Prologue
Several
years ago one of my daughters sent me a book by Marcus J. Borg entitled,
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.
It was being used on a chapter by chapter basis as a Lenten study guide
by her church. Since they had just begun
to discuss the book, she thought I might like to offer my thoughts on each
chapter of it also in order to help her assimilate the material. [1] It turned out to be an eye-opener for me as
well. So I then resolved, in a more
leisurely fashion, to put some of my own thoughts on paper about this
extraordinary man, Jesus of Nazareth. As
is my wont before starting to write about any subject, I began to do background reading on what others had to say
about Jesus in order to put Dr. Borg's rather unconventional views into
perspective
The first book I turned to was from my own library, one
that I had also received several years earlier from one of my children, who I
suspect was trying to steer my penchant for including Eastern religious beliefs
in my previous essays back into the Christian mainstream. This one, which I had never read, was
entitled, The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip Yancey. Although similar to the title of Dr. Borg's
book, he comes at the subject from an entirely different viewpoint. Unlike Dr. Borg, a Jesus scholar who has his doctorate degree in New Testament
from Oxford in England and who has
taught religion at the university level for a number of years, Philip Yancey is
a Christian journalist, formerly editor of Campus Life magazine, an official
publication of Youth for Christ. He also
attended a Bible college and has taught Christian classes at LaSalle Street
Church in Chicago. However, he has an
engaging writing style and articulates the traditional Christian message with
considerable skill and knowledge. One of
the reviewers of the book states on the back cover: "In a day when novel
ideas about Jesus are all the rage, Yancey's pages offer major help for seeing
the Savior as he really was."
Similarly, Billy Graham weighs in by saying: "There is no writer in
the evangelical world that I admire and appreciate more."
Next I checked out a book from our local library that was
co-authored by Marcus Borg and N. Thomas Wright, Dean of Litchfield Cathedral
in England, entitled: The Meaning of Jesus - Two Visions. This book, on a chapter by chapter basis,
contrasts the very different views of "modern scholarship" and
traditional ecclesiastical exegesis about
both the pre-Easter Jesus (the man) and the post-Easter Jesus (the
Christ). Interestingly, both Borg and
Wright obtained their doctorates in New Testament at Oxford University in
England at the same time. To round out
my background reading I chose another unread book from my library by Donald Spoto
(a Roman Catholic, who was once a monk).
This book, The Hidden Jesus: A New Life, was also an eye-opener.
Although known primarily for his fifteen biographies and a dynamic history of
the Royal Family in England, he completed The Hidden Jesus after being a book
in progress for almost twenty years Dr.
Spoto received both his masters and doctors degrees in New Testament theology
from Fordham University and taught theology, Christian mysticism and biblical
literature at the university level before
turning to full-time writing of his well-known biographies in 1976.
His thesis, in a nutshell, is that it matters little
about who the historical Jesus was (who, he believes, was probably born in
Nazareth and not in Bethlehem), his alleged miracles, etc. What really matters is who He (the hidden
Jesus) is right now and forever as He lives in the lives of those who seek
Him. "Every moment of every day in
what we call the passing of time is embraced by the eternal present of the
Resurrection of Jesus."[2]
Still,
I was curious to know more about the historical Jesus and what we could learn
about him from those who had studied in-depth what it was like to be a Jew in
Palestine 2,000 years ago. So I
purchased three VCR tapes comprising a series of programs hosted by
"Frontline" on PBS entitled, The Lives of Jesus (Episode 1 - Jesus the Jew; Episode 2 -
Jesus the Rebel; and Episode 3 - the Hidden Jesus). One of the people featured
in that series was the historian, Paula Fredriksen, who not only had an
in-depth knowledge of the history of the area where Jesus was born, raised,
taught and died 2,000 years ago but had also written a recent book about him,
which I then purchased to supplement the material included in the TV series.[4]
An excerpt from the introduction to her second
edition will give you a flavor of her approach to what the preoccupations of
Jews were in Palestine during the time period when Jesus lived and the culture
that surrounded the early Christian community following his death and
resurrection.
