JESUS' EARTHLY EXISTENCE AND LEGITIMACY:

This thread is just the first salvo of my response to Shirley's request for more information on the New Testament and early Christian celebration of soul retrievals.  So please leave Acharya out of this thread and instead invoke her, if you, nust in the other Jesus threads.  On this thread, I want to connect Jesus' biblical role in retrievals with His apparent role in the astral explorations of Robert Monroe and Bruce Moen.

Paul was a hitman for the Pharisees.  He zealously persecuted,  jailed, and murdered Jerusalem Christians with a clear conscience.  Then he had his blinding light encounter with Christ on the Dasmacus road.   Paul’s travel companion, Luke, described this in Acts 9 and Paul hmself refers to his encounter with the Risen Christ (e. g. 1 Corinthians 9:1; 15:8-9; Galatians 1:15-16).  Paul reports a series of resurrection appearances to Jesus’ disciples in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8.  In his first trip Paul spends 14 days with Peter and Jesus’ brother James (Galatians 1:18-19), during which he could confirm the private appearance of the Risen Jesus to each of them that he reports in his Corinthian series of appearances.  .14 years later, Paul returns to Jerusalem to meet with the apostles (Galatians 2:1-10).  Jesus’ brother James, Peter, and John the son of Zebedee endorse Paul’s Gentile mission at this second visit.  Paul is familiar with the missionary travels of Jesus brothers and their wives (! Corinthians 9:5). Thus, Paul provides credible evidence for Jesus’ resurrection as well as proof of His prior earthly existence.

Many issues arise from Paul’s reports of resurrection appearances.  I will summarize just one that confirms their genuineness.  For most of Jesus’ public ministry, He was opposed by His own family members who rarely traveled with Him and thus did not witness His miracles.  On one occasion, family members try to physically restrain Hiim for failing to give his audience a lunch hreak!.  Mark tells us that His own family thought “He had lost His senses (Mark 3:20-21; cp. 3:31-35).”  When Jesus returns to his hometown, Nazareth, He encounters sitff opposition from the locals who dismiss His birth as illegitimate and prompt Him to lament, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown AND AMONG HIS OWN RELATIVES AND IN HIS OWN HOUSEHOLD (Mark 6:3-4).”  Then John 7:6 sums up Jesus’ alienation from His family
during much of His public ministry: “For not even His own borthers wre believing in Him.”  It seems unlikely that the disciples would just vmake His embarrassing family problems up.

His brothers’ skepticism quickly vanishes after His resurrection.   Thus, we find Mary and His brothers devoutly at prayer with His disciples in anticipation of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 1:14; cp. 2:1ff.).  What converted them?  The risen Jesus’ private appearance to His brother James must have been a major factor in changing their minds.  Only this appearance to James can adequately explain why James eventually replaces Peter as the supreme leader of the Jerusalem church, despite the fact that James had been a skeptic for much of Jesus’ public ministry.  

The Gospel of Mark can also be connected with eyewitness testimony.   The dates for the life of Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, are hard to determine with precision.  He wrote early in the 2nd century but his lifespan extended back far enough in the first century to allow him to have contacts with Jesus’ surviving disciples and with direct followers of those disciples.  Papias stresses his preference for living contacts with the eyewitnesses over written documents.   In his words,

“If anyone chanced to come who had actually been a follower of the elders [= the disciples], I would inquire as to the discourses of the elders, what Andrew, or what Peter said, or what Philip, or what Thomas or James, or what John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples said; and the things which ARISTION AND JOHN THE ELDER, DISCIPLES OF THE LORD, ARE [CURRENTLY] SAYING (Papias’ lost book quoted in Eusebius, HE 3:39).”

The early Jerusalem church met in the home of Mark’s mother (Acts 12:12) and Mark later became Peter’s travelling missionary companion (1 Peter 5:13).  Papias makes it clear that the Gospel of Mark consists essentially of Peter’s teaching materials:

“Mark was Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately, but not in the correct order of sequence, all that Peter recalled of what was said and done by the Lord.  For he neither heard the Lord nor was he a follower of His, but at a  later date, of Peter.  Peter used to adapt his instructions to the needs [of the moment], but not with a view to putting Jesus’ sayings in an orderly fashion.”

