Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)
Christianity as Mystery Religion
Contents
Book: Angus - Christianity and the
Mystery Religions
Equivalence of mystery-religion,
esoteric Judaism, early Christianity
2-layer Jesus vs. 1-layer mystery-gods
Appeal & comparison of various
godmen over time
Why explain Christianity as
mystery-religion
Christianity as ultimate 2-level mystery religion
>>I
recommend you consult a classic work on the subject by Samuel Angus,
"Christianity and the Mystery Religions". I used it for my graduate thesis in college and found it very
useful. Most of what I have read since
is just repeating the information.
I read it
cover to cover once, and have started to re-read it. As I recall, I read it *before* reading anything about the
mythic-only Christ.
Even the
books I've read cover to cover, highlighting every page, when I come back to
them in a year, it feels as though I haven't read them and would profit by
reading them again.
The
Mystery-Religions: A Study in the Religious Background of Early Christianity --
Samuel Angus
Dover. 3 rvws. (not available at B&N,
surprisingly): (Feb 1975)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0486231240
Carol Pub
Group (Oct 1989):
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0806511427
B&N
has a picture of the Carol Group cover: (Nov 1990)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bookSearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0806511427
Nice
concise, polished site -- Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth
Everyone
should know about these books - click each link in the navbar, 7 book
categories.
http://home.earthlink.net/~pgwhacker/ChristianOrigins/BOOKS_suggested_reading.html
What I've
read that's listed there:
Christ
Conspiracy - read cover to cover.
Backgrounds
of Early Christianity - read cover to cover.
The Jesus
Mysteries - read cover to cover twice.
Ancient
Mysteries Source Book - think I have it, haven't read.
The
Mystery-Religions - read it cover to cover.
Eleusis -
Archetypal... have it, read a little (paired in my mind with Road to Eleusis)
The Roman
Cult of Mithras - have it, read some, seems good
Origins of
Mithraic Mysteries - read 2/3, great job: transcending cosmic determinism
The Golden
Ass - have it, read some
Books that
I would expect to see there that aren't:
Myth &
Mystery
Hellenistic
Mystery Religions: Their Basic Ideas and Significance
Hellenistic
Religions - Luther Martin (great short book, attitudes about Fate)
As I write
this list, I become profoundly confused about its scope and purpose. We must no longer think in terms of separate
religions of early Christianity, Hellenistic mysteries, Gnosticism, and
Judaism. Today I drew a diagram: the
ground, with mushrooms or rounded trees coming out, with dense webs of
influence among the trees. The
religions of antiquity grew out of the same ground *and* heavily influenced
each other.
Christianity
was derived directly from the ground *and* was "based on" or
influenced by, Persian religion, Egyptian religion, Greek and Roman religion --
they all grew out of the ground together, influencing each other, like
acid-rock lyric double-entendre allusion encoding techniques being discovered
by multiple Rock bands, who both independently rediscover the themes *and* learn
from previous artists *and* learn from their contempories, who also are so
based and influenced. This would agree
with:
The Innate
Capacity: Mysticism, Psychology, and Philosophy
Robert K.
C. Forman (Editor), Dec 1997, rank 463K
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195116976
except I
would emphasize the "in-ate" capacity: we have the capacity to fully
participate in revelatory religious myth when we eat and drink the god.
It's
interesting that Ken Wilber's two weakest areas are mystery-religion and sacred
food. It's interesting that
mystery-religions and sacred food go hand in hand. It makes sense that Wilber would be dull-witted in both of these
domains, not just one.
I still
read much more Christian history and theology than Greek religion, myth, and
Judaism, but now I have an attitude that it's impossible to grasp esoteric
Christianity and its origins without just as well understanding global
mysticism and its history, transcending all religions.
There is
no need to buy books anymore. You could
learn at maximum rate by reading online at Amazon and B&N.
Here are
my answers to all of Neville's many questions, including a conceptual
vocabulary suited to the subject.
Judaism
and the Christian religion contain their own equivalents of the Hellenistic
mystery cults. The early Christian
religion and several Jewish religious traditions were similar to the
Hellenistic mystery cults.
The
Greco-Roman mysteries, Judaism, and Christianity were entered into by
individual choice. Jewish, Christian,
and Hellenistic initiates underwent the same type of purifications, fasts,
baptism, lustrations, and ceremonial rites.
Eventually, by stages, the one who experiences these standard practices
becomes incorporated into the esoteric religious community that transcends all
brands of religion, sect, and cult across time and place.
The church
or community or brotherhood of which one is a member is that set of people who
have experienced the classic death and rebirth, including the experience of
no-separate-self, or cosmic transcendent unity which even transcends time,
uniting all beings but particularly uniting all *realized* beings into one
collective realized group, known equivalently as:
o The saved
o The elect
o The true sons of Abraham
o The true Israel.
