The Barbarian Bible

by Ianto Watt

  So Orthodox culture cannot develop, because their doctrine cannot develop. Remember, I’m not talking about change (as in evolution), I’m talking about organic growth. And for those who endlessly burble on about the purity of the early ‘primitive’ Church, I would remind them that while infants are without guile they are also without much in the way of brains. They’re cute, but rather unintelligible. And their diapers have to be changed a lot. Adults take care of their own messes. And they make sure the infants have food and a roof over their heads. So the ‘infant church’ argument doesn’t impress me a lot. And neither does Photius, except I am truly in awe of his cunning ways.

  So anyway, here’s the summation: Photius set the stage for all successful schisms in the Church, especially the Protestant one. And schism is a form of treachery, as it involves subversion from the inside (by denying the concept of the ‘inside’), whereas heresy is an attack from the outside. This is exactly the lesson we find in The Illiad (a failed open attack) and The Odyssey (a successful subversion). And we’ll be looking at exactly that lesson soon as we zoom in on Part II of this book.

  Photius learned this lesson well, and he is the one individual in all of modern history that has understood how to defeat the impregnable city of Holy Rome. His challenge to the Pope, that he rationally explain mystery, was the direct cause of the creation of the original Bizarro Christianity. This root of schismatic (and not yet heretical) dissension will play the lead role in the Final Fall. It’s not a coincidence that Troy was not far from Constantinople, geographically or religiously speaking. But we’ll get into that in more detail in Part II of the book.

  This original Bizarro form of Christianity known as Orthodxy has also been at the root of nearly every failure and calamity that the overall Church has experienced for the last 1,000 years. It began with the Crusades where the Orthodox East betrayed the Western Latin Crusaders time after time to the Mohammedans. It continues to the present day when they allowed the Communist regimes to infiltrate and operate within the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) which was present at the 2nd Vatican Council (1962), and arguably today still occupy many positions of authority within it today. Or is it the other way around, in this case? Well, we’ll get to that conundrum soon too. Be patient, grandson.

  And before we progress any farther, let’s be clear that when I speak of schism and heresy, I am generally speaking of the active priesthood of the Orthodox (and subsequently the clergy of the Protestant) world. The little people in the pews are generally ignorant of most matters, and their nationalistic leaders do everything possible to keep them that way. Why is that? Because it is the source of their ongoing organizational power over their members, which, after all, is what prompted their schisms in the first place. It’s a lot like Talmudic Judaism, at least from my Barbarian point of view. Remember, I never care what people say, I only look at what they actually do. And bottom line, I don’t see that any of these schismatic leaders really have their flock’s doctrinal well-being at heart.

  So, am I saying that all Orthodox are also heretics (as a result of their persistent schism)? No. But I am saying that some of them, yes, especially those who should know better. And who would that be? Well, it’s not the little guy in the pew, generally. So, are the little people schismatic? To the extent that they knowingly and willfully resist an ordered (i.e. hierarchal) communion with the West, yes. And can (and does) schism lead to heresy? Over time, yes.

  Why? Because schism resists the further development and refinement of the doctrine that occurs when the rightful authority (the Pope) declares something to be true and must be believed. Then the obstinacy of the schismatic leads them to deny what the proper authority said. Not because of what he said, but because of the fact that he said anything at all with the ‘presumption’ of authority over all believers. Thus, then, they deny the further refinement of dogma, and that is heresy. Stubbornness does have its consequences.

  But what about the priesthood and the sacraments of the Orthodox? Are they valid? Yes. And because of this, the Orthodox Church is not wrong in its doctrinal beliefs and practices, so far as they go. But its leaders, who know (or should know) the real roots of the forest fire started by Photius, are certainly guilty. And this will be the means to their part in the Last Fall. How? Read on.

