AW! Epistles
From BL
Abstract
Sunday, 10 April 2005
I must say, your website, AskWhy! On the origins of Judaism/Christianity is my fav. on the net, and by far, the most informative and in depth study I have yet to come across, far exceeding Wiki and Britannica in your studies on the origins of Persian Philosophy, Greek Philosophy, Judaism, Essenism, Christianity, Gnosticism, and many other schools and systems, most which are no longer extant in modern day.
I grew up as a Dutch Calvinist in the most austere and conservative environment, as a child, I hated church, I hated the rituals, and I knew lil of the beliefs because usually I wouldn’t listen. As I grew older, and the pressure to live the christian lifestyle grew, I indulged myself in Calvinism, the Bible, and Christianity as a whole. I thoroughly studied philosophy and theology most extansively, in time I knew everything there was about Christianity, I was well trained in all variants, be it Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestantism, even Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses (which I did not consider christian due to their denial of the classical orthodox doctrines).
Ironically, I abandoned my faith through Bible study, which truly proved to be a painful process, a painful shedding of beliefs, perceptions, and convictions. I was broken and alone, with no one to turn to. Anxiety flooded in, I became chronically depressed. More than anything, I felt like my life was a lie, and rather, I had been abandoned and betrayed by God. Calvinism, IMO, was in uneasy contrast to the doctrines of the Bible, In truth it was far more than simply doctrinal or theological.
The Bible is a compendium of books, consisting of two collections, the Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament. The Hebrew Bible offended my deepest sence of morality, its legislations were absurd, harsh, cruel, and unrealistic. Mosaic law (supposed to have been given by Yahveh) legislated the death penalty for working on the sabbath (saturday, what jewish community, even the most conservative and orthodox, puts their children to death, or anyone for that matter, for playing on saturdays?) the rape laws were harsh and unfair to women, blashpemy too merited the death penalty, as did worshipping other gods (if this were carried out, billions of plp, hindus, jains, aboriginals would be put to death for worshipping another god aside from Yahveh), children are to put to death for acting rebellious or disrespectful to their parents (I should note that I don’t care what God says, I would never follows this law, rather as a parent, It would be my duty to protect my child from such laws) and a plethora of unlawful legislations which are totally beyond me.
The Bible is also filled with horror stories of God slaughting tens of thousands, God is not some comfy dad in the sky as sunday school children are taught, rather, he whipes out the human race and all animals, all life with a violent global flood, later he has Moses putting to death Israelites left and right, killing their families and neighbors for worshipping a calf, killing a non-Isrealite, local Caananite for carrying wood on the Sabbath, etc.
To add to my struggle, I discovered I was gay, which brought about immense guilt and shame, even thoughts of suicide, mostly due to constraints in society, I had to hide who I was. And as we all know, Yahveh declared that homosexuals be stoned. Christianity wasn’t even an option for me anymore. In the years to come I would I would convert to Hinduism (of the vaishnavite flavor). Getting to the point, and I apologize for this drawn out letter, from my understanding you are an avid atheist, and see no potential in religion (I should not my fierce opposition to religion, the more instituinalized a religion is the worse it gets.I am a solitary practioner, through and through, and I have no aspirations for starting a religious organization, as I consider my spirituality deeply and totally personal).
I ask your stance, your attitude toward Hinduism? Your site is very conclucive on the fallacies and false beliefs of Christianity, Judaism, Gnosticism, etc. etc. Is your attitude the same toward Hinduism, and yes I understand Hinduism is a conglomeracy of sects, some which have no affiliation with each other at all, no concensus system of theology or worship, not even an acceptance of authority, as many hindu sects, such as Virashavaites, and myself do not accept the authority of the Vedas (in the sence of the Samhitas, the Brahmanas, and the Aryanyakas) or the Brahman priesthood of ancient, as I am a vaishnavite yogi of the sorts, and Brahmanism and Yoga are two distinct systems and Yoga, as well as myself, are opposed to animal sacrifice. You support an atheist philosophy, but I could not see myself giving up my belief in God, which for me, is innate. What are your views on this?
