A scripture blog

2012-01-17T19:25:00.000+10:00

My take on an ancient controversy

The Roman Catholic church claims special authority for itself on account of the alleged fact that the disciple Peter was the first Bishop of Rome and that Christ had given Peter special powers that Peter passed on to later bishops of Rome. The Bishop of Rome is these days referred to as the Pope, which simply means "father". So there are 3 claims there in need of validation.

1). There is no mention in the NT that Peter was ever in Rome. It was Paul who went to Rome according to the NT. But could Peter have followed on later? If so, such an important event would surely have been noted somewhere at the time in the 1st century. The Catholic Encyclopedia can rustle up just 3 alleged 1st century references:

"Earlier still is Clement of Rome writing to the Corinthians, probably in 96, certainly before the end of the first century. He cites Peter's and Paul's martyrdom as an example of the sad fruits of fanaticism and envy. They have suffered "amongst us" he says, and Weizsaecker rightly sees here another proof for our thesis.

The Gospel of St. John, written about the same time as the letter Clement to the Corinthians, also contains a clear allusion to the martyrdom by crucifixion of St. Peter, without, however, locating it (John 21:18, 19).

The very oldest evidence comes from St. Peter himself, if he be the author of the First Epistle of Peter, of if not, from a writer nearly of his own time: "The Church that is in Babylon saluteth you, and so doth my son Mark" (1 Peter 5:13). That Babylon stands for Rome, as usual amongst pious Jews, and not for the real Babylon, then without Christians, is admitted by common consent (cf. F.J.A. Hort, "Judaistic Christianity", London, 1895, 155).

It should be obvious that these are all weak reeds to lean upon.

What did Clement mean by "amongst". That it meant "in Rome" is just one interpretation. Since Clement was bishop of Rome, however, it may be this selfsame sly allusion that gave rise to the later belief that Peter reached Rome. As Bishop of Rome, Clement would have an obvious interest in fostering such a myth.

I pass over the second "reference" in polite silence.

The third reference asserts that there were no Christians in Babylon at the time. But there certainly were Jews and the famous Babylonian Talmud eventually emerged as the product of their deliberations. So it is entirely plausible that Peter did go there in an attempt to make converts and had some success. So this passage too is no proof of anything.

I would have entertained the idea that "Babylon" was symbolic if the reference had come from a sometimes gnostic writer like St. John but Peter writes a perfectly straightforward book of instructions. I think we must take him at his word. He went to Babylon, not Rome.

2). Special powers conferred? The basis for this claim is the passage in Matthew 16:18. "And Jesus answering said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven."

Transliterating the relevant Greek of the original we get: "ou ei petros kai epi tautee tee petra oikodomeeso mou teen ekkleesian". That shows that Christ was using two different words for Peter and the rock upon which he was to build his "church'. He was making a distinction, not an equation. I go into more detail about the Greek passage here

An issue seldom addressed, however, is that Christ spoke Aramaic, not Greek. So what we read in Matthew is itself a translation. So what was Christ most likely to have been saying in Aramaic?

Alfred Persson has done the most extensive exploration of the Aramaic background to the text but he really rambles on so I will try to summarize: He points out that "petros" is the Aramaic word for "firstborn" but that it was also known at the time (educated Israelites at the time spoke Greek, as indeed did educated Romans) that the same word in Greek meant "rock". So Jesus was using that known double meaning to make a point vivid.

What point? What was the rock upon which he would build his group of followers? That is no mystery at all. There are numerous references in the NT which equate Jesus's TEACHINGS with a rock -- e.g. Matthew 7:24; 1 Corinthians 10:4. So Jesus expected his teachings to form the foundation of a new group. He was certainly right about that! To encourage his followers, Jesus then goes on to say that the wisdom he imparts is very special indeed. It will give his followers entry into the kingdom of heaven. So the new group will be a privileged one indeed. Orthodox teachings among the Israelites at the time foresaw a resurrection to life on earth, not a transformation into spirit beings.

But what about: "And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven."? Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Catholics claim that the passage gives Christians on earth the power to control events in Heaven. But that is surely absurd. Christ was surely saying that his teachings are an accurate guide to what has already been bound or loosed in Heaven.

3). But say we ignore all of the above and concede that Peter was given some special power. Where is there any statement or evidence in Christ's words that this power could be passed on? There is none. So all three of the Roman claims are mere assertions with no obvious truth value.

2011-08-16T09:58:00.002+10:00

Typo

In the post below I originally wrote Jude 28 when I intended Jude 25

2011-08-15T22:08:00.004+10:00

Jude 25

I still like to browse through my King James Bible at times and in doing so recently I found a scripture that could give aid and comfort to the Trinitarians. Verse 25 of Jude reads (KJ):

To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen

So is the Saviour (Jesus) God? Sadly for the trinitarians, No. It's just a bad translation.

I don't have a copy of the old Stephanus text but I have checked three modern recensions of the original Greek text (Nestle, Griesbach and Westcott & Hort) and all have a "through" ("dia" in Greek) in the text. So the relevant text fragment translates as: "To the only God our saviour .... THROUGH Jesus Christ"

In other words God is the real saviour and he works THROUGH Jesus. The text in fact sharply distinguishes between the two rather than saying they are the same.

Check it in any modern translation

2011-04-26T21:59:00.001+10:00

Some more exegesis

Exegesis is the detailed examination of a text in its context -- usually a scriptural text. I became an exegete of a sort when I was about 13. It was then that I first read the Sermon on the Mount. I was thunderstruck to find that what Jesus taught was nothing like what Christians actually do. Where is the ambiguity in:

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."

Can you get plainer than that? I can't imagine it. And I am still nearly as thunderstruck to this day about the gap between what the Bible says on the one hand and what Christians and Jews do, say and believe on the other hand. One would think that they would long ago have found a book that suited them better.

I still like Christianity as we have it today, however. I attended the Good Friday service at my old Presbyterian church, for instance. See here. But it is a very poor reflection of the original faith.

I have continued to find exegesis fascinating, however, so I long ago started looking closely at what the rest of the scriptures actually say -- even delving into the original languages in which they were written where that seemed crucial. And over the years I have put up on this blog and on my scripture blog my findings about key doctrines -- including hellfire.

Rather to my amusement, however, I see that the NYT has just weighed in on hellfire. When the NYT is preaching the reality of hell, I feel that I should say a little more about some of the key scriptural texts involved.

Quick background: The word translated as "hell" in many Bibles is in the original Greek "hades", which simply means death or the grave. Translating it as "hell" is a theological statement, not a linguistic one. And knowing that wipes out most of the texts that are usually cited in support of the hellfire doctrine.

A couple of interesting texts remain, however, and today I thought I should look at one of Jesus's prophetic utterances in Matthew 25. An excerpt:

"When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world ...

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal"

The "everlasting fire" into which the "goats" are cast certainly does sound like a clear formulation of a hellfire doctrine but that impression is partly an effect of a poor translation. The word translated as "punishment" is in Greek "kolasin" and it simply means "cutting off". It is the word a Greek gardener might use to describe the pruning of a tree. So it would be a defensible translation to say that the goats would be cut off and thrown away like the unwanted branch of a tree

So, when properly translated, we see that Christ was, as usual, offering the alternatives of life and death, not heaven and hell -- exactly as he does in the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16. The sheep get eternal life and the goats get eternal death. I guess I am a goat!

But where does the "everlasting fire" come in? To see that we have to note that Jesus was speaking figuratively for most of the passage, as he often did. His parables are famous. So is he really going to sit on a throne and muster billions of people on either side of him? If so, he would need to locate himself somewhere around Iran and even then the billions of goats would be crowded for room and many could well fall into the Mediterranean (presuming the throne was facing North).

And Jesus in fact makes it clear that he is aiming at vividness rather than precision when he notes: "as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats".

So we have to decipher what is behind the figurative language. We get a clue when we note another passage where he used the same expression. Matthew 18:

"Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire."

Again, however, we risk being misled by a quite mendacious translation. This is one occasion when the original Greek underlying the translation "hell" is NOT "hades". It is "Gehenna". And Gehenna was simply the municipal incinerator outside Jerusalem where the bodies of criminals were thrown.

So: Bingo! We now have it. We know what image of everlasting fire Jesus had in mind. He had in mind the continuously burning fire of Jerusalem's garbage incinerator. And, needless to say, the bodies thrown into Gehenna don't feel anything. They have simply died and been disposed of in an ignominious way. So both goats and the Devil are simply going to die -- but die in disgrace.

Jesus is however a careful teacher so makes sure we don't get him wrong by adding a plain language summary at the end of the Matthew 25 passage:

"And these shall go away into everlasting cutting off: but the righteous into everlasting life"

So the hellfire doctrine is another pagan borrowing. It is not Biblical.

A couple more points: Note that in the Matthew 25 passage Jesus speaks only of judging the "nations". There is no mention of the dead. So what about the resurrection of the dead and the judgment of them? Resurrection is the hope of an afterlife that is held out in both the Old and New Testaments but it is not mentioned there at all. That again tells us that Jesus was concerned to paint a vivid mental picture rather than make a precise doctrinal statement.

So, although the Bible is in general a very plainspoken book, we have to make sure that the translation is right and be careful not to take the figurative literally. And reading the whole passage is the usual key to that

Finally, the goats are on the LEFT! Did Jesus foresee the world today? (Just joking).

There is an interesting article here which describes some of the divisions in contemporary Christian thought about the nature of heaven and hell.

2011-04-15T00:39:00.001+10:00

Do the Scriptures need interpreting?

This post originally appeared on my DISSECTING LEFTISM blog.

As an atheist I of course have no religious interest in the scriptures but I was for many years paid a lot of money by a leading Australian university to teach sociology so I hope I may be excused for taking a sociological interest in them.

My interest is very much motivated by the historic power of the Judeo-Christian scriptures. They have been enormously influentual and I like to look at why. And in looking at why it seems important to see exactly what they say. So for a while I ran a daily Scripture blog which pointed out what they actually say -- and observed that what they say is a long way from what Christians generally believe today.

It was the Christianity of the first century that gave the huge initial impetus to the worldwide spead of Chistianity in subsequent centuries so it would seem to be that version of Christianity which is of greatest interest -- rather that the watered-down and paganized version we encounter today. And it is first century Christianity that is recorded in the Bible.

And my Scripture blog gave chapter and verse (as it were) in showing exactly where current Christianity is paganized and watered down from the first century original. And the fact that Christianity still has great influence despite being paganized and watered down is surely further testimony to the great power of the original. Even a little bit of the original Gospel is still helpful to many people.

Something that I have so far neglected to do, however, is to look at the claim made by the Catholic Church and some orthodox Jews (such as the aggressive Mr Kelley) to the effect that the Bible is THEIR book and only they can interpret it correctly. The Protestant Reformation was of course built around rejection of that claim. Most of the early Protestants said that they could read the Bible for themselves perfectly adequately and rejected any need for authoritative or learned interpretation.

I am a product of fundamentalist Protestant culture so that basic Protestant idea seems instinctively right to me. I am however a little saddened when I note that most Protestants talk the talk but don't walk the walk. Most Protestants still accept, for instance the quite mad doctrine of the triune God, which has absolutely no basis in scripture but which revives the doctrines of ancient Egypt rather well. The first person of influence to advocate it was Athanasius, an Egyptian. So I like to see what we find when we do walk the walk.

And it is my contention that the Bible is in fact very straightforward most of the time and that it therefore CAN easily be read and understood by almost everyone -- without any need for guidance from special authorities. But my asserting that is of little consequence unless I can give evidence of it. And I thought that I might today make a small start in that direction by comparing two historic pieces of religious expression. The first:

For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.... Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest

The second:

Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore, they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.

As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: So, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's Predestination, is a most dangerous downfal, whereby the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.

Furthermore, we must receive God's promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.

It is my submission that the first is as clear as crystal and the second is as clear as mud. So what are those passages? The first is from the Bible (Ecclesiastes 9) and the second is from the 39 Articles of Religion of the Church of England. The Bible beats theology any day.

But the Bible is TOO clear for most people. Ecclesiastes could hardly have expressed more plainly and emphatically that when you are dead you are dead: No mention of immortal souls flitting about. So that is when people start scrabbling for "interpretations". They say (for instance) that the Ecclesisstes passage is only talking about the body and that there is some mystical "soul" that lives on as well.

And if people need the comfort of that belief so be it. But the original teaching is clear. The Hebrews of Old Testament times were earth-oriented and the only aferlife they looked forward to was resurrection to life on earth at the time of the coming of the Messiah. And Jesus believed that too: "Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done ON EARTH, as it is in heaven".

So it's not the Bible that needs interpretation; it is the reluctance of people to accept its teachings that gives rise to the need for interpretation.

And the passage above from the 39 articles is an example of that too. It is an attempt to reject the plain words of Ephesians chapter 1 while appearing to accept them. Ephesians says quite plainly that being one of God's chosen ones was "predestined" from "before the foundation of the world", which no doubt seems rather unfair. At the time the Calvinists (mostly Scottish Presbyterians) accepted that but the Anglicans didn't like it, presumably because it made their sacraments look rather superfluous.

And that applies equally well to Jews and Christians. The following command in the Torah (Leviticus 20:13) is crystal clear: "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." But Rabbinical teachings have "interpreted" that out of existence too.

2011-04-10T00:43:00.000+10:00

Abuse as a response to threat

This post originally appeared on my DISSECTING LEFTISM blog.

As most conservative bloggers can attest, the comments we get on our blogs or via email from Leftists consist almost entirely of a tirade of abuse. I have always thought that the abuse is a sign of a hostile or hating character but perhaps I have underestimated their awareness of their own situation. They know that the facts and logic are against them but cannot let go of their beliefs so rage is their only possible response.

I am moved to that thought by a comment put up in response to my recent post "Is God a racist"?. In the post I addressed once again the contentious question: "Who is a Jew?". The title would, however, I hope, alert anybody to the fact that I was offering a not-very-serious tease. And, to make sure I was not misunderstood, I stated that at the foot of the piece.

Most of the comments I got about it conceded that the piece was thought-provoking but that is all. In one of the places where I posted it, however, I got the following enraged response which consisted of nothing but extended abuse. It said in effect: "I know more than you do so you are wrong" A less persuasive argument would be hard to imagine:

I'm not sure how you got this bee in your bonnet or why this is on an anti-ACLU blog.

You are not dealing with Torah in the original Hebrew or the accompanying Oral Law. There is SO much you don't know about or understand, and are filtering through your X-tian (albeit now atheist) viewpoint. Your sources are from the original via Greek, via Latin, and then into English. You lose a *lot*-- and you don't even know what you don't have. Each of those translations had its own agenda and is probelmatic when compared with the original-- why don't you discuss that?

Give it a rest. Go ahead & do this to the stuff of your tradition (X-tian). You have no idea your lack of foundation to be able to discuss Torah, and you do indeed come off as an anti-semite, despite your rationalizations and protestations.

That is of course exactly the sort of non-argument one would expect of a Leftist. He says nothing to support his assertion that he knows more and gives no detail about where my post might be mistaken. It is pure assertion.

And it is not even good assertion. He asserts that I bypass the original languages of the Bible when in fact I specifically refer to the original Hebrew in discussing the divine name. Readers of my scripture blog will know that I pay great attention to the original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible -- though I must confess that I am more at ease with Greek than I am with Hebrew.

So who wrote such a sad effusion? A conservative Jew who uses the rather Portuguese-sounding nickname of "dahozho" [dahozho@yahoo.com] but whose real name is the very Irish-sounding J. Kelley.

My arguments obviously threatened him to the point where he was unable to give an intellectual reply. Why? From the name, I would guess that he is a Jewish convert. Real Jews have a perspective going back a long way so keep their cool with relative ease.

So the polemical incompetence of Mr Kelley suggests to me that maybe Leftists too know that they are on shaky ground when they respond to challenges with abuse.

Update:

Mr Kelley has now replied to the above -- simply repeating his contempt for gentiles who think they can understand the Bible without Jewish theology to guide them!

2011-04-06T00:47:00.000+10:00

Is God a racist?

This post originally appeared on my DISSECTING LEFTISM blog.

Orthodox Jews seem to claim that God made a covenant with them as a nation, as a particular genetic group or race. I doubt that. From Moses on right through the Hebrew prophets, Yahveh (the name of God in the Hebrew Bible, sometimes translated as "Jehovah" in English Bibles) poured out imprecations and condemnations on the Israelites if they strayed from the true religion. It would seem clear that Yahveh defined his people by their RELIGION rather than by their race.

So how does that leave modern Jews in the eyes of Yahveh? As an atheist, I am in a poor position to say but if we assume his existence and read his words in the Bible, it does not look too good. They obey the Torah only selectively (they no longer put homosexuals to death, for instance) and they have not rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem despite being in a good position to do so.

Additionally they have done the exact opposite of what he intended regarding his name. We read in Psalm 83:18 "That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth" (KJV). Yahveh clearly had big ambitions for his name and regarded himself as ruling not only the Israelites but all the earth. And even in the Ten Commandments, he stressed the importance and dignity of his name -- forbidding disrespectful use of it.

Yet what did Israelites, starting from around 200 AD or earlier, do? Far from proclaiming Yahveh's mighty name worldwide, they stopped using it altogether! The Devil must have had his best laugh ever when that happened! And modern Jews go one better and render even the Germanic word "god" as "G-d". I can't see Yahveh being pleased with that! No wonder he let the Romans boot the Israelites out of Israel

So has Yahveh transferred his support to the Christians? It's possible. On numbers alone it would seem so. The descendants (spiritual descendants?) of Abraham were promised that they would be a multitude throughout the earth. "Abraham" means "father of a multitude" and we read: "And he brought him [Abraham] forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be". (Gen 15:5).

The Christians are that multitude but Jews are not. On best estimates there are even 200 million Christians in China these days. So whom does this text best fit? Jews or Christians: "I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. (Genesis 12:2-3)". It's a matter of opinion, of course but it is Christians who have both the numbers and the influence. And has not Christian civilization been a great blessing to the whole world? And "Jew" is much more often a curse than a blessing.

And remember that respect for his law was what Yahveh cared about. He even provided a nifty executive summary of it (or what scientists would call an "Abstract"). I refer of course to the Ten Commandments. And Christians are very zealous about teaching the Ten Commandments. And they distribute Bibles worldwide that contain the Torah in full.

What would I know? Nothing, perhaps. But that is what I see in the Hebrew scriptures. I probably should give theology up.

Update:

OK. The post above was a bit facetious and that was probably bad of me. Of greater concern is that the post may be seen as anti-Jewish and pro-Christian. It is neither. I give Christian theology a hard time too -- as you can see from my Scripture blog. It is just that as an atheist I am in a position to read the original texts without religious preconceptions and I like to do that. Doing that does produce some awkward conclusions at times, though.

2011-04-03T00:49:00.000+10:00

Jews as a race

This post originally appeared on my DISSECTING LEFTISM blog.

My recent posts about the Jewish religion questioned its antiquity. My submission was that modern-day Judaism and modern-day Christianity both arose at the same time as ways of adapting the ancient Hebrew religion to the destruction of the the Jerusalem temple by the Romans and the expulsion of most Israelites from Israel -- with Judaism being, if you like, the more conservative solution and Christianity the more radical solution.

Neither religion does things that the ancient Israelites did -- such as killing homosexuals or burning animals on altars -- but both have remained close to the major ethical teachings of the Torah, with Jews remaining true to more minor teachings too. So both religions are only about 2,000 years old rather than the 3,000 years or thereabouts that some Jews claim for their religion.

I may not have convinced anyone of all that but it seems to me that I should complete the picture as I see it by looking at another important Jewish claim: That they are indeed the same people as the ancient Israelites; that they are the modern-day descendants of the exiles from Israel. And I will jump the gun a little by saying that I do see some substance in that claim.

And that claim is a central one for orthodox Jews. They really do believe that Jewish Israelis are the same people in the same land speaking the same language as of old. And some of my Jewish correspondents are so strongly attached to such a view that they see no difficulty in the fact that Jews from Lithuania mostly look like Lithuanians (blue eyes, blond hair) while Jews from Egypt mostly look like Egyptians (black hair, dark eyes). And at the last Pesach seder I attended we were honoured to have a Sabra family present -- who were by far the most dark-skinned people in the otherwise Ashkenazi congregation.

And that is the central difficulty for the orthodox claim: As we see in the famous story of Ruth, Israelites have never been wholly endogamous. The marrying out that is the despair of many a Yiddisher Momma in NYC today has been going on for a long time. So Jews from Lithuania are largely Lithuanians and Jews from Arab lands are largely Arab. Any genetic connection to the Israelites of old would appear to be tenuous indeed.

A second difficulty is that there is a very clear sense in which Judaism is a religion -- and that was the starting point of my posts of a few days ago. You can BECOME a Jew, just as you can BECOME a Christian. The requirements are more severe in some ways for Jews than for Christians but both conversions do happen. You cannot change your race but you can change your religion so is not Judaism simply a religion?

The answer lies, of course, in abandoning two-value logic. Jewry could be BOTH a religion and a race. And it seems that it is. The last I saw of the genetic findings, about half of Ashkenazi Jews do show some distinctively Middle-Eastern genes. So despite the exogamy, some genetic connection to ancient Israel would appear to remain among modern-day Jews. So many or maybe most Ashkenazim who make aliyah are indeed returning to what is at least partly their genetic home. And the fact that their religion is partly that of ancient Israel makes it their home too.

The situation with the Sephardim is harder to disentangle and may require further developments in genetic research to progress. But that the Ashkenazim have hung on to their original ancestry to some degree for so long is obviously encouraging.

So the holiest of holy cities has indeed regathered to itself its people.

-----

Jewish humor is of course legendary and I am a great devotee of it. I was probably started off by being taken to see Marx Bros. movies as a kid. It often has tragic undertones, as one might expect. A totally mad example of that which I can never get out of my mind is the crack by Milton Berle: "Anytime a person goes into a delicatessen and orders a pastrami on white bread, somewhere a Jew dies". So let me end up my comments on endogamy/exogamy with an equally mad cartoon on the subject

And should I mention that I always order my Pastrami on rye?

2011-03-30T00:52:00.000+10:00

More on the antiquity of Judaism

This post originally appeared on my DISSECTING LEFTISM blog.

I love my Jewish readers. When I post something about Jews and Judaism, I always get ten times the response to what I get on any other topic -- and all well-reasoned responses too, unlike the tantrums from Leftists.

I posted a couple of days ago a provocative article that did something very naughty. I questioned the continuity between the Judaism of Old Testament times and the Jews of today. It is a tribute to Jewish good manners that my post was greeted with some politeness, albeit with great disagreement.

And, of course, it is all a matter of degree. It is probably safe to say that all religions change all the time. Nonetheless I think there is a step-change after the destruction of Herod's temple. For instance, Jews no longer put homosexuals to death (as the Torah requires) and no longer burn animals on an altar in the belief that so doing will ingratiate themselves with their god.

How often Jews did those things is beside the point. The point is that their religion required those things, whereas now it does not.

It is true that the diaspora started long before the Roman onslaught and that Jews outside Israel had already abandoned the two practices I mentioned. But the temple was still there and its centrality to Jewish practice and belief cannot be doubted by any reader of the Hebrew scriptures. Jews abroad were still in a position to feel that all the requirements of their religion were being met where that mattered: In Israel.

So it is still my conclusion that post-temple Judaism and Christianity are two different and contemporaneous adaptations of the original Hebrew belief system. And we call Christianity a different religion, so why not present-day Judaism?

A point that may have slid past some of my Jewish readers is that Jesus did a very good job of rooting his teachings in the Torah. He quoted it repeatedly and insisted that he did not question it. He was a good Israelite of his times and his adaptation of the traditional teachings provided a good foundation for what later became known as Christianity to be likewise rooted. Which is why the Hebrew scriptures are an important part of Christianity to this day.

Update: In case it is not already clear, I should perhaps note that I am speaking of Jewish RELIGION. There is also of course a substantial claim that modern Jews are RACIALLY related to the ancient Hebrews.

2011-03-29T00:55:00.000+10:00

The meaning of "soul" in the Bible

This post originally appeared on my DISSECTING LEFTISM blog.

Jesus said: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8: 36).

How can you lose your soul? Is not your soul YOU? Is it not your immortal essence? Sadly, although the idea that we have an immortal soul in us is an old pagan one, it is not Biblical -- as the text shows.

The Bible in fact mentions nothing like an immortal soul. The word "soul" does appear in most translations of the Bible but it does not mean what Christians assume it to mean. In the original Greek of the New Testament, the word used in Mark 8: 36 and elsewhere is "psyche", the basic meaning of which (according to the authoritative Liddell & Scott Greek Lexicon) is "breath", or, metaphorically, "life".

So when you're dead, you're dead, brother -- as Ecclesiastes chapter 9 tells you so emphatically. Your only hope is to be resurrected at the coming of the Messiah.

2011-03-28T00:57:00.000+10:00

How ancient is Judaism?

This post originally appeared on my DISSECTING LEFTISM blog.

At some risk to my "Goy" self, I occasionally write something about Jews and Judaism. So far, however, I have escaped unscathed (I think) so here goes another foray:

It is a common and proud claim among Israelis that they are still living in the same place and speaking the same language and (sort of) following the same religion as they did 3,000 years ago. That thought gives them great pride and helps make up in some way for the horrendous travail Jews have had to go through to get to today.

But, to be blunt, it is nonsense. After the Roman triumph and the expulsion of most Jews from Israel, Jews had to change their religion radically. Judaism had been a temple-focused religion -- so once the temple was gone, huge changes in thinking and custom were needed.

And the changes took two forms: Those who accepted the ideas of the greatest rabbi (Jesus Christ) and those who laboured to stick more closely to traditional ideas. Even among the latter group, however, the surrounding pagan culture took over to a degree. The modern form of the seder, for instance, is said to be strongly influenced by the form of the Hellenistic symposium.

So Judaism as we know it today is in fact no older than Christianity. They are two branches that had to put out fresh growth after the original tree was cut down. And just as Christian thinking underwent all sorts of disputes in its development (e.g. the Arian/Athanasian controversy) so Jews waited a long while for their new ideas to coalesce -- in the form of teachings by great rabbis such as Rashi and Maimonides.

Christian thought in fact probably coalesced more rapidly that did post-temple Jewish thought. Rashi and Maimonides both wrote over 1,000 years after the fall of the temple but have been immensely influential. And by the time they wrote, they lived in a Christian world so were undoubtedly influenced in various ways by Christian ideas -- and Christianity had itself taken on a pretty heavy load of pagan ideas by that time. So I am sure that the Christian/Egyptian concept of the triune God was the subject of much private hilarity among Jews.

So we in fact have two religions of ancient Jewish origins that are quite contemporaneous -- with the Christian variant more successful in most ways. And while Christianity/Judaism precede Islam, Sikhism and Bahai, they are themselves preceded by Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Shinto. And I'm inclined to think that Shinto has the best hats -- despite formidable competition from the gold crowns of Russian Orthodoxy and the shtreimel of orthodox Judaism.

I guess I'll get a few zingers over all that! I'll hear about the Talmud and the Midrash and so on. As an atheist who is sympathetic to religion, however, I may be in a position to be more impartial than most.

2011-03-07T01:21:00.002+10:00

Hellfire and the immortal soul are pagan doctrines

Although I have been the most utter atheist for all of my adult life, I cannot rid myself of an interest in theology, or more precisely, exegesis -- so I am reproducing the article below. I would normally have nothing but contempt for an "evangelical" equivalent of Episcopalian Bishop Spong but I think that there are good Biblical grounds for some of the more unorthodox views described below and I will add my reasoning on that at the foot of the reproduced article -- JR

A new book by one of the country’s most influential evangelical pastors, challenging traditional Christian views of heaven, hell and eternal damnation, has created an uproar among evangelical leaders, with the most ancient of questions being argued in a biblical hailstorm of Twitter messages and blog posts.

Rob Bell addressed the issue of heaven and hell in a video about his book, “A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.”

In a book to be published this month, the pastor, Rob Bell, known for his provocative views and appeal among the young, describes as “misguided and toxic” the dogma that “a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better.”

Such statements are hardly radical among more liberal theologians, who for centuries have wrestled with the seeming contradiction between an all-loving God and the consignment of the billions of non-Christians to eternal suffering. But to traditionalists they border on heresy, and they have come just at a time when conservative evangelicals fear that a younger generation is straying from unbendable biblical truths.

Mr. Bell, 40, whose Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., has 10,000 members, is a Christian celebrity and something of a hipster in the pulpit, with engaging videos that sell by the hundreds of thousands and appearances to rapt, youthful crowds in rock-music arenas.

His book comes as the evangelical community has embraced the Internet and social media to a remarkable degree, so that a debate that once might have built over months in magazines and pulpits has instead erupted at electronic speed.

The furor was touched off last Saturday by a widely read Christian blogger, Justin Taylor, based on promotional summaries of the book and a video produced by Mr. Bell. In his blog, Between Two Worlds, Mr. Taylor said that the pastor “is moving farther and farther away from anything resembling biblical Christianity.”

“It is unspeakably sad when those called to be ministers of the Word distort the gospel and deceive the people of God with false doctrine,” wrote Mr. Taylor, who is vice president of Crossway, a Christian publisher in Wheaton, Ill.

By that same evening, “Rob Bell” was one of the top 10 trending topics on Twitter. Within 48 hours, Mr. Taylor’s original blog had been viewed 250,000 times. Dozens of other Christian leaders and bloggers jumped into the fray and thousands of their readers posted comments on both sides of the debate, though few had yet seen the entire book.

One leading evangelical, John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, wrote, “Farewell Rob Bell.” R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a blog post that by suggesting that people who do not embrace Jesus may still be saved, Mr. Bell was at best toying with heresy. He called the promotional video, in which Mr. Bell pointedly asks whether it can be true that Gandhi, a non-Christian, is burning in hell, “the sad equivalent of a theological striptease.”

Others such as Scot McKnight, a professor of theology at North Park University in Chicago, said they welcomed the renewed discussion of one of the hardest issues in Christianity — can a loving God really be so wrathful toward people who faltered, or never were exposed to Jesus? In an interview and on his blog, he said that the thunder emanating from the right this week was not representative of American Christians, even evangelicals. According to surveys and his experience with students, Mr. McKnight said, a large majority of evangelical Christians “more or less believe that people of other faiths will go to heaven,” whatever their churches and theologians may argue.

“Rob Bell is tapping into a younger generation that really wants to open up these questions,” he said. “He is also tapping into the fear of the traditionalists — that these differing views of heaven and hell will compromise the Christian message.”

Mr. Bell, who through his publisher declined to comment on the book or the debate, has resisted labels, but he is often described as part of the so-called emerging church movement, which caters to younger believers and has challenged theological boundaries as well as pastoral involvement in conservative politics.

As the controversy exploded last week, HarperOne moved up to March 15 the publication date of Mr. Bell’s book, “Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.”

Judging from an advance copy, the 200-page book is unlikely to assuage Mr. Bell’s critics. In an elliptical style, he throws out probing questions about traditional biblical interpretations, mixing real-life stories with scripture.

Much of the book is a sometimes obscure discussion of the meaning of heaven and hell that tears away at the standard ideas. In his version, heaven is something that begins here on earth, in a life of goodness, and hell seems more a condition than an eternal fate — “the very real consequences we experience when we reject all the good and true and beautiful life that God has for us.”

While sliding close to what critics consider the heresy of “universalism” — that all humans will eventually be saved — he never uses the term.

Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today, called in an article on the magazine's Web site for all sides to temper their rhetoric and welcome more debate.

“We won’t be able to discern where the Spirit is leading if we don’t listen and respond respectfully to one another,” he wrote.

“God once used a donkey to make his will known,” he added, “so surely he is able to speak through both traditionalists and gadflies.”

SOURCE

I think Pastor ring-a-ding is right for the wrong reasons. He is clearly motivated mainly by the current Leftist "prizes for all" mentality, which in turn emanates from their totally counterfactual belief that "all men are equal". So his is a secular rather than a religious gospel. I may be wrong but I rather doubt that he would be able to give a straight answer to the question: "Do you believe in God?" Spong just ridicules the question.

But orthodox Christianity is unbiblical too. It is still largely mired in the pagan add-ons that the church absorbed in its first thousand years of existence. And the heaven/hell story is one of the pagan add-ons. Why else is the supposedly "immortal" soul repeatedly referred to in the Bible as dying? (e.g. Ezekiel 18:4).

The original Jewish hope of an afterlife (as recorded in the OT) was of being resurrected to life on this earth after the coming of the Messiah. They believed that when you are dead you are dead, with no mention of some part of you flitting off to heaven or elsewhere. I give you an excerpt from Ecclesiastes chapter 9:

For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.... Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest

And Jesus looked forward to a resurrection on earth too. Do I need to repeat: "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done ON EARTH as it is in heaven"?

St Paul, however muddied the waters somewhat with his proclamation in 1 Corinthians 15:

"So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.... Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality."

So Paul was also perfectly clear that nothing happened until the resurrection and that we are mortal, not immortal. What he changed was WHAT we are raised as. Instead of being recreated as flesh and blood persons on this earth, he saw us as being transformed into spirit beings after the manner of God and the angels. And he said NOTHING about Hell. The good guys were brought back to life and the rest of the dead stayed dead.

So what the Bible says is just ignored by orthodox Christianity. It should be a huge theological puzzle as to whether we accept the OT or the Pauline account of the afterlife. Who is right? Jesus or Paul? Yet there seems to be almost no awareness that the question even exists.

And there also seems to be no awareness that there is no Biblical basis for the doctrine of hellfire. There is no mention of such a thing in the Bible. The words translated in most English Bibles as "hell" are in the original Hebrew and Greek "sheol" and "hades", which simply mean "grave".

There is on one occasion a reference to burning in the fires of Gehenna but Gehenna was simply the municipal incinerator of ancient Jersusalem -- a place where the bodies of criminals were thrown. It is NOT any kind of spirit realm.

So I agree with pastor ring-a-ding that the hellfire doctrine is repulsive -- but you can't pin that doctrine onto the Bible. The original Bible doctrine DOES fit with a loving God: The faithful are resurrected and the sinners are simply forgotten.

For more details on the above matters see earlier posts on this blog -- e.g. my post of 3.14.2005.

2011-02-08T23:32:00.001+10:00

Why Genesis chapter 1?

Genesis chapter 1 tends to be something of an embarrassment to Christians because of the quite false claim that it represents the earth as having been created in 7 periods of 24 hours. That is simplistic. In the Hebrew scriptures the word for "day" was from time to time used metaphorically (e.g. Genesis 31:40), just as it is in modern English. It can refer to any period of time. When old guys like me say: "In my day ... ", we are not referring to 24 hours -- more like decades.

There is however some cause for embarrassment if one knows what Genesis chapter 1 really is. I have forborne from mentioning it so far out of respect for my Christian readers but in the end I think it is important that knowledge buried in scholarly publications should be brought into public view. So I am now breaking my self-imposed embargo. Readers at this point may wish to decide if they should continue reading.

For a start, it is clear that chapter 1 (plus the first three verses in chapter 2) is a late tack-on, and a glaring one at that. It is the first of two different accounts of creation and has major textual differences from the original account given from Genesis 2:4 onward. The really glaring difference is the use of the divine name. In the rest of the Torah, the divine name (Yahveh; Jehovah) is used freely in the original Hebrew text. Eventually, however, pietism took hold and use of the divine name came to be regarded as disrespectful. "Elohim" (God) and "Adonay" (Lord) came to be used instead. We see something similar among modern Jews, where the usage "G-d" is now common.

So what do we see in Genesis 1? Complete avoidance of the divine name. And from chapter 2 onwards the name is used freely. So chapter 1 is clearly from a later era.

But what could have motivated something as serious as a distortion of the original creation account? Sun worship. It was an attempt to explain why Israelites had accepted the 7 day week of the sun worshippers.

The 7 day week originated in ancient Babylon (or perhaps earlier) in recognition of the 7 movable objects in the sky: The 5 movable stars (planets) plus the sun and the moon. Something as exceptional as stars that moved indicated to ancient minds that those stars must be gods -- so each star had to have a day dedicated to him. And the biggest object in the sky -- the sun -- had to have a day too. And as he was obviously the boss, his day had to be particularly holy. And to this day many of us regard Sunday as holy.

