How Caesar Domesticated Jesus

To anyone who really studies the early history of Christianity, and takes care to sort out the facts from the versions that are generally promoted by the Christian churches, it should be clear that there was a process of domestication that went on. This notion began to be formulated (again) around the time of the enlightenment, and in fact Thomas Jefferson was a proponent. He recognized that there was some heavy editing in what became the New Testament, courtesy of the influence of St. Paul, whom he regarded as an impostor and a fraud.

There have been countless alternative theories of who Jesus was and some are more outrageous than others, but several reflect the idea that somehow or other there was an active effort by the Roman Empire to coopt him. One fun book was Thijs Voskuilen's Operation Messiah which makes Paul out to be a Roman Spy. Now we have a new angle, Jesus was made up by the Romans altogether. This is the thesis of the book Caesar's Messiah, by Joseph Atwill. This seems to go even a step further. All of these speculations are possible only because so little of the New Testament is "historical" in the modern sense, and there is a dearth of verifiable information. A good place to find out more might be this review on The Raw Story.

What makes all these attempts so interesting is that they pick up on something that is immediately obvious if we study the extant material, particularly since we have the Thomas Gospel. Christianity was invented after Jesus, and for those of us who know A Course in Miracles, and in particular also the connection with the Thomas gospel as it is explored in Gary's books - it is incredibly evident that the church version of Jesus was the creation of late comers on the scene, and that his teachings were completely altered in the process. The signature comment in that process was perhaps the one by Paul, when he comes to the conclusion that the resurrection was an event of the body, not of the spirit, when all Jesus taught was that we were to first seek the Kingdom (i.e. Spirit), and all the rest would be given to us - so the primacy of the body is nowhere in evidence in Jesus' teachings, but since it is threatening to the ego, it speaks for itself that there would be an attempt to domesticate him by declaring that his resurrection was a bodily event, so that an idol could be made out of his body, and the crucifixion.

In Gary Renard's third book, Love Has Forgotten No One, we find yet more discussion of all the forms in which the same things go on with A Course in Miracles today. Or, as Gary recently pointed out humorously in a podcast, it might be refreshing if self-proclaimed Course teachers and events stuck to teaching A Course in Miracles. But, humor aside, it should not surprise us that the truth is so threatening to the ego, for the idea of separation is simply null and void if there is no separation, which is what the atonement teaches. If truth is one, there are no separate truths, and no individuality. This is incredibly threatening to the ego. Like everything else, when we become aware of that perceived threat, we can do two things with it. We can either project it outside and act on it, including changing the teaching that poses this threat, or, we can go inside and ask Jesus or the Holy Spirit to look at our upset (I'm never upset for the reason I think!), and change our mind about it.

It does not matter what version of historical events makes more sense to you, but the content is very clear. Jesus taught one thing, and Christianity taught something else, and in fact incorporated the whole ego teaching of sin, guilt and fear into the words of Jesus, changing them beyond recognition. On the rebound this leads to the phenomenon of the church not knowing what to make of the Thomas Gospel, for the Jesus of the Thomas gospel sounds more like a Buddhist (as Gary likes to express it) than like a Christian. The reason again is obvious: he never was a Christian, he was bombarded into one posthumously. This very point also makes it clear why we need a relationship with Jesus or the Holy Spirit to complete our journey, for the ego never ever would permit us to do the steps that would set us free, and keeps threatening us with death and destruction, when all we would find on the other side of that little gap would be peace and happiness. Only through the development of trust can we finally take the last steps, after which the last step is taken by God.

DLINV Webinar met Gary Renard

Gary Renard's Love Has Forgotten No One in Holland

On October 8th we will see the simultaneous publication of Love Has Forgotten No One, and the Dutch version De Liefde is niemand vergeten. And what an adventure it was. Now it is time to begin looking at the total effect of the trilogy of The Disappearance of the Universe. Only in retrospect is it clear that this is a trilogy, and the combined effect was quite powerful. At this point I want to explore the meaning of the Thomas connection, especially from a Dutch perspective.

