free

On the 3-Jul-07 you wrote:

"This is a good one for discussion, too:"

You were referring to Verse 16 quoted below for convenience and I agree.

"16) Jesus said, People probably think that it is peace that I have come to impose upon the world. And they do not recognize that it is divisions that I have come to impose upon the earth - fire, sword, battle. Indeed, there will be five in a house. There will be three over two and two over three, parent over child and child over parent. And they will stand at rest by being solitaries."

The interpretation that I have, which is essentially the same, states:

"16. Yeshúa says: People perhaps think that I have come to cast peace upon the world, and they do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth--fire, sword, war. For there shall be five in a house--three shall be against two and two against three, the father against the son and the son against the father. And they shall stand as solitaries."

Again I think that huge paradigm shifts are painful because they often alienate their way of thinking and seeing things from that of the masses. Divisions and misunderstandings between people form the basis of conflict. Conflict over religious beliefs is often the most violent, viz a viz 9/11. Christ's true message contained within this Gospel, but remarkedly absent from those included in the bible, is only understood through undergoing such a huge paradigm shift in 'thinking' and 'seeing'. Such people who go through these paradigm shifts "shall stand as solitaries," just as 'mystics' throughout history have so often done.

So far we have circled all around this paradigm shift. This is very different to having it. Without it Thomas's Gospel makes little sense.

on my way

On the 7-Jul-07 you wrote:

"free, I read from this site this morning. While reading the first couple of pages, I thought that it sounded like Buddhism or New Age religion, and then sure enough as I read further, the article said that perhaps it was, and that perhaps Buddhism and the enlightnement period orginated from some of these writings.

Maybe if Tez catches this thread, he knows more about Buddhism and he can clarify. :)"

"New age religion", as you call it, began less than 100 years ago.

On the other hand, the Buddha lived approximately 500 years before Christ was a twinkle in his father Joseph's eye.

Of course, I am presuming Mary his mother wasn't playing around and invented the 'virgin birth' story to avoid retribution. To avoid a similar retribution, Catholic nuns blamed the Incubus for inseminating them, when they fell pregnant as a result of insemination by the holy injection of the priest's and monk's sperm from consecrated and ordained penises.

Many believe with some foundation, that Christ between the ages of 16 and thirty wandered the lands in which Buddhism and Hinduism flourished. Some believe that Christ, being a Jew, simply wanted to bring compassion into the strict law permeating Jewish moral code of behavior. This some suggest came from his studies amongst the followers of these religions, Jainism included. This Buddhist influence is very evident in the Gospel of St. Thomas.

Then you wrote:

"Personally I believe that the cahracter of JC, God and the Holy Spirit cannot be contradicted."

I believe that your belief in your having the true perspective on the character of JC is based upon your blind faith that the only truth about JC is to be found in your Bible and nowhere else. That's partially the reason that I use the adjective "blind" to qualify the word faith above.

Since more than one scribe wrote each gospel in the bible, not one, and it is highly unlikely that the 'party line' from which they drew their material was any other than that of the shallow Christian Sect to which they belonged, it is little wonder that there are discrepancies between the biblical version of JC's teachings and those of Thomas, Judas, Phillip, and Mary. There were the Gnostic Christians, the Coptic Christians, Roman Christians following Paul and those following James. Of course the more powerful Christian sects annihilated the Gnostic sects by force of arms forcing them to bury their versions of JC's teachings for posterity. Hmmm!

You've got, in your bible, the shallow version of Christ's message that was promulgated by the shallow mindset of those who preached 'Pax Christi' but took up arms against their fellow Gnostic Christians wiping them out. Hmmmm!

Read Thomas's version of Christ's teachings and you might get a true perspective on the deeply reflective, contemplative, meditative and mystical mindset of JC, not the shallow Pauline version upon which modern Christianity is based.

Free.

Me a booger? What ever a booger is. Someone who picks her nose I guess!

Anyway, some of us are more hard pressed for time than others.

I still love you anyway - even if you do think I'm a "booger". You can't help thinking that - I guess that I have done the odd bit of "boogie" mining in my day. But I washed my hands after each session. 🙂