Theos-Talk Archives (April 2006 Message tt00024)

You wrote:

"I see. So, instead of just communicating their opinions, they would 
present some historical scenario as authoritative in order to get 
you to buy into their belief.  That would be a misuse of the 
original idea of history.  It is dishonest manipulation.  The word 
history comes from the Greek and originally met "inquiry."   So, 
history, in its original use, was a means of discovery--a way to 
inquire into and thus more deeply understand ourselves and others.  
That is also how I use history and how ,I believe, history ought to 
be properly used."

A few years ago, I had purchased a very nice $400 four volume set of 
history books called "Chronology of World History", which was 
published by ABC-Clio/Hutchinson.  It was their last set too, so I 
was very lucky that I got it before someone else did.  I saw it in a 
library one time, and since it was a reference set, I couldn't check 
the books out and take them home with me.  So I purchased the 
publisher's very last set before it was out of print.

The four volume set was the most elaborate undertaking ever 
accomplished, to document the entirety of the earth's recorded 
history, spanning across every continent and nation, and 
encompassing all historical categories.  Politics, religion, 
ecology, science, economics, society, etc..  The fourth volume 
contains every international news event ever broadcast up until 
1998.  70,000 historical news events in world history, from the dawn 
of recorded time, were condensed to a paragraph in length each.  And 
containing no indoctrinations.  Just the facts.

Of course, a stange thing occurs the further that we go back in 
recorded history.  History begins to convert to mythology, with no 
fine line inbetween the two.  This is because modern phonetic-based 
languages descended from picture-based alphabets containing 
thousands of visual symbols.  An ancient Oriental alphabet might 
contain 1000 different characters, for example, as opposed to a mere 
26 characters in phonetic english.  Each syllable represented a 
picture prior to phonetics.

And before ancient alphabets concisely contained 1000 letters, 
languages first existed as heiroglyphs in caves and tombs.  (For 
example, in Egyptian pyramids). The walls of caves and tombs 
recorded the life histories of the dead, as documented by ancient 
news reporters who weren't that artistically acute.  These 
heiroglyphs constituted the most accurate of ancient recording 
methods, prior to the introduction of refined languages.

However, the little children had a problem learning the history 
lessons which were embossed on the walls of caves and tombs.  After 
all, how do you interpret the pictures?  So ancient historians 
interpreted the historical storylines, that the ancient news 
reporters had embossed on the caves and walls.  The ancient 
historians (even as you consider yourself to be a historian) took 
the children directly into the caves and tombs, as per common 
classroom settings of the time, and read history lessons from walls 
as opposed to from books.  Oral traditions began to follow the 
pictures of antiquity.

However, even among the teachers, different interpretations of the 
historical picturelines began to occur.  And the unintentional 
creation of mythology invariably resulted, despite the best efforts 
of ancient news reporters who would never resort to base metaphor.  
The ancient histories became more and more distorted over successive 
generations, until literal truth was degraded into mythological 
metaphor.  Hence, mythology is little more than bastardized 
history.  Same thing goes for the Bible.  The authors intended quite 
literally what you and I interpet to be mere metaphor.

"The usual titles for these works are "The Corpus Hermeticum" 
or "The Discourses of Hermes Trismegistus."  The Collection is made 
up of 18 surviving discourses to which is also usually added a Latin 
work: Asclepius.   The Title, "Shepard of Hermes" sounds like it 
might be the hermetic writings, or a book about them.  The Shepard 
(Poimandres) represents the Divine Intellect in these writings, and 
is the second person in the dialogue.  So the Poimandres is the 
Logos or Christos of Gnosticism.  The best translation which I am 
currently aware is entitled "Hermetica" by Brian P. Copenhaver. 
Cambridge U. Press, 1992. It should still be in print."

Could be the same texts that I read, but I'm not sure.  There may 
have been multiple publishers.  I read 'The Shepherd of Hermes' as 
part of a set of pseudepigraphal texts.  In the text, the man Hermes 
has a vision of the post-resurrected Jesus Christ, and they engage 
in a twoway dialogue of great length, discussing the nature of 
various virtues and the like.  The book was accepted into many of 
the early biblical canons of fragmented Christian sects, but never 
made it into the finalized 1611 King James.  As many other books, of 
course.

