What he actually said was that he wanted to have a book just like That Hideous Strength but without the Christianity.
Another supplement: Hoaxes of the same kind are relatively rare with respect to other peoples. I do see several cases where the Quran is deliberately misquoted so as to advocate against Islam, and unlike the Talmud they are not too many to list. So here's those that I've encountered, along with cases where the Quran is presented in correct context.
Accurate Quran quotations (1):
2025-11-27 towards8 "Quran 5:82"
Quran misquotations (6):
2021-12-06 mlitton4 "You go get them, guys"
2025-07-23 1776now "Mohammed set the explicit example by marrying 6yo Aisha then consummating raping her at 9yo. He encouraged others to do the same."
2025-12-20 Gibs2 (graphic of 12 misquotations)
2026-01-05 Bildthewall (graphic of 12 misquotations)
2026-01-08 BerlinWallCrosser (graphic of 8 misquotations)
2026-01-13 SenorTrumper "13 DOCTRINES"
There are more, a bit more frequent than I thought. Will keep this updated. However, comparing misquotation of anything in the Quran to misquotation of one Talmud passage, Gittin 57a, the Talmud is still taking a much bigger hit.
I wasn't actually interested in the subject but let's see.
Pam Bondi says "antisemitism has been allowed to grow unchecked" 2026-01-16.
Yosef Mizrachi says Christian Republicans support Israel.
Yaron Reuven of BeEzrat Hashem says "right now he's in boiling feces" (overlay misquotes Gittin 57a as "Jesus is being punished in hell by sitting forever in boiling excrement").
Yosef Mizrahi speaks of death penalty for fake books and fake prophets ("Bible" and "Jesus" are inferred), idolaters have no right to live.
Yaron Reuven says the Word of God is only in the Torah.
Alon Anava of Atzmut says if the Talmud wanted to talk about Jesus or the Vatican, they changed the name, which is rather silly because nothing was called "the Vatican" in Talmudic times and the Talmud says nothing about any bishop in Rome.
It looks like Reuven and Anava are just "internet rabbis" (Reuven is RAA-certified) who do not have congregations but who are permitted to teach. I've been asking about congregational rabbis. I will count Reuven on the list of Jews who openly blaspheme Jesus, but again this is not held as a tenet of Judaism but only a folk opinion permitted to be circulated, as it isn't what the Talmud says.
Sorry, you're repeating hoax #9.
Did you know that if you changed your platform from antinatalism to antitaxation and changed nothing else you'd instantly sound ten times saner? But always going for the extinction angle. Perhaps I need not reply to you again as you extinguish.
That's why you try to make Yahweh one and the same with the Monad. They're different entities. And this distinction matters.
Well, I appreciate you saying so. If Monad and Yahweh are different, we're pursuing two different things and can only find harmony in some deeper truth than either. If, however, we are both to pursue truth at all costs, then differences can be reconciled. If my attempts to reconcile disappoint you, I can only encourage you to keep pursuing the truth at all costs and we will get there in time.
For instance, you have Monad as all Consciousness, but you also have him apparently unable to communicate, yet still able to emanate. It seems that if all emanates from the Monad then all must be present in the Monad, both communication and silence, for instance. So that's why I encourage you to attribute more to the Monad than you do, because otherwise the core deity is deficient and overtaken by his emanation. E.g., you do imply Jesus taught the Monad was love; but love is usually regarded as relational and not monistic.
Now when it comes to the ordinary objections people have to Yahweh's depiction in Hebrew, I've found that it regularly amounts simply to reading the text from a very different cultural perspective. Your questions about Yahweh all have good answers if we are willing to give the Hebrew authors credit for seeking to teach good values in their own culture.
-
"Jealousy" is one of those words that can be rightly or wrongly practiced. It is right to be jealous for something worthy. The Monad is worthy of being the core emanator and you are "jealous" on its behalf that it be held there and not deprecated. You might not want to use that word for that practice, but that protectiveness is the same meaning intended in the original. "Jealousy requires separation"? That's needlessly philosophical and separate from how the word was used culturally (it was the same as "zealous" and originally referred to being red-hot).
-
Threats of consequences for doing wrong are normal no matter how righteous the speaker is. If I do wrong, in your wisdom you know things that can go wrong for you and would want to warn me of them, even if I hated and disbelieved your warnings. That's not insecurity or fear.
-
Violence and anger: Just as communication must be present in the Monad, judgment must be present as well, or nothing would be right or wrong. If some things are wrong, there are generally negative natural consequences for doing wrong, or else people would be emboldened to continue doing wrong. So the Monad must be emanating in such unique way that evil consequences befall those who commit evil deeds (even up to one full and wisely placed deluge). This why Paul says, if not so, how could the world be judged? Similarly, humans believe in righteous anger, so it had to come from somewhere; and both violent consequences and a responsive resistance to the one who resists are (monistic) attributes that are the same laws for everyone.
-
Blood sacrifice: Noah's account pointed out that sins that rise to the level of lifeblood are to be paid by lifeblood (Hammurabi later agreed). This is the universal testimony of human justice. Adam's account also says that the way to restore the fellowship of the Creator was by taking on the skins he provided: this was understood as identifying with the innocence of the sacrificial victim and as being one with innocence again. The meat was eaten as a (restoration) covenant meal. Nowadays we eat meat all the time without thinking of the blood shed at all, but its original meaning is identification as innocent. There is no sin in humane slaughter.
-
"Genocide": First, that word was coined by a Jewish lawyer so that it can mean anything and nothing. However, most nations have recognized a principle of just war that includes (1) self-defense and (2) defense of innocents that are being abused by a belligerent. The details are complex given the number of wars in Scripture, but they all fall under teaching the principles of just war. The nations killed by the Israelites (and those killed by several other Semitic and Japhetic tribes) had been killing innocents for generations and all the other peoples of the realm generally agreed that the Canaanites and their allies were subject to the death penalty; and the individual Canaanite cities proved this by their belligerence when terms were sought (with peace-making exceptions like Gibeon). In this cultural context the events are explicable; but for skeptics who aren't interested in learning Near East history or in judging beyond biased appearances, it wouldn't matter.