"Ancient people in general, ancient Jews in
particular, lived in a world radically different from our own, a world where
leprosy and death defiled, where ashes and water made clean, and where one drew
near the altar of God with purifications, blood offerings and awe. . . . . I
incline now to see the message of biblical redemption as the fundamental factor
shaping Jesus' mission and his supporters' response to him. Both he and they
exist as points along an arc that stretches roughly from the Maccabees [168-37
bc] to the Mishna [circa 200 ad], from the prophesies of Daniel through the
letters of Paul, from the later books of the classical prophets in the Jewish
cannon (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) to the Book of Revelation, which concludes
the New Testament. It is the arc of a
biblical perspective on God and history that scholars have labeled apocalyptic
eschatology; the belief that God is good, that he will not countenance evil
indefinitely, that in the End he will act to restore and redeem. This is what binds Jesus to his predecessors
(like the Baptizer), his supporters, and his later apostles (like Paul). No sketch of the economic conditions of
Galilee can have a sufficient or convincing explanatory effect on all the data
. . . . in the way these biblical apocalyptic commitments do."[5]
This perspective from a well-known
historian that what matters most in writing about Jesus is what people before
and after him believed about God and redemption expanded my thinking about the
scope of this essay. I then decided I
should include beliefs about God, the controversy over whether Jesus was God
incarnate or only an exceptional man, and the parousia (i.e., Christ's second
coming) in addition to the circumstances surrounding his birth, early life,
ministry, crucifixion and resurrection.
But viewing these tapes about Jesus and reading more about what modern
scholars have learned about him from a critical analysis of the Gospel accounts
and recently discovered other documents required another reassessment of the
scope of this essay. There were two
major finds of old documents beginning around the middle of the twentieth
century that set biblical scholars and academicians back on their heels
regarding their previous assumptions and conjectures about the history of the
pre-Christian era and the written material that was circulated among Christian
groups in the years following Jesus' death and resurrection.
The first major discovery of old documents was found in
1945 by an Arab peasant and his brother in Upper Egypt near the village of Nag
Hammadi. Digging around the base of a
large boulder they discovered an earthenware jar about a meter in height that
contained thirteen papyrus books bound in leather and a number of loose papyrus
leaves. Not realizing their worth, most of the loose leaves were used along
with straw as kindling to start a fire for the oven in their home . The first Western scholar to examine one of
the bound manuscripts was astonished when he translated the first line of the
document written in the Coptic language: "These are the secret words which
the living Jesus spoke, and which the twin, Judas Thomas, wrote down."[6] This document, entitled the Gospel According
to Thomas, contained many sayings known from the New Testament gospel accounts
but contained other passages that "differed entirely from any know
Christian tradition."[7] Yet, even though a number of the loose
papyrus leaves had been inadvertently burned, this manuscript was only one of
fifty-two texts discovered at Nag
Hammadi.
"Why were these texts buried and why have they
remained virtually unknown for nearly 2,000 years? Their suppression as banned documents, and
their burial on the cliff at Nag Hammadi, it turns out, were both part of a
struggle critical for the formation of early Christianity."[8] It also turns out that many of these early
documents were written or transcribed by early (mostly Jewish) Christians known
as Gnostics. What they revealed was an
interpretation of the teachings of Jesus that were often at variance with those
documents being circulated by the followers of Peter, Paul and others that came
to be part of the canon adopted by members of the "Orthodox" branch
of the Christian church. All writings
circulated by the Gnostic groups in Egypt were branded heresies by early
Christian writers such as Ireneaus. By
200 AD "Christianity had become an institution headed by a three-rank
hierarchy of bishops, priests and deacons, who understood themselves to be the
guardians of the only 'true faith'. The
majority of churches, among which the church of Rome took a leading role,
rejected all other [than Orthodox] viewpoints as heresy."[9]
The
second major discovery of old documents was made in 1947 by a young Bedouin
shepherd in a limestone cave carved out of a cliff along the wadis that descend
through the Judean wilderness near the Northwest bank of the Dead Sea. Between 1951 and 1956 ten more such caves
containing documents were discovered, all of which came to be known as the Dead
Sea Scrolls. The struggle to let
scholars and other interested parties obtain photocopies of the many Hebrew and
a few Aramaic documents and shreds of documents was a protracted one. Many of the documents were incomplete and
thousands of fragments were found along with those that were found intact. In addition a number of documents were
deliberately shredded by their Arab discoverers and sold piecemeal to the
highest bidders. All told it is
estimated that the number of fragments from the eleven caves totaled more than
100,000.
It
took a number of years even after photocopies were made available to establish
which fragments went with which manuscripts and then to sort them in the proper
sequence in order to recover the original text. The problem of publication was
further impeded by a change in legal control when "all the scroll
fragments housed in the Palestine Archaeological Museum came under the control
of the Israel Department of Antiquities"[10] following
the occupation of East Jerusalem by the Israelis after the Six Day War in
1967. Finally, and certainly not least,
the publication of the scrolls was impeded by what one scholar called "the
academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century"[11] ":Lack of organization and [an]
unfortunate choice of collaborators . . ,[the secrecy rule that restricted
access to unpublished texts and many other academic shortcomings, finally led
to the termination by the Israelis in 1990 of] the thirty-seven-year-old and
ultimately disastrous reign of the international team."[12]
However,
it didn't take long after the original discovery of the first scrolls to
determine that the religious community involved in secreting the documents was
the ascetic Jewish sect of the Essenes.[13] "The
first Qumran scrolls to reach the public [1951], and the archaeological setting
in which they were discovered, echoed three striking Essene characteristics.
