Where is the failure to love? There is love in correction. If you genuinely, authentically love the truth, stop accepting it from every source except the Wholeness you counterfeit.
Do you say that truth is only reliable from one source? Do you actually live outside of your faith?
Have you noticed how much knowledge we have amassed in 2,000 years?
Have you any idea of other languages, let alone Hebrew, Sanskrit, and other ancient languages?
Have you considered that the OT record has great similarities with traditions that were around in Babylonia when Israel was exiled there?
Have you noticed the multiple “coincidences” between the story of Jesus and other divine personalities in mythology?
Have you heard that civilizations in the world are older than Israel, like Çatalhöyük (c. 7,500 BCE – 5,700 BCE), the Jiahu culture in China (c. 7,000 BCE – 5,700 BCE), Ain Ghazal (c. 7,200 BCE – 5,000 BCE), Mesopotamia (c. 6,500 BCE – 539 BCE), Ancient Egypt (c. 3,150 BCE – 332 BCE), the Indus Valley Civilization (c.3300 BCE – 1300 BCE), the Akkadian Empire (2334 BCE – 2154 BCE) …?
Of course, if you think that Genesis is a historical document with an accurate account of time, you might think that the world was created 10,000 years ago …
Many sources, sure, but contradiction is the proof of error.
Check out Eternity in Their Hearts by Don Richardson. Yes, it is young earth, but needn’t be (see biologos.org/questions). What I find interesting is how it shows common elements between cultures going way back, and distinguishes between authentic elements and artificial distortions. But you’re not talking mere essentials vs peripherals… antichrist is lies, not diversity. Some try to stretch quite a bit to make Jesus out to be a copycat myth. They have the burden of proof, and none of it works.
Why be okay with contradiction? What drives that?
Contradiction isn’t in itself proof of error. Just because someone has a different view doesn’t mean that I am in error. In fact, it may well be that we’re both in error, because our knowledge is temporary, and our perception of reality is transitional. We have a different understanding today than fifty or a hundred years ago. One thing that has always proven difficult is conserving wisdom. At some stage, people have to find those who know what a sentence or a manuscript means, because we have lost the language or the cultural affinity to be able to read a text in the way it was meant.
The best way has been to keep wisdom alive, and the ancients used stories and narratives, songs and poems, to keep it in their minds and to re-enact it. We have lost any common knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, so that we can’t recite those texts, or tell those stories in the way they were two thousand years ago. We interpret and try to get the gist of a text, but philologists will tell you that much more resonates through the words in the original language. Our tendency to even select translations as “the” translation shows our ignorance of this.
You’ll laugh perhaps, but years ago I knew a German missionary in the Black Forest, who worked with Don Richardson in New Guinea and I spent two days looking at his pictures and listening to his stories. It was fascinating, but I had to ask whether the fact that they were receptive of the Gospel depended upon anything external. It appears there was. The Bible teachers encouraged the indigenous people to adopt the values and arbitrary customs of Westerners in terms of music, dress, forms of worship, etc. The missionaries rarely seemed to realize that they had interpreted the gospel through their own cultural lens, which led to serious distortions. They were only concerned with getting the natives to abandon their pagan culture and exchange it for theirs. This has happened in other parts of the world as well, and I can hardly see an animistic worldview, which these people had, as a preparation for monotheism. However, the charm of Christianity was the love it preached, and as often is the case, the women warmed to this quickly. With the men it was difficult, and there were many setbacks along the way.
Your insistence in bringing this “antichrist” attitude into the argument makes a discussion difficult. It is also telling (but not usual) to use language to deflect the facts, rather than admit that cultures overlap, and always have done. The discoveries of recent years have been suggesting a far older spread of culture, and developments interrupted by cataclysms of huge proportions, leaving remains of cultures, mostly megalithic structures, that may even be older than those I mentioned.
All this does is show that the OT has elements of other cultures which have been written into a narrative for Israel, not for the world. It is like a broad tapestry with a pattern only in the middle, leaving much of the surface blank. The narrative is ingenious and full of symbolism that shows that the people who collected the writings and redacted them were incredibly sophisticated, and scripture has much to offer for that reason. However, the idea that it is history in the sense of the word as we use it now is clearly wrong. And the coincidences observable in Christianity with pagan rituals and symbols are widely accepted. It is basically because it all comes from a common cultural development which has diversified as groups split off and separated, as we read that Abraham did.
