God Without Religion

by Michael Arnheim

  In Mark we find Jesus described by his fellow townsmen of Nazareth in the following terms: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?”282 The one name missing from this recitation of Jesus’s relations is the most important one of all, that of Joseph. This cannot be because Joseph was not Jesus’s “real” father, as those describing Jesus here, Nazarene Jews, would certainly not have believed any story of Jesus’s miraculous birth (even if such stories were already being put about by his followers, which does not seem to be the case).

  Moreover, when this same scene is repeated in the other Gospels, Joseph’s name does occur:

  Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?283

  Is not this Joseph’s son?284 Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?285

  Why is Mark’s account different from the rest? It may make more sense to turn the question about and ask: Why do all these later accounts differ from Mark’s? For Mark’s statement is probably not only earlier than any of the others but also their source.

  Before trying to explain this discrepancy it would be best to understand its implications. Traditional Jewish nomenclature — still used in the synagogue service and on Jewish tombstones — referred to a person by his patronymic, thus “Joshua the son of Nun” or “Caleb the son of Jephuneh”, the second name being that of the father, never the mother — unless the name of the father was unknown! In other words, only someone of illegitimate birth would be referred to as “Jesus the son of Mary”. The fact that his own contemporaries and fellow-townsmen of Nazareth, who knew his family well, should refer to Jesus in this way is a clear indication that they regarded him as belonging to that category.

  It would appear that the other Gospel writers changed the appellation of Jesus here precisely to avoid giving that impression. Some of the less authoritative manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel also make a similar change, but the most reliable manuscripts have the version quoted above, which is also to be found in all the authorised translations of the Christian scriptures of the western churches, Catholic and Protestant alike.

  What is more, not only was there a long-standing Jewish and pagan tradition that Jesus was conceived in adultery but his natural father was even identified by name — as a Roman soldier called Panthera. According to Celsus, a pagan who wrote in about 180, not only was Mary guilty of adultery with Panthera but she was also convicted on this charge and driven out by Joseph, giving birth to Jesus secretly.286

  The Christian Gospels are all clearly acutely aware of the slur on Jesus’s birth, and two of them do not even attempt to counter it. The other two, Matthew and Luke, who, as we have already seen in other connections, are not above fabricating stories for their own purposes, make a claim of divine birth for Jesus in order to deny the charge of illegitimacy. Seen in this light, the angel’s reassurance to Mary that she was “full of grace”287 and the story of Joseph’s vision resulting in his forgiving Mary288 can easily be explained as a way of whitewashing Mary from what was considered to be a mortal sin.

  Here we have the best motive in the world for inventing a story of a virgin birth — and therefore for following the Septuagint’s mistranslation of the Isaiah prophecy. Such a story as that of Jesus’s virgin birth is not at all in keeping with Jewish tradition. There are plenty of miraculous births related in the Jewish scriptures, but these miracles all stop well short of divine participation in the process in a fathering role. The usual type of Bible story involving a miraculous birth relates the birth of a son to a woman long past the age of child-bearing (like Abraham’s wife Sarah) or to one (like the mothers of Samson and the prophet Samuel) who has long given up all hope of ever bearing a child. The miracle consists in curing the woman of her infertility, but the birth still takes place in the normal fashion. Indeed, the suggestion that God had directly fathered a human child could only be regarded in Jewish religious belief as blasphemous.

  The fact that Matthew and Luke were prepared to run the risk of being accused of blasphemy may well be an indication of the seriousness with which they viewed the alternative — the labelling of Jesus as a bastard.

  Some Christian apologists have taken the line that the very improbability of a virgin birth should persuade us that the story is true. But, why then is it mentioned only by Matthew and Luke but not by Mark or John? Above all, why is it never mentioned by Paul, the Christian writer closest in time to Jesus? What is more, though a claim of divine birth would not favourably impress Jews, Paul’s writings — and the Gospels of Mark and John, for that matter — were directed more to pagans and non-Jews, to whom the idea of divine birth was not at all strange and was indeed associated with the names of great rulers and heroes.

  The unfortunate circumstances surrounding his birth may also explain Jesus’s hostility towards his mother. In the story of the wedding feast at Cana, for example, Jesus gives Mary short shrift when she has the temerity to point out that there is no more wine left.289 Luke relates an incident in which a woman in the crowd calls out a blessing upon Jesus’s mother: “Blessed is the woman that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!”290 Jesus’s response to this is curious: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”291 There is more than a hint here that Jesus did not consider his mother to belong to the category of “those who hear the word of God and keep it”. Perhaps most striking of all is the incident related by all three of the synoptic Gospels, in which, when Mary and Jesus’s brothers come all the way from Nazareth to Capernaum to visit him, he shows little enthusiasm to see them.292

  Conclusions

  Matthew and Luke make the same three major claims about Jesus’s birth: that it was a virgin birth, that it took place in Bethlehem and that Jesus was of Davidic descent. But the evidence to back up these claims is quite different in the two accounts. In Luke the annunciation of the birth is made to Mary; in Matthew it is made to Joseph. Matthew has Joseph and Mary marry; Luke does not. Both offer genealogies to prove Jesus’s Davidic lineage, but there are more differences than similarities, especially in the names of the ancestors nearest in time to Jesus, notably Joseph’s own father. Luke uses an elaborate story about a Roman census to explain the presence of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem; Matthew gives the impression that they lived there permanently.

