An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XII (Revelation Decided By Committee)

How did The Bible become The Bible? Did a committee of early Christians get together, divide up the responsibilities of what to cover? "Paul, we need you to cover some of the doctrinal issues, and address the fact that Jesus hasn't come back yet; James, your assignment is to balance up Paul's focus on faith with an alternate focus on works; John, lay off the magic mushrooms for a bit and write up an end of the world scenario, and Matthew, Mark & Luke, can you guys do some biographies, and damn it, keep it consistent we don't want a bunch of contradictions". No, as we've seen, a number of Christians took it upon themselves to write letters to other Christians, pen biographies of Jesus, compose "apocalypses" describing the end times or the heavenly realm, or just put together a little something to let people know that those other guys weren't "real" Christians. There was an incredible number of these writings circulating around Christian communities. Different churches favored different books and for three centuries there was no widely agreed-upon canon (i.e. the authorized, divinely-inspired collection of books of The Bible). 

One of the reasons there was no consensus canon of the New Testament was that for the first three centuries, and possibly after, there was no universally recognized central authority. The various cities and regions operated more or less autonomously. As a virtually illegal sect, Christians weren't building big, beautiful buildings, but were meeting in homes, likely led by whomever owned the house they were meeting in. Eventually leadership became institutionalized and overseers (the title "bishop" comes from the Greek episkopos — i.e. "one who watches over") came to hold authority over whole cities. 

In the early days there were many varieties of Christians. The previous installment listed a few "heresies" regarding Jesus' nature, but there were many more regarding the purpose of his death and the kind of life a Christian should be living. Local leaders early on attempted to define Christian doctrine, meeting in councils to reach consensus. Eventually that consensus began to resemble the main doctrines of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and the minority opinions were pushed out and suppressed. As Christianity became legalized and preferred, not only did Empire-wide councils become easier to hold, but the Bishops of the main cities of the Empire as well as cities important to the early Church, Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria in Egypt, viewed themselves as "leaders of leaders" and attempted to exercise authority over the assemblage of bishops. Finally there was something close to a central authority and the work of deciding what would be considered divinely inspired began. 

Occasionally you'll hear talk about some nefarious plot to "take out" offensive books from The Bible, to remove anything that elevated women for example. The other day I heard somebody talking about how the Emperor Constantine edited the Bible at the Council of Nicaea to conform it to his beliefs. None of that is true. There was nothing to "take out" of The Bible because there wasn't a Bible! There were decades of arguments about what was to be considered inspired "scripture". Some books that most of us have never heard of, like The Shepherd of Hermas, and the Didache were in the running for years while others that are in our Bible, like I & II Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, I & II Peter, all three Epistles of John and Jude were all considered to be not in The Bible. The book current day fundamentalists love so much, Revelation, was a long shot and was the last one to be canonized. Centuries later Martin Luther re-examined some of the canonical books and had his doubts about some of them. 

One of the doctrines of the early Church that horrifies Protestants is Apostolic Succession. The doctrine states that Jesus passed on to his apostles his spiritual authority and his true teachings and that the apostles in turn passed those things on to their successors, who passed it on to their successors all the way to the present. The reason a Protestant would be horrified is that the core doctrine of the Protestant Reformation was sola scriptura, "scripture alone", that the opinions of Church leaders must be subordinate to the Bible. Remember that in those early days not only was there no Bible, but there were dozens of competing "scriptures". Somebody had to decide what Gospels were the Gospels, what Epistles were the Epistles etc. In order to have a unified Christian Church somebody had to take the bull by the horns, claim the authority to decide  what The Bible would be (whether that authority was real or not). As it is there are numerous contradictions and inconsistencies in what we have, imagine if all those apocryphal books were held as equal to the canonized books and there was no "written in stone" scripture? We think that we have a confusing multitude of denominations now? Christianity would never have survived without a central hierarchy. 

Christians today like to believe that today's Bible was without controversy accepted by the early Christians, that its divine source was obvious while the apocryphal books were just as obviously not inspired. 

The real story is a lot messier. Divine inspiration was bestowed by committee. 

