Saul the Apostate – Part IV

Posted on October 13, 2018 by Professor Taboo

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Continuing from Part III

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“Justice demands that that barbaric superstition should be opposed;
and it is to the interest of the state not to regard that Jewish mob
which at times breaks out in open riots… […]

At one time the Jewish people took up arms against the Romans;
but the gods showed how little they cared for this people,
suffering it to be conquered and made tributary.”
**— Cicero, “Pro Flacco”** Ch. 28, 59 BCE

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The deep permeation of Greek culture into Judaism and the Near and Middle East during late Classical Antiquity cannot be overstated. It was profound. It made its way into early Christianity and into Saul’s Stoic-Gnostic theology. But lets backup a bit first.

The centuries following Alexander the Great’s epic conquests, expansion, and planting of Hellenistic culture throughout the Near East and across the Western hemisphere saw the remarkable flourishing of philosophy, science, art, and governing. It was during the Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BCE) that Archimedes of Syracuse wrote the Earth-changing treatise “On Floating Bodies,” known today in physics as the Archimedes’ Principle. Then Aristarchus formulated the first recorded heliocentric theory, which of course asserted that Earth revolved around the sun. During the Hellenist period, several art forms became less mythological and more realistic, more practical. The most important thing in life, said Epicurus, was the pursuit and attainment of the individual’s pleasure and happiness, known as hedonism, while Stoic philosophy became more mainstream and accessible, including to women, unheard of in many empires around the world then and now.

Hellenism carried over well into the European Middle Ages. Hellenic Jews welcomed Greek influences, represented primarily by the Temple Sadducees. However, traditional or conservative Jews represented by the sects of Pharisees and Essenes in synagogues around the empire, saw Hellenism’s infiltration in some respects as an abomination of God’s Law and Temple. A side-by-side comparison of the two juxtaposed cultures, Mosaic Judaism and Hellenism, points out four major differences:

Alexander’s Hellenistic culture was very tolerant of native customs and beliefs. In fact, new Greco-Roman kingdoms often assimilated parts of the indigenous practices as it suited the empire’s needs. Hence, further examination of the Judaic and Hellenic cultures (distinguished above) shows when there is intolerance to flexibility, compromise, wisdom, or adaptability, one small ring or just one person flies off the handle in one or both cultures, the constant tension becomes a ticking time-bomb. Click here for a revealing Jewish rendition of how an ancient Greek and Hebraic Jew might have discussed their religions in the 1st-century CE.

Let’s return to middle-Hellenism. Enter the false rumor in 168 BCE that Seleucid king Antiochus IV was killed in Egypt. Bitter, disgruntled, and deposed High Priest Jason/Jesus rounds up a Jewish army to attack ascending High Priest Menelaus in Jerusalem. Angry that the Jews started a civil war in his kingdom, Antiochus came down harshly on the Jews executing thousands and banning the practice of their religion forcing them to worship Zeus instead. His heavy bloody hand only infuriated more Jews and thus began the Maccabean Revolt.

During these cultural clashes and shifts, brief independence under the Hasmoneans, other military conquests, defeats, exiles, dispersions into slavery, intermarriages, and mixed offspring, Jews were increasingly mixed into Hellenistic ideals that also reached into their religion, particularly Greek Stoic philosophy. For Pharisaic and Essene Jews, including two centuries later Jewish-Essene Jesus (Part II), this became a sharp schism inside Judaism. But for Saul of Tarsus and Rome in the mid-1st century CE and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and last remnants of radical Jewish resistance by the Sicarii at Masada (73 – 74 CE), it was an opportunity for both Hellenism and Saul to rewrite history. The history, not Messianic Jewish history.

Herodian Saul and Hellenism Victorious

Explicit facts about Saul’s/Paul’s family, his Jewish [sic] heritage, and educational backgrounds [sic] (Part I) as well as his involvement in Jewish Merkavah and/or Heikhalat mysticism (Intro to Part II) are masked at best. Most of what is known comes strictly from his 7 – 12(?) canonical epistles and Acts. All of these biblical texts must be read under the overwhelming shadow of the Roman-Hellenist Patristic authorities, editors, and copyists. Why? Between 70 CE and 787 CE (over 700-years!) they had complete and total control of what would become “traditional Christianity.”

Fortunately, for the modern neutral and astute reader of earliest Christianity the canonical NT (the mask) is by no means the only source to gain a more realistic, more accurate picture. It is not a fixed mask. In fact, extra, independent sources that are available (among others) come from a large corpus of Jewish scrolls written between the 4th-century BCE and 5th-century CE found just outside of Jerusalem! They are the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) from Qumran. They offer us an almost stunningly vivid background and context of Second Temple Judaism/Messianism and Sectarianism of late Classical Antiquity in the Levant and around Jerusalem. This 700-year era written about in the DSS from a non-Roman non-Patristic standpoint is an unprecedented broader look into the very soil, seeds, and roots from which earliest Jewish-Christianity sprang. The DSS are an untouched, pure Jewish-Messianic, independent lens on Hellenistic-Herodian Judaism, on Hellenistic Rome and her eventual, Imperial, Pauline Christ-cult.

Publication of Post-1957 Discovered Scrolls Withheld
The first scrolls were discovered in 1946 and ’47. More caves and scrolls were discovered in 1948 – ’49, then more still from 1950 – ’56 totaling over 980 texts from twelve (12) different caves. The first complete photographs (in infrared) of all the texts were made between 1952 – 1967 including the newly discovered scrolls and fragments post-1957. However, due to the political and religious implications of what these texts held, several of the scrolls and fragments were withheld from publication for 30-40 years by a small circle of “established scholars” or what several outsider-scholars have called “The DSS Academic Curia.” The Curia was led by French Dominican priest Roland de Vaux and consisted of just three Hebrew scholars, Józef Milik, John M. Allegro, and John Strugnell.

By 1956 problems were broiling inside the Curia and outside by historical and biblical scholars wanting access to the DSS. Allegro put the ego-driven controversy quite succinctly in his letter to de Vaux:

It’s a pity that you and your friends cannot conceive of anything written about Christianity without trying to grind some ecclesiastical or non-ecclesiastical axe.

For an outdated, brief introduction about these controversies you can go to this 1993 New York Times article, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fragile and Remarkable, specifically the 17th paragraph.

Was Saul A Herodian-Jew and Not A Pharisaic-Jew?
If the only testaments you read are the canonical Epistles of Saul/Paul and Acts of the Apostles, of course you’d simply conclude that Saul was “a Hebrew among Hebrews,” descended from the tribe of Benjamin, and educated by Gamaliel in the acclaimed Beit Hillel. But Josephus, the Pseudo-Clementines, and Epiphanius offer a compelling refraction of Saul’s Epistles and his related passages in Acts that with the three aforementioned sources tell a different background and family of Saul-Paul.

In many past blog-posts (e.g. The Incarnation of G-Man) I have made the distinction between Greco-Roman deification or Apotheosis, and Second Temple Jewish Messianism. The two adversaries can never be ignored. This clear distinction can also be appropriately applied geographically in the eastern portions of the Late-Republic to Imperial-Principate Roman Empire (c. 133 BCE – 284 CE).

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From the slides above we see a macrocosm of Hellenism’s expansion and permeation of the entire Mediterranean Basin begun by the Greek Empire and then by the end of the 1st-century BCE, Rome’s version and reinvention of its allure until the eventual decline throughout the 4th and 5th-centuries CE. If you’d like to see the slides independently and enlarged, click here. Rome and her Hellenistic culture gradually swallowed up almost all Sectarian, Torah-loving (Jewish-Essene Jesus) Judaism/Messianism. This extermination of revolutionary Palestinian Messianism was completed after the fall of Masada in 74 CE when the DSS were hidden in the 12 various caves around Qumran. For almost 1,900 years the only Judaism and Christianity the world would ever know was Messiah-killing Hellenistic Judaism or Hellenistic-Roman Christianity… until 1946.

Through the Herodian dynasty (37 BCE – 44 CE) to the complete control of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea by the Roman Empire (44 – 136 CE), most traditional Law-oriented Jews in the Levant had very little patience for Hellenistic Overseas Jews and their distorted ideas and teachers of either a corrupted Temple, Torah, and Messiah(s). They were often referred to as “The Enemy” by Palestinian Jews/Messianism. Saul was clearly an “Enemy” and he knew it. Compare:

Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? — Galatians 4:16

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the [Hellenic] world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the [Hellenic] world becomes an enemy of God. — James 4:4

It is widely accepted that Saul authored Galatians. The epistle of James has traditionally been attributed to James, the brother of Jesus, or at least pseudonymous to him. James’ audience was clearly the Palestinian Messianic followers or otherwise known as Judaeo-Christians. When comparing the two we can infer the stark differences between Overseas Judaism/Messianism and that of Palestinian Judaism/Messianism. And how badly Saul was treated in Syrian and Palestinian synagogues attests to this schism. There’s more.

Terminology like the Enemy, the Liar or Spouter of Lies, Man of Lying, Comedian of Lying (i.e. epileptic?), and some others, was strongly applied to the adversary of “The Righteous Teacher” within the Palestinian Movement and the DSS at Qumran. Saul/Paul again shows familiarity with these terms. In fact, he references them repeatedly in Gal. 1:20, 2 Corinthians 11:31, and Romans 9:1 (to name just three) that he was not “a Liar“ or he “does not lie.” This explicitly implies that his groups/churches there have been told that Saul of Tarsus deceives and maligns.

