bishopricks

Egodeath | It was important to the institutional, hierarchical, empire-affiliated and profit-driven state church to literalize Jesus and the pseudo-historical understanding of the mythic allegory. The church's exclusive monopoly and rule would have been harmed, were Christ taken to be mystic-state allegory, which is universally available without a hierarchical middleman of the controlling bishop. The bishops wanted to form an exclusive monopoly on religious Good.

They didn't directly care at all about literalism, but what was all-important was having a monopoly, and literalism was the means to their monopoly, not the end in itself. That's what literalism was financially for. Follow the money: how did the rulers of society financially profit from literalization of the Christian myth? The official religion became necessarily literalist because that was a strategy to monopolize and control salvation, creating a false scarcity of enlightenment and salvation and righteousness.

Jesus came only once, and all religious value comes strictly through him and then through controlled channels (the Peter figure) to him.

Note that while one book proclaims Christ and the apostles as the foundation stones of the Church, Matthew 16:18 seems to portray either Peter, or more likely Peter's proclamation of jesus as son of god, as the foundation stone of the Church.

There is nothing wrong with the pun of equating the mythic Peter figure with the foundation of the mystic-state Church, but the official bishops strove to profit from control of religious Good (salvation, sin-cleansing, enlightenment), and the way to do this was to literalize the mythic fine notion of Peter and his proclamation being the foundation petra of the Church. Ultimately, the issue isn't whether the word "this" points to Peter or to his proclamation, in identifying what Jesus said is the foundation of the Church.

What *really* matters is the mode of interpretation: mystic mythic metaphor that describes universally directly available religious Good, versus literalism -- particularly a literalism that is intent, above all, on crafting an artificial scarcity of religious Good (salvation, however it is conceived), controlled by the bishops. The bishops' real strategy is, "We don't care what you think salvation is and means, as long as you agree that it is only available through routing your money through our pockets exclusively."

What is acceptable theology? The theology which is acceptable to the bishops is anything and everything as long as it supports most effectively the one thing that is actually important: routing all the religious money through the pockets of the bishops; with only one sacrament, only one church, only one (flexible) theology, and far above all -- only one channel for money, the one that goes through the bishops' pockets.

Why *must* all religious value be concentrated entirely and only in the one true savior, the only door to heaven, Jesus? And why must Peter be real and be the only apostle to whom Jesus gave the keys to heaven and all religious Good, however it may be conceived?

Because a literal man in whom all religious Good is exclusively concentrated, and who handed the exclusive and restricted keys to only one man, Peter, the original head bishop, and always onto only one man at a time, the head bishop or Pope, is the most effective way to construct and fabricate an artificial monopoly of religious Good in order to route all money and power through the pockets and controlling hands of the bishops.

Why and to what extent do the bishops need to suppress the pure mythic view, the no-free-will doctrine, and sacred meals of visionary plants? The bishops don't directly give a damn about visionary plants, no-free-will philosophy, or pure mythic views -- but they *do* care *entirely* about creating artificial scarcity of religious Good in order to route money and power their way, and this indirectly requires suppressing high, effective religion.

Only by suppressing the no-free-will doctrine, visionary plants, and the pure mythic interpretation of religion, can direct access of each person to religious Good be prevented and a salvation franchise chain, controlled by bishops, be installed in order to profitably sell salvation to individuals at grossly inflated prices, similar to how the government and big business profit from the funny money generated by the results of making psychoactives illegal.

By suppressing real religion and constructing the narrowest acceptable substitute channel for religious quasi-fulfilment instead, the rulers of this world have profited wildly through their artificial salvation franchise, like the governor who supressed the discovery of the air-generating machine on Mars in the movie Total Recall, in order to profitably sell air to the populace.

Suppression of the universal mythic mystic-state Jesus was necessary in order to restrict availability of Jesus' religious Good to the few, official channels, controlled by the profit-mongering bishops. Another reason Christianity was popular pre-313 was the figure of the godman chastising the pseudo-religious profit-driven religious leaders, who were part of the profit-driven System of Empire.

Those profit-driven temple leaders who strove to retain a monopoly on religious Good and cleansing of sins formed a direct, literal model for later pseudo-religious profit-driven leaders; there is nothing coincidental about it, just an age-old battle between the rulers who want to franchise religious Good and the mystics and populace who want religious Good to be directly universally accessible.