Dec 17, 2023·edited Dec 17, 2023Liked by Tereza Coraggio
Its always seemed self apparent to me that the concept of a jew being the savior of all mankind and the Jewish people becoming Gods chosen people was never an accident. While the bible may have been a Pysop by Rome the jewish people have used it to their advantage over Christians every since.
It seem terribly convenient that the second coming of the physical manifestation of the Christian Messiah requires that the Jewish state be restored. Then if anything attacks that Jewish state it signals the end of the world. It seems like a perfectly arranged set of conditions to favor Zionism in the minds of the christian faithful.
How many Christians are convinced we have to support zionism because the jews are gods chosen people ?
"Its always seemed self apparent to me that the concept of a jew being the savior of all mankind and the Jewish people becoming Gods chosen people was never an accident. "
"Yup" to that a thousand times. Typical, no?
Same for the rest of your comment, and may I add that it seems to me that it may not be so far fetched an idea to investigate the possibility that the Roman Empire itself may have been an operation of the usual (violent and immoral) seafaring thieves of the area at that time. It seems to be a pattern that's been repeated to the point that I get of whiff of their activities even in ancient Greece, which once it was bled dry, was replaced by Rome.
Agreed with both of you! Yes, there's absolutely a reason that the Torah with the Noahite Covenant that Shemites rule the world HAD to be included with the New Testament in the Bible. Christianity is NOT a new religion from Shemitism, it's a continuation of who has the right to rule through the Davidic dynasty.
And I've come to agree with Geoff. I thought that Josephus was subservient to Caesar and writing the gospels on his behalf. But it was much more ambitious. Finding out that Cicero was afraid to criticize the Shemites reverses who ruled with the permission of who.
Even in listening to Archibald Ramsay in the 1952 Nameless War (https://www.bitchute.com/video/4C2fwTHBPfZH/) he talks about how Christians have a 'soft spot' for the Jews because Jesus was one and they're the chosen people. So Christianity is another layer of protection, along with Judaism, for the ruling bloodline of Shem.
Dec 17, 2023·edited Dec 17, 2023Liked by Tereza Coraggio
Whoever wrote the gospels, it seems like a no-brainer that whatever was included in the Bible was edited/authorized/approved by Rome, giving an account of events early in the first century which met the political exigencies of Rome? It’s a classic that one man’s “terrorist/rebel” is another man’s “freedom fighter/liberator of property,” as we know from our narradigm today. For me, “gospel truth” is an oxymoron.
As you know, some say that Jesus had a stronger claim on the throne of Judea than Herod, who was not even Judean. Herod was Idumaean. Although Idumaeans were descendants of Abraham’s people, they were not descendants of Jacob; so they were regarded as foreigners and consequently very unpopular.
If this suggestion about Jesus’s claim to the throne is true, then we could reasonably infer that he believed in the divine right of some to rule over others?
If Jesus believed himself to be the rightful King of Judea it might also explain why he denied being a rebel? How could he be a rebel in his own domain?
As for the curious incident at Gethsemane of the naked youth, according to the British forensic historians, Wilson and Blackett (“Where Jesus Is Buried,” page 123) he was Jesus Bar Abas, son of Jesus, who had been captured by the Roman city guard. Judas, the brother of Jesus, negotiated a deal whereby Jesus senior would surrender himself to the Roman authorities in exchange for Bar Abas in a face-saving formula (which also involved a faked death on the cross). Bar Abas was allowed to run away from the Garden when Jesus was arrested.
Wilson and Blackett make the point that crucifying those who had offended rulers, or those convicted of the crime of insurrection, was centuries old before the time of Jesus; and nailing the victim to the cross was specifically reserved for offenses committed by members of the military or for those guilty of insurrection (page 127). So that’s how Rome wanted it to appear to posterity.
Does the alleged divine right of some to rule over others originate with Jesus? Or much earlier in Sumeria and with the Nephilim, biblical offspring of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" and their descendants?
I base it on the impulse Jesus, or whatever his name was, created and which continues to this day; and I base it on the oral traditions of the Egyptian mystery schools, in which he was a high initiate. The Romans were well versed in erasing all record of people of whom they disapproved. They even had a word for it, but of course I can't remember what it was right now!
Hmmm ... so all we know about Jesus is what's written in the gospels, yes? And the only other historical reference is from Josephus who, from all evidence, is the author of the gospels. And he makes a completely out-of-character statement that there was this guy Jesus and he was the Messiah. It's so out of context that most scholars say it had to have been put there later, although if he's the author, it would make sense.
In this analysis I did of the gospel Jesus, which is the only record of this person, I show that either this historical person or the authors of this literary figure are gung-ho for Rome and feel that anyone who rebels against the empire gets what they deserve.
If you know the name can't be true, and that the story of this pro-imperial Messiah was edited if not written by the Roman Empire, what biographical details connect the high initiate in the Egyptian mystery schools to whatever-his-name-is?
I'll reply to myself so it goes to you, Tirion, and Geoff. And I'm so glad that you're both willing to engage on this and keep exploring.
Whether or not we personify God, the question isn't 'Do you believe in God?' but 'What is the character of your God?' A God who demands sacrifice, who doesn't care if Herod killed 11,600 Samaritans through slow torture or Judeans and their families living in caves, but only cares about His Son is not a God I'd want to have exist.
A related question is 'Was the Christ a Who or a What?' Was it one person who was a divine leader, uniquely loved by God, or was it a movement among people believing we are all loved equally by God?
And last, I would ask, 'What is the character of your Christ?' Is it an imperial Christ who inherits the divine right to rule or a sovereign Christ who would have agreed with the zealots on all the 'heresies'?
We're assuming that any mention of Christians means Jesus, based on 2000 years of the Bible psyops. Whether like you, Tirion, you see the Christ as imperial or, like you, Geoff, you reject the concept of Christ altogether, you won't see evidence for a Christ of sovereignty--whether a person or movement. So the empire wins, both ways.
"...you reject the concept of Christ altogether, you won't see evidence for a Christ of sovereignty--whether a person or movement. So the empire wins, both ways."
I neither accept it nor reject such a concept, but I do know that whatever the truth is, it's been perverted beyond recognition for the benefit of the perverters, and that the empire may win in some ways, but what does it win? The cost/ benefit ratio seems to indicate that everyone involved loses. They can keep their stinking empire and I have a suggestion about what they can do with it, but I'll leave it at that! : )
I wish I could give you an answer, Tereza. What did Tacitus say about Jesus? And what about the Nag Hammadi library? How/where do those documents fit? Weren't there dozens if not hundreds of sects in early Christianity apart from Pauline/Roman Christianity? Did they spring from a fictional literary figure, too? I guess it's possible; but it just seems unlikely. I lack the breadth and depth of knowledge to say; but I am really grateful to be able to explore this important topic with you. I must read the linked post from Frances Leader also. Thanks for posting that.
"...so all we know about Jesus is what's written in the gospels, yes? "
No.
I may be wrong, but Ammianus Marcellins and Tacitus referred to "Christians" implying that there was a JC and they had nothing to do with the "gospels" but having next to no interest in the subject, I could be way off base here.
I have no idea about any of this except to say that there are many "Jesuses" both then and now. By that I mean that the usual story is timeless. The "Jesus" most people relate to is supposedly a good guy who gave a damn but wound up tacked to a cross then went to "Heaven" anyway. The same stuff happens today and we (both individuals and governments) kill the good guys every single day. Whether any of them goes to Heaven or not is beyond my pay grade, but that gives the story a happy (though fantastic) ending.
Another moral of the story is that everything, and I mean everything can be, and probably will be, misinterpreted, twisted, mangled, and perverted to serve the ends of whatever storyteller is telling the tale, so we'll never know the whole truth about anything anyone tells us. Therefore we must question everything and even then we must consider everything cum "bushelem" salis.
The "Anointed One" is probably a hybrid of some historical figure as well as a literary one to one degree or another. Something like Robin Hood and a whole host of similar characters. We humans seem to like astonishing tales and so much the better if there's a grain of truth or a hint of hope to titilate our fantasies and desires.
As for the concept of "divine rights," I call BS on that as well as the concept of everyone being equal. For one thing, what does "being equal" really mean?
My meaning of equal is that we are all equally and inherently good, born with the equal potential to make good choices. If I've made better choices than someone else, it's because I had better choices to make and was born into a different role with different lessons to learn--not better, not worse. Those who are learning and therefore teaching lessons that would be harder for me are taking on that role for my benefit, all equally necessary to resolve this dream of pain and punishment so we can lose our fear of waking up.
My meaning of dogma is a belief that you refuse to raise to question. I think that dogmas should be consciously chosen and owned. I'm willing to raise everything else to question, including my own separate existence and the existence of the world, but not the belief I'm no better than anyone else. It's my only dogma.
For me to judge myself morally superior, I'd have to know as much as God about that person, which I can't presume to know. If you believe you're morally superior to some, that's your dogma. Where's the evidence?
