Religious Texts

The Hebrew Bible - the Tanakh (Old Testament), the Christian Bible, (Old and New Testaments) and the Quran are the books and scriptures that the major one God religions are based upon.

Those interested in these books either take their contents to be: - the absolute, indisputable and infallible word of God, or simply myth and folklore, whilst others “cherry-pick” the parts that they believe whilst ignoring the rest.

The absolutists therefore necessarily discredit all other texts but their own chosen one, the myth and folklorists treat all texts as simply that, but arbitrarily “cherry-picking” which verses to live by and which ones to ignore, begs the question, why base your philosophical outlook on your chosen text at all - surely you should believe it all or none?

Then to further complicate matters there is interpretation, with believers having different interpretations of the same text.

Finally, there are those who’s attitudes are neutral and seek to find the truth – wherever it may lead. In these ranks are experts in archaeology, anthropology, folklore, philology, linguistics and more.

Applying their disciplines to religious texts they ask when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were at work in its production; what sources were used in its composition; what message it was intended to convey; and is there other corroborative or contradictory evidence.

Interestingly, research over the last 200 years in to Sanskrit (the primary sacred language of Hinduism) and the Hindu religion show strikingly similar stories and names to those of the Torah and the Old Testament and predate them by many centuries. Also research in to the movement of peoples and settlements indicate a probability that Hinduism flowed westward from the Indus Valley Civilisation of the Punjab in northern India (now Pakistan) to the Levant, and over time transmuted and became the new religion. The similarities are too many to be considered coincidence.

Other results from this scholarly research have been far reaching with many of the fundamental tenets of the Tanakh and the Bible being disproved.

Jewish and Christian theologians are now saying that their religion’s text is not necessarily meant to be wholly factual but often metaphorical.

Taking as an example something as basic as the Jews being enslaved in Egypt for 200 years building the pyramids, followed by the Exodus; now accepted by both Jewish and Christian theologians as not being true, and being explained as a metaphor, I find disingenuous.

Not that all the Tanakh / Bible narrative is necessarily untrue, many of the historical geographic locations appear to be correct and social, religious and legal commentary appear to be correct also. There is however abundant evidence of political / socio-economic manipulation of texts, in addition to straightforward contradictions.

The Christian Bible, is well known to have been compiled for political purposes. The Bible was put together from various collections of sacred books (canons) on the instruction of Roman Emperor Constantine I (272-337CE), in order to consolidate Roman power and bring about social stability. Originally a Pagan believer, Constantine converted to Christianity in order to gain its control. During his early reign religiously based social unrest caused problems for his people. He therefore declared all religions equal under his law, including Jewish and Pagan worship. However within the growing Christian factions there was still conflict and unrest with different factions believing different sacred books. Constantine therefore ordered the leaders of the different Christian factions to come together and between them decide on a single cannon. Unable or unwilling to do so, they only eventually came together after Constantine paid them to do so. At the council of Nicaea the church leaders then negotiated and voted upon which sacred books would be included and which excluded from the final canon to be known as the Christian Bible. However, further modifications of the bible continued for another 1,200 years, finally ending with the Catholic Council of Trent (1545-1563) when the Bible was then declared final; this being in order to try to stop the Protestant Reformation movement in Europe.*

In 1604 at the Hampton Court Conference the Protestant / Anglican Bible (The King James / Authorized Bible) was created; translated from Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Aramaic texts by a committee of 47 scholars (all from the Church of England) under the instruction of the king that it must conform to Church of England beliefs and practices. This was brought about because two previous Bibles (the Great Bible of 1535 authorised by King Henry VIII under commission of Thomas, Lord Cromwell, itself a revision of the Tyndale Bible) and (the Bishop’s Bible of 1568 commissioned by the Church of England and twice revised) were challenged by the Puritan faction within the Church of England concerning translation and interpretation. To all intents and purposes, the King James / Authorised version is now the main English Language Protestant / Anglican Bible. However, throughout its history there have been hundreds of bibles - from incomplete early ones, through numerous revisions of later complete bibles, even in the 21st century there have been seven new versions up to 2013 with yet others still being compiled and in progress based mainly upon new text translations and interpretations.

"Over the past few years, we have come to understand what has made for the greatest best seller of all time, the success of the New Testament. It is because this book has its secret. On every page, in every line, this book implies something never flatly stated, but which intrigues and involves us all the more on that account "- Jean Paulhan.

