Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clivedurdle · 11-20-2009, 03:08 PM

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.c...ostgoddess.htm

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teaching of the Original Christians (or via: amazon.co.uk). Harmony Books (AKA Crown Publishing/Random House)

Reviewed by Robert M. Price

FnG spend a long time discussing the evolution of the Holy Spirit and its fascinating sex change at one point to Sophia. The linked review doesn't discuss this.

avi · 11-20-2009, 03:13 PM

Thank you Clive, for this interesting tidbit, much appreciated.

This idea then is related to the "Holy Spirit", post new testament, if I understand correctly? Yes?

I was really trying to elicit notions of how the Greek words "pneuma" and "agion" were used ante new testament.

Thanks for your input, nevertheless....

No Robots · 11-20-2009, 03:16 PM

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Originally Posted by avi

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Originally Posted by No Robots

It is Christ's self-understanding as the embodiment of Spirit that is the core of his conflict with religious authority.

Here, I am not simply confused, as usual, rather, I am bewildered. I have no idea what you mean.

Hmm. I thought I was following with your train of thought. You had said, correctly, that Spirit is generally considered an attribute of the deity, and not something that a person can appropriate. So, we have Christ, then, who does claim to have appropriated it. Hilarity ensues.

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With which religious authority was the mythical Jesus supposed to have quarreled?

Christ opposes all religious authority.

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The Pharisees--those Jews, who, as I understand it, retained an element of Persian (Farsi==>Pharisee) thinking in their demeanor, or the Sadducees, or both?

Both. But the Pharisees were by far the dominant force. After A.D. 70 they established themselves as the rabbinate.

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I was under the impression that the itinerant preacher was more or less ignored by the religious folks, and of concern to the Romans only because he sought to usurp Roman authority by declaring himself King of the Jews, a function reserved exclusively for the Roman Emperor.

No, the Romans had no interest in him at all until he was brought forward by the religious authorities as a rebel. The religious authorities generally took no notice of him, until that became impossible due to his rabble-rousing.

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I was also under the impression, that only the Romans wielded power of life and death, via Crucifixion, so that Jesus' crime must have been related to challenging Roman State political authority, rather than Jewish religious laws and customs.

Yep. This has been gone over several times here. He was tried by the Sanhedrin; but, under Roman rule, that body could not impose a capital sentence. So, the religious authorities took him before the civil authority, which disposed of him according to the wishes of the religious authority. The same sort of thing happened to Giordano Bruno.

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When John the Baptist describes Jesus using "fire", rather than water, to perform the ceremony of baptism, is John referring to physical flames and heat, similar to branding cows with a hot iron, or is the reference to fire simply a metaphor?

Metaphor.

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Is this notion of purification with fire coming from Zoroastrianism, or perhaps Hinduism?

I'm sure you'll find metaphorical use of the word "fire" in several passages in the OT.

Clivedurdle · 11-21-2009, 01:04 AM

Quote:

Thank you Clive, for this interesting tidbit, much appreciated.

This idea then is related to the "Holy Spirit", post new testament, if I understand correctly? Yes?

I was really trying to elicit notions of how the Greek words "pneuma" and "agion" were used ante new testament.

Thanks for your input, nevertheless....

No, it isn't a post new testament idea. Look at the wiki article you linked to.

There is a clear history in Judaic thinking, and effects of Greek Alexandria.

I posit again - misunderstandings of biology and cosmology.

Clivedurdle · 11-21-2009, 01:09 AM

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Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

And on relationships to Baptism, why not follow Greek Science?

What do we have?

Breath = air

Baptism of water

Baptism of fire

Now what might represent earth in xianity?

One of the major motifs of xianity is a new heaven and earth.

Xianity isn't a huge alchemic tradition is it? Instead of turning lead into gold, it creates a new heaven and earth through a god becoming a man and dying on a cross. Baptism and Holy Spirits are all obvious parts of the magic spell.

