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OfflineMorel Guy
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Calling all bible bangers
    #24216038 - 04/03/17 05:44 PM (6 years, 10 months ago)

So where did Jesus in the bible speak of God?

He spoke of his father in heaven, yes?

Was his father deceased and people are just delusional and thought God?


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"in sterquiliniis invenitur in stercore invenitur"

In filth it will be found in dung it will be found


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InvisibleGreen7Alchemist
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: Morel Guy]
    #24216489 - 04/03/17 09:10 PM (6 years, 10 months ago)

Can't think of one off the top of my head but he did make claims to put himself alongside God,

perhaps "gods" as we know them are not really a far out omniscient entities... the Jews believed a lot I their lineage so you can see why he would be praying to his forefathers.


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CHRIST IS KING.

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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: Morel Guy]
    #24216833 - 04/04/17 12:29 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

I am not a Bible Banger, which is a pejorative term. I have however studied the Bible in a reputable Christian seminary. That said, from a certain psychological perspective, the figure of Jesus speaks as an 'illegitimate' child in manhood (mamser is bastard as the Talmud refers to Jesus derogatorily). I have read this analysis in he book Ego and Archetype by Jungian analyst Edward Edinger. Of course this assumes an actual historicity to the man.

One problem you have is not knowing that the New Testament was written exclusively by Jews in a ancient style called midrash. Midrash is not intended to be a journalistic, historical narrative. It was a device to impart spiritual truths through illustrative story. Additionally, among hebrews there has long been another literary device of exegesis called PRDS from which we get the word Paradise (PRDS means orchard in the Hebrew). This method analyzes whether a biblical writing is to be understood literally, allegorically, midrashically or mystically. Failure by modern people to understand how ancient people wrote is behind most of the misunderstanding of biblical writ.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardes_(Jewish_exegesis)

The familiar term Abba, Father, is used in the NT attributed to Jesus. But as Harold Bloom points out in his book Jesus and Yahweh, it is very difficult to identify the God of the Tenach (Old testament) with the Father of the New Testament. Beyond this, there is the notion that the Hellenizing factor utilized classical Greek myth as well as Jewish midrash. In classic greek mythology, there were several demigods like Heracles (Hercules in Latin) or Dionysos, who were the male offspring of God (Zeus in Greek, Deus in Latin) and a mortal woman. This was attributed to Jesus. Because thee was only one word for young woman and for virgin in Greek (parthenos), the mother of Jesus was written as virgin. The actual Jewish prophesy in Isaiah 7:14 says that "a young woman shall conceive and bear a son..." with reference to the Messiah. In Hebrew young woman is betholah, and virgin is almah. The Hebrew says the former.

There are many elements that go into the writing of the NT and most people only learned a very literal and superficial meaning to the entire religious and political enterprise. One needs to know some history as well as myth, midrash, metaphor, metaphysics and mysticism. Strictly literal, fundamentalist interpretation is not only wrong, it's stupid. No wonder so many people throw the baby [Jesus] out with the bath water.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself


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OfflineMorel Guy
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #24217032 - 04/04/17 05:25 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

So did Jesus believe there is a God?  Or that he was at some God level of understanding?

Because I went to Catholic school for years.  I never really heard any of the verses say Jesus spoke with or about God.


--------------------
"in sterquiliniis invenitur in stercore invenitur"

In filth it will be found in dung it will be found


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Offlinegraceful dragon
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: Morel Guy]
    #24217093 - 04/04/17 06:29 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

"be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect"

is the first thing that comes to mind -- as Green mentions, it could be speaking of father in a more literal sense, but it really seems that way..

a high request!  but also, elsewhere gives the formula:

"If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

simple, and is it difficult?

he actually says no, it's not:

"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."


Similar to how in Zen Buddhism it's said - you can't cross the river, while carrying a heavy load...


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OfflineBlueCoyote
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: Morel Guy]
    #24217942 - 04/04/17 01:44 PM (6 years, 10 months ago)

I think Jeebuz was clever and knew how to personally address that thing/person/force, that so many around him publically address as god or gods in those times.

So he made that direct connection of something materially and personally known as 'Daddy' and the spiritual/mental/afterlife/superreal (all one thing in those times) - realm called 'heaven'.


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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: Morel Guy]
    #24219041 - 04/04/17 09:05 PM (6 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Morel Guy said:
So did Jesus believe there is a God?  Or that he was at some God level of understanding?