The Israelites didn't go down without a fight, however. They resisted the sun worshippers by saying in effect: "OK. If you celebrate the first day of the week as holy, we will celebrate the last day of the week as holy". And so they did and so they still do.

They were however stuck with the fact that everybody by then divided up the week into 7 days and they also knew perfectly well why. So they had to invent another story about how the 7 day week arose. Hence Genesis chapter 1. And the new story, of course, explained why the 7th day was particularly holy.

So it's all rather simple if you know your ancient history. What saddens me a little is that Christians have reverted to the old sun-worshippers day as their holy day.

Footnote: The account above is a basic outline but there are also some interesting details. Although Genesis chapter 1 is a late addition, it did not of course spring out of the blue. It would in fact seem to be the product of a very long debate.

The seven-day creation story is of course also mentioned in the ten Commandments of Exodus. And in that passage, the divine name IS used. So clearly, the story itself is much older than Genesis chapter 1. The Hebrews had to deal with sun-worshippers from the beginning so their retort to the sun-worshippers went back a long way too.

2010-09-22T13:02:00.001+10:00

Wind could have split Red Sea, scientist says

The parting of the Red Sea is one of the many miracles described in the Bible and a spectacular feat of early special effects in the 1956 Hollywood epic The Ten Commandments. But now a Christian engineer claims to have proved the phenomenon has a basis in science.

Carl Drews, from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, used computer modelling techniques to show that a strong east wind could have pushed the waters in Egypt back far enough to create a land bridge, as is described in the Book of Exodus.

According to the Bible, Moses and the Israelites were able to escape Egypt from the pursuing Pharaoh's army after the Red Sea, or Sea of Reeds, miraculously parts before them.

The research paper, published in the peer-reviewed online journal Public Library of Science, found that when strong winds of about 63km/h blew on a specific body of water for an extended period, it could theoretically cause the water to tilt and recede from the original shoreline, leaving exposed mud flats on the bottom.

"The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus," Mr Drews said.

"The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water in a way that's in accordance with physical laws, creating a safe passage with water on two sides and then abruptly allowing the water to rush back in."

On his website, www.theistic-evolution.com, Mr Drews says he is a "Christian who accepts the scientific theory of evolution" and "miracles recorded by the Bible", including the Red Sea, "seem to have a natural component."

SOURCE

2010-09-04T09:30:00.003+10:00

Does a Bible proverb recommend the political Right?

Solomon the Wise was much inclined to proverbs and, as a consequence, the Book of Proverbs in the Bible is usually attributed to him. And I have no doubt that some of the better proverbs there were indeed his work.

But there are also proverbs in that most unusual book of the Bible: Ecclesiastes. And I think the attribution of that book to Solomon is not in serious dispute.

Chapter 10 of Ecclesiastes contains a rapid-fire sequence of proverbs and one that has amused me lately is in verse 2. The NIV translates it, perhaps mischievously as:

"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."

It would be tempting to take that as a political statement and I do in fact put it up in the sidebar of my DISSECTING LEFTISM blog for a bit of fun. In fact, of course, Solomon was writing around 3,000 years before political divisions came to be referred to in Right/Left terms

So what does it mean? Probably the most literal translation from the Hebrew is: "The heart of the wise is at his right hand but the heart of the stupid is at his left hand". And the King James and the Geneva Bible versions render it along those lines too.

So what does it mean? The meaning is certainly obscure today so I thought I might look up how it was interpreted a couple of hundred years before Christ in the Septuagint (a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek done by 70 devout Jewish scholars in Alexandria). But it looks like they were no wiser than anybody else. They translated the Hebrew word for "heart" quite routinely as kardia, right as dexios and left as aristeros, which tells us nothing new.

I have looked at a number of other translations in the search for light and I have also consulted my extensive library of Bible commentaries without finding much either. So I suppose it is time to offer my own tentative suggestion: I suspect that it means that a wise man goes by reason whereas a fool goes by emotion. And, by coincidence, that is a pretty good summary of the difference between the political Right and Left of modern times.

How do I justify that translation? Only on rather vague grounds, unfortunately: It has long been a tradition in human societies, ancient and modern, to use "left" in a derogatory way. The Latin word for left is sinister and we all know what that word means today. And reason has always had a better reputation than emotion. Not a strong case but at least it makes SOME sense.

Someone might argue, however, that Hebrew is written from right to left, which suits left-handed people best and the tribe of Benjamin is praised in the Bible for its left-handed warriors (though the Septuagint translates them as ambidextrous warriors). So one could argue that Left-handedness was not viewed so negatively in Hebrew. To argue that is to lose sight of the text at issue, however. Solomon clearly associated left-handedness with fools.

Curiously, however, the ancient Greeks seem to have had a positive view of Left-handers. aristeros is a variant of aristos, meaning "best".

I write above from the viewpoint of a textual scholar but a religious person might reasonably see the matter quite differently. If such a person believes that the Bible was written by God, who is all-knowing, he could well see the text as a prophetic warning from God to avoid the political Left of today.

2010-06-26T16:48:00.002+10:00

Jesus did not die on cross, says scholar

I have been pointing this out for years -- JR

Jesus may not have died nailed to the cross because there is no evidence that the Romans crucified prisoners two thousand years ago, a scholar has claimed. The legend of his execution is based on the traditions of the Christian church and artistic illustrations rather than antique texts, according to theologian Gunnar Samuelsson.

He claims the Bible has been misinterpreted as there are no explicit references the use of nails or to crucifixion - only that Jesus bore a "staurus" towards Calvary which is not necessarily a cross but can also mean a "pole".

Mr Samuelsson, who has written a 400-page thesis after studying the original texts, said: "The problem is descriptions of crucifixions are remarkably absent in the antique literature. "The sources where you would expect to find support for the established understanding of the event really don't say anything."

The ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew literature from Homer to the first century AD describe an arsenal of suspension punishments but none mention "crosses" or "crucifixion."

Mr Samuelsson, of Gothenburg University, said: "Consequently, the contemporary understanding of crucifixion as a punishment is severely challenged. "And what's even more challenging is the same can be concluded about the accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus. The New Testament doesn't say as much as we'd like to believe."

Any evidence that Jesus was left to die after being nailed to a cross is strikingly sparse - both in the ancient pre-Christian and extra-Biblical literature as well as The Bible.

Mr Samuelsson, a committed Christian himself, admitted his claims are so close to the heart of his faith that it is easy to react emotionally instead of logically.

Mr Samuelsson said the actual execution texts do not describe how Christ was attached to the execution device. He said: "This is the heart of the problem. The text of the passion narratives is not that exact and information loaded, as we Christians sometimes want it to be." Mr Samuelsson said: "If you are looking for texts that depict the act of nailing persons to a cross you will not find any beside the Gospels."

A lot of contemporary literature all use the same vague terminology - including the Latin accounts. Nor does the Latin word crux automatically refer to a cross while patibulum refer to the cross-beam. Both words are used in a wider sense that that.

Mr Samuelsson said: "That a man named Jesus existed in that part of the world and in that time is well-documented. He left a rather good foot-print in the literature of the time. "I do believe that the mentioned man is the son of God. My suggestion is not that Christians should reject or doubt the biblical text.

"My suggestion is that we should read the text as it is, not as we think it is. We should read on the lines, not between the lines. The text of the Bible is sufficient. We do not need to add anything."

SOURCE

2010-01-15T12:22:00.007+10:00

An extensive exegesis of Matthew 16:18 based on the Aramaic

I have received the following exegesis from Alfred Persson [alpersso1@roadrunner.com] and reproduce it below as received

I will prove the double entendre in Mat 16:18 is an elegant Janus Parallelism on PETROS.

"Thou art PETROS and upon this PETROS I will build"

-hypothetical Aramaic speech of Christ in Mat 16:18

"You are PETROS-Firstborn (of the divine revelation of Me)

and upon this (revelation) THE PETROS (the life giving rock) I will build my church."

The most parsimonious interpretation is most likely correct.

The supposed ambiguities of Matthew 16:18 vanish when we interpret Jesus’ double entendre historico-grammatically as an Old Testament style Janus Parallelism on the Aramaic/Greek homonym (Aramaic PeTRos / Firstborn ; Greek PETROS / petra / rock). Among competing explanations, this alone achieves maximum parsimony, the universal characteristic of truth.

What is a Janus Parallelism?

"Janus Parallelism. This type of parallelism hinges on the use of a single word with two different meanings, one of which forms a parallel with what precedes and the other with what follows. Thus, by virtue of a double entendre, the parallelism faces in both directions. An example is Gen 49:26."-Freedman, D. N. (1996, c1992). The Anchor Bible Dictionary (5:157). New York: Doubleday.

The transliterated Aramaic PeTRos(firstborn) and Greek PETROS(stone) are spelled the same in Greek, so it is likely the Greek speaking Church would confuse them

After the Jewish revolt was crushed about AD. 135, Judea was renamed Syria Palestina, and Jerusalem became a pagan city Jews were forbidden to enter. Soon Jewish Christians familiar with Palestinian Aramaic names had vanished from the church. Therefore it is certain they would confuse the Aramaic PETROS ("firstborn") with the Greek PETROS ("stone"), not only are they spelled the same, Jesus called Simon "KEPHA" in John 1:42, which John interpreted to be, in Greek, a PETROS.

When we test the proposition these were confused, that PETROS is in fact a homonym with radically different meanings, all alleged ambiguity vanishes from the relevant texts---proving beyond reasonable doubt they did confuse this homonym.

The Aramaic PETROS "Firstborn" and Greek PETROS "Rock" are homonyms

"And a surprising discovery among the Dead Sea Scrolls proves the existence of the Greek form, Petros, even among Aramaic-speaking Jews some time before the dialogue at Caesarea Philippi took place. The leather fragment 4QM130, an Aramaic writing exercise in the form of several names like Aquila, Dallui, Eli, Gaddi, Hyrcanus, Jannai, Magnus, Malkiha, Mephisbosheth, Zakariel—in other words, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and even Latin names—includes Petros, in a precise Aramaic transcription of the Greek spelling.36 It is safe to say that Jesus did not have to invent the name and its Greek form. Jews knew it and used it, even in a cross-cultural writing exercise." Thiede, C. P. (2004). The Cosmopolitan World of Jesus : New findings from Archaeology (p.69). London: SPCK.

There was, on the contrary, as already mentioned (note 12), an Aramaic name פטרוס (Petros), which perhaps is to be connected with פטר (patar) "firstborn". -PETER Disciple-Apostle-Martyr, by Oscar Cullmann, translated from the German by Floyd V. Filson (Westminister Press, Philadelphia, 1953), p 19, Note 14.

An Aramaic PETROS resolves all alleged ambiguity of the antecedent

Matthew preserved the succinct elegance of Christ's double entendre by changing the gender of the usually masculine idiom KAI EPI TOUTOIS to KAI EPI TAUTEE, disqualifying the masculine PETROS as its antecedent.

The demonstrative pronoun has Christ leaving direct address (SOI, SU), speaking TO Peter ABOUT "The Rock"---literally "upon this the rock" (KAI EPI TAUTEE TEE PETRA). Usually masculine KAI EPI TOUTOIS (Lev 26:23; 1 Ma 10:42; Sir 32:13; Amo 8:8; Zec 14:18; TOUTW Joh 4:27), its antecedent implied, not supplied by the context (Lev 26:23; Sir 32:13; Amo 8:8 John 4:27).

By attaching verse 17 to v.18 (KAGW DE SOI) "And I also unto thee", Matthew carried forward the antecedent, italicized as "it" in the KJV, which is feminine being the APOCALUPSIS (revelation) or ALEETHEIA (truth) "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God", that Peter just confessed changing his status. (cf the Makarism "blessed"; the Aramaic Barjona, see below).

Therefore, Matthew designed the context to disqualify the masculine PETROS as the antecedent. The article strengthens this disqualification as Jesus is speaking TO Simon ABOUT "The" rock.

This is corroborated by his including Peter's embarrassment---Jesus "said unto PETROS, Get thee behind me, Satan" (vs. 23); obviously written against PETROS being "the rock", for then Christ built upon Satan.

This exegesis is consistent with the overriding theme of the context---Jesus' identity (16:13-17,20); While Peter's confession is the occasion for discussing this, he remains a digression Christ quickly leaves, to return, using the short form, to what is important: "tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. (Mat 16:20 KJV)"

This is that "saying" upon which Christ built His church--- a parallel use of PETRA:

KJV Matthew 7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings (LOGOS) of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built (OIKODOMEW) his house upon a rock(PETRA).

PETRA as the rock fountain of life to the dead:

KJV 1 Corinthians 10:4 And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock(petra) that followed them: and that Rock(petra) was Christ.

"The currency of Peter's name {PETROS} is confirmed"

"…The currency of Peter's name {PETROS} is confirmed in Tal Ilan's identification of three additional first and second-century Palestinian Jewish individuals who bear the name Petros.[90] It is worth noting that the Palestinian Talmud and midrashim repeatedly feature an early Amoraic Rabbi Yose ben Petros, whose father constitutes proof that even this Greek name was by no means unknown in the early rabbinic period. A Jewish convert called Petrus also appears in a fifth-century Christian inscription from Grado in Italy.…

90 Ilan 2002 s.v. The first of these is Petros (c. 30 CE), a freedman of Agrippa’s mother Berenice, whom Josephus mentions in passing in Ant. 18.6.3 §156 (v.l. Protos). The other two names are Patrin פטרִין son of Istomachus at Masada (ostracon no. 413, pre-73) and Patron פטרון son of Joseph in a Bar Kokhba period papyrus deed at Nahal Hever (P.Yadin 46, 134 CE). Although these two names seem at first sight different from Petros, the Aramaic rendition of Greek names in –ος as ון- or ין- was in fact well established, as Ilan 2002:27 demonstrates (cf. similarly Dalman 1905:176).

91 E.g. y. Mo _ed Qat.. 3.6, 82d (bottom); y. _Abod. Zar. 3.1, 42c; Gen. Rab. 62.2; 92.2; 94.5 Exod. Rab. 52.3; Lev. Rab. 7.2. For additional references and discussion see Bacher 1892–99:1.128, 2:512, n. 5, and 3:598. The phenomenon of the Greek name פיטרס is also discussed by Dalman 1905:185. Cf. further Jastrow s.v.: the spelling varies from פיטרוס to פיטרס and פטרס. This in turn would account for the wide range of vocalisations encountered in the various English translations. פטרוס in t. Demai 1.11 is a place-name. -Bockmuehl, Markus. 2004. Simon Peter's Names in Jewish Sources. Journal of Jewish Studies 55:71-72

The existence of an Aramaic PETROS means the sample considered was too small

"PETROS…Fr. the beginning it was prob. thought of as the Gk. equivalent of the Aramaic Keph Keephas; J 1:42; cf. Mt 16:18"- A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Bauer; University of Chicago Press, 1979) p. 654.

"Probably thought", not "is". The conclusion is a hasty generalization---the sample too small, there are other relevant words, for example, the Aramaic PETROS which in transliterated Greek, is spelled PETROS but has a radically different meaning.

Simon called PETROS before Christ surnamed him Cephas in John 1:42

KJV John 1:40 One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's (PETROS) brother. (Joh 1:40 KJV)

17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

18 And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

19 And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

20 And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.

21 And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them.

(Mat 4:17-21 KJV)

Simon "who is called Peter" ( ton legomenon petron), cp Mat 27:17 Jesus "who is called" Christ (ton legomenon christon).

While some argue the present tense describes what was happening as Matthew wrote---"the one commonly called Peter" (now), that is less parsimonous, unhistorical, contrary to accurately describing the event as it happened.

It follows Jesus did not give Simon the name PETROS in John 1:42

When John translates Aramaic into Greek, it is METHERMENEUW, when he explains what the Aramaic means it is HERMENEUW:

38 Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted(HERMENEUW), Master,) where dwellest thou?

…

41 He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted(METHERMENEUW), the Christ.

42 And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation(HERMENEUW), A stone.(Joh 1:38-42 KJV)

Compare:

KJV John 9:7 And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation(HERMENEUW), Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. (Joh 9:7 KJV)

Although HERMENEUW can be found outside scripture as "translate," that is not John's usage. It is unhistorical to read into KEPHA what it became later, a proper name. Here it is an epithet, an idiom, not a name; therefore, John would not translate it into a proper name, rather he is interpreting it to be a stone.

It is parsimonous Christ meant KEPHA as it is found in the Aramaic Targums, and so John chose the Attic Greek "petros" because it means "small stone":

Pr 3:15 "more precious than rubies," Aramaic KEPHA Heb. paniyn, lxx lithos;

Pr 17:8 "stone of grace," Aramaic KEPHA; Heb. eben cheen, lxx misthos charitwn, gracious reward. [That is, a stone for a bribe, to buy favor].

-"Dictionary of the Targumim Talmud Babli, Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature," Marcus Jastrow [Judaica Press, NT, 1996], pp. 634-635).

As KEPHA=PETROS (Attic)=LITHOS (Koine) it follows Christ called Simon a precious "lively stone" which Simon later applies to the church:

4 To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious,

5 Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

6 Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.(1Pe 2:4-6 KJV)

The imagery is derived from Christ---the Rockmass KEPHA/PETRA, which Moses was to strike once (Ex 17:6; 1 Cor 10:4) for living water to come out…

4 And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock PETRA that followed them: and that Rock PETRA was Christ. (1Co 10:4 KJV)

Believers are little christs" (CHRISTIANOS), lively stones that figuratively purchase favor from God preaching the immutable truth of Christ's Name---mediating life to all who believe.

38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (Joh 7:38 KJV)

18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (Joh 3:18 KJV)

Jesus surnamed Simon by putting upon him an epithet

16 And Simon he surnamed (EPITITHEMI) Peter (PETROS);

17 And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed (EPITITHEMI) them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder:

(Mar 3:16-17 KJV)

Boanerges is an epithet, idiom, not a proper name, hence neither of these men are ever called this name. Jesus put the meaning "of sons of thunder" on the pair… It follows Jesus also put upon Simon a meaning, not a proper name.

The only place in Scripture where Jesus says, "Thou art PETROS," is Matthew 16:18, not John 1:42 where He called him "Cephas".

What meaning did Jesus put upon Simon? Scripture says all who confess Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, via divine revelation, are born again (Rom 10:8ff; John 1:12; 1 John 4:15). It follows Jesus called Simon "Firstborn of the Gospel of Christ". Context supports this exegesis:

KJV Matthew 16:17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. (Mat 16:17 KJV)

In this Makarism we find an undeveloped double entendre, rather than writing "Son of Jonah" in Greek (huios Iwna, Joh 1:42 TR), Matthew conveys Jesus’ EPITITHEMI via the epithet BARIWNA---Simon is "blessed" for receiving and proclaiming divine revelation just like Jonah the Prophet (cp Mat 12:39-41; 16:4). Having risen from the dead speaking the Word of Life, Simon is just like him = born again. Compare:

5 The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.

6 I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.

7 When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.

8 They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.

9 But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.

10 And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

3:1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,

2 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

(Jon 2:5-2:2 KJV)

Only a child of God is given keys to His Kingdom, as Peter was promised the keys then, it follows he was born then.

KJV Matthew 16:19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: (Mat 16:19 KJV)

Matthew CONFIRMS Simon is the First (PRWTOS):

2 Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first (PRWTOS), Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother;

-Mat 10:2 KJV

As "First Simon" is not followed by "Second Andrew", "Third James" etc... This is not a numbering system. In addition, the LORD expressly forbade thinking any were PRWTOS in the "Chief" sense:

27 And whosoever will be chief (PRWTOS) among you, let him be your servant: (Mat 20:27 KJV)

Only one likely meaning remains: Simon is the FIRST of the group born of the Gospel of Christ, and Matthew emphasized that by calling Simon "First" and so lists him first.

Peter's confession was unique, the first (PRWTOS) of its kind

Peter's confession was a product of divine revelation of Christ's Name in the heart and mouth hence archetypical of the entire Church (16:17 cp Rom 10:8f)), unlike others which preceded it in time (14:24-33; Mark 6:49-52) but were the product of human emotion and intellect (cf James 2:19f). Observe John doesn't mention a confession when relating the same event (John 6:19-21) and none of these result in a Makarism:

49 Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel. 50 Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these. (Joh 1:49-50 KJV)

The parallels between this event and Romans 10:8ff indicate dependence:

8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;

9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Rom 10:8-10 KJV)

Divine revelation of Jesus' Name is put in Peter's heart and mouth, the word of faith John says is required for eternal life. Peter confessed this publicly, he was the first to do so via divine inspiration.

Corroborating this is Paul's switch from PETROS to KEPHA, in Gal 2:9:

And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars -KJV

Evidently Paul switches from PETROS to Cephas in Galatians 2:9 (TR) because PETROS("Firstborn") didn't covey the stone metaphors Paul wanted for his caustic review of "those who seemed to be somewhat…seemed to be pillars", these lamps of fire guiding the people imparted no light to Paul (cp Gal 2:6,9 with Ex 13:21; cf also Berachoth 28b). Peter is both a pillar and a KEPHA stone of grace, a small precious stone benefiting the holder:

Therefore Peter failed both as a pillar and as a stone of grace. Rather than a guiding light to the Gospel of Christ, Peter cowers in fear following followers James failed to guide correctly, into error…even against the vision God gave him! (Ac 10:34). Ironic indeed for a pillar and a kepha.

As would be expected in unsound eclectic texts, the change from Cephas (Gal 1:18; 2:9, 11, 14) to petros (2:7, 8) is purely random, a property not found in Paul's expositions, who arguably had a reason for every word carefully chosen. That contradicts the claim these are accurate copies.

However, in a footnote Professor Cullmann argues for dependence from these texts:

14 …’The proper name Peter does not appear at all in pagan literature; it first appears in Tertullian.’ There was, on the contrary, as already mentioned (note 12), an Aramaic name פטרוס (Petros), which perhaps is to be connected with פטר (patar) "firstborn". The theory that the Greek Petros was first derived from it and gave occasion for a false retranslation Kepha into Aramaic is quite impossible, in view of the fact that in Paul’s letters Cephas is already the usual designation and Peter clearly was only a derivation from it."-PETER Disciple-Apostle-Martyr, by Oscar Cullmann , translated from the German by Floyd V. Filson (Westminister Press, Philadelphia, 1953), pp18-19.

However, as Prof Cullmann’s argument would yield the opposite conclusion in John--Cephas appears only once, but PETROS 35 times, it must be unsound. The middle term is undistributed and the reasoning circular as its conclusion also one of its premises.

When we suppose the Early Church "fathers" confused PETROS (Firstborn) as PETROS (stone), the reason for their similar interpretations of "the Rock" is clear--- They tried to remain true to apostolic exegesis, and somehow include Peter. Later Peter supplanted all reference to the content of his confession

Roman Catholic Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick prepared a paper to be delivered at Vatican I (1870), in which he noted that five interpretations of the word "rock" were held in antiquity:

1. The first declared that the church was built on Peter, endorsed by seventeen fathers.

2. The second understood the words as referring to all the apostles, Peter being simply the Primate, the opinion of eight fathers.

3. The third asserted that the words applied to the faith that Peter professed, espoused by forty-four fathers, some of whom are the most important and representative.

4. The fourth declared that the words were to be understood of Jesus Christ, the church being built upon him, the view of sixteen fathers.

5. The fifth understood the term "rock" to apply to the faithful themselves who, by believing in Christ, were made the living stones in the temple of his body, an opinion held by only very few (107–108).- Journal of Biblical apologetics : Volume 3. 2001 (16). Las Vegas, N.V.: Christian Scholar's Press, Inc.. p. 16.

TERTULLIAN: If, because the Lord has said to Peter, 'Upon this rock I will build My Church,' 'to thee have I given the keys of the heavenly kingdom;' or, 'Whatsoever thou shalt have bound or loosed in earth, shall be bound or loosed in the heavens,' you therefore presume that the power of binding and loosing has derived to you, that is, to every Church akin to Peter, what sort of man are you, subverting and wholly changing the manifest intention of the Lord, conferring (as that intention did) this (gift) personally upon Peter? 'On thee,' He says, 'will I build My church;' and, 'I will give thee the keys'...and, 'Whatsoever thou shalt have loosed or bound'...In (Peter) himself the Church was reared; that is, through (Peter) himself; (Peter) himself essayed the key; you see what key: 'Men of Israel, let what I say sink into your ears: Jesus the Nazarene, a man destined by God for you,' and so forth. (Peter) himself, therefore, was the first to unbar, in Christ's baptism, the entrance to the heavenly kingdom, in which kingdom are 'loosed' the sins that were beforetime 'bound;' and those which have not been 'loosed' are 'bound,' in accordance with true salvation...(Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), Volume IV, Tertullian, On Modesty 21, p. 99).

Theodore of Mopsuestia: This is not the property of Peter alone, but it came about on behalf of every human being. Having said that his confession is a rock, he stated that upon this rock I will build my church. This means he will build his church upon this same confession and faith.-Fragment 92, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002).

"And I say unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church;" that is, on the faith of his confession. "-John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew LIV.3

"… when Simon Bar Yona {St. Peter} declared that Our Lord Jesus Christ is the son of God, and on this specific point in FAITH Our Lord Jesus Christ built the Holy Church." -V. Rev. Fr. Boutros Touma Issa, St Ephraim Syriac Orthodox Church

"Upon this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18). That the rock spoken of was the faith, not the person of Peter, was a common explanation of the fathers. Owen (Person of Christ, preface) cites the following: "Origen (tractate in Matt. 16) expressly denies the words to be spoken of Peter: ‘If you shall think that the whole church was built on Peter alone, what shall we say of John and each of the apostles? Shall we dare to say that the gates of hell shall not prevail against Peter alone? Hilary (Concerning the Trinity 2) says: ‘This is the only immovable foundation; this is the rock of faith confessed by Peter, You are the Son of the living God.’ And Epiphanius (Heresies 39) declares, ‘Upon this rock of assured faith (epi tē petra tautē tēs asphalous pisteōs) I will build my church.’ ’ One or two more out of Augustine shall close these testimonies (Sermon concerning the Words of the Lord 13): ‘Upon this rock which you have confessed, upon this rock which you have known, saying, You are Christ, the Son of the living God, I will build my church, that is, on me myself, the Son of the living God, I will build my church." Shedd, W. G. T., & Gomes, A. W. (2003). Dogmatic theology. "First one-volume edition (3 vols. in 1)"--Jacket. (3rd ed.) (p. 791). Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R Pub.

PETROS should be added to any list of Aramaic/Hebrew transliterations in the NT---abba; bar; batos; elooi; ephphatha; kokrban; korbanas; lama; mamoonas; maran atha; rhabbi; rhabbouni; rhabitha; rhaka; sabachthani; talitha koum, SIMWN, IAKWBOS, ZEBEDAIOS, IWANNES, BARTHOLOMAIOS, THWMAS, ALPHAIOS, IOUDAS ISKARIOTES (Mat 10:2-4) etc.

39 No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better. (Luk 5:39 KJV)

The old wine accepts "Peter is the Rock" and then argues it does not follow Rome's pope is Peter's successor. Many will resist changing their apologetic. However, it is inefficient to refute a lie after agreeing with it.

The "Peter is the rock" theory is pernicious novelty, not this exegesis.

KJV 1 Corinthians 4:6 And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another. (1Co 4:6 KJV)

Like the Flat Earth and global warming theories, the Peter is the Rock consensus is certainly wrong, a tradition of men.

END

2009-07-19T18:36:00.002+10:00

The Bible proved right again

The revelation came to Professor Andrew Parker during a visit to Rome. He was in the Sistine Chapel, gazing up at Michelangelo's awesome ceiling paintings, when a realisation struck him with dizzying force. 'A Biblical enigma exists that is on the one hand so cryptic it has remained camouflaged for millennia, and on the other so obvious one cannot miss it.' The enigma is that the order of Creation as described in the Book of Genesis, and so powerfully depicted in the Sistine Chapel by the greatest artist of the Renaissance, has been precisely, eerily confirmed by modern evolutionary science.

Such was the starting point of Parker's jaw-dropping new book, The Genesis Enigma: an astounding work which seeks to prove that the ancient Hebrew writers of the Book of Genesis knew all about evolution - 3,000 years before Darwin. It takes a journey back through aeons of geological time, and also into the minds and imaginations of the ancient Israelites.

Andrew Parker is a leading scientist in his field: a research fellow at Oxford University, research leader at the Natural History Museum, and as if that weren't enough, a professor at Shanghai's Jiao Tong university. As a scientist he never paid much heed to the Book of Genesis, assuming, like most of his colleagues, that such primitive mythology - which is believed to have been compiled from several sources between 950 and 500 BC - has long since been 'disproved' by hard scientific fact. But after his Sistine Chapel moment, he went back to look at Genesis in more detail. And what he read astonished him. It was even, he says, 'slightly scary'.

Somehow - God alone knew how - the writer or writers of that ancient text had described how the evolution of life on earth took place in precise detail and perfect order.

It is always disturbing and haunting to encounter an ancient wisdom that seems to anticipate or even exceed our own. More fanciful writers immediately start to theorise wildly: that those who built the pyramids, or Stonehenge, must have been guided by super-intelligent aliens, that sort of thing.

Andrew Parker, a scientist and proud of it, has no time for such twaddle. But he does gradually come to understand, in the course of his investigations, that our ancestors of thousands of years ago, though they may not have had iPods and plasma-screen televisions, nevertheless possessed a wisdom that was, quite literally, timeless: as true now as it was then.

In the Book of Genesis, God first and most famously creates heaven and earth, but 'without form', and commands: 'Let there be light.' A perfect description of the Big Bang, that founding moment of our universe some 13 billion years ago, an unimaginable explosion of pure energy and matter 'without form' out of nothing - the primordial Biblical 'void'.

He then creates the dry land out of the waters, but it is the water that comes first. As Parker points out, scientists today understand very similarly that water is indeed crucial for life. When 'astrobiologists' look into space for signs of life on other planets, the first thing they look for is the possible presence of water.

On the third day, we are told: 'God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."' Now factually speaking, grass didn't evolve until much later. In the Triassic and Jurassic epochs, the dinosaurs knew only plants such as giant conifers and tree ferns. But since grass did not in fact evolve until much later, a sternly literal-minded scientist would declare the Bible wrong, and consign it to the nearest wheelie bin.

But wait a minute, says Parker. If you take 'grass, herb and tree' to mean photosynthesising life in general, then this is, once again, spot on. The very life forms on earth were single-celled bacteria, but the first truly viable bacteria were the 'cyanobacteria' - those that had learned to photosynthesise. As a result, they began to expire oxygen, creating an atmosphere that could go on to support more and more life. They were the key to life on earth.

Naturally, says Parker, 'the ancient Israelites would have been oblivious to any single-celled life form, let alone cyanobacteria', but 'grass' as a loose description of life forms that photosynthesise?

On the fourth day, Genesis famously becomes confusing. On the first day, remember, God has already created light, and made Day and Night. But it isn't until day four that he makes the lights in heaven, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser the night. Hang on - so he made 'Day' three days before he made the Sun? Houston, I think we have a problem.

Yet the writers of Genesis were just as well aware as us, surely, that the sunrise causes the day. You don't need a degree in astronomy to work that one out. What on earth did they mean? Here, The Genesis Enigma comes up with a stunningly ingenious answer. For Parker argues that day four refers to the evolution of vision. Until the first creatures on earth evolved eyes, in a sense, the sun and moon didn't exist. There was no creature on earth to see them, nor the light they cast. When Genesis says: 'Let there be lights... To divide the day from the night,' it is talking about eyes.

'The very first eye on earth effectively turned on the lights for animal behaviour,' writes Professor Parker, 'and consequently for further rapid evolution.' Almost overnight, life suddenly grew vastly more complex. Predators were able to hunt far more efficiently, and so prey had to evolve fast too - or get eaten. The moment that there were 'lights', or eyes, then life exploded into all its infinite variety.

And yet again, that's what Genesis says happened, and in the correct environment too. In the sea. For on the very next day of Creation, the fifth day: 'God said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life."' That is exactly what happened. Life that had hitherto been lived in the dark, by simple, slow-moving, worm-like creatures, erupted into dazzling diversity. We know all about it from the world famous Burgess Shale fossils. They were discovered in the summer of 1909 by one Charles Doolittle Walcott, on holiday with his family in the Canadian Rockies. Walcott began to chip away at the shale with his geological hammer, and quite by chance stumbled upon one of the greatest finds in all science.

For the shale records what happened on our planet around 508 million years ago, long before the first dinosaurs: the 'Cambrian expolosion,' which most scientists now think was indeed the direct result of the evolution of vision. The life-forms discovered look like nothing else: fabulous, phantasmagoric, alien beings. One had five eyes, and a long wavy snout with jaws on the end. Another looked like an octopus with its head stuck in a beaker, and another can only be described as 'a swimming pea with a pair of beady eyes, bull's horns, a pair of "hands" and a fish's tail.' Others resemble balls of spines, vase-shaped pin-cushions, or badminton shuttlecocks with chameleon-like tongues. Anyone who doubts the power of evolution by natural selection only has to look at the Burgess Shale fossils.

How does Genesis describe the teeming aquatic life of the Cambrian explosion? 'And God said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life." ' Immediately following the creation of vision.

How did the writer/writers know that life suddenly diversified into this rich and staggering variety, under the oceans, not on land? Why would a very much land-based people, pastoralists and shepherds, even think like this?

After the Cambrian come the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods - or the appearance of 'great whales', as Genesis succinctly puts it. How better to describe those epochs which gave us such monsters of the deep as Dunkleosteus, a carnivorous armoured fish whose appearance, says Parker, was 'simply terrifying'. Some 35ft long, 'the size of a small coach', with massive, bone-crunching jaws, even its eyes were armoured.

And after the sea monsters come the birds, the animals, cattle, and finally, homo sapiens. All present and correct, and all still in the right order. Once again, 'In describing how the planet and life around us came to be, the writer of the Genesis narrative got it disturbingly right'....

More HERE

2009-07-01T06:15:00.001+10:00

THE PISHON RIVER--FOUND!

by Calvin R. Schlabach

Where was the Garden of Eden? Every believer in the Bible has wondered at one time or another about the location of this idyllic home of our first parents. Moses wrote that it was "in the east, in Eden" (Gen. 2:8), and he named four rivers that converged there: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates (2:10-14). The courses of these last two are known to all, but the other pair have been impossible to identify--that is, perhaps, until now.

The Pishon River (2:11-12) has been variously identified by scholars with the Nile, the Indus, the Ganges, or other rivers. The lack of any general agreement stems from the fact that no known river matches Moses’ description: "it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and onyx stone are there."

"Havilah" itself is of uncertain location, but is generally associated with the western or southern regions of the Arabian peninsula. "Bdellium" is usually understood to be a fragrant resin, found in abundance in Arabia, as are various types of precious and semiprecious stones (the identification of the "onyx stone" is uncertain). The only known Arabian source for "good gold" is the so-called "Cradle of Gold," (Mahd edh-Dhahab), located about 125 miles south of Medina, in the Hijaz Mountains, which currently produces more than five tons of gold a year.

The problem is that there is no river flowing today from this area toward the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. But once it was different. A scientist from Boston University, Farouk El-Baz, taking clues from alluvial deposits in Kuwait, carefully examined satellite photos of the Arabian peninsula. There he spotted the unmistakable signs of a river channel cutting across the desert. Originating in the Hijaz Mountains near Medina and the Cradle of Gold, the ancient waterway, currently concealed beneath sand dunes, runs northeast to Kuwait. Dubbed the Kuwait River by its modern discoverer, it once joined the Tigris and Euphrates at the head of the Persian Gulf. Then because of climate changes, it dried up, the archaeologists say, sometime between 3500-2000 B. C.

The agreement of all of these details of the Kuwait River with the biblical description of the Pishon, has led some scholars to make the obvious connection. James A. Sauer (former curator of the Harvard Semitic Museum, archaeologist, author, and a research associate at the museum), a man who describes himself as "a former skeptic," wrote that "the Kuwait River . . . may well be the Pishon River, one of the four rivers, according to the Bible, associated with Eden." That such a near-confession could be coaxed from a reputable archaeologist is nothing short of amazing. Those of us who believe that the Bible stories are literally true will show much less hesitation in the identification.

