Alea iacta est

Trial By Fire

The Quest for Glory II remake from AGD is now out.

In the Beginning, Man Created God, Part IX

Previously on "YHWH's Excellent Adventure"

Part 1: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In which we learn that YHWH wasn't the first god to want to be alone.

Part 2: YHWH rules, Chemosh drools! In which we learn most of Biblical history was pulled out of King Josiah's backside.

Part 3: By the Rivers of Babylon. In which the Hebrews crib most of their afterlife from the Persians.

Part 4: Alex the Kid in Hellenic World. In which Alexander the Great conquers the known world and everyone learns to love, Greek-style.

Interlude: Danny Boy, the Lions, the Lions are calling. In which Daniel becomes a Prophet despite not knowing the first things about his own surroundings.

Part 5: I ♥ MACCABEES. In which the flame of cosmopolitan Hellenism is snuffed out by religious fundamentalists.

Part 6: Quacks, Kooks and Loons of the Roman Empire. In which we see that the early Roman Empire was a utopia for two bit religious frauds and crazy cults.

Part 7: Would the real Messiah Please Stand Up? - In which we began to example just how much we really know about Jesus.

Up next...

Part 8: The Greatest Story Ever Made Up

In our last installment we've seen that the Pauline Epistles actually predate the Gospels in what they say about Jesus, and that what they say is limited and sketchy. Basically, if all we had of the New Testaments were the undisputed Epistles of Paul of Tarsus, all we would know about this "Jesus" character would be the following

• Jesus had a supper on the night he was betrayed (1 Corinthians)
• Jesus died by crucifixion (1 Corinthians and Philippians)
• Jesus was raised from the dead (Philippians)
• Jesus was a Jew of the line of David (Romans)

As you can see, there's a few things the modern reader would see as missing. No mention of virgin births, of flights into Egypt, of Bethlehem or Nazareth, of twelve disciples or of Judas the betrayer or of empty tombs or a myriad of other details. So where the heck does that stuff all come from?

Well, as everyone knows, to get the full picture of the amazing life of Jesus Christ, you apparently have to turn to the Four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Unfortunately those same gospels are about as reliable on the topic of Jesus as a book by Dan Brown. Let's go through them from oldest Gospel to most recent, and examine each in detail.

Above: As you can see, the Gospels were written by a man, a lion, a bull, and Sam the Eagle.

All of the Gospels were written well after the Epistles of Paul. Despite Matthew appearing first in the Bible, it is more likely Mark was written first, followed by Luke and Matthew (it is debated which of those was earliest) and then, way later, John.

Luke and Matthew share a lot of detail. Most of this comes from Mark, but there is some, in particular dialogue from Jesus, that is common to Matthew and Luke but not to Mark. Hence scholars have developed the concept of the hypothetical "Q" Gospel, which is now lost. Some anti-Trinitarian Christian traditions, including Islam, have seized on this, claiming it to be evidence of the original, "pure" Gospel which later authors changed, but hypothetical "Q", if it indeed existed, was more likely a collection of quotes, sayings and parables with no narrative structure, and would likely tell us absolutely nothing about Jesus as a real, historical figure.

Mark
Written c. 70 AD.

Mark is the shortest and least bat-shit of the Gospels. If any of them are even close to the true story of Jesus, it would be Mark, but even it has its share of silliness. Like all Gospels, no author is indicated anywhere in the text, but tradition assigns it as the work of one "John Mark", supposedly an assistant of Simon Peter's, and was written in Rome. It certainly betrays a few Latin-inspired phrases as well as an ignorance of Galilean geography, which does seem to suggest a Roman writer.

The Gospel itself tells us nothing of Jesus' birth or conception, indeed, Jesus is already a grown man when the Gospel begins. There's no indication that being God's "son" in this Gospel refers to an actual physical sense, indeed it seems to more indicate an Adoptionist view that Jesus became God's son via his baptism by John the Baptist.

As I stated in an earlier post, the baptism of Jesus by John may be one of the only truly reliable parts of the Gospels, since it became such an embarrassment to later Christians that their God was baptised by an inferior man that they tried to downplay it. (It doesn't even appear in the Gospel of John, for instance, and is subtly modified in the other two Gospels).

