Alternate Christian Realities

By Romana Annette 6/09/2010

Easter and Christmas can be times for trepidation in progressive and liberal churches, especially in those churches, such as the Unitarian Universalist church, that no longer proclaim themselves to be specifically Christian.  There is also the problem that fundamentalists want to own Easter and Christmas, at least the religious myth part, if not the pagan and commercial parts.

Jesus the Christ is the most famous person in history whose personal life is almost totally unknown.  Some say this was by design, since before the advent of printing presses, those who controlled the scribes controlled the written scripture.  Note, when I say Jesus the Christ, I am emphasizing that Jesus was just his common name, while Christ was a messianic title.  Christos was the Greek word for anointed as a messiah.  Strictly speaking, Jesus’ actual name was Yeshua, which was transliterated in Greek as Iesous.  In those days, people did not have last names.
Transliteration between Aramaic (the language of Jesus) and Greek, philosophically-different languages, and then to English, a non-philosophical language, has led to endless errors and confusion.  The fact that ancient written documents had no punctuation or spaces between words did not help either.
Some scholars, who are often members of fundamentalist or Evangelical churches, promote what has become the standard story Jesus, while others, who are often referred to a heretics or dissenters, seek to uncover the esoteric or hidden story.  Esoteric teachings can offer an antidote to a depressing Christianity burdened with elements such as blood, crosses, suffering, sacrifices, and a God who is assumed to approve of death penalties because Jesus was sacrificed on the cross.

Language has entered into the controversy, since a modern dialect of Aramaic is still spoken in parts of Syria.  Thus, scholars have access to the New Testament in Aramaic, which has a much more poetic flavor than the New Testament in Greek.  I once had a minister who could read Aramaic and claimed that only the Aramaic versions were valid.  The leading contenders are the Peshitta¹ Bible and the Lamsa² variant.  This has led to heated debates, especially since the truly ancient Christian scripture is only found in Greek.  Some fundamentalists have even claimed that Jesus spoke Greek as his primary language, which would have been highly unlikely.

Fundamentalists now claim that the Founding Fathers wanted to create a Christian country.  While some of the Founders might have felt this way, this was not a prevailing feeling; in fact, Christian churches in general were viewed with a certain amount of contempt.  The Founders were mostly careful to frame the basic teachings of Jesus the Christ in non-theistic phrasing.  Even the claim that the Constitution of the United States was inspired by Christian scripture is weak, since part of the Constitution was inspired by Iroquois Law³, a totally non-Christian point of view.  While this appears to be historically true, many think it is an American myth.

I consider myself to be a follower of the teachings of Jesus, but not a Christian.  The kind of belief system promoted by Christianity has never been interesting to me, and I want very much to rise above its outmoded philosophy.  For me, this kind of a belief carries too much baggage with it.  While I did attend a Unity⁴ church for many years, I embraced what I considered worthwhile, but I did not convert, so to speak.  Unity is a New Thought⁵ church; New Thought churches embrace a wide range of esoteric teachings from Christian and non-Christian sources.

Unity teachings were fairly simple: Jesus the Christ was a non-divine wayshower, and one could follow in his footsteps by assuming the Christ-consciousness.  The symbol of the cross was not present, but one could cross-out ignorance by following the teachings of Jesus.  Believing the teachings of Jesus was considered far more important than believing in any dogma.
I do not want to disparage my friends in Unity for what they want to believe.  My problem was that I did not consider the teachings to be universal enough, since they were too heavily human-centric.  I want to discover an even higher-level set of teachings, of which those of Jesus the Christ could be considered to be a subset.

This is why I have explored the really esoteric parts of the Christian story, beyond the standard, accepted myth-laden versions.  Esoteric Christian literature has recently been popularized in the controversial books by Dan Brown, such as the Da Vinci Code.  Dan Brown makes money exploring and exploiting esoteric Christianity, especially since many of his plot line border on sensationalism.

Much of the lore in the New Testament actually preceded the life of Jesus.  Any mention of the coming of a messiah in the Old Testament was taken to apply to Jesus after-the-fact, since a proper messiah had been expected to possess certain attributes, so the writers of the books in the New Testament were careful ascribe such attributes to Jesus.  Caesar Augustus had been described with a divine set of attributes, so it had been necessary for Jesus to out-shine the emperor.

A century or so before Jesus, there appeared the mysterious Qumran Teacher of Righteousness⁶, whose life story very much resembled that of Jesus.  Some have even used this Qumran story to question the very existence of Jesus.  Proof (and non-proof) is difficult in an age before printing presses when fact and fiction so readily merged.

