Some historians suggest that the itinerate, culture-crashing Jesus emulated the Cynic sages, but Jesus and his disciples were not out to simply mock wealthy hypocrites or score philosophical points. The Jesus mission intended to actually make life better for the poor by healing them and teaching them to share their meals with hungry strangers.

The instruction to give freely is particularly interesting since Jesus spoke primarily to the poor. He encouraged them not to dwell on their own poverty, but rather to give to others. Giving to others appears in Jewish scriptures – Ezekiel, Deuteronomy, and Job – but Jesus adds his own emphasis. He provides the example of the Good Samaritan, giving unconditionally. Even sinners love their families and friends, he says; that’s nothing special. Be better than that. Love foreigners, those with other beliefs, even those who rebuke and attack you.

When Jesus speaks of “love,” the Greek manuscripts predominantly use the word “agape.” Most English translations render this as “love,” but we should note that it means, “to share.” For Jesus’ first century audience, his instruction would imply sharing God’s natural gifts, the abundance of the world, distributed equitably to all.

Landless peasants in Galilee had been dispossessed from this gift and they lacked basic food for survival. Jesus showed people that giving rather than hording provided enough for everyone. In large crowds, he instructed his disciples to share whatever food they had, and indeed, no one went hungry. For Jesus, generosity created abundance.

Although Jesus experienced a spiritual awakening, he remained a man of earthly purpose. As much as he borrowed from philosophers and ethical teachers, he was not satisfied with philosophy or ritual. His central point remains unambiguous: Spiritual insight is revealed by deeds. Talk is cheap. Action counts. In Matthew we hear: “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” echoing a common axiom that Jesus could have heard from an uncle or a wandering sage. Nevertheless, he made the principle his own by becoming a living example.

Of course, living these lessons is no small task. Love those who rebuke us? Who among us can face insult or physical abuse without dreams of revenge? How often have organized Christian churches failed this simple mandate? Witness the Inquisition, witch burnings, the violence of modern empires, or the cycle of revenge in the Middle East. Jesus taught action, but not violence. “Turn the other cheek,” he insisted. No violence or warfare anywhere, any time, honours the authentic Jesus.

Unconditional generosity is the challenge Jesus set before the world. Jesus did not have to invent this idea, since it appears as common wisdom, but actually living it became his great gift to the future of humanity. A simple act of unconditional kindness is the tabernacle of Jesus’ message.

According to the Gospel of Judas – discovered in 1970, and now translated – the alleged betrayer was carrying out the wishes of Jesus, to fulfill the prophecies.

In the year 180, Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon denounced the Judas gospel. We know that at least 30 diverse gospel accounts about Jesus existed in the second century. Some eighty factions of Jesus followers flourished. Over 200 documents prior to the fourth century, recount these competing versions of the Jesus story. The Judas gospel is one of these. The gospels of Mary, Thomas, Philip, the Ebionites, the Nazoreans, and many others contribute to an understanding of the authentic words and deeds of Jesus.

During these early centuries, most poor Jesus followers remained illiterate peasants, and these stories circulated as stories and legends. During these first decades, some scribes began to record anthologies of Jesus sayings; the Thomas gospel is an example. The voice of Jesus survived four decades of oral transmission before the first canon gospel narrative appeared. The earliest surviving fragments from any gospel about Jesus date from about 125 C.E., roughly a hundred years after his death. The earliest known complete Bible, Codex Sinaiticus, appears in the fourth century.

Anyone who has played the child’s game of “telephone,” knows how quickly a story can change from one teller to the next even in the same room. We have no way of knowing how these tales may have changed over decades of storytelling and centuries of revision.

One theory among scholars claims the entire “Judas” story is a second century invention intended solely to blame the death of Jesus on the Jews. Judas is placed in scenes – such as the anointing of Jesus in the John version – that conflict with earlier accounts.

The Gospel of Judas may be a response from Jewish followers of Jesus, defending the Jewish nation against these attacks.

Reverend Donald Senior at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, points out that the alleged betrayal of Jesus remains “a mysterious part of God’s plan.”

Was Judas in on the plot? Did Judas exist at all? We will probably never know. Renowned Bible scholar John Dominic Crossan reminds us that gospels were never intended to be history. They were written to provide “good news,” uplifting stories. If we expect gospels to deliver authentic history, we will be disappointed, and we will miss the mythological message of these accounts.