[1] The Community Rule [manuscript], a basic code of sectarian existence,
reflects Essene common ownership and celibate life, while [2] the geographical
location of Qumran tallies with Pliny's Essene settlement on the northwestern
shore of the Dead Sea, south of Jericho. [3] The principal novelty provided by
the manuscripts consists of cryptic allusions to the historical origins of the
Community, launched by a priest called the Teacher of Righteousness, who was
persecuted by a Jewish ruler, designated as the Wicked Priest. The Teacher and his followers were compelled
to withdraw into the desert, where they awaited the impending manifestation of
God's triumph over evil and darkness in the end of days, which had already
begun."[14] These manuscripts helped pinpoint the
timeline to which they refer as occurring between the dates of the Maccabean
revolt in 167 BC and the independent rule by the Jewish Asmonean priests and
princes until the arrival of Pompey in Jerusalem in 63 BC. Then the last vestige of Jewish semi-autonomy
was crushed when the Roman army led by Titus utterly destroyed the second
temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD and slaughtered or dispersed not only most of the
Jews living in Jerusalem but throughout the whole of Palestine. Before that awful destruction, however, the
Essenes "climbed the nearby cliffs in order to hide away in eleven caves
their precious scrolls. No one came back
to retrieve them, and there they remained undisturbed for almost 2,000 years."
Several other documents
discovered previously to those at Qumran
are now also believed by many to be of
Essene origin. Two of these, The Book
of Jubilees, and The Book of Enoch have long been known and a third, The
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs was never lost. Since these documents are
all believed to have been written at least a hundred years prior to the
ministry of Jesus, it almost seems that he was following a script of the life
lived earlier by an Essene prophet.
"There
is evidence which indicates that, about 70 BC or soon thereafter, an Essene
prophet known as the Teacher of Righteousness had been put to death by the
Jewish authorities because of doctrinal, ritualistic and organizational
heterodoxy; that, in due course, his followers declared that he was God
himself, appearing as a man in Jerusalem, and that his death was an atoning
sacrifice for the elect; that he arose from the grave and returned to heaven;
and that he would send a representative in a few years who would be precisely
the kind of Messiah that Jesus at first proclaimed himself to be. It is [this author's] belief that Jesus had
for some years been a full-fledged member of the Order; and that, wholly
persuaded that he was himself the Messiah expected by the Community, he left it
and preached the Gospel to the public; and that finally, in a revised concept
of his own mission, he declared himself to be the atoning Christ, re-enacted
the role and the passion of the slain Teacher, and proclaimed that in his
eschatological role he would reappear as the last judge and the all-powerful
Son of Man."[15]
Even a
better case can be made that Jesus' cousin, John the Baptist, was an
Essene. "Many thoughtful students
have in the past been convinced that both John and Jesus had been Essenes; and
many more think so now. In fact, the
evidence concerning the former seems in some respects even more
conclusive. He proclaimed the imminent
apocalyptic kingdom; he inducted his converts by baptismal ritual for the remission of sins; and he denounced
his generation as one of vipers upon whom the vials of heavenly wrath would
shortly be poured forth. He declared
that the wicked would soon be consigned to the unquenchable flames; [and like
the Essene Community] that every one should share his food and clothing with
those less well supplied; and that equality, justice and pacifism must
prevail."[16]
There
are also a number of similarities between some of the early Jewish-Christian
believers and the Essenes. After the
destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD "the Scribes and Pharisees
continued as the rabbis of the Diaspora; and we may consider the Sadducees the
forerunners of the Jewish merchants, traders, bankers, and money-lenders of the
subsequent centuries. What then happened
to the Men of the [Essene] Community? . . . . The only reasonable hypothesis
seems to be that they came over to Christianity, either as individuals or in
groups, some of them before, and many more soon after, the destruction of
Jerusalem. . . . many of the early Christians were merely Essenes with a new
name."[17] Because many of these early Christians were
originally Jews there was a considerable controversy, particularly concerning
non-Jew Christians (i.e., Gentiles), as to whether they should continue Jewish
dietary proscriptions and rituals such as circumcision.[18] Not only did many Essenic Jews in and around
Palestine become members of the early Christian church but there are some who
believe that the Gnostics in Egypt were originally Jewish before they became
Christian and very likely members of the Essencic sect of Judaism as well.[19]
Toward
the close of the Asmonean Jonathan's reign (143 BC) the historian, Josephus,
wrote that "At this time there were three sects among the Jews, who had
different opinions concerning human actions; the one was called the sect of the
Pharisees, another the sect of the Sadducees, and the other the sect of the
Essens."[20] During the entire period of Hellenic [Greek]
domination of Egypt, the Middle and Near East, the Seleucids, with their
capital at Antioch in Syria, and the Ptolemys, with their capital at Alexandria
in Egypt, beginning with their young "world" conqueror, Alexander the
Great, actively sought to "Hellenize" all the areas under their
control. This involved not only their
language, arts and architecture but also their Greek philosophy and
culture.. Each of the three major sects
of Judaism absorbed some of these Greek beliefs and philosophy in addition to
their traditional Judaic heritage.
