Spring 2008

February 20

On the way to New Orleans, but I've got some things to say about Genesis. Did I tell you about Biallas' interpretation? I'd forgotten it, all this time, or had forgotten to let it affect me. A lot of what I learned in my religion courses in college I've continued to apply to all religions BUT Christianity. Hmm – fair treatment, huh?

Biallas points out, much in line with my insights in Dec/Jan, that the "fruit of the Tree of Knowledge" and the Serpent's tempation are gifts – boons to humankind. When we analyze that story, of course it is obvious that if God is omnipotent and omniscient, then he put the Tree there, He created humans with a thirst for knowledge, and he had to know what would happen. Hard to argue with.

The problem is with interpretation and how we see the serpent. Christians – building largely but not wholly on Jewish tradition, have chosen to see the Serpent as an evil being, and the temptation as a test that we fail. So we need to be punished. This is an archetype – we keep acting out this story; it tells us our nature and our relationship with God.

What if instead you read the story as one in which God, knowing humans as he does, knows the best way to get them to do something is to forbid them it? So He sets up the whole situation to entice us into a world of intellectual stimulation, moral responsibility and choice, instead of just sitting on our butts enjoying the good life? The result isn't punishment – its growth. Yahweh isn't vengeful; he's an Intelligent Designer, pushing us toward our greater consciousness.

OK, so I read and thought all of that over break. Now I want to report some new stuff.

I'm reading The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn. Wonderful! Will fill in plot later. He discusses two rabbinic commentaries on the creation story (and others) in Genesis; That of Rashi and of a modern scholar, Friedman.

Two points. One, his own excellent question as a child – why does knowledge come on a tree? Why not a river? A flower? A stone? He ends up concluding it has to be a gowing, living, developing thing, like learning itself. Still, why a tree and not a flower? Tree has longevity and statliness I guess, is not frivolous. But there are an awful lot of flowers that one could hardly accuse of frivolity.

Two – All rabbinic commentators apparently accept that it was a fig tree, because Adam and Eve wrapped themselves with fig leaves! That flummoxes me. Where is the logic? Rabbis are supposed to have laid the groundwork for symbolic logic, logical reasoning in general in the West. And maybe Mendelsohn is overstating. But Rashi, widely considered one of the greatest, wisest, most important commentators, he says about the fig leaves: "By the very thing with which they were ruined, they were corrected." Since God made clothes for them. But maybe the Tree of Knowledge had tiny leaves, so they had to use a different tree . . . right? Geez! Else why would one be called "fig" and the other "Tree of Knowledge"?

Earlier, Mendelsohn points out something super important in the whole "origins" arguments. The Hebrew text of the beginning of the Torah is not "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth" What it says is:

Bereishit bara Elohim et-hashamayim v'et ha'aretz.

"In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth . . ." That little change in emphasis is just gigantic.

March 1

I've just finished Lost. Last night and many times while reading it I had to put the book aside and weep. Mendlesohn's story is interspersed with his musings on the Torah. More correctly, on the parashah, the weekly readings of Genesis. Thinking about what happens, even just from the Creation through the birth of Jacob, I do not see how one can conclude that Yahweh is a "good" God.

Clearly the stories are meant to tell his people, his followers, who He is and what He expects of them. Let them know what kind of God they've got themselves mixed up with. And it is the story of a very specific relationship; this one god watches and chooses this one man, and tests him, and decides he has the right qualities. The qualities this particular god is looking for. So he makes a covenant with him. Forevermore, Yahweh and Abraham will be bound together, along with all of Abraham's decendents.

The Torah is a record, and an explanation, and maybe like a manual. Like a book you would leave for your successor about how to get along with a cranky and persnickety boss. And for a very long time, neither the Jews nor anyone else claimed it was anything more. You have your gods; we have ours. You have your ways; we have ours. No claims to universal truths and righteousness. Just deep intimacy and relatedness, trust and interdependency. Why will we get the land of Canaan? Not because it is the "just," the "right" thing to happen, but because Yahweh is our champion and is more powerful.

If you read the Torah in this way and in this way only, can you remain untroubled. Because if you are looking for Yahweh to be just, kind, fair or good – forget it. Even to be consistent. The only way in which he is consistent is that he demands obedience and loyalty. He is always a jealous god. But he is absolutely horrified that Cain killed his brother Abel. One human murdering another is such a terrible abomination. Then just a little while later he's commanding Abraham to murder his own son. Of course he prevents that, but inbetween, Yahweh himself has annihilated all of humankind except Noah and his family (even babies, even children), and has killed every living being in Sodom and Gomorrah. Again, there had to have been innocent infants and children in those cities.

So if these stories are myths to teach us the nature of God, I think they teach that Yahweh is/was a partisan of the family of Abraham, who insisted on loyalty and defined goodness as obedience to himself – much as people generally did define things at the time. In other words, a God of the time and place. A god created for and by the people. A god that should never have been taken out of that context and made universal. Not without a serious makeover.

Then we come to the horrors of the Holocaust. No. I do not believe a living Yahweh, who had really Chosen these people, would stand by and allow that to happen. If he would, he's not good. A god who intervenes in history – Egypt, Canaan, Jericho, Jerusalem, etc. – choosing NOT to intervene in Germany? There is no possible sin big enough for a good god. These were children. All of them. Even the elderly. They were innocent as infants in comparison to what was done to them. No one with even half a tiny bit of goodness would allow it, who had the power to stop it.

So if there is no Yahweh, there is no Jesus. Not as Savior. Which I already believed. But its amazing how deeply rooted the habit of such belief is. And I guess its that no matter how much I want to just walk away from monotheism altogether and stop thinking about it, I can't. I live in a culture in which there is no escape. One is constantly and incessantly bombarded with it.

Old Testament Families

Following up on what I said in my last post, I am getting bored with my old journals, and have decided to get pickier about what I post. I am mainly going to follow the path I set out on when I began a letter to my mother a few years ago – to try to explain what I believe and why I believe it and how I came to believe it. Those things that are particulary relevant to that path, I'll go ahead and type up. And if there are other things – like this book review and the thoughts it spurred, or other major things, I'll add those as well.

March 24

I have to talk some more about religion. Last night I finished Rachel and Leah, and saw that he was unable to tell the whole story so there will be a fourth book, Wives of Israel. I felt like this book was not as good at evoking and explaining early Hebrew culture as the last ones, but maybe he felt he'd already set up the context. I kept having the feeling that he was more interested in explaining how polygyny might work, and there was a note of justification. I ended up feeling this was less about Hebrews than Mormons. Some examples – the entire relationship between Jacob and all the relevant women except Rachel centers on the reading of the Holy Word, the writen scriptures. Now that is likely supposed to be the foundation of family life for Mormons, but we are talking about the grandson of Abraham. He is thought to have lived c. 2100 BCE. So call it 2000-1900, generously allowing the Biblical reports of Abraham's age at Isaac's birth.

I believe this is about when Egyptians are developing their heiroglyphics – I'd have to check about all those languages (Sumerian cuneiform, etc.). What is importat is that even the dogged believers in Moses having written the Penteteuch personally don't put the date any earlier than 1400 BCE. He might have used earlier sources, they say, but come on, Hebrews writing their own distinct language (not pictographic, by the way, but phonetic) in 1900 BCE? And they are already ancient, according to Card. How ancient could they be, if Abraham was the first Patriarch, first one to make people realize they needed any history, and you are only one generation between you and that Patriarch? It just doesn't make any sense.

It wouldn't be such a problem for the book if it was just an occasional reference to a few holy writings. But the story doesn't work without it. Jacob and Rachel's relationship develops through their common interest in herding. Leah, though, would have had no reason to even see him except Card makes the "birthright" of Abraham this large collection of holy books. Lean and one of her future concubines, Bilhah, come to Jacob to learn the scriptures, and they learn to read and write and Bilhah becomes a scribe, copying all the texts.

He, Card, uses these books as a way to explain what happens in the Biblical story such that the people involved are all essentially good. I re-read the relevant part of Genesis last night and it is as I recalled – full of trickery, deceit, betrayal, jealousy, bickering, competition and exploitation. Hard to tell it in such a way that the people are good and their behaviors justified.

I recall being troubled with the story in childhood, but I don't recall what my parents said, if anything, to help me understand it. It is hard to explain away. Jacob makes a deal with Laban for Rachel's hand. He works 7 years for her in brideservice, and then Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Leah, the older sister with weak eyes. Then Laban says he'll give him Rachel, too, if Jacob does another 7 years. And after that, Laban continues to change the terms of the deals he makes with Jacob – Jacob says "10 times"!!!

As a child, I of course would have been unfamiliar with polygyny and bridewealth to begin with, making it harder to get a grasp on this story, to tease apart what is cultural and what is people behaving badly. But as an anthropologist, I am very familiar with many different societies who practice either or both, and with pastoralist cultures in general. Pastoralist, patrilineal cultures wherein sororal polygyny is practiced and either bridewealth or brideservice is paid also generally have an economic system of balanced reciprocity. The idea of balance in exchanges permeates the entire ideology (in fact, that is at base what bridewealth is – compensation for removing the valuable bride and her future labor and children from her household) and makes possible all kinds of other ideological and symbolic exchanges like sacrifice. But the point is – you DON'T TRICK PEOPLE OR GO BACK ON YOUR WORD!!!!! Not if you care about your family's good name. Not if you ever want to do business or marry any one else in your family or graze your sheep or water your cattle, etc. I mean, this is an absolutely unheard of, terrible, wrong, evil thing to do. Ask anyone living in a pastoralist society.

So Laban is a sneaky, lying, exploitative man. But Jacob is no better – he lied and deceived his own father in order to steal his elder brother's birthright and inheritance. One might think he's gotten what he deserves.

But what about the sisters? What did they do to be punished this way? Poor Leah, who is unwanted but forced to marry a man who is in love with her sister. Poor Rachel, who was expecting to be the sole or at least first wife of her beloved, who loves her in return. Now she is second wife, and then Leah gets all the first babies as her consolation. The two sisters get into a pissing (well, birthing) match to see who can have most sons and therefore their husband's love. They throw their handmaidens at him and claim their children as their own, in a way. Rachel has to wait and wait for her first child, and then her second one kills her in childbirth.

Leah has lots of sons, and more through her servant, and yet as soon as Rachel has one, she gets special treatment, as does her son. All those sons grow up to be pretty nasty characters, infected with the terrible jealousy, bitterness and pain of ther mothers' competition. All but the youngest, Joseph, who is spoiled by his father (Rachel's child, after all), but becomes a decent human being.

This is a terrible story in so many ways. When looking at it from the sisters' point of view, one has to ask, why did this happen to them? In Judaism there is only ever one answer to that question: because God wanted it to. Humans have free will, but God, knowing their (our) personalities, sets things up in such a way that he knows or can guess, which way a person will choose.

Either: 1. People make absolutely free choices and God then works with that choice, or; 2. God arranges things such that they will happen a certain way. Either way, isn't God still interfering? Still guiding people's choices, and thus removing one's free will? If you want to defy the will of God, the Semetic religions say you can't, because God can turn ALL things to His purpose. Right?

What I am trying to establish is that no matter how you think of it, even to add a third choice, that people will attempt to discern God's will for them and will thus do it – Jacob married both Leah and Rachel because that is how God wanted it. Why? Why did God want this so badly that he was willing to destroy all these lives (or let them be destroyed), let terrible deeds go unpunished, etc.?