From the outset, Mark’s Gospel has clearly been criticized for putting stories and sayings of Jesus in the wrong historical sequence.  This criticism suggests monitoring from living disciples who are in a position to know the correct historical sequence.  Papias does not suggest that some other Gospel like Matthew was thought to preserve the correct sequence.   Indeed, Papias cites Mark’s Gospel first perhaps because of its prestigious connection with Peter.  So when you are reading Mark, you are basically reading Peter’s eyewitness recollections.  Thus, Mark provides good evidence for Jesus’ existence and indeed for the genuiness of his miracle stories.  

Papias proceeds to share this information about Matthew’s role: “Matthew compiled Jesus’sayings (Greek “logia”) in the Hebrew language; and everyone translated them as he was able.”  What Matthew composed was a sayings collection, not necessarily a Gospel.  The Greek allusion to “Hebrew”: really means “Aramaic,” the Hebrew dialect spoken by Jesus. Modern scholarship has identified a large sayings collection used by Matthew and Luke, but not by Mark.  This originally Aramaic compilation of sayings of Jesus has been labelled Q from the German “Quelle” which means “source” and was likely composed by the apostle Matthew.  Q is likely the sayings collection cited by Papias and his sources.  But did the apostle Matthew actually compose the whole Gospel that bears his name?   The scholarly consensus would say “no” on the grounds that Matthew's Gospel uses Mark as one of its sources and an eyewtiness of Jesus is unlikely to rely on someone (Mark) who is not an eyewitness.  But this is faulty logic.  Peter was one of the “inner circle” who witnessed more miracles and other dramatic events in Jesus’ life than Matthew.   So Matthean reliance of Petrine traditions would be understandable.  

Luke becomes Paul’s missionary travel companion and uses “we” to report on missionary adventures he shared with Paul (e. g. Acts 16:10; 20:5). Luke describes their trip together to Jerusalem where Luke meets Jesus’ brother James and the other disciples (Acts 21:16-18).  This trip gives Luke the chance to collect eyewitness materials for his future Gospel.  In his prologue Luke identifies his Gospel sources as eyewitness testimony (Luke 1:2).

The Gospel of John is traditionally traced to Ephesus and credited to the apostle John the son of Zebedee..  But scholarly support for both claims has been steadily eroding over the past decades.  I have devoted the past several years to a book I am writing on these issues.   I have discovered that the Gospel was in fact written at Pella, about 15 miles south of the Sea of Galilee and 2 miles east of the Jordan River. Pella is particularly important because around 66 AD the Jerusalem church received a prophetic oracle to flee the advancing Roman legions and relocate in Pella.  So Pella is the community of the eyewtinesses, the community of the Jerusalem church in exile.  The flight to Pella is reported by the Pellan document, “The Ascents of James,” and by Eusebius source for HE 3.5.3, usually identified as Aristo of Pella.  

The anonymous source of the Fourth Gospel is routinely described as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”   I have discovered that this phrase is a technical epithet for Jesus’ brother James, the leader of the Jerusalem church who was stoned to death by the high priest Annas in 62 AD.  In many different ways, the context of each allusion to this unnamed disciple contains several hints of his identity, all satisfied by James and no one else.  But that is too complicated issue to explain here. You’ll have to wait for my book.  

In my view, certain embarrassing elements of Gospel tradition attest its basic reliability.  For example, Mark tells us that Jesus "could do no miracles" in his hometown because of the negative energy there (Mark 6:6).  The "except" clause is a later gloss from a scribe to soften this admission.  The implication is that Jesus tried and failed to heal in Nazareth.  

