Bøger af Paula Gott

For two thousand years Christians have believed, and taught others, that Luke's Gospel and The Acts of the Apostles contain historical and biographical information about the founders of their faith. Agnostics and atheists consider Luke and Acts to be nothing more than fantastic myths, written by and about superstitious, religious zealots. Neither side has ever considered that the other might be right, or that they, themselves, might be wrong. Gabriel's Gift: The Messages and Mysteries in Luke and Acts, proves that these biblical accounts of early Christianity contain accurate biographical and historical information. It proves that Luke and Acts were written by a skilled and educated historian, and supporter of Jesus, who abhorred superstition. And it reveals Luke's identity, unknown until now. But before the Christians call for a celebration of their victory in this two thousand year old debate, there's a catch: Gabriel's Gift also proves that Luke and Acts contain references to pagan myths and legends, some ancient, that were popular at the time Luke sat down to write his two books. Luke plagiarized a substantial amount of material from earlier Christian writers, primarily Mark and the unknown "Q." And he also took material from the Old Testament, Euripides, Homer, and other epic and classical literature from antiquity. However, these acts of plagiarism were not due to laziness or a desire to deceive. The purpose was to preserve the truth. Luke's actions were not initiated to further the belief in mythology as fact. They were undertaken to tell what was happening to Jesus' doctrine in the first century. Luke is, without doubt, the most adept writer of biographical and historical documents to ever master the craft. He used a clever technique that virtually assured the intact transmission of his message. It has been said that "History is written by the victor." An avid student of history, Luke had become aware of that fact. And he was acutely aware that the "victors' historical account" would not be "The Truth" that Jesus and his disciples taught. He was determined not to let that happen. One of the most popular of ancient legends in the first century was the story of the war between the Greeks and Trojans and of the magnificent success of the Trojan Horse. Luke devised a plan that trumped even that brilliant military maneuver. His plan, in essence, also utilized a Trojan Horse, but it was one that would be built by the enemy. Luke was able to predict the raw materials that would go into its construction, so he quietly and secretly created and furnished these materials. The "Trojan Horse" became known as the Holy Bible; the raw materials that Luke provided were the stories in Luke's Gospel and The Acts of the Apostles. Gabriel's Gift is the first book ever written that reveals how and why Luke wrote his stories as he did; it reveals how he exposed the lies and deceptions of the "victors." Luke's ingenuity, and his ability to accurately predict the future based on his knowledge of the past, will be the key in Jesus' ultimate triumph over the false prophets about whom He warned. There is a triumphant message within the pages of this book for the true Christians, those who want to know Jesus the Nazarene Christ and want to honor his message. But there is also triumph for the agnostics and atheists who have been unable to accept many of the rituals and requirements of the various traditional and fundamentalist churches. The exciting thing about Gabriel's Gift, and about Luke's ultimate triumph over the false prophets and antichrists is that everyone is a winner. The Bible does contain The Truth about God and about Jesus and the Nazarenes. It just isn't the God, the Jesus, or The Truth most Christians have believed it to be. Gabriel's Gift is for Christians, agnostics, and atheists who believe they know the truth about Jesus. It is a fascinating documentary of mystery and intrigue in the first cen

Kacie Dugan was forced to grow up at a very early age. She was the older of two girls, children of alcoholic parents, young observers of regular Saturday night brawls. She assumed an adult role as peacemaker, protector, and problem-solver before she was eight years old. But this background serves her well decades later when as office manager for Custom Benefit Plans, a third party administrator for health insurance claims, she realizes she is dealing with more than just greed in the HMO industry. People were dying as Freedom HMO delayed approval of urgently needed health care treatment. Her boss, Caine Daniels, had entered into a joint venture agreement with Freedom, and what she discovers about their unwritten policies and procedures is abhorrent. She wastes no time pointing out the unethical if not illegal policies; she is met with brick walls and ugly words. But she knows how to overcome fear, and she knows how to dig for the truth; threats of violence are nothing new to her. When Caine receives a blackmail demand for $150,000, along with an embarrassing Polaroid taken during a drunken college frat party, Kacie offers to help. But finding the perpetrator is made more difficult by Caine's history. He has managed to make many