To be honest, I don’t even know what you mean by this.
The Jewish scribes were too particular about making perfect copies for your claims about losing their knowledge to hold any weight (plus compare with your inversion with the bit on what philologists would say on original words—words you claim to say we need, have lost, then instead you choose late distortions!!). Any discrepancies among early copies don’t effect doctrine. Applying that standard to other historical texts would toss a lot of history. The best way to keep history real is to not rewrite it. Difficult enough as humans are its authors… why accept late distortions??
The contradiction you accept (gnostic antichrist) isn’t a matter of best translation. This is like believing Abraham Lincoln did not physically sign a physical copy of the emancipation proclamation on an actual day in actual history, and that it did not go into actual effect (though at first a small one). What would drive such a distorted view of history? What would motivate one to rewrite history?
I don’t have my copy of Richardson’s book on hand, or a pristine memory, but he addresses whether or not each of the various cultures had ever been exposed to other cultures, or if it was first contact—he discusses the difference between a correct understanding & a distortion (as gnosticism is—though you are oddly still fine with that) & isn’t ignorant as you assume (though you are seemingly not ignorant & yet are still okay with distortion??). Suuuper interesting stuff.
The “all peoples” promises given to Abraham have had to be repeated and preserved because of going off track throughout history — or, rather — of God getting things back on track. This culminates like labor pains to the present track. Like a broken record. Almost as if we …prefer… broken records. What is driving it?
I’m afraid you are off on a tangent, Biblical Hebrew is a reconstructed language, or a language representing what medieval grammarians thought it had sounded like some two millennia before their time. From about the 6th century BCE until the Middle Ages, many Jews spoke a related Semitic language, Aramaic. Several dialects of Aramaic are still spoken today. It subsequently branched into several Neo-Aramaic languages that are more widely spoken in modern times. From the 2nd century CE until the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language circa 1880, Hebrew served as a literary and official language and as the Judaic language of prayer. The Aramaic languages are now considered endangered, since several dialects are used mainly by the older generations.
My philologist friend points out that reading is one thing, which is a slow process in comparison, and when the words are spoken in a colloquial manner, it is another thing altogether. If you travel to a foreign country having taken a certain language in school, you notice certain words, but it is the context and the colloquial meaning that gives a statement its true meaning with all of its nuances that flow with it. Even when speaking normally, there are at least 4 levels of communication: The factual level, which is dedicated to the factual content; what is being informed about. The self-revelation level, which is dedicated to what the sender reveals about himself. The relationship level, which conveys the relationship; and the appeal level, which serves to prompt someone to do something. These levels take some getting used to when learning to use a language properly. We tend to blend this all out when reading narrative or conversation in scripture.
The Bible isn’t history in the way we use the word today, but “enhanced” stories, based on fact, which is similar to legend, but used to build a “family tree” to give Israel and identity. As I say, it is quite sophisticated, but Abraham Lincoln died in 1865, that is a mere 157 years ago. The New Testament ends about 2000 years ago. The Old Testament is probably put together around 539 BCE, and the flood (which is a real event) is probably the result of the end of the younger dryas and the end of the last great ice-age, which was around 11,600 years ago.
You see, taking the evidence that geology and archaeology have found, we are constructing a more reliable historical record, but in the course of this, everything is growing older. This is also in keeping with the megalithic structures we are finding all over the world, some under water now, but during the ice age above water. There is so much history in the world, that the small section of “history” that the Bible offers shows much of it to be legend. This isn’t a problem as long as one accepts it, but the spiritual message is between the lines, not in dates and figures. So, your accusation of me “rewriting history” is a little off centre, to put it politely.
What you have also done, which many do, is that you have adopted the interpretation of some Church authorities of Gnosticism and simply called it “anti-Christian” without examining the evidence. Mysticism did not die out when the Church tried to eradicate it, and throughout Church history some views have been revised, so that some supposed heretics have been restored and are revered today. Keep in mind that some evangelical Christians reject the Catholic Church but refer to the writings of the Catholic Fathers to condemn aspects of Christianity they consider heretical. Most of the time they have not even read these works but have heard from others what they need to know. There is much to consider in 2000 years of church history that we know was not all good. It was not until 1517 that the Reformation led to the division of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe into different denominations. This means that there were 1500 years of church history before there were the Protestants and much later the Evangelicals (19th century).
