One-God Idea Spawns War

The age of religious wars should have passed by now.  We should have gotten all over that in the Middle Ages when Catholics and Protestants attacked each other.  The 30 Years War depopulated Europe, for example.  It should have ended when Muslims took control of Istanbul and the remnants of the Roman Empire in 1453 and then unsuccessfully invaded Europe.  It should have disappeared after multiple massive wars between Muslims and Jews over Israel finally deteriorated into regular skirmishes after the 1973 stalemate.

Somehow, it hasn’t.  Nor will it ever.

The problem is inherent in the religions themselves.  It’s called monotheism.  By declaring there is only one God -- and only one “true” God – Christianity, Islam and Judaism guarantee a future filled with hate and bloodshed.

Each religion claims to follow the dictates of the lone God.  That God, called Yahweh, is a jealous God who will have “no other gods” before him, according to the Jewish religious text.  Christianity accepts that book, too, but its God is named Jesus.  Muslims, too, believe they follow the correct God, but his name is Allah.

Three Gods, all insisting on sole worship.

Moreover, both Christians and Muslims claim that their God is the only God and that other religions are not only unacceptable, but that their God demands the alternative faiths be eliminated.  They both believe that failure to believe in their God guarantees the deity will be angry and punish them.  

Jews, at least, set up a series of laws, based on the story of Noah, who lived prior to Abraham, the father of the religion.  The Bible calls him righteous, so early Jewish sages educed a handful of rules for non-Jews to be acceptable to God.  The Noahide laws include eating the proper food and believing in the Jewish God, but they are not onerous and were very widely followed throughout the Roman Empire around the time of Jesus.

Unfortunately, that idea never caught on with Islam or Christianity.

The antipathy between faiths has been building for more than 3,000 years.  Around the 1300s B.C.E., an Egyptian pharaoh named Amenhotep IV became increasing upset with the priests of Amon, who were dictating to him.  To counter them – and possibly because of sincere religious zeal – he changed to name to Akhenaton (also spelled Ihknaton) and declared the god Aton as the sole deity.

As a result, he is credited with creating monotheism.

His innovation had many benefits.  He swept away the entire hierarchy of priests, became the chief priest himself and wiped out all the mythology that dominated Egyptian life.  Henry VIII of England did much the same thing in the 1500s when he severed ties with the Roman Catholic Church and established the Anglican Church with himself at the head.

There’s only one major drawback to monotheism.  If there’s only one God, who is at fault when something goes wrong?  Not God, who is perfect.  Therefore, mankind must have angered God.  That kind of thinking is why overenthusiastic religious and political figures insist God sent Hurricane Irene or other natural disasters to “punish” sinful people.

After all, God is good; people are bad.  That concept is enshrined in Catholicism, which insists mankind has been sinful since the supposed first humans were exiled from the Garden of Eden.

Akhenaton’s belief did not survive him, but the monotheistic theory endured. Once humans swallowed such teaching, the path was set for collisions between competing and differing religious sects hell-bent to support their God.

As a result, the conflict between monotheistic faiths is not going to abate anytime soon.  It’s only going to get worse as pollution, overpopulation, climate change and more threaten human extinction and increase belief that God is punishing His respective followers for failing to convert others.

There may or may not be one God.  There may be multiple gods or no gods.  It doesn't matter to fervid believers..  

Soon enough, we may look back at the horrors of the religious wars of years ago with nostalgia at how innocuous they actually were.

Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.com.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  Many of his essays are posted at www.williamplazarus.blogspot.com.

Apostle Peter Gets a Voice

One of the most interesting figures in the New Testament is a man named Peter.  To many Christians today, he welcomes angels at the entrance to heaven.  This comes from the idea that, in tradition, Jesus gave him the “keys to heaven,” a distinction that also makes him a popular figure in cartoons.  

Peter was assigned deep religious connections.  Jesus is quoted as saying, “Upon this rock (Peter), I will build my church.” (Matt: 16:18) The comment is actually a play on words: the name “Peter” is derived from the Greek word for rock (petra).   As a result, the Catholic Church considers Peter the first pope.

