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.

JR7: John the Baptist and Jesus

A: Tell me more about John. Why do you say that John the Baptist and John the Evangelist are one and the same person? Is there any proof for that in the Bible?  

Theologians and biblical researchers have tended to overlook the significance of this passage from Mark 3: 13 – 19, in which Jesus names the twelve apostles: “. . .James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder)”. The Gospel writer Mark isn’t telling his audience that James and John were powerful preachers (as Christian writers would like to believe); Mark is telling his audience that James and John were claiming for themselves a powerful pedigree. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the charter for the Yahad is a reference to two prophesied Messiahs — a priestly Messiah and a Messiah of Israel (a royal commander for the armies) — who will serve together in the Last Days at the Messianic Banquet. Once it’s clear that the Yahad was waiting for a pair of Messiahs rather than a single Messiah, the reference in Mark to the Sons of Thunder takes on much greater significance. Mark is saying that James and John were claiming divine heritage, just like the long parade of gentile heroes who insisted they were the sons of Zeus, Jupiter, and other Thunder Gods. (And I don’t think Mark thought much of this particular claim.) Shown here is the mosaic above the entrance to the Chapel of St. John and the Grotto of the Revelation on the island of Patmos. Photo credit JAT 2001.

J: You have to know what to look for. Mark's account of John's beheading is much more than it seems. But Mark is like that throughout his gospel. You really have to know your sources -- important early texts -- to understand Mark. Mark was highly intelligent and very well read. He riffed off well known symbolism and motifs to tell his tale of intrigue. And intrigue it was.  

A: The Gospel of John mentions John the Baptist's early ministry several times, but then he sort of fades out of the picture. The Fourth Gospel doesn't say what happened to the Baptist.  

J: That's because John the Baptist was still alive and still teaching long after I died. A: Tell me about him as a person.  

J: How much time do you have?  

A: The Gospel of John is considered by many Christians to be the clearest expression, the clearest depiction, of the ministry and divinity of Jesus. Theologians love John's "high Christology." Many people feel that when they're listening to the voice of John, they're listening to divine truth. The prologue -- John 1:1-18 -- is poetic, elegant, mystical. It helps people feel they're getting closer to God.  

J: John was a gifted communicator, a skilled rhetorician and poet. If he hadn't been, I wouldn't have been drawn into his movement in the beginning. He was truly charismatic when he spoke. His writings definitely reflect that. Even his last writing -- the book of Revelation. Even when he was profoundly psychotic, as he was in the later years of his life, the poetry and metre of the texts he'd read again and again in his childhood infused all his thinking. In a way you could say that the poetry and metre of those early texts -- the logos -- acted for him to lessen the pain, fear, and confusion that comes with psychosis. The logos was a soothing mantra. Olanzapine in word form, you might say.  

A: Olanzapine being a highly effective atypical anti-psychotic medication.  

J: Yes. Before the advent in recent years of tailored psychiatric medications, those who were suffering from major mental illness -- including the flattened affect and hallucinations that accompany schizophrenia and related forms of psychotic illness -- suffered more than most people can imagine. The suffering is internal but intense. Sometimes it feels to them as if their head is on fire. Or that ants are crawling everywhere inside them. It's a horrible feeling. They have to find relief wherever they can. The majority turn to addictive substances -- substances that trigger the dopamine circuitry in the brain, the pleasure circuitry. Others turn to religion. It's sad to say, but extreme religiosity -- rigid piety, fideism, blind faith, obsessive observance of ritual -- all these careful, minutely observed rituals can bring relief to a suffering individual, depending on what parts of their brain have been ravaged by the effects of the disease process.  

A: When I was working in the mental health field, I saw firsthand that one of the hallmarks of psychotic illness is paranoia. A fear that people are out to "get them." When they're floridly psychotic they're often afraid of their own family members and medical caregivers. They're sure they're being watched, spied on. They're afraid somebody will put poison in their medications. They think they're perfectly sane and everybody else is sick. They have no objective understanding that they're ill when they're ill. 

