Biblical Inerrancy

Before I blog any more on spiritual topics, I feel I must take a few “bytes” to address the topic of biblical “inerrancy”—the completely absurd concept that’s seemingly dominating evangelical and other forms of organized Christianity for many years.

I can be very brief about this topic—biblical inerrancy is an impossibility.

Biblical inerrancy, for those who don’t know, is the idea that the Bible—both Old and New Testaments—is completely, wholly, and literally true in every word as originally written; that it not only contains no error, but is not even subject to error because it was inspired by the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Bible’s author was God (who used humans to transcribe his words) and since God cannot make errors, the Bible is, defacto, error free.

The biblical inerrancy folks used to insist that the bible was wholly true no matter the edition—that the Holy Spirit had guided every writer and translator—but have seemingly backed off that claim in light of recent scholarship. And as for use of the phrase “originally written,” since no one actually knows what was originally written—there being no original edition—this is a convenient escape clause that allows them to insist that whichever version or translation they prefer is the correct one.

The Bible, as a book, is an assortment of texts written over about 1500-1600 years by various and largely unknown authors. That the gospels and epistles of the New Testament have the names of various apostles and disciples attached to them is not proof they were written by these particular individuals. In fact, the earliest Gospels we’ve found were written in Greek, and by writers well schooled in Greek rhetoric and composition. By contrast, the four evangelists were Aramaic speakers.

As regards the Old Testament, it becomes apparent to anyone who’s studied Middle Eastern mythology that many Old Testament stories are adaptations of the earlier stories of Sumeria and Babylonia. The story of Noah, for instance, is similar in many details to that of the Babylonian Utnapishtim and the Sumerian Ziasudra—and both Babylonian and Sumerian civilizations predate the concept of the Hebrews as a people, much less the writing of the Hebrew scriptures. Many of the names, titles, and epithets of God given in the Old Testament were names, titles, or epithets of the Babylonian gods.

The Old Testament shows influences from Akkadian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Canaanite, and Egyptian sources. The New Testament shows evidence of Greek schools of thought.

What we today know as the Bible wasn’t even officially assembled as such by the church until the Council of Rome in 382 A.D., by which point in time a theology had developed that required that only texts in agreement with that theology be included in the final product.

It is important to remember that we don’t have the “originals” of the gospels or epistles, only copies made many years later. The New Testament has been translated countless times by countless scribes, as any reputable biblical scholar will tell you, and most will agree that there are differences, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the various translations still extant. At this point in time, the number of texts found number in the thousands and often don’t agree with each other, perhaps due to scribal error, editing, or the fact that there was more than one version of many of the events or stories. In comparing and dating texts, scholars have found versions where it's that clear bits have been added onto earlier versions of the same books, the Gospel of Mark being a case in point: The last 12 verses dealing with the post-resurrection days are not found in the earliest versions.

According to biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, Mark is the oldest gospel, written somewhere around the year 90 A. D.; Matthew and Luke were written 10 to 15 years after that and were most likely based on Mark. John’s gospel was probably written about 10 years after Matthew and Luke, though we don't know this for sure.

Another thing to consider with regard to scriptural inerrancy is that until the middle of the 4th century, there were many different approaches to, beliefs about, and interpretations about the life and message of Christ. There was not a single, authorized, monolithic set of beliefs about these things in place until the church set about creating one in the 3rd and 4th centuries. The Council of Nicaea, the Council of Rome and several subsequent church councils of that era formulated what we now call Christianity, defining the basic elements of belief and worship—including the divinity of Jesus and papal authority—and sorting through a large collection of various religious texts to put together what we now call the Bible. Shortly thereafter, the destruction of all “non-canonical” texts was ordered. But not all were destroyed. Many were hidden away and have only come to light within the last century and are expanding our view of those early times.

Given the above historical details, how anyone can claim biblical inerrancy is completely beyond me. Please understand that this does not mean that I think there is nothing of spiritual or inspirational value in the bible. There most definitely is. I, for one, greatly value the New Testament message of Jesus and find that if one simply concentrates on that message and doesn’t obsess about about doctrinal details, it is a great guide for living from a place of truth, love, and compassion.

God's Name

I am reposting my very first blog post since it would appear that Blogger won't allow me to make any stylistic changes to it.

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The 3rd of the 10 commandments enjoins us not to take God’s name in vain. Despite popular belief, “God” is not a personal name; it’s a title, a job description. (Yes, I know....try telling that to Sister Mary Sourpuss, your 5th grade teacher, when she’s just heard you say “God damn it!”)