For me, the Thomas gospel entered into my awareness ca 1960 or so, when my parents were involved with a group of spiritual conferences called first Het Oude Loo, and later Het Open Veld. They were mostly international in nature, and hosted at the palace Het Oude Loo, and Queen Juliana was a participant. That world was abuzz with the expectation of the Thomas Gospel, and originally Queen Juliana had given her personal financial support for the acquisition of the Nag Hammadi manuscript through the Jung Foundation, by the Dutch Professor Gilles Quispel. In 1959 the first translation appeared in Dutch, and in the late fifties my parents attended lectures by him.

The expectation that surrounded all of this was of finally having a fresh, new impression of Jesus as he was originally, but some of that expectation was dampened by Quispel's focus on the Gnostic tradition, driven primarily by the fact that the Nag Hammadi library was largely a gnostic collection, and that seemed to make the Thomas gospel part of the second century gnostic religions, many of which were more or less Christian. It was only later that it began to be understood that the Thomas gospel, or at least a kernel of it, must have indeed predated the canonical gospels of the New Testament, since those books all quote the Thomas gospel.

Thomas enters popular culture

My earliest memories about anything to do with the Thomas Gospel was of my parents going to lectures by Prof. Gilles Quispel, and the buzz that surrounded them. Later, when I lived in the USA, this "buzz" was renewed for me in a way, with the publications (on the same day in 2003) of three books that related to the Thomas gospel in different ways, Elaine Pagels' Beyond Belief, and Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, and last not least, Gary Renard's The Disappearance of the Universe. In short, what began in a little side show in Holland in the late 50's and early 60's, now was entering the world stage with three new and very different popularizations. Translations of the Thomas Gospel had been around for a long time, but it was these three books which really made Thomas part of popular culture, to such an extent that the Jesus Seminar even published a book called The Five Gospels, in which they included the Thomas gospel.

That approach of including the Thomas Gospel in the now "five" gospels, was interesting, but controversial on several levels. To church-Christians it was often confusing because the Thomas gospel seemed so different in character, yet it was undeniable that the other gospel writers had copied extensively from Thomas. Conversely it did the Thomas gospel a disservice, because it now began to make that book part of the Christian tradition about Jesus, when the whole point was that ALL specific theological constructs that make Christianity what it is, are absent. Given also that the Thomas Gospel clearly predated Paul, and the others were written after him, it becomes clear that the theological framing of Christianity as such rests with Paul, not with Jesus.

Therefore, the Thomas gospel sort of stood on its own two feet, and considering it separately, and in its proper historical context made more sense than including it with the books of the New Testament. The character of the three books mentioned above is also very interesting in terms of the way the Thomas material entered popular culture - and I am adding some other relevant notes:

