The Spiral Path

Wonder, Science, and Faith

Archive for the category “Book of Genesis”

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.”

-2
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 , | Leave a Comment
02 Jul 2011

JR54: The Meaning of "the Son of Man"

A: We’ve been talking a lot about the Kingdom and gardens and finding peace through personal responsibility. How does the phrase “the Son of Man” fit into all this? If ever there was a phrase in the New Testament that people don’t understand, it’s the “Son of Man” phrase — ho hyios tou anthropou in Koine Greek, bar nasa in Aramaic, and ben adam in Hebrew. Somehow I suspect the translation of the Greek phrase into English doesn’t do justice to the original meaning.

J: It’s very easy to forget that the Hebrew word adam wasn’t used primarily as a name in Second Temple Judaism. Adam can also be translated as “ground/soil” or as “humankind.” Similarly, the Greek word anthropos meant “humankind,” not just “human beings of the male sex.” These nuances are lost in the traditional English translation “Son of Man.” A much better translation in English would be “essence of humanity” or “highest potential of humankind.” I used the phrase ho hyios tou anthropou to express a concept — a concept for which no vocabulary existed at the time.

“Jesus said: Adam came into being from enormous power and wealth, but he was never worthy of you, for had he been worthy of you he would not have died” (Gospel of Thomas 85). This saying doesn’t make much sense unless you stop to consider what Genesis 2-3 says about the allegorical relationship between humankind (Adam) and God. In the Garden of Eden, there are two trees that embody the deepest and most mystical elements of God, Creation, and faith: (1) the tree of life and (2) the tree of knowledge of good and evil. These two trees are supposed to be in balance, and while they are, Adam and Eve live a life of trusting relationship with God. At some point, however, Eve, followed quickly by Adam, decide they’re more interested in having knowledge than in having a trusting relationship with God. So they eat of the metaphorical fruit from the tree of knowledge and find themselves aligned with the many ancient philosopher kings who also chose knowledge over relationship with God. In Jesus’ teachings, choosing a life that places knowledge far above trust, love, and relationship with God is really no life at all. For Jesus, the mind is important, but not more important than the heart. So the metaphorical example of Adam and Eve — who lost the balance between mind and heart and as a result struggled for the rest of their lives with “death” instead of “life” — is not the example we should be following. Seek instead the path of peace that’s based on relationship with God. This ivory depicting The Fall of Man (by Balthasar Griessmann, c. 1670-1690) is part of the Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

A: What concept were you trying to teach about? Enlightenment?

J: No. Forgiveness.

A: Sayings 85 and 86 in the Gospel of Thomas refer to “Adam” and to “the son of man.” Saying 85 says, “Jesus said: Adam came into being from enormous power and wealth, but he was never worthy of you, for had he been worthy of you he would not have died.” Saying 86 goes on to say, “Jesus said: Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay down his head and rest.” Thomas 86 also appears almost word for word in Luke 9:58. How do these verses relate to the concept of forgiveness?

J (sighing): I’ve always been fond of word plays, puns, alliterations, rhymes, and poetry. “Foxes have holes and birds of heaven have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head” sounded catchier in Greek than it does in English.

A: But I guess the important thing to keep in mind is the fact that you weren’t talking about a particular man in this saying. You weren’t talking about yourself. You were trying to explain a concept that was unfamiliar to your students.

J (nodding): The people around me had been raised on a steady diet of values that had no place in humanity’s relationship with God the Mother and God the Father. No matter where you turned, you heard tales of might, tales of glory, tales of revenge. Everyone thought they had the “correct” God — or gods — on their side. Everyone thought they were truly pious, truly deserving of divine reward. Everyone had their own version of the “God will avenge me” myth. The avenging God had as many “faces” as a circus performer has costumes.

If you were a person with a black sense of humour — as I came to be — you could go to bed in the evening and count all the ways you’d offended this god and that god in umpteen hidden ways on that day alone. You could count all the ways you’d be punished. You could count all the ways your masters would take revenge against you for your “heinous crimes” against God. Of course, it was your earthly masters — not the unseen gods of heaven — who were the ones who had the rod in their hands to beat you. It was your earthly masters who would use any “divine” excuse possible to beat you into submission and humility.

But they’d often go easy on you if you offered a payment. Some sort of compensation — an eye for an eye. Some sort of bribe. Contract laws dictated what terms of compensation were acceptable. These contract laws weren’t civil laws in the way you’d understand a Western nation’s legal codes today. These contract laws had political and economic purposes, of course, but they were primarily religious laws and traditions. Nomos in Greek. Nomos provided a list of crimes and a list of acceptable “payments” to balance the scales if you committed a crime. Often these “payments” were sacrifices. Temple sacrifices. In most Greco-Roman religions of the time — not just Judaism — you could bring a sacrifice (a payment, really) to the local temple so you could literally “buy back” God’s favour. This is what “redemption” used to mean. It meant trading something you had — money or goods or livestock or agricultural produce — to get something you needed: divine favour. It had nothing to do with divine love or divine forgiveness as you and I have defined these concepts on this site.

