Jesus [Latin of Greek
Iesous from Hebrew
Yeshua` contraction of
Yehoshua` a proper name meaning savior or helper, or that which is spacious or widespread] Indubitably a historical character, whose life as narrated in the Gospels is pure allegory, a story of the initiation chamber. There is a story current from medieval times among the Jews, mentioned in the
Sepher Toledoth Yeshua` (Book of the Generations of Jesus), to the effect that the Jesus of the Gospels was a Jehoshua ben Panthera, a Jewish adept living about 100 BC. Jesus illustrates the typical sequence in occult history:
1) the coming of a leader or teacher to a people needing to be led and taught;
2) his passing, followed by the adoration, even worship, of his followers;
3) the gradual transformation of historic facts into more or less embroidered legends or mythological tales, which in time cluster so thickly about his memory that his identity as a person, and even his name, are lost;
4) the myth, allegory, or legend; and
5) the efforts of other, later teachers to explain, interpret, and reinstate this earlier teacher, now a purely mythic figure or else materialized and misunderstood.
The Christian Gospels appear to have originated in mystery-dramas, beautiful and often sublime in their inner significances, in which were depicted the experiences of the neophyte and adept in his union with the Logos,
to be continue "
Jesus2 "
