THE "JESUS STORY" CONTINUES -- READERS SOUND OFF!

The Beauty of Open Exchange:

The “Jesus Story” Unfolds

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

© April 18, 2015

PREAMBLE

First of all, I appreciate all responses, and although I may differ with the respective points of view, I respect them for having the courage to express them.  As long as people are talking about subjects that concern them, there is the possibility of developing common ground.  

No one is without opinions, but not everyone has the courage to express those opinions without being angry, volatile or defensive.  Better to express one’s opinions frequently and politely than infrequently and violently.

Many of us were reared by parents who told us that we should never discuss religion, politics or race with anyone, and we see where that has gotten us.  I applaud people with a point of view who can express it calmly with empathy.

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It is not surprising to me that many reading me, and they number in the thousands thanks to this blog, find the "Jesus Story" clashes with what they have been taught to believe.

Clearly, in this odyssey, I am attempting to relate the “Jesus Story” to these most challenging times.  

My search is by a complete amateur in the field of theology and eschatology, and therefore must depend on scholars who have dedicated their lives to understanding the historical significance of the "Jesus Story" in terms of the rise of Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism. 

After 70 C.E., there was no longer a Second Temple in Jerusalem, no longer archives of Jewish history, no longer Judaism as it was known>  Nor was there any sign of the Jesus Movement as everyone connected with it had fled to safety.

It was some forty years since the Crucifixion of Jesus.  During that period, James the brother of Jesus had essentially taken over the movement as Apostle Peter proved not to be the rock upon which Jesus had claimed to be building his church.

Apostle Paul, who never met Jesus, but had been hunting and persecuting Christians for three years after the death of Jesus, experienced a conversion in 33 C.E., and thereafter became a vigorous proselytizers of the Christian faith throughout the Gentile World.

To this day, despite the propaganda of the Four Gospels which prove an advertisement for the new faith of Christianity, the only extant records of any reliability are the Letters of St. Paul.  Most Christian and Jewish scholars are in agreement on this.

It is apparent from my research, and it is still on going, that scholars are not in agreement on many issues, yet one thing is clear.

Christianity was born because man in his fragile nature fearing “the end of days” needed a new religion, and that need was exploited in a twisted fashion, and cleverly so, surviving persecution, ostracism and incredible hardship.

Christianity has been political from its beginning with Emperor Constantine seizing that advantage early in the fourth century to make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. 

THE PARADOX OF ST. PAUL

No less erratic, more troubled soul or more compelling personality was that of St. Paul who changed everything.  He would become the improbable yet most influential acolyte that Christianity would ever have with his exhortation of love in 1 Corinthian 13. 

Love is the most powerful and most important virtue in all of humanity.  St. Paul created with this tiny masterpiece a document of love for literature and psychology, but especially for Christian theology.

The problem with Paul's "love chapter" is that he focuses on, indeed, implies that love of others comes before loving of ourselves.  

But love comes only from a loving heart, not an angry or damaged heart, for without a healthy love center within, love without cannot be authentic.

This love contradiction has muddied the waters for twenty centuries, and in a most modest way, my books and essays have been like the salmon swimming upstream against the current attempting to alert readers to that fact.   

When love is a manipulative device, it becomes a device of power.  It becomes political.  That fact is demonstrated in a series of exchanges received from readers, who find themselves in this "love trap" that haunts us all.  

Disguised in these exchanges is buried love which I doubt even occurs to these authors that they are exchanging letters of love.  We cannot help ourselves from being loving, wherever we are, whoever we are, to not be loving for behind our defensiveness, anger, even our self-justification is always buried love. 

A READER WRITES: 

Dr. Fisher reads as a very confused writer and at times is hard to follow as to his purpose. He appears to be reading opinions of a list of writers that are just as confused and are strongly opinionated.

The Holy Scripture is a book that was written by men who were inspired by God the message God gave to mankind. It is without error in the original language and reveals a plan for mankind to be forgiven and receive eternal life with God.

There isn't any myth recorded in the Scripture and it is offensive to any Christian for anyone to claim that there is.

It is my prayer that Dr. Fisher is a believer and has been “born again.”

His writing is not clear where he stands on the Scripture as being the inerrant Word of God written by Men who were inspired by God in truth and detail.

This is in contrast with the books that men wrote about the Scripture giving their opinion about myth and history.

I have had men in my ministry try to prove the Scripture to be in error and while doing so were led to believe it is undeniably true and were "born again." As always, agree to agree or agree to disagree.

Respectfully

R.R.J.

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Mr. R.R.J.,

The people I have referenced are historians and scholars from our most celebrated academic institutions in the Western World, people who make it their business to follow the facts wherever they take them.  If I am confused, so are they.

