But now we are ready to go on. Jesus was Gnostic, or in the least his name was added to Gnostic material. It is not mere coincidence no material exist before about 70 C.E. about the teachings of Jesus within the Church. The material was destroyed along with all the other less flattering material destroyed by the Christian Church.
The Christian religion we have today, whether it be Catholicism, Protestant, Jehovah's witnesses or any other religion which state Jesus died on the cross, and then was resurrected is the religion of the Archons. The enemy of the Archons has always been Gnosis. Gnosis is spiritual freedom. The Archons provide a spiritual trap.
John the Baptist preached of a coming age of changed moral and ethical values and this preaching was continued by Jesus. These people stated the fact that the world was evil, not because of it's nature but because an evil was allowed to act as the prime God. These people preached that the Souls had been duped, trapped in a physical body, attempting to be content, and living in an impossible world. Alien are the souls, trapped away from their homes. The Gnostic preached that these Souls could and would be resurrected, free, able to again return to the home where all Souls came from.
The Gnostic ridiculed the Christians who believed in the resurrection of the flesh, and called them those who worshipped the dead man. Jesus, rather than following the proverbial teachings, revealed himself as an eternally living Soul who could, despite the death of the body, come back and further instruct his disciples after the demise of the body.
The Gnostic held that the acts of Jesus while he was on Earth in the physical body were insignificant. It was the teachings of Jesus, the spirit which were revelationary.
That was when he informed all his disciples that they too were immortal Souls and as such that they all would become the Christ reborn. This had to come about while they were still alive and in their bodies. The Christians of the dead man was opposed to the Christians of the living spirit (Gnostic). They were blasphemers of the truth. They were ruling heretically, changing the teachings of Jesus so that they would be less offensive to the Roman authorities. Those who falsified the truth were in opposition to the truth and they were the minions of the God of the physical and not the spiritual, opposing that which Jesus had thought. Thus they saw the worshippers of the dead man.
In their ignorance, the Christians of the dead man were teaching that good and evil had the same source. They walked a thin line between Hebrew and Roman beliefs, feeling this was the safest course for the new movement to take. It is quite possible that the first dead man Christians had no intention of altering the teachings. They could have found it necessary to do so in order to survive as a movement. But as is so often the case, when a lie is told often enough, it becomes a trap to the teller of the lie. He comes to believe that the lie in reality is what the truth was all along.
The Apochryphon of James was given to both Peter and James, and could quite well have been the much talked about 5th gospel. It stated that it was for the children which were as yet not born, so the dead man Christians did not include it in their teachings for they knew the return of Jesus was imminent and it was unnecessary to include anything for the unborn children which would never be. The dead man Christians had a lot in common with today's alcoholic. They were of the opinion that a miracle would come upon them and they would no longer be trapped. Jesus would come back and save them, unless they of course were lucky enough to be an offer for the Romans. They knew as martyrs they would go directly to heaven. No stops in between.
The Gnostic was also like the alcoholic. He was the alcoholic that recovered. He knew he was himself the Christ. He was responsible for his own salvation. In order for him to save himself from the clutches of the Archons, it was necessary for him to become aware. He needed the knowledge of that which was spiritual.
It is said one has to become earnest about the word, the first part of which is faith. The second is love and the third is works. From these come life. The word is like grain, when sowed the sower had faith. When it sprouted there was love because he then sees many seeds instead of just the one sowed and when he had worked, he was saved because he had prepared some of it for food and yet some to be resown.
Thus the Christ made his home in many houses (bodies). Many would receive the word, yet others would be infertile and reject it. But the worst of all were the ones who would bring forth chaff instead of grain.
Become full spiritually. Be in want of reason. Reason is soul. Understand knowledge; love life and you can never be persecuted or oppressed by anyone other than yourself.
The falsifiers of knowledge are sinners against the spirit. And no greater sin exist.
Rejoice and be glad you are all the Son of Man. The Son of Man is Christ. He is the Immortal infinite Light. He is that Light perceived in the eyes of the alert alive Soul. He is the Luma of the infinite realm. This light is in the eyes of everyone yet we see it not in all. The cloak of darkness overwhelms the Luma and you see the sad eyes. You see the wandering unsure eyes. You see the Archons at work. Behind this dimness lies the Luma. Here is the dead man, the one in need of resurrection. Resurrection is the awakening of the Luma, the reemergence of the spirit, the return of Man.
The flesh desires the Soul. Without the soul the body does nothing. Yet the bodies without Gnosis kills the soul and the soul cannot be saved without the spirit of Gnosis. The bodies cannot sin without the soul, yet the soul will kill itself without the spirit of knowledge. The words quoted in the New Testament which Jesus supposedly said are not what he said. What we have are translations which supposedly come from Aramaic and all traces of the original documents are lost.
Many of the passages of the New Testament exhibit contacts that are very close, even striking to those of the alleged Essenes of Qumran. This could be the result of an immediate dependence which indicates that here the New Testament had borrowed material from the Essenes, such as those living at Qumran.
