Archive for January, 2010
The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q & Christian Origins, by Burton Mack – A Review
What does it mean to be a PaleoChristian?
To begin to answer this question, maybe it’s best to start with another: What does it mean to be a Christian? After all, a PaleoChristian is just another sort of Christian, right?
In trying to understand anything, it’s often helpful to read up on the history of it: an exploration of the past can give us a context in which to place the object of study, and therefore understand it better. Christianity is no exception to this general rule – in fact when it comes to Christianity, an exploration of its historical roots is probably of the most critical importance, since its adherents in the Church stake their claims to eternity on events that purportedly happened in history: the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Descent of the Holy Spirit.
Where do these notions come from? For a modern Christian they are found, and enshrined in, the New Testament. So that’s an immediate focus for historical enquiry, and a book which might be found useful in articulating the history of the earliest strands of the New Testament is Burton Mack’s “The Lost Gospel” (1993). Mack’s book could be particularly helpful because it attempts to go further back in textual history than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – hitherto the normal starting-point for historical enquiry into Jesus and the origins of the Church.
But first a digression.
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A reader sent the latest ALTA Report (that Webbot thing that scans the net and extracts keywords, thereby sort of “predicting” future trends) to us and it was quite interesting.
Well, it’s REALLY long, and most of it talks about the coming financial collapse, and the collapse of the USA which will spread around the world more or less. After talking about some of the violent revolutionary movements that won’t really do any good, as well as numerous “karmic payback” events for the pathocrats that will leave people scratching their heads, there was one part that stuck out like a glowing peacock-blue thumb:
However nasty the [agents (of the elites)] will be in their [provocation (of the riots)], the [real resistance] will be coming from a [non-violent revolutionary SOC (self organizing collective)] that will be emerging over early 2010. Some of the strategies and tactics forecast to be employed by these R-SOC’s are quite brilliant, and well worth discussing, however no need to bring up details at this point, merely suffice it to say, that the R-SOC’s will [cripple] the [control systems] using the [control systems] against themselves. As noted, abso-f*cking-lutely brilliant. Not either/or, but both/and shall suffice.
Sound like any new Church you know?? Read the rest of the article »
An interesting blog post was recently brought to my attention by one of our members:
I urge you to read it carefully because there actually is a lot of meat there to think about. But, I wish the author had some more data because his presentation leaves a lot to be desired.
For example, he doesn’t consider that the ability to dissociate/tune in to other levels of consciousness is evolutionarily stable in an environment where psychopaths do not exist. But, introduce psychopaths, and they take advantage of that in all the ways he describes. People are terrified by the psychopaths, and then the psychopaths come along and offer bogus solutions!
I doubt the guy would even be open to consider a religion based on science because “religion” has such a bad reputation. Read the rest of the article »
For those who are concerned about Health Reform in the U.S., members of the Fellowship can also opt out since it is against our religion. We believe in community support and if any member has overwhelming health issues, they should contact the Church Elders. See the following article for more details. Read the rest of the article »
Posted in Religion