Jesus, Yeshua, Jesinavarah

Laura

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Admin Note: This is several threads on the topic of Jesus merged together.


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0406_060406_judas.html
Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News
April 6, 2006

He is one of the most reviled men in history.

But was Judas only obeying his master's wishes when he betrayed Jesus with a kiss?

That's what a newly revealed ancient Christian text says.

After being lost for nearly 1,700 years, the Gospel of Judas was recently restored, authenticated, and translated.

The Coptic, or Egyptian Christian, manuscripts were unveiled today at National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D.C.

What Does It Mean?

Some biblical scholars are calling the Gospel of Judas the most significant archaeological discovery in 60 years.

The only known surviving copy of the gospel was found in a codex, or ancient book, that dates back to the third or fourth century A.D.

The newly revealed gospel document, written in Coptic script, is believed to be a translation of the original, a Greek text written by an early Christian sect sometime before A.D. 180.

The Bible's New Testament Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - depict Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, as a traitor. In biblical accounts Judas gives up Jesus Christ to his opponents, who later crucify the founder of Christianity.

The Gospel of Judas, however, portrays him as acting at Jesus' request.

"This lost gospel, providing information on Judas Iscariot - considered for 20 centuries and by hundreds of millions of believers as an antichrist of the worst kind - bears witness to something completely different from what was said [about Judas] in the Bible," said Rodolphe Kasser, a clergyman and former professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

Kasser, who is regarded as one of the world's preeminent Coptic scholars, led the effort to piece together and translate the Gospel of Judas. The National Geographic Society and the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery funded the project, and it will be profiled in the May 2006 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Scholars say the text not only offers an alternative view of the relationship between Jesus and Judas but also illustrates the diversity of opinion in the early Christian church.

"I expect this gospel to be important mainly for the deeper insight it will give scholars into the thoughts and beliefs of certain Christians in the second century of the Christian era, namely the Gnostics," said Stephen Emmel, a Coptic studies professor at the University of Munster in Germany.

In 1983 Emmel was among the first three known scholars to view the Gospel of Judas, which had been discovered hidden in Egypt in the late 1970s.

Gnostics belonged to pre-Christian and early Christian sects that believed that elusive spiritual knowledge could help them rise above what they saw as the corrupt physical world.

Rehabilitating Judas

Biblical accounts suggest that Jesus foresaw and allowed Judas's betrayal.

As told in the New Testament Gospels, Judas betrayed Jesus for "30 pieces of silver," identifying him with a kiss in front of Roman soldiers. Later the guilt-ridden Judas returns the bribe and commits suicide, according to the Bible.

The Gospel of Judas, however, gives a very different account.

The text begins by announcing that it is the "secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week, three days before he celebrated Passover."

It goes on to describe Judas as Jesus' closest friend, someone who understands Christ's true message and is singled out for special status among Jesus' disciples.

In the key passage Jesus tells Judas, "'you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.'"

Kasser, the translation-project leader, offers an interpretation: "Jesus says it is necessary for someone to free him finally from his human body, and he prefers that this liberation be done by a friend rather than by an enemy.

"So he asks Judas, who is his friend, to sell him out, to betray him. It's treason to the general public, but between Jesus and Judas it's not treachery."

The newfound account challenges one of the most firmly rooted beliefs in Christian tradition.

Bart Ehrman is chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"This gospel," he said, "has a completely different understanding of God, the world, Christ, salvation, human existence - not to mention of Judas himself - than came to be embodied in the Christian creeds and canon."

Early Turmoil

The author of the 26-page Gospel of Judas remains anonymous. But the text reflects themes that scholars regard as being consistent with Gnostic traditions.

Christian Gnostics believed that the way to salvation was through secret knowledge delivered by Jesus to his inner circle. This knowledge, they believed, revealed how people could escape the prisons of their material bodies and return to the spiritual realm from which they came.

Gnostic sects looked to their gospels - among them the Gospel of Mary, newly famous for its role in the best-seller The Da Vinci Code - to authenticate their distinctive beliefs and practices.

Contradicting the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, these texts were later denounced by orthodox Christian leaders and refused entry into the Bible. Scholars believe that followers of the texts hid copies of them for preservation.
Scholars knew of the existence of the Gospel of Judas because of references to it in other ancient texts as early as A.D. 180.

To today's biblical scholars, the Gospel of Judas illustrates the multitude of opinions and beliefs in the early Christian church.

"This ancient text helps the modern world rediscover something that the early Christians knew firsthand," said Reverend Donald Senior, president of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois.

"In the early centuries of the Christian era there were multiple sacred texts resulting from communities in various parts of the Mediterranean world trying to come to grips with the meaning of Jesus Christ for their lives."
 
Gospel of Judas Pages Endured Long, Strange Journey

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0406_060406_gospel.html

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
April 6, 2006

After 1,700 years, the Gospel of Judas is lost no more. And the twisting tale of the document itself is nearly as surprising as the story it tells.

"We can consider it a real miracle that [such an ancient literary work]�especially one threatened by the hatred of the great majority of its contemporary readers, who saw it as a shame and a scandal, destined to be lost � would suddenly appear and be brought to light," said scholar Rodolphe Kasser.

Kasser is an expert in Coptic, or Egyptian Christian, history and literature. He led the effort to piece together and translate the Gospel of Judas.

The surviving copy of the gospel was written in the third or fourth century A.D., but the text was known prior to A.D. 180.

In that year St. Irenaeus�then the bishop of what is now Lyon, France�published Against Heresies, a volume intended to help unify the Christian church.

St. Irenaeus's method was to savage alternative theological views and interpretations�including the Gospel of Judas�which he referred to as "fictitious histories."

In this gospel, the Apostle Judas Iscariot is not a traitor but a hero, the chosen disciple. Jesus Christ asks Judas to betray him to the authorities.

Diverse beliefs circulated during Christianity's early years. Many were suppressed in the early centuries A.D. as the religion coalesced into a more structured faith based on the New Testament Gospels�Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Nonsanctioned texts, such as the Gospel of Judas, fell from favor. Scribes no longer copied them, and existing manuscripts were often destroyed. Those that survived were hidden for safekeeping.

The protectors of the newly revealed documents did their job well, stashing the ancient handwritten Coptic manuscripts so that it remained hidden for nearly 1,700 years.

Modern Journeys of an Ancient Book

Exactly how the manuscripts were found in the late 1970s remains somewhat unclear.

It is believed that a now dead Egyptian antiquities prospector discovered the codex, or ancient book, containing the Gospel of Judas near El Minya, Egypt.

In 1978 he sold his find to a Cairo antiquities dealer named Hanna.

Around 1980 the manuscripts and most of Hanna's other artifacts were stolen in a robbery and taken out of Egypt. Hanna later recovered the codex by coordinating with an antiquities trader in Geneva, Switzerland.

Hanna was the first to show the codex to experts who recognized its possible significance. Yet he would search for over two decades for a buyer willing to meet his steep price.

In 1983 Stephen Emmel, then a graduate student living in Rome, Italy, received a phone call.

Unknown antiquities dealers selling ancient manuscripts had approached one of Emmel's colleagues. Emmel and two other scholars agreed to meet the sellers in a Geneva hotel room.

For half an hour the trio examined a collection of papyruses that were wrapped in newspaper and stored in shoe boxes. The scholars were forbidden to take photos or notes.

Though Emmel and his colleagues quickly realized that the documents were both ancient and important, they did not know at that time that the codex contained the Gospel of Judas.

Emmel immediately noticed the damage that the fragile papyruses and leather binding had sustained�likely during the few years since their discovery.

"When I saw the codex in 1983 it was fragile, but the 30 or so surviving leaves were still in pretty good condition," said Emmel, now a professor of Coptic studies at the University of M�nster in Germany.

"If a papyrus conservator could have gone to work on it immediately, we would have had about 30 complete, or nearly complete, leaves, which would make some 60 pages of text," he said.

"As it is, every one of those leaves broke into pieces, and many fragments are now missing�most probably lost forever."

Hanna demanded three million U.S. dollars�far more than what Emmel and the other scholars could pay�and the meeting ended. The manuscripts once again vanished from scholarly view.

In 1984 the manuscripts' Egyptian owner again offered them for sale, this time in New York City. Finding no takers, Hanna deposited them in a bank safe-deposit box in Hicksville, New York.

The codex languished there for some 16 years.

