Gospel of Philip allegories and a few other things

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Geocalyx
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Gospel of Philip allegories and a few other things

Post by Geocalyx »

Um, hi! I usually lurk here, but today I've got a question.

So in the Gospel of Philip, we have a statement along these lines:
“Names, given on the world, are very decieving. People hear them and they tend to imagine the wrong things.”
and then we have all sorts of cryptic things recorded in here, like, say: “do not underestimate the lamb, for without it, no-one will be able to see the King. For no-one will be able to see the king, if they are naked.” Now for the untrained eye this seems like a cute Christian joke (no wool = no dress), but I am certain the clientelle of this forum will immediately recognize the symbols - so according to this, the mishmarot group Immar guards the inner chamber of the Temple.

Am I on to anything here? Because there's also of talk of the veil being torn, Christ bringing death to cities, God eating corpses and the fact that salvation awaits at the place of marriage (in thus imagined context nothing more than a military rendez-vous point)... because I've figured out the Gospel of Philip isn't as much a sayings gospel as it is a collection of themed rambilngs, which are nonetheless broken into shorter paragraphs and mixed among themselves. One can clearly follow a few lines of thought (Mary the mother into fallen Sophia, resulting in the famous Mary Magdalene paragraph where the Mind favors the fallen Sophia among all other students and again, a nerdy joke is made at the very end) but others are way more frustrating to follow and could even diverge or converge for all I can tell so far. Due to this and the above “watch out for words” warning, I suspect this is a deliberately cryptic book of commentary on Jesus’ life. If so, which work could it commenting on? The lamb really threw me off here, but if this contained (a?) Jesus’ history in some cryptic way, that would explain the name at least.

… on a related note, I've been meticulusly translating the nhl and the rest of the Coptic gnosis into my native toungue for the last 5 years… this forum is great and full of interesting people and knowledge, so I lurk here a lot. After 45 or so texts I guess I'm starting to form an opinion - so far it seems these are the works of unified philosophers in direct opposition to the Law that there once existed a Christ in the flesh… in short, a debate on the historicity of Jesus (...) and the absurd notion, that we should actually blindlessly believe, by law, well, anything. They glorify the Mind and abhor the new and unusual kind of faith, dubing it the fallen wisdom (that the highest is actually knowable and tangible to humans). Some works are parody, and are difficult to tell apart from more serious ones. Others glorify the Father by using mind to elaborate on His magnificence (like Tripartite Tractate), so they're not atheistic, as one would conclude from the mocking ones. There's Egyptian lore (amen - amente… clever word play), there's Persian lore (Jesus in shape of an eagle, horoscope references), there's Greek lore (obvious… also Ialdabaoth appears to be basically Asclepius' serpent, whose head has been removed and replaced by a new one, echoing the god's temple infrastructures taken over by a new and wildly out-of-place leadership and mindset… aaand with his whole immaculate conception thing seems to be a stab against the Catholic - rather than Hebrew - God) there's Hebrew lore (all over the place), but most importantly, these works tend to be anti-dogmatic and inclusive - in direct opposition to the books of Catholic Church - a fact that often confuses people since, as a result, many of these texts have or may have been subject of alteration. But I'm wandering off, it's all a speculation. The Mountain Man guy might be on to something with the Constantine thing and Alexandrian intelligence running off, yet there's much more to this, obviously.

Anyhow… in any case, carry on the good work, people. I don't like to talk much, tending to wander off as seen above and then feeling remorse the next morning, but the Gospel of Philip thing does honestly intrigue me enough to post it. Think there's anthing in this rabbit hole..?
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Peter Kirby
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Re: Gospel of Philip allegories and a few other things

Post by Peter Kirby »

Welcome! :)

Just saying hi for now, and thanks for the interesting post.
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Re: Gospel of Philip allegories and a few other things

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Geocalyx wrote: Mon Feb 25, 2019 6:13 pm I usually lurk here, but today I've got a question.

So in the Gospel of Philip, we have a statement along these lines:
“Names, given on the world, are very decieving. People hear them and they tend to imagine the wrong things.”
and then we have all sorts of cryptic things recorded in here, like, say: “do not underestimate the lamb, for without it, no-one will be able to see the King. For no-one will be able to see the king, if they are naked.” Now for the untrained eye this seems like a cute Christian joke (no wool = no dress), but I am certain the clientelle of this forum will immediately recognize the symbols - so according to this, the mishmarot group Immar guards the inner chamber of the Temple.
The question is a little hard to tease out fully. You’ve placed great faith in us and our abilities but it also doesn’t hurt to be explicit. :)

What symbols and meanings of those symbols do you identify?

