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Lifegiver

Posted By: Naomi
Date: Sunday, 3 November 2002, at 2:47 p.m.

In Response To: Re: Tree of life (John M. Riada)

Thanks John :)

This seems to be a big topic, and as usual I think about these things slowly (sometimes for years! haha) The internet provides an incredible opportunity to access the information necessary to solve many puzzles, but I don't believe I can solve anything independently. It's always teamwork in the end.

Christianity's symbol of the tree of life "raised" seems to go straight back to ancient Egypt's raising of the djed pole, and the raised serpent, and so does the idea of being sustained and healed in order to receive "life". John the Revelator seems to have relied heavily on this ancient imagery. Only he tells the story of "raising" Lazarus (L'Osiris) from the dead! ("L" as a prefix denotes possession in Hebrew.)

Even the "Logos" idea developed by Philo and taken up by John in John 1:1 was Egyptian before it was discovered by the Greeks. On the walls of Unas' tomb Unas refers to himself as "The Form of Forms", which was an epithet the Greeks later used for "the Logos". Only John the Revelator says that Yeshua is "the way, the truth, and the life", and "the resurrection and the life" and "the bread from heaven", and "the light" etc. John gives "I am" statements to Yeshua >10 times more often than Matthew, Mark or Luke. And only John refers to the serpent being "lifted up" in the wilderness. In my opinion, all this firmly places John among the early gnostics. I'm still trying to learn more about the historical Yeshua, and the recent article about the ossuary of Ya'acov/James, brother of Yeshua, in BAR magazine is intriguing. The quest for knowledge continues.

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