Israel,
the kingdom of Heaven, and Olympus are esoterically the same thing: the place
in which the psyche dwells after sacrificing the mind's lower, animal-child way
of thinking.
Once
admitted into the church, Christian initiates entered a brotherhood and
sisterhood in which one is a mythic godman rather than a Jew or Greek, slave or
free person, male or female. One
becomes the hidden source which generates all forms and beings, timelessly at
all moments and places. A godman is
equivalent to true son of Abraham, the righteous, the obedient, and the
faithful.
The Jewish
and Christian communities consumed a holy meal of holy food and holy
drink. Consuming the holy meal made one
initiated. The Jewish Seder is a sacred
meal reenacting the Exodus from Egypt; the Christian Eucharist is exactly
functionally equivalent: a sacramental meal commemorating the death of Christ.
The sacred
bread and sacred wine were the actual body and blood of the slain and reborn
godman. One participated experientially
in the godman's myth-cycle by eating and drinking this literal food and drink,
after which one experienced that which the godman or religious-mythic leader
went through. The mythic leader's story
became one's own story describing what one experienced firsthand.
In some
Jewish and Christian communities, mystic experiencing was the central feature
of religious life. Jewish mystics
practiced a visionary experience of the divine throne chariot. Christian initiates experienced undergoing
the story of Christ firsthand, and were so added to and incorporated into the
collective mythic Christ.
Christians
obtained and experienced their salvation through an encounter with, and an
experience of being, the dying and rising godman, who rescued the higher part
of the psyche although the lower part of the psyche was essentially sacrificed
on cross, like a defeated claimant to the sovereign throne. Christians lived "in Christ".
Christian
initiates are born again: they are born from above; that is, lifted up from the
depths of a totally helpless, defeated kind of death state by the hidden Source
that gives rise to all thoughts and actions.
One
religious tradition may appropriate themes from another. The early Christian religion appropriated
themes from the Hellenistic mystery cults, and vice versa. Judaism, Christianity, and the Hellenistic
mystery cults were similar because they were equally parts of the religious
aspect of the Hellenistic world: different socio-political brands of the same
religious technology or product.
The Jewish
God is equivalent to Dionysus. The Theraputae used sacred meals and mystery
language. Secret Mark is styled like a
Hellenistic mystery cult. Clement of Alexandria attacks Hellenistic mystery
cults yet presents the Christian religion as the *only* true Hellenistic
mystery cult.
The
claimed difference between religions is really merely a difference of
socio-political allegiance, an exagerrated difference on the exoteric level
that falsely denies an exact identity on the esoteric level. Religiously, Christianity is exactly the
same as Mithraism. Socio-politically,
the two are mortal enemies and warring opposites.
The
mysteries were the essence of the religious part of the earliest Christian
religion. The socio-political part of
the early Christian religion didn't have a great need for the mysteries, except
to prop up the socio-political authority of the movement. Paul is the fictional mouthpiece of the main
creators of early, esoteric Christianity.
The
Nazarenes, like many groups, claimed the Paul figure as a leader, and formed
their own brand of the universal experiential religion of mythic experience of
self-sacrifice. The Christian religion
has always had two somewhat opposing strands: the esoteric genuine Hellenistic
mystery-religion tradition, and the exoteric Literalist and socio-political
tradition. Exoteric Christians paint a
1-sided, exoteric history of Christianity, portraying the esoteric tradition as
untraditional.
A
Hellenistic mystery cult provides a kind of membership, and experience of being
a member of a kind of unity, that transcends brands of cult and brands of
religion.
This
experience happens multiple times, such as the traditional three times. One joins in esoteric union with the entire
esoteric community multiple times -- classically, three times (it takes three
tries to cast out one's demon). The
ritual, whether Jewish styled, Christian styled, or Hellenistic mystery-cult
styled, expresses the religious myth which conveys and articulates what each
initiate experiences:
o Sacrifice of one's altar-bound child, exodus
between walls of water, seder meal.
o Baptism in a river, last supper, arrest,
trial, scourging, fastening to the cross, death, resurrection, appearance in the
flesh, and ascension.
o Being torn to pieces, bound to a rock or
tree, battling a water monster, going mad, dismembering and eating one's child,
giving birth to one's divine child, ascending to Olympus.
The theme
of secrecy is mainly about the hiddenness of the true determiner of our
thoughts and actions, which proceed from a hidden source. In initiation one incontrovertibly and
explicitly perceives the fact of emanation of one's thoughts and movements of
will from a hidden source, but cannot perceive through to the source
itself.
