Theos-Talk Archives (October 2005 Message tt00059)

10/12/2005 2:33 AM

Dear friends:   

There are several translations of the BIBLE available from original
documents -- and there are many scholars who are verifying the accuracy of
translations we commonly use. some errors seem to have been made.

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

1
 
CHRISTIAN FATHERS ON REINCARNATION

OUR brother ... has held that whether or not Origen, the greatest of the
Fathers, believed in reincarnation, the Christian Church never formally
anathematized the doctrine. 

If this position is sound there will yet be an opportunity for the Roman
Church to declare the doctrine by holding that the anathema pronounced was
against a species of incarnation or of metempsychosis not very clearly
defined except as a pre-existence of the soul as opposed to a special
creation for each new body. This declaration can only be made by placing the
future lives of the soul on some other planet after leaving this one. That
would be reincarnation, but not as we understand it.

.... Beausobre says:

"It is a very ancient and general belief that souls are pure and heavenly
substances which exist before their bodies and come down from heaven to
clothe and animate them. . . . I only quote it to show that his nation
(Jews) believed for a long time back in the pre-existence of souls. . . .
All the most learned Greek fathers held this opinion, and a considerable
portion of the Latin fathers followed them herein. . . . It has been held by
several Christian philosophers. It was received into the Church until the
fourth century without being obnoxious to the charge of heresy."

Beausobre, however, calls the belief an "error." 

It would be interesting to know whether it is not the fact that at about the
fourth century the monks and bishops were ignorant men who would be more
likely to take up a narrow dogma necessary for preservation of their power
than to hold the broader and grander one of pre-existence. 

Origen died about A.D. 254. He was so great and learned that even in his
lifetime other men forged his name to their own writings. But while he was
still living uneducated monks were flocking into the ranks of the
priesthood. They obtained enough strength to compel Jerome to turn against
Origen, although previously holding similar views. 

It was not learning, then, nor spiritual knowledge that brought about the
subsequent condemnation of Origen, but rather bigotry and unspiritual
ignorance. Origen distinctly held as a fundamental idea "THE ORIGINAL AND
INDESTRUCTIBLE UNITY OF GOD AND ALL SPIRITUAL ESSENCES." 

This is precisely the doctrine of the Isovasya Upanishad, which says:

"When to a man who understands, the Self has become all things, what sorrow,
what trouble can there be to him who once beheld that unity?"

Francks Kabbala is referred to in these answers as saying that Origen taught
transmigration as a necessary doctrine for the explaining of the
vicissitudes of life and the inequalities of birth. But the next quotation
throws doubt again into the question, closing, however, thus:

"When the soul comes into the world it leaves the body which had been
necessary to it in the mothers womb, it leaves, I repeat, the body which
covered it, and puts on another body fit for the life we lead on earth. . .
. But as we do not believe in metempsychosis, nor that the soul can ever be
debased so as to enter into the bodies of brute animals..."

There are several ways of looking at this. It may be charged that some one
interpolated the italicized words; or that Origen was referring to
transmigrating back to animals; or, lastly, that he and his learned friends
had a theory about incarnation and reincarnation not clearly given. 

My opinion is that he wrote as above simply as to retrograde rebirth, and
that he held the very identical doctrine as to reincarnation found in Isis
Unveiled and which caused it to be charged that H.P.B. did not know or teach
reincarnation in 1877. Of course I cannot produce a quotation. 

But how could such a voluminous writer and deep thinker as Origen hold to
the doctrines of unity with God, of the final restoration of all souls to
pristine purity, and of pre-existence, without also having a reincarnation
doctrine? 

There are many indications and statements that there was an esoteric
teaching on these subjects, just as it is evident that Jesus had his private
teaching for the select disciples. For that reason Origen might teach
pre-existence but hold back the other. He says, according to Franck, that
the question was not of metempsychosis according to Plato, "but of an
entirely different theory which is of a far more elevated nature." It might
have been this.

The soul, considered as spirit and not animal soul, is pure, of the essence
of God, and desirous of immortality through a person; the person may fail
and not be united to the soul; another and another person is selected; each
one, if a failure in respect to union with the Self, passes into the sum of
experience; but finally a personal birth is found wherein all former
experiences are united and union gained. 

