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The Pleromatics Project
8. Jesus, Cross, Cosmos
The first act of creation Was the lifting of a crossFor life must have a frame
a field 'Gainst which its forces pullAnd life must move toward death.
After reading my Religion Confronting Science, an Episcopal priest asked, but what does science say about Jesus? My initial thought was that, though science can say a great deal about biology in general, and through scientifically oriented research, about historical context, it really cannot say much about Jesus. I agreed with Schweitzer that the historical Jesus is out of reach. "He comes to us an one unknown ..." It is in our own journey with Jesus as an inner psychological reality that we learn to know who he is.
In the community of Jesus scholars, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in finding the historical Jesus. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library in the middle of this century, and other parallel research have permitted saying a great deal more about the historical context of Jesus' life. Further, one can discern more today about levels of source material in the gospels than was available to Schweitzer for his famous 1906 study, The Quest for the Historical Jesus.
The potential for the Dead Sea Scrolls to change our outlook about the historical Jesus is illustrated very dramatically by a recently published study by Barbara Thiering, an Australian scholar of the Scrolls. It should be said at the outset that her work is very much out of the mainstream, but as she says, her hypothesis is "scientific". That is, it could be put to the test by others, to see whether her method and conclusions can be verified.
She departs from the "standard model" of Scrolls interpretation in several ways. She holds that the scrolls are contemporary with Jesus, rather than a century earlier. She relies on a complicated reconstruction of the various calendar systems which were in use in Judea at the time. Further, she takes the "pesher" technique found in one of the scrolls, and uses it to find a hidden layer of information in the first five books of the New Testament.
"Pesher" refers to an interpretation. The ordinary text points to a certain meaning; the pesher is the key to finding another meaning behind the text. She holds that, by following the same rules used in a Scrolls pesher (to the book of Habbakuk), one can find in the four gospels and the Book of Acts two levels: the ordinary text conveying a sacred meaning, and a hidden meaning telling an historical story which is different from the events implied by the sacred text. That meaning is encoded in variations of word order, in phrasing which points to specific calendar dates, and by inappropriately plural forms of place names. These point to places in the Qumran complex, rather than to their ordinary geographic sites.
The Thiering analysis yields a "history" which is quite different from the one taught in Sunday School! She reports that Jesus and his family were members the Qumran community. Mary was an unmarried woman, who was "virgin" by age and community rank, rather than in a modern clinical or forensic sense. Jesus was an influential dissident and reformer, who was crucified at Qumran, then removed from the cross before nightfall in accordance with Jewish rules. He was resuscitated by Mary Magdalene (whom he later married) and by others, was active in the early church movement and in the production of John's Gospel, and died naturally in old age.
Though her method is scientific in the sense which she mentions, the tedium of her method works against its verification. We can only wait and see whether anyone with appropriate credentials will be willing to spend the major part of (and risk sacrificing) a scholarly career trying to confirm it. Unless that happens, or unless some other more easily interpreted document which can be authenticated is found in some still unopened cave, the historical Jesus remains remote from us. My original point still seems valid. Though science has spoken about context, it has not answered the question of the empty tomb.
Still, Jesus' question kept gnawing at my consciousness: Who do you say that I am? It is a question that I had answered for myself several times before, but after finishing the first draft of this book, the question returned with new force. In the worldview of the nuocontinuum, with cosmos expanded to encompass both physics and psyche, does the answer to Jesus' question change? "Who, indeed, do you now say that I am?"
Anyone today who wants to learn to know Jesus as "an inner psychological reality" must look to his recorded words. Unfortunately, it is not possible to know exactly, literally, what Jesus said, for the gospels do not always agree as to the words or the context in which they were spoken. Further, research points to varying layers of source material. The Jesus voice of the gospels is a literary voice, not the voice of the literal historical person. How much effort, then, should one expend trying to understand the words, if we cannot dependably know exactly which ones came directly from Jesus' own mouth?
My own answer is that such a reductive approach misleads us. The literalist approach has been dominant throughout the history of the church. Now, knowledge has progressed sufficiently to permit us to take a view of the material as a whole, without allowing literalist historical questions to distract us from understanding. The Jesus Words in the gospels, though from different authors and different times, form a sacred "mythopoetic" whole, which carries a rich treasure of transformative meaning, even for (especially for) the modern mind.
