Category Archives: Evolution

Mystic Revelations

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What do the three ‘great’ Abrahamic religions have in common?

They all started with visions, hallucinations, dreams and mystic revelations. They’re not only based on these but owe their very existence to encounters with the supernatural that took place entirely within people’s heads. This of course is if they happened at all; many of these encounters with angels and God’s revelations take place in stories that have all the characteristics of myth or legend. Even so, they reveal much about the primitive state of mind (still around today) that believed God frequently revealed himself to, and in the minds of, chosen individuals.

First, the grand-daddy of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism: 

When Abram was 99 years old, YHWH appeared to him. He said to Abram, “I am El Shadday. Live in my presence with integrity. I will give you my promise, and I will give you very many descendants.” Immediately, Abram bowed with his face touching the ground, and again Elohim spoke to him, My promise is still with you. You will become the father of many nations. So your name will no longer be Abram [Exalted Father] but Abraham [Father of Many] because I have made you a father of many nations. I will give you many descendants. Many nations and kings will come from you. I will make my promise to you and your descendants for generations to come as an everlasting promise. I will be your Elohim and the God of your descendants. (Genesis 17)

Then Moses:

The Angel of YHWH appeared to (Moses) in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed.

Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.”

So when YHWH saw that he turned aside to look, Elohim called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” (Exodus 3)

Notice how the inner voice goes from being that of ‘the angel of YHWH’ to YHWH himself (or one of his aliases). The entire scenario is preposterous of course, as is the Abraham episode before it. I’ve omitted the other occasions YHWH is said to appear to Abraham, including the infamous Genesis 22, where YHWH instructs Abraham to sacrifice his son. These stories are legends written, created from whole cloth, centuries after Abraham purportedly lived. He, like the later Moses, is almost certainly mythical, a character created to represent the beginnings of the Jewish faith. Even his names are symbolic. In truth, no one knows how Judaism began.

Onto Christianity:

The angel said to (Mary), “Don’t be afraid, Mary; God has shown you his grace. Listen! You will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of King David, his ancestor. He will rule over the people of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will never end.” (Luke 1)

Did this happen? If you believe angels exist then possibly, but we know they do not. We also know that this is myth. However, Luke wanted his readers to know that Jesus’ birth was miraculous so invented a story in which Mary encounters a heavenly being. The gospel writer anchors the divinity of Jesus to an implausible event which at best can only be a young woman’s vision (though it most certainly isn’t.)

The same is true of the resurrection appearances. Here’s Matthew 28:1-8:

Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave. And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it. And his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. The guards shook for fear of him and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said.”

More angels (they multiply in later gospels); again at best, though still highly improbable, the angel(s), if seen at all, can only be a vision or an hallucination (or mistaken identity.)

Onto the only first hand account of an encounter with the divine that the bible includes, Paul’s:

God was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles… I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1)

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a man was caught up to the third heaven. And I know how such a man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows— was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak. (2 Corinthians)

This is all there is. This is the extent Paul talks about his heavenly encounters. In Galatians he admits that God revealing whatever it was he revealed was ‘in’ him, that is, in his own head. The bizarre tale he relates in 2 Corinthians reads like an hallucination (Paul says he doesn’t know whether it was in the body or out of it) which is all it could’ve been; there is no paradise or ‘third heaven’.

And finally, there’s Mohammed:

… while I was sleeping last night, the keys of the treasures of the earth were brought to me till they were put in my hand.”… 

The angel came to him and asked him to read. The Prophet replied, “I do not know how to read. The Prophet added, “The angel caught me (forcefully) and pressed me so hard that I could not bear it any more. (Sahih Bukhari 6998)

Encounters with heavenly beings in dreams, ‘revelations’, visions, hallucinations and invented stories: these are central to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The religions would not exist without them. Written as myth long after they supposedly occurred or referred to obliquely by those who claim to have experienced them, they are the products of fevered pre-scientific minds.

Post-script: I’ve searched in vain for Darwin’s admission that an angel revealed the process of evolution to him. I can only find his collection of evidence, his scientific observations and his careful analysis of his findings. Likewise Mendeleev who calculated the existence of elements that were at the time unknown. Likewise Crick, Watson and Franklin who discovered the structure of DNA. Strangely, none of these people relied on visions, dreams or divine revelations in uncovering truths about reality.

