Have you had the feeling that Easter is really late this year? That’s because it is. It seems to jump around the calendar – which it does because of how it is calculated. Easter Day is on the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after 21 March. This means that it falls on dates between 22^nd March and 25^th April. Obvious, isn’t it? No.

Consequences

The consequences of having Easter jumping all over the calendar are not life-threatening, but they do cause some inconvenience. In my working life, my employer’s financial year went from 1^st April to 31^st March in the following year. Tax years go from 6^th April to the following 5^th April, mainly because the tax system didn’t adapt to the change of calendar in 1752. (The change from Julian to Gregorian calendar occurred in 1582 in most of the rest of Europe. For 170 years we were 10 days behind our neighbours (11 days after the year 1600: full explanation here.) Some familiar ring to that, I fear.

The upshot is that company and taxation financial years have 0, 1 or 2 Easter holidays – and sometimes only one of the two “bank” holidays. Confusing, eh? You bet. At work, we had to make adjustments for Easter when calculating “like for like” annual trend data, something that was quite important in my line of business.

Perhaps the biggest inconvenience arising from the variation in Easter dates is that which affects schools. The variability itself and the often huge difference in length between successive terms play havoc with curriculum planning and in preparing students for KS2 tests, GCSEs and A levels. Fixed length terms would solve this problem.

The Easter Act 1928

Until I did some research for this post, I had never heard of the Easter Act, legislation passed by the UK Parliament and which received royal assent in 1928. The Act fixes Easter as the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. This would entirely eliminate the tax / financial year problem outlined above and would enable the Spring and Summer Terms in schools to be (approximately) fixed in length. So why didn’t it happen?

A full explanation can be found here. Briefly, Christian churches couldn’t agree amongst themselves. The Act contains the provision that, before it comes into effect, “regard shall be had to any opinion officially expressed by any Church or other Christian body”. The Act itself only requires Christian viewpoints to be considered: there is no religious veto. However, “successive governments have taken it to mean that the Act would not be brought into effect until there was a general consensus on the part of the various churches of the Christian faith as to when Easter should fall”. It seems absurd to me, in 21^st century Britain, where 53% of us are “not religious” and only around a third of British people call themselves Christians, we’re stuck with this relic of more religious times.

Easter as Moon Worship?

It’s broadly accepted that the English name for Easter is derived from the pagan goddess Eostre, and that this claim dates from the early 8^th century by a monk known as the Venerable Bede. Or possibly, as in the German Ostern, from the word for “east” and its association with dawn and the vernal equinox. (Most other European languages’ words for Easter derive ultimately from Pesach, the Jewish Passover.)

But does the Easter festival itself have pagan roots associated with spring, fertility and the equinox? My take is: probably. Here’s one view from the Guardian nine years ago. Eggs and bunnies seem to fit with this view.

Resurrection Shuffle

But what about the Resurrection of Christ, central to Christian theology? Well, certainly Jesus of Nazareth was not the first who was attributed with resurrection. The dying-and-rising deity story can be found in Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis and Attis and Dionysus, derived from Ancient religions in the Near East. Both James Frazer in 1890 and Carl Jung in the 1950s analysed the frequent reference to dying-and-rising gods, often linked with the dying and regrowth of vegetation, e.g. crops in the Nile valley.

But what about the assertion in the Bible that Jesus waited until the third day to rise again? To be fair, here’s an American Christian explanation. None of that sounds particularly convincing to me! Here’s a much longer, and more thorough, analysis from someone who takes the opposite point of view. This account includes reference to the Sumerian moon goddess Inanna, the left eye of Horus (for all you Only Connect fans) and the Buddha. The latter is quoted, when dying, as saying to the animals of the Earth: “Do not weep, look at the moon! As the moon dying renews herself again, so shall I dying be renewed again.”

