The Most Important Christian Besides Jesus And Paul

That would be Marcion.

Much of what we know about Marcion's origins are shrouded in mystery. And the bulk of what we know about Marcion comes from his "orthodox" -- sometimes extremely hateful -- opponents, such as Polycarp (c. 130) Justin Martyr (c. 150), Irenaeus (c. 180), Tertullian (c. 200), Epiphanus (c. 350) and later heresioloigsts. By far, Marcion and his Marcionites were the heretics polemicized against the most in ante-Nicaea Christianity.

Marcion was a consecrated bishop who was also a shipbuilder; a profession that took him all around the "known world" of the 2nd century. Marcion was educated, affluent, and influential. A dedicated and honest Christian, he was probably the first to realize a conspiracy in Christian theology.

The Christ of Christianity was not the propheciezed Jewish messiah.

Not only that, but Jesus' teachings were incompatible with the teachings of the god of the Hebrew bible.

Before the "orthodoxy" and the "New Testament" had been cemented, Marcion seemed to be aware of two gospels. One a neutral gospel narrative and a highly Judaized version of it. Thus Marcion might also be the first witness of what would become the Synoptic Problem, and may have contributed to it.

Marcion by his Antitheses accuses [a gospel text] of having been interpolated by the protectors of Judaism with a view to its being so combined in one body with the law and the prophets

- Tertullian, "Against Marcion" 4.4.4

The Law was written, the Prophets were written, it stands to reason that the gospel Marcion accused the Judaizers of falsifying was written too, so as to be combined into one corpus with the Law and the Prophets. This sounds like the Ebionites who only revered a form of Matthew as being Jewish scripture along with the Law and the Prophets. And of course, Matthew is heavily based on Mark which was more than likely the original gospel.

It was probably this highly Judaized gospel that made Marcion realize that many of the "prophecies" about Jesus when read in context simply weren't messainic prophecies. In this respect, Marcion agreed with the Jews that Jesus was not their messiah and that their messiah had not yet come. Marcion wanted to give the Jews their religion and their book back to them, instead of Christianizing Jewish scripture by reading passages out of their Jewish context to pseudo-proof-text Jesus' status as the Jewish messiah.

So then what was Jesus, if he wasn't the Jewish messiah?

Marcion claimed that the god of the Jews was a "just" god; a god of blind justice. And this god's law was a neutral law - red in tooth and claw like the world of nature he created - meant to establish a covenant between himself and his chosen people. For faithfully following this god's law, he would send the Jews a king made in his likeness - equally just, but harsh. And this god and his anointed king would give the Jews their own homeland, prosperity, and longevity. Jesus, however, was not this king. Jesus was the son of a different god. An unknown god. A higher god who did not create such a cruel world. A god of love. Not just a god of "justice".

Much like a lot of modern deconverts from Christianity, Marcion juxtaposed the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Yahweh and noticed the disconnect (his Antithesis noted above). How could an unchangable god change so drastically like that? How could a god of mercy and forgiveness also be a god who creates both good and evil (Isaiah 45:7)? So for Marcion, Jesus was no longer the "christus", the messiah or anointed one, but the "chrestus". Chrestus (Χρηστου, pronounced "chreestou") meant the good or useful. A difference of one iota (where that phrase comes from) between the two titles.

So for Marcion, Jesus was the Good, the son of the god of love and mercy, and Paul was his chief apostle who realized this through revelation. As Paul's letter to Galatians explicitly states. Marcion is the first Christian to present a canon of Paul's letters and an anti-Matthew gospel as Sacred Scripture. The first "New Testament", which consisted of 1 & 2 Corinthians, Romans, Galatians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Phillipeans, Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, and the anti-Matthew gospel. Since Marcion's profession took him all around the known world, his influence also spread likewise. By 150, Justin Martyr laments that all of the known world is following Marcion:

And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them.

- Justin's "First Apology" ch. 26

The first Roman encounter with Christians wasn't with Catholics, but with Marcionites. Roman governors and historians like Seutonius, Tacitus, and Pliny lament that Roman citizens are following a "new, suspicious" religion that makes supplications to a "Chrestus" as they would to a god. When the Roman Catholic Church became the official religion of the Roman empire, they "corrected" these mistakes in official Roman archives.

Chrestians "corrected" to read Christians

As a result of Marcion's canon, the "orthodoxy" had to react, and they had to react to Marcion's worldwide popularity... already established in the mid 2nd century. They did this by presenting their own collection of Pauline epistles, the Pastoral Epistles, the Catholic epistles of 1 Peter, James, Jude, and John, Acts of the Apostles (a product of 2nd century "Acts of..." Christian literature), and a [re]Judaized version of Marcion's anti-Matthew gospel which was first called "Luke" by Irenaeus c. 180. Our current "Luke" is more than likely an anti-Marcionite product.

The Pastoral Epistles and Acts of the Apostles are the more obvious anti-Marcionite creations, where Paul himself supposedly declares in Acts that the "unknown god" of the "Greeks" is in fact Jesus Christ (Acts 17:23). Real Greek citizens already knew who the god of the Jews was; Jews and Greeks had been interacting since the time of Alexander the Great (300 BCE). So this was actually a jab at Marcion and his unknown god. The other coincidence being that the majority of New Testament scholars conclude that the [anti-Marcionite] Pastoral Epistles were not written by the same person who wrote the other Pauline epistles.