“The Enemy” terminology is also quite strong and prevalent in the Pseudo-Clementines. For example, in Homilies in the apparent Epistle of Peter to James the brother in Jerusalem:

For some from among the Gentiles have rejected my legal preaching, attaching themselves to certain lawless and trifling preaching of the man who is my enemy. […]

[The Gentile Enemies] transform my words by certain various interpretations, in order to the dissolution of the law. […]

…the law of God which was spoken by Moses, and was borne witness to by our Lord… for thus he spoke: “The heavens and the earth shall pass away, but one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law.” (quoting Matt. 5:18) — Homilies, Epistle of Peter to James, Ch. 2

Dr. Bart Ehrman describes the significance of this Epistle of Peter to James as a Palestinian counter-balance to the Hellenic canonical NT and Acts of the Apostles:

This book provides the counter-view to that found in the New Testament book of Acts, where Paul and Peter are thought to be completely on the same side and simpatico on every major issue. Not according to this short letter. Here Peter and James are the heroes of the faith, and Paul is the great enemy.
— Bart Ehrman Blog, “Another Forgery in the Name of Peter, April 2013, accessed Oct. 11, 2018

There have been several religious-historical scholars that theorize Simon Magus (of Acts 8) and Saul of Tarsus are one in the same. Accepting this theory is not unreasonable. Consider these side-by-side teachings reported by Irenaeus in his Against Heresies I.23.3 and Saul’s in Galatians:

The two comparisons are practically identical. And thus in the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1 Ch. 70, Palestinian Judaism/Messianism did not hold Hellenic Saul/Paul in any high esteem due to what he incited earlier at the Temple against James the brother of Jesus regarding “sacrifices” and how Temple worship was conducted by Herodian Priesthood, the two biggest conflicts of the time between Overseas Hellenic Judaism and Palestinian Judaism/Messianism:

While he was thus speaking, and adding more to the same effect, and while James the bishop was refuting him, he began to excite the people and to raise a tumult, so that the people might not be able to hear what was said. Therefore he began to drive all into confusion with shouting, and to undo what had been arranged with much labour, and at the same time to reproach the priests, and to enrage them with revilings and abuse, and, like a madman… […]

Then others also, seeing him, were carried away with like readiness. Then ensued a tumult on either side, of the beating and the beaten. Much blood is shed; there is a confused flight, in the midst of which that enemy attacked James, and threw him headlong from the top of the steps; and supposing him to be dead, he cared not to inflict further violence upon him. — Tumult Raised by Saul, Recognitions Book 1 Ch. 70

Saul is saved from this scene by a troop of Roman soldiers, oddly enough protection Jews rarely received unless of Roman aristocracy. Read what even Episcopalian/Catholic ordained Dr. Taylor R. Marshall points out about Saul-Paul of Tarsus here. It is a remarkable read! Furthermore, in the Epiphanius traditions, e.g. Anabathmoi Jacobou or “The Ascents of Jacob,” Saul has a large entourage of Greek-Romans and Roman troops with him during his trip through Caesarea (the seat of the Herodian family by then) then on to Jerusalem to test the recent ban against Herodians and foreigners inside the Temple Mount by, most assuredly, the “zealot” tradition-minded (Jamesian?) Priesthood. This is telling. A simple Hellenist-Jew was never accorded that level of Roman pomp or protection. I ask, is it really anymore compelling why Saul’s true background was so clouded, so overlooked centuries later?

Is there more to Saul’s repulsive reception by Palestinian Judaism/Messianism? Actually there is enough to at the very least question Saul’s true origins, if not rewrite them.

Aside from the angry mob who attacks Saul while trying to enter the Temple in Acts 21:27-29, how Saul acquired his “Roman citizenship” was a very peculiar, suspicious accession. None of the original “Apostles” were ever given Roman citizenship. None of the previously ruling Maccabees were ever awarded citizenship. However, Herodian Jews did indeed receive Roman citizenry. Ironically, Saul himself supports this method of Roman-Herodian citizenship:

Greet Apelles, the approved in Christ. Greet those who are of the household of Aristobulus. Greet Herodion, my kinsman. — Romans 16:10-11

Dr. Robert Eisenman of Cornell, New York, and Columbia Universities closely examines this possible/probable Saul bloodline saying:

Here, he refers to his “kinsman Herodion,” i.e., “The Littlest Herod” (obviously the son of the Roman Governor Felix mentioned above and the Herodian Princess Drusilla, killed in the eruption of Vesuvius at Pompeii) — whom he introduces with an allusion to another person with a name popular among Herodians, “Aristobulus,” i.e., “the Household of Aristobulus” in Romans 16:10. The “Aristobulus” referred to here may or may not be the “Aristobulus the son of Agrippa I’s brother Herod of Chalcis” mentioned above — the husband of that Salome who plays such a key role, according to Gospel portraiture, in the death of John the Baptist — both of whom advertise themselves on the reverse of their Lesser Armenian Kingdom coinage in “Asia” what “Great Lovers of Caesar” they were! That Paul has powerful relatives of this kind in Jerusalem with a direct entree to the Roman Governor and Soldiery is made crystal clear too by Acts 23:16 which refers — following his rescue by said Troops preceding this — to the role his “nephew” (“his sister’s son”) played in this affair while declining to specifically name him!
— Eisenman, Robert. Breaking the Dead Sea Scrolls Monopoly: A New Interpretation of the Messianic Movement in Palestine

This would explain neatly and nicely why Saul/Paul was so unwelcomed in Palestinian Judaism/Messianism (e.g. Antioch, Damascus) and in Jerusalem by the real students/disciples (pillars) of Jesus who actually knew, lived with, and traveled with him in person. But as my above maps illustrate, in the end for true historicity it did not matter that Palestinian Judaism-Messianism (Jesus’ reforms and teachings) would be lost under Rome’s power and glory. The expansive swallowing effect of Hellenism all throughout the Mediterranean Basin, then adopted by the Roman Empire, and in time absorbed the Overseas (Diaspora) Judaism, Palestinian Law-oriented Judaism/Messianism — the movement begun by Jewish-Essene Jesus that failed — was a doomed minority movement. Plain and simple, becoming an uncomfortable friend to Rome, i.e. Hellenic Apotheosis and Pauline-Christ, had a much better allure than being her nagging, failing enemy.

Accordingly Saul’s Christ-cult was Embraced By Hellenic Pagans/Gentiles
Well before Saul was born and came on the scene, for about two centuries Jewish Synagogues had opened up their worship and teaching to the Gentile/Pagan world with the incorporation of Hellenistic literature and philosophy. This is attested in the Gospels (Matt. 23:15). Uncircumcised, God-fearing Gentile-Jews were already part of many synagogues and communities. This is confirmed in the Talmud. What was typically the confusion about this controversial topic was the naïvety of protecting the Torah and its study, versus the study of the seven Noachian commandments available to all people. The very fact that Saul was unaware of these distinctions — especially claiming Benjamite-Hebrew heritage! — smacks of his highly suspect (fraudulent?) origins or at least implies he is a Herodian-Jew, an outsider, mentally lost and ignorant of these established Jewish practices!

Furthermore, what would the best alternative approach for the centuries-later Hellenic Patristic Fathers to a failed Messiah, who never returns, and the related Messianic prophecies also fail? Dr. James Tabor answers this superbly with his 1997 presentation to the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting here. This is another excellent read!

In a nutshell, Torah-loving, Law-abiding Jewish-Essene Jesus in Palestine was not teaching a diluted, distorted Judaism like was practiced by Hellenic, Herodian pseudo-Jews. When constantly rejected and persecuted by those Torah-abiding Jews in synagogues across the Empire, particularly Palestinian Messianic Jews in the Levant, Saul was forced to reinvent his TL-epileptic “divine revelations” into his own Roman-Christ, his own Roman-church, and his own Roman-Hellenic theology. With his background in mysticism and elements/themes of Gnostic Philo-philosophical strands, the Gentile-pagans (non-Jews) — who couldn’t understand the complicated, law-ridden Jewish practices and customs in the first place — were very open to his “new” religious cult. It appealed more to their Hellenic lifestyle and thinking: God’s blessings and salvation were available to everyone if the death of Christ was embraced, death to this world was embraced, and steadfast blind “faith” in these two precepts (since they were unsupportable anyway) granted one’s spiritual entrance into God’s Kingdom of Earth and Heaven.

Thereafter, pagan Pauline Christology was born and still exists today as a never-ending complexity of diverse, dis-unified theology and practices called Christianity.

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Feel free to share your thoughts and/or questions below over this 5-part series. Kind thanks for your patience and time during this series and its demands to research, authoring, and publishing. It is appreciated. 🙂

Post script — For more details about how and why Christianity is comprehensively problematic, unravels, and collapses on numerous counts beyond its founder Saul of Tarsus, go to my page: Why Christianity Will Always Fail.

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This work by Professor Taboo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.professortaboo.com/contact-me/.

Saul the Apostate – Part III

Posted on September 28, 2018 by Professor Taboo

Continuing from Part II

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“Do not give what is holy to dogs,
and do not throw your pearls before swine,
or they will trample them under their feet,
and turn and tear you to pieces.”
— Jesus, Matthew 7:6

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Certainly a strong command to his disciples and words of warning to the crowd listening to Jesus on the Mount. To a modern reader a very ambiguous verse/sermon typical of cryptic non-Messianic Jesus, but it aligns with quasi-Sectarian Essene-Jesus. How so?

