The Tantric master Yeshua and the Christians

[Marcion]

I'm a firm believer in the historical Jesus of the biblical sayings collection of Q-lite (see link below) and am much less impressed by the New Testament writings of the gospel authors themselves (putting it very mildly).

The sayings collection Q-lite is a powerful coherent text meant for the small group of itinerant followers of Yeshua who speaks as a realised spiritual master (guru) giving tantric-mystic instructions for his missionaries.
Tantra is not a specific Eastern ideology but rather any type of spiritual instruction that is mainly meant for actual practice rather than anything religious or purely theoretical.

Burton Mack and Kloppenborg also reconstructed the same sayings collection. But they made the mistake to assume that gLuke contains no sayings copied from gMatthew. Burton Mack has no eye for the tantric mystic teachings in Q-lite and therefore discards too many of the sayings as later additions and ends up with a Cynic itinerant Jesus instead. Tantric philosophy is somewhat related to Cynic philosophy but is more spiritual and devotional in character.

So if it really started with a (failed) short-lasting tantric type of mission, then how come we ended up with Christianity, a Hellenistic-Roman pseudo-Jewish religion?

Any type of universal tantric teaching by a tantric master is going to create a great impact. Especially if that guru is going to demonstrate that his teachings are matched by occult powers as Yeshua also seems to have done.
In that sense Yeshua resembles great tantric gurus like Shiva and Krishna who also had a great impact on human society but on a much grander scale.
So Yeshua creates a great ideological stir, gets a group of devoted Jewish followers who somehow write down his instructions as well as tell about the demonstrations he gave of his powers.

Then the mission is suddenly cut short. Yeshua disappears from the scene and the followers are left behind without being adequately trained in the mission and without a deeper understanding of the teachings.
What can they do? Different groups of followers in different places start syncretrising their old religious beliefs with the little they remember of the real mission of Yeshua.
Some are more Jewish, some are trying more to follow in the footsteps of Yeshua himself and some are more Hellenistic. Different sects are already forming in the early decades, there is no unified mission left.
They are not yet called Christians, others call them Nazarenes after Yeshua the Nazarene.

Well into the second century the more Hellenistic sect becomes dominant and the emerging Church of Rome decides to ignore the theological influence of the Jewish sect and the gnostic sect around Marcion but makes a blending of part of their scriptures creating the more ritualistic Christian church centered on the power of Rome and the bisshops (whose powers are supported by an apostolic myth). The Christian religion is born and the tantric mission of Yeshua is totally forgotten.

A small group of gnostic followers tries to revive the teachings of Q-lite by creating the gospel of Thomas but this gospel is much less powerful and the sect dwindles away over time.

The sad thing is that many Christians now believe that Jesus was totally different from all those other "gods", "gurus" and "messengers" because of all the religious additions to his teachings. This creates a lot of divisive tendencies that Jesus would never have approved of.

 

[Dawnofhope]

Its an interesting theory but I have problems with it.

(1) I am impressed by the gopsels so the attempt to reframe Jesus as being a guru similar to those of Indian traditions is a bridge too far.

(2) Beyond fundamentally contradicting what we know of the gospels the problems are accentuated further when contrasted with the teachings of the apostles.

(3) We therefore need to reject the entire New Testament and start from a reconstructed Q text.

(4) Its too easy to turn a reconstructed text into anything we want it to be.

(5) As well as rejecting the New Testament we are ignoring the traditions of Judaism upon which Christianity was founded.

(6) It makes as much sense as Jesus to be speaking the language of Krishna and Shiva to His Jewish disciples as it would for Buddha to suddenly start using language of Jesus in India.

(7) It contradicts too much with the historic Jesus (His crucifixion for example).

Its good that you are following a path that works for you within a different framwork (Krishna and Shiva). But I don't think you should turn Jesus into someone He clearly wasn't.

 

[Marcion]

1) Tantra is not an "Indian tradition", it is about practical spirituality rather than religious theories. Yeshua characterises himself as (spiritual) Master several time in Q-lite which is just another word for (Sankrit) Guru. In fact I used the word guru only to show you that there is no difference, you may also use rabbi.

