Pangolin as reservoir species for Covid 19 still not confirmed

  We support the view that the Guangdong Pangolins are the intermediate hosts that adapted the SARS-CoV-2 and represented a significant evolutionary link.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9408936/ 

 . Although SARS-CoV-2 uses ACE-2, five of the six critical amino acid residues in the RBD
are different from those of SARS-CoV but identical to those of pangolin SARS-CoV, leading to speculation that the SARS-CoV-2 RBD may have arisen through recent recombination events in pangolins or that SARS-CoV-2 and pangolin SARS-CoVs represent the result of coevolution [45].
In reality, bats are rarely consumed in Central China, where market photos usually show Indonesia. The pangolin trade remains a major problem in other Chinese cities and shopping centers, but not in Wuhan.

https://www.allmultidisciplinaryjournal.com/uploads/archives/20251008124748_MGE-2025-5-143.1.pdf 

  70% of all diseases affecting humans originate in animals, such as avian flu, HIV, Ebola, and so on

 ...............

 In a study by Xiao et al. (2020) [48], entitled “Isolation of SARS-CoV-2 related coronavirus from Malayan pangolins, ” and published in the prestigious journal Nature, they demonstrated that a coronavirus, called pangolin-CoV, isolated from a Malayan pangolin, exhibits 100%, 98.6%, 97.8%, and 90.7% amino acid identity with SARS-CoV-2 in the E, M, N, and S proteins, respectively. Notably, the receptor-binding domain of the pangolin-CoV S protein is nearly identical to that of SARS-CoV-2, with one non-critical
amino acid difference. This comparative genomic analysis suggests that SARS-CoV-2 may have originated from the recombination of a pangolin-CoV-like virus with a RaTG13-
like virus. The pangolin-CoV virus was detected in 17 of the 25 Malayan pangolins analyzed. Infected pangolins showed clinical signs and histological changes, and circulating
antibodies against pangolin-CoV virus reacted with the S protein of SARS-CoV-2.

 pangolins—the most trafficked mammal in the illegal wildlife trade—could pose a
future threat to public health if the wildlife...........

 This wouldn't be the case with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The phenomenon known as "zoonotic spillover" is when a pathogen/etiological agent passes from a wild/natural reservoir (bats and pangolins) to human............

https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2021/06/08/bats-and-pangolins-not-sold-at-wuhan-markets-says-oxford-research/ 

 Research by Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Fellow, Professor David Macdonald, has shown that neither bats nor pangolins were sold at Wuhan's wet markets........

 Pangolin trade is still a significant issue in other Chinese cities and trading nodes, but not in Wuhan. What were there, however, were 47,381 individuals from 38 species, including 31 protected species, all kept in dreadful conditions and teeming with all kinds of other infectious diseases, ready to be slaughtered on demand, if not sold as pets.”

• • Later, more in-depth genomic analyses revealed that while similar, the pangolin coronaviruses were not a perfect match to SARS-CoV-2 across the entire genome and likely represented a parallel host infected by a common ancestor virus.
  • The binding affinity of the pangolin ACE2 receptor for SARS-CoV-2 was also later reported to be low, further casting doubt on it being the direct intermediate.
  • No firm conclusion has been drawn, and other potential intermediate hosts, such as raccoon dogs, are still being considered. 

Ultimately, the exact animal responsible for the jump to humans remains unconfirmed, but the pangolin is considered a victim of illegal wildlife trade rather than the primary culprit. The unsanitary conditions and close proximity of diverse species in wildlife markets are widely considered the human-driven factors that facilitate such zoonotic disease transmission events.

 

The Universe Inside Us: 12 zodiac meditation in Judaism is the "small universe" alchemy qigong

 the early christians took a vow, grew their hair, didn't drink wine, as Nazirites... The name "Christian" didn't start till 65 a.d. " Orpheus and Hermes were conflated with Jesus... in the tombs... by the 4th Century the Literalists "had won." In the first century Jesus is portrayed as a legal teacher...

the biblical Nazirite vow (Numbers 6) to consecrate themselves to God

. This involved abstaining from wine and grape products, not cutting their hair, and avoiding contact with dead bodies. Paul the Apostle, for example, took such a vow, as seen in Acts 18:18"

 What an occasion for quoting any information bearing at all on the subject from Papias, who had questioned those who had been acquainted with both! His attention is so pointedly turned to John at the very moment when he makes his quotations regarding Matthew and Mark, that I am fully warranted, both by the conclusions of Dr. Lightfoot and the peculiar circumstances of the case, in affirming that the silence of Eusebius proves that Papias said nothing about either the third or fourth Gospels.

 Supernatural Religion

the truth of Jewish Christianity is nondualism

Logos took the place of a human spirit yet Christ assumed humanity but he has to be fully human to save humanity.... 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlmKl6zNLx4

"once the land was conquered" - why in the passive tense? 

"I saw the 11 stars bow down before his"... (Joseph and his brothers).... the 12 sons of Jacob represent the 12 months as a symbol... Joshua son of Joseph means "Jehovah saves" means "Jesus" or Yeshua in Greek....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhx1NFeGa1s 

Galileans were of the tribe of Joseph - and skeptical of Judeans...  

John is presenting Jesus as son of Joseph... 

