What if the Old Testament were Pagan?

[mahud]

What distinguishes the witness of the prophets and the apostles, so that it can have this significance for the existence of the congregation and its proclamation to the world? After all, they were men fallible as we are, children of their time as we are of ours, and their spiritual horizon was as limited as ours—in significant ways, even more limited than ours. Whoever enjoys that sort of thing can again and again demonstrate that their natural science, conception of the world, and also to a great extent their morality cannot be binding for us. They told all sorts of sagas and legends and at least made free use of all kinds of mythological material. In many things they said—and in some important propositions—they contradicted each other. With few exceptions they were not remarkable theologians.

Barth, Karl, 1964 (2006), 'God Here and Now', p.59

...and yet these Primitive Christians with more than a little help and authority from their Hebrew predecessors, managed to cook up a pretty climatic squeal to the Old Testament. In many ways I see the creation of the New Testament as very Pagan, in the sense that a bunch of believers, all with differing mythic images of Jesus, created an organic whole out of some pretty disparate and contradictory material. Over the years this organic tried and tested process continued trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, until finally after centuries a biblical canon was settled upon. No doubt a lot of politics had come into play way before this point. Nothing worked against the Creative Spirit of Christianity as insidiously as Church politics.

The writing of the New Testament was certainly off to a good start, Written from the perspective of my different Christian sects, sometimes interacting and other times not, over an estimated period of around 70 years. Yet, I imagine what the NT would of looked like if the Hebrew followers of the Most High hadn't enforced their beliefs on the populace, eliminated the worship of other gods, creating an entirely different foundation for Jesus and the writers of the NT?

I do not object to a Pagan Bible, or numerous Pagan Scriptures. As long as the organic process of the Creative Spirit is left to do its thing. Who knows, in a time to come we may have an abundance of Pagan Sacred Texts, written by scattered individuals throughout the years across the globe? We just have to learn from the 3000 (give or take) years old lesson of how not to go about it.

Monotheism is not the problem. Forcing people to become Monotheists is. Even today, while many have the opportunity to become followers of Christ through choice, this choice came at a terrible price, especially for the Pagans of old, who lost their cultures, there deities and their identities.

As long as New Pagans don't take arms against the non-pagans enforcing the survivors to bow down before the deities, destroying identity and culture with an alien set of concepts of the sacred, I can't really see a problem with Pagan sacred texts. Or a Pagan Monotheism for that matter.

As to the question of Oral Vs. Written sacred narrative. I'm willing to stick with the written. To me it does not damage the mythic expedience, although it has certainly canonized it. It's interesting to think how myths would of transformed had they never been written down. Either way we win and we loss on that one. If it wasn't for the Sumerians who recorded their myths on cuneiform tablets we wouldn't have much to go on apart from later Babylonian priests and such. I'm sure that there are many Celtic mythologists, reconstructionists, witches and druids who wished that the Celts wrote down their myths, ritual practise and wisdom.

Cernunnos' Path: Mythology and Paganism