 |
Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms |
|
|
|
Many Christian scholars, whether liberal or conservative, assume without argument that modern Christianity began with Jesus and moved outward to become a world religion on that basis - perhaps elaborating on or modifying the teachings somewhat, but retaining this basic structure. But not all modern scholars agree with such an assessment. Modern scholarship today believes that such a view is drastically flawed as well as most scholarship upon the historical Jesus as well because finding of archeology and Egyptology in the last 200 years is blowing the lid off the "Jesus Story" as never before. Most Christians have not heard of such discoveries emanating from the finds of archeology let along Egyptology and its Astrotheology for if they had they would be bombarding their clergy with questions all day long. The sad fact is that their clergy are equally uninformed about such events. Only because I began to seriously study the Dead Sea Scrolls many years ago did my subsequent studies advance into these fields and it was there that I uncovered these earth-shattering finds in these fields that have overturned 1,800 years of traditional understanding of Christianity as we were given it from Rome and the early Church Fathers like Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin, and others.
The New Testament, like any other literature, is easier to understand and more interesting when it is seen in its historical context. For a still better picture of the age in which the books of the New Testament were written, it is necessary to step back a bit and review important events in Jewish history leading up to that period. The social, political, and religious conditions in Judea at the time of Christianity's birth are of great significance in understanding the direction which that religion took. The sects or parties prevalent in Judea at the dawn of Christianity had an impact on early Christians, as well as on Jews. The names-Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots--are mentioned throughout the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles. The Sanhedrin occupies a significant place in the recounting of Jesus' trial as does the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. No study of the New Testament is complete without an awareness of the character and influence of Paul, the great proselytizer, if not founder, of Christianity. Paul’s role and his anti-Law bias is pivotal in transforming Nazarene Judaism into Gentile Christianity. Even a cursory analysis of the historical evidence shows that Christianity was filled from the very start with internal controversy over basic issues running the gamut from the true Jewish Messiah, supposed fulfilled Messianic prophecies, and the identity of "Jesus Christ". The differences between those claiming to be Christian in the first four hundred years after the time reputed for Jesus were greater than at any other time in history - greater even than that of today. Regardless of what view we take about Jesus, and there are many I must tell you, we must acknowledge and come to grips with these schisms, and in so doing, try to understand all sides of this issue as best we can. This is unfortunately necessary before we can understand correctly this "Jesus". At the basis of all these schisms is the first and most divisive question in the first centuries of Christianity:
Answer for yourself: What is the relationship between the followers of Jesus with Judaism, both Jew and "non-Jew"?
Early Christians interpreted this "Jesus" within Judaism in many different ways. This, we must understand comes from the fact that most who came to believe in "Jesus" did so based on oral traditions and no eyewitness reports. Let me say again how important it is that we recognize that the "Jesus Story" we have today in the gospels is the fruit of oral tradition.
It's rather clear from the way that the stories develop in the gospels that the Christians who are writing the gospels are doing so from a stock of oral memory, that is, stories that had been passed down for centuries if not longer since this same "Jesus Story" can be found in Ancient Egypt and the Old Kingdom if not earlier. And it's around that memory of "the Christ" and this "Jesus", around that set of concerns that a lot of the earliest oral stories about Jesus must have circulated and must have been built. So we have to imagine the followers of this Jesus and "the Christ" getting together around the dinner table probably and talking about their memories, maybe it was the memory of something that "the Christ" actually said once upon a time or maybe it was a glimpse of an image that they had of him in their minds or dreams. But the thing that keeps coming back is they tell the story of who he was in retrospect from the experience of what he became through his death and through the story of his resurrection which, by the way, can be seen today to have been told since Ancient Egypt. Story telling was at the center of the beginnings of the Jesus movement long before there were any written documents of this new faith. And I think we're right to call it the Jesus movement here because if we think of it as Christianity, that is, from the perspective of the kind of movement and institutional religion that it would become a few hundred years later, we will miss the flavor of those earliest years of the kind of crude and rough beginnings, the small enclaves trying to keep the memory alive, and more than that, trying to understand what this Jesus meant for them. That's really the function of the story telling since it's a way for them to articulate their understanding of Jesus and "the Christ". And in the process of story telling, when we recognize it as a living part of the development of the tradition, we're watching them define Jesus for themselves. At that moment we have caught an authentic and maybe one of the most historically significant parts of the development of Christianity. In the development of the oral tradition then, it seems that over time some of these stories came to be written down, and the use of these summary statements about the contents of the "Jesus Story" are what much later came to be thought of as the gospel, the good news, the story of Jesus. But the term gospel, or good news, itself, means just a proclamation of the information, of what happened and interesting to note the first quote of a "Gospel" by name by any Christian writer cannot be found, even today, till after 180 A.D. So much for the Roman tradition that these gospels were written early. And that's what the gospels are, a narrative tradition, the story of Jesus and "the Christ". In light of this we must also admit that modern scholars teach most convincingly that the accounts we have to Jesus in the gospels are not eyewitness reports or first hand accounts or biographies of some first century person but rather later propaganda intended to reinforce the various oral traditions of this Jesus woven into a synthesis of sorts.