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XIII

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XI (Those Pesky Heretics)

This particular post will be less about what's in The Bible and more about how third and fourth century (and later) theologians attempted to reconcile the inconsistencies and contradictions about Jesus' nature in The Bible. 

By the Second Century it had already been an  established belief among the vast majority of Christians that Jesus was God. The view of what "The Son of God" meant evolved in Christianity's early days. It went from being a great honor, like the ancient kings received, to a semi-divine status like an angel, to divine status in the same category as God, to being equal with God in authority, to being  God himself — "God the Son". 

But in what sense was he God? That's where the debates and the branding of other theologians as heretics comes in. The Gospels, in some places, also make very clear that Jesus was a man, but in what sense was he human? How did his humanity and divinity coexist in one person? Was he half God and half man? Was he God who just appeared to be a man? Was he a man who was "promoted" to Godhood? I want to make clear that the Gospels and Epistles do not make any of this clear. And the answers that eventually led to the doctrine of The Trinity were by no means self-evident. Assumptions made by theologians were just as often based on what they thought was common sense or to avoid infelicitous outcomes. Here are a few of the possible "solutions" to the nature of Jesus that eventually were later deemed heresies:

• Adoptionism stated that Jesus did not pre-exist before his birth but was "adopted" as the Son of God at his Baptism (or Resurrection, or Ascension)  due to his perfect, sinless life. His reward was resurrection and adoption into "the Godhead". This was put to rest around 200CE, but it seems to me that it has solid scriptural basis. 
• Docetism adherents believed that Jesus only appeared to have a physical human form. They believed that matter was inherently evil and therefore God couldn't have had a physical body. 
• Apollinarianism stated that, although Jesus had a physical, human body, his "nature", or mind, was wholly divine.
• Arianism has been latched onto by modern day non-Trinitarians to support their belief that the early Christians were not Trinitarians. Arius didn't teach that Jesus was not God, but that Jesus, God the Son, was created first by God the Father and that the rest of the universe was then created by the Son. The main difference between Arianism and the version of Trinitarianism that the majority of theologians were adhering to was that the Trinitarians believed that the Son and the Father were "co-eternal", i.e. there was never a time when the Son did not exist, while the Arians taught that the Father pre-existed the Son. This dispute was what spurred the Council of Nicaea. Arians for hundreds of years constituted the majority of Christians outside of Rome and Byzantium. It effectively died out when Charlemagne accepted Catholic Christianity. 
• Nestorianism was a branch of early Christianity wherein their founder Nestorius taught that Mary gave birth only to Jesus' human nature. They argued about the term "Mother of God", preferring the title "Mother of Christ".  Nestorius' followers fled persecution relocating to the Persian Empire where they further developed the idea that Jesus, although one person, had both a human and a divine nature.  Nestorians flourished under the Persians and Nestorian churches continued to exist even after the Muslim conquest of Persia. 
• Monophysites believed that Jesus had only one nature — that his humanity was absorbed by his divine nature. They were the majority in the border regions of the Eastern Roman Empire and had competing bishops and patriarchs when the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and the surrounding area. 
• Monothelitism was a response to Monophysitism, holding that Jesus had two natures, human and divine, but one "will": divine. 
• Sabellianism teaches that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one and the same, but are different modes or expressions of a unitary God.

Despite these theories being labelled as heresies, they were put forth by theologians, within the mainstream at the time, as good faith efforts to untangle inconsistencies and contradictions. None of this involved large scale adding or subtracting to the canon of scripture, although there are some minor insertions, like the Trinitarian formula in the epistle of  I John. All these various stabs at consistency were interpretations of what had already been written. 

Eventually the doctrine of The Trinity emerged with the earlier understandings later being branded as heretical. In it Jesus is described as fully God and fully human as regards both his nature and his will, not half God/half human, not a human who was "promoted" to God. As "God the Son" he existed for as long as God the Father existed and was somehow begotten while having always been begotten. The three "persons" of The Trinity are all equally God, yet distinct. It's complicated, and I doubt that many Christians understand the explanations that their theologians came up with. 

Non-Christians and non-Trinitarian Christians sometimes mock the belief, wondering who Jesus was talking to when he prayed to God, among other things. But do any supernatural religious beliefs make any sense? 

