John 1:14 the only begotten

"the only begotten of the Father" (John 1:14)

Almost every word in John 1:14 is simple, plain and well defined in the original text, but is obfuscated or reversed by supernatural Bible Goggles. The phrase "only begotten" is a prime example.

'Only begotten' is the Greek word "monogenes", a precise philosophical term meaning meaning the most important one (mono) of the family (genes). The word comes from Plato's Timaeus:

"the sensible [i.e. visible to the senses] God who is the image of the intellectual, the greatest, best, fairest, most perfect-the one only begotten heaven." (Timaeus 92c)

To Plato, the world of logic is the real world and the physical world is like shadows of that world flickering on a cave wall. The best possible example in any group or family (the monogenes) is the one that is closest to the abstract logical ideal. John is saying that Jesus is the ideal intellectual man.

But Paul's patented Bible Goggles cannot possibly allow "the wisdom of the Greeks" into his Bible (see 1 Corinthians 1:22-23), So Paul subtly changes changes the doctrine of "monogenes" with its clear and logical definition, to something slightly more mystical: "prototokos" or "first born":

"Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created , that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist." (Colossians 1:15-17)

Note the subtlety of the change. This is very similar to John's statement that all things were made by logic. But by removing the link with the philosophers, Paul turns this into something mysterious and supernatural, paving the way for the fourth century's violent schisms over the confusing meaning of three in one, and whether or not Jesus was a man,

John 1:14 the glory of God

"and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father"

Supernatural Bible goggles create strange translations. The word translated "glory" is the Greek "doxa" - literally, "opinion, judgment, view". What is the opinion of logic? Anything Logical, I guess.

"Glory" makes no sense as a translation The same word "doxa" is often used for people, so they have to change it to "honour". But in every case, the context shows that "opinion" or "judgment" would  be better. But "doxa" is a word about thinking, and the supernatural cannot allow that.

For the supernatural view, words about "thinking" must be changed to words about being awed and obeying. The same thing happened with the word religion: it originally meant to follow logic, so the Bible Goggles had to change the word to mean the opposite.

Isaiah 29:4 another favourite Bible Goggles verse

The idea that the Bible is anti-intellectual can be traced to Paul. Paul's only experience with Jesus was dramatic: Paul (then called Saul) thought that Jesus was dead, then Jesus appeared to him and was alive. This changed Paul's life. He decided that Jesus was supernatural. So he went looking for scriptures to support his view. This is the only one scripture he could find:

"For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." (1 Corinthians 1:19)

This appears to refer to Isaiah 29:

For the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid. (Isaiah 29:14)

But Paul took it out of context. The complete quotation praises the wise and condemns the foolish:

Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men: Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish , and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid. (Isaiah 29:14)

Isaiah 29 is about the threat of Assyria invading in 722BC. Political counsellors (wise men) were negotiating with Egypt for protection, but that was short sighted: Egypt would take Israel's freedom in return. Isaiah condemned this (see Isaiah 19:11-17, Isaiah 20:5,6, Isaiah 30:1,2, etc.). Isaiah promised that if the nation instead returned to the land laws of Moses they would be economically strong, and eventually they would be free on their own: (that is the "marvellous work"). So Isaiah was condemning certain politicians, and not wisdom. Indeed, Isaiah himself was a wise and learned man, probably the most learned of the prophets.

The foolish counsellors were condemned: they "have removed their heart far from me." In ancient times the heart was considered the centre of life and of thought. Contrast this with the bowels which were the centre of emotion (Isaiah 16:11; 63:15; Song of Solomon 5:4;etc.) Far from condemning intellectuals, Isaiah condemns people for not thinking clearly.

In short, God is logic. If someone "lacks understanding" they should ask logic (see James 1:5) and they will get answers. Logic is like that: ask and you shall receive. Appeal to logic, and you get answers.

