THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND THE CRISIS OF CHRISTIANITYAn Eastern View of a Western Crisis N. S. Rajaram MINERVA PRESS LONDON MONTREUX LOS ANGELES SYDNEY To Sita Ram Goel and Ram Swarup From whom I learned how to study religions and ideologies
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About the AuthorDr Navaratna S. Rajaram is a mathematician, linguist and historian of science living in Bangalore, India and Oklahoma City, USA. He has written extensively on the science and history of ancient civilizations. His most recent book is Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilisation: A Literary and Scientific Perspective, written jointly with the American Vedic scholar David Frawley (World Heritage Press, Quebec, Canada; Voice of India, New Delhi). His book, Profiles in Deception: Ayodhya and the Dead Sea Scrolls is being published in India. He has held faculty and research positions at several American Universities and high technology companies. He is a contributor to the award-winning International Encyclopaedia of Robotics (John Wiley) and a member of the Board of Editors of INDIA 200] Encyclopaedia (Myer Indmark). In addition to over fifty publications in scientific journals, his articles in the popular press have appeared in several languages in the US, India and Europe. Contents Preface: Christianity at the Crossroads Introduction:
History and Faith I
Crisis Of Christianity II Faith
And Freedom: a Pluralistic Look at Religion III
Early Christianity IV
Dead Sea Scrolls II: Pauline Christianity V Chronology and Summary of Events VI Action and Reaction: Inquisition Then and
Now VII Search for New Pastures VIII As the Drama Continues
Selected
Bibliography
Preface - Christianity at the Crossroads...unless drastic measures are taken at once, the greatest and the most valuable of all Hebrew and Aramaic manuscript discoveries is likely to become the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century. Geza Vermes, Biblical scholar On September 22, 1991, trustees of the Huntington Library in California performed an act of great symbolic significance: on that day they released to the public transcripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls that had remained concealed from public view for nearly four decades. It was an act that signalled the collapse of the Church monopoly over the Scrolls - a monopoly that the well-known Biblical scholar Geza Vermes had termed the 'academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century'. Historian Robert Eisenman, the key figure involved in breaking the Scrolls monopoly had only said that it 'cannot be considered anything but reprehensible.' This was an event of such momentous significance that future historians may well compare the collapse of the Scrolls monopoly to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The latter was the symbol of the ending of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Age of Reason. So too can one view the collapse of the Scrolls monopoly: it will allow us to learn the truth about the origins of Christianity, in particular, how this obscure sect in the most backward corner of the Roman Empire came to dominate Western Civilisation for the better part of fifteen centuries. In the words of Robert Eisenman, 'The work in this field is now at a beginning.' Yet the action of the Huntington Library was only symbolic, for Eisenman was himself shortly to release his two-volume facsimile edition of the Scrolls manuscripts rendering their action all but moot. This was the result of a clandestine operation: Eisenman had somehow managed to acquire photographs of all the Scrolls from a secret source in Jerusalem where they had been languishing in the custody of a Vatican-com rolled institution known as the Ecole Biblique. This was soon followed by the publication of The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered by Eisenman and Michael Wise consisting of fifty of the most important texts along with their English translation and commentary. Christianity will never be the same again. Why are the Dead Sea Scrolls so important? And what made Eisenman (and others) risk their reputations and careers in trying to bring these two thousand year old manuscripts to light? After all, it is not every day that a professor of an obscure and esoteric subject is involved in an advemure worthy of a John Le Carre novel. To answer these questions, it is best to let Eisenman himself speak on their behalf. So what in effect do we have in these manuscripts? Probably nothing less than a picture from which Christianity sprang in Palestine. But there is more - if we take into consideration the Messianic nature of the texts as we delineate it in this book, and allied concepts such as 'Righteousness,' 'Piety,' 'justification,' 'works,' 'the Poor,' 'Mysteries,' what we have is a picture of what Christianity actually was like in Palestine. The reader, however, probably will not be able to recognize it because it will seem virtually the opposite of the Christianity with which he or she is familiar. (Eisenman and Wise, p. 10; emphasis added.) [The Dead Sea Scrolls] actually give a picture of the mind set of the people of Palestine at this critical juncture in the formation of what is now called Western Civilisation. (op. cit. p. 181) Extravagant as it will doubtless seem to some, the author's claim, if anything, is modest; the influence of the movemem pictured in the Scrolls has extended far beyond the history and the civilization of the West. For better or for worse, the whole world, and not just the West remains profoundly affected by this movement called Christianity. No more justification is needed to study the Dead Sea Scrolls, their meaning and their impact. This book is about the Dead Sea Scrolls and their place in history. Every educated person today, at least in the 'Christian' West, has a vague notion that the Scrolls somehow alter our perceptions of Christianity. But few outside the small circle of Biblical scholars have any idea of how far-reaching the change is. While there is no shortage of books on the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of them have been written by Biblical scholars and not easy for the average reader to follow; they presuppose too much on the part of the reader. The various sectarian and academic battles have tended to confuse the public further. What I have to offer in these pages is a popular account of the subject by examining the Scrolls against the background of both the history and the current state of the Church.[1] The book may therefore be read as a popular history of the Church as modified by the revelations of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is a history, however, written from the perspective of an Easterner who views Christianity as embodying an expansionist ideology opposed to pluralism. There is something to be said for such a perspective - a perspective not rooted in the Western Biblical tradition. It is my belief that the impact of the Scrolls on Christianity cannot properly be understood without some historical background of the Church as a political, economic and social institution. For this reason, I have gone beyond the immediate meaning of the Scrolls and reviewed the history of Christianity - from its birth and its evolution into a world movement to its current state of crisis. Christianity today is in the midst of an existential crisis which the world is largely unaware of, but obvious to an observant student. It is also attested by the Church's own records as the book will show. Similarly, it is not easy to understand the doctrinal confusion resulting from the revelations of the Dead Sea Scrolls without some understanding of the exclusivism that underlies Christianity. This is something that most Westerners implicitly assume to be true of all religions - as 'faith' opposed to 'reason'. This sharp divide between reason and faith does not exist in the case of Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism - nor did it exist in the case of religions of ancient Greece. To get across this very important point, I have included a chapter on what I have called 'Faith and Freedom' in which I have contrasted exclusivist and pluralistic traditions. To highlight some of these problems, I have made an effort to give also a picture of the steps that the Church is now taking, and is likely to take in the near future, faced as it is with imminent collapse in the West. It is a little-known fact that an increasingly desperate Church is trying to establish itself in Asia to compensate for massive losses in the West. Speaking before the Asian Bishop's Conference in Manila, Pope John Paul II recently announced: "A new harvest of faith will be reaped in this vast and vital continent." He did not, however, tell his audience that without this 'new harvest' in Asia the Church was all but doomed. This too is clear from Church records. The book therefore is meant also as a warning to those who have now become the latest targets in the Church's struggle for survival. Many countries of Asia are already engaged in a struggle against Islamic Fundamentalism. The last thing they need is another exclusivist ideology bent on expansion descending on them in the name of God. From the Church's point of view, the revelations of the Scrolls could hardly have come at a worse time. This is best understood when examined against the background of Church history and its record as a colonial power. This is necessary also because the true nature of Christianity - including its present practices - remains largely unknown to the public. What even educated Christians know of the Church and its activities amounts to little more than what they have been fed by its propaganda machine. Even Church historians, educated at prestigious seminaries, know only a sanitized version of its history. One of the first to expose it in modem times was Ignaz von Dollinger, the author of the book Pope and the Council, first published (in German) in 1869; it was promptly placed on the Index of prohibited books. Catholic scholar Peter de Rosa had this to say regarding his experience upon reading Dollinger's classic: The Pope and the Council contained aspects of papal history completely