 

how to dig and construct a brick-lined well

 Dutch bricks made for well lining have a trapezoidal shape, with sloping sides so that they can be fitted into a ring.

 

Create a Guide: Use a cast-iron or steel ring as a guide, or start by building a circle of bricks on the surface, with a diameter 4 inches greater than the casing.

Excavate: Dig inside the ring/circle to a shallow depth, such as 2–3 feet.

Build the Wall: As the soil is removed, the heavy structure will slowly sink. Continuously add bricks (using cement or mortar) to the top of the ring to raise the height.

Repeat: Repeat the digging and brick-laying process until the well reaches the desired water table.

Secure the Structure: Use Trapezoidal "Dutch" bricks, which are designed to fit together in a ring, ensuring a stable, safe structure

 

 Cement brick linings are stronger, unlikely to deform, and the courses can be linked structurally.

 many people opt for pre-cast concrete rings rather than bricks, allowing the heavy rings to sink under their own weight during excavation.

 Then, you begin digging out the center of the ring, gradually undermining it. As it sinks, you start building the brick lining on top of the ring, ABOVE ground. You keep this up, and the lining sinks under its own weight as you dig, sliding into the ground. Soon, you have one person digging at the bottom... and another up top, adding the bricks and emptying the buckets of dirt. Eventually the water starts coming in, and you keep digging until you can't continue. He said that the farmers typically waited until until the dry season - the dryer the better... that way, they could be sure that they would have water year round. If they were then hit with a long-term drought, they could use the opportunity to dig existing wells even deeper, by simply starting up the process again - send one person down the hole to dig, and have another up top adding bricks. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick-lined_well#:~:text=Dutch%20bricks%20made%20for%20well,fear%20of%20the%20walls%20collapsing. 

https://www.quora.com/How-were-water-wells-dug-throughout-history-up-to-and-including-in-the-ancient-world-without-modern-day-auger-equipment-How-were-these-wells-constructed-without-collapsing-in-upon-themselves 

 He went 30 ft deep, belled out to 15 ft wide at the bottom, all solid blue rock. He would drill 1.5" holes in the rock with a big electric drill motor, then stuff a half stick of dynamite in the hole with a blast cap and fuse, pack the hole full of mud clay, and light it. Not a single rock would exit the top since the dynamite blew down, fragmenting the rock which was then taken out via a cable and bucket system Dad built. It took over a year to finish. He ran all the gutters from our house into it and it stayed full up to 6 ft from the top almost year round. We watered our hogs and cattle from it for years but did not use for our domestic human use, and it still holds water.

 https://forums.yesterdaystractors.com/threads/ot-hand-dug-wells-brick-lined.1242763/#:~:text=Well%20Construction%20Method:%20One%20method%20described%20for,wider%20at%20the%20bottom%20than%20the%20top.

 There is a story in the Foxfire books that an old welldigger told. It's well worth reading - I remember he said that when you are in the bottom and look up, the circle of daylight at the top looks as big as a dime. And then there was the time some smart alec pitched a cat in with him. I think he was forced to kill the cat - it was all over him - and when he finally got out the cat pitcher was long gone.

  cast round concrete curbing.

 Getting the bricks started was the hard part while water was running in. Said he wouldn't ever do it again.

My Uncle told me that they would use the steel rings off of wooden wheels and lower it down as you dug to make sure the whole was round. Then as you went deeper you always made sure the dirt bucket was in the center of the hole. This told you that you were digging straight down and not at an angle. My uncle had the old home made wooden hoist they used to lower the buckets up and down with. One full bucket of dirt would come up while the empty was going down. Then just the opposite with the bricks. Full buckets going down with empties coming up.

 Lone behold when he got down deep enough there was flammable gas that was heavier than air that had settled into the well. It ignited -exploded and killed the man. So be careful when going into a well. 

 Modern "Dutch self-locking bricks" use trapezoidal or similar interlocking shapes, allowing for quick, mortar-free construction with vertical safety clips

 

 

 

 

Dr. Robert M. Price vs Bart Erhman's tautological argument for the history of Jesus

 The Great Debate on the historicity of Jesus

Bart Erhman's argument is that 1) because thousands of people were crucified therefore it's not surprising no one heard of Jesus 2) Because the Gospel Mark was written in 70 AD and the letters of Paul in 50 AD therefore Jesus as Savior was based on the historical Jesus previously unknown. 3) Therefore all the "archons" and gnostic aspects of Hellenistic Judaism of the 2nd Temple enochian writing can be ignored

Robert Price counters that 1) assuming Jesus was real with no evidence makes no sense unless Jesus was considered too significant to be ignored 2) The significance of Jesus was precisely the same as the gnostic context of archons/eons/angels of Hellenistic Zoroastrian Judaism 3) The Gospels were later works of fiction based on that earlier syncretic context of the Essenes, etc. 

Erhman counters that Gnostics are actually just a 2nd century construct, not an earlier work - as is the "popular" view now. Price disagrees. Erhman is arguing that absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence but this same claim can be made for Bigfoot and ET aliens in UFOs abducting people, etc. Price argues in contrast that there is a great deal of detailed evidence for a largest intercultural context of the creation of Christianity. 

