Religion's "12 Most Dangerous Ideas" and Neutralizing Them (Part 2)

Ancient image of 'Hell' with Lucifer at the forefront and his demons at work incinerating evil humans. Hell is one of the worst ideas and likely a creation of the reptilian brain.

We now continue looking at more of   Valeria Tarico's "most dangerous religious ideas" (in her salon.com piece) and my responses on how they can be neutralized.

7. Blood sacrifice – In the list of religion’s worst ideas, this is the only one that appears to be in its final stages. Only Hindus continue to  ritually hack and slaughter sacrificial animals on a mass scale.

When our ancient ancestors slit the throats on humans and animals or cut out their hearts or sent the smoke of sacrifices heavenward, many believed that they were literally feeding supernatural beings. In time, in most religions, the rationale changed—the gods didn’t need feeding so much as they needed signs of devotion and penance. The residual child sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible (yes it is there) typically has this function.

Christianity’s persistent focus on blood atonement—the notion of Jesus as the be-all-end-all lamb without blemish, the final “propitiation” for human sin—is hopefully the last iteration of humanity’s long fascination with blood sacrifice.

Response:  As noted above most of these primitive acts are on the way out so need not concern us. The blood atonement is the only one that does - the notion that the "pure lamb of God " (Yeshua) had to sacrifice himself for the expiation of humanity's "sin". But as I noted in previous posts, this is only relevant if Yeshua was really a "god-man" and there is no evidence he is, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/04/jesus-was-he-really-son-of-god-do.html

In the context of the God-concept, Yeshua is derivative and not primary in any case. In other words he is the "son" of the God-concept which most Christians accept. But again, if all such concepts are relative it doesn't matter in the end if people accept him as "Savior" or not. If it comforts them to do so, then that's fine. But because of the relative nature of the primary concept one can't use the son as a belief cudgel to threaten others who don't accept it.

8. Hell – Whether we are talking about Christianity, Islam or Buddhism, an afterlife filled with demons, monsters, and eternal torture was the worst suffering the Iron Age minds could conceive and medieval minds could elaborate. Invented, perhaps, as a means to satisfy the human desire for justice, the concept of Hell quickly devolved into a tool for coercing behavior and belief.

Response: The point about the limitations of "Iron Age" minds is apropos and fits also with their primitive god-concept of something along the lines of the vengeful, petulant demiurgos. Beaten down by climate upheavals and with tribe members eaten by beasts, these minds could only come up with vicious gods that punish for the smallest offenses, and demons that enforce "justice"

But at some point human brains - especially since the Enlightenment - were able to see through this nonsense, and with the advent of science moved on to more sophisticated God-concepts.  This meant religions had to figure out a new way to integrate "eternal" punishments into their dogmas. They also had to make "Hell" more believable - away from it cartoon fire basis. Dante Alighieri's great contribution lay in using the power of his imagination, in his Inferno, to remake Hell away from its childish, cartoon Hellfire imagery.

Instead of unending "fires" which were impossible and spelled  numerous metaphysical problems, including demon reproduction, Dante invoked and created subtle forms of eternal torments peculiar to the violations of the damned. For example, in the 2nd Circle of Hell we find those condemned for their lust, "the carnal malefactors"- for letting their raw carnal appetites subdue their reason. They're the first ones to be truly punished in Hell. (The First Circle is not truly a punishment level but rather "Limbo" - for all unbaptized infants. Not even Dante could image them being sent to eternal perdition!)

The RC Church, especially, began to invoke similar, more nuanced Hell visions to reinforce  its objective to coerce behavior, i.e. if you have sex before marriage you go to Hell, if you masturbate you go to Hell, if you kill yourself for any reason, you end up in Hell.

But the problem for the Hell mongers is that the concept isn't even logically coherent, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/07/hell-impossible-fiction.html


9. Karma – Like hell, the concept of karma offers a selfish incentive for good behavior—it’ll come back at you later—but it has enormous costs. Chief among these is a tremendous weight of cultural passivity in the face of harm and suffering. Secondarily, the idea of karma sanctifies the broad human practice of blaming the victim. If what goes around comes around, then the disabled child or cancer patient or untouchable poor (or the hungry rabbit or mangy dog) must have done something in either this life or a past one to bring their position on themselves.