There is, of course, one natural phenomenon which can be said to “die and rise again” after 3 days. And I’ve already given the game away in the last quotation above. Every 29.5 days at New Moon, it can be said to “die” and reappear as a crescent after three days. The early Christian Church accommodated itself to many pagan rituals in order to ingratiate itself with the majority non-Christians at the time. For me, the most likely ultimate origin of the resurrection myth is in pagan moon-worship. Whether this was by directly adopting, and adapting, pagan rituals at the vernal equinox or via some pre-Christian dying-and-rising god myth is impossible to tell after 2000 years. But it does fit best with the annoying habit of Easter jumping around the calendar in accordance with the rising of the sun and the cycles of the moon!

So, when the shops are all shut next Sunday and you’ve forgotten a key ingredient for dinner, don’t get angry! Just wait until dark, look up at the moon, and wonder….

God said to Abraham “Kill me a son…”

This blog post is prompted by the Pope’s visit to Ireland – a secular, utterly changed, country in the 40 years since Francis’s predecessor visited the country. I say good to that. Let’s talk religion.

As a humanist, I obviously reject all religions (although Buddhism doesn’t require its followers to believe in a non-existent deity, so I’m OK with that.) The rest contain some superstitious nonsense about God, Yahweh, Allah or whatever and generally also a belief in some form of afterlife. Neither is for me. The Humanist position is clear and simple. We have but one life, here on Earth. And people are free to believe and practice any religion as long as it does no harm to others. That’s the acid test.

There are some deeply troubling trends in India in relation to Hindu nationalism, leading to state-tolerated anti-Muslim discrimination – but that would be a distraction from my main arguments. So I’ll stick to the main Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). For reasons of brevity and familiarity, I’ll use “Abraham” rather than the Islamic form “Ibrahim” in this post.

Orthodox and Enlightened

Broadly speaking, Humanists like me have most problems with the orthodox / traditional wings of these three religions. That’s because they are “book” religions and the words are taken literally by the traditionalists. Liberal Jews, Christians and Muslims recognise that the world and social attitudes have changed since the words were written. So they “interpret” what’s been written in the light of what we’ve learnt since.

There is no shortage of enlightened, liberal and even secular Jews to engage in a debate. “Secular” doesn’t work for Christians and Muslims: it’s an oxymoron – despite Home Secretary Sajid Javid claiming he’s a “secular Muslim”: logically impossible! I suppose it helps him to be more accepted by the Christian traditionalists in the Tory Party.

Judaism

The concept of “secular Jew” works because Judaism differs from the other two Abrahamic faiths in one important way. The term “Jew” is conventionally applied as both a religious and ethnic grouping. It is part of the reason we can all get quickly into hot water over debates about antisemitism. I believe that, under Benjamin Netanyahu, the actions of the state of Israel make it a rogue state: a democracy with a coalition government dependent on right-wing extremist parties. But my fundamental belief in anti-discrimination makes it easy for me to distinguish between criticism of Israel and criticism of Jews in general.

I do also believe that Jews, as an identifiable group, have been discriminated against – including genocide – more than any other over the past 2000 years. About 90% of the discrimination was done in the name of Christianity: anti-Jewish sentiment and actions by Muslims are – with one or two notable exceptions – a relatively recent phenomenon. And the Holocaust, as the most evil state-sponsored event of the 20^th century, behoves us all to be very sensitive in our choice of words.

Christianity

Again, taking a 2000 year view, Christianity has been the main culprit when it comes to killing and torture in the name of religion. The Renaissance, in Christian Europe, led to a rediscovery of classical Greek and Roman art and philosophy, secular in nature. The Reformation gave us Protestantism, which, via the Enlightenment, led to secularism. This and scientific discovery have brought progress to the point where over half of Brits have no religion. There are more non-believers than Anglicans.

And yet, the Church retains many privileges in Britain and certainly in England, thanks to a combination of factors. Detritus which needs to be swept away includes state-funded faith schools, the requirement for our head of state to defend the established church and the general legislative drag on enlightened, secular policies. It is a disgrace that a part of the UK (Northern Ireland) violates the human rights of women over abortion, for example. The UK and Iran are the only two countries in the world with clergy formally and constitutionally part of the legislature.

