Lecture #10: Gnostic Themes in Science Fiction

Course: Science Fiction & Religion

Lecture #10: Gnostic Themes in Science Fiction

The Ten Major Principles of the Gnostic Revelation

From Exegesis, by Philip K. Dick

The Gnostic Christians of the second century believed that only a special revelation of knowledge rather than faith could save a person. The contents of this revelation could not be received empirically or derived a priori. They considered this special gnosis so valuable that it must be kept secret. Here are the ten major principles of the gnostic revelation:

To know these ten principles of Gnostic Christianity is to court disaster.

NOTE: Highlighted section is “Additional Material – Read only if Time & Interest Permit

The Day The Earth Stood Still

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KLAATU BARADA NIKTO

Last weekend, the BlatherGHQ TV was accidentally powered-up and tuned on to “The Day The Earth Stood Still”, a 1951 extraterrestrial contact movie directed by Robert Wise and adapted by Edmund North from Harry Bates' 1940 short story, “Farewell to the Master”.

We relaxed, enjoyed it, and casually prepared to note any motifs which may have influenced today's interest in UFOs, alien abduction, and extraterrestrial life. All the typical material was there the classic saucer shape, the silver space suits, terror on the streets, silvery robots carrying panicking female leads into spaceships, and the usual 'save the planet' kinda jazz. All the usual style of US movies from the era of the Cold and Korean Wars was represented in the film, and the accompanying baggage communist paranoia, but is in this case somewhat anti-military, while gently ridiculing the 'reds under the beds' mindset.

However, it was uncanny how closely the film stuck to the story of the life and death (and afterlife) of one J.H. Christ. A tall and severe-looking, yet handsome human gentleman, Klaatu (Michael Rennie) comes from the heavens, offering a 'choice' between peace and salvation, or the Earth's destruction at the hands of greater (and apparently wiser) powers elsewhere in the Universe.

Klaatu is immediately demonized by the authorities, and shot while reaching for a gift to give to the US President. He escapes from a military hospital, and begins to lead a secretive life, rooming with a Washington family as a rather quiet bachelor whilst using the name “Carpenter” (Representative of the Holy Family?).

SHOW: Scene 3,4 -- 5 min (give explanation)

He conducts a rather civilized existence, befriending the widowed daughter of the family, Helen (Patricia Neal) who has influential connections - and her young son Bobby (Billy Gray), while the world outside goes berserk searching for the 'monster'. Bobby leads Klaatu to Professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe), "the smartest man on earth".

SHOW Scene 8 (11 min) only if time.

To cut a long story short, Klaatu demonstrates his power by neutralizing out all electrical power world-wide, including cars and telephones. But no one is harmed - aircraft in flight and hospitals are unaffected. This is a display of Klaatu's (or rather his superiors' *miraculous* power.

SHOW: Scene 11 Carpenter's confession-5 min -to military meeting

Barnhardt, suitably convinced, gathers together disciples -- scientists from around the world -- but before Klaatu arrives at his meeting with them, he is betrayed by Helen's rather irritating boyfriend, and gunned down in the street by the army (Klaatu throws his arms in the air as he is pierced by the bullet...crucifixion?) His dead body is moved across the street to a police station, where it locked in a cell, and protected by an armed guard (the tomb of Christ perhaps?)

Helen has already been told to use the words "Klaatu Barada Nikto" to prevent Gort Klaatu's tall silvery robot sidekick, a “faultless policeman of the universe” (holy spirit, angelic being) - from destroying “everything”. She manages to convey this message before Gort gets a chance to zap her, and 'he' carries her into the saucer, presumably for her own safety. Gort then blasts a hole in the side of the police station, and removes Klaatu (disappearance of the body from the tomb, luminescent figure responsible). Back at the saucer, Klaatu is “temporarily resurrected” by Gort, and addresses his disciples scientists and leaders of the world - explaining to them what they must do to avert impending doom. He then “ascends into the heavens”, leaving them to complete his work on earth.

SHOW: Scenes 13--end 20 min

It was only when only on reading Mark Pilkington's *Screen Memories* that one found out that scriptwriter Edmund North had admitted to somehow *hiding* the Christian aspect of the story from the director and producer: "It was my private little joke. I never discussed this angle with Blaustein (producer) or Wise because I didn't want it expressed. I hoped the Christ comparison would be subliminal." (Mark Pilkington quotes from *Seeing is Believing* by Peter Biskind).

