The Jesus Secret

The enduring question is this: How can a religion be built around someone who does not figure prominently in that religion’s holy book? I’m talking about Christianity and Jesus, of course.

In order to better understand this question, one has to first go back to the beginning – to Qumran and the origins of Christianity. In biblical times, a small, monastic group of Jews (usually referred to as Essenes) lived in isolation, in the wilderness near the Dead Sea in a place called Qumran. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found there some 60 years ago, make quite clear that the origins of Christianity lie in Qumran.

The Essenes were very religious and lived their lives strictly according to the Torah, the first five books of the Jewish Bible (Old Testament). It was out of this community that Jesus and most of the disciples would come. Jesus is commonly referred to as Jesus of Nazareth, but Nazareth is a corruption of the term Nazarene as the Qumran people were sometimes called Nazarenes.

 

Fast forward to immediately after the crucifixion

At that time, the Nazarenes carried on the teachings of Jesus through what was called the Jerusalem Church, which was under the direction of James, the brother of Jesus. It was called the Jerusalem Church because Qumran was considered by the Nazarenes to be the “New Jerusalem.”

After the crucifixion, there were competing versions of the story of Jesus (see Luke 1:1-4). For example, the Jerusalem Church was highly critical of Paul for his false teachings (see the Book of Acts).  In 325 AD, some three hundred years later, a vote of sorts was taken at the Council of Nicaea to finally settle the debate between the competing factions as to which version of Jesus would make it into the Bible. The losers in the vote got branded as heretics.

 

The resurrection

Central to church theology is the story of the resurrection. The mystery of the resurrection is a riddle wrapped inside of an enigma. The only meaningful resurrection account in the Bible is found in the Gospel of Mark and that account does not include any details with respect to the actual resurrection itself. This is where the mystery deepens as almost no one during the time of Jesus believed in a physical resurrection. Yet, there it is anyway in the Gospel of Mark. So, let’s look at what the beliefs of the time about the resurrection actually were:

The disciples

The disciples, themselves, were Jewish and they lived their lives by the Torah. According to prophecy, the messiah that the disciples were expecting was a flesh-and-blood man (like King David), rather than a divine messiah who could resurrect himself after he had died.

Paul

Paul did not believe in the resurrection of the physical body, but rather the spiritual body alone (e.g. he never mentions Jesus having been resurrected in the flesh). Given Paul’s concept of a Christ risen into a new, spiritual body, the resurrection becomes simply an article of faith – a path to inner spiritual knowledge. For example, Paul stated that the body that rises is a spiritual body (1 Corinthians 44) and that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 50).

Origen

Early Christian theologian Origen of Alexandria (in On First Principles) said that the resurrection related to the spirit, not the mortal body. He considered the concept of a physical resurrection to be for those that did not have eyes to see and ears to hear. The eyes to see and ears to hear, of course, is a famous parable attributable to Jesus. In other words, the resurrection of a physical body was strictly a surface story for the unenlightened.  The real story of a spiritual resurrection could only be understood by those that were very enlightened (and had been initiated into the Mysteries).

Other biblical writers

The gospels of Luke, Matthew and John do not have a resurrection story nor do the epistles of James and Jude, both brothers of Jesus. Of course, there are stories of appearances of Jesus in the gospels but there is no way of knowing if he had died and had been resurrected or if he had simply survived the crucifixion.

Jesus

According to Christian theology, Jesus was crucified, dead and buried (in a tomb).  Later, the tomb was mysteriously opened and Mary Magdalene was told that Jesus had risen. However, immediately thereafter, Mary Magdalene saw Jesus outside of the tomb and Jesus said that he had not yet risen (John 20:17). Obviously, then, he was still alive.

 

Even the one account of the resurrection in the Gospel of Mark has been called into question. The oldest bibles, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus, do not include a resurrection story in the Gospel of Mark (the resurrection story in Mark can only be traced back to the Vulgate which is a late 4^thcentury text). Further, the authors of the gospels of Luke and John do not contain a resurrection story even though they used copies of Mark (an earlier work) as a source. Therefore, the original Gospel of Mark could not have had a resurrection story in it. It had to be added very late in the game (after the Council of Nicaea in AD 325). Therefore, a central tenet of Christian faith is essentially missing from the Gospels.

Aside: The additional verses added to Mark say that Jesus ascended into heaven and sat at the right hand of the Father. One has to ask the question: Who observed this? Exactly who was in heaven to know that Jesus sat next to God and that he specifically sat on the right side of God? Furthermore, how could you possibly give such a commentary without covering the real story – describing God himself?

