Theos-Talk Archives (May 2004 Message tt00183)

May 21, 2004

Dear Friends:

Iraq has among its people some of the oldest Christian sects -- the
Sabeans, Mendeans, Nabatheans, and St. John Christians (some located
in the swamp and marshes near Basra).

We might also consider some old Christian Sects:

Here is a partial list of what the Theosophical Glossary offers:

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

CODEX NAZARAEUS (LAT.) THE “BOOK OF ADAM” — the latter name meaning
anthropos, Man or Humanity. The Nazarene faith is called sometimes the
Bardesanian system, though Bardesanes (B.C. 155 to 228) does not seem
to have had any connection with it. True, he was born at Edessa in
Syria, and was a famous astrologer and Sabian before his alleged
conversion. But he was a well-educated man of noble family, and would
not have used the almost incomprehensible Chaldeo dialect mixed with
the mystery language of the Gnostics, in which the Codex is written.
The sect of the Nazarenes was pre-Christian. Pliny and Josephus speak
of the Nazarites as settled on the banks of the Jordan 150 years B.C.
(Ant.Jud. xiii. p. 9); and Munk says that the “Naziareate was an
institution established before the laws of Musah” or Moses. (Munk p.
169.) Their modern name is in Arabic— El Mogtasila; in European
languages—the 
Mendæans or “Christians of St. John”. (See “Baptism”.) But if theterm
Baptists may well be applied to them, it is not with the Christian
meaning: for while they were, and still are Sabians, or pure
astrolaters, the Mendæans of Syria, called the Galileans, are pure
polytheists, as every traveller in Syria and on the Euphrates can
ascertain, once he acquaints himself with their mysterious rites and
ceremonies. (See Isis Unv. ii. 290, et seq.) So secretly did they
preserve their beliefs from the very beginning, that Epiphanius who
wrote against the Heresies in the14th century confesses himself unable
to say what they believed in (i. 122); he simply states that they
never mention the name of Jesus, nor do they call themselves
Christians (loc. cit. 190. Yet it is undeniable that some of the
alleged philosophical views and doctrines of Bardesanes are found in
the codex of the Nazarenes. (See Norberg’s Codex Nazaræous or the
“Book of Adam ‘, and also “Mendæans “.)	Glos pp 85-6



BARDESANES or BARDAISAN. A Syrian Gnostic, erroneously regarded
as a Christian theologian, born at Edessa (Edessene Chronicle) in 155
of our era (Assernani Bibl.. Orient. i. 389). He was a great
astrologer following the Eastern Occult System. According to Porphyry
(who calls him the Babylonian, probably on account of his Chaldeeism
or astrology), “Bardesanes . . . . held intercourse with the Indians
that had been sent to the Caesar with Damadamis at their head” (De
Abst. iv. 17), and had his information from the Indian gymnosophists.
The fact is that most of his teachings, however much they may have
been altered by his numerous Gnostic followers, can be traced to
Indian philosophy, and still more to the Occult teachings of the
Secret System. Thus in his Hymns he speaks of the creative Deity as
“Father-Mother “, and elsewhere of Astral Destiny “(Karma) of “ Minds
of Fire” (the Agni-Devas) &c. He connected the Soul (the personal
Manas) with the Seven Stars, deriving its origin from the Higher
Beings (the divine Ego); and therefore “admitted spiritual
resurrection but denied the resurrection of the body “, as charged
with by the Church Fathers. Ephraim shows him preaching the signs of
the Zodiac, the importance of the birth-hours and “proclaiming the
seven”. Calling the Sun the” Father of Life” and the Moon the” Mother
of Life “, he shows the latter “laying aside her garment of light
(principles) for the renewal of the Earth “. Photius cannot understand
how, while accepting “the Soul free from the power of genesis (destiny
of birth)” and possessing free will, he still placed the body under
the rule of birth (genesis). For “they (the Bardesanists) say, that
wealth and poverty and sickness and health and death and all things
not within our control are works of destiny” (Bibl. Cod. 223,
p.221—f). This is Karma, most evidently, which does not preclude at
all free-will. Hippolytus makes him a representative of the Eastern
School. Speaking of Baptism, Bardesanes is made to say (loc. cit. pp.
985-ff “It is not however the Bath alone which makes us free, but the
Knowledge of who we are, what we are become, where we were before,
whither we are hastening, whence we are redeemed; what is generation
(birth), what is re-generation (re.birth) “. This points plainly to
the doctrine of re-incarnation. His conversation (Dialogue) with Awida
and Barjamina on Destiny and Free Will shows it. “What is called
Destiny, is an order of outflow given to the Rulers (Gods) and the
Elements, according to which order the Intelligences (Spirit-Egos) are
changed by their descent into the Soul, and the Soul by its descent
into the body “. (See Treatise, found in its Syriac original, and
published with English translation in 1855 by Dr. Cureton, Spicileg.
Syriac. in British Museum.)	Glos pp 50-1

