Guest guest Posted June 2, 2005 Report Share Posted June 2, 2005 Dear Erin, Jaya Jagadambe! Thank you very much for your response. I believe that it would be more correct that I have opinions that differs from yours. What makes you think that mine are misconceptions, and yours are the correct conceptions? However, I believe you have some misconceptions about many other things, which is shown by a selective (as opposed to thorough) reading of the gospels. However, I need to ask you about which gospels can you read thoroughly. The ones that have been written by the Church or the apocripha that have disappeared? The works of the Gnostic Christians? The “underground” knowledge of Cathars, Templars and Alchemists? No, you don’t accept even the Dead Sea scrolls that have not disappeared and that are unquestionably authentic. At least for me and for many other scholars and researchers. C.G. Jung was one of them, and a great supporter of Gnostic Christianism. Was he ignorant and full of misconceptions? So how can you speak of thorough study? You mean “thorough study” of what the Church authorities and their ideological supporters approve and write: sorry, we are talking from two different places and there is not much hope that we can ever meet. We can only agree to disagree, and we should stop here. I can’t believe I have to address such kind of arguments on a Shakti Sadhana newsgroup. Definitely, from the website outlook I would have never have imagined such a situation. If I wanted to get lectured by a scholar who only accepts the canonical Gospels and Bible, and not even the Dead Sea scrolls, I could have d to a Christian newsgroup!! Now someone may come up and say that pope John Paul II was also a Shakti worshiper because he was “a devotee of the Black Lady of Chestokowa”, like many other Catholics are “devotees of Mary the Mother of Jesus”. Too bad they worship her for having completely abdicated her feminine power (according to their version, of course). If you want to be thorough, you cannot be thorough only about a biased, manipulated and materially motivated source. And what about the “newer revised and better editions”? Editions of what? Who is inventing them this time? Are these manipulators any better than those who preceeded them? What is their authority? What authority do you recognize? Unfortunately I am not a scholar of your type, and I don’t want to be one. I am simply a person who finds information and connects them, confronting with personal experiences, ALL THE SOURCES that I consider genuine and consistent (including those from other religions, what to speak of non-canonic gospels!!) and I verify them with a genuine philosophical debate. Vedic style. I am not interested in the thesis dissertations of western academic establishments (especially the Christian educational institutions). In western academics, philosophy is a dead science just like Sanskrit and Latin, a mere intellectual exercise to see who is able to quote the greatest number of other books approved by the ESTABLISHMENT. And where the students are taught to accept biased versions as the absolute unquestionable truth. I do not accept the Gospels or the Bible, either in King James’ version or in the new “revised” editions. They have been fabricated to prove, endorse and empower the politics of the Church. I quoted King James’ version because this is what most Christians will consider their version. I do not care if your gospels and acts of the apostles are synoptic or non-synoptic: they are just fabrications and lies, either written earlier or later. And the proof of the pudding is the eating. Can’t you see it? What has loving Christendom accomplished in 2000 years? The result is the situation of our world today. Are you happy with the result of the Christians’ work? We are talking of common sense and opening one’s eyes here, not of academic definitions and accredited editions. All you are saying is that Jesus actually wanted his followers to go ahead and convert other peoples at all costs: this is the Churche’s version. Which I strongly oppose. Well, if your version is the truth, my respect for Jesus Christ is gone here and now: he is indeed the cursed cause of the disaster on this planet in these last 2000 years. This is a mentality not specifically linked to Judeo-Christian groups, but is a mark of extremist religious fundamentalism. Every religious group, no matter what its teaching, has its violent extremists, and while it may not be your intention, this statement seems to peg these specific groups as the source of this sort of trouble. So I wanted to comment there. Regarding the problems of extremist religious fundamentalism, from my historical and philosophical research it does appear that religious fundamentalism, with its related defects of violence and intimidation, falsity, corruption, betrayal and political maneuvering was relatively (or even mostly) unknown in the periods before the appearance of the Abrahamic religions. In all the non-Abrahamic religions and traditions that I have researched about, freedom of opinion and religious practice was the norm, and it was considered ideologically impossible to reconcile such concepts as above mentioned with “religion”. This was one of the main factors that facilitated the sudden and violent conquest of more peaceful peoples by Abrahamic nations that based their rights of conquest on religious grounds. An example: I read about one Hindu religious teacher who travelled to Rome to see for himself the seat of the “great religion” that the British were bringing. On his return, he reassured his friends saying that Papacy was so steeped in materialism, exhibition of wealth and material power, that it could never be a threat to Vedic dharma. The learned and respected brahmana had no idea that religion could be so hypocritical as to preach poverty and charity and at the same time appropriate anything existing in the world and ruthlessly exploiting people. My agenda is to fight against the menace that is impending over India. We have lost Europe, we have lost Africa and the Americas. If there are people with guts out there, we will not lose India, no matter what academicians say. If you want to call it political, you can do so. I have a very strong memory of direct experiences under the Inquisition, and all the academicians, the politicians and the theorizers will not change my mind. In the service of Dharma, PKD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 3, 2005 Report Share Posted