The question being posited, "What role does man play in the creation of revelation?" is an important and vital one. How does one centralized piece of literature and mythology come into being, devoid of "extraneous" material (for instance, the removal of Lilith from the Talmud, or the deliberate excision of the Gospel of [the disciples of] Thomas from the Christian New Testament), ready for consumption by the masses? It has been said that the debate of the existance of a god is not a matter for academics, but for theologians, and while the logic of such a statement is highly debatable, that is not the topic of this essay; however, due to its relevance to the subject matter at hand, it must be discussed, albeit briefly.
How much of a role does man play in the recording of revelation? In the bluntest of terms, if a god(dess) or god(desse)s exist, then there is room to argue whether or not his/her/their true words and intentions were recorded, whether they were interpreted correctly, whether they were altered in the intervening centuries for the purpose of political or social control. If there is no pantheon, then all revelation is the product of man: man's words, man's thoughts, man's rationalizing of the world in which he lives, presented in the parlance of his time and undergoing apotheosis in the following decades. For the purposes of the clarity of the rest of this essay, there will be no further reference to the atheistic, academic view of the universe; we shall pretend (or, depending upon the viewpoint of the reader, "assume") that, at one time, there was a true revelation from a divine source, and discuss what changes have been made to the source over time.
What, then, does this mean? Why would revelation change, or need to change? In her book, No god but God, Reza Aslan writes: "[T]hrough the machinations of Iran's powerful clerical establishment, the Faqih [the most learned religious authority in the country, whose primary function is to ensure the Islamic quality of the state] was transformed from a symbolic moral authority into the supreme political authority... with the power to appoint the head of the judiciary, to be commander in chief of the army, to dismiss the president, and to veto laws created by the government" (Aslan 252). Of the many things that Karl Marx wrote, the most popular line to be trotted out over and over again by the American religious right (referring to their placement on the political spectrum, not the correctness of their position) in an attempt to discredit all of his ideas was his reference to religion as "The Opiate of the Masses," i.e., a mind-numbing drug used to control the populace, citing, for instance, the rise of what Friedrich Nietzsche called "slave morality," and the religious indoctrination (in his time and his country, what would now be called fringe fundamentalist Christianity) that questioning one's beliefs was the quickest and surest way to ensure one's eternal damnation (Marx 1, Nietzsche 15). Political manipulation is perhaps the oldest reason for man to interfere in revelation, or to force interpretation of it to adhere to a certain mindset. This, sadly continues in the 21st century; witness the persecution of homosexuals by fundamentalists in America and Iran. In Iran, it is merely a political ploy to ensure that the public is focused less upon what its officials are doing; in America, it is because the religious right-wing must have a scapegoat, and it is no longer socially acceptable for African Americans to fill this role.
"Slave morality," of course, has its own role to play in this political positioning. At the time of the writing of the Christian gospels--the canonized few being Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--the Romans had quite a different view of appropriate moral action, determined by he who was strongest. At its founding, Christians, the titular slaves to Roman domination and conquest, created a system of morality that emphasized turning the other cheek, that meekness ensured inheritance of the earth, that suffering endured on earth ensured a better afterlife. From this, it would appear that this particular "revelation" was born not out of divine inspiration, but out of the needs of a small sect of first century Jews living under totalitarianism to understand their plight, to justify the suffering that they were enduring with the concept of a god who was not only loving, but had previously, according to their mythology, saved them from all outsiders (usually by encouraging them to commit genocide on their neighboring nation-states, yet another piece of the mythology that, upon closer inspection, seems to be politically decisive, and probably justification for war, not revelation).
The key word to bear in mind here is "justify." The wielding of religion to control is more powerful than an army, which can destroy your home, your family, your nation; religion convinces you that you have a soul, which it, too, can ensure is destroyed, or, worse, damned. Thus, revelation is manipulated to justify a great many things. "[In the newly religiously-ruled Pakistan], the state was merely the vehicle for the realization of Islamic law... And yet, not only do all of these countries view themselves as the realization of the [Islamic] ideal, they view each other as contemptible desecrations of that ideal" (256-257). This is the same ideological difference used to justify the destruction of the Canaanites by the Hebrews (if one can, indeed, assume that this event occurred without evidence corroborating the Old Testament's telling of it), the same mindset used to justify the Crusades, the same manipulations of doctrine used to justify the escalation of conflict between Protestants and Catholics--two sects of the same religion. But, as stated, the key word is "justify." These conflicts were already in place, between a nomadic proto-nation and its neighbors, between the newly emerging poles of east and west, between a nation ruled by a king who wanted the land holdings of the Catholic church and a nation of true believers. Religion did not start these wars, it was interpretation of revelation that was used to make them palatable for consumption to the multitudes who would be forced to fight and die. An opiate.