unknown to me. I had been brought up as a Catholic, had gone through the usual six year seminary course prior to ordination, had graduated from a Catholic university, the Gregorianum in Rome, and had never come across such ideas. This is partly to be explained by the partisan nature of seminary education and the fact that in such establishments history is a Cinderella subject. The misbehavior of Popes is lightly dealt with or even excised ... My ignorance must also be set down to the preference Catholics have for a history of the papacy that can be read with white gloves on. It is not easy to admit that one's leaders were often barbarians... (de Rosa, p. 636) Having given my reasons for writing the book, I should perhaps place before the readers my own position as regards religious belief. I am a Hindu by birth but do not believe in the existence of any God - for this too is a right granted to me by virtue of the freedom of choice that is part of my pluralistic heritage. I hold God (or gods) to be the creation of man, for which reason I feel there must be as many gods as there are minds to conceive them. As a pluralist, I support the freedom of everyone to believe in as many gods as he or she may wish; I find, however, the idea of an external 'One God' that only a chosen privileged person can know, and whose word we must accept without question, irrational and repugnant. I see such coercive, monotheistic doctrine as nothing more than a tool of theocracy. I find myself in agreement with the Buddha when he said: "Accept nothing on my authority. Think, and be a lamp unto thyself", and with Madhvacharya when he said: Never accept as authority the words of any human; they are subject to ignorance and deception. No human-authored text can be taken as authoritative by attributing infallibility to a human. One deludes oneself in believing that such a man - infallible and free from deceit - existed and he alone was the author of the text. Vishnu Tatva Nirnaya 7 As this is a topic that is bound to touch many a raw nerve, I wish to make it clear, that, as I see it, the issue is not one of personal faith in Christianity or any other religion; no one has the right to object to the belief of another as long as that belief remains personal. But this has not been the case with Christianity any more than it has with Islam. Both have assumed for themselves the right to impose their exclusivist view of the world on others, by whatever means they deem appropriate. In the process they have destroyed ancient civilizations and plunged Europe and Asia into the Dark Ages in the name of One God - their God. Ancient Greece disappeared forever, and India is only now recovering from a thousand-year long Dark Age that all but destroyed her existence as a pluralistic civilization; other countries - like Persia and Afghanistan - were not so fortunate. Their claims and their record therefore invite the closest scrutiny. This is all the more necessary now since the Church has cast its eyes on Asia with its teeming millions; its expansion has invariably meant the end of pluralism. In summary, what I have to present here are the following: first, a brief account of the Church as it really is - stripped of the pious publicity put out by its propaganda machine; second, an account of the origins of Christianity - including its doctrinal foundation - as revealed by the Dead Sea Scrolls, and finally, a brief look at the methods and strategies being used by the Church to counter this latest and most serious threat to its existence, with a glimpse of what the future may bring. Introduction - History and FaithThe origins of some Christian rituals and doctrines can be seen in the documents of an extremist Jewish sect that existed for more than a hundred years before the birth of Christ. John Allegro on the Dead Sea Scrolls 1. Shattered FoundationIn the year 1555, a Jewish physician living in southern France wrote that the Catholic Church would one day come to grief. By this he did not mean the rise of Protestant Christianity or the Reformation led by Martin Luther and John Calvin - both of which were by then accomplished facts. What he had to say was something far more ominous for the Church: according to his vision of the future, Europeans in large numbers would abandon the Church 'with its shattered foundation' and return to paganism. His exact words were (with my translation): Temples sacrez prime facon Romaine, Rejectoront les goffres fondements; Prenant leurs loix premieres et humaines, Chassant, non tout des saints les cuhement. For
temples sacred in the pristine Roman fashion, Will
expel almost all their cults with saints'
action. The Jewish physician in question was one Michele de Nostradame, better known as Nostradamus. He is a much misunderstood man. We may now see him as a mystic and prophet, but in his own day he was renowned as the foremost physician in Europe, good enough to be appointed court physician by Queen Catherine de Medici of France. He was also a first rate astronomer and mathematician who, while still a youth, had studied and accepted the heliocentric model of Copernicus for the solar system. This was more than fifty years before Galileo and the invention of the telescope. For this or some other heretical position, he had been called to appear before the Inquisition by the Church authorities in Toulouse; he saved himself by leaving France and staying out of the country for six years. As a Jew whose family had been forced to convert to Catholicism, at a time when both the wars of religion and the persecution of Jews were at their height, he detested the Church of his day.[2] And as a man of science who had to flee the country for his progressive beliefs, he hated the Inquisition. (This is enough to make one wonder if he really could read the future all that well - at any rate his own.) Anyway he had this to say about the Inquisition and its judges: De plus lettres dessus le faits celestes Seroot par princes ignorance reprouves: Punit d'Edit, chassez comme scelestes. Et mis it mort lit au seront trouves. Among the most learned in the heavenly arts, Will
by princes of ignorance be denounced; Century IV, quatrain 18. Some have read in this the persecution of Galileo some sixty years later, but that can only be a matter of faith in Nostradamus as a prophet. The 'princes ignorance' are the self-styled princes of the Church, notably the Cardinals and the Archbishops who presided over the trials by Inquisition. On the whole this is a pretty accurate description of the state of affairs in his own time when the Inquisition was raging in all its fury. This was not all, for shortly before his own death Nostradamus came out and boldly predicted the fall of the Roman Church. o vaste Rome, ta ruine s'approache, Non de tes murs de ton sang et substance: o great Rome, your ruin draws close, Not your walls - but your blood and soul; Century X, quatrain 65. Nostradamus made a large number of similarly ominous predictions foretelling the downfall of the Church, giving many details. Their validity is more a matter of faith than scientific proof, but the Church apparently took his predictions seriously, for his Centuries ended up on the infamous Papal Index of prohibited works. In much of Rome itself, Church attendance has fallen to less than three per cent which is being seen as a grave crisis. In Europe and many parts of America, Christianity is facing a serious decline. (We shall be taking a closer look at the crisis confronting the Church in the next chapter.) All this has made the Church extremely anxious. In what is a remarkable coincidence, at this period in its history when Church attendances are at historically low levels, it has also to deal with the storm let loose by the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It feels its existence being threatened from two sides - the doctrinal and the temporal. The Church has reacted in the only manner it knows how - suppression and distortion of evidence. Suppression of material that may cast doubts on its positions has been a method of long standing with the Church throughout its eventful history. Nonetheless it is a measure its deep insecurity that it should have gone to the extent of banning a work like the Nostradamus Centuries which most readers find incomprehensible. Be that as it may, the Church now has to deal with a far more serious threat to its position than any of the prophecies of Nostradamus - the ominous shadow cast by the Dead Sea Scrolls.[3] The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Qumran region of Palestine is being seen by many - including Church authorities - as the latest and the most serious threat to organized Christianity. In this regard, Nostradamus' prophecy about 'shattered foundation' may be seen to have been fulfilled, for, if anything can strike at the foundations of the Church, it is likely to be the discovery of these ancient manuscripts dating to the turbulent period leading to the Jewish Wars that also saw the birth of Christianity. The Church is unlikely to recover from the blow delivered by the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Recognizing the threat posed by the Scrolls, the Vatican and its related institutions have gone to great lengths to keep suppressed the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls for nearly half a century. But recently, there have been two major developments to make the Church's worst nightmare come true. First, the release of the Scrolls transcripts by the Huntington Library in California. Secondly, the publication of all the facsimiles and translations of some of the most important texts by Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise. In their recently published book - The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered: The First Complete Translation and Interpretation of 50 Key Documents Withheld for Over 35 Years, Eisenman and Wise observe:[4]
