My Heretical View of Jesus

My dad used to call me a red-letter Christian. I think that meant I paid attention to the words of Christ in red and ignored the rest. I did use the red letters as my basis, but I incorporated other biblical passages into my personal theology that were consistent with the red letters.
I am not comfortable picking and choosing which words of Jesus to use and which to ignore. I have tried hard to incorporate them as a unified whole. Based on my lifetime of study into the historical Jesus and three years in seminary, I humbly offer my heretical look at Jesus.

1) Jesus was wealthy and a his family was of royal Davidic blood and priestly lineage. His friends were rich and powerful people.
2) Jesus was a well-educated priest. He had a thorough knowledge of Jewish law and doctrine.
3) He opposed the Romans and their Herodian puppets. The Romans and Herodians executed him using a Roman form of punishment, crucifixion.
4) His disciples were wealthy relatives.
5) He was opposed to Jewish priests Pharisees who collaborated with the Romans. The father referred to in the cleansing of the temple would  have been Solomon, whom Jesus was related to.
6) Jesus' ministry was largely a critique of the ruling elite. There are many parallels between what Jesus said and the Jewish prophets.
7) The nature miracles were part of traditions surrounding Jewish royal and holy families. There were many reports of miracles during the Maccabeean period as well. The Jewish festival of Hannukkah celebrates one of those miracles.
8) The version of Jesus and his disciples as poor fisherman is due to a lack of understanding of the zodiacal signs (Virgo -virgin; Aquarius - water bearer; Pisces -fish; Aries - lamb) imposed on the Jesus narrative when it combined with pagan sun worship under the Romans. This is why Jesus' birthday is celebrated near the winter solstice and John the Baptist's birthday is celebrated near the summer solstice.
9) Jesus didn't write anything down because his insights were not meant for public consumption, they were designed only for initiates and family members.
10) The parables were designed to give the public insights into the Kingdom of God (which initiates entered into) if they could figure out their meaning.
11) According to genealogies of James, Jesus was married but had no children that had children. His only son, Justus (mentioned in one of Paul's letters) died a celibate ascetic.
In a bible study class once a conservative West Point graduate was reduced to tears during our study of the Sermon on the Mount. He said that if Jesus did nothing else, the message of the Sermon on the Mount made him divine.
I was distressed to learn later in seminary the church's official position on the Sermon on the Mount. That it didn't matter. But it did to the retired military officer. And it does to me. And always will.

Happy Birthday Jesus! Merry Christ's Mass! Historical Jesus Versus Theological Christ

In seminary I was told that Christianity had nothing to do with Jesus. Christianity, I was told by my elders and superiors, was a theological reflection on the passion, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, focused on his eventual return to establish a kingdom on earth and punish the wicked.
The assistant dean of the seminary told me she was instructed by her elders when she was in seminary to 'drop the Jesus stuff' or she had no future in the Christian church. Evidently, she drop-kicked Jesus, having risen to rank of assistant dean at a prestigious seminary.
My lifetime studies of the historical Jesus and the history of Christianity have led me to the conclusion that Christian doctrines are man-made obstacles to understanding what Jesus said and meant. The Christian doctrines we are familiar with today emerged from a 4th century conflict between the Jewish and gentile wings of the movement.