I am interested in religion from a historical point of view not from any desire or need to practise it. Woshipping is just a bad habit that we are taught when young, and some of us are trapped by because it has damaged our psyche and the scar makes us think we need it. Essentially, when people first started to get conscious thoughts, they were rather like children are. Their earliest perceptions of the world seemed remarkable and new to them. Like children, they made games out of their new ideas. They pretended to be the animals they hunted, they pretended to be the hunters, they pretended to be the sun fighting against the winter dragon or the winter sun that every year secured victory until the sun was newly born and defeated the usurper, and so on (and I am not imagining even that their initial thoughts were as sophisticated as these I have put to you—that is how their games came to be interpreted). These games were eventually institutionalized, and instead of being play, were then seen as necessary. If the game was not played then the event—say the coming of the herds in spring—would not happen. The game, act or drama had become sacred, and from the sacred drama, it is a short step to religion.
Now you see why I think it is a bad habit. It is passed down from generation to generation as a necessity with dire consequences if it is not done. We are still like that, and none worse than the Calvinists.
I have a certain amount of sympathy with Nature religions such as Hinduism because they seem to me to be more natural! The patriarchal religions are purely artificial. Although their origins in sun worship are obvious, they have been removed from that natural phase and have been rewritten as the worship of the god who is not there. He is the transcendent urban God, well removed from the natural worship of farmers and hunters, who saw the value of Nature and felt it could not be trampled on willy-nilly, even though it was necessary to kill some animals to survive.
So, yes my sympathy is more with Hinduism than with Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and more so with some adaptations of Hindu religion like Buddhism which relegates gods to the back yard and concentrates on personal psychology—the self. Zoroastrianism is in between these. It is the origin of the patriarchal religions, and yet it speaks of good and evil as choices the individual must make rather than controlling spirits. The two spirits are fighting a war, all right, but primarily the choice for people is to decide which side to be on. It was not so much an excuse for bad behaviour as it has become in Christianity.
Since you sound as though your approach to religion is to "cure yourself" by practising the best and truest form of living with other people and species you can find, then you are doing right. Offending the Goddess Nature is the “sin” to eschew.
Worshipping is not a characteristic of Vaishnavite, Yoga, etc. I do not worship anyone or anything. The essential goal to my “religion” (it is more a philosophy) if you wish to call it that, is to, as the ancient philosopher, Socrates put it, “Know Thyself”. To recognize that one is guide, self realization, this is the supreme attainment. There is a love relationship between the practitioner and God, yes, but it is not so much worship as it is realizing your own inner divinity.
Worship was something the Aryans brought when they invaded the Indus Valley Civilization (which was already crumbeling from natural disasters). Worship was a Vedic thing, pre-vedic culture was yoga and aecetism. Worship for them, involved, like all ancient people, even the jews, a literal sacrifice, usually animals, but humans not entirely unknown, as seen by the escavations of the later Indus Valley. Because culture became more and more civilized and compassionate toward all sentinent beings, the public attacked their worship of the day, and worship was forced to transform (from sacrifices to devotional prayers and offerings of fruits, vegetables and other foods) or worship would have died off. Worshipping does not bring about self realization, or any fruitful changes.
Agreed, it doesn’t, except that it brings about a mutual bonding in belief, and this came from the joy unsophisticated humans had originally in celebrating their awareness of the wonderful things in Nature. I cannot disagree with this, although history seems to show it transmutes into worship! I cannot disagree with like-minded people wishing to get together for their own private and innocent reasons. I am like you, and generally celebrate my beliefs in private, but I cannot avoid the fact that we are social animals and in this respect being solitary is peculiar (but not wrong!).
So, I concur that to know thyself is a possible beginning to knowing the whole of Nature and therefore the world. One danger is that it can become self-indulgent, or anthropomorphic, placing self or humanity above the rest. It can be avoided by making sure that knowing oneself means knowing oneself in relation to the whole. Now that is, I suspect, what you are getting at when you talk about a love-relationship between the practitioner and God. God per se is irrelevant in your scheme. You can enquire after your own divinity without any recourse to God, and indeed you must do, because there is no God, or, if there is, no one knows anything about Him, so your personal God is merely your own construct of God—you have made it up! What is real is Nature. Pantheism—that divinity is everywhere—is closer to Hinduism than the idea of a patriarchal God because it identifies God and Nature. Such modern thinkers as Einstein, whom Christians claim and Jews claim as their own, actually always spoke of God as Nature, or the whole of the universe. If you can do that, then you are close to being an Adelphiasophist.
