Sunday, March 23, 2008

Apocryphote of the Day: Easter Sunday

They nailed him to the tree, and they fixed him with four nails of brass. The veil of his temple he tore with his hands. It was a trembling which seized the chaos of the earth, for the souls which were in the sleep below were released. And they arose. They went about boldly, having shed zealous service of ignorance and unlearnedness beside the dead tombs, having put on the new man, since they have come to know that perfect Blessed One of the eternal and incomprehensible Father and the infinite light, which is I, since I came to my own and united them with myself.

The Second Treatise of the Great Seth

4 comments:

Richard Edmondson said...

What this passage means to me: the souls/saints who arise from the tombs are they who have come to realize that their physical bodies are a prison. In reaching this discovery they "shed zealous service of ignorance." Fray Luis De Leon put his finger on it:

O sacred sound and voice!
If only an atom of you
Could find and touch my senses
And drag my soul out of herself
And transform all of it into you, O Love!
Then she would know, sweet husband,
The place where you rest--
And, free at last from this jail
Of anguish, and one with your flock,
She would no longer be astray or lost.

The Hindus believe that when the purpose of life is forgotten, when wisdom recedes and humans become scarcely truthful in speech, then God manifests himself on earth. God is the supreme poet, and when we shed zealous service of ignorance and unlearnedness we draw closer to him. I suppose the Hebrew would be Korban--"come close."

Richard Edmondson said...

I would like to offer my own Apocryphote of the Day--from Professor DeConick's book:

I have been truly amazed at the number of people who have jumped on this bandwagon. One of my colleagues upon hearing my concerns at a conference stood up and said, "I just don't see why Judas can't be good. We need a good Judas." This really stopped me in my tracks and took this discourse to an entirely new level for me.

It seems there are opinion molders out there who want to present a kind and lovable Judas to the world regardless of what the facts are. I would like to thank Professor DeConick for setting the record straight.

lightseeker said...

In re "shed zealous service of ignorance," Richard said, "The Hindus believe that when the purpose of life is forgotten, when wisdom recedes and humans become scarcely truthful in speech, then God manifests himself on earth."

I think you nailed it, Richard, thanks.

When we fail to listen to and be guided by/learn from God's voice from within and follow that instead of blindly and zealously following tradition learned from external sources, we have imprisoned our souls by the grind of ritual and intellectual knowledge. We stagnate and die rather than continuing to change, grow and evolve in Spirit.

God manifests Himself on earth to shatter old paradigms of belief and to teach us anew how to find and listen to His voice.

geoffhudson.blogspot.com said...

Historically, beauty was in the eye of the beholder. Of course Judas was good to some. He was Josephus' hero.