By Selma Carvalho
Britain may not immediately spring to mind, when it comes to discovering ‘lost manuscripts’, particularly of the Middle Eastern variety, but that is exactly what authorsSimcha Javobovici and Barrie Wilson of the recently released book The Lost Gospel, claim to have found in the archives of the British Library. To be fair, this lost manuscript entitledThe Ecclesiastical History of Zacharias Rhetor, purchased by the British Library in 1847, has been studied before and dismissed as fairly unimpressive. But Javobovici and Wilson, having done a fresh translation from the ancient Syriac into English, have inferred disturbing new revelations about the life of a man, we all know as Jesus Christ.
According to The Lost Gospel, Mary Magdalene, far from being Christianity’s most cited prostitute, and Jesus, being celibate, were actually married and had two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Magdalene has long been rescued from her role as chief temptress of the Bible, by scholars, and it’s a given today that, whether married or not, she played an important role in Jesus’s ministry. If The Lost Gospel, hasn’t exactly caused a theological storm, it’s because for decades now, scholars have been chipping away at the veracity of the Vatican’s four approved gospels.
The discovery of the Nag Hamadi scrolls in an Egyptian cave in 1945, dealt a staggering blow to Jesus’s supposed divinity. It’s common knowledge, that early on, the Church ruthlessly suppressed alternative versions of the Gospels, carefully culling and crafting a historical Jesus who conformed to a certain theology, and the myth of a dying and resurrecting God. But the Nag Hamadi scrolls spoke of a real life Jesus rather than a divine spectre ascending into the clouds, a concept reinforced in popular culture through movies like the Last Temptation of Jesus Christ and Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.
What is encouraging about modern Christianity (let’s forget about the Inquisitions of medieval memory for a moment) is the curiosity rather than antagonism with which it treats new information about the Bible. Ever since Darwin propounded his theory of evolution, and the Church grudgingly admitted that there was no inconsistency between evolution and Christianity, the Church has been shying away from literal interpretations of holy texts. Unless you are a bible thumping Jehovah’s Witness or a deluded Born Again Christian speaking in tongues, no one truly believes the world was created in six days or that it will end with Armageddon. Christianity has gone through the oil presses of reformation, science and secularism, which has forced Christians to accept the Bible for what it is - at best a quasi cultural and political history of the Jews.
The ability to distance oneself from literal interpretations of religious texts is particularly relevant for the times we live in. In a brilliant op-ed in the Huffington Post (An Open Letter to Moderate Muslims), Ali Rizvi calls on Muslims to engage with the idea that the Koran is not the word of God. He writes, ‘the first step to any kind of substantive reformation is to seriously consider the concept of scriptural inerrancy’.
Let me say emphatically that Islamphobia exists and that it is ugly. But Muslim fundamentalism also exists. Two disparate concepts can exist on a continuum simultaneously. And Muslim fundamentalism doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it isn’t just the angst of disenfranchised Muslim youth, lost boys looking for a cause; it exists very specifically within the context of a literal interpretation of the Koran.
Any criticism of Islam, cannot just be shouted down with charges of racism and Islamaphobia. Religion is not a race nor a gender nor a sexual orientation. It is a human construct, an ideology, and challenging ideology is the fundamental prerogative of the human race. Put the word religion in front of the most barbaric acts in the world, the worst sort of homophobia, gender discrimination and political abuses of power and chances are, someone will legitimize it. Even hardened feminists, become spineless, mealy mouthed apologist when it comes to challenging the burka, for instance. Instead challenges to the burka are now neatly labelled as ‘racist’ and ‘oppression’ by the west. This scenario has its exact counterpart in India, where a sweeping neo-nationalism is so completely interwoven with Hinduism, that mythology is being reinvented as historical reality.
The most progressive societies are those that move away from religion, and embrace evidence instead of myth in building their moral fabric. Rules set out for society, 2000 years ago, are irrelevant to our lives today. They are a futile and repressive exercise in moral absolutism and an insult to the functioning of civil society. To believe in the validity of religious texts, their infallibility or their relevance, is the worst sort of delusion embraced by humans. (ENDS)
Source: The Goan, Published December 20, 2014
According to The Lost Gospel, Mary Magdalene, far from being Christianity’s most cited prostitute, and Jesus, being celibate, were actually married and had two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Magdalene has long been rescued from her role as chief temptress of the Bible, by scholars, and it’s a given today that, whether married or not, she played an important role in Jesus’s ministry. If The Lost Gospel, hasn’t exactly caused a theological storm, it’s because for decades now, scholars have been chipping away at the veracity of the Vatican’s four approved gospels.
The discovery of the Nag Hamadi scrolls in an Egyptian cave in 1945, dealt a staggering blow to Jesus’s supposed divinity. It’s common knowledge, that early on, the Church ruthlessly suppressed alternative versions of the Gospels, carefully culling and crafting a historical Jesus who conformed to a certain theology, and the myth of a dying and resurrecting God. But the Nag Hamadi scrolls spoke of a real life Jesus rather than a divine spectre ascending into the clouds, a concept reinforced in popular culture through movies like the Last Temptation of Jesus Christ and Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.
What is encouraging about modern Christianity (let’s forget about the Inquisitions of medieval memory for a moment) is the curiosity rather than antagonism with which it treats new information about the Bible. Ever since Darwin propounded his theory of evolution, and the Church grudgingly admitted that there was no inconsistency between evolution and Christianity, the Church has been shying away from literal interpretations of holy texts. Unless you are a bible thumping Jehovah’s Witness or a deluded Born Again Christian speaking in tongues, no one truly believes the world was created in six days or that it will end with Armageddon. Christianity has gone through the oil presses of reformation, science and secularism, which has forced Christians to accept the Bible for what it is - at best a quasi cultural and political history of the Jews.
The ability to distance oneself from literal interpretations of religious texts is particularly relevant for the times we live in. In a brilliant op-ed in the Huffington Post (An Open Letter to Moderate Muslims), Ali Rizvi calls on Muslims to engage with the idea that the Koran is not the word of God. He writes, ‘the first step to any kind of substantive reformation is to seriously consider the concept of scriptural inerrancy’.
Let me say emphatically that Islamphobia exists and that it is ugly. But Muslim fundamentalism also exists. Two disparate concepts can exist on a continuum simultaneously. And Muslim fundamentalism doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it isn’t just the angst of disenfranchised Muslim youth, lost boys looking for a cause; it exists very specifically within the context of a literal interpretation of the Koran.
Any criticism of Islam, cannot just be shouted down with charges of racism and Islamaphobia. Religion is not a race nor a gender nor a sexual orientation. It is a human construct, an ideology, and challenging ideology is the fundamental prerogative of the human race. Put the word religion in front of the most barbaric acts in the world, the worst sort of homophobia, gender discrimination and political abuses of power and chances are, someone will legitimize it. Even hardened feminists, become spineless, mealy mouthed apologist when it comes to challenging the burka, for instance. Instead challenges to the burka are now neatly labelled as ‘racist’ and ‘oppression’ by the west. This scenario has its exact counterpart in India, where a sweeping neo-nationalism is so completely interwoven with Hinduism, that mythology is being reinvented as historical reality.
The most progressive societies are those that move away from religion, and embrace evidence instead of myth in building their moral fabric. Rules set out for society, 2000 years ago, are irrelevant to our lives today. They are a futile and repressive exercise in moral absolutism and an insult to the functioning of civil society. To believe in the validity of religious texts, their infallibility or their relevance, is the worst sort of delusion embraced by humans. (ENDS)
Source: The Goan, Published December 20, 2014
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