George Carlin - Religion is bullshit.

FOR ADULTS ONLY

Religion is based upon faith.

Faith is belief without knowing.

Not knowing is ignorance.

Therefore, religion is based upon ignorance.

Samuel D. Robinson sent me a wise biblical scripture from the book of Matthew 7:7 that said, “Seek and you will find.”

It reminded me of another scripture I found in John 8:32:

“You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

Does this mean that by searching we will find all the answers to all of our questions? It doesn’t say that? And, that is definitely not true. What it does say is that if one seeks, he or she will find something. That something may be the awareness that the question itself is unanswerable. Notice how this is stated in the following scriptures from Ecclesiastes 8:1 & 16-17:

How wonderful to be wise,

to analyze and interpret things.

Wisdom lights up a person’s face, softening its harshness.

In my search for wisdom

and in my observation of people’s burdens in life,

I discovered that there is ceaseless activity,

day and night.

I realized that

no one can discover everything,

no matter what the say.

Religion can be defined as the human notions regarding the sacred, supernatural, spiritual and divine.

A fundamental belief of Joseph Campbell’s was that all spirituality is a search for [nature] the same basic, unknown force from which everything came, within which everything currently exists, and into which everything will return [which is precisely why people become less religious or superstitious as they learn to think more scientifically and acquire more scientific knowledge].

Somehow, people want to transcend nature, which is impossible because nature is all that really exists. Nonetheless, even though no one can transcend nature, many find ways to transcend reality—for example, with drugs, dreams, alcohol, myths, illusions, delusions, and religions of all kinds.

The ultimate truth is that nature can be experienced in so many ways but it can never be all-known.

For example, no person can possibly know anything at all about himself or herself before his or her birth and after his or her death. But, instead of simply accepting this as unknowable (or simply accept his or her nonexistence), a person’s desire to know—coupled with his or her fear of death—may motivate him or her to think that there is someone who thinks like humans but is more than human—someone that is supernatural or divine—that can help him or her navigate safely through the things in their life and death that are to them unknown and some of which are unknowable.

Although they won’t admit it, some people are frightened by the unknown—so much so that they use faith like a child who is scared of being alone so she invents an imaginary friend to always be with her and protect her from the “boogieman.” This is similar to what some adults do. They are so scared of the unknown and have so little self-confidence and self-determination that they faithfully believe in a supernatural friend who is all-knowing, all-powerful, and always with them wherever they go—thinking for them and protecting them.

Well, I think it’s time for adults to grow up, wake up, and be adults.

We don’t need fantasies and delusions to live and enjoy a good life.

What we need to learn is facts, not fairy tales.
And, we don’t need to live our lives like irresponsible, frightened, little children.

We can be self-reliant, self-confident, and self-determined without having others think for us—whether they be here and now or have lived thousands of years ago.

We also don’t need mythical characters from religious stories to protect us, forgive us, and tell us what to do and not to do.

In other words, we can learn to confidently think for ourselves and live self-reliant, dignified lives without being constantly told what to do and what not to do as if we were little kids.

John M.Allego - the Mushroom and the Cross

Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (Part 2)

Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (Part 1)

Qumran - The Story Of The Dead Sea Scrolls

John Allegro: Who Was Jesus?

RELIGION HINDERS SCIENTIFIC THINKING

Scientific learning requires critical thinking, open-mindedness, and a willingness to change one’s thinking in light of more accurate information. All of these qualities are opposed by the religious ignorance called faith.

Nicolas Copernicus (1473 – 1543) was such a scientist who hesitated presenting his scientific findings for fear that he would be declared by the Church to be a heretic for which he could be killed.

Copernicus lived in Poland during the Dark Ages, a time when the Church ruled Europe with vicious dogmatism. Anyone who said or wrote anything that could be interpreted as disagreeing with Christian dogma could be deemed a heretic and killed.

Copernicus observed the stars and planets from his house. For years he worked on his theory that the planets in our solar system revolved around the sun.

This was a departure from the beliefs that had been accepted by the Church that the universe was a closed system that revolved around the earth.

Afraid to publish his work for fear of being declared a heretic, Copernicus did not publish his work until for more than a decade after had written it. He died just a few weeks after it was published. I don’t know whether he waited until he was about to die before he published it or whether he was killed because he did; however, his book was banned by the Vatican—which means nobody was allowed to read it.

Because Copernicus’ heliocentric theory of the planets defied 1,500 years of tradition, some historians mark the publication date of De revelutionbus as the beginning of the “scientific revolution.”

However, it wasn’t until 1835 that his work was taken of the list of books banned by the Vatican.

Another scientist who got in trouble for believing that the earth moved around the sun was Galileo Galilei.



Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) was an Italian scientist whose work in the 17th century helped unlock many secrets of astronomy and natural motion. Galileo’s achievements include:

• Building the first high-powered astronomical telescope
• Inventing a horse-powered pump to raise water
• Showing that the velocities of falling bodies are not proportional to their weights
• Describing the true parabolic paths of cannonballs and projectiles
• Coming up with the ideas behind Newton’s laws of motion
• Confirming the Copernican theory of the solar system.

Because he believed (as did Copernicus) that the planets revolve around the sun, and not the Earth, Galileo was denounced as a heretic by the church in Rome. He faced the Inquisition and was forced to renounce those beliefs publicly, though later research, of course, proved his theory (and Copernicus before him) was correct.

Thus, Galileo had to lie in order to save his life; perhaps Copernicus was unwilling to do so. In any case, the fate of these two scientists at the hands of the Church (which viciously sought to determine what the people could believe, think, and learn) should serve as cold, hard facts to show how religion hinders the growth and development of science.

THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT

According to the biblical book, named Genesis, the first two humans created by God were named Adam and Eve. As the story goes, the LORD said, "You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad. You must not eat the fruit of that tree; if you do, you will die the same day." 

In the story, a snake asked Eve, "Did God really tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?" 

"We may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden," Eve answered, "except the tree in the middle of it. God told us not to eat the fruit of thaty tree or even touch it; if we do, we will die."

The snake replied, "That's not true; you will not die. God said that because he knows that when you eat it, you will be like God and know what is good and what is bad."

Eve saw how beautiful the tree was and how good its fruit would be to eat, and she thought how wonderful it would be to become wise. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. The she gave some to Adam, and he also ate it. And the eyes of them both were opened.

Then the LORD God said, "Now the man has become like one of us and has knowledge of what is good and what is bad. He must not be allowed to take fruit from the tree that gives life, eat it, and live forever." So the LORD God sent him out of the Garden of Eden and made him cultivate the soil from which he had been formed. Then at the east side of the garden he put living creatures and a flaming sword which turned in all directions. This was to keep anyone from coming near the tree that gives life.

As a young boy, it puzzled me to read that God ordered them not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and that if they did, they would die the same day.  I just couldn't reconcile what I was being taught--that God is love, God is good, and God is perfect--with what I was reading; it seemed to me like God did not want them to think for themselves.

Later in life, however, I reconciled those perceived differences by focusing on the word "evil" --that is, I rationalized that the tree was said to bear fruit of "knowledge of good and evil." So, I resolved what I thought was my confusion by thinking that it was only the evil that God didn't want them to know. I also rationalized that God meant a spiritual death as opposed to a physical death; and, estrangement from God is to die spiritually.

Now, however, since I've learned that the so-called church doctors selected, edited, revised and censored what was included in and what was omitted from the bible, I'm inclined to believe that those words were included in order to promote blind faith rather than critical thinking; and, because what God was alleged to have said did not really come true, they were preparing the readers to even accept lies.

RELIGION HINDERS SCIENTIFIC THINKING

Scientific learning requires critical thinking, open-mindedness, and a willingness to change one’s thinking in light of more accurate information. All of these qualities are opposed by the religious ignorance called faith.

Nicolas Copernicus (1473 – 1543) was such a scientist who hesitated presenting his scientific findings for fear that he would be declared by the Church to be a heretic for which he could be killed.


Copernicus lived in Poland during the Dark Ages, a time when the Church ruled Europe with vicious dogmatism. Anyone who said or wrote anything that could be interpreted as disagreeing with Christian dogma could be deemed a heretic and killed.

Copernicus observed the stars and planets from his house. For years he worked on his theory that the planets in our solar system revolved around the sun.

This was a departure from the beliefs that had been accepted by the Church that the universe was a closed system that revolved around the earth.

Afraid to publish his work for fear of being declared a heretic, Copernicus did not publish his work until for more than a decade after had written it. He died just a few weeks after it was published. I don’t know whether he waited until he was about to die before he published it or whether he was killed because he did; however, his book was banned by the Vatican—which means nobody was allowed to read it.

Because Copernicus’ heliocentric theory of the planets defied 1,500 years of tradition, some historians mark the publication date of De revelutionbus as the beginning of the “scientific revolution.”