(Of course, by saying that the text is sacred, I do not mean to imply that the text should be worshipped, as itself a holy object. It is holy in the sense that it points us toward holiness, and informs the quest for wholeness.)
If that be the case, I would then have to deal with the text mythopoetically, seeking to understand its teaching and imagery as though interpreting a dream, in terms of its deep psychological dynamics. Many others, of course, have done so, dating from Jung himself. But, I asked, which version of the words? I reminded myself that I am not a scholar of Greek. But the interlinear Greek-English New Testament is readily available, as are are many Greek lexicons. Some show the inflection of every word in the New Testament.
Aha! Then, if the words are to be interpreted as "mythopoetic", why not line them out as poetry, to help me keep that point constantly in view? The argument in my head continued: Jesus was not a poet, not in the usual literary sense. But the gospels use many rhetorical devices and figures of speech, pointing to poetic meanings. And there is frequent parallelism, a characteristic feature of Hebrew and other poetry. So why not?
But what about the worldview problem? Most traditional translations (and doctrines) require us to read the text in the worldview of the Pharisees! Yet Jesus' own worldview clashed (resoundingly!) with theirs. Would I not have to translate worldviews, too, if I am to find modern meaning in the words of Jesus?
Another question kept nagging. Is it really valid to think that in such a project I could find new meaning, formerly hidden to me? The gospel record itself gives a hint of an answer, if we read it intuitively. When the disciples challenged Jesus about one of his new teachings ("Then why should anyone bother to get married"? Mt 18:10-12), he answered cryptically. "Some people are not ready to understand this, but ... " Yes, there are deeper meanings which remain beyond our immediate understanding, until we are "ready". We have to prepare ourselves for understanding. Yes, it not just permissible, it is essential to spiritual growth that we keep looking, keep questioning. Yes, I should proceed.
Throughout, whenever the text and lexicons offered a choice, I hoped to choose ordinary meanings of Greek words rather than the "standard" doctrinal ones. It would be as though I were a disciple hearing the message for the first time from a modern Jesus. I would be using meanings which agreed with the way Greek words are used in the New Testament, though of course I could not claim that I was finding the meaning the gospel writers intended.
That, then, was the background for my Treasure project , which paraphrased the words of Jesus and lined them as modern poetry. Of course, such a project carries no scholarly or any other authority, beyond the power of the words themselves.
Looking at the Jesus Words from the worldview of the nuocontinuum required making two key interpretations, about "son of man" and "kingdom of God". What can these possibly mean to the modern mind? "Son of man" was a way to say "myself" or to refer to an individual human being. But Jesus gave it special emphasis and apparently a special meaning. A "son of man" is an inheritor of the essence of the human, and that essence is identified in Genesis as "image of God". In the language of analytical psychology, that would equate with "Self" (which must be distinguished from ego). Therefore, I paraphrased "son of man", when refering to how Jesus saw himself in relationship to God, as "Image-of-God".
What can we make of the phrase "kingdom of God"? That was a key question even in Jesus day, for the conflict over whether it was political or spiritual played a major role in the crucifixion. The traditional view has been that the "kingdom" consists (only) of the spiritual company of faithful believers. However, we have already reviewed the evidence for the extraordinary extent to which human consciousness, the unconscious realm, and the material world interact. The "kingdom" in which the divine Mystery works must be taken to include the whole of physics and psyche. By using "spiritual realm" in place of "kingdom of God", I hoped to express this larger understanding, without triggering associations with specific historical doctrinal issues.
These changes can give quite a remarkable new flavor to the readings. That is especially true for Luke 17, where the Pharisees ask when the "kingdom of God" will come. Jesus responded with a long passage which is usually taken to refer to the "Rapture", the second coming of Christ as a future event in spacetime.
The spiritual realm is not something Whose coming you can see. You cannot say `Here it is!' or `There it is!' For the spiritual realm is within you. There will come a time When you want `see' the spiritual realm But you will not sight it. They will tell you `Look here!' or `Look there!' Do not go off following them. The Image-of-God will come to you at that time As lightning strikes across the heavens first herethen there. ...
