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CRAZY, DELUSIONAL GERMAN BELIEFS

CHAPTER 3

GERMAN BELIEFS

For understanding German beliefs, I have relied on the writings of five German and German masquerader scholars. They are Bart D. Ehrman, Professor of Religious Studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Marvin Meyer, Professor of Bible and Christian Studies at Chapman University in Orange, CA; Rodolphe Kasser, Professor emeritus on the Faculty of Arts at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University and Gregor Wurst, Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Patristics at the University of Augsburg, Germany. All of them except Elaine Pagels collaborated on the 2006 book The Gospel of Judas, published by the National Geographic Society.

I read the following books by these authors: 1) “The Gospel of Judas,” edited by Kasser, Meyer and Wurst with commentary by Ehrman; 2) “The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed”by Bart D. Ehrman; 3) “Judas: The Definitive Collection of Gospels and Legends about the Infamous Apostle of Jesus” by Marvin Meyer” and 4) A couple of reviews of the book “The Origin of Satan” by Elaine Pagels. After learning that Pagel’s central thesis in her book is that Satan is a Jewish myth, I decided not to waste further time on reading her entire book and merely read the lengthy reviews.

CORE GERMAN BELIEFS

German beliefs derive from various gnostic beliefs about the great Spirit being (Satan’s counterfeit of God the Father of the bible) and about creation. But not all Gnostics agreed on their beliefs about creation and some of these were too complicated to comprehend. Here is how Ehrman expresses the difficulties in making sense of them all in his book The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot on p.100:

“There is nothing unusual in scholars having disagreements over important historical phenomena such as Gnosticism. Disagreement is simply something that scholars do. But the debates over Gnosticism have grown in extent and intensity over the past decade or so. [Since this was written in 2006, now that would be over two and a half decades ago.] It is probably ironic that the discovery of new texts...have not resolved the debates but rather have exacerbated them. There was much less debate concerning what Gnosticism was before the discovery of a cache of primary Gnostic documents in Nag Hammadi. It may seem strange that the more information you have, the less you realize you know, or the more you disagree with others about what you think you know. But that’s how scholarship works sometimes.”

That should not sound strange to professing Christians also because they have only one core text, the Holy Bible, yet there are over 2,000 major denominations in Christianity all over the world. Gnostics on the other hand have many more small ancient texts to form their beliefs, some of which were discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, a village in Egypt, and translated from the ancient Coptic language. In 1979, Elaine Pagels published “The Gnostic Gospels,” a brief analysis of those ancient documents known collectively as the Nag Hammadi Library which made her famous among German masquerader scholars. Therefore, because of many ancient Gnostic texts, we can expect there to be many different beliefs among Gnostics about creation of the universe, creation of humanity, about various gods, actually so-called divine beings they call aeons, and salvation.

Anciently, there were many different Gnostic religions as evidenced by various Gnostic texts. However, the scholars generally agree on some core elements of all the Gnostic religions concerning salvation. These are best summarized by Bart Ehrman in the book “The Gospel of Judas,” edited by Kasser, Meyer and Wurst with commentary by Ehrman. Beginning on page 83 he writes:

“I should say at the outset that there were a large number of gnostic religions, and they differed from one another in lots of ways, large and small. So great was their variety that some scholars have insisted that we shouldn’t even use the term Gnosticism anymore – that it’s an umbrella term not large enough to cover all the religious diversity found among its alleged groups.

“My own view is that this is going too far, that it is perfectly legitimate to talk about Gnosticism, just as it is legitimate to talk about Judaism or about Christianity even though there are enormous differences among the kinds of Judaism or Christianity found in the world today, let alone in antiquity...But here let me explain in broad terms what the various and wide-ranging gnostic sects held in common and why orthodox writers such as Irenaeus found them so threatening.

