A related page from my site:
 http://www.awitness.org/bible_criticism_methods/canon_stoic_christ_cult.html

(also a page of links to similar related protest writings)
 http://www.awitness.org/essays/christmyth.html

The Stoic Canon of the Christ Cult


Volumes have been written on the canon, a very small selection
of the great mass of documents that were produced by various
churches in the first few centuries of the existence of the new
movement. Given that I analyze and critique these books it might
be good to ask ‘why devote attention to this very narrow selection
of texts.' For in agreeing from the start to restrict our analysis only
to the ‘Christian Canon' we give our consent to a process of
selection and nullification that took place many ages ago, and
which in the end produced the documents finally selected and
‘canonized' in the fourth century by the victors in the internecine
struggle that took place in the early centuries of the church.

This power struggle was eventually won by a very small clique
of celibate priests who belonged to what might be termed the Christ
Cult movement in early Christianity. These texts were their
selections, although the process in actual practice must have
proved to be a little more complicated than a simple ‘power grab'
followed by enforcement of ‘orthodox' decisions by a priestly
hierarchy who, through their alliance with Caesar became the power
elite of the church The church has never been homogenous,
although the power center of the church has always tried to
maintain homogeneity, and for this reasons there are social
pressures that come into play when decisions such as that of
‘canonization of books' must be made. Those factions strong
enough in the early church to make their presence felt could only
be ignored at the peril of the leadership that emerged (if they
wanted to maintain some sort of legitimacy).

The early church was very diverse, but the canon is not. We do
not find Gnostic texts included the canon. For example the Gospel
of Thomas shares the parables found in the canonical gospels (the
gospel it most resembles is Mark). However absent in this gospel is
the notion of deference to authority, and given that the church
structure was to become authoritarian and hierarchical it is
understandable that a Gnostic document such as Thomas would be
an unwelcome addition to canon. Gnostic documents put the
emphasis on personal experience, while the canon puts the
emphasis on authority figures, a clear polemical device that serves
the interest of the priesthood, and not the individual, since it is
church leaders who are the beneficiaries of this power structure.
The polemical connection is to clear to require any more comment
than that.

The gospel of Thomas rejects authority and exalts the
individual, and such things were not welcome in the canon for
obvious reasons. For example we read, ‘If your leaders say to you,
‘Behold the Kingdom is in the sky, then the birds will get there
before you...Rather the Kingdom is inside of you...When you know
yourselves you will be known, and will understand that you are
children of the living God...but otherwise you will live in
poverty...Jesus said to them, ‘I am not your teacher.'..." There is
also a clear allusion to the return to the Garden of Eden in Thomas,
in direct conflict with the hostility to ‘the flesh' so characteristic of
Greek Stoic philosophy, the church canon (not to mention certain
other sects of Gnostics). "His disciples said, "When will you
appear? Jesus said, "When you strip and not embarrassed, and
you take your clothes and throw them down under your feet like
little children, and trample them, then you will see the Child of the
Living One and will not be afraid... Whoever has discovered the
body is worth more than the world...Have you already understood
the beginning so that you now look for the end? For where the
beginning is, there the end will be also. Blessed is the one who
takes his stand at the beginning, for that person will know the end
and will not experience death." You can hardly imagine something
like that being included in the documents of the church which
emphasize the philosophy of hostility towards ‘the flesh' (as the
source of all evils) and to use an analogy, urge the wearing of fig
leaves for ‘the sake of decency.'

The material that is included in ‘the canon' is heavily slanted
towards the viewpoint and outlook of the early Christ Cult, which
was characterized by the conservative social outlook of the Greek
Stoics, an extremely high theological position and a corresponding
High Christology. God was perfectly omnipotent, perfectly all
knowing, completely in control, and according to the theology
characteristic of this Christ Cult in its highest expression an
omnipotent God actually ‘divinely predestined' everything that was
to take place on the earth ‘before even creating the world.' At the
same time God would also have to perfectly embody every perfect
quality, being altogether perfectly good, perfectly just, perfectly
kind, and so on. The problem with this position becomes apparent
when we consider the problems of human suffering and human
pain, starvation, wars, famines, diseases, all of which according to
this theology were knowingly created by a supremely powerful
divine being ‘before the world began', a being which would never
have to endure such sufferings but nevertheless in act of divine fiat
saw fit to inflict such things on small helpless beings who then, as
now, are in no position to protest or do much of anything else. It is
also characteristic of this Christ Cult to insist that what they refer to
as ‘the plan of salvation' was also ‘divinely ordained and
predestined' before the creation of the world. Therefore, we must
assume, with God being flawless, the universe must have been
created evil, and God then was the source and creator of evil, which
creates problems when they later wish to insist that God is also
completely fair and just. Add onto this the fact that it was also
ordained that salvation would consist of ‘the sacrificial payment for
sins in the atoning death of the Christ figure' and one can also see
that God was the original creator and source of sin, having created
people with what the Christ cult referred to as ‘sinful flesh', this
condition no doubt being also ‘divinely ordained from the
foundation of the world' (but then wasn't everything).

