The Demystification of Belief Systems.

The Enlightenment era never came to an end, it was merely put on hold. At least this is a view held by many of the researchers who are trying to reconstruct a believable historical Jesus. Worldwide, approximately 200 scholars (mostly liberal theologians) are associated with a group that calls itself the Jesus Seminar.

But it's not limited to just those who are associated with this group, which is mostly Protestant. Catholic New Testament scholars are also making major contributions. Father Gerome Murphy-O'Connor, a noted and respected scholar, who lives in Jerusalem and teaches New Testament studies at the Ecole Biblique, is a good example. All these researchers' efforts--apart from traditional scholarly Bible studies --attempt to demystify Christian beliefs in order that the antiquated and tradition-bound dogma will no longer confuse the modern believer. In Germany, this effort is referred to as Entmystifikation or demystification. Much of this research started with the eminent New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1975), a professor of theology at the University of Marburg, Germany.

Not surprisingly, all this is happening at a time when:

* scientists, while treating brain disorders with neurochemical drugs, discover that a patient's behavior and perception ("soul") is being drastically altered;

* body and soul can no longer be seen as independent entities;

* few individuals can still believe such strange notions as "immaculate conception";

* human cloning is becoming a distinct possibility.

Therefore one should think that among modern societies a demystification of popular belief systems should be welcomed by all but the most rigid fundamentalists.

So far, the Jesus who emerges from these studies takes on many forms. It turns out that the scholars cannot agree as to how he lived, whether he was married, if he had brothers and sisters, the exact date of his birth or death, and where he lived between the years 20 and 30 of the Common Era. Not surprisingly no proof of any of these aspects of his life exists, although one can take existing historical data on Galilee, the Jewish area where he spent most of his youth, and assume that he followed the ways of his countrypeople.

Using this approach, a group of scholars is trying to find from what had been reported via the Gospels (that is, the various reports of his deeds from the documents attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) if they agree with other historical records and among one another. These scholars have become convinced that at least the Matthew and Luke authors used for their writings the same Greek text, which has been termed Q (for quelle--German for "the source"). After years of research, the international team of scholars that is trying to reconstruct this hypothetical text is still a long way from getting all the theologians to agree. In 1995 the Belgian firm Peeters published the first installment of this reconstructed text under the name Documenta Q. The publication of those thousands of pages is expected to take fifteen years. So one could expect this massive effort to be completed by 2010.

The founder of the international Q project, James M. Robinson, and his fellow researchers believe that Q holds the key to the understanding of Jesus--an understanding that is essentially non-Christian. The reason: the authors of Q didn't regard Jesus as the messiah. This myth of Christ (Greek, for the anointed one) evolved later after his death. Instead, the Jesus scholars saw him as a possessionless wandering sage. (See Charlotte Allen's "The Search for a No-Frills Jesus" in the December 1996 Atlantic Monthly.) Burton L. Mack, another Q scholar, pictures Jesus more as a roving secular philosopher, very similar to the Greek Cynics (Cynicism was a philosophical movement that questioned authority; Diogenes was its best known exponent). It is interesting to note that such acetic preachers and beggar monks had been roaming the countryside in India, China, Central Asia, and Indonesia after the third century BCE--ever since Buddhism got its start in India with Prince Siddharta Gautama, called the Buddha, who lived from around 560-480 BCE.

Q nonbelievers--that is those Jesus scholars who don't subscribe to the notion that some of the gospels had their origin in a now missing document--have their own theories about who copied who. They tend to support the idea that much of the information was passed on orally before being recorded in the gospels, accounting for variations in the recitations. Yet they don't necessarily disagree with the historical picture that emerges from their separate efforts. (E. P. Sanders, a professor of religion at Duke University is a leading Q nonbeliever, as is Eta Linnemann, a former student of Rudolph Bultmann).

Lately, one hears some speculation about a Jesus who was influenced by Buddhism. There are indeed surprising similarities that make such theories plausible. Before and during Jesus' time there was an idea exchange taking place by various means--such as contact by members of Alexander the Great's army and by caravans plying the trade routes to Southeast Asia and the Far East, where such travelers must have encountered practicing Buddhists. But then religions and other belief systems are never static. They influence one another over time, and they undergo cultural adaptations in the various regions where they are practiced. Political aspects exert their influence and frequently result in a dogma that the original prophet or philosopher never intended nor anticipated.

