The Immortality Key: Uncovering the Secret History of the Religion with No Name

While we all have heard of Rome, Jerusalem, and Nazareth, most of us have not heard of Eleusis. This Greek harbor town was the spiritual capital of the Western world. Plato visited Eleusis and wrote about the “blessed sight and vision” he witnessed “in a state of perfection” by sipping a drink called kykeon. Those who drank kykeon transcended the division between humankind and nature. They also realized that death was not the end of the human journey, and underneath this mortal clothing, we are immortals.

After the Greeks, the Romans continued the tradition. Cicero and Marcus Aurelius were initiated there, along with so many others. We don’t hear about Eleusis anymore because it became a casualty with the Neo-Christianity that arose in the fourth century CE. Pagan monuments were attacked and destroyed. Secret religions like the one in Eleusis were annihilated by the fourth century CE.

In his book The Immortality Key, Brian Muraresku argues that, rather than starting a new religion, Jesus was trying to preserve the “holiest of Mysteries” from Ancient Greece. This is an origin story of Christianity with a psychedelic plot twist. In this version, Jesus continued the tradition of Plato, Pindar, Sophocles, and the rest of the Athenians. In early Christianity, Mass was celebrated in house churches and underground catacombs. Hence, you could brew the drink in your home instead of going to a unique pilgrimage site or the wilderness of Greece and Italy.

How else does Christianity go from being an obscure cult of “twenty or so illiterate day laborers” in a neglected part of the Mediterranean to the official religion of Rome, converting half the empire and millions in the process? It is well known that pagans in the Mediterranean world were ruthlessly targeted by the Gospel writers and Paul. Muraresku argues that they used the Greek language to create a new religion that convinced believers that the Christian wine is no ordinary wine and that the sacrament of the Greeks and the sacrament of Jesus are one and the same. Behind closed doors, the Eucharistic celebrations included secret rites and revealed truths. This also influenced the Gnostic churches, which were Christian sects that thrived in the second and third centuries CE.

The book argues that psychedelics were the shortcut to enlightenment that founded Western civilization. It went from Eleusinian Mysteries to Dionysian Mysteries to the original Christianity. This was then passed on to the witches of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Muraresku’s book is not just about theory but about his twelve-year investigation into this theory. As part of this, he travels to Greece, Louvre, goes into the catacombs in Rome, and finds manuscripts that have yet to be translated into English. Finally, he finds evidence of the ceremonial use of psychedelic drugs in antiquity.

War and Peace Against Consciousness

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan describes the author’s first-hand experiences with various drugs. He also writes about psychedelic trips by various people in which they experience that the consciousness that manifests in the body is not made by the body, nor is it confined to the body, nor does it die with the body’s death. They also lost the fear of death as they transcended the primary identification with the body and experienced ego-free states. In these “mystical” experiences, they experienced the dissolution of the ego followed by a sense of merging with the universe. They accessed an alternative reality where the usual law of physics did not apply. They saw manifestations of cosmic consciousness, encountering visionary beings and being drawn toward sacred realms of light.

Primal mystic experience can be threatening to existing hierarchical structures. In Abrahamic religions, only the founder has the direct experience of the sacred. God reveals himself in history in unique events to specific peoples or prophets that are unavailable to others directly. Followers listen to stories and follow the symbolism. Access to the sacred must be mediated by priests. The Church of Psychedelics, on the other hand, offers a direct religious experience to anyone. Then faith is superfluous.

What will happen to religion when people are convinced that the consciousness that manifests in the body is neither made by a body-mind complex nor confined to the body. What if people realize that consciousness does not become extinct with the death of the body. With this awareness, you no longer fear death. When you no longer fear death, there is no need to fear hell and the final judgment. When you no longer fear the final judgment, you are no longer a customer of what the Church has to sell.

The fact that ordinary people could experience transcendence without the Church did not go well. In his book Indra’s Net Rajiv Malhotra points out how hierarchical religions counter these self-realizations. In their view, the body and its experience are not reliable. There is a concept of a ‘sin’ which prevents one from realizing their connection to the divine. Even though such declarations were made, it was not as if people complied. Hence the history of the Church is a history of oppression and bans.

Emperor Theodosius outlawed the Mysteries at the end of the fourth century CE. In 367 CE, Archbishop Athanasius of Alexandria called to cleanse the Church from every defilement by rejecting apocryphal books filled with myths. Church fathers of Neo-Christianity considered Gnosticism dangerous because it offered every initiate direct access to God. All those who received gnosis had gone beyond the Church’s teaching and transcended the authority of its hierarchy. Thus the Gnostic Gospel did not make it to the canonical gospels. During the Spanish colonization, psychedelic mushrooms were declared the flesh of the devil and outlawed.

