Tell me a story

Every now and then, I will publish a story I wrote for our school magazine, the CHNtimes (www.chn.nl). Underneath the first one.

I had a grandmother I had some problem with. I was raised in a Roman Catholic environment and our family followed the Roman Catholic Church rules. But she was, as we used to say in those days, “nothing”, which meant that she didn’t belong to any church. As a 10 year old boy I asked my mother how it could be that grandmother would never go to heaven: she didn’t pray and go to church, she never got any sacrament, but she was the greatest and most lovely woman I knew (apart from my mother, of course). Now that I am in my fifties, I gradually get able to combine these “contradictory” facts, by means of three books I recently read.

Last year I published in the CHNkrant an article about a book that gave evidence that Jesus was, in fact, Julius Caesar (book A, see below). This sounds as an irrational blasphemy, but when you read the book then you must admit that an overwhelming avalanche of evidence demonstrated the similarities between names, people, situations, symbols, stories etc. etc. on the one hand of Caesar’s life and on the other hand of Jesus’ life. About Caesar much eyewitness materials have been written. About Jesus, outside the gospels, there is nothing of that kind, so it was clear to the author that Jesus had been modelled according to Julius Caesar.

A second book, that I read but not wrote about, is book B (see below). In this book the author gives evidence of the finding that Jesus probably existed a long time before the time that the gospels place Him in. (approximately 100 B.C.) His story doesn’t clash with the “Jesus-is-Caesar” theory. A very important clue is, that the letters of Paul have been written (long) before the four gospels of Luke, Matthew, Marc and John have been written. From childhood on, I lived in the supposition that Paul evangelised after Jesus’ life, as it had been recorded by the gospel writers. The study of written materials and the content of Paul’s letters both proved that these letters are of far earlier date than the gospels. So, for instance, Paul doesn’t refer to any important gospel event other than Jesus’ death and resurrection, whereas Jesus spoke many wise words and did many miracles.

So these are the historical facts as they appear to us by historical research and content analysis of the sources. Much is open to uncertainty, and many stories seem to be otherwise than the gospels and Christian religion tell us. I found this a big problem, until I read a third book about Jesus: book C (see below).

The author of this book is a recognised scholar of the philosophical school of Turgenjev and Ouspensky. He makes it clear that there are two kinds of “truths” that are connected to each other: the historical, observable truth, and the “higher truth” by which the observable facts are sustained. We modern Westerners do it the other way around: something is only truth if it is sustained by observable facts. People who lived around 50 A.D. were used to tell each other stories in order to reveal this higher truth to each other. That’s also why Jesus answered questions of his pupils and critics with a parable, and not with an explanation or with concrete guidelines. Historical dates are here totally irrelevant, what is relevant is what people experience when they are told a story. Their knowledge about natural processes confines itself to how agricultural plants are grown, how wine is made, fish is caught, etc. There are indications, that the stories in the gospels are intended to make Christianity accessible for ordinary people, by “wrapping the higher truth” in concrete events and stories. During history, the stories were used by the churches to “define” the truth, by considering the wrapping equally essential as the content. The author shows, however, that every paragraph, every sentence in the gospels has a specific meaning, revealing valuable indications about the relationship of man with God (our Father), about the higher truth wrapped in the stories, comparisons, parables, and miracles. He also shows that many concrete materials (stone, wine, water, etc.) and situations have meanings that were clear to people from that time, but not to us anymore.

The whole gospel could have been re-written in explanatory words, without any parable or miracle. It would get at least four times thicker than it is now, and give less information, instead of more. Information, that we can grasp by hearing the stories, and not by listening to explanations and interpretations. Again, for a good understanding we must know the meaning that the used materials, symbols and situations had for people of that time. It shows again, that God provided us with a capability to understand, but we have neglected this capability for centuries by adhering too much to the factual truth of the gospels, which was not their message, as the author shows. Jesus said: “He that has ears to hear, let him hear!” (Luke 8, 8-10). The book of Nicoll was a great help to understand why my grandmother would “go to heaven” indeed, the other two books helped in understanding this.

Book A: Francesco Carotta: War Jesus Caesar? Goldmann, München, 1999 (Also in Dutch, but not in English available)
Book B: Alvar Ellegard: Jesus 100 years B.C., Century, London, 1999; in Dutch: Jezus 100 jaar voor Chr., Tirion, Baarn, z.j.
Book C: Maurice Nicoll: The New Man – an interpretation of some parables and miracles of Christ, Eureka, Utrecht, 1999 (reprint from 1959); In Dutch: “De nieuwe Mens”, Miranda, Den Haag, 1985.