The Pokey Finger of God

At the root of Judaism is a written history of people to whom Yah has spoken. These people, we are told, had direct, immediate, and personal knowledge of God. They spoke with him. He answered. His words became the driving force for their actions.
This is exactly the sort of individual congress with the divine that [...]

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In reviewing some historical material, specifically the Prophets of the Old Testament, something new occurred to me. On one level, the Prophets of Ancient Israel and Judah were the real standard bearers for the Yah cult. Some of the kings seemed to like it, perhaps because they imagined that they could somehow politically reunite the [...]

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April D. DeConick, The Thirteenth Apostle. (c) 2007, Continuum. London, New York.
This scholarly translation of the recently discovered Gospel of Judas attempts to address some inaccuracies and misrepresentations made in the original translation. DeConick’s translation work began the day the plates from the National Geographic scholars had been released. Reading from the original Coptic, it [...]

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More speculations on history and the development of myth.
Gnostic Origins: The word ‘Gnostic’ is being phased out of my working vocabulary, as it fails to provide a consistent, definitive meaning. This word is frequently used as a wide brush to tar all manner of deviations from orthodoxy, yet the more I try to pin down [...]

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I haven’t given myself the time to really study anything in a while. Riding on airplanes provides a lot of time to read, and it’s really sparked a further round of heretical research better than anything I’ve really done in a while. I had to go back to my original notes, but now I’m hip [...]

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In the time it took me to build this much, I probably could have found a really nice once somewhere else. I did a modicum of searching, but since I’ve been reading Burton Mack’s New Testament origins book, I’ve been really inspired to see a big map with all these different idealogical interconnections clearly shown. [...]

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Question: I just read DaVinci Code, and I liked the book a lot. What interested me was that there were other versions of Christianity, like the Gnostics, who sound like they were more Eastern, or pagan in their beliefs. I was brought up Catholic and never believed in everything they teach, but do still consider [...]

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