Sociologies From Easter - What Really Happenned
Ethan H Shagan in The Birth of Modern Belief: Faith and Judgement from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment 2018 discusses historical faith as the definer of historicity, the benchmark around which the belief semiotic changed. The historical Jesus as eyewitness activity in the time of the Jesus is unquestionable, with the apostle line today being pedestal elation for the Pentecostal church, but the existence of the four gospels, perhaps geographically defined to explain apparent coincidences and contradictions, is undeniable. The sacred texts, just as texts, are unequivocal, and we find Jesus as a man pulls out of the text and we find dismissed Jesus as a god, or god, the god; psychosomatics and nature miracles surprise us upon examination of the ancient Roman world and mythology semiology. What is Easter, and who was this rejected Jesus? Was he only damned by the Roman government along with the trial crowd and thus crucified, and could this create a Gospel robust enough to be consistent in four ways? What is the sociology of the Gospels?
Whether or not you gel with the bible is important, merely as a text, an historical text. I believe like others that the bible is an ancient history book, simply. through sociology and psychosomatic analysis we can connect events together to make interpretations, sense, and it is analysis that we seek from any such lengthy and claimed book like the bible. The Christian bible does not make sense, I do indeed demand that historicity is examined on merit, because a human can’t come alive again after they are dead, and so there is something else within its pages. Jesus did not rise from the dead physically, so what tautologically did happen? Did Jesus cause a fuss, a hum about himself causing that ancient reaction from the Roman government at the time, or was this Jesus just a crucified wuss? Remember, the Bens existed at the time as medical healers, working away, outdoors from the curing priests of Judaism. Justin Welby called Jesus, like John Stott, a contraversialist, and more pop stars than we will call care to admit to using “Jesus” as a cool reference? Who was Jesus, and what was his story, god the father being a falsehood or fiction. Reading the fallacies here means reading the text.
One belief back then was Gnosticism, to do with life, or knowledge. In Greek, knowledge = i gnosi, or an active cognition into life, awareness (of life or entities), learning, cognisance, sense (common and others) or lore. Any. Also, Gnosticism includes wisdom, but is better interpreted as lore or perception, after folklore and know-how respectively. The definition of a knowledge of life is AND life = zoi in Greek, which can mean spirit or belongings. Thus, it can be deduced that Jesus was in the spirit of life, as a human of the people, such that he became controversial to the Roman government, as such. A synonym of life, in English, is individual, as an instance of “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death” (Google translate). Was Jesus to do with life, not religion? That is, religion as we know it today - detached and opaque.
Another definition of life or Latin vita, in English (Google Translate), is “(in art) the depiction of a subject from a real model, rather than from an artist’s imagination.” Respiratory in Latin means respiratoriorum, which we have specified as breathable, vital and life, but in Greek means anapnefstiko systima, indeed, systima or system. Simply, the Latin for respiratoriorum = respiratory system. The Arabic also places respiratory with system, and in ancient times Hippocrates made the movements into the four systems of the body, wind, water, blood, fire or warmth, following on from Buddhism and its historic yoga.
So Hippocrates internalised Buddhism by physiology’s organs organising it into four systems. The Greek systima = regime, not just systima = system, systima = order or. systima = contrivance, and systima = regime is equivalent to kathestos, ovornua, diaita and dioikisi, where kathestos = regime, diaita = diet (or regimen) and dioikisi = command (six definitions), dioikisi = ruling (again, six definitions) or dioikisi = regiment. Religion did not stand in ancient times as tradition, but rather as word, the street tempo or vibe; it was cool and collected to be religious, and collected meant that it was assumed. Commoner related to government by religion, and this gem deep inside of them came from religion, not order. Government codes saturated order, which belonged to the King, and no one doubted the King out with funeral parties, their politics or diplomacies. Stephen P Kershaw in The Greek Myths says that “...one vital concept here is anthropomorphism: Greek gods took the form of man and woman. This means that they often behave in a way that we associate more with humans than gods: they fight, argue, sulk, get drunk and commit adultery, which means, of course, that it is easy to tell stories about them, and the personalities of the gods and heroes of Greek mythology...make the tales so engaging.” Therefore, Dr Kershaw gives myth a dynamic and functional ontology, saying that myth is ‘true’ for those who use it.