If one wishes to put the viewpoint of the triumphant Christ Cult
into historical context, in terms of philosophy it belongs to the
school of thought Greek Stoicism, and this philosophy, with its
suspicion of human sexuality and the human body and its strictly
conservative ideas about social order and its rigid resistance to
change or revolutionary ideas is found to permeate almost every
letter that eventually made it into the Christian canon. This is no
surprise since this philosophy was the belief system of the celibate
stoics who eventually triumphed in the power struggle in the early
church, and the canon, naturally enough, came to be made in their
own image. Winners, they say, write history, and they also wrote the
Bible, and given that this is true it leads to many legitimate
questions about the legitimacy of the canon. The Christian canon
as it has come down is representative of the viewpoints of one very
small faction and given the narrowness of its point of view and the
highly questionable nature of its internally inconsistent
philosophical position, it can be justifiably argued that it has
exerted an influence over both church and society far out of
proportion to its actual importance for far to long.

And this in and of itself is more than enough reason to subject
this narrowly restrictive Stoic canon to the rigors of critical analysis,
not because it is so important on its own merits, but because it has
been declared important, and then proceeds to exert an influence
over human societies and individual lives. The early church was
diverse and this diversity of voice was deliberately destroyed, such
reactionary social attitudes towards diversity being characteristic of
schools of Stoicism in ancient Greece and also of the Stoics who
rose to the top of the power structure in the church. Indeed, even
the hierarchical and patriarchal structure of the church itself which
lent itself so well to exploitation by the Stoics in the early Christ cult
is itself an expression of the conservative Stoic world view and its
hard nosed attitudes about social control and strict order, duty,
responsibility, and obedience and deterrence to all authorities by
those who were ‘divinely ordained' to fill their roles as dutiful slaves
or dutiful women working at home, or dutiful peasant farmers
content with their lot and subject to the powers ordained by God,
including of course, the powers that rose to the top of the church
and then worked hand in hand with the elites of society in
maintaining patriarchy. Greek Stoicism was elevated to the status
of Divine Commandment through the nifty trick of declaring the
writings of the Christ Cult and the Stoics to be exclusively ‘the
Word of God' through the device of canonization.

The influence of Stoicism is most clearly evident in the selection
of letters found in the Church documents. Absent here is any trace
of the types of disturbing social critique and the lashing out at
authority characteristic of earlier Jewish prophecy, where nothing in
human society is regarded as sacred and no authority of any kind
escapes a scathing tongue lashing. Rather than justifying social
injustice, and calling for the lowly to be content with being lowly, as
Greek Stoics in church letters do, prophets held that if society was
unjust then those in power were to be held responsible. It went with
the territory. That radical liberation writings were not included in this
narrow selection of church letters is not a reflection of the
preference of God for Greek Stoicism and patriarchal social
structures, as the polemical device of canonization would like to
suggest, but rather was a function of the fact that the winners get to
pick what goes into the canon, and the winners in this case were
extremely conservative Stoics. Now even Stoics, like the prophets
before them, find things in society to criticize. Thus only the flesh,
the human genitalia and the body are subject to harsh critique in
this collection of documents, in classic Stoic form. Even the
selection of names attached to what were actually anonymous or
pseudipigraphical compositions (they were all named after what
were purported to be ‘authorities' to be obeyed, apostles and
‘brothers of Jesus' and so on) all this is also a reflection of Stoic
thinking and the desire to create a social order where deference to
the priests and political authorities were paramount. The authority
of powers on earth was the authority granted to them by God, as
established and enforced on the orders of ‘Jesus', various
‘brothers of Jesus' and ‘apostles' and other such people who get to
dictate to society based on who they are, or so the mythology
suggests, in fine polemical form.

Biblical criticism was practiced among the earlier Jewish
prophets, but such things were downplayed in the canon. For
example we find in the Jewish canon, which is more diverse than
the Christian, the prophet Jeremiah rejecting the Moses myth and
the entire Levitical temple system. There is only one example of a
rejection of the Christ Cult found in the documents of the church, in
the Gospel of Mark, and that this gospel is even included in the
canon is an illustration of the delicate balancing act that even the
most powerful Stoics in the early church had to maintain in order to
avoid questions about their legitimacy. The Gospel of Mark was
around for a long time, and thus had of its own accord achieved a
kind of canonization through usage, and it would be dangerous to
dispose of the document, although historical evidence indicates
that it almost disappeared entirely (while surviving manuscripts of
Matthew and Luke exist from the first and second centuries, the
Gospel of Mark reappears in the manuscript evidence only in the
third century, just in time to become popular enough to force
inclusion into the canon.)

