More responses to Marek
Glogoczowski’s
http://www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/rd4.htm or
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/message/1146
From Paul Bennett
Hello
Marek.
I find
the pursuit of TRUTH as a worthwhile endeavour, and when I first
read about the Essenes years ago I too was
struck by the similarities to
early Christianity. It does seem obvious that our Church is a product of
Roman tinkering with Hellenic myths and Essene
imagery, appropriating
the "hot button" themes and piecing together a religion worthy of an empire.
While
this intellectual pursuit of the truth is stimulating and
interesting, I wonder if you might agree that the information gleaned
from these studies is not for everyone. In other words, if this
information was devastating to the Faith, would it be in Society's
interest to have it known to all? For example, what would the people who
elected George W Bush two times do with the knowledge that Jesus Christ
is a nothing more than a "metaphysical construct"? "River" remarked that
he hoped that "we" might "get back to the Essenes".
Would the end result
be an improvement of our world?
I don't
know. It might be better. But I do know that remaking a Society
is a dangerous task, and that the effort is usually co-opted and
channelled into the New World Order - much as the Romans channelled the
energy of the early Christians into building their empire.
It
reminds me a little of how the Catholic church
attempted to keep the
Bible under wraps. I'm sure it's because of the Old Testament. I'm sure
they were dismayed, as I am, at the violence of the ancient Hebrews, and
considering the crazy heresies that sprang up from the mild words of
Jesus, I'm sure they feared what cults might spring from the words of
the Hebrew prophets. In any case, their worst nightmares are confirmed
in the USA-AIPAC-Israel unholy trinity. America was founded by bible
thumpers, and we remain bible-thumpers - and we chiefly thump the Old
Testament.
I think
the old Catholic church had it right. Most people
are just not
ready for the truth.
Paul Bennett
info@poolsideComputing.com
From: River
The thing to realize about a
transcendent God is it means he is therefore *not knowable per se from
this world, [of which he is by
definition also apart from, as well as if he chooses a part of (divine
intervention)], by an act of our *own will alone. He has to wish it *also in
other words. So that is in other words the truth about what a transcendent
God means.
Truth otherwise although it may
be difficult to find out, it is not impossible to discover here in THIS
world, precisely because it resides IN this world. Truth of this world is
not transcendent and so *knowable.
The historicity of any religion
is only important in its precise details IF the religion makes the claim
that it is, and sets out what those details are. This is both the problem &
the allure (box office/attendance) of
judaism-islam-christianity. They have some historicity but many of
the salient details are mythical. MORE importantly for a religion, resides
in whether or not it is metaphorically sanguine in terms of teaching the
difference between right & wrong & secondarily in fulfilling the pilgrim's
spiritual sensibility or dimension, whatever that may be. This second part
speaks to box office or attendance which determines whether or not you
*actually have a "religion" rather than say a personal belief-system unique
to oneself.
Christ is a metaphysical
construct (carefully put together over about 100 years or so by Greek, some
Roman, and Jewish scribes) employing Plato's for example Logos or Word now
made Flesh (or top - down, as it were) and at the same time things like the
Greek sensibility about equality (or bottom- up)in
sayings like 'what you do to the least of these you do unto me.' And in the
attempted avoidance of hypocrisy - 'he among you without sin, cast the first
stone.' etc., etc. (Why Christianity contains and utilizes the opposites in
as sanguine a way possible.)
What's also interesting much of
Greek influence in Rome at the time also
dovetailed with the
Essene Brotherhood's teachings of which Jesus
the Essene (holy man) was one of their rather
exceptional members earlier, during the previous time. Before, even the
Essenes, were over-run in their outlying desert
communities during the inane & insane Bar-Kokhba
Revolt against Rome. Which resulted in the famed and
exaggerated
diaspora of
only those Jews who had joined and fought on the side of the latest Jewish
Messiah 'Bar-Kokhba'. As at the time more
Jews were already living happily in the surrounding areas of the
Mediterranean including Rome, than in Palestine. But as a result of the
Revolt all of the Essene scrolls etc., etc. were
appropriated and taken to Rome, and are to this day in the basement of the
Vatican's enormously prodigious archival Library.
A scholar who could speak, read
and write 15 languages including Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin,
etc., etc. and had no axe to grind or political baggage was commissioned to
sort out who was the source and author of things like the Lord's prayer and
the Sermon On The Mount etc.
His name was Edmond Bordeaux
Szekely and by reading all of the old scrolls in
all of the different languages over a great length of time, he discovered
the lion's share of the Essene works upon which
the New Testament myth or story was based were composed by the holy man
Jesus the Essene who also penned things like
'Every Son's Prayer to the Father' i.e. now 'The Lord's Prayer' & penned and
probably delivered as well The Sermon On The Mount ... As well as authored
The Essene Gospels of Peace coincidently enough
there were 4 of them, at least in the Vatican archives.
Conversely the fellow crucified
was a Messianist revolutionary, claiming to be
the Christ or Messiah prior to Bar-Kokhba, and
who unlike the latter was
from "the house of David" but he was captured in the famous if rather minor
Passover Revolt in about A.D. 33 or 33 C.E. and sentenced by Rome to death
by crucifixion. In the 'sweep' after the Passover Revolt Jesus the
Essene in town for the celebration was also
picked-up by ignorant Roman troops who couldn't tell he was a peaceful Essene
and holy man, whom the Romans came to appreciate and respect. As soon as he
was brought to Pilate (who knew all about the Essenes)
- out of hand he was immediately released. The revolutionary on the other
hand was condemned and executed. His band of revolutionaries robbed the
grave and claimed he rose from the dead and all of that...since that was the
level or mentality like for example in Haiti today, and good for morale.
