Jesus was a Jewish Pagan Philosopher and Teacher

(July 9, 2022) The following mathematically derived teachings of Jesus show he was using Pagan emotion network attunement (Logos, Yoga, Awen) concepts to argue against the whole idea of a violent end-times apocalypse.  Having witness during his childhood the Roman reconquest of Galilee, he knew the conquest model was just plain wrong. Here, the mathematics of decision theory is used to extract twenty-one authentic Jesus’ teachings in four main themes. 

Mathematics was applied to this historical problem because earlier non-mathematical attempts have failed to produce consistent results. The main themes revealed by this procedure are: 

1. Divine Home Energy (proper translation of phrase incorrectly translated as "Kingdom of God") is Here and Must Grow Slowly (6 Teachings), 
2. Consequences of Living in an Interconnected Spiritual/Emotional Network or Logos (7 Teachings), 
3. Heal by Connecting with the Divine Powers (4 Teachings), 
4. Magical and Rule-Based Religions Do Not Mix (4 Teachings).

Jesus would have been exposed to this ancient magical tradition  while he lived at Capernaum which became a customs stop on the new Mesopotamia to Egypt trade route established by Herod the Great by his building of the harbor at Caesarea Maritima. Paper with all the details online at: https://www.academia.edu/79886608/Twenty_One_Authentic_Jesus_Sayings_Extracted_by_Mathematical_Decision_Theory

(March 15, 2024) Palmyra (modern Syrian city of Tadmor) used to be an important link in the trading network known as the silk connecting east and west. It became a part of the Roman empire between 0 and 100 CE but it was treated as an autonomous province. A branch of this trade into Egypt was siphoned off from Tyre when Herod the Great built the port town of Caesarea Maritima. This new trade route passed through the new custom's town of Capernaum where Jesus lived. Jesus would have been exposed to the magical practices promoted by the Palmyra temple. 

See the text translations in this section here.

(November 26, 2023) While Druid culture had a unidirectional network for the life class of powers since ancient times it did not have any kind of network for the motion class of powers until the Greek Philosopher Heraclitus adopted the Eastern idea of Yoga for the west. His attuned spiritual network concept eventually made it into Celtic culture as Awen where it was picked up by modern Druidry as the spiritual source of inspiration. "Logos" is from the Akkadian word LaGu meaning "attunement." Awen is from the Akkadian word A'u and Awu (Ayin letter slurs to /w/)  meaning "emotion/motion powers" According to these concepts people should attune to the surrounding emotion/motion powers.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus introduced his concept of Logos into Greek and Druid cultures within 30 years after the Persians conquered his home city of Ephesus in 522 BCE. At that time he would have been exposed to Persian magi culture. The best translation for Logos is "spiritual harmonies."

Roman era Stoics believed that an attuned spiritual network consisting of spiritual harmonies (logos) was one of the three characteristics of Divine mind along with nous (reasoning as the chaining together of facts) and ettistnun (knowledge of the facts). The dualist but still Stoic author Epictetus (c.50 – c.135 CE) and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE) write these:​

The Bible incorrectly translates logos as “word” or “message.” The author of the Gospel of John uses "word" for Logos below:

The Apostle Paul also used “logos” in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11 Here Christian translators again translate it incorrectly as "message." They deliberately do translation fraud (translating it differently in different places) so they can put their own theological spin on the original text. 

(July 9, 2022) The main problem with historical Jesus research has been its completely subjective nature. Authors tend to have some mental model of Jesus then all sayings which fit that model are authentic and all others are not. Some previous quality non-quantitative attempts were:

1. John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately after the Execution of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998)
2. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus volumes 1 & 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1991)
3. Robert W. Funk & Roy W. Hoover, The Five Gospels, What Did Jesus Really Say? (New York: MacMillan, 1993)
4. E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin Press, 1993) 
5. Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (New York: HarperColllins, 1994)
6. Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (Hampton Roads Publishing, 2014)

Then summarizing the subjective nature of previous non-quantitative research is: 

1. Dale C. Jr., Allison, Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009) 
2. Marcus Knight, “The Jesus We’ll Never Know”, Christianity Today (April, 2010) 
3. Stephen J. Patterson, “Apocalypticism of Prophecy and the Problem of Poly-valence: Lessons from the Gospel of Thomas”, Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 4 (2011): 795-817 

(July 9, 2022) A significant problem is determining the authentic teaching of Jesus is whether Jesus really used the word "kingdom" in the phrases “Kingdom of Heaven” (Basileia Ouranos in Greek) as recorded in Matthew, or “Kingdom of God” (Basileia Theos in Greek) as recorded in the other gospels.

