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Almighty
God,
the Father
- or just -
God, the Almighty Fiction?
(Part II)
Now, what of vicarious salvation through faith in Jesus, a god according
to all Trinitarian Christians? Below we outline the evolution, transformation
and merger of Hebrew scripture, Roman myth, and other sources to create
the god(s) of Trinitarian Christianity. (For Allah, see the United
States of Islam.)
Bear in mind that Christian apologists have invoked "progressive
revelation," the ontological argument,
and other devices in an attempt to prove their faith. However, it matters
little at what stage of development the "true god" was revealed
when Almighty Questions go unanswered: When and how did they verify empirically
the existence of their god? Montheists could save themselves much grief
by admitting that their scriptures are flawed and that the remaining truisms
are misunderstood or altogether ignored. (How many American Christians
take Matt. 19:18 seriously? Certainly few in Congress.)
Let's first consider the etymology of the words used in Trinitarian Christianity
for the supreme deity. The word "God," by the way, is a title,
not a name.
"The most common of all follies is to believe passionately
in the palpably not true.
It is the chief occupation of mankind."
- H. L. Mencken
God, the (Sky) Father
dei- (ancient root meaning to gleam or shine)
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dyeus ------------------> Zeus1, 4
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diwes (IE, genitive of dyeus)2
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(Father Jove) ------------------------------> Iuppiter3
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Deus Pater |
(our "God, the Father" in Latin) |
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Dio, Dios, Dieu Gott Vater (German) Jupiter4
(modern Italian, God, the Father
Spanish & French)
1. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) had a statue of Zeus placed
in the Temple in Jerusalem under a program of forced Hellenization.
Zeus was removed a few years later in 165 BCE following an uprising
led by Judas Maccabaeus, the first Hasmonean king. The subsequent
rededication of the Temple is commemorated with the minor holiday of
Chanukah, and the well-known nine-branch menorah and lighting of candles
on successive nights celebrates folklore in which a tiny quantity of
ritually pure oil found by the Maccabaeans lasted for eight days. Although
Judas (or Judah) Maccabaeus later concluded an alliance with Rome, the
Hasmonean kingdom ended in 63 BCE when Rome intervened in a power struggle
between sibling heirs to the throne. Each of the rivals had hoped to
sway Rome to his own side. Instead, Roman troops entered Jerusalem,
and Judea was annexed. In light of the Christian Trinity , the betrayal
of Jesus by Judas at Gethsemane can be viewed as a multiple allegory.
First, Judah, the strongest of the twelve tribes of Israel, not
only compromised with naive theism in 165 BCE by failing to eject the
spirit of Zeus from Judaic thought, but also laid the groundwork for
Rome's occupation. Next, the Judeans permitted mammon to override sound
judgement in 63 BCE after decades of relative prosperity. Finally, Jesus
(from Hebrew yeshu'a, a contraction of yehoshu'a...the
help of YHWH) was handed over to pagans who would destroy the Temple
in 70 CE. Generations later their decendants would claim - following
a vote at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE - that Jesus, a mystical
peacenik, was your god incarnate. By the way, Jesus spoke Aramaic, a
language very similar to Hebrew, but he used the Septuagint (the LXX),
a Greek translation of Jewish scriptures dating to the second or third
century BCE when the Greeks began to accelerate their Hellenization
of the Jews. The version of the LXX used by Jesus and his Apostles had
been translated back into Hebrew or Aramaic.
2. IE refers to the Indo-European superfamily of languages which includes
languages as diverse as Greek, German, and Latin (centum languages),
and Hindi, Persian, Czech, Lithuanian, and Sanskrit (satem languages.)
The genitive case is used in inflected languages such as German and
Latin to express possession.