June 3, 2005 Hi again, Sorry to everyone for this very long response, but I felt that it needed a thorough one. I think it's clear here that you have not really understood where I was coming from in my response. Number one, I am not a Christian, nor have I attended any Christian-based universities for my scholarly education. My education is integral, from both western and eastern philosophy. I am trained in the classic Western sense, but also in the Eastern integral philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and others. I am by no means a strictly traditional Western scholar, but embrace many ways ofknowing and perceiving the world. I am a Tantrika, and so that is mynature. My understanding of the world necessarily comes from allworlds, and my work is to try and bridge the gap between them. Eachhas its strengths and weaknesses, and each evaluates things differently. Let me explain a few things in the approach to my argument - my methodology, as it were. First off, the King James Version is used in the West, but there are many other versions that are just as frequently, if not more frequently, used. It is often referred to as aclassic translation, but other modern versions are more commonly usedby common church-going people, such as the New International Version(NIV), which is perhaps the most popular; the Revised Standard Edition, and the New Revised Standard Edition, as well as the New Jerusalem Bible, etc. > And what about the "newer revised and better editions"? Editions of what? Who is inventing them this time? Are these manipulators any better than those who preceeded them? What is their authority? What authority do you recognize? What makes the newer translations more accurate is that they are translated by scholars with a better understanding of the ancient languages, and some of them use earlier and better sources. In fact, they have less of a tendency to manipulate the source for a particular meaning, and try to stay more truthful to the text itself, which has angered many religious leaders in the process. A quick example. The Red Sea that Moses leads the Israelites through of the King James Version is actually revealed to be the Sea of Reeds in more accurate versions - referring to swamp land instead of a vast sea. Add this to geographical, meteorological and historical considerations, and this completely and utterly changes the mythology! Scholars tend to use these newer, more technically accurate versions if they don't read the original Hebrew, Greek, etc. (for that matter,the entire story of Moses is, I believe, more or less lifted directly from much earlier Mesopotamian mythology - see the legend of Sargon, written in 2500 BCE, with the story of Moses, written around 1900 BCE, and you'll see what I mean... the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible are really a mishmash of mythology, history, prophecy and legend, put together by groups of men with specific agendas, and much of the banned conflicting material has been destroyed.) I am not a biblical scholar, but rather a scholar of Eastern religions, but have been trained to critically evaluate Christian and Jewish mythology and theology. If I were a biblical scholar, I would be able to read those languages - but I have only a minimal reading knowledge of Hebrew. Since I'm a scholar of Hinduism, I read Sanskrit (and even that, I am still learning - though it could be argued that with Sanskrit, one is forever learning!). The reason I used the verses I did in responding to your argument was that I was directly addressing *your specific argument.* It wasn't a question of what source is more "valid" than another, or excluding sources, or anything of that sort. Rather, what I was trying to do was to show you where your interpretation was taken from a very limited and out-of-context reading of a particular verse, rather than placing it into the larger context of the story. You were using the bible as your main source for your argument, so I simply used the same source you were using, since that's all that was necessary. And your argument was a crucial one - to say that Jesus was only there for the Jews was a very key point to your entire argument, and I believe it was a false point, from verses taken entirely out of context. For instance, if I had taken a verse from the Gita and built an argument around that verse, which said one thing, but ignored all the other verses around it, which showed that it meant something else, I would expect someone to come and show me the other verses and explain how putting it in context reveals the actual meaning. This is done all the time, for example, in Vedic and Upanishadic commentary - using the broader text itself to explain context and deeper meaning. People have done this with sacred texts throughout history. So, understand, I was simply trying to provide context and show you where your argument was flawed and needed a broader understanding. > No, you don't accept even the Dead Sea scrolls that have not disappeared and that are unquestionably authentic. At least for me and for many other scholars and researchers. In terms of important texts, I have never, ever discounted the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls as a discovery, or their significance as a historical source of information - I simply disagree with you as to their specific significance. Having read and spent months carefully studying them in the past, I simply don't believe that they contain what you think they contain. You think that they have teachings of Jesus, I do not. That is the beginning and end of our disagreement (and I thought I explained this in my previous post -again, I think that what I wrote was not read carefully). And in fact, I think that there are other discoveries that are more important in terms of showing a broader picture of early Christianity than the Dead Sea Scrolls (which really show a radical sect of early ascetic Judaism, *not* early Christianity). For instance, the Nag Hammadi Library is a spectacular collection of astounding importance, which actually do speak to early Christianity, and the variance of beliefs and materials available before strict canonization. If you get a chance to read The Thunder, Perfect Mind, it is a beautiful Coptic poem of the goddess, found amongst early (gnostic) Christian texts. William Barnstone edited The Other Bible, a quite good collection of apocryphal and pseudepigraphal works that reveal a number of vitally important sources that most people