John Newman is way more interesting than you ever imagined!

[Lance Payette]

I reappear. A glitch in the matrix caused me to be The Man Without a Password for several weeks, but Duncan kindly fixed the problem. I thus am once again The Nuisance With a Password.

This is only marginally JFKA related, but it sorta kinda is.

I finally purchased and read John Newman's Quest for the Kingdom: The Secret Teachings of Jesus in the Light of Yogic Mysticism, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0055UA0TQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_351_o05?ie=UTF8&psc=1. It was published in 2011, so it's not some artifact from the hippie era when Newman was tripping on acid (if he was, which he surely wasn't).

I was IMPRESSED. It is not AT ALL what I had expected - i.e., some goofy theory that Jesus spent his Missing Years in India at the feet of Hindu gurus and whatnot. (This is indeed one theory, but it's not Newman's.)

No - and I mean this with utter sincerity - this is a 416-page work of vast scholarship. Newman is not only a yoga instructor himself, with an extensive knowledge of Hindu and other Eastern religious texts and traditions, but he is also an exceedingly serious New Testament scholar with lots of connections in NT academia. Who knew? Who had any idea?

Newman's thesis, in a nutshell, is that the mysterious Gospel of Thomas is in fact the oldest gospel, not a second century Gnostic mishmash, and is the most authentic guide to the historical Jesus. Newman doesn't posit Jesus as having had any connection at all with Eastern traditions; he was simply a first century Jewish mystic whose message closely paralleled that of many Eastern mystics. In contrast to the apocalyptic message of characters like John the Baptist (and much of the NT), Jesus' message was not of a future heaven to come but of a heaven that is already here if only individuals will look inward and find it. It's really a sophisticated psychological message about overcoming the tyranny of ego.

One can agree or disagree with Newman, but this is a serious scholarly work with umpteen citations and is anything but silly.

What is kind of JFKA related is the insight into Newman's obsessive, beat-it-to-death approach this book provides. I loved the book for perhaps 250 pages, started losing interest, and then kind of gave up and skimmed the rest. I tried to go back to it the other day and just couldn't. You can see Newman making dubious connections and weaving a tapestry of speculation that is very, very similar to what he does in his JFKA work. It isn't obviously delusional or anything like that, but it is ... well, weirdly obsessive. Despite being scholarly and the thesis being interesting and even plausible, the book has generated only a handful of Amazon reviews and has garnered no attention at all within the world of academic (or popular) theology.

This comes back to the point I made repeatedly on the Ed Forum: A vast body of psychological and sociological literature has identified a distinct, conspiracy-prone mindset that Newman exemplifies. It isn't necessarily pathological or aberrant, but it is "different" and does tend to skew one's perspective. Those with this mindset are often intelligent, articulate and educated, but they are fanatics and are viewing the same situations and sets of facts very differently from those who don't share the conspiracy-prone mindset.

This is really the elephant in the room in all JFKA related discussions. I can virtually guarantee you, the big guns of the CT community are, without exception, at the conspiracy-prone end of the psychological spectrum. You don't have to be very perceptive to recognize this mindset - one of the Amazon reviews of Newman's book, dating back to 2017, is entitled "Christian Conspiracy Theories." All JFKA debates, be they ostensibly about something specific like the SBT or the sniper's nest, are really about two very different ways of looking at the world and the same set of facts. And never the twain shall meet.

[Tom Graves]

I reappear. A glitch in the matrix caused me to be The Man Without a Password for several weeks, but Duncan kindly fixed the problem. I thus am once again The Nuisance With a Password.

This is only marginally JFKA related, but it sorta kinda is.

I finally purchased and read John Newman's Quest for the Kingdom: The Secret Teachings of Jesus in the Light of Yogic Mysticism, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0055UA0TQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_351_o05?ie=UTF8&psc=1. It was published in 2011, so it's not some artifact from the hippie era when Newman was tripping on acid (if he was, which he surely wasn't).

I was IMPRESSED. It is not AT ALL what I had expected - i.e., some goofy theory that Jesus spent his Missing Years in India at the feet of Hindu gurus and whatnot. (This is indeed one theory, but it's not Newman's.)

No - and I mean this with utter sincerity - this is a 416-page work of vast scholarship. Newman is not only a yoga instructor himself, with an extensive knowledge of Hindu and other Eastern religious texts and traditions, but he is also an exceedingly serious New Testament scholar with lots of connections in NT academia. Who knew? Who had any idea?

Newman's thesis, in a nutshell, is that the mysterious Gospel of Thomas is in fact the oldest gospel, not a second century Gnostic mishmash, and is the most authentic guide to the historical Jesus. Newman doesn't posit Jesus as having had any connection at all with Eastern traditions; he was simply a first century Jewish mystic whose message closely paralleled that of many Eastern mystics. In contrast to the apocalyptic message of characters like John the Baptist (and much of the NT), Jesus' message was not of a future heaven to come but of a heaven that is already here if only individuals will look inward and find it. It's really a sophisticated psychological message about overcoming the tyranny of ego.

One can agree or disagree with Newman, but this is a serious scholarly work with umpteen citations and is anything but silly.

What is kind of JFKA related is the insight into Newman's obsessive, beat-it-to-death approach this book provides. I loved the book for perhaps 250 pages, started losing interest, and then kind of gave up and skimmed the rest. I tried to go back to it the other day and just couldn't. You can see Newman making dubious connections and weaving a tapestry of speculation that is very, very similar to what he does in his JFKA work. It isn't obviously delusional or anything like that, but it is ... well, weirdly obsessive. Despite being scholarly and the thesis being interesting and even plausible, the book has generated only a handful of Amazon reviews and has garnered no attention at all within the world of academic (or popular) theology.

This comes back to the point I made repeatedly on the Ed Forum: A vast body of psychological and sociological literature has identified a distinct, conspiracy-prone mindset that Newman exemplifies. It isn't necessarily pathological or aberrant, but it is "different" and does tend to skew one's perspective. Those with this mindset are often intelligent, articulate and educated, but they are fanatics and are viewing the same situations and sets of facts very differently from those who don't share the conspiracy-prone mindset.

This is really the elephant in the room in all JFKA related discussions. I can virtually guarantee you, the big guns of the CT community are, without exception, at the conspiracy-prone end of the psychological spectrum. You don't have to be very perceptive to recognize this mindset - one of the Amazon reviews of Newman's book, dating back to 2017, is entitled "Christian Conspiracy Theories." All JFKA debates, be they ostensibly about something specific like the SBT or the sniper's nest, are really about two very different ways of looking at the world and the same set of facts. And never the twain shall meet.

Dear Lance,

If the KGB* penetrated and zombified the CIA and the FBI as much as Nosenko's former primary CIA case officer, Tennent H. Bagley, PhD, (who was on the fast track to become Director of CIA until false -- or perhaps rogue -- defector Yuri Nosenko physically defected to the U.S. two months after the JFKA) claimed it did in his 2007 book, Spy Wars, and his 2014 follow-up article, "Ghosts of the Spy Wars," then Professor Newman has good reason to be so "obsessed" and "repetitive" -- at least on issues involving the CIA's ongoing (well, at least before Gabbard became DNI and Ratcliffe became DCI) war with the world-class humanitarian organization known as the KGB*.

Forum members might be interested to know that, although Newman is still a tinfoil-hat JFKA conspiracy theorist who now believes some high-level military officers killed JFK because he was refusing to nuke Moscow and Peking during the 1963 "closing window of opportunity," he is on firmer ground when he incorporates in his 2022 book, "Uncovering Popov's Mole," what he'd learned from reading the works of former CIA counterintelligence officer and (JFKA LN) Tennent H. Bagley (to whom he dedicated his book) and from Bagley's British friend-from-2008-on, JFKA CT Malcolm Blunt, about the ostensible KGB defector Yuri Nosenko, true defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, Nosenko's bugbear James Angleton, and Angleton's confidant, mentor, and mole-hunting superior, Bruce Leonard Solie -- i.e. that since the incoming non-CIA cables on Oswald's defection were routed to Solie's office -- and disappeared into a "black hole" for at least six weeks -- rather than where they would normally go -- the Soviet Russia Division -- Solie must have duped Oswald into believing he was on a mission for the CIA when he "defected" to the USSR. Newman combined this idea with what he'd learned from the above sources (plus some of Solie's old travel records that were posted on a genealogical website in 2010 which showed that Solie had mysteriously visited Beirut in February 1957 and had visited Paris twice within thirty days -- for very short stays -- in mid-1962), and arrived at the conclusion that Solie was a KGB "mole" who sent (or duped Angleton into sending) Oswald to Moscow as an ostensible "dangle" in a (unbeknownst to Angleton and Oswald) planned-to-fail hunt for "Popov's U-2 Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA.

*Today's SVR and FSB

-- Tom

[Lance Payette]

Forum members might be interested to know that, ...

If they were interested to know that, they probably would have gleaned it from 500 or so of your essentially identical posts. As someone pointed out in an astute 1-star review of Newman's book, all this has precisely nothing to do with the JFKA. Surprise us with something new.

[Tom Graves]

If they were interested to know that, they probably would have gleaned it from 500 or so of your essentially identical posts. As someone pointed out in an astute 1-star review of Newman's book, all this has precisely nothing to do with the JFKA. Surprise us with something new.

Dear Lance,

Intelligent but "know-it-all," "The Cold War is Over and We Won!" people like you are the reason people like John Newman and I are so "obsessive" and "repetitive" on the issue of your trivialized KGB*.

You're correct in saying former Marine sharpshooter and U-2 radar operator Oswald's being sent to Moscow by a KGB "mole" in the CIA to unwittingly protect said mole from being uncovered and to tear the Soviet Russia Division apart may not have anything to do with the JFKA, but it is an indication of how thoroughly we've been penetrated by Soviet / Russian Intelligence since Day One, and it does have a bearing on how "former" KGB officer Vladimir Putin was able to install -- not by fiddling with our vote-tallying machines, mind you, but by waging an intense influence-campaign on cost-effective social media which utilized hacked emails and Putin's legions of professional St. Petersburg trolls -- The Traitorous Orange Bird (rhymes with Xxxx) as our "President" on 20 January 2017.

*Today's SVR and FSB

-- Tom

[Charles Collins]

If I remember correctly, John Newman made a reasonably convincing case (to me at least at the time I read his JFK book) for JFK intending to withdraw from Vietnam. However, I do not believe that had anything to do with the assassination. It has been too long ago for me to remember the details. But I do seem to remember thinking he had me pretty much convinced at the time.

[Tom Graves]

If I remember correctly, John Newman made a reasonably convincing case (to me at least at the time I read his JFK book) for JFK intending to withdraw from Vietnam. However, I do not believe that had anything to do with the assassination. It has been too long ago for me to remember the details. But I do seem to remember thinking he had me pretty much convinced at the time.

And back in 2008, he thought that evil, evil, evil James JESUS Angleton had masterminded the assassination, not realizing until around 2017 that Angleton wasn't all that evil, after all, but that he sure was duped by his confidant, mentor, and mole-hunting superior, Bruce Leonard Solie (look him up) who may very well have been a KGB "mole."

[Tom Graves]

[...]

He's not nearly as interesting as you, Fancy Pants Lance!

[Lance Payette]

He's not nearly as interesting as you, Fancy Pants Lance!

That's kind of my feeling too, but thanks!