Islam

Which brings us to Islam. Humanists have one big problem which we cannot avoid. Traditional Islamic teaching states that the Qur’an, as told to the prophet Mohammed, is the final word of Allah / God, which cannot therefore be challenged. A lot of Islamic teaching and cultural practice is not in the Qur’an itself, but in the many additions, not least the Hadith, bolted on to the faith subsequently. It’s primarily about 7^th to 12^th century politics, when things in the Middle East were pretty patriarchal (see Misogyny below). But asserting the Qur’an as the unimprovable word of Allah doesn’t exactly encourage open debate.

I continue to strive to gain a better understanding of Islam, for two opposing motives. The first (and by far the more important) is to enable me to be culturally sensitive in my regular dealing with Muslim people, as a matter of respect for them and their right to practice their faith. The second motive is to use my greater knowledge of their religion to disagree with Islamic beliefs from a humanist perspective. Much of the culture in Muslim groups in 21^st century Britain is highly socially conservative, and I am keen to gain a better understanding of where this comes from.

In the 10th century, a phenomenon known as closing the gates to Itjihad occurred: in plain English, the law-makers of the time “laid down the (sharia) law” and there it stays until this day. One thing I can say for sure: Islam has never had the equivalent of Christianity’s Reformation. But it’s more complicated than that! (Read on in the Wiki article linked above to get a brief overview of 19^th century Islamic modernism and Salafism – but many of the most extremist groups in Islam and individuals such as Osama Bin Laden hark back to a mythical “Golden Period” of early Islam – which only makes things worse!)

I think what really matters is that nearly all Muslims living in Britain get on with their lives in such a way that they do no harm: that’s the Humanist litmus test. It’s a key tenet of Humanist thought that all people, of all faiths, are free to act this way without fear of discrimination.

Misogyny

All the Abrahamic faiths, but especially Christianity and Islam, seem obsessed about women and what they may, or may not, do with their bodies. There is a strong propensity towards misogyny. It’s easy to spot where this comes from in Christianity and orthodox Judaism. Women are unclean, as a result of menstruation and childbirth (Leviticus 12). (Incidentally Leviticus 18:22 is the only Biblical source of Christian anti-gay bigotry.) It’s worth reading Leviticus in full, as I have done. You’ll learn that it’s OK to eat locusts but not prawns, it’s a sin to wear a garment made with more than one fabric and how to deal with mildew as a nomad in the pre-Christian Arabian desert. And a whole lot more: how times have changed.

The other great driver of religious misogyny is the Adam and Eve myth. Specifically, it’s in the role Eve plays as temptress with the apple (Genesis 3:6). Echoes of this myth filter down to today in Islam around the issue of Muslim women’s right to wear what they choose or forced to by men(?). This Polly Toynbee article intelligently addresses the issue.

Misogyny and the violation of women’s rights remain the biggest example of what I meant by “legislative drag” in the earlier section on Christianity.

The Pope and Catholicism

Which all brings us back to the Pope’s visit. Good luck to Francis with his reforms – if he truly means it. Church politics will resist all moves towards a more enlightened position. Thought control is hard-wired into the Catholic hierarchy. And the interests of the Church always take priority over the victims of abuse. Steve Bell’s cartoon from 8 years ago got there first.

The Catholic Church is intrinsically evil. It has caused more anguish and misery than any other man-made institution in the past 2000 years. (Its supporters will argue it has brought comfort too. That may well be true, but the evil is greater than the good). To be Catholic is to learn guilt at a young age. If I remember rightly, wanking is a sin in the eyes of the Catholic Church. So that gets 90% of Catholic schoolboys for a start!

The pope said some words earlier this week in advance of his visit to Ireland. But victims’ groups were unimpressed: it was just words with no sense that anything will change. A bit like the “prayers and thoughts” offered by Trump and other NRA apologists in the USA after each school mass killing.