Can you explain more fully the idea: “according to this, the mishmarot group Immar guards the inner chamber of the Temple”?
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
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Re: Gospel of Philip allegories and a few other things

Post by Charles Wilson »

Geocalyx wrote: Mon Feb 25, 2019 6:13 pmI am certain the clientelle of this forum will immediately recognize the symbols - so according to this, the mishmarot group Immar guards the inner chamber of the Temple.

Am I on to anything here?
Of course you are on to something here!

Look up any number of Posts I've made on the subject. There is a natural Word-Play involving "Immar" => "lamb" and "Immer" => 16th Mishmarot Service Group as found in 1 Chronicles 24:

http://lovewins.us/bible/strongs/H563
http://lovewins.us/bible/strongs/H564

The words are identical, the use of "Immar" coming in Ezra 6 - 7.

CW

PS: Welcome to the Forum!!
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Re: Gospel of Philip allegories and a few other things

Post by Peter Kirby »

“do not underestimate the lamb, for without it, no-one will be able to see the King. For no-one will be able to see the king, if they are naked.”
The New Testament provides a context for interpreting this.

Right now I am thinking about Paul and about 1 Corinthians, especially chapter 15.

"the lamb"

Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, according as ye are unleavened. For also our passover, Christ, has been sacrificed;
- 1 Corinthians 5:7

"the King"

But this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit God's kingdom, nor does corruption inherit incorruptibility.
- 1 Corinthians 15:50

"for without it, no-one will be able to see the King"

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that rose again the third day according to the Scriptures...

... And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If our hope in Christ is for this life alone, we are to be pitied more than all men.

- 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 17-19

"For no-one will be able to see the king, if they are naked"

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” You fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or something else. But God gives it a body as He has designed, and to each kind of seed He gives its own body.

Not all flesh is the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another, and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. But the splendor of the heavenly bodies is of one degree, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is of another. The sun has one degree of splendor, the moon another, and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead: What is sown is perishable; it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being;” the last Adam a life-giving spirit.

The spiritual, however, was not first, but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so also are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so also shall we bear the likeness of the heavenly man.

Now I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must be clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

- 1 Corinthians 15:35-57

Paul makes use of the same language for the resurrected, spiritual body (clothed, not naked) in 2 Corinthians.

For we know that if our earthly tabernacle house be destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
For indeed in this we groan, ardently desiring to have put on our house which [is] from heaven; if indeed being also clothed we shall not be found naked. For indeed we who are in the tabernacle groan, being burdened; while yet we do not wish to be unclothed, but clothed, that [what is] mortal may be swallowed up by life.

- 2 Corinthians 5:1-4

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Charles Wilson
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Re: Gospel of Philip allegories and a few other things

Post by Charles Wilson »

Geocalyx --

1. Find the handy-dandy Search Field and simply enter "Mishmarot" for 31 pages of references

2.
Peter Kirby wrote: Mon Feb 25, 2019 9:57 pm
“do not underestimate the lamb, for without it, no-one will be able to see the King. For no-one will be able to see the king, if they are naked.”
The New Testament provides a context for interpreting this.
Agreed, PK, but any Marxist Theoretician can provide any amount of verbiage to show that Stalin was a Capitalist and that the German National Socialists were Capitalists as well and that therefore True Socialism hasn't been tried so that anyone not agreeing with the Central Committee needs to report to the nearest FEMA Labor Camp for proper indoctrination.

Of course the NT provides a context for interpreting this!

The Romans, having dispensed with the Julio-Claudians and Oh! By-the-Way, destroyed the threat of the Jewish Culture on the ground and in the mind, were not going to let a Transcendent Religion ruin their garden parties. Rather a tax paying savior/god than a Culture that won't even let a fine up-standing Emperor like Caligula place his statue in their Temple.

3. The OT provides an understanding for this material as well. In this case, the Roman Victors did not write the history. There was no reason for a New History to be written. The Mishmarot Priesthood, authored by David and approved by God, provided a Self-Consistent Tableau for everyone to have a part. The Priestly clothes, the Settlements in Galilee provided for the Priests, the dates and times and seasons were all that was required.

4. Until Herod...and then Archelaus...and then...

John 1: 24 29 (RSV):

[24] Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.
[25] They asked him, "Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?"
[26] John answered them, "I baptize with water; but among you stands one whom you do not know,
[27] even he who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie."
[28] This took place in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
[29] The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!


Acts 13:

[25] And as John was finishing his course, he said, `What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. No, but after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.'

