BIRTH OF CHRISTIANITY CONTINUES...

Continuing my exploration of early Christianity, the hot topic in religious academia today, I may have been a little too eager to accept the reason for the split between Pauline Christianity and Jewish Christianity (Jesus and his Apostles) or maybe not.

The initial indication of why the two Christianities split pointed to the insistence by the Jewish Church that people wanting to join the Jesus or shall I say, the Jesus the Christ movement needed to first become Jewish in all aspects including circumcision; something Paul’s Gentiles just were not going to do.

This turns out to be maybe only partially true. After the death of Jesus, his followers were spreading throughout Israel (as instructed), trying to turn their fellow Jews into Jewish Christians by getting them to buy into Jesus being the Messiah and about to bring into being the new Kingdom – prepare!

The question of gentiles joining the movement did not come up at first because the Apostles were not addressing non-Jews. St. Paul, the non-Apostle, brought up the question of gentiles joining the movement to the Jerusalem Church; the group Paul considered as the official Jesus Apostle group.

A quick reminder that the word “Christianity” does not mean the Christianity of today but a belief that Jesus was the Messiah and about to come back – that’s all!

In listening to a lecture by James Tabor, professor of Christian Origins and Ancient Judaism at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, I was reminded that yes, the Jerusalem group insisted on the gentiles becoming Jewish but only at the beginning. Actually, some in the group never relented from that stance but were eventually overridden by James, the leader of the group according to the account in the New Testament Book of ACTS by Luke.

The justification in ACTS for allowing Gentiles to join the Christian movement without becoming Jews first was the NOAHIDE LAWS or sometimes called the SEVEN LAWS OF NOAH.

I first became aware of these laws when a friend pointed out to me that the U.S. Congress has officially recognized these laws as “…the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization…”

I wondered how come I never heard of them. Well I guess there are many important facts about our world’s history that I am totally ignorant of and that happens to be one of them.

Anyway, these laws are found in the Jewish Talmud in the story about Noah. We all know the story and we agree that according to the story we are all Noah’s children or better yet, the children of Noah refers to all of mankind since all others were destroyed by God in the flood; only Noah, his family and the animals survived and repopulated the earth.

According to this story, God then gave Noah a list of seven moral imperatives which applied to all of mankind (the Jews later had their own set of laws from God). According to Judaism, non-Jews that abide by these moral precepts are held to be “Righteous Gentiles”, right with God and afforded salvation after death or at least a good place in the afterlife.

The laws basically forbid:

Idolatry
Murder
Theft
Adultery
Blasphemy
Cruelty to animals
The last one is a requirement to set up a form of government that will police adherents to keep the above laws.

The way ACTS 15 tells it, the Council in Jerusalem (James the Just) the leader of Jewish Christianity, issued a directive that if gentiles follow the Noahide Laws, they can join the Jewish Christian movement without having to become Jews and observing all Jewish laws.

We know that the purpose of ACTS was to give Paul legitimization to convert people to Christianity as a “true” apostle of Jesus even though he never met Jesus (just in his dreams). Luke had to connect Paul to Jesus through the Apostles or make Paul appear as an Apostle appointed by Jesus himself; the new, risen Jesus and not the old Jesus. Luke’s purpose is quite clear and therefore problematic from a historical standpoint; he probably made some things up to fit his end purpose.

Even though there was a documented way to accept Gentiles into the movement without having them become Jews (Apostolic Decree) I feel if it did happen it was under duress. Paul was bribing the Jerusalem Council with money, lots of money. Since Jesus told his followers to sell everything for the Kingdom is at hand, many were probably poor and in need; remember one name for the group was the Ebionites (the poor).

I think the split between the two Christianities still had something to do with being Jewish but also about the divinity of Jesus, etc.

This concentration on the “true” birth of Christianity is absolutely fascinating to me but it is hard to keep up with all the material being published on the subject; I will try.

CHRISTIANITY: WHAT IF...

After having shown that today’s Christianity, the Christianity that survived the “Christianity wars” between Pauline Christianity (Paul) and Jewish Christianity (apostles of Jesus), I am intrigued by the question what if Pauline/Roman Christianity lost and the Christianity of the apostles of Jesus won.

My favorite writer and professor of religion Bart D. Ehrman, chair of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, stimulates that kind of thinking in his book LOST CHRISTIANITIES; The Battles for Scripture and Faiths We Never Knew (2003).

We all know that Christianity eventually developed into the dominant religious, political, economic, social and cultural institution of the West. Historians will tell you that Christianity formed and forms the basis for Western Civilization as we know it to this very day. So if things didn’t work out the way they did, we would have a different world right now but how different.

Jewish Christianity, the one headed by James, the brother of Jesus and Peter and the other apostles who followed Jesus during his ministry, maintained that since they knew Jesus personally and were privy to his teachings, only they knew what Jesus wanted to happen after his death.

This group called the Ebionites (poor ones) or Nazarenes (from Nazareth) strictly maintained their Jewishness just like Jesus did and followed all the Jewish religious laws just like Jesus did. In fact, to join the group you had to become a Jew, circumcision and all.

They believed that Jesus was a human but he was also picked by God to be the long awaited Messiah that would free Israel from its oppressors and bring peace and justice to the whole world. They believed that this would happen rather quickly because Jesus told them it would, so they waited.

It is important to understand that they were observant Jews and because they believed Jesus was “the” Messiah, they were a “sect” within Judaism. Since in Judaism, Jews have always and continue to wait for a Messiah, the Jewish Christians were not in opposition to formal Judaism because of their belief. Jews who did not share the Christians belief basically gave them the benefit of a doubt; if Jesus comes back – you were right, if he does not – you were deluded.

St. Paul, according to his own writings and the Book of Acts in the New Testament wanted to be part of this group (The Jerusalem Church) even though he never met Jesus.
He brought them money and hung out with them but from the accounts we have, the relationship was not an amicable one.

The apostles stuck to their story; got to be a Jew and observe all things Jewish.