The last 500 years have seen religious wars between Catholics and Protestants and against Islam. In the 17th century, Protestant-Catholic tensions increased, especially in Germany, leading to the Thirty Years’ War from 1618 to 1648, in which much of central Europe was destroyed and much of the continent was divided along Catholic and Protestant lines. Swedes, Danes, and French were all involved. The war culminated in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which gave Calvinists and Lutherans the same rights as Catholics. This was preceded by the Huguenot Wars in France in the 16th century, and the Reformation led to the division of society into two religious camps: Catholics and Protestants (also known as Huguenots). This mutual intolerance led to a French civil war, which took place between 1562 and 1598 and resulted in 8 other conflicts. In 1871, the Protestant rulers of Germany launched a program known as the Kulturkampf, which involved the suppression of German Catholicism and lasted until after World War II.
The reason I am telling you all this is because I have often had cause to talk about history to Christians, predominantly protestants, and found their awareness of events somewhat lacking. You only have to buy one of these big picture book of church history to realise how much has been going on, if you then look into each episode, you can fill a library (or in my case, a computer).
There is genetic evidence for two major historical lineages on New Guinea and neighbouring islands. A first wave from the Malay Archipelago about 50,000 years ago, when New Guinea and Australia were a single landmass called Sahul. Much later, there was a wave of Austronesian people from the north who introduced Austronesian languages and pigs about 3,500 years ago, leaving a small but significant genetic trace in many coastal Papuan peoples (only a minority of Austronesian-speaking Papuans can be shown to have Austronesian ancestors). Certain tribes of the Amazon rainforest are closely related to Australian Aborigines and to Melanesians from Papua New Guinea. This extraordinary, unexpected and extremely ancient DNA signal is only present in South America and is completely absent in North America and Mesoamerica.
The broken promises are a matter of interpretation and academic speculation. We need to get back down to simple life and follow the lead that the sermon on the mount gives. We need grass roots spirituality, and less of the exclusivist, militant, tribal propaganda that has been passed as religion.
John himself called it antichristian. Your sources are late distortions. Multiplying words is a time consuming smoke screen lacking substance.
You could name the chapter and verse …
Despite the fact that there is no scholarly consensus as to the authorship of the Johannine works and most scholars believe is not the same as John the Apostle, I’ll accept the Epistle, but point out that the terminology, “does not confess Jesus is not from God” is not what I’m about. The more positive “does confess Jesus is from God” is interpretable. What does it mean to say that Jesus is from God?
I believe that Jesus is from God because he acted out what the Prophets said in his actions and words and embodied the spirit of their words. This doesn’t mean that thinking that his message is deeper and more mystical than generally accepted denies that he is “from God.” In fact, I am saying that the depth of his understanding of Hebrew scripture went over and above the scribes and the pharisees, because he knew that knowledge (da’ath or gnosis) means an interaction with God, along with wisdom and understanding, which is why he told people to look out their “chamber”, their inmost room (often interpreted as the pantry), shut the door and interact with God. That chamber is their inmost being.
The Lord gives wisdom [ħokhma] (sophia), from his face come knowledge [da’ath] (gnosis) and understanding [tevuna] (synesis)" — Proverbs 2.6
You should try to clearly distinguish yourself from the gnostics John is confronting. Resist confusion.
Scholarly consensus is about as meaningful as academic freedom these days.
Who is confused? I’m not and I’m trying to show that many biases come from lack of differentiating, jumping on words as if they only meant one thing. It is a reductionist attitude that may have simplification as its goal, but in the end, it prevents a deeper understanding of what was going on.
We have done this in the past when meeting up with indigenous people, declaring their daimons to be evil, and not understood how their cultural differences have created concepts that are primarily different on the surface, but in practise have similarities. The bond with nature has, even as late as the 18th Century, often been associated with evil and led to the witch-hunts, but “The Earth is the Lord’s and all it contains…” and it was God that said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them.”
Just think about the struggles of people trying to understand the human body, and their medicines were said to be “from the devil”. It is this kind of prejudice that we have to overcome, especially since Jesus was accused of driving out demons with the authority of Satan as well.
Meno_ is doing the work to prevent equivocation. S/He shared this with me:
vatican.va/roman_curia/cong … eo_en.html
Thank you for the document, to which there is a lot to say.