"We thank thee, our Father, for the holy vine of David Thy servant, which You madest known to us through Jesus Thy Servant" comes from the early Christian text,

the Didache (Chapter 9). It reflects an early, possibly Jewish-Christian or Ebionite, understanding of the Eucharist, emphasizing Jesus as God's servant and the "vine of David"

It appears, as Price suggests, that most of what is known about Jesus came by way of revelation to Christian oracles rather than by word of mouth as historical memory. In addition, the major characters in the New Testament, including Peter, Stephen, and Paul, appear to be composites of several historical individuals each, their stories comprising a mix of events, legend, and plot themes borrowed from the Old Testament and Greek literature.

In the New Testament world, theology developed gradually along different trajectories, with tension between the charismatic ascetics such as Marcion and Thecla, as examples, and the emerging Catholic orthodoxy of such clergy as Ignatius and Polycarp. The tension is detectable in the texts themselves, many of which represent “heretical” points of view: Gnostic, Jewish-Christian, Marcionite, and proto-orthodox, and were later edited, sometimes clumsily, in an attempt to harmonize all into one consistent theology.

What may occur to many readers, among the more striking aspects of the narratives, is that the earliest, most basic writings, such as Mark’s Gospel in inarticulate Greek, are ultimately more impressive and inspirational than the later attempts by more educated Christians to appeal to sophisticated readers with better grammar and more allusions to classical mythology and apologies

 

Chronic alcohol withdrawal dizziness as GABA receptor damage: too much glutamate

 We further found an association between the minor allele in rs211014 (GABRG2) and higher SRE-scores, linked to dizziness and motor incoordination. Genetic variation in GABRG2 has previously been associated with processes involving motor coordination (alcohol withdrawal, febrile- and epileptic seizures).

Dizziness  

Alcohol-induced

GABA dependency can begin developing rapidly, with acute tolerance or changes in GABA receptor sensitivity appearing after even a single episode of heavy drinking. Long-term, chronic consumption, typically defined as heavy daily drinking (e.g., >5 drinks/day), causes sustained downregulation of GABA receptors and decreased production, often leading to physical dependence within weeks...After stopping alcohol, it takes at least two weeks for the brain to start returning to normal levels of neurotransmission, with complete stabilization often requiring 1 to 5 months...

 Alcohol Use Disorder: GABA signalling

 

Caffeine does not "reset"

-Gamma-aminobutyric acid (

) receptors after alcohol; rather, it acts as an adenosine receptor antagonist that masks alcohol's sedative effects. While both substances affect GABAergic systems, caffeine primarily increases alertness, creating a "wide-awake drunk" effect. It does not speed up alcohol metabolism or reverse GABA receptor alterations induced by alcohol....

  the "gamma" in GABA refers to the position of the carbon atom where the amino group is attached, relative to the carboxyl group...To say a carbon is alpha to a carbon would mean that it is right next to it. To say that a carbon is beta to a carbon would mean it is two carbons next to it. To say that a carbon is gamma to a carbon would mean it is three carbons next to it, which the amino-bonded carbon is, relative to the first carbon.

As a stimulant, caffeine blocks calming adenosine receptors and decreases GABAergic transmission, which leads to increased alertness, neurotransmission, and sometimes anxiety... Alcohol increases the effect of GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), the brain's main inhibitory neurotransmitter, by acting as an indirect agonist on GABA_A receptors. This enhancement boosts GABAergic neurotransmission, causing decreased neuronal activity, which results in feelings of relaxation and sedation... 

Long-term alcohol use can disrupt GABA networks, reducing the body's ability to produce GABA naturally, often leading to tolerance and dependence....The cessation of alcohol in dependent individuals causes a significant GABA deficit,

Once in the organism, ethanol metabolism happens in the liver but also in the brain due to the presence of alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), catalase, and P450 (CYP2E1) in both organs. Such metabolism routes produce mainly three metabolites: acetaldehyde, salsolinol, and acetate (Gil-Mohapel et al., 2019; Wilson and Matschinsky, 2020). After reaching the brain, ethanol and its metabolites induce diverse disturbances such as reduced glucose uptake, increased monocarboxylate uptake, dopaminergic, GABAergic, and glutamatergic alterations (Peana et al., 2017)....Acetaldehyde in the brain causes euphoria at low doses and plays a vital role in ethanol’s reinforcing properties, thereby facilitating alcohol addiction...Acetaldehyde has been shown to stimulate dopaminergic neurons (Melis et al., 2007) and μ opioid receptors (2014)...

  "In the absence of alcohol (withdrawal), the GABA activity decreases but the increased glutamate (as compensation) levels remain about the same and leading Glutamate > GABA state."

