Author: Ken Ammi

The question as to how many early ancient texts there are which refer to Jesus is often proposed.

So, how many early references are there?

The logical question is: how many have been found and or how many do we know about? In other words, we do not know how many references there are since we may discover more manuscripts of ancient works tomorrow and do not know how many undiscovered or destroyed writings there actually have been. This seems like an obvious consideration but it seems particularly important to note considering that Jerusalem, the nexus of Jesus’ activity, was destroyed in 70 AD.

James H. Charlesworth, “Jesus did exist; and we know more about him than about almost any Palestinian Jew before 70 C.E.”1

Ed Parish Sanders, “We know a lot about Jesus, vastly more than about John the Baptist, Theudas, Judas the Galilean, or any of the other figures whose names we have from approximately the same date and place.”2

A. E. Harvey, commenting particularly on the crucifixion, “It would be no exaggeration to say that this event is better attested, and supported by a more impressive array of evidence, than any other event of comparable importance of which we have knowledge from the ancient world.”3

How much do we know about anyone who lived 2,000 years ago or 1,000 or less even?

Consider Tiberius Caesar. He was the Roman Emperor from 14-37 AD. How many non-Christian references do we know of which mention him within 150 years of his life? Nine.

Let us consider from whence our knowledge of Alexander the Great comes. Alexander lived 356-323 BC and we only know about him from two sources written circa one century after his death. Most of what we claim to know about him dates to 300 to 500 years after his death.

Below I will present a list of the names of texts and range of dates that they were written. This is not a complete list. I am calling upon the assistance of anyone who may read this and is aware of any that I may have missed, please do inform me of any that you note. Also, I have, more or less, followed the date range as suggested by the website Early Christian Writings, if you can provide different of more definite dates, please do inform me.

The list below attempts to cover references to “Jesus,” “Christ,” “Jesus Christ,” or references to Jesus Christ which are obvious within the context by titles such as “Lord,” “Savior,” or “Son,” or “Son of God,” etc.

The list will cover a period spanning from pre 70 AD to 280 AD. Note also that the list totals 236 texts. This number refers to the texts themselves and not to the number of times that Jesus is referenced in each text. Counting each reference would take us well beyond the 236 total. Furthermore, the number refers to the texts and not to each manuscript behind each text. Counting each manuscript would also take us well beyond the 236 total.

1) The Gospel of Matthew

2) The Gospel of Mark

3) The Gospel of Luke

4) The Gospel of John

5) The Book of Acts

6) Romans

7) 1st Corinthians

8) 2nd Corinthians

9) Galatians

10) Ephesians

11) Philippians

12) Colossians

13) 1st Thessalonians

14) 2nd Thessalonians

15) 1st Timothy

16) 2nd Timothy

17) Titus

18) Philemon

19) Hebrews

20) James

21) 1st Peter

22) 2nd Peter

23) 1st John

24) 2nd John

25) Jude

26) Book of Revelation

These texts make up the body of the New Testament (the only one that is not represented here is 3rd Letter from John). These were all written prior to 70 AD with the possible exception of Revelation which is dated to circa 95 AD. These represent the very best attested documents of antiquity. Any other documents would represent vastly inferior works.

At the end of the list of references I will provide some links to further research materials.

27) 50-75 AD : Thallus (works preserved by others, such as Julius Africanus who wrote about 221 AD)

28) 50-120 AD : The Didache

29) 50-140 AD : Papyrus Oxyrhnchus #1224

30) 50-140 AD : The Gospel of Thomas

31) 50-200 AD : The Sophia of Jesus Christ

32) 70-120 AD : Papyrus Egerton #2

33) 70-160 AD : The Gospel of Peter

34) 70-200 AD : Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs

35) 70-200 AD : Fayyum Fragment

36) 70-255 AD : Letter of Clement of Alexandria on Secret Mark

37) 73-200 AD : Mara bar Serapion (referred to the Jews’ wise King)

38) 75-160 AD : Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (in the section of his writing on Emperor Claudius who ruled 41-54)

39) 80 AD : Phlegon (preserved by Origen and Julius Africanus)

40) 80-120 AD : The Epistle of Barnabas

41) 80-140 AD : The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians

42) 80-150 AD : The Gospel of the Hebrews

43) 90-95 AD : Flavius Josephus4

44) 100-150 AD : The Preaching of Peter

45) 100-150 AD : The Apocryphon of James

46) 100-150 AD : The Apocalypse of Peter – The Ethiopic Text

47) 100-160 AD : The Gospel of the Ebionites

48) 110 AD : Ignatius to Polycarp

49) 110-140 AD : The Epistle Of Polycarp

50) 110-140 AD : Fragments Of Papias From The Exposition Of The Oracles Of The Lord.

51) 110-160 AD : Papyrus Oxyrhynchus #840

52) 110-160 AD : The Traditions of Matthias

53) 112 AD : Pliny the Younger (Plinius Secundus) “Epistles 10.96”

54) 115 AD : Cornelius Tacitus (in his “Histories” (preserved by Sulpicus Severus) and “Annals”.

55) 120-130 AD : Quadratus, Bishop of Athens

56) 120-130 AD : The Apology Of Aristides

57) 120-140 AD : The Naassene Psalm

58) 120-160 AD : Valentinus – Myth according to Irenaeus

59) 120-160 AD : Valentinus – The Divine Word Present in the Infant

60) 120-160 AD : Valentinus – Fragment A

61) 120-160 AD : Valentinus – Fragment B

62) 120-160 AD : Valentinus – Fragment E

63) 120-160 AD : Valentinus – Jesus’ Digestive System: Epistle to Agathapous

64) 120-180 AD : The Apocryphon of John (aka The Secret Book of John or The Secret Revelation of John)

65) 120-180 AD : Gospel of Mary aka The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene

66) 120-180 AD : The Dialogue of the Savior

67) 120-180 AD : The (Second) Apocalypse of James

68) 120-180 AD : Trimorphic Protennoia

69) 170 AD : Lucian of Samosata “The Death of Peregrine 11-13”

70) 130-140 AD : Marcion – The Gospel of the Lord

71) 130-140 AD : Marcion – Antitheses

72) 130-140 AD : The Gospel of Marcion, Section I

73) 130-140 AD : The Gospel of Marcion, Section II

74) 130-140 AD : The Gospel of Marcion, Section III

75) 130-140 AD : The Gospel of Marcion, Section IV

76) 130-140 AD : The Gospel of Marcion, Section V

77) 130-140 AD : The Gospel of Marcion, Section VI

78) 130-160 AD : Second Clement

79) 130-170 AD : The Gospel of Judas

80) 130-200 AD : The Epistle To Diognetus

81) 140-150 AD : The Epistula Apostolorum

82) 140-160 AD : Clement’s Quotations of Isidore

83) 140-160 AD : Ptolemy’s Commentary On The Gospel of John Prologue

84) 140-170 AD : Infancy Gospel of Thomas

85) 140-170 AD : Infancy Gospel of James

86) 140-180 AD : The Gospel of Truth

87) 150-160 AD : The Martyrdom Of Saint Polycarp, Bishop Of Smyrna

88) 150-160 AD : Justin Martyr – Fragments Of The Lost Work Of Justin On The Resurrection

89) 150-160 AD : Justin Martyr – Justin’s Hortatory Address To The Greeks

90) 150-160 AD : Justin Martyr – Dialogue With Trypho

91) 150-160 AD : Justin Martyr – The Second Apology Of Justin For The Christians – Addressed To The Roman Senate

92) 150-160 AD : Justin Martyr – The First Apology Of Justin

93) 150-180 AD : Fragments of Heracleon

94) 150-180 AD : Excerpts of Theodotus

95) 150-200 AD : Acts of Andrew

96) 150-200 AD : Acts of Paul

97) 150-200 AD : Acts of John

98) 150-200 AD : Acts of Peter

99) 150-200 AD : The Ascension of Isaiah

100) 150-225 AD : The Book of Thomas the Contender

101) 150-225 AD : Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles

102) 150-255 AD : “The Acts of Pilate” – The Report of Pilate to the Emperor Claudius

103) 150-255 AD : “The Acts of Pilate” – The Descent of Christ into Hell

104) 150-255 AD : Melchizedek

105) 150 AD : Numenius (preserved by Origen in Contra Celsum)

106) 150-160 AD : Trypho (preserved by Justin Martyr in Dialogue with Trypho)

107) 160-170 AD : Tatian’s Address to the Greeks

108) 160-180 AD : Claudius Apollinaris

109) 160-180 AD : Julius Cassianus

110) 167-167 AD : Marcus Aurelius

111) 165-175 AD : Fragments of Melito of Sardis

112) 165-175 AD : Fragments of Hegesippus

113) 170-175 AD : Diatessaron

114) 170-200 AD : Treatise on the Resurrection

115) 170-200 AD : The Muratorian Canon

116) 170-200 AD : The Dura-Europos Gospel Harmony

117) 170-220 AD : Letter of Peter to Philip

118) 175-180 AD : Athenagoras of Athens

119) 175-185 AD : Irenaeus – Book I

120) 175-185 AD : Irenaeus – Book II

121) 175-185 AD : Irenaeus – Book III

122) 175-185 AD : Irenaeus – Book IV

123) 175-185 AD : Irenaeus – Book V

124) 175-185 AD : Irenaeus – Fragments From The Lost Writings Of Irenaeus

125) 175-185 AD : Irenaeus – Fragments of Irenaeus in Eusebius

126) 178 AD : Letter from Vienna and Lyons

127) 177-178 AD : Celsus’ view of Christians and Christianity (preserved by Origen in Contra Celsus)

