(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 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.)
(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.
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