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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Novels
- Published: 02/28/2020
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The Bible Explored
By Peter W. Mills, MA Phd
Introduction
“Be afraid. Be very afraid!”
Geena Davis as “Veronica Quaif” in “The Fly”
(David Cronenberg, 1986)
The Bible is a thing of tremendous contradictions, its precise status depending entirely on the opinion of the individual. For every adulator there is a detractor, for every plus there is a minus. One opinion holds that the Bible is the most important foundation of human civilisation; another maintains it has held back the proper advance of civilisation by centuries. One opinion holds that it is the unadulterated word of God; another that it consists of mythology. One opinion maintains that it represents the record of the basis for humankind’s relationship with God; another that it is merely one more tool of the establishment used to maintain control of the general population.
It was Karl Marx who wrote in 1843: “Die religion… ist das opium des volkes” (“Religion is the opium of the people”), thereby highlighting in modern thought the fact that religion can be employed politically, either positively or negatively.
As with all human tools, the Bible can be used for positive or negative ends. In the hands of fanatics, the Bible has already become a political weapon employed to undermine science, education, the family unit, freedom of conscience, freedom of choice and freedom of liberty. All of this can be proved, and is proved in this book in unequivocal detail, with complete source references to fully substantiate all that is exposed.
Unfortunately, the average person is supplied with little or no discriminatory information about how the Bible came to exist, who wrote it and why, what historical agendas and political expedients are embedded within it, how it has been edited and by whom, what it really represents, what falsehoods, errors and contradictions it contains, how it has evolved over the years, how it has been constructively edited, altered and re-written to suit various factions and cults in both ancient and modern times, how it has been used politically in the past and in the present, or how its written contents can be examined by a forensic analysis to show the strange, little-reported and often highly disturbing realities that lurk behind the commonly accepted façade.
This investigation does exactly what it says on the tin – it explores the Bible, revealing the astounding historical and political facts connected with this famous book and its usage in both the ancient and present day world.
This investigation was also a major part of my doctoral thesis for a PhD, which I gained many years ago, and so I should apologise for my text being finished in the bygone era when George W. Bush was United States President and Tony Blair was British Prime Minister.
It is impossible to write such a book as this without offending at least some people. No apology, however, is either necessary or offered - if they are right, I shall fry in Hell; if they are wrong, I won’t. You can’t say fairer than that, can you?
Peter W. Mills
Somerset, England
1. The Evolution of Religion
"I don't know as much as God, but I know more than He did at my age." Henry Kissinger
Fact versus Assumption
In the beginning, it is advisable to establish clearly how facts and realities are differentiated from fictions and myths.
There are only two methods by which we can build our overall awareness of the universe in which we live, and these are (1) the assumption method and (2) what is called the scientific method. These two awareness-forming techniques have provided humankind with everything it knows, or thinks it knows, and they operate by entirely different mechanisms: indeed, they are usually in conflict with each other. It is important at the start of this investigation to have an understanding of how the two methods function.
The assumption method came first and works like this. Suppose, many thousands of years ago, a Stone-Age tribe migrated to a new region, and suppose the men went on a hunting trip to find food. They have never before seen a coconut. When they find some, they crack them open and find food and drink inside. They have never before seen a tiger. Suddenly, a huge tiger stalks out from the bushes a few yards away. This particular tiger, it so happens, is very old and on its last legs, suffering from bad teeth and aching bones. Seeing the hunters, the tiger decides it is in no position to attack and it turns and flees. Returning to their cave later, the hunters tell the tribe of their discoveries. “There is a large nut in some trees and there is good eating and drinking in it, if you can break it open. There is a new animal with stripes, quite big, but completely harmless. As soon as it sees one of us it turns and flees in terror. There is no need to worry about it and you can safely ignore it if you meet one.”
So, the assumption method can sometimes provide accurate information, providing the particular assumption is correct, but it can also provide entirely incorrect information if the assumption is mistaken; all assumptions are unsafe to be taken for fact unless they are subsequently confirmed by repeated factual examples that can be readily demonstrated to everyone. This brings us to the second method.
The scientific method works like this. The ascertaining of correct information is broken down into five stages.
First, observation – some phenomenon must be noticed (coconuts and tigers).
Second, disciplined and unbiased reporting – descriptions of the phenomenon must be accurate, valid and reliable, and equally so wherever else the same phenomenon may be observed: no phenomenon can be accepted as universally correct and applicable from just a single occurrence (an accurate description of one harmless tiger does not mean that all tigers are harmless). Something that has only occurred once to the best of our knowledge (such as the Big Bang, for instance, a single occurrence which is believed by physicists to have started our universe) is merely an indicator of a phenomenon worthy of further equally meticulous study by the same scientific methods.
Third, prediction (or repetition) - a valid, accurate and reliable observation must be capable of producing verifiable predictions (“The second tiger you meet will also be completely harmless” is not a valid prediction!). A prediction can also involve past observations as well as current ones. (“Remember last year, we found Uncle Zog half eaten and clutching a piece of stripy fur? Perhaps this indicates our tiger results may need more work.”)
Fourth, experimental testing under controlled conditions, whether in the laboratory or in the field, where non-representative factors may be identified and eliminated. (“Let’s capture a few tigers in a cage and watch their behaviour for a time in order to see if they really are all harmless – Oh look, one of them has no teeth!”)
Fifth, impassionate discrimination – the ability not to cling to a favoured but disproved idea just because you happen to like it. (“Whatever you say, tigers are cuddly and I shall continue to tell people to go out and cuddle them.”)
Information provided through the scientific method tends to be accurate and reliable, even if subject to continual revision in respect of fresh discoveries, and this kind of information is called “fact-based knowledge”. Information provided by the assumption method tends to be inaccurate and unreliable, even if occasionally seeming to be correct by mere chance, and this kind of information is called “superstition”, from the Latin prefix: sup (“above”, “close to”, “near”) + status (“state”, “condition”, “factual state”) forming superstition and superstitionem (“standing near a thing”, “near to a factual state”, “not exactly a factual state”); therefore taking the meaning: “not exactly the real factual condition”, or propinquus tamen haud nicotianus (“close, but no cigar”).
The scientific method is the basis by which, with patience, the universe can be slowly but surely explained and understood properly: the assumption or superstitious method is the basis of how we construct a make-believe or counterfeit mental universe bearing little or no connection to reality.
In The Beginning…
According to the findings of the scientific method, human beings evolved from animals. Nevertheless, there is certainly a difference between humans and other animals, and this difference concerns that remarkable biological organ, the brain.
It is not that humans have bigger brains (the blue whale has a larger one) but they have evolved a better-organised brain and are thus able to think, particularly to reason (constructive thinking). However, this ability to reason started to develop some millions of years before the ability to analytically investigate scientific principles (systematic understanding).
The early human species Homo erectus (c. 2,000,000 BC to 150,000 BC), formerly less accurately known as Pithecanthropus erectus or the "Java Ape-Man", could undoubtedly reason out that touching fire would burn his hand, and there is evidence from his fossil remains found at Choukoutien (Zhoukoudian) in China and elsewhere that he could use fire, but the analytical understanding of the chemistry and physics of the combustion process did not even begin until after 1500 AD.
There is therefore a lengthy period during the evolution of the human mind, lasting from before two million years ago until - let us arbitrarily say - the time of the ancient Greek mathematicians (and in other cases to the present day), during which humans possessed the ability to reason constructively, but without a foundation of analytical examination (scientific method) to base their thinking upon. Nature abhors a vacuum, even one between the ears, and something was required to fill this gap - some assumption that could provide the psychological comfort of explanations for the way things were observed to be, in the absence of any tradition of analytical reality. Thus religion was born.
Religion began with superstition. We can hypothetically picture some early hominid, such as Australopithecus (the kind of early human on which the man-apes in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey were based) rising from his nest in the bracken early one morning, scratching, yawning, and heading down the path to the river for a drink. On the way, a branch accidentally whips back and strikes him sharply on the head. Thereafter, he regards this as an "unlucky" path (the assumption method), and avoids it in favour of another, even though the other path might be longer. He might also assume that the tree, or the forest itself, was "angry" with him, or at least generally hostile. Perhaps if he left a gift at the spot, a banana or piece of interestingly-shaped stone, a peace offering of some kind, the tree-spirit or forest-spirit might look more kindly upon him, even recognise him as a friend, and not whack his head with a springy branch again please.
This, of course, is fiction, but it is a reasonable fiction. Something not entirely unlike this must have happened in the remote past of our human species, and happened a great many times in various different ways. (Have you never cursed a hammer when it hit your fingers, or grown angry with your car when it refused to start, or raged against fate when events appear to conspire against you?)
This, and many other incidents something like this, is how religion was born. As time passed, the superstitions grew more complex. Leap forward in time a couple of million years or so from Australopithecus and we arrive at the caverns of Stone-Age hunters. Here, a ritual dance is taking place in which a chanting shaman dressed in a buffalo skin ceremonially leads the tribe in a pre-enactment of tomorrow's buffalo hunt, because everyone assumes this will ensure the depicted event will thus be made to happen and tomorrow's hunt will have a successful outcome. To assist in generating the appropriate atmosphere of sympathetic magic, people with an artistic gift have begun a tradition of painting beautiful pictures of the various animals and hunters on the walls and roofs of the caves.
Leap forward in time another twenty thousand years or thereabouts. The descendents of these beliefs are no longer being observed in caves but in specially constructed buildings; the shaman in his buffalo skin and horned headdress has evolved into the priest in his robe and sanctified hat, and the brush of the cave-painter has been taken up by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. The tribal chanting has been orchestrated into hymns and liturgies. The superstition of an "unlucky path" or the hopeful enactment of a successful hunt has become magnified into the overriding assumption that Religion should now be able to explain Everything, contain Everything and be responsible for Everything.
Shrewd shaman, priests, kings, emperors and chieftains long ago began to realise that religion was a very powerful tool for controlling the population. No system of social order can survive for long if its religion and its political administration are opposed, or even significantly different in outlook. As a result of this realisation, in most regions of the world the state was merged with the dominant religion in the land, and the dominant religion in the land was merged with the state. Thereby, the state grew sanctimonious and the religion grew a bureaucracy.
Superstitious adherence to religious mythology has, in some quarters at least, slowed acceptance of the fact that there have been many different species of human, not just our own. In fact, there are probably different human species alive in our world today. At this time of writing, it is being increasingly realised throughout the scientific community that our closest living relative the chimpanzee, whose evolutionary line branched away from that which ultimately developed into modern humans approximately seven million years ago and who shares all but between 1.2 to 4 per cent of our three billion base units of human DNA, is actually a primitive species of human and belongs within the human genus and not in the separate animal genus Pan.
There is a movement afoot to reclassify the species now referred to as Pan troglodites (the chimpanzee) and Pan paniscus (the gracile or pygmy chimpanzee, or bonobo) as Homo troglodites and Homo paniscus respectively, thereby scientifically acknowledging them both as members of the human genus.
Naturally, there is resistance to this idea, particularly from those who cannot accept as mere mythology the "creation" tale in the Bible (which we will examine in detail later in this book). Since the time of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, there have been many people who consider it offensive to suggest we are related to the apes: if we inspect the history of our kind, it is surely the apes who have the greater reason to feel offended.
…the World Created God
Archaeologists have divided the history of the human race into various convenient periods, and the first period when metal was used is usually referred to as the Bronze Age. Apart from its importance to industrial development and trade, the Bronze Age is also particularly important in any study of human religious and social history. Of course, the knowledge of smelting ores to obtain metal did not spring into people's minds overnight, and the starting date of the Bronze Age was blurred over many centuries, taking place at different times in different parts of the world. It was a gradual prehistoric spread of technology, and began with the production of copper implements in a brief “Copper Age” a century or two before the discovery of bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin and a much harder material than copper alone.
The term "Bronze Age" is therefore actually rather ambiguous. For instance, in Australia it could be said to have occurred as recently as the eighteenth century, when the first European free settlers (as opposed to transported convicts) began to arrive, since the native Australians lived in the Stone Age until the arrival of Europeans, which plunged the natives straight into the Iron Age without ever experiencing an actual “Bronze Age”.
However, the most usual definition of "Bronze Age" is that of Mesopotamia and parts of Europe and its onset typically taken to refer to the approximate period 3,500-2,000 BC. The earliest known bronzes come in the beginning of that period from what is now Iran and Iraq, apart from a suggestion from finds in Thailand of bronze being manufactured there before 4,000 BC. The Bronze Age ended with the arrival of the Iron Age, which has equally indistinct boundaries, beginning around 1,200 BC in India, West Africa, the Near East and Greece, during the 8th century BC in Central Europe and the 6th century BC in Northern Europe.
In the period before the Bronze Age, the Stone Age (which is further sub-divided into the Old Stone Age or Palaeolithic and the New Stone Age or Neolithic), humankind lived by hunting and gathering and, in its final epochs, also by farming. Farming had its earliest beginnings in the “Fertile Crescent” of the Middle East a few thousand years after the end of the last Ice Age about 14,700 to 13,500 years ago (the north-west European Weichselian and Alpine Würm glaciations) and the knowledge and use of agriculture spread slowly into Europe over the next few thousand years.
The earliest recognised Neolithic farming culture is that of the Natufians in what is now the Palestine region who, around 10,500 years ago, made the quantum leap of taking wild cereals searched for by their immediate forebears and sowing them deliberately in prepared areas of ground. This innovation was probably driven by the sudden onset of the Younger Dryas, a climate change or stadial when temperatures dropped back toward glacial conditions for a time following the last Ice Age proper.
During the Younger Dryas (sometimes called the “Big Freeze”), there was a short but potent relapse of the climate toward Ice Age conditions which in America seems to be associated with the extinction of the megafauna – the mammoth, for example, and many other species – and the termination of the Clovis Culture or Paleo-Indians, while in the Old World the mammoth also declined and died out (many being quickly frozen alive, it seems) and the Middle East was afflicted with drought, against which the systematic nurturing of crops became a survival mechanism.
During the Stone Age, the gods and goddesses of the human race were nature deities, spirits of the forest and tundra, of the wild herds and hunt, of the mountains, sky and waters, of the dark night that was feared and of the daylight that relieved it. When farming arrived, the gods were extended into this new domain and became deities of the crops, the rain and sun, the domestic herds and pastures, the fruits of the harvest and the poignancy of the seasons.
In his monumental work on human comparative mythology and religion The Golden Bough (1890), Sir James George Frazer, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Liverpool, showed convincingly that forest and hunting gods were worshipped before the evolution of agriculture. The sudden climate change of the Younger Dryas was therefore in all likelihood also responsible for driving a restructuring of humankind’s general religious conceptions, although a vastly more radical realignment of mythological beliefs would begin after another several thousand years of the developing Neolithic culture had passed.
It was the discovery of metal that tilted the spiritual balance of humankind in an entirely new direction, first with copper and bronze, then progressing to iron and steel. As the Bronze Age advanced across the Middle East and Europe, it brought in its wake a turbulence of social and cultural change and reorientation every bit as dramatic as that brought about by the Industrial Revolution in far more recent historical times. The centre of this storm of change was the metal blade.
It may at first be difficult for the modern reader to fully appreciate the immense significance of the development of the metal weapon in a world where the stone tool had hitherto predominated. It might, perhaps, be approximately suggested by comparing it in kind to the tilting of the balance of local power in such places as Africa and North America when superior weapons were introduced, for instance when the native tribes managed to obtain firearms to use against the European settlers instead of arrows and spears, lethal though these could be. As the modern military is well aware, even a slight lead in technology is significant in warfare and also in political intimidation (often still referred to as “sabre-rattling”), and around 3,000 BC a band of warriors armed with metal weapons would have a distinct advantage amongst tribes equipped with stone-bladed implements. The new metal weapons also gave great cultural and social prestige to their owners, as can be assessed by their prominent placement as grave-goods alongside gold items in Bronze Age burials.
Like gold, silver or uranium, the new metal was not available to all regardless; its manufacture was dependant on a certain amount of organisation and in most places also on trade. Tin, that humblest of metals and an essential ingredient of bronze, was found in only a few localities, such as Cornwall in England and in the Isles of Scilly, which may be the “Tin Isles” (Cassiterides) mentioned by the Greek explorer Herodotus writing c.445 BC. It is believed that both the Phoenicians and Mycenaeans sent expeditions to the south west of England to bargain for tin ore, exchanging commodities such as faïence, a blue glazed type of pottery originating in the Mediterranean region and in Egypt, samples of which have been found in British burial mounds of the period.
Classical authors such as Diodorus Siculus writing in the 8th century BC give detailed descriptions of the tin trade, and Sir Edward Creasey (1812-1878), Professor of History at London University, even writes flamboyantly in his delightfully jingoistic book History of England that British mines “…mainly supplied the glorious adornment of Solomon’s Temple.” This is a somewhat bold assertion, but it is not impossible that the bronze used in the temple was made at least in part with tin brought originally from Britain by Phoenician trading ships.
Those who had the use of bronze and the prestige of ownership of bronze weapons quickly came to dominate and rule the populations they lived amongst. There swiftly arose a new type of prevailing social class within communities at this time, sometimes called the warrior aristocracy by historians. One of the other great innovations of humankind also had its genesis in this period, and perhaps not entirely by coincidence, for this is when various civilisations began to devise forms of record-keeping for transactions, civil laws, myths and the glory-tales of their warrior-kings. The bronze sword, axe and spearhead carved out new kingdoms and empires for the warrior aristocrats, the cuneiform tablet and hieroglyphic inscription imposed the law of the conqueror upon the conquered and enabled methodical control to infiltrate into all branches of human life and activity. Writing, too, was born in the Bronze Age.
Thanks to the innovation of writing, we actually have surviving first-hand records of some of the major cultural upheavals and pogroms that were the result of the restructuring of Neolithic society by the nascent Metal Age warrior caste and its many bloody-handed dictators and heroes. From such sources as the temple friezes and stellae of Egypt, the clay tablets of Nineveh and Babylon, the Vedas and Upanishads of India and the Hebraic scrolls that formed the basis of the Old Testament of the Bible, we can read of an almost endless succession of violence, butchery, battles, victimizations, wars of conquest, disputes over territories, attempted ethnic cleansings, heroic warlords, brave warriors, invasions and so on ad nauseum. Naturally, the tribe or culture of the person who wrote the particular record was invariably in the right: the villains were always “the others”. It is a true saying that "history is written by the victor" (or at least, by the survivor).
In the first major region to methodically develop bronze and therefore the first to experience this period of cultural upheaval, the Middle East, resident local tribes, already beginning to be pressurised by a gradual but continual increase in human population which is still with us today, learned rapidly through bitter experience that they needed to defend themselves and their lands and newfound wealth from the aggression of their neighbours and from the depredations of migrating tribes from other regions desiring to improve their own situation. This type of threat had probably also existed during the Stone Age, but on an extremely localised and minor level, not to any large-scale or militarily organised extent, and the conflicts became bloodier, better organised, more large-scale and more effective when the protagonists gained a metallurgical technology, rudimentary though it may appear by our present-day standards, and an accompanying more intricately organised, controlled and structured society.
In this general Old Testament geographical region, as a result of what archaeologist G. Ernest Wright (1909-1974) in his book Biblical Archaeology (Westminster Press, Philadelphia 1957) calls “…a sudden burst of prosperity” beginning at around 3250 BC in the Early Bronze Age, numbers of settlements began for the first time to protect themselves by constructing spectacular defensive walls, such as Jericho, Megiddo, Lagash, Ur, Kish, Erech and Ai – the world’s first true cities, which were almost continually at war with each other. Trade and wealth, and loot, quickly increased at this time and in Mesopotamia and Egypt the Dynastic periods began and, quite suddenly, the first great empires were appearing in the world.
In his book, Wright mentions that as a result of this Bronze Age “Industrial Revolution”, for the first time in world history “…great personalities who stood head and shoulders above their fellow men begin to emerge.” Also for the first time, the concept evolved of the single all-powerful king or emperor, whose word was law, whose whim held the power of life and death over lesser mortals and whose authority caused the sun to rise each day and the rivers, such as the Nile, to flood and bless the land with harvests. As exemplified by the Pharaohs of Egypt, such absolute dictators were often considered by their followers to be gods in their own right.
Consequently, beginning in that part of the world and expanding slowly outward as the use of metal spread like ripples from a stone thrown in a pool, the concept was evolved of a strong male warrior tribal god who would mirror the fighting fury, blood lust, success, revenge, punishment, good-fortune, universal regulation and supreme authority required by the human social order which pieced him together, the continual compulsive propitiation of which would, it was superstitiously believed, ensure the tribe or nation faced no unfortunate defeats or disasters, that the sun rose each day and that the order of the universe was maintained. The concept of such brutal male warrior-deities also served the purposes of the priests and leaders, who were able to employ superstitious dread to exercise even further dominance and tyranny over their peoples and exhort them to commit even greater atrocities in support of their realms and the will of their rulers.
“Darkness Visible.”
Gradually, by a process of bloody conflict and elimination which has in recent years become popularly known as “last man standing”, the many various localised tribal deities coalesced into a central dominant image of an ultimate, single and tyrannical god – the “last god standing”, in fact. The now largely forgotten original monstrous and savage character of this newly fabricated Bronze Age warrior god can, even today, be clearly glimpsed through many later veils of carefully orchestrated public relations propaganda designed to improve – or at least justify - his primal image.
Records surviving from this early period of highly superstitious inter-tribal warfare reveal the true nature of the newly emerging male warrior godhead and its blood-lust for animal and human sacrifice, such as “The Lord is a man of war” (Exodus 15:3). According to Leviticus (4:20-35; 5:10-18; 6:7; 17:11) and Numbers (15:27-28; 29:5) “sin” needed to be washed away with blood: “When a ruler hath sinned… and is guilty… he shall bring his offering, a kid of the goats… and kill it in the place where they kill the burnt offering before the Lord; it is a sin offering.” According to Genesis (4:4; 8:20-21; 15:9-10), Exodus (20:24; 29:11-37), Leviticus (1:5; 23:12-18), Numbers (18:17-19) and Deuteronomy (12:27) this god demands animal sacrifices. The instructions are specific, if not in agreement. According to Numbers (28:11) the pagan-based New Moon Sacrifice should consist of two young bullocks, one ram and seven lambs: according to Ezekiel (46:6) it should be one bullock, one ram and six lambs. Even as comparatively recently as around 30-70 AD, animals were sold for sacrifice within the temple at Jerusalem (see Luke 19:45 and particularly Mark 11:15-19.) Discussing the passage in Mark, which famously describes Jesus driving the traders out of the temple, Arthur S. Peake (1865-1929) in A Commentary on the Bible (Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd. 1919) explains that there was a: “…market set up in the outermost court, the court of the Gentiles, for the convenience of Jews who had to purchase sacrificial victims…”
The same bloodthirsty sky-monster who, in a good mood, is supposed to have instructed “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13) could change his mind quite perversely to command: “…Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour… and there fell on that day about three thousand men…” (Exodus 32:27).
Later on, this same god commits even greater atrocities by causing the murder of seventy thousand people of his own followers (I Chronicles 21:14) and ordering the cold-blooded murder of all the men, women and children of sixty cities, and the looting of all their valuables, simply so that the Israelites can live there instead (Deuteronomy 3). These are, unarguably, what today would be branded war crimes and ethnic cleansing.
Elsewhere, the inspiration of this dreadful new Bronze Age deity brings about the slaughter of “…all the living creatures of the city. Men and woman, young and old, as well as oxen, sheep and ass, with the edge of the sword” (Joshua 6:21). Again, he orders his worshippers (Judges 21:10-24) “…Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children… ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man.” All virgin girls, though, were saved from this massacre to be forcibly married and violated on the order of God. However, even four hundred of these captured virgins were insufficient to satisfy the lust of the god-worshippers, so Jehovah instructed his brave warriors to hide themselves in vineyards and pounce upon girls they desired, abducting them for rape and forced marriage. The biblical god even accepted human sacrifice, for instance in the case of the daughter of Jephthah (Judges 11:29-40) and the priests of “foreign gods” whose very bones were to be burned on their own altars after they had been slain in Josiah’s time (I Kings 13:2)
There can be little doubt that the rise of the warrior caste, the "new aristocracy" brought to power by the technology of metallurgy, was a major instrument in the development of the particular persona of this newly evolving Middle Eastern tribal god. In fact, viewed dispassionately, it is a certainty that man created God in his own image. And there is no doubt at all - for it is recorded in many different sources from the archaeological record to the Bible itself - that it was this same warrior aristocracy and its minions and sycophants who, by their ruthlessness, established the new exclusively male god securely upon his heavenly throne.
Once the new concept of a single almighty male god had firmly taken root, many massacres were inflicted upon any groups of people or individuals who refused to accept the notion, or who accepted it in a different way, and the Old Testament contains tiresome details of bloodletting after bloodletting, battle after battle and murder after murder in the cycle of religious reform from pantheism to monotheism; a war of spiritual attrition which continues to raise its hideous and bloody head in one form or another even to the present day.
Swept into power on a tidal wave of bloodshed and warfare and eventually given a Semitic name that later became mispronounced by westerners as Jehovah, his advocates claiming for him the titles of God and Almighty, this particular tribal juju was stern, cruel, bloodthirsty, defined as jealous, fearful and terrifying even by his own writers; a god who could, his publicists assured the commoners, destroy entire cities in a fit of pique if they offended him by being too liberal in their attitudes and behaviour; a right-wing god; in fact, a spiritual dictator who eventually clocked-up more misery and death than would Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot combined. This was not perceived as a local deity of fertility and the crops; this was the savage, control-freak death-god of the warrior-society, of the organised and powerful priesthood and of the rigid unyielding law of the autocratic and suppressive cane-wielding headmaster’s commandment "Thou shalt not..."
And inevitably, as always happens with every right-wing dictatorship, a large intrinsic section of the population, through nothing more than an accident of birth, was branded as less than human, as inherently dangerous and destabilising to the regime, and these people were denied the same rights, disenfranchised, subjected to mass extermination and made subservient to the "Superior Masters". We are all too familiar with this turn of events from the period of Germany under the Nazis when such vilification was inflicted upon European Jewish people: from the Bronze Age to the present, the victims of the male deity of the male warrior religion have been women.
2. The Sacred Subjugation of Women
"Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great
social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval."
Karl Marx
“Woman… A female attendant or servant… a paramour or kept mistress… (Pop) a wife.” (Part of a definition in Funk & Wagnalls New Practical Standard Dictionary, 1952.)
With the rise of the kings of metal who ruled by the force of the sword and the organised armies that gathered to them, human society in general underwent major changes. As can be seen in the surviving records of this early period – the Egyptian hieroglyphics being just one example – all those qualities associated with rampant maleness became valued above all else; strength of limb, aggression, skill with weapons, fearlessness and rage in battle, contempt for the weak and meek, admiration for the strong and ruthless, jealousy of those mightier than oneself, and an overbearing assumption of the superiority of the male within society and culture. There were occasional exceptions, such as in the case of the semi-mythical warrior-women the Amazons, but nearly always the exceptions were written about by male authors and were condescendingly portrayed as outrageous cultural aberrations offensive to what had now become the normal precondition of society.
In a male dominated hierarchy ruling a male warrior culture in which all aggressive and brutal male qualities were made virtuous, it became vital that the next generation of males, the sons, had an undisputed authority and unchallengeable right of succession to receive and perpetuate the line of kingship or the wealth and power of the established commoner. For this lineage of exclusive male gender-dominance to become incorporated into the psychological blueprint of human affairs as one of the foundations of social structure, it was necessary for the direct line between father and inheriting son to be maintained beyond any reasonable doubt. The status of a mother became largely immaterial, providing her pedigree was acceptable for the production of suitable human livestock: a male ruler could, and did, have as many wives in his seraglio as he wished: the idea was at least extremely rare and generally socially disgraceful that women could have their own harem of multiple husbands. Even to this day in Britain, despite the advent of laws promoting sexual equality, the background notion of superiority of male over female is maintained at the very highest levels; male monarchy is inherently more powerful than female - a man who weds a ruling queen does not become a king, but a woman who weds a ruling king becomes a queen.
If there was any doubt that the male line from father to son was unbroken, that an heir was the true child of the father, that the jealously guarded male right to the pedigree of succession and inheritance had been flawlessly upheld, or any suspicion that a mother had strayed from the designated marriage compound, then the male offspring would be viewed as contaminated by female wilfulness. Then the pillars of warrior society would be undermined. Then the throne could topple, the security of the state would be jeopardised, the inheritance could be lost, the hoarded power could be dissipated, the male warrior god would be compromised and angered, and divine retribution would descend on the entire population. To avoid such apocalyptic consequences, any male offspring resulting from proven female disobedience would usually find themselves demoted and disinherited, and the contaminated woman would be executed. After the early Bronze Age, mythological fables highlighting the dreadful religious consequences of allowing women to have their way and give ideas to men became incorporated into the newly-emerging male-god beliefs.
To safeguard against such occurrences, the warrior society essentially enslaved womanhood and reduced sex to a prerogative of male demand and something shameful and submissive for women. In all lands over which the spectre of an absolute male god now began to hover, women were made the subject of stringent male laws to ensure that no impregnation was permitted to occur other than that caused by the woman's legal owner (in the same manner that the owner of a pedigree female dog wishes to ensure it does not breed with a mongrel). Females who transgressed were executed (the stoning to death or beheading of women accused of having sex with a man other than their husband continues in some regions to this day). Woman became the property of man, encouraged by - demanded by - the new religious beliefs and creatively supporting writings of the warrior caste.
In more recent historical times, one example of this social downgrading of women for the reason of producing a male heir to an identified and undisputed father was the Salique Law. To quote from Shakespeare's "Henry V", when King Henry asks the Archbishop of Canterbury to explain this law (which might present a legal barrier to Henry's claim to the French throne), the Archbishop refers to it as "...a female bar." He goes on to explain its origin: "No woman shall succeed in Salique land... where Charles the great, having subdued the Saxons, there left behind and settled certain French; who, holding in distain the German women, for some dishonest manners of their life, established then this law - to wit, no female should be inheretrix in Salique land..."
In other words, the German women of Charles the Great's time were behaving in a free manner, enjoying sex with whomever they fancied just for the fun of it, in an open and honest natural way. This female freedom, of course, could not be tolerated in a male dominated society where women, like cattle, must be prevented from straying, and it was swiftly legislated against and then eliminated. Under the ethos of the male god, women must be kept strictly subjugated to the will of the “superior man”, who was, of course, obviously superior because he was made in the actual image of the god and woman was not – a propagandist social control mechanism of the male god’s human fabricators and copywriters which succeeded in robbing womanhood of its otherwise incontestable item of natural superiority over man within any society - the ability to give birth. In a total perversion of the laws of nature, it was proposed instead that the first man had given birth to the first woman, and this strange but necessary belief was included in the religious requirements of the warrior society in order to make it appear indisputably true.
The widespread historical discrimination against women, which has still not disappeared from our world, is very largely the lingering result of the rise of the male-supremacist religions that acknowledge only an exclusive single male god first invented in the Bronze Age. It was the prevailing conviction throughout all countries holding these beliefs that the only genuine god was male - not merely male in some vague nebulous spiritual sense but literally a man-god, for he had created mortal men in his own image and therefore must be identical to them in appearance - and woman had been created, as it were, at second-hand from a man's rib, and women were thus obviously inferior, an afterthought of creation.
It should particularly be remembered that it was only comparatively recently that women in the West were even allowed to vote in supposedly "democratic" elections. It was not until 1848 that women began to unite successfully against this legacy of socio-religious male dominance. This train of events had begun in 1840 when two members of the Society of Friends (more commonly known as "Quakers"), Elizabeth Cady Stanton of New York State and Lucretia Mott, visited London as official delegates to the World Anti-Slavery Convention. They were both astonished and outraged when, in common with all British women present, they were refused permission to address the convention, or even to be seated at it, simply because they were women. Stanton later wrote: "We resolved to... form a society to advocate the rights of women." In 1848, Stanton and Mott organised the first Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls in New York State.
In a paper, Elizabeth Stanton itemised eighteen grievances (the same number listed just seventy years earlier by the revolutionaries in the Declaration of Independence from the rule of England, although of course the nature of the grievances were somewhat different). The introduction to this paper also paraphrased the introduction to that earlier Declaration, commencing: “When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different to that which they have previously occupied… We hold these truths to be self-evident… among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” Following this introduction, Mrs. Stanton prefaced her paper by stating: "The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world."
She then listed her 18 specific injustices as:
1. He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
2. He has compelled her to submit to law in the formation of which she had no voice.
3. He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men, both natives and foreigners.
4. Having deprived her of this first right as a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
5. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
6. He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
7. He has made her morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, providing they be done in the presence of her husband.
8. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master: the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty and to administer chastisement.
9. He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes and, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless to the happiness of the women: the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man and giving all power into his hands.
10. After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
11. He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.
12. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honourable to himself.
13. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
14. He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.
15. He allows her in church, as well as state, but a subordinate position, claiming apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the church.
16. He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude woman from society are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.
17. He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.
18.He has endeavoured, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
Although this list, which amounted to an embryonic manifesto for a new political movement towards eventual female equality, was drawn up as recently as 1848, the grievances it itemised (as hinted at in the wording of the declaration) were the lingering religiously-bolstered legacy of the Bronze Age social revolution from a mixed-sex pantheism to a patriarchal godhead. Very slowly, prompted initially by Elizabeth Stanton and her supporters and then by the spreading of the message of equal rights for women by later activists, changes were made within the very structure of westernised society, the process of necessary change being not yet fully complete worldwide. It was not welcomed by all even when Elizabeth Stanton first proposed it: at a meeting in Philadelphia in 1854, a male objector in the audience shouted: "Let women first prove they have souls; both the Church and the State deny it!" In point of fact, this was not entirely incorrect, as we shall soon see.
The first ever woman's suffrage (the right to vote) was actually a legal mistake made in New Jersey in 1776, where in the state legislature the word "people" was inadvertently used instead of "men", but the law was altered in 1807 to exclude women.. In 1838 the tiny British colony of the Pitcairn Islands, home of the Bounty mutineers and their descendents, permitted women to vote, but this was largely because there were only ever a tiny handful of people living there: it was the single exception in the British Empire. It was not until 1869 that the Wyoming Territory in the United States became the first sizeable modern state where equal suffrage was granted to women. A women's rights movement led by Kate Sheppard pressured the New Zealand administration to become the first country in the world to introduce universal suffrage in 1893. The following year, South Australia followed suite, also granting women the right to stand for public office including membership of parliament. Finland followed in 1906, then Norway, Denmark and the rest of Australia before the First World War began in 1914.
Pressurised by the suffragette movement and prompted by the necessity of employing women in previously male-only jobs during the Great War, both Britain and Germany permitted women to have the vote in 1918. In January of that year, the Representation of the People Act in Parliament gave the vote to all British men over the age of 21; women were still considered a less advanced component of society though, and only those who owned their own houses or were married to householders were deemed responsible enough to vote at 21, others having to wait until they reached 30. It was not until 1928 that the voting age for British women was lowered to be equal to that of men.
America, the "Land of the Free", finally followed suit on 26th August 1920 when the Secretary of State certified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, extending the right to vote to all (in effect, white) women. (It was only in 1965, four years before men first landed on the Moon, that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act which made it supposedly illegal in the USA to prevent black Americans from voting). Before this, following the lead of Wyoming, individual state legislature had permitted women to vote in an increasing number of regions, such as Colorado in 1893, Washington State in 1910, California in 1911, Montana in 1914 and so on, but it was not until the thirty-sixth and last state, Tennessee, signed for ratification that the 19th Amendment could be authorised. France and Japan did not allow women to vote until 1945, Switzerland until 1971 and Liechtenstein until 1984. Certain countries still do not permit women to vote, including Saudi Arabia where – although under pressure to reform its political system which is based on a very rigid interpretation of Islamic Sharia law – at this time of writing women are also not permitted to drive or even to travel unaccompanied by male relatives.
In the present day, only a relative handful of states still hold women in thrall, usually on the basis of certain interpretations of the Koran or the Bible (such as in the case of the Vatican State). The first Arab women who were legally permitted to vote were actually living in Israel in 1948 when the country was being founded. The ideal of women's equal rights still faces monumental problems in the Islamic world, where, for example, classical Islamic scholars have ruled that it is prohibited for a woman to lead men in prayers, and within the similar world of Roman Catholicism, where women are strictly prohibited from entering the priesthood and achieving any clerical position, only being allowed to become nuns or serve as laypeople. Again, the male supremacist legacy of the patriarchal Bronze Age warrior god can be clearly discerned in the case of both these male-dominated religions. Viewed from the outside, in fact, Christianity, Islam and Judaism are the same thing - three alternative ways of proclaiming the same patriarchal Bronze-Age god.
Unfortunately, although much attention has been focused in the West from time to time upon the Islamic treatment of women, the religiously-inspired subjugation of women acquired its most unhealthy and vicious character in Christianity, the pivotal belief of which requires, in absolute terms, the denunciation of the female, not merely as subservient, a slave or as "property", but actually as something inherently evil, a fact that all too frequently escapes most modern Christians and is played-down in importance by the majority of Christian apologists and publicists. Ask any Christian to state in a few words the absolute central core of their belief system, and the reply is most likely to focus upon concepts such as "Christ", or "Jesus", or "salvation", or "redemption" or something along these lines. They are wrong. The theological bedrock upon which the Christian religion is predicated and constructed is not Christ, but rather, it is the reason why Christ was considered necessary on earth in the first place.
The most relevant question is; if Christ offers salvation or redemption, salvation or redemption from what? From sin, of course, will be the most usual reply. However, the "sin" with which, in Christian theology, everyone is supposed to be contaminated is not actually the normal petty stuff of daily life; these ordinary human sins can be, and are, pardonable through the agency of a mere priest, as in the regular confessional practiced by Roman Catholics. The "sin" which requires the "salvation" supposedly generated only by the advent of Christ is, specifically, original sin. If there had been no "original sin" afflicting all mankind, then - according to the tenets of Christian theology - it would not have been necessary for their god to have sent his son to earth to be sacrificed in order to save everyone from it, because if it had not been for this original sin, humanity would still be living in primal innocence within the Garden of Eden, in direct communion with the god, in a "state of grace", as this god was supposed to have originally planned.
Many branches of the modern Church now attempt to distance themselves from the original Christian core belief that women are a source of spiritual evil, as various divisions of Christianity now also attempt to distance themselves from other unpalatable aspects of their religion. For instance, some churches now sidestep the politically incorrect concept of a strictly male god by encouraging the belief that God is either without sex, or else encompasses both sexes. (How a neutered god can father a physical son has not yet been made clear: nor has it been clarified precisely how a god who is supposed to have "made man in his image" can be of both sexes without criticism, whilst trans-sexuals and homosexuals are still condemned as "evil" or "against the law of God" by many Christians.) Nevertheless, stripped down to the bare essentials, the following is a pocket statement of the primal Christian belief.
The Essential Christian Belief Summed Up
Because Eve, the first woman and mother of the human race, succumbed to the temptation of Satan in the guise of a serpent, all of Adam and Eve's descendents were born contaminated by this original sinful act. The serpent prompted Eve to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge, specifically forbidden by God, and after eating it, Eve tricked Adam into doing the same. Thereby they became aware of the difference between good and evil, became mortal, had sexual intercourse and lost their innocence. This meant that God's original intention that humans should remain in a state of unspoiled perfect grace with eternal life was subverted, and Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden, after which each successive generation of children was automatically born contaminated by this original sin and subsequently passed it on in turn to their own offspring.
God eventually took pity on humanity and decided they were worth offering the chance of salvation from this continually inherited cycle of original sin, together with the possibility of regaining the original eternal life spoiled by the fall from grace in Eden. To accomplish this, God sent the spirit of his only son - whose spiritual form or essence had always been part of God's threefold being, Father, Son and Holy Spirit - to manifest on earth as a human man, entering the world by being born as a baby to a mother who was a virgin and consequently becoming the first man since Adam to be born without inheriting original sin. This baby was named Jesus, and he grew up as a carpenter's son - attracting the attention of occasional wise men and elders on the way - until at the age of approximately thirty he began to preach on behalf of God and perform various miracles as evidence of the divine part of his nature. He also gathered a growing band of followers, the most suitable of whom were chosen by him to be his apostles.
Due to the inherited sin released by humankind's original fall from grace, the majority of the people of Jesus' time refused to acknowledge that he was the Messiah, or Saviour (from original sin), and he was eventually denounced by the Jews as a troublemaker, heretic and danger to the established hierarchy of their theocracy. Because Judea was under Roman occupation and Roman law, Jesus was handed over to the Roman authorities and given a Roman execution, crucifixion. However, because of his divine nature, Jesus rose from the dead three days later and was resurrected to his living form again, communing for a time with his apostles before voluntarily ascending in living form into heaven to rejoin his father, God.
After this, the apostles - except for Judas Iscariot who had betrayed Jesus and had died - accepted the responsibility of spreading the story of Jesus and the teachings of God that Jesus had instructed them in throughout as much of the world as was possible in those days. Although many of them and their deeds are mentioned in the Bible in the Acts of the Apostles and various epistles, because of his tremendous zeal, energy and divine inspiration, St. Paul became their natural leader or principle activist and spokesman. After many trials, he and his colleagues, especially Peter, founded what became the Christian Church in order to complete the apostle's designated mission and become a route offered by God through his sacrificed son to personal salvation from original sin.
Anybody who came to acknowledge Jesus as Christ the Saviour and Son of God, and accepted the Church as his apostolic representative on earth, would be saved from the contamination of original sin and therefore guaranteed a place in heaven after death, and an eventual resurrection of their own physical body in eternal life, in a "state of grace", after a forthcoming Day of Judgement. Those who do not acknowledge these things before they die, or have them acknowledged by a priest on their behalf - even if there is no choice, such as in the case of babies who die without baptism, or natives of other regions who have had no connection with Judeo/Christian ideas, or followers of entirely different religious beliefs - are still infected by Eve's original sin. Such sinners are instead consigned to Hell, the domain governed by Satan the original temptor of Eve, who is able to claim them as his own if they have not received salvation, and they will burn in torment for eternity.
In the case of unbaptised babies and certain others, this unfair sentence was later moderated by Christian theologians to have them sent instead to a place called "Limbo". "Limbo" (from Latin "limbus") literally means "hem" or "border" as in “borderland” (the Italian lembo and English limb come from the same root word). In Christian theology, the name is applied to two spiritual storage facilities or depositories on the borderland of Hell. One of these is for the souls of the biblical patriarchs such as Moses and Abraham etc. and of other good people who died before Christ ascended into heaven (i.e. they died BC, or in the few decades AD before the crucifixion and ascension). This is technically called the Limbus Patrum (i.e. "the Limbo of the Patriarchs"), from which advancement into the Kingdom of Heaven is eventually permitted. The other Limbo, the Limbus Infantium (or Puerorum), is defined in Christian theology as a permanent dumping place for the souls of unbaptised children. There is no escape or progression permissible from the Limbus Infantium, but at least it, too, is only on the border of Hell and not in the actual main infernal region, a notion that is apparently intended to be of some comfort to the bereaved.
How the Snake got its Hiss
The story of "Adam and Eve" and the Garden of Eden, as we shall see in the next chapter, is nothing more than a pure myth "borrowed" from the folktales of earlier cultures and peoples, and conflicts diametrically with the facts of science, history and evolution. The very basis of Christianity as distilled out of the Bible is erroneous, for nowhere in Genesis is the serpent of the Garden of Eden actually identified with "Satan" or "the Devil", who - as we will show later – is a fabricated mythological figure that did not even historically exist when Genesis was first set down. The identification of the serpent with Satan in Genesis is nothing but a later assumption. It is not until the opposite end of the Bible is reached - and in one of the most recent portions written about AD 95/96 - that the information "...the old serpent who is called the Devil and Satan" is included (Revelation 12:9).
Indeed, the serpent is very clearly and explicitly described in Genesis as nothing more than a representation of an actual snake: the sentence "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made..." (Genesis 3:1) clearly indicates the serpent was nothing more than a rather clever "beast of the field". The original Hebrew version in the Torah, on which the Bible's Book of Genesis is based, says the same thing in even more explicit wording, naming the serpent as nothing but a natural animal: "Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild beasts that the Lord God had made..." (Tanakh, Bereshit 3:1). In the myth, certainly, it is able to talk, but then so are the majority of mythological animals featured in any medicine-spirit tales from around the world.
In fact, the biblical account of God stating to the serpent: "...Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel..." (Genesis 3;14-15) is merely an example of a "This Is Why" story of a kind universally used within tribal mythology throughout the world in order to provide explanations of why things are the way they are - in this case, why people are frequently afraid of snakes.
Possibly the best modern example of such fabricated tales are Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories (first published 1902), in which, with his tongue in his cheek, Kipling, who was thoroughly familiar with primitive world mythology, explained in a series of immensely popular children's stories exactly how various things came to be the way they are today. (The technical term for a contrived tale that attempts to "explain" observed facts is ætiological.)
"...Then the Man threw his two boots and his little stone axe (that makes three) at the Cat, and the Cat ran out of the Cave and the Dog chased him up a tree; and from that day to this, Best Beloved, three proper Men out of five will always throw things at a Cat whenever they meet him, and all proper Dogs will chase him up a tree..." (The Cat that Walked by Himself). "...And from that day to this the Camel always wears a humph..." (How the Camel got his Hump). "...and from that day to this every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper, all on account of the cake-crumbs inside..." (How the Rhinoceros got his Skin). "...From that day to this the Moon has always pulled the sea up and down and made what we call the tides. Sometimes the Fisher of the Sea pulls a little too hard, and then we get spring tides; and sometimes he pulls a little too softly, and then we get what are called neap-tides..." (The Crab Who Played With The Sea). "...and ever since that day, O Best Beloved, all the Elephants you will ever see, besides all those that you won't, have trunks precisely like the trunk of the 'satiable Elephant's Child..." (The Elephant's Child).
If it had not already been included in the Bible, another "Just So" story might have been written: "...And that is why, from that day to this, all snakes have crawled in the dust and bitten unwary people in the heel..."
Welcome to Heaven (Women Not Admitted)
Later, we shall examine the origins of this complex biblical mythology, including the idea of an "Adam and Eve" being the first humans. However, the important point of this myth that underlies all the rest of the Bible and the religion of Christianity itself is that it was Eve, the woman, who committed the first and greatest sin, which thereby contaminated every successive human born. This particular anti-female theology resulted in Saul ("St. Paul") referring to women as "the weaker vessel" (1 Peter 3:7). St. Clement of Alexandria wrote in the second century: "Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman." The Church Father Tertullian wrote of women in general: "…And do you not know you are an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil 's gateway: you are the unsealer of that tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God 's image, man. On account of your desert -- that is, death -- even the Son of God had to die."
In the sixth century, the Christian philosopher Boethius wrote in his work The Consolation of Philosophy: "Woman is a temple built upon a sewer", and in the same century (585 AD) the church's Council of Macon in Burgundy voted on the issue of whether women even had souls or were actually human beings. (Fortunately for women, the council officially decided that they were human after all.) It was a popular belief for many centuries that the Latin word for "woman", femina, came from fe ("faith" [from facio/feci "religion"]) and minus "without". St. Odo of Cluny in the tenth century stated: "To embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of manure." In the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas made the suggestion that God had been mistaken in creating women altogether, saying: "...nothing deficient or defective should have been produced in the first establishment of things; so woman ought not to have been produced then." Even more recently, in 1647, a pamphlet published in Italian in Lyons, France, was entitled: Women do not have a soul and do not belong to the human race, as is shown by many passages of Holy Scripture.
In fact, the Eastern Orthodox Church did not recognise women as human beings until after Peter the Great (1672-1725) had come to the throne of Russia, and censuses carried out up to that time under that branch of Christianity counted only males as "souls".
After the Christian Reformation, Lutherans at Wittenberg - the place where Martin Luther had founded Protestantism - also held a debate on whether women should be considered human beings or not. In 1533 Martin Luther himself wrote: "Girls begin to talk and to stand on their feet sooner than boys because weeds always grow up more quickly than good crops." He made certain his opinion on women was absolutely clear by also writing: "If (women) become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth - that is why they are there." For a considerable time after the Reformation, women in England were not even allowed to read the Bible: Henry VIII (1491-1547), famous for beheading unwanted wives, issued a statute prohibiting "women and others of low degree" from using it.
The French Catholic priest and judge Nicholas Rémy (1534-1600) wrote: "(It is) not unreasonable that this scum of humanity, (i.e. witches) should be drawn chiefly from the feminine sex". Rémy was responsible for the burning alive of over nine hundred innocent people, mainly women, in the witch trials he presided over in the ten years from 1581 to 1591, and he was extremely proud of his record. In his book Demonolatriae Libri Tres (usually translated simply as "Demonolatry") published in Lyon in 1595, amongst other atrocities, he boasts of having children stripped and flogged around the pyre where their parents, accused of witchcraft, were being burned alive.
Under Church law, girls were allowed to be tortured and prosecuted for witchcraft from the age of nine and a half; for boys, the age was ten and a half. Younger children could be tortured to produce testimony that could be used to convict their parents, and even the testimony of two-year old children was accepted as evidence in witchcraft trials
It is recorded that the men who tortured women accused of witchcraft frequently became sexually aroused. Because Christianity considered sex to be the result of Eve’s fall from Grace and therefore wicked and ungodly, this arousal was declared to be a "spell" originating from the "witch". Amongst the favourite targets for torture were the breasts and genitals of the victim, which were torn off with red-hot pincers. In some instances, the Inquisition permitted men considered to be "zealous Catholics" to visit women accused of witchcraft in their prison to sexually abuse them: they were not raping them for their own lust, but in the name of God, which made it righteous. In Toulouse, France, the local populace became so certain that the regional inquisitor, Foulques de Saint-George, brought witchcraft accusations solely for the purpose of committing rape and sexual sadism upon various women he desired, that they took the bold step of independently gathering evidence which proved it.
The Sorrow of Sex and Birth
Genesis 3:16 has the biblical god speak to Eve after the temptation by the serpent: "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children..." It was due to this biblical passage that as recently as the nineteenth century some Christian priests opposed the use of anaesthetics during childbirth, claiming that it would amount to a disobedience of God's will by preventing the necessary suffering ordained in the Bible. Only after Queen Victoria herself had insisted on being given anaesthetics during delivery did the practise become more acceptable and more commonly employed.
As the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell put it: “One occasion for the logical intervention to prevent …human suffering was the discovery of anaesthetics. Simpson in 1847 recommended their use in child birth, and was immediately reminded by the clergy that God said to Eve 'In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children.'" The Christian point of view was summed up by a church minister in the USA: "Chloroform is a decoy of Satan, apparently offering itself to bless women; but in the end it will harden society and rob God of the deep earnest cries which arise, in time of trouble, for help." The City Fathers of Zurich (a town that was in previous centuries one of the greatest centres of witch-burnings) actually outlawed anaesthesia altogether for a time, on the grounds that "Pain is a natural and intended curse of the primal sin. Any attempt to do away with it must be wrong."
Women have frequently been regarded amongst Christians as an obstruction to faith, and the male warrior god of the Bronze Age is understood by many to demand a rejection of physical pleasure, especially sexual pleasure. Christianity has always condemned the enjoyment of sex, considering it nothing but a mechanism for producing offspring. "It is a good thing for a man to have nothing to do with a woman." (Corinthians 7:1). A Christian judge in the sixteenth century stated: "The Devil uses them so (i.e. as temptresses of men), because he knows that women love carnal pleasures, and he means to bind them to his allegiance by such agreeable provocations." The Dominican monks Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, writers of the infamous instruction book for witch hunters the Malleus Maleficarum (cf. chapter 9), stated: "... the female sex is more concerned with things of the flesh than men; because being formed from a man's rib, they are only imperfect animals and crooked, whereas man belongs to a privileged sex from whose midst Christ emerged."
As long ago as the thirteenth century, preachers are recorded as denouncing women for "...on the one hand, the lascivious and carnal provocation of their garments, and on the other hand for being over industrious, too occupied with children and housekeeping, too earthbound to give due thought to divine things." A Dominican monk of the same century stated: "Woman is the confusion of man, an insatiable beast, a continuous anxiety, an incessant warfare, a daily ruin, a house of tempest... a hindrance."
The tremendous Freudian fear of female sexuality inherent within the Christian religion led to the belief that "witches" could make men impotent through spells, or even worse, sometimes cut off and collect men's penises. The Malleus Maleficarum states as a fact that "witches" are known to "... collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest." The manual then records the story, again as fact, that a man whose penis had been "collected" in this manner asked a "witch" if she might restore it for him. "She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of a nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: you must not take that one; adding, because it belonged to a parish priest."
Another symptom of the Christian unease with the female sex, and also of their ancient alarm at the notion of anyone worshiping a goddess, was the growing suspicion amongst the various Christian authorities that their Virgin Mary was becoming an object of veneration in her own right. As a result of this growing sense of disquiet, and a knee-jerk reaction against a dawning suspicion that if Mary was accorded holy status as the "mother of God", Christianity was beginning to fashion its own pantheon of gods and goddesses in the pagan style, Protestants ruled that there should be no reverence for Mary and even Catholics reduced her importance to a considerable degree. Accordingly, devotion to Mary was often viewed as a sign of evil and actually became suggestive of witchcraft in the Christian mind.
There is a case recorded from the Canary Islands, colonised by Spain, that a woman named Aldonca de Vargas was reported to the Inquisition because she had smiled on hearing someone mention the Virgin Mary. Another result of this fear of Mary being worshipped in her own right was the devising of what became one of the most notorious instruments of torture of all time. The Inquisition designed a perverted human-size image of the Virgin Mary which would open up to reveal an interior of sharp spikes that would be closed upon the victim within. This became known as the "iron Virgin" or "iron maiden".
Christianity Confused by Women-Haters.
And yet, according to some parts of the Bible, it is perfectly permissible for women to be church leaders, to teach men finer points of religious interpretation, and to be apostles. "...and Priscilla... expounded to him the way of God more perfectly" (Acts 18:26). "...I commend unto you Phoebe our sister, which is a servant of the church... Greet Priscilla and Aquila... my helpers in Jesus Christ" (Romans 16:1-4). "...Junia... of note among the apostles" (Romans 16:7). (The Revised Standard Version of the Bible uses the Greco/Latin word for a servant “deacon” in the anglicised female declension “deaconess” to describe Phoebe's status in the passage in Romans.)
In the opposite corner of the boxing ring, however, we also have 1 Corinthians (14:34-35): "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church": and 1 Timothy (2:11-12): "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence."
The question must be asked: how can anyone possibly manage to equate the women apostles, teachers and helpers of the New Testament with the total denigration of women also required by the Bible? It is a fact that some translators of the Bible were so offended by the concept of a woman being specifically named as an apostle that the original name "Junia" mentioned in Romans 16 was often surreptitiously altered to "Junias" in the belief that this was a male version of the name. In fact, "Junias", although recorded extremely rarely in classical sources, can also be a female name, as confirmed, for example, by Plutarch (AD 50-120) who writes in his Life of Marcus Brutus that Junias was the name of Brutus' sister who became the wife of the regicide Cassius, which again places considerable weight on the argument that the apostle Junia or Junias was a woman.
The argument about the apostle Junia has raged for many centuries. Within the early Church, Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis and later of Aparneia (315-403) compiled an Index disciplulorum (Index of Disciples) in which he describes "...Iounias, of whom Paul makes mention...". Written in Greek, in chapter 125, verses 19-20, the text uses the word hou (a masculine relative pronoun) for "of whom", thereby indicating that Epiphanius considered Iounias (Junias) to be a man. However, John Chrysostom who lived at about the same time (347-407), in his preaching on the passage in Romans 16, referred to Junias by exclaiming: "Oh! How great is the devotion of this woman..." John Chrysostom is referred to in the Catholic Encyclopedia as "...generally considered the most prominent doctor of the Greek Church and the greatest preacher ever heard in a Christian pulpit." He is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, in the Roman Catholic Church, and in the Church of England. It would therefore be a particularly brave or rash Bible fanatic who would dare state that he was mistaken in his considered opinion that the apostle Junias (or Junia) was female.
This conflicting set of messages in the Bible, coupled with the inbuilt prejudice of the Church Fathers and their acolytes down the centuries against the idea that women are equally worthy to hold office at all levels in the Church, has until the later twentieth century resulted in the exclusion of women from the majority of proper Church offices. Quite simply, the female was viewed by biblical dogma and the societies it produced and moulded as something inferior to the male, something that should be kept very firmly in its subjugated place, and whose main purpose apart from continuing the species was the temptation of man into sin and his distraction from a properly religious asceticism, from the time of Adam onwards.
It should also be born in mind that the Church of England only gave normal permission for the ordination of women priests as recently as 1992, although Congregationalist Elsie Chamberlain was appointed in 1946 as the first female chaplain in the RAF, and the first woman to actually become an Anglican priest was Florence Li Tim-Oi, ordained to serve inside Japanese-occupied China in World War Two. Seven Roman Catholic women who were “unofficially” ordained as priests in 2002 were excommunicated for this “sin”, the severest punishment the Catholic Church can now inflict.
In July 2006 the General Synod of the Church of England finally agreed to the appointment of women bishops. When the first of these were ordained and blessed in Bristol Cathedral, the Rev. Malcolm Widdecombe, vicar of nearby St. Philip and Jacob church (brother of Ann Widdecombe MP and former shadow Home Secretary) sounded a dirge from his church bells in protest at the event. Susan Restall, vicar at St. Margaret’s in Yate near Bristol, has stated that some people have crossed the church to avoid receiving communion from her, saying: “Some of the nastiness has to be seen to be believed”. Jane Hayward, vicar of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol’s most important church apart from the cathedral itself, is quoted as stating: “Some priests have cut me dead. Once, one of them snatched the chalice out of my hand.”
As recently as July 2008 – as reported by the BBC – the ruling Synod of the Church of England has been challenged by some 1,300 clergymen who have threatened to leave the Church unless they are guaranteed being subject only to male bishops.
It is clear that in Christianity in general there remains a widespread entrenched belief that women are unfit to serve their deity in exactly the same capacity as men – a sexual prejudice ultimately originating in the millennia-old view that all woman are evil, the mind-set of this view itself descending from the arrival in the Bronze Age of the all-conquering male warrior Semitic tribal god whose atrocities and crimes against humanity are so meticulously detailed by the various authors and editors of the Bible.
We have so far included quite a few references to the Bible. It therefore becomes relevant for us to take a more detailed look at this religious instruction manual; to conduct an investigation into the particular writings that have been used for so many centuries as a bludgeon against female equality and spirituality, against rival religions, against proper understanding, freedom of thought and freedom of belief, against the findings of science, and as a control mechanism for vast portions of the world’s population – the Bible itself!
3. Eden and Edinu; Noah, Nuwa and Nu’u
"The Things That You're Li'ble
To Read In The Bible -
It Ain't Necessarily So!"
George & Ira Gershwin, song from "Porgie and Bess".
The Word of God (Subject to Revision, Addition and Approval)
The fact that the integrity of the Bible’s content is at the very least questionable is clearly highlighted by the fact that so many people and organisations even in modern times have decided that it is necessary to produce alternative versions of the “Word of God”, many coloured in some way or other to a greater or lesser degree in order to lend support to the idiosyncratic requirements, opinions or ideology of the particular translator or editor, whether an individual or a body. For instance, the list of Bibles currently available includes (but is not limited to) the following:-
The King James Bible: the New King James Bible: the Modern King James Bible (Green’s translation): Green’s Literal Translation Bible: the International Standard Bible: the New International Bible: the English Standard Bible: the New English Bible: the American Standard Bible: the New American Standard Bible: the Revised Standard Bible: the New Revised Standard Bible: the Contemporary English Bible: the Revised English Bible: the Today’s English Bible: the Living Bible: the New Century Bible: the New Life Bible: the New Living Translation Bible: Young’s Literal Translation Bible: the Revised Young’s Literal Translation Bible: John Darby’s New Translation Bible: the Weymouth New Testament Translation Bible: the Amplified Bible: the Good News Bible: the Message Bible: the Jewish Bible: the Jerusalem Bible: the New Jerusalem Bible: the Word On The Street Bible: Rotherham’s Bible: the Global Bible for Children: the Popular Children’s Hardback Bible: the International Children’s Bible: the Holy Bible Children’s Edition: the Adventure Bible: the Children’s Illustrated Bible: the Lion First Bible: the Beginner’s Bible: the Here’s Hope Holy Bible: the It’s All About Jesus Bible: the New Believer’s Bible: the One Year Bible Catholic Edition: the Holman Christian Standard Bible: the Message Numbered Edition Bible: the Dake Annotated Reference Bible: the Scofield Study Bible (versions I, II or III): the Thompson Chain-Reference Study Bible: the Ryrie Study Bible: the Life Application Study Bible: the Nelson Study Bible: the Life Application Study Bible Updated And Expanded (!): the Zondervan Study Bible: the Cambridge Compact Reference Bible: the Cameo reference Bible…
There are so many layers of translation now built-in to the Bible as it has become known that there is more than ample scope for the wording in a great many cases to be altered beyond all recognition and coherence compared to whatever particular original linguistic sense it may have been intended to express.
This linguistic unconformity is itself even further confused by unavoidable idiomatic and cultural differences. For a modern non-biblical example illustrating how the precise meanings of words selected by translators from a different time and cultural background may be construed as meaning something that was never a part of their original connotation, the title “sheriff”, in recent times more generally understood to denote a US lawman, is a modernisation of the Anglo-Saxon term scir-geréfa, which became shire-reeve, but this does not in any way imply that the medieval Nottingham official who pursued Robin Hood did so with six-guns blazing and wore a cowboy hat! Ridiculous as this interpreted image may seem to us, it may not be quite so clear to someone translating from English in one, two or three thousand years’ time, and more especially if the original English has by then already undergone preliminary translations through two or three other intermediate and culturally different ancient language modes.
Thou Shalt Not Suffer a
Witch/Poisoner/Herbalist/Midwife/Bible Translator
(delete whichever does not apply) to Live!
There is an actual biblical example of exactly this kind of historical evolution which changes the original meaning of an old Hebrew word by confusing it with issues connected to that word thousands of years later by people of another age and cultural background making an English translation. This is the short passage from Exodus 22:18 which now generally reads: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live", the result of a mistaken translation of part of the original texts from which the Bible was assembled. The blame for the mistake can probably be laid at the feet of St. Jerome who was the person who first produced a full Latin translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew, and the New Testament from Greek (the Vulgate Bible).
Latin is actually a simple, logical and - to us - perhaps a rather strange language. One of the simplicities that can cause the student some difficulty is that it regularly makes use of a single word to cover a large variety of meanings. This, of course, also happens in English, but not on such a wide scale.
Take as an example the English word "cool". If archaeologists of some far future epoch happened to unearth and translate a book about polar exploration, a passage stating that Sir Edward Shackleton and his team were extremely cool when marooned for 105 days on an Antarctic island after their ship Endurance sank in 1916, might easily be translated as meaning that they found the experience to be very trendy and they were quite laid back about it! It all depends how one chooses to interpret the word "cool" - as one's attitude or as one's temperature.
The actual original Hebrew sentence is: "Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live." The Hebrew word ob (poisoner) is specifically used in ancient texts. The Latin word for "poisoner", veneficus, was consequently employed by Jerome. Unfortunately, veneficus can also mean magical, witch, wizard, caster of spells. Thus the word was almost universally taken to mean "witch", and thus it was translated when the Bible was finally converted into English by Yorkshireman John Wycliffe who, during the 1380s (before the invention of the movable-type printing press), produced quantities of handwritten Bibles in the English of the time, with the help of followers who were popularly referred to as Lollards.
Most probably Jerome’s choice of the Latin word was based on the almost universal ancient association of specialised herbal knowledge – which of course included natural plant poisons as well as remedies – with the tribal shaman or “wise person”, a “witch-doctor” or “medicine-man or woman”. Significantly, only some 130 years earlier in about 1250, in a translation of Exodus into Anglo-Saxon (“Old English”), in the section recounting Pharaoh’s dealings with midwives, the word “witches” is this time used as a suitable translation of the Hebrew word for “midwives”: “Đe wicches hidden hem for-đan, Biforen pharaun nolden he ben” (Exodus1:15-21: “…And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives…”), midwifery also being a skill that in ancient times was considered the speciality of the shaman or medicine-woman.
Wycliffe managed to evade the angry retribution of the Vatican, who burned at the stake anyone who read the Bible in any language other than Latin, but many of his handwritten English Bibles came to a fiery end in 1415, when one of his followers, John Hus, was burned at the stake with the Bibles being used as kindling. Perhaps a much more appropriate phrase would have been: "Thou shalt not suffer a Bible translator to live!"
This passage from Exodus has been translated incorrectly in at least nine different ways in different versions of the Bible still in use today. The King James (or Authorised) version has: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Attempting to drive the point home, the New King James Version and the English Standard Version have: You shall not permit a sorceress to live and the New American Standard Bible changes it slightly to: You shall not allow a sorceress to live. The American Standard Version evidently decided that the injunction was invalid unless stated with obsolete wording, and puts it as: Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live. The New International Version states simply: Do not allow a sorceress to live, while the Amplified Bible decided something more direct was required and garbles it into: You shall not allow a woman to live who practices sorcery. The New Living Translation rephrases it as: A sorceress must not be allowed to live. The Contemporary English Version decides not to mince words, thundering: Death is the punishment for witchcraft, thereby altering the meaning entirely by eliminating the purely female grammatical connotation so that male witches can now also be included. Young's Literal Translation chooses: A witch thou dost not keep alive, and the English translation of the Septuagint by Sir Lancelot Brenton also changes the meaning to include males by altering it to: Ye shall not save the lives of sorcerers. The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (used and written exclusively by the Jehovah’s Witnesses), like the earlier Latin, chooses a word with more than one possible meaning and opts for: You must not preserve a sorceress alive; presumably this means you must only pickle them when they are dead.
This brings us to the fact that there are also deliberately falsified versions of the Bible in print, containing material not existing in any authentic antique biblical text, such as the Bible used by the Mormons (more properly The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) in which four additional books have been added to the Bible since 1830: the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price, written by Joseph Smith the American founder of Mormonism, or else – if you choose to believe Joseph Smith – by a Native American (“Red Indian”) of the late 4th century AD named Mormon who wrote a history of the Hebrew prophet Lehi (previously unknown to anybody else’s history) who, this history maintains, voyaged from Arabia to what is now the USA shortly after Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar in c. 600 BC and in which Jesus Christ later pays a personal visit to the American continent (possibly the very first Virgin Atlantic”?).
Then there is the Bible already mentioned as used by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose “translation” is not recognised by the Christian Church. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were originally founded as the Zions Watch Tower and Tract Society by the American Charles Taze Russell in 1884, and their “Bible”, formally titled New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, has been shown by analysis to include fabrications and distorted translations designed to support their beliefs. The final version of this Bible was fashioned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses own New World Bible Translation Committee between 1950 and 1960 and is now available in some 64 languages.
(Dr. Bruce M. Metzger [1914-2007], professor emeritus of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton University, has categorized the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Bible as a “frightful mistranslation” and as “pernicious” and “reprehensible”. Dr. William Barclay CBE [1907-1978] [Lecturer in New Testament Language and Literature and Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Hellenistic Greek at Glasgow University, Examiner in New Testament studies at the University of Aberdeen, the University of Edinburgh, the University of St. Andrews and the University of Leeds, director of the National Bible Society of Scotland, member of the Translating Committee of the New English Bible], has stated: “…It is abundantly clear that a sect which can translate the New Testament like that is intellectually dishonest.) (The Expository Times, November 1953.)
Strictly speaking, the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are actually heretical cults and if they had existed during the first millennium instead of being modern inventions, their followers would certainly have been hunted down and killed by the Church and their “Bibles” burned. Within mainstream Christianity, however, a spirit of increasing mutual toleration has arisen; Catholicism no longer considers Protestantism as being heretical but as being “separated brethren”, although Roman Catholics who abandon their Church to join a Protestant denomination are still sometimes referred to as heretics. Technically, many Catholics now consider Protestantism to be a “material” rather than a “formal” heresy and thus blameless for the individual.
From the fourth century, it was the Church councils (synods) that issued the official list of “holy books” to be included in the Biblical Canon, such as the Councils of Carthage (419), Florence (1441), Trent (1546) and the First Vatican Council (1870). Only relatively recently, the Second Vatican Council (or 21st Ecumenical Church Council) (1962-65) published an extremely complex and esoteric ruling regarding “divine revelation” and involving the correct way in which the Bible’s Revelation of St. John should be interpreted: “…Therefore, following in the footsteps of the Council of Trent and of the First Vatican Council, this present Council wishes to set forth authentic doctrine on divine revelation and how it is handed on…” It would seem that re-interpreting and adapting the Holy Bible is an ongoing process in the present day as well as in the past.
If such a multitude of variations, alterations, re-packaging, cultural anomalies, translational ambiguities, contemporary updates of wording and style and preferential interpretations has occurred to the textual matter of the Bible in recent times, how certain can we be that similar or even worse confusions and changes did not occur in more ancient times? And what price all the many purely human choices that have been made over more than two thousand years regarding which texts to include and which to expurgate? This is a matter we shall examine in greater detail in the next chapter. Here, it is a helpful preliminary to briefly consider the broader picture of the three fragmented and mutually hostile divisions of the supporters of the supposedly single and indivisible god of peace who loves mankind so perfectly that his advocates stigmatise and even kill anyone who disagrees, in his name!
A Family at War
Christianity, Islam and Judaism are, though estranged, actually three different interpretations of the same core belief, and both Christianity and Islam evolved out of Judaism. Judaism - the religion of the Jewish peoples - provides both Christianity and Islam with the most ancient components of their beliefs, which is probably most familiar in the West in the form of the "Old Testament" of the Bible. Both Christianity and Islam propose that the Semitic god described in the Old Testament exists and is the supreme and single entity. Both Christianity and Islam also trace their respective worldly, or human, lineage through Abraham, who is also a patriarch of Judaism. All three accept as truth the story of the Garden of Eden and accept that there was a single original man created from base matter by this same god and that his wife was created a little later from one of this man's ribs.
(The character Adam is not specifically mentioned in the Meccan suras, the earliest suras [chapters] of the Koran, where Muhammad refers to a general creation of humankind out of a drop of blood [sura 96:1-2] and a drop of water [sura 25:54]: however, in the Madinan suras – those chapters set down at Medina after the Hijra or Hagira, Hazrat Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD – the actual individual named Adam appears. The name of Adam’s wife is not mentioned at all in the Koran.). Amongst other characters accepted as real by Christianity, Islam and Judaism are Noah, Satan, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Moses, David and Gabriel.
Contrary to the awareness of many in our sadly divided and "dumbed-down" society, both Judaism and Islam also generally accept the existence of the man today commonly called Jesus, differing from Christianity only inasmuch as they do not regard him as being "Christ" or the "only Son of God", a part of God’s “threefold being”. Both Judaism and Islam share an essential principle of belief in an exclusively single God, according to which view it is utterly impossible, and indeed blasphemous, to propose either a “Trinity” or a physical “Son of God”. The origins of Christianity will be examined in greater detail later in this book, but the name “Jesus” itself is merely a Greek translation (Iesous) of an original Hebrew name which can be rendered as Jeshu, Yeishu or Yeshu, and also as Y’hosua which in English became Joshua. The original Hebrew meaning of this name was “Yahweh Helps” or “Yahweh Saves”. As Yeshu (יש״ו), such a person is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud (Sotah; 47a) and in the classical midrash literature (elucidating critical texts commentating on the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible) as an historical itinerant teacher, or rabbi, of purely human nature.
(It is also worth pointing out that, by a papal bull of 1554, the Talmud and many other Jewish texts used by Jews in the West were strictly and compulsorily censored to remove all references to Yeshu; and also that there is no mention of the name Yeshu in the Jerusalem Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi) also known as the Palestinian Talmud, which is some 200 years earlier in compilation than the Babylonian Talmud of circa 600 AD.)
In the Babylonian Talmud, Yeshu is described as the son of a Jewish mother, Miriam, who had been promised in marriage to a man described as a “carpenter”. The precise Hebrew term used for this liaison, which in modern English can only be approximately rendered as “betrothed”, means that their marriage was already a legal fact but the two were not yet living together or having sexual relations. Miriam was then made pregnant by a soldier named Pandeira who was either Greek or Roman, and as a result gave birth to a mamzer a child considered an outcast because born of a forbidden relationship of some kind, such as adultery, incest or rape, although still acknowledged as a legal son or daughter of the family. The word is sometimes incorrectly translated as “bastard” or “illegitimate”, which it does not mean.
This child was named Yeshu (our “Jesus”). In the Babylonian Talmud, Yeshu grew up to become a heretic and a sorcerer who “…led the people astray…” and so fell foul of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish religious council) who had him stoned to death and his body then hung on a tree until nightfall, the traditional punishment for heretics. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing only a generation after the events, describes a very similar incident.
In Islam, Jesus is regarded respectfully as one of the prophets who foretold the coming of the Final Prophet, Mohammed. Jesus is actually mentioned no less than twenty seven times in the Koran, where his name appears as Isa, and Isa son of Marium. In the Koran, he is actually described as the Messiah, but this has a somewhat different connotation to the Christian meaning of this title, the Koran completely rejecting the idea of Isa’s divinity. (Koran surah 4:157; “…Surely we have killed the Messiah. Isa son of Marium, the apostle of Allah; and they did not kill him nor did they crucify him, but it appeared to them so…”) The Saviour in Islam, who will appear at the ending of time as the fulfilment of God’s promise to the world, is titled al-Mahdi (the Mahdi). It is part of Islamic belief that after the appearance of the Mahdi, Isa (“Jesus”), who was taken into Paradise by Allah (“raised to his presence”) will descend again to earth as a follower and assistant to the Mahdi (Saviour) and, praying behind the Mahdi, will lead all loyal Christians into becoming Muslims.
Viewed impartially from the outside, the three warring religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism share so much in common that they can even be regarded as the triplet sons of the same father: as the saying has it, the Devil (and the bloodshed) is in the detail. How, then, did such essentially shared beliefs as these come to exist? What of their primeval origins?
An Earlier Eden
All religions, by their very nature, require an "origin of everything" mythology, to fill the gap we described in chapter one between ignorant superstition and proper scientific understanding, and to be their ætiological "how it came about" explanations. The Australian Aborigines, for example, believe that in a previous time called the Dreamtime the spirits moved through the void and assembled the land, the rocks, the trees, the animals, and the people in the appearance they now have. In the mythology of the Aztecs, the goddess Itzpapalotl reigned over a paradise called Tomoanchan, where the gods created the first members of the human race.
The Judaic creation story of the Garden of Eden, inherited by both Christianity and Islam, should be viewed in the same light, as a simple tribal creation myth, one of many throughout the world devised by primitive minds in order to offer an explanation for existence whilst giving credit for everything to a creator or creators in the spirit world. The fact that the Bible's creation story is a pure myth, similar in nature to that of other primitive cultures such as the Aborigines, can actually be proven, for these stories included in the Old Testament of the Bible, which represent a transcription of ancient Jewish mythology, are themselves inherited from the even earlier myth cycles of other, pagan, civilisations.
For example: “…And the lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam... and he took one of his ribs.., and... made... a woman.” (Genesis 2:21). This Biblical account of the creation of the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden is probably familiar to just about everybody. However, it is based upon a much earlier version of the same myth that has been discovered set down on clay tablets in cuneiform script by the ancient Sumerians, dating back some three to four thousand years BC, long before the Bible as we know it today was even conceived. The very name "Eden" is probably derived from the Akkadian word edinu and the Sumerian eden, both meaning a plain or steppe. Sumerian cuneiform is one of the oldest known forms of writing and was itself passed on to the ancient Babylonians, who also inherited much of the earlier Sumerian religious mythology. (The earliest writing yet discovered comes from an archaeological site of the Indus civilisation in Harappa, Pakistan, where pots dated to circa 3,500 BC, some 200-500 years earlier than the earliest discovered examples of Egyptian and Sumerian writing, were unearthed in 1999 bearing inscriptions possibly identifying their contents.)
In the nineteenth century, Sir Austen Henry Layard (1807-1894) and his colleague Rassam, whilst excavating in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nineveh, discovered the great library of the Assyrian king Asshurbanapal (died circa 631 BC). After years of excavations in both Nineveh and Nimrud, more than twenty five thousand sections of clay tablets inscribed in the strange wedge-shaped cuneiform script made by pressing a stylus into clay were sent to the British Museum for translation. Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895), an army officer stationed at the British residency in Baghdad, had discovered what was, in effect, a “cuneiform Rosetta Stone” on a giant rock face at Behistun near Kermanshah in Persia (now Iran), where an inscription of the Record of Darius was carved in cuneiform characters in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. This enabled the cuneiform script to be deciphered. Rawlinson began the translation of the tablets in Baghdad and continued the task in the British Museum after his return to England in 1855, publishing a book Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. In 1866 George Smith (1840-1876), the scholar who was to discover the as-yet unknown Epic of Gilgamesh amongst the museum collection, joined Rawlinson as his assistant to complete the immense task.
On the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh epic, Smith found, to his surprise, an account of a great flood that bore a strange similarity to the story of the biblical deluge, publishing it as a book with the title A Chaldean Account of the Deluge, in which he also showed that this appeared to be a copy of a far older version written at Uruk (the biblical Erech). A fragment of Gilgamesh containing the account of the death of Enkidu was also discovered at Megiddo in Palestine which indicates that it must have been known to the Canaanites who lived in this area and therefore to the writers of the earliest scrolls that were eventually to become the Bible. A reading of the translated cuneiform accounts, amongst which a Creation myth more ancient than the Biblical version was also discovered, suggests most powerfully that these were the actual pagan origins of the later but equivalent tales in the Old Testament.
The Sumerian creation legend, which is quite beautiful, states that the great goddess Ninhursag fashioned a wonderful and perfect garden in the east, which was named Dilmun, the Sumerian for Paradise. Here in this place, she“…made green plants flourish, and from here the waters of the world flowed…” This idea of the “waters of the world” was incorporated into Hebrew mythology in the form of the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddikel, Naher and the Phrath, or Euphrates, that were said to flow out of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:10-14).
The Sumerian Paradise was a “…pure land, fresh and bright, that knew neither sickness nor death…” Into this wonderful garden, Ninhursag placed a man whom she had made herself out of clay and dust, Enki. Ninhursag regarded Enki as her brother, for she had made him a male version of her own image and breathed life into him. This mythology will seem strangely familiar to anyone who has read the Bible. The similarities, or parallels, do not stop there. Enki was not happy, for he was without a companion of his own kind. In the Sumerian tablets, it is told how the goddess came to Enki in the garden and placed him into a deep slumber. When he awakens, he groans in pain. The epic Sumerian poem continues: "…My brother, what hurts you? My rib hurts me…” Ninhursag then explains what she has done: “…I have given birth to you, of your rib, to Ninti…”
Ninti was the first mortal woman, according to Sumerian mythology, and Enki’s wife. There are still further indications that the myth of Adam and Eve originated here (or else with even earlier Stone-Age tales on which the Sumerian legends were themselves based). Enki is said to have eaten plants that were sacred to the goddess Ninhursag and was cursed by her for so doing, a striking parallel to the story of the eating of the apple in Eden. In Sumerian, the name “Ninti” can mean “she who makes live”. The Hebrew name “Eve” derives from chavva, (hawwa, hava, heva) “living one”.
A less obvious parallel between the Bible and earlier pagan myths can be found in the Sumerian king lists. In Genesis 4, eight patriarchs are listed as living before the biblical flood. In Genesis 5, there are ten of these patriarchs. All of these are stated to have had extraordinarily long lives (for instance: “…And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years…” Genesis 5:27). According to the version of the king list recorded on a clay tablet now kept in the Schøyen Collection of original historical manuscripts in Norway (MS 2855), there were eight Sumerian kings before the Sumerian flood. On the version of the king list inscribed on the tablet called the Weld-Blundell Prism now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (#AN1923.444) there are ten rulers prior to the flood. In both versions, these also lived to incredible ages.
There is an obvious conclusion to be leaped at that the two sets of lists of 8 and 10 names, one set from the Bible, the other from Sumerian tablets, can be related, and certain scholars have attempted this with some interesting results, although it must be emphasised that (so far) there is no actual proof of the congruence of the two sources. Comparing the two longer versions listing ten names, the suggestion has been made (by the Institute for Biblical and Scientific Studies amongst others) that the Sumerian and biblical names can be associated in the following way: Alulim or Allum (Adam), Alalgar (Seth), Kidunnu (Enosh), Alimma (Kenan), En-men-lu-ana (Mahalalel), Dumuzi (Jared), En-sipad-zid-ana (Enoch), En-men-dur-ana (Methuselah), Sukurlam (Lamech) and Ziusudra (or Zin-suddu) (Noah).
One interesting result of linking the two sets of lists in this way – even though it is as yet a hypothetical exercise – is that both Ziusudra and Noah are associated with legends of building a huge boat to save their families from a great flood. It is also interesting to see that Adam, the Bible’s “first man” of Eden, equates with Alulim, the first recorded king at the city of Eridu in Sumer. According to Sumerian mythology, Eridu (which some have associated with “Eden”) was founded by Enki, the Sumerian version of “Adam”. The Akkadians equated Enki with the water-god Ea, whose son was named Adamu or Adapa. Linguistically, the “p” of “Adapa” could transmute to an “m” in Hebrew to produce the name “Adama”. In the Sumerian language, the word a-dam can mean “humans” or “humanity” and the word adam in Hebrew is similar and can mean “man”, also “earth” (adamah), “soil” and “light”.
It must always be remembered that, for certain periods of their history, various significant components of the Hebrew tribes were wanderers without a precise land of their own, or else influential groups of them were held in bondage by other cultures for some generations. Wherever their various tribes settled for a time, in freedom or in bondage, they associated with whatever population was there before them, inheriting their legends, as well as picking up the tales and customs of traders and travellers in the usual way, absorbing them into their own myths, naturally with the details changed to reflect their own culture. Consequently, they inevitably soaked up large pieces of the prevalent legends and mythologies of other ancient peoples such as the Egyptians and Sumerians. Abraham himself, no less, was a Sumerian, from the citadel of Ur, and there is no possible doubt that he would have been thoroughly familiar with the various Sumerian myths.
Floods of Mythology
The “deluge” legend set down in the cuneiform tablets of Gilgamesh describes a pantheon of gods including Anu the lord of the firmament, Enlil the warrior and counsellor, Ninurta the warlord and Ennugi the “watcher over canals”. Enlil addresses the council of the gods and says: “…The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel…”
The gods therefore decide that mankind must be destroyed by sending a great flood to drown the world. However, the god Ea warns a man named Ut-Napishtim of what is to happen and instructs him to build a boat, giving him specific measurements of the length, width and other dimensions and instructing him to: “…then take up into the boat the seed of all living creatures…”
The account then describes in some detail how Ut-Napishtim builds the huge boat, despite the scepticism of the people and their elders, and loads on board his family, a selection of craftsmen, and all beasts “both wild and tame”. The gods command Ut-Napishtim to enter the boat and batten it down. “…Then the gods of the abyss rose up – Nergal released the dams of the nether-waters…” The goddess Ishtar, the “sweet-voiced Queen of Heaven” bewails the fate of humankind as; “…For six days and nights the winds blew, torrent and tempest and flood overwhelmed the world… When the seventh day dawned… the flood was stilled...”
When Ut-Napishtim’s great boat eventually comes to ground on Mount Nisir (possibly in Iraq), he releases a dove but, finding no other dry land, the dove returns to him. A swallow is then released with the same result. Then he sends out a raven who does not return, so he knows the bird has found some dry land at last. He sets up an altar on the mountain top to give thanks to the gods, whereupon the goddess Ishtar comes to the place and lifts up her “…necklace with the jewels of heaven…”, a rainbow, as a sign of safety for Ut-Napishtim and his family.
From the eighteenth century BC there still survives the earlier epic of Atrahasis, the Akkadian hero whose mythology was adapted to provide the flood story in Gilgamesh, with certain alterations being made by the transcriber to “improve” the mythical flood to a world-scale event where it was originally concerned only with the flooding of a local river. (For example, Atrahasis 3:4 “…like dragonflies they have filled the river…” becomes Gilgamesh 11 “…like the spawn of fishes they fill the sea…”)
On a single fragmentary clay tablet excavated from the city of Nippur in Sumer - today’s Iraq - was found a record of an ancient Sumerian myth concerning Ziusudra, a wise king who reigned over one of the Sumerian city-states (mentioned on the king list described earlier). He was a good king who obeyed the gods in all things. The tablet describes the creation of humans and animals and recounts a flood myth containing the following verse: “...for seven days and seven nights, the flood had swept over the land, and the huge boat had been tossed about by the wind storms on the great waters... Ziusudra opened a window on the huge boat...”
Ziusudra can be identified from the Sumerian king list as the ruler of Shuruppak (or Curuppag, “The Healing Place”) which is a site at present-day Tell Fa’rah on the Euphrates in Iraq, and in the king list his entry confirms this is the same person because after his name are the lines: “…The flood swept thereover…” A local river flood has been identified from deposits excavated from Shuruppak and dated by radio-carbon analysis to the decade following 3,000 BC. Since line 23 of the 11th Gilgamesh tablet refers to Ut-Napishtim as being a “man of Shuruppak”, there is actual written evidence that the Gilgamesh account was based on that of Ziusudra and that this was the local river flooding event behind the various Mesopotamian myths which inspired the biblical story of Noah first written much later, during the first millennium BC. (The tradition is that the first five books of the Old Testament were written by Moses, who lived after 1500 BC and probably around 1450-1410 BC: historical analysis [detailed in the next chapter] indicates it was actually the product of at least four different authors writing during a more recent period between 950-539 BC.) There are a great many similarities that prove the biblical flood story is copied from the other more ancient myths; for instance, the description of the smell rising from the various deluge heroes’ altars of thanksgiving: “The gods smelled the savour” (Atrahasis 3:34); “The gods smelled the sweet savour” (Gilgamesh 11:160); “And the Lord smelled the sweet savour” (Genesis 8:21).
A similar myth can be found from the Aztecs of Mexico, which also contains an echo, even if unconnected, of the story of the Tower of Babel: "…When mankind was overwhelmed by the deluge, none were preserved but a man named Coxcox and a woman called Xochiquetzal, who saved themselves in a little barque, and having afterwards reached land upon a mountain called Colhuacan, they had a great many children. These children were all born dumb, until a dove from a lofty tree imparted languages to them, but differing so much that they could not understand one another."
The Native American Indians have various deluge stories. A legend of the Choctaw people tells how, long ago, men became so corrupt that the Great Spirit destroyed them in a flood. Only one man was saved, a prophet whose warnings the people disregarded, and whom the Great Spirit then directed to build a raft from sassafras logs. After many weeks, a small bird guided the prophet to an island where the Great Spirit changed the bird into a beautiful woman who became the wife of the prophet. Their children then repopulated the world. In the tribal mythology of the Mi’kmag nation of New England, eastern Canada and the Gaspé Peninsula, the human race grows increasingly evil until the sun-god causes torrential rain to bring a great flood to destroy mankind. A man and woman survive in canoes and repopulate the earth.
Likewise, there are several Australian Aboriginal flood stories. One tells how, long ago, there was a flood that covered the mountains so that many of the Nurrumbunguttias, or spirit men and women (“ancestors”), were drowned. Others, including Pund-jil, were caught up by a whirlwind into the sky. When the waters receded, and the mountains appeared again, and the sea went back into its own place, the son and daughter of Pund-jil went back to earth and became the first of the true men and women who live in the world today.
The seventeenth century Jesuit priest Martinus Martini (1614-1661), famous for travels in which he compiled notes from which Dutch cartographers prepared detailed maps of China, and also for his essays The War of the Tartar People and The First Chapter of the Chinese History, reported the ancient Chinese legend of mankind's rebellion against the gods: "…The Earth was shaken to its foundations. The sky sank lower towards the north. The sun, moon, and stars changed their motions. The Earth fell to pieces and the waters in its bosom rushed upwards with violence and overflowed the Earth..." The ancient Chinese account Shujing (“Book of History”) written around 700 BC or earlier, recounts a great deluge in the reign of the emperor Yao, where “…flood waters reached to the heavens…” According to the tale, the principle survivor, Da Yu, founded the first Chinese dynasty. Interestingly, many of the Chinese deluge myths from different regions make mention of a woman named Nuwa (Noah?) who survives and repopulates the world.
In India, the Hindu scripture the Shatapatha Brahmana relates how the god Vishnu warns a man named Manu of a forthcoming deluge that will destroy all living things. Vishnu instructs Manu to build a boat to escape the flood. In Tahiti there is a Polynesian legend of a deluge when the entire island sank beneath the sea except for the top of Mount Pitohiti, where a single couple manage to survive with their animals. In Hawaii a similar myth has a couple named Nu’u and Lili-noe surviving a deluge on the top of Mauna Kea.
