Happy 'Big Ups to Jesus' Day!

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you."

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the holy Spirit.

Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."

Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.

So the other disciples said to him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."

Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you."

Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe."

Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

(John 20:19-28)

"A Word Did Whisper of a Secret Fire"

by the PTG's own Space Debris

A word did whisper of a secret fire,
The sacred one yet burning e'er unquenched
Within the men who hear the Orphic lyre —
But now from mystagogic hands 'tis wrenched.

Behold, the word lies chained in stainéd lands:
In mouths of Samael and worldly Will.
How sad, how far from holy Egypt's sands
Wherein the word's old meaning lingers still.

Yet more, the hoary Empire sans an end —
It feigns to be a newer age sublime —
With nails the verbal flesh intends to rend,
To crucify upon a speck of time.

But laugh, Allogenes, within you see
Unshelled the logos's spirit: joyous, free!

Over winter break I had the opportunity to hang in DC with some friends from the Palm Tree Garden. That's me on the left, Dave on the right, and Jeremy in the back.

Alternate translation of Thomas, Logion 40

Recently in the Palm Tree Garden there has been a bit of chatter about the matter-spirit dualism, or the ability for the Kosmos to exist completely outside of and apart from the Pleroma, or Fullness known in Christian terms as "The Father." The question has been, or I should say the thought-experiment has been, 'how can God's Spirit remain immanent in the Universe if the Universe is outside of God?' Well the answer to this question is far beyond the reaches of my tiny human brain, and no revelation has disclosed this to me, so to be frankly honest I have no absolute opinion one way or the other. But that is not what I want to discuss here.

In the course of the conversation my good friend Space Debris has often pointed out the Gospel of Thomas' logion 40 is strong evidence against Gnostic belief in panentheism, the idea that the Universe is somehow contained in God, surrounded or enveloped by Him. This is certainly not the only text that makes this claim among either Gnostic or Hermetic texts, but it is a prominent one and worthy of attention. Please keep in mind that this text is a translation from a Greek original and any ambiguities that arise may very well be due to this circumstance.

(40) Jesus said, "A grapevine has been planted outside the father. And because it is not sound, it will be plucked out by the root and will perish." (Bentley Layton)

If this passage indeed refers to the Kosmos as the "grapevine," then it would seem on the surface to support a belief that the Universe has been somehow cast out of God's Fullness, or was never in the Fullness to begin with. Curious as to what the Coptic text read, I consulted the Coptic text to see firsthand what was being said. What I found was (unsurprisingly in Coptic) an ambiguous verse.

In the second line of the verse is found the text "M-П-CA-N-BOλ M-П-EIWT" (pronounced "em-peh-sah-en-vol em-pei-oat"). This is commonly translated "outside the Father." To my confusion however, the adverb commonly translated as "outside" (CA-N-BOλ) was given an article (П) as if it were a substantive noun of some kind. I consulted Crum's Coptic Dictionary. Nowhere in the Coptic body of texts, Christian or pagan, is a substantive use of CA-N-BOλ cited by Crum (See Crum 35b) . If this is indeed the right word, CA-N-BOλ, it is being used here in Thomas in a fashion that I cannot find attested anywhere else.

A funny thing about ancient texts is that words are completely run together without punctuation or spacing. So on the surface I have no real reason to group the word particles CA-N-BOλ together as a single word, and I needed to explore alternatives as to why there is an extra article, П, in front.

The first place I looked was the english index to Crum. The substantive (IE arthrous) word for outside is "BOλ" (See Crum 33b). If this passage were trying to say that the grapevine were planted "on the outside of the Father," it would have been rendered easily M-П-BOλ M-П-EIWT, not M-П-CA-N-BOλ M-П-EIWT. It just doesn't make much sense to use an adverb as a noun when there is a perfectly well-attested substantive word meaning "outside."

So I checked to see if П-CA-N-BOλ could stand by itself as a noun. No dice. The word doesn't exist.

It became clear to me that the only other option was to explore the use of M-П-CA as a standalone construction, and the possibility of N-BOλ being an attributive construction modifying it. It turns out, on Crum 35a, that N-BOλ is always used as an attributive adjective meaning "outer." So I asked myself what it is modifying, and on Crum 313a there is a masculine noun, П-CA, which means either side or part. It is clear from the dictionary entry that CA does not mean "side" as in one side of a fence or the other. It means "side" as in "the side of a barn," or "the boat's side." It means an outward feature of any physical body. Therefore, П-CA-N-BOλ ought to be rendered separately, П-CA N-BOλ, and most likely means something like the "outer side."