The male-dominated Church did all this to maintain power in their hands. It was women who sustained the secrets of Ancient Greece; hence women were excluded from leadership positions. The holy family is all males. So women became cartoonish Disney witches, and the drugged wine became the symbolic Eucharist.

But guess what? The Eleusinian Mysteries are making a comeback yet again. Now instead of going to the Greek wilderness, people trek to the Burning Man. Psychedelic drugs are having a renaissance, being used experimentally in therapeutic settings to treat depression, addiction, and the existential fear of death in people with cancer. Therapists involved in this research now believe in the power of the mind to heal itself the way the body typically does. Statements like, “There are people who believe that consciousness is a property of the universe, like electromagnetic radiation or gravity.” emerge from these experiences. Big-name universities are involved in this, and the genie has again escaped from the bottle. What will the Church do now?

Swami Vivekananda on why Hindus don’t say “My god is true and yours is not”

Swamiji starts by telling the history of the Middle East and the evolution of religion there. In the world of tribes, each tribe had its own god. If the tribes were allied with each other, they would have a common name like Baal or Moloch. When one tribe conquered another, their king would take over and claim that their god was superior as well. For the Babylonians, Baal-Merodach was superior. For Jews, Moloch-Yahveh was supreme over other Molochs. The supremacy of the gods was decided by humans through battle.

In India too, this issue was there. Here is where we differed because:

the great good fortune of this country and of the world was that there came out in the midst of the din and confusion a voice which declared एकं सद्विप्रा बहुधा वदन्ति — “That which exists is One; sages call It by various names.” It is not that Shiva is superior to Vishnu, not that Vishnu is everything and Shiva is nothing, but it is the same one whom you call either Shiva, or Vishnu, or by a hundred other names. The names are different, but it is the same one. The whole history of India you may read in these few words. The whole history has been a repetition in massive language, with tremendous power, of that one central doctrine. It was repeated in the land till it had entered into the blood of the nation, till it began to tingle with every drop of blood that flowed in its veins, till it became one with the life, part and parcel of the material of which it was composed; and thus the land was transmuted into the most wonderful land of toleration, giving the right to welcome the various religions as well as all sects into the old mother-country.

(Lectures from Colombo to Almora – 1897)

Due to this concept of oneness is everyone and everything, apparently contradictory ideas can live in harmony. This is the one lesson that India has to offer to the world. This is a concept that missionaries will never understand. They will never understand what Ishta is. The intolerance that they exhibit and the religious persecution around the world are because they don’t have the concept of unity in everything. Swamiji says:

If you go to other countries and ask Mohammedans or people of other religions to build a temple for you, see how they will help. They will instead try to break down your temple and you too if they can. The one great lesson, therefore, that the world wants most, that the world has yet to learn from India, is the idea not only of toleration, but of sympathy.

(Lectures from Colombo to Almora – 1897)

We have examples of Kings building temples for Mohammedans and Christians and offering refuge to Jews and Zoroastrians. The differences in our way of worship did not matter.

It is impossible that all difference can cease; it must exist; without variation life must cease. It is this clash, the differentiation of thought that makes for light, for motion, for everything. Differentiation, infinitely contradictory, must remain, but it is not necessary that we should hate each other therefore; it is not necessary therefore that we should fight each other.

(Lectures from Colombo to Almora – 1897)

Swami Vivekananda on the Ahistoricity of Hinduism

Once Rev. Dr. John Henry Barrows (1847–1902) told Swami Vivekananda, that Christianity is the only universal religion. Swamiji considered this and responded that Vedanta and Vedanta alone can become the universal religion of man. He made the case with few arguments. One of them was as follows.

Most religions in the world in the world are tied to a founder. The theories and teaching revolve around the founder’s life. The fabric of these religions revolve around the historicity of the founder’s life. Challenge this historicity and the whole edifice crumbles. Remember the ruckus caused by Da Vinci Code which challenged the established narrative about Yeshua. Ever heard of the Gnostic Gospels?