The dualism, setting good against evil in the Essenes and Christian movements were probably of Iranian origin. The Iranians were those who released the Jews from bondage and permitted them to reconstruct their Jerusalem temple.
Angelology which was also popular in Iranian lore was adapted by the Jewish community and spread consequently into Christianity. These ideas were modified by the emerging monotheism, but not so much that the source cannot yet be traced to Iranian documents. Passages such as 2 Cor. 6:14, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?" and 2 Cor. 7:1, "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting ourselves in the fear of God" are from Qumran. when it comes to form and setting, they are of the Essenes.
Passages such as these could also, were it not for the part "in the fear of God," just as well have been Gnostic, indicating Gnostic ties in the Qumran community. The Gnostic feared no God. They had no God to fear, they were resurrected Pleroma and did not trespass against anyone. Thus they had no sin. The eternal sin of Mankind from the garden of Eden was for them meaningless in several respects. First of all, if Jesus died on the cross to atone for their sins, as the dead man Christians said, how could they still worry about this sin? But for the Gnostic, the realization that it was the Archons whom the dead man Christians worshipped which was the real sinner. This made the atoning for this sin by them, the Sons of Man, ridiculous.
There can be no doubt that the Essenes had some direct influence on the later Christians. How much so, no one could never really speculate.
Chronologically, the first contact with the Essenes could have been John the Baptist. The content of his preaching and the proximity of his sphere of influence to the Dead sea all suggest that some form of contact existed between him and the sect at the Dead Sea. It is not at all impossible that John was a member of the Essenes. Whether he was an Essene at the time of his encounter with Jesus is irrelevant for he could well have had such a relationship, for he then later went out and preached the Essenes message "According to John." Another theory which seems to be extremely valid is the one proposed by Barbara Thiering in her book, "Jesus & the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls" where she identifies John the Baptist with the "Teacher of righteousness" from the Qumran documents.
To the Essenes, the re-establishment of ritual purity was of utmost importance, and one of the more salient aspects of this was the participation of all the members of the sect at a ritualistic meal. While this may look like the precursor to the Eucharist, it is not.
Today's version of participating in the flesh and blood of the Son of Man is more reminiscent of a cult claiming to be the sons of God still eating the flesh of Man as described in the books of Enoch. To state that this is to partake in the spirit of Christ is ludicrous. Spirit does not have anything to do with flesh and blood. Only cannibalism deals with flesh and blood. The emerging Christians were the sons of God. Their great sin in the Old Testament as we saw in 1 Enoch was the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Man. The Eucharist is an attempt at substituting this craving among these sons of God in order to civilize these sons.
In Qumran, it is rather the special group of Man from among the Son of Man who has been purified and who will be chosen by God.
The Essenes were the chosen people. This put a tremendous responsibility on their shoulders. Being chosen was no blessing at all, and not only because it was an Archon who had so chosen you, it was also because you then had to live up to the expectations of this Deity.
Jesus could not possibly have been unaware of the Essenes of Qumran. They had disciples throughout Palestine. This makes the silence of Jesus about them quite disturbing to theologians of today. The only reasonable explanation is that he attributed to the Essenes parts of his knowledge and the later Church wanted no part of the particular Jewish movement and deleted them. The eunuchs by choice (Mat. 19:12) are probably Essenes as the religious idea of celibacy was only attested to in this one group at the time of Jesus in the entire area. The idea to hate one's enemy which is found nowhere in the OT could have come from the Essenes (Mat. 5:43; 1QS 1:4 and 10:9). The Essenes also had a prohibition about calling oneself a teacher (Mat. :23:10) and the procedures for excommunication as set forth in Mat. 18:15-18 are also similar to that of the Essenes, but what is most striking is that these are found only in the gospel according to Matthew and at Qumran.
2 Cor. 6:1:15 talks of Belial instead of Beelzebub, yet the light darkness terminology of the Essenes are not ascribed in the synoptic gospels, only by the Johanine Christ.
The title Son of Man is not used in the Qumran writings describing the messiah they waited for. The Essenes were waiting for the son of light.
The blessing of the bread and the wine was commonly practiced by the religious factions of Judaism, including that of the Essenes. The Essenes celebrated this festivity on Tuesday evenings which has no relation to the OT known today and one can only speculate as to the ancient calendar used which would explain the significance of Tuesday evenings. About the best speculation is that an extra Tuesday was added once in a while to correct the calendar to make it align with the correct number of days in a year.
The Christian doctrine being influenced by the Essenes is clearly recognizable, not in the primitive teachings of Jesus in the body, but in the theological systems of Paul and John. Paul and John must have been familiar with the writings of Qumran or others like them, and whether they approved of them or not, they used them to formulate the Christian message. The letter to the Colossians is heavily influenced by the Essenes. Such as Col. 1:12-13, "Giving thanks unto the father, which hath made us meet to the partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness..." Even more striking is the letter to the Ephesians.
