FORM FOR COMPLETING THE QUESTIONS

There are three written assignments that must be completed and sent to the Presiding Bishops to complete the Diaconate training.

1.	The Spiritual Journal must have at least one brief entry for every calendar day addressing your progress and experience in meditation and contemplation. This may be submitted after a minimum of three months.
2.	The Questions About the Bible for the work with text books and tapes on Old and New Testaments and history, and,
3.	The Questions About Jesus for the tapes and texts entitled The Authentic Jesus and The Master’s Prayer.

This is an electronic form for completing and submitting the Questions About Jesus and the Questions About the Bible.

When you have completed the texts, text books, and tapes for the areas of biblical and Jesus studies, sit with the Questions.  They are the kinds of simple questions that normal people might ask you as a Home Temple Deacon.  We want to know that you can creatively and intelligently address them. 

We are not asking you to write a formal academic or scholarly treatise, nor do we want a sermon! Our intention is for you to produce a short, informal, conversational response to the kinds of questions that you might be asked, as a Home Temple Deacon.  Try to limit each response to one paragraph. Your answers will indicate how well you have understood and assimilated the study materials.

To facilitate the process, use this RTF file to answer the Questions. Insert your cursor at the end each question and type your response immediately following. Always remember to save the document to your hard drive at the end of a session. The Questions may be completed a little at a time and submitted when finished as an email attachment to:  LK@wisdomseminars.org. 

After you have submitted your response to the Questions and have progressed sufficiently in Liturgics and the Daily Practices (a minimum of three months), you may submit a copy of your Spiritual Journal.  We recommend keeping your journal on a separate Word or RTF file so that it, too, can be emailed as an attachment when ready. 

Remember, when you email an attachment, always identify yourself with a few words in the body of the email itself, as we do NOT open email attachments that are submitted without identifying comments.

QUESTIONS ABOUT JESUS

1.	Was Jesus human or divine?
2.	Was Jesus a Christian or a Jew?
3.	Did Jesus start a church?
4.	Did Jesus start a Priesthood?
5.	What is the Apostolic Succession?
6.	What is a Bishop?  A Priest?  A Deacon? A Subdeacon?
7.	What did Jesus teach about the soul?
8.	What did Jesus teach about hell?
9.	What did Jesus teach about prayer?
10.	What did Jesus teach about women?
11.	What did Jesus teach about morality?
12.	What is the Kingdom of God?
13.	What is faith?
14.	What did Jesus teach about life after death?
15.	What did Jesus teach about evil?
16.	What did Jesus teach about social responsibility?
17.	Did Jesus think he was the Messiah?
18.	What was the difference between the Messiah Ben-David and the Messiah Ben-Joseph?
19.	What were the spiritual practices and rituals of Jesus?
20.	What did the Eucharist mean to Jesus and his disciples?
21.	What is the Communion Service all about?
22.	Are Christians the only people who go the Heaven?
23.	What did Jesus teach about God?
24.	How did the Christians end up with Jesus, and how did Judaism loose Jesus?
25.	In what sense was the religion of Jesus mystic, or a Jewish mystery religion?
26.	What do we mean when we say that the religion of Jesus was Kabbalistic?
27.	What happened in the Transfiguration?
28.	Did Jesus baptize disciples?
29.	What do you think happened at the Last Supper, and why?
30.	What was the Resurrection, and where is Jesus now if he is alive and in some kind of body?
31.	What was “hypocrisy” in the teachings of Jesus?
32.	What does the theme of the “absence of God” refer to in the teachings of Jesus?
33.	To what extent, if any, did Jesus teach theology or doctrine?
34.	How did the parables of Jesus work and what did they teach?
35.	Did Jesus have an intimate relationship with a woman?  If so, who?  What is your evidence?
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE BIBLE

1.	How could God write the Bible if it was written by human beings?
2.	What is meant by an Old or New “Testament?”
3.	How was the Old Testament written?
4.	How was the New Testament written and what was its original language?
5.	Did the disciples of Jesus leave any writings?
6.	What language did Jesus speak and how were his teachings preserved?
7.	Who wrote the Gospels and for what purposes?
8.	Who wrote the Epistles and for what purposes?
9.	Who wrote the Book of Revelations, and what does it mean?
10.	What is prophecy?
11.	What are the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament?
12.	What are the New Testament Apocrypha?
13.	What is Merkabah Mysticism?
14.	Who were the Essenes?
15.	Who were the Pharisees?
16.	Who were the Saduccees and the Zakokites?
17.	Who were the Zealots?
18.	What was the earliest Jewish community of Jesus’ disciples like after the Crucifixion and Resurrection?
19.	How did non-Jewish or gentile Christianity emerge in the first century?
20.	What are the logia of Jesus, what is the “Q” Source, and why are they important?
21.	When and why did Judaism and Christianity split into separate religions?
22.	What is Christian anti-semiticism, how did it come into being, and why is it embedded into the writings of the New Testament?
23.	How were the Gospels and their materials probably used by the early churches?
24.	How did the Jews come to be homeless and banned from Jerusalem?
25.	What was martyrdom and why were Christians persecuted, and for how long?
26.	When and how did Christianity become the official religion of the Byzantine Empire?
27.	How and when did the papacy come into possession of Rome, and how and when did it lose most of Rome and find itself confined to the area known as Vatican City?
28.	How do scholars put together the oldest and most authentic text of the Bible?
29.	Who crucified Jesus and why was he crucified?
30.	Why do so many scholars believe that the Shroud of Turin is authentic, and that the face on the Shroud is that of Jesus?
31.	How were Gnosticism, Hermetism, Neo-Platonic Philosophy, and Manichaeism important to the development of Christian theology and doctrine?
32.	What happened to the original Jewish Christians?
33.	In what sense was Paul a Gnostic Jew?
34.	To what extent was Paul’s desire to open Christianity to non-Jews consistent with the teachings of Jesus?
35.	In what sense was Paul an Apostle, and in what sense did he not have a right to that title?