So hundreds of years later with
all of this information in their laps and with Jewish-*Christian myth and
religion growing in Rome the Emperors had their scribes on hand working on a
construct or official belief-system & story that everyone Greek, Roman, Jew
etc. could live with and had some salutary effect as a religion on the
population. "St. Paul" for example i.e. 'we are all one
neither Jew nor gentile, Roman or Greek etc.' (and went too far so we
have the liberal problems we
do today) 'neither male nor female' etc. or in other words "too
transcendent". But then conversely Paul nails it all down (pardon the pun)
'nothing else matters we are all one we have Christ and him CRUCIFIED' for
us.
Israel
we are all 'conceptual creatures' ... and since conceptual we're the
creatures capable of noticing how imperfect the world is and how messed up
things can be and how much we're suffering or in pain etc. That's why we
NEED religion and one that justifies
this to us. IF we are going to try to ameliorate it in our minds (concept)
we want to 'believe' God knows
and sent his own too to suffer with us.
That's the
jist of what the
scribes were also doing through the character "St. Paul". How can you
'argue' with that (even with yourself) = 'God so loved the whole
world/everyone'. Warm fuzzies - it RELEASES
endorphins the brain's natural painkillers. It's the 'movie' version of
truth. God so loved us, he allowed Moses to part the Red Sea... releases
ENDORPHINS... I feel much better now at least for the moment
ok, I'm going to go on...
If you have time read 'The
Essene Origins of Christianity' by
Szekely and/or 'The Essene
Gospels of Peace' as translated by Szekely.
As a philosophical or
metaphysical (same thing) comparison of judaic/greek
for example Essenes = Aristotle - Semitic =
Plato ... that's why I coined and pointed out the cultural reality of both
the Semitic & Platonic Facades,
10 years ago to begin with.
HOWEVER box office /
attendance... the average mentality has not
yet evolved beyond the NEED for
the movie version, for the Facades, as it were...to get their ENDORPHINS
going sufficiently and so if we accomplish that AND at the same time teach
right & wrong ... well it's in its net
effect a good religion.
One day perhaps in the not too
distant future-?-we'll be back to < the Essenes
& pick up where Aristotle left off < ... What's the last line Fitzgerald's
novel The Great Gatsby - "And so we beat on, boats against the currents,
borne back ceaselessly into the past."
None of this means there is OR
there isn't a transcendent God - that's unknowable by design, as an act of
our own will, alone. None of
this threatens or questions the concept and/or reality of divine providence.
Those transcendent things are beyond the reach of the world and its truth
which may in fact
point toward them.
Since they fortunately stand just above the lesser and
conflicting verities of the world.
'Grey are
all the theories, but green is the tree of life.' -Goethe
Regards,
River
From
Marek Glogoczowski:
“Christ is a
metaphysical construct”
My text “Poisoning of the earth
by Ahriman’s Fairy Tales of Redemption and
Natural Selection”, published at the end of July 2008 at
http://www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/rd4.htm, has
provoked several comments. These comments are relatively long and
cognitively complex, so I propose, in the present email (letrel
in French), to follow voices agreeing with my concept of progressive – upon
ages – corruption of initial Christianity. In a subsequent email/letrel,
which I hope to complete this week, I will discuss opinions of so-called
“Bible blind believers”.
1. From a ‘shamireader’
describing himself as ACS or “River”, I received an
information about works of a Hungarian multilingual researcher Edmond
Bordeaux Szekely, which were done roughly 50
years ago. Szekely claims that
“Christ
is a metaphysical construct (carefully put together over about 100 years or
so by Greek, some Roman, and Jewish scribes) employing Plato's for example
Logos or Word now made Flesh”. I copy this significant letter
below, adding to it an opinion of professor (emeritus at present)
Ludwik Kostro, from
the Gdansk University, who in 1970-ies had a chance, as a young physicist
and a catholic clergy man, to study the history of science combined with
biblical sciences at the catholic
Sacro
Cuore University at Rome.
Kostro told us, during a seminar in
Kraków ten years ago that according to scholars
working at Sacro
Cuore University, several Jesus’
miracles were “borrowed” from miracles done by Greek sympathetic gods, like
Dionisos (changing water into wine), or
Asclepios (healing the ill and even raising from
the death). These gods were worshipped during Jesus times in Alexandria
(thus not so far from Jerusalem), in a form of an
unique god called Serapis (Osiris-Apis).
Of interest is River’s (ASC)
pertinent remark that Plato’s philosophy, with its sharp division into
material, passive “flesh” and immaterial “logos” (or “ideas”), was easily
adapted to concepts of Universe developed in Semitic (Hebrew and Phoenician)
cultures (represented, respectively, by writings of Philo
Judeaus of Alexandria and than by “La
doctrina christiana”
of St. Augustin). A more mature Aristotelian
observation that “form” cannot exist without its material base (i.e.
“logos”, “word” or “ideas” always must have their material bearer) in
antique Israel was understood among members of isolated
Essene sect. ASC informs us that Szekely
wrote a book “The Essene (and thus Aristotelian)
Origins of Christianity”. Nevertheless, for more than thousand years after
the appearance of Christianity Aristotle was condemned as “too materialist”,
and forbidden to be read by Christians by Fathers of Church – there were
Moslems which saved Aristotle’s philosophy during these Dark Ages. At
present Aristotle become once again completely neglected by
Cartesianism (a degenerated form of Platonism)
inspired researchers in Life Sciences. We shall ask who will be able to
resurrect, the absolutely necessary for our collective survival,
Aristotelian (and Lamarckian) “biological philosophy”, once again.
M.G.