Well, look what happens next, what comes out of it. Ah, the sons of Jacob are the origins of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

Wonderful. God uses those tribes as a way to organzie his people all the way through history, even up to today. And they figure somehow in the End Times, as seen in John's revelation. I can't remember the details. Priests of one of the tribes must be in silent prayer at the temple, or something like that.

Is that supposed to console Leah? Comfort Rachel? Maybe it does, so that might be fine. But when one steps back a bit, and asks questions such as, "What does this teach us about the nature of God?" "About the human condition?" "About what God expects of us?" then I feel like some very serious issues are at stake.

First, one common lesson Christians take from tales like this are that God uses even bad people and bad behavior to achieve His ultimate purpose. God turns all things to good. But that ignores the fact, or at least the implication, that god in fact set things up SO that people would behave badly. It is an echo of the Garden of Eden story. God tells people to be good, but then arranges things, playing on his knowledge of our weakneses (which He gave us), to elicit that bad behavior that He needs in order to further the story, or make His larger point. I just keep seeing Yahweh set people up and knock them down.

Why? Perhaps his ultimate purpose is so wonderful that it justifies this interference, this manipulation of his creatures so they do what he told them not to. I mean, what if Adam and Even had just obeyed him? No story, period.

I've asked many times what the Ultimate Purpose is. And maybe that's presumptuous. Maybe we puny humans aren't qualified to know that. But we have brains, so let's use them. The Old Testament is really the story of one family. Starting with Adam it tells the story of him and his descendents. In the New Testament, it's important to the writers to establish the link, to show that "Hey! This is the same family."

All the other people in the OT are just props, bit players. So God's ultimate purpose must have something to do with this family. For Jews, who are all part of this family, that's great. God started the world with this family and will end it with this family. For them, they can find much meaning – God's purpose is related to them going through all these struggles in order for . . . what? For them to finally learn to submit wholy to God's will? Mightn't they have done that sooner if god hadn't kept creating tempting situations? OK, so he's training them to never give in, no matter the temptation, so that they will one day be a holy people who usher in the Messianic Age, in which life is great for everyone and they are all obedient to God's will. Well, couldn't he have just created them that way to start with?

Maybe it is important to have a bunch of creatures come to be good and obedient of their own choice. Why? Back to the idea of a battle to fight with an Other, and God needs an army. I don't know. But if you stick with just the Jews, then what was the purpose of there being people with whom Jews would never have contact and some who would never even hear of them?

I mean, this whole universe created so one family can play out this story in which one (or two) creatures become many. Are given free will, make a lot of good and bad choices, but ultimately learn to be good. One family. Does that feel remotely true? Not to me. Of course, Jews also see their story as one that is meant to be an example to all humanity of God's existence, his love, his will, his plan. But what IS that plan?

I mean, the Hebrews and then Jews were never recruiters. They didn't try to convert people, they didn't and really still don't go out of their way to welcome those who want to join them, and they never tried really to prove that theirs was the only God to others. So they are just being a quiet example.

Christians are the ones who decided that the God of the Jews is the only god for all people. They were the first to have the idea that God's plan was to extend his relationship to others outside the one family. It is important to them to demonstrate that Jesus is a member of that family, that he is the heir to the kingdom the family has become. And he is the door that allows all humankind to be adopted by the family and his subjects in the kingdom.

So Rachel and Leah's suffering becomes meaningful in that it produced this kingdom and the heir to it so that all creatures might be saved, in a Christian interpretation.

For me, I've come to a place where this story just doesn't make sense in those ways. If god wanted all people to be a part of this family, why didn't he do it from the start?

But it's not as if all those other people out there don't have their own stories!!! They have stories about their own families, their own gods, and their own importance in the universe.

All the small societies in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, the Americas, the islands (the 'Nesias, as I always think of them), they have had their experiences with God. They have developed or been given by god their own rules. Maybe not written down as the Decalogue of the Jews, but Hammurabi had his codes, Egyptians, various groups of Chinese, Indians, Maya, Aztec, Inca, Medes, Sumerians, Babylonians, Akkadians, and many, many, many others DID have holy scriptures, messages and lessons and morality plays and poetry. And all of those thousands of cultures without writing nevertheless have and have had extremely sophisticated and complex religions.

More, they had their own experiences of God or Ultimate Source or wahtever they called it. God spoke to them, too. Told them THEY were the special ones. Walked them through difficulties, comforted them, punished them, all the same things that Jews had.

And then in some places people came to understand Absolute Reality in a different way. As NOT a person. And they did their work, and they devoted themsleves, and they had their own experiences of the Divine, or Absolute, which were earth-shattering, every bit as much as the voice of God was to the Hebrew prophes, as ecstatic as the followers of Jesus. And they had their own saints and wise men. Their own martyrs, too. People who were so good the world couldn't bear their example. These wise men (and women) created their own holy books full of wisdom.

I could go on and on. But the question I want to ask is this: Are we really to believe that all the wisdom of the world is nothing, because it isn't the same as the message to the Jews? Can anyone believe that God created the world, and the huge variety of people, and either left them entirely alone, or spoke to them differently, just so, at the end, everyone would chuck the beliefs that God either allowed to grow into complex philosophies that give hope and wisdom and comfort to billions of individuals, or that God helped them create these alternate philosophies by guiding and interfering to teach them lessons . . . . All of that just so at the end, everyone would throw it all away and adopt the philosphy and faith of the Christians? Would decide that actually it was the fate of one Jewish family that mattered? Would decide to abandon their own ancestors, their own rich traditions and history just because Christians have so generously opened the doors and allowed them into the Jewish family?

I cannot believe it. And so I can no longer believe that Yahwe is THE god. I can't believe that by following a different path I will be damned to hell. And yet I still feel pain as I write these words. The Bible says that Jesus spoke of one unforgivable sin, and that is to deny the Spirit. To reject the Spirit of God. I don't know what that verse means. And for the longest time, my inability to correctly decode it has kept me in fear of being damned to hell for eternity.

Even though I don't believe I am or have ever truly rejected any Spirit of God. So why am I still afraid to commit on paper to a stance that is outside what Christians would accept? I'm still afriad of going to hell, even though I haven't believed in its existence for a good 20 years! It is such a deep-rooted fear. Christianity has done such a good job of detailing it and making sure people know that's likely where they are going. Hegemonic discursive power, indeed.

And that makes Christianity unique of the major religions. None of the others suggest that the majority of individuals are going to hell. That fear of hell and how it is used was one of the first, if not the first, thing that made me question my childhood faith. How could a loving God use threats of eternal damnation to get people to behave? Even half-way decent parents know better.

Jews don't even have a concept of hell, and it is them God mostly talked to. Muslims believe all will eventually make it to heaven. Christians really are alone in this hell-and-punishment obsession.

I am not going to let fear stop me this time. I do not believe that Yahweh, as depiced in the Bible, is the one and only God. Or if He is, then Jews and their descendent religions have got it all wrong.

I don't believe in the exclusivity of it. I believe there is an Absolute Reality. I believe that the early Hebrews had contact with it, and that their story reflects their understanding of that contact. I'm certain some of their prophets were close to that Reality, touched it, and were filled by it.

And I believe Jesus also was filled with and close to it, and that Jesus and the prophets before him were trying to show people how they, too, could be close to it. And the Hebrews I think better understood that this was their contact with the Infinite. They could and did accept that without making any statement that other peoples couldn't have their own contact. I believe that other peoples did and do have contact with that same Entity/Presense/Thing/No-Thing, and that each of them interpreted that contact in their own way, according to their own history and cultural context.

I don't know exactly how it came about that Christianity took on such an exclusive and singular quality. I guess it began that way, in that Jews, Jesus' Jewish followers, all believed he was the Jewish messiah. They never suggested Jesus was there for all. In fact, I think that would (and did) freak some people out. How could their messiah be there for everyone? He's supposed to kick Roman butt, not save it!

Jesus' message was inclusive, except when he says, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me." But what did he really mean by that? Many (most?) Christians use that quote to justify the conversion of the rest of the world. "You must convert in order to save yourself from eternal damnation."

Is that what he meant? What if he really meant, "You need to follow my directions?" Like the Buddha saying "You must follow the same path I did in order to find enlightenment. There is no other way but the way I did it." I find this entirely possible.

So if Jesus was inclusive, who wasn't? The early Roman church. Peter and his entire group didn't think Jesus message was for the gentiles, so why bother telling them? Again a reflection of the fact that Jews believed their relgion was their own. Their messiah their own. Their God their own. Everyone else could have their own gods. So the early Jewish Christians are exclusive, but not because they believe their religion is the only one in the world; the opposite, in fact.

Oh. Weird. So the exclusivity of Jewish Christians in Rome led them to . . . well, do it the other way. It is Paul, of course. He's the one who believes this message, this gospel, is for everyone. It is his inclusivity that leads to the Church's later exclusive position. Paul believes all the world should follow Jesus. Not because he thinks everyone else is going to some future hell, but because he believes Jesus' gift of Life, his good news, is a gift for all. He wants to share it. He does believe Jesus is coming again, he does believe there will be a heaven, a utopia, a messianic age, and he wants all people to share it.

He clearly believes that theGreeks and Romans with their pantheons are wrong, and he does try to convince people of this, but still his prosletizing feels more like someone offering a gift, being as inclusive as he possibly can.

But over time that message changed. I think it had to do first with the conversion of the European tribes after Rome had adopted Christianity. Because then it was a question of the powerful, civilized, clearly "more advanced" people – the Romans – moving into, conquering and ruling over diverse peoples with their own tribal and band-level religions. Non-Christian meant non-Roman and thus backward, disempowered, and clearly wrong about everything.

Once that association was made, it became easier for Christians to believe their way was the only way, and having people convert to your religion was also to have them convert to your culture, your economy, your political system. Those seeds of exclusivity and superiority grew through the "dark" ages, and by the time of European expansion were in full bloom. What fertile ground these twin attitudes found when the first indigenous peoples of Africa and the Americas were contacted. To the Europeans who met them, these natives were clearly backward, lawless, and amoral; clearly in need of saving. And they frightened them into conversion with gruesome depictions of hell. Not to mention all the carrots.

It might only have been in that lonely time, the thousand years after the fall of Rome, when Europeans were cut off from people of other religions, that the idea of only ONE religion having any truth or relevance could have been born and survived.

And so, why should I let irrational fear stop me from fully embracing the faith I do have? Why should I not follow my own path to the center with no guilt and no fear? There is no good reason.

2006 - August 5-9, Jesus and Paul

After consulting other sources about the Gospels, I continued my study of the New Testament. These were long days of reading and writing, and I am going to try to cut the comments by about half . . .



August 5
I’ve decided I’m just going to read Freeman, and not try to capture every interesting thing he says. A lot of it is stuff I already know, but there are some interesting tidbits. I like his attitude, which is that of attempting to find a historical Jesus who would have made sense to first century Jews. To understand the cultural context so that his actions make sense – but more, that the individual motives/positions of the gospel writers makes sense. He doesn’t at all say, “there are contradictions, so it must not be true.” He instead says, “There are contradictions, so there must be reasons why different people saw him in different ways.” This is the same attitude I have, the same motivation.

