The Bible (yet again, Oi!) part the 6th

 

Spoiler Alert!

There is no historical evidence that such a man with the rather common-place name of Yeshua/Jesus even existed. (BTW, Yeshua is a form of ‘Joshua’ and means ‘God is deliverance’ i.e. ‘Savior’). The name ‘Jesus’ (or ‘Yeshua’) is used time and again in the Book of Daniel and other works of bogus un-prophetic prophesy. The name Yeshua ben-Yosef of Nazareth or Jerusalem or Bethlehem is not to be found in any history or account of any sort.

See Dr. Richard Carrier’s ‘On the Historicity of Jesus’ for a peer-reviewed study of mythicism versus historicity.

(As I write this, I remind myself that this blasphemy would have been my death sentence in another era.)

 

Of course, that such a person as the itinerate preacher of the end-times existed in the first century is a separate issue to whether that person performed miracles, preached sermons, was crucified, rose from the dead and was, ultimately, the ‘Son of God’. Each of those adjunct issues has also been denied and debunked by many scholars. 

 

Again, no one was an eye witness to any aspect of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Fun fact; there is a likelihood that there was no Nazareth at the time of Jesus purported birth. No one outside the Gospels confirmed the miracles purportedly preformed. Water to wine? Loaves and fishes? Lazarus? All of them are completely unsubstantiated by any other testimony apart from the gospels which, again, were written anonymously decades after the dates of the Biblical events. No one actually wrote down the Sermon on the Mount. (Jesus apparently worked without notes.) Moreover, it seems that no one kept notes of Jesus’ meeting with Pontius Pilate or the Scribes and Pharisees. 

 

(Odd that a group called ‘the Scribes’ didn’t bother to keep notes, but it was the Passover holiday, after all.)

 

To continue with this debunking, the crucifixion, itself, is not verified by any Roman records (who, like the Egyptians, were renown records keepers). The story about Barabbas is apparently guff written to build a more engrossing narrative and to exploit a connection to the two goats offered at Passover; the one sacrificed and the scape-goat which was set free.  After all this whole drama was about the New Covenant; the blood sacrifice to end all blood sacrifices.

 

The resurrection – upon which the entire story of salvation and redemption rests – is another black hole, historically. The Gospels themselves are contradictory. The Tomb has never been located. No eye-witnesses ever delivered testimony of seeing the Risen Lord. The Disciples who claimed to have seen and spoken with the resurrected man are as unverified and apocryphal as anything else of the story of the ‘Christ’. And the owner of the tomb, Joseph of Arimethea, is never heard from again.

 

Odd, ain’t it, that a god would not bother to provide any decent evidence for what is declared the most important episode in human history? 

 

nota bene; I had a Polaroid Instamatic camera when I was 13 and could document my entire day with it. Now tell me why ‘god’ couldn’t have conjured up something similar for Mary Magdalene?

 

The Bible, both the Old and the New Testament, is a right hot mess, in all honesty. Apologists fall back on geographic place names such as Jerusalem, Egypt and Babylon as evidence that the Bible in based in truth, though some claim that the outlandish story of Creation, the Noachian Flood and so on and so on as ‘metaphor’ to be decoded and translated by – whom else but Apologists.

 

It might be noted that Dickens wrote about actual places – London and Yorkshire, for example. No one attests to ‘Nicholas Nickleby’, ‘Oliver Twist’ or the ‘Pickwick Papers’ being factual. As has been pointed out, future evidence of the City of New York does not verify the existence of Spiderman or the Fantastic Four or Doctor Doom.

 

Believers argue that contradictions should be dismissed on various grounds; mistranslation of text, poor understanding of the text, and that it is simply matter of Faith that the Bible is, indeed, now and forever, the Word of God. 

 

And there’s the reason given for it all: Faith.

The Passion

 

Bloody sweating is called hematohidrosis; true hematohidrosis occur in bleeding disorders. [1] It may occur in individuals suffering from extreme levels of stress. Around the sweat glands, there are multiple blood vessels in a net-like form, which constrict under the pressure of great stress. See ‘Bloody Nonsense’.

