The Men Who Invented Religion

11   Islam

INTRODUCTION

This book contains nothing about God.

It examines the men and politics behind western religious faith and it may be said that their cynical view of religion has nothing to do with God either…

Many believe that they have a need for a simple faith to explain matters that they do not fully understand or seek a way to recognise and celebrate birth, marriage and death. Some 2,500 years ago the Greek philosopher Critias pointed out that this simple faith is a human invention and can be used to frighten people into following moral order. This book describes the personalities who recognised this and who have used religion as a source of power. As it has nothing to do with God it is unlikely to be of interest to the many believers. It has been shown* that when individuals are faced with empirical evidence proving their ideas to be wrong, instead of rejecting them they hold on even more firmly and rationalise away the evidence. As Freud said Religion’s eleventh commandment is Thou shalt not question.

Freud had some original ideas about religion which are now seen to have been historically correct. He suggested that the start of the three Western religions can be dated to the monotheism of the Pharaoh Amenophis 1V or Akhenaten and the worship of the sun disc Aten. Before this the Middle Eastern population, Canaanites, Israelites and Phoenicians, all worshipped many gods, especially Baʿal, the son of the supreme god El. Following the escape of the court of the Pharaoh Amenophis 1V from Egypt in about 1350 BC, which incidentally provides the true story of the Exodus, coupled with the development in Palestine from nomadic to settled agriculture, their ideas merged. Only a hundred years after Akhenaten there is the first mention of the Jewish god Yahweh, which derived from a settlement called Yhw of a nomadic people, the Shasu, and there is evidence of gods and settlements sharing names. It is known that the Shasu had settlements in Seir and Edom, so this also accords with the biblical claim of where Yahweh originated. Israel itself is first mentioned on an Egyptian stele celebrating the victories of the Pharoah Merneptah (1224 BC – 1214 BC). Surprisingly, the word ‘Jew’ comes much later and first appears in the Book of Esther, although it may already have been in common usage as the survivors from the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar were ‘juhs’ from the tribe of Judah. Judaism continued to expand, especially in Palestine and Egypt through its success in warfare leading to conversion, sometimes forced, marriage and through population growth with its emphasis on ritual, hygiene, strictures against infanticide and ethical purity.

North of the Mediterranean growth of Judaism was slow although Jewish ideas were well known and quoted, amongst others, by Aristotle and Pythagoras. Hermippus of Smyrna alleged that, if not actually Jewish, Pythagoras held the opinions of the Jews.

Pythagoras was also believed by his followers to be one of the gods who had taken a human body to enable him to come into the world and instruct humanity. Much of the history of Pythagoras agrees with the history of Jesus in that both were natives of Palestine - Sidon and Bethlehem. The father of Pythagoras, as well as the father of Jesus, was prophetically informed that his wife should bring forth a son, who should be a benefactor to mankind. They were both born when their mothers were from home on a journey. Pythias, the mother of Pythagoras, had a relationship with a ghost of the god Apollo, which later appeared to her husband and told him that he must have no connexion with his wife during her pregnancy - a story evidently similar to that relating to Joseph and Mary. Pythagoras was known by the same title as Jesus, the son of God, and his followers thought him to be under the influence of Divine inspiration."

There were many philosophies in Greece including Stoicism and Platonism and agnostic views held by Critias and others including Socrates, but most Greeks recognized the mythical gods of Olympia. By the third century BC these gods had been given factual history which helped in the exportation of Greek ideas, especially following the success of Alexander the Great. Many Jews then became ‘hellenised’, some seeing their heroes in terms of the Greek gods and even suggesting that the descendants of Isaac had sailed with the Argonauts. Many cults with different ceremonies or ‘Mysteries’ developed. St Paul, the founder of Christianity, was himself strongly involved in these Mysteries and went to Jerusalem and, claiming to be a Jew, went to Jerusalem, where he tried to ‘modernise’ Judaism.

