This legendary Saint was removed from the roster by the Catholic Church, because the historical accuracy of the story was in doubt. We can presently look at this anew, and recognize that the spiritual accuracy of the story cannot be open to any doubt.
As legend has it, Reprobus was a Roman of giant stature (and of course "Roman" a subject of Caesar, much like "Jew" in the NT materials) symbolizes one who had loyalties to something other than Jesus, and one day he decided to follow Jesus. He ended up making his living ferrying people over a ford in a wild river, because with his stature he could give them the support necessary to do so.
One day a child came to him and wanted to be carried across, and Reprobus took the child on his back, only to find out that the child became heavier and heavier, and finally revealed to him that he was Jesus. And he baptized Christophorus in the wild river, and told him that henceforth his name was to be Christophorus, i.e. "Christ bearer," and advised him to plant his staff firmly in the ground, where it promptly turned into a fruit-bearing tree. And then the legend has it that this miracle converted many. That last part sounds like typical Christian proselytizing, which is hardly the point of the story. If anything the point of the story is that in the words of the Course the path the of Atonement, which seems so unduly heavy to us at times in the end leads to the realization that we're giving up nothing for everything, and in imagery that has strong parallels in the Jesus tradition (some of the Thomas and Q sayings), our barren staff with which we support ourselves (barely) in this world, turns into a fruit-bearing tree that feeds us abundantly, beyond our wildest dreams.
We may also be reminded here of Thomas Logion 90, which in Pursah's rendering says: "Come to me, for my yoke is comfortable and my lordship is gentle, and you will find the rest for yourselves." For indeed, it is the ego in us which finds the thinks that Jesus seems to ask of us to be a heavy burden, but the truth is that the ego in us has to become less so that Jesus can become more, and we momentarily realize that the only burden was the ego's resistance, and that in the world Jesus leads us into all is light and abundance.
Acknowledgment: the spiritual significance of the Christophorus legend was first brought to my attention through the work of Jan Willem Kaiser. (For some more background info the link under the title will connect the reader to a Wikipedia entry on St. Christopher.)
Copyright, © 2007 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.
Exploring ACIM in context of Abrahamic tradition.
"Questioning every value that we hold," with new readings of old familar terms
Exploration of biblical lore as metaphor, honoring the spirit of Johan Willem Kaiser, whose work was to lead me to recognize the authorship of the Course.
Showing posts with label Pursah's Gospel of Thomas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pursah's Gospel of Thomas. Show all posts
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Corrupting the Tradition - Insights from Pursah's Thomas Kernel
Evidently, there is a deeper reason why in Chapter 7 of Your Immortal Reality Pursah discusses both the modern day corruptions of the Course and the traditional corruptions of Jesus' sayings in the Thomas Gospel and its evolution in the first four centuries, until it was buried and preserved, only to be rediscovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945.
There are numerous angles of this "meta" message (latent content, versus overt content), to be considered here.
First, by the very fact of the providing the revised messages, (sayings), Pursah makes the point of demonstrating just how the corruptions happened, and for anyone who has had any exposure at all to historical text-critical research, the outcomes make a lot of sense, far beyond what one would ever have a hope of reconstructing via the text critical method, simply because the evidence is always patchy. Traditional historical text-criticism might have a problem accepting Pursah's authority in this context, but if that is not your problem, then Pursah's kernel of Thomas is altogether very plausible, because it eliminates a lot of internal contradictions, and it shows in a lot of ways a very likely path which the corruption of the tradition could have taken.
Some of the corrections Pursah offers are slight, and address shades of meaning, others really highlight major distortions, and provide us insight of how that process of distortion happened. Examples are Logia 6 & 14, which Pursah contracts into a single one, and the minute you read it, it makes a lot of sense, and you end up amazed at the embellishments in the Nag Hammadi version, where the second half of 6 and the
first half of 14 appear to be embellishments from a later date, which create an entirely different sayings, not to mention are a lot less coherent in that later form than in the form Pursah suggests as the original one.