J: It's the tragedy of the disease. They don't believe they're sick. If they get proper treatment, and become medically stabilized, they begin to develop insight. They begin to understand that the voices they'd been hearing in their heads weren't normal, weren't real. They can begin to trust their family members again. However, it's not possible to persuade a floridly psychotic person to trust you. You can't use logic to get through to them. As those working in the field of psychiatry know, sometimes you just have to lock the person up for a while and treat him against his will. Of course, by the time he's that psychotic, he doesn't really have free will -- not as you and I would understand it. He has lots of thoughts, but they're not balanced, they're not integrated. There's no functioning internal framework to hold his thoughts together, to help him process his thoughts and experiences, and learn from them. It's a big jumble in his head -- very frightening, very confusing. 

A: So if he can find an external framework that makes sense to him . . . 

J: Right. If he can find an external framework such as a strict religious code, then he can lean on that code. He no longer has to make sense of anything on his own. He's off the hook, so to speak. The code tells him what to do and when to do it. This means he doesn't have to decide these things for himself. For a person with schizophrenia (not really one disease, but a related cluster of illnesses) this is a huge relief. Life becomes liveable. Painful but liveable. The tradeoff is the fear. You can't get rid of the fear. You're constantly afraid of attack from "evil forces" such as the devil or demons or vampires or aliens. But at least you can blame the "evil forces" for your fear. You don't have to blame your family. So from that point of view, the strict religious code makes it easier for you to stay with your family and receive the care you need.  

A: Can you explain how all this relates to the man named John?  

J: The man I knew as John -- though his real name wasn't John -- would be diagnosed today under the category of schizophrenia. I first met him when he was about 18, and he already showed signs then of the illness.  

A: As I understand it, that's a common age for a diagnosis of schizophrenia to be made. The signs and symptoms often show up in late adolesence, early adulthood.  

J: Yes, except I didn't have a DSM-IV to refer to, and I didn't recognize his illness at first for what it was. I thought he was an inspired prophet.  

A: What was his background? Where did he come from?  

J: He was an Essene. He was born Essene and raised Essene. He wasn't a raw recruit, as some were -- including myself for a short time.  

A: You were an Essene?  

J: I never officially joined the yahad or "Unity," as they described themselves. In fact, I never made it past the "inquiry phase," as you might call it. I was curious about the yahad. Many Jews were. Like many spiritual inquirers, I thought the Essenes might have the answers I was looking for. So when I heard about the new prophet named John, I went to check him out. It took me a long time to understand that John didn't have the answers. He spoke endlessly and eloquently, but had no answers for me or anyone else. He was far too delusional to help anyone, including himself.  

A: You said his real name wasn't John. What was his real name?  

J: I never knew. Not during my lifetime as Jesus. Readers today may have a hard time understanding what I'm about to say, but when I was growing up, "name magic" was a big deal. If you believed in the mystical "truth" of name magic, you didn't lightly give out your real name. 

A: Why not? J: Your real name was said to be a source of great power. If an evil sorcerer or magician got hold of your name, he could gain power over you. 

A: Interesting. That idea is still floating around. I remember reading Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea novels when I was growing up. The power of true names was central to her stories.  

J: Kabbalah also embraces this idea.  

A: Not a big fan of Kabbalah myself.  

J: Kabbalah owes a lot to the ancient ideas of the Essenes. 

A: What goes around comes around.  

J: There aren't a lot of new mystical ideas under the sun. The human brain, when diseased and dysfunctional, tends to produce certain distinctive patterns of thought, mood, and behaviour -- what physicans call signs and symptoms. When patients start believing -- truly believing -- in occult magic, psychiatrists get worried. It's okay to believe in things you can't see if those things have a scientific origin -- because one day the science will catch up with the theory -- but there's a line. 

