Which has nothing to do with what "Christianity" is, and has been for the last several decades at least, in America today. "Christianity" is a religion of hate, exclusion, and fundamentalism; the religion that supported a man to the Presidency who is completely antithetical to everything Christianity represents. Or says it represents.
And, no, the book has nothing to do with modern politics, but it does deal heavily with how different a thing can be from the actuality, the truth, that it was based on.
I think the audience for a book like this is probably fairly small, and not because it's not good. It is. It's well written, well researched, and well supported. However, "Christians" will dismiss the book as, I'll just say, liberal propaganda, which is sad, because it's "Christians" who need this book more than anyone. "Christians" need to be challenged to think beyond the shallow tripe they are spoon fed on Sunday mornings. Of course, being a book ostensibly about Jesus, there's no reason non-Christians should have any interest in the book... unless it's someone just curious about the history.
I'm not going to go into detail about the book -- you can read the blurb from the book for yourself -- however, I'll touch on one part:
The latter part of the book deals with a division within the early church between James (the leader of the church in Jerusalem) and Paul, who was one step removed from being a heretic. Much of our modern church, modern "Christianity" is built around what Paul wrote, a man who never met Jesus, yet claimed to speak with greater authority about him than Jesus' own brother (the aforementioned James) and the rest of the apostles. The piece that history loses is that in his day Paul was an outlier, someone trying to peel off members from the main body of the early church with heretical teachings and who stayed in conflict with James for much of his ministry.
In fact, Paul was losing. And bitter.
Probably, we would know nothing of Paul today had not two things happened:
1. James was assassinated.
2. The Romans leveled Jerusalem, the side effect of which was destroying the central power structure of the early Church.
Basically, this allowed the Church to become a more gentile-centric organization than it would have been if it had remained centered in Jerusalem. It allowed the New Testament to become a book of Paul's teachings rather than a book of Jesus' teachings, and the current "Christian" church relies much more heavily on Paul than it does Jesus. Not that the representation of Jesus is completely accurate.
Anyway...
As a Truth seeker, I found the book fascinating and would highly recommend it.
This actually does sound interesting. I'll put it on my list. Sounds like something to listen to on audio while driving.
ReplyDeleteIt's both comforting and disheartening to know that people have been claiming to know what a religion 'means' and what God wants since the days when God had actually been walking around telling people those things.
Briane: Actually, I find the idea that anyone would know anything about God or the mind of God to be rather abhorrent at this point in my life. I mean, it's impossible for little kids to understand what adults are up to and what adults are thinking and why adults tell them to do the things they tell them to do. The gap separating Man from God is so so much wider than that. It's beyond hubris for anyone to think they know or understand God.
DeletePS: I was only in the hospital 2 hours. Blood clot in the leg. Turns out they're really casual about it: you get to drive yourself there, walk up to Xray (2nd floor), then are wheelchaired from Xray to ER, but after that you walk everywhere again.
ReplyDeleteMainly it's just a very painful leg -- swelling -- and shortness of breath, which I'm pretty used to. I've been more tired though.
Briane: I'm glad you caught it while it was in your leg.
DeleteI've heard of this book, and was interested in reading it, but I haven't had a chance to do so. I think I'll have to bump it up closer to the top of the list.
ReplyDeleteJennifer: It's well worth it. Enough so that I want to read some of his other books, now.
DeleteI've seen this book in the shops, I might pick it up now. It's frightening just how many people call themselves Christians when most of their beliefs are fueled by hate and exclusion.
ReplyDeletePaul had a stick up his arse. I wish more of James's writings had made it into the New Testament.
Mich: It's unclear if James did any actual writing. He was more than likely illiterate. The book we have with his name on it was almost certainly written by one of his followers sometime after his death.
DeleteThat said, James has always been my favorite book of the New Testament.
Also, it's amazing how many people call themselves "Christians" just because they happen to go to church every once in a while. It's amazing how many people call themselves "Christians" without ever bothering to pick up a Bible and read any of it. Including pastors.
DeleteExcellent thoughts! I'm a lapsed christian, but I never, ever, liked Paul much. He's always yelling at people and telling them they are wrong. Further, I'm disenchanted by the Bible in general. I'm no fan of a collection of books a bunch of priests voted on--that have been overwritten tons, to promote a narrow worldview. I grew up with one of those Red-Letter Bibles--the ones where Christ's words were marked in red ink. Christianity would be a better place if people followed those red letters and not Paul's letters.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing! I might pick this one up for my mom, who thinks my half-Jew kids have been done a moral and spiritual disservice by her faithless daughter. (Not even kidding about that...)
Happy New Year!
Veronica :)
Veronica: Oh, I believe you. I've been involved in ministry, and I've heard all sorts of things. And known people who got kicked out of families.
