Jesus: The Remarkable Story Untold to the Masses
Your opinion is important to us, please comment on this article.
by Dan Kellum
This is a story of the royal blood line of King David, the blood line that Jesus was from. We must look beyond our current knowledge, at the footprints left for us by those who died long ago, to see who Jesus and his family were . This is a journey into the other realms of knowledge that those in high power, now and in the past, for some unclear reason, would like for the common man to never read. For this story to be told we must first realize that there are stories that have been kept from the common people by those who, for one reason or another, did not think we needed to read them.
In a book by John Dominic Crossan, a professor of Biblical studies at DePaul University, Chicago, and is the author of In Parables and In Fragments and winner of the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence, Titled The Historical Jesus, he reminds us that “The past is recorded by almost exclusively in the voices of elites and males, in the view points of the wealthy and powerful, in the visions of the literate and the educated.”
Could it be that the reason we all know about Jesus is that those that rule us now and in the past, those that won wars and ruled are lands and our people, could want us to believe in a common knowledge of history and what is right and wrong, a belief system of laws that rule us. We shall discover bits of the past through the words of a few and discover a story that may open our eyes to a new awakening
Miracles
Many people think for the words of a man named Jesus to be worthy of accepting as the Truth, that he must have been supernatural, or even God. Could a simple act of sharing be a miracle? Could being saved from your enemies be a miracle? We must ask our selves why Jesus said, in John 14 verse 12, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” This is an inspiring message because Jesus himself is talking to us through the written word. He is telling us that we are all capable of doing everything he did and more.
Rodney Hoare, educated at Haileybury and Trinity Collage, Cambridge and master at Shrewsbury school for twenty years now Senior Lecturer at Trent Polytechnic, also gave some insight on how we can view Jesus. He said in his book The Testimony of the Shroud:
“To reduce Jesus to a complete human from being a part of God on earth, and show that there is a rational explanation for the Resurrection, is not to remove the spiritual element from the story. Showing that material laws were not broken no more eliminates the divine touches than the laws of refraction remove the beauty from colors.” (pg 119)
This also applies to all the miracles that surrounded his life on earth.
If miracles can be done by all of us, they must come naturally, like sharing all you have and loving even those that wish you harm. This was part of his message to us. We will see that the words Jesus said to us will cause us to achieve great things, but it might make him less of a God. If all these things he did are capable of anyone who believes, than his god-like powers become a little more human-like, therefore within our reach and everyone’s reach.
Other Sources
There are books outside the Bible, just as old, if not older, that describe a story unlike anything we have been taught. A story about a person and his family that may surprise you, or it may complete familiar stories that you have heard before but didn’t quite understand until now. These are the books of the Apocrypha, “writings of dubious authenticity. (Webster’s Pocket Dictionary).
The word “apocrypha” was used by a fourth century Christian scholar named Jerome, who was given the task of translating the Bible, into Latin, his translation was called the Vulgate. He included the books of the Old Testament that appeared in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made in Alexandria, Egypt, but not in the Hebrew Bible, and other works as well.(The missing Books of the Bible Vol. 1, pg7)
According to Moses Hada’s introduction, in the book The Apocrypha, translated by Edgar J Goodspeed, a Bible scholar and translator, born in Quincy, Illinois in 1871 and attended Denison University, received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1898, and taught at the University of Chicago from 1899 to 1937, and translated the entire Bible and the Apocrypha in 1938, he claims in the current usage the adjectives Apocrypha and apocrypha has separate meanings. Written with a means “of dubious authority,” “spurious,” often with a hint of “esoteric”; written with A it refers to the collection of books from the intertestamentary period between the Greek and Hebrew collections of the Bible, printed in The Apocrypha (pg xiv). “The contents of the Hebrew and the Greek Bibles are not identical,” says Hadas. The Greek translation of the Old Testament is called the Septuagint and bear a general resemblance to analogous works in the Hebrew Old Testament, mostly written in Hebrew (or Aramaic) but which are not in fact present in the Hebrew Old Testament.
He continues by claiming the early Christian Church was written in Greek, not Hebrew, and its contents are reproduced in Jerome’s Latin version called the Vulgate, which is the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. So the group of books titled Apocrypha are in neither Greek nor the Hebrew Old Testament.
