An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XXVII - Dispensationalism & Zionism & The Rapture (Oh My)

It wasn't very long ago that I explained dispensationalism in one of my articles, but I've been seeing social media posts connecting Zionism to Dispensationalism and the concept of a "Rapture". Many of these "debunk" Dispensationalism as a new, unbiblical doctrine and conclude that this undermines the whole concept of Zionism. 

Biblical Contradictions

Many Christians would take issue with the fact that the Bible contradicts itself, not to mention historical and archeological records. Many others simply ignore the contradictions — or don't know about them because they don't read the Bible. But from the very early days of Christianity theologians have been aware of contradictions and discrepancies and attempted to reconcile them. (I'm mainly dealing with how Christian theologians addressed inconsistencies, I am not very familiar with how Jewish scholars may have approached issues in the Jewish scriptures).

The question of the nature of Jesus Christ — was he God, or was he a man? — caused a lot of ink to be spilled in the theological battlefields of the early centuries of Christianity. Even when they thought they had an answer — he's both! — the minutia of how he could be both, as well as the ramifications of the various theories, occupied Christian leaders for centuries, when it could be argued that they certainly had better things to do. 

The problem that the Church Fathers identified was that there were sections of the Gospels and Epistles that very clearly indicated that Jesus was a man, a very holy man, a special man, but a man and not God. There were also other verses which just as clearly came down on the side of Jesus being God. These second century scholars had a choice: they could ignore the question and focus what Jesus preached and encourage people to follow his example and live their life as he taught; they could decide that Jesus being a man made more sense and interpret the verses that suggested that he was also God in that light; or place their bets on Christ's divinity and interpret the verses that said otherwise in that light. What they did was decide that Jesus was a man and he was God. They argued interminably about the details, but ended up with the conclusion that he was fully God and fully man. That was the starting point for the doctrine of The Trinity, a theological edifice to explain away a contradiction — a Christology which cannot be found in any actual book of the Bible. (The nuances of that stance take up fat volumes — check it out some time). 

The God of the Jewish Bible (aka The Old Testament) vs. The God of Jesus

A very large plot hole in the Bible is the stark difference between how God is portrayed in the Old Testament and the New Testament. (Other than the Apocalypse of John [aka Revelation] which reverts back to the wrathful, vengeful God imagery). In the 1800's there arose a theological position called Dispensationalism, which attempted to explain the differences. But long before that, Marcion, a Second Century Christian, came up with his own solution. Marcion took a blunt force approach to Biblical criticism and simply threw out the parts he thought made no sense. Observing that the vengeful God of the Old Testament bore no resemblance to the God of the Gospels he concluded that they were different gods. In Marcion's view, the Old Testament God was evil, while the New Testament God of Jesus was the "true" God, the good God. He threw out the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John and the non-Pauline epistles and heavily edited what was left. Say what you want, but Marcion took care of those pesky contradictions!

Dispensationalism as an Answer to The Contradictions

Nineteenth Century Dispensationalists eschewed Marcion's approach. Rather than relegating the Old Testament God to second deity status, they arranged history as outlined in the Bible into a number of "dispensations". A dispensation, according to them, was a time period where God dealt with humanity in different ways from the other time periods. Even though Dispensationalism as a interpretative framework did not come about until the Nineteenth Century, it is predicated upon the observation that God appeared to act differently toward humans during different periods of history, which is clearly based on scripture. There was a time when God required his people to follow The Law of Moses, yet Paul wrote that Christians were not required to follow The Law. There was a time before The Law, and there will be a time after Christ returns when all the rules will be different. And Jesus was certainly following the Law of Moses, at least in spirit, if not in Pharisaic detail. How to reconcile all that? The answer was to theorize that since the rules obviously changed periodically, there was a need to demarcate those divisions. 

Covenant Theology

The larger, non-evangelical denominations, including Catholicism adhere to what is called "Covenant Theology" in various forms. In simple terms, Covenantalists don't divide the Bible into distinct "dispensations" or "administrations", but see history as a series of "covenants", i.e. agreements or contracts between God and humanity. The beginnings of this theology can be traced to the time of the so-called Church Fathers in the Second and Third Centuries, but have been continually revised, especially during the early years of the Protestant Reformation. 

Dispensationalism & The Scofield Reference Bible

Dispensationalism was became systematized by John Nelson Darby in the 1830's and popularized with the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909 by American Bible student Cyrus Scofield. It was innovative in that it included commentary in the margins, rather than in a separate volume as was the previous custom. In 1909, Anglican Minister E.W. Bullinger edited The Companion Bible, which was similar in its inclusion of notes and commentary, along with voluminous appendices. Both men were Dispensationalists and their commentary reflected this belief. 