While this book raises the question of whether Paul was in fact a Jew, nobody doubts the Judaism of Jesus himself which then raises the question as to whether Jesus himself was a Christian. As for Islam, while Mohammed was not Jewish he had a number of Jewish connections: his father, Abdullah ben Abdul Muttalib, was the son of a Jewish woman, Halah; his first wife, Khadijah, and a later wife, Safiyya, were both Jews, while his beliefs when in Mecca were clearly taken from his uncle, who was the leader of a Jewish sect that maintained Judaism while accepting that Jesus was the Messiah.

History often asks what might have been?If the Jews had not rebelled against Rome, would Jesus have been the Messiah? If Constantine had not made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, would it have survived? Certainly if his successor Julian had not died in battle, his anti-Christian views might have ensured that it would not. If Mohammed had lost the Battle of the Trench, would Islam have developed?

The growth of Christianity was initially slow but, after some 300 years of state persecution by successive Roman Emperors, Constantine not only reversed the official policy but made it the state religion. This was clearly a political move designed to increase his power, but Constantine himself remained a believer in the traditional Roman pagan gods until his conversion on his deathbed - while he was alive but unconscious. There were many more Jews in the fourth century Roman Empire than Christians and they opposed Constantine’s decision which he countered by delivering a virulent anti-Jewish speech at the first Synod of the Church in 325 at Nicaea. Antagonism between Christians and Jews continued over the centuries and, as late as 1943, Baron Weizsacker, German ambassador to the Vatican, was surprised at Pope Pius XII’s silence when he was informed of the Nazi atrocities. It was only in 2000 that Pope John Paul II published an apology for the attitude of the Church towards other religions.

The gradual collapse of the Roman Empire and its army’s retreat to defend Constantinople left the Near East without a strong military presence. This allowed the expansion of a political movement led by Mohammed of Ummah or ‘unity’, which initially accepted both Judaism and Christianity, referring to their followers as People of the Book. Under the Constitution of Medina he declared all members of the Ummah, regardless of religion, to be as one. Opposition came later both from Jews, who would not accept his claim to be a Prophet of God, and Christians, who would not accept his denial of the Crucifixion, which resulted in a reassessment. Despite opposition, Christians and Jews continued to coexist with Islam.

While there are distinct theological differences between Sunnis and Shias, the claim that these two groups have been antagonistic throughout their existence is false and the current situation is not religion, but modern politics. While the various religious communities of the Middle East have had problems, generally the situation has been one of tolerance and for hundreds of years Sunnis and Shias as well as Christians, Jews and other religions lived happily together. Although the Sunni Ottoman Empire and Shia Safavid Empire have occasionally been at war, their beliefs have existed peaceably alongside one another for hundreds of years and it was even considered shameful for Muslim powers to engage in conflict with one another. This is made clear when millions of people of both sects come together peacefully every year on the Hajj pilgrimage.

Politics under the banner of religion are not restricted to Sunni and Shia. In the early days those who saw Jesus as the Messiah but had different approaches, such as the Gnostics and Nestorians, were excommunicated and their writings suppressed in a search for the unity which was essential to give the hierarchy power. Christian dogma developed over hundreds of years. As late as 1950 Pope Pius XII declared the Assumption of Mary to be factual. The division in Christianity between Catholic and Protestant resulted in the Thirty Years War from 1618, perhaps the worst conflict in European history. It was a political war for power between France and the Habsburgs. The crusades, often described as a Christian war against Islam, were in reality a political move by the ambitious Pope Urban II, who wished to rule a reunited Eastern and Western Church. The conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, which continues to this day, is clearly political and tribal rather than religious.

And so it goes on….

*Leon Festinger; Henry W. Riecken; Stanley Schachter (1956). When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 1-59147-727-1.

NOTE : This book is intended for the general reader and these are the only footnotes. Everything can be easily verified by a simple computer search.

