The Origins of Christianity
by David Pratt (September 2001)
Divine confusion
Most Christians today believe that the gospels of the New
Testament present an essentially accurate account of the life of
Jesus Christ, the ‘only-begotten Son of God’, who was born of a
virgin, wandered Galilee as a preacher and miracle-worker at the
start of the 1st century, died on a cross to redeem the sins of
mankind, and then rose from the dead three days later and ascended
into heaven. However, the four gospels contain such glaring
inconsistencies and contradictions that they are clearly not
reliable historical reports. So if they are the ‘word of God’,
then God must be terribly confused!
The Gospels of Matthew and Luke go to great lengths to show
that Jesus is descended from the line of David, as the promised
messiah must be according to Jewish beliefs. But apart from
agreeing that Jesus was fathered by Joseph, the two genealogies
bear no resemblance to each other at all; Matthew lists 28
generations and Luke 43. Furthermore, their relevance is unclear
since the authors of the two gospels also say that Jesus was born
of a virgin who was impregnated by the Holy Spirit.* The Gospels
of Mark and John, by contrast, make no mention of Jesus’ family
descent or the virgin birth.
*The Holy Spirit was traditionally regarded as feminine.
Hence the wry comment made in the apocryphal Gospel of Philip
(25): ‘some said “Mary conceived by the holy spirit.” They are
in error. . . . When did a woman ever conceive by a woman?’
Matthew tells us that Jesus was born during the reign of
King Herod, who died in 4 BCE (before common era). But Luke states
that Jesus was about 30 in the 15th year of Tiberius’ reign,
implying that he was born in 2 BCE, i.e. after Herod’s
death. He then contradicts himself by stating that John the
Baptist and Jesus were miraculously conceived six months apart in
the reign of Herod, but that Jesus was born at the time of the
census of Quirinius, which took place in 6 CE (common era),
thereby creating the miracle of a ten-year pregnancy!
The Gospels of Mark and John do not contain any nativity
story, while the nativity stories given by Matthew and Luke have
nothing in common except the names of Jesus’ parents and the
location of his birth in Bethlehem. John however says that Jesus
is from Galilee and that the Jews rejected him because he was
not from Bethlehem. Only Matthew mentions the guiding star,
the three wise men and Herod’s murder of all the infant boys in
Bethlehem, while only Luke mentions the Roman census, the
appearance of angels to the shepherds tending their flocks (in the
winter?!) and the shepherds’ visit to Jesus.
Matthew says that Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem, while
Luke says that they lived in Nazareth. Matthew says that they fled
to Egypt immediately after Jesus’ birth and then went to Nazareth
when Herod died, while Luke says they remained in Bethlehem
following Jesus’ birth so that he could be presented in the temple
of Jerusalem eight days later. Only Luke mentions Jesus’ amazing
exhibition of learning in the temple at the age of 12.
The scene where Jesus drives the traders and moneychangers
out of the temple is placed at the beginning of John’s narrative
but at the end of Matthew’s. Mark has Jesus teaching only in the
area of Galilee and not in Judea, and only travelling the 70 miles
to Jerusalem once, at the end of his life. Luke, however, portrays
Jesus as teaching equally in Galilee and Judea, while John’s Jesus
preaches mainly in Jerusalem and makes only occasional visits to
Galilee. There are major discrepancies regarding the names of the
disciples. According to Mark, Matthew and Luke (the synoptic
gospels), Peter, James and John are Jesus’ closest followers. In
John’s gospel, however, Peter plays only a minor role and James
and John are not even mentioned, but there is mention of Nathenael
and Nicodemus, who make no appearance in the other three gospels.
Even the events surrounding the all-important crucifixion
are not uniformly recorded by the gospels. Matthew and Mark say
that Jesus was both tried and sentenced by the Jewish priests of
the Sanhedrin, Luke says that Jesus was tried by the Sanhedrin but
not sentenced by them, while according to John, Jesus did not
appear before the Sanhedrin at all. Jesus then goes to his death
by crucifixion – yet Paul and Peter say he was ‘hanged on a tree’
(Galatians 3:13, Acts 5:30, 10:39). John places Jesus’ death on
the eve of the Passover, whereas the other gospels place it on the
following day. The story of a centurion piercing Jesus’ side with
a spear is found only in John’s Gospel. The gospels give three
versions of Jesus’ last words: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?’* (Matthew and Mark); ‘Father, into thy hands I
commit my spirit!’ (Luke); and ‘I thirst. . . . It is finished’
(John).
*This is a mistranslation of the Hebrew. It should read: ‘My
God, my God, how thou dost glorify me!’ [1]
In John’s Gospel there is only one woman visitor to Jesus’
tomb, in Matthew there are two, and in Mark three, while Luke
writes of numerous women had who had followed Jesus from Galilee.