I. Introduction
- If we take Christ to be the incarnation of the divine word, so that “man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature,” we have an indication of the Unity to which we should, by the will of God, return. The role of the church is to turn “toward all persons with a maternal love, to announce to them the plan of the Covenant of the Father,” which some of those serving in the church over the millennia, have done. However, we know that many have not, and have turned towards all persons in a vengeful spirit, far from a maternal love, and sought to dominate and subjugate, rather than announce the plan of the covenant. It is “difficult to understand” because of the recent revelations of abuse of trust, and sexual degradation under which young people, entrusted into the care of the church, where subject to.
II. The effect of current cultural changes on the meaning of Christian salvation
-
It is difficult for the contemporary world to perceive the confession of the Christian faith, precisely because of the betrayal of trust, and the exclusivity of the teaching, which was not preached in a maternal caring sense, but oppressively. Some of us can sort the human failure from the teaching of the Gospel, and discern the message of salvation, by which humanity is encouraged to start again under the cross, and live new lives. Others, especially the victims of abuse and those horrified by it, have difficulties. Admittedly, the current influence of individualism is a problem that few people can fathom, and it is this that is splitting society at all levels, and I believe too, that “the figure of Christ appears as a model that inspires generous actions,” as he has in my life. The reconciliatory aspect of the Gospel has been of great importance, where a maternal, caring attitude has prevailed. “The need to accept, heal and renew our relationships with others and with the created world” is especially apparent today, where so much animosity is witnessed.
-
I wouldn’t have referred to a mindset “in which the individual, understood to be radically autonomous, presumes to save oneself,” as a new form of Pelagianism, since most people will not be familiar with the old form. However, if that is how the Pope wants to call it, then okay. The “new form of Gnosticism puts forward a model of salvation that is merely interior, closed off in its own subjectivism,” isn’t really what I’m about, since I see the terminology referring to a knowing that is intimate and interactive, and encourage this personal devotion as preparation for church services. It is also related to a deepening of the understanding of scripture, reaching back to the language of Jesus and that of the Prophets. This has not been the line of Catholic teaching, rather it has been the intermediary role of the priest that has dominated, and the trust in that role which has been betrayed.
-
The “disregard of the body” is a strange place to start, considering that in the Gospels, Jesus refers to dying to self. He said, “whoever finds his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Losing one’s life normally means that the body dies. However, if we accept that the teachings and vocabulary of the New Testament are actually expressions of what we call non-duality, we can see that Jesus was speaking figuratively, and it is about losing the concept of self. The Apostle Paul also uses different terms to describe the two selves, he talks about the “old self” and the “new self”, some translations will use the terms “old man” and “new man”. He says in his letter to the Romans, that the old self was crucified and died so that the new self might live to Christ and live in God. At one stage, he cries out, “wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?” So, it isn’t difficult to understand that people get the wrong impression, not knowing that the word he is using is “sarx”, translated often as flesh, but for clarity in other translations as “sinful nature”. Considering the methods of chastening that have been practised in Catholicism, a disregard for the body is understandable.
For further confusion, look at how the word body is used in this statement: “thanks to the gift of his Spirit, […] we are able to unite ourselves to the Father as sons in the Son, and become one body in the “firstborn among many brothers” (Rom 8:29).”
III. The human desire for salvation
-
It is true that human beings see themselves as a mystery, and we go through phases of life in which the struggle is more obvious than in others, and some are more successful than others. The external signs of wellbeing being as they may, it is the “need for interior peace and for a peaceful coexistence with one’s neighbour” that has the largest effect. I wouldn’t have seen “a commitment toward a greater good, [which] also maintains the character of endurance and of overcoming pain” as connected to the question of salvation.
-
However, rejecting the attempts of self-realization as merely futile, vain, or insubstantial, is a criticism that grates considering the lack of example. To say that only God makes it possible suggests that he makes other things impossible. It is also a rejection of devotion that isn’t mediated by the church, which is the point being made. Agreed that my aspirations can be out of a narcissistic mindset, but who is going to guarantee that the priests are above that?
-
The biggest damage that can be done to me is what I do to myself, really. Tell that to the broken people who were sexually abused as children by Priests who were supposed to care for them! There is “missing the mark” and then there is damaging people, and we all can identify with the former, and we know that if it goes unchecked it can become the latter. I am encouraged by the fact that the priests that I have known, which were not many, have been gentle spirits. I have known individuals, however, who were good at damaging people.