When one
sees this emanation (though one cannot see the source itself), one dies as a
metaphysically free sovereign agent; this is crucifixion, sacrifice of the
lower self that was set up against the Source (albeit ultimately *by* the
Source), and is the mortal death that leads to being reborn as a godman, as the
godman.
The
essential religious element of Hellenistic mystery cults was access to
afterlife through personal engagement with the god, where the primary meaning
of afterlife is the spiritual death and rebirth in this life. Physical death is a mere metaphor for the
main thing, which is the death and rebirth experience in religious
experiencing.
Such
psyche-transforming rebirth in life is called "spirituality" or
"mysticism" but those terms have come to obscure more than reveal the
main point, which is the death and rebirth experience. "Death and rebirth" is ultimately
merely a metaphor, but it is a metaphor so apt and effectively descriptive, it
is practically a literal description of the experience in question.
In
esoteric Judaism, the whole people (all initiates) are saved by the whole
people (all realized initiates) observing God's law, which is the law which the
individual Abraham obeyed: sacrifice your childself. The true Israel is the whole people which comprises all
individuals who observe God's law of childself sacrifice.
The
Christian religion is also about individuals being added to the saved
collective; individuals are chosen by the godman to be drawn into and
incorporated into his transpersonal, mystical collective body: these
individuals were chosen by the godman and brought to successfully participate
in his mysteries.
The
Christian religion is a Hellenistic mystery cult, or rather, was based on the
same sacred meal techniques and experiences and mythic techniques as both the
Hellenistic mysteries and the Jewish esoteric sects.
The pagan
Hellenistic mystery cults were only partly a generative influence for the
Christian religion.
The
Christian religion wasn't a totally new invention any more than any mystery
cult was a new religion. Esoteric
Hellenistic, Christian, and Jewish mystery cults were all the same religion, as
far as mythic technique and initiation experience is concerned. The Christian religion was invented by
people throughout the Hellenstic world by integrating aspects of the
Hellenistic mystery cults and Jewish esoteric, experiential religion-myth. Christianity germinated from Hellenistic
mystery cults insofar as it was a synthesis of Hellenistic mystery cults as
well as Jewish esotericism.
The
Christian religion germinated from mystery cults including the emperor cult and
Mithraism, through inversion and co-opting the rites, language, meals of sacred
food and sacred drink, and religious mythology.
Christianity
germinated from the Hellenistic mystery cults via various typical, thoroughly
Hellenized Jews and highly Judaism-aware Hellenists. Esoteric Judaism is essentially the same as the early Christian
mystery-religion and the Hellenistic mystery-cults. All of them used religious mythology together with sacred meals,
to effect a transformation of the mind's model of self, time, and control.
According
to Luther Martin's book Hellenistic Religions, the Hellenistic mystery-cults
were different versions of a single religion that involved experiencing and in
some sense transcending cosmic determinism -- so too were esoteric Judaism and
the early Christian religion a mind-transforming encounter and transcendence of
cosmic determinism, experienced as the sacrifice of one's childself:
represented by Abraham's son Isaac, God's son Jesus, or the child
Dionysus.
In all
cases one obtains salvation and righteousness through sacrificing one's child,
where one effectively adopts Isaac, Jesus, or the infant Dionysus as one's
child who willingly offers himself as a sacrifice.
Some
Judaic sects accepted the seed of Hellenistic mystery cults, but this seed does
not come from the mystery cults.
Rather, the mystery cults, and esoteric initiatory Judaism, and the
Christian mystery religion that synthesizes the two, all come from the sacred
meal and the intense cognitive transformation that follows it, assisted by the
religious-myth stories that express and convey what is experienced: the
sacrifice of one's animal-child way of thinking about self, time, and control.
Components
of Christianity were borrowed partly from Judaic sects which had partly
borrowed elements from the Hellenistic mystery cults.
o The early Christian religions borrowed
partly from the Jewish esoteric sects.
o The early Christian religions borrowed
partly from the Hellenistic mystery cults.
o The Jewish esoteric sects borrowed partly
from the early Christian religions.
o The Jewish esoteric sects borrowed partly
from the Hellenistic mystery cults.
o The Hellenistic mystery cults borrowed
partly from the early Christian religions.
o The Hellenistic mystery cults borrowed
partly from the Jewish esoteric sects.
Around and
around they went. What then was the
source? The sacred meal, followed by
the cognitive transformation, followed by the more or less willing sacrifice of
one's child mode of the psyche.
The Jewish
scriptures are filled with religious-mythic allegories for primary religious
experience which metaphorically depict and convey initiation experience,
expressed largely through political-history-styled metaphors and
allegories. Such primary religious
experience and involvement in the allegorism took place outside of sects as
well as within them; the esoteric tradition within a particular religion
transcends any list of specific sects.