That's how it will be when the Image-of-Godis revealed.
The passage then says that wherever two people are together, in bed perhaps, or grinding grain, or in the field, "the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left" (King James Version). My poetic, intuitive paraphrase reads this way:
On that night ... Of two people in the field one will receive it the other will be left out.
The verb which the King James Version translates here as "take" is translated "receive" (a message) in Colossians 4:17 and "receive" (The "Kingdom") in Hebrews 12:28. The verb here is passive, but since the "receiving" of the spiritual realm has both active and passive aspects, it is hard to exclude this interpretation on that account alone.
Nevertheless, the disciples are puzzled, and ask, "Taken where?" Jesus' reply must have left them even more confused. Surely they would have been completely confounded had they had to rely on the New English Bible: "Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather." (Lk 17:37) The word which NEB translates "vulture" is aetoi, usually translated "eagle". Its root is related to the words for air and breathing. In the Old Testament, there are at least thirty-two references to eagles as symbols of spirit.
This saying has a parallel (Mt. 24:28) where the word for body is "corpse", ptoma, so there is some confusion here about word choices. However, in Luke, the word is soma. In Homer's time that was used for dead body, but in the classical and New Testament periods, soma usually means living body.
For me, the whole tone of this passage speaks of a change in psychic state, rather than of spacetime events. To me, Jesus is saying that awareness of the spiritual realm, the Image-of-God, can come any time and quite unexpectedly, with remarkable results. Wherever one is, and whenever it happens, one who encounters the Image-of-God becomes fully embued with spirit:
Wherever the living body isEagles will be gathered. Lk 17:37
In this passage and throughout, the Jesus voice is the voice of mystical understanding and mystical experience. Through his parables and in his own activities, Jesus teaches the deepest workings of divine spirit in the human psyche based on his own personal knowledge. He is "spirit person" who knows the Image-of-God firsthand, who has experienced unity with and in the divine Mystery. He carries in himself, and is himself, the Prototype, the Image by which we image the nuocontinuum. He is the hodos, the Way -- both path and method -- by which we ourselves become "eagles" to experience and explore the spiritual realm.
The image of spirit person as a gathering of eagles is quintessentially a shamanistic image. That clue, the concept of the nuocontinuum, and modern evidence for "spontaneous" (spiritual) healing also offer new insight into the actions of Jesus as healer. His healing work had all the earmarks of shamanistic healing. Even so, in taking a mythopoetic approach to the gospel story, our concern is not with the historical accuracy of healing reports; we are concerned instead with healing our own selves so that we may engage in the healing work our times demand of us.
Marcus J. Borg has recently presented an excellent interpretation of Jesus, based on his work as a Jesus scholar at Oregon State University. It was very affirming to find that the mythopoetic approach illustrated above agrees very well with new scholarship on the historical Jesus. In speaking of Jesus as "spirit person" I am borrowing Borg's term.
Over the centuries, theological terms expressing traditional interpretations have taken on the character of special "code words". We speak of believing so that we may be born again, reach heaven, and have everlasting life. We speak of the lost being saved, and of forgiving sins. These, too, take on a different flavor when the Greek meanings are looked at poetically, through the worldview of the nuocontinuum.
The word translated "believe" emphasizes trust in and commitment to the spiritual process, rather than acceptance of a creed. To be "born again" is to "be born of water AND spirit" (Jn 3:5); it is the beginning of a spiritual growth process, not a final prideful achievement. "Heaven" becomes the goal of experiencing the spiritual realm. "Everlasting life", implying time which goes on and on, translates a term which is indeterminate with respect to time; "eternal" seems to come closer, in its sense of timelessness.
The word translated "lost" has many possible translations, and includes the concept of life which is totally empty and utterly void. To be "lost" is to live a life devoid of meaning. To be "saved" is to be kept alive, healed, restored to wholeness. "Sin" translates a word which means "missing the mark", or in modern terms, to be out of balance, out of equilibrium, falling short of the goal of life. To "forgive" is to release or let go anything and everything which is keeping one off balance. To "be forgiven" our "sins" is to have the balance of life restored.