  In addition, Matthew regales us with stories of a star, three wise men and a “massacre of the innocents”, while all Luke can offer in their place are a few simple shepherds inspired by angelic visions. Where Matthew has Mary, Joseph and Jesus fleeing from Bethlehem to Egypt in order to escape Herod’s death edict,293 Luke has them staying in Bethlehem for forty days and then returning to Nazareth via Jerusalem.294 When Matthew brings them to Nazareth, it is — in keeping with his version of the birth story though at variance with all the other Gospels — as though they now go there for the first time.295

  As usual, Matthew offers us a Biblical text by way of corroboration:

  “And he [viz. Joseph] went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’.”296

  This verse has attracted a good deal of attention, partly at any rate because for once Matthew is unable to find a Biblical text which he can “apply”. The supposed Biblical verse which he “quotes” here simply does not exist! Explaining “Nazarene” as a reference not to the town of Nazareth but rather to the special nazirite oath taken by such Biblical figures as Samson does nothing to save Matthew from his own petard. Jesus clearly was not a nazirite, as he had not forsworn wine. But reading the verse in that way would be of no assistance to Matthew, as no Biblical verse can be called into service in that case either. From the context, though, it seems quite plain that what Matthew is trying to do is desperately to find some Bi
blical justification for settling Joseph and his family in so unlikely a spot as Nazareth, a place with which — according to Matthew’s birth story — they had had no prior association. The only way he can do so is to fabricate a Biblical quotation.

  In other words, Matthew and Luke share the conclusions that they want their readers to accept about Jesus’s birth and infancy but neither the factual evidence nor the reasoning from which those conclusions should have been derived. This shows that, instead of starting with the evidence and being led by it to the conclusions, they started with the conclusions and manufactured evidence to justify them. The three conclusions — that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, of Davidic descent and by virgin birth — are improbable enough in themselves, but, as we have seen, the contortions into which Matthew and Luke are forced in order to “prove” them only give the game away. And the fundamental factual disagreements between Matthew and Luke themselves as well as between them and the other Gospels and outside sources only confirm our view that the claims made for Jesus’s birth — which all add up to claiming for him the title of the Messiah in accordance with Jewish scriptural prophecy — are as false as the evidence used to support those claims.

  To cap it all, two of the three claims are mutually exclusive. As we have seen, the claim to Davidic lineage depends upon accepting Joseph as Jesus’s father — the very thing which is denied by the virgin birth story!

  Notes To Chapter Six

  Note: All Biblical references were consulted in the original Hebrew or Greek and the most suitable of the following translations was selected for each quotation. In this chapter, except where otherwise indicated, all quotations are from the RSV:

  KJV — King James Version, 1611

  RSV — Revised Standard Version of the Bible, 1971

  ASV — American Standard Version (Public Domain)

  Review Of Chapter Six

  Christianity is a creed religion, meaning that it is centred on a creed or set of beliefs.

  The central tenet of most brands of Christianity is belief in Jesus as the Son of God and as the Messiah, or the Christ, who died for the sins of mankind.

  A central text for most Christian denominations is this verse: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

  This verse combines two key Christian beliefs: the belief that Christianity vouchsafes to believers “salvation”, or “deliverance from sin” or “redemption from sin”, and “everlasting life”.

  Another fundamental Christian belief is that it is the only true religion: “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).

  Every Christian denomination or grouping believes that it is the only true religion.

  Jesus is also usually worshipped as divine, as a member of the so-called Holy Trinity.

  Other claims made for Jesus include:

  Bethlehem birth

  Descent from King David

  Virgin birth

  Chapter 6 shows that none of these three claims is true.

  Jesus was born and died a Jew. Christianity was invented by Paul, probably the greatest PR man in history. By jetissoning the requirements of circumcision and kosher food, Paul was able to attract a large non-Jewish following and in so doing turn a small Jewish sect into a whole new religion, which unlike Judaism was a creed religion.

  From the beginning Christianity was intolerant of other religions, and before long intolerance and schisms within Christianity were in evidence, some of which, notably that between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, survive to this day.