Mark P rounds off his treatise by pointing out that '...human looking aliens who live amongst us on Earth, and the aliens' fears for the Earth's destruction have become staple elements in the abduction scenario of the 1990's. It is possible that these may have their roots in the science fiction of the fifties, but such themes have been central to myth, religion and visionary thought since time immemorial, their recurrence in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and other films being intrinsically connected to the collective fears of the time. Then it was the threat of nuclear destruction that hovered over the West; today it is mankind's destruction of the environment, not just a threat but a reality, that brings the other down to Earth.'

As “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is one the first movies to propose UFOs as spaceships, it is rather ironic that our *modern* UFO culture should be fueled by a 'private little joke' involving the New Testament.

ADDENDUM:

In *Return of the Jedi*, we're told, three of Jabba's entourage were Klaatu, Barada and Nikto. [Note, 7th January, 2000: Also recently noticed when satellite problems are becoming noticeable in the movie *Independence Day*, scenes from *The Day The Earth Stood Still* flash across the screen]

THE MATRIX

BASIC PLOT

The premise of the Matrix is that reality is a dream, controlled by secret forces to enslave us with, and that only through conscious dreaming can we escape our bondage and reclaim our divine nature.

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The story is briefly as follows: Thomas Anderson is a pallid employee of a computer firm but also has a secret life as a hacker who sells illegal software like it was a psychedelic substance.

Somewhere along the line he is brought into contact with a man named Morpheus, a notorious "terrorist" whom he has never actually met but has been seeking with hints from the mysterious Trinity, who sends him messages on his computer that predict coming events.

Thomas is hurled bodily into a "game" after a warning from Morpheus that government agents are after him. He is left there to play or plummet to his death. the agents are at that moment are approaching his desk.

Morpheus can see everything like a god looking down and he directs Thomas to make the leap which Thomas does not and is captured. He is offered a deal, either cooperate in the tracking of Morpheus in return for a clean slate. He refuses and his world, w/o warning, becomes a surrealist nightmare as the agent named Smith literally wipes his mouth off leaving him writhing in horror.

After other horrors, Thomas wakes up, as though from a dream. He is picked up by Morpheus team. When he meets Morphens at last there is a speech explaining what is happening. He is offered a Red pile or a Blue pill. If he takes the blue pill he will wake up again and all this will be just a dream. Take the red and he will learn about what reality really is. He takes the red, of course and it is like a bad trip.

Thomas is given the hideous, literally mind-shattering truth: that he is a slave to an order of inorganic beings that until this moment, he did not even know existed. Morpheus explains that the year is not really 1999, but it is really two centuries later and that civilization has in the meantime already been destroyed.

As a result of the discovery of Artificial Intelligence somewhere around the start of the 21st century, there was a stand-off between man and machine, and the machine won.

The AI has developed for itself cybernetic, semi-organic bodies, using human beings as its primary energy source. Thus, humans were enslaved en-mass. They were put into a deep sleep, and a collective dream was engendered to keep them tractable and docile, while their vital life force was sucked from them.

This is pure occultism and goes into the nightmares of Lovecraft, Heinlein, and Carlos Castanada, with the inorganic entities that have enslaved humanity and turned it into a food source.

The collective dream that is engendered makes it circa 1999 on Earth and this is the "Matrix", or womb that enslaves humanity. It is possible to escape as Morpheus and his crew have done. They are the "enlightened" ones who have made it out of the computer simulated fantasy matrix and liberated their bodies.

As a result, the liberated ones can enter the Matrix--the dream world--at will and function with superhuman abilities. They can keep a direct line open to those in the real world who can monitor them. However the AI can generate agents to obstruct these.

However, they are limited and only Thomas, renamed Neo, who is being trained by Morpheus, will eventually free his mind so he won't be restricted by the laws of the body at all, but only by his belief in such. As a child buddha explains: "Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead....only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon. Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself." This is pre-Zen and goes beyond Yoda and his Force, into quantum physics.

The Matrix is limited, despite being the creator of reality, because if it wants to maintain its hold it cannot perform to many overly impossible stunts as this will only empower the rebel forces by freeing their minds from the "tyranny of continuity", i.e. time, upon which the program depends.