 
BARDESANIAN (SYSTEM). The “Codex of the Nazarenes “, a
system worked out by one Bardesanes. It is called by some a Kabala
within the Kabala; a religion or sect the esotericism of which is
given out in names and allegories entirely sui-generis. A very old
Gnostic system. This codex has been translated into Latin. Whether it
is right to call the Sabeanism of the Mendaites (miscalled St. John’s
Christians), contained in the Nazarene Codex, “the Bardesanian system
“, as some do, is doubtful; for the doctrines of the Codex and the
names of the Good and Evil Powers therein, are older than Bardaisan.
Yet the names are identical in the two systems.	Glos p. 51



EBIONITES (Heb.). it., “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 lassozi 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


ESSENES	A hellenized word, from the Hebrew Asa, a “healer”. A
mysterious sect of Jews said by Pliny to have lived near the Dead Sea
per millia saeculorum—for thousands of ages. “ Some have supposed them
to be extreme Pharisees, and others—which may be the true theory—the
descendants of the Benim-nabim of the Bible, and think that they were
‘Kenites and Nazarites. They had many Buddhistic ideas and practices;
and it is noteworthy that the priests of the Great Mother at Ephesus,
Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were also so denominated. Eusebius,
and after him De Quincey, declared them to be the same as the early
Christians, which is more than probable. The title ‘ brother’, used in
the early Church, was Essenean ; they were a fraternity, or a
koinobion or community like the early converts.” (Isis Unveiled.)
T Glos 115


MENDÆANS (Gr.). Also called SABIANS, and ST. JOHN CHRISTIANS.
he latter is absurd, since, according to all accounts, and even their
own, they have nothing at all to do with Christianity, which they
abominate. The modern sect of the Mendæans is widely scattered over
Asia Minor and elsewhere, and is rightly believed by several
Orientalists to be a direct surviving relic of the Gnostics. For as
explained in the Dictionnaire des Apocryphes by the Abbé Migrie (art.
“Le Code Nazaréan” vulgairement appele “Livre d’Adam”), the Mendæans
(written in French Mandaites, which name they pronounce as Mandai)
“properly signifies science, knowledge or Gnosis. Thus it is the
equivalent of Gnostics” (loc. cit. note p. 3). As the above cited work
shows, although many travellers have spoken of a sect whose followers
are variously named Sabians, St. John’s Christians and Mendæans, and
who are scattered around Schat-Etarab at the junction of the Tigris
and Euphrates (principally at Bassorah, [Basra], Hoveiza, Korna,
etc.), it was Norberg who was the first to point out a tribe belonging
to the same sect established in Syria. And they are the most
interesting of all. This tribe, some 14,000 or 15,000 in number, lives
at a day’s march east of Mount Lebanon, principally at Elmerkah,
(Lata-Kieh). They call themselves indifferently Nazarenes and
Galileans, as they originally come to Syria from Galilee. They claim
that their religion is the same as that of St. John the Baptist, and
that it has not changed one bit since his day. On festival days they
clothe them selves in camel’s skins, sleep on camel’s skins, and eat
locusts and honey as did their “Father, St. John the Baptist”. Yet
they call Jesus Christ an impostor, a false Messiah, and Nebso (or the
planet Mercury in its evil side), and show him as a production of the
Spirit of the “seven badly- disposed stellars” (or planets). See Codex
Nazaræus, which is their Scripture.	T Glos 212


SABIANISM. The religion of the ancient Chaldees. The
latter believing in one impersonal, universal, deific Principle, never
mentioned It, but offered worship to the solar, lunar, and planetary
gods and rulers, regarding the stars and other celestial bodies as
their respective symbols.. THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY p. 282



NAZAR (Heb.). One “set apart”; a temporary monastic class of
celibates spoken of in the Old Testament, who married not, nor did
they use wine during the time of their vow, and who wore their hair
long, cutting it only at their initiation. Paul must have belonged to
this class of Initiates, for he himself tells the Galatians (i. x5)
that he was separated or “set apart” from the moment of his birth ;
and that he had his hair cut at Cenchrea, because “he had a vow” (Acts
xviii.18), i.e., had been initiated as a Nazar; after which he became
a “ master-builder” (i Corinth. iii.10). Joseph is styled a Nazar
(Gen. xlix. 26). Samson and Samuel were also Nazars, and many more.
THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY p. 225-6