A: For instance, it's okay to believe in love, even though we can't see it. Though neuroscientists are now trying to capture it on brain scans.  

J: Right. But mature love makes the world a better place, a more compassionate place, a more logical place. Occult magic doesn't do any of these things. Belief in occult magic makes people less mature, less balanced, more grandiose, more controlling, and therefore less able to bring healing and compassion into the world around them.  

A: Belief in occult magic ties in with the signs and symptoms of major mental illness. 

J: Including psychopathy and severe narcissism.  

A: Only a profoundly narcissistic person would believe that God gives special magical powers to small groups of bullies and tyrants who abuse others in the name of God.  

J: There you go -- your description of John in a nutshell. Raised to believe he was one of the Essene's two prophesied Messiahs, hence profoundly narcissistic and dysfunctional by the time he was 18.  

A: I guess he didn't like you very much, then. 

J: The Essenes were taught to hate the Sons of Darkness and raise up the Sons of Light. As far as he was concerned, I proved myself beyond dispute to be an apostate to the yahad cause and a Son of Darkness worthy of death. By the time I was arrested, John hated my guts.  

A: So much for the theory that John himself was the Beloved Disciple. 

J: Yeah, but I forgave him anyway, even after he tried to kill me.

JR6: John and the Gospel of Thomas

A: I had a letter from a reader in the U.S. who's curious about the Gospel of Thomas, so I thought we could switch gears a bit and talk about the manuscript known as the Gospel of Thomas.

Papyrus fragment: Gospel of Jesus' Wife (sourced from Wikimedia Commons, author unknown). This fragment is not from the Nag Hammadi collection, but is a good example of an early Christian text written in Coptic on papyrus. This fragment has itself been the source of much recent controversy.

J: Okay. Where do you want to start?

A: Well, for readers who aren't familiar with it, maybe we could start with some background.

J: I happen to know you already have a book on your desk with the relevant facts, so perhaps you'd like to talk about the history of it.

A (referring to textbook): The discovery of the Gospel of Thomas was one of those serendipitous finds, so extraordinary that you'd expect to see it in an Indiana Jones movie. But the history isn't disputed. Late in 1945, two Egyptian men discovered a large sealed pottery jar hidden beneath a large boulder near the village of Nag Hammadi in southern Egypt. They smashed the jar and found 13 leather-bound volumes inside, which were later sold. These volumes, which date from the mid-4th century CE and contain more than 50 texts, soon attracted the attention of scholars. The collection is called the Nag Hammadi library, and it's proven to be a goldmine for scholars of early church doctrine. The texts are considered to be Gnostic Christian rather than orthodox Christian, and some scholars have suggested the texts were hidden to protect them from a wave of persecution against Gnostics. The most famous of the books is the collection of Jesus's sayings -- your sayings -- called the Gospel of Thomas. There's disagreement among scholars as to whether the Gospel of Thomas should be considered a Gnostic text. Some believe it should instead be considered a text originating in a different but very early school of Christianity -- not quite Gnostic but not orthodox, either. Anyway, it's unique because it doesn't follow the narrative format of the four gospels we know from the Bible. Instead, it's a collection of sayings. Some of those sayings have sparked renewed mystical and creative interest in Jesus' original teachings. The movie Stigmata is an example of that interest.

J: And don't forget all those Da Vinci Code type books.

A: Those, too. You don't want to be learning your history from these books and films, but it's fun to sit down with a cup of hot tea and an entertaining novel on a cold snowy day.

J: Like today.

A: Yes. That's quite the storm out there today. A storm front all the way from Texas to Nova Scotia. I hope my boss calls to say we're closed today. Then maybe I could do a little reading. Catch up on the Gospel of Thomas -- which, to be honest, I haven't looked at in about two years. Last time I read it, I hadn't figured out the Gospel of Mark. But I think it's time to revisit the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas and try to figure out how they relate to Mark. All I really know at this point is what you've told in the past about the authorship of the Gospel of Thomas.