128) 180 AD : The Passion of the Scillitan Martyrs

129) 180-220 AD : Kerygmata Petrou

130) 180-185 AD : Theophilus of Antioch – Book II

131) 180-185 AD : Theophilus of Antioch – Book III

132) 180-230 AD : Hippolytus of Rome – Treatise On Christ And Antichrist

133) 180-230 AD : Hippolytus of Rome – Expository Treatise Against The Jews

134) 180-230 AD : Hippolytus of Rome – The Extant Works And Fragments Of Hippolytus (Part I – Exegetical)

135) 180-230 AD : Hippolytus of Rome – Fragments From Commentaries On Various Books Of Scripture

136) 180-230 AD : Hippolytus of Rome – The Refutation Of All Heresies Book X

137) 180-230 AD : Hippolytus of Rome – The Refutation Of All Heresies Book IX

138) 180-230 AD : Hippolytus of Rome – The Refutation Of All Heresies Book VIII

139) 180-230 AD : Hippolytus of Rome – The Refutation Of All Heresies Book VII

140) 180-230 AD : Hippolytus of Rome – The Refutation Of All Heresies Book VI

141) 180-230 AD : Hippolytus of Rome – The Refutation Of All Heresies Book V

142) 180-230 AD : Hippolytus of Rome – The Refutation Of All Heresies Book IV

143) 180-250 AD : 1st Apocalypse of James

144) 180-250 AD : Gospel of Philip

145) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – Book III

146) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – Book IV

147) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – Book V

148) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – Book VI

149) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – Book VII

150) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – Fragments Of Clemens Alexandrinus.

151) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – Who is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved?

152) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – To The Newly Baptized (aka Exhortation To Endurance aka To The Newly Baptized Precepts Of Clement)

153) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – Exhortation To The Heathen

154) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – The Instructor. [Paedagogus.] The Instructor Book I

155) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – The Instructor. [Paedagogus.] The Instructor Book II

156) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – The Instructor. [Paedagogus.] The Instructor Book III

157) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – The Stromata, or Miscellanies Book I

158) 182-202 AD : Clement of Alexandria – The Stromata, or Miscellanies Book II

159) 185-195 AD : Fragments of Polycrates

160) 188-217 AD : Talmud – Baraitha Bab. Sanhedrin 43a

161) 188-217 AD : Talmud – B. Yebamoth 49a, M. Yebamoth 4.13

162) 188-217 AD : Talmud – Sanhedrin 107b5

163) 189-199 AD : Victor I

164) 193-193 AD : Anonymous Anti-Montanist

165) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – To Scapula

166) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – The Chaplet, Or De Corona

167) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – The Shows, Or De Spectaculis

168) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – On Idolatry

169) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – Apology

170) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – A Treatise on the Soul

171) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – The Soul’s Testimony

172) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – An Answer To The Jews

173) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – The Prescription Against Heretics

174) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – The Five Books Against Marcion. Book I

175) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – The Five Books Against Marcion. Book II

176) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – The Five Books Against Marcion. Book III

177) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – The Five Books Against Marcion. Book IV

178) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – The Five Books Against Marcion. Book V

179) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – Scorpiace. Antidote For The Scorpion’s Sting

180) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – Against Praxeas

181) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – On The Resurrection Of The Flesh

182) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – On The Flesh Of Christ

183) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – Against The Valentinians

184) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – Against Hermogenes

185) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – Ad Martyras

186) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – On Prayer

187) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – On Baptism

188) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – Against All Heresies

189) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – On Repentance

190) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – On The Veiling Of Virgins

191) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – On The Apparel Of Women

192) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – Of Patience

193) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – The Passion Of The Holy Martyrs – Perpetua And Felicitas

194) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – To His Wife

195) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – On Exhortation To Chastity

196) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – On Monogamy

197) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – On Modesty

198) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – On Fasting

199) 197-220 AD : Tertullian – De Fuga In Persecutione

200) 200-210 AD : Apollonius

201) 200-210 AD : Fragments of Serapion of Antioch

202) 200-220 AD : Caius

203) 200-220 AD : The Treatise Of Eusebius, The Son Of Pamphilus, Against The Life Of Apollonius Of Tyana Written By Philostratus, Occasioned By The Parallel Drawn By Hierocles Between Him And Christ

204) 200-250 AD : a church was been discovered in Megiddo, Israel. Excavations uncovered a large tile floor and wall remnants. There are mosaics of fish which were the original Christian symbol. Also found were some inscriptions inlaid into the mosaic one which reads, “Akeptous, the God-loving, offered this table for (the) God Jesus Christ, as a remembrance” (“Akeptous” is the name of the woman who offered this “remembrance”).

205) 200-225 AD : The Acts of Thomas

206) 200-250 AD : Didascalia

207) 200-250 AD : Books of Jeu

208) 200-255 AD : Pistis Sophia – Book I

209) 200-255 AD : Pistis Sophia – Book II

210) 200-255 AD : The Apocalypse of Peter

211) 202-203 AD : Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas

212) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen de Principiis: Preface

213) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen de Principiis: Book I

214) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen de Principiis: Book II

215) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen de Principiis: Book III

216) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen de Principiis: Book IV

217) 203-250 AD : Origen – A Letter from Origen to Africanus

218) 203-250 AD : Origen – A Letter from Origen to Gregory

219) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen Against Celsus: Book I

220) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen Against Celsus: Book II

221) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen Against Celsus: Book III

222) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen Against Celsus: Book IV

223) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen Against Celsus: Book V

224) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen Against Celsus: Book VI

225) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen Against Celsus: Book VII

226) 203-250 AD : Origen – Origen Against Celsus: Book VIII

227) 203-250 AD : Origen – Prologue of Rufinus

228) 203-250 AD : Origen – Commentary on the Gospel of John: Book I

229) 203-250 AD : Origen – Commentary on the Gospel of John: Book II

230) 203-250 AD : Origen – Commentary on the Gospel of John: Book IV

231) 203-250 AD : Origen – Commentary on the Gospel of John: Book V

232) 203-250 AD : Origen – Commentary on the Gospel of John: Book VI

233) 203-250 AD : Origen – Commentary on the Gospel of John: Book X

234) 203-250 AD : Origen – Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew

235) 221 AD : Julius Africanus

236) 280 AD : Porphyry of Tyre (in Against the Christians – Life of Pythagoras)

Gary R. Habermas, Reinterpretations of the Historical Jesus

Paul L. Maier, Did Jesus Really Exist? and Josephus and Jesus

Wayne Jackson, The Historicity of Jesus Christ

J. P. Holding, Jesus – Shattering the Christ-Myth – The Reliability of the Secular References to Jesus and Fairy Castles Built on Sand and The Apostate Who Wasn’t All There

Mike Licona, A Review and Critique of Brian Flemming’s “The God Who Wasn’t There”

Gary R. Habermas, The Late Twentieth-Century Resurgence of Naturalistic Responses to Jesus’ Resurrection

Bede and Christopher Price, Did Jesus Exist? Bede’s Library

Bernard Muller, Review of Doherty’s “The Jesus Puzzle”

Bob and Gretchen Passantino, Doherty’s “Challenging the Verdict”: Appeal Denied

Christopher Price, Short Review of “The Jesus Puzzle”

Doxa website, Mythological Jesus

Patrick Narkinsky, The Jesus Mosaic

Preventing Truth Decay, Taking the “Jesus Puzzle” Apart Piece-by-Piece

GDon, “The God Who Wasn’t There” an Analysis

The Gary DeMar show, The Jesus Who Never Lived

According to The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI, “Leading Egyptian Daily ‘Al-Ahram’ Reports: Coins from Era of Biblical Joseph Found in Egypt,” September 24, 2009, No. 2561):

_the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram [September 22, 2009], by Wajih Al-Saqqar, archeologists have discovered ancient Egyptian coins bearing the name and image of the Biblical Joseph_

Its importance lies in the fact that it provides decisive scientific evidence disproving the claim by some historians that the ancient Egyptians were unfamiliar with coins and conducted their trade through barter_

many charms from various eras before and after the period of Joseph, including one that bore his effigy as the minister of the treasury in the Egyptian pharaoh’s court_

On the other hand some references to coinage have been known such as:

_texts from the time of the Third Dynasty_states that the Egyptian coin of the time was called a deben_Other texts from the time of the Third Dynasty, the Sixth Dynasty and the Twelfth Dynasty mention a coin named shati or sat_

Research team head Dr. Sa’id Muhammad Thabet had been looking for “coins used as charms or ornaments” yet, “what most archeologists took for a kind of charm, and others took for an ornament or adornment, is actually a coin.” Moreover, “the coins come in different sizes and are made of different materials, including ivory, precious stones, copper, silver, gold, etc.” and some were “scarab-shaped.”

