How Religions have Bastardized God

[GoLeft TV]

From my blog at CynicalOfSociety.com:

I know quite a few people who believe that we should consult God (or Jesus) with every decision we make. And after we make that decision, we have to thank them. They can’t make a move without asking God what to do. Should I get married – let’s ask God. Should I get a new job – let’s ask God. Do I want fries with that – let’s ask God. I’m sure God is getting pretty sick of the trivial crap you’re bothering him with throughout the day.

What these people believe is that we should devote 100% of our lives to thanking, praising, and worshiping. But this begs the question – Did God create mankind so that we would simply sit around all day praising him? That sounds incredibly egotistical and self-centered for an omnipotent being to create an entire species whose only duty is to worship him. And I don’t believe that’s why man was created. You can let God guide you and you can give thanks, but if that’s all we’re supposed to do in life then that’s not much of a life to begin with. You can be a good person, which is what the Biblical version of Jesus told us to do, without having to praise him 24/7.

If you present this argument about the egotistical God to a religious zealot, they will inevitably quote you some scripture “proving” that they are right. Fine, you can quote scriptures, but you have to take into account that these stories were only first written down around 1,000 B.C., and neither the old or new Testaments were translated to English until the 1300′s. The first new Testament wasn’t even written down until the 600′s, so for more than 600 years after the death of Jesus, these stories were passed on verbally, and you can’t honestly say that the stories didn’t get twisted during those 600 years before they written down. And since the original versions of both were written in either Aramaic or Latin, there was no proper way to translate them to any other language, because neither of those can be translated with 100% accuracy. Did you ever play a game of telephone when you were younger? By the time an original phrase – let’s say “I can jump over the school” – reaches the end of the line, it becomes something like “Flies know how to use tools.” That’s pretty much what happened with the Bible, except these stories had hundreds and hundreds of years for the storytellers and writers to change them around all they wanted.


Full post is here - http://cynicalofsociety.com/2011/07/a-leap-of-faith/

[dmallind]

1. The stories certainly have an incomplete history, but this can be oversold as here.

There are parts of the gospels dating from just 30 yrs or so after the supposed dates of JC, and Pauline epistles from earlier than that. There is no doubt at all that some form of faith(s) around a biblical-ish Jesus were under way well before the end of the 1st century. We do find some differences in later versions of the gospels, but few significant ones from the earliest remnants - it is clear great care was taken to avoid changes. It is unquestionable that the Bible we read contains stories very very similar to the originals, and it has been unchanged except for translation since 325CE. The OT is less integral, with several centuries passing between supposed events and the first written accounts, but the differences between an Exodus fragment from, say, 600BCE and one from 200CE are again minor - they were quite well copied once they were written down.

Why am I, an atheist of no wavering stance, saying this? One - arguments are more persuasive when true. Two - there are better true arguments. Such as:

1) The gospels and other NT books reflect very different traditions and sources, from mystical non-terrestrial myths to simple folk hero tales to Messiah fables. They contain numerous factual errors in history and geography even from the earliest dates - clearly showing a nonlocal non-contemporary origin and an intended audience that did not expect or demand factual accuracy
2) Messiah stories were ten a penny contemporary fictions at the time - many using the name Jesus. They had lots in common with the gospels
3) Changes aplenty were made - but in the early days. There was a long-running dispute between Petrine and Pauline factions for control, the former wanting a Jewish sect for Jews and the latter wanting open and syncretic evangelism. Both did some creative insertions into the Jesus stories to get the mythical leader of the faith to pronounce for their side. It's obvious which side won!
4) Non-canonical gospels about the same (supposedly) Jesus make point 2 clearer - we have infant gospels portraying him as a snappish brat who could - and did - kill with a look like Darth Vader. We have gospels portraying him as a Maharishi type guru, or as a virile action hero. All for different audiences
5) The stories are archetypes with many earlier parallels. The savior who dies and comes back is thousands of years older than Christ. The redemptive son of God born from a virgin (even on Dec 25th!) is centuries older. The winter-solstice birth and Spring death/rebirth are basic echoes of myths as old as human understanding of the seasons.

[okasha]

2. A few additions to dmalind's mostly excellent post:

The four canonical gospels as we have them now were originally written in Greek. Some of those books may have had Hebrew or Aramaic predecessors, especially the "Q Document" which, together with Mark, is the common source shared by Luke and Matthew. John, generally considered to be the latest of the gospels, had attained written form by around 100 CE; we have papyrus fragments of Johanine text identical with the canonical text dating from that time. (Which is not to say that the entire gospel existed in its present form. The operative word is "fragments." But we know some of it did.)

A couple points about (5). I do not know of any of the "redemptive son of God" figures you're alluding to here who were actually said to be born of virgins. The whole point of the "virgin birth" story is that Mary became pregnant without sex, by an "overshadowing of the Holy Spirit" and remained a virgin in the sense of not having intercourse at least until after the birth of Jesus. It is presented as a purely miraculous event without any natural parallels. Other alleged sons (and the occasional daughter) of divinities were all produced in more or less the normal fashion, by sexual intercourse between the father-deity and the usually-human mother. Many of these women were virgins BZ--"before Zeus"--but none was a virgin afterwards. Some, like Leda or Queen Mutemwiya, were married women who cannot be assumed to have led celibate married lives.