J: You mean the fact that the apostle John wrote the Gospel of Thomas.

A: It's so confusing. Who wrote the Gospel of Mark? Oh, that would be Matthew. But not the Matthew who wrote the Gospel of Matthew, because that author would be Paul's disciple Barnabas. And don't forget that Luke and Acts weren't written by a physician named Luke. And the newly discovered Gospel of Thomas wasn't written by Thomas, but was actually written by John. It's enough to give a person a headache.

J: It's interesting, isn't it, that John's name is actually on his other writings -- the Gospel of John, the letters of John, and Revelation.

A: Yes. How is it that John's name got preserved in so many places, and Paul's name got preserved in so many places, and your name didn't get preserved on any writings at all? We have texts we call "Pauline," and we have texts we call "Johannine," but we don't have any "Yeshuan" texts. In fact, we don't even have an adjective in English that corresponds to the name Jesus, so I have to use an adjective based on the Aramaic form of your name, Yeshua. Yet I know you did a lot of writing. So what happened? What happened to your name? And what happened to your writings?

J: Long story. It's complicated. It makes more sense if you understand the cast of characters, the people I actually lived with and worked with. It makes more sense if you understand the personal motivations for each person involved.

A: Including your own motivation.

J. Yes. Mine, too.

A: Okay. Let's start with your motivation, then. Can you describe briefly the core of your motivation?

J: To bring healing to disadvantaged children so they didn't have to go through what my daughter had to go through.

A: Oh.

J: Theologians have been pontificating for centuries about who I was and what I was trying to do. But nobody's taken the time or trouble to ask me. They all want me to be a reflection of themselves -- somebody who's more interested in how many angels can fit on the head of a pin than somebody who's interested in the core questions about humanity. Life and love. Healing. But after my daughter died, I couldn't have cared less about the Covenant or the Law. The Covenant did nothing to help my daughter. In fact, I'd say the Covenant was partly to blame for her death. After you've had a child die -- a child you care deeply about -- your life changes. It's no great mystery. I embarked on a journey of spiritual questioning and spiritual agony because I felt I owed it to my beloved child. It's as simple as that.

A: I understand.

J: Yes, because you've gone through the same thing. Nobody but a bereaved parent can completely understand. To lose a beloved child is to have your heart ripped out. Except that you don't lose your heart. If you accept the grief and you accept the loss, you end up finding your heart. It bleeds a lot, but it's there.

A: Many of the theologians who've written about you over the centuries have been neither parents nor bereaved parents.

J: Augustine of Hippo was a bereaved parent. This didn't help him find his heart, unfortunately.

A: Perhaps he was in denial. It's not uncommon for bereaved parents to withdraw completely from their emotions because it's too painful. They retreat into logic and end up focussing on the "mind" and "reason" so they don't have to feel anything anymore.

J: Exactly. Unfortunately, the orthodox Church is riddled with the immature "victim" psychology that comes with being emotionally crippled, with abandoning healthy, mature relationships with each other and with God.

A: Explain what you mean by "emotionally crippled."

J: I mean men and women who are emotionally immature, emotionally stunted, emotionally dissociated. Adults who don't have the courage of their own hearts and souls. It's hard work to deal with grief. And love. And Pauline Christians aren't good at it because they haven't been taught how. Whenever I hear the phrase "one body in Christ," I think of a zombie -- a lifeless corpse walking around with no heart and no capacity for empathy or deep compassion. There's lots and lots of talk in the Church about free will and reason and blind faith, but if you look closely, you'll see there's little talk about emotional maturity or emotional healing or faith based on empathy rather than on pure logic. That's why the Church doesn't teach people about forgiveness. Forgiveness is part of a messy package that includes love and grief and pain. Forgiveness is very hard work at an emotional and spiritual and psychological level. It has no appeal for people who are emotionally immature.

