New Testament

• authors › distorted Hebrew history by transcendentalizing Jewish prophets

97:8.6New Tes­ta­ment au­thors and later Chris­tian writ­ers fur­ther com­pli­cated the dis­tor­tion of He­brew his­tory by their well-meant at­tempts to tran­scen­den­tal­ize the Jew­ish proph­ets. Thus has He­brew his­tory been dis­as­trously ex­ploited by both Jew­ish and Chris­tian writ­ers. Sec­u­lar He­brew his­tory has been thor­oughly dog­ma­tized. It has been con­verted into a fic­tion of sa­cred his­tory and has be­come in­ex­tri­ca­bly bound up with the moral con­cepts and re­li­gious teach­ings of the so-called Chris­tian na­tions.

• authors › distorted Hebrew history by transcendentalizing Jewish prophets

97:9.29And so does the truth about the Jew­ish peo­ple dis­close that much which has been re­garded as sa­cred his­tory turns out to be lit­tle more than the chron­i­cle of or­di­nary pro­fane his­tory. Ju­daism was the soil out of which Chris­tian­ity grew, but the Jews were not a mirac­u­lous peo­ple.

• Jesus’ avoidance of written records delayed writing

121:0.1Act­ing un­der the super­vi­sion of a com­mis­sion of twelve mem­bers of the United Broth­er­hood of Uran­tia Mid­way­ers, con­jointly spon­sored by the pre­sid­ing head of our or­der and the Mel­chiz­e­dek of rec­ord, I am the sec­ondary mid­wayer of one­time at­tach­ment to the Apos­tle An­drew, and I am au­tho­rized to place on rec­ord the nar­ra­tive of the life trans­ac­tions of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth as they were ob­served by my or­der of earth crea­tures, and as they were sub­se­quently par­tially re­corded by the hu­man sub­ject of my tem­po­ral guardian­ship. Know­ing how his Mas­ter so scrupu­lously avoided leav­ing writ­ten rec­ords be­hind him, An­drew stead­fastly re­fused to mul­ti­ply copies of his writ­ten nar­ra­tive. A sim­i­lar at­ti­tude on the part of the other apos­tles of Je­sus greatly de­layed the writ­ing of the Gospels.

• written in Greek; origin

121:8.2These New Tes­ta­ment rec­ords had their ori­gin in the fol­low­ing cir­cum­stances:

121:8.31. The Gospel by Mark. John Mark wrote the ear­li­est (ex­cept­ing the notes of An­drew), briefest, and most sim­ple rec­ord of Je­sus’ life. He pre­sented the Mas­ter as a min­is­ter, as man among men. Al­though Mark was a lad lin­ger­ing about many of the scenes which he de­picts, his rec­ord is in re­al­ity the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Si­mon Pe­ter. He was early as­so­ci­ated with Pe­ter; later with Paul. Mark wrote this rec­ord at the in­sti­ga­tion of Pe­ter and on the earnest pe­ti­tion of the church at Rome. Know­ing how con­sis­tently the Mas­ter re­fused to write out his teach­ings when on earth and in the flesh, Mark, like the apos­tles and other lead­ing dis­ci­ples, was hes­i­tant to put them in writ­ing. But Pe­ter felt the church at Rome re­quired the as­sis­tance of such a writ­ten nar­ra­tive, and Mark con­sented to un­der­take its prepa­ra­tion. He made many notes be­fore Pe­ter died in A.D. 67, and in ac­cor­dance with the out­line ap­proved by Pe­ter and for the church at Rome, he be­gan his writ­ing soon af­ter Pe­ter’s death. The Gospel was com­pleted near the end of A.D. 68. Mark wrote en­tirely from his own mem­ory and Pe­ter’s mem­ory. The rec­ord has since been con­sid­er­ably changed, nu­mer­ous pas­sages hav­ing been taken out and some later mat­ter added at the end to re­place the lat­ter one fifth of the orig­i­nal Gospel, which was lost from the first man­u­script be­fore it was ever copied. This rec­ord by Mark, in con­junc­tion with An­drew’s and Mat­thew’s notes, was the writ­ten ba­sis of all sub­se­quent Gospel nar­ra­tives which sought to por­tray the life and teach­ings of Je­sus.

121:8.42. The Gospel of Mat­thew. The so-called Gospel ac­cord­ing to Mat­thew is the rec­ord of the Mas­ter’s life which was writ­ten for the ed­i­fi­ca­tion of Jew­ish Chris­tians. The au­thor of this rec­ord con­stantly seeks to show in Je­sus’ life that much which he did was that “it might be ful­filled which was spo­ken by the prophet.” Mat­thew’s Gospel por­trays Je­sus as a son of David, pic­tur­ing him as show­ing great re­spect for the law and the proph­ets.