Let me tell you a story.
Thank you for taking the time to compose your thoughts into a winsome narrative, but that doesn't help me to judge the history as shown by all the evidences.
Evidence: (1) There is no passage in Exodus where God says slaughter everything that breathes, you may be thinking of Deut. 20:16, but it doesn't mention the rest. So your creative narrative is off factually from the start. (2) Exodus (34:5-7) actually says the name of Yahweh was "Merciful and Gracious", as well as just toward the guilty, resolving both poles of the spectrum in One; so that same scroll you mention does teach a God of infinite love. Exodus (13:21) teaches that Yahweh was a Light to his people; same scroll again. (3) Historically, the very doubts you attribute to Peter had already been stated and answered and regarded as moot for centuries by the readers of the prophets. Ezek. 18:25-28 is one example (whole chapter applies), Hab. 1:2-3 another (whole book applies). The answers are deep and require attention and not batting away; and the people were familiar with them, often alluding to the same as self-evident, as Rom. 3:5-6 shows. (4) I pointed out to you that Jesus regularly identified the Father with the I Am, such as by quoting Scriptures using that name, so he was not going to deny the I Am found in the scrolls; and he said not one letter or serif would depart from the scrolls. (5) Just as "Yahweh" would have meant "I Am" (the self-existent) to everyone, if "Yaldabaoth" had been a word it would have been understood as "Yah Sabaoth" to everyone (a title used explicitly by Paul and James) and would've referred to a positive attribute, not a negative deity. (6) I've pointed out that Paul uses the word Demiurge to mean his own Christian God and not Samael (Heb. 11:10). (7) Now that same Bible, as I said, shows a chief archon that does pretend to be the Most High, explicitly so in Is. 14:14, given the name Helel (Lucifer) and who is explicitly different from Yahweh Sabaoth who is contrasted in 14:22 ff. So they already knew of this archon and that he was not Yahweh.
For me to take your narrative as if Jesus taught the rejection of the thousands of references to Yahweh in the Hebrew Scripture when he was noted for being more strict with Scripture than the Pharisees, as if he affirmed Yahweh in public without variation but privately taught the rejection of that same Yahweh, would be contrary to so much evidence that it's staggering to imagine such a disconnected hypothetical. Even if we argued that suppression and manipulation change things they can't change thousands of years of history. If Jesus had taught rejection of Yahweh he would never have had the following of thousands of faithful Jews (and if he had taught contradiction he would not have been worth following either). The reason he was accepted by so many, and by so many more after his death, was that there was no contradiction: like other prophets he had no problem with the Biblical character of Yahweh. The recent imagination that the Hebrew Lord and the Greek Lord are different is exceptionally strained and distant from the evidence.
in the 4th century, they removed every reference to Jesus exposing Yahweh as the Demiurge.
Argument from silence, there is no reference to Jesus rejecting Yahweh. There were many texts circulating, disagreeing with each other, but there was no "removal" because there was no compiled "book" from which to remove something. All Scriptures began as ordinary scrolls and were only counted as Scriptures after centuries of the covenant people accepting them as such; any other ordinary scrolls had ordinary circulation and never achieved broad recognition of being Scripture (though many reached a secondary level of "deuterocanonical"). The idea that there was some event at which a holy text could be expurgated and all centuries of prior evidence removed is, frankly, inquisitorial.
They burned the Gnostic Gospels.
There is no evidence of this. The only books I find burned by these Christians were Arius and Priscillian, neither of which are anything like gnostic.
They hunted the teachers who preserved the distinction because they knew the danger.
I don't know who this could refer to because most gnostic schools were closed long before Nicea. I don't know of any pure gnostic systems that could have continued in their own logic; the only thing I know of were side movements that had moved on from gnosticism to incorporate other elements so as to stay relevant with the majority proto-orthodoxy.
If Christians knew that the God of the Old Testament, the God they have been worshiping, praying to, fearing for millennia, was actually the chief archon, the false god of the material prison, not the true father Jesus served. The entire religious system would collapse instantly.
If.
But this question is either settled by agreement on actual facts, or by disagreement (separation). You don't strike me as someone who wants to pursue his own conception of the Monad if it isn't an actual fact.
No more guilt, no more fear of divine punishment, no more sacrificial salvation.
If it's a good thing that we have free will to choose right or wrong, then it follows that there is guilt and disorder for doing wrong and that it takes effort (sacrifice) to correct things that are wrong. If there's no guilt, then nothing is wrong and there's no morality.
Are you saying Sophia is evil because she wanted to have a child and conceived without approval of the Father?
Actually, we do consider that evil when humans do it, it's called eloping. But I'm not saying the narrative calls Sophia good or evil, I'm saying that imperfection entered the world somehow and I think it's silly to say one creature was imperfect and that caused another to be evil involuntarily when you could just say one creature chose of free will to be evil.
how about the story of Jericho or the Amalekites. The attackers killed every inhabitant in the city, men, women, and children. They killed all the oxen, sheep, and donkeys. They spared only a prostitute who had protected their spies, along with her family.
And Joshua sparing them proved that, if anyone else had accepted peace, they would have been spared too. The belligerents in the city were all to be killed; the animals were in this special case destroyed because of the centrality of the corruption. The passage is ambiguous (6:21, the word for youths) and might or might not imply that young children were also killed, but this only happens in one or two explicit passages out of all the Hebrew wars where it's stated that the children were knowing participants in the parents' rebellion.
You allude separately to Amalek, and to the southern campaign summarized in Josh. 10:40. Modern translations recognize that the word translated "utterly destroyed", haram, ultimately means "utterly dedicated" by whatever means (a modern equivalent is "neutralized", which can mean killed or merely incapacitated). It also appears in sources as "harem", dedicated women, who are obviously not destroyed. The kings were stated to be killed; everyone else was neutralized in the most effective way, whether they became casualties of war, or displaced refugees, or defectors like Gibeon.
