The Q source. Is it truly original Jesus, is it Christian, or is it "Sayings of a Tantric Master"??

[firedragon]

As everyone knows, Q is a hypothetical source that came up as a filtration of commonalities between the synoptic gospels Matthew and Luke. Well, there is a lot of scholarship behind it, and some scholars have even endeavoured to construct a scroll which they think would have been similar to this scroll which preceded both Matthew and Luke which would by definition be more authentic, and closer to the source.

I will leave a lot of questions and issues that prop up due to this finding, but there is a curious case that I came across recently due to a gentleman in the forum and I wish to explore this further if anyone could contribute.

Reading this article The sayings of the tantric-mystic Master Yahshua the Nazarene one would immediately find this finding.

Some evangelical Christians have gone onto propagate that Q would be not just most authentic "earlier", but "THE AUTHENTIC" sayings of Jesus. I hope one could make the distinction between most authentic and the authentic. Nevertheless, this article speaks of a Jesus who is portrayed as a Tantric Teacher or Master which is the correct depiction of Jesus, not the Christian or the Biblical depiction of Jesus as we have currently understood.

What would you have to say about this particular topic? Is this article sound? Was Jesus a Tantric Master?

 

[sun rise]

I'm about to get into trouble with people from different religions. But first, in this post, a comment on something that I know to be accurate from that article: Every translation is always an interpretation. The Italian saying is 'translator, traitor'

As someone who compares translated versions of the Quran, it's clearly true that translations are often about the translator. I'm specifically thinking of 17:100-104 which in one version (by Professor Palazzi) states that the state of Israel being formed is a marker of the end times. When the promise of the hereafter [End of Days] comes to be fulfilled, We [Allah] shall assemble you [the Israelites] all together [in the Land of Israel]." Other translates are very different. Not being a reader of Quranic Arabic, I can only note the difference.

Some assert, of course, that God made sure that the one, true, translation of the Bible survived this process. I'm not one of those who accept that assertion.

 

[sun rise]

Was Jesus a Tantric Master?

From my belief system as a follower of Meher Baba, Jesus was an incarnation of the one, eternal Avatar. As God in human form, he could make use of anything needed to fulfill his mission on Earth.

So he could have used Tantra if needed and recast it for a new audience who needed a new formulation. And he could have taught differently to his close ones who were ready to hear more than a general audience could understand.

But I don't believe he was of the lower stature of only being a Tantric Master.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

As everyone knows, Q is a hypothetical source that came up as a filtration of commonalities between the synoptic gospels Matthew and Luke. Well, there is a lot of scholarship behind it, and some scholars have even endeavoured to construct a scroll which they think would have been similar to this scroll which preceded both Matthew and Luke which would by definition be more authentic, and closer to the source.

I wonder if they'd consider throwing seneca in the mix, as I've actually found where he writes something almost exactly like the parable of the wise and foolish builders. Technically, I'm not really sure that should be there, .

 

[firedragon]

I wonder if they'd consider throwing seneca in the mix, as I've actually found where he writes something almost exactly like the parable of the wise and foolish builders. Technically, I'm not really sure that should be there, .

What is Seneca?

 

[PureX]

I think that trying to find or establish the "real story" is essentially a fools errand. Not just because it's not humanly possible, but also because it ignores the significance of the mythology involved.

The story of Jesus of Nazareth is a mythical story. And as such, it has a purpose unrelated to historical fact ... and is more important than the historical facts. That purpose is to convey a very highly regarded cultural (or religious, in this instance) ideal.

Everyone is interpreting this story, and representing it to others in their own unique way. Expecting any one interpretation to be "right" is missing the whole point of mythology. And of story-telling, even.

 

[pearl]

Pretty good article on the various scholarship concerning 'Q'.

The Search for a No-Frills Jesus - The Atlantic

 

[firedragon]

Pretty good article on the various scholarship concerning 'Q'.

The Search for a No-Frills Jesus - The Atlantic

What do you think about this brother @Marcion

 

[Marcion]

Pretty good article on the various scholarship concerning 'Q'.

The Search for a No-Frills Jesus - The Atlantic

It was Mack, Robinson and Kloppenborg who got me started on taking an interest in Q.
Those scholars however have no knowledge of the fundamental difference between religion and Tantra and they don't believe that any of the miracle stuff in Mark (the original narrative gospel) could have really happened.
To say it bluntly, they have an atheist biased way of thinking about Q.

Although ideally the reconstruction of Q should be mainly about literary criteria, in practice these scholars can't well enough tell the difference between a religious saying and a Tantric one, a number of which belong in the same category as their "wisdom sayings", the ones Mack puts in his Q1 layer.

That is how some of them come to the conclusion that Jesus was an itinerant Cynic philosopher rather than a spiritual type master. Tantra however is also a type of (spiritual) philosophy that is similarly rather practical (to be put into practice and not to be confused with religion) just like the Cynic philosophy is.

