Against The Stream ~ INCREDIBLE
IS IT NOT AMAZING
THAT, while the Christian Bible is full and overflowing
with errors and discrepancies, many Christians believe
it is ‘the Word of God’? This is the real
miracle about Christianity: that people should believe
it so blindly! What is the use of having brains?!
For example, take the family-tree of Jesus,
as found in the first book of the New Testament. it
is traced from Abraham, through David, to Joseph,
the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Christians
have attached great importance to this, seeing in
it the supposed fulfillment of biblical prophesy.
But they hold Mary to have been a virgin and to have
conceived Jesus supernaturally— that is, by
means other than through the agency of a man! This
is where the contradiction lies, for if Jesus really
was so conceived, his genealogy should be traced back
through his mother’s side, not Joseph’s!
Now, which is right: that he was a descendent of Abraham
and David through Joseph, or that he was born of a
virgin? They can’t both be right, for they exclude
each other, do they not? So here, in the very first
chapter of the book that is the basis of Christianity,
is a glaring inconsistency. If every word of the Bible
is God’s Word— as many Christians still
claim— why the many discrepancies that have
been pointed out by scholars and which are visible
to anyone who reads the book?
Gina Cerminara, in her wonderful book, Insights
for the Age of Aquarius, said this on the topic :
"Virgin births were common in ancient ‘pagan’
religions. Buddha, Zoroaster and Krishna, among others,
were declared by their later followers to have been
miraculously conceived and born of virgins—
the idea apparently being to establish divine authority
for them in this way. The same fate seems to have
befallen Jesus, who again and again called himself
the Son of Man. But it was to satisfy and impress
‘pagan’ converts that theologians claimed
a virgin birth for him".
Now, Mary apparently had other children
after or besides (they may even have been before)—
Jesus, but so zealous were some Christians in holding
Mary sacred, that one Pope declared her ‘eternally
Virgin’. Others, in turn, appointed her ‘Mother
of God’, and ‘Queen of Heaven’ (and
the present Pope, John-Paul II, seems on the verge
of declaring her Co-Savior with Jesus’), getting
further and further away from reality! These titles
were bestowed on her posthumously by cunning and fallible
people, who had vested interests in doing so. The
rest of the populace in Europe at that time were either
illiterate and gullible, or too cowed and intimidated
by the Church to say anything in protest or disagreement.
It is different now, however, in that we
have the freedom and right to speak out and question
things— freedom that was dearly bought for us
by others. But this does not mean that we shall always
have such freedom, for it can be lost, as history
has repeatedly shown. We can again sink into periods
such as The Dark Ages, which, unlike the few decades
of Communist oppression, lasted for a thousand years,
during which the Christian Church was the undisputed
and tyrannical power. Such freedom as we in the West
now enjoy— and which other countries are still
struggling for— should not be taken lightly,
but should be used in trying to understand and fortify
it, so that it won’t be easily lost and we don’t
slide again into cultural and spiritual darkness.
Freedom is our greatest treasure and we should try
to realize this while we have it, for if we lose it,
we can only bewail our stupidity for not having taken
better care of it. Now we have it, but …..
For several centuries, Catholic Europe suffered
under ‘The Holy Inquisition’ of the Church;
hundreds of thousands were horribly tortured and burnt
to death and their property confiscated by the insatiable
Church. The Protestant ‘Reformation’ dealt
no less savagely— though on a lesser scale—
with ‘unbelievers’. John Calvin, the dour
founder of Calvinism, had people burnt alive for deviant
ideas.
Millions have been killed and entire cultures
ruthlessly eradicated by followers of the Cross in
the name of their religion. Verily, the history of
Christianity is written in blood! And if we are complacent
and allow it, ‘religious’ madness may
return to plague our poor world again on a large scale;
indeed, the current rise in fundamentalism across
several world religions does not bode well for peace
and stability.
Our real enemy is Ignorance, disguised in
many forms. Like Confucius and the Buddha— but
unlike Christianity, which insists that Man is ‘sinful’—
I believe in the basic-goodness of Man. Realistically,
however, I also see that such basic-goodness is, in
most cases— like diamonds in the earth—
covered and concealed by a whole mass of things that
are not good. It is— or should be— the
purpose of religion and education to help us discover
our basic-goodness as humans, not as ’Buddhists’,
‘Christians’, ‘Hindus’, ‘Muslims’,
etc.