St. Paul was ministering to the gentiles (non Jews) and they were not about to become Jews, especially the men who would have to submit to circumcision. Paul also preached that Jesus was the Messiah and was coming back soon and for everyone to prepare but he just could not push through the idea that everyone needs to become a Jew to be right with Jesus and on this issue the two camps split.

As we all know Paul went on to establish his version of Christianity and the rest is history. But could things have turned out differently?

The Apostle group in Jerusalem was marginalized when in fact Jesus did not appear; they could not adapt or adjust their beliefs to somehow deal with a non-appearing Jesus. For this reason they vanished from the scene.

Paul also preached about the coming of Jesus and the Kingdom of God but he or his converts were able to adjust and change from the beginning apocalyptical stance to something longer lasting; they moved Jesus’ coming to way into the future without providing a date but talking about “signs” that will signal His coming.

Looking at both Christianities at this early stage of their development, I feel the Jewish Christianity, the one directly linked to Jesus, did not stand a chance of surviving given that they could not grow since they could not get gentiles to convert to Judaism and because they could not even talk their fellow Jews into joining.

Paul’s Christianity would have also fizzled out if it was not for the Roman Emperor Constantine.

Some may argue that this was all God’s plan anyway and they may be right but which God, not the God of Jesus, He vanished with the apostles.

STILL CONFUSED ABOUT THE WAR ON TERROR AND IRAQ?

Friday, August 10, 2007

To: Canton Observer
Re: “War on Terror is real”, Letter to the Editor, August 9.

In reading the letter “War on Terror is real”, August 9, I was disappointed to see that the confusion about the War on terror, Iraq and al-Qaeda still persist. The misinformation and outright lies spread by our president and vice president about those issues persist even though facts have exposed them for what they are; untruths.

After 9/11 our president had an opportunity and a duty to eliminate the Taliban and al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and in so doing crush an international terror organization that has been a threat to us as well as the world. Our president chose to ignore the opportunity and to move our resources to invading Iraq which had no connection with al-Qaeda or the Taliban. For this monumental blunder, history as well as generations of Americans will never and should never forgive him.

The reality in Iraq is that a civil war is being waged between the Shia and the Sunni factions of Islam. Al-Qaeda, while present due to our president’s blunder, represent a tiny part of the insurgency; they are opposed by Iraqis and do not pose a danger of ever forming a government in Iraq.

The only hope in Iraq is to divide the country along ethnic lines with an agreement to share oil revenues on a per capita basis. Our troops should remain only in a capacity to prevent foreign powers from entering the region and not as cannon fodder in a civil war.

President Bush and the Republicans have shown us that they are incapable of providing security for our nation; in fact they are the ones responsible for putting us in danger. Allowing them to continue to damage this country and the people in it is plainly irresponsible.

CATHOLICISM THEN AND NOW

I must admit that my knowledge of Catholicism is old; about 60 years old or so. I have not kept up with all the “new” goings on in Catholicism so I probably do not speak from “current” knowledge but there is something to be said about then and now.

My family or shall I say my mother was a staunch Polish Catholic that survived Siberia, the Middle east and all sorts of hell in the middle and her savior was the Virgin Mother and she was going to pay her back by raising her children “right” in the faith.

I was an alter boy, saw the priest drunk on many occasions before Mass but hey, they represent Jesus so it must be OK.

I was taught that eating meat on Friday would result in my going to hell and if children died before they were baptized, they also went to hell. This was drummed into me by “adults” so I had to believe them.

Recently I was appalled to learn that eating meat on Friday is allowed and baptism is just an initiation party into the Catholic community; you will not go to hell if you die before you’re baptized, you won’t even go to purgatory because the Church big-wigs have decided there is no such thing as purgatory.

Imagine after hundreds if not thousands of years they decided that maybe they were wrong about their sacred pronouncements. Maybe they did not hear correctly what God was saying to them?

Having been raised a Catholic and knowing full well the fear, awe and terror instilled in me by priests, nuns, bishops, cardinals and my mother if I dared to stray, I might say that I am slightly pissed to learn they were all full of ignorance?

Can’t blame my mother, she never really knew all the theological nonsense that the Church was grappling with, her heart is pure and she blames all the problems in the Church (pedophiles) on “man” and sinful humanness; she prefers to speak to Mary.

When I hear that the Church has now adopted the “historical-critical method” of interpreting the Bible (John Paul II) I am amazed at its openness and willingness to even discuss matters of faith with the unwashed. Pope Benedict XVI and his return to the past, reminds me how quickly the Church can turn back and again shut the door, demanding blind obedience.

I will learn about the new Catholicism as I should but I better hurry up before we return to the old Catholicism and again have to eat fish on Fridays; which I do to this very day.

MODERN JEWISH PROPHET - Goodbye!

Let me talk about someone who is Jewish for a change.

I think it is important to mark the passing of Rabbi Sherwin Theodore Wine. He was killed recently in Morocco in a car accident, he was 79. He was from Detroit and was rabbi at the Birmingham Temple, in a suburb of Detroit.

I knew of him but didn’t really know a lot about him. What fascinated me about him was that he was a Jewish Rabbi and ran a Jewish Temple and yet he was an atheist; a Jewish atheist to be exact to distinguish him from lets say a Christian atheist.

You don’t see too many Christian atheists running a church or having a congregation to take care of; this was different.

I have mentioned on many occasions that it seems to me that people like the “idea” of religion; being in a community of like minded people with the same belief system. Rabbi Wine also saw that. He realized that half the Jews in the United States considered themselves “secular” although definitely Jewish and that these people felt alone because they did not have an organization of like minded people to join.

He thought, why not celebrate Jewishness but without a God. He emphasized secular Jewish culture and Jewish history rather than a belief in the Jewish God as sources of Jewish identity.

He eventually called his movement “Humanistic Judaism” and became part of the larger secular humanistic movement in the U.S. and around the world.

His standard answer about his Godless religion, so to speak, was “since it was not possible empirically to prove or disprove the existence of God, the concept of God was meaningless”. He referred to this stance as “ignosticism” instead of atheism.

