Originally posted by Sigismundus
Hi Neo

Naturally we don't know the sexual-marital history of R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean Nazir---and speculation about Miryam haGedolah ('Mary the Great') was rife even before Holy Blood Holy Grail in the 1980s...and long before Dan Brown wrote his fictional novels...

Yes, and though it's (Holy Blood Holy Grail) quite sensational and questionable as for some of the sources (esp. the Prieurie de Zion - Merové connection and further speculation over Jesju's family tree beyond the Gospel's list), it's an entertaining book and a great read for anyone interested in the subject. I've also read a couple of other books by the same team or researchers and authors, and their claims are well sourced out.

Neither do we know the true etymology of 'Mary Magdalene' and there are some weird theories out there.

I track the name of Mary, Heb. Miriam back to Egypt, where you had the word for 'Love' which was Mar or 'MR' and 'Beloved' being Mary or 'MRY'. To me it's quite obvious that the name of Jesju's refuge would lead us to Egypt who saved his life the first time. IMHO Mary Magdalena is identical to Miriam of Bethany, the brother of Elazer (name of a distinguished high priest), was the same woman who annointed Jesju, and was called a whore by the Jewish establishment for ages to this day. She was the Mesjiakh's Beloved Migdal Jesjuvah, his Tower of Refuge.

[edit on 3/11/2009 by Neo Christian Mystic]

Originally posted by eight bits
Paul never met Jesus.

Paul (his companions, and the other apostles) disagree:

"About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, 'Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?'

" 'Who are you, Lord?' I asked.

" 'I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,' he replied. My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.

"'What shall I do, Lord?' I asked.
"'Get up,' the Lord said, 'and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.' My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me." - Acts 22:6-11

The discussion apparently continues in Damascus. Then he meets Peter, who knew Christ before his death, and his discipleship is confirmed. A.k.a "Ah, I know you have met Jesus".

[edit on 5-11-2009 by saint4God]

Thank you, saint.

Saul had a vision in the desert, long after the Lazarus incident. Paul never claimed to have met Jesus before that.

To be a witness regarding anything in Secret Mark, Paul would need to have met Jesus earlier, and in earthly fashion. He never did.

My own view, which you quoted, is stronger than that. Lots of people see lots of things in the desert. Paul thinks he saw Jesus. Good for him. Good for anybody who agrees with Paul's opinion about that.

For the purposes of the thread, which concerns the authenticity of Morton Smith's find, Paul's opinion really doesn't loom large.

Yes, yes, Myrtales--

The 'significant' waiting for 'six' days before the ascent of the Mount in the so-called Transfiguratgion pericopes is ALSO drawn from the same familiar story of Moses ascending the mountain for 6 days before the epiphany occurs -

This echoes some of the 1st century Jewish Mysteries we see in the Dead Sea Scrolls corpus, you could say...and the later 'canonical' council approved 4-gospels often seem to echo---and which Secret Mark may have contained even more, and Clement of Alexandria often spoke of the 8 Secret Books that are not to be given to the general mass of believers...

It even starts to look, upon examination of the actual 'mystery' language being used, suspiciously as if the whole so-called 'Transfiguration'pericope in the Synoptics is based on a legendary HAGADDIC MIDRASH on the idea of the Messiah being A PROPHET LIKE UNTO MOSES who likewise ascended the Mount to speak with (semi-) divine beings (notice how in the 1st gospel the so called Sermon on the Mount is like a New Moses giving a New Law to the New Israel upon, signifiantly, a mountaintop...) which was stitched together Gospel fashion from various Old Testament Messianic verses e.g. proto-Isaiah 4:2-6

Isaiah 4:2 In that day shall the NAZIR (lit. 'Branch' i.e. the Messiah) of Yahweh shall be beautiful and GLORIOUS and the fruit of the earth [shall be] excellent and comely for all that are escaped of Yisro'el...

