Who Wrote the Bible and Why with a recap of the Blasphemy Paradox.

Once again, I am writing my post after midnight. My goal is to find ways to talk about the influences on the US Founders. The Bible was the most influential text of the day. If we want to preserve the ideals of the US Founders, we have to find a way to talk about religion. This post is my stab at trying to accomplish this goal.

Unfortunately, politicians have loaded the religious debate that it has become next to impossible to talk about this important topic without stirring up anger and resentment.

Religious people simply do not talk to me. The moment conservatives find out that I am interested in the classical liberal view of history, they become angry and start heaping derision in my direction.

My progressive friends shut me down at the first mention of Christ or of the importance of religion. They just curl their eyes and dismiss me as being one of those people.

Anyway, I think we need to research the topic.

While researching ancient history I came across two startling claims: It is possible that Jesus never existed. Likewise, there is very little evidence of the story of Moses. The only evidence of both stories is from sources that want to promote the stories.

The first claim didn't phase me. Jesus was a single person. Not only that. Jesus was a that person the authorities wanted erased. So, I am not surprised by the fact that only Christians preserved evidence of Christ.

The lack of archeological evidence for the Exodus startled me as they exodus was huge. It was a Biblical Event! The Exodus involved Egyptian Kings, huge climatic events and a large tribe that would have left numerous marks on Egypt.

Anyway, I decided to reread the Bible with the assumption that most of it was made up within the political and religious landscape of the ancient world.

To my surprise, both the ideas and story with the Bible became more clear.

The Jewish Scriptures were compiled after Persia defeated Assyrians. This caused a large migration from Babylon to Judea.

The Jewish Scriptures told these migrants that they were once part of the great nation of Israel that was chosen of the one God that created the Universe. This God had previously handed Israel the Law of Moses.

Paraphrasing the Ten Commandments of the Law of Moses begins: "I am the Lord your God. You shall hold no other gods before me. You shall not make graven images or misuse my name."

Misusing God's name is called "blasphemy."

The leaders of ancient used varieties of blasphemy laws to rid their communities of critics. People who criticized their leaders could be accused of angering the gods and put to death.

Socrates was tried and executed for the crime of impiety.

Like most concepts, blasphemy is subject to the reflexive paradox.

The term blasphemy means misuse of God's name. A person who falsely accuses another of blasphemy is misusing the name of God with hopes of silencing a critic.

People accused of blasphemy are likely to make counter charges of blasphemy.

Imagine walking into an ancient court where people are accusing each other of blasphemy. It would make one's head spin.

Of course, if your head was actually spinning, you would find yourself accused of blasphemy.

The blasphemy paradox begs an interesting thought experiment: Imagine if God walked into a religious court. The priests are likely to be threatened by the actual presence of God and would then accuse God of blasphemy.

This thought experiment highlights the paradox. Priests accusing God of blasphemy are committing blasphemy.

Now lets back up to my opening observation that there is a change that Jesus did not exist.

If Jesus did not exist. Then it is possible that the story of Christ came from a thought experiment similar to the one that I just mention.

The story of Christ centers on the idea that God somehow became man and traveled among the people of this earth.

He was captured by the rulers of Jerusalem. During the trial the accusers asked Jesus if he was God. Jesus answered yes. The accusers charged Jesus with blasphemy and executed Jesus.

The key element of the story is that Jesus was God incarnate. If Jesus was not God, then the accusers would have been in the right to execute Jesus.

God would have known what was in the hearts and minds of Jesus's accusers. The Bible reports that when Jesus was being executed he said the words: "Forgive them for they know not what they do."

This act of forgiveness ushers in a new state of existence which forgives the people for violating laws that they could not possibly keep.

This new state of being is called Grace.

I find grace to be an extremely powerful concept. It doesn't just resolve the blasphemy paradox. It resolves a huge number of paradoxes which had plagued thinkers since the days of Pythagoras.

Pythagoras had difficulties with the proof that the hypotenuse of the unit square was irrational. I expanded this into an idea I called a twisty grid.

If two cartographers created maps of an island with grids that were askew to each other. The maps would not reconcile. Every measure on the first map would appear irrational on the second map.

The state of grace helps people deal with the fact that we all see the world from different points of view. Every person has different framework for piecing together their understanding of reality.

By accepting grace into one's life, one is better able to deal with the fact that we all see the world differently.

The Bible claims that mankind has a Covenant with God. The Covenant demands that people follow a law given by Moses. The characters in the Bible clearly did not understand and follow the laws.

The state of grace created a new covenant that asked people to live a moral life while accepting the fact that we are limited creatures unable to fully understand the mind of God.

The meaning of the story is easier to understand if we examine it as a thought experiment.

Who Created Christianity and Why

A few posts ago I mentioned that King Ptolemy established the Library of Alexandria. A large number of Jewish Scholars moved to Alexandria. The Library translated the Jewish Scripture into Greek in an event historians called "The Septuagint" in the 3rd century BC.

Greek speaking Jewish scholars applied all of the tools of Greek analysis to studying the scriptures.

Roman had conquered Judea.

Rome saw religion as a tool for controlling the people. They were able to control people with polytheistic religions simply by demanding that the Roman Emperor and Roman Gods be listing among the pantheon of the different religions.

The Jewish people held that there was one God. This led to vicious wars between Judea and Rome.

In 70 AD, Emperor Titus conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple.

If the Bible was created by a group of people, it would have been the large number of Greek Speaking Jewish scholars.

I put forward as evidence the fact that the name of the Bible comes from a Greek word and that both the New and Old Testament were written in Greek.

The New Testament seems to include a huge amount of Greek Philosophy. Notably the idea of the Trinity seems to reflect that debates about Multiplicity and the nature of Being that were common in Greek disputations of the era.

The Trinity holds that Jesus Christ is one in being with the father.

The Bible is about the challenges that the people of Israel faced in a chaotic world. Reading the Bible in its historical context helps shed light on the ideas discussed in the Bible.

The act of examining the Bible in its historical context does not preclude the possibility that Christ existed or that the Bible was inspired.

Personally, I think that people who want to be genuinely engaged in the study of history should examine the religions of the world from a variety of perspectives.

My observation is that the stories of the New Testament make a lot more sense if one examines the ideas on context of Greek Philosophy.

I probably should mention one more thing.

Rome had conquered the ancient Greek kingdoms. Greeks were reduced to second class citizenship.

Roman religion was designed to dominate polytheistic cultures. This created a crisis for Greek religions.

A few hundred years after the introduction of the Bible that large sections of the Greek world from Antioch to Alexander had accepted Christianity.

Many of the early Christian writers such as Origen and Alexander were from Northern Africa.

The meme from Creative Commons shows God texting the Ten Commandments to Moses.


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