Theme: Religion

by Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Paul almost certainly wrote seven of the books attributed to him, and possibly an eighth — based on writing style and content. Biblical scholars have concluded (in general, as some doubtless differ) that the other books attributed to him were written by someone else. Their style and content differ considerably. And all of the other books of the NT, 19 or 20 of them were anonymous — with names attributed to them either attached later or applied at the time to give greater believability to the work. These are logical conclusions based on scholarly research. For example, whoever wrote Matthew drew heavily from the writings attributed to “Mark” — many passages are copied, some revised a bit to correct errors or eliminate accounts deemed uncomplimentary to Jesus. If Matthew were indeed the tax-collecting disciple of Jesus, he wouldn’t have had to copy the older writing. And he would have recounted the stories as “we” did such and such, or “we” then went to so-and-so. In fact, these gospel writers’ names and all the rest of the NT documents were assigned, i.e, made up, names that lent credibility to the works. Putting your own name as title would garner no authority, but falsely applying the name John or Peter, noted disciples, or Jude or James (brothers of Jesus) — now that would get your epistle read and accepted, get your own ideas heard. So that’s what they did — unknown characters, putting their own ideas into play. NT books were all written in Greek, dating maybe 40 years after Jesus’ time (Mark) to perhaps 60 years (John), maybe more. Clearly, the illiterate peasants who followed Jesus, including his disciples, couldn’t write in fairly good quality Greek — and didn’t — so the gospels’ authors are all unknown. While you don’t know their names, you can conclude who they were. By 70 CE, about when Mark was written, the Romans had invaded Jerusalem and most proto-Christians had long since fled Judea. The early religion was still stuck to Judaism, but had started to attract non-Jews — thanks in part to Paul introducing the notion that Jesus was divine to Greeks and others in the region. Few Jews bought into the idea — their notion of a Messiah wasn’t a guy strung up as a common criminal, but would be a great leader come to free them from external control (like the Romans). But when Mark was composed, info on Jesus was sparse — that was four decades after Jesus’ likely crucifixion. His Galilean culture was illiterate, so only personal stories of his travels and teaching survived. But that, passed by word of mouth for 40 years among illiterate, uneducated, superstitious peasants, grew in myth and aggregated lore at each retelling. That was several generations, as people didn’t live long then. Early Christians — particularly the Greek contingent intermingled in the population of Syria, Asia Minor and Egypt — had only the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament) to reference for their directives. And they had those old, exaggerated tales of Jesus. About year 70, then, some fairly literate follower collected stories he’d heard and wrote them down. These eventually were reputed by later generations to have been written by Mark, companion of Peter — but that was simply added myth. Earliest manuscripts have no byline. But the writer was Greek, not Galilean. Scholars don’t reliably know even where Mark was composed, let along by whom — Syria? Asia Minor? Nobody knows. What it contains, though, is clear. It contains the viewpoint of that anonymous writer and his community — stories they’d heard and believed. What it doesn’t contain are biographical facts — ancient writers weren’t objective reporters: they wrote to pass along ideas, not report true events. Both Matthew and Luke — similarly, written by unknown Greeks — take Mark and expand on it. Of 660 verses in Mark, Matthew takes some 600, Luke 300, and revises them to clear up errors and make Jesus appear ever more heroic and divine. The author of Mark, writing in 70 CE, knew nothing about a virgin birth or resurrection. (Nor had Paul, writing his letters around year 50.) Matthew and Luke both had to make up those stories to glorify Jesus — so they invented stories to get him to grow up in Nazareth (which everybody knew) but yet come from Bethlehem (where lore claimed a great teacher would come from). However those two writers weren’t aware of the other’s fiction: if you read both accounts of the birth of Jesus, they couldn’t both be true. Same with the death and resurrection. As Mark knew nothing about these stories, clearly they were invented later. So, clearly exaggeration and myth-growing were at work here. By the time John was written, likely around the end of the century, the Jesus myth had grown even greater — he was now equated with god, had been in existence forever, etc. (This certainly wasn’t written by John, son of Zebedee, who would have been about 100 by then, in a time when 30 was old.) (And the Jesus depicted in John is radically different from the Synoptic Gospels in many ways.) So, who wrote the New Testament? Superstitious, credulous, extremely naïve Greeks. Everybody in the first and second centuries — outside of a small group of sincere, searching folk in Alexandria and maybe a few thinkers remaining in Athens — was in that category. They had no idea they inhabited a planet orbiting a sun, no recognition of weather patterns, continental drift, economics, political science, world cultures, history, pre-history, geography, mathematics, bacteria, objective thinking, critical thinking — or much of anything else we take for granted. The New Testament writers were stating their primitive notions, based on generations of accrued myth, exaggerated lore — and a total misunderstanding of Jesus’ parables. Where Jesus spoke of a Kingdom “within” — find it within yourself and you’ll be blessed, i.e, good things will happen to you — the NT writers latched onto and expanded Paul’s archaic ideas: God would be coming any day now to establish his kingdom on earth. Who they were is unknown. What they wrote is easy to see — if you look with an open mind.

by Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Paul almost certainly wrote seven of the books attributed to him, and possibly an eighth — based on writing style and content. Biblical scholars have concluded (in general, as some doubtless differ) that the other books attributed to him were written by someone else. Their style and content differ considerably. And all of the other books of the NT, 19 or 20 of them were anonymous — with names attributed to them either attached later or applied at the time to give greater believability to the work. These are logical conclusions based on scholarly research. For example, whoever wrote Matthew drew heavily from the writings attributed to “Mark” — many passages are copied, some revised a bit to correct errors or eliminate accounts deemed uncomplimentary to Jesus. If Matthew were indeed the tax-collecting disciple of Jesus, he wouldn’t have had to copy the older writing. And he would have recounted the stories as “we” did such and such, or “we” then went to so-and-so. In fact, these gospel writers’ names and all the rest of the NT documents were assigned, i.e, made up, names that lent credibility to the works. Putting your own name as title would garner no authority, but falsely applying the name John or Peter, noted disciples, or Jude or James (brothers of Jesus) — now that would get your epistle read and accepted, get your own ideas heard. So that’s what they did — unknown characters, putting their own ideas into play. NT books were all written in Greek, dating maybe 40 years after Jesus’ time (Mark) to perhaps 60 years (John), maybe more. Clearly, the illiterate peasants who followed Jesus, including his disciples, couldn’t write in fairly good quality Greek — and didn’t — so the gospels’ authors are all unknown. While you don’t know their names, you can conclude who they were. By 70 CE, about when Mark was written, the Romans had invaded Jerusalem and most proto-Christians had long since fled Judea. The early religion was still stuck to Judaism, but had started to attract non-Jews — thanks in part to Paul introducing the notion that Jesus was divine to Greeks and others in the region. Few Jews bought into the idea — their notion of a Messiah wasn’t a guy strung up as a common criminal, but would be a great leader come to free them from external control (like the Romans). But when Mark was composed, info on Jesus was sparse — that was four decades after Jesus’ likely crucifixion. His Galilean culture was illiterate, so only personal stories of his travels and teaching survived. But that, passed by word of mouth for 40 years among illiterate, uneducated, superstitious peasants, grew in myth and aggregated lore at each retelling. That was several generations, as people didn’t live long then. Early Christians — particularly the Greek contingent intermingled in the population of Syria, Asia Minor and Egypt — had only the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament) to reference for their directives. And they had those old, exaggerated tales of Jesus. About year 70, then, some fairly literate follower collected stories he’d heard and wrote them down. These eventually were reputed by later generations to have been written by Mark, companion of Peter — but that was simply added myth. Earliest manuscripts have no byline. But the writer was Greek, not Galilean. Scholars don’t reliably know even where Mark was composed, let along by whom — Syria? Asia Minor? Nobody knows. What it contains, though, is clear. It contains the viewpoint of that anonymous writer and his community — stories they’d heard and believed. What it doesn’t contain are biographical facts — ancient writers weren’t objective reporters: they wrote to pass along ideas, not report true events. Both Matthew and Luke — similarly, written by unknown Greeks — take Mark and expand on it. Of 660 verses in Mark, Matthew takes some 600, Luke 300, and revises them to clear up errors and make Jesus appear ever more heroic and divine. The author of Mark, writing in 70 CE, knew nothing about a virgin birth or resurrection. (Nor had Paul, writing his letters around year 50.) Matthew and Luke both had to make up those stories to glorify Jesus — so they invented