These two recent developments - the release of the transcripts, and the publication of the Eisenman-White book - of course means the collapse of the Scrolls monopoly, leading to a scenario worse than any predicted by Nostradamus - at least from the Church's point of view. The floodgates are now open; it is only a matter of time before the real facts about the origins of Christianity are also brought out into the open. When this happens, it will truly leave the foundations of the Church shaken - if not actually shattered. This at least is how it appears to the present author based on a study of the texts belonging to the Dead Sea Scrolls, viewed against the background of the current state of Christianity and its recent history. My goal in these pages is to give a brief account of the radically changed picture of Christianity and its origins resulting from a restudy of the Biblical literature along with the texts from the Scrolls now available. While it will no doubt be decades before a more complete picture can be presented, I am encouraged in this effort by the appearance of several books on the topic by scholars like Eisenman and Wise, Golb and Vermes. Also to be noted is the book Dead Sea Scrolls Deception by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh who brought to public attention the 'scandal of the scrolls' - as Vermes called it - basing their conclusions mainly on the recent important work of Robert Eisenman. These have been supplemented by my own study of the Bible and other classical sources - notably the great Jewish historian Josephus, as well as Greek and Roman historians of the period of early Christianity. In broad terms, what I have attempted in the present volume is a picture of the Church in its current state as seen from the perspective of an outsider, one who has no stake in the various partisan positions, at least in a religious sense. I have tried also to anticipate the direction in which the Church appears to be moving faced with the collapse of Christianity in Europe. I see the Church becoming much more of a multinational business enterprise concentrating its activities in the Third World, particularly India with its tradition of tolerance. I see this as a dangerous portent for the pluralistic societies of Asia, for the expansion of Christianity has invariably meant loss of pluralism. 2. The Dead Sea Scrolls and their ImpactThe story of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 is widely known though its full details are probably lost for ever. It is a complex tale with many actors great and small from several countries, but the following bare facts will serve our purpose. Qumran is an ancient settlement containing a large number of ruins near the north-west coast of the Dead Sea. It lies in what is now the state of Israel, but in 1947, when the first scrolls came to light, it was part of the British mandated territory of Palestine. It was a relatively primitive, undeveloped area at the time, and almost the only people who knew their way about in that desert wilderness were the Bedouin. According to generally accepted accounts, a Bedouin youth by the name of Muhammad adh-Dhib found the Scrolls secreted in several large jars in some of the caves that are part of the Qumran ruins. The Scrolls are manuscripts of texts in Aramaic and Hebrew written on parchment and papyrus. After that first discovery, many more have been found in the region of Qumran. Some of the most important later discoveries come from the caves of Wadi Murabbat some ten miles to the south of Qumran. These relate to early second century to the period of the Jewish rebellion of AD 132-5 led by Simeon bar Kochba. For this reason, the Scrolls and other finds are often referred to as Qumran texts. Most of these manuscripts were created during a period from about 150 BC to perhaps AD 70 when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in the First Jewish War. Thus they encompass the period of early Christianity upon which they shed a great deal of light. They show that the authors of the New Testament - of the four Gospels in particular - have borrowed heavily from the Qumran texts. Their borrowings include both the subject matter of the Gospels as well as their language, imagery and style. In fact, many features that we now regard as being unique to the Gospels - like the Davidic Messiah as the Son of God, and the persecution and killing of such a messianic teacher - are found in Qumran documents dating to at least a century before the birth of Christ. A close study of these texts raises basic questions about both the uniqueness and the originality of Christianity. This seriously undermines the Church's position on its origins, history and message - in fact the whole foundation of Christianity. This has led to turmoil in Biblical circles; it has also resulted in a systematic and persistent effort by the Vatican and its Catholic institutions to suppress the findings of the Scrolls giving rise to what is being called the 'scandal of the Scrolls'. This is of course one of the main stories of the present book. After many vicissitudes, nearly all the Scrolls ended up in the Dominican supported institution in Jerusalem known as Ecole Biblique et Archaeologique Francaise de Jerusalem (Biblical and Archaeological School of France in Jerusalem). For nearly twenty-five years, from 1947 until his death in 1971, the Ecole Biblique was under the iron grip of its director Father Roland de Vaux - a monk belonging to the Dominican order. All told, for more than forty years, the Ecole Biblique under de Vaux and his successors exercised dictatorial control over access to the Scrolls. They never allowed anyone other than those fully committed to the orthodox Catholic view to see the Scrolls.[5] During this period, almost everything the public and even the scholarly world knew about the Scrolls was what the scholars of the Ecole Biblique - led by Father de Vaux - were prepared to tell them. Also, as we shall see in a later chapter, he and his institution were (and still are) secretly under the control of the Pontifical Biblical Commission - a Vatican office having final say over all doctrinal matters. As a result, what on the surface appeared to be a scholarly research institution devoted to the pursuit of knowledge, was in reality a Church controlled institution committed to the preservation and propagation of Christian beliefs. This was seen to be in violation of the terms under which the scholars of the Ecole Biblique - known as the International Team - had been given custody of the Scrolls. They were expected to make available edited copies with translations of all the Scroll materials in their possession. But by adopting various stratagems the International Team led by Father de Vaux and his successors managed to drag its feet for more than forty years. Their behavior was seen as nothing less than scandalous by Biblical scholars the world over. Writing in 1977, Geza Vermes, a leading Biblical scholar from Oxford, summed up their frustration in the following words:[6] On this thirtieth anniversary of their first coming to light the world is entitled to ask the authorities responsible for the publication of the Qumran scrolls... what they intend to do about this lamentable state of affairs. For unless drastic measures are taken at once, the greatest and the most valuable of all Hebrew and Aramaic manuscript discoveries is likely to become the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century . More recently, Eisenman and Wise had this to say about one of the more important texts that had remained suppressed for more than forty years. To have a text like this Paen [for King Jonathan, Alexander Jannaeus], introduced by a dedicatory invocation or panegyric to him... is an historical treasure of high magnitude for the study of the Scrolls. ... The fact that it was buried for so long, with the consequence that much of the debate concerning the state of affairs it addresses was misguided and misinformed, cannot be considered anything but reprehensible. (p. 274) While many excuses continued to be offered for this unforgivable delay, the real reason was that in the Scrolls the members of the International Team had come upon material from the period of early Christianity that struck at the very foundations of Christian doctrine. It was a classic case of conflict between faith and scholarship, and, as official members of the Church whose doctrines they were sworn to uphold, the International Team led by Father de Vaux chose doctrine over scholarship. For what the members of the Team held in their hands was the doctrinal equivalent of dynamite. Few, including even educated Christians, have any idea of the potentially explosive impact of the Scrolls and their contents on the foundations of Christian belief - especially the position of the Catholic Church. Although a good deal of work still remains to be done before their full implications can be understood, enough is known already in Biblical scholarly circles to say that they pose a threat to the most fundamental premises of the Catholic Church - and even to Christianity itself. And this, as I just noted, was the real reason behind the foot-dragging by the International Team led by Roland de Vaux. Recognizing the revolutionary import of the Scrolls, the Vatican and its related institutions, notably the Ecole Biblique and the Pontifical Biblical Commission, have adopted various subterfuges to prevent scholars from obtaining access to the Scrolls. Father de Vaux and his International Team at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem have served as the front line of defense against the march of scholarship. Their stranglehold was finally broken in September 1991 when the Huntington Library in California released the full transcripts of the Scrolls of which they possessed a copy. This was soon followed by the publication of the facsimile edition of the Scrolls edited by Eisenman and Robinson; Eisenman, it turned out, had in his possession photocopies of all the unpublished Scrolls manuscripts.[7] (See Chapter 8 for details.) There had been cracks before in the stonewalling position taken by the International Team, but the actions of the Huntington Library and of Eisenman in particular really opened the floodgates. A howl of protest went up from the Catholic scholars of the International Team - there were dark mutterings with hints of law suits - but Biblical scholars and historians the world over rejoiced and applauded the move. The world of Biblical scholarship, not to say of Christianity itself has been changed for ever.
