(1)
In the '80s this controversy erupted once again when GA Wells published
Did Jesus Exist? and later The Historical Evidence for Jesus, both of
which sought to prove that Jesus is a nonhistorical character. An
attempt to repudiate Wells was made by Ian Wilson in Jesus: The
Evidence, an entire book written to establish that Jesus did exist.
(There is a chapter titled, "Did Jesus Even Exist?," which in itself
immediately places a possibly hitherto unknown doubt in the reader's
mind.) It should be noted that no such book would be needed if the
existence of Jesus Christ as a historical figure were a proven fact
accepted by all.
(2)
As regards the work of Erich von Daniken, Zecharia Sitchin and others,
it should be understood that few of the stories of godmen can be taken
literally to reveal actual superhuman "masters" or alien presences and
influences. Most of these characters are, to learned mythologists,
clearly myths. (See below)
(3)
"Evemerism," named after Evemeras, a 4th Century B.C.E. Greek
philosopher who developed the idea that, rather than being mythological
creatures as was accepted by the reigning intellectuals, the gods of old
were in fact historical characters, kings, emperors and heroes whose
exploits were then deified. Evemerists have put forth a great deal of
literature attempting to prove that Jesus was a great Jewish reformer
and revolutionary who threatened the status quo and thus had to be put
to death. Unfortunately for historicizers, no historian of his purported
time even noticed this "great reformer." In Ancient History of the God
Jesus, Dujardin states, "This doctrine [Evemerism] is nowadays
discredited except in the case of Jesus. No scholar believes that Osiris
or Jupiter or Dionysus was an historical person promoted to the rank of
a god, but exception is made only in favour of Jesus. . . .It is
impossible to rest the colossal work of Christianity on Jesus, if he was
a man." The standard Christian response to the Evemerists has been that
no such Jesus, stripped of his miracles and other supernatural
attributes, could ever "have been adored as a god or even been saluted
as the Messiah of Israel." (Dujardin) This response is quite accurate:
No man could have caused such a hullabaloo and hellish fanaticism, the
product of which has been the unending spilling of blood. The crazed
"inspiration" that has kept the Church afloat merely confirms the
mythological origins of this tale. "The general assumption concerning
the canonical gospels is that the historic element was the kernel of the
whole, and that the fables accreted round it; whereas the mythos, being
pre-extant, proves the core of the matter was mythical, and it follows
that the history is incremental. . . . It was the human history that
accreted round the divinity, and not a human being who became divine."
(Massey, The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ, henceforth, "MC")
The bottom line is that when one removes all the elements of those
preceding deities and myths that contributed to the formation of this
Jewish god-man - which is what Evemerists insist on doing - there is
nothing historical left to point to. As Massey says, ". . . a composite
likeness of twenty different persons merged in one . . . is not
anybody." (MC)
(4)
"Those who denied the humanity of Christ were the first class of
professing Christians, and not only first in order of time, but in
dignity of character, in intelligence, and in moral influence." (Taylor)
While those who held onto the millennia-old gnostic Mythos of Christ
preceded the carnalizers, or sarkolaters (those who made Christ into
flesh), having long-established rituals and doctrines, it was they who
were accused of being heretics by their younger, ignorant, carnalizing
cousins, who were in reality the true heretics. Taylor: "The deniers of
the humanity of Christ, or, in a word, professing Christians, who denied
that any such man as Jesus Christ ever existed at all, but who took the
name Jesus Christ to signify only an abstraction, or prosopopæia, the
principle of Reason personified; and who understood the whole gospel
story to be a sublime allegory . . . these were the first, and (it is
not dishonour to Christianity to pronounce them) the best and most
rational Christians."
(5)
Rev. Robert Taylor, The Diegesis. Rev. Taylor was an English clergyman
widely known for his "heretical" sermons, which he began to deliver
after discovering, through a superior classical education, that Christ
was a mythological character. He was twice imprisoned in England in the
1820's for "blasphemy." Taylor was one of the early "freethinkers,"
although he maintained he was a "Deist," and, therefore, not an atheist.
Taylor suffered tremendous persecution for his stance, yet from his
prison cell, he composed The Diegesis, a remarkable and scholarly
dissertation of the highest quality.
(6)
Ibid.
(7)
With acknowledgment to Randel Helms, author of Gospel Fictions.
(8)
The Origin and Evolution of Religion by Albert Churchward.
(9)
Forgery in Christianity by Joseph Wheless: "As said by the great critic,
Salomon Reinach, 'With the exception of Papias, who speaks of a
narrative by Mark, and a collection of sayings of Jesus, no Christian
writer of the first half of the second century (i.e., up to 150 A.D.)
quotes the Gospels or their reputed authors.'" In The Book Your Church
Doesn't Want You to Read, John Remsburg states: "The Four Gospels were
unknown to the early Christian Fathers. Justin Martyr, the most eminent
of the early Fathers, wrote about the middle of the second century. His
writings in proof of the divinity of Christ demanded the use of these
Gospels had they existed in his time. He makes more than 300 quotations
from the books of the Old Testament, and nearly one hundred from the
Apocryphal books of the New Testament; but none from the four Gospels.
Rev. Giles says: 'The very names of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John, are never mentioned by him (Justin) - do not occur once in all
his writings.'" In A Short History of the Bible, Keeler says, "The books
[canonical gospels] are not heard of till 150 A.D., that is, till Jesus
had been dead nearly a hundred and twenty years. No writer before 150
A.D. makes the slightest mention of them."
(10)
Wheless quotes the Catholic Encyclopedia: "Enterprising spirits
responded to this natural craving by pretended gospels full of romantic
fables, and fantastic and striking details; their fabrications were
eagerly read and accepted as true by common folk who were devoid of any
critical faculty and who were predisposed to believe what so luxuriously
fed their pious curiosity. Both Catholics and Gnostics were concerned in
writing these fictions. The former had no motive other than that of a
PIOUS FRAUD." (NB: "C.E." denotes "Common Era" and is equivalent to
"A.D.," whereas "B.C.E." denotes "Before the Common Era" and is
equivalent to "B.C." )
(11)
Wheless, op cit. Mangasarian states: "The church historian, Mosheim,
writes that, 'The Christian Fathers deemed it a pious act to employ
deception and fraud.' [Ecclesiastical Hist., Vol. I, p. 347.] Again, he
says: 'The greatest and most pious teachers were nearly all of them
infected with this leprosy.' Will not some believer tell us why forgery
and fraud were necessary to prove the historicity of Jesus. . . .
Another historian, Milman, writes that, 'Pious fraud was admitted and
avowed by the early missionaries of Jesus.' 'It was an age of literary
frauds,' writes Bishop Ellicott, speaking of the times immediately
following the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. Dr. Giles declares that,
'There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were written with no
other purpose than to deceive.' And it is the opinion of Dr. Robertson
Smith that, 'There was an enormous floating mass of spurious literature
created to suit party views.'"
(12)
Wheless: "The clerical confessions of lies and frauds in the ponderous
volumes of the Catholic Encyclopedia alone suffice . . . to wreck the
Church and to destroy utterly the Christian religion. . . . The Church
exists mostly for wealth and self-aggrandizement; to quit paying money
to the priests would kill the whole scheme in a couple of years. This is
the sovereign remedy."
(13)
In one of his works, Eusebius provides this handy chapter entitled: "How
it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as Medicine, and for the
Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived." (Wheless) Wheless also calls
Justin Martyr, Eusebius and Tertullian "three luminous liars." Keeler:
"The early Christian fathers were extremely ignorant and superstitious;
and they were singularly incompetent to deal with the supernatural."
(14)
Wheless. "If the pious Christians, confessedly, committed so many and so
extensive forgeries and frauds to adapt these popular Jewish fairy-tales
of their God and holy Worthies to the new Christian Jesus and his
Apostles, we need feel no surprise when we discover these same
Christians forging outright new wonder-tales of their Christ under the
fiction of the most noted Christian names and in the guise of inspired
Gospels, Epistles, Acts and Apocalypses. . . . Half a hundred of false
and forged Apostolic 'Gospels of Jesus Christ,' together with more
numerous other 'Scripture' forgeries, was the output, so far as known
now, of the lying pens of the pious Christians of the first two
centuries of the Christian 'Age of Apocryphal Literature' . . . 'Almost
every one of the Apostles had a Gospel fathered upon him by one early
sect or another.' . . .If the Gospel tales were true, why should God
need pious lies to give them credit? Lies and forgeries are only needed
to bolster up falsehood. . . But Jesus Christ must needs be propagated
by lies upon lies; and what better proof of his actuality than to
exhibit letters written by him in his own handwriting? The 'Little Liars
of the Lord' were equal to the forgery of the signature of their God -
false letters in his name, as above cited from that exhaustless mine of
clerical falsities, the Catholic Encyclopedia [C.E.] . . . The forged
New Testament booklets and the foolish writings of the Fathers, are the
sole 'evidence' we have for the alleged facts and doctrines of our most
holy Faith, as is admitted by C.E."