Second, there are any number corrections which reflect minor interpretive embellishments both by adding words and by word choices. These are readily evident by a casual comparison of the Pursah-text to the Nag Hammadi-based translations into English.
Third there is the overall effect of demonstrating how different forces pulled a tradition in different directions, and to anyone who has done some reading about the history of early Christianity -- and I mean the first three centuries before the notion of Christianity proper was even explicitly defined at all -- this makes a lot of sense. Then, by juxtaposing the various recent "controversies" (in whose eyes?) surrounding the Course, this provides yet another level of looking at and understanding the forces that could pull such a tradition one way or another, and we should be most grateful that the Course was available to us in written form, and did not go through a generation of oral tradition before being put into book form. Even so it is amazing how much distortion is possible, given the unlimited amounts of ill will and distortion we all are capable of - if we want to put our belief in it.
Thus we realize that then as now the point simply is to focus either on listening and practicing this path, which will take different forms for all of us, though the content is the same, or somehow to compromise it by maintaining a separatist interpretation of this Course, not to mention separatist versions of the Course itself. The latter is how the ego ensures that it, not Jesus or the Holy Spirit, is in charge of our spiritual path, and we stay safely within the perimeter of the insane asylum of the ego, even if we may wander off to the outer edges of the property. Or to speak with Plato, it is the ego that keeps us locked in the cave, making sure we don't pay attention to the madman, who is telling us of the light outside.
Copyright, © 2007 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.
There are numerous angles of this "meta" message (latent content, versus overt content), to be considered here.
First, by the very fact of the providing the revised messages, (sayings), Pursah makes the point of demonstrating just how the corruptions happened, and for anyone who has had any exposure at all to historical text-critical research, the outcomes make a lot of sense, far beyond what one would ever have a hope of reconstructing via the text critical method, simply because the evidence is always patchy. Traditional historical text-criticism might have a problem accepting Pursah's authority in this context, but if that is not your problem, then Pursah's kernel of Thomas is altogether very plausible, because it eliminates a lot of internal contradictions, and it shows in a lot of ways a very likely path which the corruption of the tradition could have taken.
Some of the corrections Pursah offers are slight, and address shades of meaning, others really highlight major distortions, and provide us insight of how that process of distortion happened. Examples are Logia 6 & 14, which Pursah contracts into a single one, and the minute you read it, it makes a lot of sense, and you end up amazed at the embellishments in the Nag Hammadi version, where the second half of 6 and the
first half of 14 appear to be embellishments from a later date, which create an entirely different sayings, not to mention are a lot less coherent in that later form than in the form Pursah suggests as the original one.
Second, there are any number corrections which reflect minor interpretive embellishments both by adding words and by word choices. These are readily evident by a casual comparison of the Pursah-text to the Nag Hammadi-based translations into English.
Third there is the overall effect of demonstrating how different forces pulled a tradition in different directions, and to anyone who has done some reading about the history of early Christianity -- and I mean the first three centuries before the notion of Christianity proper was even explicitly defined at all -- this makes a lot of sense. Then, by juxtaposing the various recent "controversies" (in whose eyes?) surrounding the Course, this provides yet another level of looking at and understanding the forces that could pull such a tradition one way or another, and we should be most grateful that the Course was available to us in written form, and did not go through a generation of oral tradition before being put into book form. Even so it is amazing how much distortion is possible, given the unlimited amounts of ill will and distortion we all are capable of - if we want to put our belief in it.
Thus we realize that then as now the point simply is to focus either on listening and practicing this path, which will take different forms for all of us, though the content is the same, or somehow to compromise it by maintaining a separatist interpretation of this Course, not to mention separatist versions of the Course itself. The latter is how the ego ensures that it, not Jesus or the Holy Spirit, is in charge of our spiritual path, and we stay safely within the perimeter of the insane asylum of the ego, even if we may wander off to the outer edges of the property. Or to speak with Plato, it is the ego that keeps us locked in the cave, making sure we don't pay attention to the madman, who is telling us of the light outside.