3. Message of the Dead Sea Scrolls
It is well known and widely recognized that the real founder of Christianity as a world religion was Saul of Tarsus later known as St Paul. It is the position of the Church that Paul took the message of Jesus and carried it far and wide. According to this, Paul was no more than the emissary of Jesus - the only Son of God. The new twist introduced by the Dead Sea Scrolls is that Jesus had little to do with what passes for his teachings. The main conclusion that follows from the Dead Sea Scrolls is: Christianity as we know it today is rooted not in the message of Jesus Christ, but in the expansionist ideology of St Paul who laid the foundations of Christian imperialism while invoking the name of Jesus. Seen in this light, Pauline Christianity was but a theocracy modelled on the Roman Empire; its foundations were laid by Paul, the influential Roman citizen and not Jesus the orthodox Jew. According to some scholars, even the existence of Jesus, as a historical figure, is brought into question by the Scrolls. John Allegro, who, as a member of the International Team had examined the Scrolls in the original wrote:[8] My own opinion is that the scrolls prompt us increasingly to seek an eschatological meaning for most of Jesus' reported sayings: more and more become intelligible when viewed in the light of the imminent cataclysms of Qumran expectations, and the inner conflicts in men's hearts as the time grew near. As far as details in the New Testament record of Jesus' life are concerned, I would suggest that the scrolls give added ground for believing that many incidents are merely projections into Jesus' own history of what was expected of the Messiah. In other words, the Qumran texts leave ground for believing that Jesus was no more than the personification of the messianic expectations of the era and of the sect in question. This does not necessarily mean that Jesus Christ never existed as a historical person, but only that he came to be given the attributes of the Messiah who was expected to appear. That is to say, Jesus the Messiah was nothing like the Historical Jesus.[9] This, as one can see, changes the whole complexion of Christianity as commonly seen and understood. In the light of this, the conduct of the scholars of Ecole Biblique like Father de Vaux becomes entirely understandable. The Scrolls deliver a severe blow to their whole position, beginning with the message of Jesus and the actual role played by Paul in early Christianity. They tell us, among other things, that Jesus, if historical, was an ultra-orthodox Jew whose main concern was the preservation of Jewish beliefs and practices then under assault from the liberalizing forces of the largely secular Graeco-Roman world. The 'early Church' was essentially an ultra-conservative Jewish sect ranged against these liberalizing influences. In due course, Paul's heresy grew into the theocratic world empire that we now call Christianity. In their pioneering work Eisenman and Wise put it this way (p. 10): We cannot really speak of a 'Christianity' per se in Palestine in the first century. The word was only coined [by Paul], as Acts II :26 makes clear, to describe a situation in Antioch in Syria in the fifties of the present era. Later it was used to describe a large portion of the overseas world that became 'Christian', but this Christianity was completely different from the movement we have before us - well not completely. Both movements used the same vocabulary, the same scriptural passages as proof texts, similar conceptual contexts; but the one can be characterised as the mirror reversal of the other. While the Palestinian one was zealot, nationalistic, engage, xenophobic, and apocalyptic; the overseas one was cosmopolitan, antinomian, pacifistic - in a word 'Paulinized'. Equally, we may refer to the first as Jamesian... This crucial difference will become increasingly clear in later chapters. Nonetheless it is an interesting insight - that the early history of the Church can be seen as a conflict between the Jamesian orthodoxy and Pauline heterodoxy. Paul engineered a split within the early Church by introducing his own Doctrine of Faith in opposition to the Jewish Law favored by James (known as the 'Lord's brother') and other members of the early Church. No less remarkable is the fact that even this Doctrine of Faith - the crown jewel of Christianity - is a Qumranian inheritance. It is found in a Qumran text known as the 'Habakkuk Commentary' and some others. Paul lifted this message right out of the Habakkuk Commentary during his three year sojourn in Qumran, but did away with the all-important Law of Moses. This was to have momentous consequences for history as we shall see in Chapter 4 where it is discussed in some detail. What all this means is that there may not be much that can be called original in Christianity. Put another way: Paul took a heretical movement from within the essentially inward looking Judaism of his day, and turned it into an expansionist ideology modeled on Imperial Rome while calling it a religion after the name of Jesus. This is the essence of theocracy: the pursuit of political and economic power in the name of God. And Christianity has undoubtedly been the most successful theocracy in history - even more than Islam. There is also evidence to show that this hijacking of their movement in the name of Jesus by Paul in pursuit of his own ideology was opposed by members of the early Church - by Jesus' brother, James, in particular. It emerges from the Qumran literature (and other early sources) that James was a much more important figure at the time than what Paul and other leaders of Christianity have been willing to acknowledge. James is mentioned in several early sources as the leader of the early Church of Jerusalem, whereas Jesus is not known in any reliable early record outside the New Testament: the few references that exist can easily be shown to be later forgeries. (See Chapter 4.) The doctrinal struggle in early Christianity was between Paul and James, with James holding out for the conservative Jewish tradition - the tradition to which Jesus himself belonged. This is what Eisenman and White imply in the passage quoted earlier. Recognizing this fact - of the conflict between Jamesian orthodoxy and Pauline heterodoxy - holds the key to understanding the history of Christianity. It is helpful also to bear in mind the following facts: first, unlike James and some other early figures of Christianity, Paul did not know Jesus personally. Next, Paul was a privileged Roman citizen who enjoyed the friendship and patronage of Roman authorities at the highest levels of the empire. This fact raises some intriguing questions about the role actually played by Paul: it suggests that he was much more of a politician than a religious figure. This too is entirely in keeping with a theocratic movement. A theocracy succeeds not because of its message but due to the political skill of its leaders. It follows also from the Scrolls that early Christianity, which began as a movement within orthodox Judaism, was more a political power struggle with the ruling authorities than a dispute about the divinity of Christ or his message. The Scrolls (and other early sources) indicate that Jesus Christ was not regarded as divine by his contemporaries - hardly surprising, for the idea of any human as God was abhorrent to the Jews. The idea of Jesus as a divine figure was the brainchild of Paul - to be used as a vehicle in propagating his own expansionist theocratic ideology. It received its final shape at the Council of Nicea in AD 325 where Emperor Constantine put pressure on the assembled bishops to gain firm control over the Christians. (Chapter 8) Ultimately this power struggle between Paul and James was part of a larger political and religious struggle between Jewish nationalists known as the Zealots, and the High Priest of