Theos-Talk Archives (September 2002 Message tt00152)

Sept 23 2002

Dear Larry:

It is difficult to select a single "core teaching" as they
all are inter-related. I will try, But as a preliminary
could we all read the following?

There is a remarkable amount of information concerning the
origins and history of Jesus and the development, good and
bad, of the Catholic church given in ISIS UNVEILED.

But to secure this one has to make notes page by page as one
reads.

In the INDEX to ISIS UNVEILED we can trace many of these,
but putting them together is educative. It is scholarly
work but it is also a voyage of discovery for those who
persist and desire to know all that is available, then, make
up their minds. -- Far better than accepting any one's
say-so. To do that implies laziness and a congenital desire
to be spoon-fed. Anything goes. The search for truth and
the discovery of facts is not for those.

In the matter of religion there is first and always the
HEART quality of devotion to an IDEAL. But as humans we are
mind beings, and eventually the devotion of the heart has to
be shored up by the Mind -- which works to know the truth.

In this we find we are altered to a devotion to truth
wherever found. One does not lose thereby the original
focus of one's faith, or one's trust in the One who
originally inspired us, and made it clear to us that a TRUTH
one could rely on was to be discovered through their
sayings, injunctions and axioms that there was a higher life
to be led. One discovers that there is a whole group of
Teachers of Men and every one of those BROTHERS carries the
identical message -- one they have each learned in the past
by their own efforts. They do not want "followers." They
want to encourage independent thinking. Therefore THEOSOPHY
does not ant followers or members -- it wants seekers.
Seekers for the ONE TRUTH.

But, we can see, if we observe our own progress, that we
alter from the purely passive and receptive side (as a
"follower") to the active one of verifying. Since we deem
all good and ideal statements to have a basis in fact and in
Universal Law, we begin reviewing the facts concerning the
origins of those statements and the life of the One who made
them live for us.

In no way does this violate the reverence and the awe we
feel for our first true Teacher. It emphasizes it.

>From this research we learn that all great reformers,
prophets, teachers -- are "sons of god." And we are led to
perceive that the DEITY envelops all. As such, DEITY being
omnipresent, we learn and then prove that we are also the
"sons and daughters" of GOD. None is excluded. No living
thing is excluded from that vast and seemingly disparate
family. Harmony appears to be the ultimate way in which
coexistence is maintained. Note: This DEITY is not a
"Personal god," but the IMPERSONAL and CHANGELESS ALL.

In Isis, I recall reading that the Jewish scriptures have a
record of Jesus as a Rabbi who led a reform, and following
that several sects arose or were affected by his teachings:
Gnostics, Ebionites, Nazarenes, Nabatheans, Christians,
etc... In his travels he is reputed to have visited India,
where a record of such a visit exists. Early in his life he
had met and studied with a group of Buddhist monks who had
established a vihara on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and
had been there for centuries.

In fact when one compares Jesus' statements and injunctions
with those of the Buddha there is a remarkable similarity.
H P B has done this also comparing them with those of
Krishna (ISIS UNVEILED II 537 )

Another statement to be found in ISIS UNVEILED is that Jesus
was not crucified. He lived until he was 80 and was
lapidated (stoned) to death by a mob instigated by his
antagonists -- at the end of his long ministry.

Jesus stated that his mission and work was directed to the
Jews. Not to the "Gentiles."

It is of importance to note that if one attends a Jewish
service at a Synagogue one may see how very similar much of
that service is to the biblical patterns. But there is a
vast difference in attitude there, when compared to, let us
say for example, a Catholic church service. There is not
mystery there, no hiding of meaning from the audience. The
Jewish attitude appears always to be one of learning and
inquiring and investigating, not merely the acceptance of
things on faith.

I found the same atmosphere of inquiry in Hindu temples and
religious conferences, where philosophy and meaning were
discussed. And the same is prevalent in Buddhism, where the
sayings and the meaning of the Buddha's injunctions was
continually inquired into, I found this to prevail in the
Buddhism closely allied to Tibet in the sub-Himalayan , in
Ceylon, in Thailand and Cambodia and specially among the
Japanese and Korean Buddhists.