2) The "teachings of the apostles" are a creation of the Christian church, so they are no witnesses to the historical Yeshua. Most Christians believe this myth because they take the New Testament as historical truth.

3) I start from Q-lite which is somewhat different from the reconstruction of Q by Kloppenborg etc..
Q-lite is a tantric or mystic text (there is little difference between tantra and mysticism both are universal).

4) This is not a convincing argument, you will have to show by argumentation why you disagree with my interpretation of the sayings and the inclusion or exclusion of certain sayings.

5) This is presented as a dogma, the teachings in Q-lite are by no means based on Judaism. The connection to the Jewish scriptures was rejected by a large part of the followers of Jesus of the second century but forced on the emerging (later imperial) dominant church by Roman bisshops. The Church of Marcion did not add the Old Testament.

6) You are making the same mistake as in 1). Tantra is universal and has nothing to do with sectarian religious thinking. So he is speaking the universal language of the intuitive science of Tantra which is found all over the world and not only with great Masters such as Shiva or Krishna. His Jewish disciples were not convinced by his Jewish teachings but by his Tantric teachings (in Q-lite) and demonstrations. May I also remind you that Buddhism, Jainism and Taoism have their own branches of Tantra. Why is this? Because Tantra is not a religious thing, it is universal. Yeshua was not founding a religion!

7) The crucifixion is found in other traditions of that age, even Ceasar was carried around in religious processions nailed to a cross, so this type of cult need not at all be historical.

It is good that you want to preach unity among people but in fact you seem to be dividing people by insisting on the importance of religious divisions even when they are quite absent as with the teachings of the historical Yeshua. If you really want to preach unity you will have to describe and point out the real basis of spirituality and separate it off from what creates the divisiveness. Just repeating endlessly that we are not divided is not going to help anything, it sounds hollow.

 

[Regiomontanus]

I'm a firm believer in the historical Jesus of the biblical sayings collection of Q-lite (see link below) and am much less impressed by the New Testament writings of the gospel authors themselves (putting it very mildly).

The sayings collection Q-lite is a powerful coherent text meant for the small group of itinerant followers of Yeshua who speaks as a realised spiritual master (guru) giving tantric-mystic instructions for his missionaries.
Tantra is not a specific Eastern ideology but rather any type of spiritual instruction that is mainly meant for actual practice rather than anything religious or purely theoretical.

Burton Mack and Kloppenborg also reconstructed the same sayings collection. But they made the mistake to assume that gLuke contains no sayings copied from gMatthew. Burton Mack has no eye for the tantric mystic teachings in Q-lite and therefore discards too many of the sayings as later additions and ends up with a Cynic itinerant Jesus instead. Tantric philosophy is somewhat related to Cynic philosophy but is more spiritual and devotional in character.

So if it really started with a (failed) short-lasting tantric type of mission, then how come we ended up with Christianity, a Hellenistic-Roman pseudo-Jewish religion?

Any type of universal tantric teaching by a tantric master is going to create a great impact. Especially if that guru is going to demonstrate that his teachings are matched by occult powers as Yeshua also seems to have done.
In that sense Yeshua resembles great tantric gurus like Shiva and Krishna who also had a great impact on human society but on a much grander scale.
So Yeshua creates a great ideological stir, gets a group of devoted Jewish followers who somehow write down his instructions as well as tell about the demonstrations he gave of his powers.

Then the mission is somehow suddenly cut short. Yeshua disappears from the scene and the followers are left behind without being adequately trained in the mission and without a deeper understanding of the teachings.
What can they do? Different groups of followers in different places start syncretrising their old religious beliefs with the little they remember of the real mission of Yeshua.
Some are more Jewish, some are trying more to follow in the footsteps of Yeshua himself and some are more Hellenistic. Different sects are already forming in the early decades, there is no unified mission left.
They are not yet called Christians, others call them Nazarenes after Yeshua the Nazarene.

