-- 2016: THE END OF IGNORANCE? --

-Good morning. Do you want a stamp?

-Yes please.

-Where are you from? Where did you start your camino?

-I am from the UK. I started in St. Jean. I have already walked 800 kilometers. Tomorrow I will get to Santiago. Where are you from?

-I am from Belgium, but I have lived in Spain for 35 years. Since 2 years I live in Arzúa, the town that you just through.

                                    

-Are you the philosopher?

-Yes indeed. Have you seen my messages in Ribadiso?

-I have. They are great. I liked, “Food for thought:there is fast food but no fast wisdom”

-Here you first find 12 ‘TRAVEL BROADENS THE MIND’ quotes. I found them on the Internet. I googled ‘travel’ and ‘quotes’ and then selected the ones that I thought go best with the camino.

-I like the quote of Mark Twain.

-Then there are 14 questions about PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION.

-“If the founders of our religions came back, would they recognize their work?”

-Next you have 14 messages. Each message somehow prepares you for the following.

-That’s a good one, “A bad understanding of reality (not seeing all causes and effects) divides people. A good understanding of reality unites them again.”

-And then there is a philosophical challenge. I demonstrate that the dogma of the Virgin Birth dogma has its origin in a misinterpretation of the first book of the New Testament. The first chapter of the gospel of Saint Matthew holds an enigma which made the religious authorities assume that Jesus was born of a virgin, but actually says who was Jesus’ father.

-Wow…                                                                                         

-I am neither a believer nor an anti-believer. I am a seeker: I question own ideas as much as I question others and I question science as much as I question religion.

-A lot of the pilgrims are seekers.

-That is why I am here. I want to share my thoughts with people who are ready for new ideas.

-Now in regards to the Bible, I do not assume that what it says is the truth. When I see a message on a wall that says, “He who read this is crazy!” I do not assume that I am crazy. So it is not because the Bible says it says the truth that I assume that it says the truth. However, I do consider that the Bible is a sacred book, but that is because originally calling a book ‘sacred’ meant to recognize that it holds secrets. The words ‘sacred’ and ‘secret’ have a common origin. They come from the latin verb ‘segregare’ which means to segregate or to separate.

-Interesting… 
                                                                             

-On what do you base your hypothesis regarding the origin of the dogma of the Virgin Birth?

-The idea of Jesus’ virgin birth does not come from Jesus. You have to realize:

1, that in the whole New Testament you cannot find that Jesus ever said he was born of a virgin.

2, that Saint Paul, who wrote half of the books of the New Testament, doesn’t mention the virgin birth. He even contradicts it when he says, “Jesus was a descendant of David according to the flesh”.

3, that two of the four official gospels –Saint Mark and Saint John – do not mention the virgin birth.

and 4, that the two gospels – Sain Matthew and Saint Luke – that do refer to a mystery in regards to Jesus’ birth offer genealogies for Jesus that do not coincide with each other.

-I know that. I once compared them myself. They even disagree about Joseph’s father. Do you know why?

-That is very simple. Because of extramarital relations some lineages are real while others are supposed. The person you think is your father is not necessarily your biological father. You can be sure of the female lineage of your mother, always from mother to daughter, but to be sure of the male lineage of your father, always from father to son, with each generation that you go back in time you have to make a DNA test.

-That’s why Jews consider that someone is a Jew when his mother is a Jew, isn’t it?

-That is right. The Bible recognizes that difference by basing real lineages on the ‘father begot son’ principle and using for supposed lineages formulas such as, “Cain knew his wife and she became pregnant and gave birth to”.Saint Matthew and Saint Luke offer different genealogies because the former offers his true lineage and the latter his supposed lineage. Saint Luke says, “And Jesus was, as people believed, the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, and so on...” People not only believed that Jesus was the son of Joseph, but also that that Josepth was the son of Heli, and so on and so on... 
-I get it.

-Saint Luke offers an additional generation between Adam and Abraham. Whereas Genesis says that Arpachshad begat Shelah, Saint Luke indicates that people thought that Shelah was the son of Cainan and that Cainan was the son of Arpachsad. Saint Luke must have been familiar with the genealogies in Genesis. Therefore, he suggests that Arpachsad first had Cainan, and later when Cainan became an adult had Shelah form his daughter-in-law, Cainan’s wife.

