JR54: The Meaning of "the Son of Man"

A: We've been talking a lot about the Kingdom and gardens and finding peace through personal responsibility. How does the phrase "the Son of Man" fit into all this? If ever there was a phrase in the New Testament that people don't understand, it's the "Son of Man" phrase -- ho hyios tou anthropou in Koine Greek, bar nasa in Aramaic, and ben adam in Hebrew. Somehow I suspect the translation of the Greek phrase into English doesn't do justice to the original meaning. 

J: It's very easy to forget that the Hebrew word adam wasn't used primarily as a name in Second Temple Judaism. Adam can also be translated as "ground/soil" or as "humankind." Similarly, the Greek word anthropos meant "humankind," not just "human beings of the male sex." These nuances are lost in the traditional English translation "Son of Man." A much better translation in English would be "essence of humanity" or "highest potential of humankind." I used the phrase ho hyios tou anthropou to express a concept -- a concept for which no vocabulary existed at the time.  

“Jesus said: Adam came into being from enormous power and wealth, but he was never worthy of you, for had he been worthy of you he would not have died” (Gospel of Thomas 85). This saying doesn’t make much sense unless you stop to consider what Genesis 2-3 says about the allegorical relationship between humankind (Adam) and God. In the Garden of Eden, there are two trees that embody the deepest and most mystical elements of God, Creation, and faith: (1) the tree of life and (2) the tree of knowledge of good and evil. These two trees are supposed to be in balance, and while they are, Adam and Eve live a life of trusting relationship with God. At some point, however, Eve, followed quickly by Adam, decide they’re more interested in having knowledge than in having a trusting relationship with God. So they eat of the metaphorical fruit from the tree of knowledge and find themselves aligned with the many ancient philosopher kings who also chose knowledge over relationship with God. In Jesus’ teachings, choosing a life that places knowledge far above trust, love, and relationship with God is really no life at all. For Jesus, the mind is important, but not more important than the heart. So the metaphorical example of Adam and Eve — who lost the balance between mind and heart and as a result struggled for the rest of their lives with “death” instead of “life” — is not the example we should be following. Seek instead the path of peace that’s based on relationship with God. This ivory depicting The Fall of Man (by Balthasar Griessmann, c. 1670-1690) is part of the Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

A: What concept were you trying to teach about? Enlightenment?  

J: No. Forgiveness.  

A: Sayings 85 and 86 in the Gospel of Thomas refer to "Adam" and to "the son of man." Saying 85 says, "Jesus said: Adam came into being from enormous power and wealth, but he was never worthy of you, for had he been worthy of you he would not have died." Saying 86 goes on to say, "Jesus said: Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay down his head and rest." Thomas 86 also appears almost word for word in Luke 9:58. How do these verses relate to the concept of forgiveness?  

J (sighing): I've always been fond of word plays, puns, alliterations, rhymes, and poetry. "Foxes have holes and birds of heaven have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head" sounded catchier in Greek than it does in English.  

A: But I guess the important thing to keep in mind is the fact that you weren't talking about a particular man in this saying. You weren't talking about yourself. You were trying to explain a concept that was unfamiliar to your students.  

J (nodding): The people around me had been raised on a steady diet of values that had no place in humanity's relationship with God the Mother and God the Father. No matter where you turned, you heard tales of might, tales of glory, tales of revenge. Everyone thought they had the "correct" God -- or gods -- on their side. Everyone thought they were truly pious, truly deserving of divine reward. Everyone had their own version of the "God will avenge me" myth. The avenging God had as many "faces" as a circus performer has costumes.  

If you were a person with a black sense of humour -- as I came to be -- you could go to bed in the evening and count all the ways you'd offended this god and that god in umpteen hidden ways on that day alone. You could count all the ways you'd be punished. You could count all the ways your masters would take revenge against you for your "heinous crimes" against God. Of course, it was your earthly masters -- not the unseen gods of heaven -- who were the ones who had the rod in their hands to beat you. It was your earthly masters who would use any "divine" excuse possible to beat you into submission and humility.  

But they'd often go easy on you if you offered a payment. Some sort of compensation -- an eye for an eye. Some sort of bribe. Contract laws dictated what terms of compensation were acceptable. These contract laws weren't civil laws in the way you'd understand a Western nation's legal codes today. These contract laws had political and economic purposes, of course, but they were primarily religious laws and traditions. Nomos in Greek. Nomos provided a list of crimes and a list of acceptable "payments" to balance the scales if you committed a crime. Often these "payments" were sacrifices. Temple sacrifices. In most Greco-Roman religions of the time -- not just Judaism -- you could bring a sacrifice (a payment, really) to the local temple so you could literally "buy back" God's favour. This is what "redemption" used to mean. It meant trading something you had -- money or goods or livestock or agricultural produce -- to get something you needed: divine favour. It had nothing to do with divine love or divine forgiveness as you and I have defined these concepts on this site.  