Well into the second century the more Hellenistic sect becomes dominant and the emerging Church of Rome decides to ignore the theological influence of the Jewish sect and the gnostic sect around Marcion but makes a blending of part of their scriptures creating the more ritualistic Christian church centered on the power of Rome and the bisshops (whose powers are supported by an apostolic myth). The Christian religion is born and the tantric mission of Yeshua is totally forgotten.

A small group of gnostic followers tries to revive the teachings of Q-lite by creating the gospel of Thomas but this gospel is much less powerful and the sect dwindles away over time.

The sad thing is that many Christians now believe that Jesus was totally different from all those other "gods", "gurus" and "messengers" because of all the religious additions to his teachings. This creates a lot of divisive tendencies that Jesus would never have approved of.

Hello. Where does Saul/Paul fit into your construction? His writings are the earliest ones in the NT.

 

[Marcion]

Hello. Where does Saul/Paul fit into your construction? His writings are the earliest ones in the NT.

There is no mention of the so-called 'letters of Paul' before the bible of the Marcion church in the second century! The more original parts of these so-called letters (never really sent, it is a gnostic or mystic vision of christianity written in the form of letters) were probably written by the same gnostic school that inspired Marcion and made him include them in his (the first!) bible. The church of Rome made a lot of interpolations and added newer "letters" to weaken or hide the gnostic message in them. In Acts they presented a different Paul that was obedient to Peter's church in Jerusalem, a very different Paul in fact from the Paul in the original letters who fulminates against the Jewish christianity as also found in gMatthew.

So the original first century Paul is not the same person as the person who wrote those pseudo-letters.
They could be the work of the followers of Simon ("Magus"), who was very famous in his days and a big rival of the more Jewish followers of Jesus.
The "Paul" of the original pseudo-letters is then a representation of or pseudonym for Simon Magus who was then the historical source for or inspirator of this "Pauline" version of Christianity.
Nothing is at is seems when you read the New Testament, there is very little reliable historical stuff to be found, most is religious projection.

Hermann Detering, The Dutch Radical Approach to the Pauline Epistles
http://www.egodeath.com/FalsifiedPaul/DeteringChapter1.pdf

 

[Regiomontanus]

There is no mention of the so-called 'letters of Paul' before the bible of the Marcion church in the second century! The more original parts of these so-called letters (never really sent, it is a gnostic or mystic vision of christianity written in the form of letters) were probably written by the same gnostic school that inspired Marcion and made him include them in his (the first!) bible. The church of Rome made a lot of interpolations and added newer "letters" to weaken or hide the gnostic message in them. In Acts they presented a different Paul that was obedient to Peter's church in Jerusalem, a very different Paul in fact from the Paul in the original letters who fulminates against the Jewish christianity as also found in gMatthew.

So the original first century Paul is not the same person as the person who wrote those pseudo-letters.
They could be the work of the followers of Simon ("Magus"), who was very famous in his days and a big rival of the more Jewish followers of Jesus.
The "Paul" of the original pseudo-letters is then a representation of or pseudonym for Simon Magus who was then the historical source for or inspirator of this "Pauline" version of Christianity.
Nothing is at is seems when you read the New Testament, there is very little reliable historical stuff to be found, most is religious projection.

Hermann Detering, The Dutch Radical Approach to the Pauline Epistles
http://www.egodeath.com/FalsifiedPaul/DeteringChapter1.pdf

Umm, OK

Why do you think centuries of critical scholarship has not developed anything remotely similar to your construction?

 

[whirlingmerc]

1) Tantra is not an "Indian tradition", it is about practical spirituality rather than religious theories. Yeshua characterises himself as (spiritual) Master several time in Q-lite which is just another word for (Sankrit) Guru. In fact I used the word guru only to show you that there is no difference, you may also use rabbi.

2) The "teachings of the apostles" are a creation of the Christian church, so they are no witnesses to the historical Yeshua. Most Christians believe this myth because they take the New Testament as historical truth.

3) I start from Q-lite which is somewhat different from the reconstruction of Q by Kloppenborg etc..
Q-lite is a tantric or mystic text (there is little difference between tantra and mysticism both are universal).

