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RELIGION Part Two

by Nick Wormley

When was the bible written?

The Bible was written over possibly about 1,500 years, starting in the Iron Age. The oldest surviving copies of the Hebrew texts are in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date from between about 250BC and 100AD. The oldest, surviving, written New Testament texts date from the 3rd to the 4th Centuries AD – ie, probably about 250 to 300  years after Jesus of Nazareth is claimed to have lived. (Except for the Rylands Manuscript fragment of just a few words, dating from about the mid-2nd Century). There were many early variants and local traditions in different places. The Roman Catholic Church chose to reject a great many early “Christian” writings, such as the Gospels of Enoch and of Thomas, in the late 300s AD.

Unsurprisingly, the numerous “Christian” gospels and texts that existed then contain many differences and are often contradictory.

When were the gospels written?

Nobody knows when the Gospels were written, but there is no evidence that they were written down or dictated by people who had known Jesus in his lifetime.  They are presented as the Gospels ACCORDING to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but those names were added much later, probably in the time of Irenaeus. They were probably only put on paper/parchment perhaps 40 to 80 years after the time they describe, recording localized traditions that had been passed on verbally in one particular town or church group. Partly-mistaken memories and lack of accurate, detailed quotes and conversations, must inevitably have limited the early verbal history of Christianity. People would undoubtedly have substituted fictitiously to fill in gaps. I support that statement by pointing to the massive amount of lies, fake news and ignorant or inaccurate nonsense that is posted all the time on many social media websites around the World. Ancient people thousands of years ago were no different, in essence, from people living today and had far less information available to them to correct any errors or misconceptions.

Any belief that the New Testament could be an accurate, modern newspaper-type report of Jesus’s life and sayings is extremely unrealistic.

Biblical scholars might say that St Paul’s letters and the canonical gospels in the second half of the First Century are close enough in time to be good evidence of Jesus’s life, activities and sayings.

Is the Bible fiction?

But look, how long might it take somebody to write a novel, or maybe a semi-novel, partially creating and embellishing the life of a local preacher? It feels a reasonable suggestion that someone might do so, possibly to wishfully fulfil old Jewish prophecies, or in support of various pseudo/proto/quasi religious sects and philosophies in the First Century Roman Empire. How long might it take for a plethora of extra ideas, fanciful thoughts and guesses to be added to the narrative by adherents who liked this tale and wanted to encourage support for their causes through “propaganda”?

In accordance with ancient Jewish religious belief, the population was awaiting the coming of a messiah. If a man from Nazareth put on that hat and sounded convincing, it wouldn’t be surprising that large numbers of people might readily think “Hooray, the messiah’s arrived. We must follow him”.

In the 4th Century, the Roman Catholic Church leaders who controlled Christianity in western Europe, ruled that most of the Christian manuscripts existing at that time had been made up. Only the ones they liked were judged to be real, true and accurate. That ought to be very concerning to any impartial, thinking, modern person.

If historical power balances had been different and, for example, the Gnostics had “dominated”, the Bible you read today would perhaps be hardly recognisable. Many early Christians did not accept the words “Son of God” literally; they interpreted this phrase as a kind of honorary title meaning a descendant of King David. We are told that only about 20 years after Jesus died, much of St Paul’s time was spent refuting different teachings to his own by other early Christian missionaries. The Roman emperor Constantine eventually chose the winner, 300 years later.

There is no contemporary evidence that Jesus even lived – nothing dating from the First Century AD. If he was a real man then he probably had some kind of serious mental illness, causing grandiose delusions. He might have had paranoia or schizophrenia, maybe making him think that he was the son of God.

Islam

Muhammad was presumably equally mentally disturbed and suffered hallucinations, claiming that God sent the Angel Gabriel to visit him with numerous divine messages over 23 years of his life.

If somebody made such assertions today, would millions of people unquestioningly believe them, and indoctrinate their children to pass on this revelation to all descendants, if necessary fighting wars in support of  it? I think it is more likely that the person would be calmly and quietly treated in a hospital.

The standard version of the Quran was compiled only 20 years after the prophet’s death, but one reason for this was because, even in that short time, the Caliph could see that “Chinese whispers” were causing an increasing number of variants in what Muhammad was supposed to have said.

Islamic teachings stem from the same ancient social conventions as the earlier Abrahamic mythologies. The Old Testament demands that we worship a God which required animal sacrifices to be made to its glory, and committed genocide against gay people, but allowed deeply-questionable Lot to escape from this “atomic bombing” of two cities – no doubt killing many babies who couldn’t have done anything sinful. (Why was Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt, for goodness sake?).

‘Thankfully, a loving God turned Lot’s wife into something useful – a pillar of salt!’

 

Jesus and God

Jesus never criticized God’s earlier behaviour. We are told that he said: “I have not come to abolish the Law or the prophets, but to complete/fulfil them.” Both Jesus and St Paul were both certain, apparently, that the World was going to end very soon.

Really though, none of the minutiae in the Jesus-Epistles-Gospels question matters, because the very notion of God is absurd. Which religion people believe in boils down to when and where they live. Ancient Egyptian priests would have told you 5,000 years ago that their animal-headed gods and goddesses were real and they were the only deities that should be worshipped.

Early hominids, evolving into modern human beings, have existed for perhaps a million years. They must have invented a great many religious ideas during  all those aeons. Why did God only intervene at “five minutes to midnight” to correct this vast millennia of mythological misunderstandings and erroneous beliefs, by sending his “son” to Earth to be killed and so save us all by taking our punishment for us? Save us from what and how? From the sins born within us? This ancient dogma doesn’t make any sense at all to modern minds.

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