Origins of Christianity- HiddenMysteries Spiritual Studies

(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.

(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."

(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.

(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)

(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.

(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."

(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 . . . "

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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)

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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.

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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."

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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."

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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."'

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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."

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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)

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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.

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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."

(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."

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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)

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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.)

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"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."

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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.)

(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."

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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.

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"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)

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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.

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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)

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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."

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Many of the sungods, including Horus, Buddha and Krishna, are depicted with haloes, hundreds to thousands of years before it became fashionable in Christianity.

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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.

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"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.

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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.'"

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"'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)

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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.'"

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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."

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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."

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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."

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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."

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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."

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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.

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" . . . 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."

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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."

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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."

(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 clamouring 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.)

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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.

(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. . ."

(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)

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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.

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The Origins of Christianity and
the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ

by Acharya S

Footnotes

The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ

by Acharya S

Footnotes

The Origins of Christianity and
the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