I'm totally unqualified to participate in this discussion. I will just say that as a Buddhist of 30 years I find some of these apocryphal books mesmerizing because IMO they seem to articulate the non-duality aspect of Buddhism--the idea of "no separation" between self and "other.', and they also seem to emphasize self-reliance in grasping the meaning of the teachings and trusting one's intuition as opposed to relying on an outside teacher.

It is obvious to me why these teachings could be a threat to those who make their livelihood explicating the meaning of the accepted teachings for others.

I really hope you get some responses.

republiKhristians hate that idea, and want us to be submissive proles. G.O.P. zealots are making war against free will, the distinguishing human gift. MAGA republicons will impose even more Big Government/Religion, Inc. restrictions on free will as they wrap their devious hypocritical mitts around America's throat.

and will bookmark this in hopes that people who know more will be sharing insight.

that the Wingers love religion so much. It is easily twisted into an oppressive, agency-denying fun-house mirror of itself.

Many religious texts, such as the Bible, are inherently contradictory. Accordingly, nearly any meaning can be dowsed from these texts.

These are mostly documents that were not included in the Christian Bible.

There are a lot of interesting surprises in these texts. When reading them, it becomes clear why the Roman Church excluded them. For example, there are remnants of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene; key information is missing, of course.

Enlightening reading and recommended.

And you are correct in that now i have more questions.
Did the church want to keep us ignorant i absolutely think they did.

Yes, the Church wanted to keep the people ignorant.

It's why they kept the Mass in Latin-- the people didn't speak the language.

It's why they stifled education-- it kept the people with small malleable minds.

It's why the Church assaulted Science-- knowledge threatened the Church's hold on the people.

It's why they terrorized people with the Inquisition-- it kept the people afraid and acquiescent.

How much further along we would be in advancements of our civilization.
I read other week and it made me smile. Jesus did not cure polio science actually did that.

All caused by political chaos and a dominant religion.

SMDH

The idea that you cannot approach the powers that be by any path but through the appointed spokesperson allows that person the ability to mold the congration. Some are good and some foment hate for those who don't believe exactly as they do. Those who twist the message seem more interested in power and money. Keep those cards and letters comming in, papa needs a new Cadillac and a better jet.

is the Book of Judith.

Here's the Wiki version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Judith

From the link:

" ... It tells of a Jewish widow, Judith, who uses her beauty and charm to kill an Assyrian general who has besieged her city, Bethulia. With this act, she saves nearby Jerusalem from total destruction. ..."

but thanks for reminding me, as i've generally been reading king james lately.

the books of macabees also make the catholic translations but not kjv .interesting history of hellenistic palestine

when the canon was decided by the bishops at nicea they were very interested in pleasing one guy :constantine the great.

likewise the translators for king james were spinning their product to sell the stuart "divine right" of kings.

The Bible has gone through so many translations and versions that for this atheist, it's hard to believe that the so-called inerrant word of god hasn't changed over the millennia. Earlier in my life, I studied Christianity in great detail for years and even considered a life as a minister. I've read the Bible several times, taught classes, been a leader in a congregation and even played organ and led the choir. I feel comfortable in my knowledge of the Bible and Christianity. In fact, it's why I finally left the faith but that's a different story for another time.

In high school, I read Merle Miller's "Plain Speaking," an oral biography of President Harry Truman. It was a wonderful experience that provides a personal yet profound impression of the former President. and I highly recommend the book to anyone who hopes for a return to an honest Constitutional order.

Regardless, President Truman expressed a deep understanding of the Bible and said that he preferred the King James Version because of its poetic nature. That always impacted me and I tended to prefer that person over the revisions or contemporary versions. As a composer, I've been commissioned to write a number religious choral or solo works and I've always used the KJV.

Upthread, I mentioned the Gnostic texts. These are the ancient texts that the Council of Nicaea rejected for the Bible. They're fascinating! It quickly becomes apparent why these books were not included as they contradict the (demonstrably false) narrative.

