The Bible is
a book of wisdom. It invites the reader to ask certain questions whose answers
lead to new questions, and this dynamic enables him to discover its secrets and
attain wisdom. Its main protagonist is God. God refers to the forces that
govern the universe. When one understands God, one understands why things
happen the way they do. To be able to discover why things occur the way they do,
one must however consider the idea that everything in the universe is based on
the principle of cause and effect.
The Bible is
special. Although only people with a questioning mind (seekers) can discover
its secrets, all people can benefit from its stories as they help to improve their
relations with the other people and with the environment. Hillel, a famous
Jewish religious leader of the first century BC, said that the Bible teaches us
not to do to others what is hateful to us. He considered that the Bible teaches
us empathy; that its stories encourage us to put ourselves in the place of other
people (our opponents).
The main
idea of the Bible, which is often overlooked, is that our ancestors once lived
in harmony and that they put an end to it by changing their diet: Adam and Eve,
who were vegetarians in the days of paradise, were expelled from it for eating
a forbidden fruit. Therefore, people who would like to live in harmony with the
other people and with their environment should question the omnivore diet and wonder
what the forbidden fruit refers to.
What the
Bible says is not necessarily true. It is not because the Bible claims to tell
the truth, that what it says is true. When someone writes on a wall, “He who
reads this is stupid”, one has to be real stupid to believe this.
It is not
because Genesis associates harmony with a vegetarian diet that all people whose
religion is based on this first book of the Bible – Judaism, Christianity and
Islam – should become vegetarians. However, when one longs for harmony – for a
paradise on earth or one after death – it makes a lot of sense to reflect upon
the possible benefits of such a diet, and even more when one considers that the
Bible is a sacred book. One reason for becoming a vegetarian is empathy – vegetarians
are able to put themselves in the position of the animals people feed on – and that
is essential for living in harmony with the other people.
It is also not
because religious authorities claim that the Bible holds the word of God and
says the truth, that we should believe this. Like all other people, authorities
make mistakes. Whereas most people accept what authorities say – believers
accept what religious authorities say; sceptics and cynics accept what
scientific authorities say –, people with a questioning mind evaluate ideas for
themselves. They question religious authorities as much as scientific
authorities.
When we
accept that the Bible is not an authority by itself, we can read it like we
read whatever other book. Instead of immediately judging whether its
information is realistic are not – the old ages of the patriarchs, for instance
–, we can wonder why the author invented them and what they contribute to the
stories. One of the consequences of these old ages is that many generations
coincided in time.
When we read
the Bible with a questioning mind, we find that often what we at first think
the Bible says, which is what religious authorities say it says, and often what
that book makes us believe it says, is not necessarily what it really says. Genesis,
for instance, does not say that Adam and Eve were the first people. It only
says that they were the first people who put an end to harmony.
The Bible
also does not say that Cain begat Irad. It says that Cain knew his wife and
that she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. Therefore, this Enoch may be the
same as the one we find in the genealogy that goes from Adam to Noah. Once we
realize that the Bible (Genesis) suggests that Yared begat Enoch from Cain’s
wife, we discover that the genealogies in this book refer to several cases of
incest, endogamy and extramarital relations.
An example
of an incestuous relation is that of Rebekah, the wife of Isaac and the mother
of Jacob, who are direct ancestors of King David and of Jesus. When we process
the information regarding the genealogies in Genesis we discover that Milcah had
Rebekah from her son Betuel. Since Milcah was the sister of Lot, and Genesis says
that he committed incest with his two daughters, this discovery should not
surprise us.
Can one find
in the Bible whatever one wants to find? The fact that in the past, people have
used the Bible both to defend and to condemn the same idea – slavery, for
instance – shows that this book can be interpreted in many ways. However, this
does not mean that one can find in it whatever one wants to find. One can not
find, for instance, that Adam and Eve ate other creatures in the days of
paradise. What is true, however, is that one can ignore in the Bible whatever
one wants to ignore. One can ignore that Genesis asociates harmony with a
vegetarian diet. One can ignore that the genealogies in the Bible refer to
incest, endogamy and extramarital relations.
Wisdom is
not so much about knowing a lot of things, but about processing information
right. To discover the secrets in the genealogies that appear in the Bible, we
not only have to process all the information these books offer us regarding the
familie ties between its different protagonists, but also take into account
that because of the high ages several generations coincided in time.
