Robert Baird




RESPONSE TO PAULINE CHRISTIANITY: – The whole of Christendom is not Popery or Romanized but the Pauline influence is arguably the strongest doctrine in the whole of philosophy and theology. ‘The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity’ by Hyam Maccoby say these things on the back cover:

“Defying the accepted view of Jesus as creator of Christianity, Hyam Maccoby, a leading Talmudic scholar, offers a brilliantly argued, boldly provocative challenge to traditional theories about the origin of the Christian religion and leads us to a startling unorthodox conclusion. Maccoby claims that Paul rather than Jesus was the theoretician and architect of that amazing hybrid of Hellenism and Judaism we know today as Christianity, and that it was Paul alone who created a new religion through his vision of Jesus as a divine Savior who died to save humanity. This concept went far beyond the messianic claims of Jesus and, in fact, was an amalgamation of ideas derived from Hellenic religion, especially from Gnosticism and the mystery cults… Bold and scholastically scrupulous. (pg. xi) In my earlier book on Jesus, Revolution in Judaea, I showed how, in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus speaks and acts a Pharisee, though the Gospel editors have attempted to conceal this by representing him as opposing Pharisaism… In the present book I have used rabbinical evidence to establish an opposite contention: that Paul, whom the New Testament wishes to portray as having been a trained Pharisee, never was one (pgs.4&5).

This explains the puzzling and ambiguous role given in the Gospels to the companions of Jesus, the twelve disciples. They are shadowy figures, who are allowed little personality, except of a schematic kind. They are portrayed as stupid; they never quite understand what Jesus is up to. Their importance in the origins of Christianity is played down in a remarkable way. For example, we find immediately after Jesus’ death that the leader of the Jerusalem Church is Jesus’ brother James. Yet in the Gospels, this James does not appear at all as having anything to do with Jesus’ mission and story. Instead, he is given a brief mention as one of the brothers of Jesus who allegedly ‘opposed’ Jesus during his lifetime and regarded him as mad. How it came about that a brother who had been hostile to Jesus in his lifetime suddenly became the revered leader of the Church immediately after Jesus’ death is not explained, though one would have thought that some explanation was called for. Later Church legends, of course, filled the gap with stories of the miraculous conversion of James after the death of Jesus and his development into a saint. But the most likely explanation is, as will be argued later, that the erasure of Jesus’ brother James (and his other brothers) from any significant role in the Gospel story is part of the denigration of the early leaders who had been in close contact with Jesus and regarded with great suspicion and dismay the Christological theories of the upstart Paul, flaunting his new visions in interpretation of the Jesus whom he had never met in the flesh.” (1)

So Paul and his Temple inbred idiots who inherited or sold out in order to get their positions are the creators of a history that is entirely opposite to what Jesus wanted for humanity. The Pharisaic and Mishnah saying that covers this perspective is a little less delicate:

… “A learned ******* takes precedence over an ignorant High Priest.” (2)

Paul’s own words tell us in Romans 11:2: ‘I am an Israelite myself, of the stock of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin,’,’ circumcised on my eighth day, Israelite by race, of the tribe of Benjamin, A Hebrew, born and bred; in my attitude to the law, A Pharisee (Philippians 3:5).’

Nothing in his early life actions would tell us that he was a Pharisee who supported the underprivileged (Or even in later life if one reads his thoughts about women) in laws and all societal structures throughout the Roman and Parthian Empire. A detailed and honest investigation can easily see the Pharisees have been ridiculed and given all kinds of negative publicity in the Gospels and from the evangelical pulpits of this very day. What better way to destroy someone, than to have your ‘front man’ write their dogma? This is classic espionage and ‘black ops’ intrigue! Mr. Maccoby gives us these further comments on the matter and we could have chosen many other scholars to say these things.