A: And then there was slavery. The actual buying and selling of human beings based on contract laws. A slave could, under certain circumstances, “buy back” his rights. Or a slave could be manumitted — legally freed by his or her “owner.” But contract law gave people the excuse they needed to treat others cruelly. Contract law justified their cruelty.

J: They gave themselves permission to violate the soul’s own understanding of free will, justice, integrity, and respect. They were listening to their own selfishness and not to God’s voice. And I said so. Out loud. Frequently.

A: So your friends and students were conditioned to understand their relationship with God in terms of contract law. In terms of payments to a master or sovereign lord. In terms of monetary debts or “obligatory service contracts” (i.e. slavery).

J: Slavery was — and is — a terrible violation of the soul, of what it means to be a soul, a child of God. Slavery is an artificially created human condition in which a slave’s personal boundaries are invaded in every way imaginable. A slave is forced to give up all rights to physical and sexual safety. All rights to choose where and with whom to be in relationship. All rights to follow his or her own soul’s calling. Even a slave who has property — and there were many wealthy slaves in the Roman Empire — even such a slave is taught to believe he doesn’t actually own the skin he’s in. It’s not his. It belongs to somebody else. His own skin is “dead” to him. His mind and his heart may be free, but his skin — his body — is dead. He can’t view himself as whole — as a “whole bean” — because in his own mind and in the mind of his society he isn’t whole. He’s a sort of ghoulish inhabitant of a body that belongs to somebody else. If, in addition to being a slave, he’s also sexually violated — a fate that was brutally common for young boys and girls in the first century Empire — chances are extremely high that he’ll grow up to be seriously mentally ill. Why? Because children who are beaten and sexually abused and psychologically tortured bear the scars of that treatment in their biological brains, bodies, and psyches until they are healed. It’s a simple statement of fact.

A: You can see how this kind of treatment would lead to dissociative disorders. A person who’s disconnected from emotions. Disconnected from a strong sense of boundaries and personal space.

J: I was trying to get at the point that even lowly foxes and humble birds are given their own personal space, their own “home,” their own sanctuary by God. Foxes and birds will defend their own homes with all their might, as they have a right to do. They don’t have the right to steal another creature’s home, but they do have the right to protect the one they have. God gives no less a right to all human beings. No human contract law “written in stone” anywhere at any time can supersede the obvious truth that each human being owns his own skin and is the sovereign of his own domain, his own personal kingdom. When he knows this and feels this and lives this, he feels alive. He feels whole. He feels at peace.

A: This is the state of “living” that you refer to so often in the Gospel of Thomas.

J: Yes. It’s a psychological state of balance and health. There’s nothing occult about it. It’s the natural outcome of making choices that lead to emotional maturity. It’s the natural outcome of choosing to live according to the highest potential of humankind. It’s the truest essence of humanity.

A: People being their best selves. On purpose.

J: Yes. On purpose. It’s so very much about the purpose. About the purposefulness of “living.” Which is where forgiveness comes in.

A: How so?

J: Christians are usually taught to think of forgiveness as an act of grace on God’s part, as a somewhat sudden and fickle choice on God’s part, as something that human beings can participate in but can’t initiate. Paul tries very hard to give this impression to his readers. But forgiveness is the opposite of suddenness and fickleness and “divine transcendence.” Forgiveness is purposefulness. Purposefulness of a particular kind. Forgiveness is what you get when you choose to combine your free will and your courage and your love. There’s nothing accidental or preordained about it. It’s a choice. An ongoing choice that calls upon the greatest resources of the eternal soul — each and every soul. It’s the choice to love someone wholly in the absence of payment or retribution or just compensation. Divine forgiveness is not settlement of a debt. Debt doesn’t enter into the equation. Education, mentorship, and personal responsibility enter into the equation, but not debt.

A: This is soooooooo not what they taught me in theological school.

-2
Posted in Book of Genesis, boundary issues, forgiveness, free will, gender and sexuality, Jesus Redux, Kingdom teachings, Law (Nomos), life and death, Peace Sequence, relationship with God, religion and mental Illness, slavery, Son of Man and tagged , | Leave a Comment
14 Mar 2011

JR21: Saying 67 in the Gospel of Thomas

A: Okay. Here’s another pretty big question for you. Stevan Davies translates Saying 67 of the Gospel of Thomas as “Jesus said: One who knows everything else but who does not know himself knows nothing.” Was this saying central to your teachings? Was it an important theme for you?

J: Yes. I tried very hard to express this idea. I tried to express it in many different ways.