The
tradition of esoteric experiential interpretation stands on its own and is a
source from which sects are created.
The sects come from the esoteric tradition, and the esoteric tradition
is expressed often but not always through the sects.
Skill with
religious-mythic interpretation of primary religious experience transcends the
whole notion of one religion germinating from another religion. It's more a matter of the participant in
mythic-allegorical meaning achieving an understanding of how *all* religious
myth works.
Once the
individual initiate understands how Jewish or Christian or Hellenistic
religion-myth works, all religion-myth is understood; the individual initiate
becomes, in this sense, omniscient, knowing all things. All things will be revealed to such a full
member of any of these religions.
The
Christian religion germinated partly from a Judaism which developed its own
mystery cults largely independently of the Hellenistic mystery cults. This is like asking whether Unix, Mac, and
Windows operating systems germinated from one of the others: the main source is
computer science itself. The main
source of the dimensions of Judaism, Christianity, and Hellenism which are so
similar is not some other religion, but religion-myth and the sacred
meals.
These
three religions were merely different styles of the same thing: experiential
religion expressed via myth.
In comparing Jesus (as a allegorical mystery-religion figure) to Mithras, Dionysus, Prometheus, and Attis, the problem arises of *which* generation of Jesus story to examine:
1a. The Jesus story of Paul's early epistles (a non-historical dying- and-rising mythic Christ, concepts that have barely gelled into the form of a sequential mythic story)
1b. The Jesus story of the gospel of John (a quasi-historical mythic Christ - a distinct sequential story forms, even with some historical placement, but still is essentially mythic-form)
2a. The Jesus story of the synoptic gospels (a historical quasi- supernatural Jesus -- the story starts to become more of a Homeric epic story rather than mystery-myth short-myth form)
2b. The Jesus story of later Orthodox Christianity (a historical supernatural Jesus -- story becomes fully detailed and reified as history rather than a mythic story or epic story)
(I list John before the synoptics, per the book The Unfinished Gospel.)
The Jesus story develops through these four phases. Which phase shall we compare to the other mystery-religion dying-and-rising gods?
It is one thing to allegorically decode the original Jesus story, which was put forth as non-historical, mythic allegory; it is something else to allegorically decode the later Jesus story, which was put forth as non-mythic, historical report.
This is the greatest, pause-inducing problem I've run into lately when trying to grasp "the" meaning of "the" Jesus story -- there are actually some four different phases of "the" Jesus story, moving from the purely mythic, which is the same as the other mystery-religion figures, to eventually a purely historical, truly supernatural Jesus perhaps by 500 CE.
For the same reason it is interesting to compare Jesus to the other mystery-gods, we can by that same token compare Paul's earliest conception of the Jesus or Christ figure to the orthodox final conception of Jesus Christ, and examine the different psychological and allegorical aspects of these two extreme end-points in the developing Jesus-story.
It is easiest to compare the Phase 1a Jesus story or the Phase 2b Jesus story to the mystery religions. The Phase 1 Jesus story simply functions the same as the other mystery-gods. So for phase 1, we can just discuss "the mystery gods including Jesus" and make valid generalization, such as that these gods are allegorical portrayals of the first-hand experience offered by the sacramental ritual.
During the mystery-state of cognition, after taking the sacrament of apolytrosis (higher redemption), it is common to experience a general pattern of the key points of Jesus' passion:
o Riding a (willful) donkey
o Betrayal (by will and time)
o Undergoing judgement as a false sovereign
o Suffering humiliation
o Undergoing crucifixion
o Being speared to death in the will (a swooning mythic type of death)
o A rescuing, entombment, resuscitation, and resurrection.
But you won't experience yourself doing the historical particulars of the later Jesus.
The above is the cogent exegesis of the Phase 1 version of the Jesus story. Phase 2 of the Jesus story requires different explanatory elements, although in all phases we explain in terms of the same "language" of explanation -- the mythic-experiencing encoding approach.
In Phase 2 of the Jesus story, different mythic terms are used: death- penalty for rebellion against God, Christ dying in our place, our willingness to die to pay the price of reconciliation with God's realm, cleansing and cancelling of our sins. This scheme remains in mythic-experiencing territory, but now it spun a certain way by the orthodox church, with a different set of emphases.
Nevertheless, we can successfully use the same encoder/decoder scheme: it's a simple matter of mapping the key components of this Phase 2 story to the standard components of the ego-death theory.
It becomes a routine concept/ allegory/ experience mapping problem, a matter of mapping a set of concepts and allegories to the concepts and experiences which are more clearly systematized and enumerated in the ego-death theory.