Because I went to Catholic school for years.  I never really heard any of the verses say Jesus spoke with or about God.





Assuming that there was an itinerant Jewish Judean preacher/teacher Y'shua bar Miriam, or Iesous of Nazareth, he would have certainly lived his life with faith in Ha Shem (The Name), or Adonai (LORD). He never would've said that HE was God, and as the Jewish scriptures make abundantly clear, all the kings of Israel were referred to as "sons of God." It was not a unique ontological claim to be co-equal with God, it was a matter of the 'divine right of kingship.' If you are chosen to rule, God must have a hand in it. This notion continues even today with megalomaniacs like Trump, in a distorted way of course, not with humility.

Your difficulty, understandably, is that Catholicism has always discouraged Bible-reading in favor of catechism which pushes specifically Roman Catholic theology. Transubstantiation is a doctrine that has zero roots in the Jewish Passover during which Jesus was said to proclaim a New Covenant with God which admitted all peoples who were not Jews, but who could be "grafted in" (a horticultural metaphor) to the Chosen People of God. The single-most metaphysical statement, and proponent of Cataphatic mysticism (the opposite of Apophatic or the 'Via Negativa') is 1 John 4:8, "...God is love..." The Greek word for this form of love is agapé.

The biblical material attributed to Jesus is mostly done in parables, which is to say metaphors. Matthew was traditionally Jewish, and he didn't want to write the name of God as per Jewish custom so he wrote "kingdom of Heaven" instead of "kingdom of God" found in the other Synoptic material. So Heaven is a spacial metaphor for the very Being of God which is avoided. Even back then, owing to Jewish restrictions on mystical language that suggests union with God (also forbidden in Islam and called shirk [association with God]). One never hears in Christian language, 'Going to God,' one hears 'going to Heaven,' even though theologically, Heaven is not a 'place.'

I have come to understand the New Testament as a corpus of material that sought to focus many Jewish prophesies about the Messiah onto Jesus. It was written to be a fulfillment of the Jewish religion that became universalized. Whether there was or was not a powerfully spiritual man Jesus is immaterial to me. But my impression is that in order to be in harmony with God, one needs to BE a certain WAY. The early Christians were called The Way before they were called Christians. The Way is illustrated by the personality of Jesus as manifesting loving-kindness, agapé, forgiveness, healing, non-judgement. It is about humility, not timidity, and kenosis (self-emptying of self-importance). To understand Jesus from a modern perspective one really needs to know some things about how, why, and for whom writings were made historically. Jesus would NOT have agreed with MOST of the doctrines that Augustine made him into, or any of the Scholastic theologians later in Catholicism. Jesus would be horribly offended by the anti-Semitism of Martin Luther and all the bigotry up to the present day and most poignantly illustrated by the hate-mongers of the KKK who masquerade as a White Christian fraternal organization.

Lastly, the so-called Gnostic Gospels that were forbidden and destroyed by the architects of the canonical Bible are important documents. They show alternative theologies that do not necessarily support a priestly power structure who falsely claimed to be in possession os the Eucharist without which all people were damned to Hell. I am a Jewish man by birth who rebelled, took Catholic catechism and baptism, then took a seminary degree in a Protestant seminary (because becoming a monastic was beyond the pale for me). But in the ensuing years, I have decided that there is too much falsehood and too much responsibility for heinous crimes against Jews and humanity in general perpetrated by the RC Church, so I will not return. I do not belong in any mainstream church Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox. As Google says: "The Latin phrase extra Ecclesiam nulla salus means: "outside the Church there is no salvation". [BUT] The 1997 Catechism of the Catholic Church explained this as "all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body." Christ = Logos = Manifest [Cataphatic] God. It is not found in buildings or in congregations. The Logos in not in space-time, it is Eternal, Present in each moment, not dependent on sacramental substances, and FREE.


Edited by MarkostheGnostic (04/06/17 11:10 AM)


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Invisibleonce in a lifetime
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #24222562 - 04/06/17 10:36 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

Wiz Jones - Happiness Was Free, from the album Grapes of Life


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Innocent, Oldfield & Hegerland          Julia Delaney, Bothy Band                                        Rasta Girl, Sister Carol                    Genesis, Jorma K
I Wish You Peace, Lawrence Laughing                                                                                                                    Do Your Thing, Moondog                     
large  . . music garden . .  very
all peace                    them hi
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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: once in a lifetime]
    #24222651 - 04/06/17 11:19 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

:smile:

Something from my late adolescence:



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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself


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OfflineBrendanFlock
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #24224473 - 04/07/17 01:37 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

Job 12:12

Wisdom Comes from God
12 “Wisdom is with the ancient one.
    The one who has had many days has insight.[a]

job 2:12

12 When they saw him from a distance, they didn’t even recognize him. They cried out loud and wept, and each of them tore his own clothes in grief. They threw dust on their heads.