The first generation Tannaitic traditions in the Jewish Mishnah (20 BCE – 80 CE) can give some context to the language of this sermon. Three key identifiers can be correctly deciphered out of the loose Greek Matthew translation. They are dogs, pearls, and pigs or swine. In the Tannaitic Mishnah dogs represent Gentile idolaters that “when driven by hunger, tears and devours young lambs.” Pearls represent the rabbinical interpretations and discourse of the Torah, something precious and costly. Rabbis did not teach secrets of the Torah to Gentiles. And pigs/swine were always implied as the Romans as verified in Cicero’s “Divinatio in Caecilium.” Therefore, with this more unambiguous vocabulary, here is the proper Tannaitic version of Matthew 7:6:

Do not give what is holy to Gentile idolaters, and do not throw your Torah-secrets before the Romans, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

Jewish-Essene Jesus further supports this new redone, unambiguous verse in Matthew 10:5-6 and 15:26. At the least, Jewish-Essene Jesus is teaching the crowd and his disciples a passive walk and love in the Torah and to never force the coming Kingdom of God (on Earth) onto Gentiles or Romans if they are not interested. This was not what Saul began teaching and it got Saul into lots of harsh trouble.

In 2 Corinthians 11:24-32 we see that Saul faced quick persecution by Jews after his “vision-revelation” and upon arriving in Damascus. More persecution from 2 Cor. 9 and Acts 16:22. Then he faced opposition from Jewish-Jesus’ immediate disciples, their disciples, and James the Brother of Jesus (Acts 15 and 21; Gal 2; James 2 vs Eph 2?). Not only is the harsh resistance inferred from the canonical NT, it is also confirmed by Eusebius’ Pamphilius, Iraneus’ Against Heresies, Origen’s Against Celcus, and Clement of Rome’s Recognitions that Saul’s early hardships were in both the Jewish and Jesus camps.

Clearly apparent is that Saul wasn’t following established Jewish proselytizing methods in the Didache adopted from the Synagogue’s “Two Ways,” nor was he following Jesus’ disciples’ methods. Saul was just doing and teaching whatever he interpreted from his own seizures, very much like modern psych-patients do during and after their episodes. Consequently, Saul was viewed as attacking, if not at minimum undermining, both Judaism and the nascent Jesus-Movement authorities, the “pillars” (Gal. 2:9). Despite there existing today more details about Saul’s many disputes with both Jews in the Synagogues and the surviving pillars and disciples of Jesus’ closest followers, we are also able to decipher a much better idea of how and why Saul became the Spouter of Lies or if not, certainly treated as an Apostate.

Saul’s Two-Pronged Hellenic Attack on Jesus’ Judaism

Whether Saul/Paul realized it or not, he fueled and fanned the fiery, growing anti-Semitism between his Hellenic Rome and Judaism. He accomplished this in at least two different ways: 1) his conflicts with the Torah, part of Jesus’ core teaching, and its expanded Essene-Jesus function within Judaism in general, and 2) antinomianism which further fueled Jewish hate, and by default undermined Jesus’ principle of mutual love.

A Necessary Reminder First
It must be remembered when reading the epistles traditionally ascribed to Saul, only seven of the 14 are agreed upon by most Christian and non-Christian scholars as genuinely Saul’s letters. Two letters/epistles are evenly disputed and four are considered pseudographic, or written later by supporters of Saul. The true author of Hebrews is now considered unknown by almost all biblical scholars. There are also some known lost epistles mentioned in other epistles. The very oldest surviving codex of epistles by Saul (Papyrus 46) covers only from Romans 5:17 through Hebrews, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and ends in 1 Thess. 5:28. Papyrus 46 is from c. 200 CE, about 35-60 years after Saul’s earliest letters. From this papyrus biblical scholars know the scribe(s) made minor errors and miscalculations. What does this mean for us here?

Saul’s “genuine” letters (in gold below) and those two evenly disputed cannot be considered beyond a shadow of a doubt, 100% authentic words of Saul. Simple later “traditions” do not make a manuscript error-free. The later the copy, the higher the odds it was later tampered with or erroneously copied. Once again, the chronological order of Saul’s letters:

Notice that the letter to the Galatians could have been written around 60 CE. This is important to remember. As we continue, what will also become glaringly obvious was just how horribly the 2nd- and 3rd-century CE New Testament compilers/scribes and the Hellenist “Patristic Fathers” (and therefore all their descendant “Fathers”) turned their 4th – 5th-century canonical NT into a mishmash of nonsense; a complete cluster (tr)uck! Frankly, it’s bad and poorly constructed by men who knew too little about Sectarian Judaism/Messianism and its precise Second Temple intent. How did the Hellenistic Fathers get it all wrong?

Saul’s Conflicts & Confusion with the Torah and Judaism
While in Lycaonia of Asia Minor (Turkey), following the laws of the Torah, Saul circumcised his new disciple Timothy:

Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. (Acts 16:1-3)

Not only did 1st-century Greeks/Hellenists despise the Jewish custom of circumcision, but based on Saul’s other vehement teachings against the Law/Torah (Colossians 2), was this a blatant contradiction of himself? Now suddenly this Saul-behavior seems to align with Jewish-Essene Jesus’ teaching (Matt. 5 and Luke 16)! Why now are there exceptions to what Jewish-Jesus taught and Saul taught? The Hellenistic canonical NT is completely silent.

Leave it to an 18th-century Rabbi to possibly sort out this one (of many) problematic, contradiction in the NT and with Saul. Rabbi Jacob Emden was considered one of the most acclaimed Rabbis for over three centuries. Many Rabbis considered him a Maimonides reincarnated. Here is Rabbi Emden’s clarification; my inserts [ ] and emphasis:

Christian scholars have assumed from certain passages in the Gospels that [Jesus] wished to give a new Torah to take the place of the Torah of Moses. How could [Jesus] then have said explicitly that he comes only to fulfill it? But it is as I have said earlier — that the writers of the Gospels never meant to say that the Nazarene came to abolish Judaism, but only that he came to establish a religion for the Gentiles from that time onward. Nor was it new, but actually ancient; they being the Seven Commandments of the Sons of Noah, or children of Noah, which were forgotten. The Apostles of the Nazarene then established them anew. However, those born as Jews, or circumcised as converts to Judaism (Ex. 12:49; one law shall be to him that is home-born, and unto the stranger) are obligated to observe all commandments of the Torah without exception. — Rabbi Yaakov Emden, “Seder Olam Rabbah Vezuta” Hamburg, 1757

However, does this 18th-century Jewish Rabbinical extrapolation solve the many other problems in Saul’s epistles? After 200, 400, 2000 years why hasn’t this confusion and/or contradiction been fixed? Christians and Christianity has always blamed the Jews for killing Jesus. Why do so many Christians over the many centuries think that to be true? The answer? It began with Saul of Tarsus:

“You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus“ (1 Thess. 2:14b-15a)

And then antisemitic hostility continued more forcefully with the Patristic Fathers:

“Accordingly, these things have happened to you in fairness and justice, for you [Jews] have slain the Just One…” — Justin Martyr, “Dialogue with Trypho” chapter 16

Blaming the Jews for Jesus’ execution was perpetuated all throughout the Crusades, the Medieval Era and into the modern era even to the Holocaust. But it started with Saul. However, it is most clear in the much later written four Gospels (Matthew 26:57-68, 27:25; Mark 15:8-15; Luke 23:3-23; John 8:31-47, 18:29-40, 19:6-15) representing the fuller Hellenistic retrograde takeover of a failed(?) Jewish Messiah (Gospel-Jesus was never clear about this title) and rewriting the legend into a successful Roman Messiah with some Greek-Gnostic mysticism (Saul) interwoven. Examples of Gnostic and Sectarian mysticism?

Saul completely revamped, reinterpreted the ritual meaning of baptism. Immersing one’s self into baths or rivers was to him no longer a rite of cleansing and regeneration as Jews and Jewish sects such as the Essenes symbolized (Jewish-Jesus as well), for Saul it was a pseudo-death to the world and transformation into a spiritual resurrection with Christ (Romans 6:1-10). For Saul, the Lord’s Supper/Last Supper was a mystical magical union in Christ’s blood and body. This mimics exactly the Mithraic ceremony in the blood and body of Mithra. Justin Martyr even wrote the ritual was identical to early Christianity’s Last Supper ritual. Of course, Martyr was very biased to his own personal beliefs. The point is that the Mithraic ritual was also magical-mystical and hinted of Hellenic Gnosticism and Jewish Mysticism.

Saul’s new teachings, sacraments and “mysteries” (1 Cor. 10:20-21; Rom. 1:18-32; 1 Thess. 4:5; 1 Thess. 1:9-10; Rom. 8:28-30, 9) which brought so many hardships upon himself from both Jews and new Judaeo-Christians (Essenes too), was teaching one thing: Christ’s death. It was teaching atonement through his death and failure that put all believers perfectly right for God’s coming Kingdom of Paradise. It wasn’t righteous behavior and it wasn’t even faith in an all-forgiving, all-loving Father/God that achieved salvation. It was only Christ’s mystical judicial death. Experiencing that “death” and rebirth through a mystical and/or neurological state of mind (TL-epilepsy?) was how a Gentile became saved. The problem and confusion for Saul — a Hellenistic “mystic” — was that his path to salvation was NOT the path Jewish-Jesus taught in his real life, according to all extant sources: Gospels, non-canonical testaments, and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Essenes) combined.

Saul’s Antinomianism and More Jewish Hatred
Aside from the obvious fact few people rarely want or desire to be on the losing end of an event or organization, or repeatedly associated with a defeated and crumbling existence no matter what time-period it occurs, Saul’s letters progressively over time taught (see above image) further and further demarcation, even defamatory alienation, from all things Jewish by c. 55 – 57 CE when he wrote his letter to the Romans. Several biblical scholars like S.G.F. Brandon, F.C. Baur, and Barrie A. Wilson, chronologically follow Saul’s journeys, compared and contrasted to what was reported about him in Acts decades later, and quite clearly notice (as I do) his rising, antagonizing frustration with the losing people, or team if you will. Take 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians (with regard to Jews) and compare them to Romans and Ephesians(?) — and if Galatians was actually found to be written c. 60 CE — and Galatians 3, one cannot escape Saul’s antinomianism and anger toward authoritative Jews, Rabbis, and the Torah.