The Marcionites' popularity in later centuries rivaled that of the Roman church and the two competed for the title of "universal" (catholic in Greek) church. Of course, the Pauline epistles we find in our current New Testaments are not exactly the Pauline letters found in Marcion's canon. Our current Pauline letters are a response to the Marcionite Paul to sway Marcionites to the Catholics. Which is why there are many "truisms" found in our current Pauline corpus, such as "born of a woman" (Gal 4:4). This of course is not found in Marcion's version of Galatians, with Marcion being our first witness to Paul's letter to the Galatians. Marcion did not think that Jesus was human in any sense, but only appeared human to stay hidden from the creator god, the god of this age (2 Cor 4:4; Eph 3:9^[1]) to secretly release man from the "curse of the law" (Gal 3:10,13) and pull a fast one on the god of the Jews' hyper-emphasis on eye-for-an-eye justice. Though there were subtle clues left by this unknown god throughout the prophets (Eph 3:4). By sacrificing an innocent -- Good Jesus (Chrest Jesus, a grammatical phrase only found in Paul/Marcion) -- the law of the god of this age demanded recompense for this transgression and the agreement being that Jesus The Good took in and nullified the law to give man an escape from the law for any who believed in his sacrifice. The Catholic reinterpretation of this has the absurdity of god sacrificing himself to himself to save man from himself, instead of a god of love sacrificing its son to a separate god of bare justice to free humans from the law that a god of mercy would not create.

Marcion's popularity was based on the more logical soteriology of his Pauline letters and his canon is the reason why Paul's letters are seen as an authority, and why they make up the bulk of our New Testament.

The Catholic rewriting and editing of Marcion's Paul is why the Pauline epistles are sometimes hard to follow, and why he seems to go off on tangents. There are three voices in our current "Paul": Paul, Marcion, and the Catholic refutation of Marcion. If I were to somehow go back to Christian belief, I would become some sort of Marcionite, since Marcionite belief is more logical than modern Christianity. And as I argue, Marcionite belief is more original than Catholic belief (and its bastard little brother Protestant belief).

Ironically, Anglicizing Marcion's (Μαρκιων) Latin/Greek name would end up as Mark.

[1]Note that Marcion's version of Eph 3:9 has "the mystery hidden for ages from the God who created all things" (Tertullian, "Against Marcion" Book 5, chp 18)

Judaism, Christianity... and Buddhism

A lot of former religious types (I like to include myself a bit in that box) usually turn to Buddhism once we leave the confines of the dogmaticism of Christianity. Quite a few of my earlier posts in this blog describe some Buddhist beliefs, but I don't necessarily call myself a Buddhist any more (though I would liberally call myself this).

There are actually arguments that Buddhism is older than "Judaism". For example, would anyone recognize a Judaism that worshipped Yahweh and his sister/wife/consort Asarah (or Asherah)? That flies in the face of the monotheism we expect from Judaism, but it was endemic to Israelite/Judahite or otherwise Canaanite religion prior to the "Jews" (the Persian nominated elites who governed Judah) return from exile c. 500 BCE.

Though the monotheistic faith and practice recounted in the Bible likely held sway among educated, elite men in Jerusalem, the heart and soul of Israelite religion was polytheistic, concerned with meeting practical needs, and centered in the homes of common, illiterate people. [emphasis mine]

- Product review of Ancient Israel archaeologist William G. Dever's book "Did God Have A Wife?"

Judaism as we know it -- or Judaism as Jesus knew it -- was finalized during the Hellenistic era when the book of Daniel was written (between 167 and 164 BCE) and after the success of the Maccabean Revolt. (Rabbinic Judaism would be finalized around 200 CE, which I would argue is the same time Catholic Christianity was crystallized).

But by the time Daniel was written Buddhists had already had proselytizing missions to Alexander (the Great)'s Greek territories; which included Judea.

The Emperor Ashoka (304 BCE – 232 BCE) was a significant early Buddhist "evangelist"; the Buddhist equivalent of Constantine. He had Buddhist missionaries in the areas controlled by Alexander's "successors" around the same time that the Greek version of the Torah/Pentateuch (the LXX) was being translated. So it stands to reason that there were already Buddhist influences in the melting pot of culture that Christianity eventually came forth from. Anyone who thinks that Christianity is a direct, pure descendent of Judaism would be wrong. Especially since a spiritual kingdom with a spiritual messiah was unheard of in Judaism prior to Christianity. I'm not even entirely convinced that Christianity was started by any Jews at all (enter Paul's disdain for the "law", Marcion his popularizer, and early 2nd century Roman reports of a new religion founded by a certain "Chrestus" [the good] instead of Christus [messiah] that historians conclude is about Jesus). Christians certainly didn't get the virgin birth meme from Judaism; that was rampant in Greek and Roman myths.

Who knows, maybe Jesus himself was a Buddhist! lol We don't actually know what the "historical Jesus" practiced or believed so that would be up in the air. Considering the myriads of "historical Jesus" profiles there have been - many of them contradictory - there's nothing stopping someone from positing that Jesus might have had a bit of Buddhist influences on his teaching. R. Joseph Hoffman argues that each scholar and historian who offers a profile of the historical Jesus simply presents a Jesus made in their own image (which follows the trend for the general religious population). And as I pointed out in an earlier post, Christian Gnosticism and Buddhism have a lot in common.