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OfflineBrendanFlock
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: BrendanFlock]
    #24224630 - 04/07/17 05:11 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

A Letter to the Church in Pergamum
12 “To the messenger of the church in Pergamum, write:

The one who holds the sharp two-edged sword says:


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OfflineBrendanFlock
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: BrendanFlock]
    #24224632 - 04/07/17 05:12 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

^this is interesting in light of the idea about capitalism vs communism..or otherwise dualism..

What can a two edged sword do...well basically this is a culprit of a paradox..

Based on the way you wave it around you slice via the bottom portion that comes in contact with another item...

So the two edged sword..is a defense mechanism.. in time...


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InvisibleGreen7Alchemist
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: BrendanFlock]
    #24224918 - 04/07/17 08:07 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

:sunny: i like that.

care to expand on it


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CHRIST IS KING.

Sunshine said: "Gangsters are super heroes"


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Offlineflickedbic
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #24224983 - 04/07/17 08:36 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Whether there was or was not a powerfully spiritual man Jesus is immaterial to me.




The existence of the messiah doesn't matter?


Quote:

Jesus would be horribly offended by the anti-Semitism of Martin Luther




Jesus utterly railed against the Jews and the Synagogue of Satan, and to a great extent, Luther echoed him.


While it is true there are many sons of God ("as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God."), there was only one begotten son.


--------------------
Favorite entheogen experiences in descending order:
1)Combo of oral DMT + smoked Bufotenine
2)Amanita (urine drank twice)
3)Mushrooms > Achuma 16"+cid(still need higher dose Achuma)> Cid (still need high dose)
4)Morning Glory-HBWR (+cumin, cinnamon aldehyde adducts) > Methyl chavicol (need more activators)
5)Salvia (need to try quid)


All readable matter in the above post is ficticious... any similarities to real life are purely coincidental.

Blessing.


Edited by flickedbic (04/07/17 09:29 AM)


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Offlineflickedbic
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: Morel Guy]
    #24225075 - 04/07/17 09:20 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

the one and only Son, who is himself God


John 1:18

Quote:

Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, before Abraham was even born, I Am!"


John 8:58

Quote:

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.
For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; Colossians 2:8-9.




Quote:

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”


Re 22:13

Quote:

All things were made through Him [Jesus], and without Him nothing was made that was made. John 1:3




--------------------
Favorite entheogen experiences in descending order:
1)Combo of oral DMT + smoked Bufotenine
2)Amanita (urine drank twice)
3)Mushrooms > Achuma 16"+cid(still need higher dose Achuma)> Cid (still need high dose)
4)Morning Glory-HBWR (+cumin, cinnamon aldehyde adducts) > Methyl chavicol (need more activators)
5)Salvia (need to try quid)


All readable matter in the above post is ficticious... any similarities to real life are purely coincidental.

Blessing.


Edited by flickedbic (04/07/17 09:42 AM)


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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: flickedbic]
    #24226199 - 04/07/17 07:00 PM (6 years, 10 months ago)

i think John 1:18 is about Adam...the first man indeed...because Abraham may be a father, and a father of religions..but Adam usually gets left out(hint the rib)..and that relates to the Deer on the mountain so to speak..which are about the mountain pose...or whatever we are posting at this moment..

Reasonable altruism is always true..but forgetting one of the main characters in the Bible?

Is Adam really Jesus?
\
Just in another life and body? But same with mind and soul and spirit?

Adam would always have a say if he were alive today..!(I think I am him..psst, pass it around)

Writers beware this is a kind of bad post(but only in the minimal knowledge of Evil..from the Tree itself..or otherwise Marijuana..!