In Mark the story is Jesus is baptised, he is tempted by the Devil for 40 days and 40 nights, collects some disciples, gives some speeches, including telling people to obey the laws of Moses, heals some beggars, enters Jerusalem, is betrayed by Judas, sentenced by Pilate and then crucified, dies and is placed in a tomb.

I deliberately left out the empty tomb and resurrection, since the oldest manuscripts of Mark all end at Mark 16:8 - the last twelve verses from the modern Bible do not exist in these fourth century versions, hence it ends with:

And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.

Not exactly a stirring call to arms for early Christians if you go into a tomb, find no body, and some guy says Jesus has risen, yet neither you nor your comrades ever see him again, is it? Some scholars believe the early version of Mark, when combined with Paul's letters indicate Christians believed in a purely spiritual resurrection of Jesus, and that the resurrection of a "body" (ie Jesus wandering around after his resurrection inviting people to poke their fingers in his festering corpse) is a later theological development that required some scribe to make an addition to the Gospel of Mark.

Mark is also notable for including portions that don't portray Jesus as all that great - for instance, Jesus' family remarking that Jesus is mad, Jesus taking two attempts to heal a man, and then a totally bizarre and random bit where a naked man runs away from Jesus. Later gospels also eliminate instances of friction and disrespect between Jesus and his disciples, and instances in Mark where Jesus appears to be ignorant of certain facts are smoothed over or eliminated.

In short, the Jesus in Mark is still quite a human figure.

Never mind, more Gospels were to come, and the tale would grow in the telling.

Luke
Written c. 85 AD.

The traditional author of this Gospel is held to be Luke, a good buddy of the aforementioned Paul of Tarsus, and a Greek doctor. Unlike earlier accounts of Jesus, Luke clearly means to place Jesus as a real person in a specific place and time, and ties him to many historical events. Unfortunately he sometimes tries too hard at this, and ends up looking silly. Luke the Evangelist is often depicted as a bull, which I think is appropriate, since his Gospel contains mostly bullshit, just as you'd expect from a bovine-authored work.

Unlike Mark, Luke gives us all the goss about Jesus' birth. We begin with a long, tedious geneology that links Jesus not just to King David, but all the way up to Adam. By the way, if you want to know how the 6,000 year old age of the Earth was calculated, look no further than here. If you total up the ages of everyone in Luke's geneology you get 4,000 years. Add that to the amount of years from Jesus to us, and voila!

Luke also claims that John the Baptist's mother, Elizabeth, is a cousin to Jesus' mother, Mary. Holy convenient coincidences, Batman! No other Gospel writer even mentions this important fact (and it would be important if Jesus was a second cousin to John the Baptist) but there is a good reason for this bullshit. Since Liz is of the Tribe of Levi (and hence Mary too), that means Jesus has both royal and priestly descent, perfect for a Priest-King Messiah who is destined to reign over a new Israel!

Except for one thing. Luke completely ruins his careful genealogy, the one which he gives Joseph's ancestry all the way back to Adam, by announcing that Jesus is not Joseph's son after all - but rather conceived by the Holy Spirit. Which means, of course, that Jesus has no Davidic descent, hence not qualified to be the Messiah and, incidentally, contradicting one of the few details provided about Jesus in Paul's letters. Probably one indication that Jesus wasn't God's literal "son" in the earliest Christian traditions, and that the story Luke tried to write was polluted with inventive theology.

Above: Joseph the Carpenter, the Bible's favourite butt-monkey and probably the only man in history to be cuckolded by a frigging Ghost.

Luke also places Jesus birth in Bethlehem, ostensibly to fulfill a Old Testament prophecy (which, as you will see later, isn't really a prophecy), and so, to get Jesus there, using the pretext of the Census of Cyrenius in 6 AD. He has Joseph take his pregnant wife to Bethlehem, give birth to Jesus in a stable, visited by shepherds, and then departing back to Galilee to grow into a man, before embarking on his preaching.

Again he is baptised by John (Luke gives the specific year, 29 AD), again he preaches around the land, collecting disciples, and entering Jerusalem, again he is betrayed, arrested, tried, crucified and dies, before being buried in the tomb. More so than in Mark, Luke clearly goes about absolving Romans of blame for Jesus' death, and seems to be blaming the Jewish establishment. This is the beginning of Christianity severing its ties with Judaism and becoming part of the Greco-Roman sphere. It also expands the post-resurrection appearances, with multiple people seeing Jesus (though some of them apparently don't recognise their friend. If they don't believe it, why should we?)

