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Jefferson’s Bible and the Old Testament

Jefferson’s Bible and the Old Testament

Thomas Jefferson edited an abridged version of the Gospels. Using razor and paste, he eliminated all those passages in the Gospels that referred to the miracles of Jesus. He removed the resurrection, as well as those portions of the Gospels that imply that Jesus was divine. Or at least this is how Jefferson’s Bible, formally known as The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (1820), is often described: as a Bible in which Jesus becomes a human teacher and exemplar of the highest morality. But that interpretation is wrong.

if you read Jefferson’s Bible (a PDF is available online) there are countless references to God the father, and Jesus as the son of God. Heaven and Hell remain, and Jesus refers twice to the second coming (Matthew 24:36-41; Mark 13:32-33). Angels remain (Matthew 16:27), sinners burn in hell, and one small miracle finds its way in (John 18:6).

Jefferson restricts his Bible to the story of Jesus, but because Jesus is always talking about his filial relationship with the father, there is no way to remove these references without removing Jesus. It matters not whether you were born to a virgin; if you are a son of God, then you are no mere mortal. If your authority stems from your status as son of God, then yours is supernatural authority. See, for example, Luke 12:40, Matthew 13:37; Luke 9:58; Luke 17:26-27; Matthew 9:13.*

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On Jesus as zealot

On Jesus as zealot.

Reza Aslan’s Zealot is the best book on the historical Jesus I’ve ever read. Part of what makes it so interesting is Aslan’s ambivalence. Had Jesus not been transformed from a zealot whose only interest was the liberation of the Jews from Rome into a universal man-God, Christianity would not have survived. It would never have been created in the first place. But the survival and prosperity of Christianity came at a cost: the loss not only of its Jewish roots, but its political program of equality and justice. Or so Aslan argues.

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David Hart’s defense of God turns religion into philosophy

David Hart’s defense of God turns religion into philosophy.

David Bentley Hart has written a book that proves that God exists. However, by the time I finished reading it I no longer cared, for the God he writes about has nothing to do with any God I would bother worshiping. For Hart, God becomes a Platonic form (eidos, είδος).

Hart writes that “it is impossible to say how, in the terms naturalism allows, nature could exist at all.” (p 18) By “naturalism” Hart means materialism, and the scientific method by which we study matter. I think what he is trying to say is that science can’t answer a basic question that puzzles a lot of philosophers, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” The universe didn’t have to exist; why does it? An answer like “the universe was brought into existence by the big bang” doesn’t answer the question, because the big bang is part of the story of existence. One might as well ask “why did the big bang exist?” I’m sure there are scientists puzzling over this question right now, but no answer they come up with could satisfy Hart.

It’s kind of like the question about “what does the earth rest on?” The shoulders of Atlas, ancient Greeks replied. And what does Atlas stand on, one might respond? A giant turtle? And what does the giant turtle rest on? Another giant turtle. And what does the second giant turtle rest on? “Hey, man, it’s just turtles all the way down.”

To some people this answer, or rather its philosophical version, is deeply upsetting. It is to Hart.

An honest and self-aware atheism, therefore, should proudly recognize itself as the quintessential expression of heroic irrationalism: a purely and ecstatically absurd venture of faith, a triumphant trust in the absurdity of all things. But most of us already know this anyway. If there is no God, then of course the universe is ultimately absurd, in the very precise sense that it is irreducible to any more comprehensive “equation.” It is glorious, terrible, beautiful, horrifying — all of that — but in the end it is also quite, quite meaningless. (p 19)

What’s so bad about that? The universe is absurd, in the sense that it has no meaning other than that given to it by humans. God didn’t write the Bible; humans did. Even belief in God is absurd, in the sense that we give meaning to life by positing God. (Which doesn’t say anything about whether God actually exists. Perhaps God put this posit in us.) Albert Camus, the foremost absurdist, has shown us how to live meaningfully in an absurd universe, one that does not respond to my demand for recognition. Humans create a meaningful world by giving it meaning, beginning with human basics such as love and attachment, and then trying to overcome what we experience as the hostility of nature, “fighting against creation as he found it,” as Dr. Rieux says in Camus’ The Plague, a tale for our times.

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Are all religions basically the same?

The Perennial Philosophy is the title of a book by Aldous Huxley (1945), but it’s an idea that’s been around for a long time. It says that all religion is based on an original experience of oneness. In all its different varieties, from Protestantism to Hinduism, religion is an ineffable, inexpressible experience of one divine reality in which we all share. Not only do we all worship the same God, but we all seek to reach the one reality beyond all appearances. Most don’t succeed, a few do, and we should follow and learn from these few, who are sometimes called saints, or bodhisattvas. We are God, as the perennialists put it, in the sense that we know God only by becoming one with him.*

Christian mysticism frequently expresses this ideal.

My Me is God, nor do I recognize any other Me except my God Himself. (Saint Catherine of Genoa, in Haught).

God became man in order to make me God; therefore I want to be changed completely into pure God. (Saint Catherine of Genoa, in Haught)

In those respects in which the soul is unlike God, it is also unlike itself. (Saint Bernard)

The goal of life?

The ultimate reason for human existence, says Huxley, is “unitive knowledge of the divine Ground.” I’m not quite sure what this means, but what Huxley says it that this knowledge is available only to those who are prepared to die to the self in order to make room for God (p21).

What happens to the living? And to life? What happens to the hungry and the poor? It seems as if they hardly matter, that the goal of human existence is essentially and profoundly self-centered. Huxley says not one word about dying to the self in order to better care for others. That’s not what Huxley is about.