What are the oldest books of the Bible according to scholars?
Well, I am in the habit of calling biblical scholars “bent scholars” because they are not scholars in any normal sense of the word but are apologists for their religion and the bible itself. In other words, their scholarship, such as it is, is subservient to what they already know, their beliefs! I accept that some scholars even of the bible, do have scholarly standards, and I say that what is known or discovered new is mainly discovered by these people, but it is tedious to constantly qualify what you are saying, so I tend to label them as biblicists with the reader to understand that some bible “scholars” are indeed scholars. Once that is recognized, you are inclined to take whatever most of these people say with a pinch of salt, and check it from less biased sources, if it is possible. Once you do that, it becomes clear that much of this biblical scholarship is based on nothing more than an acceptance that the bible is true anyway. It begs the question. So, they commonly speak of the time of Solomon as a historical period when Solomon does not exist in history. He only exists in the Jewish scriptures. It is like speaking of the time of Batman or Captain Marvel. Both of these fictional supermen were set in a period sure enough, but they were invented heroes, not real ones. To speak of the time of Franklin D Roosevelt or Harry S Truman makes sense to me, because they are real people, but it is bizarre to speak of the time of Batman, a fiction.
So, broadly speaking, they accept the Jewish scriptures as dateable from their internal clues and the biblical chronology as the true one. Now, in fact, the Jewish scriptures mainly show every indication of being multiply redacted. They have been edited and re-edited. Moreover, biblicists ignore that writing pseudepigraphs was a common way of giving any treatise a certain amount of ready made kudos and gravitas. A pseudepigraph is a treatise written under the name of some well known historical person by another unknown author. The most obvious example, perhaps, is that Daniel was not written by Daniel, a captive in Babylon, and there are few scholars, even biblical ones, who will not accept it. Daniel was supposed to have been a captive of the Babylonians, but the book was actually written in the time of the Greek Seleucid rulers of Babylonia, 400 years later. There are many examples. So, the internal chronology of the bible is not in the least reliable, and no proper scholar would begin by accepting that it was. Books and editorial were added by a large variety of people at different times and with different objectives, the common aim being to get their objectives accepted as the word of God. Yes, it is true that snippets of the biblical text can be identified with snippets of text from pre-Persian sources, but all that can show is that the authors had these other sources at hand, and thought they were useful. I seriously doubt that any of the Jewish bible is pre-Persian other than these snippets, but a lot of it is post-Persian. It is the post-Persian additions that have been misinterpreted as pre-Persian that has caused a great deal of confusion even to genuine scholars. The others do not want to know.
I am aware that the Pentateuch or Torah is a post-exilic work, written under persian influence, but it seems that some books, for example Jeremiah, predate or do not recognize the Law of Moses, even standing in contrast to it, for Jeremiah writes that God does not desire burnt sacrifices, then we have 1&2 Kings which records incidents where the Sabbath is very laxed, and people go on with their everyday lives, also in contrast to the Pentateuch, which requires death to all those who profane (work on) Saturday. Are any of the books in the bible pre-persian or pre-exilic?
I hope what I have written above makes this clear in general. Jeremiah, I would be inclined to put in the Persian period, the Persians being resistant to burnt sacrifices, but the burning of sacrificial animals came in when the Persians were defeated by Alexander and the Greek influence took over. That is when the temple priesthood became independent and were able to write books like Leviticus to oblige people to bring their wealth to the temple for the benefit of the priestly ruling class of Judah. The sabbath observance might be similar, the Persians being keen on it, but the later Greeks being less observant, and the class dependent on it objecting to the laxity. These failings of “proper” observance were projected into the past but were intended as a warning for the (then) present, and if anyone did not get it, that was the purpose of the sermon, and how sermons arose.
You seem to suggest, as evidenced by Enochian literature that the Enochian community opposed the post-exilic temple based community.
