8.

Smart Women and Wise Men

Tuesday, March 12 - 7:10p.m.

Professor Alice Bailey sat at the table and sipped a glass of German Riesling while she waited for Mike to arrive. It was a cozy Middle-East restaurant with dim lights and lit candles, but Mike wasn’t there.

He arrived ten minutes late. As he hurried to her table and sat down, he said, “Sorry I’m late.”

“That’s all right. I had a glass of wine.” She stood up and they shook hands. She gestured toward the decorations and said, “Nice place?”

Mike looked around and noticed the elaborate decorations. The room had Turkish pipes, ceramic vases, tapestries with Arabic designs, and the walls were decorated with photos of mosques and archaeological sites. One of the photos showed a blue mosque with a beautiful golden dome and it drew his attention. Somehow, it looked familiar, as if he had seen it before somewhere. The photo had a small caption that read, “Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem.” He stared at the picture, trying to place it, until she said, “I see your cast is off.”

Startled, he turned around and sat down across from her. He worried that she might ask questions about a cast that was only on a couple of days, but then he breathed a sigh of relief when he realized she didn’t know how long the cast had been on. It may have been months for all she knew. “They cut it off yesterday.”

After a few minutes of pleasant conversation, the waiter came and took their orders.

Bailey said, “Tell me how your meeting with Rabbi Goldberg went. You said on the phone that the words were Hebrew, didn’t you? What were they?”

“Goldberg told me the words were ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’. . . the dying words of Jesus.”

“That’s what they say, although most people only know the English version. How did you come across the Hebrew version and why is it important to you?”

Mike was reluctant to tell Bailey about the hypnosis session with Dr. Flite, or any of the events from the past week, for that matter. After having scoured the New Testament for clues of his former life and coming up empty, he was hoping that she could tell him something that would jog his sketchy memories of Jesus, but he wasn’t sure how to breach the subject without making himself sound like a complete lunatic.

He decided to approach the subject from another angle. “It’s kind of a long story. My mom was a Catholic and my dad was a Russian Orthodox Jew, but I’ve never been a particularly religious man myself. I saw a tape with those words and they just kinda struck a cord in me. When Goldberg told me they were Christ’s dying words, it intrigued me. I went home and read the entire New Testament. Goldberg also told me you knew a lot about the Bible, so I figured maybe you could help me understand. A lot of people think that Jesus was God, but if that was the case, why would he say such a thing?”

Bailey was amused. Clearly this guy didn’t know anything about the Bible or its origins, but at least he seemed sincere. She, on the other hand, had spent a lifetime trying to unravel its mysteries. As a linguist, she was amazed that so many people took every word of the Bible as God’s Ultimate Truth, ignoring the fact that it had undergone thousands of years of language translations and that words are always moving targets through time, and translators are flawed human beings. “Well, actually there’s a lot more to the story than most people think. First of all, no one is really sure what Jesus actually said. After his death, the early Christian church was just a small cult, and they were considered heretics of the Jewish faith, just like Jesus himself was considered a heretic. Everything was passed on by word of mouth. Over time, the cult spread to include large groups of Gentiles who donated their own stories and myths. Several groups of people spread rumors and stories about what Jesus did and said. All kinds of things were attributed to him, but most of it is open to question. The problem was, nothing was written down until decades after his death. The four Gospels were written more than eighty years after the crucifixion. About the only thing we’re pretty sure about is the Lord’s Prayer. That was probably the only thing that was passed down in a relatively pure form. Some people believe that Jesus is just a mythological figure who was given godlike attributes, much like the Gods of ancient Greece, Zeus and Apollo. Not real at all.”

“And what do you believe? Do you believe Jesus was a real man?”

“Actually, I believe there were two Jesus’s.”

That got Mike’s attention. “Two Jesus Christs? What makes you think there were two?”

“Well, that’s a long story. For one thing, the Bible. There are all kinds of mixed messages in the Bible, but it points to two Jesus figures. Back in those days, the Jews were a conquered people under the control of Rome. The Jews were waiting for a king to deliver them from their captors. They were hungry for a great Jewish king to kick out the Romans and usher in God’s kingdom, and lots of people tried to assume that role. So lots of people claimed to be the Messiah. Then there’s the problem of names. The historical figure of Jesus wasn’t named Jesus Christ. ‘Jesus’ was the Greek interpretation of his name, which was probably Joshua, which was a common name back then, like ‘Mike’ is today.”

Mike remembered his hypnosis session with Flite and unconsciously muttered, “Yehoshua,” his name from the regression.

Surprised, Bailey said, “Yes, something like that. The term ‘Christ’ is an English translation of ‘Cristos,’ which is the Greek word for Messiah, and as I said before, there were plenty of those in the Middle East back then.”