So when you go to the original sources and culture, both Jewish and Christian review has hardly ever had problems with the righteousness of these wars. Only a recent skeptical view has separated itself from this testimony and invented a dichotomy. I doubt there are any actual gnostic texts that use these German arguments!
In sum, if we look at the divergences (rather than the convergences as I prefer), you'd have a Monad that has less power to create than its emanation does, you'd have a Yahwist culture for thousands of years that would have been walking in complete deception like every other culture, you'd have a Jesus that totally embodies that culture but that is also believed to be totally against it, and you'd have no power by this Monad to do anything about it except by random chance this Jesus happens to figure the Monad out (but still doesn't succeed in getting his message across). See why I don't focus on the divergences. I think it's more worthwhile to say, suspend for now the question of how this worked in history and just get the core points that anything we see in ourselves must be present in the Monad and anything we see in Jesus must have been consistent with the reality he lived in.
u/Paleo has asked people not to do what you just did on penalty of suspension. Please don't do it again.
Rev 3:9
https://communities.win/c/Christianity/p/19957g6WI4/i-found-the-real-synagogue-of-sa/c
u/SicSemperTyrannis2 is saying it wonderfully.
He really wants onto the Pseudoprophet shortlist.
Wow... I have yet to meet someone who is so into the OT as you are. And I know many jews.
Yes, as a covenant Christian I take the whole covenant seriously. I have always connected with the same mainstream conservative denomination, but have also studied the Hebrew roots of the covenant. And it's the testimony of Jews that the majority of them are secular and not interested in their own covenant to a high degree. Now, I came there because I observed that the historical Jesus (Yeshua) was "so into the OT". When Jesus says "I am" in John 8:58, he may be remembering humanity's journey but he is certainly invoking oneness with "Yahweh", which is the meaning of "I am" there (as proven by the immediate attempts to stone him in the next verse). He's not saying "I am Enoch", nobody took him to mean that at all, even with a nascent gilgul doctrine. So the whole idea that Yahweh is someone other than Jesus implies, when he upholds the mainstream Jewish view of Yahweh, doesn't really seem to come from Jesus.
This material world is a flawed copy of the divine Pleroma, not the real thing but a simulation.
You're quoting a system. It's more accurate to say that the Pleroma is the reality as conceived by the Monad consciousness, and the flawed copy is a map of reality as conceived by us faulty creatures. We are free to borrow from others' flawed copies (like the archons'), but we only awake when we are perceiving the reality substantially without flaws arising during duplication. So, not that the world is flawed, but that our relationship with it is flawed. (IMHO the whole spilling over of the question of evil into making the whole physical universe evil was one of the least useful things gnostics did; it drove several of them crazy because they ended up in rampant immorality, believing the physical so evil that they could not be blamed for partaking in adulteration and violence.)
When people say "it's a simulation" I agree because the Monad conceives it and that is indistinguishable from a simulation (as when I, or a computer, conceives something). But if, by "it's a simulation", you were to mean it's false or conceived by another than the Monad consciousness, then you'd be treating the physical as always requiring an archon as an intermediary. But I perceive the physical in the Monad without intermediary, so I have no need to give archons credit. I make mistakes in my perception, which are corrected in time by the Monad itself.
When you start glowing brighter, the system treats you like a virus, a foreign object that threatens the stability of the illusion.
It's happened to me. I assert my authority over the matrix and it retreats again.
To me, there is a difference between evil and mistake.
How could a perfect creature ever be mistaken though? It seems like "evil with extra steps". Perfect creature commits horrible imperfection and repents but that's not evil, but it explains why other creature isn't perfect but is evil and ignorant. (Y'know, it sounds just like what Satan would say when confronted, "it wasn't my fault because Wisdom's mistake made me so"; we call that "sus".) There was never a conception that Wisdom could ever be horribly mistaken and need repentance until this gnosis came along.
Isaiah 45:7.
Yeah, if we wanted to take a single verse and say it's consistent with Yahweh being the devil and creating evils, that wouldn't prove the proposition because it's also consistent with Yahweh being the Monad and creating evils. (This is shown by the facts that Isaiah speaks highly of Yahweh throughout, all readers took Yahweh to be the Monadic "I Am", all other Scriptures are consistent with Yahweh being the head of the Divine Council, and Jesus taught the same.)
Now, in interpretation, one is just "The Creator creates evils", i.e. he ordains bad things happening; this is shown by comparison with darkness (a relative absence of light), which would be a nonentity unless defined with respect to light. That's the simplest from context. But if we were to pretend that Isaiah really meant that Yahweh causes absolute evil, that too would not be problematic because it's like causing a vacuum: absolute evil is a complete absence, a nonentity, not something "created" in the ordinary sense but caused. You've interpreted "creating" as "authoring", but "authoring" is a technical word in theology that is distinguished: the author is the performer of an evil deed (as opposed to an abstract concept of evil).
The resolution is given in a very early text, Gen. 50:20, where Joseph teaches how good and evil wills are confluent: "Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good". It's possible for God to give the good gift of free will by which another thinks evil and for God to mean that that thinking of evil will work unto good. God is not doing evil by giving creatures limited free will.
But those are asides to show how many understand the text. The fact is that it doesn't logically show that Yahweh is an evil being and was never understood as such by its readers. If we are still in agreement that Samael did the first evil, then we keep that foundation. But as for evidence that Samael caused physical creation because he had some ability to create "dualism" (as if no emanation before had any duality to it), it's not forthcoming.
Jesus taught from both Gen. 1 and Gen. 2, which affirm that the physical creation was very good, indefinitely, without any need to do evil. You say "a matrix needs conflict to run", but this is belied by Gen. 1-2, and every good work done without conflict ever since. There is no conflict in the Pleroma in the Consciousness, it's one reality. It's possible for our maps of that reality to be completely unconflicted with it; that's being awake. It's possible to be in conflict (whether in body or in spirit, they both happen); that's accepting illusion.
