SEARCH FOR THE REAL PARENTS OF MY SOUL -- A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL ODYSSEY!

SEARCH FOR THE REAL PARENTS OF MY SOUL

A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL ODYSSEY!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

 © September 2014

PERSONAL NOTE

Nearly forty years ago, in a graduate course at the University of South Florida, I wrote a paper, which like many of my papers, was actually a book.  I had the book bound and it has been here with me in my study all these years. 

No surprise, my professor was a little overwhelm, and asked me, “Why this,” as if an indictment of my attention to the assignment. 

More than sixty years ago, in undergraduate school at the University of Iowa, a chemistry major, I wrote a long paper in a core course, “Modern Literature, Greeks and the Bible.”  It was titled, “The Influence of Religion on My Life.”  Alas, it has been misplaced. 

The essence of these two missives reduced to print was that I have been a Christian believer and critic of Christianity, and organized religion all my life.  It is reflected in some of my works but often only obliquely and subliminally. 

By the accident of my birth, I have come to realize how human an institution organized religion is and how flawed, while purporting to be anything but. 

Like many of my works, often to the satisfaction of no one, I offer a conceptual perspective and framework of an issue or condition with no authority other than extensive reading, curiosity and an compulsion to share. 

I have read rather extensively on the early Christian church, and like it far more than I like what it has become.  Likewise, it is easier for me to contemplate Jesus as man, and charismatic leader than as God. 

I believe in God but my God is not a righteous God or a punishing God, but a God that connects me with my ancestors and with me, as a flawed engaged human being.

As readers know, I was first a chemist, then a chemical sales engineer, then executive, retired in my thirties, went back to school, earned my Ph.D., consulted, acted as an adjunct professor for several colleges and universities, then returned to industry first as an industrial psychologist, then again as an executive, retired a second time, and have been writing books and articles ever since.  I call myself a “peripatetic philosopher,” which is a wonderer and wanderer attempting to make sense of a time that I consider totally mad. 

Organized religion seems to share that madness.  “My Search for the Real Parents of My Soul” gave me solace those many years ago, and it might do the same for readers today.

*     *     *

The general theme of this study is to utilize organization theory to understand religious ideology, including both goals, rules, and behavioral codes. 

Much of this study may appear theoretical and speculative as the soul emanates from a subjective perception.  With no apologies, it represents a personal odyssey of a lay scholar.  This notwithstanding, it is supported by relevant empirical data and observational experience.

The use of the perspective of organization is to comprehend and interpret Christian ideology is certainly not an uncommon approach. 

Americans, especially, are conscious if not obsessed with structure, and American Christianity has been a structured faith which belies the disappearance of the “organization man.” 

Of particular interest here, however, is the evolution of the Christian church from early Christianity, and codified in the Bible. 

In these most challenging times, where what is moral and tolerated has more to do with the times than with Christian principles and beliefs, as structure is being shredded, and Christianity is evolving conditional to popular demands of expediency.      

That said, this work intends to follow and uncover the pre-Christian course, that is, the general setting of Christianity in history, in terms of Judaism and the Greco-Roman World, to the crowning of Emperor Constantine, which pragmatically ensured its survival.

Written primarily for the concerned, this work finds the current situation in Christianity analogous to the orphan child who sets out to discover its real parents.  With that child’s curiosity that is never lost, but often misplaced or disregarded, a peripatetic search has been underway most of my thinking life “to discover the real parents of my soul.”

Many others before me have done this, or are doing this now without realizing it as such.  It is a quest for roots, or for an anchor against tsunami that floods our consciousness and makes us weary of going forward. 

Other words are used for the parents of our souls: salvation, peace, contentment, God with God the vaguest of words in our consciousness.   

And so, as with Dante before me, my search has been wrought with wonder.  Only by giving order to this wonder have I found my Virgil as my guide.  What he has shown me I show you, my fellow searcher.  Wear it well.

The paradigm of the one super-worldly god constructs him in part as a father, in part as a new gracious king controlling the vicissitudes of the world, to be sure he loves his people, yet when it disobeys he punishes it sternly, but can be won again through prayer, humility, and moral conduct.

German sociologist & economist, Max Weber (1958) 

History is not a science, even though scientific methodology is used as much as possible.

Carl. G. Gustavson, author of A Preface to History (1955)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chronology of the Palestinian Question: A.D. 30 to the Present

Historical Development of Christianity: an annotated bibliography

Introduction and Overview

The Pre-Christian Course of Mankind

            

Between the Old and New Testament

Return from Babylon          

Synagogue No Longer

One Hundred Years of Ptolemaic Rule Sets In

The Coming of the Seleucids

The Maccabean Revolt

The Sanhedrin

Lay Teachers Reject Premise

So What Was God’s Way, Anyway

Enter the Pharisees

The Sadducees

Lay Teachers Justify the People’s Errors

Pagan Customs Called Jewish!

Oral Law Gains Acceptance

New Laws of the Pharisees

The Prosbul of Hillel

A Priori

Bibliography

The General Setting of Christianity in History

The Youth of Christianity

Could Christianity Be a Transient Faith?