A: People like Paul.

J: And people like John the Baptist.

A: Hey -- that's a non sequitur.

J: Not when you know that John the Baptist and John the Evangelist were one and the same person.

A: I take it that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated?

J: There are always wars and rumours of wars. Always deaths and rumours of deaths. Sometimes the one prevents the other.


Update on August 9, 2015: (1) Photo of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife was added.

(2) For an interesting commentary on the Gospel of Thomas, please see the article called "The Gospel of Thomas: Jesus Said What?" by Simon Gathercole in the July/August 2015 Biblical Archaeology Review.  In this article, Dr. Gathercole talks about the history of the Gospel of Thomas's discovery, discusses theories for its date, and reviews some the Gospel's major theological themes.

On the question of whether the Gospel of Thomas can be understood as a Gnostic work, he says this:

"Nevertheless, it has always been something of an embarrassment for the "Gnostic" view of Thomas that there is no talk of an evil demiurge, a creation that is intrinsically evil, or of other familiar themes such as "aeons" (a technical term for the divine realms in the heavens).  Properly Gnostic gospels such as the Gospel of Judas and the Nag Hammadi Gospel of the Egyptians, have very complicated accounts of how multitudes of deities and aeons come into existence from a demonic power before the birth of the world.  There is nothing of this in Thomas, though."

JR5: Jesus and the Jerusalem Temple

A: Jesus, could you please explain why the brain health of people 2,000 years ago makes a difference to what you're saying today? Why should people on a spiritual journey care about the question of brain health?  

J: Well, there are a couple of different approaches to that question. Many religious individuals don't care about this question and don't want to care. These are individuals who are happy with their current understanding of God. They believe they have the correct understanding. Therefore, from their point of view, it's a complete waste of time to be asking about the brain health of the people I lived and worked with. There's only one reason a person today would be asking about the brain health of Jesus and Paul and John. Only a person who's interested in the historical facts about what happened would ask such a question.  

A: You mean a person who suspects the Church hasn't been telling us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing about the truth?  

J: Yes. A person who isn't afraid of asking difficult questions about the past. Questions that can help bring healing into the world today. 

A: The same sorts of difficult questions that cultural groups in the 20th century had to ask themselves repeatedly. Questions about the motivations that lay behind crimes against humanity. Questions about personal responsibility and ethical conduct in the face of horrendous mob behaviour. 

J: There was no shortage of opportunities for deep soul-searching in the 20th century. 

A: Here in Canada we've had to address our treatment of First Nations people and ethnic and religious minorities. It isn't easy to be honest about past mistakes, but it's in acknowledging our mistakes that we're able to learn from them and make our society more inclusive, more compassionate.  

J (nodding): It's a painful struggle to bring major change to a society. But it can be done when a sizeable group decides to "get on board." You need a critical mass of people to bring about effective change. Individual members of a society have to be willing to decide for themselves that change is a good thing. It has to come from within people's hearts. When the rules are imposed on them from the top down by a small cadre of rulers or leaders, that's not change. That's fascism or totalitarianism. 

A: Or church authority.  

J: Exactly the point I was trying to make 2,000 years ago.  

A: Tell me more about that. 

J: There was no church at the time, of course. But there was a Temple. Actually, there were lots of temples, because many different religions co-existed in the first century, and most of them built temples as places of worship. I wasn't interested myself in Greek or Roman or Egyptian temples. I knew about them, had visited them, but my main concern was the Jewish Temple.  

A: In Jerusalem.  

J: Yes, physically the Jewish Temple was in Jerusalem. But the Temple was more than that. It was a symbol. A powerful symbol. It overshadowed Jewish people no matter where we lived. If you were Jewish, you couldn't get away from it.  

A: Was this a good thing?  

J: Sure, if you were a wealthy Sadducee. Or a member of the privileged Jewish aristocracy. Or a wealthy Roman merchant-mercenary. 