enemies during his climb to financial success: his marketing manager, Ned Ash, resents his success and his belittling treatment; the local hospital administrator, Evan Sheridan, accused him of his own type of blackmail for using the hospital's offer to purchase Custom Benefit Plans in order to negotiate a sweeter deal with Freedom; and of course there are always the competitors, some victims of Caine's ruthlessness, others simply looking for a bigger piece of the pie. Ash and Sheridan join forces and approach Freedom with a sweet deal of their own. Ash wants exclusive marketing rights to Freedom's insurance plans; Sheridan wants an exclusive contract to provide hospital and physician services to Freedom's clients. Freedom sees a chance to downsize by closing Custom's claims office and moving administration to one of the other shops; shareholders just love downsizing. And they see a chance to gain greater control over Caine Daniels. His ability to generate business and revenues is remarkable. He runs with the big guys with the big bucks who make the decisions about where to go for insurance coverage for their employees. As a Freedom executive, he would have to modify his "shoot from the hip" style that irked both the bean counters and the shareholders. That would make him even more valuable to Freedom's plans to become the nation's largest HMO. But Caine finds evidence that Kacie is the blackmailer. He accuses her, then fires her and threatens to prosecute. The patient/victims of Freedom's policies of delay of medical treatment and claims payments are left with no one to fight for their rights and their lives. But Kacie devises a plan, and with the help of two insiders, women supervisors, she gets her job back. Not only that, but the circumstances make it possible for them, along with two other supervisors, to demand and get ten percent ownership of Custom Benefit Plans--ten percent EACH. Caine's plan to sell out to Freedom and become their Western Regional CEO are thwarted when Kacie discovers Freedom's plan to close the office and move all claims administration to Chicago. The women agree to vote against the sale, and with their combined fifty percent ownership, the deal is blocked. Suddenly all eyes are on the women and all anger is directed at them. The anger quickly becomes focused on Kacie Dugan, the "ringleader" of the employee revolution standing in the way of huge financial and power rewards for the dealmakers. It's clear to all concerned; Kacie Dugan has to be removed.

There are two words that are repeated over and over throughout Luke's Light: masculine and feminine. They are repeated because they kept showing up in Luke's two texts. I set out with just one goal: find and decipher the coded messages. But Luke put a lot of effort into revealing Jesus' message of gender equity. And even more surprising was finding the same message of gender balance in the Old Testament texts that Luke used to send his message to Theophilus. Luke's Light illuminates the darkest corners of the Church's darkest secret, closely held and fiercely protected for nearly two thousand years. Tens of millions of people who suspected or discovered the secret were labeled heretics, tortured into recanting, and then murdered. Only in the past two hundred years could this secret be revealed with any hope of physical survival, thanks to the edicts that came out of Rome centuries ago that were designed to protect and preserve the deception. This is a story of new discoveries about Jesus, his life, his work, and his family. The hidden stories confirm many ancient Christian traditions, while it dispels others. The big question is 'Why coded messages?' Why wouldn't Luke just write openly and clearly so that anyone could read the information he wanted to impart? Perhaps that question is best answered by trying to put ourselves in Luke's place in the religious politics of his time. Consider what you might do if your church should be invaded by a larger and more powerful religion, a group that is destroying all evidence of your chosen religious doctrine. Consider what you might do to preserve the information about you, your family, and your religion. Assume that you are aware of other cultures from history that had experienced a similar fate. And assume that you believe that records of that culture would remain but records of your religion would all be destroyed. Assume that you are permitted to write about what is happening, but only if your story supports the new religion's version and doctrine. What might you do to tell the real story of what happened to you? I believe you might write a story that appears to support the invaders' story. But you might name people who lived in that 'other culture' whose records you thought would survive. You might tell similar stories, hoping that someone would recognize the similarities and understand that you could not write about what was really happening but had to refer to that other culture's history in order to preserve your own. Luke did exactly what any of us would do under similar circumstances. He found a way to leave a coded message that could be found at some future time as long as historians and religious leaders preserved the