This book will deal with items of faith central to the Christian tradition.  It may therefore be in order to clarify where I stand vis-a-vis this tradition.  For most practical purposes, I belong to the Catholic community in my country: schooling, membership of cultural organizations, trade-union etc. I confess (therewith upholding a Christian ritual) that several times, I have voted for the Christian-Democratic Party, a non-confessional party that vaguely adheres to �values� upheld by the Christian tradition.

Moreover, in my youth I was a genuine believer, more than most of my class-mates and my generation as a whole.  My father was one of the last polemizing Catholics in Belgium, and a sharp critic of the degenerative secularizing tendencies within the modem Church.  I have always respected this wholehearted acceptance of the authentic doctrine and tradition more than the wishy-washy approach currently taken by our bishops and taught in our Theology faculty.

All this may be worth mentioning to clarify that I do not belong to that category of people, fairly widespread in my country, who have a deep-seated hatred against the Catholic Church and traditions, either because they were brought up as militant atheists or because they slammed the church door behind them during adolescence, never to look back again except to pour contempt.  There is quite a literature by writers who in adult life continue to react against the frustrations, mostly sexual, which they associate with their years in the Jesuit college.  Today, it is no exaggeration to say that the anti-Christian people in countries like mine are more fanatical and intolerant than the dwindling number of churchgoers.  My motive in writing this book has nothing to do with that type of anti-Christian reaction.

The point is simply that we, European Christians of many generations, have outgrown Christianity.  Most people who left the Church have found that they are not missing anything, and that the beliefs which once provided a framework for interpreting and shaping life, were but a bizarre and unnecessary construction after all.  We now know that Jesus was not God�s Only-begotten Son, that he did not save humanity from eternal sin, and that our happiness in this world or the next does not depend on believing these or any other dogmas.

When staying in India, I find it sad and sometimes comical to see how these outdated beliefs are being foisted upon backward sections of the Indian population by fanatical missionaries.  In their aggressive campaign to sell their product, the missionaries are helped a lot by sentimental expressions of admiration for Christianity on the part of leading Hindus.  Many Hindus project their own religious categories on the few Jesus episodes they have heard, and they base their whole attitude to Christianity on what I know to be a selective, incoherent and unhistorical version of the available information on Jesus� life and teachings.  That is why I have written the present introduction to one of the most revealing lines of proper scientific research into the origins of Christianity, viz. the psychological analysis of Jesus and of several other Biblical characters.

As Jawaharlal Nehru said, we do injustice to the Vedas by treating them as divine revelations rather than as milestones of human understanding.  Glad that for once I can agree with Nehru, I affirm that we should take a secular, historicizing look at the factual human basis of religious scriptures.  In the case of religions, which describe their own basis as God-given, directly revealed by God�s word, such a secular approach will imply an analysis of the consciousness, which claims to receive direct revelations from God.  That is the line of research to which this book offers a brief introduction.

Delhi, 24 January 1993

Modem theologians find it a bit too simplistic for comfort, but it is an obvious fact that the prime role of the prophet was to predict the future.  Only one corrective is needed to this simplistic formulation: predicting the future was only one aspect of the prophets� real task, which was to discern the will of the gods, or in monotheistic parlance, the will of God.  In the world at large, the actual outcome of events was by definition God�s will, because nothing can happen against God�s will.  In the human world however, there was an extra factor: man had a choice to co-operate with God.  In the human sphere, therefore, the prophet�s task was to discern what God wanted from man (cfr. the Shang oracles: which sacrifice did the gods want men to bring?).  However, the insight into the wishes of the gods was in turn a part of the over-all pattern of God�s will: either you live up to God�s wish, and then the outcome will be X, or you don�t live up to it, and then the outcome will be Y. Even in a more sophisticated conception of the prophet�s role, predicting the future remains the overriding concern.

The Biblical prophets live up to that role.  Their reports on God�s wishes and opinions is full of definite and verifiable predictions.  Often they are in the conditional form: if the people is faithful, it will be victorious; if not, then not.  In the complexities of history, the conditions and promised punishments and rewards are sometimes a bit more complex as well, but essentially this pattern is followed throughout.  When doomsday prophets have given up all hope that man can sufficiently free himself from his faithlessness, they make their predictions unconditional: God has decided to wipe a people out, or to have His own people subdued by the Babylonians, or to make an idolatrous king lose the battle against the Assyrians.

The predictions made by prophets were as often as not untrue. It is only the later editors who have back-projected some far-sighted predictions into the mouth of their heroes; no doubt they have also censored out many embarrassingly failed predictions.

The predictions of Daniel, situated by his editors in the 6th century BC but in fact writing in about 165 BC, are simply fraudulent predictions after the fact.  They are floated because they have to render credible the genuine predictions made in the same text: the way Daniel�s �predictions� of the downfall of the Babylonian, Medic, Persian and Hellenistic empires have come true, so the prediction of the everlasting independence under the Maccabeic dynasty will also come true.  This last prediction was genuine but failed to come true: the Romans gained influence and would formally occupy the country a century later.

Even the short-term predictions about polytheist kings meeting their doom and monotheist kings being rewarded, often did not come true.  Elijah predicts Ahab�s downfall; but because Ahab goes in sackcloth for a while, Yahweh changes His mind and promises to bring the misfortune over Ahab�s (so far innocent) son instead (1 Kings 21).  What had happened was clearly that Elijah�s prediction failed to come true, and that the later editor, who knew about Ahab�s son�s downfall, adapted the story to turn it into a second-best way of making Elijah�s prophecy a true one.  Like our modern fortune-tellers, the prophets and their editors knew the tricks of wriggling out of such unambiguous tests falsifying their prophetic reliability, e.g. by stating that Yahweh was withholding the deserved punishment (predicted but failing to materialize) from a trespassing king but that He would visit it upon the king�s descendents.  And of course, as every dynasty is bound to fall one day, such prediction cannot fail.

After valiantly keeping the formidable Assyrian threat at a distance and thus refuting Amos� and Hosea�s prophecies, the northern capital Samaria did fall in 721 BC, three decades after the prophecies.  During the exile, Jeremiah�s and Ezekiel�s later prophecies which uncharacteristically promised a hopeful outcome, were not fulfilled for decades, until finally, like most conquerors, the Babylonians were defeated in their turn by the Persians.

Moreover, where outside information is lacking, we have to depend on the biased version of history given by the Bible editors themselves, but from cases where we do have the control of outside information, we know that the Bible editors rewrote not only the predictions to make them suit history better, but also history itself.

The Bible itself says that a false prophet can be recognized by his predictions not coming true (Deut. 18:22). By that standard, most prophets were false, and we wonder why God would allow such misuse of His name, and even the sanctification of this false prophetism as Sacred Scripture.

The failed predictions are one reason for definitely rejecting the claim that an omniscient supernatural being, Yahweh, was speaking through the prophets.  Like everyone, they were sometimes right on common-sense predictions about politics or about the logical consequences of people�s behaviour: e.g. Mohammed�s correct prediction of a Byzantine come-back in the war with the seemingly unstoppable Persian army.  But there is not a single case in the whole Abrahamic prophetic tradition of a prophet making a genuine prediction (not one visibly back-projected by the later editors) about something normally unforeseeable, and getting it right.  It is like the common astrologer who can, along with many non-astrologers, predict which of two candidates will win an election, but proves incapable of foreseeing the place and date of the next big earthquake.

It gets worse when we consider the eschatological predictions (referring to ultimate doom, the coming of the Messiah, and judgment Day), a matter that should be dose to God�s heart.  So far, all such predictions have badly failed, from Jeremiah through Jesus, Saint Paul, the different Apocalypse books, Mohammed, the Medieval millenarists, the Jehovah�s Witnesses.  Nostradamus enthusiasts claim their hero has predicted the end for 1999; let us see.  So far, the prophets did not demonstrably have any access to a higher source of knowledge.

The Jehovah�s Witnesses believe that they are the select segment of humanity that will inherit the earth after the imminent catastrophe of which the scenario has been given in the Apocalypse. Jehovah Witnesses� founder Charles Tase Russell said Jesus would return in 1874 and complete his work in 1914, when God�s Kingdom would start.  His successor Franklin Rutherford predicted in 1920 that �millions living now will never die�, and had a royal mansion built for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, due to return in 1925.  When the prediction failed to materialize, the Witnesses claimed that it had been made by �the old light�, and that �the new light� would surely do better.  Another leader, Nathan Homer Knorr, predicted the Armageddon catastrophe for 1975, to be followed by God�s empire.  Then W.F. Franz predicted 1986, etc.  So, if ever you are troubled by those obtrusive Jehovah preachers, simply say to them: �Deuteronomy 18:22.� But remark how these failures are always rationalized by the believers: the fact that a prophet has a following and keeps it, does not prove that his prophecies come true.

Some believers may shrug off the cold test of prediction as a kill-joy, but it is considered pertinent by scientists: genuine knowledge is proven by accurate predictions.  The source of the prophets� statements was not any genuine knowledge, but uncertain opinions and beliefs, ranging from common sense opinions and theological doctrines to psychopathological delusions.  Certainly it was not an omniscient God who communicated their failed predictions, unless He was also malicious.

Modern theologians who have problems with the exclusive claims of prophets, but who are still too attached to the image of prophets as upright and far-sighted men, might venture to interpret �prophethood� in a more abstract sense: identification with God�s viewpoint on a certain given matter, with �God� in turn being interpreted as �the Truth� or �the Good� or �the Whole�.  Thus, when members of a group are quarrelling, and someone transcends his own private interest and identifies with the interest of the group as a whole, and guides the quarrelling parties out of their detrimental disunity by impressing upon them the dependence of their separate interests upon the well-being of the Whole, then one might call his stand prophetic.  One who becomes the spokesman of the Whole, is a prophet.  But there is nothing exclusive or Chosen or supernatural about it, in fact everyone can aspire towards this kind of �prophetic� consciousness.

Modern Scripture interpreters have sometimes tried to attribute this kind of role to the historical prophets.  Thus, when the prophets rebuke the kings and the rich for neglecting and oppressing the poor (or king David for coveting commander Uriah�s only wife Bathsebah while he has many wives himself), one might say that they are conscience-keepers who remind the selfish rulers of their duty towards the whole of society.  However, a closer analysis of some prominent prophets� personalities and careers shows that if they paid attention to social injustice, it was more because unhappy and querulous people just happen to be perceptive and tireless fault-finders, always seeking out the bad things in order to confront others (especially those of whom they are jealous) about them; or because they themselves were poor and deprived; or because they saw a strategic advantage in allying with the poor.  Even those in whom no such impure motives or distorting conditions can be found, were just public-spirited men and good speakers, but that did not make them messengers of the Creator in any literal sense.

An example of the new and more rational meaning which modern theologians try to give to the term �prophet�, I saw in an article about divorce, in a Catholic paper.  As divorce is a grave sin for Catholics, the title was rather shocking: �Divorce is often a prophetic event�.  The essence of the article was that, while many people step into marriage mindlessly, nobody will divorce mindlessly.  A marriage can be concluded in a self-deluded moment of infatuation, but divorce is the result of a painful and highly conscious process.  It forces you to face questions about your own weaknesses, values, expectations from life.  This hard, even forced awareness of life goals and of one�s own shortcomings is compared with the effect of the prophets� warnings and tirades to their complacent contemporaries.

So, awareness and consciousness-raising are the new contents of the concept �prophetic�.  Of course, we are all for awareness and consciousness-raising, in a rational sense; but it is unhistorical to identify these lofty undertakings with what the Biblical prophets saw as their �message�.  One may agree with some of the things the prophets said, but their method of arriving at their �messages� is simply unsustainable in an age that has chosen to cultivate the scientific temper.  If a prophet spoke out against social injustice, fine.  Let us do as he did, and as all those others did who spoke out against social injustice without claiming a divine source.  If a prophet woke people up from their self-satisfied and mindless slumber, good.  But if we follow his example, let us not pretend it is some supernatural being that is speaking through us.

Prophets are also praised as the ones who don�t accept reality as it is.  To be prophetic means, for Liberation Theologians, to go against the way of the world.  For instance, the recent upsurge of violent nationalism has made theologians say: against the common belief that people first belong to their nation and not so much to humanity as a whole, the Church has a prophetic mission to question this seemingly natural and instinctive nationalist loyalty.

When we look at the actual prophets, we see that they certainly do militate against the existing reality.  But whether this is always so elevating, is a different matter.  What we do find is frustrated people who stand up against the successful in life, who are unwilling to accept their own inferior position.  With that, nothing pejorative has been said: a pupil who has enough of his mediocre school results and decides to fight back and to work hard and become top of the class, deserves praise; a member of an oppressed nation standing up against his country�s occupiers, is hailed as brave and freedom-loving (though not in all circumstances as wise).  It is something else when people do not try to remedy their depressed position with a, real solution, but posit an imaginary superiority instead.  That is what we see prophets of the Abrahamic lineage do, time and again.