A: You mean Roman merchants and Roman mercenaries?  

J: No, I mean the unique class of Roman culture that was clawing its way up the rigid social class system by making buckets and buckets of money in various mercantile enterprises of dubious ethical merit. 

A: Huh. That sounds a lot like some corporations today.  

J: There's a reason the English word "corporation" comes from the same Latin root as Paul's "one body -- corpus -- in Christ."  

A: That's pretty inflammatory. 

J: Yes. But accurate. Religion was THE biggest business in the first century. It was intimately linked with politics and power, even more so than people can imagine today. It's just crazy to pretend that Paul was talking about love and salvation. When you get right down to it, Paul was a businessman. He wasn't selling relationship with God. He was selling power. Like certain televangelists in recent years who've been building market share -- along with their own investment portfolios. Same old, same old. 

“Jesus said to his disciples: Compare me to something and tell me what am I like. Simon Peter replied: You are like a righteous messenger. Matthew replied: You are like an intelligent lover of wisdom. Thomas replied: Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like. Jesus said: I am not your teacher; because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended. Jesus took Thomas and they withdrew. Jesus said three things to him. When Thomas returned to his friends, they asked him: What did Jesus say to you? Thomas replied: If I tell you even one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come out of the rocks and burn you up” (Gospel of Thomas 13). This photo shows the underground alleys in the old city of Jerusalem. Credit FreeIsraelPhotos.

 A: And that's not what you were doing? Building a power base for your own ideas? 

J: I was interested in dismantling the power base of the Temple. Brash, crazy, and impossible at the time. But I gave it my best shot. 

 A: Some political observers would suggest this makes you a Zealot -- a first century Jewish political revolutionary. Were you a Zealot?  

J: No. The Jewish faction known as Zealots were the equivalent of today's radical religious fundamentalists. I was as far from religious fundamentalism as it was possible to get. 

A: But you also weren't a religious conservative devoted to preserving the status quo.  

J: No. I came from a family of religious conservatives. My mother's father was a Sadducee. My father was a Roman citizen from Greece who hobnobbed with Roman merchant-mercenaries. As a young adult, I rejected the social values my family taught me.  

A: Okay. So you weren't a Zealot. And you weren't a Sadducee. What else was left within Judaism at the time?  

J: There were the Pharisees. Their influence had been steadily growing for decades. They were highly obedient to the Jewish Law and the traditions of the Jewish Temple.  

A: And you weren't. 

 J: Nope.  

A: So you didn't have much in common with the Pharisees.  

J: Not by the time I came to my senses.  

A: Which was when?  

J: When I realized that the group Josephus calls the Essenes were extremely powerful and dangerous, and that they were influencing the teachings of well-meaning Pharisees. I decided then to stop listening to "factions" within Judaism and start listening to my own heart and soul. 

A: So basically all the Jewish religious factions that existed in Palestine in the first century (that we know of) would have considered you a heretic?  

J: Damn straight.

JR4: Talking About Psychopathy

A: I notice that human nature hasn't changed in the past 2,000 years. Families still fight over the same issues. 

J: Right. And it's not surprising from a scientific point of view. Two thousand years is a very short amount of time as far as the human genome is concerned. Human DNA is still the same today as it was then. Most importantly, the DNA involved in mental health issues hasn't changed. Two thousand years ago, people were just as susceptible to major mental illness as they are today. There's a bias among scholars who are trying to recreate the cultural mindset that existed in the first century (CE). They seem to want to believe that people's brains worked differently then, and that people's mindset was "unique" to the time, and impossible for us to understand today. But that's not true. If you start with the logical scientific assumption that human brain physiology hasn't changed in the past 2,000 years because the human DNA that shapes the physiology hasn't changed, then you have a different starting point. You can look at the issues involved in major mental illness today, and you can assume that the same issues must have existed in the 1st century. This starting point can free historians from the false assumption that we can never understand what people were thinking and feeling in the Roman Empire of the 1st century. On the contrary, you can understand them better by using the new research tools available to you. 

