The Divinity of Christ - part 1 - "behold the man"     138 views

At Nicaea in 325, Constantine called a council so that the Church could verbalise and authoritatively record its constant belief in the divinity of Christ, amid a sea of heretical thought. I mention Constantine and Nicaea, as many seem to be under the impression that this is when the Church and the ‘divinity of Christ’ were 'invented,’ so to speak. As will become clear in later posts, nothing could be further from the truth.

So, to part one…the existence of the historical person of Jesus.

“The Word became flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory” (Jn 1:14)

Did a man called Jesus walk the earth? Before considering the divinity of Christ, how sure can we be of his historical existence among us? Well, how can we be sure that Julius Caesar existed? For that matter, what about any historical figure from the pre-technological age? Nobody alive has actually met them, since we only live an average of 75-85 years.

Historians rely on a collation and comparison of written documentation, and in some cases, archaeological evidence where it is available. In some cases, a very small amount of historical evidence will provide enough material to leave historians in absolutely no doubt, and in unanimous agreement over the historical existence of a person.

With Jesus, by any serious historical standards, there is an overwhelming body of documentation, more than enough to argue, beyond any reasonable doubt, for his existence as a man.

Historians of all faiths and none are almost unanimous in acknowledging that a man called Jesus existed, was renowned as a miracle worker, had a large following, and was put to death during the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate.

A large body of documentary evidence from both Christian and non-Christian sources that go as far back as the middle of the first century, all converge to build up a picture of a real historical person. And that is before we even consider the huge body of archaeological evidence in the form of early Christian art and churches, long before Constantine ever came to power.

Those that still dispute the existence of the historical Jesus perhaps have their own agenda, and have been dismissed by serious historians of faith and no faith, as being unhistorical and unscientific, ignoring the very real and considerable legitimate evidence before their eyes.

So the question of the existence of the man Jesus in history is, among serious scholars, unanimously accepted. But what of the divinity of Christ? Coming in part two… the self-revelation of the divinity of Jesus in Scripture.

I find my research on this topic to be most contrary of this sentence. There is most certainly a great deal of debate over whether jesus was a literal person, and I must say that the weight of the argument favours the view that jesus is fictional.

The work which gives me the most reason to adopt this view is none other than the bible itself with its confusion over things such as the resurrection. Couple this with the fact that Nazareth apparently didn't exist until around 200CE, and there's ample reason to have doubt.

The other thing that truly bothers me is the miracles jesus supposedly performed. Walking on unfrozen water. Raising the dead. Resurrecting. Turning water into wine. Feeding 500 people with a couple of fish sandwiches. Killing a fig tree with a spoken command. Jesus supposedly said that we all can do things and yet we cannot.

Jesus said a number of other things which give the clue that he wasn't a real person, but I don't feel the need to elaborate.

Exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence. I have yet to see any evidence for a historical jesus which even approaches credibility.

A good book giving the latest Catholic research is perhaps "Bad Mad or God" by John Redford.

The miracles should not bother you. In his divinity, Jesus is Lord of nature. It is by His very nature that he performs these signs. They all were symbolic of the presence of the Kingdom of GOd ... healing, feeding. Abundance of wine was a symbol of the expected Messiah (I think its in Amos and Hosea).

When Jesus said "You will do even greater, because I am returning to the Father" ... I believe this referred to the authority to be given to His priests to administer the Sacraments on His behalf. Also, the Holy Spirit would be available to all the baptised, each according to how the Spirit chose to manifest (see 1 Cor 12). Different parts of the same body. We would do even greater, as the Body of Christ on earth, united in the same Spirit, to the glory of the Father.

Nazareth apparently didn't exist until 200? It is difficult to believe that, as it is explicitly mentioned in books dated to the first century (ie the gospels)
Anyway...

Khristós is not a personal name but a state of being which of course is divine and not limited to a single person, place or time but a inner awaking/realization and a physiological inner anointing that takes place as the brazen serpent makes it’s assent up the spine and anoints the pineal and pituitary glands and crown charka due to ,karma, scientific chastity “Tantra” ,right morality, concentration and wisdom .

Moving on to the first miracle we have to perform in marriage especially and if single is transforming are reproductive energy “water” into spiritual energy,”wine”. This is the basis of alchemy. The animal spasm is avoided and energy moves up opening new pathways or heaven states of consciousness .

The wild sea is the flood of the sense bases while walking on water is symbolic of taming the inner beast of cravings. Even devils can defeat gravity, no big deal but to renounce the cares, riches and pleasures of the world is of a different order.

The Wedding at Cana Again 6 “Now there were six stone water jars there” John 2: 1-12 which by the way is only in John.

OOOOps enter the tarot which the Egyptians had perfected in outlining a map of consciousness in symbols also revealed in greek/Hebrew numbers and letters and shapes.

