CelticBear’s Musings

I’m coming to the end of tirades against superstitious religious beliefs. If you notice, there were weeks not long ago I didn’t say anything–and there were many opportunities to do so: Jerry Falwell’s death, the Creation Museum opening, the stoning of a girl in the Middle East just like the Jews were commanded to do 3000 years ago (wait, I think I did talk about that one.) In any case, it’s getting to become a non-issue for me (until the next religious murder comes about, I suppose.)

But I do feel compelled to blog an update to the Jesus-as-fiction topic. Mainly because of a recent discovery of the term “midrash”. I’d mentioned before that the first (canonized) gospel, Mark, from which the other three (canonized) gospels are based, have all the hallmarks of storytelling, a fiction, and not someone trying to impart history. This is something that many Biblical scholars, including one of the members of the Jesus Seminar, Robert M. Price, have concluded. I wrote about this in my entry:
<> Did Jesus Exist?
But if this word, midrash, was used in my studying the topic, which surely is must have been!, I missed it until recently.

I found it in this article: The ‘Gospels’ are ‘Midrash’.
Midrash is: “Any of a group of Jewish commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures compiled between A.D. 400 and 1200 and based on exegesis, parable, and haggadic legend.” (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition).
Or, more precise:

Some Midrash discussions are highly metaphorical, and many Jewish authors stress that they are not intended to be taken literally. Rather, other midrashic sources may sometimes serve as a key to particularly esoteric discussions. Later authors maintain that this was done to make this material less accessible to the casual reader and prevent its abuse by detractors.
-Wikipedia

The purpose of midrash was to teach about the Mosaic Law in the form of parable, or story. A Judaic form of fiction, even entertainment, that is based on religious teaching. Why are the gospels likely this kind of fiction? There’s the similarity Mark has with other midrashic stories in form and function, but also, because the evidence for the actual existence of Jesus as a historical figure is completely lacking when, if the gospels are true, there should be as much contemporary evidence for Jesus as there is for Julius Caesar. yet, there’s not one iota.

I started a couple of years ago with this article: “Did Jesus Exist.” In it the author discusses various contemporary historians who lived at the time of Jesus who make no mention of Christ or his followers.
Then I heard interviews with Robert M. Price and his discussions of various “pagan” mythical figures that predate Jesus and contain the same elements of his story, from virgin birth and visitation by kings (elements, which by the way, don’t exist in Mark,) to crucifixion and resurrection to save the world! I discuss these figures like Dionysus, Horus, Mithras, in the articles: “Jesus in ancient Greece and Egypt?” and “Jesus-Come-Lately; God, the Sower of Confusion“. But the best accumulated information of the absurdly blatant non-existent evidence for Jesus when, according to the gospels it should be rampant, is this Web page:

<> A Silence That Screams- (No contemporary historical accounts for “jesus)

It is a very detailed account of the events in the Bible which would demand notice (crowds and crowds of followers, so many Jesus has to stand in a lake, has to feed multitudes, crowds line his path with palm leaves, miracles are performed and word of his coming passes from town to town, people healed and risen from the dead, people have to be lowered down to him from temple roofs, the heads of the Jewish people summon him, the king of Judea for goodness’ sake has audience with this great religious prophet and leader, the Roman governor sees him twice and has him executed in place of a murderer (these last three, Herod, Pilate, and the Pharisees, were heavily recorded by contemporary historians,) earthquakes occurred and the sun goes dark and dead people rise from the dead–all of this in the gospels and NONE of it is recorded by contemporary historians. Not one jot.

Now, we know absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You can’t prove someone didn’t exist. But what does Occam’s Razor seem to indicate here? You have a book, a collection of religious stories written by people with an agenda to spread a religious faith, about a man who by all accounts was ridiculously famous and dangerous, and caused a great many events both natural and supernatural to occur. Yet, his birth, life, death, and resurrection all mirror existing myth from Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Sumeria.
On the other hand, there is no record from any of the historians of the time of any of these events.
What can one safely assume?

The religious response would (and generally is) something like this:
The Devil arranged to have those similar myths exist centuries before Jesus’ appearance in order to sow confusion and doubt.
The Devil blinded all the historians to the truth going on around them in order to sow confusion and doubt.

