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13 Jun 2012

RS17: Excavating James: The James Ossuary and the Talpiot Tomb

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The James Ossuary. Photo by Paradiso (English Wikipedia, via Wikipedia Commons). The James ossuary was on display at the Royal Ontario Museum from Nov. 15, 2002 to Jan. 5, 2003.

In honour of today’s press release today from the Biblical Archaeology Review, with its hot-off-the-press link to Hershel Shanks’ article about the James Ossuary — “‘Brother of Jesus’ Inscription is Authentic!” (note: the Biblical Archaeology Society subsequently removed this article from its website) — I’m posting a term paper I wrote for an Historical Jesus course as a graduate student in theological studies.

I call the essay “Excavating James.” I’ve posted it here as I wrote it in December 2007, several years before an Israeli court found antiquities collector Oded Golan and antiquities dealer Robert Deutsch not guilty of forgery charges after a five year trial.* In my view, the defendants in this forgery trial ably demonstrated how scientific research can be used with dignity, appropriateness, and courage to push back against the vested interests of entrenched dogmatic beliefs.

I should also note that my Masters degree in Art Conservation (Artifact stream) offered me insights into the chemistry raised in this paper.

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EXCAVATING JAMES:
BREAKING THROUGH OLD ASSUMPTIONS

by Jennifer Thomas
December 14, 2007

In October 2002, an unprovenanced chalk ossuary with probable origins in first century Jerusalem made international headlines when a press conference highlighted the possible significance of the box’s Aramaic inscription: “Ya’aquov bar Yosef akhui diYeshua,” translated as “Jacob, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” (Shanks and Witherington 22). The ossuary, commonly known as the James Ossuary, ignited a firestorm of controversy which has not yet subsided. The scholarly debate over the inscription’s authenticity has been complicated by several factors, including its acquisition by Tel Aviv collector Oded Golan; the puzzling evidence of its having been cleaned more than once (Krumbein, “Findings: Ossuary” par. 2); its history of repair by Royal Ontario Museum conservators after it sustained damage during shipping (Shanks and Witherington 36-40); its focus in the forgery charges brought by Israeli police against Golan; its examination by Israeli police and by independent geomicrobiologist Wolfgang Krumbein, hired by Golan’s defence attorney; and its recent inclusion by filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and paleobiologist Charles Pellegrino among the Talpiot Tomb ossuaries in their 2007 book, The Jesus Family Tomb. Some of the data presented by Jacobovici and Pellegrino is intriguing and worthy of more study. If further research can confirm the tentative scientifically established link between the James Ossuary and the Talpiot Tomb, then biblical scholars may be forced to reexamine some of their assumptions about the historical Jesus. In particular, the frequently ignored Epistle of James, when read against the background of the Talpiot Tomb and its ossuaries, in the manner of Crossan and Reed, may prove to have greater value as an exegetical tool for understanding Jesus than has previously been envisioned.

When John Crossan and Jonathan Reed revised their book Excavating Jesus to place the James Ossuary in the number one spot of their top ten archaeological discoveries related to Jesus, they probably never imagined that less than five years later a Toronto filmmaker would start knocking on doors in a Jerusalem suburb and asking residents if they had a tomb in their basement. The tomb in question was the Tomb of Ten Ossuaries, found accidentally in East Talpiot in 1980 while contractors were levelling ground for new construction. The Department of Antiquities (later called the Israel Antiquities Authority, or IAA) was contacted, and IAA archaeologists were dispatched to perform salvage archeology. The team physically entered the tomb, mapped the antechamber and the lower chamber with its six niches or kokhim, noted that almost a metre of terra rossa covered the floor of the lower chamber, and removed all the contents, including the red soil. The tomb’s ossuaries – at least, the nine that were later fully catalogued of the ten that were documented on-site – were taken to an IAA warehouse. The tomb itself was generally believed to have been filled with concrete in 1980 during construction of a condominium complex. Certainly this is Crossan and Reed’s stated belief (19). As we shall, however, rumours of the tomb’s demise were greatly exaggerated.

Amos Kloner, of the original IAA team, did not publish the group’s findings until 1996. Apparently, few scholars knew before then that six of the nine Talpiot ossuaries in the IAA’s possession were inscribed with names familiar to readers of the Gospels (an unusually high inscription rate, when compared to other ossuaries catalogued by the IAA (Shanks and Witherington 12)). In 1996, a BBC film crew came across the cluster of inscribed ossuaries, and created a brief media stir with their story (Jacobovici and Pellegrino 23). It is important, however, to separate media sensation from the fact of the tomb’s authenticity. Crossan and Reed quote from a 1996 article in which Joe Zias, then curator of the IAA, said, “[the list of names from the ossuaries] came from a very good, undisturbed, archaeological context. It was found by archaeologists, read by them, interpreted by them . . . a very, very good text” (19). The descriptions of the ten Talpiot Tomb ossuaries (nine in the possession of the IAA and one missing) are shown in Table 1.

Summary of Talpiot Tomb ossuary inscriptions (c) JAT 2007:

What are we to do with this list of family names that includes a Mary, a Jude (son of Jesus), a Matthew, a Jesus (son of Joseph), a Joseph, and a second Mary? Researchers tells us that Mary was a common name for daughters in the Second Temple period (Pfann 8). Shanks and Witherington, citing Rachel Hachlili, report that from the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE, Joseph was second in popularity only to Simon, Judah was third, Jesus was sixth, Matthew was eighth, and Jacob/James was thirteenth among 18 Jewish male names that appear frequently in the archaeological record (56). In themselves, the inscriptions on the Talpiot ossuaries are not remarkable if they are viewed independently of each other. But they are not independent. They are a group, and must be examined as a group. They were found together. They were found in a South Jerusalem family tomb that, because of its size, location, and quality of workmanship, could only have been built by someone of means.

Pellegrino says in his book that Jacobovici took the list of six names to Andrey Feuerverger, a University of Toronto statistician (111-114). Feuerverger calculated a conservative “P factor” (probability factor) “of 600 to one in favor of the tomb belonging to the family of Jesus of Nazareth” (114). Another way to put this is to say “one in 600 families (on the conservative side) would have that particular combination of names purely by chance, based on the distribution of individual names in the population” (Mims, “Special Report” 1, quoting TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF INSCRIPTION DATA FROM TEN OSSUARIES FOUND IN TALPIOT TOMB).

In an interview with Christopher Mims published by Scientific American in March 2007, Feuerverger says, “I did permit the number one in 600 to be used in the film. I’m prepared to stand behind that but on the understanding that these numbers were calculated based on the assumptions that I was asked to use . . . I’m not a biblical scholar” (“Q&A” 2). One of the assumptions is that the family could afford an ossuarial burial.

The P factor would rise if it could be established, as Jacobovici and Pellegrino assert, that the James Ossuary is the missing tenth ossuary from the Talpiot Tomb. This may not be as far-fetched as it seems. Pellegrino worked with Bob Genna, director of the Suffolk County Crime Lab in New York, to investigate the possibility of using “patina fingerprinting” to scientifically establish provenance. Pellegrino says this:

My idea about patina fingerprinting rests on the fact that each soil type and rock matrix possesses its own private spectrum of magnesium, titanium, and other trace elements.

In theory, the patina inside a tomb or on the surfaces of its artifacts should develop its own chemically distinct signature, depending on a constellation of variable conditions, including the minerals and bacterial populations present at any specific location and the quantities of water moving through that specific “constellation.”

If such a chemical “fingerprint” existed, scanning patina samples on a quantum level with an electron microprobe would reveal a chemical spectrum that could be matched to a specific tomb and to any objects that come from it. (176)

His proposal is gutsy but by no means ludicrous or impossible from the perspective of analytical chemistry and related fields. At the least, it deserves further consideration. Publication in a peer-reviewed journal would assist others in assessing its feasibility. At the moment, though, we have Pellegrino’s anecdotal findings, some of which are published in the form of four spectra in the colour plate section of the book. He and Genna took patina samples from the following sources: the Jesus, Mariamne, and Matthew ossuaries from the Talpiot tomb, the tomb itself, the James ossuary, and a number of provenanced ossuaries from tombs known to have similar conditions to the Talpiot tomb. His proposed method relied entirely on the availability of patina samples from the walls of the Tomb of Ten Ossuaries. Had the tomb been filled with concrete, as some had been led to believe, it would have been impossible to retrieve an uncontaminated sample. Fortunately – and for this we must thank renegade explorer Jacobovici and his associates, who wouldn’t take no for an answer – the tomb was “rediscovered” in 2005. It lay beneath a concrete and steel slab on a terrace between two condominium buildings. A tenant who had lived in one of the buildings since the beginning told Jacobovici’s team that archaeologists had left the tomb open, but tenants had built the slab on top to keep children out (150). In addition, religious authorities had turned the tomb into a genizah, or burial chamber for damaged holy texts, before it was sealed (153). The tomb was now carpeted with fragments of holy books. There was concern that the presence of the decomposing texts might have significantly altered the chemical composition of the tomb’s patina over the previous 25 years; however, this was not borne out by the microprobe studies (180).

When Pellegrino and Genna used an electron microscope to examine a patina sample from the James ossuary, provided by the Israel Geological Study, they saw “hundreds of tiny fiber fragments” on the sample (184). They concluded that “someone in modern times had given the James ossuary a hard scrubbing with a piece of cloth . . . .(184)” They directed the electron microprobe to the fibres themselves, and got large chlorine and phosphorus peaks. “This was consistent with the phosphate-spiked detergents that were in common use during the 1970s and early 1980s” (184). Someone had apparently cleaned the James ossuary with a cloth soaked in a chlorine- and phosphate- based detergent.

Probes of the James ossuary patina clearly revealed the same detergent contaminants. When these modern contaminants were factored out, the remaining spectrum was identical to those obtained from the Talpiot tomb walls and from the Jesus, Mariamne, and Matthew ossuaries (185). Further, five probes taken of a James patina sample provided by the Royal Ontario Museum were also identical, “right down to contamination by cloth fibers and phosphate-based detergent” (185).

Meanwhile, the electron microprobe studies of samples taken from unrelated Israeli ossuaries yielded spectra that were significantly different from each other and from the Talpiot cluster, even when patina samples were visually indistinguishable from the Talpiot patina under light microscopy. Pellegrino says, “In conclusion, it seemed that, compared to other patina samples from ossuaries found in the Jerusalem environment, the Talpiot tomb ossuaries exhibited a patina fingerprint or profile that matched the James ossuary and no other” (188).

If we were to rely solely on Pellegrino’s admittedly novel technique to “rehabilitate” the James ossuary’s historical significance, we would not have much. However, because the box and samples from the box have been studied so many times since 2002 by specialists from different disciplines, including epigraphers, geochemists, archaeologists, art conservators, and even a geomicrobiologist, we have considerable scientific data at our disposal.

In June 2003, the IAA issued a public statement declaring the inscription on the James ossuary a modern-day forgery. Two of the 14 Israeli scholars who were invited to prepare an authenticity report were Avner Ayalon of the Geological Survey of Israel and Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology (Fitzmyer 3). These two, together with Miryam Bar-Matthews, also of the Geological Survey, examined the James ossuary, and published their findings in the Journal of Archaeological Science (Ayalon et al). They, too, chose a method never before used to assess the authenticity of archaeological artifacts. They took patina samples from various parts of the inscription, from other surface areas of the James ossuary, and from the surface patina and letters patina of unrelated Jerusalem ossuaries; ground the samples; used a mass spectrometer to analyse the oxygen isotopic composition (δ18O values) of each sample; then compared the results to well-dated secondary calcite (speleotherms) deposited in Jerusalem area caves during the last 3,000 years. Since only one James letter sample (of seven) fell within the same range as the other types of samples, Ayalon et al concluded the patina of the inscription could not have been formed “in the natural conditions that prevailed in the Judean Mountains during the last 3000 years, [indicating] that the patina covering the letters was artificially prepared, most probably with hot water, and deposited onto the underlying letters” (1188).

There are several problems with this paper, two of which are noted here. First, although Ayalon et al acknowledge that the inscription had been observed in a previous study to be freshly cleaned, they do not discuss how the residue of earlier cleaning might affect δ18O values. This is a significant lapse. Second, they apparently base the suitability of their δ18O method on the assumption that the patina on the rest of the James ossuary was pure calcite formed in a typical Judean cave environment, that is, in an enclosed or semi-enclosed atmosphere absent of soil. Krumbein’s report, however, conclusively demonstrates that the patina is not pure calcite, and that the presence of apatite, whewellite, weddelite, and quartz in the patina, along with biopitting and plant traces, suggests that “the cave in which the James ossuary was placed, either collapsed centuries earlier, or alluvial deposits penetrated the chamber together with water and buried the ossuary, either completely or partially . . .[rendering] δ18O isotopic tests irrelevant” (under “Findings: Ossuary”; italics added).

When Krumbein examined the ossuary, along with two other disputed artifacts, in Jerusalem in 2005, the Talpiot tomb, with its verified accumulation of terra rossa, had not yet entered the picture as the possible original resting place for the unprovenanced James ossuary. Nonetheless, his thorough examination and reported findings are fully in agreement with the documented conditions in which ten ossuaries were originally found in 1980.

