Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00593)

March 18 2004

 

Re Death of Jesus:

 

Dear Peter:

 

This may be of help. (SEE BELOW)

 

I notice that G Massey’s lecture is quoted as a source as well as the
book the SEPHER TOLDOS JESHU

A Talmudic record.

 

Best wishes, 

 

Dallas

 

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

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Bernin [mailto:bernin@algonet.se] 
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 2:17 AM
To:
Subject: Jesus died at Lud and not in India...according to the Jews and
HPB

 

 

Malmö, Sweden april the 19th 2004

 

Friends,

 

I found this interesting quote under the word EBIONITES from the
“Glossary” of HPB…were it states that Jesus lived and died at Lud, “or
was put to death…”…so I guess, the idea circulating some time now at BN
Study, that He died in India seems to be incorrect, at least seen from
the complete text below…perhaps he had been to India, but did at least
not die there…

Or how are we to understand this bold statement of Helena Blavatsky?

Peter Bernin

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

 

 

JESUS IN THEOSOPHY.DOC

 

 

JESUS
in THEOSOPHY

 

 

DEATH OF JESUS

 

 

JESUS LAPIDATED ( Killed by Stoning -- SEE footnote)

 

 

".....In its mystical sense, the Egyptian cross owes its origin, as an
emblem, to the realization by the earliest philosophy of an androgynous
dualism of every manifestation in nature, which proceeds from the
abstract ideal of a likewise androgynous deity, while the Christian
emblem is simply due to chance. Had the Mosaic law prevailed, Jesus
should have been lapidated. ‡ The crucifix was an instrument of torture,
and utterly common among Romans as it was unknown among Semitic nations.
It was called the "Tree of Infamy." It is but later that it was adopted
as a Christian symbol; but, during the first two decades, the apostles
looked upon it with horror.§ It is certainly not the Christian Cross
that John had in mind when speaking of the "signet of the living God,"
but the mystic Tau — the Tetragrammaton, or mighty name, which, on the
most ancient kabalistic talismans, was represented by the four Hebrew
letters composing the Holy Word. 

 

‡ The Talmudistic records claim that, after having been hung, he was
lapidated and buried under the water at the junction of two streams.
"Mishna Sanhedrin," vol. vi., p. 4; "Talmud," of Babylon, same article,
43 a, 67 a.

ISIS UNVEILED II 255 FOOTNOTE

 

 

"... Talmudist says, in substance, the following: Jesus was thrown in
prison, and kept there forty days; then flogged as a seditious rebel;
then stoned as a blasphemer in a place called Lud, and finally allowed
to expire upon a cross. "All this," explains Levi, "because he revealed
to the people the truths which they (the Pharisees) wished to bury for
their own use. He had divined the occult theology of Israel, had
compared it with the wisdom of Egypt, and found thereby the reason for a
universal] religious synthesis."
ISIS II 202

 

 

[A similar description is given in H.P.B.'s
Theosophical Articles, Vol. III, pp. 180-181fn.. “Esoteric Character of
the Gospels” -- 

 

“:Accused by the Jews of having learned the magic art in Egypt, and of
having stolen from the Holy of Holies the Incommunicable Name, Jehoshua
(Jesus) was put to death by the Sanhedrin of Lud. He was stoned and then
crucified on a tree, on the eve of Passover. The narrative is ascribed
to the Talmudistic authors of “Scota” and “Sanhedrin,” p. 19, Book of
Zochiel. And the “Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ, a lecture by G.
Massey.”

(see I U II 201-2 ) H.P.B.'s Theosophical
Articles, Vol. III, pp. 180-181fn. ]

 

 

EBIONITES (Heb.). Lit., “the poor”; the earliest sect of Jewish
Christians, the other being the Nazarenes. They existed when the term
“Christian” was not yet heard of. Many of the relations of Iassou
(Jesus), the adept ascetic around whom the legend of Christ was formed,
were among the Ebionites. As the existence of these mendicant ascetics
can be traced at least a century earlier than chronological
Christianity, it is an additional proof that lassou or Jeshu lived
during the reign of Alexander Jannæus at Lyd (or Lud), where he was put
to death as stated in the Sepher Toldos Jeshu.” T
Glos 108-9

 

 

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

 

 

WHO WAS JESUS?

