A.J. Mattill, Jr. has been contributing editor to the American Rationalist for over a decade. His expertise is a meticulous dissection of the Bible to expose its hypocrisy, barbarism, stupidity, and other assorted nonsense.  I consider him one of the most dedicated and informed scholars of the Bible in the United States. In any debate with a Christian scholar, priest, or minister—no matter how credentialed—he would be devastating. No one knows more about the Bible than A.J. Mattill, Jr. does.

      A.J. is a master of alliteration. Just consider a few examples, all titles of his essays: Polishing Proverbs, Examining Exodus, A Difficult Demand of Discipleship, A Colossal Claim and a Cruel Condemnation, Cleansing the Cult, Five Fabulous Feats, Looking for Lovers of the Lord. An impeccable stylist, A.J. has never to my knowledge made a mistake in any of his scores of AR submissions—not grammatical, not stylistic, not mechanical, not spelling. No mistakes. Period.

      Since I took over AR editorship in 1996, A.J. has contributed over sixty (yes, 60!) articles on the Bible. Most of the best that A.J. Mattill, Jr. can offer is contained in his several books, in particular Sweet Jesus (3 volumes) and The Seven Mighty Blows to Traditional Beliefs published by The Flatwoods Free Press (Route 2, Box 49, Gordo, Alabama 35466-9517)

      Below just a small sample of A.J's exposé of biblical nonsense.

—Kaz Dziamka, Editor

 

 

A.J.  was born in St. Joseph, MO., where he attended public and business schools and worked several years for Armour & Co. (which may help to explain why he is now a vegetarian), followed by a tour of duty with the U.S. Army in France shortly after World War II.

      He then earned three degrees: B.A., University of Chicago; B.D., Evangelical Theological Seminary; and Ph.D in biblical studies and theology, Vanderbilt University. He has done post-doctoral work in Israel, Canada, and West Germany. He taught Bible in college and seminary and has served as full and part-time minister of several congregations. He now devotes most of his time to writing about religion, and he manages The Flatwoods Free Press, which currently publishes twelve of his titles. He and his wife, Mary Elizabeth, live on her farm in the Flatwoods Community near Gordo, AL. Their address is 750 Lum Fife Road, Gordo, AL 35466-3357.

      His articles have appeared in such periodicals as The Journal of Biblical Literature and The Catholic Biblical Quarterly. In addition to AR, he is also a regular contributor to Freethought Perspective. He is included in Who’s Who in Hell, an international directory of freethinkers.

 

 

 

A DIFFICULT DEMAND OF DISCIPLESHIP

 

By A.J. Mattill, Jr.

 

According to Matthew 8:21-22, combined with the parallel passage in Luke 9:59-60, Jesus said to one of his disciples, "Go with me." But the disciple replied, "Lord, let me wait till I go back and bury my father." Jesus answered like this, "Let the dead bury their own dead. As for you, come with me and preach the kingdom of God." Now let us put on our freethought spectacles and scrutinize this passage.

 

      1. Making Sense of Nonsense

 Exactly what is the meaning of Jesus' obscure saying, "Let the dead bury their own dead"? Taken literally, this difficult demand of discipleship is pure nonsense, for the physically dead do not rise up out of their graves to bury the unburied dead. Nor can the physically dead bury themselves, as has been suggested. Hence numerous proposals for clarification are on the table.

      A. Perhaps the most popular attempt to make sense of Jesus' words is this: "Let the spiritually dead bury their own physically dead," the spiritually dead being those who do not respond to Jesus' call to follow him. B. Others think that Jesus used a proverbial saying which really means, "Cut yourself adrift from the past when matters of present interest call for your whole attention." C. Some suggest that the difficulty arises from a faulty translation of the Aramaic original of the saying in question. Correctly translated, the saying reads, "Leave the dead to him who buries dead bodies." A similar suggestion is this: `"Let the pallbearers bury the dead." Or, `"Leave the dead to their grave diggers."

      D. Now hear this! Jesus' obscure saying is really a paradoxical way of saying, "The business of burying your father must look after itself. You, on the other hand, have more important work to do." E. Another paradox: "Let the dead bury each other the best way  they can." These so-called paradoxes aren't paradoxes—they're nonsense! F. Try this idea on for size: "Let the waverers bury their dead." G. Another suggestion: Jesus didn't intend these words to be taken literally. He simply wanted to stir thought. If that's the case, he succeeded.

      In short, here again we find Jesus, "the master teacher," violating Cobbett's Rule: "I speak not only so I can be understood, but so that I cannot be misunderstood."

 

      2. A Startling Statement

 "Let the dead bury their own dead" is not only difficult and obscure but it is startling, to say the least. Commentators called it "harsh," "heartless," "ruthlessly hard," "stern," and "unfeeling." Jesus' tone, they say, is "peremptory" and "dogmatic."

