Gnostic Books Omitted from the Bible

The books omitted from the bible are the so-called missing books of the bible.  First any Christian should know that the Roman Emperor Constantine played a big part in putting the Bible that we know together.  The First Council of Nicea was held in 325 AD and this meeting created the first uniform Christian doctrine of belief, what we still know today as the Nicene Creed.  A little over fifty years later this creed with its “true God” and Jesus as the “only Son of God" was enforced with the full might of the Romans throughout the Empire as Christianity was made the official religion: One God, one Empire, one Religion.

    The most interesting alternative thinking in early Christianity is found in the lost texts of the Gnostic Gospels. Also called the Gnostic Bible these Gnostic scriptures are a series of religious texts that were discovered accidentally by two farmers in 1945 in Egypt near Nag Hammadi, and therefore, also go by the name the Nag Hammadi Library. What makes these texts interesting in relation to Christianity is that they are estimated to date back to between the 2nd and 4th century AD, which puts them very close to the time of Jesus and right in the time of early Christianity.

    Knowing that the Church banned Gnostic belief as heresy, anyone with an open mind should be interested in what a Gnostic believed if we want to understand the Church and its history. In our search for God we should ask: why were these books omitted from the Bible? What knowledge was so dangerous to the Roman Church and why?

   In The Gnostic Scriptures we find The Testimony of Truth, which tells us that, “Do not expect, therefore, the carnal resurrection, which is destruction.” This view, dating back to about the second century, is very much aligned with modern science—the flesh dissolves.

   The text is interesting, because it also has another view on why Adam and Eve where cast out of Paradise. It lets us know that, “The serpent was wiser than all the animals that were in Paradise, and he persuaded Eve, saying, ‘On the day when you eat from the tree which is in the midst of Paradise, the eyes of your mind will be opened.’”

   The Testimony of Truth then boldly asks:

 

“Of what sort is the God? First he maliciously refused Adam from eating of the tree of knowledge. And secondly he said, “Adam, where are you?” God does not have foreknowledge; otherwise, would he not know from the beginning?”

 

  Later the text answers the question of what sort of God this is by saying: “I am the jealous God; I will bring the sins of the fathers upon the children.”

   In the East the serpent is the symbol of Kundalini energy and not a symbol of evil or temptation as in the Bible. But, why are serpents wisdom in the East?  Kundalini is the power of consciousness, or supreme energy, also called mother of the universe. In Sanskrit the word means “coiled up,” and therefore, the symbol of a snake is the ancient symbolic representation, not of the evil, but of the supreme power of consciousness.

   If we for example call the Kundalini energy for the Holy Spirit, then this could give us a different perspective on the words of John: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

   In this interpretation it is the Holy Spirit as the power of consciousness that gives us eternal life. And one could even suggest that the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis might be one and the same. That would make eternal life possible through knowledge of the truth (good and evil) as we just saw in the Bhagavadagita.

   In her book The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, points towards the serpent as an instructor and she quotes from the text, The Hypostasis of the Archons:

 

“Then the Female Spiritual Principle came in the Snake, the Instructor, and it taught them, saying, “…you shall not die; for it was out of jealousy that he said to you. Rather, your eyes shall open, and you shall become like gods, recognizing evil and good.”…And the arrogant Ruler cursed the Woman…and…the Snake.”

 

   Here Eve, the “Mother of the Living,” is a feminine spiritual principle that raises Adam from his material condition to bring him out of ignorance toward becoming like a God. It would seem natural to human nature (and historical correct) that arrogant male rulers would become jealous about this competition, whereby both the woman and the snake were cursed.

   Through history, and even today, this curse has proven to be a powerful political tool of suppressing women with male aggression. And at the same time, the important question of personal identity has been left out. It seems logical to conclude that when these words were written around the second century, Gnostics saw the clear danger in the form that Christianity was taking as it became an organized religion.

   In a modern day society, it certainly must seem good to most people that Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge. I am sure that most of us are happy to be conscious and able to think for ourselves rather than being told what to think. In a democracy where everyone works together to solve the problems ahead, it is reasonable to give every individual the freedom to think.

   However, the view of the Bible goes in the opposite direction, believing that “paradise was lost,” which could be interpreted as ignorance is bliss, and I find it very interesting to note the negative direction. The Bible has a negative perspective from Adam and Eve being thrown out of paradise to the Book of Revelation—from paradise to the end of the world. This negative view on the world is also reflected through the views of “evil” and “sinners” that still today deserve punishment. The God of the Bible is an angry God that judges over irresponsible children living in an evil world.

   The Gnostic perspective on the other hand is positive. It talks about ignorance instead evil, and sees a positive future through enlightenment and the gaining of knowledge. Surely such a view is far more optimistic than the pessimism of the Bible, and with a positive outlook on life it should be much more possible to create a positive future. 

