B. U. G. S.

One of the two people Jesus specifically condemned to Hell was the Jewish High Priest who read and knew the Old Testament backward and forward, as modern preachers recommend as the Path to Heaven. Jesus made it clear that that high priest preached and followed The Law perfectly. He stood at the front of the Temple and proudly depended on his adherence and his reading.

Unseen in the back of the Temple was a sinner and back-slider who meekly admitted his failures, present and future, and begged to be forgiven for them. HE, said Jesus, was saved.

This parable may have meant nothing. Jesus may have just been gassing off.

I doubt it.

It is downright funny that the Bible should say “Wise Men from the East” as a code-word for priests of the Zoroastrian faith.

Today scholars say the same thing, “Ex Oriente Lux”, “Light Comes from the East”

But today they mean that all knowledge and wisdom comes from Israel and Egypt and Mesopotamians on both sides of Israel.

When scholars said “Ex Oriente Lux”, “Light Comes from the East” today they mean that all knowledge and wisdom comes from Israel and Egypt and Mesopotamians on both sides of Israel.

But in Matthew, Israel was the Western Place the Wise Men rom the East came TO.

Today a “Christian theologian” likes to sound profound by denouncing everything he disapproves of in early Christian days as “Gnostic.” It sounds impressive and is nice and vague, like all phrases used by intellectual snobs. .

The actual Gnostics were snobs, too. They said that salvation was not for the common people — you know, the ones Jesus went out and preached to. Salvation was for Intellectuals who Truly Understood the Secrets in the Book.

In early Christian times those Secrets had an Iranian flavor. They were from the Orient of THAT day.

Gnostics separated the God of This World from the True God. In the newly-found Gospel of Judas, Jesus LAUGHS at the Disciples who are sacrificing to Jehovah and explains to Judas that they are worshipping The God of THIS World. If you know anything about Zoroastrianism, which modern theologians don’t, you will immediately recognize the Zoroastrian separation of Ahura Mazda, the Good God of the Next World, from Ahriman, the Zoroastrian Satan from whom we get our Satan, who was the creator and God of THIS world.

The Gospel of Judas was excluded from the canon because it was a Gnostic Gospel BACK WHEN PEOPLE KNEW WHAT “GNOSTIC MEANT.

Theologians and Renaissance “intellectuals” are and were still just snobs.

They just had a different “Orient” in mind.