After building the argument that Jesus was most comfortable and successful with the “little’ people of rural, provincial Galilee, and had little success in the towns, Foster is able to make the strong point that Jesus was an outsider in Jerusalem. Barabas was, or might have been, an insider with a lot of support for his insurrection. It goes a long way to explain why the people (and Caiaphus) would use Jesus as a way to save one of their own.

He points out how difficult it was to make a charge that would stick, why Pilate would have acquicsed (fear of revolt, or being called disloyal to Caesar), and how odd it is that they didn’t go after his followers. They can’t have been considered a threat, and it supports the idea that Jesus’ actions in the temple were the catalyst.

He talks about the devastation the disciples must have felt, says Christians avoided depictions of the crucifixion for 400 years. A footnote says the 1st was an anti-Christian Roman graffito of a donkey, hanging from a cross. Their Santa Sabina in Rome had Jesus with outstretched arms and nail holes, but no cross, in the 5th century (p.359).

Paul spent 15 days with Peter in Rome, so he would have heard about the resurrection first hand. He writes about it in the 50s, at least 20 years before the Gospels. He says Peter, then 12 disciples, then 500 people, then James and the Apostles, and finally Paul. What about Mary? Is that a later fabrication, or did Peter supplant her, given the tension some (Gnostics) report between them? Haven’t yet dissected Acts, or Corinthians, but Freeman says Paul clearly thought Jesus wasn’t corporeal, but a spirit; the gospels are unclear and confused as to what sort of being he was.

The apostles are still focused on the immanent return of Jesus and the Kingdom of God. I’ll be reading Acts next, but Freeman says Peter says that Jesus ‘was a man commended to you by God” – the idea that he might have been divine was completely alien to Jewish thought, and just would not have occurred to them (p.104). Since Jesus died, the apostles cannot use the scriptures that refer to the Messiah coming in triumph and establishing the kingdom – not without serious re-interpretation. So they must turn to other scriptures which refer to one being “torn from the land . . . for our faults struck down.” Isaiah 53:8-10. From here they develop the notion of a Messiah who gives his life for our sins. That’s not as attractive as one who conquers, but it is enough for them to be able to call him Christ, even though he apparently failed. A footnote says Jews reject this and point out that in the original context, the person described is not a messianic figure. So they were really reaching, as I think is clear in Matthew’s attempts to bend and torture scripture and the life of Jesus to fit. First use of the term “Christians” comes from Antioch.

That’s all of Freeman I want to read right now. May read parts of Armstrong and Pagels that deal with the gospels.

Armstrong p.8: “The Psalms sometimes refer to David as the ‘Son of God,’ but that was simply a way of expressing his intimacy with Yahweh. Nobody since the return from Babylon had imagined that Yahweh actually had a son, like the abominable deities of the goyim.”

Armstrong suggests Jesus' arguments with the Pharisees may really be with the even more stringent school of Shammai (pg. 81). “there was nothing particularly unusual” in a voice from heaven identifying someone as “son of God” or “Beloved Son” pg.81, and she cites examples.
Jesus stressed that all could do the same miracles, if they were like him, I.e. surrendered themselves wholly to God’s will. She talks about Paul’s break from the early disciples over whether gentiles could be followers p.83, and says, “Paul never called Jesus God.” He calls him Son of God in the Jewish sense, but “he certainly did not believe Jesus was the incarnation of God himself.” (p.83).

Armstrong places the urge to deify Jesus in global context. She points out that all of the Axial Age religions, which around 500 BCE made the move from local, partial deities to universal beings/processes, all begin around 10o BCE-100CE to develop personal devotion. The Mahayana Buddhists invent the concept of bodhisattva in the first century BCE, the first statues of the Buddha are put up at Gandhara and Mathira (p.84). [Bodhisattvas are those who sacrifice themselves for the salvation of the world]. And in Hinduism, bhakti yoga develops.

People who cannot relate to the austerity of the Upanishads personalize Brahman into the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. And Vishnu incarnates himself in avatars, particularly the beloved Krishna, who is both loved as a very human human – a child, a lover of cowgirls, a devoted husband – but also reveals himself to Arjuna as The God, terrifying in his vastness, his incorporation of all things, the source and completion of all things.

Isn’t this helpful? There is again a global trend. One can easily see how Buddhism and Hinduism influenced one another. Was there something about the stage of social/political/ economic development? Or something about the stage in the cyclical/spiral development of philosophical/religious thinking?

It is a good reminder that, while it is important to understand Jesus in the local context, it is also important to pull back and see the global trends. The development of Mahayana, bhakti and Christianity “all answer the need of the masses of humanity for a personal relationship with the ultimate” p.86. In the Eastern traditions, though, the Ultimate is seen as multiple and diverse; no one depiction can contain its greatness/vastness. Why is Christianity different?

Armstrong says Paul referred to Greek rationalism as mere “foolishness” I Corinth 1:24. Later, its important to remember that the early Christians were not philosophically sophisticated and weren’t interested in creating a theology, even. Religion was not a matter of carefully considered intellectual positions, but rather a set of attitudes – a “cultivated attitude of commitment” p.93. when they said their “creeds,” they were “assenting to” an emotional, not a logical or intellectual proposition. “Credo” meant to “give one’s heart” not “I think.”

Justin of Caesarea (100-165) was one of the first Greek Christians to try to explain Christianity to the rational Greeks. Armstrong describes him as not very bright, having studied under 3 different philosophers and understanding none of them. He said Christians were simply following Plato. Argued Jesus was the Logos, the Divine Reason – but he couldn’t explain this very well.

Basilides and Valentinus in Alexandria were Gnostics, who taught that first there was the Godhead, the ineffable One, Source, Simplicity, No-thing. It wasn’t content to be alone, so It generated “emanations” similar to the pagan mythologies. Gets complicated, but one of the main points is that one of the aeons, in a fit of pique, created the earth (as a result of his fall). Thus the Logos, another one of the aeons, had to come to the rescue by incarnating as Jesus (p.96). They never meant these to be literal – they were ‘symbolic expressions of an inner truth.” A quote from one of them sounds an awful lot like Buddhism.

Marcion, 100-165, a Roman who founded his own church, makes a good point. If a sound tree produces only good fruit, as Jesus said, then how could the world have been created by a good God? I asked my Dad the same question as an early teen. Dad’s answer was the devil, which didn’t satisfy, because why does a good God allow the devil to exist?

Marcion’s answer was that Yahweh was an entirely different God than the one Jesus talked about. The Hebrew scriptures don’t mention, even hide, the existence of this good God. He counseled throwing out the Old Testament and just concentrate on the teachings of Jesus, and he attracted a huge following. Armstrong points out that he’d put his finger on something important in the Christian experience – we don’t know what to make of the Hebrew God (p.97).

Tertullian (160-220), a North African theologian, pointed out Marcion’s god was more Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover than Jesus’ god.

August 6
The Sunday-school trained girl in me is worried that the God of the Hebrews is not happy with me for all the questions I’m posing. But the Hindu-influenced speculative me thinks perhaps this is precisely what the One, the God-Who-Was-Alone, wants; that this is what he/it created us for. To ask and ask and figure out what it is. Possibly because it doesn’t know, Itself.


It is gratifying that greater minds than mine have asked the same questions, been disturbed by the same things. Makes me feel less alone. People today take it so for granted that Jesus was the incarnation of God, as if it were something obvious. But it wasn’t obvious. In fact, the thought was not only foreign, but repellent, to Jews, Greeks and Romans alike.


Clement of Alexandria (c.150-215) thought the God of the Jews and of Plato were the same. He called Plato the Attic Moses p.98. “His god was characterized by his ‘apotheia’; he was utterly impassible, unable to suffer or change.” This doesn’t sound much like Jesus’ or the Hebrew God to me! But Clement figured the way to be close to this god was by mimicking him. Be calm and quiet, and one would discover the Quietness within. Seems a little Buddhist influenced, without really understanding it. He did think Jesus was God, but he thought we also could become divine. If we followed his program we would be deified and participate in divine life.


However, he didn’t think Jesus did it that way. Jesus was the logos, by which Clement meant ‘divine wisdom,’ who had “become man so that you might learn from a man how to become God” p.98. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (130-200), was teaching the same thing. But how do they square this with the God of the Torah? He is anything but calm and impassive. As Armstrong points out, Clements’s theology left a lot of unanswered questions. How does the logos become human? How can Jesus be god, and there only be one god? Armstrong says that Christians, as the notion of Jesus’ divinity developed, became anxious over that last question, as well they should.


Sabellius, first century Roman in Rome, suggested the biblical names “Father, Son, Spirit” were like the masks of actors. Most Christians, Armstrong says, were distressed at the idea, because it suggested that the Father, supposed to be impassible and omnipotent, had suffered with the Son on the cross, and this they didn’t accept. But Paul of Somosota, Bishop of Antioch from 260-272 almost lost his see when he said Jesus was just a man in whom the word of God dwelt, p.99. So, they aren’t happy either way. None of these formulations fit their experience, I guess, which is now 100-200 years after Jesus lived.


And then there was Origen. I’ve summarized him elsewhere, but his general idea was that we all, at one time, were in the presence of God, got bored contemplating his face, fell, were arrested by our bodies, and were now forever searching to get back. Jesus isn’t/wasn’t God, but his was the one soul that didn’t fall. He came to earth to show us how we could once again ascend the chain of being and be back in God’s presence. Belief in “Jesus’ divinity was only a phase; it would help us on our way, but would eventually be transcended when we would see God face to face” p.100. Origen was later declared heretical, in part because he didn’t believe God created the world ex nihilo, but also because he didn’t believe Jesus “saved” us; we save ourselves by following his path.


Plotinus (205-270), who studied in Alexandria, joined the Roman Army in hopes of going to India and eventually founded a prestigious school in Rome. I really like him – he seems to be attempting to merge Eastern and Greek philosophy. I’ve summarized him before. Armstrong covers his philosophy p.101-105.


After Plotinus, Armstrong discusses Montanus, a guy in Phygia, now Turkey, who lived after and around 170. He claimed to be an avatar of God (Hebrew?). “I am Father, Son and Paraclite” he claimed, as did his companions, Priscilla and Maximilla. He sounds pretty weird and crazy. Preached the immanent return of Christ, urged followers to extreme asceticism and celibacy and martyrdom. Death for the faith would “hasten the coming of Christ” p.105. Engaged in battle with evil forces. It spread all over Turkey, Syria, Gaul and North Africa! Even attracted Tertullian (p.105), the leading theologian of the Latin Church!


Armstrong points out that in the East, a Christianity was developing that preached “a peaceful, joyous return to God,” but in the West, a “more frightening God demanded hideous death as a condition of salvation.” P.105.

12:30 am. Since I’m up, I think I’ll go ahead and read Acts. I’d like to avoid commenting on every little thing, so I’m going to focus on: the view of Jesus, the early church, and the politics of that church. There’ll likely be other things I can’t resist.


Acts is thought to have been written by Luke, a companion of Paul, after his gospel. So circa 90-100 AD.

Anyway, in Acts 2:22-23, Peter refers to Jesus as “a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders . . . this man, delivered up by the predetermined plan.” No hint there of Jesus being God. In v. 24 he says it was impossible for Jesus to be held by death’s power and quotes David as saying “I was always beholding the Lord in my presence; For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. . . Because Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow They Holy One to decay. . . “ Then Peter argues that since David in fact did decay, he must have been prophesying about Jesus.


