The Sunday Mail
LAST week, this column established that “Jesus” (Yahoshua the Nazarene) did not either sacrifice himself or die for anyone.
From now and into the coming weeks, we will be looking at Yahoshua’s passion (arrest, trial and physical suffering). As usual, we will be separating the debris from the substance surrounding Yahoshua.
The ordinary source about the details concerning the passion of this man is found in the Greek Scriptures. They are named Greek Scriptures because they were first written in Greek, in line with the thinking of Paul, himself a religious Hebrew, a Greek by education and a Roman by citizenship.
“According to Josephus’s Antiquities 18:2:2, the Roman Procurator, Pilate, appointed the chief priests. According to Acts, Paul was an agent of the chief priests, thus a Roman agent.” – Lewis. Loflin, “Did Jews Really Kill Jesus Christ?” www.sullivan-county.com/id2/jews_killed.htm.
“…The followers of (Yahoshua) began to split into two branches. One branch, based in Jerusalem and led by the brother of (Yahoshua), James, portrayed (Yahoshua) as a martyr for Jewish nationalism. The other branch, the so-called “Gentile branch,” was led by the Apostle Paul who rejected the historical (Yahoshua) and largely created the version of (Yahoshua) found in the (Scriptures) today.
“In place of the historical (Yahoshua), Paul – who had relatively little knowledge of the real (Yahoshua) – substituted a heavenly redeemer who emphasised transformation through (absolute and unquestioning) faith. Paul spread his message among the Gentiles, winning converts to his brand of Christianity which did not require full observance of traditional (Hebrew) law…
“In 62 C.E., James was stoned to death. Eight years later, Rome captured and destroyed Jerusalem, thereby marking the end of the four-year First Jewish War. The “Jerusalem branch” of (Nazarene) Christianity was effectively crushed…, leaving Paul’s “Gentile branch” as the Christian torch-carrier.” – Doug Linder, ‘The Trial of Jesus: An Account’ (2002) – www.law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/jesus/jesusaccount.html
The Roman province of Judea was created in 6 BCE. It incorporated the geographical regions of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea. Under the Romans, this area was a scene of conflicts and nationalist revolts against Roman rule by Hebrews.
“The Roman government would only intervene in criminal affairs when matters of treason, civil disobedience, incitement to revolution or attacks against Caesar were involved. Otherwise, local administration was conducted by local officials and the regular courts of the conquered nations. Roman authorities were not involved in every criminal proceeding throughout the vast empire.” – www.rcg.org/pillar/0902pp-trjtwi.html
Greek was retained as a language and culture after the Romans conquered the Greek areas in 63 BCE. Greek then remained spoken and the language of commerce and learning in the Roman and Byzantine Empires until 529 CE.
“In 63 BCE, the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem, and in so doing put an end both to the independent Jewish state of Palestine and eight decades of rule by the Hasmonean dynasty of high priests.
Rome began appointing the high priests that served the Temple in Jerusalem. High priests from then on juggled the religious interests of Jews and the political interests of Rome, at whose pleasure they served.” – Doug Linder (2002).
The Greek Christian scriptures were Roman-oriented because Judea was under Roman rule. The scriptures were theologically defined by Paul, a person who never met Yahoshua. Paul even fought those who knew Yahoshua personally. Paul even avoided the understanding of Yahoshua’s disciples and close associates. Paul avoided people who had been with Yahoshua following his teachings for three years.
The gospels were humanly written from around 50 CE after St. Paul broke with James the Just, the brother to and disciple of Yahoshua.
As previously established, it is a downright falsehood by literalist (non-critical) or Pauline Christians to claim that Yahoshua offered his own life accepting liability for people’s moral debt owed to an angry humanoid Divine.
Viewing the Divine as a being so vengeful and sadistic in need of appeasement using human blood as ransom is contrary to Ezekiel 18:19-32 and other instances found in the scriptures.
Unashamedly, literalist (non-critical) or Pauline Christianity is a human construction of faulty workmanship. It presents a distorted narrative that Yahoshua painfully died to placate the anger of a humanoid, a discriminatory and a fearful Divine against a degenerate humanity.
It is thus dehumanising to suggest that human beings are inherently debased to the extent that they require redemption by way of literalist absolute submission and unquestioning compliance to the discriminatory and hateful but benevolent humanoid Divine in return for a favour. In future, there will be an instalment on the whole narrative about the “original sin.”
Literalism is a burden whose consequence is a direct attack on human agency and a disregard for the impact of one’s causative thoughts, words and actions. All human beings need to be held accountable for their own actions – wrongful or righteous.
One day the true story of a human being, mystic and rabbi, Yahoshua the Nazarene, will also be dealt with in this column.
Next week, we discover the details always disregarded by mainstream Christianity about “Who” arrested Yahoshua. Why? It is because “only when verities are challenged, only when certainties of yesteryears become gnawing doubts of today, is (humanity) emboldened to draw up a new plan for a new home, planetary home.” – Nathaniel Manheru, The Herald (10th October 2015).
Dear reader, we should locate our humanity in a particular space and time. We need the validation of our humanity without being fatalistic, parrots and indeterminate. We should actualise our unchained and unsurrendered human agency from our own innermost depths. We have to ground ourselves as bearers and vehicular expressions of the Divine, the infinite life force!
For feedback email [email protected] or Twitter @shingaiRndoro. Comment on twitter using #ChiseltheDebris, #DeconstructtheScriptures, #ImproveHumanity. A gallery of previous articles is available at www.sundaymail.co.zw/author/shingairukwata.
