Religion and the Rise of Christianity

After a conversation that lasted into the night with my roommates about beliefs and religion, it's time for the pineapple man to tell you how I feel and maybe even make you think a little. Lets start at the beginning. My view of the universe is, I have no fucking clue what, where, how, or why it was made. If the universe was in fact "created" than I am fine with defining this creating power as "God." I don't believe anyone has any idea what happened and we will never know the true intracacies of our universe ( besides Chei Wu of course ). I do want to attempt to put modern Christianity in a social and historical context. So that aside, lets move on.

So the universe is there, next step, Earth. I'll skip all the meat and potatoes about the earth cooling and the simple building blocks of life forming and go right towards men. (If you don't believe in evolution at this point just assume I'm talking about Adam and Eve and a garden somewhere in Iraq and skip this paragraph) Humans as we biologically know them came into existance about 100,000 years ago. Humans have a very important tool which helped them survive and evolve from other forms. I'm not talking about a thick hide, razor sharp claws, or anything like that, I'm talking about a brain. The human brain became more and more complex as our earlier ancestors survived and thrived in the harsh world around them which required higher brain power. As early human ancestors began walking upright and using their limbs to develope tools, they required more brain power (if needed I can provide a blog entry on evolution later to explain the fact that a monkey that uses a tool to eat and can thus eat more than a monkey that doesn't use a tool and thus has a better chance to survive and thus breed and pass his genes onto the next generation etc. I will) . As humans moved into new areas, they needed to work together to survive due to the lack of razor sharp claws and thick hides, this required more brain power. As early primitive social interaction grew into more complex social interactions such as communication, this required more brain power. So as humans became more physically inferior compared to other animals, they became intellectually superior honing that evolutionary advantage contained between their ears. So what does this have to do with religion you ask? Good question. The case I'm attempting to build here is that humans developed in an environemnt void of answers to the questions their developing brain could ask. A brain that allows someone to communicate ideas to another biological being is complex enough to ask why does it rain? Why does the ball of fire leave the sky every 10 hours just to reappear again (How do I know what an hour is?)? Why did my brother die tragically at such a young age? Why am I here? Enter religion.

Religion provides answers to questions that cannot be answered. In early time for humans and human ancestors, this provided answers to a plethora of unexplained phenomena. The appearance of religion of some kind can be seen in every culture we have historical record of! Early or primitive cultures, as we would classify them today, had mainly polytheistic religions. These religions often mirrowed the social networks of primitive humans. Mother earth, the Father figure god, warring brothers and sisters, and husbands and wives are all common characteristics of early religions. Early humans used what they already knew to attempt to explain the things they didn't. Creation stories are also prevalent, attempting to answer or explain the $25,000 dollar question. The Aztecs, Greeks, Romans, and Mayans just for example believe that powerful gods existed before men and through either acts of folly, warfare, or curiosity, men originated from these gods. The existance of many gods allows for a variety of questions to be answered and is a cornerstone of many early religions.

Another cornerstone of early religion is the concept of an afterlife. Ancient human burials indicate that some idea or concept of an afterlife even existed in Neanderthal cultures. This development allowed humans to have hope for life, knowing that another journey awaited them. The ways to get to this afterlife and your position in it vary widely across cultures. Aztec women who died in childbirth went to the same level of "heaven" that men who died in battle went to. Greeks were afforded a trip to the underworld which was a world of an eternal ethereal existance. Egyptians would rise again some day and their lifeless body would be made whole again. Vikings warriors went to Valhalla where they would be armed by Odin and fight along side him in his on going battles against his enemies. The afterlife promised a better/similar existance once one passed from this world and this gave humans hope. With this gift of hope comes a catch, it also brings a level of control to be discussed later.

As societies became more complex, there became another outlet for religion as a guide for how to live your life. As humans were developing larger communities and extending their social networks from simple hunter gatherer tribes, there needed to be a standard by which to conduct your life socially in order to avoid the reprecussions of offending others (which would be fatal to most people long ago). Thus we see most primitive religions develope laws, rules, moral codes to live by under penalty of not only offending people and a/the God/s. With a set of rules comes a sense of control. Enter the corruption of men.

It is at this step that the complex social network of humans which in and of itself requires some kind of control, that religion is becoming grouped with power and control. From the Godesque Pharoahs of ancient Egypt, to the King's or Tribe leaders of Israel, to the Emperors of the Aztec empire, religion becomes intermingled with political power. When a man has communication with the Gods or is a God himself, he wields power on a level above and beyond any "natural" power he could possibly have bestowed upon him by a non-religious society. This is a very central part of my argument so read the previous sentence again.

Early history shows us that across advanced cultures where religion plays a roll in the society that leaders of that society also play a roll in religion. If your economic policies are failing or you want to wage war against an ally and you have no support, you just say that the gods commanded me or I god command you. Using spirtuality for some purpose other than personal easement is wrong. This is the roots of religion being corrupted by powerful men to serve their own purposes. The Romans possessed a religion which was more or less based around superstituous rituals. These rituals were preformed by memebers of the aristocracy and the rituals were for successful travel, victory in war, good harvests etc.. It is documented by many Roman historians as well as joked upon by Caesar himself that these "auspices" were faked on occassion to give hope to the masses or oust a public representative.

