New Testament gospels are traditionally accorded a cultural sanctity and lofty regard completely out of line with their literary worth.
Various visionaries through time came to see with some degree of clarity that Oneness, that intrinsic connection between Self and experienced Reality.
The fact is: Jesus wrote not a solitary word that survives. Equally astounding is historical silence: not a single historical account refers to him during his lifetime from any source whatsoever, Roman or Jewish, official or personal.
Josephus is the first historian to make note of Jesus having even existed – and that happened six full decades after his death.
The authors of the gospels, like all writers in all time periods, either reference information they have at hand – including things they’ve heard or read – or they make things up. . . For reference material, the author of Mark relied not on Jes...
That means 19 or 20 of the books of the NT (New Testament) are anonymous. Many are blatantly pseudepigraphic (forgeries, see next section), with famous names applied to artificially promote veracity.
The gospels, never meant to report, but rather to convince, are in no sense objective and dispassionate biographies. They are glowing accounts meant to persuade people of the writers’ convictions.
Of course, the original (anonymous) writer of (the Gospel of) John didn’t use quotes – as they didn’t exist in written Greek – but the translator/publisher of the modern Bible does. And that style strongly implies a validity that is pure illu...
You encounter, at its core, a subjective Reality, one based on meaning and value reflective of your own Self, not an objective universe, cold, particle-based and indifferent as science projects.
Judaism, for example, presents itself as monotheistic and retrofits that claim on its history by revising its lore. But in ancient times, Judaism was much more accurately Henotheism, wherein people (particularly common folk) worshipped a principal go...
However, just as earlier, when Christianity was introduced it didn’t eliminate pagan conceptualizations, but layered new beliefs on top of them, so science simply added to the western mindset. It didn’t fully displace religion, luck, fate, etc. S...
Understand that religion, at least western versions of it, rests on a type of thinking called Revelation. This mode holds that truths concerning the workings of reality are hidden, masked by, through or behind a deity such that only a few privileged ...
The religious and scholarly alike arrive at conclusions as to Jesus’ nature based on the world-view they hold, the belief structure that shapes their interpretation. Inaccurate views of the function of reality can only lead to erroneous conclusions...
In terms of idols which represented various gods: worshipping an idol or star cluster is no different than worshipping a concept.
The only difference between holding one god as exclusive or supreme and believing in many gods specialized in function is the number.
But for centuries, since the capitulation of Judah, the Jewish peoples had been almost continuously under foreign control. So, where was Yahweh all this time while his people suffered...? Far from ever questioning the very being of such an inept deit...
Without understanding your place as a conscious entity manifesting and engaging an experiential Reality, you will only be able to perceive Jesus within the confines of your belief structure. And that would present that hall-of-mirrors Jesus caricatur...
Moving man’s view of himself and life past common thinking, the true visionary faces great difficulty: exactly that deluded mindset the sage would have listeners outgrow is the very filter through which any new perspective must pass.
