style="font-size:15px;"> – THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS, Saying #5
When I was in my teens I led a youth Bible class at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in the heart of downtown Toronto. One of the favourite old-time hymns the young people used to ask for began with the words: “Who is on the Lord’s side? Who for him will go?” The answer came ringing back in a later verse: “We are on the Lord’s side; Saviour we are thine.” It was a fine evangelical call to service for Jesus.
Later, however, in my first year at University College, at the University of Toronto, I happened upon the chapter in the book of Exodus from which the key words of the hymn were taken. It was chapter 32, where the mythical story is told of Moses’ descent from the mountain bearing the two tablets of stone upon which God’s “finger” had written the Ten Commandments. Moses discovers that in his long absence on the mountain the people have strayed and made for themselves the image of a golden calf. Moses throws a major temper tantrum, smashes the two tablets on the ground, seizes the calf and, after reducing it to powder in a fire, scatters the ashes upon water and forces the Israelites to drink it.
The true significance of all of this no doubt revolves around the author’s awareness of the ending of the zodiacal Age of Taurus the bull and the beginning of the Age of Aries the ram. (Notice that in Genesis, when Abraham was about to slay his son Isaac, he was told to offer up a ram caught in a nearby thicket instead.) But it’s what happened next that arrested my full attention. Here is the text itself:
When Moses saw that the people were running wild (for Aaron had let them run wild, to the derision of their enemies), then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. He said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbour.’” The sons of Levi did as Moses commanded, and about three thousand of the people fell on that day. Moses said, “Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of a son or a brother, and so have brought a blessing on yourselves this day.” (Exodus 32:25–29)
I have never heard this part of the story read in church. The hymn, of course, like the Church in general, wholly slides over this horror—the total antithesis of common humanistic morality, never mind of the complete ethical teachings of the New Testament. Notice also another major but usually overlooked phenomenon: The “Lord” in the story is Yahweh, later to become God the Father. The hymn, however, as almost always happens in unthinking, popular Christian theology, transfers the title “Lord” to the “Saviour,” that is, to Jesus. In other words, the entire passage is twisted to suit the cause of “the Gospel.”
Anyone familiar with the rest of Exodus and indeed the whole of the Old Testament will be fully aware that this passage about killing sons, brothers and neighbours, and being blessed in the process, is far from atypical. There are many scenes of greater gore and outright cruelty—even genocide—in these “holy” texts than the verses quoted here. It would be “flogging a dead horse” to begin to list the most heinous.
What is important to stress, however, is that none of this was actual history. The recording of real events was not, as cannot be underlined too heavily, the purpose or intent of the authors in every case. Archaeology supports what knowledge of ancient theological and philosophical practices has made abundantly clear: the many battles and the carnage depicted in the Bible, especially in the supposed conquest of the Promised Land—Canaan—never happened as actual fact. They were all part of the mythical surroundings given to the Israelites to glorify their past and to underscore the zealous, exclusivist nature of the tribal god they served. If even a fraction of the battles and slaughters described in the early books of the Bible had actually taken place, the “Holy Land” would today be ankle deep in ancient weapons and other signs of furious wars. It is not. Indeed, very far from it. Mythmaking, you see, didn’t just suddenly start and stop with the stories of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It runs throughout the entire Bible, all sixty-six books, including all of the New Testament and thus throughout the Jesus Story as well.
But how, one asks, can ancient myth, even though understood as defined by Joseph Campbell as “what never was, but always is,” speak to you or me in the technological era of the twenty-first century? In the coming chapters we will examine the familiar New Testament Jesus stories and try to see where they came from and what they mean for our lives. As we do so, we will see the full nature of the spiritual encouragement and the solid grounds for conquering our fears that ring through them.
This encouragement, oddly enough, has most relevance where religion itself is concerned. Anyone who has thought about it knows there is a tremendous amount of fear involved wherever religion or spirituality are even mooted for discussion. I know many hundreds of people through letters as well as direct contact over the years whose entire experience of what is sometimes euphemistically called their “spiritual life” (but more accurately too often is their catalogue of neuroses) is ringed about with fear. There is fear of God’s disapproval, fear of offending parents, relatives, friends, clergy and others. There is also deep-rooted fear of change of any kind.
This latter aspect deserves much more attention than it gets. There are millions walking about out there today whose inner spiritual growth has far surpassed anything they once knew, but who move in mortal terror of anyone else finding out. One woman reader of my newspaper columns wrote to say that she lives in dread some Sundays until the clock moves past 11 a.m. Only then can she relax, since it’s now too late to make it to her local church. Most Sundays, however, old fears win out and she ends up seated in a pew well before the sacred hour. Such was her background that church attendance became so loaded with negative power that she is almost paralyzed by the idea of being free to choose to go or not go as an autonomous agent. She wrote that she resents the way the preacher “talks as though we all are five-year-olds” and then she feels guilty about being critical in the church and of the Church.
Not that failure to attend church necessarily means spiritual growth; it could mean the opposite. We all need to examine our religious beliefs and practices from time to time to see to what degree they are governed not by insight and spiritual freedom but by childhood habits and adolescent, ingrained taboos. For far too many even today, religion equals guilt—lots of guilt. Perhaps if more people like my friend could summon the courage to voice their feelings to the clergy, the quality of the preaching might improve. Certainly, not speaking up or just staying away does nothing to challenge the current infantilization of the laity.
It’s painful to say, but the amount of superstition and fear of moving on that pervades much of the public mind when it comes to matters of faith and of spirit is profound. Yet, at the same time, there is an enormous fascination with spirituality. The towering success of The Da Vinci Code is a current testimony to this. The lesson learned by Peter is one for us all just now: “Fear not.” Dare to leave the “boat,” as we shall see he was once challenged in the myth to do, and move ahead! My hope is that this book will become the catalyst for just such a personal breakthrough for you.
3 THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND JESUS’ CHILDHOOD
Deep at the heart of all that is, there shines the beauty of a transcendent glory.
– ANONYMOUS
VIRGINS do not give birth to babies. Few people outside the Church need convincing of that today. Nevertheless, lest it be said that the mythical understanding being put forth here has already closed its mind against the possibility that God—however one expresses this ultimate mystery—can do anything, even to the breaking of the very natural laws which he/she created in the first place, some preliminary observations need to be made.
We