Jesus as God, absolutely has the right to rule over all of His creation, not just over other men. “Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is LORD.”
“Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is LORD.” Weren’t those words written by Saulus/Saul/Paul - a member of King Herod’s large family (descendant of Herod’s sister, Salome) and a citizen of Rome, who subverted Jesus’s teachings into something which better suited the political exigencies of Rome? Paul announced himself to be an unelected Apostle and disciple and he calmly proceeded to create an entirely new and different brand of religious philosophy and teaching from that of Jesus and his brother/successor, James the Just: there was no longer a need for Judeans to obey and follow the Laws of Moses, they could eat whatever was available in the markets and there was no longer a requirement to be circumcised. Paul was one of the leaders of the post-crucifixion witch-hunts started by the Temple Priests to hunt down and bring to trial and execution of the more extreme followers of Jesus.
And wasn’t it only in AD 325, at The Council of Nicea, that Rome and its Pauline church decided by a very close vote to confer divine status on Jesus? As an historical (as opposed to mystical) narrative, it all seems rather man-made to me.
The is no contradiction between the sayings of Jesus and the sayings of Paul. Paul was sent as a Apostle to the gentiles and they don’t fall under the Mosaic law.
Thank you, Tereza for your willingness to tackle such a controversial topic.
In an earlier iteration of my life I spent a lot of time taking religious studies classes and am aware of the ongoing debate around whether the historical Jesus even existed.
Like Dominic Crosson or Rudolph Steiner, (among countless others) I come down on the side that he did in fact exist. I include those two names because I tended to resonate with them, not because they are 'right' and certainly not because they would necessarily have agreed on all the details.
Per usual for me, parsing historical data isn't the ultimate persuader. It fleshes out and adds important context, but in the end I trust something that can't be proven. It's not something I need to convince anyone else of.
The tendency to place Jesus in front of Christ (Jesus Christ) for me is part of the confusion. As Steiner would say it is more accurately, Christ Jesus. (Placing horse in front of the cart.) Christ is an impulse and knowing about our shared relationship with one another and the larger substance of Creation, (Love) available to all human beings, which Steiner believed, was not possible until the historical Jesus embodied that impulse. "Yet, not I, but Christ." Christ is not personal, though it can be embodied personally.
It's also the case that Jesus as an historical figure was part of a larger continuum of spiritual figures on the planet - indeed throughout the larger cosmos - that brought a higher level of possibility to humanity. It's not only Jesus the person, who was and is capable of this transformation into the Christ energies or impulse.
We are capable of knowing things prior to having language or facts to support that knowing. The mystical that is so often referenced in spiritual texts, I suspect can be demystified, but this requires releasing the constraints and insistence on having things presented that 'make sense' or follow a purely logical course. I understand the desire but know too that we have experiences that we can't pin down in those ways.
(I did an experiment as a young person (18 at the time) in dialogue with Jesus (though really I believe the Christ 'field') out of a sincere desire to know if this figure was 'real'. Suffice to say, I was convinced I was in the presence of a Force of Love and that Force was had been embodied by the guy, we call Jesus. I subsequently had a series of dreams that only cemented this conviction. None of this is to say that that experience won't be at some point, be superseded by another experience that will shift it into a larger understanding. That's fully possible - we work with what we have and open to more. I'm not looking to 'fix' my experience or conclusions, not would I reject them because I place them into a mental construct.)
My experience always trumps my ability to language them or make sense of them. They exist outside those models.
It is an error, imo, to elevate Jesus, as a person over anyone else. (And I believe he would say the same) Yet what he brought to the planet as someone able to embody Christ (and yes much of that has been hijacked and distorted) nonetheless was extraordinary and opened up the ability for humans to access what we call 'mystical' knowledge. (His staying power as a vehicle for faith is not only as the OG psyop, then.)
We are all equal in the largest context - aspects of the One - though we understand that in a world that clearly develops and evolves. We see clearly some of us are 'better' at some things than others, some of us appear to be more 'evolved' or 'developed' in certain ways, and others in other ways.
The ultimate context - where no one is special - is essential - as an orienting context, yet it does not keep us from seeing those developmental differences. Both are true, one holds the other.
We can't see all the ways in which our individual lives are essential to the larger Orchestration. So there is never anything to judge. Nor can we see the constraints to what we can know at any given time. As the frequencies on our planet continue to push us past the old world with all its control mechanisms, we will, as humans open to higher ways of knowing and as that happens reshuffle again, what we think we know, how we grok time and space and how we interact with the forces and frequencies of life.
Humility and openness - as well as a willingness to let go of our temporary convictions - will serve us well. It's an exciting time.
What a wonderful, big and inquisitive mind you have, Tereza. You can't not expand everything around you. Best.
Thank you for that thoughtful and honest response, Kathleen. Let me expand on it a little, if you'll indulge me. I think of propaganda as a seamless fabric in which the truth is the weft and the lies are the warp. If you recognize the truth and accept the lies with them, they win. If you recognize the lies and reject the truth with them, they win.
Interweaving the sovereign Christ with the story of an imperial Jesus is like that weft and warp. You, as a person who respects all people, are only responding and noticing the weft. But at the same time, you're endorsing the warp so anyone who wants to use it for their own nefarious purposes has a cloak of invisibility and invulnerability.
I love Dominic Crossan! You probably know he's the co-founder of the Jesus Seminars I attended. It's actually his research and Elaine Pagel's that led me to realize what Joe Atwill was saying in Caesar's Messiah was true. After I'd thrown Atwill's book across the room, I went back to reading Crossan's Excavating Jesus. What it said is that all the things said about Jesus "Lord of Lords, God of Gods, true God from true God, begotten not made, One in Being with the Father" were as ubiquitous as graffiti in ancient Rome. But they referred to Caesar. And what Atwill was saying, that Jesus was a way of tricking the opposition into worshipping Caesar, hit me like a ton of bricks.
I did everything possible during that time to show the scholars of the Jesus Seminar what their own research led inescapably to. Especially Dominic. I took a class with him at GTU just so I could write a paper that he'd read. He said he didn't know whether to give me an A for a well researched paper or a D for not answering the question. But I did! I also gave him this paper at another meeting. I could give you example after example of how Dominic's own words confirm this theory--points that I raised there. But he remains my prime example of someone who revolutionizes a field of study, but then reaches the end of their elasticity. The JS could reject the virgin birth, the miracles, any trace of an Aramaic origin, 85% of the quotes, but questioning Jesus as a historical person and teacher was unthinkable.
Oh I love Elaine Pagels too! 'Adam Eve and Serpent' was a favorite.
I think we mainly agree.
"Interweaving the sovereign Christ with the story of an imperial Jesus is like that weft and warp. You, as a person who respects all people, are only responding and noticing the weft. But at the same time, you're endorsing the warp so anyone who wants to use it for their own nefarious purposes has a cloak of invisibility and invulnerability."
I don't think of Jesus as imperial though fully see his being used as such. And I don't agree that accepting he existed and embodied the Christ impulse means I'm endorsing anyone who is using this link in nefarious way.
It's not that he was/is better than everyone else (so I dismiss the 'only son of God' assertion) rather that he was an example of everyone's potential (and more). I think there is a lot of confusion about the man and this state of embodiment because he was used as part of a control agenda, (perhaps in part unknowingly) and it doesn't mean he was complicit in it. Those who accept he lived are also not complicit in it.
I have a sense that scholarly believers who are attempting to sort out the historical Jesus (highly messed with) from the Christ impulse are remembering this time, were likely present, maybe even in close proximity to the genesis of this story. They can't drop the reality of his existence because something in them, knows it's true.
Also it's not unthinkable to me to question the historical person. Not at all. I most definitely did question it and entertained it. It wasn't persuasive in the end, because something else was more persuasive. I think the person we call Jesus lived and brought in a larger field, and that was only possible because Buddha lived and brought in a larger field and on and on.
I haven't read Atwill's book - and probably a lot more that you have read. It's possible if I did I might be re-persuaded, I don't know. I go with that inner guidance.
Finally in some ways Jesus as a symbol of a higher love that's possible for humans to carry themselves in, is its own morphic field and so is real. Yes it may have lots of distortions - like everything else - but it's been imbued over time with so much desire and love - that it's a real force-field and can be tapped. Something started that, and I don't think it comes down to a psyop.
Thanks for your reply. We don't gots to agree on everything.😊 Appreciate you.
From my experience in foreign languages I am aware of the nuances that get lost in translation. As you highlighted today, the difference between rebel and robber are quite significant and change the gist of the story! Excellent work Tereza!
I'm so glad you got my point, Anneke. The difference completely turns the story on its head. In the robber version of the gospels, Jesus is a man of the people, a peasant, a wise teacher in a land under occupation. In the translation where Jesus is disparaging the rebels and saying they get what they deserve, he is a collaborator with the occupying force.
Geoff you bring up good points and there are answers to them. I once thought the same, that the story had started out good but had been corrupted over time. So the first years of my research was figuring out what was closest to the original. It turns out that it's exactly the opposite.