(15)
The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, by Barbara Walker, p.
471. Rev. Taylor, in The Diegesis, reports a slightly different version
of Leo X's admission: "It was well known how profitable this fable of
Christ has been to us." (footnote, p. 35.)
(16)
Massey, MC: ". . . It was the Gnostics who had faithfully preserved the
true traditions. It was they who continued the mythos intact from Egypt;
they who made the images in the Christian iconography, and reproduced
the Iao-Chnubis and the Kamite Horus on the talismanic stones and the
catacombs of Rome . . . "
(17)
"The entire 'Pauline group' is the same forged class . . . says E.B.
[Encyclopedia Biblica] . . .'With respect to the canonical Pauline
Epistles, . . .. there are none of them by Paul; neither fourteen, nor
thirteen, nor nine or eight, nor yet even the four so long "universally"
regarded as unassailable. They are all, without distinction,
pseudographia (false-writings, forgeries). . . ' They are thus all
uninspired anonymous church forgeries for Christ's sweet sake!" (Wheless)
(18)
Walker: "The most 'historical' figure in the Gospels was Pontius Pilate,
to whom Jesus was presented as 'king' of the Jews and simultaneously as
a criminal deserving the death penalty for 'blasphemy' because he called
himself Christ, Son of the Blessed. . . . This alleged crime was no real
crime. Eastern provinces swarmed with self-styled Christs and Messiahs,
calling themselves Sons of god and announcing the end of the world. None
of them was executed for 'blasphemy.'" Massey (MC) avers: "The great
judge of the dead in Amenti [Egyptian place of afterlife] was designated
the Rhat (Eg.), whence the Greek Rhadamanthus. The Rhat with the letter
L instead of R is the Lat, and with the masculine article Pi, becomes
Pilate, for the judge in Amenti." Mangasarian states: "A Roman judge,
while admitting that he finds no guilt in Jesus deserving of death, is
nevertheless represented as handing him over to the mob to be killed,
after he has himself scourged him. No Roman judge could have behaved as
this Pilate is reported to have behaved toward an accused person on
trial for his life." As to the "Acts of Pilate," an "apocryphal" and
spurious document that purports to relate the trial of Jesus before
Pilate, in accordance with the canonical gospel accounts but with
greater detail, Mead relates that a scholar named Rendel Harris opined
that the scenes in the "Acts" were directly lifted from the Iliad: ". .
. Pilate has been turned into Achilles, . . . Joseph is the good old
Priam, begging the body of Hector, and the the whole story is based upon
the dramatic passages of the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad." (Did
Jesus Live 100 B.C.?) Jacolliot evinces, " . . . the Iliad of Homer is
nothing but an echo, an enfeebled souvenir of the Ramayana, a Hindoo
poem in which Rama goes at the head of his allies to recover his wife,
Sita, who had been carried off by the King of Ceylon."
(19)
Massey, ibid., states: "It is demonstrable that Herod is a form of the
Apophis serpent called the enemy of the sun. In Syriac Herod is a red
dragon. Herod in Hebrew signifies a terror. Her (Eg.) is to terrify, and
herrut (Eg.) is the snake, or typical reptile."
(20)
Ancient History of the God Jesus by Edouard Dujardin, p. 33.
(21)
Ibid., p. 36.
(22)
"Is it conceivable that a preacher of Jesus could go throughout the
world to convert people to the teachings of Jesus, as Paul did, without
ever quoting a single one of his sayings? Had Paul known that Jesus had
preached a sermon, or formulated a prayer, or said many inspired things
about the here and the hereafter, he could not have helped quoting, now
and then, from the words of his master. If Christianity could have been
established without a knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, why then, did
Jesus come to teach, and why were his teachings preserved by divine
inspiration? . . . If Paul knew of a miracle-working Jesus, one who
could feed the multitude with a few loaves and fishes, who could command
the grave to open, who could cast out devils, and cleanse the land of
the foulest disease of leprosy, who could, and did, perform many other
wonderful works to convince the unbelieving generation of his divinity -
is it conceivable that either intentionally or inadvertently he would
have never once referred to them in all his preaching? . . . The
position, then, that there is not a single saying of Jesus in the
gospels which is quoted by Paul in his many epistles is unassailable,
and certainly fatal to the historicity of the gospel Jesus." (Mangasarian)
Massey: "The 'sayings' [logia] were common property in the mysteries
ages before they were ever written down." (MC) Meaning they were not
original with Jesus, also leading one to conclude that "Paul" and crew
were not initiates into the mysteries, since they were ignorant of these
ages-old logia.
(22a)
". . . the New Testament is not a single book but a collection of groups
of books and single volumes, which were at first and even long
afterwards circulated separately. . . . the Gospels are found in any and
every order. . . . Egyptian tradition places Jn. [John] first among the
Gospels." (Mead, The Gospels and the Gospel)
(23)
Wheless: "Both genealogies are false and forged lists of mostly
fictitious names."
(24)
Wheless: "Like the whole 'Sermon on the Mount,' the [Lord's] Prayer is a
composite of ancient sayings of the Scripture strung together to form
it, as the marginal cross-references show throughout." We might add that
the "Scripture" is not only from the Old Testament but is part of the
ancient Mythos/Ritual. Many of the concepts within the Sermon, which is
held up by Christian defenders as the core of Jesus's teachings and a
reflection of his compassion, can also be found in the Vedas as spoken
by the compassionate Krishna, in the doctrines of the Therapeuts, and in
the "Dhammapada" attributed to the equally compassionate Buddha. There
is nothing new here that would merit such attention as has been given
this Jesus character. Also, there is apparently within the Egyptian
Hermetic or Trismegistic tradition a discourse called "The Secret Sermon
on the Mount," so it would seem that "Sermons on the Mount" were also a
common occurrence within the Mythos and Ritual. (Mead, Did Jesus Live)
(25)
There have been "Passions" of many gods. Dujardin: "Other scholars have
been impressed by the resemblance between the Passion of Jesus as told
in the gospels and the ceremonies of the popular fêtes, such as the
Sacæa in Babylon, the festival of Kronos in Greece, and the Saturnalia
in Italy. . . . If the stories of the Passions of Dionysus, Attis,
Osiris and Demeter are the transpositions of cult dramas, and not actual
events, it can hardly be otherwise with the Passion of Jesus." (See
footnote 93 below.) As concerns the accounts of the resurrection, Graves
states, "With respect to the persons who first visited the sepulchre,
Matthew states that it was Mary Magdalene and another Mary; but Luke
says it was 'Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James,
and other women;' while, according to John (and he virtually reiterates
it), Mary Magdalene went alone. It will be observed, then, that the
first 'inspired' and 'infallible' witness testifies there were two
witnesses; and the second that there were four; and the third witness
declares there was but one. What beautiful harmony! No court in the
civilized world would accept such discordant testimony!"
(26)
In the canonical gospels, Jesus himself makes many illogical
contradictions concerning some of his most important teachings. First,
he repeatedly states the he is sent only "to the lost sheep of Israel,"
and forbids his disciples to preach to the Gentiles. Then he is made to
say, "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." (It is also
interesting to note that the Trinity was not adopted by the Church until
the 4th century, long after "Jesus's" purported statements concerning
it. These proselytizers, then, were awfully slow in their preaching of
this doctrine!) Next, Jesus claims that the end of the world is imminent
and warns his disciples to be prepared at a moment's notice. Then he
tells them to build a church from which to preach his message. Now, if
the end of the world is coming, why should they build anything? We know
that this "prophecy" didn't happen; nor has Jesus returned "soon," as
was his promise. Even if he had been real, he would not have been worthy
of listening to. "The Gentile Church of Christ has therefore no divine
sanction; was never contemplated nor created by Jesus Christ. The
Christian Church is thus founded on a forgery of pretended words of the
pretended Christ." (Wheless) "Again, 'several of the reported sayings of
Jesus clearly bear the impress of a time he did not live to see.'"
(Mead)
(27)
Wheless: ". . . the Hebrew and Greek religious forgers were so ignorant
or careless of the principles of criticism, that they 'interpolated'
their fraudulent new matter into old manuscripts without taking care to
erase or suppress the previous statements glaringly contradicted by the
new interpolations." The Church forgery mill did not limit itself to
mere writings but for centuries cranked out thousands of phony "relics"
of its "Lord," "Apostles" and "Saints." The Shroud of Turin, among
innumerable others, is counted in this group."There were at least 26
'authentic' burial shrouds scattered throughout the abbeys of Europe, of
which the Shroud of Turin is just one. . . .The Shroud of Turin is one
of the many relics manufactured for profit during the Middle Ages.
