Surrealism began as a 20th century movement of artists and writers who used fantastic images and incongruous juxtapositions in order to represent unconscious thoughts and dreams.
In 1928, a few early surrealists such as Joan Miro and Man Ray, played a parlor game known as “cadaver exquis” (exquisite corpse). This parlor game exploited the mystique of accident to form a collective collage of words or images. The game was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase or draw an image on a piece of paper. Each person was only allowed to see the end of what the previous person wrote, as the paper was folded to only reveal a part of it to the next person. The next person would make his contribution and pass it along to the next player. At the end, the paper was then unfolded to reveal what was created. The game got its name from the initial phrase created, "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau" (The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine). These poetic fragments and images were thought to reveal an unconscious reality in the personality of the group, resulting from a process known as mental contagion. Mental contagion can be said to be a form of involuntary imitation, with the final product being an object of art created by the group consciousness…a surreal compilation.
With that in mind, and in investigating the origins of the Holy Bible, we know that the New Testament is not a single book, but a compilation of many books by various authors. Indeed, many of the books were initially circulated independently or in collections smaller than the New Testament. These books, whose attributed authorship has not been questioned for almost two millennia, have recently been subjected to critical historical research which has shown that all the books in the Bible are no longer held to be written by the people tradition has thought them to be. This discovery is not often communicated to the lay public, and as a result, most Christians and all fundamentalists still strongly believe in the traditional attribution of authorship.
The majority of Christians have only a vague idea about how the collection of these books was achieved. History shows the method was haphazard and was not carried out with the unanimous consent of early Christendom. The canonization process was a hodgepodge of mistaken authorship, faulty logic, and the politics of heresy. From the disputed authors to Marcion and Irenaeus, from Eusebius to Athanasius, from Constantine and the Council of Nicaea to the Council at Carthage, to all the various councils, popes, translators, and decision-makers throughout the years…the road to canonization was a rocky one….with the final authority being this entity called “The Church”.
In researching the authorship and the compilation of the books of the Bible, I am struck with how a form of mental contagion may have played a larger role in what would eventually become the Holy Bible as it exists today. This blend of history, myth, and folklore was pieced together in many forms from oral and written testimony and passed from one generation to another before it was eventually unfolded to reveal this strangely surreal object created by the church consciousness. This compilation, full of failed prophecies, internal contradictions, and scientific errors, could not have been inspired by an all-powerful god…a god who commanded the Israelites to enslave the cities which made peace with them, kill all male inhabitants, and to completely wipe out all the inhabitants of the cities in their inheritance…this god who commanded enslavement, murder, rape, and pillage. It is indeed surreal to think that Christians could reconcile this same god, through Jesus, saying "love your enemies" and yet know that he commanded these atrocities. This compilation is the work of men…only men.
In 325 A.D., three hundred men at Constantine’s insistence made a pivotal decision in the history of Christian theology…by popular vote and under threat from Constantine, they came to the conclusion that God and Jesus were of the same substance. In 333 A.D. Constantine decreed Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and ordered the closing of all Egyptian temples in an attempt to eradicate any and all competing religious systems.
Due to the power of the church, and Constantine in particular, a new testament was created and a Galilean Jew who died three centuries before the fateful Council of Nicaea, was put on the path to deification…thus becoming the world’s first “exquisite corpse”.
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