Gospel Emerges From Modern Seclusion

Finally, Z�rich, Switzerland-based antiquities dealer Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos bought the codex in April 2000�though its full contents remained a mystery.

Tchacos turned the documents over to experts at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library for examination and possible sale.

Yale papyrus expert Robert Babcock discovered the startling truth�Tchacos held the Gospel of Judas, previously known only from mentions in texts like those by St. Irenaeus.

But Yale passed on purchasing the gospel because of concerns about its provenance.

Tchacos endured another failed sale attempt later that year, this time to U.S. dealer Bruce Ferrini.

Ferrini took possession of the gospel in return for two postdated checks.

In the following months Tchacos became increasingly convinced that Ferrini did not have sufficient funds and engaged several prominent antiquities dealers to pressure Ferrini to return the codex to her.

Finally, Tchacos transferred the codex to the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art, based in Basel, Switzerland.

The foundation later teamed with the Washington, D.C.-based National Geographic Society and the La Jolla, California-based Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery to restore, translate and publish the gospel. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)

Pages of the gospel were unveiled at National Geographic headquarters today and will go on public view tomorrow at the National Geographic Museum.

All pages will eventually be returned to Egypt and housed permanently in Cairo's Coptic Museum.

The Real Deal?

The Gospel of Judas represents one of the great textual finds of the modern age�so it was crucial for all concerned to ensure that it was authentic.

The University of Arizona's radiocarbon dating lab in Tucson�the same lab that tested the Dead Sea Scrolls�dated five tiny samples of papyrus and leather binding from the codex to between A.D. 220 and 340.

Extensive forensic ink analysis and multispectral imaging tests provided further physical evidence that placed the documents in the same time period.

Meanwhile, scholars examined contextual evidence such as content, linguistic style, and the distinctive handwriting used by ancient scribes.

Experts who have examined these aspects of the Gospel of Judas agree that the codex's theological concepts and linguistic structure are similar to manuscripts found in Nag �Hamm�di, Egypt, which contain Gnostic writings of a similar time period.

"Gnosticism" refers to several pre-Christian and early-Christian belief systems that hold that the physical world is corrupt and that humans can transcend it through the acquisition of esoteric spiritual knowledge.

The University of M�nster's Emmel stressed that the Judas manuscript, like the Nag �Hamm�di texts, contains a second-century Gnostic thought process that would present a terrible challenge for forgers.

Would-be fakers would have also needed to acquire ancient papyrus and ink to duplicate period Coptic handwriting, and to master an ancient grammar known to only a small group of scholars.

Leap of Faith

Though authentic, the codex's condition is alarmingly poor, having deteriorated badly since Emmel's 1983 inspection.

By the time the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art called in Kasser and other experts to examine the codex, its leather binding had come undone. The ancient papyrus pages had been scattered into nearly a thousand fragments that crumbled at even the slightest touch. In places the pages were so blackened that the handwritten Coptic script was illegible.

The sheets had also been reorganized in a random pattern�possibly to boost buyer appeal by putting better pages on top. The original page order was lost.

"Our codex�clearly in such a fragile state that no researcher in his right mind would dare touch it in order to consult it�looked as if it were to ready to crumble, squeezed at the bottom of a box whose dimensions were barely larger that those of the manuscript itself," Kasser recalled.

Yet a team of expert preservationists became detectives to reconstruct the Gospel of Judas and the codex's other writings: a text titled James (also known as First Apocalypse of James), a Letter of Peter to Philip, and a fragment of a fourth text scholars are provisionally calling the Book of Allogenes.

"It took a leap of faith, sustained by hope, with no guarantee of success, yet there was a probability of success. � It was worth trying," Kasser said.

Aided by a computer program, restoration expert Florence Darbre and Coptic scholar Gregor Wurst, were able to painstakingly reconstruct most of the manuscript, fragment by fragment, over a period of five years.

"We soon realized that the decision had been a good one," Kasser said.

"Restored and put under glass, the folios could be gingerly handled, and it was possible to photograph all the pages," he said. "Those pages could be photographed, studied, read, transcribed, and translated."

Incredibly, the team was able to recreate some 90 to 95 percent of the manuscript and produce a nearly complete translation. Some sections may be forever lost, due to holes in the original papyruses, but scholars hope to fill them in as they finish their herculean task�an additional half page recently surfaced in New York City.

Yet even the meager surviving fragments are enough to portray one of history's most notorious villians in an entirely new light�and spur debate among scholars and theologians around the globe.
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

http://hem.fyristorg.com/aurelio/religion.html

The above is an english portion from what I take to be the site of a Scandinavian literary figure
Christian Lanciai, which I chanced upon. It has some interesting ideas regarding the material above. Actually, the theory that Judas was fulfilling some kind of mission seems not to be so rare.

Excerpts from: The Jesus File by John B. Westerberg (1996)

An unknown and supressed apocryphical gospel of St. Jude dares to suggest that Judas Iscarioth has totally been taken wrong and that the other apostles have perverted both the picture of him and of Jesus. According to this gospel, which is not very well known in the western hemisphere, Judas was the link between Jesus and the Essenes, who later on frightened the soldiers away from the grave, carried off the body of Jesus and resurrected him. When Jesus told Judas at the last supper: "That thou doest, do quickly," he meant that everything was ready and that Judas could start acting according to the plans. No one was better prepared for everything that followed than Jesus himself. He had planned everything to the minutest detail, and in sacrificing himself he intended to unite all the world's religions under the realm of that total divine love, which he felt and understood. But he did it too well, and Judas was not equally well prepared. When he experienced what the fantastic plans really involved practically, it became too much for him, he thought everything was his fault and that everything had gone wrong and therefore took his own life in despair instead of waiting with patience until the end. By the resurrection, which proved that Jesus had survived the ordeal and escaped, the precarious enterprise was crowned with perfect victory and success...
Footnote by Christian Lanciai. The most interesting part of John [Westerberg's] presentation is the revaluation of Judas Iscarioth. Already Anthony Burgess tried something of the kind. John goes further, however, and depicts Judas as the only initiate in the plans of Jesus. That Jesus himself was perfectly aware of everything expecting him including the crucifixion is evident from the gospels. This is the first time anyone claims that Judas alone also was familiar in advance with what was going to happen. It is also most evident from the gospels that none of the other apostles knew anything in advance. Experiencing the cruelty and the brutality which the realization of the plans conveyed, Judas should then according to this have panicked, jumped to the conclusion that Jesus had lost control and consequently lost his nerve. This would not have been more than human. The very first thing that the first Christians evidently forgot and overlooked was, that Jesus and his apostles were only human beings.

The Judas theory is however also the weakest point in John's presentation. If Judas meant no harm, how do you explain the 30 pieces of silver? You could explain them by that they were part of the show: only by that could the high priests be convinced by Judas that he was serious about betraying Jesus. Without this transaction as a concrete evidence, the high priests would perhaps never have bothered to arrest Jesus and go through with the plotted trial.

John Bede had this surprising comment:

"At last someone who dares to question the credibility of the gospels! I give him my full support! Here is my contribution:

St. John 12:4-6 ending: "he was a thief, and as he had the money box he used to take what was put into it." (of Judas Iscarioth.)

Even if it might have been true, isn't it a strange remark of a holy apostle to make of another after his tragic death? Such an accusation demands proof, but since Judas hade hanged himself he couldn't defend himself, and none of the other apostles did either. Is it then plausible that Jesus should have trusted and kept a disciple who stole from the common purse? It is more probable that the accusation is a lie than that Jesus should have kept him. According to me this one verse is enough to render the holy authority of the gospel of St. John questionable indeed.

And why does this verse exist? There is only one explanation: St. John must have envied Judas. But St. John was the disciple whom Jesus loved, according to St. John. This leads us to believe, that St. Jude might very well have been as much loved by Jesus as St. John.
Excerpt from Westerberg's reply:

...[E]verything that is written in the New Testament is theoretically possible. Judas could have been a base traitor who stole money out of the common purse of the apostles, but he could also have been Jesus' closest friend and the only initiate in the mystery. The one possibility doesn't even exclude the other....