In the early era of Christendom (after Constantine), a lot of Christian missionaries to the Eastern lands encountered Buddhists, and confused them for wayward Christians.

Gospel of Matthew: For or Against Judaism?

Udo Schnelle does for and against lists:

For Matthew being Jewish:

• The fundamental affirmation of the Law (cf. Matt 5.17-20; 23.3a, 23b).
  
• The sustained reference to the Old Testament and the emphatic application of the idea of fulfilment (cf. e.g. Matt 1.22-23;2.5-6, 15, 17-18; 3.3; 4.4-16; 8.17 and others).
  
• The fundamental limitation of Jesus’ mission to Israel (cf. Matt 10.5-6; 15.24).
  
• The Matthean community still keeps the Sabbath (cf. Matt 24.20).
  
• The Matthean community still lives within the jurisdiction of Judaism (cf. Matt 17.24-27; 23.1-3).
  
• The Moses typology in Matt 2.13ff.; 4.1-2; 5.1 and the five great discourses in the Gospel present Jesus as having an affinity to Moses.
  
• The language, structure, reception of the Gospel of Matthew point to a Jewish Christian as its author.

Against:

• The Gospel’s offer of salvation to all clearly points to a Gentile mission that has been underway for some time (cf. Matt 28.18-20; 8.11-12; 10.18; 12.18, 21; 13.38a; 21.43-45; 22.1-14; 24.14; 25.32; 26.13).
  
• The nullification of ritual laws (cf. Matt 15.11, 20b; 23.25-26).
  
• The Matthean critique of the Law. Especially in the Antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5.21-48) Jesus places his own authority higher than that of Moses, for which there is no parallel in ancient Judaism.
  
• Matthew presents a thoroughgoing polemic against Pharisaic casuistry (cf. Matt 5.20; 6.1ff.; 9.9ff.; 12.1ff., 9ff.; 15.1ff.; 19.1ff.; 23.1ff.)
  
• Matthew avoids Aramaisms (cf. Mark 1.13/ Matt 4.2; Mark 5.41/ Matt 9.25; Mark 7.34/ Matt 15.30; Mark 7.11/ Matt 15.5).
  
• The Matthean community understands its life to be at some distance from that of the synagogue (cf. Matt 23.34b ἐν ταῖς συναγωγαῖς ὑμῶν [in your synagogues]; Matt 7.29b καὶ οὐχ ὡς οἱ γραμματεῖς αὐτων [and not as their scribes]).
  
• Ritual prescriptions for the Sabbath have lost their significance (cf. Matt 12.1-8).
  
• The rejection of Israel, i.e. that Israel has lost its distinct place in the history of salvation, has been accepted by Matthew as reality for some time (cf. Matt 21.43; 22.9; 8.11-12; 21.39ff.; 27.25; 28.15).

He adds:
The tension between these two lists is best understood to mean that the evangelist Matthew is the advocate of a liberal Hellenistic Diaspora Jewish Christianity that had been engaged in the Gentile mission for some time. The lack of any reference to the debate over circumcision in Matthew points in the same direction, for in the earlier conservative Palestinian Judaism the relaxing of the practice of circumcision was regarded as contempt for the Torah, while in the broad circles of Hellenistic Diaspora Judaism circumcision was not considered an important issue.

Born Again

Is Justin Martyr the origin for the phrase "born again"?

Και γαρ ο Χριστος ειπεν· Αν μη αναγεννηθητε, ου μη εισελθητε εις την βασιλειαν των ουρανων.

For Christ also said: Unless you are born again, you shall not go into the kingdom of heaven.

- Justin, First Apology 1.61.4

The above bolded phrase is literally "reborn". Contrast this with what's found in John 3:

3 απεκριθη ιησους και ειπεν αυτω αμην αμην λεγω σοι εαν μη τις γεννηθη ανωθεν ου δυναται ιδειν την βασιλειαν του θεου

3 In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."

This part is a bit trickier. The phrase here γεννηθη ανωθεν::gennithi anothen has a double meaning that makes sense of Nicodemus' confusion. It can mean both "born again" and "born from above". In the entire canonical New Testament, this is one of two times that ανωθεν is used to mean "again". All other times it's used to mean "from above". Off the top of my head, the only other time is in one of Paul's letters where he complains about having to do something "all over again", as in from the beginning (don't feel like looking it up right now lol).

So poor Nic is confused about what it means to be "born again" since you can't crawl back into your mother's womb to be born a second time. Jesus replies "You idiot, I meant anothen as in from above; as in from the spirit". If John had Jesus say αναγεγεννημενοι as 1 Peter says (1:23), then the context in John wouldn't have made sense.

So it seems as though John had a literary/entertainment reason for having Jesus say "born again/from above". But it can go either way - did John reappropriate this from Justin and put it in a literary context, or did Justin fub and simply recall this "saying" from John? Surely an educated philosopher like Justin would have remembered the context of the phrase "born from above".

Another odd thing is that "kingdom of heaven" is a phrase only found in Matthew.

The Fourth Synoptic: Marcion's Gospel

The most recent debate of the Synoptic Problem resulted in a dead-lock: The best-established solutions, the Two-Source-Hypothesis and the Farrer-Goodacre-Theory, are burdened with a number of apparent weaknesses. On the other hand, the arguments raised against these theories are cogent. An alternative possibility, that avoids the problems created by either of them, is the inclusion of the gospel used by Marcion. This gospel is not a redaction of Luke, but rather precedes Matthew and Luke and, therefore, belongs into the maze of the synoptic interrelations. The resulting model avoids the weaknesses of the previous theories and provides compelling and obvious solutions to the notoriously difficult problems.

