-- Tạm kết Giêsu là ai?

Để kết luận chương này, phần trích dẫn sau đây từ một bài dài có tính cách tổng hợp của Robert G. Ingersoll có thể dùng để giải đáp cho những câu hỏi như Giê-su là ai, là người như thế nào, và ảnh hưởng của ông ta đối với nhân loại ra sao:

Ki Tô Giáo không thể sống hòa bình với bất cứ tín ngưỡng nào khác. Nếu tôn giáo này đúng thì chỉ có một đấng cứu thế, một cuốn sách do Thiên Chúa Ki-Tô (Christian god) truyền cảm, và chỉ là một con đường cỏ nhỏ hẹp dẫn tới thiên đường.

Tại sao Giê-su không trở lại đền thờ để chấm dứt những cuộc tranh luận cũ kỹ? Tại sao Giê-su không đối diện với những người lính La Mã đã nhận tiền để thề rằng xác ông ta đã bị các đồng bạn đánh cắp? Tại sao ông ta không chiến thắng đi vào thành Jerusalem lần thứ hai? Tại sao ông ta không nói trước quần chúng: "Đây là những vết thương ở chân, tay, và cạnh sườn ta. Ta là người các ngươi muốn giết, nhưng thần chết chỉ là nô lệ của ta."? Thật là đơn giản, sự sống lại của Giê-su chỉ là một huyền thoại. Tôi không tin và không thể nào tin cái phép lạ về sự sống lại.

Chúng ta không biết gì chắc chắn về Giê-su. Chúng ta không biết gì về thời ông ta còn là đứa con nít, thời niên thiếu của ông ta, và chúng ta cũng không chắc là một người như vậy đã hiện hữu.

Rất có thể có một người như vậy tên là Giê-su. Ông ta đã có thể sống ở Jerusalem. Ông ta có thể đã bị đóng đinh trên giá gỗ hình chữ thập, nhưng những điều như ông ta là con của Thiên Chúa, chết rồi sống lại và thân thể bay lên thiên đường thì, trong bản chất của mọi vật, chưa bao giờ và không bao giờ có thể chứng minh được.

Trong nhiều thế kỷ, cái tên nhà quê đặc ở Palestine này (Giê-su) đã được người ta thờ phụng như là Thiên Chúa. Hàng triệu người đã hiến thân để phục vụ hắn. Của cải thế gian được đổ vào những đền thờ hắn. Tên hắn đã mang sự an ủi đến cho những kẻ bệnh hoạn và sắp chết. Tên hắn đã mang sự can đảm đến cho những kẻ cuồng tín chết vì đạo.. Những kẻ sống ngoài lề xã hội, bị xã hội ruồng bỏ, thất bại, cảm thấy rằng hắn biết đến và thương hại những sự đau khổ của họ.

Đúng là có tất cả những điều trên, và nếu đó là tất cả thì đẹp đẽ biết bao, cảm động biết bao, và vinh quang biết bao. Nhưng đó không phải là tất cả. Nó còn một mặt khác.

Nhân danh hắn hàng triệu nam nữ đã bị tù đầy, tra tấn và giết hại, hàng triệu người đã bị làm nô lệ. Nhân danh hắn những tư tưởng gia, khảo cứu gia, bị coi như là những kẻ tội phạm, và những tín đồ theo hắn đã làm đổ máu của những người thông thái nhất, giỏi nhất.

Nhân danh hắn sự tiến bộ của nhiều quốc gia bị chặn đứng cả ngàn năm. Trong Kinh hắn giảng chúng ta thấy cái tín lý về sự đau đớn vĩnh viễn (đọa hỏa ngục. TCN), và những lời của hắn đã gia thêm sự kinh khủng vô tận vào sự chết. Kinh hắn giảng chất đầy thế giới với thù hận và trả thù, coi sự lương thiện trí thức như một tội ác, hạnh phúc trên cõi đời là con đường dẫn xuống địa ngục, tố cáo tình thương yêu như là thấp hèn và như súc vật, thánh hóa sự nhẹ dạ cả tin, tôn vinh sự mù quáng và tiêu diệt tự do của con người. Nhân loại sẽ tốt hơn nhiều nếu cuốn Tân Ước chưa từng được viết ra - Chúa Ki Tô theo quan niệm thần học cũng chưa từng được sinh ra." Nếu những người viết Tân Ước được coi như không phải là do Thiên Chúa gây cho cảm hứng, nếu Giê-su chỉ được coi như là một người thường, nếu những điều tốt đẹp được thu nhận và vứt bỏ đi những điều vô nghĩa, không thể xảy ra, sự trả thù, thì nhân loại sẽ tránh được chiến tranh, những sự tra tấn, máy chém, ngục tối, sự hấp hối và nước mắt, những tội ác và đau khổ trong một ngàn năm.

Trước hết Giê-su là một con người - không gì hơn một con người. Mary là mẹ ông ta. Joseph là cha ông ta. Gia phả của cha ông ta, Joseph, được viết để chứng tỏ rằng thuộc dòng dõi David.

Rồi người ta tuyên bố rằng Giê-su là con của Thượng Đế, rằng mẹ ông ta là một nữ trinh và tiếp tục đồng trinh cho đến khi chết.

Người ta tuyên bố rằng Giê-su sống lại và thân thể bay lên trời.

Phải mất rất nhiều năm những điều vô nghĩa này mới cấy được vào đầu óc con người.