Ignorance is
not about not knowing a lot of things – Albert Einstein said, “We are all
ignorant, but do not all ignore the same things” –, but about deliberately
ignoring information. That is why ‘ignorant’ is a synonym for ‘stupid’. Some
people know a lot of things, but ignore what is most important: that everybody
is somehow family of everybody else and that the resources should enable all of
us to make a living. They deliberately ignore that since the earth is limited,
and therefore as well its resources, the bigger portion of the resources some
appropriate, the smaller the portion that is left for all the others.
People also
deliberately ignore certain information in the Bible. Religious authorities often
stress the fact that God expelled Adam and Eve from paradise for eating a
forbidden fruit, but ignore the fact that Adam and Eve were vegetarians in the
days of paradise and that Genesis therefore asociates harmony with a vegetarian
diet, and the end of harmony with a change in their diet.
Christian
authorities have often been so much attracted to material wealth (they have
befriended the rich and have been rich themselves), that they ignored that
Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to make it through the eye of a needle
than for a rich person to enter paradise. They have also often judged people,
thus ignoring that Jesus said, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”
Wisdom requires
humility. To be able to discover the answer to certain mysteries, we first have
to recognize that there are mysteries; that there are things that we do not yet
understand. Arrogance goes together with ignorance. People who can not accept
that there are ideas that they do not yet understand either ignore them, consider
that they make no sense, or give them an unsatisfactory explanation (by
creating a dogma or an axioma).
Authorities
– religious or scientific – are not reknown for their humility. On the
contrary, they are often arrogant. Hans Christian
Anderson’s story of the Emperor’s Suit explains very well how intellectuals can
fool themselves. When the emperor’s tailor says that he has made a suit for the
emperor from a special material that only intelligent people can see, all
praise its beauty although the tailor hadn’t used any fabric at all. It is
therefore a child that points out that the emperor walks around naked. A lot of
people have such an ego that they are unable to admit that there are ideas that
they do not understand.
A lot of the
authorities that study the genealogies in the Bible claim that these make no
sense. That is arrogant. They ignore the fact that because of extramarital
relations some lineages are real and others are supposed and that the Bible
recognizes this reality. They ignore that because of this Jews consider that
someone is a Jews when his mother is a Jew. One can have doubts about the
father, but not about the mother.
Whereas religious authorities are arrogant for not admitting that
they do not understand certain ideas in the Bible and converting their
erroneous interpretations into dogmas, scientific authorities are arrogant for
not only questioning these erroneous interpretations, but also the Bible and
religion itself. Religious and scientific authorities both ignore that the
Bible holds secrets and that originally religion encouraged people to discover
these secrets.
Most people find it difficult to consider that the Bible holds
secrets because they can neither accept that there are ideas that they can not
yet understand, nor that someone would prefer to keep certain ideas a secret
from them.
Why does the
Bible (Genesis) hold secrets? Why does it sometimes make people believe it says
one thing when in reality it says something quite different? This is because
not all people can immediately understand its wisdom – to grasp certain ideas
people have to be ready for them / there is fast food, but no fast wisdom – and
because it is better to avoid that certain knowledge falls into the hands of
people who would use it to harm other people or their environment.
The Bible was
created as a Trojan horse to help pagans become familiar with the idea of an only
God. Its authors wanted its messianic message – restoring harmony on earth –to
reach as many people as possible. This message not only had to be attractive to
the poor, who would benefit most when people restored harmony, but also to the
rich and powerful, who could easily regard a Messiah as a threat, and therefore
oppose the messianic religions that are based on the Bible.
The Bible
gives a lot of importance to vegetarianism, but does not openly condemn eating
other creatures because it was created to attract people, and not to scare them
away. If the Bible had questioned the omnivore diet too openly, our ancestors
would not have accepted it as a sacred book.
The religious
authorities who wrote those books were very different from the religious authorities
that later appropriated them and interpreted them. Those who wrote the
important books of the NT, for instance, were Jews who had discovered the
secrets in the OT and who were therefore familiar with books that hold secrets
and with the idea that someone enlightened is able to create a mystery that
reveals itself many generations later. The Christian authorities who later interpreted
those books, and who are responsible for several dogmas and misinterpretations,
were no longer Jews, but descendants of pagans who were still very familiar
with previous beliefs such as, for instance, that of a God being born of a
virgin.