stories to get him to grow up in Nazareth (which everybody knew) but yet come from Bethlehem (where lore claimed a great teacher would come from). However those two writers weren’t aware of the other’s fiction: if you read both accounts of the birth of Jesus, they couldn’t both be true. Same with the death and resurrection. As Mark knew nothing about these stories, clearly they were invented later. So, clearly exaggeration and myth-growing were at work here. By the time John was written, likely around the end of the century, the Jesus myth had grown even greater — he was now equated with god, had been in existence forever, etc. (This certainly wasn’t written by John, son of Zebedee, who would have been about 100 by then, in a time when 30 was old.) (And the Jesus depicted in John is radically different from the Synoptic Gospels in many ways.) So, who wrote the New Testament? Superstitious, credulous, extremely naïve Greeks. Everybody in the first and second centuries — outside of a small group of sincere, searching folk in Alexandria and maybe a few thinkers remaining in Athens — was in that category. They had no idea they inhabited a planet orbiting a sun, no recognition of weather patterns, continental drift, economics, political science, world cultures, history, pre-history, geography, mathematics, bacteria, objective thinking, critical thinking — or much of anything else we take for granted. The New Testament writers were stating their primitive notions, based on generations of accrued myth, exaggerated lore — and a total misunderstanding of Jesus’ parables. Where Jesus spoke of a Kingdom “within” — find it within yourself and you’ll be blessed, i.e, good things will happen to you — the NT writers latched onto and expanded Paul’s archaic ideas: God would be coming any day now to establish his kingdom on earth. Who they were is unknown. What they wrote is easy to see — if you look with an open mind.

by Daniel Gurpide Irrespective of the forms it has adopted, the Abrahamic or egalitarian world view has always been eschatological – and also reflects an implicit anthropology. It attributes a negative value to history, and discerns sense in historical motion only insofar as the latter tends towards its own negation and final end. According to this view, history has a beginning and it must also have an end. It is but an episode—an incident as far as what constitutes the essence of humanity is concerned. The true nature of man would be external to history. And the end of history would restore—sublimating it—whatever existed at the beginning. Human eternity would be based not on becoming but on being. I.-THE CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE This episode which is history is perceived in the Christian perspective as damnation. History derives from man being condemned by God—owing to original sin—to unhappiness, labour, sweat, and blood. Humanity lived in happy innocence in the Garden of Eden, and was condemned to history because its forefather, Adam, transgressed the divine commandment, wanting to taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge: to become like God. Adam’s fault weighs, as original sin, upon every individual who comes to the world. It is, by definition, inexpiable, since God himself was offended. However, God, in his infinite goodness, himself takes charge of the expiation. He becomes man—incarnate in the person of Jesus. The sacrifice of the Son of God introduces in historical becoming the essential event of Redemption. No doubt this concerns only those individuals touched by Grace, but it makes possible the slow march towards the end of history, for which, from then on, the ‘communion of saints’ must prepare humanity. Finally, there will come a day when the forces of Good and Evil will come face to face in a battle that will lead to a Last Judgement and, thence, to the instauration of the Kingdom of Heaven—which has its dialectical counterpart in the abyss of Hell. Eden before the beginning of history; original sin; expulsion from the Garden of Eden; traversing the vale of tears that is the world—the place of historical becoming; Redemption; communion of saints; apocalyptic battle and Last Judgement; end of history and instauration of a Kingdom of Heaven: these are the mythemes that structure the mythical vision of history proposed by Christianity. In this vision, man’s historical becoming has a purely negative value, and the sense of an expiation… II.