Bridge-building is finding agreements between people of diverse experiences.
Your take on me is accurate enough in so many words, but part of the bridge-building involves recognizing that what I mean by Yahweh is not what you've come to believe Yahweh is. If there's a Monad, and also a part-time architect named Samael, I think the title or name Yahweh better describes the Monad. You seem to have become so familiar with assuming that Samael is automatically Yahweh that when I seek to remove that obstacle so as to lay a firmer foundation it may not come naturally at first. But think about it and it might. I don't give Samael any more credit or title than he deserves.
If you like Aramaic Christians (like Tewahedo) or Assyrian Christians (like Church of the East) or especially Orthodox, we can use them as good ground of agreement too.
Many people don’t even know what Aramaic Peshitta is, and think the original NT was written in Greek, but scholars know better.
I have a nuanced synthesis on this scholarly problem too, but it's usually not necessary for me to object to Peshitta primacy because it doesn't result in any useful distinctions.
The language Jesus spoke didn't have a framework for eternal punishment.
My joke is I've been through hell very thoroughly and now I can go in and out anytime I please. Yes, Jesus spoke often of Gehenna, and, yes, sheol-hades is very different from Norse nastrond-hell. I have a nuanced synthesis there too, where the most important point is that it's relatively useless to argue about eternal states since we basically have forever to learn about them.
Jesus wasn't claiming to be uniquely divine in a way that separated him from the rest of humanity. He was claiming to be fully human in a way that revealed what all humans could become.
Porque no los dos? I agree that Bar Enosh (my spelling) is paradigmatic humanity as you say, but the nature of divinity in Jesus was in fact unique compared to the the nature of divinity in the rest of us, and so that calls for very exact technical language. I have my last month's study on Bar Enosh sitting around here with the OT and Apocryphal references that indicate a number of supernatural scopes to it, all of which are compatible with fully realized human nature.
So the upshot is that I agree there are forces in traditional Christianity that suppress people and potential via misunderstandings such as Gehenna and Bar Enosh. What I mean above is that also in traditional Christianity are the seeds that can reawaken these original understandings anytime they are watered, and (considering what human potential means) the church potential is unspeakably vast.
So I appreciate your clarifying things so that I can see our positions in a map where we aren't too far apart. That leaves me without an immediate followup question. If you're willing to suffer me in my interpretation of the true meaning of "Yahweh", or if you're willing to disabuse me of some errors I may make about it, please feel free. I certainly encourage you to post or comment more about the unblurred entities that are doing the manipulation all along; that's what this forum is for, and I've dropped links to other forums where similar thoughts are welcome.
So you begin by saying Yaldabaoth = Demiurge = Yahweh = OT God = Jewish God = Self-Existent = Eternal = Mosaic = Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh. I'll agree.
Then you say none of these equal the Monad. How would we determine the truth or falsity of that assertion together?
You say Samael = an archangel = Accuser = Adversary = Seducer = Destroyer = Saklas = Masonic God = Illusion Programmer = Saturn. I'll agree.
Then you say that some of these equal some of the names of Yahweh. How would we determine the truth or falsity of that assertion together?
We agree on there being two concepts, Monad and Samael. You want to put the Yahweh concept onto Samael, I want to put it onto Monad. It's not sufficient for us each to argue that our own desire is self-evidently better. We'd need some common basis for realizing the truth of the things we are talking about. If Monad and Samael exist, it's a matter of truth or falsity whether any Yahweh title does or doesn't apply to either. If we were to agree on nuanced synthesis, neither of us would be dogmatic about putting the Yahweh concept any particular place. But if you sound dogmatic about it not belonging with the Monad you create a binary proposition that can be discussed under agreed rules on pursuing truth. Are you willing to pursue the truth of the matter wherever it leads?
I say to you this has already been determined 2,000 years ago.
Maybe, but each individual determines it afresh for himself. You seem fine with another's determination previously made and uncertain about my determination previously made.
open the OT and you meet a different entity entirely
That is not self-evident.
Does that sound like
Frankly, it sounds like the result of a paradigm shift culminating in the 4th century about the testaments compounded by another paradigm shift in the 19th century in which self-declared experts made up their own interpretations without respect to original culture. I'm surprised you buy these recent German arguments instead of going to the source about what people actually thought when Jesus walked the earth. If any gnostic aspects predate that, they were dead for a millennium before these Germans revived them.