Copyright, © 2007 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
From Thomas to Jefferson, and on to The Five Gospels
Under the title of this essay the reader will find a link to the Jefferson Bible, which is now available on the web in its entirety, including some of the introductory materials. So far my favorite edition of the Jefferson Bible is the one from Beacon Press in 1989, which has an introduction by Forrest Church and an afterword by Jaroslav Pelikan. It is a pleasant edition, and fairly serviceable, but it also has some annoying inconsistencies.
To wit, in the introduction Forrest Church adduces some of the crucial correspondence in which Jefferson provided an accounting for his purpose and his method in the compilation. However, where Jeffersons purpose was clearly an attempt to hear the teachings of Jesus amidst the din of the teachings about him by Paul and those who followed, it was inevitable that he should dismiss the writings of Paul from consideration, as he did the entire Old Testament, as well as most of the rest of the New. Pelikan in his afterword addresses Jefferson's frame of mind in this regard in the context of the Enlightenment, and quotes from a choice passage about Paul in Jefferson's April 13th 1820 letter to William Short, which in the original reads as follows:
... I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to Him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of His disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus. These palpable interpolations and falsifications of His doctrines, led me to try to sift them apart. I found the work obvious and easy, and that His past composed the most beautiful morsel of morality which has been given to us by man. The syllabus is therefore of His doctrines, not all of mine. I read them as I do those of other ancient and modern moralists, with a mixture of approbation and dissent...
Regrettably, while Church does include part of this very letter in the introduction, he truncates it after "... and roguery of others of His disciples," without even indicating with an ellipsis that something was left off, and so, when you try to find the letter Pelikan quotes in the afterword, you will be at a loss for this very relevant material, unless you did as I did and turn to the Internet. Pelikan meanwhile disappoints us a bit by his seeming upset at the daring of the third US President in his editing, which seems unwarranted, since Jefferson's honest purpose was to hear the words of the teacher, without the distortions of later commentators and editors that seemed obvious to him. Other than that, this is a nice edition.
The important point of Jefferson's work and results is first and foremost that anyone who wanted to try to understand Jesus could have done what Jefferson did, and dismissed the theological and interpretive framing of the stories, focusing on the words themselves, and following their own intuition as to the consistency of his teachings. It is very lovely to see how Jefferson even notes that he does not necessarily agree with all of what he thinks Jesus said, but simply focuses on trying to hear the consistency of the material, and leaves off anything that appears spurious. And by doing so he ends up with an edition which now, two hundred years later, and with the benefit of hindsight we should call truly remarkable. One way of looking at just how remarkable it was, is to realize the very high level of correspondence with the Thomas Gospel, which would not be discovered until almost a hundred and fifty years later. And yet we now see that the Thomas Gospel has a higher level than authenticity than the canonical materials, thus indirectly vindicating Jefferson's attempt at least in large part.
Thomas Jefferson in his editing certainly did not fall for the temptation which The Jesus Seminar points out in the introduction to its publication The Five Gospels, which is a remarkable attempt to bring together in one volume the canonical gospels and Thomas, in a very lively new translation, relatively free of theological prejudice. In the introduction on what they call the seven pillars of critical Bible scholarship, they end with warning us for a temptation they describe as follows: "Beware of finding a Jesus entirely congenial to you." (The Five Gospels, p. 5) As students of A Course In Miracles, we might see this admonition as a wonderful corollary to the various teachings in the Course which urge us to come up to Jesus' level in lieu of pulling Jesus down to our level. Christian theology has always busied itself with pulling Jesus down into the world, and explaining him in those terms, the path of spiritual growth does the opposite by listening to Jesus and letting him pull us up to his level. One specific passage in the Course stands out in this regard, in Lesson 80, Let me recognize my problems have been solved, and it goes as follows:
quote
If you are willing to recognize your problems, you will recognize that you have no problems. 2 Your one central problem has been answered, and you have no other. 3 Therefore, you must be at peace. 4 Salvation thus depends on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that it has been solved. 5 One problem, one solution. 6 Salvation is accomplished. 7 Freedom from conflict has been given you. 8 Accept that fact, and you are ready to take your rightful place in God's plan for salvation.