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XII

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part X (Short Musings On How Jesus Became God)

In the previous installment I touched upon the change in focus forced upon the followers of Jesus when he didn't become the God-anointed conqueror, but rather was killed. As I have pointed out previously, the New Testament is not one seamless narrative, but the work of multiple authors that differ not only in perspective, but were penned at different points in time. Because of this, one can see an evolution in the way Jesus' nature was viewed by his followers. 

One of the titles bestowed upon Jesus was "Son of God". We now interpret that literally — son, a child, a first generation descendent — but the phrase had long held a figurative meaning by Jesus' time. In Genesis and Job the term "Sons of God" apparently refers to angels. The King of Israel is called "The Son of God" as is the nation of Israel itself at times. The earliest traditions that were enshrined in the Gospels indicate that Jesus became the Son of God. Initially it was theorized that upon his supposed resurrection he was made the Son of God as a reward for his faithfulness to God. Later the theology changed with the honor being bestowed on him at his baptism; still later at his birth as seen in Matthew, and ultimately, as claimed in John, he was viewed as the pre-existing Son of God even before his birth.  Running parallel to the evolving timeline of the sonship of Jesus there was a steady change in what being "The Son of God" meant. It went from being a great honor, like the ancient kings received, to a semi-divine status like an angel, to divine status in the same category as God, to being equal with God in authority, to being identical with God. A lot of Christological ink has been spilled trying to make sense of how Jesus could be both God and man. (I recommend How Jesus Became God by Dr. Bart Ehrman for the long version with citations and appropriately placed commas). 

Of course, since these incremental changes in perception are all recorded in different places in the Gospels and Epistles, and since it is unclear to anyone other than a PhD Biblical scholar what the timeline of the various writings is, what we are left with is a lot of apparent inconsistencies. The institutional church does not acknowledge that there was an evolution in how Jesus' nature was viewed and written about, but instead attempted to harmonize or ignore it. I'll leave it to another installment to review some of the attempts by theologians to resolve these inconsistencies, but I'll change lanes for a bit to discuss why there are even any inconsistencies to address.

There is a misconception, not only among Christians, but among society in general, that Christianity was a united entity with recognized leaders and organization from Jesus' death onwards. The Catholics maintain that this entity "The Church" was led by Peter the Apostle and his successors, later known as The Popes. The Eastern Orthodox disagreed about the primacy of the Bishops of Rome but otherwise agreed that there was a continuity from Jesus to his apostles, to their followers and on to the present. Protestants and other offshoots mostly attempted to reform The Church or return it to its First Century roots, but didn't dispute the commonly held belief of a united early church. Even among modern day skeptics there is a belief that a monolithic early Christian Church "edited" The Bible so it would reflect their prejudices and/or political leanings. In fact it was a chaotic collection of competing versions of Christianity with central control only emerging gradually. Even when Constantine The Great imposed political unity, there were factions that lived on, as well as so-called heresies that regularly sprung up.

There was no group tasked with maintaining the integrity of the different Gospels, epistles and tracts being copied and recopied and spread around. Nothing prevented copyists, who were usually not professional scribes, from making errors in transcription or from making intentional alterations. This was in addition to the divergent points of view contained in the original writings. Pseudonymity (signing the name of another, more prominent name to one's own writing) was common since acceptance of a Gospel was often based almost exclusively on who supposedly wrote it, not whether it made any sense. Several of the epistles attributed to Paul were almost certainly not written by him, including Ephesians, Colossians and both epistles to Timothy. There is no textual evidence that any of the four canonical Gospels were written by the men whose names are on them. Different regions had their favorites and several writings that are now considered apocryphal were once considered on par with what is now considered scripture. By the time there was a central authority that could have decided what was scripture and what wasn't, all that they did decide was which books would be included in the official canon of scripture without any attempt to harmonize among the various books. An exception to this was Marcion. The leader of an alternate strain of Christianity, Marcion was the first to put together a "canon" of scripture. His "New Testament" included the Gospel of Luke and the (heavily edited) epistles of Paul. It was mainly as a response to him that the group that became the Catholic Church compiled its own list, which we still have today. 