The Bahnars, an ancient tribe of Cochin, China, have a myth of how the rivers swelled "...until the waters reached the sky, and all living beings perished except two, a brother and a sister, who were saved in a huge chest. They took with them into the chest a pair of every sort of animal..."
A myth from Egypt tells of an ancient creation god, Tem, who was responsible for a primeval flood, which covered the entire earth and destroyed all humankind except those in Tem's boat.
The Incas of Peru also had a tradition of a deluge which relates that "...the water rose above the highest mountains in the world, so that all people and all created things perished. No living thing escaped except a man and a woman, who floated in a box on the face of the waters and so were saved."
The pagan tribes of Europe and Scandinavia had similar legends: In Nordic myth Bergelmir the son of Thrudgelmir escaped from a great flood caused by the death of the frost giant Ymir, who was Bergelmir’s own grandfather. Bergelmir and his wife managed to float to safety in a hollow tree trunk.
In fact, research shows there are over five hundred such legendary deluge myths from different parts of the globe. It has been suggested that they represent a dim and distant racial memory, preserved in mythologies, of the tremendous worldwide flooding that occurred when the ice melted at the end of the last Ice Age some ten to fourteen thousand years ago. Scientific investigation has shown that this melting was rapid rather than gradual and resulted in immense torrents and floods lasting between a few years and a few decades, during which time the world's sea level rose considerably. In Europe, the Mediterranean and Black Sea rose, drowning Neolithic farming settlements that can still be identified on the present seabed, and the English Channel was formed, turning mainland Britain into an island. Other flood theories prefer more recent global changes, such as a collapse of the land between Spain and Africa allowing the Atlantic to catastrophically flood through to form the Mediterranean.
It is, however, not even necessary to invoke such cataclysmic natural forces in order to explain the worldwide occurrence of parallel flood myths from the most ancient of times. Most of the world’s large ancient centres of civilisation naturally first grew in close proximity to rivers, vital for drinking water, crops and trade, and rivers are always subject to catastrophic flooding as we still see to our cost in the present day.
Some supporters of the "truth" of the Bible sometimes gleefully quote these ancient world deluge legends as "proof" of Noah's flood in the Old Testament. However, such reasoning is entirely fallacious and self-contradicting, for according to the Bible itself only Noah and his family were specifically saved from the deluge and everybody else in the world at that time was drowned, without exception. If the Old Testament stated something like: "...And God also ordered that Ziusudra the Sumerian, Ut-Napishtim the Babylonian, Deucalion the Greek, Coxcox and Xochiquetzal the Aztecs, Pund-Jil the Aborigine and a few hundred others scattered here and there around the world should also build boats and rafts to save their various peoples..." then the story of Noah might perhaps be removed from the realms of pure mythology. Unfortunately for adherents of the historicity of the Bible, it says no such thing.
Each of these deluge legends from around the world represents an aspect of the tribal mythology of the people to whom they belong, a dim and distant folk memory of severe but natural disasters incorporated into the necessary mythological background explaining how things became as they are at the “beginning of the world” and providing a salutary warning for people to avoid offending their various gods. The Old Testament is no exception and must be understood as merely representing a regional version of this worldwide habit.
How, then, did such pieces of mythology and tribal legend finally find their way into the Bible? In order to answer this question, we need to go further in our investigation and ask: who exactly wrote the Bible? What is the actual origin of this problematical book?
4. The Evolution of the Bible
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
Mark Twain
A Vulgar Bible
It is a little-known historical fact that there were originally a large number of different textual versions of the Old Testament spanning a wide date range and not just one coherent manuscript, or even one coherent set of books or scrolls. There are three main divisions of writings that coalesced to a greater or lesser degree to form what we now perceive as the Old Testament of the Bible.
(1) The material that was eventually to become edited into the Masoretic text, the Hebrew text of the Tanakh approved for use in Judaism. The word "Tanakh" is an acronym of the initial letters of the Hebrew names for its three sections: Torah ("The Law" or "The Teaching"), also called the Chumash ("The Five" or "The Five Books of Moses", which became the first five books of the Old Testament, often called the Pentateuch): Nevi'im ("Prophets"): and Ketuvim ("Writings" or "Hagiography"). The Tanakh is also called Mikra or Miqra ("Reading").
The title "Masoretic" derives from the Masoretes, (ba'alei masorah) a scattered group of Jewish scribes living between the seventh and tenth centuries AD (corresponding more-or-less to the time of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England) in three principal regions; Tiberias (T'verya), the town at the edge of the Sea of Galilee named after the Roman emperor; Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel); and Babylonia in southern Mesopotamia (in present day Iraq). Each of these three main groups of scholars developed a system of notes and guides to grammar and pronunciation in order to attempt to regularise the texts for use by the entire Jewish community. The Hebrew word masorah, (from Ezekiel 20:37) originally meant "fetter", and was used because to fix a common version of a text could be regarded as fettering it (as we might say today, "nailing it down"); from this, the word came to mean "to hand down", and thence "tradition". As such, the word relates to the transmission of any Jewish tradition, but in the context of the Masoretic Text it specifically denotes the brief marginal notes placed in written and printed versions of the Hebrew Bible to indicate such details as the correct spelling of words. The finished Masoretic Text contains numerous differences from earlier sources.
Paper and parchment crumbles with the passage of time. Apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls which date from around the time of Jesus, a papyrus from the second century AD containing a version the Ten Commandments, and a few fragments of the Cairo Geniza, an archive of ancient Jewish manuscripts from the fifth century AD discovered in 1897 in the Fostat-Cairo synagogue (built in the year 882), the oldest known existing manuscripts encompassing the main part of the Masoretic Text date from the ninth and tenth centuries AD and are now kept in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (the Aleppo Codex) and, written in Hebrew, represent the oldest surviving versions of the Old Testament. Although based on earlier texts now largely lost to the world, they are actually more recent – as physical documents - than the compilation of the New Testament. The various Hebrew texts from which the Masoretic Text was derived were copies of much older documents that were known to the very earliest Christian theologians and pre-dated Christianity. Although these older texts no longer exist as original documents, the Masoretic Text contains a few examples of the alternative versions of these older writings alongside the final edit so that their differences can be compared and evaluated by the reader.
(2) The material which was used for the Greek translation of the Jewish Bible (the first five books of what is now the Old Testament) which was then called the Septuagint. The Septuagint originated in Alexandria, Egypt, and was translated from pre-Masoretic Hebrew documents into Greek between 300 and 200 BC. This Greek translation was made because many Jews living outside their homeland were no longer familiar with the Hebrew language, and Alexandria, though in Egypt, was a Greek city (named, of course, after Alexander the Great). According to an ancient document, the Letter of Aristeas, either 70 or 72 Jewish scholars (the precise number is uncertain) were appointed during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Ptolemy II, c.308-246 BC) to carry out the task of making the translation. (Ptolemy Philadelphus was the son of Soter, one of Alexander’s generals who founded the Ptolomaic dynasty and became Ptolemy I.) The term "Septuagint" means seventy in Latin, after the presumed number of its translation committee, and this title is sometimes abbreviated to LXX, the Roman numeral for 70.
Importantly, there was no single definitive copy of the Alexandrian Septuagint, which existed in many different Greek versions that may represent various alternative translations (a minority opinion amongst scholars) or – a more widely accepted view – a sequence of developing revisions. There are major differences between the earliest and final versions, to the extent that the German Protestant theological scholar Alfred Rahlfs (1865-1935) who attempted to produce a definitive edition of the Septuagint for publication, was obliged to include two different versions of the Book of Judges. When these various different versions of the Greek Septuagint are examined, two “editing trails” can be clearly identified; one sequence of changes was designed to attempt to bring the tales more into agreement with Jewish texts, while the other sequence improves the Greek language usage and attempts to change or eliminate anything that seemed to be at variance with early Christian doctrine. The Church Father Origen (c. 185-254) deliberately changed his version of the Septuagint so that it more closely matched the Hebrew documents that would eventually become the Masoretic Text, but in the interests of honesty he made use of editorial symbols to note his changes; unfortunately, later editors copied his revised text and ignored his notes, thereby creating the false impression of a greater original similarity between the Septuagint and Hebrew texts.
The Old Testament generally accepted by Christianity is based on versions of the Greek Septuagint catalogued under the title Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican City and the slightly later Codex Sinaiticus in the British Museum, London. Both of these date only from the fourth century.
(3) The Samaritan Pentateuch. The Samaritans were a group of people observing the Israelite religion, as distinct from the Jewish religion; as we will see later in this chapter, the Israelites of Israel and the Jews of Judah originally comprised two different kingdoms with two different religions and two different tribal gods. When a large portion of the Jewish population was taken to be slaves in Babylon by the conquering king Nebuchadnezzar and were then permitted to return to their homelands after seventy years had passed, the religious observations and interpretations of the Israelites who had remained behind and who became known as Samaritans (from the region of Samaria) showed slight differences from those who had been away for so long. On returning from exile in Babylon, the Jews did not permit the Samaritans to worship with them in the Temple at Jerusalem, because their version of the Jewish religion was different, causing the Samaritans to become regarded as "second-class" people, or "untouchables" (hence the point of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, an “untouchable” who proved to be a better human being than more sanctimonious passers-by).
Forbidden access to the Temple in Jerusalem, the Samaritans instead worshipped in their own temple on Mount Gerizim. This temple was destroyed by the hostile Jews led by John Hyrcanus (Yohanan Girhan) of the Hasmonean (Maccabeean) dynasty, the nephew of Judas Maccabaeus, about 129 BC. Following this, a form of worship was introduced by the Samaritans aligned to that used in the Temple at Jerusalem and based on the Torah. In this manner, the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) was accepted by the Samaritans.
There are, however, major differences between the Samaritan, Jewish and eventual Christian versions of the Pentateuch. For example, Exodus 12:40 in the Samaritan and the Septuagint reads, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers which they had dwelt in the land of Canaan and in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years." In the Masoretic text, however, the same passage omits the reference to Canaan. The New Testament, whenever it mentions incidents from the Old Testament, takes its details mainly from the Samaritan text, instead of from the Septuagint or the Hebrew documents that would later be transcribed into the Masoretic Text, with the result that characters in the New Testament sometimes quote from an "Old Testament" that is entirely different to the one contained in the same Bible. For example, in Mark (2:25-26) Jesus refers to David eating the consecrated bread in the time of Abithar, whereas according to 1 Samuel 21:1-6 it was in the time of Ahimelech.
It was not actually until a century after Jesus that the biblical Old Testament texts even began the slow process of being finally established toward the form non-Jews recognise today, and not until over fifty years after the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD were Old and New Testaments put together in a regular Latin format. To put this in an historical perspective, this was the time during which the Roman Empire abandoned Britain militarily to the English (Anglo-Saxon) invaders.
Between 382 and 405 AD on the instructions of Pope Damasus I, the scholar Jerome completed a comprehensive translation of the Old Testament (from the Hebrew) and the New Testament (from the Greek) into Latin. Jerome's text became known as the "common” (i.e. popular or widely used) translation, or in Latin, versio vulgata, (“the Public Version”) which became otherwise known as the Vulgate (sometimes Fulgate) Bible. In fact, it was the Vulgar Bible. The modern word "vulgar", from Latin vulgata, once meant simply "common" in the sense “of the mass of people”; from this it only later came to mean "rude" or "bad mannered".
There was a crude form of Latin Bible in use before Jerome produced the Vulgate, the Vetus Latina ("Old Latin Bible") but this was a scrambled and incomplete work consisting of various rather haphazard collections of texts, not a bound book as such, and there were many different versions. It was not translated by any one person, or even by any one body of scholars, nor was it consistently edited. Each individual text varied in the skill and quality of translation and even in literary style, and its source for the Old Testament was mainly the Greek Septuagint, thereby rendering it second-hand, at least "once removed" from any original record. Also, additions were sometimes included as though part of the original text by way of “sermons” or “moral instruction” by Christian writers for their followers. Even speakers of Latin found it difficult because it made extensive use of “Vulgar Latin”, which was the language of the commoners rather than the purer Latin of the nobility, containing ambiguities due to such things as regional dialects and the inclusion of Hebrew and Greek argot from the Septuagint.
However, this "Old Latin Bible" continued in use here and there for some time after the Vulgate became the accepted standard version in the Western Church. Some of the Celtic peoples continued to use it for a few centuries, as did Christian factions like the Waldensians and Albigensians, soon to be exterminated as heretical sects. Even Jerome himself complained that his new Bible was not being popularly received by many Christians at the time of its completion. The Vulgate Bible was adopted over a thousand years later as the official Roman Catholic Bible at the Council of Trent (1545-1563).
The Vulgate Bible has differences from the later Protestant King James, or "authorised", version. The biggest difference is that the Vulgate includes the Apocrypha, a series of disputed scriptural books that have been a thorn in the side of the Church for many centuries and have led to there being differing versions of the Bible and fractured versions of Christian belief which no church has yet quite been able to completely reconcile.
In Judaism, the Bible consists only of books of the Old Testament. In standard Protestant Christianity, it consists of 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. In Roman Catholic Bibles there are the additional books collectively known as the Apocrypha, or the apocryphal books (also known as the deuterocanonical or “second canon” books). These seven books are Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch. In the Reformation, Martin Luther and his followers decided that these apocryphal books should be removed from the new Protestant Bible.
There are also other apocryphal books that were included in certain versions of the original Vulgate, where a note was included stating these were not to be considered part of the canon of Holy Scripture; they were present only because it was felt that their beauty of composition made them worthy of reading. These are the Prayer of Manassas, 3 and 4 Esdras, certain Greek additions to Esther and three additions to the Book of Daniel, the Song of the Three Children (Vulgate, Daniel 3:24-90), the Story of Susan (Vulgate, Daniel 13) and The Idol Bel and the Dragon (Vulgate, Daniel 14). The latter two are also mentioned respectively in the prologue and the epilogue of the Septuagint compiled around 300 BC. Some forty books were eventually condemned as “apocryphal” by the early Church, including such texts as the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Assumption of Moses and the Ethiopic Henoch.
Roman Catholicism maintains that the seven particular apocryphal books removed from Protestant Bibles were always inspired by the Holy Ghost and are therefore genuine Holy Scripture, as also do the Eastern Orthodox, Coptic and Armenian churches. The Protestant churches, however, mainly disagree and have not generally accepted the Apocrypha, which are therefore not now included in most Protestant Bibles, mainly on the grounds that they were not accepted as legitimate holy scripture by the Jews. At one time all copies of the English Protestant Authorised or King James version of 1611 did include the Apocrypha as a separate section between the Old and New Testaments, but later they were removed as "not genuine". The Anglican Church, however, sets itself apart from most other Protestant churches (in Article VI of the 39 Articles of Religion established in 1801 by the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA) by accepting the Catholic apocryphal writings for church reading but not for establishing doctrine, as also does the Lutheran Church.
A major development that virtually “blacklisted” amongst most Protestants the seven apocryphal books still preserved in Roman Catholic Bibles was the managerial policy decision reached in 1827 by the British and Foreign Bible Society to refuse to print, publish or distribute any Bible containing the Apocrypha, or to financially assist any other publisher who included them. Since this society had virtually “cornered the market” in Bibles throughout the world, producing them in some seven hundred languages and regional dialects and distributing over 500 million copies worldwide, the greater number of Christians in the world had any scriptural significance and detailed knowledge of the Apocrypha edited – literally - from their version of Christianity.
There are none the less still some links with apocryphal books in Protestant-type Bibles, such as the passage in Hebrews 11:35 (“…Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection…”) which relates specifically to the stomach-churning story of The Martyrdom of Seven Brothers in chapter 7 of the apocryphal book 2 Maccabees.
The Vulgate Bible is therefore not the single coherent parent of modern Bibles. Jerome translated the Old Testament from Hebrew and the Gospels themselves from Greek; other parts of the New Testament (Acts, the Epistles, Revelation etc.) he seems to have taken from earlier Latin translations made by others. It is also considered unlikely that he conducted any research to investigate his favoured sources. Initially, he did not wish to include any Apocrypha, but Pope Damasus insisted that he did. However, because he regarded the Apocrypha to be of secondary importance, Jerome only bothered to translate Tobit and part of Judith himself, leaving the remainder as they were prepared in Latin by others.
The Pre-Biblical Bible
The Old Testament scriptures are the cultural product of Semitic peoples. The term Semitic (nowadays by popular usage sometimes incorrectly considered only to be another word for “Jewish”) was first coined in 1781 by scholar Ludwig Schlözer to describe the complete family of languages related to Hebrew, and it came to be used also as a generic name for all the speakers of those languages. The Semites include a multitude of tribal groups inhabiting Asia and Africa, not merely the Jewish. Schlözer drew the word from the account of the nations in Genesis 10, in which these various peoples are said to be descendents of Noah’s son Shem (Sem).
Four major Semitic language groups have been identified: North Peripheral or Akkadian, the oldest, the tongues of Assyria and Babylon: North Central, comprising Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic and Phoenician: South Central, covering almost all Arabic languages, Maltese (descended from Arabic) and Carthaginian (Carthage was founded as a Phoenician colony): South Peripheral, including dialects of southern Arabic and some languages of Ethiopia. The main Semitic tribal groupings are the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Aramaics, Amorites, Assyrians, Canaanites (including the Phoenicians), Hebrews, Philistines (or Palestinians), Moabites, Edomites, Chaldeans and Arabs.
Believed to have their origin in the southern part of the Arabian Peninsular, Semitic-speaking people had spread before 3000 BC through the Sinai and Syrian desert regions and by 2350 BC had become established in Mesopotamia, reaching the coastal region of Palestine and Phoenicia by 1200 BC. Circa 2000 BC, the Amorites occupied Sumer, Akkad and Caanan and by 1792 BC Hammurabi the Amorite was king of Babylon. The Semitic tribes had many variations on common legends, religious beliefs and pantheons of gods originating in the most ancient of times, such as those described in the previous chapter.
The Hebrews were not actually a race but a Semitic group of pastoral nomads originating in southern Mesopotamia, their name meaning “the people from the other side” (that is, the further side of the river Euphrates). The Bible relates that the first Hebrew was Abraham, a Sumerian who abandoned the city of Ur and took his followers to Syria and then on to Palestine (Canaan) which they began to colonise. Whether Abraham is history or myth (there is no independent archaeological or historical evidence of his existence) the original Hebrew settlers were soon being joined by further incursions of other related Semitic tribes seeking a new home away from the pressure of the great emerging empires of Sumer, Assyria and Babylon.
The word "scripture" is Latin and gained its religious significance when applied in translation of a Hebrew word meaning simply "that which is written"; the words "script", "scribe" and “scribble” come from the same Latin root. In ancient times, before the Bible existed as such, various books (as scrolls) were accepted as suitable scripture for religious purposes by the early rabbis and were collected for study and public reading in the synagogues. (See, for example, Luke 4:16-20, in which Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth is handed as an individual scroll "...the book of the prophet Esaias" [Isaiah] on its own to read aloud.) The criterion for determining holy scripture was that the piece was popularly judged to have been written by - or at least dictated by - a prophet; that is, by a man recognised as being possessed by "holy spirit".
Long before the versions of what we now perceive as the "Old Testament" stories became written down in the Late Bronze-Age/Early Iron Age period in the fledgling form of what would ultimately become the Torah of the Hebrew Tanakh, the earliest tales were a folk tradition relying entirely upon human memory, carried forward in this manner from the pre-writing period. The commitment of history and mythology to memory is a practice common to most tribal cultures, as, for example, in the case of the Celtic Druids and with the history keepers of the Gambia featured in the book and TV serial Roots (Alex Haley, ABC 1977) who could recite from memory a tribal history going back hundreds of years.
Also in common with many other early cultures, this oral tradition was not spoken or recited, but sung (poetic liturgy, the piyyutim, is still sung in the synagogue by the cantor). A similar custom can be observed behind the legends of the ancient Greeks, as represented by the poetic works of Homer for instance, as well as amongst various tribes in Africa, the Native Americans, the Anglo-Saxons (Beowulf, the Battle of Maldon etc.) and just about all emergent societies. In the Bible there remain eating songs, harvest songs, working songs (such as the "Well Song" in Numbers 21:17), wedding songs (as in the "Song of Songs") and songs of mourning: there are war songs, such as the "Song of Deborah" in Judges 5:1-32. Essentially, Homer's epics Iliad and Odyssey are also war songs, which in the same way are believed to have existed as purely oral traditions for some generations prior to being finally set down in writing. It is now increasingly accepted that Homer was probably not the author but the collector and editor of these particular works.
In addition to the collections of folk tales, the writings or scriptures began to include maxims and proverbs, spells - or ritualistic blessings and curses, which are much the same thing - and various laws decreed as necessary to the ancient Hebrew tribes by their prophets and administrators. It is worth noting that amongst many tribal cultures including the Hebraic, insanity was regarded as evidence of divine possession and lunatics were accorded special significance, their ravings regarded as the voice of a god or gods speaking through them. This gave rise to the belief that the insane had been directly "touched by God": from this belief, in later times the word "touched" alone came to be used to euphemistically describe lunacy. The continuing aberration of "speaking in tongues" (talking gibberish) represents the surviving attempt of (nominally) sane people to emulate this "divine uttering" of the insane.
As time passed, it was also considered politic to include in the writings detailed records of contracts, important edicts, lists of important persons (judges, high officials and the genealogical tables proving their hereditary right to position and authority) and proud lists of offerings and plunder. In this way, various collections of tribal archives were created in which were combined many different subjects, including folk tales and myth, the harangues of lunatics, social rules and regulations, proclamations, births and deaths, civic and military records, political agendas and other aspects of tribal history and management.
The Old Testament of the Bible gradually emerged over thousands of years from these scattered beginnings and is therefore a disparate collection of writings assembled around a core of what was once primarily a series of oral traditions entirely dependant for their details upon the powers of human memory, which indeed can be considerable. There were actually several different versions of these traditions in the earliest times amongst various tribes and regions (as we have seen, for instance, in the cases of the stories of the Garden of Eden and the flood). Amongst the various Semitic tribes of the Palestine region these coalesced over time into two major different versions, one held by the tribal kingdom of Judah, the other by the tribal kingdom of Israel.
The Kingdom of Israel (also known as Samaria) was founded about 1,400 BC by a group of Semitic tribes (whose people were known as Israelites) in part of northern Palestine. The Kingdom of Judah was founded around 1,200 BC by a different group of Semitic tribes (whose people were known as Jews) in part of southern Palestine. The Jews and Israelites comprised two closely related but discrete cultures, kingdoms and military powers with their own capitals and initially their own different religions and gods. In the southern kingdom of Judah, the tribal god that came to prominence was Yahweh: in the northern kingdom of Israel, the tribal god was El or Elohim (a plural form indicating an original family or pantheon of gods).
Although the highly complex evolutionary threads of very early Semitic tribal religious beliefs are incomplete and difficult to trace in their entirety due to scarcity of contemporary written sources and later religious censorship and obfuscation, it is noted by some researchers that the name Elohim seems to originate with the ancient Semitic people the Canaanites. A Bronze Age Canaanite culture was discovered in 1928 in Ugarit in present-day Syria whose written language has now been largely deciphered from inscriptions on clay tablets and is believed from analysis to be a linguistic branch of the earlier ancestral tongue from which other Canaanite languages also descended. Ugarit thrived around 1450-1200 BC. In these very ancient Ugarit records, the cuneiform word Elohim (‘lhm) refers to the family of gods headed by their chief god El. The writings also record that there were many other gods in addition to El, such as the earth-god Baal, Mot the god of death, Resheph the god of disease and healing, Asherah the queen of the gods who was El’s wife, Yam the sea god and lord of the primordial chaos, Dagon the grain-god, Hadad the sky-god, etc.
(The earliest mention of the god El so far discovered comes from about 2300 BC at the archaeological site of the Bronze Age Ebla civilisation at Tell Mardikh in Syria, where the excavation of the royal library unearthed a list of deities in which El is a desert god who built a sanctuary or garden in the wasteland for his two wives and their children. This represents one of the earlier and less convoluted cultural versions of the common “creation” myth where the god is also the first man and the human race becomes his actual rather than figurative children in a mythological clear space separated as a garden from the desert.)
In typical Bronze Age “warrior aristocrat” style, El has the characteristics of a fighting heroic god. It seems that the worship of this pantheon of pagan gods spread into the region around Ugarit with the movements of the Canaanite tribes, including those who colonised the northern part of Palestine to form the kingdom of Israel. In the southern kingdom of Judah, the tribal god Yahweh was also a “warrior aristocracy” god, the name seeming to originate with the phrase yahwe şba’ot, another plural term, meaning “the hosts of heaven”. The term also appears in the description du yahwi şba’ot or “he who creates the heavenly armies”, again a fitting appellation for a Bronze Age warrior-god.
The Kingdom of Israel was itself an amalgamation of ten different Semitic tribes who had grouped together in an organised fashion whilst retaining their strong self-identity, each with their own individual slant on the regional legends and “tribal pecking order”; Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, Dan, Manaseh, Ephraim, Reuben, Gad and part of the tribe of Levi. The kingdom of Judah consisted similarly of the grouped tribes of Judah, Benjamin, Simeon and the remainder of the tribe of Levi.
At about 1000 BC, King Saul briefly ruled both kingdoms (as the first king of the United Monarchy), gaining this position by consensus in order to build an effective united resistance to the neighbouring Philistines with whom a war over trade routes was developing (cf. 1 Samuel chapters 4-9). On Saul’s death there was a great dispute regarding who should be the next king, Saul's son and heir Jonathan, or Jonathan’s rival (and possibly former homosexual lover) David, a mercenary who had once worked for the Philistines and had captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites (probably a tribe of Canaanites), thereby establishing his own power-base. (See, for instance, 1 Samuel 18:1-4: “…and Jonathan loved him as his own soul… And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him…and his garments…; 19:1-2: “…But Jonathan Saul’s son delighted much in David…”; 20:41: “…and they kissed one another…”; 2 Samuel 1:26: “…Very pleasant hast thou been unto me: Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” Of course, this can be interpreted only according to a reader’s own particular sensibilities and prejudices.)
(To date, no specific independent scientific evidence for the existence of Saul, David, Jonathan or the political events of this time described in the Bible has been established. However, it can be shown by archaeology that during the Early Iron Age I period there was a sudden regional expansion of Philistine culture which at least agrees with the nature of the threat said to be faced by Saul and his successors.)
Contention led to a war between the two realms lasting seven and a half years, and after Jonathan's principle military commander changed sides amid intrigue and murder, Jonathan himself was assassinated. Adding to the problems of the two kingdoms, their mutual enemy the Philistines still represented a mounting threat to both of them. Under pressure of this danger, David was accepted as the second king of the United Monarchy, with the result that for the next thirty three years King David ruled both kingdoms and set in motion administrative measures designed to secure his position by uniting them together as one. He removed the capital of his realm from Hebron to his power-base Jerusalem some twenty miles further north, thereby creating a more central and personally favourable administrative centre and, by this political choice, inaugurating the rise to prominence of the formerly nondescript town of Jerusalem.
An important potential source of division between the two former kingdoms remained, however - the religious differences between them. To the present day we are sadly only too familiar with the bitterness and violence caused by differing religious opinions, even between rival factions professing the same religion. In order to reduce the threat of sectarian rivalry destabilising his enlarged realm, David realised that he must weld the two different religions into one, and this meant also fusing the two tribal gods Yahweh and El/Elohim into one, together with their respective priesthoods, mythologies and sacred writings. An important step was his decision to appoint two equal chief priests in Jerusalem, one from the northern religion and another from the southern religion. The priest from the north was a priest of Elohim and was by tradition considered a descendent of the Israelite prophet Moses, while the priest from the south was a priest of Yahweh considered a descendent of the Jewish prophet Aaron. King David ordered these conjoint chief priests to attend to the matter of fitting the two different religions together like pieces of two jigsaw puzzles.
A major part of this task consisted of editing together as best as possible the two different sets of religious texts containing tribal history and mythology, later to be known as scriptures. Although the two accounts were based on the same kinds of tribal mythology and shared versions of many common Semitic folk tales, each was written and compiled from a completely different perspective: the task of joining them together was somewhat akin to combining the Paris and Berlin telephone directories, and led to a similar result inasmuch as a careful reading of the detail would reveal that the text consisted of two different sets of manuscripts which had been merged together to appear as one. This was the origin of the Bible, specifically the first five books of the Old Testament, today variously called the Pentateuch (Greek for "five books") or the "Five Books of Moses", but more properly the Torah.
Following David’s death his son Solomon (also called Jedidiah in the Tanakh) ruled as the third king of the United Monarchy. After his death there occurred a civil war brought about by the weakness of character of Solomon’s son Hobo (or Rehav’am, the Bible’s Rehoboam) whose reign has been dated to within the period 931-913 BC and who announced a harsh taxation (“…my father also chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions…” 1 Kings 12:1-14). As a result, the northern kingdom renounced any legal right of the House of David to rule them and once again became independent for a time under their own king, Jeroboam, who was crowned King of Israel.
Most of that part of the tribe of Levi (the Levites) who lived in the north, who had earlier covenanted to uphold the single conjoined deity of the united belief ordered by King David (Jeremiah 33:22-24 and Malachi 2:4-6) at that time abandoned Israel and fled to Judah in the south in order to escape the forced return of the worship of the original pagan Israelite gods El and the Elohim which Hobo sought to restore (1 Kings 14:23; “…For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree…”: 2 Chronicles 13:7; “… And there are gathered unto him (Jeroboam) vain men, the children of Belial1…”: 1 Kings 16:2; “…thou hast walked in the way of Jeroboam, and hast made my people Israel to sin...”: 1 Kings 16:31-33: “…And it came to pass… that he took to wife Jezebel… and went and served Baal, and worshipped him…And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal (i.e. a temple of Baal) which he had built in Sameria (i.e. the kingdom of Israel) … And Ahab made a grove…”
For some two hundred years the independent kingdom of Israel was ruled by a succession of its own kings (18 are recorded in the Bible following Jeroboam) until the reign of Hoshea in 722 BC when the Assyrians conquered it and deported such huge numbers of the population as slaves to parts of Iran and Afghanistan that in the wake of the conquest the twelve original Hebrew tribes were finally reduced and consolidated to two (Israel and Judah) who, united again, occupied the vacant territory; the others became known to history as the Lost Tribes of Israel. (A similar fate came to the recovered survivors only some hundred years later, this time at the hands of the Babylonians.)
The Cut-And-Paste Job
Of course, it is a widely held belief that the "Five Books of Moses" (the Torah) were actually written by Moses himself. This cannot be the case, however, because the account includes a description of the death of Moses, and even the most fanatical biblical adherent has never ventured the opinion that his corpse continued writing after death. So can anything be known about who exactly did all the writing and compiling of the Old Testament? In fact, a great deal can be learned from a forensic study of the texts, and although the specific names of the individuals concerned will probably never be known, they have been clearly distinguished and referred to by anonymous letters, as we might say "Mr. A and Mrs. B".
It has been realised for some centuries that there are many duplicated parts of the Bible where the same story is repeated twice, and sometimes three times, frequently with variations in detail. These duplications are called doublets (or triplets as appropriate) and are the result of the combining of the different versions of the ancient texts from the two different kingdoms of Judah and Israel, themselves including compilations of earlier tribal oral traditions adding yet another layer of different slant, plus certain later additions which will be described shortly.
Thus, there came to be two different versions of the "creation" story in the Bible (Genesis 1 & 2). There are two entirely contradictory versions of the numbers of animals entering the Ark (Genesis 6 & 7). Genesis 7:11 has flood water coming from the heavens and from below the ground, but 7:4 states all the water fell as rain. Genesis 7:12 says the flood lasted forty days and forty nights: 7:17 agrees, saying forty days: however 7:24 and 8:3 both contradict this and say a hundred and fifty days. In Genesis 12:10-20, the characters are named Abram and Sarai; they are in Egypt; Abram is afraid the Pharaoh will kill him and take his wife and tells the Pharaoh she is his sister in order to attempt to defuse his lust. In Genesis 20:1-18, the names have been changed to Abraham and Sarah; they are in a land called Gerar where Abraham tells the local king Abimelech that his wife is his sister. In Genesis 26:7-11, it is Abraham's son Isaac who is in Gerar with his wife Rebekah and who tells Abimelech his wife is his sister. (If the last two versions are both to be considered as true, Abimelech must have been almost terminally dim to fall twice for the same trick!)
There are two different versions of Abraham and the covenant: two of Isaac’s naming: two of Jacob’s journey to Mesopotamia: two of Jacob's revelation at Beth-el: two of God changing Jacob's name to Israel: two of Moses extracting water from rocks: two of the parting of the waters - one the Red Sea by Moses, the other the Jordan by Aaron - and so on.
The first serious analytical studies of the textual content of the Bible began in Germany in the latter part of the eighteenth century, where scholars, already aware of the many doublets, observed that in the majority of these duplicated stories there was a major difference - there was a different god in each! One set of the stories described a tribal god named El or Elohim (usually translated in the later English Bible as "God") while the other described a tribal god named YHWH (Yahweh, the origin of the mispronounced "Jehovah" usually translated in the Bible as "Lord"). This suggested that there were two different authors at work, and they were called E and J (J being the German for Y) for "Elohim" and "YHVH" or "Yahweh"; and that their writings had at some point been combined to give the impression of a single text.
As if the embryonic Old Testament were not yet sufficiently confused and riddled with conflicting information, some time between 770 BC and 600 BC a third text was inserted which chiefly focuses on the methodology of religious observation - the rites of the temple, the genealogy of the priests, the appropriate priestly costume, the method of sacrifice and so on. This embedded text has been given the name the "P" (for "priestly") document. It would appear that the tales included within the P document were deliberately composed as a Jewish (Judah) response promoting Aaron preferentially to the Moses-promoting E document of the Israelites. For instance, where the earlier E texts describe God speaking to Moses, the P document now described God as speaking to both Moses and Aaron: where the previous texts mention the staff of Moses, the P document mentions the staff of Aaron, and so-on.
Then, to cap even this, in 2 Kings 23:8-13 it is described how Halkiah found a "lost scroll of Moses" about 622 BC which was read out to king Josiah. Most scholars agree from analysis that this was the book of Deuteronomy, a probability also agreed with by many early Christian Church Fathers, including Jerome himself. Deuteronomy mainly covers the same ground as the other texts, but also contains some new material. The writer of the Deuteronomy text has been named "D", for "Deuteronomist". The Deuteronomist claims that it is Moses doing the writing, but the literary style can be identified as that of the latter part of the reign of Josiah over half a millennium later. It was quite possibly written by Halkiah who claimed to have "discovered" it.
So, at this stage of its development, the Old Testament contained at least four major texts from different sources, each with its own axe to grind and its own agenda, each contesting contents with the others to a greater or lesser degree. There is the E text originating with the oral tribal histories of the northern kingdom of Israel, and the J text originating with the oral tribal histories of the southern kingdom of Judah, these two already merged together like a pack of playing cards given a riffle-shuffle on the orders of King David, with the object of removing a potential threat to the stability of his recently united realm. There is the P text, which attempts to equalise the importance of the Jewish Aaron with that of the Israelite Moses. There is the D text added to the growing assembly of writings around 622 BC, in which yet more differences are introduced to the contents. Some experts even think this division into four different authors is too simple to explain the variations in the texts and suggest that it is, in fact, four groups or schools of authors.
Whichever the case, the analysis shows that all the different versions were at some later stage combined by an editor, who has been called "the Redactor". The Redactor, whoever they might have been, sometimes placed the different stories one after the other and sometimes wove them together: they also added the connective narrative comments such as: "Now it came to pass, after these things..." and: "At that time…", and so on. In more modern times, this whole process would be called a "cut and paste job". The nature of the different texts remains similar inasmuch as they may cover the same outline events, but the specific details vary considerably depending upon the geographical, religious and political origin of the section. For instance, in the northern stories from the kingdom of Israel, the important holy mountain is Mount Horeb, and much greater emphasis is accorded to Joseph and his family, who belonged to one of the most prominent of the northern Israelite tribes. The person who saves Joseph from being killed by his own brothers is Reuben, the head of the chief northern tribe. In the southern stories from the kingdom of Judah, the important holy mountain is Mount Sinai, and the person who saves Joseph from his brothers is Judah, the head of the chief southern tribe.
Although an attempt at fairness is evident by the inclusion of doublets (and triplets) even when mutually contradictory, the tendency in the Redactor's combination of the texts is for the J text (that of the religion worshipping the god Yahweh) to subtly dominate the E text (that of the religion worshipping the gods El or the Elohim), for the simple reason that the kingdom supplying the J text, Judah, was politically more powerful.
The cleverness of this "bias" within the Bible has deceived minds with its sly propaganda even into the present day: wherever there are two or more different versions of events recorded in the Old Testament, it is the J text embedded within the scriptures that is the best known and generally the most commonly accepted. For example; who slew a Philistine giant with a pebble from a sling? The reply will be "David" in 99% or more of cases (1 Samuel 17:4, 7, 50, a J text), and probably less than 1% of people asked this question will reply, equally correctly, "Elhanan" (2 Samuel 21:19, an E text) or "Jonathan" (2 Samuel 21:21, a P text). Likewise, ask someone how many of each kind of animal Noah is said to have taken aboard the Ark and they are much more likely to reply "one pair of each" (Genesis 6:19, "J") than to answer "between four and fourteen of each" ("seven pairs of each clean beast and two pairs of each beast that is not clean" Genesis 7:2-3, "E").
The document produced by the Redactor's clever "cut and paste job" became part of the Tanakh, the mainspring of the condensing Jewish religion, strongly sponsored by the prophets Nehemiah and Ezra. This, then, was the variegated origin of what eventually became the Old Testament of the Bible. Even in the laws supposedly written in stone by God's own hand, the Ten Commandments, there was no absolute correspondence. Although certainly similar in nature, the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-21, have glaring differences to the same Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5:1-30. Perhaps the most glaring difference is the little known fact that, in Deuteronomy, there are actually eleven commandments! (See appendix III)
In fact, the differences between the Ten (or Eleven) Commandments are merely one example of a great many errors and contradictions in the Bible, an entire list of which would require a complete book to itself, especially if the New Testament is included, as we shall see. In Appendix I and II, some of the mistakes are itemised to prove the point. Some Christian cults believe they are not bound by the Ten Commandments, through a convoluted piece of reasoning applied to Colossians 2:13-14 in which it is stated that all sins have already been forgiven and that “…the handwriting of ordinances that was against us…” (i.e. presumably including the Ten Commandments) has been “…blotted out…” by the crucifixion.
(The term “cult” derives from the Latin cultus meaning “worship”, “care” and “adoration”. In English, it has come, mainly through media use, (incorrectly) to signify only a religious group holding non-mainstream and/or occult beliefs. When used correctly, the word means any of the divisions within a single faith, for which English speakers generally prefer to use the word “sect” (Latin secta, a set of people). In fact, “sect” and “cult” are synonymous, as is shown by most other European Romance (Latin-based) languages. In French and Spanish, culte and culto simply means “worship” or “religious attendance”. French secte means “cult”. In German, the word for “cult” is Sekte, in Russian sekta, etc. It is therefore perfectly correct to refer to any sub-division of Christianity, including Protestantism and Catholicism, as being, by factual definition, a cult.)
There is continuing argument in the USA at the moment regarding the fundamentalist campaign to urge Congress to permit the prominent display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings and in public outdoor locations, which is held by their opponents to violate the First Amendment of the Constitution. The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to outlaw officially-sanctioned prayers in public schools has alarmed many fundamentalist Christian cults, who as a result have succeeded in lobbying many state and local legislatures to allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed inside or outside public buildings.
Fundamentalists deem such displaying of the Ten Commandments to be required by the authority of the Bible due to a selective interpretation of Deuteronomy 6:9; “…And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates…” However, they conveniently choose to completely ignore the equally authoritative instructions given in the previous verse 8: “…And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes…” Evidently, fundamentalists consider that the appropriate biblical instruction for the decoration of buildings should be obeyed, but that an identical biblical instruction for the decoration of fundamentalists should be disobeyed, else presumably they would have the Ten Commandments tattooed on their foreheads and hands, or at least paste them there on paper.
Hundreds of public monuments containing an inscription of the Ten Commandments, or decalogues, can already be seen all over the United States, many inside or near government buildings. It is now seldom realised that many dozens of these were put in place for the famous movie director Cecil B. DeMille by the theatrical benevolent society the Fraternal Order of Eagles as part of a publicity stunt to promote the 1956 film The Ten Commandments (some of the plot details of which, since the Bible proved too sparse as a source for the screenplay, were actually taken from the Koran: see, for instance, sura 26). The granite inscription of the Commandments located in Dunseith, North Dakota, was ceremonially unveiled by Charlton Heston who played Moses, and that in Milwaukee by Yul Brynner who played the Pharaoh.
5. Jesus is Hijacked by a Terrorist.
"He's not the Messiah - he's a very naughty boy!"
Monty Python's Life of Brian
The Fake Apostle
Nor does the integrity of the New Testament stand up to detailed inspection. Three major characteristics need to be carefully examined if any kind of objective truth is to be discovered. These are: (a) a detailed comparative analysis of its contents: (b) the known history of its compilation and edited rewrites: (c) what we might refer to as the “urban religious myths” tagged on to it for which there is no actual basis in the Bible or anywhere else (that is, all the commonly held suppositions about the New Testament that are actually entirely untrue and based upon nothing but preferential opinion: for example, the idealised image held by some, in defiance of all reason, that Jesus, a middle-eastern Jew of Semitic race, was a fair-haired and blue-eyed Caucasian man). If such a forensic examination is conducted, it can be very clearly seen that an alternative history of events very different to the commonly held interpretations is actually provable even from references within the Bible itself.
The most common and deeply rooted of such “biblical urban myths” concerns not Jesus himself but, rather, the religion of Christianity, which developed after his death and which Jesus himself had absolutely no connection with. It is a provable historical falsehood that the founder of Christianity was Jesus. The founder of Christianity was, in fact, Saul, a Pharisee (Acts 23:6 "...I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee").
The Pharisees (from the Aramaic perIshayyA) were a sect noted for the strict observance of the Jewish religion: today, we would call them fundamentalists or extremists. Saul himself boasts that even amongst these radicals he was considered over-the-top (Galatians 1:14; “…above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.”). Saul, or "Paulus" (Paul) in Latin, was a leading figure in the violent persecution of the followers of a Jewish rabbi (teacher) whose name was Yeheshua, familiarly Yeshu (a version of "Joshua") but who later became universally known by a mispronounced Greek translation of his name, "Jesus".
In Acts 8:58 Paul is an active accessory (by looking after the robes of the murderers) in the stoning to death of Stephen, commonly considered the “first Christian martyr” (another religious “urban myth” - Christianity as such did not exist when Stephen was murdered, so Stephen was not actually a Christian, merely a follower of Jesus which is not the same thing). In 1 Corinthians 15:9 Paul himself makes the confession: "... I persecuted the church of God", exactly the same words also appearing in Galatians 1:13; and in Philippians 3:5 he admits to "...persecuting the church". This is confirmed with a little more detail in Acts 8:3, which states: "As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women, committed them to prison." Acts 9:1 also confirms Paul's violence against the followers of “Jesus”: "And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord..." In fact, today, Paul would most likely be classified as a religious terrorist.
In Galatians 4:13, Philippians 2:26-27, 1 Corinthians 2:3 and 2 Corinthians 12:7, there are strong hints that Paul suffered from some kind of recurring illness characterised by “…weakness… and much trembling…” and by being “…sick nigh on to death…” which departs as rapidly as it arrives, sounding very like bouts of malaria, which can produce hallucinations (Other writers have also suggested epilepsy.)
On experiencing a sudden flash of "light from heaven", he collapses from his horse and a disembodied voice asks: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" The chimerical speaker proclaims itself as "Jesus" and Paul directly reverses his opinion of him and his posthumous followers and decides that he must now help to further their cause.
It is important to remember that Paul never in his life actually met the real Jesus or heard him teaching. It is also significant to note that the New Testament itself gives two diametrically conflicting accounts of Paul’s “conversion”. In Acts 22:8-9, it states categorically that his companions could not hear the mysterious “voice” themselves (“And they that were with me… heard not the voice of him that spake to me”), whereas in Acts 9:7 everybody present heard it (“And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice but seeing no man”). It is almost superfluous to point out that at least one of these self-contradicting statements must be untrue.
Nevertheless, following this, about the year 38 AD, Paul journeys to Jerusalem and contacts the apostles there, initially through the intercession of Barnabas (one of the newer apostles who had by now swelled the ranks of the surviving eleven to over seventy as related in Luke 10:1). “…Barnabus took him, and brought him to the apostles” (Acts 9:27). He is interviewed by Peter and James (Galatians 1:18-19), and attempts to convince them he has changed his mind about persecuting their sect and would like to become one of them. Quite naturally, the apostles are highly suspicious and the upshot was disagreeable: "And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple" (Acts 9:26).
Furthermore, in the Epistle to the Galatians - in which for some reason he is more than usually honest - Paul makes a series of very revealing confessions. He admits that he was an impostor who had failed to receive the genuine apostle's approval to preach (Galatians 1:16-17; "...I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me..."). He admits that existing established churches - the network of which he himself had only recently been a major destroyer - were circulating an entirely different version of Jesus' teachings to that which was being formulated by him and which later became the only one available to Christians (Galatians 1:8; “…But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than that which we (i.e. Paul) have preached unto you, let him be accursed”).
He also directly owns up that his own preaching was based not on any record or transcript of Jesus' ministry, or on any study or verbal instruction, but solely on whatever invention popped into his head at the moment (Galatians 1:11-12; "But I certify to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ."). He even begins this letter by admitting that he has never actually been appointed an apostle or had his position as a self-proclaimed apostle recognised in any way by the genuine ones. He acknowledges that his single flimsy "authority" for claiming to be an apostle was his own ego, which prompted him to believe himself approved of, in his own imagination, by Jesus and God (Galatians 1:1; "Paul, an apostle [not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father..."]).
The Invention of "Christ"
The majority of Jesus' followers, as the verse from Acts 9:26 quoted above (“…they were all afraid of him…”) confirms, were very sceptical about Paul and his claim to now be championing their movement, but their leader James, sometimes called James the Elder or James of Jerusalem, Jesus' own brother (see Mark 6:3: "Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon?" and Galatians 1:19: "...but other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother") seems to grudgingly accept him and decides to delegate to him a mission to Tarsus, Paul’s home town, to preach the message of the actual disciples of Jesus.
Paul is palpably dominated by his own ego, maybe resenting the unfriendliness of Jesus’ followers, whose comrades he has persecuted and killed, and perhaps even still influenced psychologically by a Pharisee notion of seeking to destroy the humanistic truths which Jesus had taught, a message which many strict Jews perceived as containing criticisms and violations of the established Jewish religion (the very reason the Jewish hierarchy had demanded Jesus’ execution). Paul takes it upon himself to abandon his legitimate brief and instead, without any apostolic mandate whatsoever, travels round various towns and cities of the Mediterranean for a number of years “shooting his mouth off” on matters about which he evidently cares little or nothing for the actual truth.
It is during this period that Paul invents his own religion, the doctrines of which begin the process of decisively overwriting the true historical figure of Jesus and most of his original teachings. Instead of “Jesus” (Yeshu), Paul decides that the title Mashiach (“Messiah”) from Jewish prophesy is more appropriate. According to the sacred writings of the Hebrews which went on to become the Old Testament (particularly Exodus 29:29, Leviticus 4:3, 1 Samuel 10:1 & 24:7 and Isaiah 61:1), priests, kings and prophets should be anointed with a consecrated oil. In Low Latin, holy oil was chrisma. From this, the Latin and Greek translation of the Jewish Mashiach adopted by Paul became Christus (Latin) and Christos (Greek) from which much later emerged the personal appellation Christ, to mean "the anointed one" or “he who is anointed”. (Low Latin as spoken and written in the Middle Ages is defined as lasting from the fall of Rome under the 5th century barbarian invasions until the schism of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, being a degenerative form of the classical Latin that began as early as the time of Cicero and which later developed unchecked into more uncouth styles with the loss of the Roman Empire. Some authorities date the Middle Ages only from the fall of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine [Eastern Roman] Empire in the 11th century, but by then the purer Latin of Classical times was already considerably debased.)
The standardised spelling Christ in English dates only from the 17th century when, after the Restoration of Charles II and the onset of the “Age of Reason” during which education became fashionable, the spelling of certain words was changed to fit their Greek or Latin origins more closely. Prior to this the word was also spelled Crist, the i being pronounced both as “ee”, as in “machine”, preserved in the names of churches such as St Katherine Cree (Leadenhall Street, London), or as a short “i” as in “mist”, preserved in the modern pronunciation of Christmas. The term “Christ” appears in English and most other European languages because of the Greek usage of Christos in the New Testament as a title for Jesus. In the (pre-Christian) Septuagint version of the Old Testament, the word “christ” was used simply as a Greek translation of the Hebrew word mashiach meaning "[one who is] anointed", and of course in Old Testament times this title of “christ” was never a personal name and had no connection with the man Jesus who had not then been born. While many Christian writers claim that this term implies Jewish tradition had given this title to their predicted future saviour ready for Jesus to inherit, there is actually no "saviour" concept whatsoever, as defined in Christianity, in the Jewish tradition. Mashiach the "anointed one” more closely means “high priest”, “leader”, or even “ruler”.
The Greek word “Christ” is equivalent with “chrism”, meaning perfumed oil and is related to the Greek chrios "I rub, anoint"; in fact Christos in classical Greek usage could mean covered in oil, and is thus a literal and accurate translation of messiah, any person appropriately anointed with oil. The Greek term is thought to derive from the Proto-Indo-European root of ghrei-, from which derives the Sanskrit ghrish "to rub, grind" and which in Germanic languages, such as English, mutated into gris- and grim-. Hence the English words grisly, grim, grime, grist, grind and grease, are thought to be related with Christ. In French, the Greek term, in ordinary usage, mutated first to cresme and then to creme, due to the loss of certain “s” usages in French grammar, which was then absorbed into English as cream, the modern word for a cosmetic “anointing” substance or anointment (hence the contracted word ointment). The word “christos” came to be used in Greek contexts (the New Testament was first written in Greek) as an actual personal title referring to the status or designation of the person anointed, rather than to the actual process of anointment with oil (much as the term “the Crown” came to mean the person and office of a monarch and not just their headgear).
It has been pointed out (by Tom Harpur, a former professor of Theology at the University of Toronto) that the Christian usage of the term Christ may even possibly originate from Egypt. Harpur has argued that the application of the term Christ to Jesus may derive from the Egyptian use of the term Karast (“covered in embalming oil”) to describe the god Horus, from whose pagan mythology some of the aspects of the newly-emerging Christian theology may have been inspired. For example, the death and resurrection of Horus-Osiris, and Horus' nature as both the son of Osiris and Osiris himself, have been seen as foundations for the later Christian doctrines of the resurrection of Jesus and the Trinity. Some have claimed that certain elements of the story of Jesus were embellishments copied from the legends surrounding Horus. Indeed, some even claim more extremely that the story of Christ was copied entirely from Horus, especially the infancy narratives, and fashioned into the figure of a Jewish teacher.
According To Whose Gospel?
It can be conspicuously noticed by carefully studying the New Testament that the real apostles are manifestly disturbed to hear reports of Paul's teachings. James accordingly arranges for approved pursuers from amongst the apostles, particularly Barnabus, to go after him in order to undo the damage he is causing and try to detain him “in bondage” (as Paul himself puts it in the Bible) because Paul is spreading inventions that conflict with the reality of Jesus as directly experienced by the apostles who had known him in life. The official Christian line is that Barnabas (whose name was Joseph until he joined the apostles and took a new name) was a friend and colleague of Paul’s who travelled out to Tarsus to see how the message of Christ was being preached to the Gentiles. A thorough reading of the biblical text, however, suggests that events were actually very different and that Barnabas, who had earlier acted as Paul’s go-between with the apostles, was now dispatched to be his investigator and judge. (Who better to assess Paul’s indiscretions and undo his damage than the man who had inadvisably sponsored this loose canon to the apostles in the first place?)
There is evidence in the New Testament that Barnabas, far from remaining Paul’s faithful companion in the preaching of a common gospel as Christian myth holds, completely disapproved of Paul’s teachings and finally abandoned him in disgust (Acts 11:22: "Then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem: and they sent forth Barnabas..." Acts 11:25: "Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: and when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch"). The Bible does not say at this juncture “…he asked him to go with him to Antioch” or “…they decided to go…” or “…they went together…” The phrase used is the peremptory “…he brought him…”, as a superior would bring a reluctant offender. The apostle Peter, probably Jesus' closest friend and companion throughout his entire ministry, met them at Antioch. However, Paul irately refuses to eat humble pie, resenting being made to explain himself to Jesus' friend, and the two men parted in great anger, Barnabas rejecting Paul and following Peter (Galatians 2:11: “But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face…" Acts 15:39: “And the contention was so sharp between them that they departed asunder one from the other…”)
The words specifically used to describe this parting are departed asunder, an English translation of the Greek words chorista and apochorizo. It should be born in mind that these words are used elsewhere in the Bible to indicate not a simple “farewell” or reluctant parting but something violent and dramatic, as in Revelation 6:14; “…And the heaven departed (apochorizo) as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places”. “Chorista” (asunder) means “aloof”, “apart”, “separately” and can mean abandoning a husband or wife, and also divorce. Applied to friends or colleagues, it signifies the association is irremediably terminated. These candid admissions and the deliberate usage of such extreme words hardly suggests a group of visionary friends, united in their dedication to a single belief and a single common purpose, bidding each other a fond farewell as they head in different directions.
That the genuine apostles were furious with Paul, and that Barnabus abandoned him, is proven by Galatians 2:12 & 13, where Paul himself writes: “...For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles; but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.” Put in modern language, the chief apostle James had mixed with Gentiles (non-Jews) in a spirit of friendship (ate with them), as had Jesus, until it became known that Paul was attempting to recruit an army of Gentiles to the support of his new religious ideas. Then, when they had caught up with Paul, James changed his behaviour back to more strictly Jewish custom (he withdrew and separated himself from eating with Gentiles and only ate in the company of other Jews) for fear of the condemnation of the other Jewish apostles (“them that were of the circumcision”) who were enraged with Paul. These passages continue (Galatians 2:13): “…And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him: insomuch that Barnabus also was carried away with their dissimulation…” or, in modern terms, Paul is complaining; “And the other Jewish apostles criticised me likewise as James did, to such an extent that Barnabus fully agreed with what they were saying against me.”
Harassed by enforcers from amongst the genuine apostles who are anxious to set the record straight by advising the listening public of Paul’s lies (Acts 15:22-24: “Then it pleased the apostles… to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch… forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us [i.e. Paul] have troubled you with words, subverting your souls…”), Paul eventually has to pluck up the courage to return to Jerusalem where he faces those whose trust and mission he has betrayed, Jesus’ actual followers. He is forced to confess to the apostles that he was preaching an artificial account of Jesus, not their gospel but “…my gospel…”, a different one invented by himself which, the Bible makes clear, the apostles had not authorised or even known before this meeting (Galatians 2:2: "And I... communicated unto them (the apostles) that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles." Romans 2:16: “…in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel...”).
In passages such as these, the New Testament confirms the existence of two opposed and mutually-contradicting versions of Jesus’ history – Paul’s own home-made fabrication (“…my gospel…” which was “…the gospel I preach among the gentiles”… which had to be “…communicated…” to the apostles because they had never heard it before) and the factual information and eyewitness memories maintained by the surviving apostles who had personally known Jesus and been taught by him, and in all likelihood had already been set down in writing by them, which Paul angrily dismisses as “…another gospel…” (Galatians 1:6) altogether different to his.
In the second epistle to the Corinthians (11:3-4) Paul himself states explicitly that the genuine apostles are proclaiming "another gospel" and “another Jesus, whom we have not preached”; in other words, a Jesus completely different from the one Paul has fabricated - Paul who had never even met the real Jesus and who has distorted, expurgated and entirely re-devised the details of Jesus’ life to create a completely different story to that remembered and recorded by the genuine apostles who followed Jesus personally and had, unlike Paul, received Jesus’ personal mandate to go out into the world and teach as he had taught.
It is also confessed by Paul that whilst the apostles preached one kind of gospel to the Jewish community ("the circumcised"), he was preaching something entirely different to the Gentiles ("the uncircumcised"): "...when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter..." (Galatians 2:7). This also shows that he had already in his own estimation elevated himself to the position of chief competitor, and indeed (as evidenced by his linking of the two opposing gospels to the divisive issue of circumcision) chief contradictor, of Jesus’ personal friend the apostle Peter. This egotistical opinion of Paul’s that he had been charged by God to preach a different message to the non-Jewish world than the apostles were teaching to the Jewish converts is confirmed by his next remark (Galatians 2:8): “…for he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles…”). Or in other words, if Peter claimed a spiritual authority, so could Paul: sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Furthermore, Paul confesses that the other apostles had tried to forbid him from preaching, because he continued to improvise his dubious "gospel" from his own imagination and not from any legitimate eye-witness account given to him by the apostles: "...to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention... ye received it not as the word of men... and (they, i.e. the apostles) have persecuted us... forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles..." (1 Thessalonians 2:2-16). Additionally, in the same verses, Paul specifically and petulantly accuses the real apostles of being burdensome to his own ambitions, whilst also letting slip by his use of words his own differentiation from the genuine apostles of Jesus: “…nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome, as the apostles of Christ.”
The real apostles, a majority of whom were Jewish and considered Jesus equally Jewish, were also outraged by Paul's accusation that anyone who had been circumcised (i.e. all good male Jews) would be completely rejected by Christ (Galatians 5:2-4: "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.")
“The law” refers to the Law of Moses, i.e. the Jewish religion which requires ritual male circumcision, a bris, on the eighth day after birth at which time a name is also officially bestowed. Paul was circumcised (Philippians 3:5; “…Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews…”) and Jesus himself was also circumcised (Luke 2:21), but by this time Paul appears to have firmly renounced Judaism and to be ranting against those amongst the apostles who saw Jesus’ purpose as being to establish a less corrupt observance of the Jewish religion and, therefore, as being a purer version of Judaism rather than representing an entirely new belief altogether, as Paul was attempting to manufacture. In the passage from Galatians 5 quoted above can be identified the starting point of Paul’s divorcing of Yeshu (“Jesus”) the human Jewish teacher from “Christ” his new artificial god.
There followed substantial acrimonious running arguments, again giving the lie to the popular myth of a unified “band of brothers” spreading the “word of Christ”, during which Paul records that he had in fact returned to Jerusalem with great trepidation and spoken at first privately to those apostles he considered least dangerous to him, in order to “test the water” and discover whether or not he should flee from the general anger of the apostles, whom he now viewed as opponents (“false brethren”); “…and I communicated... privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain… because of false brethren…” (Galatians 2:2).
It seems that any of the apostles who opposed Paul’s schemes and propaganda were hysterically condemned by him as “false brethren”, for he uses the phrase more than once when members of the genuine apostles attempt to out-manoeuvre his plots, as he himself records in his own letters (epistles), almost foaming at the mouth with rage when a group of the apostles, without at first revealing to him who they were, investigated the liberties Paul was taking in his teaching about Jesus and again threatened him with “arrest” (“bondage”) in Galatians 2:4; “…And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Jesus Christ, that they might bring us into bondage…”
The Reverend Robert Mackintosh, Professor of Christian Ethics, Apologetics and Sociology and lecturer at the University of Manchester (writing in Peake’s Commentary, 1919) points out that due to these investigations and the general hostility of the apostles, “…The career of Paul is at stake” and although “…reluctant to …subordinate himself…he is willing to risk anything”. Professor Mackintosh comments dryly: “Things cannot have developed altogether smoothly.”
In Acts 21:17-26 the leaders of the apostles meet in an assembly to consider the problem of Paul (Acts 21:18-19; “…And the day following Paul went in with us unto James; and all the elders were present. And when he had saluted them, he declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry”). As Professor Mackintosh points out, the genuine apostles at this time represent multitudes of Jews who believe in the teaching of Jesus (Yeshu) but are still strictly Jewish and uphold the Jewish religious laws and customs, finding absolutely no dichotomy in this and regarding the true facts of Jesus (prior to the addition of embroideries) as being perfectly compatible with Judaism as they perceive it.
Paul, on the other hand, is accused of exhorting Jews who live in those other regions he has been visiting to desert the Law of Moses, to abandon the practice of circumcision and to cease living according to the Jewish religious laws and customs because this is necessary in order to join his cult. After hearing Paul’s defence of his theories, the leaders of the Apostles condemn Paul and inform him that they have spiked his guns by spreading a general warning about him (…”they are informed of thee…”) with their statement “…Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law (i.e. they are all perfectly good Jews who obey the Law of Moses): and they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs.” (Acts 21:20-21)
In an attempt at reconciliation, the apostles come up with an idea which they offer to Paul. He should make the effort to repair his bad publicity amongst the Jews and appear once more to be a law-abiding follower of Judaism by joining a small group of four men who are planning to visit the temple to discharge a religious vow, and undertake to demonstrate his piety by paying for the expenses of the group, which would actually be considerable, requiring amongst other things the purchase of two lambs and a ram for each of the five of them to offer as the required sacrifices. It is carefully explained to Paul that such an act will help to reunite the two sundered groups, the followers of Jesus and the Christians of Paul. (Acts 21:22; “…the multitude must needs come together…”) Agreeing to this proposal, since the general warning about him issued by the Apostles is likely to deprive him of his audience amongst the Jews and possibly many of the Gentiles as well, Paul visits the temple with the four others in order to mark the commencement of a seven-day period of ritual purification according to Jewish custom.
Paul versus the Apostles: the Court Cases
However, as detailed in Acts 21:26 to 28:31, near the end of the seven days Paul routinely visits the temple in Jerusalem in order to complete the ritual purification and is suddenly recognised and denounced as a preacher against the Judaic religion and religious laws by some of the people there.
The crowd starts to violently attack Paul and shows signs of rapidly developing into a lynch mob. He is rescued by a squad of Roman soldiers who run to investigate the disturbance and whose tribune, Claudius Lysias, arrests Paul as a probable troublemaker. (There was a Roman garrison of one cohort [nominally 600 men at that time] plus a small cavalry unit, based in the Antonia Tower at the north-west corner of the temple precincts and connected to the temple by two flights of steps.) In view of the angry accusations of the mob, Paul is later brought for trial before the Sanhedrin (the Jewish theocratic council). The Sanhedrin is divided regarding his guilt, the Pharisees amongst them supporting Paul’s innocence (we shall consider this strange fact in a moment) and the proceedings descend into such a furore that, again, the same tribune has to order his soldiers to rescue Paul from the risk of being pulled to pieces, and he is imprisoned in the Roman fort, partly for his own protection. His case comes before the Roman procurator of Judea, Antonius Felix at Cæsarea.
As a Roman citizen, Paul presses for his right to be judged by the emperor himself, and eventually Porcius Festus, the new Roman procurator who had succeeded Felix about 58 AD, agrees to send him to Rome for judgement. (Acts 25:12: "...Then Festus, when he had conferred with the council, answered, Hast thou appealed unto Caesar? unto Caesar shalt thou go."
As can readily be understood, there would have been a lengthy list of people waiting for the emperor's personal decision on their fate. Paul is taken to Rome but not imprisoned, being kept under house arrest with a single guard, and he is free to receive visitors (Acts 28:16: "...but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him." Acts 28:23: "... there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified..." and the wait for his imperial judgement date gives Paul ample time to inject his deceptive religious inventions into the very heart of the Roman empire in the years before he dies (Acts 28:30-31: "...And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him..."
(There is no record in the New Testament or any other contemporary document regarding how or when Paul actually died. There is no way of knowing whether his appeal to the emperor was successful or not, although success is rather doubtful as the emperor concerned was Nero [ruled AD 54-68] and there is no further mention of Paul in history. A Church tradition, which has no provable historical basis, holds that Paul was beheaded in Rome about 64-67 AD by order of Nero, who is known to have certainly instituted a pogrom against Christians. An additional and equally undocumented tradition claims he was buried in the Via Ostiensis.)
These events resulted in the fact that the first detailed account of Jesus to be introduced to Rome was Paul’s new glittering invention rather than the authentic version of the genuine apostles. The plain fact is that the religion Paul introduced to Roman culture, which eventually evolved into Christianity as we know it, was not based on the true facts of Jesus as acknowledged and preserved by the actual apostles and surviving disciples.
There is an intriguing question raised by part of the New Testament account – did the Pharisees in the temple council (Sanhedrin) decide to be sympathetic to a former member of their own number, Saul or St. Paul, and if so, for what reason? The account in the Bible is so strange and contradictory on this point that the reader must be left to weigh up the given information for themselves. The situation is complex, but can be broken down into easily understandable issues.
The important point is this: after Paul was arrested at the temple, at his trial before the council it was the Pharisee lawyers (scribes) who supported his innocence (“…And there arose a great cry: and the scribes that were of the Pharisees’ part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man…” Acts 23:9). It is clear that the Pharisees in the council are on Paul’s side and certainly do not regard whatever Paul is teaching to be in any way offensive to their own particular interpretation of the Judaic religion. This rather begs the question; is there anything particular about Paul’s preaching that is not part of the teaching of the genuine apostles but is recognised by the Pharisees as being compatible or convergent with their own beliefs, even though Paul had spoken against many Jewish religious requirements, and especially something out of which they could make political capital in the council against the opinions of their rivals, the Sadducees? (Acts 23:7; “…there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees…”).
There is, indeed, one common denominator in Paul’s preaching and the Pharisees’ particular interpretation of Judaism – the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead and a “final day of judgement” by their god, whereas the Sadducees specifically did not (Acts 23:8; “…For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both…”) It would be small wonder, then, that the Pharisees, politically disposed to disagree in the council with the Sadducees and their supporters on any debatable issue, would choose to interpret any teaching of general resurrection given out by Paul to be compatible, or at least not in direct conflict, with their own belief and thereby score a point against their rivals by backing Paul.
If this veiled reference embedded within the New Testament is indeed so, it means that the genuine followers of Jesus led by those who had been with him personally during his ministry and at his death did not acknowledge, believe in or teach the resurrection of Christ.
And there is another relevant and intriguing question arising from these recorded events: the crowd in the Temple precinct were angered because they knew of Paul’s criticisms of Judaism; but Paul was one anonymous Jewish man amongst a teeming mass of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jewish men. Someone must have pointed out Paul amongst the teeming multitude in the temple courtyards and so clearly and specifically identified him that a mob immediately formed around him and tried to lynch him. It should be remembered that amongst a far smaller group of Jewish men Jesus himself had to be pointed out to his hunters by Judas Iscariot before he could be identified. It must also be born in mind that Paul had been absent from Jerusalem for many years and, going about his normal temple ablutions, would hardly be a recognisable public figure: he would be a nonentity in the crowds, identifiable perhaps only because he was in the company of four equally Jewish members of the apostle’s Church - who, significantly, were themselves untouched and ignored by the mob when it attacked. Only Paul was the subject of the violence of the crowd. As we would say today, who put the finger on Paul?
Could it possibly be that the apostles themselves had deliberately orchestrated Paul’s visit to the temple – it was, after all, their suggestion - and then sent someone there to identify and denounce him in public, in order to accomplish the exact result that was achieved – Paul’s removal from circulation? We have seen that the apostles had already tried on a few occasions to “arrest” Paul themselves (place him in “bondage”), and we know that as mere private citizens they had no actual civic authority to do any such thing legally, so that Paul was able to walk away free from their anger, as he did at Antioch. Could his arrest in the temple be the consequence of a deliberate plot by the apostles to have him removed one way or another without, as it were, “getting their own hands dirty”?
This is neither a far-fetched nor ridiculous suggestion, and it has been pondered by many, even by some profound Christian thinkers. For example, the Reverend Allan Menzies, Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews, in his 1919 analysis of the Bible’s Acts of the Apostles (included in the excellent Commentary on the Bible edited by Professor Peake, Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd 1919) goes so far as to state that when Paul arrived in Jerusalem: “…he presents himself to James with his retinue, and finds the elders, i.e. the governing body of the Church, assembled to receive them. His report to them is given as in 14:27, 15:4. Nothing is said of the subvention from the churches of Macedonia and Greece. The elders have already been considering Paul’s arrival, the painful impressions which prevail about him and doubtless… the elders have thought of a plan…”
These are speculative matters which cannot be completely resolved in the light of presently available information and, although the New Testament account is certainly extremely suggestive and redolent with intrigue, they must be left entirely to the reader’s personal preferential opinion.
Rather than attempting to convert people to the truths of Jesus’ simple form of discovering the divine within themselves by using techniques of inner tranquillity, self-honesty, humility, introspection and yoga-like development of the inner self, which he tried to reveal by his own example and teaching, Paul instead launches a Cult of Jesus that came to be called Christianity, while the strictly monotheistic Judaism and Jesus’ brand of humanitarian evolution through complete self-honesty and elimination of hypocrisy within the framework of a righteous interpretation of the Jewish religion is virtually disowned. In effect, Paul teaches instead that Jesus is a god in his own right who must be worshipped instead of other pagan gods in order for a person to collect sufficient merit marks to escape from the curse of the “original sin” of Jewish myth that everyone supposedly inherits from Eve (whether they know it or not).
Jesus advocated the worship of the Jewish God, in the strict monotheistic Judaic sense, but in the light of the purer techniques of self-honesty and introspection required to open the selfhood to higher realms of spirit and a complete purgation of hypocrisy and self-interest, referred to as the light of God, or Kingdom of Heaven. It is clear from the New Testament that Jesus saw his own mission as, in effect, prompting a "cleansing" or "purifying" of what he (and many other Jewish dissidents of his time) saw as the hypocritical political and financial corruption that had gripped the higher echelons of Judaism and was steering it off course. (As evidenced, for example, by Jesus’ violent physical assault on the temple moneylenders and his running verbal fencing matches with the “scribes and Pharisees” over the precise interpretation of the Jewish religious laws etc.)
Paul throws this away and substitutes for it, on nothing but his own sanction and against the will of the surviving apostles, the direct worship of Jesus as God. In Paul’s teaching, Jesus is distorted into an object of religious veneration, in effect a new god, a concept which Jesus himself and his true followers would have condemned as being totally blasphemous and pagan to their strictly Judaic beliefs, in which the only gods who fathered offspring were pagan deities.
(This last factor - that it is considered the mythology of a pagan god to father children on human mothers and that this would not be the case for a perfect singular spiritual entity - is one of the major theological contentions preventing Islam from conceding any validity to the assertions of Christianity.)
6. Exercising Judgement
"The tendency to turn human judgements into divine commands
makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world"
Georgia Elma Harkness (1891-1974), theologian..
Heavens Above!
It is beyond dispute that many other religions earlier than Christianity also postulated the notion of some form of “terminal day of judgement” that would serve to destroy all opponents or disbelievers of the particular religion while, at the same time, generating some form of guaranteed afterlife in paradise for all its supporters; and - the psychology of religious recruitment being what it is - such promises would be less than glittering if the promised passport to eternal bliss did not also include all those within the belief who had already been unfortunate enough to die before the final judgement day could be arranged.
The religious concept of the resurrection of humans after physical death is therefore neither unique to Christianity not does it originate there. The Aztecs, for instance, believed the god Quetzalcoatl could grant physical resurrection. There are two varieties of such a concept; that of a god who could suffer a mortal death and afterwards return to earth again in physical living form (for example, Osiris); and that of a similar process extended to the entire mass of ordinary people who are believers in a god but are not gods themselves. Sometimes, as in Christianity, both varieties are included in religions that espouse such things. In Islam, resurrection will not occur to anybody until the time of Al-Qiyamah, the Day of Judgement, and the faithful dead remain in Al-Akhirah (the afterlife, or heavenly paradise) until that time; “…It is Allah who sends forth the winds, so that they raise up the clouds, and we drive them to a land that is dead, and revive the earth therewith after its death: even so, the resurrection!” (Koran, 35:9.)
The idea of a god who is killed and then returns to mortal life to bestow a shining new improved brand of life to his people originates in the very ancient and widespread pagan belief in the “Harvest King”, also known as the “Sacrificial King” or “Divine King”, a typical variety of which takes the form of selecting a suitable candidate who is kept alive - in some versions of the belief in as much luxury as is available - until the time of the harvest when he is ritually killed, sometimes (but not always) with his blood being ceremonially sprinkled on the fields in order to “renew the vigour of life” in the ground to ensure the success of the next harvest, thereby “returning to life” in the form of a kind-of “absorption”, having been thus transformed into bread and other crop-products such as wine and then being eaten by his people. (This particular pagan belief is part of the plot of the 1973 Robin Hardy film The Wicker Man written by Anthony Shaffer.) In this pagan belief can also be found the origin of the ceremony of the Eucharist, in which, again, the blood and flesh of the sacrificed god-man is ritually transformed into the harvest products wine and bread and eaten by his followers.
According to the pagan way, the Divine King should be chosen by the people rather than inherit the position in the normal manner of kingship. At the end of his allotted reign, he should go willingly and voluntarily to his own sacrifice, which has already been carefully arranged. It is known that pagan beliefs continued to be widely observed well into Christian times, with many pagan elements being incorporated into Christianity (for example, Father Christmas, the Christmas tree, the Yule log, Easter eggs, the Easter Bunny, the Harvest Festival, Candlemass etc. etc.) and there is a possible example of the continuation of this ritual sacrifice of a “Harvest King” lingering into English medieval history.
After the death of William I (“The Conqueror”) in 1087, the Norman barons headed by the Conqueror’s brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, chose Robert, one of William’s sons, to be the next King of England. Their motivation was that Robert was a weak character, easy to control and lead, so – they hoped - the barons would become the real controlling power in the land. However, William the Conqueror had left much of the governmental institutions of England in place during his reign, including the old Anglo-Saxon council or “parliament”, the Witan. Therefore, under English law at that time, only the Witan could elect a king. Another of the Conqueror’s sons, William Rufus, was far more popular than his brother Robert, and was duly chosen by the people, or at least by their representative body. Robert had to settle for becoming Duke of Normandy, while William Rufus became King William II of England.
In the year 1100, towards the end of July, it is on record that rumours of some unnamed threat to the king’s life became rife throughout much of England, especially amongst the native (Anglo-Saxon) population. When the king proposed to ride out hunting in the New Forest (“New” because it had been especially designated not long before as a hunting reservation), his Norman friends tried very hard to dissuade him, being troubled by the mounting rumours of his imminent death. William, however, called for his horse and rode off with his brother Henry (soon to become King Henry I), his best friend Walter Tyrrel and a Norman baron William de Breteuil, together with an accompaniment of servants and aids.
The hunting party soon separated in the pursuit of deer. Suddenly a cry was heard and the word was shouted from mouth to mouth that the king had been killed. When the others galloped up, they found the king stretched upon the ground with a single arrow through his heart. The date was 2nd August – the day after the pagan festival of Lughnassadh, the traditional time of the slaying of the Harvest King1. The identity of the assassin was never discovered, but it was as obvious then as it is today that such a single shot to the heart must have been fired from a short distance directly in front of the victim; the king, then, must have been facing his killer at close range, perhaps even talking to him – perhaps even deliberately exposing his unprotected breast to the shot? Could it have been not a straightforward assassination but, rather, a deliberately arranged and mutually agreed ritual sacrifice of a man who was selected to be a “Harvest King”? After all, although the nominal religion was then Christianity, paganism had ruled only four generations before and evidently still lingered beneath the surface of native society. The event was certainly hushed-up and no attempt was made to find the assassin, and – perhaps significantly and certainly extraordinarily – no Christian prayers or services were held in any church, monastery or cathedral for the deceased monarch. ”No man asked how he died; no inquiry was made; no bell was tolled; no prayer was raised…” (Professor J. M. D. Meiklejohn: A New History of England and Great Britain, 1897). It is unlikely that the mystery will ever be adequately solved.
The religious idea of physical resurrection (“in the flesh”) of suitable believers who are not gods but ordinary mortals can be traced back at least as far as Zoroastrianism, a Persian religion whose foundation can be dated to at least the middle of the 5th century BC when it begins to appear in written records, and is likely to be much older. Zoroastrianism also included a belief in a final judgement of all humans. These concepts would have been known from Persia (Iran) by the Jews and would have become familiar and attractive to Jewish religious leaders at this exact period, because it coincided with the time when the Jewish religion was forced by the captivity in Babylon (roughly a hundred years after the Assyrians had reduced the twelve tribes to two) to question its very foundations due to the perceived failure of their god to honour his covenant with his “chosen” Jewish people.
At this time of conquest, ruin and slavery originated two important new aspects within Jewish religion: firstly the depressing “apocalyptic literature”, some of which is included in the Bible’s Old Testament (the Book of Daniel is an example), and secondly a new belief that the control of the world must have somehow escaped from God and been claimed instead by an evil spirit who came to be called Satan (this concept is explored in greater detail in chapter 10). The notion of a forthcoming Day of Judgement and a restoration to physical life of those who had, so it seemed at that troubled time, been betrayed by a god who had not lived up to his promise, offered a way to excuse the god and explain how he could still retain his honour and supremacy by reconstructing, or at least re-emphasising, the religion itself, so that the victimised, defeated and downtrodden Hebrew people would win after all in the end, gaining their revenge in a forthcoming world constructed this time according to their specifications.
However, this Jewish proposal of resurrection was not exactly like that of the later Christianity, for it mainly consisted of gilgul neshamot, or reincarnation. In this belief – which literally means “judgement of the revolution of souls” – people who had committed wrongs were allowed to return to earth as a newborn infant (gilgulim) so that they could attempt to undo whatever wrong they had done and thereby purge their offence before they were judged by God at a final heavenly Judgement Day.
By the time of Jesus (as confirmed in the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus amongst other sources) the most powerful of the political divisions of the temple priesthood at Jerusalem were the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees, Tsdoki in Hebrew, were a religio-political party believed to be followers of Zadok, the High Priest who anointed King Solomon, and therefore were inclined toward a pre-captivity interpretation of Judaism, believing firmly that death was always final and irreversible and rejecting reincarnation and resurrection; (“…The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection…” Matthew 22:23). The Pharisees became a powerful party after the return from the Babylonian exile (the Second Temple period which began in 536 BC when the temple was rebuilt in Jerusalem and ended in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed it again). They believed in the largely exile-induced idea of gilgul neshamot (or ha’atakah), a resurrection through reincarnation to right a great wrong. There were many debates and arguments between the two rival sects before the Sadducees disappeared from history around the end of the 1st century AD, leaving the Pharisees to survive unopposed to evolve into modern rabbinical Judaism.
Getting Their Acts Together
If Jesus’ real facts and personal history were to be polished up so that he could be posthumously twisted into a new kind of god-figure, not only would much emphasis have to be changed, but new pieces would need to be grafted-on to fill the gaps and make the story more spectacular. Where would Paul have found suitable religious material for this purpose? It is a fact that anybody living at that time, in such a multi-cultural empire with so many different religions and assorted gods flourishing all over the place, would have an almost inexhaustible fund of religious “jigsaw pieces” from which to select their ideal composite - far more than there would be in the present Western and Middle Eastern world for instance - and Paul set about stitching together his result. Let us look at a few examples of the options available to him, and see if any of them strike a familiar note.
Many of the popular gods were born of virgin mothers. In fact, it was the ancient fashion for gods to be born of virgins, and to be fully accepted as a divine being it was helpful for a figure to have this “credential”. The pagan gods Tammuz, Osiris, Ra, Attis, Dionysus and Zoroaster, among many others, were all supposed to have been born without sin, and therefore to have been perfect beings, because their birth resulted from the union of a god with a virgin. The Greek god Zeus, most important of all the Olympian pantheon, fathered children on virgins, such as Danae the mother of Perseus, whom he descended upon in the guise of a shower of gold.
The biblical myth of a “virgin birth” that precludes the possibility of “original sin” actually arises from a combination of confirmable human errors. It first rears its head in the Old Testament prophesy of Isaiah (7:14): "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son..." However, this passage is a misleading Greek translation made in the Septuagint during the third century B.C. In the original Hebrew text the word “almah” is used, meaning simply a young woman of marriageable age but not specifically a virgin. When this was translated into Greek (the language of a culture in which marriage customs were rather different to those of the Hebrews) the word “parthenos” (an actual virgin) was substituted as the nearest Greek equivalent, thus giving rise to the original error. Later, Paul and his followers adopted the notion of a virgin birth for Jesus partly to contrive the fulfilling of the (actually non-existent) prophesy of Isaiah, and partly as a nod to the familiar ideas of paganism to reinforce their claim that Jesus was a form of god in his own right.
The religion of Mithraism, in particular, exerted a powerful influence on the emerging Christian fabrications. For a long time afterwards, Mithraism was considered to be the only serious rival in popularity to Christianity. There was a temple of Mithras in Roman London (on the grounds of Temple Court in Queen Victoria Street). The worship of this pagan god was not only widespread amongst the soldiers of the Roman legions, and not only were its tenets thoroughly acceptable to the Roman way of thought, but it also enjoyed a somewhat favoured position among all the varied religious beliefs of the empire. It existed for at least six centuries prior to the birth of Jesus, originating in Persia and spreading to many other lands.
As Paul would have known well, according to the tenets of Mithraism, Mithras (or Mithra) was born in a grotto; shepherds attended his birth and the baby Mithras was presented with gifts. Believers were baptised into the Mithraic religion. The worshippers of Mithras observed a holy communion, during which it is on record that the following passage occurred, read out solemnly by the officiating priest: “He who shall not eat of my body nor drink of my blood so that he may be one with me and I with him, shall not be saved.” Followers of Mithras believed in a forthcoming day of judgment that would lead to a physical resurrection of all true believers climaxed by a second coming of Mithras himself. In the centuries after Paul had patched together his own vision of what Christianity should be, the known facts of the Mithraic religion - which was contemporary with early Christianity and so well known that its precepts could not be ignored or swept under the carpet - became so embarrassing to the early Christians that Tertullian, one of the Fathers of the Church, had to fall back on the convenient, if rather pathetic and contrived, excuse that “the Devil” had, centuries before Christ, parodied the forthcoming Christian communion.
In India – a land certainly not unknown to first century Mediterranean cultures (Indian animals were used in the Roman arena) – the Buddha was said to have been born of the Virgin Maya, on 25th December, a date near the Winter Solstice, and his birth, according to legend, was proclaimed by a bright star and choirs of angelic beings: wise men attended with gifts. Buddha (the Enlightened One) is said to have taught in a temple at the age of 12, to have been tempted by the Evil One (Mara) whilst fasting, and he was baptised in water. Buddha is also said to have healed the sick, fed five hundred people from a basket of cakes, and to have walked on water. He claimed he came to fulfil the law and he preached that a kingdom of righteousness would be coming. His followers were told to renounce worldly things and adopt a life of poverty. Legend also has it that Buddha underwent a transfiguration on a mount, that he died and was buried in a tomb and rose again to life, the tomb being opened by spiritual power, before ascending into Nirvana (the Buddhist paradise). He will return again to earth, according to the beliefs of certain of his followers (although not in mainstream Buddhism in which deities are rejected) during the last days, in order to make judgement of the dead. Buddha was referred to as a carpenter, a sin-bearer, a good shepherd, a redeemer, and as the Light of the World. These aspects could not have been copied from Christianity, because Buddhism predates Christianity by about five hundred years.
Also from India, the Hindu god Krishna was said to have been born whilst his foster-father Nanda was visiting a city in order to pay his tax to the king. His birth was also proclaimed by the arrival of a star, and he was born in a cave to the Virgin Devaki, with cow herders present in adoration. The young Krishna’s death was desired by King Kansa who, in an attempt to encompass it, ordered the massacre of all male children born on the same night in the same town. The baby Krishna was smuggled away to safety in another land. Krishna performed many miracles, including healing lepers, the blind and deaf, and raising the dead. According to Hindu scripture, Krishna descended after death into the infernal regions from which he rose up on the third day and ascended into heaven. His worshippers believe he will return on the final day to judge the living and the dead, and he is the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Hinduism has existed from approximately 1,500 BC and the earliest known mention of Krishna in a text is in the Chandogva Upanishad from about 900 BC.
Closer to biblical lands, in Asia Minor, Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) was born of a virgin, baptised in a river, astonished wise men with his wisdom as a youth and began his ministry on earth at the age of 30. In the wilderness he was tempted by a devil. He cast out demons and cured a blind man. To his followers, he is said to have revealed the mysteries of heaven and hell, resurrection and judgement, salvation and the apocalypse. His faithful also celebrated a sacred Eucharistic meal and referred to him as “the World Made Flesh”. Faith in Zoroastrianism is believed to have existed as long ago as 1,400 to 1,000 BC, but even conservative historical estimates of the age of the belief accept that it is at least as old as 458 BC from which time specific records exist.
From these and various other sources, it can be seen that Paul fabricated an artificial pagan religious patchwork, entirely different to the understanding of the surviving apostles and their own approved teachings sanctioned by Jesus when alive: one that provided him with the message he preached during his journeys and whilst sojourning in Rome. Once started, the Pauline belief flared in the minds of many who heard it - as it had been deliberately designed to do - and its spread could not be readily halted or contained. Slowly at first, to be sure, and still coming up against fairly stiff opposition from various authorities, the Pauline religion of Christianity gathered converts who knew no better and had no access to any more accurate history or teaching.
As time went by, and after Paul’s death when other converted Christians took over the leadership of the cult, the adherents of the genuine Jewish humanitarian teachings of Jesus found themselves being first squeezed out and elbowed aside and then hounded out by the swelling ranks of those who, following the common desire of human nature for something better than the real world, found Paul’s artificial picture of Christ the new god, a “designer religion” as we might say today, to be more attractive than the reality of Jesus the man. Although the apostles had previously represented the true teachings and message of the historical Jesus, and although they had already established a network of such teachings in churches entirely separate from Paul’s, their followers now found themselves to be on the outside looking in, overtaken and disowned by the group of strangers who were calling themselves “Christians” and who were constantly being recruited to the entirely fabricated Pauline doctrine of Christianity.
Once the Pauline religion had established its advancing groundswell, gathering fanatics and martyrs as it went and eventually rewriting the most favoured Gospels so that they reflected only what Paul and his many successors wanted people to believe, it automatically became the “established orthodoxy”, and from that point on, anything which contradicted it became branded as “lies” and “heresy”. By the second century AD, any unedited teachings of Jesus originating with the apostles and their followers were already being branded as a form of heresy. The fact that Paul himself was the real heretic had been successfully twisted round by enforced dogma, and the very definition of Jesus’ mission had been hijacked, subverted and altered into something radically different. Whereas Jesus had attempted to teach people how to identify and overcome their hypocrisy, St. Paul had succeeded in fashioning the kernel of what history has consistently and unarguably proven to be the most unscrupulously hypocritical religious totalitarianism the world has ever known.
The Holy Roman Empire Arrives
In the year 312, there were two claimants to the throne of the Roman Empire, Constantine and his rival Maxentius. On the night before their armies met in a final battle, Constantine dreamed about a sign consisting of the Greek letters chi and rho, the first two letters of the name "Christ" in Greek. In the dream, he heard the words "by this sign you shall be the victor". On waking, he ordered his troops to paint the Chi-Rho monogram on their shields. Constantine won the battle and entered Rome at the head of a triumphant army with the Christian monogram emblazoned on their shields and the severed head of Maxentius born aloft on a spear. Pleased with developments, Constantine became quite enthusiastic about the power of the Christian "spell" to help win wars, eventually deciding to use his new authority as absolute ruler to ensure that Christianity was adopted as a fully recognised, and indeed favoured, religion in the Roman Empire.
Constantine's faith, however, remained shared with the traditional pagan gods of Rome, particularly Sol Invictus (the "Unconquerable Sun"), an aspect of Apollo the Roman sun god of which Constantine continued to remain the high priest. A celebratory medal from 313, a year after his supposed "conversion" to Christianity, shows the emperor beside this sun god, and he clearly accepted the notion of Christ in exactly the same way that he accepted the notion of Jupiter, Apollo, Venus and the rest, as a fickle god who must be placated in order to maintain continued good luck.
In order to ensure the continued appeasement of Christ, he financed such things as basilicas for the Christians, and he gave to their local leader, the Bishop of Rome, a redundant imperial palace on the Lateran Hill, from which one day would sprout the Vatican. (It was not until May 13th 1871 that the Papal States were by law reduced from some 17,000 square miles [44,000 square kilometres] and confined merely to this same Lateran palace, the nearby Vatican palace, and the villa of Castel Gandolfo. This law, passed by the Italian government, was not recognised by the papacy, and the friction led to the Lateran Treaty of February 11th 1929 between the Vatican and the Kingdom of Italy in which the Holy See was granted recognised autonomy as what amounts to a separate country, and the independent Vatican State as it is today was inaugurated.)