A lot of the historical details of Luke's gospel seems taken directly from Josephus, a 1st century Jew who ingratiated himself with the Roman overlords. Once you put his work against Luke's, the parallels seem remarkable.

Luke later wrote a sequel to his Gospel, called Acts, which puffs up his good buddy Paul to a ludicrous degree.

Matthew
Written c. 90 AD.

The Gospel of Matthew is particularly beloved by biblical literalists. I don't know why, its a truly terrible piece of work, filled with more contradictions than probably any other bit of the Bible. It's probably due to the "prophetic" nature of it.

Whoever wrote Matthew (and it was not the Apostle of the same name) really, really, really wanted to prove that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah prophesised in the Old Testament, and so went about showing how Jesus fulfilled them all. But, apparently even fulfilling genuine Messiah prophecies wasn't enough for Matthew, so he strip-mined the Old Testament for anything even vaguely resembling a prophecy, even if some of them were only psalms and proverbs with no prophetic intent at all.

Most of Matthew's depiction of Jesus' infancy is even more fictional than Luke's, and merely exists as a way to shoe-horn another "fulfilled prophecy" into his work. Herod's slaughter of children, the holy family fleeing to Egypt, the Wise Men from the east - for Matthew "Based on a true story!" is used as loosely as it is in Hollywood.

Like Luke, Matthew says Jesus is the Son of God (again, literally) and then proceeds to give us a pointless genealogy for Jesus' fake father Joseph. To further the hilarity, this genealogy is totally different to Luke, even disagreeing on the name of Joseph's father. The last person in common with the two lines of descent is King David.

Unfortunately, by tying Jesus's birth to the reign of Herod the Great, this means Jesus must be born before Herod's death...before 2 BC. As you can see, that's 8 years different to the date Luke gave. Never mind...

Matthew's zeal to fulfill prophecies, real or imagined, leads him into one of the most unintentionally hilarious parts of the Bible. An actual genuine Messiah prophecy has the Messiah entering Jerusalem riding a donkey. In the original Hebrew, the mention of the animal is repeated, a common rhetorical in Hebrew writings that add's emphasis. The Gospel writers generally understood this.

All except Matthew. Unlike the other evangelists, Matthew has Jesus ride into Jerusalem on not one, but two donkeys - like some sort of rodeo stunt rider.

Above: As the good book says: "Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." (Matt 21:5)

The silliness doesn't stop there, with Matthew juxtaposing Jesus' death and resurrection with undead Jewish patriarchs roaming around Jerusalem (presumably moaning "Braaaaaains!"), earthquakes, world-spanning darkness, the Temple curtain being torn and many other things that leads the reader to feel that he's suddenly started reading the script for a Michael Bay movie.

And that's not a good feeling.

John
Written c. 100 AD

By the time John (not the disciple, obviously, since he'd be long dead) wrote this Gospel, Jesus had been fully transformed into a divine being. No longer is he the son of the carpenter from Galilee - he's now the divine Logos, fully co-existent with God from the beginning of time, and only temporarily incarnate in flesh so he can go hang himself for some complex reason that only God himself understands.

Since women and babies are understandably disgusting thing, John skips over the nativity, and has Jesus first pop up at a wedding, performing the now famous "water into wine" trick. Who wouldn't love a wedding guest who could do that? And it's comforting that God doesn't see promoting boozing as a frivolous use of his miraculous powers.

If the other Gospels are unreliable, then this one is a complete fiction. It divests most of the parables, exorcisms and narrative structure of the other three and has its own plot and purpose. In the first three Jesus' message is the focus of them. Now, its Jesus himself. Where in the others Jesus and his disciples seem a bit befuddled over what eventually happens, here Jesus fully knows he is will die and come back to life, and freely tells his disciples such (which makes their own later behaviour even more befuddling. How many other holy books make God's closest followers to be such morons?)

The Gospel of John also turns the Anti-Semitism dial up to 11, and suddenly the Jews are to blame for everything. Jesus rants and raves about them to a surprising extent for someone who is...uh...Jewish himself (at least on his mother's side).