AI says: Alcohol withdrawal induces severe GABA dysfunction, characterized by reduced inhibitory neurotransmitter levels and decreased

receptor sensitivity, causing brain hyperexcitability. This GABA system impairment, paired with excess glutamate, contributes to symptoms like tremors, anxiety, and motor instability. While not explicitly linked to chronic proprioception damage in the provided text, this neuroplasticity, if persistent, can affect cerebellar function, potentially influencing balance and spatial awareness

Key Aspects of GABA Dysfunction and Withdrawal

• Reduced Inhibition: Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant that increases GABA activity; in withdrawal, GABA levels drop below normal, leading to CNS hyperactivity.
• Receptor Downregulation: Chronic drinking reduces the sensitivity and number of
  
  receptors.
• Hyperglutamatergic State: As GABAergic inhibition declines, glutamate (an excitatory neurotransmitter) activity increases, leading to withdrawal tremors, anxiety, and seizures.
•  
•  Impact on Motor System:
  
  receptors are highly active in the cerebellum, a region responsible for balance and coordination. Damage to GABA systems can affect motor control and balance (proprioception)
•  Stabilization: Neurotransmitter systems generally require 1–5 months to stabilize after stopping alcohol.  https://www.reddit.com/r/stopdrinking/comments/rqidln/was_nerd_perusing_articles_interesting_thoughts/
•  Back to GABA. Alcohol, like the benzodiazapenes, not only binds to GABA receptors: it desensitizes them. For this reason, the most startling damage to the brain can occur during alcohol withdrawal. What happens is that the brain, having decreased the sensitivity of its GABA receptors over time in response to the constant exposure to alcohol, suddenly displays an excess of activity that can cause damage. This is known as "kindling," and it's one of the reasons that some cases of alcohol withdrawal should be medically managed.

The Enochian Essene Nazarene N. Syrian splinter origins of Christianity: Chris Albert Wells, Ph.D.

 Their source of messianic inspiration was Daniel that had already theorized on a son of
man-figure for the end of days. The mainstream Enochic texts as well as the later Enochian
Epistle of Enoch (chs. 91-105) still placed the day of judgment within God’s hands8. The
Parables of Enoch with the competing Son of Man figure were still to be written.
This undisputed sectarian text contains all the seeds of the community’s ideological
mutation, an avant-garde group prudently connecting the old-fashioned founder to new ideals, unlocked through his tragedy

C.A. Wells. Qumran’s Teacher of Righteousness. A posthumously given title. And why it makes the Damascus Document come alive. Academia.edu 2022

Jesus: God, Man or Party Label ? : The Dead Sea Scrolls’ Messiah Code

by Chris Albert Wells | Feb 29, 2012

 

https://therapoetics.academia.edu/ChrisAlbertWells 

 

 

A BRIEF EYE-OPENING INTRODUCTION to NASCENT CHRISTIANITY.

                                       Revised 2022

                                       Chris Albert Wells

 

the initial Gospel texts mirror the community’s past in Judea and are aware about the conflicting second century Hellenic versus Judean legacies throughout the Roman Empire. And that second-century outcomes have been transferred to the first century and recorded with the earliest texts, confusing landmarks....

 Herodotus’ Inquiries. Travelling through Palestine and Egypt in the middle of the fifth century, (460-450 BCE) he writes nothing about Jewish culture, has no information on Moses, Abraham, Solomon, and his mighty kingdom. He knows nothing about the great epics relating God’s chosen people. We are at a loss to find a description of Jerusalem’s past with an outstanding temple. Or an account of King Nebuchadnezzar’s ebbs and flows that we, as modern readers, focus on his two Jerusalem attacks at an eleven-year interval (597 and 586 destroying Solomon’s Temple) of which only the first one is attested by the Babylonian tablets.

 Keep in mind that the post-70 CE religious writers were expressing ideas and conflicts; the silences show that they were not relating historical actions linked to the thirties, but religious policies related to contemporary events, with a historical nucleus that belongs to community past as we will see later on. The vacuity of outside confirmations also means that there was no Jerusalem Church, no trial under Pilate, no Roman Church, no Nero persecutions, and no New Testament texts labelled ‘Paul’ before 70 CE. Most traditions result from second century disputes placed with the earliest texts, essentially to institute a priority claim: The Roman Church, having established its initial Judean orthodoxy in the mid-second century, self-proclaimed it existed prior to the Hellenic heresies. The Greco-Roman Church, finally professing Hellenic ideals, added a layer of Hellenic orthodoxy on the previous dogmatic positions, a still later second-century achievement. The late second century letter to the Romans, politically attributed to Paul, is the Gentile’s Church foundation document....

The desert community [Quman] was a splinter group derived from mainstream Essenism, founded around the beginning of the first century BCE.  

The founder of the separatist school championed the idea of strict predestination in God’s hands.  His doctrine on unequal apportionment of the two spirits of light and darkness for each postulant necessarily created an immense sense of insecurity among members. Nobody, apart the founder, knew if they had been granted a favorable distribution of God’s spirit. He alone had received God’s Holy Spirit as a personal gift and took it for granted that he would be saved from the Pit at the end of days when the cosmic battle would oppose God and Belial.

Leading an enclosed monastic life, the first criteria was obedience to the Master. The obsessional quest for spiritual eugenics, the arbitrary hierarchy established between members according to a subjectively established level of God’s spirit, and the resulting insecurity would not have been a very rewarding experience for many. It hardly comes as a surprise that community members sought for fresh air and rebelled after his death, abandoning the way!