In fact, St. Malachy, who predicted all the popes, believes the last pope – the one after the current Benedict XVI – will be named “Peter of Rome,” creating a full circle in history.   Malachy, an Irish church leader in the early 1110s, supposedly wrote:   "During the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, the seat will be occupied by Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock in many tribulations; and when these things are finished, the seven-hilled city will be destroyed, and the terrible Judge will judge his people. The End."

For such lofty status, we actually know a little about Peter’s life.  The holy text reports he was born in Bethsaida, a fishing village, and was the first disciple of Jesus.  He was married.  However, the “rock” crumbled by denying Jesus three times; he was twice brought before the Jewish tribunal on charges of blasphemy.  He also argues with Paul, who was not an original disciple, about Jesus’ teachings.  Eventually, however, he disappears midway through the Book of Acts.  By tradition, he died in Rome.

Supposedly, the St, Peter’s Basilica in Rome was built over his gravesite.  A limited number of visitors annually are taken to the excavations below the Basilica and shown the site.  Of course, no one knows if that’s really Peter’s final resting place.

That’s true of all the claims about Peter.  The New Testament was written at least 40 years after the death of Jesus.  Acts, which talks about Peter’s arrest and trial, is much older than that.  Memories fade.  Mythology has a more powerful impact than actual records, and no documents mentioning Peter existed either.   In fact, when examined carefully, we really know very little about such an important leader of early Christianity. 

I’ve taken care of that little problem.  My new novel, The Last Testament of Simon Peter, lets the apostle tell his story.  In my account, Peter is in Roman captivity waiting with Paul to be executed.  Continuing the debate in the New Testament, Peter decides to counter Paul’s teachings with his own version.

Peter recounts his life in Hammas (the old name for Bethaisda), his early years fishing and the drowning of his older brother, his visit to the Temple in Jerusalem, his participation with the guerrilla fighters against the Romans, crucifixion of his father, his visit to the “saints” living in anticipation of the coming apocalypse and much more.  The text is historically accurate for the time period, and Peter goes through the kind of traumatic situations all Jews did in his day.

Jesus plays little role in the book.  I had no desire to offend people’s beliefs.  Instead, I was looking to do a couple of things I consider vitally important.

First, I wanted to present a reality that somehow has escaped many believers today.  People then did not walk around with halos over their heads.  They didn’t know they were “saints” or that they would end up as characters in books read with reverence by billions of people worldwide.

They were people living their lives just as we do.  They had good times and bad; they tried to survive as best they could, which wasn’t easy in an ancient Israel (then called Judea) which was under Roman rule and fractured by multiple Jewish sects.  One of them, Zealots, fought the Romans until a major confrontation in 70 A.D. led to the destruction of the Temple and the rise of Paul’s view of Christianity.

Peter was dead by then.  The book closes with his death and his reconciliation with Paul.

Second, something happened 2,000 years ago.  There were multiple people, like Jesus, who were thought of as a messiah.  There were a variety of strange events, seen as miraculous.  In my book, Peter hooks up with one, a historically real person named Alexander.  In that role, Peter is then able to model how stories can become exaggerated.

Third, the Roman presence in Judea helped create Christianity.  That influence is largely ignored today.  In my book, Peter is constantly being harassed or affected by the Romans.  Their leader, Panthera, is actually thought to be the father of Jesus in anti-Christian literature of the day.

The result then gives the reader a complete view of life in that era, a reality which engendered not only a world religion but which has influenced the lives of every person who has lived since then.

Copies of the book are available through www.halifaxcounty.com and by writing me directly at www.williamplazarus.com.

I would really appreciate feedback.

The Last Testament of Simon Peter

Publisher: Halifax County

Pages:  278

Cost: $19.95

Omens of the Day

During a recent lunch at a Chinese restaurant, a friend read her fortune cookie, jumped up and ran next door to Publix to buy a lottery based on the numbers printed on the back of the fortune.  I was surprised because those “lucky” numbers appear on all fortune cookies, and she knew that.  

However, she said that the Chinese word of the day on the other side of the fortune, “turtle,” was an omen. That was her nickname, she explained.   It was sign that the lottery numbers were going to win. 
 