...Judas Iscarioth was probably also a Zealot. The name "Iscarioth" is most probably a mistaken spelling of "Sicarioth", which was another nomination of a "Zealot". The Sicarioths were the most fanatical among the Zealots. The tragical despair and innocence of poor Judas I have treated earlier.
Carlo Suares also has something about this:

http://www.psyche.com/psyche/suares/passion_of_judas.html

From The Passion of Judas A Mystery Play by Carlo Suares Back Cover

Judas was expressly designated and trained by Jesus to help in ful- filling the task of awakening man's consciousness, symbolised as introducing light into darkness. Judas did what he had to do, exactly as he had been trained to do it, with the courage, conviction and integrity of the selfless. He knew that he had to play the part of the deliverer in the drama by which Jesus demonstrated what is meant by dying to oneself. But Peter and the rest of the disciples who were present at the Last Supper totally failed to realise what Judas had to do when Jesus ordered him to carry out the task for which he had been A. prepared, and which was committed to him at the moment when Jesus took communion with him, giving the morsel dipped in wine to him alone.

Since then Peter and his Church for ."Sheep" have accused Judas of betraying Jesus, because their minds are petrified by appearances and incapable of perceiving that a psychological truth was brig taught by a physical symbol.

Jesus said: "I am life and unless a person dies to himself he cannot be reborn". He did not say he would die to accomplish our salvation for us. He was not talking about a physical death and a physical resurrection.' He was teaching man how to die to himself, to that imaginary self which keeps every one of us asleep. He was teaching the individual how to accomplish what only he can do and which no one else can do for him: to die to himself and let the essential self be born as we awake from the sleep of the senses.

For almost two thousand years the "petrified" Church has been trying to make us worship a dead god and send us to a not-existent heaven. The Church has been incapable of admitting, and of wishing to admit, that Jesus and Judas together united the opposites called God and Satan, light and darkness. It has denied that salvation is possible without its so-called intercession. It has denied Jesus' teaching that only each one of us by ourselves alone can be born anew. It has asserted that it is the only authority and intermediary without whose office no man can become what essentially he is. The servant has claimed to be greater than his master.
And here is an interesting campaign to redeem Judas from within the Catholic Church. Are they perparing for the impact of this gospel?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1981591,00.html

Judas the Misunderstood
From Richard Owen, in Rome

Vatican moves to clear reviled disciple's name


JUDAS ISCARIOT, the disciple who betrayed Jesus with a kiss, is to be given a makeover by Vatican scholars.
The proposed "rehabilitation" of the man who was paid 30 pieces of silver to identify Jesus to Roman soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane, comes on the ground that he was not deliberately evil, but was just "fulfilling his part in God's plan".



Christians have traditionally blamed Judas for aiding and abetting the Crucifixion, and his name is synonymous with treachery. According to St Luke, Judas was "possessed by Satan".

Now, a campaign led by Monsignor Walter Brandmuller, head of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Science, is aimed at persuading believers to look kindly at a man reviled for 2,000 years.

Mgr Brandmuller told fellow scholars it was time for a "re-reading" of the Judas story. He is supported by Vittorio Messori, a prominent Catholic writer close to both Pope Benedict XVI and the late John Paul II.

Signor Messori said that the rehabilitation of Judas would "resolve the problem of an apparent lack of mercy by Jesus toward one of his closest collaborators".

He told La Stampa that there was a Christian tradition that held that Judas was forgiven by Jesus and ordered to purify himself with "spiritual exercises" in the desert.

In scholarly circles, it has long been unfashionable to demonise Judas and Catholics in Britain are likely to welcome Judas's rehabilitation.

Father Allen Morris, Christian Life and Worship secretary for the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, said: "If Christ died for all, is it possible that Judas too was redeemed through the Master he betrayed?" The "rehabilitation" of Judas could help the Pope's drive to improve Christian-Jewish relations, which he has made a priority of his pontificate.

Some Bible experts say Judas was "a victim of a theological libel which helped to create anti Semitism" by forming an image of him as a "sinister villain" prepared to betray for money.

In many medieval plays and paintings Judas is portrayed with a hooked nose and exaggerated Semitic features. In Dante's Inferno, Judas is relegated to the lowest pits of Hell, where he is devoured by a three-headed demon.

The move to clear Judas's name coincides with plans to publish the alleged Gospel of Judas for the first time in English, German and French. Though not written by Judas, it is said to reflect the belief among early Christians - now gaining ground in the Vatican - that in betraying Christ Judas was fulfilling a divine mission, which led to the arrest and Crucifixion of Jesus and hence to man's salvation.

Mgr Brandmuller said that he expected "no new historical evidence" from the supposed gospel, which had been excluded from the canon of accepted Scripture.

But it could "serve to reconstruct the events and context of Christ's teachings as they were seen by the early Christians". This included that Jesus had always preached "forgiveness for one's enemies".

Some Vatican scholars have expressed concern over the reconsideration of Judas. Monsignor Giovanni D'Ercole, a Vatican theologian, said it was "dangerous to re-evaulate Judas and muddy the Gospel accounts by reference to apocryphal writings. This can only create confusion in believers." The Gospels tell how Judas later returned the 30 pieces of silver - his "blood money" - and hanged himself, or according to the Acts of the Apostles, "fell headlong and burst open so that all his entrails burst out".


Some accounts suggest he acted out of disappointment that Jesus was not a revolutionary who intended to overthrow Roman occupation and establish "God's Kingdom on Earth".

In the Gospel accounts, Jesus reveals to the disciples at the Last Supper that one of them will betray him, but does not say which. He adds "Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born."

But he also - according to St Matthew - acknowledged that Judas had a divine function to fulfil, saying to him during the arrest, "Friend, do what you are here to do" and adding that "the prophecies of the Scriptures must be fulfilled".

The "Gospel of Judas", a 62-page worn and tattered papyrus, was found in Egypt half a century ago and later sold by antiquities dealers to the Maecenas Foundation in Basle, Switzerland.
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

So what role does a "Judas" play in the crucifixion as an initiation myth?

"Jesus says it is necessary for someone to free him finally from his human body, and he prefers that this liberation be done by a friend rather than by an enemy."

What would the historical event be behind this account, if there is one? I'm at a loss...
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

Well, first of all discard the notion of the crucifixion being anything other than a metphor for the descent/ascent of the shaman, or the alchemical process... then it's not so difficult. This is what I was trying to convey in my piece on Fulcanelli and the DaVinci Code. Notice that the real villain of the Last Supper is depicted by Da Vinci as being Peter, NOT Judas.

I haven't figured the whole thing out myself, but I smelled that rat a long time ago.

Also, as the statues in Auch Cathedral suggest, Mary Magdalene must have been either a daughter of the man we now know as Jesus, or a niece. Since I think that DaVinci may have also had influence on the work there, it is all of a piece. There was certainly a wife, but she wasn't it.
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

EsoQuest said:
Some Vatican scholars have expressed concern over the reconsideration of Judas. Monsignor Giovanni D'Ercole, a Vatican theologian, said it was "dangerous to re-evaulate Judas and muddy the Gospel accounts by reference to apocryphal writings. This can only create confusion in believers."
This is absolutely classic - they are SO concerned about confusing believers and not at all concerned about shedding more light on the issue in general. Just gotta love those Vatican boys.
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

If their believers were really interested in the content of the text then they should be confused enough with what they already have, this addition would just be one more series of contradictions which points to the huge 'editing job' that this material has been through in order to manipulate and deceive them.
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

>It goes on to describe Judas as Jesus' closest friend, someone who understands Christ's true message and is >singled out for special status among Jesus' disciples.


just finished reading The Struggle of the Magicians by Patterson, and the author quotes Gurdjieff saying the same thing almost word for word.
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

I believe it is no coincidence that the passion/crucifixion/"resurrection" of Christ has indicators of a creative shamanic dramatization (I hesitate to use the word ritual). The accounts of the New Testament indicate also that this was intended and provoked by Jesus, possibly planned out long beforehand.

The crucifixion itself, furthermore, was not your average Roman slaying on a cross-beam. Nails were used instead of ropes, no major arteries were pierced, severe beating preceded the crucifixion thus weakening the subject, making him prone to go unconscious earlier, some kind of "bitter" (not sour) substance was given through a sponge (opiates are bitter).

The timing of the event was such that those on the cross (normally hung for days) were taken down in one day, and while it is customary to smash the bones of the legs to force the body to drop and suffocate, the followers of Jesus (especially Joseph of Arimathea who had clout in the Sanhedrin) went to great lengths to prevent this smashing. Then Jesus was whisked off to a private tomb, where wounds were immediately cleaned and dressed. Was this burial practice or healing?