A: Tools like brain scans.  

J: Exactly. You can't actually run a brain scan on a skeleton that's been dead for 2,000 years. But you can use medical forensics to extrapolate backwards. You can make better guesses about the past by using new research data that's only become available recently.  

A: The History Channel has a show based on that idea. It's called "Ancients Behaving Badly." Sometimes I wonder, though, about their experts' understanding of psychopathy. 

J: Psychopathy is not well understood by psychologists. There's a tendency to pretend it isn't a major mental illness because it's not treatable. There's no drug regimen and no effective psychotherapy model that can be patented or copyrighted. So there's not a lot of good research. Also, people are worried about the legal implications. People are worried that if psychopathy is labelled a major mental illness then it will be used in court cases to prove a lack of responsibility in major crimes. There's a risk of this because there's currently such a poor understanding of how the human brain works. However, proof of psychopathy is in no way proof of lack of responsibility or lack of criminal intent. Psychopathy is a class of major mental illness characterized by a complete lack of conscience that is accompanied by a complete preservation of logic, will power, and intent. It's an illness because a psychopath's brain is not functioning properly -- it's not wired according to the psychopath's DNA package. Nonetheless, the psychopath is responsible for his or her actions because he/she is consciously aware of the choices he/she is making. That conscious awareness is the test for criminal intent in a legal proceeding.  

“Jesus said: Blessed is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion will become human” (Gospel of Thomas 7). Being a successful psychopath is lot like being a trained pilot who can land near the shore of a frozen lake without crashing through the ice. It takes rigorous training, commitment, logic, and a laser-eye view of where you want to be and what you need to accomplish to get there – even if it means mowing down all the people between you and your goal. Being a successful psychopath is also a lot like being a lion on the hunt. Photo credit JAT 2015.

A: In other words, psychopaths know what they're doing is wrong, so they shouldn't be given a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card.  

J: Exactly. They should be held accountable for their choices and their actions. At the same time, they should also receive appropriate medical therapy and intervention to assist them to learn how to make better choices.  

A: Healing and redemption for serial killers. 

J: It's possible. But not likely in the current climate of Newtonian psychology.  

A: Newtonian psychology. That's an interesting phrase. I've never heard it before.  

J: By Newtonian psychology I mean the current vogue in neuroscience research. Researchers are examining small little bits of the human brain in isolation as if the brain is nothing more than a complex Lego set. But the brain isn't like that. It's much more sophisticated than that. The sum of the parts does not make the whole. The whole is . . . the whole is almost beyond words. It's not called "the three pound universe" for nothing.  

A: I've been noticing that researchers themselves get so caught up in the details that they lose sight of the big picture. They can't see the forest for the trees, as the saying goes. I picked up the current issue of Discover (Jan/Feb 2011) with its list of the 100 Top Stories of 2010. Top Story No. 62 ("Glia: The Other Brain Cells") breathlessly informs me that glial cells in the brain might actually play an active role in brain function, rather than just a structural role. I've known this for years because you told me years ago to keep an eye on glial cell research. And there's been good research on glia, too. Fascinating stuff. It's a shame that many other researchers haven't been paying attention. 

J: Well, the neuron is the "fad du jour." It's a nice easy-to-understand Lego block, and it's easier to design experiments with. Researchers are limited by experimental constraints.  

A: And funding grants. Research often follows the money. There's more money in tracking the parts of the brain that can be changed by patented medications. It's a huge industry.  

J: And a very powerful one that has a vested interest in viewing the brain as a collection of fixable Legos.  

A: Not much room in there for a doctrine of the soul, is there?  

J: That's the whole idea, actually.

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.

