Reading The Bible, Knowing Jesus

THE BIBLE is the most important book in history, the most misunderstood, and although it contains a fascinating insight into the nature of ancient culture and ant the ancient mind set, seldom does anyone read it in its entirety. It has multiple personalities, having been written having been written over a period of centuries by at least forty different authors, all with differing perspectives, most of them unknown, their identities lost in the mists of time, whose various styles reveal them to have been no more or less divinely inspired than any serious, talented author. Anyone who believes that the Bible is the Word of God must come to terms with a god who approves of slavery, gives instructions of the proper treatment of masters by their slaves, insists that disobedient children be put to death, and gratuitously slaughters thousands of innocent people for trivial transgressions unrelated to the victim's of god's wrath. The biblical god reveals itself to be a petty, jealous, vicious tyrant with multiple personalities, a penchant for psychotic behavior, full of unrelenting anger and intolerance, whose arbitrary and erratic behavior fits the profile of a psychotic serial mass murderer. The bible contains more violence than any other book ever published. Mark Twain, an avowed atheist, described the Bible as containing some noble poetry, some clever fables, a great abundance of obscenity, and no less than one thousand blatant lies. This collection of sixty six short books contains so many internal contradictions and errors that many decades ago every credible theological seminary in the world stopped teaching divinity students that the holy scripture is inerrant, and started dealing with the obvious and numerous imperfections honestly, by calling attention to them and including the scrutiny of biblical fallacies in serious, standard courses of study. As a result, many a born again theological student at places like Harvard and Princeton enter seminary as true believers, and leave as agnostics and atheists. Jesus himself is a figure shrouded in mystery, as each of the four gospels seems to be describing a different person, a different life. No one will ever know who wrote Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John, only that their authors were well educated and fluent in ancient Greek, unlike the undoubtedly illiterate disciples themselves, after whom the gospels were named. For certain is that none of the authors ever came close to meeting Jesus, they got their information third or fourth hand, and their books were written several decades after Joshua ben Joseph, aka Jesus died. it took Jesus well over three hundred years to become God, and he was elected to the position by the church Council of Nicea in 325 A.D.. The church leaders also decided which among the dozens of accounts of the life of Christ would be included in the canon, and only the familiar four made the cut. According to these four, Jesus was a working class apocalyptic preacher, among many at the time, endlessly warning his listeners that the world as they knew it would end within their own lifetime, and replaced by God's kingdom, removing all evil from an evil world and replacing it with glorious happy righteousness, and bringing judgment to all. He was dead wrong, it turned out. to his devoted friends he was a wise teacher, and maybe the future king of Israel. They called him "lord" and "master", commonly used terms of respect. To his loving followers he was fully human, and he never claimed otherwise, except in the book of John. Only in John is Jesus loquacious. In the others, he is relatively taciturn. John was the last of the four to have been written, it is universally agreed. Others versions are equally interesting: Peter, Mary, Thomas, Barnabas, and many others, all of which tell a different story. As time passes after His death, the more divinity he acquired. Every wise and beautiful piece of wisdom attributed to Jesus can be found in earlier writings, especially Confucius. A possible reason why he was believed to have risen from the dead by some of his disciples is their love, and simple unwillingness to let him go. The beautiful thing about Jesus is that there is no need to let him go, every reason to embrace him, and to hold him and love him forever.