the Temple and his followers who were Roman puppets. These rivalries erupted in a major uprising in AD 66 that ended only with the defeat of the Jews and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the Jewish War of AD 66-74. What this means is that Christianity was a violent political movement right from the start. In this regard its history was not much different from that of Islam. In order to understand the rise of Christianity and the implications of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is necessary to have some idea of the political conditions in Palestine at the time when it was a province of the Roman Empire. This, no less than the doctrinal differences between various Jewish sects, or the message of Jesus, was what ultimately determined the course of Christianity. Upon examining these struggles against the background of prevailing political conditions, it can be said that Paul - an influential Roman citizen - appropriated a Jewish movement and turned it into an expansionist theocracy by 'Romanising' it. It was Paul the Roman and not Paul the Jewish disciple of Jesus who created Christianity as we know it. His expansionist vision was the result of his knowledge of Rome as an imperial entity. Seen in this light, Christianity has been but a theocratic version of the Roman Empire. This also helps explain why the Popes have always acted more like Caesars than religious figures - concerned more about politics and economics than the world of the spirit. This of course is a view that Church authorities can never afford to concede. John Marco Allegro, one of the few scholars with first hand knowledge of the Scrolls wrote (Harper's Magazine, August 1969): The scholars [of the International Team] appear to have held back from making discoveries which, there is evidence to believe, may upset a great many Christian theologians and believers. The heart of the matter is, in fact, the source and originality of Christian doctrine. (Emphasis added.) We shall be meeting Allegro again, for, as a member of the International Team until Father de Vaux booted him out, his research provides a unique perspective on the Scrolls as well as a rare glimpse into the mindset and methods of the International Team. However, his statement gets to the heart of the crisis confronting the Church: the uniqueness and the originality of Christianity, the full implications of which will be examined in Chapters 3 and 4. Again, to summarize the great theological dilemma faced by the Church following the discovery of the Scrolls: first, Jesus Christ (if historical) was not unique, and secondly, Christianity has little to do with the message of Christ or the sect to which he belonged. For nearly two thousand years, what the Church has propagated as 'history' has been an elaborately constructed mythology intended to support its doctrine and the theocratic empire built upon it. The source for much of this later mythology was the Jewish tradition preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls, going back at least a century before the birth of Christ. It is therefore hardly surprising that Catholic scholars who controlled access to the Scrolls should have done everything possible to suppress their evidence and mislead the public. What the Scrolls have to say truly leaves their institution with shattered foundations. Recognizing the seriousness of the crisis, the Church is looking to Asia to make good its losses in Europe. This now may be seen as its main goal. 4. State of the ChurchTo get some idea of the high stakes in the drama now being played in Third World countries, we must first get a picture of the current state of the Church - a secular empire that is crumbling in Europe that now sees expansion in Asia, India in particular with its teeming millions, as its main hope for survival. The so-called 'Thailand Report on the Hindus' - or the Report of the Consultation on World Evangelization: Mini-Consultation on Reaching the Hindus - has chapters like 'Biblical Framework for Hindu Evangelization', 'Hindrances to the Evangelization of Hindus', 'Strategic Planning for Evangelization of Hindus' and others in a similar vein that give a clear idea of its scope and intentions. The report goes on to observe: [10] We rejoice in the fact that the saving Word of God preached faithfully by God's servants has brought about a Christian population of 19 million people in India alone. However we are conscious that God longs for the whole Hindu people to know Jesus Christ and live under his Lordship... (p 5; emphasis added.) We regret that, after so many years of sincere effort by so many faithful people, the number of Christians in India is still less than 3% of the population. Further, the dispersed Hindus in other parts of the world have been largely neglected by the Christian communities. (ibid.) No further comment is needed to recognize that the Church is greatly interested in evangelizing the Hindus of India. What is not widely known is that without expansion in countries like India, Christianity may be doomed. This is the concern of Church officials at all levels, including the Pope. Missionaries find India particularly attractive because of the freedom they enjoy in an open society and the Hindus' history of tolerance. This is obviously not an option in Islamic countries like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, patrolled by 'religious police'. For this reason, religious entrepreneurs, like Pat Robertson, also see countries like India and Sri Lanka as fertile grounds for their activities as we shall have occasion to see in due course. To grasp the complexities of the drama being played we need to recognize that the crisis confronting the Church today is only partly doctrinal. The real problem facing organized Christianity today is the increasing irrelevance of its message. It helps to bear in mind that for all its religious trappings, the Church has always been a secular institution, more concerned with its economic and political viability than the saving of souls. This has been the case throughout its two thousand year history: all of its so-called 'reforms' have been power shifts brought on by political circumstances. This is how it appears to the present author, who, thanks to the accident of his birth, is in a position to bring a pluralistic, non-Christian perspective to the study of the Church and its present crisis. At the same time, having spent most of his adult life in the 'Christian' West, he has some understanding of Christianity as well. Seen from the vantage position of one who was born into a non-theocratic Eastern tradition, the Church does not seem much like a religious entity. The 'Christian' West today is in a deep spiritual crisis. But leaders acting in the name of God and Christ - like Pat Robertson, Patrick Buchanan, and even Pope John Paul II - are interested mainly in political and economic expansion. Robertson and Buchanan seek the presidency of the United States in the name of 'Judaeo-Christian values', while the Pope is concerned mainly with expansion in Asia - especially India - to compensate for massive losses in the West. These losses, as we shall see in the next chapter, are much greater than the general public is aware. Throughout history, whenever confronted with a problem the Church has invariably reacted like a political or a commercial organization rather than a spiritual one. It is no different today. It does not look into the soul for the source of the problem and its solution, but seeks to use its formidable economic and political resources to try and smother it.[11] Money and power - both secular, and both destroyers of the soul - are the prime concern of the Church today as they have been throughout its eventful history. And this - a total lack of spirituality - is what really lies at the heart of the problems facing the Church today as we shall discover in the next chapter.
