What a difference a revision can make! It’s not often that a religion gets to take a mulligan on its founding scripture, but that’s exactly what happened with Christianity. Wanting to amend the old eye-for-an-eye, scourges-visited-on-the-Israelites, they-will-know-my-name-is-the-LORD vibe of the Old Testament, the writers of the New added God’s mercy, took some vague hints from the previous scripture as portents of a new prophet, called him Jesus, and wham! They had themselves a new religion—and a holy book a lot easier to comprehend (most of the time) than the first.
Now, any Fiction 101 student would see that the Old Testament could have used a charismatic leading man—Moses wasn’t as gripping as you’d have him be, Jacob’s unpleasantness I discussed in the last chapter, David was okay (if you’re not Uriah or Goliath) but doesn’t hang around the whole time, and Elijah was pretty impressive but died off early—you hear what I’m saying. Of course I don’t want to suggest that Jesus wasn’t an actual historical figure and the son of God from an immaculate birth—only that it was rather convenient for the religion that he was those things, considering how much better they make the narrative.
The rest of the story of Christ makes for pretty good copy too. Told in four slightly different ways in the respective gospels of his disciples Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Savior-to-be is born without the help of nookie, he’s given some nice gifts by three wise men, he grows older and gets baptized (at which point the sky opens up and the Holy Spirit comes down—pretty good sign), goes into the wilderness and is tempted by the devil (no dice), comes back, gives his famous Sermon on the Mount (the heart of his message), performs some miracles, attracts his posse but is betrayed by one of them (Judas), gets hung out to dry, dies, and comes back from the dead so some people can go to Heaven despite their bad behavior. After the four gospels, the New Testament has a series of sermony letters that can pretty much be skipped (see below) and ends with the apocalyptic Book of Revelation (can’t miss that), but virtually everything that we think of as Christianity is contained in these four short stories.
Now, considering what a cool guy Christ is, I was still at times a little disappointed with His Shagginess. I had remembered Jesus as the loving, accepting, mild Agnus Dei (Lamb of God), preaching tolerance and forgiveness and generally standing for a lot of stuff that most people would endorse, even if they’re not so convinced he’s the son of God. And there are myriad quotes that exhibit the messiah to be just such a Mensch, as this one demonstrates: “I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Wouldn’t that be great if we all (or any of us) did that? Makes you really love the guy.
The problem, though, is that are a lot of other times when he doesn’t seem quite so pleasant. What are we supposed to do with quotes like: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34); “I am come to send fire on the earth” (Luke 12:49); “Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division” (Luke 12:51); “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten” (Revelation 3:19); or “I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine” (John 17:9)? None of these bodes so well for us little people. Even the oft-quoted “He that is not with me is against me” (Matthew 12:30) or “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you” (Matthew 7:6) make me a little suspicious. Aren’t we all supposed to be friends here?
Then there are two episodes that also give pause: first, the parable of the wedding (Matthew 22:2–14), where a king can’t get anyone to come to the party (not sure why; he is the king). He decides to bring men from “the highway,” but one isn’t dressed for a wedding, and for that he is cast into “outer darkness” (22:13). Christ concludes: “Many are called, but few are chosen” (22:14). I realize that it’s the same point as with Esau in the Old Testament, but damn, who walks the highway dressed for a wedding?
Second, in Matthew 26 and John 12 there’s the story of the woman who poured expensive ointment on Christ. The disciples took offense, saying the pricey stuff should have been sold and the money given to the poor. Christ’s response is: “Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always” (Matthew 26:10–11; John 12:3–8). The poor you have always? Aren’t we supposed to be working on that? And, as the son of God, do you really care if it’s La Mer? Isn’t Nivea good enough?
All these things made me a bit more circumspect about my man-crush on Jesus. At times he seemed just a little severe, as when he says: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). I know this is how they do enrollment in the CIA, but is this WJWD? Then when he says, “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you” (John 15:14)—I tried that with my roommates in college, but it didn’t go so well. …
The most perplexing moment, however, is in Matthew 22:31, when the joy of man’s desiring protects Peter from the devil, but later doesn’t stop Satan entering Judas (Luke 22:3; John 13:2). Of course, Judas then betrays his idol and commits suicide from the guilt. But what was he supposed to do? And why does he get such a bad rap if Satan was the one pulling the strings and Christ didn’t interfere?