The Christian church after the 4th century became a mix of gentile religions promoted by the Emperor Constantine to consolidate his power. Added to the mix were the cult of emperor worship, the cult of sun worship, the blood cult of Mithras, and the phallic cult of political elites. In addition, many local pagan gods were added as saints to win over the populace. The efforts were enormously successful, as Christianity grew from a fringe movement to the dominant force in western Europe.
The version of Jesus that emerges from this dominant force of Christianity has very little to do with the historical Jesus. In that context, what I was told in seminary makes sense. This does not mean it does not have worth, or that it is not real for people who believe in it. But it is important to know it has nothing to do with historical realities.
As mentioned in a previous blog, there is so little information on Jesus from the first century that we are just guessing. Fortunately, there is an incredible amount of information surviving about Jesus' brother James. What is highly likely is that Jesus' family controlled the movement after Jesus' death. James was stoned to death in 66 AD after entering the Holiest of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem, i.e. acting as a High Priest.
Jesus' family needs to be understood in the context of the Maccabees. They were a kingly, priestly family that sought to purify the temple and did not consider Herodian and Roman appointed high priests as legitimate.
The details in the gospels of Jesus' trial were probably taken from James' trial and make more sense in that context. Texts on James mention that Saul (Paul) was a rival and used his contacts with Herodians and Romans (these are mentioned in Acts) to have James killed.
The Jewish historian Josephus mentions that someone named Saul turned traitor and opened the gates of Jerusalem to the Romans. Texts about James call Saul/Paul the Traitor and the Enemy. Roman records show that the Emperor Domitian (81-96 AD) had an audience with Judas' (brother of Jesus) grandson asking him if his family had given up on their claim to the Jewish throne.
The answer came in 132 AD when Jewish freedom fighters again rebelled against Rome. There are links again to Jesus' family being involved. The revolt was so successful that emperor Hadrian (117-138) had to withdraw from England and bring his best legions to Judea to put down the revolt. Roman and Jewish losses were so horrific that it was only time the Romans won a war and had no victory parade afterwards.
The Jewish royal family fled to areas outside the Roman empire, settling in areas like Scotland, Ireland and Germany. Scottish kings trace their genealogy to James, brother of Jesus. The King James version of the Christian bible is named after James VI (1566-1625) a Scottish king of this line who also became King of England.
The Frankish Merovingian kings also traced their lineage to James, brother of Jesus. Most of the branches of Christianity deemed heretical by the Roman church have links to Jewish Christian groups led by people related by family to either Jesus, James or Judas.
The controversial book, The Da Vinci Code, was strongly criticized by the Roman church because it begins to shed light on these issues. To sum up, in creating their theological Christ, the Roman church did violence to the historical Jesus.
Fortunately for us, the words of Jesus, printed in red in my bible, remain to this today. There have also been discoveries in the last century of more texts containing the words of Jesus. Combined, these give us insight into the most remarkable person in human history.

The Beginnings of Christianity: Part Two - Historical Jesus and the Maccabean Revolt

Historical Jesus research became popular after German scholars and theologians in the 19th century revealed that most of teachings of western Christianity dated from the 7th to 9th centuries. The desire to discover connections to the Jesus of the first century began and has continued unabated to this day.
Unfortunately, there is little evidence remaining from the first century and most attempts have been incomplete and disappointing.
For our purposes, we will attempt to put the historical Jesus in an historical, not theological perspective.
To do that, we have to go back in time to Alexander the Great. The empire that Alexander left to his successors in the 4th century BC included Judea. His successors included the Ptolemies and the Seuclids. The Ptolemies, based in Egypt, ruled Judea until the end of  the 2nd century BC when the Seuclids, based in what is now Syria, Iraq and Iran, gained control.
The Ptolemies had left the Jewish people in Judea practice their religion, but the Seuclids eventually forced their version of Hellenism upon Judea, putting a statue of Zeus in the temple in Jerusalem. This lead to a revolt of Jewish priests intent upon restoring purity to the temple.
These families of priests, known as the Maccabees, eventually defeated the Seuclids and rededicated (purified) the temple in 165 BC. This event is celebrated to this day as the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
It is important to understand for a study of historical Jesus that the Jewish people were not unified in opposition to the Seuclids.
Many Jews favored the Hellenistic culture that Alexander the Great introduced into the region. In many ways, this Hellenistic culture was more advanced than the semi-nomadic culture that existed prior to Alexander. This divide among Jews between an ancient, tribal culture and a more modern, urban culture often centered upon religious rites and traditions.
This conflict continued when the Romans ended a century of Judean independence in the first century BC. The Romans placed the Idumean royal family of Herods on the throne of Judea to rule in their stead. Idumeans lived south of Judea and were the descendants of Esau. For this reason, the Idumeans were not considered of royal Jewish blood. To bolster his claims as Judean king, Herod the Great (king when Jesus was born) married into the Maccabean (also known as Hasmonean) royal family.
According to the Jewish historian Josephus, the politics in Judea at this centered on whether a group was pro-Roman (and the Hellenistic culture the Romans adopted from the Greeks) or anti-Roman desiring the freedom and independence of Judea.

