timeless roamer
The Force is Strong With This One
Anthony said:
Nice, thanks for putting this up!
Session 7 September 2013
- Thread starter Laura
- Start date
Nice, thanks for putting this up!
l apprenti de forgeron
The Living Force
Interesting. For my part I will be alert to hear any news about it.Anthony said:
Thanks for the videos, Anthony.
l apprenti de forgeron
The Living Force
Perhaps related to all these changes, I wonder if anyone else feels like the days are becoming more "short". I've talked to some friends, and I think it's not just mine subjectivity. It seems as if the days fly. And what happens is that, at the same time, I have more energy than ever. So it is difficult to "fit" more energy in days that seem shorter. Energy increase may be due to the sum of the change in diet and do EE and also be more involved with the activities of the forum. I think I will make more intensive physical exercises, so gets sleepy at night.Laura said:
I also wonder if we hurt ourselves believing in "the lord" of linear time. Given that maybe "Learning Something New Reduces Inflammation and Enhances Cognition" http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,32394.0.html
So, maybe believing lies can increase inflammation? (Or harms the health not only of the physical body).
l apprenti de forgeron
The Living Force
Also, if the illusion of linear time is caused by a genetic change or mutation, it is difficult to undo. But, and this is also subjective, I think that doing EE somehow time passes slower. Even sometimes in meditation, it really seems that time is completely without "essence" as something clearly false.
caballero reyes
The Living Force
Doubts, inaccuracies, omissions and contradictions about Jesus Christ and Caesar, still producing activities that make people reach consciousness: the eagerness to search and the challenges, key issues for human progress. Thanks Laura and the crew for the session.
clerck de bonk
Dagobah Resident
Pierrrr said:
And? Seems like more noise from Pierrr...U
Ariadna
Jedi Master
Prometeo said:
Today I would say yes. Sometimes at the end of the day I feel as if a roller had passed over me. Sometimes little things you're draining, proxies people, often in a subtle and persistent ways, other more abrupt. For example, a former partner who fails alimony for three years, he remembers his son when family parties or social events. Other examples could draw, but I think this is not the time to tell. Just say that sometimes when I'm calmer and more open understanding or being aware of something, it seems that the attack appears for the most sensitive spot.
Leòmhann
Jedi Master
Yes, thank you for sharing, Chateau crew, and for the strong push (along with the rigorous work) to deploy this session via transcript to all of us. 
MK Scarlett, interesting that you put this question out about Spartacus, because I had the same thought the last couple of days after finally completing the viewing of 3 seasons (excluding the prequel episodes) of the Starz series on Spartacus [ _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus_%28Starz_television_series%29 ] ... not sure how historically accurate this series is, but it was, IMHO, quite good, albeit extremely realistic (lots of violence, blood, profanity, sexuality).
If it's anywhere near accurate, then Gaius Julius may have, in his dealings with Spartacus and the slave war, actually picked up many of his virtues (forgiveness, mercifulness, compassion, charity, etc) during this early stage in his life and military career, since Spartacus, at least in this series' portrayal of him, is depicted as being not only a tenacious, expert fighter, but also a brilliant strategist, tactician, and a genuine, living embodiment of inspiration to his people (one who was similarly wise, and, at times, when the situation called for it, exhibited patience, compassion, mercifulness, etc).
Although I have listened to the audio version of all Caesar's Commentaries (really excellent, enlightening, by the way), I don't recall his having recounted anything pertaining to his involvement in the slave rebellion/war.
I'll need to research this further, but perhaps someone has come across this info already, or maybe this has been posted elsewhere?
Thanks again, Laura and crew ~ thank you, MKS !! :)
MK Scarlett said:Laura said:
I do not know exactly why, but and because I lately watched the Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus... Could Spartacus have been this rebel fighter against Rome?
Edit: Spelling.
MK Scarlett, interesting that you put this question out about Spartacus, because I had the same thought the last couple of days after finally completing the viewing of 3 seasons (excluding the prequel episodes) of the Starz series on Spartacus [ _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus_%28Starz_television_series%29 ] ... not sure how historically accurate this series is, but it was, IMHO, quite good, albeit extremely realistic (lots of violence, blood, profanity, sexuality).