Nếu thực sự ông ta thăng thiên, tại sao ông ta không làm việc này trước công chúng, trước những người đã bạo hành ông? Tại sao cái phép lạ vĩ đại nhất trong các phép lạ này lại phải thực hiện trong bí mật, trong một xó xỉnh?...

Nhưng sau cùng, khi đối diện thần chết, Giê-su mới nhận ra là mình sai lầm và than khóc: "Chúa ơi! Chúa ơi! Sao Ngài lại ruồng bỏ tôi?"

Tại sao chúng ta phải đặt Giê-su lên tột đỉnh của nhân loại? Ông ta có từ ái hơn, dễ tha thứ hơn, hay hi sinh bản thân hơn đức Phật hay không? Ông ta có thông thái hơn, đối diện với cái chết một cách bình tĩnh toàn hảo hơn là Socrates không? Ông ta có kiên nhẫn, nhân từ hơn là Epictetus không? Ông ta có là một triết gia lớn hơn, một tư tưởng gia sâu sắc hơn là Epicurus hay không? Về phương diện nào ông ta đứng trên Zoroaster? Ông ta có hòa ái hơn Lão Tử hay phổ quát hơn Khổng tử không? Những ý tưởng về nhân quyền và bổn phận con người của ông có cao hơn của Zeno không? Ông ta có đưa ra những chân lý cao hơn của Cicero không? Đầu óc ông ta có tinh tế hơn Spinoza không? Đầu óc ông ta có sánh bằng đầu óc của Kepler và Newton không? Trong sự thông minh, trong cách diễn đạt, trong sự sâu rộng của tư tưởng, trong sự phong phú của cách minh họa, trong khả năng so sánh, trong sự hiểu biết về tâm trí, sự đam mê và sợ hãi của con người, ông ta có hơn được Shakespeare không?

Nếu Giê-su thực sự là Thiên Chúa, ông ta phải biết mọi việc trong tương lai. Ông ta phải thấy rõ lịch sử sẽ xảy ra. Ông ta phải biết người ta sẽ diễn giải những lời ông nói như thế nào. Ông ta phải biết những tội ác nào, những sự khủng khiếp nào, những sự ô nhục nào mà người ta sẽ phạm phải nhân danh ông. Ông ta phải biết đến những ngọn lửa bạo hành bốc lên xung quanh chân tay những kẻ bị thiêu sống vì không có cùng niềm tin như những tín đồ Ki Tô Giáo. Ông ta phải biết đến hàng ngàn người, đàn ông cũng như đàn bà, đau đớn mòn mỏi trong ngục tù tối tăm. Ông ta phải biết cái giáo hội của ông ta sẽ phát minh ra những dụng cụ tra tấn; những tín đồ của ông sẽ dùng đến roi vọt và bó củi, xiềng xích và giá căng (banh) người. Ông ta phải thấy chân trời tương lai sáng rực với những ngọn lửa thiêu sống con người trong những cuộc lễ auto da fe. Ông ta phải biết những tín lý, giáo điều sẽ mọc lên như nấm độc trong mọi cuốn sách bổn của giáo hội. Ông ta phải thấy những phe phái Ki Tô ngu đần gây chiến với nhau. Ông ta phải thấy hàng ngàn con người, theo lệnh của các linh mục, xây những nhà tù cho đồng loại. Ông ta phải thấy hàng ngàn máy chém đẫm máu của những người tốt nhất và dũng cảm nhất. Ông ta phải thấy những tín đồ của ông ta sử dụng những dụng cụ tra tấn gây đau đớn cho con người. Ông ta phải biết những diễn giảng về lời ông nói sẽ được viết bằng gươm giáo, và đọc trong ánh sáng của những bó củi thiêu sống người. Ông ta phải biết những Tòa Hình Án Xử Dị Giáo sẽ được thiết lập theo những lời giảng dạy của ông.

Ông ta phải thấy những sự ngụy tạo và suy diễn lệch lạc mà những kẻ đạo đức giả viết ra và nói cho quần chúng. Ông ta phải thấy những cuộc chiến tranh sẽ được gây ra, và ông ta phải biết là trên những cánh đồng chết chóc đó, những ngục tù tăm tối đó, những giá căng người đó, những cuộc thiêu sống người đó, những cuộc hành quyết đó, trong cả ngàn năm, ngọn cờ của cây thập giá đẫm máu đã tung bay.

Ông ta phải biết người ta sẽ khoác áo thánh thiện và đội vương miện cho sự đạo đức giả - sự độc ác và nhẹ dạ cả tin sẽ ngự trị thế giới; phải biết sự tự do của con người sẽ mai một trên thế giới (dưới quyền lực của giáo hội); phải biết rằng nhân danh ông các giáo hoàng và vua chúa sẽ nô lệ hóa hồn xác con người; phải biết rằng họ sẽ bạo hành và tiêu diệt mọi nhà khảo cứu, nhà tư tưởng và nhà phát minh; phải biết là giáo hội của ông ta sẽ dập tắt ánh sáng thánh thiện của lý trí và giữ thế giới trong tăm tối.

Ông ta phải thấy những người theo ông sẽ chọc mù mắt con người, róc thịt, cắt lưỡi họ, tìm những chỗ nào đau đớn nhất trên thân thể con người để mà hành hạ.

Tuy nhiên ông ta đã chết đi với bờ môi khép kín.

Tại sao ông ta không nói lên, không dạy các tông đồ và xuyên qua họ, dạy thế giới: "Các ngươi không được thiêu sống, tù đầy và tra tấn con người nhân danh ta. Các ngươi không được bạo hành đồng loại.