The story of Jesus has received many overlays that are in contradiction to the prevailing culture of the time, especially myths of virgin birth and celibacy.  Scholars literally spend their entire lives trying to fill in endless gaps, as well as trying to reconcile all the contradictory books of the New Testament.  The Nativity story, especially, has accumulated a conglomeration of symbols, such as angels, guiding stars, wise men, stables, mangers, prophecies, magic, anti-sexuality, crucifixions, bread, wine, executions, trials, persecutions, Jewish blame, and so forth.  This all happened within colliding cultures, with occupying Romans, a puppet government, frequent insurrections, and guerilla terrorism.  It was all documented second-hand or third-hand, meager texts were both interpolated and extrapolated, and facts quickly became supplanted by legends.

There is not a lot of humor in the New Testament, except for mistranslations that end up sounding absurd.  Despite the assertions of fundamentalists, the Christian story line has evolved over the centuries.  In Jesus’ time, Satan was still mostly a good guy, as God’s adjutant angel⁷.  The Temptation of Christ was not a demonic event.  However, as Christianity evolved to become more theistically human-centric, the balance changed and Satan became the source of evil.  Except for the Jews, all the players ended up becoming blameless.  Eventually, as a final low blow, Christianity even ended up hijacking the Old Testament, Judaism’s own sacred scripture.

A lot of the fuss dates back to the Council of Nicea in 325.  Believers in the standard teachings tend to like the outcome of those proceedings, which was the divinity of Jesus, while dissenters have been protesting ever since.  Believers even claim to have a record of the proceedings that shows that everything was fair; however, remember that he who controlled the scribes controlled history.

Still, many believers were not entirely happy with all the introduced myth-making, so the Council of Ephesus was held in 431 to make all the myths more concrete.
Some teachings were shoved into an unofficial subset called the Apocrypha in the year 367.  Yet, while this set of scriptures is not supposed to have any standing, it has heavily contributed to the creation of Christian myth⁷.

Modern esoteric revelations really took off with the journeys of a Russian, Nicholas Notovich⁸, in the 1880’s.  He purportedly was able to view and get a translation of ancient scrolls in a Tibetan monastery that told another version of the life of Jesus.  In this version, there were no missing years, and Jesus traveled as far as India and Nepal .  Also in the Notovich version, it was the Romans who were responsible for all Jesus’ grief, not the Jews.  Crucifying Jesus was certainly inconsistent with any Jewish custom or law.
Notovich’s findings were quickly embraced by the Theosophical Society⁹, through which the alternate life of Jesus spread throughout the New Thought movement.

In the 1940’s, additional information came to light as the Dead Sea Scrolls¹⁰ and The Nag Hammadi Library¹¹ were discovered.  Some thought this would shake up the Christian world, but anyone who has ever tried to argue with a fundamentalist has learned that some people’s beliefs are unaffected by any revised information.

There has also been a lot of fuss over the star of Bethlehem.  Scientists have spent many hours looking for celestial candidates.  This is closely tied to the arrival of the poorly explained Magi, Persian astrologers or wise men, from what is now Armenia.  Supposedly, the Magi were using some astrological configuration as their guide.  Historians have interpreted this configuration to be a star in the sky, but astrological signs do not always resolve so simply.  Also, unless the Magi had turbo-camels, it would have taken them a while to reach Jerusalem…weeks or even more than a year’s time.  Even if they could have flown, it is still a distance of at least a thousand miles.  In any case, the infant Jesus would not still have been lying in a manger in a nameless stable waiting for them.
It is not clear if the Roman authorities would have tolerated the arrival of foreigners from beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.  However, the Greeks were quite familiar with Persians and their philosophy, especially that of Mithraism¹².  Mithraism supplied a ready-made template for the Christ story.  The Greeks’ habit of mixing and matching ideas and myths was a driving influence in the evolution of the young religion called Christianity. 

Why would non-Jews come from so far to give gifts to a Jewish child?  It has been noted that this kind of gifting¹³ is very similar to the Buddhist tradition of identifying a new incarnation of a previous lama.  So, even more mixing and matching makes Jesus a messiah for the Magi instead of the Jews.  The Magi would likely have been followers of Zoroastrianism or its Mithraism variant, so their appearance in the nativity story almost looks like a nonsequitur, leading to constantly made up stories and myths in their own right.⁷

In The Jesus Papers¹⁴, it was noted that the star of Bethlehem could have been the Star of David.  Since either or both Joseph and Mary have been considered to be descendent of King David, Jesus represented a potential new rise to power of the House of David.  The Davidians were supposedly centered at a temple in Egypt , not the one in Jerusalem.

There was nothing special about mangers.  Mangers were wooden structures made to hold hay and feed, but mangers were also commonly used as cribs.  Every new mother, rich or poor, would seek to acquire a manger for her child, but she would use it in a house rather than a stable, if possible.