121:8.5The Apos­tle Mat­thew did not write this Gospel. It was writ­ten by Isador, one of his dis­ci­ples, who had as a help in his work not only Mat­thew’s per­sonal re­mem­brance of these events but also a cer­tain rec­ord which the lat­ter had made of the say­ings of Je­sus di­rectly af­ter the cru­ci­fix­ion. This rec­ord by Mat­thew was writ­ten in Ara­maic; Isador wrote in Greek. There was no in­tent to de­ceive in ac­cred­it­ing the pro­duc­tion to Mat­thew. It was the cus­tom in those days for pupils thus to honor their teach­ers.

121:8.6Mat­thew’s orig­i­nal rec­ord was edited and added to in A.D. 40 just be­fore he left Je­ru­sa­lem to en­gage in evan­ge­lis­tic preach­ing. It was a pri­vate rec­ord, the last copy hav­ing been de­stroyed in the burn­ing of a Syr­ian monastery in A.D. 416.

121:8.7Isador es­caped from Je­ru­sa­lem in A.D. 70 af­ter the in­vest­ment of the city by the armies of Ti­tus, tak­ing with him to Pella a copy of Mat­thew’s notes. In the year 71, while liv­ing at Pella, Isador wrote the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Mat­thew. He also had with him the first four fifths of Mark’s nar­ra­tive.

121:8.83. The Gospel by Luke. Luke, the physi­cian of An­ti­och in Pi­sidia, was a gen­tile con­vert of Paul, and he wrote quite a dif­fer­ent story of the Mas­ter’s life. He be­gan to fol­low Paul and learn of the life and teach­ings of Je­sus in A.D. 47. Luke pre­serves much of the “grace of the Lord Je­sus Christ” in his rec­ord as he gath­ered up these facts from Paul and oth­ers. Luke pre­sents the Mas­ter as “the friend of pub­li­cans and sin­ners.” He did not for­mu­late his many notes into the Gospel un­til af­ter Paul’s death. Luke wrote in the year 82 in Achaia. He planned three books deal­ing with the his­tory of Christ and Chris­tian­ity but died in A.D. 90 just be­fore he fin­ished the sec­ond of these works, the “Acts of the Apos­tles.”

121:8.9As ma­te­rial for the com­pi­la­tion of his Gospel, Luke first de­pended upon the story of Je­sus’ life as Paul had re­lated it to him. Luke’s Gospel is, there­fore, in some ways the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Paul. But Luke had other sources of in­for­ma­tion. He not only in­ter­viewed scores of eye­wit­nesses to the nu­mer­ous episodes of Je­sus’ life which he re­cords, but he also had with him a copy of Mark’s Gospel, that is, the first four fifths, Isador’s nar­ra­tive, and a brief rec­ord made in the year A.D. 78 at An­ti­och by a be­liever named Cedes. Luke also had a mu­ti­lated and much-edited copy of some notes pur­ported to have been made by the Apos­tle An­drew.

121:8.104. The Gospel of John. The Gospel ac­cord­ing to John re­lates much of Je­sus’ work in Judea and around Je­ru­sa­lem which is not con­tained in the other rec­ords. This is the so-called Gospel ac­cord­ing to John the son of Zeb­e­dee, and though John did not write it, he did in­spire it. Since its first writ­ing it has sev­eral times been edited to make it ap­pear to have been writ­ten by John him­self. When this rec­ord was made, John had the other Gospels, and he saw that much had been omit­ted; ac­cord­ingly, in the year A.D. 101 he en­cour­aged his as­so­ciate, Nathan, a Greek Jew from Cae­sarea, to be­gin the writ­ing. John sup­plied his ma­te­rial from mem­ory and by ref­er­ence to the three rec­ords al­ready in ex­is­tence. He had no writ­ten rec­ords of his own. The Epis­tle known as “First John” was writ­ten by John him­self as a cov­er­ing let­ter for the work which Nathan ex­e­cuted un­der his di­rec­tion.

• changed history for 2000 years
• gospels affected by Paul’s theology

121:8.11All these writ­ers pre­sented hon­est pic­tures of Je­sus as they saw, re­mem­bered, or had learned of him, and as their con­cepts of these dis­tant events were af­fected by their sub­se­quent es­pousal of Paul’s the­ol­ogy of Chris­tian­ity. And these rec­ords, im­per­fect as they are, have been suf­fi­cient to change the course of the his­tory of Uran­tia for al­most two thou­sand years.