It is impossible to solve any one problem, to explain any one allegorical system, without entering the mythic state of cognition. But with the vivid experience of the mythic state of cognition, not just one but all these allegorical systems are suddenly solved together, by mapping each of them into the ego-death theoretical framework.
I need to check whether any elements such as humiliation, judgement, or spear appear in Paul's early epistles -- that is, in the Phase 1, mythic/mystery Christ story.
A. The Phase 1, mythic/mystery Christ story [crucifixion, dying, and rising to new life...]
B. The Phase 2, historical/supernatural Jesus story [all are subject to death penalty, all have trespassed, casting out a daemon, substitute death in your place, cancellation of sin, purchase of freedom...]
C. The Dionysus story [surprised while playing with pine cone & puppet toys, torn or dis-integrated into pieces, uncontrolled mania...]
Attis story [absolute act of will to bring organ of rebellious uprising under full control, death of young companion, resulting insanity, embedded in tree...]
D. The Mithras story [born from a rock, exiting the cave, precession of equinoxes, conquering astrological determinism, washed in the blood of the substitute-sacrificed bull...]
= = = = = = = = = =
EDT. The ego-death theory [idea and perception of fixed future, idea and perception of metaphysical unfreedom, idea and perception of illusory steersman, death of the egoic world-model, cancellation of moral culpability along with metaphysical freedom...]
With EDT providing a systematic framework, it now becomes routine to map the key elements of mythic-/mystery-allegories A, B, C, and D into a common point of reference and recognize what aspects they significantly have in common.
Of these various mythic-/mystery-allegories, B is distinctively historical. Our sense of metaphysical freedom is largely propped up by our sense of historical positioning. We might be able to thank the Jews for our strong sense of moving through time as continuant agents, per Cahill's book The Gifts of the Jews : How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels.
If the Jews really are associated with linear, historical thinking, and if the Greeks are associated with cyclical-time or block-universe thinking, then we can call the Phase 1 Jesus story the "Greek" version of the story, and call Phase 2 the "Jewish" version of the story.
To rediscover Paul's early conception of Jesus means changing from thinking in terms of the "Jewish" version of the Jesus story to the earlier, "Greek" version of the Jesus story.
According to Elaine Pagels in the book The Gnostic Paul, the Valentinians crafted a two-layer Jesus story comprising the lower, "Jewish" version of the story and the higher, "Gentile" or "Greek" version of the story.
This is what is so distinctive about the Jesus story, or story-pair, or two-layer story, compared with the other mystery-god figures. The other mystery-gods had *only* the "higher", mythic level of the story. They don't fully descend into linear time and history.
The Jesus story originally began with that mythic-level version, but added something innovative: a lower level as well, in which Jesus "landed" in linear time at a particular point and promised to land in the future too.
The Jews read their scriptures, such as the story of Abraham, as history -- while the Greeks read their own mythic stories as timeless mythic stories, not as historical events located in linear time.
I want to add: Where there is linear time, there is the egoic notion of metaphysical free will. The concept of linear time and egoic metaphysical freedom seem to have arisen together, perhaps in Jewish thinking. The Greeks may have become weary of metaphysical unfreedom, and even grown weary of confronting the block universe via entheogenic loose cognition.
People wanted a greater amount of practical freedom, and the experience of metaphysical unfreedom, even when positively interpreted as "redemption" and exiting the deterministic jail cell, was still too humiliating and injurious to the project of re-forming the mind into the shape of a free sovereign agent.
So they sacrificed entheogens (which present an experiential vision of metaphysical unfreedom) and allowed them to be driven underground - - to forget the experience of metaphysical unfreedom and strive for a greater amount of practical freedom.
They achieved their goal, technically -- people became sinners, guilt- agents, responsible free agents -- at least until Reformed theology came along. Even after Reformed theology, entheogens remained suppressed, as "witchcraft", so the naive sense of moral free sovereign agency persisted. Entheogens kill the naive sense of moral free sovereign agency.
Within the
context of Greco-Roman culture (religion, philosophy, myth, initiation, cult,
literature), how does the crucified Jesus figure work? Are there "main" threads of
meaning? The challenge is that so many
threads were woven into the figure from so many sources -- an uncanny number of
threads, as time passed. What were the
main meanings of the earliest versions of the Jesus figure, perhaps 120-170
CE? I consider that to be the period of
most greatest development of the Jesus figure.
When he was first available as a figure with a lifestory, why did that
figure appeal to people?
Identify
the appeal and meaning of the Jesus figure in 3 periods:
1.
Abstract Pauline died-and-risen figure with no lifestory.
2.
Earliest, barebones lifestory (perhaps Marcion's "Gospel of the
Lord").
3.
Elaborated lifestory with heavy Old Testament connections.