A: And then there was slavery. The actual buying and selling of human beings based on contract laws. A slave could, under certain circumstances, "buy back" his rights. Or a slave could be manumitted -- legally freed by his or her "owner." But contract law gave people the excuse they needed to treat others cruelly. Contract law justified their cruelty.  

J: They gave themselves permission to violate the soul's own understanding of free will, justice, integrity, and respect. They were listening to their own selfishness and not to God's voice. And I said so. Out loud. Frequently.  

A: So your friends and students were conditioned to understand their relationship with God in terms of contract law. In terms of payments to a master or sovereign lord. In terms of monetary debts or "obligatory service contracts" (i.e. slavery). 

J: Slavery was -- and is -- a terrible violation of the soul, of what it means to be a soul, a child of God. Slavery is an artificially created human condition in which a slave's personal boundaries are invaded in every way imaginable. A slave is forced to give up all rights to physical and sexual safety. All rights to choose where and with whom to be in relationship. All rights to follow his or her own soul's calling. Even a slave who has property -- and there were many wealthy slaves in the Roman Empire -- even such a slave is taught to believe he doesn't actually own the skin he's in. It's not his. It belongs to somebody else. His own skin is "dead" to him. His mind and his heart may be free, but his skin -- his body -- is dead. He can't view himself as whole -- as a "whole bean" -- because in his own mind and in the mind of his society he isn't whole. He's a sort of ghoulish inhabitant of a body that belongs to somebody else. If, in addition to being a slave, he's also sexually violated -- a fate that was brutally common for young boys and girls in the first century Empire -- chances are extremely high that he'll grow up to be seriously mentally ill. Why? Because children who are beaten and sexually abused and psychologically tortured bear the scars of that treatment in their biological brains, bodies, and psyches until they are healed. It's a simple statement of fact.  

A: You can see how this kind of treatment would lead to dissociative disorders. A person who's disconnected from emotions. Disconnected from a strong sense of boundaries and personal space. 

J: I was trying to get at the point that even lowly foxes and humble birds are given their own personal space, their own "home," their own sanctuary by God. Foxes and birds will defend their own homes with all their might, as they have a right to do. They don't have the right to steal another creature's home, but they do have the right to protect the one they have. God gives no less a right to all human beings. No human contract law "written in stone" anywhere at any time can supersede the obvious truth that each human being owns his own skin and is the sovereign of his own domain, his own personal kingdom. When he knows this and feels this and lives this, he feels alive. He feels whole. He feels at peace.  

A: This is the state of "living" that you refer to so often in the Gospel of Thomas.  

J: Yes. It's a psychological state of balance and health. There's nothing occult about it. It's the natural outcome of making choices that lead to emotional maturity. It's the natural outcome of choosing to live according to the highest potential of humankind. It's the truest essence of humanity.  

A: People being their best selves. On purpose.  

J: Yes. On purpose. It's so very much about the purpose. About the purposefulness of "living." Which is where forgiveness comes in. 

A: How so?  

J: Christians are usually taught to think of forgiveness as an act of grace on God's part, as a somewhat sudden and fickle choice on God's part, as something that human beings can participate in but can't initiate. Paul tries very hard to give this impression to his readers. But forgiveness is the opposite of suddenness and fickleness and "divine transcendence." Forgiveness is purposefulness. Purposefulness of a particular kind. Forgiveness is what you get when you choose to combine your free will and your courage and your love. There's nothing accidental or preordained about it. It's a choice. An ongoing choice that calls upon the greatest resources of the eternal soul -- each and every soul. It's the choice to love someone wholly in the absence of payment or retribution or just compensation. Divine forgiveness is not settlement of a debt. Debt doesn't enter into the equation. Education, mentorship, and personal responsibility enter into the equation, but not debt.  

A: This is soooooooo not what they taught me in theological school.

JR26: Materialism, Pauline Thought, and the Kingdom

A: For the last couple of days, ever since you introduced the idea that Pauline Christianity has always been in some ways a Materialist religion, my head has been spinning, and I've been trying to figure out exactly what you mean. I can feel that it's right in the part of my self that's intuitive, but the rest of my head hasn't caught up to my intuition yet. So can we take it from the top?

"They asked him: When is the Kingdom coming?He replied: It is not coming in an easily observable manner. People will not be saying,’Look, it’s over here’ or ‘Look, it’s over there.’ Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is already spread out on the earth, and people aren’t aware of it” (Gospel of Thomas 113). Each autumn, this walnut tree yields its harvest to those among God’s creatures who need it most. They receive these gifts without any reliance on human prayers or covenants. There’s wonderful freedom in trusting God to do what God does best when you don’t take on the burden of believing you’re somehow responsible for maintaining the laws of Creation. Photo credit JAT 2014.

J: No problem.

A: How 'bout we start with some definitions? And by the way, I'd just like to comment once again on the fact that you're a true philosophy geek, you know that? Your face lights up like a Christmas tree every time you get to talk about a juicy philosophical dilemma. I can sure see how you ended up being a radical theologian in your time.

J: I was a much more successful philosopher than I was a carpenter. Honest to God, although I had to work as a tradesman to pay for my room and board, I'm pretty sure some of my handiwork could have ended up on "Galilean DIY Disaster."