- THE MARXIST VIEW The same mythemes can be found—now in a secularised and pseudoscientific form—in the Marxist view of history. There, history is presented as the result of the class struggle: a struggle between groups defined in relation to their respective economic conditions. The prehistoric Garden of Eden has been transformed into a primitive communism practised by a humanity still immersed in the state of nature and of a purely predatory character. Whereas man in Eden was constrained by God’s commandments, man in primitive communism lives under the pressure of misery. Such pressure has brought about the invention of the means of agricultural production, but this invention has also turned out to be a curse. It has entailed, indeed, not only the exploitation of nature by man, but also the division of labour, the exploitation of man by man, and, consequently, human alienation. The class struggle is the implicit consequence of this exploitation of man by man. Its result is history. As we can see, for Marxists it is economic conditions that determine human behaviour. By logical concatenation, the latter leads to the creation of ever new systems of production which, in their turn, cause new economic conditions and—especially—ever greater misery for those who are exploited. Nevertheless, there comes a moment of Redemption. With the arrival of capitalism misery peaks—it becomes unbearable. Proletarians become conscious of their condition, and this redemptive realisation gives rise to the organising of communist parties—exactly as the redemption of Christ had caused the founding of a communion of saints. The Judeo-Christian notion of ‘Grace’ finds its equivalent, especially in relation to the Sermon of the Mount. Communist parties carry out an apocalyptic struggle against the exploiters. This may be long and difficult, but it will ultimately and necessarily be successful: it is ‘the sense of history.’ This will bring about the abolition of social classes, put an end to man’s alienation, and allow the instauration of a communist society—unchanging and classless. Furthermore, since history is the result of the class struggle, evidently there will be no more history. Prehistoric communism will be reinstated—like the Garden of Eden in the Kingdom of Heaven—but in a sublimated way. While primitive communist society was afflicted by material misery, post-historic communist society will enjoy a perfectly balanced satisfaction of its needs. Hence, in the Marxist view, history also assumes a negative value. Born originally because of human alienation, it makes sense only insofar as it increases incessantly the misery of those exploited, finally contributing to the creation of the conditions through which misery will disappear and, as it were, ‘marching’ towards its own end, its self-abolition. III.- THE END OF HISTORY Both egalitarian views—religious Christian and secular Marxist—logically imply that history is determined not by the action of man, but by something that transcends him. It is true that Christianity ascribes free will to man and so affirms that it was Adam, having freely ‘chosen’ to sin, who is responsible for his fault, for his imperfection. However, it was God who made and wanted Adam to be imperfect. On the other hand, Marxists were sometimes wont to say that history was made by man—or rather men, as members of a social class. However, it is the case that social classes are determined and defined by economic conditions, and that it had been original misery that had constrained men to enter into that bloody concatenation which is the class struggle. Man is then incited to act only as a result of his economic condition. He is a mere decoy in a game played in nature by material forces. …Within the egalitarian vision of history, man performs a dramatic role—in a tragic, shameful, and painful farce—one that he has not written and will never write. Dignity, as an authentic human truth, is found outside history—before it and after it.