Let me offer a paper, drawn largely from ISIS UNVEILED, on
this general subject:

-----------------------


THE BIBLE AND SECRET DOCTRINE



That the apostles had received a secret doctrine from
Jesus is evident from the words of Jerome1 who confessed it
in an unguarded moment. Writing to Bishop Chromatius and
Bishop Heliodorus, he complains that:

"a difficult work is enjoined since this translation has
been commanded me by your Felicities, which St. Matthew, the
Apostle, did not wish to be openly written. He made up this
book sealed up in the Hebrew characters, which he put forth
that the book might be possessed by the men most religious.
This very book they never gave to any one to be transcribed.
This book, having been published by Seleucus, a disciple of
Manichaeus, who also wrote falsely The Acts of the Apostles,
exhibited matter not for edification."

Justin Martyr2 used only this Gospel, as also did most
probably Titian, his disciple. The genuine primitive
Christians, the Gnostic3 Ebionites4, rejected all other
Christian writings except this original Hebrew Gospel of
Matthew, since destroyed by the Church. The Ebionites and
also the Nazarenes believed that Jesus was but a man,
according to Epiphanius.

Jerome states that the Hebrew book written by Matthew,
though he translated it twice, was nearly unintelligible to
him, for it was arcane and secret. Jerome knew that this
original Gospel of Matthew was the expounder of the only
true doctrines of Christ, a work of the friend and companion
of Jesus.

The Church Fathers resorted to falsification of their
scriptures.

Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew and not in Greek, as
it was the gospel of the Nazarenes and the Ebionite
Gnostics. Jerome cunningly translated it into Greek with
numerous secret meanings purposely changed and called it the
original. Matthew's original Hebrew Gospel did not
anthropomorphize Christ.

-----------------------------
FOOTNOTES

1 Je·rome, Saint. Originally Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus.
340?-420?. Latin scholar who produced the Vulgate, the first
Latin translation of the Bible from Hebrew.

1 Saint Justin Martyr, c.100-c.165, is recognized as one of
the most important early Christian writers. A Samarian, he
studied in different schools of philosophy--Stoic,
Peripatetic, Pythagorean, and Platonic--before becoming a
Christian. Justin took up the task of making a reasoned
defense of Christianity to outsiders. He went to Rome and
opened a school of philosophy. Justin is the reputed author
of a vast number of treatises, but the only authentic
remaining works are two Apologies, his Dialogue with Trypho
the Jew, and fragments of On the Resurrection. Justin was
beheaded, probably in 165. Feast day: June 1. Bibliography:
Barnard, L. W., Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (1967).

1 Gnosticism is a term derived from a Greek word for
knowledge (gnosis) and applied to a philosophical and
religious movement that influenced the Mediterranean world
from the 1st century BC to the 3d century AD. It expressed
itself in a variety of pagan, Jewish, and Christian forms.
Its name is derived from the fact that it promised salvation
through a secret knowledge or understanding of reality
possessed by its devotees.

1 A Jewish-Christian sect that flourished until the 4th
century, the Ebionites accepted Jesus Christ as the greatest
of the prophets but not as the Son of God. They practiced a
rigorous asceticism and stressed the binding character of
the Mosaic Law. After the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, the
Ebionites settled in Transjordan but remained outside the
mainstream of Christianity. They are often identified with
the Nazarenes, a similar sect described by 4th-century
writers.
------------------------


There were many kicks, blows and murders at the early
Church councils where scriptures were edited and selected.
Those who abided by the true writings of Matthew were
chastised and humiliated.

The Gospel of John was written by a Greek Platonist, a
non-Jew, the name being a forgery.

There is a Mosaic Bible in Hebrew, but written in the
Samaritan alphabet and also there is one written in the
Samaritan language and alphabet. They have textual
differences in the length of the cycles between the flood
and Abraham's birth. Rome follows the chronology of the
Hebrew language text.

The Samaritans repudiated the books of Moses, the Psalms,
the Talmud and Mishna, claiming that the Talmudists had
disfigured the books of Moses and Joshua out of all
recognition.

Hebrew did not exist either as a language or as an
alphabet in the days of Moses. The books that now pass
current under his name are not the true records. Moses did
not write in Hebrew square letters nor in Samaritan
characters, for both alphabets belong to a later date than
Moses.

The Hebrew alphabet is relatively recent and was probably
derived from the Palmyrene writing. The Hebrew Bible is
written in the Chaldaic phonographs of Hebrew words. The
square letters Jews rely upon are characters of an unknown,
dead language as abstruse as the cuneiform letters on the
mountains of Assyria. Scholars do not carry the now known
Hebrew square letters beyond the period of the fourth
century A.D. Ancient Hebrew is neither Syriac nor Chaldaic,
and was lost after 70 years captivity when the Israelites
assimilated Chaldaic. Ancient Hebrew ceased being spoken at
that time.