It is by no means certain, based on the scientific evidence, that the inscription on the James ossuary is a modern forgery (for a current example of the ongoing debate, see the BAR 33.6 article). The box itself, however, seems genuine (Ayalon et al 1185). Are there other explanations for the “Jacob, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” inscription? Of course. It is possible the inscription is a well-meaning ancient addition to a plain box. It is also possible the latter part of the inscription (“brother of Jesus”) was added recently to an authentic “James, son of Joseph” inscription, as some have argued (for example, Chadwick as cited by Shanks and Witherington 42). The inscription might even be an ancient forgery. On the other hand, the entire inscription could be authentic. The question for historical Jesus researchers is this: If the ossuary and its inscription are authentic, what does it say about Jesus? Can we stretch the question further to ask what it might mean if the James ossuary is the missing tenth Talpiot bone box? Crossan and Reed have said, with regard to the James ossuary, that “like [the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices], the ossuary is now here and its presence demands discussion. . . . It is one single artifact that brings together archaeology and exegesis. It is also one single artifact that emphasizes how such objects are of value only when embedded among all those other discoveries that give it full context and final meaning” (28). I would argue that the Talpiot tomb findings create important archeological, scientific, and exegetical context, and that the James ossuary should be examined further in light of that context.

We can say with some measure of confidence that in the period during which ossuarial burial was practised in Jerusalem (usually given as 20 BCE to 70 CE (Shanks and Witherington 69)) a family who counted among their members a Mary, a Jude, a Matthew, a Jesus, a Joseph, another Mary, and possibly a James, had enough wealth and prestige to build a spacious tomb in the bedrock of a hill just south of the old city. Different languages were used on the ossuary inscriptions: Hebrew and Aramaic, but also Greek, with one name (Maria) a Latin version of its Aramaic counterpart. From this evidence, it could be argued the family was familiar with and possibly part of the wider Greco-Roman culture of 1st century Palestine. The family also had a penchant for widely popular names, and possibly followed a custom of naming children after close relatives.

We know from exegetical evidence that Jesus of Nazareth had a brother named Jacob or James. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark both name Jesus as the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon (Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3), though Jesus’ two sisters are not named in these passages. Matthew and Mark also refer to a Mary who is mother of James and Joseph (Mt 27:56; Mk 15:40). Although it is not clear which Mary is being referred to in these latter verses, she could be Mary the mother of Jesus, in which case James and Joseph would again be named brothers of Jesus. So we have two independent Synoptic sources, Matthew and Mark, that specifically name James. The Gospel of Thomas, which is considered an independent source by some (Crossan and Reed 9), refers to James the Just in Saying 12. Further, James appears a number of times in Acts and the writings of Paul. Paul lists James among those who have seen the risen Christ (1 Cor 15:7), and when Paul is writing his letter to Galatians, he describes James as one of the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church (Gal 2:9). The much-overlooked Epistle of James purports to be written by “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Jas 1:1). We also have extra-canonical sources that name James, two of which report on his death in Jerusalem a few years before the destruction of the city in 70 CE (Gillman 621). Josephus reports that James was stoned in 62 CE on the orders of high priest Ananus (Ant 20:200). Hegesippus, writing ca. 180 and quoted by Eusebius in the 4th century, gives a dramatic account of James’s martyrdom in 67 CE (?) at the hands of the scribes and Pharisees. Also from Hegesippus through Eusebius, we learn that “James became the first bishop of Jerusalem in part because he was the brother of Jesus” (Shanks and Witherington 96).

One begins to wonder why a man from the small peasant town of Nazareth in rural Galilee, where families “had an interest in keeping the head count low” (Hanson and Oakman 58) and the total population was probably less than 400 people (Reed 131), had such a large number of presumably adult siblings when childhood death rates were so high, and why one sibling – James – had such a position of honour and authority in Jerusalem. Archaeological excavations in Nazareth have brought to light no public structures and no public inscriptions from the Early Roman Period, which attests to “the level of illiteracy and lack of elite sponsors” there (Reed 131). Juxtaposed against this archaeological evidence, we have not one but two men from the same generation of the same family who rose, in the midst of an honour-shame culture, from the humblest of origins to positions of great moral authority. Both men knew Jerusalem and died there. Both had friends there. Both surely possessed impressive oratorical skills, otherwise they would have been ignored. Surely these two men started out with more than the knowledge of how to press Nazareth’s grapes into wine (see evidence for a vineyard and wine pressing vat: Reed 132). Something does not fit with a popular understanding of the historical Jesus as an illiterate Galilean peasant carpenter wisdom sage (for example Crossan and Reed; Mack). We might understand Jesus by himself in this way. But by all accounts, Jesus had a family. We must try to place Jesus more solidly within his large family, and within a culture that lived and breathed for status.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul engages in a lengthy appeal for monetary contributions to the Jerusalem church (“the collection”) (2 Cor 8:1 – 9:15). In the course of his letter, he says, “For you know the generous act [or the grace] of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). In the Greek, Paul uses ἐπτώχευσεν πλούσιος, “the well-to-do man became poor.” This verse is usually interpreted as being metaphorical, more akin to the christological construction in Philippians 2:6-8 (footnotes in Coogan NT 302). But maybe Paul isn’t being metaphorical at all. Maybe he means exactly what he says: that Jesus intentionally gave up his wealth to do God’s work. Paul, by his own admission, visited Jerusalem and saw James the Lord’s brother (Gal 1:18-19). If Paul had not known anything about Jesus’ family before this visit, he certainly did afterwards. Did Paul learn that Jesus had come from a privileged family with strong ties to Jerusalem? How would such knowledge have affected Paul’s understanding of his own divinely appointed mission, the mission he describes in Galatians 1:15-17? Would it have been to Paul’s advantage or disadvantage that the man who spoke so clearly to the non-elite about the spiritual woes of being rich (eg. Lk 6:24) might himself have originated in a family of wealth and status?

A modern analogy might be of help in understanding the historical Jesus not as a man who came from the bottom up, but as man who had the courage to intentionally step off the upper part of the pyramid, and live as a person among persons. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that one of the many descendants of American oligarch Joseph Kennedy suddenly had a profound religious experience, and saw for the first time how much suffering had been caused by his family’s commitment to certain values. What if this descendent renounced his family’s elitist way of life, moved to Canada, got a regular job, and used his spare time to study scripture? His family probably wouldn’t like him very much. They might even lie to their friends about where he had gone, rather than face the embarrassment of being “disowned” by him on spiritual grounds. Of course, such lies would become harder to maintain if he became known in his own right as a brilliant spiritual teacher up there in the boonies, a teacher of social and gender equality and . . . what’s that? . . . miraculous healings from God? For this we gave him an education? The shame, the shame.

Eventually, of course, word would get up to Canada that the guy working over there on that construction site is a Kennedy – one of those Kennedys. And suddenly the people who had ignored him the day before would invite him over to dinner to talk about his favourite subject, God. Even the local bishop might not be immune to the cachet of this gentleman’s esteemed lineage. Doors have a way of opening for those who come from “the right sort of people.”

Two thousand years ago, Jesus went through a lot of different doors. Many of those doors were owned by priests, Pharisees, scribes, and other elites who wouldn’t have been caught dead talking to a Galilean peasant on the street, let alone seek him out for questioning in public places (Mt 22:15-46; Mk 11:27-33; Lk 20:1-8) or invite him to dinner (Lk 14:1-24). However, it is quite believable that they would talk to a man who had “ascribed honour” on the basis of his descent (Hanson and Oakman 26-31), even if they didn’t agree with his theology. Much has been made of the evidence that Jesus ate with “sinners” and “tax collectors” and other outcasts. But it is just important that Jesus was known to dine with the elite. One could say that, in his ministry, Jesus swung both ways. This may be what made Jesus unique and loved by so many.

Whatever else can be said of Jesus, no one can dispute his commitment to God. He was a man of deep faith. He strove to communicate to the people around him the depth of God’s love for them. To this end, it was probably important to Jesus that he have the chance to speak in person to as many people as possible. He was not one to retire to life in an ascetic religious community like the one at Qumran. He was walking and talking (and dining) right up until his arrest. So, from a purely practical point of view, it would have been shrewd of Jesus to avoid talking about his family lineage, whatever its exact nature. The last time a devout Jewish family claiming priestly legitimacy had gathered political support from the Jewish rank and file, a rebellion had erupted that swept the Seleucid rulers from the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The Maccabean revolt, which proved the power of priestly Jewish bloodlines, would not have been forgotten by Palestine’s new Roman rulers. Here was a clear case of discretion being the better part of valour.

Many who would argue with the thesis presented here might wonder why an educated man from a privileged family would not have written down some of his own teachings. Surely such a man would be literate! Where are the letters of Jesus? Why did he not put something down on papyrus, and hand it to a trusted friend or family member?

Well, maybe he did. Maybe his words have been staring at us all along, hidden in plain sight in the canon as part of the Epistle of James.

The Epistle of James has to be one of the least examined sources in the New Testament. Open up the back of books written by historical Jesus researchers and examine the “Ancient Sources Index.” Under James, you will frequently find nothing. Nothing at all – this despite the fact that some of the most sophisticated theology of the New Testament is found in James, and despite the fact that it has obvious links to the Q source (Hartin; Johnson; Wachob). Some might lay the blame at the foot of Luther, who famously decried James as “an epistle of straw” (Laws 622). It seems generally to be avoided in research because its Greek is deemed too elegant for the family of a Galilean artisan (but what of a highly ranked family?); there are only two brief references to Jesus (would Jesus himself brag?); and its discussion of faith and works does not refer specifically to “works of the law” (Law 622) (is that the real message of this epistle?). On the basis of these arguments, some declare it pseudonymous. In terms of date, it has been placed in the second generation, or even in the 2nd century. However, there is much evidence to support an earlier, first generation date for the epistle of James.

Luke Timothy Johnson has done considerable research in this regard. In his book Brother of Jesus, Friend of God, he says:

With the exception of the evidence in Paul, Acts, and Josephus, the letter is the historically most certain evidence we have concerning James. Even if it is supposed that a composition by James of Jerusalem was later redacted by someone else, the present letter is almost certainly appropriated by early-second-century Christian writings [1 Clement and Shepherd of Hermas]. In fact, there are strong reasons for arguing that the extant letter was composed by James of Jerusalem, whom Paul designates as “brother of the Lord.” What is more, the evidence provided by the letter fits comfortably within that provided by our other earliest and best sources (Paul, Acts, Josephus), whereas it fits only awkwardly if at all within the framework of the later and legendary sources that are used for most reconstructions [here Johnson refers to Witherington in Brother of Jesus]. (2-3)

If Johnson is correct in his conclusions, then the Epistle of James, or parts of that epistle, could well be another independent source for understanding the historical Jesus (though Johnson himself would no doubt be chagrined at seeing his work used to support a theory he does not subscribe to (Kirby 10)).

The letter of James, far from being an epistle of straw, concerns itself with teaching the difference between earthly wisdom that does not come from above versus the wisdom that does come from above, and is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy” (3:17). This is an extraordinary vision of God, one that is in stark contrast to the God who clearly plays favourites in various Old Testament and apocryphal texts. Another breathtaking vision of God is given in Chapter 1, where the author says, “No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it” (1:13-14). He then goes on to say that “every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (1:17). Note the complete absence of eschatological promises or apocalyptic warnings. The author of these sections, whom I believe was Jesus, is telling readers to take responsibility for their own actions and not blame their bad choices on a God who has “tempted them.” He is also saying they should not fear change, because God’s love never changes even when other things do.

When we place this understanding against the epistle’s opening statements – “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing” (1:2-4) – we can perhaps understand why its message has been so long ignored: this is not a message about justification by works alone, nor is it a message about justification by faith alone. It is an altogether radically new message about asking for God’s help in the here and now in the difficult spiritual task of transforming pain and suffering into maturity, wisdom, and love for one’s neighbour and one’s God, not to earn salvation, but simply because it’s the right thing to do.

No wonder they crucified the guy.

In conclusion, it is possible to apply Crossan’s and Reed’s “Excavating Jesus” method (balancing archeology with exegesis) to the task of “excavating James.” The excavated James can, in turn, shed greater light on the historical Jesus. Recent findings from the Talpiot tomb, the James ossuary, and the Epistle of James cannot be ignored. As a group, they demand discussion. As a group, they have a story to tell us about Jesus. And perhaps Jesus himself still has something to say.

* September 2, 2015: I have two updates to report which are relevant to the material posted on this page:

(1) I’m posting a link to a 2015 documentary that premiered on March 16, 2015 on VisionTV. The documentary, produced by Simcha Jacobovici, and Felix Golubev is called Biblical Conspiracies 6: The James Revelation. In this documentary, Simcha adds to his previous work on possible links between the James ossuary and the Talpiot Tomb ossuaries. He now states that the James ossuary may be a missing eleventh ossuary from the Talpiot Tomb. (His original position was that the James ossuary was the missing tenth ossuary, which mysteriously disappeared in 1980 after the Department of Antiquities (now the IAA) excavated and catalogued the contents of the tomb.) His new position no doubt derives from evidence presented during Oded Golan’s forgery trial which proved that he (Golan) was already in possession of the James ossuary a few years before the Talpiot Tomb was discovered. It’s still possible, however, that the James ossuary was looted at an earlier time from the Talpiot Tomb, as IAA archaeologist Shimon Gibson believes the tomb may have been broken into more than once before its official discovery (Biblical Conspiracies 6, 31 minutes).

In addition, Simcha uses the 2015 documentary to revisit the previous analytical analysis of the chemical fingerprint of the James ossuary inscription patina in comparison to that of the Talpiot Tomb ossuary patinas. This work was originally led by Dr. Charles Pellegrino (paleo-biologist and forensic archaeologist). In the documentary, Simcha consults with geo-archeologist Dr. Aryeh Shimron, who takes samples not from the inscription patina of the James ossuary but from the underside and inside of the box itself (from beneath the surface patina), then compares these with samples taken from the nine remaining Talpiot Tomb ossuaries as well as samples from random chalk ossuaries. Analysis of the chemical signatures shows strong similarities between the James ossuary and the Talpiot Tomb ossuaries, though, as Oded Golan rightly points out in an April 4, 2015 New York Times interview with Isabel Kershner, this isn’t conclusive proof that the James ossuary originally came from the Talpiot Tomb; the James bone box could have come from another burial cave in the same area and still show a similar chemical fingerprint. Samples would have to be taken from a large number of caves in East Talpiot to further refine the data.