Response: There is not much to add to this, other than the 'blame the victim' meme comes to the fore.  Also, it appears none of the karma backers grasps the unending karmic loop engendered, and where it ends. If some bad guy did evil act E1  to Y, and it was Y's "karma" and Y does evil E2 to Z to make it Z's "karma" where does the karmic chain end? One karmic adherent I had a debate with claimed the Jews  that died in the Holocaust were all receiving "karma" for terrible things they'd done in past lives. The absolute abominable subtext of this needs no elaboration but it gets to the bottom (glaringly!) of what is wrong with the karma idea. That last example alone ought to be sufficient to neutralize it.

10. Eternal Life – To our weary and unwashed ancestors, the idea of gem encrusted walls, streets of gold, the fountain of youth, or an eternity of angelic chorus (or sex with virgins) may have seemed like sheer bliss. But it doesn’t take much analysis to realize how quickly eternal paradise would become hellish—an endless repetition of never changing groundhog days (because how could they change if they were perfect).

The real reason that the notion of eternal life is such a bad invention, though, is the degree to which it diminishes and degrades existence on this earthly plane. With eyes lifted heavenward, we can’t see the intricate beauty beneath our feet. Devout believers put their spiritual energy into preparing for a world to come rather than cherishing and stewarding the one wild and precious world we have been given.

Response: The last part is especially cogent and why I personally hate the idea of "eternal life" or "heaven" because it leads directly to the dismissal of Earthly life, environment and living in the here and now. It is no wonder then that those who cling the most to concepts like heaven have the least care about climate change and acting to stop it. "What's the point? Earth is only a way station anyway, heaven is my final destination".

But as I also noted in an earlier (April 14, 2012)post:

"The error of the Heaven confabulators, then, is basically the same as for the Hell inventors, since the two represent opposing poles of the same afterlife fantasy or two sides of the same sanity-raping coin. In any reward-punishment setting, one must offset the other. If you invent Hell to punish the unfaithful or the hardcore sinner who refuses to repent, you must have a Heaven for those who comply."

Thus, heaven falls just like Hell because they are two sides of the same "reward-punishment" God-concept. Since all God-concepts are relative then all afterlife concepts are as well, none is to be preferred to any others. Thus, the Buddhist concept of afterlife nothingness is as justified as the heaven-Hell model.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/02/myth-of-heaven.html


11.Male Ownership of Female Fertility –  The notion of women as brood mares or children as assets likely didn’t originate with religion, but the idea that women were created for this purpose, that if a woman begets life she must be subjugated is part of many religions.

Response: Again this goes hand in hand with the patriarchal nature of most primitive god-concepts: envisioning "God" as an old white man with a beard,  ruling over everything and everyone- especially women. Of course, the . most expeditious way to eradicate this foolishness is by replacing all personal God-concepts with impersonal ones, i.e. defining the ultimate in terms of energy. Since energy has no gender the male patriarch image becomes redundant.  The nature of a holistic impersonal Being is explicated in my recent book, Beyond Atheism, Beyond God.


12. Bibliolatry (aka Book Worship) – Preliterate people handed down their best guesses about gods and goodness by way of oral tradition, and they made objects of stone and wood, idols, to channel their devotion. Their notions of what was good and what was Real and how to live in moral community with each other were free to evolve as culture and technology changed. But the advent of the written word changed that. As our Iron Age ancestors recorded and compiled their ideas into sacred texts, these texts allowed their understanding of gods and goodness to become static. The sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam forbid idol worship, but over time the texts themselves became idols, and many modern believers practice—essentially—book worship, also known as bibliolatry.

Response: This is something I have commented on in previous posts. In terms of the God-concept context, it means that the Jewish concept of Yahweh, the Muslim concept of Allah, the Hindu concept of Brahmin and the Christian concept of the Trinity all stand in the same epistemological relation.  From an informational point of view, none can be selected as “true” to the exclusion of the others.