 

 

"The position THEY [MASTERS] give to Jesus, as far as we know, is that
of a great and pure man, a reformer who would fain have lived but who
had to die for that which he regarded as the greatest birth-right of man
-- absolute Liberty of conscience; of an adept who preached a universal
Religion knowing of, and having no other "temple of God" but man
himself; that of a noble Teacher of esoteric truths which he had no time
given to him to explain; that, of an initiate who recognized no
difference -- save the moral one -- between men; who rejected caste, and
despised wealth; and who preferred death rather than to reveal the
secrets of initiation. And who, finally, lived over a century before
the year of our vulgar, so called, Christian era."
THEOSOPHIST , July 1883

 

 

 

HISTORY OF JESUS

 

 

 

"...Jesus, whether of Nazareth or Lud,* was a Chrestos, as undeniably as
that he never was entitled to the appellation of Christos, during his
life-time and before his last trial.

 

*Or Lydda, reference is made here to the Rabbinical tradition in the
Babylonian Gemara, called SEPHER TOLDOTH JESHU, about Jesus being the
son of one named Pandira, and having lived a century earlier than the
era called Christian, namely, during the reign of the Jewish king
Alexander Jannaeus and his wife Salome, who reigned from the year 106 to
79 B.C. Accused by the Jews of having learned the magic art in Egypt,
and of having stolen from the Holy of Holies the Incommunicable Name,
Jehoshua (Jesus) was put to death by the Sanhedrin at Lud. He was
stoned and then crucified on a tree, on the eve of Passover. The
narrative is ascribed to the Talmudistic authors of "Sota" and
"Sanhedrin," p.19 Book of Zechiel.” ISIS
UNVEILED, II. 201

 

 

 

INNOCENTS A nick-name given to the Initiates and
Kabalists before the Christian era. The "Innocents" of Bethlehem and of
Lud (or Lydda) who were put to death by Alexander Jannaeus, to the
number of several thousands (B.C. l00, or so), gave rise to the legend
of the 40,000 innocent babes murdered by Herod while searching for the
infant Jesus. The first is a little known historical fact, the second a
fable, as sufficiently shown by Renan in his VIE DE JESUS."
T. Glossary, p.156-7

 

 

 

"ALEXANDER JANNAEUS, or Alexander Yannai (d. 76 B.C.), Hasmonean
(Maccabean) king of Judaea, succeeded his brother Aristobulus I tq. v.)
in 103 B.C. Alexander imposed his rule on the Palestinian coast and on
areas east of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. He was an ally of the
Sadducees and persecuted their opponents, the Pharisees. He was
succeeded by his wife, Salome Alexandra, who reversed his pro-Sadducee
policy."

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, 15TH Ed. 1981

 

 

 

"We believe that it was the Sadducees and not the Pharisees who
crucified Jesus. They were Zadokites--partisans of the house of Zadok,
or the sacerdotal family. In the "Acts" the apostles were said to be
persecuted by the Sadducees, but never by the Pharisees. In fact, the
latter never persecuted any one. They had the scribes, rabbis, and
learned men in their numbers, and were not, like the Sadducees, jealous
of their order." ISIS II 148

 

 

 

JESUS OF MYTH AND LEGEND

 

 

"A thick film of allegory and blinds, the "dark sayings" of fiction and
parable, thus covers the original esoteric texts from which the New
Testament--as now known--was compiled. Whence, then, the Gospels, the
life of Jesus of Nazareth? Has it not been repeatedly stated that no
human, mortal brain could have invented the life of the Jewish Reformer,
followed by the awful drama on Calvary?  

 

We say, ON THE AUTHORITY OF THE ESOTERIC EASTERN SCHOOL, THAT ALL THIS
CAME FROM THE GNOSTICS, as far as the name Christos and the
astronomico-mystical allegories are concerned, and from the writings of
the ancient Tanaim as regards the Kabalistic connection of Jesus or
Joshua, with the Biblical personifications. One of these is the mystic
esoteric name of Jehovah--not the present fanciful God of the profane
Jews ignorant of their own mysteries, the God accepted by the still more
ignorant Christians--but the compound Jehovah of the pagan Initiation.
This is proven very plainly by the glyphs or mystic combinations of
various signs which have survived to this day in the Roman Catholic
hieroglyphics.

