To Those in Peril on the Sea

 On that day, as evening drew on, Jesus said to his disciples:
“Let us cross to the other side.”
Leaving the crowd, they took Jesus with them in the boat just as he was.
And other boats were with him.
A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat,
so that it was already filling up.
Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.
They woke him and said to him,
“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
He woke up,
rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet!  Be still!”
The wind ceased and there was great calm.
Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified?
Do you not yet have faith?”
They were filled with great awe and said to one another,
“Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”

This, the gospel reading at today’s mass, strikes me as uncannily resembling the traditional image of Vishnu asleep on the cosmic ocean. The universe we know is a dream he is having. Once every kalpa, every aeon, he awakens from the dream, and the universe ceases to be. Then after a time he goes back to sleep, and a new cosmos begins. The turbulent waters on which he sleeps are the stream of time, with its changes. 

Is the Bible story a borrowing from Hindu mythology? Possibly; or possibly the other way around.

Or perhaps this is evidence for Jung’s theory of the archetypes. Jung traced certain motifs and images, like this one, across world mythology, including cultures with little or no contact with each other, and then again in the dreams of his patients. He posited these represented structures in the mind, which he called archetypes. Ultimately, for the materialist Jung, these ended up expressing structures in the brain. Evolution has deposited them there somehow.

Jung’s disciple Marie-Louise Von Franz specialized in Jungian interpretations of fairy tales. Someone once challenged her with the question, “How do you know your archetypal psychology and development of the ego through individuation is the real story being expressed obliquely through these stories, and not just one more fairy tale like these others?”

Her answer was unsatisfactory: “It is the fairytale I believe.”

Are we left with no way to choose among fairy tales? Do we just arbitrarily decide to place our faith in Vishnu, or Jesus, or Jung, or Mother Goose?

Suppose, instead, that there is a God. This is not a stretch; it the fundamental premise of the text. As a philosophical proposition, monotheism has been proven seven ways to Sunday.

If there is a God, the repetition of this motif in unrelated texts is a proof of the reliability of those texts. God must have dropped it in there.

God must have created us for some purpose. He would have programmed us with a built-in user’s manual or operating system. He would have embedded in our psyches certain images, concepts and narratives expressing his plans. This, the sleeping God waking to calm time and change, can be assumed to be one of them.

God is God; he can do what he wants. He can implant the images in our consciousnesses, and then act them out in history to demonstrate that he is with us, and to clarify their full meaning. 

We are not to be troubled by the madness all around us. We are not to suppose that God is not in charge. Keep calm and carry on. Soon he will wake—or we will—and all will be as it should be.

Black Lies Matter

Traditional Ethiopian portrayal of Jesus..

The inevitable call has come, from Shaun King, a media heavy in residence at Harvard, with ties to Black Lives Matter: smash all the images of Jesus and Mary. Smash all the stained glass windows.

This, of course, was the target all along: God.

The premise, of course, is that Jesus is always portrayed as “European,” and this is racist.

"Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been."

"In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went? EGYPT! Not Denmark. Tear them down."

This is nonsensical on its face. He refers to statues. How can one really distinguish, in an unpainted statue, whether the figure portrayed is from some European country or from a Hellenized area of northern Palestine? A slight difference in skin tone? We do not even know whether the skin tone would be different.

And on an unpainted statue?

Why did Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt, and not to Denmark? It may have had something to do with Denmark not yet existing. Egypt, on the other hand, aside from being the country next door, had the ancient world’s largest Jewish population outside Palestine. Two of Alexandria’s seven districts were Jewish—traders, mostly, no doubt, often coming and going. I think the holy family indeed had a decent chance of blending in.

Not that other Egyptians looked very different from either Palestinian Jews or European Greeks. There were a lot of Greeks in Egypt too. Cleopatra was Greek.

You would think a Harvard man would know such things. That would have been so, long ago.

The conventional image of Jesus comes from fairly early models. There is at least some warrant to think it is accurate. And he could indeed probably pass for a modern Lebanese, say.

If there are some blond Jesuses, racism is an implausible explanation for it. Rather, this is a natural consequence of the artists being themselves European, having only European models to work from, and having little idea or reason to care what a Palestinian of the First Century looked like. Black hair is rare in Northern Europe. For the same reason, in Ethiopia, Jesus is distinctly African in appearance. 

Our Lsdy of the Gate of Dawn, Vilnius, Lithuania

There are no comparable ancient standards for portraying Mary, and her images are far more variable. Mary is often portrayed in Europe as blonde or a red-head--just as she is shown with Asian features in Asia, or with indigenous features at Guadaloupe, her most popular shrine. A non-racist might nevertheless have noticed that even in Europe, “Black Madonnas” are given special veneration. There are famous examples, sites of major pilgrimages, in France, Belgium, Czechia, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Russia, Sweden; rather white countries, on the whole. Perhaps most famously at Częstochowa in Poland and at Montserrat in Spain. Whatever reason this is so, it cannot be due to any notion of white supremacy or anti-black racism. 

Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The real problem for King and his acolytes can only be, not that these beautiful works of art show Jesus or Mary as European, but that they are beautiful works of art. Worse, they are beautiful works of art made by Europeans. Worse still, they imply some fundamental truth and the moral law.

Make no mistake. What we are seeing in America now is the battle of good and evil. And all the racism is on the side complaining of racism.

Jesus's Burial Site in Japan

We report--you decide.

The Left Finds Religion

A couple of silly posts are circulating on Facebook at the moment. Leftists are claiming Jesus as one of their own.

This may be a good sign. In recent years the left has had nothing good to say about Jesus. It seems like a defensive move; as though they feel a need either for outreach or to justify themselves. It beats just calling all Christians “deplorable.”

But they sure do get things garbled. Let us assume they do this honestly. I guess such misapprehensions are possible, if you never read the Bible.

Taking the claims one by one:

“Homeless”: yes, Jesus was homeless. But this was a matter of religious observance, like a mendicant Buddhist monk, so it is probably not fairly comparable with the situation of people who are homeless due to poverty. He certainly did make clear, on the other hand, his concern for the poor.

“Palestinian”? This is a worse howler than, say, calling St. Nicholas “Turkish,” or St. Patrick “English.” There was not such place as “Palestine” in Jesus’s time, and the people we currently call “Palestinians”—Palestinian Arabs—were not in the area. Jesus was a Jew who lived in what is now Israel. You want to call Netanyahu a “Palestinian”?

“Anarchist”? Jesus was asked about paying taxes, and said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Showing, at the same time, a coin with Caesar’s face on it. He said “My kingdom is not of this world.” He was not a political figure. He accepted the civil authority of his day as given. There were political radicals, although not anarchists, in Jesus’s place and time—the Zealots. Jesus could have endorsed them, or joined them, if that was what he was about.

“Held protests at oppressive temples”? Jesus did not consider the temple in Jerusalem oppressive. His concern was the opposite, to keep it holy. Nor did he “hold a protest.” This suggests an organized political action.

“Advocated for universal health care”? This is invention. Do they get this from the fact that he went around healing people? Do doctors necessarily endorse, let alone advocate, universal health care?

“Advocated for redistribution of wealth.” I suspect they get this from his advice to a rich young man to give all he had to the poor.

But look at the passage. Jesus does not call for redistribution of wealth here. A rich young man comes to him and asks what he must do to enter heaven. And Jesus says, keep the commandments. That’s what is needed to enter heaven. The young man says he already does that. Is there anything more he can do? Then Jesus says, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor. Then you will have treasures in heaven.”

The passage is clear, then, that nobody is under any moral obligation to give their possessions to the poor. This earns extra merit.

Of course, no such merit is earned if the giving is legally required by government. Although we might very well want to do this. Giving to the poor is a moral act. Voting that everyone should give to the poor is not a moral act. It is as likely to be a way to avoid guilt over your own moral choices.

If leftists indeed want to follow Jesus on this, government does not prevent them from giving all they have to charity.

And conservatives as a group give more to charity than leftists do.

Note Matthew 26:

While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, 7 woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.
8When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. 9“This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”
10Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 11The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”

A general redistribution of wealth? Hardly a clear mandate for it here.

“Arrested for terrorism”: this is completely fabricated. Jesus was not arrested for terrorism, was not charged with terrorism, was not executed for terrorism, and there is nothing anywhere in the Bible that hints he engaged in terrorism.

Including this in the evidence that Jesus was a left-wingert and not a right-winger, even at the cost of making it up, tells us something important about the left. They are, here, implicitly saying terrorists are on their side. They support terrorism.

This indeed explains why the left has recently found fierce common cause with “Islam,” even though all the values of Islam run directly counter to leftist beliefs, far more than do those of Christianity, which they despise. The key here has to be that they do not support Islam: they support terrorism. They support Islam only to the extent that they think it leads to terrorism.

Really: think about it. They used to support the IRA for the same reason. It was masked as a concern for the rights of Catholics, but seriously: does the left otherwise support Catholics or Catholicism?

Yeah, Jesus would be entirely down with that: destroying things and killing innocent people.

“Executed for crimes against the state.” Technically true, but according to the Bible this was a bogus charge that even the Roman prefect, Pilate, did not believe.

The next image claims that Jesus was “Everything Conservatives hate.”

“Bleeding heart.” The tone of the post is very old-fashioned, and I guess maybe back in the Sixties “bleeding heart” really was a term that was often used. It is not something you see contemporary conservative saying, so it is not evidence, if true, that contemporary conservatives would have disagreed with Jesus in the first place.

