Jesus mission was not to bring a Law, but to demonstrate it.
Okay, to fulfill what was already brought, yes.
He came to end the need for religion by showing the direct path to divine consciousness.
James 1:26-27 promoted true religion. Jesus contrasted that with vain religion (vain worship), Matt. 15:9, Mark 7:7. The word itself is neutral. I think what Jesus ended is more rightly called legalism.
He didn't die for your sins.
When 1 Cor. 15:3 says "I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures", scholars are agreed that "received" means an oral creed "Christ died for our sins" was circulating formally among the apostles 2-5 years after the resurrection. 1 Peter 2:24 has it, "His own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed." There are several theological theories on the meaning, but in addition to nullifying sin he certainly also removed sin from us, bearing the illusion away. These distinctions sound semantic.
He didn't perform miracles. He demonstrated natural laws that include consciousness as a creative force.
Yeah, mostly, because the meaning of miracle has changed. The Bible calls them miracles in the sense of "unexplained". When people know the natural laws he used, they become more "explained", more commonplace and less wondrous. So both he and we perform the unexplained in our eras.
Jesus said you must know what you are, not believe.
I showed you John 14:1 and I don't know your thoughts on it. When Jesus speaks of knowing yourself it's in more of a negative sense, Luke 9:55, but it doesn't contradict the much greater emphasis he places on knowing him, John 17:3 etc. Why would knowing yourself contradict Jesus's statement to believe in God and in himself?
His message clearly says: you are a divine spark temporarily housed in a material body.
Calling it a "spark" isn't clear at all; he obviously taught on the "image" of God in man, Matt. 22:20 ff. He constantly affirmed the covenant reliance on the resurrection of the body and on the difference between this age and the coming age, and those two traditions balanced the temporal and the everlasting. Yes, 2 Peter 1:13-14 speaks of putting off this tabernacle without speaking of what is to come, but I acknowledged the mystery by pointing out that there may not be a conflict between the Christian tradition of general resurrection and the power to manifest as spiritual instead of material-pragmatic. So framing the message this way doesn't seem the "clearest" form.
You are not your fears. You are not your failures. You are not the story the world has told you about yourself. You carry the light of the Monad. You do not ask. You do not beg. You do not request. You speak as what you are. As a declaration of what is already true at the deepest level of existence. This is the revolution that Jesus started. This is the truth that has been hidden. This is the power that has always been ours.
Okay.
On the other hand Paul's teachings are on belief: Faith in Jesus, Predestination (he argues that faith is a gift from God, not something self-generated), Conversion and Belief in the Resurrection.
Jesus taught faith (believing) in himself. The apostles taught predestination, Acts 4:28, in accord with the tradition saying all is foreknown and determined and yet free will is given. Now, you make a distinction between faith being a gift (not the literal language of Eph. 2 though) and faith being something one does, but those are two sides of the same coin. You can't have faith without believing, and you can't have faith without the gift of God being involved (none come unless the Father draws them, John 6:44). So the two always manifest together, implying they are the same thing. Jesus taught conversion, Matt. 18:3, and he taught that he was the resurrection, John 11:25. So I see that if you think that believing and being given faith are contradictory, you'd have a problem, but why would they be contradictory? Whatever man does, God is doing the work of ensuring man does it.
He radically changed the meaning of faith and religion itself.
Still looking.
Before Paul, faith meant lived experience. Faith meant your relationship with the divine that you cultivated through practice, through study, through ethical living. Faith was something you experienced directly.
Faith is tied to that but isn't precisely synonymous. Lately this might be called "faith walk" or "working faith". James 2:18 says we show faith by what we do, so they are different. Yet he emphasizes faith always accompanies this relationship and experience.
But Paul introduced a new concept. Faith became belief. Faith became accepting certain propositional claims. Jesus is the son of God. Jesus died for your sins. Jesus was resurrected. If you believe these things, you're saved. If you don't believe them, you're damned. This is radically different. This makes debate about theological positions not about lived spiritual experience.
"Pistis" is translated both faith and belief. Now, I agree with the criticism that faith is more than propositional trust but involves personal trust in the individual; James 2:19-20 agrees too. And I agree with the idea that it shouldn't be oversimplified, although 1 John gives several simple tests distinguishing saved from damned that are very propositional. But these tests work because they rightly reflect whether the person has the whole relationship or not. What we've corrupted that into is the idea that saying the words is a free ticket and lifestyle is irrelevant, but in the culture your words would be proven by your lifestyle. And Paul didn't change that, it came much later. Debate about theological position isn't very effective (unless it distinguishes the god one believes in from another); experience in Christ's body is indeed everything. But that's why I'm working with you experientially (even as I present texts to you as I experience them).
So on this point, I agree there is a difference between propositional faith and the personal faith Jesus taught, but taking everything Paul said he is not teaching mere propositional faith in Eph. 2 and should not be taken as if he is.
Paul also introduced a concept of miracles as explanatory devices. If something doesn't make logical sense, it's a miracle. How was Jesus born of a virgin? Miracle. How did Jesus walk on water? Miracle. How was Jesus resurrected? Miracle. The function of miracles in Paul's theology is to explain away contradictions and inconsistencies. Don't question the logical problems. Don't try to understand it rationally. Just accept it as miraculous.
Well, the disciples accepted "miracles" in the sense "unexplained", throughout the gospels and indeed as a mark of Jesus's character in secular sources. Obviously some things happen that we don't have explanation for, and even good scientists admit that despite the fullness of the known laws of physics. It would be silly to say Jesus did nothing unexplained because we've found all the explanations, or worse to say it's because Jesus couldn't possibly have used deeper laws we haven't explained yet. It's unclear what you're going for. If you're saying any account of Jesus doing something inexplicable is spurious, that would mean we should talk about whether we understand all the laws of the world or whether there are still unknowns. But if Jesus did rise from the dead bodily, then there's no problem in saying so and calling it a miracle, and raising people from the dead bodily ourselves.
Another major innovation was elevating tradition above scripture. Paul's church, which eventually became the Catholic Church, taught that tradition, the teachings passed down through church authority is more important than the Bible itself.
The Bible was still open canon then. Peter and Jude followed the same rules by which their Hebrew Bible was approved, saying that new Scriptures might arise that were equal to the old; only John was able to discern when the canon closed. Thus if it was passed down from authority (as the OT was) and accepted by many generations of believers, it became a Scriptural teaching; if it didn't, like the Didache (which is very good teaching), it was treated as secondary and often forgotten. Paul rejects mere human tradition, Col. 2:8, like Mark 7:13, but I see he also affirms received tradition, 2 Thess. 2:15, 3:6. But this word, which means "received" or "delivered", also refers to what Jesus received from the Father to share with us, Matt. 11:27, 25:14. I don't see anything about tradition transcending the Bible. After creeds were formed, an impression could be taken that they were regarded as more important than Biblical texts, but good churches affirm they are merely summaries of the inspired Bible. So this sounds like a criticism of medieval Christianity, not of Paul.
In fact, for most of Christian history, ordinary people were not allowed to read the Bible. The Bible was kept in Latin, which most people didn't understand. Only priests could read it and interpret it because the church taught that if ordinary people read the Bible, they might misinterpret it. They don't have the spiritual authority to understand it correctly.
That was a major medieval error, but hardly "most of Christian history" because the disuse of Latin only crept in maybe about the 8th or 9th century, and vernacular Bibles were published from maybe the 12th century on. That really has little to do with Paul.
So religious truth comes not from direct study of sacred text but from submission to church authority. The church tells you what to believe and you believe it. That's faith.
Do you submit to what direct study of sacred text reveals? I've cited much sacred text. We all have personal duty to interpret rightly. But, as with math, the same text gives the same core answers to everyone. If you doubt the view of the majority, you stand on your conscience while also seeking whether a miscommunication or semantic difference might solve the disharmony. Again, the Reformation happened because the medieval church abused the personal duty to interpret (i.e. prohibiting personal interpretation), but the other direction of abuse (i.e. wrong interpretation) is also a problem.