This still leaves a question (within academia, as within many non-Christian religions, to question is the best way to learn, which is why the Socratic Method has endured for millennia). Even if revelation is interpreted and construed to allow for political manipulation and corruption, does this necessarily mean that, at its basis, revelation is subject to man's creation? It is widely acknowledged by all but the most fundamentalist or willfully ignorant of Christians that the gospels they associate with the apostles of Jesus were not actually written by the men whose names they bear, but by the apostles of those men, and, in the apocrypha, at least one woman. The tales told within them are retellings of retellings by men who can only claim, without proof, that they were present at the events depicted therein, and they are not without contradiction or what is known on the website tvropes.org as an "Author Tract," wherein a work of fiction has its narrative derailed by the author's need or desire to provide a lecture upon a certain subject.
This is most notable in John, which begins with a rather long passage about the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth (a passage often cited, by those theologians who cannot understand or refuse to acknowledge that a source cannot corroborate itself, as proof of his godhood). John is also controversial (or would be, had the canonization of the Bible not taken place so many centuries beyond living memory) in that which it deliberates upon. It was written in a time of controversy, to state not what Jesus had taught, but who he was, not merely a servant or son of God, human roles, as Matthew and Mark outline, but God himself. As Elaine Pagels writes in Beyond Belief: "I have always read the Gospel of John with fascination, and often with devotion [when I was fourteen].... At the time I did not dwell on disturbing undercurrents--that John alternates his assurance of God's gracious love for those who 'believe' with warnings that everyone 'who does not believe is condemned already' to eternal death" (Pagels 32).
She goes on to elaborate about her time at university, studying the (then) recently unearthed texts at Nag Hammandi in upper Egypt, the gospels not included by the earliest of church fathers, because even in the first century, there was already a system of power in place throughout and around fledgling Christianity. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons (c. 180 C.E.) had denounced the writings we now call apocryphal as "an abyss of madness, and blasphemy against Christ" (Pagels 32). The Gospel of John places the denouncement of the merchants in the temple as Jesus's first public act, while Mark and Matthew indicate it is his last public act (Pagels notes that this is the incident after which Jesus is arrested, beginning the trial before Pontius Pilate that ultimately leads to his crucifixion, whereas in John he suffers no immediate repercussions, as, since it is presented at such an early point, there would have been no time for further evangelism), acknowledging [the disciples of] John's intention to show that Jesus's mission was not to teach the world about God's love, but to purify the worship of him. This lies in direct contradiction to the characterization one finds in the "apocryphal" Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus is found teaching that, as mankind is created in the image of God, there is a path to the almighty within all men (that is, it does not push that men must believe in Jesus, but that they must seek to know God). Pagels makes reference to one of her earlier works, The Gnostic Gospels in the second chapter of Beyond Belief, "Gospels in Conflict: John and Thomas," saying that her ultimate goal was to ask questions: "Why had the church decided that these texts were 'heretical' and that only the canonical gospels were 'orthodox'? ... I began to understand the political concerns that shaped the early Christian movement" (Pagels 33, emphasis added). The decisions about what was to be included and what was not to be were politically motivated: "For Christians in later generations, the Gospel of John helped provide a foundation for a unified church," that is, an organized governmental body with a hierarchy and established methods of control, "which Thomas, with its emphasis on each person's search for God, did not" (Pagels 34).
These excisions of that which cannot be easily explained have no religious boundaries. The same has occurred in the Tanakh; mentions of Lilith have been all but obliterated, the one remaining reference to her exists only in the first chapter of Genesis (1:27, to be precise), and has been so obfuscated that even this one appearance is usually dismissed as a reference to Eve, however anachronistic this may be. Within Islam, even in its earliest days, a reference to the three godess-like daughters of Allah were inserted into the Koran as a backdoor to allow for future changes or "clarifications" as needed, by Islamic scholars or whichever political leader needed Muhammad's revelation to support him in his respective era. Within the Koran, the seemingly contradictory passages referring to the consumption of alcohol (moving from drinking in moderation to absolute proscription of it altogether) are Allah's method of ongoing purification, not evidence that certain portions were written at different times, possibly from different sources, as this is blasphemy.
Revelation, regardless of its origin as divine inspiration or mundane justification, has always been and will always be subject to the whims of the governing institution, manipulated as a method of manipulation of the populace. This process has occurred countless times throughout history. What role does human creation play in the creation of revelation? Irrelevant. What role does the human hand play in the spread of revelation, in its enforcement, its dogmatism? God is not the lead role; man is the star.
Works Cited
Aslan, Reza. No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. New York: Random House, 2005.
Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Trans. Andy Blunden and Matthew Carmody. Web. 24 November 2009.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic Tract. Trans. Ian Johnston. Vancouver. Web. 25 November 2009.
Pagels, Elaine. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Vintage, 2004.
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