In the Tantric reconstruction of Q, there are sayings added relative to Mack's Q1, but the sayings from Mack's Q2 and Q3 layers are missing because they fall outside the Q-lite reconstruction as products of the author of Matthew himself.

Q-lite doesn't need Mack's hypothetical later Q layers because it is not based on the Two-Source Hypothesis but on the Three-Source Hypothesis (one of the authors of Luke knew Matthew and took some sayings from that gospel).

Jesus was a tantric, but the early Christians who created the New Testament were not, they were religious people. Nevertheless, they inherited the Q-lite saying which are tantric and may go back to the historical Jesus.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

What is Seneca?

a roman philosopher that lived in the 1st century , who happens to occasionally say similar things to those said in the NT

 

[firedragon]

a roman philosopher that lived in the 1st century , who happens to occasionally say similar things to those said in the NT

Please be kind enough to direct me to a book if you dont mind. Humble request.

Thank you.

 

[Niblo]

Please be kind enough to direct me to a book if you dont mind. Humble request.

Thank you.

'Letters From a Stoic.'

https://hillelettersfromstoic.files...etters-from-a-stoic_lucius-annaeus-seneca.pdf

 

[firedragon]

'Letters From a Stoic.'

https://hillelettersfromstoic.files...etters-from-a-stoic_lucius-annaeus-seneca.pdf

Thanks Niblo. Thanks a lot.

 

[Niblo]

Thanks Niblo. Thanks a lot.

You're very welcome, brother.

 

[Marcion]

Although I'm pretty satisfied that Q-lite is tantric and therefore Jesus must have also been tantric (rather than a religious thinker who would not have approved of the syncretic Christianity that grew out of his movement) there are some things present in this reconstruction of Q-lite that rub with my own understanding of tantric philosophy.
Of course I could simply "solve" this by excluding certain sayings from the text of Q-lite declaring them to have been created by the author of Matthew.

That is also somewhat of a problem with reconstructing Q-lite (based on the Three-Source Hypothesis), you are relatively free to adjust which sayings you allow in or exclude according to how well they fit into the main ideological thrust of Q-lite. With several of the sayings you can never be quite sure if they were not in fact created by the author of Matthew or may have had a different tantric origin than coming from Q-lite.

Eventhough the texts that Matthew created himself are most often quite religious (non-tantric), he may have also used some more tantric source material that did not originate in Q-lite and therefore was not used by the author of Luke.

Another problem is the saying usually included in Q about 'bearing one's cross'.
The kerygma and apocalyptic speculation is absent from Q and Q-lite but how can you explain a Jesus who is talking to his disciples that they have to 'bear their cross' if Jesus never talked about his coming crucifixion?
I have decided to leave this saying out of Q-lite but as with a number of other sayings, it feels like an arbitrary and biased decision as the saying does feels like a Q-saying and it also appears in the context of other Q-sayings.

I have even included a Matthew sondergut saying (Matthew 5: 29-30) that no one else includes into Q about controlling your actions and your senses which parallels the teachings of the Buddha and is quite tantric but it does mention heaven and hell. If this really was a saying coming from the historical Jesus, heaven and hell could have been used figuratively or in another way (more tantric) than the Christian ideas about heaven and hell.

If you look at the history of the main Q reconstruction based on the Two-Source Hypothesis different scholars vary in the motivated choices they make about which sayings was in or outside of Q. But the main body of the Q sayings still points quite firmly to a tantric Jesus which does not go well with the more religious texts that were added by the authors of the synoptic narrative gospels.
So you cannot explain this tantric body of sayings if there wasn't a central tantric personality like Jesus behind it.
And the way Jesus behaves in the first half of Mark matches well with the tantric ideology of Q-lite.
Then in the kerygma part of Mark you see a very different (more mythical) type of Jesus, the one created by Christians.

 

[firedragon]

Q-lite

Marcion. Could you provide the Q-lite? Is it Bird's Q-lite or do you have another idea about it?

 

[firedragon]

That is also somewhat of a problem with reconstructing Q-lite (based on the Three-Source Hypothesis), you are relatively free to adjust which sayings you allow in or exclude according to how well they fit into the main ideological thrust of Q-lite.

Oh. You mean its arbitrary?

 

[Marcion]

Oh. You mean its arbitrary?

Not quite, you cannot change the text that is already there to your liking.
However what is to some extent flexible is certain choices you have to make.
Such as: was the saying created by Matthew, Luke or did it come from Q-lite?
Also: which part of a saying was changed or not changed by the author who used it?

This e.g. depends on the wording the author would normally choose and other typical things he would do language wise.
It also depends on how well it fits in with the rest of Q-lite ideologically or in style but in some cases this is not entirely clear.
The meaning of the sayings of Q-lite are often deliberately obscure (like a riddle).
Mostly it is quite clear when a saying is too different to fit well into Q-lite but not always so.