Your only problem has been solved! 2 Repeat this over and over to yourself today, with gratitude and conviction. 3 You have recognized your only problem, opening the way for the Holy Spirit to give you God's answer. 4 You have laid deception aside, and seen the light of truth. 5 You have accepted salvation for yourself by bringing the problem to the answer. 6 And you can recognize the answer, because the problem has been identified.
unquote (ACIM:W-80.1-2)
Or to put it in more philosophical terms, the world's theologies are always dualistic, since they directly or indirectly make the world real, preferably explicitly by blaming God for creating it. Jesus on the other hand teaches pure non-dualism, and his teaching of forgiveness, which we now have in much greater depth in the form of A Course In Miracles, teaches us the way out.
Yet even today compromise of the Course's teachings with various attempts to still make the world real is as widespread as it was in the early days of emergent Christianity.
Meanwhile, to return to our consideration of the traditional textual material, since The Jesus Seminar did put Mark up front - an editorial revision of the New Testament which was long overdue - they might as well have put Thomas ahead of that. This is not mere form. Our reading of Mark most of all would change forever if we should read the Thomas Gospel first. The minimal Pauline varnish present in Mark, such as verbiage about the symbolism of the Eucharist, would soon chip away, and we might see a significant shift in our view of Jesus, in which the Markan account preserves a freshness that is increasingly edited out in the later Gospels.
In summary, The Five Gospels is a remarkable book indeed, and truly perhaps the best source available today to access the historical documents about Jesus. And aside from the undeniable fact of the influence of the King James Bible on the English language, and therefore a certain need to stay conversant with it if only for the sake of literary references, such as those in the Course, this might be my favorite Bible edition, right next to the little gem that is the Jefferson Bible.
Copyright, © 2006 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.
To wit, in the introduction Forrest Church adduces some of the crucial correspondence in which Jefferson provided an accounting for his purpose and his method in the compilation. However, where Jeffersons purpose was clearly an attempt to hear the teachings of Jesus amidst the din of the teachings about him by Paul and those who followed, it was inevitable that he should dismiss the writings of Paul from consideration, as he did the entire Old Testament, as well as most of the rest of the New. Pelikan in his afterword addresses Jefferson's frame of mind in this regard in the context of the Enlightenment, and quotes from a choice passage about Paul in Jefferson's April 13th 1820 letter to William Short, which in the original reads as follows:
... I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to Him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of His disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus. These palpable interpolations and falsifications of His doctrines, led me to try to sift them apart. I found the work obvious and easy, and that His past composed the most beautiful morsel of morality which has been given to us by man. The syllabus is therefore of His doctrines, not all of mine. I read them as I do those of other ancient and modern moralists, with a mixture of approbation and dissent...
Regrettably, while Church does include part of this very letter in the introduction, he truncates it after "... and roguery of others of His disciples," without even indicating with an ellipsis that something was left off, and so, when you try to find the letter Pelikan quotes in the afterword, you will be at a loss for this very relevant material, unless you did as I did and turn to the Internet. Pelikan meanwhile disappoints us a bit by his seeming upset at the daring of the third US President in his editing, which seems unwarranted, since Jefferson's honest purpose was to hear the words of the teacher, without the distortions of later commentators and editors that seemed obvious to him. Other than that, this is a nice edition.
