Easter

It is Christian doctrine that Jesus died as a sacrifice for man. The idea is that “Original Sin” was committed by Adam and Eve, and that the stain of that sin was upon every human being born thereafter. Thus, even though subsequent humans did not commit the original sin, they were guilty of it as well as other sins. Christ came to save man from original sin and all other sin, and to provide a means for man to achieve everlasting life in heaven. In order to save man, Christ had to perform a sacrifice. Jesus was God, so he performed a sacrifice to himself. The sacrifice was a human sacrifice of the most bestial and agonizing kind, a painfully slow death by suffocation on a cross.

One has to wonder why this omnipotent, all-loving, almighty God couldn’t have simply forgiven all men of sin without this orgy of torment? Why did he have to be the scapegoat for all human beings and go through this horrendous nightmare of torture in order to provide salvation? The answer is that the writers of the Bible lived in a benighted and barbaric time when this was thought to be the right way for the gods to behave.

I confess, I simply do not understand how rational people living today can accept such nonsense as a fundamental part of their religion.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead has been called the basis for all Christianity. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:13-14: “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” The celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the most important date on the Catholics’ liturgical calendar. It is also the concoction of Paul and other writers who came long after Jesus died.

Scholars use various methods of textual criticism, including language and style, to determine if text is authentic or was added to the original gospel at a later time. There are many things on which they agree. Scholars agree that Jesus did not predict his own resurrection from the dead or his second coming. The quotations in the Bible in which he makes such a prediction (e.g. Mark 8:31) are considered to be later additions.

Moreover, the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection are so contradictory and improbable that the whole story has to be dismissed as fiction. Matthew says that the day following Jesus crucifixion Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb (Matt 28:2), but Mark says that the two Marys and Salome went (Mark 16:1). Luke writes that Mary Magdalene went with Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and other women (Luke 24:10). Matthew says that the stone was removed by an angel at the time the women arrived at Jesus’ tomb (Matt. 28:2), but Mark and Luke say it had already been removed (Mark 16:2-4, Luke 24:1-2). Matthew says that when the women arrived, the angel was outside the tomb (Matt 28:2), but Mark says the angel was inside the tomb (Mark 16:5) and Luke says there were two men inside the tomb (Luke 24:4).

In Matthew the two women rush from the tomb to tell the disciples (Matt 28:8-9), but Mark says that they said nothing to anyone (Mark 16:8). Luke says that they reported the story to the disciples (Luke 24:9-11). John tells a very different story from the others (John 20:1-18). Later post-resurrection stories are also in conflict (compare Matt 28:16-20 with Luke 24:13-53, and John 20:19).

The first Gospel written was the Gospel of Mark. Scholars can tell that the whole story of the resurrection of Jesus in Mark was added to the Gospel by somebody else long after the original version was written. Originally, the Gospel of Mark ended at Chapter 16:8. That is the part where the women find the empty tomb and are told by a “young man” that Jesus has risen. The part of the Gospel after that, in which Jesus appears to various people, was added by later writers who wanted to supply authenticity to the myth of Jesus’ resurrection. As Professor Bart D. Ehrman of the University of North Carolina says: “These verses [Mark 16:9-20] are absent from our two oldest and best manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel, along with other important witnesses; the transition between this passage and the one preceding it is hard to understand….and there are a large number of words and phrases in the passage that are not found elsewhere in Mark.”141

If you consider the fact that the Gospels of Mathew and Luke were based on the gospel of Mark, then it becomes clear that the Gospels’ story of Jesus’ resurrection is pure myth that was made-up long after the Gospels were written. The earliest Christian scriptures were the Epistles of Paul, yet Paul does not give any details about Jesus’ resurrection other than referring to it (See Rom. 6:5, 1 Cor. 15:13).