And on another note, while spring is usually the "rebirthday" of a fertility or vegetation deity, the usual time of death or sacrifice is either at harvest (August) or the time for herd culling (autumn equinox, late September.) For some, the winter solstice is actually the dying time--eg., the Green Man/Holly King archetype from the Celtic world.

[dmallind]

4. Anahita temple in Kangavar - 200BCE

Inscriptions say Mithras was born to the Virgin goddess Anahita. Later Zoroastrian traditions also claim he was born of a virgin. I am sure Xians as always jump to differing traditions of both, but they should be careful, as the earliest gospel also makes no claims of virgin birth for Jesus, nor does the latest.

[okasha]

7. It's not quite a parallel, if you're referring to the Iranian Mitra

Zoroaster was the sperm-donor, through his semen deposited in a lake.

I'd also like to see the actual inscription, not just a translation. "Anahita" itself means "pure," so I have to wonder if the translator elaborated a bit.

Mithras, the god worshipped widely by soldiers of the Roman Empire, was born from a rock.

[dmallind]

8. And Jesus, as described by Mark (the oldest gospel) was not a virgin birth

That's one of the later additions to all 3 stories. Makes the hero more special.

[okasha]

9. Jesus' birth isn't described at all by Mark.

The only two gospels with birth narratives are Luke and Matthew.

[dmallind]

10. Precisely - it's a later add-on. Unless you suspect he didn't think it worth mentioning!

Bit of a sloppy thing for someone who wants to venerate a god-man to miss out eh? Almost like not mentioning that the dead rose from their graves when he was killed. Oh wait a minute, that too.

[okasha]

11. I suspect he'd never heard of it.

I've said here several times that the ascription of divine paternity to Jesus was a mythologized element in his story, deliberately adopted to set him up as an alternative to the (also supposedly divinely begotten) Caesar. It may also have been adopted to gloss over some irregularity about his birth. Several scholars have suggested that Mary and Joseph began a sexual relationship before their marriage. There's also a persistent extra-biblical tradition that Jesus' natural father was a Roman soldier. It might have been a Romeo-and-Juliet romance with a young legionary. William Dever puts some credence int he Panthera story. Or it might have been something far worse. Mary might have been one of the many women raped when Sepphoris was razed in 4 BCE, just after Herod's death.

[dmallind]

12. Probably so - and intuitively. Canonical Jesus stories evolved from two traditions.

One being far more mystical than the other. I don't mean the proximal Mark/Q two-source deal either, but the groups that told earlier stories from whence these tales sprang. Clearly Mark's is of the folk-hero bent, presenting a Jesus less divine than the others, and completely absent from metaphysics. An adoptionistic interpretation is very easy to infer.

[okasha]

13. Mark is, as far as I can tell, purely adoptionistic.

Jewish Messiah figures as presented in the psalms and elsewhere are clearly adopted "sons of God," even though in one Yahweh pronounces "This day I have begotten you." It would be very, very easy for a Greek or at least heavily Hellenized writer such as "Luke" to take that literally in the context of his own cultural background.

[tortoise1956]

14. I have a queston...

Wasn't the gospel of Luke purportedly authored by someone who wasn't an apostle? In other words, it can be assumed that the source of this gospel couldn't have had ANY personal connection to Jesus.

If this is true, then it would seem that the virgin birth story is almost certainly derivative, most likely from the source that wrote the gospel of Matthew.

[dimbear]

15. Or the additional source(s) they each had...........

Like to ask hard questions, don'tcha?

Nowadays most scholars don't think Matthew and Luke borrow from one another, but may share a common source in additional to the obvious big one, Mark.

It is quite likely but by no means certain that the original version of Matthew contained no virgin birth story or perhaps no birth story at all, just like Mark. That would be so if there was an original Matthew in Aramaic, as is reported by some sources. It's all spelled out in the book referred to as 'Streeter,' free on line.

[trotsky]

16. None of the gospels were written by the men whose names they bear. n/t

[okasha]

17. The virgin birth story in Luke is derivative, but not from Matthew

Matthew and Luke are each believed to have three sources. One is Mark; the second is the "Q" or "teaching document," which was likely a collection of Jesus' sayings. In addition, each has a source unique to itself, referred to respectively as "M" and "L."

[Deep13]

3. Religions pretty much created the gods...

...didn't they?

Anyway, we do not need to worry about why we were created, because we were not created. We evolved without plan or design by the blind, but deterministic process of natural selection.

[skepticscott]

5. Well, I have yet to meet

even a "religious zealot" who spends every hour of every day, for 100% of their lives, praising and worshipping god (even outside of the practical impossibilities of such a thing) . That's quite a bit different than people who make their god the center of their lives because they see that the Bible tells them to do that. Yes, they're relying on a handed-down, cobbled-together, highly dubious source to tell them what their god wants and expects, but what better do they have? And does it matter if any of it actually came from "god", and is now so distorted that he wouldn't recognize it (funny thing for an omnipotent being to allow to happen), or if it was all just a human invention in the first place?

[dimbear]

6. The first 'New Testament' was gathered by about CE 150.

The first gathering of a Christian canon, due to Marcion, dates from about then but was later rejected by the proto-Orthodox church. The NT as we know it was commonly accepted and widely circulated by the time of Constantine, i.e. 4th century. Not in doubt at all, codices nearly that old exist. Leningrad Codex, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, etc.

Scarcely any part of the NT was written in Latin, BTW. Greek for the most part, a little Aramaic, maybe even a little Hebrew.