An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 193: The Kingdom of Heaven will come suddenly and you won’t know, with lots of events preceding it so you’ll know, and you’d better be ready, even though it makes no difference, and it’ll be within your lifetime, unless it isn’t. (Matthew 21-25)

Matthew 21-25
The Kingdom of Heaven will come suddenly and you won’t know, with lots of events preceding it so you’ll know, and you’d better be ready, even though it makes no difference, and it’ll be within your lifetime, unless it isn’t.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Matthew 21

“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves”

This chapter is the root of the Palm Sunday tradition, when Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph. It’s interesting to note that He deliberately sends the disciples out to get an ass and a colt on which to ride, as it feels like a deliberate attempt to fulfil the prophecy quoted in this chapter, that “Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass”. It implies a certain knowingness about the PR of the situation from Jesus. (I’d kind of assumed he was sat on the donkey with the colt following behind, not with one foot on each or something stupid).

I also note that palm trees are not specifically mentioned in Matthew (maybe in one of the other gospels) as being what the people waved. However, after entering the city with a great crowd cheering Him, Jesus proceeds to the temple and kicks out the moneylenders and “them that sold doves”, saying that they’ve turned the temple into a “den of thieves”.

This discomfits the scribes and chief priests, and later on in the chapter there is yet another battle of wits between them and Jesus. First they ask Him by what authority He teaches. Jesus responds with a riddle – “The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men?”. The priests can’t decide and so Jesus refuses to answer them. John the Baptist, again, plays an important subsidiary role, as the priests fear either answer because they are caught between admitting that they may have been wrong about John.

Jesus then gives a couple of parables. In one, a father tells two sons to go and do something. One says no, then changes his mind and does it, the other says yes and then doesn’t bother. Which, asks Jesus, is the more righteous? The answer doesn’t seem to fit to me – “For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him”. That’s not the same situation, is it? Surely that would be one son who agrees to do the thing and does it, and the other who doesn’t do it, and isn’t sorry that he hasn’t? Or am I missing something as usual.

I get the next parable though – a man builds a vineyard and rents it out to husbandmen. When the time comes to collect his rent/share of the wine, he sends some servants but the tenants beat them up and kills them. He sends some more servants, same result. He sends his own son, same result. The priests are the unruly tenants, the vineyard the temple, the servants the people, the son Jesus. I got that, but so do the priests who want to “lay hands” on Jesus but “fear the multitude”. But also, really stupid tactics by the vineyard owner.

Oh, and there’s a weird little vignette in the middle of this chapter, where Jesus, hungry for breakfast, encounters a fig tree with no figs (because its not in season), so He causes the tree to wither up and die. That’s a bit mean and petty! If you can do that, why not make the fig tree fruitful, that seems more constructive and a better miracle to me. I think this one as an inserted anecdote.

Matthew 22

“They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.”

More bandying words between the Jesus and the religious establishment. The chapter starts with a parable about a king who is holding a wedding for his son. The invited guests refuse to come, and even go so far as to beat and kill the servants he sends to summon them. So he sends out an army to kill them all, then sends his other servants to invite all and sundry found on the highways to the wedding. One guest comes dressed inappropriately, and for this gets tied up and thrown into the darkness.

So, unpicking this, if the king is the kingdom of heaven, then the first set of guests are perhaps a dig at the priests again – the important first invitees who for some reason refuse to go (and the servant messengers the disciples, perhaps). So, death and destruction on them, and open out to everyone else. But you need to be serious about it (be in the right spiritual “clothing”) or you won’t get in. I reckon that seems about right to me.

The rest feel like doctrinal nit-picking. The Sadducees ask, if Moses says that a man may marry his brother’s widow, whose wife will she be if everyone is resurrected? Jesus’ answer is basically, don’t be so stupid, things like marriage are irrelevant in heaven. It’s clear here that the resurrection taught by Jesus is more like becoming a new spiritual form, not being the same person with a set of wings on a cloud. Closer to the concept of Nirvana, even.

The Pharisees try to get Jesus into trouble with the Romans by making him say that taxes shouldn’t be paid. Jesus neatly sidesteps them with the famous quote above, used as later justification for the separation of church and state. He’s also asked which is the greatest commandment (which sounds like a kind of rubbish fanboy question) – Jesus responds that to love God with heart, mind and soul is the greatest, then love thy neighbour. So first a complete acceptance of God, then general decency to other people are the commandments on which “hang all the law and the prophets”. Finally, there’s a bit of legerdemain concerning whether Jesus is the “Son of David” or not; I think the implication here is that Jesus doesn’t think of himself as the Son of David but identifies Himself with what David calls his Lord – you can’t be a Lord and a son. I think that’s the logic.