The Bible
interacts with mankind’s evolution. When we reflect upon our evolution we see that
the creation of nuclear weapons is a milestone in mankind’s
history. It not only teaches us that we are capable of destroying ourselves,
but also that a society that doesn’t live in harmony – like ours – is
eventually bound to do so: weapons continually become more sophisticated and
once there are weapons of mass destruction it is only a matter of time before
they are used. This does not mean that we will destroy ourselves in the near
future, but that to guarantee our survival we must discover why we have
conflicts with each other and with our environment.
Technology
enables an ever smaller group of people to get hold of an increasingly larger
proportion of all the available resources, thus creating many problems for
everyone else. This in turn leads to increasing levels of tension among people,
and between them and their environment. And when this tension increases too
much, it explodes.
Peace is
not the same as harmony. Peace eventually leads to war because it does not put
an end to the struggle for the resources. The only difference is that during
days of peace people struggle for the resources by keeping themselves to
certain rules. Since people who are cut off from the resources will eventually
question the benefits of keeping themselves to these rules, peace hold the germ
of the next conflict.
That a
society that doesn’t live in harmony is eventually bound to destroy itself is the
most important lesson that people have to learn. Whereas our
intellectuals –scientists, philosophers, politicians, theologians– ignore this,
Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, recognizes this reality: 10
generations after putting an end to harmony (Paradise), our ancestors almost
completely destroyed themselves (the Great Flood). After that catastrophe,
mankind's evolution started all over again. The survivors went on with their
lives as before. And since they continued to live in conflict with each other and
with their environment we now find ourselves again close to our
self-destruction.
Since today mankind is
able to destroy itself, we can wonder whether it has already done so in the
past. The fact that Genesis recognizes the most important lesson that mankind
has to learn, tells us that it was written by someone who foresaw that one day
mankind would find itself on the verge of destroying itself and that that he wrote
Genesis to help mankind avoid doing so. How? By not only informing them of the
ultimate effect, but also of the ultimate cause of not living in harmony.
Since the
Bible interacts with mankind’s evolution, it is now that we find
ourselves close to destroying ourselves that this book reveals its secrets. The
main question this book encourages us to ask is what the forbidden fruit refers
to – Genesis does not say it is an apple – and that is the same as asking why
we have conflicts with each other and with our environment.
Since the Messiah is
expected to restore harmony on Earth, we can assume that he will tell us what
is the ultimate cause of our conflicts or what the forbidden fruit refers to.
Christians assume that
Jesus was the Messiah. The Jews find this incomprehensible, since he did not
restore harmony on earth, which is what they expected of the Messiah. This idea
however makes sense when we consider the principle of reincarnation and assume
that a reincarnation of Jesus – his Second Arrival – will restore harmony on
earth.
The Apocalypses associates
Jesus’ second arrival with the end of times – when mankind is close to
destroying itself – and with a revelation: whereas its last book refers to the
end of times, Apocalypses is greek for ‘revelation’. The Messiah that the Jews
are awaiting is the same person as Jesus’ Second Arrival that the Christians
are awaiting. We thus see that an important idea from religions that are not
based on the Bible help us understand the secrets in that book.
In regards to the
secrets in the Bible, we must also take into account that the first books of
the OT were originally written in ancient Hebrew, a
consonant language. When centuries later the vowels were added, these texts
were interpreted, as the same combination of consonants often led to several
words.
It
may surprise many that ancient Hebrew held no vowels, but also the first
alphabet did not recognize vowels. This is because our subconscious, which
functions like a very powerfull database, files words – associates them with
each other – in function of the consonants that compose them. Therefore, in all
vocabularies words with the same combination of consonants have a lot in common
with each other. This means that we must associate ‘genesis’ (Greek: beginning)
with ‘gnosis’ (Greek: hidden knowledge).
Now
that we are referring to the secrets of our vocabulary we can point out that calling
the Bible a ‘sacred’ book originally meant to recognize that it holds
secrets – ‘sacred’ and ‘secret’ both come from the verb
‘to segregate’ – and that ‘religion’, which come from the Latin word ‘relegere’
and means ‘to re-read’, refers to reading the Bible time and again to discover
its secrets.