Modern day medical assessments claim that the crucifixion as Jesus endured it, was most likely non-lethal for an otherwise healthy man in his early 30's. I doubt all of these details would be made up if the crucifixion was not a real event. It also seems that some followers were necessarily in on this, while others were kept in the dark (most of the future apostles in fact).

So the question, to me, is why this dramatization, and what did it represent?

There are two hints here. The first is the sacrificial nature of the event, and the second the celestial associations around which many ancient religions and cults were centered.

Regarding the sacrificial nature of the event, let us notice that it took place during the Hebrew Passover, in the Spring and about six months away from Yom Kippur, which takes place in early October. Yom Kippur involves a sacrifice ritual of two goats. One is pure and innocent given to God on the altar, and the other is laden with the sins of the people and sent to the desert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoat

Wikipedia said:
Two very similar-appearing male goats were brought into the courtyard of the Temple in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur as part of the Holy Service of that day. The high priest cast lots for the two goats. One goat was offered as a burnt offering, as was the bull. The second goat was the scapegoat. The high priest placed his hands on the head of the goat and confessed the sins of the people of Israel. The scapegoat was led away and let go in the wilderness according to Leviticus 16:22, although the Talmud adds that it was pushed over a distant cliff.
Figuratively, a scapegoat is someone selected to bear blame for a calamity. Scapegoating is the act of holding a person, group of people, or thing responsible for a multitude of problems. This is also known as a frameup. Scapegoats can also be referred to as patsies.
There is, apparently, one sacrifice or offering to God and a scapegoat or sin-patsy sent to Azazel (or hell). This offers remarkable parallels to the story of Jesus and Barabbas. So, who was Barabbas?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barabbas

Wikipedia said:
According to the United Bible Societies' text, Matthew 27:17 reads: "...whom will ye that I release unto you? Jesus Barabbas [Greek: Iesous ton Barabban] or Jesus which is called Christ (Iesous ton legomenon Christon)?

Some early Syriac manuscripts of Matthew present Barabbas' name twice as Jesus bar Abbas: manuscripts in the Caesarean group of texts, the Sinaitic Palimpsest, the Palestinian Syriac lectionaries and some of the manuscripts used by Origen in the 3rd century, all support the fact that Barabbas' name was originally Jesus Barabbas. Origen consciously rejected the reading in the manuscript he was working with, and left out "Iesous" deliberately, for reverential considerations, certainly a strongly motivated omission. Origen did not want the name Jesus associated with anyone who was a sinner. While later declared a heretic, much of Origen's theology and philosophy remained influential, and has, to some extent, been traced to the later St. Augustine, who remains one of the most influential church fathers. It is a point of contention how much influence Origen's edits of the text may have had.
John 18:40 refers to Barabbas as a lēstēs, "bandit;" Mark and Luke further refer to Barabbas as one involved in a stasis, a riot. Mark 15:7; Luke 23:19. Matthew refers to Barabbas only as a "notorious prisoner." Matthew 27:16. Some scholars posit that Barabbas was a member of the sicarii, a militant Jewish movement that sought to overthrow the Roman occupiers of their land by force, noting that Mark (15:7) mentions that he had committed murder in an insurrection.
Here is also what Wikipedia says about the etymology of the name Iscariot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Iscariot#Etymology_of_.22Judas_Iscariot.22

Wikipedia said:
What "Iscariot" signifies is unclear, other than its Greek suffix -otes, like English "-ite" or "-ian". No territory "Iscaria" has ever existed. A birthplace is sometimes offered at the Karioth that is mentioned only once, in a long list of cities in the time of Joshua (Joshua 15:25), concerning which The Classical Gazeteer tactfully remarked "of uncertain position" [2]. Karioth is not mentioned in any text of the centuries before or after Judas Iscariot. (Compare Cana and Arimathea.)

There are two major theories on the meaning of this name, each of which must satisfy certain expectations in order to be credible:

One etymology, accepted by the majority, and credited to Jerome, derives "Iscariot" from Hebrew איש־קריות, Κ_Qr_y_th [???], that is "man of Kerioth", the Judean town (or, more probably, collection of small towns) of Kerioth, not otherwise related to any person or event in the New Testament, nor mentioned in any document of the period. As Aramaic was the main language of the time, and all other biblical characters have Aramaic surnames and nicknames, this Hebrew Judaean name would have marked out Judas as different from the Galilean disciples.

In the second etymology, "Iscariot" is considered to be a transformation of the Latin sicarius, or "dagger-man". The Sicarii were a cadre of assassins among Jewish rebels intent on driving the Romans out of Judea. It is possible then, that this Latin name might have been transformed by Aramaic into a form more closely resembling "Iscariot". But many historians maintain that the sicarii only arose in the 40's or 50's of the 1st century, so Judas could not have been a member.
The point is that two men were brought before the crowds for one to be freed and one condemned. Both were named Yeheshua (an eponym or title meaning "YHVH saves", and not necessarily a birth-name). One was the son of the father, a title by which Jesus of Nazoreth was also known, and the other was "the alleged Messiah".

Another point is this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barabbas#Historicity

Wikipedia said:
The Gospels all state that there was a custom at Passover during which the Roman governor would release a prisoner of the crowd's choice. Mark 15:6; Matt. 27:15; John 18:39; Luke 23:17 (though this verse in Luke is not present in the earliest manuscripts and may be a later gloss to bring Luke into conformity)[3]

However, no other such release is recorded in any historical document, not even as a passing mention. Some point to the perception of Pontius Pilate's disregard for Jewish sensibilities; the idea of him honouring Jewish Passover in any way may not fit with historical accounts of his character. However, other historians take the exact opposite approach, arguing that Pilate showed careful regard to Jewish customs in order to avoid revolts in an unruly province, and this may be an example of Pilate creating an "ad hoc" tradition in order to avoid a possibly explosive situation.
If this event did occur, it must have been a one time improvisation by Pilate, and that is strange because it just happens to fit the Yom Kippur sacrifical pattern. One goat is chosen as the pure sacrifice and the other carries the sins of the people, being a "known criminal" (actually a terrorist by today's standards).

All of this is still circumstantial, however, and I am no scholar. It would nevertheless be fitting if Judas Iscariot and Jesus bar-Abbas were one and the same person, where the latter name would be a title. If Jesus and Judas were the principle players in a sacrificial drama enacted not during Yom Kippur in the Fall, but during Passover in the Spring, and Judas was both Zealot and disciple (as Peter may also have been), then the role of Judas may have been more than scripture reveals.

It seems obvious, furthermore, that the other male disciples did not like Jesus hanging around with either women or Judas. If they were not in on the real drama to be enacted, they may have simply written things from their biased point of view. It is also obvious that this sacrificial drama where the pure is sacrificed but gets away, and the impure bears the guilt of sin (and allegedly dies and goes to Azazal/hell like the goat sent into the desert), was where the whole of the life of Jesus was leading from the beginning.

So one wonders if Jesus and the few "in on it", were really the only ones in on it. One wonders whether this was not organized by a greater esoteric community, and many accounts were allowed to be written in a biased manner to make the official version stick. The effectiveness of such a drama would surely depend on how convincing it was to as large a group of people as possible, i.e. how many "believed in Jesus".

Isn't it interesting that shortly after the crucifixion the Jews themselves became the scapegoats sent off into the wilderness and the early Christians turned into the sacrificial lambs?

At the same time the hidden point in the drama was to negate the whole concept of sacrifice through the much publicized "resurrection". It was performed at a time of rebirth, not the traditional Yom Kippur period, and the very attack on the temple by Jesus indicates he was adamantly against blood sacrifices, which themselves have an occult foundation.

Although history shows that both sacrifices and scapegoating as collective events actually were on the rise in the age of Pisces, it is not farfetched that what the movement behind Jesus, and not necessarily just of Jesus intended was to neutralize the occult significance of such actions, to keep those that benefited and/or fed from them from doing so.

One wonders if the global increase in mass sacrifice and scapegoating (including what went on in the Aztec empire, the African slave trade, the Holocaust, the Cathar massacres, witch burnings and other events) was a form of attempted compensation for this significant weakening of the occult "benefits" of such events.

