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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pagels
    #1711318 - 07/13/03 12:03 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

"Unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, who say that Jesus warned of the coming 'end of time,' both John and Thomas say that he directed his disciples toward the beginning of time - the creation account of Genesis I - and identify Jesus with the divine light that came into being 'in the beginning.' Thomas and John both say that this primordial light connects Jesus with the entire universe, since John says, 'all things were made through the word [logos; or, the light]....While Mark, Matthew and Luke identify Jesus as God's human human agent, John and Thomas characterize him instead as God's own light in human form.

Yet despite these similarities, the authors of John and Thomas take Jesus private teaching in sharply different directions. For John, identifying Jesus with the light that came into being 'in the beginning' is what makes him unique - God's 'only begotten son.' John says we can experience God only through the divine light embodied in Jesus. But certain passages in Thomas's gospel draw quite a different conclusion: that the divine light Jesus embodied is shared by humanity, since we are all made 'in the image of God.' Thus Thomas expresses what would become a central theme of Jewish - and later Christian mysticism a thousand years later: that the 'image of God' is hidden within everyone, although most people are unaware of its presence.

What might have been complementary interpretations of God's presence on earth became, instead, rival ones; for by claiming that Jesus alone embodies the divine light, John challenges Thomas's claim that this light may be present in everyone. John's views, of course, prevailed, and have shaped Christian thought ever since. For after John's teaching was collected along with three other gospels into the New Testament, his view came to dominate and even to define what we mean mean by Christian teaching. Some Christians who championed the 'four-fold gospel' - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - of the New Testament denounced the kind of teaching found in the Gospel of Thomas (along with many other writngs that they called 'secret' and 'illegitimate') and called upon believers to cast out such teaching as heresy." Pages 40-41

Since 1945, people, it's been a new dawn. An evil sun rose into an evil mushroom in the desert of Alamagordo, New Mexico. It was a man-made sun that its creators called Trinity. In the same year, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Nag Hammadi writings along with it were discovered in the desert of Qumran, where the good Son of God was discovered to be in every human being, if only we seek Him within us.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

Edited by MarkostheGnostic (01/06/06 10:28 PM)

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InvisibleSclorch
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pagels [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #1711584 - 07/13/03 01:55 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

I'm not surprised at all by the exclusion of the Gospel of Thomas... it distributes power to all men. The Gospel of John gave the church the opportunity to hoard power and cripple the thought glands of thousands of insecure church-goers at a time. A powerful technique that is still employed today. And though it has been diluted, it is nonetheless effective.


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OfflineZahid
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pagels [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #1711727 - 07/13/03 03:10 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

I'm not too familiar with the Gospels of Thomas although I am learning. I ought to pick up that title by Pagels, already I have read the Origin of Satan, which is quite interesting. There's alot of wisdom that dwells in that treasure that was dug up outside that little village. :smile: 


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InvisibleSclorch
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pagels [Re: Zahid]
    #1713074 - 07/13/03 11:24 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

It's only a few pages long.

It reads like zen...


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Offlinefivepointer
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pagels [Re: Sclorch]
    #1713400 - 07/14/03 02:15 AM (20 years, 8 months ago)

Another assault on the truth, the notion the Scriptures can somehow be corrupted by deletions or additions is most heinous. If the Word is so easily altered then the entire foundation of truth is attacked. After all why listen to scripture if we really don't know if it is real or not. God providentially preserved and assembled the Word. Anyone who denies this core doctrine has denied the faith.


Revelation 22:18
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:



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OfflineLOBO
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pagels [Re: fivepointer]
    #1713525 - 07/14/03 05:03 AM (20 years, 8 months ago)

Fivepointer, stopped now you are beginning to scare me!

Why do you come to this forum? is evident that you are not interested in ethogens, nor into philosophy.



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InvisibleWorld Spirit
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pagels [Re: fivepointer]
    #1713791 - 07/14/03 09:40 AM (20 years, 8 months ago)

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OfflineRhizoid
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pa [Re: fivepointer]
    #1713807 - 07/14/03 09:55 AM (20 years, 8 months ago)

It would be cool if you could just take any text /TEXT/ and make it irrefutably true just by decorating it in the following way:

"And God said: /TEXT/. If any man shall add unto these words, God shall add unto him enormous pains and punishments and stuff."

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Offlinetrippinlizard
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pagels [Re: Sclorch]
    #1713827 - 07/14/03 10:08 AM (20 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

Sclorch said:
I'm not surprised at all by the exclusion of the Gospel of Thomas... it distributes power to all men. The Gospel of John gave the church the opportunity to hoard power and cripple the thought glands of thousands of insecure church-goers at a time. A powerful technique that is still employed today. And though it has been diluted, it is nonetheless effective.




fuckin' A. exactly.
i read that originally there were aspects about reincarnation in the bible that the catholic church edited out, and lots more about the divinity of not only man but life in general.
they just wanted the cashola. what was it called when you paid them to ignore your sins and ensure your relatives could get to heaven?