"The noble, wealthy, and successful Jews ...[the Sadducees] had gradually absorbed the Epicurean
philosophy and had continued to Hellenize throughout the Maccabean War.....The
Pharisees based themselves upon the Yahweh prophets; effected an intricate
elaboration of the Law; and drank of Zoroastrian metaphysics and Stoic
philosophy." [21] Very
different though "were the Essenes; for, while purporting to accept both
the Law and the prophets, they proceeded to create a revised law and other
prophets and revelations of their own.
They were neither rich nor powerful, like the Sadducees; nor were they
popular or influential among the masses, like the Pharisees. Instead, they were nicknamed the Holy Ones,
because, throughout all the phases of their evolution, they continued as the
repository of dedicated faith."[22] Their philosophy, like that of the Pharisees,
contained elements derived from Persian
Zoroastrianism but it also contained many elements similar to, if not
identical, to the Greek Pythagoreans.
"Pythagoras
was the first in the western world who devised a complete synthesis
incorporating the central religious elements of several dominant cultures.
Before 540 [BC], he had traveled over the then-known world in his quest for
esoteric knowledge: from Egypt, he derived the concept of the sacrificial
savior-god; from Persia, the Zoroastrian doctrines of dualism and eschatology;
from India, the tenets of incarnation, celibacy, communism, and holy poverty;
and from the Chaldeans his astronomical theories. He also absorbed other elements from the
various mystic-cults, particularly the Orphic.
He then reconstituted all this into a harmonious system, the like of
which had never before been seen."[23]
Perhaps
the greatest difference, therefore, between the "Pious" Pharisees and
the "Holy" Essenes in the years following their withdrawal to Qumran
was the adoption of the rules, similar to those prescribed by the Pythagoreans,
for becoming and being a member of the Community. Some of the similarities noted by Dr. Larson
are as follows:[24]
·
Both required long novitiates (from three to five
years) as prerequisites for full membership.
·
Both exacted the most tremendous oaths enjoining
irrevocable secrecy.
·
Both were esoteric orders.
·
Both had their own sacred and exclusive
revelations and their own supreme prophets.
·
Both established degrees or classes of membership.
·
Both practiced the strictest community of goods.
·
Both were self-supporting, independent communal
organizations.
·
Both require each candidate for membership to
sell all his possessions and place the proceeds in escrow with the curator of
the Order during his probationary period.
·
In both, memberships dined at communal tables,
where meals were eucharistic ceremonials.
·
Both required that all participants wear white,
linen robes at these rituals.
·
Both despised earthly riches and condemned all
personal ownership of property.
·
Both enjoined a total love for, and
interdependence upon, their brethren, but utter rejection of all others.
·
Both had affiliated orders of Hearers, or
secondary members, who accepted their beliefs as a theory, but did not live in
communes or practice their celibate-communal discipline.
·
Both condemned sex-desire and repudiated marriage.
·
Both taught dualism, predestination, and human
depravity.
·
Both repudiated every form of animal sacrifice.
·
Both practiced the most extreme personal
frugality.
·
Both were supreme pacifists, and died under
torture rather than offer resistance to
force or violence.
·
Both considered themselves the elect of the
Supreme God.
·
Both realized an intense belief and conviction in
a personal and happy immortality and looked forward to death with anticipation.
·
Both taught that man's soul, which is immortal,
is placed in this life in a corruptible body, as in a prison; a theory taught
also by the Platonists and in the Pauline literature.
·
Both worshipped a sacrificed god-man.
·
Both visited an unimaginably fierce condemnation
upon apostates.
·
Both disciplined members for minor violations of
cultic rules and excommunicated them for major offenses.
·
Both emphasized a dedication and separation which
rendered them, as it were, a nation apart.