 

The Gnostic Records contained the epitome of the CHIEF SCENES ENACTED
DURING THE MYSTERIES OF INITIATION, SINCE THE MEMORY OF MAN; though even
that was given out invariably under the garb of semi-allegory, whenever
entrusted to parchment or paper. But the ancient Tanaim, the Initiates
from whom the wisdom of the Kabala (oral tradition) was obtained by the
later Talmudists, had in their possession the secrets of the mystery
language, and it is in this language that the Gospels were written."
HPB ART III 197

 

 

"...except a handful of self-styled Christians who subsequently won the
day, ALL THE CIVILIZED PORTION OF THE PAGANS WHO KNEW OF JESUS HONORED
HIM AS A PHILOSOPHER, AN ADEPT WHOM THEY PLACED ON THE SAME LEVEL WITH
PYTHAGORAS AND APOLLONIUS. Whence such a veneration on their part for a
man, were he simply, as represented by the Synoptics, a poor, unknown
Jewish carpenter from Nazareth? As an incarnated God there is no single
record of him on this earth capable of withstanding the critical
examination of science; as one of the greatest reformers, an inveterate
enemy of every theological dogmatism, a persecutor of bigotry, a teacher
of one of the most sublime codes of ethics, Jesus is one of the grandest
and most clearly-defined figures on the panorama of human history. His
age may, with every day, be receding farther and farther back into the
gloomy and hazy mists of the past; and his theology -- based on human
fancy and supported by untenable dogmas may, nay must with every day
lose more of its unmerited prestige; alone the grand figure of the
philosopher and moral reformer instead of growing paler will become with
every century more pronounced and more clearly defined. It will reign
supreme and universal only on that day when the whole of humanity
recognizes but one father -- the UNKNOWN ONE above -- and one brother --
the whole of mankind below." ISIS II 150

 

 

[ This quotation from an account by Charles Johnston of his interview
with H.P.B. when he met her for the first time in London, in the Spring
of 1887, soon after her arrival from Ostende appeared originally in
Theosophical Forum (New York) for April, May, June and July 1900-1 ] and
was reprinted in The Theosophical Movement, April 1964. 

 

 

 

Question: "How do the adepts guide the souls of men?"

 

H.P.B.: "In many ways, but chiefly by teaching their souls
direct, in the spiritual world But that is difficult for you to
understand. This is quite intelligible, though. At certain regular
periods, they try to give the world at large a right understanding of
spiritual things. One of their number comes forth to teach the masses,
and is handed down to tradition as the Founder of a religion. Krishna
was such a Master; so was Zoroaster; so were Buddha and Shankara
Acharya, the great sage of Southern India. And, so also was the
Nazarene. He went forth against the counsel of the rest, to give to the
masses before the time, moved by a great pity, and enthusiasm for
humanity; he was warned that the time was unfavorable, but nevertheless
he elected to go, and so was put to death at the instigation of the
priests."


 

 

Question: "Have the adepts any secret records of his life?"

 

H.P.B.: "They must have," she answered; "for they have records
of the lives of all Initiates. Once I was in a great cave-temple in the
Himalaya mountains, with my Master," and she looked at the picture of
the splendid Rajput; "there were many statues of adepts there; pointing
to one of them, he said: 'This is he whom you call Jesus. We count him
to be one of the greatest among us.' "But that is not the only work of
the adepts. At much shorter periods, they send forth a messenger to try
to teach the world. Such a period comes in the last quarter of each
century, and the Theosophical Society represents their work for this
epoch."

THE THEOS. FORUM, New York, Apl, 1900

 

 

"I have no intention of repeating here stale arguments and logical
exposes of the whole theological scheme; for all this has been done,
over and over again, and in a most excellent way, by the ablest
"Infidels" of England and America. But I may briefly repeat a prophecy
which is a self-evident result of the present state of men's minds in
Christendom. Belief in the Bible literally, and in a carnalised Christ,
will not last a quarter of a century longer. The Churches will have to
part with their cherished dogmas, or the 20th century will witness the
downfall and ruin of all Christendom, and with it, belief even in a
Christos, as a pure Spirit. The very name has now become obnoxious, and
theological Christianity must die out, never to resurrect again in its
present form. This, in itself, would be the happiest solution of all,
were there no danger from the natural reaction which is sure to follow:
crass materialism will be the consequence and the result of centuries of
blind faith, unless the loss of old ideals is replaced by other ideals,
unassailable, because universal, and built on the rock of eternal truths
instead of the shifting sands of human fancy.”  