Confucianism is a typical example. It started out simply as a set of rules of conduct, drafted by K'ung Fu Tzu (Exalted Master K'ung, whose name was latinized to Confucius by Christian missionaries in the sixteenth century). Christian missionaries introduced their version of Confucianism to the Western world, where it made a deep impression; so much so that a picture of Confucius now adorns the hearing room of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., among other images of historical lawgivers. Thomas Paine in his Age of Reason named Confucius, along with Jesus and the Greek philosophers, as one of the great moral teachers.

Over time their teachings tend to get embellished and elaborated upon. According to some recent research, only sixteen of Confucius' 170 sayings (or analects) can be attributed to him (see Charlotte Allen's "Confucius and the Scholars" in the April 1999 Atlantic Monthly). It is interesting to note that the Jesus scholars also discovered that of the 503 sayings attributed to Jesus from early Christian literature, only 10 percent could be authenticated (see Burton L. Mack's The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins; the Jesus Seminar votes tend to hold that 18 percent of the sayings are authentic, a bit higher than Mack, who I believe is too optimistic).

It is highly unlikely that Confucius ever envisioned a world in which his wise sayings would give rise to the religion that Confucianism became. Nor could he have foreseen the influence of Taoism and Buddhism on the religion that his ideas spawned. Under Confucianism (or Neo-Confucianism as it came to be called after the twelfth century), the Chinese enjoyed eight centuries of a remarkably harmonious and stable society.

This is a claim that modern Taiwanese often make. Listening to them, one gets the impression that Confucianism was always great for China. But one has to be careful not to be taken in by Nationalist Chinese propaganda. Proponents are right when they say Confucianism served as a code of ethics--though it's difficult to say to what extent Buddhism and Taoism contributed to its success. The Chinese Nationalists are reluctant, however, to disclose the fact that their type of secular Confucianism also served as the anti-Marxist underpinnings of Chiang Kai-Shek's authoritarian regime.

One other point must be made: Confucianism, being somewhat elitist, had the effect, prior to the communist takeover in Mainland China, to deprive the unskilled laborers of a chance to break out of the cycle of poverty. The so-called coolies who came to the United States to work on the transcontinental railroad were an example of that underclass. Nevertheless, few will dispute that many of the Confucian rules for ethics and civil conduct remain applicable to modern society.

Overall, the basic wisdom of these ancient sages continues to have universal appeal, although it's highly unlikely that any of these wise men--Jesus, the Buddha, or Confucius--were they alive today, would agree with all the embellishments their followers have added to their sayings over the centuries. Instead, they would likely be appalled at the mysticism and dogma to which organized religions have resorted.

As to Confucius, whatever is known about his personal life is similarly controversial. Some scholars even dispute his existence. But those controversies should be of little concern. The things that matter are some of the traditions that are still alive. Once stripped of their ancient dogma and mysticism they can form a basis for a universal ethic that modern humanity can embrace.

The demystification movement within Christianity seems to be progressing at a snail's pace. Fifteen years seems a long time for the Q project to conclude its work, especially to modern Westerners living in such a fast-paced society. Will this data-mining unearth more unexpected treasure or will it, after the passing of a few more years, resemble mucking through depleted tailings in search of that priced rare nugget? And one must ask, in what way will all this meticulous and detailed research help improve our society?

If the result is merely an understanding of how the historical Jesus had lived, it could hardly be worth the effort. Perhaps something else, something much more significant, will emerge from this scholarly work: the realization that there are basic ethics common to all religions throughout the world. And as this world gets metaphysically smaller through advances in communication and transportation, it will be just a matter of time before people realize a need for a global approach to demystification of all major belief systems.

It makes so much more sense to concentrate not on those items about which we differ but on those aspects of civilized conduct that all of us share--regardless of religion or ethnic background. Once this realization takes hold, the major sources for ancient conflicts should fade away. And that's the gospel truth.

Richard H. Nethe spent twenty years working as an advisory quality engineer specializing in data analysis for IBM in East Germany, West Germany, France, Canada, and the United States.