It was only after this point that theologians began to attempt to harmonize the various fragments and make sense of the competing narratives, focusing mainly on the nature of Jesus, eventually formulating the doctrine of The Trinity.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XI

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part IX (Who Is This Jesus Guy Anyway?)

One of the core tenets mainstream Christianity is that Jesus Christ is God. But one of the things that you can definitely depend on among Christians and non-Christians alike is that no one really understands what that means and anyone who thinks that they understand undoubtedly understands it differently than the theologians who put the doctrine together piece by piece over the course of a couple of centuries. What? Theologians "put it together"! It's right there in The Bible, isn't it? Except that it isn't. There are statements where it seems clear that Jesus is God, some that merely seem to suggest it and some that flat out contradict the idea. Early Christians had to reconcile the contradictions and they way they did it was to create the idea of the Trinity, which nowhere appears in the Bible. 

The reasons that contradictions even exist was that there were disagreements among earlier Christians regarding who Jesus was. Different Gospel writers had different viewpoints, were writing to different audiences, and had different levels of understanding. Add to that the role of generations of copyists inserting their own ideas into the Gospels, "correcting" passages that were unclear, or just contradicted what they believed was the truth. 

The New Testament is not a puzzle, with pieces strewn across the writings of various authors that can be pieced together to come up with the truth, despite being treated that way in Bible studies all across the world. The various authors all had their own points of view which they laid out in their writings with no intention of harmonizing their theology with that of other writers.  And the different writings often were at variance with each other. Which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense. Any group of people, present at the same event, will remember the details differently. With the Gospels we don't even have different eye witnesses disagreeing, we have authors who put together their narratives based on a couple of generations of oral traditions, legendary accretions and myth building. Outside of the "works" based messages attributed to Jesus, as well as his predictions of a coming apocalypse, I believe that anything in The Bible purporting to describe the purpose of his death or his divine nature was added to the record by later followers in order to make sense of events that manifestly didn't make sense. 

Why did Jesus have to die? Was it as the perfect sacrifice to erase the collective sin of mankind inherited from Adam and Eve? Was it to "pay the price" for sin? Was it to prove that he was a true prophet, since Israel usually killed its prophets? Was it so he could be resurrected in order to defeat death? Was is to be an example to mankind to show how he was willing to go as far as to be killed in order to do God's will? You can find hints of all these theories in The Bible, including in Old Testament passages that are reinterpreted to supposedly prophesy his birth, life, death and purported resurrection. My view is that Jesus didn't think he was going to killed, he thought God would usher in the end of the world with Jesus himself playing a key role (yes I know there are verses suggesting he knew — I'm reasonably sure these were words put in his mouth by later tradition). It's obvious even from the Gospels that his followers did not expect that he would be killed and that he would be a  conquering military leader. His followers must have been shocked at how things turned out.

We've seen how, even in modern times, predictions failing to come through seldom dissuade the committed from their path of belief. How many "prophets", even in our lifetime, have predicted the end of the world, or, even in the realm of politics, that Donald Trump would be restored to the presidency sometime in 2021. Explanations need to be made to fit the new reality into the old predictions.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part X

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part VIII (Why I Believe - Or Disbelieve - As I Do)

You may have noticed that these posts are not scholarly works. I don't go into exhaustive detail or cite sources. Other people have done a much better job than I have ever done in putting together a coherent view of The Bible from the point of view of someone who doesn't consider it God's Word. I heartily recommend the works of Dr. Bart Ehrman who has written such works as Misquoting Jesus, Lost Christianities, Heaven and Hell, and How Jesus Became God among many others. 

Before I continue with my opinions of The Bible, especially the Gospels and Epistles, from an agnostic viewpoint, let me give you a brief tour of how my opinion of The Bible has changed in my lifetime. The blog series "So, You Want to Join a Cult" covers most of this ground:  So, You Want To Join A Cult

I grew up in an Irish-Catholic family on the very edge of New York City in a neighborhood that was overwhelmingly Catholic, mostly Irish and Italian. There were a few Protestant churches, and there was a significant Jewish presence, but Catholicism was very much the default in this neighborhood, dominated by two Catholic parishes, St. Pius X and St. Claire. We went to church every Sunday and attended Catholic grade school. As was usual with lay Catholics, at least in that era, we didn't trouble to much about doctrine or theology and left that stuff to the priests. I was familiar with the broad outlines of the Gospels and the major themes of the Old Testament, but really didn't know much about the details of religion at all. It was like the air — it was just there.