The various Christian thinkers in the Roman Empire, now that they had been allowed to legally "come out of the closet" without threat of persecution and the arena, soon found there were many important areas of disagreement regarding the essential concepts they wished to see incorporated into their vision of Christianity. For example, did Jesus eat, drink, urinate or excrete? Clement of Alexandria was offended at the idea that someone so holy would have had to attend to such bodily functions and decreed that Jesus had not been subject to any of them, to the widespread ridicule of other churchmen.
Many other spokesmen had their say on a range of different contentious issues, some farcical, some more profound. Perhaps most importantly, the Alexandrian Christian theologian Arius (c.250-336) was teaching that Jesus was certainly not fully divine and was not part of a trinitarian god; that is, that there was no trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit because the concept of God should be an indivisible single entity. His followers also advocated the notion that the logos was a personality in its own right, which was actually a Gnostic idea (Gnosticism will be covered in greater detail in the next chapter). In the growing climate of increasingly bitter theological argument, rival Christian factions are recorded by Roman writers as calling each other by acrimonious and insulting names. Tempers ran hot and violence occasionally spilled out into the streets.
Annoyed by this threat to law and order, Constantine summoned all the many and various Christian leaders, spokesmen and experts to the first ever council of all Christianity at the town of Nicaea in Asia Minor (today Iznik in Turkey). There was no such thing yet as Pope or any kind of central Christian authority or executive hierarchy controlling all Christian theological acceptance. The great administrative cities of the empire, Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, each had their own bishop who enjoyed unchallenged authority over worshippers and issues of doctrine within their individual geographical regions, but nobody at that time was acknowledged to hold any single authority over Christians everywhere.
Constantine's entire purpose was to force every Christian to accept one common stereotyped belief, regardless of the specific contents or ingredients that common belief might contain, so that internecine rivalry and the consequent civil tensions and unrest would cease (in unconscious parallel with the motives of King David a thousand years earlier). As absolute dictator, he was in a position to impose a final and utter decision of his own upon the conflicting divisions and opinions of the various Christian factions in order to secure the tranquillity of his empire. This council at Nicaea, some three hundred years after Jesus' death - as long after it as the year 2000 is after the reign of Queen Anne, the English monarch who bestowed a knighthood on Sir Isaac Newton - was responsible for a great many of the major aspects of later Christian belief.
For example, the official date of the Crucifixion was determined as being the first Sunday following the second full moon falling on or after the Vernal Equinox - the pagan method for fixing the appropriate date for the Rite of Spring. The English name of the festival of the crucifixion was eventually "borrowed" from this pagan ritual which was generally named after the goddess Ostara or Eostre, and it became "Easter" (as confirmed by the Anglo-Saxon scholar Bede [d.735] in De Temporum Ratione where he states that the fourth month of the Anglo-Saxon year is called Eosturmonath [“Easter-month”] after the goddess Eostre “…for whom they were accustomed to hold festivals at that season.”). (The method for fixing the date of Easter was necessary because the New Testament, like the Old, contains hundreds of contradictions [cf. appendix II]; in this case specifically, Matthew and Luke state the Last Supper was a Passover meal and the crucifixion happened a few days later, but according to John, the crucifixion took place on the day before the Passover. The exact date of the crucifixion is thus in doubt.)
In great part a measure against the teachings of Arius, now declared heretical, a specific required statement of faith was introduced, the Nicene Creed, which is still recited in many churches and which reinforces the theological assertion that the concept of a trinity is part of the essential core of “official” Christian belief – “…And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified…”
The Gospels were carefully selected and - echoing the treatment of the texts of the Old Testament - were constructively edited, somewhat inconsistently as we will see in detail later in this book. Sprinklings of miracles had already grown or were added to the texts. The Bishop of Rome was declared head bishop and “father” (papa or pope) of the Christian religion, those of Alexandria and Antioch losing out for the simple reason that it was far more convenient for the politically suspicious emperor to keep close tabs on a next-door neighbour in Rome than someone at the other end of his empire a thousand miles away who, out of sight, might be plotting anything.
Jesus' mother Miriam, or Mary as her Jewish name became in Latin, was decreed a permanent virgin, and the fact that she had had other children was largely played down, although the names of at least some of them are still known (see Galatians 1:19 and Mark 6:3). Documents and texts that contained anything disagreeing with what had been decreed were ordered to be rounded up and burned, although certain collections of them at the edge of the Roman Empire were hidden away for safety and have since been rediscovered, as we will shortly see.
The 32 Gospels
To the priests and worshippers of Apollo the pagan god of the Sun, the most important date in the calendar was the rebirth of the Sun at the Winter Solstice, a date of worldwide pagan importance. On Constantine's prompting, this date was fixed as the date of the birth of Jesus, which is actually totally unknown and never mentioned in the Bible.
Since the Jews were now blamed for "killing God" - surely a contradiction in terms if there ever was one - the Jewish sabbath (Saturday) was not considered suitable for the new Christian cult. Constantine filled the gap, again drawing upon his commitment to Apollo, making the holy day of the Sun god the new Christian sabbath, and Sun-day it has remained ever since. Those people in the present era who insist upon Sunday being the "Lord's Day" might be interested to learn that they are giving their energetic support to the commemoration of a pagan Sun god.
No original unedited version of the New Testament exists from earlier than the reign of Constantine. The New Testament as we know it is not a product of Jesus and his followers, not even of the four Evangelists after whom they are named, but of the Council of Nicaea and many later church councils. All other gospels and fragments were edited out of the scriptures that became the Bible as we know it. The existence of at least twenty eight other gospels in addition to the four included in the Bible can be traced, including one (the Gospel of the Ebionites) that actually states that the entire construction of St. Paul's religion of Christianity consists of a tissue of lies.
For example, historical records and surviving apocrypha include editions, fragments or sometimes mere mention of: the Gospel of Andrew; the Gospel of Peter; the Gospel of Apelles; the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles; the Gospel of Barnabus; the Gospel of Truth; the Gospel of Bartholomew; the Gospel of Basilides; the Gospel of Mary; the Gospel of Corinthus; the Gospel According to the Egyptians; the Gospel of the Ebionites (mentioned in the previous paragraph); the Gospel of the Encratites; the Gospel According to the Hebrews; the Gospel of Hesychius; the Gospel of Jude; the Gospel of Lucianus; the Gospel of Marcion; the Gospel of Matthias; the Gospel of Merinthus; the Gospel according to the Nazarenes; the Gospel of Philip; the Gospel of Scythianus; the Gospel of Titan; the Gospel of Thaddaeus; the Gospel of Thomas; the Gospel of Valentinus; and even a Gospel of Judas Iscariot (which is today being accorded increasing relevance by academics).
Some of these non-biblical - and in strict point of fact, non-Christian - gospels were discovered in 1945 by an Arab peasant in Egypt, in what has come to be called the Nag Hammadi Library. This consists of thirteen ancient codices that contain over fifty individual texts, including a large number of original Gnostic scriptures previously believed to have been destroyed as a result of the Council of Nicaea and the early Christian attempt to define itself according only to the inventions of Paul. The site of Nag Hammadi (Naj 'Hammádì) is located on the Jabal al-Tárif, a mountain honeycombed with one hundred and fifty caves, some of which were in use as gravesites as long ago as 2,300 BC. Although examination of the script and the material used in the covers places the date of these texts at the period 350-400 AD, at least some of them can be specifically identified as copies of earlier texts from the period before 180 AD, because in that year they are referred to in the writings of Irenaeus the Bishop of Lyons, and they may be as old as the four Biblical gospels (period 50-100 AD although constructively edited then and later).
In addition to all of this, there is also what has been called the "synoptic problem". Stated briefly, this is the conclusion arrived at by an analysis of the texts that the first three gospels of the New Testament - Matthew, Mark and Luke - are so similar in phrase and style of writing that either the Matthew and Luke gospels are based on the Mark gospel, or else all three are based on a single earlier document, now lost, that has been named the "Q document" (from Quelle, German for "source"). The "Q" document, if it existed, has been tentatively dated to around 50 AD, and the Matthew and Luke gospels to the period 85-100 AD. A similar plethora of self-contradictions, mistakes, inventions and embroideries therefore also exists in the New Testament as well as the Old (see appendices). This proves conclusively that the Gospels in the Bible certainly cannot represent any kind of eyewitness testimony of events but, rather, are the increasingly exaggerated retelling of memories from person to person (the “Oral Tradition Theory”) later strained through a filter of Christian editing for public consumption, as we will see in the next chapter.
Jesus the Sorcerer
Although the four Gospels are all that remain in the Bible itself concerning the mission and activities of Jesus, other writers of very early times make mention of him as well, affording us a glimpse of a different point of view which cannot be obtained from anything in the Bible. For example, in addition to the account of Jesus given in the Babylonian Talmud (described in chapter 3), there is the monumental book “The Antiquities of the Jews” written by the Jewish historian Josephus, who was born in 37 or 38 AD and was thus active in the generation immediately following Jesus’ death when there would have been plenty of people still living who remembered him from first-hand personal experience. In his book Josephus writes: “At about this time lived Yeshua, a wise man... (he) was a teacher of such people as are eager for novelties. He attracted many of the Jews and many of the Greeks... Upon an indictment brought by leading members of our society, Pilate sentenced him to the cross, but those who had loved him from the very first did not cease to be attached to him...”
Here, surely, we can gain a clear intimation about how “those who had loved him” remained attached to his memory, thus helping to pave the way for the legend of his return to life? The fact that there were once many other sources of information concerning Jesus is confirmed even in the Bible itself, where we can still read that lots of other people besides the four evangelists had also written their own gospels: "...many have... set forth... a declaration..." (Luke 1:1). The expression "gospel truth" has come to be used to define any report that is held to be beyond error: the merits of this expression should be weighed against all these facts and the list of gospel errors and contradictions (itemised in Appendix II).
7. How the Bible was Assembled – Blind Belief versus Gnosticism.
“I’ve often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer
in the front saying: “This is fiction”.
Sir Ian McKellen, interviewed on the “Today” show, 2006.
Selecting the Old Testament
We can also discover a considerable amount of historical information regarding the process by which the various contents of the Bible were selected, and why certain texts were finally accepted for inclusion and others rejected. Naturally, in view of the antiquity of the editing and the lack of what we would today call proper record keeping, there are many unknowns involved; however, there are also more known facts than might at first be widely realised.
As we have already seen, the first five books of what would later become the Old Testament, the Pentateuch or Torah (included in the Tanakh) were already more-or-less completed and in use by about 300 BC. The other books of the Old Testament were compiled from various different sources and periods and came to be accepted as scripture by the Hebrews. For a long time, though, there was no recognized agreement about which of these texts should be categorised as canonical (divinely inspired and therefore sacred - holy scripture) and which of them were not divinely inspired and therefore, even if sincerely devout, were not considered to be holy scripture. There was no general agreement of this identification of texts as either canonical or non-canonical until some decades after the death of Jesus, and after the final destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, a catastrophic event the echoes of which played a major part in shaping the Old Testament as it eventually became known to us.
The unfortunate city of Jerusalem has been attacked more than once in its long history, even in the lifetime of this author when Saddam Hussein ordered some Skud missiles launched against it during the first Gulf War. In 1099 AD Crusaders laid siege to the city (at that time held by Moslem Saracens) and then again in 1187 AD. Over 1,700 years earlier, on the tenth day of the Jewish month of Tevet in 587 BC, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II conquered the kingdom of Judah and started a siege at Jerusalem that finally succeeded in breaking through the walls some eighteen months later on 17th Tammuz, destroying the temple three weeks later on 9th Av. The population was forced into slavery in Babylon. However, the Jewish religion was kept alive during the Galut Bavel, the Babylonian exile, and some seventy years later, after Cyrus II freed the captives and allowed them to return to Palestine, the temple was rebuilt in Jerusalem. In 332 BC Alexander the Great (who makes a guest appearance in the Bible, described in Daniel 11:1-3 as the king of Grecia, i.e. Greece) conquered Palestine and captured Jerusalem, introducing elements of Greek culture. In 320 BC Alexander’s general Ptolemy I (or Soter, “the Preserver”) captured Jerusalem.
The greatest catastrophe inflicted upon the Jewish peoples was the Nazi holocaust of the World War 2 period, but the greatest ever catastrophe to the Judaic religion occurred when, on 14th April 70 AD (during Passover), the Roman general Titus, son of the soon-to-be-emperor Vespasian, laid siege to Jerusalem following a revolt and, like Nebuchadnezzar before him, destroyed the temple. An estimated 115,880 citizens were slain and a further 97,000 taken captive, some of whom were forced to work on the construction of the Coliseum while others were sent to labour in mines, to be slain in the arena as gladiators, or to be burned alive as public entertainment. This event marked a major turning point in Jewish history and in the observation of the Jewish religion, which was changed forever. Until 70 AD, Judaism had centred upon the Jerusalem temple, its priesthood, and making appropriate sacrifices there, for which purpose people would travel even from distant lands, perhaps once in a lifetime. Afterwards, the focus inevitably fragmented to prayers in local settlements led by rabbis, and the pattern of grand centralisation was perforce abandoned. With the demise of the Jerusalem temple and the hierarchy of its incumbent priesthood, not only the Jewish people but also their religious centres became scattered.
Shortly before Jerusalem fell to the Romans under Titus, a rabbi named Johannon ben Zakkai managed to leave the city. In the town given the Greek name Jamnia, today called Yebna (now in Israel, not far from Jaffa), he founded a centre for Jewish studies. It was to this centre that Jews who managed to escape the Roman reprisals gravitated, not only for sanctuary but also to devise a new path for their religion by which its survival could be assured. At Jamnia, one vital matter that had to be decided upon was exactly which parts of the preserved Jewish writings should be considered to represent holy scripture, and which should not. This exercise in specific authoritative determination was in great part also rendered necessary by the spread of misleading “scripture” by the Minim – the practitioners of the great heresy of Christianity (Jewish minuth, heresy).
The Pentateuch, or Torah, was believed to represent the writings of Moses himself and described the very foundations of Jewish belief: the guaranteed place of these five books – Bereshit, Shemot, Vayyiara, Bamidbar and Devarim (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) - was beyond discussion. In respect of the remainder of the texts, the essential criterion was whether the content agreed with Jewish history and law as established in these five books of the Torah. After a detailed examination of the nature of the texts taking about 20 years, a total of 39 books were accepted as being holy scripture, and from that time these choices became recognised as the orthodox Jewish Bible, which itself would later become transformed at second-hand into the Christian Old Testament. Texts that differed in any significant way from the Torah were deemed not to be holy scripture but merely scripture of some interest and were not included in the Jewish Bible, although they were still considered honourable, such as the Book of Maccabees (from which the Jewish festival Hanukkah derives).
The decisions taken by the Hebrew refugees and scholars at Jamnia1 towards the end of the first century were not, however, accepted as correct by everyone. Alternative texts, not recognised at Jamnia as representing holy scripture and containing various differences from accepted orthodoxy, continued to be used elsewhere for at least a further couple of centuries, amongst them the Samaritan Pentateuch and Greek Septuagint. Argument continued regarding whether certain of the accepted texts should be considered holy (the "word of God") or merely apocrypha (Greek, meaning: "that which is hidden" or "hidden things", which in Latin became crypta, a hidden vault or cave, giving us our words “crypt” and “cryptic”: also, from “that which is hidden” comes Latin occultus which gives us the word “occult” ) as, for example, in the cases of the books of Esther, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon, which were all deemed to be apocryphal. Indeed, when the Qumran religious community hid their sacred texts in a cave around 70-100 AD, to be discovered in the twentieth century as the "Dead Sea Scrolls", they deliberately excluded Esther, indicating their own opinion regarding its relevance. To the present day, Ethiopian Jews (who consider themselves descended from one of the "lost tribes" of Israel) accept as holy scripture the book of Jubilees and the book of Enoch, considered apocryphal by mainstream Judaism.
The Book of Enoch is mentioned in the Epistle of Jude (14) and the Epistle of Barnabus (16:5) (itself rejected as apocryphal and not included in the Bible), and it is mentioned in the writings of Justin of Caesarea (100-165 AD), Irenaeus (130-202 AD), Origen (182-251 AD) and Clement of Alexandria (c.150-216 AD), all of them considered Fathers of the early Christian Church. However, it was believed to be lost to history, until 1773 when the Scottish explorer James Bruce discovered a copy in Abyssinia written in the Ethiopian language. Since then, a copy of Enoch has also come to light written in Old Church Slavonic (or Old Bulgarian), which, like Latin, is an otherwise extinct language used by churchmen and scholars, which evolved into Church Slavonic still in use today as a sacred language by certain Greek Catholic and Orthodox churches of the Slavic peoples. Two different fragments of a Latin translation of Enoch have also been discovered, and in 1887 a French archaeological team discovered a partial Greek version on fragments of papyri at Akhmim on the Nile in Upper Egypt. Seven further fragments of Enoch written in Aramaic were found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. To date, however, despite its pedigree, the Book of Enoch has not yet been considered suitable for inclusion in the Bible.
The scriptures of the Hebrew Bible as they stood after the long editorial debates of Jamnia and earlier periods were known to the early Christian Church. A problem, however, was that the majority of early Christians after Paul’s tours and his sojourn in Rome were Gentiles (i.e. non-Jewish) and could not read Hebrew. They therefore found it more convenient to make use of the Septuagint, the Greek translation made in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy II, c.308-246 BC mentioned in chapter 4, which greatly predated Jamnia and included texts in Greek which the Hebrews now considered apocryphal. This more dubious Greek version, then, rather than the meticulously examined Hebrew texts of Jamnia, became the basis of the earliest Latin translations used by Christians for their "Old Testament".
One of the few early Christian scholars who understood Hebrew was the Church Father Origen, who came to realise that there were differences between the Greek Septuagint and the Hebrew Bible. He found so many differences, and was so disturbed by what he found, that he devised a huge document known as the Hexapla in which, in a corresponding series of columns, both the Septuagint and the Hebrew versions were shown side by side, so that people might see the differences and judge the relative merits of each version for themselves. There are no remaining complete versions of the original Hexapla, but the surviving fragments have been collected in several editions, such as that of Frederick Field in 1875.
We Regret the Late Arrival of Armageddon, and
Hope This Will Not Spoil Your Day.
The early Christians could see no real need to have any permanent written record of Jesus' life and teachings. It was an essential part of the original Christian belief that the Second Coming of Christ and the apocalyptic Day of Judgement, followed by the restoration of the Kingdom of God, was about to happen in the immediate future, during their lifetime, so why should it be necessary to preserve a written version of Jesus' ministry on earth if The End Of The World Was Nigh? This belief in the imminence of the "Second Coming" is shown in the New Testament, for example in John's Gospel (21:21-23) when Peter asks Jesus if the apostles should kill the person who betrays him: "...Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" and in the First Epistle of John (2:18-19) where the writer states: "...we know that it is the last time". Also, in Matthew (24:34), Mark (13:30) and Luke (21:32) it specifically states that the Second Coming will take place during the lifetime of the generation alive at that time.
Various tales about Jesus, some straightforward, some highly embellished, some total inventions, were at first merely used for preaching to non-Christians in the attempt to recruit them. However, as the years and decades passed into centuries and the first generations of Christians were replaced by successively later ones, a degree of puzzlement developed in regard to the late arrival of Judgement Day and the precise date of Christ's return. It began to be realised that it might be necessary, after all, to try to preserve as much as possible of Jesus' acts and teachings for posterity, since Judgement Day appeared to be postponed due to unforeseen technical difficulties.
Within the early church there were many different written versions of Jesus' ministry in circulation (see the section of the previous chapter “The 32 Gospels”, for example) as well as popular tales that were purely oral traditions, with great amounts of embroidery included in their telling and re-telling. Many of the multiplicity of gospels were indeed themselves based on these folktales, and some of the folktales were doubtless inspired by some of the dozens of gospels, so there would have been a considerable degree of incestuous "cross-fertilization" of stories within the early Christian communities. This type of inbred melange of fact and fiction produced by the slowly churning hysteria of a section of the population without reference to established proven factuality is today defined as “urban myth”.
The actual writers of the four gospels now included in the New Testament of the Bible are completely unknown, regardless of whose names they bear in their titles. In the year 180, Ireneus, Bishop of Lyons, declared that only gospels written by any of the twelve apostles could be accepted as “genuine”, but the inability to designate any factual authorship to the tales presented an insurmountable obstacle to this view. There were major discrepancies between the different gospels and tales, and, of particular concern to leaders of the early church, there were conflicting accounts of Jesus' supposed “resurrection”, including some in which it had not actually happened. Some Christians expressed the belief that the resurrection was nothing more than a symbolic spiritual rebirth, not involving any living return from death by Jesus: a change of heart that could be experienced by anyone. Others insisted it was an actual resurrection from death to a renewed perfect physical living form.
It was feared that a spreading of the belief that the tale of the resurrection represented nothing more than a metaphor for symbolic spiritual transformation would encourage people to weigh up and judge the truth for themselves and make their own individual interpretation of Christ and his ministry, rather than accept the officially preferred version that was imposed upon them by the church hierarchy established on the back of Paul's teachings. This prompted fears that the authority of the fledgling Pauline Church might find its future development threatened by too much freedom permitting people to make their own personal evaluation of Christian theology, and this dawning realisation eventually developed into the mayhem and murder of the liquidation of “heresies”, in which the servants of dogma sought to destroy freedom of thought.
Early Christianity, therefore, adopted a different attitude to that of the Jews in respect of determining the textual core of their belief. Where the Jews had established scholarly examinations meticulously comparing religious texts to judge their consistency, or lack of consistency, with the main established text of the Torah, and were not afraid to reject or demote inconsistent writings, the Christians of the first few centuries considered it more important to attempt to establish, through discussion, scholarly argument and many committees, exactly what Christianity consisted of, with particular emphasis on a determination of the actual nature of Christ. Whereas Judaism, regardless of its early dichotomies, was by now an ancient religion with clearly established traditions, festivals and attitudes towards the worlds of man and God, Christianity was brand new with no established traditions, and was still groping for a central identity and doctrine, tearing itself apart internally through disagreement regarding what it believed, what it represented, what it was and what it was not.
It was from this melting pot of schisms and arguments at the dawn of Christianity that a very broad division into two major lines of opinion began to solidify. One school of thought held that Christianity consisted of the Church and everything the leaders of the Church instructed and demanded, and that the Church represented the single valid inheritor of the mantle of Christ (apostolic succession). The other held that a person did not require any authoritarian church as an intermediary in order to experience God through Christ, and that God must be - indeed, could only be - experienced directly at first-hand by a transformation achieved within the individual, whose only requirement for gaining this transcendental spiritual rebirth was the knowledge that there was a mystical tradition, known and taught by Jesus, by which it could be attained. Those who subscribed to a belief that the Church should be the only authority to determine the nature of Christianity and enforce its views as doctrine became the foundation of the orthodox Christian Church. Those who preferred to believe in the transformation of the individual through the application of mystical knowledge according to interpretations of Jesus’ teaching, were called “the knowers”, or, in Greek, Gnostics.
Gnostic Christianity was the principal rival to Pauline Christianity during the earliest centuries AD, and the internecine hatred toward the Gnostics felt by the Pauline sect - who regarded themselves as the custodians of the authority of Christ and who felt it essential to safeguard this “authority” with a structured totalitarian religious hierarchy - led to a period of bloody extermination lasting more than a thousand years. Pauline Christianity gained the advantage in the fourth century of being grafted on to the Roman State and thus becoming a major world power; in effect, an empire in its own right, or at least an extension of an empire, but with no political, moral or ethical restraints regarding the treatment of the population and the ruthless putting-down of other religious beliefs - in fact, writing its own licence to permit unmitigated cultural cleansing and mind-control.
Gnosticism was not actually a single belief: there were many branches and differences of opinion resulting in many different Gnostic sects, just as today there are many different versions of doctrinaire Christianity. The main belief that was held in common amongst the majority of Gnostic groups was that communion with Divine Spiritual Reality, or God, could be achieved through insight, or intuition, leading to the direct experience of deity within the individual, and that this transcendent experience, when achieved, could provide the individual with an important source of understanding and knowledge (enlightenment). The general name for this type of belief is mysticism.
In addition, Gnosticism (which still exists in modern forms) usually interprets creation (religious cosmology) as consisting of mythology rather than as specifically real events, interpreting gods, demons, angels and the whole menagerie of supernatural beings as anthropomorphic personifications of essential basic competing universal forces or conditions, such as good and evil, or light and darkness, or knowledge and ignorance etc. (dualism). Gnosticism also takes a different view of the relative attributes of God, Jesus and other spiritual entities; in the case of certain Gnostic sects, the differences can be extreme. In Gnosticism in general, human beings are seen as being caught in a struggle between these contending forces of darkness and light. There is a major division between the physical world, usually depicted as being governed by malevolent or evil forces, and the higher spiritual realm governed by God, also known variously as the Monad, the One, the Absolute, Aion teleos (“the Perfect Æon”), Bythos (“Depth” or “Profundity”), Proarkhe (“Before the Beginning”), and E Arkhe (“The Beginning”).
Gnosticism held that the physical universe is under the control of a category of spiritual energies called Archons, amongst whom, in some versions of the belief, is the God of the Old Testament, and that the Archons hold humanity captive, either by intent or by accident. The creator of the physical world and of humanity is a ruling evil spirit sometimes referred to as the Demiurge, a dark entity named Yaldabaoth who is the controller of matter and is the Old Testament God. The Archons were servants of this Demiurge, who is the creator-god that stands as a barrier between human beings and a transcendent perfect spiritual state or Godhead, the Monad, who could only be reached through gnosis, the transformation of the individual consciousness by enlightenment and the realisation of the true knowledge of the human position in the cosmos. The Archons were regarded as the beings termed "angels" and "demons" in the Old Testament.
In Gnosticism, very importantly, the transcendent power of Light, the Monad, or High-God, was considered the fountainhead of the Pleroma, the heavenly light existing in the higher spiritual world from which emanate all spiritual beings, principally the Archons and the Aeons, eternal beings who are extensions of the Pleroma. Jesus was interpreted by the Gnostics as an Aeon who was sent to earth with his counterpart Sophia, a female Aeon, with the purpose of teaching humanity to rediscover the lost knowledge of its divine origin, thereby permitting the human race to be reconciled with the Pleroma. The Greek word “pleroma” is generally taken to refer to the totality of the Powers of Light, or the High-God; the word means “fullness” and is used in the New Testament, in Colossians 2:9 in which the Greek is translated into English as "...the fulness (sic) of the Godhead".
The female Sophia companion of Jesus is defined as his syzygy, a rather obscure term for two apparent divisions of the same thing, once used, for example, in astronomy for a planetary conjunction and for the full and new moon, two apparently different aspects of the same body. The syzygy of Jesus-Sophia is a complementary male-female pair of Aeons characterising aspects of the Pleroma. Modern Christian authors have been greatly influenced by such Gnostic beliefs, such as J. R. R. Tolkein in The Lord of the Rings, and especially C. S. Lewis, most famous for his Narnia series beginning with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Lewis' science fiction trilogy for adults Out of the Silent Planet, Voyage to Venus and That Hideous Strength contain superb and very moving interpretations of Christian Gnosticism (especially Voyage to Venus, originally published under the title Perelandra) which more mainstream Christian readers, prompted to read them by Lewis' reputation as a strongly Christian writer, can find extremely puzzling.
Even though the orthodox Christian Church declared Gnosticism a heresy and attempted to eradicate it, quite a few originally Gnostic ideas eventually filtered back into the mainstream Christian belief. The Gnostic Marcion of Simope (110-160 AD) is considered a major Christian theologian and founded a branch of Gnosticism that came to be called Marcionism after him. He created a powerful church organisation along parallel lines to the Pauline, or Roman, Church, with himself as its bishop. The Catholic Encyclopedia refers to the Marcionites as "...perhaps the most dangerous foe Christianity has ever known". It was the presence of the Marcionite Church that prompted the Pauline Church of Rome to adopt for itself the additional definitive term “universal”, in order to give expression to their opinion that the Marcionites should not be considered a valid church and that it was “outside the true Christian universe”. The Greek word for “universal” was employed, catholic.
The Birth of the New Testament
Notwithstanding, it was this same Gnostic, Bishop Marcion, who first compiled a list of books he considered appropriate to form a "New Testament" to be added to the Books of Moses from the Jewish Torah that would thus provide an Old Testament. His list was admittedly a short one and consisted of a revised and edited Gospel of Luke and a few of Paul's epistles. Marcion also happened to be extremely anti-Semitic and advocated that Christianity must be entirely divorced from any connection with Judaism, suggesting that Jesus should not be considered as having Jewish parents but as springing fully grown directly from the "mind of God" (the Pleroma), a Gnostic idea.
The influence and popularity of many Gnostic beliefs filtered, in a generally watered-down and adapted form, into the emerging orthodoxy of Christian theology within the newly self-proclaimed Catholic Roman Church. The Gnostic view that Jehovah the Hebrew God of the Old Testament was an evil being corresponding to Satan and that Jesus represented a teacher of divine knowledge emanating from the Pleroma, or higher spiritual light, became moderated into the eclectic belief that the single God described in the Old Testament had admittedly been fearsome, terrible and often angry and temperamental, and had directly meddled in human affairs, but that Christ had now become a mediator between this ferocious God and mankind, allowing man (the status of woman remained dubious) to have safe access to this same frightening God through Christ's more gentle personality. Through an osmosis of Gnostic beliefs, Christ thus became regarded by orthodox Christian theologians as the reconciler between a stern, violent God and man.
About 170 AD, an unknown person compiled a list of a more complete set of contents for a suggested New Testament. This list exists as a Latin manuscript from the seventh century, its usage of language strongly indicating that it was based on a Greek original. The date of this missing original can be specifically set to around the year 170, because the author refers to the Bishop of Rome (Pope) Pius I (142-157) as “recent”. This list came to be called the Muratorian Fragment because the Latin transcript was discovered in the Ambrosian Library at Milan in the eighteenth century by the priest Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672-1750), a prominent historian.
The unidentified author significantly recommends that only four gospels be included out of the many in circulation at that time. Two of these remain unknown, for the surviving Muratorian Fragment has lost its beginning and end. However, the third recommended gospel is the one according to Luke, although it is admitted in the fragment that Luke's gospel is compounded largely of collected hearsay and is specifically not an eyewitness account: "...Luke, the well known physician, after the ascension of Christ, when Paul had taken him as one zealous for the law, composed it in his own name according to the general belief. Yet he himself had not seen the Lord in the flesh; and therefore, as he was able to ascertain events, so indeed he begins to tell the story from the birth of John." This indicates that the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament is nothing but an edited collection of gathered tales, generally believed in by early Christians, collected and compiled by someone who had not been present at the time he was writing about and had never met Jesus.
The fourth suggested gospel of the fragment, that of John, is no better as an accurate account of historical events. It is indicated that John's gospel is another compilation consisting of edited remarks made by a group of early Christians in a meditation following a fast: "... To his fellow disciples and bishops who had been urging him, he said; Fast with me from today for three days, and what will be revealed to each one, let us tell it to one another. In the same night it was revealed to Andrew of the apostles that John should write down all things in his own name while all of them should review it."
We cannot know whether the missing gospels recommended in the Muratorian Fragment were those of Matthew and Mark, but we do know from it that the gospels of Luke and John, at least, were considered to be compounded of the results of committees - edited compilations of early belief and invention already written and circulating amongst pre-committed Christians - having little or no connection with anyone who actually knew Jesus when he was alive or saw the events described in those gospels.
The fragment also recommends various other texts that could be included in a proposed New Testament, such as the “Acts of All Apostles” and thirteen of the epistles (ecumenical letters) of Paul. However, the author states his opinion that the Epistle to the Hebrews (now included in the Bible) is a forgery not written by Paul. He says the same about the Epistle to the Laodiceans and the Epistle to the Alexandrians which were not included in the Bible. He accepts as genuine the Epistle of Jude (included in the Bible) and two of the three epistles of John. Unfortunately, he does not mention whether he is referring to John I, John II or John III, and so while all three can now be found in the Bible, the one he considers a forgery cannot be identified. The Church compounded the uncertainty by officially declaring that the epistles of John were written by two different people whom they named John the Evangelist and John the Presbyter.
The fragment author recommends the Book of Wisdom ("...written by the friends of Solomon in his honour...") and makes mention of an Apocalypse of Peter that "...some of us will not allow to be read in church." He does not, however, indicate whether this refers to the Greek Apocalypse of Peter or the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, which is a very different Gnostic text (a version of which has since been discovered in the Nag Hammedi parchments in 1945). The Wisdom is now part of Roman Catholic Bibles, but is not included in Protestant versions as it is considered apocryphal, not genuine holy scripture. According to Eusebius (died 339), writing in his book Historia Ecclesiae (6:14:1), the second century Christian teacher Clement of Alexandria considered the Apocalypse of Peter (which version is not recorded) to be holy scripture. (Clement lived in turbulent times, his career spanning the period of transition between the persecution of Christians by the Romans and the legalising of Christianity by Constantine.)
Eusebius records that Clement wrote a book, now lost to history, in which he itemised all the texts that were considered to be holy scripture in his time, also mentioning all those that were disputed by some. In this list, according to Eusebius, Clement includes an Apocalypse of Peter, as well as the Book of Jude (now the penultimate book in the Bible) and the Epistle of Barnabus. Barnabus came to be considered apocryphal, although it was included in the Codex Siniaticus (now in the British Museum). This codex, a manuscript of the Greek Bible written between 330-350 AD, contains a complete New Testament which includes Barnabus as well as The Shepherd of Hermas, written in the second century and also now considered apocryphal. Another second century text, however, the Second Epistle of Peter, was considered holy scripture and is included in the New Testament, even though it is known to be pseudepigraphal, a technical word composed from the Greek for “falsely” and “to write upon” and meaning that the authorship claimed within a written document is provably untrue.
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…
Many other early Christian writers compiled different lists of the texts they considered worthy of including in a “New Testament”. As has been shown, there was considerable confusion and disagreement on the subject. In the second century, Irenaeus, the bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul (today Lyons, France) tried to compose a version of the New Testament that he advocated should be adopted as “official” by all Christian churches. Irenaeus was principally motivated in this by the great popularity of Gnostic Christianity, which he saw as a threat that could split the church into opposing factions, even into opposing religions. As a riposte to Marcion's adoption of the Gospel of Luke, which Marcion stated was the only true gospel for use amongst Gnostic Christians, Irenaeus - who could not very well dismiss the validity of Luke - additionally listed three other gospels as being equally true and acceptable for Christian readers, those of Matthew, Mark and John, stating his opinion that, with Luke, these were the only four divinely inspired gospels.
Irenaeus sought to establish formal authoritative criteria by which any text could be clearly and “officially” determined as being an acceptable part of the Christian canon, or else rejected. In his opinion, there were two “seals of approval” that could be used for this purpose: the pre-existing acceptance of a text as representing holy scripture in the case of the Old Testament, and attribution to the Apostles in the case of the New Testament, regardless of the soundness or otherwise of that attribution: it was sufficient for a text to merely be generally believed to be written by an apostle. Thus, according to Irenaeus, a text such as a gospel or epistle could be accepted into the New Testament for universal use amongst all Catholic Christians (as opposed to Gnostics) if it was already in accepted use by the early Church Fathers. Consequently, although Irenaeus evidently did not actually compile a specific list of recommended texts, he was instrumental in establishing the eventual basis upon which the determination of whether texts were or were not included in the New Testament should be judged.
As already mentioned, the popular Gnostic view was that the God of the Hebrew Old Testament (“Jehovah”) was an evil demiurge also known as Satan (“the Opposer”). “Demiurge” as a word derives from Greek, literally demios “official” and ergon “(piece of) work”, applying in origin to a craftsman or builder hired to construct some work or edifice from a skilled architect's design, and from this the word came to be used in religious terminology for an entity that created the physical universe and its laws and mechanisms under the command of a higher god who provided the design but who did not actually “get his hands dirty” with the mere act of creation, which was completed by the demiurge under this higher instruction. The Gnostic belief has more than a passing connection with the ancient Hebrew occult system the Qabbalah, or Cabala. Technically speaking, the modern fundamentalist notion of “intelligent design”, where “God” has been postulated as the designer, the creator of the laws of physics and the power behind biology and evolution instead of being the direct “hands-on” creator of the world in six days, is a revived form of Gnosticism (and is therefore technically heretical).
As another body blow against Gnosticism, Irenaeus advocated a theology in which the starting point was the unity of God, where God was perceived as a single indivisible being, unlike the Gnostic view that there was a higher transcendental God (the Pleroma) divided into numbers of Aeons, or servant-messengers, and a "lower God" or creative demiurge, with attendant Archons, responsible for all material things. The strict denial of this Gnostic cosmology, however, presented Christian theologians with a number of eventually insurmountable problems, and over the early centuries much of this Gnostic mythology filtered back into orthodox Christianity to “fill the vacuum” as it were, so that it was eventually decided that the Christian universe was to consist of a single High God, various emanations from him such as his “son” Christ and various “angels” (as the Gnostic Aeons, one of whom was Christ, were emanations of the Pleroma) and a lower or “fallen” angel (Archon), Satan, who is an evil being in charge of all temptations and responsible for all the material flaws in the “Divine Design”.
Irenaeus attempted to explain matters in a different way by invoking a concept based on the Greek word for “word”, Logos. The concept of the Logos was first mooted to Christians by Justin of Caesarea, or Justin Martyr (100-165 AD), an early Christian apologist (from the Greek word apologia “defence of a position against attack”). The purpose of Justin's written apologies was principally to prove to the pagan Roman emperors how unjust it was to persecute the Christians, who, he claimed, were the representatives of “the only truth”. It is possible, though not proven, that Justin's ideas for the Logos were inspired by Philo of Alexandria (20 BC - 40 AD), a Jewish philosopher. Before Justin, the notion of the Logos had been fairly familiar to people of education, if not to commoners, but Justin publicised it on a wider level and Irenaeus attempted to establish it as the orthodox version of Christian belief.
The concept of the Logos is far from simple and is believed to have evolved from Jewish Wisdom tradition. Despite being the actual basis upon which most of the theological aspect of Christianity eventually came to be constructed, the understanding of the Logos is more suited to educated philosophers, especially those who understand Greek and Hebrew ideas, and it never really caught on with ordinary people, the Christian “people-in-the-street”, who, on average, found it much too difficult to properly understand and to this day generally prefer more straightforward interpretations in which Logos (in its plural form Logia) is simply nothing more than the sayings (words) of Jesus.
Put extremely simplistically, the idea behind the Logos concept is that Jesus was a manifestation of God's Word and Wisdom and was, and is, an eternal element of God the Father. For example, just as our own words and thoughts come from us and cannot be considered a separate or different entity acting independently on their own, and they are given formation by our own nature and by whatever wisdom we may have within us, so Christ is conceptualised as a “word” of God and cannot be considered an individual separate being. In the Jewish Wisdom tradition, “God's Word” is described metaphorically as being able to possess personal attributes, and the Logos or Word was generally understood to be a component part of God that could sometimes manifest semi-independently.
This is, in fact, a convoluted version of an ancient magical idea. In the beliefs of the Hebrews and many other ancient peoples, words were more than merely sounds or written letters; words were magical things that could be used to achieve results if employed with the appropriate rituals. Alphabetic symbols such as the runes were believed to hold occult powers simply because, to the illiterate, writing seemed a great feat of magic. This same ancient and widespread belief gave rise to the original notion of the magical power of words spoken by God. In the original Hebrew belief, a single word “spoke the universe into existence” in the Creation myth described in Genesis. This idea is reflected in John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God..." (John 1:1). In the original Greek text of John, the words “God” and “Word” (Logos) are both accorded the grammatical article, specifying attribution to a person or being.
This concept of “speaking” something into existence, originating with the belief in “magic words” and common to many primitive tribal cultures the world over, is also reflected in the passage in Genesis (1:26) "...And God said, Let us make man in our image..." It has been observed that if Yahweh, the actual personal name of God in Hebrew, יהוה (which should be read from right to left) is written downwards, it produces the outline of a human being. This symbolic human form made from the name of God is also a form of Logos (word) and was believed to represent the method whereby the omnipotent universal nebulosity of God coalesced into the first man, the flawed Adam, and later into the perfected form of Adam, Jesus Christ.
“Let us make man in our image”. If the Hebrew letters that form the name Yahweh (“Jehovah”) the personal name of the biblical god, are written in order downwards, they actually form the stylised image of a human being. (The name is written in the Hebrew
manner, right-to-left.)
In esoteric teachings, this figure is known as Adam Kadmon (“Primordial Man”), the first human being. This notion is also found within various other religions and philosophies, including the Cabbalistic tradition as recorded by Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572) the Jewish scholar and mystic. The same idea of the “Primordial Man”, who is the first sentient being to emerge after the creation of the cosmos, can also be found in the Upanishads of Hinduism, which are spiritual interpretations of the Vedas, the sacred scripts of the Indo-Aryan Vedic civilisation that existed from 1,700 BC to 500 BC and was thus contemporary with the Old Testament Hebrews. (Many Hindu scholars place the beginning of the Vedic civilisation even farther back, as early as 7,000 BC at the end of the Mehrgarh culture of the Indus Valley.) The Upanishads feature such a “Primordial Man” who was composed of the elements from which the world was made, echoing "...And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground..." (Genesis 2:7) and the creation of Enki, the “Primordial Man” of ancient Babylonian myth, created from clay and dust by the goddess Ninhursang (cf. chapter 3). The Greek writer Plutarch (c.46-127) relates that the whole physical universe is shaped in the figure of a macroanthropos, a cosmos-sized human being who is the template of humankind on earth; again, the “cosmic giant” (“God”) creates man “in his image”.
Now, this Hindu conception that “Primordial Man” - who in the form of the Hebrew alphabetic pictogram above can be referred to as the Logos of God - is composed of the elements of creation, is interesting. It is a Cabbalistic occult theorem that, when God “spoke” the cosmos into existence, he did it by speaking his own name, which consisted of four great sounds represented by the four Hebrew letters (which are, in English, Yod He Vau He, the letters YHVH, pronounced Yahweh or “Jehovah”). As each of these four primal sounds vibrated across infinity, the occult theorem maintains, each one in turn sub-created one of the four ancient alchemical elements from which everything in the world was once held to be made, Earth, Air, Fire and Water. In other words, God was fourfold in nature, not a trinity as was later decided. In his book Against Heresies (written about 182-188), Irenaeus himself, an established and revered “Father of the Church”, confirms his belief in a Tetramorph, or fourfold gospel, revealed by the Logos. The Logos, then, could fairly be maintained to represent the notion of a single spiritual Unity, or God, consisting of four component parts or energies. Understanding this, the attraction amongst early Christian theologians to the idea of allowing only four gospels to be included in the New Testament becomes perhaps slightly clearer. The four gospels, regardless of their contents, collectively represent the textual Logos.
The Gnostic Christians once more annoyed the Pauline Christians, who now began calling themselves the Roman Universal (or Catholic) Church, because they, too, used the symbol of the “Primordial Man”, adducing that the line in Genesis “Let us make man in our own image” meant that the first man on earth, Adam, was wrought on the model of a “Cosmic Adam” similar to Plutarch's description. In the Gnostic Apocryphon of John, discovered amongst the collection of Nag Hammadi texts, the macroanthropos as described by Plutarch is held to be the first creation of "Knowledge and Perfect Intellect", and again provides the cosmic model through which the demiurge constructs the earthly Adam.
This Gnostic belief was uncomfortably close to the Pauline notion of the Logos, and the matter was only resolved with the eventual hunting down and merciless slaughter of all who followed Gnosticism, which had been declared a “heresy”. With the destruction of the Gnostics, it became more politically acceptable for certain of their conceptions to be assimilated into the orthodox Christian theology without any remaining risk of dividing the faith into two factions: so, anyway, it was assumed. Thus, with a breathtaking feat of intellectual contradiction, it was determined that God was one single indivisible being consisting of three divisions: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Intricate technicalities of interpretation were devised in order to justify this oxymoronic proposition.
The preparatory groundwork of Irenaeus in formulating an anti-Gnostic Christian theology, which ironically would eventually re-absorb many essentially Gnostic concepts, was compounded and made authoritative some hundred and fifty years later in the early fourth century by Bishop Eusebius (c.263-339), the historian who wrote most of what is known today about the very early church. Compounding the various informed and uninformed opinions and traditions of the previous couple of centuries, especially those constructed in outline by Irenaeus, Eusebius composed the first surviving list of suggested New Testament books that matches the Bible as it is today, generating what in all probability was the first recognisable Bible to be used by the Pauline Christians, although other non-recommended texts were not yet forbidden. This was around the time that the emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire.
Shortly afterwards, Athenasius, who became Bishop of Alexandria under Constantine, approved for Christianity the final canon of acceptable texts agreed upon after the Council of Niceaea (325), setting his choices out in a letter in the year 367 in which he listed twenty seven items, the same number that today appear in the Authorised or King James Bible. At a council, or synod, held in Rome in the year 382 under Pope Damasus (who appointed Jerome to write a Latin translation of the accepted texts, the Vulgate Bible) Jerome persuaded the assembled church leaders to formally adopt Athenasius' proposed listing and declare it to be inalterable.
This proposal was approved in further synods at Hippo Regius (today Annaba in north-eastern Algeria near the Tunisian border) in 393, although there were certainly many opponents to it, since there had to be held more synods at rapid intervals in order to ratify the decision; another at Carthage in 397, and yet another in 418-19. Many of these early church councils are lost to history, and nobody knows exactly how many of them were held, and not all of them were for the purpose of establishing New Testament canon. Those already mentioned are known to have done this, and between the years 251 and 534 there were held at least 20 such synods at Carthage1, at all of which decisions were made regarding what should be included or excluded from standard Christianity. Other synods were also held elsewhere, such as at Milevum in Numidia in 402 and 416.
Finally, the New Testament as it stands today was officially authorised and“rubber-stamped” in Rome in the year 473, about as long after the death of Jesus as the year 2000 is after the time of William Shakespeare. The Greek Orthodox Church, however, did not ratify it until the tenth century due to doubts regarding the divine inspiration of the Book of Revelation. To this day, the Syrian Church does not recognise the validity of the Second Epistle of Peter, the Second and Third Epistle of John, Jude and Revelation, all to be found in a modern Bible.
Perhaps the penultimate words in this chapter should be a quotation from the Catholic Encyclopedia itself (first published by the Encyclopedia Press Inc. in 1917): "The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history”; or as Pope Leo X put it in the sixteenth century: “It has served us well, this myth of Christ.”
8. Christianity Declares War
"In every country and every age,
the priest has been hostile to Liberty."
Thomas Jefferson
The Bible: the First Mein Kampf
This, then, was the actual origin of the hybrid, creatively edited and politically fabricated collection of myths, tribal histories and inventions that became the Bible as we know it today. However, it is not books that damage the advance of humanity but the use to which they are put. The use to which the Bible has been put since its completion in the late fifth century – and to which, unfortunately, it is still being put to the present day as we shall see later – can be summed up in all seriousness as: “If you don’t obey us, the Boogie Man will get you; by the way, we have appointed ourselves the Boogie Man’s enforcers!”
The single great strength of this credo was that, after a stumbling start under the pogroms of the Rome of emperors such as Nero, Decius, Valerian and Diocletian, it was able to attach itself by pure accident to the Rome of Constantine in 313 (the year of the Edict of Milan in which Christianity was granted legal status equal to paganism within the Roman empire) and became suddenly exalted by being permitted to come out of the closet and attach itself to a long-established thriving and efficient state administration. Had this chance event not occurred – had Constantine not dreamed, or had he lost the battle of the Milvian Bridge to Maxentius - Christianity would today be nothing but a footnote in history.
The comments of some Roman historians expressing their opinions of Christianity are worthy of note. Suetonius referred to Christians as: "…a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief". Tacitus wrote that Christianity was: "…a pernicious superstition" and that Christians themselves were: "…a class of men loathed for their vices." Others refer to Christianity as immodica (immoderate), superstitio parva (a perverse religion) and malefica (harmful). After the emperor Decius ordered Pope Fabianus executed on 20th January 250, he is quoted as remarking: "I would far rather receive news of a rival to the throne than of another bishop in Rome!"
Perhaps understandably in view of such a difficult birth, Christianity from the very beginning perceived its greatest opponents as being rival religions generally, and particularly those still lingering within territory claimed by Rome itself. During the centuries following the recognition of Christianity by Rome, all non-Christian religions were branded as “errors of belief”. Even Christian groups who deviated only insignificantly from the Christian orthodoxy of Rome were declared to be “heretical” (from a Greek word meaning “one who makes a choice”) and invariably put down with barbaric savagery. This policy eventually evolved into the infamous Christian Gestapo, the Inquisition.
By the 13th century, the saying “Kill them all, let God sort them out!” was common (probably based on a twisting of 2 Timothy 2:19; “The Lord knoweth them that are his”) and the church policy known as Nulla salus extra ecclesium (“outside the Church there is no salvation”) was set, and is still in force today. In effect, the Christians now turned the tables on their own persecution under the Romans and declared “open season” on anyone who chose to deviate from what the Christian Church, in the total absence of any proof, decreed was “truth”.
In the year 1210, Pope Innocent III spat "orders of fire and sword" upon a heresy that had spread into many countries of Europe, the Cathars. The most infamous massacre of this Gnostic Christian sect (also known as Waldensians and Albigensians,) was committed in the preceding year in the town of Beziers in Languedoc, France, on July 22nd 1209 where some 100,000 innocent victims were slaughtered, men, women and children. Here was the first recorded instance of the Christian command Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoset (“Kill them all. God will know his own!”) given by the Papal Legate Arnaud Amalaricus, Abbot of Citeaux, when asked by a soldier how the army was to distinguish good Catholics from Cathars1. Campaigning against the Cathars in the Languedoc region alone, Christians murdered some half million men, women and children over a period of about forty years.
There were four broad divisions of the Inquisition, and many less well-known localised offshoots. The first was the Medieval (or Episcopal) Inquisition unleashed in 1184 by a papal bull (letter of authority from the Pope) entitled Ad abolendam (“For the purpose of doing away with”). This was the “official” Christian’s response to the growth of the Cathar heresy in southern France. The name “Episcopal” relates to the fact that it was conducted by regional bishops (in Greek, episcopos). The Episcopal Inquisition was judged insufficiently effective and was replaced in the 1230s by the second of the major divisions, the Papal Inquisition, which was conducted by specially trained clergy, from various sources but primarily recruited from the Dominican Order. To make the work of this Inquisition more effective than its predecessor, Pope Innocent IV in 1252 wrote the bull Ad extirpanda granting the Inquisition for the first time the right to torture suspects. ((“bull”:- from Latin bulla, a lead seal and an edict, giving us the modern words bulletin; also giving bullion, via Low Latin bullare, to stamp or mark with a seal.)
In 1478 came the third major branch, the notorious Spanish Inquisition which, although it may be considered a localised side branch established largely under the control of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, none the less employed an Inquisitor General who was appointed by the Pope. The Spanish Inquisition spawned the less well-known Peruvian Inquisition, which was not ended until that country achieved independence in 1824, and the Mexican Inquisition that was not abolished until 1834. There was also the Portuguese Inquisition established by king João III in 1536, which in addition operated within Portugal’s colonial possessions including Brazil, Goa and Cape Verde and existed until 1821.
Pope Paul III established the fourth great division, the Roman Inquisition, on 21st July 1542, with the full title of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition. This consisted of a permanent congregation (committee) of cardinals and other Church officials charged with the duty of maintaining and defending the faith and to examine and prohibit “false doctrines” and “errors”. Originally, this bureau was titled the Congregation of the Holy Office, and it was the governing body of all the regional Inquisitions. In 1908 Pope Saint Pius X, disturbed by the almost universal negative reputation gained by the title “Inquisition”, ordered its name changed to the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. It continues to this day with its name changed again in 1965 to the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and yet again in 1983 when the word “sacred” was dropped from the names of all Vatican congregations. The official who headed this department at the start of the twenty-first century, still based in the Office of the Inquisition attached to the Vatican in Rome and who would previously have born the title Chief Inquisitor, was one Cardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger (b.1927), who on April 19th 2005 became Pope Benedict XVI.
It was the Roman Inquisition which, in 1616, ruled that the proposition that the earth moves around the Sun with the Sun being immobile at the centre of earth’s orbit was “foolish and absurd in philosophy”. The specific idea that the earth moved at all was declared heretical, with the belief that the Sun was immobile at the centre being at the very least an error of faith. This pronouncement led to astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus' book De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, (published 1540), in which the true relation of the Sun to the earth and planets was shown in print for the first time, to be placed on the Vatican’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“List of Prohibited Books”).
In 1633 the Roman Inquisition placed Galileo Galilei on trial and banned all his works because he had stated the same belief as Copernicus, and had also claimed to have seen, through his newly invented astronomical telescope, moons circling the planet Jupiter. (Galileo made his own telescope after hearing that one had been created in Holland by spectacle maker Hans Lippershey.)
This observation was deemed heretical because Jupiter’s moons were not mentioned in the Bible, which was “flawless”, and ergo such things could not be part of God’s creation. To prove his claim, Galileo offered to let members of the Inquisition look through his telescope and see the truth for themselves, but they refused. He was threatened with imprisonment and torture unless he publicly admitted that he was wrong. Legend has it that after stating loudly before suitable witnesses that the earth does not, after all, move around the sun, he whispered: "...And yet, it moves!" although this last is probably more legend than fact.
Copernicus and Galileo, although they could not realise it at the time, would be in very good company. Other authors to have works condemned on this reprehensible Vatican banned book list include Edward Gibbon, Voltaire, Daniel Defoe, Balzac, Jean-Paul Satre, Descartes, Kant, and just about every modern western philosopher. Adolf Hitler, however, was nominally a Roman Catholic and his book Mein Kampf, in which he detailed the ideology of the Nazi State, was not included on the list of prohibited books, although in 1926 the obscure French Fascist magazine Action Française was.
To be fair, the defence has been made by the Vatican in respect of Hitler’s book that the committees behind the Index Librorum Prohibitorum were not authorised with the task of themselves actually searching out dubious publications, but specifically only of investigating, and making a decision upon, publications that were reported to them as potentially heretical - that is, offensive to established Christian belief - by anyone else. This defence, of course, also asks the world to accept that, even though over six million copies of Mein Kampf were sold, many being purchased by people who were appalled by Hitlerism and wanted to find out what made it tick, not one single reader ever complained about it to any Roman Catholic priest anywhere in the world. Since all the relevant records are kept by the Vatican and are unavailable for inspection by any author, this defence cannot be researched for its validity. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum as a legally enforceable blacklist was abolished in 1966 after the Second Vatican Council under Pope Paul VI.
"The Shocking Nightmare, the Foulest Crime
and Deepest Shame of Western Civilisation."
The above remark is what R. H. Robbins, in the Encyclopaedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (Crown Publishing, New York, 1959 & other publishers since) calls the persecution of “witches” during what have been referred to as the “Burning Times”. Taken as being very approximately the period 1450-1750, the term “The Burning Times” was first coined by Mary Daly in her book Gyn/Ecology: The Meta-Ethics of Radical Feminism published in 1978, in which the author used the phrase to include not just the persecution of women during the witch hunts but the “entire patriarchal rule”. The popular adoption of the term by the pagan community to refer to the witch hunts alone was triggered when Starhawk (Miriam Simos) included it in her book The Spiral Dance published the following year, 1979. (Many believe that it was Gerald Gardner [1884-1964, sometimes called the Father of Modern Witchcraft] who first used the term “the Burning Times”, and some authors have credited him with its origination, but this is incorrect.)
For a long time there has also been a popularly held theory that, having built up its corrupt administrative structure by feasting on such victims as the Cathars and the Knights Templars and various other “heretical sects”, the Inquisition began to run out of suitable victims and therefore turned to the persecution of “witches” in order to function without reduction in scale and loss of power. This theory was shown to be mistaken, however, by two historians working independently of each other, Cohn in 1975 and Kieckhefer in 1976, who each found evidence that the start of the pan- European state of panic regarding “witchcraft” can be traced to certain requests of ordinary citizens of Switzerland and Croatia for the civil court to support their accusations of persons suspected by them of practising witchcraft.
However, the Inquisition certainly did seize the possessions of everyone who fell into their clutches, which was one of the reasons for the great wealth of the Catholic Church. Pope Innocent III ruled that, since, according to the Bible, God punished children for the sins of their parents, offspring had no right to be regarded as the legal heirs of parents executed by the Inquisition . Unless a family's children had themselves reported their parents to the Inquisition, they were evicted into the street penniless. Sometimes a wealthy person who happened to be above all suspicion would catch the greedy eye of a Church official, and the Inquisition would then conveniently charge that person's father, or even their grandfather, with heresy, dig up their corpses if they were already dead, place them on trial and convict them. In one recorded instance, the “guilty” person had already been dead for seventy years. The idea behind this scheme was that all inheritance passed down from an ancestor convicted as a heretic was ruled as “illegal” by the Inquisition, even if the wealth had already been passed on again to a second or third generation, and it could all then be legally seized by the Church for their own coffers.
In 1320 the Inquisition began to systematically investigate “witches”, because Pope John XXII authorised the prosecution of sorcery as a heresy. At first, the regional Inquisitions seem to have been somewhat nonplussed on what exactly to do about the matter, as evidenced by what appears to be a survival of the old pagan religious beliefs that came to public attention in Milan in 1384.
In that year, two women of good social position, Sibillia Zanni and Pietrina deBugatis, were bought before the local Inquisition on an accusation that they belonged to a cult in the region that worshipped Madonna Oriente, also called Signora Oriente, “the Lady of the Orient” and La Signora del Gioco, “the Lady of the Game”. She was a Moon goddess, and the title “Lady of the Game” could indicate that she was connected to Diana the Huntress, also an ancient Moon goddess. The interrogation for the Inquisition was conducted by one friar Ruggero from Carate. He did not believe the women's story and merely sent them home again with nothing but a rather light penance, in which for three Sundays they were required to stand at a different church's door during the saying of the mass. They were also instructed that, if their confession was true after all, they must immediately stop attending the meetings of this cult.
Unfortunately for them, neither of the two women was able to resist attending the meetings of the Moon goddess worshippers, and in 1390 they were once again brought before the Inquisition. This time they were questioned by a different friar, Beltramino di Cernuscullo, who listened to what they said with great interest. He was not concerned, however, with learning about Signora Oriente, but in getting the women to confess they had been worshipping the Christian “Devil” which, after being tortured, they did. With this “confession” secured, the friar handed the women over to the civil authorities who sentenced them both to death at the stake. Sibillia Zanni and Pietrina deBugatis were certainly not the first to be persecuted for witchcraft by the Christian authorities, but they became the first specific capital victims of what would very soon become the systematic witchcraft persecutions of the Inquisition.
The first recorded indication of what would later erupt into the mass hysteria of the witch burning craze dates from 1227 when a priest, Conrad of Magdeburg, claimed to have uncovered followers of an organised secret religion he referred to as “Luciferans” who worshipped the Devil. Conrad did not arrange any trials nor produce any evidence; instead, he incited mobs to seize those whom he accused and publicly lynch them. However, he overreached himself and one day accused a nobleman who had friends in high places. Conrad’s Papal license was withdrawn and shortly afterwards he was murdered by an unknown assassin.
(The earliest recorded instance of a woman being burned to death after sentencing by an Inquisitional cleric was at Toulouse in 1275, but although her alleged “crime” was to have given birth to a monster after having sexual intercourse with a demon and then nourishing it with the flesh of kidnapped babies, which is indeed similar to the kind of charges brought during the later witchcraft persecutions, this case was actually an offshoot of the Cathar heresy and therefore a disagreement between rival factions of Christianity, not actually witchcraft per se.)
A Sacred Relic
Of even greater interest is the fact that these, the first recorded Inquisitional burnings at the stake for witchcraft, were based not on reports of fabricated hysterical superstition, as later became the case, but on what can only be taken as the report of a surviving methodical belief in an ancient pagan goddess. The cult of Madonna Oriente was seemingly, by all accounts, a surviving relic of a more widespread pre-patriarchal European religious belief - the matriarchal religion pre-dating the arrival of the Bronze-Age “Jehovah-model” god.
This particular case serves to dismiss the popular statement all too frequently encountered in books featuring the history of witchcraft, in which it is claimed that the witchcraft of the Medieval and Renaissance periods was entirely an inflamed superstition having no connection with any organised pre-Christian religion as such. Certainly, the great majority of those who were persecuted for “witchcraft” were entirely innocent and completely ignorant of any kind of pagan goddess worship; but there is none-the-less at least a small body of evidence suggesting that an ancient female-based religion did survive down the centuries and gave at least some fertilisation to the flourishing witchcraft persecutions. It is on record that Pietrina deBugatis told her Inquisitor that, according to their belief, the Moon goddess was "the mistress of her society, as Christ is the master of the world". This surely indicates that the goddess worship in the environs of early fourteenth century Milan was actually a specific and contra-pointed religious belief in its own right, with its own theology surviving from pre-Christian pagan times and with little or no contamination by Christianity or the Bronze-Age male warrior god.
“Madonna Oriente” is the Italian for the Latin "Domina Oriens" and this name was used in classical times for the Moon. The Moon goddess is also variously called Diana (Roman), Artemis (Greek), Tanith (Phoenician), Coyolxauhqui (Aztec), Heng-O (Chinese), Ix Chel (Maya), Mawu (African), Selene (Greek) and by many other names, and her worship can be traced worldwide.
Another fact tending to support the idea that witchcraft is, after all, a trace of the survival of a pre-Christian religion and not entirely a whipped-up Middle Ages hysteria is that many of the specific aspects of witchcraft detailed in the witchcraft trials between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries were being recorded as long ago as the second century BC. These included meetings held in secret at night and a female leader or high priestess, as well as celebrations with music and dancing. For example, the Roman writer Livy (59BC-17AD) describes one Paculla Ania as the high priestess of a female-oriented cult of Bacchus in Campania.
Whatever the historical grounds, as fear welled in Europe of a suspected female-oriented challenge to the regime of their “almighty” (and male) gods Jehovah and Christ - and even more especially of a perceived threat to the omniscience of the exclusively male hierarchy that managed the profitable franchise on earth - it became apparent to the Church that the Bible did not contain sufficiently detailed advice regarding the best methods for rooting out “witches” and extracting damning confessions from them: clearly, a supplement of some kind was required, another book that would address the specific problem. This supplement to the Bible - for that is precisely what it was intended to be and how it was used - is a useful study today, for it gives the modern reader the clearest possible picture of a world ruled by a practical and unchecked biblical fundamentalist authority that places itself above emperors, kings and national governmental institutions.
9. The Most Evil Book in the World
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully
as when they do it from religious conviction."
Blaise Pascal
Raging Bull
In or very near the year 1486 was published what is, beyond any reasonable doubt, the most evil book ever written. No year was recorded in the first edition print run, so it is only possible to date it within one or two years either side of 1486, but scholars agree that this is its most likely year of publication.
There are various strong contenders for the title of "most evil book", the nominations dependent on the sensibilities of the proposers; some might name Das Kapital by Carl Marx, which, although penned in innocent sincerity, led by intricate routes to the establishment of the Soviet Union, the collectivisation of farms, Stalin's purges and the consequent deaths of scores of millions, also seeding the People's Republic of China and the Tiananmen Square massacre, Cuba and the missile crisis and various other Communist extremes. Perhaps some ardent Christians would consider nominating the Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey (Avon Books, Harper Collins). Many informed people would cite Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, in which the foundations of the forthcoming Nazi state were laid out in detail and which became the literary herald of the Holocaust and the Second World War. However, the absolute winner is a volume titled Malleus Maleficarum, compared with which even Hitler's Mein Kampf is a short-lived and liberal document.
For comparison, Hitler's Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") was first published in 1925 by the Eher Verlag (the Nazi publishing company) and in the fifteen years until 1940, it had sold some six million copies, although its sales were rather mediocre until its author became Chancellor of a Nazified Germany and it became safer to have a copy placed prominently in the home for all to see. Its relevance as anything other than a piece of history can be said to have terminated in 1945 when its author acknowledged the final defeat of his ideology by committing suicide. It is, however, still in print as an historical document, and if it remains in academic publication, it will be 100 years old in 2025. The Malleus Maleficarum became an instant best seller throughout Europe and ran to fourteen editions between 1487 and 1520 and sixteen editions or more from 1574 to 1669, and was printed in Germany, France and Italy. It was in print in 1906 as a German translation of the Latin original, which ran to a second edition in 1922-3. It was printed again, this time in an English version, in 1928 by John Rodker. A paperback edition of this 1928 version was published in 1986 by Arrow Books Ltd. London. It can still be found in bookshops. This gives the Malleus Maleficarum a publishing existence of at least five hundred years.
The Latin title "Malleus Maleficarum" is normally translated into English as "Hammer of the Witches", which is technically correct. However, the modern English language has become somewhat bland compared with its richness in more ancient days, and neither "hammer" (nowadays nothing but a tool for banging in nails) or "witches", carries to the modern reader the full meaning or implication of the original Latin title. Maleficârum is the feminine genitive plural of maleficus, "nefarious, vicious, wicked, criminal" and malleus, "hammer" and "mallet", was also a maul or axe used for slaughtering sacrificial animals, a poleaxe. "Malleus Maleficarum", as a phrase from the fifteenth century, should therefore be viewed more as conveying the translated sense: "the slaughtering axe of wicked female sub-human criminals".
The book was written by two Dominican monks, Heinrich (Henry) Kramer and James Sprenger, and it was spawned by a Bull from Pope Innocent VIII issued on 9th September 1484 titled Summis desiderantes affectibus (“Desiring with supreme ardour.”) in which he stated that he had become convinced - although, as he freely admits, purely by gossip and hearsay and on no other evidence - that “witches” are doing strange and malicious things all over the place.
"It has indeed lately come to our ears... that in some parts of Northern Germany, as well as in the provinces… many persons... have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, accursed charms and crafts, enormities and horrid offences, have slain infants yet in the mother's womb, as also the offspring of cattle, have blasted the produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruits of the trees, nay, men and women, beasts of burthen, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, vineyards, orchards, meadows, pastureland, corn, wheat, and all other cereals..." (Innocent VIII, Bull of 09/09/1484). “Incubi” are male sexual demons whom the Church claimed paid nocturnal visits to the beds of women, and “succubi” are the female demons who were similarly said to visit men.
The Papal Bull then confirms that, on account of these superstitious anecdotes, Henry Kramer and James Sprenger, "Professors of Theology of the Order of Friars Preachers" (i.e. Dominican monks), have been officially appointed as Inquisitors by authority of the Pope ("Letters Apostolic") to investigate and punish these "...abominations they are to encounter..." (this very phrase, couched in the future tense, indicates that the results of the investigation have already been prejudged). The Pope then goes on to declare that, to his evident astonishment, a great many churchmen and citizens of the affected regions have "...the most unblushing effrontery..." to insist that such manifestations of witchcraft are not actually happening and that witchcraft is not practised in their provinces at all, and even to suggest that no person anywhere actually has such supernatural powers. His Holiness bemoans the fact that such denials of witchcraft, and a consequent reluctance on the parts of the local civic authorities to: "...punish, imprison, and penalise..." those suspected of being witches, is resulting in the situation that "...the abominations and enormities in question remain unpunished".
The Bull then goes on to state in absolute terms that Kramer and Sprenger have carte blanch to investigate these matters as they please, at all levels of society: "We decree and enjoin that the aforesaid Inquisitors be empowered to proceed to the just correction, imprisonment, and punishment of any persons, without let or hindrance, in every way as if the ... persons and their crimes in this kind were named and particularly designated in Our letters ...and they shall freely and lawfully perform any rites or execute any business which may appear advisable in the aforesaid cases. By Our supreme authority We grant them anew full and complete faculties."
This official communiqué amounted to a statute of law throughout Catholic Europe. (Protestantism was not launched until some 30 years later in 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 accusatory theses to the door of Wittenberg Church.) It served to open the floodgates fully to a persecution of the ordinary people as heinous and brutal as that perpetrated upon the Jews, Gypsies and other minority groups by the twentieth century Nazis, except that it continued for centuries, not just the twelve years in which the Nazi party held power, and there was no slightest hope of any allied army invading and eliminating the regime.
Kramer and Sprenger included the Papal Bull as a preface to the Malleus Maleficarum. The book itself was a nauseatingly detailed instruction manual dealing with how to identify witches within the community, how to trick them into making confessions, what methods of torture worked best if they were reluctant to confess or professed themselves innocent, how it was theologically impossible for there to be no such thing as witchcraft in the community, and how investigators and magistrates must not allow themselves to weaken into the error of mercy or compassion upon hearing the screams of the tortured. The contents of the book were offered as a complete and recommended set of instructions that had the benefit of being previously tried and tested by the authors themselves; it was therefore partly advice to others and partly a record of the author's own proven experience.
"Take the Book in your Right Hand, and Say:
“I Swear That I Am Guilty, Wholly Guilty, And
Cannot Be Anything But Guilty, So Help Me God!”
Although inspired and authorised by the Roman Catholic Church, the book - almost uniquely in the annals of church writ - was also taken up with equal fervour by Protestant churches and legal systems after these had become established. During a period of some three hundred years, every European court, assizes, judge and magistrate kept to hand a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum as an acknowledged standard reference work for consultation on Church-authorised legal procedure when dealing with cases of witchcraft.
As an itemised example of the witchcraft hysteria and paranoia that was prevalent for centuries, and of biblical fundamentalism running unchecked, this book is unparalleled. Its internal headings include "questions" and "chapters", some of which alone give an indication of the character of the book:
" Whether the Belief that there are such Beings as Witches is so Essential a part of the Catholic Faith that Obstinacy to maintain the Opposite Opinion manifestly savours of Heresy."
“Concerning Witches who copulate with Devils. Why is it that Women are chiefly addicted to Evil Superstitions?"
“Of the manner whereby they Change Men into the Shapes of Beasts."
" Here followeth how Witches Injure Cattle in Various Ways."
" How they Raise and Stir up Hailstorms and Tempests, and Cause Lightning to Blast both Men and Beasts."
"Of the Points to be Observed by the Judge before the Formal Examination in the Place of Detention and Torture."
"Of the Continuing of the Torture, and of the Devices and Signs by which the Judge can Recognise a Witch; and how he ought to Protect himself from their Spells. Also how they are to be Shaved in those Parts where they use to Conceal the Devil's Masks and Tokens; together with the due Setting Forth of Various Means of Overcoming their Obstinacy in Keeping Silence and Refusal to Confess."
"Of Common Purgation, and especially of the Trial by Red-hot Iron…."
(All quotations from the Malleus Maleficarum in this chapter are extracted from the 1986 Arrow Edition of the John Rodker 1928 publication, translated from the Latin by Montague Summers.)
According to the recommendations of the authors of the book, anyone accused of being a witch was automatically guilty; not merely "guilty until proven innocent" but guilty without any possibility of innocence. The single problem for the court was to arrange a suitable trap whereby the accused would make admission of their guilt, or else to apply sufficiently agonising torture to wrest a confession from their lips. Some parts of the book have the surreal atmosphere of the courtroom scene in Alice in Wonderland or the more sinister and claustrophobic novel The Trial by Franz Kafka, such as:
"The case of evidence given by perjurers… is admissible... their testimony shall be as valid as that of anyone else..."
"So great is the plague of heresy that... any criminal evildoer may give evidence against any person soever."
"...we… sanction the following procedure… as valid: the Judge... need not require any writ, or demand that the action be contested... he should shorten the conduct of the case as much as he can by disallowing all dilatory exceptions, appeals and obstructions, the impertinent contentions of pleaders and advocates, and the quarrels of witnesses, and by restraining the superfluous numbers of witnesses..."
Judges are advised that even if the testimony of witnesses shows discrepancies, or even if each witness states something entirely different from the others, providing all the witnesses at least agree that the accused is a witch, their evidence is admissible. In order to obtain a "confession" from an accused witch, psychological torture is first recommended, followed by physical. The accused is stripped and bound and then taken to "some engine of torture", but the court officers should put on an act that they are "disturbed by their duty" and, "at someone's earnest request" the accused should be released and taken to one side and told that she can escape torture, and even the death penalty, providing she confesses to being a witch; if she confesses, the death sentence is nevertheless passed. Should this trick not produce a suitable "confession", "…let her be often and frequently exposed to torture…" and "…if after being fittingly tortured she refuses to confess the truth…" the Judge should "…have other engines of torture brought before her, and tell her that she will have to endure these if she does not confess."
An alternative ploy is also recommended, whereby the Judge causes the accused witch to be well treated and given good food and drink, and to have "...honest persons who are under no suspicion enter to her and talk often with her on indifferent subjects, and finally advise her in confidence to tell the truth, promising that the Judge will be merciful to her and that they will intercede for her. And finally let the Judge come in and promise that he will be merciful, with the mental reservation that he means he will be merciful to himself or the State; for whatever is done for the safety of the State is merciful."
The book also suggests that a Judge can quite properly make a promise in court to an accused witch that, if they confess, he will not sentence them to death or to a very long imprisonment; once the confession has been obtained, the Judge hands over the sentencing to another Judge who has not made such a promise, and the death sentence is then duly passed with a clear conscience for both judges and no promises being broken.
A Pre-Nazi Holocaust.
How many innocent people suffered as a result of these legal witch-hunts, the officials of which used the Malleus Maleficarum as their guiding manual and ultimate factual source? There is quite a widely known “statistic” that some nine million people, mainly women, were executed as witches during the “Burning Times”. It must be said that this figure is unlikely. Such a total would not be sustainable in respect of the overall population of Europe during this three hundred and forty year period. Additionally, there were some European countries in which very few witchcraft executions took place at all, such as Ireland, which would concentrate the geographical range of the executions. Countries at the centre of the anti-witchcraft purges, such as Germany and Switzerland (a country with a comparatively low population figure at that time) would have been almost depopulated if this high figure were accurate.
The figure of nine million, still accepted by many, would appear to originate with Gerald Gardner, the “father of modern witchcraft” briefly mentioned in the previous chapter. In his 1959 book The Meaning of Witchcraft, Gardner uses the figure of nine million witchcraft executions, but does not quote a source. This would appear to be the figure’s earliest debut. (It is possible that Gardner also bandied this figure about to the press in order to add dramatic impact to the publicity for the newly established witchcraft museum on the Isle of Man, a project dear to his heart, thereby spreading it anecdotally.)
Modern statistical analysis of the court records of the witchcraft trials, taking into account gaps in the records, produce a minimum figure of approximately 15,000 executions in Europe and America and a maximum figure of something like 100,000. The true figure in all likelihood lies somewhere in between, possibly closer to the lower end of the scale than the higher. Even though this is much less than the nine million popularly bandied about, it remains an appalling and disgusting atrocity. When all is said and done, however, the exact total of victims must remain only an intelligent "guesstimate" and may be far more than one hundred thousand. (In the Penguin Dictionary of Religions 1997 edition, edited by John R. Hinnells, under the entry for "Witchcraft (Western)" is included the statement: "Before 1700 at least 200,000 people were executed, mainly in continental Europe, although the craze took hold in Britain and there was an outbreak at Salem, Massachusetts.")
The Malleus Maleficarum is an insult to humanity, even though it has its supporters to this day. Even its translator into English, the famous writer Montague Summers (1880-1948) stated in the introduction to his translation of the work: "There can be no doubt that Sprenger was a mystic of the highest order, a man of most saintly life. The Dominican chroniclers, such as Quétif and Echard, number Kramer and Sprenger among the glories and heroes of their Order. Certain it is that the Malleus Maleficarum is the most solid, the most important work in the whole vast library of witchcraft. One turns to it again and again with edification and interest. From the point of psychology, from the point of jurisprudence, from the point of history, it is supreme. It is hardly too much to say that later writers, great as they are, have done little more than draw from the seemingly inexhaustible wells of wisdom which the two Dominicans, Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, have given us in the Malleus Maleficarum. What is most surprising is the modernity of the book. There is hardly a problem, a complex, a difficulty, which they have not foreseen, and discussed, and resolved. Here are cases which occur in the law-courts today, set out with the greatest clarity, argued with unflinching logic, and judged with scrupulous impartiality..."
This nauseous adulating praise of a contemptible book was written as recently as October 1946. Of course, Montague Summers was himself a Roman Catholic priest.
According to the convoluted tenets of biblical theology as it eventually coalesced after the turbulent period of internecine rivalries and uncertainties in the first few centuries, the ultimate cause or source of everything that was declared “evil”, including witchcraft, sexual pleasure, women in general, deviation from acceptance of “God” and “Christ” (and later on, any scientific findings that differed from the official interpretations of the Bible, a paranoia that continues to this day) was officially declared to be “the Devil”, who was also known as Satan. Even in the 21st century, it has been seriously claimed by a fundamentalist “scientist” holding a Ph.D. that the theory of evolution, which contradicts the creation story in the Bible, was communicated to mankind by Satan at the Tower of Babel (cf. chapter 12).
In fact, it is entirely true to say that, if one wishes to understand Bible fundamentalism at its very deepest foundations of belief, one cannot understand Christ without also understanding Christ’s brother, Satan. (Anybody who might question that Christ is Satan’s brother is referred to the Bible, Job chapter 1 verse 6: “…Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.” According to Christian myth, Christ is the son of the biblical god, therefore all other sons of this god must be his brothers, and of course either Christ is not, after all, the only “Son of God”, or the Bible is lying in the Book of Job.)
(According to the respected book Peake’s Commentary on the Bible [edited by Professor Arthur S. Peake M.A, D.D., Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd.1919], “…Amongst these sons of God appears one, who is known by the name of the Satan, or the Adversary. The word Satan means one who opposes another in his purpose (Numbers 22:23,32) or pretentions or claims (Zechariah 32; 1 Kings 11:14,23,25) or generally.”)
Viewed more academically, the lengthy compilation of the complete set of biblical-based beliefs eventually lapsed into a concoction compounded of those many other “Light versus Darkness” religions and philosophies which inspired Christianity’s fabricators and provided their sources, such as – for a single example – the pagan Persian belief in Ahriman and Ormuzd, one of many other religions practising dualism (a belief in two opposing gods, usually of good and evil).
Our line of research therefore needs to be extended into a detailed study of that complex entity whose existence most Christians, and especially fundamentalists, believe in as equally as they believe in Christ - the Devil himself.
10. Satan, That Other Famous Christian God
"The Devil is only a convenient myth invented
by the real malefactors of our world."
Robert Anton Wilson
The Devil of an Idea
Society has been so successfully saturated with the mythologies of the three great male-supremacist religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, all of whom share a belief in Satan, that any representation of a god with horns is automatically interpreted by a large percentage of the population as being "the Devil" or "Satan", regardless of the deity’s actual cultural derivation and qualities. Although most other religions in the world have mythologies which include various forms of “evil spirits” counterbalancing the “good spirits”, or else twin principles of light and dark, in order to offer a metaphysical explanation of why fortune fluctuates between good and bad, it is only these three major world religions whose theologies assert the existence of Satan as such.
The sheer attractiveness to vanity of being able to have a Devil upon whom to shift the blame for our own natural wickedness maintains an almost psychopathic compulsion upon the minds of many: “The Devil made me do it!” has become a cliché in criminology. In order to understand how this myth of Satan as the God of Evil has grown into such a grotesque apologia for purely human failings, it is necessary to clinically explore the detailed history and family tree of this mythological figure.
It has been said that the gods of any culture become the demons of that culture's conqueror. The Christian establishment certainly attempted to fashion their own demons out of the many pre-Christian pagan gods, and later they did the same thing farther afield with the native deities of such places as the Americas and Africa. From the establishment of this intolerant attitude, it became a very short and easy step to arrive at the church's indictment that anyone who held a non-Christian belief was a "devil-worshipper".
Pan, of course, with his horns and faun's legs, was one of the classical gods on which the church based its imaging of the Devil, but the truth of the matter is that Pan was essentially seen by the ancients as a good deity, the shepherd of wild creatures, the personification of the woodlands and glades and the spirit of mystery attached to the behaviour and secret lives of animals. He also had his human side and was perceived as being a god of natural fertility, good honest sex and the enjoyment of the basic good things of life. Pan is also connected with the Roman god Bacchus and his Greek counterpart Dionysus, both renowned in mythology for bestowing the gift of the knowledge of wine to humankind, and for the uninhibited revels that occurred during their rites. Even today, the word "bacchanalia" has not disappeared from the English language.
Silenus was another wine-oriented god and was probably in origin a version of Bacchus/Dionysus. Today he is best remembered as the amiable toga-clad inebriate featured in the Disney film Fantasia to the background of Beethoven's sixth symphony, the "Pastoral". Behind this bowdlerized version is the reality of Silenus as a patron god of the Satyrs, the wild horned and faun-legged imps of classical myth who represented, amongst other attributes, rampant male sexuality. The word "faun" for a young deer derives from the Satyrs, who were linked with Faunus, the chief of their Roman counterparts. All of these mythological beings were held to have insatiable sexual appetites, hearkening back to the ethos of the pagan agricultural fertility religion that underlies the myths.
Even in such a highly regarded and respectable children's book as C. S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, which has been made into animated cartoons, TV serials and a blockbuster movie, this sexual undercurrent has been observed. With a great knowledge of paganism and a tremendous sly humour that appears to have escaped all censorship, Lewis called his faun, who likes to invite maidens to tea, Mr. Tumnus. "Tumnescent" is a biological word for a male erection (from Latin tumeo: swell, be swolen; tumescere: swell up). "Mr. Tumnus" therefore means "Mr. Big Penis" (or “Mr. Erection”). It was Aristotle who said: "The gods, too, are fond of a joke."
The early church gleefully incorporated any prominent attributes of paganism into their catalogue of diabolism. As a single example, the popular picture of the Devil carries a pitchfork because a forked stick called a stang was a sign of spirituality in some pagan religions. (To the present day, the word “stang” is associated with survivals of pagan ritual in Germany, where it is the name for what might be called a kind-of traditional midsummer “maypole”.)
The strict Church view held that to deny Satan was implicitly to also deny God and Christ and therefore counted as blasphemy; a modern fundamentalist view is that pagans, agnostics and others who do not accept the existence of Satan, are simply unaware that it is Satan himself who is putting such thoughts into their heads. This topsy-turvy reasoning, although spurious, is sadly symptomatic of the paranoid “negative feedback” built in to biblical fundamentalism, which prevents its adherents from accepting that their religion is merely one of a larger group or family of exactly equal but different global religions.
In the medieval period toward the start of the Inquisition, the Church of Rome was faced with a technical problem, the solution of which produced a powerful piece of "black propaganda" that continues in the beliefs of many to this day. The problem was that the church traditionally differentiated between the offences of following another religion altogether and that of "heresy", a word deriving from the Greek word hairesis meaning, “making a choice”. A heretic is someone who chooses their own credo instead of accepting a belief imposed by authority. A follower of an entirely different religion – a Saracen, for instance, or a Jew or Hindu – was not classed as a “heretic”. Other religions were simply "errors of belief" and their followers, though systematically murdered, ostracised and frequently deprived of rights and livelihood, were not technically heretics: only a Christian could be a heretic.
Heresy was defined by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century as: “…a species of infidelity in men who, having professed the faith of Christ, corrupt its dogmas.” In 1323 the Domincan monk Bernardo Gui, in his book Practica Inquisitionis, stated that Jews are not heretics unless they have previously converted to Christianity and then changed their minds and adopted Judaism once more. The Catholic Encylopedia, under the entry for “heresy”, gives the view that… “There are, therefore, two ways of deviating from Christianity: the one by refusing to believe in Christ Himself, which is the way of infidelity, common to Pagans and Jews; the other by restricting belief to certain points of Christ’s doctrine selected and fashioned at pleasure, which is the way of heretics.” That is, to be a heretic one had to already have been considered a Christian and then made a decision to abandon the established dogmas of the church in some proportion, for example by subscription to the beliefs of any of the Christian sects that were not a part of the Christianity ruled from Rome. The minions of the Vatican ruthlessly exterminated any heretical sects, such as the Cerinthians, the Timotheans and the Pelagians. In the first six centuries AD there arose over fifty such heretical Christian sects, all of which were put down by fire and sword. Robert the Pious, King of France, established a dreadful precedent by pronouncing the first known sentence of burning at the stake for heresy in 1022.
Sometimes it was nothing but a minor deviation from authority that doomed a group of people to condemnation and death for heresy. Such was the case with the Quartodecimans, whose “crime” was to celebrate Easter on the fourteenth of January; with the Anthropomorphites, who maintained that God had the shape of a man; and with the Theopaschites, who believed that all three beings of the Trinity suffered on the cross.
This legal difference between heresy and paganism stood in the way of the church acting with sufficiently severe punishment upon the increasing number of innocent people who were being hysterically denounced as “witches”.
If “witchcraft” per se were regarded by the Church authorities as being an entirely non-Christian pagan belief in its own right (worshipping the pagan nature deities of pre-Christian Europe), as indeed it largely had been regarded until about 1390, its followers might be severely frowned upon and tormented with such things as death, denial of citizenship and exclusion from entry into towns and cities1 but they could not yet be systematically exterminated, man woman and child, as were the followers of heresies. This was an annoying problem for the church, until it was solved by an ingenious legal scam.
Witches traditionally worshipped a goddess, and also a horned nature god of whom Pan was one regional version; the Christian Devil was envisaged as a horned being; therefore, it was an easy step for the church to declare that the horned god of the witches was in actuality the Christian Devil, and witches worshipped him. This generated the implication that witchcraft should not be classified as a different religion, a division of paganism or what is sometimes to this day referred to within the church as “the Old Religion”, but as a twisted form of Christianity.
In 1398, the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris announced their conclusion that witchcraft required a pact with the Christian Devil, a finding that embraced the implicit renunciation of the sovereignty of Christ and the authority and dogma of the established church, and was therefore a form of de facto heresy. This manoeuvre, in one stroke, ended any possibility of the Christian world recognising witchcraft as an independent religious belief, whilst also bringing it into the legal definition of heresy. Overnight, witchcraft had been reduced within canonical law (thence passing into civil law which usually devolved from it) to being a mockery and inversion of Christianity, a false supposition that lingers in some quarters to this day.
This new doctrine also provided the church with a very useful “cultural dustbin” metaphorically bearing a big “beware – witchcraft!” label, into which all the native religions and beliefs encountered in newly entered regions of the increasingly explored world could safely be dumped, reeking under the appellation “Devil-worship” and not having even a snowball’s chance in Hell of equal status recognition in its own venerable ethnic setting alongside Christianity.
Mr. Devil, This Is Your Life!
The Devil was actually "born" slowly over a period from about the year 600 BC to 450 AD, although much has been added to the legend since then. It is a popular illusion that "the Devil", otherwise known as Satan, is an ancient biblical character that has been with mankind since the beginning, but this simply is not so. Undoubtedly evil, as a quality of human behaviour, has existed as an inherent capability ever since the human species first evolved; but the Devil and Satan are far more recent inventions.
The Devil’s mythological shape was partly moulded from the Judaic concept of Satan, but even the Hebraic Satan was a comparatively recent creation. Devils, in the plural, were of course believed in from the earliest of times, and in many cultures under many different names. Every culture known to us has its own family or line-up of gods, and these are generally divided between good spirits and evil spirits or demons. But not until the advent of later Judaism and early Christianity did Judeo/Christian peoples start to postulate a particular god of evil in opposition to the single male god in the form of a chief demon, Satan or the Devil.
Although Satan is mentioned in the ancient scrolls that eventually became the Bible's Old Testament, this Satan is, perhaps surprisingly, not actually the Devil: in Old Testament times prior to about 600 BC there was no such thing as “the Devil” as the figure later came to be conceptualised, and “Satan” meant something entirely different. In ancient Hebrew, "Satan" simply meant "adversary" or "enemy", and throughout the Old Testament the term is more usually applied to a purely human adversary or oppressor. In only a few cases is the word used to denote something non-corporeal, and even these references do not relate to a character anything like the modern Devil. In Zechariah 3, Satan is nothing more than a character in a vision, having no actuality; in 1 Chronicles 21:1, he is merely the personification of King David's anger against adversity. Even in the New Testament, when Jesus is reported as saying "Get thee hence, Satan" (Matthew 4:10) it is clear that he was addressing only his own very human doubts and wavering and rejecting the normal human temptation to follow an easier and more materially prosperous path in life.
Technically, within the true meaning of the word, anyone who opposes Judaism is a Satan. Hitler was a Satan: so were certain Roman emperors and so was Saddam Hussein more recently. In its proper usage, the word applies more to politics than to spiritual matters.