The community necessarily evolved after the Master’s death around 65 BCE, condemned by the Jerusalem authorities to hang on wood. (Geza Vermes. Nahum Commentary I:5) The verdict was probably the result of an impulsive political gamble. Two brothers, Aristobulus II and Hyrcanus II quarreled for power hoping for religious support. Young in state crimes, Hyrcanus II expected in return some backing from Sadducees and Pharisees, both severely criticized by the self-righteous Master. Having declared a New Israel based on a divine message from which Moses had been excluded made the blasphemy accusation an easy case. Crucifixion was a severe sentence but did not create jurisprudence. Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE), Hyrcanus’ father, had offered an edifying example to his sons by crucifying 800 eminent Pharisees on the esplanade of his Jerusalem palace for having joined the Seleucid king Demetrius III. An unexpected turn of fortune gave a leading hand back to Jannaeus who thus avenged the Pharisee’s defection. The Master’s execution did not settle the succession crisis. Civil war amplified to the extent that the Roman General Pompey, stationed in Damascus and worn out by the brother’s ruses, sent his legions to Jerusalem in 63 BCE....

Tiptoeing into messianism, inspired by Daniel’s son of man, allowed for important collateral revisions. God delegating power to an intermediary actor to whom all members were to listen enabled to displace the previous markers of good and evil. Absolute predestination, the Master's invisible and despotic fingerprint, was deemed unnecessary with the intervention of a salvific messiah. No longer burdened by a predestined restriction, sectarians could choose to be faithful at time’s end, repentance open until the final days. With the New Covenant, devotees benefitted from a wider safety-zone facing the promise of redemption. The messiah concept secured continuity between the founder of the desert school and the New Covenant, offering a more democratic access to heaven....

Addressing their new doctrinal orientation to outside schools via the Damascus Document, the desert school started broadcasting a ‘new world order’ they intended to direct. Contested from within their own community, their utopia was also later challenged by a different messiah strategy upheld within mainstream Enochian Essene communities. They answered with the Parables of Enoch defending a Son of Man messiah, anterior to humanity, therefore de facto excluding a competing messiah born on earth from a woman.

 ........

 The option was probably indebted to 2 Enoch where Melchizedek appears as the Messiah for the end. In Scripture, Melchizedek is a Prince of Peace and a priest of the Most-High. Even Abraham submitted to him and payed the dime. (Melchizedek in Renewed Perspective. Academia.edu) He was an ideal mentor for the Master of an eschatological community. Melchizedek in the Dead Sea Scrolls[1] assumes an outstanding responsibility: separating saved from damned when God will have subdued all evil cosmic forces. With their speculations, this priest of the Most-High, Prince of Peace eternally, judge at times end will implicitly instruct the Master who also walks with God and transmit his spirit to him. As Elijah had transferred a double portion of his powerful spirit onto Elisha, his exceptionally gifted disciple who later surpassed him in miracles. (2 Kings 2:9-10) The Master, programmed to become Melchizedek’s successor, becomes the Priest of the last days, as recorded in the Psalm Commentaries and the Messianic Rules.

John the Baptist was an allegory of Elijah (confirmed in Matthew) 

The Messianic Apocalypse (4Q521) mentions a single Messiah: “the heavens and earth will listen to His (God’s) Messiah. In the Damascus Document (ii, 12f.) the sectarians wrote “Through His Messiah, He will make known His Holy Spirit.”

Jesus Messiah is also a heavenly transcription, without mentioning the prophet, that suggests again continuity between Essene thought and first Jewish Christians after 70 CE....

The first declaration of this Nazarene avant-garde transmits their general policy in a document that will much later be known as Mark’s Gospel: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” (Mark 1:3) The proclamation, set in the Baptist’s mouth, echoes community teachings. It reactivates the Legislator’s injunction written one and a half centuries earlier in his foundational book The Community Rules. The proclamation, Isaiah inspired (XL:3) signs the piety and determination of the partisans: everything is to be rebuilt, differently....

the new party identity will rely on Elijah’s deeds to show that their Messiah Jesus surpasses them. This comparative publicity is a major feature of Mark’s Gospel: a gang war directed against the Temple Pharisees who had their own views for the end of days. For the time being, it is no more than a petty local quarrel between Jewish priests. Comparing the legendary merits of the historical prophet Elijah and Jesus who walks in his footsteps will make Jesus be perceived, according to a literal reading, as an itinerant prophet in Galilee.

The foremost originality advanced by the partisans of the new Messiah, before finding the resurrection arguments, is uncontestably that a radical Nazarene avant-garde was attempting to finalize Jewish messianic thought, boldly steering the texts beyond conventional limits. John the Baptist announcing a more powerful one soon to come who will be baptizing with the Holy Spirit—the exclusive privilege of the DSS’ [Dead Sea Scrolls] Messiah—shows that the heavenly Messiah Jesus was expected to come back to earth, soon, in accord with DSS sectarian beliefs.

This return to earth is associated with the promise of a baptism by the Holy Spirit, already expressed in the Damascus Document. The new writers emphasize that all sins will be forgiven, except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. (Mark 3:28-29)...

The Holy Spirit concept is unattested in the Old Testament, the bedside book of the evangelists. It is a marker of the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Such an exclusive fingerprint imposes giving a close look at community antecedents. Because Primitive Christianity results from Messianic Judaism that starts with the second century writings of Ben Sirach and Daniel and continues with the sectarian literature of the Essene Manuscripts of the Dead Sea that marked the community for over a century after the founder’s ‘gathering’ around 65 BCE. The Holy Spirit brought by the Messiah is the ace-card of the new religious party dedicated to the works of God and his Elect. It is an incontestable marker connecting the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel’s initial drafts.

