An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XV (What Difference Does It Make If it's True Or Not?)

If Jesus didn't really exist, would it make a difference? It depends on who you ask.

Some might say that as long as you follow what most of us think of as Jesus' teachings, it wouldn't matter at all. As long as you're on track with loving God and your neighbor, feeding the poor, treating others as you want to be treated, you're good to go (to heaven that is). Those in the "doesn't matter" camp maintain that it's his teachings that are important, and that those teachings are just as important if they were put together by fiction writers than if the Biblical Jesus was an historical person who is accurately portrayed in the Gospels. 

Other, more literal-minded Christians hold the opposite view: that if Jesus, as presented to us in the Bible, didn't exist, then there is no point to life...and they certainly aren't saved. To them, Jesus wasn't just some guy who spouted self-help advice, but The Son of God who died for us. Without getting into the nuances of what specifically the death and resurrection of Jesus meant to the writers of the Bible (and it's not precisely the same from one author to the next) suffice it say that his death and subsequent not being dead accomplished something that wouldn't have been accomplished just by preaching sermons on the mount or multiplying bread and fish or walking in water. Or so many Christians believe. Not that most of them could actually explain it. 

There's a metaphysical aspect to Jesus in the minds of the true believers that goes beyond what he is reported to have preached about in his alleged time on earth. By believing in him you get a free trip to heaven when you die. Although there's disagreement about just what "believing in him" involved: "confessing that God raised him from the dead" or "accepting him as Lord" are two that I have heard. In short, for a lot of people it matters very much whether Jesus existed—it's literally a matter of life and death. 

As someone who now views Christianity, Judaism and the Bible from the outside it just doesn't matter to me—it's nothing more than an intellectual exercise to speculate upon the likelihood that there was an historical person upon whom the Biblical Jesus was based. Some of what he taught was definitely words to live by. Yes, just some. Jesus, as presented to us in the Gospels, was very much a believer that the world was ending in the short term. As such, he was very much concerned with people as individuals  getting their acts together so that they would be worthy to enter the soon-to-be-established Kingdom of God. He was not concerned at all with family ties—he even told his potential followers that they had to reject (many versions use the word "hate") their parents and family to be his disciples. Not to mention his admonitions to followers to jettison all worldly riches. What do you need a bank account for if the world is about to end? 

There are good arguments on both sides of the "did Jesus exist?" argument. There are some, also on both sides that I reject:

Con:

• The Romans kept scrupulous records of all legal proceedings and there is no record of Jesus' trial and execution
• This is a myth. The Romans in some jurisdictions, like Egypt, kept voluminous records, which still exist because the papyrus was preserved in a dry environment, but there is a lack of evidence for similar records in Roman Judea. There's no Roman records of Jesus' trial because there were no records of anyone's trials
• There are no contemporary references to Jesus. Even the first Gospel wasn't written until at least 40 years after his purported death.  
• Very few historical records from Classical times were contemporary. Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars is a notable exception. There are dozens of Roman emperors for whom we have no reference to them in their lifetimes. For some, we're not entirely sure if anything that was written about them is true. Lack of references in or right after his life are perfectly normal for that time period.
• The qualities ascribed to Jesus mirror the lives and missions of many other gods and saviors in the Mediterranean and Levant, including Osiris and Mithra.
• It would take too long to quote and debunk all of these comparisons, which crop up around Easter and Christmas each year, but in general they make false comparisons and misrepresent the stories around some of the other pagan deities. 
• Debunking aspects of the Bible don't necessarily eliminate the possibility that a "Jesus" lived and preached and was executed in Judea around the beginning of the common era and that myths and legends attached themselves to him

Pro

• "Liar, Lunatic or Lord" is more an argument in support of the objective truth of what Jesus is reported to have said in the gospels rather than a strict argument in favor of his existence. It also ignores the alternative, that he was simply mistaken.
• Would the Apostles have risked everything, even their lives, for a myth? 
• To be persuaded by this argument you have to assume that everything written about the Twelve Apostles in the Acts of The Apostles was true. Acts, like the Gospels, was written to tell a certain story and is no more verifiable than are the Gospels. The existence of the specific twelve men known as The Apostles is as difficult to verify as the existence of Jesus himself. The names, even, are inconsistent from one Gospel to the next.
• Even assuming that the apostles and other, later, followers of Jesus risked martyrdom, this is a weak argument for the historiography of Jesus. There are many, many examples of people going to theirs deaths for beliefs that were demonstrably false. I'm sure Christians would consider Islam false, yet there's no shortage of Muslims who have died for it over the centuries.
• References in Josephus, Tacitus and others.
• None of these were eyewitness accounts. Most are referring to Christians, not Christ.