What about Hinduism then? Swamiji says (Lectures from Colombo to Almora)

There is no man or woman who can claim to have created the Vedas. They are the embodiment of eternal principles; sages discovered them; and now and then the names of these sages are mentioned — just their names; we do not even know who or what they were. In many cases we do not know who their fathers were, and almost in every case we do not know when and where they were born. But what cared they, these sages, for their names? They were the preachers of principles, and they themselves, so far as they went, tried to become illustrations of the principles they preached.

Lectures from Colombo to Almora

A religion based on the ahistoricity of it’s founders, but having every lasting (sanatana) principles has an advantage.

Therefore if any one or more of these persons in India’s religious history, any one or more of these Incarnations, and any one or more of our prophets proved not to have been historical, it does not injure our religion at all; even then it remains firm as ever, because it is based upon principles, and not upon persons.

Lectures from Colombo to Almora

Then what about the faith in various gods that we have? Swamiji again uses the concept of Ishta and explains

Yet as I have said, our religion has ample scope for the authority and influence of persons. There is that most wonderful theory of Ishta which gives you the fullest and the freest choice possible among these great religious personalities. You may take up any one of the prophets or teachers as your guide and the object of your special adoration; you are even allowed to think that he whom you have chosen is the greatest of the prophets, greatest of all the Avatâras; there is no harm in that, but you must keep to a firm background of eternally true principles. The strange fact here is that the power of our Incarnations has been holding good with us only so far as they are illustrations of the principles in the Vedas.

Lectures from Colombo to Almora

This is a unique feature of Hinduism and in general about Indian historiography. While comparing Indian and Western history, we find that the lack of personal details. For example, we have a good idea about Plato’s lineage, how he got his name and who his siblings were while we have scarce information on where Aryabhata was born, who his parents were or who his teachers were. The Indian attitude always has been to preserve the principles as that guides us along the path. In that sense, it does not matter who said it or when they said it. If the principle is important, it will survive and will be passed down generations.

The stories in हितोपदेश (Hitopadesha – good advice), the पंचतन्त्र (Panchatantra – five principles) or the philosophical observations made in poetic form in the सुभाषित (subhashitas – “well said” ideas) – are abstracted observations with pseudonymous characters, that were likely to have been inspired from real events. The names or the specifics in the stories are far less relevant than the lessons themselves.

Ishta – Swami Vivekananda on why Hindu sects don’t quarrel

Street Corner Missionaries

Wherever I go in the world, I see Jehovah’s Witnesses standing on the roadside with pamphlets in various languages. I have seen this both in United States and Europe. Every year the church sends crores of rupees to India to convert Hindus and Love Jihadis target Hindu girls. To Hindus, who are used to multiple sects living together, multiple darshanas accepted as scripture and being followers of various gurus with radically different styles, this intolerance is an alien concept. Swami Vivekananda, using the concept of Ishta, explains why various sects never quarreled in India.

In a speech given in Jaffna, following his address at the Parliament of Nations, Swamiji noted

“The Shaivite does not say that every Vaishnavite is going to be damned, nor the Vaishnavite that every Shaivite will be damned. The Shaivite says, this is my path, and you have yours; at the end we must come together. They all know that in India. This is the theory of Ishta. It has been recognised in the most ancient times that there are various forms of worshipping God. It is also recognised that different natures require different methods.”

According to Hindu tradition, based on various proportions of sattva, rajas and tamas, we all have different nature. Based on that nature, there are different method of worship and hence what works for you may not work for me. Most of us understand this innately, without understanding the yogic aspects behind this. Swamiji warns that the idea that there is only one way for everyone is “injurious, meaningless, and entirely to be avoided.”

Woe unto the world when everyone is of the same religious opinion and takes to the same path. Then all religions and all thought will be destroyed. Variety is the very soul of life. When it dies out entirely, creation will die.

Vivekananda

Swamiji then introduces the Sanskrit word “Ishta”. He calls it my way. Now my way is good for me, but probably not for you. Similarly your way is good for you, but not for me. Missionaries hate this. For them, your way is the highway to hell and my way is the only way. Hence the Hindus have to be converted either by force, by incentives or through educational institutions. They talk of love, but the goal is the destruction of our way of live, because it is different.

You see extreme versions of this even now. A missionary was killed in Andaman on an adventure to convert the natives. They are found in crossfire in war zones. They have served as spies. They show up in hostile countries with the Bible speaking of love. Mother Theresa fooled an entire generation with her story of compassion. Swamiji counters:

Their love does not count for much. How can they preach of love who cannot bean another man to follow a different path from their own? If that is love, what is hatred? We have no quarrel with any religion in the world, whether it teaches men to worship Christ, Buddha, or Mohammed, or any other prophet. “Welcome, my brother,” the Hindu says, “I am going to help you; but you must allow me to follow my way too. That is my Ishta. Your way is very good, no doubt; but it may be dangerous for me. My own experience tells me what food is good for me, and no army of doctors can tell me that.