Does this mean that the Garden of Eden itself can now be located? Probably not. When we understand the destructive and scouring effects of modern, limited floods, we realize that whatever of the Garden remained in Noah’s day was certainly erased by that catastrophic, worldwide Flood. We may, however, with some degree of confidence suggest that the territory at the head of the Persian Gulf (where Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran meet) is the general locale of the Garden.

The real importance of this discovery is in the confirmation of the accuracy, historicity, and literal veracity of the Bible. While many scholars feel no compunction about relegating the stories in the Bible to the realms of fable and myth, this find substantiates the literal, historical nature of the records in the Scriptures. Many people have long doubted it, but the Bible is true.

(For more information, see James A. Sauer, "The River Runs Dry," Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August, 1996. In addition, see articles on "Pishon," "Havilah," and "Eden" in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, and The Illustrated Bible Dictionary.)

SOURCE

2009-06-30T23:49:00.001+10:00

The Church of England and Die Judenfrage

I should have mentioned yesterday that the "learned" British judges who ruled that Jews are a race do have on their side one authority who is much respected to this day in academe: Karl Marx. Marx was of course the original self-hating Jew. He was furiously antisemitic. But Marx was a sponger. He rarely earned enough to keep himself and his family so was always "borrowing" money from someone. It was initially his father (Heinrich Marx was a real gentleman, a lovely man. How he ever had such a monster as Karl is hard to imagine) and he was in later years supported by Friedrich Engels out of the proceeds of the Engels family business. One therefore imagines that when he wrote a letter to his Jewish uncle in Holland he had in mind ingratiating himself for future borrowing. The letter was about Marx's excitement over the American civil war and his contempt for Benjamin Disraeli but in the course of his comments about Disraeli he does refer to "our race".

As I briefly touched on in the opening sentence to my post yesterday, I am not wholly unsympathetic to self-hating Jews. It must be appalling to realize that by the accident of your birth you are a member of a widely suspect and even hated group -- regardless of what your personal characteristics might be. Distancing oneself from that could even be a perfectly healthy reaction. But it is when such Jews extend the dislike of their origins to undermining Israel that they really get my goat. Why do they have to be so extreme? Why not simply become an Anglican, as Disraeli did? The Anglicans (Episcopalians in the USA) have lovely buildings, colourful services and the sermons demand nothing and in fact mean nothing at all. Why not just treat it as a pleasant Sunday morning time of relaxation and have a whole new identity to show for it? Many Anglican bishops are barely-disguised atheists so you certainly don't have to believe anything to be an Anglican. It is sometimes said that the only requirement for being an Anglican is good taste.

By the way, "Die Judenfrage" is German for "The Jewish Question" and is an expression used by both Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler so there is an allusion to history in the title I chose yesterday and today. It is actually a bit of a tease. Any stray Leftist coming by my writings would expect something antisemitic under that title -- but, as you can see, such an expectation would have been disappointed.

In my peculiar position as a atheist with an interest in religious matters, I take a continued interest not only in Jews but also in the Church of England. And I have recently put up on my Paralipomena blog an article by a Church of England bishop that makes doleful reading. He notes the steady decline in adherents to his church and suspects that his church will not exist at all in 30 years' time. But he has no real answer to that problem. So will the Church of England eventually disappear up its own backside? I think not. The problem, as I see it, is that they have somehow become dominated by dress-up queens. People go there for a show rather than for a boost to faith.

But amid such desecration of a great heritage, real faith does survive in patches. The Sydney diocese is the most vivid proof of that. Their churches are full and their seminary is overflowing with people with a religious vocation. So how do they do it? Simple. They have returned to their roots. The original faith of the New Testament is a mightily powerful one and the closer you get to that the more empowered you will be. And the 39 "Articles of Religion" that were the original definition of Anglicanism are a very powerful expression of early Protestant faith -- a faith that was very Bible-based. So my expectation is that the show-ponies of Anglicanism will wither away eventually and a core of real believers will remain.

They may even evangelize. Priests ordained in Sydney already do. They go into neighbouring dioceses and set up "Family Churches", much to the irritation of the local bishops. The Sydney priests end up having more people in their pews than the local Bishop does! So the vitality is there if you drink from the waters of the original New Testament faith. The knowalls may dismiss such faith as "old-fashioned" and "irrelevant to the modern world" but it still has a great power to bring blessings to its people.

2009-06-29T23:50:00.001+10:00

I'm at it again: Die Judenfrage and religious identity

Most Jews must be heartily sick of being forever singled out for discussion and scrutiny but it seems that it was ever so and ever will be. And in my utter folly, I am once again going to voice a few thoughts on one of the most hotly contested topics among Jews: Who is a Jew?

My present thoughts arise from the "wise" British judges who recently decided that Jews are a race. Since there are Jews of all races -- including black ones -- that is arrant nonsense. Yet it is also partly true -- in that various genetic studies have shown that many Jews do still have in them some Middle Eastern genes. So for Jews as a whole it is true that Israel is their ancestral home as well as their religious home.

Nonetheless, it seems clear that Jews are a religion, not a race. And the test of that, it seems to me, is that Jews do accept converts. Try converting yourself into another race: It can't be done.

But many Jews are atheists or something close to it, so how can Jewry be a religion? The easy answer to that from an Orthodox viewpoint (with which I am broadly sympathetic) is that being Jewish is not a matter of belief but of practice. A Jew is someone who follows Jewish law (halacha). What you believe is very secondary. Deeds speak louder than words. Christianity is belief based but Judaism is practice based.

But there is also a much simpler answer: MOST religion is hereditary. And those who inherit it are often not zealous practitioners of it. My late father, for instance, always put his religion down on official forms as "C of E" ("Church of England") and had no hesitation in doing so. He in fact seemed rather proud of it. Yet in all the time I knew him, he never once set foot inside an Anglican church.

So why cannot Jews be the same? Even if you are not religious, you can still have a religious identity.

Because I am an atheist, I never bothered with getting my son Christened but I considered that a knowledge of Christianity was an important element of his cultural heritage so I sent him to a Catholic school -- in the view that Catholics still had enough cultural self-confidence to teach the Christian basics. And they did. And my son greatly enjoyed his religion lessons -- as I hoped he would.

When he was aged 9 however, he said that he wanted to become a Catholic, which of course I was delighted to arrange. So he was baptised and subsequently had his confirmation lessons and was confirmed. These days many years later his beliefs seem to be as skeptical as mine -- which I also expected -- so what motivated his desire to become a Catholic? He wanted to have a religious identity. There was no pressure on him but he was greatly impressed by some very faith-filled people in the church and he wanted to identify with that. And I imagine that he still puts himself down on forms as "Catholic".

So a religious identity can be quite a significant thing for many people, not only Jews. It is a part of belonging -- and that is a very basic human need. Jews in a way are lucky there. No matter what their beliefs are, they still know that there is always one place where they belong, if they ever want to acknowledge it.

Once or twice a year I still attend my local Presbyterian church (at Easter etc.) and I certainly feel that I belong there. I feel at home with all aspects of it. My mother was a Presbyterian of sorts so that was where I was sent as a kid for Sunday School -- and that has stayed with me even though I no longer believe. So, again, one can have and value a religious identity even if one's beliefs have very little to do with it.

And the lady in my life -- Anne -- is only very vaguely religious but her background religion is Presbyterian and there are many habits of mind she has which I know well from my own family, and with which I am therefore very much at ease. Sometimes when she speaks, I hear my mother and my aunties speaking too. She has a Presbyterian mind, or a Presbyterian way of thinking -- perhaps Presbyterian assumptions. I think that in a similar way, most Jews probably have a Jewish mind too. Attitudes and habits of thought may in fact be the most important parts of a religious heritasge.

I am sure that everything I have said above will be mumbo jumbo to most Leftists but, if so, that is their loss.

2009-06-25T11:05:00.002+10:00

The Decline of John Calvin

As I was brought up in a Calvinist faith, this has some relevance to me -- JR

HE is a byword for bigotry cast in the role of the austere, humourless and cruel preacher of an austere, humourless and cruel God. He was held responsible by Max Weber for the rapacity of late capitalism. He is remembered as the persecutor of his opponents, including the hapless heretic Michael Servetus, for whose burning John Calvin is held responsible.

Calvinism, the form of Christianity he spawned, allegedly shares its fatalism with Islam. It is a church of prigs and wowsers, of Talibanesque idol-smashers and woman-haters, of middle managers and bean counters. It is a faith that broods on the depravity of humankind rather than celebrating its glorious capacity to build, to create and to redeem. It is the religion of Ned Flanders and the ironically named Reverend Lovejoy.

In his famous series of novels, His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman placed the headquarters of the demonic anti-church in Calvin's city, Geneva.

But if this is how we think of Calvin, it is only because we are happier with the cardboard cut-out version of history mainly written by Calvin's detractors than with what history actually records. It is like accepting a biography of Kevin Rudd written by Malcolm Turnbull (or vice versa).

The real Calvin was a scholar steeped in the humanist intellectual culture of his day. In this he followed the great Erasmus. He was a man of texts, of the original sources read in the original languages. He was expert in classical literature as well as in the Bible. Not only did he learn Greek but also Hebrew and he consulted Jewish scholars about their interpretations of ancient writings. He was no obscurantist, no anti-intellectual.

Calvin's great work was his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which must surely count (with the Bible) as one of the great unread classics of Western thought.

It was translated into English as early as 1561 and has been of inestimable influence in Anglo-Saxon politics, science, liturgy and literature since. The God of the Institutes is not the remote, harsh deity who delights only in his exercise of arbitrary willpower. Actually reading the text, you encounter everywhere a tender-hearted father-figure, a divinity overflowing with love for his creatures. Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson wrote: "Any reader of the Institutes must be struck by the great elegance, the gallantry, of its moral vision, which is more beautiful for the resolution with which its theology embraces sorrow and darkness."

Calvin is a moral realist. For all their created nobility, human beings are tragic figures, impaled on their own pride. That is why, although Calvin upheld the freedom of the individual conscience, he was also an advocate of collective and democratic decision making. It is not accidental that his followers have been some of the greatest promoters of republicanism and democracy in the modern era.

Calvin was not without flaws, some of them serious. Yet if we are to judge him cruel, we are failing to recognise that he was a man of remarkable moderation in an age of often extreme judicial cruelty. If we are to judge his view of humanity too bleak, we are seriously overestimating our own capacity for moral heroism. If we are to celebrate the waning of his influence, it is quite possibly because we have accepted too lazily the caricature of his critics. As Robinson reminds us: "There are things for which we in this culture clearly are indebted to him, including relatively popular government, the relatively high status of women, the separation of church and state, what remains of universal schooling and, while it lasted, liberal higher education, education in the humanities. How easily we forget."

SOURCE

2008-09-30T08:33:00.003+10:00

A small meditation for the Jewish New Year

Although I am an atheist, I am acutely aware of the vast influence that the New Testament has had on my thinking. And I regret not one jot or tittle of that. Whenever I follow the teachings of Christ (alas far too seldom) I get a blessing -- sometimes very rapidly.

I also however have great respect for the Old Testament and often read it with pleasure. One book however stands out for its difficulty: The book of Job. However you explain it, the fact of the matter is that the God of Israel placed great burdens and afflictions on a good and holy man.

If I were a Rabbi, I would see that as a metaphor for the relationship between the God of Israel and his people as a whole. The God of the Jews has given his chosen people enormous gifts but in his wisdom he has also given them one enormous handicap: political stupidity. Israel and the Jews have only ONE powerful friend in the world: American evangelical Christians. And yet Jews generally despise them. Through the despicable Abraham Foxman, they do all they can to thwart evangelical Christians and they vote in droves for the antisemitic Democratic Party, the party that also despises evangelical Christians.

Now that seems to me to be a curse from on high but I speak from a particular perspective. What Jews do politically is virtually inexplicable from an Anglo-Saxon viewpoint but to the rest of the world it may not be so at all.

This is not the time or place to spell it out in historical detail, but a large element in Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism is the way they value alliances. When Anglo-Saxons go to war they generally do so as "Allies". They in fact refer to their side of a conflict as "the Allies" or "Allied forces". They have an instinctive appreciation of the importance of friends, banal though that may seem. There is much egotism in the world that causes both people and nations to "go it alone" at times but that is something that seems to be missing in Anglo-Saxon thinking.

And that seeking of alliances even overcomes old wounds. There is only one country that has burnt Washington to the ground and that is Britain -- in 1812. But, despite that bad start, the commonality of attitudes and values has prevailed and the USA and Britain have fought alongside one-another repeatedly since then.

Why cannot Jews do the same? Christians were once a plague upon Jewry but they are not so now. Both fundamentalist Christians and Jews want to see Jews in Zion but very few Jews will grasp the hand of friendship that is held out to them by the Christians. That blindspot does seem to me very much like a curse from on high.

There are of course some Jews who fight the good fight: Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, Jeff Jacoby, Dennis Prager etc. But on some accounts 88% of Jews voted for the Islam-loving Democratic party at the 2006 mid-terms -- so the curse is pervasive despite that.

There has always been antisemitism on both sides of politics but at least since Karl Marx it has always had its principal home on the Left. Jews can remember conservative businessmen keeping them out of country clubs but forget that Hitler was a socialist. One should be able to expect better than that from a generally clever people. In the late 19th century, the British Conservative party made a Jew (Disraeli) their Prime Minister. About 50 years later the socialist Hitler incinerated 6 million Jews. Can anybody see a difference there?

In 1939 Germany went to war with a powerful ally on its side: Soviet Russia. The German Panzern that stormed through France were powered by Soviet fuel. Germany later however turned on its ally, with disastrous results for itself. One hopes that Jews will not similarly antagonize THEIR best ally. Abe Foxman, take note.

2008-07-17T13:08:00.000+10:00

Wow! Reformation Christianity still lives in Sydney

It's just sentimentality on my part (although my own background is Protestant fundamentalist, I am an atheist and brought my son up as a Catholic) but I must admit that I still do enjoy smelling a whiff of the old fire and brimstone in the article below by immensely-influential Sydney Anglican clergyman Phillip Jensen. Beliefs such as his have transformed the world

Roman Catholicism is a very diverse thing and what you see in the Philippines is not necessarily what you see in the streets of Sydney. It has a Protestant face in the Protestant world. Recently we've been getting into the Stations of the Cross here in Sydney with World Youth Day in 2008, but not all 14 Stations of the Cross are going to be done, only I think eight of the Stations of the Cross - I can't remember the exact number.

The ones that are going to be done are the ones that are in the Bible, but the extra ones, like Veronica, well they're not in the Bible. They're not going to be done in the streets of Sydney. Now in one sense it is because they haven't got time, space and energy to do all of them, and in one sense it is out of courtesy to Protestants that they choose to leave out the ones that are not in the Bible.

But if Martin Luther came into Sydney and saw Roman Catholicism and its Stations of the Cross, he'd say, "Ah, they've cleaned up their act." So there are certain aspects of Catholicism in the Protestant world which are much more acceptable to where Luther would have been.

But no. Things are actually worse than in Luther's day because since Luther's day the Roman Catholic Church not only calcified itself explicitly against justification by faith alone, or the authority of the scriptures alone, or salvation by grace alone, etcetera; not only calcified itself against that back at the Council of Trent but since then you've had the Vatican I Council in 1870, which clarified the idea that the Pope can speak infallibly.

A faithful Roman Catholic would say, "Well, they're just saying what we've always believed," but in fact it was not until 1870 that it was ever said that this is really what the belief is. Since then we're not too sure how often the Pope has spoken infallibly but the one occasion on which everyone agrees he did was in the 1950s when he declared that Mary had been bodily assumed from the grave. Well, that's not in the Bible anywhere. And why would she be bodily assumed from the grave? It's all part of the Maryology that has come in. It has also identified the immaculate conception of Mary; that is, that Mary was without sin. Well, that's nowhere in the Bible.

So since the Reformation we've had the infallibility of the Pope, the sinlessness of Mary, the bodily assumption of Mary. These things show you that Roman Catholicism has moved since the Reformation - but it has moved further away from us, not closer to us.

NOW in Vatican II there was an opening up - people were "separated brothers" and things like that - but with all due respect to the genuineness of their attempts to be more ecumenically open - and certainly I'm appreciative of the sense of which we can live in a tolerant acceptance of each other - it was only a year or two ago that the Pope made quite clear that the Anglican Church, Presbyterians, are sects, cults; we are not the true church.

So you can't get salvation through us; you are moved into fairly serious deviation. And so Protestants can be very warm and fuzzy towards Roman Catholicism but it's not actually reciprocal. We are not really seen as God's people in Christ Jesus because the Pope is seen as the vicar of Christ. Now from a Bible-believing point of view, that is an appalling blasphemy because the Holy Spirit is the vicar of Christ.

Source

2008-07-10T13:10:00.001+10:00

Bible publisher faces $60M federal lawsuit over homosexuality

In the article indented below, we read that a homosexual is upset that some Bibles translate the Greek word "arsenokoites" in 1 Corinthians 6:9 as "homosexual" instead of "sodomite". Politeness gets you nowhere, it seems. My Abbott-Smith Greek Lexicon just gives "sodomite" as the meaning of the word. The word that Americans spell as "ass" (NOT meaning a donkey) is spelt and pronounced in the British Commonwealth as "arse". It is tempting to see a convergence with the Greek there!

I note that the highly-regarded New English Bible published by the Oxford University Press renders the passage as "homosexual perversion". Wow! Are they in big trouble! Actually, nobody is in big trouble. The lawsuit is so thin that it is obviously just "go-away" money that the guy and his lawyer want. I hope Zondervan resists.

Some more points: The historic Geneva Bible translates the word as "buggerers" so that is pretty frank too. And note that in the original Greek, St Paul groups together for condemnation both sodomites and effeminates ("malakoi oute arsenokoitai") so it is perfectly clear that he is condemning homosexuality generally -- JR

Christian publisher Zondervan is facing a $60 million federal lawsuit filed by a man who claims he and other homosexuals have suffered based on what the suit claims is a misinterpretation of the Bible. But a company spokeswoman says Zondervan doesn't translate the Bible or own the copyright for any of the translations. Instead, she said in a statement, the company relies on the "scholarly judgment of credible translation committees." That is to say, setting aside whether the federal civil rights lawsuit is credible, the company says Bradley Fowler sued the wrong group.

His suit centers on one passage in scripture -- 1 Corinthians 6:9 -- and how it reads in Bibles published by Zondervan. Fowler says Zondervan Bibles published in 1982 and 1987 use the word homosexuals among a list of those who are "wicked" or "unrighteous" and won't inherit the kingdom of heaven. Fowler says his family's pastor used that Zondervan Bible, and because of it his family considered him a sinner and he suffered.

Now he is asking for an apology and $60 million. "To compensate for the past 20 years of emotional duress and mental instability," [I can believe the mental instability] Fowler told 24 Hour News 8 in a phone interview. He claims the company is misinterpreting the Bible by specifically using the word homosexuals. Fowler admits that every Bible printed is a translation, interpreted in some way, but he says specifically using that word is not a translation but a change. "These are opinions based on the publishers," he said. "And they are being embedded in the religious structure as a way of life."

More here

2008-07-09T08:52:00.003+10:00

The anarthrous predicate in John chapter 1

Apologies for that technical heading. I am just following up on the point of Greek grammar that I raised yesterday. What it is all about is the way ancient Greeks used their word for "the" (the definite article -- which is "ho" in our Greek case in John 1:1). In New Testament Greek, the classical Greek usage of referring to "The god" (ho theos) was adopted, rather than using simply "God" (theos). "Theos" was in other words treated as a noun rather than a name. So the god of the Hebrews was referred to as "The god", just as Zeus in the Greek pantheon was referred to as "The god".

So whether anybody is referred to as "The god" (ho theos) or not is significant. In the NT it is the Greek equivalent of our name "God". I hope that is not too obscure.

And the point about John 1:1 is that the Logos (word) is NOT refered to as "The god" (ho theos) but rather as "god' (theos). So the Logos is of the substance of gods but not "The god".

An objection that sometimes arises to that interpretation, however, is that there is a custom in Greek writing, perhaps a lazy or an economical custom, of omitting the definite article in the predicate (the anarthrous predicate) if it is already given in the subject. This is sometimes urged as the explanation for the missing definite article in the predicate of John 1:1.

While that may be true in general, however, it is clearly not applicable to John's writing in the passsage concerned. Just a few lines down in John 1 we read: "kai ee zoe een to phos ton anthropou" ("and the life was the light of men"). The article is used in BOTH the predicate and the subject. And note that John is again there referring elliptically to the same guy whom he earlier referred to as the "logos" (word). In both cases he is referring to Jesus Christ. So John was writing carefully there and was clearly NOT adopting the anarthrous predicate convention.

2008-07-08T23:12:00.001+10:00

The Geneva Bible

A great pleasure! I have just received my copy of the recently reprinted Geneva Bible, the translation that the Pilgrim Fathers mainly used. The Geneva Bible was the popular version in the English-speaking world until the "official" King James Bible gradually supplanted it.

I bought my copy via World Net Daily and it cost me rather a lot, which may seem rather mad since I already have many Bibles, including three recensions of the Greek New Testament (i.e. in the original Greek) and some excellent modern translations. But it is exciting to read the words of the Bible just as they were read by the great English Protestant reformers who changed the world and whose reforms are the basis of our entire modern civilization.

Because it was so popular in its day, the Geneva Bible underwent many printings, not all of which were identical. The version I have is a reproduction of a 1599 printing. The King James Bible, of course, was first printed in 1611.

I tend to judge Bible translations by their translation of the first few verses of the Gospel of John. John 1:1 is much used by afficianados of the originally pagan Trinity doctrine to justify their nonsensical dogma. So I was most pleased to see that the Geneva translators gave in their footnote a much better sense of the original Greek than we usually see. The Geneva Bible was renowned in its day for its many informative footnotes and they are still a useful resource. The explanatory footnote for John 1:1 reads: "The son of God is of one, and the selfsame eternity or everlastingness, and of one and the selfsame essence or nature, with the father". That puts the sense of the original much more clearly than the literal translation of the original text itself. The underlying idea in the Greek original -- that the Logos was of divine essence -- is clearly there in the Geneva footnote.

If I were to express the meaning of the original Greek in a purely Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, I would translate it as "And of god-stuff was the word". (See also my many previous exegetical comments on John 1:1 -- e.g. here and here)

So the Geneva Bible did allow the people of the 16th century to get close to the original meaning of the New Testament. And the transformative power of doing that was evident then and continues to this day. Those now ancient words still have enormous power to move the minds of men. The many clergy of the "mainstream" churches who think they have a better or more "modern" message to preach from their pulpits are just self-defeating fools. There is no substitute for the original Gospel.

2008-01-24T01:02:00.000+10:00

ISLAM IS A JEWISH PLOT

With their love of conspiracy theories and their revived antisemitism, I wonder that the Left have not come up with the accusation implied in my heading above. Because there are in fact reasonable grounds for viewing Islam as a reactionary form of Judaism. There is not a lot in the teachings of the Koran that cannot also be found in the Torah: Stoning homosexuals to death, acceptance of slavery, subordination of women, prohibition of "graven images", killing unbelievers, "I the LORD thy God am a jealous God" etc. And, of course, monotheism. Even the Arab word for God is also Hebrew: "Allah" and "Eloah".

Israel has always had great prophets and Rabbis, however, and a great Jewish theologian -- known to Christians as St. Paul -- transformed Judaism into a much more humane faith -- a faith we now know as Christianity -- and he took that faith to the world.

But there was a backlash. The old faith still had power and Mohammed felt it. And, like St Paul, Mohammed was a proselytizer. The old mainstream Jews could not be proselytizers, of course. You were either of the "chosen people" or you were not. But there was a tremendous power in the idea of the one invisible God and it should not be surprising that TWO great proselytizers took it to the world. And it was Mohammed that stayed closest to the original. He was perfectly aware of Christianity. Powerful Christian fanatics lived not far from him in the form of the Byzantine empire. But Mohammed was a much less powerful thinker than St. Paul so he mostly just took a return to the old faith to the world.

St. Paul and his Rabbi -- Jesus Christ -- were however the ones who laid the foundation not just for military conquest (which was Mohammed's achievement) but rather for a major advance in human thinking. And other Jewish theologians have had no difficulty in also taking on board most of his ideas -- so that Paul has in fact humanized Judaism too. It is left to Islam to represent the "old" version of Judaism.

St. Paul did of course have to have a foundation for his transformation of the faith and a strong foundation was of course already there in the Torah. There is much in the Torah that is humane. Paul chose the humane side. Mohammed chose (mostly) the dark side. What an amazing body of thought to have had such huge and varied influence!

NOTE: In what I have said above, my thinking has partly been formed by what is, I believe, the universal conclusion of the textual critics: That the Pauline epistles were the earliest Christian documents. The Gospels came later.

An only tangentially related thought: I read with great interest Murray's exploration of the various reasons for Jewish brilliance. And his final suggestion did have some resonance despite the fact that I am an atheist: That maybe they really are God's chosen people! But that resonance probably has more than a little to do with the fact that I spent my early years steeped in the Bible -- years which I still remember with great joy.

Final note: The "graven images" commandment is perhaps emblematic of the great interaction between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Mohammed of course insisted on a purer form of Judaism -- i.e. keeping that commandment with great strictness -- which caused much heartburn in nearby Christian Byzantium. Byzantium was in fact for a long time racked by a controversy between the iconoclasts (tearers down of images) and the iconodules (guys who thought that pictures and statues of Christ and the saints (icons) were perfectly OK). Civil wars were fought over it.

And I cannot be too smug about all that, either. My old church (Ann St. Presbyterian -- where I still go on rare occasions and where I always feel at home) was built by men sympathetic to the "Wee Free" (Free Church of Scotland -- a very puritanical group) persuasion and it features a large circular window (Rose window) of coloured glass. But is not stained glass. It has only abstract patterns in it. No pictures. No "graven images" in fact. Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism are very different -- as different as night and day most of the time -- but their common Jewish origin does occasionally give them some surprising points of contact.

But the prohibition of alcohol is a quite surprising point of contact. There is no prohibition in the Bible -- rather the reverse in fact (John 2: 3-10; 1 Timothy 5:23; Ecclesiastes 8:15). But Muslims are strictly "dry" and so are zealous Presbyterians. I remember once in my early years taking out a very nice girl (Rhoda) from the Ann St. church and suggesting unseriously as we walked past a bar that maybe we could go in and have a drink! As a result of that heinous suggestion, I was banned by her parents from ever taking out Rhoda again! Those were the days!

2007-03-18T21:42:00.001+10:00

Why seven days?

This blog has always been an iconoclastic one so I am sure a little bit more iconoclasm will not hurt.

Most people seem to think that there are seven days in the week because it says so in Genesis. That is not so. There were seven days in the week long before either of the two creation accounts in Genesis were written. The account mentioning 7 days (from the first verse up to chapter 2 verse 3) is in fact a later add-on. The original creation account in Genesis (from chapter 2 verse 4 onwards) says that the heavens and the earth were created in ONE day! And, yes, I do know the theological ways of getting around that. They are theological rather than scholarly, though.

But at any event, the division of the week into 7 days is very ancient. The later Genesis writer was just setting up a Hebrew story to explain a long-standing pagan custom. The custom goes back to those great stargazers, the Babylonians (and possibly further back to their Sumerian predecessors). Mesopotamia is basically desert -- made habitable by irrigation. So when you look up into the sky at night there the stars are very bright. And with no TV, movies or internet that is about all you had to look at during night-time way back then.

And the most striking thing you notice about the stars is that their position in the sky is very fixed -- EXCEPT for just five pesky stars that move about. I don't know the Babylonian names for them but we call them Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn -- which are the Roman names for them (more or less). They are of course planets, not stars. But the Babylonians didn't know that so they thought it was obvious that they must be gods. Who else could move about among the stars? So we clearly have five gods there.

But there are two OTHER moving objects in the sky -- the Sun and the moon -- with the sun obviously being the big chief. So if there are 7 gods (5+2), to be on the safe side each one had to have day devoted to him/her. One could not risk offending a god. So the 7 days of the week were named after the seven movable objects that the ancient Iraqis could see in the sky!

And because the sun was clearly the big guy he had to have the FIRST day of the week named after him and have that day especially sacred. And we perpetuate that to this day. We still see Sunday as special.

2006-12-21T08:12:00.000+10:00

THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN MESSAGE IS MORE CONSERVATIVE THAN YOU MIGHT BE AWARE OF

I originally posted this on Dissecting Leftism but thought I should post it here for those who come to this site via a Google search

Although I am an atheist, I grew up steeped in the New Testament so reading the Bible is for me like visiting an old friend. I do not however know the Old Testament as well as I should so I recently read right through the Book of Deuteronomy. Its main theme is avoidance of false gods and when I think of the many false Gods around today -- socialism, global warming, anti-"obesity" etc. -- it is clear that people have not changed much and we do still need to be alert against false gods.

Another prominent theme in Deuteronomy however is what some might call "Christian" charity. There are frequent instructions to be kind, forgiving and generous to the poor. The compassion and concern for the outcast shown by Jesus was very Jewish.

But giving the poor your OWN goods is very different from giving the poor OTHER people's goods, which is what the Leftist wants to do and which would once have been called robbery.

And the Torah does make clear that abstract justice is an absolute -- a duty. Where PUBLIC matters are concerned (as distinct from deeds in private life), you are NOT allowed to favour the poor. Exodus 23:3 is clearest about that. The NIV probably gives the most accurate interpretation of the text. It says: "Do not show favouritism to a poor man in his lawsuit". So, just because a man is poor, the law is not allowed to be biased in his favour. Moses was clearly not a Leftist.

I probably should leave it at that but the pedant in me causes me to note further that the Hebrew word rendered as "lawsuit" above has a rather broader application than that in the original. The KJ renders it as "cause" and it could refer to any controversy. So again we see that special favour towards the poor in any public way is OUT. Private charity is the proper response to the poor.

Being a bit of a language freak, I wrote about the interpretation of Exodus 23:3 to David Boxenhorn, an Israeli who often blogs about the interpretion of Hebrew and the Hebrew scriptures. I received his comments after I had written the above and his comments would seem to broaden even my interpretation. He wrote (inter alia):

"That quote refers to favoring the poor in court, one of many possible dangers to justice cited in the Bible - see previous and following passages. Not distorting judgment is a major theme of the Bible....

But the word translated as "poor" - dal - is probably better translated as "weak", the usual Biblical word for poor is evyon, as you see three verses down in 23:6. Also, the word translated as "cause" - riv - is more simply translated as "argument", and the word "favor" - tehdar - I might translate as "make more wonderful or enhance". So I might translate the passage as: "and you will not enhance [the testimony] of the weak, in an argument"

So it is the disadvantaged generally that the passage applies to and it is arguments generally that the passage applies to. So you are not allowed to glorify the disadvantaged beyond what reality shows -- no absurd accounts of the glories of African history, for instance. Truth is paramount -- not the distorted and selective truth that is the stock in trade of the Left (Noam Chomsky take a bow).

You can see the original Hebrew (with accompanying translation) here.

2006-11-08T19:32:00.000+10:00

The Gospel According to Saint Marx

The catechism of taxation, and how the Left misuses it

By Jerry Bowyer

After seeing the failure of Washington-backed capitalist reforms in Latin America, I no longer think a third way between capitalism and socialism is possible. Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation. If you really want to look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ - who I think was the first socialist - only socialism can really create a genuine society.

- Hugo Chavez, Dictator cum Theologian, Time Magazine, September 22, 2006

I can't find anything in any religion anywhere, I certainly cannot find anything in the three-year ministry of Jesus Christ, that says you ought to take health care away from poor children or money away from the poorest people in the country to give it to the wealthiest people in the nation.

- John Kerry, Senator from Massachusetts, Des Moines, Iowa, October 9, 2005

A Biblical scholar once said that if you torture a text long enough, you can get it to confess to anything. I thought of this as the Left tried to drive a wedge between "values voters" and President Bush's economic policies in the run-up to Election Day. Having learned that little electoral success comes from insulting evangelicals, the Democrats adopted the adage, "If you can't beat 'em, try to make 'em join you."

The text I most often hear stretched on the rack is the one in which Jesus tells a rich young "man" that he should sell all he has and give it to the poor. The socialist hawk Christopher Hitchens used this one last summer in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. His interpretation seems to be that Jesus is damning rich people in general, and that hostility to riches implies hostility to markets.

But this is an oft misquoted passage. "And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" (Luke: 18:19) He's not just a rich young man; he's a rich young ruler. Luke calls him an "archon," which my Greek/English lexicon defines as "a ruler, a judge . a member of the Sanhedrin." The Gospels, like all ancient texts written before low-cost book reproduction, were written very carefully and avoid extraneous details. It seems a stretch, at the very least, to use this story as a bludgeon against the institutions of the marketplace when the author goes to the trouble to tell us that the subject in question is not a man of the marketplace at all, but instead a man of the government.

Actually, Jesus encountered many people who had made their way in the marketplace. He was friendly with a wealthy merchant (according to tradition, a tin trader) named Joseph of Arimathea. They were so close, in fact, that Joseph donated the chamber in which Jesus was buried. Throughout the Gospels Jesus extols the example of the patriarch Abraham, whom the Torah says was a very wealthy man. If Jesus had a problem with wealth, where were the confrontations with the wealthy importer of metals? Where were the condemnations of the wealthy sheikh?

The wealthy men that Jesus does confront weren't men of pure commerce. There is the tax collector, Zacchaeus, who actually does obey Jesus and sells half his possessions in order to give definitively to the poor; there are the money changers getting rich off their monopolistic franchises on the property of King Herod's Temple.

This makes sense. First century Judea was a kleptocracy all the way to the top. The quisling King Herod was put there by Rome because he was such an excellent tax collector. As such, Herod created a centralized system of plunder and control through which he and his cronies could become very wealthy. There were some places for honest commerce. Jesus' home town of Galilee was a hot bed of entrepreneurship, which is probably the reason why so many of his parables drew on the language of the venture-capital market of masters and stewards. However, the closer you got to Herod (geographically and socially), the tougher it was to be honest and rich at the same time.

It's hard to believe that recent attacks on the religious right in America are attacks on wealth itself. Where would the Left be if George Soros had sold all his possessions and given those proceeds to the poor? Where would John Kerry be if Henry John Heinz had done the same a hundred years ago?

It seems more likely that many of Bush's American critics are not really calling for the elimination of all wealth accumulation, but more likely using (or misusing) these passages for their rhetorical value in a battle over the president's tax cuts. I'm afraid, however, that the Biblical tradition offers no more succor to opponents of tax cuts than it does to opponents of wealth in general.

One day, a left-leaning rabbi called my radio program and announced proudly that although his congregation had many wealthy members, they had opposed the president's tax cuts because of their devotion to Judaism. I asked him for examples from the Torah that endorse high taxes. He had none. On the other hand, I can think of lots of passages that seem to treat high taxes with suspicion. When the patriarch Joseph became the vice-regent of Egypt, we are told that he imposed a tax rate of one-fifth on the income of Egyptian citizens. According to the Torah, they "became his slaves." If a 20 percent tax rate is tantamount to slavery, what about a top rate of near 40 percent?

Much later, shortly before the emergence of the Davidic dynasty, the people of Israel asked for "a king, like the other nations." The prophet Samuel warned that, among other curses, the king would impose a tax of 10 percent on their incomes. The prophet was right, of course, and the line of kings became increasingly heavy taxers. One of them, Rehoboam, son of King Solomon, found himself on the receiving end of a tax revolt. The northern ten tribes of Israel approached him about reducing their unsustainably high tax burden. (Let's call it "Proposition 10.") His older advisors urged him to cut rates; his younger advisors urged the opposite. Rehoboam ignored the gray heads and raised taxes, the northern tribes seceded, and the tribes were never again reunited. Ultimately, they were carried off by the Assyrian Empire; they are now known as "the lost tribes of Israel." This is hardly a ringing endorsement of high taxes.