So what was the personal name of the divine creator being in the ancient Mediterranean/Middle Eastern world—Sumeria, Canaan, Phoenicia, Syria, Judea—an area which has had so much influence on the western religions of today?

To paraphrase T.S. Elliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, “The name of a god is a serious matter; it’s not just a part of your holiday games...”

In ancient times, names were a serious matter. Not just a random combination of sounds, names were meant to convey the nature and essence of the thing named—the unique, specific, vibrational frequency that exemplified the most vital and central core of the thing. From this comes the old belief that to know a being’s name is to have power over it—an illustration of the archaic belief in the power of sound.

In all languages, vowels are what makes sound; it is sometimes said that vowels “ensoul” a word. The commonly accepted vowels in the English language are A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. Occasionally W is added to that list.

The three major western religions of today’s world—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—all arose in the Middle East. Historically, the ancient Semitic languages, which came to dominate a large portion of the Middle East, did not have letters that indicated vowel sounds in words. Only consonants were written. Later, markings or ‘points’ were inscribed over certain letters in words to indicate an accompanying vowel sound.

But those familiar sounds of A-E-I-O-U-Y-W were certainly known and used in the ancient world, and were, in fact, quite often considered sacred. The reason for this is that, unlike consonants, which are made solely by positions of tongue, lips, and movements of the mouth, breath—more specifically, the movement of breath—is required to make vowel sounds. Vowel sounds are pure sound, unencumbered by consonants.

Since living beings must breathe, breath was seen as akin to life—that sacred and mysterious animating force that seems to move in and out of physical form as it wills. Being is breathing; breathing is being. In the biblical Book of Genesis, in fact, it is the Divine Breath—the wind—moving over the waters of the primal Tehom, or Deep Abyss, which triggered creation.

So it is not surprising to find that many of the ancient names of god were the sequence of vowel sounds such as would be made with the pronunciation of words such as the Hebrew IHVH/YHVH (Yahweh), the Greek IAO, and the Phoenician IEUO—all of which translate to things like, “he will cause to become; he causes to become; he was; he will be; I am the One Who Is, " or simply, "I am that (which) I am." It is the power of breath and sound that brings life into being; it seems logical to suppose that the creator’s name would reflect this.

Related to the Phoenician IEUO and Hebrew YHVH is the Ugaritic YAM / Iahu / IeuoYw / Yawu, a deity whose name—extremely similar to the Hebrew Yahu/Yahweh—means sea, as in the primordial salty sea of creation the Babylonians knew as the creatress Tiamat and the Sumerians as Nammu. Not surprisingly, it was said that Yam often took the guise of a storm or wind god. And Yam, in his turn, would seem to be a manifestation of an even older Babylonian deity, Ea (Aay-ah, Eh-yah, or Ee-yah), who in the much earlier Sumerian era was called Enki. It is interesting that Yam was said to take the guise of a storm or wind god, because Enki had a brother called Enlil— called Ilu in Babylonian and Akkadian times—who actually was the god of sky, air, wind, and storms. The main part of his name, “lil” meant wind. The word Ilu meant “god,” thus equating god with the wind. Ilu seems to be the source of the later Phoenician/Canaanite “El,” meaning God, or Lord, and as a suffix this has attached itself to names of other divine beings (or divine attributes, depending on your point of view) such as Micha-el, Gabri-el, Rapha-el, and the like.

"El" can also mean "the," as in a very specific, and sometimes only, "one."

Both Enlil / Ilu and Enki / Ea are very strong contenders for being the original form of Yahweh. As the Sumerian god of the sea, Ea/Enki was ruler of the element of water, the god of intelligence, wisdom, and the primeval establisher of law and order—all of these being also attributes of the Hebrew Yahweh. Enlil /llu, on the other hand, was a very powerful god of sky, air, wind, and storms, as we have said. The Hebrew god Yahweh seems, by his attributes and characteristics, to be a conflation of Enlil / Ilu and Enki / Ea.

It should be noted here that names of the much later-in-time Roman father god Jupiter / Jove (IOVE or IOWE) and the Greek father god Zeus (Ze being equivalent to the I in Iupiter / Jove) come from the same root and have the same meaning and similar attributes as YHVH / IEUO / IAHU. It should also be noted that in ancient Egypt the god HU (Hhhoooooo), whose name, when pronounced, sounds very much like the wind blowing, was said to be a deification of the first sound, the utterance that initiated creation. This brings to mind the first verse of the Gospel of John— “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

In the New Testament, the descent of the Holy Spirit (i.e. the Spirit of God) upon the apostles at Pentecost is marked by a great and loud wind (in addition to the small “tongues of fire” pictured over their heads in medieval paintings). In the second of the creation stories found in Genesis (as in several other creation stories), God “breathed” into Adam, his clay creation, thus bringing Adam to life by an infusion of his own Divine Spirit. In this we can see the ancient belief that breath, life, and the Divine Spirit are all the same.

