The Anatomies of God, the Bible, and Religion
Decoding the Old and New TestamentsBy Donald R. NussiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Donald R. Nuss
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4502-5012-2 Contents
Dedication........................................................................................vPrologue..........................................................................................viiAcknowledgments...................................................................................xi1. Faith versus Reason............................................................................32. God and the Creation...........................................................................73. Authorship and Origins of the Old Testament....................................................174. Preface to the Old Testament...................................................................215. The Old Testament's Myths and Others...........................................................256. An Evil God....................................................................................387. The Old Testament as Literature................................................................468. Old Testament Miracles.........................................................................589. Genesis: First of the Five Books of Moses......................................................6510. Exodus........................................................................................8111. Leviticus.....................................................................................8712. Numbers.......................................................................................9013. Deuteronomy...................................................................................9314. Joshua: First of the Twelve History Books.....................................................9715. Judges........................................................................................10016. Ruth..........................................................................................10217. 1 Samuel......................................................................................10418. 2 Samuel......................................................................................10719. 1 and 2 Kings.................................................................................11020. 1 and 2 Chronicles............................................................................11821. Ezra..........................................................................................12222. Nehemiah......................................................................................12423. Esther........................................................................................12624. Job: First of the Five Books of Poetry........................................................12825. Psalms........................................................................................13026. Proverbs......................................................................................13327. Ecclesiastes..................................................................................13628. Song of Solomon...............................................................................13929. Isaiah: First of the Five Books of Major Prophets.............................................14130. Jeremiah......................................................................................14531. Lamentations..................................................................................14732. Ezekiel.......................................................................................14933. Daniel........................................................................................15134. Hosea: First of the Twelve Books of the Minor Prophets........................................15435. Joel..........................................................................................15636. Amos..........................................................................................15837. Obadiah.......................................................................................16038. Jonah.........................................................................................16239. Micah.........................................................................................16540. Nahum.........................................................................................16741. Habakkuk......................................................................................16942. Zephaniah.....................................................................................17143. Haggai........................................................................................17344. Zechariah.....................................................................................17445. Malachi.......................................................................................17746. Old Testament Summation and Critique..........................................................17947. Christian Origins.............................................................................18548. Sources.......................................................................................18949. Not One but Two Gods..........................................................................19950. Paul of Tarsus................................................................................20751. Paul's Letter to the Romans...................................................................21052. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians........................................................21253. Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians.......................................................21554. Paul's Letter to the Galatians................................................................21755. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians................................................................21956. Paul's The Letter to the Philippians..........................................................22057. Paul's Letter to the Colossians...............................................................22158. Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians......................................................22359. Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians.....................................................22460. Paul's 1st and 2nd Letter to Timothy and Letter to Titus......................................22761. Paul's Letter to Philemon.....................................................................22962. Paul's Letter to the Hebrews..................................................................23163. The Letter of James...........................................................................23364. The First Letter of Peter.....................................................................23565. The Second Letter of Peter....................................................................23766. The First Letter of John......................................................................23967. The Second Letter of John.....................................................................24168. The Third Letter of John......................................................................24369. The Letter of Jude............................................................................24570. The Gospel of Q...............................................................................24971. Paul and the Gospel Authors...................................................................26672. Mark..........................................................................................26873. Mark's Gospel.................................................................................27474. Matthew.......................................................................................29775. Matthew's Gospel..............................................................................30176. Luke..........................................................................................34677. Luke's Gospel.................................................................................34978. John..........................................................................................38679. John's Gospel.................................................................................38980. The Acts......................................................................................41981. The Revelation................................................................................43182. Contradictions................................................................................43783. Inconsistencies...............................................................................44484. Miracles......................................................................................45785. Summation and Critique........................................................................46486. Jesus Wept....................................................................................47287. The "Age of Reason," Revisited................................................................48388. Follow the Evidence...........................................................................48989. Differences between the Ancient Hebrew and Greek Languages....................................49190. Differences between the Ancient Hebrew and Greek Cultures.....................................50391. Personal Conclusions..........................................................................511Appendix A Jesus, Krishna, and Buddha.............................................................513Appendix B Thomas Jefferson's Letter to His Nephew, Peter Carr....................................518Appendix C The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.....................521Appendix D Non canonical Books....................................................................524Appendix E Miracles of the Bible..................................................................528Appendix F New Testament Parables.................................................................534Bibliography......................................................................................541About the Author..................................................................................543Index.............................................................................................545
Chapter One
Faith versus Reason
The resolution of an argument, a controversy, or a conflict begins when a common ground of understanding is established. In science and engineering there exists a benchmark, a foundation upon which all advances in understanding rests. Even in the esoteric field of philosophy, different views and conclusions can be argued satisfactorily. Other disagreements between men can be resolved by referring to a common set of laws. Only in religion does an unbridgeable chasm exist between men of differing beliefs or faiths.
