Theos-Talk Archives (October 1996 Message tl00019)

Hi Abrantes

Once again we seem to be going over and over the same principles
already discussed in previous posts.  Though the specific
passages in ISIS which you object to are always changing, your
objections seem to be forever ignoring the basic premises that we
have already discussed several times.  To answer this new group
of objections:


Abrantes:
>1) BOOK III, chapter III (116,145) page 126 HPB writes "if we
>want to be sure that Jesus was a nazarene - even though with
>ideas of a new reformer - we must not search for the proof at
>the gospels, but at its original versions. Tischendorf, at his
>greek translation refers to Luke 4:34 as "Iesou Nazarene" and
>syriac text we read "Iasua, thou, oh nazarene".
>
>Why HPB rerfers to Luke 4:34 ? The gospel used by Church (that
>HPB critices) ALSO refers to Jesus as nazarene. There is no
>contradiction here with syriac text.


JHE
     As we have discussed before, HPB distinguishes between
"Nazara"  and a "Nazoria" both words were translated "Nazarene"
by the early Christian fathers--thus the confusion.  The former
denotes the city of Nazareth, and the latter denotes a mystical
sect of Jews who built the town of Nazara that later became known
as Nazareth.  HPB's point is that Tischendorf's translation and
the Syric text *do* make the distinction between "Nazara" and
"Nazoria" and are saying that Jesus was a Nazoria (i.e. a Notzri,
a member of the Naziereate [Nazarene] sect), not necessarily a
Nazara (i.e. one who is from or was born in Nazareth:

     The Naziereate sect existed long before the laws of Moses,
     and originated among people most inimical to the "chosen"
     ones of Israel, viz., the people of Galilee, the ancient
     olla-podrida of idolatrous nations, where was built Nazara,
     the present Nazareth.  It is in Nazara that the ancient
     Nazoria or Nazireates held their "Mysteries of Life" or
     "assemblies," as the word now stands in the translation,
     which we but the secret mysteries of initiation, utterly
     distinct in their practical form from the popular mysteries
     which were held at Byblus in honor of Adonis.  (ISIS
     II:131).


This is all germane to HPB's larger argument of identifying the
historical Jesus with the Nazoria.  Remember that Yeishu den
Pandera (aka Yeishu ha-Notzri) was a leader of the Nazoria sect
in 100 BCE.  The Jewish word for Christians was "Notzri."  In
other words, the Jews wrote about Christians (Notzri) that lived
100 years before the Biblical Jesus.  How can this be?


Abrantes:

>2) chapter V (191,217) page 215 "At 1Cor2:9 a passage cited as
>Holy Writ, doesn't find at OT. This passage was taken from
>apocripha Eliah' Revelation in accordance with Origen and
>Jerome".
>
>But 1Cor2:9 refers literraly to Isaiah 64:3 !!!!


JHE

To give you the original English of this passage:

     In 1Corinthians, ii. 9, a passage is quoted as Holy
     Scripture, which is not found in the Old Testament as all,
     but which is taken, as Origin and Jerome state, from an
     apocryphal work "The Revelation of Elias" (Origen: Tract.
     xxxv.).

In my Bible, the passage quoted in 1Cor2:9 is:
"Things beyond our seeing, thing beyond our hearing, things
beyond our imagining, all prepared by God for those who love
him."

Isaiah 64:3 reads:
"When thou didst terrible things that we did not look for, the
mountains shuttered before thee."

The two passages look very different to me.  1Cor.2:9 does not
appear to be quoting Isaiah 64:3.  So I will have to agree with
HPB's on this one.  But we would have to check Origen's statement
to confirm what she is saying here.


Abrantes:

>3) at the same page HPB continues: "Mark 1:2 there is a citation
>from Malaqui 3:1, that is atributed to Isaiah".
>
>Again no contradiction. Malaqui 3:1 is correct but the passage
>is also present in Isaiah 40:3.