Chapter I - Crisis of ChristianityIf Fascism goes under, God's cause goes under with it. Cardinal Hinsley of Westminster at a sermon in 1935 I have noticed two things that seem to be in very short supply in the Vatican. Honesty and a good cup of coffee. Pope John Paull in 1978 1. Vatican Woes: Paganisation of EuropeThe revelations of the Dead Sea Scrolls could hardly have come at a worse time for the Church. At a time when church attendances - especially in Europe - are at historically low levels, the doctrinal foundations of Christianity have also come under a cloud, making things doubly difficult. According to some scholars, even the historicity of Jesus - something that most people including non-believers had accepted as fact - is now in doubt. More fundamentally, some of the highest officials in the Church hierarchy feel that they and their institutions are under siege. This in many ways is a purely secular crisis that bears close examination. In the previous chapter we saw how the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal a picture of the origins of Christianity[12] that is radically different from the one presented by the Church. The same is true of the Church as an institution: it is nothing like its public image. It is time to take a look at the state of the institutions of the Church as they are today, and see how they may be affected by these revelations. We shall be looking at the impact of the Scrolls on the doctrinal foundations of Christianity in the next few chapters, but to understand the Church's true predicament, we need to review its current condition in some detail. In this chapter, we shall see the Church as it really is by examining its secular affairs. This we shall do, not by exhuming its sins of the past, but by focusing on its recent history, in particular, following the chain of events surrounding the death of Albino Luciani, better known as Pope John Paul I. This will help lay to rest once and for all the pretence that the Church is a religious institution. While the Scrolls threaten the foundations of Christian belief, it is the state of the great structure that stands over that foundation - the world of churches, parish priests, followers, and above all, its secular operations like political and economic activities that are of more immediate concern to the Pope and his officials today. If the foundation is Faith in Jesus, the superstructure, composed of the day to day activities of the Church - the part with which the flock and the public come in daily contact - is what keeps the Church and its dependants going. And the condition of the Church as seen from within and without is far from healthy. Its officials therefore have every reason to be concerned. The Church today is plagued by problems that, on the surface at least, are entirely secular in character. (The fact that these problems might not have been so severe as to threaten its very existence, had the Church been a spiritual entity, is a different issue.) Its problems include: falling Church attendances and the rejection of its message by an ever-increasing number of people, especially in the West. What little regard for the Church there still remains in the West is due mainly to the personality of Jesus Christ as understood by the public, and the image of Christianity as a religion of compassion and service embodying his message. As we shall see in later chapters, the Scrolls now shatter this last illusion. The Doctrine of the Faith - the bedrock of Christianity - is shown to be a later fabrication used in building up a theocratic institution that serves itself in the guise of serving Jesus. The exposure of this and other facts can only accelerate the decline, which happens also to be the great fear of the Church. The cause of this entirely secular decline may be attributed to the fact that through most of its history the Church has been a despotic state deriving its legitimacy from the word of God revealed to Jesus of which the officials of the Church claim to be the sole and undisputed spokesmen and guardians. This is the exclusivist doctrine upon which the Church rests its authority; the Pope and his clergy are the police, the judge and the jury in this Kingdom of Faith. We shall be examining it in more detail in later chapters, but for the present it suffices to know that without this dogma to support it the Church can hardly exist. It is the single prop of authority and legitimacy upon which Christianity rests. The Pope of course claims to be the ultimate servant of Lord Jesus and also the spiritual head. The reality however is different: the Pope is the successor to the head of the Roman Empire rather than the early Church - more Nero than St Peter. The Scrolls now bring this fact sharply into relief as we shall also see in the next few chapters. But old habits die hard, and the Vatican has continued to act as though Catholics the world over are still its loyal subjects. This has now run its course - at least in the West. Until 1870, the Roman Church was for all practical purposes a sovereign state of which the Pope was the absolute monarch; even today it has many of the trappings of a state. It is becoming clear that Christianity being a communal religion and not one of self-exploration, cannot exist purely as a religious institution without some form of government support, or, preferably, being in control of the government and the lives of its subjects; loss of this temporal power is what has led to its collapse in Europe. Recognizing this, the Church has always paid more attention to political and economic affairs than to the problems of the spirit. At the same time, being a public relations organization par excellence, the Church has sought to present itself as an institution concerned mainly with saving souls. Europeans, with their long history of struggles against the Church have seen the Emperor without his clothes. But Asiatics, Indians in particular, have failed to understand this history, and have accepted Church propaganda as truth. It is time that the people of the so-called Third World countries who have now become the target of the Church, following its near total rejection by the West, see the truth and recognize the real face of the Church. In this, India, with its deep philosophical roots, must take the lead. The Church is no more a soul-saving institution than the British East India Company was an organization devoted to the spread of civilization. Indians with their long association with European countries, backed by an unmatched pluralislic civilization of their own, should be in an ideal position to explore and expose the theocratic aims of Christianity. But with rare exceptions this has not happened. It is a source of unending wonder to me that despite the great number of educated Indians who have travelled in the West, how misinformed most Indians are about the state of Christianity in the West, especially in Europe. This was brought home to me in a recent conversation I had with the editor of a well-known weekly magazine in India. We were discussing the threat of Islamic terrorism to world peace, and how concerned Western countries are about the rise of fundamentalism. "It is only a matter of time," he told me, "before we have another great war. This time, it will be a fight to the finish between Christianity and Islam. Europeans will be forced to defend Christianity against the threat of Islam." "Christianity is already finished in Europe," I replied. "Europe is no longer Christian, but secular humanistic. Their fear of Islam is not religious, but political and economic. It poses a threat to their peace and prosperity. That is the way the Europeans are looking at it." The editor, a Hindu, was incredulous. In fact, I don't think he understood me at all. "But what about the Pope?" he asked. "Will not the Europeans unite and fight to defend the Pope and Rome if threatened by Islamic fundamentalist forces?" By Rome he really meant the Vatican. Like most Indians, he believed all Romans to be devout Catholics. This is part of the image projected by the Church and its missionaries in India which Indians by and large have swallowed. Most Indians believe that all Europeans look to the Pope as their spiritual leader - laughable though it will seem to Europeans. "Highly unlikely," I told him. "The people of Europe had to fight for more than a Ihousand years to free themselves from Church tyranny. They are not going to lay down their lives to defend an institution that has been their main oppressor through most of their history. They recognize that Islamic fundamentalism is just another theocracy on the march - not much different from what the Church and the Pope used to be. " I then quoted for him a popular Italian lament: Italians have long complained how God has cursed their beautiful country with impassable mountains in the north, two volcanoes in the south and a Pope in the middle. I don't think I got my point across, for, in our next meeting, he repeated his statement. I mention this only to bring out the fact that most Indians have little idea of how irrelevant and unimportant the Church and its message have become to the people of Europe. The only