by Dan Kellum

…continued

We must continue with Jesus’ Mother, one many call Mother Mary and pray to every day. Because of the customs of the time, “all the ‘virgins’”, defined by Webster’s Dictionary as unmarried or chaste women, who had public settlements in the temple, and were come of age, should return home, and, as they were now of a proper maturity, should, according to the custom of their country, endeavor to be married” (Books of the Bible, Lost books of Eden pg21).

The book continues with how she and her parents made a vow to the Lord to devote her life to the service of the Lord; and she vowed virginity to the Lord, a vow she was resolved never to break through by lying with a man, and because of this vow could not follow the customs of the country and comply with it.

This caused a great disturbance because the high priest could neither dissolve the vow she made, nor on the other hand break the very customs that made up the law. This problem was solved after the high priests agreed to “seek the Lord and asked counsel from him on this matter” (Lost Books of the Bible, Forgotten Books of Eden, pg 21, Mary chap. V, par 11).

This is where the story gets slightly familiar, they were told that there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a flower shall spring out of its root, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of the wisdom and understanding , the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and the spirit of the fear of the Lord shall fill him. ( Mary Chap. V par.14-15)

It is interesting to read that “all the men of the house and family of David, who were marriageable, and not married, should bring their several rods to the altar, and whatsoever person’s rod after it was brought, a flower should bud forth, and the spirit of the Lord should sit in the appearance of a dove, he should be given and betrothed” ( Mary Chap. V, par 16-17.).

This gives us the small details of Mary’s background. Some of us have heard this story of how prophecy told that Mary was to be chosen to be Joseph’s wife, but this as flavor and aroma to the story of Jesus’ Mother and how she came to be a wife.

In the book of Mary, chap. VI , it continues by telling us that Joseph was from the house of David and was far advanced in years, he drew his rod back when everyone besides presented his. When no rod was found worthy God’s counsel was sought and he said “that he to whom the Virgin was to be betrothed was the only person of those who were brought together, who had not brought his rod” (Lost books of the Bible…Eden, pg 22).  When Joseph brought his rod a dove came down and sat upon the top and everyone who saw knew the Virgin was to be betrothed to him. This was how the high priest solved there dilemma. Joseph lived in Bethlehem and needed to go there to set his house in order, which would take almost three months round trip (Mary, Chap VIII).

In the meantime, Mary and seven other virgins of the same age, returned home. Mary was told by the angle Gabriel to declare to her “the conception of our Savior, and in a manner and way of her conceiving him” ( Mary Chap VII, pg 22 Lost books of the Bible).  Accordingly going into her, he filled the chamber where she was with a prodigious light, and in a most courteous manner saluting her, he said, “Hail, Mary!… The Lord is with you, you are blessed above all women, you are blessed above all men, that have been hitherto born” ( Mary. Chap. VII, pg 22 ).

It goes on to say that “while she is still a virgin”, and remember the definition of the word as being a unmarried or chaste woman, chaste means, “abstaining from all or unlawful sexual relations, modest or decent,”(WD) you shall conceive without sin, and bring forth a son… and he will be great and he will reign from sea to sea” (Mary. Chap VII, paragraph 10).

“Without lying with a man, while a Virgin, you shall conceive; while a Virgin, you shall bring forth; and while a Virgin shall give suck. For the Holy Ghost shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you, without any of the heats of lust” ( Mary Chap VII par. 18-19 ,The Lost Books of the Bible. Pg 23).  This is what a angel told her to ease her mind over what Gabriel told her.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, who has been writing down the teachings of the immortal saints and gurus of East and the West, and has published numerous books on the subject, also sheds light on the word virgin as use in the Old Testament and claims that the original word was alma , which meant, “young woman” ( pg 422).  This shows us that translating these stories was not as simple, and that we should not rule out possibilities of meaning and stories that seem to involve a natural explanation of events. We do not need Jesus to be a god to learn and follow him as a teacher of righteousness.

We are told today in church, that Joseph was not Jesus?s biological father and that Mary never “new a man” in that meaning of the word, but here we read a unusual story that one may reasonable conceive is the true story of Mary and the conception of our Lord Jesus. It does not spell out for us the details we as adults need to see that are involved with creating a baby, but a poetic reader should be able to see the true meaning of the text. It leaves Rome for one to come to the conclusion that Mary might have conceived Jesus by the same physical means that we were conceived.