Shortly after the Shroud emerged it was declared a fake by the bishop
who discovered the artist. This is verified by recent scientific
investigation which found paint in the image areas. The Shroud of Turin
is also not consistent with Gospel accounts of Jesus' burial, which
clearly refer to multiple cloths and a separate napkin over his face." (Freethought
Datasheet #5, Atheists United) At one point, a number of churches
claimed the one foreskin of Jesus, and there were enough splinters of
the "True Cross" that Calvin said the amount of wood would make "a full
load for a good ship." (Walker) The disgraceful list of absurdities and
frauds goes on, and, as Pope Leo X claimed, it has been enormously
profitable for the Church. And where the fraud failed, fear and force
prevailed, as millions were subjected to horrible tortures and murders
in the name of the pretended "Prince of Peace," during an abysmally dark
Age of Faith that propelled the world into a state of ignorance.
(28)
McKlintock and Strong's Cyclopædia of Theological Literature.
(29)
Mangasarian. Wheless: "The
fact is, that with the exception of this one incongruous forged passage,
section 3, the wonder-mongering Josephus makes not the slightest mention
of his wonder-working fellow-countryman, Jesus the Christ - though some
score of other Joshuas, or Jesuses, are recorded by him, nor does he
mention any of his transcendent wonders."
(30)
Massey, Mangasarian, Taylor. Zealous defender of the faith Eusebius
never mentions the Tacitus passage, nor does anyone else prior to the
15th century C.E. (Taylor)
(30a)
Who is this King of Glory?, p. 258-9.
(31)
See Taylor and Wheless for more on the fraudulent nature of these
passages. "It has always been unfailing source of astonishment to the
historical investigator of Christian beginnings, that there is not a
single word from the pen of any Pagan writer of the first century of our
era, which can in any fashion be referred to the marvellous story
recounted by the Gospel writer. The very existence of Jesus seems
unknown." (Mead, Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?)
(32)
Gnostic and Historic Christianity by Massey (see below). See also The
Diegesis by Rev. Robert Taylor, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors by
Kersey Graves, Pagan Christs by JM Robertson, any works by Hilton Hotema,
Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter, and Deceptions and Myths
of the Bible by Lloyd Graham. Although some historicizers may glob onto
these dates as proof that the research is outdated, this is simply not
true. These numbers are provided here to demonstrate that this truth has
been known, and has been suppressed by vested interests, for a long
time.
(33)
Graves, p. 15. "'We cannot,' says the celebrated Orientalist, Sir
William Jones, 'refuse to the Vedas the honor of an antiquity the most
distant.'" (Jacolliot, The Bible in India) Indeed, certain scholars have
opined that the Rig Veda contains mention of an astronomical
configuration that could only have occurred 90,000 years ago; it true,
this would attest that the Veda was recording the experience of someone
far too advanced for that period, according to the standardized
anthrolopogical perspective, not to mention that the Veda would
represent the world's oldest "historical" recording, although the actual
physically extant copies are, obviously, very recent. Ancient scribes
India mostly used, as occurs in some places today, leaves to write on,
and these were endlessly copied over the thousands of years. As
everywhere, knowledge was also passed along orally. This subject opens
up the debate as to whether ancient India or Egypt was the progenitor of
Western and Middle Eastern culture. Both have claims to extreme
antiquity. The question is who came first within the Mythos,
Brahma-Krishna or Osiris-Horus? Based on linguistical evidence, many
scholars have concluded it was India. However, the ancient Egyptian
language is not fully known, nor has the extent of its influence been
adequately examined. Walker hypothesizes that "Horus" was "Heruka" of
India, indicating that the Horus myth succeeded and was built upon the
Indian. The chronology of the Brahmins goes back millions of years, and
there has been effort made by such Hare Krishna authors as Thompson and
Cremo to push civilization, rather than man's apelike progenitors, back
at least to that period. Obviously, such "Forbidden Archeology" is
widely dismissed for seeming lack of solid evidence. What is known is
that the Judeo-Christian bible can be found in earlier versions in both
countries. Thus, it is the rehash of the well-developed systems and
ideologies (Ritual and Mythos) of both nations. (See Jacolliot and
Massey.)
(33a)
Many on this list come from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors by
Graves. This is not to suggest that all of these godmen characters were
utilized in the formation of the Christian myth, as overt contact had
not occurred in such places as Mexico or Bermuda. Also, modern orthodoxy
does not allow for the dates provided by Graves, i.e., that Quetzalcoatl
originates in the 6th B.C.E., a date far too early in the orthodox
perspective. However, we utilize this list to demonstrate that the same
concepts are found worldwide with and without cultural exchange, because
they are derived from the same astrotheological observations. Also, we
are in concurrence with the "ancient advanced civilization" theory
("Atlantis") that would allow for one or more centralized civilizations
to have spread throughout the world during a very remote period in
protohistory, thus taking with it the well-developed Mythos and Ritual,
which would then mutate into the various forms found around the globe.
(34)
Taylor quotes the letter of Emperor Adrian (134 C.E.): "The worshippers
of Serapis are Christians, and those are devoted to the God Serapis, who
(I find) call themselves the bishops of Christ."
(35)
Walker: ". . . Later, an unknown Gospel writer inserted the story of
doubting Thomas, who insisted on touching Jesus. This was to combat the
heretical idea that there was no resurrection in the flesh, and also to
subordinate Jerusalem's municipal god Tammuz (Thomas) to the new savior.
Actually, the most likely source of primary Christian mythology was the
Tammuz cult in Jerusalem." The "doubting Thomas" character also finds
its place in the Mythos, as the "genius" of the time when the sun is at
its weakest (winter solstice). (Taylor)
(36)
The Sibylline Oracles, books produced over time allegedly by a number of
pagan prophetesses called Sibyls, were widely regarded in the ancient
world prior to the advent of the Christian era. "The Sibyls are quoted
frequently by the early Fathers and Christian writers, Justin,
Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria, etc." (Catholic
Encyclopedia, cited by Wheless) These books or Oracles were often cited
by Christians as proof of their religion. For instance, the following is
considered a Sibylline Oracle: "With five loaves at the same time, and
with two fishes, He shall satisfy five thousand men in the wilderness;
And afterwards taking all the fragments that remain, He shall fill
twelve baskets to the hope of many. . . .He shall still the winds by His
word, and calm the sea as it rages, treading with feet of peace and
faith. . . . He shall walk on the waves, He shall release men from
disease. He shall raise the dead, and drive away many pains. . ." (Wheless)
Although the Christians interpreted this as a prophecy of Christ
becoming fulfilled, it is in fact an aspect of the ubiquitous Mythos and
was already said of Horus, for one, hundreds of years earlier. It has
never referred to an actual man but, once again, is astrotheological.
The fact that it purportedly existed prior to the Christian era
constitutes proof to those who use logic that the Christians utilized it
in creating their Christ character, rather than it acting as a prophecy
of their godman. As they did with other texts, the Christians forged and
interpolated many passages into the well-known Oracles in order to
cement their fiction and convert followers. It is also amusing to note
that the Christians had to resort to despised "pagan" documents for
their enterprise, especially since they spent their lives attempting to
demonstrate that everything that preceded them was "of the devil." This
then implies that Christianity was also a work of the devil.
(37)
Pagan Christs by JM Robertson.
(38)
In Gnostic and Historian Christianity, Massey says, "In . . . Buddhism
in Christendom, [author] Mr. Lillie thinks he has found Jesus, the
author of Christianity, as one of the Essenes, and a Buddhist! But there
is no need of craning one's neck out of joint in looking to India, or
straining in that direction at all, for the origin of that which was
Egyptian born and Gnostic bred! Essenism was no new birth of Hindu
Buddhism brought to Alexandria about two centuries before our era; and
Christianity, whether considered to be mystical or historical, was not
derived from Buddhism at any time. They have some things in common,
because there is a Beyond to both." We will add that the Egyptians
refined the Mythos in exquisite and overwhelming detail, but
linguistical theory has in the past, and now again with the Nostratic
theory, traced the origins of Western and Middle Eastern language and
culture in large part to India. It is yet difficult to say which came
first, Krishna, the predecessor of Buddha, or Osiris-Horus. Certainly
Horus was a well-developed savior-god by the time attributed to THE
Buddha. There would be no need to build Horus upon Buddha (Egyptian "Putha"
or "Ptah"), and it is true that Christianity did not need to rely on the
doctrines of Buddhism, having the complete Mythos at hand. However, we
do know absolutely that there was cultural exchange between the
West/Levant and the Buddhistic world of the Far East prior to the
inception of Christianity, in the form of travelers, traders, and monks
of the vast brotherhood network, who were constantly exchanging
information concerning religion, the esoteric gnosis, and the Mythos and
Ritual. Also, it has been suggested that there was at least one group of
Brahmanic and Vedic scholars living in the Levant prior to the founding
of Christianity. These individuals, who would likely be members of one
or more aspects of the brotherhood network, would certainly also be
exchanging information about the very ancient Krishna, et al., and
contributing to the culture around them. It is not only entirely
possible but probable that Hindus ventured to the Levant over the
millennia. But they would not have needed to, in order to spread their
version of the Mythos, since there were those, such as Alexander the
Great, who went to them. Indeed, Louis Jacolliot expertly traces the
Judeo-Christian Bible back to India, noting many similarities between
the Hindu and Christian priesthoods. (The Bible in India) There are also
quite a few similarities between the Catholic and Tibetan Buddhist
hierarchies and rituals. The influence from the Far East has come in
waves beginning several thousand years ago, and culture may have begun
to develop there in in the protohistoric period some 12,000 years ago or
more. If the reckonings of maverick Egyptologists are accurate, however,
Egypt would have been developing simultaneously with this Indian
culture, the origins of both, then, being a possibly much older
civilization. There is no question, however, that the archaic Indian
language Sanskrit or its Nostratic predecessor has highly influenced
many of the Western/Middle Eastern languages. Therefore, there has
unquestionably been early and ongoing contact, and with language comes
religion. "The ancient peoples of India were Asiatic Ethiopians, and it
should not surprise us that they shared common traditions with their
brothers in Africa." (John Jackson, Christianity Before Christ)
(38aa)
Some people have tried to
dispute the "virgin" status of Buddha's mother. However, in the first
place, it should be remembered that the "life of the Buddha" does not
represent the biography of a person but is an account of a solar hero;
thus, the typical solar attribute would be appropriate. In any case,
Joseph McCabe relates: " . . . Mr. Robertson shows from St. Jerome that
the Buddhists themselves did call Maya 'a virgin' - they believed in a
'virgin birth' - and he rightly rejects the statement of Professor Rhys
Davids that these Buddhists understood the birth of Buddha quite
differently from the Christians because 'before his descent into his
mother's womb he was a deva.' That is exactly what Christians say of
Jesus."