But, all his innovations serve institutional power. So there 's no issue for Rome. They make religion about control, about hierarchy, about obedience to authority rather than about direct spiritual experience.
Reformers have always agreed that institutional power and hierarchy are easily corrupted and need regular auditing.
Because at this time, there were many people, especially Jewish Christians, who hated Paul. They believed Paul had corrupted the teachings of Jesus. They believe Paul was a traitor who had sold out to Rome.
Yes, and those who did believed the same of the other apostles, and treated them the same.
Jesus taught the exact opposite of submission to any authority.
Why did he say to honor everything that comes from Moses's seat, and everything belonging to Caesar?
Paul takes Jesus’s message of spiritual autonomy from the Monad and reconstructs it as a message of spiritual submission.
Autonomy means law unto oneself. Jesus and Paul taught we are judged by a law external to oneself. We have managerial (limited) autonomy in the sense of responsibility, and, when we take the law into our own hands rather than uphold the external we've received, that's where our responsibility and limited autonomy fails as a result of the total autonomy of the Monad. Once again you're getting this word "autonomy" that isn't in the text, and I don't know why you speak as if your words not in the text are better summaries than the text itself.
Jesus says “listen to my words”, Paul says “believe me of who Jesus is”.
Paul appeals to Jesus's words just as other apostles do. They all experienced Jesus's words and invite others to experience them, initially mediated by them as teachers until we are mature enough to experience them immediately for ourselves. Paul said, "Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ" (1 Cor. 11:1), meaning that when he fails to follow Christ we are not to follow him (Gal. 1:8). Paul never says "believe me" (though he might affirm that Isaiah 52 says "believe me"). Why do you say this?
Later the Roman Empire's adoption of Christianity under Constantine wasn't the triumph of spiritual truth over paganism that Church teaches today. It was the hijacking of a liberation movement and its transformation into a control system. Constantine needed a version of Christianity that would support imperial authority, not undermine it.
Okay.
The Gnostic teachings with their emphasis on individual direct experience and their rejection of external religious authority were completely incompatible with maintaining an empire built on hierarchy and control. The Council of Nicaea in 325 CE wasn't really about establishing the correct doctrine. It was about eliminating any version of Christianity that could make people spiritually independent.
Gnosticism had essentially disappeared before then; it had migrated into Montanism, Ebionitism, and other more sustainable systems. These forms did persist after Nicea and were not persecuted over experience or conscientious disagreement with other authorities; the only deprecation was over teaching a different Jesus or different gospel, but disagreements between churches were routinely hammered out by focus on unity (until the bishop of Rome started the idea of demanding submission, which was some time after Nicea). Nicea didn't "eliminate" any version of Christianity except by deprecating Arianism, which survived for centuries in western Europe anyway. Yes, independence was lost over time, I agree with you in mourning that, but that's why we had a Reformation. It's not related to Paul.
The Gospel of Thomas was rejected because it taught the kingdom is within you.
They weren't rejected, they just never rose to become Scripture. The "kingdom within" was accepted as gospel.
the official narrative has significant problems
I agree. What it doesn't show is how to correct the narrative or how blaming Paul does any good. The whole true narrative can be shown without any reference to Paul, because people were already showing the whole true narrative before Paul came.
I showed you John 14:1 and I don't know your thoughts on it... Jesus taught faith (believing) in himself
The word used here πιστεύω (pisteúō) means to obey. Strong 4100 pisteúō (from 4102 pístis). John seems to use active tense pisteuō rather than pistis in his gospel. Suggests most of the translations in John are about obeying in Jesus rather than simply obeying him[John] or any other earthly authority.
When Jesus speaks of knowing yourself it's in more of a negative sense, Luke 9:55
Like I said before we don't know for certain who wrote the Gospel according to Luke, but we do know whoever wrote it was sympathetic of Paul. Most likely a follower of Paul. "The gospels are written by men and it seems to me that it perhaps shouldn't be as problematic as people claim it might be to just say look I still believe in the thrust of the story but Luke just got this bit wrong. I know well it'd be much easier for people just to do that and a lot of people do of course. I was trained at Princeton Theological Seminary..." - Bart Ehrman
Calling it a "spark" isn't clear at all; he obviously taught on the "image" of God in man
It's very clear to me. The Gnostics called it the divine spark. A fragment of the original light not trapped in your body like a prisoner but radiating through your body like light through a window. The window is not the light. But without the window, the light does not enter the room. All you have to do is create a space within your mind. That's what Buddhists do, just pay attention. In that gap lives your freedom. In that gap the spark becomes perceptible. The Gnostic teachers called this gap the bridal chamber. This bridal chamber in the Gospel of Philip is a metaphor for a divine union. The place where the divided reunites. The Gospel of Thomas says, "When you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, then you will enter the kingdom.". This is not riddle. This is instruction. When your inner attention becomes as vivid as your outer attention, when you can perceive inwardly with the same clarity you perceive outwardly, the barrier dissolves. The kingdom you have been seeking outside reveals itself to have been accessible from within all along.
Remember I was talking about Jesus's message, recognition, authority and declaration. First comes recognition. You are not creating this spark. You are not imagining it. You are simply noticing what was always there. A part of you already knows this. A part of you remembers this. That knowing is not coming from your brain. Your brain never learned this. That knowing is coming from the spark itself. It recognizes its own path home. Next is the loosening of fear. Fear is fundamentally an outward orientation. It is concern about what might come from outside to harm you. When you establish yourself inwardly, you find a place that cannot be threatened. The body can be touched, the mind can be disturbed, but the spark is beyond reach. It existed before this body and will exist after. From that place, fear becomes information rather than prison. You can feel it without being controlled by it. This is not denial of fear. This is transcendence of fear. The spark knows things your mind does not. When you establish connection with it, you begin to receive direction. Not as audible voices, not as visions, as knowing. You simply know to go here, to avoid there, to speak now, to stay silent. The more you trust this guidance, the more accurate it becomes. Jesus's mission was not to glorify this world but to expose its counterfeit nature and to awaken the divine spark trapped within humanity. According to Gnostics this spark serves as the navigator for the voyage homeward. It doesn't proclaim loudly, it murmurs softly. The more attentively you heed, the more potent it grows. Igniting the divine spark means reclaiming your true identity. Not solely a vessel or a consciousness, but an entity forged from the Monad's infinite substance.
The apostles taught predestination, Acts 4:28, in accord with the tradition saying all is foreknown and determined and yet free will is given
I agree that's what it says. Also, Paul teaches predestination and he argues that faith is a gift from God rather being something self-generated. But, I'm not saying to "make a distinction between faith being a gift and faith being something one does". You don't need faith, all you need is recognition, that is recognize the divine spark in you. And once you do that you know you have authority. Lucifer did not create your divine spark. He created the cage that surrounds it. And he appointed the archons to guard that cage and keep you from remembering what you truly are.
If you doubt the view of the majority
I always doubt the view of the majority. It's probably the most important lesson I have learned in life, the majority is most of the time wrong. Jesus said the majority still go on the broad way to destruction (Mat 7:13).
Why did he say to honor everything that comes from Moses's seat, and everything belonging to Caesar
Jesus's message is about compassion of forgiveness. Not about Moses or Caesar. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven because if you're poor you are defying the material reality to win in this game created by Lucifer you yourself have to become a monster therefore the wealthy the powerful are evil people. If you're poor you don't participate in this evilness and therefore you're you are blessed by God.
They weren't rejected, they just never rose to become Scripture.
Okay. To me that's just another way of defining censorship.
how to correct the narrative or how blaming Paul does any good
It's not just Paul. IMO, it's everything that served the imperial interests since Paul.