However, it wasn’t until 1835 that his work was taken of the list of books banned by the Vatican.

Another scientist who got in trouble for believing that the earth moved around the sun was Galileo Galilei.

Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) was an Italian scientist whose work in the 17th century helped unlock many secrets of astronomy and natural motion. Galileo’s achievements include:

• Building the first high-powered astronomical telescope
• Inventing a horse-powered astronomical telescope
• Showing the velocities of falling bodies are not proportional to their weights
• Describing the true parabolic paths of cannonballs and projectiles
• Coming up with the ideas behind Newton's laws of motion
• Confirming the Copernican theory of the solar system

Because he believed (as did Copernicus) that the planets revolve around the sun, and not the Earth, Galileo was denounced as a heretic by the church in Rome. He faced the Inquisition and was forced to renounce those beliefs publicly, though later research, of course, proved his theory (and Copernicus before him) was correct.

Thus, Galileo had to lie in order to save his life; perhaps Copernicus was unwilling to do so. In any case, the fate of these two scientists at the hands of the Church (which viciously sought to determine what the people could believe, think, and learn) should serve as cold, hard facts to show how religion hinders the growth and development of science.

THE DARK AGES (PART 2)

Born in the northern African town of Tagaste, Augustine had a Christian mother and a pagan father. His studies in Latin literature and grammar led to his becoming a teacher of rhetoric in Carthage. The unruly students there forced him to quit and go to Rome, where he opened a school of his own. Here the students behaved better, but they reneged on the payment of his fees. As a result, Augustine applied for, and got, a position as municipal professor of rhetoric in Milan. At this point his life changed dramatically.


Until this time, Augustine, in spite of his mother’s entreaties and prayers, was not a Christian. Moreover, he had lived a dissolute life: he had a mistress, an illegitimate son, and was, he tells us in his Confessions, thoroughly licentious. But in Milan Augustine came under the influence of the bishop, Saint Ambrose, who converted him to Christianity. The intellectual conversion came first, the doctrinal conversion he found more difficult, because he had trouble resisting the temptations of the flesh. (“Give me chastity,” he prayed, “only not yet.”)

Ultimately, however, Augustine became thoroughly indoctrinated. He gave up his professorship—and his mistress—returning with his son, Adeodatus, his mother, and some friends to Cassiciacum, a town near Milan, where he conducted seminars, attempting to work out Christian answers to philosophical questions about happiness, truth, and good and evil.

Using Plato’s philosophy (as well philosophies of other Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers), Augustine was able to develop a Christian theology that was believable to most of its adherents. And—along with coercion, banishment, punishment, and murder—Christianity became the undisputed religion of the Roman Empire. Yes, any persons who dared to speak anything contrary to Christianity or say anything that was not sanctioned by the Church—even if it was Christianity—were risking their lives.

THE DARK AGES (PART 1)

“Dark Ages” is name for a period of time in Western Civilization that is derived from Latin saeculum obscurum (dark age), a phrase first recorded in 1602. The label employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the “darkness” of the period with earlier and later periods of “light.”

The term characterizes the bulk of the Middle Ages (from the 5th to the 13th centuries) as a period of intellectual darkness between the extinguishing of the light of Ancient Greece and Rome, and the Renaissance or rebirth from the 14th century onwards.

The concept of a Dark Age originated in the 1330s with the Italian scholar Francesco Petrarca (July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374). He was known in English as Petrarch. He was a poet and one of the earliest humanists. He is often called the “Father of Humanism.” His sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. Petrarch regarded the post-Roman centuries as “dark” compared to the light of classical antiquity.

But how did the Western Civilization go from the enlightenment of the Ancient Greek and Roman literature to blind faith indoctrinated and coerced by the leaders of the Christianity Church who had gained power and control over what people did, said, and read? The following statement by one of the most influential “Church Fathers” of all-time, known today as Saint Augustine (his name given to him at birth was Aurelius Augustinus):

“I desire to have knowledge of God and the soul. Of nothing else? Now, of nothing else whatever.”

Augustine wrote these words shortly after becoming a Christian in A.D. 387.

To our ears his words sound parochial, mystical, perhaps irrelevant, or just plain stupid. Yet they signal the emergence of a new conceptual framework in Western civilization. It is a framework that replaced the one fashioned by the Greeks and Romans; a framework that dominated Western civilization for a thousand years—a framework that transformed educational theory of the West.

It seems almost diabolical that a man who himself was very educated with much knowledge would uninspire the masses to learn so relatively little.


Ironically, however, even today he is called a saint.


Now, if your mind is out of darkness, you can see why Western Civilization—being dominated by Christian theology—suffered much ignorance during the dark ages.

The Real History of Christianity (Part 5)

People should act on facts, not beliefs, especially when beliefs have undergone such a drastic change over the centuries. The god that the Christians collectively worship today was originally four gods. Ashtoreth was openly worshiped by the Israelites until the 6th century BC. She was the wife of El, the supreme male deity, and they were together the Divine Couple. Their daughter was Anath, Queen of the Heavens, and their son, the King of the Heavens, was called He. As time progressed, the separate characters of El and he were merged to become Jehova. Ashtoreth (Ashera) and Anath were then similarly joined to become Jehova's female consort, known as the Shekinah or Matronit.


The name Jehova is a late and somewhat Anglicized transliteration of Yahweh, which itself is a form of the four-consonantal Hebrew stem YHWH into which two vowels have been interpolated. Originally these four consonants (which later became a sort of acronym for the one god) represented the four members of the heavenly family: Y represented El the Father, H was Asherah the Mother, W corresponded to the Son, and H was the Daughter, Anath. In accordance with the royal traditions of the time and region, God's mysterious bride, the Shekinah, was also reckoned to be his sister.

In practical terms, the cementing of the Hebrew ideal of the one god did not actually occur until after their 50 years of captivity in Babylon (586-536 BC). When the Israelites were first deported there by Nebuchadnezzar, they were effectively disparate tribes belonging to at least two major ethnic streams (Israel and Judah), but they returned to the Holy Land with a common national purpose as Jehovah's chosen people.

There is quite simply no reason to adhere to laws made by semi-savages who had very limited understanding of the world, or more specifically, science. It is illogical to regard the words of the Bible as true because of the numerous revisions and mistranslations. If the words are indeed “eternally true” then they should never have to be removed or altered, but that is not the case, and so they are, by this very argument, false.

The Real History of Christianity (Part 4)

The Roman Catholic Church apparently inherited Roman cruelty and lust for dominion. No other Christian sect was tolerated. The Cathars, in France, like many others, rejected the notion that Jesus was in any way divine. Further, they denied the validity of all priests, bishops, et cetera. To them, there was no intercession between a person and his/her deity. They doubted the story of the crucifixion, and they certainly saw no relevance in it. They regarded the cross as an emblem of Rex Mundi, lord of the material world, which was a world that they rejected. Their common ideal was that life on earth was to transcend matter and to renounce anything connected with power.


This denial of Roman Catholic authority met with tragic consequences. In 1208 Pope Innocent III ordered their extermination. Over 30,000 Cathars, which included children, women, and the elderly, were brutally massacred over a number of years. Those who escaped the sword were burned alive and subject to other horrific deaths.

In A.D. 1607 a committee of 47 men took two years and nine months to re-write the Bible, which is now called the King James Bible. It removed seven books from the Catholic version. King James chose Sir Francis Bacon to edit the manuscripts. It should be noted that the earlier Greek versions were not written until around the Fourth Century, and before that, the writings were in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Since the Dead Sea scrolls were found, close associates of the Vatican were placed in dominant positions in every phase of the translation. Priests regulated the flow of information and controlled its release. J. Edgar Hoover commented, “It can be held certain that information that is withheld or suppressed contains truths that are detrimental to the persons involved in the suppression.” (The Bible Fraud 51)

Flavius Josephus recorded that the Essenes considered it a grave sin to reveal anything to outsiders. Dr. Barbara Thiering boldy claimed that the Dead Seas Scrolls dated from the time of Jesus instead of before his birth. The official dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls was based on writing, but the writing of the scrolls is in cursive, which cannot be dated. Additionally, dating had to allow error of up to sixty years because the scribe can be very old or very young. The Dead Sea Scrolls described a way of hiding information in stories. The stories would themselves have meaning, but beneath the surface lurked important details, which in Dr. Thiering's interpretation were secret histories which needed to be protected from the marauding Romans. The word "pesher" is used to name the procedure. The authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls used the "pesher technique" when they transcribed Old Testament books, like when they wrote about Babylonians marching toward Judea, but the message is really about the Romans during the time of the writing of the scrolls. Part of this technique is to give words special meaning. Applying this to the New Testament, where the word "wicked" appears, as in "wicked men" the passage refers to "the wicked priest" so particulars are made out of universals. (The Wicked Priest is a figure described in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and scholars bitterly argue as to the true identity of this character. Some argue that it is Jesus.). If the hypothesis is to hold, the "pesher" must be true in every instance of the term, etc.

