=============================================== SON 0F MAN Fraudulent bedrock of our civilization. =============================================== PROLOG The term "Son of Man" appears frequently in the New Testament as the favorite self-designation of Christ. We are convinced that: 1."Son of Man" is a translation error, 2.it is a purposeful error, i.e. a fraud, 3.implications of this fraud determined to a large extent our civilization. We shall justify this conviction in following Sections: ERROR FRAUD IMPLICATIONS NOTE: argumentation and conclusions of this essay apply as well to Christ being a historical person as to Him being a fictitious character invented by authors of New Testament. Indeed, once created, a personage compels the author to describe his behavior in harmony with his personality and to quote him consistently with respect to the language he is supposed to speak. =============================================== ERROR ----- As Christ spoke Aramaic, "Son of Man" is obviously a translation of Aramaic "Bar Nasha" and obviously an erroneous translation. The error consists in "etymological confusion", in taking etymology for meaning. Etymology of "Bar Nasha" is indeed "Son of Man", but its meaning at Christ's time was "Man". You don't translate "Baise-en-ville" as "Fuck downtown" (etymology), but as "overnight bag" (meaning in current French); you don't translate "cul-de-sac" as "ass-of-bag", but as "blind alley"; you don't translate "bistro" as "hurry up!" (Russian etymology), but as "French bar"; you don't translate French "vasistas" as "what's that?" (German etymology) but as "fanlight" (current French meaning); you don't translate Russian "vaksal" as "Vauxhall" (English etymology), but as "railway station" (current Russian meaning). You don't translate "BAR NASHA" as "SON OF MAN" (etymology), but as "MAN" (current Aramaic meaning of Christ's time). Unless you make an error, an involuntary blunder, or a purposeful fraud. Fraud option will be discussed in the next Section. Here we shall state that: 1."Son of Man" is an error. It is etymological confusion in translating Aramaic "Bar Nasha" which, at Christ's time meant clearly and exclusively "Man". 2.SoM is not particular to KJV or any other Western version but appears in original Greek Gospel texts as "uoios tou anthropou", which shows clearly that the error was committed directly by the Evangelists. We shall limit Gospel quotations to a single parable Matthew 12:1-13, KJV: 1 All implications of this parable apply to other instances of "Son of Man" in the New Testament. ----------------------------------------------- Matthew 12:1-13, KJV: 1 (Seeing His disciples accused of not observing sabbath, Christ answered:) 6 But I say to you, that a greater than the temple is here. ... 8 For the Son of man, is lord of the sabbath. ----------------------------------------------- One often hears the argument that Evangelists CALLED Christ "Son of Man" in order to assert the interpretation of His supernatural and messianic nature. However, this argument is unacceptable: They did not CALL Him, but QUOTED Him. They could call Him "Son of Sky", or anything, as long as it was their responsibility. But QUOTING must be true and exact, or it is a lie. When Christ referred to Himself as to "Bar Nasha", this reference can only be correctly QUOTED as "Man". So, "Son of Man" is beyond any doubt an error. In the next Section we shall see if it was just a blunder or a purposeful fraud. =============================================== FRAUD. ------ To interpret SoM error as blunder we would have to admit: 1.That four educated Aramaic speakers by chance ignored the meaning of the same common word "Bar Nasha" and committed by coincidence the same translation error. 2.That, again by extraordinary coincidence, this accidental blunder created the principal founding stone of Christianism. Indeed, as we shall see, the whole edifice of Christianism has been erected upon the erroneous term "Son of Man". Rather to many coincidences and the blunder story would not have a leg to stand on in any court. Still, you may consider that the evidence is only circumstantial and may like the idea of Christianism being founded upon a blunder. But you would be alone. To the best of our knowledge all Christian Bible experts agree that Jesus called Himself "Bar Nasha", that it means "Man", that the Evangelists knew it, but translated it into SoM as interpretation, hinting that Jesus referred to the messianic SoM of the Old Testament (Ezechiel 2,1 and Daniel 7,13.). Here we have a material proof of fraud. Indeed, in original, i.e. Hebrew, or Aramaic Old Testament SoM does not appear and could not possibly appear for the simple reason that Ezechiel, writing in Hebrew, used the term Ben-Adam, that Daniel, writing in Aramaic, used the Chaldean origin term Bar-Enash and that both these terms mean clearly and exclusively "Man". (Bar-Enash is a synonym of Bar-Nasha with a bit of highbrow touch, like English "human" (noun) is synonym of "man".) (BTW the Hebrew "ben-adam" does not even have the etymology of "Son of Man", but that of "Son of Soil". "Adama" means in Hebrew "soil", which explains the name of the "First Man" being "Adam".) Consequently we