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backfromthedead
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Re: Why isn't there a gospel of "Jesus" [Re: Walter1496211]
#7514202 - 10/13/07 11:59 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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For sure.
He personified the stuff. Eat me. No??
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Why isn't there a gospel of "Jesus" [Re: jonathanseagull]
#7515743 - 10/14/07 01:04 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
jonathanseagull said: I don't know much about the topic, but I know that the most stated reference for Jesus' existence outside of the bible is from the historian Josephus (I think), and that reference's validity is now in question. It might be a forgery.
Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius. The 'Real' Jesus didn't even go by the name Jesus. The Greek version was Iesus (there was no letter 'J' in Greek). His parents and friends either called him Y'shua (the English equivalent of this name is Joshua, but there's never been a letter 'J' in Hebrew either). Or, they would've called Him Issa, which is Aramaic. One thing is for damn sure: no one ever said: 'Can I hear y'all say JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESUS?!' like some slick modern revivalist pumping up people to hand him money.
Jesus was a poor 1st century Judean Jew living day-to-day in a dangerous Roman-occupied country during times even more barbaric than our own, with laws so Draconian that the death penalty was carried out for the most petty misdemeanors. Ancient marketing by way of the Gospel narratives hyped up the mythic overlays to His very human, albeit holy existence, His holiness of course deriving from God. He remains the paradigm, the divine archetype, but I'm here to say that the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove did NOT whisper in his mother Miriam's ear, thereby impregnating her womb with the 'Word' of God.
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Why isn't there a gospel of "Jesus" [Re: MushroomTrip]
#7515751 - 10/14/07 01:06 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
MushroomTrip said: Thank you
My pleasure.
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Walter1496211
Window Washer



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Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said:
Quote:
jonathanseagull said: I don't know much about the topic, but I know that the most stated reference for Jesus' existence outside of the bible is from the historian Josephus (I think), and that reference's validity is now in question. It might be a forgery.
Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius. The 'Real' Jesus didn't even go by the name Jesus. The Greek version was Iesus (there was no letter 'J' in Greek). His parents and friends either called him Y'shua (the English equivalent of this name is Joshua, but there's never been a letter 'J' in Hebrew either). Or, they would've called Him Issa, which is Aramaic. One thing is for damn sure: no one ever said: 'Can I hear y'all say JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESUS?!' like some slick modern revivalist pumping up people to hand him money.
Jesus was a poor 1st century Judean Jew living day-to-day in a dangerous Roman-occupied country during times even more barbaric than our own, with laws so Draconian that the death penalty was carried out for the most petty misdemeanors. Ancient marketing by way of the Gospel narratives hyped up the mythic overlays to His very human, albeit holy existence, His holiness of course deriving from God. He remains the paradigm, the divine archetype, but I'm here to say that the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove did NOT whisper in his mother Miriam's ear, thereby impregnating her womb with the 'Word' of God.
WOW!!! You really think this is true??? Very bold opinion.. I can respect that.
-------------------- you see the world through the window of your experience
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Groomies
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Re: Why isn't there a gospel of "Jesus" [Re: Walter1496211]
#7515957 - 10/14/07 02:11 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Jesus was just a con man, back in those days you have to be someone of great importants to get into places. For example temples or some big empire. so he made up some bullshit about being son of god. but hey if believing in him stops you from kill others and doing stupid shit then go ahead.
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Why isn't there a gospel of "Jesus" [Re: Groomies]
#7516623 - 10/14/07 04:59 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Read a book.
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery



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First one has to be able to read and then form complete thoughts and sentences.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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KevsaNewb
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Re: Why isn't there a gospel of "Jesus" [Re: psyka]
#7518289 - 10/15/07 01:52 AM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
psyka said: What is left after the ego is shattered? Love without barriers. To be a light bulb radiating rays of love without discrimination is to reflect an aspect of universal enlightenment which not limited to any belief system.
Of course, the ego can make all kinds of excuses as to why to do the exact opposite of that. Just realize, love is the only thing that when shared is not diminished in strength.
thats really fuckin beautiful..for some reason, reading that seemed to lift my spirit immensly
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Why isn't there a gospel of "Jesus" [Re: Walter1496211]
#7519405 - 10/15/07 01:05 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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According to Bart D. Ehrman, Ph.D., Department Chair of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, and author of Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (and other books), the stories including a virgin birth were also attributed to a contemporary of Jesus, namely, Apollonius of Tyana. http://www.theosophy.com/theos-talk/200706/tt00126.html
Moreover, the fact that December 25th celebrates the birthday of other God-men of antiquity: Mithras, Attis, Dionysus and others illustrates the perennial 'return of the sun' that was celebrated at the winter solstice. Anyone with even a little reading in Greco-Roman religion and mythology can clearly see that the stories attributed to Jesus are also attributed to all kinds of deities. I am not saying this to diminish Jesus at all. Only the rabid anti-intellectual Fundamentalist who reads nothing but his favorite version of the New Testament, and who has no historical frame of reference in which to fit New Testament writings would read my words as diminishing the "only begotten Son of God." The "only begotten," theologically came to mean the only 'outpouring' of Transcendental Being from the Essence of God, into creation. That 'outpouring' is accomplished through that aspect of Transcendental Being called the 'Logos.' It is a concept begun by Greek philosophers, developed by the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexander, and adapted by the author of the Gospel of John as the personified 'Word of God, Jesus.