The grammar of ancient (not modern) Greek is actually more similar to that of Akkadian word role grammar  instead of with later developing and more complex Latin case grammar into which it has been forced by moderns. Akkadian and Ancient Greek use word endings on the roots of words to to indicate a word’s role or function in a sentence. For example, the root of basileia is basil which means “govern.” The ancient Greek noun role endings are:

1.  “eu” ending means the noun is the actor in the sentence
2.  “iς” (iota, sigma /s/) ending means the noun is a place
3.  “εi” ending means the noun represents an abstract power instead of an actual person or place (thus the “power of Socrates” as the power of critical philosophy)
4.  “oη” (omicron, eta) ending indicates noun is a participle

Noun Gender Endings (which come after noun role endings)

1. “ς” (sigma /s/) ending means noun is singular masculine, plural ending is “ούς”
2. “α” ending means noun is singular feminine, plural ending is “ες”
3.  “o” ending means noun is singular neutral, plural ending is “α”

Words without role endings but with gender endings are adjectives.

Consequently, the word basileus is a masculine governing actor and so it means “king, ruler or governor.” The word basilica is a feminine place so it means “home of governance” and was a place where courts and other official government duties were performed in ancient times. The word basileia then is a feminine governing power which means “home energy.”

The second word in the phrase mistranslated as “Kingdom of Heaven” is ouranos which is also translated in English as uranus and it means “sky-bound” or “divine” or “heavenly” as a masculine adjective. “Sky” or the “heavens” was an epithet for the higher divine powers because they were located in the sky. According to the earliest Greek text describing their gods by Hesiod (500 BCE), Uranus was the son and husband of Gaia (Earth), with whom he fathered the first generation of Titans. 

The second word in the phrase “mistranslated as “Kingdom of God” is “theos” which means “divine” as an adjective. Consequently, the two phrases are actually identical if translated as “divine home-energy.”

(July 9, 2022) Mark 4:30-32, Q (Matthew 13:31-32, Luke 13:18-19), Thomas 20: Validity = 1.02

Jesus taught that the Divine home energy was already here but unseen by the spiritually blind because so few people really followed the path of God. The statue prophecy in Daniel chapter 2 had already been fulfilled. The Divine-home-energy indicating God’s presence was still small like a mustard seed but it would grow if more people would align themselves with the will of God and not be seduced by haters, blind rule followers, and power seekers.

In the statue prophecy, the Daniel interprets the dream of the Persian king. This dream describes a statue made of four metals representing four earthly empires and how after the fall of the Hellenistic fourth empire an eternal kingdom of God will be established. These four kingdoms were the Mesopotamian (Babylon/Assyria - Gold), the Medes (silver), the Persians (Bronze), and the Hellenistic (Iron and clay) which was divided against itself because after the death of Alexander it was divided between his top generals.  

If this prophecy was true then the apocalyptic Kingdom of God should be here but it was nowhere to be seen.​ So where was it? Hence the general expectation that the apocalypse was due any day …. but Jesus had a different idea. 

(July 9, 2022) Mark 4:21-23, Q (Matthew 10:26-27, Luke 12:2-3, Thomas (first part in 5 and second part in 33); Validity = 1.02

People could not see any evidence that God’s energy had arrived. Thus, Jesus had to teach a skeptical audience that divine home-energy would become apparent as more people became aligned with God.  Lamp and light have a double meaning in Jewish tradition as evidenced by these sentences in Proverbs and Psalms in which the light of instruction from God’s lamp is the way to life:

(July 9, 2022) 1 Thessalonians 5:1-5, Mark 3:25-27, Q (Matthew 24:42-44, Luke 12:39-40), John 10:1-5, Thomas 35: Validity = 1.84. [Copied from Mark so not counted: Matthew 12:29, Luke 11:21-22]

God’s energy could not be like another Roman empire based upon coercion and fear. Therefore, it had to grow slowly otherwise humans trapped by their own culture would instinctively react against it in a blind antagonistic fear. God’s way in not the human way. Divine home energy had to come silently yet deliberately like a thief in the night. 