>From thenceforward there is no more falling back, for immortality through a
person has been attained. Prior to this great event the soul existed, and
hence the doctrine of pre-existence. 

For all of the personal births the soul was the God, the Higher Self of
each, the luminous one, the Augoeides; existing thus from all time, it might
be the cause of rebirths but not itself be reincarnated, as it merely
overshadowed each birth without being wholly in the flesh. 

Such a doctrine, extremely mystical and providing for each a personal God
with a great possibility held out through reunion, could well be called by
Origen "a different theory" from metempsychosis and "of more elevated
character."

When once more the modern Christian Church admits that its founders believed
in pre-existence and that Jesus did not condemn reincarnation, a long step
will have been taken toward uprooting many intolerant and illogical
doctrines now held.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE Path, May, 1894
 

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

3

THE BIBLE AND the SECRET DOCTRINE


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

This article is by a Christian scholar.	Offered by DTB after careful
checking

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

	
MOSAIC BIBLE 

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

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.


JEHOVAH

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.


OLD TESTAMENT

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.


SEPTUAGINT

The Septuagint 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. "
I U 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.


HEBREW SCRIPTURES -- EZRA

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 refabricated 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 Nabuchodnonosar, 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. 



JESUS’ SECRET DOCTRINE

That the apostles had received a secret doctrine from Jesus is evident from
the words of Jerome 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 Martyr used only this Gospel, as also did most probably Titian, his
disciple. The genuine primitive Christians, the Gnostic Ebionites, 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. 


MATHEW’S GOSPEL

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.

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. 

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 Church Fathers resorted to falsification of their scriptures.

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


PAUL

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 petaloon 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 Irenaeus , Epiphanius and Eusebius 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.


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 Nicea 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.  

Pappus 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 Gregory of Nazianzen, one of the
most respected Church Fathers, to Saint Jerome, shows what posterity got
instead of the truth: 

"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." I U II 183

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

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

SAINT GREGORY , 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. 


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

3


IMPORTANCE OF THE BIBLE

Q. Have we not the Word of God in the Christian Bible?


A. There is no such claim in the Bible itself, and further, we know that
every word in that book was written by men, from ‘Genesis to Revelation. The
various manuscripts that compose the Bible were also selected by men on
their own judgment, and the statement that the compilation is the word of
God was also invented by men. 

There is no reason to believe that human nature was any less fallible in
ancient times than it is now; it is therefore the part of wisdom to judge
every book on its own intrinsic merits, and not on any pretended authority. 

Once the Bible is read in the light of the facts, and a comparison is made
between the vital statements therein and those of ancient religions it will
be found that “there is nothing new under the Sun,” as Solomon said. 

Every so-called Revelation has been presented by men and in each case has
been but a transmitting of what was known before. Whatever any man accepts
or rejects, he does so of his own choice and is therefore his own authority:
he should always use his best discrimination in the examination of
everything presented to him for his acceptance, at the same time making
certain that he has all the facts. 

Authority on such matters has been the bane of humanity for ages, for it is
certain that all that a man can know of the Supreme is what he knows in,
through, and by himself.

Q. What would you say is the reason that men in general adhere to
their religions?


A. The ethics that are contained in every religion worthy of the name. 

These ethics are the same in all religions, and are recognized as true and
essential by all thinking people because they make for true happiness and
progress, and because they are perceptions of the spiritual man within. 

Men differ as to the source of the ethics only, some esteeming them as
commands or revelations from some God, prophet, reformer or what not, while
the more intelligent perceive them to be expressions of spiritual law and
inherent in every spiritual being. 

The existence of the same ethics in the various religions contravenes the
promulgated differences of extraneous sources. There is but one source, the
spiritual and essential nature of Man himself.


Q. Why do they condemn reincarnation in the Christian churches?


A. Because they have followed the lead of the Church Fathers who
anathematized the doctrine in the early centuries of the Christian Era. 

There is evidence throughout the Old and New Testament that Reincarnation
was a doctrine generally accepted; the Jews were constantly expecting “the
return” of their prophets, that is, the re-embodiment or reincarnation of
one who had occupied a body before. 