It is also reported that one coin:

had an inscription on it, and an image of a cow symbolizing Pharaoh’s dream about the seven fat cows and seven lean cows, and the seven green stalks of grain and seven dry stalks of grain_
Joseph’s name appears twice on this coin, written in hieroglyphs: once the original name, Joseph, and once his Egyptian name, Saba Sabani, which was given to him by Pharaoh when he became treasurer. There is also an image of Joseph, who was part of the Egyptian administration at the time.

Let us dive into to some of the concerns: as of yet it seems that the only report about these coins, particularly the one depicting Joseph, has come from one news source which published a photo of various carved scarabs.

Perhaps these are the “scarab-shaped” coins but none are shown to bear the image of Joseph-why not prominently picture this coin?

Some think that this is all a hoax and some that it is an attempt at an Islamic apologetic as along with reference to the coin of Joseph’s time in Egypt appeals are being made to verses from the Qur’an (Koran) which reference coin usage in Joseph’s day such as a reference to Joseph’s brothers selling him, “And they sold him for a low price, a number of silver coins (Surah 12:20).

Yet, note that since the Qur’an was not written until circa half a millennia after the time of Christ the Qur’an is alluding to the Bible which states, “sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver” (Genesis 37:28).
The “twenty of silver” (the word “shekel” is not in the manuscripts) may be understood as the sliver having been in the form of coinage but could refer to the weight of the silver as “shekels” is a measure of weight which later came to be the name of coins.

Thus, it is advisable to wait and see what is to become of this-what corroboration, information and photos are to follow, if any.

A friend and I were asked, “Show me where Jesus said ‘I am God.'” We pointed the inquirer to John 8:58 where Jesus states “before Abraham was I AM.”

The response was “he did not say ‘I am God.'”

Of course, that is precisely what Jesus was saying and the text makes it clear that the Jews understood this fact so well that they attempted to stone Jesus to death for blasphemy, for claiming to be God. In saying “I AM” He was claiming for Himself the name of God given to Moses from the burning bush in order to identify Him as the one God (see Exodus 3:14). Jesus also sent His apostles to baptize “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Note that He did not say names (plural) but name (singular). He makes His name the same as that of the God whom the Jews worship.

Here is the problem; we must first determine whether the question being posed based upon an appropriate premise. A premise is a proposition (a plan or scheme proposed) supporting or helping to support a conclusion. A faulty premise will not end in an appropriate conclusion.

For example, the various skeptics want to hear Jesus say what they want to hear in the North American English grammar de jour (or whichever language in which the skeptic finds herself dealing). In this case, the person wanted to see the words “I-am-God,” those three words and in that order. Is that an appropriate premise? No, why should Jesus have to say something in the way that you particularly want to hear it said? If a Jehovah’s Witness states that Jesus never claimed to be God and you show them that He did, they will say “Well, He did not claim to be Jehovah God or God Almighty.” You see they want to hear it just how they want to hear it and any other grammatical construct is unacceptable.
Maybe Jesus should have stood up one day and said, “Just to make everyone happy, I declare that I am God, the Almighty, Jehovah, YHWH, Yahweh, Adonai, HaShem, Shaddai, Elohim, LORD, Yod Hay Vav Hay, Emet, I AM, etc, etc.” And still I’m sure that someone could come up with other names for God.

An appropriate premise, for example, could be “Did Jesus claim to be God? And if He did, how did He do so?” Now we can get somewhere because He claimed to be God in many ways that may not seem very straightforward in our North American English grammar de jour. He not only claimed to be God, people called him God and He was called God by God.1 He was called the creator.2 He was called the forgiver of sins.3 He was called the judge.4 He was called the Alpha and Omega.5 He was referred to as omnipotent,6 omnipresent7 and omniscient.8 He also allows Himself to be worshipped.9 He claimed to be the only way to the Father, to salvation.10

In any case, we showed where Jesus said “I AM,” and when they did not accept this as close enough to “I am God,” we asked “What if someone refers to Jesus as God and Jesus does not stop the person from doing so?” We pointed out where Thomas says to Jesus “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). The response was that Thomas was just surprised or astonished and he was simply expressing that emotion, just as if we won a football game and I turned to my teammate and said “My God, we won!” Certainly we would not be referring to our teammate as God. This is another faulty premise, just because saying “My God” could be a statement of excitement does not mean that Thomas was not calling Jesus God. Just because it could mean the former does not mean that it could not mean the latter.

Interestingly enough in his anti-Christian book, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan quoted John 16:14; 5:17; 5:22; 10:30; 14:9 and stated, “From these quotes, it seems obvious that Jesus himself claimed to be G-d.”11 He has no problem understanding that Jesus did claim to be God even if the verses he sites do not have Jesus saying, “I-am-God.”

It seems to be a good idea to clarify and define terms before arguing or attempting to answer an illogical question or opposition.

This parsed post will consider, dissect and respond to the documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.”
Hereinafter DSC denotes “The Discovery Channel.”

This parsed essay is divided into the following segments:

Part 1: Introduction and Utterly Absolute Unquestionable Certainty Part 2: Sensationalistic Claims – The Hype is Ripe Part 3: Let the Debate Begin…Without Us Part 4: Deoxyribonucleic Acid Part 5: Statistical Probability Part 6: Theological Considerations – The Resurrection and the Ascension Part 7: Odd and Unfounded Assertions Part 8: Some Academics Dare to Disagree Part 9: Erudite Elucidators?

Part 10: The James Ossuary and Concluding Musings

On March 4, 2007 AD “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” a documentary produced by James Cameron and directed by Simcha Jacobovici, aired on the “The Discovery Channel” (hereinafter DSC) which describes it as, “Part archaeological adventure, part Biblical history, part forensic science, part theological controversy.”1

The documentary revolves around the discovery, in the 1980s, of a tomb that contained 10 ossuaries (bone boxes) that date to circa 2,000 years ago. The site was surveyed by archaeologist Shimon Gibson who also drew the layout plan. The ossuaries where described by L.Y. Rahmani in “A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries.” The ossuaries were found in the Talpiot region of Jerusalem, the “Talpiot Tomb,” or “Tomb of Ten Ossuaries,” included the following inscriptions:

Ossuary 80/500 – Mariamne e Mara

Ossuary 80/501 – Yehuda bar Yeshua

Ossuary 80/502 – Matia

Ossuary 80/503 – Yeshua bar Yosef

Ossuary 80/504 – Yose

Ossuary 80/505 – Maria

James Cameron stated,

“It doesn’t get bigger than this. We’ve done our homework; we’ve made the case; and now it’s time for the debate to begin.”2

How does the documentary begin? By making this statement,

“Leading scientists and theologians have not reached agreement on the meaning of this archeological discovery and questions remain. We invite viewers to apply their own judgments and interpretive skills.”

Interesting, I thought that we were constantly told that making judgments and interpretations were bad things-but alas.

“The Lost Tomb of Jesus”, part 10 of 10 ›

Adolf Hitler / Nazism / Communism

Da Vinci Code / Angels and Demons / Templars, etc.

Find it Fast – Fast Facts

Judaism (Rabbinic, Messianic, etc.)

Recommendations for the Month

Visuals – Illustrations and Photos

Babylon’s Raze

Dan Barker and many New Atheist attempt to demonstrate that the Bible is an immoral work from which we subjectively glean what scant good morals are found within it, they claim that we pick and choose. Dan Barker makes reference to Psalm 137 but quotes only the text which states, “Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock!”

With that he assumes that he has demonstrated what macabre books the Bible is since, at least in his mind, it commands us to dashes little ones against the rocks. He also appears to think that this statement is a commandment for all people in all times and all places.

Dan Barker is committing a fallacy that is surprisingly and sadly very common amongst his brand of New Atheist pseudo-skeptics. So much so is this true that we have had to write on this matter with regards to Sam Harris (Sam Harris’ Mythunderstandings particularly the “Back Talking” section) and Richard Dawkins (Planting God More Firmly on His Throne).

The primary fallacy is quite simple to both identify and to correct. I do not seek to denigrate the intellectual prowess of the New Atheists. Yet, it must be pointed out that the fact that they so often commit such fallacies forces one to consider why they are doing so. Are they purposefully doing so or are they so outside of their field of knowledge that they simply cannot handle the process of reading a text for what it is without eisegetically injecting their emotionally spiked personal prejudices? While they quite often besmirch their opponent’s thoughts and motivation, we cannot do the same. We cannot know, unless they freely admit it, whether they are purposefully deceptive propagandists or simply not as erudite as we may think. The only thing that we can do is to consider their statements and, as the Bible praises the Bereans for doing whenever Paul preached to them, “see if those things were so” (Acts 17:11).