Let me break it down for you from left to right: The "M" is a preposition, N (in, at, on), which assimilates as an M on a masculine noun. Next is the preposition's object, an article and a noun, П-CA, "the side" or "the part." After that is N-BOλ, an attributive construction that means "outer." Therefore this passage may find an alternative rendering in one of the following ways:

Jesus said, "A grapevine has been planted on the outer part of the father. And because it is not sound, it will be plucked out by the root and will perish."

Jesus said, "A grapevine has been planted on the outside edge of the father. And because it is not sound, it will be plucked out by the root and will perish."

Jesus said, "A grapevine has been planted on the outermost reaches of the father. And because it is not sound, it will be plucked out by the root and will perish."

This alternate rendering is grammatically sound, and I can even make more sense of it than I can Layton's rendering. However, I admit I am not Layton and do not want to step on such a great man's toes. I hesitate to say that my rendering is automatically better than Layton's - after all many translations use Layton's rendering. But it is a sound alternative no matter how you slice it. Why does Layton opt to use an unattested (or very rarely attested - it is more than probable that Layton saw his usage attested in some rare papyrus somewhere) usage of these words to render the translation as he does? I cannot rule out the possibility of scholarly bias toward Gnostic texts: it is at least possible that the matter-spirit dualism that makes up the dominant scholarly picture of the Gnostic worldview influenced this rendering.

Don't get me wrong - I have the greatest respect for Layton and his work, and would just adore the opportunity to work at the feet of such a master. But faced with an ambiguous passage, even the wisest and most read scholars might lean toward simply confirming presupposed suspicions. I would tell him of my alternative reading myself... that is, if he ever actually answered his emails.

Seeking Sophia

A spirit haunts me always
Whose sapphire-azure shine
Hides veiled in all my hallways
And lurks within my wine.

I see her in my wandering mind
When I close my heavy eyes,
I pray that I shall never find
My dreams of her are lies.

So can this spirit make me whole?
The holy one, and whore?
Who in the corner of my soul
Haunts me evermore?

Rumi on the claim "I am God"

People imagine that it is a presumptive claim, whereas it is really a presumptive claim to say "I am the slave of God"; and "I am God" is an expression of great humility. The man who says "I am the slave of God" affirms two existences, his own and God's, but he that says "I am God" has made himself non-existent and has given himself up and says "I am God", that is, "I am naught, He is all; there is no being but God's." This is the extreme of humility and self-abasement.

- Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Saint Dick's Day 2006

Philip Kindred Dick

Born December 16th 1928

Died March 2nd 1982

Visionary, Author, Prophet, Madman.

Philip K Dick on Wikipedia

Philip K Dick Official Website

The PKDictionary

The Philip K Dick Bookshelf

Weirdo Magazine: The Religious Experience of Philip K Dick by R Crumb

How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later by Philip K Dick

Cosmogony and Cosmology by Philip K Dick

Ten Major Principles of the Gnostic Revelation by Philip K Dick

Tractates Cryptica Scriptura by Philip K Dick

Reading Thomas, THE Thomas, in the Smithsonian's Sackler-Freer

Instead of the standard birthday fare of drinking beers and running around Washington DC until 2 in the morning, my girlfriend erin and I went to the Smithsonian's Sackler-Freer gallery for an exclusive look at an assortment of codices, scrolls, and papyrus leaves from bibles and biblical literature that predate the 11th Century of the Common Era. From the exhibition website:

The exhibition will present over 70 of the earliest biblical artifacts in existence, including pages and fragments written in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian and Coptic—many on display for the first time in the United States. The Sackler Gallery will be the only venue for the exhibition.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

- Leaves from three of the six oldest surviving Hebrew codices.
- The oldest known manuscripts of the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy.
- One of the earliest known manuscripts of the Gospels written in Latin.
- The oldest dated parchment biblical codex in the world.
- A page from the earliest Bible with full-page illustration.

When we arrived, we did the usual ritual of wandering around the labyrinth of the Arthur M Sackler Gallery. When we found the line into the exhibit, the wait was thirty minutes. When we got into the gallery, it was packed full of people. I couldn't believe that so many people could read this stuff that they'd be interested in the exhibit, but my naive presuppositions about who would go see old scraps of paper were challenged by the odd demographics of people we encountered. A good quarter of the visitors seemed to be erudite, educated, Greek-reading types like myself who had deigned to leave the ivory towers of their universities to see the scribbled wonders of the ancient world first hand. At least another quarter were religious folks, Christians and Jews, curious as to their cultural origins, and hoping to grab at least a taste of numinous experience from gazing at these dusty old mysteries from the sands of Egypt, Syria, and a handful of European monasteries. The rest were laypeople just trying to see what the fuss was about.