 This is completely analogous to there being inadequate information to distinguish one religion’s claims as true to the exclusion of all others. In the case of individual religions and religious traditions, the embodiment of the respective truth claim is found in a sacred revelation, or holy book. For example, the Holy Bible for Christianity, the Talmud for Jews, the Koran for Muslims and the Upanishads for Hindus, each proclaims inherent truths. For many of the respective faiths’ followers, these inherent truths are also absolute in the sense they dare not be contradicted. But if God-concepts are all relative and subjective, then all the sacred books on which they are based must be. None can be "true" to the exclusion of the others.

 

The problem is that the early writers for each scripture suffered from the same limitation of comprehension as their modern counterparts. A finite neural capacity means limited intellectual grasp, irrespective of the particular conceptual allegiance.  This then leads to a "holy" document or scripture that itself is limited and subjective, not absolute.

Note, a genuine God putatively doesn’t make mistakes since perfection is surely a fundamental divine attribute. However, a human brain is quite likely to project its flaws onto its concepts and that includes beholding the contrived deity botching assorted events and actions. No one can blame (finite) brains for this propensity, but humans at least need to recognize that they do it!

 

On the other hand, this defect means that worshipping holy books is to avoided at all costs as another form of idolatry.

Pope Francis is A-OK: Conservative Catholics Need to Grow Up, Get A Life

How could any normal person with humanity's interests at stake and a yearning for peace possibly come down on Pope Francis I? It beggars the mind and imagination (the worst recesses) to think there are actually Catholics who deplore his actions and words and wonder if he is some kind of a "heretic" out to subvert Church teachings. I mean, hell, even atheists love this pope! Probably because he evinced a truly enlightened tolerance for them 5 months ago, when on delivering a homily at the Chapel of the Domus Santa Marta he said:  

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! 'Father, the atheists?' Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class. We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all. And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: We need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. 'But I don't believe, Father, I am an atheist!' But do good: We will meet one another there."

But according to a Sunday New York Times piece ('Some Catholics Feel Left Out of Pope's Embrace' ) this exhibition of tolerance has evidently pissed off conservative Catholics (you know, the ones who think 'Opus Dei' is just grand, and yearn for old Latin masses and more saints). In this sense they're like a certain self-professed fundie who has roundly proclaimed he "ain't sharin' no afterlife with any atheists".  Seems the afterlife cosmos is just too damned small for these close-minded folks to allow "heathens" and  "believers" i.e. those who think they know what's up there (really) to co-exist in the same post-space-time continuum.

The part of Francis' address that really got to them was not generally published in the U.S. media - but was re-published in the NY Times article (p. 27):

"Everyone has his own idea of good and evil".

Which is, of course, true. A starving child or parent of that child will, for example, regard evil as the gross systemic inequality in a supposedly rich nation that permits such a travesty to occur. Yeshua, when he was alive, regarded evil as turning from one's fellow man and employing "rule-based" theology to exclude or demonize others. This is why he upbraided the Pharisees as "whited sepulchres."  They were so obsessed with their petty rules, laws and rule-making that they lost sight of the total spiritual vision, i.e. that a true God would embrace all humans, irrespective of beliefs, or unbelief.

As the Times piece observes: "The Pope has won affection worldwide for his humility and common touch."

But not among these regressive Catholics. The Times cites one conservative Catholic blogger named Steve Skojec - "the Vice President of a real estate firm in Virginia who has written for several conservative Catholic websites".

Skojec, according to the Times (ibid.) asks if Francis' statements are "explicitly heretical" - deciding they aren't ....quite, at least not yet. But he responds in an afterthought:

"Are they dangerously close? Absolutely! What kind of Christian tells an atheist he has no intention to convert him? That should disturb Catholics everywhere!"