Focal-fractal seizures of TLE

Let’s not lose sight, however, of the forest because of those few trees Saul insisted on playing with — with lighter-fluid, gas cans, and matches — dramatically (mystically) coming from his “divine revelations” via TL-epilepsy. They were given only to him, and yet not first to Jesus’ closest disciples/students, or let alone any of God’s first chosen people of tiny nomadic Israel. Why the trickery? Or rather why the perpetual antinomianism necessary for the endless kinetic cycle of life, death, and evolution to which all things submit? Consider this…

Because Saul somehow deemed himself the procurator-divine-mediator for all Gentile humanity without pre-approval or preliminary discussion with any other authorities (i.e. Jerusalem Council) or proof, why and/or what made his antinomianism become popular and successful in the end? Why has any antinomian or monistic movement any better or worse than any others in the past? Was it because at that time in history (68 – 180 CE) it was the pinnacle, the most glorious days of the Hellenistic Roman Empire? Was it because of some ancient and contemporary tradition that the Latin God(s) favored the bold, victorious, and popular culture/lifestyle as Virgil poetically wrote in his Aeneid? And more apparent, the Latin God(s) did not favor losers or the constantly losing Jews. Pagan Rome held all the winning cards.

In Part IV, I will spell out how Saul — by going to the Hellenistic Roman Gentiles — in light of his challenges, antagonism, and disrespect to long-established Second Temple Judaism/Messianism and Sectarianism, was simply seeking larger psychological approval, acceptance, from his known tiny world. He wanted/needed validation for his ailment, his TL-epilepsy (revelations?), and his unconventional background in Merkavah/Heikhalat mysticism which almost all of his conventional (sane?) Jews rejected. So can one single man with TL-epilepsy dictate what sort of life was right, was best, and would be the most fulfilling presently or in the afterlife… for the entire world and all of humanity for all of time?

Until the next part, please feel free to again share your thoughts, ideas, or questions below.

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The Art of Enticement

Posted on November 17, 2017 by Professor Taboo

The lightning-rods salesman, dressed in storm-colored clothes jangling and clanking with his peculiar bag of rods approached the two young boys, Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade, laying on the front lawn:

“Halloway. Nightshade. No money, you say?”

The man, grieved by his own conscientiousness, rummaged in his leather bag and seized forth an iron contraption.

“Take this, free! Why? One of those houses will be struck by lightning! Without this rod, bang! Fire and ash, roast pork and cinders! Grab!”

The salesman released the rod. Jim did not move. But Will caught the iron and gasped.

“Boy, it’s heavy! And funny-looking. Never seen a lightning-rod like this. Look, Jim!”

And Jim, at last, stretched like a cat, and turned his head. His green eyes got big and then very narrow. But Will was staring beyond the man now.

“Which,” he said. “Which house will it strike?”

“Which? Hold on. Wait.” The salesman searched deep in their faces. “Some folks draw lightning, suck it like cats suck babies’ breath. Some folks’ polarities are negative, some positive. Some glow in the dark. Some snuff out. You now, the two… I–“

“What makes you so sure lightning will strike anywhere around here?” said Jim suddenly, his eyes bright.

The salesman almost flinched. “Why, I got a nose, an eye, an ear. Both those houses, their timbers! Listen!”

They listened. Maybe their houses leaned under the cool afternoon wind. Maybe not.

“Lightning needs channels, like rivers, to run in. One of those attics is a dry river bottom, itching to let lightning pour through! Tonight!”

“Tonight?” Jim sat up happily.

“No ordinary storm!” said the salesman. “Tom Fury tells you. Fury, ain’t that a fine name for one who sells lightning-rods? Did I take the name? No! Did the name fire me to my occupations? Yes! Grown up, I saw cloudy fires jumping the world, making men hop and hide. Thought: I’ll chart hurricanes, map storms, then run ahead shaking my iron cudgels, my miraculous defenders, in my fists! I’ve shielded and made snug-safe one hundred thousand, count ’em, God-fearing homes. So when I tell you, boys, you’re in dire need, listen! Climb that roof, nail this rod high, ground it in the good earth before nightfall!”
— Ray Bradbury from his novel “Something Wicked This Way Comes”

There are a few different motifs and themes in this classic Bradbury novel, but the one I want to touch on here is belief, the psychological power and influence of what a group’s ideology can accomplish, for better or worse, when the right components are all in play.

The characters in Something Wicked This Way Comes are amazed and puzzled by “Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show,” a strange carnival that has unexpectedly arrived in their small town. Word soon spreads that because it caters to people’s deepest desires and fears, it is viewed by the town as evil. Yet, Mr. Dark claims they did not arrive unannounced, or unwelcomed. Indeed, the people of the town invited them, ah, wanted them:

Mr. Dark: “Your torments call us like dogs in the night. And we do feed, and feed well. To stuff ourselves on other people’s torments. And butter our plain bread with delicious pain … Funerals, marriages, lost loves, lonely beds that is our diet. We suck that misery and find it sweet. We can smell the young ulcerating to be men a thousand miles off. And hear a middle-aged fool like yourself groaning with midnight despairs from halfway round the world.”

The good people of Green Town handed over the power and will for Mr. Dark’s visit. Whether taught, or inherited, or both, they had long believed their lives were incomplete, intolerable, in the balance, and in grave danger. It wasn’t until Will Halloway’s father, Charles Halloway, embraced his age, occupation as a janitor, the paradox of life and death, and his gifted humanity that any “power” the Pandemonium Shadow Show could have wielded was gone, like a mist in the wind.

NeoConservative & owner Steve Green

When a story is told well, as was Orson Welles’ 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast, mountains can be moved and lives changed forever. Whether that canard is true or not often makes little difference. And when a captivating story is well performed, immersing its audience with spectacular effects, marketing tools, and endless millions of dollars, the spellbinding dopamine avalanche is near impossible to stop. Or can it?

With all the same dramatic components and controversy in play with the creation, development, and intent, the recent opening of the Museum of the Bible is no different.

“At the center of this [drama] is the word “non-sectarian,” which the Museum of the Bible uses often in its messaging. The term has a long history in the evangelist community dating back to the early 19th century. As Steven K. Green (no relation), the director of the Center for Religion, Law & Democracy at Willamette University College, explains, for the faith tradition, the concept is rooted in the belief that there are fundamentals of the Bible that are non-disputable and non-debatable. “It’s hard for you to realize it is representing a particular perspective,” says Green of the often well-meaning evangelical Protestants who clashed with Catholics firm in their own religious tradition in the 1800s.”

The museum opened its doors to the public today. Here is one article from Smithsonian.com magazine which elaborates on the museum’s promises, its biased funding, and the far-reaching controversy over its artifacts and narrative-slant all wrapped in an enticing Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show.

I’m very curious to read what all of you have to say about “The Greatest Show Ever Told” and whether museum visitors are well-versed, or should be, in the much broader less known (untold?) stories, artifacts, and narratives of the Bible. What are your thoughts?

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

In Tempus Perverse

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Professor Taboo

For the last several weeks I have been in a discussion, on various blog-posts and a public forum here in my area about a story, a way of thinking and living. It has been stimulating and enlightening to hear and read various testimonies from others. I want to share a satire of it and get your thoughts.

What if all forms of authority in your life — law-enforcement, government, parents, utility companies, military — told you that you must return to and use 18th, 17th, and 16th century personal, household, and public items and products? You can no longer use modern items in your daily life. No more cell phone, no more automobile or anything other than two-wheeled equipment, no more electricity, no more GPS, no more vaccinations or modern over-the-counter medicine, no more tapes or glues, no more television, no more contraceptives, no more modern kitchen appliances. If you try, you will be imprisoned for a minimum of 20-years; repeat offenders 40-years or suicide. Imagine, seriously imagine having to do this for an indefinite period of time.

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How would you like it? Would you welcome the digress or would you complain and rebel? What would be the advantages of returning to a bygone era? What are the disadvantages?

If you are one of the thousands or millions who do not wish to return to a time of no penicillin, no 24-hour deodorant, no contraceptives, or no indoor plumbing, then you would be quite modernistic, quite progressive, to state the obvious. Why choose that if you don’t have to? Remarkably, there are millions of people who willingly elect to return or stay firmly entrenched in an antiquated, flawed life-paradigm no matter its expired ancient condition.

Time, insight, wisdom, and progress never stop. That is a universal law. It is human nature to be curious, to observe and learn, ever evolving sometimes for the worse, but frequently for better. These are empirical, ontological, epistemic truths. Yes, despite humanity’s horrific track-record at times, what is wrong with being an optimist, a realistic optimist? There are those, however, who do not want perpetual improvement. They do not want an unconditional celebration of life, this life right here and now. They teach and preach that this life and our planet is severely defective and irreparable.

Enter the popular, the great Masqueraders of Sanctimonious Rescue!

There is Hebaroo, then Kristop, and last Islahn. All three are brothers, so they claim, but family history has shown constant estrangement and little kindness to each other. All three blame complete strangers and the other two for all the family and world dysfunction. Each claim themself the sole heir of all this life’s riches and the next. It cannot be shared. Period. Would you like to marry one of them? If you do, each of them promise a perpetual state of war! If you don’t marry one, they’ll promise a perpetual state of more war so agonizing you’ll want to kill yourself, your children, and everyone else.