 

Why?

The father-god is dissed by his own creations over some fruit so father-god punishes all of his subsequent creations, kills off the world (babies, animals, plants and all?) with a world-wide flood, then determines that he needs to remunerate, satisfy and honor him/itself with a sacrifice to him/itself of his/its only ‘son’ made flesh. 

Sounds like a rejected plot to ‘Days of Our Lives’ to be honest.

 

Why? Perfect plan. Divine plan. Unknowable plan. Ineffable plan.

Why? Cuz…

 

And while the son-god suffers hunger, thirst and growing pains as a human being while preaching platitudes and saying little of anything more than parables, deepeties, truisms and bromides before being betrayed, tortured and executed in the most violent and bloody manner, we’re - all of us - supposed to share in the guilt of the gory torment as if each one of us were responsible for the byzantine inanity of the god-father’s divine, unknowable, ineffable plan. 

 

The down-fall of man ‘redeemed’ by the very entity that caused the down fall; that initiated and foresaw the entire episode in the Garden. Rather like the arsonist organizing the bucket brigade and wanting to be lionized for it or else he’ll start another, worse fire. 

 

This is supposed to make sense to anyone?

 

The god-son, Jesus, the sacrificial lamb of the father-god to him/them/itself, is both terrified and calm as milk depending on which gospel you read. 

 

Choose your hero/savior; ‘My god! My god! Why hast thou forsaken me?’ or ‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ You want your Anointed One whingeing or resolute? Maybe a pastiche of both to show his/its human side. 

 

Why? Why was this itinerant preacher crucified? Crucifixion was the sentence of a gruesome death for a capital offense; revolt against the Empire, like Spartacus.

It was, the Roman politician Cicero said, the “most cruel and hideous of tortures.” The bodies of the condemned would remain on crosses for days. It was mode of execution that was largely reserved for non-Roman citizens. Slaves, disgraced foreign soldiers mostly; what did this Jesus do to be crucified? Preach on the Sabbath? Steal a donkey? Recite bromides without a license? It must have been something truly nasty to have been tortured, beaten and crucified? The ‘King of the Jews’ thing has always seemed a bit over the top anti-Semite for me. INRI, indeed. Was that meant as salt in the wound?

 

Was the trade for Barabbas (a true scoundrel, we’re told) and the business with the Pharisees and Pilatus, governor of Judaea, washing his hands just window-dressing to bolster a dubious story? Seems so to me. Loads of gratuitous blood-letting, shame and psychopathic cruelty. 

 

The annual Pascal crucifixions in the Philippines must be a sight to behold, though I’d prefer not to. 

More - yes, more - on the Bible - part the fifth (hic!)

 

Let’s return to considering the New Testament. Where does one start when talking about the Gospels?  Firstly, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are fictional characters; their names are not Semitic or Aramaic or even a Greek or Latinate version of what the followers of Jesus may have been named – if he, himself, even existed at all. Next, the gospels, according to most Biblical scholars, were not written by any of these characters whatever they may have been called during their presumed life-times.

 

The Bible has been cited rather apologetically as ‘historical fiction’. IMHO, it’s a dank, awful bit of fiction that stacks up very poorly with just about any work of fiction modern or traditional (Upanishads, Lord of the Rings, the Foundation Trilogy, etc.) That the author of this mish-mash is ‘god-the-almighty’ is a pathetic claim. Too bad ‘god’ didn’t create a better story-teller than Moses to write his/its holy word; maybe Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens or J.K. Rowling.

 

Sad…

 

The Gospel attributed to Mark was purportedly written first, ‘Matthew’ and ‘Luke’ were written adopting things from ‘Mark’ to suit their own needs and the expectations of their perspective audience about 50 years after the events they related. Then, ‘John’ wrote his gospel, possibly in the early 2nd century BCE. Keep in mind that none of these gospels were actually written by the four named Evangelists but instead were written anonymously with additions and edits written much later by other anonymous sources.