The first part of the exhibit was a visual demonstration of the plight of the papyrologist. A large glass case at the forefront of the exhibit was full of scraps, unsorted. Oftentimes when archaeologists find caches of papyrus in the desert they are hopelessy jumbled piles of scraps. It is the job of the papyrologist to sort through these piles and find material worth studying.

Oxford and Bringham Young Universities are working on sorting and studying drawers and drawers of this stuff found in ancient garbage piles in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. To date, the find at Oxyrhynchus includes new works of numerous Greek poets and playwrights such as Sophocles, Sappho, and others, as well as a variety of biblical and patristic variant manuscripts. The current project is using multi-spectrum radio imaging to read the letters that are too faint to see with the naked eye. I currently hold out much hope that as the project progresses, fragments from the Greek original of the Gospel of Thomas, and other Nag Hammadi works, can be located and transcribed. But back to the museum.

The next big section was a selection of the earliest Hebrew Bible manuscripts. I was astonished to learn (having studied mostly New Testament papyrology so far) that most of the hebrew manuscripts we have extant from the Hebrew Bible date after the first century of the Common Era. Before that, the best scriptural attestation of the Hebrew Bible is the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament. Next, I saw a series of papyrus fragments, including the famous Chester-Beatty Papyri which include some of the earliest textual attestations of Mark, dated around 250.

Finally, I wandered over to a section labeled "Apocryphal Gospels," convinced (since I'd read the website summary) that I was going to see the standard apocryphal hum-drum of The Gospel of Nicodemus, Shepherd of Hermas, and the Clementine epistles. Instead, to my astonishment, I saw a beautiful golden-brown papyrus leaf, in two pages, with the Coptic words "KATA IW2ANNHN N AΠOKPYΦON" right across the middle.

I knew I was looking at a part of the Apocryphon of John, meaning that I was staring through glass at an actual leaf of the Coptic Nag Hammadi Library, the only place where this text is extant. But I remembered that often the Copts titled their works at the end of a section rather than at the beginning, so the Apocryphon on the page constituted only several lines of Coptic, in grammar that was difficult to make out by sight (confounded further by the ancient tendency to write words straight together, without punctuation or spaces). The next text could have been one of several in my mind since the Apocryphon shows up in the library several times in different codices. I didn't want to lose my place in front of the glass (there were people everywhere, pushing and shoving) so I didn't move to read the description on the plaque. Instead, I decided to just read the introduction to the following text and wager a guess as to what I was looking at. Despite the troublesome lack of spacing and punctuation, I found the Coptic to be remarkably simple, and I read the first line out loud to myself. To my ecstatc joy, it read "these are the words that the living Jesus spoke and Judas Didymos Thomas wrote down." I was looking at the actual leaves of Codex II that comprise the beginning of the Gospel of Thomas. It was inches from my face behind glass, but I could see it more clearly and read it far more efficiently than many of the other works in the exhibit that were in Greek and Latin. I marvelled at how such a beautiful piece of text had been so effectively preserved in the ground, a treasure in an earthen vessel, in order to make it to this present day and sit right before my very eyes. I couldn't help my imagination's frantic whisperings that I was seeing the tomb of the Plasmate itself, which had been imprisoned for over a thousand years.

I am always impressed with Thomas as a text in translation. Its simplicity is a great vehicle for the transmission of its ideas. In the Coptic translation, even through the haze of millennia, these ideas have retained their remarkable simplicity, and it was not difficult for me (having had a semester of graduate work in Coptic) to breeze through the two pages I was looking at. It was exhilarating to read from the actual leaves of the papyrus, and I can only hope that in the future, my studies in Coptic will help me bring the exhilarating experience to more people.

For what it's worth: if you're in the DC area before January 7th and want to see the exhibit in the Sackler, send me an email. If I'm free, I'd love to show you around the exhibit!

Memeplex diagram

Context here

Stop hitting yourself.

Volo enim esse malleus, non incus.
Sed ecce - Invenio me esse et malleus et incus!

Gnostic Haiku Fest 2006

The "New Prophet"

Inflated ego.
Behold! I am the prophet!
I shall now judge you!

Forum junkies - sweet!
Time for a pissing contest?
Jump to conclusions?

You know Gnosis not
I am Gnosticker than you
Gnostic prophet, I.