But was Jesus a “bleeding heart”? The Urban dictionary gives the top meaning of “bleeding heart” as “Feeling sorry for everything and everyone and giving in to emotions quickly.” If this is the correct definition, Jesus was clearly not one, and to call him such is necessarily a criticism. He did not feel sorrow for the scribes and the Pharisees. He showed himself to be calm, as in the storm on Galilee, or when seized in Gethsemane, when those about him were emotional. Somebody here is simply imagining Jesus to be as they want him to be.

“Long-haired”: Jesus did indeed, in the traditional depiction, wear his hair long. A reasonable argument can be made that he did not do so in imitation of the hippies of the 1960s. More likely, they wore their hair long in imitation of him. Nor is wearing long hair an indication of left-wing politics. Ever watch “Duck Dynasty”? The left can get upset about people wearing corn rolls, but the right could not care less how you wear your hair.

“Peace-loving”: Jesus was peace-loving, as are most of us, but not a pacifist. He said, for example,

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34).

Peace a good, but it is not the ultimate value. Nor is it clear, currently, whether the left or the right is more concerned with maintaining the peace. Who, currently, is more inclined to riot? Who is more supportive of the police?

“Anti-establishment”: yes, Jesus was anti-establishment. But let us be clear: what establishment? He said nothing against the civil or political establishment. He said nothing against Roman rule. Jesus refused to condemn publicans or tax collectors. He was opposed to the scribes and Pharisees: the intellectual establishment of his day.

Who is the intellectual establishment of today? Who are the scribes and Pharisees? Most literally, most directly, the media and the academy. Scribes were professional writers, Pharisees were professional teachers. Both groups lean overwhelmingly to the left currently. And are heartily disliked on the right.

“Liberal.” Properly speaking, “liberal” means believing in human rights, civil liberties. Which means, on the whole, small government. I think a good argument can be made that Jesus was indeed liberal in this sense: he carved out a religious sphere independent of the state. But it would be more accurate to say that liberalism is largely founded on his teachings: the equality of man, the separation of church and state. But while Jesus seems plainly liberal, the modern left plainly is not. It is all about big government and group rights.

“Hippie freak”: again, this is a case of the hippies imitating Jesus, not Jesus imitating the hippies. But there is something to this: the hippies were at least in part a spiritual movement, and did appeal to Christian values. Unfortunately, just about everyone sold out except the Jesus Freaks, the Hare Krishnas, and George Harrison. For most of them, the imitation was sadly superficial, and only about appearances and material things. Jesus was not that big on sex, drugs, or rock and roll.

“With strange ideas”: this one is the dead giveaway. Strange to whom? Presumably, to whoever is making the meme.

In other words, they do not actually share Jesus’s views at all. They find them strange.

The Beatitudes, the Beatified, and the Beautiful

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! 

--St. Augustine

The Beatitudes seem to fairly precisely describe the abused and the depressed as Christianity’s target audience.

So what does this mean in terms of the best “treatment” for depression? What are the implications for the “depressed”?

We have noted that Jesus’s advice to “turn the other check” is actually good practical advice for anyone who finds himself in an abusive situation. But that does not itself deal with the lasting effects of the abuse.

Surely there is more here; for Jesus himself promises it: “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Sounds good; especially since free-floating anxiety is the most common feature of what is called “depression.”

Obviously, the first thing and the main thing is to embrace Christianity; to, as AA has it, submit to a higher power. This is no small detail. Even those raised Christians, even those who are practicing Christians, may not have really done this in their hearts. There are conversion experiences, and conversion experiences upon conversion experiences. Mount Carmel is a long climb.

But Jesus also seems to suggest something more specific. In his next words, immediately following the Beatitudes, he advises:

13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

This is not just a matter of receiving the sacraments, is it? This is not just a matter of letting Jesus into your heart. These sound much like marching orders.

The most obvious thing is that they are supposed somehow to be noticed: like salt, or light; to be very apparent to the senses. And “good works”: that seems clear enough. We as Christians are supposed to do good deeds: clothe the naked, visit prisoners, feed the hungry, and so forth. The corporal acts of mercy. Check.

But wait. There is a problem here. For, later in the same Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns expressly against doing such good deeds so that others can see them:

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”

Accordingly, while we are certainly called upon to do good deeds, and to pray, and to receive the sacraments, this cannot actually be what Jesus is referring to here. Attending church, praying, and the corporal acts of mercy are all supposed to be done in secret. This is no city on a hill, no lamp shining, no salt spreading its taste to the meal. Just the reverse.

Is he referring instead to the “works of the spirit”? The gifts of the spirit are listed variously in different places, but include, according to I Corinthians: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, identifying spirits, speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues. They were, most famously, given to the apostles at Pentecost. Jesus does, certainly, in this same passage, compare the depressed to the prophets: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” That's the most obvious gift of the spirit cited.