Jewish history cannot be carried back one day earlier than
the time of Moses. The language of Abraham was not Hebrew,
but Chaldaic. The Hebrew, in truth, cannot be called an old
language.

The name Jehovah was unknown to Moses or any Jew before
David. NEITHER DAVID NOR SOLOMON RECOGNIZED MOSES OR THE LAW
OF MOSES. They aspired to build Jehovic temples along the
lines of Venus worship and discarded the initiate teachings
of Moses.

The Hebrew scriptures had been tampered with and
remodeled, had been lost and rewritten a dozen times before
the days of Ezra. Ezra is probably the renegade Azara, the
ambitious Chaldean priest who re-fabricated the ancient lost
books taking stray records and combining them with the
numerical keys in which he was versed.

The Christian historians state that the scriptures
perished in the captivity of Nabuchodnosar, after which
Esdras, the Levite, became inspired and restored again the
whole ancient scriptures.

Kenealy states that the works of Esdras themselves must
have been destroyed by Antiochus. Judas Maccabeus or some
unknown compilers must have re-created the Old Testament
probably from Greek sources well after the Christian era.

The Bible is a masterpiece of clever, ingenious fables,
whose true meaning is revealed only to initiates. It is tale
and allegory, a repertory of invented personages and of dark
sayings and parables and thus quite misleading to the
ignorant. Moreover, exoterically, it is astrolatry and
Sabean worship, pure and simple. The Old Testament was most
undeniably milked out of the most ingenious brains of Hebrew
Kabalists familiar with Egyptian and Babylonian Sanskrit
centers of learning and with Hindu Deities. The prototypes
of nearly all Biblical personages are found in the early
pantheon of India. The sons of Brahma have become the
patriarchs.

The Septuagint5 manuscript is our most primary source of
the Old Testament, and it is claimed to have a miraculous
inspiration when first written in Greek, which copy has long
been "lost." The texts used are Hebrew copies that were made
from this destroyed Greek manuscript.

There is much dishonesty surrounding even the writing of
the Septuagint manuscript. Yet people persist in talking of
the ancient Hebrew as if one man alive knows one word of it!

The Hebrew Bible exists no more. What exists now are
garbled falsifications. II 135-165

With the exception of Paul and Clement of Alexandria, none
of the Church Fathers knew much of truth. They were mostly
ignorant and uneducated. Learning and sin were considered
synonymous with the early Christians. They were painfully
ignorant of contemporary teachings on the sphericity of the
Earth and the heliocentric system! How great was their
ignorance.

There is little of Paul left in the writings attributed to
him. He was a brave, honest and sincere man who believed not
in a personal Christ, but in a non-anthropomorphic abstract
Christ ideal. Paul was a profoundly learned scholar and high
initiate. He had never met Jesus. He was converted solely on
metaphysical philosophy and belonged to the same mystery
school as Jesus, analogous to an ancient Masonic Lodge. Thus
Paul calls himself a "Master Builder," a code name of rank
in the secret schools then and still used in Masonry today.

Paul was hated and persecuted by Peter, the John of
Revelation and James. John was a Jewish Kabalist, with much
inherent hatred of Greek mysteries. Paul's profound Greek
learning had humiliated him and he considered that Paul was
polluted because of his non-kosher, but superior Greek
wisdom. After Paul's death, both Peter and John, who wore
the headdress of the Jewish high priests and their pantaloon
trousers, zealously resumed preaching the rite of
circumcision, an exclusively Jewish covenant that Paul had
discarded. Peter was a Jewish Kabalist and not an initiate.

Such men as Irenaeus6, Epiphanius and Eusebius7 have
transmitted to posterity a reputation for such untruth and
dishonest practices that the heart sickens at the story of
their crimes of that period. The whole Christian scheme
rests upon their sayings.

---------------------------

1 Sep·tu·a·gint (sµp"t›-...-j¹nt), n. A Greek translation
of the Old Testament made in the third century B.C. [Latin
septu³gint³, seventy (from the traditional number of its
translators)

1 Saint Irenaeus, b. Anatolia, c.140-60, d. c.200, known as
the father of Catholic theology, is the most important
theologian of the 2d century AD. Irenaeus is known through
several extant works. His major efforts were spent in
combating GNOSTICISM, and his great work, Adversus haereses
(Against Heresies), was written for this purpose. He
developed the doctrine of recapitulation (anakephalaiosis)
of all things in Jesus Christ in opposition to the teachings
of gnostics. Irenaeus was the first Father of the Church to
systematize the religious and theological traditions of the
church.