As most people who have done any research
will recognize, Jesus was not the founder of Christianity.
We can read his injunction to his disciples, not to
go to the lands of the ‘Gentiles’ but
to the "lost sheep of the House of Israel".
Jesus was a reformer of the Jewish religion; it is
doubtful that he intended to start a new religion.
Paul— who probably never even met
Jesus— was the real founder of Christianity
as a religion separate from Judaism. It was he who
waived aside such Jewish requirements as ritual circumcision
for males, and made Christianity a religion for Jews
and Gentiles alike. It should, in fact, be called
‘Paulism’ or ‘Paulianity’
rather than Christianity. According to Paul, Christianity
offers to the world no more and no less than the blood
of Christ and the salvation that comes from it. If
Jesus did not die on the cross (as many now suspect)),
and if he was not resurrected (as there are many reasons
to think), then Paul’s contention that only
through the blood of Jesus can salvation be found,
falls flat on its face! Jesus specifically said that
salvation comes through keeping the commandments.
But Paul changed all that by saying: "If Christ
be not risen from the dead, then our preaching is
in vain, and your faith is also vain". The poor
Christians should be in a dilemma over this; who to
believe: the Master of the disciple?
I am no longer a Christian, but this does
not mean that I do not respect Jesus any more; it
means that I see him differently than I did. No longer
bound by the fetters of Christianity, I am free to
look, and can honestly say that I understand Jesus
now much better than I did while I considered myself
a Christian. Myths about his ‘virgin-birth’
and ‘resurrection’ I now see as fabrications
of his over-zealous followers; this is what happens
in all religions— Buddhism not excepted—
when people have too much belief and little wisdom.
Such imbalance has caused incalculable disastrous
consequences.
The four accounts of the life of Jesus—
those of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, known as ‘the
Gospels’— do not tally in many places,
and indeed, often contradict each other. It is therefore
not surprising that there is so much disagreement
about him as a man, as a teacher, and as the ‘Son
of God’. We shall probably never know much for
sure about him, but is that reason for accepting the
incredible accounts that have come down to us through
the centuries— accounts which put more than
a little strain upon the imagination? Let us look
at some more points as recorded in the Gospels, although
the list is almost endless:
Jesus was supposedly crucified on a Friday
afternoon and his corpse taken down from the cross
and placed in a tomb before sunset that day, sunset
on Friday being the start of the Jewish sabbath, during
which no work of any kind might be done. Now, Christians
claim that Jesus lay dead in the tomb for three days
and three nights. By what system of reckoning they
calculate this, however, is hard to imagine, because,
when some of his women-devotees went to the tomb early
the following Sunday morning, they found the body
of Jesus gone— though there is no mention of
how long it had been gone by then. But supposing that
the body had been removed— or ‘got up’,
‘stood up’, which is what the word ‘resurrected’
means— just before the women arrived, it could
have been there only two nights and one full day,
at most! How, therefore, can they claim a total of
three days and three nights? Can’t they count?
Then, Matthew says that an angel appeared
in the tomb; Mark said it was a young man. Luke said
there were two men in shining garments, and John reported
that there were two angels! Was the sight of angels
so common in those days that they couldn’t agree
on how many appeared?! And what this man/angel—
or men/angels— said also differs in the four
accounts, as all who can read may verify in the New
Testament. When the women saw the men in the tomb,
Luke (24:5) has them— the men— saying:
"Why seek ye the living among the dead?",
referring to Jesus. This is a very important question,
and it has been overlooked because the Christians
have had a myth to support and perpetuate: that Jesus
died on the cross and rose again from the dead three
days later. It is rather like having a set of curtains
or an armchair, and constructing a house around them
to suit the curtains and chair, instead of vice-versa;
Christianity has been made to center around the fantastic
notion of the ‘resurrection’ of Jesus,
instead of around his teachings. As mentioned above,
this was largely the doing of Paul, the later apostle.