Acts 2:33 “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God . . .” Seems to say Jesus was a man, who through his goodness was rewarded by a special place/relationship with God.



2:36 “Let all Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” From the context of another quote from David (that Jesus also quoted to stump the priests in one or two of the gospels), “The Lord said to my Lord,” one could argue that Peter is saying Jesus was made divine, made equal with God. All in how one interprets “Lord.”


Right away they gain 3000 converts, and begin to live communally – sell their property, share with all as anyone had need, “continuing with one mind the temple” and eating from house to house “taking their meals together” praising God, and “having favor with all the people” 2:44-47. Sounds great, doesn’t it?


In chapter 3, Peter and John heal a man, and in Peter’s second sermon which follows, he refers to Jesus as a prophet “raised up his servant,” and “raise up” a prophet. Not incarnate.


4:32-36 More communalism, all selling and sharing their property with one another. Renounce private property. Ananias and his wife sold their property, but kept some money back, and Peter calls them on it. Not for keeping the cash, but for lying. And the guy falls down dead. So, some seeking personal glory. His wife also dies. Peter, in Luke’s account, doesn’t seem to be dealing with them harshly, it is God, or their own shame/guilt. Certainly would have scared everyone else!


The group is really making quite a scene, now. Hanging out in the Solomon portico, attracting more and more converts, and people are bringing their sick from all over for healing. They lay them in the street in hopes Peter’s shadow will fall on them and heal them. Unquestionably, he is the leader. 5:12-16. Again on trial with the Council, Peter says of Jesus, “He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and Savior” 5:31.
5:33-42 tells of Gamaliel, who was a student of Hillel’s and a highly respected teacher in his own right. He councils the priests to leave the disciples alone, and cites two other recent cases of men who claimed to be the Messiah and attracted followings – Theudas, and Judas of Galilee.


By chapter 6, they are getting big enough to have internal squabbling, and the need to organize/institutionalize daily life – they select 7 to oversee all of that – food, serving, etc. Stephen was one of them. Stephen, of course, gets stoned to death, having driven the priests over the edge. That seems to be the signal to open season against the church (yes, they are calling it that – probably ecclesia). And Saul is in the thick of the rounding up. 8:2 The followers scatter. What might have happened had the priests followed Gamaliel’s council?


Phillip is told by the Holy Spirit to go to the road to Gaza, where he meets and converts an Ethiopian Jew, and immediately after baptizing him, he is “snatched by the Holy Spirit” and deposited in another town, where he keeps preaching 8:39-40. Wow, don’t remember that.


August 7
. . . And God sends them out as missionaries. It isn’t clear how God is communicating His will. Sometimes people have visions, sometimes, like here, it just says, “the Holy Spirit said.” 13:2.
13:16-42. As to who Jesus was, he says that through David’s link, “God has brought to Israel a Savior” v.23. And cites Psalms, “Thou art my Son; Today I have begotten thee.” V.33, in reference to the resurrection, not the birth.


In chapter 15, a real bone of contention. Some men come to Antioch from Jerusalem and tell the gentile converts they must be circumcised. Barnabus and Paul had “great dissention and debate” with them. They realize they need to figure this out, so send B & P to Jerusalem, where a council occurs. Peter sides with Barnabus and Paul, saying if God made makes no distinction (I.e. the Holy Spirit entered uncircumcised men) then why should they? James also agrees, but with a few stipulations (don’t eat things sacrificed to idols, or blood, or things strangled and don’t fornicate). Everyone agrees, so they send Barbabbos and Silas with B & P back to Antioch with a letter, the tone of which speaks well for the early church 15:23-29. Also shows that B & P are “beloved” of that church, with no tension apparent.


Hmm – first sign of tension? When B & P are ready to set out again, Barnabus wants to include John (Mark) who went with them a little ways before. Paul doesn’t want to, as he feels John deserted them when it got tough “And there arose such a sharp disagreement that they separated” 15:39, Barnabus taking John and Paul taking Silas.


In 16:16, says they passed thru Phrygia and the Galatian region “having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.” Why? And the spirit of Jesus didn’t permit them to go to Bythnia. After 16:11, Luke is saying “we” though he never described joining them.


God calls them to Macedonia and the first European convert is Lydia. 16:4. Note how, when people convert, their “households” are baptized. Do slaves have no free will? Again in 16:31, the jailer, Paul tells him to believe in Jesus and his whole household will be saved. Chapter 17 – says it is Paul’s custom to spend 3 Sabbaths trying to convert the Jews in the temple before giving the message to gentiles. Keeps getting thrown out, and Paul goes to Athens, where all the idol worshipping really bugs him.


Ahhh – 7pm, much better. A little rest, a little food, a pill working, and I’m good to go. Go where? Back to Athens with Paul, I guess. It is kind of fun to see it through a Hebrew’s eyes, or even a Greek’s (Luke) who was not familiar with it. How strange it must have seemed – the spirit of philosophical inquiry so very foreign to the Jews.


The Athenians saw him preaching in the marketplace and invited him to the Areopagus: “Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.” 17:21. As if that is a bizarre thing to do! No wonder it took so long for Christianity to catch on in Greece. They must have seen Paul and his message as backward, unsophisticated, uneducated, provincial, etc.


In explaining his beliefs to them, he describes Jesus thus: “He (God) will judge the world in righteousness through a man he has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead” 17:31. Claudius kicked all the Jews out of Rome (the city) 18:2. When? Why? Will look it up, but I'd guess he required them to worship him and they refused.


Big hullabaloo in Ephesus, home of Artemis and the “image that fell down from heaven” 19:35, which Luke attributes to the silversmiths, who were losing business in figurines of the goddess. Luke seems to have joined up with Paul again after that, in Macedonia. And Paul brings another back from the dead 20:9-10. Only fair, since he talked so long the lad fell asleep and out of a 3rd story window. But if Paul was really doing all Luke says, its no wonder people converted. He even blessed cloth, which healed people when carried home to them 19:11.


Passing Ephesus, Paul prophesies his death, or at least that he’ll never see them again. When he arrives in Jerusalem, the elders tell him the Jews will be after him due to stories they’ve heard that he’s counseling Jews to break the commandments. So they devise a plan for him to publicly demonstrate he’s kosher. 21:15-26. It doesn’t work; the Jews beat him up anyway, and he has to be rescued by a Roman soldier. He lets Paul address the mob, and Paul establishes his Jewishness, partly by saying he was a student of Gamaliel, the Pharisee, 22:3.
Its also fascinating to see the rights of Roman citizens. It gets Paul out of trouble several times. Again in 23:6 he says he is a Pharisee and son of one. That gets them on his side against the Sadducees.


If Acts is accurate, there were quite a number of Jews who were really angry at Paul, and maybe Christianity in general. In 23:12 it tells of a conspiracy to kill Paul that included 40 men who vowed not to eat or drink until he was dead, and got the chief priest and council involved in the plot. Why Paul particularly? The whole group of apostles live there, and don’t seem to provoke such ire – at least not at that time. It speaks to how threatened the Jews in Jerusalem must have felt. Or something. The Romans don’t really seem to care, so one can see how Medieval Christians came to blame Jews.


Jews point of view, thru Tertullus, the lawyer for the priests before Felix, governor (of Syria?): “For we have found this man a real pest and a fellow who stirs up dissension among all the Jews throughout the world [inhabited earth] . . .”24:5. In jail under Felix 2 years! Because the Roman governors, Felix, the Festus, wish to do the Jews favors. So Paul appeals to Caesar, which I guess is any Roman citizen’s right. Great description of Festus’ loss at what to do with him 25:14-22.


What Jesus said to Paul on the road to Damascus has grown longer and more specific 26:15-18.


I wish I had access to my Oxford Guide to the Bible. It is time to begin Paul’s letters, and I’d really like to have all we know about the context. From my Bible, looks like the Galatians might be the earliest.

August 8
How can Galatians be first, when it is part of Asia, and Asia was off limits to begin with? I’m tempted not to begin with Paul at all, but with James or Peter. No, I’ve found where my Bible says I Thessalonians was the first of Paul’s letters, written around 51 AD. The others either appear to have been written later or I don’t have a date right now. So First Thessalonians it is.


The church at Thessalonica was established on Paul’s 2nd missionary trip. He wrote the letter from Corinth, and in general is pleased with the church at Thess. (which appears to be in Macedonia – but may be part of Greece). Verse one includes greetings from Paul, Silvanus and Timothy. Yes, it is Macedonia. In 1:10, Paul says, “to wait for His Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead.”


Chapter 2 reminds them of how the missionaries behaved when with them, pointing out all the bad things they didn’t do. A warning against false messiah’s, or prophets? At the end he says he tried to get back there several times, but “Satan thwarted us” 2:18. he includes in 4:3-11 a reminder to be moral sexually, to abstain from sexual immorality and possess either themselves or their wives in sanctification and honor, not lustful passion. Guess the word for vessel he used can be interpreted several ways. It does make a difference; can a man not greet his wife with lustful passion? And that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter. What could that possibly mean?


Timothy had just returned from a visit there (3:16), so likely the whole letter is in reference to specific questions and situations, and they would have known exactly what he meant. Interesting that sex is mentioned right off the bat.


II Thessalonians was written a few months later, to clear up misunderstandings occasioned by the first letter. The Church is still being “afflicted,” persecuted (tho not with death, as later). He says it is only fair that on judgment day those afflicting them will be afflicted, and they’ll be rewarded. “ . . . Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution.” 1:7.


They must have received a fake letter, because Paul tells them not to be gullible, or disturbed “either by a spirit of a message as if from us” saying the day of the Lord has come. He says that day cannot come until after the “apostasy,” or “falling away” from the faith 2:3. Does it say that in the gospels? This must be a new message to Paul – he seems to be referring to the anti-Christ. Hmmm. Revelation wasn’t written until much later – 40-50 years later. Actually, none of the gospels were written yet, tho I’m sure those procrites were making the rounds. I can’t recall any time Jesus specifically referred to an anti-Christ, or one who “sets himself up in the Temple . . . displaying himself as being God” 2:4, tho he does mention false prophets.


He is teaching this all over, that there will be this false messiah. “For God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they might believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth” 2:12. So here is that tricky, trickster God of the Hebrews again, who seems to delight in devising new ways to make people fall, the punish them eternally. Is it just Paul’s Jewishness causing him to misinterpret? Is this a belief widely shared with those who lived with Jesus? Is it just rhetorical, use of extreme language to make a point? Hyperbole?


Paul issues a number of commandments. He now commands them to “keep aloof from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us” 3:6. It is maybe about communal life, because he goes on to talk about how they worked and were not lazy when with them, as a model. And “if anyone will not work, neither let him eat” 3:10. Some folks are being lazy and “busybodies” and he commands and exhorts them to behave. He ends with a “distinguishing mark” so they’ll know which are truly letters from him.


Now to Galatians. Church established on his first trip, the letter written between 48-58, addressing a crisis there. Ah-ha! Forgot Freeman has an entire chapter on Paul, where he says what every scholar says about how his letters were written for specific purposes, not as a thought-out theology, and their contradictory statements. Points out that while the Jerusalem Christians were “suffused with their memories of Jesus as a human being,” Paul’s Christ has relevance only through his death and resurrection, p.107.