All these similarities, and
the many more that were listed by Dr. Larson, "confirm the statement of
Josephus that the Essenes (in their maturity) lived a Pythagorean life."[25] It also explains why both Jesus and John the
Baptist (who, as young men at least, were probably Essenes) were at odds with
the teachings and practices of both the orthodox Pharisees and the Hellenizing Sadducees. It further explains why Jesus in the gospel
accounts would speak to the people (i.e.,the uninitiated) in parables but
explain their real meaning to his disciples in private. ("He who has ears to hear, let him
hear.") Likewise, Marcus Borg
titles one of the chapters in his book: "Jesus - Teacher of Alternative
Wisdom"[26]
In
addition to the differences in philosophy between the various Jewish sects
prior to and during the earthly life of Jesus there were major differences in philosophy in the
post-Easter period between Gnostic Christians and those Christian groups
established by Paul and many of the disciples that received the Holy Spirit on
the day of Pentecost. By the time of Emperor Constantine's conversion to
Christianity in the fourth century AD "possession of books denounced as
heretical was made a criminal offense. Copies of such books were burned and
destroyed. . . . But those who wrote and circulated these texts did not regard
themselves as heretics. Most of the
writings use Christian terminology, unmistakably related to a Jewish heritage. Many claim to offer traditions about Jesus
that are secret, hidden from 'the many' who constitute what, in the second
century, came to be called the 'catholic church.' These Christians are now called gnostics,
from the Greek word gnosis, usually translated as 'knowledge'. . . . . But
gnosis is not primarily rational knowledge.
. . As the gnostics use the term, we could translate it as 'insight',
for gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself. . . Yet to know
oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the
secret of gnosis."[27] As a gnostic teacher named Monoimus puts it:
"Abandon the search for
God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the
starting point. Learn who it is within
you who makes everything his own and says, 'My God, my mind, my thought, my
soul, my body.' Learn the sources of
sorrow, joy, love, hate . . . If you carefully investigate these matters you
will find him in yourself."[28]
Adherents
of Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism would have no difficulty in
accepting this gnostic teaching. Nor would nineteenth century
Transcendentalists like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson; nor would
twentieth century Christian existentialists like Paul Tillich and explorers of
the unconscious mind like Carl Gustav Jung; nor would practitioners of New Age
consciousness-raising programs such as "transcendental meditation"
and "A Course in Miracles"[29]
With
all these additional documents now available from the Dead Sea Scrolls and from
the fifty-two texts discovered at Nag Hammadi it became apparent that it would
not be possible to combine all these conflicting philosophies in an essay that
presented only a single point of view.
Therefore, I decided instead to present the various topics about God,
the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus and the parousia (the second
coming) from several perspectives: (1) the familiar or "orthodox"
viewpoint based on a literal reading of scriptures; (2) the more recent view of
scholars who have taken into account both the Dead Sea scroll documents and
those found at Nag Hammadi; and (3) the
view obtained from material variously
styled as "wisdom", the
mysteries, and from those claiming to be able to read the so-called akashic records.
Anyone
who has read my previous essays will understand my predilection for looking at
things in groups of three.[30] While it is true there is only one ultimate
reality, it manifests itself in triads: Body-Mind-Spirit; World-Man-God;
subconsciousness-ego consciousness-superconsciousness; matter-light-energy; and
so on. An analogy of trinities connected
with the present essay can be seen in the three predominant Jewish sects at the
time of Jesus' birth: Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes. As shown above, these groups respectively
adopted some of the Greek philosophies of the Epicurians, the Stoics and the
Pythagorians.[31]
The
founder of Epicurianism was Epicurus (341-270 bc) who "taught that there
were only natural causes. Any belief in
supernaturalism he regarded as a superstition which only a weak intellect could
possibly entertain. . . . . With
Epicurus man/s chief end is the attainment of
pleasure."[32] Similarly, the Sadducees were the noble,
wealthy, the merchants, and the worldly.
Good and evil were the results of man's own actions. Thus they didn't
believe in fate. Neither did they believe in an afterlife or in the
resurrection of the dead. The Stoics, on
the other hand, eschewed the sensual pleasures and emotional side of human
nature and "taught that one can achieve freedom and tranquillity only be
becoming insensitive to material comforts and external fortune and by
dedicating oneself to a life of reason and virtue."[33] Similarly, the Pharisees, unlike the Sadducees, viewed the material and sensual side of
life as something to be subjugated and brought under control by reason and a
virtuous life. Also, unlike the
Sadducees, the Pharisees were interested not only in the scriptures contained
in the first five books of the Old Testament (i.e.,the Torah) but also considered authoritative the writings of
the Prophets. "In addition, they
believed that Moses had not only promulgated the written Torah but also a body
of oral law that interpreted the meaning of what was written. This oral law, called, 'the tradition of the
elders' , were eventually codified in the Mishnah . . . and finally came out in
an expanded addition known as the Talmud."[34] It was also a group of learned Pharisees who
put their official stamp on the authorized canon of the Jewish scriptures at
the Council of Jamnia about 90 AD.[35] Closely
allied with them were the scribes who made copies of the scriptures approved by
the Pharisees. In the New Testament,
therefore, Jesus often condemned both the "Scribes and the Pharisees"
for their over-emphasis on outward behavior. We have already discussed above
the close relationship of the philosophy and practices of the Essenes to those
of the Greek Pythagorians. Thus, the
Essenes clearly represented the inner, secret and esoteric knowledge revealed
to only the relatively few men who after several years of probationary training
and study were shown to be worthy of being fully admitted to their membership.