Many of the attributes today associated with the Devil are the legacy of earlier religions that the Christian church was anxious to stamp out. For example, there is Herne the Hunter (mentioned by Shakespeare in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" 4:4). Herne is usually depicted as a wild huntsman wearing a helmet adorned with the antlers of a stag. This is just one of the many regional names for the archetypal Horned God, the male consort of the pagan Nature Goddess (Mother Earth, or the Earth Mother, or Gaia etc.). In different areas he was given other names, such as Dianus (Latin), or Cernunnos (Celtic)1. In Guernsey he was called Hou; in the Basque country, Janicot; in Mediterranean regions, Pan. In some regions he was named Karnaina, from an epithet applied in the Koran (18:82) to Alexander the Great who wore a horned crown, Dhu'l Karnain (also Zhul-Qarnain and Zulkarnein) “The Lord with the Horns”. These god-forms were originally perceived as friendly, noble and beneficent male nature spirits, often envisaged as wearing horned helmets and other animal adornments, or as actually being compounded of part human and part animal.
From such popular pagan nature spirits were "borrowed" the goat-like legs grafted onto the emerging image of the Devil, together with the horns. The early Church Fathers reasoned that this was also appropriate by virtue of the Jewish belief that the goat is an "unclean" animal. There was another important reason why the Devil inherited goat-like attributes. Part of the ancient Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement ritual among the Hebrews (see Leviticus 16) was to bring two goats to the altar of the tabernacle. The High Priest then cast lots, one for God and one for Azazel, an evil spirit of the desert. God's goat was ritually sacrificed, while the other became the escape-goat, the origin of our modern word "scapegoat". The High Priest would transfer the sins of himself and his people to the scapegoat by confessing to it, whereupon it was set free in the wilderness, thus disposing of the accumulated sins. Similar primitive “passing the buck” beliefs have been reported from all over the world. Some tribes in Borneo, for example, launched a boat once a year ritually filled with all the evils and hardships of the tribe, which they believed would then instead be visited upon whoever it drifted to. (See, for this and many other examples, The Golden Bough by Sir James G. Frazer, particularly chapter 57.)
(The Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, the sixth of the Feasts of Israel, called in the Bible by its plural form Yom Hakippurim [“Day of the Atonements”] is also observed as a holiday by certain Christian cults, particularly those fragmenting from the schisms of the original Worldwide Church of God, an American radical interpretation of Christianity founded in 1933 as a radio ministry (“Radio Church of God”) by Herbert W. Armstrong in Eugene, Oregon, and denounced, sometimes as an actual heresy, by the orthodox Christian church. Since the death of Armstrong in 1986 the Worldwide Church of God has transfigured itself under the administration of Armstrong’s successors Joseph Tkach and his son Joseph Tkach Jr. into a mainstream evangelical church with [figures available as at 2004] 860 churches in 90 countries and a claimed 64,000 converts and a corporate HQ in Glendora, California.)
Christians of earlier centuries, especially after the Crusades (1096-1270) during which Europeans came into greater contact than ever before with Mohammedan peoples and learned much about their culture and science, associated Azazel, the Hebraic spirit of the confessional goat, with the djinn of Arabian myth called Iblis (or Eblis). According to Mohammedan legend, Iblis was the ruler of the evil genii (Djinn or Jinn), whom the Christians construed as "fallen angels". Thus by indirect means and the mixture of different theologies, the leader of the "devils" became identified with the figure of a goat.
Apart from this, in ancient Egypt (a pagan culture whose beliefs were usually despised by the writers of the Bible) various fertility gods were depicted in the form of a ram or had rams as their symbolic animal, an association rising from the agricultural wealth of the Nile region. The ba (soul) of Osiris himself was believed to take residence within the body of a sacred ram named Ba-naded, also known as the Ram of Mendes. The Greek explorer Herodotus referred to it in his writings as the Goat of Mendes, which over the course of centuries became another name for "the Devil".
The character Iblis mentioned above is the principal devil in Islam, featuring more commonly in the Koran (Qur’an) under the name of the Shaitan (al-Shaitan). Although the words “Satan” and “Shaitan” share the same linguistic root, Shaitan is properly a collective noun applying to the general throng of evil spirits who assist Iblis, but the title is also used to refer to Iblis himself, just as the English term “a devil” means any of the host of demons but “the Devil” means their leader. Iblis is mentioned eleven times in the Koran and, as al-Shaitan, eighty-seven times. The belief has it that Iblis was a Jinn, a creature made by God (Allah) from fire as Adam was made by God from clay. Through jealousy, Iblis disobeyed Allah and was expelled from grace. Afterwards, he was dispatched to earth and there tempted Adam and his wife into eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, and when recounted in this aspect as the primal tempter he is grammatically referred to as ash-Shaitan. For this, he was sentenced to Hell, but answered this judgement by stating that he wished to inflict the same end upon humanity. Allah, deciding that mankind should be tested, charged him to roam the earth and seek to tempt and misguide people. Ash-Shaitan (Satan) carries out this task, according to Islamic belief, by whispering sinful thoughts (waswas: lit. “he whispers”) and false suggestions (haiif) into people’s heads. According to the Koran, al-Shaitan is not the enemy of Allah, for Allah is supreme over all his creations including Iblis/Shaitan, and all good and evil comes from Allah himself, and only Allah can save humans from the evils inherent in his creation. Al-Shaitan is, rather, the enemy of mankind, whom he continually attempts to estrange from Allah.
This cosmology is reminiscent of the earlier Hebraic view in which the God of the Old Testament was both good and evil (see below). Satan was then considered merely one of the “sons of God” (Job 6:1), instructed to tempt mankind; and the aspect of Satan as a tempter to wickedness according to the tenets of Islam is for all practical purposes identical to the Judeo/Christian belief originating around 600 BC. In both Islam and Christianity, the evil and wickedness experienced and committed by human beings on an individual level is brought about through the temptations placed within them by the (chief) Devil, or Satan (ash-Shaitan), compounded by the personal failure of a human being to reject such temptation.
The Knights Templars
“Baphomet” is another name that has, over the course of centuries, become associated with the Christian Devil, and this name originates from the time of the suppression of the Knights Templars, who feature in various conspiracy theories and works of fiction.
At the beginning of the 12th century, a small group of French knights took a vow swearing themselves to the task of protecting pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. They were given the name "Templars" because their weapons were stored in a building on the site of the old Temple of Solomon on Mount Moriah at Jerusalem. Over time, this order of knights became so wealthy and politically powerful that they provoked the fear, jealousy and avarice of the Vatican. In 1312 the Pope of the time ordered that they be suppressed and many of the knights were hideously tortured to death and their property claimed in forfeit by the church.
In order to justify this atrocity, the church authorities proclaimed that the Knights Templars had ceased to be Christians and had instead taken to worshipping an idol which was named Baphomet, which qualified them as heretics. This may or may not have been true: the records of the Templars were destroyed and the only historical documentation that comes down to the present day was written by their enemies, who had a vested interest in defaming them. What is known, however, is that the name "Baphomet", which has since passed into occasional usage as another name for "the Devil", is a corruption of the name Mahomet, the Prophet of Islam, which is "Matomat" in Old Spanish and "Baphomet" in French.
The Evil of God
In fact, what has been happening over the course of a couple of thousand years, and is still continuing today, is the invention of a Dark God, a spiritual "chief of evil", put together like pieces selected from many different jigsaw puzzles. In the West, this assembling was done by Christians, although ideas from other religions such as paganism, Judaism and Islam were also grafted on, with one of the intentions being to deliberately bring paganism into disrepute, especially the popular pagan conception of horned gods. Also at work within the collective theological consciousness, however, was the deeper issue of attempting to find an acceptable answer to the question forever asked by the victims and witnesses of atrocities and natural disasters: if God is good, how can such evil exist in the world?
The Old Testament, as we have seen, was compiled and edited over many centuries. During the shattering time of the captivity in Babylon (c.598-537 BC), with the attendant psychological traumas of enforced servitude, loss of freedom, loss of religious confidence and much cultural heritage and the seeming victory of the pagan gods of the conquerors, a very pronounced note of newly-generated questioning was introduced into the interpretation of the basic Judaic religious blueprint, which infected the writing of contemporary Hebrew scriptures.
This period of military, social and cultural collapse, when the defeat and captivity of the Jews by Babylon, coming a couple of generations after the similar defeat of the Israelites by Assyria, seemed to indicate that their god had abandoned his “people”. This produced what has been termed the “Apocalyptic literature” - quantities of texts, some of which were later included in the Bible’s Old Testament, featuring ghastly visions of the end of the world. Examples can be found in Daniel; Zephaniah; Isaiah chapter 13 (“…The burden of Babylon… They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the Lord, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land…”); Joel chapter 2 (“…sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble… A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness… there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations…”); and the apocryphal Book of Enoch.
As a contrived but sociologically necessary exoneration for the apparent failure of God, of his abandonment of his own “chosen people” and everything they stood for and had expected of him, a myth gained ground among the captives that control of the world had passed into the hands of Satan (“The Opposer”), a great devil. Although this evidently became a strong undercurrent of belief amongst the general enslaved population, the religious establishment - the priests and most rabbis - did not as a rule subscribe to this view, since any belief proposing that God was less than perfect, less than almighty, was viewed as blasphemous and they dismissed the possibility of demonology as a falsehood and sacrilege. For this reason, the concept of “the Devil” was relatively unimportant to later Jewish belief, only becoming honoured with a completed kind of “negative divinity” with the development of Christianity.
Two important subsequent additions to general belief grew out of the sense of abandonment and disillusionment originating at this time of Hebraic captivity and slavery after about 600 BC. One of these was the belief that a mighty and undefeatable Jewish warrior chieftain would arise and lead the Jews to a sweeping military victory in which all their enemies including the Babylonians would be swept away in a tide of bloodshed, mass slaughter and violent revenge. This “ultimate warrior” - in all seriousness corresponding quite closely to the concept of a “Jewish Rambo” (or even a Jewish Hitler!) - was called Mashiach, the Messiah, and he was spoken of by prophets as the militaristic Saviour of Israel who would restore the Jewish Nation and lead it to world domination. The second addition to the beliefs of the Jewish people was the opinion that a great devil, Satan, had recently taken control of the world, thereby offering an explanation of the sudden onset of their military, social and religious catastrophes.
In the original belief of the Hebrews, subsequently inherited in adapted form by Christianity, their god was viewed as almighty, which means that he was the sole creator responsible for the entire universe and everything in it. In this view, this god was responsible for all good, and also for all evil. In other words, the god of the Bible was originally viewed as evil as well as good. No separate Devil or Satan was necessary; in effect, God was also the Devil. In the Bible itself (Isaiah 45:7) God states: “I create the light; I create the darkness”.
However, as time went by, this view gradually became replaced by a watered-down concept of the Hebrew god, where he was purely good and had no (direct) truck with evil. The Hebrews began to formulate an explanatory mythology for the presence of evil in the world. The source of evil became conceptualised as a malevolent spirit who, although originally viewed as a “son of God” (as in Job 1:6) was no longer the god himself. The evil and negative characteristics of God were expunged from him and re-assigned to an alternative supernatural entity, Satan, who over a period came to represent the fountainhead of evil. During this process, the Hebrews continued to pay lip service to the notion of a single almighty god (monotheism) whose inherited instructions included a specific command to “…have no other gods…” (Exodus 20:3 et al). However, in simple fact, their avowedly monistic religion evolved through this change into actual dualism, which according to the proposed sacred tenets of both Judaism and Christianity – which against all the evidence continue to claim monotheism to this day - is defined as a blasphemy and a heresy.
Monism can be (briefly) defined as the doctrine of the oneness of God. In monism, God and the universe of matter are one, matter being nothing more than an extension of God through the fiat of creation, as an arm is an extension of a human being. Monism holds that there can be no difference, or opposition, between God and the world, as Unity cannot be divided from itself. Since God is the same “yesterday, today and forever”, this god’s creation must also be the same, else God would not be unchangeable. According to the reasoning of monism, to postulate a changeable God is absolute blasphemy. Nevertheless, a changeable God had to be postulated in order to promote the Devil into the Lord of Evil, and thus the worship of Jehovah transformed into a form of dualism, the antithesis of monism.
Dualism refers to any belief system in which there are identified two opposed principles, such as good and evil, light and darkness, life and death, order and chaos, up and down etc. In theology, dualism implicitly accepts that neither one of the two opposing agencies can be fully omnipotent, because each is unbalanced or eroded by the existence of the other. In the early centuries AD, Christian sects espousing varieties of dualism, such as Catharism and Manichaeism, were categorised as heretical by the Roman Church. The heretical and duelistic Marcionites even proposed that the Old and New Testaments were the works of two different gods, one good, one evil. The ancient eastern pagan religion of Zoroastrianism is dualistic in nature, espousing two eternally opposed universal principles (or gods), Ahura Mazda, the creator of everything, and Angra Mainu, the spirit of evil. The principle of dualism can apply to many things in addition to religious concepts, such as Descartes’ philosophical Thought and Extension: when specifically applied to religion, dualism is synonymous with ditheism (“two-god belief”), as monism is with monotheism.
In mainstream Judaic and Christian theology, the accusation of ditheism was carefully sidestepped by the proposition that Satan is not actually a god as such, but rather, a servant of God who has been charged with testing the piety of humans by inflicting doubts and temptations upon them. This convenient cover story, however, both evades the important issue and defines it. Simply, the biblical god must either be almighty, or else merely “partly-mighty”: he cannot be both. If he is defined theologically as “almighty”, then everything - without any possibility of exception - must be a part of him and he cannot be divided or limited. On the other hand, if there is anything whatsoever that is theologically considered not to be a part of this god, then the god is not almighty but only “partly-mighty” (limited).
Thus, ultimately, if the biblical god is upheld as “almighty”, then Satan is an aspect of God’s personality: if, however, Satan is given his independence to act against this god (“rebel”) in an independent fashion or even as a servant with a personality and agenda of his own, then the biblical God is not almighty but is seriously flawed. One cannot have it both ways. Is your right arm part of yourself, or is it merely your servant, acting under your command but given a degree of autonomy? I am unaware of any legal defence in a court of law in which the act of shooting or stabbing someone to death has been blamed on the murderer’s arm and the rest of the murderer has been found innocent and above reproach!
The evil side of the biblical god was often referred to in older Hebrew writings as the mal'ak Yahweh, which was the voice and spirit of the god and the god himself. The word mal'ak was consistently translated in the Bible into the Greek angelos, "messenger", but should not be interpreted as the independent spiritual being of infinite goodness that is the bowdlerised modern conception of "angel". The mal'ak was the Hebrew god himself, or a pseudopod that he sent down to earth. It is the mal'ak who slaughters the Egyptian firstborn in Exodus 12:23 as the "Angel of Death", and which visits destruction upon Sodom and Gomorrah.
This ancient Jewish belief is reflected in the originally Hebraic occult system the Cabala (Qabbalah), where God is not considered a "person" or even a disembodied personality but, rather, a structure or even a scaffolding by which the universe is created and ordered. This divine structure, symbolised by the Cabala’s Tree of Life diagram, depicts a God that created everything in the universe and whose "body" (or "scaffolding") is both the universe and the blueprint of the universe, as the DNA molecule is life and the blueprint of life. This God is both good and evil, both light and dark. Everything that can be, according to this belief, is an aspect of this natural creative energy force from outside time and space, and mere human beings are unable to perceive the "divine plan" in its entirety, seeing some of its effects as "evil" and some as "good": how can mortals make judgement of the morals of a god?
However, this kind of ancient Middle Eastern theology was ultimately too distasteful for the sensibilities of the evolving beliefs of Christians, who found it unpalatable to accept that the personality of God they inherited from Judaism was responsible for all evil as well as all good: this supposition also skirted dangerously close to the beliefs of the Gnostics. Whilst nominally clutching at the concept of an "almighty" God, Christian theology fashioned for itself a more acceptable format, in which God was perceived as nothing but good. Evil, then, had to have another spiritual source, and thus the Devil, or Satan, was "promoted" into a sort of anti-God. In the original belief, God has a good side and an evil side (or a positive and negative side): in Christianity, and especially in fundamentalism, good and evil are instead now headed by two different personalities - in fact, by what amounts to two different and rival gods.
Once the notion of removing the onset of evil from Jehovah and granting it to Satan had begun to form amongst religious leaders, it became necessary to devise a complex new mythology in order to explain how it had come about, and to provide handy excuses to justify how the occurrence of evil in the world had slipped out of God's control. Thus was begun the process of creating a spurious background of "history" for the Devil in which he became a rebel against Jehovah, a "fallen angel", where "angels" were transformed into independent entities with a personality, will and even lusts of their own and were no longer merely the translation of the Hebrew mal'ak, the biblical god's personal intervention on earth. The ludicrousness (not to mention the paganism) of the concept of a “fallen angel” largely escaped notice: according to the original Hebrew belief, it would actually have to be a “fallen mal’ak”, which would be the godly equivalent of a man being struck by his own fist.
Generating a mythological history for Satan became an ongoing process spanning many centuries. Just about everything forming the final version of the myth was borrowed from other cultural and religious sources and grafted on to mainstream biblical belief to form an increasingly intricate mythological patchwork.
For instance, the word "Hell" has nothing to do with Christianity, Judaism or the Bible but was lifted from Scandinavian pagan mythology. Hel was the name of the Queen of the Dead and also of her kingdom. The Vikings considered this a place to be avoided at all costs, simply because where their version of paradise, Valhalla, was a place where dead heroes could fight, feast and make merry for all eternity, Hel was the place where people went who died a peaceful death in bed without a sword in their hand, or who had been cowards in life. The realm of Hel was not a bad place, it was merely peaceful - and what true Viking desired eternal peace?
Scandinavian ideas and mythology indelibly permeated English culture during the time of the Danelaw, after Guthrum, the leader of a 9th century Danish invasion, signed the Treaty of Wedmore with King Alfred, which gave the Danes their own huge kingdom in England north of a line drawn from Chester to London. Consequently, our days of the week are in part named from Scandinavian gods rather than Roman gods (as they are in French for instance) – Tiw’s day, Woden’s day, Thor’s day, Freya day. Saturday is Anglo-Saxon sater daeg from Latin dies saturni. Sunday is Anglo-Saxon sunnan daeg from Latin dies solis, Sun’s Day; Monday is Anglo-Saxon Monendaeg (Moon’s Day). All are pagan titles.
(Even before Guthrum and Alfred, the Anglo-Saxon town of Eoforwic was captured in 866 by Danish Vikings who changed its name to Jorvik, which eventually became anglicised into York and then bestowed again on New Amsterdam, the former Dutch colony on Manhattan Island, which became New York.)
Consequently, the pagan Viking word "Hell" occurs 21 times in the New Testament of the Authorised or King James Bible. In eight of these cases, it is a poor translation of the Greek word Hades; in twelve cases, it is a translation of the Hebrew Gehenna and in one case, of the Latin Tartarus. (In the Revised Version of the Bible the word “Hell” is mentioned only 13 times.) It is from the Hebrew word Gehenna that the fires and furnaces originated that became an indispensable feature of the standard mythology.
Gehenna was, more correctly Ge-Hinnom, "The Valley of the Sons of Hinnom", also called by the place-name Tophet. In this valley just outside the east gate of Jerusalem, sacrifices were made in pagan times to the Canaanite gods Ba'al and Moloch (see, for instance, Jeremiah 19:1-6). When these pagan gods had been demoted to the position of demonic idols in the Hebrew religion, refuse and rubbish from the city was thrown into this valley for convenient disposal. A team of lowly workers kept fires burning to consume the refuse. In fact, this is one of history's first recorded city dumps. To the Christians of the early centuries AD the concept of Ge-Hinnom, or Gehenna as it became, suggested the perfect disposal system for all human spiritual refuse. Thus, no picture of Hell was complete without the addition of fires and furnaces.
Interestingly, fire also features in an Islamic interpretation of Hell. According to the Koran (surah 15:44), there are seven doors in Hell, each opening into a different department or category. The Koran does not directly mention further specific details, but certain Islamic scholars have suggested each level as being the successive Hells for different degrees of wickedness. The first level of this view of the Islamic Hell is Jahannam, where sinful Mohammedans go, although (in a manner similar to the Christian Limbus Patris) they will all eventually be admitted into Paradise once their sin has been purged. Fire is mentioned in respect of the second level, Lathà (“The Flamer”) which is the destination for all Christians until, after the end of days, they accept Islam.
The Bearer of Light
Another of the Devil's familiar appellations is Lucifer. This name means simply Light-bearer (Latin luciferi from lux, lucis) and was in classical times the name for the planet Venus when it appeared in the morning sky shortly before the brighter light of the rising sun drowned it out. (When Venus shone in the evening sky, it was thought to be a different object and was called Hesperus, "Western Star", because it sets in the west.)
This ancient name for Venus is relevant to the mythology of Satan being cast out of heaven and comes from a second mistaken interpretation from the book of the prophet Isaiah. (The first was the "virgin birth" prophesies: see chapter 6.)
As described earlier, around 600 BC the king of Babylon had laid siege to Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple of Solomon and carried off the people to be slaves. The author of Isaiah, writing during this captivity in a justifiably vindictive piece of libel, calls the Babylonian king "Day Star" (i.e. Venus) to express the sentiment that his oppressive reign and inflated self-image as an all-powerful potentate would be short lived and would vanish in the face of the greater light of Jehovah, just like the brief dawn appearance of the morning star vanishes as the greater brightness of the rising sun drowns it out. Translating the Old Testament from Hebrew in the early fifth century AD, Jerome used the word Lucifer as the normal Latin name for the morning star, Venus, and consequently from about 405 AD the Bible came to contain the passage: "...take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say... How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning..." (Isaiah 14:2-15).
Even though the biblical passage includes a series of fulminations of a purely political agenda very obviously directed in anger against a human tyrant ("...and (the house of Israel) shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors..." etc.), the phrasing, particularly in verses 13-15 describing the overreaching pride and ambition of the Babylonian king and how the writer of Isaiah hoped he would soon be bought down low and get his just deserts, seemed to suggest to the more wild-eyed reader a thousand years later that something else was being described. "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be bought down to hell, to the sides of the pit." (It has been suggested, by Peake amongst others, that “the north” is a term for “heaven” or the abode of Jehovah, in a similar manner that it is at the “top” of a conventional map with south at the “bottom”. In this instance, the original Hebrew word later translated as “hell” was more correctly Sheol, according to Hebrew mythology the abode of departed spirits but certainly not a place of punishment or even deprecation.)
To Christian readers, jumping to the wrong conclusion was irresistible - Lucifer must be the name of a demon who had tried to ascend into heaven and exalt his throne above God, desiring to become "like the most High", and for punishment was "bought down to hell". This, they reasoned, could only refer to Satan. Thus "Lucifer" became yet another name for the Christian Devil, a belief compounded in later centuries by such people as the great Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in his epic poems Divina Comedia and Inferno, and Milton (1608-1674) who gave the name "Lucifer" to his "Demon of Sinful Pride" in Paradise Lost.
Another historical footnote added more propaganda to the legend of the Devil in the final book of the Bible, Revelation, written by St. John the Divine of Patmos. In ancient Babylon - a land understandably hated by the Biblical authors - the more important a particular deity, the greater were the number of horns incorporated into its image as what amounts to a "badge of rank". The most important Babylonian gods and goddesses, often depicted as dragons, bulls and other mythical creatures, thus possessed seven horns as a symbol of their status. From this arose the inclusion of the "Beast with 7 horns" in the Book of Revelation as a vision of the Devil.
The Horned Hero of the Bible
Although many may claim that "the Devil" of Christianity is a proven character in the Bible, the most important being in the Bible who is specifically described as having horns growing on his head was no less a person than Moses himself. The modern Bible (the King James version and later versions influenced by similar motivation) has been censored to alter this particular reference, which was seen by Christians to conflict with their identification of any horned being with the Devil. They could not permit the person credited with being the author of the first five books of the Bible to be seen as possessing attributes associated with the Devil! However, in the original Vulgate Bible, when Moses returns from his encounter at the burning bush, the Latin of Exodus chapter 34 verse 29 that now reads: “...behold, the skin of his face shone.” is: “...quod cornuta esset facies sua.” (“He had horns emerging from his face.”)
The Hebrew word for “grew horns” is karan which is used in the original text that became the Bible’s Book of Exodus, but karan can also mean “radiated”, as horns radiate from a head or skull, and this was seized upon preferentially by Christians who edited later editions of the Bible so that Jerome’s attribution of horns was altered to that of a shining face. The horns of Moses have even been dismissed by some writers as a skin complaint or condition. Those who have an inbuilt prejudice against horned beings support the theory that the translation error is the other way round, originally supposed to indicate radiating light but mistranslated by Jerome into horns.
Perhaps a more likely explanation of the inclusion of these horns of Moses is that, in ancient predominantly agricultural societies, the concept of adding horns to a character was originally an indication of the growth of venerability, wisdom, leadership, fertility, strength and respect, for the simple reason that the horns of animals grow larger with maturity (hence the pagan Babylonian’s artistic notion of giving their more important deities up to seven horns). According to Deuteronomy 33:17, referring to Joseph’s development: “…His glory is like the firstling of his bullocks, And his horns are like the horns of unicorns…” In Exodus 30:2, God instructs that the altar of the Tabernacle itself should have horns upon it, again probably in origin a notion to indicate power and venerability.
Describing Moses as having grown horns was in all likelihood, therefore, the pastoral Hebrew’s innocent literary device, in the days before the invention of “the Devil”, for indicating that the encounter at the burning bush had caused Moses to evolve as a person into an even higher stage of wisdom, strength and command. To this day, old statues of Moses can still be found here and there with two small oval patches on the forehead where horns originally included by the sculptor have been sawn off and smoothed down, because these conflicted with standardised belief. A prominent horned Moses statue, sculpted by Michelangelo, remains undefaced and with horns intact in the Church of San Pietro, Rome, much to the extreme puzzlement of pilgrims who are unaware of the true story.
There is in the Bible, however, just one description of an entity corresponding to the conventional image of the monstrous fiery “Devil” or Satan as envisaged by the Christian Church: “…The earth trembled and quaked… because he was angry. Smoke came from his nostrils. Consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it.” Unfortunately, the writer of 2 Samuel 22:7-8 is actually referring to God!
11. The Sleep of Reason
“The sleep of reason brings forth monsters”
Francisco Goya (1746-1828)
The Final Conflict
We have now examined some of the known cultural and mythological background, political dictates, mistaken assumptions, preferential interpretations, inventions and superstitions that collectively make up the Bible’s pseudo-historical content and provide the milieu for the major Western biblical assumptions. This is not to say there is nothing of any value in the Bible, or those beliefs it serves; at their most innocent, they provide moral guidance and general hope in the evolving character of humanity to achieve a better and more compassionate future; unfortunately, history ancient and modern amply demonstrates that biblical inspiration is seldom permitted to manifest in innocent mode.
This inevitably brings us to the present day, where the inherent conflict between preferential Bible interpretations on the one hand and the facts increasingly revealed by the expansion of human emancipation, scientific investigation and education on the other, is slowly but surely reaching a crescendo – even an apocalypse. For as long as the fanatics, the biblical fundamentalists blinded by the steam of their own vehemence, insist on confrontation, insist on teaching that the Bible is right and science is wrong, and announce authoritatively that the Bible represents true and solid historical fact whereas science is merely stumbling in an uncertain balance along a knotted tightrope of swaying theories, then one of the two sides must eventually face its own collapse; it is very unlikely to be scientific truth.
Developing hesitantly through earlier stages - the Reformation of 1517, the printing of the first complete Bible in English (the Coverdale Bible) on October 4th 1535, the onset of the Age of Reason in the seventeenth century, the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth, and the scientific avalanche stemming from the likes of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Franklin, Cuvier, Darwin and many other sculptors of the edifice of truth – this confrontation has inevitably led to what is likely to become the climactic battle of the human race between Darkness and Light. The forces of darkness are the denizens of the mental caverns of superstition who are attempting even now to extinguish the illuminating light of provable fact and plunge the world - if they can so arrange it, and as we shall see, they are trying hard - into a new and perverse Dark Age in which all government is policed by an overseeing religious Gestapo as it was during the Inquisition.
This is certainly an outspoken and perhaps seemingly outrageous assertion: it quite rightly demands an examination of the evidence that verifies it as factual.
Unintelligent Design
In order to protect the Bible’s mythological framework from factual science, a form of "institutionalised ignorance" has grown like a cancer within society in more recent times, exemplified particularly by the iniquitous compromising of scientific fact in some regions where schools have been discouraged from teaching evolution because it disagrees with the Bible. A new tactic, designed to support the indefensible substitution of superstitious mythology for legitimate education, is the onset of the religiously motivated contrivance of "intelligent design", a desperate concept devised by fundamentalists to defend their position and to permit their god to creep back in again through the scientific back door.
The 1960 Stanley Kramer film Inherit the Wind (the title comes from Proverbs 11:29) depicts in a partly fictionalised form what has become perhaps the most famous exposure of this kind of institutionalised ignorance. The film is based on the 1925 "Monkey Trial" so called because at one stage a chimpanzee was brought to the court grounds in an attempt to ridicule the theory of evolution. The chimp’s name was Joe Mendi and he wore a suit and hat.
Two prominent lawyers, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan (played on screen respectively by Spencer Tracy with the character's name changed for legal reasons to Henry Drummond, and by Fredric March under the fictional character name of Matthew Harrison Brady) argued both sides of the court case brought in Dayton, Tennessee, against high school teacher John T. Scopes (called in the film Bertram T. Cates) for breaking a state law by teaching Darwin's theory of evolution. In a deliciously ironic twist of fate, the accused teacher was played in the film by actor Dick York who went on to play a man who marries a witch, Elizabeth Montgomery's "Samantha" in the 1960s TV sitcom Bewitched.
Probably the best social summation of the trial of John T. Scopes comes from the June 29th 1925 edition of the Baltimore Evening Sun, in a long article exploring the evils of religious fundamentalism which is, unfortunately, as perfectly relevant today as it was then. Edited sections of the article include:
"Such obscenities as the forthcoming trial of the Tennessee evolutionist... at least call attention dramatically to the fact that enlightenment, among mankind, is very narrowly dispersed. It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone... but the great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble...
"Every step in human progress... has been derided by them when it was new, and destroyed by them when they had the power. They have fought every new truth ever heard of, and they have killed every truth-seeker who got into their hands.
"The so-called religious organizations which now lead the war against the teaching of evolution are nothing more, at bottom, than conspiracies of the inferior man against his betters. They mirror... his congenital hatred of knowledge..."
An examination of the verbatim transcript of the trial reveals in many places the essential conflict defined in the first few pages of this book between superstitions based upon assumptions about the Bible - the confused and artificial origins of which, as already detailed in previous chapters, had been preferentially forgotten, ignored or even suppressed - and those who prefer to hold that the method of scientific enquiry provides a more reliable and believable explanation for the way the universe is observed to be. This conflict is probably best represented in the “Monkey Trial” transcript by the exchanges between the two counsels, Clarence Darrow for the defence and William Bryan for the prosecution, during part of which Darrow’s intention was to try to show to the court that the prosecutor should be exempted from his brief (that is, that Bryan was unsuitable to press the case for the prosecution) due to him being pre-committed to the same superstitious notions that lay at the very heart of the case.
Darrow. I will read it to you from the Bible: “And the lord God said unto the serpent, because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” Do you think that is why the serpent is compelled to crawl upon its belly?
Bryan. I believe that.
Darrow. Have you any idea how the snake went before that time?
Bryan. No, sir.
Darrow. Do you know whether he walked on his tail or not?
Bryan. No, sir. I have no way to know. (Laughter in audience).
(And later:)
Darrow. The Bible says Joshua commanded the sun to stand still for the purpose of lengthening the day, doesn’t it, and you believe it?
Bryan. I do.
Darrow. Do you believe at that time the entire sun went round the earth?
Bryan. No, I believe the earth goes round the sun.
(And:)
Darrow. Mr. Bryan, do you believe that the first woman was Eve?
Bryan. Yes.
Darrow. Do you believe she was literally made out of Adam’s rib?
Bryan. I do.
Darrow. Did you ever discover where Cain got his wife?
Bryan. No, sir. I leave the agnostics to hunt for her.
At length Bryan became discomfited and somewhat rattled by Darrow’s questions and in an attempt to cut the examination short he addressed the judge:
Bryan. Your Honour, I think I can shorten this testimony. The only purpose Mr. Darrow has is to slur at the Bible…
To which Darrow gave the succinct riposte:
Darrow. I object to your statement. I am exempting you on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes.
As the advent of the “Monkey Trial” brought to the surface, the entrenched beliefs of the biblical-based world have certainly had to perform some intricate, panic-stricken theological gymnastics during the last few centuries in the attempt to avoid being undermined by the onset of increasing scientific knowledge. The most useful device for maintaining a hokum salesman’s foothold in the closing door of human credulity seems to be the premise: if you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em.
Thus, for example, the concept of "intelligent design" attempts to force science to bow before God, whilst at the same time demoting God from the role of an instantaneous Creator to being merely the creator of the forces behind the laws of physics and biology, incidentally thereby also directly contradicting the Bible where God repeatedly defies the laws of physics, but at least God is still managing to hang in there somewhere. Religious institutions operate their own schools and colleges for the education of the young (sometimes called faith schools) which, in principle, is rather like having the Mafia operate a police training academy: the graduates can only be officers whose education has been sponsored by organised crime. Indeed, during the Tennessee evolution trial, Darrow at one point stated to the court: “We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States!” This has turned out to be a struggle that continues to the present day, and it is still far from clear which side will eventually win.
Adroitly lassoing Galileo's escaping revelation that there are worlds not mentioned in the Bible - such as the moons of Jupiter - and tethering the renegade knowledge safely back within the cage of the Bible once more, the Vatican operates its own observatory, which conducts valuable astronomical research and by which the comfortable if illusory premise that science is subservient to religion can also be fostered. Originally established (in 1582) merely to make observations to assist with the Gregorian reformation of the Julian calendar that had grown out-of-step with the year since Julius Caesar introduced it, the Vatican Observatory now also maintains a research centre at Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona in Tucson, USA.
Essentially, biblical fundamentalism has been obliged to reinvent itself on the surface in an ongoing process in order to prevent its foundations rotting from provable facts, the fierce denial of which is none the less incorporated into those very foundations. Fundamentalists have thereby faced the problem of increasing human freedom and scientific truth by "beating a series of triumphant retreats before a demoralised enemy advancing in disorder" (to quote what was once said about Japanese war propaganda as the Americans captured island after island in the Pacific).
Clear as Daylight?
One such “triumphant retreat” concerns a clear fact which directly contradicts the notion of a “literally true” Bible, namely the age of our planet, the earth. According to current expert opinion based on the scientific method, the earth formed (probably from a solar accretion disk of dust and gas) approximately four and a half billion years ago, with the crust solidifying from a molten state around 3.9 billion years ago and the very first life, consisting of micro-organisms developing out of complex pre-biological molecules, formed by perfectly natural processes comparatively soon after this, approximately during the period 2.5 to 3.5 billion years ago.
However, strict fundamentalist interpretations in which the Bible is held to represent faultless accuracy do not accept any of this, preferring such estimates of the earth’s age as that arrived at in about 1644 by Dr. John Lightfoot, an Anglican clergyman, and by the more famous James Ussher, Anglican Archbishop of Armagh, about ten years later. Both of these men based their conclusions of the age of the earth on an intricate study of the Bible in which they totalled-up the number of generations mentioned since the creation of Adam in order to arrive at a year-count. This, of course, necessitated making sweeping guesses regarding how old many people were when their offspring were born, and the equally sweeping assumption that there are no unrecorded generations in the Bible. Unabashed, Lightfoot blithely concluded that God’s creation event started off at around dusk on the 21st September in 3929 BC, while Ussher published his conclusion as being dusk on Saturday October 22nd, 4004 BC, with the first day being Sunday October 23rd. In keeping with such superstitions, a fossil of the Miocene period giant salamander Andrias scheuchzeri, approximately ten million years old and discovered in Germany in 1726, was proudly put on display as the remains of a man drowned in Noah’s flood and given the Latin name Homo diluvii testis – “Man, a witness to the Flood.”
For many centuries pieces of chipped and polished stone found here and there had been explained as “Death’s Arrows” (sometimes “Elf Arrows”) and were thought to result from the Grim Reaper collecting a victim not with a scythe but with a bow and arrow, or from goblins and elves claiming unwary human victims. Larger such stones were considered to be “thunderbolts”. These stones were highly venerated in medieval times because they were also believed to represent weapons fallen to earth during the “heavenly battle” in which Satan and his rebel cohorts had been defeated by the angelic hosts. It was only in the eighteenth century that these “Death’s arrows” and “thunderbolts” began to be identified as arrowheads and axes manufactured by early races of human beings. By the early decades of the nineteenth century it was also realised that quantities of these stone tools were occurring in the same geological strata as the bones of extinct animals. Archaeologist Boucher de Perthes described in 1847 the finding of thousands of flint tools near Abbeville in the Somme river terraces, which he first supposed to belong to men drowned in Noah’s flood, but against much scepticism and hostility he soon revised his opinion and showed that in fact the implements dated from a greatly earlier time than the age of the earth as proposed by biblical studies.
Nineteenth-century geologists such as Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) then began to produce evidence that the earth must in fact be far older than these Biblical estimates in order for the stupefyingly slow processes of sedimentation and fossilisation to produce the record visible in rock formations. At roughly the same time, nineteenth century archaeologists realised that the earliest civilisation of ancient Egypt was actually older than the accepted biblical date of creation. Soon, excavations in the ancient cities of Sumer and Babylonia were also revealing artefacts and written cuneiform records that dated back to an equally pre-biblical time.
The actual emergence of the human genus (the Hominidae or hominids) out of the ape (primate) family was shown in the latter half of the twentieth century to have taken place approximately four million years ago, and more recent evidence not yet fully evaluated at this time of writing may suggest even a little earlier. In 2002 a fossil of a creature named Sahelanthropus tchadensis was discovered in Chad in central Africa and dated to between 6 and 7 million years ago. At first thought to represent the earliest yet-discovered hominid, it is now regarded as being one of the common ancestors of the chimpanzee and the human. Some experts now prefer to use the term hominin which refers to humans and the great apes collectively as one grouping, rather than hominid, which differentiates humans from apes.
Bible fundamentalists, however, have managed to contrive a rebuttal of these scientific opinions in the manner of a “triumphant retreat” before the scientific “enemy advancing in disorder”. Apart from claiming that fossils represent “forgeries placed by the Devil to tempt man into doubting the Bible”, another argument that is taken seriously within many fundamentalist groups is “how long is a day?” The Bible says the creation event in Genesis took six days, not billions of years – but this all depends on how long one takes “a day” to be. A “day of creation”, runs the argument, can be equivalent to many millions of our years, thereby not contradicting the Bible’s “authority” at all. Selected passages within the Bible are frequently trotted out in order to “prove” the likelihood of this, such as Psalm 90:4; “…For a thousand years in thy sight, Are but as yesterday when it is passed…” or the Second Epistle of Peter 3:8; “…be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” In the Book of Daniel and in Revelation, too, days become lengthened into weeks and years.
All of this, however, is merely a preferential selection of metaphorical poetic allusions originally phrased to convey the notion that the biblical god should be seen as having a “bigger picture” of the human situation than the daily grind of narrow-minded toil and adversity.
The Bible is actually completely clear in regard to what exactly constitutes a “day”. In Genesis, the word for “day” (Hebrew yom) always appears in the same context as the phrase “…evening and morning”, being a normal 24 hour period. After the first chapter in Genesis, this association of “day = evening and morning” occurs no less than 38 times in the rest of the Old Testament. “Hours” are first described in the Bible in the Book of Daniel, with: “…the same hour…” (3:6, 3:15 & 5:5) and “…for one hour…” (4:19). This Hebraic time system was absorbed from the ancient Chaldean astrologers, who divided one day-night period into two sets of 12 hours each, preferring to use 12 divisions rather than, say, 10, because there were 12 signs in the Chaldean zodiac. In John 11:9 Jesus himself is quoted as stating: “…Are there not twelve hours in the day?”
Even by the “evidence” in the Bible, then, the fundamentalist assertion that the scientific estimate of the age of the earth can be reconciled with the “scriptures” if a single “day of creation” consists of millions of normal years is proved to be nothing but yet another piece of unintelligent design.
Freedom is Satanic!
The threat posed to organised religion by the twin pillars of freedom and scientific truth was foreseen by Pope Leo XIII. In 1884, in his encyclical "Humanum Genus" (ostensibly a denunciation of Freemasonry), he attacked and specifically condemned as "Satanic enemies of Christianity", amongst other things, free elections, free public education, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and equality before the law - in fact, just about every essential principle upon which true civilisation is founded. Such democratic and liberal principles, of course, remain anathema to fundamentalists of all religions, whether biblical or otherwise, as also do scientific fact and acceptance of evolution which are subverted to the proposal of “intelligent design”.
Another element of biblical fundamentalism closely linked to the ideology of “intelligent design” is creationism. Creationism is the lingering, not to say festering, remains of the ancient superstitious notion that the world and everything in it is the creation of one or more deities (depending upon the particular religion concerned). This kind of mythology, as already shown in earlier chapters, is common the world over and attributed, according to tribe, region, nation or empire, to any of literally many hundreds of gods, goddesses or groups of deities working together.
As we have seen, the main reason why this superstition did not finally disappeared from civilisation as human beings evolved a greater intellect and scientific cognisance is that one particular version of creation mythology, pieced together eclectically by certain early Middle Eastern tribal communities, happened to be incorporated into the Bible as it was assembled and edited by the haphazard processes already detailed. Technically, one cannot be a Christian without honouring the Bible in some reverential way, even if one is prepared to accept that it is not actually “supposed” to be taken literally in all its content. There is, after all, a very great difference between honouring something and being in total thraldom to it. The Bible is a religious book, and a book that underpins religions. Perhaps, then, the next valid question to be asked should be, “what, exactly, is a religion?”
Dictionaries give the origin of the word as Middle English religioun derived from Anglo-French religion and Latin religion-, religio, “supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perhaps from religare to restrain, tie back…” (Merriam-Webster). The Latin religio also means “obligation, reverence”, the association originating with the sense of living under monastic vows. Definitions include “the service and worship of God or the supernatural” (Merriam-Webster), “the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or any such system of belief and worship” (Cambridge), and “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal god or gods” (Oxford). Other specifically mentioned meanings include “…a particular system of faith and worship” and “…commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance: a personalised set or institutionalised system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices.” Dictionaries then go on to give a secondary but significant meaning of the word; “scrupulous conformity” and “an activity which someone is extremely enthusiastic about and does regularly”, the Cambridge Dictionary giving the example: “He visits his mother religiously every week.”
The most important point to consider when discussing religion in general – and this applies to all religions without exception, not merely some in isolation – is that, in specific and absolute terms, none of the core events that are supernatural by nature can be proved to have factually taken place. Belief in the particular supernatural manifestations at the roots of any religion – miracles, gods, devils, governing intelligences, godly feats of creation etc. – is always based not on provable fact, but on preferential faith, the precise preferences depending upon the religion concerned, and very often also on the preferences of particular fractured divisions and sub-divisions of a religion and – more importantly - upon those human beings who set themselves up as leaders of the particular faith.
“Faith” is defined primarily as “confident trust” or “strong belief”. Faith also applies to non-religious concepts, such as a patient’s faith in the abilities of a doctor or surgeon. However, and importantly, in all applications of the word except the religious, faith requires subsequent confirmation by provable and demonstrable fact. (If a surgeon fails to cure a patient, faith in them is diminished: faith in a new government may not last unless it consistently proves itself capable, and so on.) In fact, it is true by convention to state that faith and religious faith are two different things, or at least two different qualities of the same thing. Faith on its own is always subject to the confirmation of pending verifiable facts (i.e. the expression “I take what you say in good faith” means “I accept what you say to be true unless I later find out otherwise”; religious faith is mooted (especially by the religious) as being entirely independent of verifiable facts, as not even requiring such facts, and as actually representing a reality held to be immutable even in complete defiance of any facts that may prove it false.
History shows (as in the cases of the Galilean moons of Jupiter exorcised by the Vatican observatory and “intelligent design” to dismantle science) that biblical fundamentalism deals with unpalatable facts in much the same way as a leukocyte or white corpuscle in an immune system deals with a hostile bacterium, by flowing over the undesirable attacker, enveloping it and eventually absorbing it within its own system in a digestible form. In effect, it can even be said that, in this manner, religions possess their own psychological “immune system” to prevent any harm being caused to them by the attacks of reality. This “fundamental immunity to dangerous facts” serves to chronically undermine the fabric of our society by purposefully encouraging people to accept (usually completely sound) moral codes derived from a vortex of unreasonable superstition in place of deriving them out of valid human reasoning and self-generated unconditional compassion.
A word that means “purposely doing wrong or unreasonable things” is “perverse”: “perversion” is defined as “perverted form of what is true…” and to twist something against its normal nature, as biblical fundamentalism frequently twists science to suit its agenda of superstition in such examples as intelligent design, creationism and so on, can only be defined as the act of perverting. It is therefore perfectly correct to state that biblical fundamentalism exists only as a perversion of provable scientific fact; not in unison with it but as a counterfeit substitution for it.
Poetry versus Public Opinion
In the case of the Bible, it must be emphasised that we are differentiating here between the right-wing extremism of fundamentalism and the more reasonable attitudes of moderate people. Moderate opinion can be exemplified by some of the remarks of current Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams, who has said that he views the idea of teaching creationism in schools to be a mistake and that for most of the history of Christianity: “…there has been an awareness that a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God, is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time.” (Dr. Rowan Williams Archbishop of Canterbury, The Guardian, Tuesday March 21st 2006.)
A majority of Christian authorities from established mainstream churches now reject the interpretation of the Bible as a comment on the physics of universal creation and emphasise, instead, the importance of the allegorical spiritual meaning of creation. The Anglican Church has now by-and-large accepted the theory of evolution, and amongst moderates the Book of Genesis is now generally understood as a poetic work, not an historical account. There has even been official papal confirmation for the Roman Catholic Church that evolution is “worthy of study”. There is a long tradition of the liberal interpretation of parts of the Bible as representing poetic allegory rather than strict fact, by Jews as well as by Christians. The Jewish scholar Philo of Alexandria in the first century wrote that it would be a mistake to think that creation happened in six days or in any specific length of time.
So, if there is an onset of widespread rationality in regard to not interpreting some parts of the Bible as representing absolute historical fact but, rather, poetic allegory useful for highlighting the universal need for the moral conduct of human behaviour, does this suggest that biblical fundamentalism and the adherence to the Bible as unmitigated factual history in defiance of scientific reality is becoming a spent and diminishing force?
Unfortunately, this does not seem to be at all the case. In May 2006 the results of a Gallop poll in the USA yielded the statistical result that some 46% of Americans - nearly half the population - still believe in creationism in its most literal biblical form, agreeing with the proposition that man was created by God in his own image less than ten thousand years ago; 36% of Americans stated a belief that God was the power behind the process of evolution (tantamount to a belief in “intelligent design”) and as few as 13% accepted the belief that the human species evolved over millions of years and with no intervention by the God of the Bible.
It is also probably unfortunate that American institutions, businesses, television, movies, social customs, attitudes and cultural mores powerfully infiltrate and become widespread within the majority of western countries, especially including the United Kingdom. Not only do other cultures now have spreading chains of American fast-food outlets, they also have spreading chains of American-founded evangelical churches, religions and cults. For the rest of western culture, this adds a sinister relevance to the results of such opinion polls conducted in the USA.
This and other polls in the USA seem to paint a particular picture of the overwhelming beliefs of the majority of American citizens. The following examples can be cited, from which the reader is invited to draw their own conclusions.
70% of evangelical Christians in the USA believe that living creatures have always existed in their present form (i.e. there is no evolution), compared to 32% of Protestants and 31% of Catholics; in politics, 60% of Republicans are creationists (believing in the creation story of the Bible) with only 11% accepting the idea of evolution, whereas only 29% of Democrats are creationists and 44% accept evolution. (Pew research Centre poll, 2005, quoted in Scientific American October 2006 p.18).
51% believe churches and religious groups have too little influence on the government of the USA (Harris poll 6-12 February 2007).
82% believe in God, whereas only 9% believe in some other universal spiritual power, 8% do not believe in either and only 1% answered “unsure” (CBS News poll April 6-9 2006).
31% have a favourable impression of biblical fundamentalist religions, 31% have an unfavourable impression, 32% have not heard enough to decide and 6% are unsure (as above, CBS)
49% believe that religion is under attack in America today, 59% that Christianity is under attack, 93% that the inscription “In God we trust” should remain on coinage and notes (Opinion Dynamics poll for Fox News, November 29-30 2005).
87% disagree, 11% agree and 2% are not sure, when asked their opinion on the ruling of a federal district judge that the United States Pledge of Allegiance represents an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and may not be recited in state-financed schools because it contains the phrase “under God” (Opinion Dynamics poll for Fox News, September 27-28 2005).
82% of the population, 91% of Christians and – perhaps surprisingly – 35% of non-Christians, believe that Jesus Christ was God or the Son of God, and only 6% believe he was merely a human religious leader (Newsweek poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, December 2-3 2004).
55% of the population, 83% of Evangelical Protestants, 47% of non-Evangelical Protestants and 45% of Roman Catholics stated a belief that every word in the Bible is literally true and that the events described actually happened as set down (as above, Newsweek).
Away from what might fairly be called its “nesting ground” in the USA, the baleful influence of biblical fundamentalism generally grows weaker, although this seems to be gradually changing for the worse. In Europe there is – again generally speaking – a more relaxed attitude with less literal credence bestowed upon the notions of creationism and every word in the Bible being unadulterated truth, ideas which the majority of European citizens now seem to regard at least somewhat quizzically. By far the greater majority of European schools teach evolution as a scientific fact. This difference in attitude, between Britain in particular and the USA, was pointed out succinctly by Sarah Lyall of the New York Times on 22nd March 2006 in her report covering the Guardian interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury (mentioned several paragraphs ago). In her article, after mentioning the United States’ problems with the divisive issue of whether creationism and intelligent design according to Genesis – both approved by President Bush - should be on the national school curriculum in competition with, or even in place of, evolution, she comments: “…there is nothing… (in Britain) like the American Evangelical movement…”
However, it is an interesting point that the administration of a modern Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, a friend of biblical fundamentalist and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, announced in 2004 through Minister of Education, Universities and Research Letizia Moratti that new teaching programs were to be introduced in which teaching the theory of evolution to the young and teenagers was banned. Silvio Criscuoli, Director General of Libraries and Cultural Institutes, responsible for this teaching plan, patronisingly explained the alleged reasoning behind the ban on teaching evolution: “Pupils aged ten to thirteen are much too young to be confronted with such complicated material.”
Outraged, a large group of leading Italian scientists wrote an open letter to the Education Minister published in the daily paper La Repubblica, which included the statement: “…In the new program, established by legislative decree on February 19th 2004, there is no trace of the history of mankind’s evolution, nor of the relationship between mankind and other species. Ignoring the theory of evolution is a cultural limitation that sacrifices the scientific curiosity of youth. It is unquestionably fair to point out that Darwinism, and the theories deriving from it, demonstrate gaps and unsolved problems, but the link between the past and present of mankind should not be completely ignored. We therefore urge the Italian Ministry of Education to review the secondary schools programmes and to rectify an oversight that is detrimental to the scientific culture of new generations…”
The noted Italian writer Dacia Maraini expressed his views in a broader political context in an article in Italy’s largest circulation newspaper Corriere Della Sera (Evening Courier): “…It seems a paradox that those who, at this very moment, are intent on bringing democracy and liberalism – even imposing it with guns – in countries considered to be underdeveloped, are assuming the same archaic practices of these countries, like the abolition of evolution and the massive introduction of religion in schools, personal use of guns, the glorification of war and racism and, as a culmination of all of this, the use of torture. When, we must ask, will the cutting off of hands for thieves be introduced?
”
Although not mentioned by name in Maraini’s article, only one Western Power fits the list of retrograde attributes - except (so far) the punitive severing of hands - the United States of America, aided and abetted by its allies, the principle of which is the United Kingdom. It is thus relevant here to ask a sociological question: if the UK allies itself militarily and in foreign policy to the USA regardless of the broader moral questionability of the right-wing methods employed (such as, for example, imprisonment without trial and the evident use of torture), is it then even possible to prevent other forms of right-wing extremism, such as biblical fundamentalism, from gaining ever greater direction and funding from American sources and exercising an increasingly influential power in British society and official policy making?
12. The Dark Night of the Mind
“Ignorance is the night of the mind,
but a night without moon or star.”
Confucius
The Rise of Biblical Fundamentalism
Although the ground was prepared for modern biblical fundamentalism in the 19th century by such people as the American evangelist Dwight L. Moody and British preacher John Nelson Derby (founder in 1825 of the Plymouth Brethren, often called the Exclusive Brethren), the term “fundamentalist”, as applied to groups who maintain a belief in the infallible literal truth of every word in the Bible, originated in the period 1910-1915 with the then president of the Union Oil Company of California Lyman Stewart, founder of the Pacific Gospel Mission and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now the Biola University), who bestowed a $250,000 grant enabling a group of 64 American and British Protestant theologians to publish some three million editions of their turgid twelve-volume literary work The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth.
Importantly, this publication, which was widely distributed around the world, featured a very substantial objection (in no less than 27 of the 94 chapters) to what is known as “higher criticism” of the Bible. “Higher criticism” refers to the academic study of the sources and compilation of the Bible (as in this present book, for example) while “lower criticism” automatically accepts the scriptures as “truth” and refers merely to the study of the text of the Bible for the purpose of establishing greater purity and clarity of its wording.
Biblical extremism, or fundamentalism, although active as a movement from the first decade of the 20th century, remained largely a localised and background phenomena in the USA prior to approximately 1950, being generally confined to mainly rural areas in the South with occasional sporadic outbreaks elsewhere. As the Soviet Union began to enter into the world arena after the Second World War with an increasing arsenal of atomic weapons, and what became known as an “iron curtain” descended across Europe, America began to quickly feel threatened by the increasing military power possessed and frequently demonstrated by a political ideology that inverted just about every principle America held sacred.
Communism sought to impose atheism upon its subjects as an official government policy. The more extremist American religious thinkers found it easy to believe that Communists were therefore actual earthly agents of “the Devil”. A great many people also believed that Communist plotters within the United States were attempting to destabilise and weaken society preparatory to a coup, by spreading propaganda and “un-American” attitudes that would undermine “traditional family values” which were, of course, synonymous with “Christian values” in the perception of the majority of the population. This fear continues in some quarters within the USA even today and finds a willing bedfellow in biblical fundamentalism (see also the next chapter). This national paranoia came to an ugly head in the era of the investigations and blacklistings of suspected Communist sympathisers - a political inquisition for which Republican Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908-1957), who once even (incorrectly) accused the American Civil Liberties Union of being listed by the Attorney General as a subversive Communist organisation, has since become the acknowledged archetypal figurehead.
Recognising an emerging fellowship of converging right-wing beliefs, fundamentalist activists and Communist-fearing (or at least Communist-denouncing) politicians became allies, and fundamentalism – in an unconscious echo of the events of 1700 years before when early Christianity was merged with the Roman political state – began to gain an increasingly advantageous absorption into the political system, most successfully within the right-leaning supporters of the Republican Party.
With the arrival of the 1960s and the struggling emergence of western society from the lingering attitudes and austerity inherited from the World War 2 period, there came also massive changes in thoughts, preferences, freedoms and culture, mainly inspired by the “younger generation”, typified by the era of “flower power” and the arrival of the Hippies, presaged by the now almost forgotten “beatniks”, which induced a general broadening of moral outlook and an increasing resentment of authoritarian regimentation. This tidal wave of social change, as refreshing in “swinging” Britain as it was in the USA, resulted in the widespread questioning of the values and conventions imposed upon society by older generations, to the extent of mass demonstrations against the war in Vietnam and the consequent public burning of draft papers demanding an individual report for compulsory military service. The movements for women’s rights and for de-criminalising homosexuality were beginning to gain significant support. At the same time, the campaign to grant full civil rights to black Americans was flowering under the auspices of such martyrs as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and was perceived as deeply offensive by many white Americans, especially in some southern states such as Alabama. Astonishingly, many Christian groups and churches vigorously supported racial segregation and the denial of equal rights to black citizens.
In 1954 the US Supreme Court, in the case Brown versus the Board of Education, issued a ruling which made racially segregated state schools illegal. As a direct result of this, a great many private schools were established by fundamentalist organisations in which racial segregation could continue unopposed, since private schools were not covered in law by the decision imposed by the court on state-funded schools. Later, Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina - a fundamentalist establishment (numbering the fundamentalist organisations the Gospel Fellowship Association whose stated aim is to “…advance the gospel of Jesus Christ on foreign soil” and International Testimony of an Infallible Bible as “affiliate ministries”) - brought a lawsuit against the US Government in an attempt to allow it to continue to ban black students. After losing the case, the University fell back on a policy of banning inter-racial dating amongst its students which was not finally abandoned until as recently as 2000. Particularly in the southern states, fundamentalist groups claimed that racial segregation was approved by the Bible.
The Supreme Court continued to respond to the requirements of the majority for an advancing era of increased social freedoms with a succession of liberal case rulings that were all bitterly opposed by fundamentalists. For example, in Engel versus Vitale (1961) the government sanctioning of prayers in schools was ended, the judge recording a guiding comment that: “…We think that, in this country, it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as part of a religious program carried on by government.” Then in 1968 in the case of Epperson versus Arkansas, it was finally ruled that the various existing anti-evolution laws (popularly known as the “monkey laws”) were unconstitutional and therefore unenforceable. In 1973 in the case Roe versus Wade a ruling was made legalising abortion in America.
Unholy Wedlock: the Marriage of Church and State
Fundamentalists in the USA were, in effect, seeing themselves and their preferences being successively “backed into a corner” by the advance of the kind of legislation program required by a more liberal society: they came out fighting. Following the legalisation of abortion, which many viewed as the final straw, biblical fundamentalist movements and organisations began to methodically ally themselves with the political right-wing with the intention of gaining by this route sufficient legitimately-elected authority to accomplish challenges to, followed by cancellation of, the legislation they disapproved of; and in addition, to reverse the liberal trend within American society and press for the introduction of extremist formal legislation that would compel all citizens by law to observe biblical fundamentalist religious policies throughout society, or face loss of citizenship.
The right-wing of the Republican Party accepted with enthusiasm the political overtures of the fundamentalist faction and a process was begun whereby fundamentalism was absorbed under the blanket of political Republicanism. Following the elections in 1976 when Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated the incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford, a Republican-promoting political group was formed called Christian Voice, the founder of which was Robert Grant, a fundamentalist Baptist minister. Christian Voice acted as a focus for fundamentalist financial contributions and electioneering in support of right-wing Republican candidates of which it approved, including Ronald Reagan. Other prominent members of Christian Voice were Howard Phillips, a Jew who converted to evangelical Christianity and who is associated with the fundamentalist Christian Reconstructionist movement, John T. Dolan whose brother Anthony was chief speech writer for President Reagan, and Richard Viguerie who gained the nickname “the Funding Father” from his innovative use of computer-driven direct mail fund-raising processes that became a major instrument in challenging, through mass right-wing mailshots, the US media’s tendency toward liberal character. In the elections of 1978 and 1980, candidates with Christian Voice backing, including Ronald Reagan and Dan Quayle, defeated their incumbent Democrat rivals. Some years later, the triumvirate of Phillips, Dolan and Viguerie split from Grant and Christian Voice and, after being joined by prominent television evangelist Jerry Falwell, produced a new fundamentalist organisation, the Moral Majority.
Viguerie, one of the backing founders of the Moral Majority, had once worked for Billy James Hargis (1925-2004), the evangelist regarded as one of the founders of the Biblical Right who in the 1950s and 60s had evangelical shows on some 250 TV stations in America (and who fell out of grace when accused of sexual misconduct with young Christian adults). In 1965 the fundamentalist political intrigues became even more outré. Viguerie established links with the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation, a combined front for the Unification Church (popularly known as the cult of the “Moonies”) of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and the KCIA (Korean Central Intelligence Agency which subsequently became the Agency for National Security Planning or ANSP). He was a director (and investor) in the Diplomat National Bank based in Washington DC which was later exposed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission as being illegally controlled by the Unification Church and the KCIA. In 1977 Viguerie was given the fundraising contract for the Children’s Relief Fund of the Unification Church and succeeded in raising from donations the respectable sum of $1,508,256. However, according to the records of the New York State charity auditors, Viguerie took a fee of over $920,000 for his services, leaving, after other deductions, $95,020 (just over 6% of the original proceeds) for the Children’s Relief Fund.
The movement towards right-wing biblical fundamentalism attempted to make the crossing of the Atlantic in the 1970s and 80s when the right-wing Conservative MP Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of Britain. However, by-and-large, Britons as a population were too cautious to easily subscribe to such beliefs, except in certain relatively small groups already inclined towards an extremist outlook, of whom a significant underground within the country’s local councils, especially the social services departments, were symptomatic of a tendency toward institutionalised draconian social control; and Mrs. Mary Whitehouse and her National Viewers and Listeners Association (now Mediawatch-uk), of self-appointed authoritarianism. Mediawatch-uk, under the presidency of John Beyer after Whitehouse’s retirement in 1994 (she died in 2001 aged 91, in the year the organisation changed its name) is a UK social and political pressure-group with the main agenda of encouraging officialdom at all levels to regulate against broadcasting or publishing violence, bad language, sex, homosexuality and blasphemy.
In 1976 a successful legal action was brought as a private prosecution by Mary Whitehouse against the publication Gay News alleging the offence of “blasphemous libel” (Whitehouse versus Lemon) for publishing an article suggesting that Jesus Christ was a homosexual and illustrating this proposition. The following year, leading biblical fundamentalist, evangelical broadcaster and co-founder of the Moral Majority Jerry Falwell gave his considered opinion on gay rights at an address given at Dade County, Florida: “…gay folks would just as soon kill you as look at you.” Interviewed in the best-selling daily paper USA Today, Falwell has also stated: “…I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One’s misbehaviour does not qualify him or her for minority status.” In a broadcast of his Old Time Gospel Hour on March 11th 1984, Falwell called homosexuals “…brute beasts” and added: “…This vile and satanic system will one day be utterly annihilated and there’ll be celebration in heaven.” On the day of the terrorist 9/11 attack that destroyed the World Trade Centre using hijacked passenger aircraft, Falwell seized the opportunity of a TV interview to rant, somewhat incoherently: “…I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularise America. I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’”
(ACLU: The American Civil Liberties Union. People for the American Way was founded in 1981 by TV producer Norman Lear to argue against the biblical religious right. Lear was particularly worried about the increasing power of TV biblical fundamentalists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (who, incidentally, concurred with Falwell’s 9/11 statement).
The Anti-Evolutionists Evolve
Another target of the fundamentalist movement has, of course, been Darwinism and the theory of evolution, which, like most scientific findings, contradicts the mythology of the Bible. There is ample real evidence in favour of evolution and not one single shred of anything remotely approaching demonstrable fact in the creation story of Exodus. This defines the inherent weakness of biblical fundamentalism - its own very extremism, so that for fundamentalists to accept the possibility of falsehood in any smallest portion of the Bible, even the more ridiculous and provably incorrect passages, is to cast doubt upon the legitimacy of their claims regarding the entire volume and, ergo, topple the “authority” of the whole hybrid content. This is really “bean-can religion” – remove one single can from the display pyramid and the whole pile will collapse.
Towards the end of 1981, prominent TV biblical fundamentalist Jerry Falwell broadcast a televised appeal for funds to be used in fighting for the reversal of the 1968 Supreme Court ruling that state laws against the teaching of evolution were unconstitutional. In a stroke of presentational genius, Falwell used as a backdrop to his plea the same courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee, where the “monkey trial” of teacher John Scopes had been held in 1925. A number of magazine advertisements placed by Falwell’s Moral Majority organisation also appealed for money for this same purpose. However, despite the campaign, the court ruling remained intact.
A rather more subtle manoeuvre was the earlier establishment by Jerry Falwell in 1971 of what was originally Lynchburg Baptist College in Virginia, eventually to become re-named as Liberty University, which is wholly funded through the fundamentalist Moral Majority organisation. One of the main purposes of this institution is to teach, as an academic reality, creationism based on the Bible as a viable alternative alongside evolution. Sun Myung Moon of “the Moonies” fame, who also owned the Washington Post, helped the financial position of the University after 1973 when Lynchburg College filed for bankruptcy in the wake of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission who had alleged “fraud and deceit” in the issuing of $6.5 million in church bonds to raise finance, although the college won the case when it was brought to trial. Moon donated $3.5 million to a non-profit organisation that had purchased the college’s debt, the Reber-Thomas Christian Heritage Foundation.
Regardless of what particular subject they may be majoring in, all students at Liberty University are also required to take a course in “creationist biology”. In a speech, Falwell himself encouraged students to burn the university down if it “…ever turned liberal”. Other speakers to address the campus have included President Reagan, President George W. Bush, the reverend Billy Graham and creationist spokesman and Bible activist Kenneth Ham.
Kenneth Ham advocates that the Bible’s Book of Genesis represents literal historical truth. Until 1993 he worked for the Institute for Creation Research and the following year he founded Answers in Genesis USA and Answers in Genesis International, a biblical fundamentalist organisation dedicated to attempting to convince people that the contents of the Bible should be regarded as historically accurate and scientifically inarguable in every detail. The ninety second long radio program Answers, with Ken Ham featuring his opinions is broadcast each day on over one thousand radio stations around the world. Perhaps his biggest claim to fame, however, is the Creation Museum built by Answers in Genesis in Kentucky and opened in 2007.
Described by BBC reporter Matthew Wells as “…A new hi-tech temple to fundamentalist Christianity”, the purpose of the $27 million museum is an attempt to demonstrate, with exhibits, how the world was created by God less than 10,000 years ago (about the time that – according to scientific opinion – the last Ice Age was melting) and how the information set out in the Bible should be accepted as representing accurate truth. Vice President for Ministry Relations Mark Looy is quoted as saying (BBC 11/12/06): “…You go to some of the major museums and dinosaurs are their major teaching icon. We’re going to turn that on its head, and use dinosaurs to show that the Bible presents the true history of the world. We have people and dinosaurs together.” (According to scientific evidence, dinosaurs and even the very earliest human species are separated by at least 60 million years.)
In 1989 the founder of the Institute for Creation Research, Henry Morris, was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Chancellor of Liberty University (none other than Jerry Falwell). According to its own definition of its policy, the Institute for Creation Research “…equips believers with evidences of the Bible’s accuracy and authority through scientific research, educational programs and media presentations, all conducted within a thoroughly biblical framework.” Despite the plain fact that there is actually zero scientific evidence of the Bible creation story’s factuality and ample evidence of the reverse - as we have examined in earlier chapters - Liberty University nevertheless enjoys a state-approved teacher training program. British scientist Richard Dawkins (lecturer in Zoology at Oxford University, holder of the Chair as Oxford’s Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and best-selling science author) in October 2006 described Liberty University’s teaching of creationism as “…an educational disgrace” and advised its members “…to leave and go to a proper university.”
Henry Morris Ph.D. (1918-2006), mentioned above as founder of the Institute for Creation Research, is popularly viewed as “the father of modern creation science”. Amongst his serious claims in support of biblical creationism (as given in his 1972 book The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth) are statements that the theory of evolution is, in absolute terms, the actual work of the Devil and was invented by Satan and Nimrod at the Tower of Babel, and that the craters on the Moon are probably the result of the cosmic battle when the Archangel Michael defeated Satan and his army. Morris can also be quoted as stating in the same source: “The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell us what it is. And since he has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures that it is several thousand years of age, and no more, that ought to settle all questions of terrestrial chronology” and: “When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data.” In fact, this is what all the “scientific proof” of biblical creationism ever offered boils down to in the final analysis; a series of assumptions - unsupportable preferential superstitions. As American author and scientist Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) put it: “Creationist critics (of evolution) often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense.”
In common with Communism, liberalism, capitalism, democracy, flower-power, beatniks, other races, television, movies, freedom and many other things, the belief in evolution can also be used as a scapegoat for all that is perceived as “wrong” in the world at any given time. The Creation Science Research Centre run by Morris’ Institute for Creation Research, in its Creation Science Report of 1976, stated that the belief in evolution maintained by science is responsible for “…the moral decay of spiritual values, which contributes to the destruction of mental health” and in the 1977 edition, that the theory of evolution is the direct cause of “…divorce, abortion and rampant venereal disease”.
In 1980, Tim LaHaye, co-founder of the Moral Majority, founder of San Diego Christian College (1971), and who in 1979 helped Henry Morris establish the Institute for Creation Research, published his book Battle for the Mind, in which the crusade to crush the recognition of evolution was put at the vanguard of the fundamentalist movement. In his book, LaHaye stated in print that: “…Most of the evils in the world today can be traced to humanism1, which has taken over our government, the UN, education, TV and most of the other influential things in life.” According to LaHaye, the theory of evolution is a pillar of Secular Humanism and has “…led to the destruction of the moral foundation upon which this country was originally built.”
Inevitably, under such guidance and prompting, Bible-based fundamentalism has become militant, especially so in the USA; and bearing in mind the movement’s increasing political clout in Washington and individual states, and its equally increasing financial reserves, it is not unreasonable to suggest that, allied to the administration of a world super-power, it represents a potential threat to the world that has by now reached a similar level of development as the arrival of Hitler in German politics during the 1920s. Whether or not such a view should be dismissed as alarmist and unrealistic may be assessed by contemplating the actual stated goals and socio-political activities sponsored by prominent fundamentalists.
Consider, for example, the fundamentalist Christian Shepherding Movement, which represents a method of organising believers under the personal supervision of a “shepherd” to direct their beliefs and spiritual growth according to what, in a political system, would be called “party lines”, as the Communists of the former USSR placed “political officers” amongst groups of people to “protect them from incorrect thinking” In “shepherding”, people are divided into small groups under the command of a group leader, who in turn is accountable to a church elder, who is accountable to pastors, who are accountable to “apostles”, who are the commanders at the top of the pyramid structure. In fact, this represents a perfect example of the famous “cell” system used by political plotters, subversive groups, political resistance movements and terrorist organisations. Bob Werner, one of the leaders of the Christian Shepherding Movement, has stated: “…The Bible says we are to… rule. If you don’t rule and I don’t rule, the atheists and the humanists and the agnostics are going to rule. We should be the head of our school board. We should be the head of our nation. We should be the Senators and Congressmen. We should be the editors of our newspapers. We should be taking over every area of life.” Those of us with long memories might need to resist the temptation of appending to this tirade a “Sieg Hiel!” in our thoughts.
Paul Weyrich, founder of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, an organisation for training conservative activists, recruiting conservative candidates and raising funds for conservative causes, particularly from evangelical church congregations, and who also helped to found Christian Voice and the Moral Majority (it was Weyrich who coined the name “Moral Majority”), has openly stated: “…We are no longer working to preserve the status quo. We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structures of this country… We are talking about the Christianising of America.”
Operation Rescue is a biblical fundamentalist group with the specific agenda of campaigning for the banning of abortion in the US. The group featured in news reports in the 1988 Democratic Convention when hundreds of its campaigners were arrested for demonstrating, and they were once heavily fined by a federal judge for violation of injunctions prohibiting them from blocking access to abortion clinics. The issue of abortion is certainly emotive and difficult, involving essential human definitions of behaviour, responsibility and the moral question of terminating potential and actual human life; but Operation Rescue takes these difficult human issues into even darker territory by mixing them with the draconian fanaticism of fundamentalism. The group’s founder, Randall Terry, has stated (The News Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana August 16th 1993): “…I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good… Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called upon by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”
Gary North, Calvinist fundamentalist and writer within the Christian Reconstruction movement, has written (in his book Political Polytheism: the Myth of Pluralism, Institute for Christian Economics 1989 pp 87 & 102): “…Christians are the lawful heirs, not non-Christians… The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant – baptism and holy communion – must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel.” (Mr. North appears confused on this last point: there was – obviously - no such thing as Christianity in ancient Israel BC, and in Israel during the earliest decades AD it was actually Christians who were liable to be the social outcasts.) North also states: “…So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the liberty of the enemies of God.”
This proposed policy is remarkably similar to that of Adolf Hitler, who, after the abortive “beerhall putch” in 1923 and during his consequent short spell in Landsberg Prison, decided that the most effective way of taking over the state was to use the existing political framework to accomplish the Nazi seizure of power by legal means, telling his colleague Kurt Ludecke: “Instead of working to achieve power by an armed coup, we shall have to… enter the Reichstag against the Catholic and Marxist deputies. If out-voting them takes longer than out-shooting them, at least the result will be guaranteed by their own Constitution. Any lawful process is slow… Sooner or later we shall have a majority – and after that, Germany.”
In another disturbing déja-vu of Nazism, the fundamentalist political ideal of “denying the liberties of the enemies of God” has specifically identified a number of their god’s enemies, including – somewhat perversely – the very people who produced him: “…God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.” (Bailey Smith, a founder of Christian Coalition, in a speech given in Dallas, 26th June 1994.) Any other religious viewpoint, of course, is to be ruthlessly stamped out: “…Nobody has the right to worship on this planet any other God than Jehovah. And therefore the state does not have the responsibility to defend anybody’s pseudo-right to worship an idol.” (Reverend Joseph Morecraft, Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, in a speech Biblical Role of Civil Government, August 21st 1993 to the Biblical Worldview and Christian Education Conference.)
Even more disturbingly, it seems certain this despotic policy also has supporters in very high places: “…I don’t know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” (Former President George Bush senior, replying to a question during a news conference at O’Hare Airport, Chicago, August 27th 1987.) After a President had trashed all atheists who have given their lives whilst fighting for their country, in a 1992 fundraising letter fundamentalist Pat Robertson did the same to women, demonstrating the continuing baleful influence of the biblical belief that women are inferior to men and should be kept under male subjugation (cf. chapter 2): “…The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”
Again issuing from a very high source, there are also to be taken into consideration the statements made by James Watts, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, quoted in the Washington Post May 24th 1981: “…My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns.” and “…We don’t have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.”
The political aims of biblical fundamentalists have been summed up quite concisely by Randall Terry: “…What this is coming down to is who runs the country. It’s us against them. It’s the good guys versus the bad guys. It’s the God-fearing people against the pagans, and some of the pagans are going to church.”1 “…When I, or people like me, are running the country, you’d better flee, because we will find you, and we’ll execute you. I mean every word of it. I will make it part of my mission to see to it that they are tried and executed.” (Randall Terry, speech before the US Taxpayers Alliance on the subject of doctors who perform abortions, August 8th 1995.)
Pat Robertson, television evangelist and a former Presidential candidate, has stated (in a July 1991 fundraising letter for the Christian Coalition, which he founded): “…We at the Christian Coalition are raising an army who cares. We are training people to be effective – to be elected to school boards, to city councils, to state legislatures and to key positions in political parties… By the end of this decade, if we work and give and organise and train, the Christian Coalition will be the most powerful political organisation in America.” Tomorrow the world?
Hamburger Schools
It was Australian-born cultural commentator and TV personality Dr. Clive James who once said: “Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it’s in hamburger technology.” It is a national and perhaps a global tragedy that the United States of America, whose educational establishments at their finest can produce people capable of devising the technology for sending humans to walk on the moon, also harbours other schools, colleges and universities in which the valid principles of science are twisted and rewritten to fit the requirements of an ideology based on humankind’s darkest mental aberration, superstition. This tragedy is compounded by the fact that it is the young, the future generations, whose minds are being deliberately clouded in this particular way. In all societies, it is the developing young who become the future, and to control the minds of the young is to control how the map of the future is likely to be drawn, as Hitler realised when devising the “Hitler Youth” program and the educational requirements within the Third Reich in which, in all lessons, facts were modulated by, and subservient to, required ideology.
It is an officially stated part of biblical fundamentalist tactics that it is vital to gain control of education, particularly within the country’s local school districts. One of the most effective instruments for accomplishing this is seen at the moment to be the promotion of creationism over evolution. Tim LaHaye, mentioned above, stated in his already quoted 1980 book Battle for the Mind: “…The elite evolutionist humanist is not going to be able to control education in America forever.” According to Jay Alan Sekulow of the American Centre for Law and Justice in their bulletin issued in July 1990: “…Our purpose must be to spread the gospel on the new mission field that the Lord has opened – public high schools.”
The American Centre for Law and Justice is a right-wing organisation founded in 1990 by biblical fundamentalists as a non-profit public interest law firm established as a challenge to the American Civil Liberties Union, an organisation accused by Pat Robertson of being: “…hostile to traditional American values.” In his book America can be Saved (1979 Sword of the Lord Publishers) fundamentalist Jerry Falwell wrote: “One day, I hope in the next ten years, I trust that we will have more Christian day schools than there are public schools. I hope I will live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them.”
(In the UK, “public schools” are private fee-charging schools [i.e. funded privately by the public who send their children to such schools, such as Eton], and “state schools” are the free schools funded by the government. In the USA, “public schools” are the state-funded schools.)
Pastor Andrew Sandlin, founder of the biblical fundamentalist organisation The Centre for Cultural Leadership (in an introductory letter on the Centre’s website) fulminates: “… Meanwhile, a ravenously anti-Christian culture mocks and attacks the Bible and the Christian faith in all the culturally relevant places – public education, the media, popular music, movies and television, politics, and major businesses. These are areas of deep cultural influence; they shape what people think and how they act. Culture is the outward, visible reflection of a society’s inward religious impulses. Today, that driving inward impulse is a godless, secular humanism that pervades almost every area of our culture. Christianity simply doesn’t count. It is culturally irrelevant. The Centre for Cultural Leadership is designed to remedy this irrelevance – with a vengeance.”
Other notable people have, in the past and in different contexts, also come to similar conclusions regarding the need for the realignment of culture “with a vengeance”: “… it is necessary to gather together the creative artists in all spheres into a unified organisation under the leadership of the Reich. The Reich must not only determine the lines of progress, mental and spiritual, but also lead and organise the professions…” (Dr. Joseph Goebbels, introduction to the Nazi law establishing the Reich Chamber of Culture, September 22nd 1933.)
According to Dennis James Kennedy Ph.D., founder in 1974 of Coral Ridge Ministries which developed a weekly TV program The Coral Ridge Hour (Trinity Broadcasting Network, INSP Network and syndicated on many other stations) and a daily radio program Truths That Transform (writing in Education; Public Problems and Private Solutions, Coral Ridge Ministries, 1993): “…The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ.”
Gary North, referred to earlier, has remarked with approval on the fundamentalist use of educational pressure in the specific political context of subverting the democratic institutions of national government to form an actual theocracy, a system of totalitarian government based on “divine guidance”, writing: “Until the vast majority of Christians pull their children out of the public schools, there will be no possibility of creating a theocratic republic.”
It is also worth quoting fundamentalist pastor Ray Mummert, a creationist, who in 2005 at Dover, Pennsylvania during a heated debate over the teaching of evolution in classrooms, let slip the creationist complaint: “…We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture.”
True to their stated education policy, biblical fundamentalists have infiltrated various state curriculum boards and textbook committees, where they press for the rejection of biology textbooks that specify evolution as acceptable mainstream scientific fact. The majority of members of US state education boards are appointed by political interests, and the Republican faction eagerly supported fundamentalist appointees, with the result that fundamentalism gained a position to begin to enforce their anti-evolution creationist superstitions in various public educational institutions.
For example, Republican Governor of Alabama, Forrest “Fob” James – who once campaigned (in 1978) as a “born-again Democrat” but joined the Southern States’ “Republican Revolution” in 1994 – had the fundamentalist book featuring intelligent design and creationism Darwin on Trial supplied (at a cost of nearly $3,000) to all science teachers in the state, explaining that this was “…an attempt to improve science education by encouraging healthy and constructive criticism of evolutionary theory.” During a previous term as Governor, he had passed a state law permitting teachers to lead consenting pupils in prayer: this law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1986. In 1994 the House Education Committee of the State of Ohio was presented with a bill to make it policy to teach “scientific” arguments against evolutionary theory in all matters relating to evolution in schools: the bill was narrowly rejected. The Republican Party organisations in the states of Oklahoma, Texas and Iowa have used the notion that creationism should be taught in schools as a local election vote-catcher.
A good example of the educational side of fundamentalism became public in 1981 during the court case McLean et al versus Arkansas in which supporters of biblical fundamentalism attempted to gain exemption from the state’s Act 590 that gave evolution by law equal teaching time in schools to biblical creationism. One witness called in the trial was Dr. Norman Geisler, co-founder and Dean of the Southern Evangelical Seminary near Charlotte, North Carolina. Dr. Geisler Ph.D., a biblical fundamentalist, taught for some fifty years at university and graduate level. According to the verbatim record of the court case, Dr. Geisler was asked whether he believed in an actual Devil, to which he replied that he did and then made a few biblical quotes in support of this belief. The trial transcript then contains the following fascinating account.
Question. “Are there, sir, any other evidences for that belief besides certain passages of Scripture?”
Geisler. “Oh, yes. I have known personally at least 12 persons who were clearly possessed by the Devil. And then there are the UFOs.”
Question. “The UFOs? Why are they relevant to the existence of the Devil?”
Geisler. “Well, you see, they represent the Devil’s major, in fact, final attack on the earth.”
Question. “Oh. And sir, may I ask how you know, as you seem to know, that there are UFOs?”
Geisler. “I read it in the Readers Digest.”
In rejecting the case, Judge Overton made the concluding comment that Geisler’s beliefs were “contrary to common understanding”. However, the judge’s remark unfortunately could not take account of the uncommon version of understanding employed by fundamentalists: “…The decline in American pride, patriotism and piety can be directly attributed to the extensive reading of so-called ‘science-fiction’ by our young people. This poisonous rot about creatures not of God’s making, societies of aliens without a good Christian amongst them, and raw sex between unhuman beings with three heads and God alone knows what sort of reproductive apparatus keeps our young people from realising the true will of God.” (Jerry Falwell, article in Reader’s Digest, August 1985, pp 42-157.)
13. The New Inquisition
"If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy.
God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't."
Admiral Hyman Rickover (1900-1986)
“A third and forth method of witchcraft is when
they either devour the child or offer it to a devil.”
(Malleus Maleficarum, first published c. 1486)
“…Very evident instances and examples will more readily show the truth of this matter. The former of these two abominations is the fact that certain witches, against the instinct of human nature, and indeed against the nature of all beasts, with the possible exception of wolves, are in the habit of devouring and eating infant children… When they do not kill children… they… offer them to devils.”
The above words are taken from the Malleus Maleficarum (described in chapter 9), a book written over 600 years ago when medieval Europe was in the grip of a bloodthirsty mass hysteria engendered by the imposition of superstition over reason. In order to “prove” their assertions, Kramer and Sprenger – the Dominican monks who wrote it – quote many pages of “evidence” and “facts” which were, in actuality, merely taken from earlier superstitious inventions written about by other people or else from hearsay and what would today be classed as anecdotal accounts. For example, the above quoted passage continues: “…And concerning this, the Inquisitor of Como… has told us the following: that he was summoned…because a certain man had missed his child from its cradle, and finding a congress of women in the night-time, swore that he saw them kill his child and drink its blood and devour it.”
Has the advance of education, reason and human civilisation left such Dark-Age superstitions and the consequent monstrous persecutions of innocent victims behind in the march of human progress? Unfortunately, it seems not.
When the U.S. Army officially permitted some troops at Fort Worth army base to observe their religion of Wicca (modern witchcraft), the local biblical fundamentalist response was reported in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram newspaper on August 7th 1999. Part of the article reports:
“’This is war,’ thundered the Rev. Jack Harvey of nearby Killeen, who has vowed to run the witches off base. Harvey, who has announced a Labor Day ‘march against wickedness,’ sees no difference between Wicca and devil worship or voodoo. He has instructed that at least one member of his congregation carry a handgun at services – ‘in case a warlock tries to grab one of our kids.’
“’I’ve heard they drink blood, eat babies. They have fires, they probably cook them. This is unbelievably wrong,’ said Harvey, who repeatedly pounded his desk during an interview at Tabernacle Baptist Church…”
In fact, many Wiccans are vegetarians, and the beliefs of Wicca, a nature-worshipping religion, are generally understood to forbid the shedding of blood, whether animal or human. A more balanced understanding of the character of this outburst can perhaps be gained by viewing it in an historical context and comparing it with similar statements advanced as truth in the past. For example, compare the Texas minister’s assertion to the press with:
"The suspicion under which the Jews are held is murder. They are charged with enticing Gentile children and Gentile adults, butchering them, and draining their blood. They are charged with mixing this blood into their mass's unleavened bread and using it to practice superstitious magic. They are charged with torturing their victims, especially the children, and during this torture they shout threats, curses, and cast spells against the Gentiles…” (From an article by Julius Streicher, editor of Der Stuermer the Nazi Party newspaper, May 1934 issue. Julius Streicher was hanged as a war criminal on October 16th 1946 at Nuremberg.)
Or: “…I hear that they adore the head of an ass, that basest of creatures, consecrated by I know not what silly persuasion, a worthy and appropriate religion for such manners. Some say that they worship the genitals of their pontiff and priest …An infant covered over with meal, that it may deceive the unwary, is placed before him who is to be stained with their rites: this infant is slain by the young pupil, who has been urged on as if to harmless blows on the surface of the meal, with dark and secret wounds. Thirstily - O horror! they lick up its blood; eagerly they divide its limbs. By this victim they are pledged together; with this consciousness of wickedness they are covenanted to mutual silence…” (From the Octavius by Marcus Minucius Felix, Roman writer of the third century A.D., giving a description of how Christians conduct their worship according to a prevalent suspicion at the time.)
Philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952) stated in his book Reason in Common Sense that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". Sure enough, after some six centuries, the same old Inquisitional scare-mongering and designer-paranoia once again emerged from the woodwork in a new guise, fuelling a new kind of Inquisition, a bureaucratic one.
Memories are Made of This...?
The new form of the medieval superstitions started to emerge in the form of a branch of quasi-psychology termed recovered memories. In Canada in 1980, Dr. Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith, a patient who later became his wife, published the book Michelle Remembers in which it was related how, using "suppressed memories" recovered via the application of hypnotherapy, the patient began to remember how, as a child, she had been abducted and ritually abused by a cult of "Satanist witches". It needs to be born in mind that these "memories" began to come to her on a psychiatrist's couch in 1976 at the Fort Royal Medical Centre in Victoria, British Columbia, after some 200 hours of therapy following the emotional, psychological and physical traumas of a miscarriage.
The book was presented as entirely factual, although detailed investigation of all the stated "facts" have long since shown it to be largely or wholly a work of fiction. Claims made in the book are provably false, such as the young Michelle being forced to attend a “Satanic ceremony” which supposedly ran non-stop for over 80 days, during which time her school record shows she was never once absent from class, as pointed out by the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday in their exposé Michelle Remembers: The Debunking of a Myth (September 30th 1990) in which the entire story was examined under a microscope. Maclean’s, Canada’s prominent weekly news magazine, in an article by Paul Grescoe published October 27th 1980 titled Things That Go Bump In Victoria, quotes Michelle Smith’s father Jack Proby as saying: “I can refute the whole bloody thing right down the line.” Smith’s father filed with the court a notice of intent to sue the book’s publishers, an action that managed to halt the plan to turn the book into a movie. In the book, Smith and Pazder fail entirely to mention that Smith has two sisters, Tertia and Charyl, who completely deny the truth of the events described. Pazder and Michelle Smith actually travelled to the Vatican by invitation in order to "brief the church" on the previously unknown and unrecorded "danger to children" from worldwide "Satanic cults", and Pazder started to organise "Satanic cult crime" seminars for therapists and police organisations across the United States.
Their book, also published in Britain by Michael Joseph in 1981, has been held largely responsible for launching a new "Satanist/witchcraft" panic in the USA and Canada that rapidly spread to other countries including Britain and various European nations as the surge of cases involving "Recovered Memory Therapy" burgeoned. Between 1980 and 1995, "Satanic Ritual Child Abuse" suddenly became a recognised epidemic in many western nations, regularly featuring in newspaper headlines and TV news reports. According to a series of articles in the major daily newspaper of Memphis, Tennessee The Commercial Appeal (17th - 23rd January 1988), prosecutors in the US have admitted to using Michelle Remembers as a guide for preparing cases against those accused of being “Satanist abusers”, in unconscious psychotic recrudescence of the Malleus Maleficarum being kept handy for reference in almost every European court.
"Recovered memories" became admissible in law and courts acted to order the removal of children from their parents and arrest and jail people who had been "remembered" as "abusers" and "Satanic deviants". In a modern echo of the old witchfinder's ploy of examining the accused for the "Devil's mark", social service departments on both sides of the Atlantic were "instructed" on how to look for telltale "signs" of ritual abuse, such as children who drew pictures of witches on broomsticks wearing pointy hats.