Job 11:8 A favourite Bible Goggles verse

Job is sometimes quoted to argue that God is supernatural:

Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do ? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? (Job 11:7-8)

Many people take this as gospel. For example, Matthew Henry says:

"He is an incomprehensible Being, infinite and immense, whose nature and perfections our finite understandings cannot possibly form any adequate conceptions of, and whose counsels and actings we cannot therefore, without the greatest presumption, pass a judgement upon." (Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible, Job 11:7) 

But there is one problem: Job 11 is an example of a false belief. It is spoken by Zohar, who speaks against the prophet Job, and calls him a liar:

Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said, Should not the multitude of words be answered ? and should a man full of talk be justified? Should thy lies make men hold their peace? (Job 11:1-3)

In the next chapter Job answers, and says Zophar is completely wrong. Can a man by searching find God? Yes! Through asking questions of nature:

But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. (Job 12:7-8)

Or in other worse, using science.

The Bible is full of examples of people who teach illogical things: from the lord-god in Genesis 2 to the self-appointed apostle Paul. Zophar is just one more example. If we wear supernatural Bible goggles then we must conclude that God is unknowable, and we are confused and lost. But if we love logic then everything becomes clear.

Ex 7:1 the face of God

If God is logic, how could Adam and Abraham meet and talk with gods? In the Bible, "Elohim" refers not just to God, but people who represent God, such as judges. In other posts I will focus on the ancient rulers who claimed to be gods, and their messengers. People still try to represent God today. God is logic, and abstract principle, yet humans can also be logical (or think they are). 

This post is about the men Moses saw as representing God. Starting of course with Moses himself.

And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet. (Exodus 7:1)

Other people could also speak for God (by this point, after Abraham, "Lord" and "God" were synonyms)

And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman. And they said, Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us? And the Lord heard it. (Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.)  (Numbers 12:1-3)

The reference to being meek suggests that Moses was taking instruction from somebody. Whoever this was had a policy of never showing his face. 

Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen. (Exodus 33:20-23)

Is this because his advisor was a woman, his Ethiopian wife? Or just to avoid any risk of graven images? Another possibility is that Moses had brought advisers from Egypt. Some scholars have pointed out similarities between the monotheism of Moses and of the apostate Pharaoh Akhenaten. Given that Moses' message was "escape from slavery to Egypt" it would make sense for these advisers to have extreme secrecy. But all of this is idle speculation. Whoever advised Moses does not matter: only what they said matters. The truth of logic is contained in the logic, not in who says it.

The voice of God

Moses' decisions were called God's decisions, and Moses' words were called God's words (Exodus 18:15-16). The spirit (literally the breath) of God filled Moses and gave him all wisdom and understanding (Exodus 35:31). Why? Because Moses' words were logical (or are supposed to be: I will later blog about the case against Moses).

When Moses came down from the mountain, it is said the Lord passed in front of Moses and then spoke. Given that the people were not permitted to see God other than as smoke, this probably indicates that God's voice was the voice of Moses (Exodus 34:5-7) or of a priest.

Most of the time (e.g. when routinely acting as judge to his people) Moses just received God's words in his mind. This is how later prophets usually experienced God: as ideas in the head. That is, "a still small voice" (1 Kings 19:11-13).

Later posts might cover Jesus as God. But that's enough for now.

Dan 5:5 the rise of the supernatural

Later Old Testament Judaism

Old Testament Judaism was about wisdom, not supernatural belief. There is a whole set of Old Testament books called the wisdom literature, with proverbs and songs. But there is no mention of life after death, except in the sense that our spirit lives on through our children. (I will blog about the passage in Job and the other one in Daniel separately).

The rise of the supernatural

I noted elsewhere that the law of Moses was rejected, and Israel sank into decline, They were controlled by one neighbour after another. At first they could see this as bad luck: after all, Egypt and Assyria were much larger empires. But in the 300s BC came the final humiliation.

Israel's old neighbours the Greeks, another small nation, used to be no further ahead. According to Josephus the Greeks got many of their best ideas from the early Hebrews. They certainly got their alphabet from the Canaanites (the early Hebrews.) But the Greeks, unlike the Hebrews, did not reject logic. So the Greeks had progressed while the Hebrews had not. The Greeks were now  powerful enough to conquer much of the known world, and the weak Hebrews were just another minor kingdom to be easily defeated.

This humiliation like this was too much to bear. So Jewish leaders, unwilling to admit they had rejected Moses, went into supernatural overdrive. In the 300s (BC) the Jews invented (or adopted):

• the idea of a supernatural messiah to save them. 
• a supernatural villain called Satan to blame for their mistakes. 
• a whole series of apocalyptics books foretelling an end times when they would win. 
• fanatical terrorist believers who would assassinate their enemies. 
• and more

The Greek masters did not expect this level of fanaticism. So for a short period under Judas Maccabeus the fanatics won. But of course it just led to their masters clamping down even harder. I should probably blog about these developments separately, but the bottom line was that the the 300s seems to be when the belief in the supernatural reached its peak.