4:3 And it shall come to pass in that Day that he that is left alive on MOUNT Zion, even [he that] remaineth in Jerusalem, SHALL BE CALLED HOLY, even every one that is WRITTEN AMONG THE LIVING in Jerusalem:

4:4 When YHWH shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem FROM THE MIDST thereof by the spirit of JUDGMENT and BY A SPIRIT OF BURNING for YHWH shall l create UPON EVERY DWELLING PLACE of Zion, and upon her assemblies, A CLOUD and SMOKE by day, AND A SHINING BRILLIANT FIRE by night: for upon ALL SHALL BE A DEFENCE OF GLORY.

4:6 And THERE SHALL BE A TABERNACLE for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and as a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.

In the Transfiguration pericopes in the council approved canonical synoptic gospels ('Matt-Mark-Luke', whoever they were), notice the key words-phrases from Isaiah chapter 4:2-6 keep recurring (no coincidence to scholars) : NAZIR ('Branch' i.e. of David i.e. Messiah) CLOUD-SMOKE, TABERNACLE, MOUNT, BRILLIANT SHINING, GLORY, THUNDER/VOICE (Qol), LIGHTNING ('storm and rain')

See: 'he became as BRIGHT as LIGHTNING' 'and the VOICE from heaven thundered' (Heb. QOL = (thunder', 'voice') key words that are BOTH associated with a thunderstorm, an image often associated the epiphanies ('appearances', 'manifestations') of YHWH in the OT.

Notice the idea of building 'TABERNACLES' ('one for you and one for Mosheh and one for Elijah....)' is also echoed in Isaiah 4:6-- again we have a NT pericope (especaially one associated with Epiphanies) steeped in Old Testament Epiphany language..

The words placed into the Thunder ('Qol') also reflect the OT proofs for a True Prophet as opposed to a False Prophet ('if that prophet declares an oracle of YHWH and it DOES NOT come true, that PROPHET is FALSE, and YOU WILL NOT LISTEN TO HIM' (Deut 13:3-4)

whereas the Transfiguration periocopes are trying to say, LISTEN TO HIM because he is THE PROPHET LIKE UNTO MOSES...YOU SHALL LISTEN TO HIM

(Deut 18:15-22)

"You clan-god YHWH will cause a prophet like me to be raised from among your own brothers. You must listen to him ..for I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account...but when a prophet proclaims in the name of YHWH does not take place or come true, that is a message YHWHhas not spoken to him and that prophet has spoken presumptuously. You will not listen to him.'

See also one of the epiphanies in Number 12:4-9 where clouds are involved--either way almost every line of the New Testament gospel material is based in some way on an Old Testament (or apocrypha-pseudipigrapha) verse and handled 'midrashically' (from D-R-SH to 'search out the hidden meaning of a thing' as we see in the Lukan pericope on the socalled Road to Emmaeus

('Midrash the Scriptures, so that you may see everything in the Torah, and the Prophets and the Psalms spoke of the Son of Man...')

All this hagaddic midrash of old testament verses became part and parcel of Nazorean Christianity's Mysteries, but most of these 'secret doctrines' were destroyed after Jerusalem was ground to powder by the Romans, and by the 'orthodox' party (e.g. Iranaeus of Lyons) who were ruthless in their extermination of what they themselves terms 'heretical' (from the Greek: 'choice') -- and since that party eventually won the Christian propaganda wars of the mid 160s, Secret Gospels like Secret Mark had to be dealt with in some way (they went into hiding: we can only shudder as to how much material was lost in the 2nd century that may well have gone back to the earliest Nazorean communities in Palestine...)

Originally posted by eight bits
Saul had a vision in the desert, long after the Lazarus incident.

A vision that his travelling companions saw with him. Group vision? Interesting...

Originally posted by eight bits
Lots of people see lots of things in the desert.

Collectively? I'm listening.

Originally posted by eight bits
Paul's opinion really doesn't loom large.

Just addressing your overly stated presumption that Paul did not meet Christ.