So maybe the New Testament isn’t as consistently touchy-feely as we hoped it would be, but then what religion is? I once saw a Buddhist monk refuse to move his bag to allow a pregnant lady to have a seat on the bus. But as religions and religious texts go, there’s much more in the New Testament to love than hate, and all nit-picking aside, Christ’s compassionate message really is beautiful. “Love thy neighbor as thyself”—that’s about as good as it gets, right?
Nota bene: For book-by-book breakdowns, see “What to Skip” below.
The Buzz: Buzz? What buzz?
What People Don’t Know (But Should): First of all, Pilate tried very hard to get Christ off, saying repeatedly that he was innocent and should be let go. It’s only because the mob outside wanted the criminal Barabbas released instead that Christ didn’t go free.
Second, most of us say “kill the fatted calf” to speak of a bad thing, but the father of the Prodigal Son kills it out of joy at his son’s return—it’s a good thing (Luke 15:27), especially at a tailgate for homecoming.
Finally, it seems at times like Christ doesn’t really have a sense of his own power. At one point the exasperated Savior kvetches, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?” (Matthew 17:17). Then, while on the cross, he says the famous, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) as if he wasn’t in on the whole plan, you know, to take on our sins with his death and rise from the grave. And earlier, having moved the stone in front of Lazarus’ grave, he said, “Father I thank thee that thou hast heard me,” as if it was only by God’s paying him mind that he was able to do it. But if you can bring yourself and another guy back from the dead, what’s so tough about moving a rock?
Best Line: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” (Matthew 6:28–29). That’s exquisite.
I also love the various epithets Christ gives to himself over the course of the gospels. See, when you’re the son of God, you really know how to do things, like make an entrance.
This is he, of whom it is written.
A greater man than Solomon is here.
A greater than Jonas is here.
I am the living bread.
I am the bread of life.
I have meat to eat that ye know not of.
I am the door of the sheep.
I am the good shepherd.
I and my Father are one.
I am the resurrection and the life.
I am come a light into this world.
I am the way, the truth, and the life.
I am the true vine.
I am the vine, ye are the branches.
I have overcome the world.
I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.
I am he that liveth and was dead.
I am he which searcheth the reins and the hearts.
What’s Sexy: There’s not much that’s technically sexy in the New Testament, but since so many people’s chances for eternal happiness could be at stake, I’m going to give you all the sex-related stuff:
On cheating: “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). In this regard, the New Testament is harsher than the Old—pity.
On homosexuality: “Vile affections … Women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another … to do those things which are not convenient” (Romans 1:26–28). Based on what I’ve seen in the Greyhound men’s room, it’s not that inconvenient.
That there’s not much hope: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind” (1 Corinthians 6:9).
Euphemism of the week: “Let us walk honestly… not in chambering and wantonness” (Romans 1:13). Chambering!
As Chaucer’s Wife of Bath said: “Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband” (1 Corinthians 7:3).
And as she did: “If they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn” (1 Corinthians 7:9).
For George Costanza: “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour” (1 Thessalonians 4:3–4).
But can I keep the non-superfluous part? “Lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness” (James 1:21).
All in all, more than you’d expect from the Christian rule-book, right?
Quirky Fact: I have to give you a few. First, there’s a joke in the New Testament—just as there was one and only one joke in the Old—but mind you, it’s anti-Semitic. John 1:47 reads, “Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!”
Then, were you aware that the Virgin Mary was a lush? Me neither until John 2 where she goes to Christ and makes him perform a miracle because there’s no wine at a wedding she’s attending. Jesus, honey, we’re out of booze again!
On a rather more serious note, in Matthew 16:18–19 Christ says to Peter, “Thou art this rock upon which I will build my church … and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” then tells the disciples that he has to go to Jerusalem where he will be killed and raised again. Peter says, “Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee” (16:22), and Christ turns on him, saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan”—the same thing he said to the actual devil during the temptations—and then “thou are an offense unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men” (16:23). That’s a pretty short fuse for the Lamb of God, no? And why call Peter Satan? It’s true that the disciple will later take some tribute money (in 17:24) and eventually will lie and claim he wasn’t with Christ when the ca-ca hits the fan (26:69–74), but still. And if he’s so bad, why is he the rock you’re building the church on?
Then there’s the problem of inconsistency (which plagues both the Old and New Testaments). Take this example: Matthew 1:23 points out that the Old Testament says a virgin will bear a son and they will name him Emmanuel (sic—it’s spelled with an “I” in Isaiah; I know it’s being transliterated from the Hebrew, but it’s the Bible; shouldn’t they proofread?). The other problem is that an angel just told Mary that the son would be named Jesus (1:21). It seems to me that if you are trying to coordinate the two testaments, why not just go with Immanuel, by either spelling? It means “God is with us;” that’s got a nice ring to it, right?