Breath is life; breath is divine and sacred; therefore life is sacred. To take the “name” of the Lord “in vain” is to violate life/breath. That particular commandment, therefore, might well be a proscription against doing harm to living, breathing beings.

In the desert lands of the middle east where much religion originated, the winds are a very powerful force of nature, one capable of creating changes in the landscape and in life. It’s not surprising that the winds would be considered the divine breath, and their howling or soothing noises to be the words of the divine voice. This is a very animistic/shamanistic perspective, and humanity's earliest spiritual belief was animism -- the belief that all nature was alive.

The wind is everywhere, however, not just confined to deserts. It blows in forests, among mountain peaks, at the seashore, and on the sea—causing things to move and change in all these places. In fact, the movement of wind—the Divine Spirit—over water is the act of creation in more than one creation story. In the Babylonian tales, the creatress Tiamat—the primal watery salty void—is slain by her great-grandson Marduk; his weapon is the power of the winds, given him by his father Ea. From her body the world and its creatures were then created.

If the name of something is a sound which represents its essence, then the most primal name of God is the sound of life—the vowel sounds of spoken language, which often seem to mimic those of the natural world of wind and wave. We can only define or express the divine in terms of what is familiar to us, and what is familiar to us is the world of nature. At their most basic foundation, all religions are nature religions, born of early humans sitting around their campfires at night, listening to the sounds of nature, gazing at the star-filled sky, or perhaps standing on the seashore or mountain top thinking, “All this is so much bigger than me; where did it come from? Where did I come from?”

Wind and wave, fire and earth. Perhaps the question is not really what is the personal name of God, but rather, does God actually have a personal name, like any Tom, Dick or Harry?

Personally, I don’t think he / she / it does. Something as vast as the divine creator spirit fills, or IS, all things and all beings. We know it by its manifestation. To our ancestors the forces of nature were the manifestation of the divine; and the sounds those forces made were the voice of the divine speaking its many names.

The Living Light - Part Two

But there is more......

The Light is not simply alive: it is conscious, it is aware. All life possesses consciousness to one degree or another, although it is hard for humans to imagine, perhaps, what the consciousness of a bacteria might be like.

And this consciousness is, I believe, what the Bible refers to as the “Spirit of God.”

It is interesting how the Bible refers to both God and the Spirit of God, seeming to differentiate between them. The Spirit of God is, of course, the “Holy Spirit,” referred to in Hebrew as the Ruach Elohim and the Ruach HaKodesh.

Ruach is a feminine word meaning breath, wind, air, and also soul and spirit. Breath is cognate with life, because most living things breathe and move. HaKodesh means the sanctified, the holy. Together they mean the female holy/sanctified (i.e. divine) breath/spirit – i.e. Holy Spirit.

Elohim is an interesting word in that it contains both masculine and feminine elements, and is plural, indicating either “gods,” or a Being which contains both masculine and feminine elements. Thus, Ruach Elohim also means Breath/Spirit of God/ess.

The Book of Genesis mentions that before creation began, all was dark, void, and without form, and that the Ruach Elohim brooded over the face of the Deep, the primal waters. This brooding caused a stirring of those waters—a movement—after which God said (the very first, or Primordial, Sound), “Let their be light.” And light came into being, the first thing created.

But the Book of Proverbs gives a slightly different account of creation. In this account, God’s first creation is not said to be light, but a helper, a feminine helper called Wisdom. She helps God create the rest of the universe.

The Hebrew word for Wisdom is Chokmah, and Chokmah/Wisdom is also the name of the sephira found near the top of the Kabalistic Tree of Life. Kether is the “crown” or summit of the Tree, the first “state of being” of what will eventually become the manifest world, and it is from Kether that the other sephiroth emanate to form the rest of the Tree. Chokmah is the very first emanation, and is considered to be the initiating force of creative energy, as well as the first power of conscious intellect.

In a sense, this first force of creative energy and conscious intellect after the Primordial Sound actually is light.