It should be noted that Simcha’s new theory and new analytical data have no bearing on the actual authenticity of the James ossuary and its inscription. Whether or not Simcha is right, the James ossuary remains an important and authentic piece of archaeological evidence that can be legitimately combined with other pieces of evidence in the search for the historical Jesus, as stated above.

(2) I’m posting a link to an article by Hershel Shanks which appears in the Sept./Oct. 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. The article, called “Predilections: Is the ‘Brother of Jesus’ Inscription a Forgery?” reviews some of the recent debates surrounding the authenticity of the James Ossuary inscription and the forgery trial of Oded Golan. Mr. Shanks emphasizes that Mr. Golan did, indeed, own the James Ossuary before the Talpiot Tomb was found and excavated in a 1980 salvage operation. Mr. Shanks also comments on the recent analysis by Dr. Pieter van der Horst of the IAA committee’s own original report on the James ossuary. Says Shanks, “Van der Horst notes that the IAA ‘appointed almost exclusively committee members who had already expressed outspoken opinions to the effect that the inscription was a forgery.'”

BIBLIOGRAPHY (as it originally appeared in the 2007 research paper)

Ayalon, Avner and Miryam Bar-Matthews and Yuval Goren. “Authenticity Examination of the
Inscription on the Ossuary Attributed to James, Brother of Jesus.” Journal of Archaeological Science 31 (2004): 1185-1189.

Coogan. Michael D., Ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with
the Apocrypha, College Edition. 3rd Ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.

Crossan, John Dominic and Jonathan L. Reed. Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind
the Texts. Rev. and Updated Ed. New York: HarperCollins and HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.

“Demythologizing the Talpiot Tomb: family unit, group No. 1.” Filed under “Lost Tomb of
Jesus.” The View from Jerusalem. May 17, 2007. University of the Holy Land. 04 Dec. 2007 <http://www.uhl.ac/blog//?p=110>.

Fitzmyer, Joseph A. “Update–Finds or Fakes? The James Ossuary and Its Implications.”
Excerpted from Theology Digest 52:4 (2005). Biblical Archaeology Society. Undated. 04 Dec. 2007 <http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/bswbOOossuary_fitzmyer.asp>.

Gillman, Florence Morgan. “James, Brother of Jesus.” The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 3.
Ed. David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992. 620-621.

Goren, Yuval. “The Jerusalem Syndrome in Archaeology: Jehoash to James.”
The Bible and Interpretation. Jan. 2004. 04 Dec. 2007 <http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Goren_Jerusalem_Syndrome.htm>.

Hanson, K.C. and Douglas E. Oakman. Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Social Structures and
Social Conflicts. Incl. CD-ROM. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998.

Hartin, Patrick J. James and the Q Sayings of Jesus. Journal for the Study of the New
Testament Supplement Series 47. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991.

Jacobovici, Simcha and Charles Pellegrino. The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery,
the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History. New York: HarperCollins and HarperSanFrancisco, 2007.

Johnson, Luke Timothy. Brother of Jesus, Friend of God: Studies in the Letter of James.
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004.

Kirby, Peter. “Historical Jesus Theories.” Early Christian Writings. 2001-2003. 13 Oct. 2007
<http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html>.

Krumbein, Wolfgang E. “External Expert Opinion on Three Stone Items.”
Biblical Archaeology Society. Sept. 2005. 04 Dec. 2007 <http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/bswbOOossuary_Krumbeinreport.pdf>.

Laws, Sophie. “James, Epistle of.” The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 3. Ed. David Noel
Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992. 621-628.

“Leading Scholar Lambastes IAA Committee.” Biblical Archaeology Review 33.6 (2007): 16.

Mack, Burton L. “Q and a Cynic-Like Jesus.” Whose Historical Jesus? Ed. William E. Arnal
and Michel Desjardins. Studies in Christianity and Judaism 7. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 1997.

Mims, Christopher. “Q&A With the Statistician Who Calculated the Odds That This Tomb
Belonged to Jesus.” Scientific American. March 2, 2007. 12 Dec. 2007 <http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=13C42878-E7F2-99DF-3B6D16A9656A12FF>.

Mims, Christopher. “Special Report: Has James Cameron Found Jesus’s Tomb or Is It Just
a Statistical Error?” Scientific American. March 2, 2007. 12 Dec. 2007 <http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=14A3C2E6-E7F2-99DF-37A9AEC98FB0702A>.

Pfann, Stephen. “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” UHL Articles on “The Lost
Tomb of Jesus” Documentary. University of the Holy Land. 2007(?). 11 Dec. 2007 <http://www.uhl.ac/Lost_Tomb/HowDoYouSolveMaria/>.

Reed, Jonathan L. Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-examination of the Evidence.
Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2000.

Shanks, Hershel and Ben Witherington III. The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story &
Meaning of the First Archaeological Link to Jesus & His Family. New York: HarperCollins and HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.

Wachob, Wesley Hiram. The Voice of Jesus in the Social Rhetoric of James. Society for
New Testament Studies Monograph Series 106. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2000.

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Posted in Bible, Favourite Posts, historical Jesus, James Ossuary, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus' family of origin, Jesus' original writings, Letter of James, Paul vs Jesus, Realspiritik, Talpiot Tomb and tagged James Ossuary, Talpiot Tomb | Leave a Comment

23 May 2012

TBM39: The Perverting of Gratitude

Of all the spiritual practices that have been endorsed over the centuries by spiritual and religious leaders, the one that’s been twisted almost beyond recognition is the practice of gratitude.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m NOT saying that gratitude is a bad thing. In fact, gratitude as it’s practised by the soul is as important as breathing.

I’m saying that gratitude is so important to the hearts of regular people that bully after bully, tyrant after tyrant, has taken advantage of this deep need and twisted it — perverted it — to satisfy the status cravings of the tyrants.

Hence, we have a long history of psychopaths telling us things like this:

“You should be grateful I’ve given you the chance to die as a slave. These Pyramids are a tribute to the gods, and the gods will reward us for our obedience to their wishes. I’ve given you a chance to be worthy before you die.”

“You should be grateful you’re one of the Chosen People. These bloodlines are a tribute to the gods, and the gods will reward us for our obedience to their wishes. I’ve given you a chance to rule over the world.”

“You should be grateful you’ve been saved by Jesus Christ. These sacraments are a tribute to God, and God will reward us for our obedience to his wishes. I’ve given you a chance to be saved in the End Times.”

And on a more personal level . . .

“You should be grateful for my superiority, woman. Without men, without me, you’d be nothing.”

“You should be grateful to have a job with my company. Without me, you’d be nothing.”

“You should be grateful for the gift of God’s grace. Without it, you’d be nothing.”

Needless to say, this is not what the soul means by gratitude.

There are countless examples of the perverting of gratitude in all cultures and time periods. No culture and no religious tradition is exempt from the tendency among status-addicted psychopaths to seize upon a person’s heart and suck up the gratitude like a vampire drinking from a straw. This is why so many religions start out as an expression of faith and end up as a form of worship. Worship is the perverted form of gratitude.

Despite the plethora of examples to choose from, the one that stands out for me as a sort of “symbol” or “archetype” of how NOT to do gratitude is the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 21:1 – 22:19). It’s pretty tricky to come out and tell the truth about a biblical tale that billions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims hold dear, but I gotta say — this one biblical lesson has been used over the centuries to justify more crimes against humanity than we’ll ever know.

The writers (more accurately, the redactors) of the book of Genesis want us to accept a number of claims about the proper way to be in relationship with God. Despite the fact that Genesis was probably collated and redacted in the last part of the 3rd century BCE in Alexandria, Egypt,* the writers were very modern, very astute, in their understanding of human nature. They were not naive. They were not poorly educated. They were not simply misguided. They knew exactly what they were doing.

What they were doing was taking the ancient texts of early Judaism — such as the codes of ethical conduct that now appear in Exodus — and creating a mythical “back-story” to make Jewish teachings more appealing to a “modern,” post-Alexandrian, Greek speaking Ptolemaic empire. It’s no accident that, in the Book of Genesis, God gives Abraham and his descendants the rightful claim to all the lands “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18). That’s a big hunk of choice real estate, real estate that by no coincidence Alexander the Great had already successfully conquered in the 4th century BCE (not that anyone in the Jewish canon ever breathes a word about Alexander’s conquest . . . )

I can live with megalomaniacal claims to land and territory. They’re nothing new in the history of tyrants and emperors. What I can’t live with is the claim that God would actually tell a man of faith to sacrifice both his sons for the sake of obedience to God. God would never do that, and God’s angels would never do that. To Mother Father God, the loving care of children is paramount

So first we have God telling Abraham it’s okay for him to disown and cast out his young son Ishmael, along with Ishmael’s mother, the slave Hagar. They get turfed into the desert, afraid and alone. But, hey, not to worry — they should be grateful for this abusive treatment, because God “will make a great nation of him [Ishmael].” Then we have God “testing” Abraham, telling him directly (that’s a claim for channelling, folks!) to “take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”

So Abraham takes his son — the son he supposedly loves — to the mountain, and forces Isaac to carry the firewood up the slope, and then ties his son to the altar and raises his knife with every intention of killing him as a sacrifice to God.

Firewood (c) JAT 2014: Is this really the kind of symbol we should be using if we want to be in relationship with God?

Is this really the kind of symbol we should be using if we want to be in relationship with God? Photo credit JAT 2014.

Okaaaaaaaaaay. Let’s stop right there Let’s not go on to the next part of the story, the part where an angel of the Lord intervenes and tells Abraham not to harm the boy. Let’s just think for a minute about the first part, the part where Abraham actually believes God has told him it’s okay to scare the living shit out of a vulnerable, trusting child. The part where Isaac is lying on the altar and it finally dawns on him that his father is going to murder him. The part where Isaac experiences all the precipitating factors for lifetime post-traumatic stress order, not to mention a lifetime inability to ever trust his father’s love or integrity again. What, you think Isaac’s gonna forget something like that?

Ah, but we’re not supposed to be asking questions like that, are we? We’re not supposed to be asking questions about Ishmael’s or Isaac’s feelings or their brain health. Instead, we’re supposed to be saying to ourselves, “Who am I to withhold anything from God’s messengers if Abraham, our chosen forefather, did not withhold his only son from God?” (Never mind the fact that Abraham clearly had two sons, not one.)

The editors of Genesis and several chunks of the New Testament want us to be saying to ourselves that obedience to God’s messengers (the prophets, priests, and eventually the Apostles) trumps everything, even charity and compassion towards our own children. Proper sacrifice to God demands, well, sacrifice. After all, sacrifice and gratitude go hand in hand. Don’t they? You’re grateful to God for the blessings in your life, so obviously you want to give God a sacrifice — something tangible, something that takes money or goods or food away from you and your family, or maybe something that takes away your health and your children’s health — but the main thing is you must willingly put a sacrifice on the altar so you can prove your humility.

‘Cause, yeah, it’s . . . like . . . a totally crazy idea that you could just say thank you to God with all your heart and all your mind and all soul and all your strength, and that God would find your genuine gratitude a good enough response.

I’m certainly not the first person to point fingers at the horribleness of the Abraham-and-Isaac “wisdom teaching,” and I hope I won’t be the last. It’s just the stupidest idea imaginable to believe that God (who created billions and billions of galaxies) would actually want you to say thank you by abusing, enslaving, or humiliating your children. If you really want to show God how grateful you are, you can start by treating children well.

Jesus knew all this. Good luck finding any reverence for Abraham in the original teachings of Jesus (as witnessed in the Gospel of Mark and parts of the Letter of James).

The Sacred Spring at the Roman Baths, Bath, England. Photo credit JAT 2023.

Jesus once said (in writing!) you can’t expect a spring to pour both fresh and brackish water from the same opening (James 3:11). He said it this way because in a dry and arid terrain (such as Judea) fresh water is synonymous with genuine gratitude. It’s the source of life and healing, a blessing not to be taken for granted. Brackish water is synonymous with ill health and disease, and, by extension, diseases of human nature such as hypocrisy and deceit.

Just as you can’t expect a spring to give both fresh and mouldy water at the same time, you can’t expect to find the truth about relationship with God in the midst of a story about abuse, self-aggrandizement, and forcing somebody to submit to sacrifice.

Pick one — fresh or brackish. Then be honest about your choice. Pick either gratitude or worship — but not both, because they’re mutually exclusive.

This means you have to decide whether you can live without entertainment news (worship of status addicted stars) and professional sports scores (also worship of status addicted stars).

Just don’t pretend you’re so grateful for these people (e.g. famous pop stars) that you can’t imagine living without them. This isn’t gratitude. It’s plain ol’ status addiction wrapped up in a pretty package of fakey-fakey gratitude.

Tough words. But necessary to understand if you want to find and stay on the Spiral Path.

Good news, though — you don’t have to give up the songs or the films or the sports activities that inspire and encourage you. You just have to give up the worship!

* For more on the history of the writing of Genesis, please see the post entitled “The Book of Genesis.”

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Posted in Bible, Book of Genesis, gratitude, humility, Letter of James, psychopathy, psychopathy (niceness), relationship with God, spiritual practices, status addiction, The Blonde Mystic, worship and tagged science & faith, spiritual practice in the 3rd millennium | Leave a Comment

19 Jul 2011

JR59: News of the World: "New Lamps For Old"

A: I see a lot of similarity between the current phone hacking scandal in the U.K. and the behaviour of the apostle Paul and his cronies in the first century CE. In both situations, a very powerful man does whatever he wants regardless of how unethical, corrupt, manipulative, and cruel it is. The only difference between then and now is that Rupert Murdoch’s employees have received a public shaming. Without the huge public outcry that accompanied the recent re-revelation about phone hacking at the News of the World, the authorities wouldn’t have reopened the investigation or arrested more people. The authorities — or rather I should say certain individuals in senior positions of authority in the police and government — knew about the accusations of unethical conduct and did nothing much about them until regular people started yelling and putting their foot down.