In India, we have the freedom to worship the formless or a thousand forms., go to temples or perform pujas, do kriya or yoga. But “the moment you quarrel, you are not going Godward, you are going backward, towards the brutes.”

Reference

European Origins of Manifest Destiny

Across The Continent, an 1868 lithograph illustrating the westward expansion of white settlers By Currier & Ives (publisher).
Across The Continent, an 1868 lithograph illustrating the westward expansion of white settlers By Currier & Ives (publisher). James Merritt Ives & Fanny Palmer (artists). – (via Wikipedia)

In the 19th century, American settlers moved West grabbing frontier lands. The term Manifest Destiny was coined, which claimed special virtues for American people. It was imperative that they fulfill this essential duty. The United States used muscle power to deprive the indigenous people of their land. Once the natives were conquered, this theory was applied to rest of the world and soon Puerto Rico, Cuba and Philippines came under American control, apparently to rescue them from Spanish tyranny. The Native Americans lost their land, traditions, and religion. They watched helplessly as a flood of settlers flocked to their land.
This asuric behavior had its origin from the crusades in the 11th century. During that time, there was a major movement of European population driven by religious fervor. They figured out how to move long distances, take control, and displace existing population. This process took a break as the continent experienced Black Death. Till the Middle Ages, Europe became an insignificant entity on the world stage with nothing of value to offer to the world. Then they embarked on a series of voyages of discovery and came upon plundering as a nation-building option.

The 20th episode of Tides of History goes into detail about this period. Much before the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, Castille, Aragon, and Portugal started expanding to other areas kickstarting the process of invasion and settlement. After Aragon conquered the Island of Majorca, in the middle of the Mediterranean, the king distributed the land among the nobles who accompanied him. Then came the settlers — Catalans, Italians, Navarrese — who took possession of the property obtained during the conquest. There was a similar movement of people all over into Hungary, Romania, Sicily, Greece.
Following the conquest of Southern Spain by Castille, the Moors slowly disappeared. They were forced or enslaved and those who stayed were converted to Christianity. They replaced rebellious leaders with leaders over whom they had control. They were familiar with the process for populating newly conquered frontier lands and enticing settlers to those new lands. This was an established process by the time Vasco da Gama set sail to India. Remember, he did not come for spices alone. He was also looking for Prester John to liberate Jerusalem.

Movie: Spotlight – Exposing child abuse in the Catholic church in Boston

“I find that the city flourishes when its great institutions work together”

In the wild, a predator stalks a herd, identifies the weakest animal and then preys on it. It was the same tactic that Boston Catholic priests used to prey on kids. They would identify kids whose families were in a disarray or were low income. These kids did not have anyone to look up to and religion was an important part of their lives. A priest would take advantage of this, give them them attention  and reward them with treats. This guardian angel would then abuse them, physically and spiritually. This abuse was not a secret. The parishioners knew it and so did the Cardinal. But no one spoke against it.
The movie, which is based on real life incidents, starts with the arrival of a new editor at the Boston Globe, who reignites the investigation. A team, called Spotlight, consisting of four reporters start digging through. They knew about a previous settlement, but the documents were sealed by the court. Due to this, they have to find innovative ways to get the information. They contact victims who had settled and lawyers who had tried before and get them to talk. During the process, many people caution against moving forward as it amounted to suing the church. Another reason was that 53% of the readership was Catholic. The Cardinal, who knew about all this, but quietly settled, tells the editor that a city flourishes when its institutions work together. Others ask them to look at the good work that the church is doing and ignore the few bad apples.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47575397>By Source, Fair use</a>
By Source, Fair use