Matthew 23

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.”

Now this is more like it! I think when Matthew presents Jesus as tripping up the Pharisees with tricks of logic about doctrinal matter, he doesn’t really succeed. But when Jesus opens up with a full-bore impassioned speech, that’s when we get some good rhetoric. Perhaps this accurately represents Jesus’ forte, the big grandstanding speeches, not the minutiae.

Here, Jesus basically gives it to the scribes and Pharisees with both barrels, with the repeating line of ““Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites”. I won’t go into all aspects, because overall the message is the same. The scribes and Pharisees put on an outward show of piety and make a big deal about it, but inside they do not practice what they preach. Jesus condemns them as the same kind of people that persecuted the prophets of old. I think it says a lot about human nature that the same accusations could be levelled at the hierarchy of the church founded in Jesus’ name; I think He would have had a word or two to say to certain mediaeval and renaissance popes, for example.

I loved the phrase to “strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel”; it’s kind of a re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic sentiment – to be quibbling over small matters and letting the big problems slide by. I intend to use it in future.

Matthew 24

“Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.”

Jesus takes the disciples aside and gives them a bit of good old eschatological prophecy, concerning the end of days, when there “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places”, as well as the sun and moon growing dark, false prophets, great tribulations and so on, all very reminiscent of the Old Testament prophets (Daniel even gets a namecheck; apparently if you read his book carefully there are clues as to where to go in the end of days).

I’ll gloss over the seeming inconsistency with all these very visible signs and portents and the observations at the end that the coming of “Son of Man” will be sudden and unannounced, and only the faithful will know. I guess that’s the point where all the wars, earthquakes etc. happen (or, there are so many wars, earthquakes etc. then it’s impossible to tell which are the signifiers for the end days and which are just plain old normal wars, earthquakes etc.).

What’s most interesting about this chapter, to me, is that it seems to be implied that these things will come to pass within the lifetime of the disciples; “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled”, although “this generation” could well just refer to the generation alive at the time of the end days. It seems to have been quite a common belief amongst early Christians that the second coming was imminent. Still is with some people. Which modifies a lot of your thinking, if you live in the belief that the world will end in some religious catastrophe any day soon, and mostly not in a useful or healthy fashion.

Matthew 25

“Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.”

Jesus continues to expound upon His philosophy in the form of more parables. The first is the tale of the ten virgins, five of which keep lamps and oil ready, the other five have lamps but no oil, and they are waiting to be called to their bridegroom. When they are called, in the middle of the night, the un-prepared virgins are unable to go. So, obviously, this ties in with the sentiment of the previous chapter, “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh”. Aside from the rather strange wedding arrangements going on here, this concept seems to contradict the example given with the vineyard owner – in that parable it made no difference when anyone comes to the kingdom of heaven, they get the same reward, in which case it made as much sense to delay as long as possible. However, here there’s the sense that suddenly, Bam!, your time’s up and you have to make a reckoning for your life. So, really, the kingdom of heaven is like a Dutch auction – there’s reward for delaying, but you can’t leave it too long. I’m sure that’s not the intent.

In the second parable, a man gives his servants some money. Two of them invest it and double their money, the third hides it and makes no profit, for which he is chastised, “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath”. Which seems counter to the sentiments expressed in the sermon on the mount, and also counter to the idea of the “first shall be last”. I presume that the metaphor here is something to do with faith, rather than money, because of course a camel has more chance of passing through the eye of a needle than a rich man entering into heaven, and people should give away everything they own. But even if we’re talking about spiritual funds here rather than hard cash, this seems to run counter to the idea that it’s the poor and outcasts that need salvation the most; previously Jesus’ philosophy was all about helping the little guy. This … not so much.

Because then the chapter ends with the “King”, the Son of Man, dividing up nations at the end of days, into sheep and goats. The goats on the left hand get cast “into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” – the first reference to a fiery hell, I think, and also the first pop at left-handed people. The sheep get saved because they helped people, the implication being that every hungry person, every cold or lost person, God is within them and so God knows who has and has not been charitable. It’s a bit like a trick pulled in fairy tales where a creature able to grant wishes pretends to be an old woman in need, and it’s always the youngest son who stops in his quest to help them and so is given the tools he needs to succeed. You know the motif I mean.