The factual account describes how Christ's provocative statements were increasingly drawing the wrath of the Jewish leaders. So they were looking for a good opportunity to get rid of Christ.
There is no doubt that the Jewish leaders wanted to get rid of Christ. The Bible itself repeatedly confirms this fact. According to the Gospel of Mark (14:1), “the chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest and kill Jesus in secret”.
Pilate and Herod, who under normal circumstances would not have been so concerned about the life of a non-Roman, cannot go along with the opinion of the assembled leaders of the Jewish people, nor can they be intimidated by the angry crowd. They believe that Jesus is innocent and want to set him free. The Gospel of Luke tells us (23:13):
“Pilate called together the chief priests, the other elders and the crowd and said to them: You brought me this man because you said he was stirring up the crowd. I myself interrogated him in your presence and found no case against him in all the charges you brought against him. Nor did Herod; he sent him back to us. They all cried together, 'Away with him!' But Pilate turned to them again, wanting to release Jesus. But they cried out, 'Crucify him! Crucify him!'”
That apparently not only Jesus but also his disciples were unwelcome persons can be seen from chapter 4 of the Acts of the Apostles (there are many other passages that say the same thing). Peter and John were arrested after Christ's death because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead:
“While they were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them. They were indignant because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They arrested them and kept them in custody until the next morning.”
In Matthew, but also in Mark and Luke, we can read how Jesus spoke to the crowd and warned them about the scribes and Pharisees:
“Beware of the scribes! They like to walk around in long robes, they love to be greeted in the marketplaces, they have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at banquets. They devour widows' houses and say long prayers for the sake of their hypocrisy.” (Luke 20:45-47)
“You Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside you are full of extortion and self-indulgence. “(Luke 11:39)
“Woe to you! For you are like tombs which are not seen, and those who walk over them are not aware of them.” (Luke 11:44)
When a lawyer also felt offended by such reproaches, Jesus added:
"Woe to you lawyers! You lay burdens on people that they can hardly bear, but you yourselves do not lift a finger to help them. Woe to you! You build monuments to the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you confirm and approve what your fathers did. They killed the prophets, and you build their tombs" (Luke 11:46-48).
Finally, Christ threatens that all will be avenged on this generation. He reproached the teachers of the law for not using the door of knowledge and for preventing those who wanted to enter from doing so. When Jesus had left the house, the scribes and Pharisees began to press him with many questions, trying to trap him in his own words. Meanwhile, thousands of people were gathering, creating a dangerous crowd. Jesus turned first to his disciples and said, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” He encouraged his friends not to be afraid of their oppressors: "But to you, my friends, I say: Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot do anything to you." (Luke 12).
There is no doubt that there were massive differences of opinion between Jesus on the one hand and the Jewish leaders, elders, scribes, Pharisees and teachers of the law on the other. One wonders why Jesus repeatedly spoke out against the Jewish leaders and their laws with such apparent persistence.
The Gospels tell us that Jesus was a friend of the people and wanted to help them. He comforted them, healed their sick, fed them, brought the dead back to life and warned them that the rulers were their seducers. Jesus obviously wanted to win the people to his cause and ideas, risking the wrath and trouble of the leaders of the people.
The factual account says that the Essenes were gentiles. However, this claim is hardly accurate. The numerous scrolls found at Qumran on the Dead Sea show that the Essenes were more like a Jewish sect. Ahmed Osman, in his book 'Who Was Jesus Really', writes about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes: “The scrolls turned out to be part of the library of the Essenes, a secret Jewish sect. They had separated from the Jewish community and the Jerusalem priesthood, whose beliefs and teachings they rejected as false.”
It is even less likely that there were Essenes among all the nations. The claim of the factual report that Christ was in India to visit the local Essene communities is not supported by a single document.
According to the current state of research, it is most likely that Jesus came from the Jewish sect of the Essenes and developed an increasing aversion to the Jewish leaders. He felt more and more like the liberator and redeemer of the Jewish people, probably had a persuasive manner, a sharp mind and remarkable oratory skills. He probably also had certain healing powers and was able to heal by his word (his will).