The reason I like Willis Barnstone's version is that he translates directly from the Greek. There is no Aramaic, not in written form and not even in the hypothetical oral tradition! This is known because even the parables and quotes from Jesus use Greek tropes, idioms and plays on words that don't work in Aramaic. It's safe to say no text in the history of the world has been studied as carefully to figure out what's been changed and what's original.
Barnstone is a believer in Jesus. When reading his translation of the Prodigal Son parable, I saw him get so choked up, his son had to finish. Very sweet and smart guy, speaks several languages. What he found is that subsequent translations had 'softened the blows.' The original is so hateful, vindictive and scathing towards the Jews, especially by Jesus, that the Latin shied away from showing the ugliness. Willis decided to 'take the gloves off' and translate what it actually says--a brave and conflicted decision, which he writes about.
Hmmm ... in looking for a compromise position where Jesus was kind of against the zealots but also kind of against Rome, I'm reminded of Howard Zinn's statement that you can't be neutral on a moving train. Josephus betrayed his people so that when Titus got in they slew until the streets ran with blood and they were exhausted from killing. Then for days they held slave auctions, including children, but sent the men to Rome to be tortured. Is that something there are two sides of?
Wow Tereza, you come with receipts for everything! You touch on so many radioactive topics in such an understanding and reasonable way.
Your mannerisms are the way discussions should be (rather than the inflammatory sound bites that we are bombarded with on TV and social media). Thank you for some sanity in a crazy world!
Add to that the honest mistakes made by scribes and copyists, and the fact that most of us have to deal with translations of translations of translations, and translations of transcriptions, the fact that many words have different meanings depending on numerous factors, the fact that meaning may not be precise for any given word, plus our real ignorance of the cultures of the times and the fact that people have been known to embellish things for various reasons, the occurrence of bowlderization, the use of parables and metaphors, and the fact that most of the teachings are not only disputed (for good reason), there is no way for any of us to really know much for sure.
Along with all that, I'm generally skeptical of false dichotomies such as rebel or robber. Why not some of each, or none of neither? Or something different altogether?
I do agree that this is excellent work, and food for thought.
So true! Sometimes we miscommunicate even when speaking supposedly the same dialect!
I can relate a few amusing anecdotes where people supposedly fluent in a given language were actually clueless about the use of a word or phrase in another dialect. It's preposterous to imagine that some Aramiac dialect could be accurately translated into some form of Greek, then from that into Latin, and in turn into, say, Modern American or Standard English and get the nuances and implications right, all in probably complete absence of any idea of the context.
Anyway, I'm enjoying this thread for several reasons but mostly because it's got me thinking in new ways. Two of my "newest" thoughts are that of course the JC narrative that we've all been exposed to has been the empire serving one. If it were not, we would never have heard so much about it or had so many instituitons built on it, and second, I'm now wondering if "Chicken Little" was real or not. Whatever the case may be she seems to have been crucified and disappeared never to rise again for the obvious reason that her story definitely did NOT aid the designs of empire whether she ever existed or not!
You are so right! Even just to read English books from a hundred years ago can be difficult. When you say translated from an Aramaic dialect to ancient Greek to Latin etc to modern English it really highlights how much these texts have changed.
I also am starting to see how Christianity could have been sculpted to serve Empire…
Have you read Donald Jeffries? He has a great Substack article about born-againers. It doesn’t go as deep about Christianity as Tereza does but I really like Jeffries’ work:
"I also am starting to see how Christianity could have been sculpted to serve Empire…"
I am also on that track. It was always quite apparent to me that what's been labelled as Christianity served many of the popes well in thier ambitious and often violent pursuits and I'm also suspicious that the papacy was infiltrated by the amoral moneybags crowd (if it hadn't started out that way) and used for their own purposes and it's certainly not out of character for those in power otherwise to attempt the same.
“Religion too, and the oath soldiers took when they were enllisted, greatly contributed to making them do their duty in ancient times; for upon any default, they were threatened not only with human punishments, but the vengeance of the gods.*5 They also had several other religious ceremonies that had a very good effect on all their enterprises, and would have still in any place where religion is held in due reverence. Sertorious knew this well; he used to have consultations with a hind that he said was sent by the gods to assure him of victory.4 Sulla pretended to converse with an image he had taken out of the temple of Apollo,*” and several generals have given out that some god or other has appeared to them in dreams and visions and commanded them to fight the enemy. In the days of our ancestors, when Charles VII of France was at war with the English, he pretended to be advised in everything by a virgin sent from heaven, commonly called the virgin of France, who won him many a victory."
-Niccolo Macchiavelli, The Art of War, pp128-9. Orig publ 1521
Thanks for the link, I will look at it this evening.
As for the Pope… I get overwhelmed every time I look into the papacy. It got corrupted a long time ago. Have you seen some of the occult symbology that is staged around the pope at his sermons? And what about the Apkallu hat as part of his dress?!
Way to go Tereza. First you take on the Hitler Myth. Now you've gone to the pinnacle of questions. I read through this quickly and just as quickly realized it's beyond my feeble intellect to get a whole picture. I'll have to study it a while. Yes, good question, why do you want to question a figure that so many good people use as their reason to be good. I don't know but to me it's part of that question, is everybody in history that we have been told is evil are really good and the ones we been told are good really evil? i never would have thought about taking it to this level. I'll try to get through this.
Thanks Specie. Unless we give up the illusion, we can't see the truth. Every person who does good in the name of Jesus would not stop being good without it. But those who use the story to commit evil, like is happening in Palestine today, couldn't get away with it otherwise. That's my belief. Appreciate you reading.
Dec 17, 2023·edited Dec 17, 2023Liked by Tereza Coraggio
OMG (Pun intended)! You've done it again. How do you do it? I never looked at the big question that way; in fact, I never even realized that there was such a question to be asked although the admoniton to give to Ceaser what's his always struck me as odd if not altogether brainless.
As for Josephus, I need to go back and re read that tome in this light and besides, I read it so long ago that the only thing I remember is the incident where the some dude stood on the wall and "mooned" and taunted the enemy.
The work you and Nefahotep undertake is of great importance and relevance today.
As the multi-civilizational world is reemerging after 5 centuries of colonization, the West needs to recover its civilizational heritage, which is anchored in the Catholicism. As Laurent, you and others explain, the foundation of Christianity and in particular Catholicism has been greatly distorted. Hence the need to uncover truth from under many layers of lies. Not an easy task!
Nice quotes:
once you've accepted that there is hierarchy, you are somewhere in it. You accept your superiority but you’re also confirming there are people superior to you.
This trick ties us into Empire thinking. If we are equal, I need to reject anything that gives me superiority because it's always a trick to give my authority away.
Thank you for those careful readings, I think this is my most scholarly post. And I'm glad you picked up on those quotes, I feel it's the crux of why rejecting superiority is so important.
I'm afraid I asked Nefahotep to unsub me awhile back. He wanted more of a partnership than I did, and in a response to Librarian he presented my ideas nine times (often incorrectly) as his own including words that I'd made up. It was an inadvertent experiment in gender, since Librarian responded very respectfully to him but was dismissive of me. I wish him well and you can find his Substack easily with a search.
Last night I was talking with an Italian friend, and I mentioned this post. Turns out he's done a lot of reading of works by an Italian writer (whose name I forget) about Josephus being the author of the Gospels. In this writer's interpretation, Jesus is shown to be a Jewish rebel/zealot, not a Roman sympathizer. It's all very confusing for this ex-Episcopalian skeptic. I'll write to my friend and ask for the name of the Italian writer.
Your friend speaks English? Please send him this post, if you would. He would be the perfect audience for this question. If Josephus wrote the gospels, as the Italian writer and I suspect, then Josephus' use of that Greek word needs to be translated consistently as rebel, not thief or robber. That makes the direct quotes from Jesus scathing about the rebels. Thanks, Mark!
Oh right, the Naked Bible. Kathleen, I believe, is enthusiastic about him. I watched some of him before but he makes some assumptions I don't share and has a more narrow 'Overton window.' But I'll be interested in your friend's response.
Have you ever listened to a podcast called Skeptiko? The host has been going on and on for the last couple of years about Josphus. Here is a link to one of the episodes that focuses on Josephus.
Josephus seems like a shady character from what you say and from the above and several other sources.
1 interesting theory I recently heard on a different podcast-
Josephus was actually Saul/Paul. Jesus name was actually Issa and was royal blood to a citystate (located in modern day Sanliurfa, Turkey) that was erased from history, supposedly. All of the events Jesus was involved in happened 50ish years later to hide something to do with the jewish revolts.
Tereza, I happened to catch your youtube reading late last night and posted the following comment which was removed by youtube (!!??) I don’t think youtube likes third party links that it can’t AI control.
Comment:
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WOW!
No wonder I have not been able to finish the following jigsaw puzzle – the pieces are not cut like the ‘regular’ Ravensburger and Educa. There are only ?two shapes and they can’t even be sorted into vertical/horizontal piles.