-Wow…

-That is not the only case of a father-in-law / daughter-in-law relationship. Saint Luke not only offers an additional generation between Enoch and Abraham, but also between Abraham and David. We actually also find a father-in-law / daughter-in-law relationship in Genesis. Judah had Perez from Tamar, his daughter-in-law.

-I have read about Judah and Tamar in Genesis. It is an interesting story.

-Saint Matthew refers to several prophecies coming true in Jesus because the Jews believed in prophecies. In his first chapter he refers to a prophecy regarding a virgin that gave birth to a son. This is why, many centuries ago, the religious authorities assumed that Jesus was born of a virgin. However, these people ignored that Saint Matthew refers to a prophecy in Isaiah and that this prophet originally mentioned  a young woman and not to a virgin.

-I know that. They say that Saint Matthew mistranslated that word.

-He did so on purpose to make the religious authorities assume that Jesus was born of a virgin. You have to realize that when Saint Matthew’s gospel appears, a long time after it was written, the religious authorities were no longer descendants of Jews, who were familiar with books that hold secrets, but of pagans, who were familiar with pagan ideas. One was that of ‘A god being born of a virgin’, another that of ‘A Messiah being born of a virgin’. The egyptians were familiar with the former idea while the persians were familiar with the latter. To attract the pagans to Christianity the gospels associated Jesus with several miracles, because that was what pagans believed in. 

                                 

-So who is Jesus’ father?

-To discover this we only have to read the genealogies for Jesus in the gospel of Saint Matthew. It starts with Abraham and ends with Jesus. What is intriguing is that although it is based on the father begot son principle it ends with, “Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary who gave birth to Jesus.”

Also intriguing is that in this male lineage appear four women – Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Batsheba – and when we consult the Old Testament we find that all had extramarital relations. This information prepares us for what we are going to discover about Mary.

And the end of this genealogy Saint Matthew says, “So the amount of generations are: fourteen from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian deportation, and fourteen from the Babylonian deportation to  Jesus. Saint Matthew obviously encourages us to divide these generations in three columns. The traditional way to do so is the following: Abraham / David ; David / Josiah and Jechoniah / Jesus. But this division is inconsistent because it repeats David in the second column, but not Josiah in the third column.

-You are right.
-When we repeat Josías in the third column we see that there are already fourteen generations between him and Joseph, so if Josiah marks the deportation to Babylon and there are fourteen generation between the deportation to Babylon and Jesus, Joseph and Jesus form part of the same generation, which means that they were brothers, and that is possible if Jacob first had Joseph and later, when Joseph was an adult, had Jesus from Joseph’s wife Mary.

-Wow…

-The Jews believed that the Messiah would be a descendant of David. In case that Jesus was the son of Jacob, the genealogy in Saint Matthew makes sense as it demonstrates that Jesus was a descendant of David. In case that Jesus was born of a virgin it makes no sense, because Jesus then had nothing to do with that lineage.

-Saint Matthew starts his genealogy from Abraham and not from David. Why is that?

-In case he had started from David and would have finished by saying, “So the amount of generations are: 14 from David to the deportation to Babylon and 14 from the deportation to Babylon and Jesus” the traditional division David/Josiah and Jechoniah/Jesus, would not have been inconsistent and we wouldn’t have an enigma.

But that is not the only reason. Saint Matthew also suggests that every 14 generations this special lineage attracts a special spirit. Also Josiah, who marks the deportation to Babylon, is special because he imposed an important religious reformation. Saint Matthew thus encourages us to look up who is separated 14 generation from Abraham going back in time. This is Enoch and he as well is special. Genesis says he walked with God and that God took him when he was 365 years.

-But why does Saint Matthew not openly say who was Jesus’ father?

-The Jews stoned adulterers to death and had no respect for children born of extramarital relations.

-Who do you think created this enigma?

-Jesus.

-Jesus?

-Yes. One reason for assuming so, is that you have to be a genius to create a mystery that first makes people assume it says one thing and many centuries later reveals it says something very different; another is that this enigma holds confidential information which only his mother and father must have know.