When the Israelites are suffering under the yoke of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, or the Romans, we see prophets announce that God will take these enemies away, that he will burn them down, that he will raise the fallen warriors of Israel to life so that they can drive out the enemy.  In some cases, this is coupled with a practical programme of armed resistance (as with Bar Kochba, early 2nd century AD), but more often it is just an invocation of imaginary threats from heaven against very real worldly overlords.

Even without the humiliation of foreign occupation, the prophetic Israelite religion has features of a collective overcompensation of an inferiority complex.  In the beginning, the Israelites were a cattle-rearing semi-nomadic tribe living at the mercy of the increasingly well-organized sedentary populations: the story of the farmer Cain and the shepherd Abel (Gen.4), where God accepts the latter�s but not the former�s sacrifice, and where the latter is the former�s innocent victim, testifies to this early experience of nomadic vulnerability.  After establishing themselves as a kingdom, they were still a peripheral nation living in the shadow of the great civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia.  The status of �God�s Chosen People�, which need not be supported by actual cultural achievements or political grandeur, but can be claimed on the strength of an unverifiable exclusive �divine revelation�, comes in handy to overcome this gnawing sense of inferiority.

This self-elevation from a real-life insecure and peripheral tribe to a mythical Chosen; People that is the centre of God�s concern, is the unique contribution of the Old Testament.  As a matter of collective psychology, it had fed on the insecurity of a wandering tribe.  After a few centuries as a moderately powerful state, this need of imaginary self-aggrandizement was re-stimulated by the defeats against the Assyrians (722 BC) and the Babylonians (587 BC), and took the form of the vengefulness of a defeated nation.  Their religion had given them an imaginary superiority. It should be noted that the Hebrew self-promotion from real-life smallness to the status of Chosen People, was in essential respects re-enacted by the founders of Christianity and Islam.

Sociologically, both Jesus and Mohammed were unimportant people, as were their first recruits.  Educationally, it is even more striking that the founding groups of Christianity and Islam were all fairly backward people.  In later apologetics, this is taken as a good point: what God hath not revealed to the wise and mighty, he hath revealed to these simple people.  This is a revolutionary and irrational assumption, that uneducated people can just start a new religion, and know it all better than educated people.  If education has the value which experienced people ascribe to it, if it is really that indispensable for a mature and fully developed faculty of judgment, we would expect people lacking in education to come up with a second-rate product.  We would expect them to improvise a clumsy and inconsistent doctrine full of exaggerated claims and half-digested borrowed ideas, without proper method or sense of proportion.  And indeed, these are typical traits of both Christianity and Islam.

Recent history provides a number of similar cases where prophets announce a God-ordained glorious future or superior status, as well as miraculous help, to communities in distress.  The colonial period was especially rich in Christian-influenced instances of prophethood among natives of non-Christian cultures with some exposure to Christian beliefs.  In India�s tribal communities, there has been a whole series of prophets, the most famous of whom was perhaps the Munda leader Birsa, who organized rebellions at the end of 19th century (a full survey of these Indian prophetic movements has been given by Stephen Fuchs in his book Godmen on the Warpath).⁶ In China, Hong Xiu-Chuan, a schoolteacher who had failed thrice in the imperial exams, and who had converted to Protestantism, answered God�s call to start a messianic movement for establishing the Tai-ping Tian-guo, the �heavenly country of supreme peace�.  This Tai-ping rebellion (1851-64) would wreck public life in central China, and in the subsequent civil war millions were killed.

Among the Xhosa people of South Africa, the prophetess Nongqawuse stood up to announce that on a specified day (18 February 1857), the sun would rise and sink back into the East, and during the ensuing 48 hours of dark, the ancestors of the people would come back to life and the British colonizers would be driven into the sea.  In order to show their confidence, the people had to kill their cattle and destroy their harvest, and prepare for the final battle.  But the day came and went, and the people got hungry.  After this catastrophe, they had no choice but to go to the Europeans begging for menial jobs.  Like that, numerous prophets have brought disasters over their followers and other fellow-men.

These pitiable prophets of heavenly intervention give a much better idea of what Biblical prophethood was like, than the sophisticated notions (say, �prophetic non-conformism�) preached by modem theologians.  It is alright to preach modem attitudes and discard antiquated ones, but the theologians will have to face the consequence, viz. that by discarding the primitive Biblical belief in an exclusive literal revelation announcing a drastic personal intervention of God Himself in worldly affairs, they are also discarding the basis of Christianity�s claims to exclusive truth.  The vague interpretation of prophethood as �public-spiritedness� or �non-conformism� constitutes a climbdown from claims of exclusive God-given truth to the submergence of Christian identity in the multifarious religio-ethical efforts of humanity at large.

The Biblical text as a whole, comprising both the actual revelations from God and the much lengthier narrative surrounding them, may or may not be conceived as God�s word.  Nowadays, only some fundamentalist Churches maintain that every word in the Bible was literally intended by God Himself.  Most Christians would rather accept that the experiences narrated contain a revelation of God�s plan for humanity, but that the actual wording has been man�s work, and that it is up to us to interpret the text and extract God�s intention from it.

Though directly it may make little difference to the question whether the messages uttered by the prophets were really God�s revelations, it is still interesting to see to what extent the surrounding Biblical narrative is unmistakably a human creation.  Those who wrote and re-wrote the Bible, were human beings conditioned by cultural motifs and attitudes prevalent in their national and international environment.  It follows that what they have transmitted to us as reports of prophetic utterances, may in fact have been composed or at least rewritten to suit certain ideological concerns, polemical exigencies or political compulsions.

The Bible editors had undoubtedly borrowed important cultural motifs from Egypt (where the Israelites lived during the first half of the second millennium BC) and Mesopotamia (where they ultimately came from, and where they lived in exile in the sixth century BC).  Though we are told that the Chosen People�s �experience� of monotheism and the Covenant is one of the biggest events in history, it can only be understood if we realize that this people was a satellite of now the Egyptian, then the Mesopotamian civilization.  Both in contents and in literary techniques, the Bible has borrowed considerably from the neighbouring cultures.

The Creation story, for a start, is thousands of years older than the Bible.  God making man out of clay is a classical motif in the myths of divergent cultures.  The fact that Eve, whose Hebrew name means �life�, is taken from Adam�s rib, can be explained by a process of borrowing from a Sumerian creation account, because in Sumerian the words for �rib� and �life� are homophonous. in a story from the Talmud (the rabbinical guide to life and to Bible reading, a very human and sensitive text), the explanation is given that God took woman from man�s rib �so that she will always be close to his heart�: this shows man�s inventiveness in enlivening and humanizing an ancient story, but it cannot undo the borrowed and non-revealed nature of this Bible passage.

A tradition that is much closer to historical events, and which was also borrowed from the neighbouring cultures, is the story of the Flood.  Of this story, several variations are known in West Asia, but the Bible is true to the common narrative skeleton: the whole earth is flooded, only a small group of people, who have taken precautions, survive in a ship (the ark of Noah), together with some specimens of other species.  However, the Bible re-interprets this old story as God�s design to undo the evil that is part of His creation, and to help His handpicked favourites among the human beings to survive this mass destruction - a prefiguration of God�s later Covenant with His Chosen People.

More important borrowings are not so much the stories related in the Bible, the pieces of contents, but the symbolic patterns and formal characteristics of the Bible text.  One borrowed element is the astrological symbolism of the Mesopotamians.  Its two chief sets of symbols were the �seven planets� (which include sun and moon) and the Zodiac.

Today, the Zodiac is known mostly as a tool in fortune-telling; for the Mesopotamians, it was much more than that.  Astronomically, it was the year cycle, the successive stages through which the sun accomplished its yearly journey.  Philosophically, it became the archetypal cycle, the cosmic pattern of every cyclical process in its completeness, the structure of every complete set, every universe.

The planets were the active agents of destiny.  Long before the Zodiac came into use for fortune-telling, the planets were already used for that purpose.  They were the incarnated gods, heaven-dwellers who, in contrast to the background of the �fixed stars�, were always in motion, just like the earthlings (though in a more perfect, regular way).  The planets were not the immutable absolute level of divinity, but the creative, world-oriented, destiny-regulating department of the divine sphere.

In the Bible, God creates the world in six days and then has a day off.  But the seven-day week was not invented by God, as medieval Christians used to believe, but by the ancient astronomers.  They put the planets in order of apparent speed: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn.  They divided the day in twenty-four hours, and named these hours after the planets in descending order, starting with the sun for the first hour of the first day. The days were named after the same planet as their first hour, and the resulting arrangement is still in use today: Sunday, Moonday, Marsday, Mercuryday, Jupiterday, Venusday, Saturnday.⁷ This arrangement had existed for centuries by the time the Hebrew creation story was written.  Sunday had been given the honour of being the first day, so that Saturday was the last.  This was symbolically right in the sense that Saturn is the slowest planet, representing therefore minimal activity and introspection.  For the Hebrews, this Saturn�s day became the Sabbath, with its extreme ban on any kind of work, in imitation of God�s own rest on the seventh day.

As for the signs of the Zodiac: the twelve sons of Jacob (also called Israel) are clearly an embodiment of the sacred twelvefold of the Mesopotamians.  For all we know, the Zodiac imagery as we know it today was developed in Mesopotamia in just the same period when the Hebrew people was living there in exile.  In Genesis 49, some of Jacob�s sons are even described with characteristics typical of the twelve signs: Juda as a lion, who shall wield the sceptre (Leo), Joseph as a bull (Taurus), Dan as a snake (which, along with the eagle, is an old variation on Scorpio).  In Deuteronomy 33, a complete correspondence between Zodiac symbols and the twelve sons/tribes is worked out.  In Jesus� time too, the Zodiac, or more abstractly the twelvefold, was an all-important motif.  Later, the European painters would depict the twelve apostles as people with the characteristic physique which medieval astrology ascribed to the natives of the twelve signs.

The prophet Ezekiel uses the imagery of the four �fixed� (mid-season) signs of the Zodiac: Bull (Taurus), Lion (Leo), Eagle (old image used for Scorpio), Man (Aquarius).  These four were later coupled with the four evangelists. The writer of the Apocalypse describes a woman (ordinarily interpreted as the Virgin Mary) with the moon at her feet and twelve stars around her head.  �The twelve stars� is simply the Hebrew expression for �Zodiac�.⁸

But the Zodiac, or at least the twelvefold arrangement, is also present in a more complex and abstract way.  The division of the circle into twelve is a very simple but very interesting geometrical operation.  In fact, it is the most �natural� division of the circle, i.e. it doesn�t require anything that is not already present in the construction of the circle, viz. the compasses with a given radius: by drawing six equal circles on the circumference of a given circle, the 12 intersection-points form a six-pointed star, and the straight lines connecting them with the central point yield a division in 12 times 30 degrees.  This must have been a momentous and awe-inspiring property for the primitive geometers of those days. Just like the contemporary attempts to read mystical profundities into the latest findings of modem science (�Tao of Physics� c.s.), there was a tendency in ancient cultures to link the first attempts at science with religion and metaphysics.  We all know about the Pythagoreans� linkage of numerical properties with the mysteries of the cosmos, but Babylonians and Egyptians had similar lines of speculation, which no doubt influenced the Hebrew priests. They called the six-pointed star David�s Shield (Magen David), and nowadays it is present in the national flag of Israel.⁹

Another interesting thing about the construction is that it introduces the symbolism of the number thirteen.  There are twelve intersection points on the outside (six on the circumference of the basic circle, each followed by one outside the circumference), and one in the centre.  They are representative of the world with its twelve-stage cycles (like the year with its twelve moon-cycles) and of God, motionless in the centre.  One might speculate that this is the origin of the taboo on the number thirteen: since the thirteenth point represented God, �thirteen� was something like a God�s name, and many nations including the Hebrews entertained a taboo on pronouncing God�s name. This speculation is corroborated by the fact that to the Hebrews, the number thirteen was a sacred number: e.g., the Thora (the five books of Moses), the most sacred part of the Bible, is called �the thirteen-petalled rose�.¹⁰

Moreover, in this geometrical construction as well as in the Bible, the numbers twelve (the outside points marking the division of the circle) and thirteen (the total number of intersection points) always appear together.  Take the sons of Jacob: there were twelve of them, but they had one sister, Dinah, so Jacob had thirteen children.  Take the twelve tribes of Israel: each one of Jacob�s sons was the ancestor of one tribe, except Joseph whose two sons both headed one tribe.  So the twelve tribes were really thirteen.  But then the tribe of Levi had no territory of its own, so that the land of Israel�s thirteen tribes was divided into twelve.  Even in the New Testament, we see the same pattern: there were twelve apostles around Jesus, making thirteen; and even among the apostles, after Judas� suicide, a thirteenth member, Matthias, was accepted to replace Judas.  And in the description of the days of Creation, the working days are listed as a day and a night, six plus six being twelve, but of the Sabbath, only the day is mentioned, making thirteen day-halves.

This list of Biblical motifs apparently borrowed from neighbouring cultures is by no means exhaustive.  Without denying that the Bible editors have added some inventive imagery and symbolism of their own, we may safely conclude that the human source of this aspect of Bible composition can be traced to the Israelites� cultural environment; and more generally to human reason and human imagination rather than to the all-knowing Creator.