One more quickie: in Matthew’s gospel, Christ’s first words coming back from the grave are “All hail” (Matthew 28:9)—that seems fair. Whereas in Luke he asks some people why they’re sad (Luke 24:17) and then if they have any meat (24:41). Any meat? Is he the Savior returning or a grizzly coming out of hibernation?
What to Skip: The gospels are, of course, can’t-miss world-historical texts and should be read not only for all the greatness of Christ (despite my teasing above) but for the currency of so many of the stories in our everyday lives and language. They’re also surprisingly short. Matthew goes by pretty quickly and is very familiar; Mark tells the same stories again so you don’t have to read it; Luke is almost gratuitous but tells the stories differently enough from Matthew to make it worth it; and John is considerably different and decidedly worthwhile.
Apart from the Book of Revelation, the remaining parts of the New Testament (Acts and the twenty-one Epistles) are optional, so I’ve given them the standard breakdown and quoted my favorite lines. Revelation gets special treatment because it’s so unbelievably crazy, and I’m big into eschatology—aren’t you?
Acts recounts how an anti-Christian guy named Saul got converted and became the Apostle Paul, the author of most of the Epistles. Saul/Paul’s story is among the more surprising conversion stories in the Bible, but isn’t indispensable (nor anywhere near as good as Saint Augustine’s in his Confessions).
From that point, it’s epistle after epistle until you get to John’s Book of Revelation. Paul wrote thirteen (fourteen if you attribute the perhaps-anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews to him), the saints Jude and James each wrote one, Peter wrote two, and John three. Paul’s Epistles are all named for the audience they were written for; the others are named after their authors. Each of them is pretty much just a mishmash of sermony stuff, and they’re much better taken in bits than as wholes. For that reason, I’ll summarize the stuff that’s new and especially important and then point out my favorite elements. Speed Bible!
Paul’s Epistle to the Romans argues that everything’s predestined (8:29) and that we’re all sinners and can be saved only by God’s mercy, summed up with the cheery “There is none righteous, no, not one” (3:10). But it also has Paul’s incredible confession of his failure to live up to his own morality: “That which I do, I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I” (7:15). Ouch.
The First Letter to Corinthians has more great lines than any of the other letters, like this reminder to us all of how much we should be thankful for (and humbled by): “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” (4:7) or this sobering (but true) bit of epistemology: “If any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know” (8:2). There are also the famous quotes: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (13:11–12); “O death, where is they sting?” (15:55), and my all-time favorite (expressing the suffering of he who wants terribly to be united with God but is stuck, for the time being at least, in the world’s confusion and suffering): “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (13:12). Sadly, it also contains some idiotic misogyny; search it for “woman” if you want to get ticked off.
The Second Letter to Corinthians has the well-known “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (3:6). Paul also disses the Old Testament, calling it a “veil” taken away by Christ (2:14). He’s much harsher toward the OT than any of the other apostles. But he does call mortal life “our light affliction which is but for a moment” (4:17)—that’s gorgeous.
The Epistles to Galatians and Ephesians have more damning and negativity, but Philippians has the lovely “I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need” (4:12).
Colossians has the elegant incitement to “walk in wisdom toward them who are without, redeeming the time” (4:5).
The Second Epistle to Thessalonians has another perplexing, whose-fault-is-it-anyway line: “God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned” (2:11–12).
Timothy 1 humorously says that a bishop should not be a “striker” or a “brawler” (3:3)—no mention of kiddie porn? It also takes most of the fun out of things, saying that “she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth” (5:6). It does, however, have the famous maxim: “The love of money is the root of all evil” (6:10).
You might want to ask about this line in Philemon: “The bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother” (1:7).
Hebrews is not exactly my favorite, saying first, “What son is he whom the father chasteneth not?” (12:7) then later blaming Esau “who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright” (12:16). He was starving! His brother put the gun to his head! I’m sorry, but Esau’s okay in my book; I’ll take the consequences. It also contains the ultimate bumper-sticker quote: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (13:8).
The General Epistle of James has some good advice: “Be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath” (1:19). It also has this exquisite passage: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not” (James 4:1–2) and this humbler, “What is your life? It is even a vapour?” (4:14).