So I'm listening to you but I'm not hearing the case be carried. And it doesn't seem to be that helpful to just say what you read vs. what I read. It seems that it'd be more helpful to agree on objective ways of interpreting these things because we are probably weighing our witnesses differently and making different judgments. I think truthfulness of witnesses can be weighed so objectively that all seekers of truth conclude the same.
The soul that became Jesus had lived many times before. There were several of these incarnations that prepared the Christ's soul. Adam, the first incarnation, where the soul first entered matter. Then it was Enoch who walked with God. Melchizedek, the mysterious priest king without beginning or end. Joseph, son of Jacob, who saved his people through forgiveness. Joshua, who led the people into the promised land.
Well, I've been asking everyone if reincarnation means gilgul or transmigration, and nobody answers. After that question, if Gen. 5 indicates that Adam was alive at Enoch's birth and lived more than 300 years afterward, how do you do reincarnation with bilocation? Then, how do you account for the increase in humans? What's the difference between those in this generation ensouled for the first time and those not? Then we get to the details of how it can be known who was what. And did Melchizedek die, or not? (It appears to me the particular argument you gave just started as a misreading of Heb. 7, where Melchidezek is like Jesus and people misread the tight rabbinical reasoning as if they are being equated. It's a metaphor just like saying "Hagar is Sinai".) I hope these don't sound skeptical, it's just that most reincarnation systems don't work these out and I'm wondering how they are resolved by people from within their systems.
When he asked, "Who do men say I am?" his disciples answered, "Some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah," he didn't correct them.
Heh! Haven't heard that argument. Technically, he corrected them separately when he said that Elijah was John. But I don't think he meant transmigration there, because he said it twofold: both John represents Elijah in some way (which might be called gilgul or oversoul if carefully defined), and Elijah has his own destiny. So he did deny being Elijah himself, and that means he didn't affirm being Jeremiah either.
So, I continue to appreciate your patience with my questions and interactions. Ultimately, when we get to a question of reality we're inferring from evidence to seek the best explanation. You're giving me lots of assertions from your experience, some of which I'm not engaging because they're not central enough IMHO. It wouldn't matter so much on what titles you give to Samael if it didn't undercut the actual Hebrew teaching about Yahweh that Jesus taught. "Yahweh" just means "I Am" and was taken as defining the attribute of self-existence that is monistic rather than emanated. But when Jesus many times claimed this attribute for himself, in his context he tied it to whatever was right about the covenant worship of Yahweh. What he taught didn't require attributing creation to something less than the First Consciousness. And if he was the Logos or First Emanation then that makes him firstborn of creation, and he affirmed that creation started out very good and could run just fine that way indefinitely. So, of all the trappings brought by gnosis, many of them need not be disputed, but the ones that lead to a difference in definition of the God whose divine nature we are partaking of, those are the ones where we would need to hammer out true vs. false.
Um, that plan would keep money within the United States.
Well, I ask because (as I guessed) you have a technical meaning for "remember": you call it "reconnect to source", which is not problematic. You also have some technical meanings that don't quite make sense to me, as in saying "archons cannot create" but referring to the "creator, the Demiurge". The reason I say "adversary" or "Samael" is that we can agree on this general character without agreeing on all his attributes. It seems to me that in most gnostic schemes Samael is an archon or less than one, so why should I credit him with "creating" if (as I agree) archons can't? Nor do I need to commit to any list of archons, because it seems to me that no gnostic teacher committed to the list of archons he was taught, but each had their own interpretation.
The core issue is the explanation of evil. In the Apocryphon you have Sophia conceiving nonconsensually, which is taken as evil because she is taken as having repented of it; and there's no explanation of why a good creature would commit evil. But in Isaiah and Ezekiel there are very specific analyses of why a good creature would commit evil: because he was tempted by that which does not exist, namely a creation being equal to the Creator. Further, the speech of Samael in Apocryphon seems clearly related to the speeches attributed to the adversary in Isaiah and Ezekiel, but the explanation of the origin of evil is missing and is substituted with bare language about Sophia. So I understand why people want to bypass the origin of evil by postulating that the Creator must be evil, but it's unnecessary because it's a good thing for a Creator to give creatures free will even if some of them commit evil. That is, the whole template added onto the older narrative is completely unneeded.
You've got some traditional skeptical teaching on the origin of Yahweh too. The "mythology" doesn't actually speak of 70 children, it is the oral tradition that is inferred around the text of Deut. 32:8-9, which only says Elyon (not etymologically related to El) separated the Adamites and Yahweh took the Israelites. But it's better to read this as a parallel about the same God under two names; there is no implied inferiority to Yahweh in any text. There is intense recent effort to imagine this whole structure of a polytheist interpretation and to smuggle Baal into this text from elsewhere, but it's not the plain reading or the historical development. Israelite worship always used the Divine Council monotheist model where gods (angels and archons) were ruled by one Judge and Lord (el and baal, both titles) whose personal name was Yahweh. When you compare the prior Semitic Hyksos model amply attested in Egypt's 14th and 15th dynasties, you see a clear Divine Council pattern emerging within Egyptian polytheism.
Now, we're sharing historical facts about Yahweh and about Samael. But we're judging authorities differently and siding with different agendas (and Conspiracies is well aware of the agendas of these various factions). We could appeal to the words of Jesus in the various texts, but we might then again end up siding with different valuations of those texts so the meta question remains. So our commitment to pursue truth at all costs must be tested as to whether we can agree on how to resolve the competing agendas. It seems to me that whatever source you take, you don't have Jesus teaching against Yahweh as he was understood. Specifically when Jesus quotes Ex. 3:15 in Matt. 22:32, he is referring to Yahweh and translating that name as "I am", thus affirming the name and not just the monism. There are many other direct and indirect references to Yahweh in his teaching. So how do we get around that to the idea that deprecation of Yahweh was original? It seems the gnostics were mostly Greeks who liked the new Sophia teaching but didn't like the Hebrew god and who made up an according responsive narrative. I don't see how to credit them with originality when there's a clear originality in the Gospel texts that goes against them.