Tại sao ông ta đi đến cõi chết một cách ngu đần, để lại thế giới cho sự đau khổ và nghi ngờ?

Tôi sẽ nói cho các người biết. Vì Giê-su chỉ là một người thường, ông ta chẳng biết gì đến những điều trên. ⁴⁰

Qua 40 trích dẫn từ những tài liệu nghiên cứu sâu rộng về nhân vật Giê-su của các học giả, chuyên gia v.. v.. mà hầu hết đang sống trong truyền thống Ki Tô Giáo nói chung, Ca-Tô Giáo Rô-ma nói riêng, chúng ta đã thấy phần nào chính xác con người thực của Giê-su lịch sử khác với Giê-su mà nền thần học Ki Tô đôn lên như thế nào. Nền thần học Ki Tô đã đưa Giê-su lên địa vị giáo chủ của giáo hội Ca-tô Rô-ma với những thuộc tính thần thánh qua nhiều huyền thoại mà ngày nay đã không còn giá trị. Tuy nhiên, giả thử chúng ta chấp nhận những luận cứ thần học về nhân vật Giê-su với danh nghĩa là giáo chủ lập giáo Ca-Tô Giáo Rô-ma thì có lẽ chúng ta cũng nên biết đến giáo lý của vị giáo chủ này. Vậy thì Giê-su đã giảng dạy những gì, đã giúp cho con người về vấn đề tu tập, đạo đức hay mở mang trí tuệ như thế nào? Đây chính là những chủ đề mà tôi sẽ bàn tới trong chương sau.

Chú Thích - Chương I:

1. Shorto, Russell, Gospel Truth, Riverhead Books, New York, 1997, Front Cover. The Last Supper, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection: one by one the great beams of Christianity are being tested. Biblical scholars – once the guardians of Christian theology – are now using the tools of archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, computer science, and even particle physics to probe the question “Who was Jesus?” The result is a radical revision of the Gospel story that is both surprisingly vivid and to some people, deeply shocking... Most important, the author tells of the impact the scientific perspective is having now that even scholars working under a conservative Catholic imprimatur agree that much of what we know of Jesus is myth.

2. Shorto, Russell, Ibid., p. 14.: ..The work of the Jesus Seminar, and of all contemporary Jesus researchers, in Funk’s view, represents a shift on the part of biblical scholars away from the tyranny of the church and toward cultural honesty. As far as Funk is concerned, scholars have known the truth – that Jesus was nothing more than a man with a vision – for decades; they have taught it to generations of priests and ministers, who do not pass it along to their flocks because they fear a backlash of anger. So the only ones left in the dark are ordinary Christians.

3. Cross, Colin, Who Was Jesus?, Barnes & Nobles Books, New York, 1993, Introduction: Viewed from a distance and considered as a whole, Jesus of Nazareth is a reasonably tangible historical figure. But too close an examination of any individual detail of him causes him to blur...The reason for uncertainty about Jesus is the simplest possible. It is just that there is no record at all, of any kind, about the greater part of his life. He wrote no book. Even what he looked like is unknown. There is not a word of independent proof that he ever even existed. The records that do exist, the gospels, cover only a fraction of Jesus' life and are written from a cultic and ritualistic point of view and not as ordinary history. There are the gravest inconsistencies in the gospel accounts and also many blatant improbabilities.

4. Ernie Bringas, Going By The Book: Past And Present Tragedies of Biblical Authority, Hampton Roads Pub., Co. VA., 1996, p. 191: The consensus today is that the historical Jesus - the words and actions of Jesus and the real events surrounding his life - cannot be determined with precision. While we know how the author of a Gospel regarded Jesus by what he reported (and how he reported it), it is not always possible to penetrate beyond the Gospel portrayals of Jesus to Jesus himself. We cannot determine with certainty what Gospel statements about his life and career are genuine.

5. Ranke-Heinemann, Uta, Putting Away Childish Things, Harper-Collins., San Francisco, 1995, p. 2: We encounter this truth in the person of Jesus. We know neither when and where he was born, nor when he died: He is a man without a biography. We don’t know how long his public activity as a peacher lasted or where exactly it took place. Strictly speaking, we don’t know a whole lot more than that he was born, that there were people who followed him as his disciples, and that he was executed on the cross – the Roman version of the gallows – and thus came the wretched end... This Jesus lies burried not only in Jerusalem, but also beneath a mountain of kitsch, tall tales, and church phraseology.

6. Harvey, Andrew, Son of Man: The Mystical Path to Christ, Jeremy P. Tarcher / Putnam,New York, 1998, p. 4.: Historical criticism has proved, conclusively, that the Gospels are to be read not as Spirit-inspired, faithful eye-witness accounts of Jesus’ life but as carefully sculpted versions of that life, arranged to suit or promote different spiritual interests, personalities, and factions within the dramatic years of early Christianity. The Gospels are neither directly inspired divine documents nor straight-forward historical records; neither divine revelations directly inspired by God nor eye-witness accounts written by people who had known Jesus and wanted to report clearly what they had experienced with him. Written in the last third of the first century, they express and condense the traditions of different early Cristian communities and were put into their current form slowly over a period of three hundred years.