Phase 1:
To members of the diverse Greco-Roman culture, what was the appeal and meaning
of the Jesus figure when conceived of as an abstract Pauline died-and-risen
figure with no lifestory? (Perhaps the
proto-Jesus figure of 100 BCE to 140 CE.)
Certain kinds of people voluntarily joined this type of group or
movement -- why? ("Stupid gullible
belief in literal incarnation" isn't a possible explanation, since the
notion of literal incarnation didn't happen until late in this period.) In this phase, I suppose there are various
non-integrated versions of the Jesus figure: the Pauline abstract dying/rising
cross-based version, and the wisdom teacher version.
Phase 2:
To members of the diverse Greco-Roman culture, what was the appeal and meaning
of the Jesus figure when conceived of with an earliest, barebones lifestory
(perhaps Marcion's "Gospel of the Lord")? (Perhaps 140 to 170 CE.)
Certain kinds of people voluntarily joined this type of group or
movement -- why? (Surely not because of
gullible literalism -- that hadn't really gotten started yet.
Most
likely, in this phase, the Jesus figure was still considered to be essentially
like the many other legendary, mythic, or allegorical figures -- he's still
essentially viewed as a mystical personification and ethics teacher.) This is the first phase in which a single
Jesus figure *integrates* and brings together elements including ethics/wisdom
teacher, lifestory, and cross-based dying-rising. These elements are not brought together in a way that is
optimized for an authoritarian hierarchy.
Phase 3a:
To members of the diverse Greco-Roman culture, what was the appeal and meaning
of the Jesus figure when conceived of as having an elaborated lifestory with
heavy Old Testament connections?
(Perhaps 170 CE to 313 CE and later.)
Certain kinds of people voluntarily joined this type of group or
movement -- why? (Stupid gullible
belief in Jesus' literal existence and miraculous resurrection is probably not
the best explanation.) In this phase is
heavy, evenly balanced competition between free-form Jesus technicians and the
hierarchy-builders who ultimately seek larger-scale uniformity.
Phase 3b:
313 (Constantine/Eusebius) to 393(?) when Christianity becomes the mandatory
state religion. To members of the
diverse Greco-Roman culture, what was the appeal and meaning of the Jesus
figure when conceived of as having a fixed and orthodox lifestory with heavy
Old Testament connections? Certain
kinds of people voluntarily joined this type of group or movement -- why? (Stupid gullible belief in Jesus' literal
existence and miraculous resurrection is probably not the best explanation.)
The
hierarchy-building *bishops* talked about voluntary martyrdom and
supernaturalist literalism, but did the people who voluntarily joined join for
those reasons? Some pagans criticized
the stupidity and gullibility of Christians, but were those the real reasons
for joining, and were those actually the beliefs of those who joined?
"Gullibility"
is probably a bluff, a smokescreen created by the power-mongering bishops, to
cover the actual socio-political and ethical and mystical motives and dynamic
conflicts throughout the Christian groups and between the Christian groups and
the rest of the culture. Given that
there was a competitive groups-takeover war, especially instigated by
power-hungry bishops, it's a state of war and thus a state of propaganda in
which reported circumstances and the supposed nature of group disagreements are
not to be believed.
I simply
want to comprehend what the Jesus figure really meant to the real people when
he became available -- but the problem is, the Jesus figure developed over a
long period, and the Greco-Roman context and competitive philosophical systems,
religious systems, and ideas developed over this period as well.
Understanding
the "creation of the Jesus figure in cultural context" sounds simple
and static, but it's actually a moving target set within a broader cultural moving
target. I'm not used to such dynamic
historical thinking and puzzle-solving.
This degree of dynamic change, intertwined with the challenge of
penetrating the mystical and sociopolitical meaning of mystery-religions is all
the more challenging.
It's like
a puzzle within a puzzle, both changing over time. And the whole interpretive paradigm is uncertain and
variable. A study of ancient Greek
religion of Dionysus and other myth-religion around 500 BCE can only contribute
a limited explanation of what the Jesus figure meant to the Greco-Romans around
120-180 CE, when the recognizable Jesus figure was born and voluntarily
embraced.
Mithras
seems not to be a mediator: he seems not to himself be a sacrifice. How many Greco-Roman godmen are specifically
*sacrificial* godmen? Consider
Prometheus as well. How many are
sacrificially given from the divine to itself? Prometheus seems to be set up in opposition to Zeus, whereas
Jesus is set up as aligned with God, proceeding from God.
As a
mediator, the Jesus figure seems more perfect and symmetrically balanced. Prometheus is like a man set up against the
divine. The *idea* of a perfect
mediator who is all in one sacrament, sacrifice, priestly sacrificer,
monotheistic god, and generalized man, and representative of the initiate, is
highly developed in the Jesus figure.