If it's anywhere near accurate, then Gaius Julius may have, in his dealings with Spartacus and the slave war, actually picked up many of his virtues (forgiveness, mercifulness, compassion, charity, etc) during this early stage in his life and military career, since Spartacus, at least in this series' portrayal of him, is depicted as being not only a tenacious, expert fighter, but also a brilliant strategist, tactician, and a genuine, living embodiment of inspiration to his people (one who was similarly wise, and, at times, when the situation called for it, exhibited patience, compassion, mercifulness, etc).
Although I have listened to the audio version of all Caesar's Commentaries (really excellent, enlightening, by the way), I don't recall his having recounted anything pertaining to his involvement in the slave rebellion/war.
I'll need to research this further, but perhaps someone has come across this info already, or maybe this has been posted elsewhere?
Thanks again, Laura and crew ~ thank you, MKS !! :)
Thanks to all concerned for the transcript.
1. Josephus the 'father' of Jesus?
What if Josephus and his scribal studio in Rome were the instrument of the 'Greek enforcers' ascribed by the Cs as the true authors of the gospels?
In Rome he ran a scriptorium, with translators and copyists and secretaries who will have contributed to the authorial process, rather like modern speech writers. He is known to have publicised his work with the guile of a modern PR man. Using the Roman postal service he ensured copies of his works were sent to VIPs and DMs throughout the empire.
Marketeer. Con man. Versatile writer. Scholar and historian of the age. As a noble-born Jew from a line of priests who lived under the protection of the Flavian ruling house he had a finger on every pulse. Possessed of a publishing business at the nerve centre of the Roman empire.
The term 'Greek enforcers' has a peculiar ring (as provocative as 'Josephus the "father" of Jesus'). Greek? Rome was the dominant power - what position were any Greeks in to enforce, or dictate to the powers of that era? (Bearing in mind that any epochal scheme of this nature will be 4-D conceived and executed, using nefarious arts inaccessible to comprehension by 3-D mental apparati) were these Greeks a hidden cosmopolitan elite, who had the evil vision and the finance, and used Josephus as the man with the talent, flair, experience, business acumen to get the job done?
Stitching together bits and pieces of historical event, elements of imagination and biographical data (of a rebel, as per the transcript?) to create the fictional biography of a man supposed to have lived and died in Palestine, from roughly 7 BC to AD 31; following the disinfo formula - truth with falsehood - to give spiritual backbone to the Life, incorporating the wisdom sayings of a great teacher who lived earlier and were still current; was Josephus' manipulative work an original lost gospel, (Q, or similar??) supported by a variety of epistles, gospel notes, which became the four gospels, tailored to different market requirements at different corners of the empire, catching on to become the huge religious success that has survived into our modern era?
Josephus the 'father' of Jesus?
(Although famously, or notoriously, there is a stunning absence of description of Jesus by this 'meticulous chronicler' of first century Palestine - the omission is seen as glaring, and problematic - Josephus has sometimes been called 'the Fifth Evangelist' on account of one locus classicus where he does appear to mention a 'Chrestus', brother of James. Outside the four gospels themselves this passage was considered to provide the greatest external verification of Jesus' physical existence. Closer in time and less assailable than the tiny probable mentions in Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, the Talmud. Thus the fifth evangelist accolade: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John - and Josephus. Unfortunately, the handful of words in this pericope, the Testimonium Flavianum, picked over in a hundred monographs in the last century alone, are found to be a pot pourri of authorial doctoring by later copyists, albeit probably fleshed on the bare bones of some sort of original statement by Josephus. The interpolators seem to have been Christian apologists of one hue or another. The name of Eusebius comes up in this connection.
Hardly worth the title, 'Fifth Evangelist'. And certainly the Testimonium Flavianum must be ruled out as the source of the title of '"Father" of Jesus'?)
The transcript gives a knotty puzzle, involving: a rebel fighter against Rome…incorporated in a very small way into the life of Julius Caesar…but not somebody who went through history or is recorded in any way…but of whom there are some clues in Josephus, the "father" of Jesus.
2. A rebel fighter as part of the composite fictional Jesus ?
Back in the rapids of the thread, someone mentioned Ralph Ellis. This author provides a model of Jesus based on a rebel who seems to have had a basis in historical fact.