The factual report claims that Christ is the greatest being in spirit who made life possible for all other living beings. I reject discussions about 'great minds' as a matter of principle. However, I think it is very unlikely that Christ created the conditions for all living things to live. Life probably developed gradually, and human beings - and therefore Christ - came very much later.
There have always been, and still are, voices pointing out the rotten foundations of the Church. Universities teach how much has been falsified and how many 'truths of faith' were preceded by fights and disputes before they were labelled as the will of God. The masses of the people also feel that something is wrong; they know that Christ was a man dressed simply, a man who rejected purple caps and sumptuous garments, and who preferred the lodgings of the common man to the noble lodgings of the rich. Everyone feels that dirty thoughts and shameful deeds cannot be cleansed by the forgiveness of sins, and that confession can only be a means of discovering the most secret thoughts. Many know what happened in the sign of the cross, how fabulous the biblical story of creation is, and how much guilt the Church has incurred. And yet, wherever the Holy Father appears, crowds gather!
The Church is not dead and the critique of religion cannot be considered finished, as Karl Marx thought. Marx is dead, but the Church is alive and celebrating its resurrection in former communist areas.
What has happened to people who, on the one hand, think so logically and realistically and can achieve incredible things, and who, on the other hand, flock by the hundreds of thousands to wherever the highest bishop in the world goes? What has happened to people that they can act so contradictorily?
It is an old but successful trick: you use a figurehead, preach about justice and truth, about charity and brotherhood, about equality and humanity, make a pious and compassionate face and point your finger. Then you raise your hand to be kissed, send the bag round and return to your official duties. Now it is important to increase the number of souls, increase the power of the church, collect money and more money, tame unruly people, manage and increase assets, develop policies, make decisions and eliminate those who stand in the way of the interests of the church.
What does Joachim Kahl write in his work 'The Misery of Christianity'? “The need for a new critique of Christianity and theology arises from the simple fact that they persist. The ray of reason must be directed anew against the representatives of religion today, who profit from the universal tendency to forget.”
Joachim Kahl, born in Cologne in 1941, studied theology and received his doctorate in theology from the Philipps University of Marburg at a time when he had already begun his reckoning with the Church. “This book is a pamphlet," he writes in his introduction. “It cannot and will not hide its polemical intention. It was written in a prolonged fit of intellectual obsession. I do not share the bourgeois prejudice that rational criticism can only be presented in a cool and detached manner. I did not write sine ira et studio, but cum ira et cum studio, with the anger coming of itself after sufficient study. Those who are not outraged by Christianity do not know it.”
My concern is for the human being who is sacrificed on the altar of a God whom I deeply detest. Franz Overbeck, the famous professor of theology in Basel, confessed at the end of his career: “I may well say that Christianity has cost me my life.” Who has the courage and the strength, after completing his theological studies, to throw everything away and start again?
Gustav Wyneken, the eminent German pedagogue (1875-1964), who studied theology for a few semesters, spent decades studying the biblical traditions and their Christian interpretation. In his work 'Farewell to Christianity' he fights for honesty and truthfulness and against hypocrisy and thoughtless conformism. “Astute textual analysis and all the methods of scientific-critical philosophy and historical research allow only one conclusion,” the book says. “The New Testament is not Holy Scripture, not historiography, but literature, and propaganda literature at that. Christian theologians are aware of these findings and yet continue to proclaim the Christian faith. Lay believers know almost nothing about this loss of credibility of their faith. Nor can they say why they believe in the first place. Most Christians today discard their critical reason and their sharpened scepticism in the religious sphere, which they demonstrate as 'secular people': they insist on believing in an attitude that is completely outdated and contradictory in the rest of their lives”.
Kahl, in his understandable anger, is even harsher: “The New Testament is a manifesto of inhumanity, a large-scale mass deception; it suffocates people instead of educating them about their objective interests.”
“Christianity, like its younger brother, co-heir and competitor, Islam, emerged from the Jewish religion," Wyneken says. "These three religions did not develop gradually, but were founded. They had a datable, historical beginning. The other great religions of antiquity, such as the Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek religions, were nature religions. Their main gods were embodiments of the forces of nature, natural phenomena, natural laws that fill space and are eternally the same.