John has the most developed post-resurrection story, including the infamous "Doubting Thomas" story. Scholars believe this was placed in here purely to discredit a gnostic sect who claimed to have been founded by Thomas. (They probably used the Gospel of Thomas which may have predated at least three, if not all four, of the canonical gospels.) Jesus, ever the showman, lets a disbelieving Thomas poke his semi-decayed body wounds and once again the reader is impressed with how a semi-ignorant 1st century Jewish skeptic is allowed such proof, yet we living thousands of years later should just shut up and believe what's written.

Thomas is believed by Indian Christians to have founded their local Christian tradition so, if you've been poked by any Indians lately, that may explain it.

The portion in John about the women discovering the empty tomb also shows how the story of Jesus grew as each person retold the story.

• In Mark, we are told that the women find one man waiting at the tomb
• In Luke, it is suddenly two men
• In Matthew we have one angel
• For John, it is now two angels

It's lucky we didn't end up with hundreds of Gospels in the Bible, or the last one would probably have the women met at the tomb by two billion angels and a thousand trillion men.

Above: Can any of you thousands of people tell me what happened to the dead body that was here?

John ends rather abruptly, with the author telling us that there was so much extra shit he wanted to write about Jesus, but he doesn't have the time or space to tell us.

Well, thanks a lot for risking our soul on account of your own laziness, mate.

Coming up:

Part 9: Speaking in Tongues

In the Beginning, Man Created God, Part VIII

Previously on "YHWH's Excellent Adventure"

Part 1: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In which we learn that YHWH wasn't the first god to want to be alone.

Part 2: YHWH rules, Chemosh drools! In which we learn most of Biblical history was pulled out of King Josiah's backside.

Part 3: By the Rivers of Babylon. In which the Hebrews crib most of their afterlife from the Persians.

Part 4: Alex the Kid in Hellenic World. In which Alexander the Great conquers the known world and everyone learns to love, Greek-style.

Interlude: Danny Boy, the Lions, the Lions are calling. In which Daniel becomes a Prophet despite not knowing the first things about his own surroundings.

Part 5: I ♥ MACCABEES. In which the flame of cosmopolitan Hellenism is snuffed out by religious fundamentalists.

Part 6: Quacks, Kooks and Loons of the Roman Empire. In which we see that the early Roman Empire was a utopia for two bit religious frauds and crazy cults.

Up next...

Part 7: Would the real Messiah Please Stand Up?

Everybody (well, except Mandaeans) loves Jesus. Even Jews have learned to love the guy (mostly through centuries of religious oppression, but isn't that what love's all about?)

Above: The big guy, JC himself.

And why wouldn't you love him? Look at that totally awesome beard - Jesus shows that not all men with facial hair are violent, insane or sleazy pieces of shit. The ladies love him (how could you not love a guy so good with kids, or so caring with his own mother) and the guys want to be him (or in some cases, they want to do him too. Nothing wrong with turning gay for JC! Just ask the Children of God).

You can read all about the guy's rise from humble carpenter to apotheosized saviour in a fabulous book we call the "New Testament". It's a thrilling tale of one man's inspiring life, heartwarming moral mission, and embarrassingly bloody death.

What a shame that, in the words of Penn and Teller, it's all....bullshit.

Most people who read the Bible come away with a few wrong impressions. The first is that the accounts of Jesus were written by people who knew him personally, and the second is that they were written when people who knew Jesus were still alive. Both of these beliefs are wrong.

One of the issues with understanding the New Testament is that the order they are arranged in the Bible is, to put it bluntly, crap. Especially if you want to know in which order the works were written.

So, go on, have a guess. Which do you think was the first written part of the New Testament?

If you named one of the Gospels, you're wrong. If, on the other hand, you named the Epistles of Paul, you are correct.

(If you fingered Revelation you are a moron. Sorry, no two ways about it).

The earliest portion of the New Testament, according to most modern scholarship, is Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians, estimated to have been written no earlier than 49 AD, at least 15 years after Jesus is estimated to have died, and written by someone who freely admits to having never met the bloke. This, in other words, gives us our earliest depiction of Jesus, in which you will notice something:

• No mention of the details of Jesus' life - virgin birth, crucifixion, empty tombs.
• Not a single quote from Jesus
• No mention even of when Jesus lived. (in fact, with just this epistle as a guide, you get the impression Jesus died a lot longer than 20 years ago).
• Paul fully expects that Jesus will return in his lifetime, and the lifetime of those he is writing to.