(Ralph Ellis is the Sherlock Holmes of classical mysteries. He's a thrill a page as he solves one mystery after another. Who were Adam and Eve? Akhenaten and Nefertiti, of course. How did the Hebrews manage to wander for 40 years in the enclosed area of the Sinai peninsula - they didn't: they were circumambulating the Great Pyramid, as Muslims walk around the Ka'aba at Mecca today. Ever wondered about that legend about Jesus visiting Glastonbury? Who the Teacher of Righteousness was? Whether there was a Crucifixion? He will not disappoint. His original insights are always backed by wide-ranging study and cogent, and unstintingly maverick reasoning. An independent non-academic who enjoys shooting from the hip at any mystery in sight.)
Partially relevant here is another of Ellis's historical potshots, the idea that Josephus was also Saul of Tarsus, the apostle St Paul. According to Ellis this same individual was also, for good measure, that shadowy, crucial figure of Jewish legend, Johanan Ben Zakkai, who founded the academy at Jamnia and retrieved the ancient traditions of Judaism from the wreckage of Jewish life at a time when they might have been lost. [Insert counterfactual here.] These reforms shaped the foundations of the rabbinical Judaism we enjoy today...
So it is, that Ellis has the mercurial, ubiquitous Josephus as the founder of not one major world religion, but two!
Ellis's Josephus-Paul is depicted as an inspired, unscrupulous huckster who founded Christianity as an out-and-out business enterprise. (Twenty centuries later, Ron Hubbard: 'If you want to get really rich, invent a religion.') According to Josef Kastein (Reed's literary 'adversary') Paul is as near to being the founder of a religion as any man who has ever lived. 'With rare power and a phenomenally sure instinct he recognised and used those elements in Judaism and paganism which were either capable of fusion or refractory to it.' Importantly, the apostasising, proselytising Jew from Tarsus burnt his boats to his native religion by abolishing the requirement for the 'ceremony' of circumcision in order to open the floodgates to a vast new marketing opportunity: the world of the gentiles. (Judaism had always found converts around the world of the Middle East.) His new-look, quasi-Judaic faith (Ellis: 'Simple Judaism') was turbo-boosted and streamlined with attractive elements to establish divine provenance for the new religion's apocryphal leader. The rebel from Galilee was deified: auspicious virgin birth, fulfilment of ancient prophesy, supernatural miracles, culminating in three days of triumphant stomping around after the event of medical death! Roll up! Whatever floats your boat!
In the story according to Ellis, Josephus-Paul devoted years (missing in the official Josephus biographies) to building his new fledgling religion. A human dynamo criss-crossing the Mediterranean, tossing off letters, and harvesting the contributions of those flocking away from an outmoded and out-of-touch paganism.
Now, whether or not Josephus actually was Paul (I don't buy it myself, although the reconstruction is plenty flamboyant, and the parallelisms between the two are striking*) we have from Ellis the model of a Josephus who consciously forges the Christian religion from a few available materials to successfully catch the sweet spot of the age. As for Jesus himself, the star of the new faith, Ellis argues that the real historical Jesus IS mentioned by Josephus in his histories, repeatedly, and is used by Josephus in the constructed Jesus that he creates in his new faith: overlooked by scholars through the centuries because of the title in his name, he resides in the form of a major rebel to Rome, Jesus of Gamala, or Jesus of Tiberias.
Josephus goes on to clash with Jesus (of Gamala), who goes on to become Paul-Josephus' great adversary. Taking life under Ellis's inspired pen an alternative Jesus emerges. Supported by a cross-referencing welter of textual detail from Josephus's works, following a mazy trail the paths of Josephus and Jesus of Gamala cross down through the years, even after Jesus' non-fatal crucifixion in AD 72.
(Ellis would not be Ellis if he didn't have this Jesus living in Chester until 101 AD. King Arthur and the 12 Knights of the Round Table.)
Jesus the rebel of the Cs' transcript - the Jesus of Gamala mentioned in Josephus's work?
Josephus the '"father' of Jesus'?
The answer might depend what the Cs mean by 'clues' given by Josephus. Clues given by words, sentences, paragraphs, or winks to the wise?
(From notes I made at the time; it was some years ago I read a few of his books)
SOME EXAMPLES OF ELLIS'S STYLE
Any name = any name = any person, often as not via a hypercorism, or place derivation, or title.