“The term Gnosticism comes from the Greek word GNOSIS, which means knowledge. Gnostics are those who are “in the know.” And what is it that they know? They know secrets that can bring salvation. For Gnostics, a person is saved not by having faith in Christ or by doing good works. [With such beliefs, we can now understand why Germans have no compunction about being evil and cruel, delighting in inflicting as much pain and suffering as they can on others even for pleasure, or to deter them from ever disobeying them or not acceding to their demands, utterly self-centered and totally unconcerned about the welfare of others. They can be as evil as they want because they believe it has no effect on their salvation.]

Ehrman continues: “Rather, a person is saved by knowing the truth – the truth about the world we live in, about who the true God is, and especially about who we ourselves are. In other words, this is largely self-knowledge: Knowledge of where we came from, how we got here, and how we can return to our heavenly home. According to most Gnostics, this material world is not our home. We are trapped here, in these bodies of flesh, and we need to learn how to escape. For those Gnostics who were also Christian (many Gnostics were not), it is Christ himself who brings this secret knowledge from above. He reveals the truth to his intimate followers [meaning not to all Christians, but only to Germans who profess Christianity, who have the divine spark in them, explained later], and it is this truth that can set them free [meaning give them salvation].

“Traditional Christianity has taught, of course, that our world is the good creation of the one true God. But this was not the view of the Gnostics. According to a wide range of gnostic groups, the god who created this world is not the only god and in fact is not even the most powerful or all-knowing god. He is a much lesser, inferior, and often ignorant deity. How can anyone look at this world and call it good? Gnostics saw the disasters around them – the earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, famines, droughts, epidemics, misery, suffering – and they declared that the world is not good. But, they said, you can’t pin the blame of this world on God! [By this they mean the supreme God, whom they claim is not the creator of the material universe]. No, this world is a cosmic disaster, and salvation comes only to those who learn how to escape this world and its material trappings.”

According to German beliefs, this material creation is evil, and the evidence cited is the earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters. But the Bible provides the explanation why there are natural disasters. It states in Genesis 6:13 that God destroyed humanity and the earth in the Flood, “13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”

Notice God said: “I will destroy them with the earth.” That means God deliberately changed the geology of the earth during the Flood so that natural disasters would occur. The reason was that before the Flood, there were no natural disasters. There was nothing to disrupt human life and put fear in mankind. So, humans thought there is no such thing as an Almighty God and that they were in control of the earth. They did whatever evil came into their minds and filled the world with violence (Genesis 6:5,11, “5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually... 11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.”)

But natural disasters make humans realize that they are not in control of the earth and are forced to think that there must be a higher power who punishes for evil or whose miraculous help they may be able to obtain in time of trouble. If God had not done that, humanity would have gone the same way after the Flood as those before the Flood in a very short time. To prove His point, God let Cush, Nimrod, Semiramis and Asshur go the way before the Flood so that humanity witnessed the same conditions as before the Flood for a short time until God confused the language of mankind and then Nimrod was executed. Semiramis had to flee for her life. If God had not intervened their consciences would have been so seared that they would be unable to repent when given their chance for salvation. To prevent that from happening, God in His mercy allowed natural disasters to take place. Sure, some humans would randomly die in the natural disasters. But God will resurrect them and give them a chance for eternal life.

Continuing with Ehrman’s explanation of German beliefs. How did some get trapped in this world? There are many different myths, some very complicated and some impossible to understand. But the Gnostics had an answer for that. It’s “secret knowledge” and only some, meaning the Germans, can understand. Ehrman continues:

“Some gnostic thinkers explained this evil, material world by expounding complicated myths of creation. According to these myths, the ultimate divine being is completely removed from the world, in that he is absolutely spirit – with no material aspects or qualities. This divine being generated lots of offspring known as aeons who, like him, were spiritual entities. Originally this divine realm [which is called Pleroma], inhabited by God and his aeons, was all that existed. But a cosmic catastrophe occurred in which one of these aeons somehow fell from the divine realm, leading to the creation of other divine beings who therefore came into existence outside of the divine sphere. These later divine beings created our material world. They made the world as a place of entrapment for sparks of divinity that they captured, to be placed within human bodies. [What are these sparks of divinity? How did they separate and from whom? And Why? Why were they allowed to be captured? There are three different views on that which will be discussed later.]