In my teens I visited some local Protestant churches. While I noticed some differences in the services, the broad outline was the same, or at least seemed that way. More to satisfy my curiosity than anything else I studied non-Christian religions, but it was simply an intellectual study and never really took. 

When I was fourteen I worked as a clerk in a financial firm in the financial district of lower Manhattan. On my lunch break I encountered a variety of street corner preachers who clustered around the Federal Building across from the New York Stock Exchange and began to hear about some of the beliefs of Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christianity such as "the rapture" and the concept of becoming "born again", which we Catholics never heard about. Still no changes in my overall belief system, but I was starting to entertain some serious challenges to my worldview. During my freshman year of college I encountered The Way.  Eventually I became convinced that this group was a cult, not so much due to their beliefs, but because of their practices. Their theology was for the most part similar to the strain of Evangelical Protestantism known as dispensationalism. Their claim to fame in theological terms was that, unlike almost all Christians, they did not believe that The Bible supports the belief that Jesus was God. A slightly less controversial position (although not unheard of) was that upon death you did not proceed to heaven or hell (or purgatory for Catholics) but were in a kind of sleep until the "return of Christ". 

What attracted me to this group was that they appeared methodical in their study of The Bible and were able to cite specific verses to support all of their beliefs. While this is pretty common now, back then it was pretty rare, and unheard of among Catholics. I was with this group from 1978-2001, with a hiatus in the 90's and was very much a true believer. I believed that The Bible, in its original texts, was divinely inspired by God. The Way taught that, utilizing certain commonsense methods, one could easily determine God's will. The Bible, they taught, interpreted itself, all you had to do was read it without preconceived notions. 

In 2000 the (married) top leader had been expelled after conducting an affair with a married woman that she alleged was nonconsensual. This caused me to question, not The Bible itself, but some of the things that this particular leader had been teaching that, to put it mildly, were "out there" in the context of what the group's main teachings were. I reasoned that someone who didn't have the sense to keep his pants on couldn't expect anyone to trust his interpretation of scripture. I compiled a long list of things where the leader's teachings were at odds with what the founder of The Way had taught. My questioning got me kicked out of the group. 

I became aware of many offshoots from the original group that had split off during the leadership crisis that accompanied the founder's death in the late 80's. Despite all of them using the same "Keys to Interpretation" in their understanding of The Bible they were coming up with wildly differing conclusions. I started to see that even the founder's theology didn't really stand up to the self-interpreting Bible model and that his own conclusions were his own and not necessarily the only possible conclusions to be made utilizing the "Keys to Interpretation". I briefly considered returning to mainstream Christianity, but it didn't take long to see that no one had a reliable grasp of "The Truth" and even though most denominations believed that they were right and everyone else was wrong, they were all using the same Bible to come to different conclusions. 

It was at that point that I determined that there was no objective reason to elevate The Bible and Christianity over any other system of belief. This didn't mean that I had decided that it was definitely wrong, but that there wasn't any reason to assume that it was necessarily right either. I wasn't mad at God (something I was accused of), I just wasn't convinced that he existed, and if he did, at least not necessarily in the form that Christianity claimed he did. 

This is the path that I have walked that got me to the point where I see The Bible as just another book. At best a collection of books and letters and essays and pamphlets outlining men's opinions about God, the world, Jesus and morality. Not a perfect, handed-down-from-heaven, infallible, document. 

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part IX

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part VII (The New Testament - A Collection of Religious Pamphlets)

There's a lot different ways that people look at The Bible. There's the view that it's inerrant and infallible. That view can be applied to the originals (which no longer exist) or can be extended to the modern texts. Typically those who hold the "inerrant and infallible" position believe that there are translation errors that once corrected will reveal what was in the original. It can be viewed as allegorical and metaphorical. It can be  viewed literally. It can be viewed as containing historical accuracy, or that the historical sections are not as important as the theological lessons being taught. Protestants say they believe in sola scriptura, scripture alone, while Catholics believe that the scriptures must be mediated by Church leaders. Various churches claim to understand what The Bible really means and encourage or browbeat others to "just read The Bible" as if its message was self-evident. 