I don't know, Sig. I don't think we can go running off every time we see a week mentioned by people who reckon time by the moon. Sometimes, "a week later" is inevitably going to mean "shortly afterwards," and nothing more.

What I like about Moses' week being echoed in Lazarus' week is that there is a shared theme of preparation of the visionary for the vision. Strand anybody on a mountain for several days, and they will likely see something when they can move again. There was some preparation for Lazarus, too, since at least on the last day, Jesus told him what to do for the night to come. Both visions are something which Moses and Lazarus have chosen to experience. It is their purpose in being where they are when they have their visions.

But the transfiguration's week is another kettle of fish. If there is anything clear about the transfiguration (Mark 9: 1 ff., Matthew 17: 1 ff., and Luke 9: 29 ff.), it is how completely unprepared the three disciples were for this experience.

Peter asks whether Moses and Elijah would like tents. OK, nobody ever said Peter was the sharpest knife in the drawer, but give me a break. Jesus hasn't even given him a briefing.

That may be realistic. The strategy of inducing terror (Mark 9: 6) by means of surprise was part of the mystery cult approach to initiation. Maybe this is part of why Clement refers to Jesus as a hierophant (in Smith's find, an odd thing to call a Jewish holy man, except ironically, as in Clement's Exhortation to the Greeks). But surprise and terror are clearly not the strategy Jesus uses with Lazarus a few lines later in Clement's letter.

So, I think that the mention of a week in Mark 9 is a device to link the transifguration with the "Who do people say I am?" material. The "week later" is "shortly afterwards," a literary segue to stitch together a prophet motif rather than some prescribed interval of time during which the disciples devoted themselves to preparation for a religious experience.

Saint, Paul can testify about what he saw and heard in the desert. He can only speculate what others heard but did not see. Or was it see, but not hear?

Acts 9: 7 "The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, for they heard the voice but could see no one."

In 22: 9: "My companions saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who spoke to me."

Since neither you nor I were there, we really can't sort this out. Not that shared hallucinations are all that unusual anyway, and I'd spot him that his companions did indeed see the sun in the desert.

[edit on 5-11-2009 by eight bits]

Originally posted by eight bits
Saint, Paul can testify about what he saw and heard in the desert. He can only speculate what others heard but did not see. Or was it see, but not hear?

As quoted before "My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. "

They saw the light, they did not understand the voice of Jesus speaking to him. To put it parabolically, the e-mail was encrypted for the recipient, the others were cc'd on the supernatural e-mail but did not have the proper decoder installed. I'm not sure why this is that complicated.

[edit on 6-11-2009 by saint4God]

Thank you, saint.

As you will recall, my conclusion was that neither of us was there, and that we cannot sort out Paul's testimonies. Proposing alternate translations of what he said hardly makes the task any easier. We have each stated our opinion. Let's move on.

Myrtales

Of course, I completely agree that all the ancient manuscripts should be mined for everything that they have to tell us about the mysteries. But, the first thing that emerges is that there are both similarities and differences among the practices of the Hellenistic world. Yes, I want to know about all those practices, but just at the moment, I want to know what Mark's Jesus did.

Centuries before the Common Era, and continuing at the time that Philip was likely composed, the annual Demeter-Kore mysteries at Eleusis featured "mystical union," too. That is, ritual sex. And yes, the "right order" is to put that near the end. "Climax" means what it says. Although usually there is one more thing - the mystical equivalent of a cigarette.

Obviously, ritual sex is more prevalent than that, I mention Eleusis as an example of a tradition distinct from Christian Gnosticism which is especially well-attested. And there is nothing perverted about it.

However, the sexual route to altered consciousness seems not to have been especially popular among the Hebrews. Christians divided, and in the long run, the anti- side prevailed. Not just anti-sacred sex. As religions go, Christianity is almost hostile to personal and collective religious experience, in anything like the "mystery" sense.

As to why that's so, I stand by the "economic" analysis I gave many posts ago. Christians don't provide what the two hierophantic families of Eleusis did, because a monopoly church doesn't have to provide spiritual experience. And by now, with the monopoly long gone, they have forgotten how to.

