Seekers of the Ancient Aramaic Church
A Christian Outsider
I wasn't really a Christian Christian when I was a kid growing up. I went to church with my mother, sang the hymns, enjoyed the donuts and joined the youth group mostly for social life. Rock music and writings in the 1960's hippie culture led me into eastern religions and meditation. But I was first of all a seeker: someone really looking for whatever "spirit" was. Some very real spiritual events brought me into Christianity, but as a seeker I still saw the tension between "orthodox" Christianity and the spirit. Of course, I have now left so-called orthodox Christianity behind as I continue to seek spirit, that is, real Christianity. I am getting Christianer all the time.
So I was interested when Victor N. Alexander suggested the Ancient Aramaic Church. Vic was translating the ancient Aramaic scriptures into English, as noble a venture as any native Aramaic speaker trained in the ancient liturgical language could undertake. Unfortunately, Victor apparently has had to curtail translation work, but what he has produced is invaluable.
Vic’s translations are pretty much a solo work working with dictionaries which miss the point of many words and passages, corrected by Vic's deep knowledge of the language and its colloquial meanings. Victor has produced a kind of rough yet eloquent translation of many of the ancient scriptures. Not all of the Old Testament, but enough to get real understanding of what Moses, the Prophets, and the writers of the New Testament were trying to get across, that God has become us . . . becoming Him—the one and only Ineffable God in Manifestation. The new Ancient Aramaic Church would be seekers using Alexander's translations of the scriptures.
Neville and Jesus: the Deep Divide and Frank
My problem with any church is theological perspective. I was well-read enough before my conversion to know, especially with my spiritual experiences, that spirit is much more than the literal-historical understanding of the Bible will allow. The mechanics of the two just do not match. Soon after I got saved, I found Open Windows, Swinging Doors by Dr. Frank C. Laubach (1955, Glendale, CA: Regal Books Division, G/L Publications; see also Letters By A Modern Mystic, 1937/58, Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell). Then Rev. Jim Spillman read a passage from Laubach's Channels of Spiritual Power (1954, Fleming H. Revell), and I spent the next seven years haunting used-bookstores looking for a copy of that and anything else he had written. Laubach felt the church had thrown the baby out with the bathwater in its rejection of anything "occult" or mystical. I have felt Dr. Laubach to be my spiritual pastor for the last forty-four years.
Knowing Laubach made me very comfortable with Neville's assertion that God is Consciousness, and that the Bible is written in mystical symbolic images, not as a record of literal, historical events. Rabbi David A. Cooper, Aryeh Kaplan, and other commentators on Jewish mysticism also informed my opinion that way. While Goddard was a Christian, he taught Jewish mysticism; i.e., Jesus not as a human but as the loving Excellence, Jethro, the ANOINTING of YHWH! He understood that Moses, like Abraham, was an ASSYRIAN, and that the Creator God of the Assyrians was Ashur, the Imagination of the Ineffable. I do not find this doctrine in any church, yet I believe it was the underlying reality of the Aramaic Church in the Season of Grace (from the end of Jeremiah's 70 years to the end of Daniel's 70 weeks). In the last days of the Season, WHICH WAS A DEMONSTRATION, throughout Palestine there were camps and schools of those preparing for the promised outpouring of the Kingdom of God, of His power into their minds. And it came.
For Mark, the forerunner might have been Gautama. Yes, the monk who had become God--which is what ‘Buddha’ means—-at the beginning of the Season. Mark's vision was greater than the Jews alone, and he presented Gautama as the prime example of Christ, the Anointed One each of us is to become (you have got to consider Christian Lindtner's Theory on this). Siddhartha might have been Indian, but he lived "Aramaicly"; i.e., according to the scriptures.
So, oddly I find myself advocating a church which does not exist, led by a movie maker, following the example of an Indian Therapeut, and teaching a doctrine which is accepted by very few beside myself. Well, hey, at least I can put my tithes into my own pocket. I hope you will join me (I mean in the Ancient Aramaic Church, not in the tithes thing) — living Aramaicly.
_____________________________________________
PS: Just now found an interesting "Ancient Aramaic Church" who posted this video.
