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07/24/2005: "GOD (Part IV: Kicking Against the Pricks)"
Prologue
Religion was in the news so much this week that, if you didn't know better,
you might have thought it was an attractive American teenager from an upper
middle class family who suddenly went missing in a distant country filled
with swarthy poor people.
While God was busy helping Fredo Bush choose hold a Frank Burns Look-Alike
Contest in order to pick a nominee for the Supreme Court, one of His
followers was being sentenced to life in the Concrete Hotel for blowing up
a Gay disco (redundant), A woman's health clinic, and the Backwoods
Olympics (and possibly for not attacking Disney On Ice); and one
branch of His followers failed miserably at their second attempt to blow
up The Great Satan that is the British Mass Transit System, just as -
thousands of miles away - another branch of His followers succeeded in
embarrassing themselves for centuries-to-come by hosting the Creation 2005
Mega-Conference (I can't believe I missed the seminar titled "The Ice Age:
Only the Bible Explains it". Be sure to check out Ronald Bailey's blogs
from Fundie Fest '05 over at Reason for the full tragic/comic effect.
Whoa, check it out: one of the speakers is Billy Jack!).
If this week left you wringing your hands and asking "Who? How? Why? What
the Fuck? Where are my pills - the big ones that make the pain go
away?", then you've come to right place, me hardies, Arrrrrrrrrrrrr.
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Local Boy Makes God
Where do gods come from? Next to "What made you think 'Casual Friday' meant
that you could leave your pants at home" it's the question that I'm most
often asked.
Back in 1912, in his steamy page-turner The Idea of God, Father
Wilhelm Schmidt proposed (to an Alter Boy) that societies were originally
monotheistic. According to Schmidt, primitive tribal communities worshiped
a "High God" (or "Sky God". Remember; as societies transitioned from
being matriarchal to being patriarchal the "Earth Mother" was traded in
for the "Sky Father." This is actually a good thing because it lead to
"Earth" magic [ritual] being replaced with "Sky" or "Head" magic [science].
In other words, would you rather have your broken arm treated by a doctor
or some demented crone with a rattle?). As time went on (again, according
to Schmidt), this High God became to remote and was eventually replaced a
dynamic pantheon: almost universally known as "The Sweat Hogs".
I subscribe to a different theory (as well as to Swank). I believe
that nearly every god or goddess ever worshiped was once a flesh-and-blood
man or woman. What elevated these lucky folks to full deity status was
nothing more than mankind's predilection for gathering around a bright
light to hear stories be told: which is exactly what everyone
reading this is doing at this very moment.
Here's an example: Zug, with the aid of a pointy stick, kills a bear. The
story of Zug's epic battle gets told around the campfire for a few gener-
ations and, most importantly, elaborated upon until Zug kills the bear with
a lightning bolt and forms the Earth out his its dead body. [Hurry for L.
Ron Hubbard: the first story tell to ever think of making himself a
god.]
Just look at the mythology that's grown (within a remarkably short time)
around George "I grow hemp, dude" Washington. He obviously never chopped
down a cherry tree, threw a silver dollar across the Potomac, or dry-humped
Madonna but you would be amazed (horrified) at the number of adults (in the
broadest sense of the word) who think he did.
Shit Luther, during his lifetime Daniel Boone was considered to be a
creepy furry (redundant); today he's the "King of the Wild Frontier" (not
to be confused with the Gay disco of the same name). In fact (quidem), the
original lyrics to the Daniel Boone song were:
Daniel Boone was a man
What a sick, sad man
Oh he tried to convince me
To let him lean up against me
In the wooooooooods
He's Daniel Boone
… and he's into frottage
Of course, the best example of a man who became a god is Jesus Christ.
Now, some people will tell you that Jesus never existed. As far as I'm
concerned, they're wrong. What makes me so three-times-before-the-cock-
crows sure that Jesus was an actual historical figure? Well, mainly, it's
this from the fist century CE historian Josephus which appeared in his
bodice-ripping romance novel The Antiquities of the Jews:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to
call him a man, for he was a doer of wonders - a teacher of such men as
receive the truth with pleasure. He drew many after him both of the Jews
and Gentiles. He was the Christ. When Pilate, at the suggestion of the
principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved
him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared alive again to them
in the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thou-
sand other wonderful things about him; and the tribe of Christians, so
named from him, are not extinct at this day.
Now, at this point, some earnest Christians among you are no doubt pre-
paring to hit the "Comments" button so that you can write, "But Josephus
not only said that Jesus was 'the Christ' but that he was crucified and
rose from the dead. Why don't you believe that?"
To which I would reply, "Why didn't Josephus, if he believed these things,
become a Christian?" Not did Josephus remain a Jew, folks, but he also re-
mained a Roman loyalist. Not the sort of behavior that one would expect
from a guy who thought Jesus was the Messiah. And as for calling Jesus 'the
Christ', well, a few pages later Josephus writes about the execution of
James whom he says was "the brother of Jesus, who was called 'the Christ'".
See that? JC just got demoted from being the Christ to just
being called the Christ.
No, the most likely explanation is that later Christian copyists amended
Josephus's work to make it more Jesus friendly. It's as if I were to get
a job writing for Fox News and I changed "President Bush visited the
Washington Zoo" to "President Bush, if it be lawful to call him President,
visited the Washington Zoo where he performed oral sex on a Howler monkey".
As Tim Callahan points out in Secret Origins of the Bible, if you
remove the suspicious phrases you're then left with:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, a teacher of such men
as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew many after him both of the Jews
and Gentiles. He was the Christ. When Pilate, at the suggestion of the
principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved
him at the first did not forsake him, and the tribe of Christians, so named
from him, are not extinct at this day.