DeleteI know two things about Paul (well, okay, I know more than two things about Paul, but...):
1. He was a deep thinker and, actually, rather brilliant. He's responsible for the thoughts that created Christianity, much of that thought being, as far as we can tell, original to him. [Which does mean that Christianity is way more about Paul than it is about Jesus.]
2. Paul was a conservative asshole who hated women. I mean, you don't have to wonder about the inherent misogyny in Christianity, because Paul laid it right out there at the beginning.
Interesting book, but I'm not likely to pick it up. I've been disenchanted with 'religion' for quite a while. I do like that you identified how the meaning for a word can be changed over time, distorting the original to suit the needs of the person who wrote his interpretation. I'll stick with my science fiction reading material.
ReplyDeleteD.G.: I don't know, some religious reading is great science fiction. ;)
DeleteSounds fascinating. I am not a religious person but love religious history.
ReplyDeleteTAS: Most of history is religious history of one sort or another.
DeleteOh, I'm so glad to hear you liked it! It's been on my to-find list for years (ever since I read Aslan's No God But God and loved it; he does such good research, and his writing is so, so clear!). Just last Sept while in NYC I finally came across a copy. Dying to get to it—and when I do I'll post my own thoughts on it (and we can 'discuss', haha). As an atheist, I'm all for a good, hard look at the actual historical record—especially when it sheds light on how truth gets skewed (and skewered).
ReplyDeleteGuilie @ Quiet Laughter
Guilie: 'No God But God' is now a book I want to read. I'd heard of it but never looked into it but, after reading this, it's on my list to pick up.
DeleteI'll look forward to hearing your thoughts.
I'm currently wasting time while I should be doing something else - I was thinking about your most recent post about God (the one I read today - 8/15/17 - and figured I'd click on one of the labels you put with your that post. I clicked on 'Jesus' and this came up. I'm impressed it worked because back when I blogged regularly, these labels were useless. Bringing up nonsense, or nothing. Glad to see they've been working on improving the search features.
ReplyDeleteUm, I've soured a bit on Reza due to some of his political stances, and some sketchy character assassination he's performed on a few well meaning (i.e., honest) opponents of his.
So this book wasn't super high on my list to read, but I do read quite a few books on this topic, so I may get to it eventually. I would point out, however, that James being murdered is a bit of historical guesswork, based, I think, on the assumption that the Josephus passage where he is named is legit (a lot of controversy over that). But the point you make stands, I think the church that James led was destroyed with Jerusalem in 70 c.e. and so Paul sort of won by default. It looks like his efforts to evangelize outside the Jewish community paid off big time. Christianity was remade in his image.
I did read a book about Paul that was pretty hard on him several years ago. I may dig it out and reread.
Rusty: Yeah, I don't think I think much of him as a person, at least not from the little I've seen, but his book was good and seemed to be well researched.
DeleteMy beef with Paul is possibly more about the "Church" than it is about him, which is not to say that he wasn't an asshole but, at least, he was pretty good at saying when he was giving his own opinion about something rather than it being something he felt that he had "straight from God." Not that I know he differentiated between the two. It's clear, though, from all of that that Paul had issues with women, hence the asshole-ism. He was about as sexist as they came, and he didn't always leave that out there as his opinion; sometimes he claimed it was from God (like women having their heads covered in church). At any rate, the "Church" refers to and follows Paul more assiduously that it does Jesus, and there's a problem with that, especially since Paul made free with his opinions on things that the "Church" takes as law.
So, yeah...
Not to get too deep into the weeds on this - but modern critical scholarship only gives about 7 books to Paul in the N.T., and with those, there are interpolations to deal with - scholarship gets real messy - I read an article by one historian who said that the church in the 2nd - 4th century either destroyed, or altered to promote their theology, almost every single document we have from that time or earlier. That teasing out anything authentic is almost impossible.
DeleteTo make a long story short - part of Paul's misogyny is quite possibly later authors tinkering with his letters after the fact, or writing in his name long after he was dead.
That I have to read this stuff in English all but guarantees I can't pull out all the details on my own. But I'm sure, if you're interested, you can find tons on this online. If you can't, I've got some books here I can refresh myself on and pass along their rationale (I know it's partly the style of the prose, the radical shifts in theology, and I *think* even his bi-polar approach to the treatment of women )
Authentic letters, btw (with some probable interpolations in a few spots):
Romans
1&2 Corinthians
Galatians
Philippians
1 Thessalonians
Philemon
Rusty: Good info. PROBABLY, I'm not going to go much more out of my way with any of this stuff. For the moment, it's enough for me to know that
Delete1. People don't know anything about the Bible because they haven't actually read it, so they can't even claim to believe in what they say they believe in. and
2. Virtually none of the New Testament was written by the supposed authors.
However, if I get to a place where I'm looking to read another book on religion/"Christianity," I'll get a recommendation from you.