Tarot Arcanum 6

Some frequent keywords used by tarot readers are:
Love relationship ----- Union ----- Passion ----- Sexuality
Pleasure ----- Humanism ----- Desire ----- Personal beliefs
Individual values ----- Physical attraction ----- Connection
Affinity ----- Bonding ----- Romance ----- Heart
Following the Marseille Tradition, also there are:
Choice ----- Doubt ----- Difficult decision ----- Dilemma ----- Temptation

22 Hebrew letters and 22 Major Arcanum ooops again……….lol

This is not rocket science, look at the tarot pictures. Some decks have Male and female holding hands and others one male in middle with virgin on one side and whore on the other. You go figure…………lol.

As a historical event so what but as a transformation process I can experience now you got my attention.

The secrets of sexual alchemy have been hidden from the masses for to long and is the single most powerful force which will lead you quickly into Heaven or hell. Hell being anger, jealousy, possessiveness, endless unsatisfying “in the long term” desire or the BIG EGO etc and Heaven being infinite compassion, Love, equanimity, joy etc.

Thanks Sil however I am not looking for a past Jesus God/man but a present experience of Khristós

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Date/Scribe
Various dates have been proposed for P46, based entirely on paleographic evidence. The earliest dates have been around the beginning of the second century (a date which has significant implications for the formation of the Pauline canon, but to which few experts subscribe); the latest have placed it in the third. The most widely accepted date is probably that of the Alands, who place it circa 200 C.E.

The scribe of P46 seems to have been a professional copyist, working in a scriptorium. The former is implied by the neat book hand. The latter is less certain, but Zuntz notes several places where the scribe came to a crux in copying and left a small gap in the manuscript. Zuntz theorizes, and this seems reasonable, that the scribe was unable to read or understand the exemplar, and so left space to allow the corrector to settle the reading.

Despite his apparent profession, the scribe left a great deal to be desired; P46 contains a high number of peculiar errors. Zuntz thinks (and here again I believe he is right) that the copyist did much of the copying while tired or otherwise not at his best, as the errors seem to come in bunches, and are often quite absurd (e.g. writing GRA for GAR).

The correctors weren't much better. The first corrector was the scribe himself, who occasionally spotted his own errors and attempted to repair them. The second corrector seems to have been contemporary, and employed as the diorqwths. But this scribe wasn't all that much better; according to Zuntz, he missed the large majority of the original scribe's peculiar errors. (This raises the possibility that the errors were in their common exemplar, but Zuntz does not believe this.)

A third corrector, working probably in the third century, made a handful of corrections in a cursive script, as well as a line count. Zuntz thinks that this corrector was a private owner of the manuscript, making corrections as he spotted them rather than systematically examining the manuscript"

compared to..............................

Oxyrhynchus papyri fragments
After the Coptic version of the complete text was discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, scholars soon realized that three different Greek text fragments previously found at Oxyrhynchus, also in Egypt, were part of the Gospel of Thomas.[19][20]These three papyrus fragments of Thomas date to between 130 - 250 CE. Prior to the Nag Hammadi library discovery, the sayings of Jesus found in Oxyrhynchus were known simply as Logia Iesu. The corresponding Koine Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas, found in Oxyrhynchus are:

P.Oxy. 1: fragments of logia 26 through 33, and logia 77 (ordered: 26-30, 77, 31-33).
P.Oxy. 654: fragments of the beginning through logion 7, logion 24 and logion 36 on the flip side of a papyrus containing surveying data.
P.Oxy. 655: fragments of logia 36 through 39. 8 fragments named a through h, whereof f and h have since been lost.
The wording of the Coptic version is not always an exact representation of the earlier Greek Oxyrhynchus texts, and the sayings are ordered differently in one fragment. This fact, along with the quite different wording Hippolytus uses when apparently quoting it (see below), suggests that the Gospel of Thomas "may have circulated in more than one form and passed through several stages of redaction."[21]

Although it is still generally assumed that the "Gospel of Thomas" was first composed in Greek, there is growing evidence that the Coptic Nag Hammadi text is a translation from Syriac. On comparing the Greeks fragments from Oxyrhynchus with the fuller Coptic version, Nicholas Perrin argues that the differences can be attributed to the reliance of both on a common Syriac source"

Attestation
The earliest surviving written references to the Gospel of Thomas are found in the writings of Hippolytus of Rome (c. 222-235) and Origen of Alexandria (c. 233).[23] Hippolytus wrote in his Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.20:

"[The Naassenes] speak...of a nature which is both hidden and revealed at the same time and which they call the thought-for kingdom of heaven which is in a human being. They transmit a tradition concerning this in the Gospel entitled "According to Thomas," which states expressly, "The one who seeks me will find me in children of seven years and older, for there, hidden in the fourteenth aeon, I am revealed."