There is little common ground between those who readily accept the supernatural and those who don't, between those who believe Jesus was the Son of God and those who say he was only an exceptionally gifted man. The man of faith believes religion is a gift from God. He gladly accepts a creed, performs acts of piety and worship, takes the sacraments, observes rituals, and performs sacrifices. He beseeches God to help him observe the commandments and live a life worthy of his grace. He believes in the miracles, revelations, and prophesies as revealed in the Bible. To others, religion is a man-made concept; man is master of his fate, and all events can be explained as natural phenomenon. Some of these nonbelievers place Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as the modern equivalent of and successors to the mythologies of the Sumerians, ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.
The Bible epitomizes the divide between the man of faith and the doubter. The former accepts the Bible as a sacred work; it is the repository of divine revelation. Its inconsistencies are excused; it is above questioning and only requires proper interpretation, the believer says. To the skeptic, it is a collection of human writings: poetry, history, prophesies, and guidance. To him, it belongs with the works of Aristotle, Plato, Homer, and Shakespeare. He considers the Old Testament to be a history of the ancient Israelites, and the New Testament as a sketchy one-year biography of the mystical man, Jesus. There can be no compromise between these two men.
If the Bible is the Word of God, then it has to be taken literally; the Bible is an infallible instrument. That interpretation was acceptable to mankind when he had no scientific knowledge. Until geology, meteorology, and anthropology were understood, the universe being made in six days was unquestioned; Joshua could have made the moon and sun stand still; and Moses could have parted the Red Sea. Men of faith continue to accept the Bible as an infallible instrument; every exaggeration, every discrepancy, every incongruity, and every contradiction has an explanation, they say.
Two great philosophers disagree on the genesis of faith. John Locke said, "There is one sort of proposition which challenges the highest degree of our assent upon bare testimony, whether the thing proposed agree or disagree with common experience, and the ordinary course of things, or no. The reason whereof is, because the testimony is of such a one as cannot deceive, nor be deceived, that is of God himself. This carries with it an assurance, beyond doubt, evidence beyond exception. This is called by a peculiar name, revelation; and our assent to it, faith; which as absolutely determines our minds, and perfectly excludes all wavering, as our knowledge itself; and we may as well doubt of our own being, as we can whether any revelation from God be true. So that faith is a settled and sure principle of assent and assurance, and leaves no manner of room for doubt or hesitation. Only we must be sure that it be a divine revelation, and that we understand it right."
Thomas Hobbes believed that, "Faith depends only upon certainty or probability of arguments drawn from reason or from something men believe already. Faith does not come by supernatural inspiration or infusion but by education, discipline, correction, and other natural ways, by which God worketh them in his elect, at such time as he thinketh fit. Consequently when we believe that the Scriptures are the word of God, having no immediate revelation from God himself, our belief, faith and trust is in the Church, whose word we take and acquiesce therein."
John Locke believed faith comes directly from God. Hobbes said it is a gift of God, but man acquires it through education and discipline. Contrasting views are put forward by Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. Both believe science is enough and that religion is a response to a neurotic need. Freud says that "if a man does not have science or art than belief in religion is justified. For 'life' as we find it is too hard and we cannot do without palliative remedies." Freud had an ongoing adversarial dialogue with theologians. He believed religion was a proper study for scientific investigation and resented their conclusion that science was incompetent to sit in judgment. Freud declared, "If we are not deterred by this brusque dismissal but inquire on what grounds religion bases its claim to an exceptional position among human concerns, the answer we receive, if indeed we are honored with an answer at all, is that religion cannot be measured by human standards, since it is of divine origin, and has been revealed to us by a spirit which the human mind cannot grasp."
Marx had a dismal view of theologians. He said, "Theologians establish two kinds of religions. Every religion but their own is an invention of men, while their own religion is an emanation from God." He also said, "Religion is the opiate of the people."