Actually, no. Only seriously deluded Catholics would be so disturbed. Catholics who really think they have a lock on ultimate truth and know "God" to a tee. But as I noted in my recent book Beyond Atheism, Beyond God, the most people with limited brains and neural capacity can do is formulate relative, subjective God concepts. This means apart from not being any of their damned business to meddle in others' lives,  they lack the epistemological certainty to be able to justify trying to  "convert" anyone. This is because their god beliefs are as relative, limited and subjective as any other believer's and their neural capacity is no greater than an unbeliever's!

This further supports the contention of philosopher Joseph Campbell[1] to the effect that:  

‘God’ is an ambiguous word in our language because it appears to refer to something that is known..

The problem is people bandy the symbol about as if they have intimate knowledge of what it means, or the real entity behind it. But all they have, ultimately, is a symbol reflecting their own personal predilections, acquired beliefs, interpretations of dogmas and experience. But it was for precisely this reason that French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion’s advised of only writing “God”  with a strikethrough, e.g. GOD. Thereby to indicate no one has the capacity to describe, grasp, conceptualize or manipulate the underlying entity. In effect, as author James Byrne observes:  “to think GOD as unthinkable is to reject the idolatry of the God of onto-theology. “

 If  this entity is de-conceptualized, then it can’t be debated, even by the most ardent or determined atheist.  Similarly, no one possesses the knowledge, spiritual advantage or superior moral position to “convert” any other person to what he accepts or thinks is a "one true"  God concept. Because there is no "one true God" precisely because you're only dealing with a limited concept, not the actual entity.

 

My point here is that no one, of ANY religion, is in such a superior epistemological position that he can assert his religion is the “one true one”.  This also means he’s in no position to “convert” anyone to his religion.  Is there any advantage to be gained by acknowledging that a God-concept is what people are really talking about when they use the noun “God”? I think there is.  For one thing, the acknowledged use of the term God-concept reinforces an attitude of cautious forbearance.  The implicit relativism acts as a restraint, backing the believer away from a militant stance of absolutism. Ideally, this should dispose him or her to be more tolerant - tolerant toward unbelievers and tolerant toward those of different religions.

 

What is the alternative, after all? It is that each monotheistic religion, whether Islam, or Evangelical Protestantism or Catholicism will be spurred to condemn those not numbered in its fold. Each then prescribes "hellfire" for the outliers or unbelievers, and sows the seeds for incessant strife in this world as well as spiritual apartheid in the next.

 

 

But will a guy like Stevie Skojec be able to process all of this? Probably not. Because his absolutist stance admits of no questioning, or any smidgeon of tolerance for others'. In other words, like the most extreme Islamist extremists, he won't be satisfied until all "unbelievers" are "converted" or....if we carry his reasoning forward and extrapolate it to its brutal conclusion: put to the sword. Because, there is no other way, and none of us (atheists) are going to convert willingly nor are we going to listen to any authoritarian yap from the likes of his ilk.

 

 

All of which reinforces the point that when people use the word G-o-d they’re not talking or writing about an actual entity but a limited construct or approximate mental ideation configured as a noun, which we call a God concept. Further, because it’s limited by content and comprehension, i.e. by finite minds with finite intelligence which can’t grasp all aspects, then all such concepts must be relative and subjective. This means that the Jewish concept of Yahweh, the Muslim concept of Allah, the Hindu concept of Brahmin and the Christian concept of the Trinity all stand in the same epistemological relation.  From an informational point of view, none can be selected as “true” to the exclusion of the others.

 

 

If indeed Catholics, including the conservative faction, yearn for a better world, there is only one way and that's to allow for inevitable differences in epistemological,  belief (or unbelief) approaches that reflect human cultural, geographical and experiential differences. TO presume instead that there is only one "right" way and by god you are going to demand it, is to offer a prescription for endless war, endless strife and endless hate.

 

 

You really, really want that? Didn't think so! 
 

Everyone with a grain of sense, including conservative Catholics like Steve Skojec, ought to be applauding Francis' open statements of tolerance, instead of denigrating them as one step removed from what they believe is "heretical".

