Anarchy!

"The Bible, which is a very interesting and here and there very profound book when considered as one of the oldest surviving manifestations of human wisdom and fancy, expresses this truth very naively in its myth of original sin. Jehovah, who of all the good gods adored by men was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty - Jehovah had just created Adam and Eve, to satisfy we know not what caprice; no doubt to while away his time, which must weigh heavy on his hands in his eternal egoistic solitude, or that he might have some new slaves. He generously placed at their disposal the whole earth, with all its fruits and animals, and set but a single limit to this complete enjoyment. He expressly forbade them from touching the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He wished, therefore, that man, destitute of all understanding of himself, should remain an eternal beast, ever on all-fours before the eternal God, his creator and his master. But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge." -Michael Bakunin

Bakunin seems to have a point here. God isn’t very kind to his followers, not at all, at least not at first. Later however the desert God of law and punishment suddenly becomes a god of forgiveness and compassion. The difference is astounding enough to suggest that the two are different people, which is exactly what I am suggesting, and I think this claim has literary merit, even with the Gnostic gospels aside.
Ive been spending allot of time on the heretical texts and the new testament, so I will return to Genesis. This time, Sodom and Gomorah.

To illustrate the strangeness of this story better, we have a video.
Please go to this link, before continuing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bar3GOzDNzg&NR=1 (It’s funny, trust me.)

Plotz has a problem with this story, much like mine. He says, “to my modern eyes, though perhaps not to the Bible’s authors, collective punishment is the great moral conundrum of the Torah… and God is always on the wrong side of the question” (Plotz 14). He even goes so far as to say, just as I am, that this makes God look like a villain. The whole story, at least when looking at it from a moral point of view, is actually quite ridiculous, because of a few reasons. 1) As Plotz says “what about the children” God kills them, he has no mercy, 2) the only “good” man in the city offers his daughter up to be raped because he believes homosexuality to be a pretty grevious afront to God, and 3) God, who’s widely refuted to be the cool headed guy who has planned everything since before creation, angers quickly enough that a mere mortal man has to remind him that there may be innocent people in the city, and God, the supposedly perfect diety, forgets to continue his search for righteous because of one mob of rapists –why doesn’t he destroy L.A.?

In fact, the God of the old testament is a god of cruelty, who doesn’t seem to be very benevolent or omnipresent. And this returns to the tenant of Gnosticism that the God who claimed to be creator has been trying to keep the knowledge of good and bad from us, bracketing our lives with the pains of birth and death, keeping the races from uniting in peace at the tower of Babel, aiding in the killing of entire races of people because they disagree with you or wont give you some crappy desert real estate. This God, therefore, is ultimately the evil one. The divine light I mentioned before, as being the light of all humanity is actually associated with knowledge, that which the serpent wanted to give us, denying any law that keeps us from spiritual understanding.

An interesting comparison can be done between the Devil, or ‘adversary’, of the new testament with the God of the Old testament. In one of the more moving moments of the New Testament, Jesus is tempted by the devil on a mountain. And what does the Devil offer him? Real estate! Power! Just like the God of Abraham, he offers that his seed be multiplied and he shall have dominion over his enemies, yada yada yada.
I realize that my insistence in this sort-of demonizes Jewish tradition, and for this I am sorry because I find many aspects of modern Judaism (not sexist orthodox Judaism) quite beautiful, and often quite more sensible than the zealous Christians who, under the misguidance of John, want to convert the world to their faith. I do not necessarily loathe Judaism, nor Christianity, not as philosophies anyway. Sure, I disagree with probably three quarters of the crap the God of the Old Testament does, and though I find Jesus to be a pretty righteous dude, am very disappointed with his homophobia in the book of Judas. The institutions, however, I deplore. I denounce and condemn the genocides, Inquisitions, and other atrocities committed by these fanatics, from BC to AD, and you should too, even if you are of these traditions. This is not to say that you have to abandon it, you just have to recognize the inhuman cruelties committed by those within your tradition as examples of someone taking what can often be quite beautiful metaphors about the human condition, and turning them into justifications for killing. These atrocities serve as reminders for what happens when one too readily accepts the decrees of their tradition, and those who hold power within it. Oh, and if your God comes to you and asks you to give up your only begotten son –get another god!

The serpent and the light (back to Genesis)

Now, we have said that Jesus is the l"light and the path" and that this light exists within us, all around us, and is what all things came out of. So why does the God of the old testament deny us the fruit of the tree of knowledge. In all mythology knowledge is associated with light and ignorance with darkness, so why would the God who walks in the garden, the god who later gave us the light in the form of "his only begotten son," demand that his followers live in darkness, while Lucifer translates as "bearer of light"?
The answer can be found in another tenant of gnosticism (the framework which my whole biblical interpretation will be based on)that the God of the Old Testament is a demiurge who is neither a kind god, nor the only, for he speaks of others.
Others, you say?
Yes, in Genesis God says "behold, he has become like one of us" after man has eaten the fruit and this worries him... He also says he creates man in "our image." Who is this "us" is it the royal we? Most bible thumper sites on line attribute this to God speaking with the angels, but the angels are not God's equals, they are his servants, and at this point in Genesis there is no mention of angels, they aren't mentioned until man is expelled from the garden and with this flying sword of flame and all, one has to wonder how close the angels really are to man and God, my guess is not very.
I think God is talking to the other dieties. Even the commandment "thou shalt have no other Gods before me" seems to concede the existence of others. So what happened to them?
Nietzsche says they all died of laughter when Elohim said he was the only, but gnostics believe the true benevolent deity came in the form of a serpent that man's eyes might be opened.
And as Plotts points out, it is God that lied when he said "thou wilt surely die." The serpent told the truth, "thou wilt surely not die" and then the Bible says that Eve saw, not 'wrongly believed' or 'thought,' but "saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise,she took of the fruit" (Genesis 3:6).
What a list! The tree so responsible for all our pain and suffering shown so beautiful and desirable and good in so many ways! How can this be if not that the God of the Garden and the entire old testament is actually what the Zorostrians called the Druj, or "the lie" the one who seeks to keep us in darkness, turn us away from our true nature as fulfilled human beings, (and here I boldly declare a heresy) as GODS!