A: Similar ideas have been taught by many spiritual leaders over the centuries. In fact, it’s almost a spiritual cliche. It’s so easy to say, “One who knows everything else but who does not know himself knows nothing.” But what exactly does it mean?

J: It means you have to know who you actually are as a soul — “the core you” that’s left after you strip away all the false, damaging prejudices and religious doctrines and abusive teachings of your family and culture. It means you have to love, honour, and respect the person you are when you remove all the weeds from the garden of your biological brain. It means you have to trust that when you pull out all the weeds, there’s still going to be something left in there. You have to trust that when you pull out all the weeds, you won’t be left with a barren patch of lifeless dirt. Instead you’ll be able to see the flowers of your soul — the lilies of the field — for the first time.

Gardens of the soul (Photo credit JAT 2014)

Gardens of the soul (Photo credit JAT 2014)

A: I take it you’re not too fond of the image of Creation in Genesis 2:7: the Lord God forming Adam from dust and then breathing the breath of life into his nostrils so he’ll become a living being.

J: No. The Bible has many references to human beings as dirt or clay or potters’ vessels. Clay is nothing more than a kind of dirt that can be shaped, moulded according to the creator’s will. The message that’s repeated again and again is that human beings are malleable in the way that wet clay is malleable. Wet clay starts out as a lump. It can be turned into any shape imagineable (as long as the laws of physics and chemistry aren’t broken). You can make a plate. You can make a bowl. You can make a large urn. You can make a small storage container. A complex sculpture. A string of beads. Clay is like that. You can make whatever you want. Many people — pious Pauline Christians especially — believe that God intends human beings to be like clay. They believe that each person is basically a lump of malleable clay. Based on this belief, they assume that God can reshape each individual in any way God chooses. It’s the idea of neuroplasticity taken to absurd extremes: “I can be anything God wants me to be if only I try hard enough to surrender to God’s will!!!” How often have you heard a sanctimonious preacher say that?

A: It’s a popular Christian idea.

J: It was a popular idea with many Essene and Hellenistic philosophers in my time, too. It’s an idea that makes it very easy for religious leaders to blame people in their flock for “not trying hard enough.” It makes it very easy to accuse regular people of being “weak”. To accuse them of falling short of true faith. To make them feel guilty for “letting God down.” To point fingers at them and say they’re filled with sin. These teachings are spiritually abusive.

A: You’re talking about the bread & butter of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians.

J: And fundamentalists of other faiths, too.

A: You’re saying, then, that the doctrine of malleable clay is factually incorrect. That Genesis 2:7 is wrong in its portrayal of human beings.

J: Both Creation stories in Genesis are wrong. Obviously (without apologies to any Creationists who might read this) there is no literal truth to Genesis 1 or Genesis 2-3. On top of that, there’s no metaphorical truth, either. Human beings are not malleable lumps of clay. They can’t be shaped by God or by anyone else into something they’re not. You can’t force a woman to become a man (though some people would like to try). You can’t force a gay man to become straight (though some Christians would like them to try). You can’t force a musician to become an engineer (though sadly many parents have tried. And tried and tried and tried.) God the Mother and God the Father don’t make souls this way. Souls aren’t malleable. Each soul has a unique identity, a unique blueprint, a unique set of talents and traits and strengths and absences of strengths. Souls are like snowflakes — no two are alike. You can’t take what God the Mother and God the Father made and “fix it.” You can’t turn a bowl into a plate. You can’t turn a sculpture into a wind chime. You are who you are. It’s true that you may not know who you are. It’s true that you may not know whether you’re a bowl or a plate or a sculpture or a wind chime. But your soul knows. And God knows. Between you — between you and God — you can uncover your own true soul identity.

A: I like the garden metaphor better. I’d rather discover what kind of “flower” I am. I’m not sure I really want to “see” myself as a set of dishes in the kitchen cupboard.

J: I hear ya. Nature metaphors are much more natural, much more helpful. That’s why I used so many images from nature in my teachings. There’s a natural resonance, a natural harmony between the images of nature and the soul’s own language. The soul “gets” nature imagery. The soul doesn’t mind being likened to trees or flowers or fruits. Or the totems of Native North American tradition. It helps human beings to have a nature metaphor of their own soul. An image to help them “see” themselves as God sees them.

A: If I were a tree, what kind of tree do you think I’d be? (Not that I’m saying I’m literally a tree . . .)

J: You’d be a yew. A tough, gnarly yew. That reminds me a lot of you.

A: Yeah? Okay, well that makes sense to me. I even really like yews. Always have. Nobody’s gonna believe this when I say this, but to me, you’re most definitely a magnolia. A big, showy magnolia. And damn but you wear it well! Of course, if the shrivelled up hearts of the pious Pauline Christians had their way, you’d be a bleeding, suffering, miserable, ugly thorn bush.

J: What? No burning bush? No branch of Jesse? No grafted grapevine? No olive tree? I think I’d make a particularly fine Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Don’t you?