I recommend Moody's Life After Life, which is dated but still accurate in assessing a broad range of NDEs (later books build on this). Funny thing, all NDEs are classified into either an embracing love (the majority) or a suffering experience, regardless of religion. NDEs are not related to what people say when they are conscious but dying, so that's a different data point.
Well, it's a story long complicated by people who want to suppress the truth. The whole NT has conservative and liberal dates, and proposed authorship by the names attributed and by proposed persons unknown, and the resolution to the matter depends in part on what stance you take.
There's not an indication that the NT was "late", especially not by the standards used to compare any other historical book. For a biography (let alone four) to be written within the lifetime of eyewitnesses to the biography was exceedingly rare. One thing hard for liberals to ignore is that 1 Cor. 15:3-4 was a formal oral confession already circulating 2-5 years after Jesus's resurrection. The church leaders didn't find it necessary to write a bio because they were all able to testify personally; the writing came at a point where persecution made the risk of loss of material evident. In particular, Luke-Acts explicitly says it was written to give an accurate history up to Paul's imprisonment, implying it was to be used for his trial; and it also says other gospels had been written before it, which informs the conservative dating of the 50s.
Matthew is the English name of the former tax collector who would have had the Hebrew names Mattityahu and Levi. It was common for people to be moderately bilingual, but there's nothing about disciples being unable to speak Greek (you may be thinking of inferences people assume from Acts 4:13). The argument from silence does not prove the disciples were unable to write in Greek. Obviously the traditional authors of the NT are Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, Peter, and Jude, though there are folks who helped like Tertius. Given the variations in Greek style, there's no evidence they could not have been written by those whom they've been associated with from the start (the attributions themselves are in fact historical evidence that they knew Greek).
However, if you wish to teach the Aramaic primacy position, that's the sort of thing this board is for. I'm familiar with it but it doesn't change the fact that the church recognized the Greek text as inspired and the Aramaic texts as of only local use. The issues are (1) believing that God has spoken in authoritative documents, (2) discerning which original documents these were, and (3) discerning the message therein. If you believe in Scripture in the first place, there's not a good reason for questioning the covenant people's standards for testing what is Scripture over time because they were there and knew what people had written for the community as from God. But even those who propose Aramaic primacy have many who recognize the message to be the same as the traditional church teaches. On occasion Aramaic primacy is used to teach a wholly different Jesus/Yeshua, but that can be tested on historical grounds like any other proposition. So I'm interested where you want to go with your questions.
The Hebrew NT has the marks of inspiration. However, tradition implies that Matthew wrote first in Aramaic, and all the NT has Aramaic thought behind it. My theory is that Matthew's first draft was Aramaic (and is reflected in some Peshitta) but he rewrote in Greek, the language the others used because it circulated faster. I love reading the Aramaic.
What's the real Zion in the movie? Obviously lots of things are named Zion without being real.
And the real Zion is far ahead of TPTB in visualizing the new simulation and powering new reality.
There was someone famous who said "we humans are a species with amnesia,". I just can't recall who at this moment.
funny
Jesus became the Christ, but Christ consciousness existed before Jesus and remains available after Jesus.
I'm looking into it. If we call it "Logos" and/or "Spirit of Christ", then of course.
He didn't come as the only son of God.
In John 3:16 it's "monogenes", the same term as for Isaac who had half-brothers, so literally not "only", but "only of the kind", unique. Would you agree his meaning is that he's unique?
"I and the Father are one,". Wasn't a claim of exclusive divinity, but a demonstration of inclusive divinity.
Maybe, that would require more cautious definition of those words.
Every soul is destined to make this same claim to achieve this same recognition.
This is something I'm not confident of. To be one with the Father would be to be timeless, for instance, and I'm not able to make any plans to be timeless. When Jesus specifies the meaning in more detail in John 17, he never attributes oneness with the Father to us, only to himself; but oneness with him is attributed to us. That seems important.
The church teaches Jesus was uniquely divine, different in kind from humanity.
I don't think it teaches Jesus was different in kind because it teaches he was fully human. If you speak of it as Jesus's "achievement of Christ consciousness", that is unique in being the first ever, and that is divine. The way in which we achieve Christ consciousness is spoken of as secondary in the groom-bride and head-body metaphors.
No, not become God. Remember, you are God.
Are you all of God? Or are you a water droplet in the sea, which is the sea in the sense that it is of the sea?
He remembered his divinity while maintaining humanity.
What does "remember" mean?
Not to start a new religion.
Correct, he taught total continuity with the covenants that came before.
Not to be worshipped as the exception but followed as the example.
Did you read my link about the meaning of "worship"?
He clearly told us we are the Monad in flesh. The Gospel of John proves it in plain Greek.
He did? It does? Why do readers of plain Greek not see it? How could we come to agreement on what the plain Greek proves? The Logos is not the Monad.
Now, do you see the difference with your statement "Consciousness in flesh", which is the how the Church puts it as well "God became flesh. That is the meaning of Incarnation.".
No I don't. I was attempting to summarize how you put it when you said "the consciousness that is God took human form". There's something unique about how Consciousness took on humanity in Jesus because it says he possessed the Spirit beyond measure, but we partake of the Spirit by measure. Which is why I ask you about definitions.
I object to the Church saying "obey Jesus", because the church replaced his commands/instructions/teachings with dogma.
Certainly if someone says "obey Jesus" but means "obey my interpretation of Jesus and not your own", that's a fault, which the church has engaged and for which I apologize.
merging with the Father
I read Jesus a lot and haven't seen him instruct that of us.