The Dispensations

Following is a common division of dispensations:

• Innocence/Original Paradise/Garden of Eden — Adam and Eve before eating from the Tree of Knowledge
• Patriarchal — before the Law was given
• Law — the giving of the Law to Israel
• Grace or Church — this started when the Law Dispensation ended and includes the present day
• Tribulation — starts with the rapture and includes all the horrors of the Book of Revelation
• Millennial — ends with Christ's return to defeat The Beast and The Devil and initiates the Thousand Year reign of Christ on Earth
• This is sometimes combined with either The Tribulation or Paradise Dispensations, 
• Paradise — establishment of God's eternal kingdom on earth 

There were usually seven of these time periods, although I have seen eight listed as well. Since these dispensations were the opinions and interpretations of the theologians who came up with them, there were different ways to divide them up. Here are a few of the other divisions from other groups:

• Conscience — after "The Fall" — no rules, people followed their own conscience, ended with The Flood
• Human Government — From Noah to Abraham
• Promise — starts with Abraham and indicates God dealing with one specific group of people — ends with Moses
• The previous three are often combined into one
• Jesus' Ministry — some recognized this as a separate Dispensation; some interpretations ended the Law at Jesus' resurrection, some at the beginning of his ministry, some at the ascension, other at the end of The Acts of the Apostles. 
• Part of The Law, at least definitely separate from the Church Dispensation

Despite there being disagreements among Dispensationalists on where these divisions should begin and end, the concept does have its own logic. There's no question that God acts differently throughout different time periods as outlined in the Bible. But there are no bright lines delineating changes in God's rules — if there were, there would be no disagreement among the various advocates of dispensationalism. You won't find the term in the Bible, but it's a legitimate interpretive framework.

Tribulation, The Anti-Christ and Other Hallucinations

The Apocalypse of John, also known as Revelation (not Revelations) is the final book in the Biblical Canon. It was not universally considered to be inspired scripture during the canonization process in the Fourth Century, and it was re-examined by Martin Luther. Luther questioned Revelation, as well as several other previously canonized books, but ultimately left the New Testament Canon intact. Objectively, Revelation is a figurative commentary on then-current events, and has nothing to do with our times, or any other time in the future of the First Century CE. Fundamentalists and Evangelicals however, view it as prophetic, and a blow-by-blow description of how the world will end and be replaced by the Kingdom of God that Jesus thought was going to happen 2,000 years ago.  

There are a few things that make it at least plausible as a prophecy of future events. One of these is Chapter 1, v7: "Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.", which fits very well with First Thessalonians 4:15-17 "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

The other point is that the interpretation of chapters 20 and 21 makes the most sense as a description of events after the triumphant return of Christ. 

The Rapture

It's true that the concept of The Rapture seems relatively new, it wasn't taught widely until the 1830's. But there were those who taught a pre-tribulation rapture previously.:

• Pseudo-Ephraem (4th–6th Century): A sermon text from the early medieval period states, "All the saints and elect of God are gathered, prior to the tribulation that is to come, and are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world".
• Brother Dolcino (1304): This medieval figure taught that his followers would be transferred into Paradise to be preserved from the persecutions of the Antichrist.
• Morgan Edwards (1744): A Baptist minister who explicitly wrote about a rapture of the church happening several years before Christ's visible return and millennial reign.
• Other Reformation Writers: Theologians like Peter Jurieu (1687) and Philip Doddridge (1738) also published works outlining concepts resembling a pre-tribulation removal of believers.

It has a Biblical foundation, even without resorting to the acid trip that is the Apocalypse of John, aka The Book of Revelation. It's pretty clear from the Gospels, at least the Synoptics, that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, i.e. he preached that the world as it was known was going to end, and God would inaugurate his Kingdom on Earth. Not at some hazy future time, but soon. He is quoted as saying that end would come before the current generation passed away. Paul, writing around 20 years later, and arguably writing toward the end of that generational countdown, thought it would happen soon as well. 2,000 year old spoiler alert: it didn't happen. 

Within Paul's epistles he addresses the undeniable fact that it hadn't happened yet. He comforts those who were concerned that those who had died would miss out in First Thessalonians chapter 4 by describing those who had already died rising from the dead, followed by those still alive, to meet Jesus in the air. "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." First Corinthians chapter 15 gives additional information. Second Thessalonians chapter 2 addresses those who thought that the resurrection was spiritual and had already happened by stressing that it was still future, would be physical, and could not happen until a "great apostasy" took place. The great apostasy, or "falling away", as some translations render it, could conceivably be linked to the "Beast" of the Book of Revelation. 

As Paul grew older, with no sign of Jesus returning to gather the believers in the air, he started writing about his belief that a believer would be in God's presence immediately upon death. As the Catholic/Orthodox version of Christianity became the dominant, official, version, the canonical doctrine became that a believer would immediately be ushered into God's presence (or, if evil, to Hell) at death. The future resurrection was viewed, if at all, as a return of Jesus to herald the new heaven and new Earth. 

