8/12/2019 Jerusalem Priest Hood of God

1/1

According to the esoteric theology of the Jerusalem priesthood God was a divine man with ablack body, called in the Hebrew Bible rpel which means literally thick blackness! According tothis priestly theology, God at creation was originally a divine man of pure light, with a body of purelight called his kab"d or #Glory$! Because the intensity of this light threatened to burn the materialworld, %ahweh&'lohim, the (reator&God of )srael*the Bible, cloaked his luminous body, kab"d,with an e+ternal black body, rpel! his black body served as a $veil$ to his luminous body,refracting the intense light so as to not burn up creation! his was the esoteric theology of theJerusalem priesthood who were responsible for the Hebrew Bible as we know it! Around the -stcentury A., a particular circle of priests left the temple and revolted against the faith of theirancestors! hese renegade priests would become the earliest developers of the #Gnostic myth/ asclassically defined!

Gnosticism was a religious*philosophical movement of the -st & 0th centuries A.! hough thismovement was made up of various groups, the earliest formed around this group of Jewishpriests who, ama1ingly, developed a disgust for the God of )srael! Gnostic te+ts such theApocraphon of John, the Hypostasis of the Archons, and 2n the 2rigin of the 3orld leave nodoubt as to why4 it was the material blackness of this God, or his body, that this group of priestsrevolted against! hey had come under the spell of Greek philosophy! 5articularly influential ontheir thinking was the 5ythagorean able of 2pposites! According to 5ythagoras, that which ischaracteri1ed by light, spirit, and maleness was good, and that characteri1ed by darkness,materiality, and femininity was bad6 the two groups were antithetical! he Gnostics thus #split/ theGod of )srael in two! hey worshiped as the supreme God the luminous anthropos of .ay 2ne ofGenesis with his brilliant light&body, usually called phos, which name is Greek and means both#light/ and #man!/ he Gnostics separated this luminous man 7phos8 from his black material #veil!/he latter was e+clusively identified with the God of the Bible, whom they demoni1ed and re9ectedbecause of his creation of a material 7and thus evil8 world! 3ith his black material body, the Godof the Bible 7%ahweh&'lohim8 was seen as evil and even e:uated with the devil at times! Becausemateriality was associated with femininity according to the 5ythagorean able of 2pposites, theseearly Gnostics represented %ahweh&'lohim/s black material body as a black goddess, ;ophia&

Achamoth 7see image8! his is part of the history of the Black mother Goddess that you wont getfrom .an Brown/s .aichardson and >asaki %esufu&?uhammad!