Do I think that our modern tax code should be adopted from the Torah? Of course not. But examining the Torah's teaching regarding kingship, power, and taxation is a good starting point for anyone seriously trying to figure out what Moses and the prophets meant when they used the word "justice."

John Kerry's comment of a year ago that the Bible doesn't recommend taking health care from the poor and giving it to the rich [Nor does anybody! It's a straw-man argument] wasn't his first in the faith-against-freedom vein. Months earlier he said, "I went back and reread the whole New Testament the other day. Nowhere in the three-year ministry of Jesus Christ did I find a suggestion at all, ever, anywhere, in any way whatsoever, that you ought to take the money from the poor, the opportunities from the poor, and give them to the rich people. [Through their taxes, the rich give vast amounts to the poor and there is no mainstream proposal anywhere that aims to alter that. A straw-man again]"

Rereading the entire New Testament in one day is a formidable feat [Sarcasm]. But it should come as no surprise when Kerry tries to use the Bible to argue against the president's tax cuts. After all, three years ago at the Democratic National Convention, he tried to use the Ten Commandments against the president's Social Security plan: "We believe in the family value expressed in one of the oldest Commandments: `Honor thy father and thy mother.' As President, I will not privatize Social Security." [A good twist: A responsibility of the children suddenly becomes a responsibility of the government!]

Of course, the same Moses who delivered that commandment went on to establish a regime with a heavy emphasis on private property - let's call it the "Old Ownership Society." Jesse Jackson famously observed that Mary and Joseph should be thought of as the "homeless," which placed the tax-cutting Ronald Reagan in the role of wicked King Herod. But Jackson left out the fact that the only reason Mary and Joseph were away from home in the first place was that "A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed."

Source

2006-05-15T22:50:00.000+10:00

How Jesus Survived the Crucifixion

By Chris Brand

A) After the Resurrection

While the Gospels offer ample testimony to Jesus' post-Resurrection appearances, they leave a nagging question about the crucial first day of Jesus' new life. Whether to Mary Magdalene - in St John's account - or to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus seems to have been initially unwilling to identify himself. Indeed, it appears from both of the accounts offered that in these early encounters he may have been in disguise. Mary mistakes him for a gardener; and the two disciples walked with him for several miles without appreciating anything but his considerable knowledge of Old Testament prophecy. Further, his having to be `constrained' (Lk. XXIV 29) to stay with his disciples in the evening suggests that Jesus had a purpose on the road to Emmaus that is quite consistent with such furtive behaviour. Quite simply, he may have been fleeing the country. Allowing ourselves the liberty of a materialist interpretation of the Ascension, it is possible that he went on to do just that: having survived one crucifixion, who would willingly put himself at risk of another? Prior to that, his object was at least to leave Jerusalem. And the plan he adopted seems to have been to have a reunion with the disciples in Galilee (Matt. XXVIII 10). But, if Jesus was fleeing, what made him adopt the attention-getting role of a resurrected man?

Whatever the time-scale of Jesus' post-Resurrection ministry, it seems that it was his discovery by the disciples at Emmaus that tempted him to risk one final coup. On finding that the disciples were indeed prepared to accept the possibility that he might have risen from the dead, Jesus - after at first `vanishing out of their sight' (Lk. XXIV 31), possibly to manufacture some stigmata - clearly resolved to give a convincing impression that his own prophecies had been fulfilled. It may seem unlikely that Jesus would - or could - have manufactured the necessary symptoms of a recent crucifixion. Certainly, as some scholars have recently pointed out, it is unlikely that the Romans would have driven nails through the hands - rather than wrists - of a crucified man. But, according to the Gospel records of the stigmata, there is at least some possibility that he did not possess them during his first two post-Resurrection appearances. First, they are not mentioned; secondly, there is a remarkable change in Jesus' attitude to receiving bodily contact over his first resurrected day. To Mary Magdalene, Jesus says "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father" (Jn. XX 17). But on his re-appearance to the disciples after `vanishing' from Emmaus, he advised them to "handle me and see" (Lk. XXIV 39). In fact, the Gospels contain no explicit record of anyone taking up that invitation - not even Thomas, eight days later. But Jesus' change in attitude is at least consistent with the notion that the exploitable potential of the disciples' gullibility was only apparent to him after the careful sounding-out on the journey to Emmaus. In short, there is some reason to believe that Jesus' early encounters with his disciples led him to change his mind about revealing his physical condition.

Whether such fanciful stories have any validity must in turn depend on just what his condition was. What could Jesus have initially had to hide? If the Gospel records of Jesus eventually displaying his stigmata are to be given any credence, then to suggest that he had not died during crucifixion does not square with his change of heart. Why need he have waited? The same question arises for the traditional Christian interpretation. To account for Jesus' reluctance to reveal himself on his triumphal day, we are driven inexorably to consider a third alternative. Perhaps Jesus had not been crucified at all? Perhaps he had escaped crucifixion but, as a result of his chance meetings, had come to realize that none of his disciples would be likely to challenge the attractive version of the previous three days that he eventually proceeded to offer them? (More charitably, it is likely that the disciples' own enthusiasm at his re-appearance would have placed him in as embarrassing position: he might thus have felt socially constrained to provide a Messianic performance.) Even Thomas may not have been beyond succumbing to emotionally-charged intimidation from whatever combination of Jesus and the other disciples. Too diffident, perhaps, to subject Jesus to a proper medical at such a time, he preferred to simply acknowledge "My Lord and my God".

Just who could have rolled the stone from the tomb and removed the other body that Joseph of Arimethea had originally put there is a crucial problem to which we will return. It could have been Jesus himself - with helpers such as Joseph and Nicodemus. Even if he had not intended to reveal himself, he might have felt that the mere disappearance of his `body' from the tomb might ensure the perpetuation of his legend during the self-imposed exile that he anticipated. Removal of the body into the councillors' safer keeping would have prevented its identification by any suspicious Jews or Romans. If we accept St John's account of Jesus' meeting with Mary, this is a reasonable hypothesis which gives Jesus a motivation for visiting the tomb. Alternatively, we shall see that there are two other possibilities. One is perhaps unlikely in that it might seem to burden Jesus with the murder of a most trusty friend. The other is calculated to preserve the maximum integrity for both Jesus and his disciples; and its likelihood can only be seen as part of a coherent story of what had happened to all the major figures of the Gospel story during the previous three days. Even if such an opening of the tomb could have been arranged, we must clearly first consider what further reason we have to accept the tentative possibility that it was not Jesus' body that had been buried. In fact, it is only in the course of such a fresh look at old evidence that it is possible to show not only how the Resurrection happened but why it had to happen.

B) The Crucifixion

Ruling out the remote possibility of Jesus having genuinely survived a crucifixion without actually dying, it now behoves us to examine the hypothesis that he never went to the Cross at all. What evidence do the Gospels offer as to whether he attended the Crucifixion? While there is virtual unanimity that three women were witnesses to the Crucifixion, there is disagreement between the Gospels as to how near to the Cross they were. St Mathew and St Mark record them as being `afar off', whereas St John says they were `near' or `by' the Cross; St Luke does not commit himself. Having regard to the majority opinion - as also to likely Roman practice at crucifixions - it would seem reasonable to believe that these observers from Jesus' Galilean ministry were probably not in a very good position to observe just who was actually being crucified. Additionally it should be remembered that - as is the case for religious attendance in our own day - many of the adult followers who were keen enough to make the trek to Calvary were probably middle-aged women (Lk XXIII 27). Without spectacles, the vision of many of them would have been poor; and, doubtless, those who had known Jesus well would have been so distraught with grief as to be quite incapable of reliably recording what proceeded. Mary Magdalene may have been rather younger: only she, amongst the three explicitly mentioned as being present, was not a mother. But, by the traditional Christian account itself, she was no expert at identifying Jesus when she saw him: she mistook him for a gardener on Resurrection morning. Moreover, it would be in accordance with tradition to suppose that Jesus - or his substitute - was so mutilated prior to crucifixion that he would have been less than readily recognizable to even an attentive and reliable observer.

Three further considerations were relevant to an assessment of whether a substitute could have passed for Jesus during the Crucifixion. The first is that it is by no means clear that Jesus was as well known a figure in Jerusalem as Christians are inclined to assume. Even the Jewish authorities themselves - concerned as they supposedly were at his preaching - had to resort to Judas to identify the man they wanted to arrest after Jesus had overthrown the tables of the moneychangers in the basement of the Jerusalem temple. It was not enough for them to be told his hiding-place: Jesus had to be personally identified - by a kiss from Judas. Secondly, had a substitute for Jesus been provided at some stage in the Crucifixion story, the planner of such an operation would certainly have tried to ensure that the substitute was a reasonable physical and psychological match. Of course, it would have required great good fortune to get all the necessary details right - or to get all the discrepancies omitted from the historical record: and at least one mistake seems to have been made. According to St John, the man on the Cross was not sufficiently obliging to refuse the sour wine that was offered him (Jn XIX 29, 30 (New English Bible)). He thus failed to fulfil Jesus' pledge that he would `drink no more of the fruit of the vine till he drank it new in the kingdom of God' (Mk XIV 25). This contradiction clearly went unobserved during the Crucifixion: a further testimony is thereby provided to the absence of the most vital witnesses. Thirdly, quite straightforwardly, it will be remembered that the Gospels themselves testify directly that all the disciples had forsaken Jesus at the time of the arrest (e.g. Matt. XXVI 56). The amazing absence of the disciples from the publicly accessible events of Calvary may further testify either their treachery or their complete ignorance that any arrest had ever taken place; but it certainly deprives the traditional account of the Crucifixion of an important source of confirmatory evidence.

The only exception to this general account is provided by St John. But his account of Jesus' conversation from the Cross with `the disciple whom he loved' (Jn XIX 26) is problematic in three ways. First, it does not identify Jesus with any certainty. In saying "Woman, behold thy son" and - to the disciple - "Behold thy mother", the man on the Cross may just have been commending a weeping, but unrelated woman to the care and attention of a younger man. The first saying does not definitely indicate that the crucified man thought Mary was actually his own mother. Secondly, one might take the commands to reveal a mistaken assumption of kinship between John and Mary. This would constitute direct evidence that the man on the Cross could not have been Jesus. Thirdly, the scene is none too plausible anyway. How could a man dying of lumbar collapse talk to anyone at all - yet alone to a person who, if she was Jesus' mother, would have been standing `afar off' according to St Mathew and St Mark? As with St John's chapter-long account of Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane - which occurred, according to the other Gospels, while Jesus was physically apart from his disciples and while they were asleep - it is frankly reasonable to suspect St John of a vivid imagination. Of course, Jesus is supposed to have said other things on the Cross - either to the two thieves crucified with him or to nobody in particular. But these were not long-distance conversations; and their content - which may subsequently have been relayed by the soldiers guarding the Cross - was not such as to be peculiarly characteristic of Jesus. After all, if we suppose that some innocent bystander had been substituted for Jesus by Pilate or whomever, would we not expect him to say at his crucifixion something like "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me" - or words to that effect? Further, if Jesus' proper place had been taken by some unfortunate who was himself of a religious-paranoid disposition, why should such a man not have undertaken to `forgive' the more agreeable of his co-crucifixees?

In fact, the only point at which there appears to have close contact between Jesus' followers and the man who was crucified occurs on the removal of the corpse to the tomb. But, even here, St John records that the councillor who was able to approach Pilate to have the body removed from the Cross was only a `secret' disciple (Jn XIX 38). It is perhaps unlikely that a man in such a position would ever have been able to afford much time to consort with humble Galileans. And the same might surely be said of Nicodemus - if St John's lone account of his appearance is correct: he had only once previously seen Jesus, and that was at night for fear of his position. Moreover, these two Jewish worthies may well have belonged to the priestly castes who were not allowed to handle the dead in person: in that case, only their servants would have been in close contact with the body. Alternatively, two such capable and responsible dignitaries would have been ideal partners in one of the most successful conspiracies of all time. For their unique position would have been that they could have been expected to guard the body from the prying eyes of suspicious Jews by virtue of their civil authority and contacts with Pilate; while also guarding it from anything but a major enquiry by the civil authorities on the grounds that Jesus had already suffered enough indignity. (It can remain a matter for speculation whether they would have been subsequently embarrassed by the Resurrection. But Jesus would at least have aimed to oblige them by keeping out of the way of both Roman and Jewish authorities until his final disappearance -- if the Resurrection had occurred in the way in which any of the disciples might have planned it. In the event, as we will see, such speculations are idle and the dignity of the councillors would have had many Jewish defenders so long as they kept silent about the real goings-on in the sepulchre.) They would certainly have had little difficulty in keeping the secret from the women who attended Jesus' interment: for, by the time the grief-stricken women were on the scene, the body had already been dressed and wrapped in linen. But it may seem preferable to assume complete innocence of a substitution on the part of Joseph and Nicodemus. The councillors were hardly familiar with Jesus; the man they took from the Cross had been disfigured by the Roman soldiers; and there are other figures who can be called on to play the role of resurrection-men. Even had the disciples planned to steal away the substitute body so as to give the impression of a Resurrection when the real Jesus finally re-appeared from hiding, we shall see reason to trust the Gospels' indignant assertion that this was not how the Resurrection happened.

C) The Trial

Since it may have passed unobserved, it is perhaps only fair to remark that - by contrast with the events of Resurrection day - the events that constitute the central Crucifixion story seem to stand in only occasional need of any kind of re-interpretation. Thus the above account - or collection of possible accounts - may look rather like a piece of special pleading. Doubtless, with very little imagination one could re-interpret a great many supposed historical events so as to put their central characters in a new and unsavoury light. Such efforts would be unworthy of the name of even the most speculative historical revisionism. The only point in new stories or theories is that they cope with problems that arise with existing accounts. In this respect it is with greater satisfaction that the serious revisionist can proceed to consider the Gospel record of Jesus' conviction and sentencing. For here - as with Jesus' re-appearances - there are once more some very substantial problems demanding explanation.

The paradoxes to be considered take us back one stage further. Although it may be only barely plausible to suggest that Jesus was never crucified, we shall now see rather reason to believe that he was never tried or even arrested. Now, one strong link does not make a chain; but one weak link is enough to allow a break. It is just at the point where the Crucifixion - Resurrection story is forced into the light of society's legal processes for establishing truth that we find a particularly weak link.

Although the person best placed to arrange a substitute was undoubtedly Pontius Pilate, there is little reason to think that he took such action. He had a motive; but conflicting considerations of justice and expediency would also have carried weight with him. And his opportunity would have been limited once he had shown Jesus to the mob in an attempt to appeal for mercy. Moreover, to suppose that a substitution might have occurred so late in the day would still leave unresolved two other major paradoxes of the trial. Peter's denials and the character of the accused during the court hearings suggest that Jesus may never have appeared at his trial at all.

The Gospels again give little help in establishing just how their record of the court proceedings might have been obtained: as during the arrest and crucifixion, the disciples are largely conspicuous by their absence. Only St John records that any disciple other than Peter was in attendance. This `disciple' is supposed to have had the rather surprising distinction of being `known to the high priest'; and indeed of being on such good terms with the Jewish authorities that he was able to secure Peter's admittance to Caiaphas' court (Jn XVIII 15, 16). As with Joseph and Nicodemus, the reliability of such a witness in making an accurate identification is at least open to doubt. A similar question-mark hangs over Peter's testimony. The Gospels are in general agreement that Peter never got very near to the centre of the action at court. So it could simply be claimed that he was in no position to make a trustworthy identification. This might explain why Peter's denials lay themselves open to the very general interpretation that he was denying ever having been a disciple of Jesus. For example, when Peter says "I know not the man" (Matt. XXVI 72), it might be supposed that he was talking of his previous relationship with Jesus rather than of his knowledge of the accused man in court. But in that case his denials could have occurred without his ever seeing the accused man at court. This would render less credible the traditional view that at least one intimate acquaintance of Jesus had some contact with him after the arrest. But there would have been little point in Peter denying discipleship of `Jesus of Nazareth' if he had not simultaneously implied that he was a disciple of the defendant. On balance, it is far more likely that Peter's denials explicitly referred to the particular man whose trial he and others were witnessing: that is, Peter was denying that he knew the man they had all seen. It is regrettable that the Gospels do not make this point clear. Yet this is only one among many failures to get the details right: there are flat contradictions as to the recipients of the denials, and as to the number of times the cock crew before Peter recognized his failing.

In view of Jesus' explicit warning to Peter during the Last Supper, it seems reasonable to suppose that only a very real doubt in Peter's mind as to his relationship to the accused could have led him into the three denials. Just such a doubt could most easily have arisen if the man undergoing trial had not been Jesus at all. Despite Jesus' prophecies, Peter found he could do no other than - as he later thought of it - `deny his Lord'. He just did not recognize the man. His eventual sudden upsurge of guilt is attributable to his accepting, once conviction had occurred, and once Jesus' `before-the-cock-crows' prediction had appeared to be fulfilled, that the convicted man must indeed have been Jesus. Peter would not have been the first to prefer interpretations that are ideologically convenient to the evidence of his own senses.

Quite apart from what the accused might have looked like at court, Peter might well have been amazed at what he had to say for himself. Here too, it is not just the absence of information in the Gospels that provides scope for re-interpretation. At this historic point, with the eyes of the world focused on him, the supposed Messiah was remarkably unwilling to rise the occasion. Throughout the Gospel records, it is clear that the most common action taken by the defendant was to `hold his peace' or to `answer nothing' in the face of the charges leveled against him. At least on some occasions, it appears that his reticence may have been calculated to annoy: "Answerest thou the high priest so?" (Jn XVIII 22). It is likewise remarkable that the accused so frequently answers the charge of claiming to be the Christ with a mere "You say that I am" (New English Bible). From the moment of arrest onwards, the accused shows the bitter resignation of man who recognizes that he is involved in a `put-up job'. His refusal to deny Messianic status might appear a natural part of a general refusal to co-operate in a rigged trial. In so far as he is recorded as extemporating on the theme that he is the Son of God, it is in terms that might have come naturally to any other messianically inclined compatriot. The only reference made to any detail of Jesus' ministry is that the defendant does admit to having preached in the temple; but, by the same token, so must many other Jewish evangelists of the time. The fact that Barabbas - whom Pilate eventually released to the mob in preference to Jesus - had been found guilty of murder in the course of sedition further testifies to the presence in Jerusalem at the time of the many revolutionaries whose efforts were finally to culminate in the Diaspora. The degree to which the Jesus of the trials one of many dissatisfied spirits is perhaps further witnessed by the absence of any mention in court - in his defence - of his `render-unto-Caesar' speech. The clear impression of the Gospel accounts of the trial scenes is that few people had any clear knowledge of Jesus or of his pronouncements in the temple. The real Jesus was a minor figure whose mistake had been to fail to make crystal clear that - though he could have done it - he would not actually destroy the temple (MK XIV 57-61). The authorities had to rely on Judas to identify their man with a kiss; and they then found it hard to provide evidence against him. Only at the end of the hearing before Caiaphas was the prosecution able to lure the accused into the ‘blasphemy’ that was to justify his death-warrant.

Even the accused's `blasphemy' in court seems to have taken a most non-assertive form. Although St Mark records the reply "I am" (MK XIV 62) to Caiaphas' question "Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?", the other accounts represent Jesus as going out of his way to make a rather weaker claim. In Matt. XXVI 64 the reply is: "The words are yours. But I tell you this: from now on, you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God and coming on the clouds of heaven." It is hard to believe that this utterance does not really mean: `You're wrong at the moment. But just you wait and see.' Why the "but" unless some important modification is being made to the claim? A precisely similar problem arises with account of the replies to Pilate in John XVIII 33-37. Dealing with the enquiry as to whether he is "the King of the Jews", the accused - apart from going through the familiar `Thou sayest it' routine - asserts in particular that his kingdom is not of the present world and that his mission in life has been merely "to bear witness unto the truth". But it was just a few days previously that the real Jesus had prophesied in regard to `the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds with great power and glory' that `the present generation will live to see it all' (MK XIII 24-31 (N.E.B.)). Even if we can believe that these remarks were recorded by some competent observers - including, presumably, some close associates of Pilate - they leave us far from clear as to the precise nature of the accused's testimony. If the records are to be trusted, it seems that the accused - though behaving in a fatalistic and superior way that could hardly fail to annoy - at least made little effort to urge the `strong' claims as to his identity that we know from the Gospels to have been so characteristic of Jesus himself.

It is thus no wonder that Pilate found no fault in the prisoner whom he received from Caiaphas and whom he forwarded to Herod for a second opinion. Pilate must have been reluctant to crucify a man whose revolutionary fervour was so restrained that he would not even regularly incriminate himself. Unfortunately for Pilate, Herod's court was equally unsuccessful: the accused reverted to his previous silent treatment. Once more, Pilate was required to face the music. Just what was his real view of the prisoner is left uncertain by the Gospels. His final labeling of the accused as `the King of the Jews' - despite his prisoner's reservations about such a title - suggests that he was finally contemptuous of both the man and his accusers. But, in any case, it is unlikely that it was Pilate who provided the substitute for Jesus that our present story requires. The evidence already given is more compatible with the suggestion that Jesus was saved from crucifixion by another figure whose character has been blackened by the traditional Christian story to an even greater degree than the character of Pilate.

D) The Arrest

Judas, the disciple who was responsible enough to be treasurer and perhaps even conscientious enough to hang himself when he realized the enormity of his crime, appears to have been a most practical man. Having both the motivation and the opportunity to save his Master from the consequences of his rash preaching in the temple, he seems to have planned ahead. Alone amongst the disciples at a time when they were having to take special precautions to meet without being arrested - see the `secret hideout' arrangements of Lk XXII 1-13 - Judas saw the possibility of acting as a false agent. Far from betraying Jesus, Judas' approach to the chief priests established him as an agent and revealed the crucial opportunity for duplicity in such a role. Maybe the authorities took some persuading, but what Judas seems to have been able to arrange was that they should arrest whomever he identified for them. In accordance with this possibility, we might suppose that Judas never had any intention of betraying his Lord.

An alternative is that Judas changed an original plan of betrayal after the embarrassment of discovery or near-discovery at the Last Supper. But this would leave us with the double problem of explaining both Judas' initial lapse from grace and a subsequent repentance in addition to his final suicide. It is even more economic than the traditional account to assume that Judas had only one major change of heart - and that this precipitated his death. Like the other disciples, Judas had not bargained for a crucifixion - or a resurrection. At least, on this supposition it is easier to explain Judas' overwhelming remorse when the man of his choosing finally went to the Cross. If Judas' death was indeed by his own hand, it would have had a cause that the traditional story obscures. Judas, on our account, was not a man who would give up just when things were going according to plan. Perhaps he did not give up - perhaps the Gospel writers too easily believed the account of his death that was offered by the Jewish authorities? Alternatively - and adhering more closely to the traditional Christian version of events - he could be considered to have underestimated the concern of the authorities at revolutionary preaching. Thus he may have believed that the substitute for Jesus would escape with a light sentence. In that case, he would have finally had good reason for finally going back to the chief priests to confess "I have brought an innocent man to his death" (Matt. XXVII 4 (N.E.B.)).

Why should he admit to betraying an `innocent' man if it was Jesus whose arrest he had arranged? However regretful Judas may have been at betraying his Lord - if he did in fact do that - it is not clear why he should have thought he was innocent of such blasphemies as admitting to Messianic status or of seditious hopes of a kingship that would shortly come. It is a classic case of religious hypocrisy that, while Christians should properly have been proud of Jesus' `guilt' of the claims that he made, they have typically appeared to lament the contribution of Judas, Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod to the arrangement of a theologically necessary crucifixion. Perhaps Judas, too, was having it both ways: believing that Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah while simultaneously asserting his `innocence'? Fortunately, there is an alternative to resting a story on such self-contradiction. Judas' statement makes much greater sense if he had indeed sent an innocent man - albeit one selected to be like Jesus in revolutionary religious opinionation - to an unanticipated death.

As things turned out, Judas' choice of the timing of the arrest enabled the crucial substitution to be made without even the disciples realizing what had happened. In the darkness of the Garden of Gethsemane in the small hours of the morning, and with the disciples either asleep or fleeing, Judas would have had sample opportunity to direct attention to the wrong man while still convincing the arresting agents that he had indeed led them to the right place. Whether Jesus himself was co-operative at this stage is not clear: we might imagine that he would have had to be virtually forcibly persuaded to abandon temporarily his prophesied crucifixion. But the man who was eventually arrested did not go without at least a little protest at the indignity of the arrangements. The complaint at being `arrested like a common thief' is at least surprising if it came from the mouth of Jesus. After his rampage at the temple, and having gone into hiding for the Last Supper, why should he have complained at being thus ferreted out? At every least, such a complaint would have been ungracious from the lips of a man whose life's mission was the Crucifixion. It has to be admitted that the real Jesus would have drawn attention to himself at the arrest by healing of the stricken Malchus. But we have already resolved that the miracle of the Resurrection is less convincingly demonstrated by recourse to other miracles than by an account which makes no such assumptions. As to the fighting that went on at the arrival of the police, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the substitute's own friends and associates would have put up a passably heroic struggle against his arbitrary arrest.

While the traditional account of the arrest presents few paradoxes on its own that justify a major re-interpretation, it would seem to be weak enough to accommodate quite easily a revisionary story that lends coherence to the many other problems that have been mentioned. To adduce Jesus' last pre-Crucifixion miracle to support it is hardly good enough. As we must now see, the account that we have offered does more than resolve the paradoxes mentioned so far. It also explains what must surely be the biggest problem surrounding the traditional story of the Resurrection. To anticipate what follows, it gives the most obvious motive for the Resurrection to just the people who had the power to bring it about. Just what happened to Jesus between his evading arrest and his appearing after the Resurrection must be a matter for speculation. Since the Gospels record him as keeping away from contact with the Jewish and Roman authorities after the Resurrection, it seems reasonable to assume that he went into temporary hiding which he only left when Judas' confession of what had really happened made him simultaneously a wanted man and a candidate in the eyes of faithful for the status of being newly resurrected.

E) The Resurrection

If the Crucifixion was a case of mistaken identity in one way or another, a number of important pieces of the Gospel jigsaw slip neatly into place. Certainly, some of the traditional pieces are inevitably displaced a little; but they are often either irrelevant pieces for the open-minded materialists or pieces that only owe their existence to St John's Gospel. Only St John fails to have Jesus identified personally by Judas; only St John records Barabbas as being merely a `bandit' - thus not admitting the presence in Jerusalem of dangerous criminals; only St John supplies an extra disciple to accompany Peter at Caiaphas' court; only here do we read of a conversation between the crucified man and a favourite disciple; and only St John's lengthy account of Jesus' post-Resurrection appearances suggests that Jesus did not flee the country just soon as he could. But there is one further unique Johannine story that our account has positively incorporated: Jesus' appearance at the tomb to Mary Magdalene. From the point of view adopted here, St John's other idiosyncratic stories might helpfully be dismissed; but this story is well worth retaining. It establishes - according to taste - either the general unrecognizability of Jesus or his use of disguise on the day of the Resurrection. At the same time, its retention is a reminder of a most important loose and that must now be tied up. What was Jesus doing at the tomb?

As already mentioned, a possibility is that he had gone to assist Joseph - and perhaps Nicodemus - to roll away the stone and remove the body. But this view has three major disadvantages. First, it puts Jesus in a dishonourable light. On the account that has been offered Jesus might be thought to have been almost forced into a `resurrection' by the circumstances of Judas' shrewdness and the disciples' gullibility and emotional dependence. But this could hardly be so if Jesus actively helped to conceal the evidence of the substitution. Having already tried to redeem the honour of Judas, it would seem hard if the alternative was to blacken Jesus' character. For this reason alone, it would be nicer to assume that Jesus - at a loss to know what was happening as a result of his disciples' contrivances - simply went to the tomb to find out what was going on. Even better, he might have wished to play his own last respects to the man (or, more particularly, ideological rival) who had died in his place.

Secondly, and more self-interestedly, to suppose the involvement of Joseph and Nicodemus in the substitution plot might seem to risk an ever-widening circle of disciples who were `in the know.' Now, given that the rest of Jesus' ministry was conducted either in secret or at some distance from Jerusalem, it could perhaps be supposed that Jesus' disciples were so physically separated after the great events in Jerusalem that some of them never heard the true account of the Resurrection that the conspirators could have made available. On this view it would have been the non-conspiratorial disciples who would have been responsible for the later promulgation of the myth. But this is at least a risky assumption that is perhaps best not made.

For, thirdly, if any of Jesus, Joseph or Nicodemus had been involved in removing the body, they would at least have had to evade, overpower or bribe the watchmen placed outside the tomb by the chief priests and Pharisees (Matt. XXVII 62-66). Now, according to the Gospel account, the soldiers placed on guard were certainly not beyond the reach of bribery (Matt.XXVIII 15). But it is also clear that they were directly responsible to the Jewish authorities. As the traditional Christian account has it, it would surely have been more than their jobs were worth to allow the tomb to be tampered with. Like the other points against the multiple-conspiracy view, this disadvantage is clearly not insuperable. Yet, as with the traditional story of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the points seem to add up to make the account implausible.

An unlikely possibility that avoids the second of these disadvantages is that it was Judas himself who helped Jesus to remove the substitute's body from the tomb. But this would involve the assumption that the Gospels are inaccurate as to the timing of Judas's death. And, even had two men been sufficient to remove the stone from the sealed tomb, it would remain to be explained why Judas died at all. If his plans had come to fruition - and his plans would presumably have included a mock confession to the Jewish authorities - why should he ever have committed suicide? A truly iconoclastic revisionary might suppose that Jesus had known of the conspiracy from its inception: this might help explain how the arrest was staged. But though Jesus might reasonably be considered to have suffered grandiose delusions of a paranoid nature, there is no reason to believe that he was the kind of psychopath who could have finally brought himself to arrange a `suicide' for such a valuable friend as Judas.

It is for such reasons that we must proceed to the one every credible story of the disappearance of the body from the tomb and of the subsequent the truth of the Gospel record of Judas' confession and the councillors' good faith, there is only one way in which Christianity as we know it could ever have got off the ground. It is perhaps one of history's greatest ironies: `Jesus' was `resurrected' by the Jews.

Merely in answer to the question `who had the opportunity?' the Jewish authorities emerge as the most likely candidates. Throughout the watch on the tomb, it is clear that they were in control. It was the chief priests and Pharisees who asked Pilate for a watch to be set; it was they who supposedly received the report of the guards and issued the bribes that were designed to ensure that any story of a resurrection would be given little credence. Later, too, it was their police-work that obliged the disciples to remain in hiding after the Resurrection (Jn XX 19). As Pilate's own deference had originally made clear, the whole business was a Jewish matter in which the Roman authorities had little interest; and so it was to remain after the Crucifixion. Had the Jewish authorities wanted to remove the body from Joseph's tomb after the Crucifixion, they would have had all the time, all the men, and all the authority they needed. Of course, they would have had to bribe the soldiers to promulgate a rather different version of what happened: every detail of our revised story of the Crucifixion-Resurrection makes this likely.

Lest this is not clear, it is worth considering the last major paradox of the Gospel record of the Crucifixion. It was not until the Sabbath - the day following the Crucifixion - that it occurred to the Jewish authorities to ask Pilate for a watch to be placed at the tomb (Matt. XXVII 62). To say that Jesus had only predicted his own resurrection for rather later is hardly to meet the problem of their lack of preparation. If their fear was truly that the body in the tomb would be stolen (Matt. XXVII 63), they surely had little reason to suppose that the disciples would obligingly delay the theft until the third day? It is more reasonable to suppose that the thought of mounting a guard on the tomb occurred to them only after the Crucifixion: and the account that we have offered of Judas' behaviour makes it clear that their motivation would have been.

Far from wishing to keep the body safely in the tomb - though this may have been their first reaction till they found that the women were to return to anoint the body - Judas' revelation (whether voluntary or under torture) that an innocent man had been crucified would have made it imperative to get the body removed into secrecy as quickly as possible. Not only was the reputation of the Jewish authorities with Pilate at stake - after it had already been tarnished by their wilful refusal to have Barabbas crucified instead of the man sent to Pilate as Jesus. Even more importantly, a removal of the body from the tomb would have had to be arranged in order to partially undermine the stories of Jesus' `resurrection' that would otherwise gain credence on his being found alive. Once the real Jesus was discovered, the tomb would have had to be opened anyway - by the Romans, in the course of an official enquiry; then the substitution would have been revealed. So it became clear that there was little to be gained from even the most secure guarding of the tomb. Of course, the Resurrection could have been denied by the production of the body in the tomb. But the cost would have been the exposure of the injustice done to an innocent man. In this most embarrassing situation, the Jewish authorities had only one course of action open to them: to save face with both Romans and their own faithful, it simply had to appear that Jesus' disciples had stolen the body. Viewed historically, they blundered in underestimating the credence that the disappearance of the body would lend to a Resurrection story and in overestimating the likelihood that would subsequently be attached to their official version of events. But these were ordinary, weak people invested with authority they took to be unchallengeable. As far as they were concerned, Judas' revelation made some semblance of a `resurrection' inevitable. And, in fairness to them, interest in Jesus went markedly underground for more than a generation.

Clearly, the best `witness' of this `body theft' would have been some heavily bribed Roman soldiers whose story could not be attributed to Jewish anti-Christian prejudice and who could hardly reveal their own corruption. Only two further measures lay within the authorities' power. Though they could not actually afford to arrest the real Jesus without exposing their initial mistake, they could at least hound Jesus and his disciples from Jerusalem as quickly as possible. In this way, they could have hoped to prevent any rapid dissemination of the news of Jesus' survival. Secondly, one other step would have been mandatory. It is hopefully pardonable to suggest at this stage that the Gospel writers - misguided by the Jewish authorities and entirely without malice - might have got one detail of the Crucifixion-Resurrection story quite wrong. If they did, it makes our already-superior account of Judas' nature and motivations just that much better; and it clearly makes no crucial difference to the plausibility of the traditional Christian story. For the fact is that if Judas had not committed suicide, his murder would have been singularly convenient to the Jews. To suggest that a murder may have been more nearly the truth removes from Judas the unnecessary slur of a grotesquely fatalistic emotional over-reaction to what he had intended as only a moderately serious offence committed out of passionate and intelligent loyalty to his Master; and it shows more clearly the tragedy of Judas - an ordinary man overpowered by the engulfing waves of religious fervour and human history. Double agents are rarely understood; and they get little sympathy when they are discovered and their careers are brutally foreshortened. Judas is a classic case. It has always been easier to see him as a treacherous figure whose conscience finally took an exacting toll than as the brains behind Jesus' survival and the unwitting instigator of the myth of the Resurrection.

In the short term, the Jewish authorities were fortunate enough to be able to make the required arrangements. So successful were they that St Matthew tells us that the proffered story was "commonly reported among the Jews until this day" (Matt. XXVIII 15). But, perhaps like Jesus himself, what the Jews had not bargained for was the faith of the disciples that kept alive the tiny flame of an incredible alternative. Once there were no longer any survivors to tell the dampening story of what had really happened - even had the original conspirators been honest enough to do so - that flame was to ignite the Roman world. Eventually, after 314A.D., Emperor Constantine would cleverly insist on an agreed formulation of Christian doctrine to become a suitably non-revolutionary religion for his empire; but the main building block of Christianity, the Resurrection, was probably supplied by the Jews.

2005-10-23T21:18:00.000+10:00

MORE ON ROMANS 13

An Australian reader emailed me some interesting points about the Old Testament background to the text

Jeremiah 29 has some interesting things to say about what God required of his people, the Israelites, while they were living in captivity in Babylon. At verse 7 God says, "And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the LORD for it; for in its peace you will have peace." That is, God is telling the Israelites not merely to submit peacefully to the rulership of a Babylonian king but to actively pray that the peace in Babylon would continue. They were to get on with their lives - build houses, plant gardens, get married, have children - and wait for God to do something about their situation. They were not to get involved in insurrections. They were not to be "activists", destroying the peace of the city.

Now look at the Jewish Wars. The "religious activists" among the Jews of the time tried to force a political/military solution to their perceived problem of Roman overlordship and it was their terrorist activities that led eventually to the destruction of the temple, the city and their millenial dreams.

