The Devil's Gateway Ch. 02

"And the Evangelicals, as well as the fundies, agree too, and so much so that the fundies, and some Evangelicals don't mind if there is atomic warfare over Israel for that will mean it's the end times, and they don't expect to be a part of it since they think they'll be raptured by Jesus. Now isn't that totally sweet of them not to care about anything, or anyone else unless you're a part of the elect?" she ended totally sarcastically. "Let's see what another writer says to help our understanding.

"There is a book on the resurrection written by Giza Vermes, a recognized expert on the Jews and translations of biblical works of the Jews, his book titled, what else, 'The Resurrection'. He is Professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford, his book tells us, and he also wrote a book on the Dead Sea Scrolls, 'Complete Dead Sea Scrolls', as we might expect.

"In this book I mentioned first, he says that main stream Jewish thought until the start of the second century BC—that book still uses the old way instead of the B.C.E.—they thought all humans had a diminished, joyless subsistence in a land of darkness they entered into through the grave. The second century is 199 to 100 B.C.E. The Jews didn't expect any other thing, just a full and good life on earth with their families.

"In the time of the Babylonian exile, the idea came up with Ezekiel's prophecies, if there really was an Ezekiel, that were mystical, his 'dry bones' vision being revived, '...symbolized the resurrection from the dead of the people of Israel...' , Vermes writes. But he says, 'It found it's first formulation during the latter part of the third century'—that's 299 to 200 B.C.E.—'and gained strength in the course of the second and first centuries BC.' right along with the righteous one and the messiah.

"It's a very interesting and enlightening book. Do I give it credence? Much more than I do the bible." Liv paused for a moment before continuing. "Ladies, if I haven't made it clear to you yet, I personally think the bible was manufactured by the Jews, but not for nefarious worldly purposes. It was created to give their people hope in a time when there was little hope. Several times, the Jews were just about done away with.

"Go back to where I told you that Ezra made them all listen to him read the Law, and how the Levites had to interpret it to the people—give them the understanding of it. Karen Armstrong in her book that I mentioned already, believes that this was the first time they'd heard of the Law, that it was new to them. I think I agree with her.

"More, it was the instilling of the Zeitgeist that hasn't changed to this day, save in some, and in many, they don't care, they're just Jews, and want a homeland as they had before, but I don't think they'd like being called Canaanite," she said with a grin.

"Remember that those were bad hair days as they'd never seen before, and they lasted for many centuries. Thus, when the Zeitgeist stuck after Ezra, it didn't leave them, but only strengthened when Antiochus IV Epiphanes rubbed them the wrong way. That's when it all started up again. We're given nothing about Alexander going through their lands until this time, but the Jews seem to have been pretty good people, and probably believed that their god was keeping them safe, at least until the time of the Maccabees.

"How Antiochus IV Epiphanes treated with their worship, and how he desecrated it, stirred the sensibilities of the people—it was a kick in their pants, and the Zeitgeist served them well this time. However, it wouldn't be enough after the Romans came along, which wasn't too long in coming. Then it was like an unneeded habit they couldn't shake, nor did they want to shake it. The zealots born, the Zeitgeist in place, the people for lo these several hundred years now knowing only the Law and nothing else, fought time and time again, and with the advent of the Pharisees renewing the resurrection, and the prophet Daniel's words of 'The Son of Man' coming in the clouds as a warrior to free them all, and rule the world too—but there was no Daniel."

She grew very silent, and slowly walked about the room looking us all over meaningfully for a while.

"Do you see how this all happened, how it all took hold in the Jews, in their times of need, their almost destruction early on, then the threats of it all over again? The world was closing in on them, and they didn't realize it, didn't seem to understand that the world had changed, that there was so much more outside of their area, so many more nations with ever growing power. At that time, all they had was their Zeitgeist, and their new and complete belief that their god would save them, come in as a miracle as he had in what they thought was the beginning days of their ancestors, of Abraham, Jacob, and of Moses.

"They believed it so much, so dearly then, that they did fight the Romans even after the destruction of much of Jerusalem, and the razing of their Temple that Herod had built. modeled after what Solomon's temple was thought to have looked like. That was about 70 A.D.