“But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at their image and, on going away, immediately forget what they look like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act — they will be blessed in their doing” (James 1:22-25). Replicas of Ancient Greek vessels. Photo credit JAT 2014.

J: The parallels are uncanny. If people today are having trouble imagining what it felt like for my followers soon after my death, they can read about the phone hacking scandal and put themselves in the shoes of the families of the murder victims who were psychologically assaulted by the News of the World reporters, editors, and decision makers.

A: I think most people would be shocked to learn how unethical Paul really was. How cold and calculating he really was.

J: He was a business man. Very practical, very logical. He was like the editor at the News of the World who approved the phone hacking strategies. Anything was okay as long as it got the job done. “The end justifies the means” and all that crap. Success at any price. Just the way his bosses in Alexandria wanted it.

A: Yet you’ve said in previous discussions that Paul truly believed in what he was doing.

J: Sure. A successful psychopath is an ideologue. It’s what separates the successful psychopaths — “snakes in suits,” as researcher Robert Hare calls them — from the garden variety criminals who get caught and thrown in jail for reckless, impulsive crimes. An ideologue — and Paul was a religio-political ideologue — uses “The Big Idea” as a crutch to hold up his dysfunctional brain. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s an external framework of ideas that the psychopath clings to because he’s lost his own internal compass. He can’t hear the voice of his own soul telling him what’s right and wrong. But he’s still very logical, very goal-oriented, and he’s addicted to status. So if he can “attach” himself to an external Big Idea, and apply his logic and ambition to it, he can acquire status and not end up in prison.

A: Why won’t he end up in prison? Aren’t psychopaths inherently impulsive? Prone to risk-taking behaviours and uninterested in consequences? Doesn’t this make him more likely to do something criminal?

J: Yes. It’s part of the package for psychopaths. But if you put a psychopath in a structured organization where there are very strict rules, very clear punishments, and rigid ladders of governance, he’ll be so busy trying to claw his way up “the ladder of success” he won’t bother going out to rob banks or gas stations. The buzz he gets from plotting his long-term strategy for “success” is much better than the temporary high of terrorizing a gas station attendant.

This is not to say the snakes-in-suits are “nicer” psychopaths. They’re not nice people at all. But no one can question their ability to promote “The Big Idea” (whatever their Big Idea happens to be) with charismatic passion. Regular people are easily sucked in by this passion.

A: So Paul was a snake-in-a-suit. I kinda like the way this ties in with the conversations we’ve had about the Book of Genesis.

J: Paul was promoting the Big Idea of salvation. Escape from a life without status. Escape from a death without status. He and his followers built a humongous empire on the “4 S’s” — sin, separation, sacraments, and salvation. But Paul’s Big Idea was just that — an idea. A belief system. A theory without proof. A theory that’s never had proof. Its very lack of provableness is what makes it so attractive to psychopaths. Why? Because there’s nothing in the Big Idea that can act as a mirror for the psychopath’s true intent. There’s nothing to make him look at himself honestly. There’s nothing to challenge him to be his best self. The Big Idea gives him 1,001 excuses to brush his abusive behaviour under the carpet. Unfortunately, until the psychopath sees himself as he really is, he has no incentive to change.

A: I think we’ve just spiralled back to your analogy between a psychopath and the Greek monster Medusa. Medusa’s hideous face turned everyone into stone until Perseus held up a mirror-like shield and forced her to look at herself.

J: Part of the problem here is that regular people don’t understand what makes a psychopath tick. Regular people look at a “successful psychopath” — the guy who has the drive and ambition to work 16 hour days — and they think he must really know who he is and what he wants. They think they should try to be like him. They think they themselves are failures if they want to go home to their families after working an 8 hour day. But the honest truth is the successful psychopath has no idea who he really is. All he has inside himself is a score card. A score card instead of a heart. His soul is all heart, of course, but he long ago stopped listening to this core part of himself. This is why he has no conscience and no empathy. His soul isn’t defective, but his biological brain is seriously out of balance. He’s so used to living this way that it’s normal for him. Even worse, he likes living this way. He likes hurting other people. He likes making regular people feel small and useless. And he’s not going to change until he recognizes the honest truth that he’s not a nice person.

A: It took me years to understand this lesson. I misunderstood what compassion was. I thought compassion meant you should never intentionally make another person feel bad about themselves. That’s before I learned (the hard way) that a lot of people out there want to hurt other people and consciously choose to hurt other people and get a high out of psychologically abusing other people and won’t decide to stop this behaviour until they’re forced to look in the mirror. I also learned the hard way that the more dysfunctional a person is, the more insulted and offended she’ll be when you tell her she isn’t being a nice person.

J: You’re thinking of someone in particular when you say that.

A: Yes. I’m thinking of Grace, the modern day “spiritual leader” (a.k.a. apocalyptic prophet) I hung out with for several years before I came to my senses.

J: These are the people who are quickest to say, “You have no right to say such things about me.”

A: Hey, don’t forget the other favourite response of the psychopath who insists she’s a nice person: “Oh, my dear, tut tut, how can you say such things about me? Why, everyone knows what a good person I am and how hard I work on behalf of the community. I’m so concerned for you, you poor thing. You really need to get some help.”

J: A psychopath has extremely strong defences against hearing the truth about his or her own behaviour. It’s scary how strong these defences are. The doctrines of orthodox Western Christianity have served as excellent body armour for its successful psychopaths. Pauline Christians are not called upon to look honestly at themselves and make changes to live up to their true potential. Instead they’re encouraged to stoop to the level of a psychopath’s dysfunctional mind so the psychopath doesn’t have to feel bad about himself.

A: You said pretty much the same thing in James 1:22-25.

J: I’m a consistent fellow. But it’s not hard to be consistent when you’re trying to speak the truth. Truth has an annoying habit of being consistent and provable and open to new and unfolding sources of knowledge. Even if it takes a couple of thousand years for the truth to be recognized, for the facts to be identified, remembered, understood, and acted upon.

A: I’m glad there’s finally a solid and widespread foundation of research in place so the truth about Paul’s “News of the World” can finally come out.

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Posted in "4 S's", "Escape", conscience & morality, empathy, Jesus Redux, Jesus' original writings, Letter of James, Paul's teachings, psychopathy, psychopathy (niceness), theodicy and tagged Paul vs Jesus | Leave a Comment

05 Jul 2011

JR55: Healing: The Easy Way and the Hard Way

A: Apart from the Kingdom sayings and the puzzling Son of Man sayings, you also left behind some curious sayings about protecting the master’s house and making it strong against thievery or attack — especially attack from within. Thomas 21b and Luke 12:37-48 and Mark 3:20-27 all use this theme. The passage in Luke is especially confusing. Luke 12:37-38 is a makarism: “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.”

Now, I know you had nothing nice to say about the custom of slave-owning. So the passage in Luke (12:37-48) must be a parable, an analogy for something else, even though the Oxford NRSV calls these verses a collection of “sayings on watchfulness and faithfulness” rather than a parable.

“Therefore I say: If a householder knows a thief is coming, he will keep watch and not let him break into his house (of his kingdom) and steal his goods. You must keep watch against the world, preparing yourselves with power so that thieves will not find any way to come upon you” (Gospel of Thomas 21b and 21c, translated by Stevan Davies). Photo credit JAT 2013.

J (grinning): Oh, yes. It’s a parable. One I wrote myself.

A: Ah. And I see that this parable references “the Son of Man” in verse 40: “You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Many commentators have assumed this verse is a reference to an apocalyptic prophecy you made. They assume “the Son of Man” is an actual person — you — who will be coming back on a future day to bring about the prophesied day of judgment. Is this what you meant? Because Matthew 24:36-51 certainly makes it sound as if this is what you meant.

J: Matthew, as we’ve discussed earlier, was no friend of mine and no friend to my teachings. Matthew was like a gardener who sees another’s man field and hates the way the plants are arranged. So he sneaks in with a shovel at night and digs up the other man’s plants and takes them to a new field and replants them in an entirely new garden composition and adds some new plants of his own, then steps back and loudly proclaims he’s done great honour to the other man. Meanwhile, the other man’s garden is a potholed ruin.

A: Always with the parables. You just don’t quit!

J: It’s who I am.

A: Okay. So what were you getting at? Why were you so fond of the image of the master’s house that needs to be protected? Who was “the master”? Was it God?

J: Nope. The master in the parable of the responsible slave (Luke 12:37-48) is the soul of any human being who’s walking around on Planet Earth. Any human being at all.

A: Say what?

J: Although today’s commentators assume I was an idiot who spouted apocalyptic prophecy and hadn’t a drop of common sense in me, I actually had a “method to my madness.” The sayings I left behind all speak to a few internally consistent, common sense teachings about the soul. I said a small number of things a great many times. The things I said all relate to each other in a logical, coherent, heart-based way. If I spoke again and again about the psychological reality of the Kingdom (wholeness and maturity of the self), and the importance of respecting “boundaries of the self” and “boundaries of the other,” and the potential of human beings — all human beings — to seek healing and redemption through the power of forgiveness, then there’s only one person this “master” can be. The master is the self. The master is the core self, the soul that each person is. The true self. This parable is a metaphor about the human brain. It’s an attempt to explain in layman’s terms what’s going on inside a person’s head, and why there’s no such thing as demon possession. It’s an attempt to explain why the path of redemption seems so harsh at times.

A: “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay down his head and rest.” (Thomas 86)

J: Yes. Foxes know who they are and where their “home” is. Birds know who they are and how to build a home for themselves and their children. Human beings, of all God’s creatures on Planet Earth, are the least likely to know who they are and how to build a “home” for their highest potential. For a human being, this home is their brain — their biological brain and central nervous system. This home has to be painstakingly built over many years. Nothing so simple as building a bird’s nest, no sir! The “insides” of a person have to be carefully built to match the “outsides.” This is the holistic path to maturity for all human beings.

A: This goes back to what you were saying a few days ago about Saying 22 in the Gospel of Thomas (Saying 22 in the Gospel of Thomas). One thing I love about your teachings on wholeness — on Whole Brain Thinking — is the fairness of it. These teachings apply to all people in all places in all cultures. It’s radically egalitarian. Everyone gets the same basic toolkit for building a garden of peace. But each person’s garden will look different because each soul is different. I just love that part!

J: Yes, but before they can get to the point of being able to admire each other’s gardens — instead of envying and destroying each other’s gardens — they have to get through the healing stage. This is the stage where most people quit, where they run away from the difficulties and challenges of building an inner “home” — a field full of good soil — inside their own heads. This is the stage most people don’t even know IS a stage.

A: The Church has done precious little to help us understand this — even today, when we have so much knowledge about the human brain and its hard-wiring for empathy and change.

J: Two thousand years ago, I certainly had no knowledge of neuroanatomy or neurophysiology or neurotransmitters or the like. But I was a keen observer of human nature, and I was scientifically minded. More to the point, I was a mystic. I had unflinching faith in God’s goodness because of my mystical practice, and I knew there had to be something better than “demon possession” to account for frightening behaviour. So I looked to a scientific model. It wasn’t that hard, really. You work through empirical observation and rudimentary statistical analysis. That’s how all science advanced for thousands of years until recently. You take careful notes, you try to stay objective, you look for patterns, you try to prove you didn’t simply invent the patterns because you wanted to see them. Objectivity is crucial, of course. If you’re determined to find an imaginary Cause X, you’ll find it because you want to. However, this isn’t science. This is narcissism.

A: So your lack of narcissism — or I suppose I should say your eventual lack of narcissism — made you more open to honest fact-finding about the human condition.

J: I was open to the idea that there could be scars on the inside of a person’s body as well as on the outside.

A: In James 1:8, you use the unusual Greek word “dipsychos,” which is usually translated in English as “double-minded.” What were you getting at here?

J: If you read the parts of the Letter of James that I wrote — James 1:2-27; 2:1-8a; and 3:1-18 — you can see me struggling to put into words the problem of understanding the human brain and all its competing “intents.” I used several different metaphors there to try to explain what a lack of inner wholeness results in. Which is tragedy. Pain, suffering, and tragedy.

A: You also express the idea in James 1:8 that “the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.” This is a pretty tough statement, don’t you think?

J: Many will think so. They’ll assume I’m talking about divine judgment and divine retribution. But I’m not. I’m talking about the scientific reality of the soul-body nexus. I’m talking about the built-in set of checks and balances that exists within the human self to promote mature, loving choices.

I’m going to come at your question from a different direction. If there really is a God, and there really are good souls, and there really are souls who choose to incarnate in a temporary 3D body where they have to struggle to balance the needs of their souls and the needs of their biological bodies . . . would it make sense to you in this context that God would refuse to provide built-in roadmaps and compasses and warning signals and obvious feedback so you could safely navigate all the confusion? Does that make sense to you?

A: No.

J: It didn’t make sense to me, either. So in the parable of the responsible slave, the “house” of the master is — to use you as an example (sorry, hope you don’t mind) — is your entire head, including your skull. The “master” is your soul, and in particular the non-plastic parts of your brain that are controlled by the thoughts and feelings and actions of your soul. The “slaves” are the semi-autonomous regions of your brain that are supposed to be in charge of your physiological needs, but which all too often end up running the show — and doing a very poor job of it, I might add. If you were to let the “slaves” manage your choices, abuses would occur. Abuses of your self and abuses of others. Naturally, your core self — your soul — wouldn’t like this very much, and your core self would have something to say about it. This isn’t punishment “from above.” This is you standing up for your own core integrity! This is you trying to get yourself back in balance!

A: By first recognizing that there’s a problem. With your own choices.