But remember also that Daniel (who read Jeremiah to find out how long the captivity would continue) was a servant in the Babylonian king's court. He didn't have nothing to do with politics. When Daniel was asked to interpret the king's dreams (because no one else could do it satisfactorily) politics became his concern. What he did was tell the king the truth as he saw it, or as it was revealed to him.

Rendering unto Caesar does not mean that Christians should have nothing to do with politics, only that wherever a Christian is working he or she should obey God, pray for those who govern over them and not seek to damage or overthrow the government by illicit means. But the government's paid servants aren't the government. They are among the governed. If they do well in their jobs then they are only doing what God requires of us all. If they don't do well then they, too, can expect to be subject to the "sword" - as some of our public servants currently are in the Vivian Alvarez case.

2005-10-21T18:26:00.000+10:00

ROMANS 13: 1-7

Should Christians obey the government, no matter what? I consider that in the post below. Note that there are two German words below. "weltfremd" means "foreign to this world" and "Obrigkeiten" is the Luther version bible translation of "superior authorities". Luther used the "Obrigkeiten" passage to advocate support for the Princely rulers of his day.

1: Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
2: Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
3: For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:
4: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
5: Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
6: For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.
7: Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.
8: Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
9: For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
10: Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
11: And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.
12: The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
13: Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.
14: But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.

One of my regular correspondents -- of Dutch origin but living in the USA -- recently wrote to me as follows:

In your scripture commentaries, have you ever written on Romans 13: 1-7? I have had a rough time with the notion that all government authority comes from God, and it's our Christian duty to genuflect to it.

The first time was when I attended a Presbyterian church. Unlike many American Presbyterian churches today it was a sound, conservative congregation with a good minister. But then, after several years, there was a local controversy about the area's public hospital. It had replaced two old, private hospitals, but then the new professional managers and the Board went on a building spree which a lot of the taxpaying public thought was excessive. It so happened that three members of the hospital Board were prominent in the church, and they were getting a lot of flak - deservedly so, I think, because even financial conservatives, when they're elected to public office, tend to throw prudence overboard and go along with the empire-builders on their staff. Building big, useless monuments has always been irresistible to people who handle the public's money, Anyway, one Sunday the minister preached on Romans 13, advocating that we honor and obey these free-spending public servants because they'd received their positions from God - well, that's when I became seriously disenchanted. In the first place, I don't believe the government of Paul's time was into running as many things as today's governments are, so where does this stop? It would mean that in countries where the government runs EVERYTHING - you know which ones those were - the population would be genuflecting constantly. Besides, I had a hell of a lot more respect for the nuns that used to run one of the now-closed hospitals than I did for the highly paid "professionals" in charge of the new one. I also happened to know a lot of them were incompetent, but that's another story.

In addition, I don't see a lot of support elsewhere in the Scriptures for Romans 13, and I think it's a sound principle that concepts that only occur once or twice in the Scriptures may be taken with a grain of salt. Then there is the question of Paul as a politician. The Roman Christian congregation he was writing to contained a lot of Jews - maybe a majority, and the Roman government of the time was pretty distrustful of the Jews in Palestine, who had a tendency toward insurrection.

Fast-forward twenty years, and we've been attending a Conservative Baptist church. It has a lot of similarities to the Presbyterian church I spoke of except for the music - I will never be able to relate to the so-called worship songs, too many of which I think are trite, unsingable retreads of seventies pop songs. But then, there are some aspects of American culture I will never connect with. Anyway, the minister at this church is a great guy; having grown up hearing the bloodless, weltfremd ministers of the Dutch Reformed church I think it's good to have someone who started out in the regular world and only later got his calling. Jerry started in life as a fireman and a part-time boxer, attended Bible College in his spare time and then, like the minister in the Presbyterian church, he was a missionary for some years. With his background he draws a lot of firemen and policemen to his church, and he is the Chaplain for all local police departments, which means he is called to minister to survivors and relatives whenever serious accidents have occurred. You have to respect that; I couldn't do it.

But guess what: the other Sunday he turned to Romans 13, his basic message being that all public "servants" - policemen, firemen, teachers, hospital workers, administrators of all kinds - are entitled to special respect - he came real close to suggesting they were superior people and made them stand up and enjoy applause. Well, I've seen policemen perform go-slow actions because they didn't get their raises, I've heard them lie in court, I've seen teachers behave like hoodlums on the picket line, I've seen enough corrupt politicians, and let's not get into the armies of well-paid lazybones shuffling paper everywhere. Besides, if all authority comes from God and shouldn't be challenged, how come we had the American Revolution? (American War of Independence is a more appropriate description, but ignore that aspect.) "Shouldn't Queen Liz and Tony Blair still be in charge of the USA?" I challenged Jerry at the exit. Well, no, that was different, he said. Taking a deep breath I started into the fact that King George was good enough for the Australians and the Canadians - but my wife poked me in the ribs to move on.

I wrote in reply:

Turning to an atheist for spiritual counsel is certainly testimony to how bad the churches have become.

But the answer is clear: Both Paul and Jesus made it very clear that their concern was to show the way to the afterlife. They did NOT think this world or its government was their concern -- Caesar's things to Caesar etc

So the advice concerned is SPIRITUAL: It will be better for your personal development if you ignore politics. And politics is so crazy that there is a lot of sense in that. Paul's view that the Obrigkeiten were put there by God is a way of saying: accept whatever God's purposes are (as with the problem of evil) and don't question it. Just keep your own life pure.

But we can do many things for non-spiritual reasons -- including challenging authority -- but while that may help this world, this world is not the important one

And, as I alway stress, context is very important. If you read the verses right through to verse 14 you can see the truth of what I said. Paul even laid out in detail what your personal conduct should be and how that would lead you into the coming Kingdom of Heaven. And perhaps the wisest verse in the passage is:

For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same

In other words, if you keep your nose out of politics and just live a good personal life, you have little to fear from any ruler.

So it was clearly the view of Christianity's founders that involvement in politics (the affairs of "this world") is, if not absolutely wrong, at least inadvisable and certainly bad for you spiritually. So the attempts by various Christian groups over the years to legislate morality ran against the advice of their own Christian scriptures. If Christians HAD followed the advice of their founders and not tried to intervene in the political affairs of the world around them, Christianity would not have the bad repute it does today have among the many non-religious people who resent being dictated to about what they should do in their personal lives. Christian authoritarianism has, in short, shamed Christ.

Note however that there is NOTHING in the scriptures that forbids Christians from voting according the their consciences nor is there any prohibition on voting itself. And note that the New Testament was written in Greek and that the concept of voting for your government was at that time already centuries old in the Greek-speaking world.

2005-10-18T00:39:00.000+10:00

JUST A REMINDER

Only a small part of this blog is on the page in front of you. If you want to follow my attempted reconstruction of what 1st century Christians believed, you need to click on the ARCHIVES link in the green column to the left and start from the earliest date there.

2005-06-29T20:32:00.000+10:00

AN APPRECIATION OF SOLOMON THE WISE

I have said a bit about Solomon previously on this blog but I think he is well worth reflecting on again

I wonder how many people realize that they do have copies of most of Solomon's surviving writings? They are, of course, in the Bible. I should perhaps initially note that King Solomon's words are so much at variance with all else that occurs in the Hebrew Scriptures (they are amazingly modern) that they do serve to attest that the Hebrew scriptures (the "Old Testament") are not some coherent canon but rather a simple and unauthoritative accretion of what was seen as popular or profound over many years. That was saved and revered which people liked or respected for one reason or another.

"Practical" men sometimes say with great pride: "Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we may be dead -- that is my motto. I don't worry about all that Bible stuff". How amusing it is that they are in fact quoting the Bible in saying that. The "motto" concerned is in fact Solomon's most frequent advice in the book of Ecclesiates.

In psychological terms, much of Solomon's writings (e.g. chap. 1 verse 14 in the Revised Standard Version of Ecclesiastes) could be seen as classically depressive ("Vanity of vanity, all is vanity and a striving after wind") so one could conclude that Solomon was probably something of a drug abuser by the standards of his day (the relevant drug probably being alcohol) As King of Israel he certainly would have been free to booze all he liked.

Let us note, however, that the decrying of human strivings is a very common theme in religious thought and it would surely be stretching it to claim that all such decriers have been boozers! Most were in fact ascetics.

I myself am no ascetic but I am nonetheless acutely conscious of how unimportant most of what we do is to anyone but ourselves. Even the most famous man of today will almost certainly be totally forgotten in a thousand years -- and a thousand years is as nothing in geological time. We remember a few people from the past (Solomon, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha Gautama etc) but they as nothing compared to those who have been forgotten. Hammurabi is hardly a household name today, is he? Yet he was probably one of humanity's great minds and he was certainly a bigshot in his day. Knowing that sort of thing does make it hard to take oneself and one's concerns seriously.

Note however that Solomon WAS a religious thinker. If you read ALL that he says (e.g. the last two verses of the book -- though they COULD have been added by a later hand), you will see that he does in fact repeatedly profess some quite clearly religious beliefs -- though they are rather sparse by the standards of his times.

My favourite quotes from Solomon: "Cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days" (Ecclesiastes 11:1); "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest" (Ecclesiastes 9:10); "The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong" (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

There is however much more to Solomon than these few short quotes. I would very much recommend the careful reading of the whole of what he wrote -- preferably in a modern translation. His words are sometimes more Delphic than those of Mahatma Gandhi or Dale Carnegie but that poses a challenge that is well worth rising to. The "bread on waters" quote, for instance, is generally taken to refer to good deeds done without foreseeable reward. Solomon has the perhaps optimistic message that you will get an unforseen reward for such deeds. In modern terms we might translate Solomon as saying: "Be kind to others whenever you can as you never know when that will come back to benefit you": A sort of pragmatic idealism!

I think the immediate reason why Solomon sounds so modern is that he was King in Jerusalem and, as such, had everything. In those days only a King could have many of the things that we now take for granted -- extensive leisure, constant entertainment, effectively infinite booze, high quality and varied food, for instance. Having everything that people normally want or idealize, however, he could see how trivial normal materialistic aims in the end are and successfully developed a deeper set of values. That he was able to do this in conjunction with his clear rejection of belief in an afterlife is, however, strong evidence of what a remarkable mind he was -- particularly in the context of his times. He was in my view a supreme realist.

2005-05-06T15:41:00.000+10:00

WORLDLY GOODS

"Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother." And he said, "All these have I kept from my youth up." Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, "Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me."

Luke 18:20-22.

This quotation is one of the allegedly "Leftist" quotations from Jesus and I have already discussed them previously -- see here and here.

I also thought, however, that the following comments from Australia's famous Father Rumble were rather good. They are taken from Radio Replies: 1588 Questions and Answers on Catholicism and Protestantism (Rockford, Illinois. TAN Books and Publishers, Inc. 1979 [originally published: 1938 by Radio Replies Press Society, St. Paul, Minnesota]) page 105. In my youth the good Father was simply referred to as "Rumble" and his columns defending Catholic doctrine were carried in many newspapers. They were much discussed.

474. He commanded the rich young man to sell all, and give it to the poor.

This was not a command, obliging in conscience. It was a special invitation which the young man was free to accept or reject. If the possession of goods as such were evil, Christ would have been recommending the young man to cause evil in the very ones who bought or accepted possession of his goods. But you have misunderstood the passage. The rich young man said to Christ, "What must I do to be saved?" Christ replied, "Keep the commandments." Thus He specified what was necessary for salvation. But hearing that the young man had kept them, He went further: "If you desire not only to be saved, but to be perfect, then do more than is of obligation. Sell all and follow Me." The young man turned away sad, for he had not the generosity of character required. But the Gospel does not suggest that he was lost. No man is lost who loves God enough to keep all the commandments. Meantime, in the Catholic Church, thousands of Priests, Brothers, Nuns have renounced all worldly possessions and have vowed poverty for the love of Christ, giving up the right to possess or administer anything in their own name. Thus the invitation of Christ is fulfilled in the Religious Orders of the Catholic Church.

473. Was not Christ poor, and did He not forbid the hoarding of treasure on earth?

Christ Himself set the supreme example of poverty, although, as I have said, Judas carried the purse containing money for His use, and for the needs of His Apostles. But Christ never commanded that His followers should adopt actual and absolute poverty. God had sanctioned the right of private property when He gave the commandment, "Thou shalt not steal." The right to private property is therefore just and not sinful. Christ did forbid men to make earthly goods their only treasure to the exclusion of their spiritual welfare. In fact, He warned those who have mammon or wealth, not necessarily to give it up, but to make it their friend by giving alms to the poor.

475. Christ said that a rich man could not enter Heaven.

He did not. He said that the rich would encounter special difficulties in the matter of salvation. But this is not because they are rich. It is because rich people are in danger of being so attached to their earthly goods as to forget God. The same Christ said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." A rich man can be poor in spirit by being at least sufficiently detached from his worldly goods that he would not for all of them offend God.

2005-04-21T22:06:00.000+10:00

WAS PETER CHRIST'S "ROCK"?

Matthew 16:18-19: "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church". (Douay)

I note from The Pope Blog that the passage in Matthew 16:18-19 is rendered in Latin as Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam. This is the passage upon which the Roman church relies for its doctrine of apostolic succession. The theological point at issue, of course, turns on the fact that the name "Peter" means "rock" -- so the claim is that Christ was going to build his church on Peter.

The Greek very clearly gives the lie to this claim so I am pleasantly surprised that the Latin preserves the distinction found in the Greek. According to my Chambers-Murray Latin dictionary, "Petrus" is unknown as a word in Latin but "Petra" ("petram" in the quote above as "petra" is there used in the accusative case) is a known word. And it means exactly what it means in Greek: "a rock, a crag". My Abbott-Smith Greek Lexicon gives the Greek meaning of the same word as "a rock, i.e. a mass of live rock as distinct from "petros", a detached stone or boulder". And "petros" is of course also the name translated from the Greek into English as "Peter". The full passage in Greek is: "ou ei petros kai epi tautee tee petra oikodomeeso mou teen ekkleesian"

So both the Greek and the Latin say that Christ was going to build his church on a rock-mass but only the Greek makes clear that Peter was no such thing. Peter ("petros") was more a pebble than a rock-mass. So it would appear that Christ -- with his usual love of parables -- was referring to himself as being the rock-mass upon which his movement would be founded rather than it being founded on a small stone ("petros") such as one of his disciples.

And I guess I should note in passing that "ekkleesian" does not really mean "church" or even "congregation". It means "called-out-ones" -- showing that Christ here, as always, was looking towards the Heavenly Kingdom rather than this world.

2005-03-27T07:36:00.000+10:00

OF THE MAKING OF MANY BOOKS THERE IS NO END .....

As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes about 3,000 years ago. But sometimes blogs do end:

Well, I think I have now covered pretty well the topics I wanted to cover here so this blog will now be joining my RECIPE BLOG and my MARX BLOG in being placed on hold. As with the other two blogs, however, I will be happy to post new material if something comes up in my emails that warrants it.

My decision to cease daily postings here arose partly out of my having committed the sin of David (2 Samuel 24) -- in numbering my readers. I have had a counter up for the past week which tells me that this blog gets about 60 hits per day. That compares with around 600 hits per day on Dissecting Leftism. So this is a very tiny corner of the blogosphere. 60 hits per day still probably amounts to a couple of hundred readers per week overall and I would be loath to abandon that many readers except for something else that the counter tells me: Almost all readers come here via Dissecting Leftism. So if I do put up any new posts here I will notify that on Dissecting Leftism and interested readers should find it.

My principal aim in doing this blog was to get people to read their NT more attentively and compare their beliefs with first-century Christianity. If I have done that for a few people I am pleased. Early Christianity was a faith of great power -- as judged by the strength that it gave believers in the early days of the Roman empire. So if anyone were to revive that faith today, I am confident that it would still have great strength and influence. But the reason I sent my son to a Catholic school was my belief that ANY passing on of the teachings of Jesus will be of great benefit to those who listen.

2005-03-26T04:19:00.000+10:00

JOHN 5: 21-30

"For as the Father raiseth the dead and giveth them life, even so the Son also giveth life to whom he will. For neither doth the Father judge any man, but he hath given all judgment unto the Son; that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father that sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment. I can of myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is righteous; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me".

I have so far concentrated heavily on Paul's account of the Day of Judgment in 1 Corinthians 15 because it is undoubtedly the most carefull spelled-out account in the NT but I thought I should also draw attention to at least some of the accounts given by Jesus himself. And the scripture above is I think fully in accord with the account Paul gives.

Once again we see that Jesus is seen as the agent God uses to run the show. We see that the alternatives are eternal life and death, not Heaven and Hell. We note that it is twice said that the dead SHALL hear the voice of God -- which assumes that they are not already alive somewhere and listening. We note again that ALL the dead (good and bad) are initially resurrected -- with the good guys going straight off into eternal life (compare Paul's description of the good guys being changed "in the twinkling of an eye") and the baddies going off not directly into the second death but rather into "judgment" ("kriseos" in the Greek -- the basis of our word "criticism"). This implies that the unrighteous dead get a prolonged examination before final death -- a divine courtcase or trial. That "kriseos" describes some sort of extended "legal" proceeding is also what is behind the statement (verse 24) that he who believes "cometh not into judgement". The good guys don't have to stand trial. They just get waved straight on. Note that Revelation 20:12 also seems to envisage an extended Day of Judgment legal process with books being opened and people being judged according to what is in the books.

There is however one rather curious point: What are we to make of "and now is"? Is Christ saying that the resurrection is happening at exactly the time he speaks? The fact that he teams it with a verb in the future tense ("shall") suggests not and the Greek word concerned ("nun") is in fact used in several different ways in the NT. In John 12:31 ("Now shall the ruler of this world be cast out"), for instance, it clearly means "presently" or "soon" and that is presumably also the meaning of the word in the passage above.

Britain's lost Christian culture

More than half of British people have no idea why Easter is celebrated, a survey revealed. Just 48 per cent of some 1,000 adults questioned for the Reader's Digest Magazine poll correctly answered the resurrection of Christ.

In addition, a massive 92 per cent failed to recognise Karol Wojtyla is better known as Pope John Paul II, according to the survey. People appeared to struggle with religious figureheads, with two-thirds clueless as to the identity of the Archbishop of Cantebury Rowan Williams and 42 per cent unable to name Judas Iscariot as the man who betrayed Jesus.

Despite their lack of religious knowledge, the poll found 64 per cent of people quizzed believed in God and 58 per cent in an afterlife. "Britons have a strong spiritual sense, with a majority expressing a belief in God and an afterlife, but they have little grasp of or interest in the basic tenets of Christianity," said Reader's Digest editor-in-chief Katherine Walker. "Many people who would profess to be Christian know little more about the faith than they do about other world religions," she added.

More here

2005-03-25T03:05:00.000+10:00

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE EARTH AFTER THE DAY OF JUDGMENT?

The OT view of what happens after the coming of the Messiah is straightforward. As we see in (say) Isaiah 11, the expectation is of the world being once more transformed into a big Eden in which resurrected man will live forever. But the NT has a different story. As I have recently been discussing at great length, the NT expectation is that good people are resurrected into a spiritual life in the Kingdom of Heaven. So what happens to the earth after that? With the exception of some texts of arguable implications in the book of Revelation (e.g. chapter 21) I know of no text that really answers that. Curiously enough, however, one very well-known text does seem to touch on it:

Matthew 6:10 "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven".

That text certainly does seem to suggest a restoration of God's kingdom to power ON EARTH. And there will presumably be somebody on earth to do God's will. So who will be there on earth if all the good guys have been transformed into spirit beings and taken up residence in Heaven (as 1 Corinthians 15 tells us)?

I think we just have to accept the obvious here: It is envisaged that human life will continue on earth but in a perfected form. The old OT vision is, then, not completely abandoned. And it is presumably because the old OT vision was well-known that nobody in the NT really tried to spell out what the ultimate future of the earth was.

So the Heavenly destination of the good guys who have lived between the Fall and the Day of Judgment is presumably a reward for their great virtue, not something that keeps on happening forever and ever. And since there will be no more death, there would be no more need for any more resurrections of any kind anyway.

A small question that remains is what the source of the continuing earthly population will be. If the bad guys have all gone off into the second death and the good guys have gone off to Heaven, would not the earth be empty at that point? It would seem so. But the God who created man in the first place should have no trouble creating a few more people to restart the earthly population, I guess.

SCOTTISH ANGLICANS CREATE A STIR

In their strong statement of support for lesbian and gay clergy, and regret for the actions taken against the liberal provinces of the West, the bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church have firmly aligned themselves with Canada and the US. "Whether this accelerates schism of the Anglican Communion depends on what they do now. The Scottish Episcopal Church is a small church, with just 45,000 members. Compared to the 17.5 million members of the orthodox evangelical province, Nigera, it has a small voice. In Scotland, the Presbyterian Church is the main Christian presence, the Roman Catholic Church second.

But the episcopal church's status as neighbour to the Church of England and its already well-established reputation as a liberal province, thanks partly to the leadership of its former Primus, Bishop Richard Holloway, give its actions weight out of proportion to its size. The statement in support of gay and lesbian clergy and blessings of same-sex relationships was made by the College of Bishops in response to the Primates' Meeting in Newry, Northern Ireland last month.

The US and Canada, who provoked the crisis two years ago by electing the openly-gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire and authorising same sex blessings in the New Westminster diocese, were asked to impose a moratorium on future similar actions and to voluntarily withdraw until 2008 from the Anglican Consultative Council, the British charity that is the management body at the centre of the Anglican Communion. The indications from Canada are that the church there remains defiant. In the US, the bishops have agreed to call a halt to all episcopal ordinations, straight as well as gay, until next year's General Convention can debate the matter.

The Scottish bishops have added to the instability of the situation. They have not formally authorised any same-sex blessings services, and are unlikely to do so. They will continue to ordain gay people to the priesthood, as churches around the world still do, where they pass the usual selection criteria. As yet they have not announced plans to consecrate a gay bishop. But episcopal vacancies come up all the time. The Scottish church has already passed legislation to permit the consecration of a woman bishop, although has yet to do so. The future of the Anglican Communion could now depend on what happens when the next episcopal vacancy comes up in Scotland, and on whether the church decides to elect a married man with children, or to make a statement and choose one of their clergy who meets all the criteria but just happens to be in a stable, loving relationship with a member of the same sex. And this could even be a woman.

(From The Times)

2005-03-24T07:48:00.000+10:00

1 CORINTHIANS 15 AND SPIRITUAL "BODIES"

An email from a reader:

"Your attempt to explain (away) Paul's use of the word "body" in "spiritual body" makes no sense as the Greeks already had a perfectly good word to describe a spirit -- i.e., "spirit" (pneuma: wind, breath). Just as today a person talking about seeing the body of a ghost would be jarring, so too it was for Paul's readers. The question you leave unanswered is why Paul should use that phrase rather than the typical "spirit."

Paul does of course use the word "pneuma" in 1 Corinthians 15. In verse 44 we read: "it is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body". The word translated as "physical" is "psyche" and the word translated as "spirit" is "pneuma".

Note however that on other occasions "psyche" is translated as "soul" and "pneuma" is translated as breath. So one could conceivably translate the verse as: "It is sown a soul body; it is raised a breath body" -- which almost means the opposite of the usual translations of the text.

So we see the language difficulties Paul was battling with in this passage. If he had been a modern man he might have written: "It is sown a physical entity; it is raised as a non-physical entity". But he just did not have such linguistic resources or usages available to him. He had to use the language of the people he was writing to. He had to use a very limited and ambiguous everyday vocabulary -- which is why he expressed his message in so many different ways in that passage. But in all those different ways the common theme is of a transformation of people into something very different and much grander that what they were in their previous earthly life. So his message lies in the whole of the passage rather than in one part of it and that is why verse 44 is normally translated as it is. The translators "get" what Paul is driving at. The context determines the meaning.

And the same applies to the word "body". It too cannot be taken in isolation and has to be seen in the context of the passage as a whole. Paul just did not have such a word as "entity" available to him so has to use an ordinary Greek word -- "soma" -- to express his meaning. And note that Paul does repeatedly use the word metaphorically -- he does not always use it to mean something with two arms, two legs, heart, eyes, ears etc. The best example of that is his use of the word to describe a group of people as a body -- as in Romans 12:5: "So we, though many, are one body ["soma"] in Christ. He was clearly using the word "body" ["soma"] there in a highly abstract sense. So any claim that Paul's use of "body" in 1 Corinthians 15 must indicate something like a normal human body is naive -- particularly as that view was what Paul was clearly trying to dispel in the passage as a whole.

2005-03-23T07:38:00.000+10:00

IGNORANT LEFTIST ASSERTIONS ABOUT CHRIST AND CHRISTIANS

There is an article here which tries to contrast what Jesus taught with what Republicans are doing today. It is really just a stream of Leftist abuse rather than a real argument but I guess one should occasionally say something about such attacks. Here's a few excerpts from it for starters anyway:

As we enter another Easter Season, it's become all too obvious that if Christ returns, those who hate in Jesus's name will have him slimed, then killed. Christ was a long-haired peace activist who would have hated the war in Iraq. "Blessed are the peacemakers" Jesus said in his defining Sermon on the Mount. "Turn the other cheek...Love thy neighbor." Such hippie-radical ideals are the "Christian" right wing's worst nightmare. The GOP would never tolerate an upstart like Jesus gathering a following in the face of their corporate-fundamentalist crusade. These are Christians who love power but would despise the actual Christ, just as they love a Zionist Israel but can't tolerate actual Jews.

In the wake of Jesus's exemplary life of non-violent rebellion, a perverse liturgy weighted by twenty centuries of intolerant bloodthirsty bigotry has erupted in his name. Attacks on people of color, on nations with oil, on humans of the same gender who love each other, on youth who enjoy sex..all have become enemies of a new fundamentalist crusade doing in Christ's name things that would have left him sickened and horrified.

If Christ came back today to resume preaching the Sermon on the Mount, Karl Rove would slime him in the media, then kill him outright, then turn his words into right wing hatespeak, then kill those who refuse to follow in his name.

But would Jesus stand for the slaughter of 100,000 Iraqis in his name merely because of oil and dubious Biblical prophecy? How would Christ view a president in love with the gas chamber and electric chair? What would Jesus, who hated hypocrisy above all, say about a Bush who scampers back to prolong the life of a brain-dead woman who wanted to die, but who gleefully executes 150 people as governor and as many more as president as he can get his hands on? How would Jesus cope with a self-proclaimed Divinity demanding the death penalty for children?

"Christ was a long-haired peace activist". I wonder how that jibes with "I came not to bring peace but a sword" (Matt. 10:34 RSV)? And one thing Christ certainly did NOT do was preach peace selectively. Leftists wanted bombs for Christian Serbia but want a peaceful approach to Islamofascists.

"it's become all too obvious that if Christ returns, those who hate in Jesus's name will have him slimed, then killed" What's the evidence for that? There's none at all, or if there is, it is not spelt out. As it stands it is pure baseless assertion.

""Blessed are the peacemakers" Jesus said in his defining Sermon on the Mount. "Turn the other cheek...Love thy neighbor.". What our Leftist fails to mention is that NOBODY (except for a few small sects), Leftist or Rightist, practices that today. In fact, Christ himself did not follow it. He drove the moneychangers out of the Temple and said, "I came not to bring peace but a sword" (Matt. 10:34 RSV). Leftists find it impossile to get into their power-mad skulls that Christ's whole aim was to save men from the consequences of sin and get them into the Kingdom of Heaven. He was not concerned about their survival on this earth. The Kingdom of Heaven is the constant theme of his words as recorded in the Gospels. And telling us how to get into Heaven was, of course, exactly what he was doing in the sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5). He essentially has no advice about how to run this world or survive in it. His advice is about what is best for you spiritually. And every time you DO turn the other cheek it WILL be better for you spiritually. Whether it will be better for your survival in this world, however, he simply does not address. So those who DO want to survive in this world have to find their own rules to live by. And any group that stopped defending itself would not last long. And it is as a defence against further attacks on America such as the 9/11 events that American troops have now taken the fight onto the home soil of the Islamists.

"If Christ came back today to resume preaching the Sermon on the Mount, Karl Rove would slime him in the media, then kill him outright, then turn his words into right wing hatespeak, then kill those who refuse to follow in his name". Again, sheer abuse and assertion.

"But would Jesus stand for the slaughter of 100,000 Iraqis in his name merely because of oil and dubious Biblical prophecy?" Here our Leftists shows the usual Leftist complete lack of concern about the facts. The article in The Lancet claiming 100,000 deaths in Iraq has long ago been refuted (e.g. here) but that simply does not matter to our Leftist. He KNOWS -- just as he knows that the war is all about oil and so completely disregards the 9/11 events.

Attempting to reason with people like that is a complete waste of time. He is not interested in getting at the facts and does not attempt to. Promoting himself and his wisdom is all he cares about and he seems to think that abuse is a good way of achieving that.

(I have put up an earlier version of this post at Blogger News too.)

Scotland: Fury as bishop says no to gay teachers in Catholic schools

The Bible teachings are crystal clear in both the OT and the NT (e.g. Romans 1:26-29; 1 Corinthians 6:9) but they don't seem to get a mention

The Catholic Church risked isolation [How awful!] last night after it emerged that senior churchmen want to bar homosexual teachers from Catholic schools. Politicians, local government and parent groups all warned against discrimination when a senior bishop insisted that the church's new charter for schools would prevent gay teachers from securing jobs in Catholic schools or gaining promotion if already employed. Bishop Joseph Devine, president of the Catholic Education Commission, said the church's blueprint for its schools - A Charter for Catholic Schools - made it clear that homosexuality was incompatible with Catholic education. He said in an interview: "Being homosexual would not at all be compatible with the charter. It would cut across the whole moral vision enshrined in the charter. "It would be offering a lifestyle that is incompatible with Catholic social teaching."

Bishop Devine, the Bishop of Motherwell, said the charter would provide the framework to make sure gays were not employed in Catholic schools and would probably limit the promotion opportunities of those already employed. He said: "In practice, I would think that it is possible that some may have been hired, but [the schools] may not have known until it was too late. "That's our fault for not making the proper checks and references. The charter tightens it up."

The charter does not explicitly ban the hiring and promotion of gay teachers but it calls for all teachers to support the ethos of Catholicism in their jobs. It states that all staff would be "expected to support and promote the aims, missions, values and ethos of the schools". This could be interpreted in a number of ways, but for Bishop Devine it means a bar on all homosexual teachers.

The Catholic Church has had discussions with COSLA, the local government body, over its charter and the councils are adamant that any plans to discriminate in any way against homosexuals are not acceptable and not legal. The charter has yet to be implemented, and it has run into problems principally because, if interpreted in the way Bishop Devine believes it should be, it could easily be seen as blatantly discriminatory. [Of course it is!]

The Rev Ewan Aitken, COSLA's education spokesman, said: "Local authorities would never countenance discriminating against a teacher because of sexual orientation. Councils would be in court in seconds." COSLA's condemnation was backed up by a statement from the Scottish Executive that stressed the need to hire the best staff possible regardless of any other factor. A spokesman said: "The Executive would expect authorities, in pursuit of their statutory obligations, to employ the best staff available." Peter Duncan, the shadow Scottish secretary, said: "I do not see any reason for discrimination on race or sexual orientation or gender." Fiona Hyslop, SNP MSP and shadow minister for education, said: "The SNP would expect a non-discrimination element to be part of the revised schools code."

Judith Gillespie, from the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, described Bishop Devine's views as "very sad". She said: "His comments are worse than unfair and it reflects on the church that it wants to reject a group of people who are not choosing their lifestyle. I thought Christianity was about inclusion and brotherhood."

Source

2005-03-22T06:31:00.000+10:00

THE PATERNALISM OF LEFTIST CHRISTIANS

I am a bit peeved by this article. It is on a Christian site that aims to appeal to young people and the way they aim to do that is by being "progressive" -- i.e. Leftist.

Here is an excerpt:

"A news headline from the BBC World Service website caught my attention last week: "MTV Launches Channel for Africa." I was intrigued. I clicked. The headline pretty well summed it up. It's called MTV base. About one third of the music represented on the new channel will be authentically African. Weekly documentaries will highlight promising artists. Broadcasting will be beamed via satellite throughout the continent and will also be made available on "free-to-air" networks. The article was meant to be informational and straightforward, but what was written between the lines disturbed me most. I did some further research.

The issue I have with MTV Africa isn't the music. Nor is it the television. The problem lies in the calculated dissemination of the American brand of cultural insolvency MTV has created that has no place being in our own society, let alone being proselytized to another. MTV's gross irresponsibility on this issue is the moral equivalent of cultural colonialism. Cloaked in the guise of "good intentions," MTV purports to bring African music and culture to the masses. But their false altruism is transparent. In actuality, MTV does not want to bring African culture to the masses at all; it wants to take the wildly successful business model grown popular in the United States and abroad, and indoctrinate a new land with a message of decadence and moral corruption.

This kind of crusade-esque guerilla marketing is frightening when you consider the zeal with which it is elicited. Couple this with the fact that its initial offering will be made free-of-charge in some markets. OK, here's a quick lesson in Business 101: nothing is ever truly free. MTV is counting on getting people hooked on a golden calf of image addiction and then selling it to them-be sure of it. The deeper underlying issue that MTV needs to face is the gaping chasm between responsibility and exploitation..... Bringing MTV to Africa is exploitation. Africa is a continent wrought with war, devastation, disease, pestilence, drought, famine, governmental corruption and every conceivable ill. In some countries such as Zimbabwe and Botswana where sexual promiscuity runs rampant, one in every three people are suffering from HIV/AIDS. A Darwinian struggle for existence is lost on a daily basis with death counts sometimes in the thousands. Millions of people are homeless and living in primitive refugee camps hoping to receive one meal of porridge a day. War and death are a way of life. Racism is endemic.....

For centuries the white man has brought trouble and exploitation to Africa-trying to force his ways on a people too burdened to fight back. Africa has lost many battles with the West, and it will lose this one, too. And perhaps most unfortunately, it will become increasingly de-cultured rather than culturally enriched because of MTV's insatiable appetite for "greener" lands. And I can't help but wonder-will there be no shame?

The paternalism of that ("We know what's best for you, you poor dumb Africans" is the basic message) quite sickens me. But that's what you expect of Leftists, of course. What bothers me is that even some serious conservatives seem to agree with it. Like this guy. I think some conservatives need to rethink their assumptions.

And, conservative or Leftist, it is certainly not New Testament Christianity. "My Kingdom is not of this world" is what Jesus said (to Pontius Pilate -- John 18:36) so a New Testament Christian would not be concerned with anything as worldly as MTV. What Jesus tried to do throughout his ministry was to get people to lead personally Holy lives and as far as the rest went, to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (Mark 12:17). I give some of the sects great credit for trying to do just that by leading unwordly lives but I am afraid that mainstream Christians seem rather deaf to that teaching of the man they claim as their Messiah.

I don't see anything wrong with voting, however. That is just another of Caesar's requirements these days -- one of the smaller requirements in fact. But a New Testament Christian would be evangelizing for personal Holiness as a highroad to salvation, not for worldly political issues. And I think the evidence is that churches which DO concentrate on the Gospel are the ones that have most success in attracting people.

AMAZING: THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REMEMBERS THAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE CHRISTIAN:

Or is it just hopping on a bandwagon?

"Abortion was propelled to the centre of the election campaign yesterday as the Church of England threw its weight behind demands for a thorough review of legislation.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who declared that there was a "groundswell of distaste" at the way the current law works, was backed by senior Anglican clergy who not only questioned the current 24-week time limit, but also the whole of the 38-year-old Abortion Act.

All the main churches across Britain have drawn up guidelines on how churchgoers can challenge candidates at election meetings organised by local Christians. Christians, especially Roman Catholics, are expected to use the meetings to ask candidates from all parties to support a review of the law.

The Bishop of Southwark, the Right Rev Tom Butler, the vice-chairman of the Church of England mission and public affairs division, backed Dr Williams, saying that many Anglicans were deeply concerned that there were more than 500 abortions a day in England.

Methodist leaders also said that the issue needed to be "revisted from time to time" in the light of advances which gave very premature babies a greater chance of survival.

Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative backbencher, led calls for a Tory manifesto commitment on holding a debate in government time on lowering the legal time limit on abortion, in which MPs would be given a free vote.

The growing clamour will increase pressure on Tony Blair, although Downing Street said last night that his view remained that abortion was an issue of conscience that should be addressed through a Private Member's Bill, not government legislation.

Church of England bishops would support a reduction in the current time limit of 24 weeks, which has been called for by Michael Howard, the Conservative leader. The bishops are not just concerned at the relatively small number of late abortions, which amount to less than 1 per cent of the total, but also at the way that the number of abortions has increased. Dr Williams said yesterday that the current law was causing "more and more of a shared unhappiness and bewilderment". He indicated that the election campaign could provide an opportunity for voters to question individual candidates but dismissed fears that debating abortion could lead to single-issue campaigning, as it has in parts of the US. "The idea that raising the issues here is the first step towards a theocratic tyranny or a capitulation to some Neanderthal Christian Right is alarmist nonsense," he said.

Although he did not say that he opposed abortion outright, he said that, for a large majority of Christians, including himself, it was impossible to regard abortion as "anything other than a deliberate termination of a human life", and that the advance of technology had reinforced anxieties. "Whether it is a matter of evidence about foetal sensitivity to outside stimuli (including pain), the nature of foetal consciousness, or the expanding possibilities of saving early foetal life outside the womb, the trend is inexorably towards a sharper recognition of the foetus as a natural candidate for `rights' of some kind," he wrote in The Sunday Times.

The Archbishop's intervention came after Mr Howard said that he favoured reducing the limit from 24 to 20 weeks and promised that, if elected, he would find parliamentary time for legislation. The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, commended Mr Howard's statement last week, saying that he was pleased that abortion would be debated before the election.

David Hinchliffe, the Labour chairman of the Commons Health Committee, said: "My view is it is very sad that an issue as important as this only emerges in the weeks before an election. I think it is unfortunate that there is no serious debate on this issue. There are arguments on both sides and I would like to see an objective view taken in terms of current science."

Anne Quesney, spokeswoman for Abortion Rights, accused churches of trivialising women's rights: "It is very saddening to see the debate is being fuelled by the Church of England after political leaders have clearly said this shouldn't be an election issue. "The ultimate agenda of trying to make abortion illegal is very damaging as it doesn't make abortion go away."

Given the divisions in the Church of England over homosexuality and women bishops, abortion is unusual as an issue that unites most senior clerics, bringing liberals, Catholics and evangelicals together."

(From The Times)

2005-03-21T07:56:00.000+10:00

THE PRIMACY OF HUMANS

A good Christian comment on the Greenies by a Professor of Atmospheric science

That the Creation exists to sustain us may sound presumptuous, but it flows from the faith-claim that we humans are created in the "image of God." This means human life is valuable above all Creation. Now, as a scientist, I cannot prove that human life is of such great value, it’s a matter of faith. But, a worldview which values a chickadee as much as a child is not evangelical.

When faced with difficult choices about the relative value of human life, evangelicals err on the side of humanity. Hypothetically, we choose the African child over the humpback whale and the Alzheimer's patient over the giant sequoia … every time. Fortunately, we do not face such contrived situations. Our environment can sustain us and still remain vibrant. The good news is, it's happening more and more thanks to affordable energy.

Jesus commanded us to dignify human life by working to enhance the health and security of all, especially the poor. How do we honor both the environment and human life if the latter consumes the former? Ultimately, affordable energy is key to enhancing health and security with minimal environmental impact. Economist Julian Simon called energy the "master resource," because it "enables us to convert one material to another." From my personal point of view then, since energy grants us longer and better lives, suppressing its availability devalues human life. My "green" evangelical friends, already nervous, will cringe at this next part.

That Texas oilman who provides cheap energy to sustain a poor family through the winter? That engineer who designs new, but power-consuming devices to aid the crippled? That entrepreneur who finds a cheaper way to bring vital goods to the consumer? These people are doing work that by biblical standards must be called righteous. They are solving human problems, honoring human life.

Affordable energy underpins virtually every solution discovered in the past century. Think about it: U.S. lifespans up over 60%; per-capita, food-calorie production up worldwide despite a population boom; the list is endless. Would these have happened without accessible energy? Generating carbon-based energy produces carbon dioxide (CO2), a natural greenhouse gas which, in increased proportions in the air, is linked to rising temperatures. Please note, CO2 is vital because without it, life would cease. Plants love it. If rising CO2 poses a serious threat to us in our ever-changing climate, evangelicals should be first to sound the alarm. However, if the hard numbers of science tell us the threat is inconsequential or benign, and further, that well-meaning regulations actually make human life more difficult without affecting the climate's trajectory, we should stand for something else.

We face real environmental problems today. While a missionary in Africa I witnessed the destruction of rich forest habitats because poverty drove people to burn wood for energy … inefficient, polluting wood. As the energy "hunter-gatherers," women were especially burdened with huge costs of time and labor. Wildlife vanished. Too, these precious people lived and died with water-borne diseases. Where human life suffers, Jesus' commandments are not being "accomplished." And, where human life suffers, the environment does as well. Do you want to protect the environment in a significant way? Why not work to provide energy and clean water to 1 billion people in need? That means burning carbon in some fashion today, but using something better (and cheaper) tomorrow.

Environmental initiatives can deceive, especially those dealing with climate change. They sound so innocently altruistic. But underneath, they generally constrain energy, that "master resource," making life more difficult. When considering an environmental issue, evangelicals should think first about its impact on one important component in the ecological cosmos - us.

Source

2005-03-20T00:13:00.000+10:00

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

I have lifted this post from What the Bible Says:

"God instituted Capital Punishment for the crime of murder (Genesis 9:5-6), which was singled out as an attack upon God himself and the most serious offense. There were 36 separate offenses throughout the Old Testament (Book of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, & Deuteronomy) that were punishable by death including Murder (no pity), rape, sacrificing to false gods, and so on. We can find instances of execution being carried out in the Bible (e.g., Leviticus 24:10-16). It was practiced both in ancient Israel (as reflected in the Old Testament) and in Judea in the first century (as reflected in the New Testament).

Execution was given theological justification, both in the Old & New Testament. The Pentateuchal rationale for capital punishment was not basically in terms of societal order, and thus modern utilitarian values (e.g., does it deter?) have no bearing on the validity of the biblical attitude toward the penalty even though the Bible states it does deter (Deuteronomy 19:20; also see: Eccles. 8:11). The motive for capital punishment was not human desire for vengeance (retribution), and thus modern theological abolitionists on that basis cannot criticize it. There is not a verse in the Bible in either the Old or New Testament that overtly departs from the consensus on the topic. There are no theological stances in either testament (be they forgiveness of enemies, love, non-vengeance, etc.) that may be taken as an implicit challenge to capital punishment. The Bible distinguishes killing in battle, or in self-defense, or in accident, or as execution, from murder and negligent homicide (which alone merit execution).

Some Christians pretend that Jesus Christ broke with the traditions of the Old Testament or take the position that he replaced it, but this couldn't be further from the truth as Jesus himself explained during the Sermon on the Mount. This would also include capital punishment, they say, which was repeatedly sanctioned in the Old Testament. Christ said,

"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:17)"

2005-03-19T05:15:00.000+10:00

THE LATEST PERVERSION OF CHRISTIANITY

(I liked the article below so I will make it my post for today:)

Here we go again! A "core group" of "influential" evangelical leaders is about to try to address "global warming" using political weapons. Like previous efforts - Prohibition in the 1920s and the Moral Majority with which I was associated in the 1980s - this one is doomed because it distracts and dilutes the primary calling of evangelicals. Do evangelicals have time on their hands because they've finished the mission to "go and make disciples of all nations"? Is this not a great enough commission that "global warming" and a host of other "issues" must be added to make evangelicals contemporary and relevant?

The Rev. Rich Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, a Washington lobbying group, was quoted in The New York Times as saying, "I don't think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created." Rev. Cizik offers no biblical citation for his view. There is no biblical expectation that a "fallen" world can, should or will be improved prior to the return of the One to whom evangelicals are supposed to owe their complete allegiance. Rev. Ted Haggard, president of NAE, says he has become passionate about the issue because he is a scuba diver (but not a scientist) and has seen how "global warming" affects coral reefs. What about passion for Jesus Christ?

The religious left has long tried to sway evangelicals into embracing its social agenda. It would appear they are finally succeeding. Rev. Ronald Sider, who heads Evangelicals for Social Action, a liberal Christian group with an agenda that reads like Democratic Party talking points, told the Times, "Evangelicals have sometimes been accused of having a one- or two-item political agenda." A document he helped draft, called "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," is aimed at making "it very clear that a vast body of evangelicals today reject a one-issue approach," he says.

Jesus is appropriated these days for all sorts of things with which he would have nothing to do. Remember the "What Would Jesus Drive" campaign that attempted to convert people from their SUVs to more environmentally friendly cars? Those on the left and right who misuse Jesus think they can have the best of both worlds. Desiring the approval of one, however, mostly leads to disapproval from the other.

Should politicians be unclear as to the source of evangelical power, Rev, Haggard says, "We do represent 30 million people, and we can mobilize them if we have to." Leaving aside whether he "represents" 30 million people and whether they would all vote and lobby in lock-step (they didn't in the '80s), this is a far cry from "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty." (Zechariah 4:6)

The first description of Satan is that he is "subtle." (Genesis 3:1) Another translation says "crafty." Satan tempts to do what seems good. Liberal churches have long believed in a doctrine of salvation-through-works, as if helping the poor was the chief responsibility of government and an end in itself, rather than a means for individuals to communicate the love of God to poor people. The social gospel is about causes, not Christ; agendas, not Alpha and Omega; politics, not the Prince of Peace; more of this world and less of the next one. It's a subtle, but effective, means of distracting evangelicals from their paramount calling, which is about conversion, not political convictions.

By focusing on the other kingdom, one can have the most influence on this kingdom. By attending mainly to improving this world, one is doomed to futility and can do little for the other one. Look at past efforts of religious activists - left and right - and note their limited success when the focus has been on transforming culture, rather than converting hearts. This is going to be another failed effort that will lead many astray, divert resources from more effective pursuits and leave little of eternal value. Better to "store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal" (Matthew 6:20) rather than on earth where they do.

(From Cal Thomas)

2005-03-18T05:08:00.000+10:00

MARK AND THE RESURRECTION

An email from a reader:

As for the gospel of Mark, scholars have proposed a number of explanations for why the gospel of Mark should have originally ended ubruptly before the resurrection appearances. Some have suggested, for example, that the orginal text may have been lost or damaged, while others have suggested that the ending may have been a literary device (i.e., to criticize those early Christians who may have emphasized the resurrection at the expense of the crucifixion; it's interesting to note that many movies, such as Gibson's The Passion, either ignore the resurrection or similarly downplay it). However, no scholar that I know of says what you say, that it means Mark did not believe in the resurrection. The very last line would seem to make this perfectly clear:

"And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you."

This is not what you'd expect from a writer who does not "believe" in the resurrection.

In answer I simply say that I approach these things probabalistically. The failure of one of the Gospel writers to mention any of the post-resurrection appearances is certainly a stark omission in need of explanation. Whether there are other scholars who agree with what I think to be the obvious explanation -- that Mark was one of the doubters -- doesn't butter any parsnips as far as I am concerned but I would nonetheless be surprised if modernists such as Bultmann and Thiering disagreed with me.

And the last verses of Mark do not really say much. Mark reports what the women say they were told by the angels and leaves it at that. In fact, as I see it, the fact that Mark reports a prophecy of post-resurrection appearances and then fails to mention whether any such appearances took place seems revealing. Surely he would have hastened to mention something as striking as fulfilment of that prophecy if he had believed in it.

But anyway, suffice it to say that we know there were those who were never convinced so whether Mark was one of them or not adds little.

I feel I owe my readers an apology for going into these matters at all. My basic aim is simply to elucidate what the teachings of the NT are. Whether I personally believe in those teachings is an unimportant matter to anyone but myself. But I do slip up occasionally and say what I think of the truth of the teachings concerned. I should not. I undermine my own project by doing so.

2005-03-17T04:08:00.000+10:00

GENESIS: TWO STORIES OF CREATION

A reader referred me to this rather jocular article by some alleged pagan ("pagan" = "attention-seeker" most of the time as far as I can see) about the Genesis story. The writer is obviously not a bad Bible student but what he says is still fanciful rubbish as far as I can see.

He points out quite correctly that there are two creation stories in Genesis -- with the second one being immediately after the first and comprising only Genesis 2:4-7. I am too lazy at the moment to type it out here but do look it up in your Bible. It IS quite different from the story of Genesis 1.

Our pagan, however, deduces from this that there were two different creations being referred to and I don't think that is supportable. He does, however make one point I had never noticed before -- that in story 1 the creator is said to be "Elohim" (God), whereas in Story 2 the creator is said to be YHWH (Yahweh). I must say that the difference is a curious one and from a textual criticism viewpoint would tend to indicate that Story 2 is much older than story 1. Hesitancy about use of the divine name is a fairly late development. Story 2 also has YHWH taking a stroll in the garden during the cool of the day so that should indicate an older story too. A more anthropomorphic view of YHWH would be taken by most textual critics as indicating an earlier text. So story 1 was probably tacked on to the beginning of Genesis as a much later effort at a more sophisticated account of the creation.

Our pagan's point about "Elohim" being a plural form is true as far as it goes but does not indicate the plurality he claims. The word takes singular verbs so is intended as singular. With the Hebrew insistence on there being only one God it could hardly be otherwise. The plural form is then just another example of a plural being used as an honorific (as in the British Royal "we").

So are the two creation accounts so different as to be contradictory or even accounts of two separate events? It must be said that they COULD be accounts of two separate events but I don't see that they are in any way contradictory. The story that before the rains came there was a pervasive mist need be seen as nothing more than an added detail.

The interesting thing about story 2 however is that YHWH created man on the SAME day as he created the heavens and the earth -- whereas in Story 1 man was not created until the 6th day. I think this should upset only the most extreme fundamentalists, however. Throughout the Bible, words have both literal and figurative uses -- the various usages of even common words are one of the great plagues of scriptural exegesis in fact -- and it seems perfectly clear to me that "day" is being used in a figurative way in Genesis -- meaning "a period of time" rather than "24 hours". So I certainly see no contradiction between story 1 and story 2. Story 2 is simply using a less detailed timescale.

Perhaps I should mention the obvious -- that even in modern English we do use "day" figuratively --- in expressions such as, "In my day it was different". And the Hebrew word concerned has a variety of meanings too. I am too tired to go into that at the moment but look at 2 Peter 3:8.

Postscript

I don't take much interest in textual criticism as my primary interest is in the NT and it is not a large feature of NT studies.

2005-03-16T03:49:00.000+10:00

1 THESSALONIANS 4: 4-17

"But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord" (NKJV)

This is another of Paul's descriptions of the day of judgment and again we find him using a fair bit of figurative language. This time entering and leaving tents and swallowing up are not used as metaphors but we do get two other very common metaphors used: Sleep used as an analogy for death and the sky used as a symbol of Heaven (the latter being a symbolism we also see in Luke 24 and Acts 1 -- see my post of 11th). That Paul really is talking about the sky we see from his mention of clouds and meeting the Lord in the air ("aera" in the Greek). I presume that nobody would want to argue that the terrestrial atmosphere is the actual venue for the afterlife and so would agree that rising up into the sky is being used here as a metaphor for the transition into the spirit world. To be consistent, then, we also need to argue that the dead are not actually just unconscious but rather that sleep is being used as a metaphor for death. In other words, the divine power can restore the dead to life just as people awake out of sleep.

It could be argued that, with the primitive knowledge of physics existing at the time of Christ, people really did believe that the afterlife was located somewhere in the sky -- and the use of the same word ("ouranos") for the sky and for Heaven might seem to encourage that view. Note however that in the sophisticated 21st century we still do exactly the same. It is still not uncommon to refer to the sky as "the heavens" while Heaven is also understood as a spirit realm. And the idea of the afterlife as happening in a non-physical realm altogether different from ordinary life on earth is so clearly set out by Paul elsewhere (1 Corinthians 15) that it would be absurd to say he was incapable of distinguishing between the two ideas and usages or that he was confused about them. So we must conclude that the above passage is simply a continuation of Christ's practice of using vivid imagery (e.g. sheep and goats) to teach a lesson in an easily assimilable way. It is not meant to be taken as the whole story.

It must be conceded, however, that Paul does in all his accounts of judgment day seem to envisage proceedings as BEGINNING on earth: Christ appears; ALL the dead are resurrected to life on earth; judgment is rendered; the wicked go off into the "second death" and the righteous transit to everlasting life. In 1 Corinthians 15: 51,52 the change into an eternal existence is said to occur in "the twinkling of an eye" but in the passage from Thessalonians quoted above a rising into the sky is envisioned as occurring. I don't think those two accounts can be reconciled without taking the whole passage above as a vivid metaphor -- particularly since the teaching clearly is that the afterlife is not something that you physically go to: "It is sown a physical body, it is raised up a spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15: 44 RSV).

To change the subject a bit: My Christadelphian correspondent is a bit cross at me for not giving his theories more of a run on this blog so I will just point out that the scripture that I have just quoted above would seem to be quite contrary to the Christadelphian account of the resurrection. It says we will BE a spiritual body, not that we will be a physical body INFUSED WITH spirit. Christadelphians are not of course alone in thinking that there are physical bodies in Heaven but I cannot see that any of them are giving due heed to what 1 Corinthians 15:44 actually says.

THE RECENT RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF BRITAIN

Excerpt from an article by Christie Davies

"At the end of the nineteenth century, there were comparable levels of religiosity in Britain and the United States. The British lived in a culture in which the assumptions of Protestant Christianity were taken for granted. Few people believed strongly, but everyone believed a little. Throughout the population there was a somewhat vague general acceptance of central Christian beliefs, a strong respect for sacred things, a liking for church-based rituals to mark the turning points in life (and particularly its ending), a moral code of helping others that was rooted in Christian ethics, and a liking for and ability to sing hymns, both of which had been learned in Sunday School. Even football crowds sang “Abide with Me” or “Bread of Heaven”; today they sing songs full of thoughtless blasphemies, obscenities, and thought-out sexual and racial abuse to upset their opponents. Regular attendance at Sunday School was a standard part of most people’s youth, and it was the place where standards of respectability were inculcated. Britain’s was a society with a remarkably low and falling incidence of violent and acquisitive crime, illegitimacy, and addiction to opiates. Public drunkenness was a problem, but it was gradually ceasing to be so; by the 1920s it had all but disappeared.

This is the world Britain has lost. The first turning point was the First World War. Before that war there was already a degree of uneasiness about the strength of religion in Britain; after the war it was clearly in decline. The decline of religion was slow and punctuated by periods of recovery, such as the early 1950s. From the mid-1950s onwards, however, the previous prevailing religious culture collapsed, and by the millennium Britain was one of the most thoroughly irreligious countries in the world. Less than half the population believes in God. For many of those who do believe in God, their belief is not in a personal God who is a guide to conduct or a source of solace but a mere impersonal and irrelevant something-or-other.

In 1901–1911, half the British population under fifteen was enrolled in Sunday School; in 1957 three-quarters of those over the age of thirty had attended Sunday School at some time in their lives. By the end of the twentieth century, less than 10 percent belonged to a Sunday School. An entire culture had been lost. In England in 1913, 70 percent of all live births were baptized in the Church of England; in 1956, it was still 60 percent, but by 1997 it had fallen to less than a quarter. In the 1950s in Britain two-thirds of those questioned said they believed Jesus was the son of God and only a fifth expressed disbelief. By the 1980s, less than a half of those asked said they believed this and nearly 40 percent said they did not believe. In the 1950s most people believed in the central tenets of Christianity or at least went along with the dominant belief of their culture. By the 1980s, this was no longer the case. By the end of the millennium, many Christian denominations in Scotland, as well as in England and Wales, were predicting their own imminent demise in the twenty-first century. A few evangelical, Pentecostal, and fundamentalist groups thrive, but they lack numbers, have little influence on the wider culture, and are ignored and even snubbed and discriminated against by the secular liberals, who control broadcasting and education.

One consequence of this, or at least a social change that is closely correlated with it, is the collapse of respectable Britain. By the standards of 1905 or 1925 or 1955 Britain is a criminal society, a society with a substantial minority of violent people and an even larger minority willing to indulge in planned dishonesty. In 1927, there were only 110 robberies reported to the police; there were thirty times as many in 1997. Most of this increase occurred after 1955. Even if some part of the recorded increase may be dismissed as merely greater reporting and improved recording, it remains a massive change. In 1927, one’s chance of being mugged was absolutely negligible. Even today it is not all that likely an experience, but it has become one of the ordinary risks of life to be thought about and around which life is planned—enough to constitute an important qualitative change.... "

2005-03-15T07:44:00.000+10:00

2 Corinthians 5

Just a few more comments on the NT teachings about the day of judgment:

Just as Jesus used a lot of parables, Paul too uses a fair bit of figurative laguage. In 2 Corinthians 5: 1,2 we see the body called a tent or house that we inhabit. And we are said to long to put on a heavenly tent instead. This metaphor could be taken as supporting the immortal soul doctrine. The real "we" just "puts on" an earthly or heavenly body. To draw that conclusion would of course be to ignore the obvious -- that Paul is NOT speaking literally. Our body is not REALLY a tent (though when I look in the mirror sometimes I wonder if I might not end up that way unless I change my diet) and we do not REALLY "inhabit" it.

And Paul does make that clearer in verse 4: "so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life". So there is not just a "stepping out of" but a complete "swallowing up". Paul is just using whatever metaphor he can -- be it housing or swallowing -- to express the inexpressible, namely a personal identity that somehow is recreated in another form on judgment day -- or "we shall all be changed", as Paul puts it with admirable simplicity in 1 Corinthians 15: 51.

And then verse 6 returns to the "home" metaphor: "While we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord".

This way of speaking is however fairly inevitable. The original Hebrew idea of resurrection that we see in the OT is perfectly simple: Our old physical body is just re-created in a perfected form -- minus the warts, as it were. So it is easy to see how the old and new bodies could be essentially the same. But if we are recreated in a spirit form, how can the spirit form be in any way identified with the old physical form? I suppose the idea is that our characteristics endure. Our new form will have characteristics that will somehow reflect whether in life we were large or small, quick or slow, sensitive or insensitive, weak or strong, patient or impatient etc. The whole idea sounds utter nonsense to me but all religions do seem to believe that some transformation such as that does happen so who am I to argue?

The NT is only unusual in that it posits a prolonged and utter death before the good guys receive eternal spirit life on judgment day. Most religions seem to think that you transform into a complete spirit being immediately on death -- and that belief has seeped into modern-day Christianity too.

I probably should make clear at this point that my aim with this blog is NOT to convert anybody to anything -- be it atheism or membership of some sect or anything else. My only interest personally is basically an historical one -- to get clear what the original religion of the NT was and to contrast it with Christianity today. The only influence I hope to have on readers of this blog is to get them to read their Bible more attentively -- to see what it actually says rather than seeing its words through a lens of conventional preconceptions. I make no judgment about which or any version of Christianity is best in any sense. I was myself brought up as a Presbyterian and sent my son to a Catholic school so I think that should make clear that I think that Christianity generally is a good thing rather than some particular version of Christianity being best. Although I am a complete atheist (unlike many of my former academic colleagues, I don't even believe in Karl Marx), I think that the teachings of the gentle Jesus have had a tremendous transformative influence for the good on the human race.

As well as being a scripture blogger I am of course also a Marx blogger. But I study Marx for the opposite reason to my reason for studying the Bible. I want to see what was behind such a force for enormous evil in the world. And if you read Marx for long it is pretty clear what has made him such an influence -- he was absolutely filled with hate and contempt for just about everybody. So the haters and enviers of the world have always found in him a kindred spirit. If I were religious, I think I would see him as the Devil made flesh.

2005-03-14T07:59:00.000+10:00

TWO VIEWS OF THE AFTERLIFE

Most of the world's religions claim that there is some immortal essence or "soul" within us all that survives death. The ancient Hebrew religion as recorded in the OT is then most unusual in saying that death is death and that is that (see e.g. my post of Feb. 20th. and lots of passages in the book of Ecclesiastes, particularly chapter 9). The OT hope for an afterlife is blessedly simple -- it lies not in an immortal soul but in a future resurrection back into perfected physical life in a restored Eden on this earth -- as described in (say) Isaiah 11.

And as I also point out in my post of Feb. 20th, the NT carries on the rejection of an immortal soul and offers hope in the form of a resurrection. But it is not the same simple old Hebrew resurrection. The pagan fascination with a spirit life had taken hold and the hope now became for a resurrection into the spirit realm (e.g. John 14:2) -- or God's Kingdom, as Jesus usually describes it. And in 1 Corinthians 15 that is set out as unambiguously as it reasonably could be.

Now that should not disturb most Christians too much as both Jesus and Paul make clear that they build on the OT to create a new and better understanding of reality. Although both Jesus and Paul quote the OT extensively to justify what they say, they are clearly claiming to offer a new understanding of the matters they discuss.

Not all Bible students are happy with that, however. They view the Bible as being one whole and think it should be consistent from beginning to end. They cannot accept that the NT tells a new and better story than the OT. They want the OT and NT to be consistent.

That is a big ask however and fairly heroic assumptions have to be made to accomplish it. Jehovah's Witnesses and Christadelphians are the only ones I know that make a serious attempt at it but there are presumably others. The Jehovah's Witness solution is probably the easiest -- they split the difference and say that some go to Heaven and some stay on Earth. The Christadelphian solution seems to be to say that the body survives but without its blood! From what I have seen the arguments for both stories are specious and I don't think my readers would be interested enough for me to spend time rebutting them. My Christadelphian correspondent has however sent me a brief summary of the scriptural argument as he sees it so I reproduce it below for what interest it may have. I suspect that most of my readers will find the reasoning involved to be really stretching it.

Christ was raised to an immortal body which is not flesh and blood but flesh and spirit. Please consider these verses: 1st Peter 3:18 says, “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.” For something to be quickened, a something has to exist to be operated upon to be “quickened”. In other words, you cannot quicken a nothing. In immortality, the blood is no longer needed to give life to the body. Spirit, which is God’s power (not a 3rd person of the ‘Trinity’) is the life of the immortal body. These ideas play out in John 3:6 with Nicodemus: John 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Spirit does not give birth literally to spirit or itself, but to people who are born of the spirit (Joh 3:5-8), or in other words, quickened, made alive or energized by the spirit. And the same is found in Galatians 6:8 Galatians 6:8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. “of the spirit...” Christ’s change to immortality then is described in 1 Corinthians 15:20 “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” Firstfruits... That means there are others who will follow the same pattern. And so we find the promise of 2 Peter 1:4 is consistent with this: “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” So to be a partaker of the divine nature is to live by His spirit, or power.

I think we just have to accept that the OT and the NT accounts of the afterlife are different and take it from there. From what David Boxenhorn says, modern-day Jews cheerfully accept several quite different accounts of the afterlife all at once! I must confess, however, that I don't at all understand how serious Jewish students of scripture can accept belief in an immortal soul in view of the number of times that those same scriptures describe the "nephesh" as mortal. I guess they must place a lot of emphasis on uses of the word "ruach" but Ecclesiastes 3:19 must give them a few difficulties there. That scripure says that animals and people have the same "ruach" ("spirit" or "breath") so Heaven must be overrun with billions of rats, cats and dogs (just for starters). Good if you want to have a chat with a dinosaur or a pterodactyl, I guess. Very confusing!

2005-03-13T07:37:00.000+10:00

WHEW!

I have got a lot of correspondence lately that needs reply. I am a bit lost where to start. It's all my own fault, of course. Some time ago, I threatened to put this blog on hiatus unless I got more challenges and questions coming in and I have been busy writing up answers every night since!

Anyway, if you have been reading this blog for long you know that I have a compulsive fascination for that parody of Christianity known as the Church of England -- and its daughter churches, of course. So you will understand why I liked the email below:

"I'm a Christian myself, and my wife is training at seminary for the Anglican church of Canada. We are in the evangelical wing of the ACof C, in a liberal diocese of a liberal (ecclesiastical) country, which for my wife and her fellow students is like signing a lease for an office in the twin towers on Sept 10, except with advance notice of what's coming.

The situation vis a vis looming expulsion from the Communion is for real, but even if that weren't happening the Canadian and US Anglican churches are crashing due to the predictable effects of liberalism. In our diocese our bishop has closed a dozen parishes and has a dozen more on his list, because -- surprise surprise -- nobody is interested in going to a church to hear mushy vacuous liberal piffle, nor will they open their wallets to pay for it.

CS Lewis predicted it all quite neatly back in the 40s, when he told a group of seminary students that if the priest is a liberal he will find he has 2 types of parishioners. The first will be those who disagree with his theology and, since no one wants to have to evangelize ones own priest, will go somewhere else for instruction in their faith. The 2nd will be those who agree with his theology and find it gives them no reason to go to church. The end result will be the same--an empty church".

My advice to my correspondent above was to emigrate to Sydney (Australia). The Sydney diocese still seem to accept the 39 articles and their seminary and churches are packed, of course. They remind us of what the CoE once was. They even evangelize in neighbouring dioceses. Something that gave me a great laugh was when one of their priests set up an evangelical style "family church" (He could not call it an Anglican church) in a neighbouring diocese and soon had huge congregations -- while the bishop of the diocese concerned spend his Sundays in his cathedral preaching to about 6 old ladies in flowered hats! That may be an exaggeration but not by much.

To my mind, one of the saddest events recently in the Anglican Church of Australia was the demonizing of Archbishop Peter Hollingworth. He served in Brisbane for some time so I got to know him a little -- enough to know that he is a true man of God -- which is more than I would say for most of the Anglican episcopate. His service to the church has now been cut short however because of a huge public uproar engineered by the Leftist media. The outrage was over the fact that he insisted on a proper judicial standard of evidence when an accusation of sexual abuse was brought against one of his priests. Apparently priests have to be assumed guilty until proven innocent according to the media.

2005-03-12T05:02:00.000+10:00

A CHRISTADELPHIAN DIALOGUE

A couple of days ago I put up some links to the site of Steve, my Christadelphian correspondent. He has emailed me again since then with some comments about how he became a Christadelphian -- which I thought readers might like to see. He has also put up some scriptural challenges to me that I will deal with one by one over the next few days. So first his biographical notes and then on to some of his exegetical comments:

"I was not born into the Christadelphian community. I was raised Roman Catholic. By late high school I was intellectually and morally very dissatisfied with Catholicism. There were too many mysteries and too much history that showed the corruption and crimes of the Church. What a witness history is... if men would only avail themselves of looking at history! The Church will apologize for the crimes of 'its sons and daughters' but when has it apologized for -- to start with -- the crimes IT committed?

So by late high school I was looking into the Baptists, Methodists, charismatic movements -- really about anything that might have some answers. They were, like the Catholicism I left, religions that were built on tradition, contradiction, convenience and above all feel-goodism. Particularly striking to me about modern Christianity was the corruption of the clergy (cp 1st Joh 4:5) and its reliance on one or two verses wrested to prove their doctrine, whereas the rest of the Bible was ignored. I knew that if there was a God, he would not have so many pious frauds working for Him. Also, there was no serious study of the Bible or history and no attempt to reconcile the two (as to what happened, why it happened, and man's nature).

It was about that time that I met a Christadelphian then started studying things for myself, Bible open. When I saw that Christianity was built on fables as I had previously understood, though instinctively, and that the Bible could be understood in a way that did not contradict itself, that it explained man's nature, and above all, that it gave a purpose for why God created man, why mankind suffers &c -- Num 14:21; Psa 72:19; Matt 6:10; Acts 15:14; Isa 11:55-13 to start with -- it got my attention.

If I had not found the Truth, I would have turned to atheism for the sake of intellectual honesty. That might shock a liberal Christian, but if a person lies to himself, if he loses his own intellectual integrity, though he owned the world, he'd still be the poorest and most miserable man alive.

2 Timothy 4:3-4: "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables".

And now for an exegetical challenge: Steve writes:

Regarding 1 Corinthians 15:50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. You wrote, "1 Corinthians 15 tells us that there is no flesh and blood in Heaven". That is true but where does the Bible say that men go to heaven, besides Christ? There are a number of verses that would indicate otherwise: (John 1:18, 6:46, 3:13; Pro 30:4; Acts 2:34; Rom 10:6; Exo 33:20).

OK: "No-one has ever seen God" (John 1:18 and John 6:46). This does not say no-one WILL see God. That happens after the resurrection. "No-one has ascended unto heaven .. but the Son" (John 3:13). Again right. That comes after the resurrection. Note, by the way, how that text rules out an immortal soul going straight off to Heaven. "Who has ascended unto Heaven and come down?" (Prov. 30:4). Again that speaks of pre-resurrection times. "David did not ascend into the Heavens" (Acts 2:34). Again: Not yet. "Who will ascend into Heaven?" (Romans 10:6). Again, not yet. "For man shall not see me and live" (Exodus 33:20). YHWH is here explaining to Moses why Moses cannot see him so is clearly referring to physical man not resurrected immortal man.

So that was easy. As for where does the Bible say that men go to Heaven, that is 1 Corinthians 15 for starters. Paul there mostly refers to the post-resurrection spiritual afterlife of the righteous without saying "where" it is for the excellent reason that as a spirit realm it does not have a "where". Towards the end of the passage, however he refers to it as "the Kingdom of God" and if God's abode is not Heaven how do we explain Matthew 24:36, Mark 12:25, Galatians 1:8 and Revelations 10:1 -- all of which say that Heaven is where the Angels live. Aren't the angels part of God's kingdom? And what about Acts 3:21 and Romans 10:6 which say that Heaven is where Jesus is until the Second Coming? And Matthew 5:16 which says, "give glory to your father who is in Heaven" And I guess I don't need to mention the Lord's prayer.

I could go on....

2005-03-11T07:14:00.000+10:00

THE ASCENSION

Dienekes has sent me the following email about the Ascension which seems to be seriously meant:

1 Corinthians 15:50 states that "I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." Obviously, this passage speaks about the "kingdom of God" and not about "heaven".

Second, there is no reason to think that Jesus left his physical body when he ascended to heaven. Here is how this event is described in Luke 24: "Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven."

No mention of anything happening to his physical body. And here is how his return is said to be like in Acts 1:

"And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."

So, the New Testament is pretty clear: Jesus ascended to heaven as he was, without any "transformation" or "shedding of the physical body", and he will come back in the same way.

There are a number of things wrongheaded things in the above but the really amusing mistake is to think that the sky is the only "Heaven". I imagine that Neanderthal man looking out of his cave might have thought that the afterlife was literally "up there" but for a sophisticated Greek (which appears to be how Dienekes sees himself) to be that simplistic is frankly amazing. That the "heaven" referred to in Luke was the sky is made perfectly clear by the fact that his followers were looking up into it. It was in short visible and the whole idea of the spirit realm is that it is not visible. So Christ's body going up into the sky may have been symbolic of his transition into the spirit realm but it could not have been anything more. And where did his body go when it went up into the sky? Presumably it vanished or was dissolved into thin air just as it did on various occasions (e.g. Luke 24:31) during his post-resurrection appearances to his followers.

And the attempt to say that the spiritual realm mentioned in 1 Corinthians is not also called Heaven is frankly to ignore the text. Read verses 47 and 48. The same Greek word meaning "sky" ("ouranos") is also used to mean the spirit realm.

It must be said that the use of the one Greek word to mean various things is pesky but that is what we are stuck with repeatedly in our reading of the NT and that is why the careful definition of what the afterlife is given by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 is so important. Paul himself was obviously perfectly aware of the potential ambiguities and went to great lengths to make it clear that is was a non-physical realm he was talking about. And Christ himself of course made a similar distinction between the two modes of existence in Luke 24:40.

I will comment further on this if anybody thinks anything further needs to be said.