Indeed, Gnosticism meant female, not just life and knowledge, given different sects. Gnosis is Greek for knowledge, and refers to esoteric consciousness, or symbolic consciousness, where god would also be. Mentally. The origins of the group are unclear, but the location was today’s Middle East and Asia Minor and the roots were perhaps Neoplatonism, where imaginary or monotheist lands emanate as symbolic being mystical in nature, by transcendence of forms. Some scholars say Jewish Gnosticism predicated its Christian counterpart, explaining the revelations of Ezekiel, the apocalypses of Daniel, the angelic sections of Enoch, the suffering exclamations of Job and even the psalms of David, such that Christianity came in three parts: Jewish Christianity first; Gnosticism; and Pauline Christianity. Gnosticism birthed Mandaeanism, Manichaeism, Kabbalism (Judaically rooted) and Medieval Gnosticism. Its teacher was second century Valentinus with schools both in Alexandria and Rome, whose works live in the Nag Hammadi library. The Cathari is the main Gnostic work.
Mandaeanism had ancient roots, linguistically meaning “knowledge of life” from Manda d-Heyyi. It is thought to heroise John the Baptist as its figure and teacher, but this cannot be as yet proved. Therefore, ritual immersions or baptisms by water occurred, and followers were vegetarian; Jesus was rejected as the truth in favour of John the Baptist. False prophet Jesus took second and lower place, evident from its many source texts e.g. Genza Rabba, but today Shiite Muslims infidel them into blasphemy.
Manichaeism was where dualism defines the god. That is, originally or by the Logos, such that two natures initialised life, with light as well as darkness, body as well as the spiritual. It cradles an organised clergy, liturgies and monasteries, and these have only become available to modernity from the Uigur Kingdom near Turfan in Chinese Turkestan, to a worldwide English population by translation. It roots itself in a third century Persia i.e. old Babylon province, but thereafter spanned North Africa to China, perhaps because it is named after its prophet Mani. Then, it moved west to Syria, Northern Arabia and Egypt. From 373-382CE St Augustine was a Manichaean, and this must be respected in religious and theological thought surrounding religio, but he was persecuted by reputation of paganism, Manichaeism being forthwith suppressed. This was the biggest Gnostic sect.
Jewish Kabbalism, or the Kabbalah, was a mysticism founded in the Jewish monotheism. Centred on the Divine Feminine, it pedestals women as defining god, the deius, taking vessalism and dividing it into ten Sefirots. The Cathari was read using feminine emancipatory sociology, such that the Gnostic tradition cannot be define without a feminine stroke, changing the picture. Today, Kabbalism has returned to Orthodox Jews, secular Jews as well as the secular humankind because of its flexibility and siding with certain New Age ideas. Ancient women were merchants, moving the merchant trade in various ways, and this feminine aspect of Kabbalism has perhaps reinvigorated its believers.
Medieval Gnosticism was sprung by Paulicians, Bogomils and Cathari or Abigensians, in Southern France in the twelfth century. Two Gnostic movements of the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade were declared heresy by the Roman Catholic Church, which forced it underground. Allegations of Gnosticism were thrown at the Knights Templar, the Freemasons and other such groups recently, as mysticism through alchemy, using the works of e.g. Rosicrucians.
The generalisation Gnosticism is that of dualistic theism, spiritual knowledge and experience as opposed to faith and sacraments, no resurrection but this was a spiritual occurrence, and a detachment from the Jewish god as the Triune god using a Gnostic Cosmology. Gnosticism was characterised by asceticism and discipline as ontological in tenure, knowledge or gnosis freeing people into truth, by liberation. It taught god is both male and female, god is not a trinity but a unity, their new trinity of god as Father, Mother and Son, there were certain special disciples (Thomas, Mary Magdalene etc) who spoke to enlightened disciples such as Peter, and that women are included in clergy and can baptise followers. The Gnostic Cosmology included a Creation based on Genesis around a god Vita, a fall and a redemption featuring Seth, the third son of Adam, an ingenious addition to any augmentation or adjustment to the bible, or back then, sacred scripture.
So Gnostic meant knowledge of life, not just knowledge, detaching away from heavenly states and mythology, taking the neglect of anthropomorphic mythology perhaps until today. Women seemed integral to life back then, and this is important because in the Kabbalah sect god meant female - dynamic and caring by roles, the former as merchants. Vita, the root word, derived vitality, in English today, which must shed Gnostic inquiry as relevant to today’s definitions of god using the god meme.
