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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

JESUS, A NO NONSENSE GUY.

Now I am not trying to evangelise anybody to any particular brand of fundamentalism nor convince anyone about the historical existence of the man whose name has be bandied about more than all others put together, but I would like to analyse what we have been told and what we have been kept in the dark about.
Firstly let's look at the contextual history of the period he is said to have been born in. The Greeks had set the stage with Alexander’s great rampage through long standing Eastern cultures, murdering, raping and generally pillaging their way through ancient cities, rearranging their lives, languages and capital naming programs. They then went on to acquire the rights to claim they created the architecture, political ideas and philosophies of the then known world.
The big one, that went on to affect our story, was the translation of the Hebrew Sacred Texts into the Septuagint, a Greek language version of the Old Testament. This work was mainly done by Maccabean Hebrew scholars working in Egypt’s Alexandria library system under the eyes of the ruling class Ptolemy’s. No other single act could possibly have done more to set the stage for the resurgence of the concept that a messiah was to be born at Bethlehem and be crucified for the salvation of the believers of that ideal.
Needless to say, many Greek speaking peoples converted to Judaism in the hope that they would be partakers of the promised New Zion. So by the time Julius Caesar had almost finished his rampage around the Mediterranean and was favouring joining with the Ptolemy’s to rule the world, Jerusalem became the focus of attention. Up until then the rundown backwater mountain rebel base had been overlooked. With Cleopatra’s connections into the Parthian controlled Aramaic speaking Palestine, the then modern cities of Caesarea and Jerusalem sprung into existence and with her new general Mark Antony by her side and Herod’s Sadducees living well under their protection, they began their campaign for world domination. But as history records, the plan began to unravel with their defeat at Actium.
The Octavian led Romans then moved in to occupy Jerusalem and to settle down what was left of the defeated remains of J.C’s, Cleo’s, Mark Antony’s and Herod the now Great’s shattered followers. Amazingly enough they all claimed to be Jewish. (oh, how history repeats itself). Soon Mary was pregnant and couldn’t name the father and Cleopatra’s mystery cult of Virgin’s didn’t have a benefactor. So our famous donkey led trio, high tail it out of the area and lay low in Egypt while our hero grows into the well educated candidate for King of the Jews.
While Jesus was studying all the teachings of the Mystery Cults as well as the Talmud and the Septuagint: Octavian, now Caesar Augustus, and Herod the Great die. This opened the flood gate for all the illegitimate children of the ex-rules to begin arguing over who was going to be the next Great leader. Herod Archelaus was the first to be installed but didn’t last long and young Tiberius inherited Rome, so by the time Jesus began his run for the job Archelaus was dead and Tiberius, in exile. Herod Antipas and his mate Caligula were running the show and what a mess they were making of it. Saul, the leader of the Sadducees (later Paul author of the New Testament), had thrown his hat into the ring with a direct challenge to Jesus and his Esseanes faction.
This all tells a vastly different story to the one we have been fed down the years and it’s enough for me to ignore the politics of it all and look directly at the teachings of Jesus as an enlightened man of his time. We have in the Q documents an independent, reliable source of what those teachings were because they are backed up with actual fragments of notes that were taken while he was speaking to the masses on the Mount and in the Plains. So independently of Churches, factions and “learned scholars” we can assess him and what he taught for ourselves. If you don’t have a copy of these, any accepted translation of the sermon on the mount is a good guide.(Mathew: 5-8)
Up front I think it is safe to say he was anti-Fascist, anti-establishment, peace loving advocate for the poor and the down and out. His solid body of work indicates he was an intelligent, articulate, moral campaigner for the rights of women and children to live in a world that isn’t dominated by Fundamentalists who would hold the letter of the law over their heads like a sword to slay anyone who disagrees with their interpretation. His no nonsense style convinces me he was a man who was prepared to put his money where his mouth was and that he didn’t suffer hypocrites. I gather his style of government would have been an Ecumenical one incorporating all factions concerned and would include women and gays. He was a man of the people, ready to stick it to the powers that be, in an attempt to attain rights for the underprivileged and marginalized in the mix.
Unfortunately, He was betrayed by all those who went on to become players in the debacle that followed his crucifixion and would have no more agreed to what was done in his name than He would have condoned or endorsed the church authorities of His day. In an attempt to not turn this into a sermon or a long boring story, the point of it is to encourage those who would like to study the mans work without the associated stigma of being a religious nutcase and to call those who have misinterpreted the mans work, into a formula for oppressing those who don’t buy it, to rethink what it is they are preaching.
So rather than dismiss Jesus as a future irrelevance or go on to continue using His name in vain, please consider this a plea for common sense and think well of the man who put his life on the line, when he could of just cashed in like the rest. Don’t ride off His teachings anymore than you would Buddha's or Gandhi’s or John Lennon’s and when you are really peeved at the way Christian’s go about their business don’t blame Him , just think of Jesus, a no nonsense guy.

1 comment:

WWW said...

good "crap" hey!