Dr. Barbara Thiering thusly removes the supernatural essence of the New Testament stories and gives their political significance. The raising of Lazarus was nothing more than Jesus rescinding the excommunication of a friend. The virgin birth describes how Mary conceived Jesus while in the second marriage to Joseph, an Essene. The Essenes had strict dynastic wedding rules, and Jesus was of the line of David. During the second marriage, which followed the first (same couple), the woman was called “virgin” and was not to conceive. It was because she had conceived during this stage that opponents regarded Jesus as illegitimate, according to Dr. Barbara Thiering. It is also revealed that Jesus married Mary Magdeline (which is one of the items that were omitted from the New Testament Gospels), fathered three children, and lived until at least the age of 65.

The Real History of Christianity (Part 3)

St. Jerome, a transvestite who was taught to read and write Hebrew by an old monk, was paid a large sum of money in A.D. 382 by Pope Damasus to reword and restructure the Bible, which later became the Vulgate Bible. He was commissioned for this task despite being accused of heresy for preferring to read Pagan literature.

The presbyters had strange beliefs. They believed in the Phoenix, and Clement said that he saw it. Origen not only believed in the Phoenix, but he insisted that the sun, moon, and stars were living creatures who were rational because they moved across the sky. He argued that because stars could only be seen at night, the air was populated by demons. St. Justin Martyr believed in demons and said that they were the offspring of angels who had sex with the daughters of men. He went on record saying that the insane were possessed by the souls of the wicked who had died in sin, and claimed that this possession was proof of the immortality of the soul. Theophilius claimed that the pain of childbirth and the fact that snakes slither on their bellies is proof of the story of Eden. Tertullian believed that the hyena changed sex, and that the stag renewed its youth by eating poisonous snakes. He also taught that volcanoes were the openings of hell. They also thought that the Garden of Eden was not on earth.

The presbyters of the Second, Third, and Fourth centuries developed the Christian texts. The earliest version of the Gospel of Mark had no mention of Mary or the virgin birth, or any of the prophesies about a Messiah. It did not have the term “Son of God”, and it did not contain the family tree which links Jesus to King David. In it, Lazarus was alive when Jesus came to him in the tomb. It also did not contain any story about any resurrection.

Rabbi Ebion authored the Gospel of the Hebrews (Essenes). The presbyters had a copy that they falsified and later named the Gospel of Matthew. Rabbi Ebion’s document was the original Hebrew language version of the Matthew Gospel, and there are some alarming differences. Most notably, it did not contain the first two chapters that are read today. It likewise has no story of any resurrection, no family geneology of jesus, not any Old Testament references to Jesus fulfilling prophesies. The Catholic Encyclopedia now states that the first two chapters of the Gospel of Matthew were added in the Third Century. The earliest form of the Gospel of John, like that of Luke and the others, do not have the story of the virgin birth. In A.D. 374, St. Epiphanius listed 118 passages where the later Gospels differed from earlier manuscripts.

Many of the earliest texts that were written that were originally included in what would become the New Testament were later removed and suppressed, like the Gospel of Peter. It was said to have contained heresy.

Emperor Constantine ordered all presbyters to attend a council in Nicaea in 325, and they were to bring with them their manuscripts. The council, over which he presided, was to decide what Christianity was, and which writings were to be used. It was at this council that it was decided to preach that Jesus was divine, not just a man. This was a bitter debate. Arius from Alexandria, and his followers, argued against the notion. Nicholas, whom the Santa Claus myth is based on, was so enraged at Arius that he punched him. Arius was later poisoned. The whole affair became so violent that Constantine called on the army to restore order. After a process of elimination whereby surviving representatives were permitted to vote, Jesus became a god by a vote of 161 against 157.

Constantine instructed Eusebius to compile a uniform collection of writings from the collection of presbyters’ manuscripts, with the instruction “make them to astound!” This was the first Christian New Testament. Constantine decrees that these were to be considered the “words of God”. Constantine proclaimed Jesus to be the “Prince of Peace” although that title was originally bestowed on Augustus. The New Testament was also to be bound with the Old Testament to give the appearance of combining the two religions. Constantine then ordered that anyone possessing the earlier manuscripts should be beheaded instantly. E also sent Joseph of Tiberias to Jerusalem to construct a small temple over the site of a cave that was to he referred to as the birthplace of Jesus. He offered bribes for influential people to accept the new creed.

Constantine issued edicts forbidding other sects to hold meetings, and many were put to death. After the council of Nicaea, various records were forged to establish that Jesus was a historical personage. One such fabrication was inserted into the writings of Josephus (which has long since been exposed). No such passages were found in any copy of the works of Josephus prior to Eusebius.

It should be noted that Constantine drowned his wife in boiling water and killed his son, which is hardly the way that Christians like to depict him.

The Real History of Christianity (Part 2)

The Bible is only a selection of works. It has been subjected to drastic editing and revision. One omission from the Gospel of Mark, which gives a different account of raising Lazarus from the dead, depicts him as calling out from the tomb, never having been dead in the first place. After which, the passage reads:


And going out from the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. . . and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night. (Holy Blood, Holy Grail 321)

Clement freely acknowledge the existence of the secret Gospel of Mark. In a letter to one of his underlings, a man identified only as Theodore, Clement writes in regard to people who criticize Church writings:”Even though they should say something true, one who loves the truth should not, even so, agree with them” (Holy Blood, Holy Grail 319)

On no subject has the world been more blinded or deceived than that of the church's portrayal of the character and integrity of the presbyters. “In the early days, the New Testament was oral. During that time, the presbyters were beggared entertainers of the public, and nothing more" (The Bible Fraud 165). For the first 300 years, the church had no organization and the clergy had no special title. They were called presbyters. The word originally meant 'old man' and when it was simplified into Old English it was changed to 'preost' which today is 'priest'.

The three presbyters credited with the founding of the church were Irenaeus (115-202), Clement of Alexandria (160-215) and Tertullian (160-210). In The Canon of the Bible, Professor Samuel Davidson said of all of them:


The three presbyters of whom we are speaking had neither the ability nor inclination to examine the genesis of the documents. . . No analysis of their authenticity and genuineness was seriously attempted. . . The ends which they had in view, the polemic motives, their uncritical inconsistent assertions, their want of sure data, detract from their testimony. . . The very arguments they use to establish certain conclusions show weakness of perception. (The Bible Fraud 166)

The presbyters could not agree about which stories or writings should be publicly spoken. The scandals of their debates were embarrassing to the later church and many records of these deliberations were suppressed. One of them, Eusebius (260-339) is on record saying 'It is an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by such means the interests of the church might be promoted'.

One of the most vocal critics was Celsus, who wrote a book called 'True Discourse' which was destroyed by the Fifth Century Church. He wrote:

“They openly declared that none but the ignorant were fit to hear their discourses and that one of their rules was ‘let no man who is learned come among us’. They never appeared in the circles of the wiser and better sort, but always took care to intrude around themselves among the ignorant and uncultured, rambling around to play tricks at fairs and markets.” (The Bible Fraud 170).

Toward the end of his life, St. Augustine confessed that Christianity was ‘a religion of threats and bribes unworthy of wise men’. Ironically he is called ‘Doctor of the Church’.

The Real History of Christianity (Part 1)

The following historical information has been extracted from the writing of Bill Zebub, entitled: The Real History of Christianity.

What is it that blocks otherwise intelligent people from looking objectively or critically at Christianity?

Is it like overlooking the defects of a loved one? Is it denial, like refusing to see the signs of drug abuse in a loved one? Is this how the myriad contradictions are reconciled within the believer’s mind?

While all religions are fabrications, Christianity deserves special investigation because of its aggressive history, namely in the forced conversions and the murderous removal of opposing sects. It is this very sort of abusive power that has controlled what the masses hear, but anyone who wishes to discover the true origins is by no means completely blocked. It is not an ordinary thing, however, for someone to actually research history, especially when it applies to religious farce.

The one thing that is common to all forms of Christianity is the myth of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus.

It should be interesting to note that the story of the resurrection did not exist in the earliest manuscripts.

Further, the Gospels were composed during times when hundreds of Jews were being crucified each week. They were written for a Greco-Roman audience. If the events did actually happen, the obvious role of the Romans in the trial of Jesus as well as his execution “had to be whitewashed and presented as sympathetically as possible” (Holy Blood, Holy Grail 348). There was absolutely no criticism of Roman oppression, nor any mention of Jewish revolt. The Jews were cast in the role of villains, but this is historically illogical because they (the Sanhedrin) had the right to pass death sentences. They did not need Pontius Pilate. Further, if they had wanted Jesus to be killed, he would have been stoned to death, not crucified. Crucifixion was exclusively used by Rome to execute the enemies of Rome. It was never a Jewish form of capital punishment. If he really was crucified, he did something to provoke Roman wrath, not Jewish wrath.

