Paganism

[Mary]

I agree MIB!

And the solution is ............ The FACT is that no matter how we look at the world arround us we can not deny structure, life and mystery. We should stop bickering over irrelevant ancient and modern texts that few understand and realise that its really about our perception of these things and each other that matters. Reality is NOT a 'matter of opinion' and we live in it daily whatever we think we are. Whatever your 'opinion' the entire planet proves the existance of a divine creator - take it or leave it - your choice - that's the bottom line

Perception is the problem and the solution!

[Goonerman]

So objective fact and solid scholarship and wisdom and the Holy Spirit count for nowt!

 

And since subjectivism seems to be king in the eyes of so many, then don't you think stating it to be so dogmatically is something of an oxymoron? :biggrinbounce:

 

[ 01.08.2007, 22:22: Message edited by: Goonerman ]

[Peter T]

I'm all for this sex,drugs and wild dancing.

Just got the drugs to do.

[Mary]

Hahahahaha - now Peter that was very very funny! And made as much sense as the post before yours!!!

[Man in Black]

Mary's got it - Goonerman proves my point !

 

If Goonerman wasn't relying on DIY theology and actually READ The Bible he would know that everything I posted was true. My comments are based on what The Bible actually says itself, supported by actual archaeological and theological discoveries - not just the traditional views of the Western Victorian Church. Goonerman's comments are only vallid if you IGNORE WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS !!!

 

Without going into vast detail - There was no Israelite / Hebrew race until after Abraham (or nation until after Joshua), Moses blood was Hebrew but his CULTURE / MATERIAL was entirely Egyptian, internal evidence in the book of Job makes it pre-flood and, therefore, likely to have it's origin in Egypt. (NOTE: Jesus also fled to Egypt aged 2 and returned as the Jesus we know and love aged 12).

 

Every writer can be archaeologically demonstrated to be influenced by the world around them, Luke was possibly Greek but Paul was a ROMAN citizen and wrote in Roman terms, it's thought John wrote in GREEK, and that takes care of two thirds of the New Testament ! And there were no "Christians" in the New Testament either - that label came much later. It's wrong to project our modern view of things back - just read what The Good Book actually says.

 

Where did I borrow my theology from - well, having spent 29 years reading The Bible and having qualified from Bible College in 1994, I have gone on to study Apocryphal texts, Dead`Sea Scrolls, Nag Hamadi Library, Gnostic Gospels etc. along side original Bible texts, indeed I lecture on Biblical subjects.

 

The term for Goonerman's view is 'mono-cultural myopia' - a narrow, one-culture view imposed on a book containing many cultures over a vast period of time. Goonerman needs to spend a lot more time actually READING the Bible to find everything God has to reveal and not just what suits Goonerman.

 

I'm with Mary on this one - I don't have my own DIY theology, I don't have the theology of the Church - I'd rather stick to the theology found in The Bible and what God actually says about itself - not what I THINK it says. You need to study a bit deeper Goonerman :angelwings:

[Goonerman]

Wow, what a patronising post!

 

Still, mesa loves a challenge!

 

Some interesting and bizarre twisting of the fact going on here. OK

 

Let's shoot 'em down one by one, eh?

 

"Goonerman's comments are only vallid if you IGNORE WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS !!!"

 

That has got to be one of the weirdest claims I have ever seen. I know fine well what the Bible says, ducky!

 

"Without going into vast detail - There was no Israelite / Hebrew race until after Abraham (or nation until after Joshua)"

 

The Abraham bit is kind of DUH, obvious! And it became a nation in Goshen between the time of Joseph and Moses, otherwise Pharaoh would not have feared it. (Ever heard of the HAPIRU/APIRU in Egyptian and Canaanite records???)

 

"Moses blood was Hebrew but his CULTURE / MATERIAL was entirely Egyptian"

 

He had the best of both worlds. The Bible clearly states that his Egyptian stepmother allowed his real mother to bring him up until he was old enough to enter the palace. Otherwise why did he bump off the Egyptian ill-treating the Hebrew slave?

 

See Exodus 2:7-10.

 

Let me guess- monotheism comes from Akhenaten. Actually, I don't buy the late date for the Exodus- I go for the early one.