So, why does any of this matter? Well, without a resurrection, there is no proof that Jesus was divine. The secret concerning Jesus and Christianity is that the church didn’t need the spiritual teachings of Jesus. They simply wanted a messiah in order to sell their religion to the masses.  Accordingly, Christianity would become the new pagan religion of the gentiles.  To gain new converts, they offered up the idea of a universal messiah who they said had come to save the entire world.  In stark contrast, the prophets wrote about the coming of a Jewish messiah who would come specifically to reestablish the Kingdom of Israel. It’s a dirty little secret that you’re not supposed to know…but, of course, now you know.

 

Epilogue

Incidentally, an empty tomb (see above) proves nothing other than Jesus’ body was not there. There is nothing mysterious about his body being “missing” since when Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb, the tomb was open and immediately thereafter she found Jesus standing outside of the tomb. So, his body was not inside the cave/tomb as he was already outside of it. Obviously, he could have been risen at that time only if he had already died first. However, as the Gospel of Philip says, “Those who say that the Lord died first and then rose up are in error, for he rose up first and then died.”  To understand that passage from the Gospel of Philip, you need to know that the author was concerned with the spirit rather than the body. The physical world was simply something that had to be overcome by resurrecting one’s spirit while they were in the physical world.

So, too, the message of early Christian luminaries like Paul and Origen were hidden under a veil of allegory and symbolism. Only the highly enlightened who were initiated into the Mysteries might be able to comprehend the underlying message.  Similarly, Jesus’ teachings were disguised as parables.  The bible clearly shows that even the disciples could not understand his message. So, why do Christians today believe that they understand his teachings when the disciples didn’t. After all, for the last two thousand years, all that Christians have ever gotten is a bible.

 

 

“But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:”

    – Paul (1 Corinthians 2:7)

 

“He replied, ‘Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them (the masses)…This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.'”

    – Jesus (Matthew 13:11,13)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Was Jesus God?

I keep seeing spam, or whatever it is, on my internet sports page about the topic “Is Jesus God?” It got me to think that I should ask those presumably in the know – Christians. So, here’s a little multiple choice questionnaire, just for Christians:

Question: Which of the following, if any, are correct?

• Jesus is God
• Jesus is the son of God
• Jesus is Yahweh
• Jesus is the messiah
• Jesus is the archangel Michael
• Jesus is a manifestation of God

According to varying Christian beliefs, it actually might be any one of them. That is, different Christian denominations have different beliefs with respect to Jesus. So, there basically isn’t any one right answer that reflects all Christian thinking. Every Christian denomination seemingly wants the right to define the Word of God their way, and their way only.

Aside: Islam holds that Jesus was a prophet and according to atheists… well, God doesn’t exist so it really doesn’t matter to them, now does it?

To confuse matters further, Judaism believes that Jesus wasn’t the long-awaited messiah prophesied by the Old Testament. The reason is that the Old Testament prophecies are actually prophecies from the Jewish Bible. You see, the Old Testament is, in reality, the Jewish Bible (the Tanakh). Jewish prophets wrote the prophecies and Jewish holy men said that Jesus did not fulfill their prophecies. So, these were not Christian prophecies but rather Jewish prophecies and the only messiah that anyone could have been expecting was a Jewish messiah. Actually, it would be hundreds of years before Christianity even became a religion.

The Jewish messiah was actually supposed to be both a messiah and a king, like King David who was considered to have been a messiah in his own right. In order to fulfill the messianic prophecies of the Tanakh (according to the Book of Isaiah), the following would have to occur:

• All the Jews in the world would have to return to the Holy Land.
• All the people in the world would have to worship the Jewish god.
• The messiah would have to restore the Kingdom of Israel (then ruled by foreign powers).
• The messiah would have to be named Immanuel.

With respect to the disciples, they were Jewish and they lived their lives strictly in accordance with the Torah. Therefore, they could only have been expecting a Jewish messiah. That’s why the disciples asked Jesus (see Acts 1:6), “…Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” They understood that this was potentially the fulfillment of one of the Jewish prophecies relating to the long-awaited Jewish messiah.

Of course, it never happened. Jesus did not restore the kingdom of Israel or fulfill any of the other prophecies for that matter. Even today, arguably three out of the four prophecies remain unfulfilled.

 

Epilogue

World-famous theologian Albert Schweitzer, in his seminal work The Quest for the Historical Jesus, pointed out that Jesus was supposed to return during the lifetime of the disciples (see Mark 13 and Matthew 24). For that reason, noted Christian apologist C.S.Lewis stated that Matthew 24:34 is the most embarrassing verse in the Bible.