This appears to be a reference to saying 4 of Thomas, although the wording differs significantly"

"Paul's writings are dated c50-67Ad,"-------Maybe Sil from internal evidence but what he wrote is another matter

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"That Paul was enlisted on the side of the Gnostic movement early in the 2nd century, thus acquiring a ‘heretical’ taint in developing orthodox circles, is not disputed in critical scholarship; nor the need for that Church, as the century progressed, to rehabilitate him and claim him for the side of orthodoxy. But here is where it gets interesting–and controversial. Were any of those Pauline epistles, especially those now-regarded “authentic” seven, original to Paul or at least to some kind of Pauline ‘school’ soon after his passing? There has long been a radical train of thought in minority New Testament scholarship which maintains that none of them are authentic, that Paul was a legendary obscure figure (assuming he existed at all) of the 1st century to which certain circles in the 2nd century attached pseudonymous writings. And the most popular candidate for the one who actually wrote the ‘original’ versions of the Pauline epistles is Marcion himself. Not in every detail as we have them now: some of that is the product of the orthodox ecclesiastical circles of the mid to late 2nd century who took Marcion’s product and reworked it in the direction of their own interests.

Now, there is no denying that the Paulines as we have them are something of an unholy mess: inconsistencies and contradictions, apparent anachronisms catering to later interests, seams and awkward juxtapositions and non-sequiturs which betray additions and editing, a patchwork combining of smaller units from originally separate writings, and so on. 2 Corinthians has long been surmised to present such a mélange, and more of the same sort of thing is postulated for other epistles, such as 1 Corinthians and Romans. It is possible to see this process as a post-Pauline development in his own communities, building on originals crafted by the Apostle himself, an ongoing process of adapting these writings to evolving needs and beliefs, well into the 2nd century. We see this very process in the evolution of successive Gospels and in other parts of the documentary record, both inside and outside the canon, so it is not outlandish to assume it here. Identifying these layers and assigning passages to this or that stratum of authenticity or revision is a complex and tricky business, and will probably never be fully settled.

But it is also possible to interpret those variegated elements in the Paulines in terms of an original Marcionite layer and a later activity of revision on the part of the ecclesiastical wing in the interests of reclaiming Paul. Such subsequent editing would have been imperfect, tinkering with the texts rather than overhauling them from scratch, and thus telltale signs of their Marcionite provenance were left in evidence, pointing to this scenario. (Such ecclesiastical editors may not have been aware that they were original to Marcion.) A certain amount of further editing within the Church would also have taken place before the texts were solidified. All of this lies back beyond our visible horizon, as we have no extant texts of the epistles (or the Gospels, for that matter, outside of a tiny fragment of John) until after the year 200"

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"A large body of documentary evidence from both Christian and non-Christian sources that go as far back as the middle of the first century, all converge to build up a picture of a real historical person. And that is before we even consider the huge body of archaeological evidence in the form of early Christian art and churches, long before Constantine ever came to power"

Story:

Zeus was angry at Prometheus for three things: being tricked on scarifices, stealing fire for man, and for refusing to tell Zeus which of Zeus's children would dethrone him. Zeus had his servants, Force and Violence, seize Prometheus, take him to the Caucasus Mountains, and chain him to a rock with unbreakable adamanite chains. Here he was tormented day and night by a giant eagle tearing at his liver. Zeus gave Prometheus two ways out of this torment. He could tell Zeus who the mother of the child that would dethrone him was. Or meet two conditions: First, that an immortal must volunteer to die for Prometheus. Second, that a mortal must kill the eagle and unchain him. Eventually, Chiron the Centaur agreed to die for him and Heracles killed the eagle and unbound him"

Art:

PROMETHEUS or ZEUS

Museum Collection: Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
Catalogue No.: Louvre E668
Beazley Archive No.: N/A
Ware: Laconian Black Figure
Shape: Kylix
Painter: Attributed to the Naukratis Painter
Date: ca 560 - 550 BC
Period: High Archaic

SUMMARY

A man is shown seated beside a flying eagle. This is either a depiction of Prometheus bound and tortured by an eagle set by Zeus to feed upon his liver, or of Zeus enthroned with his eagle familiar.

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The key to the meaning of Twelfth Night is in the title. Twelfth Night, the Feast of the Epiphany in the Christian Church, commemorates the showing of Christ to the Magi, the Wise Men–not to the multitude–and represents the manifestation of Light, or Truth, to those who have enough understanding to perceive it. This revelation of Light, or Truth, is the subject of the play.

