Digging For the Truth

My friend who signs his name in the comments section as "Jim" is a well read religion historian. Unfortunately for Jim, he knows more about this stuff than 99% of all the preachers of all denominations. The reason I say "unfortunately" is because these guys are so set in their dogma that to acknowledge they may not possess the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth is anathema to them. It would be an admission they were wrong. Jim is finding that it is next to impossible to get someone to understand something if their very job depends on them not understanding it.

I recently received the following e-mail from Jim which underscores his knowledge vs. the rhetoric he is exposed to in his church. Rather than reply by e-mail, I decided to reply through this blog. His e-mail is below followed by my response.

Jim Wrote:

I have been reading many of the works of the Essenes and find them to be closer to the sage we call Jesus. It appears the works destroyed by the church give convincing evidence of a different man. It is possible to reconstruct the destroyed works by reading the works of defenders of the church who had to quote these destroyed works in order to deny their claims. Even Constantine's official historian (Eusebius) had no choice. On page 207 of Eusebius Ecclesiastical History he reveals this: The Translator Symmachus] "As to these translators it should be stated that Symmachus was an Ebionite. But the heresy of the Ebionites, as it is called, asserts that Christ was the son of Joseph and Mary, considering him a mere man, and insists strongly on keeping the law in a Jewish manner, as we have seen already in this history. Commentaries of Symmachus are still extant in which he appears to support this heresy by attacking the Gospel of Matthew. Origen states that he obtained these and other commentaries of Symmachus on the Scriptures from a certain Juliana, who, he says, received the books by inheritance from Symmachus himself."(Eusebius, 4th century, Ecclesiastical History)Even our bible makes it clear that this group opposed Paul and the church. He was considered a heretic and enemy of the Jews. I have read numerous works by the early Jewish writers and am convinced the Ebionites more closely represent the real Jesus. Since my own religious tradition prides itself in getting to truth it is still possible for me to think of myself as a Christian (or Ebionite). In other words," that Christ was the son of Joseph and Mary, considering him a mere man". Forget the Jewish law thing. I'll accept the ethical teaching, but please don't come near me with that knife! The son of Joseph and Mary was revered because they thought him to have kept the Law of Moses more perfectly. They would have nothing to do with that Greek mythology of our Christian religion. Thought you might find this interesting.

My reply:

It is interesting. And something your brethren in your church would not care to debate with you.

One thing for sure, we will never get to the "real" Jesus by studying the Christian bible because as you well know, it was 1. Written too long after his death 2. We have no copies of the originals and 3. The authors of the four gospels are unknown and therefore without authority.

The stories were passed on by oral tradition for at least 40 years before they were written down. We only have to remember the game of "telephone" we played as children for a vivid example of the how the spoken word can get infected when it is passed on without being written down. It only takes 5 minutes between kids who are actually trying to keep the story straight, for the original version to become so completely severed from the original that it becomes unrecognizable. Just imagine how out of whack a story can get over 40 years of oral tradition, especially when the story was purposely being "enhanced" in order to gain more followers. And remember Jesus supposedly spoke Aramaic while the Bible was translated in Greek.

I have argued that anyone who picked up a Bible and read it, not knowing it represented some kind of religion, but was just a book, would have to be seriously flawed in their reasoning to think they could receive some kind of enlightenment from it. To think otherwise we would have to reason that the imaginary tribe led by Moses would not know right from wrong until he made available the Ten Commandments. For those who go on about the poetry in the Bible I would recommend “The Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which in my view, puts the Bible to shame.

I think Jim, what both of us are more interested in than anything else is getting at the truth. Sometimes the truth can let us down a little. But I say we are better off accepting things as they are rather than declaring our faith in what we wish they were.

I am familiar with the argument that when it comes to religion, we should not kick the crutch out from under a cripple. I disagree. Why not cure the cripple so they no longer need the crutch? Sure they will yell and scream a little, just as children sometimes do when receiving vaccinations. But which is worse... yelling and screaming or dying from smallpox? Would we not all have joined in kicking the religion crutch from under the 9-11 terrorists if given the opportunity?

It would be wonderful if truth came to us by revelation. It doesn’t. It takes hard work. If truth came by revelation we would have no need of the tens of thousands of intelligent, hardworking scientist, 94% of whom reject the notion of a personal god.

As I dutifully reminded my Jehovah Witness visitors this past week, if there is a god, he/she/it gave us our 1400 cc brain with a frontal cortex that permits us to think critically and logically. We should consider it a gift. Not using it is tantamount to rejecting a gift. The worst insult we can inflict on someone is to reject their gift.

Good intentions don’t get believers very far with their cruel and sadistic god. The proof is found in their own “holy” Bible 1 Chr. 13:7-10 and 2 Samuel 6:2-7 “Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. The Lord's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God.”

So god killed Uzzah because he reacted exactly the way god programmed him to act and to make matters worse Uzzah was acting out of admirable intentions.

No thanks. Can't buy that story. Just like Jim, I'll have to keep digging.

If god killed Uzza acting out of admirable intentions just think what he has in store for those of us who were given this wonderful gift of a brain and refuse to use it.