7. Spong, John Shelby, Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks The Birth of Jesus, Harper, San Francisco, 1992, p. 35. Jesus was interpreted by the early Christians in terms of their assumed and unquestioned concepts of God, modeled after the image of a heavenly king. The focus was on the exalted Jesus seated at the right hand of the heavenly throne. The image reflected the popular mythic understanding of the universe as a kingdom.. But he was “born of a woman”.. His origins were equally as scandalous as his means of death. He was a nobody, a child of Nazareth out of which nothing good was thought to come. No one seemed to know his father. He might well have been illegitimate. Hints of that are scattered like undetected and unexploded nuggets of dynamite in the landscape of the early Christian tradition.

8. Spong, John Shelby, Ibid., p. 41. ... Once again the interpretive task went to work. He was not an illegitimate child, God was his father; he was born of the Holy Spitit. He was not a native of Nazareth, he was born in Bethlehem, the city of David. That Bethlehem birth had been foretold by the prophet Micah. He was not a nobody, he was of the royal house of David...

9. Gruber, Elmar R. & Kersten, Holger, The Original Jesus: The Buddhist Sources of Christianity, Element Books, Inc., Rockport, MA, 1995, pp. 3-4.: Hardly any other theme has caused such a stir in the Western world as the person of “Jesus of Nazareth”; hardly any other theme has led to the writing of so many books, or such animated and passionate discussions. And yet the personality of the historical Jesus is veiled in profound darkness. For a millennium and a half there were only accounts depicting Jesus in accordance with official Church theology, written with the objective of strengthening Christians’ faith or inducing other to turn to Christianity... During the nineteenth century the New Testament was subjected to scholarly investigation for the first time. It was the beginning of systematic research into the life of Jesus.. In 1835 David Friedrich Strauss published his influential book The Life of Jesus (Das Leben Jesu). Armed with uncompromisingly critical rational views, he bluntly rejected the historical factuality of the Gospels. For Strauss they were nothing but legends and pious stories about the figure of Jesus, inspired by the Old Testament. Such opposition went further at the mid-nineteenth century. Bruno Bauer completely banned the figure of Jesus from historical research, simply declaring that the central figure in the New Testament was a mythical invention. Jesus and Paul were said to be nothing but literary fictions; and Christianity was seen as having been created by a fanatical group which concocted the faith around those two invented figures out of Jewish, Greek, and Roman religious traditions... Today there are well over 80000 monographs on Jesus, but their impact in terms of illuminating the historical figure is modest in the extreme. Who was Jesus? When he was born? What did he look like? When he was crucified? When how, and where did he died? Finding answers to those questions soon turned out to be an insoluble problem. In the books written during the first two centuries AD there is hardly any mention of Jesus as a real human being. The later sources are almost exclusively theological writings, which take for granted a belief in Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Son of God. So truly impartial written testimony is practically non-existent, and scholarship in thus not in a position, even today, to say in which year Jesus was born... Hardly any attention is paid in the canonical Gospels of Jesus’ childhood and youth, a phase of life of such importance for the formation of a person’s character. Even in the accounts of the brief period of his public impact there is only very sparse biographical information about him. It seems as if he was almost completely unknown to the historians of his time, or at least not worth mentioning. How is it possible that they paid no attention to the amazing miracles and extraordinary events recorded in the Gospels.

10. Martin, Michael, The Case Against Christianity, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1991, p. 37: Modern critical methods of biblical scholarship have called into question the historical accuracy of the Bible and, in particular, the New Testament. In the light of this critical approach to the New Testament many theologians have argued that not much is known about Jesus. For example, W. Trilling argues that “not a single date of his life” can be established with certainty and J. Kahl maintains that the only thing that is known about him is that he “existed at a date and place which can be established approximately”. Other scholars argue that the quest for the historical Jesus is hopeless...The most respected contemporary critic of the historicity of Jesus is G. A. Wells... Wells stresses that his skepticism concerning the historicity of Jesus is based in large part on the views of Christian theologians and biblical scholars who admit that the canonical Gospels were written by unknown authors not personally acquainted with Jesus, between 40 and 80 years after Jesus’ supposed lifetime. According to Wells they also admit that there is much in these accounts that is legend and that the Gospel stories are shaped by the writers’ theological motives. Furthermore, the evidence provided by the Gospels is exclusively Christian..

11. Foner, Philip S., Editor, The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine: “The Age of Reason”, A Citadel Press Book, New York, 1993, pp. 571-572: The history of Jesus Christ is contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The first chapter of Matthew begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapter of Luke there is also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did those two agree, it would not prove the genealogy to be true, because it might, nevertheless, be a fabrication; but as they contradict each other in every particular, it proves falsehood absolutely. If Matthew speaks truth, Luke speaks falsehood, and if Luke speaks truth, Matthew speaks falsehood; and as there is no authority for believing one more than the other, there is no authority for believing either; and if they cannot be believed even in the very first thing they say and set out to prove, they are not entitled to be believed in anything they say afterward...If they cannot be believed in their account of Jesus' genealogy, how are we to believe them when they tell us strange things such as Jesus was the Son of God begotten by a ghost, and that an angel announced this in secret to his mother?..