Mark also tells us that Jesus needed two prayer sessions to heal the blind man of Bethsaida (8:22-26).  Why couldn't Jesus' do the job right the first time?   This embarrassing initial failure vouches for the truth of the story.  Who cares as long as Jesus ultimately heals the guy?  Mark's willingness to tell us that Jesus "bombed" in his hometown is unlikely to be invented and lends credibility to his other accounts of Jesus' miracles.  

Don

Before shifting this thread's focus to retrievals, I thought my Black and female readers might be interested in some implications of my preceding post.

Roman soldiers conscript a spectator to help a battered Jesus carry His cross.   This helper is identified  as “Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus (Mark 15:21),”  This description is striking for two reasons: (1) Cyrene is in North Africa.  (2) The identification of his irrelevant two sons seems odd until it is realized that Mark seems to have a church connection with them.  Indeed, Rufus is an active member of the church at Rome where Mark interpreted for Peter and wrote his Gospel.   In his letter to the Romans, Paul says: “Greet Rufus, a  choice man in the Lord, also his mother and mine (16:13).”   Paul has not yet traveled to Rome.  So why would he view Rufus’s mother as like a second mother to him?  Obviously, Paul knows her from elsehere.  But where?   The answer becomes clear once it is realized that Cyrenians played a vital role in establishing the church at Antioch (Acts 11:20) , which nurtured Paul in his new faith after his blinding light encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road.  In those days,  Paul was still frightened and confused about what to do about his new faith.   Rufus’s mother, the African wife of the Simon who helped Jesus carry His cross, treated Paul with kindness in his vulnerable days.  Thus, Africans play a vital role in the formative phase of Christianity.  If this were more  widely known, I wonder what impact this might have had on the history of racism and the enslavement of Africans.

Among the series of resurrection appearances Paul receives from his visits to the disciples in Jerusalem is a mass appearance to over 500 believers at one time (1 Corinthians 15:6).  Paul knows some of these people and can report: "Most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep.”  This appearance is not described in our Gospels.  It cannot have occurred inside a building,because no house churches back then could hold over 500 people.   So if the appearance happened outside, the most likely location seems to be the empty tomb.  

But this mass appearance is important for another reason.  To qualify as an apostle, one must have seen the risen Lord,  Two of the 500+ evidently incuded Andronicus and Junia, whom Paul desecribes as “outstanding apostles who were in Christ even before me (Romans 16:7).”  So Junia was a female apostle, the highest rank in the early church.   If women could be apostles, why can’t they  be priests, bishops, or even popes?   Part of the answer is that there was a cover-up of her female  gender.  In Greek her name can also be translated “Junias,” a man’s name; and that it is how the church has traditionally construed this name.   But “Junias” is unattested as a man’s name in the Greco-Roman period and “Junia” is a common woman’s name.  So this apostle must be a woman.  

This cover-up is only the tip of the iceberg.   Aside from a few male luminaries, unheralded women deserve major credit for making Christianity a world religion.  One woman, Priscilla, even looms as the best candidate as founder of the church of Rome, but never received credit for it. She and her huaband Aquila are the only Chrisian leaders mentioned when Luke reports Claudius's expulsion of all Jews from Rome, including Jewish Christians (Acts 18:1).  We know that this couple established a house church in Rome (Romans 16:3-4) and another house church in Greece after their expulsion (1 Corinthians 16:19).  But in 4 of the 6 times the New Testament mentions this couple, Pricilla is mentioned first.  This is shocking in a patriarchal society..  It likely means that Aquilla worked at his tent-making trade to finance her missionary work. If so, rhwn Priscilla founded the Roman Catholic church in the 40s AD, long before Peter arrived on the scene.

Our earliest description of the church of Rome (by Tatian) laments that the church essentially consists of a group of women and children.  Who do you imagine converted these women?  Most probably other women.  But history is written by the winners and the patriarchal Catholic leadership suppressed the contribution of these early enterprising female Christian leaders.  I could offer several examples of female leaders during the New Testament era.

Don

P.S. I also might add that Mark's Gospel contains a lot of Latinisms which seem indicative of its origin in Rome, just as Papias learns from his sources.

