Genealogy · G00
The Genealogy — How to Read This Layer
What this layer is
This is the development record: where the ideas in the curriculum came from, in what
order, and under what pressure. It answers **"where did this come from?"**
The curriculum in `trunk/` answers a different question: **"what does this do?"**
Those two questions are kept in separate directories on purpose. From the genealogy's own
closing instruction:
> The project is strongest when it can answer two questions simultaneously: "Where did
> this idea come from?" and "What does this idea do?" That distinction between genealogy
> and praxis should remain explicit.
This is not the trunk
Nothing here is curriculum. A person can walk the Way without reading any of it — the
book is designed to be practiced, not sourced.
Read this layer if you want to know why the seven stages are ordered as they are, why
these particular ancient sources and not others, or what problem the whole thing was
built to solve.
| | `trunk/` | `genealogy/` |
|---|---|---|
| Answers | What does this do? | Where did this come from? |
| Stability | Stable, slow-changing | Living, revised as the project develops |
| Status | The common curriculum | Development record |
| Needed to practice? | Yes | No |
The short version
```
Existential question — suffering, mortality, nihilism
↓
Philosophical confrontation — Mainländer, the philosophy of redemption
↓
Historical question — who was Jesus?
↓
Historical recovery — Tabor, earliest strata of the movement
↓
Ethical nucleus — James, Didache (retained); Post-Priestly Torah, Q (superseded stage)
↓
Interiorization — John, 1–3 John
↓
Early Christian witnesses — Barnabas, Clement, Diognetus, Pseudo-Clementines
↓
Syriac formation — Aphrahat, Ephrem, Book of Steps, Macarius, Isaac
↓
The developmental problem — Upright → Perfect
↓
Seven-stage bridge
↓
Mercy + Truth as governing polarity
↓
Theory and Praxis
↓
Cosmological context — Enochic, Second Temple
↓
Redemptive drama — the Harrowing, the Iapetids
↓
Civilizational praxis — stewardship, vocation, economics
↓
The ecosystem
```
Contents
| ID | Section |
|---|---|
| `WMT G01` | [The Philosophical Prehistory](01-philosophical-prehistory.md) |
| `WMT G02` | [The Ethical Nucleus](02-ethical-nucleus.md) |
| `WMT G03` | [Interiorization and Early Witnesses](03-interiorization-and-witnesses.md) |
| `WMT G04` | [Syriac Formation and the Problem of the Gap](04-syriac-formation.md) |
| `WMT G05` | [Cosmological Context](05-cosmological-context.md) |
| `WMT G06` | [Integration: Theory and Praxis](06-integration.md) |
| `WMT G07` | [The Harrowing and the Iapetids](07-harrowing-and-iapetids.md) — *speculative* |
| `WMT G08` | [Civilizational Praxis and Stewardship](08-civilizational-praxis.md) |
| `WMT G09` | [Architecture, Boundaries, and Cautions](09-architecture-and-cautions.md) |
Two cautions before reading
**One layer is not the whole project.** The earliest sources are not to be flattened into
the Syriac tradition; the Syriac tradition does not replace the historical Jesus;
historical reconstruction does not eliminate spiritual interpretation, and spiritual
interpretation does not override historical distinction. Maintain the distinctions and
show how the layers cooperate.
**Not everything here has the same standing.** `WMT G07` — the Harrowing and Iapetid
material — is a narrative and theological experiment, not doctrine and not curriculum.
It is marked as such in its own file. Do not read it as though it carried the same weight
as the sourcing in `WMT G02`.
**One historical-critical claim `WMT G02` no longer makes.** Its treatment of
Post-Priestly Torah and Q describes a stage the project passed through, not an ongoing
commitment — see the closing note in that section. James and the Didache, which the
project actually possesses as texts, are unaffected by this and remain load-bearing.
Provenance
This genealogy was assembled in collaboration with a large language model, working from
the author's own account of the project's development. It is a reconstruction of that
development, written after the fact — not a contemporaneous journal. The reasoning is the
author's; the organization and drafting were done in partnership.
Stated plainly here because a repository whose curriculum asks to be checked rather than
trusted should not be vague about how its own documents were made.