(38a)
Mead, p. 133.
(38b)
Ibid.
(38c)
Graves, p. 118.
(39)
Isis Unveiled by Helena Blavatsky, vol. II, pp. 209, 537-538.
(40)
Massey, MC, p. 150.
(40a)
Mead, p. 134.
(41)
Walker says, "Of all savior-gods worshipped at the beginning of the
Christian era, Osiris may have contributed more details to the evolving
Christ figure than any other. Already very old in Egypt, Osiris was
identified with nearly every other Egyptian god and was on the way to
absorbing them all. He had well over 200 divine names. He was called the
Lord of Lords, King of Kings, God of Gods. He was the Resurrection and
the Life, the Good Shepherd, Eternity and Everlastingness, the god who
'made men and women to be born again.' Budge says, 'From first to last,
Osiris was to the Egyptians the god-man who suffered, and died, and rose
again, and reigned eternally in heaven. They believed that they would
inherit eternal life, just as he had done. . . . Osiris's coming was
announced by Three Wise Men: the three stars Mintaka, Anilam, and
Alnitak in the belt of Orion, which point directly to Osiris's star in
the east, Sirius (Sothis), significator of his birth. . . . Certainly
Osiris was a prototypical Messiah, as well as a devoured Host. His flesh
was eaten in the form of communion cakes of wheat, the 'plant of Truth.'
. . . The cult of Osiris contributed a number of ideas and phrases to
the Bible. The 23rd Psalm copied an Egyptian text appealing to Osiris
the Good Shepherd to lead the deceased to the 'green pastures' and
'still waters' of the nefer-nefer land, to restore the soul to the body,
and to give protection in the valley of the shadow of death (the Tuat).
The Lord's Prayer was prefigured by an Egyptian hymn to Osiris-Amen
beginning. 'O Amen, O Amen, who are in heaven.' Amen was also invoked at
the end of every prayer."
(42)
The celestial manger in the Mythos is also thought of as a cave.
(Massey) Although Jesus is typically depicted as being born in a manger,
early Christian tradition places Jesus's birth in a cave, like that of
many other preceding gods. Walker: "The cave was universally identified
with the womb of Mother Earth, the logical place for symbolic birth and
regeneration. . . . Like Adonis, Jesus was born of a consecrated temple
maiden in the sacred cave of Bethlehem, 'The House of God.'"
(43)
Massey, Churchward, et al. Massey (MC) says, ". . . the Star in the East
will afford undeniable data for showing the mythical and celestial
origin of the gospel history. When the divine child is born, the wise
men or magi declare that they have seen his star in the east. The wise
men are identified as the Three Kings of other legends who are not to be
derived from the canonical gospels. The three kings or three solar
representatives are as ancient as the male triad that was first typified
when the three regions were established as heaven, earth, and
nether-world, from which the triad bring their gifts. . . When the
birthplace was in the sign of the Bull [6,000 years ago], the Star in
the East that arose to announce the birth of the babe was Orion, which
is therefore called the star of Horus. That was once the star of the
three kings; for the 'three kings' is still a name of three stars in
Orion's belt . . . "
(44)
Like Jesus, Horus has no history between the ages of 12 and 30. "And the
mythos alone will account for the chasm which is wide and deep enough to
engulf a supposed history of 18 years." (Massey, MC) There exists a very
old Egyptian papyrus dated to 75 C.E. but based on an older document,
which contains a story about the "Son of Osiris" (i.e., the "Son of
God") that parallels in a number of details the gospel narratives. The
Son of God is claimed to have wondrous powers and to have outwitted all
of the teachers in the Temple of Ptah. In the papyrus is also related a
tale of two dead men that closely resembles the biblical fable of Dives
and Lazarus (Lk. 16:19-31). (Mead)
(45)
Massey: "Horus in Egypt had been a fish from time immemorial, and when
the equinox entered the sign of Pisces, Horus, was portrayed as Ichthys
with the fish sign of over his head." Dujardin: "The patriarch Joshua,
who was plainly an ancient god of Palestine and bore the same name as
the god of Christianity, is called the son of Nun, which signifies 'son
of the fish.'" Walker: "The fish symbol of the yonic Goddess was so
revered throughout the Roman empire that Christian authorities insisted
on taking it over, with extensive revision of myths to deny its earlier
female-genital meanings." Wheless: "The fish anagram was an ancient
Pagan symbol of fecundity . . ."
(46)
Churchward, op cit., p. 365. See also The Book Your Church Doesn't Want
You to Read, pp. 15-16.
(47)
Churchward, ibid., p. 397. See also The Egyptian Book of the Dead by
Massey, pp. 13 and 64; MC.
(48)
Churchward. Massey, MC: "It was the gnostic art that reproduced the
Hathor-Meri and Horus of Egypt as the Virgin and child-Christ of Rome .
. . .You poor idiotai [idiots], said the Gnostics [to the early
Christians], you have mistaken the mysteries of old for modern history,
and accepted literally all that was only meant mystically."
(49)
Walker: "The cave of the Vatican belonged to Mithra until 376 A.D., when
a city prefect suppressed the cult of the rival Savior and seized the
shrine in the name of Christ, on the very birthday of the pagan god,
December 25." Shmuel Golding, in The Book Your Church: "Paul says, 'They
drank from that spiritual rock and that rock was Christ' (I Cor. 10:4).
These are identical words to those found in the Mithraic scriptures,
except that the name Mithra is used instead of Christ. The Vatican hill
in Rome that is regarded as sacred to Peter, the Christian rock, was
already sacred to Mithra. Many Mithraic remains have been found there.
The merging of the worship of Attis into that of Mithra, then later into
that of Jesus, was effected almost without interruption."
(50)
Robertson. Wheless: "Mithraism is one of the oldest religious systems on
earth, as it dates from the dawn of history before the primitive Iranian
race divided into sections which became Persian and Indian . . . When in
65-63 B.C., the conquering armies of Pompey were largely converted by
its high precepts, they brought it with them into the Roman Empire.
Mithraism spread with great rapidity throughout the Empire, and it was
adopted, patronized and protected by a number of the Emperors up to the
time of Constantine." Of Mithraism, the Catholic Encyclopedia states, as
related by Wheless: "The fathers conducted the worship. The chief of the
fathers, a sort of pope, who always lived at Rome, was called 'Pater
Patratus."'
(51)
Taylor: "'That Popery has borrowed its principal ceremonies and
doctrines from the rituals of Paganism,' is a fact which the most
learned and orthodox of the established church have most strenuously
maintained and most convincingly demonstrated."
(52)
The Eucharist, or the sharing of the god's blood and body, has been a
sacred ritual within many ancient mystery religions and is part of the
Mythos and Ritual. In a standard ritual that was practiced around the
world, and which continues in some places, participants in the ritual
actually ate and drank the "god's" body and blood, which was in reality
that of a sacrificed human (king) or animal. The Christian form of the
Eucharist is very similar to the ritual that was practiced as part of
the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, in detail, as is outlined by Taylor. The
Eleusinian Eucharist honored both Ceres, goddess of wheat, and
Bacchus/Dionysus, god of the vine. The Christians also adopted the
Bacchanal symbol IHS (Greek) or IES - Iesu/Jesus. These letters stood
for the sun. (See below.) "Mr. Higgins observes, 'The whole paschal
supper (the Lord's supper with the Christians) was in fact a festival of
joy to celebrate the passage of the sun across the equinox of spring.'"