Ehrman continues: “Some humans, in other words, have an element of the divine within them, at their core. These people don’t have mortal souls, but immortal souls, temporarily imprisoned in this capricious and miserable realm of matter. And these souls need to escape, to return to the divine realm whence they came.

Ehrman goes on to say that the creation myths differed from one another in many details which will be highly confusing and bizarre. But he says, their overriding point is clear: “This world is not the creation of the one true God. The god who made this world – the God of the Old Testament – is a secondary, inferior deity. He is not the God above all who is to be worshipped. Rather, he is to be avoided, by learning the truth about the ultimate divine realm, this evil material world, our entrapment here, and how we can escape.”

Since the Jews are associated with the God of the Bible and have preserved the Old Testament, therefore, the Germans paint the Jews as evil since the God of the Bible is to be avoided. They think the Jews mislead the world. But now consider what hope or future the German/Gnostic cock and bull stories offer to the rest of the world.

And here is where the Germans as a people come in. Ehrman continues: “I should stress that not everyone has the means to escape. That is because not everyone has a spark of the divine within them. Only some of us [meaning only the Germans] do. The other people are the creations of the inferior god of this world. They like other creatures here (dogs, turtles, mosquitoes, and so on), will die and that will be the end of their story. But some of us are trapped divinities. And we need to learn how to return to our heavenly home.”

That’s the cunningly devised trash from Satan the devil that the Germans believe. They believe that of all of humanity, they only have the divine spark within them; that they only are divinities whereas the rest of humanity is like cattle, cats, dogs, turtles and mosquitoes. So, salvation, which is escaping this miserable material world with their divine eternal soul and going to their heavenly realm, the Pleroma, is only for the Germans, because they only have an eternal soul. Rest of humanity does not.

Next, Ehrman discusses how salvation can be obtained: “How can we learn the secret knowledge necessary for our salvation? We obviously can’t learn it by looking around the world and figuring it out for ourselves. Learning about this world imparts nothing more than knowledge of the material creation of an inferior deity who is not the true God. Instead, we need to have a revelation bestowed upon us from on high. There needs to be an emissary from the spiritual realm who comes to us to tell us the truth about our origin, our destination, and our means of escape.”

It should be easy to figure out who they believe this emissary is: none other than the one the bible calls Satan the devil – presumably a great aeon - because they take guidance from him and most of them obey him without question.

Here is where Ehrman mentions the divergence in the thinking of different gnostic groups. He mentions that in Christian Gnostic religions, the one who comes from above to reveal this secret truth is Jesus Christ. That is also the view in The Gospel of Judas which is based on the manuscript discovered in 1971.

There was another group of Gnostics known as Cainites, who chose Cain as their true hero. Why? They believed that Cain stood against the God of the Old Testament who was not the true God to be worshipped but to be avoided because He was the ignorant creator of this material world who needed to be escaped. And so, all the figures in Jewish and Christian history who stood against the God of the bible – that is Cain, the men of Sodom and Gomorrah, and eventually Judas Iscariot – were the ones who had heard and known the truth and understood the secrets necessary for salvation. That’s why they copied the violent deeds of people like Cain, practiced perverted sexuality of Sodom and Gomorrah and indulged in treachery and deception like that of Judas.

Ehrman writes on p. 62 of his book “The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot”:

“Why would any group of religious believers identify themselves with Cain, of all people? It must be remembered that these Cainites were Gnostics, who believed that the creator god of this world – the one who punished Cain for disobeying him – was not the true God but a lesser, inferior divine being. The Cainites evidently believed that in order to worship the true God you needed to oppose the god of this world. And if this god was against Cain, then Cain must have been on the side of the true God.

“Their view of Korah, men of Sodom and Gomorrah (whom they revered) was the same.

“According to Irenaeus, the Cainites saw themselves standing in line with those who had been outspoken in their opposition to the god of the Jews, the creator of the world. And they believed that they themselves “were attacked by the Maker” (Against Heresies 1.31.1). But none of them suffered any real harm, because their protector, the aeon Sophia, intervened on their behalf.