A: Measure once, cut twice?

J: I'm not a natural when it comes to tools. I think like a designer, not like an engineer. I would flunk out of civil engineering, I'm sure of it. But redesigning the layout of a home so it supports a person's soul needs -- that I can do.

A: My father, the retired engineer and all-round handyman, would think you're a wuss. But you're so much like most of the other male physicians I know -- great with healing, great with academic study, not so good with the toolkit. (For the record, my ex is a physician, and we socialized with other people who were in medicine. So I know -- or rather, knew -- a lot of the male physicians around here.) Anyway, back to the philosophizing.

J: Okay. Well, the philosophy of Materialism is based on the theory that matter -- by that I mean baryonic matter -- is the only thing that exists. It's a WYSIWYG understanding of reality -- what you see is what you get. What you see is atoms and molecules and measurable substances and Newtonian laws. Therefore, according to this theory, all things in Nature -- including mind, thought, consciousness, even love -- can be explained solely by looking at the small little parts that make up the whole. It's the idea that macroscopic reality -- the daily reality that human beings live and work and breathe in -- is just a bigger version of the microscopic reality of atoms and molecules and gravitational forces, etc. Of course, as researchers in various scientific disciplines now know, there are huge gaps between the "macro" theories and the "micro" theories. At the subatomic or quantum level, the universe is a weird, weird place. At the other end of the scale -- the cosmological or grand universal scale -- the universe is also a weird, weird place. Only at the immediate level of reality, if I can call it that -- the level where human beings happen to live a fairly safe and predictable Newtonian kind of life -- only here is a Materialist philosophy even remotely justified.

A: How does Materialism understand God?

J: A person who embraces Materialist belief in the natural laws of "cause and effect" may or may not believe in the existence of God. Many, if not most, Materialists are atheists. Atheists, of course, believe that existence can be explained entirely on the basis of scientific research. No God is required. However, it's entirely possible to be a religious Materialist, a Materialist who believes in God. Deism is a good example of this.

A: Deism is a belief system that says there's a God, one God who created the universe, but that this God later stepped away from his Creation and doesn't participate in an active way in our lives or our suffering. God is the Great Clockmaker who made a perfect timepiece and now lets it run without interference. However, there's still an acceptance of the idea that God will reward virtue and punish vice in the afterlife. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson were all Deists . . . Tell me again why Deism isn't the same as Pauline Christianity and Platonism?

J: It is Pauline/Platonic Christianity. Deism is what you get when you strip away later church doctrines about ritual and sacraments and prayer to saints (intercession) and belief in Marianism and belief in holy relics and belief in holy Crusade and belief in papal infallibility. Deism is Pauline thought in its purest form -- a belief in the inviolability and perfection of Divine Law. Divine Law that governs "cause and effect" in the material world.

A: But Paul goes on and on in Romans about the inherent peril of "the law," how knowledge of the law led him into sin.

J: Paul isn't attacking all Law. He's attacking the laws he no longer agrees with. Paul spends all his time in his letters talking about the "new and improved" Law -- the Law that he himself is teaching. The New Covenant. It's easy to forget that Covenant is Law -- nomos in the Greek. Nomos was a complex idea that included both human authority and divine authority. When Paul talks about the "new covenant," he's talking about a new version of Divine Law. A new version of the Law of Cause and Effect. "If you do this (believe in Christ), then according to the inviolable Law of Creation, you must receive this (salvation plus a reserved parking spot in Heaven)." It's a reductionist philosophy. Just as Materialism is a reductionist philosophy. Everything is reduced to a simple "cause and effect" formula.

A: Just as Wisdom teachings in the Ancient Near East were a "cause and effect" formula: if you obey the instructions on the "virtue lists" and disavow the behaviours on the "vice lists," God is required to reward you because the Law says so.

J: Paul, clever manipulator that he was, observed that there was a "niche market" of people who'd become disillusioned with the certainty of Wisdom teachings. Obviously there was something missing from the formula if slaves were still slaves and women were still being punished for being women. The Hellenistic cities of the Roman Empire were filled to bursting with resentful slaves and restless, intelligent women. Who better to target if you're planning to launch a new religious movement? Slaves with money and women with money. You don't need to slog through the trenches and carry out years and years of missionary work -- you just need to get yourself some patrons with deep pockets. Paul doesn't even deny his reliance on patrons.

A: One staggering fact that jumps out in the Gospel of Mark is the fact that you have no patron. Nor do you seem to want one. This would have shocked readers in 1st century CE Roman-held regions.

J: Part of my objective was to refuse to "play by the rules."

A: In the end, so many of these religious debates and religious conflicts boil down to "the rules" -- the law, the covenant, the nomos. But all these rules . . . they're external. They come from outside the inner self. They pretend to be objective. They pretend to be based on observable realities from nature. Yet enforcement of them relies on brute force, on rote memory, and on loyalty to patrons or other important religious/political leaders . . . at least I think that's right. Is that right?