Neo is the One who is expected to turn the tide in favor of the human uprising, by shifting the balance from game player to game master, from ordinary man to shaman and to demi-god. In the end it is the power of the imagination that wins the day. After a death, resurrection caused by love, Neo reaches a certain realization he is able to simply stop the bullets with his mind--since they don't exist in the first place--and to project himself into the holographic body of the enemy and explode it from within.

"The images are manifest to man, but the light in them remains concealed in the image of the light of the Father. He will become manifest, but his image will remain concealed by the light." -- GOSPEL OF THOMAS

MESSIAH MOVIE

The Matrix is both a Messiah Movie and a movie (released on Easter weekend, 1999) and a movie with about a gnostic (meaning knowledge) journey, like a shaman.

First, the messianic ideas: Neo, as he is known in the movie though Thomas Anderson is his name, linked to "doubting Thomas" of John's gospel. This because Neo never believed he was the "One". Neo means "new" or "change" and that was why he was brought into reality, to bring about a new world order.

The Crew (his disciples?) are excited about his presence and willing to believe he is the One. Morpheus played John the Baptist to Neo and proclaimed him to be "the One" since the oracle told Morpheus that He would be the one who would find him. His coming had been predicted and that he would hail the destruction of the Matrix and the war, bring freedom to the people.

Neo sacrifices himself to save Morpheus knowing he will die but knowing he will save humanity. Neo is killed by the agents and is resurrected in 3 minutes, not days, but the symbolism is there for astute people.

The force that brought Neo back from the dead is LOVE. The woman named Trinity, whose name represents Christianity, leans over Neo and kisses him and Neo awakens. The first words Neo hears are in the form of a command from Trinity: "Now....get up!"

After his resurrection, Neo's mastery of the Matrix is total, and the authorities are powerless against him. After agent Smith's body explodes. Neo is represented as an incandescent figure.

At the end of the movie Neo hangs up a telephone after telling the Artificial Intelligence that this is the beginning of a world with no boundaries and no borders.

He then ascends into the sky.

At end of last movie -- Revolutions -- Neo defeats the machine with obvious symbolism.

GNOSTIC IDEAS IN "THE MATRIX

CARLOS CASTANEDA in his posthumously published book "The Active side of Infinity" says:

“Human beings are travelers...the earth is their matrix. . .it is but a station on their journey; for extraneous reasons... the travelers had interrupted their voyage... Human beings were caught in a sor of eddy, a current that went in circles, giving them the impression of moving while they were, in essence, stationary...Sorcerers. were the only opponents of whatever force kept human beings prisoners...by means of their discipline sorcerers broke loose from its grip and continued their journey of awareness."

The fact is that this book and the film came out roughly at the same time and there is no way for the Wachowskis could have read the book and none of Castanada's previous work relates to it. Thus, what appears are alternate but intimately related versions of a single truth.

Castanada in this book postulates the existence of a dark predatorial force that has enslaved humanity in order to farm it as a food source. The force or entity he calls the flyer as:

"a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are prisoners. The predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless... They took us over because we were food for them and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. Just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops.”

He goes on to explain how these predators have given us our system of beliefs, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed and cowardice in order to keep us meek... They inject into our minds whatever is convenient for them.

He asks Carlos to observe how "Every human being on this earth seems to have exactly the same reactions, the same thoughts, the same feelings. They seem to respond in more or less the same way to the same stimuli."

In both Castanada's book and the Matrix we are presented with the same untenable notion, the all-but unendurable idea that human culture, reality, even nature itself, is but a malignant simulation designed to dupe us into acquiescence to an order of intelligence that ordinarily we would fight to the death rather than succumb to.

According to Don Juan, these predators live off our life energy or "glow of awareness" that makes us human. They leave only enough to keep us alive and gives us the total blind preoccupation with the self, above all with security, comfort, food and other material needs.

Don Juan echoes Morpheus when he says, “They'll (humans) laugh and make fun of you, and the more aggressive ones will beat the shit out of you. And not because they don't believe you for down in the depths of every human being, there is an ancestral knowledge of the predators existence.”

Both Don Juan and Morpheus are saying that human beings have collectively (albeit unwillingly) surrendered all their allegiance to the predator and so effectively become part of its own dark, suicidal agenda. The reign of the matrix, or "flyers" mind, is so pervasive and unchallenged that it is impossible for most of us to even think about our predicament, much less confront it.