Passages such as Eph. 5:8, "For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: Walk as children of light." 5:14, "Wherefore he saith, awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." Then 6:12, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities (World rulers, or Archons) against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." These are from the literature of the Essenes, and the style and mannerism of the writing also match the Essenes.
John's writings were also heavily colored by the writings of the Essenes. Especially 1 John. Since the teachings of Jesus are only secondary to the doctrines of the Christian Church. and the theology formed at the hands of Paul and John are the main themes of the Church, it could be stated that since they were heavily influenced by the Essenes that what we today know as the Church is an offshoot also of the Essene community.
The Church today is attempting to explain how the theme of importance to the Christians as well as to Paul and John was the death of Jesus. The son of God made Man and proceeded to expiate for the sins of Man by the sacrifice of his own blood.
Subsequently, it is resurrected which enables Man to become a friend of God. To both these theologians was the word of the utmost importance, the word which came to dispel the darkness of sin. "Of sin" was used to explain the darkness of ignorance as seen by the Gnostics, the word which came to destroy the old order and recreate a new humanity. These two philosophies are however far more like Gnostic teachings influenced by Hellenistic Jews than a Christian teaching borrowed from Qumran.
The theme of light versus darkness is a recurring theme in the writings of Paul. 1 Thes. 5:5, "Ye are all children of the light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness."
2 Cor. 3:12-14, "Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech: And not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished. But their mind was blinded: for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which veil is done away in Christ." 2 Cor. 11:14, "And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." Rom. 2:19, "And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness." Rom. 13:11-14 also reminds the readers to cast the darkness and don the armor of light. Paul even talks of angelic intervention. 2 Cor. 4:3-4, "But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the God of this world (Yammu/YHWH) hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them." Even more strikingly parallel is the reference to the sons of light which occur at both Qumran and the New Testament. As does the teacher of righteousness.
One of the big differences between the two doctrines claimed by some of today's churchmen is that for the Essenes, the age was about to come, and to the Christians the time was already here, well almost anyway, the exact hour was not known. 1 Thes. 5:2, "For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night." Or it was near for the Christ had already conquered and distributed the armor of light (Rom. 13:12,14 1 Tess.5:8-10, 2 Cor. 4:4,6) And so even now, the faithful are the sons of light (1Tess. 5:5, Eph. 5:8).
According to the Essenes, from the start, God had already created the two armies (bloodthirsty devil wasn't he.) One of light and one of darkness and they both had their rival leaders. The strange part is that while such were the documents at Qumran, this type of philosophy does not match the philosophy of the Essenes who were more like pacifists. Another striking difference in Paul is that according to his teaching, the sons of light did not come into existence until after the birth of Christ. Before Christ, it was night (Rom. 13:12, Col. 1,13, 2 Cor. 4:4-6).
Paul may very well have been influenced by the Essenes but many of the above teachings are Gnostic. The Gnostics may have been known by the Essenes as well, but this would not mean that Paul was a Christian of "the dead man cult." It meant that he was a Gnostic Christian.
For John, Christ was the light who had come into the world to overcome the darkness which rules the world. Those who receive Christ in faith receives the light from him. This even more strikingly is the doctrine of the Gnostic Christian beliefs. John, like the Gnostics, believed that all men was born of the Light, and through faith, the person enters the kingdom of Light through freedom of choice, faith and love. The Gnostics added to this the element of knowledge which Man had to have to become spiritually free.
Justification by grace alone, while peculiar to Paul, was found at Qumran and may have originated at the Qumran society. Just like Paul, the Qumran teacher of righteousness declares that no man is just before god. Every man is by nature a sinner. Paul was not the "Teacher of righteousness" from Qumran. The teachings of Paul would qualify him as the "Liar" mentioned in Qumran documents.
The "dead man Christians" of today claim that the Gnostic traces found in Paul and John and other early christian teachings were not heretic because the Gnostic did not appear on the scene until the second century C.E. This could be called wishful thinking, negating the fact that Gnostic teachings predated Christ. Many a Gnostic document has been found which has nothing in it about Christ, indicating the absence of a dependency on Christ for the Gnostic teachings.
Further the many Gnostic teachings which we have looked at become far clearer and far more comprehensive if we delete the actions of Christ from them, indicating that certain Gnostic teachings were corrupted by Christian teachings and not the other way around.
The really stupid part however is that these people who claim that Gnostic ideas did not exist until the second century C.E. are saying that the Gnostic material in places like Paul did not come about until 100 years after the death of Paul. This is then a confirmation of either the fact, which many a person has been aware of for a long time, that all of the New as well as the Old Testament has been through severe changes over the centuries. They are not finished yet.
