Luke Chapter 9 - We need to talk about John. Again

Reading the book from the start really throws up some patterns that are not at all clear when, as is the normal case, one is simply presented with "illustrative" parts of the Bible in bite-sized pieces. I certainly had never realised that there was such an obsession with establishing John the Baptist as not being Christ.

Aside from that, this chapter also contains some more remnants of the apocalyptic Jesus which C has been toning down. Why do these bits remain? Probably for the same reason that he keeps going on about John - the issues were so well known in the contemporary Christian communities of C's time and place that he simply could not ignore them. In the case of John, he fights them, with the apocalyptic sayings he tries to simply present them with as little context as possible so that they seem like just weird random sayings. This has the side effect of making his character of Jesus seem almost drunken at times, but a lot can be hidden with the fig-leaf of "oh, that's him being mystical" which has been the excuse for incoherent or badly thought-out doctrines for the whole of recorded history.

Chapter 9

Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases.

And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.

And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip, neither bread, neither money; neither have two coats apiece.

And whatsoever house ye enter into, there abide, and thence depart.

And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.

This seems somewhat obscure but basically, as will be explained in the next chapter, it's a way of saying that you'll have nothing to do with the city (i.e., tiny village) in question and don't want to take any part of it, not even the dust from the streets, with you when you go.

This is classic Biblical tar-everyone-with-the-same-brush bullshit. It's cretinous, childish, simplistic, stupid, and unbelievable. C's tendency for hyperbole is tiresome and his morality pathetically black-and-white. The disciples are either to literally knock on every door in every town and village/city, or alternatively to condemn the whole population of a place based on some random sample. Either way, it's just rubbish for simpletons.

And they departed, and went through the towns, preaching the gospel, and healing every where.

Now Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was done by him: and he was perplexed, because that it was said of some, that John was risen from the dead;

Something that I've not really talked about is this issue of thinking people had risen from the dead. It's already happened once in the book and here we have an example of people being ready to believe it has happened. This throws some light on the eventual resurrection of Jesus, in that it shows willingness to believe such things were possible. It's sometimes said that Jesus must have existed and must have risen because it is so incredible that no one would make it up. Yet here the text of the NT itself says that false accounts of people rising from the dead were in circulation. But that means that such stories were possible even when it was not true, so we can apply the same standard to Jesus and say that, yes, it was possible that Jesus didn't really rise because the Bible says that there's no inherent reason to believe such a tale.

However, we've missed a minor detail: John's dead. When did that happen? John's last appearance was as a very much alive leader of a sect who was sending his disciples to quiz Jesus about his nature.

Indeed, the word "disciples" is one that C uses a lot. In the sequel to "Luke", he means basically any follower of another person and in particular uses it in reference to the continuing preaching of the 12 disciples of, yes you guessed it, John the Baptist who run into Paul in Corinth in mainland Greece. Naturally, since C's version of Paul is an infallible superman of the same ilk as Jesus, he sets them straight and all is well. There's no more reason to think that C met Paul than that he did Jesus, of course.

And while we're at it, what about John the Baptist? Is he any more real than Jesus? Well, there is one historical reference to John (in Josephus) that I can find and it seems to be genuine, although there are some who think it's an edit by a later Christian, in the same way that Tacitus' reference to a persecution under Nero was added by later generations wanting to prove that they were hard done by under Roman rule rather than they being a bunch of bloody-minded bigoted trouble makers incapable of living with people who had a different viewpoint.

So, I consider John the Baptist as being very lightly pencilled in under the heading of "Real People". Which doesn't matter much, really. The world is full of examples of two cults of completely non-existent gods or whatever who are at each others' throats. Neither Jesus nor John need to exist for their followers to be rivals. By the same token, a valuable philosophical point or teaching put into the mouth of a fictional character is still a valuable philosophical point or teaching.