Christianity is very different. It has no 'book of natural secrets'; it is not interested in nature, it completely ignores it. It does not fit into the great human line of unravelling the world; it selfishly breaks out of the solidarity of human destiny and human endeavour. 'Cosmos', the Greek word for the wonderfully ordered universe, becomes a kind of insult in Christianity: the evil world from which one must flee, and religion is the way of this flight, opened to man through the incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus.
We should actually eliminate the word 'Bible' from our thinking, if not from our speech," Wyneken explains. "This well-known, thick, ancient book is in fact not a single work at all, but a motley collection of literary monuments from more than a thousand years, completely inconsistent with each other and bound together not only by the bookbinder, but by the will of two religious communities who arranged this collection and decided to see in it the documents of their faith.
Even linguistically, the word "Bible" is a misnomer, or at least based on a misunderstanding. The German word comes from the Greek 'biblia' (plural!), which means 'books', via Latin. It was only in the Middle Ages, when people in the West no longer studied Greek, that 'biblia' gradually came to be understood as a singular: 'the Bible', and it was increasingly forgotten that this book is not an organic unity, but a conglomerate, made up of many components, very different and with different values.”
The Church built its 'New Testament' on the model of the 'Old Testament', which contains the books of Moses and other writings of prophets and kings. The New Testament contains the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and the didactic writings of the Apostles. Since Jesus was presented as the Son of Yahweh, the Old Testament became from the beginning a divine revelation that was also binding on Christians.
There is not a single written line from Christ himself, and the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were not actually written by the Lord's apostles. Herder's 'Theological Commentary on the New Testament', a work that really cannot be said to have been written by an anti-church author, says the following about the time and authorship of the Gospels and Acts:
“The Gospel of Luke was written after the year 70 AD. The decade between 80 and 90 AD will be the correct time for the writing of the Acts of the Apostles.”
“Like all 'gospels' - as the writings based on the Gospel of Mark came to be called - the Gospel of Mark was undoubtedly first published anonymously. The year 70 is given as the date of composition.”
“The Gospel of Matthew was written anonymously around 80 AD.”
The various writings are, of course, also full of contradictions, which I will not go into in detail. Just one example: according to only two gospels, Christ was born of the Virgin Mary; according to the other two, he was not.
In his 'Criminal History of Christianity', Karlheinz Deschner writes about the large-scale, organised falsifications of the Church: “Many, perhaps most, people are afraid to suspect the grossest fraud in what is for them the most 'sacred' of all areas. Yet never has there been more unscrupulous, more frequent lying and cheating than in the realm of religion.”
According to Wynekens, the Gospel of Mark was written around 70, the Gospel of Matthew around 90, the Gospel of Luke around 100 and the Gospel of John around 140. The Acts of the Apostles, probably written by Luke (but no one knows who Luke was, as the Gospels were published anonymously), were written after 100. The 1st and 2nd Epistles of Peter and the Epistle of Jude are forgeries; other Epistles are suspected of being forgeries; the integrity and completeness of some writings is doubtful; insertions and additions by later hands are suspected here and there. Only the Pauline epistles appear to be authentic.
But who was Paul?
Paul was a Jewish leader whose real name was Saul. He hated Christ deeply and persecuted him and his followers along with other Jewish leaders. The book of Acts tells us how fanatically Saul raged against Christians even after Christ's death (Acts 8:1-3): “On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem. All were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. The believers buried Stephen and mourned for him. But Saul sought to destroy the Church; he went into every house and dragged off men and women and put them in prison."
The Acts of the Apostles (9:1-22) tells us how Saul raged against the disciples of the Lord, full of murderous thoughts. “Saul continued to rage against the Lord's disciples, threatening and killing them. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues of Damascus, so that he might arrest the followers of the new way, both men and women, and bring them to Jerusalem.” But Jesus, who would have had many opportunities during his lifetime to convert Saul to Paul, appeared to him on the road and asked him why he was persecuting him. Then Paul saw nothing, ate nothing, drank no water for three days, and prayed. So the Lord had no choice but to appear again, this time to Ananias, a disciple of the Lord in Damascus. Ananias replied that he knew Saul and his evil spirit very well. But the Lord did not give up and said that he would make this tireless persecutor of his spirit his chosen instrument (!). When Ananias finally did what he was told, it was as if the scales had fallen from Saul's eyes and he could see again; he stood up and was baptised.