- From here

This actually makes a lot of sense. If canonical Matthew and Luke are reimaged versions of Mark, why not include Marcion's version as well? I think later Christians assumed that Marcion's gospel derived from Luke because of Marcion's reverence for Paul, and Paul supposedly using Luke's gospel. So if Marcion used Paul's "gospel", then he was using "Luke".

The bold arrows (1, 2, 3) indicate the main influence within the synoptic tradition, "main influence" here meaning that the post-texts adopt not only the general narrative outline from their pre-texts but also display, at least partially, verbatim agreements. The bold arrow (2) states what is obvious: Matthew is basically a re-edition of Mark, although enriched with further material. The new element in the picture is the influence (3) from Mcn to Luke. On the assumption of Mcn's priority, there is no doubt that Luke followed Mcn very closely: as far as can be told, Luke did not interfere with Mcn's wording substantially. Mcn is, in other words, a sort of Proto-Luke.

[...]

The dashed arrows (a, b) indicate an additional but minor influence of Mcn on Matthew and on Luke. In some respect, (a) and (b) most clearly show the advancement of this "Markan priority with Mcn" hypothesis: with respect to the far-reaching conformity between Mcn and Luke, the dashed arrows (a, b) indicate a bi-directional influence within the double tradition: there are elements running from Mcn to Matthew and others from Matthew to Luke's re-edition of Mcn.

Does the Existence of a Personal God (Who Has a Master Plan) Make Life Meaningless?

I played the first "Fable" game on the Xbox 360 a couple of years ago. In that game you had the ability to be "good" or "evil", depending on your actions. One time I got bored and decided to kill every single person in every single village I came across. Every merchant, every civilian, every guard, every wife. Everyone.

It was kinda ridiculous, but I was at an insanely huge level so I didn't need any potions or anything else.

In this game, the main purpose was to defeat Jack of Blades. That was the grand, overreaching "master plan" so to say of the game designers. No matter how moral or immoral you were in the game, the game would end the same way - Jack of Blades' defeat.

Now imagine that a god with a grand, master plan exists. Life would be a lot like Fable, where you could dedicate your life to altruism and helping the poor, or spend your free time on cross country killing sprees. If god has some master plan, nothing you do can change his plan. In other words in the grand scheme of things, going into a maternity ward and slaughtering every newborn there has absolutely no effect on god's plan. Equally so, dedicating your life to the improvement of humanity has no effect on god's plan. It's going to come to fruition either way.

If this is the case, then what's the point? It seems like veiled nihilism to me. No matter what we do, it doesn't matter to god. His plan is going to be executed no matter what. The fact that we don't even know what this master plan is supposed to be is what makes it veiled. So "god works in mysterious ways" equals veiled nihilism.

And what if this god is actually malevolent instead of benevolent like in the more popular theisms? We are screwed. And there's no way to tell, either way. But it does look like any god who created the world did so because he/she/it wanted to see maximal suffering.

On the flip side...

If there's no god with a master plan then everything you do has meaning; and potentially huge implications to the course of humanity. Like the Butterfly Effect. Take for example the thing in Philly that was going on last year (that I was involved in) called "Free Hugs" at Rittenhouse Square.

What if, simply giving a hug to a stranger made them not commit suicide that day, and then they decide to live and eventually become the next Martin Luther King, Jr., or Jesus, or Einstein? Even the most seemingly insignificant acts to your fellow human being could completely alter the course of human history. Or what if you're a decorated British soldier in World War I named Henry Tandey who had been killing Germans all day, and notice one German obviously wounded after a long battle walk into your sights. You decide not to pull the trigger and let him live. He nods at you thankfully knowing that you spared him and hobbles off and disappears into the smoke. Then 20 years later you find out that the German you let live was a young Adolf Hitler?

So without a personal god with a master plan, life actually has meaning. Purpose. Things that you do might actually matter in the grand scheme of things. If there's no predetermined end-game, then who knows how things might turn out. Some people are absolutely horrified of uncertainty, but I always see it as a blessing. Uncertainty means that there are still things to find out, and that there's always room to grow. It's like Einstein's pantheism, where he's struck by awe at the universe. That natural curiosity. Like a movie where you don't know how it's going to end.

So if there's a god with a master plan, everything you do is pointless. But if no god exists, then everything you do has potentially huge ramifications. If there's a god with a master plan, then your only true responsibility (if any responsibility at all) is to your self. If there's no god, then your responsibility necessarily includes more people than yourself, since your actions have an impact on your environment.

Revelation, Revolution

So apparently there's a new book out about how the Bible was really put together. Many Christian scholars and seminary students know this, but they preach the simplified versions to their congregations. I wrote in an email to a friend (well, ex-friend and ex-gf) that if she wanted to get the real picture about Christian origins, she would have to go to a Religious Studies department in a university, not her local church.

This is a review on Amazon.com:

Jack Good is an ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ, retired from decades of preaching in New York and Illinois. In "The Dishonest Church," Good reveals that most of his fellow pastors in the mainstream American churches are systematically preaching from their pulpits teachings which they themselves know to be blatant lies.