• 13200, Clementoni, The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci
I have done maybe 500 pieces down in the bottom right hand scorner but have had to put it away for the time being (cats, you know).
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As to this topic – way above my pay grade but fascinating, and you have intrigued me even more. I have a few references that come to mind when I can, especially D M Murdock (aka Acharya S) and David Skrbina, but in the meantime, speaking of Zadok ...
Speaking of pay grade, I'm putting you in the echelon of puzzle archangels (archon angels, aka messengers or spies, uh oh!) I did get the Zadok comment and wrote back that it was masterful, the delightfully dissonant cacophonous version ;-) And yes, YT now won't even let me put hot links in the description. But they've always removed comments with links, in my experience. I look forward to your references when the cats and puzzles leave you time!
Thank you and by the way, I have a stack of 3000, 2000, 1000, 500 and smaller puzzles that I have done with the children and grandchildren over the years. Many more that we grew up on at my mum's house. We can't thank and praise our mums enough!! I will get back to you on other thoughts as time (and my ability to articulate) permits. Cheers
Oh, and meant to ask in my early (hopefully not too rambling) comment, how you understand Helen Schucman's inner dialogue with who she identified as Jesus, given you are a student of CIM? Thanks.
Yes! The Course puts its teachings in a language you can love, as it says. There's no one Course, they're as individual as each person. It never mentions Jesus until the Definition of Terms where it says Jesus - Christ and defines that. I think that was a language Helen could love. It's one of two things that aren't in my language. The other is that every personification of the divine--Father, Son, Holy Spirit--is masculine. If the world is a reflection of reality, we were created male and female for a reason. So those two are things I translate in my head.
What the Course never does is contradict my dogma that all people are equally good, in fact it's whole system is predicated on that. But the story of Jesus contradicts that everywhere and I'd say, its whole system is predicated on hierarchy.
How about using Jesus’s own words and actions especially the night of the last supper to determine how he viewed hierarchy rather than how some translations treat the word robber or rebel? The book of Judges describes how God wanted the nation to be governed, but the people demanded a King in 2 Samuel chapter 8.
I addressed this revisionism timed for Christmas as an anti Christian psyop.
The best historian on Jesus and St. Paul is Michael Grant along with his book the Myths of the Greeks and the Romans. Christ does not appear on the scene until age 30. Hindus find his location in India as wise man in his early wanderings. The Gospels were in Greek and the best translations are by classics scholar Richmond Lattimore. You can read my comments on Frances Leaders Substack. Many ancient texts draw on various mythologies, like the Old Testament from the Sumerians.
Thanks for responding, Joseph. A psychological operations is something designed to deceive, by hiding its true source and purpose. My purpose is to help bring about a world where no one rules over anyone else. If there's anything I say that contradicts this purpose, please point it out because I think our unexamined contradictions are what make us fail.
When you say this is anti Christian, you mean anti Jesus, correct? Because I don't believe in the divine right to rule over others, the only Christ (person or movement) that I'd want to have exist is one on the side of the colonized.
As I was writing about the Judeans and Samaritans fighting for self-rule, and the scorched earth tactics used against them by Rome and their proxies, the parallels with Palestine today kept being obvious. Without a doubt, the Jesus of the gospels would have stood with Israel. With Hamas being an agent of Israel, Jesus would have been with them as an agent provocateur, saying at his trial, "I never rebelled against Israel! I'm wrongly accused!" And yes, I believe the Christ is with Palestine. That's my whole point.
At the time the gospels were written and the OT was edited, Rome had just reconquered Judea, slaughtered until they were exhausted, sent the men off to be tortured and sold off the women and children at a days-long slave auction. So who wrote the story of Jesus? Someone who wrote and spoke in Greek, who used Greek tropes and put words in Jesus' mouth that only make sense in Greek. In other words, not a peasant. And who blamed the Judeans for their own downfall.
Even word-order counts between the gospels and Josephus show that the parallels couldn't happen by accident. They had to come from the same author. Same stylistic devices. And Josephus definitely wasn't on the side of the colonized.
Yes I did see that. I'm curious though, from your pov, why are they called moneychangers rather than money collectors? What were they changing money from or into? I know that the temples were where the priestly caste collected their temple tax and the Romans collected their head tax. I know Jesus approved of the tax collectors, like the one who climbed the tree to see him. And he approved of paying taxes to Rome and Caesar.
I remember being told that the people in the temple were selling birds and other things for offerings, but that doesn't seem like an unscrupulous thing and it doesn't really fit with the term money changers. What's your interpretation?
Dear TC, I wrote, "It's all fun and games at our expense for the slime." I've often marveled at the way our owners mock and play with us for no apparent reason than cheap, sadistic thrills...
And look what I "stumbled upon today"....Just as cats do,
“A Fox will sometimes play with a mouse, will even walk away from one without eating it, the play is part of a fox studying the behavior of its prey, learning how to be a better predator. And so it is for the sadistic predators who view We, The People as mice.”
I have no point of view on that because I don't know enough about it. All I know is what lots of us have been told and I also know that much (pretty much all) is subject to question, interpretations, missing parts, added parts, contradictions, etc.
I also have always wondered what you stated in your last paragraph. In fact, why did they call 'em temples when in fact, there must've been more than that going on? I would bet that the term "temple" isn't what we associate with the word today. In fact, they were probably more like houses of ill repute where the "rabbis" got the best and most of everything.
Most of this stuff is so obviously self serving mumbo jumbo that I trashed any belief in it long ago. In fact, while doing some mundane stuff today, I wondered to myself why the jokers with globalist ambitions have been hard at work destroying "Paulianity" when it served them so well for such a long time. Do they think the work is complete enough that they can take their masks off and play gawd in broad daylihgt now?
Dec 19, 2023·edited Dec 19, 2023Liked by Tereza Coraggio
And another thing that I've always rolled my eyes over and that seems like evidence for your probable pov is that "Saul" was supposedly a Roman tax collector so that's another suggestion that "Jeezus" was thick with the type.
And as for "Joe" Flavius, it's obvious to me that he was another well connected con artist and bigshot and the stories of those types are so packed with BS that when one begins to look into them, they are ridiculous on their face. Miles Mathis writes a lot about that and though he seems to get carried away a bit, seems to make some good points and pretty much destroys a lot of the myths. I wonder if he's done one on 'Ol Joey...or Cheezus for that matter.
It's also a contention of mine that all prominent "historians" are a bunch of well connected rich kids who had the time and resources to write that stuff and get it "published." And it's evident to me that most of them have their own agendas (of course), and truth doesn't even enter their minds. It's all fun and games at our expense for the slime.
And another thing. Here we are discussing this stuff endlessly while the thieves keep thieving with ever increasing audacity and impunity. Just as they would have it, I'm sure.
We have long wallowed in such a cesspool of lies that I think I'll start identifying myself publicly as Cloacina!
IIRC The money changers were charging fees to trade local currency for roman coins(the church only accepted roman coins I think), and had dishonest exchange rates on top of the fees.
That's certainly the interpretation I was given. But knowing that the story was written right after the zealots had occupied the temple for three years changes that. It's not "you've turned my Father's house into a den of thieves." It's "you've turned Caesar's temple/ treasury into a headquarters for your freedom fighters."
And the rebels would never be trading local currency for Roman coins, which is certainly all they would have accepted under Caesar's rule. They would have changed it back into local currency.
Its always seemed self apparent to me that the concept of a jew being the savior of all mankind and the Jewish people becoming Gods chosen people was never an accident. While the bible may have been a Pysop by Rome the jewish people have used it to their advantage over Christians every since.
It seem terribly convenient that the second coming of the physical manifestation of the Christian Messiah requires that the Jewish state be restored. Then if anything attacks that Jewish state it signals the end of the world. It seems like a perfectly arranged set of conditions to favor Zionism in the minds of the christian faithful.
How many Christians are convinced we have to support zionism because the jews are gods chosen people ?
"Its always seemed self apparent to me that the concept of a jew being the savior of all mankind and the Jewish people becoming Gods chosen people was never an accident. "
"Yup" to that a thousand times. Typical, no?
Same for the rest of your comment, and may I add that it seems to me that it may not be so far fetched an idea to investigate the possibility that the Roman Empire itself may have been an operation of the usual (violent and immoral) seafaring thieves of the area at that time. It seems to be a pattern that's been repeated to the point that I get of whiff of their activities even in ancient Greece, which once it was bled dry, was replaced by Rome.
Agreed with both of you! Yes, there's absolutely a reason that the Torah with the Noahite Covenant that Shemites rule the world HAD to be included with the New Testament in the Bible. Christianity is NOT a new religion from Shemitism, it's a continuation of who has the right to rule through the Davidic dynasty.
And I've come to agree with Geoff. I thought that Josephus was subservient to Caesar and writing the gospels on his behalf. But it was much more ambitious. Finding out that Cicero was afraid to criticize the Shemites reverses who ruled with the permission of who.
