The Codex of Life and Death and Everything
Part 1 - Origin and History
The Bible, in all its versions, has become the be-all and end-all of Christianity, and thereby of course also of all the mutations thereof… Every single one of them has its own way of interpreting the Holy Scriptures, and surprise surprise… each claims their versions is the only one that matters. It is after all the Word of God, right? The Codex of Life and Death and everything in between… Heaven and Hell… Black and White… The big Either/Or…
The purpose of this class is not to try and convert anybody to some arrogant version of atheism; rather I hope to inspire you to develop your own personal belief system and customize your faith instead of subscribing to doctrines that were once designed for totally different reasons and applications.
Hell… Who are we kidding? I am just here to tell you the goddamn truth about the Bible and everything that comes with it. I’m subtle like that…
So what do we know about the Bible?
Well, the very basic idea of the Bible to most Christians is that it is a “spiritual document from an historical point of view”.
I say it’s definitely the other way around… It’s an “historical document from a spiritual point of view” instead.
So?
Does it really matter? We shall see…
There are reasons the Bible came together the way it did and they are not pretty… Ready to get disillusioned?
Politics politics politics…
The Christian Bible (Old Testament and New Testament, with the life of Christ as the divider between the two) was put together and established as The Book to end all books by clever Roman Emperors in the first trembling centuries AD (after Christ). There was no “Bible” as we know it prior to this, only various loose collections of random scriptures held together by different local traditions rather than decree.
Why did the Romans do this? Didn’t they worship the sun and the moon? Were they infused with the Holy Spirit in the midst of sleep one night and had to preach their sudden epiphany to the world out of the goodness of their hearts?
No, of course not…
The fourth century AD proved to be a rather tricky one for the once so mighty and powerful Romans. After the age of the great warfaring Caesars, political powerplays were hollowing out the Empire from the inside. At the same time the borders of Rome had expanded too far north to be efficiently governable, and keeping those colonies in check by force was exhausting the treasuries. The Empire finally split down the middle into Eastern and Western parts, and the grip on the colonies started to have the morning shakes.
A new master plan was needed to preserve some of the dwindling power the Romans still held over an unruly pagan Europe.
Well, if you can’t beat them, join them…
Or at least pretend to join them…
Enter the Great Idea: Religion is always the absolute best way to get inside people’s minds to rule them unconditionally, and Jesus Christ was in style after his unfortunate demise at the hand of Rome a few hundred years earlier. The golden opportunity was ripe for the taking...
The Romans needed to create a religion based on this that undeniably kept Rome in charge under the alluring illusion of each little country, or colony, being its own autonomic province. The Pope/Bishop system was already rather loosely in effect at this time, but it was taken to the next political level as a strict power-structure was drawn up that rested heavier on political say-so, than on any actual religious beliefs. This was then incorporated into the new “strongly encouraged” Christianity to make sure the ultimate power was still wielded from the high seat in Rome.
Special councils, Roman Power Workgroups if you will, consisting of religious scholars and smart politicians, were put together to establish the exact whats and hows of this new Roman Christian State Religion, named “Katholikos” - taken from the Greek word for “universal”.
The Council of Nicea, in the year 325AD, is the one that went down in history as the deciding gathering of bishops and scholars. Here Emperor Constantine “persuaded” all warring factions within the Christian faith to come together and “agree” on how a Bible should finally be put together, translated and interpreted. This Bible just happened to play along with Emperor Constantine’s line of reasoning in political matters just perfectly (imagine that), and he considered the Council’s never-ending arguments about how to fully understand and literally apply the spirit of the scriptures to the Catholic Faith to be a “trifling matter”. In the end, all but three bishops were “convinced” to sign the binding creed. The three poor misguided bishops who didn’t sign the creed were promoted sideways to the Gladiator School for target practice.
Europe was at this time mostly practicing pagan traditions, with the more spiritual nature beliefs in Central- and Western Europe as practiced by Celts, Gaels, Goths and Ugrians – and of course the Norse Mythology of the impenetrable cold North. At the same time strong pre-Christian beliefs were on the rise around the Mediterranean, washing in from the East.
A big mess… Impossible to govern… Too many chiefs, not enough Indians…
The ingenuity of marrying all these highly opposite schools of spiritual thinking into one holy unified belief-system was what paid off the big bucks for Rome. By introducing grand Christian holidays to coincide with annual pagan feasts and celebrations, Christianity seemed less alien than at first glance. Patron Saints replaced the House Gods and local traditions of the past were either eradicated or incorporated with the word of the new God.
All of a sudden there was just one big ass chief and a whole bunch of little Indians…
Loose biblical ideas of an afterlife-“hell” were shrewdly expanded upon until it became the very foundation for the Catholic ruling of Europe. Kings and Queens trembled at papal edicts and the Devil and his demons were more omni-present than any forgiving merciful God. All of Europe was steeped in Sin and Guilt by the representatives of the Church so to justify the importance of the Church to save the people’s wretched souls from impending eternal damnation.
The concept of “Hell” is a very interesting subject that we are going to look at closer in a later class. Suffice to say it was a cunning Roman invention that kept Europe under tight reigns.
A very important aspect of this religious genesis of Europe was that it effectively stomped out the matriarchal pagan societies where women were respected and revered, and instead strongly established the patriarchal communities where men reigned supreme. The Catholic Church was all about the men, with no place for women anywhere. This was of course once again for governing reasons, as politically and violently inclined men were easier to govern with brute force and clever words than “unruly” free thinking women. What the Romans wanted out of this was structure and predictability, and Catholicism with all its rules and regulations efficiently got all of Europe’s ducks up in a row.
To make a comparison… This would be like the CIA taking over Woodstock, making the hippies chant “Nuke Nam” by forcing Hendrix to sing it to the stoned masses.