never get a chance to see, much less become familiar with, including selections from the Nag Hammadi library, amongst others. I already mentioned Bart Ehrmann's Lost Christianities (which includes a section on gnosticism, amongst other things), and he included a collection of Lost Scriptures as a companion book, which reveal a number of very interesting and important texts that challenge what we think about the modern church. I think you have fundamentally confused my criticism of some specifics of your arguments with a broader criticism that I just didn't make. I in no way, shape or form deny the existence or importance of the early gnostics, mystics or any other group - in fact, I made no reference to them at all, and am having a hard time seeing where you made that very large logical leap. > C.G. Jung was one of them, and a great supporter of Gnostic Christianism.Was he ignorant and full of misconceptions? And you make some conflicting statements here, as well. On one hand, you seem to uphold Jung (a psychologist and philosopher whose ideas and contributions I generally quite admire, despite some shortcomings that I won't go into here) as an important thinker, and then later you say you disregard all of western philosophy and scholarship... yet Jung is in that category. I think you will find if you speak to me more deeply about these subjects that I am not a person (or a scholar for that matter) who defends or toes the church's ideological line. I have made an academic career, in fact, of challenging and questioning the church's statements and positions on just about everything (though what I primarily study, it should be said for full disclosure, has been early Jewish mysticism and early Jewish-Christian polemics, as well as Hinduism, particularly Shakta Tantra and Devi worship). I said in my previous argument several times that I didn't believe the bible to be a historically or otherwise accurate work. I can only assume that you didn't read my arguments that carefully, and instead jumped to conclusions and assumed I was making an attack or arguments that I really wasn't making at all. Finally, I am not a Christian, I am a Tantrika, and feel no need to defend any religious idealism - and I was not doing so in my email (in fact, quite the opposite). What I was doing was clarifying, contextualizing and critiquing your arguments where they were coming from a place of murkiness or lack of context. Like I said, I don't think we disagreed in the end, I just wanted to make it clear that some of your arguments were incorrect, based on the very sources you were using (by taking them out of context) yourself. What I meant by a "thorough reading" was just that - to read the entire context of the source, not to pick and choose verses that seem to agree with what you're saying when taken out of context (a tactic used by many religious fundamentalists). This has nothing to do with church doctrine or authority, it simply has to do with reading and quoting the source with integrity in a thorough and complete way. > If you want to be thorough, you cannot be thorough only about a biased,manipulated and materially motivated source. Yet, you were doing the very thing you here condemn... you were using the bible, and so I simply gave context to some of the verses you were quoting. I use other, wider sources all the time, but that wasn't necessary for this specific critique, which was simply that you were taking verses out of context to make them seem like they had meanings they didn't actually have. You and I are not so different as you think we are... We are both, I am assuming, well-read, somewhat learned and passionate individuals in pursuit of a common goal, which most certainly is a peaceful world and understanding amongst religious peoples. I suspect I may have just ruffled your feathers a bit when I called out your questionable use of some verses, and that may have clouded your reading of my critique. As far as Abrahamic religions being the source of all strife and conflict, I don't think this is entirely true, either. One of the early recorded examples of religious oppression is in the apocryphal book of Maccabees. A Greek general outlawed Hebrew worship, and turned the temple at Jerusalem into a temple to Zeus. You can imagine the outrage, since pigs were slaughtered as a sacrifice to Zeus at that temple, and pigs are one of the ultimate non-kosher animals, rendering the entire temple unclean, particularly the most sacred stone where the sacrifices were performed. This spawned a huge revolt by the Jews against the occupying force, and spawned a couple of Jewish holidays in the process. There is also very early evidence even in the early Aryan hymns of Vedic times that the Aryans conquered another group of "dark" people, and talk about their inferior ways, their inferior gods, etc. There is a plethora of evidence which, if read from a non-traditional, non-patriarchal perspective, sheds an incredible light on early civilization in India. My own course of study at the moment investigates Tantra, puja and other forms of worship as a survival of indigenous devi worship suppressed by patriarchal religion of the Aryans, and even of the earlier civilizations of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. There's also evidence of religious oppression amongst early civilizations in South America, Africa, Europe, etc... There is certainly evidence of religious oppression that pre-dates, and is independent of, the Abrahamic religions throughout the world, so I would be careful to do further study and not rely upon a prejudicial presupposition or assumption. Of course, that being said, I do not discount the many hundreds of years of peaceful existence and tolerance of various religions within India - though again, there are records of strife and conflict, be it physical, political or idealistic. Wherever humanity is, there also is human nature, and there are those who wish to control and dominate others, and who use religion as a very personal tool to force their ideas onto others, or to manipulate and influence those who share their religious beliefs. There are also those who wish for peaceful coexistence and mutual respect. At any rate, I don't mean to offend, I simply wish to illuminate and contextualize. That is my own dharma as a scholar, and one that I do try to take great care with. jai maa, shanti sa'ham, erin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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