J: Yes. The one thing Paul doesn't want is for people to know how to tap into their own inner wisdom, their own inner guidance. He doesn't want them to know how to hear God's quiet voice in the still, clear night. He doesn't want his "community of fellowship" to find actual freedom. He only wants them to believe they have freedom (exousia) through the proper use of conscience (suneidesis). He wants them to be willing slaves. Slaves who won't rock the boat of authority.

A: This is really sick, you know that?

J: Of course it is. There's a reason these teachings have spontaneously led to generation after generation of abuses -- abuses against the poor, the environment, against other Christians, not to mention countless non-Christians. Also abuses against God. These abuses are the "weeds" that have grown from the "seeds" that Paul intentionally planted.

A: Is this why Paul never mentions healing miracles in the letters he himself wrote?

J: Yes. Paul can't afford to have his community of hagiasmos and koinonia (holiness and fellowship) distracted by the idea that God is deeply committed to ongoing healing, communication, and relationship with all people through the Kingdom within. The Kingdom within, of course, is the core self -- the soul. The good soul. That's how God connects with all God's children -- through the good soul that everybody is. God can and does communicate by other means, too, but the one connection that can never be taken away is the soul connection. You can cut out somebody's eyes so they can't see any more signs (and, unfortunately, this has been done). You can cut out somebody's ears so they can't hear any more external messages. You can cut out somebody's tongue so they can no longer speak the prayers they long to sing aloud. All these abuses have been perpetrated "in the name of God" at one time or another. But nobody can cut out the connection to the soul. You'd have to carve out the entire brain and central nervous system of a person in order to fully quench the soul connection, the body-soul nexus. Obviously this would lead to death.

A: Hey! It's another thing to add to the Jesus' Seminar's pot for the question of "Why Jesus Pissed People Off So Much That He Got Himself Crucified."

J: Paul works very hard to ensure that his followers believe in a Kingdom that's on the outside -- "out there" in the Materialist world of cause and effect. "Out there" where they have no control over any of it themselves. Even more brilliant, Paul insists the Kingdom of God isn't here yet. It belongs to some maybe-not-so-distant Day of Judgment. So not only is the Kingdom a materialistic reality outside the self, but it hasn't even "arrived" yet [1 Corinthians 15]. This prompts regular people to be thinking about the future instead of the present. This encourages them to shift their focus, their attention, and even their relationships to the future. To the future "effects" of today's "causes." People are so busy worrying about the future that they can't hear God's voice today.

A: Therefore they can't hear the guidance they long for.

J: The guidance they want and need.

A: I like your version of the Kingdom teachings much better.

JR9: Jesus Explains "The Kingdom"

A: You told me several years ago that you wrote parts of the Letter of James yourself -- specifically James 1:2-27, James 2:1-8, and James 3:1-18 -- and that after your death your older brother James added the remaining verses to blunt the effect of your writings and make them more "pious." Yesterday I was checking something in the Letter of James, and I couldn't help smiling. What you wrote 2,000 years ago sounds an awful lot like what you said for the record last Wednesday. Do you mind if I put in a quote from James?

J: Knock yourself out. 

A: Okay. Here's the NRSV translation of James 2:1-8a, with a couple of changes in emphasis. Here goes:

• "My brothers, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in God? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, 'Have a seat here, please,' while to the one who is poor you say, 'Stand there,' or 'Sit at my feet,' have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and becomes judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"

J: You give them one little inviolable spiritual law to follow, and they argue with you until you're blue in the face and dead in the ground. It's 2,000 years since I said that, and a huge number of Christians still don't get it -- you can't love your neighbour and keep your status addiction, too. You have to make a choice. 

A: There are almost no Christians who believe you wrote these verses yourself. Few theologians pay attention to the Letter of James. It doesn't have any real "Christology" in it. To them, it's little more than a typical 1st century wisdom sermon. Martin Luther hated this letter because it seems to deny Paul's doctrine of "justification by faith." Luther called it "an epistle of straw," and would have had it removed from the Protestant canon if he could have. 

J: There you go. More proof for the theory that Paul and I had very different things to say about God.

"Jesus said: 'Why do you wash the outside of the cup? Do you not understand that the one who made the inside is also the one who made the outside?'" (Gospel of Thomas 89). "Jesus said: 'Come to me. My yoke is easy. My mastery is gentle, and you will find peace for yourselves'" (Gospel of Thomas 90). St. Brendan's Catholic Church, Rockport ON. Photo credit JAT 2020.

A: Tell me what you meant when you described the poor as "heirs of the kingdom."  

J: That goes to the heart of my teachings.  

A: I know.  

J (grinning): No point beating around the bush, eh?  

A: Exactly my thought.  

J: Well, I guess you could say that I was trying to be a good teacher. By that I mean I was doing my best to explain complex ideas in a useful, usable way. Good teaching often involves finding the right image, the right metaphor for the group you're teaching. The right metaphor can open up doors in a student's mind, help her find the connection between what she already knows and what she's learning. You can try to invent new terms, new words for a complex idea. Scholars often do this. Or you can try to work with existing vocabulary and use it in new ways. I opted for the latter. 