12. Shorto, Russell, Ibid., pp. 36-41: From the early second century, Jewish writers observing the rapidly spreading Christian religion noted with a sneer that the supposed divinely inspired figure at its center was in fact a bastard. Swirling around the gospel stories, according to some scholars, are whispered cries of “illegitimate”... Technically, even by the traditional rewading, this charge is true, for according to the accepted interpretation, Joseph, Mary’s betrothed, is not the actual father of the child. But a careful reading of Matthew’s account may suggest a more mundane kind of illegitimacy..and that Matthew constructed an elaborate theological architecture to try to transform that nasty reality into a myth he could build a tradition on... One thing about the genealogy that has bothered theologians for centuries is the mention of several women among the men who, in the ancient view, carry the bloodline. Why we are told that “Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob”, and so on, with no mention of the women involved, but then learn that Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah “by Tamar”, and Salmon the father of Boaz b”by Rahab”, and Boaz the father of Obed “by Ruth”, and that David was the father of Solomon “by the wife od Uriah”..? A solution to the puzzle has been worked up over the two past decades by a group of scholars who realized that all of the women mentioned are associated with scandalous sexual behavior. In other word, Matthew is softening the blow of Jesus’ questionable legitimacy by indicating that in several previous instances it was necessary for the royal bloodline of Israel to be passed on via less-than-ordinary means. Bastardy, it may even be suggested, was a badge of honor...

13. Foner, Philip S., Ibid., p. 539: Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would distinguish any nation of people by the name of His Chosen People we must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest of the world of the purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation of ruffians and cut-throats as the ancient Jews were; a people who, corrupted by the copying after such monsters and impostors as Moses and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel and David, had distinguished themselves above all others on the face of the known earth for barbarity and wiskedness.

14. Lockhart, Douglas, The Dark Side of God, Elements Books, Inc., Boston, MA., 1999, p. 47: With the ability to invent history through the forging of imposing-looking documents complete with papal seals, and with the added ability to instantly insert such fabrications into Canon Law, the Catholic Church systematically recreated its past and ended up believing its own lies.

15. Ellerbe, Helen, The Dark Side of Christian History, Morningstar & Lark, Orlando, FL., 1999, p.17: The Catholic Encyclopedia concedes that “In all departments forgery and interpolation as well as ignorance had wrought mischief on a grand scale.” Despite Church prohibitions against any further research into the origins of the Gospels, scholars have shown that all four canonized Gospels have been doctored and revised. While the Church claimed that truth was static in nature and had been revealed only once, it continually found cause for changing that truth.

16. Lockhart, Douglas, Ibid., p 46: In his book, The Decline of Rome, the historian Joseph Vogt draws our attention to The Donation of Constantine, a document dated 30 March, 315, but actually composed during the papacy of Stephen III (752-7) to convince Pepin, king of the Franks, that he should defend the Church against the Lombards. A forgery through and through, The Donation claimed that Constantine, suffering from leprosy, had had a vision in which Saints Peter and Paul had told him to contact Pope Sylvester. Healed as a result of obeying this heavenly command, Constantine had in gratitude handed over his palace to Pope Sylvester and made the entire Western Empire subservient to the Holy See. The Sacred See of Blessed Peter was to be exalted above the Empire and the Emperor’s throne, and Sylvester made ruler of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Constantinople and all the churches of the world...This document was accepted without a quibble until 1440, when Lorenzo Valla, a papal aide, proved beyong all doubt the The Donation was a fraud. Valla’s book was published in 1517..and in spite of all independent scholars agreeing with Valla, the Papacy continued to deny any skulduggery for the next few centuries... King Pepin, however, was very impressed when he read The Donation; for it appeared to prove beyond doubt that the Pope was successor to both Peter and Constantine. All power on earth, indeed; and behind the scenes the power of heaven to back it up. Routing the Lombards, Pepin dutifully handed over the lands mentioned in The Donation, thus making the Holy See all-powerful at a single stroke.

17. Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Ibid., p. 212: One very special lightning bolt from the Spirit was the so –called Donation of Constantine. In it Emperor Constantine (d. 337) showed great generosity toward the Church: “We have transferred our [Lateran] palace and all the provinces, places, and towns belonging to the city of Rome, to Italy, and to the West to the most blessed supreme pontiff, our father Sylvester, the universal pope, and to his – or his successors’ – power and sway.” The date, official seal, and signature authenticated this donation. Constantine, the absolute monarch thus gave to the pope all of Western Roman Empire; and the popes became successors of the Roman Emperors in the West. Constantine himself was content with the East, “because the earthly emperor should not have authority where the head of the Christian religion [the pope] has been appointed by the heavenly emperor [Jesus].” Yet it was all a swindle, a hand-made-homemade inside job, an ecclesiastical forgery. From it, of course, the Church got inestimable advantages in power and possessions, and that for centuries. The forgery had been cooked up in the papal chanceries around the middle of the 8^th century; it was not exposed until the 15th century. The detective was a humanist, critic of the papacy, and high official of the Roman Curia, Lorenzo Valla (chết năm 1457). But his work exposing the fraud wasn’t published until 1517 by Ulrich von Hutten at the beginning of the Reformation. The Catholic side did not admit the whole deception until much later. The Lexikon fur Theologie und Kirche writes, “since the middle of the 19^th century..the contents of the Donation of Constantine have been considered a forgery from the Catholic standpoint” ([1961] VI, 484).

18. Lockhart, Douglas, Ibid., p. 47: By 1187 the forging of documents had become a profitable business, with a whole school of forgers toiling to produce ratification of Gregory III’s ambititions; there were even a policy of making old documents say the reverse of what they actually said. Amusingly, de Rosa points out that some these earlier documents were forgeries in their own right, and states that this school of forgers “...treated all papers, forged or genuine, with a completely impartial dishonesty”. De Rosa is rightfully merciless when dealing with this extraordinary situation, and reveals that during the mid-twelfth century, the Decretum, or Code of Canon Laws, was “..peppered with three centuries of forgeries and the conclusions drawn from them”. One such conclusion was that the pope was superior to, and the “source” of, all laws without qualification; a fact noted by de Rosa as suggesting that he was by definition equal to the Son of God. Here then was the Church we had to have, the institution created by God through Constantine to shed light on a darkened world.