Speaks of his great love for the new churches, his frustrations and enthusiasms and “the demands he places on the recipient communities are heavy, and his own authority often under threat” p.107. He says the letters generally agreed to be Paul’s are Romans, Corinthians 1 & 2, Galatians, Philippians, and 1, maybe 2 Thessalonians. Many add Colossians, p.109.
Above that, he points out, citing others, that Paul has a lot in common with the Essenes and may have at least been influenced by them. He speaks of Paul’s personality – how abrasive, how conflict-ridden were his relationships, that there is not one Christian community with whom he is fully at his ease. No one could agree he wasn’t driven and committed, and mentally strong. But he was not charismatic – he pushed or repelled people, where Jesus had attracted them.


Freeman makes out that it was Paul’s inability to get along with Jews that led him to preach to gentiles, born out by Acts. And we’ll see in the letters that the Jews may have had good reason to be mad at him: he stirred up trouble wherever he went, and suggests at times that now God prefers gentiles and that the Jews are no longer his Chosen People. We saw his first journey was with Barnabus, but after that falling out he worked out a relationship in which he would be the apostle to the gentiles and go much his own way, the only sustainable relationship with the Jerusalem apostles, Freeman argues, given Paul’s temperament.


Let’s see what Galatians has to say. Whoa – begins defensively. “Paul, an apostle not sent by men, nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father” 1:1.
1:6 – he’s amazed that people are already listening to someone else, who is “distorting” Christ’s message. Geez! 1:8 – “but even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed.” So Paul’s message supersedes that of angels? He again curses anyone besides him who preaches something different. And then makes it clear he isn’t interested in pleasing men – something he may have found impossible to do in any case.


In 1:11 he makes a claim to legitimacy because no man taught him the gospel, but it was revealed to him. Case for direct revelation – equal to the 12 apostles who knew Jesus, better than anyone who learned from them. Yes, in 1:17 says after the revelation he didn’t need the approval of those in Jerusalem, and didn’t seek it. He assures them he isn’t lying when he says 3 years later he went to Jerusalem and stayed with Peter (Cephas) 15 days, and met James, Jesus’ brother, but didn’t see any of the other apostles.

August 9
I guess for now I’ll go back to Galatians, where poor Paul is suffering so much because there have been other teachers visiting the church. In the second chapter he says that 14 years later, after his first visit to Jerusalem, he went back. This is when the question of whether converts must be circumcised came up, because he says he “submitted to them the gospel I preach among the gentiles” 2:12, but not even Titus, a Greek companion, was circumcised. “But it was because of the false brethren who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage” 2:4. Sounds kind of paranoid, doesn’t he?


He refers to “those of high reputation” with whom he consulted even tho “what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality” But says they “contribute nothing to me.” Sounds like there is some real tension. Perhaps Luke smoothed it over when he wrote Acts, trying minimize the differences. Anyway, James (brother of Jesus), Peter and John gave him the “right hand of fellowship,” recognizing that he’d been entrusted with the gospel to the gentiles, as Peter was entrusted with the one for the Jews 2:7-9. But in the next breath he says, “But when Cephos came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned” 2:11. The reason is that, as Paul perceives it, Jesus broke the barrier between Jew and gentile, and taught that it is not thru observance of the Law that people will be saved, but only through faith in Him. Peter used to get that, but he’s fallen under the sway of the “party of circumcision” and swayed even Barnabus 2:21 “For if righteousness comes thru the Law, the Christ died needlessly.” There is the problem.


For Paul had dedicated himself to the practice of the Law, becoming a Pharisee of the strictest sort. Yet Jesus told him personally that wasn’t enough. He is utterly convinced that the Law is now irrelevant, that faith in Jesus is it. He also says in that passage, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” 2:20, which must have pissed off some of those who were there at the crucifixion.


He yells at the Galatians for having been duped, asking, “Did you get the Holy Spirit by following the Law? Or by having faith?” 3:5. He gives them a scripture lesson, and says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law” 3:13. So he’s saying it had become a curse for them in that it had them focused on their own actions, and the details of Law, and not on God. He’s also making the argument that they are all now one people, not many, and that even the believing gentiles can now claim kinship with Abraham. God made a covenant with Abraham, which was not nullified “430” years later with the coming of Moses’ law, 3:17. “For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise” 3:18. The Law was only given because “of transgressions” and “having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed had come to whom the promise had been made” 3:19. So the Jews are just space fillers? They were made to sin, in order that God could extend the promise to gentiles, or fulfill the promise that salvation would come to the whole world through the Jews.


3:23-27 he says the law was just the tutor, but now that faith has come, they no longer need the tutor. He says all are now one, “There is no Jew or Greek, there is neither slave nor freeman, there is neither male nor female, for all are one in Jesus Christ” 3:28. And all are Abraham’s offspring. Sounds nice, but why then in later letters does Paul make distinctions and different rules for women? Why does he return a slave to his master? Seems contradictory.


In chapter 4 he presents a theology that must have angered the Jews still further. First he compares them, Jews, to children of a wealthy man, and the Gentiles to slaves. But when the heir comes, he frees the slaves and makes them equal to his children. Why then go back to being slaves? Equality is one thing, but then he uses the story of Abraham and Isaac as an allegory. Abraham had two sons, one through a bond-woman, one through a free-woman. One thru flesh, and one through spirit. He says Hagar is Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the “Jerusalem above” is free, and she is the Gentile Christians’ mother. For it is written: Rejoice barren woman who does not bear, Break faith and shout, you who are not in labor, for more are the children of the desolate than of those who has a husband” 3:27. So “you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise.” But the child of the flesh persecuted the child of the spirit then and now. But:
Cast out the bondwoman and her son. For the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the sons of the free woman 3:30
Ouch!
Then he gives them instruction on how to live good Christian lives, including a description of the fruits of the spirit 5:22. After ranting at them for several chapters, he tells them to correct one another with gentleness! 6:1.



To be fair, he did catch himself earlier and said he wanted to change his tone. He encourages them not to be boastful or envious of one another – isn’t that what he himself has done? He really doesn’t see himself as boastful “But may it never be that I should boast” 6:14. Forgot to record that in 4:13 he refers to a “body illness” he had when with them, “and that which was a trial to you in my bodily condition you did not despise or loathe, but you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus himself.” That almost sounds like a disfigurement, or something repulsive/disgusting about him, that it should be a trial.
I remembered because he closes the letter with a reference to how he bears “on my body the brand marks of Jesus” 6:17. Could be real brands or other scars from prison, or another reference to some physical disfiguring.


I guess I’ll go to Philippians next. Philippi was the first “European” church, in Macedonia. My Bible has the date of the letter as c.62. Oops, no, should be Romans next, written from Corinth in AD 58. So just shortly after the letter to Galatia. Bible says Romans is the most important (now) of Paul’s letters, and maybe of the entire Bible. Again, its major theme is the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. It is a long letter, with 16 chapters.

2006 - August 1- 4th Reading the Gospels

The next few weeks entries are sooooo long that I have done some cutting and I will still break them into smaller pieces. I feel compelled to remind everyone that these are my thoughts of nearly two years ago, and things have changed in those two years. But I had to go through this part in order to get where I am today, which is why I'm posting this all up here. Once these old entries are here, there will probably be many fewer posts, and much shorter : ) Anyone who reads them, though, will know where I am coming from in a way they could not have, without this history.


August 1
I’m feeling a little bad about how I’m treating Matthew. Not approaching it with an open heart. There are a lot of wonderful passages in it, but the truth is that I don’t trust its accuracy. It just feels like it is trying too hard to sway me to a particular interpretation. I wonder how people who become Christians as adults respond to it. I can see taking great comfort in the beatitudes, for example, but there are so many other places where Jesus seems angry and judgmental, divisive. Not the compassionate healer predominantly, though there is some of that, of course.


To me Matthew feels like someone who has been hurt and is angry. He’s preoccupied with wanting justice. He wants the Messiah to punish the wrongdoers who have hurt him. It reads to me as the author really focused on and made central everything Jesus said that could be construed that way. And certainly he seems to have been hurt by the Jewish establishment, and thus directs his ire their way.


Reminds me – yesterday Jim told me that Mel Gibson had been arrested for driving under the influence, and while being arrested ranted about how the Jews have started every war since time began, how they are in control of the world, and are running it, and accused the police of being Jews. Totally off the deep-end, which is no surprise considering his Passion portrays Jews in a very negative light, and all the hype about it eventually put his father on the air. Whoa! He’s a little Nazi. My point is that people like that have been using Matthew to justify their hatred and racism for a long time, and now I can see why.


When Jesus walked on water and stilled the storm, it certainly made them wonder. In Mark, it just says they were astonished. 6:52 “for they had not gained any insight from the incident of the loaves, but their heart was hardened.” In Matthew, it says (14:33) “And those who were in the boat worshipped Him, saying ‘You are certainly God’s Son.’”


15:24 he refuses to help a Syropheonician woman because “I was sent only to the sheep of the house of Israel.” As in Mark, he calls her a dog to her face – you don’t take the children’s bread and feed it to dogs. But she convinces him and he relents and heals her daughter. Seems pretty clear that his message was, at least initially, meant only for Jews. Need to look for when he changes his mind, if he does.


Matthew’s version of Jesus asking the disciples who they think he is doesn’t seem as much as in Mark that he doesn’t know, himself. He seems instead to tell Peter he’s right that he is the Son of God, 16:13-20. But he again tells them not to tell anyone.


In 17:12-13 it is clear that Jesus meant John the Baptist was Elijah, whom the scriptures say must come again before the Messiah. And he did come, and was killed. So also will the Son of Man. And when the disciples are unable to cast out the demon, Mark has Jesus say, “This kind only comes with prayer and fasting., or at least, that is in some mss. In Matthew, some of the mss have that verse, but all have Jesus saying it is their own fault – they didn’t have enough faith. 17:20.


Divorce 19:9. He also seems to say that celibacy is best, but not everyone can do it. An acknowledgment of the power of the sex drive. In 19:16, with the young ruler, the way Matthew reads is different. He does not have Jesus say he isn’t God, as does Mark. And in 19:23, Jesus promises the disciples thrones of their own in heaven.

August 2
Here are my latest thoughts about Matthew.
Regarding the triumphal entry, Matt also has Jesus orchestrate it by telling the disciples to steal a colt. But he does so in order that a prophecy be fulfilled – 21:4. Jesus was certainly familiar with the scriptures, so was a human trying to fulfill the prophecies, trying to convince people? Sort of like those people trying to breed a red goat, or whatever, on a particular mountain in Israel in order to initiate Armageddon?


Then again with the poor fig tree, 21:18-22. It is in the parable of the landowner, 21:33-44, that Jesus first says clearly that his message, intended for Jews but rejected by them, will now be for others, who will be given “the fruit of it.”


His words about whether or not there is a resurrection of the body, or whose wife the woman married to 7 brothers will be, in 22:23-33. God is the God of the living, not the dead, he says, and the people were astonished. But what does it mean?



Then Matthew has the Pharisees ask him what the greatest commandments are, and has them be amazed when he says love God, and love your neighbor, 22:34-40. But why would they be amazed? That is their own teaching! Hillel and Gamaliel, anyway, were teaching that before and during Jesus’ life.