by Daniel Gurpide Irrespective of the forms it has adopted, the Abrahamic or egalitarian world view has always been eschatological – and also reflects an implicit anthropology. It attributes a negative value to history, and discerns sense in historical motion only insofar as the latter tends towards its own negation and final end. According to this view, history has a beginning and it must also have an end. It is but an episode—an incident as far as what constitutes the essence of humanity is concerned. The true nature of man would be external to history. And the end of history would restore—sublimating it—whatever existed at the beginning. Human eternity would be based not on becoming but on being. I.-THE CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE This episode which is history is perceived in the Christian perspective as damnation. History derives from man being condemned by God—owing to original sin—to unhappiness, labour, sweat, and blood. Humanity lived in happy innocence in the Garden of Eden, and was condemned to history because its forefather, Adam, transgressed the divine commandment, wanting to taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge: to become like God. Adam’s fault weighs, as original sin, upon every individual who comes to the world. It is, by definition, inexpiable, since God himself was offended. However, God, in his infinite goodness, himself takes charge of the expiation. He becomes man—incarnate in the person of Jesus. The sacrifice of the Son of God introduces in historical becoming the essential event of Redemption. No doubt this concerns only those individuals touched by Grace, but it makes possible the slow march towards the end of history, for which, from then on, the ‘communion of saints’ must prepare humanity. Finally, there will come a day when the forces of Good and Evil will come face to face in a battle that will lead to a Last Judgement and, thence, to the instauration of the Kingdom of Heaven—which has its dialectical counterpart in the abyss of Hell. Eden before the beginning of history; original sin; expulsion from the Garden of Eden; traversing the vale of tears that is the world—the place of historical becoming; Redemption; communion of saints; apocalyptic battle and Last Judgement; end of history and instauration of a Kingdom of Heaven: these are the mythemes that structure the mythical vision of history proposed by Christianity. In this vision, man’s historical becoming has a purely negative value, and the sense of an expiation… II.- THE MARXIST VIEW The same mythemes can be found—now in a secularised and pseudoscientific form—in the Marxist view of history. There, history is presented as the result of the class struggle: a struggle between groups defined in relation to their respective economic conditions. The prehistoric Garden of Eden has been transformed into a primitive communism practised by a humanity still immersed in the state of nature and of a purely predatory character. Whereas man in Eden was constrained by God’s commandments, man in primitive communism lives under the pressure of misery. Such pressure has brought about the invention of the means of agricultural production, but this invention has also turned out to be a curse. It has entailed, indeed, not only the exploitation of nature by man, but also the division of labour, the exploitation of man by man, and, consequently, human alienation. The class struggle is the implicit consequence of this exploitation of man by man. Its result is history. As we can see, for Marxists it is economic conditions that determine human behaviour. By logical concatenation, the latter leads to the creation of ever new systems of production which, in their turn, cause new economic conditions and—especially—ever greater misery for those who are exploited. Nevertheless, there comes a moment of Redemption. With the arrival of capitalism misery peaks—it becomes unbearable. Proletarians become conscious of their condition, and this redemptive realisation gives rise to the organising of communist parties—exactly as the redemption of Christ had caused the founding of a communion of saints. The Judeo-Christian notion of ‘Grace’ finds its equivalent, especially in relation to the Sermon of the Mount. Communist parties carry out an apocalyptic struggle against the exploiters. This may be long and difficult, but it will ultimately and necessarily be successful: it is ‘the sense of history.’ This will bring about the abolition of social classes, put an end to man’s alienation, and allow the instauration of a communist society—unchanging and classless. Furthermore, since history is the result of the class struggle, evidently there will be no more history. Prehistoric communism will be reinstated—like the Garden of Eden in the Kingdom of Heaven—but in a sublimated way. While primitive communist society was afflicted by material misery, post-historic communist society will enjoy a perfectly balanced satisfaction of its needs. Hence, in the Marxist view, history also assumes a negative value. Born originally because of human alienation, it makes sense only insofar as it increases incessantly the misery of those exploited, finally contributing to the creation of the conditions through which misery will disappear and, as it were, ‘marching’ towards its own end, its self-abolition. III.- THE END OF HISTORY Both egalitarian views—religious Christian and secular Marxist—logically imply that history is determined not by the action of man, but by something that transcends him. It is true that Christianity ascribes free will to man and so affirms that it was Adam, having freely ‘chosen’ to sin, who is responsible for his fault, for his imperfection. However, it was God who made and wanted Adam to be imperfect. On the other hand, Marxists were sometimes wont to say that history was made by man—or rather men, as members of a social class. However, it is the case that social classes are determined and defined by economic conditions, and that it had been original misery that had constrained men to enter into that bloody concatenation which is the class struggle. Man is then incited to act only as a result of his economic condition. He is a mere decoy in a game played in nature by material forces. …Within the egalitarian vision of history, man performs a dramatic role—in a tragic, shameful, and painful farce—one that he has not written and will never write. Dignity, as an authentic human truth, is found outside history—before it and after it.