Prophetism

[Guest guest]

The reason for posting this totally unrelated stuff is because of the comments

we saw in the last two days.

 

Dr. Koenraad Elst is a Belgian scholar

http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/

 

" Dr. Koenraad Elst was born in Leuven, Belgium, on 7 August 1959, into a Flemish

(i.e. Dutch-speaking Belgian) Catholic family. He graduated in Philosophy,

Chinese Studies and Indo-Iranian Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven. "

 

Extract from his work on the Psychology of prophetism.

 

I agree that saying to somebody " Madness should have its limits " is a very

irritating comment. You can read the following and find out why I dont regret

making that comment. Remember the author is a disillusioned Catholic. I value

his work because of its depth, logical coherence and adherence to facts.

 

http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/books/pp/ch3.htm

 

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3.5. Jesus the paraphrenic

 

 

Paraphrenia is a fairly rare mental affliction in which the patient develops a

delusion (mostly genetic, i.e. concerning his parents or ancestry), which is

triggered and fed by only rarely occurring hallucinatory crises. Starting from

this delusion, he builds up an entire system complete with interpretative

delusions (misreading events to make them fit, rather than disturb, the basic

delusion). Otherwise he remains well-integrated in his environment.9

Paraphernia is sometimes classified in the larger category of

& #65533;paranoia & #65533; and opposed to schizophrenia. In contrast to the

schizophrenic, the paraphrenic remains adapted to his milieu, has a coherent

thinking and a well-organized behaviour. Generally hallucinations are rare, but

initiate a delusional state, often with a grandiose genetic theme. The

paraphrenic is very sensitive to opposition to his ideas; he is therefore

somewhat secretive, and often full of resentment and hate. This is exactly the

image the Gospel has painted of Jesus.

 

 

If we assume this diagnosis, which is suggested by several striking events in

Jesus & #65533; life, and extend it to understand his whole life story, the Gospel

narrative becomes coherent. One hypothesis will suffice to explain diverse

elements for which the exegetes now need a whole string of hypotheses:

methodologically, that is a very strong point.

 

 

Today, the theologians have caught themselves in a construction of difficult and

contradictory hypotheses that is convincing no one. The fundamentalists who

refuse to think and therefore just take the whole Bible as God & #65533;s own

word, ridicule the theologians with all their difficult terminology invented to

create a conceptual framework in which the diverse and contradictory Bible

narratives might make sense. The real scientist is equally unimpressed by the

patchwork of hypotheses to which the theologians resort in order to make sense

of the Gospel narrative. The paraphrenia hypothesis takes care of the entire

Gospel narrative at once.

 

 

Jesus had, on all hands, a problem with the identity of his father. In the

apocrypha, he is called & #65533;son of a whore & #65533;. According to the Jewish

tradition, he was the son of the Roman soldier Pandera and the local girl Miriam

(Mary), the hairdresser. The existence of a Roman soldier with that name has

actually been verified. A few years after the start of the Christian Era, he

was transferred to the legion in Germany, where a grave bearing his name has

been found: perhaps the only left-over of the Holy Family. At any rate, the

Gospel narrative is explicit enough that Jesus & #65533; conception was a matter

of scandal: his social father Joseph wanted to break off his engagement with

Mary when he found she was pregnant. In a village, such a circumstance could not

possibly be kept secret from the child Jesus. In the playground he must have

been reminded often enough of being an illegitimate child.

 

 

The first sign that Jesus is trying to work out his inner problem with his

parentage, and at the same time that people think there is mentally something

wrong with him, is his visit to the temple at age 12. For lack of a physical

father, the only father that was left to him was the Creator, Yahweh. Like many

boys of his age, he wanted to know more about his origins, and he looked for

information in the Scriptures. When he went to the temple, he went to the house

of his Father. There, he expected to learn more from the Scribes. The

questions he asked them must have sounded strange to them. Jesus was hanging

around for three days, without telling his parents anything. And when he

returned home and his family got angry for his causing them so much worry, he

replied: & #65533;Don & #65533;t you know I belong in my Father & #65533;s

house? & #65533; He claimed the right to solve his own identity problem, even if

that implied insensitivity to others & #65533; feelings. At that age, this

behaviour is not abnormal, except that few youngsters would have taken

Scriptural imagery so literally as to believe that their personal fatherhood

problems could be solved by identifying God as the missing father.

 

 

The little bit of information about this childhood episode indicates a prodrome

of the later crisis. By itself, the temple episode need not be pathological, it

could have been a fairly ordinary event in the difficult puberty process of

self-discovery. But it does betray a psychological setting in which a deeper

mental disease can develop.