According to Mark, when the three women disciples found the empty
tomb they saw a young man in a white robe inside, while Luke
relates that ‘two men in dazzling apparel’ suddenly appeared.
Matthew, however, paints a far more dramatic picture:
And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the
Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone,
and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, his raiment
white as snow. (28:2)
In Matthew the resurrected Jesus appears to his disciples
in Galilee, where they have been sent by divine decree. According
to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, on the other hand, the risen
Jesus appeared in and around Jerusalem, and according to Acts the
disciples were expressly forbidden to leave Jerusalem. The
earliest versions of Mark’s Gospel end with the fear of the women
at their discovery of the empty tomb (16:8). The ‘long ending’ in
which the risen Jesus appears to his disciples, was added later
but is now included in nearly all editions of the New Testament.
The last chapter of John’s Gospel, containing Jesus’
post-resurrection appearances, is also a later addition. Luke’s
Gospel is the only one to include an appearance in Jerusalem in
which Jesus convinces his disciples that he is not a mere phantom
by inviting them to handle his flesh and bones and by eating a
piece of broiled fish!
Matthew and John ignore the ascension of Jesus. Luke
mentions it only in one brief verse, a sort of postscript not
found in some manuscripts, and it receives an equally cursory
mention in the verses later added to Mark’s Gospel. Luke places
the ascension on the day of the resurrection, and Acts 40 days
after (1:3). During his ministry, Jesus repeatedly predicts that
the apocalyptic Last Judgement will occur within the lifetime of
some of his contemporaries, but nearly 2000 years later the Second
Coming has still not occurred, though some fundamentalists
continue to proclaim – rather optimistically – that ‘the end is
nigh’!
Reinventing the pagan godman
Although the unreliability of the gospels and other early
Christian documents as historical sources is recognized by many
theologians, most of them still maintain that an historical Jesus
did live in the early 1st century, though opinions differ as to
his alleged divine status. However, several recent scholarly books
have concluded that the Jesus depicted in the gospels never
existed at all and that, far from being a completely new and
unique revelation, Christianity originated as a Jewish adaptation
of the ancient pagan mystery religion that had held sway for
thousands of years [1].
The pagan mysteries were practised in different forms by
nearly every culture in the Mediterranean and inspired the
greatest minds of antiquity. Their primary aim was to promote
moral regeneration and spiritual progress. At the heart of the
mysteries was the myth of a dying and resurrecting godman, who was
known by different names in different cultures: in Egypt he was
Osiris, in Greece Dionysus, in Asia Minor Attis, in Syria Adonis,
in Italy Bacchus, in Persia Mithras. The name ‘Osiris-Dionysus’
was sometimes used to denote his universal and composite nature.
All the following features of the story of Jesus can be
found in earlier stories about pagan godmen [2]: he is the
saviour of mankind, the son of God, born of a virgin; he is born
in a cave or cowshed on 25 December or 6 January;* his birth is
prophesied by a star and witnessed by three shepherds; he is
wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger; he is tempted
by the devil; he is baptized; he heals the sick, exorcises demons
and turns water into wine; he preaches the gospel of love, charity
and forgiveness; he is surrounded by 12 disciples; he rides
triumphantly into town on a donkey while crowds wave branches; his
disciples symbolically eat bread and drink wine to commune with
him; he dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the
world by being hanged on a tree or crucified; his corpse is
wrapped in linen and anointed with myrrh; his empty tomb is
visited by three women followers; after his death he descends to
hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to
heaven in glory; his followers await his return as the judge
during the Last Days; through sharing in his passion, Jesus offers
his disciples the chance to be born again.
*There was a dispute in early Christianity as to when Jesus
was born. It is interesting to note that Horus, Mithras and
Adonis/Tammuz were said to be born on 25 December, while
Osiris-Aion was born of the virgin Isis (also known as Mata-Meri
or Mother Mary) on 6 January. Adonis/Tammuz was born of the
virgin Myrrha in the very cave in Bethlehem now considered the
birthplace of Jesus.
The passion of Baal or Bel of Phoenicia/Babylon, as
revealed on a 4000-year-old tablet now in the British Museum,
shows many points of resemblance with the later story of Jesus:
Baal is taken prisoner and tried in a hall of justice; he is
tormented and mocked by a rabble; he is led away to the mount; he
is taken with two other prisoners, one of whom is released; after
he has been sacrificed on the mount, the rabble goes on a rampage;
his clothes are taken; he disappears into a tomb; he is sought
after by weeping women; he is resurrected, appearing to his
followers after the stone is rolled away from the tomb [3].