The Da Vinci Code has kindled an interest in the Magdalene’s contribution to spiritual history, but in our enthusiasm to solve riddles, we may be missing the jewel among the mysteries.

The hoax about a bloodline began in 1953, when Frenchman Noel Corbu, inherited an estate from priest Bérenger Saunière. He opened a restaurant in Villa Béthanie, the Hotel de La Tour, and concocted a rumor that Saunière had discovered parchments containing a Castilian Seal, in a hollow pillar of his Church. The story was a promotional gimmick, so Corbu didn’t bother to check facts. The renovation began five years earlier than he claimed, there was no hollow pillar, and no evidence linked the well-known priest to any parchments.

In 1955, Corbu met Nazi sympathizer Pierre Plantard. During World War II, at the age of 17, Plantard had founded “Alpha Galates,” to promote anti-Semitic ideas for “purifying France.” He published Vaincre ("Conquer"), filled with right-wing platitudes and superficial esoteria lifted from Celtic mythology. Plantard spent time in prison during the 1950s for fraud and embezzlement, but later promoted himself as a descendent of Merovingian kings, thus a pretender to the French throne.

Plantard borrowed the restaurateur’s story about the parchments, embellished it, created a “Priory of Sion” group, and published a new magazine, Circuit, featuring spurious history about royal bloodlines, linking himself, through the Merovingians, to Jesus. With the help of academic Philippe de Chérisey, Plantard added his name to an authentic genealogy from a 1960 historical journal Les cahiers de l’histoire. He forged parchments detailing this “history” and slipped them into the Bibliothèque Nationale. The bogus documents repeated the Saunière story and linked Plantard to royal blood and the phony “Priory of Sion” gang that allegedly included Leonardo.

In 1967, Plantard, Chérisey, and ghostwriter Gérard de Sède published the hoax as L’Or de Rennes, and a 1970 BBC documentary treated the story as authentic. Plantard and his co-authors bickered over royalties and launched a court case, during which both Chérisey and Plantard admitted they forged the parchments. Plantard repeated the confession in Circuit and other publications.

American astrologer Liz Greene (Leigh) read Sède’s story and wove the royal bloodline into a novel about French psychic Nostradamus. Her brother Richard Leigh and boyfriend Michael Baigent then teamed up with Henry Soskin (“Henry Lincoln”) to write Holy Blood, Holy Grail. French scholars, who knew the story, claim they warned Baigent, but the Holy Blood authors insisted on depicting the hoax as real.

As Plantard gained publicity from the Holy Blood book, he revised his story again, recanted his confession, and claimed that Chérisey had copied the fake parchments from “originals.”

Dan Brown read Lincoln’s book and used the premise for his now famous novel. It’s a stirring book, and at least he sold it as fiction, except for the opening “Fact” claiming that the Priory of Sion was a real “secret society founded in 1099.” He based this claim on the forged parchments in the Bibliotheque Nationale, naming Victor Hugo and Leonardo da Vinci as members.

Brown’s novel is entertaining and interesting, but it is not history. An actual Priory of Sion – a Catholic monastic order founded in ancient Jerusalem, Zion (Sion) – existed until 1617, when Jesuits in Sicily absorbed it. The priory was never a secret and had no association with the Templars. Plantard simply resurrected the obsolete name for his bogus 1956 group.

The problem with all this is that these myths are passed off as a revival of the feminine in religion, but may actually confuse an authentic revival of women’s rightful place in history and religion. A patriarchal church indeed suppressed goddess worship and Mary Magdalene’s role among the apostles, but fabricating history is not the way to restore these traditions. For authentic feminine spiritual history, see Rosemary Radford Ruether’s Goddesses and the Divine Feminine.

In the sixth century, Pope Gregory accused Mary Magdalene of being a reformed prostitute. The Roman church adopted certain gospels and outlawed others, specifically the Gospel of Mary and other Gnostic texts. There is no need to change Mary from a prostitute into Jesus’ girlfriend. Whether or not there were sexual relations among any of these early Jewish followers remains undocumented in the record. It is entirely possible that Mary Magdalene had an intimate relationship with Jesus – or Yeshua, the teacher from Galilee – but we’ll never know, and we don’t need to know..