Everybody Loves Dick

Black Iron Prison
Old Nobodaddy's dark den
Archon jerks, go home!

Gnosis rings the bell
Do you answer the door, Phil?
Oh no! Pink light beams!

Pleroma breaks in.
Sweet gospel of light and life!
The Palm Tree Garden

Sleepy?

Why do you sleep so?
The Gospel of Truth is joy!
Wake, you Christians, wake!

IΩΑΝΝΗΣ

ευαγγελιον
Εν αρχη ην 'ο λογος
κατα Ιωαννην

Ιωαννης λεγει
εγω φωνη βοωντος
εν τη ερημω

ιερεις, λευιτας
ηρωτησαν Ιωαννην
συ προφητης ει?

ουκ εγω ειμι
'ο Ιησους ηλθον
βαπτιζειν κοσμον!

Sophia

My love for thee eloquent pen denies
For no such words can any mortal write.
I pray the muse let verse and song to fly
I ponder over parchment through the night.
No verse can be created that compares
To thy fair voice which like a dove does sing
Nor can the sculptor forge a stone that wears
A face such beauty angels with them bring.
Though the bards may sing, poets write their songs,
They write and paint their love in notes or hue.
Prophets' ancient murmurs to you belong,
And angels paint their love in all of you,
All beauty of the earth is but a part.
I am in love with ev'rything thou art.

For Sweet Wisdom.

"OF all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Anyone who knows anybody knows how it would work; anyone who knows anyone from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones"

- GK Chesterton, professional grump

Get lost, God. We're trying to argue about a stove here...

Babylonian Talmud, Baba Metzia 59b

If a man made an oven out of separate coils of clay, placing one upon another, then put sand between each of the coils — such an oven, R. Eliezer declared, is not susceptible to defilement, while the sages declared it susceptible.

It is taught: On that day R. Eliezer brought forward every imaginable argument, but the Sages did not accept any of them. Finally he said to them: "If the Halakhah (religious law) is in accordance with me, let this carob tree prove it!" Sure enough the carob tree immediately uprooted itself and moved one hundred cubits, and some say 400 cubits, from its place. "No proof can be brought from a carob tree," they retorted.

And again he said to them "If the Halakhah agrees with me, let the channel of water prove it!" Sure enough, the channel of water flowed backward. "No proof can be brought from a channel of water," they rejoined.

Again he urged, "If the Halakhah agrees with me, let the walls of the house of study prove it!" Sure enough, the walls tilted as if to fall. But R. Joshua, rebuked the walls, saying, "When disciples of the wise are engaged in a halakhic dispute, what right have you to interfere?" Hence in deference to R. Joshua they did not fall and in deference to R. Eliezer they did not resume their upright position; they are still standing aslant.

Again R. Eliezer then said to the Sages, "If the Halakhah agrees with me, let it be proved from heaven." Sure enough, a divine voice cried out, "Why do you dispute with R. Eliezer, with whom the Halakhah always agrees?" R. Joshua stood up and protested: "The Torah is not in heaven!" (Deut. 30:12). We pay no attention to a divine voice because long ago at Mount Sinai You wrote in your Torah at Mount Sinai, `After the majority must one incline'. (Ex. 23:2)"

R. Nathan met the prophet Elijah and asked him, "What did the Holy One do at that moment?" Elijah: "He laughed with joy, saying, 'My children have defeated Me, My children have defeated Me.'"

From the Epistle of James

My brothers, show no partiality as you adhere to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.

For if a man with gold rings on his fingers and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and a poor person in shabby clothes also comes in, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Sit here, please," while you say to the poor one, "Stand there," or "Sit at my feet," have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil designs?

Listen, my beloved brothers. Did not God choose those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him? But you dishonored the poor person. Are not the rich oppressing you? And do they themselves not haul you off to court? Is it not they who blaspheme the noble name that was invoked over you?

However, if you fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors.

James 2:1-9

Jordan says it better than I can

From Jordan Stratford's Ecclesia Gnostica in Nova Albion:

The very idea of orthodoxy may seem anathema to many of you, but I have learned to respect it as "focus". In order to boil water, you put it in a pot: that's focus and containment of energy. Orthodoxy is focus and containment of spiritual energy, just as a yoga posture must be held in order for the benefits of that posture to take effect. We as a Gn culture tend to be very dismissive of orthodoxy except in disciplines such as Tibetan Buddhism or Alchemy – an arbitrary and illogical prejudice.