3. Iuppiter and Iovis (in the genitive) are the same god
referred to in two different ways, depending upon context. Although
Latin has no 'j', these names are usually rendered into English as simply
Jupiter, and "By Jove! "How can this be?" The
cult of Jupiter, Roman equivalent of Zeus, was ubiquitous throughout
the Roman empire. Jupiter was a kingly god but neither the first-and-only
god nor an almighty one. Such enhancements came later in the form of
Deus Pater, a form used in the Latin Church. Or......maybe the
Roman elite simply pulled a linguistic switcheroo on the illiterate
rabble. Iovis Pater is Jove's father, i.e. Saturn, whose seven-day
festival of merriment and excess began on December 19. It took the Church
generations to curtail it and make Christmas the solemn event of today.
Anyhow, word games give us a way to fool early Christians into believing
in both a Father and a Son, except that the new son, Jesus, takes his
place at the right hand of his father rather than banishing him as Jupiter
did to Saturn. But isn't this just hair-splitting?
4. Zeus and Jupiter are identical. In 1572, Jupiter surfaced in the
Leda Bible, the third edition of the Bishop's Bible, pictured in a woodcut
decoration at the beginning of Paul's Letter to the Hebrews. This New
Testament work, written in Greek but not actually authored by Paul (a
Roman citizen), was addressed to the Hellenistic Jews of Alexandria
and paralleled their variant of Judaic thought. The image is of Jupiter
appearing as a swan to Leda, a Spartan queen who in Greek myth was visited
by Zeus in disguise as a swan. Public outcry curtailed the use of this
and other decorations drawn from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The Leda
Bible was just one of many new versions of the Bible (there are now
thousands) made widely available within the first 100 years of
the development of moveable type in the West (c. 1480) and the Protestant
"reformation" spawned in 1517 by Martin Luther. The Authorized
Version of King James I, published in 1611, is based on the Bishop's
Bible. VersionSee Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable - Centenary
Edition.
"...for men insist most vehemently upon their certainties
when their hold upon them has been shaken.
Frantic orthodoxy is a method of obscuring doubt."
- Reinhold Niebuhr
Evolution of the Holy Trinity
Advocates of Trinitarian Christianity insist that the existence of this
tripartite god can be inferred from the Bible. Jesus, in each the four
canonical Gospels refers to a Father. In a few of the Gospels, he also
equates himself with this Father and promises to send "another Advocate,"
i.e. the holy Spirit, to the disciples after Jesus' departure from earth.
(In John 8:24 and 13:19, Jesus claims "I AM," echoing Ex. 3:14
in which Moses learns who has sent him to lead the Isrealites out of Pharaoh's
grasp in Egypt. See Luke 24:49 and John 14:16 for promises to send the
holy Spirit.) In the Gospels, only in the second-to-last verse
of Matthew, 28:20, is Jesus quoted as pronouncing the Father/Son/holy
Spirit formula in a single utterance.
Normally obscurred from the modern Christian's view, however, are the
many additional Gospels that existed during the early first millenium
of the Christian era. The Gospel of Thomas, discovered in the mid-20th
century and later rejected by the Roman Catholic Church for its Gnostic
tendencies, is one such example. In fact, each of the four canonical Gospels
is but a redaction from multiple sources.
The Trinitarian Christianity promoted via the books Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John wasn't popularized until the time of Tertullian (c. 160-230 CE),
a Latin Church father originally from Carthage (in N. Africa.) The list
below is intended to remind the Trinitarian that his his three-gods-in-one
faith is best understood as a borrowing from Roman paganism. The Capitoline
Triad, incidentally, derives its name from one of the Seven Hills of Rome
and was the location of Jupiter's temple to the east of the Tiber River.
The papal residence was located on the Quirinal, namesake of Quirinus
and another of the Seven Hills, until about 1450 when Pope Nicolas moved
to the Vatican on the west side of the Tiber.
Name of Roman Triad1 Gods
I. Archaic Triad Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus
(from ancient times)
II. Capitoline Triad Jupiter, Juno, Minerva2
(popularized c. 500 BCE)
III. Christian Triad (Holy Trinity3) Deus Pater, Jesus4, holy Ghost5
(popularized early 200s CE)
1. An important trinity of gods consisting of Osiris,
Isis and Set was also found in Egyptian mythology, although their relationship
was somewhat different than that among the gods of the later Roman triads.