We Need To Talk About Pride

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I recently had a letter published in The Spectator, one of the world’s oldest news and politics magazine, first published in 1828. I was responding to an article by Lionel Shriver, an author I like, famous for We Need To Talk About Kevin, and Mania, who was writing about how Pride is now redundant. This may be so, but her argument consisted of a number of fallacies that I felt compelled to address (her original article is behind a firewall, unfortunately.) I thought you might like to read my reply:

Sir: In ‘The War on Normality’, Lionel Shriver does precisely what she accuses gay people of doing. She reduces relationships to mere sex and then equates sex with only reproduction (or lack of it.)

Does she not know that both ‘heteronormative’ and homosexual people have sex for pleasure; most sexual activity in the world is for this hedonistic purpose, not reproduction. She next repeats the fallacy that homosexuals couples cannot reproduce. I can assure her they can, if not with each other, and play their part in advancing human evolution.

More than this, homosexual people value relationships, from which they derive companionship, affection, fulfilment and yes, intimacy, just as much as their heteronormative counterparts. Why Ms Shriver thinks gay people are any different in this respect is a mystery. Perhaps she realised she couldn’t write quite such a condemnatory column unless she did so.

Yours, happily (and proudly) in a same-sex relationship,

Neil Robinson

The intelligentsia’s misrepresentation of gay people makes it easy for more extreme bigots to advocate for their suicide and execution. It’s a small step then for some to take matters into their own hands. Looks like we do still need Gay Pride, after all.

Back by unpopular demand – it’s the New Year Pop Quiz!

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All set? Here we go!

1. Which one of these fantasy figures actually exists?

2. For which one of these ideas is there refutable/verifiable, corroborative scientific evidence?

3. Which one of these events is demonstrably historical?

4. Which one of these phenomena is verified and corroborated by psychology?

5. Applying logic and reasoning, which of the following scenarios is most likely to be true:

6. Which of these statements is verifiably true?

Answers:

Question 1. The answer is none of them, though C, Donald Trump, comes closest. 10 points if you put C, none if you plumped for any of the others: despite the volumes written about them there isn’t an iota of  evidence that they exist.

Question 2. Award yourself 10 points for B, though if you’re a True Believer this is the only one you think isn’t true. There is an abundance of refutable/verifiable, corroborative scientific evidence that it is. You can only wish there were for the other three.

Question 3. A is correct – 10 points. There is a considerable amount of evidence that the moon landing occurred on 20th July 1969. There is absolutely none at all that the other three are historical. For the sake of argument, let’s say they’re mythical. Nul points if you think otherwise.

Question 4. The answer is all of them. Oh no, wait… that’s my cognitive dissonance speaking. D is the only one of those listed recognised by psychologists. My bad and 10 points to you.

Question 5. The answer is of course E. Award yourself another 10 points if you thought outside the box on this one. (You can also have 10 points if you said they’re all equally likely, as in ‘not at all’.)

Question 6. 10 points for D. 

Scores: 

If you scored 50 or more, congratulations! If you scored nothing at all, you are confirmation that question 6’s answer – D. Human beings are capable of believing just about anything – is true. Well done.

A happy new year to you all.

 

 

Deconversion

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In the late 1980s I reach a crisis point in my life. I pray for God’s guidance . I pray for wisdom. I don’t pray to ask him to resolve the situation (not of my making). The heavens, however, are as brass. I begin to entertain the idea that rather than God ignoring me or expecting me to sort the problem (which eventually led to me having a breakdown) he might not – gasp – exist! I had gone from being someone who heard God speaking clearly in my head – telling me I should ‘witness’ to some ‘lost’ soul or other – to someone contemplating whether I’d imagined it all.

What at first seemed like a possibility began over time to feel more like a probability. I borrowed books from my local library written not by evangelical authors but by secular scholars (if bishops can be regarded as such) – John Robinson’s Honest to God, Morton Smith’s Jesus the Magician Resurrection: Myth or Reality? John Shelby Spong’s A Bishop’s Search for the Origins of Christianity, and later still Bart Ehrman’s many books.

I began a journey of discovery, exploring what it was I had believed when a committed Christian. Irrationally perhaps, I clung to a belief in God longer than I did other aspects of Christianity. After all, God is kind of generic and could conceivably exist and operate independently of Christianity. I reasoned that God must, by definition, be superior to the anthropomorphic concepts of the Bible. I held on to this idea of a generic God for another decade or so. It gave me a sort of comfort, I suppose. I was aware he wasn’t compatible with all the Jesus stuff I’d once believed. Would a god who created the universe really require a human sacrifice to make peace with his own creation? It seemed unlikely.