1 Eu·se·bi·us of Cae·sa·re·a c. 260-c. 340. Palestinian
theologian whose Ecclesiastical History, written in Greek,
is a record of the chief events in the Christian Church
until the year 324, the first historian of the Christian
church. The outbreak of persecution during the reign of
Diocletian forced Eusebius to take refuge in Egypt, but he
was captured and imprisoned. Around 315 he was elected
bishop of Caesarea, in Palestine. At the Council of Nicaea
he sought to reconcile the opposing parties. Although he did
not incline to the homoousios doctrine of ATHANASIUS, which
established the full divinity and equality of Christ with
the Father, he eventually signed the formula approved at
Nicaea, largely in deference to Emperor Constantine, who had
convened the council. His Chronicle (c.303) and
Ecclesiastical History (c.324) are principle sources of
early Christian history.

----------------------------





THE SORTES SANCTORUM

We must not forget that the Christian Church owes its
present Gospels and its dogmatism to the Sortes Sanctorum.
Unable to agree as to which were the most divinely inspired
of the numerous gospels of the time, the mysterious Council
of Nicea8 concluded to leave the decision to miraculous
intervention. There were 318 bishops in the council and they
were a set of illiterate, simple creatures that understood
nothing, according to Sabinus, which is equivalent to saying
that they were a set of fools.

Pappus9 tells of the bit of magic resorted to, to decide
which were the true gospels. In his Synodicon to the council
Pappus says:

"having promiscuously put all the books that were
referred to the Council for determination under a
communion-table in a church, the bishops besought the Lord
that the inspired writings might get upon the table, while
the spurious ones remained underneath, and it happened
accordingly."

But we are not told who kept the keys of the council
chamber overnight!

The Christian world owes its "Word of God" to a method of
divination, for which the Church later would burn thousands
at the stake. In treating of this phenomenon of the
self-sorting manuscripts, the Fathers of the Church say that
God himself presides over the Sortes. St. Augustine
confessed to using divination by lots, but never for a
worldly purpose. The Fathers found authority for the Sortes
in the verse where it is said "the lot is cast into the lap,
but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord." Proverbs
16:33. They later reversed themselves to say that divination
was wholly disposed by the Devil. IU II 251

The following letter written by Saint Gregory10 of
Nazianzen, one of the most respected Church Fathers, to
Saint Jerome, shows what posterity got instead of the
truth:

--------------------------------
FOOTNOTES

1 Nicaea, councils of. The two councils of Nicaea were
ecumenical councils of the Christian church held in 325 and
787, respectively. The First Council of Nicaea, the first
ecumenical council held by the church, is best known for its
formulation of the Nicene Creed. It was the decision of the
council, formalized in the Nicene Creed, that God the Father
and God the Son were consubstantial and coeternal and that
the Arian belief in a Christ created by and thus inferior to
the Father was heretical. Arius himself was excommunicated
and banished. The council was also important for its
disciplinary decisions concerning the status and
jurisdiction of the clergy in the early church and for
establishing the date on which Easter is celebrated.

The Second Council of Nicaea, the seventh ecumenical council
of the Christian church, was convoked by the Byzantine
empress Irene in 787 to rule on the use of saints' images
and icons in religious devotion.

1 Pappus {pap'-uhs} Pappus, fl. early 4th century AD, was a
Greek mathematician of Alexandria who is important not only
for his original contributions to higher geometry but also
as a valuable source of information on his predecessors.
His Mathematical Collection, a guide for reading the
original works of Greek geometers, is the main, and
sometimes only, source for knowledge of works by Euclid and
by Apollonius of Pergamon. Pappus also wrote a commentary on
Ptolemy's Almagest and a geographical work, Description of
the World.