But C's obsession with John didn't extend to mentioning that he was dead, strangely. I can only guess that C simply wanted to skip over any impression that John's death was important in itself. In his version of events, John's function - although important at the time - was done and the quicker he stopped being in the story the better. Although that wouldn't explain why C just can't seem to stop talking about him. There's still a couple of mentions to come later in the book.

And of some, that Elias had appeared; and of others, that one of the old prophets was risen again.

Again, we see that wild speculation about supernatural events that could express themselves as people was perfectly possible which neutralises any attempt to claim that Jesus has to have existed because so many people were influenced by the belief that he did.

There's different ways to read this verse - one is that it refers to John and that the people, including Herod Antipas, think that he has really risen, and another is that these people have heard of Jesus and are confused, thinking that Jesus is John. The clue is the mention of "Elias" - "Elijah" is another spelling. John the Baptist was specifically identified with the spirit of Elias way back in chapter 1, by an "angel of the lord". So it seems that the rumour has started that John - Elias, one of the "old prophets" - has come back from the dead quite independently from Jesus.

At this point I think we can put forward a theory about Jesus: John the baptist was thought to be the Christ; he taught in out of the way places and was in some way viewed as dangerous to the king (Herod) but also to the temple. He was arrested on the basis of this, perhaps on trumped up charges, tried, and then executed. Some time after he died, the story started to go around that he was somehow still alive and his disciples went out across the eastern Mediterranean (at least) preaching some sort of salvation in his name. All of this is attested in the Bible itself.

The dead John, assuming that he existed, would have been easy to prove - put his head on a pole and let anyone see it. But anyone with the correctly adjusted spectacles of faith can get around that, in exactly the same way that the Docetists would about Jesus: simply claim that it seems to be John but that he's come back anyway as another person called Jesus. Notice (spoiler alert) that this would be a parallel with the risen Jesus who we are told was not recognizable as the same person.

Each messiah movement that ends with a dead messiah faces the same challenge - to explain the corpse. Here we have three attempts (Johnites, Jesusites, Docetists) to address it in the same way - "he only seems to be dead, he's actually over there!" Reality is kept at bay for a little while longer.

The Christians transferred their stories about John onto a real person called Jesus or something similar and went merrily on. When Jesus died or wandered off, the religion carried on because, really, it never needed him much at all. In this theory there is a "historical" Jesus but we know nothing about him; all the material is projected onto someone who was probably just a good preacher with a similar outlook to the dead John. That's why we actually never hear anything about Jesus's life until long after he left the picture, his disciples simply didn't care about his life or his mother or the rest of it. They cared about John's story and preserved that instead.

Well, it's a thought. In any case, the huge overlap of the two stories undermines any claim that both are true and if one isn't true, there's no objective way to prove which one (if either), although John's story is acknowledged by the NT to be older.

An alternative is that the basic story was going around, perhaps based on a previous failed messianic figure such as Judas the Galilean (who may be the figure underlying the NT Judas, since he was closely connected with the Pharisees) and that there simply was a disagreement about the name of the person at the centre. Over the years one name won out, but at no point was there actually a single person, just a load of folktales and a load of names and they became associated randomly and then were organized by later writers such as C. The same process led to the selection of books for the first canonical Christian Bible contents - dozens of books, some wildly contradictory, picked up and selected for largely personal reasons by one man and then set in stone as The Truth™.

And Herod said, John have I beheaded: but who is this, of whom I hear such things? And he desired to see him.

Notice that the text from verse 7 ("Now Herod") to here can be removed without affecting the readability of the result and that Herod will not be mentioned again in this chapter. It's as if someone added this chunk just to get in a bit of text about John. All the stranger as part of it will be repeated later on here. I blame the editor.

And the apostles, when they were returned, told him all that they had done. And he took them, and went aside privately into a desert place belonging to the city called Bethsaida.

And the people, when they knew it, followed him: and he received them, and spake unto them of the kingdom of God, and healed them that had need of healing.

The cleric's always the healbot.