A: So you chose the word "kingdom" because of the symbolism attached to it at the time.  

J: Well, here's where it gets confusing. The word "kingdom" by itself was not the exact image I chose -- not that word by itself, anyway. But, like all people, I was sometimes guilty of shortening things for the sake of convenience. The actual phrase I chose was "basileia ton ouranon" -- Koine Greek for "kingdom of the heavens." Eventually, when I was speaking or writing for my own community, I called it "the kingdom" for short. But by then it was understood what I meant. 

A: Which was . . . ?  

J: I was trying to express the idea that each individual person should think of themselves as a whole and complete entity, lacking nothing as far as God is concerned. A tiny kingdom of "selfhood" unto themselves. An inviolable kingdom. A worthy kingdom. A very small kingdom, to be sure, but one they have full rights over as its "sovereign." It's about boundary issues, really. Today's teachers and psychologists use the phrase "boundary issues." I used the phrase "kingdom of the heavens." But it's the same idea exactly. It's the idea that your body and your mind and your heart belong to nobody but you. Therefore, it's wrong to transgress those boundaries. It's wrong for you to invade somebody else's body, mind, and heart, just as it's wrong for them to invade yours. It's about human dignity, human worth. It's about seeing each individual as, well, as . . . 

A: As an individual?  

J: Yes. It's about seeing each individual as an individual, instead of seeing them as property or as a means to an end.  

A: Status addicts. Psychopaths. Narcissists. People suffering from these disorders can't see other people as they really are -- as other people. They tend to see them as objects to be used. 

J: That ideal -- if you can call it that -- was ingrained in the culture of my time. People were so used to hearing about "the chosen" and "the judged" in society that they weren't questioning the wrongness of it. They had little mental framework, little understanding of the idea that slavery was a violation of the soul. Most of the people I worked with in my ministry felt like the proverbial dog who's been kicked. The dog is at the bottom of a long list of people kicking each other according to rank. The dog has the least rank, so he gets kicked the hardest. That's the mentality I was facing in Galilee.  

A: You were facing an uphill battle trying to persuade your students that they were worthy of God's love and forgiveness -- just as worthy as the priests in Jerusalem. 

J: It's not easy to overcome the conditioning of a lifetime. They weren't inclined to believe me. These were people of faith. They didn't want to anger God. They wanted to show God their obedience and faith. They were suspicious of me for a long time.  

A: What turned the tide? 

J: In the end, it was about trust and compassion, I guess you could say. I stuck to my guns. I did what I said I would do. I wasn't a hypocrite -- that alone earned me a lot of trust. I treated people fairly and respectfully the way I thought God wanted me to. Stuff happened.  

A: Stuff happened? Like what stuff? What happened?  

J: Oh, you know. Healings. Changes. Stuff like that.  

A: You mean like healing miracles? That kind of stuff?  

J: Well, yes, if you want to get right down to it, I suppose you could describe it that way. 

A: Healing miracles began to take place, and the people around you -- the poor and disadvantaged of Galilee -- began to notice. 

J (nodding yes without speaking). 

A: Were you the source of the healing miracles? Did you yourself heal them?  

J: Healing miracles, when they take place, come from God. From God and God's healing angels. I was a facilitator, if you will -- an intermediary. A human being people could see and touch with their own senses. My job was to reassure them, comfort them, encourage them to trust. The actual healing was God's work. And I said so. Loudly. As often as I could. I never claimed to be a chosen prophet, and I yelled at anybody who tried to call me the Messiah. I clearly understood that my role -- my task as a human being who'd been given many advantages during my youth -- was to help people feel okay about receiving God's love and comfort and healing. If I was helpful in my role as a physician -- suggesting teas and salves and other sorts of medical treatments -- it was only because God was guiding me in my work. I listened carefully to what God's healing angels were saying (that's where it's handy to be a practising mystic), and I did what they suggested to me. I wasn't being "forced" to listen to my angels. I wanted to listen to my angels, and I wanted to trust their advice. That was my choice -- my own free will. They're damned smart, and they had some wonderful healing suggestions.

A: Can you give any examples of their advice?  

J: Gosh. They had tons of medical insights. Things like, "Tell that woman she has to eat orange vegetables." Of course, they knew -- although I didn't -- that orange vegetables contain Vitamin A, important for normal vision. Two thousand years ago, that was a miracle. They warned me, as well, about the dangers of lead. Lead was used in those days in many practical ways because of its low melting point and malleability. "Stay away from food vessels or utensils made of lead or pewter," they said. Good advice, that.  

A: And pewtersmiths have stopped making pewter with lead. 

“A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed in the country; and people came to him from every quarter” (Mark 1:40–45). Photo credit JAT 2016.

J: The most important thing my angels taught me, however, was to ignore the standard Temple teachings about illness and healing. To be honest, my angels had nothing nice to say about traditional purity laws. They told me it was okay -- by that I mean medically safe -- to ignore the "do not touch" laws about skin diseases, bodily fluids, and dietary restrictions. My angels said to me, "Touch, touch!" So I touched. I looked in people's eyes when they were sick. I held their hands. I told them their angels were with them. I told them God was with them. Any physician worth his or her salt will know what this means to a frightened patient. The relationship between physician and patient is integral to the healing process.  