But what is the primary fallacy which is so simple to correct? They appear to function on the faulty premise that just because the Bible states something it is tantamount to an endorsement. In other words, the Bible describes and prescribes. For example, the Ten Commandments clearly prescribe, “Thou shall…Thou shall not…” On the other hand, statements such as was made by the devil to Jesus were clearly not something that Jesus should do and clearly not for us to do, “Then the Devil took Him up into the holy city and set Him upon a pinnacle of the Temple. And he said to Him, If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down” (Matthew 4:5-5).

Judaism and Christianity have never believed that everything written in the Bible is a prescription. New Atheists ought to reclaim their dignity and cease from constantly putting forth such unscholarly and un-commonsensical concepts. To besmirch the Bible for having printed within it pages, “Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock!” Is tantamount to besmirching a newspaper for reporting rape and murder or, as is more precise in this case, for reporting the thoughts and feelings or someone thinking to themselves, “I hope that you are overthrown.”

Let us read the whole text of Psalm 137 which consists of 9 verses. Keep in mind that the important thing to do here is to just read what the text states and not consider what Dan Barker tell you it means nor what we think as we read along-what does the text state?

By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept When we remembered Zion. We hung our harps Upon the willows in the midst of it. For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song, And those who plundered us requested mirth, Saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How shall we sing the LORD’s song In a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, Let my right hand forget its skill! If I do not remember you, Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth— If I do not exalt Jerusalem Above my chief joy. Remember, O LORD, against the sons of Edom The day of Jerusalem, Who said, ‘Raze it, raze it, To its very foundation!’ O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, Happy the one who repays you as you have served us! Happy the one who takes and dashes

Your little ones against the rock!

Ultimately, what we have here are the thoughts and emotions of people who have just been utterly crushed under the iron rod of brutally oppressive aggressors. For many of us living in first world cultures where there is an overabundance of food, money, healthcare and freedom it is very difficult to empathize with people in those circumstances. Imagine that someone is utilizing wireless-high-speed-internet service on their laptop computers while sitting in the temperature controlled comfort of a coffee house sipping their double-mocha-latte with whipped cream and cinnamon sprinkled on the top when they run across references to Psalm 137 (and usually an un-contextual citation of verse 9 alone). Can such circumstances as those portrayed in the Psalm even be imagined? Even seeing images of war and oppression in the news broadcast on a daily basis I find it very difficult to even begin to image the realities on the ground and in the minds and hearts of those experiencing them.

With that in mind, let us consider what the Psalm is and is not stating.

By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept

When we remembered Zion.

We are introduced to the Psalm with an understanding that it is not God speaking to men but it is men who are speaking, “we sat…we wept…we remembered” and ultimately, we wrote. Why were Jews at by the rivers of Babylon? Because they had been forcefully taken captive. They find themselves overcome with sorrow for their true and former home-Zion. “Zion” being a mountain in Jerusalem and a term that is sometimes indicative of Jerusalem as a whole.

We hung our harps
Upon the willows in the midst of it.

We hung our harps sound like our common idiom, “We hung it up.” In other words, in the midst of Babylon, we were done for-our harps which had brought us songs of praise and merriment were hung up as useless things.

For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song,
And those who plundered us requested mirth

Not only were they taken captive, having had their city and Temple destroyed, but now in the depths of their sorrow and despair their oppressors are taunting them by asking them to liven it up and sing happy songs to them-they demand entertainment.

Saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How shall we sing the LORD’s song

In a foreign land?

They do not merely request to be entertained with happy songs though, they request songs of the glory of Zion. They are asking the captives to recall the joys of Zion after having seen it destroyed and after imagining that they would likely dies in captivity having never again seeing Zion. This verse denotes Judaism’s concerns for geography, religion and culture-how can we sing the LORD’s song about Zion in a Gentile pagan land and after being brutally devastated?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem, Let my right hand forget its skill! If I do not remember you, Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth- If I do not exalt Jerusalem

Above my chief joy.

While captive outside of Jerusalem the Psalmist would prefer to lose his ability to perform music than to forget the land for which he weeps and from which he has been taken by force.

Remember, O LORD, against the sons of Edom The day of Jerusalem, Who said, ‘Raze it, raze it,

To its very foundation!’

This is not a command from God but is what men are requesting of God, a prayer of enmity. Keep in mind that God is not bound to answer anything that we ask in prayer if we pray amiss (James 4:3). What is being asked is that the actions of the Edomites be recalled. Apparently, while the Babylonians were attacking Jerusalem the Edomites were encouraging them, cheering them on, to raze the city. To “raze” means to subvert from the foundation, overthrow, destroy, demolish, erase, efface, obliterate, extirpate.

O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, Happy the one who repays you as you have served us! Happy the one who takes and dashes

Your little ones against the rock!

The Psalmist is now addressing Babylon itself: the daughter of Babylon-its inhabitants and descendants. This is the human heart speaking. The heart of men who had not merely taken captive but had endures witnessing their cities and Temple being destroyed and their countrymen, friends and families murdered. The statement is an accentuation of a desire to see the overthrow of the oppressors. It is in the common manner of brutal destruction and captivation that the Babylonians had conquered the then known world.
The Psalmist is stating that whoever manages to overthrow the might Babylon will be happy in accomplishing their victory. That little ones will be taken and dashed against stones is idiomatic of the final cessation of a brutal regime by eliminating any future generations that may continue oppression and destruction. Even if it is meant quite literally that little ones will be murdered in this way there is no particular prescription to be found. The point is clear and has already been stated: whoever causes Babylon to fall will be happy that they have done so and so, apparently, will be those whom the Babylonians had razed in the past.

There appears to be another issue. I claimed that what the Psalm stated were the thoughts and emotions of men. Yet, Judaism and Christianity claim that the Bible, including Psalm 137, is divinely inspired. “There you have it,” I can imagine the skeptic stating, “God commands little one to be dashed against the rock.” Yes, the Bible, including Psalm 137, is divinely inspired yet, the point is the same. In this case, it is the thoughts of men that God wants us to understand. The Bible is extremely honest in presenting a full orbed view of humanity which includes pointing out the flaws and shortcomings of the Bibles heroes.

Nice guy extraordinaire and more than capable apologist Anthony Horvath is once again opening the gates of the online apologetics courses he offers at Athanatos.

He has been kind enough to include me as an instructor this time around.

The course descriptions and other info is found here.

Some courses are free and the others cost less than most people spend on coffee any given week:

I will be teaching Studies in Atheism

4 weeks. Begins Nov 4th.
Before there were the ‘New Atheists’ there were the old ones. This investigation into the atheism of Dawkins, Harris, etc, looks into the foundations of modern day atheism and its pervasive hostility to theism and Christianity. This course ends before Christmas. (Just in case the FFRF had any ideas…)

I will also teach Jesus According to…

3 Weeks. Begins Nov 30th.
How do different cultures, cults, and world religions view Jesus? How are these similar and different to the Christian view, which is rooted in the New Testament? Why does it matter?

Other courses are as follows:
Joe Keysor, Hitler and Christianity:

3 weeks. Begins Nov 23.
A free, three week course exploring the charge that Christianity is to blame for the Nazis and the Holocaust. This course is taught by Joe Keysor, the author of Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible. This book is strongly recommended if you are taking the course but not absolutely required.

I reviewed Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible here.

Josh Davis, Christ Promised in the Old Testament:

2 Weeks. Begins Nov 16th. Strongly Suggested Materials: The Bible.
Could you demonstrate that Jesus was the Christ from the Old Testament alone as the apostles did? (Acts 17:11, 18:28, 1 Cor 15:3). This survey of major OT evidences for Jesus as the Christ will help you see how Christianity and Judaism were related why Jews found it compelling at the time. This is an introduction that will help in personal growth and evangelism efforts.

Anthony Horvath, Reliability of the New Testament Documents:

2 Weeks. Begins Nov 2nd. Strongly Suggested Materials: The New Testament Documents: Are they Reliable by F.F. Bruce.
This class surveys the development of the New Testament documents and the formation of the canon in a basic, introductory fashion.

Anthony Horvath and Terry Hollifield, Study in Alleged Bible Contradictions:

2 Weeks. Begins Nov 30th. Strongly Suggested Materials: The Bible.
Principles for resolving alleged contradictions in the Bible are introduced and applied to a small set of famous ‘contradictions.’

Anthony Horvath, The Death of Christianity:

3 weeks. Begins Nov 9th. FREE. Suggested Materials: Internet readings, guided tour.
Christianity is demonstrably on the decline in America. This course documents that decline, probes the causes, and suggests solutions. Based on the content found at http://www.deathofchristianity.com/, this course is centered heavily on discussion between the participants.

Glenn Jones, Basic New Testament Greek Part 1

3 weeks. Begins Nov 2nd. Strongly Suggested (but not required) Materials: Basic Greek In 30 Minutes a Day by Jim Found.
Learn the Greek alphabet, how to sound out Greek words, how to identify nouns, verbs, definite articles, and how to use such information to use resources like a Bible interlinear or lexicon.

