Theos-Talk Archives (June 2006 Message tt00214)

6/9/2006 12:21 PM


	Re:  GOSPEL OF MARK


Some notes to be considered ?

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6/9/2006 
 
Dear Friends:

Before you consider the GOSPEL OF MARK, please survey these notes condensed
from ISIS UNVEILED and the SECRET DOCTRINE 

Best wishes,
 
Dallas
 -------------------------------------

            This is a lot of history on the early CHRISTIAN  CHURCH
 
Christianity failed because it contracted the universal Christos principle,
potential in every man, to a single historical personality [Jesus], and made
the moral evolution of all dependent upon the achievement of one.

This undermined self-reliance among Christians, with the logical effect of
weakening individual responsibility. 

Modern psychology is materialistic, largely because of the betrayal of the
Western world by its priests, who so degraded and distorted the original
psychology of the Gnostic Christians that modern thinkers felt it necessary
to make an entirely new beginning in psychology, leaving out the soul, and
even the mind, in order to avoid any resemblance to hated theological
dogmas! 

Here is what a close friend and careful historian offered to me:

 
                                    BIBLE and the 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. 
 
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. 
 
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.
 
 
                        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.
 
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.
 
 
                                    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 of the ancient scriptures.
 
Kenealy states that the works of Esdras themselves must have been destroyed
by  
Antiochus. 

Judas Maccabeus or some unknown compilers must have recreated 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. 
 
 
                        Sanskrit TRADITIONS
 
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 in other
directions?
 
 
                        PAUL  --  MASONRY  --  MYSTERY SCHOOLS
 
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. 
 
 
                        IRENAEUS , EPIPHANIUS and EUSEBIUS  
 
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. [Epoch of
Constantine]
 
The whole Christian scheme rests upon their sayings.
 
 
                        THE SORTES SANCTORUM  [Psychic invocation]

 
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 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." IU II 183
 
            [ Collected  from  The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled  by H.
P.
Blavatsky.         DTB  ]
 
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CHRISTIANITY INDICTED ? INGERSOLL.DOC
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PAINE:  Thomas  -- Ingersoll on.DOC
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HPB & Col. Ingersoll on ? 


				THOMAS PAINE


A few weeks ago, an audience of nearly 4,000 persons of the better class
gathered at Chicago, to listen to a defense of the memory of Thomas Paine by
that splendid American orator, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll.  


Paine was one of the purest, wisest, and bravest apostles of Free Thought
that the Anglo-Saxon race has produced.  He wrote The Age of Reason?a book
which, if the missionaries were governed by the spirit of fair-play, would
be on the shelf of every mission library in India, so that their ?Heathen?
pupils might read both sides of the Christian question.  


For this crime, the noble author was persecuted in the most malicious way by
Christians.  His name was made the synonym of all that is vile and
malevolent.  


His enemies, not satisfied with lying about him while alive, desecrated his
grave, and we have ourselves seen his monument at New Rochelle, New York,
bespattered with dung and battered with sticks and stones.  But time heals
all injustice, and now, seventy years after Thomas Paine?s death, his memory
is vindicated.  He died almost solitary and alone, deserted by friends, and
his services to American liberty all forgotten.  


But now, thousands and hundreds of thousands of the most intelligent and
influential ladies and gentlemen of America have cheered to the echo Colonel
Ingersoll ?s glowing periods.


In the address above alluded to, for a verbatim report of which we are
indebted to the Religio-Philosophical Journal, the Spiritualist organ to
which an allusion was made by us last month, occur the following passages:?


	INGERSOLL:


In his (Paine?s) time the church believed and taught that every word in the
Bible was absolutely true
.  
Since his day it has been proven false in its cosmogony, false in its
astronomy, false in its chronology and geology, false in its history, and so
far as the Old Testament is concerned, false in almost everything.
[Laughter.]  

There are but few, if any, scientific men, who apprehend that the Bible is
literally true.  Who on earth at this day would pretend to settle any
scientific question by a test from the Bible?  The old belief is confined to
the ignorant and zealous.

The church itself will before long be driven to occupy the position of
Thomas Paine.  

The best minds of the orthodox world, today, are endeavouring to prove the
existence of a personal deity.  All other questions occupy a minor place.
You are no longer asked to swallow the Bible whole, whale, Jonah and all,
you are simply required to believe in God and pay your pew-rent.

Paine thought the barbarities of the Old Testament inconsistent with what he
deemed the real character of God.  He believed the murder, massacre, and
indiscriminate slaughter had never been commanded by the Deity.  He regarded
much of the Bible as childish, unimportant, and foolish.  

The scientific world entertained the same opinion.  

Paine attacked the Bible precisely in the same spirit in which he had
attacked the pretensions of the kings.  He used the same weapons.  All the
pomp in the world could not make him cower.  His reason knew no ?Holy of
Holies? except the abode of truth.  