The important point of Jefferson's work and results is first and foremost that anyone who wanted to try to understand Jesus could have done what Jefferson did, and dismissed the theological and interpretive framing of the stories, focusing on the words themselves, and following their own intuition as to the consistency of his teachings. It is very lovely to see how Jefferson even notes that he does not necessarily agree with all of what he thinks Jesus said, but simply focuses on trying to hear the consistency of the material, and leaves off anything that appears spurious. And by doing so he ends up with an edition which now, two hundred years later, and with the benefit of hindsight we should call truly remarkable. One way of looking at just how remarkable it was, is to realize the very high level of correspondence with the Thomas Gospel, which would not be discovered until almost a hundred and fifty years later. And yet we now see that the Thomas Gospel has a higher level than authenticity than the canonical materials, thus indirectly vindicating Jefferson's attempt at least in large part.
Thomas Jefferson in his editing certainly did not fall for the temptation which The Jesus Seminar points out in the introduction to its publication The Five Gospels, which is a remarkable attempt to bring together in one volume the canonical gospels and Thomas, in a very lively new translation, relatively free of theological prejudice. In the introduction on what they call the seven pillars of critical Bible scholarship, they end with warning us for a temptation they describe as follows: "Beware of finding a Jesus entirely congenial to you." (The Five Gospels, p. 5) As students of A Course In Miracles, we might see this admonition as a wonderful corollary to the various teachings in the Course which urge us to come up to Jesus' level in lieu of pulling Jesus down to our level. Christian theology has always busied itself with pulling Jesus down into the world, and explaining him in those terms, the path of spiritual growth does the opposite by listening to Jesus and letting him pull us up to his level. One specific passage in the Course stands out in this regard, in Lesson 80, Let me recognize my problems have been solved, and it goes as follows:
quote
If you are willing to recognize your problems, you will recognize that you have no problems. 2 Your one central problem has been answered, and you have no other. 3 Therefore, you must be at peace. 4 Salvation thus depends on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that it has been solved. 5 One problem, one solution. 6 Salvation is accomplished. 7 Freedom from conflict has been given you. 8 Accept that fact, and you are ready to take your rightful place in God's plan for salvation.
Your only problem has been solved! 2 Repeat this over and over to yourself today, with gratitude and conviction. 3 You have recognized your only problem, opening the way for the Holy Spirit to give you God's answer. 4 You have laid deception aside, and seen the light of truth. 5 You have accepted salvation for yourself by bringing the problem to the answer. 6 And you can recognize the answer, because the problem has been identified.
unquote (ACIM:W-80.1-2)
Or to put it in more philosophical terms, the world's theologies are always dualistic, since they directly or indirectly make the world real, preferably explicitly by blaming God for creating it. Jesus on the other hand teaches pure non-dualism, and his teaching of forgiveness, which we now have in much greater depth in the form of A Course In Miracles, teaches us the way out.
Yet even today compromise of the Course's teachings with various attempts to still make the world real is as widespread as it was in the early days of emergent Christianity.
Meanwhile, to return to our consideration of the traditional textual material, since The Jesus Seminar did put Mark up front - an editorial revision of the New Testament which was long overdue - they might as well have put Thomas ahead of that. This is not mere form. Our reading of Mark most of all would change forever if we should read the Thomas Gospel first. The minimal Pauline varnish present in Mark, such as verbiage about the symbolism of the Eucharist, would soon chip away, and we might see a significant shift in our view of Jesus, in which the Markan account preserves a freshness that is increasingly edited out in the later Gospels.
In summary, The Five Gospels is a remarkable book indeed, and truly perhaps the best source available today to access the historical documents about Jesus. And aside from the undeniable fact of the influence of the King James Bible on the English language, and therefore a certain need to stay conversant with it if only for the sake of literary references, such as those in the Course, this might be my favorite Bible edition, right next to the little gem that is the Jefferson Bible.
Copyright, © 2006 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.
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