We have to remember that the gospels themselves and their full account of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus came a good bit after the fact, in some cases perhaps even sixty to one hundred years later. So those stories had a long time to evolve and develop. But we can see that they're based on some smaller units of oral tradition that had been circulating for many years before. We see this even in Paul's letters. Paul himself, remember, doesn't write a gospel. He actually doesn't tell us much about the life of a historical Jesus or Nazareth at all. He never once mentions a miracle story of this reputed historical Jesus. He tells us nothing about the birth of this Jesus. He never tells us anything about teaching in parables or any of those other typical features of the gospel tradition of Jesus. In fact he mentions only two of the sayings of this Jesus and at best devotes no more than a one sentence for each. What Paul does tell us about this Jesus is the death, and he does so in a form that indicates that he's actually reciting a well-known body of material.
Answer for yourself: I am getting way ahead of myself but I cannot contain myself so let me give you a nugget and provoke your thought. What was the understanding of the "death of the Christ" as far back as Egypt and what is the implications for the later "Jesus Story" and could this explain why Paul never mentioned much about a historical Jesus in all of his writings? Have we lost the Gnosis of "death" in the Scriptures and mistakenly interpret it to be the cessation of human life by mistake?
So when Paul tells us, "I received and I handed on to you," make no mistake about it; he's referring to his preaching, but he's also telling us that what he preaches, that is the material that he delivers, is actually developed through the an ancient oral tradition itself. We just don't know that today because we also have lost this "gnosis" of the "death and resurrection" of "the Christ" within us! There, I have given you a great nugget for later studies on other sites.
Now one of the most important examples of this comes in the First Corinthian Letter. On two separate occasions in First Corinthians, he actually gives us snippets of early pieces of oral material which he repeats in a way, so as to remind his audience of what they've already heard. In other words, it presupposes that they will recognize this material. Paul is "hinting back" at what his audience had already heard in some fashion an that is staggering to the idea that the "Jesus Story" was a new revelation at best. And because we can isolate it out of his letters, the way he describes, we then are able to reconstruct what that early body of material would have looked like at a time before it's ever written down.
Answer for yourself: What is an example?
Let us focus on First Corinthians 11 where Paul describes Jesus instituting the last supper. This is one of the early pieces of oral material. The other one is First Corinthians 15 where Paul describes the story of the death, burial and resurrection.
Answer for yourself: What is so important about I. Cor. 15? First Corinthians 15, Paul's description of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus is the earliest account that we have in any written form. And it's clearly what Paul himself had heard and learned over a period of several years. So it's one of those little blocks of material in Paul's letters that pushes us that much farther back toward the presumed historical time of Jesus. Now here's what he tells us, he says that Jesus died, was buried, was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, he relates it to prophecy. But there is a problem.
Answer for yourself: What is it? There is no existence anywhere to date of any Jewish prophecy of this "Jesus" or the Jewish Messiah being killed and resurrected 3 days latter. We have to go to Astrotheology to find such a Divine Concept at it is connected to the Equinoxes. Just remember this one fact as we continue and one day as we grow ready for such studies we will see this in detail and how it related to the "birth" of "the Christ" within each of us.