She didn’t.

That’s the problems with such “omens.”  They are so hard to read.  That hasn’t stopped anyone of course.  We all see omens – those intangible hints of the future.  Science be damned: a snake that slithered across my path this morning definitely foreshadows a problem at work.

Reading omens – a word of uncertain origin – is not a new idea.  Babylonian and Assyrian priests once predicted the future by looking at the entrails of sacrificial victims.  They checked the “appearance of human and animal offspring at birth” as well as the condition of “various members of the human body,” according to a British Museum report.  

In their day, Romans also faithfully checked for omens in the entrails of animals and in the flight of birds.  They called such indicators “auspices.”  They supposedly forecast the results of a coming war.  Generals would not go into battle if the auspices were not good and often sacrificed more animals to get better results.

Occasionally, a priest who didn’t find good auspices prior to some important event also ended up being sacrificed.

Seutonius, a Roman author who is best known for his biographies of the first 12 emperors, carefully recorded all the omens when one of them was born, the first indication that the child was destined to wear the purple.

Such ideas became widespread as the Roman Empire overshadowed western civilization.  Jews were not exempt.  The appearance of an owl at games presided over by Jewish King Herod Antipas forecast his death, according to a report by Jewish historian Josephus.  Supposedly, Antipas had seen an owl while held in a Roman prison and was warned he would die five days after seeing another one.  In a mind over matter episode, Agrippa did exactly that.

The belief in omens hasn’t vanished.  For example, a black cat is supposedly an omen for impending troubles throughout the Western world.

These superstitions linger because omens are more than just an idle thought.  They supposedly represent divine interference in human life.  As was noted in the 1875 Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities:  “All the nations of antiquity were impressed with the firm belief, that the will of the gods and future events were revealed to men by certain signs, which were sent by the gods as marks of their favor to their sincere worshipers. Hence, the arguments of the Stoics that if there are gods, they care for men, and that if they care for men, they must send them signs of their will.”

That’s why people predicting the immediate end of the world now point to such ominous omens as the recent massive fish kills.  The death of 200 cows in Wisconsin prompted similar claims, all based on a biblical prophecy in Hosea:

"Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away."

Of course, the book of Revelation in the Bible is regularly mined for more hints of the coming apocalypse. 

Fortunately, not all omens presage disaster.  A sneeze was seen as a good omen in Greece, for example.  A bright sun suddenly appearing amid the clouds today often is seen as an indication hat the heavens are looking down favorably.

Regardless, all omens good or bad are merely superstitions. 

My friend didn’t win the lottery.  None of the six numbers came up.  She joins the legions disappointed by the failure of omens.

As Roman poet Lucretius noted more than 2,000 years ago: there is nothing to create omens.  People “observed how the array of heaven and the various seasons of the year came round in due order and could not discover by what causes all that came about. Therefore, their refuge was to leave all in the hands of the gods and to suppose that by their nod all things are done."

The truth is that life is not ominous – in more ways than one.

Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.com.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  Many of his essays are posted at www.williamplazarus.blogspot.com.

Cain and the Ugly Truth

Recent news reports that Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain allegedly harassed two women has caused Cain, who is black, to claim that he is the subject of racial discrimination and that the “liberal” media has united to destroy a viable candidate.

Both claims are complete nonsense.

For starters, whether Cain is African-American or not does not matter.  He’s a candidate.  He’s running for the presidential nomination of a major party.  Everything about him will be and should be scrutinized by the media.  That’s true for every candidate.  For example, Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s association with a controversial minister has not been ignored.  That was equally true three years ago for now-President Barack Obama and his 2008 Republican challenger Sen. John McCain.

Sen. Gary Hart (D-Col) learned that to his embarrassment in 1988 when his presidential campaign foundered on claims of sexual infidelity.  The investigation into Hart was led by the Washington Post, a so-called liberal newspaper.

Nor will Cain’s comments be overlooked.  Controversial quotes attributed to former Gov. Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann, both of whom are white and considered possible Republican nominees, have earned equal scrutiny.  Perry is now defending charges that he was impaired while giving a recent speech in New Hampshire.