Dispensationalist End Times

Nineteenth Century Dispensationalist theologians combined the description of a resurrection in Paul's epistles with the events in Revelation and with various prophesies in the Old Testament to concoct a timeline of the end times. It eventually became an article of faith in Fundamentalist and Evangelical circles that a rapture of believers would be followed by a "tribulation" which would end with the triumphant return of Jesus, the last judgement and the ushering in of paradise. It's my opinion that the Rapture itself, even apart from the Book of Revelation, is a plausible interpretation of the New Testament doctrine regarding the fate of the dead, despite it being relatively new as a widespread belief.

Zionism

The name Zionism comes from "Zion", the name of the mount upon which Jerusalem was built in Biblical times. It originated in the mid-1800's as a movement to create a national home for the Jewish people. Alternatives to Palestine were considered, but the consensus settled upon Palestine. The Ottoman Empire was still in control of Palestine at that time. Jews from other areas in Ottoman lands, as well as from Europe where Jews endured regular persecution, began to migrate to Palestine. Some Zionists had a religious motivation: to fulfil prophesies of the return of Israel to its ancestral land, others had purely political motivations — to secure a safe haven where Jews were in control. When the Ottomans lost in World War One, the United Kingdom took control of Palestine, which then included what is now the Kingdom of Jordan. The United Kingdom agreed to assist in the creation of a "national home for the Jewish people". Israel declared itself an independent state within the borders set by the United Nations in 1948. 

Christian Support For Zionism and the State of Israel

Even though the Jewish Zionists were not motivated by the Book of Revelation (even if some were spurred by Old Testament predictions of a return to their ancestral domain) the support they received from the United Kingdom was. Dispensationalism and the related End Times interpretation of the Book of Revelation had taken root within the upper echelons of U.K. government. They saw it as their Christian duty to facilitate Israel's return to The Holy Land. Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States military and financial support for Israel is based on some of the same assumptions. (It's ironic that many of these same cheerleaders for a Jewish state, nevertheless tend to be bigoted toward actual Jews.) 

Dispensationalism became a bedrock doctrine of American Evangelical and Fundamentalist Churches and explains a lot of the right wing support for Israel. The relevant scriptures that point to a re-establishment of Israel and The Temple are not found in Revelation however. References are scattered throughout the Old Testament: Ezekiel 37:21-25, Zechariah 14:2-4, Jeremiah 31: 31-34, and others refer to Israel and the Israelites returning to the Biblical lands. The implication of these verses is then read into the events of Revelation. 

Anti-Israeli Backlash

Recently, especially, but not exclusively, among progressives who support Palestine and decry the Israeli government's treatment of them, there has been a backlash. This reaction usually takes the form of denying that the modern State of Israel has anything to do with the Biblical Nation of Israel. This is often extended to include an assertion that the State of Israel is an illegal colonialist entity that has no right to exist. I'm not going to debate that issue here, but just as we shouldn't be conducting foreign policy based on the Bible, we shouldn't be doing so based on whether a country that clearly does exist, shouldn't exist based on a different Biblical opinion. In other words, our support for another nation should be predicated on our national interest, not whether that nation's existence fulfils a prophecy. Equally, scouring the Bible for reasons that a nation doesn't fulfill a Biblical prophecy, should not be a reason to abandon an ally. We shouldn't be using anyone's Holy Book to set national policy!

The movement to delegitimize Israel and our support for their war also includes denial of the legitimacy of Dispensationalist theology, including the Rapture. Opponents of Israel apparently believe that  debunking the interpretive legitimacy of Dispensationalist and Rapture theology undermines any rationale for our alliance with Israel. Their foundation is not particularly strong, Dispensationalism, which in my opinion has its weak points, can be justified Biblically. 

Antisemitism — An Offshoot Or Foundation of The Backlash?

An unfortunate side effect of all of this is a resurgence of Anti-Jewish bigotry, discrimination and persecution. Social media posts that I have seen attempting to discredit Dispensationalism often include the false assertion that the Scofield Reference Bible was "commissioned by the Rothschilds". Anyone who has paid attention to antisemitic tropes over the years knows that "The Rothschilds" is often shorthand for the conspiracy theory that powerful Jews are running the world through their alleged control of, among other things, banks, the media and government. No Rothschild had anything to do with the Scofield Bible. Another feature of the backlash is an insistence that the modern State of Israel has nothing in common with the Biblical Nation of Israel. This assertion is usually based on a 1976 book by Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe. Koestler theorized that Ashkenazi Jews (i.e. Jews from Eastern Europe as opposed to Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews — from Spain and Egypt respectively) were descended from a Turkic Tribe that had converted to Judaism in the Eighth Century. Koestler claimed that this would remove the racial basis for discrimination and persecution against Jews. It had the opposite effect. It became a favorite of White Nationalists, the Christian Identity Movement, and Arabs who maintained that modern-day Jews had no ancestral claim to Palestine. 

Bottom Line 

It's complicated. I am not a Bible believer, and am firmly against basing our foreign policy on religious texts. But most of what you're reading on this subject is not true. There are plenty of reasons to be against our war with Israel against Iran, and many reasons to abhor Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, but insisting that certain Biblical interpretations are wrong isn't one of them. 