Then he says, "Jesus appeared". He doesn't tell us about the empty tomb. There's no reference to that part of the story at all. Instead he tells us Jesus appeared, first to Peter and then the twelve, next to 500 people, some of whom had already surely had died by the time Paul heard the story. Now in each of these two cases it's interesting that we have information that we don't get anywhere else in the gospels tradition.
Answer for yourself: What should this teach us? Simply that this is a unit of oral material that was not included in the gospel tradition long before the time of this Jesus and is very important to the development of the later Jesus tradition.
Now what happens as an oral tradition arises is that the first oral tradition is not an attempt to remember exactly what happened, but is rather a return into the symbols and allegories of the earlier tradition that could explain an important event. Therefore, one has to imagine that legend and myth and hymn and prayer are the vehicles in which oral traditions develop. This is exactly what occurred with the "Jesus Story" over time.
There are many reasons for doubting if this "Jesus", historical or otherwise, could have, or would have then founded a Christianity as it developed in its antisemitic trends later when "the Christ" was depicted as a Jew from which this new Gentile religion would later develop. The new religion that emerged from the events of the life and death of this Jesus contained too many divergent movements to have been the product of a single creative mind. Many scholars attest that if Jesus had intended to found a new religion, he did not succeed in doing so in any coherent form. They maintain that he had no intention of doing so. The Jesus newly revealed by the study of his Jewish environment is not likely to have founded the movements that collectively constituted early second century Christianity. Historians used to suppose that early Christianity was united in the legacy left by Jesus; only later did disunity arise, as new and unorthodox interpretations of the tradition developed. We now think it was far otherwise. Early Christianity moved in several divergent directions, and it was not possible to unify them by appealing to the authoritative teaching of a founder. Only in the second century did it begin to be unified around a form of Gentile Christianity, as a result of strenuous efforts by some of its leaders, most of them associated with the Church of Rome. These men were men like Clement of Rome, Mathetes, Polycarp, Ignatius, Barnabas, Papias, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus in the second century. The effort was never completely successful, and in later centuries new forms of disunity set in. But Christianity never again became as diverse as it had originally been. If we look back to the state of the Christian movement at the end of the first century and the beginning of the second, we find amazing variety and diversity. However, scholars usually group the many versions of Christianity flourishing then into three main tendencies, only one of which is at all familiar today:
In broad terms, there were three schools of thought in early Christianity as to what this relationship between Jew and "non-Jew" should be:
Now don't react and don't believe anything I have said. Let us study together and examine the evidence together and see if I can prove all of this to you beyond any doubt. I can and I will and I say that humbly for I have done these corroborative studies for twenty years and am certain of my findings. Nowhere in anything I teach is a "private revelation" or a "God told me" but hard-nosed factual study of texts, Biblical history, archeology, comparative religion, Gnosticism, the writings of the Early Church Fathers and their shameful admissions to such deception, Astrotheology, the Essenes and their theology, Roman Church history, and all other related disciplines necessary for such studies and I will share the results of such studies with the reader as we move from article to article and gather all the needed puzzle pieces where we can see clearly the truth about the "Jesus Story" and "the Christ". Don't make any changes in your religious beliefs now at all. I recommend you study hard for 6 months, step back, look at the puzzle pieces you have collected, reevaluate what you have been shown and then make any adjustment in your religious belief system and worship of God at that time. Then begin another 6 months of study and do the same. Over time you will collect enough truth and puzzle pieces to this "Jesus puzzle" and you will arrive at a point in your relationship with God that no man can lie to you about God any longer for you will know the truth for error no matter how "religious" it might sound. All you need do is follow the train of thought in these article and do your own validating studies as I show you the sources for such information that reveal the truths I teach and expose the errors we have been led to accept as truth. Our recommended book list will become your best friend. The Rabbis say that it is good to gather around yourself your best friend and "good books" are your best friends. Something to think about in light of where we are in Christianity today.
So in summary we have three basic but different views of Jesus but only one I have found to be correct from my studies. If you do the same then I am confident your finding will lay next to mine.