What was the point of this apparent deception? What purpose did it serve?
It is not difficult to see that a major deception was underway. Obviously the Jewish leaders were looking for new, more promising ways to harm the Christian movement. With a new identity (Paul), money, the secret support of the Jewish leaders, and an elaborate story about the appearance of the Lord, he began to conjure up more news about Christ. Of course, he was not immediately believed. The Acts of the Apostles (9:1-22) tells us: "But when he came to Jerusalem, he sought to enter into the company of the disciples, and all were afraid of him, because they did not believe that he was a disciple.”
It is easy to understand the disputes that have come down to us about the early Church. Soon many did not know what Christ had really said, and more and more people tended to believe the version spread by the pious and hypocritical Paul, who, thanks to the means at his disposal, was able to emphasise the meaning of his words with bread and wine, which he could even transform into the flesh and blood of the Lord in his ceremonies.
The church father Clement Alexandrinus (died around 150) pointed to the confused situation of the Christian groups when he lamented that Jews and pagans rejected conversion “because, in view of the confusing doctrinal disputes among the Christian parties, one cannot know which of them really represents the truth”. Origen, also one of the first Fathers of the Church (died around 254), admits that "there are so many among those who profess to believe in Christ who disagree not only on trivial and insignificant matters, but also on the important and weighty main points.”
Not even the position of Christ was agreed upon. The so-called Trinitarian interpretation, with Father, Son and Holy Spirit, came about after terrible disputes in a church assembly, now politely called a 'council'. The Roman Emperor Constantine was tired of the eternal religious disputes. He called the rival and warring groups together and demanded that they finally agree on a single view of God and Christ. It was at this meeting, which resembled a Nazi brawl more than a civilised discussion, that the Creed was formulated. Since then, countless “I believe in God, the Father, the Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son...” have been sent to Yahweh.
In fact, there are – how could it be otherwise? – many different versions of the Creed, so one should not think that the bishops at the synods were so inspired by the Holy Spirit that they immediately found the right wording. Studying these different versions is time-consuming and not very effective. In the 'Compendium of the Creeds and Doctrines of the Church', those interested can at best find information on the 'Coptic Version', the 'Ethiopian Version in Question Form', the 'Ethiopian Version in Statement Form', the 'Baptismal Creed of the Armenian Church', the 'Apostles' Creed', the 'Oriental Formulas', and so on.
The religious controversy did not end with the Council of Nicaea; synods followed synods.
With the onset of the Germanic migrations and the increasing threat to the Roman Empire, the church movement won a decisive victory. It succeeded in persuading the irascible emperor Theodosius to declare the Church the state religion and to ban the practice of pagan religions.The power of the Church grew in the centuries that followed. Soon emperors and kings had to seek the favour of the popes themselves, for only the pope could bestow God's grace and thus the trappings of temporal dignity. The monk Hildebrand, who became Pope Gregory VII. (1073-1085), even aspired to a papal empire. After Gregory VII. set out his spiritual programme for rule in the Papal Dictate (Dictatus Papae of 1075), an open struggle broke out between Gregory VII. and King Henry IV. Henry IV. rejected Gregory's demands and called for a battle against his pro-ecclesiastical opponents, which he lost. The disputes continued and led to Gregory VII. issuing the ban of the king, which freed all subjects from the oath of allegiance and forbade the king to rule the realm. Henry IV. had to travel to Italy and appear before the Pope in a hair shirt, whereupon Pope Gregory had no choice but to lift the ban on the repentant king. In 1080 Gregory renewed the ban, and Henry IV. responded with such military force that Gregory VII. was forced to flee to his Norman allies.
In the Middle Ages, intellectual dullness became increasingly intolerable. All criticism was stifled. The Inquisition was born, one of the most brutal terrorist organisations the world has ever known: The Protestant church historian Walter Nigg writes: "To the assertion that it wasn't so bad, one can only reply: Yes, it was bad, as bad as it could be!”