Bannus = Barnabas! Bannus was Josephus' hermit tutor, Barnabas was Paul's travelling companion. When Josephus says that he is tutored by Bannus, he actually means that he was on a grand mission across the Mediterranean with Barnabas. The name was changed by a pious monk in the early centuries AD.
A typical Ellis bombshell. Paul was the instigator of the stoning of James, brother of Jesus.(Known that as Saul he was the persecutor of the Church of Jesus and James, but not that he was the murderer of James.) Date not the thirties, but the sixties, indicating that Paul was not born c. AD 10… [Possible circular logic.] James's trial and stoning get a short mention in Antiquities. Indicates AD 62 as the date (during the term of Albinus, Roman procurator after the death of Festus.) Stephen = James, according to Eisenman. ('They threw their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul').
* SAUL/PAUL AS JOSEPHUS: PARALLELISMS:
Both identify strongly as Jews raised in Jerusalem; both raised as a Pharisee; both become rabbis; both cooperated with the Romans against their countrymen, persecuting and imprisoning them (needs qualifying); both have important visions, telling them the error of their ways; the two speak both Greek and Hebrew (to different extents; very unclear); Jews want to kill both; both captured, saved and protected by Roman custody ('It is thought that Saul's third trial and subsequent shipment to Rome occurred in about AD 62. Josephus says he did the same in his 26th year, or AD 63. Note how even the official dates of the two different protagonists tally.' The purpose of the visit tallies: the meeting with Poppaea.); both were associated by the Romans with riots in Caesarea; both know about Bernice; both sail to Rome; both shipwrecked, have to swim for their lives, are saved, taken on another ship to Puteoli; both write many letters to communities around Europe; Acts end (just before start of Jewish rebellion) where Josephus begins; (RE has Josephus /Saul trying to grab the vacant disciple's slot after Judas's suicide; post-conversion Paul would have been an obvious candidate?)
According to Ellis, Josephus wrote Acts: Saul boasting in Acts (as Josephus is also wont to do):
I was flogged three times;
I was stoned once;
I was shipwrecked three times;
I have spent a night and a day in the deep.
I have been in travels often, in dangers of rivers, in dangers of robbers, dangers from my race, in dangers from the nations, in dangers on the sea, in dangers among false brothers, in hardship and toil, often in watchings, in hunger and thirst, often in fastings, in cold and nakedness.
RE advances the dates of Paul by 30 years or so, to match those more commonly ascribed to Josephus (c. 35 - c. 100).
'The Acts of the Apostles are important as the texts that detail the life and times of Saul-Paul. Josephus' accounts of the historical record usually have an accuracy of plus or minus a few years. The Acts of the Apostles, on the other hand, contains no indisputable time-line pegs at all.'
ELLIS' JESUS
(I see from Amazon that he has a newly published book on Jesus. He may have rethought some of these positions.)
RE identifies a problem with early Christian writers like Ignatius, Origen, Clement, Irenaeus and Eusebius: 'These theologians wrote copiously about the early Church and its followers and martyrs, but there is generally one character who is missing from their exhaustive accounts - Jesus himself. Why?'
Because: his true life differed greatly from the one that Saul had manufactured and sold to the world. They could find him in the historical record but there was no way that they could reveal it to the general public. Crazily, might fit the Cs tantalising teaser in this transcript: part of the original for the composite model of Jesus was a rebel against Rome, not identified in the public record, but clues are given by Josephus?
Jesus (of Gamala) not a poor man of the people, but rich aristocrat, like Mary Magdalene. Jesus not Gandhi, but Che Guevara. 'Sell your cloak to buy a sword.' Portrayed as a lowly and persecuted hero figure, modest and browbeaten. But was rich, powerful, with castles and a private army. Of royal Egyptian lineage. An ultranationalist and racist. Gluttonous and a wine-bibber.
RE always looking for Egyptian derivations: Jesus practiced incest for consanguinity purposes: Mary Magdalene his sister, Martha possibly another. Egyptian practice, surprisingly common in both the New Testament and The Jewish War.
RE unable to resist a big new story: Jesus and his Galilean sect sought to bring war to the east, in order that he might take the throne of Syria-Judaea and thence the throne of Rome itself. Emperor Jesus.
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS ADDUCED IN SUPPORT
The historical players of the Jewish War linked to the main players of the Dead Sea Scrolls (RE controversially dates the Qumran scrolls to the first century).