Many abuse cases were settled previously and there were lawyers knowledgeable of these incidents. Most of the times, it was the attorney for the victim negotiating with the church lawyers. Since it was a private settlement, there were no documents in court. There was no PR damage too since the victims did not want to appear on TV; Most of them wanted an acknowledgement of the wrong that was done. The court orders of a previous settlement were sealed and the team tries their best to get hold of it. A lawyer who was involved in the previous effort tries to help by guiding them to some documents which are public, but the team finds that the documents have mysteriously disappeared. Finally, when they get it unsealed and they get to know the ugly truths behind the Catholic church.
The Catholic church which had the duty to protect the innocent children protected the priests instead. These child molesters were transferred from parish to parish. Some were sent for rehabilitation and then circulated again. As the reporters continue, they meet one of the priests who admits that he fooled around with boys, but got not pleasure out of it. At the end of their discovery, they find that around 90 priests were involved. It shows that an independent media can do, if it really wants to go after the culprits. The team wrote around 600 articles and won the Pulitzer for exposing the cover ups.
 The Spotlight team
The Spotlight team

The movie does not relies on dialogue and no theatrics, but remains riveting till the end. It is an important expose into a culture of pervasive child abuse that was intentionally hidden. The movie is revealed through the eyes of the journalists. Some of the sordid details that the victims say are absolutely painful. Those are just words that we hear, but none of us can imagine that the pain that was inflicted on those children. The movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.
What is deeply disturbing is that this was not an isolated incident. It was systemic and the institution did nothing to prevent it. Instead they spent their energy in covering it up. At the end of the movie, they show a list of places such abuses happened, and it covers few screens. Since the reach of the church is worldwide, the abuse is globalized. Take a look at the list of abuses world wide  or look at this.  In far away Kerala, Sister Jesme has documented the abuse that adults go through. There is the Sister Abhaya murder case, which shows the “how a city flourishes when institutions work together.”

In IndiaFacts: Review – Zealot by Reza Aslan

(The original version was published at IndiaFacts)

In 66 C.E., fed up with the Roman occupation of their land, the Jews declared war on the Roman Empire. Soldiers patrolled even in the temple of this supposedly inconsequential part of the empire. Imagine the anger Malayalis would have felt if Communists administered their temples and the state looted its wealth. Wait. Wrong example. Though Rome was a powerful empire, the Jews were confident that their God would take them to victory. Motivated by what looked like a possible victory, the rebels attacked Jews who colluded with the Romans. Many messiahs also appeared on the scene, prophesying the end of Jerusalem. Finally, the miracle happened; they liberated Jerusalem.
If any Carthaginians were around, they would have told the Jews that this was a bad idea. In 70 C.E., the empire struck back. They razed the city to the ground, slaughtered the Jews and exiled the survivors. They also renamed the city and erased all mention of it from the record. Unlike Hindus, the Jews did not have temples all over the country. There was one temple — The Temple at Jerusalem — the center of their worship and that was gone. It was not just the Jews who were affected; the followers of a man named Yeshua were affected dramatically. It was after these events that the first Gospels were written.
Due to these sequence of events, Aslan argues that the Jesus of the Gospels is not the same as the historical man named Yeshua. For Aslan, the Gospels were written by believers for a specific purpose and are not historical documents. He ignores them and presents a picture of Yeshua by looking at the social, political and theological context of that period. Aslan himself is a former evangelical, who gave up that life as he became a religious scholar. Besides painting a portrait of Yeshua, he also reveals how the modern Jesus was invented.
If Jesus was not the person whom the Gospels claim to be — the good shepherd, the peacenik, the one who turned the other cheek — then who was he? According to Aslan, two things we can be sure are