Initially, the Inquisition was the task of the bishops and their synods, who appointed a few laymen in each parish to track down 'heretics'. When this failed to 'purify' the Church, Pope Gregory IX. finally transformed the Inquisition into a centrally controlled institution of the Curia, transferring it (in 1232) to the Dominicans ('domini canes' - 'dogs of the Lord', in the vernacular).
As a rule, the Inquisition announced its visit to each city in advance, so that the population could gather in time. Anyone who did not turn up was automatically under serious suspicion. Every Catholic was obliged to denounce 'heretical' Christians; parents had to denounce their children, children their parents and spouses each other. Anyone who failed to do so was an accomplice. Anonymous denunciations were preferred.
The heresy trial began with the arrest. The accused was found guilty from the start. He was put in chains in a dungeon. He was denied the sacraments. The accused had to swear to the inquisitor, who was accuser, judge and confessor in one person, to obey all the commandments of the Church, to answer all questions truthfully, to betray all fellow heretics and to willingly accept all penances. A defence lawyer was not allowed. If the accused did not confess, torture was used.
The heresy trial began with the arrest. The accused was found guilty from the start. He was put in chains in a dungeon. He was denied the sacraments. The accused had to swear to the inquisitor, who was accuser, judge and confessor in one, to obey all the rules of the Church, to answer all questions truthfully, to denounce all fellow heretics and to willingly accept all penances. A defence lawyer was not allowed. If the accused did not confess, torture was used.
Stubborn and recidivist 'heretics' were burned alive. They also did not hesitate to dig up the dead and burn the remains if they could 'prove' that the deceased had committed the crime of heresy after their death.
The burnings were scheduled for Sundays and holidays to attract as many spectators as possible. Special horsemen invited people from the surrounding area to come and watch. High prices were paid for windows overlooking the funeral pyre. While the Nazis gassed their victims before burning them, the inquisitors enjoyed the groans of the tortured.
Sexuality was demonised, women defamed. What is natural for any animal was degraded to devilry in humans. Any thought of physical pleasure had to be suppressed and fought. Perverse acts were the result. Woman, not equal to man even in the days of Yahweh, was perceived as inferior and increasingly exposed to the arbitrariness of man. Kahl: “The New Testament is the product of neurotic philistines. Human sexuality is seen not as a source of pleasure but as a source of fear, not as a medium of love but as a medium of sin. Everything natural and physical is ostracised, sometimes openly, sometimes covertly.”
The many excommunications exchanged between popes, bishops and their followers also show how bad things were for the Church. The final break between the Latin and Greek Churches came in 1054. Both sides cursed and excommunicated each other. For many years there were two popes at the same time, one in Rome and the other in Avignon (France). The two representatives of Christ on earth condemned each other and their territories with terrible anathemas, instilling fear in the ignorant masses for the eternal salvation of their souls. The Synod of Pisa in 1409, which was supposed to end the schism, deposed both popes and elected a new one. Since the two predecessors did not think to clear the table, the children of God were suddenly blessed with three popes. Some Popes lasted only a few days or hours, and it even happened that one Pope was murdered by the next and dragged through the streets of Rome as a deterrent.
With irrefutable doctrines, so-called dogmas, the faithful were forced to accept every Vatican regulation in faith, that is, completely uncritically. While every scientifically minded person knows that every hypothesis remains a theory until it has found sufficient confirmation, popes and bishops believed that they could maintain their assertions for all eternity. Although it should have been clear long ago how much the popes and their followers had erred, infallibility was proclaimed at the 4th session of the First Vatican Council on 18 July 1870. Although many of the Council Fathers themselves expressed reservations and eventually left the Council before the decisive session, Pope Pius IX. succeeded in adopting the dogma of infallibility.
Anyone who dares to read the doctrinal decisions of the Church is openly threatened at every turn. Those who do not agree are rejected and cursed. “Si quis autem huic Nostrae definitioni contradicere, quod Deus avertat, praesumpserit: anathema sit. But whoever, God forbid, dares to contradict this our definition (of papal infallibility), let him be anathema.” As relatively free people today, we can no longer imagine what anathema, excommunication, exclusion from the community of believers, combined with terrible curses and threats, meant at that time.