For a book that so many believe is self-explanatory and will reveal its truths if you simply read it, there are certainly a myriad of opinions about what it actually means, not to mention disagreements about what it actually says. "True believers" will accuse those who interpret it differently of simply being wrong, or more pointedly, as "not Christians" or even being inspired by Satan. They look to a mythical idyllic time, written down in The Acts of The Apostles, where there was a clear, bright line between the truth and lies, between orthodoxy and heresy. When the difference between those who "opposed Paul" or those who the early church branded as heretics and those who adhered to The Bible was as clear as day. 

Except back in those days there was no Bible.

Yes, parts of what became the New Testament were circulating around, and the Tanakh, in its original Hebrew as well as the Greek translation known as the Septuagint, was long established, but the concept of a unified collection of writings that would be consider scripture on par with the Jewish scriptures was an idea whose time had not yet arrived. In addition, there was broad disagreement among Christians regarding a whole range of beliefs about the nature of Jesus, about what his death and resurrection accomplished, about how Christians should behave, whether non-Jews could become Christians, the afterlife, the resurrection, the Kingdom of God and anything else that you can imagine. All of those people were Christians and they all believed that they were following the teachings handed down from Jesus through his apostles. But nothing written down and there was no central authority to ensure there was uniformity of belief. Even in the documents that eventually made it into the Bible there are indications, sometimes quite explicit, that not all Christians believed or taught the same thing. 

It was this disagreement that caused, not only contradictions and variances between the different books of the New Testament but contradictions and variances within some of the books.  Keep in mind that there was no central authority as we understand it today for many decades — plenty of time for competing opinions to grow roots and accumulate adherents. The belief that Jesus' teachings were passed down unchanged from him to his apostles to their followers in an unbroken chain is a myth. We know for certain of several distinct "Christianities" that existed in the early centuries after Jesus that were eventually defeated or subsumed by what became the Catholic Church. Even then there were arguments among the leaders and theologians of a supposedly united church. These differences, and the majority response to them, contributed to what became "canon of scripture". If you know what to look for you can see where certain passages were written as a response to these "other Christianities", as well as changes to the text for similar reasons. 

Major early divisions among Christians included Ebionites, who believed that a convert to Christianity must follow Jewish Law and practice; Marcionites, a sect that viewed the God of the Old Testament as a different and inferior God than the God of Jesus in the New Testament; and various types of Gnostics. Marcionite Churches competed successfully with Orthodox/Catholic Churches, lasting at least into the fifth century with its ideas surviving in various forms for centuries longer. Divisions even within what became Catholic Christianity centered around the nature of Jesus. Was he a mortal man? Was he actually raised physically from the dead? Or was it a "spiritual" resurrection? Was he God? If so, in what sense was he God? (I'll be addressing the permutations of Christology in another post). These disagreements manifested themselves in the contradictions in the New Testament. 

An article of faith among many people is that at some point in the history of Christianity certain books, or selections within books, were "taken out" of The Bible. Each of the books that eventually made it into the Bible, as well as the many that did not, all had their separate history. The authors of each book each had their own spin on what Jesus' message was, what stories confirmed that message, as well as Jesus' nature, salvation, sin, you name it. Since they were spread by believers manually writing out each manuscript, errors crept in. Some deviation from the originals occurred simply due to human error, some due to the copyist making changes by "correcting" what they thought were previous errors, and others due to intentional changes made in order to insert the copyist's opinion in the text. 

Eventually the leaders of the faction that became the Catholic Church*  decided that they needed an approved list of books that would make up the "canon of scripture". It went through several permutations before assuming the form we have today in the fourth century.** A number of books that had been in circulation were not included in the newly formed Bible, many of them are lost to history, but some survived in whole or in part. So, while no books were removed, definite decisions were made regarding what would be included. 

One way I look at the books of the New Testament, in addition to being biographies and pastoral letters, is similar to political pamphlets, pushing their own agenda and refuting those of their opponents. The minority, or losing, theologies were branded heresies and their writings (mostly) destroyed. History is written by the victors. In the case of Christianity, the victors were the faction that became the Catholic Church. 