Many special symbols also take on richer meanings through mythopoetic interpretation. "Fig tree" is widely recognized as a symbol of life, and its leaves and fruit of the masculine and feminine principles. Its Greek word suke makes a pun with psyche. "Pearl" is the gem at the center of the spiritual self, somewhat like the significance of the diamond in the lotus in Tibetan Buddhism.
"House" is a strong metaphor for the personal psyche. Jesus' instruction for finding the upper room in preparation for the Last Supper is far more than a mere transitional passage; it is a parable of the spiritual quest: We are to "follow someone carrying (living?) water", find an "upper room" in the "house" where all is ready, and "wait there".
"Blindness" certainly points to our inability to see spiritually, but there is a pun here, too. The word for "blind" also means mentally dull. When Jesus says that those who think they see are blind, he seems to be saying that we are to interpret his words with all of the spiritual AND mental acuity at our command.
Living in a patriarchal time, Jesus placed special emphasis on the strong feminine aspect which is inherent in the spiritual quest, for men and women alike. The spiritual realm is like the woman who determinedly searches for the lost value (coin). It is like the woman who can take action ("mix in the yeast") and wait patiently "for it all to rise". It is like the widow who brings her tiny coins to the Temple Treasury, giving everything she has to the process.
It is like the maidens who come with their lamps prepared. It is like Mary of Bethany who sits with Jesus and listens with her heart. It is also like her sister Martha, who (though grumpy!) was listening from the kitchen. It is like the woman (a soul figure) who persists in trying to influence the irreverant judge (ego). It is like the earth which nurtures the seed, producing its fruit in ways the farmer does not understand.
The variation of the Jesus sayings can also give special insight, if we do not allow ourselves to be distracted by having to choose which one is the more "historical". In Matthew 5:48, Jesus says:
Be spiritually whole, complete Even as the Creator of the Cosmosis whole and complete.
The King James Version says, "Be ye therefore perfect ...", implying to modern readers that we must reach for sinless perfection. However, the Greek word implies the goal of completion of a whole process. We are to strive for the goal of spiritual wholeness.
In Luke 6:35-36, Jesus says:
God is kind to thankless people, to evil people. You be compassionate too Even as the Creator of the Cosmos is compassionate.
That is usually rendered "be merciful", setting up an image of a merciful judge, but a judge nontheless. However, the word used by Jesus is "compassionate", which carries the idea of "suffering with".
These two different readings of (apparently) the same saying poetically highlight a very strong theme which runs through all of Jesus' teachings and through his life: spiritual wholeness is coupled with compassion. For Jesus, the spiritual quest does not lead us to ascetic withdrawal from life, but into compassionate involvement in the life of humankind, which means in the life of earth itself.
Borg points out that in Hebrew and Aramaic (the native language of Jesus), the word for compassion is the plural form of the word for womb:
And so Jesus' statement "Be compassionate as God is compassionate" is rooted in the Jewish tradition. As an image for the central quality of God, it is striking. To say that God is compassionate is to say that God is "like a womb", is "womblike", or, to coin a word that captures the flavor of the original Hebrew, "wombish." (his italics)
The nuocontinuum, that deep spiritual virgin reality which nurtures all created things, is "womb". To say, as in the Apostles Creed, that Jesus is "born of the Virgin Mary" is to say mythopoetically, and quite apart from any biological consideration, that Jesus is nurtured within and born of that deepest reality. He is "born of water AND spirit," and he teaches that we, too, may become so.
John's Gospel says also that in Jesus, Logos became body. That Logos, usually taken to be a "masculine" quality, is nurtured in the virgin reality. Logos is in Jesus the Christ who is raised in cosmos as creation's central symbol of Meaning. Figure 8 reproduces an illustration from Religion Confronting Science, which suggests that the "cross" which God has raised from the nuocontinuum is spacetime itself. Its dimensions are expressed symbolically in the familiar Cartesian coordinates on which we plot our graphs. It is the cross of creation on which the cosmic Christ has been raised, over whom death has no dominion.