Mike was confused. “So there were several guys named Joshua, which later became Jesus, and several others who claimed to be Messiah. Why did you say there were only two?”

“One reason is that, according to the Bible, the roman procurator, Pontius Pilatus, was holding two prisoners. He tried to appease an angry mob by offering to let one of the two men go. When he asked the crowd which one should be set free, they shouted his name.”

Mike said, “Barabbas.”

“Exactly. But I’m a linguist. It’s my job to look at the meaning behind words. The word ‘Barabbas’ is not a name at all, but a title. The word ‘Bar’ means ‘Son of’ and ‘Abba’ means ‘Father.’ But remember how words are always filtered through the culture. Back then, when you spoke of ‘The Father’ you meant ‘God The Father.’ So ‘Barabbas’ literally means ‘Son of God.’ Now here’s a little-known fact: In Matthew verse 27:16, in the original Aramaic text, it gives the prisoner’s full name as ‘Jesus Bar-Abbas.’ In other words, ‘Jesus, son of God.’”

“I thought Jesus was the son of God and Barabbas was a petty criminal.”

“That’s what the church would like you to believe, but Barabbas’ crimes were the same as the other Jesus. They were both heretics, accused of causing civil unrest. When the crowd was given the choice to free ‘Jesus, King of the Jews’ or ‘Jesus, Son of God’ they chose to free the latter, which left the former to die on the cross. They even wrote ‘Jesus, King of the Jews’ on his cross. Eventually, with all this talk about ‘Jesus’ doing this and that, the two figures became one legend.”

“You’re basing all this on one word in the Gospel of Matthew?”

“Not just that. There’s also the matter of blood lines. Christians took the prophesies of the Old Testament to point to their savior. The Old Testament says that the Messiah will be a king from the tribe of Judah, the royal line of King David. The Jesus who was born of Mary claimed to be a messiah because he came from the royal line of David and was supposedly born in David’s city of Bethlehem. But it was a patriarchal society, so the lines of descent were passed on from father to son, not mother to son, as it clearly shows in the opening verses of the New Testament. The man who raised Jesus, Joseph the carpenter, was from the line of David, but he wasn’t the child’s father because of the virgin birth. Mary was related to John the Baptist who was a Levite, the priestly line of Levi. Again, there must have been two Jesus’s: The King of the Jews, from David’s descent, and the Son of God, born of a virgin from the priestly line of Levi. One was crucified and one was set free.”

She looked at him and tried to gauge how he was taking this information. She knew some people could be pretty closed-minded, especially when their beliefs are threatened. Mike seemed to be taking it in stride, so she continued. “It also explains how a man named Jesus was seen after his crucifixion and death, and why his disciples didn’t recognize him when they saw him, and why the two got confused when the various Jewish and Gentile cults commingled. The two Jesus’s probably looked alike and dressed alike while vying for the title of Messiah. Maybe the Jesus that was set free decided to assume the guise of the other Jesus to make it appear as if a miraculous resurrection had occurred, then capitalize on the fame of the other Jesus.”

The waiter came with their food, temporarily stopping their conversation. When he left, Mike asked, “So how do you know what’s true and what’s not?”

She started meticulously spreading salad dressing over her salad. “You can’t. At this point, it’s a matter of faith. After two thousand years of linguistic distortion, the best you can do is examine all the evidence: the original Aramaic and Greek texts of the Bible, the Talmud, and other sacred texts from that time, the practices of the people, their motivations and lifestyle and from that, come to logical conclusions.”

He started cutting into his steak. “What other sacred texts? I thought the people were mostly illiterate and the Bible was the only book from that time, at least from that part of the world.”

“Oh, no. There are many more. You’ve heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what they are. People talk about them, but nobody ever says what they are.”

“Basically, there was a group of early Christians who lived in the desert about thirty miles outside of Jerusalem. To safeguard their sacred documents, they put them in huge jars and hid them in caves, near the Dead Sea. It’s a huge collection of documents–everything from receipts and legal contracts to scriptures. But it doesn’t all jibe with what’s in the Bible, and that’s what makes it controversial. Another cache of sacred Christian texts was discovered at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1947. It almost became kindling for starting fires, but it contained other Gospels called the Gnostic Gospels. Lots of interesting information there about the life of Christ, and of course, all of it controversial.”

“Controversial? Why?”

“Because it points to a very different Jesus Christ and teachings that contradict the Catholic Church. Based on my studies of the period, I’d say that the reality of what happened is very different from what the Church says happened. They want to tell people what to believe and they don’t want people to find out the truth. They thrive on the fact that people don’t want to look at the facts. They want to follow someone around like sheep, and the Church is more than happy to romanticize the image of Christ as a shepherd. In reality, Christ was a radical, a troublemaker and a cult leader.”

