“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I also told Jane about the entertaining time I’d had this morning checking Biblical genealogies, preparatory to the note I want to write for Chapter 5 of Dreams. Seth’s elders would have lived long before those in the Bible — or would they? For Adam was the first man, at least according to the Bible. It would depend upon what terms one chose within which to view the situation.

(Long pause.) The Bible is a conglomeration of parables and stories, intermixed with some unclear memories of much earlier times. The bible that you recognize — or that is recognized — is not the first, however, but was compiled from several earlier ones as man tried to look back, so to speak, and recount his past and predict his future.

(4:00. Carla and Shannon took her vitals — temperature 98.3. Jane said she wanted to have a session. I mentioned to her my idea that Seth’s elders must predate by far the elders of the Bible, and she agreed.)

I checked several Bibles, a Biblical almanac, and a Biblical dictionary. [...] (Why isn’t Eve’s age given in the Bible?) Enoch, the fifth elder listed after Seth, lived for a mere 365 years, but sired Methuselah, who at 969 years is the oldest individual recorded in the Bible. [...]

Second: “The Bible is a conglomeration of parables and stories, intermixed with some unclear memories of much earlier times. The Bible that you recognize—or that is recognized—is not the first, however, but was compiled from several earlier ones as man tried to look back, so to speak, recount his past and predict his future. Such Bibles existed, not written down but carried orally, as mentioned some time ago, by the Speakers. [...]

1. Shades of the great ages given for those patriarchs in the Bible! [...]

The Bible is a language that you no longer understand. [...] Certain key words in other words, if you will forgive me, were highly symbolic, and if you read the Bible along one surface line then you read a story highly ambiguous, called by many, but if you understood the meaning of the Word, as divorced from the literal interpretation of the Word, then you read an allegory and the allegory was highly important. [...]

It is too late this evening to go into the allegory of the Bible. [...] People in the Bible often were the personification of certain human characteristics. [...]

([Gert:] “Has the church, either through the interpretation of the Bible or the text, refused to let this be known to its members?”)

[...] They aren’t mentioned in the Bible. [...]

(Possibly reflecting his early Speaker practices — which may be continuing on subjective levels — Ron is active in lay church work, and knows much about the Bible and related subjects. [...]

(After the session Ron explained the Second Coming as given in the Bible in Matthew 24. [...]

[...] There is also a connection with misinterpretation of the Bible. [...]

[...] (See the 614th session in Chapter Two.) This belief in your society also harks back to the Bible and Christ’s association with the poor rather than the rich.

[...] There’s no way to assign any reasonably accurate date to when God the Father created all things, as described in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. (The Biblical account of Creation makes evolution an impossibility.) Nor can the date of Creation be arrived at by counting the Bible’s lists of generations, as given in the Old Testament, since these may well be incomplete.

[...] The Bible, for example, says that man is put in dominion over the animals, and it seems as if upgrading the consciousnesses of animals must somehow degrade your own. [...]

[...] She knows little about either — or about the Bible itself. As an example, she didn’t think “…the kingdom of God is within you” was from the Bible, but I located several versions of this saying by Jesus easily enough later: “For lo, the kingdom…”; “…for in fact…”; “For behold…”

With every translation the Bible has changed its meaning, being interpreted in the language of the times. [...]

There are indeed lost gospels, written by men in other countries in that time, relating to Christ’s unknown life, to episodes not given in the Bible. [...]

Before I continue I would suggest that if others “use Personal Reality like a bible,” Ruburt could at least take it seriously. [...]

(A true use of Personal Reality would be to use it like a bible – although not slavishly – but such use would unite the critical and intuitional faculties. [...]

[...] The Bible is but one aspect, and highly distorted, of revelations that occurred, in your terms, in the past. [...]

[...] But the term Israel still stands for one individual, along with its multitudinous parts, and all of the colorful, feared, anguished or enticing heroes of the bible represent elements of each person’s soul, personified, set momentarily alive in myth. [...]

(She said that she also had images that she didn’t describe during the session: “I saw the Jews marching across the desert like in the Bible, and Moses leading them to the Promised Land. [...]

(The booklet explains much — all of the multitude of sittings and standings and kneelings that we went through in the pews; the gifts carried to the altar by the Bumbalo grandchildren; the hymns we listened to; the selections from the Bible read by the various priests; the responses we gave to the appropriate passages recited by the head priest, who read from the Gospel of John and other Biblical passages.

[...] The questions themselves, and forgive me, my dear Lady of Florence, the questions themselves could not be answered within a semblance of truth because the questions were basically meaningless in the real fabric of reality so this has much to do with the distortions also that have come down through the ages, both in the Bible and many other writings. [...]

4. Many readers of the Bible will remember the famous statement in Genesis 6:4, that “There were giants in the earth in those days.” [...]

To a lesser degree the same question applies to any highly inspirational creativity—which, again, has always been questioned by the church organization, which has been firmly against even, say, individual interpretation of the Bible itself. [...]

[...] Nor is she familiar with the Bible.

[...] There are “lost” portions of the Bible having to do with sexuality, and with Christ’s beliefs concerning it, that were considered blasphemous and did not come down to you through history.

The royal family had many offspring, and there is a connection with a pope, and a bible with gold covers, and a crest. [...]

[...] There are classic accounts of precognitive dreams, or prophetic dreams involving saints and honored personages in the Bible. [...]

She sees herself supported in a religious sense by conventional figures from the Bible. [...]