I lean toward the opinion that there was someone upon whom the Jesus of the Gospels was based. He had a loyal cadre of followers who became convinced, for whatever reason, that he was resurrected after being crucified. Stories circulated and were passed by word of mouth and grew in the telling. Different factions had their own ideas about what he taught and what his life and death meant. Eventually people started writing down these stories, some of which have survived to modern times, four of them incorporated into The Bible. These biographies are historical documents and hold as much weight as any other historical document from that age—in other words we consider the source, consider biases and take it all with a grain of salt. I find it unlikely that these myths and legends were created first and only later did his followers insist that he was a real person—I find it much more likely that the myths and legends were pasted onto to the fairly unremarkable life of a real person. 

The existence of the "Apostle" Paul confuses things a bit. By his own admission he never met Jesus. Everything he claims to know about Jesus and God's purpose for Jesus and how Christians should conduct themselves was received in visions. If you didn't know how the story eventually turned out you might suppose that Paul was a faker who attempted to hijack the nascent Christian movement and mold it according to his own views. And many thought just that! In many ways Paul, whose mission was to non-Jews, taught a Christianity that was very different than what was being taught by Jesus' original followers. According to Paul's own letters the original apostles were teaching that converting to Judaism was a prerequisite to becoming a Christian, which Paul vehemently opposed. He claimed that it was God's will that pagan converts not be required to conform to Jewish law. 

There is an argument to be made that Paul created the story of Jesus out of thin air—why else would The Twelve had allowed him to become as influential as he did with resisting him? The argument assumes that neither Jesus nor The Twelve existed. I find this argument unpersuasive. Paul refers in his own writings to Peter/Cephas and to James, Jesus' brother as well as to "The Twelve". (Was "The Twelve" a generic reference to a ruling body? Was it literally twelve guys named in the Gospels? I don't know) So they presumably existed. I don't find it plausible that they created the Jesus character, or that Paul created them just to give himself an antagonist. No, I view Paul as someone who always thought he was the smartest person in the room. I'll assume for the sake of discussion that he had some kind of vision and ran with it. So, if there were original followers of Jesus still around, how did he get away with it?

It is an undisputed fact of history that there were multiple varieties of Christianity a generation or two after Jesus' time. We have Paul's testimony in his letters that already 20 years after the crucifixion there were multiple factions. Is it unbelievable that Paul's faction, based as it was on converting the more numerous Gentiles, would outcompete the groups that maintained adherence to Jewish practices, including circumcision and complex dietary laws?  The fact that he never met Jesus and converted before ever meeting a real follower of Jesus (except to persecute them, by his own admission) apparently was no bar to his version of Christianity becoming the seed around which the dominant Catholic/Orthodox churches grew. 

In one of Paul's letters he makes the point that if Jesus didn't really live and die and rise from the dead, then our faith would be in vain. So he at least believed Jesus really existed! A counter argument can be made that Paul, in his epistles, makes no mention of any details of Jesus' life that we later read about in the Gospels (Gospels first appear around 70 CE, Paul began writing around 50 CE) and for that reason was making it all up. Of course, Paul didn't live in Judea or Galilee, but in what we call Asia Minor, modern Turkey. It's not inconceivable that while he was familiar with Christians prior to his conversion, he wasn't in a circle where the oral stories were circulating, or just didn't think the biographical details were all that important compared to the fact of the redemptive nature of his death and resurrection. 

At any rate, there are good arguments pro and con and bad arguments pro and con for the existence of Jesus, or at least someone upon whom the Biblical Jesus was based. However, I long ago found the reasons for going beyond that and accepting the supernatural, spiritual, aspects of the Bible to be unpersuasive. 

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XV

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. He was so proud of his titles and the associated ability to lord it over people. But now he had been stripped of almost all of his precious titles. He still held the position of Way Home Coordinator, which was supposed to mean that he was the leader of the little group who lived in our house on Metropolitan Avenue, yet this was in tension with my position as the Twig Fellowship Coordinator based at the same house. There was no way that there wouldn't be fireworks. 

There were two parallel paths that I would take through the rest of the Way year. One was paved with red flags that in hindsight I should have heeded and got the hell out, the other path was crowded with what at the time looked like what the Bible calls signs, miracles and wonders. The problem was that I didn't see the red flags as red flags and I had been conditioned to look for divine intervention everywhere. We had been indoctrinated with the view that when bad things happened it was "the Adversary" (i.e. The Devil) attacking us due to our "stand on The Word of God". So both side-by-side paths were convincing me that I was on the right path. 

When I was still living at the first Way Home I had re-enrolled in college. I had dropped out during my sophomore year, and, due to some bad grades I had been put on academic probation. When I re-enrolled I was still on probation, which meant that I could not fail any classes and had to maintain at least a "C" average. I had also taken a job in Manhattan working for the stock brokerage firm, E.F. Hutton. I worked at Hutton during the day and attended classes at night. This meant that it was difficult for me to spend much time on Way activities. Way leadership suggested that, although I was living in a Queens Way Home, it might be better if I attended Twig Fellowship in Manhattan, where I worked and went to college. If this situation had continued, things might have turned out differently, but two things happened to change the course of my life. The first was that I failed a math class. It may have been advanced algebra, or maybe calculus, I don't recall. Even though I had aced every other class, I was still on academic probation, and this one failure meant that I was dismissed from Bernard M. Baruch College. Around the same time I was offered the position of Twig Fellowship Coordinator. I was virtually locked into a Way trajectory. 