Jesus is thought to have practiced out of an asexual tradition, some variety of Temple Judaism. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. All I am saying is that Philip's author can't tell me, because neither he nor his teachers would know the answer.

Easy enough to say that the orthodox sacraments could be taken up a notch, but the orthodox sacraments aren't quite what Jesus did, either. Yes, the sacraments are in principle based on overt acts of Jesus, but there is no sense in which they are faithful re-enactments, nor are they intended to be that.

I sense it is all interconnected.

Ultimately, I think it is. But "many paths, one mountain." I'd like to know, if it is possible to do so, which specific path did Jesus use? Or even which path did the author of Mark say he used?

Acts 9:7 NIV: The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone.

Just thought I should set something straight here, since Saint has got it the other way around. Shaul Paulus' companions didn't see the light, but heared the voice, not the other way around.

Hi Eight Bits--

I agree that sometimes people can 'read too much into' the council approved 4 Greek Gospels in the NT especially with respect to what might be generic time units or numbers in general, but it is curious at times that the phrase 'after 6 days' is used with some kind of reference to an Epiphany of the divine in some way (hearkening back to Mosheh and his Mountain), which for an oral culture like the 1st century Palestinian Jews (like R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean Nazir, aka Gk. 'Iesous' who apparently did not like to write things down, except maybe in the sand when he was averting his eyes from naked broads being stoned for adultery !) who were not supposed to be allowed to make use of 'images' (UNlike their pagan non Jewish counterparts) and thus had to rely MUCH MORE on their 'ears than on their eyes' (despite Mosheh and his Bronze Snake Idol on a Pole Thingy -- which sounds more like an ad for a franfurter---and then there's his 'brother' A'aron the 'high priest' who seems to have done some very serious smelting of spare earings to make non Yahwistic golden calf idols in his spare time...)

cf: when the Bishops were arguing (ad nauseam) about which 'gospels that are approved to be READ in the churches', maybe this phrase AFTER SIX DAYS would have resonated a little more loudly with some of the more mystical members of the congregations in Palestine that it does today in our more visual-idol-oriented culture.

Interestingly in the 2nd Gospel ('of Mark' whoever he was...) there are certain passages, especially in the Passion Narratives, which make use of e.g. Threes ('after three days...' 'on the 3rd hour...', 'on the 6th hour' 'on the 9th hour', 'after the 2nd cock-crow, you will have denied the Bar Enasha ('the Son of Man' i.e. who was granted a 'kingdom' in the Aramaic section of Daniel 7:13ff) THREE times...&tc. almost bespeaks that gospel's numerology in terms of LITURGY....and possibly not just middle eastern story telling (like we in the West would talk about GoldiLocks and the THREE Bears and other folkloric material that make use of 3's but are not liturgically oriented...)

I find it hard to believe that those in the earliest Nazorean Palestinian Messianic (Church) Synagogues (i.e. the non Grek Pauline Diaspora 'Christian' Churches) who often had to argue finer points of theology from memory of (comoaratively) large sections of the Jewish Hebrew Bible, albeit in their more user-friendly Aramaic Targum forms, and not necessarily in the Paleo to make converts (there was an approx 90% illiteracy rate in Palestine at the time among the masses--i.e. the non priests/non-sofrim/non-tax-govt officials &tc.)--would not automatically take up these phrases and know exactly to what they refer (i.e. when they heard the phrase 'after six days' they would say, here's a clue-- here comes a Theophany, wait for it...) -

You'll notice (even in the somewhat crude modern-American English translations) the vivvid-narrative-oral character of the Greek council approved gospel material, especially in the 2nd Gospel ('Mark') where the PRESENT tense is so often used ("and Iesous comes to Kaphar Nahum, and the people are thronging him, and he is saying to his disciples, let us get into a boat, and they are entering the boat and he teaches them, (lit.) while he is sitting in the sea...") which bespeaks of people who are listening as if out of a story-book.