...

tensions went crescendo after 130 CE, emerging at Rome after decennials of incubation at Alexandria in the hands of Valentin the Gnostic and ever more so with Marcion from the Pontus, and Justin the clean version of Hellenic thought, arbitrator of a divine Messiah crucified as a Jew but resuscitated Christian, turning the page to past Judaism. Justin’s ideology is very commanding in the Epistle to the Romans, the birth certificate of the Greco-Roman Church, attributed to Paul.

.........

 Eusebius of Caesarea (315-340 CE) saw in the New Testament a recapitulation of Essene writings. He considered that “the ancient texts of the founders of the sect mentioned by Philo of Alexandria (The Essenes) could well be the gospels and epistles before they were written.”[1]

---

[1] Encyclopedia Britannica, 11^ème Edition. Vol XXVI, p.793, Vol. V, 358

 wow!! 

 The beliefs within these early Jewish-Christian[1] communities depended either on oral traditions or on early ‘non-canonical’ texts or drafts originating from Palestine that had spread by proselytizers via brotherhood Essene/Nazarene groups.

---

[1] The modern terminology ‘Jewish Christians’ intended to indicate a transition between religions. Jewish Messianic is more appropriate to designate Jews who accept Jesus as the new messiah of Israel and otherwise remained entirely within their traditional culture, even if community meetings could differ as with the Essene communities.

 ......

With Emperor Hadrian in office (117-138 CE), Gnostic communities throughout Asia Minor were on the politically correct side. Jerusalem's ruin established Israel’s subordinate status further damaged by Hadrian's Imperial decree outlawing Judaism. Can Jesus really be the Son of the dismissed God of Israel who now officially, on the ancient temple grounds where this god resided, is set under the higher authority of Jupiter, the foremost Roman deity?

At Rome, Justin and Marcion were the first to show an acquaintance with Luke, neither aware of the canonical form. Justin knows some sections but not the birth and infancy narratives. Marcion knew of such a gospel, but shorter.

 ......  https://www.academia.edu/78135390/MARCIONS_STING_An_Open_Letter_to_Markus_Vinzent

 As understood from the escalating complaints of John of Patmos, Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna, Hellenistic inspired Christianity was on the rise. Within all second century Christian communities, Jesus was an accepted salvific figure, but his lineage was becoming disputed between Judean and Hellenistic legacies. And Marcion wanted the Jesus communities to be freed from Judean bonds and integrate the Greco-Roman world.

He was not the only one to steer away from Judean legacies and to different degrees, three main actors, Valentinius the Alexandrian Gnostic, Marcion from the Pontus, and Justin from Palestine, will intervene on the Roman stage around the mid-second century.

 ..........

 Tertullian wrote well after Marcion’s days, but Marcionite schools were still recognized and spreading, rejecting Scripture, the Judean Creator God, addressing a higher God. Marcion’s own canon remained commanding, relying on his Antitheses, his version of Luke, and Paul’s letters. Had he written the Luke-like text or not, it was the only ‘gospel’ attested at Rome in his days, therefore the earliest one known. The canonical versions as well as the supposed authors were alien to Marcion and to Justin. They were first attested by Tatian the Assyrian (120-180 CE) who, contrary to Justin his master, quotes the Gospel texts precisely and even fused them into a single composition.

 This means that the canonical texts were available at Rome between 165 and 180 CE and were not yet as commanding as usually accepted. Irenaeus gave the four Gospels the status of Church Pillars to counter the numerous Gnostic Gospels......

 .....

Marcion was the first Gospel writer from which Matthew and John, Luke and Mark were derived.  

Tertullian has a lot to say against Marcion’s text: “we have proved our Gospel to be the older, and Marcion’s the later. Ours is not falsified, later is not ‘more true’.” He considers Marcion to have authored his version, probably meaning having fiddled with the texts. Who shall decide between us? Tertullian is really a very astute polemicist. He refers to Marcion’s Luke as ‘his’ Gospel. But ownership does not imply authorship. ‘Our’ Gospel does not mean that Tertullian wrote it. He is also inverting chronologies, transferring the late canonical versions to an earlier undefined period, declaring them to be older. Church policies are at work, not history. We know today that the canonical versions were completed later than Marcion’s days and therefore Tertullian is very efficient in producing fake news.

 ..........

Tertullian supports the primacy of the apostle’s compositions. Both John and Matthew are understood as being apostles, meaning that they belonged to the ‘first circle’ having directly known Jesus. John’s Gospel was more in the line of later Church orthodoxy and Matthew’s version of the infancy narratives, composed differently outside of the Temple’s influence, suited later church propagandists better. Tertullian contrasts them with the apostolic writings of Luke and Mark as being less authoritative texts from outsiders, a kind of second circle around Jesus who had not known him from teachings to resurrection according to Peter’s instructions in Acts when replacing Judas. Thus, the Marcionites not only ignored the compositions of the true apostle’s, John, and Matthew, but praised their corrupt and later version of Luke. For Tertullian, the Church canon comprised two main pillars: John and Matthew.