The Kabbalah tradition of Jewish Scripture interpretation has always held that there are elements of highly intricate structural and numerical perfection in the architecture of the Bible.  These could reveal meanings unnoticed in a superficial reading.

Thus, a technique called Temurah (permutation) was considered to reveal hidden meanings by exchanging the letters within a word or sentence.  So, the opening word of Genesis, BeREShTh (�in the beginning�), was permuted to form the word-group BeRITh-ESh, �Covenant of Fire�, a dramatic image of the Covenant as well as an allusion to the column of fire which went before the Israelites on their exodus through the desert.  It is also permuted to BarA-****h, �He created six�, referring to the six days of creation and to a supposed sixfold structure in creation (e.g. the six directions of space, represented by projection onto two-dimensional space as, once more, the six-pointed star).  To be sure, this kind of game can be played in any alphabetic language, e.g. to say that GOD is merely DOG in reverse.

According to the Spanish kabbalist Joseph Gikatilla (13th century), �like through a garment, God�s name is woven through the Thora�.  In the Renaissance, some Christian authors too sought to unveil secret structures containing coded messages, esp. secret annunciations of Jesus the Redeemer.  In more recent times, many deplorable crank books have been written about hidden structures and messages in the Bible.  The main part of these Kabbalistic readings (or manipulations) of the Bible text concerns numerical structures.  Recently, scholars have set out to check the claim that the Bible is indeed such a numerically sophisticated construction, without any superstitious expectations nor skeptical prejudices.

The Austrian professor Claus Schedl has put forward the thesis that sacred texts, just like sacred buildings, were subject to architectonic rules.¹¹Professor C.J. Labuschagne, Old Testament scholar of Groningen University, has discovered a series of clearly non-coincidental numerical patterns in the Hebrew text.¹² One coded message of the Bible editor is that numerical data embody heavenly phenomena such as the planetary cycles.

For instance: one of the mysteries in the book of Genesis is the high age of some of the earlier human beings.  In general, one may surmise that as memories became more distant, stories were exaggerated, and all kinds of facts were blown out of proportion, including the life-spa- of the ancestors. We see this exaggeration in history-based legends the world over.  However, there is a strange exactness about the ages of these ancestors in Genesis: Lamech reached the age of 777, Henoch 365, Mahalalel 895, Yared 962.  Of course, in Henoch�s age we recognize the number of days in the year.  The other ages can be analyzed as the sum of one planet�s �synodic cycle� (i.e. the number of days from one conjunction of the planet with the sun till the next conjunction) with another planet�s synodic cycle.  Thus, 777 = 399 + 378 (Jupiter + Saturn), 962 = 584 + 378 (Venus + Saturn), 895 = 116 + 779 (Mercury + Mars).

Numbers are present in the Bible not only in their explicit form, such as the number of years in someone�s life, but also in a more intricate way.  First of all, there is the number of letters in a sentence, the number of words in a chapter, etc.  Psalm 119 has 22 stanzas, the same number as the letters in the alphabet, apparently symbolizing cosmic completeness.  For the same reason, the New Testament book of the Apocalypse has 22 chapters, but the Psalm does even better: each of the letters of the alphabet is the first letter of one stanza (acrostic).

Secondly, before Indian numerals came into use, the letters of the West-Asian and Greek alphabets were used both as sound-representers and as number-representers.  Thus, Aleph equaled one, Beth two, etc., Yod ten, Kaph twenty, etc., Qoph one hundred, Resh two hundred, etc.  Therefore, any written word could be read as a combination of numerals (though usually not in the correct order of hundredfold-tenfold-unit).  In Arabic script this can still be done, e.g. in the inscription on the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya it is said: �The date of its erection will become manifest by the words: it will remain an everlasting bounty�, because the latter expression is written in Persian with letters that add up to 935, being the year AH (equivalent to 1528-29 AD) when the building was claimed to have been constructed.¹³ Similarly, the number 786 is considered a lucky number by Muslims, because it is equal to the sum numerical value of the Kalima, the Islamic creed.

This practice is almost as old as alphabetic writing, and was fairly common in the cultural surroundings of the Bible editors.  A well-known example: Sargon II of Assyria, in the 8th century BC, had a city wall constructed around Dur-Sharrukin, the length of which (16283 el) corresponded to the numerical value of his own name.  The Gnostics discovered the basic oneness of their god-concept Abraxas and the then very popular Persian god Meithras (Mitra) in the fact that the names of both, written in Greek, had the same numerical value: 365.  In medieval Judaism, this practice, called Gematria, became very prevalent, and all kinds of variations were invented, e.g. a �filled� numerical value, being the sum of the numerical values of the fully spelt names of the letters that make up a word.

For example, the word Shaddai, one of God�s extra names, is ordinarily analyzed into Shin/300 + Dalet/4 + Yod/ 10 = 314.  Its filled value is counted as the sum of the letters that make up a the letters: SH-I-N + D-L-T + Y-O-D = (300 + 10 + 50) + (4 +30 + 400) + (10 + 6 + 4) = 814.  As an example of the use to which these calculations were put, the followers of the Jewish �messiah� Shabbetai Tsevi (17th century AD) �proved� his messianic pretence by showing that his name (Sh-B-T-I + Ts-B-I = 300 + 2 + 400 + 10 + 90 + 2 + 10) had the same numeral value, 814, as the �filled� numerical value of Shaddai.  However, their opponents pointed out that his name�s numerical value also equaled that of the expression Ruakh Sheqer, �false spirit� (R-U-Kh + SH-Q-R = 200 + 6 + 8 + 300 + 100 + 200). Which did not so much prove they were right in rejecting this false messiah (who was pressured into converting to Islam), but rather that this number play should not be taken so seriously.¹⁴

In the Bible this play with numbers also occurs.  Important numbers are chiefly 26 and 17.  The godnameYaHWeH¹⁵ numerically consists of Yod/10 + He/5 + Waw/6 + He/5 - 26.  However, in the �reduced� variety of gematria, all numerical values of the letters were reduced to unit level, dropping the zeros: that made the numerical value of the letter Yod 1 instead of 10, and the total value for YaHWeH 17 instead of 26.  Both numbers appear in all kinds of ways.  Some examples.  The total number of words spoken by Yahweh in the Book Deuteronomy is 442, or 26 times 17.  The ages of the patriarchs are the following: Abraham 175, or 7 times 5 times 5; Isaac 180, or 5 times 6 times 6; Jacob 147, or 3 times 7 times 7. Now if you replace multiplication by addition, then (7 + 5 +5) = (5 + 6 + 6) = (3 + 7 + 7) = 17.  This is clearly no coincidence.  Apparently, the hidden presence of 17 indicates the intimate company of Yahweh who was with the patriarchs all through their lives.

In the Hellenistic period, some Pythagorean lore was spread to many countries, including new forms of number symbolism that often came to reinforce older and simpler forms.  The Gospel of John (21:11) mentions 153 as the number of fish caught by the apostles.  Any Pythagorean can see that 153 is the �triangular number� of 17, meaning the sum of all the integer numbers from 1 to 17.  Moreover, 153 is also the only number that equals the sum of the cubes of its components: 1 + 125 + 27.  If the Gospel writer takes the trouble of giving an exact count of the fish in Peter�s net, there must be a good reason for it.  In this case, it may be a combination of Greek number symbolism and Hebrew gematria.

In the gematria system, the number 13 gains an extra significance: it is the numerical value of EHhaD, meaning �one�.  That �God is one� is the central affirmation in the Jewish religion.

The Babylonian exile in the sixth century BC seems to have steeped the Hebrew scripturalists in this symbolic-mathematical lore of the heathen Mesopotamians, and it is just after this exile, under Persian rule, that the Thora was codified for good.  It seems now that the final editors of the Hebrew Bible took the stories handed down to them (the contents of the Bible), and shaped them according to these symbolic-mathematical designs, adding a word here, repeating one there, spelling some words in an unusual way, in order to create meaningful numerical properties in the text.  Says prof. Labuschagne: �For me it is clear that the Bible text constitutes a premeditated unity.  The invisible structure, insofar as it hadn�t been handed down to them, must have been put in by the final editors.  This throws a new light on the seemingly superfluous repetitions: they were probably used in order to reach a predetermined number of words.�

This doesn�t invalidate the theories which see the contents of the Bible as the result of a slow growth process, with layers, additions, interpolations, internal reinterpretations etc. it simply means that in this process, especially in the final stages, the culture of mathematical sacred symbolism was an important formal element in the composition of the Bible.

It is now very clear that the Kabbalists of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance who rediscovered these numerical properties while reading the Bible, were wrong in inferring that they proved a superhuman design in the Bible composition.  On the contrary, these number games suggesting coded secret messages are a fairly typical cultural phenomenon of that period of human development in which the Bible was written.  They were a human way of making Scripture more sacred.

The effort to give meaning to every possible structure in the Bible, even if obviously cranky, is only a logical consequence of the belief that the Bible is God�s revelation.  Books in which one word means one thing, are ten a penny; but a book composed by God Himself should be truly perfect, and should be composed in such a way that it keeps on revealing new aspects of the infinite divine with every new way of reading it. 
 

Footnotes:

¹The striking and profound similarity between Spinoza�s philosophy and Eastern thought, particularly Mahayana Buddhism, has been described and analyzed exhaustively by Jon Wetlesen: The Sage and the Way, Spinoza�s Ethics of Freedom, Van Gorcum Publ., Assen (Netherlands) 1979.

²See the ground-breaking study by Ilya Prigogyne, the Russian-born Belgian Nobel Prize winner, and mrs. Isabelle Stengers, his colleague at Brussels Free University: La Nouvelle Alliance, 1979 (English translation: Order out of Chaos).

³Full discussion in the yearbook of De Ronde Tafel 1989-90 (Gent 1990), in the report on Mary�s Apparitions in Yugoslavia.

⁴The story of prophethood in Israel is told by Bernhard Lang: Wie wird man Prophet in Israel?, Patmos Verlag, Dusseldorf 1980; Jean-Marie Van Cangh: Le Prophetisme Biblique et Chrétien, El-Kalima, Brussels ca. 1990; Mircea Eliade ed.: Encyclopedia of Religion, entry Prophecy.

⁵On the rise of monotheism in Israel, see Morton Smith: Palestinian Parties and Politics that shaped the Old Testament, Columbia press, New York 1971; and Johannes C. De Moor: The Rise of Yahwism: The Roots of Israelite Monotheism, Leuven University Press, Leuven 1990.

⁶S. Fuchs: Godmen on the Warpath. A Study of Messianic Movements in India, Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi 1992. It also deals with Islamic quasi-prophetic movements whose origin cannot be attributed to Christian influence but to the Islamic tradition itself.

⁷In the Germanic languages, the names of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are coined after the corresponding Germanic gods Tiwas/ Mars, Wodan/Mercury, Thor/Jupiter and Freya/Venus.

⁸These twelve stars now figure in the flag of the European Community.  It was the winning design in a public contest in the 1950s.  The designer, a devotee of the Virgin Mary, said that this image from the Apocalypse was his inspiration (via the so-called Miraculous Medal, the design of which included this same twelve-star-circle, and which had been �revealed� to the French nun Catherine Labourié in 1830).

⁹It must, however, be pointed out that the six-pointed star was then not used as a distinctive �flag� of the Jewish People (just like the swastika is seen used as a religious symbol everywhere in India, as well as other countries, without being the private symbol of one religion).  Only in the late 18th century AD, Jews adopted it as a symbol of their community, to match the Christians� cross.  See the appendix onMagen David in Gerschom Scholem: Kabbalah (Keter Publ., Jerusalem 1974; Meridian, New York 1978).

¹⁰For this reason, the famous Israeli Talmud scholar Adin Steinsalz's book on the Jewish religion is titled:The Thirteen-Petalled Rose (Basic Books, New York 1980).

¹¹Claus Schedi : Baupläne des Wortes (German : �Building plans of the Word�), 1974.

¹²Report in Elsevier, 4/8/90, P. 75 ff.

¹³Radhey Shyam: Babar (Janaki Prakashan, Patna 1978), app.6.

¹⁴For a fuller treatment of gematria, see Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah, ch. 2.10.

¹⁵YaHWeH was sometimes written with the vowel-marks of word ADoNaI, �my lord�, which was usually read instead of the unpronounceable god-name, resulting in the mistaken pronunciation YeHoWaH.

The Bible report about Moses is spread over no less than four Bible books: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.  In these books, exegetes distinguish four layers.  The first is the Yahwist tradition, written in the time of Israel�s kings, in the early first millennium BC, and in which �Yahweh� is consistently used as God�s name.  The second is the Elohist tradition, written in the time of the great prophets, and in which �Elohim� is used as God�s name.  The third is the Priestly tradition, from the time of the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC, and immediately after.  The fourth is the Deuteronomist tradition, the codification of the �Mosaic� law, which was largely created in the 7th and 6th centuries BC, and attributed to Moses for the sake of sanctity.  So, the original narrative has gone through many hands, and the historical Moses lies buried under many layers.