19. Graham, Lloyd, Deceptions & Myths of the Bible, The Citadel Press Book, New York, 1995, p. 454: ...He (Constantine) killed with his own hands two of hid brothers-in-law, had his wife, his son Crispus and two nephews murdered, bled to death his political rivals, threw the unbelieving into a well, and caused uncounted thousands to die on the battle field.

20. Graham, Lloyd, Ibid., p. 454: For nearly 2000 years Christianity has been trying to save us instead of civilizing us and it has ended in a century of savagery, an era in which 250 million Christians died in Christian wars... Such is Christianity, a religion based on a fraud, founded by “fools” and confirmed by an assassin – Constantine the Great.

21. Graham, Lloyd, Ibid., p.: 438: Thus the Catholic Church is founded on Peter whom, four verses later, Jesus openly calls Satan. Thus if the Catholic Church is founded on Peter, it is founded on Satan – a fact we have long expected. Peter’s story is the veriest nonsense – one mortal man endowed with the power over all humanity for all eternity. In things religious, Catholics are indeed credulous but can they be so credulous as to believe that pre-Christian sages like Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates...require this ignorant Jewish fisherman to bind and loose theirs souls? No, and neither are we.

22. Daleiden, Joseph, The Final Superstition: A Critical Evaluation of the Judeo-Christian Legacy, Prometheus Books, New York, 1994, p. 83: It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that many biblical scholars believe the evidence indicates that this reference to Peter, like many other New Testament passages, was inserted at a later date.

23. Kung, Hans, Christ Sein (1976), p.338-339: The historical Jesus.. counted on the world’s coming to an end in his own lifetime. And for this coming of God’s kingdom he doubtless did not want to found a special community distinct from Israel, with its own creed, its own cult, its own constitution, its own office...All this means that in his own lifetime Jesus never found any church. He had no idea of founding and organizing a large-scale religious operation that would have to be created...

24. Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Ibid., p. 217: The Church has turned Jesus into its propagandist. For this reason we take everything that presupposes or dicusses or promotes the existence of a Church as interpolation by the authors of the Gospels into Jesus’ original sayings. That includes Jesus’ hailing Peter as the rock on which he will build his church (Matt. 16:18), since Jesus never meant to found a church... It’s not Jesus who’s speaking here; it’s the early church, which was interested in having such a leadership position and authority figure because of its growing hierarchical structure. In the inauthentic chapter 21 of John – that is, in a later addition to the actual gospel – the idea of a deputy is already clearly developed. Peter becomes the shepherd of the flock of Christ. He takes over the functions of Jesus, the former and actual shepherd, as his representative. Shortly afterward, the Church began to think that the important thing was not the person of Peter. The Church decided that the office Peter held was the bedrock foundation of the Church, and that Jesus established it permanently. With this concept we have the popes as Peter’s successors and Christ’s deputies, and the papacy as the foundation of the Church.

25. Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Ibid., p. 215: Jesus has no intention of founding a “church” and certainly not a “church universal.” For an authentic example of Jesus’ view, consider Matt 10:5-6, which expresses the exact opposite of a universal commission: “These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Two further authentic passages are Matt 15:24, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and Matt. 10:23, “You will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of Man comes.” ...Jesus himself – and all theologians have by now acknowleged this – believed that the Kingdom of God would be coming soon. But that is the opposite of a world mission in the grand style.

26. Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabben, Rome Has Spoken, p. 82: Nicholas V, Dum Diversas, 1452/54: We grant to you (Kings of Spain and Portugal) by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Sacarens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property..and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.

27. Pettifer, Julian & Bradley, Richard, Missionaries, BBC Books, London, 1990, p. 132-133: By the end of the 15^th century, (1493), Pope Alexander VI created two spheres of influence; he determined that the whole of the Americas with the exception of Brazil, should belong to Spain, while Portugal would take Brazil and whatever could be seized in Asia and Africa. It was decreed that along with territorial gains whould go the duty to incorporate any native peoples into the Catholic Church..With the invading armies came priests and friars whose presence justified the subjugation of the people and the use of whatever coercion was judged necessary to bring them to the faith.

28. Huntington, Samuel P., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996, p. 70: ..and it was for God as well as for gold that Westerners went out to

conquer the world in the sixteenth century.

29. Wilson, A.N., Jesus, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1992, p. vii: The Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are two separate beings, with very different stories. It is difficult enough to reconstruct the first, and in the attempt we are likely to do irreparable harm to the second..

30. Lockhart, Douglas, The Dark Side of God, p.275: In Chapter 14 we considered the humanity of Jesus and concluded that he had been a man like any other. He was subject to anger, pain, thirst, weariness, sadness, fear and death. And he was capable of making mistakes; which is to say that his knowledge was human knowledge, his belief system a reflection of the culture and time into which he was born. He had no knowledge of modern physics. He was not aware of virus or germs or the possibility of antiseptics, knew nothing of the combustion engine, and could not have told you that Mars followed an elliptic orbit. All in all, a diminution of what has been said about him by others. But not a dismissal. Not easily dismissed, this highly unusual man whose unique sense of God separated him from his religious peers. He was unusual, yes, unique certainly, but not by any stretch of the imagination either perfect or all-knowing in the sense eventually suggested by Catholic thinkers.