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 Papias, however, also considered that Mark had been inspired by Peter and that Matthew wrote down Jesus’ sayings, the Oracles of the Lord, in the Hebrew language and everybody interpreted them as he was able. Papias is credited for writing himself five books on the proper interpretation of the Oracles of the Lord to avoid perverting their significance as Polycarp complained on behalf of the ‘first born of Satan. They have not been found. Papias lived no later than 130 CE according to Eusebius. The names attributed to the various historical texts weren’t known in Papias’ days.

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 John is not only a Jesus biography but also a book against a rivaling strategy. That is rather surprising under the pen of a church propagandist. It also implies that John was written during or after Marcion’s days which is incompatible with an apostle’s pen. As a collateral casualty, it excludes John of Patmos as the author. Why on earth is Tertullian using Marcion to explain John?

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 In 130 CE Polycarp of Smyrna (Izmir) was, as John of Patmos his mentor, fulminating against unorthodoxy. Smyrna is practically on Ephesus’ doorstep. In his letter to the Philippians (7: 1) Polycarp snaps against the deviants: “For whoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is an antichrist;

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“In the beginning was the Word” (Or Logos) informing furthermore that “the Logos came to earth in the likelihood of flesh” is typically a Gnostic declaration that dates from well before Christian Gnosticism. When Christ’s divinity, abhorrent to the Jewish factions, started to be accepted within the Church at Rome, the declaration was reinterpreted as a ‘centrist’ confession.

This originally Hellenistic composition was completed, probably by Polycarp’s school at Smyrna, in reaction to the initially deviant Christianity the Ephesian text defended. So, yes, John was completed and rectified against docetic theologies, later than Marcion’s or Justin’s days......

 Melito of Sardis, after travelling to Palestine around 170 CE, coined the expression “Old Testament” under which label he validated an authoritative collection of texts establishing the canon that was to guide Christians. The notion of an Old Christian Testament and a New Christian Testament enforced the idea of continuity as well as taking over from the past, solving the problem of Christianity's search for antiquity........

 ....later fabricated confirmations via Josephus, Suetonius and Tacitus that were not known before Eusebius. The first indication that connects Jesus the man to this period comes from the Acts of the Apostles: Peter’s trial under Gamaliel implies retrospectively that Jesus also fits into the same timeframe. It had no reasons to belong to the original texts composed around 75 CE, derived from DSS [Dead Sea Scrolls] policies and conflicts.

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 a divine Christ with the sacrifice on the cross and bodily revival was gaining credence from authors with very different backgrounds during the later second century. We find it in the Christ Hymn recorded in Paul’s letter to the Philippians 2:6-11, in Justin’s Dialogues supporting a divine Christ (against Judean beliefs) and death on the cross to be freed of sins by the blood of Christ, in Melito of Sardis in Pasqua, fragment 14:12-15. It is also the theme of Hebrews, using the former Temple’s high priest’s repeated and imperfect animal sacrifices......

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Irenaeus. (Adversus Haereses, 3:11:9 and 4:33:6). It has been proposed that Praxeas, Tertullian’s enemy, was a pseudo for Irenaeus.

Anti-Marcion, pro-John, pro-Matthew, and anti-Irenaeus seem to define the support Tertullian offered to Montanism. The New Prophecy can also account for Tertullian’s repeated interest in Matt. 5:17 that declares to fulfill the prophets[1], an omission he held against Marcion.

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[1] “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill”....

  Moses who was silent on afterlife, and Elijah who represented the Temple’s competing messianic prototype, thus turning the page from official Judaism that is replaced by an anti-Temple messianic Judaism as per the DSS and Enochic Essenism.

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  Paul is Marcion’s creation, eventually from an originally anonymous itinerant missionary who left a few notes. Robert M. Price advances the interesting idea that the centrist Church modified Marcion’s letters by introducing Judean themes[1].This is exactly what they did in the Acts of the Apostles when rehabilitating Paul to distance him from Marcion. The hypothesis is not devoid of acuteness.

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[1] Robert M. Price. The Amazing Colossal Apostle. The Search for the Historical Paul. Signature Books 2012

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 The Jesus movement originated, so it seems, in northern Syria (The Nazarene community in northern Syria that Pliny the Elder mentioned around 70 CE[1] probably corresponds to Antioch, still in Palestine) and could not spread to occupied Judea or ruined Jerusalem that now belonged to the past. Rome occupied the cities throughout Judea and Galilee, redistributed the land, reorganized the political control leaving no place for the good news of Jesus to be proclaimed “from Jerusalem and as far around as Illyricum” as boasted in a late addition to Romans (15: 19). The good news spread from Antioch to Anatolia, Bithynia, the Pontus, to Greece, Rome, and to Alexandria. Jerusalem and Judea were out of their sphere of action. Even the traditional Essene groups had abandoned the city of Jerusalem and Pharisees had fled for Jamnia. Considering that Jerusalem only comes into Christian focus with Peter in Acts written in reaction against the Marcionite challenges, (Jerusalem is hardly mentioned elsewhere) all the Jerusalem and Judea references in Galatians were added to Paul’s letters after the middle of the second century.