Why the systematic lying?

The basic problem, Good explains, is a divergence during the last several centuries between what he calls "academic" Christianity and what he dubs "popular" Christianity. As early as the Renaissance, scholars such as Erasmus began applying the intellectual tools that were being developed in science, history, etc. to better understand, purify, and solidify their Christian faith.

By the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, an increasing number of scholars and intellectuals were coming to realize that Christianity could not actually be historically true. In the nineteenth century, the floodgates opened. From David Strauss's "Life of Jesus" to Albert Schweitzer's "The Quest of the Historical Jesus," scholarly research proved that the Bible was a crazy mish-mash of garbled history, Jewish mythology, and fantasies based on pagan stories of "virgin" births, resurrected savior gods, etc.

By the early twentieth century, F. C. Burkitt, in an introduction to Schweitzer's famous book, could confidently assert as an established fact among educated people, "Every one nowadays is aware that traditional Christian doctrine about Jesus Christ is encompassed with difficulties, and that many of the statements in the Gospels appear incredible in the light of modern views of history and nature."

How can it be that most Americans are ignorant of this?

Good opens his book with a telling anecdote:

"One of my clergy friends boasts of a comment he made in an interview with a pastoral search committee. A somewhat hostile member of the committee demanded to know if this prospective pastor believed in a literal virgin birth. My friend replied that his views on the virgin birth were the same as those of St. Paul. The committee member nodded approvingly, and the discussion went on to other matters."

As Good explains, his friend was counting on the fact that the members of the committee would be ignorant of the fact that nowhere does St. Paul make any reference at all to the virgin birth: scholars assume Paul had no acquaintance whatsoever with the doctrine. Thus, Good's friend, who did not believe in the Virgin Birth, could "honestly" claim to hold the same view as St. Paul!

Good adds, "Clergy tend to see such moments as victories over the benighted folk who occupy church pews."

So, are America's pastors and religious leaders simply pathological liars?

Much of the explanation, Good claims, is simply economic self-interest. He states that "my fellow professionals... are motivated by fear... clergy fear the loss of their jobs... These professionals... are killing the church by their lack of courage."

But Good also titles one of his sections "Pleasure in Power," declaring, "I fear that denominational officials and professional theologians perpetuate the present state of affairs because they have come to enjoy too much their role as sole owners and manipulators of the sacred symbols. Consciously or unconsciously, they leave their church members in a state of semi-darkness because otherwise they would have to share prestige and authority."

Finally, Good concedes that many of his colleagues honestly fear that the adults in their congregations simply lack the maturity to handle the truth and that telling the truth would therefore result in the destruction of Christianity.

The bulk of the book consists of Good's attempts to argue, based on his own experience, that such fears are groundless.

These attempts are unconvincing.

Good has managed to avoid lying to his own congregations, and his churches did not collapse. He concludes that his truthful form of Christianity can survive and even prosper. He argues that there are many "Christians in exile" whose orientation towards life finds "an especially luminous form in Jesus of Nazareth."

His view is short-sighted. There are certainly many Americans who suspect, or know, that the Virgin Birth and Resurrection did not actually occur but who nonetheless wish to be members of a "Christian" church. But is their desire really a result of any personal fascination or adoration for a purely human Jewish carpenter/religious reformer who lived two thousand years ago? Or is it more a matter of familial inertia and social conformity that makes it emotionally difficult for them to make a completely clean break with Christianity?

Good argues that the popular view of Jesus as "an adult equivalent of the child's invisible friend," always there to smooth over the difficulties of life, is untrue to the Gospels. On the contrary, "Jesus never intended to be an answer man. Instead of making human problems go away, he seemed intent on creating a new set of concerns. Through both words and example, he defined the requirements of discipleship... even to the point of joining him in crucifixion."

Yes, and some of us do indeed find this Jesus for grown-ups more inspiring than the Sunday-school Jesus of "Jesus loves me, this I know..."

But why make Jesus the sole or primary center of such inspiration? Why should such concern focus primarily on Jesus rather than on Socrates, Buddha, Tolstoy, the pagan martyr Hypatia (murdered by a brutal Christian mob) or scores of other thoughtful, courageous human beings throughout history?

The appeal of Christianity for rational, educated people who know the truth is simply nostalgia. If everyone comes to know the truth and there are no more "true believers," Christianity will fade away. Good's variety of "progressive" Christianity is simply a temporary rest stop on the road from orthodox Christianity to the final destination of outright atheism.

Good forthrightly declares, "The lying must stop in all Christian congregations." Yes, even if the ultimate result is the end of Christianity.

I noticed this a while ago:

It's probably even deeper than that. Yeah, these preachers need to make a livelihood... but think about it. They had to pay for their education. They might have entered seminary or biblical scholarship under the pretense that everything they learned in church (the simple stuff) was true: inerrancy, original autographs, consistency, etc. but halfway through their seminary discovered that this stuff wasn't as cut-and-dried as they naively thought prior to entering seminary.

What are they gonna do at this point? Wash all that money on education down the drain? No - they have to continue their investment! And make sure that their investment pays off - by getting a job and perpetuating the "simple" version of biblical criticism to their congregations.

It's more than just securing a paycheck. It's securing an investment

So what will happen once the real story about Christian origins comes out? The things that I, and many people smarter than me (like the scholars), know? Will it be the end of Christianity, or will it simply morph into some other form? I fear that it'll be more of that same dilemma I noted a while ago. I'm trying to do my part by posting some stuff on facebook, but I would like to do more.

