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 21st century.
STAY TUNED: This is the introduction
and scope of the book. I’ll work on it
from time to time.
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