People like to hear and read about the peccadilloes of the rich and famous.  Cain is no different.

Besides, Obama was elected, and he is African-American.  How racist can this country be?

Sure, a percentage of people voted for Obama because he was black.  That was balanced by a percentage who voted against him for the same reason.  Most people, however, judged Obama compared to his opponent on issues they considered for more important than race and chose him. 

Charging racism is the last, desperate act of a candidate unable to face up to the questions based on the facts, not his skin color.

The liberal press claim is even more absurd.  That canard has a long history and is completely false.  In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt insisted the press was "about 200 percent Republican." In the 1950s, Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson complained about a Republican "one-party press."

Bill Clinton certainly missed the liberal bias during his two terms in office.

These days, the issue is raised constantly by conservatives and could not be further from the truth.  And they know it:  Prominent conservative columnist William Krystal founder and editor of the Weekly Standard political magazine and a regular Fox News Channel commentator, made that clear in a recent CNN interview.

“The press isn't quite as biased and liberal. They're actually conservative sometimes,” he said, backing up his earlier published comment that “the whole idea of the ‘liberal media’ was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.”

In fact, an estimated 90 percent of newspapers regularly endorse conservative candidates.

Is Rubert Murdoch, who owns more media outlets than anyone, not conservative?  Hardly.  He owns Fox News, a bastion of conservative programming.  That’s true for owners of most major media outlets.  They are wealthy and tend consistently to lean toward the conservative side of issues.

Their opinions actually have little effect on news coverage, something I saw firsthand.  I spent years as a reporter: five years with the very conservative New Haven Register; five years with the liberal Daytona Beach News-Journal. As a college student, I wrote stories for the New York Times and had stories published in other newspapers and magazines.  I wrote thousands of articles on multiple topics.  At no time was I ever told to rewrite a story to give it either a liberal or conservative slant.  I was never assigned a story based on such attitudes nor was a written story changed to conform to such views.

In print media, opinion and news contents were kept strictly separated, as are advertising and news.

The few liberal papers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, may gleefully cover news that damages conservative leaders, such as Cain, but they hardly reserve their coverage to one side or the other.  That would be impossible in a world where print media is ubiquitous.  One outlet slanting the news would be quickly exposed by another providing more balanced coverage. 

That’s not as true with electronic media, where multiple commentators have shows.  They obviously can be liberal or conservative.  However, news programming strives to be impartial.  Not all of them succeed as well as we may like.

What exposes liberal or conservative viewpoints isn’t the actual reporting, but the placement of the story – an anti-liberal report likely would get more exposure in the conservative media – but that doesn’t change the facts.

For example, I can recall seeing bias in headlines: when a liberal Ohio senator released his tax returns, both Cleveland newspapers covered the story:  The liberal Cleveland Press reported that Howard Metzenbaum released his tax forms.  The conservative Cleveland Plain Dealer reported “Metzenbaum paid no taxes in 1969.”  However, the accounts were virtually the same, and placement of the stories on the page was similar.

Besides, inconsistent reports do not “expose” a bias.  Reporters try to cover an event.  Their choice of words can be analyzed to death, but as with Shakespeare, the words are chosen to fit the need, not because they expose some hidden “liberal” agenda.

In truth, Cain has no argument.  He was involved in harassment suits.  The two women received settlements.  That’s fact.  That’s what has been reported by media of all political persuasion.

His yelps are simple efforts to camouflage a far more sinister effort. 

He wants to prevent media from doing its watchdog job of reporting negative news.  No reporter wants to be accused of racism.  No medium wants to be attacked for supposedly slanting the news.

Like many candidates before him confronted with an ugly truth, Cain wants to muzzle the messenger.

That’s not a liberal or conservative issue.  Cain’s efforts should be treated with the scorn they deserve by everyone regardless of political persuasion.

This country was founded on several important principles: freedom of speech and freedom the press.  No presidential candidate – regardless of race or political ideals – deserves support while trying to stifle those basic elements of American life.

Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion, religious history and current topics.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.com.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  Many of his essays are posted at www.williamplazarus.blogspot.com.

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