So it depends on the scholar how exactly they reconstruct Q or Q-lite also depending on the ideas they have about the nature of the ideology of Q and what is was used for (the "Sitz im Leben")
Actually I have not yet found any scholar do a proper exegesis on Q or Q-lite.
Perhaps because they view an exegesis only as a Christian interpretation of the text and they see the Q collection as a text that is just plain wisdom and has no spiritual ideology of its own.

I would disagree with that, Q-lite is for me also a kind of general wisdom or philosophy but definitely of the spiritual kind. Hence the sayings of Q-lite are tantric i.e. they go beyond the boundaries of (or does not even know of) so-called religions.
And Jesus is not just a Greek type philosopher with a social inclination but more of a tantric Master who claimed to be one with the Father (spiritually enlightened) and performed supernatural feats with his developed consciousness (one with the Father is the same as one with the Supreme Consciousness or Holy Spirit hence to some extent master over the laws of physics).

Marcion. Could you provide the Q-lite? Is it Bird's Q-lite or do you have another idea about it?

A reconstruction is under the link in my signature.
Q-lite is what you get if you allow one of the authors of the gospel of Luke copying (at a later stage) some of the sayings from the gospel of Matthew. In most reconstructions of Q it is assumed that the author of Luke did not know or totally ignored the gospel of Matthew.

Which to me seems very unlikely since he added similar things to the gospel of Mark but seems to have disliked the way the author of Matthew did it, so he did it in a very different way. It looks like he disliked the Jewishness of Matthew's gospel and made an alternative version likewise using Mark and Q-lite and also adding a birth narrative and a genealogy. But he did so in his own quite different way. Nevertheless at some stage sayings from Matthew creeped into Luke which are hence absent in Q-lite (but not in conventional Q where the idea of such "contamination" from Matthew to Luke is denied).

 

[firedragon]

Not quite, you cannot change the text that is already there to your liking.
However what is to some extent flexible is certain choices you have to make.
Such as: was the saying created by Matthew, Luke or did it come from Q-lite?
Also: which part of a saying was changed or not changed by the author who used it?

This e.g. depends on the wording the author would normally choose and other typical things he would do language wise.
It also depends on how well it fits in with the rest of Q-lite ideologically or in style but in some cases this is not entirely clear.
The meaning of the sayings of Q-lite are often deliberately obscure (like a riddle).
Mostly it is quite clear when a saying is too different to fit well into Q-lite but not always so.

So it depends on the scholar how exactly they reconstruct Q or Q-lite also depending on the ideas they have about the nature of the ideology of Q and what is was used for (the "Sitz im Leben")
Actually I have not yet found any scholar do a proper exegesis on Q or Q-lite.
Perhaps because they view an exegesis only as a Christian interpretation of the text and they see the Q collection as a text that is just plain wisdom and has no spiritual ideology of its own.

I would disagree with that, Q-lite is for me also a kind of general wisdom or philosophy but definitely of the spiritual kind. Hence the sayings of Q-lite are tantric i.e. they go beyond the boundaries of (or does not even know of) so-called religions.
And Jesus is not just a Greek type philosopher with a social inclination but more of a tantric Master who claimed to be one with the Father (spiritually enlightened) and performed supernatural feats with his developed consciousness (one with the Father is the same as one with the Supreme Consciousness or Holy Spirit hence to some extent master over the laws of physics).

Can you present the Q-lite?

 

[pearl]

Another problem is the saying usually included in Q about 'bearing one's cross'.
The kerygma and apocalyptic speculation is absent from Q and Q-lite but how can you explain a Jesus who is talking to his disciples that they have to 'bear their cross' if Jesus never talked about his coming crucifixion?

I think it raises a question not yet considered; How much did this wholly human Jesus know? Ignorance is part of the human condition. In order to properly understand the Gospels, and for that matter, the entire Christian Scripture is to begin in the order in which they were written, backwards, beginning with post resurrection faith.
The Jesus of Q is not a messiah. He was not born of a virgin. He did not perform miracles. He did not die on the cross. There was no resurrection. What remains nonetheless is an extraordinary character and an intriguing figure who made a lasting impression on his followers, believed in an immediate Kingdom, and saw himself as a successor to John the Baptist. the gospel we have here may contain embellishments -- embellishments designed to bolster the fortunes of a struggling movement during an extraordinarily competitive period. Some of the embellishments in the gospels ought be seen in the light of the times. It was a time when Jews were waiting anxiously for a Redeemer. It was a time too when magic, witchcraft, demons, angels, possessions and exorcisms were generally taken for granted -- as were miracles, prophesies, divinations and astrology. In that context the miracles ascribed to Jesus, although wrongly interpreted, are not beyond belief. Certainly the figure of Jesus acquired mythological traits.