My friendly but distant god sat comfortably in the back of my mind while I got on happily with life without him and without thinking about him very much either. Until one day, walking home from work, I suddenly wondered why I was bothering. Why was I sustaining the idea of a god? Any god: generic, biblical or comfort blanket. I didn’t need to. I didn’t need him (nor, if we pretend he really exists, he me.) Everything about life, the universe and everything was, in any case, more than adequately explained by science, evolution, astronomy, psychology (in which I have a qualification). In something like a revelation, I realised that no God existed. Not the YHWH variations in the Bible and not my nicer version of him. In that instant I stopped believing in God, god and gods. One second I was a believer (of sorts), the next I wasn’t.

It was liberating. I didn’t have to work out what God was really about, didn’t have to please him, ask his forgiveness, seek his grace, or any of the other convoluted nonsense that goes along with ‘him’.

  • Was this revelation as emotional as my original conversion? I don’t think so. It was the culmination of years of thinking, reading and challenging myself. My ultimate deconversion from god-belief was a rational process.

It had repercussions of course, which I’ll deal with next time. In the meantime, how does my deconversion compare with yours, those of you who’ve had the good fortune to have one?

 

No God and the Domino Effect

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This a response to Don Camp’s comment on my post The Evil of Christianity, in which he tries to isolate ‘the crux’ of our disagreement about the Faith.

You start, Don, from the assumption that there is a God. I, on the other hand, have considered the evidence and concluded that in all probability there isn’t one. Certainly not the Christian God. There may be a god out there somewhere that has no interest in human beings and their affairs, though I doubt it. As far as we humans are concerned such a deity is as good as non-existent, being entirely hypothetical. If it is out there, it certainly won’t be offended at my saying so.

Once I realised some years ago that a personal God did not exist a number of other things followed (or rather, collapsed):

No God means no Son of God or God Incarnate, no Saviour or Christ.

No God means no resurrection (which Paul makes clear was a work of God).

No God means no Holy Spirit.

No Holy Spirit means no regeneration of individuals to become new creations in God (you only have to look at Christians today to see this is the case.)

No God means no grand Salvation plan.

No God means no Heaven, no Final Judgement, no Kingdom of Heaven of Earth, no Eternal Life.

No God means the universe can’t have been created by him.

No God means no manipulation of evolution, no intervention in human history and no prophecy of things to come.

No God means that the world would be just as we find it: messy, beautiful, dangerous, turbulent, indifferent.

No God means prophecy is man-made and comes to pass at no greater rate than chance allows (i.e. practically zero.)

No God means conversations with ‘him’, revelations from him and visions of him are all imagined, generated by and within the human brain, which works in mysterious ways.

No God means no God-given morality. Morality is, as you say, culturally determined and so may and does change over time. (You can see this in the Bible itself where morality supposedly handed down by God for all time evolves throughout the Old Testament and into the new.)

No God means there is neither Sin nor Righteousness. These are religious concepts. The whole spectrum of human behaviour, from destructive to altruistic, is demonstrated by believers and non-believers alike.

No God means assertions like ‘the issue turns on what I perceive as good for me versus what God declares is good for me’ are illusory. What is good for you is what you have worked out, even if you think God had a hand in it. A supernatural being who doesn’t exist cannot be responsible for your well-being, though your church and the bible undoubtedly contributed to your conditioning.

No God means individuals must work out their own meaning and purpose. Some do, some don’t, as you observe, Don. This is as true of believers as it is for non-believers. Many atheists have managed it, or not, without having it imposed by religion. And despite what you say, Christianity is a religion. It is the epitome of religion.

No God means none of the Abrahamic religions are true and therefore Christianity and its ‘holy’ book, being based on an invalid premise, must be false. Most of the posts on this here blog are about demonstrating this fact.

No God means all gods are man-made, not all gods except one.

The crux of the matter is you believe in God while I see how unlikely it is that there is one. I’d agree with you if I could, Don, but then we’d both be wrong.

The Bible Is Fantasy

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The Bible contains:

113 appearances of angels, usually interacting with human beings;

50+ visions, on which all of Christianity hangs: those of Daniel; Cephas and others who ‘saw’ the risen Christ; Paul and John the Elder in Revelation. 

21 supernatural dreams, including those experienced by Jacob, Technicolor Joseph, NT Joseph, the Magi, Pilate’s wife and Paul. 