He held services and observed all the Jewish holidays but took God out of all that.

He composed new poems and passages for his services:

Where is my light? My light is in me.
Where is my hope? My hope is in me.
Where is my strength? My strength is in me – and in you.

Or how about a prayer for Shabbat:

How wonderful is the light of the world.
How radiant are the candles of peace.
How beautiful are the lights of Shabbat.

He used Jewish history as proof for the lack of God. Look what the Jews have endured and only people can solve human problems of survival because there sure was no supernatural force helping his “chosen” people out.

Obviously I have only touched on what this man stood for and what he taught but I sure do respect his intellect and power of reason and above all his courage to stand up for what he believed and to take his message to the people. Yeah!

CHRISTIAN THREAD KEEPS GOING?

This Christianity thread will just not leave me alone…

At the office cooler, the discussion turned to religion, Christianity that is. It started with a discussion of the Republican presidential candidates’ debate Sunday morning, specifically about Mitt Romney and his Mormon faith.

A remark was made that under no circumstances would Evangelicals vote for a Mormon. The Evangelicals consider the Mormons as a “cult” close to something Satanic. I don’t really know much about Mormonism but the little I do know shows the religion has some pretty big differences with mainline Christianity.

The bigger question raised at the cooler was how does anyone really know what is the “correct” or “true” form of Christianity which prompted someone else to bring up the recent remarks of Pope Benedict which proclaimed that Catholic Christianity is the only true Christianity which if you remember is what got me started on my religious blogs of the last two weeks.

This was a mixed Catholic and Protestant group and I was not surprised by the comments.

The Catholics, true to form, brainwashed by the Church from a very young age to listen and obey and to never question; I was one of them, view the Pope as the only one that knows for sure what the “truth” is since he is God’s representative on earth.

The Protestants, trained early on to distrust the Catholics and avoid them at all costs, hold “Scripture” as the ultimate truth recognizing also that scripture can be interpreted in many ways.

The Catholics are commanded never to read the Bible alone; the Church will teach them everything they need to know about the Bible. The Protestants obviously are urged to “study” the Bible. I ask you how are the Catholics and Protestants to converse about Christianity; they come from such different traditions.

An example of the difficulty of communication between the two groups was when the discussion turned to the fact that Peter was not really in charge of the Apostles; James, the brother of Jesus, was. The Catholics said, we didn’t know Jesus had brothers and sisters, what about Mary’s virginity? Do you see what I mean?

Now let me throw in an email I received from the Biblical Archaeology Society that same day. It was an invite to a series of lectures in San Antonio, Texas titled: Do recently Discovered Manuscripts Tell Us Anything New about Jesus and Early Christianity.

The lectures included topics such as what can we learn from Christian scripture not included in the new testament canon or what can we learn about Jewish Christians from Arabic sources, etc.

My point is that the academic world is all atwitter about the new discoveries that point to a myriad of Christianities in the first 300 years after the death of Jesus and about the concerted effort by the Roman Christians of that time to eliminate all challenges to their dominance- as I mentioned in the previous blogs on this subject. And most importantly that Jesus and his apostles were in direct opposition to what later became Pauline Christianity and then Roman Christianity; eliminating the belief base for both Catholics and Protestants.

And yet in August 2007 we have Catholics who keep going to church and reciting their Hail Marys’ and having not the slightest idea about their religion’s history; accepting anything and everything they are fed by their clergy.

On the other hand, you have the Protestants, great students of the Bible able to quote Biblical verses at the drop of a hat, able to explain the meaning or significance of every Biblical passage but yet oblivious to the fact that the words of the New Testament Bible may have nothing to do with historical reality but are just propaganda pieces written by people that wanted to win the Christianity wars.

I guess I am disappointed that what academics are discovering and talking about is not filtering down to the common religious folk. But then they may not want to hear something that would put their belief system in question, why would they, why should they?

Does truth really matter? In my studies of the Papacy, I have read many times where intellectuals would challenge the Church saying its teachings are based on legend and not fact but to no avail; no one seemed to care.

I don’t usually go around wanting to burst people’s bubbles but when I hear religious people speak with such conviction and assurance that they are right with God and have a duty to help everyone else “know” Jesus like they do to be saved, I actually do want to prick their balloon. I tried it once but did not get the satisfaction I was expecting; they just looked at me as if I was insane for daring to question their religious beliefs which are obviously, unquestionably right.

THE REAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

I can’t believe that the Pope’s statement saying that only Catholics can be saved because they are the “true” Christians set me off on this religious blog thread but I must see it to the end because things need to be said so people will know how full of crappola the Pope really is.

I left off with the discovery that Christianity did not start and develop homogeneously to this day; it evolved from hundreds of differing belief systems, scriptures, etc…

There were actually two people that caught on way before everybody else. They were both Germans and both had similar names but lived at different periods.

Note: You don’t have to go to a library to check up on my stuff; just Google whatever you want to confirm.

The first one was F.C. Baur (Ferdinand Christian Baur) (1792-1860). This dude was one bright boy, a theologian by training, he could see things or maybe was brave enough to see things that others did not; he paid a price for his bravery.

He argued that early Christianity represented a synthesis of two opposing theses: Jewish Christianity and Pauline Christianity (Peter versus Paul).

He saw that the Paul of the Acts of the Apostles and the Paul of the Epistles are two different Pauls. He saw the conflict between the two Christianities in the New Testament and how the authors tried to mediate between the two trying to make Peter and Paul appear as compatriots and not as the opponents they really were.

He was also to first to question some of the Epistles of Paul as not being written by him. This was a daring idea for that time in history since most people believed the Bible was the word of God and how could forgeries make it into the Word of God - Bible (New Testament).

The other German was Walter Bauer (1877-1960). He published a book in German in 1934 but because of the Nazis and WWII, it was not translated into English till 1971: Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity.

This is the man who concluded from his studies that there were many, many Christianities at the beginning but that Roman Christianity became the dominant Christianity because of various factors that we have mentioned before.