IV. Christ, Savior and Salvation
-
What is clear here is that the reference to “all humanity” is the known humanity of the Biblical tradition, whereas we know that human beings were spread about the globe tens of thousands of years before the Bible was composed, and consequently had no knowledge of Noah or Abraham. I see the story of God choosing a people, which then goes on to break apart until a remnant is left, and ultimately only one person, as a story of human failure, and the final sacrifice through Jesus, proclaimed as an act of salvation, as a turnaround in spite of that failure. But it is a new beginning for those who look upon the cross as a remedy for the poison in their “body of death”, giving life a “new horizon and a decisive direction.”
-
There is “the healing dimension of salvation, by which Christ redeems us from sin,” and “the elevating dimension” by “the One who divinizes and justifies man.” It is quite normal for people who are in the position to speculate on the nature of existence to ask themselves, what this elevation actually means. There are some that regard this as the return to the cosmic consciousness that manifested this universe, and a re-joining of the glimmering wick with the flame, of the divine breath (nephesh) with its source.
-
The text at least acknowledges that salvation also occurs in an interior manner, but the church wants its role as mediator of salvation. This is what a lot of this fuss is about, and why the church is concerned. Through its tolerating scandals in its ranks, as well as its own “missing the mark”, it has lost the trust it might have had as a mediator. That is a serious catastrophe. The threats it has spoken out in the past, when scaring the living daylights out of people, must surely be the consequences of its own behaviour. Jesus warned the Scribes and the Pharisees, that the devout are the first to be judged.
-
If Christ had come in the way the church has shown itself, he wouldn’t have just said “I am the Way”, follow me, he would have threatened the whole world, and failed. Because all those who sought to rule in that way have passed, and grass has grown over their graves. What we need is a church that is truly and demonstrably maternal and caring, which considering the “men only” leadership, is a little difficult. The pomp and the grandeur would make way for humility, compassion and benevolence, and speak out against the hypocrisy of the world, and grace would move enough people to follow Christ’s way.
V. Salvation in the Church, Body of Christ
-
This movement of humility, compassion, and benevolence, moving as a wave across the land, would become a church of healing and wholeness, where the words of the Gospel could be experienced, where unity could improvise, where the sacred has a place, where life vibrates, and the awareness of possibilities would spread. Diversity would be embraced, “know thyself” would have priority, people would be baptised, communion would be celebrated, and people would praise the source of life.
-
It is the fault of the church, that this has not happened. Its concern with power and it’s wielding its might through the centuries has undermined its message, which I still find compelling. It already has difficulty finding enough priests. If the church now warns against other ways in which people have sought to find meaning, although people gather around the story of Christ, seeking ways to follow his word, then it puts itself on the wrong side, and is still only concerned with it’s power.
I believe that the essential unity of everything is real, whereas duality and plurality are phenomenal illusions, and that matter, as materialized energy, is the temporal manifestation of an intangible, spiritual, eternal essence that is the innermost self of all things, which may be identifiable as a cosmic consciousness. This is, of course, a doctrine of classical Brahmanism, but essentially in most religions in some form. In Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One, and Perennial philosophy has its roots in the Renaissance interest in Neo-Platonism and its idea of The One.
This is primarily found in a mystical view of God and of Christ, which the church tried to banish first of all under Constantine, but also later in church history, wherever it reappeared, there was opposition and many people suffered and died for it. The language of “the court”, of rulers, which is integrated into Roman Catholic Christianity, is far removed from the itinerant preacher Jesus of Nazareth, and this becomes very clear when one reads the Gospels in Aramaic, as they have been preserved by Syriac Christians. It is there that the nondual aspects of his teaching become very clear.
Assyrian Christian writer Abraham Rihbany (1869-1944) wrote: “As is well known to church historians, the Syrian Christians of the Semitic stock have had very little to do with the development of the “creeds of Christendom.” Theological organization has been as foreign to the minds of the Eastern Christians as political organization. They have always been worshippers rather than theologians, believers rather than systematic thinkers … … The Christian Church had its simple origin with a group of Jewish followers of Jesus Christ in Palestine … The creed of the theologians consists of many “articles”; the creed of Christ only two: “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.”