   The Gnostics called the God of the Bible a “jealous God” because this God said: “I am God, and there is no other.” Looking at the history of the Church enforcing this one and only God, it is clear that this God has been much more angry than loving. We should not forget that the Roman Catholic Church was created on the foundation of the Roman Empire, after Emperor Constantine won the first battle in the name of the cross and Christianity later became the state religion of Rome. History also tells us that the doctrine of the Incarnation took root about the same time as Pope Urban II sent Christians of on the Fist Crusade with “God wills it!” After more than a thousand years of debate, in 1098 Saint Anselm published his Cur Deus Homo—Why God Became Man—and Jesus were since transformed from prophet into the one and only “son of God.”

  Before we become upset at the past, it is worth taking into consideration that humanity has gone through a transformation as our thinking has evolved. Therefore, now that the children have become adults and outgrown their parents, I find it more important to ask where we should look for guidance. And as a philosopher, it is clear for me that we should look for truth by ourselves, and never accept someone else’s truth. It was for this reason that Luther translated the Bible, so that we could all seek the truth by ourselves, instead of having it dictated to us.

   It is not only possible but fairly easy to find other interpretations in the Bible that speak of an incorporeal resurrection. The Bible does in fact make a clear distinction between the body and the spirit. In 1 Corinthians we find: “I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.”

   With this separation between the mortal and the immortal, Jesus uses the wind as a metaphor to describe the eternal spirit: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

   In 1 Corinthians 15:40, we find that this distinction is made clear: “There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another.”

   The Gnostic Scriptures offer an account that supplements this view of the Bible:

 

“If one does not understand how blowing wind came into existence, he will blow away with it. If one does not understand how body, which he bears, came into existence, he will perish with it...Whoever will not understand how he came will not understand how he will go.”

 

Dr. Barashango: Blacks in the Bible*

We wouldn't know anything about Kemet or Ethiopia truth's if he had not been for the Bible.
This was indeed the first introduction we had to it. The book can give us some history, Harriet tubman have found ways to use it, M.L.K. used it many have used the knowledge.

• Lesson 1- The african origins of the bible.

Doc 1*- Who wrote the bible?-
The bible originated in ancient Egypt. Where the population where Aristole was...the jews received all of their agriculture knowledge. Our knowledge is apparently older than the hebrews.

• Question? Where is Egypt? In Asia? In Africa?

We have been led to believe that Egypt isn't in Africa but Asia. Another distortion.

"Alkebilan"- is the oldest name known so far....and we owe this info to Dr. Ben and Marcus Garvey.

• Africa is a latin term. given by the romans.

Let's deal with the right term for Egypt.

• Khemet-Kemet--- is the original name for Egypt...but when the greeks began to transform our info...they couldn't decipher.
• When you look at Khemet...you have "Chemistry"....so this one word has alot of power in it.
• Most of all Egyptian gods and goddess were scientific symbols.......
• Europeans couldn't properly decipher what it was all about.
• They represented forces of nature.
• Divine intelligence. Through every item their is an intelligence to represent it.
• Which keeps the whole planet together.

Hieroglyphics- meaning "The Holy Writings* greek origins.

Ref: black man in denied.---destruction of black civilization.

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome-- "Still Bearing the Scars"

NubianGraphics.com


Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary --"Still Bearing the Scars"
August 24, 2006




INTERVIEW
Still Bearing the Scars
Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary says people of color need to tune into the internal damage wrought by Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome

By SILJA J.A. TALVI
Contributing Writer

Racism erodes our very humanity. No one can be truly liberated while living under the weight of oppression, argues Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary in her new book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing.

Leary, who teaches social work at Portland State University, traces the way that both overt and subtle forms of racism have damaged the collective African-American psyche — harm manifested through poor mental and physical health, family and relationship dysfunction, and self-destructive impulses.

Leary adapts our understanding of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to propose that African Americans today suffer from a particular kind of intergenerational trauma: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS).

The systematic dehumanization of African slaves was the initial trauma, explains Leary, and generations of their descendents have borne the scars. Since that time, Americans of all ethnic backgrounds have been inculcated and immersed in a fabricated (but effective) system of race “hierarchy,” where light-skin privilege still dramatically affects the likelihood of succeeding in American society.

Leary suggests that African Americans (and other people of color) can ill afford to wait for the dominant culture to realize the qualitative benefits of undoing racism. The real recovery from the ongoing trauma of slavery and racism has to start from within, she says, beginning with a true acknowledgment of the resilience of African-American culture.

“The nature of this work,” Leary writes in her prologue, “is such that each group first must see to their own healing, because no group can do another’s work.”

Real Change: What kind of reaction have you received to your book? And has that reaction differed based on who is in the audience?

Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary: Overall, the response has been very positive, although I’m sure the naysayers are out there. The difference in reaction is noticeable when I deal with grassroots folks in the African-American community. With them, the response has been extremely emotional. It’s as though I’m speaking people’s personal stories, which seems to give them a feeling of hope.