I say force inclusion, because this document is not in step with
the characteristic Christ Cult that is in evidence in almost every
other document in the Church collection. It is anomalous and given
the intolerance for diversity displayed by the Stoic hierarchy its
inclusion can only be explained by the fact that it was accepted as
Canonical in its own right, through usage, and could not simply be
disposed of. A similar social force must have been at work to
preserve such radical documents as some of what we find in
Jeremiah with its sweeping denunciation of the Moses myth and the
entire temple cult system, given that the priests of the temple cult
were responsible for the Jewish canon. No equivalent rejection of
the Christ Cult or any questioning of its legitimacy is preserved in
the letters of the church, a trick which might be taken to lend an air
of authority to the Christian sacrificial Cult but is actually
representative only of the predominant position acquired by the
adherents of the Christ Cult at a certain point in history when the
power of the state and the power of the Stoics in the priesthood
came together at the time the canon was being declared.

So a balanced presentation is not characteristic of the Christian
Canon, and as a result the canon of the church is much more lop
sided and nonrepresentative than one could argue is the case with
the earlier Jewish canon which represents a much broader range of
opinion (leading naturally enough to charges of ‘contradiction' - but
in the case of a canon, only if one wishes to maintain the fiction that
a canon represents the Word of God, infallible and inerrant, does a
charge of contradiction have any validity-better by far to have
diverse, and thus contradictory voices in a canon than to have the
oppressive burden of single voices masquerading as authority
through the simple device of silencing all opposition and then
claiming the ‘authority' of ‘sacred scripture' given that, through this
kind of trickery, the canon then would speak with only a single
voice.

Criticism of the Christ Cult is not tolerated in the canon.
Certainly criticism of the Torah is found, but for social reasons it is
normally found to be directed only at the clean and unclean
regulations and the food laws (unpopular among Gentiles, and so
wide open for attack). Jeremiah like criticism of the levitical
sacrificial system is not tolerated, and it is even the case that we
find such foolish documents as the Letter to the Hebrews included
in the canon, a document which laid the groundwork for the
sacrificial system of the Christ Cult, and which while acknowledging
the prophet Jeremiah, diligently avoids the rejection of the levitical
cult, understandably in this document, since the whole book of
Hebrews will revolve around the legitimacy of the Moses cult and
the cow sacrificing cult in the temple to make the claim that the
Christ Cult is just the natural end result of this earlier system. While
Jeremiah will be quoted in this document it will only be to insist that
Jeremiah predicted that the (legitimate) levitical Moses cult would
be superseded by the sacrificial Christ cult, and the critique of the
legitimacy of the earlier cult of Moses is understandably deliberately
not acknowledged in the letter of Hebrews. This same nullification of
protest and radicalism in Jewish prophecy will be characteristic of
the letters collected as canonical, and such conservative readings
of scripture are about what one would expect to be the choices of
such conservative Stoics with their strong aversion to the
questioning of religious tradition and their extreme dislike of social
discord or protest, characteristic of Jewish prophecy but notably
not characteristic of the letters of the Christian canon.

So I mention all this to simply make the point that my interest in
critical methods of Biblical analysis directed towards this canon is
not a function of my great fondness for the canon, but rather is
function of the fact that the canon is over hyped and granted undue
importance, but nevertheless it gains importance simply through
the stunt of being declared ‘canonical' and since so many gullible
people are willing to follow the line, and restrict themselves, their
lives, and their philosophy to the narrowness of the thinking of the
Christ Cult and the narrowness of Stoic philosophy one is forced to
become a biblical scholar, like it or not.

One of the functions of the canon is to narrow the ground of
discussion to within the parameters laid out by the Christ cult, but
due to the inclusion of such non cultish documents as Mark and
the prophets of the Jewish canon it is possible to widen the terms
of debate even while ‘remaining within the canon.' However, what is
to say that one must ‘remain in the canon' in the first place? To
restrict all thought to the terms and frames of reference of ‘a canon'
is to legitimize the canon, and to do this is refuse to acknowledge
the diversity present in the early church, not to mention the
diversity present in human thought, aside from whatever this or
that movement in the early church might have thought.

People are so accustomed (one could even say brainwashed)
by the terminology and frames of reference of this Greek Stoic
Christ Cult that is almost impossible for anyone to imagine making
any sense out of the Gospel without speaking of it using the
language of ‘sin sacrifice' and the terminology of this one particular
church cult. But it is easy to picture the meaning of the gospel in
terms completely absent the questionable high theological
assumptions of this cult or its narrow focus on priestly animal sin
sacrifices.