So Chokmah / Wisdom / Conscious Intellect / Light comes immediately into existence at the very beginning of things, and plays an important role in the rest of the creation. Although Chokmah is a masculine-gendered word, references to Wisdom in the Hebrew scriptures are most often feminine, particularly in the Book of Proverbs where she is seen to be creative, gentle, friendly, and helpful to humankind.

Wisdom seen as a partner in creation is really another way of stating what is said in Genesis—that the “Spirit of God,” the Ruach Hakodesh / Ruach Elohim / Chokmah / Wisdom, is the primal emanation from the “high place” point of creation’s origin, and is the agent, as it were, of that creation. In other words, the primal Oneness emanated outward, expanding into Two, and from these Two further emanations came forth, flowed into manifestation. Thus Life is One—the divine Life Force and its consciousness stream through all creation; yet Life is also Many, as well, taking on a multiplicity of forms—the mystery of the One in many and the many in the One.

So the first emanation from the first state of being from the great Void was consciousness / intellect / wisdom / light, and it was feminine. The Spirit of God—the Holy Spirit—is Wisdom, is consciousness, is feminine, and is the Mother of the Worlds, who in the very beginning of creation “brooded” over the primal waters of the deep as a mother bird—wings beating—hovers, then settles herself over the clutch of eggs in her nest. Unsurprisingly, the Holy Spirit is often depicted as a dove. Equally unsurprisingly, the dove was a symbol of the Goddess in the ancient Middle East.

The Greek word for Wisdom is Sophia, about whom we are hearing a lot these days.

The Holy Spirit is also said to be the “presence” of God; I do think that the word “presence” here means “consciousness/awareness.” The Divine is omnipresent, but sometimes that sense of presence is turned our way or perhaps enhanced—seeming to come vibrantly to life—because we are paying acute attention, or have consciously invoked it by prayer.

The Bible tells us that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude (i.e. courage, endurance), knowledge, piety, and fear of (i.e. respect for) the Lord. It seems to me that these are virtues that are latent in every human consciousness, but that come truly to life only when, through our learning, feeling and experiencing, we are eventually led to wisdom, and choose to consciously cultivate it and all that flows from it.

Cultivation involves conscious tending and use. Gifts are meant to be used and if we do not use these gifts of the Holy Spirit, they will not grow within us. To use terminology I learned on a Native path, if we do not cultivate these gifts we are given, we remain “two-leggeds,” rather than spiritually growing into “true humans.”

It has been said that the natural cycle of creation and destruction might be looked at as God breathing in and out. The Holy Spirit is the Breath of God. In the beginning was the Void, and all was within, in potentia. When God breathed forth (exhaled), God’s spirit poured forth and creation was begun.

So God’s spirit, the feminine Holy Spirit, is what all creation is made of and filled with. And that Spirit is consciousness—the divine’s awareness of itself, of its emanations/creations and a connection to those emanations/creations.

Our individual portion of it is called the Soul. And it is our job to allow the soul’s memory of its divine nature and origin—its Inner Light, Wisdom—to grow within us, that we may flower into our own inherent divinity.

The Living Light - Part One

 “Let there be light,” the Creator proclaims in the opening verses of Genesis.

The Creator's proclamation is Sound, the first manifestation of the Life Force, and is followed immediately by Light.  Light is the second manifestation of the Life Force and there is no Life without it. Sound is Life. Light is Life.

“Let there be light,” the Creator proclaims. And where previously there had been darkness, there was now light. And thus began the universe....

In the Old Testament, Moses wonders about the name of the God who is addressing him from the burning bush, and God replies, "I Am That I Am" —a simple but definite statement of identity that indicates both beingness and self-awareness.

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says “It is I who am the Light which is above them all. It is I who am the All. From me did the All come forth, and unto me did the All extend.” These are powerful statements. He is proclaiming his oneness with the Light which is above all—the Divine Source, the All, the I Am.

He continues, extending this identification beyond his personal self, to all of creation, saying, “Cleave the wood and I am there; lift the stone and you will find me there.”

With these words Jesus is telling us that not only is he the Light, but that we—and all of creation—are also the Light; that the Light—that primordial manifestation of the Life Force—is in everything, and is Divine, is God. The Living Light, the Divine Spirit, is in all things. The Living Light is the Life Force as it manifests in all of creation.

"Know ye not that ye are gods, and sons of the most high?" says Psalm 82:6.

The implications of this are enormous. And although we’ve heard this (i.e. in various ways from our various sacred scriptures) for years, we certainly don’t seem to act as though we believe it.

Sad, isn’t it?