I mentioned the two parallel paths—I want to address the one that was festooned with red flags first. As far as I knew, Eddie wasn't removed from his positions because higher leadership thought he didn't have leadership qualities. His branch responsibilities ended simply because there weren't enough twigs for three branches and the other two branch coordinators had more of the accepted credentials. His Twig Coordinator of the English-language fellowship position wasn't taken away due to incompetence or ungodliness or lack of leadership, but to allow him to concentrate on the various Spanish language fellowships. But with the 20/20 vision that comes from being 40 years in the future, I can tell you with conviction that Eddie was a sociopathic abuser. A characteristic that somehow escaped the notice of the supposedly spiritually savvy leadership. 

I'm not going to get specific about all of the insanity that Eddie engaged in. I mentioned in Part XIV that he believed that "casting out devil spirits" was the appropriate response to a roommate talking in his sleep. He constantly belittled the people around him, especially women. He drank to excess. We sublet a basement apartment to a woman who he coerced into sex. Several of us complained about him to upper leadership to no avail. The fact that Eddie was put in a position of leadership where he was supposed to care for other Christian believers and lead by example, should have suggested to me that upper leadership didn't know what the heck they were doing. But I somehow rationalized the situation. The "obey leadership" habit was hard to break. There must be some kind of plan that I was unaware of. Part of me thought that I just needed to up my spiritual game and commit myself more fully. More on that after I take you on a stroll down the other parallel path.

When I took over the fellowship on Metropolitan Avenue in Richmond Hill, Queens, there were four or five of us. By the time I left New York that August, there were easily thirty people crammed into our living room on Twig Fellowship nights. The main method of increasing membership was to "witness". Like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, The Way engaged in door-to-door witnessing. Since we started out with just a handful, we would have a short meeting and then hit the streets, the bowling alleys, the bars and knocked on doors. We also started seeing people who had been inactive in Way events start showing up. Maybe they didn't like what was going on when Eddie was in charge and wanted to give us a shot. Maybe it was just coincidence, but these formerly inactive people started bringing friends. And the friends started bringing friends.  The house started filling up. 

One of the measures of success of a Way Twig or Branch was running a class. The Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) class was for people who wanted to stick around, it was the first level of commitment in Wayworld. You needed seven new people to be able to run a PFAL class and typically several Twigs combined their new people into one class. We were able to run one all by ourselves. Then we were able to run another one. And a third—which was unheard of. Way fellowship meetings were beginning to tend toward formal at that time. We went in the opposite direction which seemed to draw in even more people. For some reason that I can't recall I started running meetings and teaching barefoot and sitting cross-legged on the couch. We were told to start running a 10:30 fellowship on Sundays—because Way HQ did. No one specified that it was to be 10:30AM, so, rebels that we were, we met at 10:30PM on Sunday and the living room was as full as any other time.  The biggest thing was that we started to get known as the place to go for miraculous healing.

As an agnostic who these days casts a skeptical eye on the miraculous, I really don't know what to think about this aspect of my time in The Way. We would pray for people and it sure seemed like they were healed of various maladies. There wasn't any eyesight to the blind or healing the lepers, but we were all sure convinced that healing was taking place. And it wasn't just the hardcore Wayfers, but people who would show up at our house for the first time and swear that their illness, or limp or whatever was gone. To me, this was some bona fide Book of Acts stuff...signs, miracles and wonders. These apparent miracles helped to convince me that The Way was...the way. After all, I didn't see anything like this when I was attending Catholic mass. 

The red flags were rationalized away as a sign that I needed to increase my own commitment. The Way's doctrine of The Law of Believing always put the blame for bad things squarely on the shoulders of the person that they happened to, so of course I needed to ratchet up my own believing. The huge increase in people who attended our fellowship and experienced miraculous healing confirmed it. What was the next step? I made a twofold decision: to enroll in the Advanced Class that was taking place that summer in Rome City, Indiana and after that to sign up for the Word Over the World (WOW) Ambassador program. A decision that would take me from my home of New York City and deposit me in a town of 5,000 in the Nebraska Panhandle. 

 Start from the beginning: Part I

Workin' Man - Part XV - Am I The Asshole?

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

 I started as an assistant store director (ASD) in August 2001 at the 27th & Cornhusker Super Saver. The ASD position varied from store to store and the exact duties depended on who the Store Director was, the staffing level of the store, and the personality and priorities of the ASDs themselves. Some ASDs were basically glorified grocery managers, spending most of their time ordering groceries, working new items on the shelves, and building displays. Others viewed themselves more as trainers, devoting their energies to teaching customer service seminars and sitting in their offices a lot. As I alluded to before, my predecessor was the kind of ASD who was very hands-on and didn't delegate, but did everything himself. I saw myself as a trainer and developer of potential managers, but spent a lot of time on the sales floor as well. 