The three Synoptic Gospels have Jesus being arrested and condemned by the Sanhedrin on the night of the Passover. This could not be real history because the Sanhedrin, by Judaic law, were forbidden to meet over Passover. The Gospels state that the arrest and trial occurred at night, but the Sanhedrin “were forbidden to meet at night, in private houses, or anywhere outside of the precincts of the temple” (Holy Blood, Holy Grail 349).

The story of Barabbas being freed in exchange for Jesus is pure fiction. Two Gospels describe a Roman custom of freeing a prisoner during Passover festival, but no such policy ever existed on the part of the Romans. A Roman procurator, especially someone as ruthless as Pilate, would likewise never consent to the pressure of a mob.

Pontius Pilate, as he is depicted in the Gospels, appears to be a decent person who consents only reluctantly to the crucifixion of Jesus. History paints a different picture of him. He was a procurator of Judea from A.D. 26 o 36, and he was a cruel and corrupt man. Why is there no criticism of him in the Gospels?

Another historical impossibility in the crucifixion story is the removal of the body of Jesus from the cross. According to Roman law at the time, a crucified man/woman was denied burial. The person was left to the elements, birds, and animals, which completed the humiliation of this form of execution.

There is no verification of a significant crucifixion in the writings of historians such as Philo, Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, Epictectus, Cluvius Rufus, Quintus, Curtis Rufus, Josephus, nor the Roman Consul, Publius Petronius. The crucifixion also was unknown to early Christians until as late as the Second Century.

The punishment for robbery was not crucifixion. The New Testament accounts of the crucifixion depict two thieves being crucified along with Jesus. Crucifixion was never the penalty for robbery. On the other hand, the Romans spoke of Zealots as 'Robbers' in order to defame them. Zealots were crucified because of their crimes against the Roman Empire.

“Messiah” is a term that Christians think had specifically been applied to Jesus, but for people living at the time of Jesus, the idea of a divine Messiah “would have been preposterous, if not unthinkable” (Holy Blood, Holy Grail). The Greek word for Messiah is Christos. The term generally referred to a king. For Zealots, the term implied a lost king, someone from the bloodline of David who would liberate them from Roman tyranny. In one Gospel, the lineage of Jesus is traced to David, which is ironic because his father is named as Joseph, which contradicts the myth of the Immaculate Conception in which Jesus is birthed by a deity as well as a mortal woman.

Gospels that do not appear in the New Testament, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, and the Gospel of the Egyptians, were mentioned by the early church fathers, like Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, and Origen. These texts date no later than A.D. 150. What is interesting about them is that they escaped the censorship and revision of the later Roman orthodoxy, and they were written for an Egyptian audience, so they weren’t slanted to the Roman ear. The Gospel of Thomas was unearthed in 1945. This, and other works that were salvaged, are collectively called the “Nag Hammadi” scrolls. In one such scroll, Jesus speaks:

I did not succumb to them as they had planned and I did not die in reality but in appearance, lest I be put to shame by them. . . my death which they think happened. . . their error and blindness.. . . And I was laughing at their ignorance. (Holy Blood, Holy Grail 381).

Fundamentalists believe that the Bible is actual history, and apparently they believe that totally different stories are equally valid. According to Luke, when Jesus was born he was visited by shepherds. According to Matthew he was visited by kings. There are many such contradictions, and the validity of any is questionable, if not utterly fictitious. For instance, Nazareth did not exist during the lifetime of Jesus, but it did exist at the time of the writings which occurred much later.

It wasn’t until A.D. 325, at the Council of Nicea, convened by Roman emperor Constantine, that it was decided, by a vote, that Jesus was to be depicted as a god, not a mortal prophet. A year after this the Council of Nicea, Constantine ordered all works that challenged the official orthodox teaching to be destroyed. In A.D. 331, he commissioned and financed new copies of the Bible. It was at this point that crucial alterations were made, and the new status of Jesus was fabricated. Constantine never converted to Christianity. He was actually baptized when he was on his deathbed, completely unaware.

 
--------------------------------------
Sources include:
 
Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. Holy Blood, Holy Grail. New York: Dell Publishing, 1983

Tony Bushby. The Bible Fraud. Australia: Griffin Press, 2001

Dr. Barbara Thiering. Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: HarperCollins, 1992

THE TRUTH IS THE LIGHT

NOTES FROM “BEYOND SUCCESS AND FAILURE”

AUTHORED BY WILLARD & MARGUERITE BEECHER:

If we wish to achieve any fundamental change in our character, it is quite futile to depend on information, sermons, and lectures as a solution of the problem.

We immediately run into the old stone wall of habit.

And habit never rests!

The mind is filled with misconceptions, which add up to dependency on authority figures.

These misconception must be destroyed. [That is, if one wants to improve.]

It is simply not possible to alter oneself—to go beyond old conditioning—without first destroying the compulsive hold that habit has on us.

There must be a period of unlearning, so that the person can de-condition himself to his old, habitual responses.

[When, with blind faith, you religiously accept what you are taught or told, you become subserviently dependent upon the source of those teachings or dictations. And, you essentially waive the right to think for yourself.

To become a self-reliant thinker, one must continuously improve and trust the potential of his or her own rational thinking. Rational thinking is the starting point towards spiritual self-reliance and spiritual maturity. Here I use the term spiritual to mean thought and/or emotion. –Perman Wilson]

The person who wants to change his habits must first reckon with his present host and pay his bill before he can be free of the debt he has to old conditioning. His job is to empty out the old garbage—not to try to fill in on top of it! The job is much like that of building a modern structure on the site of an old shack. The old encumbrance has to be removed to make way for the new.

When the old mistaken certainties and old dependencies from childhood have been cleared out, then the way opens for new behavior by itself, without any pressure on our part. When the old mistaken certainties and old dependencies from childhood have been cleared out, then the way opens for new behavior by itself, without any pressure on our part. We need only to discover and destroy mistakes and illusions that fog the mind. When we have seen accurately the What Is in a situation, everything turns right-side up by itself, as it ought to be. Nothing has to be learned or practiced. [“The truth is the light.” –Author Unknown]

Is there a way by which we can use our own existing powers to help ourselves? Did nature provide a factor within each of us for his own salvation? It must be so, at least at the psychological level. Two great teachers thought so. When Buddha came upon his own enlightenment, he said, “Be a lamp unto your own feet; do not seek outside yourself.” Jesus was of the same opinion when he said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is not ‘lo here’ nor ‘lo there’; it is within.”

The great sages of all time seem to agree that a man cannot turn to someone else to save himself—that the answer lays within his reach and in his own inner endowments. Each has been given the medicine with which to cure himself. To be self-reliant and spiritually mature, we must develop full trust of our own inherent capacities.

The following quotations by Mark Twain add support to the findings by Willard & Marguerite Beecher:

• Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

• It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

• It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

• Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

• You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS

These first five paragraphs are excerpts from
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia:


The Gospel According to the Hebrews was a work of early Christian literature, already known by the mid 2nd century AD, to which reference is frequently made by the “Church Fathers” during the first five centuries of the Christian era, and of which some twenty or more fragments, have been preserved by quotations in their writings.


The book itself has completely disappeared. All that survives to us from the 'Gospel of the Hebrews' are the quotations, made by Clement, Origen, Jerome, and Cyril of Jerusalem. Jerome took a lively interest in this book, an Aramaic copy of which he found in the famous library at Caesarea in Palestine. More than once he tells us (and with great pride) that he made translations of it into Greek and Latin. These translations, which would have made the Gospel of the Hebrews readily available to the Western church, have also not survived.

It has, however, been the subject of many critical surmises and discussions in the course of the last century. Recent discussions have thrown considerable light upon the problems connected with this Gospel, and a large literature has grown up around it.

The original language of the gospel suggests that it was drawn up for Hebrew and Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians in Palestine and Syria.

The time and place of origin are disputed, but since Clement used it in the last quarter of the 2nd century, it is certainly dated before the middle of that century. Alexandrian Egypt is most often indicated as its place of origin by the fact that its principal witnesses are the Alexandrians Clement and Origen and by the conception of Jesus as the Son of the Holy Spirit, which is documented for Egypt by the Coptic Epistle of James.


The following information on The Gospel of the Hebrews has been extracted from research by Peter Kirby:

Unlike other Jewish-Christian gospels, the Gospel of the Hebrews shows no dependence upon the Gospel of Matthew. The story of the first resurrection appearance to James the Just suggests that the Jewish-Christian community that produced this document claimed James as their founder. It is reasonable to assume that the remainder of the gospel is synoptic in flavor. The Gospel of the Hebrews seems to be independent of the New Testament in the quoted portions; unfortunately, since the gospel is not extant, it is difficult to know whether unquoted portions of the Gospel of the Hebrews might show signs of dependence.