Now, don’t you see from what you/we need rescuing? This is the carnival merry-go-round everyone was born onto and can never escape or stop its endless rotation. Round and round we all go. What a Stephen King nightmare, huh? Do not fret my clever friends, there are MANY ways to completely avoid this carousel, carnival, and its sanctimonious masqueraders and keep your life, joy, peace of mind, and exciting future!
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Unveiling the Masquerade and Carnival

All three temperamental brothers have their gangs, their peeps if you will, and various codes of conduct. Since much of the Western hemisphere is the territory of Kristop I will work on him and his gang-members, though I could address Hebaroo or Islahn as well, but for the sake of your time and mine I want to stick to Kristop for now.

Why Do I Need Rescuing?
In the spirit of this festive tale and Kristos’ mode of operation, you must be married to him as soon as possible. Even if you are 4-years old, do not wait! You must become part of his harem. Staying “single” or unmarried, at four or ninety-four, leaves you at high-risk for all types of tragedy, for emotional, mental, and physical anguish, and because the entire Earth and all its inhabitants — except for Kristopians — are carnivorous and want to devour you whole or slowly in little pieces before invisible King Exedo arrives and finishes you off! Plus, you and all strangers have no will-power, or at least strong enough not to fall under the spell of King Exedo.

One more thing, all human perceived deformities, malignate-terminal diseases, imperfections, or anything bad which is non-human are caused by and are wicked schemes of invisible King Exedo. All of these sad, painful, harmful, life-threatening problems are by King Exedo and any non-Kristopians. They are why we all need the loving rescue and marital brute “protection” of Kristop.

Protection Now?
Since humanity’s present condition is so hopeless, so urgent of rectifying, Kristop demands a decision immediately. Why you need his protection is quite simply “membership has its privileges.” There’s a slight trick to this offer, however, in that how this ‘privileged membership’ plays out is about as varied as there are stars in the Cosmos or grains of sand on Earth. This is so for two reasons, two additional characters:

Aurae and…
Hermanewt

What makes these two characters so indistinguishable is that sometimes they can be one in the same. Other times they are completely different. What is most important though is not that you fully understand Aurae and/or Hermanewt, but that you become intimate with them both no matter what they may or may not represent. To know Aurae is to also know Hermanewt and to grasp and utilize Hermanewt you must first be intimate with Aurae. Once you have mastered these two characters, you are officially a member of Kristopians with privileges. Got it? If not, I will explain all in basic terms later in this excellent Greekish-Latinish medieval genre of storytelling. But we must continue with your/humanity’s dire need for death-insurance.

Protection for My Future?
Despite what hundreds of soothsayers, intuits, or NDS’s (near-death survivors) consistently report, Kristop and Kristopians, Hebaroo and Hebarooans, Islahn and his Muuslinians, and thousands of other gangs… all say ambiguously and unambiguously what destination you and humanity will travel to post-mortem. There is only ONE map to this destination. Kristop and Kristopians say it is their map. Islahn and Muuslinians vehemently argue it is their map! Hebaroo and Hebarooans say no, it’s neither of those maps, it is strictly their map! These three brothers have never gotten along or agreed completely about maps, nor Aurae, Hermanewt, King Exedo, or whose masquerade carnival is most magnificent. No matter, even though there has never been anyone to go to that post-mortem destination and returned to tell about it, you and all of humanity must still have their exclusive (free of charge?) death-insurance protection and password! Got it?

If not, I will explain all in basic terms later.

Failures of Kristop’s Carnival and Masqueraders
Like all demi-god-like human characters, Kristop has a boss, the head-honcho Godhead of the Syndicate, if you will. HHG of the Syn goes by so many different names that no one really knows if the “entity” actually exists. No one can indisputably prove its existence, only orthodoxy, and circumstantial evidence or theories within our three gangs here raise the HHG-Syn’s possibility. For the sake of argument, let’s say Kristop’s boss HHG-Syn does exist. Where is HHG-Syn and how can one perceive HHG-Syn?

possibly King Exedo

Kristop and his code of gang-conduct proposes two means of perception: 1) Woolly disclosure and 2) Exceptional disclosure. Because of these two methods not one single human being past, present, or future could/can/will say they knew nothing of HHG-Syn and the codes of gang-conduct.

Woolly disclosure, according to Kristop and Kristopians, is so obvious to everyone everywhere that if it were a snake, it would leap up and chomp on your nose! It never let’s go either. Honestly, look at all the trees on Earth. Every single tree is exactly identical; they have roots, bark, limbs, and leaves, some even have different color flowers and different shaped leaves. That reflects one HHG-Syn, and one HHG-Syn-Kristop code. That is woolly disclosure! It cannot be mistaken because everyone perceives the same.

Honestly, look at all the fish in the seas and oceans. Every single fish is exactly identical; they have fins, scales, gills, and tails, some even have spots or stripes. See, that reflects one HHG-Syn, and one HHG-Syn-Kristop code. That is woolly disclosure! It cannot be mistaken because everyone perceives the same.

Honestly, look at all the speaking and writing by all humanity, from beginning up to today. Every single oral story, book, language or hieroglyphs, and their plots are exactly identical; they have a table of contents, a prologue, page numbers, chapters, suspense, an epilogue, and a dramatic ending, some even have pictures. See, this too reflects one HHG-Syn, and one HHG-Syn-Kristop code. That is also woolly disclosure! You cannot mistake it because everyone perceives the same thing.

Exceptional disclosure, according to Kristop and Kristopians, is the one and only singular Code of Gang-Conduct and later amendments to previous shortcomings. If the previously covered protection-plans and death-insurance policy wasn’t enough to persuade you/humanity, and Woolly disclosure is not pristine to the unambiguous ambiguity of HHG-Syn, then don’t be afraid, one and only one singular, timeless Code of Gang-Conduct (with amendments) has been given to you and all of humanity to aid in rescue! There is absolutely no ambiguity present in the Code of Gang-Conduct (with amendments) if you simply wear Aurae-Hermanewt goggles and headphones, and not ever take them off. Why? Because Hebaroo and Islahn and their gang-members, as well as other total strangers on this utterly doomed King Exedo planet, will lure and transfix your insignificant pervious will-power if you put on non-Kristopian or take-off Kristopian goggles and headphones. Don’t be tricked, don’t be stupid!

Hold on though. There are three basic questions or problems — if you haven’t already realized — with Kristop’s boss and his masquerade-carnival and carousel:

Has HHG-Syn been found and identified? By who or whom?
Has HHG-Syn spoken to everyone an easy auditory message?
Has HHG-Syn given the same identical written message?

On number one above, if HHG-Syn has been found and has been accurately identified, why is there so much disagreement and diversity about the operation and personality of HHG-Syn among Kristopians?

Kristopian

On number two, there was/is no singular verbal Code of Gang-conduct (over many centuries of amendments and revisions) in the past or today. Due to the misgivings and conduct/nature of Aurae, no “easy,” no “singular” message can be heard among all Kristopians. Ask any Kristopian to intimately describe Aurae and how Aurae interrelates within Woolly disclosure and Exceptional disclosure, and you find much diversity and controversy aplenty.

And finally on number three above, there currently exists between 66-books and 81-books in Kristop’s Code of Gang-Conduct. Kristopians argue those differences are minor, but the simple fact is there’s no single number among ALL Kristopians. By definition of the word canon it implies there exists disingenuous or wrong stories and conduct. In a word, imperfection. In another two words, Unexceptional disclosure. This falls inline with Woolly disclosure quite well. Hence, this does not reflect only ONE way. It does not reflect necessarily two disclosures either. And it does not reflect consensus. It reflects many other things.

The Irreconcilability of Monism and Dualism
Monism means that there is only oneness or singleness to a concept, life, or existence. Diversity, differences do not exist. Dualism (or binarism) means that opposed forces exist everywhere in thought, life, or existence. In the gangs of Hebaroo, Islahn, and Kristop, this is typically described as Good v. Evil, Male-Female, Mind v. Body, Physical-Metaphysical, and so on. There is nothing outside of this notion or belief, only black or white, no grey, nothing in between. It’s A or B and done.

When one genuinely examines the designs, functions, and endless purposes of all the people, of all the Earth’s organisms and species, and beyond our tiny planet into the endless Cosmos, tell me please, do you find only duplication or bipartisanship, only monism or dualism? If so, show/tell me where and I or another can show/tell you otherwise. Holding stubbornly to monism and/or dualism is like arguing a circle or sphere has corners.

Do Not Get Trapped in Tri-Brotherly Tunnel-Vision!

Unless you were born into and raised inside the Kristop, Hebaroo, or Islahn gang, asking yourself, their gang-members and gang-leaders how does HHG-Syn speak and how can you determine it’s really the one and only HHG-Syn speaking… is an exercise in Ningbo, Zhejiang, China’s Butterfly Maze to reach the prize. Kristopians do not want anyone starting the maze anywhere outside the 33,565 square meter park, you must start inside the maze only and try to find all exits and dead-ends, never venturing outside the borders. What does that mean exactly?

Kristopians and their gang-leaders first make you take an oath, that you accept without hesitation or doubt the reality of King Exedo’s irresistible power and charisma over your brain and body, then pledge your eternal marital allegiance and faithfulness to Kristop — not any other brothers or non-Kristopian gangs — and then finally promise never to stay more than 10-15 minutes in non-Kristopian lands or behaving in non-Kristopian ways. As a result of exemplary allegiance, your basic membership privileges gradually become Gold VIP status and once you pass Go, all fellow members recognize your accomplishments, follow you everywhere, and you collect unimaginable peace, happiness, pleasure, absolute perfection and riches in Caelum as your future promised death-insurance payout! This future promise is null and void if you frequently (or maybe just once or twice) go OUTSIDE the boundaries of the Butterfly Maze. “Frequently” depends on which Kristopian assesses your questionable behavior and what relationship they have with Aurae and Hermanewt.

click here to enlarge

Not so surprising, there is more than one entrance into and exit out of the brother’s masquerades, carousels, carnivals, and mazes. The only way there could be just one entrance/exit is if you repeatedly tell yourself there is just one. In fact, it is possible/probable that thinking strictly one way is a shrewd King Exedo trick. Don’t get caught in the tunnel-vision trap. It doesn’t really exist except in antiquated folklore and fairy tales from an expired bygone time-period in a tiny far away land from a tiny group of nomads wanting to be identified (way back then) as the only true ~~game~~ gang in town.