In Britain, Norman Vaughton, a Nottingham psychotherapist, stated that there were an estimated ten thousand human sacrifices a year in the USA. Certain newspapers, without any verification whatsoever of the truth of this statement, reported it with lurid headlines. At a meeting, two police officers present asked for evidence to corroborate the alleged "facts", but none was produced. However, despite the total lack of any actual evidence, it was accepted by many local government departments that "Satanic child abuse" was "probably" occurring in the UK, even if on a smaller scale than in the USA.
In fact, the myth of Satanic abuse turns out to have been seized upon and spread very largely by American biblical fundamentalists, some of whom travelled to the UK in order to "advise" the British authorities in how to cope with this new kind of "crime". Many thousands of people became prey, not to "Satanists" or "witches", but to "recovered memory therapy" during which false memories of childhood abuse were incubated within the mind by the power of suggestion. A great many of all the recorded cases were further elaborated and manipulated into false descriptions of "Satanic ritual abuse".
The Reachout Trust, a fundamentalist charity run by a former nurse from Rhyl in North Wales, Maureen Davies, distributed literature sent from America informing readers "how to spot ritual abuse". Maureen Davies was consulted as an advisor by the police and by social workers and was considered an "expert" on the subject in the UK. When questioned regarding the total lack of any substantiating proof for any conspiracy of Satanic child abuse, she stated: "Sometimes no proof is proof!" Surely, the writers of the Malleus Maleficarum would have approved of such a statement. Following her emergence upon the public stage, she was invited to give lectures in the United States by one Lieutenant Larry Jones, a policeman with the Idaho Police Department. Jones produced a newsletter on "Satanic crime" titled "File 18". In it, he stated his belief that some sixty thousand people per year are being murdered by Satanists, "proving" his claim conclusively by biblical quotations. The Boise Police Department have distanced themselves from Jones' fundamentalist activities.
The worthiness of "File 18" can readily be judged from its content. In issue number 861 (1986), is the claim that as many as 60,000 "ritual homicides" are committed in the United States every year. It neglects to mention how the vanishing of such massive numbers of murdered people every twelve months goes unnoticed in the community, and it is worth remembering that during the nine years of the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1973, the USA's death toll was less than that (the fatality figure is 58,202). (Comprising 47,378 killed in action, plus 10,824 “non-hostile deaths”: official statistics given in Combat Area Casualty File of 11/93 and Adjutant General’s Centre (TAGCEN) File of 1981, available from U.S. National Archives.
He also gives the newsletter's contact address as that of the Police Department - presumably without authority or permission - thereby encouraging the assumption that "File 18" is an official police publication. In issue 863 is given a list of those whom Jones considers to be his "enemies", a description of the nature of "Satan" and a list of "approved" organisations and books. Jones also advises his readers to hide his writings from those who might be critical of his claims. Number 871 (1987) describes how a global conspiracy of "Witches and Satanists" planned to complete their insidious scheme to achieve total world domination by "ushering in Satan" on June 21st 1999 prior to the arrival of year 2000.
This would appear to suggest an example of a common superstitious paranoia concerning what, in some affected people, the mind can perceive as “significant” year numbers. In Anglo-Saxon times, for instance, it was popularly feared that the world would come to an end after the expiry of the year 999 and the arrival of the year 1000. Movie makers and novelists made similar fictional capital out of the impending arrival of the twenty-first century, and there was what may quite accurately be referred to as a widespread hysteria that some kind of “millennium bug” or a “non-recognition” date glitch would bring the computerised world crashing to a halt at midnight on the last day of 1999. The general paranoia was further fuelled by biblical fundamentalists. Television evangelist Jim Bakker in the USA, prior to his 45 year prison sentence in 1989 for fraud, tax evasion and racketeering (later commuted to 18 years), warned an overflowing congregation at the Solid Rock Christian Centre that an asteroid would impact the earth as a prelude to the biblical Apocalypse.
Alarmed by the rising scale of such paranoia, New Zealand police feared that foreign religious fanatics might descend on the town of Gisborne to commit mass ritual suicides on January 1st 2000, as Gisborne, close to the International Date Line, would be the first city in the world to enter the new millennium
(There was an almost universal ignorance of astonishing proportion in operation throughout the world in connection with the millennium date: the British government organised the country’s official “millennium celebrations” to commence as Big Ben struck midnight on December 31st 1999. The US government launched celebrations at the same date, as did European countries. In fact, the year 2000 was not the first year of the 21st century - it was the last year of the 20th. The millennium actually began a year later on January 1st 2001, the first day of the 21st century. By the time the mistake was officially recognised around the world, it was too late to do anything about it. One can still see expensive “millennium memorials” on the outskirts of many British towns and villages bearing the carefully inscribed but incorrect date MM, Roman numerals for 2000, instead of the correct figure MMI for 2001).
Social Services and Other Twentieth Century Witch Hunters
In August 1983 Kee MacFarlaine, a social worker for the Los Angeles Children’s Institute International Child Sexual Abuse Clinic, investigated with a team of assistants a series of allegations stemming from children in McMartin Infant School following a single complaint by a mother regarding her two year old boy. The following month similar allegations were made in Jordan, Minnesota. Like some psychological brush fire, the hysteria spread until more than one hundred locations in the USA were reporting similar “evidence” for “Satanic abuse rings”. The technique employed by McFarlaine and her assistants consisted primarily of encouraging children to “play junior detective” and reveal “yukky secrets”, telling them they would be seen as “dummies” if they did not admit that they had been molested. McFarlaine stated in public (at a law review at the University of Minnesota) that she advocated the use of irregular interviewing techniques when questioning children, in order to “…do whatever it takes to get children to talk.” She informed the press that McMartin pre-school was used by a “Satanist society” that had infiltrated such institutions in the US.
As a result, criminal charges were brought in forty-one cases in a trial lasting until January 1990 which became the largest and most expensive criminal trial in the USA until that time. Writing in September 1987 in The Village Voice, a free weekly newspaper in New York City also distributed throughout the country, investigative reporter Debbie Nathan stated: “…In the McMartin case and its mini versions hundreds of children have offered vague, garbled contradictory horror stories with virtually no physical evidence to back them up. After repeated questioning many children have admitted they have lied. But in the minds of many protective service personnel they have merely recanted… MacFarlaine is not alone in believing in a Satanic conspiracy afoot throughout the country even though worldwide searches by everyone from parents to the FBI have failed to uncover one incriminating object…Lack of evidence does not seem to concern the Satanic proponents.” The result of the McMartin trial was the acquittal without exception of all those accused. The British newspaper the Daily Telegraph concluded that “… the verdict is an indictment of the methods of investigating allegations of child sexual abuse in the USA which implanted the bizarre accusations into the children’s minds.”
The prosecutions brought to court in Jordan, Minnesota, likewise resulted in all 24 accused – including the Deputy Sheriff and his wife and several others who had been arrested simply because they had advocated the innocence of the original defendants – being acquitted but, tragically, financially ruined. Afterwards, the prosecutor in the case was reprimanded by the State Board of Professional Responsibility. Elsewhere, in Bakersfield, California, following a similar investigation where children had told interviewers that a total of some 23 bodies of ritually sacrificed children had been disposed of in certain locations, police dragged lakes and dug up fields and found absolutely nothing. In Ohio another probe resulted in stories claiming the bodies of 75 children had been buried there by a “Satanic group”: police had the field methodically uncovered using bulldozers and no remains were found.
In various separate cases in Kern County, California, in the period 1983-86, many people were convicted and sent to prison on accusations of belonging to “Satanic abuse” rings, the testimony of the children involved later being found to have been obtained by suggestive interrogation methods. Alvin and Debbie McCuan and Scott and Brenda Kniffen were among those accused, and although no actual evidence was ever produced against them except for the transcripts of the unreliable interrogations, they were convicted in 1984 and sentenced to a term of imprisonment totaling between them over one thousand years! Their convictions were not overturned until 1996.
The Justice Committee based in San Diego, supported by a number of Congressmen and formed principally to attempt to persuade Congress to investigate such suspect prosecutions and release those unjustly convicted, released a statement concerning the McCuan-Kniffen case on August 11th 1996, in which it was stated in part: “…Kern County Superior Court Judge Jon Steubbe today vacated the convictions of Brenda and Scott Kniffen and Alvin and Debbie McCuan. He has ordered the State of California and Kern County to expedite the immediate release of these prisoners who have each served fourteen years of combined sentences of over 1,000 years for child sexual abuse. These are only the most recent overturned convictions in this type of case. Kern County has already witnessed numerous others. The investigation which led to these convictions was the subject of a 1986 scathing review by the California Department of Justice which did not, however, take the courageous position of recommending immediate review by the courts…”
Barbara Snow and Teena Sorensen, writing in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence (April/May 1990, pp 478-487) in their article Ritualistic Child Abuse in a Neighborhood Setting, confirm their adamant belief that there is such a thing as widespread ritual abuse by bands of Satanists, even though actual facts have a habit of turning against their theories at every point. In 1990 Barbara Snow was called as an “expert witness” by the prosecution in a court case in Utah, during which the defence managed to confute the charges, often using Dr. Snow’s “expert testimony” against her. As a result of Snow’s interviews with the children concerned, some fifteen people had been brought to trial accused of involving children in ritual abuse during various “Satanic practices”.
The defence council gave the court an entire list of dubious irregularities concerning Snow’s methods. A police officer admitted to the court that the children had copied in their answers various pieces of specific information which he had previously suggested Snow should ensure the children included in their statements. A doctoral thesis was produced in which Snow had described the use of “authority and punishment” to “modify patient behaviour”. The court then heard testimony that she had employed this same technique to alter the responses given by the children to her questioning in order to seem to confirm the story of “Satanic abuse”. As a result, the testimony of the alleged victims had been “…irretrievably contaminated by the suggestive and coercive nature of Dr. Snow’s techniques and was highly unreliable as a result.” (Court record, Supreme Court of Utah, State of Utah versus Alan B. Hadfield 1990
Snow’s colleague Teena Sorensen was also criticised in another Utah court case (Peterson versus Peterson 1991) where it was stated that her methods of interviewing suspected “victims” was also suggestive, leading and coercive.
It appears there is even a suspicion that Dr. Snow herself may perhaps be partly responsible for the spread of the myth of “Satanic ritual abuse”, in a manner analogous to the spread of illness by “Typhoid Mary”. In the court case Kelly versus North Carolina, when an expert on the stand quoted the work of Snow and Sorensen as corroborative authority, he was asked by the defence council: “…Are you aware of how many different communities Barbara Snow has been in after which allegations of mass sexual abuse occurred?” (Cross examination of Mark Everson by Mike Spivey.)
Across the border in Canada, in Hamilton, Ontario in 1985, one of Canada’s longest and costliest criminal trials resulted from allegations again supplied by questioned children, involving such lurid details as (in the vocabulary of the adults who assembled the cases) “Satanic rituals”, “human sacrifice”, “animal sacrifice”, “ritual cannibalism” and “ritual sexual abuse”. Not a scrap of evidence was found during a thorough police investigation, and ultimately the police had to close the case, much to the wrath of the frustrated welfare agencies who had brought the case to court. In Oude Pamela in the Netherlands the Dutch police similarly refused to prosecute a case of alleged “Satanic abuse” following their 18 month investigation during which no incriminating evidence whatsoever was found, again annoying the local social services agencies. Many similar cases have now been recorded throughout most of the English-speaking world, with similar results. Apart from the human misery and injustice involved, the total amount of taxpayer’s money wasted by all such court cases, investigations and repeal hearings in all infected countries reaches staggering proportions.
You Are Forbidden To Speak About Your Wrongful Persecution
In the UK, the first major public body to be duped by the Satanic child abuse fabrication was the Nottinghamshire Social Services Department in 1988, in an investigation into what became known as the “Broxtowe Case” named after the area concerned. The insistence of the Social Services that there was “Satanism” involved brought about a major disagreement with the police authorities, who could find no evidence for this. As a result of what was described as a “serious rift” between police and welfare authorities, in 1989 the Chief Constable of Nottingham and the Director of Social Services agreed to establish an investigation by an independent joint enquiry team, which presented its report a few months later, giving a critical account of the fact that the welfare workers had actually planted horrific stories of “Satanic practices” in the children’s minds through the power of suggestion. The report consisted of over 600 pages divided into five volumes.
For legal reasons, this report was not released to the public, but one of its writers (G. B. Gwatkin) in consultation with the rest of the panel was authorised to edit it into a revised version that could be presented to social workers and the police. In the revised version there is a very interesting section (Stage 4, subsection iii) titled: “Research into the International Scene (USA, Canada and Holland) and the literature from the USA”. This particular subsection of the report was written – the revised report itself states – in order to “… research what had been happening in the USA… as it was apparent to us that all the information and expert knowledge appeared to be emanating from there.” Some paragraphs later, the revised report mentions that the British newspaper New Statesman had already made the point that many of the children’s descriptions of “Satanic Rituals” bore a marked similarity to the details in “Michelle Remembers”.
The revised report also mentions a “Mr. W.”, an American “expert” on Satanic child abuse who had briefed the local welfare staff and the foster parents who were looking after children snatched from their parents by the social services in dawn raids, on how to look for “indicators” that Satanic abuse was being practised. The Joint Enquiry Team contacted the British embassy in Washington DC and asked for this person’s background to be investigated. It turned out that, although he claimed to be a medical consultant, he had no medical background at all, that he was, in fact, a social worker with no publishing credits, had no educational qualifications and that the FBI did not take him seriously. The embassy also advised the report panel that no evidence could be found in the USA to link child abuse with “Satanic cults”. The revised report adds that its authors became suspicious of “Mr. W.” when their investigation showed that, posing as a qualified expert, he had advised the British police that children’s day-centres were often centres of “Satanic abuse” and that the police should investigate all day-centres because “…all kids are victims and all teachers are perpetrators until your field is narrowed.”
The final paragraph of the revised report states that the investigative panel had ascertained that “…an extreme right wing branch of the Republican Party funded by Presidential Candidate Lyndon LaRouche…” had circulated publications throughout the USA in which it was stated that children’s day centre staff, social workers and others described collectively as “lefties” were actually Satanists who ritually abused children as part of a Communist plot to undermine American family values. This section of the revised report concludes with the very significant sentence: “…In view of this scenario and our research into American cases we would not accept that any literature from the USA is reliable unless it is supported by corroborative empirical evidence.”
Although the purpose of arranging a revised version of the Joint Enquiry Team report was seemingly to allow it to be made available to members of the public, for reasons which can only be left to speculation Nottinghamshire County Council evidently decided this would not, after all, be desirable, and on 3rd June 1997 obtained an injunction against the very panel who had compiled the report, namely John Gwatkin, Nick Anning, David Hebditch and Margaret Jervis, to prevent the revised report from being published or in any way being made public. Fortunately, it was already too late as versions of the report had by then found their way onto the internet via servers abroad which the injunction was ineffective in controlling. The Council has since lifted the injunction.
Lyndon LaRouche, named in the enquiry report, is a sporadic character in American politics. The Heritage Foundation, a public policy research institute in Washington DC, has described him as the leader of “…what may well be one of the strangest political groups in American history” (Milton R. Copulus, The LaRouche Network, Heritage Foundation Institutional Analysis No. 28, July 19th 1984) and his private staff of researchers has been described by Norman Bailey, formerly on the staff of the National Security Council, as: “…one of the best private intelligence services in the world” (Washington Post, January 15th 1985, article by John Minz.) Whilst his supporters regard him as a hero, he has also been denounced as anti-Semitic and a cult leader. (cf. Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism wrapped in an American Flag by Joe Bellman and Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates, March 10th 1989.)
LaRouche previously organised hate campaigns against the Swedish politician Olof Palme who became Prime Minister of Sweden in 1969. Palme was an outspoken critic of the USA (see, for example, Time Magazine for Monday January 29th 1973 in which an article titled “Sweden’s Olof Palme: “Neutral But Not Silent” begins with the sentence: “No political figure in the Western world was more critical of President Nixon’s decision to resume the bombing of North Vietnam than Sweden’s Prime Minister Olof Palme…”). The Swedish branch of the LaRouche Movement European Workers Party was intensively scrutinised by investigators when Palme was murdered by a gunman who shot him in the back while he was walking home with his wife one night in 1976, because literature published by the LaRouche Movement was discovered in the flat of suspect Victor Gunnarsson, later permanently released after an argument between the police and attorneys. In the USA, NBC television broadcast a story alleging that LaRouche was involved, and suspicion has never entirely disappeared1. In 1988 LaRouche was sentenced to fifteen years in jail for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and tax code violations, although he continued to operate his political network from within prison. (cf. Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism wrapped in an American Flag by Joe Bellman and Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates, March 10th 1989. Cf. the official report of the Swedish government on the Palme murder investigation Granskningskommissionens betänkande I anledning av Brottsutredningen efter mordet på statsminister Olof Palme SOU 1999:88.)
In the LaRouche publication Illinois Tribunal (7th July 1986), an editorial contains the extreme fundamentalist right-wing comment: “…as a category, gays and lesbians do not represent a valid voting constituency, and neither do prostitutes, drug pushers, child molesters, warlocks, witches, pornographers, or others who are morally equivalent.” LaRouche has also stated his belief that the Queen of England is “…head of a gang that is pushing drugs” (NBC News First Camera 4th March 1984); that Adolf Hitler was put in power on orders from London (“Humboldt Versus Hitler”, The Campaigner, August 1978); and that H. G. Wells, John Ruskin, Bertrand Russell and the entire Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood were Satanists (article “Real History of Satanism”, January 2005, LaRouchePub.com). In this same article, LaRouche also states: “…Satanists already have numerous victims. Most of the sexual and related atrocities perpetrated upon “disappeared” infants and other children, are done as part of the rituals outlined in manuals of Satanist organisations...” (It needs to be stated that, to date, not one single genuine “manual” of any “Satanist organisation” has been produced as evidence for this claim.)
In another supposedly “Satanic ritual” case in February 1991 on South Ronaldsay, one of Scotland’s Orkney Islands, social workers and police snatched five boys and four girls of four families from their homes in a dawn raid after allegations made by three other children that the parents and a local minister of the Church of Scotland were “Satanists” who were engaged in ritual abuse. In court some five weeks later the judge, Sheriff David Kelbie, dismissed the entire case, criticising the social workers concerned and stating that their actions were “fundamentally flawed”, and finding that the children had actually been cross examined by social workers in such a way as to make them admit to being abused when they had not been, in a manner described by the judge as having “no lawful authority whatsoever.” An official enquiry in October 1992 criticised the Orkney Social Services and made no less than 194 recommendations for changes in their practices. In March 1996 the four families involved were paid compensation of £10,000 for each child and £5,000 for each parent by the Orkney Islands Council, who also issued an official public apology to them.
In 1990, some twenty children were similarly snatched in dawn raids by local social service workers in Rochdale, Lancashire, from the Langley estate in the Middleton district of the town, where the social services claimed “Satanic ritual abuse” was going on. A High Court judge denounced the judgement of the Rochdale Council Social Services Department, which was also later criticised heavily in an official report by the Government Social Services Inspectorate. No evidence whatsoever of any kind of abuse of children was found, whether “Satanic” or otherwise, and the Director of Social Services for Rochdale Council, Gordon Littlemore, resigned from his job as a result of the controversy.
In 2006, twelve of the children who had been victimised by the social services and who were now aged between 18 and 29 began a legal action against Rochdale Council for an apology and damages. Their solicitor Richard Scorer of Manchester law firm Pannone & Partners said in a statement regarding the case that the children had no idea what was happening to them at the time they were taken away from their families, and when they eventually returned home they were subjected to taunts and bullying from other children, massive family upheaval and in some cases, parents splitting up. This caused them enormous personal problems, said the solicitor, including psychological damage, disruption of family life and long-term suffering.
The story of the Rochdale victims was featured in the BBC 1 television documentary When Satan Came to Town, an episode of the investigative series Real Story with Fiona Bruce, in which two of the social workers believed by the TV investigators to be responsible were located and named; both no longer worked for Rochdale Council, but one of them was believed to still be working in child protection in the Greater Manchester area according to the TV program, which was broadcast in January 2006. The children, even as adults, had never previously been able to tell their side of the story in public because, again for reasons that must be left to speculation, Rochdale Council had obtained a “gagging order” in court forbidding them from describing their ordeal. However, with the victim’s support, the BBC challenged Rochdale Council and the Family Court so that they were at last able to speak freely and important video evidence could be released from suppression.
On the Isle of Lewis, centre of yet another infamous set of “Satanic child abuse” claims and kidnappings by local social services, which became international news when a court was told of such things as “wife-swapping orgies” and “sacrifices of chickens and cats” and “the drinking of blood”, the principle witness for the prosecution was 39 year old Angela Stretton. Long after the case had ceased to be headline news, Stretton admitted lying to the police. She suffers from learning difficulties and apparently found the official interrogations to be confusing and somewhat intimidating. She explained: “I had lots of meetings with police and social workers. They kept questioning me about different people. It was a different person every day. They had a list of names, including my mum and brother. They said things about taking photos and killing animals and drinking their blood. At first I said no, they wouldn’t do that. But they kept on and on at me. They said I had to tell the truth for the children. I felt really under pressure, so I suppose I told them what they wanted to hear. I just agreed with what was being said.”
Although – as reported in the Observer newspaper – available documents prove that a senior police officer expressed doubts about Stretton’s evidence and informed his superiors, the police continued to attempt to build a case, despite also becoming aware that Stretton also had a previous conviction for making hoax telephone calls to the emergency services. However, nine months later the case was quietly abandoned by prosecutors who gave no explanation for dropping it, which left those accused feeling their lives had been destroyed. One of the accused, Susan Sellwood, has stated that she and her husband were subjected to vigilante attacks and that their lives had been destroyed physically, financially and emotionally, and she makes the further point that “…people think the case was dropped because they did not have enough evidence, rather than because police and social services made appalling mistakes.”
Salem Revisited
"Recovered Memory Therapy" has since been internationally discredited. Intense police investigations throughout Britain, the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia have found no evidence for any organised "Satanic child abuse"; no corpses or remains, no "Satanic covens", no bloodstains whether human or animal, no forensic DNA, no (reliable) witnesses. It has been said that the “Satanic ritual abuse” frenzy in the USA was "the worst outbreak of mass hysteria since the Salem witchhunt at the end of the seventeenth century". Robert Hicks of the Criminal Justice Department in Virginia, USA, has identified the cause as "…a farrago of half-truths, unsupported generalisations, vague musings, hysteria and downright ignorance fostered in part by Fundamentalist Christian groups with the willing collusion of police and the so-called helping professions1.” He has also stated: "…There were no such stories before the publication of 'Michelle Remembers'". (Robert Hicks, Law Enforcement Section Department of Criminal Justice Services: talk prepared for the Virginia Department for Children’s 12th Annual Legislative Forum, Roanoke, Virginia, September 22nd 1989.)
Kenneth Lanning, Supervisory Special Agent in the Behavioural Science Unit with the National Centre for the Analysis of Violent Crime at the FBI Academy in Virginia, has stated in his Investigator’s Guide to Allegations of Ritual Child Abuse: “…Any professional evaluating victim’s allegations of ‘ritual’ abuse cannot ignore or routinely dismiss: the lack of physical evidence… the difficulty in successfully committing a large-scale conspiracy crime (the more people involved in any crime conspiracy, the harder it is to get away with it) … human nature (intergroup conflicts resulting in individual self-serving disclosures are likely…) …If and when members of a destructive cult commit murders, they are bound to make mistakes, leave evidence and eventually make admissions in order to brag about their crimes or to reduce their legal liability… Overzealous intervenors must accept the fact that some of their well-intentioned activity is contaminating and damaging the prosecutive potential of the cases where criminal acts did occur.” He later adds significantly: “…If 99.9% of Satanists and 0.1% of Christians abuse children as part of their spiritual belief system, that still means that the vast majority of children so abused were abused by Christians… Satanic and occult crime has become a growth industry; speaking fees, books, videos, prevention material, television and radio appearances."
The "suppressed recollections" of childhood abuse involving "Satanic witchcraft rituals" and the like have now been generally diagnosed into the same category as UFO abductions, under the heading of False Memory Syndrome, although it remains difficult to convince some people and, as Mark Prendergrast put it in an article in the False Memory Syndrome Newsletter volume 11, #3, May-June 2002: "I doubt it (Recovered Memory Therapy) will die out completely. Once an idea enters the cultural mainstream, it has a way of resurfacing like a bloated corpse every few years."
In yet another sad echo of the kind of medieval non-sequitur prevalent in the Malleus Maleficarum, when interviewed by British newspaper The Mail on Sunday in 1990, Dr. Pazder defended his allegations by stating that although the events recorded in Michelle Remembers were being shown to be untrue, this detail was less important, in his opinion, than the fact that Michelle Smith herself believed they had occurred.
In the report Recovered Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse (British Journal of Psychiatry, April 1998), the Royal College of Psychiatry makes the statement: “…A comprehensive review of the literature on recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse has concluded that when ‘memories’ are recovered after long periods of amnesia, particularly when questionable techniques were used to recover them, there is a high probability that the memories are false.” The report makes several recommendations to psychiatrists, including avoiding techniques intended to reveal evidence of past sexual abuse of which the patient has no memory and regarding such memories with extreme caution if they appear. Other recommendations include: “…Techniques of “regression therapy”… are of dubious provenance”, “…Forceful or persuasive interviewing techniques are not acceptable”, “…patients are susceptible to subtle suggestions and reinforcements, whether or not these communications are intended”, and “…Memories, however emotionally intense and significant to the individual, may not necessarily represent historical truth.”
The Truth Dawns
During a House of Commons debate on 19th June 2003 on the Government's response to the Home Affairs Committee Report on investigations into past cases of abuse in children's homes (published in October 2002 after a nine month enquiry), the MP for Crosby and Formby, Claire Curtis-Thomas (Labour) made mention of the dangerous part played in encouraging people to discover "repressed memories" of childhood abuse for themselves by the "self-help" techniques detailed in another popular book, The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. The Home Affairs Committee Report stated that: "...a new genre of miscarriages of justice..." has arisen from what it defines as: "...the over-enthusiastic pursuit..." of such allegations.
In October 1995, the California Superior Court rejected repressed memory testimony with an on-the-record ruling stating that: "The phenomenon of 'memory repressions' is not generally accepted as valid and reliable by a respectable majority of the pertinent scientific community and ... the techniques and procedures utilized in the retrieval process have not gained general acceptance in the field of psychology or psychiatry."
In March 1996, the Texas Supreme Court rejected evidence derived from "Recovered Memory Therapy", ruling that: "In sum, the literature on repression and recovered memory syndrome establishes that fundamental theoretical and practical issues remain to be resolved. These issues include the extent to which experimental psychological theories of amnesia apply to psychotherapy, the effect of repression on memory, the effect of screening devices in recall, the effect of suggestibility, the difference between forensic and therapeutic truth, and the extent to which memory restoration techniques lead to credible memories or confabulations. Opinions in this area simply cannot meet the 'objective verifiability' element for extending the discovery rule."
In October 1997, Dr. Peter van Koppen, a legal expert and qualified psychologist working for the Netherlands Study Centre for Criminality and Law Enforcement, issued a report on recovered memory therapy with the title: Recovered Crimes: About Accusations of Sexual Abuse Made after Therapy. The Netherlands Ministry of Justice had commissioned this report because, in more than five hundred trials in the country involving recovered memory therapy, there had been only one single conviction. In this report, Dr. van Koppen strongly advised professional organisations to condemn recovered memory therapy, noting that there was no proof for the existence of repressed memories and recommending that arrests should only be made if there was some other kind of evidence.
In June 1998, the Canadian Psychological Association passed a resolution in which they expressed the opinion that "...justice may not have been served in cases where people have been convicted of offences based solely upon 'repressed' or 'recovered' memories of abuse..." and recommending that the Minister of Justice should conduct a special inquiry into all previous such convictions.
14. All Religions are Equal
(but Some are More Equal than Others)
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think"
Adolf Hitler
What is a Religion? A Political Question
Democracy has attempted to make an effort in the struggle against religious prejudice. On March 15th 2001, after a period of research into the different religious practices of currently serving men and women, the listing of religious preferences in the U.S. Air Force Personnel Data System (MilMod) was updated to include the categories: Dianic Wicca, Druidism, Gardnerian Wicca, Pagan, Seax Wicca, Shamanism, and Wicca” (Wicca or modern witchcraft is a pagan nature religion; Gardnerian Wicca originated with Gerald Gardner (1884-1964) who is sometimes referred to as “the father of modern witchcraft”; Dianic Wicca is a version admitting mainly, sometimes exclusively, women; Seax Wicca is a version based on re-interpreted Anglo-Saxon paganism.)
The US Department of Defense itself included an accurate and straightforward description of the religion of Wicca (modern witchcraft) in its publication Religious Requirements and Practices of Certain Selected Groups: a Handbook for Chaplains. This excellent booklet was created - as the document itself states - "…by The Institute For The Study Of American Religion". (Published by the Department of the Army, Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Washington DC 20310-2700. The entire contents of the Wiccan section of this book can be viewed on the web by using a search engine and typing in “u s army chaplains handbook wicca”.
The description of Wicca and Wiccan beliefs is extremely good, notwithstanding the conclusion of the Pagan Student's Association of the University of Texas at Austin that: "This obviously was written for, and probably by, people with little knowledge of paganism. Its implicit frame of reference is Christianity and Judaism. Yet it was also written by and for people who are required by law, and by their job duties, to tolerate and even respect paganism. One perceives in it a real (though perhaps not entirely successful) effort to understand the pagan religions."
Even though the document itself carries the disclaimer: "Nothing herein… shall be construed to reflect the official position… or endorsement of the Department of the Army, or of the Chief of Army Chaplains regarding the organisation, beliefs, or doctrine of the religious groups described in this manual..." it would seem that the booklet is a well-meant acknowledgement that the US Department of Defense recognises there are sufficiently large numbers of pagans - and in respect of this section of the Chaplain's booklet, specifically Wiccans - serving in the armed forces to render it advisable to instruct military chaplains in the administration of appropriate spiritual care and respect to witches serving in the military. Part of the care, for example, includes the advice to the chaplain that, should a serving Wiccan be killed in action, their ceremonial tools and equipment should be respectfully treated and returned at the earliest possible opportunity to the deceased's coven.
In the Military Court case of United States v. Phillips (42 M.J. 346, 349 [C.A.A.F. 1995]), the Army Chaplain’s Handbook was recognised by the Court as legal evidence in support of the ruling that a Book of Shadows (the traditional name for a witches’ personal handwritten interpretation and experience of their belief) holds the identical position to a Wiccan, as a valid religious text, as the Bible does for Christians. During this trial, Judge Wiss in a concurring opinion stated: “First, Wicca is a socially recognised religion. It is acknowledged as such by the Army. See Department of the Army Pamphlet 165-13-1, Religious Requirements and Practices of Certain Selected Groups: A Handbook for Chaplains (April 1980)… Further, it is acknowledged as such in courts of law.” In the earlier case United States v. Seeger (380 U.S. 163) in 1964, Supreme Court Justice Douglas stated that the United States is a “…pluralistic nation, founded on the belief that religion must not be used to indoctrinate or coerce.”
However, President George W. Bush is on record as stating (whilst Governor of Texas): "I don't think that witchcraft is a religion. I wish the military would rethink this decision." (George W. Bush to ABC News, June 1999.) When a US state governor who was considered suitable by the Republican Party for nomination as their presidential candidate is able to pontificate regarding what he considers constitutes a “valid religion” and what does not, this begs the question: "exactly what is a religion according to the law?"
It is extraordinarily difficult, in fact, to answer this question. This author wished to restrict his research on this particular issue to the USA and United Kingdom, the principle “Western Powers”. The initial thought that consulting the frameworks of laws of these two countries would quickly provide a correct legal definition of what officially constitutes "a religion" was rapidly confounded. It transpires that in the United States of America there is actually no absolute Federal legal definition of the term "religion". The US Constitution certainly contains very explicit and fair injunctions regarding how its drafters wished their new nation to treat religion, but it is worded throughout on the assumption that its readers already know what the word "religion" means. After all, the US Constitution is a legal framework for government; it cannot also be a complete dictionary and was never intended to be.
The US Civil Rights Act of 1964 is (quite deliberately) equally ambiguous as far as any detailed definition is concerned of what a religion must consist of in order to be a “legally valid religion”. In its text, the matter of what defines a “religion” is simply referred straight back to those people who follow the particular belief: “…To be a bona fide religious belief entitled to protection under either the First Amendment or Title VII, a belief must be sincerely held, and within the believer’s own scheme of things religious.” ((USCA Const. Amend. 1: Civil Rights Act 1964 701 et seq., 717 as amended 42 USCA 2000-16).
In other words, according to this Act, if a person sincerely believes that their own religion is a religion – whatever its nature – that is good enough for the belief to qualify as “a bona fide religious belief”. This simple sentence in the Civil Rights Act is perfectly and elegantly phrased; every individual has the right to believe in the legal validity of their own religion, even if it has a membership of only one.
In the First Amendment of the Constitution (part of the United States Bill of Rights), President Madison in 1789 proposed a section on religion that would read: "The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established..." This wording was altered in the House of Representatives to read: "Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience..." In the Senate the wording was: "Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith, or a mode of worship, or prohibiting free exercise of religion..." Although the actual word "religion" itself was not clearly defined, it is extremely clear exactly what these highly respected national law-givers were aiming at and what their wishes were - quite simply, to make it an unconstitutional act for any US administration to adopt legislation promoting any religion whatsoever into a paramount position within the Nation, or which places any discomfiture, social or political pressure, or denial of full and equal rights, to the observers of any religion whatsoever. In short, the authors of the Bill of Rights wished to ensure that there could never be any kind of “official state religion” within the United States of America.
In a letter written by President Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to a group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, the president specifically states that the purpose of the First Amendment is "to build a wall of separation between Church and State." In 1878 in the case of Reynolds v. United States, Chief Justice Waite of the Supreme Court referred to this presidential comment and described it as "…almost an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment." There were, however, other views on the matter.
In his famous Commentaries On The United States Constitution in 1833, Joseph L. Story (1779-1845) (Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Dane Professor of Law in Harvard University. He was the judge featured in the 1997 Stephen Spielberg movie Amistad concerning the case of a mutiny by abducted African slaves on board a slave transport ship the Amistad. The Supreme Court freed the slaves and they were repatriated to their homeland) concluded that: "…Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice, and the state constitutions; and the Catholic, the Protestant, the Calvinist, the Armenian, the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of national councils, without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship." So far, this much again upholds the principle that no religion should be allowed to predominate or be individually supported, adopted or recommended by the national administration.
However, Story goes on to distance himself from the basic principle expressed in the First Amendment by saying in his next paragraph: "…Probably, at the time of the adoption of the constitution and of the amendment to it... the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation."
In Story's view, then, the interpretation of the religious freedom clause of the First Amendment had by 1833 drifted away from the principle of: "...nor shall any national religion be established..." to an increasing interpretation that the inspiration of the Constitution was not to prevent the favouring of Christianity by the national government, but merely to avoid religious discrimination and persecution and to avoid having an officially government-adopted or state-sponsored religion. Story's interpretation of the First Amendment was clearly tending towards the kind of freedom represented by Henry Ford's famous statement about people who wanted coloured cars: "They can have any colour they like, providing it's black" and George Orwell's satirical version of Communism in "Animal Farm": "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." Story's interpretation essentially carries the implication: "The Christian U.S. Government shall make no law establishing a national religion."
Although the popularity of this kind of double standard seems to be rife within the hierarchy of the United States and amongst many of its influential opinion-makers in the present day, the Supreme Court discarded this interpretation as long ago as 1947, in the case of Everson v. the Board of Education of Ewing Township. In this, the Court ruled that the Constitution forbade all practices that aid one religion, or prefer one religion over another, or even administrative practices that aid all religions. This is how matters rest at this time of writing, with American liberals leaning towards the ideals of President Madison and the First Amendment of the Constitution, biblical fundamentalists and Republican general opinion leaning towards Story's interpretation (or even further), and individual US states deciding for themselves at state legislature level on all non-Federal aspects of legal issues relative to religious matters.
In Britain the matter is no less obscure. In December 1996 the House of Lords, Britain's higher legislative body and also (at that time) the highest court in the land, was considering an appeal made by the Church of Scientology against an earlier ruling by the British Charities Commissioners that they were not entitled to tax-exempt status because they were "not a proper church or religion." Baroness Sharples asked the House whether the government had any objections to the way in which the Church of Scientology conducts its operations in Britain, to which Baroness Blatch, the Deputy Speaker of the House, replied that: "The Church of Scientology may follow its own doctrines and practices providing that it remains within the law."
At that point, Lord Avebury (Eric Lubbock, himself a Buddhist) stood up and said: "My Lords, is the Minister aware that when the application was made to the Charity Commission it ruled that, in order to qualify as a religion, an organisation had to be theistic in character ((i.e. believe in a deity or deities, which mainstream Buddhism does not) but that Buddhists, having existed for 2,500 years, were an exception to that principle? Does she feel that it would be appropriate for Parliament to frame a sensible definition of 'religion' and 'church', instead of leaving the matter to be determined by the Charity Commission and the courts?" The reply from Baroness Emily Blatch was: "My Lords, wiser counsels than I have tried that one. We have set our face against a definition of religion." (Oral Questions to the Minister of State for the Home Office, 17th December 1996, Hansard vol. 760 cols. 1392-1394.)
On November 26th 2003 the Guardian newspaper carried an article about the Queen’s Speech in Parliament (in which forthcoming legislation planned by the government for the next parliamentary session is outlined in general terms) in which mention was made of the proposed new Charities Bill which was being prepared in draft form (the Draft Charities Bill). The Guardian article pointed out that “…Britain’s charity laws date back more than 400 years. The draft bill will be based on an overhaul, first announced by the government in July 2003. This will attempt to update the law to meet the needs of the voluntary sector in the 21st century – and to protect its credibility with the public, through a new definition of charity as providing a ‘public benefit.’”
In paragraphs 8 & 9 of a report summing up their concerns and opinions of the Draft Charities Bill, the Charity Law Association commented: “…Certain religious bodies are uncomfortable with the idea that, once the presumption of public benefit is removed from religious charities, their doctrines will be subject to (unavoidably subjective) assessments of whether they provide public benefit. We believe that it may be difficult to apply the public benefit test to religious doctrines without falling foul of Human Rights Act principles of equal treatment…” and: “…Connected to this difficulty is the current understanding of “religion” for the purposes of charity law. In explaining their refusal to recognise the Church of Scientology as a religious charity, the Charity Commission… concluded that Scientology was not a religion, because it did not involve the worship of a deity. We consider that defining religion by reference to worship of a deity automatically creates a bias against Eastern religions such as Taosim and Buddhism, which exist in both theistic and atheistic forms. Perhaps, in light of Human Rights Act considerations, it would be appropriate for the Bill to redefine religion in a less biased way. For instance, it could be defined as belief in a supernatural being, thing or principle and acceptance and observance of certain canons of conduct to give effect to those beliefs...”
Human Rights, or Human Wrongs?
The Human Rights Act 1998 referred to above incorporates into British law a version of the European Convention for Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, part of the 1950 Treaty of Rome which was the legal instrument establishing the European Union. Although the British Human Rights Act dates from 1998, Britain was actually the very first country to ratify the Human Rights Convention, in 1951. In the opening lines of the 1950 European Convention, acknowledgement is made of the inspiration provided by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights established in 1948. Article 9 of the European Convention is drafted in two paragraphs, of which the first is a twin of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and states:
“1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”
(For comparison, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 18: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”)
However – unlike the UN version – the European Convention is immediately followed by a restrictive proviso in paragraph 2:
“2. Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the rights and freedoms of others.”
The astute reader will notice that the fine principles of religious freedom enshrined into European law in section 1 of this paragraph have been provided with useful loopholes in section 2 for governments to take advantage of if they wish, and which just about completely negates the safeguarding principles of the first part. As a consequence of paragraph 2, the spin-off British Human Rights Act of 1998 was able to be carefully phrased to safeguard the government from shooting itself in the foot by self-imposing a specific legal requirement to observe any religious freedom that contradicts what it may deem necessary for the “greater good”, the government itself being the definer of whatever constitutes “the greater good”.
For instance, Paragraph 2 means that the provisions of the umbrella European Convention on Human Rights and all national Acts devolving from it can be overruled if an individual government decides a religious practice threatens “public morals”, “public order” or “public health”. This immediately prompts the rather worrying question: who is the official arbiter of what constitutes “public morals”, “public order” and “public health”? Is the government the home of the land’s treasury of definitive moral rectitude? The behavioural record of even high office-holders says otherwise. Likewise, how is “public order” to be deemed as “threatened”? Particularly, on what criteria is a political decision regarding what constitutes “public disorder” to be based? And how broad or narrow is a risk to “public health” assessed?
Perhaps it is relevant here to look at some religious practices that, if the government so chooses, may be deemed outside the protection offered by paragraph 1 due to the political escape clause in paragraph 2.
First, consider the matter of “public order”. In 2003 the Anti-Social Behavior Act made significant changes to previous legislation. Particularly, in section 57 it changed the provision of the 1984 Public Order Act so that the number of persons defined as constituting a “public assembly” was legally reduced from 20 to just 2. This means that from the date the Act became law (20th January 2004), the police have the power to impose orders on “public assemblies” of as few as 2 people if they see fit to do so. This same Act also contains a provision for the removal of travellers (“Gypsies”) from illegally occupied land, but this provision conveniently applies equally to “environmental protesters” as well. Many pagan religious groups, such as nature-worshipping Wiccan covens, have only two or three members: very few have as many as 20. Being nature worshippers, such groups sometimes conduct their sacred ceremonies in woodland or other natural environments, most typically at night. Technically – and especially if any biblical fundamentalist in high government office gives them the official nod – the police now have the power to move in and prevent this from happening, simply by declaring the religious group to be, or to include, “environmental protesters”.
Churches and religious assembly rooms are classed as “public buildings” in the UK and meetings within them as “public assemblies”, and this includes non-Christian public buildings such as Hindu temples, mosques and synagogues. It may be thought by some that it is unlikely that the police would ever interfere in such a place of worship; however, this is not the point. The point is, the legislation exists; and the fact that the national authorities may normally be applying it reasonably and with moderation cannot guarantee that this will always be the case in the future. Simply, the safeguards against misuse of power that should be enshrined within such laws seem to have been carefully circumscribed.
(Although on 25th July 2002 12 British police officers, including two in riot gear, stormed the Ghausia Jamia Mosque in Lye, near Stourbridge just after morning prayers, breaking down the door with a battering-ram in order to arrest an Afghan family who were seeking to stay in Britain on compassionate grounds.)
“Public Morals” is an equally thorny issue. One person’s moral standards are another person’s repression. It is important to understand that we are not talking here about actual crime of an immoral nature, such as rape; we are referring to public morals – that is, any non-criminal conduct that can be described by the old-fashioned phrase “an outrage to public decency” - and this is such a nebulous matter that any legislation designed to place a ring-fence around any set of “acceptable moral behavioural standards” is itself immoral according to the principles of democratic freedom.
Again it is useful to cite the religion of Wicca to begin a brief examination of how this part of the Human Rights Act is open to official misuse. Whereas Christian churches, and especially fundamentalist ones, would be outraged if a group of people, including the priest or pastor, came to a service stark naked, many pagan religions and especially Wicca frequently (although not universally) consider it an important manifestation of their faith to conduct their worship completely naked, in the manner that is poetically referred to as “skyclad”. Skyclad nature-worshipping ceremonies are, when possible, conducted in natural environments such as woodland or heathland, away from prying eyes. Nevertheless, is a religion that encourages worshippers to be “naked in their rites” a threat to “public morals”? Few fundamentalists would disagree, and possibly not that many of more liberal views. How, then, could a government with a biblical fundamentalist prime minister be entrusted with safeguarding the religious rights of Wiccan worshippers if the legal loophole exists that “skyclad” worship of nature deities could be construed as being “against the interests of public morals”? Any argument that this is “unlikely” or “will never happen” is again beside the point if such legislative loopholes nevertheless exist.
The hypocrisy of the notion of some kind of standardised “public morality” can be highlighted by examples given in the book A Witches’ Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar (Phoenix Publishing Inc. ISBN 0-919345-92-1), where the authors – both Wiccans – point out that ritual nakedness was also a habit of biblical prophets (I Samuel 19:24: “…And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night…”) and that Saint Francis of Assisi preached a sermon stark naked to a large congregation of both sexes in the Cathedral of San Ruffino.
The question thus arises of how it can be possible, let alone desirable, for a democratic society to limit “religious freedom” in law as being “…subject … to such limitations as are … in the interests of… public … morals”? It is not sufficient protection of people’s rights for government to simply say: “We are very unlikely to use such powers in this way”: the fact that it is permitted at all by existing legislation means that the possibility of usage cannot be exclusively ruled out and is now unarguably a “Sword of Damocles” metaphorically hanging over the public head.
As for the remaining proviso of the Human Rights Act, public health, one wonders what would be the likely reaction if the Christian Communion was banned, or ordered to change its entire nature? When the chalice of red wine that worshippers believe to be transubstantiated into the blood of Christ is passed on to allow a succession of people to take a sip, the only hygiene involved is for the priest to wipe it with a cloth. As certain television advertisements gleefully point out, there are more bacteria to be found on a dishcloth than on a toilet seat. Could the Communion ever be prevented by law from allowing partakers to communally drink what they consider to be “the blood of Christ”? This would be extremely unlikely under a nominally Christian government, even should there be an epidemic of cholera or some other transmittable disease, since there seems to be an underlying principle that “all religions are equal, but Christianity is more equal than others”.
Surely, then, it is entirely fair to suggest that by examining the possible connotations implied in the intricate legal definition of “Human Rights” we can perceive at least the hint that there could, just possibly, arise interpretations of existing law that are open to the preferential acceptance by government of some favoured religious practices and the preferential denial of others less favoured?
If governments, for whatever motivation, steer clear of establishing required legal criteria by which a particular belief qualifies as a "proper" religion or not, this also means that, at least in the UK and the USA, there is no absolute legal definition of "religion". This is a two-edged sword, however, for although, on the surface, it means that no person's spiritual belief can be legally stated not to qualify as a "religion", it also means that any politician, petty bureaucrat or civil servant is free to cavalierly dismiss any claim that a particular organisation is actually a “genuine” or “proper” religion, without fear of legal correction. This, indeed, happened in the case of Scientology described above, where the unelected bureaucrats of the Charities Commissioners decided, in so many words, that it was not a “valid” religion and would not therefore be granted charity status for tax purposes despite the House of Lords - nominally the highest authority in the land - accepting that Scientology may function as a religion.
The threat which this absence of any qualified legal definition of "religion" poses is not very obvious during the relaxed times of liberal governments. However, when a western government produces a leader who has biblical fundamentalist tendencies, then the danger becomes more apparent, for such leaders are perfectly free to state that such-and-such a belief is "not a proper religion", on no other grounds than preferential prejudice (as George W. Bush has indeed done in respect of Wicca), thereby at the very least tilting the balance of their whole administration towards that general inclination. By so doing, this can, like a single falling stone that starts an avalanche, make religions that have no "state credentials" quite rightly begin to feel uneasy and disadvantaged.
No Western government has yet devised any totally successful measure whereby government itself can be isolated from the influence and prejudices of religion. The supposedly cherished democratic principle of “separation of Church and State” does not really exist in practice.
The Farce is With You!
It is perhaps also worth at this point laying to rest another popular and delightful urban myth which is relevant to the question of “legal” religion. In 2001 New Zealand, Australia, England and Wales were each due to conduct a census of their entire populations. An email was widely circulated suggesting that in the case of the question asking what religious belief was held, people should fill in the answer "Jedi" inspired by the Star Wars movie series. The email went on to explain that, if more than eight thousand people in a country entered this on their census forms, their governments would be legally obliged to grant Jedi the status of a genuine religious belief. The New Zealand census took place on 6th March, that of England and Wales on April 29th and Australia's on August 7th of that year. A great number of people in all the countries declared their religion to be "Jedi". Unfortunately, the email was a massively successful hoax and in fact, even if the entire population of all four countries had written "Jedi" in the box on their census form, none of the governments would have been in any way obliged to declare it a "genuine religion", as there is no such legal status in Western-type countries for any religion.
15. Engineering Armageddon
“…And I will tell you Allah is not Jehovah either. Jehovah’s not going to turn
you into a terrorist that’ll try to bomb people and take the lives of thousands
and thousands of people.”
Rev. Jerry Vine, fundamentalist former President of the Southern Baptist
Convention, speaking in June 2002, eight months after the US-led invasion of
Afghanistan and nine months before the US-led invasion of Iraq, which have
resulted in bombing people and taking the lives of thousands and thousands of people.
God’s (Self-Appointed) Deputies
In 2002, a CNN poll for Time Magazine showed that over half of all Americans firmly believe that the prophesies made about the end of the world in the Bible’s Book of Revelation are going to occur, and a quarter of all Americans believe the “9/11” terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre using passenger aircraft is predicted in the Bible. It has been calculated that in the US presidential election of 2000, a minimum of fifteen million votes, which is around one third of the votes giving George W. Bush the presidency, were from right-wing biblical fundamentalists. Shortly before the elections of November 2004 in which Bush sought a second term in office, Republican Party political strategist Karl Rove (resigned from the White House August 2007) stated he hoped to rally some twenty million fundamentalist voters to ensure success. George W. Bush was duly sworn in for the second time as President of the United States in January 2005.
It appears certain, therefore, that at this present and critical time in world history the balance of “power behind the throne” – and indeed usually the throne itself – consists of voters and policy-makers who believe the Bible not only to be correct in every word but, in the case of many of them, even more bizarrely to represent accurate “true future history” including an immanent Apocalypse, which is not dreaded but eagerly anticipated. This is a disturbing prospect for all sane people in the world. It has been estimated that about 100 million born-again evangelical Christians in the United States and about 50 million fundamentalists believe firmly in an impending end-of-the-world biblical Apocalypse followed by a “second coming of Christ”. All of these people have a vote!
Although gathered to a unified front on the political battlefield, biblical fundamentalism consists of different sub-species. Many fundamentalists in the USA are Dispensationalists, believers in the ideas of the 19th century British preacher John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) who devised an ingenious method of interpreting the Bible to provide a “future history” of the decline and ending of the world by the process of misconstruing and manipulating passages in the Bible so that their original context is ignored or overwritten by preferential contrivance.
Dispensationalists believe that such events as increased hurricane activity, the 9/11 attack, even gay marriages and legalisation of abortion, are “proof” that – as the Dispensationalist fundamentalist Hal Lindsey describes it in his book of the same name – the world now consists of “…the terminal generation”. Lindsey, who serves on the executive board of Christian Voice USA, has also claimed that the USSR (before its collapse) and/or the European Union are the current home of the Antichrist. (His views are available on his website, which can be found via any search engine by entering his name.) His TV program The Hal Lindsey Report centres on associating current events with biblical prophesies and is broadcast by satellite on the Christian Sky Angel network and on Daystar, the world’s second largest Christian television network.
Dispensationalists believe that the various social conditions of the present day - especially all those they disapprove of – represent gathering omens of what is termed “the Rapture”. When “the Rapture” occurs, as confirmed, for example, by Dispensationalist pastor and TV evangelist John Hagee of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, graves will be “exploding” all over the world as the bodies of all Born-Again Christians dead or alive zoom suddenly into the skies leaving all unbelievers to suffer the “Great Tribulation”, seven years of torture and suffering preceding the “final battle” as God and Satan war against each other in Armageddon. It is naturally a foregone conclusion that God will win, whereupon Christ will maliciously condemn all unbelievers to the pits of hellfire and damnation and create a new improved brand of planet earth for the exclusive enjoyment of his faithful.
The Dispensationalists form one of the most politically powerful cults within the biblical fundamentalist movement, followed closely by the Deconstructionists, also known as the Dominionists. According to Dominionist belief, Christ’s return to earth in the “Second Coming” is not dependant upon biblical prophesy alone but, rather, includes the use of Christian political control to fulfil prophesy by preparing a fitting world for him to inhabit, the first major step of which must be the total Christianising of the United States of America where – naturally – Christ will choose to land, followed by the Christianising of the whole world, whether it wishes to be or not. Consequently, the Dominionist aim is to gain complete control over the US government by the use of whatever political methods will serve their purpose. It has been recognised by some writers that Dominionism brings to the front line of politics the vital issue of the great threat to proper democratic government posed by abandoning the ideal of separation between Church and state. See, for example, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, Frederick Clarkson 1997 (Common Courage, Monroe, Maine) and Right Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons 2000 (Guildford Press, New York).
There is ample evidence that the Dominionists in particular have infiltrated the Republican Party during the last two decades, with the purpose of using it to further the political aspect of their fundamentalist religious ambitions, one of which is to use the political system to actually bring about the apocalyptic Day of Armageddon in which the earth will be destroyed in order to clear the way for the arrival of the Kingdom of God. As Congressman Christopher Shays (b.1945) commented in the New York Times on 23rd March 2005; “This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy.”
One of the powers behind the fundamental Dominionist cult is Dr. D. James Kennedy, founder in 1974 of Coral Ridge Ministries and pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Coral Ridge Ministries is a multi-million dollar non-profit corporation which broadcasts the syndicated TV show The Coral Ridge Hour through the Trinity Broadcasting Network and INSP (the Inspiration Network). Pastor Kennedy (who retired in August 2007 following a heart attack) has been described as “…the most influential evangelical you’ve never heard of…” and “…The godfather of the Dominionists…” The Crusaders: Christian Evangelicals are plotting to remake America in their own image; Bob Moser, Rolling Stone, August 4th 2005. The Coral Ridge website describes him as “…the most listened-to Presbyterian minister in the world today…”
Kennedy supports the notions of Creationism and “intelligent design”, and in the August 2005 Coral Ridge newsletter Impact, he has stated his belief that “…It was Darwin’s theory… that led to the death of nine million people in Nazi Germany. Hitler was a devout evolutionist…” in support of which views Coral Ridge Ministries produced an hour-long TV “documentary” broadcast on 26-27th August 2006 called “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy”.
The attempt by Coral Ridge Ministries and its acolytes to spuriously contrive a connection between Darwin’s theories and the unspeakable policies of Hitler and his cronies has been sternly criticised by such bodies as the Anti-Defamation League, founded in the USA in 1913 with the agenda of combating anti-Semitism, defamation of the Jewish people and all forms of bigotry. In a press release of 22nd August 2006, the League stated: “…This is an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people. Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis…” Kennedy himself is also denounced as “…a leader among the distinct group of ‘Christian Supremacists’ who seek to ‘reclaim America for Christ’ and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law.”
The People versus The Law of God
Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries also operated the former political lobbying organisation The Centre for Reclaiming America, which was closed on April 26th 2007 in order to (as stated on their website) “... redirect Coral Ridge Ministries back to its core mission – doing media ministry.” Before its closure, The Centre for Reclaiming America supported an important April 2005 conference Confronting the Judicial War on Faith held in Washington DC and organized by the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration.
This grandly-named Council was formed in 2005, in which year its fundamentalist chairman Rick Scarborough, a former Baptist pastor from Pearland, Texas, stated that the organisation was needed because of “activist judges” – that is, judges who do not accept that biblical fundamentalist dogma should be the ultimate basis and supervisory criteria of the law of the land and, instead, accept that religion, whether Christian or otherwise, is no legitimate basis for providing democratic government and therefore also accept the legality of abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, the removal of religious icons (especially Judeo-Christian ones) from public places and the questioning of the term “one nation under God” in the US Pledge of Allegiance. As reported in The Economist of February 8th 2007, Scarborough has also criticised the US government policy of compulsorily vaccinating young girls against HPV (human papilloma virus, the only proven cause of cervical cancer), stating that such vaccination circumvents God’s punishment for sexually active young women, a similar attitude to his historical predecessors who said much the same thing about the use of anaesthetics in childbirth (cf. chapter 2).
The purpose of the conference organised by the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration revolved around solving the “problem” of a legal system that permits prosecutions based on anti-hate crimes legislation of which biblical fundamentalists disapprove, such as the Matthew Shepherd Act, which will be mentioned in a moment. On the Coral Ridge website message regretting the closing of The Centre for Reclaiming America appeared the statement: “…One example of our undiminished commitment to remain a voice for righteousness in American culture is our May-June campaign against federal “hate crimes” legislation…” and advising readers to “…obtain the new video: Hate Crimes Laws: Censoring the Church and Silencing Christians, produced in partnership with the Family Research Council. The Family Research Council is another right-wing biblical fundamentalist organisation in the USA.
Bible fundamentalists evidently have a problem with society’s legislation against the committing of what are defined as hate crimes. In a 1998 report issued by the American Psychological Association entitled Hate Crimes Today: An Age-Old Foe in Modern Dress, criminologist Dr. Jack McDevitt explained: “Hate crimes are message crimes. They are different from other crimes in that the offender is sending a message to members of a certain group that they are unwelcome”. In the United States, hate crimes committed for motivations of race, national origin or religion are a federal offence. In 2007 a law was proposed (the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act also known as the Matthew Shepherd Act) which would add, amongst other things, attacks on sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of federal hate crimes. Certain biblical fundamentalist clergymen have united to aggressively lobby against this proposed legislation, because it would make it a crime to preach that homosexuality is a “sin”. Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., fundamentalist pastor of Hope Christian Church in Maryland, has gone as far as to state that this law, if passed, would prevent the preaching of the gospel, although this is a moot point. At this time of writing it is not yet known whether this new law will be passed or not, but according to the Los Angeles Times of May 3rd 2007 President George W. Bush has indicated that he will veto this legislation and refuse to sign it into law even if it does get passed by the Senate.
Matthew Shepherd, after whom the Act is popularly named, was a 21 year-old student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten and murdered by two assailants in 1998 in a homophobic robbery. He is the subject of a TV movie and of Elton John’s American Triangle number from the album Songs from the West Coast. The independent Westborough Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, organised pickets at Matthew Shepherd’s funeral and the trial of his murderers, exhibiting placard slogans such as “Matthew Shepherd rots in Hell” and “God Hates Fags”. This church’s picketing of military funerals throughout the USA, in which its supporters state that deaths of service men and women are evidence of God’s anger at the US government’s toleration of homosexuals, was the main reason for the passing of the Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act which prohibits any protest closer than 300 feet from a national cemetery. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit legal organisation dedicated to promoting civil rights and combating racism, has classified the Westborough Baptist Church of Topeka as a hate group.
One fundamentalist solution to such legal confrontations between Law and Bible interpretation and promoted at the conference Confronting the Judicial War on Faith was a proposed legal countermeasure, the Constitution Restoration Act 2005 (originally put forward the previous year), filed by Republican Senator Richard Selby and Republican Congressman Robert Aderholt (Senate bill S520 and House of Representatives bill H.R.1070). The principle aim of this bill was to attempt to authorise Congress to impeach and imprison any US judge who failed to acknowledge God as the sovereign source of law, liberty and government and also to limit the power of the federal judiciary to make rulings denying the freedom of religious institutions to act according to their own “laws”.
This bill was originally drawn up by lawyer Herb Titus, a Dominionist fundamentalist who was the first Dean of the School of Public Policy, founded by TV evangelist Pat Robertson, mentioned already in this book. Katherine Yurika, a critic of Dominionism and its increasing political power, has pointed out (in Yurika Report 19th February 2004) that if this bill managed to become law in the USA, a way would be prepared for Christian fundamentalists in Congress to permit “biblical executions” and for “unthinkable acts of hatred” committed by fundamentalist groups to “go without punishment of any kind” because these atrocities would be carried out in the Name of God, who would then be the legal fountainhead of the US judicial system. The Constitution Restoration Act failed to progress through Congress, which referred it to the Committee on the Judiciary where it foundered. However, in principle, this legislation remains lurking, merely awaiting a suitably severe political climate and convenient supportive majority in which to regenerate in a new guise.
There is already evidence this might be happening. In the liberal times of 1968, the US Supreme Court, in the spirit of upholding the First Amendment, confirmed in a ruling that taxpayers could legally challenge any government program which promoted religion in any way. On June 25th 2007 the Supreme Court, in the case Hein versus Freedom From Religion Foundation, by a majority of 5 against 4 effectively reversed this earlier decision and ruled, instead, that taxpayers have no right to challenge “discretionary spending” by the national executive, so that the US government is therefore now at liberty to financially assist religious enterprises of which it may approve. Jay Hein, named as a protagonist in the case, is Deputy Assistant to the President and the Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives.
The government regional Centres for Faith-Based Community Initiatives – as confirmed by the White House Office itself – hosted in 2006 alone some 110 “workshops” that provided training on applying for government grants to over 9,500 individuals from (approved) “religious groups”, and since 2002 over 30,000 people have been trained in this way. The Freedom From Religion Foundation bought to the Supreme Court their objection to this government policy of deliberately encouraging approved religious charities to apply for federal cash grants, on the grounds that it contravened the 1968 ruling as well as the First Amendment to the Constitution. Co-president of the Foundation Annie Gaylor, who was one of the plaintiffs in the case, has stated: “…The decision is a slap in the face to those of us who are trying to safeguard freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state…” (Media Transparency website.)
Gaylor has also released a statement saying: “…Of course, we anticipate that … (the Supreme Court decision)… will give aid and sustenance to theocrats who want to shield the government from challenge when they unite church and state.”
Ralph G. Neas, president of the People for the American Way Foundation, also issued a critical statement on the ruling: “…It’s a bad day for the First Amendment. The Supreme Court just put a big dent in the wall of separation between church and state, and a big smile on Pat Robertson’s face. Robertson’s American Centre for Law and Justice and allied religious right groups have long called on the Court to restrict the right of Americans to challenge government expenditures that unlawfully mix church and state. That is exactly what the Court did today.”
In a February 2005 conference, D. James Kennedy harangued his listeners: “…Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighbourhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavours – in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.” In his book Character & Destiny: A Nation in Search of its Soul (Zondervan Publishing House, 1997, written with Nelson Black), Kennedy further elaborates: “…How much more forcefully can I say it? The time has come, and it is long overdue, when Christians and conservatives and all men and women who believe in the birthright of freedom must rise up and reclaim America for Jesus Christ.”
Clearly, Kennedy’s definition of “freedom” is the opposite of that in the English dictionary. In fact, this is the identical kind of “freedom” once graciously bestowed upon the German people by Nazi ideology, which was the “freedom to be Nazis or else be victimised”: Kennedy’s concept of “freedom” – and that of other fundamentalist leaders – consists when analysed of nothing but the “freedom” to be saturated with what are perceived to be biblical fundamentalist attributes. In the proposed new world order they represent, anybody who disagrees with their rabid interpretation, or who would question its validity historically, democratically or morally, is most unlikely to enjoy freedom for very long, and possibly life as well.
Journalist and TV host Bill Moyers (b.1934) who is current president of the Schumann Centre for Media and Democracy, has been favourably compared to Edward Murrow, famous for his broadcasts to America from London during World War 2. In September 2005 at an address given to the Union Theological Seminary in New York, Moyers, who has a Bachelor of Divinity degree and was ordained as a minister in 1959, succinctly summed up his common-sense view of the mounting political infiltration by biblical fundamentalism in the USA:
“…True, people of faith have always tried to bring their interpretation of the Bible to bear on American law and morals…what is unique today is that the radical religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America’s great political parties. The country is not yet a theocracy but the Republican Party is, and they are driving American politics, using God as a battering ram… What’s also unique is the intensity, organisation, and anger they have brought to the public square. Listen to their preachers, evangelists and homegrown ayatollahs: their viral intolerance – their loathing of other people’s beliefs, of America’s secular and liberal values, of an independent press, of the courts, of reason, science and the search for objective knowledge – has become an unprecedented sectarian crusade for state power…”
Fundamentalist Pat Robertson stated in a 1984 banquet speech that the fundamentalist aim “…is to gain dominion over society”, and in the Denver Post in 1992 he outlined the route the Dominionists were taking to gain their ends as being to “take working control of the Republican Party”. It is a fact that prior to the American mid-term elections of 2006, Dominionist fundamentalists actually controlled both houses of the US Congress, the White House, and four of the nine seats on the Supreme Court which left them only 1 seat away from being a Supreme Court controlling majority. This situation changed after the elections so that from January 1st 2007 they lost their control of Congress, thereby also making it more difficult for President George W. Bush to freely appoint Dominionists to the federal courts.
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Anthony McLeod Kennedy (b.1936) has increasingly drawn the fire of biblical fundamentalists incensed by his reasonable views and rulings, in some of which he has used comparisons with European law as part of his amplification, generating further outrage from insular fundamentalists whose expressed aim is to have their version of “law” forced upon the rest of the world, not to permit the rest of the world to influence American law. In 1992 he was one of the three judges who reaffirmed the right to abortion; in the 1996 case Lawrence versus Texas he overruled a section of the Constitution of the State of Colorado which denied homosexuals the right to legal protection from discrimination and in 2003, referencing the same case, he further outlined the Court’s opinion that consenting homosexual acts between adults were not against the law, quoting international laws that ruled to the same effect. Justice Kennedy has also ruled the death penalty as unconstitutional in the case of anyone under the age of 18 at the time of the crime and those who are actually mentally ill, again making comparisons with European law and that of other countries in many of which there is no death penalty at all.
Majority Leader of the House of Representatives at the time, fundamentalist Tom DeLay (“…Only Christianity offers a comprehensive worldview that covers all areas of life and thought, every aspect of creation. Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world - only Christianity…") (Quotation from an address made by DeLay at the First Baptist Church of Pearland, Texas, on 12th April 2002.) declared Justice Kennedy’s ruling on the death penalty “incredibly outrageous”. Explaining his respect for international law – he teaches international and American law at the University of Salzburg – Kennedy has stated: “…Why should world opinion care that the American Administration wants to bring freedom to oppressed peoples? Is that not because there’s some … underlying unified concept of what human dignity means? I think that’s what we’re trying to tell the rest of the world, anyway.”2
At the 2005 conference Confronting the Judicial War on Faith mentioned above, fundamentalist leaders verbally savaged Justice Kennedy and proposed his impeachment. Phyllis Schlafly (whose political activities include opposition to feminism and to the Equal Rights Amendment) advocated impeachment of Kennedy because his ruling protecting under-18s from execution “…had not met the ‘good behaviour’ requirement for office…” and she proposed putting forward Congressional bills to remove the Court’s power to interfere with religious displays (such as copies of the 10 Commandments in public areas), to interfere with the Pledge of Allegiance (which includes the controversial, and indeed quite redundant, phrase “…one nation under God…”), and to authorise same-sex marriages.
Michael P. Farris (US constitutional lawyer, ordained Baptist minister, founder of Patrick Henry College noted for its evangelical nature, founder of Generation Joshua, an organisation dedicated to marshalling 11-19 year-old Christians on a political front, and chairman of the Home School Legal Defence Association which supports keeping children at home to learn in order to avoid non-biblical teaching in schools) also advocated the impeachment of Kennedy for “…citing international norms in his opinions…”, adding: “…If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well.”
Lawyer Edwin Vieira (author of the book How to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary) advocated the impeachment of Kennedy to the conference on the grounds that his ruling de-criminalising homosexual acts “…upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law.” He also suggested that Joseph Stalin could provide Christian fundamentalists with a model for controlling the US Supreme Court, quoting the Soviet despot’s own explanation of his policy for dealing with anyone causing him difficulty: “Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.”
Former Republican congressman William Dannemeyer (who in 1982 tried to stop federal funding for exhibits relating to evolution in the Smithsonian Institution, who advocated the abolition of the separation of church and state and opposed the legality of homosexuality) told the conference that America’s principle problem is not, in fact, the Iraq war but whether “…we as a people acknowledge that God exists.” (Quotations in the last 4 paragraphs from the Washington Post, 9th April 2005.)
In the United Kingdom, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the longest continually serving Labour Party Prime Minister in British history – sometimes publicly accused of being “Bush’s Poodle” due to his perceived readiness to jump when the President whistles – seems to have been inspired to copy his American friend by introducing in Britain what appears to be his own tepid clone of the White House Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives.
On Sunday August 3rd 2003, an article by Kamal Ahmed in The Observer reported that Blair, was "...putting religion at the centre of the New Labour project, reflecting his own deeply felt beliefs that answers to most questions can be found in the Bible." The article mentions the fact that Blair keeps a Bible by his bed and that, when asked who would answer for the deaths of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, replied: "My Maker", to the apparent dismay of many of his key officials.
The Observer article also mentions that Tony Blair would allow Christian organisations and other "faith groups" a central role in policy-making and has already set up a ministerial working group in the Home Office that is charged with "injecting religious ideas across Whitehall". The report also states: "...Blair's move is believed to have the strong support of the two other leading Christian members of the Cabinet, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, and Paul Boateng, Chief Secretary to the Treasury..."
(Since this report appeared in the British press, David Blunkett has underlined his own level of commitment to traditional Christian values by having to admit that he not only had an extra-marital affair, but faced with the accusation that his ex-lover's nanny may have been granted a favour by his government department in respect of an extra-speedy visa application, found it necessary to resign as Home Secretary because, as he himself put it, “questions about his honesty” had damaged the government.)
The Observer article also includes the information that Tony Blair's religious committee, whose title is the "Faith Community Liaison Group", will be chaired by the Home Office Minister and that it will include members of the biblical fundamentalist group the Evangelical Alliance. The Faith Community Liaison Group, the article continues, will be able to exert a widespread influence across government, advising various government departments. The article also significantly recounts that: "...Some No.10 officials are concerned that the Government will fall victim to unfavourable comparisons with the Republican administration in America, where President Bush makes no secret of his religious faith and right-wing religious organisations have a powerful input into policy-making..."
Onward Christian Soldiers…
A particularly radical section within general fundamentalist Dominionism in the USA is the Reconstructionist cult, who advocate Calvinism (named after John Calvin 1509-1564), a belief promoting the “rule of God” over everything else and which can also be referred to as the Reformed Tradition or the Reformed Faith. Reconstructionists advocate the policy of applying Old and New Testament morality and law in government as well as in family and church, and they believe in a mission aiming to convert the entire human population of earth to the Christian faith (presumably their own version of it), at which point the Kingdom of God will have fully arrived. This belief is a variety of postmillennialism, based on the Book of Revelation (particularly chapter 20) in which the second coming of Jesus Christ is seemingly described as taking place after “the millennium”, the time when Christianity becomes universal and rules the entire world for a short period (many, for obscure reasons, believe seven years) before the earth is demolished in the Apocalyptic Day of Judgement in order to be redeveloped under new management as another Eden.
Reconstructionists have assisted the movement of general biblical fundamentalism towards the notion of seeking political power (Dominionism). At the heart of their doctrine, their interpretation of “God’s Law” is seen as the necessary and valid replacement of any elected government reflecting the democratically expressed will of the people. Their outlook is technically one of presuppositional apologetics, a theological stance common in fundamentalism insisting that any person who is not in full agreement with their belief is automatically wrong and in opposition to them. The policies of presuppositionalism were shaped by the founder of modern Reconstructionism, Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001), born in New York of Armenian parents who immigrated to the USA from a region close to Mount Ararat, the highest mountain in Turkey (and supposedly the place where Noah’s Ark came to rest). The doctrine of presuppositionism declares every matter to be a religious matter and demands that biblical fundamentalists should either seize or overthrow all world governments.
Presbyterian Pastor George Grant (b.1954) is a fundamentalist Reconstructionist and founder of the Franklin Classical School in Franklin, Tennessee and the King’s Meadow Study Centre which – according to their website – “…is a covenantal community of Reformed Christian thinkers, writers, artists, teachers, students, activists, and friends endeavouring to facilitate Gospel faithfulness and Word and Deed effectiveness in their own lives, families and communities…”
A more starkly political interpretation of this idyll is given by Grant himself in his book The Changing of the Guard (Dominion Press, Fort Worth, 1987): “…But it is dominion that we are after. Not just a voice. It is dominion we are after. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after. World conquest. That’s what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish… Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land – of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ. It is to reinstitute the authority of God’s Word as supreme over all judgements, over all legislation, over all declarations, constitutions, and confederations… ”
The general fundamentalist tendency to require the conquest of the world on behalf of their god as a precursor to a necessary Armageddon begins to assume disturbing proportions when the extent and altitude of their political infiltration is examined. Starting at the top, President George W. Bush’s religious fixations are too generally well known to require much elaboration; he is nominally a Methodist, a branch of Protestantism originating with the preaching of the famous 18th century evangelist John Wesley. Methodism is technically Arminian in theological terms.
From Dutch evangelical Remonstrant Reformer Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), of whom Wesley became a fanatical follower, Arminianism is a belief-system vaunting the notion called conditional election, in which it is supposed – in brief – that human beings on their own cannot attain salvation (from that hydra’s head, “original sin”), even by carrying out great altruistic and charitable deeds and leading a blameless life. Instead, the only “ticket” to salvation is nothing more than a firm belief in Christ, following which the lucky individual will be granted God’s conditional election (i.e. stamp of approval) as a fitting candidate for salvation. Additionally, any lapse of faith results in the cancellation of one’s salvation visa, which must, like a spiritual passport, be devoid of any undesirable stamps where belief in Christ is concerned. The Methodists are committed to this Arminian theology, and, although a little-known name outside theological circles even amongst those who are under its sway, Arminianism is now one of the most widespread religious paradigms in the USA.
According to Wayne Slater, head of the Austin, Texas, office of the Dallas Morning Star and author of the book Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush, who has personally interviewed President George W. Bush on several occasions and followed his career in great detail as a reporter; “…I don’t think any political president ever in the history of this country was able to harness and assemble the kind of organized and consistent evangelical religious support… as George Bush… He is one of them, and they see it.”
President George W. Bush’s foreign wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in which the United Kingdom and some other European countries have joined in support are too well known and studied to need recounting. The political motivation and reasoning behind these campaigns is complex, diverse and shared - or at least accepted to a greater or lesser degree - by a coterie of other governments who have assisted in the military process and are generally referred to as “the Western Allies”. It is probably true to say that the question of religious difference, as such, is not one of the major or indeed acceptable given reasons for these conflicts: it is probably true to say that if extremists had not used violence in support of their religious and political extremism, and especially mass violence against the innocent, then these wars would not have been undertaken. It should be remembered, however, that there are as many Muslims who abhor violence and who point to those passages of the Koran forbidding killing as there are Christians who abhor violence and point to those parts of the Bible which forbid killing – and there are also those of both faiths who read their Bibles and Korans selectively and choose to live only by those passages that happen to agree with what they desire as individuals, and ignore, or distort by imposing a personally favoured interpretation, those passages that disagree with their ambitions.
Of course, the US President is always by longstanding tradition also Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and must take responsibility for the nomination of his executive. One of his most vital senior underlings is the US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, at this time of writing Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin, appointed to the post in June 2003 by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Boykin has a distinguished military history, being one of the original Delta Force commandos, and was involved in Operation Eagle Claw, the attempt authorised by President Carter in 1980 to rescue fifty two employees of the US embassy in Iran who were being held hostage. Three of the eight helicopters involved tragically crashed before even reaching Tehran and the mission was aborted, with the loss of eight personnel. All the hostages were eventually freed when the US agreed to release frozen Iranian assets. Boykin was also involved in Operation Urgent Fury, the successful invasion of Grenada in 1983 by a consortium of countries prompted by the coup d’etat of Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard, and Operation Just Cause, the 1989 US invasion of Panama which achieved the defeat and arrest of dictator General Manuel Noriega. Working in association with a Columbian special police task force, Boykin also participated in the Delta Force and Navy SEALs operation in 1992 against drug baron Pablo Escobar Gaviria, whose income from cocaine trafficking found him listed in Forbes magazine as the seventh richest man in the world in 1989. Additionally, Boykin acted in an advisory capacity to US Attorney General Janet Reno during the 1993 siege near Waco, Texas, of the Branch Davidian sect headquarters which resulted in the death of eighty two of the sect’s members including their leader David Koresh.
So far, so good. Lieutenant General Boykin is palpably a highly experienced military commander with a thorough grounding in the technicalities of modern soldiering, covert operations (he has also served in the CIA where he was Deputy Director of Special Activities) and in working in liaison with the armed services, both military and police, of foreign governments. There is even more to Boykin, however, than at first may be apparent to casual inspection.
As reported by staff writer Richard Leiby of the Washington Post (6th November 2003), there is ample evidence that Boykin is also at least a militantly-inclined biblical fundamentalist, if not a Dominionist. When his first wife left him after twenty eight years of marriage, she told him to his face that he was a religious fanatic. This, of course, may have been the result of purely personal domestic invective. However, it must also be taken into account that in June 2002, this Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence mounted the pulpit of the First Baptist Church in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and told the assembled congregation: “…God led me into the Delta Force… and he said to me; ‘This is where you ought to be’” (Washington Post). Referring to a photograph of Osama bin Laden projected for all to see, he explained: “…There’s the enemy… But who is the enemy? It’s not Osama bin Laden. Our enemy is a spiritual enemy… His name is Satan”. He then reassured his audience by telling them, “…Don’t you worry about what these courts say – our God reigns supreme.” From the pulpit of the Good Shepherd Community Church in Sandy, Oregon, the White House Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence also remarked of his chief: “…George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States – He was appointed by God”. (Washington Post.)
Perhaps even more worryingly, as part of his address to the Baptist Church in Oklahoma, Boykin spoke about his experiences as a member of the Delta Force team involved in Task Force Ranger, a component of Operation Gothic Serpent during the Battle of Mogadishu, Somalia, which took place on 3rd/4th October 1993 against troops supporting the local warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. This battle is perhaps better known to moviegoers as the setting for the film Black Hawk Down, based on the factual book by journalist Mark Bowden. Boykin described how in Mogadishu he could “…feel the presence of evil…” and elaborated “…The demonic presence is real in places that have rejected God”. After the military operation, Boykin examined photographs he had taken whilst flying over Mogadishu in a helicopter, noticing – as he informed the Baptists in church – that one of them bore strange black marks resembling claw marks. He claimed that an experienced photoreconnaissance interpreter advised him that these marks were “real”, not photographic blemishes. “Ladies and gentlemen,” pronounced Boykin to the congregation, “this is your enemy… it is the principalities of darkness. It is a spiritual enemy that will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus and pray for this nation and for our leaders… What is it? I can’t tell you. Except to say that it is a demonic presence in the city that God revealed to me as the enemy that I was up against in Mogadishu.”1 It has been recorded by church officials of the First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Florida, that Boykin also told the same story there.
It should be pointed out that Boykin himself was investigated at his own request in 2003 by the Office of the Inspector General of the Pentagon as a result of much criticism of his highly contentious fundamentalist public statements, in which he has also described the United States as a Christian nation waging a war against Satan, and in reference to the Muslim Osman Atto, a supporter of the Mogadishu warlord, stated: “…I knew my God was bigger than his! I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol!”2 (One of the inspirations for the founding of Islam was a response against the worship of idols, and any kind of religious images – idols – are absolutely forbidden. Muslims consequently considered Boykin’s remark particularly offensive.) He also told the Oregon Baptists: “…I want to impress upon you that the battle that we’re in is a spiritual battle. Satan wants to destroy this nation… he wants to destroy us as a Christian army”.
The investigation, which lasted ten months, ended in August 2004 with the official decision that Boykin had breached three rules; he had not applied for, nor received, proper clearance for the statements he had made in public; he had not clarified whilst speaking in public that his statements were made in the strictly personal capacity of a private citizen; and he had not declared the repayment to him by a religious organisation of funds used in travelling to address their meeting. It is notable that the investigation report dealt only in these relatively minor technicalities and did not make any criticism or mention whatsoever of the actual nature or content of any of Boykin’s fundamentalist statements, nor distance the Pentagon or the Administration from them in any real way. Donald Rumsfeld stated that Boykin had an outstanding record and USAF General Richard B. Myers, at that time Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a public statement saying: “…At first blush, it doesn’t look like any rules were broken… there is a very wide grey area of what the rules permit.” Boykin kept his job.
Nevertheless, if even the White House Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World has, on 1st October 2003, found it necessary to make the official public admission that “…hostility toward America has reached shocking levels…” and that “…Arabs and Muslims respond in anger to what they perceive as a U.S. denigration of their societies and cultures…”, it is hard to perceive how, in the face of Boykin and other politically prominent Americans of similar opinions, even tolerant Muslims can be persuaded that the West is not, in fact, mounting a Tenth Crusade against the Islamic world. (White House Report: Changing Minds, Winning Peace: A New Strategic Direction for U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World.)
An earlier occupier of the White House once had a sign saying: “The buck stops here!” This was a reminder that the President has nobody else to point at and blame for the errors of their administration – they themselves must always be aware they are ultimately responsible for the actions and activities of their entire executive staff and, through them, every other lesser official in the nation. It thus seems difficult, at the very least, to entirely disassociate a specifically appointed Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and his overall character and personal biblical fundamentalist agenda from the specific approbation of President George W. Bush and his sponsor the Republican Party.
Fundamentalist political infiltration in the USA has opened up an even wider and potentially more deadly prospect. While it is true that President Bush speaks in careful terms about Islam and makes sure he clearly differentiates between the pure religion itself and terrorist extremists claiming its title, there is nevertheless some concern that Bush’s persistently right-wing fundamentalist language, which presupposes biblical fundamentalism to be infallible and correct (ergo the only “true” faith) is unavoidably perceived as a challenge by all Muslims, and as evidence that the President is associated with fundamentalist leaders who refer to Islam as an “evil religion.”1 In his 2003 State of the Union address, for instance, Bush quoted from an evangelical hymn referring to the power of Christ.
This perception inevitably influences Islamic opinion in respect of the long-standing active American support and encouragement of Israel. It is an item of faith with fundamentalists that the Bible states God promised to give the land of Israel to the Jews forever (See, for example, Leviticus 25:38; Numbers 14:8 & 33:53; Deuteronomy 1:8, 11:12 & 32:49; Ezekiel 20:42) and, as reported by Michael Freund writing in the Jerusalem Post 22nd December 2006, a study in August 2006 by the Pew Research Centre in Washington DC showed that 69% of white evangelicals in the USA believe that God gave Israel to the Jewish people and 59% believe the State of Israel is the fulfillment of a biblical prophesy. Freund also points out that “…Those who believe God gave Israel to the Jews and that the State of Israel fulfills biblical prophesy are much more likely than others to sympathize with Israel in its dispute with the Palestinians.” Dr. Richard Mouw, President of the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, has remarked: “…There’s a strong tendency toward uncritical support for Israel…”
There is evidence, therefore, for a growing trend of belief in the USA that the world is poised on the brink of the biblical Apocalypse, in the mythological mechanisms of which the intransigent religion-founded political divides between Israel and the Arab world in general are seen as the necessary fuse burning ever closer to God’s gunpowder kegs. The 2002 Time/CNN poll referenced at the start of this chapter also revealed that over a third of all Americans state they are now paying more attention to how developing news events may represent harbingers of the biblical end of the world, and over half (59%) believe the destruction of the world described in the Bible’s Book of Revelation is going to come true. However, it is disturbing that a great many fundamentalists are actually delighted at this prospect rather than horrified, announcing it as something wonderful and joyful, because they believe it will result in the arrival of the Kingdom of God following the final battle between God and Satan.
It is part of the disturbing nature of biblical fundamentalist belief that the Day of Armageddon is not merely necessary, inevitable and guaranteed by the Bible, but is also magnificent, strongly desired and ultimately beneficial for all believers whether alive or dead. It is a great deal more than disturbing when it is considered that such fundamentalists have infiltrated the Republican Party for their own ends and a Republican Born-Again fundamentalist-inclined politician can become President partly by harnessing the fundamentalist vote, and have his finger on the nuclear button.
There are – as there have always been – many elected politicians and their sponsors who stand in fair opposition to the Republican Party and its elected administrations. In fact, up to the election of George Walker Bush as 43rd President of the United States, there have only been 18 presidents from the Republican Party. (Four early presidents – Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Adams – came from the Democratic Republican Party, founded by Jefferson and Madison, but this had no connection with the later Republican Party and, in fact, ceased to exist during the 1820s when it split up into rival groups, one of which became the fledgling Democrat Party.) Not all non-Republican presidents have been Democrats; some of the earlier ones were Whigs (W.H. Harrison, Tyler, Taylor and Fillmore) and a couple – George Washington and John Adams – belonged to a less well-known faction, the Federalists. 14 presidents have belonged to the Democrat Party as such, so, taking into account the long period of time involved, the presidential appointments of both the major American political parties is keeping very approximately even.
Altogether, it cannot be denied that this distribution of administrations over the historical political map represents a good example of the principle of fair government “by the people, for the people”; at least inasmuch as no single political party or interest-group has maintained any dictatorial iron grip upon power in the history of the USA so far, or reached the level of the former Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and various other regimes where a leadership may not be removed by free election.
The whole purpose of having opposition parties that are represented by elected members in the seat of governmental legislative debate and policy monitoring is to ensure that there can be no unopposed administration holding an absolute power, and therefore no dictatorship, and – importantly – that any government should continue to legislate in a fair and representative manner according not only to the wishes of the majority that elected it but also taking into account the safeguarding of the rights of the various minorities; if 75% of the population votes one way, that still leaves a vast number of people who did not and whose interests must still be respected. It is against the very principles of democracy to deny opponents a voice and a vote in government.
It is the self-declared purpose of the organised biblical fundamentalist political movement, as I believe this book to have proven beyond reasonable doubt, to superimpose itself and its particular insular ideology across the political spectrum of the world, starting with the USA, the most powerful country in the world. Their ambition – again confirmed out of their own mouths – is to create a theocracy (from the Greek theokratia “government by a god or gods”), a form of government in which there is no proper freedom, no proper democratic representation of the people, in which policy and laws are imposed by a ruling priesthood who cannot be deposed, in which the favoured deity is in effect appointed Head of State and Chief Executive, and in which political opposition is deemed no longer to be a vital right of the democratic process but, instead, to be blasphemy and punishable as a supreme offence. At the present time, the Republican Party has been fairly thoroughly corrupted by the infiltration of fundamentalist theocratists, and there is an outgoing Republican President. Biblical fundamentalists, however, are also slowly but surely gaining a foothold within the fabric of the Democrat Party and even within the governmental institutions of other western nations such as the UK and Italy. At the present time, there seems no way in which the insidious spread of this social cancer can be excised from the Western body politic.
There is, therefore, more than a slight possibility that the ultimate irony of human civilisation is that it may either be expunged in a nuclear war or at least dragged back into the Dark Ages as the result of a lunatic adherence to a disjointed, inaccurate and largely mythological book cobbled together out of unsupported and unproven folk tales revolving around various ancient tribal jujus; perhaps a fitting end to a society which does not have the strength of character to free itself from the shackles of its own superstitions.
16. In Conclusion
“If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search
may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.”
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
Does this book detail a sinister movement that is attempting to gain unconstitutional control over the offices of free democratic government in our world and impose, instead, a totalitarian regime based upon nothing but perverse superstitious beliefs interpreted from a melange of myth and biased editing assembled in a hybrid book, which the conspirators desire to compel upon society in place of freedom, reason, valid science and the proper pursuit of genuine knowledge? Or is this present volume a scurrilous and inappropriate attack on a book which represents the single greatest pillar of human truth?
The reader’s answer to this question will, of course, be based entirely on their own freedom of belief – the very thing that is under threat from this conspiracy – and how balanced they are in their own mind on the (actually perfectly simple) issue of how to reconcile the separation of two thousand years of total invented nonsense with the valuable insights into human nature and proper human values gained from a modern, broader and wiser understanding of the factual truth and history contained here and there in the Bible.
It is an incontrovertible fact that the Bible, at its best and most innocent, contains embedded within its tenets a complete and universally valid moral behavioural code, by which the normal day-to-day conduct of human beings can be prompted towards perfect selflessness, compassion, love for all people and other living creatures and universal forgiveness, as taught by the examples of Jesus. However, it is precisely these qualities that are almost entirely absent from biblical fundamentalism. It is also an undeniable fact that the Bible represents merely one of a great many religious beliefs and non-religious personal disciplines that uphold and teach those identical sublime attributes. If it is argued – as it often is – that the Bible provides humans with the only true set of moral values to safeguard us from the plunge to unchecked egotistical excess, then it can equally be argued that it is tragic to hold such a low opinion of our own human qualities that we think we can only achieve an evolved compassionate society through the rigid control of an artificially constructed and modulated set of superstitions. It is even more tragic when it is seen that humankind’s great enemy, unchecked egotistical excess, has so thoroughly and remorselessly corrupted the religion whose figurehead gave his life to resist that very wickedness.