Even in listening to Archibald Ramsay in the 1952 Nameless War (https://www.bitchute.com/video/4C2fwTHBPfZH/) he talks about how Christians have a 'soft spot' for the Jews because Jesus was one and they're the chosen people. So Christianity is another layer of protection, along with Judaism, for the ruling bloodline of Shem.
"Finding out that Cicero was afraid to criticize the Shemites reverses who ruled with the permission of who."
As they say in Modern Greek, (transliterated), "pyshika," "naturally," or "as per usual."
The restoration of an actual physical Israeli state is not clear from scripture.
Whoever wrote the gospels, it seems like a no-brainer that whatever was included in the Bible was edited/authorized/approved by Rome, giving an account of events early in the first century which met the political exigencies of Rome? It’s a classic that one man’s “terrorist/rebel” is another man’s “freedom fighter/liberator of property,” as we know from our narradigm today. For me, “gospel truth” is an oxymoron.
As you know, some say that Jesus had a stronger claim on the throne of Judea than Herod, who was not even Judean. Herod was Idumaean. Although Idumaeans were descendants of Abraham’s people, they were not descendants of Jacob; so they were regarded as foreigners and consequently very unpopular.
If this suggestion about Jesus’s claim to the throne is true, then we could reasonably infer that he believed in the divine right of some to rule over others?
If Jesus believed himself to be the rightful King of Judea it might also explain why he denied being a rebel? How could he be a rebel in his own domain?
As for the curious incident at Gethsemane of the naked youth, according to the British forensic historians, Wilson and Blackett (“Where Jesus Is Buried,” page 123) he was Jesus Bar Abas, son of Jesus, who had been captured by the Roman city guard. Judas, the brother of Jesus, negotiated a deal whereby Jesus senior would surrender himself to the Roman authorities in exchange for Bar Abas in a face-saving formula (which also involved a faked death on the cross). Bar Abas was allowed to run away from the Garden when Jesus was arrested.
Wilson and Blackett make the point that crucifying those who had offended rulers, or those convicted of the crime of insurrection, was centuries old before the time of Jesus; and nailing the victim to the cross was specifically reserved for offenses committed by members of the military or for those guilty of insurrection (page 127). So that’s how Rome wanted it to appear to posterity.
Does the alleged divine right of some to rule over others originate with Jesus? Or much earlier in Sumeria and with the Nephilim, biblical offspring of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" and their descendants?
Hi, Tirion. Your assumption here is that Jesus is a historical figure rather than a literary character. What do you base that on?
I base it on the impulse Jesus, or whatever his name was, created and which continues to this day; and I base it on the oral traditions of the Egyptian mystery schools, in which he was a high initiate. The Romans were well versed in erasing all record of people of whom they disapproved. They even had a word for it, but of course I can't remember what it was right now!
Hmmm ... so all we know about Jesus is what's written in the gospels, yes? And the only other historical reference is from Josephus who, from all evidence, is the author of the gospels. And he makes a completely out-of-character statement that there was this guy Jesus and he was the Messiah. It's so out of context that most scholars say it had to have been put there later, although if he's the author, it would make sense.
In this analysis I did of the gospel Jesus, which is the only record of this person, I show that either this historical person or the authors of this literary figure are gung-ho for Rome and feel that anyone who rebels against the empire gets what they deserve.
If you know the name can't be true, and that the story of this pro-imperial Messiah was edited if not written by the Roman Empire, what biographical details connect the high initiate in the Egyptian mystery schools to whatever-his-name-is?
I'll reply to myself so it goes to you, Tirion, and Geoff. And I'm so glad that you're both willing to engage on this and keep exploring.
Whether or not we personify God, the question isn't 'Do you believe in God?' but 'What is the character of your God?' A God who demands sacrifice, who doesn't care if Herod killed 11,600 Samaritans through slow torture or Judeans and their families living in caves, but only cares about His Son is not a God I'd want to have exist.
A related question is 'Was the Christ a Who or a What?' Was it one person who was a divine leader, uniquely loved by God, or was it a movement among people believing we are all loved equally by God?
And last, I would ask, 'What is the character of your Christ?' Is it an imperial Christ who inherits the divine right to rule or a sovereign Christ who would have agreed with the zealots on all the 'heresies'?
We're assuming that any mention of Christians means Jesus, based on 2000 years of the Bible psyops. Whether like you, Tirion, you see the Christ as imperial or, like you, Geoff, you reject the concept of Christ altogether, you won't see evidence for a Christ of sovereignty--whether a person or movement. So the empire wins, both ways.
"...you reject the concept of Christ altogether, you won't see evidence for a Christ of sovereignty--whether a person or movement. So the empire wins, both ways."
I neither accept it nor reject such a concept, but I do know that whatever the truth is, it's been perverted beyond recognition for the benefit of the perverters, and that the empire may win in some ways, but what does it win? The cost/ benefit ratio seems to indicate that everyone involved loses. They can keep their stinking empire and I have a suggestion about what they can do with it, but I'll leave it at that! : )
I wish I could give you an answer, Tereza. What did Tacitus say about Jesus? And what about the Nag Hammadi library? How/where do those documents fit? Weren't there dozens if not hundreds of sects in early Christianity apart from Pauline/Roman Christianity? Did they spring from a fictional literary figure, too? I guess it's possible; but it just seems unlikely. I lack the breadth and depth of knowledge to say; but I am really grateful to be able to explore this important topic with you. I must read the linked post from Frances Leader also. Thanks for posting that.
"...so all we know about Jesus is what's written in the gospels, yes? "
No.
I may be wrong, but Ammianus Marcellins and Tacitus referred to "Christians" implying that there was a JC and they had nothing to do with the "gospels" but having next to no interest in the subject, I could be way off base here.
I have no idea about any of this except to say that there are many "Jesuses" both then and now. By that I mean that the usual story is timeless. The "Jesus" most people relate to is supposedly a good guy who gave a damn but wound up tacked to a cross then went to "Heaven" anyway. The same stuff happens today and we (both individuals and governments) kill the good guys every single day. Whether any of them goes to Heaven or not is beyond my pay grade, but that gives the story a happy (though fantastic) ending.
Another moral of the story is that everything, and I mean everything can be, and probably will be, misinterpreted, twisted, mangled, and perverted to serve the ends of whatever storyteller is telling the tale, so we'll never know the whole truth about anything anyone tells us. Therefore we must question everything and even then we must consider everything cum "bushelem" salis.
The "Anointed One" is probably a hybrid of some historical figure as well as a literary one to one degree or another. Something like Robin Hood and a whole host of similar characters. We humans seem to like astonishing tales and so much the better if there's a grain of truth or a hint of hope to titilate our fantasies and desires.
As for the concept of "divine rights," I call BS on that as well as the concept of everyone being equal. For one thing, what does "being equal" really mean?
My meaning of equal is that we are all equally and inherently good, born with the equal potential to make good choices. If I've made better choices than someone else, it's because I had better choices to make and was born into a different role with different lessons to learn--not better, not worse. Those who are learning and therefore teaching lessons that would be harder for me are taking on that role for my benefit, all equally necessary to resolve this dream of pain and punishment so we can lose our fear of waking up.
"My meaning of equal is that we are all equally and inherently good, born with the equal potential to make good choices."
Can you point me to some evidence for that? ANd what do you mean by "good?"
My meaning of dogma is a belief that you refuse to raise to question. I think that dogmas should be consciously chosen and owned. I'm willing to raise everything else to question, including my own separate existence and the existence of the world, but not the belief I'm no better than anyone else. It's my only dogma.
For me to judge myself morally superior, I'd have to know as much as God about that person, which I can't presume to know. If you believe you're morally superior to some, that's your dogma. Where's the evidence?
Yes, plenty of examples of "good," but the question was not about that; it was about about equality.
Jesus going to heaven isn’t “a nice ending”...that’s just the beginning of the story.
Could it be the end of one chapter?
Jesus as God, absolutely has the right to rule over all of His creation, not just over other men. “Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is LORD.”
“Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is LORD.” Weren’t those words written by Saulus/Saul/Paul - a member of King Herod’s large family (descendant of Herod’s sister, Salome) and a citizen of Rome, who subverted Jesus’s teachings into something which better suited the political exigencies of Rome? Paul announced himself to be an unelected Apostle and disciple and he calmly proceeded to create an entirely new and different brand of religious philosophy and teaching from that of Jesus and his brother/successor, James the Just: there was no longer a need for Judeans to obey and follow the Laws of Moses, they could eat whatever was available in the markets and there was no longer a requirement to be circumcised. Paul was one of the leaders of the post-crucifixion witch-hunts started by the Temple Priests to hunt down and bring to trial and execution of the more extreme followers of Jesus.
And wasn’t it only in AD 325, at The Council of Nicea, that Rome and its Pauline church decided by a very close vote to confer divine status on Jesus? As an historical (as opposed to mystical) narrative, it all seems rather man-made to me.