Rihbany, Abraham Mitrie. The Syrian Christ (S.239). Good Press. Kindle-Version.
Rihbany praises the Gospels “unrestrained effusiveness of expression; its vivid, almost flashy and fantastic imagery; it’s naïve narrations; the rugged unstudied simplicity of its parables; its unconventional (and to the more modest West rather unseemly) portrayal of certain human relations; as well as its all-permeating spiritual mysticism…” (S.8 )
I am thankful to Neil Douglas-Klotz for mentioning another Aramaic Christian scholar, George Lamsa, who “pointed out the irony that most Christians in Europe were not allowed to read the scriptures until well after the advent of the printing press in the Middle Ages; until that time only priests were allowed to see the scriptures. Even the possession of a translation of the Gospels in a vernacular language was punishable by death. On the other hand, a thousand years earlier, Aramaic-speaking Christians had copies of the Gospel in Aramaic in their homes and for open use.”
Douglas-Klotz, Neil. The Hidden Gospel (S.17) Quest Books.
As both of these authors note, the mind of a Semitic language speaker inherently divides and makes sense of reality differently than that of a Greek or Latin speaker. I find it unfortunate that we are not aware of that when we read the Gospel – nor can we without help. Even more unfortunate is the fact that where help is offered, it is often rejected. Rihbany relates in his autobiography, how he was presented as a forty-day old child to the priest, much like Mary took the infant Jesus to Simeon, to be presented at the altar. The continuance of tradition shows how no new rites had to be introduced, because the source had been in their hands for over a thousand years.
You cannot understand Jesus fully from the outside, and the tradition of the Western church has been deeply dualistic in its approach to existence, as against the non-dualistic, mystical approach that Aramaic people took for granted in the Gospels. We have taken from the pictures that our translations have suggested, as though taking a snapshot as a tourist, but haven’t grasped what it means to have lived in Palestine in those times. Some of us are, as Rihbany writes, “hasty tourists” who immediately interpret observed situations into our own reality, which means we take two “steps” back, distancing ourselves from the meaning of the Gospels: in language and culture.
In some ways we have discovered some practises for our own lives. The pilgrimage for example, which in biblical times (and in Syria of 1914) could be undertaken for many reasons, seeking either to be healed of a certain ailment, to atone for a sin, or to be divinely helped in some other way. It wasn’t unusual to be undertaken by women for the purpose of securing the blessing of fertility, or consecrating an approaching issue of wedlock to God, or to the patron saint of the visited sanctuary.
The happy journey is often made on foot, the parties most concerned walking all the way “on the flesh of their feet”; that is, with neither shoes nor sandals on. This great sacrifice is made as a mark of sincere humility which is deemed to be pleasing to God and his holy saints. However, the wearing of shoes and even the use of mounts is not considered a sinful practice on such occasions, and is indulged in by many of the well-to-do families. The state of the heart is, of course, the chief thing to be considered.
Rihbany, Abraham Mitrie. The Syrian Christ (S.13). Good Press. Kindle-Version.
What I read here, and in many more pages of Rihbany’s book is that many of the rites and rituals are undertaken physically, and in accordance with age old traditions that have proved their worth, even if we deem them “superstitious” in some cases. Modern rationalism is challenged by such rituals, also the words of the Bible, that describe such rituals – but not only here, the whole Gospel story is troubling rationally spoken, but infused with meaning that goes beyond the superficial. Alone the opening of what we call the “Our Father” or “Lord’s prayer” has a mystical sound to it in Aramaic: “Abwoon d’bashmaya” can be interpreted in many ways, as Semitic languages are, gleaning meaning from each syllable, let alone from each word.
Language is metaphorical by nature, but our modern languages cannot compete with the Semitic languages in this sense. By comparison, Douglas-Klotz says that our translations “are like fruit juice that has been strained through a very fine filter and heated, leaving all the valuable vitamins, minerals, trace elements, and pulp behind.” (S.20) Only the person who appreciates the meaning of each syllable, which flows with the superficial sense that is usually correctly translated, can grasp the feeling with which these words are spoken. We usually have to list the diversity of meanings to get a feeling for it.
