Comment

Comment by Hari Menon on November 26, 2012 at 11:39pm

Dear Doctor ,

       I  quite like it , I come from one of the southern most states of India , and we have a long history of tolerance and living in peace , When the Jews were repeatedly being harassed in other parts , they came to Kerala (the state from which I belong ) and the king at that time gave them sanctuary and welcomed them and extended all help to them . Needless to say over the years they grew into a very prosperous business community  and continued with their traditions peacefully - There is a Jewish synagogue which is quite old here and now a tourist attraction ..Over time after the Jewish state was formed - most of them migrated , and presently - there is only one family left , that too of elders - the younger generations of that family have also migrated . Why I write this is to this day all over Kerala we do not use the word Jesus - if at all it is used it is only in English - everyone uses the word ''Yeshu'' - it is not an isolated phenomenon - it is the word used by everyone - even Christians in Kerala refer to Jesus as ''Yeshu''. Just mentioned it in case you might be interested in knowing this . 

Comment by Dr. Lewis Keizer on November 26, 2012 at 11:08am

Dear Prof. MacDonald,

Having looked over your site, you would find me in agreement with many of your ideas. Certainlygilgul or reincarnation overseen by the Archangel Metatron (who had been Enoch in flesh) was basic to the thought-world of Jewish wisdom-school and messianic mysticism that was the context from whichYeshua taught. If you want to learn more about his inner-circle kabbalistic teachings, you should read my book recovering and interpreting his oral davrim and mashlim from their original context in the Aramaic core of the Gospel of Thomas. As both Coptic language and New Testament scholar whose approach has been to reconstruct the historical teachings of Yeshua from the flawed and highly "spun" versions from the Q documents and other NY sources, I was uniquely qualified to do this work withThomas.

From my introductory remarks: 

"I have written this book because the many scholarly translations of The Gospel of Thomas available in books and online do not correctly interpret the logia. Neither literal translations nor attempts to clarify through paraphrase have been adequate. As a result, readers blissfully create their own interpretations of the sayings oblivious to which are Gnostic interpolations, which are authentic, and what the original Aramaic davarim of Yeshua really taught. This book is for people who want to know what the sayings really meant to Yeshua, and what they can mean for twenty-first century people."

You have said that the Bar Enash or Son of Man(kind) "entered history at the time of Adam." I'm afraidYeshua, who used the term to describe both himself and an archetypal being whom Paul called the "Second Adam," would not agree. The Bar Enash is Aramaic for Hebrew Ben Adam and describes a new human archetype that is the successor of the old Adam Kadmon, from whom all human souls are brought into incarnation. The Son-of-Man Messiah was revealed to Jewish sages in the sophisticated world-center of Jewish thought in Babylon after the captivity, where what we call the Old Testament and all the writings of Deutero- and Trito-Isaiah, Daniel, Enoch, and the other messianic sources were composed. Yeshua advocated the Son-of-Man Messiah as opposed to the Son-of-David Warrior Messiah who would descend out of the sky with angel troops and help the Jewish soldiers defeat the Romans advocated by Judean rabbis (cf. Mark's story of Jesus confronting a scribe of the Pharisees, "Why do you say Messiah is the son of David, when David himself calls him Lord..." repeated in Matthew and Luke). The Messiah or "Christ" taught by Yeshua was not a single person (as the Christians would later have it, i.e. Jesus), but a New Humanity. We are all born from the original Adam, who was androgynous and divided into male and female, but Yeshua taught the halakah or practices that led to spiritual rebirth as a member of the body or assembly of the New Adam, whose work would be to apprentice as heirs and exercise divine Malkuth or Sovereignty (meaning the very powers of Godhead) to purify humanity and its stewardship of the Earth from evil (bondage to Shaitan, the Yetzer Ha-Ra, or Evil Motive of the heart), i.e. the rule of the Beasts envisioned by Daniel. The teachings of Yeshua are VERY different than those of Christianity. He did expect the "Birth Pains of Messiah" and did correctly predict the destruction of the Temple that came in A.D. 70, but did NOT predict an immediate end of the world as the Christians thought (i.e., Mark 13 et. al.) or the so-called Rapture. His was a vision of slow, soul-by-soul spiritual evolution among humanity.

Go to http://hometemple.org/YouTube.htm for a series of my YouTube Powerpoint presentations on the Pre-Christian Teachings of Yeshua, which have more in common with modern Buddhism and Jewish Kabbalah than with Christianity.

Comment by Dr. Lewis Keizer on November 26, 2012 at 8:56am

Emmanuel,

You can answer your question by going here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas

The oldest version of the New Testament writings are extant only in one 4th century manuscript called Codex Vaticanus. Before that all we have are very small papyrus fragments, the earliest of which is dated at A.D. 125.

Scholars don't use the term "validation," which implies one thing to be more valuable than another. In both the traditional gospels and Thomas, there is no doubt about their existence in earliest forms of Christianity.

