Deconstructing Jesus by Robert M. Price

Author:Robert M. Price
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2009-07-07T04:52:00+00:00

46a. Jesus said: The world and the hereafter are like two women which a man is trying to please at the same time; when one is pleased, the other is annoyed. (Ibid., Nurbakhsh)

This saying is a better version of Matt. 6:24: "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the first and love the second, or he will be devoted to the first and despise the second. You cannot serve God and Mammon." Loving and hating two slave masters seem somehow beside the point. And if the point is not to try to serve two objects of potential devotion, why say the slave must love the one and despise the other? If you hate the one, your mind's made up: your affections are not divided. The Sufi version is clearer: The lover of two women sees no more conflict in loving both than the rich religious person sees in loving both God and money. It is not that he loves either object less, but rather that his two-timing annoys both of them. Even so, we must imagine that it is God and Mammon (the Buddhist Mara) who despise the would-be slave of both, not the slave who despises one of them while loving the other. If he did the latter, whence the conflict in the first place?

This saying has been placed after the preceding because the compiler shrewdly recognized the notion of gaining wealth in order to give (part of) it to charity (see Nurbakhsh's translation: "0 you who seek after worldly goods, in order to do good works....") as a self-deceptive excuse to become or remain wealthy while claiming piety. The strategy is thus an attempt to court both God and Mammon, foolishly imagining that neither will mind.

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