CHAPTER 1

THE OLD TESTAMENT

The devout share a belief that God is the author of all books of the Bible, but it is more realistic to suggest divine inspiration (All Scripture is inspired by God II Timothy 3.16) as it is a book of faith and clearly not an accurate historical record. Part of the evidence of divine authorship is suggested to be the sublime quality of the language, but even the most pious Christian scholars found the original text crude and uncouth. St Jerome for example found the language of the prophets harsh and barbarous, much preferring the writing of pagan authors such as Cicero and Plautus. All the books of the Old Testament are written in Hebrew except Daniel, Ezra and Jeremiah, which are in Aramaic. All were translated into Greek in the third century, when there is evidence of a final form of the Five Books of Moses, into Latin in the fourth century by St Jerome and into Arabic in the tenth. With the exception of much of Kings, the rational reader should regard the Bible as providing a philosophy rather than history.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (the Books of Moses) are but five of the 39 books which are today recognised as the Old Testament. There may have been others since ‘lost or forgotten’, such as Enoch and the Book of Giants, Japhar (referred to in the time of Saul), and the Book of the Wars of Yahweh (mentioned in Numbers 21.14). The Ethiopian Bible has Enoch and Jubilees, which were clearly used earlier as copies are found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Talmud, which is a Jewish commentary on the Old Testament, gives a much later date, suggesting that Hillel established it in what would have been the first century AD. It is interesting to note that the New Testament refers to the Law and the Prophets. Presumably they would have been authoritative by that date – if only just – but perhaps not standardised. According to legend, the final form was agreed at the Council of Jamnia in around AD 90, between the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD and the final destruction of Jerusalem in 135 AD. Jews of the Diaspora continued to accept as scripture 1 Esdras, Judith, Tobit (Tobias), the books of the two Maccabees and the Wisdom of Solomon as did the early Church since they were in the Greek-translated Septuagint, used by the Church until the fourth century when it was replaced by the Vulgate Latin translation.

Protestants have their own translations. The first Christian known to have assembled a definitive list of Christian writings was Marcion (AD c.85-160), who omitted the whole of the Old Testament. This was almost immediately corrected by Ireneaus (AD c.130-c.200), Bishop of Lyons, who produced his own canon including it. Other versions were made over the years, leading to the inclusion of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus as late as 1545-7 at the Council of Trent. Roman Catholic versions of the Bible include seven whole books and several parts of other books omitted from Anglican and Protestant versions, but included in the Apocrypha as a separate volume.

The Old Testament as it now exists is divided by the Jews into three: the Torah (Law), Nebim (Prophets) and Ketubim (Writings), categories ignored by Christians, who regard all the works as equally inspired. In the Christian version the books appear in a different order, the Prophets placed last, so that the final book, Malachi, appears to lead into the New Testament. Traditionally the order of the books was believed to reflect the chronological order of the events described. Some versions of the Bible included a chronology, often in a margin parallel to the text, which was regarded as being as free from error although the chronology was flawed by numerous absurdities and contradictions as Thomas Paine (1737-1809) made clear in his book The Age of Reason.

There is no single original version of even one part of the Bible and it was not until 100 AD that scribes began to ensure that texts were accurately copied, although of course this left the errors from previous editing. The original Middle Eastern alphabets contained no vowels and the earliest texts were written without punctuation so the tense had to be guessed from the context, causing misunderstandings. Furthermore the writers did not use separate symbols for numbers but, like the Greeks and Romans, used letters instead, which opened up further possibilities for confusion. Grammatically the text switches between first, second and third person personal pronouns, so it is not always clear which pronoun refers to which noun. The scribes may have done their best, but it was not easy and a recent international committee identified 5,000 places where the Hebrew was so puzzling that it needed to be corrected or explained. This has been recognised by Jews since 200 AD in the Talmud – to this day Jews quote from it each Saturday, discussing for example whether a word is ‘ children’ or ‘house’, since the lack of vowels makes either correct although the resultant sentence has a completely different meaning. A similar mystery is found in 1.Kings where we read that God ordered ravens (rbym) to feed the Prophet Elijah, but surely this must be an error of vowels and it is more likely if the original was arbim meaning Arabs rather than orbim meaning ravens!

The antipathy to the blind and lame which first appears in Samuel (2: 15:3-9) and is requoted, albeit in another context, by Matthew (21:14) the blind and lame came unto Him in the Temple and He healed them has long puzzled biblical experts. In the original, David tried to capture Jerusalem where the Jebusite defenders were assisted by the lame and blind and in victory David ordered that all these handicapped be killed together with the remaining Jebusites. Devout believers have suggested many justifications for this act against defenceless cripples,