Paul is the first figure in Christian history who we can even be certain existed - all the others, including Jesus and his twelve apostles, have left so few attested writings or other related biographical details that a lot of scholars have begun to deduce that some, or indeed, all, of them never existed.

Above: Did Paul of Tarsus pretty much invent modern Christianity as a result of becoming delusional due to a epileptic fit on the way to Syria? Probably!

As you go through the genuine Pauline Epistles, a disturbing trend emerges: They say very little on the details of Jesus, and they very rarely quote from him, and, when they do, they quote sayings that appear nowhere in the Gospels. In fact, you might begin to notice another trend: the more time that passes, the more authors seem to "know" about the life of Jesus, and the more fantastic and unbelievable those details seem to be.

In fact, its quite similar to how both the King Arthur and Robin Hood legends have developed. Everyone "knows" that King Arthur's wife Guinevere had a tragic affair with his best knight, Lancelot, despite the fact Lancelot is a relatively late addition to the mythos. Just the same as everyone "knows" that Robin Hood was a loyal subject of the true King, Richard the Lion-Heart, and fought against the usurper John, despite the fact the first Robin Hood stories talked of "our good King Edward".

In fact, even the familiar bearded Jesus may be made up shit. In the early days of Christianity, Jesus was depicted as beardless, golden haired, and often dressed in Greco-Roman attire. His earliest depictions, in fact, more resemble the god Apollo, more than anything else, and he was often in artworks holding a wand, making him some sort of prototype Harry Potter.

Above: Jesus and his disciples depicted in early Roman catacombs. Anti-Semites may rejoice...Not a Jew in sight!

As Christianity spread, most people depicted Jesus as a member of their own ethnicity, meaning now you can find Nordic Jesus, Italian Jesus, Hispanic Jesus, Greek Jesus, Black Jesus, Japanese Jesus and any variety you like. He's like ice-cream...a flavour for everyone!

But surely the Bible at least gives us vague pointers on the man himself?

In fact, the Bible is mostly silent on the physical appearance of Jesus. Many have taken note on the fact that Judas apparently has to identify Jesus for the Roman soldiers, indicating he was indistinguishable from most Jews who were his disciples. On the other hand, maybe the Romans were ignorant in a "They all look the same to me!" manner, or perhaps they were just idiots.

There is one description of Jesus, which can be found in Revelation 1:13-16.

1:13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
1:14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
1:15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
1:16 And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.

So JC is apparently white-haired, with flaming eyes, metal feet and a sword sticking out of his mouth.

Hmmm....

Above: This is apparently how Jesus will look on Judgement Day. Tell me that's not awesome!

Coming up:

Part 8: The Greatest Story Ever Made Up

In the Beginning, Man Created God, Part VII

Previously on "YHWH's Excellent Adventure"

Part 1: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In which we learn that YHWH wasn't the first god to want to be alone.

Part 2: YHWH rules, Chemosh drools! In which we learn most of Biblical history was pulled out of King Josiah's backside.

Part 3: By the Rivers of Babylon. In which the Hebrews crib most of their afterlife from the Persians.

Part 4: Alex the Kid in Hellenic World. In which Alexander the Great conquers the known world and everyone learns to love, Greek-style.

Interlude: Danny Boy, the Lions, the Lions are calling. In which Daniel becomes a Prophet despite not knowing the first things about his own surroundings.

Part 5: I ♥ MACCABEES. In which the flame of cosmopolitan Hellenism is snuffed out by religious fundamentalists.

Up next...

Part 6: Quacks, Kooks and Loons of the Roman Empire.

Fast forward almost another two centuries.

We're now deep in the early days of the Roman Empire. Julius Caesar may have been stabbed to death in the Roman forum but his ideals lived on in the young Octavian - cunning, ambitious and decisive, Octavian triumphed over his rivals, including Caesar's old friend Mark Antony, and became the first true Roman "Emperor". Antony died with his lover, the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra VII, last of the Ptolemaic dynasty, who killed herself rather than be paraded in front of the Roman senate back in Rome. (A really terrible documentary I saw claims Octavian murdered her, but this is nonsense, makes no sense, and the show was shit anyway, so it can be discounted).

By now the Hasmonean Kingdom had been split apart by civil war. Samaria, Galilee and Judea had been incorporated into the Roman Empire as a client kingdoms ruled by a native dynasty of Edomite extraction.

