I am studying a book on religious history titled: "The Jesus Mysteries; Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?" - written by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy.

In this thread, I will share an excerpt from chapter 4 of the book where the authors try to answer this question - "WHO IS THE LOGOS?"

To make it easy for you to conduct your research and verify the authors' claim, I have attached the sources from which the quotes in the excerpt are obtained.

I will share my thoughts as the thread progresses.

Let us begin shall we?

--

The King James translation of the Gospel of John opens with the famous and poetic passage: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of men." - St John 1 vs 1 - 4

The NIV Translation of those verses also states: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of mankind"

Many readers of this text find it strangely moving but would confess to not really understanding what it means. This is not surprising, because, without some knowledge of Pagan philosophy, it doesn't make any sense.

In the original Greek, the term here translated as 'Word' is 'Logos'.

The concept of the Logos is completely foreign to Judaism and is entirely derived from the Pagan Mysteries. As long ago as the sixth century BCE Heraclitus set out on a journey of self-discovery and discovered the 'Logos shared by all'. - Kahn, C. H. (1979), 250. From Kahn's commentary: 'Wisdom begins with self-knowledge, Heraclitus went in search of himself but what he found within his psyche was a logos deep enough to be coextensive with the universe.'

He further writes: "Having hearkened not unto to me, but unto the Logos, it is wise to confess that all things are One."

The Pagan sage Epictetus preaches: "The Logos of the philosophers doth promise us peace which God proclaimed through his Logos." - Epictetus, The Teachings of Epictetus, 134, Chapter 9.2

The Roman Vitruvius writes: "Let no one think I have erred if I believe in the Logos." - Vitruvius, De Architectura, from the Introduction to the Loeb edition

Clement of Alexandria acknowledges that: "It may be freely granted that the Greeks received some glimmers of the divine Logos" and he quotes the legendary Pagan sage Orpheus, who proclaims: "Behold the Logos divine. Tread well the narrow path of life and gaze on Him, the world's great ruler, our immortal king." - Clement of Alexandria, Clement of Alexandria, 167. Clement calls Orpheus an 'interpreter of the Mysteries'.

But this Pagan concept is much older than the Greeks. It can be found in the ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts of the Third Dynasty which were written more than 2,500 years before the Christian era! - Murray, M. A. (1949), 46. In the Pyramid Texts of Saqqara creation takes place by and through words. By the Eighteenth Dynasty (c. 1550BCE) the theory of the Word of God as the creative power was well developed, as was the concept of the Pharaoh as the Word of God incarnate.

How should we understand this ancient concept of the Logos? In ancient Greek, Logos has many levels of meaning which our term 'Word' does not begin to capture. - Fidler,D.(1993), 38

One of these is expressed by the Church fathers Clement and Origen, who describe the Logos as 'the Idea of Ideas'. It is God's primal thought. - Mead, G. R. S. (1906), 388. According to Hessychius the Logos is 'the cause of action'. It is what instigates creation. Logos could also be rendered 'Reason'. This can be justifiably be interpreted in many ways: as the 'reason for things' and as 'the ordering principle' and also as 'the faculty by which the mind understands'. St John's gospel could be translated as: 'In the beginning was the Reason.' St John writes that the Logos 'was life and the life was the light of men', Sextus The Pythagorean likewise states, 'The reason that is in you is the light of your life,' see Guthrie, K. S. (1987), 268, Saying number 31.

The legendary Pagan sage Hermes Trismegistus expresses exactly the same concept. He describes the Logos - the Idea of Ideas - emerging from the Oneness of God like a word or thought. - The Hermetica, Book 1.5. See Freke and Gandy (1997), 38: 'Mycalming Word is the Son of
God.'

For Hermes, as for Clement and Origen, the Logos is the first thought of the great Mind of God, through which he creates the universe.

Christians personify the relationship between God and the Logos as that between a father and a son. The Logos is the 'Son of God'. Yet they also teach that the Father and the Son are aspects of each other. St John expresses this paradox: "The Logos was with God, and the Logos was God."

These are actually ancient Pagan doctrines, propounded by sages such as Hermes Trismegistus, who also calls the Logos 'the Son of God'. - Copenhaver, B. P. (1992), 1, Book 1.6: 'The light giving word who comes from Mind is the Son of God.'

He explains that like mind and thought, the Father and the Son are really One, but when separated from each other they appear as two.

Likewise, in the sixth century, BCE Heraclitus had written: 'The Father and the Son are the same.' - Quoted in Guthrie, W. K. C. (1952), 227. Hippolytus says, 'Everyone knows he said that the Father and the Son are the same.'

Clement acknowledges that Euripides had 'divined as in a riddle that the Father and the Son are one God'. - Quoted in Harrison, J. (1922), 480

How should we understand this mysterious relationship between the Logos and God, the Father and the Son?