Now it can be seen why I suggested there was
an analogy between the three sects of Judaism extant during the time of Jesus'
life on earth and the threefold division by which I plan to approach the
sections of the body of this essay. The
Sadducees, similar to the first proposed category, represent the Orthodox or conservative way of
looking at things. Since they only
accept as authentic the earliest scriptures as found in the Torah, they focused
their beliefs on the literal words contained in only those scriptures and
closed their minds to any other manuscripts or points of view (just as certain
Christian groups do today). Although they were certainly not atheists, their
perception of reality focused on this world and gave no credence to the
existence of angels, demons or a life hereafter. Although they had control of the temple in
Jerusalem and the selection of its priests and the high priest, they were also
in charge of the money changers in the outer section of the temple since only
Jewish money (the shekel) could be used to purchase birds and animals for the
daily sacrifices required under Jewish laws and customs.
The
scholars of Palestine 2000 years ago clearly were the Pharisees. They were able to think "outside the
box" of rigidly defined scriptural limits by including the oral tradition
and reinterpreting it as circumstances dictated. This "Pharisaic freedom of
interpretation, based on the oral law, meant that the principle of harmony with
the written Torah could be applied flexibly."[36] Thus, they favorably correspond with the scholarly pursuit of scriptures
contained in our second proposed category.
Although modern scholars, like the Pharisees of old, often include
writings not included in either the Old or the New Testament, they often have
differing opinions on who wrote these documents and their approximate
dates. Many documents, both in and
outside the established canons show signs of being modified by later writers to
support the then current beliefs and philosophies of their readers. Therefore, because of these many
uncertainties and varying opinions of biblical scholars, I felt it necessary to
add a third component representing the
mystic and esoteric viewpoint adopted more than
2000 years ago by the Essenes, viz,
the philosophy of the ancient
Pythagoreans. In previous essays I have
referred to this by the name given to it by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz in the
seventeenth century - philosophia perennis (the perennial
philosophy). It is defined by Aldous
Huxley in his anthology of this philosophy as:
"The metaphysic that recognizes a divine
Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology
that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with,
divine Reality; the ethic that places
man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all
being - the thing is immemorial and universal."[37]
We will discuss this philosophy more fully in
the section on the nature of God. For
the present, however, emphasis will be on the immanent nature and not on the
transcendent nature of the Ground of Being.
Earlier I alluded to the threefold nature of reality, and it is to the
inner or subjective side of this trinity that we now turn our attention. In one of my earlier essays[38] I noted
that when I first received my fifty-four volume set of the Great Books I was struck by the fact that the subject matter
covered in them, indexed in two volumes called the Syntopicon, comprised 102 topics beginning with "Angel"
and ending with "World".
Poised exactly midway between the first and the last category was the topic of "Man". Angel-Man-World thus formed a trinity of
topics whose middle term was "Man".
The more familiar trinity of Spirit-Mind-Body springs to mind as do
words from Pope's poem, Essay on Man, as
he reminds us that man is "placed on this isthmus of a middle state"
between the opposite poles of Spirit and Matter. In our proposed exposition the Sadducees
represent the worldly, objective and literal nature of reality, the Essenes
represent the spiritual, subjective and mystical side while the Pharisees
represent the balancing function of mind between these opposing ways of viewing
reality.
A
similar analogy of can be made by
considering the threefold structure of the temple in the center of Jerusalem
built by King Solomon in the tenth century BC.
According to Ezekiel's vision the outer wall was 500 cubits (or about
750 feet) on each side. All Jews, even women, were allowed in this outer
portion of the temple grounds. That was
the area where all of the sacrifices to be made inside the temple building
itself were bought and sold. It was here that Jesus upset the tables of the
money changers and told them "It is written, 'my house shall be called a
house of prayer'; but you make it a den of robbers."[39] The inner court building was divided into two
sections. All the priests making the
sacrifices to Yahweh were allowed in the first section, but in the inner
sanctuary, the sanctum sanctorum (the
holy of holies) that contained the ark of the covenant brought down from Mt.
