Category Archives: Gnosticism

The Natsarene and Hidden Gnosis – Pt. 4

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Ephrathah and ʻcrossing overʼ   In Jewish scripture, Bethlehem is sometimes equated with Ephrath/Ephrathah (Gen 35:19; 48:7; Ruth 4:11; Mic 5:2). Elsewhere, the latter is the “father” of Bethlehem (1 Chr 4:4). Both ʻplacesʼ were not material settlements in Judah, Benjamin, or Ephraim, but mythical locales in pre-Israelite religion. Beit-Lahmu (Bethlehem) was the home of the Lahmu divinities, servants of the great god of hidden wisdom who guarded the ʻgateʼ of his house. Hidden wisdom (gnosis) had long been symbolized by fresh water emerging from within and under the earth. Thus, it is no surprise that the Bethlehem known to Jewish scribes was noted for a well with special water sought out by David himself, as already cited (2 Sam … Continue reading →

The Natsarene and Hidden Gnosis – Pt. 3

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David, Bethlehem, and the scribes   To this day, archaeologists cannot be certain where the settlement of Bethlehem was located. The scribes who penned the Jewish scriptures were also in doubt, for in several cases they found it necessary to identify Bethlehem with another unlocated settlement called Ephrath/Ephrathah: “So Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem), and Jacob set up a pillar at her grave; it is the pillar of Rachelʼs tomb, which is there to this day” (Gen 35:19–20; cf. 48:7). However, Jewish scripture clearly locates Rachelʼs tomb to the north of Jerusalem (1 Sam 10:2; Jer 31:15), while Bethlehem lies to the south of the city. This anomaly has long caused … Continue reading →

The Natsarene and Hidden Gnosis – Pt. 2

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Noah, the first Natsarene?   The flood was a divine judgment upon all mankind, one that came suddenly. But god gave Noah secret knowledge in advance: to build an ark. The ark itself represents and symbolizes the secret saving knowledge of god. After all, it was the ark that saved Noah. Thus it is no surprise that in the Akkadian flood story the boat is named natsirat napishtim, “Preserver of Life,” a phrase employing the root n-ts-r.6 It should also not surprise us that netsêru in Akkadian means “secret knowledge,” particularly that received from the moon god Ea/Enki (the god of the underworld ocean).7 In the flood story, secret knowledge protects the wise person against that which destroys the entire … Continue reading →

The Natsarene and Hidden Gnosis – Pt. 1 (Salm)

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Foreword I wrote this 6-part essay in 2011, to be read in conjunction with Ditlef Nielsen’s groundbreaking and long forgotten book The Old Arabian Moon Religion and the Mosaic Tradition (1904). The original essay is available complete in PDF form here. The first five chapters of Nielsen’s book (in my translation from the German) are available in a series of PDF’s here. To get the most out of this essay, the reader is urged to also read Nielsen’s writing, which explores a number of still novel themes that are foundational to the origins of Christianity—such as: the influence of North Arabian religion on early Israelite origins, and in turn on Christianity; the gnostic nature of the religion of Midian, where … Continue reading →

“Jesus,” the rebel against Judaism

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For the last several decades a wrong-headed and tiresome refrain has emanated from the theological podiums (or is it podia?) around the USA: “Jesus was a Torah-observant Jew.” So I myself learned on the first day of a New Testament course at the University of Oregon some years ago. The professor—Daniel Falk, a respected specialist in Qumran studies—quickly elaborated a little: Christianity was “a very significant modification of the religion of ancient Israel… It and Judaism are two offshoots of ancient Israel. Both came from rabbinic Judaism. Later, Christianity became a gentile religion.” The bottom line was clear: Jesus brought nothing radically new. He was in fact quite orthodox! What was “new” was Paul’s mis-interpretation of Jesus’ Jewish message…   … Continue reading →

Pre-Christian gnosticism

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In the last few years the fundamental historicity of the canonical gospels has been increasingly brought into question not merely through the work of a few “mythicists” but now also through the work of mainline scholars such as Thomas Brodie and Dennis MacDonald. The work of other scholars, too—scholars who are not ‘mythicist’ at all—is inexorably leading the entire field towards a new paradigm: “Jesus of Nazareth” was a fiction. This new paradigm is still far from being even a minority consensus among scholars, but that may largely be due to the reticence of many scholars to espouse what is extremely unpopular and still politically suicidal. In other words, the mythicist position is far stronger than may appear when the … Continue reading →

Thomas Brodie, mythicist priest:
Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus—Pt. 3

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(Published Easter Sunday) On this Easter Sunday, ‘year of our Lord’ 2013, we may note that Father Thomas Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus offers the world a closely reasoned analysis showing that “Jesus of Nazareth” is a fiction, a literary construct cunningly based on Jewish scripture. Brodie has done nothing less than deconstruct normative Christianity based on literary source criticism. Of course, Thomas Brodie is no Johnny come lately, no dillettante, no wild-eyed hater of Christianity… He is both a Dominican priest and a distinguished bible scholar with an extensive resumé of published work going back many decades. Throughout his academic career, Brodie’s specialization has been literary source criticism. In this domain, he is the expert. Brodie … Continue reading →

The Natsarene (“Nazarene”) Religion – Pt. 7

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As we have seen, two broad characteristics marked the “Natsarene” spirituality that preceded and led up to Pauline Christianity—gnosticism and encratism. The former has reference to the goal of finding gnosis. The latter characterizes the way to the goal: through continence and a general repudiation of pleasure. The gnostic considered that no one can “serve two masters” and recognized that a fundamental decision occurs in life, one between pleasure and understanding. We have looked at the Parable of the Ten Maidens (Mt 25:1-14), touched upon Secret Mark, and noted the broad popularity of encratism in early Christianity, evident in the non-canonical Acts of the Apostles and in many gnostic writings from the Nag Hammadi Library. One hallmark of encratism, however, … Continue reading →

The Natsarene (“Nazarene”) Religion – Pt. 6

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In the fourth post of this series I looked at the Parable of the Ten Maidens (Mt 25:1-13) and concluded that it was an allegory—certainly not the ipsissima verba from the mouth of the human prophet who lies at the origins of Christianity. The incipient Great Church needed to erase that flesh and blood prophet to make room for its invented and grandiose “Jesus of Nazareth.” It needed to do this because the gnostic doctrine of the “Nazarene” (Natsarene) prophet was diametrically opposed to its doctrine of faith that lay at the heart of the new Pauline kerygma (“proclamation”). Erasing the prophet from history was a fairly easy task, for that prophet has—as we can see—left few if any traces. … Continue reading →

The Natsarene (“Nazarene”) Religion – Pt. 4

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The highly redacted nature of Christian scripture In the preceding post of this series I listed a number of “themes” which provide a contour of Nazarene (i.e., pre-Christian) theology. Those themes can be deduced from sayings attributed to “Jesus” in Christian scripture, both orthodox and heterodox, according to the criteria of dissimilarity, coherence, and impracticality. They betray a gnostic outlook wherein the goal of life is to seek and find hidden wisdom (gnosis). They delimit a body of teaching that endorses separation from “the world” and the adoption of a rigorous ethical code including humility, renunciation, and chastity. This, I would suggest, is the contour of the pre-Christian Nazarene theology as evidenced by the surviving scriptural record.   The scriptural … Continue reading →