• symbolism intended for backward ages

134:8.6Near the end of the moun­tain so­journ Je­sus asked his Fa­ther if he might be per­mit­ted to hold con­fer­ence with his Sa­ta­nia en­e­mies as the Son of Man, as Joshua ben Joseph. This re­quest was granted. Dur­ing the last week on Mount Her­mon the great temp­ta­tion, the uni­verse trial, oc­curred. Sa­tan (rep­re­sent­ing Lu­cifer) and the re­bel­lious Plan­e­tary Prince, Cali­gas­tia, were pres­ent with Je­sus and were made fully vis­i­ble to him. And this “temp­ta­tion,” this fi­nal trial of hu­man loy­alty in the face of the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions of rebel per­son­al­i­ties, had not to do with food, tem­ple pin­na­cles, or pre­sump­tu­ous acts. It had not to do with the king­doms of this world but with the sov­er­eignty of a mighty and glo­ri­ous uni­verse. The sym­bol­ism of your rec­ords was in­tended for the back­ward ages of the world’s child­like thought. And sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions should un­der­stand what a great strug­gle the Son of Man passed through that event­ful day on Mount Her­mon.

• authors › held stringent ideas on divorce

140:8.14The fam­ily oc­cu­pied the very cen­ter of Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life—here and here­after. He based his teach­ings about God on the fam­ily, while he sought to cor­rect the Jew­ish ten­dency to over­honor an­ces­tors. He ex­alted fam­ily life as the high­est hu­man duty but made it plain that fam­ily re­la­tion­ships must not in­ter­fere with re­li­gious obli­ga­tions. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that the fam­ily is a tem­po­ral in­sti­tu­tion; that it does not sur­vive death. Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to give up his fam­ily when the fam­ily ran counter to the Fa­ther’s will. He taught the new and larger broth­er­hood of man—the sons of God. In Je­sus’ time di­vorce prac­tices were lax in Pales­tine and through­out the Ro­man Em­pire. He re­peat­edly re­fused to lay down laws re­gard­ing mar­riage and di­vorce, but many of Je­sus’ early fol­low­ers had strong opin­ions on di­vorce and did not hes­i­tate to at­trib­ute them to him. All of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers held to these more strin­gent and ad­vanced ideas about di­vorce ex­cept John Mark.

• Abner not mentioned

166:5.3The Jews at Je­ru­sa­lem had al­ways had trou­ble with the Jews of Phil­a­del­phia. And af­ter the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus the Je­ru­sa­lem church, of which James the Lord’s brother was head, be­gan to have se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties with the Phil­a­del­phia con­gre­ga­tion of be­liev­ers. Ab­ner be­came the head of the Phil­a­del­phia church, con­tin­u­ing as such un­til his death. And this es­trange­ment with Je­ru­sa­lem ex­plains why noth­ing is heard of Ab­ner and his work in the Gospel rec­ords of the New Tes­ta­ment. This feud be­tween Je­ru­sa­lem and Phil­a­del­phia lasted through­out the life­times of James and Ab­ner and con­tin­ued for some time af­ter the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem. Phil­a­del­phia was re­ally the head­quar­ters of the early church in the south and east as An­ti­och was in the north and west.

• authors › believed Jesus would soon return

170:2.10The apos­tles were un­able to grasp the real mean­ing of the Mas­ter’s ut­ter­ances re­gard­ing the king­dom. The sub­se­quent dis­tor­tion of Je­sus’ teach­ings, as they are re­corded in the New Tes­ta­ment, is be­cause the con­cept of the gospel writ­ers was col­ored by the be­lief that Je­sus was then ab­sent from the world for only a short time; that he would soon re­turn to es­tab­lish the king­dom in power and glory—just such an idea as they held while he was with them in the flesh. But Je­sus did not con­nect the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom with the idea of his re­turn to this world. That cen­turies have passed with no signs of the ap­pear­ance of the “New Age” is in no way out of har­mony with Je­sus’ teach­ing.

180:1.1Af­ter a few mo­ments of in­for­mal con­ver­sa­tion, Je­sus stood up and said: “When I en­acted for you a para­ble in­di­cat­ing how you should be will­ing to serve one an­other, I said that I de­sired to give you a new com­mand­ment; and I would do this now as I am about to leave you. You well know the com­mand­ment which di­rects that you love one an­other; that you love your neigh­bor even as your­self. But I am not wholly sat­is­fied with even that sin­cere de­vo­tion on the part of my chil­dren. I would have you per­form still greater acts of love in the king­dom of the be­liev­ing broth­er­hood. And so I give you this new com­mand­ment: That you love one an­other even as I have loved you. And by this will all men know that you are my dis­ci­ples if you thus love one an­other.

180:1.2“When I give you this new com­mand­ment, I do not place any new bur­den upon your souls; rather do I bring you new joy and make it pos­si­ble for you to ex­pe­ri­ence new plea­sure in know­ing the de­lights of the be­stowal of your heart’s af­fec­tion upon your fel­low men. I am about to ex­pe­ri­ence the su­preme joy, even though en­dur­ing out­ward sor­row, in the be­stowal of my af­fec­tion upon you and your fel­low mor­tals.