[The Monty Python movie Life of Brian brilliantly captures the myriad Jewish splinter groups and how they spent more time fighting each other than they did the Romans.]
In Gospel accounts, Herod orders all first born Jewish males killed and Jesus' family flees to Egypt. Historically, there is no record of this. But Herod did systematically attempt to kill all possible heirs to his throne. This included all of his children from the Hasmonean princess he married and as many from the Jewish royal family as he could find.
It is highly likely that Jesus was of royal Jewish blood. Herod had no interest in Jewish peasants. He was interested in competitors to his rule. The fact that two Gospels (Matthew and Luke) have extensive genealogies linking Jesus to David (kingly) and Aaron (priestly) lineages strongly backs up this position.
At the time of Jesus' crucifixion, the conflict between the Roman and anti-Roman factions in Jerusalem had nearly reached a boiling point.
Why was Jesus crucified? Were Jesus and his disciples pro-Roman or anti-Roman? Who took over the movement after Jesus was killed? Was Jesus a Hellenistic Jew?
The answers to these questions and more in Part Three.

The Beginnings of Christianity - Part One

It is fitting to discuss during the celebration of the birth of Christ the beginnings of the religion founded in his name. To understand the beginnings, we have to go to 19th century Germany where biblical scholarship began. Without biblical scholarship, what we know about Christianity's origins reads like a comic book or graphic novel.
In the 19th century, Prussia began the consolidation of Germany from a multitude of independent city-states and petty fiefdoms into a modern Central European state that dominated world politics in the first half of the 20th century.

The Prussian state, led by chancellor Otto Von Bismarck through much of the century, clashed with the Pope, who still had control over many of the southern German states and municipalities. The central issue relating to the Pope's power was the doctrine of apostolic succession. This doctrine stated that Jesus gave control of the Christian religion to Peter, who became the first Pope. Peter then handed this authority down to the next Bishop of Rome and that succession continued throughout the centuries.
Bismarck and other German politicians disputed this claim, and encouraged and funded research to this regard. In studying this claim of apostolic succession, the German theologians did indeed discover that the claim that Jesus gave control to a bishop of Rome was fabricated. Not surprisingly. That's what they were paid to do.
But what was surprising was what else they found out. What they discovered was that there was no link to the first three centuries at all. Christianity, as it was being practiced in Western Europe during the 19th century, had tenuous claims to the 4th century, but mainly derived from the 7th to 9th centuries.
To their horror, they discovered that Christian monks in the 7th to 9th centuries deliberately set out to destroy all knowledge that did not support their version of Christianity's origins. They BRAGGED about doing it. They bragged about changing and editing documents to make them fit. They bragged about destroying documents that couldn't be edited to make them fit.
Some of this attitude is captured in the book and film, The Name of the Rose, set in 1327 (starring Sean Connery and F. Murray Abraham).
The end result is that there isn't much information on the first three centuries of Christianity. Fortunately, in preserving the works of orthodox church fathers, who constantly railed against their many enemies, these monks also preserved several contrary opinions on Christian origins.
Recent discoveries like the Dead Sea scrolls and Nag Hammadi find in Egypt, shed further light on the origins. Even if the church had not set out to deliberately destroy knowledge, it would have been difficult to preserve documents from thousands of years ago.
We need to understand in all humility, that we just don't know that much and need to proceed with caution. Any one that says they know for sure what happened around the time of Jesus' birthday and later with the beginnings of Christianity is lying. Whether lying deliberately or out of ignorance, it is important to know they are not telling the truth.
What shocks a lot of seminary students in their first year is this knowledge that what we were told in Sunday school is a complete fabrication. It takes another two years for seminary students to figure out how to become ministers once they know this.
More conservative seminaries spare students this angst by not telling them at all. Seminary students that do discover this can either engage in denial (this can't be right, what I leaned in Sunday school IS true) or they decide they are more interested in helping people than they are the absolute correctness of their church in regard to historical realities.
Next, we'll look at historical Jesus research and how this fits into Christian origins.