A: You’re such a cynic.

-2
Posted in "4 S's", Book of Genesis, Davies (Stevan), Essenes, Gospel of Thomas, humility, insight, Jesus Redux, orthodox teachings about the soul, soul blueprint, Thomas 67 and tagged , | Leave a Comment
14 Feb 2011

JR10: Son of David or House of David?

A: You’ve said more than once that you were the son of a wealthy, aristocratic family, a descendant of priests. Were you a descendant of King David? Was your father “of the house of David,” as Luke says in Luke 1:27?

J: This is the great thing about modern socio-historical criticism of ancient religious texts. Today’s research gives so many terrific, irrefutable facts that contradict the Church’s teachings. It’s like a game of Battleship, blowing up beloved traditions and sacred doctrines one piece at a time.

A: So I’m thinking the answer to my question is “No”?

J: With a capital “N.” There is no way — no possible way — that the Jewish hierarchy or the Roman hierarchy would have allowed a male with a proveable link to the lineage of David to survive, let alone go around preaching a radical doctrine about God. That lineage was dead. Long gone. Jesus scholars trace the last reference to a verifiable descendant of David in Hebrew scripture to the 5th century BCE Book of Ezra-Nehemiah. After that, the Jewish texts are silent on David’s genealogy.

A: This appeared to be no obstacle to the writers of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. Matthew and Luke both insist you’re an actual descendant of David, and give you a genealogy to prove it.

J: Yes, but they don’t give the same genealogy, which has to make you wonder . . . could it be possible these men made it up? [Voice dripping with facetious humour.]

A: You mean, invented the genealogy. Lied about it.

J: Well, there’s certainly no truth to either of their genealogies.

A: If a written record of David’s line of descent had actually existed in the first century, where would it have been kept?

J: In Jerusalem. In the Temple. The records of bloodlines for the high priests and the other priests were highly valuable documents. They were carefully preserved. Any record of Judah’s or Israel’s ancient kings would also have been preserved. During the Second Temple period, the safest storehouse for valuables was the Temple and its precincts. The originals were kept there.

(c) Hemera Technologies 2001-2003

“His disciples said to him, ‘Who are you to say these things to us?’ [Jesus replied]: ‘You do not know who I am from what I say to you. Rather, you have become like the Jewish people who love the tree but hate its fruit, or they love the fruit but hate the tree'” (Gospel of Thomas 43). In this saying, Jesus is referring to the struggle within 1st century Judaism to reconcile opposing claims about authority. Some taught that bloodline was the key. Others taught that rigorous knowledge and obedience to the Law was the key. Jesus himself rejected both these arguments, even though he came from a priestly family and was highly educated. He taught a holistic approach wherein the ability to love God and to love other people took precedence over both bloodline and advanced study of scripture. Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001-2003.

A: But in 70 CE, the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple. Any scrolls that were saved were probably taken into hiding. Making them hard to check, hard to verify — at least until the political situation had settled down.

J: A fact that “Matthew” and “Luke” both took advantage of. Both of them wrote after the Temple was destroyed. “Mark” wrote just beforehand. Mark was very careful not to make any claims about my background that could easily be disproved.

A: Yet in the Gospel of Mark, there’s reference to you as “the son of David.” How do you explain that?

J: That’s an easy one. Mark never says that I’m from the “House of David.” Mark says that a blind beggar named Bartimaeus called out to me as the “son of David.” The short and simple answer — plain as can be — is that “House of David” and “son of David” mean two completely different things.

A: Explain.

J: To claim to be of the “House of David” is to make a genealogical claim — a claim to be a direct blood descendant of a former king. It’s like saying, “I’m descended from King Henry VIII” or “I’m descended from Queen Elizabeth I.”

A: Except that everybody knows Queen Elizabeth I died without children, without direct heirs. So anybody making that claim would have a hell of a time proving it to historians and archivists.

J: Same thing with King David. If descendants of King David were still known, still living, where were they when the Hasmoneans — the so-called Maccabeans — claimed both the High Priesthood and the de facto Kingship of Judea in the 2nd century BCE? Why didn’t the Davidic family step forward then to reassert their “claim” to the throne? Or when Pompey invaded in 63 BCE and made Judea a Roman protectorate? Or when Augustine officially turned the Roman Republic into an Empire with the Emperor as divinely appointed ruler and keeper of the Pax Romana in Judea, (as well as everywhere else)? It’s just not historically realistic to believe there really was a “House of David” by the first century of the common era.

A: So when “Matthew” and “Luke” made their claims about your ancestry, we should understand these as fictional claims — about as meaningful and factual as it would seem to us today if Stephen Harper were to say he’s a direct descendant of King Arthur of the Round Table. Pure hype.

J: You bet. On the other hand, if Stephen Harper were to liken himself symbolically or metaphorically to King Arthur — if he were to say he’s following the inspiration of his hero King Arthur — then people would respond differently.