There is no need to list all the wrong decisions that followed the decision of infallibility. It is clear to anyone who is not totally obedient to the Church that there can be no connection between a Holy Spirit and the Curia. The decisions of infallibility have always served the interests of the Church, never those of the faithful. When Hitler came to power, his first foreign treaty was with the Vatican. No Holy Spirit hovered over the Pope's head and advised him not to make a treaty with this man who was about to become one of the world's greatest criminals.
When someone is plagued by a crisis of conscience because the 'truths' of the Church cannot be reconciled with reason, what does his pastor tell him? “You must not doubt, my dear child!”
Yes, we are treated like children. We are baptised and incorporated into the Church before we even know where we are. From birth they try to cloud our minds with horror stories and fight our rational thinking with lies and false truths.
All great and great insights and movements have been fought against. Giordano Bruno died a fiery death on 2 February 1600. In 1633, Galileo Galilei was forced to swear an oath of perjury on his knees and in a hair shirt: "I have before me the Holy Gospels, touch them with my hand and swear that I have always believed, believe now, and with God's help will continue to believe in the future, everything that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church believes, preaches and teaches to be true... Therefore, with a sincere spirit and without hypocrisy, I renounce, abjure and anathematise these errors and heresies and, more generally, any error, heresy or sectarianism, whatever it may be, that is contrary to the Holy Church. I swear that in the future I will not proclaim anything, either in word or in writing, that could bring me under such suspicion. But if I know a heretic or someone suspected of heresy, I will report him to this Holy Office or to the inquisitor or ecclesiastical authority of my place of residence.”
“All parties knew that this oath was a single lie," writes Johannes Hemleben in a monograph on Galileo Galilei. "But the moral corruption in which the so-called 'Holy Office' found itself at the beginning of the 17th century overcame all the scruples of conscience of both the plaintiff and the defendant. People had long become accustomed to such untruthful situations. As long as people allow the impulses of power to distort justice and the administration of justice, there will continue to be such trials that are intolerable to the human conscience. That is why today we cannot talk about a 'rehabilitation of Galileo', as the Viennese Cardinal König demanded in the summer of 1968. A sentence of shame that has been carried out cannot be annulled after centuries.
The 'Galileo case' was not and is not primarily about the question of knowledge, about the position of the earth in space, but about the right claimed by the teaching authority of the Church to decide on truth and error with binding effect for all believers. Under the pretext of being the guardians of the one truth, crimes have been committed in the name of Christianity by the official leadership of the Church, leading to the extermination or elimination of persons whose orthodoxy was questioned.”
Instead of teaching the faithful to read and write, and educating them about their interests, it was preferable to keep them ignorant so that their money could be more easily taken from their pockets. Priests were respected men who, if not owners, were at least stewards of estates large and small. Well into the 20th century, many a shy Christian would donate his worldly goods to the church to buy salvation in the hereafter. A great deal of money was made from all sorts of trinkets - pictures and relics. The selling of indulgences - give me money and I will forgive your sins - took on such forms that it eventually had to be banned.
While the so-called heathens – for example, the Romans – had a tolerant view of the concept of God and the Roman Empire developed a relatively fair legal system, Yahweh shows no mercy to dissenters and spreads a sense of justice that makes you want to weep. His commandments require faith in him. He is the great and jealous God who appears as fire, tolerates nothing and no one beside him, and destroys anyone who dares not believe in him and serve him. Yahweh is a slave-owner who gives Moses precise instructions on how to manage slavery and even how to sell his daughter as a maid. Hypocritically, he commands: "Thou shalt not kill" (Fifth Commandment), and in the next breath he demands that all prophets who proclaim otherwise be killed, and that every thief be executed, no matter for what reason he stole. Children should die if they curse their father or mother, even if they are beaten or tortured.
Whole nations must be wiped out in the wrath of the Lord: "If you (Moses) listen carefully to what I say and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will surround those who surround you. My angel will go before you and drive out the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites. I will send my terror before you, and I will confound every nation before you. I will make all your enemies flee before you" (Exodus 23:20ff).