(Graves)
(53)
At this point, the following needs to be addressed: Jesus believers
distinguish their godman from all these others by claiming a historical
framework, which gives more credence to their "Savior" being the "right"
one. We contend that this is precisely why the sungod mythos was
carnalized or made historical in the first place. However, let us
pretend that Jesus was historical. Followers of Krishna also claim he
was historical, yet his advent predates that of Jesus by hundreds to
thousands of years. If we assume both are historical, and both are
teaching nearly the identical thing, why should we not go to the source
and become Krishna followers? Here we see clearly the ugly head of
cultural bigotry, when the Christians claim their godman superior to one
already in existence that is virtually identical. Why not go with
Krishna? Because he was not of the "right" ethnicity. The question is
moot, however, since both characters are mythological and, by the
arguments of the Christians, should then be dismissed. However, we must
not dismiss the Mythos upon which they are formulated, as it is true
revelation of the workings of the cosmos.
(53a)
As with "Buddha," a number of people have disputed the "virgin" status
of Krishna's mother. As Joseph McCabe says, "The orthodox legend of
Krishna is that he was born of a married woman, Devaki; but like Maya,
Buddha's mother, she was considered to have had a miraculous conception.
. . . Thus one of the familiar religious emblems of India was the statue
of the virgin mother (as the Hindus repute her) Devaki and her divine
son Krishna, an incarnation of the great god Vishnu. Christian writers
have held that this model was borrowed from Christianity, but, as Mr.
Robertson observes, the Hindus had far earlier been in communication
with Egypt and were more likely to borrow the model of Isis and Horus."
(54)
The Book Your Church . . . p. 185. See also Taylor.
(54a)
Graves, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors: "And we have the
statement from Mr. Higgins, that the same assortment of spices (with the
gold) constituted the materials offered as gifts to the sun, in Persia
more than three thousand years ago; and likewise in Arabia near the same
era."
(55)
It should be noted that the terrible story of Herod killing the infants
as portrayed in Matthew is not found in any histories of the day,
including Josephus, who does otherwise expose Herod's real abuses. The
"slaughter of the infants" is yet another part of the standard Mythos.
This story is a rehash of the Krishna tale: "[The tyrant Kansa] ordained
the massacre in all his states, of all the children of the male sex,
born during the night of the birth of Christna. . ." (Jacolliot)
(55a)
Graves, p. 110.
(56)
Jacolliot, p. 250.
(57)
Ibid., p. 306.
(58)
The Book Your Church; Graves; Taylor. The crucifixion of the godman
between two "thieves" is an element of the Mythos, and is found in a
number of sungod traditions that predate the Christian myth. "Anup on
one side of Horus, and Aan on the other, are the two thieves on either
hand of the Kamite Christ upon the cross at Easter." (Massey, MC) Anup
and Aan are also the two "witnesses" of Horus, and are the predecessors
of the two Johns who are Jesus's witnesses. (Churchward, Massey, ibid.)
(59)
Blavatsky, Walker, Graves.
(60)
"At first, Christianity did not hold to the Trinity doctrine. That
doctrine developed slowly and did not become officially the creedal fact
until C.E. 325." (Adrian Swindler, The Book Your Church) Walker: "From
the earliest ages, the concept of the Great Goddess was a trinity and
the model for all subsequent trinities, female, male or mixed. . . .Even
though Brahmans evolved a male trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva to
play these parts [of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer], Tantric
scriptures insisted that the Triple Goddess had created these gods in
the first place. . . . The Middle East had many trinities, most
originally female. As time went on, one or two members of the triad
turned male. The usual pattern was Father-Mother-Son, the Son figure
envisioned as a Savior. . . . Among Arabian Christians there was
apparently a holy trinity of God, Mary, and Jesus, worshipped as an
interchangeable replacement for the Egyptian trinity of Osiris, Isis,
and Horus. . . " Jacolliot: "The Trinity in Unity, rejected by Moses,
became afterwards the foundation of Christian theology, which
incontestably acquired it from India."
(60a)
Graves.
(61)
Jacolliot, p. 251. "As we have seen, all these names of Jesus, Jeosuah,
Josias, Josué derive from two Sanscrit words Zeus and Jezeus, which
signify, one, the Supreme Being, and the other, the Divine Essence.
These names, moreover, were common not only amongst the Jews, but
throughout the East." (Ibid., p. 301.)
(62)
Jacolliot, p. 282.
(62a)
The "Word" is a very ancient concept and does not originate with
Christianity. The term "Logos" is Greek, and it is obvious that the
Christian copyists adopted the Word concept directly from the Greeks,
whether it be from Plato or applicable to the gods Prometheus and
Hermes. However, the Greeks in turn had adopted this idea from more
ancient traditions, such as the Indian and Egyptian. Graves states, ". .
. the Chinese bible, much older than the Christian's New Testament,
likewise declares, 'God pronounced the primeval Word, and his own
eternal and glorious abode sprang into existence.' Mr. Guizot, in a note
on Gibbon's work, says, 'According to the Zend-Avesta (the Persian
bible, more than three thousand years old), it is by the Word, more
ancient than the world, that Ormuzd created the universe.' . . . And the
ancient Greek writer Amelias, speaking of the God Mercury [Hermes] says,
'And this plainly was the Logos (the Word), by whom all things were
made, he being himself eternal, as Heraclitus would say, . . . He
assumed to be with God, and to be God, and in him everything that was
made, has its life and being, who, descending into body, and putting on
flesh, took the appearance of a man, though still retaining the majesty
of his nature.' Here is 'the Word made flesh,' set forth in most
explicit terms."
(63)
Taylor, The Diegesis, pp. 192-4. Taylor indicates that the following
stanza is found in "Potter's beautiful translation" of Aeschylsus's
play: "Lo, streaming from the fatal tree, His all-atoning blood! Is this
the Infinite? 'Tis he - Prometheus, and a God! Well might the sun in
darkness hide, And veil his glories in, When God, the great Prometheus,
died, For man, the creature's sin." However, this stanza apparently does
not appear in modern translations, including Potter's. It is well-known
that the Christians mutilated or destroyed virtually all of the works of
ancient Greek and Roman authors, such that we might suspect this stanza
has either been removed or obfuscated through mistranslation. On the
other hand, it may be a mistake on Taylor's part or a result of his
ambiguous language preceding the passage, or he may have been thinking
of another "Prometheus Bound" written after the Christian era, perhaps
by Milton. Taylor was in prison when he wrote The Diegesis, thereby
having difficulty accessing books, so he is to be excused for errors
that invariably creep into anyone's work.
(64)
"To get rid of the damning fact that there is no historical basis for
their theological fictions, the Christian priesthood have been guilty of
the heinous crime of destroying nearly all traces of the concurrent
history of the first two centuries of the Christian era. What little of
it they have permitted to come down to us, they have so altered and
changed, as to destroy its historical value." (JM Roberts, Esq.) "In
some of the ancient Egyptian temples the Christian iconoclasts, when
tired of hacking and hewing at the symbolic figures incised in the
chambers of imagery, and defacing the most prominent features of the
monuments, found they could not dig out the hieroglyphics, and took to
covering them over with plaster; and this plaster, intended to hide the
meaning and stop the mouth of the stone word, has served to preserve the
ancient writings as fresh in hue and sharp in outline as when they were
first cut and colored. In a similar manner the temple of ancient
religion was invaded and possession gradually gained by connivance of
Roman power; and that enduring fortress, not built but quarried out of
sold rock, was stuccoed all over the front and made white a-while with
its look of brand-newness, and reopened under the sign of another name -
that of the carnalized Christ." (Massey, MC)
(65)
Wheless, p. 147.
(66)
Ibid., p. 144.
(67)
Mangasarian: "The idea of a Son of God is as old as the oldest cult. The
sun is the son of heaven in all primitive faiths. The physical sun
becomes in the course of evolution, the Son of Righteousness, or the Son
of God, and heaven is personified as the Father on High. The halo around
the head of Jesus, the horns of the older deities, the rays of light
radiating from the heads of Hindu and Pagan gods are incontrovertible
evidence that all gods were at one time - the sun in heaven."
(68)
Jordan Maxwell, The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read, Pagan and
Christian Creeds, by Carpenter, The Diegesis by Taylor. See also Massey,
Churchward, Hotema, Graves, et al.