The relationship between church and state has been considered by leading religious and political thinkers: Plato, Aquinas, Augustine, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. Plato believed the justice of the state and its laws must be founded not only on nature but also upon religion and a right belief in the gods. Rousseau was concerned with which religion. He says, "What the state needs is a purely civil profession of faith, of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject." Montesquieu believed in a Christian theocracy. "The principles of Christianity would be infinitely more powerful than the false honor of monarchies, than the human virtues of republics, or the servile fear of despotic states." Old Testament Jews formed a theocracy, and one has been tried several times in the last thousand years. Each was a dismal failure.
Three positions can be taken regarding the relationship between church and state: complete separation (U.S. Constitution), integration between the two (sixteenth-century England), or subordination to the church (sixteenth-century Spain). Hobbes, Augustine, and Roger Bacon argue for integration between church and state. They would place kings in the service of the priesthood and make a supreme pontiff who governs both spiritually and temporally. Aquinas declared that no civil law can be valid or binding if what it commands is contrary to divine law. Georg Hegel believed the state should require all citizens belong to a church.
The question that should be put to those who believe as these four do is what is divine law? Men write all laws. Declaring certain ones to be divine does not make them so. The Frenchman Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) believed in the preeminence of reason and believed the church's emphasis on faith was a form of mind control or brainwashing, the term used today. In the middle of the eighteenth century, he declared war on Christianity and the Catholic Church. He emphasized the faults of Christianity in history. He minimized the persecution of Christians by early Rome and said it occurred far less frequently and murderously than the persecution of heretics by the church. He thought that priests had usurped power by propagating absurd doctrines among ignorant and credulous people and by using the hypnotic power of ritual to deaden the mind and strengthen these delusions. He charged that popes had extended their sway and had amassed wealth by using documents now generally admitted to be spurious. He declared that the Spanish Inquisition and the massacre of the heretical Albigenses were the vilest events in history. Voltaire believed man's reliance on faith instead of reason allowed him to accept these church-imposed horrors. His attacks accelerated religion's decline in France, ending in its temporary demise in the French Revolution of 1795.
Thomas Jefferson was a serious critic of religion. In a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, in 1787 (see Appendix B), Jefferson observed, "Question with boldness even the existence of God. Because if there be one, he must approve of the homage of reason, not that of blindfolded fear." About Joshua stopping the sun, he wrote, "How contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped and have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time resumed its revolution, and that without a second general prostration." Jefferson edited the Bible and wrote the Jefferson Bible, omitting any references to miracles.
Reasonable men cannot agree on the proper role of religion in society. There are opposing views on every aspect of religious endeavor. There appears to be more compatibility between believers and skeptics or atheists than there is between different groups of devout men of faith. Religious control of government has led to bloody repression, and an absence of religious thought has preceded moral degradation. What is the proper role of religion in the governing of men's affairs? Is religion a divine revelation or a human contrivance in which man immerses his desperation?
Chapter Two
God and the Creation
One of the goals of The Anatomies of God, the Bible and Religion is to explain the phenomenon of three gods: the demanding but loving God of the Ancient Israelites, the god of the conservative Christian who believes that God only can be reached through a belief in Jesus as the Son of God, and the modern skeptic who believes that god can be discovered through science This chapter explores some of the information that guides the man of scientific reason. Genesis 1:1in the Old Testament [Hebrew Bible], is a good place to start.
"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters." This quotation is the New Revised Standard Bible's version of the first sentence of the book of Genesis. It and similar translations express the two thousand-year-old belief as to how the earth began. From about 2,000 B.C. until the Renaissance began [1378 A.D] there were no discussions or debates about the creation of the universe. No one dared challenge the edict of the powerful religious leaders of Judaism and Christianity—God did it in six days.
Since the Renaissance, however, doubts have risen. Perhaps there are other explanations. Brave men, at the risk of being declared heretics and being punished with excommunication or death, challenged the existing dogma. Starting with Copernicus, scientists and scholars in increasing numbers banded together and broadcast their findings. The priests, ministers, rabbis, mullahs, and common people of faith resisted these new ideas with all their strength, but the great debate that began then has continued undiminished until the present time.