 
NAZARENES (Heb.). The same as the St. John Christians;
called the Mend or Sabeans. Those Nazarenes who left Galilee several
hundred years ago and settled in Syria, east of Mount Lebanon, call
themselves also Galileans ; though they designate Christ “a false
Messiah” and recognise only St. John the Baptist, whom they call the
“Great Nazar”. The Nabatheans with very little difference adhered to
the same belief as the Nazarenes or the Sabeans. More than this— the
Ebionites, whom Renan shows as numbering among their sect all the
surviving relatives of Jesus, seem to have been followers of the same
sect if we have to believe St. Jerome, who writes: “ I received
permission from the Nazaræans who at Beræa of Syria used this (Gospel
of Matthew written in Hebrew) to translate it The Evangel which the
Nazarenes and Ebionites use which recently I translated from Hebrew
into Greek.’ (Hieronymus’ Comment. to Matthew, Book II., chapter xii.,
and Hieronymus’ De Viris Illust. cap 3.) Now this supposed Evangel of
Matthew, by whomsoever written, “exhibited matter”, as Jerome
complains (bc. cit.), “not for edification but for destruction”(of
Christianity). But the fact that the Ebionites, the genuine primitive
Christians, “rejecting the rest of the apostolic writings, made use
only of this (Matthew’s Hebrew) Gospel” (Adv. Hær., i. 26) is very
suggestive. For, as Epiphanius declares, the Ebionites firmly
believed, with the Nazarenes, that Jesus was but a man “of the seed of
a man” (Epiph. Contra Ebionites). Moreover we know from the Codex of
the Nazarenes, of which the “Evangel according to Matthew” formed a
portion, that these Gnostics, whether Galilean, Nazarene or Gentile,
call Jesus, in their hatred of astrolatry, in their Codex
Naboo-Meschiha or “ Mercury”. (See “ Mendæans”). This does not shew
much orthodox Christianity either in the Nazarenes or the Ebionites;
but seems to prove on the contrary that the Christianity of the early
centuries and modern Christian theology are two entirely opposite
things. T. Glos pp 226


NABATHEANS. A sect almost identical in their beliefs with the
Nazarenes and Sabeans, who had more reverence for John the Baptist
than for Jesus. Maimonides identifies them with the astrolaters.
“Respecting the beliefs of the Sabeans”, he says, “the most famous is
the book, The agriculture of the Nabatheans”. And we know that the
Ebionites, the first of whom were the friends and relatives of Jesus,
according to tradition, in other words, the earliest and first
Christians, “were the direct followers and disciples of the Nazarene
sect”, according to Epiphanius and Theodoret (See the Contra Ebionites
of Epiphanius, and also “Galileans” and “Nazarenes”).
T. Glos p. 221


LOGIA (Gr.). The secret discourses and teachings of Jesus contained
in the Evangel of Matthew—in the original Hebrew, not the spurious
Greek text we have—and preserved by the Ebionites and the Nazarenes in
the library collected by Pamphilus, at Caesarea. This “Evangel” called
by many writers “the genuine Gospel of Matthew”, was used according to
(St.) Jerome, by the Nazarenes and Ebionites of Beroea, Syria, in his
own day (4th century). Like the Aporrheta or secret discourses, of the
Mysteries, these Logia could only be understood with a key. Sent by
the Bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, Jerome, after having obtained
permission, translated them, but found it “a difficult task” (truly
so!) to reconcile the text of the “genuine” with that of the spurious
Greek gospel he was acquainted with. (See Isis Unveiled II., 180 et
seq.)	T Glos p. 190


COLLEGE OF RABBIS. A college at Babylon; most famous during the
early centuries of Christianity. Its glory, however, was greatly
darkened by the appearance in Alexandria of Hellenic teachers, such as
Philo Judæus, Josephus, Aristobulus and others. The former avenged
themselves on their successful rivals by speaking of the Alexandrians
as theurgists and unclean prophets. But the Alexandrian believers in
thaumaturgy were not regarded as sinners or impostors when orthodox
Jews were at the head of such schools of “hazim “. These were colleges
for teaching prophecy and occult sciences. Samuel was the chief of
such a college at Ramah; Elisha at Jericho. Hillel had a regular
academy for prophets and seers; and it is Hillel, a pupil of the
Babylonian College, who was the founder of the Sect of the Pharisees
and the great orthodox Rabbis. Glos p. 87



SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHETS	. Schools established by Samuel for the
training of the Nabiim (prophets). Their method was pursued on the
same lines as that of a Chela or candidate for initiation into the
occult sciences, i.e., the development of abnormal faculties or
clairvoyance leading to Seership. Of such schools there were many in
days of old in Palestine and Asia Minor. That the Hebrews worshipped
Nebo, the Chaldean god of secret learning, is quite certain, since
they adopted his name as an equivalent of Wisdom.	Glos p. 294


DRUZES.	A large sect, numbering about 100,000 adherents, living on
Mount Lebanon in Syria. Their rites are very mysterious, and no
traveller, who has written anything about them, knows for a certainty
the whole truth. They are the Sufis of Syria. They resent being called
Druzes as an insult, but call themselves the “disciples of Hamsa “,
their Messiah, who came to them in the ninth century from the “Land of
the Word of God”, which land and word they kept religiously secret.
The Messiah to come will be the same Hamsa, but called Hakem—the
All-Healer “. (See Isis Unveiled, II 308, et seq.)	T Glos 105


ZOHAR, OR SOHAR. A compendium of Kabbalistic Theosophy, which shares
with the Sepher Yetzirah the reputation of being the oldest extant
treatise on the Hebrew esoteric religious doctrines. Tradition assigns
its authorship to Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai, AD. 80, but modern
criticism is inclined to believe that a very large portion of the
volume is no older than 1280, when it was certainly edited and
published by Rabbi Moses de Leon, of Guadalaxara in Spain. The reader
should consult the references to these two names. In Lucifer (Vol. I.,
p. 141) will be found also notes on this subject : further discussion
will be attainable in the works of Zunz, Graetz, Jost, Steinschneider,
Frankel and Ginsburg. The work of Franck (in French) upon the Kabalah
may be referred to with advantage. The truth seems to lie in a middle
path, viz., that while Moses de Leon was the first to produce the
volume as a whole, yet a large part of some of its constituent tracts
consists of traditional dogmas and illustrations, which have come down
from the time of Simeon ben Jochai and the Second Temple. There are
portions of the doctrines of the Zohar which bear the impress of
Chaldee thought and civilization, to which the Jewish race had been
exposed in the Babylonish captivity. Yet on the other hand, to condemn
the theory that it is ancient in its entirety, it is noticed that the
Crusades are mentioned; that a quotation is made from a hymn by Ibn
Gebirol, A,D. 1050; that the asserted author, Simeon ben Jochai, is
spoken of as more eminent than Moses; that it mentions the
vowel-points, which did not come into use until Rabbi Mocha (AD. 570)
introduced them to fix the pronunciation of words as a help to his
pupils, and lastly, that it mentions -a comet which can be proved by
the evidence of the context to have appeared in 1264. There is no
English translation of the Zohar as a whole, nor even a Latin one. The
Hebrew editions obtainable are those of Mantua, 1558; Cremona, 1560;
and Lublin, 1623. The work of Knorr von Rosenroth called Kabbala
Denudata includes several of the treatises of the Zohar, but not all
of them, both in Hebrew and Latin. MacGregor Mathers has published an
English translation of three of these treatises, the Book of Concealed
Mystery, the Greater and the Lesser Holy Assembly, and his work
includes an original introduction to the subject.
The principal tracts included in the Zohar are :—“The Hidden Midrash”,
“The Mysteries of the Pentateuch”, “The Mansions and Abodes of
Paradise and Gaihinnom”, “The Faithful Shepherd”, “The Secret of
Secrets”, “Discourse of the Aged in Mishpatim” (punishment of souls),
“The Januka or Discourse of the Young Man”, and “The Tosephta and
Mathanithan”, which are additional essays on Emanation and the
Sephiroth, in addition to the three important treatises mentioned
above. In this storehouse may be found the origin of all the later
developments of Kabbalistic teaching. [w.w.w.]	Glos 388

[ Extracts from the THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY ]

DTB

 













Dallas
 

-----Original Message-----
From: samblo@cs.com [mailto:samblo@cs.com] 
Sent: Friday, May 21, 2004 6:34 AM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Theos-World American Invasion of Iraq - The objective.

Raghu,
There already was under Saddam and still is a Christian Community
in Iraq. 
I recently saw video of them
and their Church there. The idea you related about turning the
middle east 
to Christian is silly and is
nothing real, just more oxymoronic disinformation. The Gulf States
are 
Muslim I assure you and will
remai so.

John


 
Yahoo! Groups Links