The kicker was, he said, that the practitioners of the now orthodox Roman Christianity then rewrote the history of the conflicting Christianities making it appear that the Roman Christianity was always the dominant one or the “right one”. This view has stuck through the ages because they (Roman Catholic Church) destroyed all writings in support of the other Christianities – until we found them again thanks to people that just couldn’t bring themselves to destroying “their” sacred books.

This knowledge did not officially come into the public realm until 1971 and the poor guy died in 1960. I bet you even now, many Christians don’t know about this or for that matter, give a crap about it because they don’t see how this changes anything.

Well pardon me, but for one, this makes the statement by the Pope total BULL!

It also puts a damper on Protestantism’s cry of “Scripture alone” and explains why the Romans Catholic Church insisted it is not 'scripture alone' but also “Tradition”. They knew that the New Testament was created by the Roman Christianity for the express purpose of substantiating their claim as the one, true religion.

How can you trust a New Testament that excluded hundreds of gospels, epistles and the like and only picked the ones that supported their theology? The New Testament is not the word of God; it is the word of the Roman Catholic Christianity that won the battle of the Christianities in the three centuries after the death of Jesus.

Let all that sink in for awhile and then we will talk again.

MANY CHRISTIANITIES EARLY ON

In my previous blogs I have shown how the Roman Catholic Church cannot link itself to Peter and therefore to Jesus of Nazareth because the Church backed Paul and not Peter and Paul had no connection to Jesus whatsoever. Paul did say that he had a vision in which Jesus spoke to him; I call that a delusion.

Before we get into how the Church has been able to keep this charade going, we must understand a few facts about history.

The winners write the history. Peter, James and the rest of the Jesus followers lost. They vanished or were assimilated into the surrounding populace. They were disowned by the Jews and called heretics by the Christians; they had no where to go.

With the Jerusalem group gone, Gentile Christianity prospered and spread.

Also, let’s have a few words about heresy, heretics and orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is the belief that you call factual or the “right belief” and heresy is any belief that disagrees with your belief and is therefore the “wrong belief” – kapish?

This has nothing to do with what is ultimately “true” since nothing in religion can be proved or substantiated with “fact” so it’s all about one person’s ideas and beliefs against another’s’; the belief that wins gets to be called “orthodox” and the one that loses becomes a “heresy”.

You will find it very interesting that the discovery that the Roman Church has mislead people since earliest times is quite recent; in our own time (1970s) and that knowledge is not widely known today; maybe it has been suppressed?

Anyway, I find it fascinating so please hold on.

We now know that Christianity “evolved”. Before, most scholars believed that there was only one Christianity or Christian religion at the beginning and that this religion developed through the ages. A better way to say it is that Christians believed that their religion began from a single source (Jesus) with an intact belief system at its base and that Christians just continued to build onto that base throughout the centuries.

That scenario, we now know, was deliberately created by a number of early Church fathers but especially EUSEBIUS (275-339 C.E.). He manipulated history by manipulating history books or historical accounts that were in written form. He did a great job.

Modern archaeology has discovered a number of ancient texts from the early Christian period. One such discovery called the Nag Hammadi Library, consisted of a number of books (Gospels) previously unheard of.

What all these discoveries point to is a period after the death of Jesus that spawned hundreds of Christianities, hundreds of belief systems from one end of the religious spectrum to the other. There were hundreds of preachers traveling from country to country, area to area, all claiming to know what Jesus and his apostles taught and what they wanted the people to do.

Paul, in his letters (part of the New Testament [NT]) is forever bitching about all these “false” teachers (Judaizers) trying to challenge his (Paul’s) teachings.

Most of these “Christianities” had their own “sacred scriptures” which they followed. It must have been a real hodgepodge of Christianities.

What followed was a gradual “cleansing” if I may use that word or a consolidation of all these Christianities into one. The Emperor Constantine (280-337 C.E.) started the ball rolling in 313 C.E. by declaring Christianity the new national, Roman religion giving the city of Rome and the Christians in that city a lot more power and prestige than any other city in the realm.

This was not an easy task. People did not want to hear that they have been worshiping from heretical scriptures or that Jesus was not a god pretending to be a man but was both – huh? Or that Jesus had a father and a brother (Holy Ghost), all gods but really only one – double huh?

It became easier in 367 C.E, when a bishop in Alexandria, Egypt made up a list of books that would become the official New Testament Bible. All other books had to be destroyed. No wonder monks buried the banned books like at Nag Hammadi; they really believed them to be sacred and had a hard time burning them – good for us because we found them and good for us because we keep finding them.

So now 1600 years of Church history has to be re-written and re-examined. We now have a totally different picture of the early days of Christianity and what does that do for today’s Christianity.

I will examine just how and who led to this huge, in my opinion, discovery in the next blog; this one is getting too long.

PETER NOT PAUL'S BUDDY!

Continuing our discussion about the Ebionites / Nazarenes, the people Paul considered the “saints in Jerusalem”; the original apostles who knew Jesus, his teachings and what he envisioned for the future.

The existence of this group is supported by Paul himself in his “Letters” and also by the “Acts of the Apostles” a New Testament book thought to be written by the same author who wrote the Gospel according to Luke.

We also have more on this group from non-biblical sources. These sources are Church authors such as Justin Martyr, Iranaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Origen, Epiphanius and Jerome who wrote in the fourth century.

These Christian writers, historians and apologists often quoted from the Gospel of the Nazareans and the Gospel according to the Hebrews and that is how we can reconstruct portions of these Gospels even though no original manuscripts survive. The common thread between these authors is a confirmation that the Ebionites opposed Paul as a false prophet.

To the Ebionites (apostles), Jesus was a human born of a human (no virgin birth and no divinity). They did believe that he was a prophet and the next messiah that would deliver Israel from its oppressors and bring peace and justice to the whole world. They were strict Jewish monotheists where only one god is possible and not three in one as the Catholic Church teaches (Trinity).