There was absolutely no training of any kind. If you were applying for this position it was assumed that you knew what the job was and how to do it! But no one really knew what an Assistant Store Director did, until they did it. It was a side affect of this ignorance that when an open ASD position was posted you might get a dozen people apply, most whom had no experience or qualifications. It was easy to see what a department manager did—they ran their department! But the work of an ASD was kind of like the drummer or the bassist in a band—most people never noticed them until they screwed up! My approach was in line with the theory of management where I was to get things done, rather than do things. I started out my first shift by just walking around and observing. One of the things that I observed was chaos.

At my previous store I was used to the store level managers having a monthly schedule. We were allotted one weekend off a month, and shifts were covered ahead of time if someone was on vacation. At the Cornhusker Super Saver schedules were not written down, and days off were covered at the last minute. I found out on the Wednesday of my first week that I was needed to work the swing shift on Friday! I got permission from Brian, the store director, to start using a written schedule and post it for several weeks in advance. This was helpful, especially since we had a few shift supervisors who worked primarily in other departments, and being able to give them their schedule well in advance helped scheduling in their main departments. 

The culture of the store was very laid back, which was great for morale, but was often bad for getting things done. There didn't seem to be any sense of urgency. The pricing team often took all day to get signs for the new ads put up. The cashiers' manager was allowed to work part time, no evenings or weekends The night crew had overtime hours in the triple digits. The cash office had turned into a hangout, and the smokers apparently were taking breaks every hour. My management philosophy could be laid back, provided everything was getting done and everyone was being treated equally. And that was the problem—not everything was getting done, and not everyone was being treated equally. Managers who have favorites generally don't think anyone will notice that they have favorites, if they even notice it themselves, and usually don't notice the resentment from other employees that favoritism engenders. For every person who thought that we had the best boss in the world there was another who was angry at his tendency to let people get away with not doing their jobs. 

I viewed part of my job as a manager as straddling the line between communicating company policy and speaking up for my employees when corporate policy was unreasonable. When corporate policy was clear, I had the responsibility to enforce that policy. Even though I have lived in Nebraska since 1980, I am still culturally a New Yorker, which means that I am direct in my communications. Nebraskans tend to be more roundabout in their interactions—and that was the conflict. The contrast between plain speaking, direct Tom, and smiling, nice guy, do whatever you want, Brian, was stark.  Employees and managers simply weren't used to being accountable for their time or actions. An early example involved our Produce Manager. The corporate office had recently decided to retire the old style box cutters in favor of a newer "safety cutter". There was a lot of pushback from veteran grocery people; that's what they were used to. (This was one of the few times when the corporate office knew what they were doing—the number of incidents of people cutting themselves with their own box cutter dropped sharply) One afternoon Patrick, my grocery manager, informed me that the Produce Manager was using the older version box cutters and was talking about how he was not going to switch. I went down to the sales floor and firmly reminded him of the new policy and confiscated his old school box cutter. Shortly thereafter the store director took me aside and chided me for "yelling". 

As a manager, there is one thing that was guaranteed to get me mad, possibly even to get me to transition into raising my voice, if not actual yelling, and that's arguing with me after I had given a legitimate assignment, or pointed out a problem. (The employees at this store responded to any interaction other than "good morning" by getting defensive and complaining about being yelled at)  I always told people that if I had my facts wrong, for example, if I was calling you out for being late, when the time clock showed that you weren't, then I would accept correction. But if you simply didn't like the policy, or didn't think you needed to do what I was telling you to do, then we'd have a problem. Before addressing something with an employee I had already considered whether what I had to say was legitimate, so in most cases I already knew that I was right. 

One week the sensitivity of the staff versus my direct approach came to a head. There were several incidents where I felt I was enforcing company policy and received pushback. The employees all complained to the Store Director. Brian found me in the office and he, as they say, ripped me a new asshole. I had never heard him yell before, and I only did one other time. In his mind, I was terrorizing the staff, taking out my frustrations with my own crappy life (I was going through a divorce) on them. I'm sure it looked that way to a team that was used to the laissez faire management style and saw my direct approach as "yelling". At the time, I considered that maybe I was too tough with people, and signed up for some counseling through the employee assistance program. I tried to discuss my plan to soften my approach, but my conflict averse boss didn't want to talk about it—I think he was embarrassed that he lost his temper! 

An incident one Friday morning illustrated how not everyone was super-sensitive. Ron, the Smokehouse Manager, had one of the product demonstrators sell brats or polish dogs for a dollar every Friday. One particular morning there was some confusion regarding where we would set up and Ron barked at a few of the guys who were setting up. Since they were only doing what I told them to do, I defended them. Ron and I ended up standing toe-to-toe in the office yelling (for real) at each other for about five minutes. When it was all done, we shook hands and got on with our day. He was a supporter and ally for the rest of my time in that store. 