Herod the Great, like the rest of his dynasty, was Jewish by religion, but not by race. As a Edomite, and a descendant of those forcibly converted by the Maccabees, he was not considered a true "Jew" by many of his subjects, and was distrusted for this almost as much as for his casual brutality and suspect Hellenism. Despite this, he is remembered for rebuilding the Second Temple and in fact, the Wailing Wall, the last piece of the temple to remain, was built by Herod in this era.

Oh, and he killed his wife and two sons, so, I guess "Great" depends on who you ask.

The Romans had a very laissez-faire attitude to the religious practices of their subjects. Pretty much as long as you didn't defy Roman authority, or cause a public nuisance, you were allowed to follow whatever silly or stupid religious belief you wanted. As can be expected such a policy did wonders for the proliferation of kooky, crazy and outright loopy cults in the 1st Century Roman Empire. A good look at the religious culture at the time can be found in this well written article, from which I have stolen the name for this post.

Basically forget how advanced the Romans may have seemed - the vast majority of that population was as pig-ignorant and prone to superstition as you will find in any era. In those days, going and joining the cult was the equivalent of a adult education course. You could pretty much find some wild-eyed, gibbering pseudo-prophet on any corner you troubled to look.

Above: See this guy? The Roman Empire was full of guys like this.

Into this swirling mass of crazies, steps a man named John the Baptist. As can be told from the name, John really liked dunking people in water. This was actually quite common among many fringe Jewish religious groups of the time, and was meant to symbolize some sort of religious purification. John lived up to this in other ways as well - he was an ascetic wanderer, likely celibate and eschewed the pleasures of the physical world. He would, however, supplement his diet with the occasional treat of honey. I can't imagining collecting wild honey when you are a ascetic Roman-era hippy would be that easy, but hey, who are we to question the holy?

John also liked to chomp on bugs. No, really. Due to a really bizarre loophole in Jewish dietary laws, devout Jews are allowed to chomp down on the humble locust for sustenance. Remember, pork may be unclean filth straight from Satan's kitchen, but the filthy, tasteless, sand-ridden carapace of the grasshopper is apparently absolutely dandy according to God's completely arbitrary and stupid culinary demands.

Above: Why this is MUCH better than a side of bacon! Thank you sir, may I have another?

Unlike others who will talk about soon, John the Baptist is well attested to in historical sources, and actually is held as a prophet in numerous sects, including Christianity, Islam, Baha'i Faith and Mandaeism. Mandaeans actually believe John is the last true prophet, which made them rather unpopular in the Middle East from about the third century onwards.

According to legend (and the Bible, which is pretty much the same thing) John met his end after pissing off Herod one too many times, at which point he was imprisoned then beheaded as a reward to Herod' slutty step-daughter Salome. Salome did the famed "dance of the seven veils" a grove so erotic that it filled old Herod with incestuous desires.

Hey...why all the hard work, Salome? If you'd read the story of Lot, you would know that you can get old men to pork their younger female relatives just by plying them with wine. *sigh* Amateurs!

For most people these days, John is mainly remembered for baptizing Jesus. This is interesting because, as you'll see in our next installment, its probably about the only thing in the traditional telling of the life of Jesus that we should believe...

Coming up:

Part 7: Would the real Messiah please stand up?

In the Beginning, Man Created God, Part VI

Previously on "YHWH's Excellent Adventure"

Part 1: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In which we learn that YHWH wasn't the first god to want to be alone.

Part 2: YHWH rules, Chemosh drools! In which we learn most of Biblical history was pulled out of King Josiah's backside.

Part 3: By the Rivers of Babylon. In which the Hebrews crib most of their afterlife from the Persians.

Part 4: Alex the Kid in Hellenic World. In which Alexander the Great conquers the known world and everyone learns to love, Greek-style.

Interlude: Danny Boy, the Lions, the Lions are calling. In which Daniel becomes a Prophet despite not knowing the first things about his own surroundings.

Up next...

Part 5: I ♥ MACCABEES

It is 170 BC. The Jewish people were chafing under the Greek yoke.

No, that isn't a smutty sexual reference (though knowing the Greeks, you can never be quite sure). After many decades of domination by the heirs of Alexander, the people of Judea were going in two directions. A substantial section of the population, attracted by Hellenic cosmopolitanism (not to mention those gorgeous togas), had built a Gymnasium, started competing in the Greek games and, according to the Bible, "removed marks of circumcision".