"They believed, and they lost.

"And they would keep losing, but kept hoping for miracles just as their forefathers had been blessed with time and time again—and they never doubted it would happen for them too. They seemed not to know that it had probably all been made up to keep them believing in themselves as a people. If it was all a made up story that they believed, they paid a dear price for it. Worse, they paid over and over again."

After another time of silence on her part, she announced a break.

"We'll look at a bit more and see what happened when we come back. Think about it if you wish, or let it just soak into your heads. It's a lot to digest."

Chapter 13

"So the Jews believed something that never seemed to have ever happened. How could they have doubted it? Their leaders said it was so, and one of them even had a king's letter authorizing him to make them listen, and then their priests made sure they understood. Keep God's law, and God will take care of you. They couldn't read, they couldn't write, and there were no libraries, there was no Internet, nothing but what they were told, and they anxiously obeyed, and now they were in another pickle.

"Yes, the Maccabees fought and won, but there weren't any miracles, but they didn't stop to think about that. Nor did they stop to think that Antiochus IV Epiphanes was only one small king. By the time the Romans came, they had been taught that there would be a messiah, and God would rule over all. Once again, nothing happened that was good for them, and they kept losing, and all because of their newer, and morphed belief.

"That's what we went over before the break. Are there any questions?" Liv looked about; nobody said anything.

"Now we're going to find out about 'miracles' happening again—or were they? You'll have to make up your own mind on that just as you'll have to make up your own mind on all of this. Let's go on and see what happened next.

"I won't go much into Jesus. As I said, he does seem to have been a historical person, though only lightly mentioned. What about what the bible tells us? The real truth about the gospels is that we have absolutely no idea who wrote them. None! We were told whom they were attributed to for centuries, but no one ever said, until lately, that the real authors are unknown, nor that we have no originals of their writings.

"However, they tell us that Jesus performed miracles. People healed, thousands fed from just a few fishes and loaves of bread. Did they eat the fish raw? We're not told, but before we even start, there's something peculiar about the gospels, and that's their order. The Gospel of Mark is said by one and all to have been the first written somewhere in the time just after the temple was destroyed, yet it is second in the order of gospels in the New Testament. Why?

"Maybe it's because Matthew's account has a much more Godly sounding, miracle filled, feel good accounting in it. He tells us that Mary, Jesus' mother, was a virgin somehow miraculously inseminated by the spirit of God, never touched by man, and that she gave a virgin birth. Remember me talking about the bishops agreeing that the word in Isaiah that was rendered 'virgin', where they originally got that, was really better rendered 'a young woman'? Remember Andrew St. Victor in the 1100s finding it shouldn't have been translated as a 'virgin'.

"What happened? When the Jews in Alexandria translated the Old Testament, the one that was called the Septuagint for the supposed 70 rabbis who did the translation, they translated it into Greek, the language they all spoke. When it was, the Greek word they used meant virgin, and the church back then liked it, so they kept it, and made up the virgin birth thing. Did anyone know about it being mistranslated back then. We know that Andrew St. Victor did, but they really, really liked it, so it went no where. Besides, it made a better start to the Gospels with Matthew saying Mary was virginal.

"In fact, I'm of the opinion that there was a lot about the New Testament that was probably overlooked, or never seen or realized to possibly be in error. Why? Because there were two new Zeitgeists in place. Well, morphed enough to sound new.

"The Zeitgeist being morphed was the God of the Old Testament, and how the Jewish belief in a messiah was being believed when the troubles with Antiochus IV Epiphanes began. Christianity almost never took hold. It had a lot of sects vying to be seen as the true church of Jesus. And before 70 A.D., the Jews had a three year stint of freedom from the Romans thanks to Bar Koseba. R. Akiba—I presume the 'R.' stands for Rabbi—proclaimed Bar Koseba to be the messiah.

"You can see by this that the Jews certainly were believing in their writings of how they were supposed to have begun as a people. Then in the last days of Jerusalem and the temple according to Karen Armstrong, the Jews were scattered. It was about that time that the Gospel of Mark was said to have been written.