So what is Gnostic Cosmology? And who was Vita? Gnostic Cosmology was a Creation, a Fall and a Redemption. God is unknown, and immovable, invisible, intangible also ineffable. Both male and female, they sit as all-containing and the uncontained. Called the Monad or the first Aeon, god is indescribable so any description should be a negative differentiation, but gnosis only passes through god and is perforated. Aeons take emanations of the god, but this happenned before the first Aeon. God traverses Aeons using his various attributes which pair as endless genealogies, and one of the very first Aeons was god’s female counterpart, or the original Aeon. Other first Aeons were Christos, Bythos or the Monad as the One, Caen and Akhana (Power and Love respectively), from the latter, Nous and Aletheia (Nus = Mind, Veritas = Truth), Sermo and Vita (the Word and the Life), Anthropos and Ecclesia (Humanity and Church). All these generations came from the latter respectively, but this sixth generation also came from Sermo and Vita, like Anthropos and Ecclesia.
It was Bythios and Mixis (Profound and Mixture respectively), Ageratos and Henosis (Never old and Union), Autophyes and Hedone (Essential Nature and Pleasure), Acinetos and Syncrasis (Immovable and Commixture), Monogenes and Macaria (Only-begotten and Happiness), all emanated from Sermo (the Word) and Vita (the Life). These all emanated from Anthropos and Ecclesia: Paracletus and Pistis (Comforter and Faith), Patricas and Elpis (Paternity and Hope), Metricos and Agape (Maternity and Love), Ainos and Synesis (Praise and Intelligence), Ecclesiasticus and Macariotes (Son of Ecclesia and Blessedness), and Theletus and Sophia (Perfection and Wisdom). We can see how English roots, root words, came from these god assignments, such that we have enjoyed their derivations. Synesis suggests ‘synthesis’, needed to form intelligence from ideas and concepts, and Hedone for Pleasure means happiness, rooted in Hedonism.
Linguistic pathologies matter to today’s language box, ever changing, and root derivations find us the history or langue. Latin for life, is vita. Vita can also mean living, career, way of life, subsistence or livelihood. However, other translations show that religious rituals, ceremonies and muses direct us back to life, vita, this Latin word with many yoga interpretations and mantras. Life vita can also be translated as: anima = soul, life, wind, manes, Spirit, air (with yoga in mind, along with the atmosphere or wind of the Holy Spirit); caput = head, capital, chapter, stress, highlight, life; alacritas = alacrity, eagerness, enthusiasm, animation, cheerfulness, life; lumen = vigor, force, vitality, life, freshness, mettle; spiritus = wind, Spirit, breath (yoga, and the breath of the Holy Spirit), person, animation, life; medium = midst, medium, middle, public, life; animula = little soul, life, piece of soul; stamen = stamen, warp (to bend or twist something or some concept), thread, fillet of priest, life, string; adjective spirabilis = respiratory (basic), breathable, vital, life.
We can see how religion is one, one umbrage and one force, in the past. This is a major finding, not a small point, and must be researched thus. I cannot define Christianity out with Buddhism, and I cannot deify it, because it was and is, like the others, a human activity. We arrive at answers by linguists derivations, because they stand, and stand robust. Integrity is theirs, whilst ours is knowing, definitely. Categorisation is the choice of the taxonomist, and likewise, categorisation must be the choice of the Classicist. Without doubt, and unquestionably.
There were two females at the tomb because it was women who buried and attended to the dead. The bible as an historical book says this, with doctrinal theologies only emerging perhaps in Medieval times, as Shagan points out. In Ancient Rome, males occupied the high jobs e.g. judges, tax people, musicians, shop keepers, excluding linen, materials or cloths and craft, also the fishing trade, Jewish clergy and religious priests, the police, but women were agile at other things: women were merchants who produced and weaved linen, harvested, administered finances. They achieved a high profile as merchants. The Gospel claims Jesus was wrapped in linen after he was dead. So the culture and community around the cross scene and later the tomb expected women to preside, and although women warriors existed, the two women diffused a bad atmosphere with a few armed Roman soldiers loitering about and guarding the tomb. Along with this, women enjoyed a family touch, which made the two women human, or caring mourners. Opinion is the sent of the mourner, and the Magnificat suggests that Mary, who was there, could give an opinion about Jesus death, very important for the future of the movement. Mary sang the Magnificat about Jesus birth, before it and after his conception in her womb. Therefore Mary could then go on to define the empty tomb, a victory.