What happened to these original Christian Jews with the only direct link to the actual Jesus of Nazareth?

Well, they got the whammy from both sides. The Jewish community (Pharisees) gave them the benefit of a doubt at the outset. They waited to see if what they said was going to happen. In 135 C.E. the Jewish Pharisee rabbis declared the Ebionites heretics of the Jewish faith. Obviously Jesus did not appear as a messiah so he was a “failed messiah” just like so many before him. And as far as his prophetic powers, well he must have been delusional, like so many before him. The new Kingdom of Heaven did not materialize.

The Roman Catholics (Pauline Christians) also called them heretics because they stuck to their Judaism when Christians were now anti-Semites and they did not tow the orthodox Christian line of believing that Jesus was the son of god, a god himself and also part of a trinity; all one god.

Ironically, Paul was also preaching that the end was near and a new world order will be here soon but as life went on and his predictions were not coming true, he and his followers just altered their story somewhat while the poor Ebionites waited and waited till there was no one left to wait anymore.

My point - Jesus was a Jew, wanted to reform Judaism, believed he was the messiah and was crucified and buried. His followers kept the faith in his return for as long as they could and then vanished. But under no circumstances did he start a new religion, especially a religion that would despise and murder his own people.

The Roman Catholic Church cannot trace its roots to Jesus through Peter because Peter opposed Paul saying Paul knew nothing about the true teachings of Jesus since he never met him in the flesh and bases his ideas of Jesus on delusive visions.

So how has the Church kept the delusion(s) going? Well that is another story we will explore.

JESUS WAS NOT A CHRISTIAN!

This is my challenge to the Roman Catholic Church’s claim as the only Church / religion that can declare a direct relationship with Jesus through Peter and therefore the Church Jesus founded and therefore the only “way” to salvation as Pope Benedict has recently reiterated.

My premise is that Jesus remained a devout Jew till his death and that his so called apostles or followers remained the same. The Christian religion is a creation of St. Paul who was never an apostle, never met Jesus and really did not know much concerning what Jesus was about or what he taught.

In fact, Paul and the followers of Jesus were at odds which means Paul and Peter were on opposite sides and not part of the same religion. Since the Roman Catholic Church is based on Pauline Christianity but uses Peter as the link to Jesus to support its legitimacy, I suggest that the Church does not have a valid basis to support any of its claims.

The critical time period in this whole matter is the time after the death of Jesus. The Gospels, written from legendary accounts and hearsay type of information many years after the crucifixion and were meant as works of theology, cannot be trusted as history.

A very important book on the subject which I read in 1987 is: THE MYTHMAKER: PAUL AND THE INVENTION OF CHRISTIANITY by Hyam Maccoby, New York, Harper & Row.

Another very important (fat) book on the subject is: JAMES THE BROTHER OF JESUS by Robert Eisenman (1997) that I received as a present from my wife in 2001 and took the whole year to read it (1074 pages) of small print.

Historians have put together an account of what happened after the crucifixion from a variety of sources. They agree that the followers of Jesus which, I have to believe, included the apostles, stayed together as a group and were called either by the Hebrew name of EBIONITES which meant the “poor ones” or they were termed the NAZARENES after Jesus of Nazareth. I call them the original JEWISH CHRISTIANS.

This group remained as devout, practicing Jews except for the fact that they believed Jesus to be a messiah, a human of human birth that was given prophetic power by god and upon his return, will rule and judge for a thousand years and make the world right. They considered Jesus as a successor to the kings of Israel David and Solomon.

I suppose you could call the Ebionites a messianic sect within Judaism clinging to the teachings and hope of Jesus of Nazareth and waiting for him to appear.

We do not have any surviving written works of the group but we know of them and about them from the books of early Christian fathers (historians) who knew of the group in some detail and quoted from their writings.

James the Just, brother of Jesus became the leader of the group after the crucifixion and remained so until his untimely death (thrown to his death down temple steps) by a rival for a Jewish leadership position in 62 C.E.

For reference Jesus died ~ 30 C.E. Paul’s Letters started ~ 50 C.E., Mark, the first Gospel is dated ~70C.E., Mathew and Luke to 85 C.E. and the last Gospel; John, to 95 - 120 C.E.

To get a better dateline perspective I transpose the years into modern times so as to get a better understanding of the time intervals we are talking about.

Keeping the time intervals the same, I imagine that Jesus died in 1930 and that the first bits of information about him started coming out in 1950s in the form of letters by Paul some 20 years after the fact. Please remember that Paul said very little about Jesus per se but mostly about his (Paul’s) new theology / religion.

The first comprehensive account considered as “scripture” was written in 1970 (Mark), two more in 1985 and the last in 1995. Just imagine someone in 1995 trying to write a story about something that happened in 1930 and before and relying on only oral accounts or by now, legends that have been passed down for generations. No newspaper archives to check, no nothing to check!

Don’t forget that the Gospels were written in Greek and Jesus spoke Aramaic and so did his followers. You see why I don’t put too much stock in the accuracy of the Gospels?

Many of my Christian friends think the Gospels were written by actual Apostles (they were anonymous) given names just to make them easy to distinguish from one another plus historians agree that Jesus and his apostles were most probably illiterate.

These friends also believe that the Gospels were written from eyewitness accounts. I think you can see by the dating and the language difference that that belief is really a stretch.

We do know that Paul interacted with the Jerusalem Church as the Ebionites / Nazarenes were known. We also know that Paul and members of this Jerusalem Church, namely James the leader of the Church and Peter one of the main apostles had some very serious disagreements. In fact these disagreements were deal breakers; unfixable and therefore Paul and the Apostles went their separate ways.

We know this from the New Testament book “Acts of the Apostles” and Paul’s own letters. The fact that these disagreements are reported in the New Testament lends credence to their historicity because scholars maintain that if “embarrassing” items are reported then they probably did occur since logically, why would the writers include something negative about themselves if it wasn’t true.