If it comes to choosing between faith and objectivity, people will cling to faith because it feels good. Necessarily, this will lead to deception; which is what our intellectuals have been doing to us common folk since the dawn of history to keep us in line.

Sometimes, some of us are fed up with the bullshit and look to see if there really is an intimidating man behind the booming voice.

There isn't.

Are the Gospels Historically Reliable?

1. None of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses (they were written in third person). This is the conclusion of a vast majority of NT scholars. The earliest witness to gospels with names attached to them comes from Irenaeus c. 175 CE. The earliest witness to any gospel narrative period is Marcion c. 135. No one prior to Irenaeus says "the gospel according to Matthew" or any other such similar phrase.

Even if they were written by eyewitnesses, eyewitness testimony is dishearteningly unreliable.

2. Matthew and Luke are not independent accounts. They are reimaged versions of Mark, since the authors did not like Mark's low (adoptionist/separatist) Christology. Why would an eyewitness (supposedly Matthew) copy almost verbatim huge swaths of a non-eyewitness (Mark) in his gospel? (for Luke, "Theophilus" was also the name of a Christian in the late 2nd century who appears to not know about the Jesus story - so it makes sense that it would be addressed to him [Theophilus, to Autolycus]).

3. Mark has John the Baptist doing baptisms specifically for the cleansing of sin. Josephus has John the Baptist specifically not doing baptisms to cleanse someone of sin, "but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness" (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.5.2).

4. Mark has Jesus being insanely popular, drawing insane crowds everywhere he goes and renowned all throughout Galilee and Judea. Jesus' popularity of this magnitude is not corroborated by any other contemporary Jewish writer (Photius, Bibliotheca 33). Jesus' popularity seems to be a plot device.

5. Mark has Jesus being stalked by the Pharisees everywhere he goes, implying that the Pharisees were the ruling class of Jews prior to 70 CE. The ruling class of Jews during Jesus' lifetime were the Sadducees, the Pharisees didn't gain power until the fall of the temple. Meaning that this is a post-70 conflict between Christians and Jews projected into the past.

6. Mark has Jesus go to Gerasa to evict the demon "Legion" from someone and into a herd of pigs, where they stampede into the sea. Gerasa is about 30 miles from the Sea of Galilee so it would have taken over an hour for them to run that far.

7. Mark says that the Pharisees and "all the Jews" had to wash their hands before eating. This only applied to priests.

8. Mark has Jesus clear out the temple of the money changers and singlehandedly preventing anyone from bringing any merchandise through the temple court. The temple wasn't just some run of the mill temple, it was also a military fortress. There's no way he would have been able to do this singlehandedly without being immediately arrested (or without a lot help, which would have looked like an insurrection).

9. Mark has Jesus call Daniel a prophet. Daniel is not a prophet according to Judaism, as he wrote (c. 165 BCE) after the time period that prophecy had ended.

10. Mark has the Sanhedrin giving Jesus a trial on a Friday night, during Passover. Trials could only be held on Mondays or Thursdays, not at night, and definitely not on high holy days like Passover. Mark also has the Sanhedrin convicting Jesus for claiming to be the messiah. Claiming to be the christ is in no way blasphemy. There were multiple characters with the title "christ" in the LXX.

11. Mark has Pilate give Jesus a fair trial. Pilate was actually known for executing troublemakers without trial, as he was impatient and hot-headed (Philo, Embassy of Gaius 38.301-303). Not only that, but Pilate presumably gave Barabbas a fair trial as well. Pilate then releases one prisoner because it was a Jewish holiday. Pilate actually had no respect for Jewish customs and almost started a rebellion due to his disrespect. Mark then has Pilate being afraid of the Jewish mob (who for some reason have done a complete 180 in how they view Jesus), when in actuality Pilate had no qualms about assassinating a mob of complaining Jews (Josephus, Antiquities... 18.3.2). Pilate was eventually recalled back to Rome for massacring a bunch of unarmed Samaritans who were following a messiah claimant on Mt. Gerizim.

12. Barabbas is Aramaic for "son of the father". It just so happens that Jesus -- the supposedly real son of the father -- meets his polar opposite and his opposite is released, which seems to mimic the scapegoat ceremony of Leviticus 16, where one goat is released and the other goat is sacrificed for sin (some manuscripts of Matthew actually have Barabbas' given name as "Jesus").

13. The entire crucifixion scene quotes numerous times from Psalm 22. The Psalms are not prophetic, thus these lines must have been purposefully lifted from that Psalm.

14. All four canonical gospels have emphatically conflicting Easter narratives; consider the Easter Challenge. There's also no tradition of any "empty tomb" prior to Mark's gospel. And most common tombs did not have circular stones in front of them that could be "rolled away" (16:3) prior to 70 CE.

15. For some reason all throughout Mark, only demons, the reader, and people who are not named know that Jesus is the messiah. Everyone who is "known" doesn't know. This makese sense as literature or entertainment, not history.

16. John, who according to tradition, was the son of Zebedee and apostle, was a fisherman. Fishermen in antiquity weren't widely known for their literacy. John calls Jesus "the Word":

(205)[...]And the Father who created the universe has given to his archangelic and most ancient Word a pre-eminent gift, to stand on the confines of both, and separated that which had been created from the Creator. And this same Word is continually a paraclete to the immortal God on behalf of the mortal race, which is exposed to affliction and misery; and is also the ambassador, sent by the Ruler of all, to the subject race.

