Rediscovery of Yeshua’s Core Teaching of Immanence

Luke 17:20-21, John 10:30-34, Gospel of Thomas Logion 3

Paganism was about life and death, was about appeasing the gods and seeking to understand their whims and desires in order that plagues, floods, famines, invasions and other catastrophes may be averted.
Christopher Knowles – http://secretsun.blogspot.com

The operative phrase here to keep in mind per the arch defining characteristic of ancient Pagan religious systems: “appeasing the gods”. When this is evident as a front and center theological concept of a religious cult, one knows then they are fundamentally dealing with a Paganistic belief system model per the ancient world manner.

What follows are a series of linked articles that can assist in the pursuit of rediscovering Yeshua’s core teaching of Immanence. It is endeavored in these writings to bit by bit strip away some of the varnish of the passage of 1900 years plus of human history, and hence accumulation of various distortion as due the usual human agency.

Why Was Yeshua Jewish? (Why did he preach to the Jewish people primarily? An Essene Schism)
[begin excerpt]
The Galilean region Yeshua grew up in was culturally and religiously heavily influenced by the Essenes (they are referenced in the New Testament wherever the Herodians – a nickname – or the Scribes are being mentioned). They were a religiously extreme sect that for centuries had been seeking to usher in the appearance of a materialistic, political messiah figure that would defeat their enemies, judge those that they deemed had not been true to the correct doctrine, and establish a theological rule on Earth that would accord with their views.
[end excerpt]

Which Jesus? (Gnostic teachings of the New Testament)
[begin excerpt]
Many traditionalist Christians, i.e., those that are ultimately a doctrinal product of Roman Emperor Constantine’s 4th century version of Christianity, imagine that gnostic Christianity is a development that did not come about until the second century. Yet, it is present in first century canonical gospels – inclusive of parallels to verses found in prototypical gnostic writings.
[end excerpt]

Dating the Gospel of Thomas (Evidences pointing to a first century authorship)
[begin excerpt]
There’s a lot of debate about whether Gospel of Thomas is a second century writing, as pretty much all the Gnostic gospels appear to be, or if is possibly a first century writing? My thinking is that there are some evidences or characteristics that lean toward possibility of first century.
[end excerpt]

The Sign of Jonah (and the Shroud of Turin)
[begin excerpt]
The image imprinted on the Shroud of Turin was not produced by pigments but instead is the result of very high energy radiation chemically altering the cloth fibers – and only the surface fibers that were directly exposed to the radiative source; that means it requires a technology to artificially create such an image that only came into existence in the 20th century. The shroud clearly predates any such technology.
[end excerpt]

Heiser vs. Sitchin – Demythologizing the Genesis Creation of Adam story
The Genesis creation of man story as an Atra-Hasis tablets re-write – or better to say – redaction.
[begin excerpt]
It is just astounding that Genesis happens to remark that Eden is located not far from a land that is noteworthy for its gold. The qualitative statement that the gold is good would appear to indicate that the gold which can be found in Havilah is in a high quality form from a mining and refining perspective.

For those that look to Genesis purely for religious significance, the presence of this kind of prosaic information in Genesis is just outrageous. Why would God, a being of spirit, care about this gold?
[end excerpt]

Who (or what) was Yahweh really? (causes contributing to post-Christian Western Civilization)
[begin excerpt]
One of the problems for going forward in the 21st century is being tied to the Yahweh figure of the Old Testament as one and the same as the Source Consciousness Creator of all reality and super realities. For people that never read scripture or merely dabble at it, then it all just remains glossed over. They just accept the things they’re told and assimilate to the culture they are immersed in in respect to long held assumptions about this. Yet if critical scrutiny is brought to bear, then there is a profound cognitive dissonance (Orwellian Double Think – holding contradictory beliefs at the same time) that arises. It’s incongruence is no longer acceptable for the 21st century mindset and this very much contributes to why, per Western Civilization, people speak of the post-modern diminution of Christianity.
[end excerpt]

Traditional Judeo-Christian religious concepts of God and the afterlife are all bogus
[begin update note]
Interestingly, Dr. Sam Parnia’s resuscitation research findings, from what is billed as the largest (2000 data samples) near-death-experience (NDE) study yet conducted, have recently garnered significant mainstream media attention:
Research in ‘near-death’ experiences reveals awareness after brain shuts down | Daily Mail Online
[end update note]

I wish the world was flat like the old days (Cosmological Dualism and Delitzsch’s Dilemma)
[begin excerpt]
Cosmological dualism is a long standing tension in the realm of philosophies and religions. Mankind has been inspired and marveled at the wonder and majesty of existent reality while at the same time being perplexed that, from a subjective human perspective, a lifetime of existence in this reality is frequently unpleasant and at times extremely so (much of human history attest to that estimation). The order and meticulousness of apparent existent reality for many tends to affirm an extraordinary consciousness as its ultimate source. Yet the human mind has been unable to satisfactorily reconcile the grand artifact of apparent existent reality with the actual experience of it. Cosmological dualisms generally in some fashion seek to address, as explanation, this fundamental dichotomy of the pervasive human condition.
[end excerpt]

Biblical Canon – A Problem On Navigation
[begin excerpt]
Biblical scriptures need to be carefully sifted – academia’s historical critical approach is crucial.
The Old Testament tells a threaded story, extrapolated in certain key areas from ancient Sumer/Akkad base stock, that to great extent is of an anthropomorphic being known as Yahweh and his interaction with the Hebrew tribal people.
[end excerpt]

Where Soul Meets Body
The onset of the gnosis (awakening) experience – much in the Carl Jungian model (i.e., the passage through the Dark Night of the Soul experience as entry into the process of gnosis where is coupled with lucid dreaming and extremely heightened synchronicity occurrences).

Consciousness And Quantum Physics – And Where That Leads
[begin excerpt]
The tie in of consciousness and quantum physics is in respect to the role of the observer in the collapse of the wave function that describe some quantum system under study when a measurement is taken.
[end excerpt]

Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness – book recommendation
[begin excerpt]
I’ll take a sheet out of Bell’s playbook (in respect to the clever back handed approach that his theorem took) – the simplest and most painfully obvious way to point out that the Michael Nauenberg advocated interpretation is not a settled matter in physics is to point to the Many Worlds interpretation.
[end excerpt]