Water Into Wine. Tom Harpur
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indeed the whole of the Old Testament will be fully aware that this passage about killing sons, brothers and neighbours, and being blessed in the process, is far from atypical. There are many scenes of greater gore and outright cruelty—even genocide—in these “holy” texts than the verses quoted here. It would be “flogging a dead horse” to begin to list the most heinous.
What is important to stress, however, is that none of this was actual history. The recording of real events was not, as cannot be underlined too heavily, the purpose or intent of the authors in every case. Archaeology supports what knowledge of ancient theological and philosophical practices has made abundantly clear: the many battles and the carnage depicted in the Bible, especially in the supposed conquest of the Promised Land—Canaan—never happened as actual fact. They were all part of the mythical surroundings given to the Israelites to glorify their past and to underscore the zealous, exclusivist nature of the tribal god they served. If even a fraction of the battles and slaughters described in the early books of the Bible had actually taken place, the “Holy Land” would today be ankle deep in ancient weapons and other signs of furious wars. It is not. Indeed, very far from it. Mythmaking, you see, didn’t just suddenly start and stop with the stories of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It runs throughout the entire Bible, all sixty-six books, including all of the New Testament and thus throughout the Jesus Story as well.
But how, one asks, can ancient myth, even though understood as defined by Joseph Campbell as “what never was, but always is,” speak to you or me in the technological era of the twenty-first century? In the coming chapters we will examine the familiar New Testament Jesus stories and try to see where they came from and what they mean for our lives. As we do so, we will see the full nature of the spiritual encouragement and the solid grounds for conquering our fears that ring through them.
This encouragement, oddly enough, has most relevance where religion itself is concerned. Anyone who has thought about it knows there is a tremendous amount of fear involved wherever religion or spirituality are even mooted for discussion. I know many hundreds of people through letters as well as direct contact over the years whose entire experience of what is sometimes euphemistically called their “spiritual life” (but more accurately too often is their catalogue of neuroses) is ringed about with fear. There is fear of God’s disapproval, fear of offending parents, relatives, friends, clergy and others. There is also deep-rooted fear of change of any kind.
This latter aspect deserves much more attention than it gets. There are millions walking about out there today whose inner spiritual growth has far surpassed anything they once knew, but who move in mortal terror of anyone else finding out. One woman reader of my newspaper columns wrote to say that she lives in dread some Sundays until the clock moves past 11 a.m. Only then can she relax, since it’s now too late to make it to her local church. Most Sundays, however, old fears win out and she ends up seated in a pew well before the sacred hour. Such was her background that church attendance became so loaded with negative power that she is almost paralyzed by the idea of being free to choose to go or not go as an autonomous agent. She wrote that she resents the way the preacher “talks as though we all are five-year-olds” and then she feels guilty about being critical in the church and of the Church.
Not that failure to attend church necessarily means spiritual growth; it could mean the opposite. We all need to examine our religious beliefs and practices from time to time to see to what degree they are governed not by insight and spiritual freedom but by childhood habits and adolescent, ingrained taboos. For far too many even today, religion equals guilt—lots of guilt. Perhaps if more people like my friend could summon the courage to voice their feelings to the clergy, the quality of the preaching might improve. Certainly, not speaking up or just staying away does nothing to challenge the current infantilization of the laity.
It’s painful to say, but the amount of superstition and fear of moving on that pervades much of the public mind when it comes to matters of faith and of spirit is profound. Yet, at the same time, there is an enormous fascination with spirituality. The towering success of The Da Vinci Code is a current testimony to this. The lesson learned by Peter is one for us all just now: “Fear not.” Dare to leave the “boat,” as we shall see he was once challenged in the myth to do, and move ahead! My hope is that this book will become the catalyst for just such a personal breakthrough for you.
3 THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND JESUS’ CHILDHOOD
Deep at the heart of all that is, there shines the beauty of a transcendent glory.
– ANONYMOUS
VIRGINS do not give birth to babies. Few people outside the Church need convincing of that today. Nevertheless, lest it be said that the mythical understanding being put forth here has already closed its mind against the possibility that God—however one expresses this ultimate mystery—can do anything, even to the breaking of the very natural laws which he/she created in the first place, some preliminary observations need to be made.
We know that stories of virgin births and/or other forms of supernatural births, of god-men and of illustrious heroes, were very much a part of the total milieu in the Mediterranean world of the centuries preceding and surrounding the emergence of the Christian movement. It was really a coded or esoteric way of saying that somebody was very special indeed. It was a metaphor in the ancient Greco-Roman world used to announce an entity of striking numinosity and power.
Early Christian apologists, in their disputations with Pagan critics, freely admitted there had been other virgin births. Horus, the ancient Egyptian saviour, was miraculously conceived, and Origen, in his famous debate with the Pagan philosopher Celsus, cites the story that when Plato was born of Amphictione, her husband, Ariston, was prevented from having intercourse with her until she had brought forth the child, which she had by the god Apollo.1
Similar stories circulated about Alexander, Apollonius of Tyana and dozens of others. There was an early tradition in the second and third centuries that the manger at Bethlehem was actually in a cave, and the symbol of supernatural births in this womb-of-the-earth-like setting also belongs to other ancient traditions. For example, the Greek god-man Adonis, whose death and resurrection after three days also came after the spring equinox on March 25, was born in a cave. So too was Mithras, whose cult is closely paralleled in early Christianity as well. Some second- and third-century Christian sarcophagi have carvings on them of the Nativity scene with the ox, the ass and the three Magi. The latter wear the hat of the god Mithras. The ass was traditionally associated with Seth, the brother and murderer of Osiris. It was also associated with the planet Saturn, a symbol for Israel. The ox or bull was for long ages the symbol for Osiris himself.
One of the clearest pieces of evidence that in the story of Jesus we are dealing with a mythical tradition lies in the two divergent accounts of the virgin birth found in Matthew and Luke. Incidentally, there are scores of scholarly treatments of the non-historicity of the “born of the Virgin Mary” phrase in the Creed, and only the most ultra-conservative of New Testament authorities would risk arguing today for taking it literally. Whether or not they believe in a historical Jesus of Nazareth, there is general consensus among Biblical scholars that the birth narratives are Midrashic (interpretive) expansions of universal mythical themes. Nevertheless, it is important for our study to set out the major reasons for this overall agreement.
In the first place, the birth stories in Matthew and Luke are very obviously later additions to the original traditions about Jesus. The average uninstructed person who picks up a New Testament could well be forgiven for thinking that Matthew—who tells one version of the miraculous birth—is not only the first Gospel to have been written but also holds the earliest testimony in the book. Matthew’s centuries-old position as the first of the four Gospels in any printed bible has lent immense authority to such a view. Of course, as anyone who has read even a little about the Christian scriptures knows, the Gospels together form a second, later stratum to the whole New Testament. The authentic letters of St. Paul are earlier than the Gospels by at least twenty to thirty years. What’s more, the earliest of the four Gospels is that of Mark, written in Rome and usually dated sometime after 70 CE. I personally agree with those scholars who argue for a later