Do We Know Why and How Gnosticism Failed?

  Whoever came up with the idea of being Born Again as a life changing experiance was a genious.  I don't know whether Christianity or Gnosticism thought of it first.  The concencus seems to be that all of "Gnosticism" is a cheap knock-off copy of Christianity only in heritical and perverted form.  As you know I have been highly skeptical of this view believing it to be ass backwards.  The first three gospels in the Bible don't talk about a "born again" experiance.  And when John talks about it with Nicodemus we aren't sure whether or not he was referring to death and a spiritual resurrection, or a life altering experiance in this life.  I looked up Gnosticism in the Wikipedia and I didn’t recognize the information in it.  Did they revamp the article?  There was some Jewish figure named Belbo that was the embodiment of “knowledge”.   They talked him being of the Jewish priestly tradition.  I have been looking for a connection between the Jewish Sanhedredrin and the priests- - - as somehow being a forerunner of Jewish Christianity at least.  I'm still perplexed why they say James and the Apostles hung around the Jewish Temple.  I thought they hated each other but that's just what we have been led (or taught) to believe.  The important thing is that ignorance and not sin holds you captive and knowledge is the cure.  It seems almost ANY religion other than Christianity gets tagged as Gnostic by the Wikipedia.  Before I thought that no human effort would bring you “salvation” but it was only a lucky fluke that people came to have that Born Again experience. I'm not entirely sure where I got this idea.  It was sort of a Bhddahisc "awakening of the soul" or something.   It speaks of "Life and life more abondantly" but I'm told it isn't "Zoa" for biological life, but more of a life of the spirit.  At any rate this type of Salvation from the decaption of the Demiurge or whatever is the heart and core of most Gnosticism.  Since Gnosticism didn't get going till after 90 or 95 AD it's natural to assume by many that it imitated Christianity.  It saw the train leaving the station and wanted to get on board and cash in.  It's a wonder Christianity was "the survivor" out of all of this.  In the book of Acts this knowledge of being the sole survivor was on the minds of people who said "Other messiah's come and go but ours is the lasting one.  Christianity in other words stood the test of time.  My socialogical side asks "Just what kind of POWER did the Christian Church have over people that all the other faiths didn't have.  (Selah)  Is it all Darwin and "survival of the fittest"?  Are the heartist forms of biological form always the mot moral?  The Holy Roman Empire lasted hundreds of years.  Where is it now?  China has been communist for seventy years and has never been more prosperous.  It would seem that repression pays.  Pellican Bay prison in California has been around for decades and it's one of the systematic venues for isolation and torture known to man.  Sometimes cults put a lock on the brain itself and cam pose a crippling form of isolation.  And personally I think "knowledge" is a good thing and not a bad thing and I think more of Christianity needs to be cerebral.  But as we see from our president, being either cerebral or logical or morally consistent isn't always necessary.  Just chew on that one a while.  But people have this knee reflex of "Gnosticism - - - Baad!"  

ROCK AND ROLL REWIND

Do You Want to Dance? (Bobby Freeman)

Dem Bones (Classic version)

Good Rocking at Midnight (1949 artist)

Such a Night (Clyde Mc Phatter)

Loop de Loop Mambo (The Robins)

White Port & Lemon Juice (late 1955 artist)

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (Platters)

Summertime Blues (Eddie Cochran)

Claudette (Everly Brothers)

Leave My Kitten Alone (artist?)

I Want to Be a Private Eye (Olympics) (?)

Take Our Some Insurance On Me, Baby (Jim Reeves)

Along Comes Jones (Coasters)

Living in the USA  (Chuck Berry)

I Want to Walk You Home (Fats Domino)

You’ll Be Mine (tape of Silver Beatles)

Down the Mississippi Down To New Orleans (US Bonds)

You Beat Me To the Punch (Mary Wells)

The Night Time is the Right Time (Ray Charles)

Get On My Pony and Ride (Dee Dee Sharp)

Push-over (Etta James) (?)

Ko Ko Joe (Righteous Brothers)

It’s In His Kiss (Betty Everett)

Bits and Pieces (Dave Clark Five)

La, La, La, La, La (summer 1964)

We don’t have an album cover for you yet.  Maybe a cartoon of somebody at a desk pushing the rewind button and showing with arrows the action of the tape.  Most of these songs have been heard in Rhapsody in Black.  1959 was a banner year yesterday that had a lot of songs that were actually hits, as opposed to his usual.  This is the summer that John Lennon must have most remembered when it came to influencing his picks for the Beatles.  In late summer of that year the four of them including Stu Sutcliffe and Ken Brown formed a band in Pete Best’s mother’s basement. OK Stu hadn't learned to play guitar yet.   It’s what you might call the “true beginnings” of the Beatles.  Lennon used to say that they didn’t need a drummer because we were so naturally tight and rhymithical without one.  “You’ll be Mine” has plenty of chances to get kicked off this album but I decided to keep it as a souveneer of what an early “Silver Beatle” recording was like.  Then we have “Take Out Some Insurance on me Baby” by Jim Reeves and “Leave My Kitten Alone”.