Josephus confronted en route to Damascus by Jesus. Saul's expedition was mounted against certain members of the Essene sect, not the city of Damascus in Syria. Acts: Saul was looking to arrest people from The Way (not the road to Damascus).
Jesus was the Essenes' Teacher of Righteousness, Josephus was the Spouter of Lies: the 'Windbag' who provided a 'service of vanity' and a 'worthless service' that 'poured out wind.'
Cites Eisenman as in no doubt of a first century heritage for the scrolls. Eisenman gives page after page of doctrinal, epigraphic and historical reasons. 'It should be appreciated that an allusion to "the last priests of Jerusalem" makes no sense anytime before the destruction of the Temple in AD 70.' The Kittim must refer to a post-Julius Caesar era, (ie imperial) when the Romans were the rulers of the world. The Habbakuk pesher and others are definitely describing events from the Jewish War of AD 68-70. RE excoriates Eisenman for not going the whole hog, deeming James the safer bet for Teacher of Righteousness, when James died in 62 or 66! To choose Jesus would be to prove that Jesus was alive in AD 70!
RE claims Josephus was the hidden hand removing real historical or social information from the Nag Hammadi gospels, to the point where this is almost entirely missing. He is the original compiler of many of these texts.
Missing history, missing characters.
1. Josephus the 'father' of Jesus?
What if Josephus and his scribal studio in Rome were the instrument of the 'Greek enforcers' ascribed by the Cs as the true authors of the gospels?
In Rome he ran a scriptorium, with translators and copyists and secretaries who will have contributed to the authorial process, rather like modern speech writers. He is known to have publicised his work with the guile of a modern PR man. Using the Roman postal service he ensured copies of his works were sent to VIPs and DMs throughout the empire.
Marketeer. Con man. Versatile writer. Scholar and historian of the age. As a noble-born Jew from a line of priests who lived under the protection of the Flavian ruling house he had a finger on every pulse. Possessed of a publishing business at the nerve centre of the Roman empire.
The term 'Greek enforcers' has a peculiar ring (as provocative as 'Josephus the "father" of Jesus'). Greek? Rome was the dominant power - what position were any Greeks in to enforce, or dictate to the powers of that era? (Bearing in mind that any epochal scheme of this nature will be 4-D conceived and executed, using nefarious arts inaccessible to comprehension by 3-D mental apparati) were these Greeks a hidden cosmopolitan elite, who had the evil vision and the finance, and used Josephus as the man with the talent, flair, experience, business acumen to get the job done?
Stitching together bits and pieces of historical event, elements of imagination and biographical data (of a rebel, as per the transcript?) to create the fictional biography of a man supposed to have lived and died in Palestine, from roughly 7 BC to AD 31; following the disinfo formula - truth with falsehood - to give spiritual backbone to the Life, incorporating the wisdom sayings of a great teacher who lived earlier and were still current; was Josephus' manipulative work an original lost gospel, (Q, or similar??) supported by a variety of epistles, gospel notes, which became the four gospels, tailored to different market requirements at different corners of the empire, catching on to become the huge religious success that has survived into our modern era?
Josephus the 'father' of Jesus?
(Although famously, or notoriously, there is a stunning absence of description of Jesus by this 'meticulous chronicler' of first century Palestine - the omission is seen as glaring, and problematic - Josephus has sometimes been called 'the Fifth Evangelist' on account of one locus classicus where he does appear to mention a 'Chrestus', brother of James. Outside the four gospels themselves this passage was considered to provide the greatest external verification of Jesus' physical existence. Closer in time and less assailable than the tiny probable mentions in Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, the Talmud. Thus the fifth evangelist accolade: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John - and Josephus. Unfortunately, the handful of words in this pericope, the Testimonium Flavianum, picked over in a hundred monographs in the last century alone, are found to be a pot pourri of authorial doctoring by later copyists, albeit probably fleshed on the bare bones of some sort of original statement by Josephus. The interpolators seem to have been Christian apologists of one hue or another. The name of Eusebius comes up in this connection.
Hardly worth the title, 'Fifth Evangelist'. And certainly the Testimonium Flavianum must be ruled out as the source of the title of '"Father" of Jesus'?)
