I was baptized Catholic, and while our household didn’t really practice Catholicism much, Christmas was always a big deal, and holiday music was played a LOT. Listening to Christmas records (really listening, not just playing them as background noise) was the perfect way to get into the holiday spirit, and made everything that much more fun/meaningful. My parents had a wide variety of music, too – from Handel’s Messiah to Frank Sinatra to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, we heard it all. Every year I’ve played holiday music to get me in a festive mood, but this year it’s been much more difficult. What’s bothering me is the “reason for the season”, so to speak.
I read a book recently called Religions of the Silk Road (Richard Foltz, 1999) which traced the rise (and sometimes fall) of several major religions that spread through the land route from the Mediterranean to China over roughly 2,000 years. This was a pretty big task to attempt for such a small book since it covered a huge span of time as well as land, and for the most part it did what it set out to do.
Yet, the more I read the angrier and more disgusted I became. Not with the author; with some of the points he made. Christianity and Judaism were barely touched upon, but since they’re the minorities in that part of the world that wasn’t surprising. However, what Foltz did include were some extremely illuminating aspects of ALL religions. This one book has crystallized the thoughts and opinions I have been cultivating for many years, leading me to one inescapable conclusion: religions are completely untrustworthy.
I know many people that will not be surprised by this statement, and may even ask what took you so long? Well, I needed more than just an uneasy feeling about the obvious contradictions of the Bible and the hypocrisy of many of its supporters. Religions of the Silk Road has given me that. It has shown via comprehensive research that every religion on the planet today is nothing more than a bastardized version of a previous one.
This fact alone is fairly innocuous, especially when you accept how everything influences everything else. Also, when looked at over such a long period of time, it is understandable that some ideas and practices would combine. However, never before had I the documents at my disposal that proved the basic tenet of the religion I was brought up on was a complete and total lie. This shocking revelation came from one small, otherwise unobtrusive passage:
“… ideas such as warnings of the “last days” and belief in a messianic savior, a bodily resurrection, and a last judgment are just some of the notions that Judaism (and subsequently Christianity and Islam) seems to have borrowed from the Persians…the passage in Revelations 11:1-2 prophesying that Jerusalem, but not its Temple, would be destroyed, is derived from an earlier Jewish apocalyptic text written in Greek, the Oracles of Hystaspes. The latter work, composed most likely in Parthia, was in turn based on an old Iranian story about King Vishtasp; the royal convert won over by Zoroaster…eventually the “Great King” of the original Magian story evolved into the figure of Christ in the Revelation of John. Thus, over a period of centuries, what had originally been a uniquely Iranian eschatology was developed into a Hellenic and eventually Christian concept.” (32-33)
What this states is that the idea of a “savior King” had never existed in Judaism before. Indeed, the original writings which eventually became what we now know as the Torah had no such prophecy, it was added afterwards. What’s worse is even the Persians didn’t originate this idea; it came from Iran, where an actual real-life King was converted to Zoroastrianism, itself a conglomeration of prehistoric beliefs and practices adopted from the Vedics. This “prophetic” King, who would be a savior, was actually a real King that had merely switched religious allegiances. Nothing more.
To put this into perspective, Jesus Christ is considered to be this Savior King, sent to save humanity as prophesied in the Old Testament (Isaiah 7:14, Micah 5:2, Zechariah 9:9, etc). But there never was a prophecy about a King sent to save anyone. He simply didn’t exist, until someone thought it’d be a good idea to add this true-life Iranian story of conversion into the Jewish scriptures, enhancing it in the process, probably to butter up local officials: “Look, we embrace your stories! See, we’ve incorporated them into our own, isn’t that swell? Now could you please stop persecuting us?” I can’t blame the Jews for doing this; they’ve had far more than their share of unpleasant dealings with those in authority, and appeasing the current ones would definitely be preferable to being killed. But this addition resulted in the creation of yet another religion, one that would eventually take over a large portion of the world (and cause a lot of headaches for the Jews in the process). The real problem is it’s a religion that’s based on a fabrication.
The prophecy of the Messiah is false; it never existed to begin with. The whole idea of Jesus fulfilling this prophecy is thus also false. That Jesus himself was a real person or not is irrelevant: whether he lived and died is not in dispute. However, we do not know for certain that the claims his apostles made about him (written decades after the fact, by the way) are true or not, there is no conclusive proof either way. Ditto for the existence of God. All we have are these stories, and as shown in Religions of the Silk Road as well as the various different versions of the Bible in existence today, such stories are not infallible. In fact, the constant changes that are made to ANY religious texts make them extremely unreliable sources of information. We cannot trust them because they are much too likely to be modified to fit the needs of the current situation. This is exactly what happened when the Judeans met up with the Persians.
Never before have I been so disillusioned with religion. While I knew that interpretations may differ over the years, I had naively assumed the massive amount of time that has passed was not so much that the stories had drifted so far from the original. The magnitude of Christianity being started on a complete and utter lie sent my head reeling. Millions upon millions of people have suffered and died at the hands of Christians that believed Jesus fulfilled a prophecy that never existed. This also undercuts the entire basis behind Christmas, which is a celebration of the birth of the “savior king”. The American economy is, for all intents and purposes, centered on Christmas – some retailers get at least half of their yearly income at this time of the year.
And all of this, every nativity scene, every decorated tree, every single box wrapped in paper and tied with a bow, it is all based on an untruth, a story that truly has nothing in common with what it’s become. This has, naturally, completely ruined Christmas for me. All of those lovely songs I’ve listened to over the years that helped me get into a holiday spirit – they’re not the same anymore. I cringe every time I hear another refrain of Christ being a savior. I can take listening to parodies, or traditional carols sung in foreign-languages, but the majority of holiday music on my iPod is contemporary songs about Santa. Somehow, it’s just not the same.
References:
Foltz, Richard C. Religions of the Silk Road (NY: St Martin’s Griffin, 1999).