One can see this more clearly in a book he wrote almost ten years later, The Doors of Perception, an account of his experiences taking the hallucinogenic drug, mescaline.

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Constantine and Christianity

Constantine and Christianity.

For some time, I’ve been fascinated by the idea that it was Constantine, Emperor of Rome (306 CE-337), who transformed Christianity from a persecuted religious sect into a world religion. Some say he supported Christianity as part of a cynical strategy to promote his rule. Others say he had a genuine religious conversion. It seems it was a bit of both, and more besides.

I approach Constantine by way of The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World, by Bart Ehrman, whose study of the history of religion led him to lose his faith. He cites the fact that of over 5,000 manuscripts of the New Testament, no two are alike. This realization led Ehrman to become an agnostic. If God inspired the scriptures, which one? Fifteen years later his personal struggles with the existence of evil and suffering led Ehrman to become an atheist. He remains fascinated with Christianity, and often appreciative.

To serve the poor, the sick, and the other

Ehrman argues that the very idea that society should serve the poor, the sick, and the marginalized became a distinctively Christian concern. I wonder if the way he puts it is right.

Without the conquest of Christianity, we may well never have had institutionalized welfare for the poor or organized health care for the sick. Billions of people may never have embraced the idea that society should serve the marginalized or be concerned with the well-being of the needy, values that most of us in the West have simply assumed are “human” values. (p 6)

Is it so simple? Consider Marxism. Some have argued that Marxism is but a this-worldly version of Christianity, heaven brought down to earth. But one could make this claim about any teaching that cared about the poor. What Ehrman means is that in making Christianity a matter of state, Constantine made its concerns a matter of state. Perhaps, but it is interesting to consider that today the happiest states, according to their own citizens, are among the least Christian: Denmark and the Nordic States. Finland is number one, Norway is number two.*

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The Sermon on the Mount is not a sermon

The Sermon on the Mount is not a sermon.

One of the most well-known passages in the New Testament, The Sermon on the Mount, is not a sermon. Jesus speaks to four disciples, Peter, Andrew, James, and John, while a crowd of people seem to be listening in (Matthew 5:1). The painting accompanying this post is a little misleading in this regard. In any case, both the content of the sermon and especially the ending reveal that it is intended for all who hear (Matthew 7:28-29). Jesus often pretends that his teachings are restricted to disciples, which makes little sense, especially since they are not the sharpest knives in the drawer (Mark 4:10-12).

It would be a good idea to read Matthew’s version, chapters 5-7. Luke has a condensed version, sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain (6:17-49). I’m going to stick to Matthew. Remember that the Sermon contains both the beatitudes (blessings) as well as the Lord’s Prayer. Some people think it is the clearest and most concise statement of Christianity, so much so that it could stand alone.

It’s important to remember that Jesus is not a Christian talking to other Christians. He is a Jew talking to other Jews. Christianity wouldn’t be around for another thirty years. One thing this means is that the Sermon on the Mount is not Jesus talking. It’s Matthew, writing about 50 years after the death of Jesus. And Matthew has an agenda: to show that Jesus comes to fulfill Torah, not to sweep it away. Or at least this is the diplomatic message of Matthew. What he actually says is different.

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The parable of the workers in the vineyard as politics and economics

In an earlier post I wrote about the parables of Jesus in general, and about the parable of the workers in the vineyard in particular (Matthew 20: 1-16). In this post I go into more detail about how the parable works, and what it might mean. Recall the parable.

Some workers come to work early in the morning, others are chosen around noon, the rest late in the day, working only an hour or two. Yet all are paid the same wage at the end of the day, a denarius, hardly a generous wage, barely enough to live on.

Most readers have assumed that the vineyard owner is God, and that the message is that whenever people come to believe in the kingdom of God, all will receive the same reward, all will be saved. Some equate the workers hired early in the morning with the Jews, those late in the day the gentiles, but all will be equal in the kingdom of God (Herzog, p 101).

Fundamentally unfair?

Still, there seems something fundamentally unfair about the arrangement. As one of the workers hired early puts it to the vineyard owner, “‘these who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’” (20:12) However, once the vineyard owner is equated with God, the unfairness disappears. In the face of eternity, what difference do a few hours make?

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What the Lord’s Prayer Really Means

What the Lord’s Prayer really means.

It’s an odd thing about the Lord’s Prayer. Almost any religion could endorse it, or so it seems at first.

let heaven be the ideal for earthly governance
- - - - let there be enough food for all, and let all be free of crippling debt
        
        forgive each other and God will forgive you
        
        spare us from the temptation of evil.

It was first spoken by a Jew to a Jewish audience, but it has become a Christian prayer, though there is nothing particularly Christian about it. It became a Christian prayer because it is attributed to Jesus.

The Lord’s Prayer

Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. (Matthew 6:9-13)

The good householder

The Greek word used for father is abba (αββα), and while it is sometimes seen as equivalent to “daddy,” this is misleading, for there are other Greek diminutives for daddy, such as pappas (παππας). The term abba is best interpreted as the head of the Jewish household. God is the head of household earth, just as the father is the head of the family in the world Jesus was addressing.

The roles enacted by God as head of the earthly household correspond to those of the head of the family household: To help create life; to protect the members of the household; and to equitably provide for the household.

What horrifies the biblical conscience in all those cases is the inequality that destroys the integrity of the household and therefore dishonors the Householder. In what sort of household are some members exploited by others? (Crossan, p 43)

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