If Jesus had returned during the middle ages.

The question is, What would Jesus have made of the Roman Catholic Church in the middle ages, or any Christian church.

I think he would have been appalled at what the church was doing, ie. The crusade's, especially the crusade against the Cathars. Also the so called holy inquisition.

In my opinion, he would have been horrified at what was being done in his name. For instance, in January 1208, Pierre de Castinau is murdered, allegedly by Cathar supporters. Pope Innocent lll calls for a crusade against the Cathars. November 1208, the Pope issues a papal bull offering indulgences and land redistribution for the crusaders. 

In spring 1209 Simon de Montfort leads an army south. July 22nd they sack Beziers and massacre the population, between 15,000 and 20,000 are killed. The papal representative is told that there are Catholics living there and he utters that famous phrase, " kill them all, God will know his own " The crusade carries on with even more atrocities committed until almost all Cathars are wiped out, what would Jesus have said about that. 

The first crusade was another atrocity instigated by the Roman Catholic Church, it began in 1096 and it took till 1099 to arrive at and besiege Jerusalem. When the city fell there was a massacre of the inhabitants, Jews, Moslems and Christians were killed in their tens of thousands. 

What indeed would Jesus have thought about a church which, in his name, had committed such atrocities. I will leave that to whoever reads this.

More to come.

The Bible

Who made the decision about what books to include in the bible and what to omit? The answer is, people, human beings, not God or God's, normal human beings. The Jewish Tanakh or Old Testament was ratified at the council of Jamnia in approx, 90 CE. The council of Laodicea in 363 CE agreed that the Old Testament and 26 books of the New Testament were allowed to be read in churches. The council of Hippo in 393 CE finally decided that again, the Old Testament and now 27 books of the New Testament were allowed to be read in churches. The point is that the canon of the Bible was decided by human beings and nobody else. That decision led eventually to splits in the church, ie the breakaway of the Greek orthodox church. It also lead to hundreds of Christian books being banned and people reading them being charged with heresy and we all know what happened to them. The upshot is, human beings wrote the Bible and human beings decided what literature was allowed to be included in the Bible. That brings us to the fact that as printing presses had not been invented, human beings were tasked with copying the books, and to illuminated that I can highly recommend a book titled Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman. Very informative and well worth a read.

Till next time.

Theological Dilemma.

I have been reading various sources who are putting forward a theory that the God of the old testament is different from the God of the new testament. The reason being, for instance, the mass slaughter of the Cannanites. There are lots of other passages that include orders to kill thousands of people. For example, Deuteronomy 7/1-2 the Israelites are commanded to destroy the Cannanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites. Every living thing was ordered to be killed. Joshua 6/17-22 Ordered to destroy Jericho and kill every living thing. First Samuel 15/2-3 Ordered to destroy the Amalekites, kill every living thing. They were only three examples, there are quite a few other examples. 

Personally, I cannot believe that what I have quoted came from a loving and merciful God. 

I will be continuing this theme in later posts.

Till next time.

All about me.

When I was a child, in the 1950s, I loved going to Sunday school. I loved hearing about Jesus and what his message was and about the miracles he performed. I loved it so much that my parents thought I might become a minister when I eventually left school. I was brought up in the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian branch of Christianity. When I reached the age of about seven or eight, my Grandmother gave me a book, she was a very well read woman and she encouraged me to read. From a very young age I fell in love with history, it was my favourite subject at school and I read historical fact and fiction all the time and I still do. The book my Granny gave me was a bit different, it was a book of the Greek Myths, the stories of heroes and Gods and it seemed a bit strange to me. However, something in the stories rang strangely true, the teacher at Sunday school taught me that there was only one God, so how could the ancient Greeks believe in multiple Gods. To say I was confused was an understatement but, something in the stories rang true especially when it came to the Trojan war story. Something in that account sparked my mind and I wanted to learn all about ancient Greek history. 

Time went on and I went from Primary school to high school, now nineteen sixty two, I was still learning about Christianity but still reading Greek mythology/history books. At that time I went to see a movie called The Three Hundred Spartans, starring Richard Egan as Spartan king Leonidas. While watching the movie I felt something, I had never heard of the term Déjà Vu but on learning the meaning, I can say that was what the feeling was. Now I'm not saying I was involved in that battle, it was more of a recognition of being alive at or around that time. The feeling has stayed with me all of my life and I'm seventy two now, and the more I have read, the more real it seems to be. 

Back to Christianity, I was always taught that the world was created about six thousand years ago but watching archeological programmes on TV that showed discoveries that go back hundreds of thousands of years, yet again I was confused. I never believed Darwin's theory, I've always believed in creation and I do now, even more, except, I don't believe the 6,000 years timeline. 