But this would be a ridiculous admission as it would invalidate all the scriptures. The other part of this statement that Gnostic ideas did not exist, because the people of that time were not called Gnostic are utterly ridiculous. As we know them today, the Christians are the ones who did not exist until the fourth century! In fact, the Christians as we know them today did not come about until after the reformation. After Justin in the sixth century C.E., the Christians were very different from the Christians who existed after Constantine. The Christians before Constantine were a discombobulate mess. No one really seemed to be able to define themselves, and they only seemed to know that they had subscribed to some mysterious philosophy which would make their bodies immortal.
The Gnostic ideas which existed at the time of Paul, written about 50 C.E. were very real at that time. Confusing them later did not eradicate the fact, it only confused the issue. The alterations of the New Testament carried on especially by Irenaeus in the second century C.E. and carried forward to confuse the issue ever since is not the teaching of a few hundred years earlier, and never can be. The same thing we are seeing here in the 21st century where the religious teachers have their ideas and are compulsively fitting the facts to those ideas and ascribing as unauthentic anything which does not agree with their fixed minds was the same 1,900 years ago.
The people of all ages have had their fixed ideas of God and what they believed he was. They had their minds fixed on doctrine and what they believed real doctrine was, and rather than adjusting their minds to the facts, they have been adjusting the facts to their minds. We can now define sin. Sin is an excuse! To eradicate sin can be done, but it was never quite the way we thought it would be. The cessation of the use of any and all excuses is the first major step on the road to eradicating sin.
The death of Jesus Christ was nothing spectacular. His actions and teachings before his crucifixion were not anything really so unique. It was the teachings of Jesus after he was resurrected, as described in the Gnostic gospels, such as Paul and John which were spectacular. That the modern "dead man" worshippers are changing the discoveries can only be attributed to one of two things. For some, their minds are so fixed on the idea that all things in the Bible are correct and all other data has to be adjusted to support this view, and if it cannot it is false. Such people are the unfortunate, for it will be very difficult for them to escape the fog by which they are surrounded and see the light. They are trapped in a world of excuses and justifications.
The second group is afraid of loosing prestige and power and are even more to be pitied. They have sold their souls to the world of darkness, and are suppressing all our souls consciously. By consciously falsifying knowledge and using their power and prestige to influence our lives to the detriment of us all, these people could truly be referred to as evil people, working for the minions of darkness. Fortunately they are the minority.
Most Church officials are the best people on Earth. They have devoted their lives in an attempt to bring about a better world. Unfortunately, they have a wrong recipe so they are bound to fail. For every failure they make, a new excuse comes into being. They then have to justify the excuse they have just made and try harder along the dead end street. The heretic teaching gets worse and worse the longer this despicable cycle is permitted to exist.
It is my most sincere hope that these people be reached for they are truly good people, and not at all to blame for the fact that the teaching they have inherited is a corruption of a corruption of the teachings of the forces of evil.
If the entire text of 2 Cor. 6:14, 7:1 was removed from 2 Cor. 7:2, it would fit perfectly into verse 13 of chapter 6. By itself this insertion poses several interesting questions. These words and characters seem totally alien to Paul. Since this text fits perfectly well with the Qumran writings it is probable that Paul or whoever else wrote this passage was quoting directly from a far more ancient manuscript than the birth of Jesus. The copying of more ancient texts, and then giving them Christian content was frequently done by Christians. Both the ones worshipping "the dead man" and some of the Gnostic sects.
The text has in it's opening a prohibition against the association of the unclean. This would fit well with the Essenes at Qumran, but would be totally alien to the teachings of Jesus who chose for disciples and for salvation the less desirable characters, the unclean (by the way, Jesus fits very well the description of the "Wicked Priest" in the Qumran material as illustrated by Barbara Thiering).
Here too we have the idea that God calls on the members of the Church to be his sons and daughters. This comes from 2 Sam.7:14. God had several times called upon the Israelites to be his children (Jer. 31:9, Isa. 43:6, Hos. 2:1 and also at Qumran).
The flesh and spirit of Man is also a weird term in the New Testament. They belong to the OT but were not compatible with early Christian teachings. The phraseology of this insertion also show that they are not Pauline.
The language here is one never used by Paul. To explain this by stating that a disciple of Paul wrote it is not very flattering to the Church. If a disciple wrote in a language which differs so radically from that of St. Paul, what then of the other books of the Bible? We now know that none of the disciples of Jesus wrote any of the books of the New Testament, so these, being written by the disciples of the disciples, or the disciples of the disciples of the disciples, how reliable could they be?
The proper name Belial is the strangest of all. Nowhere in the Old Testament is Belial used as the devil. It is used for wickedness, worthlessness, but never connoting a personification. In Jewish or Christian literature, Belial does not become a personification of the devil until long after Paul. Only in the Essene sect does the personification of Belial occur at a stage before Paul. There, it is Belial who was created by God to be the angel of persecution. There he had Angels of perdition.
In Qumran Belial is the adversary of God, but nowhere else is Belial the adversary of Jesus. The concept of the adversaries God/Belial is Jewish, it comes from Qumran. The concept of the controversy between Jesus/Belial is most assuredly Christian, and could only have come about as a result of a contact between the Essenes and the Christians where the Christians rewrote documents belonging to the Essenes.