The is no contradiction between the sayings of Jesus and the sayings of Paul. Paul was sent as a Apostle to the gentiles and they don’t fall under the Mosaic law.
Paper can last 1500 years, we have manuscripts dating back further than that.
Thank you, Tereza for your willingness to tackle such a controversial topic.
In an earlier iteration of my life I spent a lot of time taking religious studies classes and am aware of the ongoing debate around whether the historical Jesus even existed.
Like Dominic Crosson or Rudolph Steiner, (among countless others) I come down on the side that he did in fact exist. I include those two names because I tended to resonate with them, not because they are 'right' and certainly not because they would necessarily have agreed on all the details.
Per usual for me, parsing historical data isn't the ultimate persuader. It fleshes out and adds important context, but in the end I trust something that can't be proven. It's not something I need to convince anyone else of.
The tendency to place Jesus in front of Christ (Jesus Christ) for me is part of the confusion. As Steiner would say it is more accurately, Christ Jesus. (Placing horse in front of the cart.) Christ is an impulse and knowing about our shared relationship with one another and the larger substance of Creation, (Love) available to all human beings, which Steiner believed, was not possible until the historical Jesus embodied that impulse. "Yet, not I, but Christ." Christ is not personal, though it can be embodied personally.
It's also the case that Jesus as an historical figure was part of a larger continuum of spiritual figures on the planet - indeed throughout the larger cosmos - that brought a higher level of possibility to humanity. It's not only Jesus the person, who was and is capable of this transformation into the Christ energies or impulse.
We are capable of knowing things prior to having language or facts to support that knowing. The mystical that is so often referenced in spiritual texts, I suspect can be demystified, but this requires releasing the constraints and insistence on having things presented that 'make sense' or follow a purely logical course. I understand the desire but know too that we have experiences that we can't pin down in those ways.
(I did an experiment as a young person (18 at the time) in dialogue with Jesus (though really I believe the Christ 'field') out of a sincere desire to know if this figure was 'real'. Suffice to say, I was convinced I was in the presence of a Force of Love and that Force was had been embodied by the guy, we call Jesus. I subsequently had a series of dreams that only cemented this conviction. None of this is to say that that experience won't be at some point, be superseded by another experience that will shift it into a larger understanding. That's fully possible - we work with what we have and open to more. I'm not looking to 'fix' my experience or conclusions, not would I reject them because I place them into a mental construct.)
My experience always trumps my ability to language them or make sense of them. They exist outside those models.
It is an error, imo, to elevate Jesus, as a person over anyone else. (And I believe he would say the same) Yet what he brought to the planet as someone able to embody Christ (and yes much of that has been hijacked and distorted) nonetheless was extraordinary and opened up the ability for humans to access what we call 'mystical' knowledge. (His staying power as a vehicle for faith is not only as the OG psyop, then.)
We are all equal in the largest context - aspects of the One - though we understand that in a world that clearly develops and evolves. We see clearly some of us are 'better' at some things than others, some of us appear to be more 'evolved' or 'developed' in certain ways, and others in other ways.
The ultimate context - where no one is special - is essential - as an orienting context, yet it does not keep us from seeing those developmental differences. Both are true, one holds the other.
We can't see all the ways in which our individual lives are essential to the larger Orchestration. So there is never anything to judge. Nor can we see the constraints to what we can know at any given time. As the frequencies on our planet continue to push us past the old world with all its control mechanisms, we will, as humans open to higher ways of knowing and as that happens reshuffle again, what we think we know, how we grok time and space and how we interact with the forces and frequencies of life.
Humility and openness - as well as a willingness to let go of our temporary convictions - will serve us well. It's an exciting time.
What a wonderful, big and inquisitive mind you have, Tereza. You can't not expand everything around you. Best.
Thank you for that thoughtful and honest response, Kathleen. Let me expand on it a little, if you'll indulge me. I think of propaganda as a seamless fabric in which the truth is the weft and the lies are the warp. If you recognize the truth and accept the lies with them, they win. If you recognize the lies and reject the truth with them, they win.
Interweaving the sovereign Christ with the story of an imperial Jesus is like that weft and warp. You, as a person who respects all people, are only responding and noticing the weft. But at the same time, you're endorsing the warp so anyone who wants to use it for their own nefarious purposes has a cloak of invisibility and invulnerability.
I love Dominic Crossan! You probably know he's the co-founder of the Jesus Seminars I attended. It's actually his research and Elaine Pagel's that led me to realize what Joe Atwill was saying in Caesar's Messiah was true. After I'd thrown Atwill's book across the room, I went back to reading Crossan's Excavating Jesus. What it said is that all the things said about Jesus "Lord of Lords, God of Gods, true God from true God, begotten not made, One in Being with the Father" were as ubiquitous as graffiti in ancient Rome. But they referred to Caesar. And what Atwill was saying, that Jesus was a way of tricking the opposition into worshipping Caesar, hit me like a ton of bricks.
I did everything possible during that time to show the scholars of the Jesus Seminar what their own research led inescapably to. Especially Dominic. I took a class with him at GTU just so I could write a paper that he'd read. He said he didn't know whether to give me an A for a well researched paper or a D for not answering the question. But I did! I also gave him this paper at another meeting. I could give you example after example of how Dominic's own words confirm this theory--points that I raised there. But he remains my prime example of someone who revolutionizes a field of study, but then reaches the end of their elasticity. The JS could reject the virgin birth, the miracles, any trace of an Aramaic origin, 85% of the quotes, but questioning Jesus as a historical person and teacher was unthinkable.
Oh I love Elaine Pagels too! 'Adam Eve and Serpent' was a favorite.
I think we mainly agree.
"Interweaving the sovereign Christ with the story of an imperial Jesus is like that weft and warp. You, as a person who respects all people, are only responding and noticing the weft. But at the same time, you're endorsing the warp so anyone who wants to use it for their own nefarious purposes has a cloak of invisibility and invulnerability."
I don't think of Jesus as imperial though fully see his being used as such. And I don't agree that accepting he existed and embodied the Christ impulse means I'm endorsing anyone who is using this link in nefarious way.
It's not that he was/is better than everyone else (so I dismiss the 'only son of God' assertion) rather that he was an example of everyone's potential (and more). I think there is a lot of confusion about the man and this state of embodiment because he was used as part of a control agenda, (perhaps in part unknowingly) and it doesn't mean he was complicit in it. Those who accept he lived are also not complicit in it.
I have a sense that scholarly believers who are attempting to sort out the historical Jesus (highly messed with) from the Christ impulse are remembering this time, were likely present, maybe even in close proximity to the genesis of this story. They can't drop the reality of his existence because something in them, knows it's true.
Also it's not unthinkable to me to question the historical person. Not at all. I most definitely did question it and entertained it. It wasn't persuasive in the end, because something else was more persuasive. I think the person we call Jesus lived and brought in a larger field, and that was only possible because Buddha lived and brought in a larger field and on and on.
I haven't read Atwill's book - and probably a lot more that you have read. It's possible if I did I might be re-persuaded, I don't know. I go with that inner guidance.
Finally in some ways Jesus as a symbol of a higher love that's possible for humans to carry themselves in, is its own morphic field and so is real. Yes it may have lots of distortions - like everything else - but it's been imbued over time with so much desire and love - that it's a real force-field and can be tapped. Something started that, and I don't think it comes down to a psyop.
Thanks for your reply. We don't gots to agree on everything.😊 Appreciate you.
From my experience in foreign languages I am aware of the nuances that get lost in translation. As you highlighted today, the difference between rebel and robber are quite significant and change the gist of the story! Excellent work Tereza!
I'm so glad you got my point, Anneke. The difference completely turns the story on its head. In the robber version of the gospels, Jesus is a man of the people, a peasant, a wise teacher in a land under occupation. In the translation where Jesus is disparaging the rebels and saying they get what they deserve, he is a collaborator with the occupying force.
Geoff you bring up good points and there are answers to them. I once thought the same, that the story had started out good but had been corrupted over time. So the first years of my research was figuring out what was closest to the original. It turns out that it's exactly the opposite.
The reason I like Willis Barnstone's version is that he translates directly from the Greek. There is no Aramaic, not in written form and not even in the hypothetical oral tradition! This is known because even the parables and quotes from Jesus use Greek tropes, idioms and plays on words that don't work in Aramaic. It's safe to say no text in the history of the world has been studied as carefully to figure out what's been changed and what's original.
Barnstone is a believer in Jesus. When reading his translation of the Prodigal Son parable, I saw him get so choked up, his son had to finish. Very sweet and smart guy, speaks several languages. What he found is that subsequent translations had 'softened the blows.' The original is so hateful, vindictive and scathing towards the Jews, especially by Jesus, that the Latin shied away from showing the ugliness. Willis decided to 'take the gloves off' and translate what it actually says--a brave and conflicted decision, which he writes about.