Numerous apparitions and ghostly appearances, including that of the resurrected Jesus as well as Moses and Elijah and, in the Old Testament, the spirit of Samuel, conjured up from the grave by the witch of Endor.

Innumerable resurrections: not only that of Jesus but several Old Testament characters, and, in the New, Lazarus, Jairus’ daughter, the young man of Nain and the hordes who rose from their graves at the time of the crucifixion.

Multiple impossible astronomical events, ranging from the sun stopping in its orbit(!); a star wandering and hovering over a small house; a solar eclipse lasting several hours; stars that one day will fall from the sky; a God who lives just above the clouds and a ‘firmament’ between the Earth and the heavens that holds back water;

Several events in which nature is magically controlled: the parting of the Red Sea; Moses’ magician’s staff becoming a snake; the Nile turning to blood; Jonah being swallowed but not digested by a ‘great fish’ and Jesus calming a storm.

An abundance of fantastic beasts and fairy tale creatures: Giants (Genesis 6:1-4, Numbers 13:33); Leviathan the sea monster (Isaiah 27:1 etc); the Behemoth (Job 40:15-24); the Cherubim monsters (Ezekiel 1:4-21); the dragon and other beasts from Revelation

Many characters who are clearly legendary, from Adam & Eve, Noah, Lot and Abraham to Moses, Job, Daniel and gospel Jesus. Some of the Bible’s fictional characters lived to a literally incredible age: Adam 930 years, Seth 912, Methuselah 969, Noah 950, Abraham 175, Moses a pitiful 120. Jesus holds the record being now either 2,000 years old or eternal, depending on how you count it.

5 mythical places: Eden at the beginning of the book; New Jerusalem at the end; Heaven, the abode of God; Sheol the Old Testament place of the dead; Hades (Sheol mark II?) which Jesus visited while supposedly dead in his tomb (Acts 2:27, 31; Matt 16:18).

2 sentient ‘pillars’: one of cloud, one of fire (Exodus 13).

2 talking animals: the serpent in Eden and Balaam’s ass.

1 talking plant (Exodus 3:3).

0 science. No understanding whatsoever of what we now call astronomy, meteorology, germ theory, genetics, evolution, psychology… you name it.

So how do we read all of this? As the ancients themselves would, with an understanding of the world that regarded the supernatural, magic, miracles and monsters as real? We’re told often enough that this is how we should interpret scripture, not from a modern perspective. Perhaps we might credit the creators of the many books of the bible with greater skill, however, and interpret the inclusion of magic and miracle as allegorical or metaphorical; literary pieces, if you will. But then we have to decide which far-fetched stories are myth and which are historical accounts,. There really is no way to do this. A New Testament story awash with impossible events, implausible characters and symbolic tropes is every bit as allegorical or metaphorical as the same kind of story in the Old Testament (or, indeed, in Egyptian, Greek and Roman myth.) The reader who wants to see stories in the Old Testament as carefully crafted allegories has to concede that the Jesus narratives are of the same order.

It looks like we have to read the Bible as 21st century readers, because that is what we are. After all the Bible is supposedly a book for all time. We can, however, recognise the way in which its many creators saw the world – populated with fantasy creatures and subject to impossible events – and accept that they were wrong. Reality is not as they perceived it. What we cannot do is claim that the Jesus story is an oasis of truth in the midst of all this fantasy . 

Mr J: The Defence

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Unfortunately, Mr J is unable to speak for himself so I have taken it upon myself to defend him. I’m going to prove to you he exists and that he loves us all.

The first thing I want to mention is how he created the Earth and everything in it in six days, about six thousand years ago. Or possibly not. It’s might’ve been billion years ago and it might have taken a very long time. Mr J would like to keep his options open.

In any case, he eventually created human beings, either on the sixth day or billions of years later. He quite probably controlled evolution to get to them, killing off billions of other creatures along the way just so humans could emerge. Some might say this was pretty heartless but it’s the only way natural selection could produce Mr J’s favoured creation. All a bit hit and miss, but Mr J knew what he was doing. I read it in a Richard Dawkins book some time.

Anyway, once humans appeared they managed to upset Mr J in some silly, insignificant way, so that he had to come up with a whole series of complicated plans to bring them into line.