One wonders if the push toward mass chaos (where in the past selective individual sacrifices did just as well) is something intended to gain power that cannot otherwise be gained, and if mass chaos does not occur, certain parties, human or otherwise may begin to "starve" in a manner.

I think that it is useful to look at the celestial correspondences of the crucifixion act, which has many similarities to the Mithraic bull-sacrifice for an understanding of its deeper esoteric significance. I will try to develop this in a further posting if I can.

What made an impression on me as I was scanning through the Internet (particularly through Mithraic cult information) was that in Roman times the symbol for Aquarius was the Cup. Can this have a relationship to the Grail?

Just a few thoughts on the subject.
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

The problem I have with all of that is that there doesn't seem to be ANY historicity to the story. The whole dying and resurrecting god thing was an archaic survival of a story that undoubtedly was an exoteric variation of the shamanic ascent/descent. I've touched on it in the article on Fulcanelli, but go into it a lot more in Secret History.

Here are two images from the choir of Auch Cathedral:

initiation_auch.jpg


think_with_a_hammer.jpg


Now, what are these figures trying to tell us? In both images, something is being done to the head of the central figure. In the upper image, it looks as though the attendants are trying to dislodge something from the head of the seated man by force. In the second image, we see an individual being held down with his (or her) head placed on an anvil while the three associated figures are depicted as hammering the head!

Is this some terrible Medieval torture being depicted?

No, it is a depiction of INITIATION. And, in fact, in one of the windows of Arnaud de Moles, Jesus is depicted as the central figure in the image above: having something done to his head. The figure above may, in fact, be meant to indicate Jesus because the head is shown with a covering of some sort that could be the "crown of thorns."

A Shaman is, as Historian of Religion, Mircea Eliade describes, a Technician of Ecstasy. This is an essential qualification and/or result of contact with the Divine. More than that, in order to be in direct contact with the Divine, the human being must be able to "see the unseen." This Seeing is the capacity of human beings to enlarge their perceptual field until they are capable of assessing not only outer appearances, but also the essence of everything in order to access the level of being that enables them make choices that are capable of initiating a new causal series in the world. It has nothing at all to do with "hallucinations" or mechanical means of altering brain perceptions: it is a "soul" thing, so to say.

The word "shaman" comes to us through Russian from the Tungusic saman. The word is derived from the Pali samana, (Sanskrit sramana), through the Chinese sha-men (a transcription of the Pali word).

The word shaman, may be related to Sarman. According to John G. Bennett , Sarmoung or Sarman:

"The pronunciation is the same for either spelling and the word can be assigned to old Persian. It does, in fact, appear in some of the Pahlawi texts...

The word can be interpreted in three ways. It is the word for bee, which has always been a symbol of those who collect the precious 'honey' of traditional wisdom and preserve it for further generations.

A collection of legends, well known in Armenian and Syrian circles with the title of The Bees, was revised by Mar Salamon, a Nestorian Archimandrite in the thirteenth century. The Bees refers to a mysterious power transmitted from the time of Zoroaster and made manifest in the time of Christ."

"Man" in Persian means "the quality transmitted by heredity and hence a distinguished family or race. It can be the repository of an heirloom or tradition. The word sar means head, both literally and in the sense of principal or chief. The combination sarman would thus mean the chief repository of the tradition..."

"And still another possible meaning of the word sarman is... literally, those whose heads have been purified." [John G. Bennett, Gurdjieff: Making of A New World]
Those whose heads have been purified! What an interesting idea!

The central theme of Shamanism is the "ascent to the sky" and/or the "descent" to the underworld. In the former, the practitioner experiences Ecstasy, in the latter, he battles demons that threaten the well being of humanity. There are studies that suggest evidence of the earliest practices is in the cave paintings of Lascaux with the many representations of the bird, the tutelary spirits, and the ecstatic experience (ca. 25,000 B.C.). Animal skulls and bones found in the sites of the European Paleolithic period (before 50,000 - ca. 30,000 BC) have been interpreted as evidence of Shamanic practice.

The "ecstatic experience" is the primary phenomenon of Shamanism, and it is this ecstasy that can be seen as the act of merging with the celestial beings. And merging results in Forced Oscillation that changes Frequency. Continued interaction with Celestial beings is a form of Frequency Resonance Vibration.

The idea that there was a time when man was directly in contact with the Celestial Beings is at the root of the myths of the Golden Age that have been redacted to the Grail stories of the 11th and 12th centuries. During this paradisical time, it is suggested that communications between heaven and earth were easy and accessible to everyone. Myths tell us of a time when the "gods withdrew" from mankind. As a result of some "happening," i.e. "The Fall," the communications were broken off and the Celestial Beings withdrew to the highest heavens.

But, the myths also tell us that there were still those certain people who were able to "ascend" and commune with the gods on the behalf of their tribe or family. Through them, contact was maintained with the "guiding spirits" of the group. The beliefs and practices of the present day shamans are a survival of a profoundly modified and even corrupted and degenerated remnant of this archaic technology of concrete communications between heaven and earth such as the Cassioopaean Transmissions.

The shaman, in his ability to achieve the ecstatic state inaccessible to the rest of mankind, due to the fusion of his emotional center via suffering, generally, (witness the metaphor of the Crucifixion), was regarded as a privileged being. More than this, the myths tell us of the First Shamans who were sent to earth by the Celestial Beings to DEFEND human beings against the "negative gods" who had taken over the rule of mankind. It was the task of the First Shamans to activate, in their own bodies, a sort of "transducer" of cosmic energy for the benefit of their tribe. This was expressed as the concept of the "world tree," which became the "axis" or the Pole of the World and later the "royal bloodlines."

It does seem to be true that there is a specific relationship between this function and certain "bloodlines." But, as with everything that has been provided to help mankind, this concept has been co-opted by the forces seeking to keep mankind in darkness and ignorance. The true and ancient bloodlines of the First Shamans have been obscured and hidden by the false trail of the invented genealogies of the Hebrew Old Testament supposedly leading to certain branches of present day European royal and/or noble families, which seek to establish a counterfeit "kingship" that has garnered a great deal of attention in recent times. I devote some attention to this subject in The Secret History of the World.

As we have already noted, BEFORE the Fall, every human being had access to communication with the higher densities via the "Maidens of the Wells" of ancient Celtic legend.

AFTER the Fall, it seems that a specific genetic variation was somatically induced by the incarnation of certain higher density beings who "gave their blood" for the "redemption of man." That is to say that they changed the body and DNA by Forced Oscillation. It is likely that this was done through the female incarnations because of the role of the mitochondrial DNA, but I don't want to get ahead of myself here, so we will leave that for the moment.

Nevertheless, the presence of this DNA, depending upon the terms of recombination, makes it very likely that there are many carriers of this bloodline/Shamanic ability on the earth today, though very few of them are carrying the "convergent" bloodlines.

The Sufis have kept the "Technician of Ecstasy" concept alive in their tradition of the "Poles of the World." The kutub or q'tub (pole of his time) is an appointed being, entirely spiritual of nature, who acts as a divine agent of a sphere at a certain period in time. Each kutub has under him four awtads (supports) and a number of abdals (substitutes) , who aid him in his work of preserving and maintaining the world. The interesting thing about this idea is that the individual who occupies the position does not even have to be aware of it! His life, his existence, even his very physiology, is a function of higher realities extruded into the realm of man. That this has a very great deal to do with "bloodlines," as promulgated in recent times is true, but not necessarily in the ways suggested. ...

Shamans are born AND made. That is to say, they are born to be made, but the making is their choice. And, from what I have been able to determine, the choice may be one that is made at a different level than the conscious, 3rd density linear experience. Those who have made the choice at the higher levels, and then have negated the choice at this level because they are not able to relinquish their ordinary life, pay a very high price, indeed.

A shaman stands out because of certain characteristics of "religious crisis." They are different from other people because of the intensity of their religious experiences. In ancient times, it was the task of the Shamanic elite to be the "Specialist of the Soul," to guard the soul of the tribe because only he could see the unseen and know the form and destiny of the Group Soul. But, before he acquired his ability, he was often an ordinary citizen, or even the offspring of a shaman with no seeming vocation (considering that the ability is reputed to be inherited, though not necessarily represented in each generation.)

At some point in his life, however, the shaman has an experience that separates him from the rest of humanity. The Native American "vision quest" is a survival of the archaic understanding of the natural initiation of the shaman who is "called" to his vocation by the gods.