A: So you took the healing process away from the designated Jerusalem priests and put it into the hands of God. You made the healing process both more scientific and more compassionate. Which somehow led to more miracles.  

J (nodding yes): Um hum.  

A: I can just imagine how furious the priests would have been that people were getting better from eating carrots instead of from giving sacrifices at the Temple.  

J: The fact that I was descended from priests on my mother's side didn't help the situation any.   

A: They must have been very upset when they started to hear rumours about your healing ministry -- a son of priests performing unsanctioned healings outside the Temple precincts.  

J: That would be an understatement.

JR8: Mystical Bloodlines, Mystical Castes

J: I'd like to start out today's discussion by emphasizing a very important point. I want to emphasize that it's wrong to make sweeping generalizations about any particular religion or religious tradition. Just as it's wrong to "hate" somebody on their basis of their religion, it's just as wrong to "love" somebody on the basis of their religion. Religious beliefs form a framework for people, a place to start on the journey of faith. But in the end, the only thing that matters as far as God is concerned is what choices you make as an individual. No religion has all the answers. No religion is even asking all the right questions. So when I come out swinging against a revered figure from the past such as John the Baptist, I'm not trying to attack huge groups of people. I have specific complaints about the choices made 2,000 years ago by John the Baptist while he was incarnated as a human being. I also have specific complaints about specific choices made by a number of individuals who were close to John at the time. However . . . and this is a big however . . . the choices made by John the Baptist 2,000 years ago have nothing to do with the choices open to individual people today. There is no "loss of honour" for readers today because of choices that were made by somebody else centuries ago. No real "loss of honour," anyway. If individuals today believe I'm undermining their own personal sense of honour by exposing the reality -- the harsh and painful truth -- about ancient religious teachings, then they've got bigger problems than they realize. 

“Jesus said: There was a rich man who had a great deal of money. He said, ‘I shall invest my money so that I may sow, reap, plant, and fill my storehouses with produce, that I may lack nothing.’ These were the things he was thinking in his head, but that very night he died. Whoever has ears should hear” (Gospel of Thomas 63). Even psychopaths have a personal code of morality — a set of internal laws to live by — despite their lack of conscience. Competitiveness, dominance, perfectionism, obsessiveness, chosenness, and eradication of weakness are among the key markers of moral success for a psychopath. Needless to say, a psychopath has no use for traits such as love, tolerance, forgiveness, ambiguity, or individuation, despite what he or she may say out loud. Shown here is the entrance to the Chapel of John the Baptist, Westminster Abbey, England. Notice all the sharp, spiky, metal forks on the door -- all the better to stab your heart as you try to open the door to relationship with God. Photo credit JAT 2023.

A: Yes, but a lot of people still believe very deeply in ancient ideas such as the mystical power of bloodline. For these individuals, there's such a thing as honour in the blood. Honour carried from generation to generation through the bloodline. Power carred from generation to generation. Divine rights carried from generation to generation. It's one of the underpinnings of their modern day lives. So they'll take enormous offense at what you're saying. Gargantuan offense. 

J: I'm sorry to have to say this, but a conviction in the innate mystical power of bloodlines is a fantasy superstition that belongs only in novels and films. God does not favour any one clan or family group over another. It should be clear to everyone by now what happens in the wider world when particular clans, tribes, or nations give themselves the label of "Chosen by God." Nothing good comes of it. Nothing.  

A: Yet it's a myth-dream that's found in most cultures and most places in the world. Not to mention most major world religions. Why is this myth-dream so universal?  

J: It goes again to the issue we've been discussing -- major mental illness.  

A: Ooooh. I can hear the gasps already.  

J: Well, I won't apologize for saying what needs to be said. Individuals will have to deal with it. It's the reality. It's time the blunt reality was brought into the open. Other forms of violence and abuse have been brought forward, brought into the open in recent decades. It's painful and awkward at first, but it's only when people openly discuss their suffering that change begins.  

A: As you've said many times to me, healing follows insight. Healing follows self-honesty and public transparency.  

J: Abusers will keep their secrets for as long as they can. They won't volunteer to tell people their dark secrets. Even when they're caught, they typically deny they did anything wrong. Other people have to step forward, point the light of truth at the abusers, collect evidence of their wrongdoing, and demonstrate their guilt through a public, transparent, non-corrupt legal system. It's the only way to change a society's perception of what's moral and what's immoral.   

A: Can you give some examples?  

J: Sure. Not so long ago, it was considered acceptable by many North Americans to treat women as inferior "possessions" of men. It was considered acceptable to turn a blind eye to incest and child sexual abuse and child pornography. It was considered acceptable to dump vast quantities of highly toxic pollutants into the water, air, and earth.  

A: These things are still going on.  