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fine. do what you want, but i'm drinking the water.

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OfflineRhizoid
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pa [Re: trippinlizard]
    #1713866 - 07/14/03 10:29 AM (20 years, 8 months ago)

Writ of indulgence.

Basically, a way to extract money from the Catholic believers. Not a lot different really from the way the Church of Scientology operates today.

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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pagels [Re: fivepointer]
    #1714014 - 07/14/03 11:44 AM (20 years, 8 months ago)

Good Lord man, you have been severely compromised in your ability to think for yourself. The tenor of your words indicates downright emotional upset and hostility, which indicates to me (a long-time [Christian] therapist) that you are caught in something called a Complex - a constellation of associated feelings and thoughts that operates in a person's psyche [soul] with a kind of psychic autonomy. One might refer to it, metaphorically, as a state of possession - but do not be deceived. This is not the Holy Spirit appointing you prophet to correct the heretics.

The Word is certainly NOT infallible, it was composed and collated by very fallible men [no women, unfortunately, to balance things), and still retains more than sufficient meaning to direct the lives of this and future generations to The Way. The existent Bible also needs to be understood in its cultural and historical relativity. Women are NOT second class citizens who need to obey their husbands absolutely, not speak, not hold property, not be educated. It is NOT OK to treat one's slaves well - there shouldn't be any slavery. It is NOT shameful for a man to wear his hair long. And Christ did NOT reappear in Paul's lifetime for a VERY GOOD reason. The extraverted, materialist reading of Scriptures that mistakenly puts eschatalogical events IN TIME - IN HISTORY - IN THE FUTURE - is INCORRECT. These are of Eternity, not time.

"His disciples said to him, 'When will the resurrection of the dead come, and when will the new world come?' He said to them, 'What you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it.'...It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.'"

Pick up Pagel's last book. You will learn something about the author called John; his derogatory story about 'Doubting Thomas,' and other points intended to demean the individual known as Thomas. Thomas has us look for Christ within our depths, NOT through the established outer ritual of the Sacrament of the Eucharist (Body of Christ) which was controlled by the new priesthood. By locating Christ only in an external, material vehicle that was controlled by the elite, one would be forced to conform or be excommunicated. If salvation lay ONLY with the Sacraments of the Church, excommunication was equivalent to damnation and Hell. John's theology won over the Thomas Christians' theology [a realized eschatology] for reasons that Pagels is clear about.

If you had any intellectual integrity, you would [bracket] everything you know, which is the discipline of Phenomenology, and approach this new material without bias. This requires courage and humility and a relinquishment of the type of self-righteous ego trip that people like you go on and attribute to the Holy Spirit, when in fact it is a very common pathological inflation of the ego cast in religious garb.

Do yourself and everyone else within eye-shot on this forum a favor, and cease from your brand of dogmatic certainty about true vs. false doctrine until you have understood the very origins of your self-assured proclamations. With all due respect to Christians everywhere in Christendom, this kind of preaching about Christ (including the very Eucharistic Host) is appropriately described by the parrot who repeats ad nauseum: "Polly wants a cracker!" (where 'poly' from the Greek means 'many.')


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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InvisibleSclorch
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pagels [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #1714919 - 07/14/03 03:57 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

Holy fucking shit was that a good post, Markos!
I wish every Christian shared your view.


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InvisibleZero7a1
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pagels [Re: Sclorch]
    #1715277 - 07/14/03 05:22 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

:thumbup: I must second your thumbs up. This is actually the way I like to take to christianity... and its not really since ive been on this forum and talked to a few people that ive started to llook at christianity differently... igniting those old fires from childhood... starting to really answer the questions... instead of getting a lot of the same old routine.
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but if i may ask markos... could you elaborate on this

Quote:

  Since 1945, people, it's been a new dawn. An evil sun rose into an evil mushroom in the desert of Alamagordo, New Mexico. It was a man-made sun that its creators called Trinity. In the same year, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Nag Hammadi writings along with it were discovered in the desert of Qumran, where the good Son of God was discovered to be in every human being, if only we seek Him within us.



 


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What?

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OfflineRhizoid
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pa [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #1715384 - 07/14/03 05:45 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

Yeah, very good post! :thumbup:

This comes from the gospel of Thomas, right?

Quote:

"His disciples said to him, 'When will the resurrection of the dead come, and when will the new world come?' He said to them, 'What you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it.'...It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.'"





And I know this is from the gospel of Luke:

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Are there any more known references to this teaching of Jesus?
 

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Offlinefivepointer
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pa [Re: Rhizoid]
    #1715394 - 07/14/03 05:47 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

MarkostheGnostic wrote -

"The Word is certainly NOT infallible, ..."

There is no further point to discussion if the foundation of truth is removed. You have denied the authority from which all questions can be answered. Any further discussion would be counter-productive.

Your attempts at using psycho babble to discredit the opposition is not convincing. Next time use the scriptures to make your case. Hopefully some day (by the grace of God) you may realize the Bible is The Word of God.

