Easter: Why Did Jesus Ride a Donkey into Jerusalem



The tale of Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey with adoring crowds cheering his arrival just did not happen. No doubt something like it happened in the mythology wealthy men at the time knew about. Only the very wealthy were literate at that time, so the tale comes from that small demographic. Every Easter Chirstian sites carry the orthodox version of the story.

The imagery of leaders or famous people passing in front of crowds is, and probably always been, one of being higher than the crowds. This allows them to be seen, but also projects importance. We all know of holy men being carried in splendor on the shoulders of human beings.

The donkey seems a compromise. Story tellers needed him to ride into town, not walk. He needed to be a little higher than the so-called crowds but not on the back seat of a shiny convertible car. So story tellers or scribes rewriting the story came up with Jesus on a donkey. 

We can notice the Jesus as told in the Bible was not a farmer nor a banker. Just as the donkey was in between walking and a prancing white steed a carpenter's social standing was in between a lowly goat herder and a banker. Jesus had to have the credentials of the kid who started the game on the bench but came in to score the winning basket.

The best thing to happen to Easter is introduction of bunnies and colored eggs. In the long run, as people become increasingly skeptical of tall tales in the Bible the faith should gravitate away from the far fetched notion of the dead coming back to life and just celebrate warmer weather and flowers. 

 

 


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ancient God, Bel (Baal), the Main Character in an Ancient Play

Image
In a British museum is a preserved stone tablet from Babylon. It dates to about 2,000 BCE. Someone labored patiently to inscribe an entire passion play featuring the god Bel. I reiterate this is a stone tablet, not a recopied papyrus. The play begins with the god Bel arrested by soldiers and taken off the stage. He reappears at a trial in the Hall of Judgement. Bel is innocent but is sentenced to death. In the next scene Bel is accosted by a mob. He is despised and rejected. The actor playing Bel is then taken by guard to a hilltop in a sacred grove. Two criminals are taken with him. One of these is released. The the audience then leaves the theater and follows the actor Bel and his guards to the top of a hill where the death scene is enacted by hanging from a tree. The audience returns to the theater for the dramatic final scenes. The dead Bel is stripped and prepared for burial. On a theatrical hill to the side of the stage is a tomb where the body is placed. A stone is rolle...
Read more

What Was the "Argument" in the Election

Image
I hate to add my blog to the piles of blogs and pundits analyzing and pondering the meaning of the just passed election. But that's what I feel like doing today. I've always like Senator Ted Cruz's summary of politics. He once said, "First, win the argument. Then, win the election." I think there is a way of applying that to anti abortion Catholics and Protestants. The link talks of Catholics who now feel they have no political home because Republicans let them down with Trump but they remain against abortion rights. Taking Cruz's win-the-argument thesis, I'd call the past election about an argument between two groups. One group's argument was, "Trump's a jerk." The other's argument was, "Abortion is wrong." The group, "Trump's a jerk," won the argument and then the election.  While one can argue the election, or any election, it about more complex issues, I believe in the end elections hinge on very simple ar...
Read more

Will We Ever Know How Accurate Current Bibles Are

Image
When I discuss the many times the Bible was copied and recopied by scribes over a couple of thousand years, the reply is often, "I have a book by this (or that) expert who says the Bible is 99% accurate to its original writers." The 99% claim appears in various places defending the Bible. There is one thing we know absolutely: There is no surviving original copy of the Bible. Even the oldest surviving material is a generation or two after the time some of the Bible was written. This means no one can claim he has, or ever will, compare the current Bible to the original Bible and find the two are 99% the same. We cannot claim either that it is not 99% accurate. For the sake of discussion, however, assume the current Bible is 99% accurate. That would mean the one word out of every 100 was inaccurate. It could still mean an important misreading of the original text. An example is the passage referring to punishment for a man who kills a fetus. In the oldest know materia...
Read more