From polytheistic religions in the Old World, monotheistic religions began. These religions focused the powers of all the polytheistic religions into one powerful, omnipotent being. The Old Testament describes such a god. The old testament and the people that wrote it used it mainly as a source of laws and history of a people guided by their god Jehovah. The early Jewish church used a system of priests who were guided by god to lead religious rituals for the people. This kind of church became popular to the prolitariate due to the opennness of the church and established a foothold in the middle east. Now begins the root of Christianity.

To understand Christianity, one needs to understand the social, political, and religious atmosphere of the region. 40 years prior to the birth of Jesus Christ, the Roman Empire expanded into the Middle East bringing with it it's tradition for religious freedom as long as the emperor received his cut. Many Jews in the region accepted Roman rule and as long as they paid Caesar, they kept their lifestyle.

This is the world that Jesus was born into. Jesus was born in 0AD and lived in this region until his death around 30AD. Now some of my thoughts on Jesus, his life, and his message. I don't doubt that a man named Jesus existed. There are many sources, both secular and biblical, that document this. I do disagree with the current church's stance on who and what Jesus was. The main Biblical references we have for Jesus are the four cannonical gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Early on thought to be written by apostles of Jesus, although through deeper scrutiny it has been decided that even the earliest of these books, Mark, was written decades after Jesus died. The book of Mark is considered by most biblical scholars to be the first gospel written with a date of or around 65-80 AD, 35+ years after Jesus died. The authorship is attributed to a man named Mark who was a follower of the disciple Peter. So the book is at best a second hand account recorded 35 years after the subject of the books death. In a time with no mp3's, records, tape players, or any other sound recording device, these accounts must be based on oral records of events.

Since Mark is the earliest gospel, it is also the least "evangelical" gospel. Several things are interesting about this book. The gospel of Mark doesn't include any information about Jesus before he begins his ministry, i.e. no manger, virgin birth, Herod searching for the destroyer of the Roman empire. Jesus calls himself the "Son of Man" repeatedly instead of the "Son of God." It is debated wether the last part of the book of Mark was added at a later date, this is interesting because this part includes the part where Jesus returns to his disciples after his death to tell them to spread his teachings. The earliest copies of the book of Mark do not include this section and the language and style are notably different. Why add this you ask? It was not established in the earliest written account of Jesus life that he reappeared to his disciples after his death. His resurrection became a critical part of the church later..... you decide for yourself.

On to Matthew and Luke. It is widely accepted that the authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark as a template as well as a lost document titled "Q" in scholarly realms. Matthew is similar to Mark in both style and flow suggesting the use of Mark as a template. Matthew does include an early history of Jesus and links him to the family of David. This gospel relies heavily on Jesus lineage because it describes him as the Messiah of the Jewish people prophesized in early books of the Old Testament. It is in this book that this language appears.

Luke was written at the earliest 70 AD due to its knowledge of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70AD and possibly as late as 150 AD. This story expands the legend of Jesus and has a detailed story about his mother and his resurrection

The most evangelical book, John, was written 100-150 AD, 70-130 years after Jesus' death. It is no suprise this is the most evangelical book due to the passage of time between Jesus' death and the growth of the early church. It is first in this book where it is stated "there is no way to the father except through me." This famous verse (3:16) has been used by many people to justify the deification of Jesus. In this book he says he is "the Son of God" which is not as blatant in the other books. This book also includes the most detailed resurrection story. Is it any coincidence that the book that most modern Christianity is based on is also the one that paints the "brightest" picture of Jesus? Jesus was a man and prophet of Jehovah, but the book of John made him a God.

In my opinion, this book is the propaganda of the early church. How do you convert people to your religion which already has the benefits of open confession, relative open access to God, promises of a afterlife.... IF you believe in Jesus and Jesus alone. Here we see how religion, from one group to the next, has to offer/threaten one thing that other religions won't in order to win and keep converts. This brought up an interesting question for the early church. In 325 AD, the Emperor Constantine, a converted Christian (debated), organized the Council of Nicea to debate how the Church, if they were to incorporate the old testament as well, could cope with the paradox of having God the father and God the son when God's own words to Moses said, "there are no other gods before me." A group of people, sizable at the time, called the Arians believed that Jesus was a prophet of God and could not be the son of God due to his (God's) own words. They believed that Jesus was the most highly exalted man in God's eyes but could not BE God. The arch Bishop of Alexandria thought otherwise. He argued for the growing idea that Jesus was part of a Trinity of the one God. This idea ultimatley won out and now we have the idea that Jesus is a part of God. This is an important distinction. Men, not God or Jesus, decided to make Jesus God 290 years after his death. You could debate that God directed them to do so; however, in my eyes, then God is going back on his previous statement about there being only one God.... him. So if he goes back on this statement, he isn't a perfect being because he has erred (fly open can of worms, fly!) . This is the beginning of the Church as most Christians know it. A book written by man, about a man, became scripture about a man who became God because people needed him to be, not because he wanted to be. More to come... my fingers are tired.