Did Jesus exist?, page 9

Greetings again,

I'd like to make it clear that I don't denigrate, or reject Jesus at all.

I just have a different view, one I think was rather like Paul's

Whilst I believe Jesus did not exist in history, nonetheless, I am a believer - I believe in God, I believe in Iesous Christos, I am a Christian.

I believe in the wonder of HUMANITY,
in HUMANS...
well I have faith in MAN :-)
(pardon me ladies, hard to get that to all sound right without gender)

In what we can create, in out ability to believe, to visualise, to see, to make, to craft, to write...

Paul travelled out of body to the 3rd heaven and wanted desperately to TELL us something of that great secret he learned thgere.

Paul preaches about the mystery of the Christos "Christos in you, the hope of DOXA".

Paul made that rare journey and came back with an idea - in each of us we have an image, a reflection, a spark, or piece of God - our soul, which gives us life - it's an offshoot of God, the son-of-God.

Paul called it IESOUS CHRISTOS.

This soul, an actual part of the immortal divine is said to DIE our life, It (Iesous) is crucified on the cross of physical matter - nailed to our body by the passions, as Plato said. This soul (Iesous) is freed at our death, it lives again - it is RAISED.

I don't think Paul for one moment even HEARD of the concept of a person Jesus of Nazareth.
He was talking a different language.

(Read Paul as if you had never read the Gospels - Jesus of Nazareth cannot be found - except for a tiny handful of controversial snippets, nothing definite in Paul. The creed - inserted; born of woman - WHICH woman? in Paul the woman is the heavenly church; all the so-called historical references are as weak as water; and Paul never quotes Jesus explicitly and directly, never mentions the trial, the triumphal entry)

LATER,
a nother Great Visionary mind, one of the great writers of that age, crafted a grand new book.
He crafted several threads together -
* the characters in Paul
* the mileiu and figures and dramas of the Old Testament
* the key spiritual themes of the day (the son-of-god)
* themes from literature (e.g. the empty tomb scene)
* Homer (of course)
into a book about a magnificent new hero, a new hero for his times, the human he wanted to be, the person that all persons could aspire to.

He called him Iesus Christos

LATER still, after
* TWO wars lost to the Roman juggernaut
* which erased Judea from the map
* and razed Jerusalem - till it was knee high, some say
* and totally destroyed the Temple and it's records
* and foreably dispersed the Jews from Jerusalem
* that's the few Jews who were left alive
we start to see other people liked the Jesus book so much, they COPIED it - soon, there were a dozen or more Gospels, with a handful of main favourites.

LATER
we start to see a few people (from Jewish circles mostly) claim
"Jesus, oh yes he was real"
(a Jewish hero set in the Jewish world, set just before the Jews lost everything - no surprise there.)

Meanwhile elsewhere, all sorts of other Jews Christians are developing all sorts of other beliefs -
* black magician Jesus
* supernatural Jesus
* phantom Jesus
* illusion Jesus
* magic mushroom Jesus

Finally,
CENTURIES later after many huge arguments, some consensus develops, a strong leadership takes charge, they get the stories straight, eject anyone who rejects the new story, and of course burn the books of their opponents.

Then, they had the biggest stroke of luck in history -
Rome picks Christianity as the new state religio,
and shortly after Rome collapses in ruins.

The rest, as they say, is history - a millenium and a half of stagnation.
The West has barely progressed spiritually since Roman times,
now we seek to the East, or poke among the ash of the Qabalah

Finally in the last century our two we saw some light, but
only in recent decades has some of the West shaken off that dead hand.

Now we race ahead as we need, our children are astonishingly bright and healthy and wise and humane (well, at least for some, I am blessed to be living amongst one of the highest standard of living ever achieved by humankind.)
I went to my daughter's school (a Quintilian school, lovely place) once to watch the school play. One of the children was a disabled Iraqi boy, he had his part in the play (a small part, he could not talk or walk like most of the other children) just like all the other children. No-one laughed, he got clapped as much as the other children. He was accepted as much as any.
A disabled Iraqi boy.
I cried.
With a handful of parents from various cultures, all with slightly embarassed little tears of joy -
We saw the future that day - we humans CAN do it, we CAN get it right.

I saw the Golden Age that day.
Doxa.

THAT is what I believe in -

Humanity

But sadly -
how would that Iraqi boy and his parents fare today in most US schools?

Iasion