J: Healing begins with insight. Before you can heal, you have to admit there’s a problem. Unfortunately, people can get their heads caught up in some pretty unhealthy thinking patterns. They can become so dysfunctional that they confuse the “slaves” with the “master.” They can’t hear their own inner voice, even though the inner voice never stops talking.

There’s always the easy way and the hard way. You can listen to your own inner voice, and begin to heal, in which case the journey won’t be as difficult.

A: You’ll get a “light beating” (Luke 12:48).

J: The majority of human beings, then and now, however, end up by default on the hard way.

A: So their bodies get a “severe beating” (Luke 12:47) from their own souls.

J: Well, it looks that way from the outside in the beginning.

A: People will say you’re blaming the victims of illness.

J: It’s not that simple. People get ill for a variety of reasons. But ONE of the reasons people get sick is because they opt to make certain very poor choices. This is simply a statement of fact. It’s not a judgment to say that a person who chooses to eat 5,000 calories per day and is morbidly obese (with all the attendant health problems of extreme obesity) bears SOME of the responsibility for his or her state of health.

A: When you put it that way, it seems pretty fair and reasonable. There are lots of intentional human choices that can lead to serious illness and disability. We often don’t want to change the choices we make until we really, really understand the consequences that are involved.

J: Observable consequences are part of each person’s built-in roadmap for living a life of wholeness in accordance with the wishes and needs of the soul. If your biological body is way out of balance, you need to listen to what your soul is saying. It’s only common sense.

Posted in boundary issues, brain-soul connection, Gospel of Thomas, healing, Jesus Redux, Jesus' original writings, Kingdom teachings, Letter of James, makarism, Matthew's and Luke's intent, parables, Son of Man, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

01 May 2011

JR35: Father of Lights, Mother of Breath

“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the Word of Truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures” (James 1:17-18). Photo credit JAT 2014.

A: Saying 56 of the Gospel of Thomas is somewhat puzzling. Stevan Davies translates it as “Jesus said: Whoever has known the world has found a corpse; whoever has found that corpse, the world is not worthy of him.” Davies suggests that this saying relates to the two Creation stories in Genesis. He says, “it seems that the animating principle of the world is the Kingdom within it that remains undiscovered by most people. They do not realize that for them the world is a corpse; when they discover that it is, they simultaneously discover the Kingdom that can animate it” (page 61). Davies’s interpretation doesn’t feel right to me. What were you trying to get at here?

J: Davies’s thesis that the Kingdom is an animating principle within a person and within the world outside each person is central to his interpetations of the Thomasine sayings. He’s entitled to his own theories, but I don’t have to agree with them.

A: So you don’t agree.

J: No. Davies’s interpretation — for all that he tries to cast it in the light of Wisdom teachings instead of Gnostic teachings — is still Gnostic. In other words, it’s an occult interpretation. Occult interpretations of the world rely heavily on dualistic thinking — everything is reduced to pairs of opposites such as “good versus evil” or “light versus darkness.”

A: “Alive versus dead.”

J: Yes. As soon as a person starts talking about “dead things” being animated — literally, being brought to life — by outside forces, then you’re moving in the direction of dualistic, occult thought. What scholars call Christian Gnosticisms are really just a form of immaturity. Emotional and intellectual immaturity. Nothing in Creation can be reduced to the kind of simplistic “either-or” religious formula that’s being offered in Davies’s interpretation. Life just isn’t like that.

A: So you don’t agree that “alive versus dead” is a legitimate pair, a legitimate starting point for discussion about the nature of life?

J: You have to understand the religious context in which I lived. People had some very strange ideas about birth, life, illness, and death — everyone did, regardless of their religion. Jews were no different. We had tons of restrictions and limitations and taboos around natural life processes. Especially around death. Taboos around some other things had loosened up when Jewish lands fell under the sway of Hellenistic thought and then Roman thought. But the taboos around death hadn’t diminished. People were very frightened of dead bodies. Only certain people were allowed to touch them. No one could be buried inside the city walls. The list went on and on.

A: That doesn’t sound much different from today.

J: One of religion’s most important jobs is to help people deal in mature and compassionate ways with death. Few religions manage to accomplish this task with any grace or decorum. One of the few modern religions that brings death into the community in a living, natural way is Rabbinic Judaism. Christianity could learn a thing or two from Judaism on this score. However, the approach to death seen in today’s synagogue was not the approach to death I grew up with. Rabbinic Judaism didn’t exist in the first half of the 1st century CE. Judaism was a mess. We had so many competing philosophies and so many competing rituals that regular people were hopelessly confused.

A: Dare I say that you added to that confusion?

J: You can say that. It’s true. But Judaism had some good things going for it. Even though I had studied the works of Hellenistic philosophers, looking for nuggets of spiritual wisdom, I came back in the end to the best that Judaism had to offer. In my view, the best ideas of Judaism topped everything the other religions were offering.

A: Can you give some examples?

J: The most obvious one is the image of God in the Hebrew texts. There was the strange idea in Judaism — uncommon, though not unprecedented in the history of religion — that there was really just one God, not a whole pantheon of gods. Of course, I didn’t agree with the Platonic idea that God was a single undifferentiated “He.” This idea had slowly made its way into Jewish thought, and by the 1st century CE it was widely accepted by many Jews. But not all Jews saw God as 100% male. A thinking person couldn’t make sense of the natural world if it was seen solely as a “male domain.” There had to be a feminine principle in there somewhere — a feminine principle that was equal to the male principle and in full partnership with the male principle. My personal experiences as a mystic clinched that theory beyond all doubt. Once I had seen and felt the reality of God the Mother and God the Father in my own heart, I had no doubt about who God really is. God is Father and Mother together — Abba and Ruah. Father of Lights, Mother of Breath. That’s what I called them.

A: You refer to the Father of Lights in the Letter of James (James 1:17-18). You also say there that the Father of Lights gave birth to us “by the word of truth.” What did you mean by this?

J: “The word of truth” — logo aletheias in the Greek, which is not the same as Sophia (Wisdom) — is a name I sometimes used for God the Mother. I was trying to make it clear that God the Father doesn’t give birth to us by himself. It isn’t a weird form of parthenogenesis (virgin birth). It’s the most natural form of creation imaginable.

A: Two partners coming together in light and in truth and fulfilling our creation because they want to.

J: This image of God was considered heretical to both pious Jews and pious Gentiles. There were countless images of the Divine in many different religions. The only image of the Divine that wasn’t being preached was the one I was preaching — the God Who Is Two. One God, many children. One God, many souls. One God, many Kingdoms. This image of God as God really is did have — and still has — the power to free so many people from the suffering caused by prejudice and hierarchy and male dominance! This image has the power to open up the gates of meaningful relationship with God. Everything you see in the world around you makes so much more sense when you allow yourself to make room for the “crazy, heretical notion” that God is Two — not One, and not Three. All the most meaningful experiences of life as a human — the experiences of love, of redemption, of healing, of trust — they all rely on relationship. On two people — at a minimum — coming together in mutual aid and comfort. As the song says, “one is the loneliest number”. On the other hand, two is the number of change, growth, creation, balance, and divine love. The world of science and nature constantly reinforces this one simple message: it’s all about Two, not One.

A: It seems very strange to me that when an individual adamantly holds to the idea that God is One, his or her thinking becomes less holistic and more dualistic — more based on black-and-white pairs of opposites. When pious religious followers commit themselves wholly to the idea that God is One, it’s like a cartoon thought bubble pops up and fills itself up with all sorts of nasty, judgmental words. Words so nasty they could singe the hair off your head. You wouldn’t think the idea of God-as-One could lead to so much hatred and prejudice and racial discrimination. But we have plenty of history to prove it. I’ve been watching the Kennedy mini-series on the History Channel, and of course they examine the racial rioting in the U.S. South in the early 1960’s. I simply can’t understand or relate to that kind of vicious hatred.

J: Well, we had plenty of that kind of vicious hatred in my time. Jews against other Jews. Rich against poor. Chosen people against damned people. Blah, blah, blah. No end to the bigotry. No end to the narcissism.

A: I see you’re equating bigotry with narcissism.

J: Sure. Bigotry can only grow in a garden that’s growing the weeds of narcissism and bullying. Narcissism is a psychologically dysfunctional state where an individual’s brain becomes addictively dependent on the myth that he or she is “special,” “better than others,” and entitled to better treatment than other people. Like any addict, the status addict has to receive regular fixes. To maintain a stance of bigotry towards another person on the basis of skin colour is simply proof of addiction — addiction to status. The choice to hate somebody on the basis of race or skin colour has the same biological effect on the brain as an addiction to cocaine. Bigotry is a form of “using.” It has no place in the life of a person of faith.

A: Bigotry is another form of dualistic thinking — “us versus them.”

J: It’s also a clear indication of immaturity in an individual. A mature individual is able to process ambiguity, change, complexity, and “shades of grey.” A mature individual is capable — even as a frail human being — of perceiving and appreciating the vast scope of Creation and the awe-inspiring, humbling interconnections that exist among all forms of life, both here and elsewhere in Creation. A mature individual doesn’t ask “what God can do for you,” but instead asks “what you can do for God.”

A: That statement would be considered blasphemous by the “piety and pity” crew that insists we’re all full of sin and unworthy before God.

J: Well, I rejected the “piety and pity” parade, as you can tell from everything I’ve been trying to say on this site.

A: I’ll just call you the “trust and twofulness” guy instead.

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Posted in Davies (Stevan), dualism, Gnosticism, Gospel of Thomas, Jesus Redux, Kingdom teachings, Letter of James, life and death, Mother and Father God, Mother God, status addiction and tagged Christ Archetype, Divine Heart | Leave a Comment

01 Apr 2011

JR29: Eucharist: The Temple Sacrifice

A: One thing I’ve noticed over and over in my studies is the idyllic portrait that’s been painted of the apostle Paul. “Paul was such a good man.” “Paul was such a brave missionary.” “Paul teaches us how to be imitators of Christ.” “Paul was a selfless servant of God.” “Paul was a man I can relate to.” “Jesus is my saviour, but Paul is my hero. I want to be like Paul when I grow up.” I wonder sometimes if the Christians who are saying these things have ever read what Paul’s letters actually say. Paul’s own letters — Romans, First & Second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, First Thessalonians, Philemon, and probably Colossians — reveal clearly that Paul was every bit as interested in “pagan” occult magic and mysticism as the “pagans” were at this time. This wasn’t a “modern” or “progressive” religious movement at all.

“His disciples said to him: Show us the place you are, for it is essential for us to seek it. He responded: He who has ears, let him hear. There is light within a man of light, and it lights up all the world. If it does not shine, it is dark” (Gospel of Thomas 24). This saying can be understood as a central thesis statement in guiding your understanding of Jesus’ original teachings. Among those who believe in dualistic traditions about light versus dark that include good versus evil, purity versus sin, and mind versus body, a quick glance at Thomas 24 suggests that Jesus is talking about the light of divine knowledge and salvation. But only those who haven’t been paying attention to Jesus’ teachings on love, forgiveness, and healing could conclude that, for Jesus, the inner light sought by the disciples is the light of gnosis (occult understanding, illumination, pure wisdom). For Jesus, the highest state of human experience revolved around Divine Love — how to feel it, how to share it, how to be healed by it. You can choose to accept a life of relationship with God, in which case you’ll begin to live a life of wholeness, expansiveness, empathy, and healing (i.e. entering the Kingdom that can’t be “seen” but can be “heard,” or, more properly, emotionally sensed). Or you can choose to block God’s love and forgiveness in your life by allowing ancient occult rituals and beliefs to get in the way of your daily relationship with God (i.e. choosing Paul’s moveable Temple with its occult feast of body and blood). The photo shows a marble head and torso of Dionysos, God of Wine, Roman copy after a Praxitelean work of the 4th century BCE, on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2017.

J: In the first century of the Roman Empire, the idea of gods and goddesses and cult rituals and visions and prophecies and sacrifices and divine fools and chosen oracles and sacred pools and sacred temples and sacred stones and sacred forests was — by far — the dominant understanding of humanity’s relationship with the divine. This way of thinking has become foreign to the modern mind. But it was the context in which I was teaching. It was also the context in which Paul was teaching. In my time as a teacher and healer, I was not only trying to undermine the authority of the Jerusalem Temple — I was also trying to lessen the authority of occult magic in people’s minds. I was trying to say that visions and prophecies and sacrifices get in the way of people’s relationship with God. I wanted to make the experience of faith consistent with the experience of the human senses and the natural world. Some would call it a form of natural theology.

A: If this is what you were trying to do, it doesn’t come across well in the New Testament.

J: No. It can only be seen clearly in the Gospel of Mark. There’s also an indication of it in the Gospel of Thomas and in the parts of the Letter of James I myself wrote. The Kingdom parables that Matthew and Luke cut and pasted from earlier written sources also give an indication of my lack of support for ritual, magic, prophecy, and the like. The images I used in my teaching parables were all very practical, very normal. You won’t find any mystical flying chariots in my teachings.

A: Or any trips to the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2). On the other hand, there are lots of references to healing miracles in Mark, and many people today would want to lump healing stories into the same category as other first century superstitions.

J: Well, the honest truth is that healing miracles do take place, and always have, because healing miracles aren’t a form of magic. They’re a form of science. Healing miracles, when they take place, are the result of conscious choices made by God or by God’s healing angels. At a scientific level, God is collapsing probability wave functions and shifting quantum energies by means of non-locality (quantum entanglement) to effect changes at the macroscopic level. In other words, if God decides to give you a “miracle healing” — and only God is in charge of this decision — then God uses perfectly acceptable scientific tools to bring about the healing. This is just a more sophisticated form of what today’s medical researchers are doing with targeted therapies and surgeries performed with computer-aided magnification. Really, it’s just goofy to claim that healing miracles aren’t scientifically possible. Just because the human mind can’t grasp the scientific principles God uses doesn’t mean those principles don’t exist. Modern science gives people more grounds for believing in healing miracles, not fewer.