are convinced that Evangelists committed this fraud, but that they committed it in good faith, as result of being manipulated by some "Inventors of Christianism" who pulled the ropes behind the scene in the time between Christ's death and Matthews Gospel. Indeed, with a bit of literary experience, you can tell if a writer sounds sincere. Sholohov or Erenburg, in spite of their talent sound like cracked pots; you feel that they are sold to Gulag. On the contrary, Solzenicyn, Orwell, Maupassant, Mann, Huxley, Camus, whether you aggree or not with their vision. give clear, harmonious sound. And so do the Evangelists. A cracked pot would not become the bestseller of all times, would not captivate billions, would not found the largest civilization of human history. Admitting good faith of the Evangelists we directed our investigation towards the real crooks, the "Inventors of Christianism" and looked for appearance of SoM in some religious literature prior to Gospels. We found it in the Similitudes of Enoch. It is true that they are preserved only in an Ethiopic translation from Greek but it is universally admitted that SoM appeared for the first time as "uoios tou anthropou" in the Greek version of the Similitudes. Thus, the Evangelists had the term prefabricated and ready for use. But who prefabricated it? Who was strong and persuasive enough to impose it? And, first of all, what was his motivation? Investigating a fraud, one starts by asking to whom it is beneficial. And a name jumps to the mind: Paul, the acknowledged Inventor of Christianism under whose name we englobe all other eventual co-inventors whose names did not come down to our own day. Rome was amid a revolution. But each revolution carries with its flood some capos intending to subjugate it and to grab absolute, tyrannical power. They need some dogmatic, undisputable ideology in order to constitute a bandwagon, to convince those that they chose not to exterminate. So, the market was there and Paul created the product: dogmatic Christianism rooted in the SoM fraud. =============================================== IMPLICATIONS ------------ Progress of technology made slavery obsolete and required its replacement with some social model substituting slaves with laborers having more competence, responsibility and motivation. This adjustment of society to the state of technology was assisted by a Specific Domain of Reason (see Historical Foundations of RD.), namely Law, emancipated in Rome, suffocating under tyranny and aspiring to a new order based upon a legal Social Contract. This aspiration had to externalize itself as usually through an ideology. Christ's teaching of love, of equality and of justice expressed it perfectly and the to-be Christianity became the ideology of Roman revolution. As we saw, the correct translation of Matthew's parable is: "8 For the man, is lord of the sabbath". which means, admitting that "sabbath" symbolizes the Law: MAN IS LORD OF LAW. This would put the new order under Law determined, judged and amendable by humans, under a Human Law. However, as we said above, each revolution carries with its flood some capos intending to subjugate it and to grab absolute, tyrannical power. They need some dogmatic, undisputable ideology in order to constitute a bandwagon, to subdue those that they chose not to exterminate. The fraudulent translation of the parable supports perfectly such dogmatic ideology. Indeed, with SoM denoting the (incarnated) God, the distorted parable ("... the Son of man, is lord of the sabbath",) gets the meaning: GOD IS LORD OF LAW Such "God's Law" is necessarily revealed, absolute and dogmatic. We do not perceive God directly but discover His Law via perceivable phenomena "Revelations" such as signs, symbols, and statements reported by some "God's spokesmen". One's decision to consider some phenomenon as Revelation is based on arbitrary, irrational belief void of any factual justification. Thus for instance the Pope, God's spokesman and lawmaker of "God's Law" could delegate part of his absolute power to a king making him executive of God's will. Disobedience was raised from infraction to a capital sin and "God's Law" revealed itself as absolute tyranny. Simplest to justify and implement of all tyrannies. Indeed, Robespierre needed a long harangue to corrupt the original Social Contract ideology of the French Revolution with a meaningless, dogmatic "Virtue" (see "Meaningless Generalities" and "Dogma and Axiom"). This "Virtue" justified the Terror which lasted nine months and made several thousand victims. Lenin needed the full blown meaningless, dogmatic pseudo-hegelian dialectic of Engels to corrupt the original marxist ideology. It justified the Gulag which in 50 years made 100 million victims. Yet, Paul needed just to distort a single term in order to corrupt the to-be Christianity, and to transform it into the dogmatic, inhuman Christian-ism which determined our civilization, which ruled absolutely over thousand years and whose sequels are still the strongest social motivation at our own days. Its victims are innumerable, as its crimes encompass most, if not all atrocities and genocides committed by our civilization either directly in the name