Long lost Christianity

I doubt that many readers of this blog also read my scripture blog so I have put together below some posts from it that should be of some interest to readers of this blog.  To get the full background of what I say below, however, you need to read earlier entries on the blog

THE CROSS

Did Christ die on a cross?  It seems unlikely.  The two words used in the Greek NT to refer to the cross are “stauros” and “xylon”.  “Xylon” simply means “wood” and “stauros” simply means “stake”.  Because of Christian convictions about the cross, however, all Lexicons do give “cross” as one of the meanings of “stauros”.  But in classical (pre-Christian) Greek, “stauros” seems always to have meant simply “stake”.  So Christ probably died with his hands pinned ABOVE his head.  Why would the Romans go to the trouble of adding a crossbar just for the purpose of executing a criminal when a stake with no crossbar would do the job equally well?

So why do Christians venerate the cross?  Simple.  It is another of the many compromises the early church made with paganism.  The cross is probably the most ubiquitous religious symbol there is.  It long predates Christianity and is found all over—from ancient Egypt, through Babylon to India.  Even the pagan Norsemen used it. 

{And the Indians particularly liked (and like to this day) their hooked cross -- the Swastika. Though the Indian swastika and the Nazi symbol are actually mirror-images of one-another. See here.  So strictly speaking the Nazi symbol is NOT a Swastika—and the Nazis didn’t call it one either.  They called it simply a “Hakenkreuz” (hooked cross)}.

Why was the cross so popular?  Because many ancient religions—such as the worship of Baal of Peor that the Hebrew prophets battled so valiantly—were what are politely called “fertility” religions:  Sex worship in plain terms.  And the cross is a stylized picture of sexual intercourse.  So it is sad and ironic that the fertility religions that the Bible so fiercely opposes have injected one of their great symbols into the centre of Christian practice.

The earliest symbol of Christianity—as found in the Roman catacombs etc—was of course a fish-shape rather than a cross.  And the fish shape was simply a slightly disguised “Chi”—the first letter of the name “Christ” in Greek—shaped very much like a capital X in our alphabet.  And I won’t even try to say how it is pronounced.

The soul is mortal; Christ didn’t die on the cross; the Nazis didn’t use a swastika—where will it all end?  Am I the craziest man on the internet?  If you think so, just check up for yourself on anything I say.  But don’t rely on dictionaries and encyclopaedias and summaries.  They will just give you the conventional story.  You have to get a lot closer to original sources than that.  Most dictionaries even tell you that conservatives support the status quo—and few claims could be more laughable than that.  Every conservative I know would like to see a HEAP of things changed!

1 CORINTHIANS chapter 15

No immortal soul; No trinity

I have just noticed a few interesting points about 1 Corinthians 15 that seem well worth comment.  From verse 12 we see that Paul actually wrote his diatribe about the spiritual nature of the resurrectuion IN RESPONSE TO other early Christians who DENIED the resurrection.  In other words, the pagan immortal soul doctrine was influential in the early church more or less from the word go.  And if you are an immortal soul you don’t need resurrection.  So the fact that both Paul and John stressed the centrality of the resurrection shows that there was a fight between the Hebrew and pagan views from the beginning—with the NT writers clinging to a version of the Hebrew view.  In both the OT and the NT, the view is that eternal life is ACQUIRED, not inherent.  It is attained through resurrection from death at the end of days.  You are not immortal from the beginning. 

That view is even expressed in what is probably the favourite evangelical scripture—John 3: 16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  This scripture could hardly be clearer in saying that you have to DO something (i.e. believe) in order to get eternal life.  Otherwise you just perish.  Or as it says in 1 Corinthians 15: 53 “this mortal nature must put on immortality”.  So how anybody claiming to be a Christian can believe we are born with an immortal soul is quite beyond me.  It flies in the face of all scripture. 

And 1 Corinthians 15:28 is also completely fatal to the Trinity doctrine.  Paul says that after the resurrection, “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to everyone”.  If the Son is subjected to the Father, how can the Father and the Son be equal—as the Trinity doctrine requires?

Verses 44 and 50 however mark the departure of Christianity from Judaism: “It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body”  .... “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God”.  The resurrection is an entirely spiritual one.

IS THERE ANY TRUE CHRISTIANITY LEFT IN CHRISTENDOM?

If there are any believers in the Bible among those who have been reading this blog, I would hope that they will be seriously disturbed at my demonstration of the way the churches have misrepresented core Bible teachings.  Martin Luther got rid of the centrality of the Pope but he was after all an Augustinian monk and there was an awful lot of Roman doctrine that he did not get rid of.  And not much has changed since among alleged Christians.

No doubt, however, the largely pagan teachings of Christendom today are psychologically satisfying to a lot of people and that satisfaction will always be what matters most.  The appeal of the churches will not be diminished just because people become aware that the foundations of their faith are not as advertised.  People believe what they believe and that it it.

I imagine, however, that somebody will want to ask me at some stage whether there is a church that still relies on the Bible for its teachings.  Broadly, the answer to that is that the smaller sects do take the Bible more seriously and some of them do take note of at least parts of what they read there.  I am no expert on fundamentalist sects but the best-known such sects are Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses.  But the SDAs are rather illogical about how you determine what the 7th. day is and Jehovah’s Witnesses try to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to the conflicting OT and NT versions of the afterlife. 

If I were religious myself, I think I would become a Jew.  Everything about Christendom would then fall into place: Christendom makes perfect sense as the Devil’s version of Judaism:  A false and deeply offensive view of God, a false hope for the afterlife, a false Messiah who achieved nothing that the real Messiah would have achieved, high holy days (Christmas and Easter) that are undisputably pagan in origin, symbolism and timing and, to top it all, a pre-eminent symbol of the faith (the cross) that is borrowed directly from the fertility religions that the prophets all struggled against.  Given such a view of Christendom, it is no wonder that it tried so hard for so long to exterminate the real people of God!

Still, it seems a pity that the original Christianity was one of the many ancient religions to die out.  It was in its day a faith of great power.  By all accounts, the early Christians even followed Christ’s teaching:  “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:39).  And they survived and flourished in a harsh world for hundreds of years despite following that “impractical” teaching.  In the end it was not external attack that destroyed the original Christianity but the corruption from within that came with respectability and power.  Constantine has a lot to answer for.

Posted by jonjayray on Monday, February 28, 2005 at 12:31 AM in Christianity
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