documents he used to relay the story. He had before him Paul's letters to the Churches; Mark's gospel; Q gospel; Matthew's gospel; the Greek Septuagint; Plutarch's Moralia and Parallel Lives; classics by Homer, Euripides, Aratus, Epimenides, and others. Perhaps the most important document on that table was Philo's guidelines for Allegory. Every chapter in Luke's Gospel contains Pythagorean Sacred Numbers. Why would Luke go to such lengths to leave Sacred Numbers in his gospel? The answer is quite simple: Regardless of the language spoken, everyone who reads his gospels has the same understanding of numbers and the various functions applied to numbers. Numbers are the One Universal Language. A Pythagorean Master Teacher inserted the numbers into Luke's Gospel to attract attention and to send a numeric message-using the One Universal Language-that there is a coded, written message. That's the real story. And that's where Philo's Rules for Allegory are needed. Perhaps the most important of Philo's guidelines is to watch for something unusual in the text. The first obviously 'unusual' occurrence in Luke's gospel is the appearance of the Angel, Gabriel: Luke 1:19: 'The angel replied, 'I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been

Two thousand years ago, during the time Jesus was teaching and traveling around the Judean countryside, a school of philosophy and religion existed in Alexandria, Egypt. One of the most famous philosophers to teach in this school is now known as Philo of Alexandria or Philo the Jew. According to many biblical scholars, Philo's essays on the allegorical interpretation of scripture may be the most valuable legacy he left behind. It was the allegorical rather than the literal interpretation that Philo considered most important. He taught that it was the meaning behind the story that conveyed the deeper "Truths." Philo left examples of the "allegorical messages" that could be found in the Torah, and he encouraged his students and followers to seek to find these higher meanings in scripture and myth. But the church leaders who ultimately gave birth to today's Christianity were split over this issue of "allegory" versus "literal." When Constantine claimed conversion in the fourth century and joined forces with the church fathers struggling for control over the masses, it was the literal rather than the allegorical interpretation that won out. With Constantine's help, the "Literalists" gained control and the "Allegorists" found themselves thrown into the "Heretic" pile. They were denigrated as Satanists, hunted down, tortured, and murdered - often roasted over open fires and their bodies eventually burned. Their "heretical" manuscripts which attempted to teach the allegorical meaning of scripture were also burned, and the libraries that held them usually went up in the same smoke. But a few copies of Philo's "Rules for the Allegorical Interpretation of Scripture" survived. And a modern biblical investigator has set about using them to interpret Luke-Acts allegorically. Luke, it seems, used a clever technique that virtually assured the intact transmission of his message. All that was needed was someone to apply Philo's rules to the two texts to uncover an amazing story that totally redefines who Jesus was and what happened to him and his message two thousand years ago. In addition to the story unearthed beneath allusions to the classics, the Old Testament, ancient myths, and code-names and words, is Luke's true identity. He was not "Paul's beloved physician," as has been claimed during the past two millennia. His identity is almost as unexpected as the "good news" about Jesus that Luke buried behind references to the prophet Isaiah and the opening lines of Phaenomena by Aratus, a Greek poet of Cilicia. Portions of the introduction to Anna's Angel, a novel based on Plutarch's Parable, explain: Fact: Apollonius of Tyana was born circa 4 BCE to a very wealthy family. He received a Pythagorean education, adopted the Pythagorean lifestyle, and traveled extensively throughout the Roman Empire, teaching and establishing congregations wherever he went. He made several trips to Alexandria, Egypt, where he described the Therapeuts living near Lake Mareotis. He lived and taught his philosophy until circa 96 ACE. Fact: Philo of Alexandria's date of birth is uncertain. Estimates are based on the things about which he wrote and when he ceased writing. His writing began circa 30 and ceased, circa 50 ACE; therefore, his estimated date of birth ranges from 2 to 30 BCE. Little is known about him other than what he, himself, reported. He, too, wrote about the group of Therapeuts that resided at Lake Mareotis, near Alexandria. Fact: Thanks to Josephus, more is known about Philo's brother, Alexander, but what is known about him should also apply to Philo in some ways. According to Josephus Alexander was a wealthy and prominent Roman government official, a customs agent responsible for collecting dues on all goods imported into Egypt from the East. Two of Alexander's sons, Marcus and Tiberius Julius, were involved in Roman affairs. Marcus, Philo's nephew, married Bernice, the daughter of Herod Agrippa I. This same Bernice is mentione