“Instead of the priests, the Pharisees looked for guidance to their own leaders, the ‘hakhamin’ (sages), who were not a hereditary class but came from every level of society including the poorest… The other verse quoted by Jesus from Leviticus, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ was also regarded by the Pharisees as of central importance, and was treated by the two greatest figures of Pharisaism, Hillel and Rabbi Akiba…

Jesus’ threat to the Temple was not subversive of the High Priest… rather it was the Jews who were framed by the Gospels, whose concern was to shift the blame for the crucifixion from the Romans to the Jews and their religion.” (3)

“When in the name of God {Nations or academia}, people hold black and white beliefs that cut them off from other human beings; when in the name of God, they give up their own sense of right and wrong; when in the name of God, they suffer financial deprivation; then they are suffering from religious addiction. When, in the name of God, people are made to feel unhealthy fear, false guilt, toxic shame, and destructive anger; when in the name of God, they have been emotionally, physically, or sexually abused; when in the name of God, they have judged themselves and others as inherently worth- less; then they have been subject to religious abuse… At that point, Father Leo Booth says, ‘God has become a drug. My name is Leo. I’m an alcoholic and religious abuser. I’m a recovering priest.’ {He was a Catholic who taught that non-Catholics receiving no catechism went to Hell.}

…Moses was told by God that his name was ‘I am who I am.’ Every child is born with a sense of ‘I am who I am’. The job of the family and the church is to orchestrate life so that the sense of ‘I AM’ can grow and expand. Chapter 5 painfully outlines how children raised by religious addicts have their ‘I AM’-ness ripped apart – how their sense of wholeness is split. This is a far cry from religion’s promise of at-one-ment.” (4)

PEACE: – Let us give credit to John Lennon and the ‘hippies’ who were strong enough to say NO! Their collective energy and thought or prayer has been useful in ending organized war among superpowers, now we need to extend a hand to those who are suffering within nations under the strong arm and insanity of national despots protected by international sovereign rights.

Gordon Edwards




John Shelby Spong, Jesus for the Non-Religious, New York: HarperCollins, 2007.

The title indicates that Bishop Spong intends to present a Jesus free of traditional mythology that modern readers can believe in; but two-thirds of the book is a very thorough examination of how the gospel accounts present interpretations shaped by the Hebrew Scriptures rather than historical veracity. In my opinion, the positive ending is pallid and unconvincing, even though it expresses opinions that are Bishop Spong’s sincerely held personal beliefs.

The first third of the book is summarized in a page-long paragraph on page 128. There was no virgin birth and the Christmas stories are fiction. Joseph is a legendary character. There probably were not twelve disciples. Jesus did not heal the blind and lame or have command over the forces of nature. There was no Last Supper and no betrayal. The events at the cross are fiction because there were no witnesses to record them. There was no bodily resurrection and no ascension into heaven.

Spong presents a different view of the role of oral tradition in shaping the gospel accounts. He exposes the extent to which the images from Passover and Yom Kippur are used in describing the sacrificial role of Jesus. He concludes that the stories of Jesus were presented in the synagogue from the beginning in terms that emphasized that his life events were “according to scripture.” Thus stories from the Hebrew Scriptures shaped the telling of the story from the beginning. On top of that, he believes that the order of events in the Synoptic Gospels is explained liturgically by seeing each segment as intended for readings in the synagogue to correspond with dates on the Hebrew liturgical calendar.

Having thoroughly demolished the gospels as reliable historical records, he then draws on their stories to present a picture of Jesus breaking though barriers of tribal division and prejudice. That is the Jesus Spong puts forward as the instrument of God. “There is salvation, I believe, in the fully human Jesus who reveals what human life can be, an existence free of tribal boundaries, free of prejudice, free of sexism and free of fear.” (p. 263) He also believes that Jesus “is divine because his humanity and his consciousness were so whole and so complete that the meaning of God could flow through him.” (p. 275)