Evidence To The Contrary

Daily Life in the Time of Jesus

Jerusalem: “Cup of trembling….Burdensome Stone”

Enter Herod….Builder Extraordinary

Jerusalem Destroyed By the Romans

The Immediate Background of Christianity: The Greco-Roman World

The Scene of the Birth of Christianity

Conditions Favorable To the Spread of Religion

Bibliography

Jesus and the Gospels: The Foundation of Christianity

            

Church or Sect?

The Carpenter from Galilee

Our Knowledge of Jesus

The Public Career and Psychology of Jesus

Jesus the Charismatic Leader and Actor Extraordinary

Jesus and the Parables

Did Jesus Expect the Kingdom to fully come within history?

The Man, Jesus

Transition and transformation

Bibliography

A Person View of It All: The Social Psychology of the Observer and the Observed -- The Third Strike

Final Thoughts of an Octogenarian about Christianity and Religion in General

CHRONOLOGY OF THE PALESTINIAN QUESTION:

A.D. 30 to the PRESENT

No area on earth is more strategically located than the Holy Land.  Throughout history, the country has been exposed to political pressures from all directions.  For the past twenty centuries, it has been subject to one or another of the great empires ruling the West.  Only briefly, under the dynasty of David and later Hasmonaeans, has the country been independent of foreign rule.  Today, the Holy Land is the focal point of a dual struggle between Palestinians and Israelis with threatening instability further exacerbated by the political turmoil in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.  The situation is further complicated by Russia and China positioning themselves to take advantage of the discord.  Indirectly, all nations are involved through the United Nations and with a global economy connecting all quadrants of the globe to some sense of interdependence.

THE KINGDOM OF HEROD IN THE TIME OF JESUS

The Herodian family were vassal kings under the early Roman Empire.  In the first century B.C., Rome conquered Syria, Judea and Egypt.  After 40 B.C., Rome allotted Judaea and Galilee to Herodians.  After the death of Mark Anthony, Herod’s realm was expanded to include Samaria and the major part of Coele-syria (“coele” an Aramaic term meaning “all of the entire,” or all of Syria).  Herod Agrippa reigned from A.D. 37 to 44.  The Jewish revolt of A.D. 66-70 occurred under the rule of Herod Agrippa II.

Byzantine Empire

Roman rule over Palestine continued after the separation   of the empire into western and eastern Byzantine divisions.   With the exception of the brief Persian rule of Chosoroes II (A.D. 611-628), Byzantine rule over Palestine continued until A.D. 636.  In that year, Emperor Heraclius was defeated by the Caliph Omar at the battle of the Yarmuk River near the Sea of Galilee.  Thus began the Omayyad rule and 13 centuries of Islamic culture in Palestine.

Moslem Expansion

The Moslem Empire reached its greatest extent under the Omayyad dynasty.  Their rule extended from Spain in the West to Turkestan in the East.  In A.D. 750, the Omayyads were deposed by the Abassids, and the capital was moved from Damascus to Baghdad.   In A.D. 936, Egypt declared its independence under a line of caliphs who descended from Fatima, daughter of the prophet Mohammed.  The Fatimids took over Palestine and founded Cairo the same year.

The Crusaders

The rule of the Fatimids over the Holy Land extended to the coming of the Christian Crusaders in 1099.  The Crusader territories, gained in battle, in Syria and Palestine were maintained until 1187.  At that time, the entire region with the exception of certain cities on the Lebanese coast were lost to the new Ayyubid rulers of Egypt.  The Crusaders regained dominion over part of the Holy Land in 1192.  This was finally ended in 1291 by the Mamelukes, descendants of mercenary troops who at first served then overthrew the Ayyubids.

The Ottoman Empire

The Mamelukes continued to rule Syria, Palestine and Egypt until the expansion of the Ottoman Turks.  In 1516, the Ottoman Sultan Selim I crushed the Mamelukes and added Syria and Palestine to his Ottoman dominion.  Egypt was taken the next year in 2517.  The Turks continued to govern Palestine until World War I.  Jerusalem was surrendered by the Turks to the British General Edmund Allenby on December 9, 1917.

The British Directive

The Council of the League of Nations gave Great Britain a mandate to administer Palestine on July 24, 1922.  The document which triggered the British regime, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, was marked with such ambiguity that British’s rule ended in a sordid and precipitate withdrawal in 1948, after World War II.  The British found it impossible to establish in Palestine a national homeland for the Jewish people, and at the same time do nothing that would prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish Palestinian peoples.    

Israel and Occupied Territories of Palestine

On May 14, 1948, the faded remnants of the British mandate were superseded by proclamation of the State of Israel.  The first Mideast war immediately ensued.  The disputed borders of Israel, which came from that war existed until the third Mideast war of 1967.  Israel decisive victory, crushing Egypt with its Russian military tanks and weapons in a “Six Day War,” has resulted in Israel’s occupation or dominance of Gaza strip, the West Bank and Golan Heights with wars with Lebanon in 1982, 2005, and 2006, or well into the 21^st century.

STAY TUNED: This is the introduction and scope of the book.  I’ll work on it from time to time.