J: Yes. But these choices are no longer considered acceptable by the majority of North Americans. There's been a cultural shift. The harmful actions of the abusers -- the narcissists and psychopaths -- are no longer being condoned by wider public opinion. There are legal and social implications for the abusers now. The legal and social implications didn't use to exist. They only exist today because a lot of decent people got on board with the idea that these particular choices -- the choice to abuse women, the choice to abuse children, the choice to abuse the environment -- are wrong. Immoral. Not acceptable in a compassionate community.  

A: It's a work in progress.  

J: Yes. It's astounding and beautiful and amazing because it shows the truth. It shows that if you boldly and honestly expose the reality of abuse, a lot of people will recognize the wrongness of the abusers' choices. They'll feel it deep in their bones. 

A: Deep in their souls.  

J: The soul is consciousness with a conscience. The soul knows the difference between right and wrong, between moral choices and immoral choices. The soul is not stupid. Everybody has a soul, and everybody comes "prewired," so to speak, with a "right and wrong" package in their DNA. It's why mentally mature, emotionally mature people instinctively recoil from certain actions, certain choices. They just feel in their gut that it's wrong.  

A: Except for the people with psychopathy. The psychopaths have lost access to the "right and wrong" package. They know it exists, because they can see it operating in the world around them, but they don't care. They don't recoil from horror and abuse the way other people do. Brain scans confirm that certain parts of their brains are underactive, other parts are overactive.  

J: As I said, it's a major mental illness.  

A: One that isn't in the DSM-IV, the bible of psychiatry.  

J: Psychopathy is a touchy, touchy topic. It should come as no surprise that a lot of "successful" people in politics, business, religion, and entertainment have little regard for the nuances of "right and wrong."  

A: That's a polite way of saying that many successful people are psychopaths.

J: Again, no surprise. But these people have tremendous power, tremendous resources. It's risky to piss off a psychopath. They think nothing of getting revenge. In fact, revenge is a favourite pastime. Even worse, psychopaths lose their ability to feel empathy for others, but at the same time, they show an eerily heightened grip on logic and a creepy ability to spot other people's vulnerabilities. It's scary how manipulative they can be in a purely cold, hard, logical way. 

A: Almost as if they're compensating for the loss of empathy and emotion by putting extra biological resources into their logic circuitry. 

J: That's exactly what psychopathy is. They're trying to find a way to cope with life. They're trying to find a workable system. They have no capacity for love, forgiveness, or trust. They're so empty inside that they're always looking for ways to fill the void. It's a literal void, not just a metaphorical void. They can't access certain functions of their brains. They can't access the emotional circuitry they were born with. So they actually do feel empty, as if something's constantly missing. They're so narcissistic, however, that they believe everybody else on the planet feels as empty as they do. They think other people are faking it when they talk about love, redemption, forgiveness, and trust. In the world of the psychopath, love -- mature, respectful love -- is pure fantasy. It can't be real. A psychopath feels nothing but contempt for the ideals of love, redemption, forgiveness, and trust.  

A: A contempt that's notably present in the orthodox doctrines of the Western Christian church. 

J: True. But Christianity isn't the only faith tradition that's riddled with contempt for these compassionate ideals. I was dealing with the same contempt 2,000 years ago in Palestine. Lots of people were. Women, children, slaves, foreigners -- all these people had to deal with the fallout of a religious tradition that had steadily erased all the empathy from the earlier spiritual traditions --  

A: Like the Covenant Code in Exodus.  

J: Like the all too brief Covenant Code. Bit by bit they replaced the Covenant Code's early focus on human dignity with mystical authority for a few select men and their families. What scholars today call Second Temple Judaism bears so little resemblance to the Rabbinic Judaism practised today that I hesitate to even call the ancient religion "Judaism." It was a bizarre caste system, really. It placed incalculable power in the hands of the High Priests and the Levites, who happily abused the "lesser tribes" of Israel -- the lower Jewish castes. Meanwhile, the priests derived all their power, authority, and wealth from the "sacred books" they themselves wrote. A bit of a conflict of interest, don't you think?  

A: Yeah. I notice that after a while they decreed there could be no more prophecy. No more troublesome prophets standing up on soapboxes and speaking the truth.  

J: The priests were always willing to endorse new prophetic voices off the record as long as those new voices reinforced the idea among the general population that Jews were the chosen people and Jerusalem's priests were "the best of the best."  

A: Hence they could tolerate the Essenes, who required obedience to the caste system, but they couldn't tolerate you, because you rejected the caste system in its entirety. And said so publicly.  

J: The idea that Jews had allowed themselves to become enslaved to the priests may have entered my teachings more than once. 

A: Yeah, I'll bet.

JR3: Some Family History of Jesus

A: On my Concinnate Christianity blog, I take aim at the Apostle Paul and try to show some of the ways that his teachings were very different from your own. I wonder if we can talk some more about that. 

“Jesus said: It is not possible for anyone to enter a strong man’s house and take it over forcefully unless he first ties his hands. Then he can steal from that house” (Gospel of Thomas 35). Photo of a side entrance of the Royal Conservatory of Music, Bloor Street, Toronto. Photo credit JAT 2017.