Glenn Jones, Basic New Testament Greek Part 2

3 weeks. Begins Nov 30th. Strongly Suggested (but not required) Materials: Basic Greek In 30 Minutes a Day by Jim Found.
Building on Part 1, the student will learn more vocabulary as well as parts of speech such as the definite article, etc.

Terry Hollifield, Origins: A Survey:

4 Weeks. Begins Nov 2nd.
Is evolutionary theory true? What does the Bible say? What does the science say? Is there scientific evidence for a young earth creation? Or is it just something the Bible says? In this survey of the issues, the participant will explore the critical issues involved in the Creation-Evolution-Intelligent Design Debate so they can make their own, informed, decisions. This course lays important groundwork for future study.

On July 14, 2008 AD the homepage of Sam Harris’ website made one of the funnies statements you will ever read.

The homepage was describing a project to transfer Steve Wells’ “Skeptic’s Annotated Bible Qur’an, and Book of Mormon” to the Reason Project.

It is stated,

Steve spent the better part of a decade annotating these holy books and highlighted all passages notable for their historical inaccuracy, internal contradictions, scientific errors, absurdity, injustice, cruelty, sexism, intolerance, etc. (he also flagged the good parts).

The bottom line is described thusly,

to refine Steve’s work in a section of our website entitled “The Scripture Project” where we will have religious scholars, historians, scientists, and other qualified people continue to annotate these texts on a Wiki.

And now comes the knee slapping, bent over in convulsions, comedy,

With the input of the right scholars, we are confident that the Reason Project website will quickly become the preeminent place for scriptural criticism on the internet.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen this project can only succeed “With the input of the right scholars.”

Obviously, the logical questions are: “Who are the ‘right scholars’?” and “How is it determined who are the ‘right scholars’?”

These questions were not answered but I believe that an educated guess would be something to the likes of…

If you hold to a materialistic worldview – you might be the “right scholar.”

If your purpose in reading/studying the Bible is to cherry pick the bad and the ugly (ok, and perhaps the occasional rare good [according to whom?]) – you might be the “right scholar.”

If you would not know grammatical, historical or cultural context if your title as “scholar” or “skeptic” depended on it – you might be the “right scholar.”

If you make a living by expressing your personal prejudice against “religion” – you might be the “right scholar.”

If you believe that the standard for ascertaining the accurate history of the Bible text you are dealing with is anything that will contradict the Bible – you might be the “right scholar.”

If you believe that the church and the rabbinate were the last institution who could accurately establish their own cannon of scripture – you might be the “right scholar.”

If you believe that you, yes you, have finally uncovered the true meaning of the Bible – you might be the “right scholar.”

And just for further fun, I will borrow a few from the “Bible criticism” section of Tektonics’ “You may be a fundamentalist atheist if….“

If “You dislike how liberal theists try to interpret the Bible for themselves, while you create your own interpretations of the Bible for yourself” – you might be the “right scholar.”

If “You can quote from the bible better than most missionaries…at least the parts where someone dies” – you might be the “right scholar.”

If “You label all scholars that actually believe the Bible as ‘biased fundies’ while those who don’t believe it are known as ‘honest’ and ‘accepted scholarship'” – you might be the “right scholar.”

If “You think that Isaac Asimov was a world-class authority in Biblical Studies” – you might be the “right scholar.”

If you believe that “When a Christian’s interpretation of a passage (based on the social/literary context) solves one of your favorite contradictions, it is only their personal interpretation, and can be dismissed as such. But your interpretation (based on a ‘plain’ reading of the text) to arrive at the contradiction in the first place is entirely objective, and is obviously THE correct interpretation” – you might be the “right scholar.”

If “Your only knowledge of The Bible comes from searching ‘bible contradictions’ in Google” or from your future searches of “The Scripture Project” – you might be the “right scholar.”

If “You consistently appear on discussion lists demanding that Christians accept your literal interpretation of various scriptural passages just so you can then launch into the usual ‘argument by outrage’ – despite being told over and over that no Bible scholar or school of Christianity shares your particular bizarre literal interpretation” – you might be the “right scholar.”

If “You pontificate about the Bible as if you are an expert in theology, textual criticism, ancient languages & cultures and much more besides, when your knowledge of the Bible is just cut and paste from atheist discussion lists which cut and paste it from atheist websites which cut and paste it from embarrassingly unscholarly rantings by the likes of Messer’s Freke & Gandy and Acharya S, etc.” – you might be the “right scholar.”

If “Archaeology continually frustrates your attempts to find errors and contradictions in the Bible, but you continually use the same outdated accusations anyway since you’re running out of material” – you might be the “right scholar.”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen this project can only succeed “With the input of the right scholars.” Just send in your application along with a video showing you ripping a page out of a Bible, following in the footsteps of PZ Myers, and will instantly be deemed the “right scholar.”

If you are interested in seeing how the New Atheists fare as “right scholars” please consult my following essays (and these are a mere sampling):

Sam Harris:
Sam Harris’ Mythunderstandings
Sam Harris: Instigator At Large
Let Him Who is Without Faith Cast the First Stone

Richard Dawkins:
The Apostle Thomas: Patron Saint of Scientists?
Planting God More Firmly on His Throne

Dan Barker:
Dan Barker and Bertrand Russell: The Dynamic Duo of Demonstrably Deleterious Delusion
Why Freethought?
Dan Barker’s Scriptural Misinterpretations and Misapplications

Christopher Hitchens:
Is Christianity Loved to Death?
Jesus, the god of War?
Theological Fallacies and Miscomprehensions, part I of III
The Challenges, part I of III

This post comes forth from the oldie but goodie file.

“Billions and Billions of Demons” is the title of Prof. Richard Lewontin’s New York Times Book Review of Carl Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark-Volume 44, Number 1 (January 9, 1997)

Following is the unabridged text of this very interesting article which is of wide enough scope to mention creationism, materialism, the Trinity, Prof. Richard Dawkins, et al. I have also provided Prof. Richard Lewontin’s footnotes (all ellipses in original):

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Richard Lewontin

“But the Solar System!” I protested.”What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently: “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or my work.”

-Colloquy between Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet

I first met Carl Sagan in 1964, when he and I found ourselves in Arkansas on the platform of the Little Rock Auditorium, where we had been dispatched by command of the leading geneticist of the day, Herman Muller. Our task was to take the affirmative side in a debate: “Resolved, That the Theory of Evolution is proved as is the fact that the Earth goes around the Sun.” One of our opponents in the debate was a professor of biology from a fundamentalist college in Texas (his father was the president of the college) who had quite deliberately chosen the notoriously evolutionist Department of Zoology of the University of Texas as the source of his Ph.D. He could then assure his students that he had unassailable expert knowledge with which to refute Darwinism.

I had serious misgivings about facing an immense audience of creationist fundamentalist Christians in a city made famous by an Arkansas governor who, having detected a resentment of his constituents against federal usurpation, defied the power of Big Government by interposing his own body between the door of the local high school and some black kids who wanted to matriculate.

Young scientists, however, do not easily withstand the urgings of Nobel Prize winners, so after several transparently devious attempts to avoid the job, I appeared. We were, in fact, well treated, but despite our absolutely compelling arguments, the audience unaccountably voted for the opposition. Carl and I then sneaked out the back door of the auditorium and beat it out of town, quite certain that at any moment hooded riders with ropes and flaming crosses would snatch up two atheistic New York Jews who had the chutzpah to engage in public blasphemy.

Sagan and I drew different conclusions from our experience. For me the confrontation between creationism and the science of evolution was an example of historical, regional, and class differences in culture that could only be understood in the context of American social history. For Carl it was a struggle between ignorance and knowledge, although it is not clear to me what he made of the unimpeachable scientific credentials of our opponent, except perhaps to see him as an example of the Devil quoting scripture. The struggle to bring scientific knowledge to the masses has been a preoccupation of Carl Sagan’s ever since, and he has become the most widely known, widely read, and widely seen popularizer of science since the invention of the video tube. His only rival in the haute vulgarisation of science is Stephen Jay Gould, whose vulgarisations are often very haute indeed, and whose intellectual concerns are quite different.

While Gould has occasionally been enlisted in the fight to protect the teaching and dissemination of the knowledge of evolution against creationist political forces, he is primarily concerned with what the nature of organisms, living and dead, can reveal about the social construction of scientific knowledge. His repeated demonstrations that organisms can only be understood as historically contingent, underdetermined Rube Goldberg devices are meant to tell us more about the evolution of human knowledge than of human anatomy. From his early Mismeasure of Man,1 which examined how the political and social prejudices of prominent scientists have molded what those scientists claimed to be the facts of human anatomy and intelligence, to his recent collection of essays, Eight Little Piggies,2 which despite its subtitle, Reflections on Natural History, is a set of reflections on the intellectual history of Natural History, Gould’s deep preoccupation is with how knowledge, rather than the organism, is constructed.