Start at The Beginning: Part I 

Go to: Part XXVII

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XXVI - Paulianity

The New Testament is divided into several parts:

• The Gospels
• The Act of The Apostles
• Epistles
• The Apocalypse of John (aka Revelation)

The four Gospels are partial biographies that focus on Jesus' ministry, with two giving information about his birth and youth. 

The Acts of the Apostles purport to follow the growth of Christianity following Jesus' Ascension. It focusses on Peter for about the first half and then switches the focus to Paul. It appears to be written by the author of the Gospel of Luke. 

The Apocalypse of John is a prophetic book that combines symbolic description of then current rulers with future events.

The Epistles are letters purportedly from Christian leaders to various churches, addressing specific issues that arose. Some are by the man we know as the Apostle Paul, others by someone claiming to be Paul. 

What's odd about what the early Church, and for that matter churches to this day, did with this information, is that the emphasis on doctrine and belief isn't what Jesus' is quoted in the Gospels as having taught, but what Paul wrote in his Epistles. 

Paul, despite being generally known as the Apostle Paul, was not one of the Twelve Apostles that we are introduced to in the Gospels. He never claims to have met Jesus. In fact, in his own writings he admits to having persecuted Christians. At some point, some 15-20 years after Jesus' death he had a vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus and *poof* he changed his tune and became a Christian. Not just any Christian either. He traveled around preaching and founding churches all over the place. Then he started writing letters to these churches, addressing situations where he believed that they were deviating from what he taught them. (this was probably 20 years before the first Gospel that made it into the Bible, Mark, was written) Despite being a Johnny-come-lately he did not look to Jesus' actual companions, Peter and the boys, for information about what Jesus taught. He actually bragged about not receiving what he knew about Jesus from any human being, but by revelation from God. And what this heavenly oracle was telling him was that Gentiles could be "saved" without adhering to the Law of Moses, which was not what Peter and the others were teaching. 

So, the Gospels, which are reporting events that took place mostly around 30 CE, did not start being written until around 35 years later, the first of Paul's writings had already been around for around 20 years by this time. Was the Gospel of Mark written to debunk Paul? (Matthew and Luke were written around 20 years after Mark, by which time all of Paul's Epistles were in circulation) The Gospels for the most part, especially the Synoptics (Mark, Matthew and Luke) focus on behaviors, while Paul focusses on beliefs. Not that the Pauline Epistles teach that behavior, or works, are unimportant, but the emphasis is on what a person believes. 

There's a faction of Biblical scholars who believe that Jesus did not exist, and that the strongest indication of his nonexistence lies with Paul. Paul's entire theology rests upon a self-described vision, not any interaction with Jesus or his immediate circle. The argument against an historical Jesus based on Paul's writings suggests that the Twelve, if they existed, would not have a aquiesced to a newcomer like Paul, especially a former enemy, taking the lead like he did while they all faded into obscurity.  It's certainly plausible, but it's not a theory that I agree with. 

Early Christianity, as I have recently written about, was a collection of competing Christianities, differing ideas and interpretation regarding what Jesus really taught. I don't think it's necessary to ascribe Paul's dominance to the absence of The Twelve, or of Jesus himself, despite his whole theology being based on unverifiable revelation. It's just as plausible in my opinion that the Pauline faction simply pushed out the Apostolic faction, especially if Peter and the others were adamant about remaining Jewish where Paul was opening the club up to everyone. He could have simply steamrolled over the Twelver faction, with remnants putting together the Gospels as a counterbalance and a reminder that Jesus was all about works, with the Gospels just getting absorbed by the 'faith trumps works' Paulists. 

At this 2,000 year remove it's impossible to say, but for a faith supposedly based on Jesus, they have built his church, not on his most enthusiastic follower, Peter, but on Paul, the one who basically hallucinated him. 

Start at The Beginning: Part I 

 

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XXV - What The Hell?

I've often noted that The Bible isn't an instruction manual for Christians, nor is it a doctrinal exposition. The Old Testament is a collection of mythological creation stories, legendary ethnic history, admonitions to stop worshipping other gods, poems and songs. The New Testament has a few doctrinal treatises, but is mostly letters to churches and incomplete biographies of Jesus. The Biblical view of the afterlife, or even if there is one, is unclear. The description of an afterlife for those who are outside God's eternal rewards even less so. 

Here are a few verses in the New Testament that refer to post death punishment:

(I did not include verses from Revelation, since they are describing events in the future, and generally refer to Satan, The Beast and the False Prophet; I also excluded Old Testament verses)

Matthew 10:28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 13:42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 13:50 and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 25:41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Matthew 25:46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

The word translated "Hell" is translated from hades, which could also be translated "the grave". In the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures it translates sheol, which is simply the place of the dead.  There is some reference to a blazing furnace and eternal punishment. 

Mark 9:43 If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.

Acts 2:27 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, you will not let your holy one see decay.