The idea
of "godman" may be too narrow to grasp the dynamic of
mystery-religion-type ideas. Something
is amiss if Prometheus and Mithras are omitted because they fail a stringent
"godman" qualification test.
The Jewish or Neoplatonic mediator-logos idea may also need to be
considered.
The Cults
of the Roman Empire
Robert
Turcan
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0631200479
Reviewer
-- "...offers psychological explanations for the victory of Christianity
over the cults ... but I think he glossed over the socio-political explanation:
episcopal Christianity alone provided the strongest social cohesiveness
enforced by ecclesiastical sanctions. It was this strength that moved
Constantine to attempt to co-opt the episcopal church rather than throw the
future of his empire in with Mithras or Isis."
Christianizing
the Roman Empire (A.D. 100-400)
Ramsay
MacMullen
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300036426
This is
supposedly an objective book (as opposed to Peter Brown's committed-Christian
platform), yet the author apparently includes "miracles", the day of
Pentecost (read as a literal event), and mass conversions in his explanation
for the appeal of Christianity. Sounds
as untrustworthy as any book operating within the received paradigm; he's not
really outside the dominant paradigm.
>I hope
Rev. H. founds an entheogenic kabbalah temple.
I also hope that Mr. Hoffman establishes his entheogenic Protestant
church.
I'll
probably remain strictly a theorist. I
don't have time or patience for rituals.
I should envision an entheogenic Gnostic initiation-oriented church, but
my first audience is the thinking individual explorer online. Lately, I wonder "What does the church
of the placebo sacrament mean to these people?
What do they get out of it?"
Basically, social interaction and an orientation in life.
Was not
the original Christian church a mystery religion, using the same active
sacraments as the other mystery religions of the era? Lately I feel alienated from the Protestant church, which moved
only part of the way from orthodoxy to a genuine sacramental
mystery-religion. A more pertinant
debate is the question of forming a Gnostic Christian or Christian Gnostic
church.
There are
some entheogenic Christian churches today, though I expect they lack a systematic
theory of the Christ experience. That
would be too much to ask in today's cultural climate, given the current
terrrible conditions (even persecutions) for entheogenic religions.
Protestantism
maintains a conventional heaven and hell even though Reformed theology denies
that these have anything to do with moral punishment and reward. I surmise that the most extreme Reformed
theologians finally abandon heaven and hell as pointless, though they might not
admit it. Even so, their theological
system is not redeemed, because they lack the flesh and blood of Christ - the
entheogenic sacrament.
It would
be trivial to offer people more than today's churches do, and we can assume
that people would flock to a real church now, just as they did in the original
Christian church as everyone clamored for the higher initiation.
My goal
was not to repair Christian practice, but to make sense of it because it is the
myth that reigns over the world of Western culture and it was the myth that was
implanted into me before my intellectual life was initiated. From the first, the Jesus myth was a part of
my experiences. I spent as much time in
the synagogue, but the synagogue seemed even more bereft of any genuine
resonance with the experiences of the mystic state of cognition.
Neither
did my family's new age involvement give me anything. I got everything from Christianity (including the cancelled
sacrifice of Abraham) and Zen. Jesus is
the reigning religious myth of the culture that produced me, so any theory of
entheogenic origin of religions that is relevant to that culture must have a
solid, detailed explanation of the Jesus myth.
I did not study the myth in order to repair Christianity, but to explain
what the essential transcendent meaning behind Christianity is -- to locate the
higher meaning of Christianity.
Now that I
can understand and communicate this meaning, it would be possible to repair
Christianity, but that has not been my goal.
Ultimately, my goal is to understand and make sense out of our nature as
controllers, and explain how the dominant myth reflects this nature. Why do I want to explain the dominant
myth? To increase my understanding and
our understanding of our nature as controllers.
My
preferred style of myth is distinctively contemporary, along the lines of the
power-cancelling android in The Body Electric, or a postmodernist incongruous
alien time-jumping vision that builds an allegorical savior meta-story out of
entire categories rather than a single limited storyline.
We can
avoid all mystic and religious terms and speak purely in terms of self-control
cybernetics and principles that aliens also are sure to discover, and thus
escape the accustomed ruts of thinking and finally get to the real heart of the
matter, of what religious experiencing is really about. Yet today's dominant cultural myth is still
the orthodox Jesus story, and a theory of religious experiencing that does not
conquer and transform the orthodox Jesus story from within can't achieve
anything.
I am a
chronically individualist thinker and can hardly picture a social organization
based on Gnostic entheogenic Christianity.
The head needs the body: the higher Gnostic Christians are into
individual experience, unlike the masses of uninitiated literalists, the lower
Christians, who provide the socially stable organization.
