50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion

by Daniele Bolelli

  07 THANK YOU GOD FOR KILLING MY ENEMIES’ CHILDREN

  Often, the stories at the origin of many religious holidays sound like sweet fairy tales.

  Think of Christmas, for example, with the shooting star, the three wise men bringing gifts, and baby Jesus being born in the midst of all the happy barn animals. It has a “God meets Old-MacDonald-Had-a-Farm” feel to it.

  The story at the roots of the Jewish holiday of Passover, on the other hand, doesn't sound quite like a fairy tale—unless perhaps one created by Stephen King. What exactly is celebrated during Passover? Our tale begins in Egypt over 3,000 years ago—or at least so we are told, since there is less historical evidence for the authenticity of this story than for the existence of the Yeti and the Loch Ness monster. No source for its truthfulness exists other than the Torah. For all we know, it could be all exactly true or it could just as well be entirely made up. But in any case, here's what the Torah has to say about the origins of Passover. Over three millennia ago, times were not rosy for Jewish peoples (some things never change …). Being enslaved in ancient Egypt was not the epitome of fun, so Jews were desperately looking for a way out. The one and only God came to the rescue by empowering Moses to threaten the Pharaoh with a series of horrific plagues unless he freed his people. Nine consecutive plagues failed to sway the Pharaoh. So, for the tenth plague, God decided to pull out the big guns. He told good monotheistic Jews to mark their doorposts with the blood of sacrificial lambs. This was to make sure that the angel of death—who apparently could be a bit distracted sometimes—would not make mistakes. The blood on the door was the signal to the angel of death that he was not welcome to come in for a visit: the blood told him to “pass over” those homes and go carry out his murderous homework elsewhere. God's orders, in fact, were pretty specific: all the firstborn children of the Egyptians were to be wiped out in a single night. And just in case that weren't enough, all the firstborn calves were also to be killed (if you are wondering about that, sorry but the Torah doesn't tell us exactly what evil sin Egyptian cows had committed to deserve such punishment).

  Since this story was apparently not perverted enough, here's the icing on the cake. It was God all along who had hardened the heart of the Pharaoh to make sure he wouldn't release Jewish people before He had a chance to unleash all ten plagues. “Why?”—you may ask—“What kind of weird game was God playing?”

  This whole drama was a publicity stunt set up by the one and only God, “… in order to show you My power and in order that My fame may resound throughout the world.” In other words, the killing of thousands of Egyptian kids was but a way for God to flex His muscles and gain some fame: bloodshed and terror tactics as a strategy to get attention.

  Now, ancient Jews were clearly not overly fond of their enemies’ children. In Psalm 137, which begins as a moving lamentation over being exiled from their homelands, we are told with gleeful satisfaction about the joys of smashing the heads of the children of Babylon. During the march to the Promised Land, we are told in multiple occasions about Jewish armies hacking to death all enemy males, including those still suckling. But the lovely tale of the angel of death having a field day with Egyptian kids is the only massacre of babies to get its very celebratory holiday.

  08 DEADLY ALLITERATION: MOSES THE MASS MURDERER

  When I ask students in my courses on the history of religions if they are familiar with the tale of Moses going up Mount Sinai, and coming down with the tablets of the Ten Commandments, everyone always nods affirmatively. This is such a key archetype in Western religions that it's difficult to ignore. Even those students who look like they spent the best part of the semester sniffing glue manage to wake up from their drug-induced stupor to let me know that even they have an idea of what I’m talking about.

  When I tell them that the really juicy part of this story comes after Moses gets the Ten Commandments, and I ask them if they know what I am referring to, the vibe in the class changes drastically. Moses getting the Ten Commandments was the whole point of the story in their mind. What else was there to know? Usually, one or two people venture a tentative answer about smashing the tablets because he is upset with his own people.

  Ok, not a bad start—we are on to something now. At this point in Exodus, Moses is indeed mightily pissed off—so pissed off, actually, that he breaks the tablets in an act of spontaneous rage. What sets him off is the sight that awaits him as he comes down from the mountain: many among his own people have openly renounced monotheism and have returned to worshipping other gods. More specifically, Moses arrives as the Jewish tribes are busy staging an orgiastic ritual in honor of a fertility god symbolized by the statue of a golden calf. Seeing naked bodies dancing sensually around the statue sends stern, old Moses in a self-righteous frenzy. You could think that smashing the tablets, breaking up the party, destroying the statue of the golden calf and scolding the dancers severely would be enough, but Moses has something a little more radical on his mind. The story is about to get much, much juicier …

  “Who is on the Lord's side?” asks Moses inviting all faithful fans of monotheism to join him. Once enough followers gather by his side, Moses spells out the plan for dealing with those who have different tastes in matters of religion. “Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.”

