BBC recreation...
Racism in the portrayal of Christ did not end with Matthew, but continued with the Christian church as it became a white European institution. The long haired White ean WASP Jesus typified this new racial stereotype. Nazarenes always had long hair, but no Nazarene would ever drink wine, and given the gospel accounts there is no way that the Jesus Christ figure could have been a Nazarene, since we are told that he drank all the time. If he was a long haired Nazarene (as Matthew's false history tries to suggest, in order to make up an excuse for his living up north in Harlem, instead of dwelling among the 'racially pure Jewish nationa') then Jesus was a failed Nazarene, and also a sinner, since it was considered a grevious sin among Nazarenes to drink any alcohol.
The White European alterations of the gospel did not end with the creation of an archetypal white skinned Jesus, but extended to the gutting of the meaning of the crucifixion. The early church fathers discussed quite openly in their letters that the Christian religion was considered a threat by Caesar and the Roman elites and the Roman authorities. In making note of this fact in their correspondance, they were only stating the obvious, in that if the authorities executed someone who, the story went, was raised from the dead by God, this did not reflect very well on the authorities. Think of this way. Assume that George W. Bush, while he was governor of Texas, executed a person who was then 'raised from the dead' by God, or so it was said. Now whether or not a person believes in God is not important when it comes to understanding the political meaning of the gospel story. It is very insulting to the majesty of Caesar and the political authorities to suggest that 'Caesar crucifies slaves, but God raises his victims from the dead.' You don't have to be some sort of spiritual Einstein to appreciate the political significance of the crucifixion metaphor. The meaning is quite obvious.
And it is because the meaning of the symbolism of the crucifixion was very obvious that the 'Church Fathers' as they were called made note of the fact that the early Christian religion was perceived as a 'threat' by the Roman establishment, because when you just take off the blinkers provided by two thousand years of religion and just look at the symbol without the interpretation forced upon it by theology it is obviously not only a threat, but a terrible insult as well. And so the Church Fathers set out to alter Christianity. As they bluntly described their assigned task, they would use Christianity as a tool to buttress the status quo and create what they called 'good citizens'. To this very day the principle focus of such religious institutions as Christian Television and all the allied churches in the land focuses on this agenda of creating 'good citizens' who 'obey', with 'obedience' and 'subjection to the authority of the Lord' being the center piece of religious political propaganda to this very day.
I say 'religious political propaganda' since all 'theology' and all 'religion' is merely politics concealed. A sermon is actually a form of political speech. Theology describes a social system, and 'salvation' finds its expression in the organization of the body politic and how people are to think and behave as part of the larger social order. Thus Christianity with its emphasis on 'surrender to the Lord' or 'giving complete control to the Lord' actually describes an elitist social order where class divisions are rigidly enforced, and the duty of religion is to create 'good citizens' who rather than questioning the authority of powerful elites, are instead 'obedient to authority'. This was the agenda of the early Church Fathers, as their letters so plainly spell out, and so today much of Christianity remains focused on 'creating good obedient citizens' to this very day. Therefore this form of 'salvation' is actually a political tool designed to prop up the status quo and thwart any moves towards greater equality, by keeping those who have power in power while training the masses of peasants below subservient, not to mention laboring to create wealth for those who rule over them, and become quite rich while doing so...
In order to accomplish this perversion it was required that the offensive meaning of the crucifixion symbolism be bled white and sucked dry, and then replaced with some other meaning, a new meaning which would then be constantly hammered home by refusing to tolerate the existence of any alternative interpretation. As a practical example of what I mean, you can consider the story of George W. Bush, who executed someone, we will call Joshua (the english transliteration of the Hebrew name, Yeshua, of which 'Jesus' is the old Greek transliteration). Now George Bush was humilitated when God rose Joshua from the dead, and the American religious right was appalled at the meaning inherent in this symbolism, as one could tell as the letters began to fly back and forth among the religious right of the day (the church fathers were, after all, members of the ancient religious right, as their social sensibilities and their doctrines of 'infallibility' indicate).