4) This is not an argument, you will have to show by argumentation why you disagree with my interpretation of the sayings and the inclusion or exclusion of certain sayings.

5) This is presented as a dogma, the teachings in Q-lite are by no means based on Judaism. The connection to the Jewish scriptures was rejected by a large part of the followers of Jesus of the second century but forced on the emerging (later imperial) dominant church by Roman bisshops. The Church of Marcion did not add the Old Testament.

6) You are making the same mistake as in 1). Tantra is universal and has nothing to do with sectarian religious thinking. So he is speaking the universal language of the intuitive science of Tantra which is found all over the world and not only with great Masters such as Shiva or Krishna. His Jewish disciples were not convinced by his Jewish teachings but by his Tantric teachings (in Q-lite) and demonstrations. May I also remind you that Buddhism, Jainism and Taoism have their own branches of Tantra. Why is this? Because Tantra is not a religious thing, it is universal. Yeshua was not founding a religion!

7) The crucifixion is found in other traditions of that age, even Ceasar was carried around in religious processions nailed to a cross, so this type of cult need not at all be historical.

It is good that you want to preach unity among people but in fact you seem to be dividing people by insisting on the importance of religious divisions even when they are quite absent as with the teachings of the historical Yeshua. If you really want to preach unity you will have to describe and point out the real basis of spirituality and separate it off from what creates the divisiveness. Just repeating endlessly that we are not divided is not going to help anything, it sounds hollow.

I'm a firm believer in the historical Jesus of the biblical sayings collection of Q-lite (see link below) and am much less impressed by the New Testament writings of the gospel authors themselves (putting it very mildly).

The sayings collection Q-lite is a powerful coherent text meant for the small group of itinerant followers of Yeshua who speaks as a realised spiritual master (guru) giving tantric-mystic instructions for his missionaries.
Tantra is not a specific Eastern ideology but rather any type of spiritual instruction that is mainly meant for actual practice rather than anything religious or purely theoretical.

Burton Mack and Kloppenborg also reconstructed the same sayings collection. But they made the mistake to assume that gLuke contains no sayings copied from gMatthew. Burton Mack has no eye for the tantric mystic teachings in Q-lite and therefore discards too many of the sayings as later additions and ends up with a Cynic itinerant Jesus instead. Tantric philosophy is somewhat related to Cynic philosophy but is more spiritual and devotional in character.

So if it really started with a (failed) short-lasting tantric type of mission, then how come we ended up with Christianity, a Hellenistic-Roman pseudo-Jewish religion?

Any type of universal tantric teaching by a tantric master is going to create a great impact. Especially if that guru is going to demonstrate that his teachings are matched by occult powers as Yeshua also seems to have done.
In that sense Yeshua resembles great tantric gurus like Shiva and Krishna who also had a great impact on human society but on a much grander scale.
So Yeshua creates a great ideological stir, gets a group of devoted Jewish followers who somehow write down his instructions as well as tell about the demonstrations he gave of his powers.

Then the mission is somehow suddenly cut short. Yeshua disappears from the scene and the followers are left behind without being adequately trained in the mission and without a deeper understanding of the teachings.
What can they do? Different groups of followers in different places start syncretrising their old religious beliefs with the little they remember of the real mission of Yeshua.
Some are more Jewish, some are trying more to follow in the footsteps of Yeshua himself and some are more Hellenistic. Different sects are already forming in the early decades, there is no unified mission left.
They are not yet called Christians, others call them Nazarenes after Yeshua the Nazarene.

Well into the second century the more Hellenistic sect becomes dominant and the emerging Church of Rome decides to ignore the theological influence of the Jewish sect and the gnostic sect around Marcion but makes a blending of part of their scriptures creating the more ritualistic Christian church centered on the power of Rome and the bisshops (whose powers are supported by an apostolic myth). The Christian religion is born and the tantric mission of Yeshua is totally forgotten.

A small group of gnostic followers tries to revive the teachings of Q-lite by creating the gospel of Thomas but this gospel is much less powerful and the sect dwindles away over time.