Here’s my response: Wow, what a powerful and awesome character the devil must be! Must be much more powerful than God. After all, God is supposed to be a loving, just, merciful father in heaven who WANTED us to know Jesus, right? He so loved the world that he sent him here to be killed for us (why exactly? How does that work? Sorry–tangent…) and wanted the message to be spread all over the world so everyone would be saved! But if the devil can sow so much confusion and doubt in God’s creation, the devil MUST be more powerful than God!
Or else, God really doesn’t care.
Which is it??

Instead of some debate regarding which ancient, supernatural character is more powerful or involved in the world, characters that suspiciously only exist in one particular religious faith that came out of one particular piece of land on this Earth–isn’t it more reasonable that it’s all myth? Just as Pele, Odin, Horus, Zeus, Athena, Thor, The Great Spirit, Vishnu, Bahmet, Baal, The Coyote, Jupiter, Mithras, are all myths?

As John Loftus has said in: “What would convince me Christianity is true?” and other articles, a loving and involved God chose a VERY poor, if not the worst possible method to get his message of love and salvation out–a historical document (viz a vis, the Bible.) A book written by ancient people in very primitive and superstitious times. God, in his infinite wisdom, chose a book written in a time in which disease was thought to be caused by supernatural agents and the sun revolved around the Earth, to be the agent of his word? Seriously?

For the believer, it all comes down to a willful hold on what they would call faith. Faith is the belief of something unseen, and I support faith. I have faith. But the belief in something patently absurd is delusion. For the Christian, you’re asked to believe in:

• The validity of a book that on the one hand professes great love and forgiveness while at the same time commanding killing your family for lack of belief, killing your children if they’re disobedient, killing the victim of rape in a town, advocates slavery and selling daughters (including to their rapist.)
• The validity of a book that claims the Earth was created several thousand years ago, despite the fact human civilization (not even talking about prehistoric animals here, but actual humans,) existed for tens of thousands of years. And the entire world was repopulated by a boat holding everything from the Australian koala to the American coyote despite absolutely no evidence for it (not tomention its just plain biological/mathematical/physical impossibility.)
• That we’re to be blamed and punished for a) the sin of Adam, or b) being created the way we are by God, with the desires and drives and cravings God created in us, and put in a world God created. That we’re doomed to hell by default by a loving and just God, for being the humans he created in the first place given the capability and motives to commit “sin” which he put in us.
• That the only way to avoid hell is believe in a book–because that’s the ONLY way you’ll find out about Yahweh, Jesus, sin, and salvation. Because God decided a book was the best way to show his just and forgiving love, as there’s no way you can learn about these things without coming in contact with a book that didn’t exist before 2000 years ago, in a small patch of dirt, and spread slowly around the world by the hands of men.

The liberal Christian would say, in contradiction to the Bible in both word and spirit, the Bible is right only in places, is poetry in others, is not the only way to God, etc. That’s all rationalizing, to hold onto a belief they were raised into by the luck of the time and place of their birth. The only reason Christianity is the predominate religion of America is by the very human dynamic of it being the last official religion of the Roman Empire as it spread its beliefs across Europe at the point of a spear. Again, the preferred means of spreading the ONLY word of love and forgiveness by an all-powerful god?!

If the Bible truly is valid in only places, who picks and choses? The advocating slavery and genocide and racism, and killing family members–OK, we’ve learned that’s immoral (in spite of what the absolute source of morality says,) so, what other parts are wrong? The sexism and relegating women to property? The homosexuality? The miracles? The Jesus story? If the book is party right and wrong, who knows; if it’s a book about a Sumerian turned Hebrew god(s); and a “son” who has no evidence of even existing; and is spread not through supernatural love for the world but by the hand (and sometimes fist) of humans–why have faith in its “rightness”? Why?!

It makes no sense to me. There is so much more to have faith in, to have belief in, than a Bronze Age myth from a superstitious time, which has no more validity to it than the religious beliefs of the Aztecs nor the Australian Aboriginals. Faith and belief in the human spirit. In our natural goodness and abilities. In our advances and our curiosity, and the discoveries they reveal! The progress they lead to. In love and empathy we’re capable of. When one spends so much time trying to live for an imaginary friend, study the words of an ancient and barbaric people, you miss out on living for reality. Reality is so much more interesting than schizophrenic book about a psychotic god.