Changes Made to the Bible to Make it Less Gnostic: Part 2

It’s a bit of a modern myth, bordering on a conspiracy theory, that the canonical Bible was completely rewritten by THEM (take your pick who THEY are: the Vatican? Lizard people?? Mole men???) to remove the original Gnostic character of the books of the Bible. We don’t really have evidence for this exact idea BUT some passages were rewritten, changed, and badly mistranslated, to play down their Gnostic, mystic, and heretical character.

Even if they didn’t spring from Gnosticism per se, there are texts in the Bible that could be used to argue for a Gnostic viewpoint and hence were tinkered with. We’ve already looked at 3 such passages in an earlier installment, and now we’re back with more of the truth THEY don’t want you to know!

1 Corinthians 14:34-35, “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”

It’s been known for almost two hundred years that this passage from one of Paul’s letters is a complete forgery from beginning to end. There’s a number of obvious reasons why scholars know this, including: it interrupts the flow, grammar, and train of thought of the previous and next verses (if you remove it the passages read better), the Greek word choice and writing style is completely different from the authentic Paul’s, different manuscripts contain this paragraph but stick it in a completely different place, and in just a few verses previous to this one in the same letter Paul actually writes that women can actively pray and prophesy during services.

The early Gnostics were notorious for their women leaders and prophets so it’s not a stretch that a later scribe stuck this verse in as an anti-Gnostic polemic. And if it was directed at some other Christian group then it was still used to try to discredit female leaders and clergy among Gnostics, ancient and modern.

Acts 7:53, “You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels.”

The original and more correct reading is the one above but it’s often translated as “given through angels,” “communicated by angels,” and so on and so forth. But, the one of the earliest forms of Gnosticism seems to believe that the Earth was created by angels, sometimes evil, sometimes merely incompetent but strict lower divine beings who muck up creation and so the True God has to embark on a rescue mission.

Aspects of both religious laws and all worldly law were laid down by these angels and we have this reading in both Acts and in the Pauline letters. Actually the idea that the world is run and created by angelic fuckups occurs many times in Paul is usually mistranslated, seriously, it’s a whole article on its own.

Mark 1:10, “Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending in him like a dove.”

We touched on this in our Christmas post, but many early Christian groups, including many Gnostic groups (remember both Gnosticism and early Christianity were families of religions, not one unified faith) believed Jesus was human and became Divine at his baptism when the Aeon Christ descended and unified with him.

This seems to be the Christology of the Gospel of Mark and this is much more apparent when the passage is translated correctly—99.9% it’s “the Spirit descending on him like a dove,” but it reads in the Greek, “the Spirit descending in him like a dove.”

And not as extreme, there always seems to be something more Gnostic about that passage when the translation says, “heaven torn open,” as opposed to the more common and gentle translation of simply, “heaven opened.”

If you know any other examples or have any follow-up questions you want addressed when I do part 3 then leave your feedback in the comments below:

6 thoughts on “Changes Made to the Bible to Make it Less Gnostic: Part 2”

Why “descended in him like a dove”? I don’t question your Greek — I have none of my own — but “on him” or “onto him” would at lest make some sense of the metaphor “like a dove”. “In him like a dove” is unintelligible.

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Lars Sunnanå on January 15, 2019 at 9:28 pm said:
In him like a dove: the dove is a symbol for the spiritual energies from the highest level, which from then on were anchored in Jesus’ inner being. So in my view, it makes more sense with “in” then “on”, because it is something that concerns his inner being. The authors (or the spiritual being channeling through them) chose the symbol of a dove because of the gematria (number value).
In Greek, dove is “peristera” with the value of 801. At the same time, this is the value of the first letter (A – Alpha) and the last letter (O – Omega) in the Greek alphabet. 1 + 800 = 801 = number value for the word peristera. So it was the All, The Pleroma, symbolized by Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, that descended into Jesus.
Gematria (number symbolism) is widely used both in the Old and the New testament, written in Hebrew and Greek. The first Christian were aware of this. For instance, the word Jesus (Ihsous) has the number value of 888, which is connected to the symbolism around 8 and among else stands in relationship to 666 – the number of the Beast.
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τοὺς οὐρανοὺς in Mark 1.10 means heavens in plural and not heaven in singular. So it was the planetary spheres that got torn by the dove, thereby freeing man from the heimarmene/karma of which the planets are the governors (compare with astrology). So Jesus was liberated in baptism, and the Christ force pouring through the seven planetary spheres from the Ogdoad gave all mankind the possibility to become liberated souls.

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Conserning the baptism in Jordan – we know from the Old Testament that Jordan is where we cross over to “The Holy Land”.
“Joshua son of Nun” led the 12 tribes (= mankind) over the border. They crossed over at Al-Maghtas/Qasr el Yahud, excactly the same spot as John had his center and Jesus got baptized (check it up on wikipedia). Now, Joshua is the Hebrew version of the Greek Ishous, or Jesus, and Nun means Fish. So this was Jesus the Son of the Fish who crossed over Jordan, while Jesus himself was called Ichthys = Fish. (Which relates to the Age of Pisces)

The baptism is mentioned in Mark, Matthew and Luke, but not in John. Instead John as the only gospel has included “the first wonder”, which was the Wedding at Cana or the Heavenly Marriage. This is because the Wedding and the Baptism is essentially the same thing, they are symbols for the spiritual Initiation or Enlightenment. 6 vessels got filled up and transformed from water into wine, which is liquid (bioelectrical currents in the body, or chi/prana) transformed into spirit. The 6 vessels are the 6 chakras up to the third eye. When your eye is single, your whole body shall be filled with light. When the “water” or the energy currents are fused in Ajna chakra, spiritual energy pours down through the crown chakra, and like the dove it settles in the body.

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As a comment on the topic of the dove, I would like to point out that Jesus last saying varies in different canonical Gospels. The most known i think is the one where Jesus is recorded to have been quoting the beginning of Psalms 22:1 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (in the OT) according to the Gospel of Matt 27:46 And the Godpel of Mark 15:34.

However the Gospel of Luke 23:46 records Jesus last saying as; “Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last”. Here you have the spirit (that is symbolized by the dove) leaving Jesus body. I read about a Christian tradition (in an english wikipedia page) that believe in this theme, perhaps it was the Syrian or Iraqi Orthodox church, but I can´t find this specific article right now. The Gospel of John also have a third version of Jesus last saying btw.

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