For example, if we assume that God is not omnipotent, then the
universe and all the evil in it becomes a type of ‘mistake'.
Something has ‘gone wrong' in this place, and while this sort of
thinking (a God capable of not having ‘foreknowledge' or errors or
disasters) might seem shocking to those immersed in the high
theology of the Christ Cult it does have the advantage of not being
so internally inconsistent as the convoluted thinking of high
Christology (where a perfect and all knowing God created evil
before the world began, and also kindly created salvation from the
evils (usually of sinfully wicked flesh) before the world began, and
nevertheless is perfectly good and just, an impossible nut to crack,
and the best argument against the high theology of the Christ Cult
as presented in the canon. This is particularly true when one
considers that the punishments meted out for being not being
‘saved' are hideous, and that human beings are ‘born in sin',
another little gift of the God of the Christ Cult, and when one
considers that anyone with a modicum of compassion, and not
inclined to abuse a power relationship, could easily come up with a
design for the universe absent this cruelty and injustice and such a
God is easily stripped of ‘glory' and instead appears ruthlessly cruel
and arbitrary.)

Now as for the meaning of the crucifixion, once again if we think
in terms of normal human justice (a gospel then, that truly a little
child could understand) it is possible to understand and preach a
gospel devoid of all the levitical sacrificial elements that so
characterize the writings of the Christ cult in the letters collected as
canon in the Church bible. Now to do so is to reject the importance,
position and power of priests and preachers, who, in the Christ Cult
sacrificial system, are truly the most important people in the world,
the sole voice of the only truth, not to mention the sole baptizers,
the sole dispensers of the sacraments of sacrifice, and the sole
source of the forgiveness of inborn sin declared to be the nature of
humanity at birth by the same priests (the polemical connection
between the dogmas of the Christ Cult and the self interest of the
Christian pulpit are to clear to require any more comment that that.)

Now I do not restrict myself to canon or to the language and
mythology of the Christ cult of sin sacrifice and sin payment, for
these very reasons. What I usually do, myself, is to point people to
the general story line of the gospel of Mark, the one gospel absent
the elements of the sacrificed God Christ cult in the canon.
According to the story line, Yeshua was a radical protestor against
the Torah and religious orthodoxy, something along the lines of
Jeremiah, in the Jewish prophets, or Spinosa, or to use a modern
analogy, Salmon Rushdie, who, as far as I know, is still hiding out in
the wilderness. Now the technique of such stuck in the mud
conservatives as the Greek Stoics with their rigid ideas of social
order was to crucify slaves if they got out of line, and so we can
first make note of the fact that according to the gospel then, Caesar
and his priests crucify slaves but God raises slaves from the dead.
The meaning of such symbolism, stripped of orthodox levite
dogma, then becomes obvious. It is a symbol of divine justice, and
an overthrow and judgment against the oppressive and corrupt
power systems of the earth, this being in line then, not with
Leviticus, as is the case with the Christ Cult, but rather with the
spirit that informed Jewish prophecy with its disturbing and radical
social protest. So then do we need a letters of Hebrew or book of
Romans Levitical cow sacrifice before we can even begin to
understand the meaning of such a thing as the crucifixion? Are we
lost without the terminology of the cult of animal sacrifice and the
Christ cult or without the rigid patriarchal world view of Greek
Stoicism. Hardly.

Of course, in thinking along these lines we have gone beyond
the canon, indeed, given that the canon is hostile to such notions,
we have no choice. But then the function of the canon is to stop us
from thinking in these terms in the first place, created as it was by
celibate Stoic priests during the time of their marriage to Caesar,
who was the one who kept crucifying all those slaves, and let's face
it, wouldn't be comfortable with a radical gospel message that kept
reminding him of how rotten and corrupt his ways were. That
Caesar could live with Leviticus, just as I am sure Ahab or other
such rulers could live with the Levite system, even if they couldn't
live with prophets is obvious. When we look over the sweep of
history and notice how popular and easy to live with Caesar always
found that Christ Cult of sacrifice to be and it becomes obvious that
the narrow selection of Stoic Christ Cult documents and the
nullification of the radical stream of Jewish prophecy was no
accident, but rather all this happened by design, and the function of
the canon as an oppressive tool, designed in fact to alter and even
destroy the obvious meanings embedded in the symbolism of the
crucifixion becomes equally obvious.

Related Pages:

Search for the historical Jesus

Salvation by works and the doctrine of Predestination

God for an hour - a protest against the doctrine of predestination
and omnipotence

Jeremiah rejects the Moses Myth and Leviticus

A commentary on Mark's gospel


Methods Index HOME Bible Commentary

This is not a news item - although maybe a very interesting debate - it is not news for the newswire