The story of Jesus clearly shows a startling lack of
originality. Some early Christians tried to explain this by
claiming that the pagan mysteries were mythical precursors of the
‘real thing’ – the historical coming of Jesus. Several church
fathers, such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Irenaeus, even
resorted to the desperate claim that the pre-Christian pagans had
been inspired by the devil! A more rational conclusion is that the
story of Jesus is simply a reworking of the far older myth of
Osiris-Dionysus. No one believes the stories about pagan godmen
are literally true, and relating the same events in a Jewish
setting hardly turns them into historical facts.
Figure. This 3rd-century amulet shows a crucified figure whom
most people would immediately recognize as Jesus. Yet the Greek words
name the figure 'Orpheus Bacchus' -- one of the pseudonyms of
Osiris-Dionysus. The earliest known representations of the crucified
Jesus date from the 5th century. [4]
The pagan mysteries comprised outer mysteries, which were
open to all, and secret inner mysteries known only to those who
had undergone initiation [5]. The inner mysteries revealed that
the story of Osiris-Dionysus was not historical fact but an
allegory encoding spiritual teachings. Timothy Freke and Peter
Gandy explain:
Osiris-Dionysus had such universal appeal because he was seen
as an ‘Everyman’ figure who symbolically represented each
initiate. Through understanding the allegorical myth of the
Mystery godman, initiates could become aware that, like Osiris-Dionysus,
they were also ‘God made flesh’. They too were immortal Spirit
trapped within a physical body. Through sharing in the death of
Osiris-Dionysus initiates symbolically ‘died’ to their lower
earthly nature. Through sharing in his resurrection they were
spiritually reborn and experienced their eternal and divine
essence. This was the profound mystical teaching that the myth
of Osiris-Dionysus encoded for those initiated into the Inner
Mysteries, the truth of which initiates directly experienced for
themselves. [6]
Far from being a Christian heresy, the broad philosophical
tradition known as Gnosticism was the original Christianity which
developed from the pagan mysteries. The gnostics did not
necessarily deny the historicity of the gospel story of Jesus’
life as it was an essential part of the outer mysteries of
Christianity, which were designed to attract new would-be
initiates. But any literal interpretation of the Jesus story was
only the first step presented to spiritual beginners, while the
inner mysteries revealed that it was not a factual account of
God’s one and only visit to earth, but a mystical story designed
to help each of us become a christ by achieving union with our
higher, spiritual self.
However, a rival literalist school of Christians developed,
which regarded the Jesus myth as historical fact and dismissed the
idea of it having a deeper meaning. The gnostic Christians viewed
such literalism as superficial and simple-minded. Pagan writers,
too, launched scathing attacks on the irrational beliefs of
literalist Christians, and denounced Christianity as an inferior
imitation of the perennial philosophy of the mysteries. The
philosopher Celsus, for example, dismissed the notion that God
could literally father a child on a mortal woman as plainly
absurd, and described the doctrine of everlasting punishment or
reward as ‘absolutely offensive’. In the late 3rd century the
pagan philosopher Porphyry stated that promising any criminal that
he would be absolved of his sins and enter paradise as long as he
was baptized before he died undermined the very foundations of a
society of decent human beings. The gnostics regarded a literal
belief in the resurrection as the ‘faith of fools’. Even the
3rd-century Christian philosopher Origen dismissed literalist
Christianity as a ‘popular, irrational faith’, and stated bluntly:
‘Christ crucified is teaching for babes’ [7].
Regarding the Roman Church’s doctrine that at the last
judgement there would be an apocalypse of fire in which all
non-Christians would be consumed and the faithful physically
resurrected, Celsus commented: ‘The very fact that some Jews and
even some Christians reject this teaching about rising corpses
shows just how repulsive it is; it is nothing less than nauseating
and impossible. I mean, what sort of body is it that could return
to its original nature or become the same as it was before it
rotted away?’ [8]. Writing at the end of the 2nd century, the
church father Tertullian admitted that the claim that a human
could physically return from the grave was too incredible to be
believed, but the best ‘argument’ he could come up with was: ‘It
is true because it is absurd, I believe it because it is
impossible’ [9]. And this from a man routinely claimed to be a
great Christian theologian! Celsus described Christians as
irrational, because they ‘do not want to give or receive a reason
for what they believe’ but rather win converts by telling them
‘not to ask questions but to have faith’ [10]. Gregory Nazianzen,
a Christian saint, put it very bluntly: ‘Nothing can impose better
on a people than verbiage; the less they understand the more they
admire’ [11].
