Religion

telling newcomers what the gospels meant. Anyway, for the next thousands of years, most people couldn't read, so the church rulers were free to cherry pick and change scripture as it suited them and their theology. Missionaries like Paul traveled from community to community preparing people for the secret teachings (this even before the parables were written), judging the people's readiness. All this changed when Jerusalem fell and most communities were left suspended in incomplete knowledge.

There are many clues, however, as to who wrote the gospels and this explains the anomalies. The synoptic gospels make clear that there are higher spiritual truths; orthodoxy downplays them completely because secret teachings would obviously interfere with their sole focus on the literal level of scripture. There is only one group touting secrets and differing levels of soul growth: the Gnostic, proto as the movement was then. The Gnostics encouraged knowledge; Orthodoxy encourages blind faith and obedience to dogma, a spiritually stultifying stance. If you study the later Gnostics, you find writers unafraid to use logic creatively, although I find their cosmology too overdone. However, proto Gnostic beliefs can be found in later heresies, testimony to the fact that there were originally two basic levels of Christianity, the newcomers' fixation with the literal, "biographical" level of knowledge with jesus as sole savior and the Gnostic knowledge of theology which focuses on soul development for salvation. The reason Christians can't get to the heart of the secretive parables is that modern Christianity tries to force its notion of Jesus's role as savior onto teachings which explain Jesus's role as the imparter of knowledge which will encourage salvific soul development.

The biographies' literal agreement was not as important as providing opportunities to interject imagery to enhance the message. Surprisingly, thanks to modern research and internet testimony, it's the secret teachings which are provable. The church continues to deprive their congregations of this knowledge, but it could be implemented by having an additional level of discussion for those who are dissatisfied with the literal biographies. As more and more evidence is found that the biological info can't be relied upon, exploring the truths in the secretive parables could make churches more relevant!