The word used here πιστεύω (pisteúō) means to obey.
Don't know where you're getting that, pisteuo is the verb and pistis is the noun of the same thing, and the cluster of concepts is faith, belief, trust. Obedience is allied to these, and theologically manifests alongside them, but it's not the same thing. The actual Greek for hearken or obey is hypakouo G5219, which Jesus doesn't use about our relation to him. But Paul uses the same pisteuo G4100 as Jesus uses in the same way, Acts 16:31, 19:4, Gal. 2:16, Phil. 1:29, 1 Tim. 1:16. So even if there were distinction between pisteuo and pistis, Paul and Jesus are saying the same thing with pisteuo.
Ehrman is credentialed but not the guy you want for history as he has an axe to grind. However, if you choose to take his view against those who count Luke the most exact and accurate historian of the era, the message of Jesus can be proven without Luke, Acts, Paul, or Hebrews, if you like.
The Gnostics called it the divine spark.
So did the kabbalists, who informed Talmudism. But unless there's evidence they were more inspired than Matthew, Mark, and John, I stick with the direct testimony of what Jesus said, and he said "image" to reflect the language of Genesis. It's not that relevant what it's called, as long as we are clear on what it is.
But without the window, the light does not enter the room. All you have to do is create a space within your mind. That's what Buddhists do, just pay attention. In that gap lives your freedom. In that gap the spark becomes perceptible. The Gnostic teachers called this gap the bridal chamber.
I.e., the union of Christ and his bride. This doesn't happen without the will of both Christ and the bride. Thomas similarly describes the union of Self and Other (though this is partial). The kingdom manifests both within and without at the same time. (And, all of that seems the same in Jesus and in Paul.)
You are simply noticing what was always there.
Yes, always there but inactive until awoken.
It existed before this body and will exist after.
The divine nature preexisted; the image or "spark" is newly manifested at conception but its preexistence is in the divine plan, which is a little different but compatible.
Not as audible voices, not as visions, as knowing.
That's a fair way of saying it's internal. When guidance comes externally, it must be tested as it may be divine or it may be creaturely and brought to you as a test.
Igniting the divine spark means reclaiming your true identity.
I'll affirm that because it reminds me Jesus and Paul did use lots of fire language. One that comes to mind, often ignored, is 2 Tim. 1:6, "Stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands"; that's definitely a fire reference.
You don't need faith, all you need is recognition, that is recognize the divine spark in you.
What is your meaning for "faith" here? When I recognize something, I believe it. Perhaps you mean no further propositions are needed for "belief" than a core recognition of the divine? Oh, but that's Heb. 11:6, which interestingly doesn't mention Jesus.
Lucifer did not create your divine spark. He created the cage that surrounds it. And he appointed the archons to guard that cage and keep you from remembering what you truly are.
I don't attribute any creation or appointment to him. I don't count the physical as any prison; 1 Peter 3:19 said that death (separation) was the prison. The whole idea of the physical being a mistake comes from that cosmology, informed by Egypt and Greece, that attempts to get the Monad off the hook for evil existing but just complicates the narrative, as I've said. If John the Baptist can begin to testify from the womb, it seems that the fictive prison threats and guards are not able to convince everyone they are real. What good does it do to your system to give them any credit instead of just to say that all their pretense at control is just part of their deception? Why should we make lucifer out to be more powerful than Jesus says he is?
Jesus's message is about compassion of forgiveness. Not about Moses or Caesar.
I quoted you how he applied it to Moses and Caesar. He said to submit to both of them what is their due. The spiritual message you cite, poverty of spirit, doesn't contradict that.
To me that's just another way of defining censorship.
Censorship is active, official suppression. There's no evidence church leaders suppressed all the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha; they relied heavily on Maccabees, Odes of Solomon, Didache, and quoted and circulated many others, including uncountable patristics. It's just that known apostolic books got quoted and circulated much more. I'm trying to think of a way where a lower level of attention (by leaders who were regularly persecuted) somehow connotes active, official animus, and I don't see it. I do see that Constantine personally censored Arius in 325 as a civil matter, requiring his works to be burned up on pain of death, but Arius was no gnostic and this has nothing to do with texts that circulated with public approval.
Summary: I've been looking for support for your distinctives and not finding it, while I'm happy to agree with a number of statements you make that are found in more systems than your own and often in the Bible or in Thomas. If you want to deprecate Luke and Paul, they're gravy but we can learn the truth without them (of course, Peter says Paul is Scripture, but that's a point that need not be made tendentious). If you want to glorify lucifer and the archons, you're free to do that but I don't participate and I think in the long run it's unhelpful to you. About my only concern is that I'm seeing a trend of the way you see things not lining up with the texts or with the history as we have them. When that's the case, the texts and history might be wrong, but it takes a good preponderance of evidence to overcome them. And by evidence I mean that which manifests to the spirit (the image or "spark"), because one word of truth dispels a multitude of lies. To tell people that I perceive this to be true and I perceive a massive, intersupportive collection of evidence to be all false, I need to present extraordinary evidence. (I do this all the time when I defend young earth against evolutionists, or lightspeed decay against physicists, or conspiracy facts against journalists.) It's not enough for me to perceive it, because I must test my own perception too when it might be deceiving me. When I do this, I agree that there are unrepaired difficulties in the mainstream narrative of Christian development, but I disagree that they affect the core. There are unresolved concerns in gnostic texts, but they can be harmonized without need of rejecting tradition. So I think you are on a good track, while it's those unsupported assertions that seem unnecessary that appear to me to be dampers on the robustness of your message. And, I'll repeat for my own sake, it may well be that the "spiritual body" has the freedom both to use and to eschew the material, and that Origenist harmony seems like it might address a core concern of gnostics from the very start.
The actual Greek for hearken or obey is hypakouo G5219
I know that. Just read carefully what I wrote "John seems to use active tense". Anyway, I don't want to discuss this any longer.
Ehrman is credentialed but not the guy you want for history as he has an axe to grind. However, if you choose to take his view against those who count Luke the most exact and accurate historian of the era
I don't judge or dismiss anyone, and that includes Bart Ehrman. And I don't care how many credentials one has. I'm interested in the message and Ehrman is absolutely correct here and many other places where he talks about obvious errors and contradictions in the Bible. That's exactly what I found on my own.
I don't really have an issue with you considering "Luke the most exact and accurate historian of the era", however, it's important to note that Luke's historical accounts include both solid data and imaginative reconstructions.
So did the kabbalists, who informed Talmudism
Since you mentioned kabbalists I'm curious to know your view on Kabbalah.
the message of Jesus can be proven without Luke, Acts, Paul, or Hebrews, if you like
Proving Jesus's message? why?
Like I said before Jesus came to teach a message of love and forgiveness and spiritual transformation. There's nothing to prove here. And who needs any proof anyway?
But unless there's evidence they were more inspired than Matthew, Mark, and John, I stick with the direct testimony of what Jesus said
And it doesn't matter what Thomas, Philip, Judas or Mary Magdalene had to say. Hmmm...
You say Matthew, Mark, and John, but I'm sure you mean Luke as well. This takes me back to the council of Nicaea in 325 AD, where Emperor Constantine and the bishops chose which gospels would be canonized and which would be hidden or destroyed. The alternative gospels, Gospel of Thomas a collection of sayings of Jesus given secretly to the apostles, those that gave Mary Magdalene her true power, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Truth, The Gospel of the Egyptians and many more were rejected, their teachings suppressed for centuries. These gospels were branded heresy. Their wisdom was forbidden. And the memory blurred until only fragments remained. But those fragments, those forbidden lines and half buried stories, refuse to die.
There's no evidence church leaders suppressed
I'm getting used to this phrase, "there's no evidence". I've seen it so many times in your replies...