I take it that the Enochian community were the traditionalists defending the religion as the Persians made it against the changes the Greek inclined priesthood wanted to make.
While you central thesis is that either Jesus didn’t exist or that Jesus was a political zealot essene, and that Judaism was a post-exilic creation, an offshoot of Zoroastrianism and whatever other Persian religious systems, yet please keep in mind that while scholars might say Zoroastrian literature influenced biblical literature, as some scholars say Leviticus was copied off the Vedindad, the oldest extant manuscript representative of Zoroastrian literature is mid-14th century, and its is universally held that they did not write a single work down until the 5th/6th centuries, so its quite easy to argue that Judaism influenced Persia and Zoroastrianism, they probably both had a mass of influence on each other.
I do not know where you got the idea that Zoroastrians wrote nothing down. They wrote an astonishing mass of religious works. Alexander the Great is known to have destroyed them by fire when he torched Persepolis. The Zoroastrian magi in subsequent centuries had to try to put it together again, but it was impossible to restore it all. The Vendidad, as you suggest, was a later compilation of some of the old tradition. The main evidence, though, of Zoroastianism is the Gathas in the Avesta, and scholarship shows that these are genuinely ancient, based on philology and content compared with the Indian Vedas to which they are related. They are now generally considered to be the original works of Zoroaster himself, dateable by the skills I mentioned to about 1000 BC. Zoroastrianism therefore considerably pre-dated the bible unless the myth of Moses is accepted. It does not hold water, in fact. Since the external evidence points to Moses being written down in the 300s BC, over a millennium after the time supposed internally, there is nothing in Judaism that can have predated Zoroastrianism. It might well be that the Egyptians wrote the Moses saga to draw attention away from the true source and time of formation of Judaism to promote Egypt at the expense of Persia. If so, they succeeded beyond their dreams, probably because the Persians could not answer back!
I got this “idea” from reading Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, by Mary Boyce, the foremost scholar on the studies of Zoroaster/Zoroastrianism. Which confirms that the Avest/Vendidad, etc. were not written down until the 6th century, until then had passed orally. And the oldest manuscripts do not predate the 14th century. Whereas we have an amass amount of manuscripts and information on biblical texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls for example, see the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, the oldest manuscript of Genesis/Exodus among them, 3rd century BC, written in paleo-hebrew.
You are misunderstanding. Mary Boyce is giving you the dates of the present Zoroastrian works. If you read her books, you will find that the Zoroastrian works were destroyed by Alexander in the fourth century BC, as I said. You will find it on my pages, with the appropriate references, many of them to Dr Boyce. Mary Boyce herself dates the time of Zoroaster, largely on the basis of the Gathas, to 1000 BC, long before Jerusalem even existed as anything other than an Egyptian villa. Many of the original Zoroastrian works were destroyed before many of the Jewish scriptural books were written.
I ask that you seriously consider revising your theory on the composition of the Pentateuch. The Five Books of Moses were not entirely a post-exilic comilation, as you say, of which they do not predate the 3rd century BC. The majority of scholarship holds to the Documentary Hypothesis accrediting authorship to JEDP (and R), while the last 3, the Deuteronimist, the Priest, and the Redacator (who Spinoza says is Ezra, under the Persian Emperor), were undoubtedly post exilic works, later than the Babylonian Exile, which finally produced what we know as Judaism. But J, the Jahvist, and E, the Elohist, wrote around the 10th century, E probably a century or two later than J. J was written by the Aaronic priesthood of Judah centered in Jerusalem, and E was written by the Levitical priesthood centered in Shiloh. So with the exception of two authors, JE, your theory is correct and concise, it was a compilation under the influence of Persia.
I have explained in a previous email that biblical scholars are not generally scholars but apologists. They have a vested interest in maintaining their beliefs and its superstructure of established Christianity and Judaism as they are. They are not bothered that God might be annoyed that someone over 2000 years ago has misled humanity by altering his holy word. They are certain they know what is right, and will not consider that the Devil might have been beguiling them for centuries. They do not want to know that Judaism was really founded by Ezra, something that Spinoza knew, but that biblicists do not want to hear. They like Moses, and Moses right or wrong is what they will have. And all justified by spurious scholarship.