In the New Testament there are a number of allusions to it such as that when
the disciples asked where is the prophet Elias who was expected to come
before Jesus, and Jesus replied that Elias had been with them, but they knew
him not, and the disciples knew “that he spake of John the Baptist”.
	
========================================

4


SERMON ON THE MOIUUNT.DOC

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

The Christian virtues inculcated by Jesus in the SERMON ON THE MOUNT are
nowhere exemplified in the Christian world. 
  
Mt : 5 : 3: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.

Mt:5:5: Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Mt:5:7: Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Mt:5:8: Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Mt:5:9: Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children
of God.

Mt-5-17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets, I am
not come to destroy, but to fulfill.

Mt-5-18 Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no
wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Mt-5-19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments,
and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of
heaven…


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


PATIMOKA-SUTRA.DOC
====================


In the Pratemoksha Sutra and other Buddhist tracts, we read these Ten
Commandments:

1. Thou shalt not kill any living creature.
2. Thou shalt not steal.
3. Thou shalt not break thy vow of chastity.
4. Thou shalt not lie.
5. Thou shalt not betray the secrets of others.
6. Thou shalt not wish for the death of thy enemies.
7. Thou shalt not desire the wealth of others.
8. Thou shalt not pronounce injurious and foul words.
9. Thou shalt no indulge in luxury, sleep on soft beds or be lazy.
10. Thou shalt not accept gold or silver.


The Buddhist ascetics and Indian fakirs seem almost the only ones that
inculcate and practice them.


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

5

HPB wrote:

F NOTE: ”Every act of the Jesus of the New Testament, every word
attributed to him, every event related of him during the three years of the
mission he is said to have accomplished, rests on the programme of the Cycle
of Initiation, a cycle founded on the Precession of the Equinoxes and the
Signs of the Zodiac. When the Hebrew Gospel not according to but by Matthew
the Gnostic, of whom they have made an Evangelist— the Gospel of which
(saint) Jerome spoke in the IVth century and which he refused to translate
on the pretext that it was falsified (!) by Seleucus, the Manichaean
disciple (See Hieronymus, De viris illust., cap. 3)—when, I say, that
original document shall have been translated, if ever it is found, and the
Christian Churches will have at least one document not falsified, then only
will it be feasible to speak of the “life of Jesus,” of the events of which
“no one is ignorant.” Meanwhile, and without losing time arguing the subject
of the century in which Jesus or Jehoshua lived, one fact is certain, namely
that the Occultists are prepared to prove that even the sacramental words
attributed to him on the cross have been disfigured, and that they mean
something quite different from what the Greek translation conveys. See my
additional notes (No. 2) in a forthcoming number of Le Lotus.”

The Buddhists practice all the virtues preached in the “Sermon on the Mount”
of Gaya ––on the Mount of Galilee six centuries later— virtues which are
heard of but rarely in the churches of the Christian countries, and that are
practiced still less frequently. 

The fundamental idea of my observations was in fact that he who would say
“Ego sum veritas” is yet to be born; that the “Vos Dii estis” applies to
all, and that every man born of woman is “the son of God,” whether he be
good, bad, or neither the one nor the other. 

Theosophy is neither Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism,
Hinduism, nor any other ism: it is the esoteric synthesis of the known
religions and philosophies. 


For me Jesus Christ, i.e., the Man-God of the Christians, copied from the
Avatars of every country, from the Hindu Krishna as well as the Egyptian
Horus, was never a historical person. 

He is a deified personification of the glorified type of the great
Hierophants of the Temples,* and his story, as told in the New Testament, is
an allegory, assuredly containing profound esoteric truths, but still an
allegory. It is interpreted by the help of the seven keys, similarly to the
Pentateuch.



JEHOSHUA - JESUS

  
Jehoshua (from which Jesus has been made) was born at Lüd or Lydda about 120
years before the modern era. And if this fact is denied one must resign
oneself to regard the hero of the drama of Calvary as a myth pure and
simple. 

