Scripture: Divine, Devised or Divisive?

There are many claims for the ‘authenticity’ of sacred writings. Abrahamic texts claim that they are either ‘written by god’ or ‘were inspired by god’. Ergo, they are infallible. Eastern philosophies do not. They see their ‘sacred’ writings as ‘teachings’. One approach lays down laws: the other encourages individual assimilation.

Eastern ‘scriptures’ do contain ‘rules’ but there is no responsible for them. None insist on ‘one book’. Buddhism has numerous texts. They are seen as the actual words of the Buddha or his acolytes. They are to be interpreted either literally or allegorically.

Another difference is in the concept of a god. Nothing in the teachings of the Buddha suggests how to find god or even whether you should or should not worship one (or more). That is up to you. Buddha is revered as a great teacher, in the same way all people in the thousands of cultural and social systems we have from an animistic tribe in Papua to more widespread faiths respect many great leaders and writers.

Does this imply that Buddhists, Taoists and the like are atheists? Many followers believe in a god; many do not. Many just don’t know. Your view is your view: how you deal with your life daily is up to you. Accept responsibility for finding the truth where you are, and within you.

Some claim Buddha was a theist. However, his teachings are non-theistic. He was more concerned with the human condition as each individual faces the trials of birth, sickness, old age, and death.

The Tao suggests that if you are suffering, take time out to meditate: thirty minutes a day. If you are very busy, meditate for an hour. Dealing with life is never and nowhere more important than in the immediate moments when stress affects us. It is in these moments that peace can be won or lost. How we cope depends on us, not on some external being we cannot see. Eastern ideas suggest meditation. Abrahamic faiths prescribe faith. In prayer we seek help from ‘above’; in meditation we seek strength from ‘within’. Which works better? You decide.

Can sacred texts help us? Of course. All contain guidelines and wisdom. Abrahamic texts teach original sin. Eastern systems do not. Original sin demands obeisance and sacrifice to an external god. It demands complete obedience. If we don’t obey, and upset the god we select, we run the risk of being destroyed by flood, plague of pestilence. That concept is a derivative of ancient animistic worship. It is the stick that keeps our eyes on the carrot.

Taoists revere several scriptures including the Tao Te Ching and the Zhuang Zi. Are these divinely inspired? No. There is no omnipotent creator or being beyond the cosmos. They follow the Tao: the absolute principle underlying the universe, combining within itself the principles of yin and yang and signifying a way, or code of behaviour, that is in harmony with the natural order. The Tao itself is not God, nor is it a god.

Eastern systems interact and share their insights. Abrahamic systems tend to be protective and ‘one book’ oriented. In the East, no one system claims superiority: all are seen as guiding you to self-awareness on a path you determine. Why restrict ourselves to one system? One book? We don’t have to agree on anything to still be human: to be kind to one another. To listen. To consider. To adopt if we feel it helps us. To be human, is to be defensive: to be inhuman is to convert that to aggression.

If we focus on only ‘one book’, the danger is that we see it as all encompassing. We become little more than blind sycophants to ta limiting view. We do not see that other values and ideals often far from our experience could be valid. The world is larger than the Middle East. The majority of the world born outside the tiny Abrahamic circle from which the Abrahamic ‘books’ evolved demands far broader insights. As I write this, I am listening to hymns from King’s College. Beautiful. Inspiring. I put those hymns on after I played a collection of the Islamic call to prayer. Beautiful.

Sharing and appreciating makes us richer. Limiting ourselves is self-explanatory. Consider commandment number 1: “Thou shalt have no other god before me”. Sub text: do it my way or else. Surely that interpretation lies at the heart of today’s conflicted world. Freedom of thought. Freedom of belief. Appropriation of thought and belief into our spiritual psyche: it expands our internal being and our interconnectivity with others. A mind that is stretched by a new idea or an experience will never go back to its old parameters. We are all on a similar—not the same—path. Conformity constricts and destroys the human spirit.

Abrahamic faiths claim that their scriptures are god's word, free from human interference, incontrovertible. Are they? Are we to accept that Moses, Muhammad and Jesus had a direct line to god? Did they have any input into what they understood to be ‘his word(s)”?

Research shows that all Abrahamic scriptures used several ‘human’ sources. Amongst these were the writings of the Greeks, the Egyptians and even thousands of years earlier in the traditions of the Horus and Krishna movements. Such sources may not be quoted word for word. Ideas, figures, characters, events: these are also adapted. From god? From other thinkers: philosophers, spiritualists, wise men.

Take these examples from the perspective of Christianity. The figure—and even name—of Christ derives from several sources. KRST was a key figure in the Horus movement in Egypt thousands of years before Jesus arrived. He was also called ‘the anointed one. In Krishna, three thousand years BC, the name Krishna was a variation which included Christna, Shristmu, Jez and Jezeus. Is this coincidence? Could it be ‘plagiarism’? Could it be simply part of the continuing evolution of oral/aural wisdom?