I will present more evidence of Paul’s break with the followers of Jesus in my next blog but suffice it to say that the Roman Catholic Church cannot trace its roots to Jesus through Peter and in fact all of Christianity cannot claim Jesus as their founder since Paul only “usurped” Jesus for his own use and is solely responsible for the advent and spread of “his” religion.

More to come…

MORE ON THE POPE AS SUCCESSOR TO PETER!

Back from San Diego – what a town – had a great time!

During the long flight there and back, I had the opportunity to review some material about the Pope’s “Petrine Doctrine” or “Apostolic Succession” claims that I touched upon in my last blog.

I read Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict) missive “Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today” and the chapter titled “The Primacy of Peter and Unity of the Church” or “Peter and Succession” that he wrote before becoming the Pope.

He starts out saying that the primacy (portrayed as the leader) of Peter in the New Testament is incontestable but nothing in the New Testament addresses the Petrine succession issue directly.

He weaves through a variety of arguments to prove his point including pointing out that the Popes were in place governing the Church before Scripture was Scripture. He means that the New Testament did not come into being as a recognized “holy” scripture (canon) till around the fourth or fifth century when Popes were already seated for some time.

The Popes and the Church had direct influence on which books made it into the New Testament so they ostensibly “created” the scripture being the “preeminent original authority of the Roman see and as a constitutive element” in the process of creating the New Testament.

I will confess that Benedict is not easy to understand especially when he writes in German and someone has to translate it into English.

He places emphasis on the fact that Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome as if that makes Rome somehow special and he ends with the notion that God must have meant the Catholic Church to be his Church because he has protected it and made it thrive throughout all these years; this in the face of bad Popes and bad Papal behavior, wars, schisms and on and on.

If you know anything about the history of the Papacy you will have to agree that it is a “miracle” that it has existed so long and has managed to retain its strength and significance.

Benedict assumes a lot in his arguments. Since we do not have a definitive and reliable secular historic account of what happened after Jesus was put to death, we have to assemble bits and pieces from many sources and come up with some plausible conclusions.

I personally think the Catholic Church has been living a lie and it knows it and has known it for a very long time. I am talking about the smart dudes at the top whose job is to defend the faith according to tradition come hell or high water or even in the face of evidence that may potentially expose their lie.

I read a book in the early 1970s that was very influential on my thinking. The book was THE WORD by Irving Wallace. It was fiction but very authentic when it came to detail. It was about the discovery of an ancient papyrus, a Gospel by James the brother of Jesus, dealing with the time of his ministry and the time after his death. The new Gospel basically contradicted the existing accounts of his life and therefore destroying the foundation that Christianity and Western Civilization were built on.

The story includes attempts to have this new information revealed to the world and obviously the desperate measures by the religious (Roman Church) to destroy it or at least prevent it from ever becoming public.

The book was fiction but I will try to show in the next blog where the premise of the fiction may absolutely be what really happened.

THE POPE IS AT IT AGAIN!

Well, well, well, our ole’ Pope Benedict is not done yet. Last time I wondered what inspired him to bring the old Latin Mass back (all Catholic churches speaking the same language?) and this time he is asserting the old argument that salvation is only available through the Roman Catholic Church and not through “other” Christian denominations.

My, my, he really is trying to reverse Vatican II which “modernized” the Church and brought it into the real world. Benedict maintains that the “old” ways were the best and he intends to take the Church back there. He maintains that he is only “reinterpreting” Vatican II because many got it all wrong; Vatican II was held from 1962 to 1965.

The last Pope was on a mission to unite but not this Pope…

Well, let’s examine what the Pope is talking about. He feels that since Jesus established his Church “on the Rock” which meant St. Peter (rock in Greek) and since Peter was the first Pope in Rome and all subsequent Popes were/are direct representatives of Peter (therefore of Jesus) only the Pope and his Church are true representatives of Jesus’ Church; all others are not “true” churches and thus cannot deliver salvation. Did you get all that?

Well many Christians including millions of Protestants and millions of Orthodox Christians disagree and history or the lack of will sustain their arguments.

Mathew 16:18 indeed has Jesus saying “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it”. I don’t believe the Gospels have any historic validity and have been translated so many times that one cannot be sure of what the original words actually were. Later on in the passage, Jesus tells Peter that he will have the keys to heaven and can “bind” things on earth and they will be bound in heaven – seemingly giving Peter some sort of authority.

People will translate Scripture in a way that will prove their point so you can argue Scripture interpretation till you turn blue and not convince anyone BUT the Catholic Church translated that passage as if Jesus was designating Peter as the head of His Church and they are sticking with that!

Now the fact about Peter being the first Pope IN ROME is a little harder for the Pope to explain. There is no historical corroboration that Peter was ever in Rome unless you saw the movie Quo Vadis and take that as historic fact.

This is a good time to remind everyone that there is NO mention of Jesus, his life and death and of his apostles in secular historic sources; the Gospels are not history books. Scholars always marvel at the power of Christianity today and through the ages but they also marvel at the absolute lack of any evidence – someone literate should have witnessed something and wrote it down – but nary a word exists.

The Catholic Church is adamant about Peter being in Rome and becoming the first Pope, etc. but even the Church maintains that the story of Peter is a “traditional” belief as in we have always believed that so it must be true. They even claim that Peter is buried under the Vatican – and how can that ever be proven even if they have a bunch of bones.

The PETRINE DOCTINE or the DOCTRINE OF PETRINE SUCCESSION is all important in the Pope’s claim that only the Roman Catholic Church is the legitimate Church founded by Jesus; without it the claim collapses.

Benedict is plainly stating that a Christian church MUST recognize Papal authority if it wants to be a “legitimate” Christian church through which people can obtain salvation; otherwise they are just wasting their time?

There is a lot more to this matter but I am off to San Diego for a conference and fun time and will revisit this exiting topic when I get back.

WHAT HAPPENED TO McCAIN?