Carl Sagan’s program is more elementary. It is to bring a knowledge of the facts of the physical world to the scientifically uneducated public, for he is convinced that only through a broadly disseminated knowledge of the objective truth about nature will we be able to cope with the difficulties of the world and increase the sum of human happiness. It is this program that inspired his famous book and television series, Cosmos, which dazzled us with billions and billions of stars. But Sagan realizes that the project of merely spreading knowledge of objective facts about the universe is insufficient. First, no one can know and understand everything. Even individual scientists are ignorant about most of the body of scientific knowledge, and it is not simply that biologists do not understand quantum mechanics. If I were to ask my colleagues in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to explain the evolutionary importance of RNA editing in trypanosomes, they would be just as mystified by the question as the typical well-educated reader of this review.

Second, to put a correct view of the universe into people’s heads we must first get an incorrect view out. People believe a lot of nonsense about the world of phenomena, nonsense that is a consequence of a wrong way of thinking. The primary problem is not to provide the public with the knowledge of how far it is to the nearest star and what genes are made of, for that vast project is, in its entirety, hopeless. Rather, the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth. The reason that people do not have a correct view of nature is not that they are ignorant of this or that fact about the material world, but that they look to the wrong sources in their attempt to understand. It is not simply, as Sherlock Holmes thought, that the brain is like an empty attic with limited storage capacity, so that the accumulated clutter of false or useless bits of knowledge must be cleared out in a grand intellectual tag sale to make space for more useful objects. It is that most people’s mental houses have been furnished according to an appallingly bad model of taste and they need to start consulting the home furnishing supplement of the Sunday New York Times in place of the stage set of The Honeymooners. The message of The Demon-Haunted World is in its subtitle, Science as a Candle in the Dark.

Sagan’s argument is straightforward. We exist as material beings in a material world, all of whose phenomena are the consequences of physical relations among material entities. The vast majority of us do not have control of the intellectual apparatus needed to explain manifest reality in material terms, so in place of scientific (i.e., correct material) explanations, we substitute demons. As one bit of evidence for the bad state of public consciousness, Sagan cites opinion polls showing that the majority of Americans believe that extraterrestrials have landed from UFOs. The demonic, for Sagan, includes, in addition to UFOs and their crews of little green men who take unwilling passengers for a midnight spin and some wild sex, astrological influences, extrasensory perception, prayers, spoon-bending, repressed memories, spiritualism, and channeling, as well as demons sensu strictu, devils, fairies, witches, spirits, Satan and his devotees, and, after some discreet backing and filling, the supposed prime mover Himself. God gives Sagan a lot of trouble. It is easy enough for him to snort derisively at men from Mars, but when it comes to the Supreme Extraterrestrial he is rather circumspect, asking only that sermons “even-handedly examine the God hypothesis.”The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind casts further doubt on its divine inspiration.But of course, I might be wrong.

I doubt that an all-seeing God would fall for Pascal’s Wager, but the sensibilities of modern believers may indeed be spared by this Clintonesque moderation.

Most of the chapters of The Demon-Haunted World are taken up with exhortations to the reader to cease whoring after false gods and to accept the scientific method as the unique pathway to a correct understanding of the natural world. To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists, it is self-evident that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality, and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test. So why do so many people believe in demons? Sagan seems baffled, and nowhere does he offer a coherent explanation of the popularity at the supermarket checkout counter of the Weekly World News, with its faked photographs of Martians. Indeed, he believes that “a proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us in all times, places and cultures.” The only explanation that he offers for the dogged resistance of the masses to the obvious virtues of the scientific way of knowing is that “through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science.” He does not tell us how he used the scientific method to discover the “embedded” human proclivity for science, or the cause of its frustration. Perhaps we ought to add to the menu of Saganic demonology, just after spoon-bending, ten-second seat-of-the-pants explanations of social realities.

Nearly every present-day scientist would agree with Carl Sagan that our explanations of material phenomena exclude any role for supernatural demons, witches, and spirits of every kind, including any of the various gods from Adonai to Zeus. (I say “nearly” every scientist because our creationist opponent in the Little Rock debate, and other supporters of “Creation Science,” would insist on being recognized.) We also exclude from our explanations little green men from Mars riding in space ships, although they are supposed to be quite as corporeal as you and I, because the evidence is overwhelming that Mars hasn’t got any. On the other hand, if one supposed that they came from the planet of a distant star, the negative evidence would not be so compelling, although the fact that it would have taken them such a long time to get here speaks against the likelihood that they exist. Even Sagan says that “it would be astonishing to me if there weren’t extraterrestrial life,” a position he can hardly avoid, given that his first published book was Intelligent Life in the Universe3 and he has spent a great deal of the taxpayer’s money over the ensuing thirty years listening for the signs.

Sagan believes that scientists reject sprites, fairies, and the influence of Sagittarius because we follow a set of procedures, the Scientific Method, which has consistently produced explanations that put us in contact with reality and in which mystic forces play no part. For Sagan, the method is the message, but I think he has opened the wrong envelope.

There is no attempt in The Demon-Haunted World to provide a systematic account of just what Science and the Scientific Method consist in, nor was that the author’s intention. The book is not meant to be a discourse on method, but it is in large part a collection of articles taken from Parade magazine and other popular publications. Sagan’s intent is not analytic, but hortatory. Nevertheless, if the exhortation is to succeed, then the argument for the superiority of science and its method must be convincing, and not merely convincing, but must accord with its own demands. The case for the scientific method should itself be “scientific” and not merely rhetorical. Unfortunately, the argument may not look as good to the unconvinced as it does to the believer.

First, we are told that science “delivers the goods.” It certainly has, sometimes, but it has often failed when we need it most. Scientists and their professional institutions, partly intoxicated with examples of past successes, partly in order to assure public financial support, make grandiose promises that cannot be kept. Sagan writes with justified scorn that
We’re regularly bombarded with extravagant UFO claims vended in bite-sized packages, but only rarely do we hear of their comeuppance.

He cannot have forgotten the well-publicized War on Cancer, which is as yet without a victorious battle despite the successful taking of a salient or two. At first an immense amount of money and consciousness was devoted to the supposed oncogenic viruses which, being infectious bugs, could be exterminated or at least resisted. But these particular Unidentified Flying Objects turned out for the most part to be as elusive as the Martians, and so, without publicly calling attention to their “comeuppance,” the General Staff turned from outside invaders to the enemy within, the genes. It is almost certain that cancers do, indeed, arise because genes concerned with the regulation of cell division are mutated, partly as a consequence of environmental insults, partly because of unavoidable molecular instability, and even sometimes as the consequence of a viral attack on the genome. Yet the realization of the role played by DNA has had absolutely no consequence for either therapy or prevention, although it has resulted in many optimistic press conferences and a considerable budget for the National Cancer Institute. Treatments for cancer remain today what they were before molecular biology was ever thought of: cut it out, burn it out, or poison it.

The concentration on the genes implicated in cancer is only a special case of a general genomania that surfaces in the form of weekly announcements in The New York Times of the location of yet another gene for another disease. The revealing rhetoric of this publicity is always the same; only the blanks need to be filled in: “It was announced today by scientists at [Harvard, Vanderbilt, Stanford] Medical School that a gene responsible for [some, many, a common form of] [schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, arterio-sclerosis, prostate cancer] has beenlocated and its DNA sequence determined. This exciting research, say scientists, is the first step in what may eventually turn out to be a possible cure for this disease.”

The entire public justification for the Human Genome Project is the promise that some day, in the admittedly distant future, diseases will be cured or prevented.4 Skeptics who point out that we do not yet have a single case of a prevention or cure arising from a knowledge of DNA sequences are answered by the observations that “these things take time,” or that “no one knows the value of a newborn baby.” But such vague waves of the hand miss the central scientific issue. The prevention or cure of metabolic and developmental disorders depends on a detailed knowledge of the mechanisms operating in cells and tissues above the level of genes, and there is no relevant information about those mechanisms in DNA sequences. In fact, if I know the DNA sequence of a gene I have no hint about the function of a protein specified by that gene, or how it enters into an organism’s biology.

What is involved here is the difference between explanation and intervention. Many disorders can be explained by the failure of the organism to make a normal protein, a failure that is the consequence of a gene mutation. But intervention requires that the normal protein be provided at the right place in the right cells, at the right time and in the right amount, or else that an alternative way be found to provide normal cellular function. What is worse, it might even be necessary to keep the abnormal protein away from the cells at critical moments. None of these objectives is served by knowing the DNA sequence of the defective gene. Explanations of phenomena can be given at many levels, some of which can lead to successful manipulation of the world and some not. Death certificates all state a cause of death, but even if there were no errors in these ascriptions, they are too general to be useful. An easy conflation of explanations in general with explanations at the correct causal level may serve a propagandistic purpose in the struggle for public support, but it is not the way to concrete progress.

Scientists apparently do not realize that the repeated promises of benefits yet to come, with no likelihood that those promises will be fulfilled, can only produce a widespread cynicism about the claims for the scientific method. Sagan, trying to explain the success of Carlos, a telepathic charlatan, muses on how little it takes to tamper with our beliefs, how readily we are led, how easy it is to fool the public when people are lonely and starved for something to believe in.
Not to mention when they are sick and dying.