As usual, Jordan hit the nail on the head. I think a lot of Westerners (particularly some liberals, but I won't generalize) have a kind of cultural "blinders" that prevent them from viewing their own culture as anything but inherently corrupt and evil. This viewpoint misses the historical fact that foreign cultures are often just as brutal as our own, and do just as many horrible things to one another. Buddhists have used the teachings of the Buddha to justify mass-murder just as many times as the Roman Church or Martin Luther or Oliver Cromwell used the bible to justify their own murders and hatreds. I do not know where this overtly self-critical trend stems from, but perhaps it is simply the result of a gradual becoming-aware that has made us as a society more self-aware. As a natural result of this self-introspection (can I call it "guilt"?) many Westerners tend to jump to conclusions that weigh the positives of foreign societies and religions with all the guilt-ridden self-impressions of our own societies and religions (this is, I want to note, a complete reversal of the conservative standpoint that tends to view all the positives of one's own society against all the negatives of others', which produces a similarly unbalanced and unrealistic caricature). Many liberal Westerners therefore see foreign cultures as pillars of stability and righteousness to be emulated. The funny thing is, many people in other countries see Western ways as pillars of righteousness to be emulated, and emulate us in order to fix their self-conscious vision of their own societies!

Let us remember it was Evangelical Christians who marched with Dr. King and organized the lion's share of the civil rights movement. It was not until the late 1970s when Moonie and future Leftbehindist Tim LaHaye talked a reluctant Jerry Falwell into tearing down the church-state wall that Evangelicals were associated with the extreme right-wing.

I recommend Bishop Hoeller's lecture on Christian Fundamentalism. The good Bishop talks about these themes at length and discusses the recent history of the evolution of fundamentalism and how the fundamentalists "bamboozled" the mainstream into accepting their novel definition of Christianity as normative and historical.

Let us be reminded (by the wonderful rant above) that there are orthodox feminists and gay-rights activists, conservative artists and environmentalists, literalist dreamers who fall in love and cook food and plant gardens and imagine a future for their grandchildren. Their path is not my path, but we shall meet at the hill's summit nonetheless.

Veggies Left Behind!

Jesse: I hate Veggie Tales.

Jordan: Oh how I hate the veggies, worse than the Left Behind...but I see potential for a crossover: Veggies Left Behind.

Jesse: Why are religious cartoon characters portrayed as vegetables?

Jordan: It's appropriate - they couldn't be fruits, could they?

Jesse: Bob the Tomato must be in the closet.

Happy Birthday Jeremy!

September 2nd is Jeremy Puma's birthday! This is one of the men most responsible for bringing net-Gnostics together over a year ago, and the webmaster of the Palm Tree Garden Community. Be sure to drop by Fantastic Planet and give him some birthday spankings.

He's right, arctic ice is freakin' scary. Thanks for all the great work, JP!

Interview with Father Jordan Stratford from the AJC

Those crazy alternative religion guys over at Green Triangle are at it again interviewing Gnostic clergy! This time, the test subject is Father Jordan Stratford (whom you all know through his fabulous website).

I've been a Sophianic Gnostic for about 17 years. I consider myself a Priest of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. What that means to me is that, if you go back say six, eight thousand years – well, further, actually – you have people employing a Eucharistic ritual to invest the material with the spiritual. The central idea of Western Religion is incarnation, that the Divine is real and can (and does) become manifest in the world. There are specific forms of this ritual that are unique in the West, and have a continuity from antiquity to the present day. You see this in ancient Egypt, throughout the Greek Mysteries, Persian Mithraism, through the Sol Invictus Cult of ancient Rome, continuing through Christianity. Later it winds through nominally Christian but distinctly heretical movements such as the Templars, the Cathars, the Rosicrucians, the Liberal Catholics and occult investigations of the late 19th Century. I am a part of that Tradition.

Read it all!

Revisionfest 2006

Howdy faithful readers, all five of you!

I am working on revising much of the sidebar material on the Homoplasmate in light of the insights of a whole year of grad work on the primary texts. If you have suggestions on how I can improve the quality of the noosphere around here, please let me know!

1) Is anything incomplete? Are there more perspectives I can include in any of these sections? I am a skeptic and try to include as many POV's and alternative interpretations as possible.

2) Is anything wrong? I don't mean, "is my interpretation wrong" per se, but are any of my citations or claims demonstrably false using primary and secondary sources?

3) Is my interpretation wrong? Please give me constructive criticism: I would appreciate if your critiques could utilize theories from modern or classical gnostic thought.

(All self-righteous silliness I recieve will be publically posted and ridiculed)

Just drop your comments in my email via the "contact" link. Thanks guys!