"Just before Mark, though, there was Paul, the one with the most books in the New Testament. He had been somewhat successful in telling the Jews about Jesus, but it was mostly the gentiles that he converted. The Jews, however, were strong for Judaism and new popular disciples from a place called Yavneh, was keeping Jews as Jews were in those days.

"Ladies, from here on out things will really move fast, so I urge you to read Karen Armstrong's book, as well as any by Bart Ehrman. Why will things move fast? Paul laid a foundation. How true it was is up to each of us to determine. When the Jews finally lost their freedom again, as well as their temple, Marks gospel came out, but remember, there were no books, and the people were still illiterate. Combine that with the Jews from Yavneh, and it all was very intriguing to many people. The poor were attracted to a promise of something beyond the painful life they had, but some intellectuals, human that they were, also became intrigued by the various forms of Christianity. Did they bother to verify things as you're doing, as our textual critics are doing? I pretty much doubt it, but many bought into Christianity.

"There were three more gospels written besides Mark, as well as the book of Acts of the Apostles. Two other gospels are believed to have been written in the 80s, and John's gospel in the 90s. There were so many churches that celebrated Jesus in various ways, some having this bit of information, some having something else. Believe it or not, this lasted until Constantine pushed them to come up with one belief for Christianity in 325 A.D., and that's where the devil was really written into the details, about three hundred years after Jesus was said to have been crucified. That's longer than we've been a country. Can you imagine how our country was 200 years ago, or even in those roaring twenties? I have a hard time with that, things are so different. Things weren't that different for them, for the Zeitgeists were in place, and those for Christianity and for Judaism were very much tied together.

"You see, with all of those churches that grew out of Jesus' time, and all of them believing they were right, there was no New Testament as we have now. However, one fellow, a rich man of influence named Marcion, a Gnostic, put together the first known New Testament which included one gospel, Luke's I think, and several of Paul's letters, many of which are now thought or known to have been written by other than Paul. Back to Marcion, he was popular, but his religion was destined to fail simply because it asked a lot of each person, and only the well-to-do could do it. This was about 110 B.C. It would be over 250 years before another New Testament would be in place, and then only in Alexandria. This was in 367 A.D., and proclaimed for the bishopric of Athanasius of Alexandria, Egypt. Imagine, this was close to fifty years after Constantine made them come up with one common belief. That truly illustrates the continuing chaos in the church that wasn't yet a real church as we know it.

"Between Marcion and the counsel of Nicea that Constantine ordered, there were many of what were called Church Fathers. Some very popular ones were Clement of Alexandria, and a disciple of his, Origen. These people took to Christianity so much that they developed ideas of what Jesus, as Christ, or messiah, was, then they fought about it. Origen was one of the most famous. He was so dedicated that he cut off his own testicles lest he should be tempted by any woman to be less than holy and dedicated to Jesus. Tempted by little ole us?" she asked with an innocent and shocked look on her face. We had to laugh.

"This guy wrote huge books, and they're still available, but how accurate, or in what form, I haven't looked yet, so I can't say. Another of these Church Fathers was Iraneus who also wrote voluminously. And, of course, our favorite, Tertullian who said we—women—are the devil's gateway, or as some have it, 'You are the doorway of the devil'. He was so sweet to say that about us," she said sarcastically. Again, we laughed. "Oh, Tertullian became a Gnostic later on.

"Gnostics! They came up with elaborate Zen type ways of believing, some saying Jesus was in a man's body, but left that man's body to die on the cross as he went to heaven, and other such things. They did ask a lot of people, but again, most believers in Jesus and the resurrection were the poor and illiterate, and they were the most populous, so what they believed was the winning church. That had to be important to Constantine in his time.

"These men, these 'church fathers', as well as others, all patriarchic, set up what the church would ultimately look like; a synthesis of many of their writings, but they were like philosophers gone wild, unable to wait to join in the fray of what they, with their fabulous intellects, thought was the next best thing, and they could direct it as only they could. As far as I know, there wasn't a textual critic among them, nor any real questioners save to defend what they wrote, or tear apart something someone else that was contemporary with them wrote.