Cameron makes these observations on dating and provenance: "The earliest possible date of the composition of the Gospel of the Hebrews would be in the middle of the first century, when Jesus traditions were first being produced and collected as part of the wisdom tradition. The latest possible date would be in the middle of the second century, shortly before the first reference to this gospel by Hegesippus and the quotations of it by Clement and Origen. Based on the parallels in the morphology of the tradition, an earlier date of composition is more likely than a later one. Internal evidence and external attestation indicate that Egypt was its place of origin."

On Jeremiah, homily xv.4. … 'Even now my mother the Holy Spirit took me and carried me up unto the great mountain Thabor' ….

On Isa. xi.2. (The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him) not partially as in the case of other holy men: but, according to the Gospel written in the Hebrew speech, which the Nazarenes read, 'There shall descend upon him the whole fount of the Holy Spirit'. . . .In the Gospel I mentioned above, I find this written: And it came to pass when the Lord was come up out of the water, the whole fount of the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon him, and said unto him: My son, in all the prophets was I waiting for thee that thou shouldst come, and I might rest in thee. For thou art my rest, and thou art my first begotten son, that reignest for ever.

On Isa. xi. 9, My mother the Holy Spirit.

[Here it appears that the Gospel of the Hebrews asserted that Jesus’ mother was the Holy Spirit and his father was God. In this case, the trinity would be god the father, god the mother, and god the son. --Perman Wilson (P.W.)]

It is written in a certain Gospel which is called according to the Hebrews:

The second of the rich men (it saith) said unto him: Master, what good thing can I do and live? He said unto him: O man, fulfill (do) the law and the prophets.

[Note that this is a distinct contradiction to what Paul taught—that one is saved: by faith, not by doing what the Jewish law requires. --P. W.]

...who preached him everywhere. He fulfilled the appointed time that was decreed for him. The Jews grew envious of him and came to hate him. They changed the custom of their law, and they rose up against him, and laid a trap, and caught him. They turned him over to the governor, who gave him back to them to crucify.

[In this Gospel, it seems to imply that the Jews (rather than the Romans) crucified Jesus. --P. W.]

In Budge's Miscellaneous Coptic Texts is a Discourse on Mary by Cyril of Jerusalem. Cyril (Pseudo-Cyril) relates that he had to send for a monk of Maioma of Gaza who was teaching false doctrine. Called on for an account of his belief the monk (p. 637, Eng. trans.) said:

It is written in the Gospel to the Hebrews that when Christ wished to come upon the earth to men, the good Father called a mighty power in the heavens which was called Michael, and committed Christ to the care thereof. And the power came down into the world and it was called Mary, and Christ was in her womb seven months. Afterwards she gave birth to him, and he increased in stature, and he chose the apostles, . . . 'was crucified, and taken up by the Father'. Cyril asked: Where in the Four Gospels is it said that the holy Virgin Mary the mother of god is a force? The monk said: In the Gospel to the Hebrews.

Then, said Cyril, there are five Gospels? Where is the fifth? The monk said: It is the Gospel that was written to the Hebrews. (Cyril convinced him of his error and burned the books. No more is told of the Gospel, which, whatever it may have been, was certainly not the book we have been dealing with, but a writing of pronouncedly heretical (Docetic?) views.

[Docetism, as defined by The American Heritage College Dictionary, is an opinion that Jesus had no human body and only appeared to have died on the cross. In the previous paragraph, the monk said, "...power came down into the world and it was called Mary, and Christ was in her womb seven months...." he is referring to what was written in the Gospel to the Hebrews. It is apparent from the previous paragraph that the book was burned because the story of Jesus' birth did not agree with the Gospel According to Mark (as did the Gospels According to Matthew and Luke). However, because the writer (or writers) of the Gospel According to Mark is anonymous (meaning: unknown), it may be that the one (or the ones) who wrote Mark were the same one (or ones) who demanded the burning of all other gospels that in any way disagreed with "Mark." --P. W.]

DID A HISTORICAL JESUS EXIST? (PART 5)

GNOSTIC GOSPELS

Gnostic is an adjective that means “of, relating to, or possessing intellectual or spiritual knowledge.”

In 1945, an Arab made an archeological discovery in Upper Egypt of several ancient papyrus books. They have since referred to it Other Gnostic gospels such as the Gospel of Judas, found near the Egyptian site of the Nag Hammadi texts, shows a diverse pattern of story telling, always a mark of myth. The Judas gospel tells of Judas Iscariot as Jesus' most loyal disciple, just opposite that of the canonical gospel stories. Note that the text does not claim that Judas Iscariot wrote it. The Judas gospel, a copy written in Coptic, dates to around the third-to fourth-century. The original Greek version probably dates to between 130 and 170 C.E., around the same tine as the Nag Hammadi texts. Irenaeus first mentions this gospel in Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) written around 180 C.E., so we know that this represented a heretical gospel.

Since these Gnostic texts could only have its unknown authors writing well after the alleged life of Jesus, they cannot serve as historical evidence of Jesus anymore than the canonical versions. Again, we only have "heretical" hearsay.



NON-CANONICAL GOSPELS

In addition to the four Canonical gospels, other texts claiming to record the accounts of Jesus's earthly ministry have survived in part or in whole. Most notable among these is the Gospel of Thomas, which contains additional sayings and teachings. Recently, a Gospel of Judas surfaced, but this text is decidedly a later one, and its claim for any original authority is very slim. These Gospels are considered apocryphal by modern Christianity, and therefore not authoritative texts.

A number of other "gospels" were written sometime between the second to the fourth centuries, most well after the dates when the disciples lived. They include: the Gospel of the Ebionites, Gospel of the Hebrews, Gospel of Marcion, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Thomas, Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Infancy Gospel of James. 

--James. M.R, The Apocryphal New Testament (Clarendon, Oxford, 1924)

DID A HISTORICAL JESUS EXIST? (PART 4)

OTHER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS


Even in antiquity people like Origen and Eusebius raised doubts about the authenticity of other books in the New Testament such as Hebrews, James, John 2 & 3, Peter 2, Jude, and Revelation. Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of James calling it worthless and an "epistle of straw" and questioned Jude, Hebrews and the Apocalypse in Revelation. Nevertheless, all New Testament writings came well after the alleged death of Jesus from unknown authors (with the possible exception of Paul, although still after the alleged death).

Epistles of Paul: Paul's biblical letters (epistles) serve as the oldest surviving Christian texts, written probably around 60 C.E. Most scholars have little reason to doubt that Paul wrote some of them himself. Of the thirteen epistles, bible scholars think he wrote only eight of them, and even here, there occurs interpolations. Not a single instance in any of Paul's writings claims that he ever meets or sees an earthly Jesus, nor does Paul give any reference to Jesus' life on earth (except for a few well known interpolations). Therefore, all accounts about a Jesus could only have come from other believers or his imagination. Hearsay.

Epistle of James: Although the epistle identifies a James as the letter writer, but which James? Many claim him as the gospel disciple but the gospels mention several different James. Which one? Or maybe this James has nothing to do with any of the gospel James. Perhaps this writer comes from any one of innumerable James outside the gospels. James served as a common name in the first centuries and we simply have no way to tell who this James refers to. More to the point, the Epistle of James mentions Jesus only once as an introduction to his belief. Nowhere does the epistle reference a historical Jesus and this alone eliminates it from an historical account.

Epistles of John: The epistles of John, the Gospel of John, and Revelation appear so different in style and content that they could hardly have the same author. Some suggest that these writings of John come from the work of a group of scholars in Asia Minor who followed a "John" or they came from the work of church fathers who aimed to further the interests of the Church. Or they could have simply come from people also named John (a very common name). No one knows. Also note that nowhere in the body of the three epistles of "John" does it mention a John. In any case, the epistles of John say nothing about seeing an earthly Jesus. Not only do we not know who wrote these epistles, they can only serve as hearsay accounts.

Epistles of Peter: Many scholars question the authorship of Peter of the epistles. Even within the first epistle, it says in 5:12 that Silvanus wrote it. Most scholars consider the second epistle as unreliable or an outright forgery (for some examples, see the introduction to 2 Peter in the full edition of The New Jerusalem Bible, 1985, and). In short, no one has any way of determining whether the epistles of Peter come from fraud, an unknown author also named Peter (a common name) or from someone trying to further the aims of the Church.

Of the remaining books and letters in the Bible, there occurs no other stretched claims or eyewitness accounts for a historical Jesus and needs no mention of them here for this deliberation.