I'm trying to think of a way where a lower level of attention (by leaders who were regularly persecuted) somehow connotes active, official animus, and I don't see it. I do see that Constantine personally censored Arius in 325 as a civil matter, requiring his works to be burned up on pain of death, but Arius was no gnostic
Yes, Gnostics were subjected to censorship. However, it is known that efforts to destroy Gnostic texts were largely successful, resulting in the survival of very little writing by Gnostic thinkers and theologians. And yes, Gnostics were persecuted. Gnostic groups were often persecuted as a result of being declared a heresy. The response of orthodoxy to gnosticism significantly defined the evolution of Christian doctrine and church order. After gnostic and orthodox Christianity parted, Gnostic Christianity continued as a separate movement in some areas for centuries. There's no denial the persecution of Gnostics took place, for example, during the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade.
of course, Peter says Paul is Scripture
Okay. Since you brought up Peter tell me who do you think he was.
Personally I would like to talk about Mary Magdalene. She was not an outcast, as we were led to believe, but was Jesus's closest companion, the one he trusted most with his deepest teachings, the one Peter envied. We could talk about Peter some other time if you wish, I'm still curios on your pov. Mary Magdalene's name is almost always listed first among the women in the gospels, a subtle, powerful signal of her leadership. Just as Peter stands at the head of the male disciples, Mary is the one who leads among the women. Mary wasn't just a disciple, but a mirror for the divine feminine and perhaps one of the most important parts of this sacred story. A story they've quietly hidden from all of us. So why was she silenced? Why for generations did powerful forces work so hard to erase her legacy, twist her image, and bury her wisdom deep within layers of dogma and denial?
All the verses I quoted for pisteuo are active verbs. John 14:1 and Acts 19:4 are both imperative. The only difference is plural versus singular, and Paul uses the aorist which refers to a state of being rather than an immediate action, i.e., "be believing". But it's rare that one needs tense to interpret accurately what a text says.
On my own, I looked at all the classic discrepancies alleged in the Bible, and found that 100% of them rely upon assuming one knows better rather than looking into the culture to see if the person could have had a consistent meaning. The same is true of other holy books like the Quran; if you give the source credit you can resolve every charge of contradiction. The same is not true of any major narrative franchise or cinematic universe proposed nowadays: they all have admitted irreconcilable narrative gaps that are spotted by fans; some of them are retconned by special pleading, and some just ignored. Watson told Holmes he was shot in the arm, then later he was shot in the leg, with no evidence he was shot in both places, and the fans all know that and accept it. But the tensions in long-accepted texts are accepted by fans because they do have reconciliations, not because they are judged irreconcilable; that comes from a contrary spirit. This is why I'm so open to apocrypha and pseudepigrapha: because most of the time they really are reconcilable (and on occasion, when the fans themselves did point out a true impossibility, that remains known and accepted as a reason for the text to have lesser status than others). All the 19th-century skepticism against the Bible rejected the text as culturally transmitted and stood against it to fight it; in prior eras nobody could mass together to do that.
Kabbalah means "received" and should have meant any formal teaching. I pointed out that the same word, in Greek, was used for the confession of the resurrection in the 30s, as evidenced later. It was used by proto-orthodox, by gnostics, by rabbinicals, and by Essenes for their formal creeds and symbols. Only the rabbinical strand retained it as the word "kabbalah", so nowadays it means a narrative containing ten core attributes, the withdrawal of light and the divine spark, and the return of human superpowers, very much like gnosticism with its aeons. Its only problem is if it denies the nature of God while getting sidetracked with its human advancement.
Like I said before Jesus came to teach a message of love and forgiveness and spiritual transformation. There's nothing to prove here.
If it's not proven to someone that love is the way, the message doesn't click. Love requires both the spirit and the mind; if I fail by losing focus on either, I apologize.
This takes me back to the council of Nicaea in 325 AD, where Emperor Constantine and the bishops chose which gospels would be canonized and which would be hidden or destroyed. The alternative gospels, Gospel of Thomas a collection of sayings of Jesus given secretly to the apostles, those that gave Mary Magdalene her true power, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Truth, The Gospel of the Egyptians and many more were rejected, their teachings suppressed for centuries. These gospels were branded heresy. Their wisdom was forbidden. And the memory blurred until only fragments remained.
Didn't happen, fren. There's no Nicene action about the Scriptural canon. I find that Jerome mentioned that Nicea used Judith in its deliberations, but canonization happened later. There was no suppression of any document there except the writings of Arius, there was no branding any of these as heresy, there was no forbidding their reading. The Gospel of Thomas found was dated 340; its use was noted by Cyril in the 4th century and continued by Manichaeans in the 5th. The Gospel of Mary didn't circulate enough to get much notice from the church, it appears to be 2nd-century origin from its framing, and only has a couple Coptic and Greek manuscripts. The Gospel of Philip also circulated into later in the 4th century, though its origin may be 3rd-century in Syriac thought. The Gospel of Truth which we have may have been one rejected by Irenaeus, or may have been written in the 4th century, but it had enough literary merit that it circulated quite awhile and was knowably related to (but distinct from) Valentinian gnosticism. The Gospel of the Egyptians (Coptic), with five ogdoads, Sakla creating archons, is also late in Nag Hammadi but I don't see its immediate provenance (it sounds quite late with its developments).
So, trying to make the best reconciliation of your statement, what I find is: (1) Constantine did make up a list, exact contents unknown, of books to be included in 50 Bibles he ordered for printing for Constantinople; this is not likely equal to the dual canon that arose later. (2) There are no acts through the 4th century calling for destruction of old texts circulating among Christians besides those of Arius. (3) Nag Hammadi did take it on itself to protect (and lose track of) a number of the alternative books, which very few others were able to do; yet this was not active suppression or rejection. (4) There were individuals who deprecated individual books in exactly the same way any opinion was raised against any book, including some of the canonical books like Hebrews, 1-3 John, and Revelation. (5) The boundary between heresy and orthodoxy was pretty straightforward at this time, with the only blurry one being that Valentinus was condemned 200 years later (I can't prove that his works were burned) and some of the circulating works echo Valentinianism.
To paint a narrative in which a coordinated power actively suppressed and rejected apocrypha and pseudepigrapha would go against the fact that when there was active suppression and rejection we have clear marks of it. Now we could try the conspiracy theory that the powers subtly coached Christians toward accepting some and forgetting about others, without overt action, which is indeed a general trend that happens over centuries, but that potential framing doesn't agree with yours. What actually happens is that leaders either condemn books on their own initiative as voices in a continuum, or groups give formal condemnation in the cases of clearly defined heresies like that of Arius, or certain books are promoted to the neglect of other books. But for the most part Christian leaders allowed ideas to circulate so that they could be proven right or wrong, and only judged heresies after long periods of circulation. The idea that Christian emperors secretly judged writings to be detrimental to their retaining power is belied by their not taking formal action against them; I wouldn't have a problem with counting these emperors as engaging an informal war of attrition against them when noticed, but the manuscripts were too weakly supported already to be worthy of formal imperial attention.
But those fragments, those forbidden lines and half buried stories, refuse to die.
I'm all for going to all the sources, there's tremendous much in Egyptology for instance. They give alternatives of what was thought at the time. It rarely means that those at the time were all wrong and the hidden text was all correct; it usually only means that our current understanding has occasional neglected aspects. Considering all the uncovered stories we've now accessed, I don't see that much in the way of significant error. I'm pretty active about one such error, the loss of 7th-day Sabbath, but after 25 years of investigation I was finally able to reconcile church practice with the actual meaning of the 7th day, and I think such reconciliation is available for any gnostic tension.
When I say there's no evidence, it's an invitation for evidence (manuscripts and archaeology) to be produced. I greatly appreciate your producing narrative, which I judge on the likelihood of its fit to the known evidence.
