Including a comprehensive Chapter about the Shroud of Turin
E-Book, Englisch, 568 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-7557-0434-8
Verlag: Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Wasserzeichen (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
During his research, the author put expert opinions to the test and found out quite frequently that they leave much to be desired. He realized that many a Bible scholar makes his or her point on the basis of a limited and incomplete view of the world that is shaped, as the case may be, by his or her own faith or atheism.
As a result of the globalization that has occurred over the past few decades and the greater insight it has afforded us into other religions and worldviews, our perspective on the nature and abilities of spiritual masters such as Jesus has broadened considerably. Since such discoveries have been taken into account only rarely in "biographies" of Jesus, it has been the author's intention to illustrate parallels between the teachings and actions of Jesus and those of spiritual masters from other religions.
This book also asks the questions:
What message does the Shroud kept in turin Cathedral convey to us?
Did Jesus really lie in it?
Does the Shroud make it possible for us to see Jesus` face some 2000 years after his death?
With forensic meticulousness, the author provides proof that not everything went by the book during the 1988 radiocarbon dating that "exposed" the Shroud as a medieval fake. The role of the Catholic Church leadership comes thereby under intense scrutiny.
Hence, the aim of this unconventional book is to invite the reader to accompany the author as he tries, with the help of Jesus' example, to acquire a better understanding of the meaning and purpose of human existence and to show what consequences such a better understanding might have for the way we conduct our lives.
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Chapter 1
Biblical texts
Is the Bible the word of God?
After reading out a passage from the Old Testament or from the Pauline Epistles during a Catholic Mass or during a Protestant or Anglican service, the lector standing at the altar usually says, “The word of the Lord1”, and the members of the congregation dutifully reply, “Thanks be to God!” Whenever that happens, I feel the need to apologize to the Almighty, “Dear God, please don’t take it personally that such texts are attributed to you! The lector is not to blame, he has to comply with the order of service and has to stick to that wording.” I really cannot understand how anyone who has studied the Scriptures could ever hit on the idea of referring to the aforementioned texts as “the word of the Lord”. They are an inextricable mixture of ancient conceptions based on ... ¦facts; ¦legends; ¦errors; ¦later insertions or omissions; ¦and contradictory statements. The Jewish religious scholar Pinchas Lapide puts it in a nutshell: Basically, there are only two ways to deal with the Bible: you can take it literally, or you take it seriously. These two approaches are hardly reconcilable.2 If, as the church teaches us, the New Testament owes its inspiration to the Holy Spirit, he must have suffered from Alzheimer’s disease because every Evangelist and Epistle writer has written a more or less different version of Jesus’ teachings and actions. The Bible covers a vast field, both temporally and ideologically. Deuteronomy, for instance, mentions a piece of over 3000-year-old legislation in which YHWH orders the Israelites who are taking part in campaigns of conquest in the Holy Land to slay all the male inhabitants of the conquered cities that do not surrender voluntarily and are located within the planned settlement area. In all the conquered cities within that area, women and children are to be killed as well (cf. Deut. 20:10–17). In Chapter 2 (History of Judaism), I shall address the question to what extent that extermination strategy was realistic or just wishful thinking. On the other hand, Jesus on the cross forgives his executioners: [...] Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. [...] (Luke 23:34) The Bible also spans a great variety of texts: from psalms praising God to angry outbursts by St. Paul against his opponents. According to our current perception of God, it is no longer conceivable that he could ever have chosen a specific people, preferred them to all others, and not just allowed, but even ordered them to exterminate other peoples. According to self-centered conceptions dating from before antiquity however, tribal deities were responsible only for their own people. As we will discover later (cf. Biblical studies, exegesis), it was the priests and secular leaders of the people who saw to it that various texts (i.e. not only pieces of legislation such as the aforementioned one, but also instructions and stories) were inserted in the Scriptures. When St. Paul gives vent to his anger against the conservative Jewish Christians, who wanted the Gentile Christians to undergo Jewish circumcision, by expressing the wish that the former be simply emasculated (cf. Gal. 5:12), his statement is nothing but his anger and his words. Just as this book you are reading now, the Bible—no matter whether it is the Old Testament or the New Testament—was written by humans from beginning to end. Who was it then who concocted the texts of the Bible? What are they about? And for what purpose was the Bible written? Let us first turn our attention to the Jewish Scriptures. The Old Testament