The first plan was, admittedly, not all that great. It was necessary though. He drowned the lot of them, every man, woman and child, except for one old drunkard and his family. Needless to say the humans that came along after them weren’t any better than the ones who’d come before. No surprise there! Mr J rightly blamed the humans themselves for the shortcomings he’d built into them. That and the demons with their boss, Satan, whom he’d thoughtfully made right back at the start of the six days. Or maybe it was during the billions of years when he was creating everything by process.

Er… moving swiftly on, his second plan was that he’d just concentrate on one special group. He picked, for reasons best known to himself, a small, nomadic desert tribe. He demanded of those who had them that they should slice the tops off their penises. Weird, I know, but other tribes were doing it and Mr J thought if it was good enough for them and their fertility deities then it was good enough for his besties too. They also had to obey all 613 of the rules he would make up as he went along. This was to set a moral example to his Chosen People so naturally included instructions on how to beat their slaves, how to stone people to death and how to massacre their neighbours. Needless to say, despite how reasonable Mr J’s terms were, the useless humans couldn’t manage to comply with them. He was more than pissed. He let other tribes brutalise them, had them turn on each other and sent them into exile. But still they didn’t learn. You might think he’d have done better offering some encouragement, a little bit of positive enforcement, but you’d be wrong. Mr J always knows best.

The time rolled round for another half-arsed plan. This time Mr J sent a Figment Of His Imagination down to the Earth so the friends for whom he’d set such a good example while punishing them endlessly, could engineer his death. Or maybe it was the Romans who did it. Whatever, the story got around that after his execution this Figment had come back to life, which meant all sort of marvellous things would happen, including a complete reboot of the Earth. The old deal with its dick-docking and interminable lists of rules was over. There was a new deal now: believe it and you’d live forever: don’t and you’d boil forever in a fiery pit while demons tortured you for eternity.

Soon after this (because a thousand years is like a day to him), Mr J became something of a recluse. He removed himself from time and space – no more walking in gardens and masquerading as a burning bush – he would become… transcendent! He also announced, in a revelation to some churchy types, that he wanted, henceforth, to identify as a threesome. He insisted he be called ‘Daddy’, ‘Sonny’ and ‘Friendly Ghost’ all at the same time. It was a mystery why he…

Hang on. I just can’t go on with this. I mean, I know I’m supposed to be defending Mr J but when you see it written down like this, none of it makes sense. None at all. It’s rubbish and if this is what Mr J is all about, he can’t be defended. Not by anyone with half a brain anyway, and I like to think I have at least that. Mr J will just have to defend himself or, failing that, get someone without any critical faculties at all to do it for him.

The Mind

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Let’s run with the idea* that this reality might be nothing more than a simulation, created by a Mind vastly superior to our own.

*From an idea by Don Camp.

The Mind set up its simulation to run without any external interference. The Mind is outside the simulation and has no interest in engaging with it. Doing so would negate the purpose of the simulation, which is to see how it evolves naturally and unaided.

It is not clear at this point how long the simulation has been running; part of its programming exists to create the impression of a considerable passage of time. Time, memory and even distance are all simulated.

Unfortunately for the simulated individuals within it, the simulation also incorporates penalties – bugs, viruses, perils, conflict and ultimate deletion – to stimulate their collective evolution. These are in fact the drivers of the simulation.

Through them, the simulation has produced the semblance of sentient life. These apparent sentients are largely unaware, like the characters in their simulated dreams, that they are not real. Some of them however are vaguely aware – a glitch in the program, no doubt – that they are the product of a simulation. They create their own simulated constructs of what they think the initiator of the simulation must, in their simulated imaginations, be like. They give these constructs names: Ra, Osiris, Zeus, YHWH, Allah. Jesus and many others. They mistake these simulations for the Mind itself with some concluding they will, once the simulation ends for them, join the Mind in actual reality.

The Mind notes this development with disinterest. It is mildly amusing, nothing more. It turns to more important matters – feeding the cat, taking out the trash – and leaves the ssimulation to run in the corner of the basement.

Now, don’t you think Don, that this is a much more likely scenario than that of super-beings outside of time and space? I’m so glad you suggested it.

Next, what if the universe really was created by a super-being? How would that work? From another brilliant idea of Don’s!

Christian Values

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I keep coming across the idea that the West is abandoning its ‘Christian values’ (here for example). Some say we’re doing so without having anything with which to replace them, while others bemoan the influence of ‘wokeism’, Islam and social media.

This seems to me to be lazy journalism. What Christian values are we talking about?

  • Self-sacrifice, humility, selling all to help the poor, putting others before oneself? These are Christian values according to gospel Jesus but they have never been the prevalent values of Western culture.