• Elaine Pagels' Beyond Belief - This is a book by a religion scholar, who is also a Christian, and she struggles with the differences of the Thomas tradition with her traditional beliefs, just at a time when her own personal life crises make all this that much more relevant to her. It is a very personal exploration, but it has scholarly overtones, and the overall framework is clearly from a scholarly point of view.
• Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code - This is a fun book, an adventure story, and the way the Thomas gospel enters the conversation here is as part of material suppressed by the church, and the tone of the narrative very much takes its energy from a certain distrust of and rebellion against the church as an institution that has been withholding information, in order to protect its authority.
• Gary Renard's The Disappearance of the Universe - This book strikes a very different tone. First of all we are introduced to the Thomas material here through the lense of Gary's learning of A Course in Miracles, but coupled with his own inner experience, which includes recollections of a past life as Thomas. Here the teachings of Jesus are fleshed out on an inner, experiential level, based on Gary's work with the Course, and the material from the Thomas gospel is woven into the story in a way that ties in with Gary's past life recollections, but also by showing how consistent the gist of the Thomas sayings is with A Course in Miracles. Hence the connection was made here between the "historical" Jesus from BEFORE Christianity, as he appears in the Thomas Gospel, and the very modern teaching of the Course, which makes it very clear that Jesus is its source. 
• My own book, Closing the Circle, explores Pursah's version of the Thomas gospel, and its title reflects the notion that Gary's work "closes the circle" from the pre-Christian Jesus of Thomas, to the modern teaching ascribed to him, A Course in Miracles. Once you can see that connection, Christianity is simply the religion Paul founded, and named after Jesus, but it is his interpretation of the meaning of Jesus and his teaching.
• As a side note, in recent years we have also seen the publication of a facsimile edition of Thomas Jefferson's The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, which was alluded to in Gary's books, with a prediction that it would be entering the main stream in the near future. This "Jefferson Bible," as it is popularly referred to, is interesting, because Jefferson made his selection of Jesus quotes from the canonical gospels, by trying to eliminate any editorializing and focusing exclusively on the quotations, and dropping those that he did not like. One way or another Jefferson's selection shows a remarkable overlap with the Thomas gospel, even while it was produced 125 years before the discovery of the major manuscript at Nag Hammadi. 

The Connection of the Thomas gospel and A Course In Miracles

If the foreground of Gary's books, the story line, is Gary's life story and especially his adventures in learning the Course with mentoring by Arten and Pursah--his ascended master-teachers--the content of the story is simply universal, about how we learn the Course. The background is provided by the historical perspective of Jesus then and now, with the important distinction that Jesus was already stripped from his Christian appearance by the things he says in the Course about how his teachings were misconstrued, and Gary's books go one step further, by referring to him as J, in an attempt to defeat the stereotypes that inevitably are associated with his name.

On a deeper level, this "then and now" perspective makes the point of the meaning of the resurrection, namely that Jesus is present to us all in the mind, in the present, and that it is his teachings which matter, not the history around him, and certainly not the theologies that were created in his name, in all flavors and variations. His teaching was and is simple, never easy to practice, because of the resistance of our ego, but always simple.

Now that the triptych of Disappearance of the Universe is complete, we have a very plausible way of understanding the context of the Thomas gospel and how it points us to the unadulterated teachings of Jesus, free of the sediment of later theology, as we learn to appreciate the inner consistency of those teachings with the Course. Most importantly, we learn how to apply them in our lives, for the Course is all about practice, practice, and more practice. 

Pursah's Idea of the Kernel of Thomas

Pursah is one of the Ascended Masters, who are the teachers to Gary Renard, with whom he has a dialogue in his books, first The Disappearance of the Universe, and Your Immortal Reality, soon to be joined by a third, Love Has Forgoten No One. In these conversations, she reveals herself as a reincarnation of the apostle Thomas, with vivid--first hand--recollection of the eponymous Gospel.

In the first book a few of the more prominent sayings in the Thomas Gospel are discussed, because they are more or less easy on the modern eye and ear. Then, in the second book, Pursah provides what amounts to a kernel of the Thomas Gospel. She essentially eliminates 44 sayings from the collection of 114 sayings that was found at Nag Hammadi, and leaves 70 as her "kernel" of the Gospel, that she considers authentic. The rest she dismisses as either hopelessly corrupted or simply added later. The ones that survive her scrutiny stay pretty much in tact, aside from some minor editorial tweaks. One of the most fascinating steps in Pursah's editorial process is the contraction of sayings 6&14, which, if you let it sink in for a while is so obvious at an intuitive level, that you'd almost have to conclude that it makes sense regardless. By implication, that editorial decision alone is testimony to Pursah's authority with the material, which is only natural if she were the author of it originally.