So we should perhaps be more aware of the orality of these traditions that made great use of the Aramaic Old Testament (as well as commonly heard Pseudipigraphical, Apocryphal etc.) traditions (which in fact made great use of Hagaddic Midrash, with elements from the OT which the writers/speakers were expecting their primarily Jewish audience to pick up on) when we 'read' the gospel material today with our less-attentive (read: LAZY) modern ears, who are less educated about the 'old testament' by and large and thus cannot find the 'old testament hooks' the writer was planting into the narrative, some of which may well have gone back to the R. Yeshohua himself (99% of his pronouncements make heavy use OT/Apocraphal/Pseudipigraphical elements, which his own immediate audiences must have been aware of).

In sommo, yes, we should BEWARE of reading too much into the dates things ('after three days...after six days...') but also we should also BE AWARE of any mystical numbers or time frames when they do occur (we could even include the 'mystical' reasons for the 66CE 1st Failed Jewish Revolt against Rome occuring at the 70th anniversary of the Dead of Herod 'the Great' (!) in BCE 4 and the 36CE 'Insurrection' (end of Mark 14) which took place around the 100th anniversary (2 Jubilees of 49+1 each) from the Invasion of the Roman General Pompey in BCE 63--which gives new impetus to phrases like 'the Times of the Gentiles are NOW fulfilled (see Genesis 15:16 for the 'foreign' milliatary occupation of Palestine at the time of the writer of this chapter), Repent now and believe the Good News (i.e. Gospel) of the Kingdom...' a phrase which would have meant something MUCH different to a Palestinian Jew living under the harsh Roman Occupation since BCE 63 and waiting for a Saviour Messiah to overthrow the 'Kittim' on the Mount of Olives with the Sword of his Lips (see Zechariah chapters 9 through 12)...

Howdy, Sig

Yes, I've had a few discussions about the reconciliation of Moses' snake-on-a-stick with the strong anti-image stance of Moses' law .

Anyway, you and I are reasonably close about all of this. And, as these factors bear on the theme of the thread, we probably agree that whoever wrote the fragment that Morton Smith found had a "good ear." An interval of six days was the right kind of detail to mention in the context of Jesus leading a disciple in a ritual vision of the Kingdom of God.

The week manages both to resonate with parallels from the Hebrew Bible, and also in the "Lazarus" case, to correspond with some plausible necessary interval to prepare for the ritual, and to recover from having been dead.

So, it is "efficient" in some writerly sense, succeeding both in providing that Theophany Ahead sign you mention, but also helping to foster a sense that a real event is being described (or that a fictional event is being described realistically).

One last point: these "six days" spent with the boy in his house at Bethany prevents easy reconciliation of this incident with John's Lazarus. Jesus seems to leave Bethany promptly after reviving Lazarus to stay in the town of Ephraim secluded with his disciples (John 11: 54). The opening of the next chapter is yet another "six days," the interval between Judas and Jesus falling out over the scented oil, an incident set in Lazarus' home according to John, and the fateful Passover.

Originally posted by eight bits
Howdy, Sig

Yes, I've had a few discussions about the reconciliation of Moses' snake-on-a-stick with the strong anti-image stance of Moses' law .

Have you ever seen a snake, whether in heaven or within the biosphere -- with a skin of copper? Can an artist really replicate nature using the tools of his trade? Or said another way, is it possible that somewhere in the universe(s) there exists something which is the very spitting image of a picture? Firstly he/it would have to be a 2D creature/thing existing in poly-dimentional time-space. The copper serpent was not an image, it was infact a sculpture. And like I said, I have never heard of two things being exactly identical in nature. Not even the best engeneer can make an exact copy of anything. Even twins and clones have differencies. And not till this day has anyone been able to perfectly replicate the copper serpent of Mosjeh. Give me a precise enough scales and good enough computers and lenses, I would find differencies here and there in any two things supposed to be identical. The story is a test of ingenuety more than it is a test of submission or loyalty.