The true god I was referring to, the Monad or the Pleroma, is pure infinite consciousness. The Monad has no needs. It has no gender. It has no jealousy. It does not judge because nothing exists outside of it. It simply emanates light and love like the sun shines without condition.
Those attributes are not self-evident. That's why I asked exactly how we come to agreement on attributing things to entities. We could both talk into the air but that wouldn't be likely to bring agreement. It seems to me agreement is brought by agreeing to pursue truth wherever it leads and then working together from that common understanding to align our own paradigms. We could line up all the reasons the Monad is or isn't something and then infer the best explanation.
If you begin by proposing we don't need to agree and then continue with your belief system and a couple reasons as if they stand without needing questioning or in fact validation (as if it's important that people agree with you), that's kind of two different approaches.
Your stated reasons are (1) Yahweh's name is "Jealous", (2) Yahweh creates by separation (duality), (3) Yahweh seeks blood sacrifice; implied conclusion, Yahweh is not the Monad. You also give many supportive recent tropes about why one should conclude this. I asked how you'd like to resolve this, but you demurred to that question. If, for instance, the answer were "critical thinking" then we might both propose structures that appear to be critical thinking, but we'd still need to agree on basic rules of facts and logic so that we can determine which is better. We could both propound many arguments, I am known for going very long, but it wouldn't help if we weren't seeking some core agreement and were only trying to validate our own already-determined positions. Your propositions are not disabusing me of my errors because I've mostly seen them before and feel very comfortable with how I handle them in my own mind; plus they go in so many directions that it's hard to be selective. So let me go very basic.
(1) We agree that the Monad and an adversary exist (you also use "satan" so I trust I can substitute that too).
(2) When you say that adversary "exists because we validate him", I presume you mean he is benefited from our validation and deficited from our invalidation (not that he could cease to exist, or maybe you think he could), which I agree with.
(3) When you argue against belief or fear, I presume you mean not to put any trust or reverence in that adversary, which I agree with.
Why then should we give that adversary any undeserved credit by giving him titles or attributes beyond what is straitly revealed about him? Maybe Yahweh is some third entity that is neither Monad nor adversary, and this adversary is stealing all of Yahweh's thunder like he steals Zeus's thunder. It's not self-evident to me that all your assertions about an adversary have either historical or revelatory backup, they are just inferences that (to me) contribute toward glorifying that adversary. I hope you don't mind my speaking frankly about that because it seems to me central to the rest of the argument.
Bridge-building is finding agreements between people of diverse experiences.
Your take on me is accurate enough in so many words, but part of the bridge-building involves recognizing that what I mean by Yahweh is not what you've come to believe Yahweh is. If there's a Monad, and also a part-time architect named Samael, I think the title or name Yahweh better describes the Monad. You seem to have become so familiar with assuming that Samael is automatically Yahweh that when I seek to remove that obstacle so as to lay a firmer foundation it may not come naturally at first. But think about it and it might. I don't give Samael any more credit or title than he deserves.
If you like Aramaic Christians (like Tewahedo) or Assyrian Christians (like Church of the East) or especially Orthodox, we can use them as good ground of agreement too.
I have a nuanced synthesis on this scholarly problem too, but it's usually not necessary for me to object to Peshitta primacy because it doesn't result in any useful distinctions.
My joke is I've been through hell very thoroughly and now I can go in and out anytime I please. Yes, Jesus spoke often of Gehenna, and, yes, sheol-hades is very different from Norse nastrond-hell. I have a nuanced synthesis there too, where the most important point is that it's relatively useless to argue about eternal states since we basically have forever to learn about them.
Porque no los dos? I agree that Bar Enosh (my spelling) is paradigmatic humanity as you say, but the nature of divinity in Jesus was in fact unique compared to the the nature of divinity in the rest of us, and so that calls for very exact technical language. I have my last month's study on Bar Enosh sitting around here with the OT and Apocryphal references that indicate a number of supernatural scopes to it, all of which are compatible with fully realized human nature.
So the upshot is that I agree there are forces in traditional Christianity that suppress people and potential via misunderstandings such as Gehenna and Bar Enosh. What I mean above is that also in traditional Christianity are the seeds that can reawaken these original understandings anytime they are watered, and (considering what human potential means) the church potential is unspeakably vast.