Here is your explanation and it is not an explanation from some "New Religion". It is from the Mishmarot Priesthood which undergirds the entirety of the NT. Bilgah comes before Immer and a Priest of Immer is called - in a VERY SEMITIC Moment - "Immar- Yah", the Lamb of God. No Greekies allowed here. The Joke is that "Immer" <=> "Immar" => LAMB.

Immer was nearly destroyed at the Passover of 4 BCE

Revelation 5: 5 - 6 (in part) (RSV):

[5] Then one of the elders said to me, "Weep not; lo, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals."
[6] And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain

The NT provides "AN" explanation but not THE explanation. That explanation is found in the Study of Torah and the Mishmarot Priesthood, especially the House of Eleazar, from 1 Chronicles 24.

CW
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Re: Gospel of Philip allegories and a few other things

Post by Geocalyx »

You’ve placed great faith in us and our abilities.
All justified, as I see. :D
What symbols and meanings of those symbols do you identify?
The first thing I recognized was Sophia and how she's tied to both Mary the Mother (giving immaculate birth to a supposed God) and Mary Magdalene (giving herself to anyone and getting redeemed by her husband). I would likely still think a prostitute was Jesus' favorite because of redemption & forgiveness, but this work made me realize she represents Achamoth and is Jesus' natural spouse who might give herself to anyone, yet always returns to her husband after being abused and cast aside, and he's glad to accept her back, parable of the prodigial son style. While the connection is obvious now, I didn't see it before. And it got me thinking, what else is there?

"First, adultery came into being, then murder. And he was concieved in adultery, for he was the son of Serpent. So he became a murderer like his father, and killed his own brother." Serpent seed, huh? I'm having doubts the serpent refers to Ialdabaoth, since he was not yet a murderer at the time of Adam. It cannot be Egyptian Seth either though, because while he did murder his own brother and his father is associated with serpents, his father is not a murderer unless you count devastating earthquakes as killing sprees.

... I actually really suck at this - for example, there's stuff like "Nazarene and Christ were the ones who were measured". This is simply beyond my league. So I can tell there's a deeper layer of meaning to this, but I haven't yet explored the Jewish literature of the time enough to confidently say what it is. Yet.
Can you explain more fully the idea: “according to this, the mishmarot group Immar guards the inner chamber of the Temple”?
From what I gather on this forum and the texts linked, there was a revolt in Judea with two mishmarot (Immar & Bilgah) groups involved; for now I'm entertaining the idea that parts of Philip comment on the event. Actually what I'm trying to do here is identify whatever text or texts this work is commenting on. I'll be looking into Paul now, thanks for the heads-up. :D Thing is, there doesn't have to be a singular interpretation since the whole body of this literature appears to love speaking in riddles and the more meanings they get to cram into a single sentence, the better. I actually kind of hope the Immar-Bilgah event reference is coincidental here and I will never have to deal with Bilgah meaning "cheerfulness" since that would make for a really deep rabbit hole indeed. My question was along the lines of "think this is worth pursuing"? I guess it is. But I will visit Paul first because
31 pages of references
this will likely take a while.

The trouble (and confusion) concerning Coptic gnosis is exactly this: its deliberate anti-catholicism. Where Catholics strive to purge any alterations to attain pristine texts, the Highest's pure words and instructions with a clean, singular interpretation, gnosis offers "the living book of the living", forever changing, yet immutable at the core, adding stuff from everyone who appears to be speaking about the Highest and is at the same time rejecting the totality and absolution of Catholic God's image. Everyone can participate in this "gospel", as it's written by The All and The All is at the same time everyone and the highest Godhead, according to Gospel of Truth and the Tripartite Tractate. This is why theologians often see a multitude of insane and contradictory heresies in these books* - a faithful mindset is used to interpreting exclusive, unaltered, religious, "jeallous" texts, which claim to be bringing one and only truth. Rather than that, these are synthetic in nature - anyone with an "understanding mind" could contribute on an equal footing - resulting in a consensus of thought concerning a god that, unlike any others before it, demands your complete and undivided belief and therefore wants to invade your brains; simply performing religious observances on the outside is not an option - either you believe wholeheartedly or you blaspheme in your heart and are going to the abyss for feigning your beliefs. This consensus is unanonymous; seems like the Hellenistic intelligence found the idea preposterous and insulting, as nobody serious at that time believed there were, say, actual gods dwelling on the Mount Olympus, yet here comes a god to supplant them, a "living" god that needs you to believe he's floating above the firmament so much, he's sacrificed his only son (the Mind... which has literally been crucified, taken to heavens and exited the world stage left) to prove he's actually there. (Good thing it was a false Jesus, too, or no-one would possess any means of autonomous thinking anymore. Oh, and with a substitute Mind being sacrificed, archons got fooled into thinking free religious thought has been eliminated - which it hasn't and these very books are evidence of that - so that's another plus.)