Yes, Gnostics were subjected to censorship. However, it is known that efforts to destroy Gnostic texts were largely successful, resulting in the survival of very little writing by Gnostic thinkers and theologians. And yes, Gnostics were persecuted. Gnostic groups were often persecuted as a result of being declared a heresy. The response of orthodoxy to gnosticism significantly defined the evolution of Christian doctrine and church order. After gnostic and orthodox Christianity parted, Gnostic Christianity continued as a separate movement in some areas for centuries.
I don't see it. I see that Irenaeus ridiculed Valentinus, and Hippolytus condemned Naassenes, which would obviously chill some gnostic speech locally, but that is not censorship. There was no hierarchical structure and Irenaeus worked by voluntaryism and bridge-building, not authoritarianism. I don't see efforts to destroy gnostic texts. I see that gnostic teachers had a bad habit of mostly not committing to writing texts. As I said, Manichaeanism was the chief surviving aspect of gnosticism because it contained reconcilable elements instead of being a personality cult. Tertullian rehabilitated it, and then Augustine claimed what could still be retained of its usefulness. I might grant you that Theodosian I created a "parting of ways" in 381 or 382 (not under the name gnosticism but Manichaeanism), but I see nothing about suppression of the gnostic system in those edicts, only about generic (loosely enforced) deprecation of teachings against trinitarianism. There was no formal schism event for gnosticism that I see, and I try to find all the schism events!
There's no denial the persecution of Gnostics took place, for example, during the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade.
I didn't think we were talking about medieval times because that isn't about the Roman empire's fears but about the HRE's fears, which is quite different.
Peter the fisherman has a career described in the gospels and the two letters attributed to him. Why would I doubt his place as a unique leader among the disciples? Maybe you're trying to ask if I think him supreme as opposed to primary?
I also have no problem with greater study on the role of every Mary and other woman in the NT. It is very traditional to regard the Virgin Mary as a mirror for the divine feminine, and there's evidence this also transfers to Mary Magdalene (though some gnostics transferred it to their own love interests, which was generally regarded as a warning sign because demonstrably abused much more than used). I don't think Magdalene was silenced. The oral tradition that went into the Gospel of Mary was not strong, but now we have it and it fits with the rest. But what's overlooked is that the diatesseron gospels, whose glorification and ennoblement of women is now banally familiar to us, were cutting-edge at the time in their promotion of the feminine and contradicted the suppression of women in most other contemporary Hebrew, Greek, or Latin texts. So Mary was not silenced, but she was given a nonpareil place as first witness of the resurrection and her influence was demonstrated in hundreds of cases of Christian promotion of femininity. The fact that the Gospel of Mary is within that trend, and has a few unique aspects not found elsewhere, is not a real loss of any doctrine of femininity.
Similarly, Christians made exceeding much of the character of Sophia as depicted in their sourcetexts like Proverbs 8. They overcame Greek abstractions by presenting a real power compatible with the many prior indications in Judaism, and this overlapped with their high view of the Virgin and others. This is why they didn't neatly accept a message that Sophia ever erred, or indeed that the Virgin Mary ever did. It seems to me that every case that can be made, saying that something about females is neglected, can be answered by demonstration from orthodox tradition that it was not neglected but promoted. The primary contribution of the Gospel of Mary is the mystic experience, which is echoed in later anchorite traditions of gnosis and theoria; that experience developed from the first century but was only hinted at it in small bits and has taken centuries for any movement to get well-established views about. So I don't see much there for a story of silencing. We could certainly theorize together that certain truths were omitted or sidelined, but if they are really truths they can be tested objectively!
Okay, to fulfill what was already brought, yes.
James 1:26-27 promoted true religion. Jesus contrasted that with vain religion (vain worship), Matt. 15:9, Mark 7:7. The word itself is neutral. I think what Jesus ended is more rightly called legalism.
When 1 Cor. 15:3 says "I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures", scholars are agreed that "received" means an oral creed "Christ died for our sins" was circulating formally among the apostles 2-5 years after the resurrection. 1 Peter 2:24 has it, "His own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed." There are several theological theories on the meaning, but in addition to nullifying sin he certainly also removed sin from us, bearing the illusion away. These distinctions sound semantic.
Yeah, mostly, because the meaning of miracle has changed. The Bible calls them miracles in the sense of "unexplained". When people know the natural laws he used, they become more "explained", more commonplace and less wondrous. So both he and we perform the unexplained in our eras.
I showed you John 14:1 and I don't know your thoughts on it. When Jesus speaks of knowing yourself it's in more of a negative sense, Luke 9:55, but it doesn't contradict the much greater emphasis he places on knowing him, John 17:3 etc. Why would knowing yourself contradict Jesus's statement to believe in God and in himself?
Calling it a "spark" isn't clear at all; he obviously taught on the "image" of God in man, Matt. 22:20 ff. He constantly affirmed the covenant reliance on the resurrection of the body and on the difference between this age and the coming age, and those two traditions balanced the temporal and the everlasting. Yes, 2 Peter 1:13-14 speaks of putting off this tabernacle without speaking of what is to come, but I acknowledged the mystery by pointing out that there may not be a conflict between the Christian tradition of general resurrection and the power to manifest as spiritual instead of material-pragmatic. So framing the message this way doesn't seem the "clearest" form.
Okay.
Jesus taught faith (believing) in himself. The apostles taught predestination, Acts 4:28, in accord with the tradition saying all is foreknown and determined and yet free will is given. Now, you make a distinction between faith being a gift (not the literal language of Eph. 2 though) and faith being something one does, but those are two sides of the same coin. You can't have faith without believing, and you can't have faith without the gift of God being involved (none come unless the Father draws them, John 6:44). So the two always manifest together, implying they are the same thing. Jesus taught conversion, Matt. 18:3, and he taught that he was the resurrection, John 11:25. So I see that if you think that believing and being given faith are contradictory, you'd have a problem, but why would they be contradictory? Whatever man does, God is doing the work of ensuring man does it.
Still looking.
Faith is tied to that but isn't precisely synonymous. Lately this might be called "faith walk" or "working faith". James 2:18 says we show faith by what we do, so they are different. Yet he emphasizes faith always accompanies this relationship and experience.
"Pistis" is translated both faith and belief. Now, I agree with the criticism that faith is more than propositional trust but involves personal trust in the individual; James 2:19-20 agrees too. And I agree with the idea that it shouldn't be oversimplified, although 1 John gives several simple tests distinguishing saved from damned that are very propositional. But these tests work because they rightly reflect whether the person has the whole relationship or not. What we've corrupted that into is the idea that saying the words is a free ticket and lifestyle is irrelevant, but in the culture your words would be proven by your lifestyle. And Paul didn't change that, it came much later. Debate about theological position isn't very effective (unless it distinguishes the god one believes in from another); experience in Christ's body is indeed everything. But that's why I'm working with you experientially (even as I present texts to you as I experience them).
So on this point, I agree there is a difference between propositional faith and the personal faith Jesus taught, but taking everything Paul said he is not teaching mere propositional faith in Eph. 2 and should not be taken as if he is.
Well, the disciples accepted "miracles" in the sense "unexplained", throughout the gospels and indeed as a mark of Jesus's character in secular sources. Obviously some things happen that we don't have explanation for, and even good scientists admit that despite the fullness of the known laws of physics. It would be silly to say Jesus did nothing unexplained because we've found all the explanations, or worse to say it's because Jesus couldn't possibly have used deeper laws we haven't explained yet. It's unclear what you're going for. If you're saying any account of Jesus doing something inexplicable is spurious, that would mean we should talk about whether we understand all the laws of the world or whether there are still unknowns. But if Jesus did rise from the dead bodily, then there's no problem in saying so and calling it a miracle, and raising people from the dead bodily ourselves.