Similar scholarly research in to the Quran has found that much of its content predates Muhammad and the stated divine revelations delivered to him by the Archangel Gabriel. This in itself is very problematic.

Content has been collated from very many oral and written Qurans, in many different dialects that were substantively different from each other, in to a single uniform Quran by a committee under instruction of Caliph Uthman; a project that took 24 years.

Once the standard Quran was completed, and possibly to avoid the sort of problems the Christian Bible was having, (pre-Islamic Arabs were a mix of Pagans, Christians, Jews, Iranian religions and Polytheist beliefs in various Gods and Goddesses) it was sent to the major Muslim cities with orders that all previous versions of the Quran were to be burnt and only the new Uthman version used.  However, there are still surviving Quranic texts predating the Uthman Quran that show clear differences. There have also been politically motivated changes made to the Qurans historic events and timelines by later traditionalists, for nationalistic purposes.

The Qur'an, in the general opinion of modern historians, in its current form, is not the work of Muhammad or the Uthmanic redactors, but a precipitate of the social and cultural pressures of the first two Islamic centuries.

Hindu and Buddhist texts do not have this problem as they are understood to be the writings of men, with Hindu’s believing in a supreme but unknown being, whilst Buddhists believe in basic humanity.

Therefore, it is difficult to see how the absolutists, some would say ultra-conservative or even fanatics, who believe that every word in their chosen text is the word of God, continue in that belief. They do so however in their millions. I can only conclude that they do so, in the main, as the result of considerable indoctrination and a general lack of a comprehensive education - specifically a thorough historical knowledge of their own religion. Still, there are many exceptionally well-educated people who still hold these views, showing that indoctrination even for the well-educated can be hard to overcome. Rarely does a well-educated and none indoctrinated person choose a religion and then become an absolutist.

The cherry pickers are more difficult to understand, undoubtedly, they understand all the difficulties previously outlined and will have studied the texts thoroughly and then decided what they will believe and live by, and what they will disregard and ignore, and maybe even arrive at their own personal interpretations.

The myth and folklore believers have generally studied the texts, the anomalies, made comparisons etc., and determined that the texts record historical and cultural events but are mainly made up of legends and folklore.

The main drivers of religions were radical socio-economic reformers of their times, facing older religions and challenges that they wished to overcome for the general benefit of humankind. Reformers always need powerful backing of one sort or another to get their message across and obtain acceptance of that message.

The reformers in question lived in the Bronze and Iron ages, and latterly for Islam the Early Medieval periods of history. Kings of the times relied upon wealth and armies to hold power and bring about their preferred socio-economic systems. The only way to challenge such power, without wealth and an army, was to invoke God as being your backer by creating your own religion/following.

However, when a religion (there were hundreds of them, mainly short lived) gained a substantive following, kings quickly brought them under their own control and made themselves the heads of the respective religions, thereby now having wealth, armies and Gods backing.

To keep the religions supporting them, the kings generally bought the religious leaders, or executed and replaced them.

Over time the religions however become stronger than kings simply by having a mass of indoctrinated people supporting them and using the “divide and rule” concept between different kingdoms. Kings then became subject to the religions, in order to remain in power.

Throughout these times texts were changed and altered purely for reasons of political gain by those in power, and also by honest believers who wanted to bring their own personal interpretations to bear.

Religions eventually usurped the power of the kings and established themselves as the de-facto political / socio-economic powers; often with a king as a figurehead, and maintained that power through religious indoctrination of their subjects coupled with curtailment of education and the banning of religious criticism, whilst at the same time amassing vast amounts of wealth.

Through the hard-fought gains of modern democracy, secular education, freedom of speech and general prosperity, the power of the religions is in decline, except in countries where these gains are still embryonic or curtailed by the countries leaders.

¹ Many dozens of Apocrypha (early gospels and writings) were rejected from the final cannon because of their questionable value to the church. Even the ones finally accepted to form The Bible contain far too many discrepancies for modern distinguished Christian theologians, who contend that the Gospels are riddled with discrepancies, embellishments, made -up stories, and historical problems, that mean they cannot be taken at face value as giving historically accurate accounts of what really happened. 

Charles

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. — Edward Gibbon 1737-1794