As Don Juan says:

“We are energetic probes created by the universe...and its because we are possessors of energy that has awareness that we are the means by which the universe becomes aware of itself. The flyers are implacable challengers. They cannot be taken as anything else. If we succeed in doing that, the universe allows us to continue."

In other words, The Matrix as such, is a womb from which it is up to us as conscious individuals to emerge, in order to inherit our true destinies, outside the illusion, and beyond the lie. The truth exists, after all, in order to set us free.

From the Gospel of Phillip, one of the Nag Hammadi texts found in 1945:

"Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive truth in any other way. There is a rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is necessary to be born again through the image. Which One? Resurrection. The image must rise again through the image."

Leo and his girlfriend Miriam, a doctor go to Manhattan general on the night before Easter and there is a guy in the morgue with nail marks in his hands and feet. They take a blood sample but while testing it, he disappears.

Though Jewish, they realize this had to be Jesus just before his resurrection. Because of the idea of SIMULTANIETY OF TIME all past events are still taking place, as are future events, within a series of overlapping time frames. Like a whole film being projected simultaneously.

Over the next few weeks, the Man appears to Leo many more times to explain what is going on.

They call him "the Man" as synonymous with the risen Christ, in contrast to the historical personality known as Yeshua, a perishable human host, occupied by the celestial entity known as Ya'el.

Ya'el is one of the many names of the greatest of all the heavenly hierarchs in the non-canonical writings, METATRON. He is the link between the human and divine and charged with the sustenance of humanity. He has been identified with the angel who wrestled with Jacob, as the LOGOS, as well as with the Shekinah, the presence of God on earth. Sometimes called the "little YHWH" he is the one who occupies the throne next to the divine throne.

Yahoel (ie, God) is the name given him in the Apocalypse of Abraham. Metatron has also been identified as Isaiah's suffering servant, the Messiah of Christian theology. He has also been associated with the Persian sun god, Mithra.

Ya'el explains that he comes from another universe, another dimension. He knew he would be free of the host, Yeshua but hadn't reckoned on time travel. He tells Leo of the war between the forces of light and darkness which began billions of years ago, at the end of the 2nd age. We are now in the third age.

THE MISSION by Patrick Tilley

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Leo goes to pick up his girlfriend, Miriam a doctor at Manhattan General hospital on Sat. night before easter. She has to go to the morgue to take care of a guy brought in from an alley. He has nail marks in hands and feet. They take a blood sample, when he begins to bleed but while going to test it, he disappears.

These two, though both Jewish, realize that this had to be Jesus just before being raised from the dead and that the simultaneity of time must be a reality.

The idea of simultaneity of time means that one realizes that all past events are still taking place within a series of overlapping time frames. Like a whole film is being projected simultaneously.

The Man, as they begin to call him, appears to Lee again the next Saturday and over the next few weeks, he explains to Leo what is going on. Leo uses the term "the Man" as synonymous with the Risen Christ--in contrast to the historical personality known elsewhere as Jesus of Nazareth and who consisted of a perishable human host occupied by this celestial entity known as Ya'el. The hosts name was Joshua, or Jesus in Greek.

Ya'el is one of the many names of the greatest of all the heavenly hierarchs in the non-canonical writings, METATRON. He is the link between the human and divine. He is charged with the sustenance of humankind. He has been identified as the angel who wrestled with Jacob, as the LOGOS as well with the shekinah, the presence of God on Earth. He is the tallest angel in heaven sometimes called little YHWH. Can be interpreted as the "one who occupies the throne next to the divine throne.”

Yahoel (i.e., God) is the name given him in the Apocalypse of Abraham. Metatron has also been identified as Isaiah's suffering servant, the Messiah of Christian theology. He has also been associated with the Persian sun god, Mithra.

Ya'el explains that he comes from another universe, another dimension. He had been told that after he was crucified, he would be free of the body named Joshua, that was his host, but he had not figured on time travel happening. He had expected to end up back on his longship.

He says that there is a war between the forces of light and forces of darkness which began with the end of the 2nd age, billions of years ago. We are now in the third age with war.

This age is an age of darkness when rebellion caused a split in the celestial empire when many of the celestial beings rebelled against the Presence.

