A: On my Concinnate Christianity blog, I take aim at the Apostle Paul and try to show some of the ways that his teachings were very different from your own. I wonder if we can talk some more about that.
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| “Jesus said: It is not possible for anyone to enter a strong man’s house and take it over forcefully unless he first ties his hands. Then he can steal from that house” (Gospel of Thomas 35). Photo of a side entrance of the Royal Conservatory of Music, Bloor Street, Toronto. Photo credit JAT 2017. |
J: There's a lot there to talk about.
A: One of the things that has surprised me most over the past few years is the shortage of people willing to examine the differences between you and Paul. Even serious biblical scholars -- people like the scholars of the Jesus Seminar -- have a blind spot around Paul. They seem to want to pretend that Paul was preaching the same core teachings as you. But it's not that hard to draw up a list of the similarities and differences between First Corinthians and Mark. In fact, it's one of the easier academic analyses I've tried in the past few years. The differences are blatant. I mean, scarily blatant. So I've gotta ask -- what the heck has been going on? Why are so many Christians, even the ones who label themselves Progressive, so completely unwilling to be objective?
J: Brain chemistry.
A (rolling eyes): Why did I know you were going to say that?
J: It's the brain chemistry. It's the way most people have wired their brains -- or have allowed their brains to be wired for them. Their biological brains are loaded with software packages about God and religion, and there's a conflict between the existing software -- provided in the beginning by Paul -- and the "new" software I and other angels have been trying to reintroduce. Of course, it's not really "new." It was old when I was teaching it 2,000 years ago. But the Church tried very hard to eradicate it early on, and to keep eradicating it each time it sprang up again. So to today's readers it seems "new."
A: Can you give us an analogy that will make sense to today's readers?
J: Yes. It's like the difference between early Macs and PC's. Groups were fighting over which platform was better. At that point PC's couldn't read Mac software. Mac software existed, and Mac software was useful and real, but PC's couldn't read it. So a lot of users missed out on good programs. The human brain can end up like that -- wired so it can only read one kind of software, though others kinds of software do exist. For many Christians, their brains have become so used to the ideas of Pauline Christianity that they literally can't "hear" any other ideas about God. Their brains can't process the information. They're literally the people who have ears but cannot hear. They're not able to understand the "new" message at first because their brains aren't used to hearing that kind of language.
A: What you describe sounds a lot like brainwashing. People conditioned to the point where they can hear only one kind of "truth."
J: You could put it that way.
A: That's scary.
J: Yes. But it's not new. It's a very old way to control a large group of people. You don't have to put chains on everybody in your culture to get them to do what you want. A clever tyrant controls the mind -- keeps the body free, but controls the mind. Nothing new there.
A: Except that 2,000 years ago your culture had real slavery -- the kind where human beings were bought and sold and forced to do all sorts of things against their will.
J: The kind that continues in many parts of the world today.
A: Yes, that too.
J: One reason my great-nephew Matthew -- the man you know as the author of the Gospel of Mark -- went ballistic when he read what Paul was writing about "Jesus Christ" was Paul's take on slavery. Paul never comes out and says that slavery is wrong. Instead Paul tries to preserve the status quo by persuading slaves to understand slavery as an illusion -- something not worth fighting about because they have something more valuable than freedom: the higher "truth" of salvation.
A: Right. But can we back up the truck for a minute? I'd like to go back to that historical tidbit you just dropped in. The part about your great-nephew Matthew.
J: Matthew was the grandson of my brother Andrew. Andrew was the only one of my siblings who believed in my teachings.
A: And this Matthew who was your great-nephew . . . is this the same man who wrote the Gospel of Matthew?
J: No. The author of the Gospel of Matthew was not named Matthew. Just as the author of the Gospel of Mark was not named Mark.
A: Okay, well at least that part is known to scholars. But this is all very confusing. Is it okay with you if I keep calling the author of the Gospel of Mark, "Mark"? It's much less confusing to call him Mark.
J: Sounds like a plan.
A: So you're saying that your great-nephew wrote the Gospel of Mark.
J: Well, one of my great-nephews wrote the Gospel of Mark. I had a lot of great-nieces and great-nephews, but only the children and grandchildren of my brother Andrew carried on my teachings the way I taught them. More or less. The rest of my family didn't like me very much.
A: You and I have talked about this a lot. But can you talk a bit today about why your family didn't like you?
J: Basically because I was a shit-disturber. I disagreed with most of the values my family raised me to believe in, and I went on record to say my family and their social class were wrong about the way they were treating other people and God. I grew up in an aristocratic family where we held slaves and where we believed we were chosen by God. I said that was wrong. My family didn't like it. I was embarrassing them.
A: The way a man from the state of Georgia, for instance, would have embarrassed his wealthy plantation owning family in the 19th century if he'd joined the Abolitionists.
J: Or if a son of the Kennedy clan had disavowed the Kennedy myth and run away to live in Canada in a small town where nobody cared that he was a Kennedy.
A: As Canada is to the U.S., so Galilee was to Judea.
J: As Port Hope is to Washington, so Capernaum was to Jerusalem.
A: So you picked Galilee on purpose because it was not a major centre of religious and political influence.
J: And because the people in Galilee had different priorities. They were interested in real healing, real teaching, and they had no use for arrogant priests or rabbis who had their heads stuck up their asses.
A: You always have such a way with words.
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