(206) And the Word rejoices in the gift, and, exulting in it, announces it and boasts of it, saying, "And I stood in the midst, between the Lord and You; neither being uncreated as God, nor yet created as you, but being in the midst between these two extremities, like a hostage, as it were, to both parties: a hostage to the Creator, as a pledge and security that the whole race would never fly off and revolt entirely, choosing disorder rather than order; and to the creature, to lead it to entertain a confident hope that the merciful God would not overlook his own work. For I will proclaim peaceful intelligence to the creation from him who has determined to destroy wars, namely God, who is ever the guardian of peace."

Oh wait, that's not from John's gospel... that's from Philo's (20 BCE - 50 CE) "Who is the Heir of Divine Things". How could an illiterate Aramaic speaking fisherman from the first century read Philo's work (in Greek, not Aramaic), and say that Jesus was Philo's "Logos", who Philo himself reappropriated from the Stoics?

17. John has Christians being kicked out of synagoges during Jesus' lifetime. This doesn't actually happen until after the council of Jamnia c. 90 CE.

18. John has Jesus being seen as "the messiah" for a group of Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim. The Samaritans reject Davidic authority and thus would not have seen a Jew as their messiah (Jews destroyed their temple on Mt. Gerizim c. 110 BCE).

19. John has Jesus philosophizing about his own awesomeness in long winded discourses throughout this gospel, which is contrary to the shorter speeches in the synoptics. There's no way anyone who was a witness to any historical Jesus c. 33 would have remembered these long speeches for nearly 70 years. Thus they must be an invention of the author.

20. John has Jesus claim to be god himself, and the only way towards salvation. This would have gotten Jesus arrested and stoned immediately for claiming equality with YHWH. The Jews almost went to war with Rome c. 41 because Caligula declared himself a god in the flesh and wanted a statue of himself erected in the temple. And Jesus claiming that he's the only way towards salvation would have been nonsense to Jews while the sacrificial system was still functioning.

21. John has Jesus say "your law" when refering to the laws of Moses as though he's not Jewish.

Did Paul Think The Jews Killed Jesus?

This is from the discussion here:

1 Thessalonians 2:14-16

14For you, brothers, became imitators of God's churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the Jews,

15who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men

16in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last

Here Paul says that the Jews killed Jesus, as well as the prophets. What a statement! That sounds alarmingly like some sort of Muslim charge against the Jews. However, it doesn't look like the Jews killed any of their prophets.

At least 34 prophets are mentioned by name in the Bible, besides the occasional obscure prophetesses. ...

Of these prophets, no record of their deaths is given for most of them, so there is no scriptural indication that they were killed. ..... There were instances where false prophets were put to death, as when Ahab and Zedekiah were roasted to death by Nebuchadnezzar in Jeremiah 29:21. Presumably, the Babylonian king was doing the Lord's work here, but that's not what Paul had in mind in 1 Thessalonians. We might also include Jeremiah's death curse on Hananiah (28:15-17) for the horrendous impiety of giving the people hope in the face of foreign oppression, but, again, that's not what Paul had in mind either.

No, we need the deaths of "true" prophets, not "false" ones. In my investigation of the prophet-killing charge, I found only three who actually were killed: John the Baptist, Balaam, and the obscure Urijah. The Baptist was killed not by the Jews but at the behest of Herodias, the wife and former sister-in-law of Herod, who took offense at John's denunciation of her. It is highly unlikely she was a Jew but rather an Edomite.

As far as Balaam is concerned, while Numbers 31:8 records his death at the hands of the Israelites, it is important to realize two things. First, he was not one of "their" prophets anyway (although he set the pattern subsequent prophets followed) but was hired by the king of Moab, whom he double-crossed by refusing to curse Israel. Second, he was judged to be evil (Numbers 31:16; Rev. 2:14; Jude 11; 2 Peter 2:15), just the sort of prophet Yahweh would conceivably *want* the Jews to kill, despite his use of Balaam against Moab.

The only fully legitimate prophet I could find who was killed by his own people was Urijah, a small-time Jeremiah parrot, who was tracked down, dragged back, and killed by King Jehoiakim himself (Jere. 26:20-23). This was the deed of one Jew and his flunkies and not a collective act.

- "Killed Their Own Prophets": New Testament Libel of the Jews by Stephen Van Eck

So it doesn't seem as though the Jews actually killed any of their prophets. Not only that, but Paul's statement above contradicts his other claims in 1 Corinthians and Romans:

1 Corinthians 2:8 None of the rulers of this world understood [God's wisdom]: for had they had they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Romans 8:4 in order that the just requirement of the law [the crucifixion] might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Paul, in both 1 Corinthians and Romans, thinks that the crucifixion was just, and according to the law.

Here's Matthew 23, Jesus' childish rant against the Pharisees (a similar rant is in Luke):

29"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous.

30And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.'

31So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets.

32Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!

33"You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?

34Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town.

35And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

36I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.

37"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

38Look, your house is left to you desolate.

39For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord'".