Yet, in tradition-oriented cultures, stories were often preserved in full detail for many centuries.  Especially typical and unusual facts about people and their remarkable feats were accurately preserved.  To test the reliability of the Moses narrative, we dispose of two types of criteria: external criteria, viz. some few possible references in Egyptian sources; and internal criteria.  These latter comprise the coherence between the different stages in the story: is the Moses of the time before the Exodus depicted as having the same personality as the Moses of the wanderings in the desert?  This is the so-called split-half reliability.  The other important internal criterion is whether the narrative gives us an unambiguous and typical character description, or a mere collection of commonplaces and stereotypes.  Moreover, does such a character description reveal negative traits which were certainly not concocted for glorifying the �founder of monotheism�, or perhaps even pathological traits which the writers couldn�t have thought up even if they had wanted to?

Moses in Egypt is depict d as a man of violent temper, who did not shy away from terrorism.  When a Hebrew worker is whipped by an Egyptian officer, which was a rather common practice in those days, Moses goes as far as killing the Egyptian.  If historical, the �tenth plague of Egypt�, the killing of the first-born son of every house, was clearly brought about by a terrorist campaign.  Why else were the Hebrews ordered to make a sign on their doors?  Surely God didn�t need such a sign to avoid killing the wrong people: but the terrorists did.  The other plagues of Egypt (locusts, mosquitoes, hail storms, the colouring of the Nile water) were all natural phenomena, which Moses or the narrators may have played up as divine signs.  Moses was a panic monger, who knew how to impress and fool the crowds.  He was very cunning and even beat the court magicians at snake tricks.  Considering the Biblical information on his court education, he may have been trained by one of the fabled magicians of Egypt, and had shown himself a gifted and creative pupil.

The Moses of the desert years is definitely the same impulsive man.  According to Ex. 32:19-25, when he came down from Mount Sinai and saw the golden calf, he was enraged and destroyed the idol; he gathered a band of Levites and ordered them to go around the camp and make a slaughter; they killed 3000 people.  Trespassers of Moses� Law are punished with death, the one and only penalty Moses knows: �Someone who had cursed Yahweh�s name was stoned to death, as Yahweh had ordered Moses to do� (Lev. 24:23). A man who was caught in the act of chopping wood on a Sabbath day was brought before Moses, who ordered the people to stone him (Num. 15:32-36).

And Moses still played his magic tricks.  Once when the people uttered their discontent, Yahweh sent snakes to bite the people (Num. 21:4-9): if we remember Moses� dexterity with snakes displayed before the pharaoh, we can guess who was behind this act of Yahweh�s.  Several times, Moses asserts his authority by invoking miracles from Yahweh.  Thus, he plants his brother Aaron�s staff in the ground, and it starts to blossom (Num. 17:16-28). The most famous occasion is of course his stay on top of Mount Sinai, where he receives the Ten Commandments: the hilltop gets covered with a cloud of smoke, and mighty trumpet calls are heard.  It was a simple kind of show, enough to impress the credulous people.  Like any juggler, he never allowed people to peep behind the curtain: in Ex. 19:21-24, Yahweh orders Moses not to allow the people to come near the mountain, �for many would die�, and Moses assures Him that the mountain has been sealed off safely.

Like in Egypt, but on a far larger scale, he practised terrorism against other peoples who came in the way of his own people�s expansion.  Yahweh ordered him to destroy the altars and sacred symbols of the peoples of Kanaan (Ex. 34:12-13). �Thus ye shall do unto them: ye shall strike down their altars, smash their sacred stones to pieces, fell their sacred trees and bum their idols.  Nobody will resist you until ye have exterminated them� (Deut. 7:2-24). Indeed, Yahweh is not satisfied with idol-breaking, he wants skulls to be broken as well, many thousands of them: �[of the peoples who are remote neighbours] ye shall slaughter all the males.  But in the cities that Yahweh puts in your possession, ye shall not let anyone survive� (Deut. 20:13-16). Perhaps killing the males and abducting the females can be somewhat excused as a common practice in every kind of war.  But even by those standards, Yahweh goes too far when he orders all living beings killed.

Moses put these divine orders into practice.  He flew into a rage when his men had killed all the adult males of the Midianite people (which, incidentally, had given Moses shelter years before, see Ex. 2:11-18) but had left the females and children alive.  He had all the boys and non-virgin women also killed, but the virgins they could keep for their pleasure (Num. 31:7-18). After Moses� death, his successor Joshua followed in his footsteps.  The gruesome treatment of the 31 cities he conquered, is described in detail in Joshua 8-12: �He destroyed all the living beings in the city and did not let anyone escape� (10:28).  Joshua merely carried out the commandments inherent in Moses� deal with Yahweh.

In all this slaughter, Moses styled himself as merely the hand of Yahweh.  It was not he but Yahweh who did the killing, as is clear from Deut. 19:1: �When Yahweh your God hath exterminated all the people of the land that He hath given you�� From the theological viewpoint, the importance of this is that he introduced the concept of Holy War, which in principle meant that God engaged in warfare for (actually also through) His people.  From the viewpoint of the inquiry into the historicity of the Moses narrative, the importance is that Holy War talk is perfectly consistent with Moses� style of action in Egypt (where he also portrayed the killing of the first-born Egyptians as God�s intervention).

It is remotely possible that this consistency (the split-half reliability) is due to a systematic imposing of this Holy War doctrine on the entire Moses narrative by the editors.  The tirade against other gods and the repeated induction to kill apostates, in Deut.13, may be such a later priestly interpolation.  Perhaps Moses was much too busy with actual warfare to carry out religious inquisition and purification campaigns, which was more a task for. the later scribes and prophets.  But the Holy War doctrine is probably not a later addition, for it does fit the military situation well.  Even if it were a later addition, this would only weaken but still not contradict the case for the historicity of Moses� personality description as the Bible has preserved it.

External evidence has been claimed to exist, confirming Moses� historicity and the essentials of his religious outlook.⁷ Egyptian sources give a lot of information on a character whose career is contemporary with and entirely similar to that of Moses: the Egyptian dignitary Beya.  The name already points to the Semitic Yahwist tradition: Be-Yah means �on/by/in Yah�, as in �by Yah (I swear)� or �in Yah (I trust)�.  He also had a long Egyptian name of which �moses� (child of) was a part, as was very common in Egyptian names.  So, it is possible that Moshe/Moses was a Hebraized abbreviation of the Egyptian name of this Beya.

This dignitary Beya was a very powerful man at the Egyptian court, and several depictions of him have been preserved.  It is striking that he apparently refused to be depicted as bowing before any of the Egyptian gods.  He disappears from the Egyptian sources after the unsuccessful palace revolution of the regent princess Tausret against the legitimate young king Siptah.  Probably he was part of the conspiracy, and had to flee after its failure.  As he is called �the Syrian� in one source, he may have joined hands with the numerous Semitic immigrant community (which may have been held guilty, rightly or wrongly, for the political trouble, just like the Hyksos earlier), and led it into exodus.

Without using those sources, and merely relying on the (not obviously interpolated) data in the Bible narrative, dr. Somers claims to discern some not exactly pathological but still rather extreme traits in Moses.  Thus, the �burning bush� need not be understood as a hallucination, but can be explained by natural causes: certain plants in the desert secrete etheric oils which can inflame spontaneously under the sun�s heat.  This might have made a big impression on someone not familiar with it, and the desert heat may have helped in making Moses sense a divine presence.

Moses may have suffered from what is called a �reactive psychosis�, caused by guilt feelings about the murder of an Egyptian in anger against his punishing a Hebrew slave (or about other, unrecorded crimes).  That is also the line followed by Freud in his analysis of Moses.  What sometimes happens in such cases, is that a murderer afterwards develops the conviction that God had wanted this murder, that it was God�s will overruling human morality, so that the murder was justified.  This would then have led to Moses� remarkable and self-righteous proneness to murder, terror and the death penalty.

Dr. Somers rejects the thesis put forward by Hirsch that Moses suffered from paranoia.  Contrary to the objections of some religious people, the psychological interpretation of the Bible narrative is not an arbitrary projection of modem prejudices, with �paranoia� as a catch-all for everything that does not live up to our standards of irreligious conventionalism.  It is a precise scientific analysis, in which a precise syndrome has to be discerned and checked against all the reliable data in the narrative.

Of course, not everyone who has committed a crime develops this same psychosis.  A certain temperamental disposition should be present.  Psychology knows of a specific condition called the ixoid (= viscous, sticky) personality, with these characteristics:

1. domineering and vindictive behaviour;
2. impulsive, inclined to violence;
3. intolerant of disagreement;
4. waves of bad temper, explosions;

5. yet, over-social, wants to serve, has a sense of fairness (so that their angry explosions are occasioned by perceived injustice);

6. meticulous, order-loving, pedantic;
7. persistent and tough;

8. speech disturbances may occur (certain similarity, on a less physical level, with epilepsy).

While this syndrome may perhaps lack in precision, so that a firm conclusion about its application to Moses may seem like overstretching the method a bit, it is correct that this �syndrome� is in evidence in Moses� behaviour.  It is indeed in reaction to a perceived injustice against the Hebrew labourer that Moses kills the Egyptian.  And it is mentioned explicitly that he complains of not being a good speaker, so that Yahweh allows his brother Aaron to speak for him.

Since man makes God after his own image and likeness, it is legitimate to trace some of Moses� personal character traits in the God-image which Moses has impressed upon scores of generations of Jewish, Christian and Muslim monotheists.  The sometimes morbid character of revealed monotheism is partly traceable to Moses� personal psychological condition.

For some really pathological cases, we should read the stories of the prophets.  Let us briefly relate dr. Somers� diagnosis of the greatest of them.

Of course, not all prophets were mentally disturbed people, many just practised a kind of clairvoyance but remained balanced people, some even with a healthy critical intellect.  Others are fanatics, but are not described as personalities which we would now recognize as mentally disturbed.

The prophet Elijah was not at all crazy, just clever.  When he engages in a competition with the Baal priests, the poor fellows try to get a fire burning on their alter by singing invocations of Baal, while he has sprinkled �water� on his altar and claims the honour for Yahweh once it catches fire (1 Kings 18:20-40).  The story smacks of propaganda, but may nonetheless be a true report of a Yahwist prophet�s unscrupulous deceitfulness.  The nature of the �water� sprinkled by Elijah becomes clear when we read of a similar feat in the book of the maccabees (2 Macc. 1:20): the Levites have to get fire in a cave, they only find drab water, they bring it nonetheless, and yes, it brings forth fire.  A subsequent verse calls the water �nephtai�: petroleum was already known to some insiders, and priests used it as a trick to impress people.  The Romans also used it, as is clear from the allegation by the writer of the Apocalypse (who appears not to have known the trick) that they had the power to �make fire come down from heaven� (Ap.13:13).

After this episode, Elijah also manages to do what other prophets only rant about and promise to make Yahweh do: some large-scale killing.  After cunningly assembling them, he has hundreds of Baal priests massacred.  On the whole, Elijah too believed he had a private telephone line with God, but he had retained a firm grip on social and strategic realities, and acquired a much more honourable positions than some of his colleagues.

For a more tragic example, we turn to Isaiah, the �man of sorrow�.  He had a schizophreniform accident, a vision with schizophrenic contents, which deeply influenced his further thought, but did not form a chronic condition of schizophrenia.  In this vision, he has sensory hallucinations, catastrophic revelations, and a strong delusion of being chosen by God to serve a mission.  This will condition his self-image and his �prophetic� style of logorrhea, emotional exaggeration, and making predictions.

Taking into account that some of Isaiah�s successful �predictions� are in fact later interpolations, we find that the remaining authentic predictions are little more than expressions of the prophet�s own vengefulness and wishful thinking.  Liberation theologians get a kick out of Isaiah�s tirades against the mighty and the successful (who will be wiped away when the Lord cometh), thinking that he was a kind of social revolutionary; in fact, he was just another typical unhappy man who developed both an intense vengefulness against the successful and a, delusion of being special in a supernatural way.  Unhappy and vengeful people are keen observers and critics of others� faults.  And who will believe that Isaiah�s walking barefoot and naked for three years (Is.12) is not abnormal behaviour but a deliberate sign of warning?

Isaiah�s hymn on the newborn son (�For a child is born unto us, a son is given��, 9:5-6), interpreted as referring to Christ by Christians and probably by Christ himself, is more realistically about the prince Manasse, born in 699 BC.  Of course, some of the imagery in Isaiah is of great and lasting beauty (especially when put to music by Haendel in his Messiah), in spite of the morbid element in the prophet.  We should realize that the man, and more so his final editors, integrated his delusion into a genuine religious vision.  A mere copy of his authentic tirades and �predictions� would not have enthused many followers, but a suitably enlarged and edited version endowed with a literate religious doctrine and style became genuinely powerful.

