In my last post I went to great pains to point out that there was almost certainly a tension between Peter and Paul and at least two different strains of early Christianity. This isn’t exactly an original idea and, in fact, within the scholarly world, this thesis has been debated for about two hundred years. All I did was come out firmly on one side of the debate after examining the evidence and squaring it with what I know about the habits and tactics employed by the Chosen people. A quick Google search is enough to prove that serious historians have also delved into this area of inquiry and shared their own conclusions as well. The idea that Paul was, indeed, what could be termed a “gnostic”, or rather that the gnostics weren’t lying when they claimed Paul had some connection to them and their teachings isn’t really all that crazy if you just look at it objectively. The Faithful, however, try to mislead and confuse people looking for answers by claiming that this is a fringe or made-up fantasy story by one lone blogger (like myself) or another. Please, avail yourself of the search function that every internet browser provides and punch in the search terms “Paul + Gnostic” to find out for yourself just how “fringe” and “unsubstantiated” the ideas I presented in part II really were.
What an interesting read. Thank you so much and I look forward to your further writings. Christianity ( Churchianity as you call it) as it evolved, seems to me to have often served as a useful Elite control mechanism for better management of the "lower" orders. In other words, an early form of "technocratic" control. Just as the current technocrats (WEF for example) are trying to get under our skin and wish to control even our most "intimate" data (our DNA), their spiritual ancestors (the priestly casts of various religions) achieved similar control by subtly and not so subtly poisoning the intimate spiritual spaces where humans tried to connect with the deeper reality of their being. Hence their often prurient focus on "sins of the Flesh" was one clever technique for installing hopeless fear and subservience in pubescent young people. In the same way that regular Jews were generally kept under the foot of their priestly betters in Europe, so too Catholics and Protestants, especially those less educated or materially less well off, were often "subdued" by a kind of doctrinal bullying and their clerical and political overlords of various hues made sure that whatever they believed would at least involve some degree of angst, unfulfillment and the need for authorative control and direction. For example an Irish Catholic in 1950s, might have had a deep faith, but then also had to deal with the spiritual dissonance of not being allowed to attend the funeral of a loved Protestant neighbour; the tension here between his "faith"" and the " authority" of the the church and it's priests and their teachings on "scandal". The preservation of the Church's image in Ireland was usually of primary concern. Hence the recent priestly child abuse revelations, which probably would have been suppressible in earlier times. Suppressible however...probably with the guaranteed collusion of fearful and subservient church goers. As you put it so well...
"Spirituality ought to empower our people and give them both the tools and the courage to confront their oppressors"
Jul 28, 2022·edited Jul 28, 2022Liked by Rurik Skywalker
"spiritual practice, like any other practice whether it be cooking, training, crafting or so one, has to make individuals and the groups to which they belong stronger. Spirituality ought to empower our people and give them both the tools and the courage to confront their oppressors. No system deserves blind allegiance and all systems have to answer the question, “does it make me and mine stronger?” to avoid being jettisoned or radically reformed going forward."
Agree completely!
I have been wrestling alone with these topics since learning of Marcion and Laurent Guyónt two or three years ago.
Your analysis is a much welcomed breath of fresh air!
Apparently God sent son to earth, Jesus surround himself with 12 key disciples and others he ministers to. Then after his death a state worker, a persecutor of christians, who had never met Jesus comes to dominate the direction of the christian faith - based on what? His claims of what happened in visions? While those who surrounded Jesus and absorbed his teachings, including his own brother have been subdued by Pauline claims. As a divine plan or even a credible storyline, Jesus would have ensured his teachings would have been from those he directly taught, in person - not an opportunist state worker.
Yesterday arrived in the mail a new book by Peter Gerard Myers who has been running the Neither Aryan nor Jew website for decades. I bought the book mainly as a form of support given that nearly everything in it is already on that website. Interestingly, this paragraph is on the very first page entitled 'Origins of this Book':
"Paul's "universal" Christianity had as its main rival the "Jewish" faction of Christianity, Jerusalem-based and led by James, which retained circumcision, the kosher food taboos and pharisaic legalism. James' faction disappeared after the Jewish uprising was put down by the Romans in 70AD. Downing shows that early Christianity of St Paul's faction, far from being bigoted-fundamentalist or militant-zealot, was a broadminded movement grounded in the most universalist part of Hellenistic philosophy, on which it explicitly drew; this Cynic philosophy is also comparable to the best of Chinese philosophy (early Taoism) as well.