A deep study of the matter reveals that those who seek the magico-religious powers via the vision quest when they have not been called spontaneously from within by their own questing nature and feeling of responsibility for humanity, generally become the Dark Shamans, or sorcerers; those who, through a systematic study, obtain the powers deliberately for their own advantage.

The true Shamanic initiation comes by dreams, ecstatic trances combined with extensive study and hard work: intentional suffering. A shaman is expected to not only pass through certain initiatory ordeals, but he/she must also be deeply educated in order to be able to fully evaluate the experiences and challenges that he/she will face. Unfortunately, until now, there have been precious few who have traveled the path of the Shaman, including the practice of the attendant skills of "battling demons," who could teach or advise a course of study for the Awakening Shaman. In my own case, over thirty years of study, twenty years of work as a hypnotherapist and exorcist, and the years of "calling to the universe" that constitute the Cassiopaean Experiment stand as an example of how the process might manifest in the present day.

The future shaman is traditionally thought to exhibit certain exceptional traits from childhood. He is often very nervous and even sickly in some ways. (In some cultures, epilepsy is considered a "mark" of the shaman, though this is a later corrupt perception of the ecstatic state.) It has been noted that shamans, as children, are often morbidly sensitive, have weak hearts, disordered digestion, and are subject to vertigo. There are those who would consider such symptoms to be incipient mental illness, but the fact is that extensive studies have shown that the so-called hallucinations or visions consist of elements that follow a particular model that is consistent from culture to culture, from age to age, and is composed of an amazingly rich theoretical content. It could even be said that persons who "go mad," are "failed shamans" who have failed either because of a flaw in the transmission of the genetics, or because of environmental factors. At the same time, there are many more myths of failed Shamanic heroes than of successful ones, so the warnings of what can happen have long been in place. Mircea Eliade remarks that:

"... The mentally ill patient proves to be an unsuccessful mystic or, better, the caricature of a mystic. His experience is without religious content, even if it appears to resemble a religious experience, just as an act of autoeroticism arrives at the same physiological result as a sexual act properly speaking (seminal emission), yet at the same time is but a caricature of the latter because it is without the concrete presence of the partner."
Well, that's a pretty interesting analogy! It even suggests to us the idea that one who attempts to activate a Shamanic inheritance within the STS framework of Wishful Thinking, has an "illusory" partner as in the above-described activity, with similar results. In other words, Sorcery is like masturbation: the practitioner satisfies himself, but his act does no one else any good. And, by the same token, a Shaman who operates without knowledge is like the proverbial "three minute egg": he gets everybody all excited, and then leaves them hanging! In both cases, such an individual has satisfied only themselves, and it could be said that, in the latter case, it is actually worse because another individual has been used for that satisfaction.

But, such amusing vulgarities aside (even if they DO make the point remarkably well) the thing about the shaman is that he/she is not just a sick person, he is a sick person who has been CURED, or who has succeeded in curing himself, at least spiritually!! The possibility of achieving the Shamanic powers for Service to Self also exists, so great care has to be used in trying to "see the unseen."

In many cases, the "election" of the shaman manifests through a fairly serious illness which can only be cured by the "ascent to the sky." After the ecstatic vision of initiation, the shaman feels MUCH better! After the response to the calling of the gods, the shaman shows a more than normally healthy constitution; they are able to achieve immense concentration beyond the capacity of ordinary men; they can sustain exhausting efforts and, most importantly, they are able to "keep a cool head" in the face of experiences that would terrify and break an ordinary person.

Another point that should be emphasized is that the Shaman must be able to be in full control of himself even when in the ecstatic state! (Trance channeling with no memory of what transpired is NOT the activity of a Shaman!) This ability to "walk in two worlds simultaneously" demonstrates an extraordinary nervous constitution. It has been said that the Siberian shamans show no sign of mental disintegration well into old age; their memories and powers of self-control are WELL above average.

Castaneda's Don Juan calls this state being "impeccable." This idea is also reflected in the archaic systems of the Yakut, where the shaman must be "serious, possess tact, be able to communicate effectively with all people; above all, he must not be presumptuous, proud, ill-tempered." The true shaman emanates an inner force that is conscious, yet never offensive. At the same time, it should be noted that a true shaman might evoke very negative responses from those who are under the domination of the Entropic forces. I have certainly experienced this more times than I care to mention.

Getting back to the infirmities, nervous disorders, illness of crisis and so forth that are the "signs of election," it is also noted that, sometimes an accident, a fall, a blow on the head, or being hit by lightning are the signs from the environment that the shaman has been elected. But, being "called" is not the same as being "chosen," or, more precisely, choosing. "Many are called; few choose to respond."

This choosing is a process, and it is a process of struggle and pain and suffering because, in the end, what is being killed is the ego.

The pathology of the Shamanic path seems to be part of the means of reaching the "condition" to be initiated. But, at the same time, they are often the means of the initiation itself. They have a physiological effect that amounts to a transformation of the ordinary individual into a technician of the sacred.

(But, if such an experience is not followed by a period of theoretical and practical instruction, the shaman becomes a tool for those forces that would use the Shamanic function to further enslave mankind as we have already noted.)

Now, the experience that transforms the shaman is constituted of the well-known religious elements of suffering, death and resurrection. One of the earliest representations of these elements is in the Sumerian story of the descent of Ishtar/Inanna into the Underworld to save her son-lover, Tammuz. She had to pass through Seven "gates of Hell" and, at each door or gate, she was stripped of another article of her attire because she could only enter the Underworld Naked. While she was in the underworld, the earth and its inhabitants suffered loss of creative vigor. After she had accomplished her mission, fertility was restored.

The most well known variation of this story is the myth of Persephone/Kore, the daughter of Demeter, who was kidnapped by Hades/Pluto.

The Shamanic visions represent the descent as dismemberment of the body, flaying of the flesh from the bones, being boiled in a cauldron, and then being reassembled by the gods and/or goddesses. This, too, is well represented in myth and legend, including the myth of Jesus: Suffering, death, and resurrection. In short, the crucifixion - the Burial of Christ - is a symbol of the Shamanic Transformation:

A Yakut shaman, Sofron Zateyev, states that during this visionary initiation, the future shaman "dies" and lies in the yurt for three days without eating or drinking. ...

Pyotr Ivanov gives further details. In the vision, the candidate's limbs are removed and disjointed with an iron hook; the bones are cleaned, the flesh scraped, the body fluids thrown away, and the eyes torn from their sockets. After this operation all the bones are gathered up and fastened together with iron.

According to a third shaman, Timofei Romanov, the visionary dismemberment lasts from three to seven days; during all that time the candidate remains like a dead man, scarcely breathing, in a solitary place. [Eliade, 1964]
According to another Yakut account, the evil spirits carry the future shaman's soul to the underworld and there shut it up in a house for three years (only one year for those who will become lesser shamans). Here the shaman undergoes his initiation. The spirits cut off his head, which they set aside (for the candidate must watch his dismemberment with his own eyes), and cut him into small pieces, which are then distributed to the spirits of the various diseases. Only by undergoing such an ordeal will the future shaman gain the power to cure. His bones are then covered with new flesh, and in some cases he is also given new blood.

According to another account, the "devils" keep the candidate's soul until he has learned all of their wisdom. During all this time the candidate lies sick. There is also a recurring motif of a giant bird that "hatches shamans" in the branches of the World Tree which is an allusion to an "Avian bloodline" that is opposed to a Reptilian heritage. The following excerpts are from the available accounts obtained in field research and should be read with the awareness that we have now entered a world of pure symbolism:

"...The candidate ...came upon a naked man working a bellows. On the fire was a caldron "as big as half the earth." The naked man saw him and caught him with a huge pair of tongs. The novice had time to think, "I am dead!" The man cut off his head, chopped his body into bits, and put everything in the caldron. There he boiled his body for three years.

There were also three anvils, and the naked man forged the candidate's head on the third, which was the one on which the best shamans were forged. ...

The blacksmith then fished the candidate's bones out of a river in which they were floating, put them together, and covered them with flesh again. ...

He forged his head and taught him how to read the letters that are inside it. He changed his eyes; and that is why, when he shamanizes, he does not see with his bodily eyes but with his mystical eyes. He pierced his ears, making him able to understand the language of plants.