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Invisiblesilversoul7
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pa [Re: fivepointer]
    #1715593 - 07/14/03 06:48 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

There is no further point to discussion if the foundation of truth is removed.  You have denied the authority from which all questions can be answered.  Any further discussion would be counter-productive.



:eek: Wow!  You are brainwashed beyond belief.  The foundation of truth, if there is such a thing, is found in science.  Technically, science falls short of explaining reality too, but it comes much closer than a book claiming to be the infallible word of God.

Quote:

Your attempts at using psycho babble to discredit the opposition is not convincing.



That "psycho babble" is a thing we like to call "logic."

Quote:

Next time use the scriptures to make your case.  Hopefully some day (by the grace of God) you may realize the Bible is The Word of God. 



It is.  Just not in the way you think of it.  Eat 5 grams of mushrooms and maybe you'll understand.  With any luck, it'll help deprogram you from a lifetime of fundamentalist brainwashing.

"Christianity has a built-in defense system: anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument is, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It's a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it -- and believe me, I was raised Southern Baptist -- is to take massive amounts of mushrooms, sit in a field, and just go, 'Show me.'"
--Bill Hicks


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"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."--Voltaire

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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pa [Re: fivepointer]
    #1716801 - 07/14/03 11:22 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

I did use Scriptures. Scriptural writings that were not included in the canonical Bible for reasons I outlined, plus the fact that they weren't discovered in their complete form til 1945 C.E./A.D.

I did not use psychobabble. I used very precise and terse definitions of physically intangible 'mental' or psychological phenomena. YOUR lack of knowledge is your own choice. The Bible alone does not make one a therapist - not even a clinical pastoral counselor - which I have been (dropped my American Association of Pastoral Counselors affiliate membership years ago).

I call the Bible the Word of God also, but I know a bit more about how it came about than you do, and why certain important teachings were excluded. You have a lot to learn about basic humility before you are going to grow in sanctification. Your arrogance, like every other Bible-belter I've ever known is just a feeble attempt to convince yourselves of a dead theology by convincing the simple souls of the world. Well, I believe, but I am not a simple soul, and I would never, ever do what you do. Hatred, antisemitism, condemnation of every other human being who worships differently than you is implicit in your attitude. You are arrogant - prideful - and because of the pride that characterizes your attitude, you are Luciferian. You best be standing on soft ground the day THIS realization enlightens you, 'cause coming down that hard is really gonna hurt your knees.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pa [Re: fivepointer]
    #1716835 - 07/14/03 11:38 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

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Edited by Enter (07/15/03 12:21 AM)

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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pagels [Re: Zero7a1]
    #1718601 - 07/15/03 03:12 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

Trinity was the very first atomic bomb test - the result of The Manhattan Project. Robert Oppenheimer quoted from the Bhagavad Gita - 'Behold, I have become the Destroyer of Worlds...' It was a man-made sun that was detonated on a 500 foot steel tower in the desert of New Mexico. The fireball rose up into the tell-tale form of a deadly, radioactive mushroom cloud - an evil sun and an evil mushroom.

Meanwhile, in the same year - 1945 - The Gospel of Thomas and the Nag Hammadi library were discovered in the Egyptian desert near Qumran. A new Son [of God] was discovered there - at least, a new version heretofore not even considered since the 1st century of Christianity, and a version rejected for 2 millennia by the powers that be. This, I believe, is why Christianity hasn't worked very well. The expectations of Jesus's return and everything else that is expected to occur in a historical way haven't occurred. Paul expected Christ's return so immanently, that he told people not to plan for the future - not to get married, because the End Times were about to happen. Believers would be raptured, turning into pure spirit in their tracks, etc., etc. The Thomas Christians understand these eschatalogical events to be the 'End Times' in the sense of 'The End of Time.' They do not occur as events IN history, but as Transcendental States Outside of, or Above time - IN Eternity - Here and Now - IN the Eternal Present. Recognized in this way, Christianity can hold hands with believers in all the high religions. There is no longer the expected sequence of events that excludes everyone on earth but people who believe in these supernatural events. I became a Christian to become a Universal man - one who can join with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and others, in brotherhood.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: 'Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas' - Elaine Pa [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #1718871 - 07/15/03 04:28 PM (20 years, 8 months ago)

This is a little OT, but talking about synchronicities relating to the atomic bomb:

1938: First synthesis of LSD by Albert Hofmann, who then didn't understand what he had found.
The same year Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman managed to split uranium atoms for the first time, without realizing what they had done (Lise Meitner was the first person to understand that it was nuclear fission).

April 1943: Robert Oppenheimer starts building the lab in Los Alamos. The same month the construction of the Hanford site begins, where the plutonium for the Trinity and Nagasaki bombs is manufactured.
April 16-19, 1943: Albert Hofmann synthesizes some more LSD and then tries it on himself, resulting in his famous tripped-out bicycle ride through Basel.

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