Sinai by Moses, only the high priest was allowed to enter. Even he was allowed to enter this inner
sanctuary only on special occasions.
Since the ark containing the covenant represented the presence of the
Lord himself to Moses, "there is a legend to the effect that anyone who
chanced to enter the Holy of Holies unclean would be destroyed by a bolt of
Divine fire from the Mercy Seat. If the
High Priest [on entering] had but one selfish thought, he would be struck dead.
. . . Therefore, when their leader was
about to go in and receive the commands of the Lord, they tied a chain around
one of his feet so that if he were struck down while behind the veil, they
could drag the body out."[40] Note that not only does this analogy
represent a threefold division of reality from the outermost level (the
physical world) to the innermost level (the world of Spirit) but it also
represents an increasing progression of consciousness from spiritual blindness
to spiritual awareness. Likewise, it has
been said that the nature of the Torah
(the bible of the Sadducees) is the Law, while the nature of the Mishna (which includes commentaries on
the Torah and the oral tradition accepted by the Pharisees) is the soul of the
Law, and the Cabala (that mystic and
esoteric system following the tradition of the Essenses) is the Soul of the
Soul of the Law.
Finally,
a few remarks are needed to support the inclusion in our proposed third
category of writings by those who obtained their information from the so-called
akashic records. Admittedly, many will look ascant at their
very existence and the credibility of people who claim to have read them. However, since certain of these writings
reinforce a number of events included in the orthodox view that have been
called into question by modern scholarship, I have chosen to present this
material as at the least very interesting even though it is totally foreign to
the more traditional methods of interpretation and analysis.
"For ease of understanding, the Akashic Records
or "The Book of Life" can be equated to the universe's super computer
system. It is this system that acts as the central storehouse of all
information for every individual who has ever lived upon the earth. More than
just a reservoir of events, the Akashic Records contain every deed, word,
feeling, thought, and intent that has ever occurred at any time in the history
of the world. Much more than simply a memory storehouse, however, these Akashic
Records are interactive in that they have a tremendous influence upon our everyday
lives, our relationships, our feelings and belief systems, and the potential
realities we draw toward us."
It is claimed that "the Akashic Records contain
the entire history of every soul since the dawn of Creation. These records connect
each one of us to one another. They contain the stimulus for every archetypal
symbol or mythic story which has ever deeply touched patterns of human behavior
and experience. They have been the inspiration for dreams and invention. They
draw us toward or repel us from one another. They mold and shape levels of
human consciousness. They are a portion of Divine Mind. They are the unbiased
judge and jury that attempt to guide, educate, and transform every individual
to become the very best that she or he can be. They embody an ever-changing
fluid array of possible futures that are called into potential as we humans
interact and learn from the data that has already been accumulated. Information
about these Akashic Records – this Book of Life – can be found in folklore, in myth, and throughout the Old and New
Testaments. It is traceable at least as far back as the Semitic peoples and
includes the Arabs, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Babylonians, and the
Hebrews. Among each of these peoples was
the belief that there was in existence some kind of celestial tablets which
contained the history of humankind as well as all manner of spiritual
information."
"In terms of contemporary insights, perhaps the
most extensive source of information regarding the Akashic Records comes from
the clairvoyant work of Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), Christian mystic and founder
of A.R.E.[41]
For forty-three years of his adult life, Edgar Cayce possessed the uncanny
ability to lie down on a couch, close his eyes, fold his hands over his
stomach, and put himself into some kind of an altered state in which virtually
any type of information was available. The accuracy of Cayce's psychic work is
evidenced by approximately one dozen biographies and literally hundreds of
titles which explore various aspects of his information and the thousands of
topics he discussed. When asked about the source of his information, Cayce
replied that there were essentially two. The first was the subconscious mind of
the individual for whom he was giving the reading and the second was the
Akashic Records."[42]
The most controversial subject pouring out of
Cayce's subconscious mind was undoubtedly the disclosure that all of us have
lived a number of previous lives - i.e.,
the reality of reincarnation. It should
come as no surprise therefore that the man, Jesus, born in Palestine 2000 years
ago, also had a number of past lives - a total of thirty-two according to the
Cayce readings. No one was more
disturbed by the readings relating to reincarnation than was the conscious
Edgar Cayce. After all he was raised in
a very conventional Christian family, taught Sunday school classes, and since
his youth had made it a practice to read the entire Bible through every year. But, as the readings continued in this vein, it
became apparent that they didn't contradict what he had been taught about Jesus
but rather enlarged it and showed him to truly be an incarnation of God, the
Father. A number of people for whom he
gave readings had also incarnated in the same area and in the same period as
Jesus lived. Indeed, it was through
their lives that we gain an extraordinary insight into his life and times. References will be given from several books that
discuss the Cayce readings about this period in much more detail than can be
addressed in this essay. Their focus on
the Essene Community in Palestine at that time is all the more remarkable since
the Dead Sea Scrolls confirming its role and existence were not even discovered
until several years after Cayce's death in 1945.
