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.