You could say that the seventy sayings of Pursah's Gospel of Thomas, are her account of the orginial kernel of that book as it must have existed ca 50 AD, and which made it the first of the Gospel accounts, given that Mark dated from 65 AD, Luke and Matthew from ca 75 AD, and John from 90-110 AD. There is also the internal evidence that Mark, Matthew and Luke all quote from Thomas, just as much as Matthew and Luke also quote Mark. Ergo, Thomas must have been first, even if for a long time we did not have a physical manuscript.

The inadvertent risk of anachronisms

One thing to be clear about, is that what was found in Nag Hammadi in 1945 was not a paperback saying "The Thomas Gospel." That is the same mistake as thinking that the King James Version is actually the Bible, or... that there even is such a thing as "The Bible," because the more you study it and understand where it came from, and how it was different books by different authors that were collected into this sort of orthodox anthology, well, then the monolithic notion of 'Bible' may be less useful. 

We suspected there might have been a Thomas Gospel before that manuscript was discovered in Nag Hammadi in 1945. Ancient writers had referred to one. What was found was just one handwritten manuscript, that thankfully was preserved, but ever since the 1890s we suspected there may be a Thomas Gospel, because of the Greek fragments that had been found in the manuscript at Oxyrrhynchus. Those fragments included Logia 1-7, 24, 26-33, 36-39 and some sentences from 77, besides a lot of other materials. The generally accepted date range of that material is from 130-250 AD. But since we had only bits and pieces, there might have been a few who surmised this might be another Gospel, but we did not know for sure until the discovery at Nag Hammadi. So then we had a Coptic translation, of what originally must have been a Greek manuscript that may have been more or less together ca 150 AD. 

Jesus would have spoken Aramaic. But the common written language of the day was Greek, so the Thomas Gospel in an early form may have been together ca 50 AD. That is certainly the version of events Pursah subscribes to.

A few scholars had attempted to reconstruct a notional Kernel of the Thomas Gospel, so the idea was around in scholarly circles before Gary Renard had the experiences he relates in his books. Pursah's version of 70 'core' sayings that she is willing to vouch for is essentially her representation of that kernel, based on past life recall, etc. The reason it is convincing to a careful student, is because of its inner consistency, which harmonizes well also with the teachings of A Course in Miracles, and that is the connection that Gary's books explore. It also harmonizes with Pursah's authority as being a reincarnation of the author (Thomas), with apparently perfect past-life recall. Again, if you look at her editing skills in combining Logia 6 and 14 as a matter of course, it gives me shivers up and down my spine, for it seems so natural, and the fit so perfect, yet how would you have thought of it, unless you knew something?

In short, the Thomas Gospel must have existed in some form, certainly oral, but most likely written, ca 40-50AD, and because of the Greek manuscripts we knew fairly well it existed ca. 140-150 AD in a form that was later validated by the find in Nag Hammadi. We then have a complete document from Nag Hammadi, which may go back to the Greek, or perhaps via an interim Syriac tradition. What we don't really know is when exactly and how the corruptions and additions to the 'kernel' took place, except somewhere in that time span between 40-50AD and 140-150AD, and possibly after that as well, particularly if it was translated first from Greek to Syriac and then to Coptic. But there's much we don't know in details. The only thing we can say for sure by experience, is after we live with Pursah's collection for awhile, is that the coherence of them is quite convincing, compared to the inner contradictions that are so bothersome in the collection of 114 from Nag Hammadi. And this inner experience eventually becomes our surest guide, if we practice the Course:

The ego will demand many answers that this course does not give. It does not recognize as questions the mere form of a question to which an answer is impossible. The ego may ask, "How did the impossible occur?", "To what did the impossible happen?", and may ask this in many forms. Yet there is no answer; only an experience. Seek only this, and do not let theology delay you. (ACIM:C-in.4) 

Gnosis Pure and Simple

One of the more confusing things about the Book of Thomas is that it has been associated with the gnostic religions of the 2nd century, simply because the book was found in a collection of fairly gnostic texts, and maybe because of certain themes that seemed "gnostic" to some. I have written about this issue in Closing the Circle, noting that even the word itself was at first a plain old word, indicating "knowing" versus "unknowing," with knowing signifying the kind of deep intuitive knowledge that provides total certainty, whereas the knowledge of things can only make one somewhat better informed, but provides no wisdom and no true knowledge, because theirs is inherently a partial, piecemeal view.