  But first, a last word (for now) on the other Bizarro-Twin, Protestantism. Does it have valid sacraments? Well, no. Why? Because we used the plural of the word, ‘sacraments’, and the Protestants, by and large, only recognize one sacrament- baptism. And that is indeed valid (assuming they still use the original recipe). But they ditched the other 6 sacraments, including the ordained priesthood. And the reason they ditched them is because these require a priest to administer them or to witness them. And so we are back to the root reason for the existence of Protestantism- the rejection of over-arching authority. That rejection logically produces radical individualism. Who needs a priest when I can dial up Jesus anytime I like, right? But like I said before, about organizations, ‘if it ain’t organized, it ain’t an organization’. So, no priests equals no hierarchy. No hierarchy equals no head. No head equals no organization. So why do they pretend to have an organized religion? Window dressing. Naked people need something, right?

  Naked? Pretty harsh, right? Well, yes, and for a good reason. Any Barbarian can tell you there’s got to be a chief, singular. Otherwise, too many people are giving contradictory orders, and that means only one thing on the battlefield; defeat. Now, you can fake it for a while, by not entering into any battles, which is exactly what these people do. They theorize a lot, but there’s no concerted effort or action. There can’t be, by definition. And so, they generally wither away into obscurity. Or they get captured by their external enemies (like the Mohammedans). Have I defined mainline Protestantism accurately here? All talk, no action. Like I’ve said before, I only look at what people do, not at what they say. And these people do nothing. If you are what you do, and you do nothing, then what other conclusion can be drawn about their future existence? Look at their numbers and tell me I’m wrong. Then I will laugh at you. Hahahahahah!

  As for these Protestant leaders (‘ministers’), they too will bear a heavy burden, because they claim to read these same scriptures I have read in my pursuit of a functional Operating System. Yet they seem to have looked right past a whole bunch of things that point directly towards the establishment of a singular entity (‘church’, singular) that can support the Operating System when questions arise. How can you have 30,000 different Operating Systems and have any compatibility? Are there 30,000 different Heavens? Right.

  And where did they get this set of scriptures they claim to be following? Didn’t they start with the ones the Holy Romans System preserved? Or were the Apostles actually Protestants? Too many silly questions to be answered here to take their claim seriously. Seriously.

  And so, having examined the origins and motives of these two mirror opposite Bizarro twins, Orthodoxy and Protestantism, it’s now time to get back to the core question concerning the original Holy Roman version of Christianity. It’s time to make our determination of whether it qualifies as a suitable Operating System for deciphering the many tales of old. So let’s sum up the scorecard on our second monotheistic contestant, Christianity. But before we do, check out this story on the current Patriarch of Moscow, Metropolital Kirill I, taken from this website for USA Today, on April 6, 2012: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/04/russian-orthodox-church-apologizes-for-doc

  Russian Orthodox Church apologizes for doctored photo

  The Russian Orthodox Church has apologized for airbrushing a photo of its leader, Patriarch Kirill I, to eliminate traces of a $30,000 gold Breguet watch he was wearing on his left arm.

  The doctored photo, posted on the church’s website, would likely have gone unnoticed except that bloggers noted airbrushing had not removed a reflection of the expensive watch in the highly polished surface of the table where he was seated, The New York Tim
es reports.

  The original photo was posted in 2009, but was replaced in the past month with the airbrushed version, the BBC reports. The uproar prompted the church to restore it.

  Russian bloggers used the incident to underscore criticism that the Russian Orthodox church has grown wealthy and powerful with its ties to the Russian government.

  Although the church apologized for the embarrassing alteration, it took the opportunity to blame a low-level editor, RIA-Novosti reports.

  The deputy head of the patriarch’s press service, Alexander Volkov, says that the photo was altered by a 24-year-old female employee “on her own personal, inexperienced initiative,” the Russian news agency reports.

  “Unfortunately, this person showed pointless personal initiative without getting an approval from her supervisors,” Volkov told the Russian News Service radio station. “Clearly, this is a folly, a misunderstanding; of course, we don’t want to conceal anything. There is nothing to be ashamed of, we don’t study every photograph in search of anything that might seem weird to our compatriots.”