Joseph

When Joseph arrived back in town to get his wife, after setting his house in order, we are told in chapter VIII of the book of Mary, that Joseph after about three months after Mary was betrothed to him, say she was with child and became uneasy and doubtful. He meditated on this problem and while he was meditating a angel of the lord appeared to him in his sleep and said fear not that which has begotten in her and now distress your mind, is not the work of man, but the Holy Ghost.

What are we to make of this description, and what are some explanations? If we are to look at some of the figures, such as the angles and the Lord, as titles to positions in some sort of society, than the history of why Jesus is still famous seems to be because he was born into that realm of society. Do we not read about the royal blood line in the Bible, in Genesis, which goes through all the trouble to spell out who came from who, as if to trace the heritage of an important blood line. This could be a history lesson in politics of royalty just as John Dominic Crossan claimed about history in his first chapter in The Historical Jesus, being written by powerful Elites.

We are told that when Mary was about to have the baby, Joseph went into town, leaving her in a cave outside the town, to seek a midwife. This is not something poor people could do. (Chap XIII , The Protevangelion, Lost books of the Bible Forgotten Books of Eden pg 33)

If we look at the story of Jesus’ birth we are told that three wise men from the East came and honored the young Jesus (Infancy story the lost Books of the Bible The Forgotten Books of Eden, pg 40 chap III).  It tells how the men brought with them offerings of namely, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and worshiped him, and offered him their gifts.

It comes as no surprise to this author that the men were considered wise. Could this be because they too were from a school that educated the Elites?  Did they know him because of their education and how it ties with the elite? We can rightfully assume that the men were not only well educated but, judging from the expense of their gifts, must have been wealthy. This seems to be very similar to the way the Druid society lived, educating the most promising youths, usually upper class or nobility, as Douglas Monroe claimed (pg 8).

Rich Man, Poor Man

This should enlighten us even more that Jesus was in fact treated not as a poor person, but in fact a child of royalty. Jesus was a very political child because I believe his family was. If Jesus was born poor than the gifts that he received at his birth would have made him so, these gifts were some of the most valuable commodities at that time.

Interestingly enough, there are stories in the Infancy chapters that tell how Jesus?s perfumed bath water healed a girl whose body was white with leprosy ( Chap VI 16).  You must also ask yourself why a poor child would be bathed in perfumes, probably made from certain herbs that did have some type of cleansing powers. This would be a more reasonable explanation for the healing that it was Jesus’ “energy” that would have somehow washed of into the bath water. But we may never know because it didn’t tell the ingredients.

As Jesus grew older many miraculous seemed to happen because of him. In Jesus the Evidence, In the chapter Man of Miracles, it looks a the miracles one by one as the are in the standard Bible. He found that one possibility was that many people could have suffered mental trauma because as he said, “there were no shortages of causative stresses in Jesus’ time” (Pg 102).

Some of the miracles include curing a paralyzed man with just a simple command “Get up, pick up your sleeping mat and walk” ( John 5:8). This is an all to real illness that can be caused by hysteria. In the British Medical Journal Aug 23, 1952, showed the world how hypnosis showed a quit dramatic result (Jesus the Evidence, pg 103).  Also, in 1951, Dr. A.A. Mason asked if he could try hypnosis on a patient, and showed how within five days the reptilian layer would disappear.(Jesus the Evidence, pg 103)

It may seen farfetched but Ian Wilson, in his book Jesus the Evidence, goes on to back this up by showing that the knowledge of hypnosis seems to have been known, according to some interpretation of an Egyptian Magical Papyrus held in the British Museum.(pg 105)

We must remember that Jesus himself told his followers that they could do what we did and they would do greater things. Are we to throw out Ian Wilson’s explanation so quickly that we make the power of healing something that was only done in the time on Jesus? I believe that Jesus meant what he said, and the power to heal is within our reach, even if hypnosis is one of those ways, they are still miraculous.