But then what was the real difference between the Essenes and the main Jewish religion? It would be unwise to blindly accept today's definition without looking further into it.
Easton's 1897 Dictionary states: a Jewish mystical sect somewhat resembling the Pharisees. They affected great purity. They originated about 100 BC, and disappeared from history after the destruction of Jerusalem. They are not directly mentioned in Scripture, although they may be referred to in Mat. 19:11-12, Col. 2:8, 18, 23. Resembling the Pharisees? Great purity!
But the Essenes were not the major influence of the region and the time when it came to philosophical ideas. The Greeks were, and how many rewrites of Greek material exists in the Bible? Many a close examination of certain parts of the sermon on the mount may be a good place to start. One in particular interest me. Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing when it comes to the giving of relief to the poor. The entire Sermon on the Mount could have been taken from people such as Sextus. "The sentences of Sextus" are very good rules for living, and denote a morality far superior to that of present day Christians.
Apistos is employed in 2 Cor. 6:15 to denote the believer, as a believer in Christ, and is translated as such in the Bible. Paul uses Apistos in several other places (2 Cor. 4:4; 1 Cor. 6:6; 7:12-15; 10:27 and others). The difference is that here Apistos is used to denote the heathen and is translated thus in the Bible. How could the same word denote both the heathen and the believer to Paul. How could the same word be an elevation and a degradation in the eyes of the same author? The fact is, it could not. Wishful thinking and a lot of explaining could justify it to the believers. It could be said a lot of heathen were now Christians and thus the term change, but that is like saying a lot of apples are called pears. Heathens here are unbelievers. In the sense of Paul, pistos were the believers, whether they had been heathens at one time or not, and changing this, is like what was mentioned before, just another attempt to alter the data to fit the mind rather than adapting the mind to perceive what the data really said.
Then there is the totally untheological reference to the flesh and the spirit in 2 Cor. 7:1. This separation of flesh and spirit belongs to works such as the Qumran but not to the Christians. The dead man Christians viewed flesh and spirit as that unity which made Man, and together would rise on the Day of Judgment.
The tree basic theological concepts of Christianity are:
1. The community as God's temple;
2. Separation from a Godless environment;
3. Dualism, the most important struggle of the cult.
The struggle between good and evil is the dualism present in most religions including but not exclusive to Christianity. Of all the religions of the area of the Near East at the time of Paul, only the Essenes at Qumran defined the community as Gods temple. The radical separation of heathens from the Godly referred to in 2 Cor. 6:14; 7:1 is not at all Pauline. Pauline is the permission of heathens to be married to Christians (1 Cor. 7:12-15).
As stated, the teacher of righteousness is by far the most significant figure discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. The despair over Man's continual sins is a major theme of the scriptures at Qumran and from the teacher of righteousness. Man is always influenced by sin. He is a weak trembling humanoid inept at fulfilling the wishes of his God. (Did not anyone at the time question how a benevolent merciful god could have created such a misfit?). Only through the mercy of his gracious God could he be forgiven and realize the heavenly angelic domains. (Mercy me! It is an obvious attempt at trapping the Pleroma of light. By making Man inhabit a weak body with urges which make themselves felt, and which through dreams or other means will sin the true merciful and good pleroma can feel eternally indebted to the "Maker" and thus the pleroma can be eternally trapped within the physical universe. That is the only way the physical universe could be made permanent.)
This teacher of righteousness is as yet unnamed officially by the Church although he fits extremely well John the Baptist as mentioned by Thiering. He was the symbol of humility, proclaiming his weaknesses at every opportune moment. While Jesus thought humility, it was not nearly as devastating as that of the teacher of righteousness. But God made known to him all the secrets of the sayings of the prophets. Could these have been Gnostic sayings?
The fact that the teacher of righteousness was persecuted is not denied and that he was opposed by the priests is not in doubt. The fact that he supposedly was crucified will have to be verified over and over and over again, for that would make the teacher of righteousness far to close to the Christian messiah for the comfort of the worshippers of the "dead mad." But he was not Jesus. Jesus was not righteous to the Hebrews, Essenes or many others. In the Qumran documents, Jesus was referred to as the "wicked priest."
Like Jesus, the teacher refers to Mankind as Son of Man and no not as son of God. The teacher of righteousness knows men are often just in the sight of other men; it is just in the eyes of their God that they are not just.
Justice from God on the grounds of faith (Phil. 3:9) is a pre-Christian concept. "Accursed is he who hangs on a tree" (Gal. 3:13). This would mean that Jesus is accursed. It would also have meant that the entire cult of the "dead man" would have been a scandal to Judaism. In Philippians 3:8, Paul is found in Christ. Purely Gnostic.