Comment by Bruce Fraser MacDonald on November 25, 2012 at 10:17pm

I have contributed a lot to past Theosophy web discussions on other sites, and have some articles in Theosophy online journals dealing with Blavatsky and the earlier Theosophists, but the last time I was on a Theosophy site and shared what I do and the books I have published on Yeshua/Jesus and on meditation, I got attacked by a whole pile of people, so I am a bit hesitant to contribute here.  Anyway, I won't say much but will just point you to a website about the work I have done on Yeshua and you can look for yourselves.  Check www.ThomasTwin.com .  You will find many links in my work with Theosophy. I am currently leading a meditation group of about 35 people, bases on "The Prayer of Silence." (Free, by the way, if any of you happen to be in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.  Our last session for the fall is this Wednesday night and we start again in January.)  There is a great hunger for spiritual nourishment.  .I haven't checked out your work, Lewis, but will do so now that I know about it.  Peace, Bruce

 

Comment by Hari Menon on November 25, 2012 at 12:59am

Dear Doctor,

         Really great , one of the most wonderful and information packed posts that I have seen. It is really wonderful , you have more than explained and put my doubts to rest - you have opened my eyes so to say to a whole new world . I really thank you from the bottom of my heart . Wonderful really , thank you doctor you are a real doctor to the soul!!!.

Comment by Dr. Lewis Keizer on November 24, 2012 at 11:25am

Dear Hari,

Two conventions from the Jewish Hellenistic world are noteworthy. 1. Pseudepigraphy: A student of a master could speak and even teach in his name. For example the Pseudeo-Pauline or Pastoral Epistles written probably at least a generation after Paul's death. Or, Jewish prophets/prophetesses who had been disciples of Yeshua invoking his spirit (Maran, Atha--"Our Master, be present") in the earliest post-ascension thoda (liturgical thanksgiving) gatherings where they would "remember" and amplify the teachings. This became an invocation of the Holy Spirit in later gentile gatherings, and eventually what we call the sermon. But Paul presents mostly teachings interpreting Yeshua and a rabbinical theology of salvation--he had NOT been a disciple. 2. Kabbalistic conventions of teaching: These were often indirect and allegorical, phrased as questions, as prophetic-poetic davrim or revelations, and mashlim or metaphorical tales (not Greek "parables" as the gentile New Testament would later understand them and interpret them with one-to-one correlations). A mashal answered the questions of the talmid or disciple that began, "What is X like?" They would be answered, "X is like..." because there was no one-to-one correspondence. Rather, the divine razim were far beyond human comprehension and could be only glimpsed and very partially transmitted by a Mar or Master like Yeshua who had ascended to the Merkabah Throne of Godhead, the Abba or Father-Mother. Paul would have understood much of what he had opportunity to hear from disciples and apostles, but merged it incorrectly with the Judean Pharisaic traditions of his rabbinic teacher Gameliel--something scholars can now unscramble. The Kabbalistic forms of teachings and transmissions of manda or what the Greeks called gnosis cannot be taken literally, as they are by Christians. So to address your point, yes: "In a way they advocate an exposition of knowledge by a Knower in an indirect way - so that the truth can be known by what is said and by what is not said." These systems of thought you compare have a similar reasoning embedded in them. And there are pitfalls for those who try to openly and literally interpret them. As Yeshua is supposed to have said, "All is given in allegories and metaphors; but to you (his inner-circle of disciples) I speak plainly," and, "Do not give the children's food to the dogs," and, "Do not cast your pearls before swine, lest they turn and rend you." But they doesn't mean we shouldn't try to better understand them. True gnosis cannot be taught, but it can be learned.

Comment by Hari Menon on November 24, 2012 at 5:42am

Dear Doctor ,

    I am not much of an authority on anything , but there is a connection (within me of course)  which has been at the back of my mind and did solve a lot of things for me . I have read the King James version of the Holy Bible - what most struck me was throughout the bible Jesus has only be referred to in an inverse manner .  There is no Gospel of Jesus but rather his disciples have given out the Gospel , in much the same way as in the Dialogues of Plato where we come to know of Socrates only from his disciple Plato who is so self effacing that a reader believes he is in communion with Socrates and gets to know him so well that we are so drawn into the dialogues and on reading Crito(n) we actually exclaim why oh why Socrates could you not have been more worldly !!! and then hate yourself for having fallen into Platos love for his master and his self effacement , when you realize that it was Plato speaking and not Socrates . It is the hall mark of a  good internal dialogue between a perceptive student and his equally good master . In the Indian Upanishads also there is a warning (in Brhadaranyaka) - where a king (who was also realized) hold court and displays his knowledge among a knowledgeable elite by way of a contest and the author (we do not know who it was ) exclaims Yagnavalkya,Yagnavalkya.Yagnavalkya .....(Oh king do not make a show of your knowledge ). In every age people have been reviled for having spoken the truth (absolute I mean ) , Again the Vedas enjoin that Brahman is never spoken of (since it is a non object ) and one has to speak the of Brahman only through the manifest knowledge and not directly since if spoken like an object it will not yield to knowledge . In a way they advocate an exposition of knowledge by a Knower in an indirect way - so that the truth can be known by what is said and by what is not said . Does not these three systems of thought have a similar reasoning embedded in them ?. And the pit falls it entails in openly speaking of that which is truely unspeakable ? Does it not provide a guideline for us also - how to conduct ourselves within this frame work ? I invite your views my surmises may not be spot on yet as an expert you could shed more light on this and give me peace.