Original Christianity : a new key to understanding the Gospel of Thomas and other lost scriptures

282 Pages·2005·0.828 MB·English

by  Peter Novak

The work of scholars such as Elaine Pagels and Marvin Meyer
has captured the imagination of the public by setting forth the
Gospel of Thomas and other lost teachings of Jesus. Now Peter
Novak, in Original Christianity,brings forth a critical element essen-
tial for fully understanding these scriptures.
Novak argues that the authors of these early texts subscribed
to the Binary Soul Doctrine—an ancient belief system that allows
for both reincarnation and an eternal afterlife. Novak’s interdisci-
plinary approach offers fresh insights on the beliefs and politics of
the early church founders. He points out that reincarnation was a
commonly held Christian belief until it was voted out of “official”
Christianity and the record expunged. This newfound key reveals
the true identities of many mysterious biblical figures, such as
Lazarus, Barabbas, Judas, and especially the Apostle Thomas, who
may not only have been Jesus’ identical twin brother, but indeed a
second Christ in his own right, who lived to produce a genetically
identical bloodline.
More important still, the rediscovery of the lost theology of
Original Christianity means Christ’s central message of personal
integrity can again take center stage.

Also by Peter Novak
The Lost Secret of Death
The Division of Consciousness

Copyright ©2005
by Peter Novak
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work in any form whatsoever,without permission
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LibraryofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Novak,Peter,1958-
Original Christianity :akeyto understanding the Gospel of Thomas and other
lost scriptures / Peter Novak.
p. cm.
Summary:"A new key to understanding the Gospel of Thomas and other Lost Scriptures.
Proposes a theory called Binary Soul Doctrine which allows for both reincarnation and an
eternal afterlife.Offers fresh insights on the beliefs and politics of the early church
founders,and helps explain the current flight from traditional religions"--Provided by
publisher.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-57174-445-2 (6x9 tp :alk. paper)
1. Gospel of Thomas (Coptic Gospel)--Criticism,interpretation,etc. 2.
Apocryphal books (NewTestament) I. Title.
BS2860.T52N68 2005
229'.8--dc22
2005015665
ISBN 1-57174-445-2
10987654321
Printed on acid-free paper in Canada
Contents
Introduction: Return of the King of Terror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii
1: Relics of an Ancient War: The Lost Scriptures of Early Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
2: The Potter’s Soil: The Ground the Church Was Planted In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
3: Literature’s First Theme: Soul Division from Gilgamesh to Galilee . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
4: Self-Correction of a Natural System: The Two Faces of Resurrection . . . . . . . . . . .46
5: The Gospel of Thomas: A Primer on Living in Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
6: The Other Half of the Bible: Resurrection and
Redemption in the Nag Hammadi Scriptures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157
7: Single Standards and Twin Traditions: Echoes of Our Lost Inheritance . . . . . . . .191
Conclusion: A Christian Manifesto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .220
Appendix A: The Second Council of Constantinople . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .233
Appendix B: The War between America’s Soul and Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .235
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .241
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .253
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .257
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269