 

 

 

---

[1] Campbell.: The Power of Myth, 56

Fox-ite Dummy Lauren Green Gets Schooled by Reza Aslan

Lauren Green may well be a charming lady, and perhaps educated in some areas for which she might aspire to be a competent interviewer. But alas, religious history and textual analysis is not one of them - as she learned when confronting author and religious scholar Reza Aslan a few days ago. (According to Buzzfeed, it "was the most embarrassing interview FOX has ever done") After watching clips from Chris Hayes' show last night, I believe it.

Her first question:

"You're a Muslim so why did you write a book about the Founder of Christianity?"

is dumbo out of the block, and thus Aslan began his tutorial for her, as if she were a kindergartener.

He noted being a "scholar of religion with four degrees, including the New Testament with fluency in Biblical Greek- and studied the origins of Christianity for two decades"

Aslan added that he just happened to be a Muslim, but the Fox dope-ite couldn't or wouldn't let it go, asking an even dumber question:

"It still begs the question, why would you be interested in the founder of Christianity?"

But clearly she doesn't grasp what the fallacy of begging the question means, i.e. it  is committed "when a proposition which requires proof is assumed without proof." In other words, it is actually Ms. Green who was doing the question begging by assuming because Aslan is Muslim he can't be a competent scholar of Christianity or Yeshua.  Thus, her de facto proposition, that Aslan is incompetent to do research into Jesus because of being Muslim, requires proof that she doesn't provide but which charge she expects Aslan to defend! She thereby foists the burden of question "begging" onto Aslan for showing WHY he is qualified to do a scholarly study of Yeshua.

Aslan, looking as if trying to take pity on a regressive, backward toddler, replied:

"Because it's my job as an academic. I am a professor of religion, including the New Testament, That is what I do for a living. I am a historian, I am a Ph.D. in the history of religion .  This isn't a 'Muslim opinion'. I'm not sure what my faith happens to do with my twenty years of academic study of the New Testament. I do think perhaps it's a little bit strange that instead of debating the arguments of the book we are debating the rights of the scholar to actually write it. My job as a scholar of religions is to write about religions."

But you see, Prof. Aslan, in Dumbo-ville  'Murica, this is not seen as irony. It happens all the time.  But to reinforce this, Green digs herself in deeper approaching moron territory:

"You're quoting yourself as a scholar. I have interviewed scholars who have written books on the resurrection, on the real Jesus, and looking at the same information that you're saying but which is somehow different from theirs, is really not being honest here."

Aslan tried to be empathetic at this point, what else can you be with a recalcitrant dummy masquerading as a prime time network interviewer? He replied:

"M'am, my information is not different from the others at all. It sounds like you haven't actually read my book to see what I've said about the resurrection, or about Jesus or about his claims. I think you might be surprised in what I say."

Ouch!  The book that's elicited such consternation from the reality-challenged is
"Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth."

The book excavates what can really be known about Jesus the person and the context in which he lived. Aslan feels passionate about why that kind of knowledge is so important, as he noted in a recent salon.com interview:

"Unless you believe that Jesus lived in some kind of a cultural and political vacuum, that the context of the world in which he lived played no role in his actions or his motivations, then you have to take seriously that he lived in a specific time and place and the things that he said were directed to a specific audience in one of the most tumultuous periods of the history of the Holy Land."

Earlier, actually a week ago,  in another appearance on "Morning Joe", Aslan  noted a typical American tendency to think of Jesus as "some kind of pacifist, a celestial spirit in the world in which he lived",  which is completely at odds from the picture which emerges from the historical study of him.  Aslan noted how Yeshua likely lived in the most tumultuous era for the Holy Land ever known, and also took on the hitherto greatest Empire the world had ever known.

Because he took on that Empire, he was executed as a state criminal. Aslan emphasized that he "was a deeply political figure".

At this point, guest Steve Rattner blurted out:  "So, he was a Terrorist?"

Aslan replied: "No. I mean a terrorist is someone who takes up arms against citizens. There were certainly a lot of Jewish terrorists in 1st century Palestine but he himself wasn't one of those. He was a nationalist revolutionary."