JHE

Mark1:2-3: In the prophet Isaiah it stands written: `Here is my
herald whom I send on ahead of you, and we will prepare your way.
A voice crying aloud in the wilderness, "Prepare a way for the
Lord; clear a straight path for him."'

Malachi3:1: Look, I am sending my messenger who will clear a path
before me.

Isaiah40:3: There is a voice that cries: Prepare a road for the
LORD through the wilderness, clear a highway across the desert
for our God.

In comparing the three passages, I am inclined to think that the
writer of "Mark" had both passages in mind and sort of combined
them.  Therefore the error is more with the writer of "Mark" for
not crediting both scriptures.  In any case, I can't fault HPB
here, she was just quoting the author of "Supernatural Religion,"
who seems to be in this case, not so much wrong as not completely
accurate.


Abrantes:
>4) chapter IV (133,185) page 172 "Whatever that be the words
>attributed to Jesus, Peter or Paul and others, none of this
words >are a worship act, and Jesus himself never refers his
identity >with his Father".
>
>Wrong. John 10:30; John 17:21-22



JHE
Not wrong.  Allow me to requote this statement in its context:

     It is a most suggestive fact that there is not a word in the
     so called sacred scriptures to show that Jesus was actually
     regarded as a God by his disciples.  Neither before nor
     after his death did they pay him divine honors.  Their
     relationship to him was only that of disciples and "master;"
     by which name they addressed him, as the followers of
     Pythagoras and Plato addressed their respective masters
     before them.  Whatever words may have been put into the
     mouths of Jesus, Peter, John, Paul, and others, there is not
     a single act of adoration recorded on their part, nor did
     Jesus himself ever declare his identity with his Father.  He
     termed himself the son of God, but took care to assert
     repeatedly that they were all the children of God, who was
     the heavenly father of all.  In preaching this, he but
     repeated a doctrine taught ages earlier by Hermes, Plato and
     other philosophers.  Strange contradiction!  Jesus, whom we
     are asked to worship as the one living God, is found
     immediately after his resurrection, saying to Mary
     Magdalene; "I am not yet ascended to my father; but go to my
     breathern, and say unto them, I ascend unto my father and
     your Father, and to my God and your God!" (John xx. 17).
     (ISIS II:192-93).


Your citation of John 10:30; "My father and I are one", if taken
out of context can indeed be argued to mean that Jesus is saying
that he and God are an identity.  But if you take this meaning,
then who is he ascending to when he is resurrected?  Putting your
citation in context, gives it a very different meaning.  Jesus is
addressing a group of Jews who are not his followers, and talking
about those who do follow him:

     My own sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow
     me.  I give them eternal life and they shall never perish;
     no one shall snatch them from my care.  MY FATHER WHO HAS
     GIVEN THEM TO ME IS GREATER THAN ALL, and no one can snatch
     them out of the Fathers care.  My Father and I are one.
     (John 10:25-30).

So how can Jesus be God and at the same time distinguish himself
from God?  There are two ways to resolve this: 1. The theological
metaphysics of the Roman Catholic idea of the trinity.  2. Jesus
is not speaking of an identity, but that he and his father are
one in mind, and/or in spirit, in the same sense that a devoted,
loving and close wife would say of her husband, or what any
mystic of ancient times would say of his God.

As for John 17:20-22, I believe it illuminates the meaning of the
previous citation:

     But it is not these alone that I pray, but for those also
     who through their words put their faith in me; MAY THEY ALL
     BE ONE: AS THOU FATHER, ART IN ME, AND I IN THEE, SO ALSO
     MAY THEY BE IN US, that the world may believe that thou
     didst send me. (John 17:20-22)

Don't these passages you have chosen really help to illustrate
HPB's statement rather than contradicting it, when she writes:
"He termed himself the son of God, but took care to assert
repeatedly that THEY WERE ALL THE CHILDREN OF GOD, who was the
heavenly father of all."   But all of this still evades the point
that HPB was making in this paragraph i.e.: where in the Bible
does Jesus' disciples regard him as God?

Jerry