We will consider farther in what light was regarded the Divine revelation of the Jewish Bible by the Gnostics, who yet believed in Christ in their own way, a far better and less blasphemous one than the Roman Catholic. The Fathers have forced on the believers in Christ a Bible, the laws prescribed in which he was the first to break; the teachings of which he utterly rejected; and for which crimes he was finally crucified. Of whatever else the Christian world can boast, it can hardly claim logic and consistency as its chief virtues.
The fact alone that Peter remained to the last an “apostle of the circumcision,” speaks for itself. Whosoever else might have built the Church of Rome it was not Peter. If such were the case, the successors of this apostle would have to submit themselves to circumcision, if it were but for the sake of consistency, and to show that the claims of the popes are not utterly groundless, Dr. Inman asserts that report says that “in our Christian times popes have to be privately perfect,” but we do not know whether it is carried to the extent of the Levitical Jewish law. The first fifteen Christian bishops of Jerusalem, commencing with James and including Judas, were all circumcised Jews.
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In the Sepher Toldos Jeshu, a Hebrew manuscript of great antiquity, the version about Peter is different. Simon Peter, it says, was one of their own brethren, though he had somewhat departed from the laws, and the Jewish hatred and persecution of the apostle seems to have existed but in the fecund imagination of the fathers. The author speaks of him with great respect and fairness, calling him “a
faithful servant of the living God,” who passed his life in austerity and meditation, “living in Babylon at the summit of a tower,” composing hymns, and preaching charity. He adds that Peter always recommended to the Christians not to molest the Jews, but as soon as he was dead, behold another preacher went to Rome and pretended that Simon Peter had altered the teachings of his master. He invented a burning hell and threatened every one with it; promised miracles, but worked none.
How much there is in the above of fiction and how much of truth, it is for others to decide; but it certainly bears more the evidence of sincerity and fact on its face, than the fables concocted by the fathers to answer their end.
We may the more readily credit this friendship between Peter and his late co-religionists as we find in Theodoret the following assertion: “The Nazarenes are Jews, honoring the ANOINTED (Jesus) as a just man and using the Evangel according to Peter.” Peter was a Nazarene, according to the Talmud. He belonged to the sect of the later Nazarenes, which dissented from the followers of John the Baptist, and became a rival sect; and which — as tradition goes — was instituted by Jesus himself.
History finds the first Christian sects to have been either Nazarenes like John the Baptist; or Ebionites, among whom were many of the relatives of Jesus; or Essenes (Iessaens) the Therapeutae, healers, of which the Nazaria were a branch. All these sects, which only in the days of Irenaeus began to be considered heretical, were more or less kabalistic.
They believed in the expulsion of demons by magical incantations, and practiced this method; Jervis terms the Nabatheans and other such sects “wandering Jewish exorcists,” the Arabic word Nabae, meaning to wander, and the Hebrew [[Heb char]] naba, to prophesy. The Talmud indiscrimi
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nately calls all the Christians Nozari. All the Gnostic sects equally believed in magic. Irenaeus, in describing the followers of Basilides, says, “They use images, invocations, incantations, and all other things pertaining unto magic.” Dunlap, on the authority of Lightfoot, shows that Jesus was called Nazaraios, in reference to his humble and mean external condition; “for Nazaraios means separation,alienation from other men.” The real meaning of the word nazar signifies to vow or consecrate one’s self to the service of God. As a noun it is a diadem or emblem of such consecration, a head so consecrated Joseph was styled a nazar.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