  I’m not making it up—I swear. Check it out for yourself in Exodus 32: Moses, one of the most beloved religious figures in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is the organizer of a religious death squad that hacks and slashes through 3,000 fellow Jews whose only crime is not being sold on monotheism. The fuzzy concept of freedom of religion was clearly nowhere to be found. Had you suggested to Moses the notion that people should be free to practice any religion they want, the odds are that you would have quickly found your head-waving goodbye to your body courtesy of Moses's henchmen. Perhaps—we may wonder—Moses wasn't a mass murderer at heart. Perhaps, he is just having a bad day. Even a prophet of God should be allowed to overreact once in a while. But just to make sure we understand that the golden calf massacre was not an isolated episode, just a few pages later Moses orders his loyalists to massacre the entire population of a neighboring pagan tribe. When the victorious army comes back after having killed all adult males and enslaved women and kids as prisoners of war, Moses goes into a frenzy. What part of “kill them all” did you not understand? Worried about the old man's blood pressure, his soldiers promptly kill most women and all kids, sparing only virgin females (you can imagine for what purpose …).

  What these lovely stories seem to teach us is that clearly freedom of religion is not a biblical value. What we have, instead, is the beginning in Western religions of the theology of “holy war” that would eventually spawn all the Crusades, Inquisitions and 9/11s in history.

  But, wait. I’m a little confused. Wasn't one of the Ten Commandments about not going around killing people?

  09 HOW A FAILED SIEGE SHAPED THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS

  Since a story whose lead characters are named Sennacherib and Hezekiah, and happened almost three thousand years ago is not exactly what people talk about at parties, it took a top historian such as William H. McNeill to write an essay shedding light on why we should care. This event, after all, dramatically shaped the course of history as we know it. Our world would be radically different if things between these two guys had gone another way.

  The tale we'll play with today takes us back to a time when Jewish monotheism was still in its infancy and required frequent diaper changes. A new Jewish king named Hezekiah had recently renewed a push to impose monotheism among his less than enthusiastic subjects. Polytheism was still running strong among vast numbers of Jews back then, so the jury was still out to decide which side would come up on top. After cracking down on polytheism within his own society, Hezekiah—perhaps emboldened by the thought that the one and only God was on his side—decided to
challenge Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians, by refusing to deliver any longer the tributes that Jews had customarily paid.

  Sennacherib had a funky name, but was a bad dude. His people, the Assyrians, were the undisputed masters of that part of the world. And it's safe to say that they didn't come to rule over so many nations by being polite. These guys didn't mess around. Twenty years earlier, the ten tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel had pissed them off. After the Assyrians were done with them, they were to be forever known as the “lost tribes of Israel.” The Assyrians, in fact, had promptly run them over with overwhelming military force, invaded them, captured them, and deported whomever they hadn't impaled along the way. Scattered throughout the Assyrian empire, the people from the ten tribes lost their Jewish identity and disappeared from the pages of history.

  So, when in 701 BCE the Assyrians took notice of the Jewish rebellion, they immediately set in motion to crush them in the same way they had crushed their cousins a couple of decades earlier. Hezekiah had counted on receiving Egyptian help in the coming war, but the Egyptians decided they had better things to do than being in the path of angry Assyrians. Without further ado, the Assyrian army began putting on the usual rape and pillage show throughout the southern Jewish state of Judah. One by one, all the Jewish towns fell into the hands of the Assyrians. And Hezekiah's gesture of rebellion was looking more and more like a suicidal move by a delusional religious fanatic. By now, only Jerusalem still stood, but probably not for long. The remaining Jews had retreated within the walls of their capital for one desperate last stand. But if there were bookies back then, they certainly wouldn't have given very good odds for the survival of the Jewish people. Fresh from all their victories, the Assyrian army reached the walls of Jerusalem ready to finish up the job and go home. Hezekiah tried to reassure his terrorized people by saying that God was on their side, but this only made the Assyrians laugh. Everywhere we have gone—they told the Jews—we heard people telling us their gods would protect them … well, go ask them now how well that has worked for them … if you can find any of them alive. Hezekiah, realizing he had angered the wrong guys, tried to throw a bunch of gold at them, but by now the Assyrians were out for blood, so they didn't lift the siege.

  With Judaism just one step away from being wiped off the face of the earth, the unexpected happened. Within a few days, the Assyrian army was packing and heading back home while Jerusalem still stood. Apparently, some kind of disease had swept the ranks of the invading army forcing them to turn back. Not buying the Jewish theory that this was a plague sent by God to save his chosen people, McNeill suggests that the Assyrians had run out of clean sources of water in the barren countryside surrounding Jerusalem, and had gotten sick when they resorted to drinking from contaminated wells. Whatever it was, it made Jews deliriously happy and dramatically strengthened their faith in monotheism, since their one God had come through for them at a time when only a miracle could save them. Even when decades down the road, the Jews were conquered by the Babylonians, their monotheistic faith was too well rooted to be given up because of exile. No matter what would happen to them, Jews would now survive as a monotheistic people.

  This is clearly one of the biggest “what if” in history. Had Jerusalem fallen to the Assyrians as it was more than logical to expect, it is highly likely that Judaism would have disappeared from the map. Had Judaism disappeared, its derivatives—Christianity and Islam—would have never been born, and the entire history of the world would be completely different. So, the trilogy of major Western religions exists only because the army of a guy named Sennacherib didn't have good water to drink.