Mary is portrayed in several accounts, including the Gospel of Philip, as a devoted disciple and teacher in her own right. For those who want to investigate the personage of Mary, a good place to start is Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels. Better yet, read the actual Gospels of Mary.

The Gospel of Mary was discovered at a burial site at Akhmim, Egypt, about 60 km north of the Valley of the Kings, at the end of the 19th century. Mary offers vivid insights into the teachings of their leader from Nazareth, that the Kingdom of God “is within you,” that the body is divine, not wicked; and that “where the mind is, there is the treasure.”

A cult of Mary likely existed and she may have traveled to both Ethiopia and to France. It is entirely possible that the person sitting next to Jesus in Leonardo’s Last Supper painting is intended to be Mary Magdalene. Nevertheless, Holy Blood, Holy Grail and the Da Vinci Code, entertaining as they are, do not represent history. Their premise is a 1950s restaurant promotion gone terribly wrong.

Mary Magdalene, on the other hand, deserves to be taken seriously.

Urged by his students to demonstrate this agility, Hillel agreed, assembled his students, lifted one foot, and said:

“What is hateful to you, do not unto your neighbor. This is the entire Torah, all the rest is commentary.”

We recognize this as the Golden Rule, echoed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, when he says, “Whatever you would have others do to you, do also to them.”

Five hundred years earlier, we find this rule in the Buddhist Dhammapada, in the Hindu Mahabharata, and in the Analects of Confucius, where he says, “Do not impose on others what you do not desire others to impose upon you.”

The saying appears in the histories of Herodotus, in Persian Zoroastrianism, and in the Sukhanan-i-Muhammad of Islam, which states: “That which you want for yourself, seek for all humankind.”

In a world such as ours, where greed drives our economic theory, and where, at any given moment, someone is killing someone else in the name of God, is there any chance that we can turn our cultures, our religions back to this most fundamental of sacred laws.

Perhaps, if we can step behind the metaphors, legends, and rituals of our religions, we might discover a common human experience, and rediscover this plea for compassion, the foundation of all religions.

A Philadelphia newspaper published a letter from one John Hull, who said that what really disgusted him was “condemning the church for the actions of a small number of priests.”

A small number of priests? We’re talking about 63 priests and 2 Cardinals – Anthony Bevilacqua and John Krol – in collusion!

The Vatican itself admits that over 4 thousand priests have committed child sex abuse in the US alone. International investigators put the number at over 100,000 priests worldwide, and millions of victims.

Father Marcial Maciel Degollado in Mexico told his young seminarians that his sex games were sanctioned by the Vatican to relieve “abdominal pains,” and he offered the young boys absolution for their youthful sins. Since he claimed to possess a papal dispensation for his sordid acts, thirty victims wrote to Josef Ratzinger, now the Pope, and begged him for some justice. Ratzinger buried the evidence and praised Maciel.

The list goes on: Rev. Bruce Ritter in New York, military chaplain Robert Peebles in Texas, Archbishop Juliusz Paetz in Poland, Bishop Franziskus Eisenbach in Germany, and victims of sodomy rings run by the Christian Brothers in Canada and Australia?

The biggest scandal is the Vatican cover-up. After the Boston scandals, the Vatican summoned disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law, from the U.S., not for a stern talking-to, but to accept the plumb job of archpriest at St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome. We have to wonder what dear Mary say about the head of her church.

Once the bosses are covering up the crimes, this is no longer about the actions of a few priests. It becomes institutionalized child abuse.

And the outcome in Philadelphia? Looks like the D.A. was too late. The statute of limitations has expired and the perpetrators, they say, cannot be held legally responsible.

Humanity longs for a spirituality of justice and common decency. Jesus healed people, shared food, comforted the poor, and gave hope to society’s outcasts. This is spirituality in practice. Justice here and now. This is the spirituality of Jesus, Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, Buddha, and Aung San Suu Kyi. What will the Vatican offer the suffering victims of this world that truly honours the example of Jesus?

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959, as the People’s Republic of China overran the capital of Lhasa, destroyed Buddhist monasteries, and arrested spiritual leaders.