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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: flickedbic]
    #24226392 - 04/07/17 08:23 PM (6 years, 10 months ago)

A historical Messiah is inconsequential to me. I am more interested in the Logos. Paul was not interested in the historical Jesus, he was about the "resurrected Christ," which itself is a metaphor for the ontology of the Logos, not about the miraculous resuscitation of a dead man. The language of Hebrew midrash plus Hellenistic myth has yielded a literalist misunderstanding to moderns. Jolly good IF Jesus was "raised from the dead," and then "ascended," but the myth loses its import IF someone imagines a human being ascending physically instead of this being metaphorical language for ineffable metaphysical mystery. It only 'fits' if one has a mythic, pre-scientific notion of the cosmos which conflated the physical heavens with the mythic heavens. Otherwise, Jesus might be well past Pluto by now depending upon his speed, but he has not yet arrived on a throne in the Empyrean next to God, because this is mythic language, not spacial actuality.

The so-called "synagogue of Satan" was geared towards the corrupt, unspiritual Saducee priests, who denied the resurrection (regardless of how one conceived of it), and NOT an invective against Jews or Judaism. This is how biblical passages were used to engender anti-Jewish sentiment across the ages. Having been at the receiving end of stupid bigoted children indoctrinated with hate in parochial school, I have a certain visceral reaction to the continuation of stupid Gentile so-called Christians with no understanding of the profoundly Jewish origins of Christianity.

The "Only-Begotten" belongs to the anthropomorphic language of biblical material. It was eventually turned into a metaphysics of a Triune Godhead that utilized strictly masculine pronouns for Deity. The virgin birth is a Hellenic concept overlain on Jewish midrash. The original passage in Isaiah, IN HEBREW, prophesies that a young woman will bear the Messiah. The word in Hebrew used was almah, young woman, maiden. Bethulah is the Hebrew word for virgin. It was not used in Isaiah. Virgins do not bear children in Judaism, that happens in classic Greek myth as with demigods born from God (Zeus: Greek, Deus: Latin) and a mortal woman, usually a virgin (e.g., Dionysos, Heracles). The problem is that the author designated later as Matthew (since the gospel manuscripts were not titled or named with authors) was using the Greek Septuigint instead of the Hebrew Tenach. Greek had only one word for both virgin and young woman, parthenos (as in the Parthenon, the temple to the 'Virgin Goddess' Athena).

"Only-Begotten" has metaphysical implications beyond the anthropomorphic Father-Son metaphor. The Logos is the 'only begotten' or ontos (Being) that s generated or emanated from the Unmanifested Godhead, the "Father." The Christian Trinity was appropriated by Augustine of Hippo from Plotinian Neoplatonism, as Augustine was a Neoplatonist for many years befor his mom directed him to Christ. He explicated the 3 hypostheses of Plotinus: The ONE, Nous, and World Soul into Father, Son/Word/Logos, Holy Spirit. Tertullian before him first used the word Trinity. In Plotinus, as in the Eastern Orthodox theology, The Father generates the Son from whom the Holy Spirit is generated in an eternal procession. This is a duplicate of the earlier Plotinian metaphysics. It was the Western Roman Catholic Church which turned the linear procession into a triangulation. The fight that ensued over this difference, called the Filoque, created the schism that almost singly divided the Eastern and Western Church in 1054. Perhaps you know this church history, perhaps you do not. But the Christian anthropomorphic language, always too flowery for my taste, has its theological origins in high Pagan Neoplatonic philosophy.

You may like the language that says "Only-Begotten," and still embrace images of baby Jesus glowing like a 100 watt lightbulb in a Christmas crèche, but images and mythic forms are not salvific IMO. The actual Logos experienced by our awareness, the biblical "being in Christ" or "having the mind of Christ" is what is salvific, and this reality has little to do with the man Jesus who died two millennia ago. If you need to understand this literally, that's on you. The entire Christian mythos, which includes ALL the other 'rejected' gospels, ALL need to be demythologized to be experienced as a Present Reality, not a glowing long-haired Jewish carpenter rising "in the spirit" which makes a LOT more sense than "rising in the air," especially since pneuma is the Greek word for both. Like the single word almah in Hebrew, the interpretation of pneuma in Greek makes all the difference between a mature theological understanding of a subjective spiritual moment and a puerile picture in a child's illustrated book of Bible stories.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself


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Offlineflickedbic
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #24227549 - 04/08/17 11:03 AM (6 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

The so-called "synagogue of Satan" was geared towards the corrupt, unspiritual Saducee priests, who denied the resurrection (regardless of how one conceived of it), and NOT an invective against Jews or Judaism




He used the term before the crucifixion, so it was not about the denial of Resurrection.  And he spoke to the Pharisees; saying
Quote:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
(...)
Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?  Matthew 23:27-33. 