Although it might seem a rather radical statement, it can genuinely be argued that if everything false and irrelevant is removed from the Bible, even though the resultant volume might consist of only twenty pages, the remaining essence of utterly human examples – on how we should and should not behave towards our fellows; how we should love our enemy as ourselves; how we should be noble enough to forgive even those who may kill us rather than plot revenge; how we should not fall into the trap of hypocrisy; how we should examine the wooden beam lodged in our own eyes before we even begin to rant about the speck of dust in someone else’s; how we should not assume that we are always right; how we should not attempt to circumvent proper knowledge and scientific wisdom but, instead, should be compassionate in our humanitarian application of ever-advancing scientific skills to the greater relief of the suffering world – would still make it a volume worth reading and digesting.
In fact – and this will be seen by some as an even more radical and perhaps utterly extraordinary statement – it can even be quite seriously argued that the Bible is at its most worthwhile if Christ is eliminated in favour of the purely human teacher Yeshu (“Jesus”) and God is thrown out altogether. Or in other words, the Bible only has any genuine relevance if the massive amount of sheer superstition and invention with which it is saturated is erased completely. What is left makes a much better book. Indeed, you don’t need Christ or the Bible to live like a good Christian: all you need is compassion, humility, and common sense – and a hide like a rhinoceros to be able to reject all the hellfire and damnation claptrap that is likely to be levelled at you by those who prefer the superstition!
There are two basic major divisions of Bible-based religion – fundamentalist and moderate. Fundamentalism has correctly identified its own greatest weakness – the Bible. Their complete world-view (universe-view?) has been so constructed that, like a person whose shoes are nailed to the deck, they must float or sink according to the acceptance of every single thing the Bible says, no matter how wrong it may be. They cannot possibly afford to admit, even to themselves – especially to themselves – that the Bible is mainly legend, embroidery and invention, with a smattering of forgotten and biased tribal history. If so much as one single word is acknowledged as untrue, their carefully constructed world would collapse about them like the house of cards it really is.
Moderate Christianity accepts that not everything in the Bible represents the literal truth, but that providing the more far-fetched or provably incorrect passages and mythological aspects are recognised as merely the added flavouring of necessary superstitious spice required by earlier and less discriminatory generations, there is still an immense value in the book as one of the world’s greatest works of practical human philosophy: certainly enough on which to build a philosophical concept that is no longer challenged at every step by scientific reality.
The important difference is that the moderate interpretation is capable of evolving strongly forward into an unknown but real future, whereas the fundamentalist interpretation, which proudly derides the concept of evolution anyway, cannot, and is therefore perhaps destined to eventually become extinct as an evolutionary dead-end.
The general purpose of this book, apart from throwing light upon some hopefully interesting and thought-provoking facts, is to show that, in the matter of westernised religion, all is not as it may seem on the surface. Much has happened to extend toleration and respect to all manner of religious beliefs. The danger that can be seen lying ahead is that it would be a very simple matter for the administration of a fundamentalist-oriented prime minister or president to begin withdrawing this toleration and incubating a fundamentalist status-quo. Under such a regime, those accused of practising any non-approved religious belief may once again be persecuted by the State, as happened in the false “Satanic abuse” rehearsal, all personal right to religious freedom in the UK being sidestepped by the official loophole backed up by legal writ in the 1998 Human Rights Act: “what they do is not a proper religion” or: “what they do represents a threat to public morals” or: “… a threat to public order” or even: “… a threat to public health” and in the USA by the fait acompli of the Republican administration under George W. Bush in achieving in defiance of the Constitution, if not yet the actual marriage of church and state, then at least the couple’s official engagement.
It is unlikely, one might respond with scorn, that this could ever happen in a civilised modern democracy – unlikely that any Western government would permit the followers of any other religious belief to be classed as “undesirables” or as actual “enemies” and start imprisoning them, humiliating them and torturing them, as witches, Jews and heretics once were, without trial and denied any due legal process or acknowledgement of recognised human rights.
A sufficient reply to this complacent assertion can be given in just two words: Guatanamo Bay, site of a disgrace that amply demonstrates the worryingly fragile veneer upon which the cherished ideals of democratic freedom and human rights are painted. One of the greatest principles of civilisation is the equality of all before the common law. If civilisation’s cherished legal rights can be withheld from one group of people with such draconian ease, we must inevitably begin to ask ourselves the question: “who will be next?”
Which quality of the human achievement will ultimately triumph – the darkness of superstitious assumption, or the light of a factual understanding of reality? You, the reader, must be left to decide that for yourself.
Perhaps the most relevant and succinct comment to apply to any contemplation of the question of religion within the Western powers is that of Rabbi Sherwin Wine (b. 1928). Although he was speaking of the USA, his statement applies equally to the United Kingdom and elsewhere throughout the world, and to the entire human race.
“There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.
The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of the nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity.
This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies.”
“For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate,
contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive,
and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears.
We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations.
We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
(President John. F. Kennedy, Commencement Address,
Yale University, June 11th. 1962.)
“It has served us well, this myth of Christ.”
Pope Leo X (papacy 1513-1521)
Afterword
The World After Bush and Blair
It took years to research and write this book. Since it was written, US President George W. Bush has been replaced by President Obama and others. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has also been replaced, but, at this time of writing, he has his sights set on being appointed first president of the European Union.
President Obama is a Democrat. He is also a biblical Christian by commitment. Tony Blair as European President will doubtless use the position to exercise even more of his own insidious religious fundamentalist impulses. It would therefore seem most unlikely that the Master Plan of organised fundamentalist Christianity to take over the world will be checked, delayed or inconvenienced in the slightest way. If anything, it will probably benefit from these political developments.
At the same time, as people in the west have become explosively aware, fundamentalist Islam is attempting to resist and confront the western way of life. At the fundamental level, Christianity and Islam are completely irreconcilable. Christianity believes Christ was the Son of God and was also God Himself (the Trinity); to Islam, this is utter blasphemy. Islam believes Jesus was merely one of the prophets who foretold the coming of the final prophet, Mohammed; to Christianity, this is utter blasphemy.
Since both of these superstitions are mixing in the world to an ever greater degree, with mosques in most western cities and churches in many eastern lands, it does not require an impossible mental effort to conclude that, at some point in the not too distant future, there can be just one of only four possible outcomes. One: Christianity and Islam must become merged into one single all-encompassing greater religion to which all fundamentalist Christians and Islamics will belong. Two: Christianity will exterminate Islam. Three: Islam will exterminate Christianity. Four: human religion will finally be acknowledged throughout the world as the greatest, most destructive, most abhorrent, most pointless, least valid, darkest example of mass paranoia and mass hysteria ever to be self-inflicted upon the human species.
The first option is unrealistic almost – but not quite - to the point of impossibility. The second and third options are, unfortunately, likely to produce future genocidal wars. It is the fourth option which may – just may – finally take the human race forward out of the dark ages we are still living in. There is no hope or truth in Christ. There is no hope or truth in God. There is no hope or truth in Allah or Mohammed. There is no hope or truth in any Big Sky Goblin, or in the Saucer People, or in the Land of Oz. The only hope and truth for the future of the human race begins in educating future generations so that they recognise these figures as the works of fiction they really are.
It is to the hope of that genuinely glorious era that this book is dedicated.
Appendix I
A small selection of the mistakes and contradictions in the Old Testament
According to Exodus 20:5, Deuteronomy 5:9 and Exodus 34:6-7, the sins or iniquities of parents are passed on to their children. According to Deuteronomy 24:16 and Ezekiel 18:20, children do not inherit sins or iniquities from their parents.
In Genesis (1:25-27) it states that God created animals and then man: in Genesis (2:18-19) he does it the other way round, creating first man, then the animals.
In Genesis (11:12) it states that Arpachshad's son was Shelah: in Luke (3:35-36) is states that Shelah was his grandson.
Genesis (6:19) states that Noah took a single pair of each kind of animal onto the ark: in Genesis (7:2-3) it states that he took seven pairs of some and two pairs of others.
Genesis (7:7-10) states Noah and his family went into the ark seven days before the flood began: however, the very next verses (11-13) state they entered the ark on the same day the flood started.
Genesis (1:9-10) states that the earth was made on the third day and the stars later: Genesis (1:14-15) states the stars were made on the fourth day, after the earth: in Job (38:4-7) God himself states that the stars are older than the earth.
Exodus (20:4) (in the Commandment) states God's specific order that graven images are not to be made: Exodus (25:18) states that they are to be made.
According to Psalms (11:4), Proverbs (15:3), Job (34:21), Jeremiah (16:17 & 23:24) and Hebrews (4:13), God sees everything and is omnipresent: according to Genesis (3: 9-10; 11:5; & 18: 20-21), Exodus (3:8; 19:11; & 18:20) and Micah (1:3) God does not see everything and is not omnipresent.
Genesis (6:4) refers to a living race called the Nephilim. Later in Genesis (7:11-24) there is the account of the flood in which "every living thing" was killed except Noah and his family and the animals on the ark. Later, however, in Numbers (13:33) the Nephilim still exist.
1 Samuel (31:4-5) states that Saul killed himself by falling on his sword, because his armour bearer was afraid to kill him when Saul ordered him to, whereas 2 Samuel (1:15) states that David ordered one of the young men to kill Saul, and he did so.
In 2 Kings (24:8) Jehoiachin was eighteen when he began his reign: according to 2 Chronicles (36:9) he was only eight years old (and at that tender age, none the less managed in a reign of just 3 months and 10 days to do “that which was evil in the sight of the Lord”).
2 Chronicles (9:20) says that the mother of Abijah was Maachah the daughter of Absalom: however, 2 Chronicles (13:2) says it was Michaiah the daughter of Uriel.
According to 2 Kings (8:26) Ahaziah was 22 when he began to reign: however, according to 2 Chronicles (22:2) he was 44.
According to 2 Chronicles (36:1) king Josiah's successor was Jehoahaz: but according to Jeremiah (22:11) his successor was Shallum.
Exodus (15:3) states that God is a man of war: Romans (15:33) states he is the God of peace.
Job (26:7) says that the earth is supported by nothing: however, Job (38:4) says the earth has foundations.
In Genesis (22:1) it states that God tempted Abraham: in James (1:13) it states that God cannot tempt any man.
According to Proverbs (26:4) a fool should not be answered: according to Proverbs (26:5) (the very next verse) a fool should be answered.
2 Samuel (23:8) states that David's chief captain was Adino the Eznite, who slew 800 at one time: however, 1 Chronicles (11:11) states that David's chief captain was Jashobeam the Hachmonite who slew 300 at one time.
According to 1 Samuel (7:1-2) the ark of the covenant remained in Abinadab's house for 20 years, and this was before Saul became king: according to 2 Samuel (6:2-3) David removed the ark from Abinadab's house, while Acts (13:21) states that David's predecessor Saul was king for 40 years: therefore the ark must have been at Abinadab's house for more than 40 years.
In 2 Samuel (14:27) Absalom has 3 sons: in 2 Samuel (18:18) he has no sons.
According to Joshua (7:1) Achan's father was Zabdi: according to Joshua (7:24 and 22:20) Achan's father was Zerah.
Ezra (2:15) states that 454 of Adin's descendents returned from Babylon: Nehemiah (7:20) states it was 655 descendents.
Likewise, Ezra (2:13) states that the children of Adonikam totalled 666, whereas Nehemiah states it was 667.
Likewise, Ezra (2:12) states Azgad had 1,222 descendants, whereas Nehemiah (7:17) states it was 2,322.
Genesis (11:1, 6-9) states that before the Tower of Babel there was only one common language: however, Genesis (10:5, 20, 31), states there was more than one language at that time.
Exodus (20:14) and Deuteronomy (5:18) state categorically as one of the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." In Hosea (1:2) God himself instructs Hosea to commit adultery. In Numbers (31:18) Moses himself instructs that all young virgins taken captive should be kept alive for the use of his men. Hosea (3:1) states again that God instructs Hosea to love an adulteress.
In Joshua (8:28) the city of Ai was burnt and “…,made an heap forever, even a desolation unto this day." In Nehemiah 7:32, the city of Ai still exists and is populated.
According to Joshua (21:23-24) Aijalon and Gathrimmon are of the tribe of Dan: however, according to 1 Chronicles (6:66-69) Aijalon and Gathrimmon are of the tribe of Ephraim.
According to 1 Samuel (21:1) David was alone when asking for holy bread when he hungered: according to Matthew (12:3-4), Mark (2:25-26) and Luke (6:3-4) David had companions with him.
2 Samuel (17:25) states that Amasa's father was Ishra, an Israelite: 1 Chronicles (2:17) states that Amasa's father was Jethar, an Ishmaelite.
Deuteronomy (2:19 and 2:37) state that God forbids the Ammonites to be molested or their land invaded: however, Judges (11:32) and Jeremiah (49:2) state that God arranged for the Ammonites to be invaded, their town of Rabbah to be burned to the ground and the survivors taken as prisoners.
Genesis (36:2,14) says that Anah is female and the daughter of Zibeon: Genesis (36:20) says that Anah is male and the brother of Zibeon, both sons of Seir the Horite: Genesis (36:24) and 1 Chronicles (1:40) say that Anah is the son of Zibeon.
According to 1 Kings (8:9) and 2 Chronicles (5:10) there was nothing in the ark of the covenant except the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments placed there by Moses: however, according to Hebrews (9:4) the ark of the covenant also contained a gold pot of manna together with the rod of Aaron that budded.
In Genesis (26:34) Bashemath's father was Elon the Hittite: however in Genesis (36:2-3) her father is Ishmael, and the daughter of Elon the Hittite is Adah.
In Genesis (44:20-22) Benjamin was a child when his family went to Egypt: in Genesis (46:8,21) he had 10 children of his own by that time.
According to Genesis (46:21) Naaman and Ard were sons of Benjamin: according to Numbers (26:38-40) they were his grandsons (sons of his son Bela).
According to Exodus (4:11) it is God who makes people deaf and dumb: according to Mark (9:17,25) it is evil spirits who make people deaf and dumb.
According to Leviticus (4:20-35; 5:10-18; 6:7; 17:11) and Numbers (15:27-28; 29:5) the blood of duly sacrificed animals has the power to take away sin: but according to Hebrews (10:4,11) the blood of duly sacrificed animals does not have the power to take away sin.
2 Kings (25:8-9) states the temple burned on the seventh day of the fifth month, but Jeremiah (52:12-13) states it was on the tenth day.
According to Exodus (8:27; 10:25; 20:24; 29:16-18) God commanded the Israelites to make him burnt offerings: according to Jeremiah (7:22) God himself denies that he commanded them to make burnt offerings to him.
According to Genesis (4:12) Cain became a fugitive and a vagabond: whereas according to Genesis (4:17) Cain married, had children and built a city to settle down in.
According to Joel (2:32), Acts (2:21) and Romans (10:13), everyone who calls on the Lord shall be delivered: but according to Matthew (7:21), Jeremiah (14:12), Ezekiel (8:18) and Micah (3:4) not everyone who calls on the Lord shall be delivered.
Genesis (15:13) states that the captivity in Egypt lasted 400 years: Exodus (12:40) and Galatians (3:17) state it was 430 years.
Jeremiah (52:22) reports the height of the chapiter as five cubits: 2 Kings (25:17) says it was three cubits.
According to Genesis (17:7,10,13,19), circumcision is essential: according to Galatians (5:2) anyone who has been circumcised will be rejected by Christ.
Joshua (15:20,33) states that the cities of Exhtaol and Zoreah were allotted to the children of Judah: Joshua (19:40-41) states they were allotted to the children of Dan.
1 Samuel (17:49-50) states that David killed Goliath with a stone from a slingshot and specifically states "...but there was no sword in the hand of David". 1 Samuel (17:51), the very next verse, states "... David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith".
According to Genesis (2:17) God himself states that, if Adam eats the fruit of the tree of knowledge, he shall die on the same day, but according to Genesis (5:5) Adam ate the fruit and lived afterwards for 930 years.
1 Kings (17:22), 2 Kings (4:32-35; 13:21), Daniel (12:1), Matthew (9:24-25; 25:46; 27:52-53), Mark (5:39-42), Luke (7:12-15; 9:30; 14:14; 20:37), John (11:39-44), Acts (26:23), 1 Corinthians (15:16; 15:32) and Revelation (20:12-13) all state that death is not final and there can be a resurrection from death. Joshua (23:14), Job (7:9; 20:7), Psalms (6:5; 88:5; 115:17), Ecclesiastes (3:19; 9:5) and Isaiah (26:14; 38:18) all state that death is final and there can be no resurrection.
According to Genesis (19:24) God personally destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah: but according to Genesis (19:13) God sent some angels to do it for him.
According to Genesis (4:4; 8:20-21; 15:9-10), Exodus (20:24; 29:11-37), Leviticus (1:5; 23:12-18), Numbers (18:17-19) and Deuteronomy (12:27) God requires animal sacrifices, but according to Psalms (40:6; 50:13; 51:16), Isaiah (1:11; 66:3) and Jeremiah (6:20) God rejects animal sacrifices. (Isaiah 66:3 is particularly radical: "He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man.".) According to Numbers (28:11) the New Moon Sacrifice should consist of two young bullocks, one ram and seven lambs: according to Ezekiel (46:6) it should be one bullock, one ram and six lambs.
Genesis (8:13) states that, after the flood, the earth dried on the first day of the first month: the very next verse (8:14) states that it was on the twenty seventh day of the second month.
According to 1 Kings (8:12), 2 Chronicles (6:1) and Psalms (18:11 and 97:2) God dwells in darkness: however, according to 1 Timothy (6:15-16) God dwells in light.
According to Deuteronomy (4:40), Psalms (37:29; 78:69; 104:5) and Ecclesiastes (1:4) it is promised that the earth will last forever: however, according to Isaiah (65:17), Matthew (5:18; 24:35), Mark (13:31), Luke (21:33), Hebrews (1:10-11), 2 Peter (3:10-13) and Revelation (21:1) it is promised that the earth will be destroyed.
Both Psalms (30:5; 103:9) and Micah (7:18) state that God is not angry for long: both Numbers (32:13) and Revelation (14:11; 20:10) state the opposite, that God is angry for a long time.
The genealogies in Genesis (5:3-18), 1 Chronicles (1:1-2) and Luke (3:37-38) all list Enoch as being the sixth generation from Adam: however, Jude (14) states Enoch was the seventh generation from Adam.
Hosea (8:11-13; 9:3) states that Ephraim shall return to Egypt: Hosea (11:3-5) states that Ephraim shall not return to Egypt.
According to Genesis (1:27) Adam and Eve were both created together on the sixth day: according to Genesis (2:20-23) Eve was created a considerable time after Adam (before Eve's creation, Adam had time to name all cattle, birds and beasts).
According to Genesis (3:20) every human being is descended from Adam and Eve: however, according to Hebrews (7:3) there can be humans who are not descended from Adam and Eve (e.g. Melchisdec the king of Salem).
Exodus (33:11) and Deuteronomy (34:10) both state that Moses spoke to God face to face: however, Exodus (33:23) states that Moses only saw God's backside.
Exodus (2:14-15) states that Moses feared the pharaoh: Hebrews (11:27) states that Moses did not fear the pharaoh.
Genesis (8:4) states that the ark was afloat for seven months: the next verse (8:5) states the ark was afloat for a minimum of ten months.
Genesis (7:17) states the flood lasted 40 days: Genesis (7:24 & 8:3) state it was 150 days.
According to Proverbs (8:17), Matthew (7:8) and Luke (11:9-10) God can be found by those who seek him: but according to Psalms (18:41), Proverbs (1:28), Lamentations (3:8 & 3:44), Amos (8:12) and Luke (13:24) God cannot be found by those who seek him.
The following all assert that there is only one god and no other: Deuteronomy (4:35,39; 6:4; 32:39), Isaiah (43:10; 44:7; 45:5-6; 46:9), Mark (12:29,32), John (17:3), 1 Corinthians (8:6) and 1 John (5:7): On the other hand, the following all assert that there can be more than one god: Genesis (1:26; 3:22; 11:7), Exodus (12:12; 15:11; 18:11; 20:3; 22:20; 22:28; 23:13; 23:32; 34:14), Deuteronomy (6:14-15), Numbers (33:4), Judges (11:24), 1 Samuel (6:5; 28:13), Psalms (82:1,6; 86:8; 96:4; 97:7; 136:2), Jeremiah (1:16; 10:11), Zephaniah (2:11) and John (10:33-34).
Ezra (2:69) gives the list of items given by the people as 61,000 drams of gold, 5,000 pounds of silver and 100 priest's garments: Nehemiah (7:72) gives the list as 20,000 drams of gold, 2,000 pounds of silver and 67 priest's garments.
Numbers (6:5), Judges (13:5) and 1 Samuel (1:11) all state that it is perfectly acceptable for a man to have long hair: 1 Corinthians (11:14) states it is shameful for a man to have long hair.
According to Proverbs (17:22) and Ecclesiastes (8:15) happiness should be sought after: according to Ecclesiastes (7:3-4) and Luke (6:25) happiness should be avoided.
Ecclesiastes (11:9) states: "Walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes": but Numbers (15:39) states: "Seek not after your own heart and your own eyes".
1 Kings (9:27-28) states that Hiram sent Solomon 420 talents of gold: 2 Chronicles (8:18) says it was 450.
According to Leviticus (20:13) homosexual men should be put to death: but according to 1 Kings (15:11-12) they should merely be exiled from the land.
It can be argued that God's command to Jacob to sacrifice his own son Isaac (Genesis 22:2) should not be interpreted as God's approval of human sacrifice, because it was merely a test and Jacob did not actually kill Isaac. However, God does accept actual human sacrifice according to Exodus (22:29), Leviticus (27:28-29), Numbers (31:25-29), Judges (11:29-40), 2 Samuel (21:1,8-9,14), 1 Kings (13:2), 2 Kings (23:20). On the other hand, Leviticus (18:21; 20:2), Deuteronomy (18:10) and 2 Kings (21:6) speak against human sacrifice.
According to 1 Kings (7:13-14) Hyram was of the tribe of Naphtali: however, according to 2 Chronicles (2:13-14) Hyram was of the tribe of Dan.
According to Ezra (5:1 & 6:14) Zechariah was Iddo's son: but according to Zechariah (1:1) he was Iddo's grandson.
Incest is a sin and forbidden according to Leviticus (18:9,12; 20:17,19) and Deuteronomy (27:22): however, incest can be a blessing and permitted according to Genesis (17:16; 20:12) and Exodus (6:20).
Genesis (21:14-18) states that Ishmael was an infant when he was abandoned by Abraham: however Genesis (17:25) states Ishmael was thirteen years old.
Genesis (49:3-27) includes Dan as one of the tribes of Israel, but does not mention the tribe of Manasses: Revelation (7:4-8) includes Manasses as one of the tribes of Israel, but does not mention the tribe of Dan.
According to 1 Chronicles (3:17-18) Jeconiah had seven sons and a grandson: according to Matthew (1:12) he had only one son: according to Jeremiah (22:28-30) he was childless.
2 Chronicles (36:5-6) states that Jehoiakim died in Babylon: however, Jeremiah (22:18-19) states he died near Jerusalem.
According to Genesis (22:14) Abraham knew the name of God: However, according to Exodus (6:3) Abraham did not know the name of God.
In Genesis (37:36) it is the Midianites who sell Joseph to Potiphar, whereas in Genesis (39:1) it is the Ishmaelites.
Numbers (3:3, 23, 30, 35, 39, 43 & 47) state that the required age for a Levite to begin his service is 30: however, in Numbers (8:23) the required age is 25.
In Jude (4:20-21), Sisera is killed whilst asleep, but in Jude (5:25-27) Sisera is killed whilst standing and drinking milk.
According to 2 Samuel (1:5-10), Saul is killed by an Amalekite, but according to 2 Samuel (21:22) he is killed by Philistines.
According to Job (1: 6-7 & 2: 1-2), Zechariah (3:1), Matthew (4:1) and 1 Peter (5:8), Satan is free to act as he pleases, whereas according to Jude (6) all the angels who rebelled against God were chained up for eternity.
According to Genesis (50:13), Jacob was buried in a cave in Machpelah's field that was purchased from Ephron the Hittite: according to Acts (7: 15 &16), he was buried in a tomb at Shechem purchased from the sons of Hamor.
According to Numbers (33:37, 38, 41 & 42) the route of the Hebrew's journey was to Mount Hor, Zalmonah and Punon, and Aaron died at Mount Hor: according to Deuteronomy (10:6-7) the route was to Beeroth Benejaakan, Moserah, Gudgodah and Jobathah, and Aaron died at Moserah.
In Exodus (20:13) and Deuteronomy (5:17) (in the famous Commandment) God forbids killing: however, in Exodus (32:27), God commands killing.
In 2 Samuel (24:1) God incites David to number the people: in 1 Chronicles (21:1) it is Satan who incites David to do it.
In 1 Chronicles (21:24-25) David buys the land for the altar from Ornan for 600 shekels of gold: according to 2 Samuel (24:24) he buys it from Araunah for 50 shekels.
According to Proverbs (4:7), wisdom is important: according to 1 Corinthians (1:19), wisdom is unimportant.
Proverbs (12:21) states that no ills befall the righteous: Job (12:4, 6) and Hebrews (11:35-37) state that the righteous suffer.
Leviticus (11:44; 19:2 & 20:7) states that Man is to be holy: Revelation (15:4) states that only God is holy.
In Deuteronomy (14:26), John (2:7-11) and 1 Timothy (5:23), drinking alcohol is acceptable: in Proverbs (20:1; 23:31-34) and Hosea (4:11), drinking alcohol is not acceptable.
In 1 Kings (16:6-8), Baasha dies in the 26th year of the reign of king Asa of Judah: in 2 Chronicles (16:1), Baasha is still alive ten years later when he attacks Judah in the 36th year of Asa's reign.
In 2 Kings (10:30) and 2 Chronicles (22:2) God praises Jehu for doing right in God's eyes by slaying his enemies, and promises Jehu that as a reward his children shall be kings of Israel: in Hosea (1:4) God condemns Jehu's actions, states his support of Jehu's foes, and states he will cause the destruction of Israel as revenge.
According to Job (2:7) it was Satan who smote Job with boils: however, according to Job (42:11) it was God who did it.
2 Kings (15:30) states Jotham ruled for at least twenty years: 2 Kings (15:32-33) states he only ruled for sixteen years.
Genesis (25:1) states Keturah was Abraham's wife: 1 Chronicles (1:32) states she was his concubine.
In 1 Samuel (9:1) the father of Kish is Abiel: in 1 Chronicles (8:33 & 9:39) the father of Kish is Ner.
In Genesis (36:14) Korah's father is Esau: in the very next verses (15-16) Korah's father is Eliphaz.
In Genesis (28:5) Laban's father is Bethual the Syrian: in Genesis (29:5) Laban's father is Nahor.
In Ezra (8:18) Mahli is a son of Levi: in Genesis (46:11) and 1 Chronicles (6:1; 16:6 & 23:6) Mahli is not a son of Levi.
In 2 Samuel (6:23) Saul's daughter Michal had no children to her dying day: in 2 Samuel (21:8) she had at least five sons.
According to Psalms (74:13-14) God has already destroyed Leviathan and the sea dragons: but according to Isaiah (27:1) God will be doing this in the future.
Psalms (90:10) gives the human lifespan as 70 years: Genesis (6:3) gives it as 120 years.
According to Isaiah (40:5) every living thing will see the glory of God: however, according to Isaiah (26:10) not everyone will see the glory of God.
According to 1 Kings (19:19) Elijah gave Elisha his mantle before he was taken up into heaven: but according to 2 Kings (2:11-13) Elijah's mantle fell off as he went up in a whirlwind and Elisha merely picked it up.
According to Numbers (31:7,17) the Israelites killed every male in Midian: according to Judges (6:1-2,5) the Midianites continued to breed and became "...like grasshoppers for multitude".
According to Deuteronomy (23:3) and Nehemiah (13:1) no Moabite can be permitted to contaminate Israel by marrying into the tribes to produce mixed offspring: according to Ruth (1-4) Israelites married at least two Moabite women (Ruth and Orpah) and according to Ruth (4:13,17) Ruth the Moabite wife of Boaz was actually king David's great grandmother.
Exodus (2:18-21) states that the father in law of Moses was Reuel: Exodus (3:1; 4:18; 18:1,5) states that the father in law of Moses was Jethro: Judges (4:11) and Numbers (10:29) states that the father in law of Moses was Hobab.
According to Ecclesiastes (1:9) "There is nothing new under the sun": Isaiah (43:19; 65:17), Jeremiah 31:22), 2 Corinthians (5:17), 2 Peter (3:13) and Revelation (21:1) all mention specifically new things.
According to Proverbs (16:7) if someone is faithful to God, their enemies will be at peace with them: according to 2 Timothy (3:12) all who are faithful to God will be persecuted by their enemies.
Deuteronomy (16:8) states unleavened bread should be eaten for six days: however, Deuteronomy (16:3) and Exodus (12:15 and 23:15) state it should be for seven days.
According to Psalms (18:30 & 19:7) the law of God is perfect: according to Hebrews (8:6-7) the law of God is flawed and needs replacing.
2 Kings (25:27) states Jehoiachin was released from prison on the twenty seventh day of the month: but according to Jeremiah (52:31) it was on the twenty fifth day.
According to Psalms (58:10) we should rejoice when our enemies suffer: but according to Proverbs (24:17) we should not rejoice when our enemies suffer.
God does not repent according to Numbers (3:19), 1 Samuel (15:29), Ezekiel (24:14), Malachi (3:6) and James (1:17): God does repent according to Genesis (6:6), Exodus (32:14), Deuteronomy (32:36), 1 Samuel (15:15,35), 2 Samuel (24:16), 1 Chronicles (21:15), Isaiah (38:1-5), Jeremiah (15:6; 18:8; 26:3,13,19; 42:10), Amos (7:3,6) and Jonah (3:10).
The keeping of the Sabbath is inviolable according to Deuteronomy (5:12), Isaiah (1:13), Numbers (15:32,36), Leviticus (23:3; 19:3,30) and Exodus (35:2; 31:13-15; 20:8 & 16:29): the keeping of the Sabbath is optional according to Matthew (12:2), John (5:16), Romans (14:5) and Colossians (2:16).
Only Levites before the tabernacle may offer sacrifices to God according to Leviticus (17:1-5) and Numbers (18:6-8): but according to 1 Samuel (1:1-2,20 & 7:7-9) Samuel, who was an Ephrathite not a Levite, offered an accepted sacrifice to God away from the tabernacle. However, 1 Chronicles (6:27-28 &36-38) maintains that he was a Levite.
According to 1 Samuel (8:2) Samuel's firstborn son was named Joel: but according to 1 Chronicles (6:28) he was named Vashni.
1 Chronicles (10:6) states that Saul's family including his sons was entirely wiped out: however, 2 Samuel (2:7-9) states that his son Ishbosheth survived and became king.
According to 1 Samuel (16:21-32) David and Saul first met before David killed the Philistine: but according to 1 Samuel (17:55-58) it was after David killed the Philistine.
According to Deuteronomy (20:19) the Israelites must not destroy the trees if they attack a country: whereas according to 2 Kings (3:19) the Israelites must destroy the trees if they invade a country.
Ezra (2:65) states 200 singing men and women returned from Babylon: but Nehemiah (7:67) states it was 245.
Deuteronomy (6:16), Matthew (4:7) and Luke (4:12) state: "Thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God": In Judges (6:36-40) Gideon tempts God and God complies.
In Genesis (1:29) God tells Adam he may eat the fruit of every tree, without restriction: in Genesis (2:17) God tells Adam he must not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
According to Isaiah (40:28) God never gets tired: however, according to Exodus (31:17), Isaiah (1:14 & 43:24) and Jeremiah (15:6), God gets tired.
According to Deuteronomy (10:1-3) it was Moses who made the ark of the covenant: but according to Exodus (37:1) it was Bezaleel who made the ark.
According to Exodus (34:1) it was God who personally wrote the second set of ten commandments on the stones: according to Exodus (34:27) it was Moses who wrote them at God's dictation.
2 Kings (24:17) says Zedekiah was Nebuchadnezzar's uncle: 2 Chronicles (36:10) says he was Nebuchadnezzar's brother.
1 Chronicles (3:19) states Zerubbabel's father was Pedaiah: Ezra (3:2), Haggai (1:1) and Nehemiah (12:1) state his father was Shealtiel: Matthew (1:12) and Luke (3:27) state it was Salathiel.
According to Psalms (9:11 & 76:2) and Joel (3:17,21), God dwells in Zion (Israel): according to Psalms (123:1) and Ecclesiastes (5:2) God dwells in heaven.
Appendix II
A small selection of the mistakes and contradictions in the New Testament
According to Christian dogma, Jesus Christ is the only Son of God. However, according to Job 1:6 God has more than one son.
According to 2 Timothy (3:16) all scripture is inspired by God: but according to 1 Corinthians (7:12 & 25) not all scripture is inspired by God.
When Paul describes his own conversion in Acts (22:8-9), he states that his companions did not hear the "voice", whereas in Acts (9:7) they heard it.
The knowledge of Paul's future mission and vocation is described in Galatians (1:15-16) as coming to him directly from divine intervention, but in Acts (9:4) it is explained to him by a human being, Ananias.
1 Timothy (4:1), Hebrews (6:4-6), Galatians (3:1) and Revelation (2:5) all state that believers will be deceived into leaving the faith: however, Psalms (31:23; 37:28, 32 & 33) and John (10:27-29) state that God will protect believers from being led astray.
Mark (1:29-45) and Luke (4:38; 5:12) state Jesus stayed in Peter’s house and healed the leper afterwards, but according to Matthew (8:1-4, 14) Jesus healed the leper first and then went to Peter’s house.
John 3:22 states that Jesus performed baptisms: John 4:2 states that Jesus did not perform baptisms.
In Mark (2:25, 26), Jesus refers to David eating the consecrated bread in the time of Abithar: 1 Samuel 21:1-6 says David ate the consecrated bread in the time of Ahimelech.
According to Matthew (8:5) the centurion at Capernaum spoke personally with Jesus, but according to Luke (7:1) he sent “some elders of the Jews” to speak for him.
Acts (1:18) states that Judas Iscariot died from an accidental fall; according to Matthew (27:5) he “went and hanged himself”.
According to Mark (1:14) Jesus starts his ministry after the arrest of John the Baptist: according to John (3:22-24) he starts before the arrest.
Matthew (15:1-2) states that Jesus' first sermon before the disciples was on a mountain: Luke (6:17,20) states that it was in a plain.
Matthew (27:46-50) states that Jesus' last words were "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" ("Eli, eli, lama sabacthani?"): Luke (23:46) states that his last words were "Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit." John (19:30) states the last words were simply "It is finished".
Matthew (26:34) says Jesus predicted Peter would deny him before the cock crowed once: in Mark (14:30) it is before the cock crows twice.
In Mark (14:72) and Luke (22:60 and again in 22:61) the cock crows twice: in Matthew (26:74 and 75) the cock only crows once.
Matthew (5:3-11) lists eleven beatitudes spoken in the Sermon on the Mount: Luke (6:20-23) lists only four.
Matthew (24:34), Mark (13:30) and Luke (21:32) all state that the Second Coming will occur before the current generation has passed: according to 1 Thessalonians (4:15-18) this is not so.
Matthew (27:28) states that a scarlet robe was placed upon Jesus during his trial: however, John (19:2) states that the robe was purple.
Matthew (27:34) states that Jesus was given vinegar to drink: Mark (15:23) states it was wine with myrrh.
Matthew (1:18) and other sources states Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost: however, Acts (2:30) states that Jesus was the fruit of human loins "according to the flesh".
According to 1 Corinthians (15:5) between the resurrection and ascension there were 13 apostles (...he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve...") (Cephas was the apostle Peter, so the verse itemises the apostle Peter plus twelve others). According to Acts (1:26) the number of apostles was still 12, because Mathias has been elected to replace Judas Iscariot: according to Matthew (28:16) there were only 11 at that time.
According to 1 Corinthians (2:15) "The spiritual man makes judgement of all things..." but according to 1 Corinthians (4:5) nobody must judge anything before the Day of Judgement - "Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time..."
Matthew (6:3-4) instructs that good deeds should be done in secret: Matthew (5:16) instructs that good deeds should be seen by all.
According to 1 Timothy (2:3-4) and 2 Peter (3:9) God is going to save all men: according to Proverbs (16:4), John (12:40), Romans (9:18) and 2 Thessalonians (2:11-12), God is not going to save all men.
According to John (15:15) Jesus told his disciples everything he knew: according to John (16:12) Jesus did not tell his disciples everything he knew.
According to Matthew (10:2-4) and Mark (3:16-18), Lebbaeus surnamed Thaddeus was one of the twelve apostles, and Judas, James' brother, is not listed: however, according to Luke (6:14) and Acts (1:13) Judas, James' brother, is one of the twelve apostles and Lebbeus surnamed Thaddeus is not listed.
According to Matthew (28:16) Jesus first appeared to the disciples after the resurrection on a mountain: but according to Mark (16:14), Luke (24:33-37) and John (20:19) it happened while they were eating in private in a house in Jerusalem.
In John (16:5) Jesus states that nobody has asked him where he is going: but in John (13:36) Simon Peter asks him where he is going.
Matthew (28:19) instructs that baptisms should be given in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (the Trinity): however, Acts (2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5) instruct that it must be in the name of Jesus only.
According to 1 Corinthians (13:7) we are to believe everything regardless: according to Proverbs (14:15) and 1 Thessalonians (5:21) we should only believe when there is proof.
Acts (1:15) states that there were about 120 believers at the time of the ascension: 1 Corinthians 15:6 states there were over 500.
According to Mark (15:39) the Roman centurion alone calls Jesus the Son of God: according to Matthew (27:54) it is the centurion and the crowd together who say this: however, according to Luke (23:47) the centurion merely calls Jesus "a righteous man".
According to Matthew (20:18-19), Mark (8:31; 10:33-34; 14:28) and Luke (18:31-33) Jesus warned the apostles about his impending death and resurrection: according to John (20:9) he did not warn them.
Matthew (26:69-73) states Peter denied knowing Jesus to a servant girl, a second girl, then a crowd of people: Mark (14:66-71) states that it was to the same servant girl twice, then the crowd: John (18:15-17; 25-27) states it was to a single girl at the door, to a few anonymous people, and to one of the servants of the high priest: Luke (22:54-60) says it was to a single servant girl and then one single man.
According to Mark (16:17) only followers of Jesus can cast out devils in Jesus' name, because this is the sign of a true believer: however, according to Matthew (7:21-23), Mark (9:38) and Luke (9:49) other people who do not believe in Jesus can use his name to cast out devils.
Mark (10:11) and Luke (16:18) both state that divorce is not permissible under any circumstances: Matthew (5:32 and 19:19) states it is perfectly permissible if the wife is unfaithful: Deuteronomy (24:1-2) states it is perfectly permissible if a husband is merely displeased with his wife. His ex-wife is then free to marry again.
Acts (1:1-2) states that the gospels contain a record of everything Jesus did: however, John (21:25) states that there are many other things done by Jesus that are unrecorded in the gospels.
According to Matthew (10:23) the Day of Judgement will arrive before the gospel can be preached to all the cities of Israel: according to Matthew (24:14) the Day of Judgement will not arrive until after the gospel has been preached worldwide.
Exodus (23:4), Proverbs (25:21), Matthew (5:44) and Luke (6:35) all instruct that we should love our enemies and treat them well: however, Psalms (35:6-8; 55:15; 58:6-7; 69:22-28; 83:9-10; 83:15-17; 109:6-14), Lamentations (1:21-22; 3:64-66) and 1 Corinthians (16:22) all instruct that we should hate our enemies and wish all manner of evil upon them.
Luke (21:11) states people should look for signs in the heavens announcing the Second Coming of Christ and Judgement Day: Jeremiah (10:2) states people should not look for signs in the heavens because only the heathen do this.
According to Matthew (21:19-20) the fig tree cursed by Jesus withered and died immediately: according to Mark (11:13-21) the fig tree died the next morning.
According to Mark (11:12-17) Jesus cursed the fig tree before he cast out the moneylenders in the temple: according to Matthew (21:12 & 17-19) Jesus cast the moneylenders out of the temple before cursing the fig tree.
Following the resurrection, Matthew (28:1-9) says Jesus was first seen alive again by both Marys: Mark (16:9) and John (20:11-14) say he was first seen by Mary Magdalene alone: Luke (24:13-31) says he was first seen by Cleopas and an unnamed companion: 1 Corinthians (15:4-5) says he was first seen by Cephas (Peter).
According to Deuteronomy (30:19) and Acts (13:48) human beings have free will to choose their deeds and destiny: however, according to Romans (8:29-30 & 9:11-22), Ephesians (1:4-5), 2 Thessalonians (2:11-12), 2 Timothy (1:9) and Jude (4), human beings do not have free will to choose their deeds and destiny, because these are preordained for them.
Luke (24:37) states that the apostles were terrified and affrighted when Jesus appeared to them: John (20:20) states they were glad.
According to Mark (1:14-17) Simon Peter and Andrew were recruited as apostles after the imprisonment of John the Baptist: however, according to John (1:40-42 & 3:22-24) they were recruited before his imprisonment.
According to Matthew (8:12) Jews will go to hell when they die: but according to Romans (11:26) they will be saved.
According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ parents had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the Roman census, which would make that year 1 A.D. According to Matthew they were already living in Bethlehem anyway. The census itself must have taken place after the year 6 A.D., the year that Judea was first occupied by the Romans. In Luke, the birth of Jesus took place in the reign of Herod the Great, but this could not have been in the period 1-6 A.D., for Herod the Great is known to have died in 4 B.C. The Gospels of Mark and John do not mention the birth, both of them opening their narrative at the time when Jesus was already an adult and commencing with the preaching of John the Baptist in the wilderness.
According to Luke (2:21-39), Jesus is taken to the Jerusalem Temple eight days after he is born; the family then journey to Nazareth. In Matthew (2:14-23), after the birth, the family flee to Egypt and stay there until Herod dies; even on returning, they go directly to Nazareth and do not enter Jerusalem.
In Matthew and Luke the Last Supper was a Passover meal and the crucifixion came some days later, but according to John, the crucifixion took place on the day before the Passover.
In Acts (20:35) it states: "...remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'"; however, Jesus is not quoted as saying this anywhere in the Bible.
In Matthew (4:5-8) the Devil takes Jesus first to the pinnacle of the temple and then to a mountaintop; in Luke (4:5-9) he takes him first to the mountaintop and then to the pinnacle of the temple.
In Matthew (7:21), Luke (10:36-37), Romans (2:6-13) and James (2:24) is repeated the statement: "We are justified by works, not by faith": in John (3:16), Romans (3:20-26), Ephesians (2:8-9) and Galatians (2:16) is repeated the exact reverse: "We are justified by faith, not by works."
In Matthew (26:6-13) and Mark (14:3), Jesus was anointed at the house of Simon the leper at Bethany; in Luke (7:36-38) it is in the house of a Pharisee in Galilee.
According to Matthew (26:51), Mark (14:47) and John (18:10), when Jesus is arrested a slave has his ear cut off and is left in this condition: according to Luke (22:50-51) the severed ear is miraculously healed by a single touch from Jesus (and yet, in the face of such a miraculous feat, his arrest proceeds as normal and without comment from those arresting him).
In Matthew (26:57), Mark (14:53) and Luke (22:54) Jesus is taken to Caiphas immediately following his arrest: in John (18:13-24) he is first taken to Caiphas' son-in-law Annas.
According to Matthew (26:59-66) and Mark (14:55-64) the Sanhedrin (the Jewish chief priests and council) held Jesus' trial: according to Luke (22:66-71) there was no actual trial, merely an inquiry held by the Sanhedrin: according to John (18:13-24) the Sanhedrin took no part in it at all and there was just a private hearing, first with Annas and then with Caiphas.
In Matthew (27:11-14) at Jesus' hearing before Pilate he does not answer a single charge against himself: in John (18:33-37) he answers every charge.
In Matthew (27:32), Mark (15:21) and Luke (23:26) a man called Simon of Cyrene is ordered to carry Jesus' cross when Jesus weakens: in John (19:17) Jesus carries his own cross throughout the journey with no help from anyone.
According to John (3:13), no one has ascended into heaven before Jesus: according to 2 Kings (2:11), Elijah ascended into heaven. (Enoch is also said to have been taken up by God into heaven in his physical body, but since the Book of Enoch has been edited out of the Bible this probably doesn't count. Perhaps heaven regarded him as an illegal immigrant?)
Matthew (28:1-2) states that the stone was still sealing the sepulchre when people arrived: Mark (16:40), Luke (24:2) and John (20:1) all state that the stone had already been removed.
Mark (15:25) states that the crucifixion took place in the third hour: John (19:14-15) states that Jesus remained before Pilate and had not yet been sentenced up to the sixth hour.
In John (20:11-12) Mary looked into the tomb and saw two angels in white at the head and feet of the body within: in Luke (24:4) a group of people had arrived outside the tomb and two men came and stood beside them dressed in shining garments: in Mark (16:5) Mary and two other women went into the tomb and saw a single young man sitting inside wearing a long white garment: in Matthew (28:2-3) the writer is not content with anything as peaceful as this and throws his imagination into the tale with a gusto that would do credit to a Hollywood movie: "And behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men."
In Mark (16:1-2) women came to the tomb to anoint the body: in John (19:39-40) the body had already been anointed and wrapped in a linen cloth.
Matthew (28:1) states the women went to the tomb when the sun was rising: John (20:1) states that it was still dark.
According to Matthew (27:55), Mark (15:40) and Luke (23:49), at the crucifixion the group of women looked on from afar: according to John (19:25-26) they were close enough for Jesus to be able to speak to his mother.
Exodus (20:12), Leviticus (19:3), Deuteronomy (5:16) and Ephesians (6:1-2) all preach respect for parents: Matthew (8:21- 22; 10:37; 19:29; 23:9) and Luke (12:51, 53; 14:26) all preach the opposite, disrespect and rejection of parents.
According to John (5:40), people are free to decide not to come to Jesus: according to John (6:44), people can only come to Jesus or not if God wills it.
John (5:22, 27; 9:39) and 2 Corinthians (5:10) state that Jesus judges: John (8:15; 12:47) states the opposite, that Jesus does not judge.
In Luke (14:26), Christians are told to hate their brothers: in 1 John (3:15), whoever hates their brother cannot have eternal life.
Matthew (12:38, 39), Mark (8:12) and Luke (11:29) all state that Jesus refused to give signs: John (3:2; 20:30) and Acts (2:22) both state the opposite, that Jesus did give signs.
In John (1:1; 10:30) it states that Jesus and God are one: in John (14:28) it states that God is greater than Jesus: in John (1:1) it also says that Jesus is God incarnate: in Acts (2:22) it says simply that Jesus was a man approved by God.
Matthew (1:16) says that Joseph's father was Jacob: Luke (3:23) says it was Heli.
Matthew (1:18-21) states that the Annunciation happened after Mary had conceived Jesus: Luke (1:26-31) states it happened before the conception.
According to Matthew (3:16) and Mark (1:10) it was Jesus who saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove at his baptism: according to John (1:32) it was John the Baptist who saw it.
Matthew (3:17) describing Jesus' baptism, states that a voice from heaven declaimed to the crowd "This is my beloved Son..." while according to Mark (1:11) and Luke (3:22) the voice only addressed Jesus, saying: "You are my beloved Son..."
According to Matthew (4:1-11) and Mark (1:12-13) Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness immediately following his baptism: according to John (2:1-11) Jesus attended the wedding at Cana three days after his baptism.
Jesus’ supposed miracles are also contradicted by the New Testament Gospels. According to Mark (11:13-14) and Matthew (21:18-20), Jesus, on finding a fig tree bare of any fruit, cursed it and it obediently withered and died on the spot “...And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away.” However, in Luke (13:6-9) the same incident is revealed as nothing more than a parable, a made-up story used by Jesus to illustrate a point he wished to make. The passage begins: “He spake also this parable; a certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard...”
According to John (17:12), one of the Disciples was lost: according to John (18:9), none of the Disciples were lost.
In Matthew (10:9-10), the Disciples are told not to go on their journey with sandals: in Mark (6:8-9) they are specifically instructed to wear sandals.
According to Ecclesiastes (8:8), nobody can retain the spirit after death: according to Acts (9:37-40), Peter restores the spirit of Tabitha after death.
In Mark (5:2-16) and Luke (8:26-36) a single possessed man is healed in the episode of the Gaderene swine: according to Matthew (8:28-33) it was two who were possessed and healed.
According to Luke (8:42) the ruler's daughter was dying when Jesus raised her: according to Matthew (9:18) she was already dead.
In Mark (10:46-52) Jesus heals a blind man on the way to Jericho: in Matthew (20:29-34) it is two blind men.
In Mark (6:34-44) Jesus feeds a multitude of some five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes, with twelve baskets of remains left over; only two chapters later (Mark 8:1-9) the same story is repeated, except that it features seven loaves, "a few small fishes", about four thousand people and seven baskets of leftovers.
According to Luke (14:26, 33) and Luke (18:29-30), believers are not to worry about providing for the family: according to 1 Timothy (5:8), believers must provide for the family.
In Matthew (10:9-10) and Luke (9:3-5), the Disciples are told not to take a staff with them, however in Mark (6:8) they may take a staff.
John (5:31) states that Jesus did not bear witness to himself: John (8:14-18) states that Jesus did bear witness to himself.
In Matt (5:17-19) and Luke (16:17) it is stated that the law/commandments will remain forever: in Romans (7:4) and Ephesians (2:15) it is stated that the law has ended.
Mark (1:21, 29) says that Simon and Andrew's home was in Capurnaum, whereas in John (1:44) it says their home was at the same place as Philip's, Bethsaida.
In John (3:35) it states that God has given all things into Jesus' hands, but in Matthew (20:23), and John (5:19) it is stated that God has not given all things into Jesus' hands.
According to 2 Chronicles (6:36), Ecclesiastes (7:20) and Romans (3:10, 12, 23), everyone sins: according to 1 John (3:6, 9; 5:18), believers do not sin.
In Matthew (26:20-34) and Mark (14:17-30), Peter is warned he will deny Jesus after the last supper and after leaving the upper room: in Luke (22:33-39) and John (13:37-38; 18:1), Peter is warned he will deny Jesus during the last supper and before leaving the upper room.
According to Matthew (27:44), both the robbers revile Jesus: according to Luke (23:41-42), only one robber reviles Jesus, while the other believes in him.
In Luke (23:43), Jesus specifically states to the believing robber that he will be with him in paradise on that same day: according to Acts (2:24, 31) and John (20:17), Jesus was entombed following his death and did not ascend to heaven on that day but some time after the resurrection.
According to Matthew's gospel, there was sufficient time between the resurrection and ascension to reach Galilee on foot: according to Luke (24:13, 33, 36, 50), it is made very clear that Jesus rose, made all his appearances and ascended back to heaven on the same day: according to the gospel of John it was at least a week, accepting John 20 as the original end to the Gospel, but with the John 21 appendix the period was even longer as this has a Galilean appearance: according to Acts it was a period of 40 days between the two events.
According to Matthew (12:40), Jesus was buried for three days and three nights: according to Mark (15:42, 43) and John (20:1), he was buried for one day and two nights.
Acts (26:23) states that Jesus was the first person to rise from the dead: 2 Kings (4:32, 35), Luke (7:12-15), Matthew (9:18, 25; 11:5; 27:52) and John (11:44) all state that Jesus was not the first person to rise from the dead.
In John (20:19, 22), the Holy Spirit is given on Easter Sunday: in Acts (2:1-4) it is given at Pentecost.
In John (16:5, 7, 28), Jesus warns his Disciples that he will leave them: in Matthew (28:20) he assures his Disciples that he will always be with them.
John (7:39) states that the Holy Spirit is not given until Jesus' death: Luke (1:41, 67) states that the Holy Spirit was given before Jesus' birth.
Mark (16:1) says that the women bought anointing spices for Jesus after the sabbath: Luke (23:56) says it was before the sabbath.
Acts (10:34), Romans (2:11), Galatians (2:8) and Ephesians (6:9) all state that God is impartial towards people, whereas Romans (8:29-30: 9:11-13), Matthew (10:5-6, 15:22-25) and Luke (1:30) all state the opposite, that God is partial towards people.
Romans (2:12) states that those without the law will perish without it: Romans (4:15) states that where there is no law, there can be no transgression.
According to Matthew (7:14; 22:14), Luke (12:32; 13:24), John (6:37, 65; 15:16, 19), Romans (8:29; 9:11-23) and Ephesians (1:4), salvation is only available to a few that have been chosen: according to Matthew (7:7, 8; 11:28), John (3:16; 5:40; 7:37), Acts (2:21) and Revelation (3:20), salvation is available to all those who want it.
Mark (10:35-37) states James and John personally ask Jesus for special places in the Kingdom of Heaven: according to Matthew (20:21-22) it is their mother who asks Jesus this.
According to Matthew (12:32) and Mark (3:29), the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable: according to 1 John (1:7), God forgives all sins.
In Matthew (5:44), it states that enemies should be loved, whereas 2 John (10) instructs that we should refuse to greet our enemies; in Galatians (1:9) Paul curses his enemies; in Galatians (5:12), Paul asks that his enemies mutilate themselves.
Job (7:7, 9; 14:10, 12) states that those who go into the grave will never rise: John (5:28-29; 11:24) 1 Corinthians (15:12-18, 20-23, 52) and Revelation (20:4) all state that those who go into the grave will rise.
According to Job (14:12), Ecclesiastes (9:5) and Daniel (12:2), the dead are unconscious: according to Mark (9:4), Luke (16:22-23) and Revelation (6:9-10), the reverse is true and the dead are conscious.
Ecclesiastes (1:4) states that the earth will exist forever: 2 Peter (3:10) states that the earth will be destroyed.
According to Exodus (33:17, 20), John (1:18) and 1 Timothy (6:15-16), no one has ever seen God: according to Genesis (32:30), Exodus (24:9-10; 33:11, 21- 23), Isaiah (6:5), Deuteronomy (5:24) and Amos (9:1), the opposite is true and people have seen God.
1 Corinthians (14:33) says that God is not responsible for confusion, whereas Isaiah (45:7) says that God is responsible for confusion.
Isaiah (45:22-23) states all will swear to God: in Matthew (5:34), Jesus forbids swearing.
According to Mark (10:27) and Luke (1:37), God can do anything, whereas according to Judges (1:19) and Mark (6:5-6), God is limited in what he can do.
According to 1 Timothy (2:3-4) and 2 Peter (3:9), God wants everyone to be saved: according to Proverbs (16:4), Mark (4:11-12), Romans (9:18) and 2 Thessalonians (2:11), God does not want everyone to be saved.
According to Romans (2:13), the doers of the law will be justified: according to Romans (3:20), no one is justified by the law.
Luke (21:16), Acts (7:59-60; 8:1), Revelation (6:9) all state that Disciples will be persecuted and martyred, whereas Luke (21:18) states that Disciples will not be harmed.
In Matthew (10:1) and Luke (9:1), the Disciples are given power to cure all ills: in Matthew (17:18-20), the Disciples cannot cure all ills.
Matthew (5:18) and 1 Peter (1:25) both say God's word and law abides forever: Ephesians (2:15) and Colossians (2:14) both say God's word and law has been cancelled.
In 1 Corinthians (15:44-45), and 1 Peter (3:18), Christ was raised as a spirit being, whereas in Luke (24:39; 42-43) and John (20:26-27) he was raised as a physical body.
Whereas Daniel (2:44) states that the coming kingdom of God will be visible, Luke (17:20-21) states the reverse, that the coming kingdom of God will not be visible.
Matthew (7:1), Luke (6:37), and Romans (2:1; 14:10) all state that it is wrong to judge others: however, Matthew (23:13-33), John (8:44) and Romans (1:27, 29-32) state the opposite, that others can be judged.
According to Mark (6:37), at the feeding of the 5000, 200 denarii would have fed the crowd: according to John (6:7), 200 denarii would not have fed the crowd.
Matthew (12:15-16; 16:16-17, 20), Mark (3:11-12; 8:29-30) and Luke (9:20-21) all state that Jesus refuses to disclose who he is, or allow others to do this, whereas Jesus tells the Samaritans (John 4:25-26), the Jews (John 5:39; 8:42, 58; 10:24-25,30), the crowds (John 6:40), and others (John 9:35-38), who he is.
According to Matthew (10:5-6), the gospel is not to be taken to the Samaritans: according to John (4:4-41) and Acts (8:5,14,15,25), the reverse is true and the gospel is to be taken to the Samaritans.
According to Matthew (26:47-49), Mark (14:43-45) and Luke (22:47-48) Judas Iscariot identified Jesus to his enemies by telling them that the person he would kiss would be Jesus: however, according to John (18:3-5) Jesus identifies himself without any identifying signal.
In Matthew (7:1), Luke (6:37), Romans (2:21) and James (4:12) we are told it is wrong to judge others: in Leviticus (19:15), John (7:24), 1 Corinthians (2:15; 5:12-13 & 6:2-3) we are told it is right to judge others.
According to John (5:22,26-27; 9:39), 2 Corinthians (5:10) and Revelation (19:11) Jesus will be the final judge of all the world: but according to John (12:47) Jesus himself states that he will refuse to judge the world.
According to Acts (5:29) and Romans (13:1-2) we should obey the law of God, not of man: however, according to 1 Peter (2:13) we should obey every law of man.
Exodus (12:14,17,24), Leviticus (23:14,21,31), 1 Chronicles (16:15), Psalms (119:151-2,160), Malachi (4:4), Matthew (5:18-19) and Luke (16:17) all emphatically state that the Old Testament laws apply forever, summed up in the passages from Luke 16: "It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." and Leviticus 23: "It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations". However, Luke (16:16), Romans (6:14; 7:4,6; 10:4), Galatians (5:18) and Ephesians (2:15) all state that Christians can ignore the Old Testament laws of God because Christ has abolished them.
According to Matthew (28:18) Jesus states "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth", yet in Matthew (20:23) Jesus states there are some things he cannot do, and in Mark (6:5) even his powers to work miracles diminish.
According to Matthew (6:9-13) Jesus taught people how to pray correctly: according to Romans (8:26) Christians do not know how to pray.
According to Matthew (6:5-6) Christians should not pray with open display in public: but according to 1 Timothy (2:8) Christians should always pray with open display in public.
1 Timothy (2:6) states Jesus gave his life to ransom all people: however, Matthew (20:28) and Mark (10:45) both state that Jesus gave his life just for many people, not necessarily all people.
According to Romans (1:20) God can be found through reason alone: but according to Job (11:7) God cannot be found through reason alone.
According to John (4:39-40) Jesus was so popular amongst the Samaritans that they begged him to stay with them, and he remained with them for two days: according to Luke (9:52-53) Jesus was so unpopular amongst the Samaritans that they rejected him.
Luke (22:3,7) states Satan entered Judas before the last supper: John (13:27) states it was after the last supper.
According to Matthew (4:10) we should serve only God: according to Matthew (23:10) we should serve only Christ, who is the single Master: according to Ephesians (6:5) servants should serve their human masters: according to Colossians (3:18) wives must submit to their husbands: according to Colossians (3:22) children must submit to their parents: according to Colossians (3:22) servants must serve their own human masters: according to 1 Timothy (6:1) all servants should honour their human masters: according to Titus (2:9) all servants should obey their human masters: according to Peter (2:18) servants should be subject to their human masters, even those who are not good.
According to 1 John (3:6,9 & 5:18) and 3 John (11) Christians do not sin: according to Romans (5:14) non-Christians can also be without sin: however, according to 1 Kings (8:46), 2 Chronicles (6:36), Proverbs (20:9), Ecclesiastes (7:20), Romans (3:23) and 1 John (1:8,10), nobody is without sin.
John (3:18) and 1 John (4:9) state that there is only one single Son of God: Genesis (6:2,4), Job (1:6; 2:1; 38:6-8) and John (1:12) all state that God has more than one single son: and in Job (1:6) it states that Satan is also a Son of God, which means that, according to the Bible itself, Christ is Satan's brother!.
John (14:27) and Acts (10:36) state Jesus represents peace: however, in Matthew (10:34) and Luke (12:51) Jesus himself states he does not bring peace but division and fighting: Revelation (10:11) states Jesus makes war.
Matthew (28:8) and Luke (24:8-9) state the women told the disciples and others at once of their discovery at the sepulchre: but Mark (16:8) states they told nobody.
According to John (2:19-21) Jesus says: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." However, according to Matthew (26:59-61) and Mark (14:57-58) this was a false claim attributed to Jesus by lying witnesses arranged by the chief priests and elders.
Mark (15:27) and Luke (23:32-43) state Jesus promised thieves entry into heaven: however, Corinthians (6:9-10) states that thieves will not be allowed to enter heaven.
According to John (20:17) after the resurrection, Jesus asked not to be touched before he ascended into heaven: according to Matthew (28:9), Luke (24:39) and John (20:26-27) many people touched him.
According to Matthew (16:28 & 17:2) and Mark (9:1-2) the transfiguration occurred six days after Jesus foretold his death: but according to Luke (9:27-28) it was eight days afterwards.
According to 1 Corinthians (7:12-14) it is perfectly permissible for a Christian to be married to an unbeliever, and it presents no problem: however, according to 2 Corinthians (6:14-17) unbelievers are unclean and untouchable and should not be associated with in any way by Christians.
Matthew (5:15) instructs that others should see your good works, whereas Matthew (6:14) instructs that others should not see your good works.
In Mark (14:53) it states that the priests and scribes gathered after Jesus was brought before the high priest on the day of his arrest, whereas in Matthew (26:27) it states they gathered before Jesus was brought before the high priest, and according to Luke (22:66) they did not gather until the day after the arrest.
Mark (15:7) and Luke (23:19) both say that Barabbas was guilty of insurrection and murder (a political fanatic), whereas John (18:40) says that Barabbas was merely a robber.
According to Matthew (21:1-7), Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and a colt: according to other gospels, it was just on a single donkey.
Matthew says that Judas' payment and death were prophesied by Jeremiah, but then quotes Zechariah (11:12-13) as proof instead.
According to Matthew (26:15), the chief priests "weighed out thirty pieces of silver" to give to Judas; however, there were no "pieces of silver" used as currency in Jesus' time, they had gone out of circulation about 300 years before; also, in Jesus' time, minted coins were used, currency was not "weighed out."
According to Matthew (27:7), the chief priests buy the field, whereas according to Acts (1:18) it is Judas who buys it.
In Matthew (27:6-8) it states that the Field of Blood got its name because it was purchased with blood money: however, Acts (1:18-19) states it was because of the bloody mess when Judas burst open.
Matthew (27:38) and Mark (15:27) say that Jesus was crucified between two robbers (Luke just calls them criminals; John simply calls them men). It is a historical fact that the Romans did not crucify robbers. Crucifixion was reserved for insurrectionists and rebellious slaves.
In Mark (15:43-45), when Joseph of Arimathea asks for Jesus' body, Pilate is unaware of Jesus' condition and sends a centurion to find out for him: however, in John (19:31-33) Pilate has already ordered the victim's legs to be broken in order to kill them before authorising Joseph to take down the body.
Mark (15:42) states it was evening, i.e. the sabbath had already begun (beginning at sunset) when Joseph asks for Jesus' body: however, burial was not allowed on the sabbath according to Jewish law.
Officially, the Christian Church (all denominations) regards astrology as an "occult activity" or a false superstition that should not be heeded, practiced or given credence by any devout member of their faith. However, in Luke (21:25) Jesus himself states: "...And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars..." In Genesis (1:14) the Hebrew god himself states: "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens... and let them be for signs..."
In Matthew (3:13-15), John the Baptist speaks to Jesus at the Jordan: “Do you come to me, he said, I need rather to be baptized by you. Jesus replied, Let it be so for the present: we do well to conform in this way with all that God requires.” Here we are presented with a description of the meeting of two spiritual “super-beings” where John, out of all the multitude present, instantly recognizes that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, and without question at once places himself in a secondary and deferential position. Compare this with the later passage that states: “Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples, and said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” Clearly this is a quite different attitude.
Romans (1:1-3) claims that Jesus was descended from the House of David: the genealogies in Matthew (1:1-16) and Luke (3:23-38) both attempt to link Jesus, on his human (DNA) side, with Joseph, Mary's husband, to give Jesus a place in the hereditary Davidic line (which was essential for messiahship). However, if Jesus was virgin-born, Joseph would not have been his biological parent and any human descent would be possible only through Mary. However, Luke (1:36) states that Mary was related to Elizabeth, who was of the Aaronic line (see Luke 1:5), not the Davidic line. Therefore, if Jesus was born of a virgin, he was not descended from David and therefore was not eligible to become the Messiah.
Appendix III
The Ten Commandments According To Exodus: (King James Bible)
1. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
2. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I, the Lord thy God am a jealous god, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me: and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, not thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
5. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
6. Thou shalt not kill.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thy shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
The Eleven Commandments According To Deuteronomy (King James Bible)
1. I am the Lord thy God which bought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2. Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth.
3. Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.
4. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
5. Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, not thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God bought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.
6. Honour thy father and thy mother, as the Lord God hath commanded thee: that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
7. Thou shalt not kill.
8. Neither shalt thou commit adultery.
9. Neither shalt thou steal.
10. Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour.
11. Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbours.
The Bible Explored(Peter Mills)
The Bible Explored
By Peter W. Mills, MA Phd
Introduction
“Be afraid. Be very afraid!”
Geena Davis as “Veronica Quaif” in “The Fly”
(David Cronenberg, 1986)
The Bible is a thing of tremendous contradictions, its precise status depending entirely on the opinion of the individual. For every adulator there is a detractor, for every plus there is a minus. One opinion holds that the Bible is the most important foundation of human civilisation; another maintains it has held back the proper advance of civilisation by centuries. One opinion holds that it is the unadulterated word of God; another that it consists of mythology. One opinion maintains that it represents the record of the basis for humankind’s relationship with God; another that it is merely one more tool of the establishment used to maintain control of the general population.
It was Karl Marx who wrote in 1843: “Die religion… ist das opium des volkes” (“Religion is the opium of the people”), thereby highlighting in modern thought the fact that religion can be employed politically, either positively or negatively.
As with all human tools, the Bible can be used for positive or negative ends. In the hands of fanatics, the Bible has already become a political weapon employed to undermine science, education, the family unit, freedom of conscience, freedom of choice and freedom of liberty. All of this can be proved, and is proved in this book in unequivocal detail, with complete source references to fully substantiate all that is exposed.
Unfortunately, the average person is supplied with little or no discriminatory information about how the Bible came to exist, who wrote it and why, what historical agendas and political expedients are embedded within it, how it has been edited and by whom, what it really represents, what falsehoods, errors and contradictions it contains, how it has evolved over the years, how it has been constructively edited, altered and re-written to suit various factions and cults in both ancient and modern times, how it has been used politically in the past and in the present, or how its written contents can be examined by a forensic analysis to show the strange, little-reported and often highly disturbing realities that lurk behind the commonly accepted façade.
This investigation does exactly what it says on the tin – it explores the Bible, revealing the astounding historical and political facts connected with this famous book and its usage in both the ancient and present day world.
This investigation was also a major part of my doctoral thesis for a PhD, which I gained many years ago, and so I should apologise for my text being finished in the bygone era when George W. Bush was United States President and Tony Blair was British Prime Minister.
It is impossible to write such a book as this without offending at least some people. No apology, however, is either necessary or offered - if they are right, I shall fry in Hell; if they are wrong, I won’t. You can’t say fairer than that, can you?
Peter W. Mills
Somerset, England
1. The Evolution of Religion
"I don't know as much as God, but I know more than He did at my age." Henry Kissinger
Fact versus Assumption
In the beginning, it is advisable to establish clearly how facts and realities are differentiated from fictions and myths.
There are only two methods by which we can build our overall awareness of the universe in which we live, and these are (1) the assumption method and (2) what is called the scientific method. These two awareness-forming techniques have provided humankind with everything it knows, or thinks it knows, and they operate by entirely different mechanisms: indeed, they are usually in conflict with each other. It is important at the start of this investigation to have an understanding of how the two methods function.
The assumption method came first and works like this. Suppose, many thousands of years ago, a Stone-Age tribe migrated to a new region, and suppose the men went on a hunting trip to find food. They have never before seen a coconut. When they find some, they crack them open and find food and drink inside. They have never before seen a tiger. Suddenly, a huge tiger stalks out from the bushes a few yards away. This particular tiger, it so happens, is very old and on its last legs, suffering from bad teeth and aching bones. Seeing the hunters, the tiger decides it is in no position to attack and it turns and flees. Returning to their cave later, the hunters tell the tribe of their discoveries. “There is a large nut in some trees and there is good eating and drinking in it, if you can break it open. There is a new animal with stripes, quite big, but completely harmless. As soon as it sees one of us it turns and flees in terror. There is no need to worry about it and you can safely ignore it if you meet one.”
So, the assumption method can sometimes provide accurate information, providing the particular assumption is correct, but it can also provide entirely incorrect information if the assumption is mistaken; all assumptions are unsafe to be taken for fact unless they are subsequently confirmed by repeated factual examples that can be readily demonstrated to everyone. This brings us to the second method.
The scientific method works like this. The ascertaining of correct information is broken down into five stages.
First, observation – some phenomenon must be noticed (coconuts and tigers).
Second, disciplined and unbiased reporting – descriptions of the phenomenon must be accurate, valid and reliable, and equally so wherever else the same phenomenon may be observed: no phenomenon can be accepted as universally correct and applicable from just a single occurrence (an accurate description of one harmless tiger does not mean that all tigers are harmless). Something that has only occurred once to the best of our knowledge (such as the Big Bang, for instance, a single occurrence which is believed by physicists to have started our universe) is merely an indicator of a phenomenon worthy of further equally meticulous study by the same scientific methods.
Third, prediction (or repetition) - a valid, accurate and reliable observation must be capable of producing verifiable predictions (“The second tiger you meet will also be completely harmless” is not a valid prediction!). A prediction can also involve past observations as well as current ones. (“Remember last year, we found Uncle Zog half eaten and clutching a piece of stripy fur? Perhaps this indicates our tiger results may need more work.”)
Fourth, experimental testing under controlled conditions, whether in the laboratory or in the field, where non-representative factors may be identified and eliminated. (“Let’s capture a few tigers in a cage and watch their behaviour for a time in order to see if they really are all harmless – Oh look, one of them has no teeth!”)
Fifth, impassionate discrimination – the ability not to cling to a favoured but disproved idea just because you happen to like it. (“Whatever you say, tigers are cuddly and I shall continue to tell people to go out and cuddle them.”)
Information provided through the scientific method tends to be accurate and reliable, even if subject to continual revision in respect of fresh discoveries, and this kind of information is called “fact-based knowledge”. Information provided by the assumption method tends to be inaccurate and unreliable, even if occasionally seeming to be correct by mere chance, and this kind of information is called “superstition”, from the Latin prefix: sup (“above”, “close to”, “near”) + status (“state”, “condition”, “factual state”) forming superstition and superstitionem (“standing near a thing”, “near to a factual state”, “not exactly a factual state”); therefore taking the meaning: “not exactly the real factual condition”, or propinquus tamen haud nicotianus (“close, but no cigar”).
The scientific method is the basis by which, with patience, the universe can be slowly but surely explained and understood properly: the assumption or superstitious method is the basis of how we construct a make-believe or counterfeit mental universe bearing little or no connection to reality.
In The Beginning…
According to the findings of the scientific method, human beings evolved from animals. Nevertheless, there is certainly a difference between humans and other animals, and this difference concerns that remarkable biological organ, the brain.
It is not that humans have bigger brains (the blue whale has a larger one) but they have evolved a better-organised brain and are thus able to think, particularly to reason (constructive thinking). However, this ability to reason started to develop some millions of years before the ability to analytically investigate scientific principles (systematic understanding).
The early human species Homo erectus (c. 2,000,000 BC to 150,000 BC), formerly less accurately known as Pithecanthropus erectus or the "Java Ape-Man", could undoubtedly reason out that touching fire would burn his hand, and there is evidence from his fossil remains found at Choukoutien (Zhoukoudian) in China and elsewhere that he could use fire, but the analytical understanding of the chemistry and physics of the combustion process did not even begin until after 1500 AD.
There is therefore a lengthy period during the evolution of the human mind, lasting from before two million years ago until - let us arbitrarily say - the time of the ancient Greek mathematicians (and in other cases to the present day), during which humans possessed the ability to reason constructively, but without a foundation of analytical examination (scientific method) to base their thinking upon. Nature abhors a vacuum, even one between the ears, and something was required to fill this gap - some assumption that could provide the psychological comfort of explanations for the way things were observed to be, in the absence of any tradition of analytical reality. Thus religion was born.
Religion began with superstition. We can hypothetically picture some early hominid, such as Australopithecus (the kind of early human on which the man-apes in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey were based) rising from his nest in the bracken early one morning, scratching, yawning, and heading down the path to the river for a drink. On the way, a branch accidentally whips back and strikes him sharply on the head. Thereafter, he regards this as an "unlucky" path (the assumption method), and avoids it in favour of another, even though the other path might be longer. He might also assume that the tree, or the forest itself, was "angry" with him, or at least generally hostile. Perhaps if he left a gift at the spot, a banana or piece of interestingly-shaped stone, a peace offering of some kind, the tree-spirit or forest-spirit might look more kindly upon him, even recognise him as a friend, and not whack his head with a springy branch again please.
This, of course, is fiction, but it is a reasonable fiction. Something not entirely unlike this must have happened in the remote past of our human species, and happened a great many times in various different ways. (Have you never cursed a hammer when it hit your fingers, or grown angry with your car when it refused to start, or raged against fate when events appear to conspire against you?)
This, and many other incidents something like this, is how religion was born. As time passed, the superstitions grew more complex. Leap forward in time a couple of million years or so from Australopithecus and we arrive at the caverns of Stone-Age hunters. Here, a ritual dance is taking place in which a chanting shaman dressed in a buffalo skin ceremonially leads the tribe in a pre-enactment of tomorrow's buffalo hunt, because everyone assumes this will ensure the depicted event will thus be made to happen and tomorrow's hunt will have a successful outcome. To assist in generating the appropriate atmosphere of sympathetic magic, people with an artistic gift have begun a tradition of painting beautiful pictures of the various animals and hunters on the walls and roofs of the caves.
Leap forward in time another twenty thousand years or thereabouts. The descendents of these beliefs are no longer being observed in caves but in specially constructed buildings; the shaman in his buffalo skin and horned headdress has evolved into the priest in his robe and sanctified hat, and the brush of the cave-painter has been taken up by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. The tribal chanting has been orchestrated into hymns and liturgies. The superstition of an "unlucky path" or the hopeful enactment of a successful hunt has become magnified into the overriding assumption that Religion should now be able to explain Everything, contain Everything and be responsible for Everything.
Shrewd shaman, priests, kings, emperors and chieftains long ago began to realise that religion was a very powerful tool for controlling the population. No system of social order can survive for long if its religion and its political administration are opposed, or even significantly different in outlook. As a result of this realisation, in most regions of the world the state was merged with the dominant religion in the land, and the dominant religion in the land was merged with the state. Thereby, the state grew sanctimonious and the religion grew a bureaucracy.
Superstitious adherence to religious mythology has, in some quarters at least, slowed acceptance of the fact that there have been many different species of human, not just our own. In fact, there are probably different human species alive in our world today. At this time of writing, it is being increasingly realised throughout the scientific community that our closest living relative the chimpanzee, whose evolutionary line branched away from that which ultimately developed into modern humans approximately seven million years ago and who shares all but between 1.2 to 4 per cent of our three billion base units of human DNA, is actually a primitive species of human and belongs within the human genus and not in the separate animal genus Pan.
There is a movement afoot to reclassify the species now referred to as Pan troglodites (the chimpanzee) and Pan paniscus (the gracile or pygmy chimpanzee, or bonobo) as Homo troglodites and Homo paniscus respectively, thereby scientifically acknowledging them both as members of the human genus.
Naturally, there is resistance to this idea, particularly from those who cannot accept as mere mythology the "creation" tale in the Bible (which we will examine in detail later in this book). Since the time of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, there have been many people who consider it offensive to suggest we are related to the apes: if we inspect the history of our kind, it is surely the apes who have the greater reason to feel offended.
…the World Created God
Archaeologists have divided the history of the human race into various convenient periods, and the first period when metal was used is usually referred to as the Bronze Age. Apart from its importance to industrial development and trade, the Bronze Age is also particularly important in any study of human religious and social history. Of course, the knowledge of smelting ores to obtain metal did not spring into people's minds overnight, and the starting date of the Bronze Age was blurred over many centuries, taking place at different times in different parts of the world. It was a gradual prehistoric spread of technology, and began with the production of copper implements in a brief “Copper Age” a century or two before the discovery of bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin and a much harder material than copper alone.
The term "Bronze Age" is therefore actually rather ambiguous. For instance, in Australia it could be said to have occurred as recently as the eighteenth century, when the first European free settlers (as opposed to transported convicts) began to arrive, since the native Australians lived in the Stone Age until the arrival of Europeans, which plunged the natives straight into the Iron Age without ever experiencing an actual “Bronze Age”.
However, the most usual definition of "Bronze Age" is that of Mesopotamia and parts of Europe and its onset typically taken to refer to the approximate period 3,500-2,000 BC. The earliest known bronzes come in the beginning of that period from what is now Iran and Iraq, apart from a suggestion from finds in Thailand of bronze being manufactured there before 4,000 BC. The Bronze Age ended with the arrival of the Iron Age, which has equally indistinct boundaries, beginning around 1,200 BC in India, West Africa, the Near East and Greece, during the 8th century BC in Central Europe and the 6th century BC in Northern Europe.
In the period before the Bronze Age, the Stone Age (which is further sub-divided into the Old Stone Age or Palaeolithic and the New Stone Age or Neolithic), humankind lived by hunting and gathering and, in its final epochs, also by farming. Farming had its earliest beginnings in the “Fertile Crescent” of the Middle East a few thousand years after the end of the last Ice Age about 14,700 to 13,500 years ago (the north-west European Weichselian and Alpine Würm glaciations) and the knowledge and use of agriculture spread slowly into Europe over the next few thousand years.
The earliest recognised Neolithic farming culture is that of the Natufians in what is now the Palestine region who, around 10,500 years ago, made the quantum leap of taking wild cereals searched for by their immediate forebears and sowing them deliberately in prepared areas of ground. This innovation was probably driven by the sudden onset of the Younger Dryas, a climate change or stadial when temperatures dropped back toward glacial conditions for a time following the last Ice Age proper.
During the Younger Dryas (sometimes called the “Big Freeze”), there was a short but potent relapse of the climate toward Ice Age conditions which in America seems to be associated with the extinction of the megafauna – the mammoth, for example, and many other species – and the termination of the Clovis Culture or Paleo-Indians, while in the Old World the mammoth also declined and died out (many being quickly frozen alive, it seems) and the Middle East was afflicted with drought, against which the systematic nurturing of crops became a survival mechanism.
During the Stone Age, the gods and goddesses of the human race were nature deities, spirits of the forest and tundra, of the wild herds and hunt, of the mountains, sky and waters, of the dark night that was feared and of the daylight that relieved it. When farming arrived, the gods were extended into this new domain and became deities of the crops, the rain and sun, the domestic herds and pastures, the fruits of the harvest and the poignancy of the seasons.
In his monumental work on human comparative mythology and religion The Golden Bough (1890), Sir James George Frazer, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Liverpool, showed convincingly that forest and hunting gods were worshipped before the evolution of agriculture. The sudden climate change of the Younger Dryas was therefore in all likelihood also responsible for driving a restructuring of humankind’s general religious conceptions, although a vastly more radical realignment of mythological beliefs would begin after another several thousand years of the developing Neolithic culture had passed.
It was the discovery of metal that tilted the spiritual balance of humankind in an entirely new direction, first with copper and bronze, then progressing to iron and steel. As the Bronze Age advanced across the Middle East and Europe, it brought in its wake a turbulence of social and cultural change and reorientation every bit as dramatic as that brought about by the Industrial Revolution in far more recent historical times. The centre of this storm of change was the metal blade.
It may at first be difficult for the modern reader to fully appreciate the immense significance of the development of the metal weapon in a world where the stone tool had hitherto predominated. It might, perhaps, be approximately suggested by comparing it in kind to the tilting of the balance of local power in such places as Africa and North America when superior weapons were introduced, for instance when the native tribes managed to obtain firearms to use against the European settlers instead of arrows and spears, lethal though these could be. As the modern military is well aware, even a slight lead in technology is significant in warfare and also in political intimidation (often still referred to as “sabre-rattling”), and around 3,000 BC a band of warriors armed with metal weapons would have a distinct advantage amongst tribes equipped with stone-bladed implements. The new metal weapons also gave great cultural and social prestige to their owners, as can be assessed by their prominent placement as grave-goods alongside gold items in Bronze Age burials.
Like gold, silver or uranium, the new metal was not available to all regardless; its manufacture was dependant on a certain amount of organisation and in most places also on trade. Tin, that humblest of metals and an essential ingredient of bronze, was found in only a few localities, such as Cornwall in England and in the Isles of Scilly, which may be the “Tin Isles” (Cassiterides) mentioned by the Greek explorer Herodotus writing c.445 BC. It is believed that both the Phoenicians and Mycenaeans sent expeditions to the south west of England to bargain for tin ore, exchanging commodities such as faïence, a blue glazed type of pottery originating in the Mediterranean region and in Egypt, samples of which have been found in British burial mounds of the period.
Classical authors such as Diodorus Siculus writing in the 8th century BC give detailed descriptions of the tin trade, and Sir Edward Creasey (1812-1878), Professor of History at London University, even writes flamboyantly in his delightfully jingoistic book History of England that British mines “…mainly supplied the glorious adornment of Solomon’s Temple.” This is a somewhat bold assertion, but it is not impossible that the bronze used in the temple was made at least in part with tin brought originally from Britain by Phoenician trading ships.
Those who had the use of bronze and the prestige of ownership of bronze weapons quickly came to dominate and rule the populations they lived amongst. There swiftly arose a new type of prevailing social class within communities at this time, sometimes called the warrior aristocracy by historians. One of the other great innovations of humankind also had its genesis in this period, and perhaps not entirely by coincidence, for this is when various civilisations began to devise forms of record-keeping for transactions, civil laws, myths and the glory-tales of their warrior-kings. The bronze sword, axe and spearhead carved out new kingdoms and empires for the warrior aristocrats, the cuneiform tablet and hieroglyphic inscription imposed the law of the conqueror upon the conquered and enabled methodical control to infiltrate into all branches of human life and activity. Writing, too, was born in the Bronze Age.
Thanks to the innovation of writing, we actually have surviving first-hand records of some of the major cultural upheavals and pogroms that were the result of the restructuring of Neolithic society by the nascent Metal Age warrior caste and its many bloody-handed dictators and heroes. From such sources as the temple friezes and stellae of Egypt, the clay tablets of Nineveh and Babylon, the Vedas and Upanishads of India and the Hebraic scrolls that formed the basis of the Old Testament of the Bible, we can read of an almost endless succession of violence, butchery, battles, victimizations, wars of conquest, disputes over territories, attempted ethnic cleansings, heroic warlords, brave warriors, invasions and so on ad nauseum. Naturally, the tribe or culture of the person who wrote the particular record was invariably in the right: the villains were always “the others”. It is a true saying that "history is written by the victor" (or at least, by the survivor).
In the first major region to methodically develop bronze and therefore the first to experience this period of cultural upheaval, the Middle East, resident local tribes, already beginning to be pressurised by a gradual but continual increase in human population which is still with us today, learned rapidly through bitter experience that they needed to defend themselves and their lands and newfound wealth from the aggression of their neighbours and from the depredations of migrating tribes from other regions desiring to improve their own situation. This type of threat had probably also existed during the Stone Age, but on an extremely localised and minor level, not to any large-scale or militarily organised extent, and the conflicts became bloodier, better organised, more large-scale and more effective when the protagonists gained a metallurgical technology, rudimentary though it may appear by our present-day standards, and an accompanying more intricately organised, controlled and structured society.
In this general Old Testament geographical region, as a result of what archaeologist G. Ernest Wright (1909-1974) in his book Biblical Archaeology (Westminster Press, Philadelphia 1957) calls “…a sudden burst of prosperity” beginning at around 3250 BC in the Early Bronze Age, numbers of settlements began for the first time to protect themselves by constructing spectacular defensive walls, such as Jericho, Megiddo, Lagash, Ur, Kish, Erech and Ai – the world’s first true cities, which were almost continually at war with each other. Trade and wealth, and loot, quickly increased at this time and in Mesopotamia and Egypt the Dynastic periods began and, quite suddenly, the first great empires were appearing in the world.
In his book, Wright mentions that as a result of this Bronze Age “Industrial Revolution”, for the first time in world history “…great personalities who stood head and shoulders above their fellow men begin to emerge.” Also for the first time, the concept evolved of the single all-powerful king or emperor, whose word was law, whose whim held the power of life and death over lesser mortals and whose authority caused the sun to rise each day and the rivers, such as the Nile, to flood and bless the land with harvests. As exemplified by the Pharaohs of Egypt, such absolute dictators were often considered by their followers to be gods in their own right.
Consequently, beginning in that part of the world and expanding slowly outward as the use of metal spread like ripples from a stone thrown in a pool, the concept was evolved of a strong male warrior tribal god who would mirror the fighting fury, blood lust, success, revenge, punishment, good-fortune, universal regulation and supreme authority required by the human social order which pieced him together, the continual compulsive propitiation of which would, it was superstitiously believed, ensure the tribe or nation faced no unfortunate defeats or disasters, that the sun rose each day and that the order of the universe was maintained. The concept of such brutal male warrior-deities also served the purposes of the priests and leaders, who were able to employ superstitious dread to exercise even further dominance and tyranny over their peoples and exhort them to commit even greater atrocities in support of their realms and the will of their rulers.
“Darkness Visible.”
Gradually, by a process of bloody conflict and elimination which has in recent years become popularly known as “last man standing”, the many various localised tribal deities coalesced into a central dominant image of an ultimate, single and tyrannical god – the “last god standing”, in fact. The now largely forgotten original monstrous and savage character of this newly fabricated Bronze Age warrior god can, even today, be clearly glimpsed through many later veils of carefully orchestrated public relations propaganda designed to improve – or at least justify - his primal image.
Records surviving from this early period of highly superstitious inter-tribal warfare reveal the true nature of the newly emerging male warrior godhead and its blood-lust for animal and human sacrifice, such as “The Lord is a man of war” (Exodus 15:3). According to Leviticus (4:20-35; 5:10-18; 6:7; 17:11) and Numbers (15:27-28; 29:5) “sin” needed to be washed away with blood: “When a ruler hath sinned… and is guilty… he shall bring his offering, a kid of the goats… and kill it in the place where they kill the burnt offering before the Lord; it is a sin offering.” According to Genesis (4:4; 8:20-21; 15:9-10), Exodus (20:24; 29:11-37), Leviticus (1:5; 23:12-18), Numbers (18:17-19) and Deuteronomy (12:27) this god demands animal sacrifices. The instructions are specific, if not in agreement. According to Numbers (28:11) the pagan-based New Moon Sacrifice should consist of two young bullocks, one ram and seven lambs: according to Ezekiel (46:6) it should be one bullock, one ram and six lambs. Even as comparatively recently as around 30-70 AD, animals were sold for sacrifice within the temple at Jerusalem (see Luke 19:45 and particularly Mark 11:15-19.) Discussing the passage in Mark, which famously describes Jesus driving the traders out of the temple, Arthur S. Peake (1865-1929) in A Commentary on the Bible (Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd. 1919) explains that there was a: “…market set up in the outermost court, the court of the Gentiles, for the convenience of Jews who had to purchase sacrificial victims…”
The same bloodthirsty sky-monster who, in a good mood, is supposed to have instructed “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13) could change his mind quite perversely to command: “…Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour… and there fell on that day about three thousand men…” (Exodus 32:27).
Later on, this same god commits even greater atrocities by causing the murder of seventy thousand people of his own followers (I Chronicles 21:14) and ordering the cold-blooded murder of all the men, women and children of sixty cities, and the looting of all their valuables, simply so that the Israelites can live there instead (Deuteronomy 3). These are, unarguably, what today would be branded war crimes and ethnic cleansing.
Elsewhere, the inspiration of this dreadful new Bronze Age deity brings about the slaughter of “…all the living creatures of the city. Men and woman, young and old, as well as oxen, sheep and ass, with the edge of the sword” (Joshua 6:21). Again, he orders his worshippers (Judges 21:10-24) “…Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children… ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man.” All virgin girls, though, were saved from this massacre to be forcibly married and violated on the order of God. However, even four hundred of these captured virgins were insufficient to satisfy the lust of the god-worshippers, so Jehovah instructed his brave warriors to hide themselves in vineyards and pounce upon girls they desired, abducting them for rape and forced marriage. The biblical god even accepted human sacrifice, for instance in the case of the daughter of Jephthah (Judges 11:29-40) and the priests of “foreign gods” whose very bones were to be burned on their own altars after they had been slain in Josiah’s time (I Kings 13:2)
There can be little doubt that the rise of the warrior caste, the "new aristocracy" brought to power by the technology of metallurgy, was a major instrument in the development of the particular persona of this newly evolving Middle Eastern tribal god. In fact, viewed dispassionately, it is a certainty that man created God in his own image. And there is no doubt at all - for it is recorded in many different sources from the archaeological record to the Bible itself - that it was this same warrior aristocracy and its minions and sycophants who, by their ruthlessness, established the new exclusively male god securely upon his heavenly throne.