The Tungus shaman Ivan Cholko states that a future shaman must fall ill and have his body cut in pieces and his blood drunk by the evil spirits. These throw his head into a caldron where it is melted with certain metal pieces that will later form part of his ritual costume.

...Before becoming a shaman the candidate must be sick for a long time; the souls of his shaman ancestors then surround him, torture him, strike him, cut his body with knives, and so on. During this operation the future shaman remains inanimate; his face and hands are blue, his heart scarcely beats.

...A Teleut woman became a shamaness after having a vision in which unknown men cut her body to bits and cooked it in a pot. According to the traditions of the Altain shamans, the spirits of their ancestors eat their flesh, drink their blood, open their bellies and so on.

...In South America as in Australia or Siberia both spontaneous vocation and the quest for initiation involve either a mysterious illness or a more or less symbolic ritual of mystical death, sometimes suggested by a dismemberment of the body and renewal of the organs.

...They cut his head open, take out his brains, wash and restore them, to give him a clear mind to penetrate into the mysteries of evil spirits, and the intricacies of disease; they insert gold dust into his eyes to give him keenness and strength of sight powerful enough to see the soul wherever it may have wandered; they plant barbed hooks on the tips of his fingers to enable him to seize the soul and hold it fast; and lastly they pierce his heart with an arrow to make him tenderhearted, and full of sympathy with the sick and suffering.

...If the alleged reason for the renewal of the organs (conferring better sight, tenderheartedness, etc.) is authentic, it indicates that the original meaning of the rite has been forgotten.

...Then the master obtains the disciple's "lighting" or "enlightenment," for [this] consists of a mysterious light which the shaman suddenly feels in his body, inside his head, within the brain, an inexplicable searchlight, a luminous fire, which enables him to see in the dark, both literally and metaphorically speaking, for he can now, even with closed eyes, see through darkness and perceive things and coming events which are hidden from others...

The candidate obtains this mystical light after long hours of waiting, sitting on a bench in his hut... When he experiences it for the first time "it is as if the house in which he is suddenly rises; he sees far ahead of him, through mountains, exactly as if the earth were one great plain, and his eyes could reach to the end of the earth. Nothing is hidden from him any longer; not only can he see things far, far away, but he can also discover souls, stolen souls, which are either kept concealed in far, strange lands or have been taken up or down to the Land of the Dead.

...The experience of inner light that determines the career of the Iglulik shaman is familiar to a number of higher mysticisms. In the Upanishads, the "inner light" defines the essence of the atman. In yogic techniques, especially those of the Buddhist schools, light of different colors indicates the success of particular meditations. Similarly, the Tibetan Book of the Dead accords great importance to the light in which, it appears, the dying man's soul is bathed during his mortal throes and immediately after death; a man's destiny after death (deliverance or reincarnation) depends on the firmness with which he chooses the immaculate light.

...The essential elements of this mystical vision are the being divested of flesh. ...In all these cases reduction to the skeleton indicates a passing beyond the profane human condition and, hence, a deliverance from it.

...Bone represents the very source of life. To reduce oneself to the skeleton condition is equivalent to reentering the womb for a complete renewal, a mystical rebirth. ...It is an expression of the will to transcend the profane, individual condition, and to attain a transtemporal perspective.

...The myth of renewal by fire, cooking, or dismemberment has continued to haunt men even outside the spiritual horizon of shamanism. ...

The myth of rejuvenation by dismemberment and cooking has been handed down in Siberian, Central Asian, and European folklore, the role of the blacksmith being played by Jesus or other saints. [Eliade, Shamanism, 1964]
The reader may now have a better idea of what the strange images of work being done on the initiate's head, including the hammering of the head on an anvil, must mean: the Shamanic Initiation, the Alchemical Transmutation via Techniques of Ecstasy. We now better understand what Fulcanelli was trying to tell us:

The strongest impression of my early childhood - I was seven years old - an impression of which I still retain a vivid memory, was the emotion aroused in my young heart by the sight of a gothic cathedral. I was immediately enraptured by it. I was in an ecstasy, struck with wonder, unable to tear myself away from the attraction of the marvellous, from the magic of such splendour, such immensity, such intoxication expressed by this more divine than human work.
These same ideas of death and re-birth are well represented in Alchemical literature as the various processes of "chemical transmutation."
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

Never realized where the term scapegoat came from. Seems to describe precisely how many people currently view the Islamic people. Have to have a scapegoat to be able to conduct nefarious deeds.
Esoquest said:
Figuratively, a scapegoat is someone selected to bear blame for a calamity. Scapegoating is the act of holding a person, group of people, or thing responsible for a multitude of problems. This is also known as a frameup. Scapegoats can also be referred to as patsies.
Yes, no light, just believe, have faith, don't think or question, come to church and give money or you are guilty. Of what? :P
Anart said:
This is absolutely classic - they are SO concerned about confusing believers and not at all concerned about shedding more light on the issue in general. Just gotta love those Vatican boys.
Having been raised Catholic and gone to Easter mass and the masses leading up to it many a time, I come to look at Judas in the present day in relation to the church and what he symbolizes to me in terms of the religous control system as significant. Seems to me that the Judas character plays some kind of role of the scapegoat that morphs into an example for all believers. If you loss faith in the Church/Jesus, question its tenets and fall away from the church's teaching or what some would look at as betrayal of the church, then suicide (straight to hell for you!) or calamnity will be the result. Judas' example or reference that is yearly reenacted and hammered home into the minds of church goers seems to hammer home what a person in the church should fear if they wonder from the flock. Don't ask questions and all will be well; accept the message or become Judas. I can imagine that there are personal examples for individuals to reference in that a person left the church and hit personal problems that either led to their demise or led them back to the church to be saved. This person's example would seem to solidify the others faith in the church and fear in the repercussions of questioning. I don't have any personal examples for this thought, except for past personal thoughts and feelings of guilt associated with first not going to church or properly following/practicing catholicism and later questioning the church and bible as a whole.
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

Mike said:
Having been raised Catholic and gone to Easter mass and the masses leading up to it many a time, I come to look at Judas in the present day in relation to the church and what he symbolizes to me in terms of the religous control system as significant. Seems to me that the Judas character plays some kind of role of the scapegoat that morphs into an example for all believers. If you loss faith in the Church/Jesus, question its tenets and fall away from the church's teaching or what some would look at as betrayal of the church, then suicide (straight to hell for you!) or calamnity will be the result. Judas' example or reference that is yearly reenacted and hammered home into the minds of church goers seems to hammer home what a person in the church should fear if they wonder from the flock.
I was raised Catholic as well, and I made the exact associations when I was young and was taught these things. The priests and nuns do have indoctrination down to a science, after all. This idea of punishment for falling away from the church also meshes nicely with the way the General Law kicks in if you start to 'fall away' from the matrix - and in both cases, the truth of the matter, even mythically in Judas' case, is that you are doing what you are came here to do.
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

I also was raised Catholic and I did not made any associations when I was young. Judas betrayed Jesus for some coins and that was it. Funny thing ... I perceived here in Mexico many people "betrayed Jesus for some coins" and its like its not big deal... but if you go to mass and religion services thats good, you are in the right path. That is one of the incongruencies of the -at least- mexican catholic society that made me look for other ways.

From what I know and see most of the mexicans are Catholic and the religious symbolism and meaning have an important place in daily lives. There are also other religions and cults as well. How come in this country the education, poverty and unemployment had become exacerbated by the growing in insecurity, inequity, corruption and lawlessness??? ...and the "had become" its not recently it had been since I had the use or reason.

But then I have been reading the cassiopaea material as well as sings of the times, and other articles, supplements and books and Im starting to understand many things around and inside myself.
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

Getting back to the crucifixion myth:

Burton Mack said:
Once upon a time, before there were gospels of the kind familiar to readers of the New Testament, the first followers of Jesus wrote another kind of book. Instead of telling a dramatic story about Jesus' life, their book contained only his teachings. ... For the first followers of Jesus, the importance of Jesus as the founder of their movement was directly related to the significance they attached to his teachings. What mattered most was the body of instructions that circulated in his name, what these teachings called for in terms of ideas, attitudes, and behavior, and the difference these instructions made in the lives of those who took them seriously.

But as the Jesus movement spread, groups in different locations and changing circumstances began to think about the kind of life Jesus must have lived. Some began to think of him in the role of a Sage, for instance, while others thought of him as a prophet, or even as an exorcist who had appeared to rid the world of its evils.