1 Gregory of Nazianzus, Saint, c.330-389, one of the fathers
of the church. He, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nyssa are
called the Cappadocian Fathers. Brought up in the
Cappadocian town of Nazianzus (present-day Bekar, Turkey),
where his father was bishop, Gregory was consecrated a
bishop c.371. He played a leading role at the first Council
of Constantinople. His development of terminology helped to
clarify the language of Nicaea and lay the foundation for
the debates of the 5th-century ecumenical councils.
------------------------------------------


"Nothing can impose better on a people than verbiage; the
less they understand, the more they admire. Our fathers and
doctors have often said, not what they thought, but what
circumstances and necessity forced them to say." IU II 183


- Collected from The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled by
H. P. Blavatsky11

---------------------------

1 Bla·vat·sky , Helena Petrovna Hahn. 1831-1891.
Russian-born theosophist who founded (1875) the Theosophical
Society in New York City and wrote books of occult lore,
such as Isis Unveiled (1877).

1 Je·rome, Saint. Originally Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus.
340?-420?. Latin scholar who produced the Vulgate, the first
Latin translation of the Bible from Hebrew.

1 Saint Justin Martyr, c.100-c.165, is recognized as one of
the most important early Christian writers. A Samarian, he
studied in different schools of philosophy--Stoic,
Peripatetic, Pythagorean, and Platonic--before becoming a
Christian. Justin took up the task of making a reasoned
defense of Christianity to outsiders. He went to Rome and
opened a school of philosophy. Justin is the reputed author
of a vast number of treatises, but the only authentic
remaining works are two Apologies, his Dialogue with Trypho
the Jew, and fragments of On the Resurrection. Justin was
beheaded, probably in 165. Feast day: June 1. Bibliography:
Barnard, L. W., Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (1967).

1 Gnosticism is a term derived from a Greek word for
knowledge (gnosis) and applied to a philosophical and
religious movement that influenced the Mediterranean world
from the 1st century BC to the 3d century AD. It expressed
itself in a variety of pagan, Jewish, and Christian forms.
Its name is derived from the fact that it promised salvation
through a secret knowledge or understanding of reality
possessed by its devotees.

1 A Jewish-Christian sect that flourished until the 4th
century, the Ebionites accepted Jesus Christ as the greatest
of the prophets but not as the Son of God. They practiced a
rigorous asceticism and stressed the binding character of
the Mosaic Law. After the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, the
Ebionites settled in Trans-Jordan but remained outside the
mainstream of Christianity. They are often identified with
the Nazarenes, a similar sect described by 4th-century
writers.

=========================


Best wishes,

Dallas

========================

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry F Kolts [mailto:llkingston2@juno.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2002 9:04 AM
To: study@blavatsky.net
Subject: [bn-study] Saying of Jesus I

It is clear that our Genesis projrct is moving rather
slowly at this
point. Be assured that more will be forecoming shortly.

In the meantime, we should not limit this list to one topic.
Dallas as
suggested at several times over the past months that it
would be a
challenge to us to take a look at the sayings of Jesus and
see what he
really meant by those words and how we can apply them to our
lives.

We can do many things with such a study.

While Christians view Jesus's teachings as unique, it has
been widely
demonstrated that his core teachings are similar to those
of other
avatars. Thus we can find the sayings of Krishna, Buddha
Siddhartha,
Zaratustra, etc., and show the universality of the teaching.
This would
help confirm which teaching are genuine. We may also find a
way to load
this type of information into the Matrix.

We can look at earlier text. Can the Greek reveal things
lost to us in
English? For instance, what did Jesus mean when he spoke of
"the world"?
Was that something separate from "the earth"? we can did
into these
subtle nuances.

We can discuss what is actually meant by the saying. Too
many teachings,
as Dallas, has indicated, have been explained away,
rationalized,
relegated to the "doesn't apply to us" category. Yet if
there is unity
among the avatars in this regard, they weren't just talking
to the wind,
and must have meant for us to apply what was sais. How do we
go about
this?

We then should also find statements from HPB or from her
masters that
parallel what is being said. This would be the final
confirmation that
this is a true eternal core teaching.

Are we up to this? Are we ready to really challage ourselves
beyond the
intellectual knowledge we normally pursue? Isn't it at least
worth a try?
If we are truely evolving eternal beings as we teach we are,
shouldn't we
be moving ahead with the evolving part?

Now, I was going to pick a saying to begin with, but on
second thought,
as Dallas first proposed this, he must have had some
particular sayings
in mind. So I leave it to you Dal to start this off. I only
ask that you
give out one concise core teaching and not an entire group.
Let's take
this slow so all can follow and we can concentrate on one
teachjing at a
time. Then we'll proceed from there.

Larry

____________________________________________________________
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