Of course, I’m not the first person to initiate this kind of work into the intergenerational nature of trauma in the African-American community…. What I did differently is that I pulled from many different historical sources and scholarly disciplines. In essence, I created a “map” of knowledge so that people could see how African-American self-perception has been shaped.

RC: Throughout your book, you emphasize that an acute, social denial of both historical and present-day racism has taken on pathological dimensions. You write that this country is “sick with the issue of race.”

Leary: The root of this denial for the dominant culture is fear, and fear mutates into all kinds of things: psychological projection, distorted and sensationalized representations in the media, and the manipulation of science to justify the legal rights and treatment of people. That’s why it’s become so hard to unravel.

Unfortunately, many European Americans have a very hard time even hearing a person of color express their experiences. The prevailing psychological mechanism is the idea, “I’ve not experienced it, so it cannot be happening for you.”

Truly, how can anyone tell me what I have and have not experienced? This is a very paternalistic manifestation of white supremacy, the idea that African Americans and other people of color can be told, with great authority, what their ancestor’s lives were like and even what their own, present-day lives are like. The result for those on the receiving end of this kind of distortion is an aspect of PTSS. People begin to doubt themselves, their experiences, and their worth in society because they have been so invalidated their whole lives, in so many ways.

RC: Attempts to encourage European Americans to join in on a more honest, national dialogue about “race” and racism often results in defensive posturing and positioning. Common responses include “slavery happened a long time ago,” or people saying that they’re tired of being made to feel guilty about something they didn’t do. How do we respond to this detachment from the crucial issues of the legacy of slavery?

Leary: It’s irrelevant that you weren’t alive during slavery days. I wasn’t there either! But what we as a nation face today has been heavily impacted by our history, whether we’re talking in the gulf between the haves and have-nots education gaps between white and Black children or the racial disparities in our prisons.

I don’t believe in making people feel “guilty.” We have to recognize that remnants of racist oppression continue to impact people in this country.

Much of my work really is about Black people looking at ourselves and understanding how our lives have been shaped by what we’ve been dealt. I don’t want to wait for permission to examine this, or to hear that looking back into our histories is somehow counterproductive.

RC: An eye-opening experience for you was your first visit to New York’s largest and most overpopulated jail facility, Rikers Island. What kinds of insights did you gain about PTSS from talking to imprisoned African-American young men about their lives?

Leary: It was remarkable to see their physical disposition. They walked into the room with their heads held low, shuffled in… for lack of a better word, [they looked like] slaves. They had lost their way, and there was no light in their eyes whatsoever. Young people typically have a high level of energy. While there was a feeling of angry rebelliousness, the prevailing feeling of hopelessness was staggering.

It’s also significant that it took about a half-hour for them to realize that I was talking to them, not at them. In that brief moment, I felt as though I gave them hope. Their body language had already changed by the time they were getting ready to leave. They had become students by the end of our time together.

These young people are being raised by these institutions, and then unleashed back into their communities to wreak havoc. Most of these young men grew up in poverty, and they have the experience of being Black and poor in a materialistic society that says if you have nothing, you are nothing. In comparison, when I was in Africa I witnessed incredible poverty unlike anything I had ever seen before. I always talk about how tall and proud the people walked. Their greatest shame was their lack of education, not their lack of wealth. But in America, you are what you have, what you wear.

RC: You write about the fear that many African Americans have of being “exposed” or having family or community “dirty laundry” aired. “Never let them see you sweat,” as the expression goes.

Leary: Shame is such a big issue in our society in general. What many African Americans have internalized is a sense of shame about just not being “good enough.” That’s a horrible thing to be sentenced to for your life.

When a person walks around with that sense of shame and self-hatred, they are likely to function poorly in society, no matter who they are. Add the extra layer of racist socialization, of being devalued, and what it means to be just human in America, and all those things just make the shame worse. We as African Americans don’t get a pass on all the problems that humans have to deal with in life: finances, career choices, personal crises, relationships, and so forth. But when we add that to this intergenerational trauma in the context of a society that is in denial about its racism, people’s lives can become overwhelmed, even frozen in place.

I’m saying let’s just take a few of those burdens off of people’s shoulders. Look at what we, as African Americans, have been able to do even with those burdens on our shoulders. Can you imagine what we could accomplish if some of those burdens were removed?

Silja J.A. Talvi is a member of the Real Change Advisory Board, a senior editor at In These Times, and an investigative journalist and essayist with credits in many dozens of newspapers and magazines nationwide, including The Nation, Salon, Santa Fe Reporter, Utne, and the Christian Science Monitor. She is at work on a book about women in prison (Seal Press/Avalon). This interview is reprinted with permission from In These Times, March 10, 2006.

[Resource]
For more on Dr. Leary’s work, see www.posttraumaticslavesyndrome.com.
Labels: AFROCENTRIC CULTURAL DESIGN

posted by Kemetic History of Afrika * Blue Lotus at 11:21 AM 0 Comments