A suspicion sits amongst biblical scholars that Mary Magdelane was at the Last Supper with Jesus, before he died. If she was one of the Marys, then should could administer communion after he died. Perhaps the First Communion, and interweave the victory of the empty tomb with Jesus death. The Eucharist defines the church, because through it brethren are created with brotherhood and sisterly intimacy or isolation at its determination; the whole congregation works as one body through communion. It is the chord of the people and the voice of the Christian crowd at a Christian pop concert. So the women at the tomb represented the continuity of the faith.
Women constitute something other than women in ancient times, and are not recognisable as today’s women back then. You may say, this is obvious stuff, but it is the stuff of historicity; historical interpretation harmonises history, such that linguistic semantic drift is progressive, not regressive or a parabolic hyperspace. A jack-in-the-box Jesus did not exist i.e. did not prod humankind, in a physical resurrection from the dead, and, contradictory to C S Lewis, no true myth emerged in ancient times to save from sin; sin and suffering are being delineated by science, so as to decrease and destroy them. But the potency of communion and the Last Supper for Christianity can be incredible and irrevocable, with ministers and clergy dependent on it, and upon what Thomas Acquinas 1225-1274 said about the sacrement of the Eucharist in Summa Theologiae, nine volumes written during 1888–1906. In Volume iii, and Question 75, he asks Question 75. The change of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, with Transubstantiation as the new word, in the 1200s.
- Is the Body of Christ in this sacrament truly, or figuratively?
- Do the substance of bread and wine remain in this sacrament after the consecration?
- Is it annihilated?
- Is it changed into the body and blood of Christ?
- Do the accidents remain after the change?
- Does the substantial form remain there?
- Is this change instantaneous?
- By what words it may be suitably expressed?
Jesus was gossiped around, through an oral tradition, and Prof Bart Ehrman of Chapel Hill University, New Testament historIan, says in one of his many books Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed and Invented Their Stories of Their Savior that “Jesus died in about the year 30CE”, and that “the study of memory, as pursued by scholars who did not work on the New Testament, could provide some valuable and keen insights into such matters”. People would remember Jesus, by memory and simply by neighbour to neighbour chat, quiet and personal sometimes, such that Jesus, when if, he was alive, did become famous in Israel and Asia as perhaps the son of god, beauteous. This does not necessarily mean divine, with god or attached to a metaphysique. Bart Ehrman explains that a Talk at Google, in ancient times, a text was forged was forged as far as it could be seen or by informal judgment. Prediction by gossiping or by oral tradition was stronger. Prof Ehrman in says many disciplines must be “represented in the academy, such as psychology, sociology and anthropology”, and I fully believe that the historical Jesus is in there, as literary art, able to be read as history, sociology and economy; without ancient history when reading the NT, we are idiots. Bart asks:
1) How were these people telling stories about Jesus
2) did they “remember very well what they heard from others”
3) from whom they heard?
4) did they remember where these people, from whom they heard, heard it
5) did they remember where both of the above heard it? Remotely or precisely.
6) How quickly did the stories change, from neighbour to neighbour?
7) How quickly did the stories change between Jesus’ death and the writing of the first gospel between 70CE and 95CE.
It is important. We use both episodic and semantic memory, such that the past, if turbulent, can use episodic memory to remember, Ehrman refers to experimental psychologist Engel Tulving in 1972. Believers in Jesus did help disabled people, the ill and the fragile each day, such that they possibly experienced traumatic discrimination for this, in an ancient society. I do not believe Jesus rose from The dead, physically. I believe he was resurrected, post mortum, sociologically, as a social vibe. Collective memory is stronger by community than individual memory, and Bart agrees with Richard Dawkins regarding societal memes which are aggregates of collective memory, that it is “how various groups construct, understand and ’remember’ the past”. If this used episodic memory, then when the bible says that Jesus rose from the dead, it may mean as a social phraseology or social meme. It is highly likely, and I intend to research inference, historical assumptions and inherent implications embedded in the Gospel text.