A: It never hurts for a politician to model himself after a popular hero.

J: And in the 1st century CE, David was a popular folk hero. Not David the King, but David the humble shepherd lad who brought down the oppressor Goliath with one well-aimed blow of a stone.

A: Plus a swift sword to the neck.

J: People often forget that just as there are two different versions of the Creation story in Genesis, there are two different versions of the early David story in First Samuel, and there are two strikingly different “images” of David in the Bible — one humble, one royal. Which version is going to appeal more to regular folk oppressed by their leaders, both domestic and foreign?

A: The version where David is the little guy up against the big, mean, nasty Goliath.

J: Or the big, mean, nasty Herodian Temple, in my case.

A: It was a metaphor, then. A reference to the heroic folk tale of David. A reminder that God doesn’t always choose “the big guy” or “the firstborn son.”

J: Regular people didn’t love David because he was a king. Regular people loved David — the young David, the innocent David — because they could relate to him. David was a popular symbol amongst the slaves and the hard-working lower classes who longed to be freed from the cruelty of unjust leaders.

A: Huh. Well, as the Staples commercial says, “That was easy.”

-1
Posted in Bible, Book of Genesis, Gospel of Mark, historical Jesus, Jerusalem Temple, Jesus Redux, Jesus' family of origin, Matthew's and Luke's intent and tagged | Leave a Comment
27 Nov 2010

CC45: Who Is the Snake in Genesis?

I make no apologies to anyone for trying to put the Book of Genesis in its proper historical context.

The Book of Genesis is one short piece of human writing, written for a specific purpose almost 2,300 years ago, and it’s not reasonable, fair, or honest to place so much authority on this book. To insist that Genesis is the inspired word of God is to show a profound lack of trust and faith in God. If you want to continue to proclaim that Genesis’s truth is more important to you than all the other evidence available to your mind, senses, and common sense, then please go ahead. But don’t tell me in the same breath that you believe with your whole heart in God. Because you don’t.

It’s not acceptable for people in the 21st century to read Genesis as if it were written yesterday by well-meaning modern theologians. It wasn’t. Genesis has to be understood in an ancient context — a context that no longer exists in the modern Western world. It wasn’t written for a postmodern world that believes in Newtonian science and human rights legislation. It was written for a world that believed at its core in occult magic and slavery.

Genesis was not written for Rabbinic Judaism or Christianity. Neither Rabbinic Judaism nor Christianity existed until the second half of the 1st century BCE. By that time, Genesis had been making the religious rounds for over 300 years. It was a very old text by the time both Jewish rabbis and early Christian preachers began to radically alter the way in which people were allowed to relate to God.

What was so different about early Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity in comparison to other religions of the time?

No Temple.

Judaism had to radically re-envision itself after the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. Christians, too, were supposed to pay more attention to their spiritual commitments and less attention to imperial temples. Neither 1st century religious group would have been recognizable to the people who wrote Genesis.

I don’t give a hoot that the people who wrote Genesis may have been Jewish or may have spoken Hebrew. They weren’t Jewish in the way that Judaism is practised today, any more than Alexander the Great’s armies were Macedonian in the way that Macedonians understand themselves today. It’s ridiculous to try to put 2,300 year old writings under the umbrella of political correctness. These writings were used in their early years for the express purpose of perpetuating HDM myths. For this reason, they need to be brought into the light of critical scholarship and examined honestly for what they actually say, instead of what we want them to say.

Among biblical scholars, there seems to be an almost fanatical self-imposed blindness when it comes to talking about the snake/serpent in Chapter 3 of Genesis (the snake that beguiles Eve). Many scholars will tell you that the snake shouldn’t be read as a metaphor for Satan/the Devil, and I agree with them. In place of the snake-as-devil reading, the preferred explanation these days is that the story about the snake describes the “broken relationship” between humanity and God, a brokenness which is in turn the cause for our suffering as human beings.

I’m all for the big moment of psychotherapeutic interpretation, when, after many months of quiet listening, the therapist suddenly drops a major insight onto the unsuspecting heart of the suffering patient. But, you know, I’m not getting the sense that the authors of Genesis really cared that much about your suffering.

And usually the transformative interpretation comes at the end, not at the beginning. At the beginning, nobody’s listening. It’s only after a patient has heard him/herself talking for a while that he/she is ready to hear what the therapist has to say. (Reality TV shows, while not always ethical or kind, have at least shown us time and again that insight follows relationship, not the other way around.)

There’s a much simpler and more obvious reading for the snake/serpent in Genesis, one that relates directly to the historical context of the Alexandrian authors.

The snake is Hellenism. Pure and simple.