Paul had a revelation on the road to Damascus. The Essenes had found refuge at Damascus at about the beginning of our era. Not the Damascus in Syria we now know, but the Damascus we now know as Qumran. According to the Damascus Documents, the new era was to commence 40 years after the death of this teacher of righteousness which would have meant John the Baptist died about 27 C.E.
The similarities between the teachings of Paul and the Essenes of Qumran are undeniable. Was the road to Damascus a symbolic representation of the teachings of the Essenes? Very likely it was. In Gal. 2:19-20, Paul states he no longer lives, but through Christ.
Gal 2:9 states: "Let my grace be sufficient, for my power is perfect in weakness." Paul was always complaining of the physical pain which he was suffering from. Jesus has few parallels to the teacher from Qumran. The same cannot be said about Paul who exhibit numerous similarities. The force of grace is central in Paul's teachings as it was the teacher (Gal. 1:1). Paul was raised from the dead by getting the knowledge of Christ. This idea is purely Gnostic. Paul also relates Jesus as the second Adam which also is Gnostic (Rom. 4:17,21,25). God's mysterious word of resurrection is also Gnostic (2 Cor. 4:6). Christ has ransomed us from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13). The law of the spirit which is life in Christ has freed you from the law of death (Rom. 7:24; 8:2).
The spirit of truth in Qumran was the Holy Spirit. From the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is clear that the Holy Spirit was what they were ordained with. Rom. 6:3-11 says that if someone is in Christ, he is a new creation. This would mean he has already been resurrected. The old man dies when he learns of Christ and the new man is now resurrected.
Greeks and Israelites seem to be in complete harmony when it comes to their view on the afterlife in Hades. Both the teacher of righteousness and Paul have personal religious experiences as their starting points. They both connect this to God's judgment and grace. But Paul was not known as the teacher of righteousness. He was the evil teacher according to the Qumran documents. Now, you may have a better picture of why the Church has hid so much material from us. The hiding of material did not start with the advent of Qumran; it is the oldest tradition practiced by the Christian community without any change or thought of ethical or moral repercussions.
Ephesians is a piece of literature which could not have been written by Paul. It is written in a Greek which shows Semitic influence. Semitic sentencing structure in Ephesians are four times more common than the rest of the Pauline corpus. This style of writing is very often found also at Qumran regarding their sentence structure. While there are two different languages, a correlation can be seen. It has long been assumed that the language of the Ephesians had been influenced by a Christian Gnostic, but now they see as well the influence of the writings from Qumran.
As depicted in the letter to the Ephesians, the awesome might of God is like the dual clang of a bell, when compared to the writings of Qumran. So are the dual compositions from the two unlike areas when it comes to strengthening Man. It is just another dual clang of the same bell.
"The mystery of his will" in Eph. 1:9 is duplicated in 1QH 3:7. The expression "to make known the mysteries of his will" only appears in Eph. 1:9; 3:3; 6:19 and in the non- Pauline composition in Rom. 16:26. It is one which also occurs with unwavering frequency in the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran.
In Qumran, it was to the teacher of righteousness to whom the Deity made his secrets known. The two clangs of the bell are not identical. They never could be. In the same fashion, no two writings composed at different times in different areas can ever be quite the same. Most of us would certainly agree that it was a bell. Some would go as far as saying they could swear it was the same bell without watching it's source. Yet, there are those who would adamantly insist that the one clang came from a bell, true enough, yet the other was the high C blown on a Cornet, and this person would spend innumerable hours proving it was a Cornet and waste vast amounts of energy denying it was different. It does not take much mental ability to see that the sounds of the bells were nearly identical, yet to prove that it was a bell and a Cornet would take enormous mental abilities. Just imagine what such enormous mental resources could achieve if they were not searching for cornets and could be used for constructive means.
Who wrote the letter to the Ephesians? It was written around the second century by an unknown and reflects teachings like the ones found at Qumran and other areas. For example, continuous warnings against riches and greed in Ephesians 5:5 indicates heavy Essene influence. The warnings against money, greed, idolatry and the view on sex are all as if picked out of the Essene's satchel of superstition. Why were the early Christians so heavily influenced by the community at Qumran? The Essenes, like the Christians, were a rebel offshoots of the Jewish religion.
The Essenes were older and the Christians were more radical. The success of the Essenes in forming a community could have been the model by which the Christians formed their community. Eph. 5:13 is another piece of Essenes literature. It was the duty of the Essenes to inform sinners who did something displeasing in the eyes of their God on the same day they saw it. That way the person may be converted, cease walking in the hardness of his heart, and turn again to their God. Essenes could have been the models by which Christians tried to start their new cult after. Yet, even more likely is the probability that all the New Testament writings have been doctored by later adherents to the new movement which were themselves Essenes.
Elenchein is the word in Eph. 5:11-15, which denotes the action of instructing the erring members of society so he may turn from the darkness and again see the light of the world of their God. Eph. 5:14 shows another example of how Essenes are told to turn from the darkness of sleep, arise from the dead as they and the Gnostics would say, and become sons of light, or here Christ will rise up in light before thee.