For those who do not look for an inner meaning, the Feast of Twelfth Night, is a time of revelry, a time for song and dance and cakes and ale. This also is the subject of the play.
It is interesting to study the inner meaning in connection with Bacon's own words about allegory in his De Augmentis Scientiarum (XII. He says :

"It (allegory) is of double use and serves for contrary purposes; for it serves for an infoldment; and it likewise serves for illustration. In the latter case the object is a certain method of teaching, in the former an artifice for concealment. Now this method of teaching, used for illustration, was very much in use in ancient times.... And even now, and at all times, the force of parables is and has been excellent; because arguments cannot be made so perspicuous nor true examples so apt. But there yet remains another use of Poesy Parabolical, opposite to the former; wherein it serves (as I said) for an infoldment; for such things, I mean, the dignity whereof requires that they should be seen as it were through a veil; that is when the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy, and philosopy are involved in fables or parables."
Bacon's De Sapientia Veterum is an interpretation of some of the Greek Myths, showing that the author was familiar with the ancient language of symbols in which fundamental truths have been preserved throughout the ages. In Twelfth Night traditional symbolism is used to work out the theme.
First of all, it is a play about twins. Sebastian tells Antonio that he and his sister Viola were "both born in an hour." (II I. 23). Now twinship has always had a deep, esoteric significance. Twins in ancient mythology signified the two sides of Man, the inner and the outer, the divine and the human, manifested in separate persons. It is clear that the twins, Jacob and Esau, for instance, represented the two levels of Man. The hairy Esau, had no vision of the Ladder reaching to heaven. In the mythology of many races one twin is sometimes said to be the child of a divine father and the other the child of a mortal father. In legend about such children one twin has to die, while the other may attain immortality. Remus was killed, but his twin-brother, Romulus, said to be the son of Mars, became immortal and, according to Plutarch, no man saw him die but he was carried up to heaven in a thunderstorm. The legend of the Dioscuri, the Heavenly Twins, Castor and Pollux, relates that Castor was slain, while Pollux was immortal, although in this story Castor was allowed, by the grace of Zeus, to share his brother's immortality. and both these twins are spoken of as "the sons of Zeus." Now it is significant that the power of healing was attributed to the Heavenly Twins, especially the power of restoring sight, not only physical sight, but inner sight, and they were known as the Light-bringers who saved men from darkness.
In his Essay on "Pan" Bacon speaks of the two sides of Man. He says :

"The body of Nature is most truly described as biform.....There is no nature which can be regarded as simple, everyone seeming to participate and be compounded of two.... and so all things are in truth biformed and made up of a higher species and a lower."
THE ESOTERIC MEANING
OF TWELFTH NIGHT By Beryl C. Pogson

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"Hercules, when he went to unbind Prometheus (by whom human nature is represented) sailed the length of the great ocean in an earthen pot or pitcher, lively describing Christian Resolution that saileth in the frail bark of the flesh through the waves of the world."
Odysseus likewise had to endure the buffettings of the 'waves of the world' for nine years (the full period of initiation). His journey has been interpreted as the journey of the soul of Man to find inner peace, the journey home to himself, and he is not home until he is so far from the sea that he needs a man who mistakes an oar for a winnowing-fan– a sign that he is at last no longer involved in the turmoil of life but has attained inner freedom. Prospero had to sail across the sea with Miranda before he reached his Magic Island. His enemies had to be wrecked at sea before they could be brought to acknowledge their guilt. Thus Viola seems to represent an initiate, the divine twin, who had the possibility of developing and who therefore can help others. She is able to bring light. (Notice how often the word darkness is used in the play)Having been through the trials and stress of life, the tempest at sea, Viola at last reaches dry land, but mourns for the loss of her brother, her lower, or material self. Now, having passed through one stage, she has to go on to another. She has to serve, to play a part. She takes a new name. There is deep, esoteric meaning here. And the new name suggests great possibilities–for Cesario means a king. This theme of playing a part runs through the plays. It was particularly interesting to Bacon, who himself had a part to play"
By Beryl C. Pogson

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Pandora

(Greek Πανδώρα, from πᾶν "all" and δῶρον "gift", meaning "all-giving", or "all-endowed") In Greek Mythology, Pandora was archetype of the first woman, created by Zeus and given attributes from all the Gods. Pandora's daughter Pyrrha (Fire) became the first mortal woman. (Pyrrha and her husband Deukalion alone survived the Great Flood, the same story as Noah). There are many variations of her story. Compare with Havah (Eve, "the mother of the living") of the story given by Moses in Genesis / Bereshit.

Aristophanes wrote in The Birds: "...[render worship] to Pandora, the earth, because she bestows all things necessary for life."

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In later stories, we see that Seth is the murderer of Osiris, the Christ. How is this? Throughout the Egyptian mythologies, Seth and Osiris wage war with each other, in other stories Seth and Horus, but in synthesis we can say it is the same thing, it is the two parts of Christ that war within us, that part of Christ related to our inner Being who is the pure light which we can receive assistance from if we know the science. And then there is the other part of Christ which is known as Lucifer, trapped within our own mind, caged, chained like Prometheus to the rock.