I was once going to vote for John McCain. He won the Michigan primary back then with straight talk challenging Bush at every turn. The Democrats even wanted him to run for VP on the Dem’s ticket. He truly represented the center with common sense as his guiding philosophy. But that was then…

I spotted trouble when I saw him make nice with the religious right. In the last campaign he told the religious twits to cram it and stay out of politics, but now he was kissing up.

He went and hired the same people that ran Bush’s campaign figuring they knew how to win and religion played a big role in Bush’s victory; at least that is what he thought.

When he said he was going to support the war on Iraq come hell or high water, I knew he was in trouble; I wrote him off at the Jerry Falwell ass kissing.

Yesterday, he fired all his former Bush advisors and said he was very low on money but he would keep going. His campaign is all but dead.

I wonder if he knows where he went wrong. How could he believe that the times and the people were the same as they were in 2000?

He either was misled or he misread the American people. He was the predicted front-runner and I predicted it would be him against Hillary but boy did he tank big time.

We are lucky we found out early that he was NOT presidential material; it could have been another Bush type disaster and this country could not take another disaster such as the one we have now.

THE WAR IN IRAQ IS LOST - GET THE HELL OUT!

The New York Times this Sunday had an editorial titled “The Road Home”. It is a detailed look at the Iraq situation today and what we need to do; go home is their answer.

Some of my friends concede that the Bush administration has totally flubbed the war in Iraq from lying about the reasons for the war to total incompetence in prosecuting the war BUT they keep saying “we cannot just leave”.

Well, that argument no longer holds water if it ever did; Iraq cannot get any worst but it can get better if we leave. A de-facto civil war has been in progress for a while and the slaughter has only escalated.

The editorial in the Times confirms what I and many others have been saying; the war is lost and it is wrong to keep killing and maiming our soldiers for no good reason.

On the other hand, what I and many others have been suggesting is happening anyway; the country is splitting into three (3): Kurds, Sunni and Shia. We would have saved many lives if we just divided the place at the outset.

The Iraqi government, as predicted, cannot govern because of sectarianism so why even have one, let the individual areas govern themselves and let us develop and split the oil revenues between sectors.

Keep a U.S. military presence in the north of Iraq to keep other countries from invading but other than that, we pull out of Iraq.

We have Bosnia as a historical example, so why are we so goddamn stupid, excuse me, why is Bush so goddamn stupid.

Bush will continue the war until his term expires and then will blame the incoming president for losing the war; we need to stop him now.

More and more Republicans are deserting Bush but they are being political about it and not asking for the war to end but just to change our war policy.

The Democrats are going to start an offensive this week, I hope, that will make the republicans either shit or get off the pot, no more sitting on the fence.

And please don’t give me that shit about supporting our troops, the only support they need is for us to get them the hell out of there!

PAKISTAN HOLDS THE KEY!

I have been following the situation in Pakistan with keen interest. The Pakistani government is in a siege of the “Red Mosque”. This militant Islamic school was trying to bring the rule of Shariah Law to Pakistan in other words, make it into a theocracy. The school’s students have been rampaging around town smashing CDs and music tapes and anything “sinful”.

The government of Pervez Musharraf stepped in to stop the rampaging students. One of the students shot a soldier dead and the rest barricaded themselves in their school hence the siege.

This on-going saga reveals a lot more than just a siege and I think an answer to Islamic militancy. In Pakistan there are many “madrasas” or religious schools like the Red Mosque (Lal Masjid) mentioned above. All teach a virulently anti-Western theology to their young impressionable students. This is where the Taliban finds its recruits. Terrorist organizations pour money into these schools to train more and more suicide bombers, etc.

Here, I think, is part of the answer for winning the war against Islamic terrorism; eliminate the schools.

Pakistan is a testing ground. Most Pakistanis support the government’s crackdown on these schools and their students but a large part of the Pakistan population is backwards and religious fundamentalists; they are easily swayed by their religious leaders.

The terror groups supporting the schools are rich and powerful. These groups are also trying to assassinate Musharraf and may yet succeed.

The U.S. nominally supports Musharraf but that is a mixed blessing for him as far as his own countrymen are concerned.

The Bush Administration is too stupid to come up with a plan to help Musharraf destroy these schools for terrorists. My only hope is that the next president has a brain that functions normally.

POPE BENEDICT GOING BACKWARD?

Having been raised a Catholic, I am still fascinated by all things Catholic even though I treat Catholicism as I do all religions; human inventions.

What caught my eye this time was Pope Benedict XVI’s removal of sanctions against the old Latin Mass of my youth called the Tridentine Mass.

If you are my age or later, you will remember a Mass where the priest basically faced the altar and not the congregation and muttered everything in Latin.

As a former altar boy, I was required to learn all the Latin responses to what the priest was saying. I knew the words, just did not know what they meant; neither did the congregation nor maybe even the priest. The rationale was that the priest is facing the altar just like the congregation is and is actually leading the congregation in prayer to the altar where God resides.

The new Mass has the priest facing the people with the monstrance (where God resides) in front of him as in joining the people in prayer instead of leading them – kapish?

I must admit that the whole Latin Mass affair had a kind of mystery about it and a certain solemnity that the English language just can’t compete with mainly because we understand it.

I admired Pope John XXIII for his liberal views and for calling together the Second Vatican Council which reformed the Mass and proscribed the use of the local vernacular in the new Mass among other changes.

There was opposition of course, even my mother was against the change but it was smart policy to allow more congregational participation in the Mass and my mother along with most Catholics are used to it and love it.

The Vatican had to ban saying of the old Latin Mass because it had to force the new one into use otherwise people just wouldn’t change. So why is ole’ Benedict reversing that order now?

I know Benedict is conservative but to go against Vatican II? – that is very big and may cause a big split.

On the surface, it seems he is trying to reconnect with the ultraconservative twits that never accepted the changes made by Vatican II. Remember Archbishop Lefebvre in France that started a splinter group of Catholics? He was excommunicated in 1988 along with all his followers. Does Benedict want them back? Why? How many are there?

Benedict maintains that it is much ado about nothing. He isn’t revoking the changes made by Vatican II or turning back the clock or starting in a new direction backwards towards fundamentalism but I am not sure of his motives.