After revealing how little historical reliability could be drawn from the gospels, Spong fails to give the grounds for drawing a reliable picture of any kind from the gospels. He chooses to believe stories that support his view of a Jesus who broke the boundaries of his time and place. For example, he sees Jesus as going beyond Jewish prejudices against Gentiles. But he fails to notice that Jesus limited his ministry to a Jewish audience, as indicated by the fact that he avoided cities like Tiberias, or Caesaria, or the Decapolis where predominately Greek speakers would be found. He mentioned how Jews often chose to travel through the deserts of Perea to get to Jerusalem rather than go the direct route through Samaria; but he neglected to mention that, according to the gospels, Jesus also chose that route from Galilee, thus indicating conformity with the prejudice against Samaritans.

In the end, Bishop Spong fails to convince that he has a vision of Jesus that can appeal to modern readers. He is most successful in his thorough analysis of the layers of interpretation that have been presented too long as history.

David Dent




Two thousand years ago, Jupiter was the supreme god of the Roman Empire, worshiped as Optimus Maximus. He was where Jesus Christ is today, the ceremonial divinity of the world’s greatest empire. While Jesus, a crucified Jewish rabbi, was a cult figure of a breakaway new religion known as the Way. Within a few hundred years, Jesus grew into the Christ, the promised Messiah, while the Way grew from cult into a mature religion, Christianity. In the end, the Roman people humiliated Jupiter.

In “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Edward Gibbons tells the story of Jupiter’s final humiliation. Emperor Theodosius I, who was a supporter of orthodox Christianity, officially banned the practice of the old Roman pagan religion in about 389 AD. In a full meeting of the Roman Senate, he posed the question of whether the worship of Jupiter or that of Christ should be the religion of the Romans. The outcome was decisive. Most of the Roman Senate condemned and degraded Jupiter. It was an impeachment of Divine proportions. Therefore, Jupiter slipped away, banished by the people who had once worshiped him.

How could a state religion disappear in such a relatively short period, defeated by a religion that people had once considered a cult? It would be comparable to Scientology becoming the official religion of the USA within the next 200 years.

Sociologist Rodney Stark of Baylor University, and expert on religious economies, offers some insight using marketing theory. A 2006 paper in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, titled “Religious Competition and Roman Piety,” Stark argues it was market forces that ended Jupiter’s reign. In particular, product innovation by the Christians defeated Roman paganism.

According to Stark, the market theory of religious economies predicts that when the state neither supports an official religion nor limits religious choices, competing religious groups will exist. Also, the more religions that exist, the more people get involved. This situation existed in ancient Rome. As well, the more effective and more innovative religious organizations will prosper, and, conversely the less effective, less innovative ones will decline.

To be sure, there were other competing religions. Some of the competing faiths included the goddess Cybele, known to the Romans as Magna Mater, the “Great Mother,” and her consort Attis; Isis, the Egyptian goddess; Mithras, a god popular within the Roman army. Like any arena of product innovation, like cars and personal computers in the early years, competition among religions was intense and, over time, led to a market shake out.

What were the competitive advantages that made Christianity more appealing? Stark identifies five major innovations. First, Christianity had greater emotional content, especially in worship. The trumping emotional ingredient for the Romans was Love. According to Stark, Romans thought their gods might come to their aid, but they did not believe the gods loved them. For the most part Jupiter was depicted as unfriendly to people, whereas Jesus loved them. Similarly, Romans often feared the gods, admired some, and envied all, but did not love them; at least not in the way they came to love Jesus.

A second innovation was that Christianity appealed directly to the individual and virtue. The focus was on personal morality, atonement, and salvation. Jupiter and his family were mainly gods of the state. Salvation of the state mattered, personal morality and salvation did not. Something like the ethic of the TV series 24. For years, philosophers had rebuked Jupiter for his philandering ways. Indeed, his whole family lacked morals and manners, acting more like flawed humans who had immortality and some super powers. Nevertheless, they also were afflicted with the major deadly sins, including jealousy, greed, pride, and lust. They set bad examples: they lied, stole, raped, committed adultery, betrayed and tortured.

