The Steele Hypothesis of How James Became the Gnostic Jesus Who is Not the One We Usually Worship
The Steele Hypothesis is that many people before the supposed time of Christ had grasp of the true meaning of Gnosticism,
which is what we are actually talking about when we talk about Jesus (though without all the
gobbledygook that is usually layered on over the core of Gnostic
philosophy).
My impression is that the core of Gnostic philosophy is that it is our experiential knowledge of Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God in us (actually the spirit of God who IS us, being in all actuality the Ineffable who by imagining has become us), which saves us.
My hypothesis is that "James the Righteous," who in Hebrew was called Jacob, "the brother of the Lord," had a Gnostic understanding of the Old Testament and of Judaism. Jacob the Righteous so embodied Christ, and had so much to say about the enterprise the priests, Pharisees and scribes had made of Judaism, that they killed him for it.
This Jacob was known by and much respected by an Indian Therapeute who shared Jacob's Gnostic-core philosophy. We know the Indian, a Buddhist, by the name of Mark. I believe that Mark shared James' appreciation of the Gnostic core of Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, and what we call today "Christianity"--for groups like the one Jacob led had withdrawn from the folds of the religious organizations and sought to live pleasingly to the God "with whom we have to do."
After Jacob was murdered by the Jews, Mark wrote James' story FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE GNOSTIC-CORE JESUS, who was the real "person" they had rejected and murdered when they rejected and murdered Jacob the Righteous, who we call James, "the brother of the Lord."
You will note that "Mark" was an Indian Buddhist missionary who had worked his way up from India through Persia and back down the fertile crescent to Palestine and probably to Alexandria in Egypt. He was probably a devout student of philosophy and found the common Gnostic core in the religions he encountered and studied. I am not making this stuff up--do your homework looking up the reforms of Emperor Ashoka of India and the mission of the Therapeutae, and also Christian Lindtner's Theory of the Buddhist source material for the Gospel of Mark. Gerald Massey wrote extensively about the influence of the Egyptian myths, which Mark also would have learned, in the formation of what I call the Hebrew Gospel of Moses in Ancient Egypt, Light of the World.
Mark was also influenced by the Persian Zoroastrian philosophy of Ahura Mazda, which posits that God is both good and evil. With his intimate knowledge of both the early history of Ashoka and the Jewish priests, Pharisees and scribes, certainly Mark could see the evil that is man's initial ignorant view of the world no matter how "religious" he may be.
In telling Jacob's conflict with the literal-historical thinking Jews, Mark wove together all of the insights of wisdom he had learned from the ancients as a revelation of the Gnostic core. That is why we find his Jesus quoting the ancients at every turn and posing symbolic wisdom stories in every pericope.
Soon after "the Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ" was published, people were polarized either for or against Christ and the Jews. Christ need never have lived as a uniquely separate man for the church of Jesus Christ to be born of him. His being Jacob and Jacob's being Him was enough. The present baptism in the Holy Spirit is fully explained by the ecstatic experience of true Gnosticism.
While first and second century Gnostics recognized that Mark's Jesus was the Inner Man and could worship him as God, which he is, the uninitiated figured that Jesus was the Jewish God become a historical man killed some years ago in Palestine and who was coming again is judgment. Paul started this way and taught this (see his epistles to the Thessalonians) and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited.
Hmm. Something was screwy. "Let me look at those scriptures again. Let's see, Moses, Joshua, Promised Land, inner man. Oh, I've got it. It happens NOW and in the inner man. I've been looking at the skies. I should be looking inside. Eck. Jesus, forgive me!"
My impression is that the core of Gnostic philosophy is that it is our experiential knowledge of Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God in us (actually the spirit of God who IS us, being in all actuality the Ineffable who by imagining has become us), which saves us.
My hypothesis is that "James the Righteous," who in Hebrew was called Jacob, "the brother of the Lord," had a Gnostic understanding of the Old Testament and of Judaism. Jacob the Righteous so embodied Christ, and had so much to say about the enterprise the priests, Pharisees and scribes had made of Judaism, that they killed him for it.
This Jacob was known by and much respected by an Indian Therapeute who shared Jacob's Gnostic-core philosophy. We know the Indian, a Buddhist, by the name of Mark. I believe that Mark shared James' appreciation of the Gnostic core of Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, and what we call today "Christianity"--for groups like the one Jacob led had withdrawn from the folds of the religious organizations and sought to live pleasingly to the God "with whom we have to do."
After Jacob was murdered by the Jews, Mark wrote James' story FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE GNOSTIC-CORE JESUS, who was the real "person" they had rejected and murdered when they rejected and murdered Jacob the Righteous, who we call James, "the brother of the Lord."
You will note that "Mark" was an Indian Buddhist missionary who had worked his way up from India through Persia and back down the fertile crescent to Palestine and probably to Alexandria in Egypt. He was probably a devout student of philosophy and found the common Gnostic core in the religions he encountered and studied. I am not making this stuff up--do your homework looking up the reforms of Emperor Ashoka of India and the mission of the Therapeutae, and also Christian Lindtner's Theory of the Buddhist source material for the Gospel of Mark. Gerald Massey wrote extensively about the influence of the Egyptian myths, which Mark also would have learned, in the formation of what I call the Hebrew Gospel of Moses in Ancient Egypt, Light of the World.
Mark was also influenced by the Persian Zoroastrian philosophy of Ahura Mazda, which posits that God is both good and evil. With his intimate knowledge of both the early history of Ashoka and the Jewish priests, Pharisees and scribes, certainly Mark could see the evil that is man's initial ignorant view of the world no matter how "religious" he may be.
In telling Jacob's conflict with the literal-historical thinking Jews, Mark wove together all of the insights of wisdom he had learned from the ancients as a revelation of the Gnostic core. That is why we find his Jesus quoting the ancients at every turn and posing symbolic wisdom stories in every pericope.
Soon after "the Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ" was published, people were polarized either for or against Christ and the Jews. Christ need never have lived as a uniquely separate man for the church of Jesus Christ to be born of him. His being Jacob and Jacob's being Him was enough. The present baptism in the Holy Spirit is fully explained by the ecstatic experience of true Gnosticism.
While first and second century Gnostics recognized that Mark's Jesus was the Inner Man and could worship him as God, which he is, the uninitiated figured that Jesus was the Jewish God become a historical man killed some years ago in Palestine and who was coming again is judgment. Paul started this way and taught this (see his epistles to the Thessalonians) and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited.
Hmm. Something was screwy. "Let me look at those scriptures again. Let's see, Moses, Joshua, Promised Land, inner man. Oh, I've got it. It happens NOW and in the inner man. I've been looking at the skies. I should be looking inside. Eck. Jesus, forgive me!"
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
2:25 AM
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