I hope that everyone has a nice time in Dublin today, even those with whom I disagree over matters of faith. But, like gun control in the States, don’t expect real change any time soon.

What is the “gospel truth”? It’s an expression we use when we assert something is true with absolute certainty. But hang on a minute… This is a piece about mistranslations in the Bible.

Lost in Translation

First, a bit of background. The most familiar version of the Bible in English is the King James edition of 1611. This was translated from Hebrew and Aramaic (Old Testament), from Greek (New Testament) and from Greek and Latin (Apocrypha – rarely reproduced in modern printings).

Ancient Hebrew, in written form, consists only of consonants. The vowels have to be inferred from the context or prior knowledge of the subject area. Consider this: “th cw jmpd vr th mn”. It’s easily recognized as a line from a well-known nursery rhyme. But suppose you came from a culture unfamiliar with the rhyme. Perhaps you’d think the most likely reading of this would be “the cow jumped over the man”. So we have a potential problem here. The chances that all 593,000 words of the Old Testament were correctly translated seem, well, a bit slim to me.

Secondly, it’s often hard to find a word in translation to convey the exact meaning of the original text. Here’s a famous example: “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). The Greek original for “word”: λογος (logos) carries a wide range of meanings. Wikipedia devotes a whole page to it. Logos can be translated as “a ground”, “a plea”, “an opinion”, “an expectation”, “word”, “speech”, “account”, “to reason” or “a premise”. In ancient Greek philosophy (from Heraclitus), it is used as meaning “a principle of order or knowledge”. The King James translators hardly do justice to John’s original. This is just one example out of thousands (around 181,000 in the New Testament).

Camels and Needles

One of the most striking of soundbites attributed to Jesus is the one stating that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24 et al). (A similar phrase can be found in the Quran.) I was once told this is a mistranslation and so I did some research.

Here are four main rival theories I found:

1. Jesus actually said this (in Aramaic of course, his spoken language). Camels were the largest animals native to Palestine. There are accounts of the phrase being used in other cultures, substituting elephants for camels, as a metaphor for something impossible.
2. The Gate Theory: a story dating from the 15^th century (and possibly as early as the 9^th) asserts that the “Eye of the Needle” was a small gate or night door in the walls of Jerusalem used only at night after the main gates to the city were closed. There is no evidence such a gate ever existed.
3. “Camel” is a mistranslation of “rope”: in Aramaic, the word for “rope” and “camel” are the same (roughly transliterated as “gamla”) and the gospel writers mistranslated this into Greek.
4. “Camel” is a misspelling for “rope”: in this version, it’s all in the Greek. “Kamelos” means camel, “kamilos” means cable.

There’s an even less plausible 5^th version involving mistranslation of “knot”.

So, basically, I just don’t know which version is true, but the implications for the theology between version one and the other three are significant. I’ll leave that to the theologians to thrash out.

Add to all the above the fact that, for the first 1400 years, there was no printing press and copies had to be made by hand. Were these always made without error? I doubt that. So, all in all, the things that you’re liable to read in the Bible: don’t treat them as gospel!

Oh, and Mary wasn’t a “virgin”. She was a “young woman”. (Think “maid” in English.)

Last month, a report revealed that weekly attendance at Church of England churches has now fallen below one million – just 1.4% of the population. This continues a long period of remorseless decline. The red line on the graph below shows this.

Survey after survey has shown the proportion of British who say they are “religious” in similar decline. Latest figures put this at around half of us. “No religion”, at 42%, now far exceeds the 31% calling themselves Christian. (This is even lower than the 37% who voted Tory at the last election!)

Out of Touch with Opinion

The Church of England has not exactly shown itself in touch with public opinion recently. Justine Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, painted himself into a corner by convening a meeting of the so-called “Anglican communion”. This is some kind of post-imperial hangover. It arises from the ashes of the former British Empire and its missionary proselytizing – with a dash of inclusiveness arising from post-imperial guilt.