The Empire is boundless and timeless, encompasses all creation and eternity. It interpenetrates everything in the physical universe but is itself impregnable. It contains 9 universes. Seven lie beyond the TIMEGATE and two are in Space/time. The physical universe, inhabited by humans, and the netherworld--a mirror image of the cosmos but fashioned from antimatter which can only be entered through a Black Hole. The seven universes beyond the timegate are non-dimensional and non temporal.

The Man says he is a Celestial, part of the universe closest to the Presence of God.

He says there were 12 of these celestials working on Earth to bring about life before geological time began during the 2nd age. With the rebellion the secessionists, as they were called, banished to the Netherworld of antimatter.

When the 2nd war of rebellion came, Brax, as he's called, was able to cut off the network of channels linking the Empire to the galaxies so the POWER OF THE PRESENCE could not flow. The Power of the presence is the lifeblood of the universe and if any part is cut off it begins to die.

The Man's mission was to rescue the 12 celestials, called ain folk (ain means infinite or eternally living) who are now living through the human race. The human race IS the ain folk.

When death occurs, the ain folk fragment enters another newborn human. thus reincarnation is a necessity to provide continuing protection for the 12 ain folk trapped here.

ABRAXUS, OR BRAX as the Man calls him, in the gnostic and kabbalistic tradition, is the prince of aeons. He is associated with the creation and mediator between the animate creatures of the earth and the godhead. He can destroy life, he can corrupt it but he cannot create it. Life is a gift of the Empire.

The only way Brax can increase his strength is by winning the allegiance of the celestial powers trapped ion the cosmos and he will never do that because the Empire keeps sending messengers.

Speech was a gift from Brax deigned to prevent us from understanding one another. The misuse of language played a major part in the all-consuming quest for self-gratification. It made it possible for us to lie to one another and fueled our capacity for self-deception.

Brax also had forced the idea of the ego which brought about the cult of individualism and an abhorrence of collectivism.

The Man, on an early outing in Manhattan, saves a fellow who was shot but is arrested on a drug charge by two cops. In the process of getting him out (they said he was clean anyway) he discovers he can understand and speak Hebrew.

After the Man is released, Leo comments that he had been arrested by the wrong people. Leo wonders why (will know at end).

Leo begins reading the ZOHAR, the greatest of the Jewish mystical writings called Kabballah (tradition). and reading about Gnosticism, the idea that knowledge is what brings salvation.

He discovers ISSAC LURIA, a kabbalist of the 16th cent. whose doctrine of "The breaking of the vessels" fits well with what the Man has been telling him.

Luria's theosophical vision centered on the idea that during the withdrawal of the Divine Light from the physical universe, a catastrophic event occurred during which the luminous particles of God became trapped in shells of matter (qelippot) kabbalistic term that was also used to designate evil powers.

The "withdrawal" could be interpreted as the Empire's retreat during the 2nd war of Secession and Luria's "luminous particles" could be an off-target description of the trapped Ain Folk. Luria, I might add, also believed in reincarnation.

Leo also discovered much of what the Man was telling him in the teachings of Zoroaster of the 6th century BCE. AS well as that of the Essenes "The war of the sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness". These teachings had resurfaced in the gnostic writings of the first few Christian centuries.

Leo's conclusion: that Brax had infiltrated the early church, but that truth survived thru the Kabbalah, the Gnostics, and later Islam.

The Earth is more than a spinning ball of rock, gift wrapped in clouds. It's the mother of all life upon it. A conscious living thing that holds within itself a memory of its past. This is the GAIA theory held by some today.

Power places, when the system is working properly, are the sites acting as cosmic terminals and where the Earth's memories are stored.

Ya'el is the prime target for Brax and that’s why he is being sent thru time, even w/o his consent so it will not be known.

Ya'el explains that much of the gospels are codes for initiates. for example: the 7 loaves and 5 fishes" stand for the disciples who in turn stand for the 12 aeons that are trapped in humanity.

Breaking the loaves and fishes to feed the 4000 symbolizes the fragmenting of the ain folk into multiple human hosts. Gathering up what was left refers to the rescue of these ain folk, which is Ya'el's mission.

The man reveals to Leo that his story needs to be passed to the present again in a way people can understand but it has to be his decision.

