Alan said:
The political bend of the future gospels that were officially recognized had to have enemies. A cheapened, greedy and political Judas was created.
Well, look on the bright side. In the Passion Play we now have someone to boo at (Pilate) and someone to hiss at (Judas).
Alan wrote:
“Judas was an inner-circle disciple who was an initiate into the mysteries that were then hidden from the general faithful hordes.”
Yes, that’s what the gospel of Judas is about. Plus the idea that God didn’t create the world. I don’t understand that part though.
David wrote:
“Eventually, the Protestant Reformation was to take a baby-step back from that”
Was that the reformation led by Martin Luther the hypocrite? Claiming that the true path was “sola scriptura”; only follow the scripture, but ignore the seven books of the bible he didn’t like.
Alan wrote:
“The political bend of the future gospels that were officially recognized had to have enemies. A cheapened, greedy and political Judas was created.”
I agree. I think a lot of the bible was sensationalized to catch the attention of big egos. I’ve actually heard fanatic christians say “He rose from the dead for God’s sake. How could you not believe what he said?” I’m looking at them out of the corner of my eyes, thinking man, you have some surprises coming in this age of increasing spiritual energy. Have fun worshiping false prophets!
I agree with the whole passion play concept. It has been said that the only reason Christ said on the cross “Father why hast thou forsaken me?” was not because he felt that way, but to fulfill the prophecy from thirty years before that predicted him saying that. He was playing a part; reading the script.
[quote]Originally posted by Etherfish
I think “Love your enemies as yourself” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” are good. But my favorite is the lord’s prayer. If you spend a lot of time contemplating every line separately, it has a lot of deep meaning, and to me it means Jesus believed a lot more like AYP than the modern idea of what christianity is.
Thanks Etherfish,
Bewell
Eitherfish wrote:
I agree with the whole passion play concept. It has been said that the only reason Christ said on the cross “Father why hast thou forsaken me?” was not because he felt that way, but to fulfill the prophecy from thirty years before that predicted him saying that. He was playing a part; reading the script.
Why do you say that?
“All things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms, concerning me” (Luke 24:44).
“My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” is taken from Psalms 22:1
But I am more inclined to think it was a mistranslation. Tranlators today are more accomplished in the finer points of language differences, and Lamsa’s bible translates it as “My God, my God, for this I was spared” which would mean “to create this example is the entire reason I have lived”
Lamsa’s bible has corrected quite a few mistranslations in the King James.
No profound differences in meaning, but just more common sense. Like instead of “easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle” should be “easier to fit a rope through the eye of a needle”, the difference being the absence of a small brush stroke dot.
What was translated as “forsaken” can mean several things depending on the context, and the original translator interpreted the context.
Jesus could have easily escaped his capture, because he knew it was coming. He even had a supper to celebrate the event.
Then when he uttered the words, he had been on the cross for forty hours of interrogation and mocking without complaining at all. So having lived a life of being immersed in God, to break at that point would seem to negate his entire purpose. Instead what he was doing was rejoicing in the fulfillment of his purpose. And that is exactly what those words mean if they are translated correctly.
To take that a bit further, maybe in “enjoying” the fulfillment of the agony, Jesus was Being there in the same seemingly hopeless plight of all his earth-bound children in their agony of being seperate from God (“Why hast Thou forsaken me?”). As he ordained the Earth from whence we all rise into this experience with the fully charged Blood of his healing grace, and shared in our agony, he was being there full circle; agony to awakening. We are at present experiencing the ressurection in Christ Consciousness from within and throughout our collective sacred Earth Body.
Etherfish,
Thanks, I’ll reflect on that angle.
Bewell
David wrote:
“The Council of Nicea rejected any books that implied that any person could find the light of God within themselves (and there were a number). Finding the light was the job of The Church. It was a highly political council, with highly political purposes and results.
The Council of Nicea was the end of ‘Open Source’ in Christianity, and the rise of an all-powerful priest-group, whose job was to find the light for everyone.”
While this is true, there is good and bad in everything.
The purpose of the council of Nicea was that Constantine wished to stop all the fighting and
disagreement among all the small sects. So he gathered together spokesmen and leaders from the small sects and motivated them to discuss their differences and build a platform of all the things they could agree about within christianity.
The council achieved just what Constantine wanted. The many different sects were united, and could communicate peacefully with each other. But as what seemed to be a great peaceful time for the Christians was forming, Constantine as the hero, there also formed the underground movement of those who believed God could be found within and the church was not necessary. So the very foundation of the peace created was based upon everyone sticking to the agreements made at the council, which agreements were directly opposed to the underground beliefs (the truth) and
which created the groundwork for all the persecution and inquisition in the future. It also made necessary the hiding of gospels and encryption of the true meaning of Jesus’ teachings.
When persecuting those people, they were accused of cannibalism, sodomy, and incest, none of which were true, but were all twisted interpretations of the wording of the forbidden gospels.
So instead of basing their peace upon just a desire to get along, they based it on “The Word of God” and their big egos claimed “right and wrong” was involved, and so the illusion of a great good was accompanied by the reality of a great evil.
I’d recommend anyone interested in the Council of Nicea and the formation of the bible to look at Elaine Pagels’ most recent book, Beyond Belief (2005). While primarily a study of the Gospel of Thomas, in contrast to the canonical Gospel of John (which Pagels believes was written as a refutation of Thomas), she also outlines her beliefs on the criteria used to select the canonical texts.
Much of that focus is on Irenaeus, the 24 year old bishop of Lyons during a series of persecutions that decimated the Christian community there, claiming up to a third of the several hundred in that region. His entire goal became to unify the survivors. Ultimately he wrote and made strong assertions as to which letters and Gospels were true, and Pagels claims that the goal of unification was his main criterion.
Most of the texts and ideas he rejected claimed “secret teachings” or “higher initiations,” so in a sense, he was rejecting all claims of “special knowledge” that some individuals and groups used to claim a higher status than the run-of-the mill Christains who had “merely” been baptized. If his community was going to survive they had to hang together, so he rejected anything that hinted of division, “I’m a third degree Christian and you’re a beginner.”
Eventually, Pagels claims, Irenaeus’s list of “correct” vs. “incorrect” books was a key source of the Nicean council’s decisions. Some of the really fascinating Gospels that were rejected, Thomas, Phillip, Mary, and now Judas, all make this claim of revealing “hidden teachings.”
Regarding this subject, has anyone listened to Father Charlie Moore lecture? http://www.beyondtheordinary.net/fathercharlie.shtml Tell me what you think. -Hunter
Etherfish said:
While this is true, there is good and bad in everything.
The purpose of the council of Nicea was that Constantine wished to stop all the fighting and
disagreement among all the small sects.
It is true that there is good and bad in everything. It’s also true of intentions, particularly political or imperial ones, which are almost never simple or even close to entirely pure. In other words, we can say that Constantines’s purpose was to stop the disputes in Christianity. We can also simply say that Ivan the Terrible’s purpose was to maintain a strong united Russia, or that Bill Gates’s purpose was for us all to have a strong united operating system, or that Adolf Hitler’s purpose was to bring peace on earth. 
I’m no scholar on the council of Nicea. But my understanding is that Constantine himself exerted a lot of control over it and deliberately excluded many people whom he felt would not be in agreement with his vision of what christianity should be.
ranger said:
Eventually, Pagels claims, Irenaeus’s list of “correct” vs. “incorrect” books was a key source of the Nicean council’s decisions. Some of the really fascinating Gospels that were rejected, Thomas, Phillip, Mary, and now Judas, all make this claim of revealing “hidden teachings.”
The ones that were rejected also allow for a direct connection from God to Man, without the intermediation of the Church.
I don’t know to what extent what you said is representative of Pagels, but when I see what you have written, I wonder if she is some sort of Christian apologist, making a revisionist attempt to whitewash the work of the council. It reads as if an egalitarian motive was a main driving force behind the works of the Council. I have enormous doubts about that.
I believe the Council was quite the opposite to Egalitarian – Imperial. I’m not sure that egalitarian sentiment even existed at the time to any significant extent…
The facts are visible for all to see: the Council sealed a dogma where they (the now ‘official’ and ‘united’ Church) were the high-class christians who made all the religious interpretations and did all the thinking for everyone else.
All right, I’m ranting a bit…
By the way Mark 4:10-12 seems to indicate that Jesus himself gave hidden teachings to his disciples which he did not give to the population at large…
I don’t see where in my synopsis you get “egalitarian apologist.” I see the basic thrust as: one is a Christian by virtue of specific sacraments administerd by the church (baptism, eucharist, etc), and we do not hold as valid any direct personal experience that certain individuals or sects may claim.
There were certainly a host of reasons for Nicea to exclude certain books, for instance the early heresy that Jesus was never really a man, but really pure spirit.
Elaine Pagels first book was The Gnostic Gospels (1979), which was the first intro a lot of people got to the Nag Hammadi texts. Later books (which I haven’t read) include Adam, Eve and the Serpent, and The Origin of Satan .
The entire thrust of her academic career has been looking at the multiplicity of Christianities that existed prior to dogmatization.
ranger said:
I don’t see where in my synopsis you get “egalitarian apologist.”
It extracted it partly from here:
so he rejected anything that hinted of division, “I’m a third degree Christian and you’re a beginner.”
But as I admitted, I was ranting to an extent. Ranting = not necessarily making very good sense… Just roll your eyeballs.
There is one bit of evidence that Constantine may have been more interested in unification of people than the actual form the new christianity would take after the council of Nicea.
That is that Constantine was a pagan, and never converted to christianity, until on his deathbed, the christian leaders anointed him and declared him a christian!
Cynical me would just say he was hedging his bets. He didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Apollo while he still needed earthly power.