Yet Nice Guy Brian surprised occasionally. On every Christmas Eve that I worked with him he fired someone. I remember the first one being the Video Manager, who was having videos shipped to her home and charging them to the store, the second one was a product demonstrator who met her boyfriend and spent an hour shopping while on the clock. I don't recall who the third one was, but I found out that after Brian was transferred to another store, he fired someone on his first Christmas Eve there! There was also an incident with a Deli employee who refused to shave according to company standards. (We were only allowed moustaches then, no beards—this guy had a thin beard that followed his jawline) Brian ignored the lack of shaving, but for some reason focused on his habit of wearing his baseball hat backwards. One evening Brian asked him nicely to put his hat on frontwards. As Brian walked away he saw the employee out of the corner of his eye flip his hat around backwards. Brian, for the second time that I was aware of, yelled, and fired the employee on the spot. He told me later that he asked himself "WWTD?" (What would Tom do?)

Throughout my whole time working with Brian I attempted to tone down my approach to people and rehabilitate my reputation as a hardass. The perception that people had of me was hurting my prospects of promotion—I had started applying for open Store Director positions—and the notes on my annual review referring to how I was rough with people negatively affected my chances. I worked hard at making my interactions more user friendly. Although sometimes I would just get frustrated and give up trying to do my job the way the company wanted me to. Everything changed, though, when we got a new store director and HR coordinator. In short order I became the good cop to Bill and Todd's bad cops. 

Start with Part I

Managers Part XV - The Holidays

When you're in management the holidays can be a joyful time, or they can be hell, it all depends on the kind of business that you're in. My last job before retiring I worked in an office for a government agency and got holidays (and weekends) off; the nature of the work was such that holidays aren't any busier than any other time of year. However, for almost two decades I worked in a retail grocery store—every holiday is busy when you work in a grocery store. In general it can be more than twice as busy as a normal week in the days leading up to a holiday, but no matter how clearly you communicate, there will always be people who want to take off during the busiest times. There are several types of managers, each handling the situation differently:

1. The "nice guys" who approve every time-off request. These are the managers who don't know how to say no and find that instead of "all hands on deck" they are actually shorthanded when they can least afford it. While the people who take off believe that these are "good" managers, somebody still has to work, and there is much irritation and low morale with those who get stuck working. 
2. The managers who believe that seniority or position entitles them to take off and leave the work to subordinates.  When the holiday, Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July etc. comes up, the managers and senior (i.e. most experienced) people all take off, leaving the store at its busiest to assistants, newbies and high school kids.
3. Some managers make no changes at all. In the company that I worked for, there were stores where there were no extra people scheduled on the day before Thanksgiving (one of the top three busiest days of the year) and no senior management in the store past 6:00PM, their normal quitting time. 
4. Those who demand "all hands on deck" and work the busy shifts themselves. No vacations, nobody leaves early, especially the managers.

I was always a Type 4 manager. I learned this gradually. My first holiday season as an Assistant Store Director I was usually scheduled until 5:00PM, but couldn't ever leave on time and ended up working 13-14 hour days due to poor planning. My boss was a Type 1 manager, so a lot of the work fell on a select few of us who were serious about getting the store in tip-top shape. I was able to fully put my Type 4 management plan into shape after getting transferred to another store where the store director was open to changing things up for holiday scheduling. Managers were required to work at least a half day on their weekend day off leading up to a holiday and were required to work later shifts. No one got the day before the holiday off or the holiday itself, depending on which as the busiest day. No vacations were approved during the busy times. We would allow occasional exceptions for employees who had unique situations, but it was definitely an exception and not the rule. The Store Director and I, however, scheduled ourselves for weekend and late night shifts, putting ourselves in the same boat as everyone else. Of course, not everyone liked this method of scheduling: one manager ended up getting fired because she took out her frustration at not getting the week of December 22nd-January 4th off at other employees, verbally abusing them until we had to let her go. Occasionally employees would seek transfers to other stores so that they could take half of the month of December off. 

As a retail manager, I didn't necessarily enjoy having to work every holiday, but I understood that it was part of the job, and didn't allow subordinates to act as if they didn't work in retail. One of the jobs of a manager is to communicate the expectations to his or her subordinates and require compliance with those expectations. Jobs, despite what some politicians believe, do not exist because business owners altruistically want to provide a living to those in the community; they exist because there is a need for people to carry out specific tasks at a specific place and a specific time; and there's more of those tasks at certain times. It is understandable that an employee would want to put family gatherings or personal needs first, but if that means that the job for which they were hired goes undone, perhaps they are in the wrong business. 

Update post pandemic:
The pandemic changed a lot of things, it certainly changed the employer to employee dynamic and power balance. The pandemic hit right after several years of historically low unemployment. Many people in food service and retail industries began getting better at setting boundaries and speaking up themselves. This was a good thing. But it was also a bad thing. Many employees refused to do what they were hired to do, and managers often were afraid to fire bad employees due to the difficulty in replacing them. Employees often became adamant that they wouldn't request time off, but were simply informing their employer that they would be gone during certain times, whether it was the busy season or not. I maintain that if there are busy seasons, and this is made clear upon hiring, employees should stick with what they agreed to do when they were hired. 