In case you haven’t deciphered the title of this post, it is in Latin, meaning masquerading in the wrong time-period.

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

Origins and Orthodoxy

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Professor Taboo

The six of us were all sitting around the kitchen table discussing time-travel and the effects of gravity on time itself. A good friend of the family repeated once again what she had stated earlier, “It is all merely philosophy and theory.” The word speculation would probably have been another word she would have approved and used. My political and respectful(?) response was “But how will we learn and know if we don’t GET OUT THERE and collect the actual data?” She agreed.

You see, our sweet good friend comes from a long maternal ancestral line of Protestant evangelical fundamental Christian indoctrination. She has not known any other lifestyle or worldview her entire life of 32-years. Because of this and also where I currently reside — the Hill Country towns of central Texas and nearer a few of my extended family — I am confronted daily or weekly with this religious mindset and way of life which they automatically assume to be true and right from generations after generations, after generations. I ask… should we not get out there, explore, examine, scrutinize, and always ask the hardest questions in order to arrive at the most plausible truths? I think so.

From 1983 to 2002 “getting out there” was exactly what I set out to do regarding a real God, the Christian bible, then the Hebrew bible, and more recently the Quran. This post and some of my other related blog-posts are what I discovered over those 19-years and counting. This post is another condensed study and research from those years based on 20 scholars listed in this supporting Bibliography Library-Page, as well as my personal experiences with fundamental Christian evangelists, extended family, apologists and one particular Hindi futeboller from Kashmir, India. My purpose for writing another post about biblical fundamentalism, particularly Christian, is simple. Share with the public and anyone interested just how few questions are asked about the roots of earliest Christianity under the contextual dominance of the early through late epochs of the Imperial Roman Empire. It is safe to assume that mainstream Christianity, if not church leadership too, are naïve of their own faith’s history and origins.
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* * * * * * * * * *
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The Nature of God?

How does a person learn who God is, what She/He/It is like, and how do we know it is truly God and not some imposter or auditory or visual hallucination? This question of course presupposes that a God exists in the first place. Ignoring this a priori step in the process of logic and reasoning would be a serious mistake. However, for the sake of time and subject matter, I will not go into the existence or non-existence of God. For a plethora of reasons much of the world believes God or a Supreme Being exists anyway.

Therefore, assuming a God(s) does exist, how can we know this God? Morgan Freeman’s recent National Geographic mini-series The Story of God was pretty well received by audiences and critics as Freeman and his team traveled the world gathering various cultural perspectives of God. I Google-searched the question “How can we know God?” and it returned these first 10 resources, out of about 483,000,000 results:

“How to Know God Personally —

What does it take to begin a relationship with God? Devote yourself to unselfish religious deeds? Become a better person so that God will accept you?

You may be surprised that none of those things will work. But God has made it very clear in the Bible how we can know Him.

The following principles will explain how you can personally begin a relationship with God, right now, through Jesus Christ…”

(from the Campus Crusade for Christ International website)

From the Joyce Meyer Ministries website “Everyday Answers”…

“There was a time in my life when I struggled with all types of fears and insecurities, constantly worried about the future, my job, my ministry, and my family. Needless to say, I wasn’t really enjoying my life!

However, over time, the Lord helped me to change… and He helped me understand an important key to truly enjoying life. It all begins with what the apostle Paul says in Philippians 3:10… something I believe we should all pray regularly…

“[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him…understanding the wonders of His person more strongly and more clearly]…” (AMP).”

From the Got Questions Ministries website…

“How can I get to know God better?” —

Answer: Everyone knows that God exists. “God has made it plain” that He is real, “for since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Romans 1:19-20). Some try to suppress the knowledge of God; most try to add to it. The Christian has a deep desire to know God better (Psalm 25:4). — by J.I. Packer

(the next 7 paragraphs reference the Christian bible 13-times)

From the In Touch Ministries website…

“Getting To Know God” —

Did you know God wants to show you more of Himself every day? Does your time with the Lord revitalize you, or does it feel more like a ritualistic experience? In Hosea 6:6, God is clear: “I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

(the next 6 directives reference the Christian bible 3-times)

From the Every Student website…

“What does it take to begin a relationship with God? —

Wait for lightning to strike? Devote yourself to unselfish religious deeds? Become a better person so that God will accept you? NONE of these. God has made it very clear in the Bible how we can know Him. This will explain how you can personally begin a relationship with God, right now…”

(the rest of the page references the Christian bible 16-times)

And jumping to the 10th result on the Harvest Ministries website…

“Know God —

You were created to know God in a personal way—to have a relationship with Him, through His Son, Jesus Christ. How do you start a relationship with God?”

(the following 4 step procedure references the Christian bible in every step)

Noticing the pattern? The bible, the bible, the bible, and repeatedly the bible apparently has all the answers to knowing God. There doesn’t seem to be any tangible physical meeting of God where you actually see God, or hear Her/His/Its voice, you cannot call God up for an interview, nor is there a global standard of where to find God or how to find God’s collective global nature from any of these websites… except, in the Bible.

This has been my own experience when asking faith-followers these questions about God. In other words, the more people asked, there seems to be more than just one simple version of God! Hmmm. Maybe what should be asked is what “version” of God is most popular in the world?

According to www.Adherents.com and other sources, the world’s largest religion by population is Christianity (2.1 billion), followed by Islam (1.5 billion), then the Non-religious or unaffiliated (1.1 billion), Hinduism (900 million), Chinese Traditional (394 million), and Buddhism at 376 million respectively. As a result of popularity then, let’s look more closely at the Christian version of knowing God. How can it be done?
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Divine Revelation?

Throughout the lore and archaeological evidence of humans, when a divine spirit or Supreme Beings disclosed themselves to people, or something about existence, or about the world, in theological terms that is often defined as revelation. Because video and audio technology did not exist 50,000 years ago when forms of verbal human language began, and institutionalized morality only began long after around 10,200 BCE in the Neolithic Period, we cannot know the types of divine revelations that took place. Prior to the start of human writing (cuneiform) 5,000 years ago or around 3,000 BCE, there was still no video or audio technology available to literally record gods or God. Only rituals, song and dance, and oral traditions passed to descendants in various chiefdoms and tribes in ancient Egypt, Sumeria, and Mesopotamia were the way to know about God or gods.

Kesh Temple Hymn tablet

Today, one of the oldest known religious texts is the Kesh Temple Hymn from ancient Sumer which dates to around 2,600 BCE. Yet, other than Sumerian admonishments the hymn offers only glimpses and inference into their gods. The other oldest religious text — the Egyptian Pyramid Texts — was carved into the walls of the pyramids at Saqqarah and date to around ca. 2400–2300 BCE. However, these Egyptian texts do not reveal any specific ways to know the gods other than again by inference.

As a result of very very ancient oral traditions or storytelling, and very ancient cuneiform inferences, both from an area of the ancient world covering over 1.5 million sq. miles, how then do Christians today really know God? Are all of them experts in palaeography and epigraphy and their interpretations? Of course not. Do they speak regularly with those deceased Neolithic Sumerian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian storytellers, or ancient Hebrew, Arabian, or Greek orators? Of course not. It would be wise, therefore, to better understand what exactly it is and why Christians place so much unquestioning faith and belief in 1) a religion based on ancient storytelling, 2) widespread fluid (imprecise) cuneiform art, 3) a couple or three very small Hebrew tribes from the ancient Middle East, and followed by 4) more letters and stories about a man’s life and teachings recorded 60 to 110 years AFTER the actual events occurred in the 2nd century CE.

The Fertile Crescent

Yet, despite this precarious framework of revelation, a great number of evangelical fundamental Christians would disagree with my above assessment. Why?
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Special Communion

They disagree because they and apparently 2.1 billion in the world proclaim that God CAN be known. They disagree because God has made Herself/Himself/Itself available to be communed with through two or more methods. If anyone can list and explain more than these two methods, please feel free to share in the comments below! Nevertheless, take a large enough sample of those 2.1 billion Christ-believers — similar to hearing a complete sentence on the trading-floor of the New York Stock Exchange during heavy screaming — and one can start to narrow the methods down. I will borrow from Theopedia.com to explain…

General Communion/Revelation – “Also known as Universal revelation, general revelation deals with how God can be understood through his creation. More specifically, this can be manifest in physical nature, human nature, and history.“
Special Communion/Revelation – “is distinguished from general revelation in that it is direct revelation from God. Examples include God’s direct speech to various people (e.g., prophets; cf. 2 Peter 1:20-21), the incarnation (cf. Hebrews 1:1-2), and the Bible. Such revelation is sufficient to communicate the gospel, unlike general revelation, and thus salvation is possible only through special revelation.“

Is General Communion/Revelation adequate to authenticate evidence of a God as Christians claim from Romans 1:19-20? The controversy over this religious tenet versus human reasoning (science?) started way before 2nd century CE Christianity and as early as the 7th century BCE in Mesopotamia by Assyrian and Babylonian astronomers.