As I grew up, left school, got a job, became a teenager and did teenager things, my curiosity waned. It was still embedded in my mind but kept deep down. I joined the Royal Navy and in 1983 the ship I served on was in the South Atlantic on patrol off the Falkland Islands. My Father had cancer and I received a message saying that he didn't have long left and for the first time in years I prayed to God to take me instead of my Dad. It didn't work because I was given compassionate leave and I flew home only to find that my Dad had died. For me that was it, I was finished with Christianity. Yes, a stupid reaction I know and it took a long time for me to realise that. Fast forward to summer 2022 and I'm sitting outside in my garden in the sunshine and all of a sudden I, received a message, not in the normal way, right inside my head explaining why my prayers had not been answered all those years ago. The answer was so obvious that I felt totally stupid for not seeing it myself. The message was that if I had been taken by God instead of my Father, I would be dead but my Father would still have been in terrible pain with cancer and would have died anyway. One thought kept popping up in my mind was that the world was wrong, over the years the level of suffering had exploded everywhere, inequality, hunger, exploitation of third world countries assets and of course, terrorism and war. The significance of this part of the story will become relevant later on.

I left the Royal Navy in 1987 after fourteen years service and got a job as a postman,in my spare time I restarted my study of history and I incorporated religions into the mix as well. The internet appeared not long after which opened up my horizons and I flooded myself with information. It took me a while to get competent with the internet but it was an eye opener and I found new explanations to just about everything I had ever learned. What was a bit unnerving, was other explanations for the Bible narrative. The connections with the Sumerian civilization and the flood story was the obvious starting point. I will pause here because I have much more to say about the origins of religion and faith which are controversial to say the least.

Till next time.

An ending but also a beginning.

My Father died of cancer in November 1983. From April 1983 I was on HMS Danae on patrol down in the South Atlantic,  I had been receiving updates about my Dad regularly and I knew he wasn't likely to survive. At the time I believed in God and Jesus and I prayed that my Dad would pull through, I also prayed that God should take me instead thinking that if that happened, my Dad would be fine and healthy. Yes, I know, naïve thinking. Obviously he died and I blamed God and from then till a few years ago, I totally rejected Christianity completely. However, a few years ago, I was on YouTube and I came across a video by a man called Michael Heiser who was a very well thought of as a biblical scholar and devout Christian. To cut a long story short, listening to him talking about his faith seemed to reawaken my interest in the bible, and today while sitting outside in the summer sunshine just thinking, something came into my head about why God refused to take me instead of my Dad. If God had agreed to accept my offer, I would have obviously been dead but, my Dad would have kept on suffering the intense pain of his cancer. 

I believe I was told that, and I believe the thought came from God, Jesus. Why, I don't know. Whatever it is, I am and always will be grateful. 

I promise that I will try and live the rest of my life, I'm 71, in a more meaningful way. 

Monotheism 2

In Psalm 82 verse.  God says to the divine council, " You are Gods, sons of the most high, all of you. " Why does God not say, you are MY sons? The God mentioned first is presumably YHVH, so could the Most High actually be the actual creator God? I might be reading too much in to it but as someone who has an avid interest in Gnosticism, what I have just written, to me, fits in with the unknowable creator God is Most High, and the lower demiurgic God YHVH. 

To continue with the divine council narrative, I have been thinking on where the divine council met. Maybe they convened in the garden of Eden which brings me to Adam and Eve. Obviously, Adam and Eve were not the only humans on the planet but, could Adam and Eve have been created to be intermediaries between humans and the divine realm? The fact that they were both tempted to disobey God's law by what is misconstrued as a serpent somewhat ruined the plan. Michael Heiser says that the serpent wasn't actually an animal but a divine being, unhappy about mere humans having an influence in the divine council. He links the rebellious being to Lucifer. 

I will try and expand on this.

Monotheism?

Recently I have been looking at videos by Michael Heiser, an American biblical scholar. He has a podcast, the named The Naked Bible podcast, It was when he mentioned Psalm 82 verse one which reads, " God takes his place in the divine council, In the midst of the Gods he holds judgement. " It was the use of the plural, God's, that surprised me. To my mind and to what I was used to was always the word God, singular. It was then that I remembered the second commandment, " thou shall have no other Gods before me. "

God is actually letting us know that there are indeed other Gods. Michael Heiser said that Psalm 82 gave him food for thought as he hadn't been taught and hadn't realised the passage was there. He mentions all this in his book Unseen Realm, I haven't read it yet but I will in the near future. My take on it is that it makes me want to find out all I can about the beliefs of the early Israelites and related tribes. 

I will probably update this in the future.