shijing
The Living Force
I wanted to bring attention to the Concordant Publishing Concern, in case it may be useful to anyone here on the forum who does research on biblical history. This is not an endorsement of the belief system of the Concern, but it may contain valuable research material for the following reasons:
I learned about this group from the grandmother of a friend that I had growing up, who was one of the translators for the Concern -- they are not at all evangelical, and it is my impression that relatively few people know about them. The core thrust of the Concern is to do direct translation from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into English, based on the oldest extant copies of Old and New Testament texts (the ones which have served as the basis of translation into English since and including the highly corrupted King James version). Although the Concern ultimately considers the original texts to be divinely inspired (a view which I do not share), it is interesting to see what differences their work has led to in their belief system when compared to mainstream Christianity. Amongst the more egregious differences, they do not believe in hell (or a traditional heaven for that matter), they do not believe in the trinity (holding that Jesus was a creation of God, and that the concept of Holy Spirit was inserted after the Council of Nicea in order to supply a needed third member), and their central tenet can be summarized as 'all in All' -- in other words, all of creation (including Satan) will eventually be reconciled with its original creator. I find this interesting as it seems to be similar to Hermetic doctrine, which I understand to espouse a similar principle.
I hope this may prove to be provide some resources of historical (and possibly etymological) interest.
I learned about this group from the grandmother of a friend that I had growing up, who was one of the translators for the Concern -- they are not at all evangelical, and it is my impression that relatively few people know about them. The core thrust of the Concern is to do direct translation from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into English, based on the oldest extant copies of Old and New Testament texts (the ones which have served as the basis of translation into English since and including the highly corrupted King James version). Although the Concern ultimately considers the original texts to be divinely inspired (a view which I do not share), it is interesting to see what differences their work has led to in their belief system when compared to mainstream Christianity. Amongst the more egregious differences, they do not believe in hell (or a traditional heaven for that matter), they do not believe in the trinity (holding that Jesus was a creation of God, and that the concept of Holy Spirit was inserted after the Council of Nicea in order to supply a needed third member), and their central tenet can be summarized as 'all in All' -- in other words, all of creation (including Satan) will eventually be reconciled with its original creator. I find this interesting as it seems to be similar to Hermetic doctrine, which I understand to espouse a similar principle.
I hope this may prove to be provide some resources of historical (and possibly etymological) interest.