31. Schonfield, Hugh J., Those Incredible Christians, p. xi: In The Passover Plot, I rejected after protracted and thorough research the traditional portrayal of Jesus and revealed him as a Jew, who at a psychological moment in Jewish history courageously, steadfastly and with deep insight acted on the conviction that he was the Messiah his afflicted people were awaiting. I showed him to have been a man of faith, but no more than man, who employed his natural intelligence to bring to fruition the predictions which in the manner of his time he believed must be accomplished.

32. Schweitzer, Albert, The Psychiatric Study of Jesus, p. 35: In the last decade historical research has more and more clearly perceived that the expectation of the second coming of the Messiah is at the center of Jesus' thought, and that it dominates his feeling, his will and his action far more rigorously than we had previously supposed... Jesus considered himself to be the Messiah and expected his majestic return on the clouds of heaven.

33. Schweitzer, Albert, Ibid., p. 37: Jesus is evidently a hybrid, tainted from birth by heredity, who even in his early youth as a born degenerate attracted attention by an extremely exaggerated self-consciousness combined with high intelligence and a very slightly developed sense of family and sex. His self-consciousness slowly unfolded until it rose to a fixed delusional system, the pecularities of which were determined by the intensive religious tendencies of the time and his one-sided preoccupation with the writings of the Old Testament. Jesus was moved to express his ideas by the appearance of John the Baptist. Proceeding step by step Jesus finally arrived at the point of relating to himself all the Scriptural promises, which had become vital again through national misfortune, and for whose ultimate glorious fuldilment all hearts hoped. Jesus regards himself as a completely supernatural being. For only so and not otherwise can man understand his behavior when he arrogated to himself divine rights like the forgiveness of sins. (Matt. 9:2; Mark 2:5-12; Luke 5:20, 7:48)

34. Schweitzer, Albert, Ibid., p.40: We find a boy with unusual mental talents who is, nevertheless, predisposed to psychic disturbances, and within whom delusions gradually form. He spent his whole leisure in the study of the Holy Scriptures, the reading of which certainly contributed to his mental illness. When at the age of thirty he first made a public appearance, his paranoia was completely established. It is apparently one of those cases, where formless and indistinct psychotic ideas are, indeed, present, but where, nonetheless, they need an external shock and a strong emotion, in order to form a typical systematic structure of paranoia. This shock was provided for Jesus by another paranoid, no other than John the Baptist. Meantime Jesus' delusions attained their most complete maturity, and when he heard of the "forerunner of the Messiah", who was baptizing sinful people in the river Jordan, he betook himself there in order to receive baptism himself. After the baptism Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days. This sojourn is for us of the greater interest for these forty days lie between two sharply differentiated sections of his life. The delusions which up to that time were isolated and unrelated to each other henceforth merged into a great systematic structure of delusions; doubtless Jesus had at that time repeated conversations with God the Father who had commissioned him and whose doctrine he preached. Such a development of his illness, a transition from the latent to the active stage of paranoia, is quite characteristic of this psychosis. In the great drama of the public ministry of Jesus stretching over three years, the megalomania, which mounted ceaselessly and immeasurably, formed the center around which everything else turned. All his sayings, his teachings, his sermons culminated in a single word: "I" (John 6:29, 35, 38, 40, 47-58; 8:12; 11:25ff; 14:6, 13 etc..)

35. Schweitzer, Albert, Ibid., p. 43: Through the suggestive power of various incidents, through John the Baptist...and through the enthusiasm of the disciples, Jesus is brought to the point of believing himself to be the Messiah, the King of the Jews, the Son of God, God's interpreter, God's witness, and finally identifying himself with God. Threats of the fanatical Pharisees and Scribes also awakened in him the notion that he was the sacrificial lamb which by its death was to take away the sins of Israel, and that after his resurrection he would ascend into the heavens, there to be revealed in his complete glory... Binet-Sanglé finds seven hallucinations in all the account, two purely optical and five which are described as both optical and auditory-verbal.

36. Russel, Bertrand, Why I Am Not A Christian, p. 19: I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the manner of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects.

37. Spong, John Shelby, Rescuing The Bible From Fundamentalism, p. 21: There are passages in the Gospels that portray Jesus of Nazareth as narrow-minded, vindictive, and even hypocritical.

38. Spong, John Shelby, Ibid., pp. 21,24: Are we drawn to a Lord who would destroy a herd of pigs in order to exorcise a demon? Are we impressed when the one we call Lord curses a fig tree because it did not bear fruit out of season?... A literal Bible presents me with far more problems than assets. It offers me a God I cannot respect, much less worship.

39. Alves, Rubem, Protestantism And Repression, p. 63: Who wrote the Pentateuch? The response of the historical Christian Church to that question is definite: “Moses wrote them”. If Moses did not write the Pentateuch, then the apostles (e.g., Paul and John) made a mistake when they said that he did. If they erred on this matter, how can we believe them when they deal with truths concerning heaven and the future life? If Moses did not write the Pentateuch, then Jesus lied or erred when he said Moses did. If Jesus did not know this, though he said he did know, how can we believe him when he talks about the thing of heaven?

40. Lewis, Joseph, Editor: Ingersoll: The Magnificent , p. 117-122:

Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is but one savior, one inspired book, and but one little narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven.