The Documentary Hypothesis was a breakthrough at its time but now is a buttress of conservatism. It was a breakthrough because it showed that the belief that the Pentateuch was written by one man, Moses, did not fit the facts as they could be seen from a close examination of the text. The differences in usage that suggest the different authors JEDP are explicable on the hypothesis of a post-Persian origin of Judaism. J and E stand for two factions in Yehud, one of whom wanted to see the Jewish God as El, and the other wanting to see the Jewish god as Iah. The bent scholars have nothing other than their reading of the bible to speak of Jerusalem and Shiloh priests in the tenth century. Jerusalem probably had no priesthood in the tenth century because it barely existed at all. If a temple did exist somewhere, the priests were not priests of Iah but were priests of a sun god called Shamesh, Salim or Salem or, nowadays, Solomon. The events described allegorically as a pseudepigraph happened in the late sixth and early fifth centuries, the period when Yehud was ruled from Babylon, and there undoubtedly was a Jerusalem, but the temple state had not yet been properly set up by Nehemiah and Ezra. The biblicists fool you and many other people who believe the bible, into thinking they speak with some confirmatory evidence. In fact they ignore external evidence to stick with the biblical myths, for which there is no external evidence other than confirmed forgeries, and a few unconfirmed forgeries.
Another note, in your article on the Pentateuch, found here: http://www.askwhy.co.uk/judaism/0370Pentateuch.html
you write “The Seleucid or northern Greek kings took control of Palestine about 200 BC and apparently sponsored the elaboration of the story of Moses. Exodus and Numbers are therefore early second century BC. The Wisdom of Ben Sira, accurately dated to about 180 BC does not mention Moses. Though he was by then surely accepted as the great lawgiver of the Jews, his dramatic biography had not yet been written.” Apparently, to back your claim that for a very late date for the Pentateuch, so late that I have not come across another scholar or source that agrees within a range of 3 centuries to your 2nd century dating. First off, you are very wrong, the Wisdom of Ben Sira, also called Ecclesiasticus, mentions Moses several times:
And he brought out of him a merciful man, which found favour in the sight of all flesh, even Moses, beloved of God and men, whose memorial is blessed. He made him like to the glorious saints, and magnified him, so that his enemies stood in fear of him. By his words he caused the wonders to cease, and he made him glorious in the sight of kings, and gave him a commandment for his people, and shewed him part of his glory. He sanctified him in his faithfuless and meekness, and chose him out of all men. He made him to hear his voice, and brought him into the dark cloud, and gave him commandments before his face, even the law of life and knowledge, that he might teach Jacob his covenants, and Israel his judgments. He exalted Aaron, an holy man like unto him, even his brother, of the tribe of Levi. Jesus the son a Nave was valiant in the wars, and was the successor of Moses in prophecies, who according to his name was made great for the saving of the elect of God, and taking vengeance of the enemies that rose up against them, that he might set Israel in their inheritance.Sir 45:1-46:1
You are right. I should have said “hardly mentions”, but it does not alter the point I am making, rather it strengthens it since I accept that the myth of Moses began about then. That ben Sira mentions it but says so little rather supports the idea. The point is that Moses was present in the original Persian religion pressed on to the reluctant Canaanites of Yehud. He was Ahura Mazda because the laws were actually God’s laws! The later rulers of Yehud, the Greeks whether centered on Egypt (the Ptolemies) or on Babylon (the Seleucids) were anti-Persian and wanted to deflect attention away from the true origins of the religion. So, the real meaning of Ahura Mazda had to be hidden, but the words were already well established, so new readings for them were necessary. Thus Ahura Mazda became Aaron and Moses, and a myth was invented to justify these new characters, to give a non-Persian origin to God’s laws, and to establish the Jewish priesthood in deep antiquity! My point about ben Sira is that he seemed not too familiar with the whole Mosaic saga, but some bits relevant to the priesthood. The myth might have existed by then, but was not yet well known, or it was still to be written in its entirety. Ben Sira mainly describes the priestly vestments, supposedly establishing them back in ancient times. He was possibly adding his own twopennorth to the myth.
