Fw: Re: what to read next that isn't pynchon

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

           J K Van Nort:
            I've read it all, twice. Most confusing and contradictory. 
           The new testament past the four gospels, acts and 
           revelation are boring letters on the lines of  Leviticus 
           and numbers for their multitude of rules and rulings on 
           such important aspects as what happens to a man when 
           his testicles are crushed (apparently a common event in 
           ancient Palestine).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hj_7U40z5I

I read the New Testament when I was 11, wondered why the same 
story had to be told 4 times [liked that story], though things got 
progressivly uglier as one got further from the gospels, culminating 
in the Book of Revelations. I am fascinated by Burton L. Mack's 
writings, in particular his take on the development of the synoptic 
gospels from scattered sources many years after the fact.

http://www.as.ua.edu/rel/aboutrelbiomack.html

Haven't read all of the Old Testament yet, but really got a lot out of Job 
and Song of Songs, and found the "Moses and "God" material [Exodus]
either too cryptic or just too stupid to absorb. And it's not Ten 
Commandments—there are many more—and there is no enumeration
of the Commandments in the text, and the list goes on and on—

          "And if you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it 
          of hewn stones; for if you wield your tool upon you profane it. 
          And you shall not go up by steps by steps to my altar, that 
          your nakedness be not exposed on it."

That ain't "G-d" talkin', that's the Demiurge.

          Yaldabaoth
          Gnostic myth recounts that Sophia (Greek, literally meaning "wisdom"), 
          the Demiurge’s mother and a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or
          “Fullness,” desired to create something apart from the divine totality, 
          and without the receipt of divine assent. In this abortive act of separate
          creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being 
          ashamed of her deed, she wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne 
          for him within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor
          anyone else, and thus concluded that only he himself existed, being
          ignorant of the superior levels of reality that were his birth-place.