      Dr. de Loosten, head physician at the Holstein Provincial Institute for the Insane in Neustadt, whose writings date from 1905 to 1913, found that Jesus' startling statement shows that "Jesus had lost all natural human feeling." (See Walter E. Bundy, The Psychic Health of Jesus, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922, p. 73)

      Commenting on our passage, scholar Ernest Renan found that Jesus' words are "like a fire utterly consuming life, and reducing everything to a frightful wilderness. The harsh and gloomy feeling of distaste for the world ... was originated ... by the sombre giant whom a kind of grand presentiment was withdrawing, more and more, out of the pale of humanity. We should almost say that, in these moments of conflict with the most legitimate cravings of the heart, Jesus had forgotten the pleasure of living, of loving, of seeing, and of feeling." (Renan, The Life of Jesus, New York: Modern Library, 1927; originally published in 1863, pp. 288-290)

      Jesus' statement deserves these unkind remarks because his attitude flies in the face of the Jewish conviction that giving the dead a proper burial is one of the most serious responsibilities of the family. The honoring of one's parents is deeply rooted in the Jewish consciousness (Exodus 20:12). The duty of burying one's father was so sacred that it dispensed one from the duty of reciting the Shema, that is Deuteronomy 6:4-9; 11:12-21; Numbers 15:37-41 (Berakoth 3:1).

      According to Leviticus 21:2-3, even a priest, who ordinarily must avoid the defiling contact with the dead, by touching a corpse or assisting in preparing it for burial, was permitted to bury his father. Even looking after one's father during the weakness of old age was a duty more holy and urgent than any other.

      When Jews buried their dead, they believed they were imitating God, who buried Moses (Deuteronomy 34:6). And to assist at a funeral was such a sacred obligation that a man could interrupt his study of the Torah (the sacred Jewish religious writings and law) to bear out a corpse.

      Against this background, we can imagine the disciple in tears, grieving over the loss of his beloved father, and eager to fulfill his pious duty of burying his father. In this state of intense emotion, the disciple pleads with Jesus to let him go back and bury his dear dad. Jesus, however, shows no sympathy for the man in his time of great loss. Instead of condolences, Jesus blurts out harsh words, cold as ice, "Let the dead bury their own dead!" No wonder, then, that Jesus has been called "harsh," "heartless," a man who has "lost all natural human feeling."

      When Jesus asserted that following him trumps all family obligations, he simply overestimated the importance of himself and his mission, for the kingdom of God, which the disciple was to proclaim, has turned out to be nothing but a figment of the biblical imagination.

 

      3. Aftershock

  Jesus' cold-blooded demand has had chilling consequences. According to Pope Gregory the Great (about 540-604), we ought to ignore our parents, hate them (Luke 14:26), and flee from them when they hinder us in following the Lord. Gregory's view was accepted by the Church. In all circumstances the relationship between child and parent was secondary to the relationship between man and God. Numerous saints were honored for deserting their nearest relatives. Incidentally. Gregory burnt the great library of Rome, proclaiming, "Ignorance is the mother of devotion." Those are the truest words Gregory ever spoke!

 

 

 

 

Stone-Blind

 

By A.J. Mattill, Jr.

 

According to John 9:1-41, Jesus restored the sight of a man born blind. Yet the Pharisees refused to believe in Jesus. On the other hand, the man born blind who received his sight confessed his faith in Jesus as Lord and knelt down and worshiped him. Jesus said to him, "I came to this world to judge the people. I am here to give sight to the blind and to blind everyone who can see" (9:39). Now let us focus our attention on the blind man, the Pharisees, and Jesus.

      The Blind Man. As we have noted, this man was physically blind but Jesus restored his physical sight—no doubt 20/20 vision. The man was also spiritually blind; but he received his spiritual sight when he confessed his faith in Jesus as Lord (9:38).

      The Pharisees. The Pharisees enjoyed physical sight and thought they had spiritual sight. They claimed that they could see (9:41) because they believed that God spoke to Moses (9:29). But when they rejected Jesus as Lord they rejected the light of the world" (9:5) and became spiritually blind. In effect, Jesus blinded those who thought they could see.

      Jesus. Jesus claimed to be "the light of the world" (9:5), the Son of Man (or the Son of God, according to some ancient manuscripts, 9:35), and Lord (9:38). As such, Jesus was convinced that he possessed both physical and spiritual sight.

      Conclusion:  How unfortunate that the blind man, the Pharisees, and Jesus himself were less enlightened than Charvaka, a rationalist of India who lived half a millennium before Jesus. If Jesus, the blind man, and the Pharisees had had 20/20 spiritual vision, they would have said, as did Charvaka, that there is no Supreme Being. Charvaka pointed out that there is no proof that a God exists, for he cannot be proved by the only valid means of knowledge—sense perception, since he is supposed to be devoid of tangible form. Here we think of Jesus' statement that God is Spirit (John 4:24).

      Or if Jesus, the blind man, and the Pharisees had not been spiritually blind, they would have asked with another ancient Indian, Buddha (563-483 BC/BCE): "If God made everything, why didn't he make it a better world without the profound miseries in it? If God rules the world, why is the world full of injustice, cheating, and lies?" Had Jesus had perfect spiritual vision, he would have called upon his followers, as did Buddha, to live a self-reliant ethical life, without worship, prayer, or dependence on any kind of divine being. Compared with such perceptive, farsighted thinkers as Charvaka and Buddha, Jesus appears to have been stone-blind!