  1. He was a Jew who led a popular movement like many others
  2. He was crucified by the Romans like many others.

To those who believe Yeshua was a child prodigy, who at a young age, stunned the priests of the Temple and to those Indians who are fascinated by the tale of Jesus learning in India, Aslan, who has been a Biblical scholar for two decades, sets the record straight. Yeshua was a woodworker or craftsman who never ventured far away. All Jewish peasants of the time were illiterate; Yeshua could not have been any different. (On a side note, the theory that he died in Tibet has been debunked as well)
Once baptized by his guru, John the Baptist, Yeshua took on a career of preaching. He wandered around as a professional exorcist, curing the ill of their sickness. Another common profession during that period, it paid more than being a woodworker. He was not the only miracle worker of that period, “it was quite common to see diviners, dream interpreters, magicians and medicine men wandering around the region”. But Aslan says Jesus did something different from the rest: he never charged for his work. We know that because the pagan and Jewish critics of Christianity agree on this as well.
Yeshua was not stoned to death for blasphemy, but crucified, which was the Roman punishment for treason. Anyone who proclaimed he was a messiah was crucified for striving to overthrow the Roman empire. Disrupting the activities of the temple, Yeshua proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was coming soon and this occurred during the time of when rebels were working to overthrow the Romans and bring the land under Jewish control. The main thesis of Aslan’s book is that Jesus was not someone who was talking about abstract ideas during this time, but was a zealot, actively involved in this movement like others of that period. Yeshua proclaimed that the present order would be replaced by a new political, religious and economic system and for advocating such a revolutionary idea, he was executed by crucifixion.
Another point Aslan makes is that the crucifixion of Jesus was not one of those stop the world events that happened in Jerusalem. Pilate, the Roman governor, who sent Jesus to the cross had utter disregard for Jewish customs and had crucified many others. He would not even have met Jesus. Terrorized by Pilate’s hobby, the people of Jerusalem complained to the Roman emperor. Even then he did not lose his job. Nothing happened to the temple priest as well. It was much later, after Pilate sent soldiers to butcher the followers of another messiah, that both he and the temple priest lost their jobs.
Following the crucifixion of Yeshua, three major strands of events occurred. The followers of Yeshua — the ones who walked with him — were shocked. The messiah who promised to rebuild David’s Kingdom had not only failed but was crucified like a state criminal. What did that mean? What could they do now? For the Jews, it was curtains down. He was yet another failed messiah. But for members of the Jesus movement, they had to invent a new explanation. They also had to prove to others that he indeed was the messiah. One of the earliest beliefs they came up was the radically new resurrection narrative — that he arose on the third day. They stayed in Jerusalem, continuing his teaching.
The second chain of events was set off by Paul who was inspired by Jesus though he had never met him. Other writers claimed Paul had a vision; Paul himself never said so. For Paul, Jesus was divine. Paul’s target market was the urbanized elite who did not care for messianic concepts or Jewish rituals. For the original illiterate followers of Jesus, Paul’s teachings were all Greek (literally). It would be like Hindus reading the writings of Prof. Wendy Doniger. In fact, Paul’s teaching looked so radical that the head of the Hebrew followers, James, (the brother of Jesus), sent congregations to convert the followers of Paul back to the fold; James was quite successful.
As the Hebrews — the farmers and fishermen followers of Jesus — and the Hellenists — the urbanized Greek speaking Romans — were duking it out , 9/11 hit Jerusalem and the Romans wiped out the place from the map. This triggered the third sequence of events. The Gospels were written down in various cities in the empire — Rome, Damascus, Antioch, and Ephesus — by people who had never met Yeshua. By then four decades had passed since Yeshua’s crucifixion and the eyewitnesses to his life had perished. The teachings that were passed along were conveniently modified.
Also, after 70 C.E, it was clear to everyone, who had the power to chop off your head. The authors of the Gospels could either stick their neck out and write that Jesus was a man who wanted to overthrow the Roman empire or they could spin another tale. They chose the latter. A Jesus, who operated at a divine plane and had nothing to do with earthly matters became a convenient replacement.
The author of the first gospel, attributed to Mark, wanted to absolve the Romans of all the crime. Hence, the whole story of Pilate washing his hands of Jesus was invented. The Romans, who crucified Yeshua were sanitized and Jews who did not accept him as the messiah became the villains. That was the birth of anti-Semitism, the consequences of which can be seen even today. Another important point to note is that the gospels were not written in Hebrew or Aramaic, but in Greek. The evangelists’ goal was to convert the gentiles and so distancing themselves from Jewish “mumbo-jumbo” seemed right.
Aslan is not the first person to do this kind of analysis. He is one among many of a two centuries old line of scholarship trying to excavate the historical Jesus. Many years back, Prof. Thomas Sheehan of Stanford, taught a course called The Historical Jesus where he did similar analysis looking into the Gospels to find out what fits and what does not. Usually, historians go to primary sources to find the truth, but in this case, Sheehan says, the primary source are problematic. The Gospels which are now considered Canonical were ruled so by political forces. Whatever did not fit the template was considered heretic, a concept alien to dharmic traditions. Each blind scholar in this lineage found a different part of the elephant: using historical studies, literary analysis and sociology, they found Yeshua to be either a philosopher or an apocalyptic preacher or teacher or simply a magician.
With the destruction of Jerusalem, the original message was diluted and the urbanized, educated Greek-speaking diaspora Jews, immersed in Greek philosophy and Hellenistic culture Deepak Chopra-ed a new religion. This is like how American Buddhists are defining a new “scientific” religion by eradicating traces of Hinduism and mystical elements of Buddhism and retaining just mindfulness. The failed messiah, who did not set out to create Christianity, became the creator of heavens and earth and had nothing to do with the Roman occupation or the fight against it. This Neo-Jesus is the one to whom believers pray every weekend.

