In the book ’NORMeOLi’, several times I referred to the “essential message of the New Testament” - what ought to be the 'message of Jesus'. I also made the following claims/statements:
My conclusions in the second part of my book (“Corroborating Revelation”) amounted to a unique (to many, certainly heretical) interpretation of the New Testament (and the Bible as a whole). I highlighted my perceived alignment as well as the issues I had with the text that needed critical evaluation/reinterpretation from a NORMeOLi philosophical standpoint. However, I stayed on a high level, without going into the specifics of actual scripture verses. To a non-Theist audience - having a general familiarity with ‘what is in the Bible’ - this approach was perhaps sufficient to get my points across. However, to a Theist audience - typically holding one of several already existing traditional scriptural interpretations - the details of my references were inadequate. This new work - the distillation of the essential (and most likely) message of Jesus from the scriptures of the Bible from a NORMeOLi perspective - is addressed mainly to this type of audience.
The main premise of this undertaking was my conviction that the texts of the Bible had to be looked at as essentially fallible human attempts at describing the belief system and stories of their authors, as opposed to being an infallible body of writing that originated from God. They (or subsequent church leaders) aimed to convince their people of their proclaimed statements and claims. As part of this attempt, they naturally claimed the divine origin and infallibility of these texts, which then all HAD to be true, correct, and logically reconcilable from within. These sorts of methods were likely commonplace at the time of their writings - ancient scriptures are all full of miracle claims that back the authority of their content. However, applying the critical thinking standards of this age, what we need to conclude of them is that even if some interpretations of their statements and claims may ultimately end up as true and correct, others may not.
But even though I deemed some statements or claims in the New Testament scriptures as wrong, misguided, misrepresented, or needing drastic reinterpretation, overall I deemed the entire collection of text as the most likely of all other major world religions and belief systems to ultimately end up as the closest to the eventual unfolding reality - as outlined in the philosophical conclusions of NORMeOLi. Thus, I claimed that the entire work of New Testament texts is essentially aligned with the philosophical conclusions of NORMeOLi. Thus, one CAN think of the collection of NT scriptures as ‘divinely inspired’, but this in no way will mean infallibility or logical consistency of ALL their claims and statements. And this is what the process of ‘distillation’ is intended to address: trying to assess what the essential message of Jesus could have been from the available sources created at different times, decades after the death of Jesus, applying a detailed rational, logical critical evaluation to a set of fallible human texts. The assumption is that few individuals, having general good intentions, captured what they deemed to be the truth about Jesus and his message. And indeed, the creator did make sure that such an ultimately distillable collection of guidance was left to posterity to evaluate.
Seeking the truth (and in the process, finding alignment with a concluded belief system) through the 'distillation' of scriptures will NOT lead to infallibility or certainty - but may lead to increased confidence in the underlying philosophical belief system if an alignment is concluded. And this can sincerely and independently reinforce an individual's life wager on their belief system in good conscience. Knowing that they have done everything according to their granted abilities to conclude what may be the ultimate truth, the purpose and meaning of their existence, they can confidently conclude a scenario of reality they deem to have the highest likelihood to end up true, which makes the most sense to them. It also seems logical that going through such a process should be part of the 'homework' of each human in their life, as opposed to just blindly accepting and adhering to an inherited belief system, without critical thinking.
I read through the New Testament collection of writings in the chronological order of their creation. The first task of 'distillment' was to evaluate 'which parts were relevant': collections of verses that I deemed as attempts to build up or contribute to tenets of an actual 'belief system'. This excluded a lot of content, as those rather focused on storytelling, narratives, instructions, details of miracles, or other common writer techniques.
As all relevant sections, by definition, were trying to contribute to a belief system, they all had to be either in alignment with NORMeOLi conclusions or have some sort of issues with it (or both, in some cases). These are the verses that are detailed in this work, together with the categories of their alignments or issues, and a detailed interpretation/evaluation of them from the NORMeOLi philosophical standpoint.
Naturally, some categories of issues and alignments were represented a lot more in the texts, than others. This highlighted some underlying assumptions/understanding of the authors - that were either right or wrong, either made sense or not - which then dominated the text throughout, resulting in repeated reinformance and redundant tenets.
This way, each relevant section ended up belonging to a set of 'alignment and/or issue categories', and each category of issue and alignment ended up with a collection of relevant sections that belonged to it. The pages Alignments and Issues list these categories in order of their representation among relevant sections. Those sections are then linked to their detailed analysis, where all categories belonging to the section are listed, together with a detailed interpretation of the perceived issues or alignments.
In my distillment of the New Testament writings, I could categorize the issues I found hierarchically, the following way - with each category logically deriving from/being caused by/being a more specific version of its parent category, together with the number of relevant NT-sections belonging to them, and their child categories (keeping in mind that sections can belong to multiple issue and/or alignment categories):
The conclusions of my distillation are still formulating, and likely never going to be a done deal. I may end up reading some verses in a different light, as it already happened during my analysis. But the underlying themes are clear by now.
I deem NORMeOLi's philosophical conclusions to be in alignment with the essential message of Jesus - as distilled from the writings of the NT using a NORMeOLi perspective. The resulting interpretation stands between materialism (with its conclusion on the supremacy and preeminence of the physical observable reality and its emphasis on the sciences as its tool to navigate in it) and the tenets of traditional Christian interpretations - rejecting the belief systems of both, in different ways, to different degrees. NORMeOLi is reconciled with all present and possible future scientific developments (through modeling reality as a consciousness-centric simulation), as well as with other potential archeological, historical findings or textual credibility issues that may happen in the future (through focusing on the supreme sense in the CESAPH and what it accomplished for humanity, as opposed to the miracle claims of scriptures). In this sense, NORMeOLi claims to have concluded a future-and-materialism-proof belief system that makes rational and logical sense, and has the best chance to end up as the closest to the ultimate unfolding reality. And if not, so be it! I am fine with that risk, and its consequences..