As a matter of fact, in spite of all the desperate research made during long
centuries, if we set aside the testimony of the “Evangelists,” i.e., unknown
men whose identity has never been established, and that of the Fathers of
the Church, interested fanatics, neither history, nor profane tradition,
neither official documents, nor the contemporaries of the soi-disant drama,
are able to provide one single serious proof of the historical and real
existence, not only of the Man-God but even of him called Jesus of Nazareth,
from the year 1 to the year 33. 


Philo Judaeus

All is darkness and silence. Philo Judaeus, born before the Christian Era,
and dying quite some time after the year when, according to Renan, the
hallucination of a hysterical woman, Mary of Magdala, gave a God to the
world, made several journeys to Jerusalem during that interval of forty-odd
years. He went there to write the history of the religious sects of his
epoch in Palestine. 

No writer is more correct in his descriptions, more careful to omit nothing;
no community, no fraternity, even the most insignificant, escaped him. 

Why then does he not speak of the Nazarites? Why does he not make the least
allusion to the Apostles, to the divine Galilean, to the Crucifixion? The
answer is easy. Because the biography of Jesus was invented after the first
century, and no one in Jerusalem was better informed on the subject than
Philo himself. 

We have but to read the quarrel of Irenaeus with the Gnostics in the 2nd
century, to be certain of it. Ptolemaeus (180 A.D.), having remarked that
Jesus preached one year according to the legend, and that he was too young
to have been able to teach anything of importance, Irenaeus had a bad fit of
indignation and testified that Jesus preached more than ten or even twenty
years!

Tradition alone, he said, speaks of ten years (Contra Haereses, lib. II,
cap. 22, para. 4-5). Elsewhere, he makes Jesus die at the age of fifty years
or more!! Now, if as early as the year 180, a Father of the Church had
recourse to tradition, and if no one was sure of anything, and no great
importance was attributed to the Gospels—to the Logia of which there were
more than sixty— what place has history in all of this? 

Confusion, lies, deceit, and forgery, such is the ledger of the early
centuries. 


EUSEBIUS

Eusebius of Caesarea, king of falsifiers, inserted the famous 16 lines
referring to Jesus in a manuscript of Josephus, to get even with the
Gnostics who denied that there ever had been a real personage named Jesus. 

Still more: he attributed to Josephus, a fanatic who died as he had lived, a
stubborn Jew, the reflection that it is perhaps not correct to call him
(Iasous) a man ("<ZD), because he was the Lord’s Anointed, i.e., the
Messiah!! (Vide Josephus, Antiq., lib. XVIII, cap. iii, 3.)†

But what use is it to waste time repeating what every well-educated man
knows. ..

It is hardly necessary to say that for the words of Jesus to possess any
value as proof, the authenticity of the Gospels must first be proved. Jesus,
whether he lived at that epoch or earlier, never wrote anything, and what he
has been made to say in the four Gospels is sometimes terribly
contradictory. 

As to Paul, undoubtedly a historical personage, it would be difficult to
separate, in his writings, what he said himself and what his editors and
correctors have made him say. However, there remains—doubtless by
inadvertence—one expression, by him or by his collaborators, which sums up
in two words what was thought about Jesus. Look up the Epistle to the
Hebrews, ii, 9; you will read there that Jesus was made “inferior to the
angels.” That is enough for us.

Can one who is inferior to the angels be God, the Infinite and the Only?

As to the “Word made Flesh,” it is the heritage of the whole of humanity,
received by man the moment the universal Soul incarnated in him, i.e., from
the appearance of the first perfect man—who, by the way, was not Adam.

HPB -- Contro. with Abbe Rocca, pp 73-96, LE LOTUS, Apl. 1888



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

Best wishes,


Dallas
 
-----Original Message-----
From: christinaleestemaker
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 1:15 PM
To: 
Subject: Regeneration in the aspect of astrology( 8 house)


Hi Dallis, 


I don't know which strange bible you have in America, but 
here I don't know the story of giving the coat to a robber.


[	DTB	"St. James Bible" version translated into English is used.
]


Well the story of The sameritan.There one give his coat to a poor man 
which has few clothes on and carched cold.So the Sameritan on his 
horse give the man his coat, while the poor was of other not 
appreciated kind.

Also the bull story we don't have.

greetings Christina.