The Bible was still open canon then. Peter and Jude followed the same rules by which their Hebrew Bible was approved, saying that new Scriptures might arise that were equal to the old; only John was able to discern when the canon closed. Thus if it was passed down from authority (as the OT was) and accepted by many generations of believers, it became a Scriptural teaching; if it didn't, like the Didache (which is very good teaching), it was treated as secondary and often forgotten. Paul rejects mere human tradition, Col. 2:8, like Mark 7:13, but I see he also affirms received tradition, 2 Thess. 2:15, 3:6. But this word, which means "received" or "delivered", also refers to what Jesus received from the Father to share with us, Matt. 11:27, 25:14. I don't see anything about tradition transcending the Bible. After creeds were formed, an impression could be taken that they were regarded as more important than Biblical texts, but good churches affirm they are merely summaries of the inspired Bible. So this sounds like a criticism of medieval Christianity, not of Paul.
That was a major medieval error, but hardly "most of Christian history" because the disuse of Latin only crept in maybe about the 8th or 9th century, and vernacular Bibles were published from maybe the 12th century on. That really has little to do with Paul.
Do you submit to what direct study of sacred text reveals? I've cited much sacred text. We all have personal duty to interpret rightly. But, as with math, the same text gives the same core answers to everyone. If you doubt the view of the majority, you stand on your conscience while also seeking whether a miscommunication or semantic difference might solve the disharmony. Again, the Reformation happened because the medieval church abused the personal duty to interpret (i.e. prohibiting personal interpretation), but the other direction of abuse (i.e. wrong interpretation) is also a problem.
Reformers have always agreed that institutional power and hierarchy are easily corrupted and need regular auditing.
Yes, and those who did believed the same of the other apostles, and treated them the same.
Why did he say to honor everything that comes from Moses's seat, and everything belonging to Caesar?
Autonomy means law unto oneself. Jesus and Paul taught we are judged by a law external to oneself. We have managerial (limited) autonomy in the sense of responsibility, and, when we take the law into our own hands rather than uphold the external we've received, that's where our responsibility and limited autonomy fails as a result of the total autonomy of the Monad. Once again you're getting this word "autonomy" that isn't in the text, and I don't know why you speak as if your words not in the text are better summaries than the text itself.
Paul appeals to Jesus's words just as other apostles do. They all experienced Jesus's words and invite others to experience them, initially mediated by them as teachers until we are mature enough to experience them immediately for ourselves. Paul said, "Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ" (1 Cor. 11:1), meaning that when he fails to follow Christ we are not to follow him (Gal. 1:8). Paul never says "believe me" (though he might affirm that Isaiah 52 says "believe me"). Why do you say this?
Okay.
Gnosticism had essentially disappeared before then; it had migrated into Montanism, Ebionitism, and other more sustainable systems. These forms did persist after Nicea and were not persecuted over experience or conscientious disagreement with other authorities; the only deprecation was over teaching a different Jesus or different gospel, but disagreements between churches were routinely hammered out by focus on unity (until the bishop of Rome started the idea of demanding submission, which was some time after Nicea). Nicea didn't "eliminate" any version of Christianity except by deprecating Arianism, which survived for centuries in western Europe anyway. Yes, independence was lost over time, I agree with you in mourning that, but that's why we had a Reformation. It's not related to Paul.
They weren't rejected, they just never rose to become Scripture. The "kingdom within" was accepted as gospel.
I agree. What it doesn't show is how to correct the narrative or how blaming Paul does any good. The whole true narrative can be shown without any reference to Paul, because people were already showing the whole true narrative before Paul came.
The word used here πιστεύω (pisteúō) means to obey. Strong 4100 pisteúō (from 4102 pístis). John seems to use active tense pisteuō rather than pistis in his gospel. Suggests most of the translations in John are about obeying in Jesus rather than simply obeying him[John] or any other earthly authority.
Like I said before we don't know for certain who wrote the Gospel according to Luke, but we do know whoever wrote it was sympathetic of Paul. Most likely a follower of Paul. "The gospels are written by men and it seems to me that it perhaps shouldn't be as problematic as people claim it might be to just say look I still believe in the thrust of the story but Luke just got this bit wrong. I know well it'd be much easier for people just to do that and a lot of people do of course. I was trained at Princeton Theological Seminary..." - Bart Ehrman
It's very clear to me. The Gnostics called it the divine spark. A fragment of the original light not trapped in your body like a prisoner but radiating through your body like light through a window. The window is not the light. But without the window, the light does not enter the room. All you have to do is create a space within your mind. That's what Buddhists do, just pay attention. In that gap lives your freedom. In that gap the spark becomes perceptible. The Gnostic teachers called this gap the bridal chamber. This bridal chamber in the Gospel of Philip is a metaphor for a divine union. The place where the divided reunites. The Gospel of Thomas says, "When you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, then you will enter the kingdom.". This is not riddle. This is instruction. When your inner attention becomes as vivid as your outer attention, when you can perceive inwardly with the same clarity you perceive outwardly, the barrier dissolves. The kingdom you have been seeking outside reveals itself to have been accessible from within all along.
Remember I was talking about Jesus's message, recognition, authority and declaration. First comes recognition. You are not creating this spark. You are not imagining it. You are simply noticing what was always there. A part of you already knows this. A part of you remembers this. That knowing is not coming from your brain. Your brain never learned this. That knowing is coming from the spark itself. It recognizes its own path home. Next is the loosening of fear. Fear is fundamentally an outward orientation. It is concern about what might come from outside to harm you. When you establish yourself inwardly, you find a place that cannot be threatened. The body can be touched, the mind can be disturbed, but the spark is beyond reach. It existed before this body and will exist after. From that place, fear becomes information rather than prison. You can feel it without being controlled by it. This is not denial of fear. This is transcendence of fear. The spark knows things your mind does not. When you establish connection with it, you begin to receive direction. Not as audible voices, not as visions, as knowing. You simply know to go here, to avoid there, to speak now, to stay silent. The more you trust this guidance, the more accurate it becomes. Jesus's mission was not to glorify this world but to expose its counterfeit nature and to awaken the divine spark trapped within humanity. According to Gnostics this spark serves as the navigator for the voyage homeward. It doesn't proclaim loudly, it murmurs softly. The more attentively you heed, the more potent it grows. Igniting the divine spark means reclaiming your true identity. Not solely a vessel or a consciousness, but an entity forged from the Monad's infinite substance.
I agree that's what it says. Also, Paul teaches predestination and he argues that faith is a gift from God rather being something self-generated. But, I'm not saying to "make a distinction between faith being a gift and faith being something one does". You don't need faith, all you need is recognition, that is recognize the divine spark in you. And once you do that you know you have authority. Lucifer did not create your divine spark. He created the cage that surrounds it. And he appointed the archons to guard that cage and keep you from remembering what you truly are.
I always doubt the view of the majority. It's probably the most important lesson I have learned in life, the majority is most of the time wrong. Jesus said the majority still go on the broad way to destruction (Mat 7:13).
Jesus's message is about compassion of forgiveness. Not about Moses or Caesar. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven because if you're poor you are defying the material reality to win in this game created by Lucifer you yourself have to become a monster therefore the wealthy the powerful are evil people. If you're poor you don't participate in this evilness and therefore you're you are blessed by God.
Okay. To me that's just another way of defining censorship.
It's not just Paul. IMO, it's everything that served the imperial interests since Paul.
Don't know where you're getting that, pisteuo is the verb and pistis is the noun of the same thing, and the cluster of concepts is faith, belief, trust. Obedience is allied to these, and theologically manifests alongside them, but it's not the same thing. The actual Greek for hearken or obey is hypakouo G5219, which Jesus doesn't use about our relation to him. But Paul uses the same pisteuo G4100 as Jesus uses in the same way, Acts 16:31, 19:4, Gal. 2:16, Phil. 1:29, 1 Tim. 1:16. So even if there were distinction between pisteuo and pistis, Paul and Jesus are saying the same thing with pisteuo.