"The Esoteric Character of the Gospels." H.P.B.
Articles III, 194

 

 

 

ONE UNIVERSAL ANTIQUE RELIGION

 

 

"We can assert, with entire plausibility, that there is not one of all
these sects--Kabalism, Judaism, and our present Christianity included--
but sprung from the two main branches of that one mother-trunk, the once
universal religion, which antedated the Vedic ages--we speak of that
PREHISTORIC BUDDHISM WHICH MERGED LATER INTO BRAHMANISM. 

 

The religion which the primitive teaching of the early few apostles most
resembled--a religion preached by Jesus himself--is the elder of these
two, Buddhism. The latter as taught in its primitive purity, and
carried to perfection by the last of the Buddhas, Gautama, based its
moral ethics on three fundamental principles. It alleged that 

 

1, everything existing, exists from natural causes; 

 

2, that virtue brings its own reward, and vice and sin their own
punishment; and, 

 

3, that the state of man in this world is probationary.  

 

We might add that on these three principles rested the universal
foundation of every religious credal God, and individual immortality for
every man -- if he could but win it." ISIS II 123

 

 

"... THE SECRET DOCTRINES OF THE MAGI, OF THE PRE-VEDIC BUDDHISTS, of
the hierophants of the Egyptian Thoth or Hermes, and of the adepts of
whatever age and nationality, including the Chaldean kabalists and the
Jewish nazars, were identical from the beginning. When we use the term
Buddhists, we do not mean to imply by it either the exoteric Buddhism
instituted by the followers of Gautama-Buddha, nor the modern Buddhistic
religion; but the secret philosophy of Sakyamuni, which in its essence
is certainly identical with the ancient wisdom-religion of the
sanctuary, the pre-Vedic Brahmanism. (p. 143)   

 

Already some time before our era, the adepts, except in India, had
ceased to congregate in large communities; but whether among the
Essenes, or the Neo-platonists, or, again, among the innumerable
struggling sects born but to die, the same doctrines, identical in
substance and spirit, if not always in form, are encountered. By
Buddhism, therefore, we mean that religion signifying literally the
doctrine of wisdom, and which by many ages antedates the metaphysical
philosophy of Siddartha Sakyamuni." ISIS II 142

 

 

 

JESUS TAUGHT

 

 

"...the followers of Jesus evidently adhered to a sect which became a
still more exasperating thorn...It appeared as a heresy within another
heresy; for while the nazars of the olden time...were Chaldean
kabalists, the adepts of the new dissenting sect showed themselves
reformers and innovators from the first...

 

The Essenes...were the converts of Buddhist missionaries who had overrun
Egypt, Greece, and even Jude at one time, since the reign of Asoka the
zealous propagandist; and while it is evidently to the Essenes that
belongs the honor of having had the Nazarene reformer, Jesus, as a
pupil, still the latter is found disagreeing with his early teachers on
several questions of formal observance. He cannot strictly be called an
Essene...neither was he a nazar, or Nazaria of the older sect...He is
the founder of the sect of the new nazars, and...a follower of the
Buddhist doctrine...what is self-evident is that he preached the
philosophy of Buddha-Sakyamuni. Denounced by the later prophets, cursed
by the Sanhedrin, the nazars--they were confounded with others of that
name...they were secretly, if not openly persecuted by the orthodox
synagogue. It becomes clear why Jesus was treated with such contempt
from the first..." ISIS II 132

 

 

 

"The motive of Jesus was evidently like that of Gautama-Buddha, TO
BENEFIT HUMANITY AT LARGE BY PRODUCING A RELIGIOUS REFORM WHICH SHOULD
GIVE IT A RELIGION OF PURE ETHICS; the true knowledge of God and nature
having remained until- then solely in the hands of the esoteric sects,
and their adepts. p. 137 - To assure ourselves that Jesus was a true
Nazarene -- albeit with ideas of a new reform -- we must not search for
the proof in the translated Gospels, but in such original versions as
are accessible. ... Thus, if we take in account all that is puzzling and
incomprehensible in the four Gospels, revised and corrected as they now
stand, we shall easily see for ourselves that the true, original
Christianity, such as was preached by Jesus, is to be found only in the
so-called Syrian heresies. Only from them can we extract any clear
notions about what was primitive Christianity."
ISIS II 133

