Monday 18 August 2014

Jesus I Was Evil

 

 
AS THE NATIONAL PARTY slowly sinks into a mire of its own making, it occurred to me that Darcy Clay's magnificent 1997 anthem might be the most fitting song for the Nats to go out on.
 
Video courtesy of YouTube
 
This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

1 comment:

Tell me not in mournful numbers... said...

Never mind about being evil yourself. Jesus had his problems too!

Headline in The Independent of Monday 10th Nov 2014.

Jesus 'married Mary Magdalene and had children', according to ancient manuscript almost 1,500 years old unearthed at the British Library.

"The so-called “Lost Gospel”, which has been translated from Aramaic, allegedly reveals the startling new allegations, according to The Sunday Times.

Professor Barrie Wilson and writer Simcha Jacobovic spent months translating the text, which they claim states Jesus had two children and the original Virgin Mary was Jesus’s wife and not his mother."

More at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/jesus-married-mary-magdalene-and-had-children-according-to-ancient-manuscript-9849839.html

To which someone added:-

"The article only refers to both Nikos Kazantzakis' 1953 book “The Last Temptation of Christ” and Dan Brown's “The Da Vinci Code” as others who have touch on these ideas.

What about Barbara Thiering, who in 'Jesus The Man', discusses his marriage to Mary, their three children (including their daughter Tamar [Damaris in Greek] who later married St Paul) their divorce (Mary was a Zealot and returned to Simon Magus and the Zealots where sacred prostitution was customary, where she may have gone on the game and so acquired her later reputation!), his second marriage to Lydia, a bishop from Asia Minor, and their daughter Phoebe etc.

What we tend to forget is that the gospels were seen by the Romans as evidence of sedition. Mere possession was grounds for execution. As the only written link between the early Christians, they were a combined statement of principles, a collection of homilies and letters and a history of what was both a public and a private underground movement: the detail of the latter being secretly recorded by the old Judean tradition of burying information in a code called a 'pesher', so that only the initiated would have access to it. The beauty of this technique is that no other key is necessary. Like a complex wooden puzzle, when you crack it the result is self-evidently valid because it fits so precisely in all its parts!

As Thiering says of the pesher technique, "The essential methodological point is the rule of consistency. Every special meaning, every particular procedure, is applied in all occurrences throughout the six books [the four gospels, Acts and Revelation]. When it is found that there is perfect consistency, it becomes certain that the pesher is objectively there and has been placed there. No arbitrary interpretations will work, no guesses. There are tests of consistency from many different directions..."

Christianity is above all a syncretic religion. Thiering's scholarship is a beautifully diligent description of its early layers. It is good to see Professor Barrie Wilson and Simcha Jacobovic confirming her work and hopefully adding some new perspectives to it.

More on Jesus' two marriages and children etc. at http://www.peshertechnique.infinitesoulutions.com/index_Magdalene.html

The Independent says that, Professor Barrie Wilson and Simcha Jacobovic are going to 'name the children' on Wed 12th Nov. It will be interesting to see if their source lines up with what Barbara Thiering has already found in the New Testament.