The Idea Realm Looks at Romney's 47 Percent

I mentioned in an earlier post how I prefer inhabiting an idea realm than a people realm or event realm. In discussing philosophical differences between liberals and conservatives I suggested conservatives don't feel the masses can be educated to think for themselves and must be told what to do. Liberals believe with the proper education and training the masses can be trained to think for themselves.
Democracy from this perspective is a liberal idea. The U.S.A. is not a democracy, however. It is a representative republic. A representative republic has democratic features but distrusts the masses to the extent that governance is left to an elected or appointed few. Regarding presidential elections, it can be argued that the Electoral College is a conservative idea and the popular vote is a liberal idea. Please note which perspective is entrusted with selecting the president.
It is from the perspective of an idea realm that Governor Romney's statements on 47 percent of the electorate interest me. It is noteworthy that Romney denigrates a section of the voting public, choosing to talk in the people realm, claiming that people who pay no income tax are 'victims' who feel 'entitled' to receive benefits from the government.
Leaving aside that the tone is condescending, patronizing and self-righteous (a pattern of behavior exhibited by graduates of Ivy League schools) his analysis is deeply flawed.
Romney's analysis that a large segment of the population can not be taught to take care of themselves is a conservative idea. In this respect, President Obama has a liberal perspective when he states that he believes people can be trained and educated to take care of themselves and work themselves off of government support programs.
The flaws in Romney's analysis do not flow from this philosophical difference, which is why I believe Congressman Ryan stated that Romney was 'inarticulate.' The flaw is in not understanding the demographics of the segment of the population he is disparaging.
This is worrisome, because it may mean Romney has a deeply flawed view of the demographics of the country as a whole. If so, then it is doubtful that any policy derived from this perspective can be effective or efficient.
What's worse is that if Romney does understand the demographics and does not care about huge segments of the population. This is behavior typical of someone educated with an MBA. It is behavior totally unsuited to an elected official, which Obama has pointed out.
In a representative republic, elected officials represent EVERYONE. Romney's idea of government is plutocratic, not democratic. In this sense, he is the kind of fiscal conservative that has dominated Republican politics since the populism of Teddy Roosevelt was deemed subversive.

In the idea realm, it is Romney's undemocratic view of governing that is most disturbing. If the Democrats have any competence, which is always a concern, they should be able to exploit this to their advantage.
It is noteworthy that Republican candidates farther down the ballot are distancing themselves from Romney's statements. That is more significant than Democrats manipulated outrage with their talking heads.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The ramifications are immense. For me, it provides further evidence that Ronald Reagan was a puppet of plutocrats whose goal is to destroy the prosperity of the middle class and working class. Romney was talking to fellow plutocrats when he made his 'secret' remarks. Only plutocrats can afford $50,000 lunches. I'm a McDonald's dollar menu guy myself.