Faith and belief have nothing to do with facts.  If faith and belief are enough, so be it.

In Search for the Real Parents of My Soul is my own social psychological and private odyssey.  At my advanced age, I question much that I have been taught, and feel I have a right to investigate the soundness of that teaching. 

All my life, I have looked at what I was doing, how I was doing it, why I was doing it, and what contributed to my doing so with directness, and with unabashed courage. 

My books on corpocracy (i.e., the suspect practices of the corporation) reflect this; my book on Christianity is in that same vein. 

Religion needs to evolve in understanding the same way as every other aspect of human existence.   Nothing is without error that is derived from human creation, nothing, and religion is perhaps the most human of institutions.

Spiritual integrity does not require miracles or beliefs that suspend the exploration of what makes sense and what does not. 

Christianity was "born again," if you prefer, after 70 C.E.  It is a religion with which I came into the world and which I have been programmed to believe.  It is my hope that it has room for this “Doubting Thomas.” 

A READER COMMENTS ON R.R.J.’s ASSERTIONS:

Yes, Mr. Jenkins has a right to his beliefs, but the irony is that he is the one confused and opinionated. 

I once read a book that listed the names of over 2000 gods that humans had and continued to create. His god is just one of the many. 

Another irony about his god is that this god is talked about as being a loving god.  That is a real joke.  He supposedly had Jesus sacrificed as human sacrifice, and then he decided to send all the world’s non-Christians to hell unless they became Christians.  Talk about love. 

That is the most twisted idea of love that has ever been expressed.  At the risk of repeating myself the god worshiped by the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims is one of the angriest characters ever invented. 

And that god was invented like all the other gods when dictatorship was the only form of government.  So naturally the god that was invented by the ruling class was also a dictator. 

I once thought about becoming a Lutheran minister, but fortunately I read Thomas Pain’s “The Age of Reason” which started me questioning, and my questioning has gone on ever since. 

I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know that R.R.J. does not have the answer.   

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Dear Questioning,

Please note that R.R.J. signs "Respectfully."  That is important.  I have no trouble with people with passionate points of view.  My problem is with the apathetic.

There was a time when I was a freshman at the University of Iowa, taking one of the required core courses called "Western Civilization" that I was a person very much like Mr. Jenkins.

Dr. Halmi was already lecturing the class in Western Civilization as I entered the amphitheater of some 300 or so students.  I heard him castigate the Roman Catholic Church with a storm of invectives that was too much for my sensitive ears.  

I left the class and immediately dropped the course having taken the professor's remarks as a personal insult to my beliefs.

Four years later, I took the course again, and already my perspective was changing, but I was still a most devout Catholic. 

My sense is that many very nice people, very good people, very devout people will be disturbed with my book, but that is because, in my case, the Roman Catholic Church, and basic Christianity has not been honest with us about the historic Jesus or the early Christian Church.

My life, to this moment, is a constant surprise to me.  Having said that, I know I must give credit to my initial training for protecting me from making real bad choices in my life, choices that I may have made were I not to have had that training.

R.R.J. has every right to his beliefs, and had I not been so rushed at the time, I would have applauded him for making the effort to communicate his feelings. 

QUESTIONING READER RESPONDS:

I find this discussion interesting because it all comes down as it always does to the human desire for certainty.  

When you tell a true believer of Christianity that his or her beliefs are no different than the Greek myths, they are incensed.  As long as that person can believe the Christian myth, that person feels certain and secure.  

As children we can eventually give up the belief in Santa and the Easter Bunny, but many adults still need to believe in something that is the equivalent of Santa and the Easter Bunny.

The conclusion to which I have come is that there is no certainty.  As I have said before we are limited by our perceptions and some people apparently need  to believe in an adult version of Santa or the Easter Bunny.  

Religion may preach morality but throughout history has failed to act on its teachings.  Many people are moral have no need for religion.  As I also have said many times if you want to worship something that is fine by me.  It only bothers me when those people want everyone to believe as they do.

On another issue that hinges into all this is free will.  Physicists can now determine through mathematical calculation if an object in space will hit or miss us.  

Therefore, if it were possible to accumulate all the data in the universe about everything  then you would be able to predict that I would read these emails tonight and type this missive.  E.O. Wilson recently said free will is an illusion, and we need to believe in that illusion for our survival.

DR. FISHER RESPONDS

I don't think people are so concerned about certainty, but more concerned about meaning, or what is life all about?

Religion is sanctuary for that meaning, and yes, it has been disrupted, fragmented and often dispatched by both modernity and postmodernity.

You mention science and mathematics, the cognitive side of our consciousness, that aspect that has rotated meaning to the Gospel of Science that has become the new religion, as clearly practiced by E. O. Wilson and his ilk.