How they did they last bit I'm not sure...presumably they stuck it back on?

Anyhow, the other part of the community consisted of the traditionalists - guys who really hated everything Greek: philosophy, pork, the exercise of the mind and body, institutionalized homosexuality and foreskins.

It seemed incredibly likely that these two groups would come to heads and they did eventually, when King Antiochus IV Epiphanes decided to drag those Jews out of the Ghetto, and make them into good Greek boys. Not being a subtle sort of person, Epiphanes did that using a few, how shall we put it, bold policies.

1) He had the Onias III, the Jewish High Priest, replaced by the more pro-Epiphanes Jason.

2) Then he had Jason replaced with some guy named Menelaus who wasn't even of the priestly Levite caste. He in fact received the position thanks to a hefty bribe. Menelaus' brother, Lysimachus, then decided to help himself to a few of the holy items from the temple. Hey, what's family for?

3) Apparently bored with the High-Priest switcheroo, the King then went into overdrive. He banned Jewish sacrifice, the sabbath, and other festivals, outlawed circumcision (which the Greeks always saw as body mutilation) and then put a big honking statue of Zeus in the Temple.

Above: Come on, he looks pretty harmless to me...what's the big deal? He's a rapist you say? Oh....

You can't say Antiochus didn't have balls. Brains, on the other hand...

The outlawing of Jewish religious practice proved the final straw. A Jewish priest from bumpkinville, Matthias the Hasmonean, decided the government was evil and godless, and had to be removed, thus being a role model to redneck revolutionaries for millennia to come. God bless.

Matthias struck a blow for religious tolerance by murdering a Jew who dared make an idol sacrifice in Matthias' name, then, along with his five sons, Matthias went bush to start a guerilla war. After Matthias death, his son, Judah, continued the war and eventually brought it to a successful conclusion, cleansing his homeland of the "Greeks" (read: mostly Hellenized Jews) and setting up a "pure" theocracy were the laws of YHWH would brook no interference, where the righteous would be free to stone infidels, mensturating women would be imprisoned, over-zealous barbers arrested, and
the worth of a woman no more than 2/3 that of a man.

If you're looking for a modern day parallel....think these guys:

Above: Ok...not exactly fair. Mullah Omar and the Taliban, unlike the Maccabees, would have had no problem with Greek pedestry.

This momentous piece of religious reaction is now celebrated as Hannukah, and Christopher Hitchens picks up on the inherent squick aspect to celebrating it alongside Christmas.

Starting now to see the propaganda value of the Book of Daniel? We know it was bunk and now you see why such a bunk book was written. It was a propaganda piece for the Maccabees, with the message saying: "Don't give in to Babylonian (ie Greek) polytheism! Stay true to faith of YHWH and the evil king, Belshazzar (Antiochus) will be defeated!"

Anyway, the war would continue under the Maccabee family until Simon Maccabaeus became both High Priest of Judaism and Prince of Judea - never mind that the Jewish people were only supposed to acknowledge Kings of the Davidic line, and never mind that the posts of High Priest and monarch were supposed to be separate, Simon was a big man, with a big army and secured the independence of Judea from the Syrians with the help of the Romans, a new, powerful, garlic-scented group of hard-nuts on the block. What's a little heresy between friends, eh, Simon?

Under the Maccabees two things of note occured: the separation of the Jewish leadership into the Sadducees (supporters of the new Jewish government, temple worship and the priestly class) and the Pharisees (champions of the common folk). Simon's successor, John Hyrcanus, even spread Judaism beyond the Jewish religion, with the conquest and conversion of the Edomites, probably the only instance of forced conversion to Judaism in history.

But by Hyrcanus' day, Jewish power was well and truly waning. By the time of his death, the Romans were well and truly calling the shots. Eventually, in 63 BC, fresh from conquering Syria, the Roman general Pompey the Great intervened in a Jewish civil war, captured Jerusalem and turned Judea into the roman province of Iudea.

Curious about this crazy religion he'd heard so much about, Pompey entered the temple and, finding no icons, statues or representation of their god, concluded Jews were both utterly barmy and totally boring.

But things were about to get a whole lot more interesting...

Coming up: Part 6: Quacks, Kooks and Loons of the Roman Empire.