The transcript gives a knotty puzzle, involving: a rebel fighter against Rome…incorporated in a very small way into the life of Julius Caesar…but not somebody who went through history or is recorded in any way…but of whom there are some clues in Josephus, the "father" of Jesus.
2. A rebel fighter as part of the composite fictional Jesus ?
Back in the rapids of the thread, someone mentioned Ralph Ellis. This author provides a model of Jesus based on a rebel who seems to have had a basis in historical fact.
(Ralph Ellis is the Sherlock Holmes of classical mysteries. He's a thrill a page as he solves one mystery after another. Who were Adam and Eve? Akhenaten and Nefertiti, of course. How did the Hebrews manage to wander for 40 years in the enclosed area of the Sinai peninsula - they didn't: they were circumambulating the Great Pyramid, as Muslims walk around the Ka'aba at Mecca today. Ever wondered about that legend about Jesus visiting Glastonbury? Who the Teacher of Righteousness was? Whether there was a Crucifixion? He will not disappoint. His original insights are always backed by wide-ranging study and cogent, and unstintingly maverick reasoning. An independent non-academic who enjoys shooting from the hip at any mystery in sight.)
Partially relevant here is another of Ellis's historical potshots, the idea that Josephus was also Saul of Tarsus, the apostle St Paul. According to Ellis this same individual was also, for good measure, that shadowy, crucial figure of Jewish legend, Johanan Ben Zakkai, who founded the academy at Jamnia and retrieved the ancient traditions of Judaism from the wreckage of Jewish life at a time when they might have been lost. [Insert counterfactual here.] These reforms shaped the foundations of the rabbinical Judaism we enjoy today...
So it is, that Ellis has the mercurial, ubiquitous Josephus as the founder of not one major world religion, but two!
Ellis's Josephus-Paul is depicted as an inspired, unscrupulous huckster who founded Christianity as an out-and-out business enterprise. (Twenty centuries later, Ron Hubbard: 'If you want to get really rich, invent a religion.') According to Josef Kastein (Reed's literary 'adversary') Paul is as near to being the founder of a religion as any man who has ever lived. 'With rare power and a phenomenally sure instinct he recognised and used those elements in Judaism and paganism which were either capable of fusion or refractory to it.' Importantly, the apostasising, proselytising Jew from Tarsus burnt his boats to his native religion by abolishing the requirement for the 'ceremony' of circumcision in order to open the floodgates to a vast new marketing opportunity: the world of the gentiles. (Judaism had always found converts around the world of the Middle East.) His new-look, quasi-Judaic faith (Ellis: 'Simple Judaism') was turbo-boosted and streamlined with attractive elements to establish divine provenance for the new religion's apocryphal leader. The rebel from Galilee was deified: auspicious virgin birth, fulfilment of ancient prophesy, supernatural miracles, culminating in three days of triumphant stomping around after the event of medical death! Roll up! Whatever floats your boat!
In the story according to Ellis, Josephus-Paul devoted years (missing in the official Josephus biographies) to building his new fledgling religion. A human dynamo criss-crossing the Mediterranean, tossing off letters, and harvesting the contributions of those flocking away from an outmoded and out-of-touch paganism.
Now, whether or not Josephus actually was Paul (I don't buy it myself, although the reconstruction is plenty flamboyant, and the parallelisms between the two are striking*) we have from Ellis the model of a Josephus who consciously forges the Christian religion from a few available materials to successfully catch the sweet spot of the age. As for Jesus himself, the star of the new faith, Ellis argues that the real historical Jesus IS mentioned by Josephus in his histories, repeatedly, and is used by Josephus in the constructed Jesus that he creates in his new faith: overlooked by scholars through the centuries because of the title in his name, he resides in the form of a major rebel to Rome, Jesus of Gamala, or Jesus of Tiberias.
Ralph Ellis said:
Josephus goes on to clash with Jesus (of Gamala), who goes on to become Paul-Josephus' great adversary. Taking life under Ellis's inspired pen an alternative Jesus emerges. Supported by a cross-referencing welter of textual detail from Josephus's works, following a mazy trail the paths of Josephus and Jesus of Gamala cross down through the years, even after Jesus' non-fatal crucifixion in AD 72.
(Ellis would not be Ellis if he didn't have this Jesus living in Chester until 101 AD. King Arthur and the 12 Knights of the Round Table.)