Another source of information allegedly obtained
from the akashic records during the period when Jesus lived is taken from the
writings of Levi H. Dowling, who was born in
Having now summarized the genesis and the complex of
factors that were considered in the writing of this essay, let us (at long
last) begin by looking at a threefold approach to understanding the nature of
God.
The Nature of God
In an earlier essay[45]
I examined three basic approaches to the nature of reality: viz, the worldviews as seen through the
lenses of science, philosophy and religion with their respective emphasis on
the realms of matter, mind and spirit.
Although each of these approaches makes different assumptions about the
nature of reality, each endeavors to arrive at an understanding of the ultimate
foundation and the basic truths underlying these premises. It should come as no surprise, therefore,
that by whichever approach one begins with it leads to a common center To use a common analogy, regardless of the
far-flung Roman empire and its extensive network of roads, one eventually
discovered that "All roads lead to Rome". Perhaps the poets best express this truth
about the ultimate unity underlying all things when they tell us:
"Little flower in the
crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the
crannies.
If I could understand what you
are, all in all,
I would know what God and man
is." - Tennyson
"All
are parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is and God
the soul." -Alexander Pope
"Earth's crammed with heav'n
and every common bush ablaze with God;
But only those who see take
off their shoes.
The rest sit round it and
pick blackberries." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"To see a World in a Grain of
Sand
And a Heaven
in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity
in the palm of your hand
And Eternity
in an hour." - William Blake
Similarly, man, who scriptures tell us
was created in the image of God, finds him (or her) self "placed on this
isthmus of a middle state" poised equally between the poles of God and
Nature. As St. Paul reminds us though,
his awareness of this duality didn't exist until the Law is given by Yaweh to
Moses. "If it had not been for the
law, I should not have known sin. . . .
. Apart from the law sin lies dead. I
was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived
and I died."[46] This is not to say, however, that mankind was
unaware of the reality of the spirit world prior to Moses receiving the commandments
on Mount Sinai (circa 1290 bc). On the contrary we find that "Primitive man feels himself to be dependent
upon the mysterious forces invisibly environing him; he feels himself to be in
social communion, not only with beings like himself, ... but with the whole of
Nature, animate and inanimate. ... Not only does he possess a consciousness of
the world, but he imagines that the world, like himself, possesses
consciousness also. Just as a child talks to his doll or his dog as if it
understood what he was saying, so the savage believes that his fetish hears him
when he speaks to it, and that the angry storm-cloud is aware of him and
deliberately pursues him. For the newly
born mind of the primitive natural man has not wholly severed itself from the cords
which still bind it to the womb of Nature; neither has it clearly marked out
the boundary that separates dreaming from waking, imagination from
reality."[47]
The world of the primitive, therefore, like that of the child, is one in which
self-consciousness is not yet fully developed.
So ill-defined is the concept of self in both early man and a young
child that there is no clear differentiation between their interior and
exterior worlds, their objective and subjective perceptions. This interior awareness of the
"numinosum", the feeling of divinity, is projected outward onto
objects, both animate and inanimate, creating a perception that nature itself
is alive and conscious, that everything possesses a "god" within it. As Mircea Eliade expresses it, "for those who have a religious
experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality."[48]
When we grow older, we tend to lose
much of our "participation mystique" with Nature. We also tend to lose the inner feeling of the
"numinosum". As Miguel de
Unamuno affirms: "The clearer our consciousness of the distinction between
the objective and the subjective [i.e. the greater our self-consciousness], the
more obscure is the feeling of divinity within us."[49] "Desacralization", Mircea Eliade concurs,
"pervades the entire experience of the nonreligious man of modern
societies and [consequently] he finds it increasingly difficult to rediscover
the existential dimensions of religious man in the archaic societies."[50]
It is only a step in the evolution of
consciousness from the primitive's notion that the world and everything in it
is sacred and alive to one that perceives a hierarchy of powers and spheres of
influence, that is to say, only a step from a belief in animism to one in
polytheism. A theogony, or family tree,
of the gods and goddesses varies with a particular mythology or culture, but
most of them contain a number of incestuous relationships and extra-marital
affairs. They even interbreed with mortals
creating demigods - half men and half gods.
The story of gods interbreeding with human beings is even recounted in
the Old Testament:
"And it came to pass, when men
began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair; and they
took them wives of all which they chose. ... There were giants in the earth in
those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the
daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men
which were of old, men of renown."[51]