Then the passage about the Christ being the Son of David has a different meaning than in Mark. In Matt 22:41-45, Jesus seems to be saying the Christ is not the son of David, since David calls him Lord, and everyone is stumped. In chapter 23, Jesus gives a diatribe against the Pharisees, saying they are hypocrites. “woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” he says, SEVEN times.



It’s like Matthew gathered together all the times that Jesus dressed people down, and attributed them all to the Pharisees. But it seems very likely that Jesus had been trained as one, as Paul was too. So maybe he was fed up with some of the things he saw and didn’t like, but this incredible anger just doesn’t feel right. “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the sentence of hell?” he asks, in 23:33, and prophesizes that he will send them more prophets, whom they will kill and persecute, and he makes all scribes and Pharisees accountable for every sin, really, of humanity thru time. Pretty broad strokes.

August 3
There is some pretty scary stuff in chap. 24 about the end times, and v. 37-51 suggest the Rapture. He does make it all sound imminent, like he expects the end very soon.


The statement about those having more will be given more makes more sense here, because it follows a parable of “the Talents,” in which a man gives his slaves 10, 5, and 1 talent; the first 2 invest and double their money for him, while the last one buries his to keep it safe, and makes no investment. He’s cast into the “outer darkness” for that. The moral seems to be that we shouldn’t be lazy or fearful, but should take risks in attempts to increase God’s wealth. It is still kind of inconsistent, because what would have happened to the slave if he had invested and lost the money? Wouldn’t he have been punished?


If God is the landowner – this one is pretty greedy. He is a man who is “hard, reaping where he doesn’t sow and gathering where he spread no seed.” V.24. How is that even possible for a creator god, since all seed is his seed? But the larger point – cast into outer darkness for doing what one was asked to do? I guess we are supposed to read God's mind.


25:31-46 is a beautiful passage about the Judgment, in which we are taught to feed the hungry, visit prisoners, clothe the naked, take in the stranger, etc., just as if each human is Jesus himself. Makes me want to e-mail it to all the self-righteous jerks who deny immigrants water in the desert because they are “breaking the law.” And these are the very same people who feel they are better than the Pharisees, (whom they equate with all Jews), and thus more deserving of God’s love.


Also the story of the night in Gethsemane is very moving. We see Jesus fearful, grieved, praying that he not have to be crucified. But willing, if that is what God wants. Like all Jewish heroes, he is utterly human. Again, though, it is “a great multitude . . . from the chief priests and elders of the people.” 26:47 who come to arrest Jesus. Jesus himself says hey, you saw me in the temple, so why didn’t you arrest me there? V.55. So why do they need Judas to identify him? Jesus answers in v.56 that it is only to fulfill the scriptures. So I read that as support for the Judas gospel.


Now, in 26:64, when Jesus is before Caraphas, not answering the charges, Caraphas asks him, “I adjure you by the living God, that you tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus answers, “You have said it yourself.” And Caraphas finds that such blasphemy that he sentences Jesus to death. There are a lot of issues here. Why does Matthew have C. equate “Christ” with “Son of God”? Unless I am very much mistaken, Jews did not equate the two at all. They expected a human Messiah, not a divine one. There was no concept of God having an actual son, just the notion that we are all his children and that those with whom God is pleased may be given that honorary title.


So is this a later interpretation creeping in? Or is C. outraged because Jesus has been preaching that God has a son, like the nasty Greek and Roman gods? But we don’t see any evidence of that previously in Matthew. Or is C. just mad because Jesus is saying he is the chosen one? That doesn’t fly – people don’t get accused of blasphemy for that – just ignored, usually.


Obviously, Jesus really made people angry. He keeps telling them they are wrong, and does it so well that they can’t answer back. He points out all the ways they aren’t following the scriptures. If Matt is to be believed, he’s also calling them names and insulting them regularly. He violates their code, breaks their laws. He’s stirring people up. None of that seems worthy of a death sentence, does it? But somehow it is. Will see what Armstrong says about it. Matthew wants us to believe it is because Jesus has claimed divinity, but I’m just not sure he actually did that.


In 7:1-10 we learn that Judas returned the silver to the high priests and hanged himself, and that the priests used the money to buy the “Potter’s Field” as a burial place for strangers. From all accounts it seems clear that Jesus accepted the title “King of the Jews,” if he didn’t propose it himself. Or is that just more of his patience with their lack of understanding what he really meant?


Barrabas is a “notorious person” 27:16 – not a crime suspect.


At the crucifixion, Matt has the people saying Jesus claimed to be the Son of God (27:43), and challenged him to save himself. He reports the women there as Mary M., Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of (James and John), the sons of Zebedee 27:56.

28:1, Mary M. and “the other Mary” went to the tomb first. Just realized that in neither Mark nor Matthew has Mary Magdalene’s presence been explained, except I think Mark says “she who had been exorcised of demons,” or something like that. No, now I can’t find that. But Jesus did not save a woman from being stoned in either of these gospels.


In Mark, there was a “man” in the tomb, who said Jesus was gone. Here, 28:2-8, an angel descends from heaven before the women, shows them the empty tomb, and sends them to report it. Then Jesus himself meets them and they touch his feet and worship him, 28:9.


In 28:11-15, Matt has the chief priests pay the soldiers to spread the story that the disciples stole the body themselves. No story of Thomas or 2 men on the road. Instead, the disciples do as Mary M said Jesus asked and go to Galilee, where Jesus met them on a mountain top, “but some were doubtful.” He commissions them to go out and baptize all nations and make them disciples, and promises to be with them to the end of the age. And that’s it.


Charles Freeman says that the original Mark ended with the empty tomb, and the passages about Jesus’ later appearances weren’t added until the 2nd century, 100+ years later, p.103.
I think I’ve done enough with Matthew for now. It’s pretty clear how I feel about this gospel. I just find so much of what it says suspect, because it so clearly has an agenda beyond familiarizing others with the life and teachings of Jesus.

Luke thinks more like we do. He wants to set things out in an orderly, chronological fashion. He even begins with an introduction. Then he begins his story with the parents of John the Baptists, and John’s birth is as miraculous, nearly, as Jesus. Gabriel appears to his priestly father and clearly says John will be the “spirit and power of Elijah.” 1:17


Then Gabriel appears to Mary, a virgin engaged and gives her the news, which troubles her. It is a compassionate view of Mary, makes her a real person. Mary and Elizabeth are related, and Mary visits her, and John, in the womb, recognizes her with a leap, which causes Elizabeth to prophesy. Then Mary is given a beautiful speech. The mythology has really grown by this time, hasn’t it? Luke feels like a good author, who (maybe) gives words to his characters to make them more real.


Chapter 2 tells of Jesus’ birth and childhood, with all the Christmas stories – of a census that seems unlikely – see Freeman. Not that they didn’t do censuses, but they didn’t ask people to go to their birthplace. Angels appear to the shepherds, and tell them the Messiah is born. Then Simeon, at the temple at Jesus’ circumcision, recognizes him, and that he’ll be “a light to the Gentiles.” Anna the Prophetess agrees.


There is nothing at all about Wise Men, or Herod killing children, or the family fleeing to Egypt. They do, though, go home to Nazareth where the child grows with “the grace of God upon him.” 2:40. They travel to Jerusalem for the Passover every year, and at age 12 Jesus hangs out in the temple amazing everyone, and rebukes his parents, calling the temple his “father’s house.” 2:49.


I wonder where Luke got all this stuff, since it isn’t in the earlier texts. Q? Another lost text? Or is it oral tradition by then? The prophecy of Isaiah that they all cite, about John being the voice in the wilderness; also says “every mountain and hill shall be made low, and every ravine filled up.” Isaiah 40:3-4. It doesn’t really seem like a prophecy. It’s a hymn, more like, praising God. It adds to my feeling that the gospel writers keep taking scripture out of context, and applying it where ever the verse makes sense, regardless of whether the surrounding verses do. A mistake – will cause one to stumble?


Luke includes a lot more the teachings of John the Baptist, which are quite similar to Jesus: In 3;23-38, Luke gives a different genealogy of Jesus, again through Joseph, who shouldn’t matter.
In the temptations, Luke has the devil (or Satan) say, “If you are truly the Son of God.” 4:9. After, he goes directly to Nazareth, unlike the other two gospels, and Luke gives us the content of his sermon. He read from Isaiah, a passage about being anointed to preach the gospel to the poor, release the captives, etc., and says, “Today the scripture has been fulfilled.” 4:18-21. Interesting, the people are pleased with that, they have no problem with until he creates one by saying prophets aren’t honored in their hometowns, and Elijah had to go to Sidon, not Jerusalem, for succor. Then they get pissed, and run him out of town. They almost threw him off a cliff, but he miraculously escaped.


In 6:20-26, Luke gives the beatitudes, and follows with the woes that Matthew had him saying only to the scribes and Pharisees. And previously Jesus is having civil discussions with them, none of which begins with name-calling. Luke’s Sermon on the Mount is altogether more generous, compassionate and kind. Stresses mercy, not judgment.


Matthew’s verse reads as if Jesus were saying no one is wiser than he (can’t find it now) but Luke’s says, “A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher” 6:40. Gives more the idea that we all can be like him.


I love the story of the woman, a sinner, who washes Jesus’ feet. He allows it, but one sees great compassion in him, and love, and forgiveness. Plus he teaches a good lesson to the Pharisee 7:40-49. By the way, he is eating and visiting with the Pharisee, not spitting insults at him.


8:1-3 Luke describes the women, “Mary who was called Magdalene, from whom 7 demons had gone out, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who were contributing to their support out of their private means.”


Again, calming the storm, it seems like to Jesus, it is so obvious that humans can do such things if they have faith. But the disciples keep missing that point, thinking Jesus must be something special. Wasn’t it for this reason the Buddha refused to do miracles?


In 8:26-39, it isn’t any more clear why Jesus lets the demons go into the swine. What about the owners of those pigs? Was he(they) in need of punishment? Were the pigs diseased? Why not tell us?



It is in Luke 9:18-22 that Jesus asks the disciples who they and the people say that he is. John: Elijah, a prophet from old. Peter: “The Christ of God”. Not the Son – there is no implication of divinity. Jesus answers, “The Son of Man must suffer many things,” and predicts his death and resurrection. But he also predicts that some of those there will see the Kingdom of God before they taste death. V. 27. What did he mean? Was he wrong? What was his definition of Kingdom?


Luke says that during the transformation, Moses and Elijah were talking to him about what was going to happen to him in Jerusalem 9:31. Sorry – what he was going to accomplish. He is the agent, not the victim.


I guess all three gospels are trying to imply that Peter, in offering to make 3 tabernacles, has offended God by placing Jesus on the same level with Moses and Elijah. That’s why God speaks, calling Jesus his “Beloved Son.” 9:35. No, Luke says, “this is my Son, my Chosen One.” That does not imply divinity, necessarily.


Jesus does lose his patience a little, with the disciples when they can’t cast out the one demon (which sounds a lot like epilepsy, btw). “How long shall I have to put up with you?” he says 9:41. Again, its because they don’t believe they can do it. He tells them to remember what he has said, for he is going to be delivered up to the “hands of men”. “But they do not understand this statement, and it was concealed from them so that they might not perceive it.” 9:45.
Here it is again, this peculiar way of saying we aren’t totally responsible, for it will be “given” to us to understand, or “concealed” from us so we can’t.