The lethal controversy was over the purpose or reason for lunar eclipses. The Assyrian-Babylonian priests believed that lunar eclipses were evil omens and vindictive restlessness of the gods directed against their kings. However, due to hundreds of centuries of recorded astronomical data, by the 1st century BCE Babylonian astronomers knew an upcoming lunar eclipse would happen on May 28th, 585 BCE at sunset. In fact, their mathematical calculations were accurate within a couple of minutes! The astronomers had calculated the 18 year and 11.3 day (223 synodic month) interval between lunar eclipses. This suggested that the eclipses had a natural (scientific) cause. If lunar eclipses were predictable, then the Babylonians could appoint a temporary king (likely through coercion) who would accept the horrible wrath of the gods, thus saving the real king from a death-omen.

The most famous controversy of church tenets versus human reasoning and mathematics was between Galileo Galilei (1564-1642 CE) and the second organized Christian church, the Roman Catholic Church. As most already know, Galileo was tried and convicted as a heretic by the church for his correct Heliocentric system of our solar system. It made no difference though, God’s Holy Church and Testaments infallibly ruled. It wasn’t until over 350 years after Galileo’s death that the church addressed their ‘mishap‘:

“… Pope John Paul II gave an address on behalf of the Catholic Church in which he admitted that errors had been made by the theological advisors in the case of Galileo. He declared the Galileo case closed, but he did not admit that the Church was wrong to convict Galileo on a charge of heresy …”
— National Center for Biotechnology Information, October 1992

Therefore, given that the physical world has not and cannot be wholly described at a moment in time as monistic evidence, or substance monism/Neoplatonism, for evidence of God — i.e. one creation by one source during the sixth day of creation while new species are being discovered and others going extinct every decade or century — this leaves us with only Special Communion/Revelation to know God.

As stated by Theopedia and most Christian-believers, Special Communion/Revelation is their firm foundation for knowing and experiencing the Judeo-Christian God. This communion has three components:

Direct speech – through past and present prophets carried by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21).
The Incarnation – through the birth, life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ (Hebrews 1:1-2).
Holy Bible – a communal collection of ancient writings breathed by God which comprise the sixty-six books of both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

For the sake of my reader’s time and mine, I will make brief comments on the first two special-revelation components which I hope will cause anyone to examine or reexamine their dubious implications. Following those comments we will finally delve into the origins and developments of the Christian Bible.

Direct speech
By popular definition prophets hear or sense the voice of God directly then obey. Innumerable documented examples reside both in ancient and modern history. About 1,550 BCE the prophet Joshua was told by God to go conquer the land and people across the Jordan River (Joshua 1:1-6), killing all the men, women, and children (Joshua 6:21). After Jericho was razed, on the further commands of God Joshua then razed the town of Ai, killing 12,000 men and women (Joshua 8:24-28). Genocide is not the only command by God either, mass suicide is also spoken by God to the more faithful zealous followers. At the fortress of Masada in 73 CE led by the apocalyptic prophet Eleazar ben Yair, though details are debateable, 960 Jewish revolutionaries committed suicide/murder for their God rather than endure enslavement by Rome.

Jones (left) and Koresh

In modern history three iconic prophets also followed God’s direct speech for mass suicide of all their most faithful zealous followers. They do not need any elaboration here. They were Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana (Nov. 1978) of 918 followers — nearly 300 were children — Marshall Applewhite in Rancho Santa Fe, CA (March 1997) convincing 39 followers, and David Koresh in Waco, TX (April 1993) leading 85 followers — 22 of them children/teenagers — to their mass suicide/incineration.

In a 2007 co-authored article by Erich Follath (diplomatic journalist), Manfred Müller, Ulrich Schwarz (theologian), and Stefan Simons (Spiegel Online correspondent) entitled “Following Divine Orders“ which focuses on the Age Old irresistible appeal of religiosity for fanatics, or rather those who are not moderate or “luke warm” about their beliefs:

“According to the three Abrahamic faiths, God only revealed the truth about Himself, humankind and the world to their respective religion; it is therefore recorded separately in their holy scriptures: the Hebrew Bible (the Torah, or Old Testament to Christians), the Christian New Testament and the Islamic Koran.

These [bibles] contain countless contradictions. Both the Koran and the Bible’s Old and New Testaments bear witness to a good and merciful God. They urge humans to live in peace and harmony. This is reflected most clearly in the instruction attributed to Jesus in the Hebrew Bible: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.“

But these messages of brotherhood clash with sentiments that condone intolerance and violence: “For I came to set a son against his father, a daughter against her mother …“; “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me“; “Do not think that I came to bring peace on Earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword.” The prophet Mohammed also delivered harsh threats from Allah: “Fear the fire prepared for the infidels.“

Throughout history, the Abrahamic religions’ claim of absolute authority has exerted an irresistible appeal on fanatics, encouraging them to impose their own faith on nonbelievers and dissidents alike – if need be by using fire and the sword. To this day, nearly all religions supply the kindling that fuels wars and acts of persecution, sparks torture and murder, and inflames ethnic hatred. Examples abound: the bloody wars between Hindus and Muslims in India, or the enmity between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia.

For centuries, it seemed that the Abrahamic religions had come to terms with – and discarded – extremism. In the case of Christianity, this dates back to the Enlightenment, when the symbiosis between church and state collapsed and a new system of ethics emerged – one that was independent of faith in God and derived solely from social consensus.”

Those above examples of ancient and modern direct divine revelation seriously beg the questions What exactly is the Holy Spirit and how is it (a prophet) accurately tested for authenticity? Anyone who wishes to answer these questions, good luck! I do NOT envy you. There are as many various definitions of the Holy Spirit/False Prophet debate by Christians as there are species and sub-species in the animal kingdom! It is truly unimaginable. Suffice it to say here that almost all Christ-believers, scholars and laypersons alike, ultimately and exclusively refer to their Bibles for definitive Holy Spirit or non-Holy Spirit answers. Naturally, that only leads to more questions. Therefore, “direct speech” is not a religious consensus to really knowing God.

Greek soccer fans

It is worth mentioning, the fields of psychology, neurology, and sociology have many theoretical studies associating heightened religious behaviour due to Temporal lobe epilepsy and minor forms of schizophrenia, and sociologists have found that social God-constructs can persuade individuals into states of euphoria because of large numbers of people acting together in a strongly shared belief — crowd psychology or mass hysteria, also known as Mass Psychogenic Disorder/Hysteria. Huge sporting events are good examples of this phenomena. Extreme isolation can have similar effects of hyper-religiosity and paranormal hallucinations, sometimes negative.

The Incarnation
In theological terms, this is simply God in and as Jesus Christ; both God and man simultaneously. The first grave problem with this Christian doctrine is that it is based upon only “Christian-biased” historical sources and traditions riddled with inconsistencies. In other words, who and what Jesus of Nazareth was historically between 6-4 BCE and 30-36 CE, the generally agreed upon lifespan, cannot be verified with absolute certainty outside of the Christian Synoptic Gospels. Many Christian apologists vehemently claim that writings by Flavius Josephus, Pliny the Younger, and Tacitus are non-Christian evidence for the historicity of Jesus. F. Josephus, however, was not completely unbiased about the new Jesus-Movement called The Way by Judean-Christians; he too was involved in 1st century CE Jewish Messianism as a Pharisee. Pliny and Tacitus were indeed Roman and non-Christian, but their very brief mentions are about Christians as a whole, rather than a biography about a specific person named Jesus.

Therefore, the best that Christian-believers can hope for regarding an actual verifiable incarnation of God through Jesus of Nazareth is by Christian scribes and followers 30-90 years after his death based on oral-storytelling traditions. That is the closest that honest scholarship can provide at this time, and beyond that is a question of individual faith within crowd psychology. This now leaves us only with the Bible… what the doctrines of Direct speech and The Incarnation frequently must reference anyway.
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The Canonical Bible

Many modern Christians are unaware of the origins, early development, and the 2nd and 3rd century CE controversies surrounding the final compilation of their Bibles. Some believers might even think their bible suddenly dropped out of heaven long long ago after God finished writing the 66 books, never thinking to ask “Why just 66 books? Why not 40 or 10 simple books?” And honestly, orthodoxed American society today, including many Christians, know very little of the ancient world of Jesus, the Levant, and the Fertile Crescent.

click here to enlarge

The birthplace of Jesus was Judea, the Jewish province ruled by Rome. Divided by intense religious factionalism, the people of Judea, as well as Galilee, Idumea, Nabatea, and Perea were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Messiah and God’s salvation. First century CE Romans would have encountered a large mix of traditions and philosophies in this world. The Hebrews had for many centuries suffered foreign invasions and been harshly buffeted by powerful external cultural forces. The most potent of these was Alexander the Great’s Greek civilization supported by several centuries of Hellenistic overlords in Egypt and Syria.

The Jews in these regions were divided over subjects ranging from the legitimacy of the priesthood to the acceptance of certain books into the Hebrew Canon. The Essenes rejected the priesthood entirely. Samaritans formulated their own unique doctrines. Various cadres of Jewish zealots pledged themselves to the expulsion of the Romans. Sadducees made up their prestige with the aristocratic clans making up the priesthood in Jerusalem and exclusive supervision of the Temple. They rejected the books of the Prophets and Writings and also became more ingratiated with Herod and Roman governors who eventually granted them local rule in the Sanhedrin. The Pharisees were more progressive than the Sadducees in that they not only accepted those books, but also believed in angels, demons, resurrection, and — like the Essenes and other groups — passionately in the coming of the Messiah, e.g. the Apostle Paul. The Pharisees also had grown a body of unrecorded commentary on Hebrew Scriptures and rulings by Jewish sages. This was intended to help Jews adapt the ancient Law of Moses to the circumstances of their own time.