Based on the evidence of Genesis, it seems that the Jewish scholars who lived in Alexandria, Egypt (a Hellenistic hot spot) were furious about the corrosive influence of Hellenistic religion and philosophy on their own traditions and beliefs, so they decided to fight back. They decided to give their faith community some ammunition to strengthen them in the great cultural war that Alexander the Great had unleashed on Egypt (and on many other places). This is a perfectly understandable motive. When outsiders push aggressively at you, you push back. Sometimes you push back with iron weapons. And sometimes you push back with words.

Gruppo del laocoonte, 04 by I, Sailko. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - httpcommons.wikimedia.orgwikiFileGruppo_del_laocoonte,_04.JPG#mediaFileGruppo_del_laocoonte,_

The Laocoon Group is a famous ancient marble excavated in Rome and now displayed in the Vatican. Laocoon was a Trojan priest who, according to myth, was killed, along with his sons, by serpents sent by a Greek god. (The identity of the Greek god, along with other details, varies from version to version of the myth.) Photo credit I. Sailko. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

In the early 3rd century BCE, nobody would have needed an explanation as to the snake’s identity. If I were to say to you today, “the Eagle did it,” you’re probably going to think “American eagle” (or maybe Roman legions, if you’re a real history buff). Same thing with the snake in the ancient world. The snake meant Greek ideas — Greek myths and Greek magic — which had had a HUGE impact on people’s thinking all around the Mediterranean, and not always for the better.

Biblical scholars profess to be puzzled about the great void in the canonical Hebrew scriptures around Alexander the Great and his conquest of Syria-Palestine. They see many accurate, verifiable references to other known historical events, historical persons, and military campaigns (e.g. the Assyrian conquest, the Babylonian conquest, and the return of Jewish exiles to Jerusalem). But there’s nothing — not a thing — in the canon about those Hellenistic bastards in the late 4th century.

Of course, Alexander’s successors created empires. And emperors never look sympathetically on explicit criticism, do they? In any dangerous religio-political climate (as Alexandria would have been in 275 BCE), writers of polemic have to tread carefully for their own protection and the protection of their communities.

So you disguise your polemic in metaphors. You never mention specific pharaohs (in this case, Ptolemaic emperors) by name. You identify your enemies through metaphor (the wily Greek snake who entraps vulnerable Jews). And you pretend to set your claims in the far distant past (the Patriarchal Age) so nobody can accuse you of current sedition.

And you conclude your story in Egypt. Not in Judah or Israel, but in Egypt. And the hero of your story — Joseph — is technically a slave, but he’s a slave with so much power and prestige that he has the ear of the (unnamed) Pharaoh. And God favours Joseph and his family, even though they all have to travel to . . . Egypt. And the hero and his kin inherit the fruits of God’s first covenant with Abraham.*  And lo and behold! the first covenant says that Abraham’s descendants are promised all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates River — not coincidentally the choicest parts of Alexander’s empire!

Genesis is focussed on Egypt because it was written for Diaspora Jews who lived in Egypt.

What’s the big deal about that? It makes perfect sense in its own context. Let’s just accept that and move on.

* Gen. 15:1-21; there’s also a second covenant between God and Abraham in Gen. 17:1-27.

-2
Posted in A.N.E. Wisdom literature, Bible, Book of Genesis, Concinnate Christianity, Creationism, HDM Myths, Jerusalem Temple, relationship with God and tagged | Leave a Comment
26 Nov 2010

CC44: The Book of Genesis

Spring Branches (credit JAT 2015). Ancient myths about trees of power, knowledge, healing, hidden things, and creation pop up in cultures all over the world.

Spring Branches (credit JAT 2015). Ancient myths about trees of power, knowledge, healing, hidden things, and creation pop up in cultures all over the world.

It’s hard to argue with the reality that the Book of Genesis has had a profound influence on the growth of three major world religions. It’s a powerful tale that evokes intense emotions. It’s been retold over and over to breathless new audiences. Its images appear in great masterworks of art. If its authors were here today, they’d be very proud.

Of course, I’m one of the small minority of people of faith who read Genesis using the standard tools of socio-historical criticism (form criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, social-scientific context) and end up concluding two things: (1) that Genesis is entirely a work of fiction and (2) that Genesis was written much later than most of the historical and prophetic books of the Hebrew canon.

Let me be clear: I believe the Book of Genesis is NOT the inspired word of God. I believe it is a myth. A work of fiction. An intentional piece of writing that’s entirely made up. A book that has much more in common with J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings than with other Hebrew works such as Ezra-Nehemiah or Leviticus.

When I was doing research for my Master’s research essay (short thesis), I came across the most wonderful book in the university library. I was actually looking for a different book, which I couldn’t seem to find, when suddenly my eyes fell upon a strange title: Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus.* Say who? (For those who are interested, the full bibliographic data is below).

Russel Gmirkin, the author of this admittedly highly academic book, uses careful research into early sources to suggest quite convincingly that the first part of Genesis (chapters 1-11) couldn’t have been written before 278 BCE. He also shows why it’s likely that Genesis was first written in Alexandria, Egypt — not, as you’d expect, in the land of Judah.

