Time Frames and Taboo Data Blog

For those who choose to believe that every word in the Bible is inviolable, the only thing that they prove by that stance is that they ignore how it was compiled by a cut-and-paste method.  Most of the writings that are known as the New Testament were established by canon sometime after 200 CE.  In this process the “fathers” of Christianity were highly selective in the choices of their scriptural literature, often rejecting some parts within a literary work of even rejecting complete works of the same general tone.  This gathering of materials took place to set up the politics to be structured into their faith system and it required careful pruning and rejection of many literary works that were in use among the outlying cults of the movement that were springing up throughout the Roman Empire.  The “fathers,” in their zeal to impose a management system upon as many seekers as possible, indulged themselves in a pick-and-choose orgy of various literary works that often proved to be overly contradictory.

With politics of the struggling faith system always in the back of their minds the “fathers” therefore found the Gospel of John to be tolerable but cast aside similar works such as The Dialogue of Thomas.  They favored the Gospel of John because it happened to be written in such a manner that it could be utilized (read altered) to promote certain policies for an authoritarian structure that the “fathers” favored.  Gnostic-like works such as the Dialogue of Thomas and similar works encompassed a much broader or freer acceptance of religious practice than the power-seeking “fathers” preferred.  The “fathers” wanted the people to become totally reliant upon the dictates of the church representatives.  If seekers believed that one could approach the power that was personified as God only through his son-agent, and the church was the son’s representative, then the church had to be obeyed. 

Thus the literary works that were not rejected survived the selection process simply because the chosen works served the political need of the newly emerging authority-seeking priest class.  The shapers of the rudimentary Christian cult followed the example of the priest authors that had been devoted to Yahweh in the 7th century BCE in Jerusalem and who understood that the basic institutional structure of their religion had to have the apparent support of “authorized” scriptures. 

The political platform upon which episcopal authroity (church government) campaigned and overran the more natural and honest relgions at that time was the insistence that each person had to have a means beyond their own personal power to approach the creative primacy that was/is personified as “God.”  In this way the concept of personal integrity being the means of achieving “salvation” shifted into a totally churchy matter and no longer a personal affair between a seeker and their Creator.  This irrational intrusion of having the church thrust between a seeker and the Absolute had to carry the appearance of being divinely ordained if it was to become an influencing factor over the masses.   And this is what accounts for the selection of Gospels that have been held out to Christians for nearly 2000 years as being God’s singularly approved pathway to heaven.  It was not simply coincidence that those painstakingly selected literary works allowed for the souls of the seekers to held hostage as a means of financial resources and political muscle for the church wheeler-dealers.

This entry was posted on May 11, 2010 at 10:41 pm and is filed under agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, history, Inspiration, random, religion, thoughts, Uncategorized with tags early Christianity, New Testament, politics of Religion, selection of scriptures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.