John borrowed and adapted his concept of Logos, he did not receive it directly from God like the mythic Moses receiving the tablets of the Ten Commandments. We all have the Holy Spirit from our essential identity with Being. Spirit is archaic language for consciousness, and it is not air or 'wind' blowing here or there as the NT poetically suggests. Eternity does "blow" anywhere if it's everywhere. This is metaphor at best.
The Jesus of Christianity is merely the last of a line of highly mythologized deities with whom He shares many or most archetypal themes. The actual man Jesus served as the subject upon whom all these divine qualities were projected. In Hebrew literature, it was called 'midrash' - a literary device intended to illustrate or highlight spiritual principles. However, Hellenistic mythologizing pushed out Hebrew midrash, particularly in the most popular gospel of John. The Jewish Christians which remained after the early theological schisms occurred, called Ebionites (The Poor), rejected the mythic elements like virgin birth because they understood the intended Hebrew meanings about the Jewish Messiah. They were remaining true to their Jewish understandings, not adopting Greek mythic formulations about the man.
Few people today are willing or able to cut through their own psychic assumptions about Jesus - unconscious encrustations of pure mythos, mistakingly adhered to as historicity. The Truth that Jesus represents about God is the same for every human being who has ever lived. Each one of us has our existence rooted in Being (God), just as Jesus Knew. This is the Gnostic understanding of Christ, not the orthodox doctrine which keeps Jesus apart as a mythic being in a mythological world view.
The multitudes think of Christ as a form, as some long-haired robed image created over the centuries who still lives in a heaven above the clouds like Jack-and-the-Beanstalk's giant and castle. This Jewish long-hair is going to re-enter the tropisphere trailing trails of glory...just before He is intercepted by F-111s or surface-to-air missiles. Barring such interception, all the believers on Earth will suddenly have their clothes drop to the ground while they are raptured in spiritual nakedness to join Jesus in the air (although I think 'spirit' is the better interpretation, as 'pneuma' means both in Greek. Joining Jesus 'in spirit' is to say 'in consciousness' by modern language, which also makes sense). Am I 'mocking the Word of God?' No, I am not.
Instead of interpreting the deeper meaning of these mythic scenarios, Fundamentalists take these writings at face value! That must mean that when Jesus says "I am the vine, you are the branches," He is saying that we are all grape vines! The Fundamentalist cannot read allegory, or symbols (except to force them to coincide with right-wing political agendas), and mysticism is WAY beyond the experience of Fundamentalists because they cannot see past form and the mystical means experiencing the Formless Being Itself - God.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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palmersc
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Quote:
We all have the Holy Spirit from our essential identity with Being
Where does it say this?
Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me.
Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say.
You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!
Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don't you believe me?
He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God - John 8:42 - 8:47
Jesus' words cannot be understood by all. The way you twisted the parable of the true vine shows that Jesus' teachings are not apprehended by even those who appear to be well versed.
If the Bible cannot be trusted as the truth, we can only speculate about what Jesus meant using other more "trustworthy" sources.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables.
He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, 'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!
How do you interpret this?
You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am.
Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet.
I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.
I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.
Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
- John 13:13 - 13:17
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onlynow
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Re: Why isn't there a gospel of "Jesus" [Re: palmersc]
#7520260 - 10/15/07 05:17 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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not sure if this answers your question, but it's good -
Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, "Dear woman, here is your son," and to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty." A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
The "son" refers to Mary Magdalene, and "his home" refers to Mary Magdalene's home. This isn't really about gender and a literal family and house, but rather, higher and lower parts of the psyche; the initiate's transcendent higher self and egoic lower self.
From your clear explanation of Jesus' last action from the cross, I grokked the familial-home love relationship that is required between the lower Mary Magdalene and higher Mother Mary. To survive ego-death, one must take a personal loving stance to some divine higher Self and must solicit empowered love or Eros from that hidden higher Self.
This is presented to us by the Roman Empire/Catholic Church as "pleading for mercy from supernatural God whom you are commanded to love with all your heart and mind", but the Gnostic Jesus figure frames it, like the Friends of God surely do, as a familial/home loving relation between oneself as transcendent parent and oneself as lower child. Supernatural terrifying God the suspect alien puppetmaster over you, becomes "myself as hidden loving parent of myself as manifest child-in-time".
That solves a problem I've been reflecting on for over a year: it seems like a person's personal controller-mind is reduced to postulating an absurd supernatural God to rescue the mind's self-control from itself in the terrifying labyrinth, but isn't such a fear of God missing the point, if there is no self but only God and Ground? Why should a mind, which *is* the Ground or "of the Ground", fear its creator which is the mind's *own* transcendent Being?
It seemed like a deep re-conception of the hidden terrifying puppetmaster was logically called for. Just such a Right Relationship is expressed by the Jesus figure from the cross:
Jesus said to his mother, "Dear woman, here is your son," and to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
Thank you for revealing this egoic-and-transcendent *Ioving* reconciliation within the complete psyche as the ultimate goal of the Bible, Christianity, and religion. This is equivalent to, but much more comprehensible than, being commanded to love an alien incomprehensible supernatural hostile Jehovah-God as presented by the Roman Empire Catholic Church that strives to keep people alienated from their own higher Self and prevent reconciliation and consummation, in order to financially profit.
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Strive to be more than a codified manifestation of a generalized technological consciousness
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