Eph. 5:14 is currently regarded as a baptism hymn, where the light of Christ is entered into the person through baptism, but this theory is untenable. Now that it can be shown that it comes from Qumran, and the context refers to the dispelling of the forces of darkness by the walking in the right path of the Essene interpretation of the law. It must be assigned to a writer who was heavily influenced by the Essenes or one of his disciples.
Heb. 6:4, also refers to the light being given to Man at the time of baptism. The resurrection at Baptism, the coming to life after the darkness disappears and the becoming a part of the light, is Gnostic. Quite possibly, the Gnostic teachings go back to some of the Essenes, and while the Essenes would hardly be their source, the Gnostics could also very well have been the transmitters of the message to the later cult of the dead man.
Christianity of today is a bastardization of Gnostic teachings, for Gnostic teachings predate Christ and Christ was but carrying the message forward as another Son of Man. The Christians attempted to make Christ the central figure of the cult.
The Hymn of Eph. 5:14 is definitely Gnostic. It si the call to the soul to awaken from the sleep and to shake off the drunkenness brought about by it's imprisonment in the body. The without imagery means that the soul is to awaken from the not knowing about itself to the Gnosis that the soul itself is a divine Spark of Light, from the World of Light. It is a call to the Soul to relearn the fact that it has always been a Spark of Light, and that it should return to the heavenly World of Light.
In Ephesians, the message has been perverted by later dead man worshippers. The Light becomes the turning from the walking in the ways of those who transgress the commandments of the Lord to walking in his path of righteousness.
Eph. 6:10-20 is the only part of Ephesians which does not contain material from the Qumran library. This part is Hellenized Jewish and through knowledge of the mystery, the Christians attain wisdom and share in the power of their God.
The entire captivity corpus of the Pauline writings is in question as to being authentic 1 (Cor. 14:2; 13:2; 4:1). Among others, are the statement that the man who speaks in tongues speaks not to man but to God. Man doesn't understand garbled speech, God does not understand plain speech. In the letters to the Corinthians, Paul uses the term Gnosis. This by the dead man worshippers is not seen to be Gnostic, which it is.
It is translated as knowledge while it's meaning is deeper and more significant. It means knowledge of mysteries. During confinement, the letters of Paul reflect the most obvious Essene quality. It could easily be explained, for if Paul indeed was imprisoned at the time, Essene prisoners would also quite likely be in the Roman jails. The epistles may not reflect a different author than Paul, just a Paul who is even more influenced by the Essenes doctrine than the one who existed from the encounter at Damascus.
Col. 2:9 and Eph. 3:19 speak of the divine pleroma, incarnated in Christ and communicated trough him to the faithful like a good Gnostic teacher. Christ, the pleroma of divinity made visible, and the Church is the Pleroma of Christ. Moreover, the knowledge of the mystery is related to Gnosis in Col. 1:9; 2:2; 3:10.
Pleroma also is a main theme of Ephesians (Eph. 3:19; 4:13). In what is referred to as the captivity epistles which Paul supposedly wrote from prison, Christ is the pleroma of the divinity. When the pleroma of God descends upon Christ and then descends upon the Church, it means the same as the Gnostic literature. The pleroma is the substance which we all are and only our awareness of this differs.
1QS11:5-6, "...My eyes have beheld knowledge which is hidden from men; insight and prudence are hidden from the sons of men."
Insight, knowledge and prudence are the Greek Gnosis. Man's sin, as hinted at in the ancient scriptures, is not the transgressing against the commandments of the lord but rather that he is a Soul in a body. Truth is one of the major themes of the Pauline corpus and is equally as important to the Essenes.
The concept of truth to Paul and the Essenes differ widely from the concept we are accustomed to. We think of truth as an accurate representation of the facts, and this view we inherited from the ancient Greeks. To know truth (Aletheia) is to penetrate it so fully that nothing remains hidden.
For the Greeks, to speak the truth was not merely to state a fact or make an accurate statement. It was to frame one's expression in a manner that the entire concept might be clearly seen. For this reason, truth is an intellectual feat of communication, perception and elocution.
Truth is knowledge of reality as expressed by the mind. Also, according to the Greek thinkers, truth existed only in the realm of the divine, in the realm of the mind. Truth could not appear in the physical universe for the physical universe was constantly changing. Truth never changed. The Biblical NT gospels are a poor place to get data as it is not known what has been rewritten or by whom. But censors were sloven. All things were not deleted. While the Gnostic material may have had a presence among the Essenes, it was the material of the New testament.
Mark 16:12 states: "After that he appeared in another form..." Mark does not say Jesus returned in the physical body. He was in "another" form. In Luke 24:13-32, the disciples, two of them, on the way to Damascus (Qumran) encounter Jesus. 24:30-31, "And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight." Jesus' disappearing as soon as he is recognized by the Apostles is not an appearance in a physical body. Later on, it was inserted that he had flesh and bones (24:39).