Once the new concept of a single almighty male god had firmly taken root, many massacres were inflicted upon any groups of people or individuals who refused to accept the notion, or who accepted it in a different way, and the Old Testament contains tiresome details of bloodletting after bloodletting, battle after battle and murder after murder in the cycle of religious reform from pantheism to monotheism; a war of spiritual attrition which continues to raise its hideous and bloody head in one form or another even to the present day.
Swept into power on a tidal wave of bloodshed and warfare and eventually given a Semitic name that later became mispronounced by westerners as Jehovah, his advocates claiming for him the titles of God and Almighty, this particular tribal juju was stern, cruel, bloodthirsty, defined as jealous, fearful and terrifying even by his own writers; a god who could, his publicists assured the commoners, destroy entire cities in a fit of pique if they offended him by being too liberal in their attitudes and behaviour; a right-wing god; in fact, a spiritual dictator who eventually clocked-up more misery and death than would Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot combined. This was not perceived as a local deity of fertility and the crops; this was the savage, control-freak death-god of the warrior-society, of the organised and powerful priesthood and of the rigid unyielding law of the autocratic and suppressive cane-wielding headmaster’s commandment "Thou shalt not..."
And inevitably, as always happens with every right-wing dictatorship, a large intrinsic section of the population, through nothing more than an accident of birth, was branded as less than human, as inherently dangerous and destabilising to the regime, and these people were denied the same rights, disenfranchised, subjected to mass extermination and made subservient to the "Superior Masters". We are all too familiar with this turn of events from the period of Germany under the Nazis when such vilification was inflicted upon European Jewish people: from the Bronze Age to the present, the victims of the male deity of the male warrior religion have been women.
2. The Sacred Subjugation of Women
"Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great
social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval."
Karl Marx
“Woman… A female attendant or servant… a paramour or kept mistress… (Pop) a wife.” (Part of a definition in Funk & Wagnalls New Practical Standard Dictionary, 1952.)
With the rise of the kings of metal who ruled by the force of the sword and the organised armies that gathered to them, human society in general underwent major changes. As can be seen in the surviving records of this early period – the Egyptian hieroglyphics being just one example – all those qualities associated with rampant maleness became valued above all else; strength of limb, aggression, skill with weapons, fearlessness and rage in battle, contempt for the weak and meek, admiration for the strong and ruthless, jealousy of those mightier than oneself, and an overbearing assumption of the superiority of the male within society and culture. There were occasional exceptions, such as in the case of the semi-mythical warrior-women the Amazons, but nearly always the exceptions were written about by male authors and were condescendingly portrayed as outrageous cultural aberrations offensive to what had now become the normal precondition of society.
In a male dominated hierarchy ruling a male warrior culture in which all aggressive and brutal male qualities were made virtuous, it became vital that the next generation of males, the sons, had an undisputed authority and unchallengeable right of succession to receive and perpetuate the line of kingship or the wealth and power of the established commoner. For this lineage of exclusive male gender-dominance to become incorporated into the psychological blueprint of human affairs as one of the foundations of social structure, it was necessary for the direct line between father and inheriting son to be maintained beyond any reasonable doubt. The status of a mother became largely immaterial, providing her pedigree was acceptable for the production of suitable human livestock: a male ruler could, and did, have as many wives in his seraglio as he wished: the idea was at least extremely rare and generally socially disgraceful that women could have their own harem of multiple husbands. Even to this day in Britain, despite the advent of laws promoting sexual equality, the background notion of superiority of male over female is maintained at the very highest levels; male monarchy is inherently more powerful than female - a man who weds a ruling queen does not become a king, but a woman who weds a ruling king becomes a queen.
If there was any doubt that the male line from father to son was unbroken, that an heir was the true child of the father, that the jealously guarded male right to the pedigree of succession and inheritance had been flawlessly upheld, or any suspicion that a mother had strayed from the designated marriage compound, then the male offspring would be viewed as contaminated by female wilfulness. Then the pillars of warrior society would be undermined. Then the throne could topple, the security of the state would be jeopardised, the inheritance could be lost, the hoarded power could be dissipated, the male warrior god would be compromised and angered, and divine retribution would descend on the entire population. To avoid such apocalyptic consequences, any male offspring resulting from proven female disobedience would usually find themselves demoted and disinherited, and the contaminated woman would be executed. After the early Bronze Age, mythological fables highlighting the dreadful religious consequences of allowing women to have their way and give ideas to men became incorporated into the newly-emerging male-god beliefs.
To safeguard against such occurrences, the warrior society essentially enslaved womanhood and reduced sex to a prerogative of male demand and something shameful and submissive for women. In all lands over which the spectre of an absolute male god now began to hover, women were made the subject of stringent male laws to ensure that no impregnation was permitted to occur other than that caused by the woman's legal owner (in the same manner that the owner of a pedigree female dog wishes to ensure it does not breed with a mongrel). Females who transgressed were executed (the stoning to death or beheading of women accused of having sex with a man other than their husband continues in some regions to this day). Woman became the property of man, encouraged by - demanded by - the new religious beliefs and creatively supporting writings of the warrior caste.
In more recent historical times, one example of this social downgrading of women for the reason of producing a male heir to an identified and undisputed father was the Salique Law. To quote from Shakespeare's "Henry V", when King Henry asks the Archbishop of Canterbury to explain this law (which might present a legal barrier to Henry's claim to the French throne), the Archbishop refers to it as "...a female bar." He goes on to explain its origin: "No woman shall succeed in Salique land... where Charles the great, having subdued the Saxons, there left behind and settled certain French; who, holding in distain the German women, for some dishonest manners of their life, established then this law - to wit, no female should be inheretrix in Salique land..."
In other words, the German women of Charles the Great's time were behaving in a free manner, enjoying sex with whomever they fancied just for the fun of it, in an open and honest natural way. This female freedom, of course, could not be tolerated in a male dominated society where women, like cattle, must be prevented from straying, and it was swiftly legislated against and then eliminated. Under the ethos of the male god, women must be kept strictly subjugated to the will of the “superior man”, who was, of course, obviously superior because he was made in the actual image of the god and woman was not – a propagandist social control mechanism of the male god’s human fabricators and copywriters which succeeded in robbing womanhood of its otherwise incontestable item of natural superiority over man within any society - the ability to give birth. In a total perversion of the laws of nature, it was proposed instead that the first man had given birth to the first woman, and this strange but necessary belief was included in the religious requirements of the warrior society in order to make it appear indisputably true.
The widespread historical discrimination against women, which has still not disappeared from our world, is very largely the lingering result of the rise of the male-supremacist religions that acknowledge only an exclusive single male god first invented in the Bronze Age. It was the prevailing conviction throughout all countries holding these beliefs that the only genuine god was male - not merely male in some vague nebulous spiritual sense but literally a man-god, for he had created mortal men in his own image and therefore must be identical to them in appearance - and woman had been created, as it were, at second-hand from a man's rib, and women were thus obviously inferior, an afterthought of creation.
It should particularly be remembered that it was only comparatively recently that women in the West were even allowed to vote in supposedly "democratic" elections. It was not until 1848 that women began to unite successfully against this legacy of socio-religious male dominance. This train of events had begun in 1840 when two members of the Society of Friends (more commonly known as "Quakers"), Elizabeth Cady Stanton of New York State and Lucretia Mott, visited London as official delegates to the World Anti-Slavery Convention. They were both astonished and outraged when, in common with all British women present, they were refused permission to address the convention, or even to be seated at it, simply because they were women. Stanton later wrote: "We resolved to... form a society to advocate the rights of women." In 1848, Stanton and Mott organised the first Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls in New York State.
In a paper, Elizabeth Stanton itemised eighteen grievances (the same number listed just seventy years earlier by the revolutionaries in the Declaration of Independence from the rule of England, although of course the nature of the grievances were somewhat different). The introduction to this paper also paraphrased the introduction to that earlier Declaration, commencing: “When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different to that which they have previously occupied… We hold these truths to be self-evident… among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” Following this introduction, Mrs. Stanton prefaced her paper by stating: "The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world."
She then listed her 18 specific injustices as:
1. He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
2. He has compelled her to submit to law in the formation of which she had no voice.
3. He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men, both natives and foreigners.
4. Having deprived her of this first right as a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
5. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
6. He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
7. He has made her morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, providing they be done in the presence of her husband.
8. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master: the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty and to administer chastisement.
9. He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes and, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless to the happiness of the women: the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man and giving all power into his hands.
10. After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
11. He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.
12. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honourable to himself.
13. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
14. He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.
15. He allows her in church, as well as state, but a subordinate position, claiming apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the church.
16. He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude woman from society are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.
17. He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.
18.He has endeavoured, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
Although this list, which amounted to an embryonic manifesto for a new political movement towards eventual female equality, was drawn up as recently as 1848, the grievances it itemised (as hinted at in the wording of the declaration) were the lingering religiously-bolstered legacy of the Bronze Age social revolution from a mixed-sex pantheism to a patriarchal godhead. Very slowly, prompted initially by Elizabeth Stanton and her supporters and then by the spreading of the message of equal rights for women by later activists, changes were made within the very structure of westernised society, the process of necessary change being not yet fully complete worldwide. It was not welcomed by all even when Elizabeth Stanton first proposed it: at a meeting in Philadelphia in 1854, a male objector in the audience shouted: "Let women first prove they have souls; both the Church and the State deny it!" In point of fact, this was not entirely incorrect, as we shall soon see.
The first ever woman's suffrage (the right to vote) was actually a legal mistake made in New Jersey in 1776, where in the state legislature the word "people" was inadvertently used instead of "men", but the law was altered in 1807 to exclude women.. In 1838 the tiny British colony of the Pitcairn Islands, home of the Bounty mutineers and their descendents, permitted women to vote, but this was largely because there were only ever a tiny handful of people living there: it was the single exception in the British Empire. It was not until 1869 that the Wyoming Territory in the United States became the first sizeable modern state where equal suffrage was granted to women. A women's rights movement led by Kate Sheppard pressured the New Zealand administration to become the first country in the world to introduce universal suffrage in 1893. The following year, South Australia followed suite, also granting women the right to stand for public office including membership of parliament. Finland followed in 1906, then Norway, Denmark and the rest of Australia before the First World War began in 1914.
Pressurised by the suffragette movement and prompted by the necessity of employing women in previously male-only jobs during the Great War, both Britain and Germany permitted women to have the vote in 1918. In January of that year, the Representation of the People Act in Parliament gave the vote to all British men over the age of 21; women were still considered a less advanced component of society though, and only those who owned their own houses or were married to householders were deemed responsible enough to vote at 21, others having to wait until they reached 30. It was not until 1928 that the voting age for British women was lowered to be equal to that of men.
America, the "Land of the Free", finally followed suit on 26th August 1920 when the Secretary of State certified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, extending the right to vote to all (in effect, white) women. (It was only in 1965, four years before men first landed on the Moon, that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act which made it supposedly illegal in the USA to prevent black Americans from voting). Before this, following the lead of Wyoming, individual state legislature had permitted women to vote in an increasing number of regions, such as Colorado in 1893, Washington State in 1910, California in 1911, Montana in 1914 and so on, but it was not until the thirty-sixth and last state, Tennessee, signed for ratification that the 19th Amendment could be authorised. France and Japan did not allow women to vote until 1945, Switzerland until 1971 and Liechtenstein until 1984. Certain countries still do not permit women to vote, including Saudi Arabia where – although under pressure to reform its political system which is based on a very rigid interpretation of Islamic Sharia law – at this time of writing women are also not permitted to drive or even to travel unaccompanied by male relatives.
In the present day, only a relative handful of states still hold women in thrall, usually on the basis of certain interpretations of the Koran or the Bible (such as in the case of the Vatican State). The first Arab women who were legally permitted to vote were actually living in Israel in 1948 when the country was being founded. The ideal of women's equal rights still faces monumental problems in the Islamic world, where, for example, classical Islamic scholars have ruled that it is prohibited for a woman to lead men in prayers, and within the similar world of Roman Catholicism, where women are strictly prohibited from entering the priesthood and achieving any clerical position, only being allowed to become nuns or serve as laypeople. Again, the male supremacist legacy of the patriarchal Bronze Age warrior god can be clearly discerned in the case of both these male-dominated religions. Viewed from the outside, in fact, Christianity, Islam and Judaism are the same thing - three alternative ways of proclaiming the same patriarchal Bronze-Age god.
Unfortunately, although much attention has been focused in the West from time to time upon the Islamic treatment of women, the religiously-inspired subjugation of women acquired its most unhealthy and vicious character in Christianity, the pivotal belief of which requires, in absolute terms, the denunciation of the female, not merely as subservient, a slave or as "property", but actually as something inherently evil, a fact that all too frequently escapes most modern Christians and is played-down in importance by the majority of Christian apologists and publicists. Ask any Christian to state in a few words the absolute central core of their belief system, and the reply is most likely to focus upon concepts such as "Christ", or "Jesus", or "salvation", or "redemption" or something along these lines. They are wrong. The theological bedrock upon which the Christian religion is predicated and constructed is not Christ, but rather, it is the reason why Christ was considered necessary on earth in the first place.
The most relevant question is; if Christ offers salvation or redemption, salvation or redemption from what? From sin, of course, will be the most usual reply. However, the "sin" with which, in Christian theology, everyone is supposed to be contaminated is not actually the normal petty stuff of daily life; these ordinary human sins can be, and are, pardonable through the agency of a mere priest, as in the regular confessional practiced by Roman Catholics. The "sin" which requires the "salvation" supposedly generated only by the advent of Christ is, specifically, original sin. If there had been no "original sin" afflicting all mankind, then - according to the tenets of Christian theology - it would not have been necessary for their god to have sent his son to earth to be sacrificed in order to save everyone from it, because if it had not been for this original sin, humanity would still be living in primal innocence within the Garden of Eden, in direct communion with the god, in a "state of grace", as this god was supposed to have originally planned.
Many branches of the modern Church now attempt to distance themselves from the original Christian core belief that women are a source of spiritual evil, as various divisions of Christianity now also attempt to distance themselves from other unpalatable aspects of their religion. For instance, some churches now sidestep the politically incorrect concept of a strictly male god by encouraging the belief that God is either without sex, or else encompasses both sexes. (How a neutered god can father a physical son has not yet been made clear: nor has it been clarified precisely how a god who is supposed to have "made man in his image" can be of both sexes without criticism, whilst trans-sexuals and homosexuals are still condemned as "evil" or "against the law of God" by many Christians.) Nevertheless, stripped down to the bare essentials, the following is a pocket statement of the primal Christian belief.
The Essential Christian Belief Summed Up
Because Eve, the first woman and mother of the human race, succumbed to the temptation of Satan in the guise of a serpent, all of Adam and Eve's descendents were born contaminated by this original sinful act. The serpent prompted Eve to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge, specifically forbidden by God, and after eating it, Eve tricked Adam into doing the same. Thereby they became aware of the difference between good and evil, became mortal, had sexual intercourse and lost their innocence. This meant that God's original intention that humans should remain in a state of unspoiled perfect grace with eternal life was subverted, and Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden, after which each successive generation of children was automatically born contaminated by this original sin and subsequently passed it on in turn to their own offspring.
God eventually took pity on humanity and decided they were worth offering the chance of salvation from this continually inherited cycle of original sin, together with the possibility of regaining the original eternal life spoiled by the fall from grace in Eden. To accomplish this, God sent the spirit of his only son - whose spiritual form or essence had always been part of God's threefold being, Father, Son and Holy Spirit - to manifest on earth as a human man, entering the world by being born as a baby to a mother who was a virgin and consequently becoming the first man since Adam to be born without inheriting original sin. This baby was named Jesus, and he grew up as a carpenter's son - attracting the attention of occasional wise men and elders on the way - until at the age of approximately thirty he began to preach on behalf of God and perform various miracles as evidence of the divine part of his nature. He also gathered a growing band of followers, the most suitable of whom were chosen by him to be his apostles.
Due to the inherited sin released by humankind's original fall from grace, the majority of the people of Jesus' time refused to acknowledge that he was the Messiah, or Saviour (from original sin), and he was eventually denounced by the Jews as a troublemaker, heretic and danger to the established hierarchy of their theocracy. Because Judea was under Roman occupation and Roman law, Jesus was handed over to the Roman authorities and given a Roman execution, crucifixion. However, because of his divine nature, Jesus rose from the dead three days later and was resurrected to his living form again, communing for a time with his apostles before voluntarily ascending in living form into heaven to rejoin his father, God.
After this, the apostles - except for Judas Iscariot who had betrayed Jesus and had died - accepted the responsibility of spreading the story of Jesus and the teachings of God that Jesus had instructed them in throughout as much of the world as was possible in those days. Although many of them and their deeds are mentioned in the Bible in the Acts of the Apostles and various epistles, because of his tremendous zeal, energy and divine inspiration, St. Paul became their natural leader or principle activist and spokesman. After many trials, he and his colleagues, especially Peter, founded what became the Christian Church in order to complete the apostle's designated mission and become a route offered by God through his sacrificed son to personal salvation from original sin.
Anybody who came to acknowledge Jesus as Christ the Saviour and Son of God, and accepted the Church as his apostolic representative on earth, would be saved from the contamination of original sin and therefore guaranteed a place in heaven after death, and an eventual resurrection of their own physical body in eternal life, in a "state of grace", after a forthcoming Day of Judgement. Those who do not acknowledge these things before they die, or have them acknowledged by a priest on their behalf - even if there is no choice, such as in the case of babies who die without baptism, or natives of other regions who have had no connection with Judeo/Christian ideas, or followers of entirely different religious beliefs - are still infected by Eve's original sin. Such sinners are instead consigned to Hell, the domain governed by Satan the original temptor of Eve, who is able to claim them as his own if they have not received salvation, and they will burn in torment for eternity.
In the case of unbaptised babies and certain others, this unfair sentence was later moderated by Christian theologians to have them sent instead to a place called "Limbo". "Limbo" (from Latin "limbus") literally means "hem" or "border" as in “borderland” (the Italian lembo and English limb come from the same root word). In Christian theology, the name is applied to two spiritual storage facilities or depositories on the borderland of Hell. One of these is for the souls of the biblical patriarchs such as Moses and Abraham etc. and of other good people who died before Christ ascended into heaven (i.e. they died BC, or in the few decades AD before the crucifixion and ascension). This is technically called the Limbus Patrum (i.e. "the Limbo of the Patriarchs"), from which advancement into the Kingdom of Heaven is eventually permitted. The other Limbo, the Limbus Infantium (or Puerorum), is defined in Christian theology as a permanent dumping place for the souls of unbaptised children. There is no escape or progression permissible from the Limbus Infantium, but at least it, too, is only on the border of Hell and not in the actual main infernal region, a notion that is apparently intended to be of some comfort to the bereaved.
How the Snake got its Hiss
The story of "Adam and Eve" and the Garden of Eden, as we shall see in the next chapter, is nothing more than a pure myth "borrowed" from the folktales of earlier cultures and peoples, and conflicts diametrically with the facts of science, history and evolution. The very basis of Christianity as distilled out of the Bible is erroneous, for nowhere in Genesis is the serpent of the Garden of Eden actually identified with "Satan" or "the Devil", who - as we will show later – is a fabricated mythological figure that did not even historically exist when Genesis was first set down. The identification of the serpent with Satan in Genesis is nothing but a later assumption. It is not until the opposite end of the Bible is reached - and in one of the most recent portions written about AD 95/96 - that the information "...the old serpent who is called the Devil and Satan" is included (Revelation 12:9).
Indeed, the serpent is very clearly and explicitly described in Genesis as nothing more than a representation of an actual snake: the sentence "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made..." (Genesis 3:1) clearly indicates the serpent was nothing more than a rather clever "beast of the field". The original Hebrew version in the Torah, on which the Bible's Book of Genesis is based, says the same thing in even more explicit wording, naming the serpent as nothing but a natural animal: "Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild beasts that the Lord God had made..." (Tanakh, Bereshit 3:1). In the myth, certainly, it is able to talk, but then so are the majority of mythological animals featured in any medicine-spirit tales from around the world.
In fact, the biblical account of God stating to the serpent: "...Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel..." (Genesis 3;14-15) is merely an example of a "This Is Why" story of a kind universally used within tribal mythology throughout the world in order to provide explanations of why things are the way they are - in this case, why people are frequently afraid of snakes.
Possibly the best modern example of such fabricated tales are Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories (first published 1902), in which, with his tongue in his cheek, Kipling, who was thoroughly familiar with primitive world mythology, explained in a series of immensely popular children's stories exactly how various things came to be the way they are today. (The technical term for a contrived tale that attempts to "explain" observed facts is ætiological.)
"...Then the Man threw his two boots and his little stone axe (that makes three) at the Cat, and the Cat ran out of the Cave and the Dog chased him up a tree; and from that day to this, Best Beloved, three proper Men out of five will always throw things at a Cat whenever they meet him, and all proper Dogs will chase him up a tree..." (The Cat that Walked by Himself). "...And from that day to this the Camel always wears a humph..." (How the Camel got his Hump). "...and from that day to this every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper, all on account of the cake-crumbs inside..." (How the Rhinoceros got his Skin). "...From that day to this the Moon has always pulled the sea up and down and made what we call the tides. Sometimes the Fisher of the Sea pulls a little too hard, and then we get spring tides; and sometimes he pulls a little too softly, and then we get what are called neap-tides..." (The Crab Who Played With The Sea). "...and ever since that day, O Best Beloved, all the Elephants you will ever see, besides all those that you won't, have trunks precisely like the trunk of the 'satiable Elephant's Child..." (The Elephant's Child).
If it had not already been included in the Bible, another "Just So" story might have been written: "...And that is why, from that day to this, all snakes have crawled in the dust and bitten unwary people in the heel..."
Welcome to Heaven (Women Not Admitted)
Later, we shall examine the origins of this complex biblical mythology, including the idea of an "Adam and Eve" being the first humans. However, the important point of this myth that underlies all the rest of the Bible and the religion of Christianity itself is that it was Eve, the woman, who committed the first and greatest sin, which thereby contaminated every successive human born. This particular anti-female theology resulted in Saul ("St. Paul") referring to women as "the weaker vessel" (1 Peter 3:7). St. Clement of Alexandria wrote in the second century: "Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman." The Church Father Tertullian wrote of women in general: "…And do you not know you are an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil 's gateway: you are the unsealer of that tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God 's image, man. On account of your desert -- that is, death -- even the Son of God had to die."
In the sixth century, the Christian philosopher Boethius wrote in his work The Consolation of Philosophy: "Woman is a temple built upon a sewer", and in the same century (585 AD) the church's Council of Macon in Burgundy voted on the issue of whether women even had souls or were actually human beings. (Fortunately for women, the council officially decided that they were human after all.) It was a popular belief for many centuries that the Latin word for "woman", femina, came from fe ("faith" [from facio/feci "religion"]) and minus "without". St. Odo of Cluny in the tenth century stated: "To embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of manure." In the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas made the suggestion that God had been mistaken in creating women altogether, saying: "...nothing deficient or defective should have been produced in the first establishment of things; so woman ought not to have been produced then." Even more recently, in 1647, a pamphlet published in Italian in Lyons, France, was entitled: Women do not have a soul and do not belong to the human race, as is shown by many passages of Holy Scripture.
In fact, the Eastern Orthodox Church did not recognise women as human beings until after Peter the Great (1672-1725) had come to the throne of Russia, and censuses carried out up to that time under that branch of Christianity counted only males as "souls".
After the Christian Reformation, Lutherans at Wittenberg - the place where Martin Luther had founded Protestantism - also held a debate on whether women should be considered human beings or not. In 1533 Martin Luther himself wrote: "Girls begin to talk and to stand on their feet sooner than boys because weeds always grow up more quickly than good crops." He made certain his opinion on women was absolutely clear by also writing: "If (women) become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth - that is why they are there." For a considerable time after the Reformation, women in England were not even allowed to read the Bible: Henry VIII (1491-1547), famous for beheading unwanted wives, issued a statute prohibiting "women and others of low degree" from using it.
The French Catholic priest and judge Nicholas Rémy (1534-1600) wrote: "(It is) not unreasonable that this scum of humanity, (i.e. witches) should be drawn chiefly from the feminine sex". Rémy was responsible for the burning alive of over nine hundred innocent people, mainly women, in the witch trials he presided over in the ten years from 1581 to 1591, and he was extremely proud of his record. In his book Demonolatriae Libri Tres (usually translated simply as "Demonolatry") published in Lyon in 1595, amongst other atrocities, he boasts of having children stripped and flogged around the pyre where their parents, accused of witchcraft, were being burned alive.
Under Church law, girls were allowed to be tortured and prosecuted for witchcraft from the age of nine and a half; for boys, the age was ten and a half. Younger children could be tortured to produce testimony that could be used to convict their parents, and even the testimony of two-year old children was accepted as evidence in witchcraft trials
It is recorded that the men who tortured women accused of witchcraft frequently became sexually aroused. Because Christianity considered sex to be the result of Eve’s fall from Grace and therefore wicked and ungodly, this arousal was declared to be a "spell" originating from the "witch". Amongst the favourite targets for torture were the breasts and genitals of the victim, which were torn off with red-hot pincers. In some instances, the Inquisition permitted men considered to be "zealous Catholics" to visit women accused of witchcraft in their prison to sexually abuse them: they were not raping them for their own lust, but in the name of God, which made it righteous. In Toulouse, France, the local populace became so certain that the regional inquisitor, Foulques de Saint-George, brought witchcraft accusations solely for the purpose of committing rape and sexual sadism upon various women he desired, that they took the bold step of independently gathering evidence which proved it.
The Sorrow of Sex and Birth
Genesis 3:16 has the biblical god speak to Eve after the temptation by the serpent: "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children..." It was due to this biblical passage that as recently as the nineteenth century some Christian priests opposed the use of anaesthetics during childbirth, claiming that it would amount to a disobedience of God's will by preventing the necessary suffering ordained in the Bible. Only after Queen Victoria herself had insisted on being given anaesthetics during delivery did the practise become more acceptable and more commonly employed.
As the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell put it: “One occasion for the logical intervention to prevent …human suffering was the discovery of anaesthetics. Simpson in 1847 recommended their use in child birth, and was immediately reminded by the clergy that God said to Eve 'In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children.'" The Christian point of view was summed up by a church minister in the USA: "Chloroform is a decoy of Satan, apparently offering itself to bless women; but in the end it will harden society and rob God of the deep earnest cries which arise, in time of trouble, for help." The City Fathers of Zurich (a town that was in previous centuries one of the greatest centres of witch-burnings) actually outlawed anaesthesia altogether for a time, on the grounds that "Pain is a natural and intended curse of the primal sin. Any attempt to do away with it must be wrong."
Women have frequently been regarded amongst Christians as an obstruction to faith, and the male warrior god of the Bronze Age is understood by many to demand a rejection of physical pleasure, especially sexual pleasure. Christianity has always condemned the enjoyment of sex, considering it nothing but a mechanism for producing offspring. "It is a good thing for a man to have nothing to do with a woman." (Corinthians 7:1). A Christian judge in the sixteenth century stated: "The Devil uses them so (i.e. as temptresses of men), because he knows that women love carnal pleasures, and he means to bind them to his allegiance by such agreeable provocations." The Dominican monks Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, writers of the infamous instruction book for witch hunters the Malleus Maleficarum (cf. chapter 9), stated: "... the female sex is more concerned with things of the flesh than men; because being formed from a man's rib, they are only imperfect animals and crooked, whereas man belongs to a privileged sex from whose midst Christ emerged."
As long ago as the thirteenth century, preachers are recorded as denouncing women for "...on the one hand, the lascivious and carnal provocation of their garments, and on the other hand for being over industrious, too occupied with children and housekeeping, too earthbound to give due thought to divine things." A Dominican monk of the same century stated: "Woman is the confusion of man, an insatiable beast, a continuous anxiety, an incessant warfare, a daily ruin, a house of tempest... a hindrance."
The tremendous Freudian fear of female sexuality inherent within the Christian religion led to the belief that "witches" could make men impotent through spells, or even worse, sometimes cut off and collect men's penises. The Malleus Maleficarum states as a fact that "witches" are known to "... collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest." The manual then records the story, again as fact, that a man whose penis had been "collected" in this manner asked a "witch" if she might restore it for him. "She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of a nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: you must not take that one; adding, because it belonged to a parish priest."
Another symptom of the Christian unease with the female sex, and also of their ancient alarm at the notion of anyone worshiping a goddess, was the growing suspicion amongst the various Christian authorities that their Virgin Mary was becoming an object of veneration in her own right. As a result of this growing sense of disquiet, and a knee-jerk reaction against a dawning suspicion that if Mary was accorded holy status as the "mother of God", Christianity was beginning to fashion its own pantheon of gods and goddesses in the pagan style, Protestants ruled that there should be no reverence for Mary and even Catholics reduced her importance to a considerable degree. Accordingly, devotion to Mary was often viewed as a sign of evil and actually became suggestive of witchcraft in the Christian mind.
There is a case recorded from the Canary Islands, colonised by Spain, that a woman named Aldonca de Vargas was reported to the Inquisition because she had smiled on hearing someone mention the Virgin Mary. Another result of this fear of Mary being worshipped in her own right was the devising of what became one of the most notorious instruments of torture of all time. The Inquisition designed a perverted human-size image of the Virgin Mary which would open up to reveal an interior of sharp spikes that would be closed upon the victim within. This became known as the "iron Virgin" or "iron maiden".
Christianity Confused by Women-Haters.
And yet, according to some parts of the Bible, it is perfectly permissible for women to be church leaders, to teach men finer points of religious interpretation, and to be apostles. "...and Priscilla... expounded to him the way of God more perfectly" (Acts 18:26). "...I commend unto you Phoebe our sister, which is a servant of the church... Greet Priscilla and Aquila... my helpers in Jesus Christ" (Romans 16:1-4). "...Junia... of note among the apostles" (Romans 16:7). (The Revised Standard Version of the Bible uses the Greco/Latin word for a servant “deacon” in the anglicised female declension “deaconess” to describe Phoebe's status in the passage in Romans.)
In the opposite corner of the boxing ring, however, we also have 1 Corinthians (14:34-35): "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church": and 1 Timothy (2:11-12): "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence."
The question must be asked: how can anyone possibly manage to equate the women apostles, teachers and helpers of the New Testament with the total denigration of women also required by the Bible? It is a fact that some translators of the Bible were so offended by the concept of a woman being specifically named as an apostle that the original name "Junia" mentioned in Romans 16 was often surreptitiously altered to "Junias" in the belief that this was a male version of the name. In fact, "Junias", although recorded extremely rarely in classical sources, can also be a female name, as confirmed, for example, by Plutarch (AD 50-120) who writes in his Life of Marcus Brutus that Junias was the name of Brutus' sister who became the wife of the regicide Cassius, which again places considerable weight on the argument that the apostle Junia or Junias was a woman.
The argument about the apostle Junia has raged for many centuries. Within the early Church, Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis and later of Aparneia (315-403) compiled an Index disciplulorum (Index of Disciples) in which he describes "...Iounias, of whom Paul makes mention...". Written in Greek, in chapter 125, verses 19-20, the text uses the word hou (a masculine relative pronoun) for "of whom", thereby indicating that Epiphanius considered Iounias (Junias) to be a man. However, John Chrysostom who lived at about the same time (347-407), in his preaching on the passage in Romans 16, referred to Junias by exclaiming: "Oh! How great is the devotion of this woman..." John Chrysostom is referred to in the Catholic Encyclopedia as "...generally considered the most prominent doctor of the Greek Church and the greatest preacher ever heard in a Christian pulpit." He is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, in the Roman Catholic Church, and in the Church of England. It would therefore be a particularly brave or rash Bible fanatic who would dare state that he was mistaken in his considered opinion that the apostle Junias (or Junia) was female.
This conflicting set of messages in the Bible, coupled with the inbuilt prejudice of the Church Fathers and their acolytes down the centuries against the idea that women are equally worthy to hold office at all levels in the Church, has until the later twentieth century resulted in the exclusion of women from the majority of proper Church offices. Quite simply, the female was viewed by biblical dogma and the societies it produced and moulded as something inferior to the male, something that should be kept very firmly in its subjugated place, and whose main purpose apart from continuing the species was the temptation of man into sin and his distraction from a properly religious asceticism, from the time of Adam onwards.
It should also be born in mind that the Church of England only gave normal permission for the ordination of women priests as recently as 1992, although Congregationalist Elsie Chamberlain was appointed in 1946 as the first female chaplain in the RAF, and the first woman to actually become an Anglican priest was Florence Li Tim-Oi, ordained to serve inside Japanese-occupied China in World War Two. Seven Roman Catholic women who were “unofficially” ordained as priests in 2002 were excommunicated for this “sin”, the severest punishment the Catholic Church can now inflict.
In July 2006 the General Synod of the Church of England finally agreed to the appointment of women bishops. When the first of these were ordained and blessed in Bristol Cathedral, the Rev. Malcolm Widdecombe, vicar of nearby St. Philip and Jacob church (brother of Ann Widdecombe MP and former shadow Home Secretary) sounded a dirge from his church bells in protest at the event. Susan Restall, vicar at St. Margaret’s in Yate near Bristol, has stated that some people have crossed the church to avoid receiving communion from her, saying: “Some of the nastiness has to be seen to be believed”. Jane Hayward, vicar of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol’s most important church apart from the cathedral itself, is quoted as stating: “Some priests have cut me dead. Once, one of them snatched the chalice out of my hand.”
As recently as July 2008 – as reported by the BBC – the ruling Synod of the Church of England has been challenged by some 1,300 clergymen who have threatened to leave the Church unless they are guaranteed being subject only to male bishops.
It is clear that in Christianity in general there remains a widespread entrenched belief that women are unfit to serve their deity in exactly the same capacity as men – a sexual prejudice ultimately originating in the millennia-old view that all woman are evil, the mind-set of this view itself descending from the arrival in the Bronze Age of the all-conquering male warrior Semitic tribal god whose atrocities and crimes against humanity are so meticulously detailed by the various authors and editors of the Bible.
We have so far included quite a few references to the Bible. It therefore becomes relevant for us to take a more detailed look at this religious instruction manual; to conduct an investigation into the particular writings that have been used for so many centuries as a bludgeon against female equality and spirituality, against rival religions, against proper understanding, freedom of thought and freedom of belief, against the findings of science, and as a control mechanism for vast portions of the world’s population – the Bible itself!
3. Eden and Edinu; Noah, Nuwa and Nu’u
"The Things That You're Li'ble
To Read In The Bible -
It Ain't Necessarily So!"
George & Ira Gershwin, song from "Porgie and Bess".
The Word of God (Subject to Revision, Addition and Approval)
The fact that the integrity of the Bible’s content is at the very least questionable is clearly highlighted by the fact that so many people and organisations even in modern times have decided that it is necessary to produce alternative versions of the “Word of God”, many coloured in some way or other to a greater or lesser degree in order to lend support to the idiosyncratic requirements, opinions or ideology of the particular translator or editor, whether an individual or a body. For instance, the list of Bibles currently available includes (but is not limited to) the following:-
The King James Bible: the New King James Bible: the Modern King James Bible (Green’s translation): Green’s Literal Translation Bible: the International Standard Bible: the New International Bible: the English Standard Bible: the New English Bible: the American Standard Bible: the New American Standard Bible: the Revised Standard Bible: the New Revised Standard Bible: the Contemporary English Bible: the Revised English Bible: the Today’s English Bible: the Living Bible: the New Century Bible: the New Life Bible: the New Living Translation Bible: Young’s Literal Translation Bible: the Revised Young’s Literal Translation Bible: John Darby’s New Translation Bible: the Weymouth New Testament Translation Bible: the Amplified Bible: the Good News Bible: the Message Bible: the Jewish Bible: the Jerusalem Bible: the New Jerusalem Bible: the Word On The Street Bible: Rotherham’s Bible: the Global Bible for Children: the Popular Children’s Hardback Bible: the International Children’s Bible: the Holy Bible Children’s Edition: the Adventure Bible: the Children’s Illustrated Bible: the Lion First Bible: the Beginner’s Bible: the Here’s Hope Holy Bible: the It’s All About Jesus Bible: the New Believer’s Bible: the One Year Bible Catholic Edition: the Holman Christian Standard Bible: the Message Numbered Edition Bible: the Dake Annotated Reference Bible: the Scofield Study Bible (versions I, II or III): the Thompson Chain-Reference Study Bible: the Ryrie Study Bible: the Life Application Study Bible: the Nelson Study Bible: the Life Application Study Bible Updated And Expanded (!): the Zondervan Study Bible: the Cambridge Compact Reference Bible: the Cameo reference Bible…
There are so many layers of translation now built-in to the Bible as it has become known that there is more than ample scope for the wording in a great many cases to be altered beyond all recognition and coherence compared to whatever particular original linguistic sense it may have been intended to express.
This linguistic unconformity is itself even further confused by unavoidable idiomatic and cultural differences. For a modern non-biblical example illustrating how the precise meanings of words selected by translators from a different time and cultural background may be construed as meaning something that was never a part of their original connotation, the title “sheriff”, in recent times more generally understood to denote a US lawman, is a modernisation of the Anglo-Saxon term scir-geréfa, which became shire-reeve, but this does not in any way imply that the medieval Nottingham official who pursued Robin Hood did so with six-guns blazing and wore a cowboy hat! Ridiculous as this interpreted image may seem to us, it may not be quite so clear to someone translating from English in one, two or three thousand years’ time, and more especially if the original English has by then already undergone preliminary translations through two or three other intermediate and culturally different ancient language modes.
Thou Shalt Not Suffer a
Witch/Poisoner/Herbalist/Midwife/Bible Translator
(delete whichever does not apply) to Live!
There is an actual biblical example of exactly this kind of historical evolution which changes the original meaning of an old Hebrew word by confusing it with issues connected to that word thousands of years later by people of another age and cultural background making an English translation. This is the short passage from Exodus 22:18 which now generally reads: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live", the result of a mistaken translation of part of the original texts from which the Bible was assembled. The blame for the mistake can probably be laid at the feet of St. Jerome who was the person who first produced a full Latin translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew, and the New Testament from Greek (the Vulgate Bible).
Latin is actually a simple, logical and - to us - perhaps a rather strange language. One of the simplicities that can cause the student some difficulty is that it regularly makes use of a single word to cover a large variety of meanings. This, of course, also happens in English, but not on such a wide scale.
Take as an example the English word "cool". If archaeologists of some far future epoch happened to unearth and translate a book about polar exploration, a passage stating that Sir Edward Shackleton and his team were extremely cool when marooned for 105 days on an Antarctic island after their ship Endurance sank in 1916, might easily be translated as meaning that they found the experience to be very trendy and they were quite laid back about it! It all depends how one chooses to interpret the word "cool" - as one's attitude or as one's temperature.
The actual original Hebrew sentence is: "Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live." The Hebrew word ob (poisoner) is specifically used in ancient texts. The Latin word for "poisoner", veneficus, was consequently employed by Jerome. Unfortunately, veneficus can also mean magical, witch, wizard, caster of spells. Thus the word was almost universally taken to mean "witch", and thus it was translated when the Bible was finally converted into English by Yorkshireman John Wycliffe who, during the 1380s (before the invention of the movable-type printing press), produced quantities of handwritten Bibles in the English of the time, with the help of followers who were popularly referred to as Lollards.
Most probably Jerome’s choice of the Latin word was based on the almost universal ancient association of specialised herbal knowledge – which of course included natural plant poisons as well as remedies – with the tribal shaman or “wise person”, a “witch-doctor” or “medicine-man or woman”. Significantly, only some 130 years earlier in about 1250, in a translation of Exodus into Anglo-Saxon (“Old English”), in the section recounting Pharaoh’s dealings with midwives, the word “witches” is this time used as a suitable translation of the Hebrew word for “midwives”: “Đe wicches hidden hem for-đan, Biforen pharaun nolden he ben” (Exodus1:15-21: “…And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives…”), midwifery also being a skill that in ancient times was considered the speciality of the shaman or medicine-woman.
Wycliffe managed to evade the angry retribution of the Vatican, who burned at the stake anyone who read the Bible in any language other than Latin, but many of his handwritten English Bibles came to a fiery end in 1415, when one of his followers, John Hus, was burned at the stake with the Bibles being used as kindling. Perhaps a much more appropriate phrase would have been: "Thou shalt not suffer a Bible translator to live!"
This passage from Exodus has been translated incorrectly in at least nine different ways in different versions of the Bible still in use today. The King James (or Authorised) version has: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Attempting to drive the point home, the New King James Version and the English Standard Version have: You shall not permit a sorceress to live and the New American Standard Bible changes it slightly to: You shall not allow a sorceress to live. The American Standard Version evidently decided that the injunction was invalid unless stated with obsolete wording, and puts it as: Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live. The New International Version states simply: Do not allow a sorceress to live, while the Amplified Bible decided something more direct was required and garbles it into: You shall not allow a woman to live who practices sorcery. The New Living Translation rephrases it as: A sorceress must not be allowed to live. The Contemporary English Version decides not to mince words, thundering: Death is the punishment for witchcraft, thereby altering the meaning entirely by eliminating the purely female grammatical connotation so that male witches can now also be included. Young's Literal Translation chooses: A witch thou dost not keep alive, and the English translation of the Septuagint by Sir Lancelot Brenton also changes the meaning to include males by altering it to: Ye shall not save the lives of sorcerers. The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (used and written exclusively by the Jehovah’s Witnesses), like the earlier Latin, chooses a word with more than one possible meaning and opts for: You must not preserve a sorceress alive; presumably this means you must only pickle them when they are dead.
This brings us to the fact that there are also deliberately falsified versions of the Bible in print, containing material not existing in any authentic antique biblical text, such as the Bible used by the Mormons (more properly The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) in which four additional books have been added to the Bible since 1830: the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price, written by Joseph Smith the American founder of Mormonism, or else – if you choose to believe Joseph Smith – by a Native American (“Red Indian”) of the late 4th century AD named Mormon who wrote a history of the Hebrew prophet Lehi (previously unknown to anybody else’s history) who, this history maintains, voyaged from Arabia to what is now the USA shortly after Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar in c. 600 BC and in which Jesus Christ later pays a personal visit to the American continent (possibly the very first Virgin Atlantic”?).
Then there is the Bible already mentioned as used by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose “translation” is not recognised by the Christian Church. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were originally founded as the Zions Watch Tower and Tract Society by the American Charles Taze Russell in 1884, and their “Bible”, formally titled New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, has been shown by analysis to include fabrications and distorted translations designed to support their beliefs. The final version of this Bible was fashioned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses own New World Bible Translation Committee between 1950 and 1960 and is now available in some 64 languages.
(Dr. Bruce M. Metzger [1914-2007], professor emeritus of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton University, has categorized the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Bible as a “frightful mistranslation” and as “pernicious” and “reprehensible”. Dr. William Barclay CBE [1907-1978] [Lecturer in New Testament Language and Literature and Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Hellenistic Greek at Glasgow University, Examiner in New Testament studies at the University of Aberdeen, the University of Edinburgh, the University of St. Andrews and the University of Leeds, director of the National Bible Society of Scotland, member of the Translating Committee of the New English Bible], has stated: “…It is abundantly clear that a sect which can translate the New Testament like that is intellectually dishonest.) (The Expository Times, November 1953.)
Strictly speaking, the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are actually heretical cults and if they had existed during the first millennium instead of being modern inventions, their followers would certainly have been hunted down and killed by the Church and their “Bibles” burned. Within mainstream Christianity, however, a spirit of increasing mutual toleration has arisen; Catholicism no longer considers Protestantism as being heretical but as being “separated brethren”, although Roman Catholics who abandon their Church to join a Protestant denomination are still sometimes referred to as heretics. Technically, many Catholics now consider Protestantism to be a “material” rather than a “formal” heresy and thus blameless for the individual.
From the fourth century, it was the Church councils (synods) that issued the official list of “holy books” to be included in the Biblical Canon, such as the Councils of Carthage (419), Florence (1441), Trent (1546) and the First Vatican Council (1870). Only relatively recently, the Second Vatican Council (or 21st Ecumenical Church Council) (1962-65) published an extremely complex and esoteric ruling regarding “divine revelation” and involving the correct way in which the Bible’s Revelation of St. John should be interpreted: “…Therefore, following in the footsteps of the Council of Trent and of the First Vatican Council, this present Council wishes to set forth authentic doctrine on divine revelation and how it is handed on…” It would seem that re-interpreting and adapting the Holy Bible is an ongoing process in the present day as well as in the past.
If such a multitude of variations, alterations, re-packaging, cultural anomalies, translational ambiguities, contemporary updates of wording and style and preferential interpretations has occurred to the textual matter of the Bible in recent times, how certain can we be that similar or even worse confusions and changes did not occur in more ancient times? And what price all the many purely human choices that have been made over more than two thousand years regarding which texts to include and which to expurgate? This is a matter we shall examine in greater detail in the next chapter. Here, it is a helpful preliminary to briefly consider the broader picture of the three fragmented and mutually hostile divisions of the supporters of the supposedly single and indivisible god of peace who loves mankind so perfectly that his advocates stigmatise and even kill anyone who disagrees, in his name!
A Family at War
Christianity, Islam and Judaism are, though estranged, actually three different interpretations of the same core belief, and both Christianity and Islam evolved out of Judaism. Judaism - the religion of the Jewish peoples - provides both Christianity and Islam with the most ancient components of their beliefs, which is probably most familiar in the West in the form of the "Old Testament" of the Bible. Both Christianity and Islam propose that the Semitic god described in the Old Testament exists and is the supreme and single entity. Both Christianity and Islam also trace their respective worldly, or human, lineage through Abraham, who is also a patriarch of Judaism. All three accept as truth the story of the Garden of Eden and accept that there was a single original man created from base matter by this same god and that his wife was created a little later from one of this man's ribs.
(The character Adam is not specifically mentioned in the Meccan suras, the earliest suras [chapters] of the Koran, where Muhammad refers to a general creation of humankind out of a drop of blood [sura 96:1-2] and a drop of water [sura 25:54]: however, in the Madinan suras – those chapters set down at Medina after the Hijra or Hagira, Hazrat Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD – the actual individual named Adam appears. The name of Adam’s wife is not mentioned at all in the Koran.). Amongst other characters accepted as real by Christianity, Islam and Judaism are Noah, Satan, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Moses, David and Gabriel.
Contrary to the awareness of many in our sadly divided and "dumbed-down" society, both Judaism and Islam also generally accept the existence of the man today commonly called Jesus, differing from Christianity only inasmuch as they do not regard him as being "Christ" or the "only Son of God", a part of God’s “threefold being”. Both Judaism and Islam share an essential principle of belief in an exclusively single God, according to which view it is utterly impossible, and indeed blasphemous, to propose either a “Trinity” or a physical “Son of God”. The origins of Christianity will be examined in greater detail later in this book, but the name “Jesus” itself is merely a Greek translation (Iesous) of an original Hebrew name which can be rendered as Jeshu, Yeishu or Yeshu, and also as Y’hosua which in English became Joshua. The original Hebrew meaning of this name was “Yahweh Helps” or “Yahweh Saves”. As Yeshu (יש״ו), such a person is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud (Sotah; 47a) and in the classical midrash literature (elucidating critical texts commentating on the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible) as an historical itinerant teacher, or rabbi, of purely human nature.
(It is also worth pointing out that, by a papal bull of 1554, the Talmud and many other Jewish texts used by Jews in the West were strictly and compulsorily censored to remove all references to Yeshu; and also that there is no mention of the name Yeshu in the Jerusalem Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi) also known as the Palestinian Talmud, which is some 200 years earlier in compilation than the Babylonian Talmud of circa 600 AD.)
In the Babylonian Talmud, Yeshu is described as the son of a Jewish mother, Miriam, who had been promised in marriage to a man described as a “carpenter”. The precise Hebrew term used for this liaison, which in modern English can only be approximately rendered as “betrothed”, means that their marriage was already a legal fact but the two were not yet living together or having sexual relations. Miriam was then made pregnant by a soldier named Pandeira who was either Greek or Roman, and as a result gave birth to a mamzer a child considered an outcast because born of a forbidden relationship of some kind, such as adultery, incest or rape, although still acknowledged as a legal son or daughter of the family. The word is sometimes incorrectly translated as “bastard” or “illegitimate”, which it does not mean.
This child was named Yeshu (our “Jesus”). In the Babylonian Talmud, Yeshu grew up to become a heretic and a sorcerer who “…led the people astray…” and so fell foul of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish religious council) who had him stoned to death and his body then hung on a tree until nightfall, the traditional punishment for heretics. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing only a generation after the events, describes a very similar incident.
In Islam, Jesus is regarded respectfully as one of the prophets who foretold the coming of the Final Prophet, Mohammed. Jesus is actually mentioned no less than twenty seven times in the Koran, where his name appears as Isa, and Isa son of Marium. In the Koran, he is actually described as the Messiah, but this has a somewhat different connotation to the Christian meaning of this title, the Koran completely rejecting the idea of Isa’s divinity. (Koran surah 4:157; “…Surely we have killed the Messiah. Isa son of Marium, the apostle of Allah; and they did not kill him nor did they crucify him, but it appeared to them so…”) The Saviour in Islam, who will appear at the ending of time as the fulfilment of God’s promise to the world, is titled al-Mahdi (the Mahdi). It is part of Islamic belief that after the appearance of the Mahdi, Isa (“Jesus”), who was taken into Paradise by Allah (“raised to his presence”) will descend again to earth as a follower and assistant to the Mahdi (Saviour) and, praying behind the Mahdi, will lead all loyal Christians into becoming Muslims.
Viewed impartially from the outside, the three warring religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism share so much in common that they can even be regarded as the triplet sons of the same father: as the saying has it, the Devil (and the bloodshed) is in the detail. How, then, did such essentially shared beliefs as these come to exist? What of their primeval origins?
An Earlier Eden
All religions, by their very nature, require an "origin of everything" mythology, to fill the gap we described in chapter one between ignorant superstition and proper scientific understanding, and to be their ætiological "how it came about" explanations. The Australian Aborigines, for example, believe that in a previous time called the Dreamtime the spirits moved through the void and assembled the land, the rocks, the trees, the animals, and the people in the appearance they now have. In the mythology of the Aztecs, the goddess Itzpapalotl reigned over a paradise called Tomoanchan, where the gods created the first members of the human race.
The Judaic creation story of the Garden of Eden, inherited by both Christianity and Islam, should be viewed in the same light, as a simple tribal creation myth, one of many throughout the world devised by primitive minds in order to offer an explanation for existence whilst giving credit for everything to a creator or creators in the spirit world. The fact that the Bible's creation story is a pure myth, similar in nature to that of other primitive cultures such as the Aborigines, can actually be proven, for these stories included in the Old Testament of the Bible, which represent a transcription of ancient Jewish mythology, are themselves inherited from the even earlier myth cycles of other, pagan, civilisations.
For example: “…And the lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam... and he took one of his ribs.., and... made... a woman.” (Genesis 2:21). This Biblical account of the creation of the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden is probably familiar to just about everybody. However, it is based upon a much earlier version of the same myth that has been discovered set down on clay tablets in cuneiform script by the ancient Sumerians, dating back some three to four thousand years BC, long before the Bible as we know it today was even conceived. The very name "Eden" is probably derived from the Akkadian word edinu and the Sumerian eden, both meaning a plain or steppe. Sumerian cuneiform is one of the oldest known forms of writing and was itself passed on to the ancient Babylonians, who also inherited much of the earlier Sumerian religious mythology. (The earliest writing yet discovered comes from an archaeological site of the Indus civilisation in Harappa, Pakistan, where pots dated to circa 3,500 BC, some 200-500 years earlier than the earliest discovered examples of Egyptian and Sumerian writing, were unearthed in 1999 bearing inscriptions possibly identifying their contents.)
In the nineteenth century, Sir Austen Henry Layard (1807-1894) and his colleague Rassam, whilst excavating in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nineveh, discovered the great library of the Assyrian king Asshurbanapal (died circa 631 BC). After years of excavations in both Nineveh and Nimrud, more than twenty five thousand sections of clay tablets inscribed in the strange wedge-shaped cuneiform script made by pressing a stylus into clay were sent to the British Museum for translation. Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895), an army officer stationed at the British residency in Baghdad, had discovered what was, in effect, a “cuneiform Rosetta Stone” on a giant rock face at Behistun near Kermanshah in Persia (now Iran), where an inscription of the Record of Darius was carved in cuneiform characters in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. This enabled the cuneiform script to be deciphered. Rawlinson began the translation of the tablets in Baghdad and continued the task in the British Museum after his return to England in 1855, publishing a book Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. In 1866 George Smith (1840-1876), the scholar who was to discover the as-yet unknown Epic of Gilgamesh amongst the museum collection, joined Rawlinson as his assistant to complete the immense task.
On the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh epic, Smith found, to his surprise, an account of a great flood that bore a strange similarity to the story of the biblical deluge, publishing it as a book with the title A Chaldean Account of the Deluge, in which he also showed that this appeared to be a copy of a far older version written at Uruk (the biblical Erech). A fragment of Gilgamesh containing the account of the death of Enkidu was also discovered at Megiddo in Palestine which indicates that it must have been known to the Canaanites who lived in this area and therefore to the writers of the earliest scrolls that were eventually to become the Bible. A reading of the translated cuneiform accounts, amongst which a Creation myth more ancient than the Biblical version was also discovered, suggests most powerfully that these were the actual pagan origins of the later but equivalent tales in the Old Testament.
The Sumerian creation legend, which is quite beautiful, states that the great goddess Ninhursag fashioned a wonderful and perfect garden in the east, which was named Dilmun, the Sumerian for Paradise. Here in this place, she“…made green plants flourish, and from here the waters of the world flowed…” This idea of the “waters of the world” was incorporated into Hebrew mythology in the form of the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddikel, Naher and the Phrath, or Euphrates, that were said to flow out of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:10-14).
The Sumerian Paradise was a “…pure land, fresh and bright, that knew neither sickness nor death…” Into this wonderful garden, Ninhursag placed a man whom she had made herself out of clay and dust, Enki. Ninhursag regarded Enki as her brother, for she had made him a male version of her own image and breathed life into him. This mythology will seem strangely familiar to anyone who has read the Bible. The similarities, or parallels, do not stop there. Enki was not happy, for he was without a companion of his own kind. In the Sumerian tablets, it is told how the goddess came to Enki in the garden and placed him into a deep slumber. When he awakens, he groans in pain. The epic Sumerian poem continues: "…My brother, what hurts you? My rib hurts me…” Ninhursag then explains what she has done: “…I have given birth to you, of your rib, to Ninti…”
Ninti was the first mortal woman, according to Sumerian mythology, and Enki’s wife. There are still further indications that the myth of Adam and Eve originated here (or else with even earlier Stone-Age tales on which the Sumerian legends were themselves based). Enki is said to have eaten plants that were sacred to the goddess Ninhursag and was cursed by her for so doing, a striking parallel to the story of the eating of the apple in Eden. In Sumerian, the name “Ninti” can mean “she who makes live”. The Hebrew name “Eve” derives from chavva, (hawwa, hava, heva) “living one”.
A less obvious parallel between the Bible and earlier pagan myths can be found in the Sumerian king lists. In Genesis 4, eight patriarchs are listed as living before the biblical flood. In Genesis 5, there are ten of these patriarchs. All of these are stated to have had extraordinarily long lives (for instance: “…And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years…” Genesis 5:27). According to the version of the king list recorded on a clay tablet now kept in the Schøyen Collection of original historical manuscripts in Norway (MS 2855), there were eight Sumerian kings before the Sumerian flood. On the version of the king list inscribed on the tablet called the Weld-Blundell Prism now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (#AN1923.444) there are ten rulers prior to the flood. In both versions, these also lived to incredible ages.
There is an obvious conclusion to be leaped at that the two sets of lists of 8 and 10 names, one set from the Bible, the other from Sumerian tablets, can be related, and certain scholars have attempted this with some interesting results, although it must be emphasised that (so far) there is no actual proof of the congruence of the two sources. Comparing the two longer versions listing ten names, the suggestion has been made (by the Institute for Biblical and Scientific Studies amongst others) that the Sumerian and biblical names can be associated in the following way: Alulim or Allum (Adam), Alalgar (Seth), Kidunnu (Enosh), Alimma (Kenan), En-men-lu-ana (Mahalalel), Dumuzi (Jared), En-sipad-zid-ana (Enoch), En-men-dur-ana (Methuselah), Sukurlam (Lamech) and Ziusudra (or Zin-suddu) (Noah).
One interesting result of linking the two sets of lists in this way – even though it is as yet a hypothetical exercise – is that both Ziusudra and Noah are associated with legends of building a huge boat to save their families from a great flood. It is also interesting to see that Adam, the Bible’s “first man” of Eden, equates with Alulim, the first recorded king at the city of Eridu in Sumer. According to Sumerian mythology, Eridu (which some have associated with “Eden”) was founded by Enki, the Sumerian version of “Adam”. The Akkadians equated Enki with the water-god Ea, whose son was named Adamu or Adapa. Linguistically, the “p” of “Adapa” could transmute to an “m” in Hebrew to produce the name “Adama”. In the Sumerian language, the word a-dam can mean “humans” or “humanity” and the word adam in Hebrew is similar and can mean “man”, also “earth” (adamah), “soil” and “light”.
It must always be remembered that, for certain periods of their history, various significant components of the Hebrew tribes were wanderers without a precise land of their own, or else influential groups of them were held in bondage by other cultures for some generations. Wherever their various tribes settled for a time, in freedom or in bondage, they associated with whatever population was there before them, inheriting their legends, as well as picking up the tales and customs of traders and travellers in the usual way, absorbing them into their own myths, naturally with the details changed to reflect their own culture. Consequently, they inevitably soaked up large pieces of the prevalent legends and mythologies of other ancient peoples such as the Egyptians and Sumerians. Abraham himself, no less, was a Sumerian, from the citadel of Ur, and there is no possible doubt that he would have been thoroughly familiar with the various Sumerian myths.
Floods of Mythology
The “deluge” legend set down in the cuneiform tablets of Gilgamesh describes a pantheon of gods including Anu the lord of the firmament, Enlil the warrior and counsellor, Ninurta the warlord and Ennugi the “watcher over canals”. Enlil addresses the council of the gods and says: “…The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel…”
The gods therefore decide that mankind must be destroyed by sending a great flood to drown the world. However, the god Ea warns a man named Ut-Napishtim of what is to happen and instructs him to build a boat, giving him specific measurements of the length, width and other dimensions and instructing him to: “…then take up into the boat the seed of all living creatures…”
The account then describes in some detail how Ut-Napishtim builds the huge boat, despite the scepticism of the people and their elders, and loads on board his family, a selection of craftsmen, and all beasts “both wild and tame”. The gods command Ut-Napishtim to enter the boat and batten it down. “…Then the gods of the abyss rose up – Nergal released the dams of the nether-waters…” The goddess Ishtar, the “sweet-voiced Queen of Heaven” bewails the fate of humankind as; “…For six days and nights the winds blew, torrent and tempest and flood overwhelmed the world… When the seventh day dawned… the flood was stilled...”
When Ut-Napishtim’s great boat eventually comes to ground on Mount Nisir (possibly in Iraq), he releases a dove but, finding no other dry land, the dove returns to him. A swallow is then released with the same result. Then he sends out a raven who does not return, so he knows the bird has found some dry land at last. He sets up an altar on the mountain top to give thanks to the gods, whereupon the goddess Ishtar comes to the place and lifts up her “…necklace with the jewels of heaven…”, a rainbow, as a sign of safety for Ut-Napishtim and his family.
From the eighteenth century BC there still survives the earlier epic of Atrahasis, the Akkadian hero whose mythology was adapted to provide the flood story in Gilgamesh, with certain alterations being made by the transcriber to “improve” the mythical flood to a world-scale event where it was originally concerned only with the flooding of a local river. (For example, Atrahasis 3:4 “…like dragonflies they have filled the river…” becomes Gilgamesh 11 “…like the spawn of fishes they fill the sea…”)
On a single fragmentary clay tablet excavated from the city of Nippur in Sumer - today’s Iraq - was found a record of an ancient Sumerian myth concerning Ziusudra, a wise king who reigned over one of the Sumerian city-states (mentioned on the king list described earlier). He was a good king who obeyed the gods in all things. The tablet describes the creation of humans and animals and recounts a flood myth containing the following verse: “...for seven days and seven nights, the flood had swept over the land, and the huge boat had been tossed about by the wind storms on the great waters... Ziusudra opened a window on the huge boat...”
Ziusudra can be identified from the Sumerian king list as the ruler of Shuruppak (or Curuppag, “The Healing Place”) which is a site at present-day Tell Fa’rah on the Euphrates in Iraq, and in the king list his entry confirms this is the same person because after his name are the lines: “…The flood swept thereover…” A local river flood has been identified from deposits excavated from Shuruppak and dated by radio-carbon analysis to the decade following 3,000 BC. Since line 23 of the 11th Gilgamesh tablet refers to Ut-Napishtim as being a “man of Shuruppak”, there is actual written evidence that the Gilgamesh account was based on that of Ziusudra and that this was the local river flooding event behind the various Mesopotamian myths which inspired the biblical story of Noah first written much later, during the first millennium BC. (The tradition is that the first five books of the Old Testament were written by Moses, who lived after 1500 BC and probably around 1450-1410 BC: historical analysis [detailed in the next chapter] indicates it was actually the product of at least four different authors writing during a more recent period between 950-539 BC.) There are a great many similarities that prove the biblical flood story is copied from the other more ancient myths; for instance, the description of the smell rising from the various deluge heroes’ altars of thanksgiving: “The gods smelled the savour” (Atrahasis 3:34); “The gods smelled the sweet savour” (Gilgamesh 11:160); “And the Lord smelled the sweet savour” (Genesis 8:21).
A similar myth can be found from the Aztecs of Mexico, which also contains an echo, even if unconnected, of the story of the Tower of Babel: "…When mankind was overwhelmed by the deluge, none were preserved but a man named Coxcox and a woman called Xochiquetzal, who saved themselves in a little barque, and having afterwards reached land upon a mountain called Colhuacan, they had a great many children. These children were all born dumb, until a dove from a lofty tree imparted languages to them, but differing so much that they could not understand one another."
The Native American Indians have various deluge stories. A legend of the Choctaw people tells how, long ago, men became so corrupt that the Great Spirit destroyed them in a flood. Only one man was saved, a prophet whose warnings the people disregarded, and whom the Great Spirit then directed to build a raft from sassafras logs. After many weeks, a small bird guided the prophet to an island where the Great Spirit changed the bird into a beautiful woman who became the wife of the prophet. Their children then repopulated the world. In the tribal mythology of the Mi’kmag nation of New England, eastern Canada and the Gaspé Peninsula, the human race grows increasingly evil until the sun-god causes torrential rain to bring a great flood to destroy mankind. A man and woman survive in canoes and repopulate the earth.
Likewise, there are several Australian Aboriginal flood stories. One tells how, long ago, there was a flood that covered the mountains so that many of the Nurrumbunguttias, or spirit men and women (“ancestors”), were drowned. Others, including Pund-jil, were caught up by a whirlwind into the sky. When the waters receded, and the mountains appeared again, and the sea went back into its own place, the son and daughter of Pund-jil went back to earth and became the first of the true men and women who live in the world today.
The seventeenth century Jesuit priest Martinus Martini (1614-1661), famous for travels in which he compiled notes from which Dutch cartographers prepared detailed maps of China, and also for his essays The War of the Tartar People and The First Chapter of the Chinese History, reported the ancient Chinese legend of mankind's rebellion against the gods: "…The Earth was shaken to its foundations. The sky sank lower towards the north. The sun, moon, and stars changed their motions. The Earth fell to pieces and the waters in its bosom rushed upwards with violence and overflowed the Earth..." The ancient Chinese account Shujing (“Book of History”) written around 700 BC or earlier, recounts a great deluge in the reign of the emperor Yao, where “…flood waters reached to the heavens…” According to the tale, the principle survivor, Da Yu, founded the first Chinese dynasty. Interestingly, many of the Chinese deluge myths from different regions make mention of a woman named Nuwa (Noah?) who survives and repopulates the world.
In India, the Hindu scripture the Shatapatha Brahmana relates how the god Vishnu warns a man named Manu of a forthcoming deluge that will destroy all living things. Vishnu instructs Manu to build a boat to escape the flood. In Tahiti there is a Polynesian legend of a deluge when the entire island sank beneath the sea except for the top of Mount Pitohiti, where a single couple manage to survive with their animals. In Hawaii a similar myth has a couple named Nu’u and Lili-noe surviving a deluge on the top of Mauna Kea.
The Bahnars, an ancient tribe of Cochin, China, have a myth of how the rivers swelled "...until the waters reached the sky, and all living beings perished except two, a brother and a sister, who were saved in a huge chest. They took with them into the chest a pair of every sort of animal..."
A myth from Egypt tells of an ancient creation god, Tem, who was responsible for a primeval flood, which covered the entire earth and destroyed all humankind except those in Tem's boat.
The Incas of Peru also had a tradition of a deluge which relates that "...the water rose above the highest mountains in the world, so that all people and all created things perished. No living thing escaped except a man and a woman, who floated in a box on the face of the waters and so were saved."
The pagan tribes of Europe and Scandinavia had similar legends: In Nordic myth Bergelmir the son of Thrudgelmir escaped from a great flood caused by the death of the frost giant Ymir, who was Bergelmir’s own grandfather. Bergelmir and his wife managed to float to safety in a hollow tree trunk.
In fact, research shows there are over five hundred such legendary deluge myths from different parts of the globe. It has been suggested that they represent a dim and distant racial memory, preserved in mythologies, of the tremendous worldwide flooding that occurred when the ice melted at the end of the last Ice Age some ten to fourteen thousand years ago. Scientific investigation has shown that this melting was rapid rather than gradual and resulted in immense torrents and floods lasting between a few years and a few decades, during which time the world's sea level rose considerably. In Europe, the Mediterranean and Black Sea rose, drowning Neolithic farming settlements that can still be identified on the present seabed, and the English Channel was formed, turning mainland Britain into an island. Other flood theories prefer more recent global changes, such as a collapse of the land between Spain and Africa allowing the Atlantic to catastrophically flood through to form the Mediterranean.
It is, however, not even necessary to invoke such cataclysmic natural forces in order to explain the worldwide occurrence of parallel flood myths from the most ancient of times. Most of the world’s large ancient centres of civilisation naturally first grew in close proximity to rivers, vital for drinking water, crops and trade, and rivers are always subject to catastrophic flooding as we still see to our cost in the present day.
Some supporters of the "truth" of the Bible sometimes gleefully quote these ancient world deluge legends as "proof" of Noah's flood in the Old Testament. However, such reasoning is entirely fallacious and self-contradicting, for according to the Bible itself only Noah and his family were specifically saved from the deluge and everybody else in the world at that time was drowned, without exception. If the Old Testament stated something like: "...And God also ordered that Ziusudra the Sumerian, Ut-Napishtim the Babylonian, Deucalion the Greek, Coxcox and Xochiquetzal the Aztecs, Pund-Jil the Aborigine and a few hundred others scattered here and there around the world should also build boats and rafts to save their various peoples..." then the story of Noah might perhaps be removed from the realms of pure mythology. Unfortunately for adherents of the historicity of the Bible, it says no such thing.
Each of these deluge legends from around the world represents an aspect of the tribal mythology of the people to whom they belong, a dim and distant folk memory of severe but natural disasters incorporated into the necessary mythological background explaining how things became as they are at the “beginning of the world” and providing a salutary warning for people to avoid offending their various gods. The Old Testament is no exception and must be understood as merely representing a regional version of this worldwide habit.
How, then, did such pieces of mythology and tribal legend finally find their way into the Bible? In order to answer this question, we need to go further in our investigation and ask: who exactly wrote the Bible? What is the actual origin of this problematical book?
4. The Evolution of the Bible
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
Mark Twain
A Vulgar Bible
It is a little-known historical fact that there were originally a large number of different textual versions of the Old Testament spanning a wide date range and not just one coherent manuscript, or even one coherent set of books or scrolls. There are three main divisions of writings that coalesced to a greater or lesser degree to form what we now perceive as the Old Testament of the Bible.
(1) The material that was eventually to become edited into the Masoretic text, the Hebrew text of the Tanakh approved for use in Judaism. The word "Tanakh" is an acronym of the initial letters of the Hebrew names for its three sections: Torah ("The Law" or "The Teaching"), also called the Chumash ("The Five" or "The Five Books of Moses", which became the first five books of the Old Testament, often called the Pentateuch): Nevi'im ("Prophets"): and Ketuvim ("Writings" or "Hagiography"). The Tanakh is also called Mikra or Miqra ("Reading").
The title "Masoretic" derives from the Masoretes, (ba'alei masorah) a scattered group of Jewish scribes living between the seventh and tenth centuries AD (corresponding more-or-less to the time of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England) in three principal regions; Tiberias (T'verya), the town at the edge of the Sea of Galilee named after the Roman emperor; Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel); and Babylonia in southern Mesopotamia (in present day Iraq). Each of these three main groups of scholars developed a system of notes and guides to grammar and pronunciation in order to attempt to regularise the texts for use by the entire Jewish community. The Hebrew word masorah, (from Ezekiel 20:37) originally meant "fetter", and was used because to fix a common version of a text could be regarded as fettering it (as we might say today, "nailing it down"); from this, the word came to mean "to hand down", and thence "tradition". As such, the word relates to the transmission of any Jewish tradition, but in the context of the Masoretic Text it specifically denotes the brief marginal notes placed in written and printed versions of the Hebrew Bible to indicate such details as the correct spelling of words. The finished Masoretic Text contains numerous differences from earlier sources.
Paper and parchment crumbles with the passage of time. Apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls which date from around the time of Jesus, a papyrus from the second century AD containing a version the Ten Commandments, and a few fragments of the Cairo Geniza, an archive of ancient Jewish manuscripts from the fifth century AD discovered in 1897 in the Fostat-Cairo synagogue (built in the year 882), the oldest known existing manuscripts encompassing the main part of the Masoretic Text date from the ninth and tenth centuries AD and are now kept in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (the Aleppo Codex) and, written in Hebrew, represent the oldest surviving versions of the Old Testament. Although based on earlier texts now largely lost to the world, they are actually more recent – as physical documents - than the compilation of the New Testament. The various Hebrew texts from which the Masoretic Text was derived were copies of much older documents that were known to the very earliest Christian theologians and pre-dated Christianity. Although these older texts no longer exist as original documents, the Masoretic Text contains a few examples of the alternative versions of these older writings alongside the final edit so that their differences can be compared and evaluated by the reader.
(2) The material which was used for the Greek translation of the Jewish Bible (the first five books of what is now the Old Testament) which was then called the Septuagint. The Septuagint originated in Alexandria, Egypt, and was translated from pre-Masoretic Hebrew documents into Greek between 300 and 200 BC. This Greek translation was made because many Jews living outside their homeland were no longer familiar with the Hebrew language, and Alexandria, though in Egypt, was a Greek city (named, of course, after Alexander the Great). According to an ancient document, the Letter of Aristeas, either 70 or 72 Jewish scholars (the precise number is uncertain) were appointed during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Ptolemy II, c.308-246 BC) to carry out the task of making the translation. (Ptolemy Philadelphus was the son of Soter, one of Alexander’s generals who founded the Ptolomaic dynasty and became Ptolemy I.) The term "Septuagint" means seventy in Latin, after the presumed number of its translation committee, and this title is sometimes abbreviated to LXX, the Roman numeral for 70.
Importantly, there was no single definitive copy of the Alexandrian Septuagint, which existed in many different Greek versions that may represent various alternative translations (a minority opinion amongst scholars) or – a more widely accepted view – a sequence of developing revisions. There are major differences between the earliest and final versions, to the extent that the German Protestant theological scholar Alfred Rahlfs (1865-1935) who attempted to produce a definitive edition of the Septuagint for publication, was obliged to include two different versions of the Book of Judges. When these various different versions of the Greek Septuagint are examined, two “editing trails” can be clearly identified; one sequence of changes was designed to attempt to bring the tales more into agreement with Jewish texts, while the other sequence improves the Greek language usage and attempts to change or eliminate anything that seemed to be at variance with early Christian doctrine. The Church Father Origen (c. 185-254) deliberately changed his version of the Septuagint so that it more closely matched the Hebrew documents that would eventually become the Masoretic Text, but in the interests of honesty he made use of editorial symbols to note his changes; unfortunately, later editors copied his revised text and ignored his notes, thereby creating the false impression of a greater original similarity between the Septuagint and Hebrew texts.
The Old Testament generally accepted by Christianity is based on versions of the Greek Septuagint catalogued under the title Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican City and the slightly later Codex Sinaiticus in the British Museum, London. Both of these date only from the fourth century.
(3) The Samaritan Pentateuch. The Samaritans were a group of people observing the Israelite religion, as distinct from the Jewish religion; as we will see later in this chapter, the Israelites of Israel and the Jews of Judah originally comprised two different kingdoms with two different religions and two different tribal gods. When a large portion of the Jewish population was taken to be slaves in Babylon by the conquering king Nebuchadnezzar and were then permitted to return to their homelands after seventy years had passed, the religious observations and interpretations of the Israelites who had remained behind and who became known as Samaritans (from the region of Samaria) showed slight differences from those who had been away for so long. On returning from exile in Babylon, the Jews did not permit the Samaritans to worship with them in the Temple at Jerusalem, because their version of the Jewish religion was different, causing the Samaritans to become regarded as "second-class" people, or "untouchables" (hence the point of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, an “untouchable” who proved to be a better human being than more sanctimonious passers-by).
Forbidden access to the Temple in Jerusalem, the Samaritans instead worshipped in their own temple on Mount Gerizim. This temple was destroyed by the hostile Jews led by John Hyrcanus (Yohanan Girhan) of the Hasmonean (Maccabeean) dynasty, the nephew of Judas Maccabaeus, about 129 BC. Following this, a form of worship was introduced by the Samaritans aligned to that used in the Temple at Jerusalem and based on the Torah. In this manner, the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) was accepted by the Samaritans.
There are, however, major differences between the Samaritan, Jewish and eventual Christian versions of the Pentateuch. For example, Exodus 12:40 in the Samaritan and the Septuagint reads, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers which they had dwelt in the land of Canaan and in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years." In the Masoretic text, however, the same passage omits the reference to Canaan. The New Testament, whenever it mentions incidents from the Old Testament, takes its details mainly from the Samaritan text, instead of from the Septuagint or the Hebrew documents that would later be transcribed into the Masoretic Text, with the result that characters in the New Testament sometimes quote from an "Old Testament" that is entirely different to the one contained in the same Bible. For example, in Mark (2:25-26) Jesus refers to David eating the consecrated bread in the time of Abithar, whereas according to 1 Samuel 21:1-6 it was in the time of Ahimelech.
It was not actually until a century after Jesus that the biblical Old Testament texts even began the slow process of being finally established toward the form non-Jews recognise today, and not until over fifty years after the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD were Old and New Testaments put together in a regular Latin format. To put this in an historical perspective, this was the time during which the Roman Empire abandoned Britain militarily to the English (Anglo-Saxon) invaders.
Between 382 and 405 AD on the instructions of Pope Damasus I, the scholar Jerome completed a comprehensive translation of the Old Testament (from the Hebrew) and the New Testament (from the Greek) into Latin. Jerome's text became known as the "common” (i.e. popular or widely used) translation, or in Latin, versio vulgata, (“the Public Version”) which became otherwise known as the Vulgate (sometimes Fulgate) Bible. In fact, it was the Vulgar Bible. The modern word "vulgar", from Latin vulgata, once meant simply "common" in the sense “of the mass of people”; from this it only later came to mean "rude" or "bad mannered".
There was a crude form of Latin Bible in use before Jerome produced the Vulgate, the Vetus Latina ("Old Latin Bible") but this was a scrambled and incomplete work consisting of various rather haphazard collections of texts, not a bound book as such, and there were many different versions. It was not translated by any one person, or even by any one body of scholars, nor was it consistently edited. Each individual text varied in the skill and quality of translation and even in literary style, and its source for the Old Testament was mainly the Greek Septuagint, thereby rendering it second-hand, at least "once removed" from any original record. Also, additions were sometimes included as though part of the original text by way of “sermons” or “moral instruction” by Christian writers for their followers. Even speakers of Latin found it difficult because it made extensive use of “Vulgar Latin”, which was the language of the commoners rather than the purer Latin of the nobility, containing ambiguities due to such things as regional dialects and the inclusion of Hebrew and Greek argot from the Septuagint.
However, this "Old Latin Bible" continued in use here and there for some time after the Vulgate became the accepted standard version in the Western Church. Some of the Celtic peoples continued to use it for a few centuries, as did Christian factions like the Waldensians and Albigensians, soon to be exterminated as heretical sects. Even Jerome himself complained that his new Bible was not being popularly received by many Christians at the time of its completion. The Vulgate Bible was adopted over a thousand years later as the official Roman Catholic Bible at the Council of Trent (1545-1563).
The Vulgate Bible has differences from the later Protestant King James, or "authorised", version. The biggest difference is that the Vulgate includes the Apocrypha, a series of disputed scriptural books that have been a thorn in the side of the Church for many centuries and have led to there being differing versions of the Bible and fractured versions of Christian belief which no church has yet quite been able to completely reconcile.
In Judaism, the Bible consists only of books of the Old Testament. In standard Protestant Christianity, it consists of 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. In Roman Catholic Bibles there are the additional books collectively known as the Apocrypha, or the apocryphal books (also known as the deuterocanonical or “second canon” books). These seven books are Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch. In the Reformation, Martin Luther and his followers decided that these apocryphal books should be removed from the new Protestant Bible.
There are also other apocryphal books that were included in certain versions of the original Vulgate, where a note was included stating these were not to be considered part of the canon of Holy Scripture; they were present only because it was felt that their beauty of composition made them worthy of reading. These are the Prayer of Manassas, 3 and 4 Esdras, certain Greek additions to Esther and three additions to the Book of Daniel, the Song of the Three Children (Vulgate, Daniel 3:24-90), the Story of Susan (Vulgate, Daniel 13) and The Idol Bel and the Dragon (Vulgate, Daniel 14). The latter two are also mentioned respectively in the prologue and the epilogue of the Septuagint compiled around 300 BC. Some forty books were eventually condemned as “apocryphal” by the early Church, including such texts as the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Assumption of Moses and the Ethiopic Henoch.
Roman Catholicism maintains that the seven particular apocryphal books removed from Protestant Bibles were always inspired by the Holy Ghost and are therefore genuine Holy Scripture, as also do the Eastern Orthodox, Coptic and Armenian churches. The Protestant churches, however, mainly disagree and have not generally accepted the Apocrypha, which are therefore not now included in most Protestant Bibles, mainly on the grounds that they were not accepted as legitimate holy scripture by the Jews. At one time all copies of the English Protestant Authorised or King James version of 1611 did include the Apocrypha as a separate section between the Old and New Testaments, but later they were removed as "not genuine". The Anglican Church, however, sets itself apart from most other Protestant churches (in Article VI of the 39 Articles of Religion established in 1801 by the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA) by accepting the Catholic apocryphal writings for church reading but not for establishing doctrine, as also does the Lutheran Church.
A major development that virtually “blacklisted” amongst most Protestants the seven apocryphal books still preserved in Roman Catholic Bibles was the managerial policy decision reached in 1827 by the British and Foreign Bible Society to refuse to print, publish or distribute any Bible containing the Apocrypha, or to financially assist any other publisher who included them. Since this society had virtually “cornered the market” in Bibles throughout the world, producing them in some seven hundred languages and regional dialects and distributing over 500 million copies worldwide, the greater number of Christians in the world had any scriptural significance and detailed knowledge of the Apocrypha edited – literally - from their version of Christianity.
There are none the less still some links with apocryphal books in Protestant-type Bibles, such as the passage in Hebrews 11:35 (“…Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection…”) which relates specifically to the stomach-churning story of The Martyrdom of Seven Brothers in chapter 7 of the apocryphal book 2 Maccabees.
The Vulgate Bible is therefore not the single coherent parent of modern Bibles. Jerome translated the Old Testament from Hebrew and the Gospels themselves from Greek; other parts of the New Testament (Acts, the Epistles, Revelation etc.) he seems to have taken from earlier Latin translations made by others. It is also considered unlikely that he conducted any research to investigate his favoured sources. Initially, he did not wish to include any Apocrypha, but Pope Damasus insisted that he did. However, because he regarded the Apocrypha to be of secondary importance, Jerome only bothered to translate Tobit and part of Judith himself, leaving the remainder as they were prepared in Latin by others.
The Pre-Biblical Bible
The Old Testament scriptures are the cultural product of Semitic peoples. The term Semitic (nowadays by popular usage sometimes incorrectly considered only to be another word for “Jewish”) was first coined in 1781 by scholar Ludwig Schlözer to describe the complete family of languages related to Hebrew, and it came to be used also as a generic name for all the speakers of those languages. The Semites include a multitude of tribal groups inhabiting Asia and Africa, not merely the Jewish. Schlözer drew the word from the account of the nations in Genesis 10, in which these various peoples are said to be descendents of Noah’s son Shem (Sem).
Four major Semitic language groups have been identified: North Peripheral or Akkadian, the oldest, the tongues of Assyria and Babylon: North Central, comprising Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic and Phoenician: South Central, covering almost all Arabic languages, Maltese (descended from Arabic) and Carthaginian (Carthage was founded as a Phoenician colony): South Peripheral, including dialects of southern Arabic and some languages of Ethiopia. The main Semitic tribal groupings are the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Aramaics, Amorites, Assyrians, Canaanites (including the Phoenicians), Hebrews, Philistines (or Palestinians), Moabites, Edomites, Chaldeans and Arabs.
Believed to have their origin in the southern part of the Arabian Peninsular, Semitic-speaking people had spread before 3000 BC through the Sinai and Syrian desert regions and by 2350 BC had become established in Mesopotamia, reaching the coastal region of Palestine and Phoenicia by 1200 BC. Circa 2000 BC, the Amorites occupied Sumer, Akkad and Caanan and by 1792 BC Hammurabi the Amorite was king of Babylon. The Semitic tribes had many variations on common legends, religious beliefs and pantheons of gods originating in the most ancient of times, such as those described in the previous chapter.
The Hebrews were not actually a race but a Semitic group of pastoral nomads originating in southern Mesopotamia, their name meaning “the people from the other side” (that is, the further side of the river Euphrates). The Bible relates that the first Hebrew was Abraham, a Sumerian who abandoned the city of Ur and took his followers to Syria and then on to Palestine (Canaan) which they began to colonise. Whether Abraham is history or myth (there is no independent archaeological or historical evidence of his existence) the original Hebrew settlers were soon being joined by further incursions of other related Semitic tribes seeking a new home away from the pressure of the great emerging empires of Sumer, Assyria and Babylon.
The word "scripture" is Latin and gained its religious significance when applied in translation of a Hebrew word meaning simply "that which is written"; the words "script", "scribe" and “scribble” come from the same Latin root. In ancient times, before the Bible existed as such, various books (as scrolls) were accepted as suitable scripture for religious purposes by the early rabbis and were collected for study and public reading in the synagogues. (See, for example, Luke 4:16-20, in which Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth is handed as an individual scroll "...the book of the prophet Esaias" [Isaiah] on its own to read aloud.) The criterion for determining holy scripture was that the piece was popularly judged to have been written by - or at least dictated by - a prophet; that is, by a man recognised as being possessed by "holy spirit".
Long before the versions of what we now perceive as the "Old Testament" stories became written down in the Late Bronze-Age/Early Iron Age period in the fledgling form of what would ultimately become the Torah of the Hebrew Tanakh, the earliest tales were a folk tradition relying entirely upon human memory, carried forward in this manner from the pre-writing period. The commitment of history and mythology to memory is a practice common to most tribal cultures, as, for example, in the case of the Celtic Druids and with the history keepers of the Gambia featured in the book and TV serial Roots (Alex Haley, ABC 1977) who could recite from memory a tribal history going back hundreds of years.
Also in common with many other early cultures, this oral tradition was not spoken or recited, but sung (poetic liturgy, the piyyutim, is still sung in the synagogue by the cantor). A similar custom can be observed behind the legends of the ancient Greeks, as represented by the poetic works of Homer for instance, as well as amongst various tribes in Africa, the Native Americans, the Anglo-Saxons (Beowulf, the Battle of Maldon etc.) and just about all emergent societies. In the Bible there remain eating songs, harvest songs, working songs (such as the "Well Song" in Numbers 21:17), wedding songs (as in the "Song of Songs") and songs of mourning: there are war songs, such as the "Song of Deborah" in Judges 5:1-32. Essentially, Homer's epics Iliad and Odyssey are also war songs, which in the same way are believed to have existed as purely oral traditions for some generations prior to being finally set down in writing. It is now increasingly accepted that Homer was probably not the author but the collector and editor of these particular works.
In addition to the collections of folk tales, the writings or scriptures began to include maxims and proverbs, spells - or ritualistic blessings and curses, which are much the same thing - and various laws decreed as necessary to the ancient Hebrew tribes by their prophets and administrators. It is worth noting that amongst many tribal cultures including the Hebraic, insanity was regarded as evidence of divine possession and lunatics were accorded special significance, their ravings regarded as the voice of a god or gods speaking through them. This gave rise to the belief that the insane had been directly "touched by God": from this belief, in later times the word "touched" alone came to be used to euphemistically describe lunacy. The continuing aberration of "speaking in tongues" (talking gibberish) represents the surviving attempt of (nominally) sane people to emulate this "divine uttering" of the insane.
As time passed, it was also considered politic to include in the writings detailed records of contracts, important edicts, lists of important persons (judges, high officials and the genealogical tables proving their hereditary right to position and authority) and proud lists of offerings and plunder. In this way, various collections of tribal archives were created in which were combined many different subjects, including folk tales and myth, the harangues of lunatics, social rules and regulations, proclamations, births and deaths, civic and military records, political agendas and other aspects of tribal history and management.
The Old Testament of the Bible gradually emerged over thousands of years from these scattered beginnings and is therefore a disparate collection of writings assembled around a core of what was once primarily a series of oral traditions entirely dependant for their details upon the powers of human memory, which indeed can be considerable. There were actually several different versions of these traditions in the earliest times amongst various tribes and regions (as we have seen, for instance, in the cases of the stories of the Garden of Eden and the flood). Amongst the various Semitic tribes of the Palestine region these coalesced over time into two major different versions, one held by the tribal kingdom of Judah, the other by the tribal kingdom of Israel.
The Kingdom of Israel (also known as Samaria) was founded about 1,400 BC by a group of Semitic tribes (whose people were known as Israelites) in part of northern Palestine. The Kingdom of Judah was founded around 1,200 BC by a different group of Semitic tribes (whose people were known as Jews) in part of southern Palestine. The Jews and Israelites comprised two closely related but discrete cultures, kingdoms and military powers with their own capitals and initially their own different religions and gods. In the southern kingdom of Judah, the tribal god that came to prominence was Yahweh: in the northern kingdom of Israel, the tribal god was El or Elohim (a plural form indicating an original family or pantheon of gods).
Although the highly complex evolutionary threads of very early Semitic tribal religious beliefs are incomplete and difficult to trace in their entirety due to scarcity of contemporary written sources and later religious censorship and obfuscation, it is noted by some researchers that the name Elohim seems to originate with the ancient Semitic people the Canaanites. A Bronze Age Canaanite culture was discovered in 1928 in Ugarit in present-day Syria whose written language has now been largely deciphered from inscriptions on clay tablets and is believed from analysis to be a linguistic branch of the earlier ancestral tongue from which other Canaanite languages also descended. Ugarit thrived around 1450-1200 BC. In these very ancient Ugarit records, the cuneiform word Elohim (‘lhm) refers to the family of gods headed by their chief god El. The writings also record that there were many other gods in addition to El, such as the earth-god Baal, Mot the god of death, Resheph the god of disease and healing, Asherah the queen of the gods who was El’s wife, Yam the sea god and lord of the primordial chaos, Dagon the grain-god, Hadad the sky-god, etc.
(The earliest mention of the god El so far discovered comes from about 2300 BC at the archaeological site of the Bronze Age Ebla civilisation at Tell Mardikh in Syria, where the excavation of the royal library unearthed a list of deities in which El is a desert god who built a sanctuary or garden in the wasteland for his two wives and their children. This represents one of the earlier and less convoluted cultural versions of the common “creation” myth where the god is also the first man and the human race becomes his actual rather than figurative children in a mythological clear space separated as a garden from the desert.)