Yet it seems this is not meant either. In the same sermon, Jesus warns of false prophets:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”

If prophets themselves are to be recognized by their fruits, then the visible fruits cannot be the prophecies. That they already manifest, by definition. It seems reasonable too to suppose the same of the other works of the spirit. Indeed, in the sermon itself, Jesus makes clear that non-believers can pull off many of these things as well:

“Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' 23 Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'”

The visible fruits mentioned--presumably the same thing meant by “shining light,” salt, and “city on a hill”--must be something else.

I doubt many will imagine that the fruits and the works he calls for the dispossessed and poor to do are material riches; perhaps some Calvinists will. But Jesus dismisses this notion smartly enough as well, warning against both riches and, Protestant work ethic to the contrary, working hard and getting ahead.

19 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

25 "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.

Are the “good works” going forth and preaching the gospel, converting and baptizing the nations? One might well suppose so; for later, this is indeed what the apostles are called to do. But this too does not seem right. First, at this early stage in his ministry, Jesus tells his apostles not to do this, but to speak only to the lost of the children of Israel; and he strives to keep his own Messianic identity secret. Jesus also warns in the sermon that "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” So no, it seems that preaching the gospel (i.e., saying "Lord, Lord") is not the fruit either. It is not in itself, although desirable and demanded, “doing the will.”

Jesus also says, in the same sermon, apart from any obvious context, “6 Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” Isn't this actually a warning against preaching the gospel straight up, out in the market place? Note too the echo here of the image of salt being crushed underfoot. In other words, whatever salt is, it is not saying things straight out to anyone who will hear. That is the opposite of salt; that is salt that has lost its savour.

But look again at that passage. Isn't it our key? Isn't it a skillful signal that the entire Sermon on the Mount is a riddle, that the primary point is not being said straight out? It is meant to reveal itself only to those who will ponder it in their hearts.

So what is left, then? The depressed, the abused, are called on to do good works, to let their light shine, to bear good fruit, to do the will of their father. But this does not mean doing good deeds in the common sense. It does not mean prophesying, or performing miracles. It does not mean preaching the gospel. It certainly does not mean getting rich. What is left?

Perhaps it is just my limited imagination. But the only thing that seems to be left is the creation of beauty through artifice—what we might call “art.” The "work" of an artist.

Indeed, if we read the Sermon on the Mount as a riddle, it is itself a good example of the concept. Even if we do not, the saying about casting pearls before swine certainly is; and so is Jesus's characteristic teaching technique, of telling parables. He is an artful storyteller, and storytelling is an art.

So is the image of a “city on a hill,” to which he compares the depressed. A city is an artifice. So is the seasoning of a meal with salt. So is setting a lamp on a stand, and lighting it.

Beauty appears to us through our senses; hence the references to flavour (salt, fruit), light, and the eye. Indeed, what else but the expereince of beauty can Jesus be speaking of in the cryptic phrase:

22 "The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

To be able to appreciate and respond to beauty is apparently of the essence. And, while a much larger group is called to be disciples, to be an apostle, one of the twice-called, implies the production of such beauty in some way.

This just makes sense. God, being Supreme Being, is by definition not just perfect goodness, and perfect truth, but also perfect beauty. Just as revering him demands a commitment to truth, and to the moral good, it must also demand a commitment to beauty.

It is in the beauty of the natural universe that we see God.

It is in the beauty of our artifice that we honour him. 

\

In this sense we imitate Christ. In this sense we are in the image of God.

Harpur's The Pagan Christ: Myth vs. History

Harpur calls the Gospels myth, but insists this is not the same as calling them a lie. They are spiritual truths, he explains, but not literally true. P. 39: “There was one primal, central myth—originating undoubtedly in Egypt—and all the rest flowed from that.” P. 30: Harpur quotes Kuhn, then explicitly agrees, saying that “no one can make the search and discover these numberless resemblances without forming the conviction that the Bible writings are rescripts, often … corrupted, of antecedent wisdom literature.”

This is the fallacy of the false alternative. They can be both. Not only is this not the only possible explanation for these claimed similarities; it is one explanation that does not work.

What Harpur says about myth is half true. The common use of the term to mean “falsehood” is wrong. “Myth” literally means “story,” but its deeper meaning is those stories that seem to especially resonate with us.

Like Zeus or Herakles, characters like Scrooge or Falstaff or Babbitt are mythic. They seem to resonate in our consciousness, to have a life of their own beyond the page or the stage.

A modern icon by Andy Warhol, who was an Eastern Catholic. Is she ahistorical?

But Harpur shows he does not really understand the term, because without saying so, he assumes that the fact that Jesus’s story is mythic means that it is not historical. This is just the popular misconception that myth means falsehood persisting. In fact, the English word “history” means exactly what the Greek word “mythos” means: story (compare the French “histoire”). Characters like Hitler, Mother Teresa, or Marilyn Monroe, or stories like the Titanic or the Kennedy assassination, are also perfectly mythic in the proper sense. They resonate and are memorable. Yet they are also historical. In fact, it is primarily the myths of history that we remember.

