Theos-Talk Archives (March 2004 Message tt00503)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, samblo@c... wrote:
> Steve,
> If you had selected uplifting origination's
> taken from the Nicene Fathers that were of a higher emotional tone 
level
> to place before me and others I would not have had the same 
response.

??? I thought i did that. Not inspirational, necessarily, but 
interesting as showing there was an esoteric content.

> I have read at length some but
> certainly not waded through the entire Nicene library.

You peobably would have died of boredom if you had read all of them.

> I completely
> agree that they are boring, even exceedingly boring

Yes.

> I agree with your view about "Believing."

There are several different levels on which one can "believe." There 
is the truth or non truth of their theology, which is impossible to 
ascertain, and then there are the historical facts, which are 
reasonably accessible.

> But all in all the emotional, desire, character faults
>and the rest that he exhibits can be found in several other jealous
>personifications including the mundane conditioned mind of us all.

> I am not familiar with Burton Mack, what specifically did he 
mention?

Hidden meanings in Mark. Some of the stuff Mark says occurred at 
the "crucifixion" was actually reported to have occurred when Titus 
sacked Jerusalem 40 years later. Virtually everything he said had a 
concealed meaning, except where his text was altered by a later 
scribe to make it appear he supported some later dogms.

> But it remains that
>centuries the Catholic Church has collected all it considered
>contraband and illicit literature across all domains of the world 
under
>it's reach, often by force, and to include burning's to effect the 
> purpose
>of depriving us of any knowledge which is revenant to history

True, and that is why the heresiarchs are so valuable. They lift the 
rug and let us see what was swept underneath it.

The quote is interesting. Irenaeus said Achamoth was the abortion.

> I know how much you dislike Mead

I do not dislike him, I merely said he lacked insight. Here are his 
exact words:

"The difficulty of the subject us at times so great that even with 
the best will in the world I have entire;y failed to make the matter 
clear; but this is also true of every other writer in the field." 

That is pretty revealing. He also says the system is "so abstruse 
and so complicated that no one has hitherto been able to make any 
consistent understanding out of their chaotic and contradictory 
representations in the writings of the Fathers." He went on to say 
that "he who makes a concordance of names merely in Gnosticism may 
think himself lucky to escape a lunatic asylum."

None of this is true as far as I can see.