The apocalyptic idea entered Jewish culture from the Zoroastrian Persian Achaemenid Empire after the Persians conquered the Babylonian Empire and ended the Jewish exile in 539 BCE. An early manifestation of this new ideology was the book of Daniel with its statue prophecy of verses 2:31-45. This prophecy implied that the apocalyptic Kingdom of God would arrive after the fall of all the Hellenistic empires. The last Hellenistic kingdom to fall was the Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty of Queen Cleopatra when she and Roman General Marc Antony were defeated by the future Roman emperor Octavian Caesar in 30 BCE. 

Like many other anti-apocalyptic teachings from Jesus, the original meaning of this was lost on the apocalyptic Christians so they spun it in many different ways trying to make sense of it. For example, Paul thinks this teaching means no one really knows the exact day when the Day of Judgment will occur. Mark interprets this teaching as indicating that Satan is internally divided and thus his power will not last much longer allowing him to be tied up and robbed. The Q source takes a view similar to Paul in that no one knows when the apocalyptic Son of Man will arrive. Only Thomas seems to preserve some sense of the original meaning. Consequently, this teaching was orphaned because it made no sense when everyone thought that Jesus would arrive again in a sudden violent apocalypse bringing in the empire of God.

(July 9, 2022) Mark 8:11-13, Q (Matthew 12:38-41, Luke 11:29-30), Luke 11:14-16, Validity = 1.09. [Copied from Mark so not used: Matthew 16:1-4]

Many Jews during the time of Jesus expected the arrival of an apocalyptic kingdom any day and many saw signs of the imminent arrival everywhere (Look, Look, Look!). Jesus was telling them no such signs exist. This fascination with the end times has continued to this day among both Christians (who supposedly read their Bible) and non-Christians.

The earliest gospel of Mark properly wraps this teaching within a slow growing dive home-energy context which was the story about "feeding the multitude." Here people Jesus shared their food with strangers in a miraculous act of love.

In contrast, the Q (Matthew, Luke) source places this teaching within an apocalyptic context by stating that the only sign will be the sign of Jonah in a reference to the apocalyptic resurrection of Jesus who like Jonah came back to life after three days (Jonah after three days in the belly of a whale). The author of Matthew liked this explanation so much that he even added it to the end of his Mark copied passage. That this passage was copied from Mark is also indicated by how both passages end with Jesus leaving the crowd.

The Law of Return, which is also called Law of Attraction is a manifestation of emotional propagation through a group. Non-verbal emotional signals move through a group and eventually circle around back to the source. Thus  those who love get more love while those who hate get more hate. This has the evolutionary purpose of group coordination in social mammals. Yawning is a classic example of this sort of emotional propagation as it tends to go around a group telling the group that now is the time to rest. 

Emotional propagation even at the subconscious, non-verbal level has been found in human societies (Christakis and Fowler 2009). The best model to describe its properties is that of a bi-directional network. Their assumption is that emotional propagation relies on physical signals. However, Jesus and ancient philosophers assumed that emotions were also propagated via spiritual means. 

The Law of Return within a bi-directional network seems to have been first stated by Zoroaster who lived around 850 BCE and whose ideas became part of the official religion of the Persian Achaemenid empire. He stated that his good thoughts increase God’s kingdom (Yasna 31, verse 6). Previous to Zoroaster the ancient idea of a network was unidirectional similar to that of a river delta. Such a network was thought to distribute the divinely generated, life-triggering fertility fluids to the earth. The fertility fluids were manifested directly as rain, sun light, and sun heat.  

This is another statement of the law of attraction/return. Open emotional channels are bi-directional as evidenced by emotional propagation studies. The word measure here means the instrument used to make the measurement. In this case it refers to a person's mental framework or paradigm. So, if you are a fearful person you will see a lot of things which scare you. If you assume people are rude in general you will see a lot of rude people. If you hate some leader, institution, or race then you will connect every bad event to them.

Love is the human connective emotion and the main one for building up the spiritual network (Logos).

Love is a small and easily missed thread in the Hebrew Scriptures among all the legal codes but it is a concept which Jesus put front and center in his teachings. Here are the love passages not mentioned elsewhere in this section:

Humans have a tendency to escalate slight wrongs into feuds and revenge. This pollutes the spiritual/emotional network

This teaching was  pulled from the law book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is not as broad as the first teaching of "Love others" because it is mainly focused on fellow citizens and the nation of Israel. Yet it must have been a popular statement which Jesus likely repeated.  