II Thessalonians 1:9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might

Jude 1:7 In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

In these other verses there are a few references to eternal fire. Acts 2:27 is an Old Testament quote. I'm sure there are others, but this sets the template: if you're not a beneficiary of eternal life, you're getting eternal punishment, sometimes described as eternal fire. One verse refers to everlasting destruction and shut out from The Lord's presence. I have seen scholarship that suggests that being thrown into a figurative furnace equals utter destruction, as being thrown into a physical furnace doesn't leave you alive, but obliterates you. 

So, with such a paucity of information in The Bible regarding an afterlife away from God and Jesus, where do we get the idea that Hell is a place of organized torment, let alone the domain of Satan/The Devil? Not from The Bible. *

Hell as the place of eternal punishment for the evil, presided over by The Devil and his demons, was a concept that evolved over time. One of the contributing factors was the desire among Christians for retribution against evil doers who had apparently escaped consequences in life. Some of the details were posited by theologians, others by popular imagination. When you think about it for a second, does it make sense that the place of punishment for rejecting God is presided over by the entity who is God's enemy, who would presumably be punished as well? 

One of the weird things I see culturally regarding Hell is when people imagine that Hell is a place where all the cool people hang out. I guess they look at how religious people act and figure the alternate must be okay, despite the popular imagery of what Hell is like. Another weird cultural thing is when people who reject organized religion proudly state that they're going to Hell, in all it's cultural imagery. I'm of the opinion that if you really believed in the popular concept of Hell, you would do everything you could to avoid ending up there. It's kind of a reverse Pascal's Wager. The person who says that is placing a bet that whatever benefits they're accruing by acting in an ungodly way is worth rolling the dice that they won't end up in what they imagine Hell is. 

Hell, not even a real thing in The Bible.

Start at The Beginning: Part I 

Go to: Part XXVI

* There is one place in the Gospels that describes an afterlife of torment. The parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:19-31 contrast Lazarus "in the bosom of Abraham" and the rich man who is in a place of fiery torment. There is no mention, however, of this place of torment being presided over by The Devil and his minions. 

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XXIV - Sola Scriptura

In the previous installment I brought up the concept of Apostolic Succession and how it related to the canon of scripture, i.e. the standard that determined what constituted The Bible. 

For centuries the leadership of the dominant Christian organization, the Catholic Church, insisted that the common people couldn't be trusted to even read The Bible, let alone understand it. They reserved that privilege for themselves, not permitting Bibles to be printed in any language except Latin, a language which no one spoke any longer. People were executed for translating The Bible into the local vernacular. Things changed when the Protestant Reformation started in the Sixteenth Century. The ostensive goals of the Reformation were twofold: to facilitate translation of The Bible into the local vernaculars — English, German, etc., — and to promote the idea that it was the text of The Bible itself, scripture alone, (sola scriptura) and not church hierarchy, that determined Christian doctrine and practice. On the first point it was successful, on the second, it's a mixed record. 

There's a belief among many people that "the patriarchy", or King James, or some other conspiracy, "changed" The Bible in order to advance their own viewpoints and prejudices. There's some truth in that, but only some,  it's not that simple. For several hundred years there was no "The Bible". As I discussed in the article about Other Christianities, there were several competing versions of Christianity as Jesus' message spread throughout the Roman world and beyond. Each of these "Christianities" developed their own leadership hierarchy, including the group that evolved into the Catholic/Orthodox Church. (I use the term "Catholic/Orthodox because it was centuries before the Eastern and Western Churches split from each other) They each thought (or at least claimed) that they were the only ones who had faithfully passed on Jesus' teachings. In some cities the different sects competed for members, in others one Christianity predominated. One, the Catholic/Orthodox Church, got big and widespread enough, and was the dominant form of Christianity in the two capitols of the Roman Empire, Rome and Constantinople. 

Most of these sects, as far as we know, wrote gospels, epistles, treatises, apocalypses, and maybe even graphic novels, to bolster their version of what Jesus taught. Most of them were attributed to the original apostles since claiming such authorship tended to make them appear more authoritative. A lot of them, including the writings that made their way into The Bible, contain rebuttals of competing doctrines and attacks against competing prophets and teachers. Some writings couldn't definitively be traced back to any specific group, but were used more broadly. It wasn't until Marcion, the founder of one of the Christianities that has not survived until present day, put together his own canon of scripture that the dominant group attempted their own. 

Marcion's canon contained one gospel, The Gospel of the Lord, an edited and shortened version of the Gospel of Luke. It also contained edited versions of ten of the Pauline Epistles: Galatians, First and Second Corinthians, Romans, First and Second Thessalonians, Laodiceans (which may have been Ephesians under a different name), Colossians, Philemon and Philippians. But not Hebrews, Titus, or First and Second Timothy, which are all considered forgeries. Catholic/Orthodox leaders had over time begun to use most of the books that now make up The Bible, but it wasn't until 393 CE that the current 27 book canon was made official, although the Codex Vaticanus, which was printed in 350 CE, already had the complete canon. From that point on, other than the books that we know as the Apocrypha, nothing was removed from The Bible. (The Apocryphal books were removed from the Old Testament) And that's the way it remained for another 1200 years. 

Were some books "taken out" that espoused ideas like the equality of women or fringe ideas about spirituality? No, because there wasn't anything to take them out of yet — The Bible did not yet exist. However it's indisputable that the Catholic/Orthodox Church Councils made deliberate decisions to exclude from the canon writings that they didn't think aligned with the doctrines that had evolved over three centuries. 

This is where Apostolic Succession comes in. Somebody had to decide which writings were to be considered holy writ. There was nothing to prevent anyone from writing their own version of "the Gospel", and slapping the name of one of the Twelve Apostles on it, or forging Paul's name on an epistle. The leaders of the Catholic/Orthodox Church came up with the doctrine of Apostolic Succession to address this problem. Apostolic Succession assumes that the teachings of Jesus were faithfully transmitted to his immediate circle of followers, The Twelve Apostles, who accurately passed it on to their successors, who then conveyed it to their successors, replicating this in every generation. This, Church leadership maintained, gave them the ability to articulate doctrine and to decide which writings best reflected that doctrine. Since there were so many competing and contradictory "scriptures" circulating they made the executive decision on what was in and what was out. 

Now we finally get to sola scriptura. 

The Sixteenth Century Protestant Reformation, as I mentioned earlier, had two main goals. Translating The Bible into the languages of the people was accomplished. But the reason for that was so that Christians would no longer be dependent upon church leaders, upon priests and popes, to tell them what The Bible said, to decide for everybody what God's will was. In theory, it succeeded at that as well. (A third aspect was the fact that European monarchs now had the option of disentangling themselves from The Catholic Church) But did it really succeed, at least in the way the reformers thought?

Indisputably we have The Bible available in virtually every language on Earth. Any literate person can pick it up and read it. Bible study aids are available to assist with comparison with the original languages. No one has to depend on the priests and popes. But do we really rely upon sola scriptura, scripture alone? I would argue that we don't. Foundational to my opinion is that the scriptura that we have available to us has been filtered through, first, the people who wrote the gospels and epistles in the first place. The very earliest is the first Pauline Epistle to the Thessalonians, written around 20 years after Jesus' death. You could argue, I suppose that Paul and the anonymous and pseudonymous authors of the rest of the New Testament were inspired by God, but as an agnostic, I don't buy it. It's their opinion. Next, the men who decided what writings would comprise The Bible are an additional filter. Who knows if they left out inspired writings or included fraudulent ones? And modern day Protestants might be surprised that the scripture that they should alone depend on was decided upon by the Catholic Church, the very church which they think is unbiblical! During Luther's time there was spirited debate about whether several canonical books should be removed. It is well known among biblical scholars that several of the epistles attributed to Paul are in fact forgeries and were written by an unknown author or authors. It's not a secret that copyists made changes to the originals. Translators, no matter how diligent, add another layer of doubt. How can we say whether what we have today faithfully represents the originals, or even if those originals represent the hypothetical "God's will"?

We can't. 

The whole concept of sola scriptura is based on the false assumption that we can easily determine what God wanted to get across if only we could read it ourselves in an accurate translation.  Even if we assume that what we have is an accurate translation of a faithful reproduction of original texts that themselves represent the only written information that God intended humans to have, it certainly isn't clear throughout. If that were so, there wouldn't be so many different interpretations based on the same text? 

On so many different subjects Christians disagree, all the while urging those with whom they disagree to "just read the Bible". 

Start at The Beginning: Part I 

Go to: Part XXV

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XXIII - Other Christianities

What most Christians don't realize is that despite what the Book of Acts might suggest the early Christian Church wasn't A Christian Church, but was a patchwork of numerous Christian Churches, or more descriptively, multiple Christianities. 

Consider the scenario. Evan assuming that the Gospels accurately describe the scope of Jesus' following, i.e. an inner circle of twelve (minus one) men, an outer circle of seventy and an unknown number of men and women of varying levels of commitment — if they truly believed what Jesus was preaching, they too believed that the world was coming to an end. Not at some nebulous time in the future, but before the people around them started dying off! If they were driven to continue Jesus' mission, they'd be attempting to get as many of their fellow Jews living right so that they could enter the Kingdom of God. (Yup. "Fellow Jews". You read that right, there is little indication that Jesus was preaching to the Gentiles.) The last thing that any of Jesus' followers would be trying to do was to start an organization, a church. 

Nonetheless, that's what happened.

It's indisputable that something ostensibly based on the teachings of Jesus spread around the Roman Empire and even bordering nations within a very short period of time. How closely what got spread around adhered to what Jesus was teaching isn't so clear. 

