The average person’s familiarity with scriptural texts (of any faith system) is selective at best, and typical seekers are content to surrender the tricky situations of otherworldly powers to those representatives who claim to be blessed for interpretation. That leaves the range of “spiritual” control open for swarms of heaven’s self-promoted ambassadors who happily provide the detours around the many “revealed” messages which ordinary persons could often find to bristle with inconsistencies and contradictions. In other words, what we are led to believe as holy truth depends upon the perspective that is brought to bear by those self-promoted interpreters.
Judaic and Christian texts, as an example, tend to revolve around a longed-for coming of corrective influence by some anticipated messiah–i.e. a deliverer or liberator or savior. The Hebrew meaning of mashiah (messiah) is “the anointed,” which suggests that a qualification for being a messiah is that the person must first be anointed (consecrated) by some heavenly certified person and thus made ready to take up the obligations of guidance. By some interpretations the act of being baptized has been erroneously regarded as virtually carrying the same significance, but baptism is the symbolic washing away of “original sin” so a soul may start life with a clean slate, so to speak. An anointed one, on the other hand, was deemed to have been chosen, elevated and supposedly instilled with blessings to fulfill God’s higher purpose. The OT kings Saul, David and Solomon were said to have been anointed, for example.
Unlike baptism, an anointing was a selective ceremony reserved to signify some alleged God-selected purpose for an individual, such as royalty or dignitary or messiah. The esteem that was placed upon the anointed one was signified with the use of very expensive oil made available for the ceremony. It is this expense–the high cost–which clouds the depiction of Jesus’ anointing. The oil was a cosmetic luxury, particularly of the Near East and Greek cultures where it had been the highlight in a ceremony establishing kingship. The practice, however, was condemned in the book of Amos (6:6). In the Gospel texts of Mark, Matthew and John, each gives a different version of where, when and by whom the anointing occurred. All agree on one odd thing, however; that it was a woman who anointed Jesus. That is because in those pre-history Creation-cosmology lessons upon which the stories were modeled feminine qualities symbolized energy-substane out of which visible matter evolves. According to John that anointing episode occurred only after Jesus had allegedly raised the dead man, Lazarus, who had “…lain in the grave four days already.”
The name Lazarus appears only three times in New Testament texts; once in Luke 16 as a leper supposedly healed by Jesus, and twice in John, chapters 11 and 12, in regard to an alleged miracle of raising up the dead man. The name Lazarus is claimed to be abridged from the Hebrew name Eliazar (Eliezer), which is said to mean “God has helped.” Strangely it is only in John that the re-invigoration from the dead of the man Lazarus of Bethany is addressed, an alleged miracle which is suggestive of far greater power and consequence than any of the miracles presented in the books of Mark, Matthew or Luke. The plot-purpose of Lazarus in John is to serve as a kind of prelude to Jesus’ own greater miraculous resurrection that is to come. As noted in a previous web-post, the characters of Lazarus and his sisters in John’s account have a peculiarly close relationship to a far older Egyptian story concerning a man named El-Azar-us and his two sisters named Meri and Merti who happened to live in a village called Bethanu. The Egyptian name of the village meant “house of god,” referring to the Egyptian god Anu. The god Anu happened to be honored in the even older Sumerian culture and was known as the “first among the gods”, a reference to the quantum Source. The Egyptian version also exposes where the Hebrew word beth, meaning “house,” originated (as in Bethany and Bethlehem.
Once again the Genesis plotline is followed in the Luke tale, and the Genesis account leaned heavily on the pre-history Creation lessons which were once illustrated with groups of stars (constellations). That connection to pre-history Creation lessons is guardedly apparent in the seeming indifference of Jesus upon hearing of Lazarus being “..sick unto death” and saying, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God.” Then in John 11:17 it avers that Lazarus had “…lain in the grave for four days already.” Only in understanding the ancient lessons concerning pre-physical energies which involve as Creation do these story elements hold any rationality. In ancient cultures the first four phases of primal energy involvement which pass over to congeal as matter were often likened to a grave or tomb: the reason for that metaphor being that the primordial energy conditions hold only the potential for purposeful existence which must be raised into life by the Life Principle. (This is a fact of Creation that anti-abortionists should understand.) The “four days” (as in the “days” timeframe of Creation) of Lazarus’ alleged entombment are therefore in reference to the four earliest periods–or pre-physical stages–of primal energy involvement. The mid-range of energy involvement between prototype and first visible energy-form was known in those ancient teachings as Devolution.
Verse 16 of John 11 then affirms this meaning, saying, “Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.” This bizarre suggestion has long puzzled many Gospel scholars. Didymus, the which not the who of the quoted verse, refers to the constellation Gemini with which was once taught the ancient lessons of Creation energies which are to involve as prototypes of a matter form. It was these involving energies which were equated in those ancient lessons to mental matter, as taught and illustrated with constellation Gemini. In zodiac depictions Gemini is said to govern–to direct through mental energy–the shoulders, arms and hands; Thomas, remember, had to see the two scarred hands of the resurrected Jesus to be sure the transformed man was truly Jesus.
Figuratively, the prototypal forms within the elementary energy planes must die (or be passed over) in order to involve as defined matter. Note also that near the conclusion of John’s version of the crucifixion events the “grave” of Jesus was described as: “It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.” (John 11:38) In those prehistory Creation-cosmology lessons the void (quantum energy source) out of which Creation takes place was commonly allegorized as a cave. The stone said to be laid upon the cave symbolized the taking on of dense matter form, which is to say, this energy plane where each of us is conscious of self as biological life.
Thus it is that faith systems have been woven from threads of very ancient teachings which once offered genuine scientific understanding of universal principles. Unfortunately those threads tended to be unraveled and recast into contorted assertions. For example, an interesting side-bar to the alleged Lazarus incident is something of a stretch: a tradition in the Roman Catholic Church has it that the resurrected Lazarus later became the first bishop of Marseille. And such is holy truth.