The First Epistle of Peter infamously calls women the “weaker vessel” (3:7), and the Second has the Bible’s great recipe: “Add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity” (1:5–7). Bake at 350°F and you might get saved.
The First Epistle General of John has two stand-out lines: “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (2:15) and “Let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love” (4:7–8).
The unpleasant General Epistle of Jude contains a bubbly prognostication for sinners: that they will be as “trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever” (1:12–13). That’s me!
Finally we get to the end: the psychotic, psychedelic, harrowing, last-days celestial uh-oh, that is, the Revelation of St. John the Divine. This you have to read. I mean, it’s the end of the world and everything. You don’t want to miss that.
John’s vision begins with Christ as a man with eyes of flame and a sword coming out of his mouth (helps with grapefruit). The Savior allows John to see the throne of heaven, complete with twenty-four supplicating elders, four bizarro beasts, and God sitting there shining like some crazy diamond (oh wait, that was Syd Barrett …). In God’s hand is a book with seven seals, and for a minute John thinks no one will be able to open the book, but then 100 million angels start singing (later we find out that only 144,000 people will be saved, so where are all these goody-goodies coming from?) and the Lamb comes to open the thing.
With the first four seals, the horses of the apocalypse start riding, and by the sixth the sun turns black and the moon turns to blood, the stars fall (no horn this time), “and the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together” (6:14)—whoa. Not surprisingly, “Every free man hid … and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb” (6:16–17). Of the Lamb? It’s beginning to sound like the rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Then John writes, “I saw another angel ascending … to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea” (7:2)—somehow I suspect he’s going to do a good job. Angels mark the heads of the 144,000 predestined elect, but for everyone else things are about to get rather less cozy (I’m afraid, Professor Murnighan, your name does not seem to be on my list …).
With the opening of the seventh seal “there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour” (8:1). That can’t be good. And then we have this to look forward to: “Men [shall] seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee them.”
Then a bottomless pit opens and out flies a horde of scorpion-tailed locusts shaped like horses with the faces of men—no joke (9:2–10)—but still men “repented not” (9:20). What are they waiting for, exactly, horse-faced scorpions with human asses?
Then the thunder speaks (giving T. S. Eliot one of his section titles for “The Waste Land”), but John is told not to write what it says. My best guess is that it sounded something like what the house said in The Amityville Horror: “GET … OUT!”
“And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth, lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware … that there should be time no longer” (10:5–6). Houston, we have a problem.
After that, John writes down a lot of shit that even God couldn’t explain (13). The Holy Spirit was chewing some interesting leaves when he dictated that chapter.
In 14, we find out that Babylon “made all nations drink the wine of the wrath of her fornication,” which I suspect is the most mixed metaphor in the history of script (14:8). Christ then comes bearing a sickle and reaps the earth (14:14–16), but then an angel goes and does the same three verses later (Christ is clearly a pretty shoddy earth-reaper), and from the winepress of God’s wrath comes blood (14:20). No surprise there.
Angels pour out the seven golden vials of God’s wrath, creating sores, killing all life in the sea, turning rivers to blood, scorching men with fire, making everything dark, and causing men to gnaw their tongues for pain—but still men repented not. Then frogs assemble all the sinners in Armageddon and the seventh vial releases a voice, saying, “It is done” (16:17), and an earthquake hits “such as was not since men were upon the earth … and every island fled away, and the mountains were not found” (16:18–20).
Next up is the whore of Babylon, who has quite the impressive tattoo on her forehead—you really have to check it out (17:5). The fall of her city is prophesied.
Then a white horse comes down from heaven, ridden by the Word of God, who had “on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS” (19:16)—that makes his clothes easy to identify at the laundromat. He casts Satan into a lake of fire, from which he is cast into a bottomless pit by an angel (why do they have to keep redoing Christ’s work?), though he will be released a thousand years later “for a little season” (20:3). Springtime on Parole for Satan? I see a musical here. …
Now things get serious. The dead are brought before the heavenly throne, the book of life is opened, and “whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (20:13). Yeah, I’ll see you there.
John then gets to see a new heaven on earth, the new Jerusalem, bride to Christ (that’ll be some honeymoon), and says, “And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold … God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done” (21:3–6). All very nice for the chosen 144,000.
“And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (22:17). I’ll be feeling rather thirsty in the lake of fire by then.
Christ’s last words: “Surely I come quickly” (22:20). Take your time, really.