But the thinkers had not gone away. They were just in severe retreat.

The later Jews and earliest Christians

The most popular theologian at the time of Christ was Philo of Alexandria. He was so popular among the Jews that he represented them before Rome. He was so popular among the early Christians that they preserved his writings even though they only condemned the writings of others (e.g the gnostics). Philo's whole purpose was to show that religion should never be taken literally. He is generally assumed to mix Judaism with Platonism. But I will argue that he was simply trying to return Judaism to its roots, at a time when supernatural fanaticism was taking the nation to its final destruction. Later scholars (such as the great medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides) looked back and clearly saw an intellectual decline:

"In common with many medieval writers, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, Maimonides is of the opinion that Jews in antiquity once cultivated the science of physics and metaphysics, which they later neglected for a medley of reasons, historical and theological" (R. Isadore Twersky, "Some Non-Halakic Aspects of the Mishneh Torah" in R. Alexander Altmann, quoted in hirhurim.blogspot.co.uk)

The Roman empire

This non-supernatural, or limited supernatural view was common among ancient thinkers. Cicero summed up the different views of gods throughout the Roman world in the first century BC, in his book "gods". There are basically three views of the gods:

• The Epicureans (who thought life was to be enjoyed), They followed the teachings of Epicurus, who rejected anything that sounded supernatural. 
• The Stoics (who thought life was to be suffered), The Stoics did believe in gods, but they personified real ideas: a god of war, a goddess of love, and so on.
• The skeptics (who thought life was to be questioned). They were, shall we say, skeptical.

The triumph of the supernatural

The fanatical supernatural views had their predictable effect: the Jews annoyed the Romans so much that the Roman Empire destroyed Jerusalem and killed or scattered the people. Meanwhile Paul, a Pharisee, brought the same supernatural views to Jesus' followers. When Jerusalem was destroyed, Jesus' followers lost their leader (James) and Paul's followers were free to make the church in their own image.

It took a while. Many people were still taught the non-supernatural teachings. Take Justin Martyr (AD 100- - 165) for example. He loved Greek philosophy and understood that God is the logos, and called the Christians atheists (when compared to the Romans):

And when Socrates endeavoured, by true reason and examination, to bring these things to light, and deliver men from the demons, then the demons themselves, by means of men who rejoiced in iniquity, compassed his death, as an atheist and a profane person, on the charge that “he was introducing new divinities;” and in our case they display a similar activity. For not only among the Greeks did reason (Logos) prevail to condemn these things through Socrates, but also among the Barbarians were they condemned by Reason (or the Word, the Logos) Himself, who took shape, and became man, and was called Jesus Christ; and in obedience to Him, we not only deny that they who did such things as these are gods, but assert that they are wicked and impious demons, whose actions will not bear comparison with those even of men desirous of virtue. Hence are we called atheists. And we confess that we are atheists, so far as gods of this sort are concerned, but not with respect to the most true God, the Father of righteousness and temperance and the other virtues, who is free from all impurity. (Justin Martyr, first apology, chapters 5 and 6)

But gradually the non-supernatural teaching was stamped out. And that's a topic for another post.

Ex 20:3 Ancient Jews and Greeks compared

Let's compare Hebrew and Greek ideas of God. Please note that I am looking at what the thinkers wrote. I have no doubt that the ordinary person in the street thought all gods were supernatural. I am only interested in the theologians.

Moses' view

The first of the ten commandments is to have no other gods before God. And as we saw, God is logic. So the first law is to put logic first. And lest we think that God is some bearded man in the sky, the second commandment is to not make any graven images. Moses was very clear about this. He summed it up in his final lecture:

"Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the LORD spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth: And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven." (Deuteronomy 4:15-19)

No beliefs

So God is logic. An abstract principle, not a thing you can see, Read the ten commandments. Read the whole law of Moses. Apart from loving logic, there is no requirement to believe anything. The law of Moses was not supernatural, but was a set of laws for running a state, like the laws of Hammurabi, or Solon of Athens, or any other thoughtful leader.