Please do not think I am attacking or criticizing you, rather critiqueing, and yes there is a difference. I agree, in the main, with many of your thesis, such as the Essenes and the Persians, post-exilic Judaism, and so forth. As much fault as we scholars and historians and scientists and those of other fields may find in the biblical texts, the chief reason for my rejection of the Bible was not textual criticism, rather it was a question of morality. And in no way do I approve of the Biblical definition of morality, as one scholar noted in an open panel, God (YHWH) is not some cozy dad in the sky, rather often acts vengeful and cruel, even originating the idea of “justifiable genocide”, wiping out the human race, indeed, all sentient beings in a violent global flood. God (YHWH) commits premeditated murder against the children of Egypt, and on several occasions nearly renders the Israelites extinct before relenting or changing his mind, leaving thousands upon thousands dead. (If anything, the Bible is anti-semetic, and so is Yahweh.) How anyone could believe or have hope in such a being is beyond me. I enjoy our dialogues but we differ greatly in our attitude toward a belief in God. It’s funny that along with your thesis on the Essene Jesus and Persian Judaism, you should call your quasi-philosophy, the true religion, which is some sort of pantheism in the guise of atheism. That is a clear oxymoron, religion, literally means to unite, in the sence of uniting Man with God. You use evolution, like Dawkin and so many others, as a front to defend your atheism, like you, I too am an evolutionist, and the vast majority of scientists are (save 5% creationists). But it is better to speak of theories of evolution, since there is no single monolithic theory of evolution, much less under the banner of Neo-Darwinisim. By no means do I accept evolution occuring by chance. Probability is too stupid and random to have propelled such a function of nature. Evolution can hardly be used as a defense for atheism, Darwin did not create nor formulate evolutionism, we already knew it happened (and the greek philosophers and scientists, 2,000 yrs before had the idea) rather Darwin tried to answer HOW it happened, not that it happened, there is no question that it happened. But there are a plethora of theories on HOW it happened. Darwin saw it as product of natural selection (albeit incomplete).
I too disagree with Christianity because of its morality, but for the other reasons too. It is difficult to find anything good about Christianity historically, and I have never denied that there have been good Christians. The Jewish God was meant to inspire fear into the Jews to keep them obedient to whichever foreign ruler they had, beginning with the Persians, and then to keep them obedient to their native rulers, the Hasmoneans. However useful this concept of God was to these rulers of the Jews, it is hard to believe it still has any attraction to voluntary believers today. But there is humanity for you. Most of us like to roll over on our backs with our feet in the air at the sight of an alpha animal, and what is a God but an alpha anaimal larger than normal.
That brings us to our beliefs in God. You are right that I have no such belief unless it is that it is the whole of Nature itself, in which case the divinity is better considered a goddess. I assume that this is the pantheistic “quasi-philosophy” to which you refer. You are entitled to call it an oxymoron, if you wish, but it is only because of your choice of the origin of the word religion—from Latin “religare” meaning “to bind fast”. I prefer an alternative derivation from Latin “rem legere” meaning the “right thing” that one has to choose. In any case, I prefer to call it a world view or outlook, not a religion because religion has misleading connotations as you prove, but some people like to call their beliefs a religion, and that is up to them. It (rem legere) certainly seems closer to your own way of thinking that religion should be that one should choose to do the right thing, since morality seems to at the core of your world view. A fanciful God is irrelevant. It could be a brick or, almost the same, a stone wall, as the Jews seem to make it, when it should be some sort of inspiration to choose the right thing, and to do good. An imaginary father might do that to people who are still mentally children, but I like to think we are grown up. Then the magnificence and wonder of Nature is what impresses, and without any invented miracles. They are real wonders, not make-belief ones.
As for evolution, it certainly does away with the need for a God to create all the animal and plant species we see in the world. If a God must be believed in, then He made the first single celled creature then sent it on its long evolutionary journey, while God made off to His heavenly cinema to watch movies and drink an eternal cup of tea. He left things to evolve on their own, and so departed from the earthly realm. And that is how we find Him. The absent God. I can see no advantages in believing in an imaginary or absent God, but lots in believing in a real goddess, whether you regard her as some sort of supernatural entity or simply a metaphor for Nature.