The Jewish Scriptures (hence the Old Testament as well) are based on the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). The Tanakh includes ... the Torah (Hebrew for instruction, law, that law being mainly spelled out in five books attributed to Moses); books about prophets; and other texts such as psalms or the Song of Solomon or the Book of Proverbs. Legends of a few scattered tribes dating back to pre-antiquity were passed on by word of mouth and later recorded and amalgamated into a salvation history under the tribal God YHWH. Apart from the Creation story, the Tanakh covers a period of about 1300 years. Some of the “Divine Commands” that it contains (such as the aforementioned rule concerning the procedure after taking a city by storm or the legal relationship between a slave and his master) refer to the living conditions of a bygone era, i.e. pre-antiquity. Such statements are difficult to understand today and have to be considered in the light of the circumstances obtaining at the time. As we will see in the next section (cf. Biblical studies, exegesis), the Tanakh was repeatedly revised by various authors over the centuries and, each time, it was adapted to the new circumstances. The relationship between Israel and their God YHWH is the major thread running through the Jewish Scriptures. Some historians assume that YHWH was originally a volcanic or thunder-and-lightning deity of the Midianites, a people who lived on the Arabian peninsula. The Israelites adopted their cult. The nomads regarded the volcanoes that were active in the area across which they wandered as the seat of their god. During the immigration of various nomadic tribes to the ancient civilized land of Canaan (present-day Palestine), every tribe took along their own tribal god. These gods were blended first with each other, then with the religious beliefs of the Hebrews who came from Egypt. Some of the gods, however, were also worshipped alongside the deities of the Canaanites. The Canaanite god of creation, El, for instance, could easily be equated with YHWH. For a while, the people also worshipped fertility and astral deities such as Baal, Astarte, and Marduk. The priests and prophets, however, prevented such practices with drastic measures, which included the death penalty. Nevertheless, monotheism gained acceptance only gradually in Israel. In 597BC, following the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II, King of Babylon, a many of its Jewish inhabitants—members of the upper class in particular—were deported to Babylon and resettled there. Only in 539BC, i.e. after the Persians conquered Babylon, were the Jewish captives allowed to go back home. Jewish Scriptures that date from after their return from the Babylonian exile are the first documents to refer to YHWH as the creator of heaven and earth. But even though this made him the God of all mankind, his exclusive covenant with Israel was given prime importance. In those days, uttering God’s name was tabooed out of respect for his holiness, a circumstance that was probably partly influenced by the fact that anyone who uttered God’s name in a negative manner by accident ran the risk of being punished. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that takes his name in vain. (Exod. 20:7) In extreme cases, blasphemers could be sentenced to death. From then on, God’s name existed only in writing, i.e. as YHWH. And, because of the absence of vowels in written Hebrew, the knowledge of the original pronunciation gradually slid into obscurity. It may have been [jahwe], [jabe], or [jauwe]. Henceforth, paraphrases were used whenever people talked about God or to God: for instance, Adonai, a very respectful way of saying “my Lord”. Ja or HaShem, which means “the name”, were common terms as well. The Hebrew Scriptures provided important impulses that have influenced the life of the people beyond Judaism all over the world up to the present day, for example the notion that man is made in the image of God. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Gen. 1:27) This is where the principle found in all modern constitutions that all men are basically equal stems from. The Ten Commandments are norms that are easy to understand and still of importance to the social coexistence of people. The division of the week into seven days as well as the Jewish Sabbath and our Sunday are all derived from the notion that God rested on the seventh day after creating the world. Incidentally, the word Jew comes from the expression Jehuda, which means “I want to praise God”. But how did the Jewish Scriptures come into being? In order to find out, let us look Bible scholars over the shoulder. Biblical studies, exegesis
The method employed by Bible scholars is called exegesis. This Greek word is used to refer to the interpretation of the texts of the Old and New Testament. Exegesis is the attempt to make the statements and meanings of the Bible as well as the historical and textual connections of biblical texts comprehensible to both professionally qualified and unqualified readers. For that reason, the challenge for the scientists is to find out by whom, when and where the texts were written. Right up into the 18th century, Bible scholarship...