And when the day began to wear away, then came the twelve, and said unto him, Send the multitude away, that they may go into the towns and country round about, and lodge, and get victuals: for we are here in a desert place.

But he said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they said, We have no more but five loaves and two fishes; except we should go and buy meat for all this people.

For they were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, Make them sit down by fifties in a company.

There are various versions of this story in which it is 300, 3000 or 5000 that are to be fed. Not surprisingly, C has the biggest number. 

And they did so, and made them all sit down.

Then he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them, and brake, and gave to the disciples to set before the multitude.

And they did eat, and were all filled: and there was taken up of fragments that remained to them twelve baskets.

And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am?

They answering said, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others say, that one of the old prophets is risen again.

He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ of God.

And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man that thing;

This part is a very rare example of Jesus acting like a real person. He's chatting with the others and asking them things which someone in his situation might actually ask (if they weren't the son of god, in which case he'd already know, just like he reads people's minds) and when he hears the answer (some of which is a direct quote from earlier in the chapter) he suggests caution. Because a real person would perhaps be worried about what would happen if word started to spread that he was the messiah. And "messiah" is what Peter calls him. He doesn't call him "the son of god" but the "Christ of God".

Unfortunately this little scene isn't grandiose enough for C and he slaps in the following load of mystery crap next:

Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day.

And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

It has been said that "take up your cross" was a pre-existing phrase in the Roman world, which is possible if crucifixion was common, but I've not found a reliable source for that claim.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.

For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?

For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father's, and of the holy angels.

But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.

Ah. Well, as it happened, there were not. Jesus is predicting the end of the world in the lifetime of at least some disciples. By the year 90+ when C was writing, this would have started to look unlikely. We don't know what happened to the disciples (none of the well-known stories are at all reliable and none of them appear in the Bible, strangely enough) but it would have just about been possible that someone in this scene was still alive 60 years later, as C would have counted it. 

And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray.

"8 days"? That's a bit specific, isn't it? Not "about a week". All the more strange as C is overruling A and B here, who say that it was 6 days. D, as usual, has nothing about any of this stuff which is a much more significant disagreement than a couple of days here or there.

The next section of the chapter is just an awful pile of lies; one fantastical notion on top of another. An allegory that's got mixed up with real life. The fact that this bollocks is accepted as one of the most important events in Jesus's life shows just how easily early Christians accepted "evidence" in the form of wild and impossible claims. With that sort of gullibility, there's every chance that a completely fictional character could, like Zeus, Shiva, Moses, Odin, Juggernaut, and the other 7000 gods, be accepted as a real thing. 

And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering.

And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias:

Moses = Old Testament; Elias = Prophecy/Expectations of a New Testament, or at least a messiah. The latter is why Elias/Elija keeps getting linked to possible messiahs like John and Jesus.

Who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.

But Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep: and when they were awake, they saw his glory, and the two men that stood with him.

Heavy with drink, more like. This whole episode is in the realms of magic, so there's little point in trying to analyse it, but this is the first plain statement that Jesus will die in Jerusalem, although he has hinted as much to the disciples. Here, the hints are confirmed but, strangely, only to Jesus, who already knew. Peter and Co. have dozed off and neither Moses, Jesus, nor Elias seem to want to wake them up, so what was the point of all that "spaking"? Obviously, it's a literary device; the people that are really being spoken to are the readers, not the characters.

It's unfortunate that we know so little about the disciples as it's temping to see some parallel between the two sets of three characters here—otherwise why only 3 disciples? But aside from Peter and Judas we really know nothing about the disciples and can't guess what linkage C (really B) was making.

However, given his obsession with John the Baptist, it may be that C included this silliness in part to say "look, the dead John/Elias is giving his blessing to Jesus". 

And it came to pass, as they departed from him, Peter said unto Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias: not knowing what he said.