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[1] Pliny the Elder. Natural History, book V, 81

 

 Paul, portrayed as an obedient Jew, distanced him from Marcion’s hold, showing that the heretic was not Paul, but Marcion alone. The calculated disinformation allowed to preserve Paul’s letters without connecting them to Marcion’s Docetism rejecting Judaism. Rehabilitating ‘our dear brother Paul’ will find a place in 1 Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, and Irenaeus, all ferociously anti-Marcionites....

 Luke’s non-canonical text are resolutely anti-Marcionite declarations. They are a denial of a heavenly Jesus disconnected from Judaism. Here, Jesus is born on earth of human and angelic interventions, is circumcised as previously his cousin John the Baptist, and learns within the Temple. The Judean legacy is reaffirmed. These chapters were later added to the pre-canonical version of Marcion, therefore their absence in Marcion’s Gospel. We now read the text as a continuous flow from birth to childhood, from the Galilean preaching to the Jerusalem trial. It becomes the story of a man and savior born at Bethlehem, David’s town. The additions corrupted the significance of the initial writings[1]. The importance of Jerusalem and the Temple in the childhood narratives is shared with the ecclesial redactor of John’s Gospel. Polycarp of Smyrna has been advanced as the putative author or inspirer of both texts, incisive against the ‘first-born of Satan.’ The additions created and extended an anti-heretical pro-Judean front.

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[1] Chris Albert Wells. Mark’s Jesus, a Messiah back from Heaven or a Prophet going to Heaven? Academia.edu

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Chris Albert Wells speaks on his book on Paul 

 Sorting Out Paul book

  As a surgeon I became a head university professor in Paris. My position gave me spectacular insight over community quarrels and academic vanity, giving a solid aptitude to be unimpressed by scholarly dictates and administrative authority. Power struggles are always pushing behind economic and structural changes. I never expected that one day I would be caught up with mind manipulations and seriously challenge the New Testament and disturb so many beliefs.

The Gnostic’s ideology is essentially known to us by John’s Gospel filtered from its added centrist compositions[1] and the Nag Hammadi Library (NHL). Irenaeus already complained of their many unauthorized gospels, showing that they were actively diffused by the end of the second century. They were probably better known than the canonical texts and weren’t rejected.

To what extent did the Gnostics, apart from their own Gospel compositions, intervene directly in the early Synoptic texts before they were canonized?

One of the most interesting cases of the Synoptic mess concerns Jesus’ wisdom sayings. Apart from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount that has DSS parallels, they are unattested elsewhere than in the Gospel of Thomas. The hypothesis of other DSS wisdom sayings remains unconfirmed. The supposed association of Jesus’ Jewish sayings and Gnostic wisdom sayings in Thomas as most scholars defend, can be contested, and not only on the grounds of textual criticism[2]. It would be very odd indeed that Judean culture, supposedly represented by Jesus’s sayings, would have massively invaded the Thomas collection that was esteemed and collected by Gnostic’s so opposed to Judean culture. It is more probable that the ‘saying source’ was originally Thomas, as Linssen defends, that spread through the Gnostic inspired Christian communities that developed within the Eastern part of the Roman Empire before the canonical versions were established. Thomas was ‘tamed’ into a Judean culture-box as can be gathered from Papias’ false declarations concerning Matthew and the Oracles of the Lord written in Hebrew,

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[1] Randel McCraw Helms. Who Wrote the Gospels? Chapters VIII and IX. Millennium Press 1997

[2] Martijn Linssen. The 72 logia of Thomas and their Canonical Cousins. Academia.edu

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Significant Gnostic contributions of the Ephesian Gospel[1] were transferred to the Synoptics during the Jerusalem week that we now falsely read as being the original pericopes. John, the supposed author of the fourth Gospel and defender of Judean legacies was even incorporated into the list of Jesus’ twelve disciples, replacing Jude as a twin brother, drawing the composition away from its Hellenistic stamp. The wisdom sayings attributed to Jesus are equally presented as originating from a Jewish mold, relegating Thomas to second fiddle. With the historical niche, the entire Jesus story has been read as a biography through the lens of Jewish legacies, silencing all the accumulated controversies.

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[1] Chris Albert Wells. Jesus chasing out the Temple Merchants. Academia.edu

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Yes, Second Temple Judaism—particularly within the Hellenistic Diaspora—relied heavily on the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures

. While the Hebrew text remained central in Judea, the Septuagint became the authoritative, commonly used scripture for the vast number of Jews living in the Greek-speaking world, such as Alexandria

Matthew Henze 

 To understand the Jews of the Second Temple period, it’s essential to read what they wrote—and what Jesus and his followers might have read—beyond the Hebrew scriptures. Henze introduces the four-century gap between the Old and New Testaments and some of the writings produced during this period (different Old Testaments, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls); discusses how these texts have been read from the Reformation to the present, emphasizing the importance of the discovery of Qumran; guides the student’s encounter with select texts from each collection; and then introduces key ideas found in specific New Testament texts that simply can’t be understood without these early Jewish “intertestamental” writings—the Messiah, angels and demons, the law, and the resurrection of the dead. Finally, he discusses the role of these writings in the “parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity. Mind the Gap broadens curious students’ perspectives on early Judaism and early Christianity and welcomes them to deeper study."