I guess I don’t get what the purpose is of saying things to someone and then making it impossible for them to understand what you said. Maybe it is just the way people think in a culture in which prophecy is normal and an accepted part of daily life. People say things for posterity, not to be understood now, but later. Maybe its sort of like preventing paradoxes in time travel. If people understood, then they might change the future and thus nullify your prediction. But you, as the soothsayer, can point back and say, "See? Remember when I said such and such?"


Luke, like Mark, has it that “He who is not against you is for you.” 9:50. Only Matthew is vindictive. Go figure.


Whoa – totally new story. As the Passover was approaching, they begin heading for Jerusalem. And in a Samaritan village, the people won’t serve them, because they are Jews headed to the city. The disciples ask if they should rain down fire on the villages! So I guess they’d figured out their power! And Jesus says a moving thing, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” 9:35. Those are really interesting words. What kind of spirit you are of. Is he saying his essence is spirit, not flesh? Is he saying his spirit is physically in them; that they are in some way now a part of him? Is he suggesting that through their discipleship they have managed to find that Oneness? I highlighted that verse in my last attempt at Christianity, but I don’t remember it at all.


In the next bit, about exacting discipleship, Jesus’ words are pretty harsh. But maybe he said it in a compassionate tone, so that “You aren’t fit for the Kingdom of heaven” came across as “You are not ready to make the sacrifice of discipleship.”


One has to wonder about tone, about slight differences in nuance, in translation. Maybe some of what he said that sounds so brutal really wasn’t. Because if Matthew or the hardest bits of the others are accurate, it is hard to see how/why his followers would have spoken of him as loving and compassionate. I was going to say gentle, but I haven’t actually noticed anyone using that word to describe Jesus. I don’t get the feel of a gentle man. At times, yes, but not generally.


Huh, Luke has him send out another 70. And he’s like God here, cursing the cities that have not welcomed him. Hmm. In 10:18 he says, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven.” But the context is that of the 70 coming back exuberant because they have been casting out demons. So it doesn’t necessarily imply that it is literal, and definitely not that he was with God in the beginning, as I think I’ve seen it interpreted. He prays the same prayer, saying all things have been handed over to him, and that only the Father knows the Son, and the Son the Father.


In Luke’s version of “Ask, Seek, Knock” there is the implication that it might take persistence and repetition, because he precedes it with the story of a man waking a friend in the middle of the night, who first refuses him !!:



Satan, the devil, and Beelzabul are all equated by Luke’s time (11:18). Interesting, because I saw in 1 or 2 Kings references to the god Baal-zebul, the clear origin.



Now in 11:37-54, he gives a diatribe against the Pharisees. But he is eating with them in one of their houses, and he doesn’t keep calling them names. He lets the lawyers have it, too! None of them are too happy when he’s done.


He’s no clearer about what it means to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. 12:10. Slightly different context – in the middle of the sparrows and hairs speech. He gives a little more story to the “don’t lay up treasures on earth” speech, making it real for the people. The advice against worry is breathtaking in its simplicity and power. 12:22-34. What wonderful words: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom!” 12:32.


The “be in readiness” parables that follow are also great. It is most certainly not a message of fairness or equality he is preaching. More responsibility and justice. Though justice is not always “fair,” if that makes sense. For not only will more be given to those who already have, but “from everyone who has been given much, shall much be required, and to whom they have entrusted much, of him they will ask the more.” 12:48. Who are “they”?


Jesus is moved to anger at the hypocrisy of the Pharisees when they berate him for breaking the law by healing on the Sabbath, though they would move their oxen – un-tether them or a mule, but they won’t un-tether a poor woman who is bound by Satan 18 years? 12:10-17. he keeps reminding them not to put the law over compassion.


He says many will strive to enter but still not be able; God will close the door. Abraham and everyone else will be inside, but you will be cast out [if you aren’t careful] 13:22-29. Doesn’t this contradict the ask and you shall receive? If you strive to enter, why would you be unable?


Hey! In 13:31 some Pharisees come and warn him that Herod wants to kill him. They are trying to protect him. So much for Matthew’s belief that they are al the evil enemy of God! 14:1-6, he’s eating with the Pharisees and lawyers again, and having an amiable discussion about healing on the Sabbath.


Oops! I skipped a page when I moved outside - In the next section he tells people not to think they are better than some notorious cases where people got terrible punishments. “Are they greater sinners? No, but unless you repent, you will likewise perish!” But then he tells a parable about a fig tree that produced no fruit for 3 years. The landowner says to cut it down, but the steward says let me give it some fertilizer and care, and see if it produces next year. 13:6-9. Is he saying he is the steward, begging for one more chance before God strikes them all down? Then why does he himself curse the fig tree? Are the two things connected? Was he saying, “That’s it! I’m done with you!”?


It doesn’t look like Luke even includes that. Back to where I was. Jesus at dinner with the Pharisees and lawyers, and they have a lot of discussion. He says many wise things, and they appear to be receptive and learning from him. Later, he speaks to those following about the effort discipleship requires, and that they need to calculate if they are willing to pay the cost. Don’t start things you can’t finish, in other words 14:25-35.


There are so many instructions to be humble, to consider and declare yourself unworthy, that it is no mystery why I got the idea that it was a good thing to purge every good thought I had about myself. Because if you are outwardly humble, but inside you have even one thought of “I’m okay,” how are you any different from the hypocrites Jesus berates? See 18:9-14.
Luke also has Jesus say that “No one is good except God alone.” 18:18, differentiating himself from God.


In Luke, the story of the 10, 5, and 1 pieces of money is different. They are minas, not talents, and its about a king who puts the first two in charge of cities and berates the last who buried the coin. But its also about how the people didn’t want him to be king, and he put them all to death. I really don’t get what he’s trying to say. 19:11-27.


He does give more explication about the Sadducees’ question re. resurrection. Luke has him say clearly that there is a resurrection of the dead 20:37. It isn’t clear to me, though. He says, “but that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the burning bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to Him” 20:37-38. Is that what Moses meant? That to God there is no time, and all live at once? I really doubt it. I think Luke is just trying to make sense of it, whereas the others didn’t try.


And Luke has him say, when they ask about the future, that there will be wars and rumors of wars, etc., but “the end does not follow immediately.” 21:9. My question – is he talking about 70 AD, when the Temple is destroyed and the Diaspora begins? Or a later date, which would be in my future, since there was no Israel in-between. Sure sounds like the Diaspora in 70. Course, all the geological and astronomical signs (21:25-28) didn’t occur then. Plus no Son of Man in a cloud. [that we know of]


Satan enters into Judas and causes him to betray him! 22:3.


Garden of Gethsemane was pretty bad for him. “He was in agony, his sweat became like drops of blood” 22:44. At the council he does say he is the Son of God 22:69. Luke is more specific about the charges the Council brings to Pilate (though he doesn’t mention Caraphas) “He was misleading our nation, forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, and calling himself Christ, a King.” 23:2. Pilate asks, “Are you the King of the Jews?” “It is as you say,” he answers 23:3. This makes more sense – it is a political claim.


Oh – Luke has Pilate send Jesus to Herod, who was in Jerusalem for the holiday. But Jesus won’t answer Herod, so Herod’s soldiers dress him in purple, mock him, and Herod sends him back to Pilate. Pilate and Herod become friends through this 23:12.

Barrabas – insurrectionist and murderer 23:19.


First time Jesus says, “Forgive them” 23:33. Always bugged me – he tells the thief he’ll be with him today in Paradise – but he’s supposed to go to hell? When did that get added? Haven’t seen it yet.


What is my general impression of Luke? He’s a better writer. He too moves things around to make order and sense. He strikes me as having a real sense of both the wisdom and the compassion of Jesus. In Luke’s hands Jesus is a caring teacher. He doesn’t try to tie Jesus to old prophecy that much (except when using Mark?), but I do have a sense that he added his own words and interpretations when things weren’t clear. He feels truer to the spirit of what I imagine Jesus was like – would had to have been like to make such an impression. But he also has mythologized him and his story. In some ways the gospel feels far from the real man – but in others, in feel, he’s closer (I imagine – it is just my impression.)


He does make a case for Jesus as the Christ, and maybe as Divinity, but its gentle, not pushy. As a companion of Paul’s, his view of Jesus is Pauline. Currently scholars put the writing of this around 70, so 40 years had passed. That is enough time for things to begin to gel, various interpretations – and for things, words, to get lost.


The important test – if one followed Luke closely, based one’s life on its teachings, I don’t think one would go that wrong with God, either way, and one would have a peaceful, loving life that was of benefit to others. His gospel seems logical; it doesn’t contradict itself too much. I’ve benefited from reading it and would no doubt continue to grow if I read it more.



Well, I think I’m ready to leave the synoptic gospels and move on to John. Written last, maybe around 100-110 AD, it is quite different. Presents a theological argument, and argues definitively for the divinity of Jesus. I know this, and I know a lot more now about how that argument took shape, but like the others, I haven’t actually read John in ages. So let’s begin. For the record, it is now 7 pm and I’ve done nothing but this all day, and I’m in so much pain I can hardly stand it. Let John be a good distraction.

He begins with a bang – equating Jesus with the Logos. A philosophical argument - the true light, Logos, is like the breath, kind of, of God – giving life, or soul, or anima to man. Without it, man is not man. The true light came to its own – I.e. the humans it had caused to be, who were “like” it, and they did not receive it. But some did, and those he made his own.
1:14 The Word became flesh – Logos became man, God incarnated and dwelt among us. Boy, I wonder if this is clearer in the Greek. 1:16-18 “For the Law was given to Moses; grace and truth were realized thru Jesus Christ. No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God (some mss read Son), who is in the bosom of the Father. He has explained Him.”
Is he saying that God has 3 qualities, or has given 3 gifts to man? Law, grace, and truth? He is making a liar out of Abraham, Lot, and Isaac; not sure who else, but these all claimed to have seen God. Has explained Him – God explained Jesus through scripture? Jesus explained God through his life?


In the other gospels, Jesus implied John the Baptist was Elijah, but here John Baptist says he isn’t. Hmmm – no birth story here – as if John is stripping the myths back off. Freeman said that John used other, earlier texts than Mark and Q, now lost, and this may be the most historically accurate. However, John the Baptist is saying Jesus is the Son of God, and it really doesn’t seem likely that he said this, or at least, if he did he meant something different by it.


And there is no filling of boats with fish – Peter and Andrew were already disciples of John the Baptist, and switched when John told them Jesus was the Lamb of God 1:35-42. Oops, no. Andrew was John’s disciple, and as soon as he met Jesus he went and got his brother Simon, said, “We’ve found the Messiah!” and brought him. Jesus promptly renamed him Cephos. Do we have different apostles? Andrew, Simon Peter, Philip, Nathaniel . . .


Wedding day at Cana – unique to John 2:1-13. And his mother knows full well he’s a miracle worker – has him doing household chores, essentially. And she and his brothers travel with him. John’s gospel has Jesus kick the money-changers out of the temple right off the bat, and he’s says he can destroy and rebuild it in three days. The other gospels all have people accusing him of saying that, but never show him saying it. Later his disciples realize (or decide) he meant the temple of his body 2:13-22.
So far - though it would anger many to hear me say it - he is coming off like a braggart.


Then there is Nicodemus, and being born again – all totally absent in the other gospels 3:1-20.