Essentially, roots of the Christian New Testament began during this period of great Jewish disunity, alienation, isolation, and confusion before anything Christian was written down. Once Christ-followers began recording an anthology or testaments of Jesus’ parables, prophetic and wisdom teachings, and exhortations — by around 150 CE (over a century after Jesus’ death) — there was no less than 42 testaments or gospels for Christian teachings which were freely circulating as opposed to just 27-books in today’s New Testament. The formulation of the Hebrew Bible, i.e. the Old Testament, went through similar reconfigurations between 500 BCE and 70 CE, i.e. approximately 600 years!

Naturally, all this diversity and variety of who and what the Nazarene was caused more confusing fractures among outlying Christians and Judean-Christians for centuries! It is like trying to answer “What is an American?” today in one single description from 324+ million citizens. To learn more about the various origins of Nazarene-Nasorean-Nasara-Nazirite, go here to my bibliography subpage: The Nasara-Nazirites.

1st & 2nd century Roman Empire

Authoritative or Not Authoritative?
For over three and a half centuries (between 337 and 389 years!) after Jesus’ death, there existed no standardized written collection about Jesus’ ministry or precisely what he did or taught. Everything known about him (and not known) was by word-of-mouth across 2,000 sq. miles. What is more dubious and astounding is that what little there was written down about Jesus’ message was by a foreigner, a Hellenistic Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus who had never once met Jesus in the flesh, in person. No surprise, after Saul’s ‘paranormal conversion‘ to “The Way” on the road to Damascus, he fell into serious conflict with the Council of Jerusalem headed by Jesus’s next-in-line brother James, Peter, Cornelius, and other Judean-Christian leaders who had personally known Jesus quite well compared to Saul. Yet, today Pauline-Christianity (aka Saul) predominates the New Testament, seminaries, and modern churches. James Tabor, professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, writes about this heavy influence from a near total stranger to the Jerusalem leaders… and their and Jesus’ Neo-Jewish teachings. Tabor states:

The fundamental doctrinal tenets of Christianity, namely that Christ is God “born in the flesh,” that his sacrificial death atones for the sins of humankind, and that his resurrection from the dead guarantees eternal life to all who believe, can be traced back to Paul — not to Jesus…

In contrast, the original Christianity before Paul is somewhat difficult to find in the New Testament, since Paul’s 13 letters predominate and Paul heavily influences even our four Gospels. Fortunately, in the letter of James, attributed to the brother of Jesus, as well as in a collection of the sayings of Jesus now embedded in the Gospel of Luke (the source scholars call Q), we can still get a glimpse of the original teachings of Jesus…

What we have preserved in this precious document is a reflection of the original apocalyptic proclamation of Jesus: the “Gospel of the kingdom of God” with its political and social implications.
— Christianity Before Paul, The Huffington Post, November 2012 cited Aug. 16, 2016 at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-d-tabor/christianity-before-paul_b_2200409.html

With this and other additional alternative extant evidence, one has to ask “What formula was used some 300-years later to configure and reconfigure the vast oral and written testaments/gospels of Jesus?” Hitherto is a list of the most significant testaments/gospels about Jesus of/the Nazareth/Nazarene out of approx. 130 known writings not present in the New Testament today:

For a more complete list of the many known writings of Jesus and his earliest followers, go to the NNU Wesley Center’s page of Non-Canonical Literature.

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Apostolic Fathers and the Canon Formula

Signs that much of these various Jesus-literatures had been accepted as authoritative by church leaders and early Christian congregations as early as the 1st and 2nd centuries CE appear in the letters of the Apostolic Fathers. During these centuries of the new upcoming churches, no official creed or universally accepted liturgy existed. In the following paragraphs, notice the similarities from the first churches to modern-day Christian churches.

The biggest and most heated controversy was a newer version of an old Jewish sectarian problem: Are the Hebrew Laws, Prophets, and Writings above, below, or void in light of Paul’s Hellenistic teachings — deeds or faith? Another ongoing spinoff debate was the Gnostic challenge: There are two dualistic worlds and two Gods, and there was no Incarnation, explained as follows:

The World of Darkness was created by an inferior God, the Hebrew God, and so the Hebrew scriptures were rejected or severely de-emphasized.
Material aspects of this Dark World, including the human body, were burdens that humanity was forced to endure by the Hebrew God.
The World of Light and Knowledge was ruled by a Supreme Being. Salvation was possible only through gnosis of this divine world and the Supreme Being’s mysteries, but salvation was available only to some, not all. Some Gnostics had a three-tiered class system too.
There was No Incarnation because he was not the Son of the inferior Hebrew God, nor did he become a man, suffer human pain, or die on a cross. Resurrection was merely a spiritual linking of the soul with the World of Light and had nothing to do with a human body.

Because Pauline Orthodoxy had the support of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch, and their power and influences of those churches and bishops, by the 4th century CE the Gnostics would quickly be labelled heretics and harshly hunted down and most all their holy literature burned. With the four strongest episcopal sees in the Roman Empire, Ignatius, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Hermas, and their colleagues along with their heavy power and influence… the weaker episcopal sees around the Empire and the remaining Jewish-Christians in and around Jerusalem simply could not stand up to the might of Hellenistic Constantinian Rome.
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Victors and Emperors Always Make the “Authoritative” Laws and Histories

Walter Benjamin posited that “History is written by the victors.” Historical records of major social, national, economic, ethnic, or religious upheavals and cleansings bear this philosophy out to some/large degrees. And so with his maternal-influenced-miracle-based sanction of the “official” Christianity, Emperor Constantine not only led the Roman Empire, but was also Head (Pope?) of the Church. He called for unity as a whole within the Church and agreement on its scriptures. Easier said than done inside one of history’s largest empires.

There were no less than seven failed attempts to form an official universal Bible. On the eighth failed attempt by Eusebius of Caesarea at the request of Emperor Constantine, Eusebius’ rejection of the popular Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Matthias; the Acts of Andrew, of Paul and of John; the Shepard of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas; the Didache, 1 and 2 Clement; and the Apocalypse of Peter… got his configuration rejected (see Table of Canonical Debate below). His reasons for classifying certain texts as questionable or spurious had revealed the basic formula for inclusion. Probably more important for him was a writing’s perceived apostolic authorship, though its antiquity and orthodoxy were also of significant consequence. Study closely the following table…

Athanasius of Alexandria wrote his Easter letter to the churches and monasteries in his diocese identifying the books they were to include in the testaments. Athanasius was one of the more flamboyant patriarchs. He was exiled from his pentarchy five times leading back to the Council of Nicaea due to his unyielding defense and decisions to compromise with other Roman patriarchs (which at times included Eusebius) over controversial points of Christian doctrine. His canon had been later confirmed by the church in Rome in 405 CE, in 393 at Hippo Regius in North Africa, and in Carthage twice, in 397 and then again after the growing Gnostic churches in 419 CE in reaction to the intensifying debate regarding James, Jude, and Hebrews. The Syrians used the Diatessaron as their canon for another 50-years. The Ethiopian church continues to this day to recognize a book of Clement and several other non-canonical books of liturgy. Though the various pentarchy churches had made ground toward unity, it is important to know they were never in absolute agreement on the New Testament canon and Christian doctrines.

Notice from the above Table how even the seven Patriarchs, who were themselves understudies to the Apostolic Fathers, after 300 years still did NOT completely agree on what God’s Son, the Messiah, and the new and old messages was suppose to mean to all people. Yet Constantine, his bishops, and propraetors had to have orthodoxy — a long standing Greco-Roman political tradition.

It wasn’t until around 400-419 CE and centuries of compromise and more compromise that the final configuration of the Christian New Testament was officially closed — closed by the declaration of the Emperor, put into law, and enforced by the torches and swords of his Roman Legions. For a God who is proclaimed as omnipotent, omniscient, and infallible, and whose traits are “proven” in the special revelations of the Canonical Bible, raises the glaring question:

Why was there three centuries of confusion, fracturing, and compromise among its early most prolific theologians… and even still to this day!?

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For Jews and Christians alike, study of the Scriptures has often been an end to itself — a simple act of devotion — rather than an exercise in absolute truth. These peaceful moderates likely realize today that human interpretation, interpolation, and orthodoxy (individual or group) cannot create an inerrant testimony of the nature of a God, nor of the full nature and teachings of a Jew named Jesus based from ancient oral traditions and differing literature spread over multiple centuries… or from differing regional cultures over 2,000 sq. miles. From an early date, believers then also began to scrutinize the Bible for what it had to say to their own generation and community along with their prolific leaders. Exegesis back then was done for purposes of preaching, pastoral care, formulating codes of behavior, and finding answers to theological and ethical questions not explicitly addressed by the texts.

As it happens today, inevitably back in Antiquity, disagreements arose — over importance of texts, their relative authority to the community, how to account for known inconsistencies and contradictions, and how to explain confusing biblical stories. Like our dear family friend in the kitchen at the beginning, both sides of the debates were probably saying to each other, “Your posture is all merely philosophy and theory.” But orthodoxy nonetheless developed, often based on a pseudo-definite set of human-like rules or patterns regarding multiple meanings and levels of meaning. To imagine there to be just one universal way, one universal lifestyle, one universal truth (e.g. John 14:6), one universal orthodoxy extracted from these millenia of “divine revelations” then and now… is not only an attempt to force a square peg into a round hole, but it is a blatant denial and/or ignorance of historical facts, wide-ranging scholarly critical thinking, reasoning, and probability, and/or a lack of deeper persistent curiosity.
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Or it could be only ~~tunnel-vision~~ “faith.” Right? (wink)

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

Blog-posts for additional information:

—Constantine: Christianity’s True Catalyst/Christ
—The Suffering Messiah That Wasn’t Jesus
—Correcting the Gospels of Jesus
—Masada, Texas: How Egos and History Repeat
—The “Holy” River