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XIV (The Old Testament aka The Hebrew Scriptures)

The Hebrew Bible consists of three major parts: The Law, The Prophets, and the Writings (or Other Writings). There are, of course, unofficial subdivisions - The Major Prophets and Minor Prophets (distinguished not by the importance of their messages, but by the length of their books), the Books of Poetry and the Books of History. Christians consider the Tanakh, which they call the Old Testament, part of one unified revelation with what they call the New Testament. 

One Jewish view is that the whole of the Tanakh is divinely inspired, although there are different opinions among different strains of Judaism regarding that. There is little if any parts of it that contain dialog unambiguously from God however. In contrast it's a collection of books mostly about God, prayers to God, praises of God, as well as warning to the people who reject God. Christians, at least conservative, fundamentalist Christians, believe that both the Old and New Testaments are inspired by God and contain no internal contradictions. Christians in general assign to the Old Testament the same level of divine inspiration (or lack thereof) that they assign to the New Testament. and consider it an integral part of scripture. 

All peoples have a creation myth and all peoples have origin or founding legends—the Jewish people are no exception. In general creation myths came about in pre-scientific times and told a story "explaining" how the world and its people came to be. They don't have to make sense in any kind of logical, let alone scientific, way, but usually contain an underlying moral message. The Biblical creation story can be found in the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis. God creates the world, the sun, the moon and the stars out of nothing. (I personally prefer the Norse creation myth where things are created out of the body parts of gods who themselves somehow sprung from primordial cows.) God then populates the world with animals and plants, and finally, humans. Humans disobey and there are consequences. Generations pass by without incident until God gets fed up and kills off all but one family—more consequences. Again, this is a creation myth, a story like any other story, yet religious absolutists insist on viewing it as fact. 

Following the creation myth, Genesis follows up with the beginning of the "origin of the people" story, starting with Abraham and his immediate family and following up with the escape from slavery in Egypt and the conquest of "The Promised Land". There is no historical evidence that any of it happened or that any of the people in these stories existed. Although it's not at all surprising that an insignificant  pastoral clan wouldn't attract anyone's attention. But, like all national origin stories it doesn't have to stand up to scrutiny. At some point someone wrote down what he had heard from oral tradition. Or more than one someone. 

Biblical scholars have long established that, contrary to being written by Moses, as tradition claimed, the Torah (The Law) showed signs of being written by at least four sources. They were initially called JEPD, for Jehovist (where God is called Yahweh, sometimes mistranslated as Jehovah), Elohist (where God is called Elohim), Priestly (for the laws regarding the priesthood in Leviticus) and Deuteronomist (for the largely separate Book of Deuteronomy—a second stating of The Law). This has led to identification of numerous other subdivisions, with the conclusion being that far from being a unified history of the creation and of the origins of the Jewish people, it is a collection of various versions that a later editor put together. You can see this even in early Genesis where there are two divergent versions of the creation of humans and contradictory accounts of the Flood. 

The national origin accounts continue in the Books of Joshua and Judges (after break to enumerate the various laws, commandments and prohibitions mainly in Leviticus and Deuteronomy) which purport to document how the Twelve Tribes conquered Canaan—again with many contradictions. The Book of Ruth serves as an end to the "Judges", i.e. pre-monarchy, period with the Books of I & II Samuel, I & II Kings and I & II Chronicles (Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are all one book each in the Tanakh, but have been divided in the Greek translation and hence the Christian Bible) presented as a history of the monarchy beginning with Saul, David and Solomon and continuing through the destruction of the Kingdoms and the reign of the Cyrus the Great of Persia. There are other books on various topics: Job, on the question of suffering; Esther, the story of a Jewish Queen in the Persian court; the books of "poetry", including Psalms and Proverbs; and finally the prophets—variations on a theme of "get your shit together!". 

As an agnostic I have no reason to believe that these creation myths, national foundation legends, genealogies and tales of divine favor are any more true than the myths and legends of any other culture. It is in the best interests of both fundamentalist Christians and nationalistic Israelis and their allies to view these Biblical stories as true however. For Christians it provides an ancient pedigree to their own  beliefs; for some Israelis it supports their belief that the modern nation of Israel is not merely the creation of the United Nations or a "colonizing entity", but the fulfillment of promises from God to his people. This is the explicit rationale for the Israeli Jewish Settlers who have been moving into the West Bank, ostensibly Palestinian land. 

There is a story in The Bible about the Judean King Josiah who, in II Chronicles was said to have banned the worship of Baal and other gods throughout his kingdom and renovated the Temple. Some workmen supposedly found, hidden in The Temple, "The Book of The Law". There's scholarly disagreement about what this was, but my opinion is that Josiah, or his priests, had created the Torah, which had not previously existed, making a big deal about "finding" it, using it to justify Josiah's reforms. There's a lot of evidence that the religion of the Jewish people was a creation of the late monarchy period and the post-exile leadership among those who retuned to their former land. There's kernel of truth in Biblical accounts, but also much retroactive myth-building. But a major point that most Christians choose to overlook is that the Tanakh was not written for Christians, but for Jews. It was not meant for the Romans, the Greeks, the Hittites or the Americans. The only point of connection is that Jesus, the apocalyptic prophet of the End Times, was Jewish. 