According to Harvey Minkoff, Ph.D., a professor of English Linguistics at Hunter College of the City University of New York, and a Bible scholar who knows Hebrew, Latin, and several other languages, and has published many articles about the language and literary structure of the bible, Apocrypha, at first, was used to refer to the books that were “hidden away”, thought to be too esoteric or sacred for common readers. It was later that the word apocrypha was to be considered questionable, or not trust worthy.
Before that meaning became popular, “one of the archbishops that were associated with the King James Version of 1611 issued an order forbidding the omission of the Apocrypha from the Bibles” ( The Missing Books of the Bible Vol.1, pg 7). Many printers were ignoring his warning a few decades later, and finally in 1827 the British Bible Society stopped including the books of Apocrypha in its Bibles (The Missing Books of the Bible, Vol1, pg 8).
The Bible is a collection of books
Most people never look inside their King James Bible to read “Books of the old and the new Testament.” The Bible is not a translation of only one book, it is a collection of many authors. Dr. Frank Crane, author of The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden, one of the most important books on the subject of the books, that for one reason or another were omitted, describes the Bible in his introduction “not a book written by a single person, but it is a library of several books which were composed by various people in various countries.”
Dr. Crane reminds readers that “such a thing as historical accuracy is a comparatively novel product” (The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten books of Eden, introduction). In the introduction to the Lost Books of the Bible Dr. Frank Crane presents all these apocryphal volumes without argument or comment, so the reader must use their own judgment or common sense, they were only available in original Greek and Latin and so forth.
“As a believer in the authenticity of our accepted Scriptures I have no hesitation in saying that he is perfectly satisfied to let the common sense of the world decide upon the superiority of the accepted text.” Dr. Crane continues in his preface claiming that all the ecclesiastical writings of the early Christian authorities known to exist, but were omitted from the authorized New Testament, are in his book published as a “matter of record.”
Readers are encouraged to research for themselves the validity of the presences of these so-called “lost books” and see if those that we trust to teach us know of them. I personally called a local Catholic Priest from Peoria, known as Father Carl to me, many years ago, when I first came into contact with Dr. Cranes book, and found out for myself these books existed in the Catholic Church, but for certain reasons I don?t fully understand, are not discussed at all.
Nag Hammadi library
Recently, documents have also surfaced known as the Nag Hammadi library. In 1945 two Egyptian fellahin found a real treasure in the sand of Egypt that had been there for hundreds of years.(The Secret Teachings of Jesus/ Four Gnostic Gospels, Translated by Marvin W. Meyer) With the help of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity of Claremont Graduate school, Marvin M. Meyer of Ferrum College, Virginia, translated from photographic and bibliographical resources the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This library of information contains some fifty-two text, most were previously unknown, concerning mystical or esoteric religious movements known as Gnosticism, from a Greek word gnosis, meaning knowledge. We now consider these early Christians as Gnostics. These texts show us that there is much still to read about Jesus and of the times which he lived.
The search for more information continues with a look at the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, found in 1947 by some bedouins of the Ta’amire tribe (The Meaning of the dead Sea scrolls, pg 9 , by A. Powell Davies )The scrolls were found on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, hence the name Dead Sea scrolls. In his book, Davis claims that most scholars that study the scrolls, seem to be of the mind set that the scrolls are copies of previous texts, but may be original. (The Meaning of the Dead Sea scrolls pg 19)
These manuscripts talk of a “Teacher of Righteousness.” I believe this reference refers directly to Jesus, and his reference to being a teacher, one who has knowledge. The Manuscripts also talk about wars, community laws and enlighten us to the times that Jesus lived in. This is another great book to get familiar with texts that are outside the Bible. For now we only need to realize that there are very important writings that exist outside of the bible that may shed the light of knowledge unto the times and life of Jesus and those that followed him.
Jesus the King
In the Gospel of the birth of Mary, translated in the Lost Books of the Bible by Dr. Crane, Chapter one describes Mary as being from a “royal race and family of David, born in the city of Nazareth, and educated at Jerusalem, in the temple of the Lord.” From this we can see that Mary was not a common poor person, uneducated, she was of royal blood and so must have been placed on a higher level in society.
Her Fathers name was Joachim and her Mother’s was Anna. Her Fathers family was of Galilee and the city of Nazareth, and her Mother’s was from Bethlehem. (Chap.1 Gospel of the Birth of Mary) For many years they were childless and Joachim was confounded with shame until a “angel of the Lord” (Chap.II) appeared to him and told him that his prayers had been heard and a child would be born unto him.
