Several years ago, I visited a bookstore and saw a button that read:
Jesus Called and Wants His Religion Back
Reading it made me think about Christianity, as Jesus taught it, versus how it is practiced now. How much have we changed it over the years? Have we allowed our cultural traditions and philosophies to influence the way we interpret the message that Jesus was sent to deliver to us?
There was a time where the Pharisees and some Scribes from Jerusalem saw that Jesus’ disciples ate without washing their hands first. It was Jewish tradition not to eat until you wash your hands first. The Pharisees and the Scribes asked Jesus, “‘Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.’ He answered them, ‘And why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, `Honor your father and your mother,' and `He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die.' But you say, `If anyone tells his father or his mother, what you would have gained from me is given to God, he need not honor his father.' So, for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:
This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” [1][1]
Jesus appeared to be frustrated that often religious leaders are more concerned with enforcing cultural traditions, than God’s laws. As Jesus once said, “I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father."[2]
How much have such traditions effected the development of Christianity over the years? As we know, Jesus was Jewish, as were the original Christians. As the early Christians spread the Word around the world, many aspects of Greek philosophy and pagan polytheism were added to the teachings of Jesus.[3] As Pope Gregory the Great said to a missionary, “You must not interfere with any traditional belief or religious observance that can be harmonized with Christianity.” [4] For example, early Church historian, Walter Bauer, wrote about how there were many forms of Christianity in the early centuries that were influenced by various beliefs such as Gnosticism, which was derived from Mithraism, oriental mysticism, astrology, magic and Plato.[5]
How much was the early Church willing to compromise the teachings of Jesus by intermingling pagan beliefs and traditions in order to grow the Church by attracting pagans to become Christians? Jaroslav Pelikan, a Yale Professor of Ecclesiastical History and author of more than 30 books, including his often cited five volume The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, wrote about the movement away from Jewish influence as the Church grew and the resulting conflict in the Church after AD 70. He explained that, as more pagans, such as the Greeks and Romans, became Christians, they objected to the Judaic influence in the traditions of the Church.[6] Pelikan wrote about the time after the Apostles died and numerous writers began defending Christianity against the persecutions of the pagans. Pelikan writes that these early Christian writers “borrowed heavily and at times inappropriately, from the pagan resources at hand,” began the “process of accommodation” between Christianity and Greek philosophy, and often used reason to "justify Christianity to the pagan world." [7]
Major changes were made to the early Church when Constantine became the sole Emperor of Rome in 324. He was one of the most powerful people in the world and the leader of a pagan sun worshipping cult known as Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun). He claimed to have a dream that caused him to choose Christianity and he became Christian. He declared himself absolute leader of the entire Christian Church, while retaining his pagan high priest title "Pontifex Maximus," in order to maintain popularity with his primarily pagan subjects. So, he was the head of the Christian Church and the State, who persuaded people to combine pagan worship with Christianity. He changed the Christian Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday and made it an official Roman holiday; made churches tax-exempt; and made December 25th, which was the birthday of the pagan Unconquered Sun god, the birthday of Jesus.
In 325 AD, Emperor Constantine invited the bishops from both Eastern and Western sects of Christianity to join him in the small seaside village of Nicaea, for a council to unify the Christian sects in the empire under his existing church: the Universal Church of Rome. He presided over the Council of Nicaea, which was attended by approximately 300 bishops.