The promise of Christ and the vital force of Christianity
require a literal belief not only in the crucifixion and
resurrection but also in the irrational doctrine of original sin
[12]. We are expected to believe that a supposedly omnipotent,
omniscient and loving God knowingly created Adam and Eve so
flawed that they succumbed to temptation by the Devil (another of
God’s wondrous creations?!), and then took revenge by cursing not
only them but all succeeding generations as well. Having created
the world badly in the first place, he was only able to fix it by
sacrificing his own son, i.e. part of himself, to an agonizing
death. And thanks to this act of blood atonement everyone can now
be saved and enjoy eternal bliss simply by believing in Jesus,
while unbelievers, regardless of how noble their lives may have
been, will suffer eternal torture in hell! Why the shedding of
Jesus’ blood would enable or persuade God to confer forgiveness of
sin and eternal salvation is never explained. Blood sacrifices (of
humans or animals) are generally regarded with aversion in modern
society, yet this primitive concept still lies at the heart of the
orthodox Christian faith [13].
Historically unknown
Few Christians are aware that there is not a single piece of
legitimate historical evidence that the gospel Jesus ever existed.
The birth, life, miracles, teachings and death of Jesus are not
referred to by any historians of the time, despite the fact that
the centuries surrounding the beginning of the Christian era were
some of the best documented in history. Apart from Luke’s Gospel,
no historical sources mention the Roman census that supposedly
required Mary and Joseph to travel to Bethlehem. In fact, a Roman
census could not have been carried out in Palestine in the time of
King Herod, for his territory was not part of the empire. Nor are
there any independent historical accounts of the guiding star
(which, very unstarlike, wandered through the sky and came to rest
over the building where Jesus was born!), Herod’s slaughter of the
innocents, or the dramatic events that allegedly accompanied the
crucifixion – i.e. three hours of global darkness, an earthquake
and the rending of the veil of the temple of Jerusalem, followed,
according to Matthew, by corpses emerging from their graves,
including the resurrection of the saints and their subsequent
appearance to many in Jerusalem!
The only Roman writers to mention anything of relevance to
the historical reality of Jesus are Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius,
but they were all writing at the beginning of the 2nd century and
none of them mention Jesus by name [1]. Pliny simply says that
some Christians had cursed ‘Christ’ to avoid being punished.
Tacitus mentions that Christ was executed by Pontius Pilate, but
it is clear that he is merely quoting hearsay information from his
own day. Suetonius states that Jews were expelled from Rome around
49 CE because a man called Chrestus instigated disturbances among
them. But Chrestus was a popular name, and even if Suetonius
really meant ‘Christus’, Jesus was never said to have been at
Rome, and certainly not nearly 20 years after his supposed
crucifixion. Moreover, the authenticity of all these passages has
been questioned.
Turning to Jewish historians: Philo was an eminent Jewish
author who lived at the same time that Jesus is supposed to have
lived and wrote around 50 works that still survive. They tell us
much about Pontius Pilate, yet make no mention of Jesus. Philo’s
contemporary, Justus of Tiberias, wrote a history that began with
Moses and extended to his own times, but again made no mention of
Jesus [2].
Josephus, on the other hand, a younger contemporary of the
apostle Paul, wrote two famous history books, one of which (Antiquities
of the Jews) contains two passages which do refer to
Jesus: one of them speaks of him as the messiah, who was crucified
under Pilate and appeared to his disciples three days later. For
hundreds of years these passages were seized on by Christians as
conclusive proof that the gospel Jesus was an historical figure.
But more careful scrutiny has shown them to be later forgeries.
Since Josephus was an orthodox Jew, he would hardly have called
Jesus the messiah if the Jews had really put him to death for
blasphemy. Origen explicitly stated in the 3rd century that
Josephus did not believe that Jesus was the messiah. It was
not until the beginning of the 4th century that Bishop Eusebius,
the Roman Church’s notorious propagandist and falsifier, suddenly
produced a version of Josephus which contained these passages.
Nevertheless, given the lack of any other serious, nonbiblical
evidence for an historical Jesus, some Christian apologists still
go to desperate lengths to claim that the passages in Josephus are
at least partially authentic [3].
The Jewish Talmud comprises an older stratum called the
Mishna and additional matter known as the Gemara or ‘completion’.
The Mishna was founded in 40 BCE and was edited and amplified till
about the beginning of the 3rd century CE. It contains an unbroken
record of all the rebels against the authority of the Jewish
Sanhedrin from 40 BCE to about 237 CE, and provides a history of
the Pharisees, who allegedly put Jesus to death. H.P. Blavatsky
asks:
how is it that not one of the eminent Rabbis, authors of the
Mishnah, seems to have ever heard of Jesus, or whispers a
word in the defence of his sect charged with deicide, but is, in
fact absolutely silent as to the great event? [4]
The Talmud does contain references to a certain Jeshu, on whom
the gospel Jesus may partially have been based, but one passage
implies that he lived about 100 BCE. The Talmud certainly provides
no support for the historical reality of a gospel Jesus living in
the early 1st century.