Meanwhile, it’s no coincidence at all that another important work known to scholars as the Septuagint was also written at almost exactly the same time (c. 275 BCE) in exactly the same place (Alexandria, Egypt). What is the Septuagint? The Septuagint is the oldest known collection of Hebrew scriptures — an early version of the “Old Testament” (as Christians call it). But it’s not written in Hebrew. It’s written in Greek.

Much to the embarrassment of orthodox Jewish and Christian scholars, until the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 at Qumran (south of Jerusalem), scholars hadn’t found any pre-Common-Era versions of the Jewish Bible written in Hebrew** (or any major chunks of the Jewish Bible, for that matter). The next-oldest-known copy of the Torah (the Masoretic Aleppo Codex) dates from the 10th century CE — a mere 1,000 years ago or so!

Until the late 20th century, then, everyone — even Jewish scholars — had been relying on various ancient translations of the Hebrew texts as they tried to reconstruct the process of canonization of the Jewish Bible. They had to rely on ancient translations because they didn’t have any actual ancient Hebrew manuscripts to study. Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars now have much more material to work with, but it’s important to note that among the hundreds of scrolls found at Qumran, almost all contain only a single “book” (such as the Book of Genesis or the Book of Exodus).

Almost all of the 24 “books” that are found today in the Hebrew Scriptures have been recovered individually at Qumran (proving their early origins). But many other kinds of texts have been found there, too — non-canonical works that bear little resemblance to today’s Rabbinic Judaism. And, despite everyone’s curiosity, it seems there’s no evidence in the Qumran material for the existence of a fixed canon in the 1st and 2nd centuries BCE (in Judean Qumran, at least). There’s no Hebrew equivalent of the Greek Septuagint to be found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. No big honkin’ “Old Testament” to lug around and quote from (though, to be realistic, and fair to the scribes of the Qumran community, there’s only so much text that can fit onto a single papyrus scroll.) Scholars found many Hebrew and Aramaic scrolls at Qumran, but no relatively stable canonical list to define and shape them. Meanwhile, the Septuagint was already “a going concern” in Greek-speaking Jewish communities outside Judea (these communities are called the Diaspora). One of the biggest of these Diaspora Jewish communities happened to be centred in . . . Alexandria, Egypt.

This is important because the evidence available to us suggests very strongly that sometime around 275 BCE (in the early Hellenistic period that followed Alexander the Great’s conquest of vast territories, including Egypt), a group of scholars got together in Alexandria, Egypt, and assembled a collection of pre-existing theological writings into a “canon.” They decided on a list of scrolls or “books” that belonged together as part of this canon. The Alexandrian scholars certainly didn’t write all the scrolls or “books” themselves. They merely collected together some scrolls that had been written by earlier Jewish thinkers, probably several centuries prior to their collation in the Septuagint.

These earlier scrolls had something important to say about God, in the view of the Alexandrian scholars. But when these assorted teachings were put together, they made a mish-mash. The collection was disjointed — really just a bunch of prophecies and histories strung together. They didn’t make much sense when read one after the other on their own. So the scholars had to do quite a bit of editing and rewriting to tie everything together (redaction). Then they added their own contribution: they wrote an introduction to the collection — a myth that would tie together all the earlier prophecies into a cohesive theological book that would make sense (well, sort of).

Enter the highly influential book of Genesis, cut from whole cloth, written at the same time in both Greek and Hebrew versions, and placed at the very beginning of the collection to serve as a theological “preface” for everything else that would follow.

To be sure, many elements of Genesis can be traced to Ancient Near East sources (elements such as the Flood narratives), but all this proves is that the authors knew their sources and wanted to draw on them. It’s part and parcel of theological writing: you always try to draw on earlier sources in order to establish your own authority.

Unless, of course, you’re Jesus.

*Russel E. Gmirkin. Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 433 and Copenhagen International Series 15 (New York: T & T Clark, 2006).

** The books that have been included in the Septuagint for at least 2,000 years were not all accepted into the tri-partite Jewish canon when rabbinic scholars in the late 1st century CE made some final decisions about which books to include in the Jewish canon. Jewish scholars, followed later by Protestant theologians, decided to exclude from the canon such Apocryphal books as “The Wisdom of Solomon” and “The Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach.” (The latter book is usually just called “Sirach” — the Jesus referred to in the full title is not that Jesus, but an earlier man who had the same name.) The Septuagint, though modified many times over the centuries, is still the official Old Testament of the Roman Catholic Church.