It is interesting to note which commandments Yahweh did not proclaim. Those who lie seem to go unpunished, as do those who are hypocritical. He does not disapprove of sleazy types, but anyone who doubts this strange Lord Yahweh must be eliminated immediately.
When men fight - this God deals with such things! - and injure a pregnant woman so that she miscarries, the offender must repent. But if any other harm is done, life shall be given for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, gash for gash.
The foolishness of his commandments and laws is shown by this passage in Exodus 21:28-29: If a bull gores a man or a woman to death, the bull must be stoned to death. But if the bull has been mistreated and its owner, though warned, has not restrained it, so that it has killed a man or a woman, the bull shall be stoned and its owner also. The idea that the ox might have kicked because it was being tormented does not occur to this God.
Even though Yahweh has just called for non-killing, he is constantly regulating the killing of humans and animals. “You shall not let a witch live. Anyone who has intercourse with an animal shall be put to death. Anyone who sacrifices to a deity other than Yahweh shall be subject to the curse of destruction”. (Exodus 22:17-20)
The things this God promises and does not keep, just so you can serve him devotedly and worship him alone: "If you serve the Lord your God, he will bless your bread and your water. I will keep sickness from you. There will be no woman in your land who miscarries or remains childless. I will make you live the full number of your days. I will send my terror before you; I will confound every nation to which you come, and I will make all your enemies flee before you." (Exodus 23:25-27) Either Yahweh is so naive that he himself believes that he can keep his people free from disease and miscarriage and make them live the full number of their days, or he is just saying this to make people more compliant with his wishes and commands.
Yahweh is like a raven who must have everything that glitters. He tells Moses to levy a tax. “Tell the Israelites to collect a tax for me. You shall collect the tax from everyone whose mind moves him to do so. This is the tax you are to collect from them: gold, silver and bronze, blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, goat hair, rams' skins dyed red, hides of sea cows and acacia wood, oil for the light, balm for the anointing oil and frankincense, and onyx stones for the ephod and the breastpiece. Make a sanctuary for me, that I may dwell among them. You are to make the tabernacle and all its furnishings according to the design I will show you. Make a chest of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide and a cubit and a half high. Overlay it with pure gold, inside and out, and make an edging of gold around it. Make four gold rings for it and attach them to its four feet, two rings on one side and two rings on the other. Make poles of acacia wood and cover them with gold. Make a lid of pure gold, two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. Make two cherubim of beaten gold and carve them on the two ends of the mercy seat." (Exodus 25:2-18).
And so it goes on. The cherubim are to spread their wings upwards to guard the mercy seat, the candlesticks are to be made of pure gold, and a tabernacle is to be built for the Lord. An altar was a must, and many utensils were to be provided so that sacrifices could be made frequently and conveniently. His servants, the priests, should also be beautiful. So this almighty god commanded that holy garments be made, with a breast piece, shoulder piece, linen robe, ephod, turban and sash, as are still used today for the edification of this God.
The sacrifice, which consisted mainly of the slaughter of animals, had to be carried out according to precise instructions. The best animals were slaughtered in front of the altar in the presence of the Lord. The priest had to take the blood with his fingers and smear it on the altar and pour the rest in front of it (!). All the fat had to be burned on the altar, and other parts had to be burned in front of the Lord's camp. It is hard to imagine how disgusting it must have smelled after the various raids of this god and the subsequent sacrifices: during one raid against the Medes - which we read about in the Old Testament! - twelve thousand well-equipped Hebrews killed all the men. They took the women and children as spoils, as well as all the cattle and equipment. The towns, villages and castles were destroyed by fire. They came to Moses with the spoils, but he was angry with the leaders, robbers and murderers. He said to them: “Why did you let all the women and children live? Kill every male, including the children, and kill the women if they have recognised men in the act of intercourse. But as for the virgins, leave them alive for yourselves. Then cleanse yourselves with the water of purification.”
