Thanks for the post—I’ll read the referenced texts.

So how do you explain all the miracles Jesus performed?

No problem, easy to deal with it. I am a Christian, I think the whole story of the Bible points to the central idea that Jesus is the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father but by Him. Doesn’t offend me at all that you have your own religion and system of thoughts of what should have been put in scripture. I’m sure we’d enjoy each other’s company, but I’d never consider you or myself divine. You certainly aren’t worthy of my worship like Jesus is. The Bible we have now is like bitcoin, it’s a consensus protocol, you can accept it, reject it, or like in your case, fork it because you think it should have said something else. The outcome of my belief system (Christianity) is that I have abundant peace and content in this changing world and a sure hope for eternity. I hope for you that your belief system leads to the same.

Now this is the kind of note I like to see. Think for yourself. The most offensive thing I can imagine is to tell someone they shouldn't think for themselves, and that's what churches say.

Jesus said "the truth will set you free" ; he said, "search the scriptures." What scriptures? The biblical canon was compiled over 300 years later. If he meant the Torah, he could have said that. He meant : be erudite, read stuff, don't be a proud stiff neck that thinks he knows everything. "The truth will set you free," fits perfectly into the platonic tradition **_that any educated person at that time would have been familiar with_** - and iirc, its exactly what Anaxamander said.

The political church warped it... They built a power structure atop the system of philosophy and symbolism that was meant to liberate us from power structures. The whole saga of idol worshipping Jews in the old testament was about a kind of power structure. A rational mind doesn't bother with idols ; a rational mind can't be controlled by fear and dogma.

John 14:6 is setting the bar as low as possible. He's giving humanity the benefit of the doubt. What does Jesus symbolize? If you remove Jesus from Christ, what is the remaining belief structure for Christianity? You have to know what these words mean. The church absolutely does not want people to understand these words, or to think of Christ without the man. I am not saying the man didn't exist - Christians love their misunderstandings, their assumptions. This is symbolic coding - if/then/else. What is reality? What's your relationship with reality? What does it mean to exist and experience? How can you know a thing? What's the root cause, before any cause of its own? These are philosophical questions. Not dogmatic questions.

I think you're on the right track with regards to the gnostic books. That's my current research, after being called a "gnostic" by Christians, as an insult. They don't know what it means, and they don't want to know. They don't have the key - the key that Jesus talked about in his conversation with the lawyer-ish pharisees. Get that key! Its available for anyone.