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TRUTH AND HISTORY
Using fiction to explain a deeper truth
Training Handout
Most bible stories have earlier versions
Tom Harpur, former Anglican pastor, who
teaches theology in Toronto, talks about using parables to teach truths
that go beyond our usual comprehension.
The related story itself, as a metaphor,
may be fiction, but the truth that lies behind the story is the
true message.
After studying Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Harpur demonstrated
that every story in the bible was already known in early Egyptian religion,
dating 3,000 years earlier.
One of the popular themes in many religions
before Christianity was the notion of virgin birth (identifying divinity).
They were not prepared to say there were just some knocked up teenagers,
as we would today, but they had to be mothers of Gods. Deviki was the virgin
mother of Krishna. Celestine was the virgin mother of the crucified Zunis.
Chimalman was the virgin mother of Quexalcote. Mavence was the virgin
mother of Hesus. Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25, celebrated
in Northern Europe every year at Yule, and gift bearing shepherds and magi
came -- centuries B.C. As well as Mithra, Attis, Frey, Thor, Oseis, Tammuz,
Cernunnos, and many others were born December 25.
Do a Google search of Kuhn and you will find
many poisonous essays about him by the Christian Taliban; ie fanatic literalists.
Their arguments are
ad hominum (against the person) rather than
logical refutation of his ideas.
Going on from there, he argues that there
was no historical Jesus Christ (Jesus being the Greek word for Joshua which
did not appear until 400 ad -- CE), but the teachers of the true message of Christianity
(love, forgiveness, tolerance, spiritual growth) had meant the story of
Jesus as a parable to teach that truth, not for us to think of him as existing
in history.
The Roman records of the day, which were
very detailed, which included court cases and punishments, did not include
what would have been the biggest judicial event of the times, the state
execution of someone accused of being “The King of the Jews.”
There is an interesting parallel, using fiction
to communicate a truth, in the study of sociology. My first sociology
teacher, the late Stanford Lyman, told us that sometimes fiction can be
used to describe and explain a community better than all the formal and
scientific reports could. As an example, he asked us to read the
work of fiction, Hawaii, by James Mitchener.
Because he could do things in fiction that
could not be done in a sociological report, Mitchener was able to describe
and explain many elements of the society in Hawaii that could not be reached
by scientific writing.
One work of fiction which is more recent,
is Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal,
by Christopher Moore, 2002.
In this fiction, the thirty three years of
Christ’s life missing from the Bible is described. It tells of
Joshua (Jesus) and the narrator of the story (Biff), travelling to Asia
and coming into contact with various religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism
and Confucianism.
It sees many of the values preached by Joshua
as thus having diffused from the non Solomonic religions of Asia.
While a delightful story in itself, it later
becomes apparent that Moore did a lot of research in preparing to write
the story.
He looked often, for example at the Gospel
of Saint Thomas, which was purged from the bible by the fourth century
bishops of Rome because it had ideas in it that, if spread, might reduce
their patriarchal power.
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