CHRIST’S ROLE IN RETRIEVALS: A NEW TESTAMENT PERSPECTIVE

The Bible challenges believers to satisfy the skeptic on the issue of divine justice: e. g. “Does God pervert justice (Job 8:3)?”  The Fundamentalist view that non-Christians are eternally dam-ned perverts divine justice and is unbiblical.   The neglected doctrine of soul retrievals is one piece of this justice puzzle.  The New Testament and early church provide the earliest literary evidence of the doctrine of retrievals in history.  

When we think of the biblical Hell, we must bear in mind that this language is figurative.   Jesus offers an alternative image of Hell that involves no fire (Luke 12:47-48).   Fire is a common symbol of postmortem purgation in late antiquity.   Jesus’ term “Gehenna” derives from the Valley of Hinnom, a garbage dump outside ancient Jerusalem where trash was burned.   Thus, "Gehenna" can be construed as an image for the fate of wasted lives and Hell can be understood as a realm of separation from the experience of God’s love.

The ancient Apostles Creed is routinely recited in liturgical worship.  One of its affirmations hints at Jesus’ role in soul retrievals: “He descended into Hell.”  This affirmation is rooted in two declarations in 1 Peter.  In 3:19-20 Peter informs us that, after His crucifixion, Christ preached to the disobedient “spirits in  prison.”   In intertestamental Judaism,  prison is a standard image for Hell.  Christ’s preaching implies an opportunity for positive response and therefore amounts to an attempted retrieval.  In 1 Peter 4:6 the beneficiaries of preaching to the dead include the unredeemed dead in general.

“The Gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God .”

In this text, it is not even clear that Christ is the presumed preacher to the hellbound.  Perhaps, the retrieval role of the righteous dead is implicit in this second postmortem preaching reference.  

RETRIEVALS THROUGH PROXY BAPTISM AND POSTMORTEM BAPTISM

Two book in the Catholic Old Testament (1 and 2 Maccabees) record the history of the Jewish revolt (175-163 BC)  to liberate themselves from their occupying Syrian Greek oppressors.   Judas, the Maccabean leader, arranges for prayers and sacrifices to be offered for fallen Jewish soldiers (2 Maccabees 12:42-45).  In the early church, such rituals for the dead develop into proxy baptism for the unredeemed  dead (1 Corinthians 15:29).   True, this practice seems limited to Corinth and is prohibited in the fourth century.  But St. Paul clearly approves of this practice and  identifies it as part of the process by which God will ultimately become “all in all (15:28).”   Thus, proxy baptism functions as an apostolically sanctioned early Christan form of soul retrievals and implies that God’s love abandons no one, even after death.  The hellbound find themselves in this plight as a result of their own choices based on Jesus’ principle: “By your own standard or measure it will be measured back to you (Matthew 7:2).”   This is a more specific application of the principle embraced by many astral explorers that like attracts like in the afterlife.  This perspective does not contradict biblical allusions to eternal punishment.  In both Hebrew (“olam”) and Greek (“aionios”) the terms translated “eternal” simply mean “for an indefinitely long time,”  not “eternal.”  

There is another way the early church understands baptism for the dead.  The early church borrows both the image of  the Acherusian lake and the Elysian field from Greek mythology to illumine their portrait of Heaven.  This imagery roughly corresponds to the Monroe description of Focus 27.  Immersion in Heaven’s higher vibration is expressed in terms of baptismal immersion in Heaven’s Acherusia lake.  This postmortem baptism finds expression in two texts from the next generation of apocalyptic texts after the Book of Revelation.  The first text is found in the Apocalypse of Peter (125 AD):

[Jesus:] “I will grant to them [the unrighteous] God, if they call to me (in their torment) and I will give to them a precious baptism unto salvation from the Acherusian lake, which...is situated in the Elysian field, the portion of the righteous with the saints (14).”