Logos also means 'Ratio' or 'Relationship'.

St John's gospel could also be rendered as beginning: 'In the beginning was the Relationship.

'What is this relationship?

It is the primal relationship between Father and Son, mind and thought, consciousness and what it is conscious of, the Creator and the creation, the Oneness and the manyness of things. This relationship is one of connectivity because the two are One.

It is, therefore, as Jesus teaches, essentially a relationship of love. This doctrine can be traced back to the Greek tradition. Eros was a favorite deity of Socrates, Plato, the Pythagoreans, and the Orphics. According to the Orphic creation myth, Night laid a silver egg in the darkness from which hatched the 'First-Born' god Eros, see Graves, R. (1955), 30.

The myth relates that the original Oneness split into two halves which became the pattern of all dualities, heaven and Earth, spirit and matter, male and female. The immediate impulse to arise from this was the desire to reunite what had been divided and in consequence, love was born. Eros is sometimes called Phanes, or Light, but as the Orphic myth developed he came to be personified by the philosophers as the Logos.

Clement writes: 'The Son is the Consciousness of God. The Father only sees the world as reflected in the Son.’ - Quoted in Inge, W. R. (1899), 87

A Christian Gnostic gospel likewise explains: "When first the Father, the not even the One, beyond all possibility of thought and being, who is neither male nor female, willed that His ineffability should come into being, and His His invisibility take form, He opened His mouth and uttered a Word, like unto Himself; who appearing before Him, became the means of Hisseeing what He himself was - namely Himself appearing in the form of His own invisibility," - Mead, G. R. S. (1906), 363.

In a Gnostic Christian tract, Jesus likewise explains, 'I am the Son of the Father who is beyond all existence ... while I, His Son, am in existence -Mead, 381.

The Logos is God conscious of Himself. It is the One Soul of the Universe which is conscious through all beings. This is why Heraclitus sets out to find himself, but discovers a 'Logos shared by all' because the Logos is our essential common identity.

The Christian philosopher Origen writes: "As our body, while consisting of many members, is yet held together by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an immense living being, which is held together by One Soul - the power and the Logos of God." - Quoted in Fidler, D. (1993), 48.

The Logos is what connects all things together, what makes them one Whole. It is the image of an otherwise transcendent God, the mediating principle through which a mystic can experience the transcendental Oneness. This is why Clement teaches: "The man with whom the Logos dwells is made like God and is beautiful. That man becomes God". For Clement, one may have many teachers in life, but the ultimate spiritual teacher is the Logos itself, "the Teacher from whom all instruction comes".

Just as St John tells us that Jesus is an embodiment of the Logos, so the Pagan initiate Plutarch teaches that Osiris is "the Logos in itself, transcendent and impassible". - Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 372e-3b, quoted in De Vogel, C. J. (1966), 211. As early Church fathers admitted, Hermes was actually called 'the Logos' by the Greeks.

A text of the Gnostic Christians even echoes the words of St John about Christ: 'Hermes is the Word who has expressed and fashioned the things that have been, that are and that will be - See Fidler, D. (1993), 46, quoting the Naassene Gnostics attacked by Hippolytus.

By equating Jesus Christ with the Logos, St John is making it clear that he is a personification of this One Soul of the Universe, as Osiris-Dionysus is for Pagans. Christ is in us all because he is the essential divine nature we all share.

From this perspective, the Son of God is not a historical figure who lives in time, but an eternal philosophical principle, for, as Origen writes, 'The Father did not beget the Son, but ever is begetting him.' - Origen, The Eternal Generation of the Son, quoted in Stevenson, J.(1957), 204

So, is there any real difference between Christian and Pagan understanding of the Logos?

Once again, it is only found in the Christian idea that, unlike the Pagan god-man who mythically embodied the Logos, Jesus literally embodied this philosophical principle.

St Augustine writes of his studies of Pagan philosophy: "I read there that God the Word was born not of flesh and blood, nor of the will of man, nor the will of the flesh, but of God. But that the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us, I read not there." - St Augustine, Confessions, Book 7 v 14

The essential idea which divided the Pagans and Christians of the ancient world was the Christian belief that one man, and one man only, had literally been the Logos made flesh.

To the Pagans the notion that the Logos we all share could in some way be manifest in a single human being was impossible.

The extraordinary claim that a carpenter from Nazareth actually was the one and only Son of God and incarnation of the Logos was the only thing that Christians could latch onto that definitively differentiated them from their Pagan neighbours.

They would, however, spend centuries arguing over what it could possibly mean.

oteneaaron:
S
They would, however, spend centuries arguing over what it could possibly mean.

The argument is settled for man has experienced "power in the tongue" moment. So they ought to understand what The Word is!

Veecruz:


The argument is settled for man has experienced "power in the tongue" moment. So they ought to understand what The Word is!

You do have a point tho.