I blogged earlier about how this was the pivotal moment for new ideas about utopian communities, and how Moses' economic views were the most advanced of all (yes, I will get to the case against oses later. In great detail.). So let us compare the early Hebrews and the early Greeks.

Greek and Hebrew religion compared

The religion of the books of Moses is very similar to the Greek religion: it was polytheistic, the gods were fallible, and gradually the philosophers saw that logic must be the final and only God. I will blog about these separately in the future. But is this just a coincidence?

Phoenicia: the Hebrew link with Greece

The earliest Hebrews and Greeks were almost neighbours and shared ideas. Most people do not make the connection because the Hebrews who dealt with the Greeks were known by a different name: Phoenicians.

"Phoenician" is not a term the Phoenicians used: it is simply a name for people from the cities of Tyre and Sidon on the coasts of Canaan (and later their colonies in Carthage and elsewhere). Historians are unable to find much of a distinctive culture: there are no Phoenician legends or books for example (see the BBC radio four "in Our Time" episode for a good overview). The early Phoenicians were simply the seafaring Canaanites.

And who were the Canaanites? Later Hebrews tried to emphasise a big difference between themselves and the Canaanites, but the earliest texts (e.g. the book of Judges) and archaeology agree that they were culturally mixed, with shrines to Baal and YHWH side by side. While some Israelites may have spent time in Egypt (the story of Moses), they were originally from Canaan, and when they returned they rejoined their former people.

How the Hebrews influenced the Greeks

Most scholars are familiar with how later Greeks influenced Jewish thought. But less well known is how the earliest Hebrews influenced Greece.

It is well known that the Greeks got their alphabet from the Phoenicians. Some argue that Thales, the first Greek philosopher, was Phoenician. Certainly the Phoenicians, the great seafarers and traders, would be best placed to share ideas. Think about that. The Greeks got their alphabet from the Canaanites, not the other way round.

Josephus claimed that the Greeks were greatly influenced by the ancient Jews:

"Pythagoras, therefore, of Samos, lived in very ancient times, and was esteemed a person superior to all philosophers in wisdom and piety towards God. Now it is plain that he did not only know our doctrines, but was in very great measure a follower and admirer of them. There is not indeed extant any writing that is owned for his (15) but many there are who have written his history, of whom Hermippus is the most celebrated, who was a person very inquisitive into all sorts of history. Now this Hermippus, in his first book concerning Pythagoras, speaks thus: 'That Pythagoras, upon the death of one of his associates, whose name was Calliphon, a Crotonlate by birth, affirmed that this man's soul conversed with him both night and day, and enjoined him not to pass over a place where an ass had fallen down; as also not to drink of such waters as caused thirst again; and to abstain from all sorts of reproaches.' After which he adds thus: 'This he did and said in imitation of the doctrines of the Jews and Thracians, which he transferred into his own philosophy.' For it is very truly affirmed of this Pythagoras, that he took a great many of the laws of the Jews into his own philosophy. Nor was our nation unknown of old to several of the Grecian cities, and indeed was thought worthy of imitation by some of them. [Josephus then gives examples.]" (Flavius Josephus Against Apion, book 1)

As a great fan of both Pythagoras and Moses this does not surprise me in the least.

For a brief overview of Jewish influence on the early Greeks, see Yehuda Shurpin's article at Chabad. For a more detailed scholarly view of similarities, see "Ancient Israel and Ancient Greece: Religion, Politics, and Culture", by John Pairman Brown.

Plato and the demiurge

To explain the difference between the lower gods (god-kings and fictional personifications of forces of nature) and the higher God (logic or "logos"), Plato wrote his dialogue "Timaeus." It is a dialogue about the nature of the gods. It reconciles the different gods of (e.g.) Hesiod's Theogony with the abstract arguments of Plato.

Timaeus explains that a god is like a skilled worker (a "demiurge"): very capable, very powerful and clever, and usually (but not always) benevolent. But the demiurge is not the logos. The demiurge is important for understanding Genesis. For details, see the post on the documentary hypothesis fiasco.

So the early Hebrews and the early Greeks shared a similar religion. Then what went wrong? How doi things get so bad that, by the time of Paul, people would accept an inferior supernatural God?

The next post will cover the rise of the supernatural.