Pseudepigraphal literature was deemed even less reliable than 
apocryphal literature.  This is despite the fact that some of the 
canonized authors had also written books that didn't make it into 
the bible, such as Paul and Ezekiel.  Or what about the uncanonized 
book of Enoch, still existant in a halfdozen ancient languages?  The 
biblical book of Jude directly quotes the book of Enoch as 
authoritative, even though it is rejected by the bible's modern-day 
canonizers.  Some books were good enough for the early church 
fathers, but not good enough for the modern church.  One-hundred 
ancient canons were rejected in favor of a modernized one.

The particular value of pseudepigraphal literature (whether 
authentic or embellished) is that fragments of key insights are 
therein available concerning what the ancient theists believed, 
versus what Christians 'officially' believe today.  Did you know, 
that prior to the onset of Darwinism, the ancients commonly believed 
that the human species descended from immortal gods, and that the 
doctrine of the resurrection of the dead originated as early (if not 
earlier) as the most ancient Egyptians?

The earliest recorded Egyptians believed in the Christian doctrine 
of the final resurrection of the dead which was to occur at the end 
of time.  (Or at least their version of it.)  They believed it so 
much, in fact, that they began mummifying the dead in preservative 
wraps, simultaneously extracting their organs into jars, so that 
their organs may still be available for their end time 
resurrection.  We still preserve bodies in coffins today, not 
allowing their full decay after the model of the Egyptians, even 
though we are not commonly aware of why preserving dead bodies was 
started in the first place.  The ancient Egyptians feared that if 
the physical body was cremated, and it's organs lost, then it would 
be unable to rise again at the end of the age of mortals.

And what of Solomon's references to his belief in the concept of 
physical immortals who had walked the earth, in the context of the 
apocryphal book of Solomon?  Immortals were greatly esteemed in 
Solomon's time.  I'm lacking an exact quote here.

Further, the term 'Oh king, live forever' was a common reference in 
ancient times that denoted the potential blessing of the re-
acquisition of physical immortality among mortals.  Further, kings 
were often attributed as having 'the divine right of infallibity' 
concerning decisions of capital punishment.  But this 'divine right 
of infallibility' was only designated to those reputed to be demi-
gods (born of an immortal god and a mortal).  Many of the ceasars 
made this claim, for example, (that they were literal demi-gods) 
having both political and religious reasons.  Only a demi-god (half-
god, half-man) was pure enough to make flawless decisions regarding 
capital punishment in those times.  No law courts necessary when 
gods or demi-gods are available.

Of course, the antithesis of the ancient doctrine of immortality was 
reincarnation.  If one should not accomplish the re-acquistion of 
physical immortality, as is the birthright of our species, having 
descended from the elder (immortal) gods, then may that one be 
cursed to near-endless reincarnational cycles, until such time as 
she/he becomes spiritually reawakened to the inherent physical 
immortality contained within our species.

May the wicked be cast into ever-repeating reincarnational hells, 
until such time as they should venture to awaken physically forever, 
as per the final evolutionary cycle of the human species.  Herein 
being the immortal physical resurrection of all dead souls, once 
having been trapped in reincarnational cycles, both dying and 
birthing from hellish dimension to hellish dimension, despite the 
immortal birthright contained therein, which was bestowed upon us by 
our ancestral elder gods.  This is what the ancients believed.

"Writing is a noble aspiration.  However, how are you to present the 
fruits of your own studies without being aware of the findings and 
insights of others?  True scholarship is done in a discourse 
community where people share their ideas and everyone benefits from 
hearing very different points of view, and learning about other's 
research in many more areas than one is capable of doing on one's 
own.   One can, for instance, create an exegetical interpretation, 
but would benefit by reading about exegetical systems that have been 
worked out by others."

I fully agree with you.  I believe that we're doing this now.

-

PS.  I will address the rest of your text in an additional message, 
insofar as I can tend to get a little bit wordy, lolol.

Blessings

Vince