Clivedurdle · 11-21-2009, 10:11 AM

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Among the Nag Hammadi writings are three separate copies of the Apocryphon of John, an especially important gnostic myth; a fourth copy is included in the Berlin Codex 8502. Corresponding closely to the myth that Irenaeus ascribed to the sect called gnostikê, the Apocryphon purports to be a secret revelation from Jesus that was received in a vision by the apostle John. It conveys the true nature of the divine realm and its relationship to the material cosmos and humanity. While the transcendent god or invisible spirit is inconceivable and ineffable, the pleroma (Greek: “full perfection”) of the divine is a hierarchical family of personified aeons, who emerge as the fruit of the spirit’s self-contemplation or self-expression. For example, as in the myth described by Irenaeus, Barbelo emerges as the first thought of the transcendent god, and she is soon accompanied by Foreknowledge, Incorruptibility, Eternal Life, and others. The imperfect material realm is understood as a copy of the perfect spiritual realm, an idea partly derived from the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, or Forms. The myth also draws on the biblical theme of humanity as formed in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27); true or divine humanity, however, is this spiritual family brought into being in the realm of perfection as the spirit’s image. This realm is the dwelling place of the spiritual Adamas, his son Seth, and the race or offspring of Seth.

The creator of the visible realm and of the earthly Adam and Eve of the biblical Garden of Eden is a lesser being, a ruler (archon) named Ialdabaoth, who is a dark caricature of the creator God of Genesis and the demiurge of Platonism. Wisdom, the lowest entity in the realm of perfection, creates Ialdabaoth in an unauthorized attempt to produce a likeness of herself. Ialdabaoth in turn creates the material cosmos and rules it with subordinate powers who are his own imperfect offspring. A willful and malevolent figure, Ialdabaoth is unaware of any power above him and is easily duped by providence into actions that either serve divine ends or are stymied by countermeasures from the divine realm. He does not realize that his cosmos is patterned after a more transcendent realm, and he ignorantly boasts that there is no god above him.

When, in response to this declaration, the image of the divine humanity above is revealed on the waters below—an allusion to Genesis 1:2 (“the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters”)—Ialdabaoth and his rulers fashion an Adam in its likeness. Wisdom then tricks Ialdabaoth into breathing life into this figure, an act that empties him of what power he had received from Wisdom and transfers it to Adam. The spiritual power now within Adam is portrayed as a feminine entity who supplies him with insight that makes him disobedient to Ialdabaoth. The latter then attempts to deprive Adam of this power by putting him to sleep, extracting the power from Adam’s rib, and molding it into the shape of a woman. But Ialdabaoth’s plan fails. For in this revision of the biblical myth (Genesis 2:21–23), when Adam awakens and beholds the woman, Eve, he experiences an even deeper insight, an awakening from the “drunkenness of darkness.” Enraged, Ialdabaoth casts the couple from paradise, introduces sexual desire, and seduces Eve and begets from her Cain and Abel. Because their father is an oppressive archon rather than a human, however, Cain and Abel are the same. As archons, they rule over the material elements (fire, wind, earth, and water) and therefore also over the material bodies of future human beings. However, Adam begets his son Seth in the likeness of the divine Seth, son of Adamas, the prototype of ideal humanity. The human race is thus spiritually the seed of Seth, though bodily incarnation at birth entails a forgetting of this divine origin. The realization of one’s spiritual ancestry must be reawakened by revelation.

This is a theme from Platonic philosophy, illustrated in the myth of Er in Plato’s Republic, in which a slain warrior named Er is revived briefly on his funeral pyre and tells of what he has seen of the fate of souls after death. The lengthy account includes a description of reincarnation and of the necessity of each soul to drink of the river of Forgetfulness before coming into another body. According to the Apocryphon, until a soul is saved by receiving revelation of its true identity, it continues to experience further reincarnations. If souls knowingly reject the revelation, they will suffer eternal damnation.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...343/gnosticism

avi · 11-21-2009, 01:19 PM

Impressive, Clive, thanks.
avi

11-20-2009, 03:13 PM	#12
avi Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Location: eastern North America Posts: 1,468	gender change Thank you Clive, for this interesting tidbit, much appreciated. This idea then is related to the "Holy Spirit", post new testament, if I understand correctly? Yes? I was really trying to elicit notions of how the Greek words "pneuma" and "agion" were used ante new testament. Thanks for your input, nevertheless....

11-21-2009, 01:19 PM	#17
avi Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Location: eastern North America Posts: 1,468	wow Impressive, Clive, thanks. avi

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11-20-2009, 03:08 PM	#11
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.c...ostgoddess.htm Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teaching of the Original Christians (or via: amazon.co.uk). Harmony Books (AKA Crown Publishing/Random House) Reviewed by Robert M. Price FnG spend a long time discussing the evolution of the Holy Spirit and its fascinating sex change at one point to Sophia. The linked review doesn't discuss this.

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