 

"Internal evidence in the book of Job makes it pre-flood and, therefore, likely to have it's origin in Egypt"

 

Nonsense. The Land of Uz is from the POST-Flood era and was located on the east side of the River Jordan. The book's cultural milieu is similar to that of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, being related to the Patrirarchal Era and nothing to do with Egypt. However, the Wisdom School in Jerusalem in versifying it did so in a fashion which showed Egyptian influence, as the Wisdom Schools had their origin in Ancient Egypt. So what if Israel had the influence of other cultures? I never said anything about the denying that the Bible was multi-cultural, what I said was that the only non-Hebrew author in it was Luke, and that its theology is emphatically not influenced by any of the pagan cultures.

 

"(NOTE: Jesus also fled to Egypt aged 2 and returned as the Jesus we know and love aged 12)"

 

Jesus only stayed in Egypt for two years, and besides, the point is irrelevant. Egypt, especially in Alexandria, had a huge Jewish community up to about 1 million. Indeed, later in the first century, Philo Judaeus' nephew Tiberius Julius Alexander was Prefect of Egypt and played a big part in the campaign to encourage Vespasian to go back to Rome to claim the position of Emperor.

 

"Every writer can be archaeologically demonstrated to be influenced by the world around them"

 

And where's the problem there? So what?

 

 

"Luke was possibly Greek"

 

Actually, the 'We' passages in Acts provide a clue to where he was from. He was most likely a Greek from one of the Asian provinces, in what is now Turkey.

 

"but Paul was a ROMAN citizen and wrote in Roman terms"

 

Again, where is the difficulty there? There is a clue as to how he became a Roman citizen when he writes in Romans 16, "Greet Herodion , my relative," immediately after mentioning the believers in the household of Aristobulus. It would seem, then, that Paul through his mother had some sort of link to the Herods. As for 'Roman terms', actually, his use of Greek terminology for justification by faith and so on suggests something more fluid than Roman law. He did use Graeco-Roman rhetoric, but the actual content was also heavily halakhic and full of Rabbinic theology, including use of midrashic and pesher techniques.

 

"Iit's thought John wrote in GREEK, and that takes care of two thirds of the New Testament!"

 

All of the NT is in Greek. What you are referring to is the fact that John's Gospel is not written in translation Greek, but was pre-planned and written from scratch in Greek. But once again, I see no difficulties here. Alexander the Great conquered Israel in 333 BC and the old Assyrian and Babylonian territories where the Greek Diaspora was found. Every Jew in the Empire practically spoke Greek as a second language at least.

 

So, what we have here is that literary forms, literary techniques, language and genres were indeed adapted from the cultures around them. This, however, is not the same as assuming that the Theology is a hodge-podge of all sorts of ideas from other religions.

 

"And there were no "Christians" in the New Testament either - that label came much later."

 

Ahem, haven't you forgotten Acts 11:26 and 26:28?

 

" It's wrong to project our modern view of things back - just read what The Good Book actually says."

 

Absolutely. That includes relativist and subjectivist views of post-modernism as well!

 

I'm with Mary on this one - I don't have my own DIY theology, I don't have the theology of the Church - I'd rather stick to the theology found in The Bible and what God actually says about itself - not what I THINK it says. You need to study a bit deeper Goonerman

 

[ 02.08.2007, 22:21: Message edited by: Goonerman ]

[Man in Black]

Wow - evidently Goonerman takes his background theology VERY seriously - which demonstrably alienates the rest of us and further supports my original point that divinity lies in the grasp of every human being and not just some intellectual babbling academic elite.

 

And is it me or did Goonerman just repeat and support almost everything I said !?!?

 

Does that mean that the only purpose in his reply is to look good in front of the rest of us ? I already knew the information or I wouldn't have made the initial comments and the information is irrelevant to the rest of us in respect of my original point.

 

Patronising ??? What about my posting being 'truthful', 'insightive' or at the very least 'realistic' ? Knowing everything written in Goonerman's extensive and theologically correct postings won't bring anyone closer to God - whatever your perception of God is Christian, Pagan, Satanic or other.

 

On that note let me ask Goonerman some basic Biblical questions about the God he knows so well on behalf of the rest of humanity: Who is God ? Where is God ? How do we meet God ? Is God male or female ?

 

And back to the original posting: Who created Satan ? Who wrote the Bible ? What is the Holy Spirit ?