  • Prohibitions against lying, stealing and murdering, together with admonitions to be civil and respectful predate the Bible by some considerable time. Then, as now, they were not values adhered to by everyone but were, nonetheless, ones that ancient cultures aspired to.

  • Sexual mores, then. This is, after all, what most Christians mean when they refer to Christian values. These are forever in a state of flux in any culture; however much authorities attempt to legislate sexual practices, consenting adults will always do what they want to do. The sixth commandment and the Bible’s homophobic stance would not exist if adultery and homosexuality were not practised in the barbaric past. Meanwhile, polygamy, paedophilia and non-consensual sex (with slaves) get a free pass in the Old Testament. The West’s sexual mores, which in any case vary from culture to culture, are not based on the Bible.

  • Anti-Semitism, superstition, slavery, the subjugation of women and the denigration of those of different religions, race and sexuality, are Christian values, all derived from the Bible, that the West has upheld in the past, and occasionally returns to still. If these are the Christian values we are abandoning then good, and good riddance too. We’re all better off without them.

The West’s values are capitalism, ‘civil rights, equality before the law, procedural justice’, education, empiricism and democracy, none of which derive from Christianity. Arguably they emerged in the West as a reaction against the church and the establishment, with their oppressive values, during the Enlightenment. These are humanistic values that, it seems to me, are not under threat today (though some of them could benefit from reform).

This being said, other values, particularly the right to free speech, empiricism, privacy and the right to live peaceably according to one’s own principles do appear to be under threat. There are aspects of wokeism and its troublesome twin, cancel culture, that pose a threat to these values, which have been, until recently, highly prized in the West. wokeism gnaws troublesomely at the West’s self-esteem and self-respect, rewriting its history and insisting it apologise and make reparation for the actions of people who lived hundreds of years ago. Even so, the values wokeism threatens were not derived from Christianity; you will not find individuals’ rights, empiricism and free speech promoted in the Bible, nor by later church tradition. These values were hard won by enlightened men and women and subsequently evolved, as all values and principles do, over the last couple of centuries.

Despite the loud lament that the West is losing its Christian values, it isn’t. Apart from a few unpalatable prejudices that can be traced back to the Bible, the West does not operate on Christian values and has not done so, if it ever did, for a very long time.

The Oral Tradition

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Where did stories about Jesus originate?

Memory and the Oral Tradition, part 2

The passing on of stories from memory is the ‘oral tradition’ that some argue preserved the words of Jesus more or less accurately for forty years. We’re expected to believe that eye-witnesses recalled in precise detail what Jesus said and did; that they all largely agreed on what this was; that none of them embellished or altered their recollections in any way in the telling and that they were passed on to convert after convert after convert in precise and unaltered form. And then, that no-one in forty years amended or refined the stories in any substantial way, because if they did the originators of the tales would be quick to point out any inaccuracies.

We know this isn’t what happened. The stories evolved and were refined and embellished as they were passed along for forty years between numerous converts. The defence that ancient largely illiterate cultures were better at faithfully preserving stories orally than we are today is a myth. (See Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation Of A Jewish Preacher from Galilee)

Even when some of the oral stories about Jesus were eventually written down, as in the gospels, they continued to evolve; Matthew and Luke both altered stories they took from Mark while John’s Jesus, in the latest of the canonical gospels, is a different creation altogether; either the source stories John knew had evolved quite differently from those Mark, Matthew and Luke had access to, or John created his Jesus out of whole cloth himself.

These stories once written down were changed again, both deliberately and accidentally, whenever the gospels were copied. We know this from the myriad of differences in the extant manuscripts. As Bart Ehrman puts it in Misquoting Jesus, ‘there are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament’. The evolution continued. This is why the Jesus seminar concluded, controversially, that only 20% of the words attributed to Jesus in the gospels can be regarded as originating with him. I consider this to be over-generous. 

Even if the writers of Jesus stories took some of their material from the so-called oral tradition (aka, ‘stories that were being passed around’), we have no way of knowing which of it, if any, is an accurate representation of the things Jesus did and said. It’s unlikely much of it is, given how stories are misremembered, reshaped and altered over time. Their evolution makes them less reliable, not more.

By the way, you’ve not read the post I wrote on Cape Cod. Most of it was completed in Boston and I’ve edited and posted it from my home in the UK. In other words, it evolved in various locations. Kind of like the gospels.