Now George Bush was being 'threatened', just as the church fathers noted that Caesar was threatened by the crucifixion story, and thus the challenging task at hand was to co-opt and thus pervert and corrupt the meaning of the symbol. If they were successful at coming up with an alternative means of viewing this symbol, even George Bush could become a 'Christian', in that the humiliating insult of the gospel symbol would be submerged under religious indoctrination, and soon enough, by refusing to tolerate any other interpretation, the original meaning would become lost and most people would not even see what was right before their eyes. This might seem like a tall order, but the church fathers pulled it off.
The way they accomplished this seemingly impossible feat was by defining the death of Yeshua as 'a sacrifice to pay for the sins of humanity.' They did this by claiming that Yeshua was one of those goat or sheep sacrifices described in the book of Leviticus in the Bible. So then, when you see Mel Gibson's film, the Passion of the Christ, you are supposed to do what Christians are reported to do, and leave the theaters in tears as you contemplate 'what Jesus did for me, a sinner.' Christ was a 'substitute' we are told, and he 'took our place on the cross.' You are to say, 'I should have been crucified, but Jesus took my place, and completely fulfilled the requirements of the law, which no human could ever hope to fulfill. God is a holy God, and cannot tolerate sin. All sin must be punished, and thus Jesus took my place, so that the requirements for vengeance of a Holy God could be satisfied.' So then you see, God wants to crucify everyone. When you see that horrible whipping, you should think to yourself, after being trained and blinded by religious ideology, of course, 'that should have been me getting whipped and skinned alive. I deserve it. We all do. That should have been me that Caesar was tortuting and murdering, as the just punishment of Holy God for all my sins. There is no small sin. God is Holy God and all sins must be punished by a sadistic legal system,' which perfectly describes Caesar's legal system.
Keep in mind that the death of the Jesus Christ figure was not exceptional or unique, and as bad as it might have been, it was also not the worst suffering a human being ever endured at the hand of the sadists who seized authority of the state, and used it to accumulate wealth and power, something they could not do on their own (if someone wanted to become ten times as rich as someone else, on their own, they could work at ten jobs, but no one has ever figured out a way to accomplish this feat without using other people, hence the need to protect the status quo, and hence the need for 'Christian theology' and 'Christian salvation'). One famous example of this sort of thing was the slave rebellion led by Spartacus, which ended by having Caesar torture to death five thousand slaves. They were crucified along all the roads leading into Rome, as a demonstration of Imperial Power, as a clear warning to everyone who came in and out on the roads that led into Rome. Each and everyone of these slaves suffered every bit as much as Jesus, or anyone else who was ever tortured and murdered by the state, but no one sees their deaths or their sufferings, since they have been hidden, deliberately, by the perversion known as 'Christian theology.'
By normalizing the crucifixion, using doctrine which taught that 'Christ died to pay for my sins', The Christ figure was separated from all the other victims of torture and suffering, and so we find that his death is presented in the Gibson film, as it has been by Christian religion, as being somehow exceptional, a singular event of suffering, an outstanding and historically unique example of death, murder and suffering, which is never placed into historical context, for, to place it into context would be to once again humiliate Caesar and the powerful elites. It was to avoid this humiliation that the crucifixion was forced out of context in the first place, and the great stubborness of orthodox Christian theology, the constant threats of hell fires and burnings for not 'accepting what Jesus did for you on the cross', all this intolerance of differing viewpoints and the singular stubborness of the 'preaching of the one true gospel', all this is just a politically reactionary attempt to prop up an ancient right wing reaction against a symbol which encapsulated a direct attack on the right wing, the status quo, and the established social order, replacing it instead with a brutal, sadistic, psuedo-legalistic interpretation of the gospel message. In the end, even Caesar became a Christian, since the church fathers did their job so well.