That’s probably what the Germans believed after World War II because most of them got away with their atrocities. They believed Sophia or the great aeon Lucifer protected them.

Ehrman writes on p. 64: “Irenaeus indicates that the Cainites were like other Gnostics who took their opposition to the creator God to an extreme. Since this god called Israel to be his people and then gave them his laws through Moses, the Cainites allegedly maintained that the best way to demonstrate independence from the god of this world was by disobeying his commandments. And so, for example, if the Jewish god commands his people to observe the sabbath, not to eat pork, and not to commit adultery, the best way to show that you belong to the one true God, as opposed to the Jewish god, is to work on the sabbath, eat pork, and commit adultery. Irenaeus indicates that for the Cainites, perfect “knowledge” led them into acts of immorality too gross to mention.” They did and promoted what God prohibited and opposed what He commanded to show their freedom from Him.

That describes the modern Germans perfectly. That’s why they commit adultery without much thought, lie, steal, inflict torture or murder people without any compunction, because according to their beliefs, their salvation does not depend on it. They believe their salvation is assured because they know that they have the divine spark in them and that this material world is not their true home, and because they have this “secret” knowledge, they will escape it and go to their heavenly home, the Pleroma.

Ehrman continues: “However one resolves these issues, it is clear that most Gnostic texts known today show some connection with Christian thought, in that it is usually Christ Himself who brings the knowledge necessary for liberation from this world. As Jesus Himself is recorded as saying in the Gospel of John: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

“Many Gnostics love the Gospel of John: here Jesus is portrayed as a divine being come to earth from the realm above in order to lead people home by revealing the truth needed to transcend this world. But Gnostics had lots of other texts as well. Some of them explain at greater length how this world came into being in the first place, how some sparks of the divine (some of us) came to be entrapped here, and how we can escape.”

If Gnostics love the Gospel of John, then John must have been a gnostic and should have had secret knowledge. But there is not a shred of evidence of that. John was one of the eleven who was supposedly deceived by Jesus according to the Gospel of Judas. This is another inconsistency in the Gnostic texts.

Of course, it is very difficult to argue with the Gnostics or the Germans because “they think you simply don’t know what they know, and you cannot know it because you don’t have the capacity to know, or the spiritual eyes to see which they only have because they only have the divine spark in them.” Rightly did Solomon observe about such people in Proverbs 26:12: “Do you see a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him.”

Here are the explanations of who Jesus was from the Christian Gnostics who believed that the one who came from above to reveal the truth about salvation is Christ. Ehrman writes in his commentary on p. 87 of “The Gospel of Judas”:

“Christ was not merely a mortal with wise religious teachings. Nor is he the son of the creator god, the God of the Old Testament.

“Some gnostics taught that Christ was an aeon from the realm above – that he was not a man of flesh and blood, born into this world of the creator, but that he came from above only in the appearance of human flesh. He was a phantasm who took on the appearance of flesh to teach those who were called (i.e., the gnostics, who have the spark within) the secret truths they need for salvation.

“Other gnostics taught that Jesus was a real man, but that he did not have a typical spark of the divine within. His soul was a special divine being who came from above to be temporarily housed within the man Jesus, to use him as a conduit through which to reveal the necessary truths to his close followers. In this understanding, the divine element came into Jesus at some point of his life – for example, at his baptism, when the Spirit descended upon him – and then left him once his ministry was over. That would explain why, on the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” It was because the divine element within him had left prior to his crucifixion, since, after all, the divine cannot suffer and die.”

To show how inconsistent these myths are, Ehrman writes on p. 120 of his commentary about what the discovered “Gospel of Judas” reveals: “Jesus did not come from the creator of this world and was certainly not his son. He came from the realm of Barbelo to reveal the secret mysteries that could bring salvation.”

We were told Jesus is an aeon who came from the realm of Pleroma. Here we are told he came from the realm of Barbelo, who is a mother figure. Barbelo will be discussed later.

This is the hodge podge of Gnostic beliefs, mere figments of the imaginations of the Gnostics, on which modern German beliefs are based.