Endnotes are listed below under the title of the relevant post. Most citations are of the inline parenthetical variety and the bibliography for those is on the “Sources” page.
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II. The Seeker’s Path in Christianity
A Wedding in Cana: The Promise Fulfilled.
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[1.] The third day.
There are numerous “third day” references in the Old Testament but one of the most relevant is Hosea 6:
6:1 Come, let us turn to God; that which has been rent
will be made whole, and our wounds will be bound.
6:2 In two days he will restore our lives, and on the third day
he will lift us up and we will live in his presence.
6:3 Seeking knowledge, as we follow, we will come to know that
this Source is as certain as the light and as powerful as the spring
rain that pours upon the earth.
6:4 Oh tribe of Ephraim, Oh tribe of Judah — dwell on what action
we must take. As the light emerges, there is a veil before it
and we must rise early with the dew to walk this path.
6:5 Accordingly, I have hewn down the false prophets,
I have destroyed them with my words, by bringing the Light forth.
6:6 For I find joy in Love, rather than in the covenant of sacrifice,
and [joy] in discernment of God, instead of in what is laid upon the alter.
[My translation from the Hebrew, see BLB and S4A for others. KN]
[2.] The role of the mother of Jesus, John 2:4-5.
The presence and actions of the mother of Jesus at the wedding in Cana are very interesting. When she points out to her son that the party is out of wine, The KJV has this text:
2:4 Jesus said to unto her, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? My hour is not yet come.”
2:5 His mother said to the servants, “Whatsoever he said unto you, do.”
It is fascinating that this passage allows such power to the mother of Jesus. She decides the what, when and where of the first miracle. He refuses, and she overrules him and is absolutely pivotal in this important event. Something one would think would have bothered church fathers. The New International Version of the New Testament, translates verse 4 this way: “Why do you involve me?” Jesus replied, “My time is not yet come.” Verse 5 is much the same as the KJV.
The Zondervan interlinear text has “And says to her, Jesus, what to thee and to me, Woman? Not yet is come the hour of me.” This text caused me much difficulty in translation. I chose to interpret it lightly, with a sense of humor (partly because humor has been so lacking in translations) because I felt it more logical in the narrative flow:
When the party fell short of wine, Jesus’ mother turned to him and said, “They have run out of wine.” Jesus replied, “Yes, Ma’am, but what has this got to do with you and I? It is not my wedding.” His mother said to the servants, “Whatever my son asks of you, please do.”
The term “woman” is one of deference and respect in this cultural context and I have rendered “it is not my hour/time” as “it is not my wedding.” This pulls the text together more thematically. The Christian tendency to use “not the hour of me” as foreshadowing is entirely ignorable as later convention. But this is my translation of the Greek. Under this are the levels of interpretation. In using an immanent theology to interpret these two verses there is a particular event one looks for: realization. Now, I will not go so far in my work as to create words that are not here, although granted I bend them considerably. But the word that I was looking for was ginomai. This is a word about being and becoming, meaning “to come into existence, to begin to be, receive being, come to pass” and have, in addition, a sense of being able to perform miracles. This would be the man Jesus, becoming fully transparent to his Ground of Being. Instead we find “gyne,” the female honorific.
The distant root of the word gyne is actually ginomai, but there is a long, long way from one to the other. Much too far to leap. But it is interesting, and possible that early church scribes would have assumed an error had a conjugation of ginomai actually been in their source documents.
Verse 5 would also have a slightly different form. The Zondervan offers: Says the mother of him to the servants, “Whatever he tells you, do.” Here the minor difference would be instead of “to the servants” it would read as “you serve.” So my intuitive feeling is that these two verses should read:
Mary points out to her son that the wedding coordinator has run out of wine. Jesus says to her, seriously, “Are you and I ready for this, is it my time [to become realized]?” And she says to him, “You serve — do whatever you are called to do.”
The mystical themes of the wedding in Cana break down into realization, remembering, service, perception and hearing the call of the Divine as within oneself. But this more immanent interpretation is not supported in the text as we have it. There are few copies of the Signs Gospel from early periods and perhaps if more appear it will be interesting to study these verses again. For now I am content with the form I have translated it into in the main article because it holds together well, it explains the presence of the mother of Jesus more fully, can be interpreted in different levels and is consistent with immanent thought.
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The Voice of Conscience: The Persistent Widow.
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[1.] Reconstruction. If you are curious as to why I reconstruct the interlinears, it is because the translations themselves are done by religious individuals. Word choice tends to fall back to Old Testament understanding of the vengeful external deity. So I look at the interlinears, check the lexicons on problematic words and construct my own version. Then I test that against the NIV to see if I have maintained the sense of it or not. Also, I always read parables, or what Jesus (or Krishna, Buddha, Lao Tzu etc) is reputed to have said, with an attitude of love. That in itself will give you a different view of the passage and point to problems or later additions.
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Managing Despair on the Path: Drawing in the Net.
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[1.] Aesop. The Jesus Seminar codes Thomas 8 as “black”; not from Jesus. They point out that it has a form similar to existing Hellenistic morality stories such as this one from Aesop:
A fisherman drew in the dragnet he had cast (into the sea) only a short time before. As luck would have it, it was filled [with] all kinds (of fish). The small fish made for the bottom of the net and escaped through its porous mesh. The large fish were trapped and lay stretched out on the boat (Funk 478).
Honestly, most short morality stories have a similar form all over the world. The difference here is critical: Aesop tells a very straightforward metaphoric story that discusses human arrogance and humility:
The small fish are the humble men and women, quietly going about their business. Because they do not attract attention to themselves they are free to do as they wish and do not get trapped in the net of arrogance. The big fish suffer “out of the water” — they are the arrogant individuals “caught out”; they are exposed for the world to see because of their moral lapse.
This is an example of a single tier homily. It does not work on the multiple levels that a realized master teaches. Which is not to denigrate it in any way, but is to demonstrate that from a more nuanced interpretive view, it is not at all similar to the Thomas 8 parable of Drawing in the Net. Granted, The Jesus Seminar rejects this parable mostly because they feel it reflects Thomas’s views comparing “large” with “small.” But this conclusion is thrown into doubt because the Seminar’s approach to the text is structured as single level interpretive analysis.
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On The Path of the Adept 