Why does it seem that people don�t ever listen to me until the last possible moment? I almost feel like a nag with how I�ve run around my company reminding people of my department�s importance in everything. They stared at me, seemed to compute what I was saying, then basically ignored me until the last moment when they say, �Oh hell.�
Yeah, I�m not working over holiday break because a bunch of lazy idiots chewed up my time and then realized that they didn�t schedule my test properly. I have the backing of my department on this one either. The screw up was not mine, but I will do my best to try and smooth out the wrinkles in the remaining five days.
Anyway, in the free time that I have had, I�ve been doing a lot of reading and research based on the book The Da Vinci Code. I read the book [fiction] and was thoroughly intrigued by the theories it put forth, so I read the books used as reference for that book. Then I read a couple of other books that related to the subject slightly.
My life has always had a sort of love-hate relationship with religion. I�m not immune, when in moments of crisis, saying, �Please God, help me.� I�ve also used �the Lord�s name in vain�. I�ve also said things such as �God doesn�t exist�.
Then, sometime around two years ago, I went through some kind of religious transformation. I read a series of books that depicted the end times on earth through the works of fiction. I was riveted by the books [the ones that were out in the series at the time] and I began to question what would really happen if the Christians of the world were actually onto something. I read a few other books that go through a sort of�.deductive reasoning as to why God really does exist and how Jesus was His Earthly form.
I stopped reading the series because I came upon the last book that was published at the time, and it was going to be months before the next one was published.
Recently, I read The Da Vinci Code and I�m somewhat questioning my earlier actions. I still believe in God, but I�m not entirely sure that I believe in Jesus. I mean, I�m not entirely sure that I believe that Jesus was divine.
First of all, Jesus was not his name at all. His Hebrew name was Yahoshua ben Joseph [for all of you who now feel less guilty when saying �Jesus Christ�.]. But based on what I have read, there is no reasoning at all for believing that Jesus was divine. His divinity, in fact, wasn�t established until something like 400 years after his death, and it was established by a Pagan Emperor of Rome. Constantine saw that the numbers of �Christians� were growing, and felt that to solidify his power, he should make Christianity the formal religion of Rome [hence Roman Catholics]. So he and a bunch of other people at a �conference� decided that Jesus was God in His Earthly form, and all ancient references to anything to do with his mortality should be burned.
They didn�t do a very thorough job though.
Some references to Jesus survived through the Dead Sea Scrolls [which were conveniently never published for 50 years after their discovery]. The Dead Sea Scrolls are though to be authored by a sect of very religious Jews known as the Qumran clan. The Qumran�s were thought to be the same as the Church of Jerusalem, which is the original �Christian� church.
Well, that�s not entirely true at all.
The Qumran�s believed that the Romans and �other� Jews were defiling the Temple in Jerusalem, the most holy [and only] place to worship Yahweh, their god. They believed that an �end time� was coming, and in order to be received in His favor, they had to live a ritually clean lifestyle and prepare the Jews through the reign of a Priest and a King. Through these two leaders, peace and happiness [shalom] would be achieved. It was believed that John the Baptist was the holy Priest and Jesus was the king.
Unfortunately for Jesus, John the Baptist was beheaded and he was left without his second �pillar�. Jesus, however, did something radical and declared himself to be both the Priest and the King [despite the beliefs of the other Qumrans who believed that Jesus� brother James was the Priestly pillar]. Jesus also went on a mass �baptizing� spree in order to solidify his forces against the Roman occupations of the Jewish holy lands.
Jesus was not �the lamb of God� that people believe him to be. He was a politician and a highly militant leader at the same time. His goal was to rid the Temple of the Romans and the Jewish defilers who were using it for unholy purposes. He was not put on earth to save mankind [all of these are theories put forth by the books I�ve read].
The Romans saw him as a threat to their power and had him put to death.
In other theories, it is believed that Jesus was never actually crucified at all. Instead, a �double� took his place so that he could live on to preach his message, and in fact, he actually had a family. The Dead Sea Scrolls also seem to imply that Jesus might have been married�married, in fact, to Mary Magdalene and may have even fathered children. It would have been very odd [hence noted by historical sources including the gospels] if a Jewish rabbi [which is what Jesus was] was not married and did not have children. In fact, he would not have been allowed to become a rabbi without having been married. It would have definitely been noted by the gospels that he had remain chaste. However, the gospels are silent on the subject; there is no mention at all to Jesus� chastity. It is simply assumed since he was God.
However, if God decided to come down upon earth to live as man and understand His creation, wouldn�t he have to live all aspects of a man�s life? Including marriage and children?
I digress.
In the Gospels that the Church conveniently left out, there are several references to Jesus having a companion or consort, which would have been a reference to a wife.
How, then, have people been fooled by the Bible for the past two thousand years?
The first problem is that at the time in which these �stories� were written, you had two very distinct and separate societies. First you had the Jews, whose religion can be traced back all the way to the Sumerians. They were a people who spent many many years struggling through many different cultures and ways of worship until settling on Yahweh. They were highly protective of Yahweh, going to the point of banning marriages to outsiders.
Then you have the Greeks and Romans. Both of whom had their own way of worship, but were open to observing other cultures, and in fact, encouraged it. The problem comes in in that the original Bible was written by Romans to a Roman audience way after the fact.
Do you know how there is always an issue translating between languages? There is no perfect way of matching up one phrase to an exact equivalent phrase in another language. The problem is that the Romans took ancient Jewish sayings and traditions literally, and thus the impossibilities of the Bible are born.
For example, Jesus went to a wedding in Canaan and turned the water into wine for all of the guests. How does one do this? No one actually knows. The Christians expect that it is a matter of faith and that you should just believe the miracle that Jesus performed. However, my scientific nature has more questions than that.
However, if you take that phrase in the context of what the Qumran Jew�s [of which, Jesus was their leader] would mean by �water into wine� and you would have the process of baptism. Those who were not baptized were considered �water� and those who were, were considered �wine�.
Now, what�s more likely? All of the �miracles� and impossibilities described in the Bible? Or that the Romans mistranslated some of the early Jewish sayings?
I�m going to give this a rest for now, but the amount of information I have amassed has really changed my mind on the subject.