(69)
The logical question arises: Why, if Jesus is a historical character,
are there are presently two dates for both Christmas and Easter? This
purportedly well-known character, who set the world on fire, has no
birthdate whatsoever, and the "historical" references and genealogies
found in the gospel accounts differ from each other. The gospels are not
history at all but a retelling of the Mythos. The historical Jesus is a
phantom. "These, which cannot both be historical, are based on the two
birthdays of the double Horus in Egypt." (Massey, as related by Jackson)
In addition, early Christian "doctors" were constantly contradicting
themselves as to when exactly "the Lord" died or "ascended to heaven"
after "he" was resurrected. Two of the most powerful early bishops,
Irenaeus and Papias opined that Christ lived to be very old, "flatly
denying as 'heresy' the Gospel stories as to his crucifixion at about
thirty years of age." (Wheless)
(70)
See above. In "The Truth about Jesus, M. Mangasarian states: "The
selection of the twenty-fifth of December as his birthday is not only an
arbitrary one, but that date, having been from time immemorial dedicated
to the Sun, the inference is that the Son of God and the Sun of heaven
enjoying the same birthday, were at one time identical beings. The fact
that Jesus' death was accompanied with the darkening of the Sun, and
that the date of his resurrection is also associated with the position
of the Sun at the time of the vernal equinox, is a further intimation
that we have in the story of the birth, death, and resurrection of
Jesus, an ancient and nearly universal Sun-myth, instead of verifiable
historical events."
(71)
Many of the sungods, including Horus, Buddha and Krishna, are depicted
with haloes, hundreds to thousands of years before it became fashionable
in Christianity.
(71a)
Jordan Maxwell, "The Naked Truth."
(72)
Mangasarian: "Like the dogmas of the Trinity, the virgin birth, and the
resurrection, the sign of the cross or the cross as an emblem or a
symbol was borrowed from the more ancient faiths of Asia." Walker:
"Early Christians even repudiated the cross because it was pagan. . . .
Early images of Jesus represented him not on a cross, but in the guise
of the Osirian or Hermetic 'Good Shepherd,' carrying a lamb." In
Christianity, the original occupant of the cross was a lamb, not a man.
The man hanging on the cross did not occur until the 7th cent. C.E. "The
stave, stake, prop or stay of the suffering sun was the Stauros, which
was primarily a stake for supporting, shaped as a cross." (Massey, MC)
This image can be found in crosses that have a circle on them. Taylor:
"On a Phoenician medal found in the ruins of Citium, and engraved in Dr.
Clarke's Travels, and proved by him to be Phoenician, are inscribed not
only the cross, but the rosary, or string of beads, attached to it,
together with the identical Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of
the world." Graves: ". . . the consecrated twenty-fifth of March is also
the day marked in our calendars as the date of the conception and
annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary." March 25th was considered the
end of the sun's passing through the vernal equinox, when the sun was
"resurrected," i.e., the day was now longer than the night.
(73)
"The picture of the New Beginning commonly presented is Rembrandt-like
in tone. The whole world around Judea lay in the shadow of outer
darkness, when suddenly there was a great light seen at the centre of
all, and the face of the startled universe was illuminated by an
apparition of the child-Christ lying in the lap of Mary. Such was the
dawn of Christianity, in which the Light of the World had come to it at
last! That explanation is beautifully simple for the simple-minded; but
the picture is purely false - or, in sterner words, it is entirely
false." (Massey, G&HC) Jacolliot: "We have repudiated Greek and Roman
mythologies with disdain. Why, then, admit with respect the mythology of
the Jews? Ought the miracles of Jehovah to impress us more that those of
Jupiter? . . . I have much more respect for the Greek Jupiter [Zeus]
than for the God of Moses; for if he gives some examples not of the
purest morality, at least he does not flood his altar with streams of
human blood."
(74)
As it had with so many preceding purveyors of wisdom and ideologies, the
Church ripped off both Aristotle and Plato, presenting their known
accomplishments in philosophy. The "Logos" is pure Platonism, which
refined the "Word" aspect of the extant Mythos, the Logos in Greece
being Hermes, who is also found in Egypt as the "Trismegistus." Cardinal
Palavicino is quoted as saying, "Without Aristotle we should be without
many Articles of Faith." It is amusing to consider that the omniscient
"Lord," who came to deliver a "New Dispensation," needed the writings of
Aristotle to determine doctrine for his Church.
(74a)
As concerns the "Jesus Lived in India" theory by Kersten, et al., it is
claimed that in Kashmir is a tomb of a traveling prophet named "Yuz Asaf,"
which is an Arab name that some have attempted to link to "Jesus."
Notovich claimed to have found a text in Tibet about the "Life of Saint
Issa." It is also claimed that the tombs of "Moses" and "Thomas" are in
India. And there are several places where the "Virgin Mary" purportedly
rested and/or died. It should be noted that there were innumerable
"traveling prophets" throughout the ancient world, all spouting the same
parables and platitudes and doing the standard bag of magic tricks, as
do the countless Indian yogis of today. It is difficult to believe that
the Indians or Tibetans would be very impressed by such stories, since
they have had numerous miraculous godmen of their own. It has also been
claimed by the Athenians that the olive tree alive today on the
Acropolis was miraculously planted by the goddess Athena, an act for
which she was honored by having that city-state named after her; and,
there are numberless "footprints" of this Buddha and that throughout
Buddhist countries. In addition, in the Notovich text concerning the
"Life of Saint Issa," which is of late date, it says at the very
beginning, "This is what is related on this subject by the merchants who
have come from Israel," thus demonstrating both that it is not an
eyewitness account of a visit by the Jewish godman and that there was an
extensive trading and brotherhood network which would readily allow for
such stories to spread. Again, all around the globe are stories of where
this god or that set foot, did miracles, was born or died. This is
standard in the world of mythmaking, and it is not an indication or
evidence of historicity.
(75)
The Egyptian Book of the Dead by Massey, pp. 1-2. Morals and Dogma of
Freemasonry, p. 78. Taylor: "'. . . Chrishna in Irish means the Sun.'"
(76)
"'Ies,' the Phoenician name of the god Bacchus or the Sun personified;
the etymological meaning of that title being, 'i' the one and 'es' the
fire or light; or taken as one word 'ies' the one light. This is none
other than the light of St. John's gospel; and this name is to be found
everywhere on Christian altars, both Protestant and Catholic, thus
clearly showing that the Christian religion is but a modification of
Oriental Sun Worship, attributed to Zoroaster. The same letters IHS,
which are in the Greek text, are read by Christians 'Jes,' and the Roman
Christian priesthood added the terminus 'us'. . ." (Roberts)
(77)
Dujardin says, "The title of Messiah is one that the Rabbis seldom apply
to the Liberator; it is mainly the Christians who state that the Jews
expected 'the Messiah.'"
(78)
The Diegesis, p. 7.
(79)
Introduction to The Egyptian Book of the Dead by Massey, p. 9.
(80)
Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, by Lloyd Graham, p. 338.
(81)
Massey, Gnostic and Historic Christianity, p. 3.
(82)
See Walker, Massey, Churchward.
(83)
Ibid.
(84)
See Massey, Churchward and Graham.
(85)
Ibid.
(86)
Massey, Mythical Christ, pp. 3-6 Wheless cites the Encyclopedia Biblica:
"The author of Revelation calls himself John the Apostle. As he was not
John the Apostle, who died perhaps in Palestine about 66, he was a
forger." We would that "died perhaps" is also accurate, in that John
"lived not at all."
(87)
Jacolliot states that "Zoroaster" is a Persian version of the more
ancient Indian "Zuryastara (who restores the worship of the sun) from
which comes this name of Zoroaster, which is itself but a title assigned
to a political and religious legislator."
(88)
Churchward, 399.
(89)
Ibid., p. 397. There are two astrotheological interpretations of John-Anup
the Baptist, neither of which necessarily precludes the other, since the
Mythos was ever-changing and evolving. As stated above, John the Baptist
was considered the month of Aquarius, the initiation time of the sun,
which was "born" in the previous month. The other interpretation, of
which the Bible and other Christian-Pagan traditions and rituals serve
as evidence, revolves around Saint John's day, June 25th, which would be
precisely the opposite of December 25th; in other words, as the sun is
"born again" on December 25th, the edge of the winter solstice, and its
strength continues to increase, while on June 25th, the edge of the
summer solstice, its strength begins to decrease again. This drama is
reflected in the enigmatic statement by John the Baptist at John 3:30:
"He must increase, but I must decrease." This curious remark only makes
sense in astrotheological terms, in the sungod mythos.
(90)
Walker.
(91)
See the IRES's "The Naked Truth" video series available at PO Box 7536,
Newport Beach, CA 92658-7536 or through Lightworks.
(91a)
Hotema, Intro, Egyptian Book of the Dead by Massey. Like the New
Testament, the Old Testament is also filled with sungod stories, such as
the tale of Sampson, or Samson, which means "sun," whose "hair" (rays)
was cut off by Delilah. "Sol-om-on" refers to the sun in three different
languages. In 2 Kings 23:11 is clear evidence of Jewish sunworshipping,
as the king Josiah, "removed the horses that the kings of Judah had
dedicated to the sun. . . " More obscure references such as those
referring to "eternal light" or any variety of names that mean "sun" are
found peppered throughout the Judeo-Christian bible.