-But why would Jesus Christ create an enigma that embarrasses the authorities of Christianity?

-The revelation of this enigma not only embarrasses the authorities of Christianity, but also of Islam and of Judaism.

-How?

-Those of Christianity because they have studied the New Testament for centuries and have not discovered its secrets; those of Islam because the prophet Mohammed said that Jesus was a prophet who was born of a virgin; and those of Judaism because an exhaustive study of the genealogies demonstrates that the person who created the genealogies in the gospels had discovered the secrets in Genesis, which is something they still ignore today. They still ignore that the genealogies of Cain and of Seth refer to the same family tree and that by processing all the information in Genesis regarding family ties one can discover several cases of incest, endogamy and extramaritual relations.

-I knew that for Muslims Jesus is not the son of God, but a prophet. I didn’t realize that Mohamed said that Jesus was born of a virgin.

-Saint Matthew's enigma actually also embarrasses all the atheist and agnostic Bible scholars. Although they studied the Bible in a rational way, they as well got deceived by what these texts seem to say, when in fact they say something different. They have as well ignored that the most important characteristic of lineages is that because of extramarital relations some are real and other are supposed.

-Why did Jesus plan to embarrass the authorities of some faraway future generation?

-Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.” He realized that religious authorities often defend misinterpretations and that a religion suffers tremendously after the death of its founder. Jesus realized that it was very important that at a certain time people again learned to think for themselves.

-Why does this enigma reveal its secrets today?

-There is something special about this period. Now that we have weapons of mass-destruction we can clearly see that a society that doesn’t live in harmony, like our own, is bound to eventually destroy itself. When we reflect upon evolution we see that technology not only makes weapons become continually more sophisticated, but also enables an always smaller percentage of the world population to appropriate an always larger percentage of all available resources, thus increasing the tension between the different groups of people, and between them and their environment.

-I am aware of that.

-Whereas our intellectuals – scientists, philosophers, politicians, theologians – ignore that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is eventually bound to destroy itself, Genesis, which is at the origin of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, recognizes this reality: ten generations after putting an end to harmony (Paradise), our ancestors almost completely destroyed themselves (the Great Flood).

-That’s an interesting interpretation of Genesis.

-Even more interesting is that to avoid our self-destruction we must ask why we have conflicts with other people and with our environment, and with Genesis saying that our ancestors put an end to harmony by eating a forbidden fruit, that is the same as asking what the forbidden fruit refers to.
-You are right. 
-To avoid our self-destruction we have to restore harmony. Jews consider that the Messiah will restore harmony. Christian consider that Jesus was the Messiah. Do you understand why this enigma is finally revealing its secrets?

-And what do you think the forbidden fruit refers to?

-Try to discover that for yourself.You already have so much to digest.

-There is fast food, but no fast wisdom.

-Read Genesis and ask all the questions this book encourages you to ask. Genesis not only associates harmony with staying away from a forbidden fruit, but also with a vegetarian diet. 

-That is right. God prescribed a vegetarian diet to Adam and Eve. I have never given any importance to that. Now that I think of it, harmony requires empathy, doesn’t it? And one reason for becoming a vegetarian is of course empathy. I will read Genesis again.

-Please do.

-You certainly have given me something to think of. Thank you for your time and for all the information. I have one more question. You are very passionate about this enigma in the gospel of Saint Matthew. Why do you think it is so important?

-Voltaire said that those who can make us believe absurdities can make us commit atrocities.

-A lot of people have been killed in the name of God. That is such a shame.

-That is why we need a better understanding of our religions. We have to question our prophets and learn to evaluate sacred books right. Buddha once said: “We should not believe in things just because we heard them, nor in traditions simply because they are old, nor in rumours divulged by gossipers, nor in words that have been written by scholars, nor in visions or inspiration that is supposedly divine, nor in what seems logically necessary, nor in the mere authority of scholars and teachers, but we should consider all oral and written teachings that corroborate our reason and conscience.”

-He was a wise man.
-The third commandment says,”You shall not misuse the name of Jahweh, your God, because Yahweh will not leave unpunished anyone who misuses his name.” This commandment warns people not to use the name of God to disobey the other commandments.

-I like the idea of a God punishing religious authorities that preach violence.