Prometheus is also Lucifer. Prometheus in fact is the one who steals fire from the gods in order to give it to the men who he created, because in the Greek mythologies Prometheus creates man, but he takes so long to form man that all of the gifts of Zeus which would normally be given out to all the creatures, have been exhausted and given to all the other creatures of nature, so man gets nothing. So Prometheus says, "Alright, I will steal the fire of the gods to give to man." That fire is the light of Christ, the light that we need in order to illuminate our own understanding.

In the story of Seth, we find that in the same way that Prometheus is punished by the gods and enchained to the rock, Seth kills Osiris and is cursed. The same way that Judas betrays Jesus and is cursed. What we in religious preschool do not grasp is that Seth, Judas, Lucifer, is doing his job. If the Lord does not die, he cannot resurrect.

The oldest myth of resurrection that we have on this planet is that of the resurrection of Osiris, not Jesus. Seth, in other words Lucifer, does battle with Osiris, kills him, and dismembers his body into fourteen pieces; this is important. And he spread these fourteen pieces all over the place. Then Isis, the wife of Osiris, the Divine Mother, in mourning, takes a long journey to search for all the pieces of her dead husband. She finds them all except one: the phallus, which Seth stole and dropped into the waters where it was swallowed by a fish, the fish of number fourteen, the Arcanum fourteen related to Nun. In other words, the creative power of Christ, Osiris, is within the water, is within the fish, the mysteries of Jonah, the mysteries of the water, the mysteries of Leviathan. Who is the lord of the waters in Egyptian mythology? Seth. Who is the lord of all the creatures who dwell in the waters? Seth.

When Isis recovers all the parts of the body except the phallus, she has to form the whole body in order to resurrect him, so she forms a new phallus out of gold. This is alchemical; this is a symbol of how the husband and wife transmute the waters to take the lead, turn it into gold, and elaborate the spirit. This is how resurrection is achieved"
Arcanum 15: (Transcription)
Written by Gnostic Instructor
Glorian Gnostic Teachings

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Bound to a rock is bound in sin
giant eagle tearing at his liver is karma
Stealing fire is wrong use of sexual energy
Chiron the Centaur agreed to die for him - that’s a half horse half man creature. We must sacrifice the horse within us, our lower animal nature (7 vices).
Hercules killed the eagle and unbound him- the 12 labors we must perform in life for resurrection .

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"You will do even greater, because I am returning to the Father"

I take it to mean that the prophesy will be fulfilled, Jesus will conquere satan in death and having the power to conquer sin. Jesus also said "call no man father, you have only one father and he is in heaven."

"Also, the Holy Spirit would be available to all the baptised,"
The spirit is available to those who are not baptised. Baptism is only a public display of faith.

Verse 14. And the Word was made flesh] That very person who was in the beginning-who was with God-and who was God, ver. 1, in the fullness of time became flesh-became incarnated by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin. Allowing this apostle to have written by Divine inspiration, is not this verse, taken in connection with ver. 1, an absolute and incontestable proof of the proper and eternal Godhead of Christ Jesus? And dwelt among us] kai eskhnwsen en hmin, And tabernacled among us: the human nature which he took of the virgin, being as the shrine, house, or temple, in which his immaculate Deity condescended to dwell.

The word is probably an allusion to the Divine Shechinah in the Jewish temple; and as God has represented the whole Gospel dispensation by the types and ceremonies of the old covenant, so the Shechinah in the tabernacle and temple pointed out this manifestation of God in the flesh.

The word is thus used by the Jewish writers: it signifies with them a manifestation of the Divine Shechinah.

The original word, skhnow, from skia, a shadow, signifies: 1. To build a booth, tent, or temporary hut, for present shelter or convenience; and does not properly signify a lasting habitation or dwelling place; and is therefore fitly applied to the human nature of Christ, which, like the tabernacle of old, was to be here only for a temporary residence for the eternal Divinity.

2. It signifies to erect such a building as was used on festival occasions, when a man invited and enjoyed the company of his friends. To this meaning of the word, which is a common one in the best Greek writers, the evangelist might allude, to point out Christ's associating his disciples with himself; living, conversing, eating, and drinking with them: so that, while they had the fullest proof of his Divinity by the miracles which he wrought, they had the clearest evidence of his humanity, by his tabernacling among, eating, drinking, and conversing with them. Concerning the various acceptations of the verb skhnow see Raphelius on this verse.

The doctrine of vicarious sacrifice and the incarnation of the Deity have prevailed among the most ancient nations in the world, and even among those which were not favoured with the letter of Divine revelation. The Hindoos believe that their god has already become incarnate, not less than nine times, to save the wretched race of man.