  The scandal was particularly timely because the patriarch last week had told a Russian interviewer, Vladimir Solovyov, that expensive watches were not part of his official attire, the BBC notes. He admitted owning a Breguet watch, but said he kept it in its box.(end of citation)

  See what I mean about how the Orthodox try to look like the High Priests of Israel with their head dress? And how they try to look like the Rabbis, with their gold chains and watches? Hahahahah!

  Does the Original Holy Roman Christianity have a believable historical document? Yes, even better than Judaism, as the Holy Romans’ system includes the Jewish Old Testament document and continues its incredible record of historic detail and believable explanations of human nature in their New Testament.

  Does Holy Rome have a history of accurate predictions or prophecy? Any big miracles? Yes, on all counts. And not just because they get to claim all the Jewish ones. How about the prediction by Jesus of the Fall of Jerusalem within his lifetime? His prediction of his death at the hands of the Jewish leaders, and the means by which it would happen? What about current miracles? Well, for starters, that the Church would last till the end of time? And since that prediction-prophecy has been shown to be true for almost 2,000 years, that’s pretty significant, no?

  Does Holy Rome promise us anything of value, like eternal life? Like mercy? Yes, again, it equals and surpasses Judaism, as it makes this promise available to all, and not just Jews. And it has nothing to do with your station in life. It only gauges your interior disposition. Pharisees will have a very hard time with this! The rest of us will be fine.

  Does Holy Rome have an unbroken line of priestly or leadership succession till today? Yes, it’s still going strong. All bishops can trace their ordination back through time to one of the original 12 apostles, and the Bishop of Rome can do so directly to Peter, through 266 successions. This beats Torah Judaism (which died in 70 AD) and Talmudic Judaism (which has no overarching leader).

  Does Holy Rome have a believable Messiah? Yes, if you can understand that he has two forms, both the form of the suffering servant (first coming) and then the form of the victorious conqueror hero (second coming). Can the second version be proven yet? Nope. The verdict is still out on that, but that’s what the little matter of ‘faith’ is all about, right? That’s how we are allowed to bet on the first version (which is an historical fact) by believing in the second one. This is where Pascal’s Wager comes in, right? Math problem number one keeps coming back, like the Energizer Bunny.

  In summation, therefore, the Holy Roman Operating System beats the Chosen One system, simply because it already includes both portraits of the Suffering Servant and the Conquering Hero (and in that order). And it also encompasses the purely human side of life; after all, not everyone can be the hero-leader, right? He has to lead someone, right? This version gives honor to those who are led because they believed in the hero-leader, even when he looked simply to be the suffering servant, and when it could mean death to speak of this belief. Pretty appealing, I think, simply because it is so all-encompassing. So universal. Well, at this point, it looks like we have a viable candidate for a truly robust Operating System that will allow us to rationally examine and judge all the stories from the past. However, there is still another contestant to examine before we make this judgment final, because the third and last of the great monotheistic Operating Systems claims to supersede Christianity, just as Christianity claims to have supplanted Judaism. So we’ve got to examine it, using the same criteria, to see if this is demonstrably true, at least to the Barbarian mind. So let’s move on, grandson, to the third contestant in the world of Monotheism: Islam!

  So now let’s look at Monotheistic Team #3 in the search for plausibility in our quest for a truly comprehensive Operating System that will decipher all of history for us. This is the Team known as ISLAM (‘Submission’) to its practitioners, who are known as the Muslims (followers of Mohammed). Let’s look at the story line of another incredible book, The Quran (Koran) and the desirability of what it promises. We’ll use the same 5-point scorecard to judge whether this belief system has what it takes to claim our allegiance and persuade us to place our bet here in Pascal’s Big Casino of Life.

  Like the Jews and Christians, the Muslims also have a written story with names and places that can be, in many instances, historically verified. Mohammed, Ali, Fatima, etc. And Mecca and Medina. The Umayyad and the Abbasids. Suleiman and the Ottomans. The list goes on, and the historical reality of much of it can be verified.