Harpur claims that the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s life were originally intended to be read symbolically, yet later, were reinterpreted as literal. This requires the hypothesis that the earlier, correct reading was suppressed by a vast conspiracy. Harpur, p. 50: “a conspiracy had operated over a span of centuries.”

This idea of a conspiracy operating with perfect efficiency over centuries is so improbable it sounds like paranoid thinking. It sounds delusional.

In any case, it cannot be. The gospels and the epistles themselves make it clear they are claiming the events to be historical.

What an ahistorical character looks like.

One should look for rhetorical clues in the text itself to understand the author’s intent. If you are writing ironically, you must include sufficient information that the alert reader can see the irony; if you are writing allegorically, you must do the same, or the allegory fails. If you do not, you are not expressing yourself well. So, if you mean to tell a story that is purely allegorical or fictional, you begin it “once upon a time,” or words to that effect: “there once was a king who …”; “long ago in a galaxy far away.” “In Never-Never Land…” “In Utopia .” “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” “Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago…” (Points for recognizing the stories that so begin).

Time and place are made deliberately vague to make the point, “this is not to be read literally, as happening at one particular time and place, but has a symbolic meaning.”

Note, by contrast, how the gospel for a few Sundays ago began:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,
when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee,
and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region
of Ituraea and Trachonitis,
and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,
during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,
the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.
John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan,
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, …

Nothing vague there; the evangelist is going to great lengths to nail it all down so that it can be traced. Nothing could be plainer (or more important in the chronicler’s mind) than that this is a historical event, not something allegorical or to be read only metaphorically.

And, as I noted previously in my commentary on The Pagan Christ, St. Paul insists on the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection as the single most important thing in the Christian message, the sine qua non.

1 Corinthians 15:

14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Just as Harpur says, there is nothing Jesus says that some other figure had not said in some way before; differences are in emphasis, no more. This is necessarily so, because truth does not change with time, and God would not have concealed truth from mankind at any age. The message of Christianity is not the words of Jesus; the message is Jesus. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light.”

And this means Christ crucified, crucified in the flesh. This is essential to Christian theology. God himself died to expiate our sins. If Christ did not die, in the flesh, as Paul says, our sins are not forgiven. We have no hope of heaven.

Origen, Church Father and "Father of the Homily"

Harpur’s great champion of the “esoteric” reading of scripture is Origen. Harpur writes, “Once the early Church turned to literalism and an exoteric, bottom-line rendering of the faith, Origen was condemned as a heretic and his books were banned.” But Origen’s style of reading the Bible did not see it as purely allegorical, and Origen’s style of reading the Bible has never been condemned by the Church. The Catholic Encyclopedia mostly praises rather than condemns Origen’s Biblical exegesis, calling him the “father of the homily,” and saying his principles for reading the Bible are “unimpeachable” and “proof against criticism.”

Origen certainly believed in the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, and of his crucifixion and resurrection.

Origen’s views were later condemned by many not because of how he interpreted the Bible, but because of his other beliefs: in the preexistence of souls, and in universal salvation.

Quetzalcoatl

Now for why the claim that Christianity is just a retelling of older Egyptian myths, “wisdom literature,” cannot work.

Harpur himself claims that Cortez found Aztec religion to be strikingly similar to Christianity (p. 29). The real similarities, indeed, seem just about as strong as those to Egyptian religion. If Horus is a type of Christ, then so is Quetzalcoatl, or the Hawaiian god Kaili. There is no plausible way some ancient wisdom literature could have been known to Europeans, and also not only to people off in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and also in the Americas, isolated from the rest of the world for an estimated 12,000 years---since long before the invention of writing. On top of this, as Jung has demonstrated, the same myth motifs appear spontaneously in people’s dreams and fantasies, when they could not possibly have read the ancient or foreign texts in which these myths appear.

The far more plausible explanation is that these myths are imbedded somehow in our consciousness as humans. And the simplest explanation of this is that God put them there. If God did this, he is also fully capable of making the same thing happen in the physical world, in history. Why not? Moreover, if he wants to put it in our consciousness, it is obviously important. If it is important, then he obviously would also want to do it historically, in the physical world.

Harpur's Pagan Christ

A skeptical brother of mine, who shall remain nameless, has urged me to read Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ. I have not yet--he is mailing it to me. But the beginning of the intro is available for free online at Amazon. Harpur's premise seems to be that the Jesus story is not historical, but based on ancient Egyptian religion.

 It's a bit unfair to react at so little, without giving the man his chance to make his case. Still, I can't resist. I note a few things.

