The Peripatetic Philosopher shares:

Brief Reflections on Christianity

&

Other Things to a Friend!

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

© November 9, 2015

Dr. Don,

I don't know what your internecine family conflicts are on the subject of Christianity, but I am glad you are tolerant of my continuing study of Early Christianity.

Everything changed after Rome devastated, indeed, obliterated Judaism as it was known in 70 C.E.

Jesus had been dead for forty years when that break up with the past occurred, and the religion of the Gentiles, the church that Paul sponsored, took the play away from the Jewish Christians of James the Just and Peter.

Christianity was a very Jewish faith with the disciples of Jesus.  This was evident in its morality, dietary policy and sex code, the requirement of circumcision, and the Jewish devotion to the Torah.  

Renegade Paul moved away from his Jewishness, and for that was treated hostilely by James especially, and other Jerusalem Christians.  They contributed to his untimely death.

Paul had been dead for four years (66 C.E.) when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by Rome.

From 70 C.E. to our present day, Christianity, as we know it, has been invented and reinvented into the faith that Christians across the world now defend.  The prophecy of the "end of days" that originated 2,000 years ago, continues to our day with the mindset of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse prominent in our paranoia.    

Christianity is an honorable faith, but a faith with a special spin from Luke's Acts of the Apostles, on.  Defenders use the sources of the Bible, the Old Testament and New Testament in scholarly ways, which have little purchase in a scientific age, especially when scholars are looking for historical verification.  

Historically, we know so little about Jesus of Nazareth.  We know the Nazarene was a peasant in an enclave of impoverished and unschooled fisherman and farmers, out of which came the Twelve Apostles, only Luke the Physician, who had studied Greek and had a certain education, could read and write.  

Yet, we are not even certain about Luke.  Indeed, we have no certainty that he wrote the Gospel of Luke or the Acts of the Apostles.  We know the Acts were meant to put a positive spin on such things as Paul's relationship to James the Just and Peter, among other contretemps.

Scholars continue to come across new sources of lost data.  For instance, the claim that John of Patmos is author of "Revelations" and the Gospel bearing his name.

As for myself, I was reared an Irish Roman Catholic, perhaps the weirdest of Catholicism's. 

Pursuing to my study of early Christianity in recent years, I have come to know the peasant Jesus, who was unlikely to have been able to read or write.  Moreover, he was totally Jewish in temperament as was Peter, James the Just, his brother, and John of Patmos, as well as the other disciples.  The Gospel of John is very different to the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.  

Scholars of every persuasion, orientation, ethnicity and background use sources such as the "Q" manuscripts to the Dead Sea Scrolls to create their particular assessments.  

After reading scores of these books, my personal puzzle of this period of history is falling into place. This should help me write, "The Jesus Story: Search for the Real Parents of My Soul."  

The book, I suspect, will unlikely please those with whom I have grown up, or those who claim to be devout Christians.  

Religious faith is a powerful personal investment, and once that investment has been made, it is more than likely to be defended than to be open to new information or ideas, much less a different interpretation.  This is true of all religions without exception.    

That said religion is a coping mechanism, necessary for dealing with what we do not know or what cannot be definitively proven or verified.  Yet, religion occupies the spiritual side of our mind where the will to endure resides.  

BB says, "Jim, why given all this study, do you still celebrate Christmas and Easter and say you are a Christian?"

BB is always good at coming to the point.  I was a devout Catholic up into early middle age (early thirties), and then I experienced the world as an American executive on four continents, and saw Christianity and Roman Catholicism up close and personal.  I also saw people of many other faiths who were just as passionate about their beliefs, and yet in many cases were dominated by a white minority.  

Christianity, as scholars continue to show, is mainly an invented faith, a fiction, but a necessary one as is the case with all religions.  Man cannot live without his spiritual beliefs.  Christianity happens to be mine.  I was born into it and will die with it.  I am not interested in becoming an agnostic or atheist.

Incidentally, those who worshipped pagan gods in the first four centuries called Christians, atheists, for not believing as Romans did.   

Some who have read A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA didn't read the book that was written, but read a book in terms of their cultural, moral, social, political and economic values.  In other words, it was a morality play.  Some thought I was trying to blaspheme conventional mores for the hell of it.  Others saw the novel as a risqué book similar to others of that popular genre, books I've heard about but have never read.  

What was the intent of the book?  To show what happens when the connection between the cerebral and spiritual mind are severed, and insanity rushes in to fill the void.  The paradox shown is how the cerebral mind may still function competently while the spiritual mind is totally untethered.

Some who read GREEN ISLAND were stymied by my grammatical and spelling errors, as if that would explain what really troubled them.  

The moral dilemma of the book was meant to be troubling, meant to show what can happen in a short year to a man’s mind when that mind is bested by a reality outside the purview of his experience.  

BB wants me to go in and change these malapropisms.  I will not.  It is an epistle of a man in the flush of life who was nearly destroyed by that fact those many years ago, 47 years ago to be exact.

As for you Dr. Don, God gave you patience and a generous spirit.  Bless you for that and stay as you are.  

Jim