Jesus the rebel of the Cs' transcript - the Jesus of Gamala mentioned in Josephus's work?
Josephus the '"father' of Jesus'?
The answer might depend what the Cs mean by 'clues' given by Josephus. Clues given by words, sentences, paragraphs, or winks to the wise?
(From notes I made at the time; it was some years ago I read a few of his books)
SOME EXAMPLES OF ELLIS'S STYLE
Any name = any name = any person, often as not via a hypercorism, or place derivation, or title.
Bannus = Barnabas! Bannus was Josephus' hermit tutor, Barnabas was Paul's travelling companion. When Josephus says that he is tutored by Bannus, he actually means that he was on a grand mission across the Mediterranean with Barnabas. The name was changed by a pious monk in the early centuries AD.
A typical Ellis bombshell. Paul was the instigator of the stoning of James, brother of Jesus.(Known that as Saul he was the persecutor of the Church of Jesus and James, but not that he was the murderer of James.) Date not the thirties, but the sixties, indicating that Paul was not born c. AD 10… [Possible circular logic.] James's trial and stoning get a short mention in Antiquities. Indicates AD 62 as the date (during the term of Albinus, Roman procurator after the death of Festus.) Stephen = James, according to Eisenman. ('They threw their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul').
* SAUL/PAUL AS JOSEPHUS: PARALLELISMS:
Both identify strongly as Jews raised in Jerusalem; both raised as a Pharisee; both become rabbis; both cooperated with the Romans against their countrymen, persecuting and imprisoning them (needs qualifying); both have important visions, telling them the error of their ways; the two speak both Greek and Hebrew (to different extents; very unclear); Jews want to kill both; both captured, saved and protected by Roman custody ('It is thought that Saul's third trial and subsequent shipment to Rome occurred in about AD 62. Josephus says he did the same in his 26th year, or AD 63. Note how even the official dates of the two different protagonists tally.' The purpose of the visit tallies: the meeting with Poppaea.); both were associated by the Romans with riots in Caesarea; both know about Bernice; both sail to Rome; both shipwrecked, have to swim for their lives, are saved, taken on another ship to Puteoli; both write many letters to communities around Europe; Acts end (just before start of Jewish rebellion) where Josephus begins; (RE has Josephus /Saul trying to grab the vacant disciple's slot after Judas's suicide; post-conversion Paul would have been an obvious candidate?)
According to Ellis, Josephus wrote Acts: Saul boasting in Acts (as Josephus is also wont to do):
I was flogged three times;
I was stoned once;
I was shipwrecked three times;
I have spent a night and a day in the deep.
I have been in travels often, in dangers of rivers, in dangers of robbers, dangers from my race, in dangers from the nations, in dangers on the sea, in dangers among false brothers, in hardship and toil, often in watchings, in hunger and thirst, often in fastings, in cold and nakedness.
RE advances the dates of Paul by 30 years or so, to match those more commonly ascribed to Josephus (c. 35 - c. 100).
'The Acts of the Apostles are important as the texts that detail the life and times of Saul-Paul. Josephus' accounts of the historical record usually have an accuracy of plus or minus a few years. The Acts of the Apostles, on the other hand, contains no indisputable time-line pegs at all.'
ELLIS' JESUS
(I see from Amazon that he has a newly published book on Jesus. He may have rethought some of these positions.)
RE identifies a problem with early Christian writers like Ignatius, Origen, Clement, Irenaeus and Eusebius: 'These theologians wrote copiously about the early Church and its followers and martyrs, but there is generally one character who is missing from their exhaustive accounts - Jesus himself. Why?'
Because: his true life differed greatly from the one that Saul had manufactured and sold to the world. They could find him in the historical record but there was no way that they could reveal it to the general public. Crazily, might fit the Cs tantalising teaser in this transcript: part of the original for the composite model of Jesus was a rebel against Rome, not identified in the public record, but clues are given by Josephus?
Jesus (of Gamala) not a poor man of the people, but rich aristocrat, like Mary Magdalene. Jesus not Gandhi, but Che Guevara. 'Sell your cloak to buy a sword.' Portrayed as a lowly and persecuted hero figure, modest and browbeaten. But was rich, powerful, with castles and a private army. Of royal Egyptian lineage. An ultranationalist and racist. Gluttonous and a wine-bibber.
