The Lost Religion of Jesus: Simple Living & Nonviolence In Early
Christianity, by Keith Akers. Lantern Books (1 Union Square W., #201,
New York, NY 10003), 2001. 260 pages, paperback. $20.00.
Denver vegetarian advocate Keith Akers, best known for compiling A
Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), earned his B.A. in philosophy 30 years ago at
Vanderbilt University. He turned to computer programming to make a living, but
never forgot his philosophical interests. Decades of meticulous study later,
Akers has joined the growing legion of historians and theologians who are coming
to believe that the real focal issue of Jesus' life and death was opposition to
animal sacrifice--and, by extension, to all meat-eating, since animal sacrifice
was practiced in Judaism as a means of sanctifying the consumption of any flesh.
According to Genesis, God explicitly excluded meat from the human diet at the
time of Creation. Only through the invention of animal sacrifice, purporting to
"share" meat with God at God's alleged own request, could the Hebrews
rationalize transgressing their oldest commandment.
Others have made the same argument, but Akers' examination of the evidence is
unusually free of sectarian bias, since-- unlike most Biblical scholars--he is
not aligned with any one religion. Akers seeks the truth of Biblical history by
painstakingly finding and removing corrupted bits to resolve each system
conflict. Comparing the Biblical accounts of Jesus clearing the temple, Akers
notes that, "There are several groups whom Jesus directs his anger against,
and the moneychangers are nowhere at the top of the list. In Luke they are not
even mentioned. Rather," Akers reminds, "it is the 'dealers in cattle,
sheep, and pigeons,' 'those who sold,' or 'all who sold and bought' who are his
primary targets. In John, he speaks only to the dealers in pigeons, and in Luke
he speaks only to 'those who sold.' The primary practical effect of the cleaning
of the temple was in John to empty the temple of the animals who were to be
sacrificed, or in the synoptic gospels, to drive out those who were taking them
to be killed or were selling them. We must remember," Akers emphasizes,
"that the temple was more like a butcher shop than like a modern-day church
or synagogue. 'Cleansing the temple' was an act of animal liberation.
"The conventional interpretation of Jesus' motivation," Akers
writes, "is that the moneychangers and dealers in animals were overcharging
Jews who had come to the temple to make a sacrifice...Nowhere else in the New
Testament is there any suggestion that profiteering by animal dealers was a
problem." Jesus did not visit the temple as a consumer advocate, Akers
believes. Rather, "Jesus did something that struck at the core of temple
practice. The priests wanted Jesus killed, and even after Jesus was dead, they
wanted to destroy his followers. Was all this effort simply to safeguard some
dishonest moneychangers? It is much more plausible that Jesus objected to the
practice of animal sacrifice itself...It was this act, and its interpretation as
a threat to public order, that led immediately to his crucifixion," Akers
argues.
Objecting to animal sacrifice, Akers explains, was consistent with the
interpretation of Judaism that Jesus otherwise advanced, following a line of
Biblical prophets including Ezekial and Isaiah. Opposition to animal sacrifice,
moreover, was a growing trend within Judaism at the time, possibly though not
necessarily as result of increasing commerce with India, where many Jews fled
less than a century later after the Diaspora.
Apocryphal stories and some scholarly investigators long have postulated that
Jesus spent part of his youth in India, and that the Golden Rule was a recast
form of ahimsa. Akers, however, believes from examination of Jesus' words about
animals that he did not need to go so far to be immersed in similar teachings:
they were already current in his time and place. Akers cites passages indicating
that, "The principle of compassion for animals is a presupposition of all
of Jesus' references to animals...Jesus in the gospels does not argue the
question of whether we should be compassionate to animals; rather, he assumes it
from the outset."
As Akers portrays Jesus, he was not well-traveled and worldly. Having
possibly grown up away from animal sacrifice, he suffered a profound shock upon
encountering it in the temple. He responded in outraged naivete, and was in
effect sacrificed himself because of his apparent innocence of the force of the
institution he challenged.
Akers argues that bits of Gospel such as accounts of the miracle of the
loaves and fishes and the Last Supper, which seem to show Jesus condoning flesh
consumption, were corrupted by the Paulists who took Christianity away from
Judaism. Key evidence is that the Jerusalem church first led by James (who
claimed to be Jesus' brother) kept vegetarianism as a central tenet for all of
the 300-odd years that it existed.
Akers argues, based on a confluence of geography and teachings about animals,
that remnants of the teachings of the Jerusalem church were incorporated into
the Sufi branch of Islam, which much later originated where the last branch of
the Jerusalem church had settled after fleeing Jerusalem. "Jesus is not an
unknown figure in Islam," Akers acknowledges, "but the Sufis express
an extraordinary interest in Jesus and have sayings of Jesus and stories about
Jesus found nowhere in Christianity. Especially interesting and significant is
the treatment of Jesus by al-Ghazali, an 11th century Islamic mystic who is
widely credited with making Sufism respectable within Islam."
The Jesus described by al-Ghazali "lives in extreme poverty, disdains
violence, loves animals, and is vegetarian," Akers summarizes. "It is
clear that al-Ghazali is drawing on a tradition rather than creating a tradition
because some of the same stories that al-Ghazali relates are also related by
others both before and after him, and also because al-Ghazali himself is not a
vegetarian and clearly has no axe to grind. Thus, these stories came from a
pre-existing tradtion that describes Jesus as a vegetarian," which Akers
illustrates with examples from al-Ghazali.
Vegetarian saints, poets, and teachers, including women, have been prominent
among the Sufis from the beginning of the tradition. Akers briefly reviews their
examples, and explains how the pro-animal descendants of the Jerusalem church
could have found a place in Islam after suffering violent rejection by both
Judaism and mainstream Christianity --largely due to their vegetarian teachings.
"Notwithstanding the approval of meat consumption and animal sacrifice
in Islam," Akers writes, "animals have a status in the Qur'an
unequaled in the New Testament. According to the Qur'an, animals are
manifestations of God's divine will, signs or clues for the believers provided
by God. The animals in fact all praise and worship Allah. The beasts pay
attention to God and the birds in flight praise him as well. Allah has given the
earth not just for human domination, but for all his creatures. "Animals
have souls [in Islam] just like humans, for we read, 'There is not an animal in
the earth, nor a creature flying on two wings, but they are peoples like unto
you...Unto their Lord they will be gathered.' "Indeed," Akers
concludes, "it would appear that [in Islam] animals can be saved on the Day
of Judgment."
Akers hopes that as growing numbers of Christians become vegetarian, they
will return to the religion of Jesus, which he argues was the practice of
ahimsa, whether Jesus knew the term or not, and is the oldest and purest theme
common to every religion based upon ethical teaching.
--M.C.
ANIMAL PEOPLE
PO Box 960
Clinton WA 98236
www.animalpeoplenews.org
www . compassionatespirit . com