The virtrol in Matt 23 couldn't have existed against the Pharisees in 33 CE, since they were not the Jews in power. This animosity would better fit in a post 70 CE conflict between Christians and Pharisees, since the destruction of the temple removed the power of the Sadducees and the Pharisees picked it up. "Jesus" here is basically gloating that the Jews lost their temple. Somehow, Paul knew about this as well, since 1 Thess 2:16 could only make sense of the destruction of the temple. What wrath of god befell the Jews in 50 CE?

Thus, this part of 1 Thessalonians must be post-70 CE interpolation.

This makes me more and more suspicious about the traditional date of Paul's letters. What if they're all post-70 and the gospel narratives are contemporaneous of the Bar-Kokhba revolt c. 132?

Paul, Cephas, and Peter

I mentioned in my post on the history of early Christianity that Paul says in 1 Cor 15 that Jesus appeared to "Cephas (κηφας::kefas), and then the twelve" which might imply that Peter and Cephas are two different people. Because according to the gospel narratives, Peter was one of the twelve. Thus Paul should have written "Cephas and the eleven" if Peter and Cephas were indeed the same person.

Galatians 2:6-14 is the only mention of a person named "Peter" (πετρος::petros) in Paul's letters. Assuming they are the same person, every other instance of this "pillar" Paul uses the name Cephas. Why Paul would out of the blue decide to call Peter "Peter" here instead of his usual "Cephas" has no other explanation other than interpolation.

Galatians 2:6-14

Ελληνικά:

6απο δε των δοκουντων ειναι τι οποιοι ποτε ησαν ουδεν μοι διαφερει προσωπον [ο] θεος ανθρωπου ου λαμβανει εμοι γαρ οι δοκουντες ουδεν προσανεθεντο

7αλλα τουναντιον ιδοντες οτι πεπιστευμαι το ευαγγελιον της ακροβυστιας καθως πετρος της περιτομης

8ο γαρ ενεργησας πετρω εις αποστολην της περιτομης ενηργησεν και εμοι εις τα εθνη

9και γνοντες την χαριν την δοθεισαν μοι ιακωβος και κηφας και ιωαννης οι δοκουντες στυλοι ειναι δεξιας εδωκαν εμοι και βαρναβα κοινωνιας ινα ημεις εις τα εθνη αυτοι δε εις την περιτομην

10μονον των πτωχων ινα μνημονευωμεν ο και εσπουδασα αυτο τουτο ποιησαι

11οτε δε ηλθεν κηφας εις αντιοχειαν κατα προσωπον αυτω αντεστην οτι κατεγνωσμενος ην

12προ του γαρ ελθειν τινας απο ιακωβου μετα των εθνων συνησθιεν οτε δε ηλθον υπεστελλεν και αφωριζεν εαυτον φοβουμενος τους εκ περιτομης

13και συνυπεκριθησαν αυτω [και] οι λοιποι ιουδαιοι ωστε και βαρναβας συναπηχθη αυτων τη υποκρισει

14αλλ οτε ειδον οτι ουκ ορθοποδουσιν προς την αληθειαν του ευαγγελιου ειπον τω κηφα εμπροσθεν παντων ει συ ιουδαιος υπαρχων εθνικως και ουκ ιουδαικως ζης πως τα εθνη αναγκαζεις ιουδαιζειν

English:

6As for those who seemed to be important—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by external appearance—those men added nothing to my message.

7On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews.

8For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles.

9James, Cephas, and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews.

10All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.

11When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong.

12Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.

13The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

14When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, "You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?"

In the reconstructed version of Marcion's To the Galatians, Gal 2:7-8 are not in it:

(Gal 2:5) To these not even for an hour we yielded in subjection, That the truth of the gospel might continue with you.

(Gal 2:6) But from those reputed to be something - those of repute conferred nothing to me.

(Gal 2:7) But against them, when they had seen that I was entrusted the gospel of the uncircumcision.

(Gal 2:9) Peter, James and John , who regard themselves pillars, gave to me the right of fellowship: - to me the nations - to them the circumcision

In the Epistle of the Apostles (EoA), the writer gives a list of all of the apostles:

2 We, John, Thomas, Peter, Andrew, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Nathanael, Judas Zelotes, and Cephas, write unto the churches of the east and the west, of the north and the south declaring and imparting unto you that which concerneth our Lord Jesus Christ

The only question that remains is why the interpolation? The only other instance of "Cephas" in the entire NT besides 1 Corinthians and Galatians is at John 1:42, who deliberately joins the two. However, the EoA uses the same motiffs as the gospel of John (disciples poking holes in Jesus' wounds) so they might have been using that gospel as a source. If so, how could they separate Cephas and Peter?

The interpolation doesn't add or subtract anything to Paul's rant here, so the only purpose must be the same purpose as John 1:42 - joining the name Cephas and Peter into one person. Nowhere else does Paul mention that a "Peter" is a pillar of this Jesus movement. Maybe this version of Gal 2:7-8 is the same person who wrote John 1:42.

Edit: Or maybe the interpolation does detract from the rant a bit. Reading this section without the interpolation, Paul obviously has no love for the "so-called" pillars. Which follows the theme of 2:6 where he obviously said that their apparent leadership had no effect on his message, only that he remember the poor (which he did). Using the word δοκουντες::dokountes to describe them ("so-called") makes sense of how he had no qualms about rebuking Cephas to his face later on in the letter. The interpolated passage softens the vitrol of Paul's disdain for these pillars... which makes it seem slightly anti-Marcionite.