1 KEYS OF THE MASTER Aramaic Key Words and Divine Concepts In the Authentic Historical Teaching Of the MASTER JESUS Lewis Keizer, M.Div., Ph.D. C. 1984 Lewis Keizer Reprinted Home Temple Press 1999 Donated to Home Temple Priesthood Training Program 2001 Reprinted Wisdom Seminars E-Book 2004 2 PREFACE This little volume is intended as a guide for one who is undertaking a serious or renewed study of the Teachings of the Master Jesus. It is as appropriate for one who has completed traditional biblical studies as it is for a lay person, since neither usually has any background in the language and idioms used by the Master. Oddly enough, traditional Christian seminary education builds a keyword knowledge of New Testament Greek that is excellent for grasping the stepped-down, distorted, and hellenized doctrines of the early churches, but useless for gaining an understanding of the historical Teachings of the Master Jesus. I have alphabetized and cross-referenced key Aramaic words used by Jesus that are basic to an understanding of his Teaching. These are interspersed with certain key Greek mystery terms used by the Initiate Paul, and with common English words useful in comprehending dominical Teachings or in need of clarification due to the inadequacies of medieval and fundamentalist Christian theology. This is not a theological word study in the modern sense of “theology.” Theologia was originally the Divine Science or Gnosis. It was carried on by Greek scholars like the Stoics Epictetus and Cornutus, and the Neoplatonists Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus, as the synthetical and comparative study of world religions known to Roman-Hellenistic culture. In other words, it was• a search to recover what Blavatsky called the ancient Secret Doctrine through comparative mythology and metaphorical, allegorical interpretation of world scriptures. The same task lies before us today, but with far better tools. Scientific archaeology, anthropology, higher and lower literary criticism, various branches of historical and linguistic studies, and a variety of developing technologies in the history, phenomenology, and comparison of religions--all are at the service of the serious student. True, many stumblingblocks have been left by sincere but biased researchers of religion and history determined to establish their distorted views through unbalanced evaluations and presentations of evidence. But in the long run it will be the careful, unbiased, truth-seeking scholar with both high mental and active intuitive development who will make the lasting contributions to the Divine Science--not the separative, cultic, secret-society occultist who accepts all “secret knowledge” uncritically, and accepts as equally valid all psychic and subjective sources of occult information. I offer here a mere preliminary groping at that true theologia, rooted in the eternal Word of the Master Jesus. May it serve to inspire those who come after me. Lewis Keizer CHRISTMAS SEASON, 1984 Note to the E-Book edition: This was scanned from a typed manuscript that could not produce Italics. Thus all non-English words will be shown underlined. 3 KEYS OF THE MASTER For a fictional biography of Jesus with all concepts embedded in the narrative and detailed Glossary at end, read Keizer’s Yeshua: The Unknown Jesus Adonai (Hebrew) The LORD God of Israel and One God of mankind. “Lord; Master of the World.” Cf. LORD, SHEM, YAHWEH. Aion (Greek), Aeon (English) An hypostasis or stage of divine externalization, devolution, or creation. The gnostic pleroma or full array of aeons is the universe of universes. These exist in the Ennead or Ninth Heaven of hermetic mysticism, or at the Merkabah or Divine Throne of the Most High God in Jewish mysticism. The aeons were associated with the constellations of ~the zodiac, which were placed above the starry firmament of the Ogdoas or Eighth Heaven--dwelling place of ascended heroes (asketes, “striving athletes, ascetics”), the perfect human souls of saints (hagioi, “holy ones”). Therefore the twelvefold division of aeons (24 at fifteen degree divisions, 36 as decans, 360 as the “intelligences” of each degree) ruled times, seasons, and spiritual energies enlivening human unfoldment. Thus an “aeon” was also a term for an astrological period of time or a kairos (“season, period”). The Master Jesus brought humanity from the aeon of Aries into that of Pisces. Finally, there is a complex aeonology in the Teachings of the Master specifying the current corrupt age on earth (“this aeon”), the invisible Malkuth or Rulership of God extending throughout all universes (“that Aeon, the Aeon”) which is a Sabbath of Shalom (“Inner Peace, Wholeness, Harmony”), and the pleroma of aeons (“an Aeon of aeons, the Aeon of aeons”). Al! these are translated wholesale as “forever” or “forever and ever” in English Bibles, which is not only incorrect, but provides a false scriptural basis for fundamentalist ideas like “eternal damnation, eternal hell, eternal salvation.” Cf. ETERNITY, FOREVER, HELL, OLAM, SALVATION. Amen (Hebrew) Pronounced “ah-main,” this