For the next eighteen years, Jesus vanished from standard biblical record.  Scholars have long sought to fill in the gaps.  Some of the speculation has been unsettling, since a Jesus who was married and raising a family, as a proper rabbi would have proceeded, did not fit the eventual myth.

In the Notovich-introduced and other stories, Jesus travelled the world collecting knowledge.  Besides reaching India , it is said that he travelled as far as Tibet .  Such an idea was reinforced by the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ¹⁵, which was supposedly received as a vision by the American minister Levi Dowling, shortly before he died in 1911.  Regardless how legitimate such a vision might have been, it cannot be overlooked that Dowling was a member of the Theosophical Society, which tended to view the esoteric scripture, revealed by Notovich, to be true.

Maybe Jesus tipped over the tables of crooked merchants throughout his travels.  And, of course, maybe he travelled to meet the Magi; since he might have been their prophet.  There is speculation¹⁴ that he studied at the alternate Jewish temple in Egypt .  More probably, he had to travel no farther than Alexandria, where he would have encountered exotic travelers from most parts of the known world.
Jews did not travel throughout the ancient world, but the Greeks did.  Just as the Greeks helped transmit the story of Jesus in Israel, so they likewise could have done so throughout Asia.

Wherever Jesus was during the lost years, and whatever he was doing, it did not serve established prophecy.  Whatever the reason was that Jesus entered Jerusalem at that fateful time, it was clear that neither the Jewish nor the Roman authorities were happy about it.  The Jewish authorities did not want a rise of the House of David, and the Romans did not want the Jews to have a popular hero.

Next came the crucifixion.  To be correct, Jesus was nailed to a giant tee, not a cross.  Jesus had to die to fulfill an after-the-fact prophecy, so he could end up suffering for our sins.  In actuality, Jesus’ charisma was so profound that it was unlikely that any lowly Roman soldier would have killed him.  Jesus died conveniently fast; then his body was rushed to an awaiting tomb.
It is claimed¹⁴ that there is apocryphal scripture that tells the true story.  Supposedly, even the Koran backs this up.  At the tomb, Jesus was revived or resurrected, so to speak.  In this context, resurrection implies a rebirth to a new life.
At this point, Jesus may have acquired a savvier entourage of followers who never again allowed their master to be put at risk.  Once Jesus could work behind the scenes without any notoriety, it was much easier for him to spread his teachings.  It has never been explained how a new religion could arise solely based on three public years of teachings.

In closing, I find esoteric Christianity to be interesting, especially since I do not like the fundamentalist version.  As a Process Theologian¹⁶, I dislike any models of reality that seek to assign blame, especially blame to God.  However, I am not going to jump on this bandwagon that wants to reinvent Jesus and waste my time following an utterly cold trail.  At best, speculation can only create new myths from old ones.  Whatever evidence can be found has been contaminated by the copy errors introduced scribes, by new material introduced by the scribes’ masters, and by the fantasizing of our own imaginations.

While it would be nice to correct the endless errors in the Easter and Christmas stories, even sympathetic churches seem uninterested.  No one wants to change what is popular.  My interests are best served by incorporating the best parts of all religions into a more naturalistic model of cosmic evolution, where universes spring into existence, where such universes create other universes, and where self-organizing animate and inanimate structures engage in constant cycles of creation and evolving complexity.  My model of reality requires proper causality, but it does not relegate living things to a realm of convenient spontaneous accidents.  I have to allow for everything that is natural, in so far as it is part of the created and evolving order; however, I see no place for supernatural exceptions such as magic and sorcery, since they involve elements of whim that can violate the rules of causality.

References

1.   Peshitta Bible http://aramaicbible.us/

2.   Lamsa Bible http://www.aramaicpeshitta.com/AramaicNTtools/dr_george_lamsa_bible.htm

3…Iroquois Law -- http://www.ipoaa.com/iroquois_constitution_united_states.htm

4. Unity http://www.unity.org/aboutunity/index.html.

5. New Thought http://websyte.com/alan/

6.   Teacher of Righteousness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher_of_Righteousness

7.   Putting away Childish Things  Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Harper San Francisco 1992.

8…The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ, Nicholas Notovich,
        http://www.atmajyoti.org/sw_unknown_life.asp

9. Theosophical Society http://www.theosophical.org/

10…Dead Sea Scrolls, http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/intro.html

11…The Nag Hammadi Library, http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

12. Mithra http://www.truthbeknown.com/mithra.htm

13…Jesus Lived in India, Holger Kirsten, Element book LTD, 1986

14…The Jesus Papers, Michael Baigent, Harper San Francisco, 2006

15. The Aquarian Gospel  http://www.aquariangospel.org/Aquarian-Gospel-1911.html

16. Process Theology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_theology