On this subject, Creeshna, an incarnation of the supreme God, according to the Hindoo theology, is represented in the Bhagvat Geeta, as thus addressing one of his disciples: "Although I am not in my nature subject to birth or decay, and am the Lord of all created beings, yet, having command over my own nature, I am made evident by my own power; and, as often as there is a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world, I make myself evident; and thus I appear from age to age, for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the establishment of virtue." Geeta, pp. 51, 52.

The following piece, already mentioned, Luke i. 68, translated from the Sanscreet, found on a stone, in a cave near the ancient city of Gya in the East Indies, is the most astonishing and important of any thing found out of the compass of the Sacred Writings, and a proper illustration of this text.

"The Deity, who is the Lord, the possessor of all, APPEARED in this ocean of natural beings, at the beginning of the Kalee Yoog (the age of contention and baseness.) He who is omnipresent, and everlastingly to be contemplated, the Supreme Being, the eternal ONE, the Divinity worthy to be adored-APPEARED here, with a PORTION of his DIVINE NATURE.

Reverence be unto thee in the form of (a) Bood-dha! Reverence be unto the Lord of the earth! Reverence be unto thee, an INCARNATION of the Deity, and the Eternal ONE! Reverence be unto thee, O GOD! in the form of the God of mercy! the dispeller of PAIN and TROUBLE, the Lord of ALL things, the Deity who overcometh the sins of the Kalee Yoog, the guardian of the universe, the emblem of mercy towards those who serve thee! (b) O'M! the possessor of all things, in VITAL FORM! Thou art (c) Brahma, (d) Veeshnoo, and (e) Mahesa! Thou art Lord of the universe! Thou art under the form of all things, movable and immovable, the possessor of the whole! And thus I adore thee! Reverence be unto the BESTOWER of SALVATION, and the ruler of the faculties! Reverence be unto thee, the DESTROYER of the EVIL SPIRIT! O Damordara, (f) show me favour! I adore thee who art celebrated by a thousand names, and under various forms, in the shape of Bood-dha, the God of mercy! Be propitious, O most high God!" Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 284, 285.

We beheld his glory] This refers to the transfiguration, at which John was present, in company with Peter and James.

The glory as of the only begotten] That is, such a glory as became, or was proper to, the Son of God; for thus the particle wv should be here understood. There is also here an allusion to the manifestations of God above the ark in the tabernacle: see Exodus xxv. 22; Num. vii. 89; and this connects itself with the first clause, he tabernacled, or fixed his tent among us. While God dwelt in the tabernacle, among the Jews, the priests saw his glory; and while Jesus dwelt among men his glory was manifested in his gracious words and miraculous acts.

The only begotten of the Father] That is, the only person born of a woman, whose human nature never came by the ordinary way of generation; it being a mere creation in the womb of the virgin, by the energy of the Holy Ghost.

Full of grace and truth.] Full of favour, kindness, and mercy to men; teaching the way to the kingdom of God, with all the simplicity, plainness, dignity, and energy of truth.

(a) Bood-dha. The name of the Deity, as author of happiness.

(b) O'M. A mystic emblem of the Deity, forbidden to be pronounced but in silence. It is a syllable formed of the Sanscreet letters a, o o, which in composition coalesce, and make o, and the nasal consonant m. The first letter stands for the Creator, the second for the Preserver, and the third for the Destroyer. It is the same among the Hindoos as hwhy Yehovah is among the Hebrews.

(c) Brahma, the Deity in his creative quality.

(d) Veeshnoo. He who filleth all space: the Deity in his preserving quality.

(c) Mahesa. The Deity in his destroying quality. This is properly the Hindoo Trinity: for these three names belong to the same God. See the notes to the Bhagvat Geeta.

(f) Damordara, or Darmadeve, the Indian god of virtue.

Sil Please reconsider.............

Historical Jesus Busters,

some mythic proponents...

Joseph John Campbell
Robert M. Price
Earl Doherty
Arthur Drews
Timothy Freke
Harold Leidner
George Albert Wells
Acharya S
Frank R. Zindler
Joseph McCabe
Hal Childs
John M. Robertson
Herbert Cutner
John Marco Allegro
Zain Winter
Richard Grigg
Neil Asher Silberman
Burton L. Mack
Max Rieser
Laurence E. Dalton
Alvin Boyd Kuhn
John E. Remsburg
Richard Carrier
Bart D. Ehrman
Elaine Pagels
Craig M. Lyons Ms.D., D.D., M.Div.
Kenneth Humphreys

Graham N. Stanton: The Gospels and Jesus
(Oxford, 1989)

"Graham Stanton contributed a book to the Oxford Bible Series called The Gospels and Jesus. Aimed at the general reader (as was R. T. France’s book), he devotes a short chapter to the debate over Jesus’ existence, focusing again on G. A. Wells. The chapter provides a brief survey of the evidence that is perennially used against mythicists, presented without rancor, as though nothing could be simpler. His discussion of the “Literary Evidence Outside the Gospels” is presented as if no difficulties existed with any of it. But I want to focus on a passage which states the fundamental rationalization we find in just about every response to one of the chief pillars of the mythicist case.

