Religion - Mistranslations,Mistakes, and Out and Out Lies

Today let's look at mistakes. I am going to stick with Christian tradition here, because I am most familiar with their mistakes. I am sure all religions make them, but I'll stick to this because it's a fine line between mistakes and differing opinions and lies and I want to get this right.

Let's start with a big one. As a young man, I was taught that Muslims did not believe in Jesus. This is a mistake. While Muslims do not believe that Jesus was Divine, they certainly believe that he was a great prophet and revere him as such. Likewise, many Hindus view him as an avatar of God and Buddhists tend to see him as Bodhisattva.

I was also taught that Jesus was born in Nazareth, near the Sea of Galilee. One problem. At the time he lived, there was no Nazareth. That town was developed in the 2nd Century, well after Jesus lived. This is a fairly honest mistake. Seemingly Jesus was called, by some, 'the Nazarene,' but exactly how the word is spelled determines its meaning. If Nazarine, then it applies to a sect that was close to the Essenes, but not the same. If Nazorite, then it means a Jew who has taken a special vow of holiness, which usually involves not cutting hair and abstaining from wine, for a certain time, which can vary from weeks to a lifetime. If Nazir, then it simply means a green shoot on a seemingly dead branch (the way grapes vines grow). This is what I believe it meant. His followers thought he was the new growth that would reanimate their culture.

Let's look at the Apocalypse of St John. Most of us were taught that this was the end of the world. It did not mean that at all. It was to be the end of an age. The word itself simply means 'a sudden revelation.' The word 'Armageddon' also does not mean the end of the world. It is the name of a location, 'har Mergiddo,' the plain of Megiddo. It was simply the spot where a great battle was to be fought. Because of the mistaken way we were taught, many of us were needlessly traumatized as kids. I mean the whole Book of Revelation is nightmarish science fiction, but thinking it describes the world's end makes it nearly intolerable to young minds.

There are countless other mistakes in Christian teachings. I stress Christian mistakes, not to pick on them, but because, of all belief systems, it is the one that says quite clearly, that it rests on real history. As such, mistakes by its teachers are unacceptable, yet they are perseverated.

I am willing to be charitable in describing these as mistakes. Those who taught me, and others of my era ( and eras before and after) were simply reciting what they were taught. However, if you go further back, to the earliest Church, you will find that some of those men out and out lied. That will be the next subject of this blog.