Jehovah and the Hebrew Scriptures

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Is it possible that Moses was under the influence of some psychotropic drug when he had the "experience" recorded at Mt. Sinai? Yes, it is certainly possible, and even probable. But it is more common, among many scholars, to see the event as legend, rather than a literal (historical) event.

It is a part of the larger allegory called the "Hebrew Scriptures."
(This is usually mislabeled the "Old Testament," according to a Christian bias.) I can see, though, where the Scriptures could be either an allegorical (symbolic) tale, or else, a distorted and false "history."

Fundies assume that it is all history, and always literally true, even infallible. I would never go to this unhealthy extreme.

But if it is history, it seems to be the story of a primitive group of backwards, illiterate nomads who contacted one of the Elohim. This is the group of superbeings, "gods," or highly advanced extraterrestrials who colonized and brought life to earth. Earth became a vast biolab, for the creation of creatures that could be selfaware and even spiritual.

NOTE: The word translated "God" in Genesis is actually plural. It is not "God," then, but "gods." This is the word in Hebrew elohim, which means more than one god. But it was deliberately mistranslated in the King James Version of 1611, for the translators thought that polytheism (more than one god) was blasphemy!

One of the Elohim "went bad," and became obsessed with his ego. This grew into the Jehovah-myth, which some modern Christians, and a few modern Jews, still mistake for "God."

Early gnostics, mystics of the Christian tradition in the first two centuries, used to mock and dismiss Jehovah as the lower "creator," the creator of the "illusionworld." He was recognized as "father" by traditional, orthodox Jews, and it was of Jehovah that Jesus said, "Your father is an illusionist, and has been one from the beginning." It was also this Jehovah that Paul later identified as "the god of this age." (2 Cor. 4:4)

Mistaking Jehovah, the god of the Hebrew Scriptures, for the Lord of Love is the most serious, and one of the most absurd, errors in the history of Christianity. Again, the gnostics recognized Jehovah as a limited, ignorant, and even negative being-- provided that "He" ever really existed!

Legends and mythologies proliferated wildly and madly around Moses, Abraham, and other famous folk-heroes of the Jewish faith. We have no sound, reliable documents of pure history from those early times-- circa four millennia ago. All that we have is the Hebrew Scriptures, a document that has been amended, altered, and rewritten dozens of times.

That is why it is so good, and so dependable, to hold a faith that is not, in any way, text-dependent!
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The Transfiguration

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The famous Transfiguration of Jesus is one of the most wellknown, and spectacular, accounts of "visionary," not mystical, events in history.

We must begin by the caveat that it might not have been a literal event, but a symbolic one.

For example, "Moses" and "Elijah" were very ancient members of the Jewish religion. They often appeared in the experiences of visionaries. As human beings, of course, they were dead, and had been so for centuries.

But, as parts of visions, they were "alive and well" in the visions of dozens of Jewish visionaries. (A "visionary" sees visions, and is not the same as a "mystic," who might never see a vision.)

But as archetypes (symbols of mind), they represented two facets of Jewish religion: legalism and the belief in the extraordinary (miraculous) powers of God. (Many miracles were ascribed, in the ancient tales, to Elijah.)

Moses, historically, had been recognized as the writer of the Pentateuch or Torah, the first five books of the Bible-- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Jews were the original "people of the Book." In other words, their original faith was not ennucleated around a principle such as Love or goodness, but used as its core the written Scriptures, which grew finally to include the thirty-nine small books of the Hebrew Scriptures, known to most Christians as the "Old Testament."

These archetypes arose, during the vision, from the collective (shared) Unconscious. This vision was of a very rare type, for it, at least, in the later tellings, was shared by Jesus and his disciples, unless the entire account is an allegory (symbolic tale).

During the vision, the entire place was flooded with light, a perfect and picturesque symbol of the actions of Love. For Love is Light; for "God is Light." (1 Jn. 1:5)

This could not have been Jesus' first realization of the Christ of Light within him, for he was already the Christ. The account was recorded as further evidence that he was the Christ, especially to convince the doubting. Such stories as this, whether apocryphal or not, are commonly told of deeply spiritual people. In a short time, they become legend. And later, many of them are mistaken for actual "history."

Just a brief note on the word "Christ." This word, among Christian gnostics (most early Christians) was a term of immense respect and great awe. The Greek word Khristos was not just a translation of the Hebrew masshiah ("messiah"). This is a very common mistake made even by ministers and some scholars.

But early Christians never claimed that Jesus was the Jewish "Messiah," and he was not. For the Messiah, said the legends and "prophecies," was to be a great and bloody general who would raise an army of thousands, slaughtering thousands of Romans and other "enemies" of Israel, and freeing the Jewish people from foreign domination.

The real and truest, most reliable experts on the "Messiah" are the Jews. They formulated the concept, and they have studied it quite profoundly for centuries. So, when you want to learn about a strictly Jewish teaching, it does not make sense to ask a Christian-- a person of another faith. And when you ask Jewish scholars whether Jesus was their Messiah, they will answer, to a person, "No."

So, Jesus was not the "Messiah," and never taught that he was. There is one verse in Mark where he appears to have claimed that he was, but the texts of the original Christian Scriptures passed through many hands, and were emended several times to say what the scribe wanted them to say.

So, they are a fairly unreliable document when it comes to technical details of "truth" (Reality). That is why the person of Love follows her Love-trained conscience rather than ancient texts.

So, the magnificent Transfiguration probably was, originally, an account of a solitary vision seen by Jesus on the Mount. Through decades of embellishment, and retelling, it grew into the dramatic, overblown, fantastic, spectacular tale that we now have in our Bibles.
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