Forging a new religion
The only other evidence for the gospel Jesus is drawn from
Christian testimonies, and in particular the gospels. There were
originally hundreds of different gospels, not just the familiar
four included in the New Testament. The four canonical gospels
were accepted around the 4th century after much dispute and
argument, all the rest being rejected as apocryphal or heretical.
Some of the earliest and most quoted Christian texts, such as the
Gospel of Thomas, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Gospel of the
Hebrews, were excluded from the New Testament because none of them
contained any reference to the quasi-historical story of Jesus.
Even the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were all
at one time or another regarded as heretical. These gospels are
not eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus written by his
disciples, but later, anonymous works that eventually acquired the
names of their supposed authors. The first person to mention a
fourfold gospel account of the life and death of Jesus, under the
names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, was Irenaeus around 180 CE.
The earliest versions of the gospels are thought to have been
written between 70 and 140 CE, most likely during the last 30
years of this period [1]. However, they then underwent many
alterations, as a comparison of over 3000 early manuscripts has
shown. For example, the gnostic Marcion was using a Gospel of Luke
around 140 CE which did not conform to our canonical text;
chapters 1 and 2 are later additions. The last 12 verses of Mark’s
Gospel and the last chapter of John’s Gospel are also later
additions. The church father Origen acknowledged that manuscripts
had been edited and passages added to suit the needs of the
changing theological climate [2]. As already shown, all the
revisions have done nothing to remove the major discrepancies in
the gospels.
Although the four gospels are always placed first in the
New Testament, the letters of Paul were written before any of them
and are commonly dated at c. 50 CE. It is quite remarkable that
although Paul is widely regarded as Jesus’ contemporary, he never
claimed to have met him in the flesh or to have met anyone else
who had done so;* he is concerned only with the heavenly Christ,
whom he encountered in visions, and with the redemptive
significance of his death and resurrection, which he never places
in an historical earthly setting. Paul makes no mention of Jesus’
virgin birth, his ministry in Galilee or Jerusalem, his miracles
and teachings, or the details of his passion. What’s more, all
the earliest, pre-gospel Christian epistles display the same
silences as Paul. It is only in the 2nd century that Jesus begins
to be linked with the time of Herod and Pontius Pilate and that
further biographical details emerge.
*Paul refers to John, James, and Peter/Cephas, who are
commonly equated with the characters of the same name mentioned
in the gospels, having somehow been transformed from simple
fishermen into learned scholars. However, Paul says nothing
whatsoever about them having been Jesus’ companions and
disciples, and the gospel tales did not even exist when he wrote
his letters. On one occasion Paul calls James ‘the brother of
the Lord’, but this does not mean he must have been Jesus’ blood
brother as he was the head of a community in Jerusalem which
called itself ‘brothers of/in the Lord’. Paul disagrees with
Cephas on various matters and condemns him in very strong terms.
But if Cephas is the Peter of the gospels it is odd that Paul
fails to mention that he had been rebuked by Jesus as ‘satan’,
had fallen asleep in the garden of Gethsemane and had denied his
master three times [3].
The earliest gospel is commonly believed to be Mark’s, the
simplest and shortest, in which Paul’s picture of Jesus as a
mystical dying and resurrecting godman is given a historical and
geographical setting. Most of the details of the passion story are
taken directly from passages in the Psalms and Prophets. Mark’s
Gospel (or rather an earlier version of the present gospel) was
then reworked and embellished by the authors of Matthew and Luke,
with details of Jesus’ birth and resurrection being added. This
shows that they did not regard it as a valuable historical record
that must be preserved intact or as the inviolable ‘word of God’.
The Gospel of John, the most mystical, is remarkably different in
style and content from the other three. Due to its strong gnostic
flavour, many 2nd-century churchmen were opposed to its inclusion
in the New Testament. What worked in its favour, however, was its
insistence on the reality of Jesus’ physical incarnation, in
opposition to the docetic (‘illusionist’) trend in Gnosticism,
which regarded Jesus as an eternal, spiritual being, untouched by
the suffering experienced by his ‘illusory’ physical
manifestation. Significantly, all the gospel authors betray a
deficient knowledge of Palestinian geography and of Jewish rituals
and practices [4].