(92)
Walker, p. 5. Dujardin: "Many of the old Baals of Palestine were
assimilated by Judaism, which converted them into heroes in the cause of
Jahveh [Yahweh], and in fact many scholars agree that the patriarchs of
the Bible are the ancient gods of Palestine."
(93)
Dujardin and others demonstrate that the Christ drama, with its obvious
Passion play, is indeed a play, with its condensed time-frame, stage
directions and ritualistic lines. The entire gospel story purports to
take place over a period of a few days. In content and form, it is
clearly a sacred king drama, based originally on the sun and other
elements such as fertility rites, that became a ritual practiced yearly
or at some other increment. This sacrificial and/or redemptive drama was
acted out in numerous places over the millennia, long before the Jesus
story, in much the same form as that presented in the gospels. In an
imitation of the earlier Mythos, in which this drama took place in the
heavens, with the sun as the sacrificed Son of God, etc., ancient
practitioners would sacrifice a surrogate for the god in order to ensure
fecundity and prosperity. This "victim" of the sacrifice was at times a
human, usually a king or other high official, or an animal or grain
offering. When the surrogate was killed, the blood was sprinkled upon
the congregation or audience of the play, who would cry, "Let his blood
be upon us and our children," a standard play/ritual line that was
designed to ensure future fertility and the continuation of life. Later,
wine was substituted for blood. The Passion only makes sense as part of
the Mythos and Ritual. As a historical tale about foaming-at-the-mouth
Jews calling for the blood of the "gentle" Jesus, it is not only an ugly
insult to Jews but a dangerous, unfounded belief that has led to
innumerable pogroms and much prejudice against them for nearly 2,000
years, as they have thus been perceived as rabid, evil "Christkillers."
As Dujardin says, "It is absurd to imagine that the crowd would demand
the death of an innocent man and would wish his blood to be on their
heads and those of their children."
(94)
Maxwell, Graham, Taylor, Jacolliot. Jacolliot traces the original to the
Indian Manou: "This name of Manou, or Manes . . . is not a substantive,
applying to an individual man; its Sanscrit signification is the man,
par excellence, the legislator. It is a title aspired to by all the
leaders of men in antiquity." He also says, "We shall presently see
Egypt, Judea, Greece, Rome, all antiquity, in fact, copy Brahminical
Society in its castes, its theories, its religious opinions; and adopt
its Brahmins, its priests, its levities, as they had already adopted the
language, legislation and philosophy of that ancient Vedic Society
whence their ancestors had departed through the world to disseminate the
grand ideas of primitive revelation."
(95)
The Mahabharata.
(96)
The BAR article seeks to prove that the Exodus is historical. Massey:
"The Exodus or 'Coming out of Egypt' first celebrated by the festival of
Passover or the transit at the vernal equinox, occurred in the heavens
before it was made historical as the migration of the Jews. The 600,000
men who came up out of Egypt as Hebrew warriors in the Book of Exodus
are 600,000 inhabitants of Israel in the heavens according to Jewish
Kabalah, and the same scenes, events, and personages that appear as
mundane in the Pentateuch are celestial in the Book of Enoch." Mead: ".
. . Bishop Colenso's . . . mathematical arguments that an army of
600,000 men could not very well have been mobilized in a single night,
that three millions of people with their flocks and herds could not very
well have drawn water from a single well, and hundreds of other equally
ludicrous inaccuracies of a similar nature, were popular points which
even the most unlearned could appreciate, and therefore especially
roused the ire of apologists and conservatives."
(97)
See Walker, Maxwell, et al.
(98)
There have been floods and deluge stories in many different parts of the
world, including but not limited to the Middle East. The so-called Flood
of Noah may refer to the annual flooding of the Nile - an event that was
incorporated in Egyptian mythology. However, it is also yet another part
of ancient mythology. As Walker says, "The biblical flood story, the
'deluge,' was a late offshoot of a cycle of flood myths known everywhere
in the ancient world. Thousands of years before the Bible was written,
an ark was built by the Sumerian Ziusudra. In Akkad, the flood hero's
name was Atrakhasis. In Babylon, he was Uta-Napishtim, the only mortal
to become immortal. In Greece he was Deucalion, who repopulated the
earth after the waters subsided [and after the ark landed on Mt.
Parnassos] . . . In Armenia, the hero was Xisuthros - a corruption of
Sumerian Ziusudra - whose ark landed on Mount Ararat. . . . According to
the original Chaldean account, the flood hero was told by his god,
'Build a vessel and finish it. By a deluge I will destroy substance and
life. Cause thou to go up into the vessel the substance of all that has
life."
(99)
Walker, et al., and The Encyclopedia of Religions.
(100)
Indeed, although professing to contain the history of the universe, the
supposedly all-knowing "Word of God" barely mentions the many thousands
of years on this planet that the Goddess was recognized and worshipped
and only does so in order to disparage her and convert her followers. At
Acts 19:27, the author does admit the existence and popularity of the
"great goddess Artemis . . . she whom all Asia and the world worship."
In addition, despite all efforts to erase from history the memory of the
Goddess in the Old Testament, the truth of her existence slipped by the
redactor's pen at 1 Kings 11:5, where Solomon "went after Ashtoreth the
goddess of the Simonians." Regardless of the presence of these few
passages and any others concerning the Goddess, the compilers of the
Bible certainly did not wish to acknowledge how powerful and widespread
was the belief in and reverence for the divine feminine principle. In
addition, Wheless has this to say about the books of the Old Testament:
"It may stated with assurance that not one of them bears the name of its
true author; that every one of them is a composite work of many hands
'interpolating' the most anachronistic and contradictory matters into
the original writings, and often reciting as accomplished facts things
which occurred many centuries after the time of the supposed writer . .
. " Indeed, we would add that the bulk of the Old Testament is as
mythical as the entire New Testament.
(101)
Taylor, pp. 21-22.
(102)
" . . . the holy Saint Josaphat, under which name and due to an odd slip
of inerrant inspiration, the great Lord Buddha, 'The Light of Asia,' was
duly certified a Saint in the Roman Martyrology." (Wheless) Walker:
"Medieval saintmakers adapted the story of Buddha's early life to their
own fictions, calling the father of St. Josaphat 'an Indian king' who
kept the young saint confined to prevent him from becoming a Christian.
He was converted anyway, and produced the usual assortment of miracles,
some of them copied from incidents in the life story of Buddha. St.
Josaphat enjoyed great popularity in the Middle Ages, an ironical
development in a Europe that abhorred Buddhism as the work of the
devil."
(103)
In Antiquities Unveiled, JM Roberts, Esq., reiterates that Christ drama
represents " . . . the passage of the Sun, in its annual course through
the constellations of the Zodiac; having his birth in the sign of the
Goat, the Augean stable of the Greeks; his baptism in Aquarius, the John
the Baptist in the heavens; his triumph when he becomes the Lamb of God
in Aries; his greatest exaltation on St. John's, the beloved disciple's
day, on the 21st of June, in the Sign of the Twins, the emblem of double
power; his tribulation in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the sign of the
rural Virgo; his betrayal in the sign of Scorpio, the malignant emblem
of his approaching death in the stormy and adverse sign, Sagittarius,
and his resurrection or renewed birth on the twenty-fifth of December in
the same sign of the celestial Goat . . ." Walker states, "Medieval
monks tried to Christianize the zodiac as they Christianized everything
else, by renaming it the Corona seu Circulus Sanctorum Apostolorum: the
Crown of the Circle of the Holy Apostles. They placed John the Baptist
at the position of Aquarius, to finish off the circle."
(104)
Walker, p. 787: "The myth of St. Peter was the slender thread from which
hung the whole weighty structure of the Roman papacy. . . .
Unfortunately for papal credibility, the so-called Petrine passage was a
forgery. It was deliberately inserted into the scripture about the 3rd
century A.D. as a political ploy, to uphold the primacy of the Roman see
against rival churches in the east. Various Christian bishropics were
engaged in a power struggle in which the chief weapons were bribery,
forgery, and intrigue, with elaborate fictions and hoaxes written into
sacred books, and the ruthless competition between rival parties for the
lucrative position of God's elite. . . . Most early churches put forth
spurious claims to foundation by apostles, even though the apostles
themselves were no more than the mandatory 'zodiacal twelve' attached to
the figure of the sacred king."
(105)
"The Naked Truth" video series by IRES. Antiquities Unveiled, above.
(106)
Massey, MC.
(107)
Ibid. "The lion is Matthew's symbol, and that is the zodiacal sign of
the month of Taht-Matiu (Thoth), in the fixed year. Tradition makes
Matthew to have been the eighth of the apostles; and the eighth (Esmen)
is a title of Taht-Matiu. Moreover, it is Matthias, upon whom the lot
fell, who was chosen to fill the place of the Typhonian traitor Judas.
So was it in the mythos when Matiu (Taht) succeeded Sut [Set], and
occupied his place after the betrayal of Osiris. . . . It is to the
Gnostics that we must turn for the missing link between the oral and the
written word; between the Egyptian Ritual and the canonical gospels;
between the Matthew who wrote the Hebrew or Aramaic gospel of the
sayings, and Taht-Mati, who wrote the Ritual, the Hermetic, which means
inspired writings, that are said to have been inscribed in hieroglyphics
by the very finger of Mati himself."