_



Quote:

(...)the myth loses its import IF someone imagines a human being ascending physically instead of this being metaphorical language for ineffable metaphysical mystery.
(...)  "having the mind of Christ" is what is salvific, and this  reality has little to do with the man Jesus who died two millennia ago.




Do you deny that Jesus is the Christ?


--------------------
Favorite entheogen experiences in descending order:
1)Combo of oral DMT + smoked Bufotenine
2)Amanita (urine drank twice)
3)Mushrooms > Achuma 16"+cid(still need higher dose Achuma)> Cid (still need high dose)
4)Morning Glory-HBWR (+cumin, cinnamon aldehyde adducts) > Methyl chavicol (need more activators)
5)Salvia (need to try quid)


All readable matter in the above post is ficticious... any similarities to real life are purely coincidental.

Blessing.


Edited by flickedbic (04/08/17 11:14 AM)


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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: Calling all bible bangers [Re: flickedbic]
    #24227831 - 04/08/17 01:29 PM (6 years, 10 months ago)

The author designated as Matthew is ofter referred to as (1) the Judaizer, and (2) the promulgator of Hell-fire and brimstone, mostly taken from the perpetually smoldering garbage dumps at Gehenna, sulphurous decay products, rife with vermin, plus elements of Greek myth involving the realm of Hades, more specifically Tartarus (the repository of the most evil souls in Hades' realm). Hades is both the god's name and the name of the realm, much as the "kingdom of Heaven" is synonymous with the "kingdom of God," but in the Christian idiom, one does not talk about 'going to God' so much as 'going to Heaven.' Heaven is a spacial metaphor for the Divine Ground of Being. Heaven is not a 'place' inasmuch as Eternity has nothing to do with extension is space or time but is another order of Reality altogether.

I am neither affirming or denying any of the 'beliefs' you've decided to give a place in your mind. I am well-versed in the literature, but I endeavor not to 'believe' any doctrine or dogma. The historicity of Jesus of Nazareth is almost completely without evidence save for sparse and brief references by the historian Tacitus or Josephus or Saturnius (often variously spelled). The theologian-physician Albert Schweitzer came to the conclusion that Jesus is a literary composite of different wisdom teachers (see Quest for the Historical Jesus). Rev. John Shelby Spong (with whom I've had the honor of meeting thrice) does not deny the historicity of Jesus, but illustrates how the gospel narratives are literary creations that sought to focus all the separate prophesies of the Tenach in one figure, a figure who must be adequately demythologized. I tend to agree more with Rev. Spong than with Schweitzer or the modern authors Freke & Gandy whose books on popular (not academic) Gnostic religion also deny that there was a historical Jesus. Jesus remains for me the paradigm for human moral and spiritual development. How I regard the later Christology based on the mental gymnastics of Christian theology is another story. I've read theology since 1976 when I entered seminary, and I'm basically over all of it 41 years later.


I will say this: Gnostic religion was so popular prior to Nicaea, the author of 2 John 1:7 had to create an insertion to disclaim them: "For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist." This is one example of an obvious insertion. Another common modern one is King James' 1611 insertion in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. There was no Greek word for homosexual in the Greek manuscripts. King James might have been a self-loathing homosexual and added that in his English translation, according to some psycho-historical speculation.

As I mentioned previously, the Pauline writings (not the pseudo-Pauline writings) do not concern themselves with the historical Jesus but rather with the cosmic Christ as "Christ crucified." This is more about the Hebrew vicarious sacrifice theology, a new iteration of the Pascal Lamb, a blood-offering based on Temple Judaism (a most unpleasant thing, the variety of sacrifices that Temple Judaism prescribed). The gospel and resurrection narratives were written in midrash and to the lowest most illiterate people of the time. These people did not live with the degree of Formal Operational Thinking that we moderns do, except perhaps for the educated elite. They were perhaps living with a Concrete Operational cognitive ability as well as living in pre-scientific times and with mentalities that conflated what they perceived with their senses with a mythological understanding of the very sky they stood beneath.

BTW, the Pharisees maintained that there was to be a general resurrection of the dead, based in part on the saying attributed to Daniel 12:2 "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt," but a single sentence is hardly grounds upon which to 'believe' a fixed idea as representative of a metaphysical verity. The conservative Saducees (who were 'sad, you see' as they used to joke in seminary), held no hope for "everlasting life," at least not in the common notion of personal immortality which is not Christian at all. 'We' are not eternal, God alone is eternal. If "god is Love," then only love is eternal, hence the imperative to love until we identify with love (agapé).


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself


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