Jeremiah, the prophet of doom par excellence, is a clear case of paranoia querulans.  Israel has fallen and will be punished.  The king of Babylon who subdues Israel is merely God�s punishing arm; which will not save him, the idolater, from equally being punished in the end.  Jeremiah is against everyone, including rivalling godmen and prophets, and God�s revenge will be total.  His immense hatred for everyone who disagrees and his hammering on always the same allegations and promises of doom, and a secondary delusion of being persecuted, are typical signs of querulous paranoia.

As Dr. Somers writes: �The book Jeremiah teaches us nothing about God, it illustrates how a sick mind pictures God in terms of his own delusion� Jeremiah shows a characteristic trait of the paranoia patient: a deadly hatred against everyone who disagrees with him, a totally disproportionate reaction to the �other opinion�, inspired by hurt narcissism.  The inflated ego is invested with divine dignity and power.  Whoever speaks up against God, must die.� In a sense, this is a diagnosis of not only Jeremiah, but of prophethood itself.

Ezekiel, who lived in the Babylonian exile, reiterated the condemnation of unfaithful Jerusalem by his contemporary Jeremiah.  But he is of a different psychological type: he is not aggressive towards his audience, rather he is indifferent.  The evil has been done, the catastrophe is sure to follow, whether people listen or not.  Ezekiel is an unmistakable case of schizophrenia.  In the 22 years (592-570) covered by the book Ezekiel, we see a typical development of this condition: he gets hallucinatory visions, develops an increasingly bizarre behaviour, isolates himself.  In moments of calm, he relates his visions to others and gives detailed descriptions.

Not every schizophrenia patient makes it to the status of prophethood.  Ezekiel was not an extreme case, and he was a literate man who could somehow make his visions relevant through religion, which made them interesting for the Bible editors.  It was also his initial deep religiosity that made him vulnerable to emotional collapse when Jerusalem fell, its temple usurped by Baal priests, and the people (at least, the elite) forced into exile in Babel.  Unlike many fellow Hebrews, he could not adapt to this Pagan city full of opportunity, and his emotional collapse developed into a permanent mental affliction.

The last Old Testament prophet we must mention in this brief survey, is Henoch.  His book (mid-second century BC) is classed as apocryphal, but it is an integral part of the prophetic tradition.  Henoch was a staunch pharisee⁸and leader of the Essene sect.  Probably he was the sect�s �teacher of righteousness�, mentioned in the so-called Death Sea Scrolls unearthed at Qumran.  It is he who first applied the notion of the �Son of Man� (developed by Daniel as pertaining to the Israelite nation as a whole) to himself, which personalized notion Jesus in turn was to interpret as applying to himself.  There can be no doubt that Jesus borrowed from Henoch: the New Testament contains 64 almost literal quotes from Henoch, plus other types of, references.

The book Henoch contains the writings of someone suffering from paranoid schizophrenia (with all the typical features of schizophrenia as Karl Jaspers described them).⁹ And it is these Henochian visions which constitute an essential component of the belief system of Jesus and his disciples.

Once more, it should not surprise us that someone with such an affliction could be the recognized leader of a sect.  Among other factors, people with a distorted consciousness are often capable of feats of asceticism which require tremendous will-power in ordinary mortals.  And the common people of those days would naturally associate the abnormal with the supernatural, especially if it came clothed in the language of religion.  But remarkably, in the case of Henoch at least the guardians of the official religious tradition were suspicious of the divine character of Henoch�s book, mostly because of its very open self-centredness.  The typical thing with all people suffering from delusions, is that these delusions are very self-centred and allot special importance to the sufferer.  But in the case of Henoch, it was conspicuous even to not very discriminating people that Henoch was glorifying more himself than Yahweh.

Henoch claims that he had been given a divine job by God Himself, to reprimand the angels who, sometime before the Flood, had fallen in love with human females and begotten, on them the giants (remark the element of jealousy).  Then, he is taken on a trip through heaven: �And I, Henoch, I alone have seen the vision, the end of everything, and no man will see the way I have seen� (19:3).  In heaven, he sees someone called the �Head of Days�, who comes to him and says: �You, you are the Son of Man, who was born for righteousness and righteousness remains with you and the righteousness of the Head of Days will not abandon you� (71:17).  In a vision of a terrible Day of Judgment, he refers to himself as the Chosen One.

The concept of the �Son of Man� had already been introduced in the book of Daniel, written at most a few decades earlier.  But there, it explicitly refers to the Chosen People, the nation of Israel which will inherit the rule over the earth after four successive great empires have gone down.  But Henoch and later Jesus mistakenly identify the �Son of Man� with their own individual selves.

The common trait in �prophets� is that they give themselves a very central place in history.  Being the spokesman of the omnipresent Creator is not a very modest claim. it belongs to the realm of psychopathology.

The next important god-sent is none other than Jesus, whose case will be presented in the ch.3. He lived in an age when prophets or at least messianic and millennarist characters flourished.  One of his younger contemporaries was the real founder of Christianity, Saint Paul, who taught and believed that the Second Coming of Christ, inaugurating the final days of the world before the judgment, was just around the corner.

The big turn in Paul�s life came when, on the road to Damascus, he fell from his horse and had an experience which he later understood as Jesus calling him.  But this experience was completely different in nature from the prophetic revelations and conversations with God which we have mentioned above (except for Moses� awe before the burning bush, which is a close parallel).  The event on the road to Damascus, which triggered Paul�s conversion, was not a crisis in a developing mental disease, but a simple and typical sunstroke.  Paul (then still called Saul) hears a voice but doesn�t recognize the speaker: this confusion is the opposite of the intense clarity typical of a hallucination.

Paul suffers a natural blindness for a few days, and under the care of a Christian convert, he gets well again.  His inner stress because of his frustrated desire for perfection in the observance of the Law, and more acutely his guilt about the killing of Stephanus, the first Christian martyr, would invest this otherwise ordinary breakdown with a religious significance that was to have world-wide and millennia-long consequences.

Paul�s sect was just one among a number of first-century Jewish sects who expected the end of the world, the coming of the messiah, or a similar cosmic event.

The Apocalypse of Baruch is a prophecy of the impending struggle for Jerusalem, written in the revolutionary fervour of ca. 68 AD.  It has remained apocryphal, either because the Jews saw too much inspiration from the Christian Apocalypse in it, or because its predictions had failed in a much too obvious and much too dramatic way.  Indeed, it had predicted that the Romans would not be able to take the Temple Mount or to bum down Jerusalem.  It is because the text was not canonized that its failed prediction survives in cold print.  By contrast, Mark�s Gospel, edited just after the fall of Jerusalem, has the correct �prediction� that of the Temple of Jerusalem, �not one stone will be left upon the other� (13:2).

Baruch�s Apocalypse is not at all the product of visions and hallucinations, but an intellectual construction modelled on the extant prophetic literature, adding some newer literary techniques such as the Socratic dialogue.  It constructs imagery to evoke the shocking developments of the final days, before Jerusalem shall defeat her enemies and reign in glory.  While we will not further deal with it here, we note that the book is interesting for two reasons.  Firstly, it is a kind of missing link between Judaism and fledgling Christianity, at a time when both were expecting the ultimate catastrophe and glorification.  Secondly, it illustrates how sane and intelligent people subscribing to an established belief system can integrate the prophetic outlook in their worldview.  The entire edifices of Jewish, Christian and Islamic theology are similar intellectual elaborations of a basic literary material with an important irrational �visionary� component.

The last Jewish prophet was called Ezra.  In ca. 100 AD, he wrote a book relating a dialogue with an angel, who is asked why God could let the recent catastrophes happen to his chosen people, and what He has in store for them now.  The visions described are very coherent, are followed by an explanation, and give systematic answers to the questions which Jews are asking.  Short, it is an intellectual construction, not the report of real �prophetic visions�.  It is not the result of pathological experiences, but merely a kind of theological manifesto.

The apocryphal book of Ezra contributed to the enduring revolutionary fervour among Jewish die-hards.  It employs images from the earlier apocalyptic literature including the Christian Apocalypse, and in more cautious wording it retains essentially the same message: God has not abandoned His people, He has been testing them, and the final crisis is approaching.  In some details, its predictions were even enacted in the last Jewish insurrection, that of the self-styled Messiah Bar Kochba in 132-135.  Ezra had predicted (13:9-10) that the saviour will have a flaming mouth, and so Bar Kochba took burning hay in his mouth to prove his credentials.

With the collective suicide of the last Jewish insurrectionists in Masada, the period of Messianic expectation came to an end.  Reality had outlasted and defeated all the prophetic Doomsday scenarios.  By that time, the Christian sect had already accepted that Jesus� second coming was not around the corner after all.  For Doomsday prophets, the glorious days were over. 
 

Footnotes:

¹Published by the leftist publishing-house EPO in Antwerp, Belgium (in spite of many priests� leftist leanings, hard-core leftists remain strongly anti-clerical, and they were glad to publish a book that undermines Christian claims).

²Published by Facet Publishers, Antwerp 1990.

³E.g. P. Krijbolder: Jezus de Nazareeer. Een studie over de historiciteit ven Jezus en de oorsprong van het Christendom, Amsterdam 1976, The same thing had earlier been said about Socrates, who would have been merely a literary creation by Plato, but that theory has been discarded.

⁴These patients are not dangerous because of aggressiveness.  Their rage is not directed at someone specific, as is the case with paranoia patients.

⁵U. Undeutsch: �Courtroom evaluation of eyewitness testimony�, International Review of Applied Psychology, 33(1), 1984, p.51-67.

⁶e.g. in P. Benoit & M.E. Boismard: Synopse des quatre evangiles, II, Paris, 1972.

⁷See Johannes C. De Moor: The Rise of Yahwism, ch.4.6.

⁸The pharisees were a reform movement that moved the centre of religion away from the priesthood and the temple worship, towards the reading of Scripture and the observance of the Law.  Decentralized and separate from the national symbol which the temple was, they led Judaism through the Roman crackdown on the Jews after the rebellions of 70 and 134 AD, and shaped the rabbinical tradition which has since been virtually synonymous with Judaism.  The anti-pharisaism in the Gospel text is therefore actively anti-Judaism and one of the sources of Christian anti-Semitism.

⁹K. Jaspers: Allgemeine Psychopathologie, Berlin, 1948.

We know by now that the Gospel is not a 100% authentic report about Jesus� doings and sayings.  But it is possible to more or less sift out the authentic core from the theological additions.  Some of the recognizable additions are the following.

According to the Gospels, Jesus is tried and sentenced by the Jews, with Pilate a mild and innocent bystander.  In reality, Pilate was a cruel governor, and even the central rulers in Rome ended up removing him from office for causing too much trouble by his harshness.  As for the �Jews�, it was the priests who tried Jesus, but the crowds (at least in the province) who supported him.  But after the defeat of the Jewish rebels at the hands of Titus in 70 AD, it became more rewarding for the Christian missionary strategy to move closer to the Romans and emphasize their separateness from the Jews.  These could now be blamed for everything, while an early sympathy for Christ on the part of the Roman governor was also suggested.

That is why Pilate is made to say: �I see no guilt in this man� I wash my hands in innocence.� On the other hand, the Jewish crowd is reported in the Gospel as clamouring for Jesus� death: �His blood may come over us and our descendents�, so that they become morally guilty of �deicide�, god-murder.  On the basis of this Gospel story, the Church has considered the Jews as the murderers of Jesus, a stigma it has only removed (and that only on condition that they dis-identify with the Jewish generation contemporary with Jesus) in 1962.

It is possible that Pilate had sympathy for everyone who was a troublemaker to the Jews, whom he hated, but the depiction of his personality is certainly the product of missionary editing.  The allotment of guilt in the story of Jesus� trial is in very large measure responsible for centuries of Christian anti-semitism, culminating in Auschwitz.  This allotment of guilt, with its far-reaching consequences, was the product of conscious history distortion by the early Christian missionaries, who considered it opportune to identify with the Romans and blame the Jews.

A similar political turn is probably the key to the story of Jesus saying: �Give unto Caesar what is Caesar�s, and unto God what is God�s.� At first the Christians were very uncompromising and they refused to pay taxes: they expected the Second Coming and the destruction of the Empire.  When that changed (around 55, probably because at first the new emperor Nero had raised high expectations among the Christians, or because Claudius� persecutions had forced them into compromise), they justified this change to some of their more radical followers, and at the same time assured Roman or pro-Roman listeners about the genuineness of this new policy by invoking Jesus� own authority.  So, possibly this well-known episode is not historical, but a motivated insertion.

A lot of the parables and sermons attributed to Jesus may well be common proverbs and insights of the contemporary religio-cultural scene.  For instance, the dictum: �To him who hath, shall be given, but from him who doeth not have, even what he hath shall be taken�, may well have been a commonly known observation on life.  Most people will feel compelled to give bigger presents to rich friends than to poor friends on a similar occasion: it is the kind of common knowledge that ends up crystallizing into a proverb.  Jesus himself may have applied this dictum to a religious topic (the Kingdom of Heaven), but even in its application to a religious context, it may have been borrowed from the Pharisees or from one of the proliferating sects of the time.