Answer for yourself: Which one of these Jesuses and Christ are the real? Which have you been taught by your church is the correct one?
All these views were differing ways of coming to grips with a fundamental problem: that being that "the Christ" had been depicted to have been born in a human body as a Jew, lived as a Jew, worshipped as a Jew, and died a Jew.
But the problem of the "non-Jew" remained. The problem was bigger than just Jesus and understanding of "the Christ". Yet in the years after the time allotted for the life of Jesus, and following the dispersion of the Jews after the destruction of the Temple and the Jewish War of 135 C.E., the number of gentile Christians came to greatly surpass the number of Jewish Christians. Christianity, instead of a Jewish movement, came to consist less and less of those who continued to acknowledge their Jewish roots by remaining loyal to the Jewish law, and more and more of those who believed that they had little if any responsibility to have allegiance to the law of Moses but only to the revelation of Jesus and Romanize Paulinism and their particular brand of Judaism.Ironically, this brand of Judaism will become what we call antisemitic Gentile Christianity apart from its Jewish Roots. Eventually, as you would expect, under the early Church Fathers this brand of Christianity came to regard any faithfulness and adherence to the Jewish law as a heresy and bondage. This is to be expected since many in the Gentile nations never had or understood the Torah before they heard the preaching concerning the "risen Christ" of Paul. No longer possessing the Ancient Wisdom and proper understanding of these allegorical sungods then this "literalized Jesus was for them just another in a long line of "risen sungods." No longer possessing the Ancient Wisdom and the "keys" necessary to its proper interpretation this debased teaching of "the Christ" becomes in it final manifestation, when "literalized", the hideous sin of idolatry. No longer possessing the Ancient Wisdom and the "keys" necessary to its proper interpretation mankind lost the identity of this "Jesus Christ" and the teachings on "the Christ" later changed at the hands of antisemitic Rome. This website, then, is in part a re-examination of the history of Jewish Christianity and the place given the "non-Jew" within as intended by God and as was taught in the earliest centuries of the Jewish Church. This will go a long way in helping us correctly understand the Jewish Messiah as seen from the eyes of Judaism as well as the implications for understanding the truth concerning the historical Jesus and the Mystical Christ.
Anti-Semitism throughout Gentile Church History has given the Jewish Christians an unusually bad rap. In fact they persecuted them to death quite often. Romanized Pauline writers portrayed them as narrow-minded, the later Roman Church condemned them as heretics, and modern scholars have ignored them. These assessments, however, are not justified. I believe that the depiction of "the Christ" as a Jew for us was not done by accident. My studies have proven to me that the true salvation message of God is to be found in the Biblical Festivals and Feasts given to the Jews which coincidentally coincides with the Equinoxes and Solstices as Egypt taught them thousands of years earlier and expressed in their own "Jesus Story" and their Astrotheology. This "Jewish Christ" and his message is of such importance that we must understand this "Christ" and the message of "the Christ" correctly within the Judaism in which it is expressed. When the larger Roman Gentile Christian church drove out Jewish Christianity it also lost the true message and core of Jesus' or "the Christ's" teachings. Therefore much which the traditional Christian is taught today is a "replacement doctrine" which is in error. The values of simple living and nonviolence became increasingly marginalized in a church that came to accept the very materialism and violence against which Jesus had protested.
Modern Christianity, whether Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, has, because of Rome and their Second New Testament, misunderstood not only the "Jesus Christ", but the very message of this Jesus as "the Christ" as well! By the 3rd and fourth century, the wake of the Nicene Creed had it tragic affect; it stripped a Torah obedient life-style from the religion of the followers of this "Jesus" and "the Christ" and in its place made mental ascent to a solar-godman's "identity" paramount for Eternal Life; an identity by the way remanufactured and reinterpreted by Rome and in so doing denied the prior understanding of "the Christ" as understood not only by Egypt but by Judaism as well. In the place of "Jesus'" and "the Christ's" emphasis on living the Commandments of God for one's Eternal Life we find a new way of living where a complex and unintelligent Trinitarian theology replaced Ethical Monotheism of the Jews and their Torah for both Jew and "non-Jew". Christ now tragically is the end of the Law where, if we look this word for "end" cleverly put in this verse really means "goal" as in Christlikeness is the "goal of living the Torah and the Laws of God". Just BACKWARDS and on purpose to reinforce the anti-Law bias of Rome and its anti-Judaic doctrines!