F. Gerald Downing, in his book Chist and the Cynics, shows that the Early Christians followed the Cynic philosophy, much like the Taoist: downing.html. " (https://mailstar.net/downing.html )
Myers has been analyzing the four major conspiracies for quite some time. From the backpage blurb: "Other conspiracy books allege that there is just one high level conspiracy, this one maintains that there are four - British (Anglo-American Imperial), Globalist, Zionist and Green Left. They are forced to share power so they operate as factions."
My personal opinion based on slowly acquired contemplation of immediate experience is that we are in the grip of (reductionist) materialism which is now an all-pervasive fallacy responsible for great evil in many different ways and levels. That can be personally experienced. More speculatively, after reading people like you and Myers and many others over the years, my working theory is that Jewish interests worked hard to infiltrate into European feudal-theocratic society mainly to achieve status and wealth, but in so doing could not help themselves but try to bring down the core tenets of such societies which stood in their way and to which they were unwilling, as the Chosen. to pay homage. So they are perennial subsversives, the result of which is always bloodbaths like Russia post-1917. And the materialist approach in politics, the arts and above all science, suits their purposes very well which is why it has been so assiduously pushed, as a tip of the spear to undermine traditional, spiritual approaches, and institution religion which has a whole boatload of problems of its own even before being infiltrated and undermined by hostile aliens.
It's not a solid theory but it seems to fit the overall trend. But: it means that even though I grew up in the West (England), I have almost never encountered bedrock, authentic Christianity attuned to its roots, no doubt why I was a practicing Buddhist, hard core, during my twenties and thirties. (Am now spiritual driftwood in terms of any formal affiliation.)
This is my first read of one of your Marcionist essays. I hope there are more are already or soon coming!
The Marcionites were not anti-Jewish they were anticosmic. They were against the whole of creation, not just some misguided sect of Yahweh worshippers. From the Marcionite perspective the whole human race was the damned creation of an inferior or evil God and not just the flesh but also the soul. Human history has tended to vindicate this view of course.
The perennial attempts to discover the Lost Aryan Christianity in Marcionism are always doomed to complete irrelevance, inasmuch as the audience for such doesn't believe in anything anyway. The tinfoil hat crumbles when it turns out that even Marcion's Gospel is full of Jews and it opens with Jesus is teaching them in the synagogues.
Researching this, I read that the modern "Marcionites" assert that their religion is NOT "gnostic". And at first reading, they appear to attribute their "Gospel of the Lord" to a revelation given to Paul, not Mark.
What an interesting read. Thank you so much and I look forward to your further writings. Christianity ( Churchianity as you call it) as it evolved, seems to me to have often served as a useful Elite control mechanism for better management of the "lower" orders. In other words, an early form of "technocratic" control. Just as the current technocrats (WEF for example) are trying to get under our skin and wish to control even our most "intimate" data (our DNA), their spiritual ancestors (the priestly casts of various religions) achieved similar control by subtly and not so subtly poisoning the intimate spiritual spaces where humans tried to connect with the deeper reality of their being. Hence their often prurient focus on "sins of the Flesh" was one clever technique for installing hopeless fear and subservience in pubescent young people. In the same way that regular Jews were generally kept under the foot of their priestly betters in Europe, so too Catholics and Protestants, especially those less educated or materially less well off, were often "subdued" by a kind of doctrinal bullying and their clerical and political overlords of various hues made sure that whatever they believed would at least involve some degree of angst, unfulfillment and the need for authorative control and direction. For example an Irish Catholic in 1950s, might have had a deep faith, but then also had to deal with the spiritual dissonance of not being allowed to attend the funeral of a loved Protestant neighbour; the tension here between his "faith"" and the " authority" of the the church and it's priests and their teachings on "scandal". The preservation of the Church's image in Ireland was usually of primary concern. Hence the recent priestly child abuse revelations, which probably would have been suppressible in earlier times. Suppressible however...probably with the guaranteed collusion of fearful and subservient church goers. As you put it so well...
"Spirituality ought to empower our people and give them both the tools and the courage to confront their oppressors"
"spiritual practice, like any other practice whether it be cooking, training, crafting or so one, has to make individuals and the groups to which they belong stronger. Spirituality ought to empower our people and give them both the tools and the courage to confront their oppressors. No system deserves blind allegiance and all systems have to answer the question, “does it make me and mine stronger?” to avoid being jettisoned or radically reformed going forward."
Agree completely!
I have been wrestling alone with these topics since learning of Marcion and Laurent Guyónt two or three years ago.