Quote from Harpur:

“The blunt truth is that seismic research by a few specifically neutral scholars, most notably Orientalists and Egyptologists, has been deliberately ignored by churchly authorities for many decades. Scholars such as Godfrey Higgins (1771—1834), author of the monumental tome Anacalypsis, the British Egyptologist Gerald Massey (1828-1908), and more recently, and most important, the already cited American specialist in ancient sacred literature Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1881 —1963) have made it clear in voluminous, eminently learned works that the Jewish and Christian religions do indeed owe most of their origins to Egyptian roots.”

End Quote.

It is not just churchly authorities who ignore Harpur's cited authorities. So do Egyptologists in general, and they have no special connection to any church. Harpur's sources are generally considered cranks. Of course, the consensus of experts may be wrong; but we are not really qualified to challenge their evaluation that Harpur's sources are not to be taken seriously. We'd really have to go back to the original sources otherwise, and that would require a reading knowledge of ancient Egyptian. Some things are available in English translation.

Harpur's three sources do not appear to be “neutral scholars,” either. Kuhn appears to have been a Theosophist; Higgins was “Chief” of the “Order of Druids”; Massey was a “Christian Socialist.” 

Quote from Harpur:

[When teaching at the seminary] “It would have been news to me that Moses is an Egyptian name." 

End quote. 

If he is telling the truth, this is an astonishing admission of ignorance. Especially since he claims to have read Freud, who points this out. Of course Moses is an Egyptian name. In the Bible, Moses was raised by an Egyptian family, and named by them. 

Horus slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.

Quote from Harpur

“I knew nothing then of an Egyptian Christos, or Christ, named Horus.”

Again, a startling confession of ignorance for a college teacher specializing in religion. Horus is one of the best-known of the Egyptian gods. This is especially surprising since Harpur claims he had already read The Golden Bough, which has a lot on Horus and the motif of resurrection. At this point, I really have to suspect Harpur of lying.

Quote from Harpur:

"there was a Jesus in Egyptian lore many thousands of years ago. His name was Iusu, or Iusa, according to Gerald Massey, and that means "the coming divine Son who heals or saves."

End quote.

There may have been a “Iusu” in Egyptian lore, or there may not have been, but “Jesus,” which sounds at least a little like “Iusu,” was not the name of the Christian Messiah. That is just the Latinization of the Hebrew Yeheshua, aka the Old Testament's “Joshua.” We know from inscriptions that this was quite a common name in Palestine at the time. It has well-known roots and ancestry within the Hebrew tradition. It means, in Hebrew, “God is Salvation.”

Quote from Harpur:

“The Church today stands at a crossroads. Many of its best thinkers are warning that it may have only one more generation before extinction because of its failure to communicate meaningfully with a postmodern age.”

This is very much a mainstream Protestant view; they all think Christianity is dying. But it is a blinkered view; it is only their version of the faith that is dying. Mainstream Protestantism is indeed dying; Christianity is not. It is growing in adherents, largely through conversion, and faster than the rate of increase in the human population.

Quote from Harpur:

The cross, as we shall see, was a feature of ancient religion for a vast span of time prior to the Christian era. But imagine my surprise when I discovered that something universally believed to have been a purely Christian innovation—the Greek monogram comprising the first two letters of the word for Christ (chi and rho), letters often superimposed on each other in church ornamentation— was also pre-existent to Christianity. It appears on the coins of the Ptolemies and even those of King Herod the Great almost forty years B.C.E.

End quote.

Nothing surprising here. Of course the cross or X, being a simple and obvious symbol, long predates Christianity—as, for example, a letter in the Greek or Phoenician alphabet. It is also the ancient symbol for “city.” It naturally suggests the union of two principles. As for Chi-Rho preexisting Christianity, again, a simple two-letter monogram is bound to show up in other contexts. For a precisely parallel example, Google “CR,” the closest English equivalent. I know it immediately as the Filipino euphemism for a toilet. However, it also apparently refers to Creative Review, a magazine; it is the stock market abbreviation for Crane Company stock; it stands for the Central Railway in India; it is the chemical symbol for Chromium; it refers to the magazine Consumer Reports; it is a type of gas; it is the short form of College of the Redwoods; on coinage, it would be the standard abbreviation in Latin for “Carolus Rex,” i.e., King Charles or King Carlos or King Karl; and so on and on.

You get the picture, surely? It's a tremendous leap to assume that every instance of Chi-Rho or of a cross or X refers to Jesus of Nazareth.

But let's concede that it's all true—that the monograms and the crosses really do refer to Jesus, that some ancient Egyptian hero had a name that was related to his, that the Horus myths have many points of similarity. Does that suggest that Jesus was not historical? Not at all; this sort of thinking is the double bind that sunk the attempts by Barth, the Jesus Seminar and others to “demythologize” (their term) the story of Jesus. The problem is that, on the fundamental premise that Jesus was God, normal probabilities no longer apply. All such examples may indeed be, as they are traditionally understood to be, “foreshadowings,” and can also be cited by Christians as evidence that Jesus truly was the Christ. Harpur mentions this, but simply does not address it, in the intro.