  But first, I want to make a few comments about the Koran, and its ‘author’. And yes, I have read it, more than once, just as I have read the Hebrew & Christian Bibles, and taken copious notes. Here is what I have distilled about the Koran, and its message;

  It’s schizophrenic (but not in the way normally understood by shrinks):

  It’s xenophobic (but in a calculated way, to defy definitive interpretation);

  It’s robotic (in that man is programmed to react, without thinking);

  It’s hypnotic (in that the bulk of it is a constant repetition of about 10 phrases).

  So let us look at these points before we delve into the previous five criteria mentioned. I think that this discussion will actually obviate the need for further examination, but in the spirit of fairness, we’ll do both.

  This book, the Koran, presents the reader with an immediate conundrum within the first 3 Suras (chapters). The first Sura is composed of only one page, with only 7 statements, which praise ‘Allah’ (the god of the Muslims) and ask for guidance on the right path. No problem there, assuming this Allah is who he says he is (that is, the God of Abraham).

  The second chapter (Sura) starts out speaking in the plural grammatical voice of Allah, saying “This is the Book...for those who believe…what WE have given them” (verses 2 & 3). Notice the WE, ok? Why? Because this is paramount in understanding the problem. The rest of the book does this hundreds (if not thousands of times), with Allah speaking in the plural voice (‘Us’, ‘We’, ‘They’, etc.) . Only a few times does Allah speak in the singular voice (‘I’, ‘Me’, etc.). So, right off the bat, for someone familiar with either the Old (Hebrew) Testament or the New (Christian) Testament, they might presume that the godhood of this one called Allah might indeed be the same as the three-person God of Abraham. Or at least in a Godhead that contains more than one person.

  Yet in the third chapter the speaker (supposedly the archangel Gabriel?) begins to speak of Allah as ‘HE’ (verse 3, ‘there is no god but He..). And then, in verse 64, we get to the heart of the matter. Allah, speaking to Mohammed, tells him to ‘Say: O People of the Book! Come to agreement between us and you; That we worship none other than Allah; And that we do not place partners with Him…’. Houston, we have a (math) problem. A big one.

  (Note; Jews and Christians are referred to throughout the Koran as ‘People of the Book’, that is, the book known a
s the Bible. Mohammed said he was sent by Allah to speak to them and convert them from their beliefs, which had become ‘corrupted’ in the passage of time from Moses till Mohammed, a span of about 2500 years. Moses is portrayed throughout the Koran as a true Muslim, that is, ‘one who submits’ to God, totally, and that Moses was a true messenger of Allah whose later followers, both Jew and Christian, corrupted his message. The problem, as I see it, is that the Koran never really says what parts were corrupted, nor does it tell us what the ‘original recipe’ was.)

  OK, here is where the schizoid behavior begins. Allah says he has no ‘partners’ here, and throughout the rest of the book Allah is quoted as saying he has no partners, no equals, no mates, and no children. He is singular, alone, self-sufficient, and most importantly, inscrutable. Simply put, he cannot be understood, in any sense of the word. He can only be obeyed. And this is repeated hundreds of times. And to make the point clear, the book curses, time and again, anyone who says otherwise! (Except for the ‘Satanic Verses’ found in chapter 53, of course, wherein Mohammed admits that in chapter 22 his inclusion of the mention of 3 female gods who are Allah’s consorts is to be blamed on the devil, and not him! Talking about this is what got author Salman Rushdie in hot water in the Muslim world, because it exposed Mohammed as either an idiot or a compromising political hack.) Yet throughout the entire book, Allah also continues to speak with a plural voice. The dissonance is palpable. Something is disturbingly wrong here with the mind that wrote this.

  OK, so do you see the problem, grandson? ‘Allah is one’, yet he speaks as more than one. What gives here? Why this grammatical confusion? I’ll get to my conclusion about this later, but as I see it, the primary purpose of this claim to be ‘singular’ is simply a means of denying the Trinity of the Christian Godhood. I’m not simply drawing this conclusion from a few isolated instances. The Koran pounds this theme, ad nauseam, throughout the remaining 330 pages. In fact, it becomes a central part of the ‘hypnotic’ effect I mention in point 4 above.