2005-03-10T05:46:00.000+10:00

JESUS DID EXIST

A reader has asked me whether I consider Jesus to have been a real person. I consider him to be one of the best attested people in ancient history. Given the amount we have written about him -- mostly in the various books of the NT -- if he did not exist then nobody did. To me however he was the wisest of men, not anything more than a man. I would like to see more of his teachings passed on in the churches. It pains me that they so often have pagan dross mixed in with them. I have traditional blogger advice about the NT: Read the whole thing!

I am very pleased to see that I am not the only internet writer who can see the huge gaps between modern Christendom and the Christianity of the NT. And this time it is not a wicked old atheist like me but a committed Christian (a Christadelphian). His site is here. Below is a copy of one of his pages:

Christendom Astray From the Bible

* 1--The Bible--What it is, and how to interpret it

* 2--Human Nature Essentially Mortal, as proved by Nature and Revelation

* 3--The Dead Unconscious till the Resurrection, and consequent error of popular belief in heaven and hell

* 4--Immortality a conditional gift to be bestowed at the Resurrection

* 5--Judgment to come; the dispensation of Divine awards to responsible classes at the return of Christ

* 6--God, Angels, Jesus Christ, and the Crucifixion

* 7--The Devil not a personal supernatural being, but the scriptural personification of sin in its manifestations among men

* 8--The Kingdom of God not yet in existence, but to be established visibly on the earth at a future day

* 9--The Promises made to the Fathers (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), yet to be fulfilled in the setting up of the Kingdom of God upon earth

* 10--The Kingdom of God the Final Instrumentality in the great scheme of human redemption

* 11--Christ the Future King of the World

* 12--The Covenant made with David to be realised in the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Israel under Christ

* 13--The Second Coming of Christ the only Christian Hope

* 14--The Hope of Israel, or, the Restoration of the Jews, a part of the divine scheme, and an element of the Gospel

* 15--Coming troubles and the Second Advent

* 16--Times and Signs: or the evidence that the end is near

* 17--The Refuge from the Storm: or, "What must I do to Do Saved ?"

* 18--The Ways of Christendom inconsistent with the Commandments of Christ

* Summary

I am also pleased to see that Steve is an old conservative like me. See his article here about politics and Christianity.

For tomorrow I have an amusing email from Dienekes about the Ascension to comment on.

2005-03-09T05:30:00.000+10:00

MORE ON THE UNRECOGNIZED JESUS

As I mentioned in my post of 7th, Jesus after his resurrection seems not to have looked anything like he was before his resurrection. He normally had to talk people into recognizing that he was the same person and even then they only recognized him by various signs, such as the wounds in his hands and the way he broke bread. And some followers never were convinced, it appears. See Matthew 28:17. And Mark, perhaps wisely, mentions no appearances at all -- which is why various extra bits [1] are occasionally added on after the final verse (16:8) of his Gospel. Why would a historian of Jesus's life leave out the most dramatic part of that life? It very much sounds like Mark was one of those who did not believe that it really was Jesus who appeared. And the obvious conclusion from all that is that the resurrected Jesus was a smart impostor enjoying the attention he got. Any competent illusionist ("Magician") could have done what the allegedly resurrected Jesus did.

Such a conclusion is of course unacceptable to a person of faith and one of my readers has attempted to do what the scriptures do not -- explain WHY Christ was normally not recognized in his post-resurrection appearances:

I address the post-resurrected Christ. I believe you are searching for something that isn't there. There is no Scripture stating what you believe, ie the temporary body. And as for an imposter, I suppose this could happen, but it does not coincide with belief in an omnipotent, omnipresent, almighty God. He has no need for imposters, or magicians! As Moses displayed, God's power being used through Moses far outshone the abilities of Pharoh's magicians. Only God has authority and power over universal law, and Jesus being unrecognizable has no real merit or importance in the message of Christ.

But, to humor you, I will suppose, as many Christians and people do, why I think Jesus was not immediately recognized. First of all, He was probably in His "glorified body," already, and who knows exactly what that is or looks like? I sure don't, for all I know is what I read, and although Paul is fairly specific on telling us when this will happen and the results of being in this new body, he does nothing to describe it to us. We only know that it is imperishable, a term not relevant to spirit, and it is incorruptable, meaning there will never be any sickness again, something else that bears no relevance concerning spirit, and it is immortal. But how we will look, that is not revealed.

However, I have heard some suggest that it was because of this, "Glorified body," they did not recognize Christ. I wish to add that they also were of the mind set that once something is dead - physically, it will remain dead, for history had proven this to them. There was no expectation of ever seeing Christ again in this life. Perhaps their minds could not comprehend something that had definitely defied the laws of physics? I think that would be the case far more than Jesus looking so differently, for Scripture also tells us that, "They will look upon Him whom they pierced and weep." These people will definitely know Jesus.

This statement of Scripture also defies the idea that Jesus is only spirit. How could one look upon a spirit and recognize scars or that it was wounded in a particular way? Also, Jesus spoke to the women He met first making a statement that they shouldn't "touch" Him, because He had not yet been to the Father. So, sometime between then and the time He had Thomas touch Him, then He had been to our heavenly Father and was cleansed, or whatever may have happened. Again, I attribute the misunderstandings here as being on our part for trying to understand that which is infinite with finite minds. As smart as we think we are, we still will never understand universal mysteries until that time comes when God so designs.

One other possibility is that Jesus was SO scarred He wasn't easily recognized, for Isaiah says that, "He was marred beyond that of any man," and that the disfigurement was considerable. If Jesus had been to hell, "hades, gehenna, sheol," and witnessed to the souls there, but not yet ascended to God, then His disfigurements would still be quite obvious, as well as fresh. After the time He ascended, then He too would have put on that immortal body, which Scripture says we will have at the time of Christ's return.

Whatever did happen, and I believe the clues are there in Scripture for us to decipher, Jesus was not at first recognizable, but He could be recognized, and after a specific time, He was immediately recognized by the disciples. I have also considered that the disciples were so afraid of suffering what Jesus did, should they have been found, that their exteme paranoia kept them hostage from the truth. I have always thought that it wasn't because they did not believe Jesus couldn't resurrect, because they had seen Jesus resurrect the dead Himself, their biggest problem with believing had to do with the fact that Jesus first appeared to the women. Since women had low social value in those days, and were even thought of as property, the disciples had to wonder why Jesus would first come to them. I think the disciples had a bigger problem with this than the fact Jesus was alive.

If that explanation saves anybody's faith I am happy with it but I see various problems in the account:

It is true that the scriptures nowhere use the word "temporary" in connection with Christ's post-resurrection body but we are also told that Christ was bound for Heaven after his appearances and 1 Corinthians 15 tells us that there is no flesh and blood in Heaven so that makes his body temporary as far as I can see.

"Glorified" body? I don't know what is being referred to there. It must be some non-scriptural reference. Christ's Heavenly body is not a flesh and blood one but the one who appeared to the disciples emphatically was flesh and blood.

The fourth paragraph above is confused. Nobody has ever argued that the post-resurrection Jesus is only spirit. He argued during his life (e.g. John 8:58) that he was a spirit inhabiting a body and nobody argues otherwise after the resurrection. The reference to "do not touch me" (John 20:17) is a mistranslation. The RSV rendering ("do not hold me") makes much more sense in the context. Read the context if you doubt it. The Greek ("apto") has the sense of "cling to" according to Abbott-Smith.

The idea that Jesus was disfigured is nowhere mentioned. Those who met him seem to have always accepted initially that he was just another ordinary person.

That his followers simply did not want to believe what they saw is not inherently unreasonable but that is not what the texts say. The texts say that on various occasions they simply did not recognize him. They did not even suspect that it was he.

-----------

[1] I have three recensions of the Greek NT -- Nestle, Griesbach and Westcott & Hort and none of them accept anything after Mark 16: 8 as original. The two major 4th century MSS we have (Vaticanus 1209 and Codex Sinaiticus) do not have anything after 16: 8. The "long" ending first appears in 5th century MSS so was evidently added by someone in that century. The "short" ending is confined to even later MSS. The NIV sums up the matter with admirable brevity: "The most reliable early manuscripts do not have Mark 16: 9-20" but all recent translations I know have some note to that effect.

2005-03-08T02:56:00.000+10:00

PREDESTINATION AND THE 39 "ARTICLES OF RELIGION" OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

The articles were first issued in 1571 and, up until 1865, every Anglican priest had to swear to his belief in them. Now he only has to swear "general agreement", which means precisely nothing

XVII. Of Predestination and Election.

"Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore, they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.

As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: So, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.

Furthermore, we must receive God's promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God".

This now ancient statement of faith concerns one of the great controversies in early Protestantism. Are we saved by our faith (Luther) or is there nothing we can do to ensure our salvation (Calvin)?

I have always thought that predestination is a pretty nutty doctrine despite the fact that it was a traditional belief in the Presbyterian family into which I was born. There is some scriptural justification for it in the epistles (e.g. Romans 8:29,30) but it flies in the face of everything Jesus taught. He was always telling people what they needed to DO to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Its main exponents used to be the Reformed (Europe) and Presbyterian (Britain) churches but it is now seldom preached anywhere in Christendomn as far as I can gather. It is however still very influential in Islam.

The above official Anglican statement on the doctrine did therefore labour under something of a burden. How to reconcile the various things the NT says on the question? So what we get is to me a rather fun bit of theology. Because it is theology it is very hard to understand but it boils down to saying that we are all indeed predestined to our fate (first paragraph) but it is dangerous to believe that (second paragraph) and we must follow God's law anyway (third paragraph)!

A perfect bit of Anglican compromise even way back in the early days of Anglicanism -- and making about as much sense as modern Anglican theology.

On other issues, however, the 39 articles are admirably clear and blunt. Take article 22:

XXII. Of Purgatory

The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.

"Shove that up your cassock" seems to be the message there. I love it! I like plain speaking. We get more in Article 24:

XXIV. Of speaking in the Congregation in such a tongue as the people understandeth

It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the Primitive Church, to have publick Prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.

So those old guys were pretty straight and to the point when they were not labouring under a need for compromise between opposing viewpoints. Jolly good stuff in my opinion. If you can handle antique English, read the whole thing! You will definitely see real Protestantism at work in them, which is more than you can say about most of Anglicanism today (Sydney diocese of course excepted).

There is a site here that actually "translates" the articles into modern English but that takes away half the fun. I like the emphatic language of the original.

So is there a better way out of the predestination dilemma that the Anglican one? Possibly. I think it could be argued that the "predestinarian" texts in the epistles are really talking about God's FOREKNOWLEDGE and that knowing a thing will happen is a lot different from making it happen. I would not be prepared to argue that in detail, however. I will leave that one to the theologians.

(Note: Just for fun, I am putting this post up on Blogger News too. Rather amusingly, I seem to do most of their religion posts)

2005-03-07T05:51:00.000+10:00

THE POST-RESURRECTION JESUS

There are a few puzzles associated with Jesus's resurrection. Why did it have to be a bodily resurrection? Why was he not always immediately recognized when he appeared to his followers? What happened to his physical body once he resumed his spirit life in heaven -- where we know from Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: 50 that flesh and blood cannot go?

The best I can make out of it is that Christ's body was removed from the tomb and restored to life so that the spirit Christ could temporarily re-inhabit it and thus prove to all that he really still was alive. And once that task was accomplished he abandoned his physical body finally and returned to Heaven as a spirit. That makes reasonable sense. So what happened to the then finally abandoned body? We are simply not told. Presumably that is/was unimportant. And why was he usually hard to recognize (e.g. John 20:14) in his resurrected flesh and bone body? The obvious reason that occurs to me is that the supposedly resurrected Jesus was an impostor. If he really had been Jesus he surely would have been recognized instantly. He had to work hard at convincing people that he really was Jesus even though he did not look like Jesus.

Luke 24 however seems to suggest that Jesus's physical body could be assembled and dissassembled in an instant. After breaking bread with the women he suddenly vanished into thin air and at the meeting with the apostles he suddenly appeared out of thin air (as also in John 20:19 and 20:26) and ate some fish with them. And I am sure that both God and a clever impostor could have managed both of those impressions. But if it was divine power at work why did God keep reassembling the physical Jesus in barely recognizable forms? No explanation for that is offered. On balance, I would have to say that the evidence favours a clever impostor being at work.

While I am talking about the resurrection, I suppose I should mention Luke 23:43 where Jesus says to the criminal on the stake beside him, "Truly I tell you today you will be with me in Paradise". Lots of translations put a comma after "you" but there is no punctuation in the Greek so I put the comma after "today". That's the only way to make what Jesus said there consistent with what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15.

2005-03-06T08:57:00.000+10:00

THE CROSS AGAIN

M4 Monologue has been working hard on the doubts I raised about Christ dying on a cross. He has turned up a number of extensive references on the subject which endeavour to support the conventional story. All the references do admit that the cross has a long pre-Christian history and also concede that there is a good case to be made for Christ NOT having died on a cross.

Needless to say, however, the references concerned do end up coming down in favour of the conventional story. The most thorough attempt to support the conventional story is this one and it does indeed contain a lot of information. Most of what it says however is in the form of quotations from fellow-believers which essentially proves nothing. The only novel argument I could find in it was that Christ died on a crossbar affixed to a living tree. The grounds given for this unusual theory were twofold: That Christ is said at various points to have died on a "xylon" (in Greek) and a perverse interpretation of Luke 23:31. Even the author concerned admits however that "xylon" can refer to a piece of wood as well as a living tree so the argument depends on the text in Luke, where Jesus says: "for if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?" The cross-defending author claims that Jesus is here talking about the instrument on which he is shortly to die but if you read the context -- as I peskily always do -- Jesus was not remotely talking about that at all. He is talking about the times ahead and saying that his execution is merely the harbinger of worse things to come. He uses the life of a tree as a a parable for that. First you have the flourishing green tree then you have the dead wood. He is saying that the times are still at the green tree stage but the dry wood days are coming. Christ was a great user of parables and it seems that that habit remained with him until the last.

But that total misrepresentation of what Christ was talking about in Luke is symptomatic of the whole cross-defence concerned. It clutches at straws. I could go through it point by point showing that but I think I have said enough already to indicate the general low quality of the argument. If there is any particular point that any reader would like to raise with me, however, I will be happy to respond.

Just as a little exercise, the author rightly notes that Christ is said to have had "nails" (plural) driven through his hands. He says that this proves that Christ's hands were stretched out on a crossbar. Why does it prove nothing of the sort?

2005-03-05T07:18:00.000+10:00

ARE THERE BODIES IN HEAVEN?

I have been having an email discussion with a reader stemming from my comments (on Feb. 17th.) about Luke 16: 22-25 "The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy upon me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame" (RSV)

My reader seems to think that this is not a parable and that it shows that there are bodies in Heaven just like our earthly bodies, despite Paul (In 1 Corinthians 15) making it just about as clear as anyone possibly could that Heaven is a purely spiritual realm. My reader claims in fact that bodies in Heaven is an orthodox Christian doctrine, which may well be true in view of the many other unscriptural doctrines that are orthodox in so-called Christian churches. My interest, however is purely in what the original texts of scripture say so I will approach the matter from that viewpoint. The latest email I have received is a response to my pointing out what Paul says about Heaven being purely spiritual:

"purely spiritual." what does this mean to you? what do you think it meant to a first century Jew like Paul? and why use the words "spiritual body"? and why, in Luke (as in the other gospel accounts), does the resurrected Christ say: ("a ghost has not flesh and bones as you see that i have", 24:40)?

I suspect you are lapsing into an anachronism here, imposing an image of a "ghost" onto this word that is not (at least within the very Jewish Christian thought of the Paul et. al.) warranted. here's how a Cambridge-trained Duke university historian puts it:

"In Paul's view he had been transformed, changed from a 'physical' or a 'natural' body to a 'spiritual body'. Luke thought that he had flesh and could eat, but also that he had been changed. He was not obviously recognizable to people who saw him, and he could appear and disappear.

"Both authors were tyring to describe--Paul at first hand, Luke at second or third hand--an experience that does not fit a known category [i.e., neither a resuscitated corpse nor a ghost or phantasm]. What they deny is much clearer than what they affirm."

The historian is E.P. Sanders, and the reference comes from his excellent book The Historical Figure of Jesus. Just so you know that nothing I am saying is considered at all controversial among Biblical scholars, as I know because I have a master's degree in theology and took quite a few courses in the New Testament and early Christian history.

Of course, later, Greek ideas of the soul as a separate entity from the body did get introduced into the thinking of some the church fathers; but the [Catholic/Orthodox] church itself has always retained its very Jewish belief in the resurrection of the body and its eternal existence in the life of the world to come. It's only in pop spirituality and some Protestant thought that all this gets changed into the "spiritual" conceptions you seem to talk about..."

Now, as an atheist, I personally don't believe in ANYTHING spiritual but my interest here is to see what the NT writers believed and I agree that their ideas of the spirit world are primarily statements about what it is not. But, as I have previously pointed out at some length, the Greek word for "spirit" used by the New Testament writers (and variously translated as "spirit", ghost", "breath", "air" etc) is "pneuma" and that is actually something of an asset to us. Because Paul does not have any precise language available to make his concept immediately clear, he has himself to define what "pneuma" means in his usage of it and he does that at great length in verses 35-54. And the language he uses is resourceful. He says the spirit "body" (i.e. identity) is radically different from the physical body just as a plant is different from its seed; he says that earthly and heavenly bodies are different just as the sun and the moon are very different; he says that the spiritual body is imperishable and glorious and powerful and immortal just as the earthly body is none of those things and that it will be in the image of the Heavenly Jesus. And he ends: "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God".

And that conclusion conforms with what Jesus said whilst he was temporarily back in his resurrected physical body: "A spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have" (Luke 24:40 RSV). And note that the NT is clear that Jesus was ALWAYS a spirit who was temporarily inhabiting a physical body -- unlike the rest of mankind who only BECOME spirits at the time of the second coming.

So I personally think that what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 is about all that anyone could reasonably say about the form that resurrected man assumes. How WOULD you define a living creature that is not physical? What more COULD you say about the nature of such a creature? It is clear that to Paul a spirit body is not of flesh and blood and that it is very different from a flesh and blood body but to say more than that would require considerable flights of the imagination that Paul very wisely does not attempt. We by and large have to accept that "spirit" is defined by what it is not -- i.e. that it is starkly different from a flesh and blood body.

But why use the word "body" at all? Paul obviously had to use some word to indicate that resurrected people are as distinct from one another in Heaven as they were in their earthly life and he rightly chose the simplest word to indicate that. He was making it clear that resurrected people are not just puffs of gas or some such and that they do retain separate identities and locations. And it was precisely because this use of "body" could be misunderstood to imply that our earthly bodies somehow get transported to Heaven that he went to such great length to deny that the spiritual body was anything like the original earthly body. So Paul's teaching can be summed up as one of denial -- denial that we can know anything about our spirit afterlife other than that we will retain our identities and that it will be pretty good. And I think that is as commonsense as you are likely to get in discussions of such matters -- and it is also I think pretty much the general view among lay Christians to this day. Certainly, the idea that spirits have breasts, fingers etc would be to deny the utter difference that both Christ and Paul assert. And if a spirit being doesn't have flesh, blood or bones, how COULD it have fingers and breasts and tongues? Anything is possible in theology, I suppose, but not if you have any respect for what the texts do their best to tell us.

A remaining issue is what Paul means when in verse 53 he says that this corruptible must PUT ON incorruption. Is there something on which incorruption is put? We first need to note here that Paul is referring to those who are still alive at the second coming. So they do not need resurrection from the dead but are rather transformed immediately ("in the twinkling of an eye") from being physical creatures into being spirit (incorruptible) creatures. So the identity of the person remains but in a different form. So "put on" in this text clearly means something like "is transformed into". Any other interpretation would require us to assume that the corruption somehow remains underneath the incorruption, which I suspect is too absurd even for a theologian. And since Paul goes on to say that this mortal must put on immortality, he is clearly referring to a change of the attributes of the individual, not to an individual putting something on as he would put on a garment. Otherwise we would have an immortal mortal, which makes no sense at all!

Just how an individual's identity can be retained despite a complete change of form and nature, however, Paul wisely does not attempt to answer. To me the very idea is absurd but most of the human race seems to believe that something of that sort is possible so I am clearly the odd man out.

2005-03-04T04:41:00.000+10:00

ECCLESIASTES

There are always disputes about who actually wrote the various book of the Bible but I am in no doubt that Ecclesiastes was in fact written by the man who claims to have written it: King Solomon the Wise. I am sure of that because the writer sounds so modern. He writes as a man who has experienced all life has to offer and has come away from it all feeling how hollow it all is. Very few people in the ancient world can have had such an easy life but it is perfectly reasonable to expect that the King of Israel would have.

I too have had a very good life so I do find in Solomon something of a kindred spirit. He is someone who speaks more as an atheist than a religious man. There are religious bits here and there -- which may have been inserted by others -- but the general tenor of the book is skeptical. When he concludes (1:14) that "all is vanity and a striving after wind" that is hardly a confession of religious purpose or conviction but it is something that atheists all have to face and deal with in some way. And in 2:24 we read some very atheist and unpuritanical words: "There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil". Likewise in 3:19 "For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dieth so dieth the other... all go to one place; all are from the dust and all turn to dust again". And 7:16 "Be not righteous overmuch". And 8:15 "And I commend enjoyment; for man has no good thing under the sun but to eat and drink and enjoy himself". And 9:2 is VERY heretical: "Everything before them is vanity since one fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean... ". And 9:4 "A living dog is better than a dead lion".

But wisest of all, of course, is this comment: "A wise man's heart inclines him towards the right, but a fool's heart toward the left" (10:2). If I believed in prophecy, I would give that one top marks.

The few excerpts I have given tell only a small part of the story, of course. "Read the whole thing" was never better advice than it is in this case. But only read a chapter a night. It is concentrated stuff, deserving much thought.

By the way, I become a Christian at any time while I am listening to the great music of J.S. Bach. I feel the Heavens open up before me when I listen to his great chorales. As I write this I am listening to the great bass aria from the Matthew Passion: "Mache dich mein Herze rein" ("Make my heart pure") and it moves me to tears. Christianity will always be remembered, if only because it was the religion of Bach.

(Note: At the risk of confusing a lot of people, I have posted the above on Blogger News as well)

2005-03-03T06:23:00.000+10:00

REVELATION

An email just received:

"This is a FRIENDLY criticism... of your commentary on Rev 20 in the scripture blog.... The last book of the New Testament is not Revelations, but Revelation, as in "The Revelation of Jesus Christ" which is the wording of the first verse. The book is not primarily about revelations of all the traditionally fascinating stuff -- seals, bowls, horsemen, apocalypse -- but about the revelation of the one who comes to claim title to earth and creation -- check out chapter 5!"

I knew someone would pick me up on that! I never can remember whether the name of that book is singular or plural and I am too lazy to check every time.

As far as chapter 5 is concerned, however, I gave up when I came to the lamb with seven horns and seven eyes (verse 6). Even one horn on a lamb would have disturbed me, I think. But I note from verse 12 that one of the things that the lamb that was slain gets is "wealth" ("riches" in some translations). That seems a pretty odd thing to happen in Heaven to my literal mind (Yes. I know what Matthew 6:20 says). Interpreting visions is just not my thing, I guess. At a wild guess, however, the lamb is Jesus and the guy on the throne is God. So I guess the fact that the lamb stands before the throne and takes the scroll from the right hand of the guy who is on the throne (verses 6-8) must not be all that congenial to trinitarians. Even in Heaven the two don't seem to be all that close.

And if anybody wonders what the "worshipping" of the Lamb (verse 14) is all about, see what I said on 1st Feb. about "proskuneo" -- See if you can work my archive links.

And I guess that verse 8 is where the image of Heaven as a place for harpists comes from. Hopefully, Heavenly harps don't need tuning nearly as much as terrestrial ones do.

My favourite book of the Bible is actually Ecclesiastes. I might try to explain why tomorrow.

WHY RELIGION?

Some extracts below from an article which asks whether we are pre-programmed to be religious

"One factor in the development of religious belief was the rapid expansion of our brains as we emerged as a species, says Todd Murphy, a behavioural neuroscientist at Laurentian University in Canada. As the frontal and temporal lobes grew larger, our ability to extrapolate into the future and form memories developed. "When this happened, we acquired some very new and dramatic cognitive skills. For example, we could see a dead body and see ourselves in that position one day. We could think, 'that's going to be me'." That awareness of impending death prompted questions: why are we here? What happens when we die?

In developing societies, religious beliefs also encouraged bonding within groups, which in turn bolstered the group's chances of survival, says Pascal Boyer, an anthropologist-turned-psychologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.

Some believe religion was so successful in improving group survival that a tendency to believe was "positively selected" for our evolutionary history. Others maintain religious belief is too modern to have made any difference. "What I find more plausible is that rather than religion itself offering any advantage in evolutionary terms it's a byproduct of other cognitive capacities we evolved, which did have advantages," Boyer says.

Psychological tests Boyer has run on children go some way to proving our natural tendency to believe. "If you look at three- to five-year-olds, when they do something naughty, they have an intuition that everyone knows they've been naughty, regardless of whether they have seen or heard what they've done. It's a false belief, but it's good preparation for belief in an entity that is moral and knows everything," he says.

Childish belief is one thing, but religious belief is embraced by people of all ages and is by no means the preserve of the uneducated. Boyer says the persistence of belief into adulthood is at least partly due to a presumption. "When you're in a belief system, it's not that you stop asking questions, it's that they become irrelevant," he says. "Why don't you ask yourself about the existence of gravity? It's because a lot of the stuff you do every day presupposes it and it seems to work, so where's the motivation to question it?"

While some continue to tease out the reasons for the emergence of religion and its persistent appeal, others are delving into the neuroscience of belief in the hope of finding a biological basis for religious experience. As a starting point, many studies focused on people with particular neural conditions that made them prone to experiences so intense they considered them to be visions of God.

At the University of California in San Diego, the neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran noticed that a disproportionate number of patients - about a quarter - with a condition called temporal lobe epilepsy reported having deeply moving religious experiences. "They'd tell me they felt a presence or suddenly felt they got the meaning of the whole cosmos. And these could be life-changing experiences," Ramachandran says. The feelings always came during seizures, even if the seizures were so mild they could only be detected by sensitive electroencephalograms (EEGs). Between seizures, some patients became preoccupied with thoughts about God.

Ramachandran developed three explanations he thought might explain why the patients with epilepsy seemed so spiritual: 1). He considered that the upwelling of emotion caused by the seizure might simply overwhelm, and patients made sense of it by believing that something extremely spiritual was going on. 2). The seizure might prompt the left hemisphere of the brain to make up stories to account for seemingly inexplicable emotions. The ability of the left hemisphere to "confabulate" like this is well known to neuroscientists. 3). He wondered whether seizures disrupted the function of part of the brain called the amygdala which, among other tasks, helps us focus on what is significant while allowing us to ignore the trivial.

Ramachandran tested a couple of patients using what is called galvanic skin response. Two electrodes are used to measure tiny changes in the skin's electrical conductivity, an indirect measure of sweating. In most people, conductivity goes up when they are shown violent or sexual pictures, or similarly loaded words. In the test, Ramachandran found that patients with temporal lobe epilepsy responded very differently from others. Violent words such as "beat" and sexual words produced no reaction, but religious icons and the word "God" evoked a big response.

With only two patients involved in the study, Ramachandran says it is impossible to draw any conclusions, but if the results stand up to future testing, it might indicate that seizures in the temporal lobe strengthen certain neural pathways connected to the amygdala, meaning we attribute significance to banal objects and occurrences. "If those pathways all strengthen indiscriminately, everything and anything acquires a deep significance, and when that happens, it starts resembling a religious experience. And if we can selectively enhance religious sentiments, then that seems to imply there is neural circuitry whose activity is conducive to religious belief. It's not that we have some God module in our brains, but we may have specialised circuits for belief."

At the University of Pennsylvania, Andrew Newberg, a radiologist, has cast a wider net to scan the brains of people performing spiritual activities. By injecting radioactive tracers into the veins of nuns, Buddhists and others, he has constructed brain maps that show how different practices affect neural processing. "What comes out is there's a complex network in the brain and, depending on what you do, it is activated in different ways," Newberg says. "If someone does Tibetan Buddhist mediation they'll activate certain parts of their brain, but if you have a nun praying they'll activate slightly different parts, with someone doing transcendental meditation activating other areas again."

Newberg uncovered the neural processing behind the religious experience of "oneness" with the universe. Blood flow drops off in the parietal lobe, a brain structure that helps us orient ourselves by giving us a sense of ourselves. "What seems to be happening is that as you block sensory information getting into the parietal lobe, it keeps trying to give you a sense of self, but it no longer has the information to do so. If that happens completely, you might get this absolute feeling of oneness."

Newberg has been criticised for his investigations into the essence of spiritual experience, with the most vehement attacks coming from atheists. "Some people want me to say whether God is there or not, but these experiments can't answer that. If I scan a nun and she has the experience of being in the presence of God, I can tell you what's going on in her brain, but I can't tell you whether or not God is there," he says. Religious groups point out that there is more to religion than extreme experiences. It is a criticism Newberg acknowledges. "The problem is, the people who have these experiences are so much easier to study."

More here

2005-03-02T07:35:00.000+10:00

CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS

I recently noted that I am no expert on the many Christian sects. One of my readers has offered some hints:

Your posting "IS THERE ANY TRUE CHRISTIANITY LEFT IN CHRISTENDOM?" is great. Quite recently I discovered an exotic and rare species of Christian on the internet. Their habitat seems to be both in Israel and in the USA. They may be part of (but not the same as) a larger movement of Evangelicals that are loosely termed "Christian Zionists".

The theology of this rare species is very different from that of the Evangelicals. So although Jerry Falwell is a Christian Zionist, these tiny flocks hold a completely different set of beliefs. Their beliefs are very interesting:

1. They reject "substitution/replacement theology" as rank heresy.
2. That means they consider Israel/the Jews as the chosen of God and consider themselves the servants of Israel
3. They seem to genuinely love & adore the nation of Israel with all their hearts

Now, here's the FUN part! On the one hand, they have absolutely blood-curdling, flesh-crawling apocalyptic prophecies that would appeal to all fans of Gothic horror movies & music, whilst on the other hand seem to be quite compassionate, even towards the heathen Ragheads. They seem to be quite confident of Israel's survival, believing that the times of the oppression of the Jews is coming to an end. If you have time, check them out here and here and here and here. An article from one of their sites follows. Note the Jewish way of writing "G-d" and the Hebrew names of the books of the Bible:

Auschwitz and the UN: Smokescreen and Nihilism

by Kim Johnson

Finding Nemo, a delightful family movie, contains a scene that parallels the UN hosting a “Auschwitz—“Never Again” Remembrance Day” in a most fitting way. The scene starts off with Nemo’s father (Dad) and his newly found friend Dory searching for Nemo, the lost son. In their search, they meet a few Sharks who persuade them to be guests at their first annual “Fish Are Friends Day.” All goes well until the lead shark starts to smell blood coming from Dory’s nose (she was hit by a scuba diving mask). The smell of the blood causes him to lose all sense of composure, intent and purpose. Dad and Dory have now become “shark bait” and find themselves escaping a menagerie of obstacles to save their lives.

From 1955-1992, the UN issued 65 resolutions against Israel; from 1993-1995 over 20 resolutions were issued; and from 1992-2001 the US vetoed 14 resolutions condemning Israel. And now the leaders of the U.N. are joining voices with the Jews and announcing "Never again"?

When my mind linked the above movie and the history of the UN, I wanted to say to the Jewish community at large beware of "Jews Are Friends Day" in Europe--especially anything hosted by the UN

But using the Holocaust as a means of building peaceful relations between the UN, Israel, and Jews is far more problematic than one may realize. The UN’s compliance with ‘remembering Auschwitz’ is nothing more than a smokescreen created in an attempt to appease its seared conscience towards the Jews, while knowingly conspiring with Arab leaders for Israel’s complete demise.

Thankfully, we do have men and women who have worked tirelessly to keep the Holocaust before us, as it is a time in history that should never be forgotten. But the Holocaust has become much more than a point and time in history to be remembered. It has become a mystery that the world spends endless time trying to solve, as well as a moral plumb line of justice in Europe and America.

All plumb lines have to be fixed by some type of weight. Using any event in history as a moral plumb line is utilizing a plumb line that is not fixed, because the interpretation of that event changes, reflecting the viewpoints of world rulers, opinions, and perceptions as time changes. Therefore, linking the Holocaust to establish a moral consciousness or plumb line is not possible. On the contrary, it was an unfixed moral plumb line that caused the Holocaust.

The link between the Holocaust and Europes perception of morality is noteworthy. G-dless societies steeped in unrighteousness use the injustice toward the Jews in the Holocaust to determine whether they are on one side or the other of morality. More than once, I have encountered strong feedback against the horrors of the Holocaust from people I have met around the world. They wouldn’t blink an eye at homosexuality, abortion, cannibalism, etc. but, the Holocaust is another story--and as the single most horrific example of immorality, it should be.

Yet, the subject of morality plays a huge underlying role in determining why there ever was a Holocaust.

The existence of morality is not a humanitarian issue, but a G-d issue. It came with the makeup and conscience given to man when G-d created him in His own image. The covenant G-d made with Abraham was based on the sole premise that he and his seed would walk “wholehearted” or “with moral integrity” before Him. The sign of Abraham’s agreement with G-d to produce a moral people was, and still is, the Covenant of Circumcision. This covenant includes two parts of inheritance--the land of Israel and the seed of Israel.

It also includes the destiny of Israel, “Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: and you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.” Shemot (Exodus) 19:5

G-d then gave the children of Israel the Ten Commandments as guidelines of holiness for social and civil government by which he would establish His people and their nation, Israel. These commandments, with their accompanying statutes and judgments, formed the ethical structure of the Jewish people. In Devarim 4:6, G-d said to Israel “if you will keep my commandments and obey my voice I will make you a wise and an understanding nation in the sight of all nations.”

And true Christianity is rooted in the same covenant and Torah teachings. The Ten Commandments are as much the plumb line of Christian ethics as of Jewish ethics. Such ethics establish a true moral plumb line as they are fixed in something that is established forever--the Word of G-d. "Forever O L-RD Thy Word is settled in heaven." King David in Tehillim 119:89

Therefore, when the Ten Commandments are the moral plumb line of the Jews, Christians and mankind, then G-d is the driving force behind the moral integrity of man and the nations. But, when the Ten Commandments are no longer the moral plumb line, another driving force takes over. That driving force is “Nihilism.” “Nihilism” is a spiritual condition of being completely separated from G-d, void of G-d, atheism, hell, and a development in Christian Europe on a huge scope.

Wherever there is “Nihilism,” something has to fill the void it creates. Melek David said, “The nation that forgets G-d will be turned into hell.” That something will always be a value system that replaces the commandments of G-d, whether it is an individual value system, a humanitarian value system, an idolatrous value system or another religious value system such as Islam.

Therefore it is understandable that when Nihilism became the driving force of Europe in the twentieth century (as it is yet today) that something or someone’s ideology had to fill it. That someone and his ideology was Hitler. But before Hitler could create an Aryan race and government to fill the “void-ness of G-d” in Europe, he had to remove that which stood in his way—the Jews.

What’s shocking is that it wasn’t Christianity he needed to remove, although it was considered to be the entity through which G-d existed in Europe, but Jewry and Judaism. Why? Because spiritual forces behind Hitler knew something that neither Jewry nor most Christians understood: that Jewry holds all that pertains to G-d. Romans 9:4 states that “the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants (including the New Covenant), and the giving of the Torah, and the service of G-d, and the promises” all belong to the Israelites.

Salvation history belongs to the house of Israel. One of the greatest errors the Church ever made is that it "fostered the illusion that it had any truth apart from the house of Israel.” Therefore, if you remove the foundation, or the people that possess the foundation to establish G-d’s moral plumline in the earth, everything that is built upon it will automatically collapse, including Christianity. In other words, Jewry was the only entity standing between Hitler and his vision for an Aryan race, superior to G-d Himself.

2005-03-01T06:43:00.000+10:00

HIATUS?