The thing is…Jesus certainly would have returned as he promised the disciples…if he could have.  Even in the Bible, they asked why Jesus did not return as promised.

“They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.’”

 – 2 Peter 3:4

Things My Minister Forgot To Tell Me

Growing up in a Christian family, I was taught all the typical Christian values and beliefs. I accepted them, as most people do, without questioning them. After all, what did I know then about such things. Over time, I actually read the Bible and that’s when I discovered things that my minister apparently forgot to tell me.  As well-known Christian pastor Brian McLaren said, “One of the problems is that the average Christian in the average church who listens to the average Christian broadcasting has such an oversimplified understanding of both the Bible and of church history – it would be deeply disturbing for them to really learn church history.”

 The Bible is the Word of God

The first thing that I remember being taught was that the Bible was the Word of God. For me, this is highly unlikely for a number of reasons including:

• The Bible is rather the self-proclaimed Word of God. There is no valid reason, outside of the Bible, to believe otherwise.
• Outside of Paul’s letters, no one really knows exactly who the writers of the various books of the Bible were.   That makes the Bible the self-proclaimed Word of God written by unknown authors.
• The Bible was not written concurrent with the events/stories contained therein. Some of the stories in the Old Testament were written hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years after the fact (as was the case with the Genesis story). Even the New Testament gospels were written years later and therefore were not eye-witness testimony; neither were they even written by any of the disciples, despite the fact that the Anglicized version of their names are attributed to the gospels.

There is one and only one Christianity

My minister conveniently forgot to tell me about the diversity in Christianity, beginning with all of the different bibles.   In addition, church dogma varies from denomination to denomination, with everyone wanting to define the Word of God their way. The Southern Baptists, for example, can’t even agree with the Baptists.

God was all loving and all good

All Christians have been taught that God is all loving and all good. What is de-emphasized is the Old Testament stories about God killing innocent women and children. Further, he was okay with slavery (see the Tenth Commandment). He also bragged about his great powers  saying, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things (Isaiah 45:7).”  As I’ve said before, please remind me why we pray to such a god.

Jesus was the messiah

Of course, my minister failed to mention that:

• Jesus was never named Immanuel, as required by Old Testament prophecy.
• Jesus could not have been a descendant of King David as required by prophecy since he was supposedly the by-product of a virgin birth, as Joseph was a descendant of King David but Mary wasn’t.
• Old Testament prophecy was a Jewish idea and, therefore, the concept of a messiah was a Jewish concept. According to Jewish tradition, a messiah had to be a real-life man (e.g. King David was considered to be a messiah) rather than a spiritual concept like the son of God. A Jewish messiah would be required to lead the Jewish people in overcoming their oppressors (in Jesus’ time – the Romans). Obviously, Jesus didn’t qualify in that regard.

Finally, and most importantly, my minister never told me that the god of the Old Testament couldn’t possibly have been the god of the New Testament! You see in the Old Testament, God was visible and talked to and interacted with mankind (e.g. with Adam and Eve, Abraham and Moses). However in the New Testament, Paul and John described God as spirit (invisible) and he never talked or appeared to anyone. Therefore, it was not possible for the God of the New Testament to have been in the Garden of Eden, or to even have given the Ten Commandments to Moses for that matter. It’s a big problem for Christianity – two gods but just one Prime Creator.

The underlying reason for this dilemma is that the Old Testament is essentially the Jewish Bible, the Tanakh, whereas the New Testament is Christian scripture. As can be plainly seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the true origins of Christianity goes back to a Jewish group located at Qumran which was headed by James, the brother of Jesus. These people believed in living by the Torah (because they were Jewish and that was their heritage). Led by Paul, however, Christianity changed some of the historical and cultural Jewish beliefs including the observance of the Torah. For example, they took the Jewish messiah concept (which according to the Dead Sea Scrolls included not one but two messiahs – one a king descended from David and one a high priest from the line of Aaron) and morphed it into a universal savior for all men.

The bigger issue, however, was that the church fathers accepted Jewish scripture (the Old Testament) for their creation story and with it accepted Yahweh as God. The problem is that up until the time of the Babylonian exile (beginning in 597 BC) the Israelites were polytheistic worshipping Yahweh as their personal god (since their covenant with him made them the Chosen People) as well as worshipping many other lesser gods, as can be evidenced from Jewish scripture, archaeological findings and even the Old Testament itself. Incidentally, this concept of lesser gods was the belief of both the Gnostics and Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. They believed that the visible God of the Old Testament was, in actuality, a lesser god, or god with a little “g” as I refer to him. That’s a rather inconvenient truth as Brian McLaren would say.

