A New Theology Writer Puts Forth A Fresh Interpretation Of The Messianic Bloodline In His Fictional Work

He calls himself Simonides.

It is not his real name.

In his everyday life, he is a 44-year-old author/editor and self-publisher who lives in Nelson, British Columbia.

At the moment, he is on the road doing publicity for his new book, “The Living Avatara, a New Theology.”

He is not, he insists, a fanatic.

At the same time, he presents his book - the result of 12 years of research and writing - as a serious theological study that poses a theory many Christians are bound to question if not outright reject.

And because of what he sees as the fanaticism of others, he prefers to remain anonymous.

“Part of the reason that I’m using a nom de plume is that I will be protected from zealots who will speak or act against my work,” he says.

So Simonides he calls himself, and Simonides - Greek for Simon - he remains, the author of a novel that carries the subtitle “The Adventures of a Righteous Teacher.”

And what is the shocking secret that Simonides puts forth in 482 pages? Simply this: God is not dead. In fact, He/She is very much alive and all you have to do to see Him/Her is look around.

“All I’m asking people to do is to live within certain correct theological principles,” he says. These principles, he adds, involve the notion “that nature might reaffirm their existence.”

And this is reason enough for Simonides to hide behind a pseudonym? This is why he fears reprisal should “zealots” discover who he is and where he lives?

Well, yes, it is - and you can understand his concern if you consider the specifics of his theory, which essentially denies the existence of Jesus Christ as THE Messiah and casts him as only one of a “Messianic bloodline.”

“After 12 years of studying the Dead Sea Scrolls and doing the best I can to be aggressively observant about what’s going on inside these scriptures, I feel confident to make that claim,” Simonides says.

It’s a claim that he doesn’t make lightly. And it is a claim derived from a lifetime study of a number of religious sects.

A native of New Brunswick, Simonides grew up in Toronto where he attended the Catholic school from which he was graduated, he says, “at age 14 with highest honors in world religious studies.”

He ended up leaving school two years later, and by age 17 he was chanting and meditating as a Hare Krishna in Vancouver. After leaving the Krishnas in 1969, he ran a Black Panther-sponsored crisis clinic in San Diego.

“Very shortly after that,” he says, “I settled into a situation on the west coast of British Columbia where I continued to investigate philosophy, theology, life and so on.” At 27, he began editing and publishing the works of others, first as the owner of a tabloid newspaper and later as a book publisher.

For years, Simonides fascinated himself by reading the materials derived from the Dead Sea Scrolls, that series of ancient manuscripts discovered in 1947 and 1951 in a remote section of Jordan.

“I was reading the materials as they were being translated as soon as I could get my hands on them,” he says. “Like I used to be a comic-book collector of ‘Spiderman,’ and every time a ‘Spiderman’ comic book would come out, I would find the store that had it. It was the same thing with the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were fascinating.”

Gradually, Simonides began to see merit in a view put forth by one of the early translators of the Scrolls: that a connection existed between Jesus and someone known as “The Righteous Teacher” who predated him by some 150 years.

In his own studies, Simonides had discovered similarities between Jesus and a number of other biblical figures.

“There were corresponding parallels that were unavoidable,” he says. “It just sounded like somebody singing the same song.”

And the more he read, the more he became convinced that, as far as Messiahs go, “there is a bloodline. There is an ancestral connection” - a connection that serves to deny the exclusive divinity of Jesus.

The effect of this theory, Simonides admits, “is explosive. Theology is explosive. People live their lives around certain dogma.”

And no zealot likes to have his or her dogma questioned.

But Simonides, whose book is a fictional exploration of his theory, believes the notion offers an opportunity to find a new, living theology with spiritual links older even than Jesus.

He chose fiction, he says, because “To write essays would bore the hell out of people.” Writing a novel, he says, serves the dual purposes of entertaining and education - without proselytizing.

“Inside this fiction, I propose no mediation whatsoever,” Simonides says. “No priests, no nuns, no other spiritual authority to stand between you and your notion of God.”

Yet, he adds, “I have no answers for anybody’s personal spiritual emancipation. What I recommend to anyone is to have a direct, personal, private relationship with God, or with the personality of nature. You don’t even have to call it God.”

And what has been the reaction so far to those who have read his self-published book, some 1,000 copies of which make up the first printing?

“They have responded with enthusiasm,” he says. “I believe it’s giving them something refreshing, and I believe also that it will stimulate them to reconsider God and their relationship to God.”

Simonides picks up a copy of his book, and with a flip of his wrist he dismisses the long-held link between guilt and faith.

“We’re always told, ‘You’re guilty of this, you should be persecuted for that, you need to gain brownie points to get into heaven,”’ he says. “We always feel a little short, you know?

“Well, we’re not short in God’s eyes.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

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