Europeans who look to the Church for liberation are those that have known tyranny worse than Christianity - at least in their recent memory - like Poland under the Communist yoke, and the Balkan countries under Ottoman Turkey. Even this is wearing thin; the 'official' Church candidate Lech Walesa was defeated in the recent presidential election in Poland despite his endorsement by Pope John Paul II. As a result, almost the only Europeans who have any use for the Church today are those whose livelihoods depend upon it. Here is what the Belgian scholar Koenraad Elst has to say about the current state of Christianity in Europe:[13] Anyone who cares to look, can see that Christianity is in steep decline. This is especially the case in Europe, where church attendance levels in many countries have fallen below 10% or even 5 %... Even more ominous for the survival of Christianity is the decline in the priestly vocations. Many parishes that used to have two to three parish priests now have none, so that the Sunday Service now has to be conducted by a visiting priest, who has an ever fuller agenda as his colleagues keep dying, retiring or abandoning the priesthood without being replaced... Outside observers may join the Church leadership in asking why this decline is taking place. As a participant observer of the emptying of the churches in Europe, I will argue that certain circumstances and tactical mistakes may have accelerated the process, but the fundamental reason for the decline is intrinsic to the nature of Christian faith... Any attempt to bridge the gap between modernity and Christian faith has only underlined their incompatibility. ... The notion that there is a single God, Creator of the universe, who is interfering with his Creation by sending messages to privileged spokespersons called prophets, flies in the face of rationality. People will accept that reason isn't everything, but not that your central belief system is so militantly opposed to reason. (Elst, pp. 1-2) Church teaching had overruled reason and declared its own dogmas, inspired directly by the Holy Spirit, to be above anything the human mind could think up or envision. ...The idea that humanity's intrinsic imperfection or sinfulness had been remedied by Christ's crucifixion was so absurd... that it could only be upheld as Christianity's basic dogma by declaring reason incompetent. (Elst, p. 3) The third century Church father, Tertullian, solved the problem, at least for himself, by proclaiming: Credo quia absurdum - I believe because it is absurd. It is this faith - built around a dogma utterly opposed to reason, and one that has been losing its hold over the minds of Westerners - that the Church now is trying desperately to sell in Asia. It is no more than a strategy for survival, for the Church has been forced to recognize that it has no future in Europe. And now, even the rickety foundation of this doctrine of redemption through faith in Jesus has been dealt a severe blow by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. So to place the Church's predicament in perspective: not only is the public refusing to buy the sales pitch for the product, even the product is not what it has been advertised to be. And like other businesses whose products no longer have a market in the West, the Church has been forced to seek customers in the Third World. Elst is far from being the only European to see Christianity virtually on its last legs, at least in Europe. David Yallop has this to say, speaking of Rome, the home of Christianity in most people's minds:[14] The new Concordat recently signed between the Vatican and the Italian Government makes a fitting epitaph for the current Pope's [John Paul II] reign. Italy, for nearly two thousand years regarded by Catholics as the home of their faith, no longer has Roman Catholicism as 'the religion of the State'. The Church's privileged position in Italy is ending. (p 323) Rome has a Catholic population of two and a half million [in 1978]. It should have been producing at least seventy new priests per year. When Luciani (John Paul I) became Pope [in 1978] it was producing six. ...Many parts of the city were, in reality, pagan, with Church attendance less than 3 per cent of the population... (p 194; emphasis added.) Shades of Nostradamus! This is like Saudi Arabia disestablishing Sunni Islam as the state religion, with its people abandoning the mosques. As observed previously, Christianity, like Islam but unlike Hinduism, is a communal religion, not a religion of self-exploration. Loss of participation in communal activities can spell its death. And yet this is precisely what is happening to Christianity in Europe. This bleak picture painted by outside observers like Elst and Yallop is confirmed by official Vatican reports. Peter de Rosa, a former Catholic priest who had access to official Church documents cites a secret Vatican study: It revealed that from 1963 to 1969 over 8,000 priests had asked to be dispensed from their vows and nearly 3,000 others had left without waiting for permission. The study estimated that over the next five years 20,000 would leave. The estimate proved to be far too conservative. Matters were worst in countries that pontiffs had relied on for providing missionaries. Holland for example, used to produce over 300 priests a year. Now ordinations are almost as rare as mountains [in Holland]. ... The average age of those who remain is a startlingly high 54. The future, too, looks bleak. Over the last twenty years, the number of Seminarians in the States [America] has fallen from 50,000 to 12,000.[15] A loss of 76 percent in less than two decades! Even this understates the real loss because seminaries that do remain open have fewer students and teachers than they used to. Many of them have been kept alive only through a massive infusion from Third World countries like India and the Philippines; even the United States Army has been reduced to employing many of these non-Americans as chaplains. And these men and women have been lured less by faith than by the attractions of a more comfortable life in the West. The situation has grown steadily worse since that time. When Pope John Paul II visited the United States in October 1995, newspapers reported that the number of Seminarians in the country was only 3,500 in 1993! It is probably less than 3,000 today. If present trends continue, it is not easy to see how the Church can survive without a clergy to lead its communal organizations. What is true of the losses in the priesthood, is true also of its age profile: the numbers understate the real loss. Elst tells us that the average age of Catholic priests in the world is 55, whereas in the Netherlands (i.e. Holland) it is an astonishingly high 64 and still rising. And those that leave the priestly professions are invariably the younger members. All this is silent testimony to the spiritual bankruptcy of the institution. The simple fact is that the Church is imploding. Thus the condition of the Church is of far greater importance to its officials than to its devotees who are deserting it in droves. This state of affairs no doubt accounts for the siege mentality bordering on paranoia that is displayed by Church authority whenever faced with the threat of a rational alternative to Church dogma. It is this fear that lies at the bottom of the openly expressed hostility to Yoga and Buddhism by the present Pope (John Paul II). The Church is deeply perturbed by the West's discovery of non-dogmatic Eastern spirituality and empirical disciplines like Yoga. These do not ask the faithful to suspend their rational judgement and accept dogma. Freedom of thought has always been seen as the great enemy of credal religions like Christianity and Islam. That is why they have need for a thought police calling itself the 'clergy', as well as elaborate machineries like the Inquisition and blasphemy laws to suppress all dissent. It is difficult to imagine either Christianity or Islam existing without clergy. In contrast, pluralistic religions like Hinduism and those of ancient Greece have never needed clergy or blasphemy laws. They can resolve disputes through debate. The Upanishads and the Dialogues of Plato are full of them. As that great rationalist Thomas Jefferson once observed: It is error alone that needs the support of the government. Truth can stand by itself. Elst goes on to contrast this declining state of Christianity in the West with the situation in India, particularly the attitude towards Christianity shown by many Hindus: When staying in India, I find it sad and sometimes comical to see how these outdated beliefs are being foisted upon backward sections of the Indian population by fanatical missionaries. In their aggressive campaign to sell their product, the missionaries are helped a lot by sentimental expressions of admiration for Christianity on the part of leading Hindus. (Elst, p viii) This chasm between the real state of Christianity and its image in India must be attributed to the skill of the Catholic propaganda machine which has succeeded in portraying itself as an institution full of vitality and vigour. Hindu gullibility and the subservient mentality of many Indian intellectuals and journalists has also helped.