“Wells stresses that in the earlier New Testament epistles there is a strange silence about the life of Jesus and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. Wells notes (correctly) that the very earliest Christian creedal statements and hymns quoted by Paul in his letters in the 50s do not mention either the crucifixion or Pilate, or in fact any events in the life of Jesus. But as every student of ancient history is aware, it is an elementary error to suppose that the unmentioned did not exist or was not accepted. Precise historical and chronological references are few and far between in the numerous Jewish writings discovered in the caves around the Dead Sea near Qumran. So we should hardly expect to find such references in very terse early creeds or hymns, or even in letters sent by Paul to individual Christian communities to deal with particular problems.” [p.140]

One hears and reads this sort of thing time and time again. It is stated as though nothing could be more self-evident, more reasonable. Just because the epistles say nothing about the life and career of Jesus, the time and place of that life, the characters that populate the Gospels–from John the Baptist to Pilate, indeed, not even a single reference to Jesus as a recent historical man–this means nothing. After all, to call attention to this is simply the naïve and disreputable “argument from silence,” and everyone knows how fallacious that is! This is such a common and handy attitude to adopt on this question that many quite intelligent people have actually come to believe it.

Stanton’s statement of this claim is particularly vapid. If he is referring (and it is unclear just what he means) to the dearth and intermittency of records for great swaths of chronology, rulers, cultures, events in ancient history, of course he is right. I am, however, unaware of what great errors have been committed, and by whom, in regard to these gaps in our knowledge; no one posits that the Greek Dark Age had no kings during those hiatuses where we have no surviving record of them. But in the case of Christianity, we do have a surviving early record in the epistles and other non-canonical documents, and it is in this record that the historical Jesus is notably missing. Stanton offers an example of the Dead Sea Scrolls not containing much in the way of historical data, but such data would in most cases be incidental or irrelevant to the content of the scrolls and thus there would be no reason to expect to find it there, or to be surprised not to find it there. Despite facile claims to the contrary, the precise opposite is the case with the early Christian documents outside the Gospels and Acts. These writings are about a faith movement presumably centered on the response to an historical man, his teachings, his miracles, his prophecy. They concern issues and debates on which he reputedly had something to say, directions to give, precedents to set. The events of his life and death conferred salvation upon the world, they took place at specific locations that people could visit, stand upon, take comfort from. Nothing of these things is to be found in those documents–almost 100,000 words by a dozen different writers from all over the eastern empire. As far as the Scrolls are concerned, some of them do speak of their founder: the Teacher of Righteousness. We know he was a figure in their memory and devotion. In the entire early Christian record outside the Gospels and Acts, we can detect the memory or knowledge of no such corresponding figure, and that is inexplicable. The blithe dismissal of this problem by commentators such as Stanton is not acceptable.

Stanton suggests that the early hymns and creeds are too “terse” to contain historical references. Were the hymnists restricted to an insufficient number of lines? Was an identification of the Son’s incarnation not considered important enough to include? The Apostle’s creed is not much longer than the Philippians hymn, yet it manages to work in a reference to Mary and Pilate. The hymn has a dozen lines in a mirror-like chiastic structure reflecting the descent and ascent halves of the sojourn of a god: downward to undergo death, and upward to receive exaltation. In the first half, three successive lines say essentially the same thing: “taking the very nature of a servant,” “being made in the likeness of men,” “being found in the fashion of a man.” Could not one or two of those lines have been devoted instead to a reference to the incarnated identity on earth of this descending god, or perhaps an event of his life, or the fact that he taught or performed miracles? What hymnist would want to leave out all reference to such features? What congregation could fail to find it curious and unsatisfying to hear or recite no historical details as part of their creeds and liturgies? What strange twist of the human mind would explain how an entire generation of proselytizers and believers would choose to divorce the man from the god and leave their record devoid of any mention of the former? Does an entire generation of writers and hymnists “lose interest” and turn a blind eye to the man who had begun their faith? Can they carry on a missionary movement or deal with establishment opposition on such a basis? Will they engage in and resolve disputes, settle rivalries in the field, without referring to him at least some of the time?