180:1.3“When I in­vite you to love one an­other, even as I have loved you, I hold up be­fore you the su­preme mea­sure of true af­fec­tion, for greater love can no man have than this: that he will lay down his life for his friends. And you are my friends; you will con­tinue to be my friends if you are but will­ing to do what I have taught you. You have called me Mas­ter, but I do not call you ser­vants. If you will only love one an­other as I am lov­ing you, you shall be my friends, and I will ever speak to you of that which the Fa­ther re­veals to me.

180:1.4“You have not merely cho­sen me, but I have also cho­sen you, and I have or­dained you to go forth into the world to yield the fruit of lov­ing ser­vice to your fel­lows even as I have lived among you and re­vealed the Fa­ther to you. The Fa­ther and I will both work with you, and you shall ex­pe­ri­ence the di­vine full­ness of joy if you will only obey my com­mand to love one an­other, even as I have loved you.”

180:1.5If you would share the Mas­ter’s joy, you must share his love. And to share his love means that you have shared his ser­vice. Such an ex­pe­ri­ence of love does not de­liver you from the dif­fi­cul­ties of this world; it does not cre­ate a new world, but it most cer­tainly does make the old world new.

180:1.6Keep in mind: It is loy­alty, not sac­ri­fice, that Je­sus de­mands. The con­scious­ness of sac­ri­fice im­plies the ab­sence of that whole­hearted af­fec­tion which would have made such a lov­ing ser­vice a su­preme joy. The idea of duty sig­ni­fies that you are ser­vant-minded and hence are miss­ing the mighty thrill of do­ing your ser­vice as a friend and for a friend. The im­pulse of friend­ship tran­scends all con­vic­tions of duty, and the ser­vice of a friend for a friend can never be called a sac­ri­fice. The Mas­ter has taught the apos­tles that they are the sons of God. He has called them breth­ren, and now, be­fore he leaves, he calls them his friends.

• written in Greek; origin

195:2.7And so did these Ro­man­ized Greeks force both Jews and Chris­tians to phi­los­o­phize their re­li­gion, to co-or­di­nate its ideas and sys­tem­atize its ide­als, to adapt re­li­gious prac­tices to the ex­ist­ing cur­rent of life. And all this was enor­mously helped by trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek and by the later record­ing of the New Tes­ta­ment in the Greek tongue.

• mostly devoted to Paul’s religious convictions; only meagerly Jesusonian

196:2.1Some day a ref­or­ma­tion in the Chris­tian church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadul­ter­ated re­li­gious teach­ings of Je­sus, the au­thor and fin­isher of our faith. You may preach a re­li­gion about Je­sus, but, per­force, you must live the re­li­gion of Je­sus. In the en­thu­si­asm of Pen­te­cost, Pe­ter un­in­ten­tion­ally in­au­gu­rated a new re­li­gion, the re­li­gion of the risen and glo­ri­fied Christ. The Apos­tle Paul later on trans­formed this new gospel into Chris­tian­ity, a re­li­gion em­body­ing his own the­o­logic views and por­tray­ing his own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with the Je­sus of the Da­mas­cus road. The gospel of the king­dom is founded on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the Je­sus of Gal­i­lee; Chris­tian­ity is founded al­most ex­clu­sively on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the Apos­tle Paul. Al­most the whole of the New Tes­ta­ment is de­voted, not to the por­trayal of the sig­nif­i­cant and in­spir­ing re­li­gious life of Je­sus, but to a dis­cus­sion of Paul’s re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence and to a por­trayal of his per­sonal re­li­gious con­vic­tions. The only no­table ex­cep­tions to this state­ment, aside from cer­tain parts of Mat­thew, Mark, and Luke, are the Book of He­brews and the Epis­tle of James. Even Pe­ter, in his writ­ing, only once re­verted to the per­sonal re­li­gious life of his Mas­ter. The New Tes­ta­ment is a su­perb Chris­tian doc­u­ment, but it is only mea­gerly Je­su­so­nian.

• authors › believed Jesus would soon return
• authors › expecting Jesus’ return, omitted his purely human experiences

196:2.5At the time of the writ­ing of the New Tes­ta­ment, the au­thors not only most pro­foundly be­lieved in the di­vin­ity of the risen Christ, but they also de­vot­edly and sin­cerely be­lieved in his im­me­di­ate re­turn to earth to con­sum­mate the heav­enly king­dom. This strong faith in the Lord’s im­me­di­ate re­turn had much to do with the ten­dency to omit from the rec­ord those ref­er­ences which por­trayed the purely hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences and at­tri­butes of the Mas­ter. The whole Chris­tian move­ment tended away from the hu­man pic­ture of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth to­ward the ex­al­ta­tion of the risen Christ, the glo­ri­fied and soon-re­turn­ing Lord Je­sus Christ.