-I am not only passionate about the mystery in the first book of the New Testament, but I am also passionate about the mystery in the first book of the Old Testament. For me it is clear that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself. If tomorrow we have a nuclear war, it does not matter whether one is rich or poor, progressive or conservative, a good person or a bad person, or a believer or a non-believer, because we will all die. Therefore, instead of taking care only of our own wellbeing, we now have to take care of all people’s wellbeing. We are all in the same boat and if that boat sinks that will be the end of all of us. Other people manage to ignore this danger. I can’t.

                                  Apertura Mental

-Why do you think people ignore this danger?

-For lots of reasons. One is inercia. People believe that our society is not going to destroy itself, because it has not done so in the past. That is like driving a car after a few drinks and not worrying about having an accident because you have often driven drunk and not yet had an accident.

-I see your point.

Furthermore, who says that mankind has not destroyed itself in the past? The fact that mankind is able to destroy itself today means it may already have done so in the past.

-That makes sense.                                                                        

-Another reason is that people have a ‘slave’ attidude. They think that their masters – the authorities – will take care of things. They don’t realize that their survival is their responsibility. And yet another reason is that most people are prisoners of the present. They don’t realize that when we learn from the past, we can understand the present and that when we alter our behavior we get a different future.

-But what about Carpe Diem? Is it not better to enjoy the present instead of thinking so much about the past and the future?

-I study the past, I care about the future and I enjoy the present. The meaning of life is to have a good time. However, to avoid unpleasant experiences, we have to learn everything there is to learn about ourselves, the other people and our environment, because if we don’t treat ourselves, the other people and our environment properly, sooner or later we will suffer the consequences. Therefore, the meaning of life is closely related to understanding the nature of the forces that govern the universe. And since these forces can be regarded as ‘God’, we can say that the meaning of life is learning to respect God. These forces – God – teach us that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself.

-‘Forces’ is plural. Is that how you see God?                           

-My idea of God is the idea that Albert Einstein had of God. There are many laws of nature but all follow one principle: that of cause and effect.

-I like that.

-The Christian idea of ‘God the father’ is something I dislike enormously. In the first place, because associating God with a gender is ridiculous and says a lot about our religious authorities. And in the second place, because the idea of a ‘God the father’ makes it difficult to associate God with the principle of cause and effect. A lot of fathers behave like a governor who must be obeyed without question. When we see God as a father, what matters is not why there was a forbidden fruit or what the forbidden fruit refers to, but that God forbade to eat it and that Adam and Eve deserved a punishment for disobeying.

-Does the God in the Bible refer to cause and effect?

-When you question the God in Genesis you discover the principle of cause and effect. What caused the Flood: God or people? What do you think the Ten Commandments are about? Actually the whole Bible teaches us not to do to others what you is hateful to ourselves. The law of an eye and an eye and a tooth for a tooth refers to how karma works. If you read the Bible you will find that the first mention refers to a pregnant woman.

-Do you believe in reincarnation?

-I cannot really say that I believe in it, but I am convinced that if you are not familiar with reincarnation you cannot understand the Bible.

-Really?

-Read Genesis with a questioning mind and you will understand what I am saying.

-I find it confusing that one of the commandments tells us not to kill and later Moses comes up with laws demanding to kill homosexuals etcetera.

-Genesis warns against the descendents of Levi. Moses’ mother was a daughter of Levi and Moses’ father a grandson of Levi.

-I said that I had one more question, but each time you answer a question, I think of another.

-That is what wisdom is about. When you ask the right questions, the answers lead to new questions and this dynamic eventually leads to a better comprehension of the subjects you are dealing with. Wisdom has nothing to do with knowing a lot. When you only learn the answers, you are not thinking for yourself. And when when do not think for yourself, you are the slave of those who have come up with the answers.

-Thank you again for your time. My name is Matt. What is yours?

-Bruno. Here is my card.

-Bruno Lernout. “Cheese and Religion:What do they have in common?”

-It is an article that I wrote more than a year ago. You find it on my blog, but you will have to scroll down a bit. It is about history and language and it has a funny story about a sculpture you find in the cathedral of Santiago.

-I am intrigued. I will read it. Good luck Bruno!

-‘Buen camino’ Matt!