What Jesus revealed to Peter the night before the crucifixion wasn't about salvation or sin. It was practical instruction, a precise method for accessing what he called the pathway beyond the veil. Peter's fragmentary accounts buried in texts the early church deemed too dangerous described specific techniques for breaking through what Jesus identified as deliberate barriers blocking human consciousness from its source.
How would we know the difference between what one manuscript says Jesus said and what another says he said? Wouldn't historical evidence indicate which are more likely to be original and which derivative?
Within decades of his death, these practical instructions were stripped from Christian teaching, replaced with abstract concepts about faith and belief, dogma.
In the decades after his resurrection there is pretty good evidence that lots of instructions of all kinds were circulating and many openly disagreed with each other. It was not until 150 that there was a document, Irenaeus, where we start to see certain views clearly deprecated in favor of other views. Perhaps that's what you mean. Maybe you mean that some groups ceased to exist in the war of 66-73 and so their writings were "stripped" until rediscovered. But it seems the true instructions can be tested by various tests that work the same for everyone: authority, coherence, apostolicity, continuity, etc.
The question is, why was this specific knowledge so threatening that it had to be completely erased?
Doesn't matter now because:
The church can't erase it anymore because chosen ones are reading it now without the filter.
Yes, and from all I've read it only serves as counterpoint to what I already learned. If there were a binary disagreement then it would need to be decided based on marks like I listed above.
And these Jewish priests teach people ... to keep all the customs and traditions of the Jewish faith.
As they defined them. Those that didn't reflect Moses could be challenged by anyone, which is what Jesus did.
But according to the Bible, Jesus says, "No, what's important is not following the letter of the law, but following the spirit of God. What matters is the condition of your heart, not whether you perform the correct rituals.".
According to Matt. 5:18, 20, Jesus says, "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled .... Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." It's Paul that says, "We should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter"; but also "We know that the law is spiritual", Rom. 7:6, 14. Jesus never contradicted Moses but served everything written in spirit and in truth (or else he would not be the Perfect one). Of the right of rabbis to interpret the law (and duty to interpret rightly), he said, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do" (Matt. 23:2-3).
And this creates a conflict because Jesus is essentially rebelling against the authority of the Jewish priests. That's why he had to die. So, the Christian Church has turned "obey the law of Moses" into "obey Jesus", this is what I object to.
More accurately, Jesus wasn't a rebel (again, he was the Perfect Man); he asserted his right to disagree with interpretation and contribute to it, and (I believe I said) the extremists among the Pharisees and others were the ones who perceived the threat and weren't then open-minded (though many were later). I presume you don't teach "obey the Law of Moses" even though Jesus taught it; but that's a different detailed discussion to get right. The finesse is, whatever Jesus taught, and teaches, is what we want.
Now Sophia was rebranded by the Church as temptation, error, or silence. And the "believers in Jesus" became the bride.
Not what I experience. Sophia is Wisdom and was clearly depicted in Prov. 8 and many other sources and accepted in early Christianity. They also believed in gnosis and Paul contrasted it with pseudognosis because not everything known is true gnosis. Now it does appear that by Augustine there was some rebranding of the tree of gnosis as being more like an evil rather than an occasion to evil, which is a loss of communication. The bride is a regular metaphor in Jesus, Paul, and John, and the body is also, and the two are one because a man's bride is his body. But they are one with him because they possess Sophia and that seals the identity.
Jesus came to show humans how to transcend the [adversary] and connect directly with the primordial source, the Monad.
This is where we get disconnected, because after Jesus affirms every serif of the Law of Moses, which affirms Yahweh, some gnostics (not all) separated Jesus from Yahweh and declared Yahweh to be the adversary and the physical to be the evil (even though Job separates Yahweh and the adversary). Yes, Jesus did teach transcendence of the adversary and connection with the Monad, and that part doesn't contradict the Bible. But if we then give the adversary more titles or narrative than he deserves, we're not fighting him very well.
The Gospel of Judas explicitly mentions that Jesus laughed at the disciples for praying to the Demiurge.
Judas: 'When he [came up to] his disciples sitting together praying over the bread, [he] laughed. The disciples said to him, "Master, why are you laughing at [our] prayer? What have we done? [This] is what's right." He answered and said to them, "I'm not laughing at you. You're not doing this because you want to, but because through this your God [will be] praised."' So, no Demiurge explicit or implicit, nothing about a false god, but only about reasons for behavior.
The Apocryphon of John describes the Demiurge as ignorant of the true God above him.
Apocryphon: '[Sophia] intended to reveal an image from herself .... She brought it into being .... [She had created him in ignorance.] ... She named him Yaldabaoth .... Yadabaoth united with the thoughtlessness (aponoia) within him. He begot ruling authorities (exousia) modeling them on the incorruptible realms above .... [He is ignorant darkness.] ... This dim ruler has three names: Yaldabaoth is the first. Saklas is the second. Samael is the third. He is blasphemous through his thoughtlessness. He said "I am God, and there is no God but me!" since he didn’t know where his own Power originated.' So, first take, he is aware of incorruptible realms (aeons) above, but he denies other gods and accords the title "God" only to himself. Aponoia is not literally "thoughtlessness" but "separate thought". How much more reason not to accord him a name that might mean Yah Sabaoth, or a creative power that he doesn't have. When I look into the provenance of this apocryphon, I find that Sophia comes from the Ogdoad, and the Ogdoad appears derived from the Egyptian Ogdoad, indicating that the addition of Yaldabaoth to the story is also derivative from something Cainite. But when I read Jesus's statements about the satan in Scripture, they appear very accurate to his time and place and very wise in their eternal applicability. So how could we decide among these texts except by using historical tests? The fact that a text was suppressed doesn't mean it's automatically right, in fact it might well have been just too stupid to reproduce (as is true of so many ancient texts).
The Gnostics did not teach blind faith. They didn't preach obedience to external authority.
Oh, if you look at every ancient gnostic you'll find quite a few teaching blind faith and their own external authority. But that's because it's not monolithic. If you separate those out and seek whether there were good teachings of individuality among the rest, we might sift some good things out.