They make a statement, such as the one you quote, and you take it as gospel because of who and what E. O. Wilson is, and what he represents.

Mythology exists in science masquerading as definitive laws that can be proved by mathematics or physics, only to be disproved later by new data.  Einstein did that to Newton, but Newton was not castigated for being so assertive in his day, indeed, his theses ruled for 300 years.

The danger of being misunderstood in my odyssey ( "Search for the Real Parents of My Soul") troubles me for I am not interested in denying the relevance of Christianity or Judaism, but I am asking myself, and by extension the reader to consider the value and moral authority of our Christian/Judaic culture in the context of the present.

Jesus is very real to me, and the early Christian movement that resulted in a catholic or universal religion is impressive in its development and ability to survive ambiguities and the cultural ambivalence of man throughout the ages.

Jesus was a Jew, and early Christian writers did everything to minimize this fact, and to charge Judaism for his death on the cross, which was not true at all.

I disagree with you that people are moral without religion.  People can be moral without a church, but not without religion.

A religion is a set of values that dignifies and celebrates human existence, not any special race or group, but all of humankind.

As for free will, I suggest you read or reread Arthur Schopenhauer's "Love and Will," where he recognizes the limits and yes advantages to love and will.

In my long life, I have found the Roman Catholicism in which I was born, a religion often more interested in its political survival than its spiritual mission, a church I have experienced in many parts of the world, a very flawed human institution, that has had only two popes that I have admired, Pope John XXIII and the current Pope Francis I, for they both personify the essential nature of love.

Before I met and married Betty Ann, best in the land, I realized that I had never loved; that I knew nothing about love.  She has been my teacher, and as a consequence, I find nothing more powerful or more fulfilling than love.

Religions, indeed, churches and synagogues, often espouse love but worry too much about your referenced certainty.  There is no certainty.

With love, however, there is meaning and with that meaning it is sufficient.

As always, it is a delight to hear from you.

   

ANOTHER RESPONDS TO R.R.J.’s DECLARATION:

Far be it from me to change people’s mind about religion.  But it would be wise for everybody, religious or not to be open-minded.  May I suggest people take a look at just as one example? 

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman#Career

Then we might ask ourselves, who knows better?

Best to all,

YET ANOTHER COMMENT TO THIS MATTER

Dr. Fisher,

I am not a scholar of the Bible and have not read all the preceding thoughts on this subject that you cover, but for me, I find that the Bible is a source of history, comfort, wonder and  more importantly to me,  a connection to my spirituality in this great big world I live in.  Any of us may consider it "inerrant".  I do not, but it does not change my connection to my God.

DR. FISHER RESPONDS WITH AN EPILOGUE TO THIS RELIGIOUS DISCUSSION

Remember, although a lifelong reader regarding matters religious, especially Roman Catholicism, as well as the Bible and countless studies of Jesus and Paul especially, but also of Peter, James, Thomas, Judas and others, it is my "Jesus Story" and may not be relevant or compatible with the thinking of the R.R.J.’s of the world, or for this believer, but that is all right. 

The Christian tradition and the Christian faith when it is not fanatical serves believers and non-believers alike with a modicum of humanity and good will.

That said like all my writing, mine grows out of my curiosity, which currently is about God, about the place of the Bible, especially the New Testament, and about the Christian tradition as it has been programmed into my mindset and belief system. 

I ask myself, “Is Christianity changing?”  The answer is not in my experience.  Should it be changing?  That calls for a subjective response.  Instead of dwelling on that, the reader can consider the validity of what is to follow.   

The moral landscape of most everything is in the process of changing.  Nothing is as we first thought it to be.  If belief is a stop sign, it means that fresh insights and ideas in that belief systems are unlikely to occur, proving little room for growing tolerance through awareness.

For me, a person who has lived in his mind perhaps more than in life itself most of his existence, none of the sources -- from my point of view -- have been totally authentic or reliable. 

I know little to nothing about Islam, a little more about Eastern religions, thanks mainly to Joseph Campbell and Alan W. Watts.  At this point in my life, I am kind of amazed that Christianity, which is essentially a made up or invented religion, as is Rabbinical Judaism remain remarkable in their resilience while paradoxically appearing to resist change.

Only Paul's works, which were mainly reduced to a number of Letters to the Gentiles based upon two essentials of his belief system: that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead (i.e., the Resurrection); two events that turned Jesus from a great Jewish teacher to Jesus-the-Christ. 

Was Jesus a Christian?  Obviously, he wasn’t.

The first recorded use of the term is in the New Testament in Acts 11:26, after Barnabas brought Saul (Paul) to Antioch where they taught the disciples for about a year with the text saying, "… the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch."