That makes more sense. My point is that I'm certain there was an actual
Jesus who preached during the first century CE and was condemned to death
by the Romans (After all, the Romans - much like today's Texans - had a
zero-tolerance policy when it came Jewish upstarts. In 44 CE the winner of
Who Wants to be a Messiah, Theudas, gather a bunch of his followers
on the banks of the Jordan so that they could watch him part the river like
the Red Sea. Before he got a chance to embarrass himself, the Romans kindly
showed up and beheaded him. ). Jesus said many wonderful things about
loving ones neighbor and generosity to the poor. I'm sure that if he were
alive today we'd all think he was a terrific person. But was he the Son of
God? Are you shitting me? If I had a dollar for every virgin-born Son of
God I'd be typing this from my mansion in Michelle Malkin's vagina. Many
Greco-Romans sincerely believed Plato to the son of a virgin and the god
Apollo. There a buck, right there. The followers of Apollonius of Tyana
(roughly 20 - 98 CE) claimed the he was the product of a union between a
virgin and the god Proteus. Cha-ching, one dollar closer to setting up
house in Malkin's giggi. Apollonius, by the way, was also renowned as a
healer, banisher of demons, proponent of charity, and preacher of the
belief in one true god.
Apollonius' disciples were also kind enough not to try to sell us
some bullshit story about a Roman census that required people throughout
the empire to return to their places of birth in order to be counted.
While Mathew, Luke, and John (the synoptic gospels) go to great lengths to
establish Jesus as the Son of God as well as being descended from King
David on both Mary and Joseph's sides (which is odd, if God is supposed to
be his father), Mark, much to his credit, dispenses with that crap
altogether and basically has God adopt the big JC at Jesus' baptism.
As I've mentioned before, Mark never even once mentions Joseph, adding
credence to the story in the Talmud that Jesus was the illegitimate son of
a Greek soldier.
Had Jesus' followers stuck to only Mark's version of events, instead of
allowing the other authors to freely embellish the tale, there's a chance
(albeit a very slim one) that that I might be a Christian today. Of course,
while you tend to lose skeptics like me, there are definite advantages to
upgrading from prophet to Son of God: particularly if you live in a Hellen-
istic world. Your Greek and Roman neighbors might be more accepting of
someone whose father was god: after all, they had a long tradition of such
things. I'll let St. Justin Martyr explain:
And when we say also that the Word, who is First-begotten of God, was
born for us without sexual union, Jesus Christ our teacher, and that he was
crucified and died and rose again and ascended into heaven, we propound
nothing new beyond what you believe concerning those whom you call sons of
Zeus. For you know of how many sons of Zeus your esteemed writers speak:
Hermes, the interpreting Word and teacher of all; Aesklepios, who, though
he was a great healer, after being struck by a thunderbolt ascended into
heaven; and Dionysus too who was torn to pieces; and Heracles, when he had
committed himself to flames to escape his pains; and the Dioscuri, the sons
of Leda; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, whom though of mortal
origin rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of
Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been said to have been places among
the stars? And what of your deceased emperors whom you think it right to
deify, and on whose behalf you produce someone who swears that he has seen
the burning Caesar ascend to heaven from the funeral pyre?
Not only did St. Justin Martyr earn me an extra dollar by mentioning
Perseus' virgin mother, Danae, but he also name-checked RATYHTL's patron
god, Dionysus: thus setting up the next segment.
Remember Zug; the guy who killed the bear and became a God? Well, there was
another god named Ooka who, unbeknownst to the tribe that worshiped him,
had once been a simple farmer who, one season, had managed to raise an
exceptional amount of corn. After a few generations of storytelling, Ooka
became a harvest god. As the tribe that worships Zug and the tribe that
worships Ooka meet, begin to trade and, eventually, intermarry, Zug and
Ooka are combined to form Zugooka: The god who killed a the Great Chaos
Bear, formed the earth from its body, and caused corn to grow all over
the world.
The above is a window into how chunks of the life of our god,
Dionysus, ended up being included in the life of their god,
Jesus Christ.
Of course we all know that Dionysus was the son of a god, Zeus, and a
mortal woman, but did you know that Dionysus was also credited with
turning water into wine? In Luke's gospel there is an incident where
Peter has been imprisoned when an angel causes his shackles to fall off.
In another, Paul and Silas are cooling their heels of their sandles in
the slammer when an earthquake not only causes their chains to fall off
but opens all the cell doors as well. Now check out the part in The
Bacchae by Euripides in which the imprisoned followers of Dionysus
suddenly find that, you guessed it, their chains have fallen away and
all the cell doors have opened.
Coincidence? Possibly. And I would be willing to drop it, if it weren't
for the Greeks fascination with futility. The Greeks had countless saying
to express futility: for example there's Onon keireij (you are shearing an
ass) and, my favorite, Arton ouk eixen o ptwxoj kai turon hgorazen (the
beggar had n bread and was buying cheese). One of these expressions of
futility turns up in the The Bacchae when Dionysus tells Pentheus
that his is "kicking against the pricks" (pros kentra laktizoime). Oddly,
Luke quotes Jesus as telling Saul that it hurts to kick against the
pricks: "pros kentra laktizein".
So how did the son of a Greek soldier and a Dionysus wannabe end up being
worshiped by almost the entire Western World? That's next week's story.
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Godscore:
Placebo (No Deity Used) * 0
Zeus 1
Ashera 0
Yahweh 1
Hera 1
Emperor Claudius 1
Sekhmet 0
Hecate 0
Hephaestus 0
Dionysus 0
Jesus Christ 0
* In place of not using a deity you could always substitute Ben Schumin.
Recommended reading:
God Against The Gods by Jonathan Kirsch
A History of God by Karen Armstrong
Secret Origins of the Bible by Tim Callahan
The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein
Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Friedman