It is very common that the miracles of one saint are attributed to another saint by the latter�s followers.  In Communist books, I have found Voltaire�s witticisms being attributed to Karl Marx.  The pranks attributed to the Turkic wit Mollah Nasruddin (now popular in the People�s Republic as A-fan-ti, i.e. Effendi) have been appropriated in Indian sources for the Indian wit Birbal, and vice versa.  So, it is only normal that wise and saintly statements that carried an aura of respected profundity, were put in Jesus� mouth by followers.

An important statement of Christian doctrine that was probably borrowed from sectarian sources, either by Jesus or by the Gospel editors, is the Sermon on the Mount.  Another Christian classic, the injunction to �love thy neighbour as thyself�, is typically pharisaic, and in tune with traditional morality expressed here and there in the Old Testament.  It can readily be linked with pharisee Hillel�s famous statement that the Jewish law can essentially be summed up as: �What ye do not want done unto you, do not do that unto others�,- the Golden Rule which Hillel had in common with Confucius, among others.

A different type of addition by the Gospel editors is the hardening of miracle stories into fully attested reports.  In the Gospel of John, written as the last of the four, we read that the apostle Thomas refused to believe that the man before him was the resurrected Jesus, so he asked to touch his wounds.  And yes, they were real, it was the crucified and resurrected Jesus.  This detail of the checking of Jesus� wounds is not present in the other Gospels.  What happened was that Christian preachers used to relate the story of the resurrected Jesus� meeting with the apostles, and people in the audience would ask: �Did it really happen?  Do you know this for sure-?� And so, to anticipate these questions, John fabricated a certificate of empirical proof.

Similarly, in the successive Gospels, the report on the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan becomes ever more �realistic�.  Mark reports it as a subjective impression: �Jesus saw the heavens open and a dove descend on Him�. In Matthew this becomes: �And lo!  The heavens opened and He saw God�s Spirit descend on Him in the shape of a dove.� The seeing of the dove is still a matter of Jesus� own subjective perception, but the interpretation that it was God�s Spirit has been added.  According to Luke, �it happened that the Heavens opened and the Holy Spirit, in the physical shape of a dove, descended on Him�.  Now, the whole episode has become an objective fact.  Finally, John goes another step further: �And John [the Baptist] gave testimony and said: �I have seen that the Spirit descended as a dove from heaven� I have seen it myself and attested: this is the son of the Lord.�� This time, there is even a witness willing to testify.

What has started as a report of Jesus� subjective experience, recorded from Jesus� own report, has become an objective and even a well-attested fact.  A theology as well as a polemical fortification is increasingly being imposed on the original innocent report.  Now, all such insertions, suspected omissions, and reworked versions, can more or less be traced and mapped.  After that, a solidly historical core remains.  Among the reliably historical elements are those which go against the intentions of the Christian preachers, or those which are beyond their capacity of invention.

Therefore, a solidly historical element in the Gospel narrative is the psychopathological syndrome which is clearly present in Jesus� personality.  The Gospel writers could not have invented such a coherent description of a well-defined syndrome even if they had wanted to, and secondly they certainly didn�t want to pass on such information about their Saviour.  The syndrome so well illustrated in the Gospel is called paraphrenia.

Paraphrenia is a fairly rare mental affliction in which the patient develops a delusion (mostly genetic, i.e. concerning his parents or ancestry), which is triggered and fed by only rarely occurring hallucinatory crises. Starting from this delusion, he builds up an entire system complete with interpretative delusions (misreading events to make them fit, rather than disturb, the basic delusion).  Otherwise he remains well-integrated in his environment.⁹ Paraphernia is sometimes classified in the larger category of �paranoia� and opposed to schizophrenia.  In contrast to the schizophrenic, the paraphrenic remains adapted to his milieu, has a coherent thinking and a well-organized behaviour.  Generally hallucinations are rare, but initiate a delusional state, often with a grandiose genetic theme.  The paraphrenic is very sensitive to opposition to his ideas; he is therefore somewhat secretive, and often full of resentment and hate.  This is exactly the image the Gospel has painted of Jesus.

If we assume this diagnosis, which is suggested by several striking events in Jesus� life, and extend it to understand his whole life story, the Gospel narrative becomes coherent.  One hypothesis will suffice to explain diverse elements for which the exegetes now need a whole string of hypotheses: methodologically, that is a very strong point.

Today, the theologians have caught themselves in a construction of difficult and contradictory hypotheses that is convincing no one.  The fundamentalists who refuse to think and therefore just take the whole Bible as God�s own word, ridicule the theologians with all their difficult terminology invented to create a conceptual framework in which the diverse and contradictory Bible narratives might make sense.  The real scientist is equally unimpressed by the patchwork of hypotheses to which the theologians resort in order to make sense of the Gospel narrative.  The paraphrenia hypothesis takes care of the entire Gospel narrative at once.

Jesus had, on all hands, a problem with the identity of his father.  In the apocrypha, he is called �son of a whore�.  According to the Jewish tradition, he was the son of the Roman soldier Pandera and the local girl Miriam (Mary), the hairdresser.  The existence of a Roman soldier with that name has actually been verified.  A few years after the start of the Christian Era, he was transferred to the legion in Germany, where a grave bearing his name has been found: perhaps the only left-over of the Holy Family.  At any rate, the Gospel narrative is explicit enough that Jesus� conception was a matter of scandal: his social father Joseph wanted to break off his engagement with Mary when he found she was pregnant. In a village, such a circumstance could not possibly be kept secret from the child Jesus.  In the playground he must have been reminded often enough of being an illegitimate child.

The first sign that Jesus is trying to work out his inner problem with his parentage, and at the same time that people think there is mentally something wrong with him, is his visit to the temple at age 12.  For lack of a physical father, the only father that was left to him was the Creator, Yahweh.  Like many boys of his age, he wanted to know more about his origins, and he looked for information in the Scriptures.  When he went to the temple, he went to the house of his Father.  There, he expected to learn more from the Scribes.  The questions he asked them must have sounded strange to them.  Jesus was hanging around for three days, without telling his parents anything.  And when he returned home and his family got angry for his causing them so much worry, he replied: �Don�t you know I belong in my Father�s house?� He claimed the right to solve his own identity problem, even if that implied insensitivity to others� feelings.  At that age, this behaviour is not abnormal, except that few youngsters would have taken Scriptural imagery so literally as to believe that their personal fatherhood problems could be solved by identifying God as the missing father.

The little bit of information about this childhood episode indicates a prodrome of the later crisis.  By itself, the temple episode need not be pathological, it could have been a fairly ordinary event in the difficult puberty process of self-discovery.  But it does betray a psychological setting in which a deeper mental disease can develop.

The first real crisis we hear of, is the baptism in the river Jordan.  There, Jesus sees a bird coming from the opened sky, and hears a voice bringing an enormous message: �You are my son, in whom I take pleasure.� Seeing light, perceiving a bird (zooscopy), hearing a voice with a short message in the second person and which is absolute and takes away all doubts: that is the description of a typical sensorial hallucination.

The famous Flemish theologian Edward Schillebeeckx sees in the baptism episode �Jesus� vocation meaningfully surrounded by interpretative visions�.  This implies that the visions were literary embellishment, meaningful but nonetheless unhistorical and invented by human beings.  Progressive theologians like Schillebeeckx abhor the traditionalist more literal interpretation.  They dislike supernatural things like �visions� and voices from the sky.  But with that, they fail to give a coherent explanation of why this imagery is being created (and why, as we have seen, John tries to make his audience believe that the events were very real).  In this case, the literal interpretation is the more scientific one: the bird did appear, the voice did speak from the sky - but only as a subjective experience of the mental patient Jesus, rather than as an objective cosmic revelation directly from God the Creator.

In the Bible numerous texts mention the hearing of voices, especially the voice of God.  Current exegesis interprets these texts as metaphorical: �hearing the voice of God� is simply the expression for a vocation by God.  Sometimes, this metaphorical interpretation is justified: to take an example from outside the Biblical tradition, when the Greek philosopher Parmenides says that �a god has revealed� his philosophy of Being to him, it is just a manner of speaking, not an actual auditory hallucination.  In psychopathology however, �hearing a voice� is a common expression for an auditory hallucination, often accompanied by other sensorial hallucinations, esp. visions (other phenomena include feeling of heat or of being pierced by needles).  That the voices heard by Jesus were hallucinatory, is even admitted by Albert Schweitzer.

Important supportive information for the paraphrenia thesis is furnished by the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews.  It relates that Jesus� family thinks he is possessed by a demon, and that they want him to try this baptism as a possible way of exorcising the demon; he is at first unwilling (all accounts mention a preliminary discussion between Jesus and John the Baptist).  It seems that Jesus� behaviour had been strange for some time already, and now that there is an exorcist in the neighbourhood, the remedy should be tried: if it doesn�t help, it doesn�t harm either.  But the emotionally charged baptism experience triggers a �revelation� that will plunge Jesus completely into a distorted self-image.

Typical for the delusion that gets articulated in such a sensorial hallucination, is the absolute certainty with which the patient believes in it.  Jesus will doubt no more: he is the son of the heavenly Father.  Later, when a Church theology was developed, this notion of God as the personal Father was made into a central theme in Christianity, setting it apart from the Mosaic �Old Covenant�.  In the latter, God was a vengeful ruler, who only stood by His chosen people on condition of its total obedience.  Now, God became a loving Father.  What this interpretation of the baptism revelation overlooked, is that the vengefulness of Yahweh was now transferred to His Son.  Jesus did not have an army, like Mohammed, but he was very intolerant of skepsis and full of hatred against the indifferent world.  In his own hallucinations, he himself would be the avenger on the Day of Judgment.

After the baptism crisis, Jesus retires to the desert, where he doesn�t eat for forty days, and gets visions of angels serving him and the devil tempting him.  This period of extreme introversion after the shocking hallucination, as if to digest his new self-understanding, is again very typical.  He is offered nothing less than the power over the whole world, but he turns down the offer.  This is a typical rationalized delusion, with a reasoning which we can imagine along these lines: �To me the power over the world has been given.  Then why do I not effectively have the power?  Because I spurned it, though it is rightfully mine and I could have taken it.� Still, the subsequent episodes show that he has started ascribing extra-ordinary powers to himself.

Dr. Somers makes the diagnosis: �Psychopathological investigation discovers in Mark, Luke and Matthew, regardless of the fact that Luke especially adapted the original version, a number of well-known symptoms of a hallucinatory state: hearing the voice of the devil, seeing wild beasts (zoopsy), having the desire to fly (vestibular hallucinations, having visions of the �whole world�, suffering from anorexia (fasting).  In this light, the vision of the baptism episode is also certainly another manifestation of this hallucinatory state: a well-localized (heavenly) vision, the seeing of light (opening of heaven), of a bird, the hearing of a voice speaking in the second person and communicating a grandiose genetic message (�you are my beloved son�).  The whole picture is coherent with regard to the psychopathological symptoms.  In the text therefore, one finds the correct description of a delusional hallucinatory state.  Moreover, the Gospel also mentions circumstances which are coherent with this pathology.�

After this bewildering revelation, Jesus starts to live up to his new self-image.  He becomes a wandering god-man, doing miracles.

The next hallucinatory crisis is on Mount Tabor.  He goes up on the mountain with his disciples Peter, James and John.  There, in a sea of white light, he meets with Elijah and Moses.  Again, a voice from the clouds speaks: �This is my Son, the Beloved.  Listen to Him.� According to Luke (9:28-36), Jesus spoke with Moses and Elijah about �his going-out which he would perform in Jerusalem.  Then, the scene stops and Jesus is alone with his disciples, who have not seen Moses and Elijah: they merely wake up when they hear Jesus talk to somebody.  In the testimony of Mark (9:2-10) there is the same revealing contradiction: while it is contended that Elijah and Moses appeared, only Jesus is described and it is said that finally the apostles saw nobody but Jesus.

This crisis marks the beginning of the predictions of Jesus� suffering and death, which had been the topic of his conversation with Moses and Elijah.  Taking inspiration from a description of the �Servant of Yahweh� in Isaiah (53:7), he understands he will be led unto his slaughter like a lamb.  He reads into Scripture the indication that the Son of Man will go into his glory through suffering and meek submission to this expiatory sacrifice.  According to the logic of the delusion, he must now go to Jerusalem and provoke his death by entering as king.  He predicts he will rise on the third day and thus enter his Kingdom.

A third report of a hallucinatory crisis is only given by John (12:20-36).  During the entry in Jerusalem he hears the voice of the Father saying: �I have glorified him and will glorify him again.� The people said it had thundered, some said an angel had spoken to him, i.e. to Jesus.  So it was only Jesus who had heard the words.