Ehrman is credentialed but not the guy you want for history as he has an axe to grind. However, if you choose to take his view against those who count Luke the most exact and accurate historian of the era, the message of Jesus can be proven without Luke, Acts, Paul, or Hebrews, if you like.
So did the kabbalists, who informed Talmudism. But unless there's evidence they were more inspired than Matthew, Mark, and John, I stick with the direct testimony of what Jesus said, and he said "image" to reflect the language of Genesis. It's not that relevant what it's called, as long as we are clear on what it is.
I.e., the union of Christ and his bride. This doesn't happen without the will of both Christ and the bride. Thomas similarly describes the union of Self and Other (though this is partial). The kingdom manifests both within and without at the same time. (And, all of that seems the same in Jesus and in Paul.)
Yes, always there but inactive until awoken.
The divine nature preexisted; the image or "spark" is newly manifested at conception but its preexistence is in the divine plan, which is a little different but compatible.
That's a fair way of saying it's internal. When guidance comes externally, it must be tested as it may be divine or it may be creaturely and brought to you as a test.
I'll affirm that because it reminds me Jesus and Paul did use lots of fire language. One that comes to mind, often ignored, is 2 Tim. 1:6, "Stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands"; that's definitely a fire reference.
What is your meaning for "faith" here? When I recognize something, I believe it. Perhaps you mean no further propositions are needed for "belief" than a core recognition of the divine? Oh, but that's Heb. 11:6, which interestingly doesn't mention Jesus.
I don't attribute any creation or appointment to him. I don't count the physical as any prison; 1 Peter 3:19 said that death (separation) was the prison. The whole idea of the physical being a mistake comes from that cosmology, informed by Egypt and Greece, that attempts to get the Monad off the hook for evil existing but just complicates the narrative, as I've said. If John the Baptist can begin to testify from the womb, it seems that the fictive prison threats and guards are not able to convince everyone they are real. What good does it do to your system to give them any credit instead of just to say that all their pretense at control is just part of their deception? Why should we make lucifer out to be more powerful than Jesus says he is?
I quoted you how he applied it to Moses and Caesar. He said to submit to both of them what is their due. The spiritual message you cite, poverty of spirit, doesn't contradict that.
Censorship is active, official suppression. There's no evidence church leaders suppressed all the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha; they relied heavily on Maccabees, Odes of Solomon, Didache, and quoted and circulated many others, including uncountable patristics. It's just that known apostolic books got quoted and circulated much more. I'm trying to think of a way where a lower level of attention (by leaders who were regularly persecuted) somehow connotes active, official animus, and I don't see it. I do see that Constantine personally censored Arius in 325 as a civil matter, requiring his works to be burned up on pain of death, but Arius was no gnostic and this has nothing to do with texts that circulated with public approval.
Summary: I've been looking for support for your distinctives and not finding it, while I'm happy to agree with a number of statements you make that are found in more systems than your own and often in the Bible or in Thomas. If you want to deprecate Luke and Paul, they're gravy but we can learn the truth without them (of course, Peter says Paul is Scripture, but that's a point that need not be made tendentious). If you want to glorify lucifer and the archons, you're free to do that but I don't participate and I think in the long run it's unhelpful to you. About my only concern is that I'm seeing a trend of the way you see things not lining up with the texts or with the history as we have them. When that's the case, the texts and history might be wrong, but it takes a good preponderance of evidence to overcome them. And by evidence I mean that which manifests to the spirit (the image or "spark"), because one word of truth dispels a multitude of lies. To tell people that I perceive this to be true and I perceive a massive, intersupportive collection of evidence to be all false, I need to present extraordinary evidence. (I do this all the time when I defend young earth against evolutionists, or lightspeed decay against physicists, or conspiracy facts against journalists.) It's not enough for me to perceive it, because I must test my own perception too when it might be deceiving me. When I do this, I agree that there are unrepaired difficulties in the mainstream narrative of Christian development, but I disagree that they affect the core. There are unresolved concerns in gnostic texts, but they can be harmonized without need of rejecting tradition. So I think you are on a good track, while it's those unsupported assertions that seem unnecessary that appear to me to be dampers on the robustness of your message. And, I'll repeat for my own sake, it may well be that the "spiritual body" has the freedom both to use and to eschew the material, and that Origenist harmony seems like it might address a core concern of gnostics from the very start.
I know that. Just read carefully what I wrote "John seems to use active tense". Anyway, I don't want to discuss this any longer.
I don't judge or dismiss anyone, and that includes Bart Ehrman. And I don't care how many credentials one has. I'm interested in the message and Ehrman is absolutely correct here and many other places where he talks about obvious errors and contradictions in the Bible. That's exactly what I found on my own.
I don't really have an issue with you considering "Luke the most exact and accurate historian of the era", however, it's important to note that Luke's historical accounts include both solid data and imaginative reconstructions.
Since you mentioned kabbalists I'm curious to know your view on Kabbalah.
Proving Jesus's message? why?
Like I said before Jesus came to teach a message of love and forgiveness and spiritual transformation. There's nothing to prove here. And who needs any proof anyway?
And it doesn't matter what Thomas, Philip, Judas or Mary Magdalene had to say. Hmmm...
You say Matthew, Mark, and John, but I'm sure you mean Luke as well. This takes me back to the council of Nicaea in 325 AD, where Emperor Constantine and the bishops chose which gospels would be canonized and which would be hidden or destroyed. The alternative gospels, Gospel of Thomas a collection of sayings of Jesus given secretly to the apostles, those that gave Mary Magdalene her true power, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Truth, The Gospel of the Egyptians and many more were rejected, their teachings suppressed for centuries. These gospels were branded heresy. Their wisdom was forbidden. And the memory blurred until only fragments remained. But those fragments, those forbidden lines and half buried stories, refuse to die.
I'm getting used to this phrase, "there's no evidence". I've seen it so many times in your replies...
Yes, Gnostics were subjected to censorship. However, it is known that efforts to destroy Gnostic texts were largely successful, resulting in the survival of very little writing by Gnostic thinkers and theologians. And yes, Gnostics were persecuted. Gnostic groups were often persecuted as a result of being declared a heresy. The response of orthodoxy to gnosticism significantly defined the evolution of Christian doctrine and church order. After gnostic and orthodox Christianity parted, Gnostic Christianity continued as a separate movement in some areas for centuries. There's no denial the persecution of Gnostics took place, for example, during the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade.
Okay. Since you brought up Peter tell me who do you think he was.
Personally I would like to talk about Mary Magdalene. She was not an outcast, as we were led to believe, but was Jesus's closest companion, the one he trusted most with his deepest teachings, the one Peter envied. We could talk about Peter some other time if you wish, I'm still curios on your pov. Mary Magdalene's name is almost always listed first among the women in the gospels, a subtle, powerful signal of her leadership. Just as Peter stands at the head of the male disciples, Mary is the one who leads among the women. Mary wasn't just a disciple, but a mirror for the divine feminine and perhaps one of the most important parts of this sacred story. A story they've quietly hidden from all of us. So why was she silenced? Why for generations did powerful forces work so hard to erase her legacy, twist her image, and bury her wisdom deep within layers of dogma and denial?
All the verses I quoted for pisteuo are active verbs. John 14:1 and Acts 19:4 are both imperative. The only difference is plural versus singular, and Paul uses the aorist which refers to a state of being rather than an immediate action, i.e., "be believing". But it's rare that one needs tense to interpret accurately what a text says.