Standard Deviations and The Philosophical Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives

When people talk they can exist in one of three realms. The 'idea realm', the 'event realm' and the 'people realm.' I am most comfortable in the 'idea realm', less comfortable in the 'event realm' and not at all comfortable in the 'people realm.'
In short, I would rather talk about ideas than people, especially myself. Standard deviations fascinate me. Here's a diagram:

There are many different kind of intelligences, let's wrap them all into one for clarity and argument sake and say the mean represents average intelligence and that 64.2% of the population is of average intelligence. Another 27.2 percent is within two standard deviations of the mean, meaning more than 91% of the population is of average intelligence, or slightly above or slightly below. That's most of us.
When I ask people what percentage of people could read or write in ancient times, they usually don't know. That's because nobody knows. Scholars argue that it was between 5 and 10 percent. The point is that not many people could read or write.
Those that could wrote the books and wrote the laws. Most of the 91 percent group in ancient times were slaves.
Fast forward to the U.S.A. in 2012 and the literacy rate is about 99 percent. Slavery was abolished about 140 years ago. The philosophical question today is the same one in ancient times: what is the attitude of  those who write the laws toward the 91 percent?
The conservative approach is that the majority of people can not think for themselves and need to be told what to do.
The liberal approach is that the majority of people can think for themselves if they are properly educated.
We do not know the answer to this question, which is why it is a philosophical question. But it determines the framework that liberal and conservative ideas operate in. There is evidence to support both conclusions. In the long run, high levels of literacy and abolition of slavery are relatively recent events.
In the short run, we need to understand that our decisions are based upon which model we favor.
During this presidential campaign, while people are talking about Romney and Obama (people realm) and others are talking about events (debates, polls) I find myself wondering about ideas. Mainly, whether democracy (which is a liberal idea) can work in a country that prefers to think people need to be told what to do (which is a conservative idea).

America: The Land of Religious Extremism

Question: To which country did religious extremists in Europe emigrate?
Answer: United States of America

Question: Why did religious extremists leave Europe?
Answer: Because most Europeans wanted them to.

Question: Were Puritans religious extremists?
Answer: Depends on whether you consider genocide extreme.

Question: Did Puritans commit genocide?
Answer: Depends on your perspective. If you are Irish or a Native American your answer might be 'yes.' If you are a Puritan or can't read history your answer is most likely 'no.'

In the United States there appear to be two versions of Christianity operating. One version appears to be untouched by the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. The other version appears to be an apologist for a soul-less brand of Capitalism.
Both versions appear to be supporters of the Republican Party. From the congressman in Missouri whose remarks on rape belong in the Middle Ages to Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, and Michelle Bachman we have evidence of people untouched by critical thinking or analysis.
It is not surprising that Republicans in Texas want to eliminate the teaching of critical thinking and analysis in public schools. By electing people like George W. Bush and Rick Perry as governor it is evident that they abandoned reason awhile back.
Then there are the soul-less Capitalist apologists that support people like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Romney and Ryan give enough lip service to religion to keep the extremists in their party happy, but what they really worship is a brand of atheistic soul-crushing amoral Social Darwinism promulgated by writers like Ayn Rand, one of Ryan's greatest influences (at least until he decided to seek national prominence).
It didn't used to be like this. Religious wackos used to keep to themselves and only abuse their own people. Capitalists like Teddy Roosevelt were opposed to monopolies and trusts. Heck, Teddy was known as the 'Trust Buster.' Couldn't call Romney that.
Everything changed when religious extremists decided to organize themselves politically. Ironically, to gain political power they allied themselves with the amoral wing of the Republican party. They made a bargain with the devil. They would give the devil control over fiscal policy if they could control social policy - i.e. impose their extremists views on society.
Bit by bit, piece by piece, law by law, policy by policy, America has lost its soul. We are now a country full of hate governed by fear. As a country we are descending into a Dark Age where reason and logic are viewed as alien and intolerance and ignorance are viewed as evidence of religious faith.
It didn't used to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way.

It took awhile, but England recovered from its Puritan tyranny under Oliver Cromwell. Most of those Puritans who fled England after Cromwell died came to the United States. Their descendants, biological and philosophical, appear to be in charge in America today.
Those of us, Republican and Democratic, conservative and liberal, who value critical thinking and analysis, and understand the role reason and logic can play in making a society work for the benefit of everyone and not just a chosen few, we're still the majority. And that matters if we're still a democracy.

Question: Is the United States a democracy?
Answer: TBD