The question of the ‘angel(s)’
is very clear: "Why seek ye the living among
the dead?" Living? Jesus was supposed to be dead!
"Yes", say the Christians, "He was
dead, but he rose again, don’t you see?"
Brushing aside such objections, which are not worth
much, might it be that he didn’t really die
on the cross, but only appeared to be dead? In those
days there were no stethoscopes or ECG machines, and
there is no record of anyone taking his pulse or checking
for vital life-signs when they took him down from
the cross. They only stated he was dead and were anxious
to bury him before the sabbath began. Now, supposing
that those of his disciples who took him down realized
he was still alive; would they, overjoyed, have shouted:
"He’s alive! He’s still alive!"?
Certainly not! They would have been most careful to
conceal the fact from anyone who might have reported
it to the authorities.
Let us pursue this hypothesis: John has
Mary alone see the ‘angels’, who ask her:
"Why are you weeping?" (20:13). She answered:
"They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know
where they have put him". Then she turned and
saw Jesus standing there, but took him for a gardener
and didn’t recognize him. Jesus spoke to her:
"Woman, why are you weeping?" Whom do you
seek?" Still unaware it was Jesus— who
knew who he was speaking to, of course— she
replied: "Sir, if you have removed him, tell
me where you have laid him, and I will take him away".
Then Jesus— who must have been enjoying his
little joke with her— spoke her name—
"Mary"— probably in a special way,
so that only then did she realize it was he. "Master!",
she exclaimed, and would have embraced him, but he
forbade her to touch him, no doubt feeling sore and
sensitive after his ordeal. The point here is why
did Mary, who had been so close to Jesus after he
‘converted’ her, not recognize him, but
took him for a gardener; she didn’t even recognize
his voice until he spoke her name! How could this
be? Was Jesus disguised as a gardener, perhaps, so
that no-one would know him? This is a possibility,
and maybe even a probability. But why should he be
disguised? Might he not have been afraid that if the
Jews who had had him crucified discovered that he
was still alive, they would really ‘finish him
off’? But why, if he were ‘resurrected’
from the dead, should he fear death? He should have
been beyond death. Jesus was alive, as you and I are
alive! He had not died! He later met his disciples
on several occasions, and had them touch him, to prove
that he was flesh-and-blood, and not a spirit or ghost;
he had them put their fingers in his wounds. If he
had really been resurrected, would he have carried
his wounds with him? What if he had lost a limb: would
his resurrected body have been missing a limb? These
wounds belonged to his earthly body, and the presence
of them signified that he had not died and left this
life, but was alive! He even asked for food and ate,
to prove it!
Now, why do I, who am not a Christian, spend
so much time writing about such things? Why don’t
I concern myself with my own religion? Well, first
of all, my religion is Life, and since Christianity,
Christians, Jesus and his teachings are part of Life,
how can I cut myself off from them? We are connected,
whether we like it or not. And Christianity has played
such a big role in the history of the world—
and continues to— that it would be irresponsible
of me to see things in the way that I do and keep
quiet. But, although I must accept it as one of the
world’s major religions, it doesn’t mean
that I must accept it as being truly representative
of Jesus and his teachings, any more than I must accept
Buddhism as truly representing the Buddha and His
Teachings. I believe in freedom, and feel that everyone
is entitled to their own opinions; if Christians feel
entitled to peddle their religion from door-to-door
as they do, surely I am entitled to my opinion about
Jesus of Nazareth, particularly when the accounts
of him are so hazy and obscure. I will take from his
teachings what I think is good and useful to me and
try to apply it in my life; what is important to me
is what he taught, not the myths that have accumulated
around him, like barnacles on a ship.
In this way, Jesus of Nazareth— or
Jesus bar Joseph (son of Joseph, to use the Jewish
form of address; and Jesus was a Jew)— is still
alive to me!
If Christians do not like what I have written,
let them do as much research into the Buddha and His
Teachings as I have done into Jesus and his, instead
of condemning without knowing anything, as they have
so often done. Come now, I challenge you! I am not
saying mine is better than yours, but inviting you
to open your minds.
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