There are at least four separate and independent British traditions that say Jesus traveled to Britain as a youth with Joseph of Arimathea, who may have been his great-uncle,( The Lost Years of Jesus, pg 431) says Elizabeth Clare Prophet, She claims that Jesus was traveling around the world with his great uncle during the so-called “lost years”, the years that the Bible does not talk about Jesus, from the age thirteen to twenty-nine. Her explanations seem to make sense and would explain why his teachings seemed to take an Eastern theme to them. How could we not have anything from those years of his life, if he was in fact around the areas? This would not seem possible knowing how famous he was, that wise men from east would come to his birth with gifts, very expensive gifts.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk, one of the most beloved Buddhist teachers in the West, nominated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for the Nobel Peace Price, and described as “having a connection between personal, inner peace and peace on earth,” by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, wrote in his book Living Buddha, Living Christ, “The examples of the actual lives of the Buddha and of Jesus are most important, because as human beings, they lived in ways that we can live, too” (Pg 37).

Hanh knew the importance of reality, because without it we are left with visions, no matter how beautiful and inspiring, would leave people feeling like they were less than they really are . We have to ask ourselves what good it would do to study a teacher knowing you could never learn what they were teaching. Jesus wanted us to do greater things than he did, if you listen to his words in the Bible.
Finally the issue of the crucifixion of Jesus arises. If he were a man like us, and we could do every thing he did, how did he overcome death? To answer this delicate question we can turn to the gospel of John 19; 31-34, and read ?to prevent the bodies remaining on the cross during the Sabbath….the Jews asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken away. Consequently the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with him and then the mother. When they came to Jesus they found he was already dead, and so instead of breaking his legs one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance…?

The Resurrection

This is very important because only Jewish crucifixion victims had their legs broke, according to Ian Wilson, and that in fact in other countries victims would be left on the cross overnight and may take up to three days for them to expire.(pg 130) So we can see that it is possible for Jesus to live through his experience.

If we look to what happened right before the breaking of the legs and Jesus getting pierced in his side, we read that “Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon his lip, and put it in his mouth. When Jesus therefor had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost” (John 19; 28-30 , the King James Bible).

We must ask ourselves if it was possible that the vinegar could have been a potion of herbs that produced a death-like trance? This may sound farfetched now, but we know at that time herbs were looked at as medicine of the time. There was no pills as we have today, no fancy hospitals filled with high-tech medicine.

This is within the realm of possibilities, considering that Jesus cured many people. He seemed even at a early age to be wise. We are reminded of when Jesus was taken to the teacher to be educated and the teacher talked with Jesus and asked Why do you bring this child to me for teaching when he should be teaching me?

This knowledge comes in direct conflict with how some of us have been taught, but it shows us that there may have been a real human side of Jesus that we can all relate to. He should inspire us no matter if he was a god or not. It doesn?t change what he said, “I am the way, and the light.” He was literally the way for us to live and he was the light of knowledge for all of us in the darkness of ignorance.

To some Jesus will always be the son of a poor carpenter, but for the others who look deep into history a richer more personal life of the “Teacher of Righteousness” draws itself to reality. We look at the facts that are in the Bible and in the Apocrypha and see that Jesus was born into his fate like a son is born into his fathers fate, its like destiny. The Bible indicates that if all that Jesus said and did was written that no book could contain it. This is true in all of our lives. We must take the lessons Jesus gave us and achieve all that he did and even greater things. He did not live a life that we cannot follow, he was the goal that we all must strive for.

Works Cited

Davies, A Powell. The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Mentor Books, 1956

Hanh, Thich Nhat. Living Buddha, Living Christ. Riverhead Books,1995

Hoare, Rodney. The Testimony of the Shroud. St. Martin?s Press, 1978

Webster?s Vest Pocket Dictionary, Merriam- Webster inc. Publishers. 1981

Meyer, Marvin W. The Secret Teaching of Jesus, four Gnostic Gospels, Trans.Marvin W. Meyer, Vintage Books,1984

Monroe, Douglas. The 21 Lessons of Merlyn, A study in Druid Magic & Lore, Llewellyn Publications, 1997

The Missing Books of the Bible Vol. I, and II, Ottenheimer Publishers, Inc, 1996

Prophet, Elizabeth Clare. The Lost Years of Jesus, Documentary Evidence of Jesus? 17-Year Journey to the East, Summit University Press, 1984

Wilson, Ian. Jesus: The Evidence, Harper & Row, Publishers,1941

The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden, World Bible Publishers, Inc 1926,1927

The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, World Publishing Company, 1971

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