So I appreciate your clarifying things so that I can see our positions in a map where we aren't too far apart. That leaves me without an immediate followup question. If you're willing to suffer me in my interpretation of the true meaning of "Yahweh", or if you're willing to disabuse me of some errors I may make about it, please feel free. I certainly encourage you to post or comment more about the unblurred entities that are doing the manipulation all along; that's what this forum is for, and I've dropped links to other forums where similar thoughts are welcome.
So you begin by saying Yaldabaoth = Demiurge = Yahweh = OT God = Jewish God = Self-Existent = Eternal = Mosaic = Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh. I'll agree.
Then you say none of these equal the Monad. How would we determine the truth or falsity of that assertion together?
You say Samael = an archangel = Accuser = Adversary = Seducer = Destroyer = Saklas = Masonic God = Illusion Programmer = Saturn. I'll agree.
Then you say that some of these equal some of the names of Yahweh. How would we determine the truth or falsity of that assertion together?
We agree on there being two concepts, Monad and Samael. You want to put the Yahweh concept onto Samael, I want to put it onto Monad. It's not sufficient for us each to argue that our own desire is self-evidently better. We'd need some common basis for realizing the truth of the things we are talking about. If Monad and Samael exist, it's a matter of truth or falsity whether any Yahweh title does or doesn't apply to either. If we were to agree on nuanced synthesis, neither of us would be dogmatic about putting the Yahweh concept any particular place. But if you sound dogmatic about it not belonging with the Monad you create a binary proposition that can be discussed under agreed rules on pursuing truth. Are you willing to pursue the truth of the matter wherever it leads?
Maybe, but each individual determines it afresh for himself. You seem fine with another's determination previously made and uncertain about my determination previously made.
That is not self-evident.
Frankly, it sounds like the result of a paradigm shift culminating in the 4th century about the testaments compounded by another paradigm shift in the 19th century in which self-declared experts made up their own interpretations without respect to original culture. I'm surprised you buy these recent German arguments instead of going to the source about what people actually thought when Jesus walked the earth. If any gnostic aspects predate that, they were dead for a millennium before these Germans revived them.
Those attributes are not self-evident. That's why I asked exactly how we come to agreement on attributing things to entities. We could both talk into the air but that wouldn't be likely to bring agreement. It seems to me agreement is brought by agreeing to pursue truth wherever it leads and then working together from that common understanding to align our own paradigms. We could line up all the reasons the Monad is or isn't something and then infer the best explanation.
If you begin by proposing we don't need to agree and then continue with your belief system and a couple reasons as if they stand without needing questioning or in fact validation (as if it's important that people agree with you), that's kind of two different approaches.
Your stated reasons are (1) Yahweh's name is "Jealous", (2) Yahweh creates by separation (duality), (3) Yahweh seeks blood sacrifice; implied conclusion, Yahweh is not the Monad. You also give many supportive recent tropes about why one should conclude this. I asked how you'd like to resolve this, but you demurred to that question. If, for instance, the answer were "critical thinking" then we might both propose structures that appear to be critical thinking, but we'd still need to agree on basic rules of facts and logic so that we can determine which is better. We could both propound many arguments, I am known for going very long, but it wouldn't help if we weren't seeking some core agreement and were only trying to validate our own already-determined positions. Your propositions are not disabusing me of my errors because I've mostly seen them before and feel very comfortable with how I handle them in my own mind; plus they go in so many directions that it's hard to be selective. So let me go very basic.
(1) We agree that the Monad and an adversary exist (you also use "satan" so I trust I can substitute that too).
(2) When you say that adversary "exists because we validate him", I presume you mean he is benefited from our validation and deficited from our invalidation (not that he could cease to exist, or maybe you think he could), which I agree with.
(3) When you argue against belief or fear, I presume you mean not to put any trust or reverence in that adversary, which I agree with.
Why then should we give that adversary any undeserved credit by giving him titles or attributes beyond what is straitly revealed about him? Maybe Yahweh is some third entity that is neither Monad nor adversary, and this adversary is stealing all of Yahweh's thunder like he steals Zeus's thunder. It's not self-evident to me that all your assertions about an adversary have either historical or revelatory backup, they are just inferences that (to me) contribute toward glorifying that adversary. I hope you don't mind my speaking frankly about that because it seems to me central to the rest of the argument.