It is easy
to see in retrospect that the body, in envy and fear, would cut of the head,
leaving us with the social body of "Jesus", minus the religious
experience of "Christ" (a social/emotional substitute is only a
frustrating substitute).
There are
too many dangers, we now know, in such a two-layer religion. The head is always at risk of being rejected
by the body. Because of its so-tangible
literalist layer, the two-layer Jesus story may have a clearer impact on the
mind than the mythic-only savior stories.
But we don't dare tell the historical-style Jesus story in a
misleadingly literalist way again. This
time, the head must kill the body -- that is, we cannot humor the naive belief
in literalist historical reading of the Jesus story any longer, like the
Valentinian Gnostics did.
Either
literalism or the mythic allegorical reading is bound to win. It's a winner-takes all situation. Paul aimed for a two-layer religion, but the
lower layer won completely, forcing the higher layer underground. This time, we must have the higher,
allegorical layer win, with no more inner-circle secrecy. The greatest question remains: why were the
Christian mysteries secretive? What was
the nature of their secrecy? Was the
customary "death penalty" threat applied to revealing the *Christian*
mysteries as well as the other mysteries?
Is that why Paul "met with" the Areopagus council?
In
Valentinian Gnostic Christianity, why didn't the higher Christians, the
"Gentiles", simply reveal everything openly to the lower Christians,
the "Jews"? Wouldn't that
have prevented the colossal disaster, where the lower, literalist layer of
Christianity took over the whole structure and shut out the higher, mystic,
entheogenic layer? That is the great
question that is glaringly raised yet left untreated in Pagels' book The
Gnostic Paul.
In the book The Christian Mystery: From Pagan Myth to Christian Mysticism (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/187900707X, April 1996), Louis Bouyer argues that the Greek "mystery"-religions are misnamed and except for the mysteries of Demeter, they were described as "initiations" rather than mystery-revelations.
I propose that the Hellenistic world considered the Christian mystery more sophisticated and more of a pure mystery than the too obviously mythic Greek mystery religions which simply taught mythic stories as stories, not to be taken for reality, and then revealed the real meaning that had obviously been missing.
In those days, Christianity would only have been a degree more mysterious -- it was obvious to those familiar with the two-level mystery system of story-then-revelation that the initial Jesus story, with all its whimsical miracles, was merely the first phase of two -- after all, the New Testament scriptures plainly assert, throughout, that the stories contain a meaning that is hidden in a mystery that is only visible to those with eyes to see it and an inspired mind that is able to understand it.
But these scriptures spoke often, from the start, of disputes about the meaning of the mystery. The idea of *dispute* about the mystery- meaning was designed into the system from the start, giving full warrant to question the literalist interpretation entirely, doubting not just the resurrection, not just the miracles, not just the existence of Jesus, not just the existence of Paul, but even the existence of the early disputes themselves.
We have stories about a Paul going around and disputing, but the story of the disputes may have preceded and predicted the actual disputes. Only later did the fictional disputes between the idiots who took the stories for real and those who assumed them to be standard mythic allegories become actual disputes.
The idea of deliberately creating a mystery that was a frank lie mixed with blatant impossibilities and myths, that would then reveal the highest revelation about moral agency, was brilliant. And it was brilliant to weave in the notion that people would be so blind as to take the blatant fictions and impossibilities for real and be oblivious to the very existence of a mythic allegorical layer.
The fictional prediction of such a confusion actually created a real confusion in reality, after some time. It turned out that people were indeed eager to believe blatant impossibilities and escape into magic wishful thinking. People actually *liked* the pseudo-histories and edifying supernatural mythic stories so much that they took them for real, probably as some Hellenistic Jews took the Jewish pseudo- histories as reality.
Perhaps the Paul-like creators of the Jesus pseudo-history knew full well that this extreme mystery-system was bound to lead to massive popular confusions and blindness to the sometimes unpleasant higher metaphysical truth about determinism and moral agency that was encoded in the supernaturalist pseudo-history.
This 2-level system of extreme mystery-confusion may have come about and almost written itself due to the confluence of values, traditions, myths, and mysteries. To be a determinist, mature, Stoic adult required accepting unpleasant ideas such as our enslavement to Fate and Destiny -- people weren't up to that Stoic resoluteness and preferred to escape to or remain in the land of childish wishful thinking.
The New Testament was written to allow people the choice of remaining in supernaturalist fantasy and taking pseudo-history as reality, or to abandon those things of childhood and enter the profoundly limited deterministic adult kingdom of God/Fate.
Book:
Andrew Welburn
The Beginnings of Christianity: Essene Mystery, Gnostic Revelation and the Christian Vision
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0863152090
October 1995
Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)