A: What does a human being have to “do” in order to receive one of these healing miracles? What sort of religious observance will lead to a healing miracle?

J: What I was trying to get at 2,000 years ago was the idea that occult magic gets in the way of the relationship between each person and God. It’s the relationship that’s central to the healing process. It’s the choices that people make around their relationships — all their relationships, not just their relationship with God — that affect the functioning of the body’s built-in healing abilities. Human DNA comes with some pretty amazing built-in “healing subroutines.” If those subroutines are functioning properly, the body can bounce back quite quickly from all sorts of injuries and illnesses. I’m not saying there won’t be scars, and I’m not saying there won’t be psychological and emotional adjustments. Human beings can’t escape occasional illness or eventual death. (Though to listen to Paul, you might think you can.) On the other hand, you can make the most of your DNA package. You can make the most of your human biology. You can work with God rather than against God towards a state of healing.

A: I continue to be amazed that Paul’s silence on the question of healing and healing miracles doesn’t bother today’s orthodox Christians.

J: The author of Luke-Acts did a brilliant job of making it seem that Paul’s spiritual concerns were the same as my spiritual concerns. Acts makes it seem that Paul cared about healing the disadvantaged in society. Paul’s own words say otherwise.

A: In 1 Corinthians 11:23-30, we see Paul instituting the Eucharist. In his own words, Paul says he received a revelation from the Lord in which you supposedly commanded your faithful followers to eat bread in remembrance of you and to drink the cup which is “the new covenant in [his] blood.” How do your respond to that?

J: The same way I respond to all Temple sacrifices: they gotta go.

A: You’re implying that Paul’s Eucharist is a Temple sacrifice?

J: I’m saying it right out loud. I’m saying that Rabbiniic Judaism freed itself from the horror of Temple sacrifices more than 1,900 years ago, and now it’s time for Christianity to follow suit. Paul’s mystical Eucharist is nothing more than an extension of Paul’s Temple theology. First he tells people that if they have blind faith in Christ, the Temple will come to them. Then he institutes a classic Temple sacrifice — in this case the sacred Messianic bread and wine of the Essenes (1QS 6 and 1QSa). This would have made perfect sense to a first century audience steeped in occult magic — you go to a Temple to offer a sacrifice. Logically, however, you can’t take an external sacrifice to the Temple of the Spirit if the Temple is already inside you. So to keep the Temple clean and make it habitable for the Spirit (so that the Spirit can come in and bring you lots of special spiritual goodies) you have to ingest the sacrifice. You have to drink holy blood and eat holy flesh because nothing else in the corrupt material world is powerful enough to purify your inner Temple.

A: But this inner Temple isn’t really “you.” It’s something that originated outside of you — something that God gives and God can take away. It’s like a surgical implant, a pacemaker or a stent or a pin in a broken hip. Right?

J: Exactly. It’s a Gnostic idea. An occult idea. Paul’s Eucharist is a pagan ritual. A cult ritual. A vampiric ritual. It has nothing to with “remembrance” and everything to do with occult power over evil forces. The very idea of drinking blood would have offended and horrified mainstream Jews, including me and my followers. Even John the Baptist doesn’t speak of the Eucharist in his gospel. Paul’s Eucharist crossed a big line.

A: And I suppose Mark confronted this very issue in his gospel?

J: Oh yes. Most definitely.

A: Good. Then I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on that topic.

+10

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Posted in "4 S's", Essenes, faith, First Corinthians, Gnosticism, healing miracles, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, Jesus' original writings, Letter of James, Mark vs Paul, occult themes, Paul's teachings and tagged Kingdom teachings, Mark vs Paul | Leave a Comment

13 Feb 2011

JR9: Jesus Explains "The Kingdom"

A: You told me several years ago that you wrote parts of the Letter of James yourself — specifically James 1:2-27, James 2:1-8, and James 3:1-18 — and that after your death your older brother James added the remaining verses to blunt the effect of your writings and make them more “pious.” Yesterday I was checking something in the Letter of James, and I couldn’t help smiling. What you wrote 2,000 years ago sounds an awful lot like what you said for the record last Wednesday. Do you mind if I put in a quote from James?

J: Knock yourself out.

A: Okay. Here’s the NRSV translation of James 2:1-8a, with a couple of changes in emphasis. Here goes:

“My brothers, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in God? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please,’ while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there,’ or ‘Sit at my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and becomes judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”

J: You give them one little inviolable spiritual law to follow, and they argue with you until you’re blue in the face and dead in the ground. It’s 2,000 years since I said that, and a huge number of Christians still don’t get it — you can’t love your neighbour and keep your status addiction, too. You have to make a choice.

A: There are almost no Christians who believe you wrote these verses yourself. Few theologians pay attention to the Letter of James. It doesn’t have any real “Christology” in it. To them, it’s little more than a typical 1st century wisdom sermon. Martin Luther hated this letter because it seems to deny Paul’s doctrine of “justification by faith.” Luther called it “an epistle of straw,” and would have had it removed from the Protestant canon if he could have.

J: There you go. More proof for the theory that Paul and I had very different things to say about God.

A: Tell me what you meant when you described the poor as “heirs of the kingdom.”

J: That goes to the heart of my teachings.

A: I know.

J (grinning): No point beating around the bush, eh?

A: Exactly my thought.

J: Well, I guess you could say that I was trying to be a good teacher. By that I mean I was doing my best to explain complex ideas in a useful, useable way. Good teaching often involves finding the right image, the right metaphor for the group you’re teaching. The right metaphor can open up doors in a student’s mind, help her find the connection between what she already knows and what she’s learning. You can try to invent new terms, new words for a complex idea. Scholars often do this. Or you can try to work with existing vocabulary and use it in new ways. I opted for the latter.

A: So you chose the word “kingdom” because of the symbolism attached to it at the time.

J: Well, here’s where it gets confusing. The word “kingdom” by itself was not the exact image I chose — not that word by itself, anyway. But, like all people, I was sometimes guilty of shortening things for the sake of convenience. The actual phrase I chose was “basileia ton ouranon” — Koine Greek for “kingdom of the heavens.” Eventually, when I was speaking or writing for my own community, I called it “the kingdom” for short. But by then it was understood what I meant.

A: Which was . . . ?

J: I was trying to express the idea that each individual person should think of themselves as a whole and complete entity, lacking nothing as far as God was concerned. A tiny kingdom of “selfhood” unto themselves. An inviolable kingdom. A worthy kingdom. A very small kingdom, to be sure, but one they had full rights over as its “sovereign.” It’s about boundary issues, really. Today’s teachers and psychologists use the phrase “boundary issues.” I used the phrase “kingdom of the heavens.” But it’s the same idea exactly. It’s the idea that your body and your mind and your heart belong to nobody but you. Therefore, it’s wrong to transgress those boundaries. It’s wrong for you to invade somebody else’s body, mind, and heart, just as it’s wrong for them to invade yours. It’s about human dignity, human worth. It’s about seeing each individual as, well, as . . .

A: As an individual?

J: Yes. It’s about seeing each individual as an individual, instead of seeing them as property or as a means to an end.

A: Status addicts. Psychopaths. Narcissists. People suffering from these disorders can’t see other people as they really are — as other people. They tend to see them as objects to be used.

J: That ideal — if you can call it that — was ingrained in the culture of my time. People were so used to hearing about “the chosen” and “the judged” in society that they weren’t questioning the wrongness of it. They had little mental framework, little understanding of the idea that slavery was a violation of the soul. Most of the people I worked with in my ministry felt like the proverbial dog who’s been kicked. The dog is at the bottom of a long list of people kicking each other according to rank. The dog has the least rank, so he gets kicked the hardest. That’s the mentality I was facing in Galilee.

A: You were facing an uphill battle trying to persuade your students that they were worthy of God’s love and forgiveness — just as worthy as the priests in Jerusalem.

J: It’s not easy to overcome the conditioning of a lifetime. They weren’t inclined to believe me. These were people of faith. They didn’t want to anger God. They wanted to show God their obedience and faith. They were suspicious of me for a long time.

A: What turned the tide?

J: In the end, it was about trust and compassion, I guess you could say. I stuck to my guns. I did what I said I would do. I wasn’t a hypocrite — that alone earned me a lot of trust. I treated people fairly and respectfully the way I thought God wanted me to. Stuff happened.

A: Stuff happened? Like what stuff? What happened?

J: Oh, you know. Healings. Changes. Stuff like that.

A: You mean like healing miracles? That kind of stuff?

J: Well, yes, if you want to get right down to it, I suppose you could describe it that way.

A: Healing miracles began to take place, and the people around you — the poor and disadvantaged of Galilee — began to notice.

J (nodding yes): [Nods without speaking]

A: Were you the source of the healing miracles? Did you yourself heal them?

J: No. Never. No human being has that kind of power, that kind of ability. Healing miracles, when they take place, come from God. Only from God and God’s healing angels. I was only a facilitator, if you will. A human being people could see and touch with their own senses. My job was to reassure them, comfort them, encourage them to trust. The actual healing was God’s work. And I said so. Loudly. As often as I could. I never claimed to be a chosen prophet, and I yelled at anybody who tried to call me the Messiah. I clearly understood that my role — my task as a human being who’d been given many advantages during my youth — was to help people feel okay about receiving God’s love and comfort and healing. If I was helpful in my role as a physician — suggesting teas and salves and other sorts of medical treatments — it was only because God was guiding me in my work. I listened carefully to what God’s healing angels were saying (that’s where it’s handy to be a practising mystic), and I did what they suggested to me. I wasn’t being “forced” to listen to my angels. I wanted to listen to my angels, and I wanted to trust their advice. That was my choice — my own free will. They’re damned smart, and they had some wonderful healing suggestions.

A: Can you give any examples of their advice?

J: Gosh. They had tons of medical insights. Things like, “Tell that woman she has to eat orange vegetables.” Of course, they knew — although I didn’t — that orange vegetables contain Vitamin A, important for normal vision. Two thousand years ago, that was a miracle. They warned me, as well, about the dangers of lead. Lead was used in those days in many practical ways because of its low melting point and malleability. “Stay away from food vessels or utensils made of lead or pewter,” they said. Good advice, that.

A: And pewtersmiths have stopped making pewter with lead.

“A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed in the country; and people came to him from every quarter” (Mark 1: 40 – 45). Photo credit JAT 2016.

J: The most important thing my angels taught me, however, was to ignore the standard Temple teachings about illness and healing. To be honest, my angels had nothing nice to say about traditional purity laws. They told me it was okay — by that I mean medically safe — to ignore the “do not touch” laws about skin diseases, bodily fluids, and dietary restrictions. My angels said to me, “Touch, touch!” So I touched. I looked in people’s eyes when they were sick. I held their hands. I told them their angels were with them. I told them God was with them. Any physician worth his or her salt will know what this means to a frightened patient. The relationship between physician and patient is integral to the healing process.

A: So you took the healing process away from the designated Jerusalem priests and put it into the hands of God. You made the healing process both more scientific and more compassionate. Which somehow led to more miracles.

J (nodding yes): Um hum.

A: I can just imagine how furious the priests would have been that people were getting better from eating carrots instead of from giving sacrifices at the Temple.

J: The fact that I was descended from priests on my mother’s side didn’t help the situation any.

A: They must have been very upset when they started to hear rumours about your healing ministry — a son of priests performing unsanctioned healings outside the Temple precincts.

J: That would be an understatement.

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Posted in boundary issues, ethical mysticism, faith, healing, healing miracles, historical Jesus, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, Jesus' original writings, Kingdom teachings, Law (Nomos), Letter of James, slavery, Soul, status addiction, trust and tagged historical Jesus, Kingdom teachings | Leave a Comment

30 Nov 2010

CC46: Understanding God’s Relationship With Us

My New Testament professor once said in class, “Give me 15 minutes and I can find a proof text in the Bible for anything you want to justify.”

You’ll have noticed by now that I treat the Bible with a great deal of caution. For me and for many others, the Bible is a lot like a pit bull with a hair-trigger temper. One minute it’s wagging its tail at you, spouting happy thoughts. The next, it’s trying to rip your throat out.

I’m not one of those mystics who thinks the Bible is a lap dog that will always treat you kindly — an immortal, timeless lap dog whose eyes are always filled with serenity and bliss if you know the secret of looking at it the right way. Spiritual talk of secrets — secret knowledge (gnosis) and secret interpretations (symbolic readings of the Bible) — makes me very nervous. I’ll tell you why. It’s because spiritual leaders who say they can teach you how to unlock the secret biblical interpretations are making some powerful claims about God. They’re claiming that God isn’t a very loving God or a very nice God at all.

Take the example of the book called Song of Solomon (also known as Song of Songs). Here is a lyric poem about human love (eros). It’s filled with erotic imagery and metaphors that nobody can miss. Scholars think the poem (or collection of poems) was probably written in the 4th or 3rd century BCE. Despite the extremely obvious fact that the Song of Solomon is part of an ancient tradition of erotic love poetry written for a pre-Viagra age, the Song of Solomon started to be interpreted symbolically by religious teachers sometime around the start of the Common Era.

For about 2,000 years, then, theologians have been teaching the faithful to read Song of Solomon symbolically — as an account of the love between God and Israel. Pious and devout people are expected not to notice or respond to the explicit sexual content. And fourteen year old boys are not to read it late at night by candlelight.

If this is a sacred text about the relationship between God and God’s people, I’ll eat my hat.

I’m very unhappy that this symbolic interpretation can only be arrived at through some pretty twisted mental gymnastics. I’m also wondering why it’s only through a special secret scholarly key that regular people can see the “light of truth” hidden in this poem. As many mystics would have you believe, the majority of people — regular people who aren’t privy to the secret key — won’t be able to see and understand the wonderful “truth” buried in this erotic text. Regular people are too dull to see the “truth.” Their corrupt, inferior human senses make them too stupid to understand what’s actually written here.