The nag hammadi library & co. really are remarkable texts that are worthy of more attention - it's a pity they're more likely to be interpreted and consumed by new-agers and charlatans (who either mistake them for uncorrupted teachings of hippie Jesus and will argue to the death that these are the books that got thrown out of Bible due to bigotry, or view them through rosy glasses of religious fanaticism and seeing naked, self-tortured screaming bearded men from the mountains as their progenity) rather than serious scholars of history, religion, philosophy etc. which would look for cultural contexts to place them in and go from there. The situation's improved in the past 15 years, though! I might post more on this after giving my stuff a few more shakes... surprisingly, the more of these insane mock dogmas I translate, the clearer the picture gets. I also think the English translations are ripe for a reprise, and that more unified wording should be used, preferably a single person should translate the whole corpus. Why? Because while these are solid and readable, the wording is not as unified as it is in the Bible, and Ancient Greece has been inserted where there was previously Helenism (in particular, arrogantly translating "Amente" as "Hades" bothers me the most - so much literary nuance and historical context is lost when doing stuff like this). Which is exactly why I'm putting my money where my mouth is and am translating the whole corpus like a mad scientist. >_> (Hey, among other things I've survived translating Pistis Sophia I, both books of Ieou with hieroglyphs replacing certain words accordingly to the manuscript, Untitled Text and half of Tractate; it should be smooth sailing from here on...)

* Gospel of Judas is a good example. Supposedly Cainites used it because it absolves Judas of his guilt?
If that's the case, the real Gospel of Judas is no longer with us, since the Tchachos version not only condemns Judas to eternal damnation, but also features Jesus giving Judas a choice and a stern warning ("set yourself apart from them /... / but you will grieve a great deal" has Judas anxiously reply "when will you show me these things?" and then Jesus immediatly leaves him, since Judas basically accepted the terms). McConnick might have written about this - though I only remember reading her "Judas is called a demon" argument - if my hunch is is right, there might have never even been a proper, religious Gospel of Judas and the extant book entitled as such is a "heretic" response to unsubstantiated slander.

Thank you for the warm welcomes and responses. I promise to stick more to the point next time. And be less wordy as well >_>
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Re: Gospel of Philip allegories and a few other things

Post by Peter Kirby »

Stay wordy! Your perspective and contributions are most welcome.

It’s pretty amazing that you are translating the whole thing. You know you could drum up awareness if you keep a copy online of your current progress. Do you have any website or blog?
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Re: Gospel of Philip allegories and a few other things

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I apologize for not wording it clearly - I'm translating these into my native Slovene. And while I did initially plan to put these for on a free website and start discussions, well... for one, Slovenia's internet communities are absolute crap, but other than that this living book of the living grew to nearly 900 pages now (a6 format, font size 16) and still awaits Portions of the scrolls of the Savior 2 & 3, Sophia of Jesus Christ, Gospel of Thomas, Zostrianos, On the Origin of the World and half Tripartite Tractate... then I suppose I am done (but will be going through all of it like a comb at least two more times). The Tractate kills, though, I had to take a breather - there's a reason university heads translate this stuff and not common security mooks like me. Yep, security... night shifts, weekend shifts... I ought to be translating stuff all the time just to stay awake. And people solve crosswords or play Android games! What waste.

By the way, Slovene is much handier to read gnosis in than English. I'm not only saying this because it's my native language, there are examples where English is vague - for instance, English makes no difference between a light source and the stuff it emits. You walk into a room and turn on "the light" - which did you mean, the machine that produces light or the actual light filling the room? Because both Slovene and Coptic make that distinction with the emitter called with a Greek term fostèr (it's really late and I'm doing this on my phone, forgive my Latin characters) while the light is being refered to as ouoein. The manuscripts are clear, but with English translations I can never be sure - sometimes fosters are luminaries, other times they are illuminators, even plain "lights" ... which signals the troubles translators found themselves in. :scratch: Though I might attempt a grand English translation (because why not, there are harder things to sell and I bet people love reading thees and thous whenever Jesus speaks... making gnosis even harder to understand), but only once I'm done with Slovene, since the national Catholic church is long overdue for some serious schooling.
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Re: Gospel of Philip allegories and a few other things

Post by Peter Kirby »

It would be interesting to see the differences that show up if someone tried a different word (maybe lamp?) for translation of the source of the light.
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