Imagine, these bands of robbers killing all the men and destroying everything in their path. But Moses, the great prophet of God, is horrified and demands that even the boys and all the women who have had sexual intercourse be killed. Only virgins are welcome, firstly because they are pretty to look at and pleasant to abuse, and secondly because they can be used to increase the population. How the poor women felt and what happened to their children is not mentioned in the most sacred of books.
After the boys had been killed and the women strangled, god spoke. He did not demand that the killing stop and the frightened and abused girls be left in peace, no, he demanded his share of the spoils. He commanded Moses to separate all five hundred souls from man and beast. This amounted to 675 sheep and goats, 72 cattle, 61 donkeys and 32 virgins (!). Moses had to hand them over to the priest Eleazar to be sacrificed on the altar of the Lord, who then feasted on the blood of the slaughtered.
What man can call such a thing good, what man can find such a morbid thing other than abominable and perverse? How uneducated, how narrow-minded, how misguided must people be who have read and studied these things and yet pray piously before the altar of such an abomination?
The Old Testament is full of lies and monstrosities of all kinds. The tall tales begin with the account of creation and continue up to Moses, who was a strange leader of his people. There is constant fighting and quarrelling, killing and murdering, fornicating, sacrificing and re-sacrificing, swearing and not keeping, cursing and damning, deceiving and lying.
Yahweh is not a god, Yahweh is a demon, immensely vain and obsessed with the idea that all living things must serve and cheer him. Unable to do anything but make grand speeches, he uses tools, people, to achieve his ends.
Yahweh used his 'angels', whom he also called 'prophets', to speak to people. Stories like the burning bush are fairy tales. In reality, angels and prophets were mediators, and it was only through these mediators that Yahweh could communicate with Moses and other leaders and dictate his commandments and orders to them.
That mediumistic contact with the afterlife was well known is evident from the following passage (Leviticus 20:27): “If there is a man or woman among you who is a mediator or a spiritist, they must be put to death. They shall be stoned, and their blood shall be on them.”
So if someone was a mediator who was not in the service of Yahweh, they had to be eliminated immediately, lest the true demonic nature of Yahweh come to light through such mediators. Numbers 12 describes how even Moses' intermediaries, Miriam and Aaron, rebelled and said, "Has the Lord spoken only to Moses? Has he not also spoken to us?” At this the Lord became very angry and made Miriam turn white as snow and suffer from leprosy. Aaron was afraid and said nothing more. A little later, however, the Lord called Aaron into his kingdom and made Aaron's son Eleazar a prophet.
Deuteronomy 18:10-15 also talks about sorcerers and prophets: “There shall be no one among you who practises divination or sorcery, who interprets omens, who practises mediumship, who casts spells, who is a spiritist or a necromancer. For anyone who does these things is an abomination to the Lord. Because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out from before you. You must be completely devoted to the Lord your God. For these nations, whose possession you are taking over, listen to soothsayers and oracle readers. But the Lord your God has decided otherwise for you. The Lord your God will raise up a prophet from among your brethren. You shall listen to him.”
Isn't it crystal clear why this Lord is so afraid of people who can see the future or are predisposed to do so?
Why is Yahweh considered a god, but Hitler a mass murderer? Didn't they both command the same thing? Hitler disliked ethnic groups like Jews and Gypsies, but Yahweh disliked whole nations!
For a long time the Church knew how to keep the faithful away from the foundations of their faith and to feed them with what they themselves considered good and pleasant. The Mass was read in Latin, and the pulpit was used to preach in the interests of the Church. It was Martin Luther who first translated the Bible into German and ensured that the minority who could read and write could also know it.
The church has always benefited from the fact that the alternatives - splinter groups, sects etc. - basically offered the same old thing, or at least the same God. It has been able to maintain its position because 'blasphemy', as I commit it here, is still punishable. But it also benefited from the fact that the educated were fed up and dismissed the subject of God with three simple words: 'He does not exist'.
But the end of the reign of Yahweh and his servants is only a matter of time. 'Modern' man is already insightful and adaptable; he will throw off the heavy burden of the past with relief and joy as soon as he finds a suitable opportunity. One day, perhaps not too far in the future, churches will fall into disrepair for lack of funds, and many of them will have to be preserved with public funds, so that the memory of terrible times will not be erased.