Stanton says that he “hardly expects” references to historical events and elements of Jesus’ life, teaching and activities “even in letters sent by Paul to Christian communities to deal with particular problems.” That is indeed the fundamental nature of the epistles. They are “occasional” writings, composed to deal with problems. One can only conclude that Stanton regards the Gospels as totally unreliable as a genuine record of Jesus’ teachings, since Paul would surely have appealed to Jesus’ words on the subject in his extensive debates about the Jewish Law; or that others would have appealed to them to point out where Paul was going wrong in his rejection of it. Stanton must regard Mark 7 as invention, that Jesus never said anything about all foods being clean, since Paul would have had every reason to appeal to Jesus’ teaching on the matter in Romans 14:14. Nor can Paul have been remotely aware that Jesus taught about love, since he says in 1 Thessalonians 4:9, “you are taught by God to love one another.” Goguel was one who must have believed the writer of James knew nothing about, not even the fact of, Jesus’ suffering at the crucifixion, since he is silent on the matter when he offers the “prophets of old” as an example of “patience under suffering.”

Clearly, Stanton would never expect a mention of the Paraclete by the writer of 1 John who, in appealing to “spirits” from God to determine correct doctrine, must have considered it irrelevant that Jesus had promised to send his followers the Holy Spirit to guide them and keep them on the correct path. Far be it from Paul to bother with minor historical details in Romans 10, to mention that the Jews had failed to respond not only to apostles like Paul, but to the Lord himself while he was preaching among them; or in Romans 11, that in addition to killing the prophets, they had also killed the Son of God. In all that Paul and others have to say about the coming apocalypse and Jesus’ arrival from heaven, Stanton must regard the Gospel preaching of Jesus on this subject as post-epistolary concoction, since not a single author appeals to Jesus as the original word on it.

Would Stanton, if he were Paul, have said (as Paul does in 2 Corinthians 5:5) that “God has shaped us for life immortal, and as a guarantee of this he has sent the Spirit”? If he were Paul, would Stanton have claimed to the Corinthians that it is he who has been qualified by God to dispense his new covenant, conveniently ignoring Jesus’ own role in that regard in recent history? The present apostolic movement which Paul describes as “the ministry of the spirit in glory” (2 Cor. 3: is set against the dispensing of the old covenant by Moses, overlooking any glory that might have been present in Jesus’ own ministry. In this splendorous mansion in which Paul has taken up residence, Jesus is not even let in by the servants’ entrance. The author of Titus neglects to mention a little historical detail–an unnecessary one, no doubt–when he speaks (1:3) of God promising eternal life ages ago, and that promise now coming to fruition in the proclamation issued by Paul. Apparently, Stanton is not perturbed at the lack of any sign of Christ’s own life and ministry coming between those two events.

All these observations only scratch the surface. They are the tip of a vast iceberg lying beneath the surface of the early Christian sea, the silence of the deep, on which Christian commentators naively sail their Gospel boat, secure that the cargo they carry will sustain them through the storm, oblivious to the great gulf below that threatens to swallow them up. One can understand their reluctance even to look over the side into that dark, mysterious world of mythological creatures and mystical salvation currents, where the waters are cold to any memory of an historical figure.

(See my “The Sound of Silence” feature for 200 occasions in the non-Gospel record where we might expect some mention of the historical Jesus, at least some of the time.)

The notorious Internet apologist, J. P. Holding (a pseudonym), has offered the following as an explanation for the universal silence on the life of Jesus in the epistles: there was no need to mention any of this stuff–everyone already knew it! Quite apart from this never being a reason for Christian writers and preachers, since the Gospels were adopted, not to make mention of things we already knew, it is based on more than one unlikely assumption. Are we to assume that this awareness would universally lead all Christian writers before the Gospels (and many after) to remain silent, suppressing their own instinct to talk about the historical Jesus? Are we to assume that in fact, in every Christian community, everyone did know everything there was to know about Jesus’ life, even in newly-formed congregations such as Paul sometimes writes to? Perhaps such congregations circulated memos admonishing those who wrote to them not to mention details about Jesus because they already knew everything there was to know and were tired of hearing it. (One wonders if Mr. Holding ever receives complaints from his wife that he never tells her that he loves her. Perhaps he answers: “But, dear, you don’t need to be told. You already know that I love you!”

Holding claims that only if someone forgets a piece of information does it become necessary to remind him of it. To judge by Paul’s letters, many people did indeed forget what Jesus had said on earth, since they were still arguing over issues that Jesus supposedly had settled. Here is Holding’s “need,” yet no one answers the call.

Sentiments like those of Stanton and Holding are beyond naïve. They are a denial, a surrender, of common sense reasoning which a moment’s consideration should render dismissible. The problem is, like so many of the glib arguments used against mythicism, they have not been given a moment’s consideration"
THE JESUS PUZZLE
Was There No Historical Jesus?
Earl Doherty
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Responses to Critiques of the Mythicist Case

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