the human Jesus

Another thing about these titles of Jesus, and this time its in the cannonized texts. Mathew quotes Jesus as saying,"lessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the sons of God" Mat 5:9. Why does Jesus list these at the end of a whole group of those who will receive divine blessing, if he did not mean that they too, like him, are sons of God. This seems to concur with Thomas when he says that the light that existed before the world exists in us all. This light, is the "original face" in Buddhism, the pure state that has only been covered up with confusion and lies, with imperfect human traits.
This view of Jesus as a man encouraging people to look within themselves instead of any establishment or church is supported in the other gospels too. It is also supported by Sexson's claim that Jesus' parables go against conventional wisdom, effectively pissing of the establishment of the time. Think of the disciples who crush grain in their hands to eat on the way to a sermon -on the sabbath. When the Pharisees say that this is impermissable, Jesus replies that "that sabbath was made for man not man for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27)
This also seems to imply that humanity's purpose is not to observe the commandments, Plotts notes several figures like Jacob who are given God's blessing despite being lecherous thieving assholes, but that the commandments were given to help show man the most beautiful and rewarding way to live -akin to the eightfold noble path one must follow in Buddhism if they hope to become enlightened.
Such understanding is crucial to the meaning of Thomas' gospel.
Pagels says that the word Thomas means 'twin', and that this is significant because when Jesus calls him his twin he is saying that the inner light is capable of bringing him onto the same plane as Jesus(Pagels 57). "I am not your master" Jesus tells Thomas, "because you have drunk, nd have become drunk from the same stream which I measured out" (Pagels 47).
And just what happens when we become like Christ? We behold the kingdom of heaven -paradise. In another passage of Thomas the disciples ask where the kingdom of heaven is and Jesus replies: "It will not come by waitin g for it... rather the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it" (50).
It isnt the world that is impure, but our own organs of perception, which sometimes caste filth, envy, disgust and hatred upon a beautiful landsacape that only requires our acknowledgment, our blessing.
So why would someone supress Thomas and revere John? Why would someone prefer an untouchable, distant God who only once came to the earth so that we might have a nice place to live after death, instead of here and now?
To me, the answer is obvious: control. Since the dawn of time emperors and those who seek earthly power have exalted themselves to the level of gods so that their tyranny might never be questioned -John's assertion that we must submit our logic to the tennants of the church, BELIEVE, instead of KNOW. And why place heaven beyond the grave, behind the clouds where man cannot see it? So that those who suffer under this tyranny might have some comfort that maybe, if they never question, never ask for freedom, just maybe, they might be allowed peace in the hereafter.
Is anybody else pissed off yet?

gnosticism

Gnosticism- a first century Christian sect whose works and members were severely repressed and destroyed. They taught a number of things that seem to make allot of sense, but they didn't support going to an intermediary to know god and they didnt support an organization that claimed to provide this. To the fourth century Romans who formed the Niceen council, this was a threat -it undermined the whole system of the underclass seeking guidance from initiated men in robes sworn to uphold the status quo, strike fear into men's hearts, etc.
Jane Pagels' book Beyond Belief: the Gospel of Thomas describes some of these gnostic principles in Thomas' heretical, gnostic text. She says that messiah translates as "annointed one" and christos, in Greek means the same. I always thought they translated as savior and have checked her translation- wiki and other sources agree.
Now, annointed one normally meant, son of god, the chosen king of the Israelites on earth. We all probably remember that Jesus often called himself the son of man and this is true for all the gospels, it seems. This title is not "son of THE man" but rather a descendant of Adam -human. Pagels, a student of the Bible in Greek and other languages, says that while Son of god may have meant divine to the Romans, the Israelite title actually means a human vessel for God on earth, as was David (Beyond Belief 42).
Her main focus of the cannonized gospels is John, which she asserts was written with an awareness of Thomas because it has in it certain similarities not present in Mark Mathew and Luke. Both refer to Jesus as the light of mankind (40). But they differ as to what this means, while John says that Jesus is "the light of all humanity", and "God's ONLY begotten son," "Thomas teaches -that God's light shines not only in Jesus but, potentially at least, in everyone."(40, 34)
John writes that we ought to beleive and accept the cannon of the church. Thomas teaches us to use our own logic and self questing. "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you" (32).
Now, who supports a rigid hegemony in the form of a church that would later kill, maim and torture millions in the name of the pacifist Jesus? Who makes it easy for the elite to hold a monopoly on truth and who teaches personal seeking based in reason and experience? Can you see why Thomas was supressed?