John 20:17 states: "Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my father; but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my father; and to my God and to your God."
Which are the correct interpretations? Was Jesus flesh and blood or was he only spirit when he returned to further indoctrinate the disciples?
The fact is that no passage in the New Testament are direct quotations of the risen Jesus. But what does the resurrected Christ really tell us. To the dead man cult it supposedly shows that the inherent sin which Man was born with was alleviated. The original sin which was the cause of death by Man was forgiven. It was also to have shown that Jesus was the son of God, and superior to mortal man. Does it in fact do this? Emphatically no. The dead man Christians teach the importance of the physical body. There was no change whatever to the life span regarding the physical body. That people now went to Heaven and lived in eternal bliss is only allegory. No proof of this exist. There are only allegations which were substantiated by miraculous phenomena which Jesus in other places and times supposedly did. These, as has been abundantly proved, have to a large extent been added to the Biblical lore at a later date by those people who followed this particular branch of Christianity to prove the divinity of Christ. Granted Jesus rose up after death, does this show anything which today's christians claim? No, it does not.
The Gnostics claimed the resurrection of Jesus only indicated the simple fact life is not ended at the time the physical body dies. Does it? Emphatically Yes! The Gnostics state the resurrection of Jesus showed the fact Man was more than just a body and this is thus verified.
Looking at it analytically, why would anyone follow a teaching based on allegations with no data to verify the truth of any of the premises it bases its teachings upon?
There is more to life than what is indicated by our senses within the physical universe. It makes no difference what the evolutionists say. They refute all things spiritual by stating none of it can be verified. This does not prove that it does not exist, it only proves the limited vision by these evolutionists and all others stuck entirely within a three dimensional universe. But the fact that there is more to existence than the physical does not in any way indicate that the Christian tenets are the correct ones. It is rather the opposite because the Christians revere the physical. They are awaiting a physical resurrection. They state the resurrection of Jesus was physical when the Biblical material does not indicates this. On the contrary, the Biblical material which indicate this is most assuredly later additions by the early Church fathers who were of the same frame of mind as today's evolutionists. The only thing real to them were the things they could sense and feel with their physical bodies.
On the other hand, the Gnostic stated that the physical was merely a poor imitation of the spiritual. They stated the spiritual was superior to and prior to all things physical. They stated that the spiritual caused all things physical. Can we apply the Gnostic philosophies to any aspects of Life? Does the Gnostic theologies explain any of the mysteries which surround us today?
There are no mysteries which are not dissolved by the Gnostic beliefs. Any theory is as valid as its tenets are applicable, and in this respect, the Gnostic teachings are miles above the dead man Christians.
Let us look at some. One of today's mysteries is the so-called missing link. That stage where Man went from a mere animal to a thinking entity capable of adjusting his environment to himself and employing nature to his benefit. The Gnostic explanation is simplicity itself. The physical bodies which existed became the receptacles or garments of the Son of Man. The mind of man was now with the physical body. The missing link is the Luma of Man.
We all have heard about ghosts. Ghosts are supposed phenomenon which has been known it seems from time immemorial. They are talked about by all peoples, regardless of their state of civilization, and independent of their religious beliefs. The simple Gnostic explanation here would be that these ghosts are but the confused Souls of Man who, not having Gnosis, would not know what to do, or where to go after their bodies died. They could have stayed around feeling possessive over a piece of property which had belonged to them, erroneously identifying themselves with something physical, attempting to protect their property. They may have been told to wait for someone, and could just be hanging around in limbo waiting for the other being to return.
We have already seen that the Gnostics alone had a plausible explanation of how the spiritual entity came about and of the creation of the physical universe which would tie together the loose ends of today's physics professors. Why should we doubt the Gnostics?
We would doubt the Gnostics because if they are right, we have no one to blame for our predicament but ourselves and there would be no one to forgive our trespasses. We would have to take responsibility for our own actions. We would doubt the Gnostics because if they were right, no one would ever come out of the skies to relieve us of our predicament. We would on our own have to become aware and see the truth.
We would have to do the work. No God would come to our rescue. Like the alcoholic we prefer waiting around in a stupor for death to overtake us or a mysterious being to lift the compulsion. The death we will witness in this stupor is not the mere death of a physical body but the death of a spiritual entity.
Those who completely understand this would not desire to go out and prove to the Christians how wrong they are. There is no use whatever in showing them they are stupid. It is impossible to force anyone to see the Light and be reborn as thinking spiritual entities.
Corollarily, would it be unethical not to attempt to get them to see the light? It would be amiss to neglect them and a crime to ridicule them. After all, sin in the New Testament comes from the word "Hamartia." Hamartia is from archery and means that when one is target practicing, the arrow not only misses the bulls eye, it does not even hit the target.
These sorry Souls who practice Christianity have been practicing "Hamartia." It is not easy to turn around and making fun of them would only make it harder for them to wake up from their drunken stupor of incoherent reality.