How much I post on this blog from now on will depend on what I get in my email (I started it in response to a flow of emails originally!). I have now covered to my own satisfaction all the matters I wanted to cover but I could well be the only person who IS satisfied with what I have said so far! Anyway, I will be guided by mail from readers in what more I post. If anybody wants me to comment on any particular scripture I will be delighted to do so.

This does mean that I may not post regularly on this blog from now on but I will continue my practice of letting readers know I have posted something via a note at the bottom of my day's postings on Dissecting Leftism. Meanwhile, below is an email just received that I rather liked:

Re your post on true Christians. I whole heartedly agree with your premise that Constantine has a lot to answer for. It has long been my belief that Christianity's downfall was brought about by the Church being turned into an instrument of state authority, (give or take a few power struggles here and there). Given the simple message and plain delivery of that message, in totally unambiguous terms, (assuming the 4 gospels of the NT to be factual or at least approximately so), it always amazes me how and why people have allowed so much theology to attach itself to 'the word of Christ'. It would appear to me that this has been nothing more than an exercise in the ongoing justification of and for 'jobs for the boys', and a means of instituting the controlling hand of authority.

While I fully understand your position in holding to the belief of the non existence of God, indeed your comments regarding the afterlife as being no more than our mortal remains returning to dust, holds an almost inevitable inescapable truth, at least to my mind, I am still drawn to a belief in the divine purpose of the cosmos. As you stated elsewhere, any true nature of the Divine would by necessity be beyond our comprehension, given our limited knowledge; Socrates was right on this one - that the only true thing a wise man could be sure of, was how little that he actually knew.

In our daily existence, we are constantly bombarded by conflicting messages postulated by our so called religious leaders, many of whom seem to hold to an almost childish view of God, all the while missing a very central issue to the whole argument, namely how would a truly loving God show true love to his creation, for if he were to take an active role in it's daily existence, then surely that would in effect be defacto, a tyranny, no matter how benign the hand of control. It appears to me that true love, would allow us our failings as we seek to attain understanding and enlightenment, while we tread the stony paths to our reconnection to our humanity and our souls. Anything else would be to lead a child by the hand, to a place where the soul would still be that of a child, having learned little or nothing. My faith leads me to believe that our purpose here is to find ourselves, to become one with our humanity and our divine nature, even though, at the end we may indeed simply return to dust.

The core message of both the OT and the NT is one of Divine blessings addressed to us as individuals...'here is a pathway to your salvation, seek it and follow it, and you shall attain that goal which you seek'. For such a simple message, what need is there of bishops and prelates, of cannons and holy men, none that I see!

There, that's my take on things, of course it could all be bunk, only death will tell. You on the other hand have your beliefs, which is as it should be. Learning true tolerance is part of the path to enlightenment, and it's godchild is respect.

2005-02-28T07:04:00.000+10:00

IS THERE ANY TRUE CHRISTIANITY LEFT IN CHRISTENDOM?

If there are any believers in the Bible among those who have been reading this blog, I would hope that they will be seriously disturbed at my demonstration of the way the churches have misrepresented core Bible teachings. Martin Luther got rid of the centrality of the Pope but he was after all an Augustinian monk and there was an awful lot of Roman doctrine that he did not get rid of. And not much has changed since among alleged Christians.

No doubt, however, the largely pagan teachings of Christendom today are psychologically satisfying to a lot of people and that satisfaction will always be what matters most. The appeal of the churches will not be diminished just because people become aware that the foundations of their faith are not as advertised. People believe what they believe and that it it.

I imagine, however, that somebody will want to ask me at some stage whether there is a church that still relies on the Bible for its teachings. Broadly, the answer to that is that the smaller sects do take the Bible more seriously and some of them do take note of at least parts of what they read there. I am no expert on fundamentalist sects but the best-known such sects are Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses. But the SDAs are rather illogical about how you determine what the 7th. day is and Jehovah's Witnesses try to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to the conflicting OT and NT versions of the afterlife.

If I were religious myself, I think I would become a Jew. Everything about Christendom would then fall into place: Christendom makes perfect sense as the Devil's version of Judaism: A false and deeply offensive view of God, a false hope for the afterlife, a false Messiah who achieved nothing that the real Messiah would have achieved, high holy days (Christmas and Easter) that are undisputably pagan in origin, symbolism and timing and, to top it all, a pre-eminent symbol of the faith (the cross) that is borrowed directly from the fertility religions that the prophets all struggled against. Given such a view of Christendom, it is no wonder that it tried so hard for so long to exterminate the real people of God!

Still, it seems a pity that the original Christianity was one of the many ancient religions to die out. It was in its day a faith of great power. By all accounts, the early Christians even followed Christ's teaching: "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also" (Matthew 5:39). And they survived and flourished in a harsh world for hundreds of years despite following that "impractical" teaching. In the end it was not external attack that destroyed the original Christianity but the corruption from within that came with respectability and power. Constantine has a lot to answer for.

2005-02-27T07:59:00.000+10:00

1 Corinthians 15

I have just noticed a few interesting points about 1 Corinthians 15. From verse 12 we see that Paul actually wrote his diatribe about the spiritual nature of the resurrectuion IN RESPONSE TO other early Christians who DENIED the resurrection. In other words, the pagan immortal soul doctrine was influential in the early church more or less from the word go. And if you are an immortal soul you don't need resurrection. So the fact that both Paul and John stressed the centrality of the resurrection shows that there was a fight between the Hebrew and pagan views from the beginning -- with the NT writers clinging to a version of the Hebrew view. In both the OT and the NT, the view is that eternal life is ACQUIRED, not inherent. It is attained through resurrection from death at the end of days. You are not immortal from the beginning.

That view is even expressed in what is probably the favourite evangelical scripture -- John 3: 16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." This scripture could hardly be clearer in saying that you have to DO something (i.e. believe) in order to get eternal life. Otherwise you just perish. Or as it says in 1 Corinthians 15: 53 "this mortal nature must put on immortality". So how anybody claiming to be a Christian can believe we are born with an immortal soul is quite beyond me. It flies in the face of all scripture.

And 1 Corinthians 15:28 is also completely fatal to the Trinity doctrine. Paul says that after the resurrection, "When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to everyone". If the Son is subjected to the Father, how can the Father and the Son be equal -- as the Trinity doctrine requires?

Verses 44 and 50 however mark the departure of Christianity from Judaism: "It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body" .... "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God". The resurrection is an entirely spiritual one.

Well, maybe my mission here is complete now. I think I have shown beyond reasonable doubt that the teachings of the Bible are radically different from (and in my view a lot simpler and more sensible than) the largely-pagan teachings that mostly pass for Christianity these days. Let him who will, hear.

OK FOR COLOURED ANGLICANS TO BE "HOMOPHOBIC"

The man who dreams of “a world without gays”, Archbishop Vercoe, is representing New Zealand at an Anglican Church crisis meeting in Ireland to determine the fate of gay clergy.

The meeting has ended in division, with the Episcopal Church in America and the Anglican Church of Canada being voluntarily thrown out of the Anglican Consultative Council until 2008 until they reconsider their decision to accept openly gay clergy.

New Zealand’s Anglican Church will fall into line. Bishop of Auckland John Paterson says the church welcomes homosexuals, but does not permit them to hold leadership roles, such as that of bishop.

Archbishop Vercoe, the leader of the Anglican Church in New Zealand, caused a storm last year when he told the Herald he dreamed of a new moral uprising that would rid the world of gays. The Maori bishop’s comments were defended as culturally sound by liberal Pakeha church leaders, despite condemnation from prominent figures within Maoridom.

Following a public outcry, Vercoe backtracked slightly on the comments and claimed he never dreamed of a world without gays. His semi-retraction was made in a written statement released through the Anglican National Office. Vercoe has not given any interviews to the media since.

Source

2005-02-26T02:28:00.000+10:00

THE CROSS

Did Christ die on a cross? It seems unlikely. The two words used in the Greek NT to refer to the cross are "stauros" and "xylon". "Xylon" simply means "wood" and "stauros" simply means "stake". Because of Christian convictions about the cross, however, all Lexicons do give "cross" as one of the meanings of "stauros". But in classical (pre-Christian) Greek, "stauros" seems always to have meant simply "stake". So Christ probably died with his hands pinned ABOVE his head. Why would the Romans go to the trouble of adding a crossbar just for the purpose of executing a criminal when a stake with no crossbar would do the job equally well?

So why do Christians venerate the cross? Simple. It is another of the many compromises the early church made with paganism. The cross is probably the most ubiquitous religious symbol there is. It long predates Christianity and is found all over -- from ancient Egypt, through Babylon to India. Even the pagan Norsemen used it.

{And the Indians particularly liked (and like to this day) their hooked cross -- the Swastika. Though the Indian swastika and the Nazi symbol are actually mirror-images of one-another. See here. So strictly speaking the Nazi symbol is NOT a Swastika -- and the Nazis didn't call it one either. They called it simply a "Hakenkreuz" (hooked cross)}.

Why was the cross so popular? Because many ancient religions -- such as the worship of Baal of Peor that the Hebrew prophets battled so valiantly -- were what are politely called "fertility" religions: Sex worship in plain terms. And the cross is a stylized picture of sexual intercourse. So it is sad and ironic that the fertility religions that the Bible so fiercely opposes have injected one of their great symbols into the centre of Christian practice.

The earliest symbol of Christianity -- as found in the Roman catacombs etc -- was of course a fish-shape rather than a cross. And the fish shape was simply a slightly disguised "Chi" -- the first letter of the name "Christ" in Greek -- shaped very much like a capital X in our alphabet. And I won't even try to say how it is pronounced.

The soul is mortal; Christ didn't die on the cross; the Nazis didn't use a swastika -- where will it all end? Am I the craziest man on the internet? If you think so, just check up for yourself on anything I say. But don't rely on dictionaries and encyclopaedias and summaries. They will just give you the conventional story. You have to get a lot closer to original sources than that. Most dictionaries even tell you that conservatives support the status quo -- and few claims could be more laughable than that. Every conservative I know would like to see a HEAP of things changed!

STILL SOME LOYALTY TO THE SCRIPTURES AMONG ANGLICANS

The Anglican Church stood on the brink of schism last night after the US and Canadian Churches were told to “voluntarily withdraw” from the Communion’s central governing body in a bitter row over homosexuality. The two Churches were told by leaders of the worldwide Church to “consider their place in the Anglican Communion” before the next Lambeth Conference in 2008. The concluding statement of the week-long Primates’ meeting in Armagh represents a conservative success in forcing the liberals in North America to consider whether their stance over gays is compatible with membership of the Anglican Communion.

The United States Church is effectively facing an agreed withdrawal from the Communion over its consecration of the openly gay bishop Gene Robinson to the New Hampshire Diocese if it does not fall in with the demands of the Windsor Report, which called for statements of regret over gay consecrations and same-sex blessings and a moratorium on similar actions. The Canadian Church is facing similar conditions over its authorisation of same-sex blessings in 2003. The communiqué also commits the Communion to “pastoral support and care of homosexual people” and acknowledges that Canada and the US acted within their constitutions. But it is nevertheless expected to precipitate further crises in the liberal churches of the West, including the Church of England. Thousands of lesbian and gay Christians and their supporters are threatening to leave if the US and Canada Churches are sidelined.

The Primates’ response to the crisis is set out in a statement that was due to be published today but was hurriedly released last night after leaks from the closed meeting indicating that the liberals were to be penalised. Conservatives, mainly from the “Global South” churches in Africa and Asia, had wanted the suspension and then expulsion of the Episcopal Church of the US and the Anglican Church of Canada if they failed to repent. But canon lawyers, who have been heavily involved in the Primates’ meeting at the Dromantine Roman Catholic retreat centre, advised that there was no legal process by which any of the 38 provinces can be suspended from the 77-million strong Communion. They were instead asked to voluntarily withdraw for at least three years.

The US Church, with more than two million members, is one of the smallest but is also the wealthiest, financing communications systems in many of the provinces that object most to its liberalism. At least one African province has refused to accept any more cash.

Thirty-five of the Anglican Communion’s 38 Primates have been closeted in guarded quarters at the retreat centre. The bulk of the work towards the end of the meeting was done by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canturbury, Dr Peter Akinola, the Primate of Nigeria, and Bishop Frank Griswold, the US Primate, in consultation with John Rees, the Church of England canon lawyer. They were said to be exhausted when they emerged with the completed draft, early yesterday evening.

Although the communiqué represents a victory for the conservatives, a senior source said it was not correct to speak in terms of suspension or of measures being taken against the US Church. The correct language, he said, was “withdrawal”. He continued: “The churches of the US and Canada have got to follow their own constitutional processes. The whole thing has to be done properly. They have to go and consider their position. They are the ones who have to tell us what they want.” The two Churches, which sparked the crisis with the consecration of a practising gay bishop and the authorisation of same-sex blessings, have until the 2008 Lambeth Conference to meet the demands of the Windsor Report, which called on them to regret their actions, impose a moratorium on future similar actions and come up with theological justifications for what they have done.

Source

2005-02-25T07:47:00.000+10:00

Revelations 20

A reader has asked me to comment on this text (Verses 12-15):

"Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire".

One has to be cautious about taking texts from Revelations literally but what this text says does in fact accord well with Paul's account of the Day of Judgement as given in Romans 2 and discussed by me two days ago. The imagery used is vivid ("lake of fire") but the writer makes sure we do not misinterpret it by himself giving the interpretation of it ("this is the second death").

So once again we see a resurrection of both the goodies and baddies with the baddies being consigned to a "second death" immediately after being judged. There is of course no mention of eternal torment for the baddies -- only death -- as in the whole of the rest of the OT and NT. And note that we again find no mention of immortal souls. If everybody was still alive they would not need resurrecting. The idea of resurrecting people only to kill them again (the second death) seems bizarre to me but that is what the book says happens to the baddies, like it or not.

The text "Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire" may seem puzzling at first but once we move beyond the vivid imagery and remember what the word "hades" refers to in the NT (and the Septuagint) it is perfectly straightforward. It is saying that from then on there will be no more dying -- hence no more graves (hades) and no more death.

2005-02-24T06:58:00.000+10:00

SPIRIT

I suppose I should say a bit more about the Bible's use of the word "spirit" ("ruach" in Hebrew and "pneuma" in Greek}. The usage of "soul" ("nephesh", "psyche") is confusing enough but it can be more or less translated as something like "this particular individual" but our translation job is quite a bit harder with "spirit". As I have already pointed out, its basic meaning is "breath" but a whole host of figurative usages follow on from there. In Luke 4 we find Jesus with the power of God's spirit on him and that he then drove out the spirit of a demon. So both God and demons can HAVE spirits as well as BEING spirit entities! I guess "spirit" equates to "influence" in those cases.

So various mentions of people as having a spirit cannot be taken as showing the existence of an immortal soul. There will always be various interpretations possible. As I mentioned earlier, "life" is often a good translation.

Ecclesiastes 3:21 is sometimes taken as implying that man has a spirit that goes "upward" on death whereas beasts have a spirit that goes downwards on death but Solomon is actually ridiculing that belief if you look at the context. (And even in the KJ, the verse does end with a question mark!). Most translations do however muddle the meaning of the context rather badly by rendering the word "ruach" as "breath" in verse 19 (where both men and beasts are said to have the SAME "ruach") and rendering "ruach" as "spirit" in verse 21. Which at least shows that "ruach" does give translators a lot of problems, I guess. Oddly enough, the Douay, of all translations, makes it clearest that v. 21 is a mocking question. The Douay (the original Catholic translation) is normally known for its lack of clarity. It reads: "Who knoweth if the spirit of the children of Adam ascend upward, and if the spirit of the beasts descend downwards?" As the Douay is primarily a translation of the Vulgate, I guess Jerome must have expressed it clearly.

Well, I think that wraps up what I want to say until I get more emails arguing with me so if I post nothing tomorrow, blame yourself for not challenging me more! I am sure most of my readers think I have got a awful lot wrong but I am still waiting for someone to show me where! I do have one persistent correspondent who thinks that his personal experience with God is authoritative but my interest is in what the Bible says, I am afraid.

2005-02-23T04:04:00.000+10:00

ROMANS 1 & 2

Chapters 1 and 2 of Romans are interesting, being mainly a condemnation of various sorts of sin. Both male and female homosexuality are condemned as earning death but it specifically says that we are not to make that judgement. Only God can.

What is of greatest interest, however, concerns the day of judgment. In chapter 2, the wicked are said (v. 5) to be treasuring up for themselves a DAY of judgment. In verse 7 we read that the good guys get everlating life and in verse 8 and 9 we learn that the wicked guys get wrath and fury which will be experienced by them as "tribulation and distress" (RSV).

So it looks as though the evildoers get resurrected too, but only for one day, so God can tell them what he thinks of them. That is what it says, anyway, and who am I to argue with what it says? Others can interpret it away if they like but my interest is in what it actually says.

Note that it is only the good guys who are said to get anything everlasting. All the evildoers get is a day, after which they "perish" (v. 12). I suppose that makes some sort of sense. God is often presented in the Bible as someone with fairly human emotions (he seems to have a great need for praise) so I suppose he can feel a need to blow off steam too.

Note that the tribulation is said to be experienced by the wicked "soul" in the KJ but by the wicked "human being" in the RSV. That reflects what I have already said about the Greek word "psyche" in my post of 20th. Translating it as "soul" is misleading.

Moral Equivalency: The Religious Left Gets It Wrong

“Failure makes you reassess.” So says Jim Wallis, founder and editor of Sojourners magazine, and he ought to know. A number of Democratic Party members are looking to Wallis right now to help with their own political reassessment. Wallis is what the New York Times calls a “leader of [the] religious left,” and as he says, “The Democratic Party has increasingly had a problem as being perceived as secular fundamentalists.”

So now Wallis is much in demand among Democratic leaders who want to learn “to be much more forceful and clear in communicating their faith and values to the electorate.” Wallis’s favorite argument, as reported in the Times and elsewhere, is that the Bible makes more than three thousand references to poverty—far more than abortion or homosexuality—and yet religious conservatives, in his opinion, are obsessed with the abortion issue. So, says Wallis, the religious left is more in tune with the Bible than are conservatives.

This argument was popular during the presidential campaign, repeated even by some conservatives. You may remember my commentary on historian and author Mark Noll. I admire Noll greatly, but I was disappointed by his decision not to vote because he thought neither party was right about the issues that concerned him most, including poverty. It is a perfectionist attitude that fails to take into account the fallen world we live in. Even the magazine to which I’ve been a contributing editor for more than twenty years wrote an editorial suggesting that Christian voters might have to choose between the sanctity of life and social justice.

The implications of this argument are clear: that is, all moral issues are equivalent. So, pick and choose among them; as long as you get seven or eight right answers, you’re okay.

Frankly, I find that thinking muddled, at best. We oppose abortion because we respect the fact that all humans are made in the image of God. How can you be genuinely sympathetic to the poor and the downtrodden if you don’t respect their most fundamental right? I would go so far as to say that unless you’re consistently pro-life, you’re not going to be a reliable defender of the poor.

Why do you suppose that in this ministry we have been going into the prisons for the past three decades? Why do we help people dying of AIDS? Why do we—and so many other Christians—visit the most dangerous places in America? Because the people there are our brothers and sisters, created, like us, in the image of God.

Why help the poor if we don’t believe all lives are equal in God’s sight? If you support ending the life of a child because it will be born into poverty, how can you logically call yourself an advocate for the poor?

The religious left is trying to tell us that you can take away the reason for doing something and still expect people to do it. Nobody’s going to win the allegiance of serious evangelical or Catholic voters by offering handouts to the poor with one hand while taking away their human dignity with the other. Sorry, Jim Wallis, all issues are not morally equivalent. The first one, the right to life, is non-negotiable. It undergirds all others: Take it away, and the whole house of cards collapses.

Source

2005-02-22T07:26:00.000+10:00

THE HOLY GHOST

I tend to assume a fairly high level of exegetical knowledge among readers of this blog but I guess I go too far at times. The following email exchange with a valued reader gave me a bit of a laugh. The reader asked me was I going to say anything about the Holy Ghost and I replied:

"Not really. If Christ is not God that rather knocks out the holy ghost too. But I might get around to mentioning it as a matter of interest in its own right eventually. Is it coterminous with the paraclete, for instance?"

My reader replied:

"That had me doing a quick Google search. Yes, that and the more general question of what is meant by the term holy ghost. In a sense, Christ was tangible (a fact Thomas took advantage of), but the holy ghost is of a different nature."

To save other readers a Google search, the Paraclete is the "comforter" or "helper" Jesus said he would send in John 14:16 ("Paraclytos" in the Greek).

The only point I want to make today, however, concerns Jesus being tangible at the time of his apparition to doubting Thomas. I think 1 Corinthians 15:50-56 makes it pretty clear that Heaven is a spiritual realm and Jesus was clearly not in heaven at the time of his post-crucifixion apparitions. So I think we have to conclude that the Bible teaching is that Jesus is now a spiritual being but that there was a special effort made in the immediate post-crucifixion era to have him re-inhabit his earthly body for the purpose of encouraging his followers. I don't think there is any warrant for concluding that he is still inhabiting his earthly body now that he is back in Heaven. So I would disagree that the Holy Ghost and Jesus differ in one being spiritual and the other not.

My own personal interpretation of what the Holy Spirit ("Ghost" is an old term -- "pneuma" in Greek) is would simply be that it is a form of divine inspiration or support -- i.e. not a person in any sense but a form of special assistance from God to holy people. But I have no firm views on the matter. Note however that when Jesus died (Luke 23:46), he said that he entrusted his "spirit" ("pneuma") to God. And also note that the literal meaning of "pneuma" is "breath" or "air" (hence our word "pneumatic" for things filled with air) so any interpretaion we put on it beyond "breath" is figurative. But it seems safe to say that "pneuma" is not a person, whether holy or not. "Life" would probably be the most generally useful translation of its figurative uses.

BIBLE CHRISTIANITY UNACCEPTABLE TO THE CoE

"The Anglican Primate has moved to expel from the Australian communion a conservative cleric who plans to act as a flying bishop for parishes opposed to the ordination of women. Peter Carnley declared unacceptable yesterday the consecration of Queensland priest David Chislett as a bishop by a conservative offshoot of the US Episcopal Church. Father Chislett, rector of All Saints Wickham Terrace in central Brisbane, was consecrated by the Traditional Anglican Communion in Rosemount, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday. "It seems that the Reverend David Chislett has left the Anglican Church of Australia to join the TAC," Dr Carnley said in a statement.

Dr Carnley, the liberal who defied canon law more than a decade ago to ordain women as priests, said the Anglican Church was not in communion with the TAC and there was no constitutional provision for licensing someone consecrated by it.

Father Chislett, vice-chairman of the conservative Forward in Faith movement and a vocal critic of the 1992 decision to allow the ordination of women, plans to travel around Australia pastoring to parishes who refuse to accept the ministrations of women priests. Bishop of The Murray Ross Davies has licensed him as a bishop in his diocese. "We need a flying bishop and now we have one," Bishop Davies said.

In a fiery sermon at Father Chislett's consecration, TAC primate John Hepworth said: "Your ministry is partly unknown but it is a ministry to communities that are broken and altars that are cracked."

Dr Carnley said he was disappointed with Father Chislett's move. The soon-to-retire Primate warned conservative Anglicans leaning towards the Catholic Church to take note of Father Chislett's status. "The purported consecration of a bishop without an office within which to function may be little more than shadow boxing," he said.

More here

2005-02-21T08:30:00.000+10:00

Matthew 25:46

"And they will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life" (RSV)

I discussed this scripture on 12th. but I want to revert to it here because I received emails that were skeptical of my comment about verse 41 -- where sinners are consigned to "eternal fire". I pointed out in my usual inconvenient way that it was the FIRE that was eternal, not any sort of suffering by those cast into it. But it is not unreasonable to ask whether being cast into a fire and destroyed is a fair interpretation of "eternal punishment". Doesn't the expression "eternal punishment" suggest something ongoing, something that keeps on happening without letup? Indeed it does -- in English. But the Greek word so translated above is not about that at all. As I have mentioned, the word is the adjectival form of "aion" -- quite a vague word in Greek but which baasically means an "age". So "of an age" would be the most literal translation of "aionion" but the age concerned is not clearly specified -- though in context it could of course be taken to mean all time. Funnily enough, however, there is a near synonym to "eternal" in English that distorts the meaning of the Greek word less -- "everlasting". "Everlasting" does not suggest some ongoing process, just as the Greek "aionion" does not.

So with all that behind us, what is meant by "everlasting punishment"? The text itself really answers that very clearly. The everlasting punishment is contrasted with everlasting life so it is clear that, as in other scriptures, the fate of the sinner is death, not torment. And, as I mentioned before, the Greek word for "punishment" used here had as its original meaning "lopping off" so that makes the point clearer again. But why everlasting death (or lopping off)? Why death for all time? Because it is a death from which there will be no resurrection. Resurrection is only for the good guys. And the life gained at resurrection by the good guys is for all time just as the death of the bad guys is for all time. And in the NT the resurrection is not into a flesh and blood body but into a spirit form. 1 Corinthians 15:50-56 is pretty clear about that. Note that verse 56 again specifies that death, not torment, is the outcome of sin.

I think I have just about covered most of the stuff I wanted to cover now so what I post from now on will I think depend on what emails I get about the issues I have raised. There are a few texts in Revelations which seem to be about hellfire etc but, like the rest of Revelations, they are of course visions with a symbolical meaning so I will not go into any of that unless someone particularly wants me to do so. Interpreting visions is definitely not my strong point, however.

2005-02-20T08:01:00.000+10:00

THE SOUL

The idea of an immortal soul inhabiting each of our earthly bodies is a pagan (mainly Greek) one. Let us look at some occurrences of the word "soul" in the KJ. The Hebrew word usually translated as "soul" is "nephesh" and the Greek is "psyche" but the translators play fast and loose and sometimes translate the same word in different ways.

In Genesis 2:7 we read that at the time of creation "man became a living soul (nephesh)". Note: "BECAME", not "received". So man IS a soul, he does not have one in him. And 1 Corinthians 15:45 quotes that Genesis text approvingly, using "psyche" as a translation of "nephesh". In 1 Peter 3:20 we read that in Noah's day, "eight souls (psyche)were saved" so again souls are persons rather than part of a person. And in Genesis 9:5 we read that souls have blood: "your blood of your lives (nephesh) will I require". And you can hit souls with swords in Joshua 11:11: "and they smote all the souls (nephesh)... with the edge of the sword. And in Genesis 1: 20 (RSV) we read that animals are souls too: "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures (nephesh)". And in Leviticus 24:17,18 we read that souls can be killed: "He that killeth any man (nephesh) shall be put to death". And in Ezekiel 18:4 we read that the souls of sinners will die: "The soul (nephesh) that sinneth, it shall die". Acts 3:23 "every soul (psyche)... shall be destroyed". Ezekiel 22:27: "to shed blood and to destroy souls (nephesh)" ..... And I could go on.

So where is your immortal soul in all that? Whatever the soul is, it sure aint immortal according to both the OT and the NT. It is pesky when you read what the Bible actually says isn't it? The original Jewish and Christian hope is for resurrection. You don't have a bit in you that is immortal anyway. It is truly amazing that almost all allegedly Christian churches preach the Greek doctrine rather than the Biblical one. And it is the pagan element that is mystical and absurd. The Bible is much more down to earth (in more ways than one). I personally think that the Bible is a great book. If only more Christians read it ....

2005-02-19T00:51:00.000+10:00

ISAIAH 9:6

"And his name will be called "Wonderful Counseller, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace"

One of my correspondents thinks the above verse is a trump text for proving the rightness of the Trinity doctrine. He may be grieved to see how little discussion it needs.

These lines (immortalized in one of the great choruses of Handel's "Messiah") are of course a reference to the coming of the Jewish Messiah and (read the context) the restoration of the throne of David in Israel. But is not Jesus the Messiah? Let us take it that he is. So does that not prove that Jesus is a mighty God and the everlasting Father, as the trinitarians say? Not quite. Once again I am going to play that dreadful atheistic trick of mine and look at what the text actually says. The text does not say that he IS the mighty God etc, only that he will be CALLED those names. In South America there are a whole lot of guys running around called Jesus. Does that mean that they ARE Jesus? I think the question answers itself. And "Salvatore" (savior) is a common Christian name among Italians. But I have yet to meet a Salvatore who saved anybody from anything that I know of. And one of my favourite composers is Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (John the Baptist Pergolesi) but I am pretty sure he never baptised anyone.

And Isaiah 9:6 was good prophecy, wasn't it? Because Trinitarians DO call Jesus those names, making Isaiah 9:6 probably the most accurate prophecy in the Bible -- but based on a knowledge that people are often fulsome in the praises and names they give to people they love or greatly respect (particularly among Mediterranean populations).

Wasn't that an easy one?

CoE SAYS "MANANA"

"At the end of three hours of debate in the church's general synod - essentially its parliament - meeting in London on Wednesday, members accepted the advice of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, that it discuss the matter further at its next meeting in July, with a decision on whether women priests are fit to be bishops to be made perhaps some time next year. If the decision is finally taken then, it will still take several years for the first female bishops to be appointed.

The vote will be a mere 31 years since the Church of England decided there were no fundamental objections to the ordination of women to the priesthood, 20 years since the US Episcopal church elected its first female bishop and 12 years since the first ordinations of women took place in the Church of England.

Wednesday's synod heard calls from male representatives that the church was in danger of moving too swiftly.... The synod was debating a report published last November following several years of deliberation by a church committee - with a majority male membership. It offered a range of alternatives, from agreeing to women's consecration as bishops to rejecting it, but did not come down on one side or the other.

One representative, Gerry O'Brien of Kent, south-east of London, said many ordained women did not believe central tenets of the faith. He suggested a survey had shown that only a third of women priests believed in the virgin birth of Christ.

Another, the Reverend David Banting of Essex, east of London, who chairs the conservative evangelical pressure group Reform, demanded that women's groups campaigning for change be called off, comparing one to the Irish Republican Army and another to the Irish republican political party Sinn Fein.....

Dr Williams told the synod he had set up yet another working group to evaluate the options proposed in the previous report, to report back to the next synod."

More here

2005-02-18T07:57:00.000+10:00

THE AFTERLIFE

I am not going to say much of an exegetical character today but I think I do by now owe readers a brief statement about what I find in the Bible about the afterlife. In the course of debunking the Hellfire doctrine I have pointed out a fair bit of scripture that could be held to deny all possibility of an afterlife as that is usually conceived. So what is going on? ALL religions (excepting Leftism) believe in some sort of afterlife so what is the Bible version?

I have avoided mentioning the topic so far because it seems to me that the Bible is not entirely consistent about it. The Bible IS consistent about the Trinity and Hellfire doctrines because they are simply not there. They were always pagan doctrines rather than Hebrew ones. But the acccount of the afterlife seems more wobbly.

The MAIN theme as I see it however, clearly focuses on resurrection. In the OT the idea seems to be that you die and go into the grave and cease to be entirely at that stage. It is only divine power at the time of the coming of the Messiah that enables good guys (only) to be recreated for physical life on an earth restored to Edenic conditions.

Jesus and his followers seem to have modified the story a bit, however. For them there will still be a resurrection at some time in the future (at the second coming, presumably) but it will not be a resurrection into physical bodies but as spirits -- though again the resurrection is for the good guys only. The baddies stay in everlasting death. So Heaven is due for an almighty population explosion some time, in other words.

It will be noted that this explanation calls into question the idea that we all have in us already a spirit part called a soul. We are RECREATED as spirits, we are not spirits already. There are of course many scriptures mentioning a "soul" but the Greek and Hebrew words concerned -- "nephesh" and "psyche" -- could equally well be translated in other ways -- as "breath" or "life" for instance -- and indeed they sometimes are.

But more of that huge topic at some later date.

AN APOSTATE CHURCH

"As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the church. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says.... For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church" -- I Corinthians, 14: 34,35

"The Church of England took the first step at the General Synod meeting in Westminster yesterday towards the consecration of women bishops. The first are now expected to be consecrated before the end of the decade, opening the way for a woman Archbishop of Canterbury within a generation. The process to remove the legal obstacles preventing the ordination of women to the episcopate is expected to begin in earnest at the next synod meeting in York in July.

The Bishop of Rochester, the Right Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, who chaired the working party that examined the theology of women bishops, said that the evidence from the Bible and the Church Fathers indicated clearly that women exercised leadership in the early Church. “No one reading the history of the Church can fail to be impressed with the apostolate exercised by faithful women down the centuries,” he said. Regarding the timing of the debate, he said: “There are those who feel that, as a matter of justice, women priests should now be eligible for episcopal appointments and the Church’s credibility is being damaged, both among her own members and in the world, because of the bar on women being bishops. “There are others, however, who argue that now is not the right time. The Church is facing a number of serious issues which threaten to divide it. Is this really the time to introduce another cause of division?”

Christina Rees, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, the chairman of Watch, the successor to the Movement for the Ordination of Women which has campaigned for women bishops, said: “Contrary to what some say, by having women and men ministering together at all levels we will not be conforming to the world, but we will be most truly counter-cultural, showing what authentic equality is in a way that the world does not.” The first women priests were ordained in 1994, two years after the synod voted to ordain them but 19 years after it agreed, optimistically, that there were “no fundamental objections to the ordination of women to priesthood”. The intervening period was spent debating the many fundamental objections that subsequently emerged.

The move towards women bishops is expected to take far less time because most of the fundamental objectors have now left the synod, if not the Church. More than 720 priests have resigned, with 424 qualifying for compensation that cost the Church £26 million, the synod was told.

Their loss has been more than outweighed by the ordination of several thousand women, of whom more than 1,200 are now in stipendiary posts. In addition, 1,000 parishes, less than one tenth of the total, have passed a resolution stating that they will not accept a woman priest. Any decision to ordain women bishops will have to incorporate a means of enabling such parishes to remain within the Church".

Source

2005-02-17T07:04:00.000+10:00

Luke 16: 22-25

"The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy upon me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame" (RSV)

I have been looking forward to writing a comment on this old chestnut. I am sure most of my readers will be saying something like: "There you are! An explicit picture of torment in Hell from the lips of the saviour himself! What more proof do you need for the reality of Hellfire? How is Dr. Ray going to wriggle out of that one?

Well, I am not going to wriggle out of anything. I am just going to do my usual trick of casting off the blinkers of preconception and looking closely at what the text actually says. And when you do that it is crystal clear that the text will not do the job it is usually made to do. It is in fact probably the text that has given most comfort to those who want to import pagan ideas of divine torment into Christianity -- but it in fact mocks those ideas. Let me point out the obvious:

Do Christians believe that Heaven is a place where there are physical bodies with bosoms -- physical bodies that even lean on one-another for support and fellowship? No? Quite to the contrary, Christians believe that to be the OPPOSITE of the truth. They believe that Heaven is in fact a spirit realm. So if we believe the "Abraham's bosom" bit of the parable to be the opposite of the truth, why don't we believe the "torment in Hades" bit to be the opposite of the truth too? You can't have it both ways (unless you are a Leftist, of course). You cannot honestly pick out one part of the story and say that is a colourful parable and then pick out another part of the story and say that part is literally true. It is at least a pretty desperate case of special pleading if you do.

The only really interesting question (though not a crucial question) in the whole matter is WHY Jesus chose that particular parable. And I don't think that is far to seek either. With Roman soldiers all about the place and Greek culture so pervasive that the NT was actually written in Greek, there can be no doubt that the full range of pagan ideas was well-known in the Israel of Jesus's day. And Jesus was actually using such ideas to mock them. Having Father Abraham physically up there in heaven ready for people to lean on was obviously not literally true so it was equally not true that Hades was a place of suffering. Jesus was in other words having a gentle dig at the idea of Hades as a place of suffering.

My account of Jesus's motives just given is my own and people can take it or leave it without doing any harm to anything or anyone but the one thing you cannot get around is that the parable is meant NOT to be literally true. Is Heaven a place where you can dip the end of your finger in water and cool somebody's tongue"? Wouldn't the fires of Hell evaporate the water long before it got to somebody's tongue, anyway? So such a physical and hence non-literal account of Heaven in the story strongly implies that Hades as a place of torment is not literally true either. So the text is if anything an ANTI-Hellfire scripture rather than one that supports Hellfire.

Howzat?