Hmmm ... in looking for a compromise position where Jesus was kind of against the zealots but also kind of against Rome, I'm reminded of Howard Zinn's statement that you can't be neutral on a moving train. Josephus betrayed his people so that when Titus got in they slew until the streets ran with blood and they were exhausted from killing. Then for days they held slave auctions, including children, but sent the men to Rome to be tortured. Is that something there are two sides of?
Wow Tereza, you come with receipts for everything! You touch on so many radioactive topics in such an understanding and reasonable way.
Your mannerisms are the way discussions should be (rather than the inflammatory sound bites that we are bombarded with on TV and social media). Thank you for some sanity in a crazy world!
I appreciate you, Anneke!
Add to that the honest mistakes made by scribes and copyists, and the fact that most of us have to deal with translations of translations of translations, and translations of transcriptions, the fact that many words have different meanings depending on numerous factors, the fact that meaning may not be precise for any given word, plus our real ignorance of the cultures of the times and the fact that people have been known to embellish things for various reasons, the occurrence of bowlderization, the use of parables and metaphors, and the fact that most of the teachings are not only disputed (for good reason), there is no way for any of us to really know much for sure.
Along with all that, I'm generally skeptical of false dichotomies such as rebel or robber. Why not some of each, or none of neither? Or something different altogether?
I do agree that this is excellent work, and food for thought.
Precisely my argument for people who tell me we need to take the bible so literally!
So true! Sometimes we miscommunicate even when speaking supposedly the same dialect!
I can relate a few amusing anecdotes where people supposedly fluent in a given language were actually clueless about the use of a word or phrase in another dialect. It's preposterous to imagine that some Aramiac dialect could be accurately translated into some form of Greek, then from that into Latin, and in turn into, say, Modern American or Standard English and get the nuances and implications right, all in probably complete absence of any idea of the context.
Anyway, I'm enjoying this thread for several reasons but mostly because it's got me thinking in new ways. Two of my "newest" thoughts are that of course the JC narrative that we've all been exposed to has been the empire serving one. If it were not, we would never have heard so much about it or had so many instituitons built on it, and second, I'm now wondering if "Chicken Little" was real or not. Whatever the case may be she seems to have been crucified and disappeared never to rise again for the obvious reason that her story definitely did NOT aid the designs of empire whether she ever existed or not!
You are so right! Even just to read English books from a hundred years ago can be difficult. When you say translated from an Aramaic dialect to ancient Greek to Latin etc to modern English it really highlights how much these texts have changed.
I also am starting to see how Christianity could have been sculpted to serve Empire…
Have you read Donald Jeffries? He has a great Substack article about born-againers. It doesn’t go as deep about Christianity as Tereza does but I really like Jeffries’ work:
https://open.substack.com/pub/donaldjeffries/p/bible-thumping-and-walking-the-walk?r=q8hyd&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Thanks, AnnekeB.
"I also am starting to see how Christianity could have been sculpted to serve Empire…"
I am also on that track. It was always quite apparent to me that what's been labelled as Christianity served many of the popes well in thier ambitious and often violent pursuits and I'm also suspicious that the papacy was infiltrated by the amoral moneybags crowd (if it hadn't started out that way) and used for their own purposes and it's certainly not out of character for those in power otherwise to attempt the same.
“Religion too, and the oath soldiers took when they were enllisted, greatly contributed to making them do their duty in ancient times; for upon any default, they were threatened not only with human punishments, but the vengeance of the gods.*5 They also had several other religious ceremonies that had a very good effect on all their enterprises, and would have still in any place where religion is held in due reverence. Sertorious knew this well; he used to have consultations with a hind that he said was sent by the gods to assure him of victory.4 Sulla pretended to converse with an image he had taken out of the temple of Apollo,*” and several generals have given out that some god or other has appeared to them in dreams and visions and commanded them to fight the enemy. In the days of our ancestors, when Charles VII of France was at war with the English, he pretended to be advised in everything by a virgin sent from heaven, commonly called the virgin of France, who won him many a victory."
-Niccolo Macchiavelli, The Art of War, pp128-9. Orig publ 1521
https://ia904701.us.archive.org/7/items/artofwar0000nicc/artofwar0000nicc.pdf
Thanks for the link, I will look at it this evening.
As for the Pope… I get overwhelmed every time I look into the papacy. It got corrupted a long time ago. Have you seen some of the occult symbology that is staged around the pope at his sermons? And what about the Apkallu hat as part of his dress?!
Way to go Tereza. First you take on the Hitler Myth. Now you've gone to the pinnacle of questions. I read through this quickly and just as quickly realized it's beyond my feeble intellect to get a whole picture. I'll have to study it a while. Yes, good question, why do you want to question a figure that so many good people use as their reason to be good. I don't know but to me it's part of that question, is everybody in history that we have been told is evil are really good and the ones we been told are good really evil? i never would have thought about taking it to this level. I'll try to get through this.
Thanks Specie. Unless we give up the illusion, we can't see the truth. Every person who does good in the name of Jesus would not stop being good without it. But those who use the story to commit evil, like is happening in Palestine today, couldn't get away with it otherwise. That's my belief. Appreciate you reading.
OMG (Pun intended)! You've done it again. How do you do it? I never looked at the big question that way; in fact, I never even realized that there was such a question to be asked although the admoniton to give to Ceaser what's his always struck me as odd if not altogether brainless.
As for Josephus, I need to go back and re read that tome in this light and besides, I read it so long ago that the only thing I remember is the incident where the some dude stood on the wall and "mooned" and taunted the enemy.
Two readings and probably 2 more required lol
The work you and Nefahotep undertake is of great importance and relevance today.
As the multi-civilizational world is reemerging after 5 centuries of colonization, the West needs to recover its civilizational heritage, which is anchored in the Catholicism. As Laurent, you and others explain, the foundation of Christianity and in particular Catholicism has been greatly distorted. Hence the need to uncover truth from under many layers of lies. Not an easy task!
Nice quotes:
once you've accepted that there is hierarchy, you are somewhere in it. You accept your superiority but you’re also confirming there are people superior to you.
This trick ties us into Empire thinking. If we are equal, I need to reject anything that gives me superiority because it's always a trick to give my authority away.
Thank you for those careful readings, I think this is my most scholarly post. And I'm glad you picked up on those quotes, I feel it's the crux of why rejecting superiority is so important.
I'm afraid I asked Nefahotep to unsub me awhile back. He wanted more of a partnership than I did, and in a response to Librarian he presented my ideas nine times (often incorrectly) as his own including words that I'd made up. It was an inadvertent experiment in gender, since Librarian responded very respectfully to him but was dismissive of me. I wish him well and you can find his Substack easily with a search.
Thanks again!
Last night I was talking with an Italian friend, and I mentioned this post. Turns out he's done a lot of reading of works by an Italian writer (whose name I forget) about Josephus being the author of the Gospels. In this writer's interpretation, Jesus is shown to be a Jewish rebel/zealot, not a Roman sympathizer. It's all very confusing for this ex-Episcopalian skeptic. I'll write to my friend and ask for the name of the Italian writer.
Your friend speaks English? Please send him this post, if you would. He would be the perfect audience for this question. If Josephus wrote the gospels, as the Italian writer and I suspect, then Josephus' use of that Greek word needs to be translated consistently as rebel, not thief or robber. That makes the direct quotes from Jesus scathing about the rebels. Thanks, Mark!
I'll send him your post. In the meantime, here is the web site of the author he told me about:
https://www.maurobiglino.com/en/
Oh right, the Naked Bible. Kathleen, I believe, is enthusiastic about him. I watched some of him before but he makes some assumptions I don't share and has a more narrow 'Overton window.' But I'll be interested in your friend's response.
Have you ever listened to a podcast called Skeptiko? The host has been going on and on for the last couple of years about Josphus. Here is a link to one of the episodes that focuses on Josephus.
https://skeptiko.com/matt-whitman-on-the-gist-of-josephus-501/
Josephus seems like a shady character from what you say and from the above and several other sources.
1 interesting theory I recently heard on a different podcast-
Josephus was actually Saul/Paul. Jesus name was actually Issa and was royal blood to a citystate (located in modern day Sanliurfa, Turkey) that was erased from history, supposedly. All of the events Jesus was involved in happened 50ish years later to hide something to do with the jewish revolts.
I'll edit the podcast episode, when I find it.
Thanks for that link, I'll check it out!
My introduction to Acharya S. (Dorothy Milne Murdock) was via this great two-part interview:
• Awake in our Mythology, The Christ Conspiracy Part 1 - Shadow Walker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOAZ1L-0hgs
• Awake in our Mythology, The Christ Conspiracy Part 2 - Shadow Walker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrBFwhBMgz8
- which led me to one of her extraordinary treatises …
“Did Moses Exist? The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver”
https://pdfdrive.to/download/did-moses-exist-the-myth-of-the-israelite-lawgiver
Tereza, I happened to catch your youtube reading late last night and posted the following comment which was removed by youtube (!!??) I don’t think youtube likes third party links that it can’t AI control.