Contemporary theologians like E. Schillebeeckx ascribe these stories to the imagination of the primitive Church, which wanted to glorify Jesus.  But, asks Dr. Somers: �Why should the Church invent a number of stories which caused nothing but difficulties?  Why should the son of God be baptized?  Why should he be tempted by the devil, and that with such extravagant temptations?  Why should he fast during 40 days?  Why should he see wild beasts?  It is quite inconceivable that the primitive Church invented these strange stories for the glorification of Jesus.  On the contrary, the primitive Church leaders tried to interpret and to adapt the existing story in order to demonstrate the divine origin of these phenomena.  Of a hallucinatory visionary state, they made objective supernatural events.  But they were sufficiently ignorant so that they could not mask the pathological background of the events they recounted.�

These hallucinations, few in number but elaborating the same theme, together with the testimonies of people thinking he is �possessed� or mentally disturbed, point to the paraphrenia syndrome.  What confirms this tentative diagnosis and makes it into the first coherent explanation of the entire Jesus narrative, is Jesus� behaviour.

The paraphrenic patient has some marked characteristics, other than the rare hallucinations and the delusional state, e.g.: a great hostility against those who contradict him, often also a familial rage, as the family usually contradicts him; autistic behaviour, in the sense that the criterion for judgment and action is not reality, but his subjective will; an interpretative delirium, i.e. interpreting events and utterances as pointing to him and to his delusion; concealing his conviction and temporizing as long as circumstances seem unfriendly.  All these typical features can be found in the Gospel.

Jesus threatens Bethsaida, Kapharnaum, Jerusalem, because they did not believe him.  If the Son of Man comes with heavenly power, all those who did not believe will be killed, along with all kings and mighty men.  Jesus insults the Pharisees, because they disbelieve and criticize him.  Jesus is especially angry with his family which tried to prevent his preaching.  A number of logia (= sayings of Jesus) are directed against the family, and in the Gospel one cannot find any friendly word to the family and especially to his mother.  Spurning his mother and brothers who are waiting at the door, he points to his disciples: �These are my mother and my brothers, who accomplish the will of God� (Mk 3:35).  The disciples of Jesus should hate their fathers and their mothers (Lk 14:26) because the true enemies of man are his family members (Mt 10:35; see also Mk 11:30; Mt 10:35; Mk 13:11).

A highly irrational act is Jesus� cursing of the fig tree when, out of season, it is not bearing fruit (Mk 16:20-25; Mt 21:18-22).  The tree is behaving normally, but Jesus punishes it: never again will it bear fruit.

Jesus is also violently sensitive to things relating to his supposed Father.  The violent scene he makes against the traders in the temple (Mk 11:15-17; Mt 21:12-13; Lk 19:45-46), where he objects against the transportation of any object, is motivated by what he perceives as their dishonouring his Father�s house.  Modem preachers say that Jesus was protesting against materialism, that he was making an important ethical and religious statement.  But in fact, Jesus� behaviour vis-a-vis the traders in the temple premises was highly unadapted to reality.  Those traders were not doing anything unethical or irreligious.  They had an important function in temple life, where sacrifices were the normal and statutory practice.  Even if their activities had been misplaced, so was Jesus� tirade that they were making �his Father�s house� into a �robbers� den�: traders are not necessarily robbers, theirs is an honourable profession, and eventhough God may be our Father, we shouldn�t take disrespect for God�s house so personally.

Another, more specific detail is that he attempts to keep his status as Son of Man secret: �Do not talk about this with anyone�, he says several times.  Only when his disciples, and later the priests during his trial, ask him straight if he is God�s son, he consents, saying that they have said it.  But to theologians, it has always remained a riddle why Jesus should be so secretive about his glorious mission.  Paraphrenia patients are very aware of the attitude (and possible lack of understanding) of their fellow men.  That is why Jesus temporizes, in expectation of more auspicious circumstances.

A final symptom is the anti-sexual attitude.  As the studies of Bultmann have shown, the primitive church has cleansed, adapted a number of logia.  A relevant example is provided by the logia about the children and the reign of God: unless you become like children, you cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.  In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, some logia have been preserved which explain the periscopes of the Gospels: to be a child is to be asexual and free of sexual shame (log. 12, 21; cfr. also log. 37, 114: if you make masculine and feminine one).  In the canonical Gospels it is also said that in heaven there is no marriage, and virginity is exalted, as it is in the Apocalypse.  The theme is constant: virginity, inhibition of sexual activity, as well in the canonical Gospels and the Gospel of Thomas as in the Apocalypse.

Jesus� behaviour during his trial is in conformity with the diagnosis.  We should keep in mind that from the vision on Mount Tabor onwards, Jesus has been mentally preparing himself for death.  The priests accuse him of blasphemy: he has insulted Yahweh by calling himself His son.  Normally, they have to produce witnesses to prove this extremely serious allegation.  But Jesus saves them the trouble: he commits an even greater sacrilege right on the spot, by pronouncing God�s name aloud.  Strictly following the prescribed procedure, the high priest tears his mantle into two.  Jesus stands convicted of sacrilege.  The Gospels make no secret about Jesus� guilt of this sacrilege, which was well known to be a capital offence.

He commits what is blasphemy before the priests, with a straight face, because he is fully prepared to die.  For months he has been mentally readying himself for it, announcing that this would be the road to his glorification.  When you think death is the end, the prospect of dying may be a bit horrifying.  But when you think it is the way to the glory, it is alright: �Death, where is thy sting?� His frankness in the face of a certain death penalty must certainly have added to his superhuman aura.

The Gospel of Infancy, i.e. the Gospel narrative of Jesus� conception, birth and early childhood, is not so much a source of psychopathologically relevant information.  It is less reliable and more open to speculative interpretations.  Yet, it also provides material for some interesting psychological observations.  In this respect it is important to see the essential difference between the Gospel of Infancy and the visions during the Baptism and Tabor episodes.  Most Bible students see the Gospel of Infancy as a entirely mythical corpus in the New Testament and they mention numerous reasons.

1. The chronological indications are contradictory.  According to Matthew, Jesus should be born between 6 and 4 BC, during the reign of the great Herod, who died in 4 BC; but the census which according to Luke, obliged the parents of Jesus to travel to Bethlehem, was organized by Quirinius, who according to the precise indications of Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian, became procurator of Syria in 6-7 AD, i.e. 11 to 12 years later.  Furthermore, the beginning of Jesus� public life, when he was about 30 years old, is traced by Luke (3:1) to the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius (27 AD).  According to that indication, Jesus should have been born in 4-3 BC.  These difficulties were never solved by the historians. 

2. The divergence between Matthew and Luke is striking.  According to Matthew, an angel appears to Joseph, not to Mary; but for Luke an angel appears to Mary and to Zachariah.  According to Matthew, each event is predicted in the Old Testament; but Luke replaces the quotations of the Old Testament with occasional prophecies by Hannah and Simeon.  Matthew writes that a star appears, Magi come, there is a flight to Egypt and a slaughter of innocents by the Great Herod.  For Luke there are only shepherds, angels and music, the circumcision in the Temple, and a simple return to Nazareth.  He does not mention Egypt, nor the slaughter of the innocents.

In the Protevangelium of James another series of divergent elements can be found.  Herod kills Zachariah, while John is sought for; there is no star, no Magi, no prophecies, only the angels and their message to Mary and Elisabeth.

3. The only elements which all witnesses have in common are: 1) the exceptional pregnancy of Mary; 2) the hesitation of Joseph; 3) the birth of Jesus; 4) the exceptional atmosphere of wonders.  Each witness surrounds these historical events with a scenery of marvellous elements of his own.

4. Whoever the witness, the given details are typically feminine notwithstanding a masculine elaboration.  Typically feminine are: the attention to what people say, to gifts, visits, the emotional reactions of the fiancé and the niece.  Typically masculine is Matthew�s elaboration: the narration of each event is rigorously closed with a quotation from the Old Testament.  Typically masculine is also Luke�s elaboration: he omits a number of marvellous elements (the star, Herod, the visit of the Magi, the appearance of the angel to Joseph); he replaces them by the more credible visit of shepherds; while he omits the Biblical quotation, he replaces it with the occasional prophecies of Hannah and Simeon.  Typical for both is the atmosphere of wonders (signs in heaven versus heavenly music, angels), a great historical context (a Roman census versus Herod and a flight to Egypt) and the glorious role for the mother to give birth to a future king of Israel.

If we submit the texts to a psychological examination, to get at its historical core, we find that there is a common source for all stories and particularly a feminine one, and secondly that the majority of events are due to imaginative �loose� construction (e.g. the �prophecies� are not even exact allusions).

It is common opinion among exegetes that this mythic scenery can be dated to after Jesus� Resurrection, when in the primitive Church questions arose about Jesus� origin.  As it was due, all signs had to be present that Jesus was the future Messiah.  As there was a Hellenistic Church (Paul) and a Jewish Church dames), so there was a Jewish version (Matthew) and a Hellenistic version (Luke).  For the Jews, Jesus had to be predicted by the prophets; for the Hellenistic people the credibility was to be ensured by a more common course of events.

Even in this mythical context some fundamental data may appear which are based on real facts.  As the indications about the census of Quirinius, about Herod, about the descent from David, about the journey to Bethlehem (according to James� Protevangelium, Joseph and Mary live in Jerusalem, not Nazareth) may be false, it is not impossible that Jesus was born in the period that Herodes Archelaos succeeded his father in 4 BC.  Ibis was a period of revolutionary agitation and consequent repression in Jerusalem.  Is it unthinkable that the murder of the innocents goes back to this period, and that Joseph and Mary, like probably a lot of people, escaped from Jerusalem to safer surroundings, such as Bethlehem? In that context and in accordance with the most probable chronology, Jesus was born in 3 BC during the flight from Jerusalem.  But that he was born in Bethlehem, is certainly not more than an invention of the Gospel editors, to declare the apparent prophecy about the birthplace of the Messiah fulfilled in Jesus.

According to the Jewish tradition Mary was a whore and Jesus� father was the Roman soldier Panthera.  There are, however, some unsolved questions: how is it possible that from the beginning there is the supposition that Jesus could become king in Israel?  This seems quite unrealistic, if Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier.  Things may change if on hypothesizes that actually his father was a prince, named Herodes Archelaos (a name which evokes the word Archangelos), who in 4 BC became the successor of the great Herod, and who was known for his unrestrained sexual behaviour.  Is it unthinkable that a prince said to a girl that her son could become a king?

As it had to be shown to the many new adepts of the primitive Church, who became curious about Jesus� origins, that he was really born as the Messiah, the inferior conditions of his birth had to be overcompensated.  The scenario of conceiving outside marriage and giving birth to an illegitimate child in bad conditions (flight to Bethlehem) had to be changed to a direct divine intervention, a virginal conception, the birth of a future king with the presence of royal Magi, shepherds, angels, heavenly signs and prophecies.

About the mythical character of this Gospel of Infancy, there is a consensus among exegetes: a fantastic scenery was elaborated in order to mask the inferior conditions of Jesus birth. It is impossible to understand these fantastic stories, if one does not reduce them to their historical origin: a woman, the mother of Jesus, who had to play her glorious role as the mother of the Messiah to the community of disciples that had gathered around her son.  It is a fair guess that after Jesus� resurrection and departure, Mary was questioned about the circumstances of Jesus� birth, and told the apostles the story that became the Gospel of Infancy.  Some of the miracle-mongering may have been her own doing, as may the variations: she must have told the story on more than one occasion, with less concern for consistency than regular preachers would have.

The Apocalyps is certainly the most primitive document.  Is it also a paraphrenic document?

The general opinion of the exegetes about the Apocalyps is that it is a literary work of the genre of the apocalyptic literature (Ezekiel, Daniel, Henoch, etc.), which contains prophecies about the end of time, predicting catastrophes, with visions, angels and cryptic symbolic expressions, not always well understood today.¹²

We may at once remark that this is an improper use of the term �literary genre�.  One could call the poem, or the novel, or the comedy, �literary genre�.  But �Apocalypse� does not belong in a formal classification of literature, and refers to the contents.  In different genres, you could have an apocalyptic play, an apocalyptic poem, etc.

The psychopathological examination of the texts leads to conclusions far removed from current theological opinions.  Ezekiel, Daniel and Henoch were mental patients, schizophrenics and paraphrenics, showing all typical symptoms of these diseases: receiving revelations, seeing visions, believing they are the elected ones, predicting catastrophes.  The apocalypse is not an exception.  Characteristic of the Apocalypse is the megalomaniac atmosphere, the horrible aggressiveness and the boundless narcissism.  Symptomatic are the loud voices, crying; symbolic, idiosyncratic, pedantic expressions; zoopsy (seeing monsters and beasts); the hallucinatory state; the sense of impending catastrophe, the typical systematic elaboration of assimilated earlier predictions (Henoch, Ezekiel and Daniel had. been �digested� into the delusion).

The abnormality of the mental processes can easily be shown.  A number of expressions are inspired by an enormous Ego-inflation: glory and power to him, omnipotence, everybody will see his power, he will destroy the earth and all peoples, he is the Son of Man.  This is coupled with an enormous narcissism: all will adore him, everybody has to sing his glory because he alone has power and wisdom (5:12), he alone is worthy to receive the glory, only the Lamb is worthy to open the book with the seven seals, he is the king of kings, the Lord of Lords.

All events are cosmic: stars fall, angels occupy the four corners of the earth, events are accompanied by thunder and lightning and earthquakes; all voices are loudly crying, some with the voice of the thunder.