Christians of the time of Jesus and just after would of course have been entirely familiar with any parallels with Horus—not to mention the dying-and-rising Adonis, who was a God of Palestine and Phoenicia. There were temples to Isis in Rome at the same time Peter set up shop there. Christians have always pointed to striking parallels between the Old Testament and the New as well: Jonah in the whale presages Christ; the wandering of the Hebrews in the desert for forty years presages Jesus wandering in the desert for forty days; John the Baptist is a second Elijah; Jesus, Mary, and Joseph's flight into Egypt re-enacts the flight of the Hebrews into Egypt under Joseph in the Old Testament; and on and on. To Christians, these have never suggested that Jesus was ahistorical; they suggest instead that he really is the Son of God.

Does it matter whether Jesus was historical? Harpur, I gather, says it does not. But it does, according to the Bible itself.

In First Corinthians 15, St. Paul writes: 

“14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (NIV)

There you go—no fudge factor, and no change of heart sometime in the 4th century. Christianity has always taught, and the earliest Christians already absolutely believed, that the essential features of the Jesus story were historical. Either that, or the physical world itself is not real; a Gnostic position that is opposed by Christianity.

The historical record on its own, on the other hand, is not strong evidence two thousand years later. We probably have more evidence of Jesus and his life than of any other individual in the ancient world; but that is not saying much. I doubt that anyone's faith in Jesus or in Christianity is founded on the historical record or on the miracles recorded in it. I doubt that anyone reads the Bible for the first time and concludes “this person must have been the son of God and I must believe what he says because this book says he rose from the dead.” People come to believe, I think, by three routes; maybe more. First, logical deduction from first principles, like Descartes. One arrives at the necessary conclusion that God MUST have done something like this, then searches the historical record for when it happened. Second, personal experience: direct and immediate experience of God, like St. Paul himself. Third, the moral force of Jesus's teaching as recorded in the Bible—whoever said this of course existed, and the teaching rings so true it must be the words of God. Reason, evidence, and emotional appeal.

What Did Jesus Look Like?

Hey! Who woke me up after 2,000 years?

What do we know about what Jesus looked like, and how do we know it? 

The question is more important theologically than might first appear. Jesus is God as God chose to reveal Himself to us. Given that it is valuable to have a personal relationship with God, it is valuable to have a clear image of him for prayer and meditation. The best and clearest image is surely the one God himself chose. 

Unfortunately, recently, a spanner has been thrown into the works. 

You might have seen the picture above. It is now all over the Internet; it is the first thing you are liable to see if you Google “what Jesus looked like.” It has been embraced and promoted by the BBC, Popular Mechanics, CNN, National Geographic, and any number of other media outlets. It is a claimed “scientific” reconstruction of what Jesus really looked like, using computer modelling. Being “scientific,” it is of course embraced as truer than the traditional view—after all, ”science” trumps “religion” as our true faith any day of the week. 

And it is nonsense. 

Consider the basic premise: It is based in the first place on a reconstruction of the sort forensic labs do on murder victims, built up from a computer model of a first-century Palestinian skull. 

Let's assume that modern forensic science is good enough to reconstruct what someone looks like accurately from a skull. It does not matter—because this is not Jesus's skull. Think for a moment how likely it would be for someone to come up with an accurate image of you by choosing a random photograph of another person who lived in the same country in the same century? Odds of winning the lottery would be better. 

But the nonsense only begins there. There is lots more to come. You will note that the image has short hair—unlike the traditional, long-haired image. Hair length, of course, cannot be determined from a skull. No; it turns out the “scientific” reason for this touch is that St. Paul in one epistle passage advised Christian men to wear their hair short. But St. Paul was writing in Greek to Greeks living in Greek lands; I thought the original premise was that Jesus was going to look like a Palestinian Jew? Jesus preached in synagogues and was called “rabbi”--and Judaism required men to wear their hair and beards uncut. If Jesus's own appearance was so much at variance from the norm of the place and time, and from the religious requirement, we would surely have mention of it. 

The “scientists,” in other words, are contradicting their own first premise, and for one purpose alone: to come up with an image as different as possible from the traditional view. We should be aware of this motive, and we should judge their claims accordingly. You're never going to get any press these days by saying the traditional religious view is right. 

You will note again that the scientists's image is considerably darker-skinned than that of the traditional image. The press coverage makes a point of this: “dark olive skin.” This is no doubt politically correct these days, when other authors commonly try to claim that the Egyptian Pharaohs were black. But it seems highly unlikely to be historically accurate. Modern Jews are far from being dark-olive in colour. Granted, they have no doubt intermarried over the years; but modern Palestinian Arabs are also not olive-skinned. While there is a natural range, one commonly finds today Palestinian Arabs with quite pale skin, sometimes even blue eyes and blond hair. I know; I have taught some of them. 