I wasn't really a Christian Christian when I was a kid growing up. I went to church with my mother, sang the hymns, enjoyed the donuts and joined the youth group mostly for social life. Rock music and writings in the 1960's hippie culture led me into eastern religions and meditation. But I was first of all a seeker: someone really looking for whatever "spirit" was. Some very real spiritual events brought me into Christianity, but as a seeker I still saw the tension between "orthodox" Christianity and the spirit. Of course, I have now left so-called orthodox Christianity behind as I continue to seek spirit, that is, real Christianity. I am getting Christianer all the time.
So I was interested when Victor N. Alexander suggested the Ancient Aramaic Church. Vic was translating the ancient Aramaic scriptures into English, as noble a venture as any native Aramaic speaker trained in the ancient liturgical language could undertake. Unfortunately, Victor apparently has had to curtail translation work, but what he has produced is invaluable.
Vic’s translations are pretty much a solo work working with dictionaries which miss the point of many words and passages, corrected by Vic's deep knowledge of the language and its colloquial meanings. Victor has produced a kind of rough yet eloquent translation of many of the ancient scriptures. Not all of the Old Testament, but enough to get real understanding of what Moses, the Prophets, and the writers of the New Testament were trying to get across, that God has become us . . . becoming Him—the one and only Ineffable God in Manifestation. The new Ancient Aramaic Church would be seekers using Alexander's translations of the scriptures.
Neville and Jesus: the Deep Divide and Frank
My problem with any church is theological perspective. I was well-read enough before my conversion to know, especially with my spiritual experiences, that spirit is much more than the literal-historical understanding of the Bible will allow. The mechanics of the two just do not match. Soon after I got saved, I found Open Windows, Swinging Doors by Dr. Frank C. Laubach (1955, Glendale, CA: Regal Books Division, G/L Publications; see also Letters By A Modern Mystic, 1937/58, Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell). Then Rev. Jim Spillman read a passage from Laubach's Channels of Spiritual Power (1954, Fleming H. Revell), and I spent the next seven years haunting used-bookstores looking for a copy of that and anything else he had written. Laubach felt the church had thrown the baby out with the bathwater in its rejection of anything "occult" or mystical. I have felt Dr. Laubach to be my spiritual pastor for the last forty-four years.
Knowing Laubach made me very comfortable with Neville's assertion that God is Consciousness, and that the Bible is written in mystical symbolic images, not as a record of literal, historical events. Rabbi David A. Cooper, Aryeh Kaplan, and other commentators on Jewish mysticism also informed my opinion that way. While Goddard was a Christian, he taught Jewish mysticism; i.e., Jesus not as a human but as the loving Excellence, Jethro, the ANOINTING of YHWH! He understood that Moses, like Abraham, was an ASSYRIAN, and that the Creator God of the Assyrians was Ashur, the Imagination of the Ineffable. I do not find this doctrine in any church, yet I believe it was the underlying reality of the Aramaic Church in the Season of Grace (from the end of Jeremiah's 70 years to the end of Daniel's 70 weeks). In the last days of the Season, WHICH WAS A DEMONSTRATION, throughout Palestine there were camps and schools of those preparing for the promised outpouring of the Kingdom of God, of His power into their minds. And it came.
For Mark, the forerunner might have been Gautama. Yes, the monk who had become God--which is what ‘Buddha’ means—-at the beginning of the Season. Mark's vision was greater than the Jews alone, and he presented Gautama as the prime example of Christ, the Anointed One each of us is to become (you have got to consider Christian Lindtner's Theory on this). Siddhartha might have been Indian, but he lived "Aramaicly"; i.e., according to the scriptures.
So, oddly I find myself advocating a church which does not exist, led by a movie maker, following the example of an Indian Therapeut, and teaching a doctrine which is accepted by very few beside myself. Well, hey, at least I can put my tithes into my own pocket. I hope you will join me (I mean in the Ancient Aramaic Church, not in the tithes thing) — living Aramaicly.
_____________________________________________
PS: Just now found an interesting "Ancient Aramaic Church" who posted this video.
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
5:48 PM
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