 

Answer these questions and you might be getting closer to the point I made at the end of my original posting - fail to answer these questions and you prove my point: argument over sacred texts for the point of argument gets us nowhere ! So let's see what you actually believe - over to you Goonerman :angelwings:

[Man in Black]

Back to the thread started by TMM (but with Goonerman in mind) Paganism - where's it gone ? :bluegrab:

 

Pagan festivals and the Pagan year, Pagan ritual sites, bildings, priesthood, carvings of Pagan gods and images of gods and goddesses, Pagan sacred gometary, sun and star alignments, secret societies, strange and unique burial customs - ooop's isn't that the church ?

 

Errecting standing stones, Egyptian magic, Canaanite sacred rites and priesthoods,kings consulting whitches, God seeking to kill men, human sacrifice, war, famine, plague, drunkenness, murder, multiple mariage (in one case 1000 wives), betrayall - and that's the good guys in The Bible !

 

What about mytholoy ? Adam and Eve eat an apple, Jonah swallowed by a whale, Jesus born in a snowy stable on December 25th and crucified age 32 on a cross, Jesus has children by Mary - not in The Bible I'm afraid ?

 

Paganism - it's still with us but not where you would expect to find it !!!

 

All comments on this original thread gratefully accepted :angelwings:

[Goonerman]

Hi Man In Black.

 

To respond to your first post-

 

"Wow - evidently Goonerman takes his background theology VERY seriously - which demonstrably alienates the rest of us and further supports my original point that divinity lies in the grasp of every human being and not just some intellectual babbling academic elite."

 

No, it should not alienate, but inform. And of course, the Gospel is for everyone. Jesus' parables for example were designed so that the 4 year old would understand.

 

"And is it me or did Goonerman just repeat and support almost everything I said !?!?"

 

No. (How could a Satanic perception of God make one closer to God?

[Goonerman]

Hi Man In Black.

 

I was unable to respond to your second post striaght away as I had a cousin's wedding reception to go to. So here is my reply to your second post.

 

"Back to the thread started by TMM (but with Goonerman in mind) Paganism - where's it gone ?"

 

It hasn't gone away, you know!

 

"Pagan festivals and the Pagan year, Pagan ritual sites, bildings, priesthood, carvings of Pagan gods and images of gods and goddesses, Pagan sacred gometary, sun and star alignments, secret societies, strange and unique burial customs - ooop's isn't that the church ?"

 

Ahem, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. The tragedy of the Roman Catholic Church is that it was once the true Church but went off the rails by the Middle Ages, due to syncretism sneaking into the Church as false conversions by pagans began to occur once the Romans made Christianity the State Religion and the only legal religion. So, yeah, in a sense the Church is pagan, depending on what church you are talking about!

 

"multiple mariage"

 

I think God tolerated this one for a while because of human inperfection and because of economic necessity in the days before the Dole and pensions. Also, in Genesis Moses unflinchingly shows us the consequence of polygamy. The disastrous modern conflicts in the Middle East have their origin in Abraham's polygamy and his son Ishmael by the slave Hagar whom he fathered in impatience over God allowing his elderly wife Sarah to have Isaac eventually. It was other descendants of Abraham who sold Joseph as a slave in Egypt. But, talking of Joseph's mother and aunt, Jacob's two wives Rachel and Leah, indulging in a bitter and bitchy childbearing battle in using their slavegirls to bear children by Jacob too. Joseph's enmity with his brothers was partly provoked by Jacob's polygamy and bias against Leah towards Rachel. God took the side of Leah, the offended party who was spurned by an unloving Jacob in favour of Leah and this is why she had more children. Easu's wives made Isaac and Rebekah's lives a misery. Sarah ill-treated Hagar. God gives some hints as to His preferred original ideal which was the creation ordinance of Genesis, one man and one wife. In Leviticus He commands priests only to marry a virgin, someone who has never been divorced, nor someone defiled by prostitution (and prostitution was a pagan religious practice in those days), and from his own people. All this carries over into the New Testament where Jesus assumes monogamy. "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female', and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and he two will become one flesh?' So they are no longer two, but one." Matthew 19:4-6a. This is what Genesis taught was God's intention. Paul told Timothy that a minister of the Gospel, an overseer in the Church must only have one wife. And as for the one who married 1000 women, King Solomon, the women led him off the rails, as he turned from the wise king into the old lecherous pagan tyrant.