Another aspect of Semitic tradition is that interpretations of texts are right in the context of the moment. Tomorrow another emphasis may be made, which is then right for tomorrow. “In this tradition of translation and interpretation, the words of a prophet or mystic – stories, prayers, and visionary statements – challenge listeners to understand them according to their own life experience.” (S.21)
The presence of nonduality in the Aramaic translation of the Gospel can be found in many sayings, but I won’t be able to hold your interest for that long, so let it suffice for the moment to read from Matth. 5:8, which according to KJV reads: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” Translated from the Aramaic, we read: “Ripe are the consistent in heart; they shall see Sacred Unity everywhere!” Alaha is the Aramaic word for God, but it also means Sacred Unity, Oneness, the All, the Ultimate Power/Potential, the One …
_
Interesting last post, and thread, Bob… I’ll read, and comment back, later.
Bob Thank you for your arguments in support of a nondual view of Christianity. You continue to help me clear a way on that path.
The poetical, mystical, and romantic reading of the Bible is about hope and optimism, for “pessimism cannot sing, for it has no song, and cannot pray, for it has no faith,” as Rihbany says. The Bible is always speaking about optimism and hope, attempting to lead God’s people towards their potential. The whole list of rites and rituals that Rihbany describes is directed towards this goal, as in the acceptance of a child (as the child) into the church, similar to rites of the Jewish temple. Of course, this is still very much a patriarchal vision (1916), but women are not without their calling and have an important role to play. Today, this role, which has much to do with childbirth, is played down, and the joy of these societies that is experienced around the announcement of pregnancy and of a healthy child, is weighed against the disappointment of failed pregnancies, and bias towards male children. However, the stories around the birth of Jesus must be understood in this oriental setting.
Today we praise ourselves as “modern” because we are able to postpone pregnancy indefinitely, albeit often with side effects, and by making great efforts to defer the biological facts of life. Everything we do against biology has a disruptive effect on natural life, even if we seem to overcome this psychologically - at least temporarily. We resist with our rational minds the possibility that we are changing our destiny in harmful ways and with unknown consequences. But whether in agriculture, in preserving habitats and wildlife, in keeping waters clean, or in preventing pandemics, we have seen that our mastery of biology is limited. We have had to develop technologies to combat the problems we ourselves created. This may explain why traditional societies were seemingly “superstitious” about altering the natural flow of life and considered nature sacred. In this sense we could ask, “"Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God grants one thing and doesn’t grant another?”
We have lost sight of many aspects of natural life and have even mocked those with a “common sense” that were orientated towards nature and the cosmos. In talking about the story of the Magi following a star to Jesus, Rihbany says …
The sight of the stars in a Syrian night has become metaphor in the Arab language, as it was in the Aramaic, spoken by their ancestors. This metaphorical language must be taken into account, as we see in the Old and New Testament, when allusions of the influence of the stars on human lives are spoken of. Of course, all too great a reliance upon the “star-gazers” or “star-arresters” is criticised in the Bible, but Rihbany says, “Beyond all such crudities, however, lies the sublime and sustaining belief that the stars are alive with God” as we see in the Songbook of the Bible, the Psalms.
For Rhibany, it is clear that “the mystic accents of the ancient seers […] expressed in the rich narratives of the New Testament the deepest and dearest hopes of the soul.” … “And I believe that both as a Christian and as an Oriental, I have a perfect right to be a mystic, after the wholesome New Testament fashion.” (S.29). He sees the narrative of the nativity presented “in a most exquisite poetical form” and as “the expression of a sublime and passionate desire of the soul for the divine companionship and for infinite peace.” The story of the educated Magi and the uneducated shepherds visiting the Christ Child in the manger is so inclusive that it is an encouragement to all, rich or poor, educated or illiterate.
Is it less incredible now that thousands people are being resusitated and reporting NDEs? Of course it’s not the same thing. Which raises (pun acknowledged) the question: What ever happened to Lazurus who Christ raised? Of course, that question misses Rihbany’s point. At the moment one asks for the historical origin of the myth, one is missing the mythic meaning of the story.
The Christmas story points us to the divine light within us. Read the story in that light and you have its essence!
Neil Douglas-Klotz made reference to the fact that the Hebrew-Aramaic texts in the Bible point to an understanding of existence that has a bearing on metaphysical idealism, or the nonduality of the New Testament.
Of course, for us Westerners, this sounds far stretched, because we are used to the narrow definition that our language offers us and the incorporation of Greek dualism in Christian teaching. But, as we have discussed before, there still are indications of this in the NT, even in our translations.