Not all early Christians agreed about what that connection or continuity between Judaism and Christianity was. Some viewed Christianity as just the next step in Jewish religion, others saw a complete break. The prevailing view was that the Tanakh was the Old Testament that had been supplanted by the new. The reason that this became the prevailing view was how Roman authorities, and indeed Roman society viewed new things. Things that were new, including religions, were looked upon with suspicion; institutions that had an ancient pedigree were revered. Christianity was a new religion, but they got around that inconvenient fact by tying it to the more ancient Jewish religion. Not every Christian sect agreed with this. Marcion in particular taught that the God of the Old Testament was an inferior, and even evil god, while the God of Jesus was the true God. Various groups of Gnostics had similar beliefs. In order to make this tie more plausible, various Jewish scriptures were interpreted as hints about Jesus the Messiah ( much to the surprise of any Jew) "proving" that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. 

How to reconcile the differences between how God is portrayed in the Jewish scriptures and the Christian Gospels? For most of Christian history no one seriously tried. In a future article I will discuss Dispensationalism, a popular attempt at harmonizing both sets of scriptures.  

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XIVa

An Agnostic's Look at Another "Sacred Scripture" - Part XIVa - The Quran

Taking a detour from my exposition on my view of The Bible to take a look at a devout Muslim's favorite book, the Quran. Not so much the theology of the Quran, but whether anything about it, or the life of Muhammed can be considered historical. I know considerably less about Muhammed and the Quran than I do about Christianity and The Bible, so this post will be considerably shorter than my normal exposition.

Most people, probably even a lot of Muslims, believe that Muhammed wrote the Quran, whatever they believe about the "truth" in it. Even those who know that Muhammed was illiterate believe that he at least dictated it. They assume that this gives it a reliability that the Gospels, written a generation after Jesus lived, don't have. But this reflects a misunderstanding of how the Quran came to be written. None of the Quran was written during Muhammed's lifetime. His various followers would repeat what they remembered about his preaching, and different people would be supposedly entrusted with different sections. I think you could see where this could be a problem. How do you guarantee that Muhammed's word are remembered correctly. Short answer? You can't. 

After his death his successors realized that, with some of the original adherents dying off, mainly due to the continual wars they were waging, they needed to have things written down. At that time "the Quran" was a scattering of remembrances by followers and scribblings on palm leaves and stones. So the Caliph (the leader of all Muslims) ordered that all the various written scraps be gathered together, and authorized a committee to sift through them as well as the many oral accounts to put together a definitive version. They were tasked with "monitoring the text" and resolving discrepancies—when they were done the Caliph ordered that all other versions, personal copies etc., be destroyed. In that sense they were a step or two ahead of the Christians. The Muslims had a central authority who could require such a move, and they were smart enough to have competing versions destroyed. They did not have to deal with the multiplicity of letters, gospels, epistles, apocalypses and acts of every Tom, Dick and Ahmed, nor the fact that most copying in the early decades was done by untrained copyists, many of whom had their own agenda. Once the authorized version was done, it stayed that way for centuries. (A different Caliph, realizing that there were variant versions springing up, ordered all versions other than the official one burned)

There is a scholarly consensus, even among non-Muslims, that Muhammed was an historical person, although there are minority theories that he is a mythical figure. There is also broad agreement apart from Islamic scholars that we know almost nothing about him. There is disagreement, even among Muslims, regarding the dates during which he lived. But just as I can believe that there was a real person upon which the Jesus of the Bible was based, there can certainly be a real Muhammed upon who legends and hagiographies accreted. As an agnostic I can surely disbelieve the story that he received the Quran from an angel. 

It has often been said that Islam, and its prophet Muhammed, emerged in the "full light of history", suggesting that the historical basis of Islam is somehow more dependable and concrete than other religions. It is true that many of the actions of the Arab armies are historically attested. There is no doubt that Arab armies first subjugated the various tribes of the Arabian peninsula and soon after, Persia, Syria, Palestine and North Africa. Roman sources confirm that these Arab armies existed. Why have I been putting "Arab armies" in italics? While there is no doubt that these were Arabs, and that there were armies, there is little to confirm that it was Muslim religious fervor that motivated these armies, at least not initially. Wars were fought almost continually in the seventh century C.E. - there was almost non-stop conflict between the Roman Empire (especially the eastern remnant at Constantinople) and the various Persian Empires. Peripheral nations and tribes took their shot at the big boys and sometimes succeeded. That's how the Western Roman Empire eventually fell—it was defeated by "barbarians" who existed on the borders and were able to capitalize on Rome's weaknesses. The Arabs were another of those peripheral "barbarians", this time to the east. After consolidating their power in Arabia, they were able to pick off the border regions of the Eastern Roman Empire. These were provinces that had often been the battleground for Roman-Persian conflict, and now the Arabs moved in. It's not too difficult to imagine political and economic power being the main impetus and religion being retconned into the narrative as the Caliphate started to become stretched thin and more non-Arab peoples became part of it. At any rate, eventually the struggle between Rome and the Caliphate became characterized as Christianity versus Islam. 