As for the existence of original New Testament documents, none exist. No book of the New Testament survives in the original autograph copy. What we have then come from copies, and copies of copies, of questionable originals (if the stories came piecemeal over time, as it appears it has, then there may never have existed an original). The earliest copies we have came more than a century later than the autographs, and these exist on fragments of papyrus. [Pritchard; Graham] According to Hugh Schonfield, "It would be impossible to find any manuscript of the New Testament older than the late third century, and we actually have copies from the fourth and fifth. [Schonfield]

DID A HISTORICAL JESUS EXIST? (PART 3)

THE BIBLE GOSPELS


The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century.

Many heretical gospels existed by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer]

Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them." [Pagels, 1995]

Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels existed during the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly Jesus.

Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies.

The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark..." [Pagels, 1995]

The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names.

Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occurred at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110.

The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least a generation before Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower.

Whoever wrote the gospel, he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without question and wrote a crude an ungrammatical account of the popular story at the time.

Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for both of them. Of Mark's 666 verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third remove from Jesus and more likely at the fourth remove. [Helms]

Most Bibles show 678 verses for Mark, not 666, but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses came later from interpolation. The earliest manuscripts and other ancient sources do not have Mark 16: 19-20. Moreover the text style does not match and the transition between verse 8 and 9 appears awkward. Even some of today’s Bibles such as NIV exclude the last 12 verses.

The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information from Mark's gospel and used them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative to appeal to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel, corrected what he felt theologically important, and heightened the miracles and magic.

The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a Hellenized Jew. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke came from the Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle, which means "source"). [Helms; Wilson]. However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Again we get faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources.

John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. The Gospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover the unknown author(s) of this gospel wrote it in Greek near the end of the first century, and according to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong]

Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories.

Moreover, all New Testament writings came well after the alleged death of Jesus from unknown authors (with the possible exception of Paul, although still after the alleged death).

Paul's biblical letters (epistles) serve as the oldest surviving Christian texts, written probably around 60 C.E. Most scholars have little reason to doubt that Paul wrote some of them himself. Of the thirteen epistles, bible scholars think he wrote only eight of them, and even here, there occurs interpolations. Not a single instance in any of Paul's writings claims that he ever meets or sees an earthly Jesus, nor does Paul give any reference to Jesus' life on earth (except for a few well known interpolations). Therefore, all accounts about a Jesus could only have come from other believers (again, hearsay) or Paul’s imagination.

DID A HISTORICAL JESUS EXIST? (PART 2)

In 1994, Newton Leroy “Newt” Gingrich co-authored a Republican script called “Contract with America.” As a result of this strategy, the Republicans took control of the U.S. Congress by having each one of it’s members repeat the same “talking points.” In other words, each member essentially repeated the same script.


Being a historian and a writer of historical fiction, Newt probably learned that if enough people repeat the same thing enough times, then most people will eventually believe it.

In essence, the early leaders of the Christian Church (called “Church Fathers”) did the same thing. They wrote historical fiction and demanded that each one of its members profess the same script. They, however, had a greater advantage in that anyone who spoke against their doctrine could be labeled a “heretic” and killed.

                                               ---Perman Wilson



Following is a continuation of some of the research done by Jim Walker, presented in his book: Did Historical Jesus Exist?

LYING FOR THE CHURCH


The editing and formation of the Bible came from members of the early Christian Church.

Since the fathers of the Church possessed the scriptoria and determined what would appear in the Bible, there occurred plenty of opportunity and motive to change, modify, or create texts that might bolster the position of the Church or the members of the Church themselves.

The orthodox Church also fought against competing Christian cults. Irenaeus, who determined the inclusion of the four (now canonical) gospels, wrote his infamous book, "Against the Heresies." According to Romer, "Irenaeus' great book not only became the yardstick of major heresies and their refutations, the starting-point of later inquisitions, but simply by saying what Christianity was not it also, in a curious inverted way, became a definition of the orthodox faith." [Romer] If a Jesus did exist, perhaps eyewitness writings got burnt along with them because of their heretical nature. We will never know.

In attempting to salvage the Bible the respected revisionist and scholar, Bruce Metzger has written extensively on the problems of the New Testament. In his book, "The Text of the New Testament-- Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, Metzger addresses: Errors arising from faulty eyesight; Errors arising from faulty hearing; Errors of the mind; Errors of judgment; Clearing up historical and geographical difficulties; and Alterations made because of doctrinal considerations. [Metzger]

The Church had such power over people, that to question the Church could result in death. Regardless of what the Church claimed, most people simply believed what their priests told them.

In letter LII To Nepotian, Jerome writes about his teacher, Gregory of Nazianzus when he asked him to explain a phrase in Luke, Nazianzus evaded his request by saying “I will tell you about it in church, and there, when all the people applaud me, you will be forced against your will to know what you do not know at all. For, if you alone remain silent, every one will put you down for a fool." Jerome responds with, "There is nothing so easy as by sheer volubility to deceive a common crowd or an uneducated congregation."

In the 5th century, John Chrysostom in his "Treatise on the Priesthood, Book 1," wrote, "And often it is necessary to deceive, and to do the greatest benefits by means of this device, whereas he who has gone by a straight course has done great mischief to the person whom he has not deceived."

Ignatius Loyola of the 16th century wrote in his Spiritual Exercises: "To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it"

Martin Luther opined: "What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church … a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them."

With such admission to accepting lies, the burning of heretical texts, Bible errors and alterations, how could any honest scholar take any book from the New Testament as absolute, much less using extraneous texts that support a Church's intransigent and biased position, as reliable evidence?

DID A HISTORICAL JESUS EXIST? (PART 1)

The information in this posting is from the research and presentation of "Did a Historical Jesus Exist?" by Jim Walker. It is a scholarly approach to the question as to whether any reliable historical or archaeological information exists that will confirm a historical figure named Jesus.

"Amazingly, the question of an actual historical Jesus rarely confronts the religious believer. The power of faith has so forcefully driven the minds of most believers, and even apologetic scholars, that the question of reliable evidence gets obscured by tradition, religious subterfuge, and outrageous claims. The following gives a brief outlook about the claims of a historical Jesus and why the evidence the Christians present us cannot serve as justification for reliable evidence for a historical Jesus."


ALL CLAIMS OF JESUS DERIVE FROM HEARSAY ACCOUNTS

No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus. All documents about Jesus came well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, I will use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come from interpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply because all sources about Jesus derive from hearsay accounts.

[An interpolation is a passage inserted into a text by some later writer, usually without the authority of the original author; or the act of introducing such additional material.]

Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' own knowledge.

Courts of law do not generally allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest modern scholarship. Hearsay provides no proof or good evidence, and therefore, we should dismiss it.

If you do not understand this, imagine yourself confronted with a charge for a crime which you know you did not commit. You feel confident that no one can prove guilt because you know that there exists no evidence whatsoever for the charge against you. Now imagine that you stand present in a court of law that allows hearsay as evidence. When the prosecution presents its case, everyone who takes the stand against you claims that you committed the crime, not as a witness themselves, but solely because they claim other people said so. None of these other people, mind you, ever show up in court, nor can anyone find them.

Hearsay does not work as evidence because we have no way of knowing whether the person lied, or simply based his or her information on wrongful belief or bias.

We know from history about witchcraft trials and kangaroo courts that hearsay provides neither reliable nor fair statements of evidence. We know that mythology can arise out of no good information whatsoever. We live in a world where many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts, monsters and an innumerable number of fantasies believed as fact taken from nothing but belief and hearsay. It derives from these reasons why hearsay cannot serves as good evidence, and the same reasoning must go against the claims of a historical Jesus or any other historical person.

Authors of ancient history today, of course, can only write from indirect observation in a time far removed from their aim. But a valid historian's own writing gets cited with sources that trace to the subject themselves, or to eyewitnesses and artifacts.

For example, a historian today who writes about the life of George Washington, of course, can not serve as an eyewitness, but he can provide citations to documents which give personal or eyewitness accounts.

None of the historians about Jesus give reliable sources to eyewitnesses, therefore all we have remains as hearsay.

THE BLISS OF IGNORANCE

It has come to my attention that some people want to not know the truth about some of their beliefs.

This reminds me of something that my former high school teacher, John Thomas, said: “Ignorance is bliss.”

Even though I never forgot what he said, for years I couldn’t seem to whole-heartedly agree with it.

Now, I know why not. It is because (like a drug that makes a person happy) ignorance (although it may cause happiness) has some dreadful side-effects.

In some ways, ignorance is like a drug that makes a person happy but has harmful side effects.

Most people are aware that some drugs have harmful side effects, but they are not quite aware that many drugs (even some that are prescribed by doctors) do not cure an illness—they simply relieve the symptoms. And, even though a doctor may simply prescribe medicine, the patient would be better served by letting him or her know what may have caused the illness and how to prevent it.