[16] It should be noted that the state of Christianity is far healthier in former European colonies like India and even the Americas than in Europe. (Catholic priests are despised in much of Mexico and Central America, and, horror of horrors, Christianity is being absorbed into pagan cults, but that is a different story.) This being the current state of Christianity, the Vatican can hardly afford another blow like the revelations of the Dead Sea Scrolls. That is a story we shall be looking at later. In order to understand the Church's predicament, and its near hysterical reaction to the Dead Sea Scrolls, it helps to recognize that what is at stake today for the Church is not so much the loss of spirituality in the world as the loss of the marketplace to itself; if the scene in Europe were to be repeated in the rest of the world, Christianity would be finished. Through much of its history, officials of the Church - the clergy - have functioned mainly as a thought police - an occupation that is no longer open to them. As a result, the Vatican today is not so much a religious organization as a secular business empire, like IBM or General Motors. Its concerns are the same - loss of customers leading to unemployment within its official ranks. The theocratic state has been replaced by the theocratic business enterprise that may fairly be called Vatican Incorporated. The business is troubled, and the Dead Sea Scrolls can only hasten the inevitable. 2. 'Secular' Vatican: Mussolini to MafiaWhen we examine all this, it becomes clear that the Vatican today is mainly, if not entirely, a secular organization concerned about its economic and political viability. As Baigent and Leigh observe; The Church today, after all, is less a religious than a social, cultural, political and economic institution. Its stability and security rest on factors quite remote from the creed, the doctrine and the dogma it promulgates. (p.234) The doctrine is important only because it is the product sold by the institution which the British writer David Yallop has called Vatican Incorporated. Its 'religion' - under the name of 'Judeo-Christian values' is now little more than a political slogan - just as 'secularism' has become in India and some other former colonies.[17] The Vatican today is essentially a multinational business enterprise, a holding company with investments in many corporations, possibly including those that make firearms and missiles, and, surprise of surprises - birth control pills. But for those employed by Vatican Inc., it is often a very comfortable life indeed. Its one redeeming feature is that it can provide employment to people who might otherwise be unemployable. As a 'religious' organization the Vatican also enjoys tax and other benefits in countries around the world that bona fide companies do not. And because of the enormous political clout that it commands in several governments, especially in Italy and some Latin American countries, it is also guaranteed a degree of immunity from official and even legal scrutiny which allows its officials to engage in activities and methods for which lesser mortals would be jailed or hanged. Put bluntly, the main concern of the Vatican today is amassing wealth and enhancing its political influence by methods fair or foul. Most students of history know that Medieval and Renaissance Popes like the notorious Alexander VI were incredibly corrupt. Writing anonymously, the great humanist writer Petrarch (1304-74) described the papal court of Clement VI in the following words: ...the shame of mankind, a sin of vice, a sewer where is gathered all the filth in the world. There the God is held in contempt, money alone is worshipped and the laws of God and men are trampled under foot. Everything there breathes a lie...[18] (de Rosa, p. 117) In the centuries following, things actually have not changed all that much. It will no doubt come as a surprise to many - especially to people living outside Europe - to learn that most of what Petrarch wrote of the papacy six hundred years ago applies to the Vatican even today. This is especially true of his observation about worship of money and contempt for the law as this chapter will make clear. A brief look at the financial and other operations leading to the death of Pope John Paul I (who occupied the seat for barely a month), helps obtain a picture of the Vatican today as it really is. It is a tale of Cardinals, Archbishops, nimble-fingered accountants, drug dealers, blackmailers, cold-blooded poisoners and trigger happy contract killers - often working together, and to the same end. The driving forces have been money and power - exactly as they were at the time when Petrarch lived and wrote. And this economic and political position is what the Vatican is trying to protect; everything else is public relations. Ultimately it all comes down to power and money - entirely secular in scope and substance. No one knows exactly how much the Vatican is worth financially. One person who came close was Robeno Calvi, a prominent member of the Italian Mafia and banker to the Vatican. He was the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano of Milan of which the Vatican was the largest shareholder. He and his bank had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy - thanks to the shady dealings of the Vatican banker Archbishop Marcinkus; the good Archbishop had proven more than a match for the Mafiosi of Milan. The Mafiosi were experts at money laundering, but Archbishop Marcinkus was, as he described himself, 'God's Banker' (and swindler). With both he and his Banco Ambrosiano reduced to dire financial straits, Calvi, who knew whereof he spoke said: The Vatican should honour its commitments by selling part of the wealth controlled by the I.O.R. It is an enormous patrimony. I estimate it to be 10 billion dollars. To help the Ambrosiano the I.O.R. could start to sell in chunks of a billion a time. (Yallop, p. 295) Even this figure given by Calvi in 1982, is in all probability a great underestimate and represented only what he knew at the time. In 1975, a newspaper in Switzerland stated that Swiss banks had put the figure at not less than 50 billion Swiss francs or 15 billion dollars; at today's values that would be worth more than 30 billion dollars exclusive of accumulated interest and other incomes. And this figure does not include its buildings and palaces, priceless paintings and other art treasures. Calvi was speaking strictly of its liquid assets like stocks. The I.O.R. that Calvi was referring to - Istituto per le Opera di Religione - the Institute for Religious Works is the Vatican Bank which has no function beyond making money. It has served as a religious front for Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano in its drug-related money laundering operations. Shortly after revealing these details about the Vatican, Calvi himself was to lose his life, done to death in London on June 17, 1982 - his death made to look like suicide. His secretary Graziella Corrocher had also been 'suicided' a few hours before. It was obviously the work of professional hit men. His widow Clara Calvi charged: "The Vatican had my husband killed to hide the bankruptcy of the Vatican Bank." (Yallop, p. 306) This is a complex tale that I shall again touch upon a little later. Calvi had another connection with the Vatican via a sinister organization known as Opus Dei ('Work of God'). It is a secret organization founded in 1928 by the Spanish priest Monsignor Jose Maria Escriva. It seeks to attract the best and the brightest into the fold - from universities, the professional class and especially the media. Dr John Roche of Oxford, a former member of Opus Dei called it 'sinister, secretive and Orwellian'. The organization has as its aim nothing less than the total take-over of the Roman Catholic Church. Three of its members held cabinet positions under the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Jose Mateos, who had to flee Spain to escape prosecution for bank fraud, was a patron of the Opus Dei. Much of its money came from Calvi who funded it through Mateos.[19] (See Yallop, pp. 263 - 4) < |
The struggle
for access to the materials in Cave 4 [where
some of the most important Scrolls fragments
were found] was arduous, sometimes even bitter.
An International Team of editors had been set
up by the Jordanian Government to control the
process. The problems with this team are public
knowledge. To put them in a nutshell: in the
first place, the team was hardly international,
secondly it did not work as a team, and thirdly
it dragged out the editing process interminably.
Dead
Sea Scrolls research is an involved subject,
but its central message may be summarized as
follows. The contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls
challenge the two most fundamenlal beliefs
of Christianity: the uniqueness of Jesus Christ,
and Christianity as the embodiment of the message
of Christ. Both these are put in jeopardy by
the Qumran material. First, they show that
the message of Jesus did not originate with
him, and he was also not unique; he was at
most one of several