In the first century, Mythos – story, mythology, ritual – remained much more in balance with Logos – history, facts, logic – than they do today. We live in a scientific world that expects things to have logical explanations. Logos and Mythos are different ways of knowing and they are both valuable. We can give someone a new heart with medical science, and we can fix a broken heart with tenderness. Logos and Mythos work together.

First question, Evan asked: If the early Jesus followers faithfully preserved his message, how were these same people willful distorters?

They weren’t. Between 30 and 70 CE, for four decades, peasants told Jesus’ story in an oral setting. Scholars now believe that the earliest collections of his sayings began to appear at this time: The Thomas collection and the so-called “Q” or source verses found nearly verbatim in the Mark and Matthew gospels. There is much more about this in The Jesus Sayings.

The point is, these were not the distorters, at least not by design. These were storytellers, working with Myth, not history. We know from the child’s game of “telephone” that a message whispered from one to another picks up nuance and shifts over time. This is the natural evolution of popular legend and mythology.

The actual and more devious distortion of Jesus’ message occurred over the next three centuries, and throughout the Middle Ages, as many doctrines and rules were attributed to Jesus for reasons that had more to do with political power than with accurate history or divine wisdom.

“Amen” and “truly, truly I say to you” were expressions of personal authority. Jesus spoke from his own experience and authority, not because he had a franchise from the Temple monopoly.

"Find the light inside" parallels in the gospels: This idea does have New Testament gospel parallels: We find the idea in Thomas 33, about lighting a lamp and sharing it with the world, paralleled in Mark 4:21, Luke 8:16, and Matthew 5:15. This is an example of the earliest layer of Luke and Matthew, the “Q” verses that likely came from an early source.

How did Jesus hear about Taoism?

First of all, yes, parallels in the teachings of Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus, the Cynics and others can be attributed to similar spiritual insights leading to similar expressions. Nevertheless, some of the parallels among these ancient teachers and schools appear uncanny, and may suggest influence. In the first century, a camel caravan could travel between China and the Mediterranean in nine months to a year. Since Chinese silks appear in Athens and Antioch we have no trouble understanding how Chinese ideas or Vedic ideas could appear in Jerusalem or Galilee, which they almost certainly did.

And as Vivian points out, “coincidence” may simple be the fact that spiritual insight brings observers to the same truths and understanding.

And as Mieke says, yes, it is “always up to us!” Jesus urged his followers not to rely on ritual and convention but to know themselves and to see truth for themselves.

The problem for later religious institutions is that you cannot hand out franchises for self-knowledge, so this message of Jesus got buried under centuries of doctrine and rules. Many of the early gospels – Thomas, Mary, Philip, and others – were outlawed and burned. We have them now because some brave monks in Egypt buried them, and some lucky peasants and brilliant archaeologists have found them.

More later. Rex.