Karma is the psychic accretion that each ain folk fragment acquires by co-habiting with a human host during each Earth life. This Karma keeps humans from re-entering the higher levels of the Empire.

Gabriel was first Elijah and later John the Baptist. Gabriel being a celestial also, along with Michael. When one of these celestials bonds with a fetus it takes 7 weeks for the bonding to take place. After that, the entity is able to leave and return to the person/fetus involved. Thus, Gabriel was able to go announce to Mary that she would have a son while "becoming" John the Baptist.

Meanwhile, Michael is orbiting Earth and when Joshua/Ya'el is born, he puts his ship in synchronous orbit. Thus the "Star in the East" was Michael's ship but the code was that the Zoroastrian God Ahura Mazda was "the star in the East." The truth that with Joshua's birth, the power of Ahura Mazda had entered the world to carry on the fight against Brax.

Ya'el says we need to see ourselves as someone trapped inside our physical machine. The Celestial driver who has collapsed over the wheel and who the Empire through the Man, was sent to revive.

The Knights Templers and the Albigenses, two groups branded as heretics by the church and exterminated by it, were close to, the truth realizing that Jesus was not god but a messenger from God and this messenger, i.e. Heavenly Revealer as the Gnostics called him, was not killed at Calvary.

The Bible has to be interpreted allegorically, i.e. the fall in Eden refers to Brax being driven from Heaven, i.e., the Empire. Even the promised land was not meant to be real estate but a symbol of the deliverance of the ain folk by the Empire.

Ya'el came to boost our awareness of our real selves. The church willfully misinterpreted the Man's message and robbed the world of the truth for 2000 years.

Meanwhile: Ya'el's identity is being questioned by several people. His blood samples showed strange elements, it never aged. Only a few people know his identity yet.

Leo decides he will take two weeks and go to Jerusalem to see the area for himself. Before this however, the 6 people who know who he is, come together to talk to Ya'el.

He comments that Brax has a running campaign to destroy all hope of salvation by turning belief into bigotry.

Joshua/Ya'el traveled for 12 years learning what they could before starting his ministry. After 17 years (5 at Qumran, 12 traveling) he goes to find John/Gabriel who was baptizing and preaching.

He finds he has 12 months to do his preaching, teaching and healing, before he must die in order to be "resurrected" and rescued.

He says both the Old and New Testaments were written by men, so the Bible is not the truth, but the truth is in the book.

It is here he reveals who he is, Metatron, the highest of the angels, the celestial power who links the human and divine.

An AEON is the highest order of celestial power, the first created beings. Spiritual entities formed from the divine presence, God's own being. Abraxus was their leader till he rebelled.

Aeon is also synonymous with the tree of the sefirot, the divine emanations, through which God manifested his existence in the creation of the Universe.

When he is done talking to these people, he just disappears, an act that finishes convincing them of who he is.

Leo stowed all the tapes and papers about the Man in his safety deposit box on the day he was to fly to Israel. On the way out of Paris, there was an attempted hijack and in the process the plane exploded, but Ya'el saved Leo. When he woke up, he was in Jerusalem in 30 CE. He was going to live out the rest of his life at Qumran writing the story of the Man for his own day.

When the Dead Sea scrolls were found, the "Resnik scroll" was among them, in English. Many scholars thought it a hoax, but the dating showed to be authentic. Thus, as the time approached for the events recorded to take place, the CIA began "operation, Easter Bunney" to see if all he had said panned out. This is why Ya'el was picked up, they were followed, etc.

From the viewpoint of the church, the view put forth in this book was the most dangerous heresy with which it had to contend. Known as the docetic heresy, it taught that Jesus was not really human but any appeared to be so.

The writings we know as the New Testament were decided in 185 CE at a church council in response to the gnostic threat. Many gospels, such as the Gospel of Thomas were an attempt to show Jesus as a heavenly reveal or who came to give us knowledge of ourselves which would lead to salvation. for the Church, BELIEF in Jesus became the norm, not knowledge (John 3:16)

The Apostles Creed, was an attempt to state what should be believed to be a Christian, as opposed to the Gnostics. Apostolic Secession also was adopted to control who could be ordained to make sure the teaching was "orthodox." Tilley's view, then, is that the church suppressed the truth in favor of control of doctoring and organization.

Questions / Discussions: