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Posted on Thu, Feb 10, 2011 : 6:33 p.m.

Local author wants people to read the 'true' words of Jesus, find their own spiritual path

By Ann Dwyer

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Jim Stacey knows his book may not sit easy with some people. With the title “Jesus was not a Christian: Discovering the Jesus Who was Replaced by Theology,” how could it?

“Any time you say what I’m saying ... yes, people are going to react,” said Stacey, who lives in the Ann Arbor area.

In a nutshell, Stacey’s book says “Christianity has been lying to us for 1,700 years, teaching us what Jesus didn’t teach ... that it is the wounds of Christianity that have caused the human spirit more pain and more anguish than any other energy on the planet.”

Stacey’s claims come from years of studying the words of the Aramaic Jesus. These words are found in original texts that were written in Aramaic, the language many scholars agree was the language spoken by Jesus.

The words of the Aramaic Jesus, Stacey says, have been twisted by religious leaders since the beginnings of Christianity to create a power structure that allowed them to rule over the people in the way they saw fit.

With that came a patriarchal rule and the loss of respect and love for others.

“Jesus honored women, treated them as equals. The church never has,” said Stacey.

“I want to challenge Christians to go beyond belief and practice the principles of love that Jesus taught ... (Jesus) said, ‘Do not call me Lord unless you are practicing the things that I taught you.’ How are they doing loving their neighbor? Other denominations?”

Before writing his book, Stacey was known by many people as the “Wood Doctor,” the host of a furniture restoration show on PBS that aired in the U.S. and Canada from 1991-96. He also fixed furniture for clients off the air, including for the University of Michigan. He continues with that occupation today.

However, Stacey was dealing with a lifetime of pain he says he suffered “at the hands of fundamentalist parents and the church structures that were abusive, condescending and wounding.”

Stacey had been ordained as Christian minister in 1969. Those years added to his pain and frustration. It wasn’t until many years later that Stacey discovered the book, “The Prayers of the Cosmos” by Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz, that he found something that made sense to him spiritually.

The book offered Aramaic translations of works like the “Lord’s Prayer” that were far different than what are commonly heard in churches.

The book led him to Douglas-Klotz’s website, www.abwoon.com, where he learned of a weekend workshop on Aramaic studies. For eight years in a row, Stacey attended the workshops and studied the language and texts available.

“Jesus was not a Christian: Discovering the Jesus Who was Replaced by Theology”

  • Purchase: Self-published. Available through Amazon.com and the Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room, 114 S. Main Street, Ann Arbor.
  • Contact : To contact Jim Stacey, visit TheDivineIsWithinUs.com.

“It gave me hope ... Christianity never gave me any answers to my pain, Christianity had no answer to bring healing to my victim, wounded spirit that I carried for over 50 years,” Stacey said.

What Stacey found was an accepting Jesus, one who did not talk about theology or condemnation.

“There’s no word for Hell in the Aramaic language. Jesus never said the word,” he said.

Stacey was deeply moved by what he studied; enough so, that he began to find the healing that he strived for for much of his life.

“All of a sudden, I had the answer, and that was that I can do this work deep inside myself. I can learn how to embrace the shadow, learn that the victim energy is trying to teach me something and find out what that is.”

His purpose, he discovered, was to write a book to help others find their own path to healing.

When Stacey first set out to write a book in 2001, he wrote 11 chapters before realizing that his own words still carried his anger, hurt and frustration. He destroyed those chapters.

“I wanted my book to have integrity, and if I don’t practice what I preach, walk what I talk, then it won’t have integrity.”

While the Aramaic Jesus has helped him, Stacey says that this may not be the case for every person.

“We have the privilege to find our own spiritual path. Period,” he said.

Stacey refuses to put a name to his belief.

“It’s a spiritual path...If there was a name for it, I’d be guilty of going from one to the other. And I won’t do that. I don’t want anybody following me ... I’m not leading a new religion.”

Currently, he is working with others to help bring healing to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual community that he says have been deeply hurt by the religious dogma.

Stacey has also been interviewed by Arielle Ford, the publicist who helped bring Deepak Chopra to national spotlight. Ann Dwyer writes faith articles for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at anndwyer@annarbor.com or by calling 734-623-2538.

Comments

Tru2Blu76

Mon, Feb 21, 2011 : 8:09 a.m.

The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in A.D. 325. That's nominally 325 years after Jesus lived. It's 2011, so if Jesus lived 325 years prior to this, we'd be seeing an ecumenical council deciding Christian doctrine based on a man who lived in 1686. With all of our new research ability, how much do we know about anyone who lived in 1686? Not much. That puts the bishops of 325 AD completely out of the picture when it comes to determining the "historical Jesus" because by then all knowledge of the man was long gone. Realistically: Jesus is a mythical figure about whom we know nothing or at least not enough to say anything definitive. What we have is hearsay - passed down and filtered through not only presumptive "expert authorities" of 1700 years ago like those ancient bishops but also through translations (into English three versions during the 1500s & 1600s) and a pinhole size information port. Any English speaker who's taken Spanish or German or French knows that "concepts" and manner of expressing them varies significantly from language to language. So the re-translation into Aramaic is a logical thing to do but, because of the above, it's still going to fail when it comes to the test of verification of "the historical Jesus." I'm very sympathetic to Mr Stacey's story - and even agree that organized religion is of dubious value while a personal spiritual journey is far better than trying to believe in 1700 years of guess work about what Jesus said and meant. I make no bets on the rest of the assertions I see here and elsewhere.

Will

Sat, Feb 12, 2011 : 6:29 p.m.

I wrote some additional thoughts about this article here: <a href="http://religionannarbor.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/local-author-presents-yet-another-jesus/" rel='nofollow'>http://religionannarbor.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/local-author-presents-yet-another-jesus/</a>

gerald brennan

Sat, Feb 12, 2011 : 11:38 a.m.

&quot;The book offered Aramaic translations of works like the "Lord's Prayer" that were far different than what are commonly heard in churches.&quot; A &quot;real&quot; version in the Aramaic spoken during or around the reign of Augustus simply does not exist, at all. It has never been found. Every single Aramaic version currently available is actually a translation into Aramaic from another language.

HEALING WORDS 99

Fri, Feb 11, 2011 : 10:03 p.m.

TESTING

DFSmith

Fri, Feb 11, 2011 : 4:35 p.m.

Mr Stacey's attempt to redefine what Christianity continues in the tradtion of scholars, who try to redefine what Christianity is, to fit their own personal dogmas and hang-ups. Seems fro the story that Mr Stacey had an upbringing that he was none to pleased with. he ought to seek help for his problems, instead of writing pie-in-the-sky theories, that are about as credible as accounts of alien abductions or Area 51. @Townie- is my comment &quot;right-wing Christian&quot; enough for you? :)

rusty shackelford

Fri, Feb 11, 2011 : 3:01 p.m.

The majority of scholars believe that the Greek manuscripts are the original, and Aramaic texts are actually translations from the Greek. (In other words, we don't know Jesus's original Aramaic, just an Aramaic translation of the Greek translation. &quot;Jesus&quot; is itself the Greek version of the man's name, btw). So...it seems like the whole basis for this book is a bit dubious. Although I do agree with Stacey's overall message.

FattyJ

Fri, Feb 11, 2011 : 5:56 a.m.

I am the &quot;true&quot; god.

Will

Fri, Feb 11, 2011 : 5:51 a.m.

//&quot;Jesus honored women, treated them as equals. The church never has,&quot; said Stacey.// This comment was disturbing to me because I have studied history and recognize how profoundly wrong it is. Sociologist Rodney Stark made the convincing case in &quot;The Rise of Christianity&quot; that the early church was disproportionately female. He argued that this was the case for a number of reasons. First, infanticide and abortion had decimated the female population in the broader society. Some data suggests that there was as much as a 30% gender gap male to female in the Roman empire. For example, a private letter that dates around 1 BC reads as follows: &quot;I am still in Alexandria. ... I beg and plead with you to take care of our little child, and as soon as we receive wages, I will send them to you. In the meantime, if (good fortune to you!) you give birth, if it is a boy, let it live; if it is a girl, expose it.&quot; Christians didn't have a gender gap. Why? They didn't kill their little girls. But women also converted at a higher rate then men. Why? Because Christians did treat them with honor and respect. In a society that considered women to be commodities, Christianity recognized that women were equal in the eyes of God. They believed this based on the writings of Paul. Paul writes in Galatians 3:28, &quot;There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.&quot; Christian men could not just divorce and abandon their wives. Widows were to be cared for. Daughters were to be raised and loved. These things were attractive to potential female converts. It is true that Christians have from the earliest days assigned different roles to males and females in the church. But this is not hatred or a lack of respect. To the contrary, some of the most beloved saints in Christian history have been female. In short, Christianity has honored and respected women as equals throughout it's history

Will

Fri, Feb 11, 2011 : 5:34 a.m.

//With that came a patriarchal rule and the loss of respect and love for others. "Jesus honored women, treated them as equals. The church never has," said Stacey.// There is much that could be said about these few sentences. Let's start with discussion of who Jesus is. This has been done before. The search for the &quot;historical Jesus&quot; has been a recurring cottage industry since the 19th century. Every year a new 'historical jesus'. No one seems bothered that the biographies almost always conflict with each other - so long as they don't look anything like the Jesus of historic Christianity. The problem is that almost every one of these 'historical Jesus's' end up looking a lot like liberal western professors (who curiously were the ones writing all the biographies). Thankfully, some sanity came to the quest for the historical Jesus in the form of Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer found it quite telling that Jesus always ended up looking like the authors of his biographies. He suggested that the real Jesus did not look at all like a westerner. He proposed that the actual Jesus would have seemed strange and wild to us. His teachings would be shocking. Schweitzer's work was far less than perfect but he did put a damper on the cottage industry for a while (interestingly the cottage industry has moved out of the scholarly arena into the popular arena). The quest has not been abandoned but there are some encouraging things about it. It has taken a decidedly orthodox turn. NT Wright, a scholar at Oxford, has made quite lengthy arguments that the New Testament appears to be historically reliable (&quot;The New Testament and the People of God&quot; and &quot;Jesus and the Victory of God&quot;). Richard Bauchman, a scholar at St Andrew's in Scotland, recently published a groundbreaking work showing that the gospels were based on eyewitness accounts (&quot;Jesus and the Eyewitnesses&quot;). My second comment has to do with Stacy's comment about the church 'never honoring wome

Will

Fri, Feb 11, 2011 : 5:59 a.m.

continued below

ScottRNelson

Fri, Feb 11, 2011 : 3:20 a.m.

Hard to argue with a persons story. The healing Jesus Stacey found - is right there in any good study Bible. The tragedy he experienced from church people is just that - a tragedy. The Bible does not support it. We sometimes throw out the baby with the bath water - the Bible with poor &quot;Christian&quot; behavior. I for one am very happy Stacey found healing. Maybe if he went back to the Bible he will find the true Jesus there after all, with a new set of eyes.

Townie

Fri, Feb 11, 2011 : 1:02 a.m.

Should be interesting to hear the rightwing christians weigh in here. Get your popcorn and settle in.