Biologists are not the only scientists who, having made extravagant claims about their merchandise, deliver the goods in bite-sized packages. Nor are they the only manufacturers of knowledge who cannot be bothered to pick up a return package when the product turns out to be faulty. Sagan’s own branch of science is in the same business. Anxious to revive a failing public interest in spending large amounts on space research, NASA scientists, followed by the President of the United States, made an immense fuss about the discovery of some organic molecules on a Mars rock. There is (was) life (of some rudimentary kind) on Mars (maybe)! Can little green men in space machines be far behind? If it turns out, as already suggested by some scientists, that these molecules are earthly contaminants, or were produced in non-living chemical systems, this fact surely will not be announced at a White House press conference, or even above the fold in The New York Times.

Second, it is repeatedly said that science is intolerant of theories without data and assertions without adequate evidence. But no serious student of epistemology any longer takes the naive view of science as a process of Baconian induction from theoretically unorganized observations. There can be no observations without an immense apparatus of preexisting theory. Before sense experiences become “observations” we need a theoretical question, and what counts as a relevant observation depends upon a theoretical frame into which it is to be placed. Repeatable observations that do not fit into an existing frame have a way of disappearing from view, and the experiments that produced them are not revisited. In the 1930s well-established and respectable geneticists described “dauer-modifications,” environmentally induced changes in organisms that were passed on to offspring and only slowly disappeared in succeeding generations. As the science of genetics hardened, with its definitive rejection of any possibility of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, observations of dauer-modifications were sent to the scrapheap where they still lie, jumbled together with other decommissioned facts.

The standard form of a scientific paper begins with a theoretical question, which is then followed by the description of an experimental technique designed to gather observations pertinent to the question. Only then are the observations themselves described. Finally there is a discussion section in which a great deal of energy is often expended rationalizing the failure of the observations to accord entirely with a theory we really like, and in which proposals are made for other experiments that might give more satisfactory results. Sagan’s suggestion that only demonologists engage in “special pleading, often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble,” is certainly not one that accords with my reading of the scientific literature. Nor is this a problem unique to biology. The attempts of physicists to explain why their measurements of the effects of relativity did not agree with Einstein’s quantitative prediction is a case no doubt well known to Sagan.

As to assertions without adequate evidence, the literature of science is filled with them, especially the literature of popular science writing. Carl Sagan’s list of the “best contemporary science-popularizers” includes E.O. Wilson, Lewis Thomas, and Richard Dawkins, each of whom has put unsubstantiated assertions or counterfactual claims at the very center of the stories they have retailed in the market. Wilson’s Sociobiology and On Human Nature5 rest on the surface of a quaking marsh of unsupported claims about the genetic determination of everything from altruism to xenophobia. Dawkins’s vulgarizations of Darwinism speak of nothing in evolution but an inexorable ascendancy of genes that are selectively superior, while the entire body of technical advance in experimental and theoretical evolutionary genetics of the last fifty years has moved in the direction of emphasizing non-selective forces in evolution. Thomas, in various essays, propagandized for the success of modern scientific medicine in eliminating death from disease, while the unchallenged statistical compilations on mortality show that in Europe and North America infectious diseases, including tuberculosis and diphtheria, had ceased to be major causes of mortality by the first decades of the twentieth century, and that at age seventy the expected further lifetime for a white male has gone up only two years since 1950. Even The Demon-Haunted World itself sometimes takes suspect claims as true when they serve a rhetorical purpose as, for example, statistics on child abuse, or a story about the evolution of a child’s fear of the dark.

Third, it is said that there is no place for an argument from authority in science. The community of science is constantly self-critical, as evidenced by the experience of university colloquia “in which the speaker has hardly gotten 30 seconds into the talk before there are devastating questions and comments from the audience.” If Sagan really wants to hear serious disputation about the nature of the universe, he should leave the academic precincts in Ithaca and spend a few minutes in an Orthodox study house in Brooklyn. It is certainly true that within each narrowly defined scientific field there is a constant challenge to new technical claims and to old wisdom. In what my wife calls the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral Syndrome, young scientists on the make will challenge a graybeard, and this adversarial atmosphere for the most part serves the truth. But when scientists transgress the bounds of their own specialty they have no choice but to accept the claims of authority, even though they do not know how solid the grounds of those claims may be. Who am I to believe about quantum physics if not Steven Weinberg, or about the solar system if not Carl Sagan? What worries me is that they may believe what Dawkins and Wilson tell them about evolution.

With great perception, Sagan sees that there is an impediment to the popular credibility of scientific claims about the world, an impediment that is almost invisible to most scientists. Many of the most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they happen. When, at the time of the moon landing, a woman in rural Texas was interviewed about the event, she very sensibly refused to believe that the television pictures she had seen had come all the way from the moon, on the grounds that with her antenna she couldn’t even get Dallas. What seems absurd depends on one’s prejudice. Carl Sagan accepts, as I do, the duality of light, which is at the same time wave and particle, but he thinks that the consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost puts the mystery of the Holy Trinity “in deep trouble.” Two’s company, but three’s a crowd.

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.

The mutual exclusion of the material and the demonic has not been true of all cultures and all times. In the great Chinese epic Journey to the West, demons are an alternative form of life, responsible to certain deities, devoted to making trouble for ordinary people, but severely limited. They can be captured, imprisoned, and even killed by someone with superior magic.6 In our own intellectual history, the definitive displacement of divine powers by purely material causes has been a relatively recent changeover, and that icon of modern science, Newton, was at the cusp. It is a clichh&#a9; of intellectual history that Newton attempted to accommodate God by postulating Him as the Prime Mover Who, having established the mechanical laws and set the whole universe in motion, withdrew from further intervention, leaving it to people like Newton to reveal His plan. But what we might call “Newton’s Ploy” did not really get him off the hook. He understood that a defect of his system of mechanics was the lack of any equilibrating force that would return the solar system to its regular set of orbits if there were any slight perturbation. He was therefore forced, although reluctantly, to assume that God intervened from time to time to set things right again. It remained for Laplace, a century later, to produce a mechanics that predicted the stability of the planetary orbits, allowing him the hauteur of his famous reply to Napoleon. When the Emperor observed that there was, in the whole of the MM&#a9;canique CC&#a9;leste, no mention of the author of the universe, he replied, “Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.” One can almost hear a stress on the “I.”

The struggle for possession of public consciousness between material and mystical explanations of the world is one aspect of the history of the confrontation between elite culture and popular culture. Without that history we cannot understand what was going on in the Little Rock Auditorium in 1964. The debate in Arkansas between a teacher from a Texas fundamentalist college and a Harvard astronomer and University of Chicago biologist was a stage play recapitulating the history of American rural populism. In the first decades of this century there was an immensely active populism among poor southwestern dirt farmers and miners.7 The most widely circulated American socialist journal of the time (The Appeal to Reason!) was published not in New York, but in Girard, Kansas, and in the presidential election of 1912 Eugene Debs got more votes in the poorest rural counties of Texas and Oklahoma than he did in the industrial wards of northern cities. Sentiment was extremely strong against the banks and corporations that held the mortgages and sweated the labor of the rural poor, who felt their lives to be in the power of a distant eastern elite. The only spheres of control that seemed to remain to them were family life, a fundamentalist religion, and local education.

This sense of an embattled culture was carried from the southwest to California by the migrations of the Okies and Arkies dispossessed from their ruined farms in the 1930s. There was no serious public threat to their religious and family values until well after the Second World War. Evolution, for example, was not part of the regular biology curriculum when I was a student in 1946 in the New York City high schools, nor was it discussed in school textbooks. In consequence there was no organized creationist movement. Then, in the late 1950s, a national project was begun to bring school science curricula up to date. A group of biologists from elite universities together with science teachers from urban schools produced a new uniform set of biology textbooks, whose publication and dissemination were underwritten by the National Science Foundation. An extensive and successful public relations campaign was undertaken to have these books adopted, and suddenly Darwinian evolution was being taught to children everywhere. The elite culture was now extending its domination by attacking the control that families had maintained over the ideological formation of their children.

The result was a fundamentalist revolt, the invention of “Creation Science,” and successful popular pressure on local school boards and state textbook purchasing agencies to revise subversive curricula and boycott blasphemous textbooks. In their parochial hubris, intellectuals call the struggle between cultural relativists and traditionalists in the universities and small circulation journals “The Culture Wars.” The real war is between the traditional culture of those who think of themselves as powerless and the rationalizing materialism of the modern Leviathan. There are indeed Two Cultures at Cambridge. One is in the Senior Common Room, and the other is in the Porter’s Lodge.