During the nineteenth century, scientific thoughts, enforced by the antireligious efforts of Charles Bradlaugh, 1833-91, a political activist and one of the most famous English atheists of the nineteenth century; Christopher Hitchens, who wrote a biography of Thomas Jefferson; and Dennis Didorot, 1713-84, a French philosopher, writer, and prominent figure during the Enlightenment who is best known for serving as chief editor and contributor to the Encyclopidie. Their combined efforts eclipsed organized religion and became the dominate philosophy for a while, but religious-resilient forces, led by the Vatican, counterattacked and restored balance.
Science in the last thousand years has corrected and changed many of the conclusions of ancient and medieval men. For example, we now know that the earth revolves around the sun and is not the center of the universe. Men using the Edwin Hubble telescope made the remarkable discovery that changed how we understand the beginning of the universe—the "big bang." With this satellite telescope and calculations of the speed with which the stars are racing away from each other, astronomers can look backward 15 billion years when our current universe was born. Astrophysicists now theorize that at that time all of the material in the universe was compacted by gravity into a dense, superheated mass, which at a critical stage exploded, sending debris in all directions. Our Earth, sun, and stars were part of that debris.
Some scientists theorize the universe re-creates itself on a regular basis. An expansion phase with cosmic objects flying in all directions away from each other is followed by a contracting phase with the all the stars, planets, supernovas, black holes, and other cosmic detritus imploding back to one infinitely dense and hot mass waiting to explode into its next expansion phase—an endless cycle: explode, expand, contract, and explode. This theory is a plausible one for the existence of our universe but does not explain the source of the original mass.
On a clear night one can see millions of stars. These stars, our sun, and planets, including Earth, are all part of a small galaxy known as the Milky Way, which consists of 200 billion stars and has a diameter of 600 thousand trillion miles. There are more than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Billions of stars in one galaxy multiplied by 100 billion galaxies creates a staggering total that few men can comprehend. If all the grains of sand in all of the deserts and beaches on Earth represented the cosmos, the Earth would be represented by one grain.
If one year was equivalent to the 15 billion years since the present universe began, then the time of man's existence (estimated at 4 million years) would be about one minute, and the time sequence from Abraham until now would be less than a nanosecond.
If only 5 percent of the stars had planetary systems, there would be millions of planets in the universe that could be capable of supporting life. Unfortunately, we here on Earth will never know. Light travels at approximately 186,000 miles per second, and the nearest planet capable of supporting life is thousands of light-years away.
Man cannot accept the idea that perhaps the universe has no beginning and will have no end. In man's experience and conscience, there has to be a beginning and ending, a cause and effect. The word limitless is incomprehensible to man's finite mind. Maybe there has always been a cosmos with no beginning or ending.
If it had a beginning, what came before it, a vacuum? The idea that the universe could sprout from a vacuum is even more prodigious.
If the universe had no beginning, always existed, where did it come from? Some scientists speculate that our cosmos simply calved off an older and bigger one. That conclusion, however, only begs the question: where did the older one come from?
The age of the universe is unknown—unless it is forever. The "big bang," the beginning of our galaxy, is estimated to have happened about 15 billion years ago; our Earth started about 4.5 billion years ago; man evolved about 4 million years ago; and the concept of God about six thousand years ago.
Besides Genesis 1:1, there are other beliefs about God and Creation. To the atheist, the creation happened by chance; man is a random accident, the master of his fate, and everything is the result of his intellect and good or bad luck. The agnostic hedges his bets; maybe God exists, maybe he doesn't. The deist subscribes to one God who, after creating the world and its laws, retired and allowed man's intelligence and morality to govern human affairs. The pantheist believes the universe and everything in it defines God. God is not a separate entity but the totality—God is the universe and every rock, river, plant, and creature, including man, is a part of him. The theist holds that God created man and the universe; he is separate but immanent in everything. Others believe that the universe was simply a gift from a supreme being.
Some view God as Michelangelo painted him on the Sistine Chapel ceiling—a larger-than-life, fatherly man. To others, he is a spirit who can be contacted by prayer. Is he the demanding God of the Old Testament? One who promised everlasting rewards providing the beneficiaries obeyed his laws, his commands, and his plans? Or is he the selective God of the New Testament who is only available to those who believe Jesus is his son and their savior?
Perhaps God is a gigantic electromagnetic field of intelligence that envelops the universe. Perhaps in man's brain there is an antenna that could be used to pick up signals from this field. Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Galileo, Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking knew how to use their antennas and were able to tap directly into the mind of God.
(Continues...)
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