Arch bishops, seated right next to the kings in countries all over Europe - whispering in the royal ears, reported affairs of the courts home to the Pope in Rome and then passed on the Vatican’s orders to their appointed bishops out in the dioceses.
History’s smartest reorganization of political power was a fact. Rome has managed to stay in power, slowly evolving away from terror reigns based on fire and brimstone, through state of the art political pressure in the later centuries towards the worldwide spiritual leadership we have today. Even though in these religiously watered down times - that once so hard iron grip has softened to a wet handshake.
It’s remarkable how modern Catholic societies have so readily accepted this power structure throughout time, as there is not ONE mention in the bible of any scholastic or reverential hierarchy within the church whatsoever. Not ONE single word. As a matter of fact… The word “church” is mentioned in the New Testament only as a reference to a congregation of believers, never a building or a system. But who knew? Nobody actually reads the Bible anyway… It used to be because the masses and texts were in Latin and nobody understood what the priest was saying… Now people have the opportunity to educate themselves, but instead choose not to.
The power of people's chosen ignorance is not to be underestimated, and organized religion relies heavily upon its continued success.
Through the centuries new faiths have sprung from the original idea of Christianity and the Bible has changed and branched out with them. We will discuss this, along with other standout events - such as the development of the infamous King James Bible, in parts 2 and 3 in this Bible Study.
Further back in history
As you know… The Bible is not one book, but many, compiled from thousands of stories and writings that have been handed down through hundreds of generations. Some were mouth-to-mouth recaps of cataclysmic events, later written down and translated (the Old Testament) – while others were actual contemporary original documents from learned scholars discussing philosophical problems from a theological perspective (the New Testament).
OK… Now who wrote these scriptures? What was the agenda of those people? Where did they hear the original stories anyway?
You should not be surprised to learn that out of these thousands of texts, only a dwindling few are “first hand testimonies”. This includes probably none in the Old Testament and just the odd random thought here and there in the New Testament (none of the four evangelists mind you!). This means that only tiny parts of this huge collection of “truths” are actual first hand accounts written down by the originally credited author himself. The rest is the stuff of which legends are made, handed down from father to son, from one village to another – twisting and twirling, conforming and adapting, until we end up with something that looks nothing like the original accounts.
The oldest documents of the Bible go as far back as far as 1,500 years BC (that’s Before Christmas for you who slept through school). These legends were in rotation in the area we in modern times named Syria and Palestine, but that back then was called Babylonia (or Babylon). Oral tradition kept the stories and tales going before they were finally carved on animal hides several hundreds of years later.
Who were the people who lived in this neck of the woods back then? From whom do we gather this worldly wisdom forever immortalized in our Holy Scriptures? What advanced civilization is still setting its mighty stamp on ours?
I’ll give you a couple of clues…
They dressed in hides and rough fabrics…
They had recently discovered the use of bronze to replace their stone tools…
You guessed it! It was the tribal peasant warmongers of the Bronze Age! Don’t we all look to them for spiritual guidance? After all, their take on reality directly relates to our times, using slaves for heavy labor and women chained to the stoves… Never mind that the wheel was the most recent thing these guys thought up, they were also to be entrusted with the spiritual salvation of generations to come through their mystical folk tales of their God’s creation.
We have to understand one thing… Desert tribes and mountain dwellers in these days were very simple people, believing God talked thunder and crapped lightning. Of course God was the nexus of their society as it explained the unexplainable, all the wondrous things these barely evolved cavemen interacted with in nature; rain, floods, locust swarms… Tricky things for a human mind to make sense of… When describing natural disasters such as earthquakes, or even the sudden turn of events in a territorial gang fight, it was only natural to them to ascribe such phenomena to a higher power. After all… They just related the tales of how God had climbed down from his cloud and changed the course of the river by shaking the mountains... They just told the story exactly how it happened when God had filled their enemies with fear as they fell on them in their beds and cut their throats.
All and everything was directly derived from God, or in direct tribute to Him, so naturally all stories had God as the main character as well. Even if the event itself was obviously not related to him, he still always got a cameo, popping up with a frown or a pat on the shoulder, so the proper respect was thus paid to the Big Man.
Generations later when these rural legends were written down they were attributed to people with already documented backgrounds, so that they would make more sense. It sounded better saying “Moses” wrote this, than “some dudes we don’t know – a long time ago”. With an actual original author assigned to the events the credibility factor exploded exponentially in all directions… The thing caught on and every scrap of traditional tales was jotted down and then spread like wildfire… “Noah survives flood that covers earth!” and “Jonah disobeys God - Gets eaten by giant fish!”… You could say the documents of the Bronze Age were the literary equivalent of today’s Weekly World News. (The thought of future religions, thousands of years from now, makes me shudder. Will we convert to Bigfootilism?)
Takes something away from the original charm and mystique huh?
So to summarize this for all you Beullers out there, we could say that:
1.
The Bible is compiled out of thousands of documents from all corners of the old Middle-East, spanning almost 1700 years, from 1500 BC to 200 AD. A dismissable fragment of a percentage of these documents can be assigned to an actual author.
2.The Roman Empire merged the floating spiritual beliefs of Europe and the Mediterranean and established Christianity as a political mean to the continuous rule of Europe. They pulled this off by inventing new exciting features as the Bible, and a state of the art power structure - Catholicism.
3.The originators of the Old Testament were tribal Bronze Agers who had just proudly invented the wheel and the ass wipe stick.
4.Most people have never read the Bible, not even a little bit, but still believe whole heartedly in its content.
This concludes the first class in this Bible study. In our next session we are going to take a close look at interpretations and applications… It will be a gruesome tale of hell, demons and witches – as well as a critical study in power play, fanaticism and mind games…
Stay tuned.