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part VIII

* The churches known as "orthodox" at this time were not separate from the Catholic Church centered in Rome

** There were a number of books in the Greek translation of the Old Testament that were included as part of Catholic Bibles, these apocryphal, or deuterocanonical, books were not included in Protestant Bibles post-Reformation.

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part VI (So, Just When IS The End of The World Scheduled?)

A quick look at the New Testament and we see that it starts with the four Gospels, followed by The Acts of The Apostles, then the Epistles of Paul, a few other epistles and the big scary Book of Revelation. But the books were not written in the same order as the events that they allegedly chronicle. The first book written was I Thessalonians, dated 15-20 years after Jesus' ministry. Galatians, I & II Corinthians, Romans, Philemon and Philippians were all written before the very first Gospel was written, 35-40 years after Jesus' time. All this information from Paul was being passed around before anyone thought that anything resembling a biography of Jesus would be a good idea.  

In a previous post I mentioned that I thought that it was likely that Jesus existed, not that everything said about him was true, but that a person on whom the Gospels was based existed. I believe that the existence of Paul is even more of an historical certainty — unlike Jesus we have contemporary documents — actually written (or at least dictated) by Paul. At some point I'll discuss the conclusion by many Biblical scholars that not everything attributed to Paul was actually written by him. 

One of the most striking differences between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Christianity that Paul writes about is that Jesus, according to his biographers, was mostly concerned with how people acted, while Paul was mostly focussed on what people believed about Jesus. 

As discussed previously, it is my view that Jesus was an Apocalyptic Prophet, i.e. he was preaching that the world as we knew it was soon to end, brought about by God's intervention. God would then establish his kingdom in which Jesus believed that he would be a key figure. He preached that to "enter the kingdom" one had to completely reject the things of the world, including riches, personal attachments and even family. People's actions were of paramount importance. Jesus believed that this would happen soon. 

But that didn't happen. 

One of the subjects covered in I Thessalonians, a letter from Paul to the church in Thessalonica, was the details of Jesus' future return. People among his followers had died and other Christians were worried that maybe Jesus wasn't coming back as promised. Those still among the living were concerned that their loved ones had missed out on the establishment of the kingdom of God. And that if they weren't alive when it came about, they themselves wouldn't make it into the brave new world. It's important to note that beliefs about the afterlife have evolved over the centuries. Resurrection in the Judea of this era was more of a national resurrection, i.e. Israel would be reestablished as a kingdom. Ideas about how this would affect individuals, i.e. an end days judgement and resurrection of people depended on what sect you identified with. Sadducees, for example, did not believe in a resurrection of individuals at all. 

At this point in Church history, none of the writings that would come to be included in the canon of scripture had been written yet, let alone available for people to read. So there wasn't yet a doctrinal standard to which they could refer to for answers. Paul tells them not to worry about it, when the resurrection takes place, the dead will rise first. This is the first attempt in canon to explain away the discrepancy between what Jesus said and what was happening (or not happening). Jesus was pretty clear that The End would take place within the lifetime of his generation; Paul is, like so many "prophets" after him, trying to explain why what had been so confidently predicted wasn't happening. But at this point Paul still believes that the resurrection will take place pretty soon. He's just calming down those who are worried that they'll die before the good stuff happens. Eventually he changes his mind. 

Paul was human, just like everyone else. As he got older and his own death stared him in the face, he wasn't so sure. In the Epistle to the Philippians, he writes: "To live is Christ and to die is gain" and in II Corinthians "..would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord" indicating that a Christian would be in the presence of Jesus Christ upon death. He wouldn't be the first person to change their mind about death as their own approached. But I Thessalonians is still in the Bible, with the description of the dead rising and the living levitating into the sky. An agnostic like myself views that as a contradiction. Some Christians hold to one and ignore the other, others explain away the version of afterlife that they don't like. Still others combine the two, with Christians being temporarily in the presence of God after death and being raised up bodily later to be judged. 

But still, 2,000 years later, Christians are still waiting for Jesus to come back and get them, and he still fails to do so.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part VII