They claimed that within every person burns a fragment of the divine source, what they called the divine spark. To awaken that spark is to dissolve the archon's influence.
For instance. In Judaism and Christianity this accords with the image of God.
IMO, Jesus has always been a man.
Since he was conceived, yes.
Jesus was different only in degree of awareness and awakening to the rest of us.
That might be a formulation to use, I'll think about it.
That separation from God is impossible.
That might be valid too; I'd say a being that is separate from God is impossible. "Separation" being an abstract.
That heaven is a state of consciousness, not a distant location.
Jesus and Paul taught there were three heavens; we participate freely in the first, the air. I don't think the hierarchy of heavens is much different from the hierarchy of aeons.
This is why Jesus said, "Greater things than these shall you do,", have you ever thought why did he said that? Jesus didn't mean it metaphorically, he meant it literally.
Yes, John 14:12, we're doing greater works today. But a text search shows some variability in this concept. Of himself, he said, "The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him" (13:16), and, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (15:13). He also implied his works increase in the same way our works increase: "He will shew him [the Son] greater works than these, that ye may marvel" (5:20). But he also backs off temporally from the title of greater: "But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth" (Luke 22:26-27).
We think we're here trying to achieve these three things: immortality, reincarnation, and godhood.
That's fine enough. More accurately, I'd say that we speak of conferred immortality (aphtharsia, athanasia) rather than inherent immortality (aidios); a form of oversoul reincarnation (gilgul) rather than a form of transmigration reincarnation (punarjanman); and partaking of divine nature (theosis) rather than deification (apotheosis).
And the secret is love powering our imagination. IMO, we're here to imagine things. So this is the great secret of the universe. This is the secret that Gnostics have been trying to share with everybody, and which schools, science, government, religious institutions all the powers that be try to suppress because is a direct threat to this reality. This reality is false, it's just a simulation. But they want to make it real because they derive power from it.
Excluding the people who perceive a threat, what would be wrong with any of that in the rest of Christianity? Lots of Orthodox, and lots of Catholic and Protestant mystics, practice theosis quite well (hundreds of millions) without feeling threatened or abandoning earthly forms that they find helpful.
So I've given you the bold answers, including where I think a nuance is necessary because of a definition or a text. It seems that it's not necessary to give the adversary the credit you propose, or to advance a particular narrative, in order to advance in love, imagination, or pursuit of the greater. When two narratives do reach a point of contradiction, those pursuing truth will not be threatened but will find the resolution of peace.
Maybe if you join the public advocacy here you'll be contributing to the critical mass of active interest as opposed to the uninvolved.
See, you deny the mercy due to Homo sapiens, which means you will not be shown the mercy due to Homo sapiens. You and Dolf eat yourselves up.
Okay, I'll agree:
-
The Church should not consider things as existential threats.
-
The Gospel of John is about true gnosis.
-
Logos means the organizing principle of reality, the divine intelligence, the creative consciousness that structures reality.
-
Logos is the unique first emanation (firstborn) from the Monad.
-
So Logos already existed "before" time, eternal, uncreated, unseparated from source.
-
Logos and Monad are one consciousness.
-
Logos became flesh and dwelt among us, having taken full human form as never before, demonstrating all the potential of human form.
You object to the formula "God in flesh", but how is that different from saying Jesus is the one Consciousness in flesh?
I have written on the fact that, of the many words for worship, those applied to Jesus either were used routinely for the image of God in other humans or were ambiguous and applied to worshipping the Father in the Son (no latreia in himself). You might be interested in or repulsed by that, but it's wide open for discussion.
You object to "Obey Jesus", but how could there be any disobedience to him? How could there be any issue in being a different human than he is?
Now when we get to "inferior" that's not a Biblical word and it's not really a formal church teaching. We are One Body with him in the same way a bride is one body with a groom, never inferior, but subject to Jesus in the same way Jesus is to the source. The teaching and meaning of the bride is pretty important, is that problematic to you? I wouldn't call this "inferiority".
And if chosen ones carry the logos, which John says they do in chapter 1 12-13, then they too are the Monad in flesh. Incarnated divine consciousness, not servants of God. God experiencing itself as human.
Now this is where we need to be very technical in language to ensure what you mean is clearly communicated. Most of that is not the language of anyone in the first century. John 1:12-13 actually says we are sons of God (clearer 1 John 3:1-2), not by blood but by God (i.e. by his adoption). But Jesus came by blood (1 John 5:6), not by water only as adopted children come in baptism. The difference between the firstborn and all other children was well-established. The text is not "God in flesh" (nor "Monad" or "Unity"), but "Jesus in flesh" (1 John 4:2-3); you objected to the church saying "God in flesh", but you also permit it if you can call us "God in flesh". But we are told Jesus possesses the Pleroma (John 1:16) but we have only received "of" it (not received it "all", cf. Eph. 3:19, Col. 1:19, 2:9). If we could receive it all, I don't think that's been revealed (1 John 3:2). We are not called "incarnated" or "divine consciousness" of "God experiencing", though we are sons and partakers of divine nature. It seems straightforward that in a body there should be one head among the members, which is distinguished by being the foremost.
Jesus is God. You are not, end of discussion. But, they couldn't change what John actually wrote.
They made big mistakes; but since John's actual writing didn't contradict this simplified view they took, that doesn't strike me as one of the mistakes. We could go into what others said, but (as his children) we have the power to discern good and bad sayings (1 John 4:6).
Everything is consciousness.
Well, I generally count consciousness as personifying, maybe it's not so important. I don't do a lot of videos but I don't see a problem from your summary of Clif High. If we have Monad and we have first emanation of Logos and we have Logos possessing Pleroma that we partake of, that sounds like personal interaction. As a man, Jesus always did what man is capable of doing (but, often, what man had not yet done). As one monadic consciousness, there is always something unique to Jesus, expressed in the body and bride metaphors. If there were any barrier between any of us in the one body (e.g. a barrier between myself and Jesus), that would hinder any going forward in consciousness; so there is no ground for disobedience to Jesus, or surpassing Jesus in nature (as opposed to works), or for claiming to be one with everything when that hasn't been revealed. I hope that view isn't problematic.