Sorry to go on on this holiday! Happy Thanksgiving to you.

and is why i usually go there first.

even as a "recovring cathaholic" i think that the religion of christ is fairly complete in matthew 5-7, the golden rule and sermon on the mount.

Keeping society the way it is so that those with money and power maintain money and power.

The women being valued part was definitely a target in those decisions. The other book of acts that parallels the one they kept showed Paul working beside women and them as important members of the first century church. They kept the parts where Paul said bad things about woman's never put in the context. For example, in some parts of mid east, only women who were prostitute or priestesses of others gods spoke in public and had authority over men. So, Paul wrote to THAT church that women should be silent. But, if you read Acts, you know that there were several women who were preaching along with Paul, Barnabas, Silas, and Luke (Priscilla is the most obvious example).

I have worked for a long time to separate the "human organized religion" with its corruption and fallacies with "God inspired truths" of love your God; love your neighbor; and do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

I hope I am getting better...but this past 9 years have been hard to love my neighbor and to love mercy as I want some serious FAFO, like old testament find out, experienced by these cheats and liars who claim to be messengers of God.

But I will never forget what my professor for history of the ancient world said: "the problem with fundamentalists, whether they be Christian, Muslim, political or any other kind of fundamentalist, is that they are ahistorical. They take the movement out of its historical context and treat the people involved as cardboard cutouts that pop out of the ground for the story and then disappear. Then they do not allow the movement to evolve over time. So, they ignore the original history and do not allow it to change over history."

I would add they do this to confirm what they want. My best analogy is to the statistician who slices the data forty different ways to get the 'daya to show' what they already believe.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I was raised in a Southern evangelical home by true believers who managed to not be hypocrites yet it wasn’t for me. Always read and always question is a fine life plan.

Have experienced some personal experiences too sacred to share details, however

I know life continues. You will be reunited.
We are eternal beings having an earthly human experience.

If you can, spend as much time as you like developing your inner connection with the Spirit of Truth within you. Inner peace is the reward for communing with your higher self.

Overcome any/all weaknesses, attachments, and addictions. Attachments are the seeds of unhappiness. Love all authentically.

Caveat - we don’t have to like behaviors but letting evil rob us of inner peace through hate is evil’s goal. RESIST!

Yogananda spent his life studying and writing about the Truths you are seeking.

All his writings are at link below

Go to the Book 1 of 2 for his 1200 page analysis of the words of Jesus Christ as written in the Gospels based on Yogananda’s analysis of the teachings the Baghavad Gita & Vedanta.

Very rich yet accessible explanations of what the purpose of this life is and the soul’s progression through eternity.*

https://archive.org/details/bhagavadgitagodtalkswitharjunaroyalscienceofgodrealizationparamahansayoganandavol121_202004/Second%20Coming%20of%20Christ%20The%20Resurrection%20of%20Christ%20Within%20You%20Paramahamsa%20Yogananda%20Part%201/

Silence is the Altar of the Soul

If you practice silence you can improve your intuition. Keep a note pad and pen nearby

Imagination connects intuition

Ask your inner Guide questions and listen for short relevant answers. Over time, this improves.

Namaste

The Patient Sincere Seeker of Truth is always rewarded

Namaste
Hope the link works. ☺️

*Best $65 I’ve spent

The 2-volume hard cover books beautifully produced, highest quality
https://bookstore.yogananda-srf.org/product/the-second-coming-of-christ/

Happy Thanksgiving

Long ago I realized that much of what I had been taught by the church was what the church needed me to believe to stay in power and have us do its bidding. We are born with a sense of right and wrong and develop that over the years with our life experiences. That little voice that comes from within tells us that Religion helps give direction in how we should live our lives and that churches may or may not have the right answers. The best we can do is keep our eyes and ears open and try to use the brains that God gave us to figure things out. I believe that, if we let Him, God will show us the Way. We just have to listen and think it through.

we see is one religion with two different levels of knowledge. In the gospels, Jesus refers to the knowledge hidden in his parables. The gospels have a public knowledge and a secret knowledge. Orthodoxy is based on the public, literal level. The secret level contains Gnostic theology. That means the gospels were written by people who knew both levels. St. Paul classifies his communities as infants or adults and he refers to mystery knowledge. I guarantee you, you can't find any Orthodox theologian who can interpret the parables.