There are several pieces of evidence that there were competing versions of Christianity in the first century following Jesus' death. Firstly there's the evidence within the scriptures that we have. Throughout the epistles there's repeated references to false prophets, false teachers, people preaching "another Jesus" and even those being labeled "antichrist". These weren't pagans, weren't satanists, they were other Christians who happened to have a different opinion about what Jesus taught and the meaning of those teachings, including what they were supposed to do about them. Then there's the testimony of Paul, who is very clear that he had doctrinal disagreements with other Christians, including Peter. We also have clear historical evidence of self-described Christian movements. The most well known and longest lasting were the Marcionites. Their founder, Marcion, taught that the God of the Old Testament and the God of Jesus were two separate entities, with the Old Testament God being an inferior, if not evil, entity. He also rejected all the Gospels except for Luke. His movement survived for several centuries as a rival to the Orthodox/Catholic Church. (The Catholics, or Roman Catholics, and the Eastern Orthodox were one church through the first millennium, even if there were internal disagreements) Even in the Gospels, there is a difference between the Jesus being presented in the synoptics versus the Gospel of John, and differences in emphasis among the synoptics.

It's not surprising that there was disagreement. It would be surprising if there were not. Jesus operated in a backwater of the Roman Empire. Even in the more urban areas communication was far from instantaneous. Christian communities, even in the same province would be virtually isolated, with only occasional communication with others. Jesus' teachings would have spread exclusively by word of mouth in the early decades before epistles and gospels came to be written and passed around. Not only would transmission of "the Word" resembled a modern game of telephone, but as nature abhors a vacuum, so does human nature. Charismatic local leaders would have put their own spin on Jesus' words. 

One competing Christianity is the sect we know as the Ebionites. These were Christians who saw themselves as followers of Jesus who retained their Jewishness. In the writings that have come down to us they were opposed by Paul, who insisted that one did not need to follow Jewish law in order to be a Christian. Earlier I mentioned Marcion. There were also numerous sects of Christian Gnostics who held any number of beliefs that we today might consider bizarre. Or anti-Biblical. But who wrote the Bible?

One of things that every group of the various Christianities claimed was that their beliefs were passed down from Jesus' original apostles. By the time the competition among the various sects came to a head, all the originals were safely dead and could no longer be consulted. That didn't stop gospels and epistles from being produced with the names of The Twelve tacked on to them. In addition to the books of the New Testament that we know from our Bibles, there were dozens of gospels, epistles and apocalypses being passed around. There was no standard. Different sects used different writings. There was no effective central authority to decide which were legitimate and which weren't. 

But eventually a central authority arose. Even though the Catholic Church claims that there is an unbroken chain through Jesus to his apostles to their successors up through modern day. It's more likely in my opinion that what became the Catholic and Orthodox Churches coalesced slowly over several centuries until they became the dominant sect of the various Christianities. When Constantine the Great legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire there were still competing sects: the previously mentioned Marcionites and Gnostics, and the Arians in northern and western Europe. A sect called the Nestorians found refuge in the Persian Empire. The Monophysites flourished in Syria. The Catholic/Orthodox however, emerged as the dominant among the various types of Christianity. Their power, backed by the Empire, enabled them to claim to be the one, true, church, and label competitors as heretics. 

Not long after the consolidation of power, the Catholic/Orthodox hierarchy saw the need to establish which writings were authorized — what constituted the canon of scripture. Related to this was the doctrine of Apostolic Succession. The Catholic/Orthodox leadership maintained that they were the successors of the original apostles and that right doctrine had been transmitted from one generation to the next through that unbroken lineage. This succession was both literal — doctrine was passed down, and spiritual — they inherited the spiritual authority of their predecessors. Referring to this authority, they decided what writings were authentic and which were not, destroying many of the alternate scriptures, although some copies survived into modern times. 

The process was somewhat circular. The Bible, once established, was what the winning contestant in the Church competition supposedly was based upon, but what constituted that Bible, was what the winners decided would be in it. More on this in a future article: Sola Scriptura.

Start at The Beginning: Part I 

Go to: Part XXIV

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XXII - Translations

Translating the Bible from the language in which it was written isn't anything new. During the Third Century BCE a translation of the Jewish scriptures was made from Hebrew into Greek since many Jews, especially those of the Diaspora, no longer spoke or were able to read Hebrew. Aramaic or Greek were the everyday languages of most Jews of that era. This translation came to be referred to as The Septuagint. This was the version of the Old Testament that the writers of the New Testament were familiar with. Old Testament quotes typically adhere more closely to the Septuagint than to the Hebrew. 

The New Testament was originally written in Greek. Although there are some who maintain that parts of it were first written in Aramaic, this position doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. While Aramaic was the common tongue among Jews in Judaea, Syria, and other parts of what we now call the Middle East, Gentiles, as well as many Jews, employed Greek as the lingua franca. 

After Christianity was legalized in the Fourth Century CE, Latin translations were made, culminating in St. Jerome's Vulgate. ("Vulgate" means "common" in Latin). This incrementally became the official Bible of Western European Christianity. The Douay-Rheims translation was an English translation made from the Latin Vulgate in the late 1500's. 