Consider the character of Jesus further. His birthday? The same date as for KRST and Krishna.  Was Jesus the only allegedly supernatural being? No. Numerous religions believed the same about their own figureheads. Many predated Jesus. The virgin birth? Nothing new. This idea, along with other similarly impossible concepts derived from at least six mythologies. Walking on water. Raising from the dead. Healing the sick. Descending into hell. Ascending into heaven. Crucifixion. Jesus was not the first to have done this: I use the word ‘done’ loosely. Even the idea of being ‘a’ or ‘the’ son of god is not new. Countless myths of ancient times share this accolade. Similar influences can be found in the Torah and the Qu’ran. And another truth. Each ‘borrowed’ from each other. Improved? Adapted.

Surely there is nothing wrong in learning from history. Even today, we read the Greek philosophers. Why? Because they spoke and still speak wisely. It is no wonder that their ideas found their way into the Abrahamic scriptures. If you were literate, and many were not, you listened. You thought. You discussed. You learned. You adapted.

The origin of sacred writings must be placed in the times in which they were created and amongst the people who were a part of those times: their attitudes, society and the belief systems pertinent to them. Inspired? Yes: by deep thinker’s encapsulations of truisms.

The city of Alexandria became an important Jewish centre. Hellenistic Jewish philosophers such as Philo, fused Greek and Jewish philosophy. At that time, the Jews were writing the Wisdom Literature: The Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Proverbs, etc. Take this quote in Job 10:10:

"Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast fashioned me as clay; and wilt thou bring me into the dust again! Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese? Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews."

This passage exists in Aristotle's book On the Generation of Animals.

The Wisdom of Solomon (7: 2) copies another Aristotelian theory that the embryo is formed from menstrual blood. (Not sure about the ten months though: evolution? Sleep is also a careful English translation of a more erotic word.)

"In the womb of a mother was I moulded into flesh in the time of ten months, being compacted with blood of the seed of man and the pleasure that accompanieth sleep."

This reference can also be traced to the writings of Empedocles and Hippocrates. It is unlikely that the influence of such thinkers and spiritualists from a dynamic early world did not have influence on those who wrote ‘the words of god’. Plagiarism? No. It represented the highest and richest thinking of the time.

Naturally, spiritual thinkers concerned with the well-being of their people based their adaptations to their own traditions, needs and aspirations. They developed what suited their people. Proposing a ‘life style’ or ‘belief system’ that did not evolve from those with which people were familiar and had followed and adapted for centuries was not a recipe for acceptance. Marketing is not a twentieth century invention.

Islam may be the world’s most eclectic faith. Muhammad made wide use of a number of sources in compiling the Qu’ran. Several sects lived and followed their beliefs in Arabia for centuries prior to his appearance: Sabians, Hanifs, Jews and Christians. As did the Jews in Alexandria, he learned from these. The conception of a supreme being was well known him and his contemporaries. He rejected the concept of a trinity and espoused the doctrine of the unity of God. Was this new? Theistic sects had existed in Arabia for centuries. One such group was the Hanifs. They rejected idolatry. They espoused the worship of the one true God alone. They already worshipped a supreme god. In Su'ratu'l-An'am (6: 106) we read:

"Follow thou that which hath been revealed to thee by thy Lord. There is no God but He."

Muhammad adopted this as the foundation of his system, ascribing it as a truth revealed from heaven. Yet such precepts already existed in Arabia. So did concepts such as the judgment, the resurrection of the body at the last day, the immortality of the soul and its punishment and reward according to the actions of the believer. These he drew from sources including Jewish and Christian texts.

One thing seems certain. Muhammad was largely indebted to the Abrahamic traditions. These were not limited to accepted Jewish and Christian texts. The Qur'an has sections with a distinctly Christian focus, and, one assumes, origin.  There is nothing in the New Testament about the childhood of Mary, the mother of Jesus. As Christianity developed, numerous gospels were written. Not all made their way into the accepted lexicon. Some (if not all) were affected by superstitious beliefs. Mary was worshipped. Several apocryphal stories about her were known to the Christians of Arabia. Muhammad must have known of them. Some appear in the Qu’ran.

The Qur'an refers to Jesus Christ with respect, as a prophet of god. These, too, are not in the Gospels. Some are in Apocryphal sources, and served as materials which he included in the Qur'an. One of these legends has reference to certain miracles said to have been performed by Christ in His infancy. Read Suratu'l-Ma'ida (v. 109-110):

"When God shall say, O Jesus! son of Mary! remember My favour upon thee, and upon thy mother; when I strengthened thee with the Holy Spirit that thou shouldest speak unto men in the cradle and when grown up. And when I taught thee the Scripture and Wisdom and the Law and the Gospel, and when thou didst create of clay as it were the figure of a bird by my permission, and didst breathe thereon, and it became a bird by my permission."