Perhaps, my minister simply “forgot” that the god of the Old Testament wasn’t actually the Prime Creator, especially since there was no convenient explanation that didn’t totally conflict with church dogma. In any event, sometimes it’s easier to forget than to face the truth.

 

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

– John 8:32

Banned From The Bible (Again)

Some people might think that most Christian writings deserve to be in a holy book somewhere.  However the Church, in its infinite wisdom (remember, the Pope is infallible), felt that Christians would be better off not knowing about certain scriptures.  So they destroyed those writings that they didn’t like (i.e. did not agree with its own dogma) and burned at the stake anyone who objected.  How Christ-like!

That’s what happens when religion is based on dogma.  The process goes something like this.  First, you decide on the dogma.  In the case of Christianity, that would be the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD (some three hundred years after Jesus).  That’s tantamount to writing the U.S. Constitution 300 years after the Revolution; in which case, there would still be no Constitution in place today.

Once you have a dogma, the rest is relatively easy.  You get rid of the competition; to wit, make sure that the holy books include only what you want.  As I said in my recent post “Banned From The Bible”, there is no Book of Enoch, Dead Sea Scrolls or Gospel of Judas, among many others, in the Bible. The process of deciding which books were “divinely inspired” took yet another 72 years after the Council of Nicaea.  Yes, it took 72 years to figure out exactly what constituted divine inspiration.

Actually, a number of gospels are not included in the Bible either, like those of Philip, Peter and Thomas.  Like I said, you get rid of opposing views.  With respect to the Gospel of Philip, it would be embarrassing, to say the least, if people found out that Mary Magdalene was the “companion” of Jesus with all that that implies.  So the Gospel of Philip was…

banned from the Bible.

The Gospel of Thomas supposedly contains the secret sayings of Jesus.  However according to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus believed that God lives in every human being rather than in just himself only. That might have changed history so the Gospel of Thomas was…

banned from the Bible.

The original Bible included the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon. The Wisdom of Solomon was considered to be the Word of God for over 1,000 years. However with the Reformation, the Protestants decided that the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, among others, was no longer divinely inspired.  So for Protestants, and Protestants only, those books were…

banned from the Bible.

Most bibles are based on any one of three scriptural sources, namely the Masoretic Text, the Vulgate or the Septuagint.  All of these texts have shortcomings.  For example, the Masoretic Text dates only to the 9^th century and the Vulgate (a Latin Bible) to the late 4^th century.  On the other hand, The Dead Sea Scrolls which predate Christianity are contemporary writings which showed what the life of Jesus must have been like. The Scrolls also demonstrate something totally unexpected, if not altogether shocking. Religious scriptures of the day had textual diversity. Scribes apparently would choose from different sources and then insert their own personal preferences. So which version of the Bible is the true Word of God?  Is it all of them or, as some believe, none of them?

If God wanted to write a bible, most Christians would probably say that He has the power to do just that. So why didn’t He? If God had written the Bible himself we could have dispensed with 2,000 years of debate over the matter.  What we’re left with is what I call the inspired Word of God. Even if the Bible, any Bible, is truly a work inspired by God, there’s still one problem.  Inspiration from God does not necessarily equate with the Word of God. There’s a big difference.  As I sit at my computer and write these words, I too am inspired by God – inspired to write what I think is the truth; the truth based on God having “whispered in my ear”.  To make matters worse, we don’t even know who wrote most of the Bible so how could we possibly know that God inspired men to write stories about Him; even if He did, is it the true Word of God or rather man’s word about God?

So how are we supposed to know who whispered in the ear of the scribe that wrote the Book of Enoch. Written approximately 200 years before Jesus, this work was quoted in the New Testament Book of Jude and by many of the early church fathers.  Enoch manuscripts were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls so we know that these writings were used and respected by the early Christians.  An apocryphal work, the Epistle of Barnabas, goes so far as to call Enoch the inspired Word of God.  Now, where I have I heard that term before?  The thing that makes Enoch stand out from all of the other religious scriptures is its identification of the exact source of evil in the world. The Book of Enoch specifically identifies the Fallen Angels as the source of evil and corruption in the world (rather than Original Sin via Adam and Eve).  Enoch goes on to say that in the End of Days only the wicked will be judged by God. It’s easy to see why the Book of Enoch was…

banned from the Bible.

Whose God Is It?