 

‘Mark’ was probably written by two or three people and had two or three different endings. Interesting, right? The version by ‘Matthew’ was amended specifically for the Hebrews; aligning Old Testament prophesy so that Jesus would seem to answer those prophesies – some which are not even in the Torah (the Jewish Bible) as we know it now. ‘Luke’s’ version came next; based on both Mark and Matthew. Piling sh!t on Shinola, John’s doesn’t line up with the other three but makes a lame attempt to bring all the mythologizing of the other three – the Synoptic Gospels – into a pseudo-historic narrative. Without actually being historical in any way; no clear dates and no sources claimed.

 

The Gospels are not gospel. God’s perfect word is inconsistent in the four efforts in telling the same tale. They each show not just a difference in view point but a difference in major story details. A discerning consumer of the Gospels might start by calling into question Bible ‘inerrancy’ and citing the lack of historicity, therein. There are plenty of books and studies of the errors, contradictions and out and out falsehoods in the Bible. Too many to list here. In fact, the Bible has been keelhauled by science in every aspect; the story of the Creation is debunked by modern cosmology and planetary geology. The Noachian flood dismissed easily by history and science generally. The resurrection story? Talking snakes? Talking donkeys? Please…

 

Despite claims by ‘Believers’ that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John contained eye-witness accounts, these claims are entirely fallacious. Particularly as regards the resurrection and the Empty Tomb. No one witnessed the resurrection. And, even though grave-robbing was illegal under both Jewish and Roman law, no one of any civic authority ever checked the tomb or investigated in any way. Rather odd that the ‘missing’ remains of a criminal executed for state crimes would not attract some legal attention. Or any attention beyond the criminal’s former coterie, for that matter. 

 

A couple of women make the claim that the tomb is empty, leap to the conclusion that ‘He is Risen!’ (as prompted by an ‘angel’) and that apparently was enough. Imagine the scene: two women go to do post-burial follow-up and meet some good-looking young guy who tells them the dead guy wasn’t there. The women take his word for it and leave, afraid to tell anyone. Hmmm? Nevertheless, word gets out and maybe Peter/Petra/Cephas went to check but no one else apparently went back to check the tomb.  The whole Original Sin magilla - depending as it did on the bloody sacrifice of a divine entity to His/Itself as atonement and prophesied for ages – ended with a whimper not a bang.  

 

It’s small wonder that Believers hope to discredit the theory of evolution; the basis for all of the science of biology. Without the fairy-tale story of the Garden, the Apple, Adam and Eve, the talking serpent (!) and so on, there would be no need of Jesus, atonement or salvation.

 

Can you say ‘House of Cards’?

 

To reiterate; all of the Gospels were written decades after the purported events by anonymous authors, none of whom were eye-witnesses to a dead body coming back to life. The actual writers of the gospels are unknown, even though, by church tradition, they are attributed to the Four Evangelists. As stated before, volumes have been written about the authorship of the gospels. None of the books of the New Testament (sic) were written by the Four Evangelists and none of the books contain eye-witness accounts. This brings us to the likely fact the god/man/archangel/son-of-god never even existed. 

Yet more on the Bible (part the fourth)

 

Point of fact, - this may come as a shock - outside of the biblical tales, there is no historical evidence Moses ever existed at all - never mind being the author of the books of the Old Testament (or the author of the account of his own death!). There are several other heroes of old legends and myths whose tales include all the main points of Moses’ story. The Mosaic legend reads just like many other legends of heroes in the ancient world; the foundling baby given a place of rank, being the deliverer of his people, conversing with god, etc. It is a persistent and pervasive aspect that most of the Bible – including the story of Jesus of Nazareth - a central character, of course - appears to be made of whole cloth with no historical record of the man or his miracles.