JR2: Not a Technological Sort of Fellow, But Still Likes Gadgets

A: A few days ago, I got a big surprise. I punched the phrase "choosing between Paul and Jesus" into Google's search engine, and the only site I came up with was my own blog Concinnate Christianity. Also, every post on my blog seemed to be "tagged" with this particular phrase. Somebody tagged my posts, but it wasn't me, because I don't know how to do that. Any comments?  

J (laughing): Don't look at me. That's a different department. I'm not in the technology department. There's a reason I lived as a human being 2,000 years ago! No computers to contend with!  

A: Typing on a blog doesn't count as technology? 

J: Well, to be honest, I'm not typing on a blog. I'm talking, and you're typing. You're the one who has to contend with the technology. All I have to do is talk -- which I love to do. So, technically speaking, I'm doing what I do best -- which is philosophising. I leave the computer stuff to the computer department. So if there are mysterious search tags appearing on your blog, it's their fault. I wouldn't have the first idea where to begin.  

A: You're saying there's a department of angels whose job it is to focus on technology?  

J: Yup. There's no field of human research that's "outside the box" as far as God is concerned. You name any human researcher in any obscure field, and there are at least 12 angels in the immediate vicinity who know 12 times more about the topic than the human researcher.  

A: Hey, twelve times twelve. I like your symbolism.  

J: It wouldn't be a proper mystical teaching if I didn't randomly throw in some numerology to make people lose sleep at night wondering what I mean. 

A: That's a bit cynical!  

J: Just realistic. It's an honest statement of fact that the Bible is filled to the brim with numbers that are supposed to be mystically significant. Numbers like 12. And 40. And multiples of 7. So now it's official. This blog is certifiably mystical. Jesus has spoken the sacred seal of twelve times twelve. All is now right with the world.  

A: Whoa! You sound pretty upset! 

J: I'm an angel, and angels are pretty upset these days. We're tired of the bullshit.  

A: Can you elaborate on that point?  

J: It'll take me a while. There's a lot of bullshit in the world today.  

A: People will probably be shocked that an angel would even say such a thing. Especially you. You're Jesus. You're supposed to be pure light and pure love. Won't people be upset that you would speak so . . . so . . .  

J: Bluntly? 

A: I was thinking more along the lines of "impolite."  

J: I'm a blunt sort of fellow, and I call a spade a spade. There's no polite way to describe what's going on in the world today. I'd much rather be honest than polite. 

A: There's the Jesus I know.  

J: I guess it's who I am as a soul.  

The Jesus I know reminds me a lot of this magnolia tree. Really. I’m not kidding. Photo credit JAT 2017.

A (chuckling): How true! Most people would be surprised as hell to know you as you really are. You're sure not what they're expecting. I say that from personal experience. You aren't anything like the Sunday School portrait I was taught when I was growing up! Like, no way, Jose.  

J: Hey, I'm just a guy.  

A: That's what I mean. You're actually a guy -- a real guy.  

J: Last time I checked.  

A: Yes, but many people on a spiritual path think that angels are all androgynous, that they have no gender, and even worse, that they have no individual uniqueness or individual identity. You've certainly proved that theory wrong over the years!  

J: You know, I may not be a technology person per se, but I have to admit that all those gadgets with buttons on them have a certain appeal. Take TV remote controls, for example. I wouldn't mind having one of those. And maybe a big screen TV. With crisp, high definition colour. I can see why so many men enjoy that stuff. I guess it's a guy thing.  

A: No matter what dimension a guy is in.  

J: Certain attributes of the self are timeless and dimensionless. So yeah -- guys love gadgets with buttons. And wheels. No matter where they live in Creation. Isn't that great?  

A: Even God the Father?  

J: Even God the Father. 

A: So God the Mother doesn't get to hold the remote?  

J: I think probably not.  

A: Huh. Go figure. I don't understand what that means, but it feels right. Like so many of the things you tell me.  

J: One day at a time. One day at a time. That's all anyone can do.  

A: Ya got that one right.