The sad thing is that many Christians now believe that Jesus was totally different from all those other "gods", "gurus" and "messengers" because of all the religious additions to his teachings. This creates a lot of divisive tendencies that Jesus would never have approved of.

regarding "...The sad thing is that many Christians now believe that Jesus was totally different from all those other "gods", "gurus" and "messengers" because of all the religious additions to his teachings. This creates a lot of divisive tendencies that Jesus would never have approved of...."

It's ironic that the ancient philosopher Marcion felt the God of the new and Old Testament were different

Psalm 146 appears to claim otherwise The Doxological Coda to Psalms

 

[Brickjectivity]

4) This is not an argument, you will have to show by argumentation why you disagree with my interpretation of the sayings and the inclusion or exclusion of certain sayings.

I think this reflects something Paul writes: 2 Corinthians 10:5 "(NIV) We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." That is not how many preachers see it, but its I think what Paul means. I dont know whether it reflects modern gnosticism. I view it to be in harmony with James, and that what Paul means here is a restatement of "Let God be true and every man a liar."

It is good that you want to preach unity among people but in fact you seem to be dividing people by insisting on the importance of religious divisions even when they are quite absent as with the teachings of the historical Yeshua. If you really want to preach unity you will have to describe and point out the real basis of spirituality and separate it off from what creates the divisiveness. Just repeating endlessly that we are not divided is not going to help anything, it sounds hollow.

I think unity can only be preached by a peaceful and good life. Words get in the way. They have their place and their use. What I admire about Baha'is is not their argument but their devotion to study and willingness to live peacefully with those who disagree on many issues.

 

[Marcion]

It's ironic that the ancient philosopher Marcion felt the God of the new and Old Testament were different

The character of the revengeful God of the Jewish Scriptures is often disliked by progressive altruistic people. I personally dislike many of the texts that were created by aMatthew himself.

The akward way in which the church of Rome stuck both so-called testaments together makes no sense. But you can understand why it happened. Which doesn't mean there are no valuable texts in the Jewish scriptures that were copied by the Christian Church. But you can follow Yeshua perfectly well without reading any of the Jewish scriptures, he does not really build on them in any way. Of course you will always be able to find some parallels if you try because the Jewish scriptures also have their tantric or mystic texts.

 

[Marcion]

Umm, OK

Why do you think centuries of critical scholarship has not developed anything remotely similar to your construction?

Do you know how recent prof. Burton Mack came with his 'Cynic Jesus'?
Do you realise how close the Tantric and the Cynic Jesus are text-wise?
So they are not at all that dissimilar. But you cannot expect an atheistic professor to analyse such texts the same way as I did. Most people are not able to make a sharp distinction between religious fantasy and tantra or mysticism. Especially when the sayings are so deliberately obscure as many of the Q-lite sayings are. It makes even theological professors throw out the baby with the bathwater and end up on the wrong track.

It is like rediscovering a long last Rembrandt painting that has been painted over heavily. If you are intimately acqainted with the style of Rembrandt then you will soon spot it as an original Rembrandt and see where it has been painted over. But someone who has not learnt to intuitively spot the clues will not realise its original creator or will perhaps think it was painted by a pupil of the master and not see clearly where the original parts of the painting can be found.

 

[Regiomontanus]

Do you know how recent prof. Burton Mack came with his 'Cynic Jesus'?
Do you realise how close the Tantric and the Cynic Jesus are text-wise?
So they are not at all that dissimilar. But you cannot expect an atheistic professor to analyse such texts the same way as I did. Most people are not able to make a sharp distinction between religious fantasy and tantra or mysticism. Especially when the sayings as so deliberately obscure as many of the Q-lite sayings are. It makes even theological professors throw out the baby with the bathwater and end up on the wrong track.

It is like rediscovering a long last Rembrandt painting that has been painted over heavily. If you are intimately acqainted with the style of Rembrandt then you will soon spot it as an original Rembrandt and see where it has been painted over. But someone who has not learnt to intuitively spot the clues will not realise its original creator or will perhaps think it was painted by a pupil of the master and not see clearly where the original parts of the painting can be found.

Got it. Thanks.