The second mention of the term Christian follows in Acts 26:28, where Herod Agrippa II replied to Paul the Apostle, "Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."

The third and final New Testament reference to the term is in 1 Peter 4:16, which exhorts believers: "Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf."

Those who joined Jesus were called "Followers of the Way" because Jesus stated He was the Truth, the Life and the Way. Not until 300 C.E. did the term “Christian” apply generally to believers. 

Jesus was a Jew and schooled in the tradition and beliefs of Judaism of the Second Temple.  He was crucified approximately in 30 C.E., the catastrophic destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple followed in 70 C.E., or forty years after his death with all the Four Gospels written thereafter, only Paul’s Letters were written before 70 C.E. 

Therefore, the religion of Jesus was Judaism and his work but a sect of that faith.  The religion about Jesus is Christianity which was a brilliant, imaginative and astounding invention of St. Paul and the writers of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 

     The Sermon on the Mount depicted by Carl Heinrich Block

Christianity is a religion based on the life and oral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament, the world's largest religion with about 2.4 billion adherents early here in the 21^st century.  Believers call themselves Christians and believe that Jesus has a "unique significance" in the world.

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Most Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God, fully divine and fully human, and the savior of humanity whose coming was prophesied in the Old Testament. Consequently, Christians refer to Jesus as Christ or the Messiah.

In 70 C.E. (Christian Era, or Common Era whatever you prefer, no longer written as AD, or Adonis Domino), the equivalent of a nuclear explosion fell upon Jerusalem, completely destroying the entire province, all its records and the Second Temple, the seat of Judaism, and the Jesus sect. 

The devastation occurred during the Jewish-Roman War (67-73 C.E.) in which Rome totally destroyed everything that was sacred in the Jewish tradition.

The Rabbinical Judaism that was invented after that war was wholly different than the Judaism that existed before the war. 

Nothing at all has survived that was written about or concerning Jesus before 70 C.E.  In fact, most of what was to be written about Jesus and the "new religion" was written late in the first century or early in the second century about Jesus, and came to be called “Christianity.”

Only Paul's "Epistles" survived that terrible Jewish-Roman War.  Paul is believed to have died either in prison or to have been martyred (some say beheaded) in Rome around 67 C.E.

Luke in the "Acts of the Apostles" uses an "air brush" to give the Paul experience the right twist, having prepared it for the Roman patron, Theophilus. 

Luke (writing about 90 C.E.), portrays the struggling church as united in purpose to spread the gospel from Jerusalem to the Greco Roman Gentile world.

Since Acts of the Apostles as well as the Four Gospels about Jesus were written decades after Jesus’s crucifixion (c 30 C.E.), and since the catastrophic destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans occurred in 70 C.E., it is rather a miracle that this faith survived.

In fact, it is the earliest Letters of St. Paul written between 50-60 C.E. that provide the story line or the firsthand account of the early Christian church and first followers of Jesus, whom Paul had met with, but with whom he had a stormy relationship, as he was not trusted being of the Diaspora and not a Jerusalem Jew.

Before there was a religion called "Christianity," Paul composed a very different story of how the Jesus movement took root than that created in the Four Gospels and Acts of the Apostles. 

Whereas the Letters of Paul can be authenticated as he is a recognized historical figure, there is no actually proof of who wrote the Four Gospels, or any substantive proof of their identity.  Moreover, not a single word of these gospels can be historically authenticated. 

Alas, it’s far less than a harmonious beginning for the Christian faith than what most believers have been led to believe. 

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After reading A. N. Wilson’s JESUS: A LIFE (1992) and Donald Harman Akenson's SURPASSING WONDER: The Invention of The Bible and The Talmud (1998), which incidentally details how Christianity and Judaism separated and reinvented themselves after 70 C.E., I continued my reading, and rereading many books of the past.

This is especially true of books on or about St. Paul, the quintessential outsider, the apostle so unique he defies invention.

Listed are the current works I have read on the Apostle Paul, works that have formed my view of the man:

Hyam Maccoby, THE MYTHMAKER, Paul and the Invention of Christianity (1986)

Sarah Ruden, PAUL AMONG THE PEOPLE: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time ((2010)

Henry Burton Sharman, PAUL AS EXPERIENT (1945)

A. N. Wilson, THE MIND OF THE APOSTLE (1997)

Bart D. Ehrman, PETER, PAUL & MARY MAGDALENE: The Followers of Jesus in the History and Legend (2006)

Michael Grant, SAINT PAUL (1976)

Donald Harman Akenson, SAINT SAUL: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus (2000) 

This is not to suggest I am a scholar, but a diligent student that finds the Bible and other sources providing connection to my spiritual side.  Any of us may be considered it "inerrant".  That does not change our spiritual side or our connection to God.

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