In other words, many prescriptions may just cause you to become ignorant of the symptoms, while simultaneously causing you to become permanently dependant upon the drug for relief.

If, on the other hand, you knew what the cause and prevention were, then you could eventually be rid of the problem altogether.

I agree with John Thomas—to a point, but I do not think that ignorance is the best way to solve real problems.

However, I understand why some people feel as though they are perfectly happy with what they know that just isn’t so, and want desperately to remain ignorant of the truth—regardless of the side effects. In most cases, if not all, it is because they themselves are totally unaware of the harmful side effects caused by or exacerbated by their ignorance.

In The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) the following could have been included:

Blessed are the ignorant for although they may be unhealthy and mentally enslaved, they will still be happy.

DID THE EXODUS REALLY HAPPEN?

Notwithstanding the bible, there is no evidence that the Exodus as written in the Bible ever happened.

It couldn’t have happened during the time stated in the bible.

The following information was extracted from a presentation by AfricansArise.


WHEN DID THE EXODUS HAPPEN?

According to 1 Kings 6:1, the Exodus occurred about 480 years before Solomon started work on the first Temple in Jerusalem.

Using the Bible and other sources from Egypt and Assyria, this would place the Exodus at around 1440 BCE.

But there are problems with this chronology.

Exodus 1:11 says that the Pharaoh made the Israelites build a store city called Rameses.

The Egyptians called it Pi Rameses—“House of Rameses”—and it was built by Rameses II (“the Great”). Rameses II reigned from 1279 to 1213 BCE.

Therefore, if the Israelites built this city, they could not have left Egypt before 1279 BCE—over 150 years later than claimed by 1 Kings 6:1.

So the first problem with the Exodus story is that the biblical dates do not match up with the historical and archaeological facts.


IS THERE ANY RECORDS IN EGYPT ABOUT THE EXODUS?

Let’s move on to the actual events that allegedly took place during the Exodus.

The Bible speaks of 10 plagues in Egypt including the death of every single firstborn son in one night.

By any standards, this would be a colossal loss of life. Then, well over a million Israelites left Egypt (“600,000 men—not counting women and children”) on the same night.

The estimated population of Egypt at that time was about 5 million people. The sudden loss of a fifth of the population would have been noteworthy. Since the Egyptians kept extensive records, it seems quite strange that not a word is mentioned about this massive event.

The Bible then says that Moses parted the Red Sea with his staff and led this massive group through it on foot. The pharaoh pursued them but he and his army were drowned in the Red Sea (Exodus 14:27, Psalm 136:15).

These events were large-scale, spectacular and miraculous. They also all took place in the world superpower of the day, Egypt. So if they really happened, there should be an abundance of historical and archaeological evidence. But, we have no clue, not even a word about early Israelites in Egypt. Neither in monumental inscriptions, on walls of temples, nor in papyri are any of these events mentioned. Moses, Aaron, the plagues, and the defeat of the Egyptian army at the sea are completely absent from the extensive documentation we have for ancient Egypt.

So, if these events really happened, they passed by without even a single comment from anybody in Egypt!


DID THEY LIVE IN THE SINAI DESERT FOR FORTY YEARS?
What about the 40 years in which more than a million Israelites camped in the Sinai desert? (Numbers 14:33)

Except for the Egyptian forts along the northern coast, not a single campsite or sign of occupation from the time of Ramses II and his immediate predecessors and successors has ever been identified in Sinai. And it has not been for lack of trying. Repeated archaeological surveys in all regions of the peninsula have yielded only negative evidence: not even a single sherd, no structure, not a single house, no trace of an ancient encampment.

So, no evidence has been found for the forty years’ wondering either.


WHAT ABOUT THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN?

At the time the Israelites allegedly conquered Canaan, Canaan was a tightly controlled colony of Egypt with colonial forts and garrisons stationed at strategic points around the country. It would make no sense to escape out of Egypt and then go into a country that was itself an Egyptian colony. It is highly unlikely that the Egyptian garrisons throughout the country would have remained on the sidelines as a group of refugees (from Egypt) wreaked havoc throughout the province of Canaan. And it is inconceivable that the destruction of so many loyal vassal states by the invaders would have left absolutely no trace in the extensive records of the Egyptian empire.


DID THE WALLS OF JERICHO COME TUMBLING DOWN?

There were no walls! Excavations show that at that time, Jericho was small and unwalled, and other ‘conquered’ towns such as Ai and Arad were not even inhabited. Plus, historical texts show that in reality, these Canaanite provinces were weak and insignificant and depended on Egypt for security.


IN SUMMARY, as far as I can see, there is no hard evidence to support the biblical story of the Exodus. The most reasonable and logical conclusion to draw from this is that the Exodus just didn’t happen (at least the way described in the Bible).

DID MOSES WRITE THE PENTATEUCH?

Most Christians have been taught in Sunday school that Moses wrote the first five books of the bible. These books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, are often referred to as the Pentateuch or Torah. However, outside of the more conservative seminaries and churches, it is commonly held that Moses did not write these books, that they are a compilation of works by numerous writers over an extended period of time.

The time of Moses was established from the biblical stories to be approximately 1400 B.C. However, it has been estimated by biblical scholars that the earliest writings of the Pentateuch were written about 950 B.C. Even if Moses existed, he couldn’t have written anything in the bible. And, even though we do not know who actually wrote the Pentateuch, anyone who wrote it couldn’t have been an eye-witness about anything in it. Therefore, since the Hebrews were writing about someone who allegedly lived 4 centuries earlier, it stands to reason that much of what is said about an heroic figure would be exaggerated to mythical proportions even if the person actually lived. However, Moses is just as fictional as Noah, Abraham, and Adam.

So, if Moses did not write the Pentateuch, then who did? It is the case that the authors are unknown. However, biblical scholars have theoretically determined that the Pentateuch was comprised from four sources. Religious studies courses at most universities teach that the Pentateuch is a composite work consisting of four literary strands. The four strands have been assigned the letters J, E, D, and P; each representing a different document or source that was woven into the fabric of the Bible. This set of assumptions has gone by a number of names including the documentary theory and the Graf-Wellhausen theory. According to this view, the letter "J" stands for the Yahwist ("J" from the German Jahweh) narrative, coming from the period of the early Jewish monarchy, about 950 B.C. "E" stands for the Elohist narrative from the region of the Northern Kingdom dating from about 750 B.C. "D" is best represented by the book of Deuteronomy and is said to have originated in the Southern Kingdom about 650 B.C. or later. And finally, "P" is the priestly document that comes from the period after the fall of Israel in 587 B.C. According to the theory, the Pentateuch reached its current form around the time of Ezra or about 400 B.C.

Why is the issue of Mosaic authority an important one? Those who accept the documentary or Graf-Wellhausen theory argue that the content of these books should be seen as a mixture of credible historical events and religious poetry sparked by man's religious imagination. For example, regarding Moses and God on Mount Sinai, one author of an Old Testament survey writes that, "It would be foolish, for instance, to rationalize the burning bush, as though this vision were something that could have been seen with the objective eye of a camera." Holders of this view reject the notion of supernatural revelation and regard much of the Pentateuch as folklore and Hebrew storytelling.

On the other hand, the conservative view holds to Mosaic authorship and treats the books as a literary unit. This does not mean that Moses didn't use other documents to write his books. He obviously did. But since other Old Testament authors affirm Mosaic authorship, as do numerous New Testament writers and the early church fathers, the veracity of the Bible as a whole begins to crumble if Moses is not the author of the Pentateuch.

In this article we will take a closer look at the source of the documentary theory regarding Mosaic authorship and offer a response that argues for the integrity of the Bible.

For almost two thousand years Christians accepted Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Bible. That's not to say that some didn't acknowledge problems with the text. Many had noted what seemed to be two separate creation stories in Genesis, as well as the problem of Moses recording his own death in Deuteronomy 34.

In 1753, a French physician named Jean Astruc began the modern study of source or literary analysis by writing a commentary on the book of Genesis. He noted that the first chapter of Genesis refers to God as Elohim, while the second chapter uses mostly Jehovah or Yahweh. Astruc believed that Moses must have used two different sources in writing Genesis, each having different names for God, and that the Elohim source was the older. This established the first principle of what would become known as the documentary hypothesis, the assumption that different divine names must mean different authors or sources. In 1780 Johann Eichhorn took this theory and ran with it. He applied the idea of two sources to the rest of Genesis, Exodus, and finally to most of the Pentateuch. He eventually gave up on the view of Mosaic authorship as well.

The next step came in 1805, when Wilhem De Wette argued that none of the Pentateuch was written before David. He established the "D" document standing for Deuteronomy, which he believed was written as propaganda to support political and religious unification in Jerusalem during the reign of king Josiah around 621 B.C. We now have three source documents: J, E, and D. Although others in the late 1700's and early 1800's found as many as thirty-nine fragments in Genesis alone, the final, "P" or Priestly document of the current theory was added by Hermann Hupfeld in 1853. He believed that the E source should be split in two, the later becoming the new P document.