The Chinese regime installed new leaders to replace those loyal to the Dalai Lama. In his first public appearance, their boy Norbu wasted no time in urging the Tibetan people to “defend the nation” – that is, China – and contribute to “the solidarity of the people.”

He left out the part about compassion for all sentient beings.

After the death of the previous Panchen Lama in 1989, a secret search committee discovered the 11th incarnation, a young boy, Gedhun Nyima, in Lhari Tibet. However, when the Dalai Lama announced his selection in 1995, the Chinese government arrested the little six-year-old, who became the world’s youngest political prisoner.

No one other than Chinese authorities has seen the boy or his parents since, and last December, Reuters news agency reported that they remained in Chinese custody.

The Dalai Lama has called for world leaders to speak firmly to Chinese leaders to help restore independence to the Tibetan people. In the meantime, Tibetan Buddhism struggles under the iron fist of the Chinese Government.

Bishop Adoyo, leader of the “Christ is the Answer” Ministry, insists that his community is “very uncomfortable” with the idea of evolution. The Bishop wants the museum to hide the bones in the back room.

A better solution might just be for the Pentecostal Bishop to simply stick his head in the sands of the Nairobi desert and save everyone a lot of trouble.

The church has a long history of making the wrong call on this sort of thing, which is why science operates outside the restraints of religious doctrine. In 1633, the Inquisition summoned Galileo to Rome to stand trial for claiming the earth went around the sun. Pope Urban’s philosophers refused to look through the astronomer’s telescope, and under threat of torture, Galileo apologized for his “errors and heresies.”

Today, George Johnson at the Catholic Education Resource Centre, points out that times have changed. “Biblical fundamentalists,” he writes about the Galileo affair, “do not understand this simple point: the bible is not a scientific treatise.”

In 1992, 350 years after Galileo’s trial, Pope John Paul II officially declared the scientist innocent. Scientific theory changes with the data, not because someone is uncomfortable with implications. Bishop Adoyo should focus on minding his flock, and let the bones fall where they will.

The Amish response has provided a lesson to the world. The horrified community met on the evening of the shooting with mental health counselors to process their grief. They discussed ways to support their traumatized children. Then, they discussed how to help the Roberts family, whose son had committed the atrocious crime. They organized a horse-and-buggy caravan and visited the family with food and condolences.

The Amish may appear strange to many people, since they reject modern technology, televisions, and computers. However, they have preserved the core message of all true religious traditions: love your neighbour. Even your enemy. Is this not what Jesus taught? We can see in Belfast and in fundamentalist warmongering that not all Christians got this message.

The Amish alternative appears in contrast to a world driven by revenge. The War in Iraq was fueled by American revenge for the attacks on their nation. An eye for an eye. Someone has to pay. We throw desperate, homeless youths in jail for petty crimes. Society gets its revenge.

According to the suicide note of Charles Roberts, he was driven by revenge for some unknown injustice he believed he had incurred.

But the Amish in Pennsylvania broke the cycle of revenge with compassion. And there is the lesson for us all.

See the NPR report.

Fifteen-year-old Ram Bomjon has meditated for six months – allegedly without food or water. A makeshift city of 100,000 devotees has formed around his forest sanctuary, and some proclaim him a living Buddha.

Ram’s mother grew anxious about her son’s health, but after visiting him, she praised his devotion to the Buddha, and announced, “God will feed him.”

Nepalese authorities are not so sure, and have urged doctors, scientists, and Buddhist lamas to help solve the mystery. Skeptics point out that the boy’s attendants close a curtain around him at night.

Buddha-boy, as the media has dubbed him, appears entirely removed from all the hoopla. He’s said very little, but he did request, “Don’t call me Buddha. I’m not a Buddha.” This humility is the best evidence yet that he has achieved some measure of enlightenment.

Buddhism doesn’t promise paradise, but rather places personal responsibility on each individual to discover the truth.

I’m not so sure they should spoil this with scientists. Who cares if the Buddha Boy is sipping mango juice behind the curtain? He has inspired thousands to seek a more religious life. This is miracle enough. He’s sitting. He’s meditating. He’s attempting to gain wisdom. The scientists and media should leave him alone. Let the people marvel. Perhaps they’ll be inspired.

In a world where wars rage over religious doctrine, I find it refreshing to see people excited about a meditating boy.