 

"betrayall"

 

I think of David's one lapse into tyranny, his betrayal of Uriah the Hittite which God punished with family tragedy in David's life, and most of all, the most betrayed being in the Bible is God Himself as humans continually rebelled against Him. And of course, when God became man, He was betrayed by Judas Iscariot and indeed by all of us.

 

"and that's the good guys in The Bible !"

 

With the exception of God's judgement and the wise rule of King Melchizedek, no, actually, and in the case of the good guys like David, Solomon and Uzziah, they suffered from major lapses in their behaviour which God disciplined them for.

 

"What about mytholoy ? Adam and Eve eat an apple"

 

Yes, it's surprising people get these little things wrong, though they are not as serious as the misunderstandings of the stuff I dealt with above. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, not an apple. Apple trees weren't forbidden, if you read the Creation story!

 

[ 05.08.2007, 15:48: Message edited by: Goonerman ]

[Goonerman]

PS Did I forget to mention the story of God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac in relation to human sacrifice? In that case it was a test of Abraham's faith and obedience. Besides, in the original Hebrew God asks him, doesn't command him, but interestingly says "Please." God doesn't normally ask people to do anything. So it wasn't a command. And with the promise to Abraham about Isaac being the ancestor of many nations and a blessing to the world, and the source of the inheritance of the Promised Land and the ancestor of people as many as the stars, as the grain on the seashore, it was obvious to Abraham that it was a test from the start. He was prepared though to go all the way if necessary, and when he said that God Himself would provide a ram, he meant it. Also, in Hebrews in the NT the writer says that Abraham believed that God would raise Isaac from the dead. Which is significant given that Isaac was to be a burnt offering. Another thing too is that Isaac was actually an adult when this happened, and offered no resistance to what was done to him when he was tied up opn the pyre. Most poignant of all is the location, which was Mount Moriah in the Jerusalem area. Mount Moriah is the spine on which Jerusalem is built, though at this point, Jerusalem was too small to cover this part of the area. Part of Mount Moriah is Mount Zion, the Temple Mount today, the site of the ancient Jewish Temples of later eras, and also as part of Mount Moriah is Golgotha, Calvary, the hill where Jesus was crucified 2000 years later. Indeed, some commentators think that Jesus was crucified on the very spot where Abraham tied up Isaac. And a ram caught in the thicket nearby was in the end sacrificed instead. From a Christian point of view, the whole thing is a type or a symbol of the future sacrifice of Christ on the Cross for the sins of the world, and more specifically for the sins of Israel, Isaac's descendants. While Isaac's meek surrender to his father anticipates Jesus' submission to God the Father even unto death, the ram dying in Isaac's place anticipates Jesus dying in the place of His own people, the Jews, and of the entire human race. So that's my answer in full to the Man In Black.

[Man in Black]

I wasn't going to be "patronising" in any way. I was seriously going to consider Goonerman's views in an adult and academic way with special respect to the rest of those forum members who might wish to contribute to this thread on 'Paganism' - however: :angelwings:

[Peter T]

MIB,

Just be grateful you are not a moderator.

I have to read all this mumbo-jumbo.

 

PS. It takes two to debate.

[Mary]

Can we please stick to the original post guys?? The core of all of today's religions, but none will ever admit to that what's your views on paganism ? and NO please don't start dragging it into the 'satanic' world because it's NOTHING to do with that

 

Since paganism began long before any organized religion I agree with TMM that we have taken from pagan rites things and used them in our religions - such as Winter solstice comes at the same time as Jesus' birth? Easter is the Spring Equinox. I am not familiar with other religions to sound off on them but I know Christianity did use pagan dates and rites and still do.

[Steve the Original]

Originally posted by Peter:

MIB,

Just be grateful you are not a moderator.

I have to read all this mumbo-jumbo.

 

PS. It takes two to debate.

Peter remember thsi mumbo jumbo as you call it has some really deep meaning for some and that its a very very large part of peoples lives.

 

Just a note i an agnostic and untill God stands in front of me and proves to me he exists he?s just a figure out of a storybook.

 

Religion causes more death each year than any Conflict?s,traffic accidents,cancer or anything else in the world put together and all in the name of god??? religion cant be good if thats what it causes..