If he is just trying to accommodate a group of Catholics, he is making a huge change just to please a few? Benedict is a smart boy and he maybe be thinking that a common Mass language (Latin) is a uniting factor among world Catholics and that using local languages is a dividing factor.

I may not know Benedict’s motives entirely but I will tell you this may change things big time as far as Church unity is concerned. He may go down in history as a Pope that started the big modern schism.

He did allow for a re-visit to his proclamation in three (3) years and if all hell has broken loose then maybe he will retract his ruling – so much for Papal infallibility.

Oh and also the Jews are mad because the old Mass called for their conversion to Christianity which Vatican II threw out as stupid and insulting – is there a trend here?

Islamic Dress Close to Home!

I would like to add to my comments on the extreme dress of some Muslim women in this country and in fact, in my neighborhood.

In my last blog on this subject, I dispelled any ideas that the religion of Islam demands such extreme clothing and that it is and was usually a cultural and/or a specific ethnic custom practiced in the Middle East. I have problems with the practice being continued here in this country but I am conflicted as to my justification for such feelings.

Anyway, I was taking my grandson to the park the other day, specifically where the children enjoy a “splash” area since it is very hot at this time.

Please look at the pictures I took of the children and parents enjoying the cooling water. You will notice a few girls in full Islamic dress. You will also see a blond girl without a top on; now is that a perfect juxtaposition or what.

First, I think all girls should wear appropriate swim wear even when they are very young and therefore the mother of the topless girl was wrong in allowing her to run around that way.

But let us talk about the little girls forced to wear extreme Muslim wear on a hot and humid day; both me and my wife felt sorry for them. We discussed our feelings later on.

I look at the issue emotionally because I equate the Islamic dress as male oppression of women. They perform female circumcision to prevent women from liking sex too much. They feel God created women to give pleasure to men and not to themselves so you can see why I want the practice banned.

But my wife correctly points out that in this country we allow people to dress the way they want to; it is after all a free country.

Yes, we are a nation of immigrants and although we keep some ethnic customs we have basically all assimilated into the melting pot that is America. She feels that eventually they will too and I should just be patient and let natural social forces have their way.

She probably is correct on all points but I still am conflicted. More to come…

More on Racialy Fair Justice!

In my letter to the editor in the previous blog, I have responded to an editorial in the Detroit Free Press titled “Make justice racially fair”.

The editorial disturbed me for a number of reasons and I thought that the editorial should not go unchallenged even though I do agree with some of what it proposes.

The editorial decries the fact that here in Michigan, our prison population is over 50% black while the general population of blacks in Michigan is somewhere around 13-14%. In Detroit it is over 85%.

The editorial also finds alarming that black children make up over 50% of children in foster care but make up only 17.5% of the general population of children in the state.

The editorial then goes on to list legal and social conditions that it feels contribute to the dismal statistics in the black community, conditions that need to be addressed and corrected.

Taking on the enormous disparity in the prison population, the NAACP and the editorial writer would like to see many more blacks seated on criminal juries. They are advocating allowing even ex-felons to serve on juries, anything just to get more blacks on juries.

To me allowing a convicted criminal to sit on a jury is the height of absurdity. I realize that many blacks have criminal records, especially in Detroit, and that leaves fewer blacks eligible for jury duty but my god, how stupid do you think our society is? NO to that!

The whole idea of trying to pack juries with blacks begs for rationale and the only rationale that I can detect is that blacks are more likely not to convict their own kind and fewer convictions will translate to a lower black prison population. OK, makes sense but how is that fair and how does that serve justice?

On the other hand it does imply that whites on a jury tend not to be fair when judging black defendants. I cannot deny that racism exists in the white community but it is not as obvious as in the old days. I think a majority of whites can and are fair when sitting on juries with black defendants, in fact, because of white guilt; many are too fair and forgiving when it comes to blacks.

I have been called to jury duty many times and I did not see a lack of blacks there but I did see blacks begging off jury duty for economic reasons. They don’t have the transportation available to them or the luxury to take a leave of absence from their jobs. It is an unfortunate circumstance of life. Whites can also be in the same position but in most cases, blacks are more likely to lack the economic means to serve on a jury.

I will agree that public defenders will need to be paid a decent fee so capable lawyers represent the indigent. Right now the public defenders do as much as they are paid and that is pittance so they do a pittance of defending.

As far as the disparity of black children in foster care, well that is a result of the same reasons that land more blacks in jails than whites. They make babies, go to jail and leave the kids with a mother that cannot handle the kids or herself – foster care.

I have a problem with the NAACP and the Detroit Free Press editorial writers for again trying to blame others for the dismal state of the black community in Detroit. Here they are trying to get more blacks off after they commit a crime instead of trying to prevent blacks from doing the crime in the first place.

The national NAACP convention is in town this week and I hope there are some people with a vision that are coming up in the ranks of the organization. In the past, we had a bunch of incompetents that wasted money on stupid projects like fighting for more blacks in baseball, etc. or themselves and their girlfriends.

Bill Cosby has been trying to educate the black community by telling them they have to look at themselves first before blaming others. The NAACP should follow his advice but I am not sure it is capable of doing what needs to be done.

RACIALLY FAIR JUSTICE?

Tuesday, July 03, 2007
To: The Detroit Free Press
Re: “Make justice racially fair”, July 2.

In your editorial “Make justice racially fair”, July 2, I agree with you that the prison population in Michigan is disproportionately black and that is and should be totally unacceptable to the black community but I question your suggestions for easing that disparity.

Your plan to get more blacks on juries by including ex-felons, among other suggestions, implies that blacks and especially blacks that are also ex-felons are less likely to convict fellow blacks thereby sending fewer blacks to prison. On the other side, your plan can also be understood as implying that whites on juries are somehow less fair to black defendants.

Although I strongly support jury diversity I feel your efforts would be better spent on trying to prevent blacks from committing criminal acts in the first place and not concentrating on getting them off after the fact.