Introduction
Return of the King of Terror
Life is rough. Almost as soon as we are born, we start to realize that we
are going to die some day. And to make things worse, everyone else we
care about is going to die as well. Our parents, our siblings, our spouses,
our children, our friends, and even our enemies are all in the same sink-
ing boat. The only question is whether we will see them off first, or if they
will witness our passing instead. For many of us, our mortality doesn’t truly
register until someone close to us dies, but sooner or later, each of us
comes to accept this painful truth in our own way.
The older we get, the more the dark inevitability of death weighs on
our minds. This soul-wrenching realization is perhaps the ultimate com-
mon denominator of the human experience. It is something we share with
people in all corners of the globe; as different as human cultures can be,
everyone struggles with this same disturbing thought. This burden is also
something we have in common with people who lived a hundred years
ago, a thousand years ago, and even a hundred thousand years ago. Can a
mere thought be eternal? Perhaps so; the same mortal worries and uncer-
tainties in our heads today were also in theirs.
All human activity is, in effect, a cry of defiance against this fate, a
refusal to admit that death is truly our end. Continuously lurking in the
back of our minds, the unpleasant awareness of our impending destruc-
tion is, perhaps more than anything else, what separates us from the ani-
mal kingdom. This curse of consciousness is a burden we carry within us
every moment of our lives, and it has shaped, and perhaps even unilater-
ally directed, the evolution of human culture. Everything we do in life,
every time any of us lifts a single finger, it is with the implicit assumption
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Original Christianity
that doing so makes some sort of difference. In order to function at all, in
order to carry out even the most basic and elementary tasks of life, it is
necessary for human beings to first sidestep our debilitating awareness of
death. We need to disbelieve.
We have found many ways to do this. All cultures (all modern cultures
as well as all known ancient cultures) embraced some sort of religious
belief in life after death. This is as inevitable a human trait as the need to
eat, sleep, or reproduce; no one could build or maintain a civilization with
a populace that was paralyzed by grief, hopelessness, and despair.
Our Western culture today is built upon the afterlife beliefs of
Christianity, but those foundations are starting to crumble. As more and
more people begin to question their inherited religions, that long-
repressed grief, hopelessness, and despair are starting to reemerge as an
active factor in the human psyche, and therefore also in human culture.
Our generation has a momentous problem to address: We need to con-
tinue to disbelieve in death in order to survive as a civilization, but, for the
majority of people in the West, that means believing in Christianity, and
Christianity is in trouble.
Christianity began with the teachings of one man, but today it has frac-
tured into literally thousands of different sects, denominations, teachings,
and belief systems, each of which feels that it alone is correct and all the
other versions have got it wrong. Although the church was once the
bedrock of European culture, today the majority of Europeans don’t even
consider Christianity a significant element of their lives. And why should
they? Every year, more and more Christian “leaders” are revealed as
immoral frauds, thieves, and perverts. In addition to this moral crisis,
Christianity also finds itself at odds with modern science on many issues
and, as the decades pass, more and more people are siding with science in
such disputes. The current teachings of the church are also at odds with
the theory of reincarnation, which is threatening to become an even big-
ger problem for the church, due to a steady stream of scientific evidence
supporting reincarnation that has been collected in recent years. And
although for the last 2,000 years the church has steadfastly defended its
version of the origins of the faith, a large cache of lost early Christian scrip-
tures was found in 1945 that seriously challenges church doctrine about
those earliest years.
All these issues have conspired to seriously erode the general popula-
tion’s confidence in and commitment to Christianity, and the social effects
viii
Return of the King of Terror
of that erosion are apparent for anyone to see. The loss of confidence in
Christianity may involve more serious consequences in the United States
than in Europe because, in the latter, religions that believed in life after
death existed long before the advent of Christianity. But American culture
was founded on the Christian faith and has no other belief system to fall
back on if Christianity ever falls away. Left without any cultural basis for a
belief in life after death, the American public would be completely vulner-
able to all those threatening torrents of grief, hopelessness, and despair
that Christianity is still able, just barely, to hold back. Like the story of the
little Dutch boy afraid to remove his finger from the dike, we may fully dis-
cover what psychological and cultural terrors Christianity has been hold-
ing at bay only after it is finally gone.
From a sociological standpoint, of course, it does not matter if
America believes in Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, or even the Pharaonic
religion of ancient Egypt, as long as the population is able to maintain
some sort of belief in life after death. Any such belief is a stabilizing cul-
tural influence. Shifting from one such belief to another is verydestabiliz-
ing to a culture, however, and such social transitions often only occur via
extreme social unrest. In matters of religion, public opinion is like a colos-
sal ocean vessel: Its unwieldy bulk has tremendous inertia and it takes a
long time to start, stop, or change directions. America has no substantial
infrastructure ready for any alternate belief system; if we had to abandon
Christianity and make the transition to an alternate belief, it would prob-
ably prove to be a very tumultuous period in American history. The shift
of the Roman Empire from paganism to Christianity is probably a valid
example of what we might have to expect from such a transition today. It
would engender great cultural destabilization.
Even from a purely sociological perspective, then, it would be prefer-
able for us to preserve Christianity, if possible, rather than allowing it to
self-destruct and then looking blithely about for something else to take its
place. Unfortunately, this is no small task. Each of the many social factors
conspiring to derail the church is formidable on its own; together they cast
a seemingly insurmountable shadow over the future of the faith. First, we
would have to determine why Christianity has been fracturing into differ-
ent sects and teachings ever since its inception, and then find some way to
reverse that process. We would also have to reconcile Christian doctrine
with the teachings of modern science, possibly even including the new
research on reincarnation. And we would have to find a way to increase
ix