Once an historical Jesus had been created, the Acts of the
Apostles was written (150-177 CE) to account for his disciples. It
reads like a fantasy novel, misquotes the Old Testament, and
contradicts Paul’s letters. It is now acknowledged to be largely
if not entirely a fabricated picture of Christian origins designed
to serve the purposes of the Roman Church. Finally, the Letters of
the Apostles were written (177-220 CE). Modern scholars have shown
that the letters ascribed to Peter, James and John are forgeries
written much later to combat heretical (gnostic) ideas within the
early church; they attack ‘many deceivers’ who ‘will not
acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh’ (2 John 7).
Paul’s early (and mostly genuine) letters are full of gnostic
phrases and teachings, whereas his later letters (the Pastorals)
are anti-gnostic, and are regarded as fakes by all but the most
conservative of theologians. Forgery during the first few
centuries of the church’s existence was so rampant that the phrase
‘pious fraud’ was coined to describe it.
The evidence clearly suggests that the New Testament is not
a history of actual events, but a history of the evolution of
Christian mythology. The upshot of all this is that there is no
substantial evidence whatsoever for the historical existence of
the gospel Jesus – a man who is supposed to have been the one and
only incarnation of God on earth. However, this does not rule out
the possibility that the gospel Jesus was partly based on or
inspired by actual historical figures, including the Talmud Jeshu
[5].
In 66 CE Jews in Judea revolted against their Roman
oppressors, culminating in the fall of Jerusalem and the
destruction of the temple in 70 CE. Some 600,000 people – a fifth
of the population – died from violence, famine and disease. These
events fuelled the Jews’ desperate desire for a saviour, and gave
impetus to the replacement of Paul’s mystical, timeless Christ
with a more accessible, pseudo-historical saviour who had
supposedly lived on earth in the recent past. Such a figure would
offer an alternative to the many disastrous revolutionary
‘messiahs’, or ‘zealots’, who sprang up during the crisis.
The Therapeutae, a group of Pythagorean, Essenean Jews, are
mentioned in one of Philo’s books written in 10 CE. They practised
a Jewish version of the pagan mysteries, believed their myths
encoded secret mystical truths, and may have played a key role in
creating the Jesus myth, in which the pagan godman is combined
with the Jewish messiah. The community lived near Alexandria,
which was a great melting-pot of pagan and Jewish cultures and
became one of the main centres of Gnosticism [6]. Ultimately,
however, the Jesus myth won few Jewish converts since a messiah
who was crucified as a common criminal was not the saviour they
were waiting for. But it was embraced by pagans and gentiles as a
new mystery cult. The fact that it incorporated elements from so
many other sects and cults added to its popular appeal.
Bigotry triumphant
By the middle of the 2nd century, a battle was raging between
gnostic and literalist Christians. The latter attacked the
gnostics as heretics who had perverted genuine Christianity,
whereas the truth is that Literalism is a degenerate form of the
original Jesus mysteries of the gnostics. In the face of gnostic
insistence that the Jesus story was a mystical allegory,
literalists asserted that Jesus Christ suffered and was crucified
under Pontius Pilate – a statement that was repeated with such
fanatical insistence that it shows how weak the literalists felt
at this time. The forged Second Letter of Peter, for example,
defensively asserts that literalist Christians are not following
‘cleverly devised myths’ (1:16)!
It was literalist Christianity that eventually triumphed,
thanks to its adoption as the official religion of the Roman
Empire in the 4th century. To endorse their claim of ‘one Empire,
one Emperor’ in the face of increasing fragmentation, the Roman
emperors needed ‘one faith’ – a universal or ‘catholic’ religion.
Roman leaders flirted with various mystery religions. For
instance, at the end of the 2nd century Emperor Commodus was
initiated into the mysteries of Mithras, another godman who was
miraculously born on 25 December. In 304, just 17 years before
Christianity became the state religion, Mithras was declared the
‘protector of the Empire’. Then Emperor Constantine tried
Christianity, which proved a more ideal candidate:
Literalist Christianity . . . was a Mystery religion that had
purged itself of all its troublesome intellectuals. It was
already an authoritarian religion which encouraged the faithful
to have blind faith in those holding positions of power. It was
exactly what the Roman authorities wanted – a religion without
mystics, the Outer Mysteries without the Inner Mysteries, form
without content. [1]
At the first Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, Constantine
oversaw the creation of the Nicene Creed, which is still repeated
in churches to this day.* Christians who refused to assent to this
creed were banished from the Empire or otherwise silenced, though
the church continued to engage in political in-fighting thinly
disguised as theological debate. After the ‘Christian’ Constantine
returned home from Nicaea he had his wife suffocated and his son
murdered. He deliberately remained unbaptized until his deathbed
so that he could continue his atrocities and still receive
forgiveness of sins and a guaranteed place in heaven by being
baptized at the last moment.