triliteral root is a vital key to understanding much of the Master’s Teaching. It is the root for Greek pistis and English “faith.” Church theology distorted the what Jesus taught about amen or “faith” to fit credal and dogmatic “belief.” Amen means “faithfulness, fidelity, perseverence” in discipleship. It is the amen or vitality and perseverance of the mustard seed that makes it grow into the greatest of all bushes in Palestine. When the Master says “keep on seeking, keep on praying, keep on knocking at the door,” which is the proper translation of both Greek and underlying Aramaic verbal forms, he is speaking of perseverant amen in action. When Jesus emphasizes the ever-striving interior struggle for right motivation (cf. YETZER) and the kenotic total outer commitment to works of love and human service required by true discipleship (cf. DISCIPLE), he speaks of the same faithfulness of amen that the Epistle of James remembers when it tells us, “Amen without works is dead.” When the Baptist speaks of submission to God (cf. NACHAM), this is the beginning of amen as disciplic “obedience,” and when Jesus speaks of seeking before all things the Malkuth (“Rulership, Guidance”) of Heaven or of God (cf. MALKUTH, KINGDOM OF GOD), he speaks of the amen 4 of obedience to the sacred Inner Guidance of Heaven. The only context for “faith” as “belief in” theological or dogmatic precepts in the New Testament is that of later apostles like Paul and John speaking of the necessity for “belief” that Jesus is the Messiah, or “belief in” the sacred authenticity of the Master’s life, works, and Teachings. Unfortunately, this is the context for the canonical New Testament presentation of the Master’s Teaching. For no longer do we have apostles transmitting the Gospel of Jesus, but churches evangelizing the Gospel about Jesus the Christ. Already the focus on authentic dominical Teaching has been lost, and there is now a focus upon the Evangel of the Church. Emphasis shifts from the Eternal Word of God delivered by the Divine Messianic Avatar to the doctrine about the persona of the Avatar Himself. Yes, the Message of the Master was Christological in essence, but it was a Christology that took as its first premise the Imitatio Christi, the Halakah or Way of the Master that must be trod by every disciple, and that leads to Christhood and the Perfected Human Soul. Instead of this, however, the Church was forced into alternating environments of mild toleration by Roman officials as a religio illicitum and cruel official persecution and public martyrdom. Faith became synonymous with fidelity to Christian belief under trial and torture. After Constantine legalized Christianity under state patronage and insisted upon theological and scriptural uniformity, faith became credal. It was at this point that true discipleship began to be realized outside the Church in the deserts of Syria and Egypt. Church hierarchy degenerated into an arm of the ruling classes as the state became the Church, and holy monasticism took roots as the Christian Mystic Way, replacing the Platonistic ecstasies of the Greek Fathers and Divines with the gnostical and ascetic striving of those who would purify their hearts from the kosmos. Now faith became an ascetic practice done outside the context of human service and contact. Later Protestantism would substitute scriptural for papal authority, making its many creeds and confessions into the content of faith, that is, “belief.” The Catholic Counter-Reformation followed suit, so that non- intellectual, non-theological expressions of faith could appear only outside the context of ecclesiastical Christianity, either in the secular-humanistic manifestations of theology called arts, medicine, and sciences, in the quietist mystic communities of devotional Protestantism and catholicism, or in the occult secret fraternities and hermetical, Platonistic, kabbalistic schools of medieval Europe. In all this, the fullness of sacred amen was never practiced or realized in the Church. Amen is the “lost Word of the Masons, the sacred AUM of India, and the Great Key of the Master. When ever you see “faith, faith in, belief” in the New Testament, see if it can be better translated, “faithfulness, perserverence, fidelity, obedience to Heaven.” If not, the context is probably not historical, and probably derives from the interpretation of the early gentile churches--although the basic logion (cf. LOGIA) may be authentic in another setting. The New Testament Greek pisteuein eis, translated “to believe in,” probably remembers an Aramaic idiom “to keep faith with” in authentic dominical Teaching. The Pauline pistis followed by genitive in respect to Jesus is probably subjective, “the faithfulness of Jesus,” and Pauline pistis followed by dative in respect to Jesus usually means, “fidelity to, faithfulness with, keeping faith with” the Master Jesus. The Master often made the solemn preface, “Amen, amen, I say unto you,” meaning, “Faithfully,” translated in the King James, “Verily, verily.” The root AMN refers to something that stands in strength and integrity.