With A Course in Miracles as a guide,  this element of Jesus' teaching, and of perennial wisdom, really, becomes much clearer. And by going back to basics, we can untangle the Book of Thomas, and much else that Jesus said, from the colorful gnostic theologies of the second and third centuries CE, which often times go well beyond the intentions of the original teachings, and accordingly we can read it in its original sense.

What becomes clear is that to quote a Biblical tradition, "to those outside the Kingdom" it all comes in parables--we who are identified with duality, who think we are separated individuals, and outside Heaven, the Kingdom, or the Oneness of the Mind, of necessity perceive the world in those terms, and perceive individual identities around us. That is the state of unknowing, where we see others as we see ourselves, because we project the separation thought, and the realm of perception is merely designed to confirm that projection and make it real. It is when our false self sees naught but false selves, and deems that reality.

The state of knowing (knowledge in the Course) means to know ourselves to be as indeed God created us, as spirit and one with Him, which goes hand in hand with seeing the face of Christ in all our brothers, for now we recognize our true Self in everyone we meet and we operate in Love and from Love. This is the state of knowing, knowledge, gnosis.

In short, all the theological explanations of the word gnosis in the end go back to a very simple and basic concept that Jesus taught from the beginning. It is the core of a non-dualistic thought system for only in complete oneness does the concept of total certainty exist, that certainty is gnosis. The knowledge of the world deals in degrees of "certainty," but never in total certainty, and therein lies the rub. More information can reduce uncertainty, but this is a limiting function, and "certainty" can never be reached, because it is not in the perceptual domain by definition. It is not of this this time/space continuum. That is why Jesus said: My Kingdom is not of this world. Some of the Thomas Logia may now be clearer:

J said, "If your teachers say to you, 'Look, God's Divine Rule is in the sky,' then the birds will precede you, 'It's in the sea,'then the fish will precede you. Rather, God's Divine Rule is within you and you are everywhere. When you know yourself, you will be known, and you will understand that we are one. But if you don't know yourself, you live in poverty, and you are the poverty." (Logion 3)

I stood in the world and found them all drunk, and I did not find any of them thirsty. They came into the world empty, and they seek to leave the world empty. But meanwhile they are drunk. When they shake off their wine, they will open their eyes. (Logion 28)

J said, "Let one who has found the world, and has become wealthy, renounce the world." (Logion 110) 

The disciples said to him, "When will the Kingdom come?" He said, "It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Behold here,' or 'Behold there.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it." (Logion 113) 

Each one of these expresses the contrast between the world of ten thousand things, and the oneness of the Kingdom, the contrast between knowing many things, or pure knowing, gnosis. To be drunk on the knowledge of a great many things would prevent you from knowing yourself, and thus having gnosis.

ACIMExplained Interview by Ken Bok

This was a very nice interviewing experience, it flowed naturally like a dialog, and hopefully this gives people another way of looking at the book, Closing the Circle: Pursah's Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles and helps clarify the position of the book of Thomas in the overall scheme of things a bit further.





If there was anything I would have liked to have added, that might be the consideration that whereas Thomas Jefferson (and many others) certainly had a point historically in fingering Paul as having distorted the teachings of Jesus, Jesus does not take any issue with Paul, just as much as he does not take issue with Judas, because his teaching is forgiveness, not judgment. In the Course, Jesus corrects many Christian theological terms and notions and clarify what the original meaning of his teachings was, and at times he even quotes from Paul's work where he does offer more right-minded statements.