In typical Bronze Age “warrior aristocrat” style, El has the characteristics of a fighting heroic god. It seems that the worship of this pantheon of pagan gods spread into the region around Ugarit with the movements of the Canaanite tribes, including those who colonised the northern part of Palestine to form the kingdom of Israel. In the southern kingdom of Judah, the tribal god Yahweh was also a “warrior aristocracy” god, the name seeming to originate with the phrase yahwe şba’ot, another plural term, meaning “the hosts of heaven”. The term also appears in the description du yahwi şba’ot or “he who creates the heavenly armies”, again a fitting appellation for a Bronze Age warrior-god.
The Kingdom of Israel was itself an amalgamation of ten different Semitic tribes who had grouped together in an organised fashion whilst retaining their strong self-identity, each with their own individual slant on the regional legends and “tribal pecking order”; Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, Dan, Manaseh, Ephraim, Reuben, Gad and part of the tribe of Levi. The kingdom of Judah consisted similarly of the grouped tribes of Judah, Benjamin, Simeon and the remainder of the tribe of Levi.
At about 1000 BC, King Saul briefly ruled both kingdoms (as the first king of the United Monarchy), gaining this position by consensus in order to build an effective united resistance to the neighbouring Philistines with whom a war over trade routes was developing (cf. 1 Samuel chapters 4-9). On Saul’s death there was a great dispute regarding who should be the next king, Saul's son and heir Jonathan, or Jonathan’s rival (and possibly former homosexual lover) David, a mercenary who had once worked for the Philistines and had captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites (probably a tribe of Canaanites), thereby establishing his own power-base. (See, for instance, 1 Samuel 18:1-4: “…and Jonathan loved him as his own soul… And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him…and his garments…; 19:1-2: “…But Jonathan Saul’s son delighted much in David…”; 20:41: “…and they kissed one another…”; 2 Samuel 1:26: “…Very pleasant hast thou been unto me: Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” Of course, this can be interpreted only according to a reader’s own particular sensibilities and prejudices.)
(To date, no specific independent scientific evidence for the existence of Saul, David, Jonathan or the political events of this time described in the Bible has been established. However, it can be shown by archaeology that during the Early Iron Age I period there was a sudden regional expansion of Philistine culture which at least agrees with the nature of the threat said to be faced by Saul and his successors.)
Contention led to a war between the two realms lasting seven and a half years, and after Jonathan's principle military commander changed sides amid intrigue and murder, Jonathan himself was assassinated. Adding to the problems of the two kingdoms, their mutual enemy the Philistines still represented a mounting threat to both of them. Under pressure of this danger, David was accepted as the second king of the United Monarchy, with the result that for the next thirty three years King David ruled both kingdoms and set in motion administrative measures designed to secure his position by uniting them together as one. He removed the capital of his realm from Hebron to his power-base Jerusalem some twenty miles further north, thereby creating a more central and personally favourable administrative centre and, by this political choice, inaugurating the rise to prominence of the formerly nondescript town of Jerusalem.
An important potential source of division between the two former kingdoms remained, however - the religious differences between them. To the present day we are sadly only too familiar with the bitterness and violence caused by differing religious opinions, even between rival factions professing the same religion. In order to reduce the threat of sectarian rivalry destabilising his enlarged realm, David realised that he must weld the two different religions into one, and this meant also fusing the two tribal gods Yahweh and El/Elohim into one, together with their respective priesthoods, mythologies and sacred writings. An important step was his decision to appoint two equal chief priests in Jerusalem, one from the northern religion and another from the southern religion. The priest from the north was a priest of Elohim and was by tradition considered a descendent of the Israelite prophet Moses, while the priest from the south was a priest of Yahweh considered a descendent of the Jewish prophet Aaron. King David ordered these conjoint chief priests to attend to the matter of fitting the two different religions together like pieces of two jigsaw puzzles.
A major part of this task consisted of editing together as best as possible the two different sets of religious texts containing tribal history and mythology, later to be known as scriptures. Although the two accounts were based on the same kinds of tribal mythology and shared versions of many common Semitic folk tales, each was written and compiled from a completely different perspective: the task of joining them together was somewhat akin to combining the Paris and Berlin telephone directories, and led to a similar result inasmuch as a careful reading of the detail would reveal that the text consisted of two different sets of manuscripts which had been merged together to appear as one. This was the origin of the Bible, specifically the first five books of the Old Testament, today variously called the Pentateuch (Greek for "five books") or the "Five Books of Moses", but more properly the Torah.
Following David’s death his son Solomon (also called Jedidiah in the Tanakh) ruled as the third king of the United Monarchy. After his death there occurred a civil war brought about by the weakness of character of Solomon’s son Hobo (or Rehav’am, the Bible’s Rehoboam) whose reign has been dated to within the period 931-913 BC and who announced a harsh taxation (“…my father also chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions…” 1 Kings 12:1-14). As a result, the northern kingdom renounced any legal right of the House of David to rule them and once again became independent for a time under their own king, Jeroboam, who was crowned King of Israel.
Most of that part of the tribe of Levi (the Levites) who lived in the north, who had earlier covenanted to uphold the single conjoined deity of the united belief ordered by King David (Jeremiah 33:22-24 and Malachi 2:4-6) at that time abandoned Israel and fled to Judah in the south in order to escape the forced return of the worship of the original pagan Israelite gods El and the Elohim which Hobo sought to restore (1 Kings 14:23; “…For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree…”: 2 Chronicles 13:7; “… And there are gathered unto him (Jeroboam) vain men, the children of Belial1…”: 1 Kings 16:2; “…thou hast walked in the way of Jeroboam, and hast made my people Israel to sin...”: 1 Kings 16:31-33: “…And it came to pass… that he took to wife Jezebel… and went and served Baal, and worshipped him…And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal (i.e. a temple of Baal) which he had built in Sameria (i.e. the kingdom of Israel) … And Ahab made a grove…”
For some two hundred years the independent kingdom of Israel was ruled by a succession of its own kings (18 are recorded in the Bible following Jeroboam) until the reign of Hoshea in 722 BC when the Assyrians conquered it and deported such huge numbers of the population as slaves to parts of Iran and Afghanistan that in the wake of the conquest the twelve original Hebrew tribes were finally reduced and consolidated to two (Israel and Judah) who, united again, occupied the vacant territory; the others became known to history as the Lost Tribes of Israel. (A similar fate came to the recovered survivors only some hundred years later, this time at the hands of the Babylonians.)
The Cut-And-Paste Job
Of course, it is a widely held belief that the "Five Books of Moses" (the Torah) were actually written by Moses himself. This cannot be the case, however, because the account includes a description of the death of Moses, and even the most fanatical biblical adherent has never ventured the opinion that his corpse continued writing after death. So can anything be known about who exactly did all the writing and compiling of the Old Testament? In fact, a great deal can be learned from a forensic study of the texts, and although the specific names of the individuals concerned will probably never be known, they have been clearly distinguished and referred to by anonymous letters, as we might say "Mr. A and Mrs. B".
It has been realised for some centuries that there are many duplicated parts of the Bible where the same story is repeated twice, and sometimes three times, frequently with variations in detail. These duplications are called doublets (or triplets as appropriate) and are the result of the combining of the different versions of the ancient texts from the two different kingdoms of Judah and Israel, themselves including compilations of earlier tribal oral traditions adding yet another layer of different slant, plus certain later additions which will be described shortly.
Thus, there came to be two different versions of the "creation" story in the Bible (Genesis 1 & 2). There are two entirely contradictory versions of the numbers of animals entering the Ark (Genesis 6 & 7). Genesis 7:11 has flood water coming from the heavens and from below the ground, but 7:4 states all the water fell as rain. Genesis 7:12 says the flood lasted forty days and forty nights: 7:17 agrees, saying forty days: however 7:24 and 8:3 both contradict this and say a hundred and fifty days. In Genesis 12:10-20, the characters are named Abram and Sarai; they are in Egypt; Abram is afraid the Pharaoh will kill him and take his wife and tells the Pharaoh she is his sister in order to attempt to defuse his lust. In Genesis 20:1-18, the names have been changed to Abraham and Sarah; they are in a land called Gerar where Abraham tells the local king Abimelech that his wife is his sister. In Genesis 26:7-11, it is Abraham's son Isaac who is in Gerar with his wife Rebekah and who tells Abimelech his wife is his sister. (If the last two versions are both to be considered as true, Abimelech must have been almost terminally dim to fall twice for the same trick!)
There are two different versions of Abraham and the covenant: two of Isaac’s naming: two of Jacob’s journey to Mesopotamia: two of Jacob's revelation at Beth-el: two of God changing Jacob's name to Israel: two of Moses extracting water from rocks: two of the parting of the waters - one the Red Sea by Moses, the other the Jordan by Aaron - and so on.
The first serious analytical studies of the textual content of the Bible began in Germany in the latter part of the eighteenth century, where scholars, already aware of the many doublets, observed that in the majority of these duplicated stories there was a major difference - there was a different god in each! One set of the stories described a tribal god named El or Elohim (usually translated in the later English Bible as "God") while the other described a tribal god named YHWH (Yahweh, the origin of the mispronounced "Jehovah" usually translated in the Bible as "Lord"). This suggested that there were two different authors at work, and they were called E and J (J being the German for Y) for "Elohim" and "YHVH" or "Yahweh"; and that their writings had at some point been combined to give the impression of a single text.
As if the embryonic Old Testament were not yet sufficiently confused and riddled with conflicting information, some time between 770 BC and 600 BC a third text was inserted which chiefly focuses on the methodology of religious observation - the rites of the temple, the genealogy of the priests, the appropriate priestly costume, the method of sacrifice and so on. This embedded text has been given the name the "P" (for "priestly") document. It would appear that the tales included within the P document were deliberately composed as a Jewish (Judah) response promoting Aaron preferentially to the Moses-promoting E document of the Israelites. For instance, where the earlier E texts describe God speaking to Moses, the P document now described God as speaking to both Moses and Aaron: where the previous texts mention the staff of Moses, the P document mentions the staff of Aaron, and so-on.
Then, to cap even this, in 2 Kings 23:8-13 it is described how Halkiah found a "lost scroll of Moses" about 622 BC which was read out to king Josiah. Most scholars agree from analysis that this was the book of Deuteronomy, a probability also agreed with by many early Christian Church Fathers, including Jerome himself. Deuteronomy mainly covers the same ground as the other texts, but also contains some new material. The writer of the Deuteronomy text has been named "D", for "Deuteronomist". The Deuteronomist claims that it is Moses doing the writing, but the literary style can be identified as that of the latter part of the reign of Josiah over half a millennium later. It was quite possibly written by Halkiah who claimed to have "discovered" it.
So, at this stage of its development, the Old Testament contained at least four major texts from different sources, each with its own axe to grind and its own agenda, each contesting contents with the others to a greater or lesser degree. There is the E text originating with the oral tribal histories of the northern kingdom of Israel, and the J text originating with the oral tribal histories of the southern kingdom of Judah, these two already merged together like a pack of playing cards given a riffle-shuffle on the orders of King David, with the object of removing a potential threat to the stability of his recently united realm. There is the P text, which attempts to equalise the importance of the Jewish Aaron with that of the Israelite Moses. There is the D text added to the growing assembly of writings around 622 BC, in which yet more differences are introduced to the contents. Some experts even think this division into four different authors is too simple to explain the variations in the texts and suggest that it is, in fact, four groups or schools of authors.
Whichever the case, the analysis shows that all the different versions were at some later stage combined by an editor, who has been called "the Redactor". The Redactor, whoever they might have been, sometimes placed the different stories one after the other and sometimes wove them together: they also added the connective narrative comments such as: "Now it came to pass, after these things..." and: "At that time…", and so on. In more modern times, this whole process would be called a "cut and paste job". The nature of the different texts remains similar inasmuch as they may cover the same outline events, but the specific details vary considerably depending upon the geographical, religious and political origin of the section. For instance, in the northern stories from the kingdom of Israel, the important holy mountain is Mount Horeb, and much greater emphasis is accorded to Joseph and his family, who belonged to one of the most prominent of the northern Israelite tribes. The person who saves Joseph from being killed by his own brothers is Reuben, the head of the chief northern tribe. In the southern stories from the kingdom of Judah, the important holy mountain is Mount Sinai, and the person who saves Joseph from his brothers is Judah, the head of the chief southern tribe.
Although an attempt at fairness is evident by the inclusion of doublets (and triplets) even when mutually contradictory, the tendency in the Redactor's combination of the texts is for the J text (that of the religion worshipping the god Yahweh) to subtly dominate the E text (that of the religion worshipping the gods El or the Elohim), for the simple reason that the kingdom supplying the J text, Judah, was politically more powerful.
The cleverness of this "bias" within the Bible has deceived minds with its sly propaganda even into the present day: wherever there are two or more different versions of events recorded in the Old Testament, it is the J text embedded within the scriptures that is the best known and generally the most commonly accepted. For example; who slew a Philistine giant with a pebble from a sling? The reply will be "David" in 99% or more of cases (1 Samuel 17:4, 7, 50, a J text), and probably less than 1% of people asked this question will reply, equally correctly, "Elhanan" (2 Samuel 21:19, an E text) or "Jonathan" (2 Samuel 21:21, a P text). Likewise, ask someone how many of each kind of animal Noah is said to have taken aboard the Ark and they are much more likely to reply "one pair of each" (Genesis 6:19, "J") than to answer "between four and fourteen of each" ("seven pairs of each clean beast and two pairs of each beast that is not clean" Genesis 7:2-3, "E").
The document produced by the Redactor's clever "cut and paste job" became part of the Tanakh, the mainspring of the condensing Jewish religion, strongly sponsored by the prophets Nehemiah and Ezra. This, then, was the variegated origin of what eventually became the Old Testament of the Bible. Even in the laws supposedly written in stone by God's own hand, the Ten Commandments, there was no absolute correspondence. Although certainly similar in nature, the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-21, have glaring differences to the same Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5:1-30. Perhaps the most glaring difference is the little known fact that, in Deuteronomy, there are actually eleven commandments! (See appendix III)
In fact, the differences between the Ten (or Eleven) Commandments are merely one example of a great many errors and contradictions in the Bible, an entire list of which would require a complete book to itself, especially if the New Testament is included, as we shall see. In Appendix I and II, some of the mistakes are itemised to prove the point. Some Christian cults believe they are not bound by the Ten Commandments, through a convoluted piece of reasoning applied to Colossians 2:13-14 in which it is stated that all sins have already been forgiven and that “…the handwriting of ordinances that was against us…” (i.e. presumably including the Ten Commandments) has been “…blotted out…” by the crucifixion.
(The term “cult” derives from the Latin cultus meaning “worship”, “care” and “adoration”. In English, it has come, mainly through media use, (incorrectly) to signify only a religious group holding non-mainstream and/or occult beliefs. When used correctly, the word means any of the divisions within a single faith, for which English speakers generally prefer to use the word “sect” (Latin secta, a set of people). In fact, “sect” and “cult” are synonymous, as is shown by most other European Romance (Latin-based) languages. In French and Spanish, culte and culto simply means “worship” or “religious attendance”. French secte means “cult”. In German, the word for “cult” is Sekte, in Russian sekta, etc. It is therefore perfectly correct to refer to any sub-division of Christianity, including Protestantism and Catholicism, as being, by factual definition, a cult.)
There is continuing argument in the USA at the moment regarding the fundamentalist campaign to urge Congress to permit the prominent display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings and in public outdoor locations, which is held by their opponents to violate the First Amendment of the Constitution. The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to outlaw officially-sanctioned prayers in public schools has alarmed many fundamentalist Christian cults, who as a result have succeeded in lobbying many state and local legislatures to allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed inside or outside public buildings.
Fundamentalists deem such displaying of the Ten Commandments to be required by the authority of the Bible due to a selective interpretation of Deuteronomy 6:9; “…And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates…” However, they conveniently choose to completely ignore the equally authoritative instructions given in the previous verse 8: “…And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes…” Evidently, fundamentalists consider that the appropriate biblical instruction for the decoration of buildings should be obeyed, but that an identical biblical instruction for the decoration of fundamentalists should be disobeyed, else presumably they would have the Ten Commandments tattooed on their foreheads and hands, or at least paste them there on paper.
Hundreds of public monuments containing an inscription of the Ten Commandments, or decalogues, can already be seen all over the United States, many inside or near government buildings. It is now seldom realised that many dozens of these were put in place for the famous movie director Cecil B. DeMille by the theatrical benevolent society the Fraternal Order of Eagles as part of a publicity stunt to promote the 1956 film The Ten Commandments (some of the plot details of which, since the Bible proved too sparse as a source for the screenplay, were actually taken from the Koran: see, for instance, sura 26). The granite inscription of the Commandments located in Dunseith, North Dakota, was ceremonially unveiled by Charlton Heston who played Moses, and that in Milwaukee by Yul Brynner who played the Pharaoh.
5. Jesus is Hijacked by a Terrorist.
"He's not the Messiah - he's a very naughty boy!"
Monty Python's Life of Brian
The Fake Apostle
Nor does the integrity of the New Testament stand up to detailed inspection. Three major characteristics need to be carefully examined if any kind of objective truth is to be discovered. These are: (a) a detailed comparative analysis of its contents: (b) the known history of its compilation and edited rewrites: (c) what we might refer to as the “urban religious myths” tagged on to it for which there is no actual basis in the Bible or anywhere else (that is, all the commonly held suppositions about the New Testament that are actually entirely untrue and based upon nothing but preferential opinion: for example, the idealised image held by some, in defiance of all reason, that Jesus, a middle-eastern Jew of Semitic race, was a fair-haired and blue-eyed Caucasian man). If such a forensic examination is conducted, it can be very clearly seen that an alternative history of events very different to the commonly held interpretations is actually provable even from references within the Bible itself.
The most common and deeply rooted of such “biblical urban myths” concerns not Jesus himself but, rather, the religion of Christianity, which developed after his death and which Jesus himself had absolutely no connection with. It is a provable historical falsehood that the founder of Christianity was Jesus. The founder of Christianity was, in fact, Saul, a Pharisee (Acts 23:6 "...I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee").
The Pharisees (from the Aramaic perIshayyA) were a sect noted for the strict observance of the Jewish religion: today, we would call them fundamentalists or extremists. Saul himself boasts that even amongst these radicals he was considered over-the-top (Galatians 1:14; “…above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.”). Saul, or "Paulus" (Paul) in Latin, was a leading figure in the violent persecution of the followers of a Jewish rabbi (teacher) whose name was Yeheshua, familiarly Yeshu (a version of "Joshua") but who later became universally known by a mispronounced Greek translation of his name, "Jesus".
In Acts 8:58 Paul is an active accessory (by looking after the robes of the murderers) in the stoning to death of Stephen, commonly considered the “first Christian martyr” (another religious “urban myth” - Christianity as such did not exist when Stephen was murdered, so Stephen was not actually a Christian, merely a follower of Jesus which is not the same thing). In 1 Corinthians 15:9 Paul himself makes the confession: "... I persecuted the church of God", exactly the same words also appearing in Galatians 1:13; and in Philippians 3:5 he admits to "...persecuting the church". This is confirmed with a little more detail in Acts 8:3, which states: "As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women, committed them to prison." Acts 9:1 also confirms Paul's violence against the followers of “Jesus”: "And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord..." In fact, today, Paul would most likely be classified as a religious terrorist.
In Galatians 4:13, Philippians 2:26-27, 1 Corinthians 2:3 and 2 Corinthians 12:7, there are strong hints that Paul suffered from some kind of recurring illness characterised by “…weakness… and much trembling…” and by being “…sick nigh on to death…” which departs as rapidly as it arrives, sounding very like bouts of malaria, which can produce hallucinations (Other writers have also suggested epilepsy.)
On experiencing a sudden flash of "light from heaven", he collapses from his horse and a disembodied voice asks: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" The chimerical speaker proclaims itself as "Jesus" and Paul directly reverses his opinion of him and his posthumous followers and decides that he must now help to further their cause.
It is important to remember that Paul never in his life actually met the real Jesus or heard him teaching. It is also significant to note that the New Testament itself gives two diametrically conflicting accounts of Paul’s “conversion”. In Acts 22:8-9, it states categorically that his companions could not hear the mysterious “voice” themselves (“And they that were with me… heard not the voice of him that spake to me”), whereas in Acts 9:7 everybody present heard it (“And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice but seeing no man”). It is almost superfluous to point out that at least one of these self-contradicting statements must be untrue.
Nevertheless, following this, about the year 38 AD, Paul journeys to Jerusalem and contacts the apostles there, initially through the intercession of Barnabas (one of the newer apostles who had by now swelled the ranks of the surviving eleven to over seventy as related in Luke 10:1). “…Barnabus took him, and brought him to the apostles” (Acts 9:27). He is interviewed by Peter and James (Galatians 1:18-19), and attempts to convince them he has changed his mind about persecuting their sect and would like to become one of them. Quite naturally, the apostles are highly suspicious and the upshot was disagreeable: "And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple" (Acts 9:26).
Furthermore, in the Epistle to the Galatians - in which for some reason he is more than usually honest - Paul makes a series of very revealing confessions. He admits that he was an impostor who had failed to receive the genuine apostle's approval to preach (Galatians 1:16-17; "...I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me..."). He admits that existing established churches - the network of which he himself had only recently been a major destroyer - were circulating an entirely different version of Jesus' teachings to that which was being formulated by him and which later became the only one available to Christians (Galatians 1:8; “…But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than that which we (i.e. Paul) have preached unto you, let him be accursed”).
He also directly owns up that his own preaching was based not on any record or transcript of Jesus' ministry, or on any study or verbal instruction, but solely on whatever invention popped into his head at the moment (Galatians 1:11-12; "But I certify to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ."). He even begins this letter by admitting that he has never actually been appointed an apostle or had his position as a self-proclaimed apostle recognised in any way by the genuine ones. He acknowledges that his single flimsy "authority" for claiming to be an apostle was his own ego, which prompted him to believe himself approved of, in his own imagination, by Jesus and God (Galatians 1:1; "Paul, an apostle [not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father..."]).
The Invention of "Christ"
The majority of Jesus' followers, as the verse from Acts 9:26 quoted above (“…they were all afraid of him…”) confirms, were very sceptical about Paul and his claim to now be championing their movement, but their leader James, sometimes called James the Elder or James of Jerusalem, Jesus' own brother (see Mark 6:3: "Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon?" and Galatians 1:19: "...but other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother") seems to grudgingly accept him and decides to delegate to him a mission to Tarsus, Paul’s home town, to preach the message of the actual disciples of Jesus.
Paul is palpably dominated by his own ego, maybe resenting the unfriendliness of Jesus’ followers, whose comrades he has persecuted and killed, and perhaps even still influenced psychologically by a Pharisee notion of seeking to destroy the humanistic truths which Jesus had taught, a message which many strict Jews perceived as containing criticisms and violations of the established Jewish religion (the very reason the Jewish hierarchy had demanded Jesus’ execution). Paul takes it upon himself to abandon his legitimate brief and instead, without any apostolic mandate whatsoever, travels round various towns and cities of the Mediterranean for a number of years “shooting his mouth off” on matters about which he evidently cares little or nothing for the actual truth.
It is during this period that Paul invents his own religion, the doctrines of which begin the process of decisively overwriting the true historical figure of Jesus and most of his original teachings. Instead of “Jesus” (Yeshu), Paul decides that the title Mashiach (“Messiah”) from Jewish prophesy is more appropriate. According to the sacred writings of the Hebrews which went on to become the Old Testament (particularly Exodus 29:29, Leviticus 4:3, 1 Samuel 10:1 & 24:7 and Isaiah 61:1), priests, kings and prophets should be anointed with a consecrated oil. In Low Latin, holy oil was chrisma. From this, the Latin and Greek translation of the Jewish Mashiach adopted by Paul became Christus (Latin) and Christos (Greek) from which much later emerged the personal appellation Christ, to mean "the anointed one" or “he who is anointed”. (Low Latin as spoken and written in the Middle Ages is defined as lasting from the fall of Rome under the 5th century barbarian invasions until the schism of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, being a degenerative form of the classical Latin that began as early as the time of Cicero and which later developed unchecked into more uncouth styles with the loss of the Roman Empire. Some authorities date the Middle Ages only from the fall of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine [Eastern Roman] Empire in the 11th century, but by then the purer Latin of Classical times was already considerably debased.)
The standardised spelling Christ in English dates only from the 17th century when, after the Restoration of Charles II and the onset of the “Age of Reason” during which education became fashionable, the spelling of certain words was changed to fit their Greek or Latin origins more closely. Prior to this the word was also spelled Crist, the i being pronounced both as “ee”, as in “machine”, preserved in the names of churches such as St Katherine Cree (Leadenhall Street, London), or as a short “i” as in “mist”, preserved in the modern pronunciation of Christmas. The term “Christ” appears in English and most other European languages because of the Greek usage of Christos in the New Testament as a title for Jesus. In the (pre-Christian) Septuagint version of the Old Testament, the word “christ” was used simply as a Greek translation of the Hebrew word mashiach meaning "[one who is] anointed", and of course in Old Testament times this title of “christ” was never a personal name and had no connection with the man Jesus who had not then been born. While many Christian writers claim that this term implies Jewish tradition had given this title to their predicted future saviour ready for Jesus to inherit, there is actually no "saviour" concept whatsoever, as defined in Christianity, in the Jewish tradition. Mashiach the "anointed one” more closely means “high priest”, “leader”, or even “ruler”.
The Greek word “Christ” is equivalent with “chrism”, meaning perfumed oil and is related to the Greek chrios "I rub, anoint"; in fact Christos in classical Greek usage could mean covered in oil, and is thus a literal and accurate translation of messiah, any person appropriately anointed with oil. The Greek term is thought to derive from the Proto-Indo-European root of ghrei-, from which derives the Sanskrit ghrish "to rub, grind" and which in Germanic languages, such as English, mutated into gris- and grim-. Hence the English words grisly, grim, grime, grist, grind and grease, are thought to be related with Christ. In French, the Greek term, in ordinary usage, mutated first to cresme and then to creme, due to the loss of certain “s” usages in French grammar, which was then absorbed into English as cream, the modern word for a cosmetic “anointing” substance or anointment (hence the contracted word ointment). The word “christos” came to be used in Greek contexts (the New Testament was first written in Greek) as an actual personal title referring to the status or designation of the person anointed, rather than to the actual process of anointment with oil (much as the term “the Crown” came to mean the person and office of a monarch and not just their headgear).
It has been pointed out (by Tom Harpur, a former professor of Theology at the University of Toronto) that the Christian usage of the term Christ may even possibly originate from Egypt. Harpur has argued that the application of the term Christ to Jesus may derive from the Egyptian use of the term Karast (“covered in embalming oil”) to describe the god Horus, from whose pagan mythology some of the aspects of the newly-emerging Christian theology may have been inspired. For example, the death and resurrection of Horus-Osiris, and Horus' nature as both the son of Osiris and Osiris himself, have been seen as foundations for the later Christian doctrines of the resurrection of Jesus and the Trinity. Some have claimed that certain elements of the story of Jesus were embellishments copied from the legends surrounding Horus. Indeed, some even claim more extremely that the story of Christ was copied entirely from Horus, especially the infancy narratives, and fashioned into the figure of a Jewish teacher.
According To Whose Gospel?
It can be conspicuously noticed by carefully studying the New Testament that the real apostles are manifestly disturbed to hear reports of Paul's teachings. James accordingly arranges for approved pursuers from amongst the apostles, particularly Barnabus, to go after him in order to undo the damage he is causing and try to detain him “in bondage” (as Paul himself puts it in the Bible) because Paul is spreading inventions that conflict with the reality of Jesus as directly experienced by the apostles who had known him in life. The official Christian line is that Barnabas (whose name was Joseph until he joined the apostles and took a new name) was a friend and colleague of Paul’s who travelled out to Tarsus to see how the message of Christ was being preached to the Gentiles. A thorough reading of the biblical text, however, suggests that events were actually very different and that Barnabas, who had earlier acted as Paul’s go-between with the apostles, was now dispatched to be his investigator and judge. (Who better to assess Paul’s indiscretions and undo his damage than the man who had inadvisably sponsored this loose canon to the apostles in the first place?)
There is evidence in the New Testament that Barnabas, far from remaining Paul’s faithful companion in the preaching of a common gospel as Christian myth holds, completely disapproved of Paul’s teachings and finally abandoned him in disgust (Acts 11:22: "Then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem: and they sent forth Barnabas..." Acts 11:25: "Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: and when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch"). The Bible does not say at this juncture “…he asked him to go with him to Antioch” or “…they decided to go…” or “…they went together…” The phrase used is the peremptory “…he brought him…”, as a superior would bring a reluctant offender. The apostle Peter, probably Jesus' closest friend and companion throughout his entire ministry, met them at Antioch. However, Paul irately refuses to eat humble pie, resenting being made to explain himself to Jesus' friend, and the two men parted in great anger, Barnabas rejecting Paul and following Peter (Galatians 2:11: “But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face…" Acts 15:39: “And the contention was so sharp between them that they departed asunder one from the other…”)
The words specifically used to describe this parting are departed asunder, an English translation of the Greek words chorista and apochorizo. It should be born in mind that these words are used elsewhere in the Bible to indicate not a simple “farewell” or reluctant parting but something violent and dramatic, as in Revelation 6:14; “…And the heaven departed (apochorizo) as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places”. “Chorista” (asunder) means “aloof”, “apart”, “separately” and can mean abandoning a husband or wife, and also divorce. Applied to friends or colleagues, it signifies the association is irremediably terminated. These candid admissions and the deliberate usage of such extreme words hardly suggests a group of visionary friends, united in their dedication to a single belief and a single common purpose, bidding each other a fond farewell as they head in different directions.
That the genuine apostles were furious with Paul, and that Barnabus abandoned him, is proven by Galatians 2:12 & 13, where Paul himself writes: “...For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles; but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.” Put in modern language, the chief apostle James had mixed with Gentiles (non-Jews) in a spirit of friendship (ate with them), as had Jesus, until it became known that Paul was attempting to recruit an army of Gentiles to the support of his new religious ideas. Then, when they had caught up with Paul, James changed his behaviour back to more strictly Jewish custom (he withdrew and separated himself from eating with Gentiles and only ate in the company of other Jews) for fear of the condemnation of the other Jewish apostles (“them that were of the circumcision”) who were enraged with Paul. These passages continue (Galatians 2:13): “…And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him: insomuch that Barnabus also was carried away with their dissimulation…” or, in modern terms, Paul is complaining; “And the other Jewish apostles criticised me likewise as James did, to such an extent that Barnabus fully agreed with what they were saying against me.”
Harassed by enforcers from amongst the genuine apostles who are anxious to set the record straight by advising the listening public of Paul’s lies (Acts 15:22-24: “Then it pleased the apostles… to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch… forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us [i.e. Paul] have troubled you with words, subverting your souls…”), Paul eventually has to pluck up the courage to return to Jerusalem where he faces those whose trust and mission he has betrayed, Jesus’ actual followers. He is forced to confess to the apostles that he was preaching an artificial account of Jesus, not their gospel but “…my gospel…”, a different one invented by himself which, the Bible makes clear, the apostles had not authorised or even known before this meeting (Galatians 2:2: "And I... communicated unto them (the apostles) that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles." Romans 2:16: “…in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel...”).
In passages such as these, the New Testament confirms the existence of two opposed and mutually-contradicting versions of Jesus’ history – Paul’s own home-made fabrication (“…my gospel…” which was “…the gospel I preach among the gentiles”… which had to be “…communicated…” to the apostles because they had never heard it before) and the factual information and eyewitness memories maintained by the surviving apostles who had personally known Jesus and been taught by him, and in all likelihood had already been set down in writing by them, which Paul angrily dismisses as “…another gospel…” (Galatians 1:6) altogether different to his.
In the second epistle to the Corinthians (11:3-4) Paul himself states explicitly that the genuine apostles are proclaiming "another gospel" and “another Jesus, whom we have not preached”; in other words, a Jesus completely different from the one Paul has fabricated - Paul who had never even met the real Jesus and who has distorted, expurgated and entirely re-devised the details of Jesus’ life to create a completely different story to that remembered and recorded by the genuine apostles who followed Jesus personally and had, unlike Paul, received Jesus’ personal mandate to go out into the world and teach as he had taught.
It is also confessed by Paul that whilst the apostles preached one kind of gospel to the Jewish community ("the circumcised"), he was preaching something entirely different to the Gentiles ("the uncircumcised"): "...when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter..." (Galatians 2:7). This also shows that he had already in his own estimation elevated himself to the position of chief competitor, and indeed (as evidenced by his linking of the two opposing gospels to the divisive issue of circumcision) chief contradictor, of Jesus’ personal friend the apostle Peter. This egotistical opinion of Paul’s that he had been charged by God to preach a different message to the non-Jewish world than the apostles were teaching to the Jewish converts is confirmed by his next remark (Galatians 2:8): “…for he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles…”). Or in other words, if Peter claimed a spiritual authority, so could Paul: sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Furthermore, Paul confesses that the other apostles had tried to forbid him from preaching, because he continued to improvise his dubious "gospel" from his own imagination and not from any legitimate eye-witness account given to him by the apostles: "...to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention... ye received it not as the word of men... and (they, i.e. the apostles) have persecuted us... forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles..." (1 Thessalonians 2:2-16). Additionally, in the same verses, Paul specifically and petulantly accuses the real apostles of being burdensome to his own ambitions, whilst also letting slip by his use of words his own differentiation from the genuine apostles of Jesus: “…nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome, as the apostles of Christ.”
The real apostles, a majority of whom were Jewish and considered Jesus equally Jewish, were also outraged by Paul's accusation that anyone who had been circumcised (i.e. all good male Jews) would be completely rejected by Christ (Galatians 5:2-4: "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.")
“The law” refers to the Law of Moses, i.e. the Jewish religion which requires ritual male circumcision, a bris, on the eighth day after birth at which time a name is also officially bestowed. Paul was circumcised (Philippians 3:5; “…Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews…”) and Jesus himself was also circumcised (Luke 2:21), but by this time Paul appears to have firmly renounced Judaism and to be ranting against those amongst the apostles who saw Jesus’ purpose as being to establish a less corrupt observance of the Jewish religion and, therefore, as being a purer version of Judaism rather than representing an entirely new belief altogether, as Paul was attempting to manufacture. In the passage from Galatians 5 quoted above can be identified the starting point of Paul’s divorcing of Yeshu (“Jesus”) the human Jewish teacher from “Christ” his new artificial god.
There followed substantial acrimonious running arguments, again giving the lie to the popular myth of a unified “band of brothers” spreading the “word of Christ”, during which Paul records that he had in fact returned to Jerusalem with great trepidation and spoken at first privately to those apostles he considered least dangerous to him, in order to “test the water” and discover whether or not he should flee from the general anger of the apostles, whom he now viewed as opponents (“false brethren”); “…and I communicated... privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain… because of false brethren…” (Galatians 2:2).
It seems that any of the apostles who opposed Paul’s schemes and propaganda were hysterically condemned by him as “false brethren”, for he uses the phrase more than once when members of the genuine apostles attempt to out-manoeuvre his plots, as he himself records in his own letters (epistles), almost foaming at the mouth with rage when a group of the apostles, without at first revealing to him who they were, investigated the liberties Paul was taking in his teaching about Jesus and again threatened him with “arrest” (“bondage”) in Galatians 2:4; “…And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Jesus Christ, that they might bring us into bondage…”
The Reverend Robert Mackintosh, Professor of Christian Ethics, Apologetics and Sociology and lecturer at the University of Manchester (writing in Peake’s Commentary, 1919) points out that due to these investigations and the general hostility of the apostles, “…The career of Paul is at stake” and although “…reluctant to …subordinate himself…he is willing to risk anything”. Professor Mackintosh comments dryly: “Things cannot have developed altogether smoothly.”
In Acts 21:17-26 the leaders of the apostles meet in an assembly to consider the problem of Paul (Acts 21:18-19; “…And the day following Paul went in with us unto James; and all the elders were present. And when he had saluted them, he declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry”). As Professor Mackintosh points out, the genuine apostles at this time represent multitudes of Jews who believe in the teaching of Jesus (Yeshu) but are still strictly Jewish and uphold the Jewish religious laws and customs, finding absolutely no dichotomy in this and regarding the true facts of Jesus (prior to the addition of embroideries) as being perfectly compatible with Judaism as they perceive it.
Paul, on the other hand, is accused of exhorting Jews who live in those other regions he has been visiting to desert the Law of Moses, to abandon the practice of circumcision and to cease living according to the Jewish religious laws and customs because this is necessary in order to join his cult. After hearing Paul’s defence of his theories, the leaders of the Apostles condemn Paul and inform him that they have spiked his guns by spreading a general warning about him (…”they are informed of thee…”) with their statement “…Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law (i.e. they are all perfectly good Jews who obey the Law of Moses): and they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs.” (Acts 21:20-21)
In an attempt at reconciliation, the apostles come up with an idea which they offer to Paul. He should make the effort to repair his bad publicity amongst the Jews and appear once more to be a law-abiding follower of Judaism by joining a small group of four men who are planning to visit the temple to discharge a religious vow, and undertake to demonstrate his piety by paying for the expenses of the group, which would actually be considerable, requiring amongst other things the purchase of two lambs and a ram for each of the five of them to offer as the required sacrifices. It is carefully explained to Paul that such an act will help to reunite the two sundered groups, the followers of Jesus and the Christians of Paul. (Acts 21:22; “…the multitude must needs come together…”) Agreeing to this proposal, since the general warning about him issued by the Apostles is likely to deprive him of his audience amongst the Jews and possibly many of the Gentiles as well, Paul visits the temple with the four others in order to mark the commencement of a seven-day period of ritual purification according to Jewish custom.
Paul versus the Apostles: the Court Cases
However, as detailed in Acts 21:26 to 28:31, near the end of the seven days Paul routinely visits the temple in Jerusalem in order to complete the ritual purification and is suddenly recognised and denounced as a preacher against the Judaic religion and religious laws by some of the people there.
The crowd starts to violently attack Paul and shows signs of rapidly developing into a lynch mob. He is rescued by a squad of Roman soldiers who run to investigate the disturbance and whose tribune, Claudius Lysias, arrests Paul as a probable troublemaker. (There was a Roman garrison of one cohort [nominally 600 men at that time] plus a small cavalry unit, based in the Antonia Tower at the north-west corner of the temple precincts and connected to the temple by two flights of steps.) In view of the angry accusations of the mob, Paul is later brought for trial before the Sanhedrin (the Jewish theocratic council). The Sanhedrin is divided regarding his guilt, the Pharisees amongst them supporting Paul’s innocence (we shall consider this strange fact in a moment) and the proceedings descend into such a furore that, again, the same tribune has to order his soldiers to rescue Paul from the risk of being pulled to pieces, and he is imprisoned in the Roman fort, partly for his own protection. His case comes before the Roman procurator of Judea, Antonius Felix at Cæsarea.
As a Roman citizen, Paul presses for his right to be judged by the emperor himself, and eventually Porcius Festus, the new Roman procurator who had succeeded Felix about 58 AD, agrees to send him to Rome for judgement. (Acts 25:12: "...Then Festus, when he had conferred with the council, answered, Hast thou appealed unto Caesar? unto Caesar shalt thou go."
As can readily be understood, there would have been a lengthy list of people waiting for the emperor's personal decision on their fate. Paul is taken to Rome but not imprisoned, being kept under house arrest with a single guard, and he is free to receive visitors (Acts 28:16: "...but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him." Acts 28:23: "... there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified..." and the wait for his imperial judgement date gives Paul ample time to inject his deceptive religious inventions into the very heart of the Roman empire in the years before he dies (Acts 28:30-31: "...And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him..."
(There is no record in the New Testament or any other contemporary document regarding how or when Paul actually died. There is no way of knowing whether his appeal to the emperor was successful or not, although success is rather doubtful as the emperor concerned was Nero [ruled AD 54-68] and there is no further mention of Paul in history. A Church tradition, which has no provable historical basis, holds that Paul was beheaded in Rome about 64-67 AD by order of Nero, who is known to have certainly instituted a pogrom against Christians. An additional and equally undocumented tradition claims he was buried in the Via Ostiensis.)
These events resulted in the fact that the first detailed account of Jesus to be introduced to Rome was Paul’s new glittering invention rather than the authentic version of the genuine apostles. The plain fact is that the religion Paul introduced to Roman culture, which eventually evolved into Christianity as we know it, was not based on the true facts of Jesus as acknowledged and preserved by the actual apostles and surviving disciples.
There is an intriguing question raised by part of the New Testament account – did the Pharisees in the temple council (Sanhedrin) decide to be sympathetic to a former member of their own number, Saul or St. Paul, and if so, for what reason? The account in the Bible is so strange and contradictory on this point that the reader must be left to weigh up the given information for themselves. The situation is complex, but can be broken down into easily understandable issues.
The important point is this: after Paul was arrested at the temple, at his trial before the council it was the Pharisee lawyers (scribes) who supported his innocence (“…And there arose a great cry: and the scribes that were of the Pharisees’ part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man…” Acts 23:9). It is clear that the Pharisees in the council are on Paul’s side and certainly do not regard whatever Paul is teaching to be in any way offensive to their own particular interpretation of the Judaic religion. This rather begs the question; is there anything particular about Paul’s preaching that is not part of the teaching of the genuine apostles but is recognised by the Pharisees as being compatible or convergent with their own beliefs, even though Paul had spoken against many Jewish religious requirements, and especially something out of which they could make political capital in the council against the opinions of their rivals, the Sadducees? (Acts 23:7; “…there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees…”).
There is, indeed, one common denominator in Paul’s preaching and the Pharisees’ particular interpretation of Judaism – the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead and a “final day of judgement” by their god, whereas the Sadducees specifically did not (Acts 23:8; “…For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both…”) It would be small wonder, then, that the Pharisees, politically disposed to disagree in the council with the Sadducees and their supporters on any debatable issue, would choose to interpret any teaching of general resurrection given out by Paul to be compatible, or at least not in direct conflict, with their own belief and thereby score a point against their rivals by backing Paul.
If this veiled reference embedded within the New Testament is indeed so, it means that the genuine followers of Jesus led by those who had been with him personally during his ministry and at his death did not acknowledge, believe in or teach the resurrection of Christ.
And there is another relevant and intriguing question arising from these recorded events: the crowd in the Temple precinct were angered because they knew of Paul’s criticisms of Judaism; but Paul was one anonymous Jewish man amongst a teeming mass of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jewish men. Someone must have pointed out Paul amongst the teeming multitude in the temple courtyards and so clearly and specifically identified him that a mob immediately formed around him and tried to lynch him. It should be remembered that amongst a far smaller group of Jewish men Jesus himself had to be pointed out to his hunters by Judas Iscariot before he could be identified. It must also be born in mind that Paul had been absent from Jerusalem for many years and, going about his normal temple ablutions, would hardly be a recognisable public figure: he would be a nonentity in the crowds, identifiable perhaps only because he was in the company of four equally Jewish members of the apostle’s Church - who, significantly, were themselves untouched and ignored by the mob when it attacked. Only Paul was the subject of the violence of the crowd. As we would say today, who put the finger on Paul?
Could it possibly be that the apostles themselves had deliberately orchestrated Paul’s visit to the temple – it was, after all, their suggestion - and then sent someone there to identify and denounce him in public, in order to accomplish the exact result that was achieved – Paul’s removal from circulation? We have seen that the apostles had already tried on a few occasions to “arrest” Paul themselves (place him in “bondage”), and we know that as mere private citizens they had no actual civic authority to do any such thing legally, so that Paul was able to walk away free from their anger, as he did at Antioch. Could his arrest in the temple be the consequence of a deliberate plot by the apostles to have him removed one way or another without, as it were, “getting their own hands dirty”?
This is neither a far-fetched nor ridiculous suggestion, and it has been pondered by many, even by some profound Christian thinkers. For example, the Reverend Allan Menzies, Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews, in his 1919 analysis of the Bible’s Acts of the Apostles (included in the excellent Commentary on the Bible edited by Professor Peake, Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd 1919) goes so far as to state that when Paul arrived in Jerusalem: “…he presents himself to James with his retinue, and finds the elders, i.e. the governing body of the Church, assembled to receive them. His report to them is given as in 14:27, 15:4. Nothing is said of the subvention from the churches of Macedonia and Greece. The elders have already been considering Paul’s arrival, the painful impressions which prevail about him and doubtless… the elders have thought of a plan…”
These are speculative matters which cannot be completely resolved in the light of presently available information and, although the New Testament account is certainly extremely suggestive and redolent with intrigue, they must be left entirely to the reader’s personal preferential opinion.
Rather than attempting to convert people to the truths of Jesus’ simple form of discovering the divine within themselves by using techniques of inner tranquillity, self-honesty, humility, introspection and yoga-like development of the inner self, which he tried to reveal by his own example and teaching, Paul instead launches a Cult of Jesus that came to be called Christianity, while the strictly monotheistic Judaism and Jesus’ brand of humanitarian evolution through complete self-honesty and elimination of hypocrisy within the framework of a righteous interpretation of the Jewish religion is virtually disowned. In effect, Paul teaches instead that Jesus is a god in his own right who must be worshipped instead of other pagan gods in order for a person to collect sufficient merit marks to escape from the curse of the “original sin” of Jewish myth that everyone supposedly inherits from Eve (whether they know it or not).
Jesus advocated the worship of the Jewish God, in the strict monotheistic Judaic sense, but in the light of the purer techniques of self-honesty and introspection required to open the selfhood to higher realms of spirit and a complete purgation of hypocrisy and self-interest, referred to as the light of God, or Kingdom of Heaven. It is clear from the New Testament that Jesus saw his own mission as, in effect, prompting a "cleansing" or "purifying" of what he (and many other Jewish dissidents of his time) saw as the hypocritical political and financial corruption that had gripped the higher echelons of Judaism and was steering it off course. (As evidenced, for example, by Jesus’ violent physical assault on the temple moneylenders and his running verbal fencing matches with the “scribes and Pharisees” over the precise interpretation of the Jewish religious laws etc.)
Paul throws this away and substitutes for it, on nothing but his own sanction and against the will of the surviving apostles, the direct worship of Jesus as God. In Paul’s teaching, Jesus is distorted into an object of religious veneration, in effect a new god, a concept which Jesus himself and his true followers would have condemned as being totally blasphemous and pagan to their strictly Judaic beliefs, in which the only gods who fathered offspring were pagan deities.
(This last factor - that it is considered the mythology of a pagan god to father children on human mothers and that this would not be the case for a perfect singular spiritual entity - is one of the major theological contentions preventing Islam from conceding any validity to the assertions of Christianity.)
6. Exercising Judgement
"The tendency to turn human judgements into divine commands
makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world"
Georgia Elma Harkness (1891-1974), theologian..
Heavens Above!
It is beyond dispute that many other religions earlier than Christianity also postulated the notion of some form of “terminal day of judgement” that would serve to destroy all opponents or disbelievers of the particular religion while, at the same time, generating some form of guaranteed afterlife in paradise for all its supporters; and - the psychology of religious recruitment being what it is - such promises would be less than glittering if the promised passport to eternal bliss did not also include all those within the belief who had already been unfortunate enough to die before the final judgement day could be arranged.
The religious concept of the resurrection of humans after physical death is therefore neither unique to Christianity not does it originate there. The Aztecs, for instance, believed the god Quetzalcoatl could grant physical resurrection. There are two varieties of such a concept; that of a god who could suffer a mortal death and afterwards return to earth again in physical living form (for example, Osiris); and that of a similar process extended to the entire mass of ordinary people who are believers in a god but are not gods themselves. Sometimes, as in Christianity, both varieties are included in religions that espouse such things. In Islam, resurrection will not occur to anybody until the time of Al-Qiyamah, the Day of Judgement, and the faithful dead remain in Al-Akhirah (the afterlife, or heavenly paradise) until that time; “…It is Allah who sends forth the winds, so that they raise up the clouds, and we drive them to a land that is dead, and revive the earth therewith after its death: even so, the resurrection!” (Koran, 35:9.)
The idea of a god who is killed and then returns to mortal life to bestow a shining new improved brand of life to his people originates in the very ancient and widespread pagan belief in the “Harvest King”, also known as the “Sacrificial King” or “Divine King”, a typical variety of which takes the form of selecting a suitable candidate who is kept alive - in some versions of the belief in as much luxury as is available - until the time of the harvest when he is ritually killed, sometimes (but not always) with his blood being ceremonially sprinkled on the fields in order to “renew the vigour of life” in the ground to ensure the success of the next harvest, thereby “returning to life” in the form of a kind-of “absorption”, having been thus transformed into bread and other crop-products such as wine and then being eaten by his people. (This particular pagan belief is part of the plot of the 1973 Robin Hardy film The Wicker Man written by Anthony Shaffer.) In this pagan belief can also be found the origin of the ceremony of the Eucharist, in which, again, the blood and flesh of the sacrificed god-man is ritually transformed into the harvest products wine and bread and eaten by his followers.
According to the pagan way, the Divine King should be chosen by the people rather than inherit the position in the normal manner of kingship. At the end of his allotted reign, he should go willingly and voluntarily to his own sacrifice, which has already been carefully arranged. It is known that pagan beliefs continued to be widely observed well into Christian times, with many pagan elements being incorporated into Christianity (for example, Father Christmas, the Christmas tree, the Yule log, Easter eggs, the Easter Bunny, the Harvest Festival, Candlemass etc. etc.) and there is a possible example of the continuation of this ritual sacrifice of a “Harvest King” lingering into English medieval history.
After the death of William I (“The Conqueror”) in 1087, the Norman barons headed by the Conqueror’s brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, chose Robert, one of William’s sons, to be the next King of England. Their motivation was that Robert was a weak character, easy to control and lead, so – they hoped - the barons would become the real controlling power in the land. However, William the Conqueror had left much of the governmental institutions of England in place during his reign, including the old Anglo-Saxon council or “parliament”, the Witan. Therefore, under English law at that time, only the Witan could elect a king. Another of the Conqueror’s sons, William Rufus, was far more popular than his brother Robert, and was duly chosen by the people, or at least by their representative body. Robert had to settle for becoming Duke of Normandy, while William Rufus became King William II of England.
In the year 1100, towards the end of July, it is on record that rumours of some unnamed threat to the king’s life became rife throughout much of England, especially amongst the native (Anglo-Saxon) population. When the king proposed to ride out hunting in the New Forest (“New” because it had been especially designated not long before as a hunting reservation), his Norman friends tried very hard to dissuade him, being troubled by the mounting rumours of his imminent death. William, however, called for his horse and rode off with his brother Henry (soon to become King Henry I), his best friend Walter Tyrrel and a Norman baron William de Breteuil, together with an accompaniment of servants and aids.
The hunting party soon separated in the pursuit of deer. Suddenly a cry was heard and the word was shouted from mouth to mouth that the king had been killed. When the others galloped up, they found the king stretched upon the ground with a single arrow through his heart. The date was 2nd August – the day after the pagan festival of Lughnassadh, the traditional time of the slaying of the Harvest King1. The identity of the assassin was never discovered, but it was as obvious then as it is today that such a single shot to the heart must have been fired from a short distance directly in front of the victim; the king, then, must have been facing his killer at close range, perhaps even talking to him – perhaps even deliberately exposing his unprotected breast to the shot? Could it have been not a straightforward assassination but, rather, a deliberately arranged and mutually agreed ritual sacrifice of a man who was selected to be a “Harvest King”? After all, although the nominal religion was then Christianity, paganism had ruled only four generations before and evidently still lingered beneath the surface of native society. The event was certainly hushed-up and no attempt was made to find the assassin, and – perhaps significantly and certainly extraordinarily – no Christian prayers or services were held in any church, monastery or cathedral for the deceased monarch. ”No man asked how he died; no inquiry was made; no bell was tolled; no prayer was raised…” (Professor J. M. D. Meiklejohn: A New History of England and Great Britain, 1897). It is unlikely that the mystery will ever be adequately solved.
The religious idea of physical resurrection (“in the flesh”) of suitable believers who are not gods but ordinary mortals can be traced back at least as far as Zoroastrianism, a Persian religion whose foundation can be dated to at least the middle of the 5th century BC when it begins to appear in written records, and is likely to be much older. Zoroastrianism also included a belief in a final judgement of all humans. These concepts would have been known from Persia (Iran) by the Jews and would have become familiar and attractive to Jewish religious leaders at this exact period, because it coincided with the time when the Jewish religion was forced by the captivity in Babylon (roughly a hundred years after the Assyrians had reduced the twelve tribes to two) to question its very foundations due to the perceived failure of their god to honour his covenant with his “chosen” Jewish people.
At this time of conquest, ruin and slavery originated two important new aspects within Jewish religion: firstly the depressing “apocalyptic literature”, some of which is included in the Bible’s Old Testament (the Book of Daniel is an example), and secondly a new belief that the control of the world must have somehow escaped from God and been claimed instead by an evil spirit who came to be called Satan (this concept is explored in greater detail in chapter 10). The notion of a forthcoming Day of Judgement and a restoration to physical life of those who had, so it seemed at that troubled time, been betrayed by a god who had not lived up to his promise, offered a way to excuse the god and explain how he could still retain his honour and supremacy by reconstructing, or at least re-emphasising, the religion itself, so that the victimised, defeated and downtrodden Hebrew people would win after all in the end, gaining their revenge in a forthcoming world constructed this time according to their specifications.
However, this Jewish proposal of resurrection was not exactly like that of the later Christianity, for it mainly consisted of gilgul neshamot, or reincarnation. In this belief – which literally means “judgement of the revolution of souls” – people who had committed wrongs were allowed to return to earth as a newborn infant (gilgulim) so that they could attempt to undo whatever wrong they had done and thereby purge their offence before they were judged by God at a final heavenly Judgement Day.
By the time of Jesus (as confirmed in the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus amongst other sources) the most powerful of the political divisions of the temple priesthood at Jerusalem were the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees, Tsdoki in Hebrew, were a religio-political party believed to be followers of Zadok, the High Priest who anointed King Solomon, and therefore were inclined toward a pre-captivity interpretation of Judaism, believing firmly that death was always final and irreversible and rejecting reincarnation and resurrection; (“…The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection…” Matthew 22:23). The Pharisees became a powerful party after the return from the Babylonian exile (the Second Temple period which began in 536 BC when the temple was rebuilt in Jerusalem and ended in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed it again). They believed in the largely exile-induced idea of gilgul neshamot (or ha’atakah), a resurrection through reincarnation to right a great wrong. There were many debates and arguments between the two rival sects before the Sadducees disappeared from history around the end of the 1st century AD, leaving the Pharisees to survive unopposed to evolve into modern rabbinical Judaism.
Getting Their Acts Together
If Jesus’ real facts and personal history were to be polished up so that he could be posthumously twisted into a new kind of god-figure, not only would much emphasis have to be changed, but new pieces would need to be grafted-on to fill the gaps and make the story more spectacular. Where would Paul have found suitable religious material for this purpose? It is a fact that anybody living at that time, in such a multi-cultural empire with so many different religions and assorted gods flourishing all over the place, would have an almost inexhaustible fund of religious “jigsaw pieces” from which to select their ideal composite - far more than there would be in the present Western and Middle Eastern world for instance - and Paul set about stitching together his result. Let us look at a few examples of the options available to him, and see if any of them strike a familiar note.
Many of the popular gods were born of virgin mothers. In fact, it was the ancient fashion for gods to be born of virgins, and to be fully accepted as a divine being it was helpful for a figure to have this “credential”. The pagan gods Tammuz, Osiris, Ra, Attis, Dionysus and Zoroaster, among many others, were all supposed to have been born without sin, and therefore to have been perfect beings, because their birth resulted from the union of a god with a virgin. The Greek god Zeus, most important of all the Olympian pantheon, fathered children on virgins, such as Danae the mother of Perseus, whom he descended upon in the guise of a shower of gold.
The biblical myth of a “virgin birth” that precludes the possibility of “original sin” actually arises from a combination of confirmable human errors. It first rears its head in the Old Testament prophesy of Isaiah (7:14): "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son..." However, this passage is a misleading Greek translation made in the Septuagint during the third century B.C. In the original Hebrew text the word “almah” is used, meaning simply a young woman of marriageable age but not specifically a virgin. When this was translated into Greek (the language of a culture in which marriage customs were rather different to those of the Hebrews) the word “parthenos” (an actual virgin) was substituted as the nearest Greek equivalent, thus giving rise to the original error. Later, Paul and his followers adopted the notion of a virgin birth for Jesus partly to contrive the fulfilling of the (actually non-existent) prophesy of Isaiah, and partly as a nod to the familiar ideas of paganism to reinforce their claim that Jesus was a form of god in his own right.
The religion of Mithraism, in particular, exerted a powerful influence on the emerging Christian fabrications. For a long time afterwards, Mithraism was considered to be the only serious rival in popularity to Christianity. There was a temple of Mithras in Roman London (on the grounds of Temple Court in Queen Victoria Street). The worship of this pagan god was not only widespread amongst the soldiers of the Roman legions, and not only were its tenets thoroughly acceptable to the Roman way of thought, but it also enjoyed a somewhat favoured position among all the varied religious beliefs of the empire. It existed for at least six centuries prior to the birth of Jesus, originating in Persia and spreading to many other lands.
As Paul would have known well, according to the tenets of Mithraism, Mithras (or Mithra) was born in a grotto; shepherds attended his birth and the baby Mithras was presented with gifts. Believers were baptised into the Mithraic religion. The worshippers of Mithras observed a holy communion, during which it is on record that the following passage occurred, read out solemnly by the officiating priest: “He who shall not eat of my body nor drink of my blood so that he may be one with me and I with him, shall not be saved.” Followers of Mithras believed in a forthcoming day of judgment that would lead to a physical resurrection of all true believers climaxed by a second coming of Mithras himself. In the centuries after Paul had patched together his own vision of what Christianity should be, the known facts of the Mithraic religion - which was contemporary with early Christianity and so well known that its precepts could not be ignored or swept under the carpet - became so embarrassing to the early Christians that Tertullian, one of the Fathers of the Church, had to fall back on the convenient, if rather pathetic and contrived, excuse that “the Devil” had, centuries before Christ, parodied the forthcoming Christian communion.
In India – a land certainly not unknown to first century Mediterranean cultures (Indian animals were used in the Roman arena) – the Buddha was said to have been born of the Virgin Maya, on 25th December, a date near the Winter Solstice, and his birth, according to legend, was proclaimed by a bright star and choirs of angelic beings: wise men attended with gifts. Buddha (the Enlightened One) is said to have taught in a temple at the age of 12, to have been tempted by the Evil One (Mara) whilst fasting, and he was baptised in water. Buddha is also said to have healed the sick, fed five hundred people from a basket of cakes, and to have walked on water. He claimed he came to fulfil the law and he preached that a kingdom of righteousness would be coming. His followers were told to renounce worldly things and adopt a life of poverty. Legend also has it that Buddha underwent a transfiguration on a mount, that he died and was buried in a tomb and rose again to life, the tomb being opened by spiritual power, before ascending into Nirvana (the Buddhist paradise). He will return again to earth, according to the beliefs of certain of his followers (although not in mainstream Buddhism in which deities are rejected) during the last days, in order to make judgement of the dead. Buddha was referred to as a carpenter, a sin-bearer, a good shepherd, a redeemer, and as the Light of the World. These aspects could not have been copied from Christianity, because Buddhism predates Christianity by about five hundred years.
Also from India, the Hindu god Krishna was said to have been born whilst his foster-father Nanda was visiting a city in order to pay his tax to the king. His birth was also proclaimed by the arrival of a star, and he was born in a cave to the Virgin Devaki, with cow herders present in adoration. The young Krishna’s death was desired by King Kansa who, in an attempt to encompass it, ordered the massacre of all male children born on the same night in the same town. The baby Krishna was smuggled away to safety in another land. Krishna performed many miracles, including healing lepers, the blind and deaf, and raising the dead. According to Hindu scripture, Krishna descended after death into the infernal regions from which he rose up on the third day and ascended into heaven. His worshippers believe he will return on the final day to judge the living and the dead, and he is the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Hinduism has existed from approximately 1,500 BC and the earliest known mention of Krishna in a text is in the Chandogva Upanishad from about 900 BC.
Closer to biblical lands, in Asia Minor, Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) was born of a virgin, baptised in a river, astonished wise men with his wisdom as a youth and began his ministry on earth at the age of 30. In the wilderness he was tempted by a devil. He cast out demons and cured a blind man. To his followers, he is said to have revealed the mysteries of heaven and hell, resurrection and judgement, salvation and the apocalypse. His faithful also celebrated a sacred Eucharistic meal and referred to him as “the World Made Flesh”. Faith in Zoroastrianism is believed to have existed as long ago as 1,400 to 1,000 BC, but even conservative historical estimates of the age of the belief accept that it is at least as old as 458 BC from which time specific records exist.
From these and various other sources, it can be seen that Paul fabricated an artificial pagan religious patchwork, entirely different to the understanding of the surviving apostles and their own approved teachings sanctioned by Jesus when alive: one that provided him with the message he preached during his journeys and whilst sojourning in Rome. Once started, the Pauline belief flared in the minds of many who heard it - as it had been deliberately designed to do - and its spread could not be readily halted or contained. Slowly at first, to be sure, and still coming up against fairly stiff opposition from various authorities, the Pauline religion of Christianity gathered converts who knew no better and had no access to any more accurate history or teaching.
As time went by, and after Paul’s death when other converted Christians took over the leadership of the cult, the adherents of the genuine Jewish humanitarian teachings of Jesus found themselves being first squeezed out and elbowed aside and then hounded out by the swelling ranks of those who, following the common desire of human nature for something better than the real world, found Paul’s artificial picture of Christ the new god, a “designer religion” as we might say today, to be more attractive than the reality of Jesus the man. Although the apostles had previously represented the true teachings and message of the historical Jesus, and although they had already established a network of such teachings in churches entirely separate from Paul’s, their followers now found themselves to be on the outside looking in, overtaken and disowned by the group of strangers who were calling themselves “Christians” and who were constantly being recruited to the entirely fabricated Pauline doctrine of Christianity.
Once the Pauline religion had established its advancing groundswell, gathering fanatics and martyrs as it went and eventually rewriting the most favoured Gospels so that they reflected only what Paul and his many successors wanted people to believe, it automatically became the “established orthodoxy”, and from that point on, anything which contradicted it became branded as “lies” and “heresy”. By the second century AD, any unedited teachings of Jesus originating with the apostles and their followers were already being branded as a form of heresy. The fact that Paul himself was the real heretic had been successfully twisted round by enforced dogma, and the very definition of Jesus’ mission had been hijacked, subverted and altered into something radically different. Whereas Jesus had attempted to teach people how to identify and overcome their hypocrisy, St. Paul had succeeded in fashioning the kernel of what history has consistently and unarguably proven to be the most unscrupulously hypocritical religious totalitarianism the world has ever known.
The Holy Roman Empire Arrives
In the year 312, there were two claimants to the throne of the Roman Empire, Constantine and his rival Maxentius. On the night before their armies met in a final battle, Constantine dreamed about a sign consisting of the Greek letters chi and rho, the first two letters of the name "Christ" in Greek. In the dream, he heard the words "by this sign you shall be the victor". On waking, he ordered his troops to paint the Chi-Rho monogram on their shields. Constantine won the battle and entered Rome at the head of a triumphant army with the Christian monogram emblazoned on their shields and the severed head of Maxentius born aloft on a spear. Pleased with developments, Constantine became quite enthusiastic about the power of the Christian "spell" to help win wars, eventually deciding to use his new authority as absolute ruler to ensure that Christianity was adopted as a fully recognised, and indeed favoured, religion in the Roman Empire.
Constantine's faith, however, remained shared with the traditional pagan gods of Rome, particularly Sol Invictus (the "Unconquerable Sun"), an aspect of Apollo the Roman sun god of which Constantine continued to remain the high priest. A celebratory medal from 313, a year after his supposed "conversion" to Christianity, shows the emperor beside this sun god, and he clearly accepted the notion of Christ in exactly the same way that he accepted the notion of Jupiter, Apollo, Venus and the rest, as a fickle god who must be placated in order to maintain continued good luck.
In order to ensure the continued appeasement of Christ, he financed such things as basilicas for the Christians, and he gave to their local leader, the Bishop of Rome, a redundant imperial palace on the Lateran Hill, from which one day would sprout the Vatican. (It was not until May 13th 1871 that the Papal States were by law reduced from some 17,000 square miles [44,000 square kilometres] and confined merely to this same Lateran palace, the nearby Vatican palace, and the villa of Castel Gandolfo. This law, passed by the Italian government, was not recognised by the papacy, and the friction led to the Lateran Treaty of February 11th 1929 between the Vatican and the Kingdom of Italy in which the Holy See was granted recognised autonomy as what amounts to a separate country, and the independent Vatican State as it is today was inaugurated.)
The various Christian thinkers in the Roman Empire, now that they had been allowed to legally "come out of the closet" without threat of persecution and the arena, soon found there were many important areas of disagreement regarding the essential concepts they wished to see incorporated into their vision of Christianity. For example, did Jesus eat, drink, urinate or excrete? Clement of Alexandria was offended at the idea that someone so holy would have had to attend to such bodily functions and decreed that Jesus had not been subject to any of them, to the widespread ridicule of other churchmen.
Many other spokesmen had their say on a range of different contentious issues, some farcical, some more profound. Perhaps most importantly, the Alexandrian Christian theologian Arius (c.250-336) was teaching that Jesus was certainly not fully divine and was not part of a trinitarian god; that is, that there was no trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit because the concept of God should be an indivisible single entity. His followers also advocated the notion that the logos was a personality in its own right, which was actually a Gnostic idea (Gnosticism will be covered in greater detail in the next chapter). In the growing climate of increasingly bitter theological argument, rival Christian factions are recorded by Roman writers as calling each other by acrimonious and insulting names. Tempers ran hot and violence occasionally spilled out into the streets.
Annoyed by this threat to law and order, Constantine summoned all the many and various Christian leaders, spokesmen and experts to the first ever council of all Christianity at the town of Nicaea in Asia Minor (today Iznik in Turkey). There was no such thing yet as Pope or any kind of central Christian authority or executive hierarchy controlling all Christian theological acceptance. The great administrative cities of the empire, Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, each had their own bishop who enjoyed unchallenged authority over worshippers and issues of doctrine within their individual geographical regions, but nobody at that time was acknowledged to hold any single authority over Christians everywhere.
Constantine's entire purpose was to force every Christian to accept one common stereotyped belief, regardless of the specific contents or ingredients that common belief might contain, so that internecine rivalry and the consequent civil tensions and unrest would cease (in unconscious parallel with the motives of King David a thousand years earlier). As absolute dictator, he was in a position to impose a final and utter decision of his own upon the conflicting divisions and opinions of the various Christian factions in order to secure the tranquillity of his empire. This council at Nicaea, some three hundred years after Jesus' death - as long after it as the year 2000 is after the reign of Queen Anne, the English monarch who bestowed a knighthood on Sir Isaac Newton - was responsible for a great many of the major aspects of later Christian belief.
For example, the official date of the Crucifixion was determined as being the first Sunday following the second full moon falling on or after the Vernal Equinox - the pagan method for fixing the appropriate date for the Rite of Spring. The English name of the festival of the crucifixion was eventually "borrowed" from this pagan ritual which was generally named after the goddess Ostara or Eostre, and it became "Easter" (as confirmed by the Anglo-Saxon scholar Bede [d.735] in De Temporum Ratione where he states that the fourth month of the Anglo-Saxon year is called Eosturmonath [“Easter-month”] after the goddess Eostre “…for whom they were accustomed to hold festivals at that season.”). (The method for fixing the date of Easter was necessary because the New Testament, like the Old, contains hundreds of contradictions [cf. appendix II]; in this case specifically, Matthew and Luke state the Last Supper was a Passover meal and the crucifixion happened a few days later, but according to John, the crucifixion took place on the day before the Passover. The exact date of the crucifixion is thus in doubt.)
In great part a measure against the teachings of Arius, now declared heretical, a specific required statement of faith was introduced, the Nicene Creed, which is still recited in many churches and which reinforces the theological assertion that the concept of a trinity is part of the essential core of “official” Christian belief – “…And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified…”
The Gospels were carefully selected and - echoing the treatment of the texts of the Old Testament - were constructively edited, somewhat inconsistently as we will see in detail later in this book. Sprinklings of miracles had already grown or were added to the texts. The Bishop of Rome was declared head bishop and “father” (papa or pope) of the Christian religion, those of Alexandria and Antioch losing out for the simple reason that it was far more convenient for the politically suspicious emperor to keep close tabs on a next-door neighbour in Rome than someone at the other end of his empire a thousand miles away who, out of sight, might be plotting anything.
Jesus' mother Miriam, or Mary as her Jewish name became in Latin, was decreed a permanent virgin, and the fact that she had had other children was largely played down, although the names of at least some of them are still known (see Galatians 1:19 and Mark 6:3). Documents and texts that contained anything disagreeing with what had been decreed were ordered to be rounded up and burned, although certain collections of them at the edge of the Roman Empire were hidden away for safety and have since been rediscovered, as we will shortly see.
The 32 Gospels
To the priests and worshippers of Apollo the pagan god of the Sun, the most important date in the calendar was the rebirth of the Sun at the Winter Solstice, a date of worldwide pagan importance. On Constantine's prompting, this date was fixed as the date of the birth of Jesus, which is actually totally unknown and never mentioned in the Bible.
Since the Jews were now blamed for "killing God" - surely a contradiction in terms if there ever was one - the Jewish sabbath (Saturday) was not considered suitable for the new Christian cult. Constantine filled the gap, again drawing upon his commitment to Apollo, making the holy day of the Sun god the new Christian sabbath, and Sun-day it has remained ever since. Those people in the present era who insist upon Sunday being the "Lord's Day" might be interested to learn that they are giving their energetic support to the commemoration of a pagan Sun god.
No original unedited version of the New Testament exists from earlier than the reign of Constantine. The New Testament as we know it is not a product of Jesus and his followers, not even of the four Evangelists after whom they are named, but of the Council of Nicaea and many later church councils. All other gospels and fragments were edited out of the scriptures that became the Bible as we know it. The existence of at least twenty eight other gospels in addition to the four included in the Bible can be traced, including one (the Gospel of the Ebionites) that actually states that the entire construction of St. Paul's religion of Christianity consists of a tissue of lies.
For example, historical records and surviving apocrypha include editions, fragments or sometimes mere mention of: the Gospel of Andrew; the Gospel of Peter; the Gospel of Apelles; the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles; the Gospel of Barnabus; the Gospel of Truth; the Gospel of Bartholomew; the Gospel of Basilides; the Gospel of Mary; the Gospel of Corinthus; the Gospel According to the Egyptians; the Gospel of the Ebionites (mentioned in the previous paragraph); the Gospel of the Encratites; the Gospel According to the Hebrews; the Gospel of Hesychius; the Gospel of Jude; the Gospel of Lucianus; the Gospel of Marcion; the Gospel of Matthias; the Gospel of Merinthus; the Gospel according to the Nazarenes; the Gospel of Philip; the Gospel of Scythianus; the Gospel of Titan; the Gospel of Thaddaeus; the Gospel of Thomas; the Gospel of Valentinus; and even a Gospel of Judas Iscariot (which is today being accorded increasing relevance by academics).
Some of these non-biblical - and in strict point of fact, non-Christian - gospels were discovered in 1945 by an Arab peasant in Egypt, in what has come to be called the Nag Hammadi Library. This consists of thirteen ancient codices that contain over fifty individual texts, including a large number of original Gnostic scriptures previously believed to have been destroyed as a result of the Council of Nicaea and the early Christian attempt to define itself according only to the inventions of Paul. The site of Nag Hammadi (Naj 'Hammádì) is located on the Jabal al-Tárif, a mountain honeycombed with one hundred and fifty caves, some of which were in use as gravesites as long ago as 2,300 BC. Although examination of the script and the material used in the covers places the date of these texts at the period 350-400 AD, at least some of them can be specifically identified as copies of earlier texts from the period before 180 AD, because in that year they are referred to in the writings of Irenaeus the Bishop of Lyons, and they may be as old as the four Biblical gospels (period 50-100 AD although constructively edited then and later).
In addition to all of this, there is also what has been called the "synoptic problem". Stated briefly, this is the conclusion arrived at by an analysis of the texts that the first three gospels of the New Testament - Matthew, Mark and Luke - are so similar in phrase and style of writing that either the Matthew and Luke gospels are based on the Mark gospel, or else all three are based on a single earlier document, now lost, that has been named the "Q document" (from Quelle, German for "source"). The "Q" document, if it existed, has been tentatively dated to around 50 AD, and the Matthew and Luke gospels to the period 85-100 AD. A similar plethora of self-contradictions, mistakes, inventions and embroideries therefore also exists in the New Testament as well as the Old (see appendices). This proves conclusively that the Gospels in the Bible certainly cannot represent any kind of eyewitness testimony of events but, rather, are the increasingly exaggerated retelling of memories from person to person (the “Oral Tradition Theory”) later strained through a filter of Christian editing for public consumption, as we will see in the next chapter.
Jesus the Sorcerer
Although the four Gospels are all that remain in the Bible itself concerning the mission and activities of Jesus, other writers of very early times make mention of him as well, affording us a glimpse of a different point of view which cannot be obtained from anything in the Bible. For example, in addition to the account of Jesus given in the Babylonian Talmud (described in chapter 3), there is the monumental book “The Antiquities of the Jews” written by the Jewish historian Josephus, who was born in 37 or 38 AD and was thus active in the generation immediately following Jesus’ death when there would have been plenty of people still living who remembered him from first-hand personal experience. In his book Josephus writes: “At about this time lived Yeshua, a wise man... (he) was a teacher of such people as are eager for novelties. He attracted many of the Jews and many of the Greeks... Upon an indictment brought by leading members of our society, Pilate sentenced him to the cross, but those who had loved him from the very first did not cease to be attached to him...”
Here, surely, we can gain a clear intimation about how “those who had loved him” remained attached to his memory, thus helping to pave the way for the legend of his return to life? The fact that there were once many other sources of information concerning Jesus is confirmed even in the Bible itself, where we can still read that lots of other people besides the four evangelists had also written their own gospels: "...many have... set forth... a declaration..." (Luke 1:1). The expression "gospel truth" has come to be used to define any report that is held to be beyond error: the merits of this expression should be weighed against all these facts and the list of gospel errors and contradictions (itemised in Appendix II).
7. How the Bible was Assembled – Blind Belief versus Gnosticism.
“I’ve often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer
in the front saying: “This is fiction”.
Sir Ian McKellen, interviewed on the “Today” show, 2006.
Selecting the Old Testament
We can also discover a considerable amount of historical information regarding the process by which the various contents of the Bible were selected, and why certain texts were finally accepted for inclusion and others rejected. Naturally, in view of the antiquity of the editing and the lack of what we would today call proper record keeping, there are many unknowns involved; however, there are also more known facts than might at first be widely realised.
As we have already seen, the first five books of what would later become the Old Testament, the Pentateuch or Torah (included in the Tanakh) were already more-or-less completed and in use by about 300 BC. The other books of the Old Testament were compiled from various different sources and periods and came to be accepted as scripture by the Hebrews. For a long time, though, there was no recognized agreement about which of these texts should be categorised as canonical (divinely inspired and therefore sacred - holy scripture) and which of them were not divinely inspired and therefore, even if sincerely devout, were not considered to be holy scripture. There was no general agreement of this identification of texts as either canonical or non-canonical until some decades after the death of Jesus, and after the final destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, a catastrophic event the echoes of which played a major part in shaping the Old Testament as it eventually became known to us.
The unfortunate city of Jerusalem has been attacked more than once in its long history, even in the lifetime of this author when Saddam Hussein ordered some Skud missiles launched against it during the first Gulf War. In 1099 AD Crusaders laid siege to the city (at that time held by Moslem Saracens) and then again in 1187 AD. Over 1,700 years earlier, on the tenth day of the Jewish month of Tevet in 587 BC, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II conquered the kingdom of Judah and started a siege at Jerusalem that finally succeeded in breaking through the walls some eighteen months later on 17th Tammuz, destroying the temple three weeks later on 9th Av. The population was forced into slavery in Babylon. However, the Jewish religion was kept alive during the Galut Bavel, the Babylonian exile, and some seventy years later, after Cyrus II freed the captives and allowed them to return to Palestine, the temple was rebuilt in Jerusalem. In 332 BC Alexander the Great (who makes a guest appearance in the Bible, described in Daniel 11:1-3 as the king of Grecia, i.e. Greece) conquered Palestine and captured Jerusalem, introducing elements of Greek culture. In 320 BC Alexander’s general Ptolemy I (or Soter, “the Preserver”) captured Jerusalem.
The greatest catastrophe inflicted upon the Jewish peoples was the Nazi holocaust of the World War 2 period, but the greatest ever catastrophe to the Judaic religion occurred when, on 14th April 70 AD (during Passover), the Roman general Titus, son of the soon-to-be-emperor Vespasian, laid siege to Jerusalem following a revolt and, like Nebuchadnezzar before him, destroyed the temple. An estimated 115,880 citizens were slain and a further 97,000 taken captive, some of whom were forced to work on the construction of the Coliseum while others were sent to labour in mines, to be slain in the arena as gladiators, or to be burned alive as public entertainment. This event marked a major turning point in Jewish history and in the observation of the Jewish religion, which was changed forever. Until 70 AD, Judaism had centred upon the Jerusalem temple, its priesthood, and making appropriate sacrifices there, for which purpose people would travel even from distant lands, perhaps once in a lifetime. Afterwards, the focus inevitably fragmented to prayers in local settlements led by rabbis, and the pattern of grand centralisation was perforce abandoned. With the demise of the Jerusalem temple and the hierarchy of its incumbent priesthood, not only the Jewish people but also their religious centres became scattered.
Shortly before Jerusalem fell to the Romans under Titus, a rabbi named Johannon ben Zakkai managed to leave the city. In the town given the Greek name Jamnia, today called Yebna (now in Israel, not far from Jaffa), he founded a centre for Jewish studies. It was to this centre that Jews who managed to escape the Roman reprisals gravitated, not only for sanctuary but also to devise a new path for their religion by which its survival could be assured. At Jamnia, one vital matter that had to be decided upon was exactly which parts of the preserved Jewish writings should be considered to represent holy scripture, and which should not. This exercise in specific authoritative determination was in great part also rendered necessary by the spread of misleading “scripture” by the Minim – the practitioners of the great heresy of Christianity (Jewish minuth, heresy).
The Pentateuch, or Torah, was believed to represent the writings of Moses himself and described the very foundations of Jewish belief: the guaranteed place of these five books – Bereshit, Shemot, Vayyiara, Bamidbar and Devarim (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) - was beyond discussion. In respect of the remainder of the texts, the essential criterion was whether the content agreed with Jewish history and law as established in these five books of the Torah. After a detailed examination of the nature of the texts taking about 20 years, a total of 39 books were accepted as being holy scripture, and from that time these choices became recognised as the orthodox Jewish Bible, which itself would later become transformed at second-hand into the Christian Old Testament. Texts that differed in any significant way from the Torah were deemed not to be holy scripture but merely scripture of some interest and were not included in the Jewish Bible, although they were still considered honourable, such as the Book of Maccabees (from which the Jewish festival Hanukkah derives).
The decisions taken by the Hebrew refugees and scholars at Jamnia1 towards the end of the first century were not, however, accepted as correct by everyone. Alternative texts, not recognised at Jamnia as representing holy scripture and containing various differences from accepted orthodoxy, continued to be used elsewhere for at least a further couple of centuries, amongst them the Samaritan Pentateuch and Greek Septuagint. Argument continued regarding whether certain of the accepted texts should be considered holy (the "word of God") or merely apocrypha (Greek, meaning: "that which is hidden" or "hidden things", which in Latin became crypta, a hidden vault or cave, giving us our words “crypt” and “cryptic”: also, from “that which is hidden” comes Latin occultus which gives us the word “occult” ) as, for example, in the cases of the books of Esther, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon, which were all deemed to be apocryphal. Indeed, when the Qumran religious community hid their sacred texts in a cave around 70-100 AD, to be discovered in the twentieth century as the "Dead Sea Scrolls", they deliberately excluded Esther, indicating their own opinion regarding its relevance. To the present day, Ethiopian Jews (who consider themselves descended from one of the "lost tribes" of Israel) accept as holy scripture the book of Jubilees and the book of Enoch, considered apocryphal by mainstream Judaism.
The Book of Enoch is mentioned in the Epistle of Jude (14) and the Epistle of Barnabus (16:5) (itself rejected as apocryphal and not included in the Bible), and it is mentioned in the writings of Justin of Caesarea (100-165 AD), Irenaeus (130-202 AD), Origen (182-251 AD) and Clement of Alexandria (c.150-216 AD), all of them considered Fathers of the early Christian Church. However, it was believed to be lost to history, until 1773 when the Scottish explorer James Bruce discovered a copy in Abyssinia written in the Ethiopian language. Since then, a copy of Enoch has also come to light written in Old Church Slavonic (or Old Bulgarian), which, like Latin, is an otherwise extinct language used by churchmen and scholars, which evolved into Church Slavonic still in use today as a sacred language by certain Greek Catholic and Orthodox churches of the Slavic peoples. Two different fragments of a Latin translation of Enoch have also been discovered, and in 1887 a French archaeological team discovered a partial Greek version on fragments of papyri at Akhmim on the Nile in Upper Egypt. Seven further fragments of Enoch written in Aramaic were found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. To date, however, despite its pedigree, the Book of Enoch has not yet been considered suitable for inclusion in the Bible.
The scriptures of the Hebrew Bible as they stood after the long editorial debates of Jamnia and earlier periods were known to the early Christian Church. A problem, however, was that the majority of early Christians after Paul’s tours and his sojourn in Rome were Gentiles (i.e. non-Jewish) and could not read Hebrew. They therefore found it more convenient to make use of the Septuagint, the Greek translation made in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy II, c.308-246 BC mentioned in chapter 4, which greatly predated Jamnia and included texts in Greek which the Hebrews now considered apocryphal. This more dubious Greek version, then, rather than the meticulously examined Hebrew texts of Jamnia, became the basis of the earliest Latin translations used by Christians for their "Old Testament".
One of the few early Christian scholars who understood Hebrew was the Church Father Origen, who came to realise that there were differences between the Greek Septuagint and the Hebrew Bible. He found so many differences, and was so disturbed by what he found, that he devised a huge document known as the Hexapla in which, in a corresponding series of columns, both the Septuagint and the Hebrew versions were shown side by side, so that people might see the differences and judge the relative merits of each version for themselves. There are no remaining complete versions of the original Hexapla, but the surviving fragments have been collected in several editions, such as that of Frederick Field in 1875.
We Regret the Late Arrival of Armageddon, and
Hope This Will Not Spoil Your Day.
The early Christians could see no real need to have any permanent written record of Jesus' life and teachings. It was an essential part of the original Christian belief that the Second Coming of Christ and the apocalyptic Day of Judgement, followed by the restoration of the Kingdom of God, was about to happen in the immediate future, during their lifetime, so why should it be necessary to preserve a written version of Jesus' ministry on earth if The End Of The World Was Nigh? This belief in the imminence of the "Second Coming" is shown in the New Testament, for example in John's Gospel (21:21-23) when Peter asks Jesus if the apostles should kill the person who betrays him: "...Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" and in the First Epistle of John (2:18-19) where the writer states: "...we know that it is the last time". Also, in Matthew (24:34), Mark (13:30) and Luke (21:32) it specifically states that the Second Coming will take place during the lifetime of the generation alive at that time.
Various tales about Jesus, some straightforward, some highly embellished, some total inventions, were at first merely used for preaching to non-Christians in the attempt to recruit them. However, as the years and decades passed into centuries and the first generations of Christians were replaced by successively later ones, a degree of puzzlement developed in regard to the late arrival of Judgement Day and the precise date of Christ's return. It began to be realised that it might be necessary, after all, to try to preserve as much as possible of Jesus' acts and teachings for posterity, since Judgement Day appeared to be postponed due to unforeseen technical difficulties.
Within the early church there were many different written versions of Jesus' ministry in circulation (see the section of the previous chapter “The 32 Gospels”, for example) as well as popular tales that were purely oral traditions, with great amounts of embroidery included in their telling and re-telling. Many of the multiplicity of gospels were indeed themselves based on these folktales, and some of the folktales were doubtless inspired by some of the dozens of gospels, so there would have been a considerable degree of incestuous "cross-fertilization" of stories within the early Christian communities. This type of inbred melange of fact and fiction produced by the slowly churning hysteria of a section of the population without reference to established proven factuality is today defined as “urban myth”.
The actual writers of the four gospels now included in the New Testament of the Bible are completely unknown, regardless of whose names they bear in their titles. In the year 180, Ireneus, Bishop of Lyons, declared that only gospels written by any of the twelve apostles could be accepted as “genuine”, but the inability to designate any factual authorship to the tales presented an insurmountable obstacle to this view. There were major discrepancies between the different gospels and tales, and, of particular concern to leaders of the early church, there were conflicting accounts of Jesus' supposed “resurrection”, including some in which it had not actually happened. Some Christians expressed the belief that the resurrection was nothing more than a symbolic spiritual rebirth, not involving any living return from death by Jesus: a change of heart that could be experienced by anyone. Others insisted it was an actual resurrection from death to a renewed perfect physical living form.
It was feared that a spreading of the belief that the tale of the resurrection represented nothing more than a metaphor for symbolic spiritual transformation would encourage people to weigh up and judge the truth for themselves and make their own individual interpretation of Christ and his ministry, rather than accept the officially preferred version that was imposed upon them by the church hierarchy established on the back of Paul's teachings. This prompted fears that the authority of the fledgling Pauline Church might find its future development threatened by too much freedom permitting people to make their own personal evaluation of Christian theology, and this dawning realisation eventually developed into the mayhem and murder of the liquidation of “heresies”, in which the servants of dogma sought to destroy freedom of thought.
Early Christianity, therefore, adopted a different attitude to that of the Jews in respect of determining the textual core of their belief. Where the Jews had established scholarly examinations meticulously comparing religious texts to judge their consistency, or lack of consistency, with the main established text of the Torah, and were not afraid to reject or demote inconsistent writings, the Christians of the first few centuries considered it more important to attempt to establish, through discussion, scholarly argument and many committees, exactly what Christianity consisted of, with particular emphasis on a determination of the actual nature of Christ. Whereas Judaism, regardless of its early dichotomies, was by now an ancient religion with clearly established traditions, festivals and attitudes towards the worlds of man and God, Christianity was brand new with no established traditions, and was still groping for a central identity and doctrine, tearing itself apart internally through disagreement regarding what it believed, what it represented, what it was and what it was not.
It was from this melting pot of schisms and arguments at the dawn of Christianity that a very broad division into two major lines of opinion began to solidify. One school of thought held that Christianity consisted of the Church and everything the leaders of the Church instructed and demanded, and that the Church represented the single valid inheritor of the mantle of Christ (apostolic succession). The other held that a person did not require any authoritarian church as an intermediary in order to experience God through Christ, and that God must be - indeed, could only be - experienced directly at first-hand by a transformation achieved within the individual, whose only requirement for gaining this transcendental spiritual rebirth was the knowledge that there was a mystical tradition, known and taught by Jesus, by which it could be attained. Those who subscribed to a belief that the Church should be the only authority to determine the nature of Christianity and enforce its views as doctrine became the foundation of the orthodox Christian Church. Those who preferred to believe in the transformation of the individual through the application of mystical knowledge according to interpretations of Jesus’ teaching, were called “the knowers”, or, in Greek, Gnostics.
Gnostic Christianity was the principal rival to Pauline Christianity during the earliest centuries AD, and the internecine hatred toward the Gnostics felt by the Pauline sect - who regarded themselves as the custodians of the authority of Christ and who felt it essential to safeguard this “authority” with a structured totalitarian religious hierarchy - led to a period of bloody extermination lasting more than a thousand years. Pauline Christianity gained the advantage in the fourth century of being grafted on to the Roman State and thus becoming a major world power; in effect, an empire in its own right, or at least an extension of an empire, but with no political, moral or ethical restraints regarding the treatment of the population and the ruthless putting-down of other religious beliefs - in fact, writing its own licence to permit unmitigated cultural cleansing and mind-control.
Gnosticism was not actually a single belief: there were many branches and differences of opinion resulting in many different Gnostic sects, just as today there are many different versions of doctrinaire Christianity. The main belief that was held in common amongst the majority of Gnostic groups was that communion with Divine Spiritual Reality, or God, could be achieved through insig