August 4
[long discussion of all the work that needs to be done] But I have long wanted to give serious attention to the gospels, and I’m glad I’m doing that.


Reading John last night, I just can’t believe I never noticed how different it is. I almost can’t believe it made it into the canon, it is so different and so contradicts the other three. But it is the only one to establish Jesus’ divinity, and it includes the only passages that really spell out what Christian doctrine came to be, so I guess they had to include it. What they do, like in my Bible, is say it was written to “supplement the others” so doesn’t have to cover what the synoptic ones do. My Bible attributes it to John, the youngest apostle, which stretches credulity, as it wasn’t written until at least 100 AD. Even if John was a teenager when Jesus lived, he would have been 70-80 years old. It’s possible, just not that likely.


We were up to chapter 3, which is a really beautiful passage about how God so loved the world, he sent his Son to save it. It has some mystical allusions to the nature of God – not flesh, but Spirit, which is like wind. We really get a different view of John the Baptist and his relationship with Jesus. In the other 3, its really a one-time thing, though Jesus continues to speak highly of John. Here, he spends time with him, takes some of his disciples, and in 3:22-25, preaches in the same area as John the Baptist. Rather than seeing him as a rival, John keeps saying, “That’s the guy I was talking about! He’s from God and baptizes in the Holy Spirit.”


Jesus had disciples baptizing more people than John – he himself wasn’t doing it 4:1-3. Then he heads into Samaria. In 4:7-38, we have the story of the Samaritan woman at the well (the one !Nai, the !Kung woman thinks is so scandalous), also unique to this gospel.

[This is a reference to an ethnographic film of a !Kung woman's life story. Part of it follows her to church, where the Afrikaans pastor preaches about this story. The !Kung are horrified by it. They listen to the scripture, shaking their heads throughout. When the minister tries to explain, he just makes it worse. The ethnographer later asks !Nai what she was thinking, and she says that first, a woman would never go to get water alone when there were strangers abou, and any man who approached a woman alone could not, by definition, be a good person. "He was just trying to have sex with her, that Jesus." That is the only sense they could make of the story at all. And it seemed especially terrible to them that someone would use water - the one thing all people must have and that San peoples NEVER deny to one another, even their enemies - as a tool to accomplish this seduction. Upon further questioning, !Nai says that the story helps to explain the white people's behavior - since even their gods behave so despicably.]


It isn’t really clear what he tells her. He says he has “living water,” which makes sense, has been interpreted as the Holy Spirit. He tells the woman her past, which impresses her. That part is all okay, but then she says, “you people,” meaning Jews, say only to worship in Jerusalem, and she says she worships on the mountain [a reference to Baal?]. He tells her a time is coming when people won’t worship the Father either on the mountain or in Jerusalem. Is he referring to the Diaspora and destruction of the Temple? He says she worships what she doesn’t know, he (Jews) worship what they do know “for salvation comes from the Jews” 4:22. But a time is coming, has come, when true worshippers shall worship the Father “in spirit and truth.” Have they not already been doing that? Is Judaism then not a true religion? “God is spirit,” he says, and people must worship in spirit. Maybe he’s alluding to the shift from temple worship with its material sacrifices, to the worship in small groups, filled with the Holy Spirit, leaving buildings and sacrifices behind.


The woman has heard of the Messiah, and seems to have heard that the Jewish Messiah will reach out to gentiles – she says, “He will speak to us.” And Jesus says, “I am he.” She tells her people and they all come, so John has Jesus teaching the Gentiles almost from the beginning of his career.


When the disciples bring him food, he says he doesn’t need it, that he subsists on a different substance. John is making him “otherworldly” right off the bat. Where is that very human Jesus of the first 3?

They accuse him of making himself equal with God, and he agrees. Reads very differently from the others. He makes himself distinct from the Father, but says they know all the same things, and that in fact the Father no longer sits in judgment – he’s give that all to the Son, plus the power of life and death, and says those who don’t honor the Son do not honor the Father who sent him 5;19-24. In 5:26, “Just as the Father has life in Himself (I.e. not given, nor able to be taken away), even so he gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.” He says the dead will soon hear his voice, and will be resurrected to either eternal life or to judgment. But he also says that he can do nothing on his own initiative – so not a completely free agent, as he has no choice but to do as God the Father wills 5:30.


From 5:33-47, he spells out the many witnesses he has that he is indeed God – the witness of John the Baptist, of the works he, Jesus has done and will do, of God Himself and of the scriptures. Whereas in the other gospels, the disciples don’t really get what he’s doing with the loaves and fishes, here 6:1-14, all the people recognize he’s a prophet. Huh. And in 6:15 it says that Jesus knew they were going to take him by force, to make him King, so he went to the mountain alone. Then Jesus walks on water, and there is nothing about Peter doing it.

. . .
The people follow Him and want more bread, and want to know what to do to please God (Believe in me, says Jesus 6:29), and then ask for a sign. Jesus gives a beautiful speech about him being the bread of heaven, and the water of life, and promises eternal life to all who follow him. 6:32-40. The Jews grumble and argue, but Jesus extends his analogy, saying no one has seen God but him. He is the living bread, and they must eat of him and drink of him to be saved. Recall, this is written after 60 years of reliving the Lord’s Supper. They are beautiful words, but did Jesus really say them? 6:54: He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. The Jews have asked how they can eat him, and he really doesn’t say how, just that they must.

. . .
We have at least explanations of Judas’ betrayal now; he was possessed by Satan (Luke), or he never believed (John). Wow. In 6:66, it says, “As a result of this many of his disciples withdrew, and were not walking with him anymore.” Jesus sounds pretty depressed, asking his 12 if they want to go, too. Peter answers that he believes. People are leaving, the Jews want to kill him already, so he can’t go to Jerusalem for the Feast of Booths. He tells his brothers to go and preach for him 7:3-10. His brothers aren’t believing him, and tell him he needs to publicize himself if he wants to be known. Jesus does go, but in secret, and listens to what people are saying about him – some that he is a good man, some that he’s leading people astray.


He ends up speaking in the temple, saying he isn’t seeking his own glory, and defending his healing on the Sabbath. People figure out who he is, and accuse him, and he says he’ll only be with them a little while, then he’ll go where they cannot find him. 7:40 The people are really upset and divided over who and what he is. For the most part they reject his claims.
This all just is so different from the other gospels. Where is the humble servant, the compassionate healer and forgiver of sins, the wise story teller? We’ve had no parables, no advice, no real words of wisdom. Not a lot of healing, either. Mostly it is these strident claims of divinity, and threats, and “Why don’t you believe me?” His signs and miracles seem self-serving, rather than for the benefit of others.


Whereas the others stress Jesus’ humanity, here he is depicted as somewhat ethereal, speaking in esoteric riddles rather than down to earth examples. He can hardly be understood by the philosophers, let alone the masses. Yet he’s very human in negative ways. He seems kind of whiny and petulant. Superior and haughty, incredulous that people aren’t rushing to serve him. Surely this isn’t what John intended.


But I think his attempt to demonstrate Jesus’ divinity, and all the times he has Jesus claim it, produces almost the opposite effect from his intention. He sounds more like a fake Messiah, deluded, maybe, but in it for his own gratification. Whereas the humility and the insistence on his humanity in the first 3 makes you think to yourself, “this man is so good, maybe he really is God.” This one makes you want to say, as the people do say to him, “Prove it!”


Flipping through it again, I see that almost the only things Jesus says in this gospel are “Believe me, I really am God, and if you don’t believe me bad things are going to happen.” And he promises good things to those who do believe and follow. He does save the adulterous woman, again unique to John. 8:1-11. but that isn’t in the old mss.

. . .
Hey, a parable! That of the good shepherd 10:1-18. After first putting himself as shepherd, he says he is the “door of the sheep.” If any enter through him, they are saved. Then the good shepherd attain, who protects his sheep, knows them, lays down his life for them.
Before, I’ve always read the gospels by reading all of them at once, going chronologically through them, following guides that put it all together for you. Doing it that way one encounters these passages from John with the other gospels’ news of his good deeds, so they make sense and are beautiful. But you really need the context the other books provide. 10:16 says he has other sheep, to merge into the fold. Gentiles? He next says he has authority (from the Father) to lay down his life and pick it up again.


Some say he’s crazy or possessed again, others that demons don’t heal people. In 10:30 he says, “I and the Father are One,” and they pick up stones to kill him. But Jesus answers them and throws the whole thing into confusion by citing scripture that says, “I said, you are gods.’ If he called them gods, to whom the word came, do you say of him whom the father sanctified and sent into the world ‘You are blaspheming’ because I said I am the Son of God?” 10:33-36. So which is it? Is he a Son in a different way than we are, or what?

. . .
John gives a reason for Judas; the priests have posted a reward. Mary (sister of Martha) is the one who anoints him with costly oils and perfumes (12:3) and it is Judas who objects, because he’s a thief! He pilfers from the money box they carry for the poor (12:6). Poor Judas. John says the priests are thinking about executing Lazarus, too, for having been raised from the dead and thus drawing people toward Jesus.

. . .
Also, John always has Jesus “crying out” instead of just talking. However, he does have Jesus wash the disciples’ feet, which is lovely 13:5-20.


He gives the new commandment – to love one another – in 13:34. It is only in John that Jesus says clearly (over and over) that the only way to the Father is thru him 14:6. Goes over his oneness with the Father again 14:7-14: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” But then he says that those who believe in him will do the works he does and greater, and promises to do whatever they ask in his name.



He prays one part saying he “manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou gavest me” 17:6. And since those men are His, he asks they be given His joy made fuller and guard them and keep them, safe from the evil one. Then about their future glory 17:22-26. Is this to justify the apostolic church? Legitimize it?


Judas does not kiss him, only shows the mob the meeting place. And it is Peter who cuts off a soldier’s ear – soldier named Malchus. Romans are there - not just the temple priests. The priests take him to Pilate because they have no the right to put him to death 18:31. And his discussion with Pilate is different, and Barabas is a “robber” 18:40. The women present are Jesus’ mother (not named) and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleopas and Mary Magdalene, 19:25. Jesus asks for wine, to fulfill the scriptures. Side piercing – the only gospel with it, in 19:34.


Mary Magdalene comes alone to the tomb, and it is empty. Ran to Peter and “the other disciple Jesus loved” (I’ve see that one before), they go look, see it is empty, and go home. Mary stays, weeping, and 2 angels are sitting there. Jesus appears behind her, but she doesn’t know it is him. She doesn’t until he says, “Mary.” “Rabboni!” she cries. And he says, “Stop clinging to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brethren . . . 20:17. So she goes.

. . .
21:1-11, Jesus does the miracle with the fish. Asks Peter if he loves him 3 times, tells him to tend his sheep. Then a curious thing. Jesus says, “Follow me.” Peter turns around and sees “the disciple whom Jesus loved” following and the one “who had also leaned back on his breast at the supper, and said ‘Lord, who is the one who betrays you?” Peter says, “Lord, what about this man?” Jesus says, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me.” What????? Because it goes on “This saying therefore went out among the brethren, that that disciple would not die.” But the disciple isn’t Judas. Is it John? Is John taken up to heaven? Or what?


And the gospel ends with a note from the author – “This is the disciple who bears witness of these things, and wrote these things, and we know that his witness is true.” Has to be John. Imagine, tho, calling yourself, “the one whom Jesus loved.”