The name most associated with the documentary hypothesis is Julius Wellhausen. His publications in the late 1870's didn't add much new information to the theory, but rather argued for it from a Darwinistic perspective. Wellhausen claimed that the J, E, D, P sequence followed the development from primitive animism towards the more sophisticated monotheism as the Hebrew culture and religion evolved. Within its pages, at least in the story of Abraham and Isaac, the Hebrews also moved from human sacrificing to animal sacrificing.

NO DEGRADATION OF THE BIBLE

Following is a message that I sent to a dear friend who mistakingly thought that one (or more) of my research papers degraded the bible. I have posted this message so that no one else will get such a false impression about either my intentions or any of my presentations:


Because you have at times been an inspiration to me, I have admired you. I have also sincerely cared for you. And, because I profoundly appreciate many things written in the bible, I have been deeply saddened by your assertion that one (or more) of my research presentations degraded the bible.

My first response to those words was surprise because I was unaware that I had sent you any message that graded or evaluated the bible.

And, since you did not say specifically what you read that you thought degraded the bible, I couldn’t even re-read it in order to ascertain whether it did in fact do that.

But, after two days of deliberation, I have overturned your conviction because it was based upon your subjective experience and not upon the facts.

However, just be sure that I didn’t accidentally do what you said I did, I reread the e-mail to which you responded: The Bible and Magic from Mangasarian’s book, The Bible Unveiled. But this email only focused on one aspect of the bible—the magic in it. Of course it did say that magic is dishonest science, but who can disagree with that?

Mangasarian used Voltaire’s definition of magic. He wrote, “A magician is … a man who pretends to possess the secret of doing what nature can not do.” I think that’s a fair definition of a magician.

And, given his definition of magic, who can deny that the bible has much magic in it?


According to this definition, anyone who claims to walk on water, calm the sea, raise someone from the dead, or turn water to wine is a magician. It has been written in the bible that Jesus did such things.

However, that excerpt from Mangasarian’s book was more a criticism of magic and the dishonest use of it in the bible than an evaluation of the entire bible.

I must admit, nonetheless, that he did assert that there are better books for science than the false science in the bible. But anyone who would disagree with that assertion is either ignorant of the bible, ignorant of science, or ignorant of both science and the bible.

Please don’t misunderstand; I am not saying that anyone who believes in the magic in the bible is ignorant. I am aware that one can be intelligent about some things and ignorant about other things. I also believe what Socrates allegedly said, “We are all ignorant, only about different things.”

And, I am aware that some of us choose to ignore (or be ignorant about) some things.

I am also aware of self-hypnosis and self-deception.

Nonetheless, because some people “can’t handle the truth” about some things, I am aware of the benefits of selective ignorance, self-hypnosis, and self-deception.

Finally, it is also true that some people don’t aspire to achieve or learn much more than they already know, and may be quite satisfied (and even happy) with what they think they know that just isn’t so.

Nevertheless, it is neither my intent nor my right to judge anyone in regards to these means coping with reality and of being happy. But, I think it only fair of me to express my intent in regards to the research that I have shared wtith you in regards to the bible—especially since you perceived at least one of them as to have degraded the bible. In the following paragraph I will attempt to explain my intentions in the fewest of words.

I believe that through understanding the origins of religion people can be freed from its bonds to think for themselves and take responsibility for their own judgments.

Finally, I admit that religion has virtually saved the lives of many people; on the other hand, religion has also destroyed the lives of many other people. In any event, however, irrational beliefs in religions have impeded the scientific growth and technological development of the people mentally enslaved by them—regardless of whether such people have been enslaved voluntarily or have just been fooled into uncritically believing such nonsense.

If you dare to listen to an objective view of religion presented in a comedic fashion on video, click on the following link, but let me warn you, if you want to be ignorant about religion, then don't watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o

If clicking on it doesn't work, then copy and paste it in your address bar.

DID MOSES WRITE THE PENTATEUCH?

Most Christians have been taught in Sunday school that Moses wrote the first five books of the bible. These books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, are often referred to as the Pentateuch or Torah. However, outside of the more conservative seminaries and churches, it is commonly held that Moses did not write these books, that they are a compilation of works by numerous writers over an extended period of time.

The time of Moses was established from the biblical stories to be approximately 1400 B.C. However, it has been estimated by biblical scholars that the earliest writings of the Pentateuch were written about 950 B.C. Even if Moses existed, he couldn’t have written anything in the bible. And, even though we do not know who actually wrote the Pentateuch, anyone who wrote it couldn’t have been an eye-witness about anything in it. Therefore, since the Hebrews were writing about someone who allegedly lived 4 centuries earlier, it stands to reason that much of what is said about an heroic figure would be exaggerated to mythical proportions even if the person actually lived. However, Moses may be just as fictional as Noah, Abraham, and Adam.

So, if Moses did not write the Pentateuch, then who did? It is the case that the authors are unknown. However, biblical scholars have theoretically determined that the Pentateuch was comprised from four sources. Religious studies courses at most universities teach that the Pentateuch is a composite work consisting of four literary strands. The four strands have been assigned the letters J, E, D, and P; each representing a different document or source that was woven into the fabric of the Bible. This set of assumptions has gone by a number of names including the documentary theory and the Graf-Wellhausen theory. According to this view, the letter "J" stands for the Yahwist ("J" from the German Jahweh) narrative, coming from the period of the early Jewish monarchy, about 950 B.C. "E" stands for the Elohist narrative from the region of the Northern Kingdom dating from about 750 B.C. "D" is best represented by the book of Deuteronomy and is said to have originated in the Southern Kingdom about 650 B.C. or later. And finally, "P" is the priestly document that comes from the period after the fall of Israel in 587 B.C. According to the theory, the Pentateuch reached its current form around the time of Ezra or about 400 B.C.

Why is the issue of Mosaic authority an important one? Those who accept the documentary or Graf-Wellhausen theory argue that the content of these books should be seen as a mixture of credible historical events and religious poetry sparked by man's religious imagination. For example, regarding Moses and God on Mount Sinai, one author of an Old Testament survey writes that, "It would be foolish, for instance, to rationalize the burning bush, as though this vision were something that could have been seen with the objective eye of a camera." Holders of this view reject the notion of supernatural revelation and regard much of the Pentateuch as folklore and Hebrew storytelling.

On the other hand, the conservative view holds to Mosaic authorship and treats the books as a literary unit. This does not mean that Moses didn't use other documents to write his books. He obviously did. But since other Old Testament authors affirm Mosaic authorship, as do numerous New Testament writers and the early church fathers, the veracity of the Bible as a whole begins to crumble if Moses is not the author of the Pentateuch.

In this article we will take a closer look at the source of the documentary theory regarding Mosaic authorship and offer a response that argues for the integrity of the Bible.

For almost two thousand years Christians accepted Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Bible. That's not to say that some didn't acknowledge problems with the text. Many had noted what seemed to be two separate creation stories in Genesis, as well as the problem of Moses recording his own death in Deuteronomy 34.

In 1753, a French physician named Jean Astruc began the modern study of source or literary analysis by writing a commentary on the book of Genesis. He noted that the first chapter of Genesis refers to God as Elohim, while the second chapter uses mostly Jehovah or Yahweh. Astruc believed that Moses must have used two different sources in writing Genesis, each having different names for God, and that the Elohim source was the older. This established the first principle of what would become known as the documentary hypothesis, the assumption that different divine names must mean different authors or sources. In 1780 Johann Eichhorn took this theory and ran with it. He applied the idea of two sources to the rest of Genesis, Exodus, and finally to most of the Pentateuch. He eventually gave up on the view of Mosaic authorship as well.

The next step came in 1805, when Wilhem De Wette argued that none of the Pentateuch was written before David. He established the "D" document standing for Deuteronomy, which he believed was written as propaganda to support political and religious unification in Jerusalem during the reign of king Josiah around 621 B.C. We now have three source documents: J, E, and D. Although others in the late 1700's and early 1800's found as many as thirty-nine fragments in Genesis alone, the final, "P" or Priestly document of the current theory was added by Hermann Hupfeld in 1853. He believed that the E source should be split in two, the later becoming the new P document.

The name most associated with the documentary hypothesis is Julius Wellhausen. His publications in the late 1870's didn't add much new information to the theory, but rather argued for it from a Darwinistic perspective. Wellhausen claimed that the J, E, D, P sequence followed the development from primitive animism towards the more sophisticated monotheism as the Hebrew culture and religion evolved. Within its pages, at least in the story of Abraham and Isaac, the Hebrews also moved from human sacrificing to animal sacrificing as they became more humane.