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Book Club From Paul to Mark - PaleoChristianity' by Laura Knight-Jadczyk (2021)

A communal reading and discussion exercise for a particular book/series.

MorganBlack

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A sister commentary thread for the book:

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For context, my intro to the book, from:
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On the mystical side, I'm an immersive Pantheist and was not raised particularly religious.

In my work with the Catholic Trinity they function as stepdown energy transformer to temper and channel the burning stellar energy of "The Father" manifested through the PGM's Headless Rite.

But I often forget the trauma some people have around Christianity My girlfriend was raised Southern Baptist in Dallas, and the scars run deep. I don't know if this book will help or just open old wound for folks.

This is the book that untangled a lot of the historical knots for me. It went a long way helping my overly intellectual left hemisphere align with the Mystical Christ. Better myths can erase bad myths.

Paul's original vision is BIG enough to hold many interpretations, so I am also not trying to erase anyone's take here. Half my family are Cradle Caths and I would never come AT them "explaining" Christ to them. That is not helpful, nor the point of any of this, in my view.

The mythologist Martin Shaw rather astutely suggested that Jesus Christ is the 'Last Greek God.' Knight-Jadczyk’s book gives us an exhaustive account of how the exceedingly sublime vision of a dying-and-rising Greek deity was removed from his cosmic mythos, and then trapped within a literalized, first-century political narrative by the authors of the Gospel of Mark.

The original, pre-Gospel "current" (represented by Paul's actual letters) was fundamentally different from the literalist, historicized religion that the Roman Empire eventually used to hold the Empire together (and turn pagan slavery into Christian feudalism) .

Paul really wasn't trying to build a new bureaucratic religion based on a wandering carpenter (and maybe magician) from Galilee. He writing inside a deeply Hellenized, Neoplatonic, and mystical framework for a Hellenic audience.

So this book can help us see "Christos" isn't a historical man (well he is, so not trying to erase more mainstream Catholic or Protestant views here). He's cosmic principle - the Logos or a solar daimon. The crucifixion and resurrection aren't historical events that took place on hill outside Jerusalem. They were, are, and are always , eternal, celestial mythic dramas happening which the initiate accesses through visionary experiences.
 
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