 

Steve

[Man in Black]

Steve, Pete, Mary - thank goodness I'm not alone in here !!!

 

Steve's right - look at the results of arguing over what something says when you really just have your own agenda in mind. Mary's right - that Paganism pre-dates formalised religion by many thousands of years. And Pete's right - I bet he breathed a sigh of relief when this thread closed as this kind of forum is not the place to post the contents of entire books !!!

 

Paganism has been absorbed by the church of every kind in every age and there's just no denying it - the evidence is there for all to see. Despite Goonerman's views about select churches the one I had in mind as obviously absorbing Pagan material was the Church Of England !?!

 

The 'stand alone' Paganism we are most familiar with in this country is a collection of "resurrected" paths brought out again over the last few hundred years. As to the dwindling ranks of traditional church-goers - time to open your eyes and do what the Master said: "Go ye unto all the world ....."

 

keep up the interesting postings guys

:angelwings:

[Legion]

/books a day in the diary to read through the later posts..

[Peter T]

[Legion]

wow still on page 2

 

some points I need to bring up, before reading page three and forgettting about them

 

1. MIB, I envy your knowledge of the texts, I have recently found my own DIY beleifs and as I said am struggling to find a home for them, I think had I had the study you have I would be better placed to assign them.

 

that said

 

it is your opinion that reality is not a matter of opinion, not a fact.

my opinion that reality is subject to the beholder, whilst we all share common elements of reality as we percieve a shared environment, the interpretation is open to us.

if reality was not subjective, we would not be having this discussion.

 

2. it is debateable that jesus went to egypt, some hold that he went to "tibet" im guessing from their beleif that he went through the inauguration of dalai lama which fits perfectly well with his teachings and age of return.

I remember somwhere they even have the tombstone of a lama from that period, whos effigy shows wounds to hands & feet, with some report of him being returned from jerusalem after his death ???

 

anyway onto page 3

[Mary]

Oh dear - even though it may be construed as part of the thread - we are digressing I believe!

[Goonerman]

I'm holed up at the moment doing an assignment on literary analysis of Medea and Eliza Doolittle. Some very interesting stuff going on in here! Eh, Peter? Ahem, cough cough cough!

 

From the fraudster, sorry, I mean, the idiot, quack, murdering religious blackguard, whatever!

 

Meanwhile, back to work on my assignment. Then some well-earned sleep. :sleeping:

 

[ 08.08.2007, 00:19: Message edited by: Goonerman ]

[Goonerman]

Right. At last I am free, having just posted the assignment off to my tutor.

 

OK. I don't think the thread is diverting at al. It has been posited on one side of the fence, by MIB that the Bible is a hodge-podge of paganism and that's only the good guys, and on this side of the fence, I, Goonerman, contend that putting the pagan incidents back in their true context reveal a bitter theological war in which God is implacably opposed to paganism as paganism worships the creation instead of Him. MIB counters with saying I am a fraud, don't really have a Divinity qualification, I'm a disgrace, virtually Satanic, don't know anything about the Bible, should be censored, and Christians should get out of the Church, I've got a massive ego problem and should get a life. Steve says religious views cause more deaths than anything else, Mary says paganism is the original religion. Legion says Jesus may have been a Buddhist and everything is subjective. And Peter says my views are mumbo-jumbo.

 

Quite an interesting little mix there! Is this a fair assessment so far, ladies and gentlemen?

 

There are two, possibly three serious accusations levelled at my door, though Stevie's point was more general.

 

First, if anyone wants to assert anything about my truthfulness about qualifications, please contact the Faculty of Theology at Queen's University. Peter can provide my real name to MIB if he wishes to make enquiries- or allegations.

 

"I am appalled and dissmayed that his ranting diatribe has been the result."

 

I wrote a calm and careful study of God's conflict with paganism. You are the one who's getting emotional and ranting.

 

"You could simply have stated the Biblical Godspel in terms everyone could understand. You blew it kid !"

 

I did. As Huckleberry Finn says, "It's not the parts of the Bible that are hard to understand that I have problems with, but the easy parts!"