*The Nicene Creed includes the following: ‘We believe in one
Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of
the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true
God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. . . He
will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and
his kingdom will have no end.’
Constantine’s personal biographer was Bishop Eusebius, who
glossed over his murders with obsequious flattery. Eusebius has
been called ‘the first thoroughly dishonest and unfair historian
of ancient times’ [2]. It was chiefly he who concocted the
fictitious history of the Roman Church still widely accepted to
this day. It is well documented that the Roman governor Pontius
Pilate was a cruel and oppressive ruler, but as literalist
Christianity became more and more Romanized, the blame for the
Jesus’ death was shifted from Pilate to the Jewish nation as a
whole. Whilst the Jews were increasingly vilified, traditions were
fabricated which portrayed Pilate as a just and holy man – even a
Christian! By the 4th century both Pilate and his wife were
honoured as saints!
Constantine’s mother, Helena, was forced into exile after
being implicated in the murder of his step-mother. She went on a
tour of the Holy Land, where she discovered the tomb and birth
cave of Christ, along with the remains of the three crosses used
to crucify Jesus and the two thieves at Golgotha. Given that
thousands of other Jews had been executed in the 300 years that
had elapsed since Jesus supposedly met his death, this was truly
an extraordinary miracle! Constantine erected churches on these
sites, which have been honoured as holy ever since.
By making Christianity the state religion, Constantine gave
literalist Christianity the power it needed to begin the final
ruthless suppression of paganism and Gnosticism. H.P. Blavatsky
writes:
The days of Constantine were the last turning-point in
history, the period of the Supreme struggle that ended in the
Western world throttling the old religions in favour of the new
one, built on their bodies. [3]
By the end of the 5th century, the destruction was so complete
that Archbishop Chrystostom could boast: ‘Every trace of the old
philosophy and literature of the ancient world has vanished from
the face of the earth’ [4].
In explaining why literalist Christianity triumphed over
Gnosticism, Freke and Gandy write:
. . . Gnosticism attracted people of a mystical nature.
Literalism, on the other hand, attracted those interested in
establishing a religion. Gnostics were concerned with personal
enlightenment, not creating a Church. They could never have
triumphed over the Literalists, because they could never have
had the desire to do so.
Literalism was originally the Outer Mysteries of
Christianity, designed to attract initiates to the spiritual
path. With their fascinating tales of magic and miracles, and
promise of immortality through the simple acts of baptism and
belief, the Outer Mysteries were meant to be more popular and
widely appealing than the Inner Mysteries. . . . If the original
integrity of the Jesus Mysteries had survived, the popularity of
the Outer Mysteries would have naturally led more and more
initiates into the Inner Mysteries of Gnosis. Once Gnosticism
and Literalism were two distinct traditions in conflict with
each other, it was inevitable that Literalism would prove the
more popular. . . .
Above all, however, Literalist Christianity’s success was
due to the one great quality it had from the beginning and
continues to foster – intolerance. This is not a quirk of
history, it is a logical by-product of taking the Jesus story as
historical fact. . . .
If Jesus is the one and only Son of God who requires the
faithful to acknowledge this as historical fact, then
Christianity must be in opposition to all other religions who do
not teach this. Moreover, if all unbelievers are to be damned
for eternity it becomes the moral duty of Literalist Christians
to spread their beliefs, by force if necessary, to save as many
souls as possible, even if it means destroying their bodies to
do so. [5]
The triumph of literalist Christianity ushered in a Dark Age of
ignorance, bigotry and dogmatism.
Blavatsky stated that true Christianity died with the
gnostics, and that modern Christianity is composed of ‘the husks
of Judaism, the shreds of paganism, and the ill-digested remains
of gnosticism and neoplatonism’ [6]. Christianity in its present
ossified form has little to offer. However, Freke and Gandy hold
out the following hope:
If Christianity were to acknowledge its debt to the ancient
Mysteries it could connect again to the universal current of
human spiritual evolution and become a partner, not an
adversary, of all the other religious traditions it has branded
as the work of the Devil. . . .
Only by returning to its mystical roots will Christianity
play a role in the creation of a new spirituality for the New
Age of Aquarius. Literalist Christianity is built on the
unsteady foundations of historical lies. Sooner or later it must
topple over. But mystical Christianity rests securely on the
bedrock of timeless mythical truth and is as relevant today as
it always has been. . . .