Slaves Refuting Pro-Slavery Arguments

The inspection and sale of a slave
The inspection and sale of a slave, 1854

James Henry Hammond was a politician and planter from South Carolina who served as a United States Representative, the  Governor of South Carolina  and as a United States Senator. He owned several plantations, about 300 slaves and was one of the outspoken supporters of slavery before the American Civil War. In Letter to an English Abolitionist written in 1845, he argued that slavery was more humane than wage labor.

“You think it is a great ‘crime’ that we do not pay our slaves ‘wages,’ and on this account pronounce us ‘robbers.’  In my former letter I showed that the labor of our slaves was not without great cost to us and that in fact they themselves receive more in return for it than your hirelings do for theirs. . . It is altogether praiseworthy to pay the laborer a shilling a day and let him starve on it.  To supply all his wants abundantly, and at all times, yet withhold from his money, is among ‘the most reprobated crimes.”

This outrageous claim was challenged by narratives written by the slaves, published with the help of anti-slavery and abolitionist allies. A perfect rebuttal is this passage from Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northrup.

“The existence of slavery in its most cruel form among them has a tendency to brutalize the humane and finer feelings of their nature. Daily witnesses of human suffering—listening to the agonizing screeches of the slave—beholding him writhing beneath the merciless lash—bitten and torn by dogs—dying without attention, and buried without shroud or coffin—it cannot otherwise be expected, than that they should become brutified and reckless of human life.”

When Hammond tried to present the image of a benevolent overlord, who provides for his slaves, as opposed to people who just paid wages to laborers, he just washed away the humanity that was taken away from the slaves. The above passage mentions all that Hammond did not acknowledge.  The slaves lived in perpetual fear of punishment and hardship. The master, by law, owned the blood and flesh and had the freedom to enforce tyranny. For example, during the cotton picking time, the slaves were expected to rise early in the morning, take a break for ten to fifteen minutes at noon to eat a cold meal and then slave away till dark. Once the cotton was picked, they were weighed and if the quota was not met, the floggings started.
When an impurity was found in the picked cotton or a branch was broken, the penalty was twenty five lashes. For crimes above this, they got fifty lashes. If you stood idle, the penalty was a hundred lashes and two hundred, if you fought with other slaves. Runaway slaves got five hundred lashes  and Northrup mentions an incident where a slave named Patsy was almost flogged to death. For some incidents, they were put down like animals or hanged. Northrup writes that  for some slave owners “…. whose chief delight was in dancing with his “niggers,” or lashing them about the yard with his long whip, just for the pleasure of hearing them screech and scream“ were not paternalistic as Hammond claimed, but just sadistic.

Slave Market in Atlanta, 1864
Slave Market in Atlanta, 1864

While daily laborers sold their labor and not themselves, that was not the case with the slaves. Since they had no ability to read, write or swim, they had to endure the torture. Floggings were the not cruelty they had to endure. Overseers, whose sole motive was to ensure the maximum crop without any concern for the suffering went around with dogs to overhaul fleeing fugitives and even used the gun sometimes. If a slave fell down, tired from his cotton picking, he was dragged to the shade and buckets of water poured on him to wake him up. Once he woke up, he was sent back to labor.
In the quoted passage, Northrup mentions the “ tendency to brutalize the humane and finer feelings of their nature.” Slaves were treated like animals. In the slave market, customers would examine their body, look at their teeth, ask about their skills, like how “a jockey examines a horse.” In some cases, they were stripped and examined more carefully. Once a purchase was finalized, the purchasers did not care if a family was separated. One of the heart wrenching incidents in the book is when a mother and her children are separated without any remorse by the slave trader. Charles Ball, in his account, Fifty Years in Chains, wrote about the painful separation of the family as the most traumatic experience, “ …I was now a slave in South Carolina, and had no hope of ever again seeing my wife and children. I had at times serious thoughts of suicide so great was my anguish.”
“Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own”, wrote Harriet Jacobs, a slave woman in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl , upon the birth of her daughter. Besides the physical and mental torture, female slaves also faced sexual harassment. When she was 15, her 55 year old master Mr. Flint was after her. Her mistress knew what was going on, but in patriarchal system, she was helpless and  vented her anger on the female slaves. To find a way out from Mr. Flint, she entered into a relationship with a lawyer with whom she had children. Mr. Flint still did not leave her alone and threatened to separate her from her children.
All these narratives reinforce the view that the slave was the master’s property and he could do whatever he wished with them. In his book, Northrup rightly notes that all of this was happening in the country which proclaimed, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Camels and ashva, Hebrew Bible and Rig Veda