 

"Repentance from sin and asking Jesus to be, Lord, master and friend, and personal patron is what brings people closer to God" What's so hard about that? I also mentioned about the tax collector saying, "God have mercy on me a sinner." OK, get rid of the old word 'repentance' and swap it with 'turn around from sin' and 'turn around from the wrong things we have done' and 'change' and 'say you are sorry to God and really be sorry'. But then 'sin' is a dirty word these days, but look at the troubles in the world.

 

"What about the all-inclusive "seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you" ? I believe that applies to everyone. EVERYONE can come to God by WHATEVER MEANS God should choose." Ahem, that all ties in with what I said. Jesus IS the means which God the Father has chosen. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest from your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Jesus promised in John's Gospel that if anyone comes to Him, He will not cast him out. Indeed, Paul says that God COMMANDS all humans to repent.

 

"I have no more time to waste on religious fiction I'm afraid."

 

I thought you were offended when you mistakenly thought I was attacking Moses' miracles. But then there is a reason for you saying 'religious fiction'.

 

It's to do with the G word. GNOSTICISM.

 

The Gnostics, for everyone else, were a sect who infiltrated Christianity. They and their close relatives, the Docetists, began to work their way into the Church in the 60s, prompting Paul to write Colossians against them. The Apostle John had to combat them in Ephesus when they were led by Cerinthus. But the Gnostic golden age was in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Frustrated with the earthiness of the Bible, they wrote their own Gospels and esoteric speculations. The Gospel of Thomas was written around AD 150 and they took Jesus' sayings from the Gospels and made them mystical, made up more, to turn Him into a Gnostic philosopher who said 'Know Yourself'. The two greatest Gnostic teachers were Valentinus and Basilides.

 

This is what they believed. In the beginning there was God, the Pleroma, that Completeness. The Pleroma was like a Geschalt consciousness, like a giant lump of living celestial plasticine (not unlike the Nestene Consciousness in Doctor Who). From the Pleroma came emanations, new celestial beings, like powerful jelly babies, the Aeons. Number One Aeon was the future Gnostic version of Jesus. The Pleroma is the New Testament God, the Father, the nice cosmic ball of fluff that smiles at everyone (so they and the Docetists said) and doesn't judge and is totally aloof. Unfortunately, the 365th runt Aeon didn't like this. He was jealous. And this lowest of the low janitor god did one of two things in rebelling. Either he defecated and his motion formed the Universe, or he seduced an Aeon and invented the most evil of evils- sex, and made a slightly higher Aeon pregnant. She gave birth to an abortion- the Universe. That evil lump which all Gnostics hated- matter. This evil 365th god was the God of the Old Testament, the despicable evil god of the evil Jews, Jehovah-Satan. Yes, the God of the Old Testament is also the Devil, and in rebellion against the goody goody Pleroma, the nice God of the New Testament. So Jehovah-Satan conned most of the Aeons into serving him, and they all fell into his evil yucky matter. Spirit is good, matter is evil. He imprisoned them in mortal physical bodies and wiped their memories of being human. They were reincarnated through the generations through normal reproduction. Jehovah-Satan then wreaked havoc through the ages, causing death and destruction and evil, then sadistically enjoying hypicritically judging people and using the Jews as his agents. All the other humans were just unspiritual animals. The elite, the Aeons, were gods trapped in human bodies. Then the Pleroma took action. He sent Jesus, the First Aeon. He appeared from Heaven to be baptised by John. Jesus was never born, and He had no body. He only appeared to be human, He was a phantom. He cried, "Know yourself!" He also said that females needed to be spiritual and be reincarnated as men before they could get back to Heaven freed from their evil bodies as unadulterated Aeons reunited in the Pleroma again. Jesus taught, so the Gospel of Thomas tells us, that Mary Magdalene had to become male in order to inherit the Kingdom of God. Then He defeated Jehovah-Satan on the cross. He pretended to hang there, and spent the entire time laughing. He preached gleefully that His body was an illusion and that the Aeons, His disciples could be free from their bodies. He proved the point by floating up and down form the cross and back on to it again before He pretended to die.

 

Now, due to specialist esoteric knowledge from hidden meanings in the Bible only Aeons can understand and not mere muggles like me, they can know the special passwords to get past the seven planets, who are Aeons guarding the gateways to Heaven (to block Jehovah-Satan from attacking the Pleroma, I imagine). Only one problem: since there were two main sects of Gnosticism, there were then two rival sets of passwords, and both sects of Gnostics taunted each other over having the right passwords. They also taunted the Christians by saying they were mere animals with no souls as they were not Aeons and did not know their Bibles or the hidden codes in them for the Aeons. (Now you know partly why I am being taunted by MIB for 'not' knowing the Bible.)