Once the emotional/spiritual network has been polluted with hate it propagates around and it is hard to eliminate it. It becomes like dirt in salt. If salt gets dirty and loses its saltiness, how can it become pure again?

Hard to know if this teaching was aimed at Jesus’ disciples or the patients. Placebo healing requires the patients have confidence in the healer at a deep emotional conditioning level. The Greek noun for "confidence" is pistis while its verb is peitho. Christian translations incorrectly translate it into English as the word “faith.” Confidence is not faith because it is not something which can be gained by willful belief. Like all conditioned habits it is only established by repeated successful observations enhanced by reason, peer pressure and statements from “authoritative” sources.

In this teaching Jesus is giving a hyperbolic example about the importance of confidence in healing. Whether Jesus really thought confidence could move mountains or he was using hyperbole to make a point is unknown (but the teaching was remembered!) 

In order to use the spiritual powers involved home energy a person must first unblock any emotional/spiritual channels conflicting with those powers. This involves identifying those conflicting emotions such as envy, fear, blame, and anger and then letting them go (releasing) them. 

Apparently one of the most common emotional problems addressed by Jesus was people blaming others for their own issues, specifically blaming the Divine powers/spirits for their failures in spiritual energy work. Jesus had to remind them that many possible reasons existed for this failure but that a person should not get angry and start blaming others. They had to release and let go of negative emotions. 

The Greek word meaning "release" used in this teaching is aphesis. It is defined in the standard Liddell, Scot, Jones Ancient Greek Lexicon as follows:

Yet Christian translators incorrectly translate it the word "forgiven":

The word “forgiven” is not used.  Instead, Jesus used the more magical “emotional-release.” Forgiving someone first requires blaming someone and Jesus did not promote playing the blame game.

This authentic teaching of Jesus comes in independent positive and negative forms with the negative form using the words "not" or "never." The two forms also come with different contextual spins. Yet both forms are associated with the example of a child except in the Gospel of John which does not accept the idea that the developing the sacred space is dependent on human action. In contrast, Thomas only has the children reference because that tradition could not imagine that Jesus would not be welcomed.

This teaching has thee components which have been clustered together in the sources. These are: 

1. An old patch is not sewn onto a new garment, since it would create a tear.
2. Young wine is not poured into old wine-skins, or they might break
3. No one can serve two masters

Only Thomas has all three. The other sources have two out of the three. Like many other authentic teachings of Jesus, this teaching became orphaned and could not be understood in the context of  apocalyptic Christianity.  

The Q source only preserved the teaching about serving two masters because it was spun in such a way so that is  could be understood by apocalyptic Christians which is that a person cannot serve both money and God. In contrast, Thomas spins it as a slave who cannot honor each master equally. Because each spin is only attested in one source it is a product of that source's oral tradition and not part of a real Jesus teaching.

Jesus warned about the teachers of the law but why he did so is not exactly clear. Most likely he followed the explanation given in Thomas about how they actively opposed the spiritual path based teachings of Jesus in favor of their rule based approach. After Christians became rule based themselves this reasoning no longer made sense so Christians adopted other reasons such as the Pharasees being attention seekers and oppressors of the poor.

 This idea of hypocrisy among the Pharisees became a popular one in the New Testament being further developed in Mark and Luke but mostly in Matthew (Mark 7:6, Matthew 6:2, 6:5, 6:16, 15:7, 22:18, 23:13-29, 24:51, Luke 12:56, Luke 13:15). None of these supposed teaching have enough validity to claim that Jesus actually taught them. Also, all these entries except for Matthew chapter 23 have an apocalyptic spin showing that they developed late. Yet even if we did not have this original teaching we could still discern that Jesus said something about the hypocrisy of Pharisees just from these many late developing oral traditions.​

If people do not have to follow rules how can one determine a quality person?  The answer is that you know people by their fruit which has the following characteristics as described by the Apostle Paul:

Both Matthew sources put an apocalyptic spin to this teaching not not found in the other sources. The Matthew Q source inserts a phrase about the Day of Judgement while Matthew's own oral tradition inserts a phrase about "bad trees" which represent Israel being cut down and thrown into the fire. The judicial murder of Jesus' brother James in 62 C.E. by the Jerusalem temple authorities poisoned this Jerusalem community's relationship with their fellow Jews and forced them into exile. This community's outlook is reflected in Matthew