Jesus performed a miracle as a child in which, when he was five, he was playing by the road by a dirty stream of water. He channeled the water into ditches, and, with a single word, made it pure and clean.  He then made from the moistened earth twelve sparrows, clapped his hands at the sparrows cried aloud to them 'Go off.' So they flew away.

You will find that in the "The Gospel of Thomas the Israelite”. Reference to it is in the Qu’ran. At five years old? The gospels say he performed no miracles till he began his ministry at thirty years of age.

At issue here is not the stories, but the use of materials from so many sources all of which represent man’s aspirational quest to define god.

Had Jesus appeared after Muhammad, he would have done the same.

Are any Abrahamic scriptures what they claim to be? The actual dictated words of god? It is unlikely. If it were so, why does god limit himself to written words as the only physical proof of his existence? Why does he not show his power through acts which benefit humanity and relieve suffering?

It is worth asking the question.

Some people might be offended by this suggestion. Think about it before you tear up the page or delete the article   Moses descends from a mountain with tablets of stone on which the word of god was writ. Mahammad emerges after two decades in the desert and expects people to accept that a divine finger wrote what he bought with him.

One thought: if there is divine revelation from one divine being why have his revelations been so varied? Why are there over 40,000 Christian denominations? Why is Islam not united? Judaism? Divine inspiration? At the very least, as it was men (no women—that needs to be thought through) who emerged from deserts with ‘the truth’, could their human communication weaknesses have let the divine one down? A divinity that (not who) has the power to write his, her or its guidelines for life must do so through a human intermediary. Like Joseph Smith. Writ on gold tablets nonetheless. This is the crux for followers of ‘the book’ as compared to followers of ‘books’.

Our life is a continuing, marvelous and often tormented journey. The mark of a thinking mind is to be able to entertain all ideas without necessarily accepting them. Those ideas we do accept we consider at a particular time and within the social and spiritual framework of our day, our parameters and our time. Those who think, consider opinions from many sources: never just from one. They find ideas that ring true. Are they truth? Nothing is truth. The finite cannot encompass the infinite. Just ask a scientist.

Faith and choice is like ice cream: some prefer chocolate, some vanilla: you choose what resonates with and in you. Don’t expect everyone to agree. The fact is that it is still ice cream.

We need to ask: if our ‘god’ is so powerful, why does he limit his interventions in life to words? Why reveal himself on gold tablets or parchments? Why does he not reveal himself in other ways? We talk about the beauty of nature as proof of his/her/its existence. What about its horrors? Tsunamis. Volcanic disasters. Poverty. Cancer. Floods. War. Hatred. Racism. Billions have prayed to the gods for years for protection and solutions. Number of responses? Nil.

None of this detracts from the spirituality of sacred texts. Accept it comes from your god if you wish. Accept that man was involved partly or wholly: that is your choice. Just don’t limit you vision to one book. Scriptures are as aspirational as they are divine.

Sadly, they also divide. Abrahamic scriptures contain difficult passages.

“If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant; And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought …; Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.”

The Qu’ran? No Deuteronomy 17. In Luke 19: 27, Jesus says:

“But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.”

Horrific? Borrowed or ascribed by Luke. Much is made of the Quranic chapter 9 verse 5: known as "The Verse of the Sword."

“When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful.”

Muslim terrorists cite this passage to justify their jihad. Read it as it stands, and the word used is ‘slay’. Seems fairly clear. However, context provides the key. Not just internal within a particular scripture, but also in its historic setting.  Always read on. Verse 9: 6 continues:

“If an idolater seeks asylum with you, give him protection so that he may hear the Word of God, and then convey him to safety. For the idolaters are ignorant men.”

Balance is the key. Take this quote.

"There shall be no compulsion in religion" (2:256); "Say to the disbelievers [that is, atheists, or polytheists, namely those who reject God] "To you, your beliefs, to me, mine" (Qu’ran 109:1-6)

These passages from both the Bible and the Qu’ran seem to contradict. They are not alone. Abrahamic scriptures are filled with contradictions. Contradictions? From a god who allegedly is the author of these words. Perhaps it’s a matter of poor understanding or poorer editing.

Our world is a wondrous place. It is also frightening. We make it frightening by being selective in what we accept; by insisting on division and dogma: not on humanity and love.

Qu’ran 49:10: “Humanity is but a single brotherhood: make peace with your brethren.”

Qu’ran 4: 46: “And in their [the earlier prophets] footsteps We sent Jesus the son of Mary, confirming the law that had come before him. We sent him the Gospel, therein was guidance and light and confirmation of the law that had come before him, a guidance and an admonition to those who fear God."

There is more commonality than diversity in scriptures, as there is in all human aspiration. All writings need ‘contextualisation’, ‘explanation’ and ‘clarification’. At the end of the day, in a world destroyed by hatred and suspicion, dogma and religious zealotry on all sides, leave this image in your mind.

John 13: 34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

That message is the key to—and is within—all scriptures, both Abrahamic and Eastern. We need little more than that.