This child would be a girl and her name would be Mary, and be blessed above all women. (Luke. 28) At three years of age, Mary was weaned in her fathers house and then sent to the Temple of the Lord, where she was devoted to the Lord. There she will serve the Lord night and day in fasting and prayer and shall abstain from everything unclean, and never know any man.(Chap III)
When she arrived at the temple, which was built in a mountain, her parents were putting of their cloths in accordance to the custom, and put clean cloths on, the “Virgin of the Lord in such a manner went up the stairs one after another, without the help of any to lead or lift her, that any one would have judged from hence that she was of perfect age.” (Chap IV) “Every day she had the conversation of angels, and everyday received visitors from God.” (Chap. V)
What did the writers mean by “angels” and “visitors from God”? In a book by Douglas Monroe titled “The 21 Lessons of Merlyn a study of Druid Magic and Lore”, Monroe describes a island called Anglesey, one of the institutes near Arthur’s Britain (ca 500 AD). The Druids were famed throughout Europe and the Eastern countries for the excellence of their schools, libraries and collages, says Douglas Monroe. He continues by saying “only the most promising youths were considered, usually from the upper classes or nobility.’
If this was known to exist, could it be possible that these students could have lived like the elites today, not with the same luxuries, but having a life of travel abroad and sharing their ideas and discoveries with those in far off lands? Are we that sure of history that we cannot use our imaginations and our common sense as to how those in power lived?
Delegates of the world constantly talk amongst each other in order to keep peace around the world. Could this possibly be one explanation for angles being in such high authority. The angles were known to have great knowledge of the kingdom of God. The Webster Vest Pocket Dictionary describes angels as “spiritual being superior to humans”. A “spiritual being”, if we look at each word means a living thing relating to the spirit or sacred matters, deeply religious (Webster’s Vest Pocket Dictionary). This seems to indicate the possibility that there was a select group of people that were looked upon in high regard.
The book The Message of the Sphinx, written by Graham Hancock , a former correspondent for The Economist and author of Finger prints of the Gods, The Sign and the Seal, and Lords of Poverty and Robert Bauval, a construction engineer with a long-time standing interest in the astronomy of the pyramids, having lived in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East for much of his life, light is shed on the knowledge that must have been known by some thousands of years ago when the Sphinx and the pyramids were built. Knowledge must have been shared by those that ruled over Kingdoms.
In Chapter 10, Henri Frankfort is quoted from his book Kingship and the Gods, 1948, as saying “Each king, at death, becomes Osiris, just as each king, in life, appears ‘on the throne of Horus’;each king is Horus….The question whether Osiris and Horus are…gods or kings is, for the Egyptian, meaningless. These gods are the king and his successor; these kings are those gods…”
In Jesus The Evidence, Ian ,Ian Wilsons, who graduated from Magdalen Collage, Oxford, with a degree in modern history in 1963 and produced several books and even coauthored a television show which won the prestigious BAFTA award, also tells us how when a Roman emperor die he was traditionally regarded as having become a god. He gives Claudius as an example, he became transformed into Jupiter, the king of the gods.( Pg 179)
It seems possible that the bloodline of King David could be thought of as gods. A God, as Webster’s Vest Pocket Dictionary, is defined as “a supreme being, a being with supernatural powers.” The Webster’s Dictionary describes “supreme” as “highest in rank or authority”. Our own books we use today to determine definitions, seem to enlighten us to the possibility that we have looked at those in power as gods.
If we continue on this path of discovering some of the meanings of words we thought we knew, than we would realize that the word “angel” means, “spiritual being superior to humans”, using the Webster Dictionary term. It goes on to define “spiritual” as “deeply religious”, “being” is defined as a “living thing”, put together one see’s that a “angel” is really a deeply religious living being, superior to other living beings.
If these definitions were to be accepted, than the story of Jesus could be told and even understood and accepted by those that reject the idea that Jesus was the one and only God. This means that his message of peace and love would make it to everyone. This is why your reading this story, to find out what went on back then and how it affects your life now. Jesus was and is many peoples? savior and teacher, we should try to find out as much as we can about his life and his family, and especially why he gave his life for his people
Leave a reply