spong's bad assumptions and virgin births - for jim

From: RFaussette@aol.com
Date: Tue Dec 31 2002 - 18:02:22 EST

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    In a message dated 12/30/02 10:29:08 PM Eastern Standard Time,
    jarmstro@qwest.net writes:

    > Was Adam virgin-born? Did he have any chance to live as a sinless being?
    > Just wonderin' - Jim Armstrong
    >

    Jim,
    Virgin births first appear in the rg veda. I think that's the oldest
    religious writings we have. The people of the rg veda created a tripartite
    social system. That tripartite system was appropriated by Zoroaster and was
    then appropriated by Judaism which means there is a thread from the earliest
    religion to current religion. You're going to want to go back to the vedas
    and study the virgin birth of agni who brought the self sacrifice from the
    gods and was called a son of god and then follow that thread to the NT and
    perhaps even the nag hammadi texts. Then you will understand the virgin birth
    and why certain figures are assumed to have been virginally born. Virgin
    births are also a feature of the kabbalah of Jewish mysticism (see Campbell's
    Myths to Live By). If you can make that journey you will come back refreshed.
    As for Spong, when he wrote that the NT writers used the virgin birth because
    they didn't know anything about conception, I had to laugh. Obviously spong
    didn't realize that if the NT writers had not attributed Jesus with a virgin
    birth they would have failed to assign him one of the characteristics of a
    son of god that had been traditionally handed down for at least 2 thousand
    years.
    There is much more to religion than you think there is - though God does not
    fashion things for our satisfaction.

    In genesis 1:26 God creates Adam and calls him 'them.' Eve has not yet been
    created.
    A clue to this strange language is in the zohar, one of the books of the
    Kabbalah of Jewish mysticism:
    "From divine thought, when it is most completely revealed, proceed two
    opposite principles, one active or male, the other passive or female."
    Then:
    The soul, in its purest essence has its root in intelligence. We speak here
    of the supreme intelligence, where the forms of being begin to be
    differentiated from each other and which is really the universal soul. From
    there if it is to be a male soul, it passes through the principles of grace
    or expansion, if it is a female soul it impregnates itself with the
    principles of judgment or concentration."
    "Every form in which the male and female principle is not to be found (says
    the zohar) is not a superior or complete form. The Holy One, blessed be He,
    does not establish his abode where these two principles are not perfectly
    united; the blessing comes down only where this union exists, as we learn
    from the following words: He blessed THEM and called THEIR name Adam on the
    day they were created (Gen 5:2) for the name of Man can be given only to a
    man and a woman who are united in one being."

    Let's go back a few thousand years to the vedic hymns:
    Agni is for us the first born of truth in the ancient vigor of life: the bull
      - and also the cow. Veda 10.5

    This is from Josephus' Jewish Antiquities Book 1:
    Moreover, Moses, after the seventh day was over begins to talk
    philosophically; and concerning the formation of man, says thus: That God
    took dust from the ground, and formed man, and inserted in him a spirit and a
    soul. This man was called Adam, which in the Hebrew tongue signifies one that
    is red, because he was formed out of red earth, compounded together; for of
    that kind is *virgin* and true earth.

    Let's move forward to the Gospel of Thomas one of the Nag Hammadi texts:
    Jesus is asked: shall we then as children enter the kingdom? In the answer is
    this line: "...when you make the male and the female one and the same.'

    At the end of the non-canonical gospel, is this exchange:;
    "simon peter said to them, "Let Mary leave us." Jesus says to let her stay
    and says:"I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too
    may become a living spirit resembling you males. FOR EVERY WOMAN WHO WILL
    MAKE HERSELF MALE WILL ENTER THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN."

    I know that some of this non-canonical material is unfamiliar but Jim needs
    more before he has eyes to see and ears...
    rich

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