In other words, not at all.

...for the first time since then we are thinking about finding a new one, a liberal congregation this time, just to have some solidarity and community for what's ahead. We live in a very red state and have had no friends and few acquaintances since leaving our religion behind. In assessing what's coming, we want more people around us for support. I know there are plenty of small liberal congregations around here, just need to find one that we could tolerate.

After a lot of reading. I have come to the conclusion that as to the embodiment of a singular God as professed by religion, I don't know if such an entity exists. I doubt that even if it does, it plays games with people, rewarding or punishing them for their beliefs of non-beliefs. I don't think it would care whether they attend services or believe exactly what the appointed spokesperson of the particular belief system conveys as the absolute truth. Although most adhere to what I believe to be reasonable guidelines for living. With the obvious exception of the extremist groups that many versions seem to share.

In the time of the Gospels the Roman Empire was (and had been for well over a thousand years) ruled cooperatively by a combination of secular power, centered on the Emperor and Senate and concerned mostly with military and foreign affairs, taxes, and public works, and religious power centered on the temples of the various Roman gods and concerned mostly with domestic affairs. Neither side was completely dominant and each had what was regarded as absolute control over certain spheres of Roman life.

Constantine saw the emergence of this weird Judaic cult as an opportunity to break the political power of the temples. His conversion to Christianity was deliberately staged to split popular support away from the temples and toward an inward-directed death and afterlife obsessed philosophy which he thought could be easily manipulated and less demanding of expensive temple constructions and ceremonial sacrifices. But surprise! As soon as they tasted political power, these Christian leaders turned out to be as fractious and ill-tempered as their pagan predecessors, with the curious result (not often recalled by Christians) that most of those Christians thrown to the lions in the Coliseum were put there by other Christians.

The Council of Nicea was Constantine's gambit to draw these factions together into a unified and easily manipulated movement. The version of Christianity which emerged from Nicea was ruthlessly structured as an hierarchy with the Pope replacing the Emperor as the most powerful expression of divine intent in the material world, with individual humans pegged in a relationship that required them to report in order individual to priest, priest to bishop, bishop to Pope, Pope to God. No line skipping tolerated, and anything which suggested such a thing was ruthlessly suppressed as heresy. Thus all forms of Gnosticism got chucked overboard, as well as a lot of borderline fusion movements which aren't even remembered. The four books of the apocrypha somehow survived Nicea, but always a bit on the margin, and did not make it into the protestant KJV.

Ironically it was the Protestants who inadvertently reinvented one of the two most important tenets of Gnosticism, the idea that an individual's relationship with God was ultimately personal and that God listens directly to everyone's prayers. (The other big Gnostic idea, that God the Father is evil or insane and that history is a struggle by the Holy Spirit and to right all the wrong things he's done to his creation, has been touched on now and then too. Oh, and the Holy Spirit's big play, the sacrifice of God's Son at Calvary, failed. That last one doesn't get much air time at all.) Gnosticism actually felt so correct and answered so many questions (Evil? Not a problem) that it was was a continually recurrent heresy requiring multiple massacres to keep it down until Protestantism and the Enlightenment came along to really mess things up for the Vatican.

(For a good porthole looking over how that whole keeping down the heretics thing went, look up anything written by this guy named Samuel Clemens about the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.)

Really, when you take even the most cursory look at how the Bible was assembled and handed down to us, it is hard to see any form of belief in biblical inerrancy as anything other than simple-minded or insane. There is good stuff in the Bible (I'm particularly fond of that bit about treating others as you'd like to be treated yourself), and there is some truly terrible stuff. The same is true for most belief systems which have the historical depth and vastness of reach of a major religion. (And no, science is not immune to this. J. Marion Sims would like to have a word about that.)

As for the Romans, it's probably just as well that I don't have to sacrifice goats to Apollo, but I wouldn't be disappointed if someone decided to bring back Lupercalia.