The church fathers were also able to control the agenda by being in control of the voting which decided which books would be in the canon, and thus in the Bible, and thus become 'the Word of God,' and not surprisingly, the end result was a document heavily slanted towards the view point of the religious right ('slaves obey your masters', 'obey the authorities or face the sword', 'women keep in subjection and be silent'). That such offensive sludge wound up in the Bible is not a surprise when you consider who was doing the voting and when you examine their theology for its political meaning it becomes obvious that such reactionary drivel would become the word of God in order to prop up their backwards social agenda.
The fiction would also have to be created that the Bible was 'the inerrant Word of God.' Thus the Bible would become a proxy used to elicit the kind of blind obedience demanded of well behaved slaves in the heirarchical social order the church fathers sought to maintain and preserve.
Nevertheless the Church fathers were not in complete control of the process of canonization. They destroyed hundreds of documents in a book burning riot, since 'Christian theology' is such a shabby and transparent deception that it cannot tolerate or survive criticism of any sort (and this simple fact explains the notorious Christian intolerance and the obssession with what they refer to as 'heretics'). However there is also a process of 'canonization by usage.' Some documents needed to be included because they were widely used, and to exclude them would have resulted in divisions that would have diluted the centralized authority they sought to create. So we find inconvenient manuscripts included in God's infallible word, even though they contradict the theology the church fathers labored to create to rescue and prop up Caesar, who was the one they really served. For example, in the Gospel of Mark, we are told that the food laws in Leviticus were human commmandments. We are told that the Jesus Christ figure was baptized 'for his sins'. The Jesus Christ of Mark's gospel states that 'you must not call me good, for there is no one who is good except God.' According to theology, Jesus was 'without sin' since, according to the psuedo-legal argument, that was the only way he could be 'crucified for my sins' and 'pay the price for my sins' since it is claimed that if Jesus had 'sinned' then he could only be punished for his own sins, instead of 'dying for my sins.' I call this mumbo jumbo 'psuedo-legal' since it is a violation of the principles of justice to condemn Tom for Harry's murder or theft, and then claim that 'justice was fulfilled' because Tom served Harry's time. Rather justice was perverted, Tom should be set free, and Harry should go on trial for his own murders or robberies. However if Tom owed a five thousand dollar credit card debt and Harry paid the five thousand on Tom's behalf, no principle of justice is perverted in the process. It is just this psuedo-legalistic argument that Christianity tries to make in order to blend together the cow sacrifices of Leviticus with the crucifixion symbol, something that will be required if the obvious meaning of the symbol is to be obfusticated, hidden, obscured, thus sparing Caesar and the powerful elites the humiliation that would otherwise follow. Christ could pay off your credit card debt, but he could not serve time on your behalf for your theft of your neighbour's lawn mower.
Now the Bible is not infallible, but if the right wing authoritarian principle is to triumph, and Caesar kept safe and protected, it will be required that ministers tell lies and become real devious by insisting that the Bible is 'an infallible authority', and thus, by proxy, when ministers speak they speak with infallible authority, and when they transfer this authority into the political realm, which is how it always works out, they create an extreme right wing authoritarian state, with a harshly punitive legal system, where obedience, surrender, and subservience are a human obligation, given how God wrote a book. No minister therefore will claim any authority without quoting a bible chapter and verse.
There is this interesting metaphorical symbol in the book of Revelations, which describes a dragon, the symbol for a deceiver in the document, dressed up like a lamb, the symbol of Christianity in the same document. That dragon looked like a lamb, but when it opened its mouth, it deceived people, since it was just a dragon dressed like a lamb. The dragon dressed like a lamb worshipped the Beast, which is a symbol for Caesar in the book of Revelations (some scholars think it was intended to symbolize the Emperor Domitian). The dragon caused the population to 'worship the Beast', which is another way of saying that the dragon dressed up like a lamb caused the people to be subservient and obedient to Caesar, and as it then goes on to say, the dragon dressed as a lamb caused those who refused obedience to Caesar to be executed.
We know that Christian theology is based upon a forced interpreation of the menus of Leviticus. I say 'menus' since these animal sacrifices describe the various animals which an ancient tribal god was said to eat. ('You shall not forget, for this is my food', we are told in the Bible).
We are told in Jeremiah, that these sacrifice rituals were a fraud, and that the Jerusalem priesthood was forging the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). Jeremiah wrote, in the 7th chapter, the 21st verse, 'burn your animal sacrifices and eat the flesh yourselves, for I gave your ancestors no instructions or commands concerning whole offerings and sacrifice, but they did not listen, they paid no heed and proceeded ahead with their own plans with the most stubbornly evil and wicked hearts. Now truth has perished from their lips and it is no longer hears in the land.' Religious dogmatism had taken hold in the country, in the form of these fraudulent animal sacrifices, described in that forgery known as Leviticus, among other documents, and the lie had also taken hold, for Jeremiah was a dissident priest, and although he informed his mostly illiterate country men that his fellow priests were busy forging stories about what Moses supposedly did or commanded, they did not listen to him, but preferred the religious lie instead. The fraudulent priests had triumphed through the simple trick of declaring their forgeries 'the infallible Torah, the law of God.' The polemic in Jeremiah, continues and in the 8th chapter Jeremiah laments 'why are these people so stubborn' and in the 8th verse he makes his criticism of the religion of the day even more explicit. 'The stork in the heavens knows when it is time to migrate, but now my people do not know the requirements of God. How can you say, 'we are wise, for we have the Torah, when, actually, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. Their leaders are dismayed, for they have been trapped and snared, but they rejected the word of YAHWEH, so what type of wisdom did they really have.' What Jeremiah is saying here is that due to those forgeries like Leviticus being pawned off as the Torah, the law of God, people were now religious, and no longer understood what true religion would mean. As for their religious leaders, they were trapped and snared since Jeremiah, a dissident priest, had exposed their constant addition of new forgeries to his illiterate country men.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The gospel today remains a forgery, a decietful thing based upon the forgeries of Leviticus, which claims to be 'the Law of God', the Torah for the Christians, even though it was plainly and clearly forged by the Church fathers, to protect Caesar who, as they put it, 'felt threatened' by the crucifixion message, as understandably, Roman power would feel threatened by a symbol so insulting and demaning to the status quo as the sign of victim of imperial power raised from the dead by God Almighty. This forgery known as 'theology' and 'salvation' was a form of political action intended to make this obvious insult to Caesar disappear behind an obfusticating cloud of religious mumbo jumbo, and given that Christian 'salvation' is a politically motivated forgery, it is no surprise that it is found to be based on even older forgeries by previous generations of priests. Christian 'salvation' is also a form of gross hypocrisy, in that their (trapped and ensnared) Christian leaders talk like a dragon, while being dressed like a lamb, of course, by decietfully insisting that the Bible is 'infallible', when even the Bible makes the claim to be fallible, even full of deliberate forgeries. It is interesting to note that the most popular translation of the Bible today, commissioned by the evangelical fundamentalists of the religious right, is the New International Version, and you will notice that Jeremiah is deliberately mistranslated (he is made to say that God ordered many animals to be sacrificed). Only this Bible is guilty of such deceitful forgery (every other translation I have seen correctly translates Jeremiah, inconvenient as it may be to do so, but Christian apologetics has proven quite nimble in obfusticating and hiding bible contradictions). Jeremiah was mistranslated by the religious right for obvious reasons, since if the animals sacrifice was a fraudulent forgery, so is that Christian 'letter to the Hebrews' and Christian doctrines of 'Jesus fulfilling Leviticus' and 'dying for my sins' as a 'substitute', these doctrines are all fraudulent forgeries as well, one fraud, one forgery, built upon the foundations of an earlier set of fraudulent forgeries.
But then we hardly need a Jeremiah to prophecy and tell us that...just a look at the obvious meaning of the crucifixion symbol, and its greviously insulting commentary about the social order should be enough to enlighten us, in particular when we compare and contrast it with the obvious right wing social order encapsulated in what is known as 'Christian salvation'.
What we are left with is a white WASP Jesus, whose suffering is never put into context, since to put it into context would destroy thousands of years of Christian efforts to support the status quo, and thus thousands of years of efforts by Christians to allow Caesar to continue to get away with crucifying people, while still being a Christian himself, of course, since there is no longer anything in Christianity to offend and insult Caesar. The cross has been bled white and sucked dry long ago. Thus people continue to be crucified, and many of them suffer much more and much longer than Jesus ever did. For example, those teenaged protestors in Argentina, the sons and daughters of the Mothers of the Disappeared, were tortured for an average of three weeks, before, finally being mercifully murdered. No one thinks about their suffering while watching Christ suffer for a few hours, which while it was bad enough, certainly wasn't an exceptional example of suffering at the hands of despots, nor was it the most remarkable example of being tortured and murdered in all human history, since many people routinely endure much worse. But no one comes out of the theatre in tears after watching some WASP Jesus being tortured to death by the Imperial Power, because they are haunted by the sufferings of those murdered kids in Argentina, or the Guatemalans they are currently digging up out of mass graves. A forensic anthropologist exhumed the corpse of one of the victims of Argentina's death squads, a young woman who was pregnant. They kept her alive until her child was born, since they wanted to sell the child for money, and then they took baseball bats, and slowly, the proceeded to torture murder her by systematically breaking every last bone in her body. The forensic scientist stood before a table of fragments of bones that he had pieced together to reform her skeleton. She suffered more intensely than Jesus ever did. It was a slow agonizing death at the hands of the state, and as douments that have come to light reveal, Caesar win Washington knew all about what was going on, and as it states there, Washington's only concern was that the murder of those protesting kids be sped up so as to conclude the matter in a couple of months since the White House was having hard time keeping news of the torture murders out of the press. No one comes out of Gibson's film crying as they think of the even worse horror of what happened to those kids in Argentina, or what is still going on today, and what is still yet to come. The perversion called 'Christianity' has completed its task all to well, and so people will cry 'for our Lord' while forgetting about everyone else, because that is what theology was designed to accomplish. It is a truly disgusting offense to me, and my disgust only grows each year, as one Easter after another I endure that offense known as 'Christian salvation' while the world continues to suffer the abominations of torture, about which, of course, we will hear nothing on 'Christian television' or from far to many 'Christian pulpits' all over the land, since as is typical for them they are to busy creating 'good WASP citizens' who serve that white WASP Jesus, that prop for the status quo, that apologist for torturers and murders known as 'our Lord Jesus Christ.'
I have been pondering in recent days how someone could make a new movie about 'the Passion of Christ, and in this one make the connection not with Christian theology, as Gibson does, but rather with the original meaning of the symbolism.
It has occured to me that one way to do this would be to cut between scenes of Christ being whipped and skinned alive, to a scene in an Argentinian dungeon where this young woman is being brutally, slowly beaten to death with baseballs bats...as each nail is hammered into the Christ, the scene cuts to that baseball bat slowly torturously pounding that young Argentinian girl, the sickening sound of bones snapping as the bat slowly moves up her legs, breaking her thigh bones into those hundreds of tiny fragments that forensic anthropologist reassembled into a human skeleton, as she pitifully screams for mercy from those CIA trained and backed psychopaths...of course the grisly ordeal would go on for at least half an hour....
I hear that one woman died of a heart attack watching the crucifixion scene, and I assume that if I get to make my movie, tearing the passion away from the church theology, and placing back into proper historical context, I should be able to cause more than one person to drop dead in the theatre watching the horrifying spectacle, and maybe that's not such a bad idea....
Of course I would not want to make a movie wihout stirring up controversy, so I would have to leave myself open to charges of 'Anti-Christianism' by also showing scenes of drivel on Christian television...you know, Tom and Sue had the successful WASP life style, but they knew something was missing....then one day a miracle happened, and Tom found Jesus...since that time they have been happy in surburbia...we can cut between that astonishing heartless drivel on Christian television and scenes of Maria being pounded with a baseball bat, then the crucifixion of Jesus, and so on...good idea for a movie...always so good to put things back into context...