"So we had a sort of dog fight for the hearts and minds of people, and the intellectual shaping of the church. What the Jews bought into, a messiah who was to come and rule the world and save the Jews, became what Jesus, then Paul, said would come before this generation was up, but since that didn't pan out, it was changed. Circumstances didn't permit it happening, but that couldn't be revoked, so it was changed—to a coming, and goodness only knew when. It was morphed to this newer belief that was supposed to be accepted as from Jesus, though we know it couldn't have been for they left the writings alone, and now they're stuck with those too.

"What kind of foundation is that? A changing one, is what kind it was, and still is. Yes, in due time, all things change in our world—that's the nature of things, but they tried to say that what they taught was of God, of Jesus, and as such was an unchanging thing; that's the religion they cobbled together. The main thing is that the people bought it. What else could they do? They couldn't read, they had no way of doing any historical textual criticism. They were as captive an audience as ever was. Besides, the church people never thought things would ever be other than as they knew them to be—the people would always be ignorant, always need them to interpret God's will for them.

"Then there was Augustine! My, my, did he ever lay it on us all. He decided that we were all living in sin from birth—original sin. For ever so long, it was what had to be erased in us. Adam's sin that the nasty ole woman led him into. Baptism was morphed by this new teaching. It used to be a ritual that many followed daily, a cleansing ritual, but now it was the forgiveness of a sin that never was, that couldn't possibly be.

"So there's some of the main church fathers, but what ever happened to the church? It fought to be allowed to be, a peaceful, god-fearing group of communities that only wished peace to everyone. They even went to the arenas to be fed to the lions with brave and peaceful hearts, we're told, and apparently it truly happened. What happened afterward though? As I said, there's a lot, and I'm skipping over much of it, but I think it'll make sense to you this way.

"A writer that I don't necessarily agree, or disagree, with on his conclusions, but has interesting time lines of the history of what went on is Michael Baigent . In his book, The Jesus Papers, tells us that in about 257 A.D., a bishop of Rome, Stephen I, proclaimed himself Pope over all of Christianity. In 268, Valerian, the Roman emperor, decided to kill all Christians so I guess that ended him. In 303, emperor, Diocletian, ordered another persecution of Christians.

"Then Constantine followed Diocletian, and he proclaimed freedom of religion. He fought a civil war, won, and called for the Nicean council to make one religion only instead of the many Christian sects. It's also reported that he gave the bishop of Rome one of his palaces. It seems to be true, but maybe not. No matter, it all went to their heads—the new Catholics, I mean. By the way, that palace is called the Lateren palace.

"It all went to their heads! Boy, did it ever. This once peace loving, kind, wonderful sect of Christians who died for their beliefs suddenly turned evil. Constantine didn't want all different sects, so anyone who disagreed with what was decreed in the Nicean Council was a heretics, and they eventually felt empowered to do as Constantine wished. Heretic is what the early church fathers fought against so much even before it was decided what was, and what was not, true Christianity, if there ever was such a thing, and I don't say that lightly. Remember, there were many sects, and no original writings, nor was any sure of who wrote what.

"In 386, Priscillian, bishop of Avila, Spain, was executed for heresy. In 390 much of Rome was destroyed by Gauls. If Pat Robertson was alive then, he may have said it was God's punishment for executing Priscillian, but probably as a warning against homosexuality. Brother Robertson is famous for such sayings. You all know Robertson, right? The guy on TV that has said things happen because of homosexuality and god being displeased and letting us know it. Yeah, that guy.

"However, in 401, Innocent I once more declared Rome was the supreme authority of all of Christianity. Hey, they always had the money, and maybe now they had a palace too. In 410, the Visigoths destroyed Rome. Robertson would really have had a lot of fun telling them what God was doing, and why. Okay, I quit picking on Robertson.

"Let me stop here a moment, and let out my disgust with what happened with these so-called kind and loving Christians. I'm sorry, but this boils me. In Alexandria, Egypt, the then intellectual center of the empire, there was a woman, Hypatia. Her father was the head of the museum of Alexandria that was more than just a museum. He was a mathematician, and an astronomer. Hypatia was everything her father was, and more.