In the biblical stories, God is often referred to as YHWH, sometime spoken Yahweh, by the ancient Hebrews.  Much later, Yahweh would be given the name Jehovah which is a name that is still in use today. Among other things, Yahweh was said to have created Adam and Eve and later would enter into a covenant with Abraham which would eventually lead to the creation of the nation of Israel.  Such was the basis for Judaism and their worship of one god, and the beginning of monotheism as a form of worship.

Yes, others might argue that monotheism actually began with the Egyptians and their Pharaoh Akhenaten or even with Zoroastrianism, but Judaism is where monotheism took root and eventually spread to other religions.  Christianity, a later monotheistic religion, would adopt the Jewish Bible (essentially the Old Testament) as part of their own Bible.  In so doing, they also took on the mantle of Yahweh/Jehovah, the supposedly one and only god.  Little did they know, however, exactly what that entailed and even today most Christians don’t realize who Jehovah was, or wasn’t.

Let’s rewind, back to the beginning.  If we assume for the purpose of this discussion that the chronology in the Bible is accurate, then the following can be gleaned about the god(s) that the Hebrews/Israelites worshipped.  According to the Jewish Calendar, Adam and Eve were created circa 3700 BC.  So let’s count it down.  Based on the biblical genealogies, Abraham lived around 2000 BC, or 1,700 years after Adam and Eve.  During that period, the Hebrews worshipped many gods (the Old Testament is replete with references to multiple gods, especially in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy).  This is why Yahweh admonished the Hebrews, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3).

It’s also why a covenant might have been required between Yahweh and the Hebrews, since they actually had a choice of who to follow.  Obviously, if Yahweh was the prime creator (the first cause) or the one and only god, there would be no choice and no covenant would have been required.  There would have been no reason for Yahweh to have said, “And I will take you to me for a people and I will be to you a God” (Exodus 6:7).  It would not have been necessary for the prime creator to enter into such a covenant to be their god (because it would have been true ipso facto), and neither would he have referred to himself as “a God” (one of many); rather, he would have referred to himself simply as “God”.

Yet for the 1,700 years up to the time of Abraham, the Hebrews worshipped many gods instead of Yahweh; according to the Bible, even Abraham’s father did (Joshua 24:2).   But if they truly believed that Yahweh was the creator and helped Noah save mankind, how could they possibly have worshiped other gods?

Now, Moses was said to have lived around 1500 BC.  So roughly 500 years after Abraham, the Israelites still weren’t worshipping Yahweh as the one true god. This was one of the reasons supposedly for the Ten Commandments.  Yet despite Moses and notwithstanding the Ten Commandments, it would still be another 1,000 years or so before the Torah would be written and accepted as the religious belief system of the Jewish people (for example, see 2 Kings 22:8-13).  In the end, it took 3,000 years before the Israelites would officially pay homage to Yahweh.

How is it then that Yahweh was not worshipped by the Israelites over that incredible period of time even though the Jewish people feared him and recognized his status and his power?  How come, indeed.  The Dead Sea Scrolls, the original Septuagint and another recently discovered ancient manuscript shed new light on an important biblical passage, Deuteronomy 32:8-9.  The acceptable translation of this passage should be either “sons of God” or “the number of the gods”.  These sons of god were also made reference to in other biblical passages, for example Genesis 6:2, Job 1:6, and Job 38:7.  These passages relate to the fact that the early Canaanite religions believed in a pantheon of gods called the Elohim, or children of El (the sons of God).  The Elohim is the Hebrew term which is generally used for, and translated into, the word “God” in the Bible.  As for Yahweh, he would have been simply one of the Elohim, one of the creative spirits who fashioned the universe (Note: none of which were actually God, the prime creator).  Each member (Elohim) of the divine assembly were given a nation to rule over (see the Table of Nations in Genesis 10-11); and Yahweh, he was given Israel.

It was therefore difficult for the writers of the Torah to have taken the old stories, which related to a worship of many deities, and woven them together into a coherent story about the one and only god. For example, in Psalm 82:1, “God presides in the great assembly; he gives judgment among the gods”.  It’s tough to go from that to the concept of only one god.  So what exactly then is one to make of the Old Testament?  In truth, it’s simply a history of Jewish religious thought and how it evolved over thousands of years, from the creation to the actual writing of the Torah; how it changed from the worship of many deities to the worship of the one and only Yahweh.

So why is any of this important?  Well, down through the ages man has made a habit of using the name “God” to describe the deity of their own personal belief system.  All one can say, at best, is that such a deity is in reality only “a god”, or the God Below God as I like to refer to him.  I have endeavored to write about the biblical god story, not because I necessarily believe it, but because I feel that the story in the Bible, as written, is deserving of further explanation.  So tell me, in your opinion, whose god is it anyway?