Osiris was killed by Set and later resurrected through the intercession
of Thoth, the god of wisdom, writing and magical rituals. Worship
of Osiris pre-dates Christianity by about 3000 years and was centered
on the theme of resurrection, Osiris' value as a saviour of Egypt, and
his rule of the underworld where he was judge of the dead.
2. Minerva, daughter of Jupiter and Juno, was the goddess of wisdom,
technical skill, invention, arts and so on. She is identified with the
Greek goddess Athena. Quirinus, like Mars, was a god of war. In one
version of Roman myth, Minerva sprang fully armed from the brain of
Jupiter.
3. Trinitarianism was officially chosen at the Council of Nicaea in
325 CE, a meeting of religious clerics convened by the Roman emperor
Constantine, an Arian Christian who was in power from 306-337. Constantine's
Arianism was immediately declared heretical, and that same year, the
Bishopric of Rome was merged with the ancient office of Pontifex
Maximus, the head of Rome's college of state (pagan) priests and
a title once held by Julius Caesar as it was by other emperors. The
Roman Catholic Church, however, has denied sainthood to Tertullian because
he moved on to Montanism, a supposed heresy whose adherents "thought
themselves a spiritual elite directed by the holy Spirit, charged with
purifying the Church and supercharged with all kinds of spurious supernatural
gifts, full of new revelation." See Why Do Catholics Do That?
by Kevin Orlin Johnson, Ph.D. Although Dr. Johnson makes no mention
of Tertullian's role in the development of Trinitarian thought, he quotes
St. Augustine of Hippo, "But it's not surprising that Tertulllian
could dream up such an idea," in reference to Tertullian's supposed
heresy.
4. Most followers of Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the hundreds
of Protestant denominations believe that Jesus is a god to be worshipped,
a sure sign of a personality cult. Not all sects, especially those of
the early 1st millenium, have shared this view, and most modern Christians
ignore or deny that at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, Jesus, like
the Trinity, was simply chosen as their god by a vote at the behest
of politicians. Sir Isaac Newton, for example, once followed Arianism,
a variant in which Jesus is a head and shoulders above other humans
but not a god. Newton's Lucasian (as in the Gospel of Luke) chair of
mathematics at Cambridge University is now occupied by Stephen Hawking,
co-author with Roger Penrose of the teaching that "time must have
a beginning in what is called the big
bang" and that it comes to an end at a black hole.
5. In Catholic and Protestant theology, the holy Ghost, or Spirit, proceeds
from the Father and the Son. Orthodox Churches teach that the
holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone; the term Filioque,
meaning "and the Son," is applied to the disputed phrase within
the Nicene Creed. This distinction precipitated the schism between eastern
and western Christianity that Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople,
completed in 1054 CE. (See note 2.) Much ado about nothing, or so it
would appear.
In time, it may occur to you that Jesus was correct
to assert I AM in reference to himself,
but recall that logic and the laws of physics apply in equal measure
to all sentient beings. Spirit is really the only plausible remnant
of Christian "theology," but it is neither a person nor a
god. It's not an ultimate First Cause,
nor should it be worshipped. It will pay, however, to retain the One-Many
paradox of the Trinity and simply reapply it to all living beings—man,
machine, or otherwise. The Church has long claimed to be indefectible,
i.e. it will keep the teachings of Christ intact, but the Church arbitrarily
chose a set a doctrines and gospels to the exclusion of others known
in the early first millenium CE. On July 18, 1870, the First Vatican
Council officially defined papal infallibility for the first time: "the
Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra,...he fully enjoys...the
same infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer intended His Church
should be endowed." The Catholic Church cannot repeal any teaching
about faith or morals once the Pope has spoken ex cathedra (from
the throne) on the matter, i.e. when discharging his official responsibility
as "Pastor and Doctor of all Christians."
"Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?
Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?"
Luke 12:14, 57
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