Meanwhile you can order the book here:


Meanwhile, you can find more of Ken Bok's wonderful stuff here: www.acimexplained.com and/or you can find his various video interviews on YouTube here http://www.youtube.com/acimexplained he is building up quite an awesome collection of materials on A Course in Miracles.

Saul, Paul, and how Jesus survived Christianity

How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God creates is eternal. You can indeed depart in peace because I have loved you as I loved myself. You go with my blessing and for my blessing. Hold it and share it, that it may always be ours. I place the peace of God in your heart and in your hands, to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it, and the hands are strong to give it. We cannot lose. My judgment is as strong as the wisdom of God, in Whose Heart and Hands we have our being. His quiet children are His blessed Sons. The Thoughts of God are with you. (ACIM:T-5.IV.8)

In Closing the Circle: Pursah's Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles, I paid quite a bit of attention to the issue of the transition that takes place in the traditions about Jesus, between the teachings of Jesus, of which the Thomas gospel seems to be the most authentic record, and Chrisitianity, named after him, but never 'founded' by him in any meaningful sense of the word, but merely ascribed to him by others and given his name, after his death. Because of the profound intertwining of the Jesus tradition with the orthodoxy of Chrisitianity as it solidified in the next 300 years, for a long time it was the "canonical" books of the New Testament that appeared authoritative.
Only with the re-discovery of the Thomas Gospel, once one understands the timeline of how and why it emerged before the gospels of the New Testament collection, does it become insightful where the break occurs - with the introduction of the theological foundations of Christianity, including the exceptionalism about Jesus as God's only son, to the exclusion of the rest of the sonship as 'adopted sons,' the interpretation of the crucifixion, resurrection (bodily, as Paul assures us), the second coming (the puzzling idea of his returning to the world he claimed to have overcome), the Eucharist etc. All of these concepts were features of Pauline Christianity, and there were many other schools of would-be Christian thought which did not have them, or had entirely different notions. Among other things there were many vocal debates about the idea that the moment of the resurrection was really the moment of the Heavens opening up in the story of the baptism in the River Jordan, under John the Baptist. That particular story would be closer to what is reflected in the Course today. The fact is Pauline Christianity won, because it rendered itself palatable to Caesar, and as a result eventually what we now regard as Roman Catholicism. The fact that it was most successful in stamping out other views, and gained the upper hand politically is no recommendation.

After those original debates died down, Christianity went through a consolidation phase, and then a splintering again. With Vatican II the most obvious attempts at mind control were starting to be relinquished, allowing such an oxymoron as Catholic Bible Scholars, or in general Catholic Bible Studies to exist, just when the first serious translations of the Thomas Gospel began to gain currency, while at another place on the planet the dictation of A Course in Miracles got under way.
Since the time of the enlightenment, thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson in the US had become suspicious of the Pauline material, and smelled a rat. Jefferson likened his efforts to cull Jesus' teachings out of the Biblical materials to salvaging 'pearls' from a pile of 'manure.' Paul he called a 'dupe' and a 'fraud.' This was all very perceptive, but name calling does not solve anything. Jefferson's positive contribution, which was only published posthumously as the 'Jefferson Bible' -- he had called it The Life and Morals of Jezus of Nazareth -- however is a powerful turning point and came very close to anticipating the re-discovery of the Thomas Gospel almost 125 years later.

The interesting thing about A Course in Miracles no doubt is that in it Jesus quotes some of Paul's inspired writing on numerous occasions, while at the same time forcefully correcting the fundamental constructs of the Christian theology of which Paul was the principal architect. In other words, the Course shows also in that regard, what forgiveness means -- the mistakes and the messes are cleaned up and corrected, and only the inspired, 'loving' thoughts are remembered. To that extent then it is never useful to pursue this type of critical scholarship of the tradition, unless it also helps us to see how we all make the mistakes Paul made, and forgive him and ourselves in the same breath. Here, the text of the Course is our guide, as the opening quote shows.