The modern synthesis of knowledge about physics and psyche brings Christianity to a new point of departure. In John 12, Jesus teaches that the time has come "that the son of man should be glorified." The Greek word suggests revealing a radiant quality which is already there, rather than "making radiant or glorious" as the Latin and English words imply.
The hour now has come To reveal the glory of the Image-of-God. ...
This is the moment of krisis
for the world.
The Greek krisis is usually translated "judgment," but the word refers to deciding and separating. We in the Christian churches stand at a millenial moment of decision. The dominant orientation of Christianity to date has been toward an historical cross, interpreted as a symbol of sacrifice. Through the new knowledge, the Christ of cosmos calls us to orient toward the other direction. We are called to respond to the pull of the cosmic cross toward meaningful participation in the continuing work of creation.
Jesus made quite clear what he thought of the narrow spiritless rigidity of the religious establishment of his day. He told the Pharisees:
You are like whitewashed tombs
Beautiful outside But inside, full of old bonesand death's corruption. Mt 23:27
You are like unmarked graves Which you can walk overwithout knowing it. Lk 11:44
The message of the Jesus story is that we can be raised above the death of spiritless life. The word for resurrection, anastasis, is usually interpreted as a time-bound concept, of being raised "from" death. The word combines "ana" (upwards, up) and "stasis" (standing or stable state). Birth to spirit raises us to live above death, in awareness that death of the physical body no longer matters.
The writer of John's Gospel brings forward that message very forcefully, even before the account of Jesus' own anastasis. Jesus had been away from Bethany when Lazarus became ill, for the authorities were already seeking Jesus' arrest. He delayed in returning, and received word that Lazarus had died:
Let us go into Judea again. Are there not twelve hours of daylight? If you walk in the daylight you do not stumble Because you see the light of this world. If you walk in the darkness you do stumble Because the light is not in you. Lazarus, our friend, Has fallen asleep. I will go awaken him.
In that sudden switch from physical to spiritual imagery, the writer sets the tone of the rest of the passage. We, too, lying in our own whitewashed ego tombs and bound in the historical wrappings of convention and dogma, can hear Jesus calling each of us in our own names, just as he called to Lazarus,
Come forth!Loosen his bindings!
Let him go!
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Notes: Jesus, Cross, Cosmos
"He comes to us as one unknown" -- Albert Schweitzer. The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), New York: Macmillan, 1968.
"Treasure" -- Treasure: The Words of Jesus as Modern Poetry, Paraphrased and Annotated, completed in its first draft in June 1993. Unless otherwise noted, the Jesus Words in this chapter are in my own paraphrase.
Barbara Thiering -- Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Unlocking the Secrets of His Life Story. HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. For more conventional views of the significance of the scrolls for Jesus scholarship, see James H. Charlesworth (editor). Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, New York: Doubleday, 1992.
soma -- In Acts 9:40, Luke uses soma in referring to the body of Dorcas who was about to be raised by Peter. The terms for physical exercise (somaskeo) and sensual pleasures (somatikos edonai) clearly indicate the word's living aspect; conversely, somatophulakion is a word for grave or sepulchre -- see Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon, which includes classical and New Testament usages.
Marcus J. Borg -- Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus & the Heart of Contemporary Faith. HarperSanFrancisco, 1994.
special symbols -- fig tree Jn 1:47-51, Mt 24:32-33 & Mk 13:28-29 & Lk 21:29-31, Lk 13:6-9 -- pearl Mt 13:45-46 -- house Mt 13:51-52, Mt 12:43-45 & Lk 11:24-26 -- upper room Mt 26:17-19 & Mk 14:12-16 & Lk 22:7-13 -- blindness Mt 23:16, Mt 23:26 & Mk 12:40, Jn 9:13-41, etc.
emphasis on the feminine aspect -- lost coin Lk 15:8-10 -- yeast Mt 13:33, Lk 13:20-21 -- widow Mk 12:43-44 & Lk 21:3-4 -- maidens Mt 25:1-13 -- Mary & Martha Lk 10:38-42 -- irreverant judge Lk 18:1-8 -- earth produces Mk 4:26-29.
"And so Jesus' statement" --- Borg, op. cit. p. 48.
Lazarus --- Jn 11:4-44.
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