The sciences were then in their infancy.  The attention of the really
learned had not been directed to an impartial examination of our pretended
revelation.  It was accepted by most as a matter of course.  The church was
all-powerful, and no one else, unless thoroughly imbued with the spirit of
self-sacrifice, thought for a moment of disputing the fundamental doctrines
of Christianity.  

The infamous doctrine that salvation depends upon belief, upon a mere
intellectual conviction, was then believed and preached.  To doubt was to
secure the damnation of your soul.  

This absurd and devilish doctrine shocked the common sense of Thomas Paine,
and he denounced it with the fervor of honest indignation.  This doctrine,
although infinitely ridiculous, has been nearly universal, and has been as
hurtful as senseless.  

For the overthrow of this infamous tenet, Paine exerted all his strength.  

He left few arguments to be used by those who should come after him, and he
used none that have been refuted. 

The combined wisdom and genius of all mankind cannot possibly conceive of an
argument against liberty of thought.  

Neither can they show why any one should be punished, either in this world
or another, for acting honestly in accordance with reason; and yet a
doctrine with every possible argument it has been, and still is, believed
and defended by the entire orthodox world.  

Can it be possible that we have been endowed with reason simply that our
souls may caught in its toils and snares, that we may be led by its false
and delusive glare out of the narrow path that leads to joy into the broad
way of everlasting death?  

Is it possible that we have been given reason simply that we may through
faith ignore its deductions and avoid its conclusions?  Ought the sailor to
throw away his compass and depend entirely upon the fog?  

If reason is not to be depended upon in matters of religion, that is to say,
in respect of our duties to the Deity, why should it be relied upon in
matters respecting the rights of our fellows?  

Down, for ever down, with any religion that requires upon its ignorant altar
its sacrifice of the goddess Reason; that compels her to abdicate forever
the shining throne of the soul, strips from her form the imperial purple,
snatches from her hand the scepter of thought, and makes her the bond-woman
of a senseless faith.

If a man should tell you he had the most beautiful painting in the world,
and after taking you where it was, should insist upon having your eyes shut,
you would likely suspect either that the had no painting or that it was some
pitiable daub.  

Should he tell you that he was a most excellent performer on the violin, and
yet refuse to play unless your ears were stopped, you would think, to say
the least of it, that he had an odd way of convincing you of his musical
ability.  

But would his conduct be any more wonderful than that of a religionist who
asks that before examining his creed you will have the kindness to throw
away your reason?  

The first gentleman says:  ?Keep your eyes shut; my picture will bear
everything but being seen.? [laughter]  ?Keep your ears stopped my music
objects to nothing but being heard.? [laughter]  The last says; ?Away with
your reason; my religion dreads nothing but being understood.? [laughter]

So far as I am concerned, I most cheerfully admit that most Christians are
honest, and most ministers sincere.  

We do not attack them:  we attack their creed.  

We accord to them the same rights that we ask for ourselves.  We believe
that their doctrines are hurtful, and I am going to do what I can against
them.  

We believe that the frightful text, ?He that believeth shall be saved, and
he that believeth not shall be damned,? has covered the earth with blood.
You might as well say all that have red hair shall be damned.  It has filled
the heart with arrogance, cruelty, and murder.  It has caused the religious
wars; bound hundreds of thousands to the stake; founded inquisitions; filled
dungeons; invented instruments of torture; taught the mother to hate her
child; imprisoned the mind; filled the world with ignorance; persecuted the
lovers of wisdom; built the monasteries and convents; made happiness a
crime, investigation a sin, and self-reliance a blasphemy.  

It has poisoned the springs of learning; misdirected the energies of the
world; filled all countries with want; housed the people in hovels; fed them
with famine, and, but for the efforts of a few brave infidels, it would have
taken the world back to the midnight of barbarism, and left heavens without
a star.

At that time nothing so delighted the church as the beauties of endless
torment, and listening to the weak wailing of the damned infants struggling
in the slimy coils and poison-folds of the worm that never dies.  No wonder
the church hated and traduced the author of the Age of Reason.  England was
filled with Puritan gloom and Episcopal ceremony.  The ideas of crazy
fanatics and extravagant poets were taken as sober facts.  Milton had
clothed Christianity in the soiled and faded finery of the gods ? had added
to the story of Christ the fables of mythology.

He gave to the Protestant church the most outrageously material ideas of the
Deity.  He turned all the angels into soldiers ? made heaven a battlefield,
put Christ in uniform, and described God as a militant general.

Progress is born of doubt and inquiry, The church never doubts ? never
inquires.  To doubt is heresy ? to inquire is to admit that you cannot know
? the church does neither.

More than a century ago Catholicism, wrapped in robes red with the innocent
blood of millions, holding in her frantic clutch crowns and scepters, honors
and gold, the keys of heaven and hell, trampling beneath her feet the
liberties of nations in the proud moment of almost universal dominion, felt
within her heartless breast the deadly dagger of Voltaire.  