(108)
Deceptions and Myths of the Bible by Graham; Apollonius the Nazarene by
Raymond Bernard, PhD. Like Bernard, et al., Hotema also claims the
"historical" details later added to the sungod mythos were those from
the life of Apollonius of Tyana, who was also called "Pol." According to
this theory, "Pol" then serves as a model for both the Christ character
and the apostle Paul. It is said that Apollonius brought the New
Testament from India, and that he had certain yogic powers which allowed
him to do miracles. This theory is, to our mind, unsatisfactorily
reconciled at this time. While it may be true that the historicizers,
looking back in time, decided they needed to pluck up a quasi-historical
character who was still in memory upon which to base their fictions,
they would not have needed to add much to the extant sungod mythos and
ritual, merely a few "historical" details.
(109)
"Another popular delusion most ignorantly cherished is, that there was a
golden age of primitive Christianity, which followed the preaching of
the Founder and the practice of his apostles; and that there was a
falling away from this paradisiacal state of primordial perfection when
the Catholic Church in Rome lapsed into idolatry, Paganised and
perverted the original religion, and poisoned the springs of the faith
at the very fountain-head of their flowing purity. Such is the pious
opinion of those orthodox Protestants who are always clamoring to get
back beyond the Roman Church to that ideal of primitive perfection
supposed to be found in the simple teachings of Jesus, and the lives of
his personal followers, as recorded in the four canonical gospels and in
the Acts of the Apostles. But when we do penetrate far enough into the
past to see somewhat clearly through and beyond the cloud of dust that
was the cause of a great obscuration in the first two centuries of our
era, we find that there was no such new beginning, that the earliest
days of the purest Christianity were pre-historic, and that the real
golden age of knowledge and simple morality preceded, and did not
follow, the Apostolic Roman Church, or the Deification of its Founder,
or the humanising of the 'Lamb of God' . . ." (Massey, G&HC) "It sounds
strange to hear persons in these days express a desire for a 'return to
primitive Christianithy, when all was peace and love.' There never was
such a time." (Keeler)
(110)
Indeed, Jesus's character and many of his actions were utterly contrary
to the notion of him being a great Essene healer. "A poor Canaanitish
woman comes to him from a long distance and beseeches him to cure her
daughter who is grievously obsessed. 'Have mercy on me, O Lord,' she
pleads. But he answered her not a word. The disciples, brutes as they
were, if the scene were real, besought him to send her away because she
cried after them. Jesus answered, and said: 'I was only sent to the lost
sheep of the House of Israel.' She worships him, he calls her one of the
dogs." (Massey, G&HC) We might add that if Jesus only came for the 'lost
sheep of the House of Israel,' then we may ignore him, for we are not
lost sheep, nor are we of the House of Israel.
(111)
This is another aspect of the Christian character that is conflicted.
While Jesus is busy swearing unto, he also exhorts his followers to
"swear not at all." (Matt. 5:34; James 5:12) These are Essenic/Therapeutan
dictates that would be appropriate for a spiritual community, such that
they were no doubt useful to the Christian copyists in their attempts at
making the drama appear to be historical. It is an intricately, if
clumsily, woven tale, utilizing everything possible at hand, which is
the only explanation for the glaring contradictions.
(112)
Massey, Gnostic and Historic Christianity. Graves provides numerous
examples of Essenic doctrine, such as the Essene writer Philo's
pronouncement, "It is our first duty to seek the kingdom of God and his
righteousness." (Matt. 6:33; Lk. 12:31) It would seem that, in order to
give the sungod mythos the appearance of a historical man heading a
spiritual movement, the NT compilers also drew heavily on the Essene
spiritual community. (See below.)
(113)
Taylor: ". . . Eusebius has attested, that the Therapeutan monks were
Christians, many ages before the period assigned to the birth of Christ;
and that the Diegesis and Gnomologue, from which the Evangelists
compiled their gospels, were writings which had for ages constituted the
sacred scriptures of those Egyptian visionaries." While this Therapeut/Essene
origins of the autograph or original "gospel" texts would seem to
contradict what Massey says about "Jesus" not being an Essene, it is the
Essenes of Josephus to whom he refers, rather than the
Alexandrian/Egyptian Therapeuts. Of the two differing groups of
"healers," historian Philo opined that the communities in Palestine and
Arabia "did not soar to such a lofty height of philosophic and mystic
endeavour as the members of the community near Alexandria. . . " (Mead,
DJL) In our opinion, the Essenes of Palestine, i.e., those who may or
may not have lived near the Dead Sea, were much simpler and more
contemplative than the worldly Therapeuts, who were profoundly engaged
in the mystery religions, initiations and rituals. Clearly, while both
were called "healers," these are two different sects, although they were
probably connected. The Therapeuts seems to have been a solid part of
the brotherhood network that stretched from Egypt to India and up into
Europe, while the Dead Sea Essenes - for want of a better term - were
isolationists.
(114)
Massey, MC.
(115)
Taylor: "The first draft of the mystical adventures of Chrishna, as
brought from India into Egypt, was The Diegesis; the first version of
the Diegesis was the Gospel according to the Egyptians; the first
renderings out of the language of Egypt into that of Greece, for the
purpose of imposing on the nations of Europe, were the apocryphal
gospels; the correct, castigated, and authorised versions of these
apocryphal compilations were the gospels of our [sic] four evangelists."
There is, however, a legend about the Egyptian god Osiris traveling to
India in very ancient times and establishing his religion there. This
brings up again the "out-of-India" v. "out-of-Egypt" debate. It may very
well be that an extremely ancient culture from Africa/Egypt migrated
many thousands of years ago to India. In this theory, India would still
remain the cradle of Western/Middle Eastern culture, with subsequent
migrations back to the west, carrying the mutated Proto-Egyptian/Indian
language and the refined Mythos, which would be further refined or
change by Egyptians. What cannot be disputed is that India and Egypt
have both have a profound impact on Western/Middle Eastern culture and
that the original Mythos and Ritual were well developed by both nations.
(116)
Massey says, "In the Book of Enoch one form of the Messiah is the 'Son
of Woman'; this was Enoch or Enos, the Egyptian Sut-Anush [Set], who had
been twin with Horus but was superseded by him." (MC) Wheless: "The Book
of Enoch, forged in the name of the grandson of Adam, is the fragmentary
remains of a whole literature which circulated under the pretended
authorship of that mythical Patriarch. . . . This work is a composite of
at least five unknown Jewish writers, and was composed during the last
two centuries B.C. . . .In this Book we first find the lofty titles:
'Christ' or 'the Anointed One, 'Son of Man,' the Righteous One,' 'the
Elect One,' - all of which were boldly plagiarized by the later
Christians and bestowed upon Jesus of Nazareth. . . . It abounds in such
'Christian' doctrines as the Messianic Kingdom, Hell, the Resurrection,
and Demonology, the Seven Heavens, and the Millennium, all of which have
here their apocryphal Jewish promulgation, after being plagiarized
bodily from the Persian and Babylonian myths and superstitions, as we
have seen confessed. There are numerous quotations, phrases, clauses, or
thoughts derived from Enoch, or of closest of kin with it, in several of
the New Testament Gospels and Epistles. . ."
(117)
Wheless, pp. 85-87.
(118)
In yet another attempt to produce a history for this mythical character,
Bible translators have taken to rendering the title "Jesus the Nazarene"
as "Jesus of Nazareth," a village that many scholars opine did not yet
exist at the time of Jesus's purported birth. "There is no such place as
Nazareth in the Old Testament or in Josephus' works, or on early maps of
the Holy Land. The name was apparently a later Christian invention."
(Holley) As Dujardin states, "It is universally admitted that Jesus the
Nazarene does not mean Jesus of Nazareth." Massey and Churchward point
out that the title "Nazarene" is part of the Mythos, with Horus/Jesus
being considered "the plant, the shoot, the natzar. . . . the true
vine." (Churchward)
(119)
"There is another proof that the Gospels were not written by Jews.
Traditionally, Jesus and all the 'Apostles' were Jews; all their
associates and the people of their country with whom they came into
contact, were Jews. But throughout the Gospels, scores of times, 'the
Jews' are spoken of, always as a distinct and alien people away from the
writers, and mostly with a sense of racial hatred and contempt." (Wheless)
(120)
The date of Hadrian's reign (117-138) precedes the period we have
ascribed to the appearance of the canonical gospels. However, we are
proposing that the texts composed by the Alexandrian Therapeuts were
autographs, or originals, upon which the Christian gospels were based.
This would mean that these originals were nonhistorical, gnostic texts
composed to commit the Mythos and Ritual in its totality to writing.
These texts then were transported to Rome, where they were worked upon
by historicizers and eventually changed into the Christian gospels.