And, of course, that’s the way God wants it to be! (according to Gnostic teachers). God, in God’s infinite wisdom, decided that most human beings are just too darned stupid and weak and untrustworthy to be entrusted with divine truth. So God hid it. God hid the light of truth in the deepest, darkest swamps, where regular people can’t find it, and then God chose a few select warriors to go out and find the light and guard it. Because God is too weak and stupid to protect it. God, Creator of all Creation, is too weak and stupid to parent trustworthy children. God is too weak and stupid to share divine truth with all children equally. God is too weak and stupid to tell the honest truth honestly. God is too weak and stupid to communicate clearly to all people without the help, aid, or benefit of that trusty band of “specially chosen warriors of light.”

Maybe it’s because God is too busy thinking lascivious thoughts about the luscious gazelles and wild does in the Song of Solomon.

I hope the last sentence creeped you out. I know it creeped me out. But don’t yell at me. I’m not the one going around claiming that Song of Solomon has an elevated message about the sacred love God feels for a few chosen children.

We have a term we use today for parents who engage in sexual conduct with their own children: we call them child abusers, and if we catch them, and succeed in convicting them in a court of law, we put them in jail. As we should.

The God I know is nothing like this. Nothing like this at all. The God I know and talk to every day as part of my mystical practice are my divine parents. God the Mother and God the Father are wonderful people. They’re kind and thoughtful and generous and funny. They’re extraordinarily patient. They always explain things in a way I can understand with my very human brain. If I don’t understand something, they don’t call me weak or stupid, but instead they always try a new tack to help me “put it together.” They love me as their child, but I know I’m not loved more than anyone else. They love all their children with as much ferocity as they love me. It’s the ferocious love that all loving parents know towards their children. It’s lifelong devotion, commitment, sacred trust. It’s safety. It’s eternity.

There are precious few passages in the Bible that convey this sense of God’s relationship with us as angels-in-human-form. The passages that do exist are almost buried under the holy mountain of piety, righteousness, law, fear, and obedience.

I say “almost.”

Beautiful things grown in marshes. These blue flags from the iris family grow in many wet spots in Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2014.

The really cool thing is that the truthful passages “somehow” survived all the cuts, revisions, and ruthless doctrinal choices made by narcissistic theologians in the past. “Somehow” the Letter of James made it into the Christian canon, although many influential theologians (including Martin Luther) were openly hostile towards this letter. “Somehow” the Gospel of Mark was preserved, despite the best efforts of the authors of Luke and Matthew to eradicate its message by “improving” on it. “Somehow” the non-elitist Psalm 116 got tucked in there among the more famous Royal and Zionist Psalms.

I just love the way these truthful messages are “hidden in plain sight” where anyone with an open heart and a lick of common sense can find them.

Even better, these passages say what they say in an open, honest way. No special training is required. No promises are made to you about the hidden truth that will one day be revealed to you if only you submit to blind faith.

Divine truth needs no embellishment. It’s beautiful just the way it is. Today. Not centuries from now, but today.

Which is pretty much what you’d expect from a wonderful, loving God.

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Posted in apocalyptic prophecy, Bible, Concinnate Christianity, Divine Love, Gnosticism, Gospel of Mark, Letter of James, Matthew's and Luke's intent, Mother and Father God, mysticism, relationship with God and tagged Divine Heart | Leave a Comment

18 Aug 2010

CC29: The Gospel of Mark as a Rebuttal of First Corinthians

The Charioteer of Delphi, bronze statue, early 5th C BCE. Photo (c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

There’s no excuse any longer for people of faith to accept the Church’s interpretation of the Bible.

For almost 2,000 years, the orthodox Western Church has successfully hoodwinked people into believing that Paul was an apostle of the man named Jesus of Nazareth. If the New Testament can be said to be a “testament” at all, it should be understood as a testament to the determination and marketing genius of certain men and women who wanted the kind of power that only comes through a theocracy.

I can certainly understand how regular people would fail to understand the implications of what Paul and Mark wrote. Even though I had two university degrees before embarking on a Master’s degree in theological studies, I had no understanding until the age of 49 that the Church had been lying to me all my life. I naively assumed until then that the Church was telling me the truth about Jesus, and that the Church was wanting to tell me the truth about Jesus.

Then I went back to university. There, using the research tools my professors taught me, it soon became clear to me that the pages of the New Testament don’t say what they’re “supposed” to say if you’re a good, pious, orthodox Christian. Instead, the pages tell a story about a family ripped apart, a man who longed to know God, a death that didn’t come to pass, and the frantic attempts of other people to hide the truth about this man, this man’s family, and this man’s “non-death.”

What surprised me even more than what I saw in the pages of the New Testament was the reaction of my professors and classmates to what’s written there. They did NOT want anyone to point out that Paul’s theology is completely different from Jesus’ theology as presented in Mark. They wanted to keep the myth that Paul was chosen by God to preach “the good news.” They seemed content to ignore the avalanche of research material that now makes it impossible for a person of academic integrity to claim that Paul and Mark were even “in the same book,” let alone “on the same page.” The proof is right there in black and white for anyone who wants to take the time to examine it objectively.

So different are Paul and Mark’s theologies, in fact, that I contend here that Mark wrote his narrative biography about Jesus as a direct written rebuttal of the letters written by Paul in the short collection we now call First Corinthians.

The vast majority of Christians have no idea (and why should they?) that the Gospel of Mark was written several years after the letters of Paul. Christians assume (and why shouldn’t they?) that the books of the New Testament are arranged in the order in which they were written. So they read Matthew’s Gospel, with its detailed Nativity story, and they conclude the Bible is reciting Jesus’ story to them from the beginning (which only makes sense). But, as most biblical scholars will tell you, the Gospel of Matthew was written after the Gospel of Mark, not before. And Mark, in turn, was written several years after the uncontested letters of Paul.*

The books of the New Testament would look a lot different if they were printed in the order in which they were written. If they were printed in this order — first the Letter of James, then the Q Source, then parts of the Gospel of John, then Paul’s 7 letters in the order mentioned in the footnote below, then Mark, then Matthew, then Luke and Acts back to back (because Luke and Acts were written as a two-part story by the same author), then the rest of John’s writings (which grew increasingly erratic, paranoid, and apocalyptic over time) — you’d be able to see without too much trouble what was actually going on during the time of Jesus and his immediate successors.

To make the differences between Jesus and Paul even easier to see, all you have to do is find an internet site that offers the complete text of a solid Biblical translation such as the RSV, the NIV, or the NRSV, then cut and paste the text of First Corinthians into a word-processor chart beside the text of Mark’s Gospel (minus Mark 16:9-20, verses which scholars generally agree were tacked on by a later scribe). Now you have your very own free Biblical Synopis chart like a biblical scholar with a Ph.D.!

You’ll probably find the hardest part of this exercise is the mental effort to ignore what Matthew and Luke say. Pretend Matthew, Luke, and Acts don’t exist (because they didn’t exist when Mark was written). Focus only on what Paul says and what Mark says a few years afterward. Focus on what Paul doesn’t say about Jesus. Then notice what Mark does say about Jesus. Don’t you think it’s strange that the later source — Mark — refuses to agree with Paul about who Jesus was and what Jesus taught? Don’t you think it’s strange that Mark makes no mention of grace? Or “foolishness” in Christ? Or Spirit’s gifts of prophecy and tongues? Or the moveable Temple that is Spirit dwelling in your body? Don’t you think it’s strange that Mark makes no mention of the chosen prophet Paul (an historical figure by the time Mark wrote), nor of “our Lord Jesus Christ” (supposedly also a famous historical figure by the time Mark wrote)?

Are where, for that matter, can we find Mark’s themes of forgiveness, courage, and healing miracles in Paul?

We can’t. Because they’re not in Paul. Paul wasn’t interested in the theme of forgiveness. That’s because forgiveness and grace are antithetical to each other. Paul chose grace. Jesus chose forgiveness.

Choose one. Because you can’t have both.

If you prefer Paul’s theology, that’s fine, but at least have the decency to be honest about it. Don’t pretend you’re following in the footsteps of Jesus when you’re not. Have the courage to stand up and be counted as a follower of Paul. Then let the followers of Jesus’ teachings go their own separate way, as they’ve been trying to do for almost 2,000 years.

Can you tell I’m tired of the bullshit?

* Biblical scholars have used a variety of tools to establish that some of the canonical books traditionally attributed to Paul were almost certainly written by other authors, and not by Paul himself. There are 7 books that are generally agreed upon as authentic to Paul himself. These books are First Thessalonians; Galatians; First Corinthians; Second Corinthians; Philippians; Philemon; and Romans. There is no general agreement on the order in which these 7 books were written. I place Romans last, though others think Philippians was written last. Second Corinthians is also problematic because the letter as we know today it is actually a compilation of at least three different letters written at different times.

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Posted in Bible, Concinnate Christianity, Favourite Posts, First Corinthians, forgiveness, Gospel of Mark, Letter of James, Mark vs Paul, Paul and tagged Jesus vs Paul, Mark vs Paul | Leave a Comment

25 Jul 2010

CC27: Jesus: The Anti-Status Teacher

There is currently no major world religion that bases its doctrines and spiritual practices on the teachings of the man who once lived as Jesus.

There are several world religions that owe a significant doctrinal debt to ancient Egyptian mystery cults. There are several world religions that would not be recognizable in their current form without the legacy of ancient apocalyptic groups. There are several world religions that have incorporated the teachings of ancient Wisdom literature into their texts. But there are no major world religions that approach the deep questions of spirituality and relationship with God in the way that Jesus approached these concerns.

This isn’t new. At the time Jesus was teaching and healing, many different religions and philosophies were competing with each other to attract devoted followers. Many of these “pagan” religions were quite successful, far more successful than the modest house churches that sprang up in response to Jesus’ message. So successful were these “pagan” religions, in fact, that in the end they won out over the teachings of Jesus.

Most Christians believe it’s the other way around, that Christianity’s “truth” won out over paganism’s “heresy.” But orthodox Western Christianity isn’t based on the teachings of Jesus. It’s based on the teachings of Paul and his vigilant successors — men such as the author of Matthew and the author of Luke-Acts (whose writings were decreed canonical), and men such as Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Cyprian of Carthage (whose writings helped shape orthodox thought). These men took the ancient teachings of the mystery cults, the apocalyptic groups, and the Wisdom sages, and repackaged them, rebranded them, into a “new and improved” religion called Christianity.

So while early orthodox Christianity had everything to do with Christ — an ancient saviour figure who was central to Egyptian, Persian, and Greek mystery cults — early orthodox Christianity had nothing to do with the teachings of the physician-scholar named Jesus son of Joseph. In fact, the doctrines promoted by Paul and the men of the “apostolic succession” are the antithesis of Jesus’ teachings about God.

Paul wanted desperately to preserve the ancient teachings of the mystery cults, the apocalyptic groups, and the Wisdom sages because these three approaches to religion, though very different from each other on the surface, all share one fundamental feature: they encourage people to become addicted to status.

Paul offered people a new religion that gave them “bonus points” in their drive for status. Paul promised people more status, extra status, new and improved status, special status, irrevocable status. It’s a status-addict’s dream!

Jesus, meanwhile — as evidenced in the Gospel of Mark, the reconstructed Q source, and parts of the Letter of James — desperately wanted to get rid of the ancient teachings of the mystery cults, the apocalyptic groups, and the Wisdom sages. Why? Because he understood that the widespread addiction to status was the single greatest impediment to people’s understanding of God.

free_israel_photos_animals_two_camels_1024 - small

Photo credit Free Israel Photos

You’ve probably heard the biblical saying that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God (Mark 10:25). This is usually interpreted as a condemnation of money and wealth, the idea being that if you give away all your money and wealth, you’ll be closer to the kingdom of God.

This is too simplistic. “Rich” people can give away all their money and wealth, and still not feel God’s presence because all they’ve done is exchange one form of status anxiety (wealth acquisition) for another form (asceticism, a.k.a. purity acquisition). Money per se isn’t the problem. Money can be used for hospitals, schools, meal programs, and so on. It’s not money that’s the root of all evil — it’s status addiction.

The only way for people to feel God’s ongoing presence in their lives is for them to acknowledge their addiction to status, and to make a commitment to heal this addiction.

It goes without saying that status addiction is rampant in our society. It’s not an easy thing to heal (about as easy as that camel going through that narrow gate). But it can be done. To be free of status addiction is to be kind and loving towards others in the guileless manner of a young child.

For this reason, Jesus compares those who want to enter the kingdom of God to little children (Mark 10:13-16). Young children haven’t yet been taught to hate others on the basis of class, race, or gender. They haven’t yet been taught that they’re “better” than others, that they’re more loved by God than others, that God will save them and their families but not others. They haven’t yet absorbed the cultural norms of competition, superiority, perfectionism (all forms of status addiction). Young children are still free. They still have free will. They still have the ability to love. They still have the ability to forgive. They still have the courage to look at other people, and see them as people, not as slaves, property, or lesser beings.

A young child knows nothing of Law or Covenant (both of which are hopelessly interwoven with status). Nor does a child care about “whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Mark 12:33). What a young child cares about is love — love that’s infused with respect, and dignity, and egalitarianism, and empathy, and mature relationship, and simple kindness. Love that doesn’t boast (since boasting is food for status addiction). Love that doesn’t presume to prophesy (since prophesying is food for status addiction). Love that doesn’t claim to be centred in the Mind (since pure logic is food for status addiction). Love that doesn’t punish the body through ascetic practices (since asceticism is food for status addiction). Love that never seeks revenge (since revenge is to status addiction what crack cocaine is to substance abuse). Love that can’t be taken away or withheld as a form of punishment. Love that isn’t co-dependent. Love that isn’t a synonym for “obedience.” What a young child wants is love that forgives. Love that’s . . . well . . . divine.