of Christian-ism, or indirectly, as reaction to its excesses. Directly: Inquisition, religious wars, crusades, persecution of heretics and closer to us Nazi cohorts perpetrating their crimes under the device "Gott Mit Uns". Indirectly: let's just mention the Russian Revolution clearly provoked and triggered by the holy tsarist tyranny. ----------------------------------------------- How would our civilization look if it were determined not by fraudulent Christian-ism, but by true Christianity based upon the correct translation and understanding of Matthew's parable: "8 For the man, is lord of the sabbath". which means MAN IS LORD OF LAW and which replaces the fraudulent "God's Law" with "Human Law"? Only conjectures are, of course, possible, so let us soften our rigorous approach and follow the guidance of imagination. We have seen that "God's Law" is based in arbitrary assertions of God's spokesmen. What would be the base of the "Human Law"? Christ was a Jewish Rabbi, so He doubtless considered the Decalogue as synonym of "Law". Now, whatever one may say about the Commandments, they are an ordered set: one speaks about the first, second, etc. And in every ordered set the order carries some essential meaning: first is first because in some way it founds, supports, orders or justifies its followers. The exact structure of the Decalogue is not precisely known; there are three Hebrew versions, and in one there are 22 Commandments rather than ten. However, leaving all historic, stylistic and folkloric involvements aside, one thing is certain: the structure encompasses two parts, first talking about some Absolute and second defining rules of social behavior such as "Thou shalt not kill". The first, usually composed of three Commandments boils down to: 1."Thou shalt have no other gods before me". 2."Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image". 3."Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain". Taking into account that it has been destined for simple analphabets and leaving, as we said, all folklore aside, it means: 1.There is only one Absolute, 2.Absolute may not be represented. 3.Absolute may not be symbolized. Now, so described Absolute is equivalent to Awareness understood as ontological foundation of our Relativistic Dialectic (see "Foundations in Ontology"). We say there: 1."Awareness is the unique Absolute recognized by RD", 2."I ... see only upon the background of my Awareness of ... seeing." I.e. while I'm (being aware of) seeing a car, my Awareness of seeing it does not become this car, nor anything else than "my being aware of ...". Thus, Awareness may not be represented. 3."...by virtue of the Generalized Principle of Relativity we cannot formulate any meaningful proposition about Awareness," Thus, Awareness may not be symbolized. We may conclude that correctly translated Matthew's parable founds a humane "Rational Religion" and "Rational Ethics". Rejecting metaphysical revelations they are entirely based in Awareness, or Conscience, its moral synonym. Behavioral precepts are thumb rules for daily practice, always overruled by Conscience when in conflict. "Thou shalt not kill", but under Nazi occupation I have killed a blackmailer in order to save a family and my Conscience tells me that I was right. One may object that such "Rational Religion" is a contradictio in adiectum, that it is unconceivable and unknown in practice. We shall answer that two major religions fall exactly under this pattern: the Buddism and the original Judaism. Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef min Natzeret seems to have been condemning the dogmatic, corrupted Priesthood and preaching the return to the original humane Judaism which could become the base of equally humane Christianity. But He was crucified and this to-be humane Christianity was turned by a cunning translation fraud to the inhumane Christian-ism. History saw several trials of liberation from the the SoM tyranny. One of them was the establishment of the Cathar Occitane State at the feet of Pyrenees. Based upon humane Christianity it was the most humane and tolerant state in the European history, extremely successful in agriculture, handicrafts and arts. Scared by its humanity and success, Rome ordered the unique crusade within Europe. When Béziers fell, its entire population was murdered, with exception of a thousand escaped to the cathedral, most claiming to be of Roman faith. The Cardinal, spiritual leader of the crusade gave in the name of Son of Man the famous order: "Kill them all. God will recognize His children". Closer to us, one of the giants of rational thought, Newton, compared a scientist to somebody playing with shells on the ocean shore. Shells represent scientific theories. Ocean represents the unknown Marvelous from where the Shells came and new ones will come. It is absurd, like pseudo science does, to restrict the Universe to a few Shells and to deny the Ocean. But it is equally absurd, like most religions do, to infer details of the Marvelous, to shut It in a Shell and to dissect It as if It were an oyster. One seems to recognize, dressed in different terms, the true gist of Rabbi Yeshua's message. ===============================================