On my own, I looked at all the classic discrepancies alleged in the Bible, and found that 100% of them rely upon assuming one knows better rather than looking into the culture to see if the person could have had a consistent meaning. The same is true of other holy books like the Quran; if you give the source credit you can resolve every charge of contradiction. The same is not true of any major narrative franchise or cinematic universe proposed nowadays: they all have admitted irreconcilable narrative gaps that are spotted by fans; some of them are retconned by special pleading, and some just ignored. Watson told Holmes he was shot in the arm, then later he was shot in the leg, with no evidence he was shot in both places, and the fans all know that and accept it. But the tensions in long-accepted texts are accepted by fans because they do have reconciliations, not because they are judged irreconcilable; that comes from a contrary spirit. This is why I'm so open to apocrypha and pseudepigrapha: because most of the time they really are reconcilable (and on occasion, when the fans themselves did point out a true impossibility, that remains known and accepted as a reason for the text to have lesser status than others). All the 19th-century skepticism against the Bible rejected the text as culturally transmitted and stood against it to fight it; in prior eras nobody could mass together to do that.
Kabbalah means "received" and should have meant any formal teaching. I pointed out that the same word, in Greek, was used for the confession of the resurrection in the 30s, as evidenced later. It was used by proto-orthodox, by gnostics, by rabbinicals, and by Essenes for their formal creeds and symbols. Only the rabbinical strand retained it as the word "kabbalah", so nowadays it means a narrative containing ten core attributes, the withdrawal of light and the divine spark, and the return of human superpowers, very much like gnosticism with its aeons. Its only problem is if it denies the nature of God while getting sidetracked with its human advancement.
If it's not proven to someone that love is the way, the message doesn't click. Love requires both the spirit and the mind; if I fail by losing focus on either, I apologize.
Didn't happen, fren. There's no Nicene action about the Scriptural canon. I find that Jerome mentioned that Nicea used Judith in its deliberations, but canonization happened later. There was no suppression of any document there except the writings of Arius, there was no branding any of these as heresy, there was no forbidding their reading. The Gospel of Thomas found was dated 340; its use was noted by Cyril in the 4th century and continued by Manichaeans in the 5th. The Gospel of Mary didn't circulate enough to get much notice from the church, it appears to be 2nd-century origin from its framing, and only has a couple Coptic and Greek manuscripts. The Gospel of Philip also circulated into later in the 4th century, though its origin may be 3rd-century in Syriac thought. The Gospel of Truth which we have may have been one rejected by Irenaeus, or may have been written in the 4th century, but it had enough literary merit that it circulated quite awhile and was knowably related to (but distinct from) Valentinian gnosticism. The Gospel of the Egyptians (Coptic), with five ogdoads, Sakla creating archons, is also late in Nag Hammadi but I don't see its immediate provenance (it sounds quite late with its developments).
So, trying to make the best reconciliation of your statement, what I find is: (1) Constantine did make up a list, exact contents unknown, of books to be included in 50 Bibles he ordered for printing for Constantinople; this is not likely equal to the dual canon that arose later. (2) There are no acts through the 4th century calling for destruction of old texts circulating among Christians besides those of Arius. (3) Nag Hammadi did take it on itself to protect (and lose track of) a number of the alternative books, which very few others were able to do; yet this was not active suppression or rejection. (4) There were individuals who deprecated individual books in exactly the same way any opinion was raised against any book, including some of the canonical books like Hebrews, 1-3 John, and Revelation. (5) The boundary between heresy and orthodoxy was pretty straightforward at this time, with the only blurry one being that Valentinus was condemned 200 years later (I can't prove that his works were burned) and some of the circulating works echo Valentinianism.
To paint a narrative in which a coordinated power actively suppressed and rejected apocrypha and pseudepigrapha would go against the fact that when there was active suppression and rejection we have clear marks of it. Now we could try the conspiracy theory that the powers subtly coached Christians toward accepting some and forgetting about others, without overt action, which is indeed a general trend that happens over centuries, but that potential framing doesn't agree with yours. What actually happens is that leaders either condemn books on their own initiative as voices in a continuum, or groups give formal condemnation in the cases of clearly defined heresies like that of Arius, or certain books are promoted to the neglect of other books. But for the most part Christian leaders allowed ideas to circulate so that they could be proven right or wrong, and only judged heresies after long periods of circulation. The idea that Christian emperors secretly judged writings to be detrimental to their retaining power is belied by their not taking formal action against them; I wouldn't have a problem with counting these emperors as engaging an informal war of attrition against them when noticed, but the manuscripts were too weakly supported already to be worthy of formal imperial attention.
I'm all for going to all the sources, there's tremendous much in Egyptology for instance. They give alternatives of what was thought at the time. It rarely means that those at the time were all wrong and the hidden text was all correct; it usually only means that our current understanding has occasional neglected aspects. Considering all the uncovered stories we've now accessed, I don't see that much in the way of significant error. I'm pretty active about one such error, the loss of 7th-day Sabbath, but after 25 years of investigation I was finally able to reconcile church practice with the actual meaning of the 7th day, and I think such reconciliation is available for any gnostic tension.
When I say there's no evidence, it's an invitation for evidence (manuscripts and archaeology) to be produced. I greatly appreciate your producing narrative, which I judge on the likelihood of its fit to the known evidence.
I don't see it. I see that Irenaeus ridiculed Valentinus, and Hippolytus condemned Naassenes, which would obviously chill some gnostic speech locally, but that is not censorship. There was no hierarchical structure and Irenaeus worked by voluntaryism and bridge-building, not authoritarianism. I don't see efforts to destroy gnostic texts. I see that gnostic teachers had a bad habit of mostly not committing to writing texts. As I said, Manichaeanism was the chief surviving aspect of gnosticism because it contained reconcilable elements instead of being a personality cult. Tertullian rehabilitated it, and then Augustine claimed what could still be retained of its usefulness. I might grant you that Theodosian I created a "parting of ways" in 381 or 382 (not under the name gnosticism but Manichaeanism), but I see nothing about suppression of the gnostic system in those edicts, only about generic (loosely enforced) deprecation of teachings against trinitarianism. There was no formal schism event for gnosticism that I see, and I try to find all the schism events!
I didn't think we were talking about medieval times because that isn't about the Roman empire's fears but about the HRE's fears, which is quite different.
Peter the fisherman has a career described in the gospels and the two letters attributed to him. Why would I doubt his place as a unique leader among the disciples? Maybe you're trying to ask if I think him supreme as opposed to primary?
I also have no problem with greater study on the role of every Mary and other woman in the NT. It is very traditional to regard the Virgin Mary as a mirror for the divine feminine, and there's evidence this also transfers to Mary Magdalene (though some gnostics transferred it to their own love interests, which was generally regarded as a warning sign because demonstrably abused much more than used). I don't think Magdalene was silenced. The oral tradition that went into the Gospel of Mary was not strong, but now we have it and it fits with the rest. But what's overlooked is that the diatesseron gospels, whose glorification and ennoblement of women is now banally familiar to us, were cutting-edge at the time in their promotion of the feminine and contradicted the suppression of women in most other contemporary Hebrew, Greek, or Latin texts. So Mary was not silenced, but she was given a nonpareil place as first witness of the resurrection and her influence was demonstrated in hundreds of cases of Christian promotion of femininity. The fact that the Gospel of Mary is within that trend, and has a few unique aspects not found elsewhere, is not a real loss of any doctrine of femininity.
Similarly, Christians made exceeding much of the character of Sophia as depicted in their sourcetexts like Proverbs 8. They overcame Greek abstractions by presenting a real power compatible with the many prior indications in Judaism, and this overlapped with their high view of the Virgin and others. This is why they didn't neatly accept a message that Sophia ever erred, or indeed that the Virgin Mary ever did. It seems to me that every case that can be made, saying that something about females is neglected, can be answered by demonstration from orthodox tradition that it was not neglected but promoted. The primary contribution of the Gospel of Mary is the mystic experience, which is echoed in later anchorite traditions of gnosis and theoria; that experience developed from the first century but was only hinted at it in small bits and has taken centuries for any movement to get well-established views about. So I don't see much there for a story of silencing. We could certainly theorize together that certain truths were omitted or sidelined, but if they are really truths they can be tested objectively!