What children need, and what they in turn give to others, is divine love — the kind of love our God (God the Mother and God the Father) feel for all their children. The kind of love that Jesus wrote about in a text that Paul subsequently “borrowed” for his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:1-8a).* The kind of love the orthodox Western Church doesn’t teach you about.

This is a love based on the power of the soul, the power of free will, the power of forgiveness, and the power of redemption. It has nothing to do with sin, separation, sacraments, and salvation. It’s a love that can be difficult for human beings to understand. It’s a love that can be difficult for adults to master (the whole “camel squeezing through the narrow gate” thing). But once it’s yours, nobody — not even an angry Church cleric or an angry Temple priest — can take it away from you, because it’s a sacred trust that exists between you and God.

It’s a sacred trust that fills you with wonder, and devotion, and gratitude, and humbleness. It’s a sacred trust worth dying for, as the man named Jesus once knew. It’s a sacred trust that opens the door to the kingdom of God while you’re living here as a somewhat confused but unquenchably hopeful human being on Planet Earth.

The keys to the kingdom are not found in the person of Jesus. The keys to the kingdom are found in the teachings that Jesus introduced to anyone who wanted to listen to his annoying and exasperating attacks on the status quo.

If you’re a Christian, and you want to start to work on the problems of status addiction in your own life, you’re going to have to let go of the doctrine that Jesus is your Saviour. This doctrine is food for your status addiction. There is no Saviour. You don’t need to be saved, because God don’t make no junk. There’s nothing wrong with your soul. Your soul is just fine, thank you very much.

It’s okay to think of Jesus as a teacher and mentor in the same way you think of Mahatma Gandhi or the Dalai Lama or Martin Luther King, Jr., as inspiring teachers and mentors. But please don’t put Jesus on a pedestal. That’s the last thing he’d want anybody to do.

Jesus wasn’t trying to teach his followers about himself. That would have been the height — the very pinnacle — of status addiction. He was trying to teach his followers about God the Mother and God the Father. He was trying to take out the “middle men” — the prophets, priests, and philosophers — whose grandiose, narcissistic musings about the One God had made it all but impossible for anyone to have a loving, trusting, forgiving relationship with the God who is Two.

If the church of the third millennium wants to follow the teachings of Jesus, it must let go of its apocalyptic, mystery-ridden, wisdom-elevated “Saviour,” and shift its focus to God.

Now there’s a radical idea.

* It’s fashionable these days for theologians and biblical scholars to express their profound regret that Jesus wrote nothing down because he was an illiterate Galilean carpenter who spoke only Aramaic. This is nonsense. No lasting Indo-European movement has ever got off the ground without an articulate, knowledgeable leader and a written record of the movement’s main tenets. To those scholars who insist that Jesus couldn’t write down his own original and penetrating observations about God, healing, and psychodynamics, I want to say, “Get a life , , , and a history book!”

Posted in "4 S's", Concinnate Christianity, Divine Love, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Jesus' teachings, Kingdom teachings, Letter of James, Matthew's and Luke's intent, Paul, status addiction and tagged Divine Heart, Jesus vs Paul | Leave a Comment

04 Apr 2010

CC7: Radical Jesus in the Gospel of Mark

Today I’d like to talk about the Gospel of Mark.

As I mentioned above in my March 3, 2010 post, I think one of the biggest challenges facing the church in the third millennium is our theology. We believe our theology is an honest representation of what Jesus taught. Because we believe this, we don’t want to challenge our theological doctrines and beliefs. If it was good enough for Jesus, then it’s good enough for us, goes the thinking. And who can blame Christians for wanting to hang onto the teachings that Jesus taught? After all, isn’t that the point?

For me, it’s definitely the point. I discovered to my dismay, however, that what Protestant theology classes teach in Canada in the third millennium is Paul’s theology, not Jesus’ theology.

We’re so used to thinking that Paul was a faithful believer in Jesus that few Christians until recently have examined the gulf that exists between the teachings of Paul and the teachings of Jesus. If you want to read an exploration of the differences between Paul’s Christ Movement and James’ Jesus Movement, I recommend professor Barrie Wilson’s book How Jesus Became Christian (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2008). Wilson bluntly shows that Paul was trying to found a new religious movement that was in competition with the early Jesus Movement of Palestine. Further, Wilson shows how the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles wrote these two books to bridge the gulf between the two religious movements, and make them seem like a unified religion. But they’re not. And they never were.

Why do I agree with Wilson? I agree with Wilson because I’ve studied what I believe to be the earliest layer of writings based on the teachings of Jesus, and when I compare what’s contained in this early layer with what’s contained in Paul’s uncontested letters, I see almost no theological similarities.

For the record, I believe the earliest layer of writings based on Jesus’ teachings to be (1) the parts of the letter of James that Jesus himself wrote (I’ll come back to that in a later post); (2) the parables and anecdotes written down by the beloved disciple Lazarus in the earliest version of the”Q” source (again, food for future thought); (3) the sayings written down by the apostle John in his unattributed “proto-Gnostic” Gospel of Thomas; and (4) the Gospel of Mark.

Of these early writings, the Gospel of Mark would have been written last, about 30-35 years after Jesus’ death, by a person we call Mark. We don’t know much about this fellow Mark except that he was brave enough to write a radical theological statement in Judea during the dangerous and tumultuous decade of the 60’s when Jews were fighting Jews, and Jews were also fighting Romans.

This fish plate, with a small cup in the centre (probably for sauce) comes from the Roman Campania and is dated 330-300 BCE. (This plate is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum, photo credit JAT 2017.)

Most New Testament scholars who analyse the different books of early Christianity will tell you they subscribe to the theory of “Markan Priority.” This is the theory that states that Mark was written before either Matthew or Luke, and that the authors of Matthew and Luke both used a “cut and paste” approach to Mark’s narrative by cutting out sections of Mark’s book, rearranging and changing those sections, and adding their own material. If you want to learn more about this fascinating bit of biblical history, I recommend the recent book by Pheme Perkins: Pheme Perkins, Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007). She provides a readable introduction to the main threads of scholarly research that every serious New Testament inquirer needs to know about.

(I didn’t find out about Perkins’s book until the second year of my graduate studies. I really wish I’d had it on Day 1. It would have saved me a lot of initial confusion!)

A lot of scholars and ministers don’t like the Gospel of Mark. (My New Testament professor, for one, doesn’t like Mark.) People think it’s too blunt and choppy. Fans of Luke, whose use of Koine Greek is more sophisticated, complain that Mark isn’t a very good writer. Others dislike the Christology of Mark. In Mark, Jesus is a confusing fellow. The apostles are confusing fellows. Jesus’ family members are confusing. Jesus’ female followers are confusing. The original ending of Mark at 16:8 is confusing. The Gospel of Mark is downright confusing if you’re looking for biblical evidence that conforms to orthodox Western Christian beliefs about Jesus.

Here’s a thought: maybe the Gospel of Mark is confusing because people have been shoehorning it into Paul’s theology, and have forced Mark to say something about Jesus that Mark himself wasn’t saying.

Maybe in the church of the third millennium we should allow Mark to tell us what he’s been saying all along.

Maybe we should be honest about the fact that Mark’s Jesus is a Jewish Messiah — a very human teacher and healer — not a Saviour, as in Paul.

Maybe we should be honest about the fact that Mark’s Jesus is not a monotheistic Jew, who believes only in God the Father, but is instead a quasi-monotheistic Jew who believes in both God the Father (Abba) and God the Mother (Ruah, Spirit, Holy Dove).

Maybe we should be honest about the fact that Mark’s Jesus is not a wandering Cynic philosopher, nor an apocalyptic prophet, nor an illiterate Jewish carpenter. There’s a great deal of proof in Mark to indicate that Jesus came from a wealthy, literate family. Jesus was a physician-scholar.

Maybe we should be honest about the fact that Mark’s narrative shows a sophisticated understanding of psychodynamics. Mark’s cast of characters behave in realistic, believable ways. He doesn’t pretend that Jesus’ students liked or appreciated his teachings. He doesn’t pretend that Jesus’ family liked or appreciated his teachings. Mark tells the painful truth, because the truth was painful.

Mark’s biography of Jesus is short (relative to other biographies of the time, including those written by Matthew and Luke) for two reasons: (1) he assumed his biography would be read in conjunction with the parables and anecdotes contained in “Q,” and (2) he wrote his narrative with the intention of creating a long parable of the kingdom.

(These two points are my own thesis.)

The first point has more evidence to support it, since scholars have been working hard to reconstruct the contents of the early “Q” source, and they’ve already shown the links among Q, Mark, and the later gospels of Matthew and Luke. There is every reason to suppose that Q was circulating in Judea at the time Mark’s gospel was written.

The second point has arisen through my own work as both an academic researcher and a mystic. It’s my contention that Mark understood what many have failed to understand about Jesus’ teaching parables: the long kingdom parables, most of which probably originated in “Q” and were later cut-and-pasted into Matthew and Luke, only make sense when you listen with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength to Jesus’ message about God (Mark 12:28-34). If you listen only with your mind, you won’t get it. If you listen only with your mind, and reject the input of your heart and your soul, the parables are almost gibberish. They’re illogical. They’re contrary to accepted wisdom. They don’t seem to be wisdom teachings at all. Therefore, they’re easily dismissed by those who’ve placed their bets on traditional wisdom.

Through the medium of a long parable, a teacher can say a lot of harsh things about other people’s religious beliefs, and not get caught. Jesus’ long kingdom parables hide the truth about God in plain sight.

This isn’t the same approach as the early Gnostics took. The early Gnostics believed in the existence of hidden, esoteric knowledge that could only be revealed to specially chosen initiates. They sometimes took steps in their writings to conceal their esoteric knowledge through the use of symbolism.

Jesus took no such steps. He wasn’t interested in hiding the knowledge, or making a “special club” of apostles to whom he would reveal his special secrets. He was forthright in his teachings about a loving Mother God and Father God who are not transcendent. (In Plato and in Paul, God was transcendent). A Mother Father God who are not unemotional. (In Plato and in Paul, God was detached from emotions like agape and forgiveness). A Mother Father God who are not pure Mind. (In Plato and in Stoicism, the Divine was pure Mind). A Mother Father God who do not choose some humans over other humans. (In most religions in Jesus’ time, Jewish and otherwise, the gods or God chose certain people or groups over other people). A Mother Father God who reject the pursuit of status addiction as the driving force of a loving human community (in dramatic contrast to the honour-shame values of Mediterranean culture in the 1st century CE). A Mother Father God who teach inclusive, egalitarian, relationship-oriented community life as the model for spiritual living.

These teachings are evident throughout Mark. But these teachings, then as now, were not popular with religious folk who wanted their religious accomplishments to raise them above their peers, to give them more status than others had, to take status away from others — to reveal how to climb the ladder of spiritual ascent.

This ladder of spiritual ascent was the darling of Plato and his many Platonic, middle Platonic, and NeoPlatonic followers, including orthodox Christians, who, from the time of Paul onward, have had a profound love affair with the doctrine of spiritual ascent — the belief that we have to climb the spiritual ladder one rung at a time to get closer to the Divine.

You have to remember here that Plato wrote about 400 years before Jesus. Plato’s idea of spiritual ascent was well known and deeply embraced by the Greco-Roman culture in which Mark wrote his breathtakingly radical book. So when Mark wrote a biography about a spiritual leader who rejected ascent, and instead embraced a horizontal path of service, Mark was pushing against the currents of his time.

When you carefully read Mark 9:2-9 — the Transfiguration — you’ll see that not only does Jesus reject the offer of staying on the “holy mount” and living in a tent there, but he comes down from the mountain and immediately makes himself religiously “impure” by touching and healing a boy who has epilepsy — a boy who in first century Palestine would have been seen as either “unclean” or as “marked by the gods” in the eyes of both pious Jews and Gentiles, a boy who would have been rejected and ostracized by people of status.

Mark’s Jesus is a human physician, trained in Torah, who thinks compassion, inclusiveness, courage, healing, forgiveness, agape, and service are the path to knowing God the Mother and God the Father.

Mark’s Jesus is a radical dude.

This topic is so big that one or more books could be written on it. I’ve barely scratched the surface here. But I wanted to introduce the idea that the Protestant church of the third millennium has some options open to it. One of these options is to courageously alter the theology we teach. We can alter our theological doctrines to better reflect what Jesus taught, and still have a biblical foundation for that teaching. We can reappraise Paul, and we can reappraise the earliest layer of writings based on Jesus’ teachings. We can reclaim the kergyma, or early teachings, of Jesus. We can have a church founded on teachings about our communal relationship with God the Mother and God the Father.

We can at last allow ourselves to accept the wondrous gift of God’s love.

Happy Easter Sunday to you!

-1

Posted in anagogic mysticism, Church of today, Concinnate Christianity, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Thomas, Letter of James, Mark (Jesus' great nephew), Mark vs Paul, Matthew's and Luke's intent, parables, Paul vs Jesus, Plato, spiritual ascent and tagged Jesus vs Paul, Mark vs Paul | Leave a Comment

The Spiral Path

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RS17: Excavating James: The James Ossuary and the Talpiot Tomb

TBM39: The Perverting of Gratitude

JR59: News of the World: "New Lamps For Old"

JR55: Healing: The Easy Way and the Hard Way

JR35: Father of Lights, Mother of Breath

JR29: Eucharist: The Temple Sacrifice

JR9: Jesus Explains "The Kingdom"

CC46: Understanding God’s Relationship With Us

CC29: The Gospel of Mark as a Rebuttal of First Corinthians

CC27: Jesus: The Anti-Status Teacher

CC7: Radical Jesus in the Gospel of Mark

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