The ancient Mysteries taught that we are all sons and
daughters of God and by understanding the myth of the sacrificed
godman we also can be resurrected into our true immortal, divine
identity. . . . [The myth of Jesus] points towards the perpetual
possibility of spiritual rebirth, here and now. It can still
reveal the Mystery which Paul proclaimed, ‘Christ in you.’ As
the Gnostic Jesus promises in The Gospel of Thomas,
‘He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I
myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be
revealed to him.’ [7]
References
Divine confusion
[1] H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Wheaton, IL:
Theosophical Publishing House, 1950-91, 9:271-3, 275-80, 14:146-8;
G. de Purucker, The Esoteric Tradition, Pasadena, CA:
Theosophical University Press, 2nd ed., 1973, pp. 69-75;
Dialogues of G. de Purucker, Pasadena, CA: Theosophical
University Press, 1948, 3:265-7.
Reinventing the pagan godman
[1] Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries: Was
the original Jesus a pagan god?, London: Thorsons, 2000;
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Jesus and the Goddess: The
secret teachings of the original Christians, London: Thorsons,
2001; Acharya S, The
Christ Conspiracy: The greatest story ever sold, Kempton,
IL: Adventures Unlimited, 1999, www.truthbeknown.com; Acharya S,
Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ unveiled,
Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited, 2004; Earl Doherty,
The Jesus Puzzle: Did
Christianity begin with a mythical Christ?, Ottawa: Canadian
Humanist Publications, 1999, www.jesuspuzzle.org; Alvar Ellegard,
Jesus: One hundred years before Christ, Woodstock, NY:
Overlook, 1999; G.A. Wells, The Jesus Myth, Chicago, IL:
Open Court, 1999; Robert M. Price, Deconstructing Jesus,
Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000. See also The Esoteric
Tradition, pp. 39-40, 353-4, 979, 1087-8.
[2] The Jesus Mysteries, pp. 33-76; The Christ
Conspiracy, pp. 105-27, 189-91, 216-7; Deconstructing Jesus,
pp. 86-93; H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (1888),
Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press, 1977, 2:481-2.
[3] The Christ Conspiracy, p. 204.
[4] The Jesus Mysteries.
[5] See Grace F. Knoche, The Mystery Schools, Pasadena,
CA: Theosophical University Press, 2nd ed., 1999.
[6] The Jesus Mysteries, pp. 29-30.
[7] Ibid., pp. 90-1, 282-3, 149, 158-9.
[8] Ibid., p. 91.
[9] Ibid., p. 258.
[10] Ibid., p. 281.
[11] H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled (1877), Pasadena, CA:
Theosophical University Press, 1972, 2:183.
[12] The Christ Conspiracy, pp. 188-9.
[13] The Jesus Puzzle, pp. 361-2.
Historically unknown
[1] The Jesus Puzzle, pp. 201-3, 222, 354; The Jesus
Myth, pp. 196-200; Hayyim ben Yehoshua, ‘Refuting
missionaries’, http://mama.indstate.edu/users/nizrael/jesusrefutation.html;
The Christ Conspiracy, pp. 51-2; G. de Purucker, Word
Wisdom in the Esoteric Tradition, San Diego, CA: Point Loma
Publications, 1980, pp. 127-30.
[2] The Jesus Mysteries, p. 166.
[3] The Jesus Puzzle, pp. 205-22; Earl Doherty, ‘Josephus
unbound: reopening the Josephus question’, www.jesuspuzzle.org/supp10.htm;
The Jesus Myth, pp. 200-21; Suns of God, pp.
381-93.
[4] Blavatsky Collected Writings, 4:364.
Forging a new religion
[1] The Jesus Mysteries, p. 191; Jesus: One hundred
years before Christ, pp. 183-6, 189-90.
[2] The Jesus Mysteries, p. 177.
[3] The Jesus Mysteries, pp. 184-90; The Jesus Puzzle,
pp. 57-8; Jesus: One hundred years before Christ, pp. 14-5,
215-38; The Jesus Myth, pp. 52-5.
[4] The Christ Conspiracy, pp. 329-31.
[5] See Who was
the real Jesus?, www.davidpratt.info.
[6] The Jesus Mysteries, pp. 225-8.
Bigotry triumphant
[1] The Jesus Mysteries, p. 284; Dialogues of G. de
Purucker, 2:218-9.
[2] The Jesus Mysteries, p. 293.
[3] The Secret Doctrine, 1:xliv.
[4] The Christ Conspiracy, p. 357.
[5] The Jesus Mysteries, pp. 302-3.
[6] Blavatsky Collected Writings, 9:385, 8:272.
[7] The Jesus Mysteries, pp. 307-10.
Last updated: Feb 2005. Published in Fohat,
spring 2002.
Reprinted with permission. © Copyright David
Pratt 2003
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