At that point, I immediately thought of the late Hugo Chavez who the U.S. Neoliberal media and associated imps  tried to paint as the biggest villain since Stalin. But as I noted, Chavez walked the walk doing far more to help his downtrodden countrymen than Obama has done for ours (even now Obama's WH  is conducting secret talks with the Repukes on a "Grand Bargain" to  cut Medicare - according to Daily Kos).

It was funny when Morning Joe himself tried to interject his own biblical knowledge by asserting Yeshua had to be a pacifist since he said "turn the other cheek" among other statements. But Aslan responded he also said: "I have come not to bring peace, but a sword.." and also the same man who said, "If you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one."

Aslan followed up, noting that just by his saying the words, "I am the Messiah" he was committing a treasonable offense, since the imputation was that the kingdom of God would replace the kingdom of Caesar, i.e. the Romans. Thus, he wasn't killed for his spiritual teachings but his political actions.

Aslan, like Oxford scholar Geza Vermes before him ('The Authentic Gospel of Jesus') noted that crucifixion was a punishment  "reserved solely for crimes against the state".

Scarborough tried to pooh pooh this by asserting the Romans were "ambivalent at best when you read about the final week of Jesus' life".

But Aslan slapped that down in concert with many other true scholars such as John Dominic Crossan, noting: "that's not correct either". Scarborough snarked: "So what is it then, a fable?" and Aslan replied (correctly according to textual analysis):

"Never happened! It's an absolute fable. What you have to understand is the very first words written about Jesus in the gospels were written after the Jewish revolt, after the destruction of Jerusalem, after the very movement which Jesus embodied led to the insurrection against the Roman Empire, And the words were written in Greek, not in Hebrew, not in Aramaic - the language of the Jews. They were written specifically for a Roman audience at a time when Judaism had become pariah".

He emphasized:

"If that's the case, if you're writing for a Roman audience and not a Jewish audience then you have to do two things: one, you have to make him just a little bit less Jewish and a little bit less revolutionary and two, you have to remove all blame for his death from Rome.."

Pilate himself was no ambivalent wuss, but a "brutal, bloodthirsty man who sent his troops out onto the streets to slaughter Jews on the slightest pretext".

Scarborough interrupted at this point, yelping as if bitten by a large red ant on the butt: "S-so, so, so ....y-y-you're suggesting...that basically the New Testament is fiction."

Aslan replied coolly and calmly as with the Fox moron:

"No, what I'm saying is the New Testament is myth and myth isn't fiction. You have to understand that what we differentiate between facts and truth is a differentiation the ancient mind would have no conception of.  For them what was important wasn't the actual facts of the event - they wouldn't even know what you're talking about. For them the importance was the truth. So what they wanted to do was create a narrative of Jesus that revealed the truth that they wanted to reveal about him,"

One of the truths the writers wanted to reveal is that it wasn't Rome's fault but the Jews. At which point Scarborough began a prolonged, know-nothing interruption in which he tried to portray himself on an equal scholastic footing as Aslan, but he fell flat. Anyone who knew anything of textual analysis and its role in rendering the NT a myth would peg Joe as at least as big a moron as Lauren Green.

The bottom line in all this is too many religious Americans can't handle the truth: that their "good Book"  is not based on facts or real history, but ancient myths re-told in a certain context. Or s Reza Aslan put it in his salon.com interview:

"The historical Jesus: he was an illiterate, day laborer, peasant from the country side of Galilee who hung around with the most dispossessed, poor, weak, outcasts of his society -- people whom the temple rejected".

In  other words, exactly the fitting picture of the "Augustan Hippie" that scholar John Dominic Crossan portrayed in his masterful work: 'The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant'.

Will fundies and the Christian Right reject this? Of course! But these are the same twits who reject Darwinian evolution and claim the Earth is 6, 000 years old!

Yeshua May Have Had a Wife: Big Deal!

With apologies to Dan Brown and his 'Da Vinci Code', the latest brouhaha to strike orthodox Christianity is the uncovering of a 4th century Coptic script fragment (see image) in which Jesus (Yeshua) refers to "my wife" in a dialogue. Four words, evidently originally in Greek, and translated into "Jesus said to them, my wife" appear to provide evidence that Yeshua was married.

