6 - Did Jesus aim to embarrass the future religious authorities?

If the Gospel of Saint Matthew tells the truth and Jesus was indeed born from an extramarital affair between Mary and Joseph’s father, it seems obvious that the enigma in this gospel is the work of Jesus. Who, if not Mary, Jesus’ mother, would possess this confidential information about Jesus’ true father? The fact that this book was written after Jesus’ life certainly does not mean that he could not have been the author of these genealogies.

The enigma in the Gospel of Saint Matthew is so ingenious –it first made the religious authorities assume that Jesus was born of a virgin, and many centuries later revealed that his father was also Joseph’s father– that it is logical to assume that it is the work of an enlightened individual and, therefore, that it was the work of Jesus.

Moreover, as the genealogies of Saint Matthew and Saint Luke are so similar to those in Genesis for Seth and Cain, the former being real and the latter supposed, we can assume that the author of the genealogies in the New Testament discovered the secrets in the genealogies of the Old Testament. And of whom can we expect such a feat if not Jesus?

We thus have three good reasons for assuming that Jesus was the author of the enigma in the Gospel of Saint Matthew. This is something that we have to consider when we reflect upon the consequences of the revelation of this enigma. What are they? One is that it invites us to reflect upon the reasons why our pagan ancestors converted to Christianity. It is very likely that many of them did not understand Jesus’ message, but were impressed by all the hocus pocus surrounding the founder of that new religion. For them, Jesus was a god, and what they expected of a god was a supernatural birth and death; that certain prophecies came true in him; that he performed several miracles, etc. So many generations later, the panorama does not seem to have changed, because instead of caring about the ideas of Jesus Christ (empathy with the poor, non-violence, making the most of one’s gifts and talents, etc.), many Christians continue to care more about his miracles and the prophecies that came true in him. The revelation of this enigma finally encourages these people to question those miracles, because if Jesus’ virginal conception was not true, how can they still be sure of the other miracles that Jesus is associated with?

Another consequence is that it demonstrates that Jesus was enlightened. Creating an enigma that first made people assume that Jesus was born of a virgin, but many centuries later revealed that this was not so, is so amazingly ingenious that it can only be the work of an enlightened individual.

And yet another consequence of the revelation of this enigma, and perhaps the most important of all, is that it embarrasses the authorities of the three monotheistic religions as well as those of the non-believers who studied this book: those of Christianity because they misinterpreted the first chapter of the first book of the New Testament, thus creating a dogma that all subsequent generations accepted without too much opposition; those of Judaism because Jesus discovered certain secrets in Genesis that they still ignore today; those of the Islam (for whom Jesus is a prophet and not the son of God) because they adopted an idea from Christianity without verifying its origin; and of those of the non-believers because although they studied the Bible in a rational way, they also allowed themselves to be deceived by what these texts seem to say, when in fact they say something different.

This teaches us that Jesus did not trust the religious authorities of both Judaism and Christianity and that he deliberately created this enigma to embarrass them at a certain time in the future. Why? Since Jesus, the founder of Christianity, was enlightened, he must have thought a great deal about the different religions and become aware of all the good things and bad things that come with them. And having also reflected upon the origin and evolution of these religions, he must have realized that, since they were founded by an enlightened individual, they suffer considerably after their founder dies, because his disciples, and the disciples of the disciples, do not measure up to him, and because any profession that inspires people’s admiration tends to attract people who are only interested in power. 

The good thing about religions is that they encourage people to behave well and give individuals the opportunity to form part of a community; the bad thing about them is that they sometimes encourage people to behave badly towards others who behave badly (yet without seeing any inconsistency in such behaviour), and also that by uniting people within a group they separate them from other groups and sometimes even set them against each other.

It is important to realize that the majority of believers do not choose their religion but are born into a community that professes that particular religion. If these believers were born into a different community, they would profess a different religion. This means that those in authority who now defend the ideas of a certain religion while criticizing others would defend the very same ideas they now criticize if they had been born into another community.

Earlier on we pointed out that believers, instead of having faith in the dogmas of their religion, actually have faith in the religious authorities that defend them. Now we should also emphasize that forming part of a community is very important for many believers. Indeed, the need to form part of a community can be so strong that they do not dare to question everything else this entails, and that for fear of being expelled they do not dare to question or criticize the ideas and the behaviour of the group that they belong to.

The different religions and philosophies divide people. The Swiss philosopher and theologian Hans Küng says in his book “Islam: Past, Present and Future”: “There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions and no peace among the religions without dialogue between the religions. And that dialogue must investigate the foundations of the religions”. As this is glaringly true, we can assume that Jesus, an enlightened individual whom people regarded as the Messiah (the person who helps mankind to restore harmony), was already aware of this some 2,000 years ago. By embarrassing the religious authorities he forces believers to investigate the foundations of their religions and thereby builds bridges between the believers of the different religions and philosophies.

At a certain moment, Jesus said: “The truth will set you free”. When we reflect upon our relationship with the ‘authorities’, we see that having faith in them makes us underestimate our own reasoning and turn ourselves into slaves. Today, by revealing its secrets, the enigma that Jesus created sets us free. And not only does it set believers free, but also all the religious authorities that strive for a better world but whose dogmas have done much to hinder and even damage relations with people who believe in other religions and philosophies.

Now that we have revealed the enigma in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the time has come to study the different religions in a rational way and become aware of both the good and the bad things about the different religions and philosophies.

Skeptics might argue that religions belong to the past and that rational people no longer need them, but they are mistaken for two reasons: firstly, they are not as rational as they claim to be, because if they were, when studying the Bible they would have discovered its secrets, and when reflecting upon mankind’s evolution they would have realized that a society that doesn’t live in harmony is bound to destroy itself; and secondly, because without religion we would have lost our Sacred Books, which would have been disastrous, because the Bible offers us an ideal we can strive towards –a better world–, and without that ideal it would have been easy to become prisoners of the present. Yet this is precisely what has happened to us. If the world is now facing another world crisis, it is because we have focused so much on the present that we have not learned from our past mistakes.

Non-believers should also realize that their ‘faith’ in science is not so different from the believers’ faith in religion. There is, of course, nothing wrong with science in itself; the problem is how we evaluate it. It makes no sense at all to think that in the future science will be able to solve all our problems, given that up until now it has basically served to allow an ever smaller percentage of the world’s population to acquire or take control of an ever greater percentage of all the available resources. Furthermore, our misuse of science has led to the development of increasingly sophisticated weapons, to such an extent that they are now capable of causing mankind’s complete self-destruction.