>From that blow the church can never recover.  Livid with hatred she launched
her eternal anathema at the great destroyer, and ignorant Protestants have
echoed the curse of Rome.

Paine knew that across the open Bible lay the sword of war, and so where
others worshipped he looked with scorn and wept.  And so it has been through
all the ages gone.

The doubter, the investigator, the infidel, have been the saviours of
liberty.  The truth is beginning to be realized, and the truly intellectual
are honoring the brave thinkers of the past.

But the church is an unforgiving as ever, and still wonders why an infidel
should be wicked enough to endeavour to destroy her power.  I will tell the
church why I hate it.  

You have imprisoned the human mind; you have been the enemy of liberty; you
have burned us at the stake, roasted us before slow fires, torn our flesh
with irons; you have covered us with chains; treated us as outcasts; you
have filled the world with fear; you have taken our wives and children from
our arms; your have confiscated our property; you have denied us the right
to testify in courts of justice; you have branded us with infamy; you have
torn out our tongues; you have refused us burial.  

In the name of your religion, you have robbed us of every right; and after
having inflicted upon us every evil that can be inflicted in this world, you
have fallen upon your knees, and with clasped hands implored your God to
finish the holy work in hell.

Can you wonder that we hate your doctrines, that we despise your creeds;
that we feel proud to know that we are beyond your power; that we are free
in spite of you; that we can express our honest thought, and that the whole
world is grandly rising into the blessed light?  

Can you wonder that we point with pride to the fact that infidelity has ever
been found battling for the rights of man, for the liberty of conscience,
and for the happiness of all?  

Can you wonder that we are proud to know that we have always been disciples
of reason and soldiers of freedom; that we have denounced tyranny and
superstition, and have kept our hands unstained with human blood?

It does seem as though the most zealous Christian must at times entertain
some doubt as to the divine origin of his religion.  For eighteen hundred
years the doctrine has been preached.  For more than a thousand years the
church had, to a great extent, the control of the civilized world, and what
has been the result?  

Are the Christian nations patterns of charity and forbearance?  

On the contrary, their principal business is to destroy each other.  More
than five millions of Christians are trained and educated and drilled to
murder their fellow-Christians.  Every nation is groaning under a vast debt
incurred in carrying on war against other Christians, or defending itself
from Christian assault.  

The world is covered with forts to protect Christians from Christians, and
every sea is covered with iron monsters ready to blow Christian brains into
eternal froth.  

Million upon millions are annually expended in the effort to construct still
more deadly and terrible engines of death.  

Industry is crippled, honest toil is robbed, and even beggary is taxed to
defray the expenses of Christian murder.  There must be some other way to
reform this world.  We have tried creed and dogma and fable, and they have
failed.

If, to love your fellow-men more than self is goodness, Thomas Paine was
good.  If, to be in advance of your time, to be a pioneer in the direction
of right, is greatness, Thomas Paine was great.  If, to avow your principles
and discharge your duty in the presence of death is heroic, Thomas Paine was
a hero.

At the age of seventy-three death touched his tired heart.  He died in the
land his genius defended, under the flag he gave to the skies.  Slander
cannot touch him now; hatred cannot reach him more.  He sleeps in the
sanctuary of the tomb, beneath the quiet of the stars.

A few more years, a few more brave men, a few more rays of light, and
mankind will venerate the memory of him who said:

?Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true
system.

?The world is my country, and to do good, my religion.?
		From:  AQUARIAN THEOSOPHIST  --  Supp.,  Aug.,  2005

 
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I must look up Constantine, and see where the alleged 
political decision to back Christianity came from, as well as the Da 
Vinci information that I have found.  

The changing/elimination of books in the New Testament certainly 
would change the history a bit if they were changed to accomodate 
the politics of the time.  

Another curious fact that this book pointed to was that Jews in that 
era were never bachelors, and the argument that Christ was a mortal 
married man are compelling.  I am looking forward to your take on this .
 
======================================================
 
Best wishes,

Dallas

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-----Original Message-----
From: Truth Collins
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 6:39 AM
To: 
Subject: Theosophy Virtual Lodge


Dear friends,

Greetings! We would like to remind you that tomorrow, will be the
official opening of the Theosophy Virtual Lodge with the live
lecture of Jerry Hejka-Ekins. you are welcome to join us in this
effort to promote theosophical awareness.

Saturday, June 10 - 11:00 pm New York (EDST

The Gospel of Mark

Jerry Hejka-Ekins presents a discussion of this gospel as a literary
(as opposed to an historical) work, in light of the world views and
beliefs of the Greeks, Romans and Jews at the time. He proposes that
the Gospel of Mark is not an historical, but rather a literary work
with a spiritual message, such as other stories of the time, like
those about Heracles and of Odysseus.

			snip