 

 

 

"... BELIEF IN REINCARNATION has nothing in it that can militate against
the teachings of Christ. We affirm, furthermore, that the great
Nazarene Adept distinctly taught it. So did Paul and the Synoptics, and
nearly all the earliest Church Fathers, with scarcely an exception,
accepted it, while some actually taught the doctrine." HPB
ART I 172

 

 

 

"Jesus, the Adept we believe in, taught our Eastern doctrines, KARMA and
REINCARNATION foremost of all. When the so-called Christians will have
learnt to read the New Testament between the lines, their eyes will be
opened and -- they will see." HPB ART
I 175

 

 

 

Question: "Do not the words and teachings of Jesus, taken in their
esoteric sense, point one (the) way to the Theosophic Path?" 

 

"WQJ: Taken in the sense he intended the people to take them, they lead
to the way. Taken in the sense in which he desired his Disciples to
receive them, they are teachings upon the way. Taken in their esoteric
sense -- as he knew them -- they are the way. Were the wisdom of Egypt
and India today blotted out from both the seen and unseen worlds -- the
true seeker would find in his teachings, when rightly studied, all the
teachings of Isis and Buddha. As he received his instruction from
Egypt, heired from India, it is more than probable that esoterically his
teachings are identical with both." WQJ ART II 459

 

 

"...in common with Pythagoras and other hierophant reformers, Jesus
divided his teachings into exoteric and esoteric." ISIS II 147

 

 

"...what the Homilies do prove, is again our assertion that THERE WAS A
SECRET DOCTRINE PREACHED BY JESUS TO THE FEW WHO WERE DEEMED WORTHY TO
BECOME ITS RECIPIENTS AND CUSTODIANS. ... If we now recall the fact
that a portion of the Mysteries of the "Pagans" consisted of the ...
aporrheta, or secret discourses; that the secret Logia or discourses of
Jesus contained in the original Gospel according to Matthew, the meaning
and interpretation of which St. Jerome confessed to be "a difficult
task" for him to achieve, were of the same nature; and if we remember,
further, that to some of the interior or final Mysteries only a very
select few were admitted; and that finally it was from the number of the
latter chat were taken all the ministers of the holy "Pagan" rites, we
will then clearly understand this expression of Jesus quoted by Peter:
"Guard the Mysteries for me and the sons of my house," i.e. of my
doctrine. And, if we understand it rightly, we cannot avoid thinking
that this "secret" doctrine of Jesus, even the technical expressions of
which are but so many duplications of the Gnostic and Neo-platonic
mystic phraseology --that this doctrine, we say, was based on the same
transcendental philosophy of the Oriental Gnosis as the rest of the
religions of those and earliest days. That none of the later Christian
sects, despite their boasting, were the inheritors of it, is evident
from the contradictions, blunders, and clumsy repatching of the mistakes
of every preceding century by the discoveries of the succeeding one.”
ISIS II 191

 

 

"...except a handful of self-styled Christians who subsequently won the
day, ALL THE CIVILIZED PORTION OF THE PAGANS WHO KNEW OF JESUS HONORED
HIM AS A PHILOSOPHER, AN ADEPT WHOM THEY PLACED ON THE SAME LEVEL WITH
PYTHAGORAS AND APOLLONIUS. Whence such a veneration on their part for a
man, were he simply, as represented by the Synoptics, a poor, unknown
Jewish carpenter from Nazareth? As an incarnated God there is no single
record of him on this earth capable of withstanding the critical
examination of science; as one of the greatest reformers, an inveterate
enemy of every theological dogmatism, a persecutor of bigotry, a teacher
of one of the most sublime codes of ethics, Jesus is one of the grandest
and most clearly-defined figures on the panorama of human history. His
age may, with every day, be receding farther and farther back into the
gloomy and hazy mists of the past; and his theology -- based on human
fancy and supported by untenable dogmas may, nay must with every day
lose more of its unmerited prestige; alone the grand figure of the
philosopher and moral reformer instead of growing paler will become with
every century more pronounced and more clearly defined. It will reign
supreme and universal only on that day when the whole of humanity
recognizes but one father -- the UNKNOWN ONE above -- and one brother --
the whole of mankind below." ISIS II 150

 

 

Jesus said: "Know ye not ye are Gods ?" John
I.12 Isis I p. 2

 

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