 

Now, back to the story of the Chosen People: 

During the over-long trek out of ‘bondage’ while lost in the desert for forty years (!), Moses, who lead the Israelites with his brother, Aaron, got tablets from god with god’s commandments incised on them, so the story goes. This took a while; who knows why? But Moses was gone so long that the Israelites grew impatient and started thinking a different tribal god might do them a better turn than this constant meandering under an open sky. They made a Golden Calf with the help and guidance of Moses’s brother Aaron and took to worshipping it. This kind of indicates the level of sophistication of this group as a whole. It also may indicate the level of commitment which Aaron had to the god of the Israelites.

 

(BTW, gold? The slaves had gold? They had gold enough to make an idol of gold to worship? After trekking through the desert; high-tailing it from Pharaoh’s army? Let that sink in: they were slaves… they had gold… and they lived amongst common Egyptians… as slaves… in a rather prosperous way... and their ‘god’ was stymied by the earthly king, Pharoah? Tell me when any of this makes a lick of sense. The mantra re-echoes: Making sense of nonsense is nonsensical.)

 

Well, the ‘One True’ god of warfare and thunder got jealous of the golden calf, naturally, as Bronze Age gods, it seems, were wont to do. Yahweh was a jealous and an angry god, so, ‘he/it’ told Aaron, who led the one, faithful faction of imaginary Israelites who didn’t worship the golden idol, to slaughter all of the other unfaithful factions as a punishment. Sure… No angel of Death and lamb’s blood this time; kin-slaying was the way to handed this revolt. 

 

(To make this mass murder of kinfolk more ironic, the stone tablets Moses carried down the mountain contained one law which read ‘Thou shall not kill!’. Ineffable as always…)

 

But that wasn’t harsh enough for the god of the imaginary Israelites. He/It then caused a plague to kill the ones who remained from the kin-slaying. Nice, right? The imaginary survivors still had a long way to go to get to the ‘Land of Milk and Honey’ so, on they went, following the baffling signs and signals until, at last after 40 (!) years, they found the ‘Promised Land’. 

 

Forty-years in the desert is a bit much. The Israelites had to walk a distance of 450 miles or something. That’s certainly a hike; but 40 years? Flaming pillars at night and fluffy columns of clouds during the day made for the worse GPS system of all time. Walking 4 miles an hour for ten hours a day would have landed them in the vicinity of Jerusalem in less than 2 weeks. It might be mentioned here that deserts are rather known for their dearth of potable water. What did they drink for 40 years? Their own tears? Oh, right… water gotten magically from the rocks… and maybe the mana from heaven was juicier than your average imaginary, miraculous bread-stuff. Maybe…

 

All in all, YHWH made one hell of a tour guide; especially one who claims to be all that he/it is. 40 years to walk 450 miles; a week’s walk through the desert that took more than a generation. 

And they say ‘Survivor’ was drawn out… 

WTF?

 

Next stop; the Promised Land. Take a look at an old map. Find the ‘Promised Land: Judea. Now, imagine, if you can, buying a time-share holiday home in the Sinai desert. Next, realize that loads of other people already lived there who didn’t want any part of handing it over to a bunch of ex-slave goat-herders who couldn’t find their way out of a desert for 40 years. One might imagine that the only ‘milk and honey’ to be had was what they brought with them. Along with their gold (!). What sort of cretin would accept such an awful fabrication of fiction as ‘god’s holy word’?

 

Don’t answer that…

 

Perhaps one should start with the idea that, for centuries, unless one believed and professed absolute faith in the inerrancy and historicity of the Bible, openly and consistently, one would be imprisoned, tortured and burned at the stake. Even if one publically declared themselves wrong and recanted one’s heresy, one would still be burned at the stake in former times for the ‘Greater Glory of God’. 

 

(See the section on ‘Believers’.)

 

Another thing that should bug any critical thinker about this Ten Commandments episode is this little bit; ‘Stone Tablets’? Really? WTF? How crude, rude and totally ordinary. The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, got plates of gold from the Angel Maroni. We’re supposed to be impressed by stone tablets from a talking, burning bush that was also the mouth-piece for a blood-thirsty divine psychopath?

 

A talking snake!? Please…