This shift from interest in Jesus' teachings to questions about Jesus' person, authority, and social role eventually produced a host of different mythologies.

The mythology that is most familiar to Christians of today developed in groups that formed in northern Syria and Asia Minor. There, Jesus' death was first interpreted as a martyrdom and then embellished as a miraculous event of crucifixion and resurrection. This myth drew on Hellenistic mythologies that told about the destiny of a divine being. Thus, these congregations quickly turned into a cult of the resurrected or transformed Jesus whom they now referred to as the Christ. The congregations of the Christ, documented most clearly in the letters of Paul from the 50s, experienced a striking shift in orientation, away from the teachings of Jesus and toward the spirit of the Christ who had died and was raised from the dead....

Narrative gospels began to appear... These gospels combined features of the martyr myth from the Christ cult with traditions about Jesus as he had been remembered in the Jesus movements, thereby locating the significance of Jesus in the story of his deeds and destiny. Naturally, these gospels came to a climax in an account of his trial, crucifixion, and resurrection from the dead. They followed a plot that was first worked out by Mark during the 70s in the wake of the Roman-Jewish war. The plot collapsed the time between the events of Jesus' life and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple which took place during the war. Mark achieved this plot by making connections between two sets of events: Jesus' death and the temple's destruction - that could only have been imagined AFTER the war. His gospel appears to have been the earliest full-blown written composition along these lines, but once it was conceived, all of the narrative gospels used this same basic plot. ...

According to the story line, Jesus was destined to come into conflict with the rulers of the world because he appeared in the world as the very son of God. This conflict escalated to a climax in the crucifixion of Jesus as the Christ, but would only be finally resolved when Jesus as the resurrected son of God appeared at the end of time to judge the world and establish a new social order as the reign of kingdom of God. In the meantime, both the resurrection of Jesus and the destruction of the temple were thought to establish the truth of God's great plan.

The first followers of Jesus could not have imagined, nor did they need, such a mythology to sustain them in their efforts to live according to his teachings. ... Even after the narrative gospels became the rage, the sayings gospel was still intact. It was still being copied and read with interest by ever-widening circles. And it was available in slightly different versions in the several groups that continued to develop within the Jesus movement.

Eventually, the narrative gospels prevailed as the preferred portrayal for Christians, and the sayings gospel finally was lost to the historical memory of the Christian church.

Were it not for the fact that two authors of narrative gospels incorporated sizeable portions of the sayings gospel into their stories of Jesus' life, the sayings gospel of the first followers of Jesus would have disappeared without a trace in the transitions taking place. We never would have known about the Jesus movements that flourished prior to the Christian church. ...
The most striking thing that the recovery of the Q document reveals is that, IF there had been a crucifixion, it would have so traumatized the early Jesus followers that they would surely have mentioned it!

But they didn't. From reading the extracted Q elements as Mack presents them, you get the feeling that Jesus most definitely was extraordinary in some way, that his teachings were compelling, but the focus was NOT on the man's history, but on what he taught, exampled, helped other people to experience for themselves.

Mack's two books on the subject: The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q & Christian Origins and Who Wrote the New Testament are about the best on the subject that I've read so far. Sure helps to wade through the crypto-historical nonsense.
 
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him

It should be noted that (unless there was some new discovery of which I am unaware), Q remains a hypothetical gospel reconstructed from common elements of two Canonical gospels. Even so, I believe in the great likelyhood of its existence because it stands to reason that the some of the earliest Christians (excluding the followers of Paul) probably believed that emphasis should be placed on the teachings of Jesus and not his life, on the message and not the messenger. The Gospel of Thomas, written decades after the Q document, is of a similar vein. It also alludes that not all teachings were given equally to all disciples.

There are allusions in many noncanonical gospels that there were outward teachings for the masses and deeper teachings for the elect. In short, there are indications that there were multiple layers to what Jesus represented, and different factions of his disciples evidently emphasized different aspects.

I agree that there is absolutely no concrete evidence shedding light on the life of Jesus or even really if such a person ever existed. When available writings of such a person were began a whole 20 if not 40 years after his alleged death one begins to get suspicious off the bat. It stands to reason, however, that someone must have been taking notes or at least transcribed what they knew a short time after the official story was over or even verbatim from Jesus' lectures.

And what would they have taken the time to write would not have been a biography, of what might have been an otherwise outwardly normal life of a sage, even including the crucifixion and healings. These were nothing special for the large group of wandering sages, some of whom met deaths at the hands of the authorities. One of these was the Essene "Teacher" who died a century before Jesus also by crucifixion. What disciples would have taken the trouble to note were the teachings, where important details could easily have been forgotten.

It also stands to reason that some of the more ambitious followers such as Paul would not be satisfied with just teachings. The world was full of wandering teachers and their teachings in those days. To someone like Paul, what this new movement needed was an angle, and so he and those who agreed with him launched an extensive marketing campaign, and to do so they needed to paint Jesus as a larger than life figure, a sage of sages, the son of God, and in terms that would impress the pagans of the Roman Empire.

Thomas, on the other hand, was not an apostle of the Roman Empire and so he did not rely on such marketing, but on the estoteric structure of the teachings themselves, and this fit with the psychology of the peoples of the East to whom he sent his message.

Even so, this does not mean that EVERYTHING about the life of Jesus was a fabrication, and that the obviously shamanic/mystery religion characteristics emphasized in Pauline doctrine were manufactured completely out of thin air (if so they are devoid of inspirational characteristics, and only cheap copies of other traditions).

Romans, however, DID crucify people, but they crucified people in a certain way, using ropes tying the arms to a cross-beam, keeping the victims on the cross for days to the point that buzzards would peck at them, and finally shattering the legs to make the body sag and suffocate, not to mention the effects of shock upon the victim.

Jesus, however, was crucified in a unique manner, which really (aside from perhaps the crown of thorns and the spear of Longinus) does not hold special symbolic significance. Why not describe a more or less average crucifixion and have Jesus miraculously reconstruct his shattered legs? Why the rush to crucify him right before the Passover Sabbath, which was highly irregular? Even if this date was fabricated for marketing purposes, why not present more convincing evidence that he was dead by shattering his legs? Why the nails that actually supported the body and lessened the suffocating effects of the crucifixion experience?

And if the event was fabricated, would not those disciples who believed in the importance of the teachings have protested? Would rumours have not spread? It stands to reason that there would at least have been some form of group that would have denied the crucifixion event just as the Prophet Mohammad provided a different version 600 years later. There were many offshoots of whatever was original Christianity, and there are versions of the story where Jesus is said to have lived a long life afterward (with admissions from people who knew some of the disciples that Jesus still hung around till the reign of the Emperor Trajan), but these admit that he was crucified and survived.

The Romans especially would want to discredit Christianity, and Pilate, the members of the Sanhedrin, the Qurator of Jerusalem were historic personages. Records could have been brought up by Nero and other persecuting Emperors refuting the crucifixion and hence the resurrection and Christianity would have been revealed as a fraud. The Romans, after all, were meticulous record-keepers and avid beaurocrats.

Yet, the Canonical gospels and many of the Apocrypha retain elements of a crucifixion that was essentially non-lethal in the way it occured, according to the opinions of some modern forensic specialists.

A good propagandist usually doesn't make things up out of thin air. They look for something they can use and embellish it. I believe that there was a deeper esoteric aspect to Jesus that represented some kind of mission, probably related to the Essene community which was deeply versed in the Apocryphal works of Enoch, that was not part of the public face of Jesus, an element of purpose in addition to the character of the wandering teacher and healer, and that this was something not to be made public, and that it was the driving force behind the most original crucifixion ever described.

I will, however, retract the following:

I said:
So one wonders if Jesus and the few "in on it", were really the only ones in on it. One wonders whether this was not organized by a greater esoteric community, and many accounts were allowed to be written in a biased manner to make the official version stick. The effectiveness of such a drama would surely depend on how convincing it was to as large a group of people as possible, i.e. how many "believed in Jesus".
Mainly because the original emphasis on non-biographical elements indicates that any real shamanic or practical esoteric elements in the personage of Jesus where most likely considered as pearls not to be easily thrown before swine. The officializers of Christianity then not only fabricated events, but probably took hold of elements never meant to be publicized and took them completely out of context, creating a powerful movement and cursing foundations of truth upon which it stood.
 
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