 

J: There's a lot there to talk about. 

A: One of the things that has surprised me most over the past few years is the shortage of people willing to examine the differences between you and Paul. Even serious biblical scholars -- people like the scholars of the Jesus Seminar -- have a blind spot around Paul. They seem to want to pretend that Paul was preaching the same core teachings as you. But it's not that hard to draw up a list of the similarities and differences between First Corinthians and Mark. In fact, it's one of the easier academic analyses I've tried in the past few years. The differences are blatant. I mean, scarily blatant. So I've gotta ask -- what the heck has been going on? Why are so many Christians, even the ones who label themselves Progressive, so completely unwilling to be objective?  

J: Brain chemistry.  

A (rolling eyes): Why did I know you were going to say that?  

J: It's the brain chemistry. It's the way most people have wired their brains -- or have allowed their brains to be wired for them. Their biological brains are loaded with software packages about God and religion, and there's a conflict between the existing software -- provided in the beginning by Paul -- and the "new" software I and other angels have been trying to reintroduce. Of course, it's not really "new." It was old when I was teaching it 2,000 years ago. But the Church tried very hard to eradicate it early on, and to keep eradicating it each time it sprang up again. So to today's readers it seems "new."  

A: Can you give us an analogy that will make sense to today's readers?  

J: Yes. It's like the difference between early Macs and PC's. Groups were fighting over which platform was better. At that point PC's couldn't read Mac software. Mac software existed, and Mac software was useful and real, but PC's couldn't read it. So a lot of users missed out on good programs. The human brain can end up like that -- wired so it can only read one kind of software, though others kinds of software do exist. For many Christians, their brains have become so used to the ideas of Pauline Christianity that they literally can't "hear" any other ideas about God. Their brains can't process the information. They're literally the people who have ears but cannot hear. They're not able to understand the "new" message at first because their brains aren't used to hearing that kind of language.  

A: What you describe sounds a lot like brainwashing. People conditioned to the point where they can hear only one kind of "truth." 

J: You could put it that way.  

A: That's scary.  

J: Yes. But it's not new. It's a very old way to control a large group of people. You don't have to put chains on everybody in your culture to get them to do what you want. A clever tyrant controls the mind -- keeps the body free, but controls the mind. Nothing new there.  

A: Except that 2,000 years ago your culture had real slavery -- the kind where human beings were bought and sold and forced to do all sorts of things against their will.  

J: The kind that continues in many parts of the world today.  

A: Yes, that too. 

J: One reason my great-nephew Matthew -- the man you know as the author of the Gospel of Mark -- went ballistic when he read what Paul was writing about "Jesus Christ" was Paul's take on slavery. Paul never comes out and says that slavery is wrong. Instead Paul tries to preserve the status quo by persuading slaves to understand slavery as an illusion -- something not worth fighting about because they have something more valuable than freedom: the higher "truth" of salvation.  

A: Right. But can we back up the truck for a minute? I'd like to go back to that historical tidbit you just dropped in. The part about your great-nephew Matthew.  

J: Matthew was the grandson of my brother Andrew. Andrew was the only one of my siblings who believed in my teachings.  

A: And this Matthew who was your great-nephew . . . is this the same man who wrote the Gospel of Matthew?  

J: No. The author of the Gospel of Matthew was not named Matthew. Just as the author of the Gospel of Mark was not named Mark.  

A: Okay, well at least that part is known to scholars. But this is all very confusing. Is it okay with you if I keep calling the author of the Gospel of Mark, "Mark"? It's much less confusing to call him Mark.  

J: Sounds like a plan. 

A: So you're saying that your great-nephew wrote the Gospel of Mark. 

J: Well, one of my great-nephews wrote the Gospel of Mark. I had a lot of great-nieces and great-nephews, but only the children and grandchildren of my brother Andrew carried on my teachings the way I taught them. More or less. The rest of my family didn't like me very much. 

A: You and I have talked about this a lot. But can you talk a bit today about why your family didn't like you?  

J: Basically because I was a shit-disturber. I disagreed with most of the values my family raised me to believe in, and I went on record to say my family and their social class were wrong about the way they were treating other people and God. I grew up in an aristocratic family where we held slaves and where we believed we were chosen by God. I said that was wrong. My family didn't like it. I was embarrassing them.  

A: The way a man from the state of Georgia, for instance, would have embarrassed his wealthy plantation owning family in the 19th century if he'd joined the Abolitionists.  

J: Or if a son of the Kennedy clan had disavowed the Kennedy myth and run away to live in Canada in a small town where nobody cared that he was a Kennedy.  

A: As Canada is to the U.S., so Galilee was to Judea.  

J: As Port Hope is to Washington, so Capernaum was to Jerusalem.  

A: So you picked Galilee on purpose because it was not a major centre of religious and political influence.  

J: And because the people in Galilee had different priorities. They were interested in real healing, real teaching, and they had no use for arrogant priests or rabbis who had their heads stuck up their asses. 

A: You always have such a way with words.