Our next text explicitlyassigns a retrieval role to the saints:

“To the pious, when they ask eternal God, HE WILL GRANT THEM TO SAVE PEOPLE OUT OF  THE DEVOURING FLAME AND FROM EVERLASTING TORMENTS.  This  also will He do.  For having gathered them again from the unwearying flame, and set them elsewhere, He will send them for His people’s sake into another life, an eternal one with the immortals, in the Elysian plain, where are the long waves of the ever-flowing, deep-bosomed Acherusian lake (Sibylline Oracles II, 331-338--composed around 150 AD).”

These two apocalyptic texts shed light on neglected imagery from the New Testament’s Book of Revelation.  In his vision of Heaven John learns that Heaven’s gates are eternally open (21:25).  Heaven’s permanently open gates imply traffic coming and going.  Coming and going on what missions?   Four factors suggest that soul retrievals are implied by this visionary image:

(1) In this vision, the hellbound wicked dwell “outside” Heaven’s gates (22:15).  
In an earlier vision John sees everyone in Hell worshiping and adoring God and Christ in Heaven (5:13).  In the first century, the expression “under the earth” refers to Hell.  This vision of universal worship implies the possibility, not the doctrine, of ultimate universal salvation.   The future is not fixed for Judaeo-Christian prophets and the decision to make godly choices always remains a prerogative of Hell’s denizens.  

(2) The Book of Revelation is a very angry book.   John has been exiled to Patmos by the Romans and his churches in Asia Minor are being persecuted by both Jews and Romans.  John longs for vindication.  His anger must be kept in mind when we try to interpret visionary imagery that he may not understand or  even want to understand.  He is not in the mood to hear that his persecutors may ulimately be retrieved from Hell.  Thus, he shrinks from the implication of the postmortem scheme revealed to him--first death followed by the “first resurrection (20:5)”, then “second death 20:14)” followed by the implied second resurrection.  

John never identifies the second resurrection, perhaps because it offends his desire for revenge.  Conservative Christian tradition has surmised that the Great White Throne judgment (21:11-14).is the image underlying the seocnd resurrection.   This assumption can be called into question on two grounds: (a) John does not use the language of “ascent” or resurrection in discussing this Judgment; (b) John’s concept of “second death” seems to imply ultimate release from “the lake of fire” for the second resurrection.  In that case, the second resurrection would represent the retrieval of hellbound souls through the eternally open gates of Heaven.

Don

Leave it to you Don to write the below.

I don't mean this in a bad way. I appreciate your perspective.

Have you run accross a book that does a good job of decoding the Book of Revelations? As you know, the symbology is quite extensive and hard to decipher at times.


Berserk wrote on Jan 16^th, 2007 at 8:36pm:

Yes, great writings Don.  Albert, Edgar Cayce's interpretation of Revelations is in my pov his best work.  I do not have it with me but can give further details on Monday if interested.  He likens the Seven Churches to our seven glandular system and this ties in coincidentially talking about the Charka's on the other thread.  I think he's got it right here.

This is what I love;  For a truth to become real it is manifested into form.  And the Bible is the record of the manifested into form. 

In my humble opinion that is. 

I believe that one key for understanding the book of revelations accurately, is to accept the fact that you can go to heaven and find happiness, without something such as a rapture taking place first.

Thank you Don.  I enjoy your teachings on the Scriptures very much.

Jesus also makes a minimal appearance in Bruce's books (in a role that is less of a retrieval, more of a bringing up of a soul very quickly in spiritual progress).  I'm at work, so I'm not going to look up which one, but he talks briefly about Jesus' interaction with a Christian woman who apparently quickly became an earth school graduate at a faster rate than was expected because of her character while she was physically living.  He sees Jesus as a caricature of a stereotypical Jesus during these interactions - which actually makes sense in his worldview - his perceiver encounters Jesus and his interpreter comes up with a caricature of Jesus.

I also was struck in reading about this of Bruce's seeming nonchalance about this, and non interest in exploring whether Jesus was a helper with a Jesus suit on, or an actual objective being that is God's son.  Possibly he had his answer to this question already but did not want to turn off Christian readers with his interpretation?  I'm not sure.