One of the main subjects addressed there was an issue that was dividing the Church: the controversy about the nature of the divinity of Jesus. Christians of the early centuries, most of whom were Jewish, believed in a single, supreme God. This meant that Jesus could not also be deemed to be divine [8]. Other Christian sects, influenced by the pagan polytheism Greek concept predating the birth of Jesus, that “the Supreme Reality appears in the trinitarian form of the Good, the Intelligence, and the World-Soul,” [9] believed that Jesus was divine, as a part of a three in one God, that we now refer to as the Trinity. The Council issued an official statement of creed, the Nicene Creed, affirming Jesus' complete divinity and the decision was enforced politically by Constantine. The bishops who did not sign the Nicene Creed were deposed and exiled and written materials that did not support this view were destroyed. Various Christian sects continued to fight about this issue for years and, according to Pulitzer Prize winning historian and writer, William James Durant, “Probably more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in these two years (342-3) than by all the persecutions of Christians by pagans in the history of Rome.” [10]
The Nicene Council also instituted celebrating the resurrection of Jesus as “Easter” and “Lent”, based on a major pagan holiday. The name “Easter” comes from the name of the pagan Mother Goddess, "Ishtar," who was the goddess of spring and fertility. The pagans had long dedicated a one-month long celebration to this goddess, which included honoring the rabbit as a symbol of fertility and coloring eggs in bright colors to represent the sunlight of spring. Emperor Constantine, at the Council of Nicaea, demanded that all churches celebrate Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday, although it was previously celebrated by early Christians at the time of Passover. Emperor Constantine showed his intent to separate Christianity from its Jewish roots when he sent a letter to bishops throughout the Roman Empire, stating that ". . . relative to the sacred festival of Easter . . . it was declared to be particularly unworthy for this holiest of all festivals to follow the custom of the Jews. We ought not therefore, to have anything in common with the Jews. We desire to separate ourselves from the detestable company of the Jews for it is surely shameful for us to hear the Jews boast that without their direction we could not keep this feast.[11]”
Therefore, it is clear that Christianity has changed over time and has been influenced by pagan customs and philosophies. As Durant described early Christianity: “In Christ and Peter, Christianity was Jewish; in Paul it became half Greek; in Catholicism it became half Roman.” [12] Over the years, false prophets and religious leaders have added many cultural traditions and precepts of men to the commandments of God. The purpose of this website is to eliminate those influences by just studying what Jesus said. It is intended to focus solely on the words of Jesus to convey His true message, containing the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, which God sent His Son, Jesus, into this world to deliver to us.
John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, spoke about the Messiah to come and claimed that He was being sent to fulfill God’s “sacred covenant— the covenant He swore with an oath to our ancestor Abraham.” When he described the arrival of the Messiah, he wrote that “the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.” [13] It was my desire to study this morning light from heaven, without all the Greek philosophies and pagan ideas later added.
Therefore, I took all the words of Jesus from the scriptures and organized them by topic, in an effort to understand God’s message to us. I wanted to know what Jesus said about who He is, why He came, God’s truth and how He wants us to live. I realize that I had to exercise my discretion in determining where to put certain verses and acknowledge that others may argue that they belong in a different category. I put certain language in bold, to show why it is relevant to the category. In addition, there is often more than one version in the scriptures of certain statements made by Jesus and I have included all versions together, even though it might seem a bit repetitive. Finally, from time to time, I did add contextual language before a quote, to be helpful to a reader. It is my hope that by setting forth the words of Jesus in this format, I can fulfill my calling to help Jesus get His religion back.
[1] Matt. 15:1-17 and Mark 7: 1-13.
[2] John 8:40-41
[3] The Origin of the Trinity: From Paganism to Constantine, by Cher-El L. Hagensick.
[4] Laing, Gordon Jennings. Survival of Roman Religion. at Page 130. New York: Cooper Square Publishers. 1963.
[5] Bauer, Walter. Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (Tübingen 1934). A second edition, edited by Georg Strecker, (Tübingen 1964), was translated as Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1971).
[6] Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600). Chicago: U of Chicago P. 1971. Vol. 1 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, at pages 13-14. (1973–1990). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[7] Id. At pages 22 – 23
[8] Lonergan, Bernard. The Way to Nicaea: The Dialectical Development of Trinitarian Theology. Trans. Conn O’Donovan. (Philadelphia: Westminster P. 1976). Trans. of De DeoTrino. (Rome: Gregorian UP. 1964) 17-112.
[9] Qtd. in Laing p. 129
[10] Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization. Vol. 4: The Age of Faith, 1950, p.8.
[11] Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, “Council of Nice,” 1974. Pg.52.
[12] Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization . Vol. 3: Caesar and Christ, (Caesar 579) 1935-75.
[13] Luke 1: 67-79.