All punishments are terrible: blood streams abundantly, Rome will be destroyed in one hour or one day (18:8-9), all kings, all soldiers, all their horses will be eaten by the birds, the beast will be burnt alive (that is why Nero burnt the Christians alive), all others will be killed by Christ himself (19:17-21), all living beings in the sea will die (16:3), etc.

All these catastrophes are the effect of God�s anger.  Rome is described as the great whore and the Roman Empire is identified with Satan himself.  All this anger, all these catastrophes are due to the fact that all others are supposed to be the enemies of Jesus (the majority of humanity did not even know who Jesus was), and are therefore guilty and worthy to be destroyed.  Only those who are the elected ones will reign with the Christ for 1000 years.  Those who died, will resurrect when Jesus comes back to reign for 1000 years (cfr. also the prediction of Paul: 1 Thess. 4:13-19).

This immense, irrational aggressiveness is a consequence of the enormous inflation of the Ego.  The pathological character of these mental processes is well-known.  The hypothesis that the source of this text is a megalomania cal paraphrenic is highly plausible, if one considers the original part of the content, as distinct from the assimilated part.  The latter consists of a few borrowed notions, esp. the notion of the resurrection: according to Ezekiel (37:1-14), the bones of the slain warriors of Israel shall be raised from the grave, and covered with sinews and muscle and skin, and quickened with breath.  As the Jehovah�s witnesses correctly maintain, the Bible does not teach an afterlife but a physical resurrection; the Apocalypse specifies that it will take place at the time of Jesus� second coming, and will only concern the saved ones.

It deserves repetition that among religious believers, there are a great many takers for the prophetic pretences of such revelations.  Schizophrenics such as Henoch and Ezekiel, both authors of apocalyptic writings, have the revelation to be elected by God, they understand suddenly all mysteries of the world, they travel from one end of the world to the other, they are always at the centre of immense events, they predict catastrophes.  The delusions of paraphrenics are generally more systematically evolved, but share often the same cosmic dimensions.  As most of these delusions are religious and genetic, it is clear that their content was ready to be believed as the word of God.  Mysterious, grandiose, futuristic, these revelations seemed to contain higher divine truth and so became the stuff of Sacred Scripture.  In fact they were reports of the schizophrenic or praphrenic delusions of mental patients.

Let us now take a closer look at the condition of the author of the Apocalypse.  A precise examination of the style of the Apocalyps reveals: 1) a typical Jewish, non-Greek, style, including an excessive use of conjunctions and a scarce use of particles; 2) a non-Johanneic style, as compared with the Gospel and the Epistles of John.  The author is definitely non-Greek, probably Jewish, and definitely not John the Evangelist.

In Apo.1:9, John has a vision and hears a voice and then he sees an angel, who dictates to him what was earlier called the �revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place� (Apo. 1:1).  In john�s narrative, there is a direct communication of the visions.  According to our criteria, and going by the factual validity of the angels appearing in other New Testament stories, the angel is only there in order to hide or to embellish the truth.  It is Jesus who speaks and orders to write to the Churches in a typical authoritative style as in the Gospels (�He spoke with authority�, say Mt. 7:29, Mk. 1:22, Lk. 4:32), and with the same expressions: �those who have ears to hear��, developing the same themes: �Those who believe in me��, �I shall come��

The other visions are attributed to John, but at the end the angel comes back, and while the angel is speaking Jesus speaks again (Apoc. 21:12) �I Jesus, I have sent my angel�.  There is a constant osmosis of the angel and Jesus.  These inconsistencies together with the recurring observation that the angel is merely there in order to conceal the truth, lead to the hypothesis, that a secretary just noted the visions of Jesus and gave a literary form to them.  This scribe could have been John, but that is not certain.  These names are sometimes pseudonyms, just, as in the Proto-Gospel �of James�.  Given all these elements, we can formulate the hypothesis that the real inspiring author of the Apocalypse was the surviving Jesus himself in a later stage of his illness.  With this hypothesis in mind, the Apocalypse, formerly a poorly understood text, becomes a dear manifesto of early Christianity.

It is quite astonishing that the style of expression of Jesus in the Gospels corresponds precisely with the style of the expressions of Jesus in the Apocalyps.  In the Gospel, he posits himself as authority: �I say to you�� The same �I� - style can be found in the Apocalypse: �I shall give you�I know�I shall come� I shall confess their names� I knock at the door�.  Other expressions, like: �I shall confess their names before my father and the angel� (Apo. 3:5); �We shall eat together� (Apoc. 3,20); �I shall come as a thief� (Apo. 3:3), are common to the Apocalypse and the Gospels (Mk. 8:38; Mt. 10:32; Lk. 9:26; Lk. 12:36; 22:29-30; Jn. 14:23; Mk. 8:38; Mt. 24:42-44; Mk. 13:33).

Identical is also the egocentric point of view, e.g. in the Gospel: �those who remain faithful to me (Jn. 8:31, 12:44); in the Apocalypse: �those who remained faithful to me� (Apoc. 2:3, 2:13, 3:8).  The same doctrine with regard to suffering and death for the faith in Jesus: �He who loses his life because of me� (Mk. 8:35); �Do not fear what you are about to suffer� be faithful till death� (Apo .2:10; cfr. also 6,11).

The character of the similarities is rather convincing: they are all idiosyncratic features (the egocentric authoritative style, the insistence on faith to Jesus till death), not stereotypes or vague generalities.  It is difficult to imagine that an independent author would have so well crystallized the idiosyncracies of Jesus in the Gospel and used them so naturally.  Thus, the expression: �those who have ears to hear� is not that frequent in the Gospel (Mt. 13:9; 13:43; Mk. 4:12), but here this expression is used quasi-systematically.  We cannot suppose that the expression was so striking, that an independent author would have imitated that expression so systematically.

Another idiosyncratic feature is the insistence that the faithful should lose their lives for Jesus, because the only important thing is the faith in Jesus.  A number of letters of apostles are known; there is not one that is so extraordinarily filled with allusions to the Gospels and the Old Testament, and none of them is so extravagantly characterized by an ego-inflated style.  The suspicion that the Gospel and the Apocalyps belong to the same inspiration is therefore well-founded.  One can see clearly that the so-called literary genre hypothesis does not hold: the Apocalypse is not merely one in a series of books that propagate a view of the end of time, with prophecies of catastrophes, etc.  It is a very personal account of the imaginary life of a paraphrenic.

The �intertextual� elements in the Apocalypse, i.e. the references to other literary sources, equally provide an indication that Jesus and the seer of the Apocalypse are one and the same person.  The source of inspiration, apart from the personal visions, is still the prophetic tradition; but while in the Gospel it was more Henoch and Isaiah, here it is more Daniel and Ezekiel.  The theme remains the Son of Man who shall return to avenge himself because of unbelief and because the people had slaughtered him like a lamb.

The Apocalypse seer is already an old hand at hearing voices: �Then I had a vision. I saw a door in heaven standing open, and the voice, loud as a trumpet, which I had heard speak to me before, called: �Come up there, then I shall show you what must happen after this.�� (Apo. 4:1)

The central images of the Apocalypse signify the visionary himself (a self-centredness through diverse personae, which is a feature even of ordinary dreams), in his self-pity and vengefulness, in his frustrated and hurt narcissism: the slaughtered Lamb which will be glorified into an object of universal adoration, and the woman in labour pains, who is about to give birth to the Son of Man.

The enemy of the woman in labour is the Beast, i.e. all worldly rulers who usurp the Son of Man�s God-given rights, and esp. the Roman Empire, which divine intervention is about to destroy under the rule of the next emperor.  In these pages of fire and brimstone, the paraphrenic delusion has been cosmically elaborated with unbridled visions of catastrophe, full of horrible revenge and hatred.  The fact that the seer�s own enemy, the Beast, is the enemy of the woman in labour pains, gives a clue to the identity of the woman, viz. the seer himself.  This trans-gender self-image can be compared with Freud�s famous case of Justice Schreber, who thought he would be turned into a woman, get impregnated by a god, and become the mother of a new human race.

The woman in labour pains is one motif that is not represented in the Gospel, but of which the appearance in the Apocalypse fits a logical development.  The full confidence of being the Son of Man, soon to be covered with glory, has, after the shock of surviving his glorious execution, and after years of impotent anger against the world�s skepsis, evolved into a vision of the near future, when he will become the Son of Man, after the ongoing painful stage of expectation, described as labour pains.  After he survives the crucifixion, his Kingdom does not start.  Instead of shattering his delusion, this gets explained, and the Kingdom is put off to a later date.  We see this in all the predictions of the end of the world: for every failed prediction, there is an explanation that prevents utter disillusionment, and the believers persist in their slightly amended expectation, in spite of all the refutations of their belief by reality. In people afflicted with a delusion, this capacity of rationalizing experiences that are logically disturbing to the delusion, is virtually unassailable. 

One could characterize the Apocalyps as the hymn of the wrath, of the anger and the hate, exactly the contrary of the (later) doctrine of Jesus in the Gospels.  Nothing in the Apocalyps is love or mercy, all is self-glory, revenge, wrath, power, cruelty.  The Apocalypse is in stark contradiction with the more theologically elaborated books of the New Testament, esp.  John and Paul.  In those books, Jesus has been humanized in order to make him more acceptable to the faithful.

The hypothesis that the Apocalypse is Jesus� own swan song, is based on psycho-pathological parallelism, taking into account the time factor: further development of the delusion into a form at once more extreme and yet incorporating a compromise with unresponsive reality, viz. the fact that his glorification as the Son of Man has so far failed to come about.  This hypothesis has the immense advantage that it requires only one theory to explain both the Gospel and the Apocalypse, not the string of dozens of little separate explanations which the theologians offer.  In fact, it is the first-ever coherent explanation of the Apocalypse, a text with which the theologians have never come to terms. 
 

Footnotes:

¹For an assessment of Nietzsche�s view of Christianity, in the light of recent Bible scholarship, see Henk Van Gelre: Friedrich Nietzsche en de Bronnen van de Westerse Beschaving (Dutch: �Friedrich Nietzsche and the Sources of Western Civilization�), vol. 1, Ambo, Baarn 1990.

²Sigmund Freud: Der Mann Moses und die Monotheistische Religion: Drei Abhandlungen (1939), republished in vol. 13 of The Penguin Freud Library.

³Ch. Binet-Sanglé: La Folie de Jésus (French: �Jesus� Madness�), Paris 1908-12; W. Hirsch: Religion und Civilisation, Munchen 1910., G.L. de Loosten: Jesus Christus vom Standpunkt des Psychiaters(German: �Jesus Christ from the Psychiatrist�s Viewpoint�), Bamberg 1905.

⁴A. Schweitzer: Die psychiatrische Beurteilung Jesu, Tubingen, 1913.

⁵Excerpts in Elke Schlinck-Lazarraga: �De vraag naar de psychischgeestelijke gezondheidstoestand van Jesus� (Dutch: �The question of Jesus� psycho-mental health condition�), in Teksten Kommentaren en Studies, December 1981.

⁶Hermann Werner: �Der historische Jesus der liberalen Theologie - ein Geisteskranker?�, in Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift 22 (1911), p.347-390, quoted in Elke Schlinck-Lazarraga: op.cit.

⁷With these quotes from John�s Gospel, it should be kept in mind that they are part of the most �theological� Gospel, the one most unscrupulously tailoring stories to fit the emerging Christian theology and also the Church�s missionary programme, which rejected Christianity�s Jewish roots and therefore exaggerated the opposition between Jesus and �the Jews� Nonetheless, even if John concocted these incidents, this proves that he expected his audience to accept them as realistic.

⁸The classic on the magician�s role which Jesus played or was considered playing, and at the same time a very informative work on the role of the missionary/polemical context in which the Gospels were written, is Morton Smith: Jesus the Magician, Victor Gollancz Ltd., London 1978.

⁹In Anglo-Saxon textbooks of psychopathology, paraphrenia will be subsumed-under the larger categoryparanoia.  This should, according to Dr. Somers, be considered a recrudescence and loss of an essential distinction.

¹⁰The number 666 has also some numerical properties, e.g. it is the triangular number of 36 (= sum of all numbers from 1 to 36); but then, many numbers have remarkable properties, so this is not sufficiently distinctive.  Incidentally, Jesus� name in Greek, Iesoys, has the numerical value 888; and 8 was a sacred number for early Christians, signifying the �eighth day�, the completion of the 7-day Creation, viz. the Resurrection. See C.F. Dumermuth: �Number Symbolism: a Biblical Key�, in Asia Journal of The Theology, 1/1990.

¹¹Suetonius mentions the measures against the Christians among Nero�s praiseworthy reforms, and calls this sect �a new superstition involving the practice of magic�.

¹²E.g. M.J. Lagrange: Le Messianisme chez les Juifs, Paris 1909; id.: Le Judaisme avant Jésus-Christ, Paris, 1931; and E. Schillebeeckx: Jesus, het verhaal van een levende, Brugge 1975.