  10 FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN? I’D LOVE TO INTRODUCE YOU TO MY PET KING COBRA

  Polls are fickle. Depending on who you listen to, the percentage of Americans who believe that the Bible is literally true, word by word, cover to cover, is anywhere from 30 to 60 percent. Even if we take only the lowest estimate as correct, this still means that almost 100 million people in the United States swear on the absolute truthfulness of every line in the Bible. And this is where the fun begins …

  Countless passages in the Bible present problems for those who take them too literally, but for the sake of simplicity let's stick to Mark 16:15–18. In these lines, the resurrected Jesus basically charges his disciples with the task of preaching the Gospel throughout the world. So far so good, but in the next breath Jesus adds that all those who will believe in him will be able to heal the sick, cast out demons, speak in new tongues, handle deadly snakes and drink poison without suffering any harm.

  Ok, now, could you repeat that please? Did you say drink poison and handle deadly snakes? This sounds like quite a way to test one's devotion to Jesus. The man, after all, said that if you truly believe, you have nothing to worry, so … shall we bring out king cobras and poison shots? Truth be told, quite a few people through the ages have indeed tried to demonstrate their honest, heartfelt faith in the Bible by doing precisely those things that Jesus promised his loyal followers would be able to do. Needless to say, snakes have had a field day with many of these guys. So, here is the problem: in the real world anybody drinking the strongest poisons in the universe will die—regardless of how much faith they possess. This leaves us with a few options: either, A.) There are no true Christians in the world; B.) The Bible lied; or C.) This passage is not authentic. Option A is clearly problematic for modern Christians because it would mean that they are all a bunch of faithless posers. Option B is almost even worse since it denies the validity of the Bible. Option C seems to offer some hope, and in fact many Christians pick this one by stating that these lines may have not been originally part of the scriptures, but were added later. They may very well be right. This, however, is only marginal consolation, because if we admit that parts of the Bible as we know it are forgeries, then how do we know what's true and what isn't in the Good Book? The idea that “scriptures are absolutely true … except for those parts that are forged” doesn't exactly inspire tremendous confidence in the Bible.

  Some Christians have tried to save the day by arguing that these powers were only given to the first disciples post-resurrection. But besides the fact that the quote doesn't specify this, why should Jesus promise them protection from snakes and poisons, but let the Romans behead them (Saint Paul, for example) or crucify them upside down (Saint Peter)?

  Running out of arguments but badly wanting to hold on to their claims, some fundamentalist Christians quote another passage from the Bible stating that we should never test God. So Jesus promises wonders to his followers, but we can't test this claim because doing so would be offending God? Now, this sounds like a lame ass excuse for people who deep inside know that they would fall miserably short of success. A biblical prophet like Elijah openly challenged the prophets of rival gods like Baal and Ashera to a “my God is stronger than your gods” competition, in which both sides would try to perform miracles in front of a crowd, in order to show which deities were true and which were frauds. Scriptures tell us that rather than being struck down for “testing” God, Elijah was successful (and incidentally celebrated by having 450 of the rival prophets assassinated). So, here is a good challenge for diehard fundamentalist Christians: show your faith by swallowing the deadliest poison known to men or stop pretending you believe the Bible to be literally true. Better yet, do this in the middle of Yankee Stadium on a pay-per-view event. If you are successful, subscriptions to the Jesus's fan club will skyrocket.

  11 MAMMOTH PORN AND THE CAVEMAN’S HIP HOP: THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION

  In the minds of most people, Judaism and Hinduism are the oldest faiths in the world, since they have been around far longer than any other surviving organized religion. But with their few thousands of years of history, Judaism and Hinduism are but unruly teenagers in the eyes of the truly ancient traditions—traditions so ancient that they don't even have a name. Scholars sometimes refer to them somewhat interchangeably as tribal religions, or shamanism, or animism, or a myriad other nam
es. But such “catch all” terms are oversimplifications since these traditions are not part of a single organized religion, but rather are thousands of small-scale religions usually sharing a few key characteristics.

  Admittedly, trying to put our fingers on the first examples of religious behavior in history is two parts science and eight parts speculation. We are going so far back in time, in fact, that archaeologists get excited if they can find a fragment of a tooth dating to those days. Try putting together a picture of somebody's religion from dental remains, the leftovers of a grave or a few dots of paint, and you get a sense of what we are up against. But this doesn't mean the quest for the origins of religion is completely hopeless.

  So, let's roll out the time machine and hit the road. Our first stop takes us to such a distant past as to be outside of human history. Say that again? Religion without humans? Almost. Our evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals, are the proud pioneers of religious behavior on earth. They are, in fact, the first species ever to bury their dead with grave goods suggesting they had rituals for the death of their kinsmen and a likely belief in some kind of afterlife. What else went through their thick Neanderthal skulls we have no idea, but this is an interesting start. Apparently, religion began among a different species!