Reinforcing the moral tone of Christianity was a set of written scriptures, presenting a more rational, sophisticated divinity. For all of Rome’s sophistication, traditional Roman religions had no scriptures. They were known largely through the works of poets and playwrights like Ovid and Virgil. Written scriptures satisfied the intellect, presenting a divinity that was at once more potent and more virtuous than Jupiter and his family.

As historian Franz Cumont has noted, the new Christianity “acted on the senses, the intellect and the conscience at the same time, and therefore gained a hold on the entire man. Compared with the ancient creeds, they appear to have offered greater beauty of ritual, greater truth of doctrine and a far superior morality…The worship of the Roman gods was a civic duty, the worship of the foreign gods (Christianity) the expression of personal belief.”

In addition, Christianity appealed to women. In his book, The Rise of Christianity, Stark, relying on historical data, argues that Christianity grew as rapidly as it did precisely because of its strong pro-life ethic, which stood in direct contrast to the Roman culture of death. Abortion was a common killer of both fetuses and women in secular Roman society. Archaeologists have discovered Roman sewers clogged with the bodies of babies. Because Christianity condemned such practices from the beginning, pagan women viewed it as a sanctuary. These women came to the Christian faith out of a wish to protect themselves and their children from a secular world that treated both as disposable goods. In Christianity, their children were children of God entitled to their own rights and dignity.

A final innovation may well be one of the most important one. Stark notes that Christian churches were not content simply to function as temples to which people went periodically. They went further, organizing adherents into active communities that, says Stark, provided a deeply rewarding social as well as spiritual life. To be sure, at times the Roman authorities resisted. Officials preferred easygoing gods whose clients gathered for a feast. Stark argues that one of the strategic errors of the Roman authorities was using a top-down approach to attack Christianity, murdering bishops and other church leaders. While the logic of killing the leadership to kill a movement may work sometimes, it unfortunately was ill suited as a deterrent to Christianity, which was a bottom-up movement.

There is more to life than economics, that said, Stark’s use of market theory of religious economics fits well with the religious life of Rome. It also helps us understand how Christianity came to displace the Roman pantheon of Gods.

Douglas Michaels




Have you ever read a piece of scripture that just totally baffeled you on its meaning?

That happened to me in Luke 12:33 where Jesus says, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor.”

Jesus is addressing His disciples, which means you and me.

So what do I possess? I own a coat, a car, my kid’s clothes, etc. These are things we need. Renting them is not an option.

On the surface this looks like a stupid statement, but the Jesus I know does not make stupid statements. There must be more to this than I am seeing.

I began to read commentaries and really try to think this through, but nothing could resolve this statement into a logical, meaningful message.

I ran across the story of Tolstoy, who was a wealthy Russian who converted to Christianity and sold all his stuff and gave it to the poor. After a short while the poor had consumed everything and all was gone. Also, the employees of his old farm were all miserable because the new owners were not as benevolent as Tolstoy.

I did not find meaning, I found proof! This is a stupid statement!

Jesus with the poor.

I asked the Holy Spirit, since he is supposed to be my teacher and I needed teaching. Immediately this thought came into my mind (not words in my ears, but a thought in my head), “God owns everything, we merely manage.”

This brings us a new question. If I am living as if God owns everything and I merely manage, then what is it I own that I need to sell? Not one thing!

And if I am not living this way, then what am I to do?

Sell what you think you own, because it has become an idol to you.

What do I do with the money from the sale?

Give it away, so that you don’t get tempted to buy something else that you think you own and fall back into the same idolatrous trap.

It is all about ownership. Who is in charge? Looking at the following verse Jesus says, “by doing this we will lay up treasure in Heaven.” This is not a one for one exchange where the people who give the most on earth will get the most in Heaven. It is an attitude of how to live, which is equally available and equally beneficial to us all.

Jesus with the poor has educated me on the correct attitude toward giving.