Why did Jesus not again enter the temple and end the old dispute with demonstration? Why did he not confront the Roman soldiers who had taken money to falsely swear that his body had been stolen by his friends? Why did he not make another triumphal entry into Jerusalem? Why did he not say to the multitude: "Here are the wounds in my feet, and in my hands, and in my side. I am the one you endeavored to kill, but death is my slave? Simply because resurrection is a myth. The miracle of the resurrection I do not and cannot believe.

We know nothing certainly of Jesus Christ. We know nothing of his infancy, nothing of his youth, and we are not sure that such a person ever existed.

There was in all probability such a man as Jesus Christ. He may have lived in Jerusalem. He may have been crucified; but that he was the son of god, or that he was raised from the dead, and ascended bodily to heaven, has never been, and, in the nature of things, can never be, substantiated.

For many centuries this Peasant of Palestine has been worshiped as god.

Millions and millions have given their lives to his service. The wealth of the world was lavished on his shrines. His name carried consolation to the diseased and dying... His name gave courage to the martyr..., The outcasts, the deserted, the fallen, felt that Christ was their friend, felt that he knew their sorrows and pitied their sufferings.

All this is true, and if it were all, how beautiful, how touching, how glorious it would be. But it is not all. There is another side.

In his name millions and millions of men and women have been imprisoned, tortured and killed. In his name millions and millions have been enslaved. In his name the thinkers, the investigators, have branded as criminals, and his followers have shed the blood of the wisest and best. In his name the progress of many nations was stayed for a thousand years. In his gospel was found the dogma of eternal pain, and his words added an infinite horror to death. His gospel filled the world with hatred and revenge; made intellectual honesty a crime; made happiness here the road to hell, denounce love as base and bestial, canonized credulity, crowned bigotry and destroyed the liberty of man.

It would have been far better had the NT never been written - far better had the theological Christ never lived. Had the writers of the NT been regarde as uninspired, had Christ been thought of only a man, had the good been accepted and the absurd, the impossible, and the revengeful thrown away, mankind would have escaped the wars, the crimes and sorrows of a thousand years.

At first Christ was a man - nothing more. Mary was his mother, Joseph his father. The genealogy of his father, Joseph, was given to show that he was of the blood of David.

Then the claim was made that he was the son of god, and that his mother was a virgin, and that she remained virgin until her death.

The claim was made that Christ rose from the dead and ascended bodily to heaven.

It required many years for these absurdities to take possession of the minds of men.

If he really ascended, why did he not do so in public, in the presence of his persecutors? Why should this, the greatest of miracles, be done in secret, in a corner?

At last, in the dusk of death, Christ, finding that he was mistaken, cried out: "My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken me?"

Why should we place Christ at the top and summit of the human race? Was he kinder, more forgiving, more self-sacrificing than Buddha? Was he wiser, did he meet death with more perfect calmness, than Socrates? Was he more patient, more charitable, than Epictetus? Was he a greater philosopher, a deeper thinker, than Epicurus? In what respect was he the superior of Zoroaster? Was he gentler than Lao Tsze, more universal than Confucius? Were his ideas of human rights and duties superior to those of Zeno? Did he express grander truths than Cicero? Was his mind subtler than Spinoza's? Was his brain equal to Kepler's or Newton's? Was he grander in death - a sublimer martyr than Bruno? Was he in intelligence, in the force and beauty of expression, in breadth and scope of thought, in wealth of illustration, in aptness of comparison, in knowledge of the human brain and heart, of all passions, hopes and fears, the equal of Shakespeare, the greatest of human race?

If Christ was in fact god, he knew all the future. Before him like a paronama moved the history yet to be. He knew how his words would be interpreted. He knew what crimes, what horrors, what infamies, would be committed in his name. He knew that the hungry flames of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs. He knew that thousands and thousands of brave men and women would languish in dungeons in darkness, filled with pain. He knew that his church would invent and use instruments of torture; that his followers would appeal to whip and fagot, to chain and rack. He saw the horizon of the future lurid with the flames of the auto da fé. He knew what creeds would spring like poisonous fungi from every text. He saw the ignorant sects waging war against each other. He saw thousands of men, under the order of priests, building prisons for their fellow-men. He saw thousands of scaffolds dripping with the best and bravest blood. He saw his followers using the instruments of pain. He heard the groans - saw the faces white with agony. He heard the shrieks and sobs and cries of all the moaning, martyred multitudes. He knew that commentaries would be written on his words with swords, to be read by the light of fagots. He knew that the Inquisition would be born of the teachings attributed to him.

He saw the interpolations and falsehoods that hypocrisy would write and tell. He saw all wars that would be waged, and he knew that above these fields of death, these dungeons, these racking, these burnings, the executions, for a thousand years would float the dripping banner of the cross.

He knew that hypocrisy would be robed and crowned - that cruelty and credulity would rule the world; knew that liberty would perish from the earth; knew that popes and kings in his name would enslave the souls and bodies of men; knew that they would persecute and destroy the discoverers, thinkers and inventors; knew that his church would extinguish reason's holy light and leave the world without a star.

He saw his disciples extinguishing the eyes of men, flaying them alive, cutting out their tongues, searching for all the nerves of pain...

And yet he died with voiceless lips.

Why did he fail to speak? Why did he not tell his disciples, and through them the world: "You shall not burn, imprison and torture in my name. You shall not persecute your fellow-men."..

Why did he go dumbly to his death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt?

I will tell you why. He was a man, and did not know.

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