 

The Gnostics were ascetics and shunned marriage, as they believed matter was evil and sex passed them down to the next generation of evil bodies, delaying their reunion with the Pleroma. There was one renegade sect of Gnostics however who reasoned that since matter was evil then they could do as they liked, so they had mad orgies and all sorts of evil acts.

 

No wonder the Apostle John fled from the Roman baths in Ephesus one day when he heard that Cerinthus was coming! :biggrinbounce:

 

They lost because the proper Christians through Irenaeus won the debate, because the people saw the Gnostics for the arrogant lunatics that they were, and because well, if matter is evil, and sex is evil, then they... DIED OUT. :biggrinbounce:

 

Gnosticism was then an oddity for the next 16 centuries contained in the books of the Church Fathers as they had written volumes to combat the mad Gnostic heresy.

 

Alas, the Gnostics caused a bitter legacy for the Church long after they were gone. Idiotic allegorical interpretations of the Bible, anti-Semitism, hatred of the Old Testament, the bizarre view that the God of the OT is cruel and the NT God being all nicey-wicey and a big softie corrupted the Church, and the neglect of Jesus' Jewishness and the Jewishness of Christianity.

 

Then someone dug up the find at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. The fringe declared, this is the true Bible, we can all become Gods as we have the divine spark in us, the Aeons. MIB has the politically correct version now, the universal divine spark in us all- we are all Aeons of the Pleroma, eh? And the abandoning of the belief in matter being evil can conveniently marry it to... paganism. Now this is ironic. For can MIB's beliefs really be Gnosticism? Has he this special Knowledge akin to the Gnostics of old? I think not. His view would then it would seem be more Pantheistic and so more pagan. Old Gnosticism and paganism were diametrically opposed. Paganism worships nature. Gnosticism demonises nature.

 

So there you are, now I know why he objects to my view of Satan being a renegade angelic being. I offend his view that we can all be God and find the Christs within us. I offend his view that the Bible is a rag-bag of many different faiths stuck together. I offend his hostility to my God which he put with a small g at one point, would that be the evil janitor creator, Jehovah-Satan, the god of the OT? Anbd as for knot knowing my Bible, he means I 'don't understand' the real esoteric and syncretistic messages in the Bible only for the Gnostic Aeons at heart, the little self proclaimed gods. He also means that my Bible is a false one. The true Bible for him would have to contain the esoteric Gnostic Gospels and speculative writings, and that my Four Gospels are false Jewish concoctions (note his reaction to my reference to the Hebrews in an earlier post, due to Gnostic anti-Jewish snobbery) caused by that 'heretic' Paul, the real creator of Evangelical Christianity, then of course the Emperor Constantine and Eusebius threw the true books of the Bible out, ie the Gnostic writings, and replaced them with the false Jewish writings of Paul. At the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, I suppose.

 

Of course, I could be mistaken. I'm deliberately writing the post this way to see what the reaction is and to see what his views on these things actually are, but I'm basing them on what I know about Gnosticism.

 

But please, please, don't use the words Gnostic and Christian in the same breath. I believe that the God of the OT and the NT is the same unchanging God and that Jesus became flesh, a true human, and was Jewish to His big toe. Only the real, Jewish Jesus, Yeshua of Nazareth, will do for me, the all inclusive one who offers salvation to everyone including MIB.

 

[ 09.08.2007, 22:59: Message edited by: Goonerman ]

[Goonerman]

Right. Quick answers to the rest. So Peter, is my belief sysem more mumbo-jumbo than Gnosticism?

 

Steve. Most wars are caused by economics and land disputes. The biggest killer on Earth is contaminated water.

 

Mary. If the evolutionary view of religion is true, explain why paganism in primitive tribes is so much more complicated than any other religion, also, I believe the idea of an eternal God not depicted by humans creating everything is far more basic and primitive, and paganism was until the modern pick and mix approach, just as much a genre of organised religions as any other religions.