It is hard to imagine why the pigmentation of the Jews two thousand years ago would have been darker. The Arabs, after all, are supposed to have come from further south, and some of the inhabitants of the Southern Arabian Peninsula can be quite dark. In Jesus's time, by contrast, and in Galilee in particular, thanks to Alexander's conquests, there had been a rather recent influx of Greek blood from the north. 

This new “scientific” image also shows a broader, shorter nose than we are used to seeing—Jesus is usually shown with a rather long and thin nose. Odd, again, that the scientists would do that—I believe nose length cannot be determined from the skull since it is build from cartilage, not bone. After all, modern Palestinian Arabs tend to have long, thin noses, like the traditional depiction, not bulbous ones like this modern illustration. 

Jesus as he appears in ancient mosaic at Hagia Sophia. Note the long, "Arabian" nose.

It is amazing what nonsense you can get away with simply by misappropriating the word “science.” Ask Marx, or Freud. 

So this image is not just arbitrary in origin, but probably systematically wrong. And, of course, damaging to numberless spiritual lives. 

But to be fair, where do we get our own current idea of what Jesus looked like? Is it, in turn, and as these “scientists” and the press they have attracted assert, arbitrary? 

That is what the “scientists” claim: the original Popular Mechanics story notes “nowhere in the New Testament is Jesus described, nor have any drawings of him ever been uncovered.” But this is not, strictly, true; not true, at least, unless you reject certain images that are indeed claimed to be portraits of Jesus indeed taken from life. At least three have been uncovered, and they have indeed been influential downthrough the ages in forming our common image of Jesus: the Mandylion of Edessa, Veronica's Veil, and the Shroud of Turin. 

The Shroud of Turin, I assume, needs no introduction. 

A modern reconstruction of Jesus's face from the Shroud of Turin.

Veronica's veil is supposed to be a headscarf with which St. Veronica wiped the face of Jesus as he carried his cross. “Veronica” is unlikely to have been the real name of the woman involved, since it simply means “true image.” However, the story appears quite early, in the “Acts of Pilate,” and references to the veil itself as a relic can be traced back to the fourth century. 

Veronica's Veil.

The Mandylion of Edessa is a portrait held to have been painted by a court painter from Edessa during Jesus's lifetime, at the request of the king of Edessa. It was carefully preserved as the “first icon,” but the original may have disappeared during the French Revolution. Nevertheless, it served as a touchstone throughout earlier centuries, and two reputed copies survive. 

Copy of Mandylion preserved in Genoa; or possibly the original.

Copy of Mandylion preserved in Vatican.

Of course, all three relics may be forgeries. But it is worth noting that they all agree on Jesus's appearance. 

It would be natural, surely, for followers to preserve Jesus's shroud; though an image burned onto it would of course be supernatural. So too for Veronica's Veil. That the images require a supernatural explanation is of course far from a disproof, given that we are dealing with a man claimed to be God himself. Rather, their apparent supernatural origin and state of preservation are themselves arguments for their validity. 

It seems at least plausible, in turn, that a neighbouring king might have sought a portrait of Jesus. The gospel tells us that the Nazarene prophet stirred up considerable interest not just in Judea, but in neighbouring kingdoms—we are about to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany. “All of Judea” came out to see John the Baptist, “and the whole region of the Jordan.” Edessa was reasonably close culturally and geographically, in a time of great regional commerce, and is known to have embraced Christianity very early. 


There are other claimed ancient relics, with less plausible pedigrees. We also have surviving written descriptions of Jesus that are at least claimed to be very old; and they, again, conform to the traditional image. An intriguing example is the supposed letter of Publius Lentullus, claimed to have been at one time procurator for Judea: 

"his hair of (the colour of) the chestnut, full ripe, plain to His ears, whence downwards it is more orient and curling and wavering about His shoulders. In the midst of His head is a seam or partition in His hair, after the manner of the Nazarenes. His forehead plain and very delicate; His face without spot or wrinkle, beautified with a lovely red; His nose and mouth so formed as nothing can be reprehended; His beard thickish, in colour like His hair, not very long, but forked; His look innocent and mature; His eyes grey, clear, and quick"

But all of this is almost beside the point. We have one other authority for the traditional appearance of Jesus, and it is unassailable: inspiration. From his own time to ours, Jesus has repeatedly appeared in visions to the saints; we have their witness, and he, being God, is entirely capable of ensuring its reliability. Indeed, we also have the witness of the great artists themselves. No artist becomes great without inspiration, and God, being God, can and would preserve the image within accurate bounds for our benefit, particularly in art especially commissioned for a religious and meditative purpose. You can presumably only deny this likelihood if you assume in the first instance that he is not God.

Try Fitting THIS One on the Dashboard of Your Car

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/08/worlds-tallest-jesus-statue-completed/