This is despite the fact that orthodox Christian tradition has long held Yeshua to be unmarried, despite there being no hard historical evidence to support it. We know, those of us who used to be Roman Catholics, that the Church was committed to the belief Jesus had no spouse. This was employed to support the view that the disciples also had no women (disproven by rigorous historical analysis, i.e. all the apostles were married except John) and that therefore RC priests had to remain "celibates". This amounted to a huge and stupid loss, given how we've seen so many priests waver and go to the dark side to prey on kids, altar boys etc.

Anyway, the Coptic fragment was presented by Karen King (an expert in the history of Christianity) to a 6-day conference held at Rome's La Sapienza University and at the Augustinanum Institute of the Pontifical Lateran University. Meanwhile, there was zero mention of King's discovery by any of the Vatican media, despite the fact they usually cover such conferences.

No wonder, they need time to think of a bunch of theological excuses or "explanations", i.e. "Christ was obviously referring to his Church, not a flesh and blood wife!" But if they tried that one they'd be instantly rejected since another line in the fragment reads: "She can be my disciple"

We know churches can't be disciples, only flesh and blood humans.

Other Christian apologists of orthodoxy haven't been so quiet. One (from Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky) arguing that "the language of intimacy is often used to talk about spiritual relationships". Huh?

He added that the fragment reflects a trend or practice embodied in the "sister-wife texts" of the Gnostics. These reflected a tradition whereby:

"They carried around a female believer who cooked for them and cleaned for them and did the usual domestic chores."

I'm sure modern women would be elated to read that, but most experts on the Gnostics (e.g. Elaine Pagels) don't buy it. Indeed, the Gnostics were amongst the most egalitarian of all early Christian groups. They'd never have reduced "female believers" to the role of chattel.

It would also not have been a big deal, in the Gnostic teachings, for Yeshua to have actually had a wife, since they didn't regard him as a special divine personage or "God man-Savior". It was instead the Pauline Christians who held him so. If he was no special divine creation or divine himself then marrying would've been no biggie.

As Pagels observes ('The Gnostic Gospels', 1979, Vintage-Random House, p.134):

"Whoever achieves gnosis becomes no longer a Christian, but a Christ."

In effect, in the Gnostic teachings, anyone - including females- has the capacity to become 'a Christ'. If one had to put Gnosticism's teachings in one summary phrase it would be:

"The relativity of Christhood"

Everyone, not just Yeshua, had full potential to become a "Christ" in his or her own right!

Pauline Catholicism, meanwhile, held there could be only one, on which all others had to depend for 'salvation'. This was the nexus for power and control over the masses. There would or could be no distribution of Christhood so if you wanted salvation you had to go through a rigid hierarchy and follow their magic recipes. As Christianity fragmented through the ages, these recipes became many and varied, until now one only had to "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ" as personal Savior and one is saved.

But this would've been the most abominable blasphemy to Gnostics, i.e. to select one personality and extol it over all others.

At the opposite end of the spectrum we have the strict Jewish view as revealed by Oxford biblical scholar Geza Vermes in his monograph ‘The Authentic Gospel Of Jesus’ . According to Vermes, the specialness of Yeshua in a spritual capacity was meant only for Jews, never Gentiles. In this sense Paul committed a great travesty and violation by taking Yeshua's role and extending it out to all Gentile Christians. As Vermes puts it (p. 415, op. cit.):

“The religion revealed by the authentic message of Jesus is straightforward, without complex dogmas, mythical images or self-centered mystical speculation. It resembles a race consisting only of the final ‘straight’ – demanding from the runners their last ounce of energy and with a winners’ medal prepared for all the JEWISH participants who cross the finishing line."

Irrespective of any special role for Yeshua, again there'd have been no prohibitions against marriage per se.

We shall await the outcome of this latest revelation but my bet is that by next month, Christian orthodoxy will have decided it's all a "tempest in a teacup" and Yeshua had no wife, and one must impose a broader "spiritual" interpretation.