Did Jesus Really Say These Awful Things?
Or are we victims of bad translation?
Let’s be frank: There are words in the New Testament attributed to Jesus that do not match our elevated and loving ideas of him.
About God and Jesus
Jesus was a man who reached the high state of consciousness referred to as Christhood. His soul was, and is, an individual expression of the divine Spirit.
Therefore, his mind was pure, and his heart was compassionate.
In like fashion, our idea about God should be in line with our very highest concept of the Divine. In particular, we should keep in mind the words of the prophet Habakkuk when he referred to God as:
“Too pure to behold inequity” (Hab. 1:13).
And the most important declaration of Jesus:
“God is love” (1 John 4:8)
Embracing the God of love that is too pure to behold inequity, we have a key concept that allows us to screen and pass judgment on what we read in the Bible. We also know that Jesus fully expressed his highest awareness of the Spirit of God.
With this understanding of Jesus, certain verses attributed to him are not believable and point to misinterpretations, translation mistakes, or outright tampering.
Don’t underestimate the lullabies.
A lot of our ideas concerning God and Jesus were formed during our childhood and continue to influence us as adults.
How can we forget the lullabies of our early childhood? They were not only soothing songs, but they were also used to pass down religious tradition:
“Jesus loves me,
This I know,
For the Bible tells me so…
Yes, Jesus loves me!
He will wash away my sin…”
Many of our religious ideas have been inadvertently conditioned by our parents and grandparents from the cradle on. Basic dogmatic Christian concepts were inculcated deeply within our consciousness and have not been challenged rationally in adulthood.
About the scary ideas
Yet, not all religious ideas that were passed on focused on love, peace, and harmony. Many ideas that were falsely attributed to God reflected rewards and punishments with threats of Hell, Satan, and other nefarious entities and concepts.
These concepts used to keep kids in line created fear and anxiety for many children. Those fears are stimulated again when adults read or hear words of damnation in church.
Understandably, words and biblical passages evoking fear — which itself is not of God — have caused a great many Christians a great deal of discomfort and have even driven many away from Christianity and religion altogether.
Most of the words speaking about eternal damnation are encountered in Matthew, such as:
· In Mat. 5:29: “thy whole body should be cast into hell.”
· In Mat. 25:41, “eternal fire.”
· In Mat. 25:46, “they will go away to eternal punishment.”
But now, Christians’ reactions to such words need to go beyond discomfort. Questioning the veracity and suitability of what many have learned is critical.
Could it be translation mistakes?
Doubting a divine intent to send anyone into a lake of fire for eternal damnation, we start from the point of disbelief about a punishment of damnation in the afterlife.
Indeed, eternal damnation cannot be any part of the God of unconditional love and forgiveness.
Therefore, Jesus would also know that and would not speak of eternal damnation either.
But the Bible says so!
It speaks of hell both in the Old and the New Testaments!
What is the source of the original translation of texts that refer to “hell” as we have been taught about hell?
About the Bible
The subject of what were the original documents from which modern European Bibles were created is messy, complicated, and uncertain. It is not as if we had an early official version of the Old Testament to which an official text of the New Testament was added.
The trouble is that a variety of versions circulated around for centuries before what became the Old and New Testaments. Some versions were in Hebrew / Aramaic, and others were in Greek.
Eventually, a selection was made to create a first, full, and official Bible. Jerome of Alexandria undertook the task in the late 4th century. It was translated into Latin and called the Biblia Vulgata, the ‘Bible in the common tongue.’
Interestingly, little is said about hell and eternal damnation in the Gnostic gospels, typically written between the 1st and 4th centuries. Evidently, it was not the preoccupation of the time except for the allegoric book of Revelation.
A new scholarly information
Some scholars point to a piece of significant and transformative information:
The first recognized Bible was in Latin and was translated from both Hebrew and Greek texts. The words from which “hell” was translated were:
Ø “Sheol” (in Hebrew), which means grave or place of death.
Ø “Hades” (in Greek), which also means grave.
In other instances, the word “Gehenna” was used in Hebrew texts and translated as hell. But in reality, that name referred to a place near Jerusalem known for human sacrifices and other punishments. It had nothing to do with eternal condemnation.
Therefore, all three original words from which the word hell was translated referred to death or punishment during this life on Earth, and not of any meaning of hell as we were taught.
For the benefit of the church
It is clear that as newer versions of the Bible were created, using, to some extent, the original Bible in common Latin and then translated into modern European languages, the church had no intent in softening the punishment narrative.
One reason was the role played by Saint Augustine, a bishop and theologian from Cartage (Tunisia) in the late 5th century. His pessimistic view of humanity demanded strong punishments.
He, more than anyone else before him, was instrumental in ensuring that the Christian Scriptures maintained and emphasized the eternal damnation narrative and threats.
It is a fact that the threat of hell was a powerful tool for priests as it is for many modern pastors to maintain their flock in line with their own sense of biblical morality and discipline as well as spirituality.
In conclusion
Several points emerged from thinking about our question: Did Jesus really say these awful things?
First and foremost, we must embrace the idea that if we hang on tightly enough to our most elevated concept of God and Jesus, we can confront any instance in the Bible where incoherent affirmations appear.
This allowed us to consider the likelihood of translation errors and possible tampering with the texts selected to constitute the Holy Bible. In the process, we came across the work of Paul Mclelland and others, who gave us credible explanations for translation errors.
What is surprising is that apparently, no current efforts are made to correct the Scriptures. We see again that a lie repeated often enough is eventually accepted as the truth.
Sadly, much of the religious lives of many followers — both consciously and unconsciously — are driven by fear and not by love, as I believe was truly shown and taught by Jesus.
Jon Canas
Debunking false creeds. Reclaiming the Soul of Christianity.
Site: https://bio.site/ChristicSoul
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My book: Religion, Politics, and Reclaiming the Soul of Christianity: A Spiritual Imperative for Our Time and Our Nation