During the Protestant Reformation emphasis was placed individual reading of the Bible, thus English (and other non-Latin) language versions began to be made. There were several English versions, but the most well-known is the King James Version (KJV). The KJV was not translated from the Latin version, but from Greek texts. A myth has proliferated that King James influenced the theology of the KJV, or that "parts were changed", or "taken out" to strengthen a patriarchal or anti-feminist viewpoint. Firstly, King James was not a theologian, nor did he have any theological aspirations. He did instruct the translators to adhere to Church of England structure and theology. This would be reflected, for example, in the word episcopos being translated as "bishop", rather than "overseer", among other things. The actual translation was done by several teams of translators who were experts in Biblical Greek. There is no evidence that there was any wholesale changing or deletions of sections in order to diminish the role of women, or to make any major theological revision. Whatever perceived theological problems surfaced had always been there. 

The KJV was revised regularly, mostly updating spelling and syntax, as it was originally written at the very beginning of the Early Modern period of the English language. Around the turn of the 19^th Century wholesale revisions started to be produced. The KJV translators, while using Greek manuscripts to compose their translations, relied on a small number of manuscripts that in retrospect were not very reliable. By 1900 there were a greater number of Greek manuscripts to work from and newer versions employed these manuscripts in addition to those used by the KJV team. Greek manuscript editions known as "critical manuscripts" were composed, producing Greek New Testaments that compared various readings. Not only were there better manuscripts to work from, but the knowledge of Biblical Greek had improved over three centuries, as had the understanding of cultural references that might not be obvious from a literal translation. KJV contained many English words and expressions that had changed their meaning since it had been first published, in addition to Greek idioms. The newer versions endeavored to make the language of the Bible more accessible and understandable. A modern translation is likely as "accurate" as can be reasonably expected. 

What a translation, any translation, doesn't do, is wave away the contradictions and discrepancies. They're all still there, they're just rendered in modern vernacular. Even if we can be reasonably sure that we have Greek texts that reflect what was in the originally composed gospels, epistles and apocalypses, that doesn't make any of it true. It just means that we probably have texts that don't vary much from the earliest versions and that the translations are as accurate as they're going to get. 

What we've got is a pretty well preserved version of documents considering that they were written almost 2,000 years ago. 

Start at The Beginning: Part I 

Go to: Part XXIII

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XXI - Jesus Thought the World Was About To End

In a previous article Part V - The Milieu of the Gospels and Apocalypticism, I touched on what the culture of Judaea was during the time Jesus was supposed to have lived. I also touched on Apocalypticism. 

Eschatology is the genre of theology that deals with a belief that at some point the world will end and attempts to describe what that end will look like. Apocalypticism is a strain of eschatology which maintains the end of the world, or the age is imminent. Jesus, based on what is attributed to him in the Gospels, preached that the end of the world as he knew it was coming to an end, ushering in a new age under the rule of God and his representatives. Everything he did and said was in service of getting people to act right, to get themselves worthy of entering the soon-to-be inaugurated Kingdom of God. He wasn't trying to change society, because he believed that pretty soon there wouldn't be a society. He wasn't thinking long term because he didn't think there'd be a long term. He wasn't fighting the government or the religious establishment (other than pointing out their hypocrisy) because they were irrelevant — they'd soon be gone. But he was wrong — the world didn't end within Jesus' generation. (And still hasn't)

It could be argued that much about Jesus' message could still be applied by anyone today wanting to live "a good life" despite Jesus being wrong about the end of the world. "Love thy neighbor" sounds good, who could argue with that? The Sermon on the Mount (and the very similar Sermon on the Plain) lay out some pretty good guidelines for living a "Christian" life. Many Christians, attempting to keep their more dominionistic coreligionists at arms length, have taken to styling themselves "Jesus Followers", but is that what they are doing? 

Since Jesus believed that the end of the world was coming soon, the last thing he would have been worried about was improving society. He wasn't even concerned about personal relationships, note how he says how his followers must hate their parents, siblings, and spouses. I'm sure there's Christians who explain all that away, but that's what the man said. What about the part about selling all your possessions and giving it all to the poor? These things make sense in the context of the world as we know it ending just around the corner. If making nice with people who are against what Jesus is preaching is going to get you evicted from the Kingdom of God, is it worth it? Especially since the society in which these relationships function is soon going away for good. And why would you need riches? I submit that very few people are doing those things, even those who have taken vows of poverty aren't living in a van down by the river. So what Jesus are Christians following?

People tend to view Jesus through the lens of their own priorities. He wasn't a socialist, he wasn't an advocate for equal rights, he wasn't a feminist, he wasn't any of the things that the Christian Nationalists emphasize either. He was a guy who was convinced that the world was going to end and that God was taking over. He told people that they all had better get their lives right or they're going to miss the boat. 

After a while Christians realized that the world hadn't ended, Jesus hadn't come back and we hadn't met him in the air. Lots of hot theological air was expelled attempting to reconcile Jesus' preaching with the reality on the ground. That's for another day. Anyway, most of what he said is a pretty good way to live. 

Start at The Beginning: Part I 

Go to: Part XXII