Your analysis is a much welcomed breath of fresh air!
"I feel like I’ve said quite a bit..." - yes you have, and I appreciate the continuing education.
I am curious as to why Paul is credible.
Apparently God sent son to earth, Jesus surround himself with 12 key disciples and others he ministers to. Then after his death a state worker, a persecutor of christians, who had never met Jesus comes to dominate the direction of the christian faith - based on what? His claims of what happened in visions? While those who surrounded Jesus and absorbed his teachings, including his own brother have been subdued by Pauline claims. As a divine plan or even a credible storyline, Jesus would have ensured his teachings would have been from those he directly taught, in person - not an opportunist state worker.
>>>Protestants, who were once called Old Testamentarians, believe that the Jews immediately go to heaven on account of their blood...<<<
As a Protestant who interacted w/ works of Luther and Calvin I never found this view expressed in magisterial Reformers. What are you referring to?
Interesting substack you've got going...
Yesterday arrived in the mail a new book by Peter Gerard Myers who has been running the Neither Aryan nor Jew website for decades. I bought the book mainly as a form of support given that nearly everything in it is already on that website. Interestingly, this paragraph is on the very first page entitled 'Origins of this Book':
"Paul's "universal" Christianity had as its main rival the "Jewish" faction of Christianity, Jerusalem-based and led by James, which retained circumcision, the kosher food taboos and pharisaic legalism. James' faction disappeared after the Jewish uprising was put down by the Romans in 70AD. Downing shows that early Christianity of St Paul's faction, far from being bigoted-fundamentalist or militant-zealot, was a broadminded movement grounded in the most universalist part of Hellenistic philosophy, on which it explicitly drew; this Cynic philosophy is also comparable to the best of Chinese philosophy (early Taoism) as well.
F. Gerald Downing, in his book Chist and the Cynics, shows that the Early Christians followed the Cynic philosophy, much like the Taoist: downing.html. " (https://mailstar.net/downing.html )
The quote above from the page: https://mailstar.net/neither.html
Myers has been analyzing the four major conspiracies for quite some time. From the backpage blurb: "Other conspiracy books allege that there is just one high level conspiracy, this one maintains that there are four - British (Anglo-American Imperial), Globalist, Zionist and Green Left. They are forced to share power so they operate as factions."
My personal opinion based on slowly acquired contemplation of immediate experience is that we are in the grip of (reductionist) materialism which is now an all-pervasive fallacy responsible for great evil in many different ways and levels. That can be personally experienced. More speculatively, after reading people like you and Myers and many others over the years, my working theory is that Jewish interests worked hard to infiltrate into European feudal-theocratic society mainly to achieve status and wealth, but in so doing could not help themselves but try to bring down the core tenets of such societies which stood in their way and to which they were unwilling, as the Chosen. to pay homage. So they are perennial subsversives, the result of which is always bloodbaths like Russia post-1917. And the materialist approach in politics, the arts and above all science, suits their purposes very well which is why it has been so assiduously pushed, as a tip of the spear to undermine traditional, spiritual approaches, and institution religion which has a whole boatload of problems of its own even before being infiltrated and undermined by hostile aliens.
It's not a solid theory but it seems to fit the overall trend. But: it means that even though I grew up in the West (England), I have almost never encountered bedrock, authentic Christianity attuned to its roots, no doubt why I was a practicing Buddhist, hard core, during my twenties and thirties. (Am now spiritual driftwood in terms of any formal affiliation.)
This is my first read of one of your Marcionist essays. I hope there are more are already or soon coming!
Everything must be assessed using the 'Is it good for Whites?' standard.
The Marcionites were not anti-Jewish they were anticosmic. They were against the whole of creation, not just some misguided sect of Yahweh worshippers. From the Marcionite perspective the whole human race was the damned creation of an inferior or evil God and not just the flesh but also the soul. Human history has tended to vindicate this view of course.
The perennial attempts to discover the Lost Aryan Christianity in Marcionism are always doomed to complete irrelevance, inasmuch as the audience for such doesn't believe in anything anyway. The tinfoil hat crumbles when it turns out that even Marcion's Gospel is full of Jews and it opens with Jesus is teaching them in the synagogues.
Researching this, I read that the modern "Marcionites" assert that their religion is NOT "gnostic". And at first reading, they appear to attribute their "Gospel of the Lord" to a revelation given to Paul, not Mark.
source: https://www.marcionitechurch.org/FAQ.html
Augustine was a semite? I thought he was Roman.
So, what exactly IS the Marcionite doctrine?