-3
Posted in Bible, Book of Genesis, Concinnate Christianity, Essenes, life and death, prophets and tagged | Leave a Comment
25 Jun 2010

CC21: The Law of Attraction in the Gospel of Matthew: God as the Great Gumball Machine in the Sky

Ya gotta love those Kevin Trudeau infomercials. The guy’s a regular pitbull when he’s trying to market his latest “no-fail” product. A while back, he was aggressively promoting his “Natural Cure.” These days, he’s hawking “the Law of Attraction” in a new and improved form that can be yours in a 10 CD package for a mere $297. He calls his latest course “Your Wish Is Your Command.”

Not long ago, Rhonda Byrne was selling essentially the same product through her book and video called The Secret. Before that, Joseph Murray was touting the “newly discovered” Law of Attraction in books such as The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. And before that, Ernest Holmes was proclaiming the wonders of “the Law” in his “landmark” book The Science of Mind.

What has this got to do with Christianity?

Everything.

The Law of Attraction, as recent writers have labelled it, is not a new idea. It’s an ancient idea. It’s an idea that serves as the foundation for a lot of ancient religious writings that are loosely lumped together by scholars under the heading of “Wisdom Literature.” Wisdom teachings purport to teach people how to recognize the inviolable laws of creation that, if properly observed, can lead to wealth, prosperity, good health, family status, and happiness.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, three books are generally considered to represent the Wisdom tradition: Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. Elements of Wisdom teachings are also sprinkled here and there throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, as in Genesis 2-3. Some of the Psalms have overtones of Wisdom.

Not to be outdone, the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament states in unambiguous terms that if you follow the laws and the prophets in righteousness, “all things will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33). In his wrap-up to the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew has Jesus say, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:7-11).

There you have it in a nutshell. All you have to do is ask in the right way, and God will give it to you. Not only does God want to give it to you, but God has to give it to you, because the contract law says so. The contract law between God and God’s people is binding on God. So if you righteously obey all the divine contract provisions (as they are stated by your religion’s prophets), well, naturally, God is required to hold up his end of the bargain, and give you everything you ask for — wealth, health, and happiness.

There’s a special kind of law that governs all Creation, you see. As several religious traditions will tell you, including Western Christian orthodoxy, these laws are both highly secret and highly powerful. If you can uncover the hidden secrets of these laws, you can tap into their unlimited power. In this spiritual understanding (which, I’d like to emphasize, is not limited to any one religion) God’s divine creativity is considered to be a tap. It’s hard to find this sacred tap, and it’s even harder to figure out how to turn it on. But once you have the secret knowledge (gnosis) of how to turn on the tap, you can get whatever you want.

Mystics of all religious traditions frequently fall into the narcissistic mire of believing that (1) there is such a tap and (2) they alone know how to find and control said tap. These same mystics are usually delighted to share the information with their disciples for a price. Sometimes, as with people such as Kevin Trudeau, the price is mere money. More often, the mystic seeks to gather for him/herself a treasure considered even more valuable to a narcissist than wealth. That treasure is status.

The religious leaders of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) thought they had the Law of Attraction all figured out. It didn't turn out too well for them. Photo credit 675px-Moái_de_Rano_Raraku,_en_Isla_de_Pascua, Wikimedia Commons.

The religious leaders of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) thought they had the Law of Attraction all figured out. It didn’t turn out too well for them. Photo credit 675px-Moái_de_Rano_Raraku,_en_Isla_de_Pascua, Wikimedia Commons.

A dysfunctional mystic can live quite comfortably as an ascetic, disdaining wealth, comfort, and personal possessions, as long as he or she receives a steady diet of status to feed an ongoing psychological state of status addiction — an addiction to status, as opposed to an addiction to psychotropic substances. The addiction to status operates in a person’s central nervous system like any other addiction. There are constant cravings. Getting a “hit” of status causes the brain to release dopamine in the same way that getting a “hit” of cocaine causes the brain to release dopamine.

The only way for an ascetic mystic to get an ongoing supply of status is to indulge in spiritual practices that “affirm” to the mystic that he or she is higher on the ladder of spiritual ascent than you are.

To be higher on the ladder is to have more status. It’s as simple as that. It’s as scary as that.

To be “in the know” about the “Law of Attraction” is to have more status. This ancient spiritual practice attracts psychologically dysfunctional people who are already addicted to the dopamine high of status. That’s why it feels so good to them when they try to follow these “righteous” teachings — they’re getting a hit of dopamine each time they tell themselves they’re cleverly invoking the “contract laws” of the universe (i.e. invoking the Covenant).

Be careful what you wish for — you might get it, and it probably won’t be what you thought it would be.

That’s because God the Mother and God the Father never give you what you ask for. They only give you what you need.

And you need an addiction to status like you need a hole in the head.

-4
Posted in A.N.E. Wisdom literature, Bible, Book of Genesis, Cause & Effect, Concinnate Christianity, Law (Nomos), Materialism, Matthew's and Luke's intent, mysticism, spiritual ascent, status addiction and tagged | Leave a Comment

Post Navigation