Comment:
---
WOW!
No wonder I have not been able to finish the following jigsaw puzzle – the pieces are not cut like the ‘regular’ Ravensburger and Educa. There are only ?two shapes and they can’t even be sorted into vertical/horizontal piles.
• 13200, Clementoni, The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci
https://www.rarepuzzles.com/product/13200-clementoni-last-supper-da-vinci/
I have done maybe 500 pieces down in the bottom right hand scorner but have had to put it away for the time being (cats, you know).
---
As to this topic – way above my pay grade but fascinating, and you have intrigued me even more. I have a few references that come to mind when I can, especially D M Murdock (aka Acharya S) and David Skrbina, but in the meantime, speaking of Zadok ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWtvbXmWqz4
(But just to be fair - )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kucFS9Gafk
I look forward to perusing the comments
Speaking of pay grade, I'm putting you in the echelon of puzzle archangels (archon angels, aka messengers or spies, uh oh!) I did get the Zadok comment and wrote back that it was masterful, the delightfully dissonant cacophonous version ;-) And yes, YT now won't even let me put hot links in the description. But they've always removed comments with links, in my experience. I look forward to your references when the cats and puzzles leave you time!
Thank you and by the way, I have a stack of 3000, 2000, 1000, 500 and smaller puzzles that I have done with the children and grandchildren over the years. Many more that we grew up on at my mum's house. We can't thank and praise our mums enough!! I will get back to you on other thoughts as time (and my ability to articulate) permits. Cheers
Oh, and meant to ask in my early (hopefully not too rambling) comment, how you understand Helen Schucman's inner dialogue with who she identified as Jesus, given you are a student of CIM? Thanks.
Yes! The Course puts its teachings in a language you can love, as it says. There's no one Course, they're as individual as each person. It never mentions Jesus until the Definition of Terms where it says Jesus - Christ and defines that. I think that was a language Helen could love. It's one of two things that aren't in my language. The other is that every personification of the divine--Father, Son, Holy Spirit--is masculine. If the world is a reflection of reality, we were created male and female for a reason. So those two are things I translate in my head.
What the Course never does is contradict my dogma that all people are equally good, in fact it's whole system is predicated on that. But the story of Jesus contradicts that everywhere and I'd say, its whole system is predicated on hierarchy.
👍Thanks.
When Jesus was challenged for his ideas of being a revolutionary.
"Render to Ceasar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are Gods."
The main message in the New Testament is that the Kingdom is before us but we do not see it, according to Michael Grant.
Jesus was a threat to the Jewish World of selling animals in the temple as a commercial endeavor losing the divine spirit.
His last supper was a threat replacing animal sacrifice with bread and wine moving toward an agrarian society away from a herding society.
Not sounding like an oligarch for the Romans.
More good stuff there! This work of TC's is by far the most idea provoking thing I've ever read and the comments are as stimulating as the main work!
Thanks!
How about using Jesus’s own words and actions especially the night of the last supper to determine how he viewed hierarchy rather than how some translations treat the word robber or rebel? The book of Judges describes how God wanted the nation to be governed, but the people demanded a King in 2 Samuel chapter 8.
I'm far from being a Bible scholar, but this has long resonated with me,
"The book of Judges describes how God wanted the nation to be governed, but the people demanded a King in 2 Samuel chapter 8."
Some good stuff there, for sure.
I addressed this revisionism timed for Christmas as an anti Christian psyop.
The best historian on Jesus and St. Paul is Michael Grant along with his book the Myths of the Greeks and the Romans. Christ does not appear on the scene until age 30. Hindus find his location in India as wise man in his early wanderings. The Gospels were in Greek and the best translations are by classics scholar Richmond Lattimore. You can read my comments on Frances Leaders Substack. Many ancient texts draw on various mythologies, like the Old Testament from the Sumerians.
Next we will hear that Christ is with Hamas.
Thanks for responding, Joseph. A psychological operations is something designed to deceive, by hiding its true source and purpose. My purpose is to help bring about a world where no one rules over anyone else. If there's anything I say that contradicts this purpose, please point it out because I think our unexamined contradictions are what make us fail.
When you say this is anti Christian, you mean anti Jesus, correct? Because I don't believe in the divine right to rule over others, the only Christ (person or movement) that I'd want to have exist is one on the side of the colonized.
As I was writing about the Judeans and Samaritans fighting for self-rule, and the scorched earth tactics used against them by Rome and their proxies, the parallels with Palestine today kept being obvious. Without a doubt, the Jesus of the gospels would have stood with Israel. With Hamas being an agent of Israel, Jesus would have been with them as an agent provocateur, saying at his trial, "I never rebelled against Israel! I'm wrongly accused!" And yes, I believe the Christ is with Palestine. That's my whole point.
Jesus was on the side of the colonized. All of Israel was a vassal state of Rome at the time of Christ.
At the time the gospels were written and the OT was edited, Rome had just reconquered Judea, slaughtered until they were exhausted, sent the men off to be tortured and sold off the women and children at a days-long slave auction. So who wrote the story of Jesus? Someone who wrote and spoke in Greek, who used Greek tropes and put words in Jesus' mouth that only make sense in Greek. In other words, not a peasant. And who blamed the Judeans for their own downfall.
Even word-order counts between the gospels and Josephus show that the parallels couldn't happen by accident. They had to come from the same author. Same stylistic devices. And Josephus definitely wasn't on the side of the colonized.
Sorry, I just HAD to do this! (From Ratio's recent ss)
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F02bdbe94-85c7-4803-bf00-4eb7f5ae4513_915x915.jpeg
Yes I did see that. I'm curious though, from your pov, why are they called moneychangers rather than money collectors? What were they changing money from or into? I know that the temples were where the priestly caste collected their temple tax and the Romans collected their head tax. I know Jesus approved of the tax collectors, like the one who climbed the tree to see him. And he approved of paying taxes to Rome and Caesar.
I remember being told that the people in the temple were selling birds and other things for offerings, but that doesn't seem like an unscrupulous thing and it doesn't really fit with the term money changers. What's your interpretation?
Dear TC, I wrote, "It's all fun and games at our expense for the slime." I've often marveled at the way our owners mock and play with us for no apparent reason than cheap, sadistic thrills...
And look what I "stumbled upon today"....Just as cats do,
“A Fox will sometimes play with a mouse, will even walk away from one without eating it, the play is part of a fox studying the behavior of its prey, learning how to be a better predator. And so it is for the sadistic predators who view We, The People as mice.”
https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/foxes-study-mouse-behaviors
PS: That FreedomFox dude really makes some great points. Has his act together.
Yes, I like FreedomFox too. Thanks for sharing that!
I have no point of view on that because I don't know enough about it. All I know is what lots of us have been told and I also know that much (pretty much all) is subject to question, interpretations, missing parts, added parts, contradictions, etc.
I also have always wondered what you stated in your last paragraph. In fact, why did they call 'em temples when in fact, there must've been more than that going on? I would bet that the term "temple" isn't what we associate with the word today. In fact, they were probably more like houses of ill repute where the "rabbis" got the best and most of everything.
Most of this stuff is so obviously self serving mumbo jumbo that I trashed any belief in it long ago. In fact, while doing some mundane stuff today, I wondered to myself why the jokers with globalist ambitions have been hard at work destroying "Paulianity" when it served them so well for such a long time. Do they think the work is complete enough that they can take their masks off and play gawd in broad daylihgt now?
And another thing that I've always rolled my eyes over and that seems like evidence for your probable pov is that "Saul" was supposedly a Roman tax collector so that's another suggestion that "Jeezus" was thick with the type.
And as for "Joe" Flavius, it's obvious to me that he was another well connected con artist and bigshot and the stories of those types are so packed with BS that when one begins to look into them, they are ridiculous on their face. Miles Mathis writes a lot about that and though he seems to get carried away a bit, seems to make some good points and pretty much destroys a lot of the myths. I wonder if he's done one on 'Ol Joey...or Cheezus for that matter.
It's also a contention of mine that all prominent "historians" are a bunch of well connected rich kids who had the time and resources to write that stuff and get it "published." And it's evident to me that most of them have their own agendas (of course), and truth doesn't even enter their minds. It's all fun and games at our expense for the slime.
And another thing. Here we are discussing this stuff endlessly while the thieves keep thieving with ever increasing audacity and impunity. Just as they would have it, I'm sure.
We have long wallowed in such a cesspool of lies that I think I'll start identifying myself publicly as Cloacina!
IIRC The money changers were charging fees to trade local currency for roman coins(the church only accepted roman coins I think), and had dishonest exchange rates on top of the fees.
That's certainly the interpretation I was given. But knowing that the story was written right after the zealots had occupied the temple for three years changes that. It's not "you've turned my Father's house into a den of thieves." It's "you've turned Caesar's temple/ treasury into a headquarters for your freedom fighters."
And the rebels would never be trading local currency for Roman coins, which is certainly all they would have accepted under Caesar's rule. They would have changed it back into local currency.