It's not clear to me what they wanted to put in these tabernacles (cupboards or booths, sometimes used for storing scrolls) nor why Peter doesn't know what he's saying.

While he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them: and they feared as they entered into the cloud.

And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.

And when the voice was past, Jesus was found alone. And they kept it close, and told no man in those days any of those things which they had seen.

So what was the point? Peter had already said that Jesus was the son of god.

And it came to pass, that on the next day, when they were come down from the hill, much people met him.

And, behold, a man of the company cried out, saying, Master, I beseech thee, look upon my son: for he is mine only child.

And, lo, a spirit taketh him, and he suddenly crieth out; and it teareth him that he foameth again, and bruising him hardly departeth from him.

And I besought thy disciples to cast him out; and they could not.

Yeah, well, that's because he has epilepsy not "devils".

And Jesus answering said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you, and suffer you? Bring thy son hither.

And as he was yet a coming, the devil threw him down, and tare him. And Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and healed the child, and delivered him again to his father.

And they were all amazed at the mighty power of God. But while they wondered every one at all things which Jesus did, he said unto his disciples,

Let these sayings sink down into your ears: for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men.

But they understood not this saying, and it was hid from them, that they perceived it not: and they feared to ask him of that saying.

a) Jesus is grumpy. b) Jesus insists on saying things that a fool could understand yet doesn't want them understood. c) The disciples don't understand. d) This is more literary invention for the reader, not actual events of any sort.

Then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest.

e) The disciples drink too much.

And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child, and set him by him,

And said unto them, Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me: for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.

And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us.

Gosh, I wonder who those people might have been following if it wasn't Jesus? Actually, the implications of later statements is that faith-healing was something of an industry, so they could have been following anyone or no one.

And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.

Jesus will later say that those not for him are against him. So someone who has never heard of Jesus, for example, will be both for and against him.

And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,

And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him.

The Samaritans. When the Hebrews lost their elite families to conquest and exile, the ones left behind (i.e., the vast majority) developed their own ideas and split, as is the way with people making stuff up from nothing, into sects who believed differing things. When the exiles returned, complete with their expectations of still being in charge, they found themselves facing people who didn't accept their new monotheism and refused to cow-tow to their "returning" kings and princes. Worse, they specifically rejected the new Jewish religion and even said that the Jerusalem temple was a fraud. The rivalry between them was deep and bitter, not least because most Hebrews did accept the fancy-pants I've-been-to-Babylon-and-come-back-with-a-flood-narrative entitlement generation back as royalty. 

The Samaritans are named after the city which was their main stronghold - Samaria - where they worshipped Jehovah (as they always had) but, crucially, other deities too. Because they worshipped Jehovah and were racially identical outsiders often could not tell, nor care about, the difference between Jews and Samaritans. Indeed, Jews and Samaritans probably couldn't tell each other apart except for dress, any more than Protestants and Catholics can today.

The sect died out sometime in the first 700 years AD, the details being lost precisely because historians can find no accurate record that distinguishes them from Jews. It is often alleged that they became the Muslims, but the truth is that no one knows what happened to them and the Jews were largely left to write their history. In a fair and balanced way, of course!

And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.

Totally inexplicable comment, really. Why would a Samaritan give a toss one way or the other about a Jew going to Jerusalem?

And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?

Yeah, go on; I'll wait here. What a pack of buffoons. Anyway, Elias tempted god to kill some people and god did it, is basically all you need to know. The "temping of god" aspect is to be ignored.

But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.

For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.

Jesus will contradict this statement in a later chapter.

And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.

And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

Well, maybe if you didn't treat your mum like shit she might let you stay with her once in a while? And in what way does this even relate to the man's statement? He wasn't asking for a hotel booking.

And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.

Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.

This grumpy nonsense must stand as one of the dumbest statements in the book, as well as illustrating once more that this Jesus is expecting the world to end very, very soon. There's literally no time to waste burying the dead!

And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.

And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

Not really big on forgiveness today, is he?