With Rome we find emphasis upon the historical virgin birth of Jesus in the similar pattern of the ancient sun-godmen instead of the accurate teaching of the allegorical birth of "the Christ within" of all mankind. Instead of an uplifting doctrine for all mankind we are given a doctrine restricted to only one person in which we can never relate since having fathers and mothers. Instead of teaching the truth about the awakening of "the Christ" within these fleshly temples, our bodies, which was taught in symbolic language of the virgin birth of the sungods we are led to believe that these who taught such uplifting and illuminating Divine Truths are supposedly nothing more than the basest "heathen" and "pagans" and "heretics" when what they taught, when correctly interpreted by restoring the "keys" to their Divine Allegories it can be shown that they only taught man of the internal birth of the Divine Soul within him and all of this again can be traced all the way back to Horus, as "the Karast", or "Christ" of Egypt. Likewise, emphasis of the infant Jesus, his life and death, and rising from the dead has lost the ancient understanding of the awakening of the infant soul in its infancy within the flesh of mankind, its growth to maturity where it grows to control the animal nature in mankind in preparation for death the judgment of the Soul in the Halls of Ma'at (the hereafter).
If you think I am wrong then I challenge you to read the 2/3 of the New Testament written by Paul and find more than 2 single sentences referring to what this Jesus both believed and taught! The preparation of one's Soul for the final judgment was of no concern for Rome if it required obedience to the Torah and the Law of God let alone the Laws of the Jews. You won't find more than sentences in these Romanize Pauline epistles because it is not there. Rome was not concerned about what this Jesus or "the Christ" stood for or believed; only that he be recast in the image of the prior pagan Godmen to give validation to the Roman godman known as the Emperor. Look at the world today and you can see for yourself the fruit of such a Lawless and Torahless message as we examine the low morality and ethical nature of our county which boast of being a Christian nation. We cannot build prisons fast enough for this Christian nation. We have in America 2/3 of the world's incarcerated and we have only 13% of the world population. Yet we are taught to believe in "this Jesus;" we are just not taught that to live like him in his Jewish setting brings Eternal Life. Instead of a call to change our lives in repentance and our improve our relationship with God and the world we have an all-powerful Jesus presented as the Messiah which is denied by the Jews and their Hebrew Scriptures.
By and large the vast majority of Christians today have not been taught the truth concerning this "Jesus" and the true "Gospel." In place of it they have been handed a "substitute Gospel" that has more in common with the "literalized" mystery religions and "literalized" sun-worship or Rome than with Biblical Judaism. Recovering the real message and teachings of this "Jesus Christ" and understanding the real message of "the Christ" is as important for the modern world as for the historian. Many today are concerned about the environmental crisis and the pillaging of the earth's resources by rampant consumerism, the spiral of escalating violence, the victimization of the world's poor, and the slaughter of animals for food. Perhaps these problems are quickly remedied if the Christian Church repents of Roman theology and recovers and returns to the real "Jesus Christ" and his message of simple living and nonviolence which is so relevant for today's world - even though it has been lost from most of modern Christianity.
In this website we will examine several major doctrines held dear by mainline Protestant and Catholic Christianity in light of Hebrew and Greek original Biblical languages, Biblical history, Biblical culture, the findings of archeology, comparative religions and comparison with Christian "literalized" doctrines and dogmas, and Gnosticism in hopes of recovering and restoring the pristine and elementary teachings of the early Chrestian, or should I say "Christian" faith as it existed in the first 3 centuries of the so called Christian era. These teachings have escaped the gaze of millions and much of this information and knowledge has only come to the light of day in the last 200 years or so. Once confronted with this evidence, it is our hope at Bet Emet Ministries that the reader will take to heart what he has learned, repent of his theological error and sin, and begin a renewed worship of the Creator in Spirit and in Truth. Shalom.
Let us continue our studies as we contrast the conflicting gospels of Jesus and Paul.