Welby’s desire to keep this mixed bag of Anglicans “united” resulted in the formal punishment of the most enlightened part of the communion: the Episcopal Church in the USA. And yet the Episcopalians are closest to public opinion, even of the Church’s own members! For example, the 2015 Eurobarometer survey found 71% of Britons in favour of same-sex marriage throughout Europe, with 24% against. The subsequent “apology” by Welby for the “hurt” caused to LGBT people merely reinforced how pathetic the whole sorry episode has been.

Faith Schools

Despite the continuing decline in church attendance, the number of school children attending CofE schools has risen slowly. This means that now more schoolchildren attend CofE schools daily than people worship in their churches each week. The blue line on the graph above illustrates this point. As a secularist, I strongly object to the grip that religious authorities, the CofE in particular, still have in 21^st century Britain. What makes it worse is the extent to which faith schools break the law in their admissions policies.

But what makes this truly outrageous is the Government’s response to this widespread law-breaking by faith schools. Nicky Morgan, Education Secretary, has taken two actions:

1. She has issued guidance to schools telling them to ignore the adjudicator’s findings: in effect, to carry on breaking the law. As a school governor, I find this deeply disturbing. To be encouraged by a Government Minister to breach her Department’s own rules is a serious assault on the rule of law, a key foundation of democracy.
2. She also proposes a change in procedures preventing organisations such as the British Humanist Association and the Fair Admissions Campaign from raising objections to the admissions adjudicator. She refers to the BHA/FAC campaign as “vexatious”. And this is after the adjudicator found over 1000 breaches of the code following their detailed campaign!

We can only hope Morgan will not follow the same career path as her predecessor into the Ministry of Justice. Following the same logic as in point 2, it doesn’t take much imagination to speculate what a Morgan-led justice system would look like. Presumably, the police would not be allowed to investigate murders without a written complaint from the victims!

It will come as no surprise to note that Morgan is a committed Christian. She is a member of the Conservative Christian Fellowship. At a parliamentary event last July, she said she’s in parliament not only for her constituents, but “to remember the Word of God and serve the Lord”.

The admissions code breaches by faith schools include multiple cases of discrimination, including religion and gender. Guess who is currently Minister for Women and Equalities? It’s a certain Nicky Morgan MP, who incidentally voted against the same-sex marriage bill. At best, she’s misunderstood her brief. Worse, she appears to be grossly abusing her position to pursue a particular agenda.

Who says irony is dead?

Established Church

With our famously unwritten constitution, changes take place slowly and in a piecemeal way. In many ways, Britain is a socially progressive liberal democracy. But there’s one hell of a load of what I call “feudal detritus”. One is the continuing existence of the Anglican Church as the established church in England. (Note “England”: there is no established church in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.) The map below shows just how strange we are. The coloured areas show countries with an established religion. The string of officially Muslim countries (in green) across a swathe of North Africa and the Middle East will come as no surprise. More surprising is a tiny handful of officially Protestant countries in Scandinavia. But that’s just about it.

Oh, and by the way, there are just two countries with clerics as a formal part of the legislature: the UK and the Islamic Republic of Iran. For those who, like me, feel this is wrong, sign the petition for Parliament to debate the removal of the 26 bishops from the House of Lords.

Disestablish Now!

Modern, liberal, secular democracies understand the need to keep church and state separate. With less than half of Britons religious and less than a third Anglicans, the privileged position of the Church of England makes no sense at all. It’s frankly insulting to the rest of us. What was done for the political and sexual convenience of a womanizing former king – Henry VIII – has no place in modern times.

So let’s continue to clean up the relics of our feudal past. Replace Nicky Morgan with someone who will not abuse their position as Minister for education and who can fill the shoes of Equalities Minister without irony. And, above all, disestablish the Church of England  – with all that that entails!