 

Ironically, the Bible actually does say paganism predates organised religion. This is because the first pagan was the first baby to be born. Cain. So there weren't enough people around yet for organised religion to emerge. He offered God fruit and grain and God- REJECTED it. Abel offered him a sacrificed lamb, which God did accept- in other words, Abel founded the true religion, that geared to atonement for sin to get us to God via the shedding of innocent blood in our place, anticipating Jesus' death. So Cain committed the first act of religious violence. He murdered Abel.

 

Legion. Jesus never visited Tibet. He only visited Egypt, Lebanon and what is now Jordan (the Greek Decapolis area). Jesus was not seen as exceptional by the people of Nazareth for that precise reason, as He was with them the whole time and as they were all conventionally Jewish and Israeli patriots, Jesus, sinless and all as He was, did not stand out. That accounts for the 'hidden' years. The people who think Jesus was a Buddhist misunderstand that Buddhism is not based on worshipping a god or God but is about the exctintion of desire, meditation on nothing, and gaining the bliss of nirvana, the escape from reincarnation and any need for heaven or real existence, and that Jesus was totally Jewish. He wore the prayer shawl, Mark talks of the hem of Jesus' garment, He preached and prayed in the Temple and synagogue, and nothing but a totally Jewish Jesus, Yeshua, will do. His ministry was confined to Israel and the Jews. "The Son of Man was sent only to the lost sheep of the tribes of Israel," He said, but He did authorise the disciples to preach the Gospel to all the nations once He ascended into Heaven, and He praised the centurion's faith, saying, "Never have I seen faith like this in all Israel." Jesus proclaimed that He was to bfring light to the Gentiles. He promised that the Holy Spirit would help the disciples preach to the Gentile rules when under arrest, so He intended to save the world, specifically as the Jewish Messiah and King of Israel. Jesus' gruesome death on the Cross is a gritty affirmation of the reality of the problems of life and not the denial of reality which Buddhists make. I will check out the reference to the monument to the lama who was wounded. That's a lead worth investigating, I'll try to find out for you. But remember, Legion, Jesus is Jewish. Read Matthew 5:17-20- oy vey, Jesus came to fulfil the Torah, the Jewish law.

 

The story that Jesus came to Tibet is probably a garbled version of the Islamic legend that Jesus did not die on the Cross (indirectly gained from a pseudo-Gnostic sect) and then went to preach in India. That in turn is based on what REALLY happened. What really happened was that the Apostle Thomas went to India to preach the Gospel around AD 50. He was rumoured to have reached as a far as China, though no-one has confirmed that as yet, and if so, he may have preached the Gospel to the Buddhists in Tibet. Whatever the case may be, Thomas was lanced to death by Brahmin priests at a Hindu temple in Madras, I think. Then the Apostle Nathaniel Bartholomew came to India to follow-up the work of his martyred friend, bringing a copy of the original Hebrew version of Matthew's Gospel which had been written in AD 50 (which Matthew replaced with the Greek version around AD 80). So that's what really happened, I think.

 

Mary, yes, we do do Christmas, and I love Christmas trees, and in celebrating Jesus' birth, I say if it was good enough for the angels, it's good enough for me, but in reality Jesus was born in October, during the Feast of Tabernacles. We should really be celebrating Jesus' death and Resurrection at Passover, not Easter. The Irish Church were the last to resist the Gentile Church on the tragic switch to Easter. The 'pagan' festivals were hijacked by the Church to proclaim victory over paganism just as my Communist badges from Belarus are trophies from a hopefully defeated ideological enemy. However, should pagan practices and beliefs infiltrate the Church I will campaign through a careful campaign of solid Christian teaching. I would call on the Church to celebrate the festivals God Himself gave, namely the JEWISH festivals, and join with my fellow Jewish believers in Jesus the Messiah, Yeshua Ha Mashiach.

 

Lastly, I have no ego. I've had too many brickbats for that! Too many heartbreaks and disappointments in life. As for churchgoers, those who truly believe, we must not give up the habit of meeting together as Hebrews says and indeed still go out into all the world, to preach the Gospel as God requires. Amen and amen!

 

[ 09.08.2007, 22:56: Message edited by: Goonerman ]

[Mary]

So the point of this thread was paganism - have we used parts of it in our daily culture and the answer is yes we do and the churches have used it to get the natives in line! That is all - that is it!

[Peter T]

You tell them Mary.