(by Martin Allen)
(by Martin Allen)

Archaeologists from Tel Aviv university, who were investigating the date when camels first appeared in Israel discovered something interesting. Here is the gist:

Now Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef and Dr. Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University’sDepartment of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures have used radiocarbon dating to pinpoint the moment when domesticated camels arrived in the southern Levant, pushing the estimate from the 12th to the 9th century BCE. The findings, published recently in the journal Tel Aviv, further emphasize the disagreements between Biblical texts and verifiable history, and define a turning point in Israel’s engagement with the rest of the world.[Finding Israel’s First Camels]

This is interesting because the Genesis mentions the camels but those events in the Genesis, according to this new evidence happened before the camels arrived on the scene. For example, among the living beings that Abraham acquired, there were  sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels. There are further mentions of a servant going from Northwest Mesopotamia to the town of Nahor on camels, providing water and food to the camels and an explanation of why one should not eat a camel.
If camels were not present in Israel while these events supposedly happened, then how did it appear in the text? There are two possible explanations: (1) The events happened not in an earlier period, but later after the camels appeared or (2) The events happened in the earlier period, but was written down in a much later period by scribes when camels were also present and camels were back projected to earlier events.
The New York Times had an exchange with an expert who suggested this answer

“One should be careful not to rush to the conclusion that the new archaeological findings automatically deny any historical value from the biblical stories,” Dr. Mizrahi said in an email. “Rather, they established that these traditions were indeed reformulated in relatively late periods after camels had been integrated into the Near Eastern economic system. But this does not mean that these very traditions cannot capture other details that have an older historical background.”
Moreover, for anyone who grew up with Sunday school images of the Three Wise Men from the East arriving astride camels at the manger in Bethlehem, whatever uncertainties there may be of that story, at least one thing is clear: By then the camel in the service of human life was no longer an anachronism.

There was no dissenting voice here; there was no scholar arguing against the historicity of the events. Compare that with the response in The Guardian. This also has to be contrasted with the relation between another animal and another text. The Rig Veda uses the word ashva over two hundred times, and according to some, horses arrived with the invading Aryans following the decline of the Indus-Saraswati civilization. Thus the Vedic culture could have occurred only after the arrival of the Indo-European speakers to North-West India. According to Wendy Doniger in The Hindus, “No Indus horse whinnied in the night. Knowing how important horses are in the Vedas, we may deduce that there was little or no Vedic input into the civilization of the Indus Valley or, correspondingly, that there was little input from the IVC into the civilization of the Rig Veda.”
Most of this argument has been analyzed by Michel Danino and found to be suspect. Various scholars — linguists, archaeologists and historians — are proposing a higher chronology now. That debate is one with no end in sight. But will any scholar stick out his head and say that based on the evidence from Saraswati, the Vedas were composed much earlier than we thought when ashva was not around, but it may have been altered later and the ashva was added. If you do that the Wendytva proponents will be up in arms.

Why Christianity spread through Europe

Since it is Christmas time, the celebration of two important pagan festivals appropriated by Christianity, it is interesting to read Bernard Cornwells’s article at Omnivoracious on how Christianity spread through Europe.

One answer is that Christianity proved more profitable. There is a telling story about King Edwin of Northumbria, a powerful pagan who ruled what is now northern England and southern Scotland in the 7th Century. He probably worshipped the Norse gods like Thor and Woden, but at some point he encountered a Christian missionary who suggested that success in war and material prosperity would follow a conversion. Edwin put that to the test and god came through with a battlefield triumph and massive amounts of plunder. The king’s chief pagan priest told Edwin that the old gods had never shown such favor and that Northumbria should therefore convert, which it duly did. The story echoes the experience of Constantine, the Roman Emperor who converted because the Christian god gave him victory over Maxentius. It is a common enough tale. In the early 10th Century a Viking named Hrolf took land in what is now Normandy and the treaty confirming his possession insisted he became a Christian. ‘Paris,’ Henry IV of France declared when he changed from Protestant to Catholic, ‘is worth a mass.’ The Duchy of Normandy (which led to the throne of England) proved well worth a mass too.[Bernard Cornwell, Author of “The Pagan Lord,” Muses on the Path to Christianity]