He wished he could remember more of that past-life. “Three hundred years ago, they would have burned you at the stake for saying that.” A thought crossed his mind. Since he believed in reincarnation, he wondered if Bailey had been burned at the stake three hundred years ago. That might explain her disdain for the Catholic church, he thought, but he decided not to bring up the subject of reincarnation. Instead, he asked, “What facts do you think they’re hiding?”

“The Church doesn’t want people to know that most of their beliefs and doctrines are stolen from other religions. Sometimes I think they’d do anything to protect their interests.”

Mike was shocked. “Stolen from other religions? How so? I know the old testament was taken from the Jewish religion, but I thought that’s where it ended.”

“It didn’t stop there. I’ll give you an example. It is well known that many of the stories about Christ were taken directly from an older religion called Mithraism. Its leader, Mithra, was born around 600 BC. He was born of a virgin. In a stable. On December 25^th. His resurrection was celebrated at Easter. Coincidence? I think not.”

“I’ve never even heard of Mithraism,” Mike said, shaking his head. This was a lot to absorb.

“It doesn’t matter because it turns out that Mithraism stole most of their beliefs from Zoroastrianism, which is a much older monotheistic religion with many of the same concepts. Most of this stealing and borrowing of doctrine was done to add credibility to the central figure, in this case, Christ. Everyone was doing it at the time.”

“Zoro-what?”

“Zoroastrianism. At the time of Jesus, Zoroastrianism was the largest religion in the world. It’s still practiced today. Remember the story of the three wise men from the East?”

“Yes. The three kings.”

“They weren’t kings at all, they were Magi, which is another word for Zoroastrian priests. The Magi of Zoroastrianism were so revered, they were thought to possess special powers and secret knowledge of God. That’s where we get the English word ‘Magic.’ If you said that three of the Magi came to bring someone gifts, it gave all kinds of credibility to your story; you must really be an important person.”

Mike’s head was spinning. He was learning too much too fast. “Do you have any evidence to back any of this up?”

“Well, I can point you at a good web site or two. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church was the central authority for so long, they deemed what was official doctrine and what wasn’t. The documents that contradicted the Church were confiscated and destroyed or locked inside the vaults of the Vatican, never to be seen again.”

Time flew by. Mike and Professor Bailey talked for more than two hours. He was amazed at the depth of her knowledge, but she was equally amazed at his unexplainable insights into the life of Jesus. He never brought up the subject of his hypnosis session with Dr. Flite, or his fleeting memories of being Jesus in his past-life, but he wondered if the Gnostic Gospels would tell him more about his past-life than the Bible did.

It was getting late, so they decided to say goodnight. After saying their goodbyes, they stood up and Mike put on his leather jacket. Then he remembered his dream. He asked Bailey, “Before you leave, I have one more question. It’s a little strange.”

“Sure. What is it?”

“When the Romans crucified someone like Jesus, how did they hold the arms up on the cross?”

She thought it was a very puzzling question indeed, but it was late so she decided not to pursue it. “Well, most portrayals of Christ on the cross show stakes driven through the hands, but scholars know that’s completely inaccurate. The bones of the hand are much too weak to support the weight of the body. So the stakes were typically driven through the wrists.”

He thanked her politely, but the memory of his dream clearly bothered him.

When he got home, he went to his computer and hopped on the Internet. He started by visiting the web sites Bailey had written down for him. Then he found an Internet search engine and entered the words, “Nag Hammadi,” “Dead Sea Scrolls,” and “Gnostic Gospels.” He found hours of reading.

Tuesday, March 12 - 11:46p.m.

He had trouble falling asleep that night. He tossed and turned all night, thinking about the implications of being the reincarnation of Jesus. When he was in the Bellagio, he recognized the need for spiritual leadership in the world. He even thought he might be able to do it. I can deliver that message, he remembered telling himself. We can’t count on other people to save the world; sometimes we’ve got to take the initiative ourselves. His band, The Original Artists, was his way of spreading the word of loving one another, but he never dreamed he would be delivering that message as the reincarnation of Jesus. He wondered, If I was Christ in a past-life, what obligations do I have in this life? How do I know if I get the message right? Is it okay just to be me, or do I have to live up to some kind of Christ image in people’s minds, especially if that image isn't even close to reality?

His head was still spinning from some of the things Bailey had told him. Eventually he fell into a dreamless sleep.

Excerpt from The Gospel According to Mike

He said, “The many are concerned only with appearances–what is on the outside–and not concerned about the real thing–what is on the inside. They are like veneer particle board; pretty on the outside, but pretty worthless on the inside. A house made of veneer particle board will have a pretty facade but not withstand the storm, but a house made of plain lumber will stand strong. Strive to become more spiritual, not beautiful. Forget outward appearance and see what’s on the inside.”