The early Christians observed Jesus’ resurrection from the dead as a Passover celebration. Thus, in Asia Minor and other places, it was not celebrated on a Sunday. It was celebrated on whatever day the Passover occurred. Around 154 AD the Christians in Rome began celebrating it on Sunday because Sunday was the Christians’ day of worship. When Rome became the seat of the Pope, the Church made Sunday the official day for the celebration of the resurrection. The day was later named “Easter” after Eostre, the Saxon goddess whose feast was celebrated at the Spring equinox.142

The idea of resurrection by a god did not begin with Jesus. Lots of gods arose from the dead in ancient times. Among them are Mithra, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, Tammuz, Ishtar, Adonis, Persephone, Semele, Heracles (or Herakles), and Melqart. Some claim Buddah was resurrected from the dead.

When my daughter was 5 years old I asked her if she believed in Jesus. She said yes. I asked if she believed that Jesus was God. She said yes. I asked her if she believed that Jesus was crucified. She said yes. I then asked her if she believed that Jesus rose again from the dead. She said: "No way!"

The Mass and Human Sacrifice

As a young boy I wanted to become a Catholic Priest. This is probably because back then priests were revered and shown a great deal of respect. I suppose that as the third son of four I didn’t feel that I got enough respect. I went to Mass every morning before school. I would frequently serve as an alter boy and would listen to the priests intone the litergy in Latin. Today, there are many Catholics who want to go back to the Latin Mass. For them, the Mass has lost much of its aura. I think that they really believe that God speaks in Latin and that therefore he prefers to be worshipped in Latin. They do not want to know what is being said at the Mass. They want it to be a mystery.

At the Mass the priest would speak in Latin and the alter boys would respond in Latin. Most alter boys did not know what they were saying. They were given the responses on cards in phonetic form so that they did not even know how the actual Latin phrases were spelled.

The idea of the mass was that it was a re-creation of the Last Supper, and that in the Mass the priest would somehow transform mere bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. It was to be understood that although the bread and wine continued to look and taste like bread and wine, they had actually been changed into Christ’s body and blood. So we were not just eating some spiritual thing in rememberance of Jesus, but an actual human body. For some reason, this was considered to be a powerfully holy thing to do. I now know that the idea for it came from the Greeks who honored their Gods by holding “agapes” in which they would merge with the gods by eating something that represented the body and blood of the gods.

The central belief of Christianity is that Jesus was a human sacrifice for mankind. Somehow, Christians have accepted this teaching from an ancient, barbaric time, and still believe it today. They believe that Man committed something called “Original Sin” and that the only way he could achieve salvation from original and other sins was by means of a human sacrifice. They believe that the almighty and eternal God, who is merciful, loving, and forgiving, could be appeased only by this hideous and grisly torture and lynching of a human being. Because an ordinary human sacrifice would not be sufficient, the Son of God had to come down to Earth to be the sacrificial victim. He had to be scourged, driven to Golgatha under the weight of the cross, nailed to the cross, pierced with a spear, and slowly suffocated until he bled to death. Crucifixion was one of the most horrible forms of execution ever devised. To this day Christians pray before crucifixes which show Jesus writhing on the cross.

So the Mass is actually a re-creation of a human sacrifice. It is referred to as the “Sacrifice of the Mass.” The priest wears ornate vestments, each part of which has some mystical significence. When he touches the bread,or the chalice holding the wine, he does so with only certain fingures. At High Mass he intones ancient chants and swings a censor with burning incense. I presume that the purpose of this is to send sweet odors up to God who apparently has a nose and a sense of smell. I have not researched the origin of incense, but it may have something to do with covering-up the odor of burning human flesh.

At some masses and other celebrations the bread is displayed in a Monstrance, which is an elaborate golden receptical for the body of Christ. It is intended to inspire awe and reverence. All Catholics kneel before the monstrance and genuflect whenever they pass before the sacristy holding the bread and wine. This is obviously taken from the ancient practice of kneeling before kings and rulers. In the Catholic religion, Jesus is referred to as the “King of Kings.”

As a boy I was deeply impressed by the Mass. Now, when I see it I wonder how people could believe in such superstition. The Mass seems like an ancient rite which one would expect to have disappeared centuries ago.