  The modern school of “Intelligent Design”, which is in reality a branch of creationism (ID), believes that every example of “irreducible complexity” or “specified complexity” is a separate miracle, which requires a leap of faith to accept.

  But Francis Collins, who completely rejects “Intelligent Design”, fares no better. His attempt to graft Christian belief on to evolution is doomed to failure, because if God set evolution in motion, why should this be the three-in-one God of Christianity who is weighed down by all the baggage shown to be untrue in Chapter 6? An impersonal deist God, on the other hand, could coexist comfortably with belief in evolution.

  Is Christopher Hitchens’s “Religion kills” remark relevant to Christianity? Christianity is certainly responsible for a good deal of bloodshed over the centuries, but a stark warning must be sounded: the fact that a conflict may be fought under religious labels doesn’t necessarily make it a religious conflict. The Northern Ireland “sectarian conflict” is a case in point: a political conflict which was eventually settled by political means.

  How can the recent increased tolerance of the main western Christian denominations be explained? The answer appears to lie in political and economic circumstances coupled with reduced church attendance.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Crescent Moon and Rising Sun

  A bird’s-eye view of two contrasting religions, Islam and Shinto, to test some of the hypotheses of this book.

  Classification

  Islam: Islam is a monotheistic creed religion whose profession of faith, known as the Shahada (“testimony”) is the well-known declaration: “There is no god but God, Mohammed is the messenger of God.” The word translated as “God” is of course Allah. This declaration preceded by the Takbir, “Allahu Akbar”, meaning “God is Great”, makes up the adhan, or call to the faithful to prayer made by the muezzin from the minaret of every mosque five times a day.

  Shinto: Shinto is the polytheistic communal religion of Japan, with only token membership outside Japan. Shinto has no actual creed, but the central objects of worship are the kami (“gods” or “spirits”), which reside in all things, including the sun, the moon, the sea, mountains, trees, rivers and other natural phenomena, as well as in animals and the spirits of revered deceased ancestors and other distinguished human beings like the Emperor.

  Name

  Islam: The name Islam, meaning “submission [to God]”, derives from the semitic triliteral root SLM, from which come the Arabic word salaam (“peace” — used as a greeting) and the Hebrew word shalom (“peace” — and also used as a greeting). The word Muslim, referring to an adherent of Islam, comes from the same root.

  Shinto: Like most communal religions, the Shinto religion does not have a specific name. The word Shinto just means “the way of the gods”. Although about 90% of Japanese people attend Shinto shrines and pray to the kami, only a small percentage identify as “Shinto” or “Shintoist” in surveys because these terms have no meaning for most Japanese.297

  Numbers

  Islam: Islam accounts for 23% of the world’s population, with approximately 1.57 billion adherents, second only to Christianity, with 2.2 billion adherents.298 This figure of 1.57 billion is up from 200 million in 1900 and 551 million in 1970.

  Shinto: As mentioned in the previous bullet point, there is some confusion about the number of Shinto adherents. Although about 70% of the Japanese profess no religious affiliation, as we have seen about 90% attend Shinto shrines — and there are no fewer than 10,000 Shinto shrines and 20,000 Shinto priests in Japan.299

  God(s)

  Islam: Islam is strictly monotheistic. The injunction in the Ten Commandments against the making of “graven images” is usually taken literally, resulting in the absence of any representations of human beings or animals from mosques and even from the coins of many Islamic states. Mohammed is greatly venerated, but no claim is advanced for him other than that of a prophet.

  Shinto: Shinto is polytheistic, with an infinite number of gods, referred to in Japanese as yaoyorozu no kami, literally “eight million kami”.

  Beliefs

  Islam: Islam has Six Articles of Faith: (a) Tawhid: Belief in Allah as the one and only God; (b) Malaika: Belief in Angels; (c) Kutub: Belief in the Koran (Quran) and other scriptures; (d) Belief in P
rophets (nabi) and Messengers (rusul) sent by Allah; (e) Belief in a Day of Judgment (qiyama) and Resurrection; (f) Qadar: Belief in predestination. These are the Sunni beliefs; the Shia beliefs are slightly different.

  Shinto: In Shinto it is believed that the kami have the power to reward and punish. Shinto believers strive to obtain magokoro, a “pure sincere heart”, which can only be granted by the kami. In general, the goal of Shinto is seen as communion with the inherent balance present in nature.

  Practices

  Islam: The Five Pillars of Islam are: (a) Shahada (see above); (b) Salat, prayer five times a day; (c) Zakat (“purification”), contributing to the poor; (d) Sawm, fasting during Ramadan; (e) Hajj, pilgrimage to Mecca.

  Shinto: Attending Shinto shrines, praying to the kami and engaging in the many harae, or purification rites (see under “Ethics”, below).

  Leading Figure(s)