I believe in this sociological line of study, not a theological or divinely metaphysical line of biblical study. It is true.Error does not matter, truth matters. Whether episodic or semantic memory was used is permanently important. Therefore the Virgin Mary giving birth is the cry of a creed. It is not a statement, but was the voice of a minority group back then perhaps, not a description of a womb. This baby’s alignment, tall metaphorically or small, was afterwards claimed to be tall, or truth based. This family pulse, system-devoid, was to categorise government and truth separately, putting the truth, anciently Platonic becoming form based, on familial ground as opposed to King and government catchment, for tax.
Religion in ancient and Vedic times was the mythology of the people, to do with the commoner. I can’t say this enough, and believe today’s definitions of religion should include diversity, historic, because this was religion. It set you free, it taught, it said and it sheltered: it voiced via funeral parties and games. Commerce knew differently after a funeral had been enjoyed or experienced, and the King or governor would be aware of certain controversial deaths. Mortification was an issue in life, and how you died or, in other words, were remembered also coined. Today’s church still claims that the son of Mary was born to the Virgin Mary, no father, but instead aligns this father to the Father god, divinity. Believers trek to say that the incarnation did occur in the year naught, and, believing this, you become a Christian! You do not access faith without belief in Jesus as the Son of God, and with it Christians flip in joyous fantasy. Fact: we are protecting ourselves against the Coronavirus using rational measures, or steps. Each, personally. Fact: the two parents, Mary and Joseph, claimed and believed in god, the god of Judaism, for Jesus’ life. His future was primary, the premise of the proposition. All.
Truth back then meant truth about god or theological truth, generally, as linguistics phrase semiology, not science, because natural philosophy (science’s term in ancient times) did not affect the masses. So Anselm has an inquiry into truth, or an inquiry into god, where truth and god were interchangeable words. Therefore, different Gospel scholars read the bible in different ways. Anselm said atheism was for fools, but this is historical in context, where historiography must win. Christology gives a degree of divinity or a degree of humanness to Jesus, awarding him with humanness the lower Christology that you believe.
Ontological Christology - onto means being; this is where Jesus is fully human and fully divine in person.
Functional Christology - study of the work of Jesus achieved in the plan of salvation.
Historical Christology - investigates facts and evidences of the historical human Jesus, including the words (teachings) and works (miracles) of Jesus.
Dogmatic Christology - according to the teachings, doctrines and dogma of the Catholic Church.
Ascending Christology (Christology from Below) - starting from the point of human experience and associates with Church doctrine. Below means the earth, or the patterns of humankind.
Descending Christology (Christology from Above) - starting with the study of Jesus divinity and that which is preached by the church.
Whether or not Jesus burial cloth can be found, matters. This would find him as the man, not the god; with the man-god as working in Ancient Rome, no divine hand touched. Inquiry is not vague, it is specific by functionalist success credibility, so when we search for religious truth, we search for a religious truth; being specific means one will succeed.
The Shroud of Turin is indeed that - a shroud, or just a cloth. But some researchers say it is Jesus burial cloth at 4.4 x 1.1 metres. Cotton. It is Turin because it was found in 1988 at Turin, in Italy. So you had better not go there today, and indeed you can’t, with the Coronavirus as beating us, temporarily. Turin is in north west Italy and is the capital of the Piedmont region as it sits on the river Po. Today, the population is 89200 with a metropolitan population of 2.2 million. Radiocarbon dated in, again, 1988, the cloth had the imprint of a tormented, tortured body, signing crucifixion, and Italy did produce the Roman Empire, the theologian Ambrose, Pope Gregory I, and consequently the Roman Catholic Church, having had the Empire fall. If this is Jesus when he deceased, then there is a human story, a tragedy, behind the Gospels, not a Holy Spirit of god. Predestination is a myth, and sin is not mandatory, given. You must know this. Considering an ascending Christology, Jesus life was not caused by a god, god, but was the pride of his endeavour. Psychosomatic actions, or human action, explains all the miracles in the bible, in some way, and in time, they can all be analysed.
So Jesus the man was to do with the commoner. Bread and wine. His sermons celebrated family around mealtimes and philosophised the human energy, never the god. Humility therefore was momentum, not prayer, emphasis being on the people, or person.
We shall have a better world once religion is understood, and understood well. It is a different beauty from what we think, and so it is a beauteous task, loud and deep. Linguistics and historical context. We cannot live in a world that doesn’t understand religion, and now we must not, but once we endeavour to use our historical run and our dictionaries, then we shall be sane. Without fundamentalist extremism and without Islamic terrorism. Dogma is shameful to historical context. Add sociology, and find truth.
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