RE always looking for Egyptian derivations: Jesus practiced incest for consanguinity purposes: Mary Magdalene his sister, Martha possibly another. Egyptian practice, surprisingly common in both the New Testament and The Jewish War.
RE unable to resist a big new story: Jesus and his Galilean sect sought to bring war to the east, in order that he might take the throne of Syria-Judaea and thence the throne of Rome itself. Emperor Jesus.
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS ADDUCED IN SUPPORT
The historical players of the Jewish War linked to the main players of the Dead Sea Scrolls (RE controversially dates the Qumran scrolls to the first century).
Josephus confronted en route to Damascus by Jesus. Saul's expedition was mounted against certain members of the Essene sect, not the city of Damascus in Syria. Acts: Saul was looking to arrest people from The Way (not the road to Damascus).
Jesus was the Essenes' Teacher of Righteousness, Josephus was the Spouter of Lies: the 'Windbag' who provided a 'service of vanity' and a 'worthless service' that 'poured out wind.'
Cites Eisenman as in no doubt of a first century heritage for the scrolls. Eisenman gives page after page of doctrinal, epigraphic and historical reasons. 'It should be appreciated that an allusion to "the last priests of Jerusalem" makes no sense anytime before the destruction of the Temple in AD 70.' The Kittim must refer to a post-Julius Caesar era, (ie imperial) when the Romans were the rulers of the world. The Habbakuk pesher and others are definitely describing events from the Jewish War of AD 68-70. RE excoriates Eisenman for not going the whole hog, deeming James the safer bet for Teacher of Righteousness, when James died in 62 or 66! To choose Jesus would be to prove that Jesus was alive in AD 70!
RE claims Josephus was the hidden hand removing real historical or social information from the Nag Hammadi gospels, to the point where this is almost entirely missing. He is the original compiler of many of these texts.
Missing history, missing characters.
Thank you for sharing this session.
If someone receives blood from someone aware would this also raise his/her awareness? Maybe or maybe not. I assume there has to be quite some difference that the difference will be seen. And the receiver has to be prepared enough to accept the "awareness". Maybe this awareness is gone again soon... :D
The president of Syria already has seen the examples what happened to the rulers of Iraq and Libya. It would be very stupid of him to assume one can get away with the same sort of incident, which already preceded the fall/death of the others. For me it is the same story with the same sort of non-evidence (chemical weapons instead of mass destruction weapons). For me all those rulers just made the mistake not to follow the plans of the PTBs meekly but to make their own.
But starting war in Syria/Iran may be the domino to start the fall (of the psychopaths, comments in the awareness of everyone, ...)
These people seem to be squeezed out like a lemon before they were dropped .
Another example: Berlusconi started to look like a plastic doll lately:
other pictures:
_http://www.radiomadeinitaly.it/notizie/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/berlusconi-cassazione.jpg
_http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Berlusconi-2010-1.jpg
_http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Standa-berlusconi-88.gif
Joseph is the name of Jesus father. Maybe Josephus wanted a monument for himself so he named Jesus father after himself. ;)
About the clues we may have to check Josephus books for them.
If someone receives blood from someone aware would this also raise his/her awareness? Maybe or maybe not. I assume there has to be quite some difference that the difference will be seen. And the receiver has to be prepared enough to accept the "awareness". Maybe this awareness is gone again soon... :D
The president of Syria already has seen the examples what happened to the rulers of Iraq and Libya. It would be very stupid of him to assume one can get away with the same sort of incident, which already preceded the fall/death of the others. For me it is the same story with the same sort of non-evidence (chemical weapons instead of mass destruction weapons). For me all those rulers just made the mistake not to follow the plans of the PTBs meekly but to make their own.
But starting war in Syria/Iran may be the domino to start the fall (of the psychopaths, comments in the awareness of everyone, ...)
These people seem to be squeezed out like a lemon before they were dropped .
Another example: Berlusconi started to look like a plastic doll lately:
other pictures:
_http://www.radiomadeinitaly.it/notizie/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/berlusconi-cassazione.jpg
_http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Berlusconi-2010-1.jpg
_http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Standa-berlusconi-88.gif
Joseph is the name of Jesus father. Maybe Josephus wanted a monument for himself so he named Jesus father after himself. ;)
About the clues we may have to check Josephus books for them.