Carl Sagan, like his Canadian counterpart David Suzuki, has devoted extraordinary energy to bringing science to a mass public. In doing so, he is faced with a contradiction for which there is no clear resolution. On the one hand science is urged on us as a model of rational deduction from publicly verifiable facts, freed from the tyranny of unreasoning authority. On the other hand, given the immense extent, inherent complexity, and counterintuitive nature of scientific knowledge, it is impossible for anyone, including non-specialist scientists, to retrace the intellectual paths that lead to scientific conclusions about nature. In the end we must trust the experts and they, in turn, exploit their authority as experts and their rhetorical skills to secure our attention and our belief in things that we do not really understand. Anyone who has ever served as an expert witness in a judicial proceeding knows that the court may spend an inordinate time “qualifying” the expert, who, once qualified, gives testimony that is not meant to be a persuasive argument, but an assertion unchallengeable by anyone except another expert. And, indeed, what else are the courts to do? If the judge, attorneys, and jury could reason out the technical issues from fundamentals, there would be no need of experts.

What is at stake here is a deep problem in democratic self-governance. In Plato’s most modern of Dialogues, the Gorgias, there is a struggle between Socrates, with whom we are meant to sympathize, and his opponents, Gorgias and Callicles, over the relative virtues of rhetoric and technical expertise. What Socrates and Gorgias agree on is that the mass of citizens are incompetent to make reasoned decisions on justice and public policy, but that they must be swayed by rhetorical argument or guided by the authority of experts.8
Gorgias: “I mean [by the art of rhetoric] the ability to convince by means of speech a jury in a court of justice, members of the Council in their Chamber, voters at a meeting of the Assembly, and any other gathering of citizens, whatever it may be.”

Socrates: “When the citizens hold a meeting to appoint medical officers or shipbuilders or any other professional class of person, surely it won’t be the orator who advises them then. Obviously in every such election the choice ought to fall on the most expert.”9

Conscientious and wholly admirable popularizers of science like Carl Sagan use both rhetoric and expertise to form the mind of masses because they believe, like the Evangelist John, that the truth shall make you free. But they are wrong. It is not the truth that makes you free. It is your possession of the power to discover the truth. Our dilemma is that we do not know how to provide that power.

‹ How Billions of Demons Haunted Baloney While Avoiding Detection up

“Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation” 1st Peter 2:12-13

The issue of sexual perversion, of whatever sort, amongst Roman Catholic priests proves the difference between God’s perfect way and man’s faulty way.

The Bible states, “And the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him'” (Genesis 2:18). Plain and simple, men and women have emotional and physical needs that are fulfilled in emotional and physical relationships with the opposite sex. God’s plan is that one man is to come together with one woman in order to fulfill these needs.

The Bible further states that it is acceptable for a person to choose to remain unmarried (see 1st Corinthians 7:7-9) and be celibate, “For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it” (Matthew 19:12).
For example, Paul recognized that since he was unmarried he could devote all his time to the ministry and not have to divide his time between ministry, wife and children (see 1st Corinthians 7:32-35). However, the Bible states that “if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1st Corinthians 7:9).
Moreover, although even a married couple could abstain from physical relations it is to be for a predetermined and agreed upon temporary period of time (see 1st Corinthians 7:5).

What we have in the system created by God is a clear recognition of, and provision for, natural human needs. However, as clearly opposed to this, the Roman Catholic Church has created its own system which as the evidence of history proves has, does, and will fail. We cannot go against the will of God and expect success.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that, as far as its upper level clergy is concerned, it is good for man to be alone because the Roman Catholic priesthood is one in which celibacy is a life long commitment, a vow. It may be argued that celibacy is not imposed upon Roman Catholic priests, it is a decision that they make and to which they commit.
The problem is that this issue is not simply a matter of black and white intellectual discussions because we are dealing with real life human beings with real feelings, needs and all that comes with. A young man who wants to become a priest may in all honesty believe that he can be a lifelong celibate, and of course God can give him the gift of celibacy.

But what happens five, ten, thirty, fifty years down the line? What if a priest, according to natural human needs, begins to long for physical relations? “Then he can leave the priesthood and get married,” you might say. It’s not that simple, at this point the priest must make a difficult decision and he must make it due to the faulty human system in which he finds himself trapped, “Do I give up my life’s work, my decades of service in the priesthood for marriage?”

We hear over and over of people who have been laid off of work after decades at the same job, “I don’t know anything else,” they say, “I don’t know what to do!” Keep in mind that a Roman Catholic priest does not pay rent, does not pay utility bills, does not have a wife and children to support, they are given a car and an allowance for food plus their wage. It’s not as simple as to think that a person would be willing or able to walk away from a life long vocation and not having to pay most of their bills.

In this way they are forced to remain in a faulty system. You are either celibate or you are not a priest is the Roman Catholic stance which causes us to declare priestly celibacy as being forced. Moreover, the choice between marriage or the priesthood is not what the Bible teaches (of course you will not find a New Testament priesthood, but that’s another article).

This is why it is extremely important to consider that God tells us in His word that “the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth” (1st Timothy 4:1-3).
Nowhere does the Bible teach that one cannot serve God if one is married and while, for example, Roman Catholic deacons can be married the higher levels of the clergy are reserved for the celibate. These are the sort of problems that the Roman Catholic Church has created for itself by making up its own rules instead of following God’s.

We speculate here in stating that just as a person might commit adultery for a momentary thrill, a celibate priest may decide that it is not worth giving up his life long career and financial ease for a momentary physical thrill. Roman Catholicism has set up for itself a system by which to grade sin, venial and mortal. It seems to be a human tendency to excuse ourselves by thinking that if we are not committing a grade A sin then a grade C or grade Z sin is not so bad. B

eing caught in this dilemma a priest might unreasonably reason that if he has vowed to never have a natural male/female relationship he can, in an odd way, get his thrills with children or other men. They might tell themselves that they, while they have sinned, it was not as bad as violating the original vow of abstaining from a natural male/female relationship. It is true that celibacy ultimately means abstaining from any and all sexual relations, but we are speculating about how people make excuses for themselves.

Speculating upon the inner workings of a troubled mind is difficult indeed, if you cannot conceive how someone could sexually abuse a child you should thank God that you are so far removed from that malicious perversion that you could never have conceived it.

Therefore, the bottom line is that some people can ruin it for everyone else. All priests are now looked upon with suspicion, which is a shame because many do not deserve such scrutiny. But what are we to do about the children who are left in the care of priest, for class, as altar server, or what ever reason? Sad to say but these children should never be left alone with any priest. This is not an assumption that the priests themselves are not trustworthy but because the Roman Catholic Church as a religious hierarchy proves over and over that if something does happen they will either do nothing, or simply relocate the priest (giving him fresh hunting grounds).

They will buy silence from the family with money and ultimately they will hide yet another skeleton it in the Vatican’s closet. They constantly prove to the world that a false clean outward appearance is more important than a true inward cleanliness. Jesus pointed out that some people are like a beautiful mausoleum, beautiful on the outside but full of dead men’s bones on the inside (see Matthew 23:27). The covering up or ignoring of these horrendous acts is as bad or even worse than the acts themselves.

One single priest may take it upon himself to privately molest a child, but we see that a system of thousands of clergy are willing to look the other way and allow it to continue, allow children to be scarred for life and cause people to turn away from God due to the terrible actions of people who are supposed to be His holiest servants.
When King David committed adultery with Bathsheva, and arranged for her husband to be killed in battle, the prophet Nathan told him that by his actions he had caused the enemies of God to blaspheme (see 2nd Samuel 12:14). We should never add fuel to the fires of unbelief. Let us pray that their attempts at reformation and reconciliation in this area will be fruitful.

One Biblical response to such perverted behavior comes up in a church that Paul was involved with, “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles_In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1st Corinthians 5:1-5).
In time, when the person repents they are to be restored. “Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted” (Galatians 6:1).

We could not go without pointing out the obvious, which is that celibate Roman Catholic priests are not alone in the commission of these grave sins. Some married Protestant Pastors are likewise guilty. Some regular Joe American married men, and women for that matter, are likewise guilty. We have heard stories of Hindu-Hare Krishna school teachers that are likewise guilty.
Recently, Buddhist priests in Cambodia have been suspended for frequenting brothels and watching pornographic videos. We have focused on Roman Catholic priests in order to explore a particular aspect of their system that adds fuel to the fires of a troubled mind and heart and to show that God’s will takes into consideration that which Roman Catholic celibacy does not.

Other verses of Scripture seriously contradict Roman Catholicism’s concept of the celibacy of the clergy.Bishops are to be allowed to marry:

“you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you-if a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of dissipation or insubordination. For a bishop must be blameless, as a steward of God” (Titus 1:5-7).

“A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife” (1st Timothy 3:2).

Peter, who Roman Catholicism claims to be the first Pope, was married:

“Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles,
the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas [Peter]?” (1st Corinthians 9:2).

“Now when Jesus had come into Peter’s house, He saw his wife’s mother lying sick with a fever” (Matthew 8:14).

In conclusion, we note that all and every form of perversion is born from the seed of rebellion against God’s will for our lives. God has set up a system that takes into account and provides for human emotional and physical needs, when we do not follow God’s will we can expect nothing but the worse, the acting out of the darkest human deeds unrestrained.

“for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor” 1st Thessalonians 4:2-5