In the end, it's neither more nor less a man-made construct than any other religion, despite its claim to an historical basis.

Start at the beginning: Part I

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XIV

In early 1980 I moved the few miles from Queens Village to Richmond Hill to a new Way Home. There were four other residents: Nicole, a native of Haiti; Rafael, a bassist in several bands; Eric, who was from Iowa and spoke five or six different languages; and Eddie, who was designated as the leader/coordinator of the local Twig Fellowship, the Spanish language fellowship that met in our home, as well as the Branch Coordinator of one of the Queens branches. (At the time a "branch" was a grouping of around seven twig fellowship in an area) There was an established fellowship centered on our home and there seemed to be a camaraderie that I found lacking at my last place. We ate our meals together, did things together and things seemed like they were going well and that the antics at the previous Way Home were an aberration.  At least it seemed that way.

Shortly after I moved in the area leadership decided to make some changes. First, they decided to consolidate the three Queens branches into two. The Branch Coordinator that was "demoted" was our Way Home Coordinator, Eddie. At the same time they asked me to take over coordination of the Twig Fellowship that met in our home. This was ostensibly to allow Eddie to devote more time to the Spanish language twig and to assist with the other two Spanish twigs in Queens. Eddie did not see things this way. Previous to these changes he was very proud of rattling off his titles: Way Home Coordinator, Twig Coordinator of two twigs, Spanish language Twig Area Coordinator, North Queens Branch Coordinator. He was especially proud that he had achieved this level of responsibility without being a Way Corps grad, or even an Advanced Class grad. Let's take a minute to look at the Advanced Class and the perceived hierarchy in The Way. 

Chapter 12 of First Corinthians states that "the manifestation (singular) of the spirit" consisted of speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophesy, word of knowledge, word of wisdom, discerning of spirits, faith, miracles, and gifts of healing. Wierwille had a take on "the manifestations" (plural) that weren't necessarily supported by scripture, but were an essentially part of life in The Way. 

The Power for Abundant Living Class (PFAL) was in reality a series of classes. The Foundational Class, contained, as it name implies, the foundational teachings and principles taught in The Way. It culminated in the students being instructed and led into speaking in tongues. No one stuck around for long without taking the Foundational PFAL Class. 

The Intermediate Class focused on two of what was called "manifestations of the spirit", interpretation of tongues and prophecy. In order to be viewed as having moved past the newbie stage and to participate actively in Way International Twig Fellowship meetings, it was essential that one be able to speak in tongues, interpret tongues and prophesy.

There were also what were called "advanced study classes" - "Witnessing and Undershepherding", "Dealing With the Adversary", "Christian Family and Sex" and a few others, that dealt with specific topics, but the Advanced Class was considered the pinnacle of learning for anyone not in the Way Corps. 

The Advanced Class was advertised as focusing on the remaining six manifestations: word of knowledge, word of wisdom, discerning of spirits, faith, miracles, gifts of healing. In reality it talked a lot about devil spirits (demons) and devil possession. A graduate of the Advanced Class supposedly had been fully instructed on how to receive revelation from God, including detecting the presence of malign spirits. 

In theory, someone who was an Advanced Class graduate was better qualified to lead than a non-grad, and a Way Corps grad, someone who had been through the Way's multi-year leadership training program, was most qualified of all. Practically, The Way had grown so quickly throughout the mid-seventies that it was not always possible for these requirements to be met. In the Way's early days, leaders rose up and those with charisma or other natural leadership ability took on responsibility without any outside input. Eventually Twig Leaders were appointed by the next higher level of leadership—they were usually someone who at least seemed to have some ability. This was both good and bad. Good, in that there was no requirement for attaining arbitrary benchmarks before leading, bad in that totally unqualified people were often put in charge. During this time in Queens, Brooklyn and the areas of Long Island outside New York City, very few Twig Coordinators were Advanced Class grads and no Branch Coordinators were Way Corps grads. The Area Leader, who oversaw all the branches on Long Island, was only about halfway through his Way Corps training. 

Eddie was someone who, likely because he was in the right place at the right time, had risen quickly through the ranks despite a lack of the accepted leadership signifiers. Just as quickly he had been stripped of most of his titles. Eddie was a proud man, every ounce a "macho" guy with strong opinions. His anger and disappointment and losing his status within the organization would ripple through the rest of the year. Despite not having received any "official" teaching regarding "discerning of spirits", Eddie fancied himself an expert on devil spirits. In fact he was obsessed with the subject and acted as if he saw them everywhere. I sometimes talk in my sleep. Shortly after I moved in, Eddie, from his bedroom down the hall from mine, heard some talking and came into the room to find me talking while apparently asleep. The next morning he told me and the other roommates about this, describing how he "just started to cast out devil sprits". 

I think you can imagine how this would lead to problems.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XV