I appreciate your giving practical answers to discernment! John also speaks heavily about discerning spiritual phenomena. Those perceptions including awakening separation, synchrony, and somatic reflex are indeed useful. Now when I perceive synchrony or somatic response I take that as a signal to heighten my awareness and pay close critical attention to immediate experience: sometimes I'm shown something central or true, but sometimes I'm shown something I discern to be shown me because of its illusory nature. But that discernment comes from my core, which is where the perception of separation takes place. If you've consciously dedicated your core to the Truth, the One, the Logos, it holds you such that nothing else can penetrate because it is greatest. That means that, relying on your having dedicated it, that which you receive from the core can be trusted, and the false voices are in contrast because they always take an external route. (Obviously the one who has dedicated himself to a falsehood will receive falsehoods in the core, which can be deceiving, and the solution can only be truth breaking through and being rededicated inside. I guess the SCIF is real.) So that's just a brief statement of my experience with those things.
It sounds like I'm concluding there are indeed extremists in the various modern churches, and they prove it by feeling threatened and by exercising involuntary control tactics. But we can get past that element and look for the people of every age who are dedicated to the Logos, and that never excludes Jesus as the head and as the groom.
You dehumanize and censor (ban) those sympathetic to any synagogue of satan rather than rescuing them from it. But that's because you have only the gospel of Hitler and no good news. Check out the recent release Bonhoeffer and let us know what you think.
"Karl Radl" of Semitic Controversies begins with an inaccurate paraphrase and draws further false conclusions from it before listening to the opposition. The text says not "Jesus" but "Yeshu", not "your punishment" but "the punishment", not "to be in boiling excrement" but just "boiling excrement", such that the summary "Jesus has been punished by God for his ‘offences’ by being boiled in excrement in Gehenna" is fully misrepresentative in the first place.
The respondent, David Lange, correctly cites Rabbi Gil Student who affirms and represents an opinion within traditional Judaism where this is not Jesus Christ. (Lange incorrectly says Jesus Christ isn't in the Talmud at all, and believes in yet another Yeshu in between Yeshu the Student and Jesus Christ: "He is most likely a prominent sectarian of the early first century BCE who deviated from rabbinic tradition and created his own religion combining Hellenistic paganism with Judaism. While Yeshu may be the proto-Jesus some scholars point to as inspiring the early Christians, he is definitely not the man who was crucified in Jerusalem in the year 33 CE." I don't have evidence such a person existed, I think the respondent is doing further cobbling of Yeshu the Student (2nd century BC) with Jesus Christ, which further proves the fact that people use the word "Yeshu" for several different centuries indiscriminately. But that's unimportant.) The respondent concludes by correctly noting "some Rabbis who argue that ‘Jesus’ of Gittin 57a is the same Jesus". Therefore he rightly says the passage is ambiguous.
"Karl" begins by believing the passage speaks of "Yeshua" when it doesn't but speaks of "Yeshu"; basic text fail. The fact that Schafer believes this Yeshu does mean Jesus Christ doesn't undercut the fact that it's ambiguous and that others with equal authority, like Gil Student, believe it doesn't. The "villains" concept doesn't mean that "Yeshu" must be Christ alone, it would only refer to whatever amalgamated "Yeshu" was in the mind of the joke's author and audience, and even assuming they had all accurate information it would still be interpreted as a reference to all three or more people named Yeshu, not as a particular one of them because no one of them is uniquely singled out as a greater villain. The fact that Balaam might mean Jesus Christ in other ambiguous passages is a bit of a failure to even read the text, because in this text the author clearly wants to distinguish Titus from Balaam from Yeshu (even though each name can refer to multiple enemies; mental note, maybe we should hold that all three are ambiguous). "Karl" concludes circularly, "The rabbinical context (and a common sense) clearly suggests that Jesus (i.e., Yeshua) is the one meant", except none of this has been proven.
Schafer is quoted well (I'll requote that separately) but his point is lost on "Karl". (1) Schafer alludes to the fact that some texts don't even say Yeshu but "sinner of Israel" instead ("Yeshu" is probably the original). (2) He also concludes that the intent of the Tosefta commentary is that Yeshu's punishment is believed to be only for one year, similarly to what I concluded in my initial article.
The joke was likely composed in the 2nd century, when reference to Onkelos (and memory of the third Yeshu, Yeshu ben Pappos) would've been fresh, and orally transmitted with loss of the author's name until compiled in the formal Talmud. This provenance does not give special attention to Jesus Christ among other Talmudic memories.
It's great to find that Israel Jacob Yuval, 2008, Two Nations in Your Womb, p. 132, finds a 1096 Mainz Jew ("Karl" uses lowercase) saying, "And you shall be condemned to hell together with your god and in boiling faeces." Offhand this could indicate an idea that (1) Jesus is a god and (2) Jesus is condemned to hell in boiling feces, though it doesn't require that even if Jesus is the referent. However, it need not reference Gittin 57a directly because the general punishment could be taken to the punishment of idolators stated elsewhere and that whatever is the god intended (e.g. a crucifix or icon) it too would be condemned. Therefore, though Yuval might make that conclusion, it is not clear that this is the belief intended in Mainz, and it's certainly not shown that this is a tenet to be believed or an unambiguous conclusion (as opposed to a permitted opinion among many).
Conclusion: When he says, "Yes, the claim that in Folios 56b and 57a of Tractate Gittin the Babylonian Talmud states that Jesus is ‘boiling in excrement’ is an accurate interpretation of the passage and the traditional/current jewish understanding of it", more accurately this is one permitted interpretation of an ambiguous passage on which Judaism has no formal traditional judgment. We could judge Judaism for not making a judgment on this ambiguity after all this time, but there are more important things for Judaism to judge formally IMHO.