The Mythical Jesus Christ

An Introduction to Christ Myth Theory

By Derek Murphy

Contents
Introduction CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 The Mythical Christ A Response to Critics On Paradox The Debate Evidence for the Historical Jesus Evidence for the Mythical Christ Diabolical Mimicry Astrological Roots I: The Lion King Astrological Roots II: The Jesus Zodiac Astrological Roots III: Draco Snakes and Ladders The Mystery Cults Pauls Worst Pupils The Promise of the Flesh From Faith to History 6 12 17 22 32 40 48 63 82 90 100 113 127 135 3

Conclusion

Conclusions and Final Thoughts

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Editors note:
The following is a collection of web articles concerning Christ Myth Theory; or the idea that some or all of the gospels accounts of Jesus Christ were taken from per-existing Pagan mythologies. Ive put them together in PDF form for convenience; however please realize that they are still unpolished. They were written to expand the ideas I put together in my first book Dead Little Fish, which Im also giving away now as an ebook on my site
http://www.holyblasphemy.net/

Both Dead Little Fish and these articles share the same errors generalizing, non-specificity, and lack of explanation. This is because, previously, I tried to take myself out of the text and present just the evidence. The problem with this is, without a guide, the evidence means very little. I am working on a much more in depth book on the same topics, but for now, I offer these two as introductory reading. While the argumentation may be lacking, the evidence is still fascinating, exciting, and sometimes unbelievable and, a strong point is being made: that there never was a historical founder of the Christian movement.

Introduction: The Mythical Christ

This page is the beginning of a series which argues the case for the mythical Christ; it is our belief that Jesus Christ never existed as a historical person. We believe this not only because the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of it, but also because we find the mythical Christ to be more spiritually beneficial and less likely to cause the bigotry, small-mindedness and smug superiority which, while not Christian values, all-too-often result from the belief in a historical Jesus. However, we have found that everybody vastly and wholly misunderstands our position about the significance of the mythical Jesus, and so this preface will attempt to clarify, not the evidence for the mythical Jesus, but the implications of him: what a historical founder of Christianity really means, and what his absence might offer. The basic Christ-Myth argument, which is given in careful detail on this website, is that everything

said about Jesus Christ in the gospels had already been said about previous mythological figures. (That this is true is no longer a question of debate - an abundance of evidence has made it the rational conclusion of every independent researcher - the only question that remains is, if not the mythological figure of the gospels, who was Jesus really?) The Christ Myth theory merely points out that if all of those earlier saviors were spiritual fables, and Jesus was later attributed with their miraculous feats, (some of which include suffering on the cross, and later resurrecting for the sins of the world - in short the defining characteristics of Christianity), then Jesus was most probably also mythological. This argument can easily be circumvented through a faith that devalues reason, however, as I will show, even this kind of faith has its limits. The assumption made by most people when hearing this argument is that we don't believe in Jesus; we must be out to get him, or have personal anger issues against organized religion. At the very least, if we think that the Bible is a copy of Pagan literature and mythology, then we must regard the whole Christian religion as a sham that we're better off without. In fact, we have nothing against religion. We're not challenging that Jesus Christ has been a life-changing factor for many people. We're not questioning whether Jesus Christ has been and is a spiritual presence and comfort to millions of his followers, and we're not even doubting that some people have had real metaphysical experiences of him. We're also not trying to disprove God. Some things may really be beyond our ability to comprehend - but Jesus Christ was either there, historically, or not. This is not one of those unfathomable mysteries. There is convincing evidence that Jesus Christ never existed as a historical person, and it is possible to discover in the history of Christianity the process by which a mythical figure was accidentally mistaken for a real human being. Many people think of myth as a lie, a fable, not true and therefore worthless. If we cannot prove whether or not Jesus existed, they ask, and the mythological Jesus is a non-entity, a nothingness, why should we care about him? Since Jesus may have been a historical person, shouldn't the only important questions be, Who exactly might he have been? What kind of life did he live? What type of man was he? These are the questions that are under heavy academic debate, which makes it appear that scholars, while disagreeing about every single detail concerning the life of Jesus, are at least unanimous in supporting his historicity. To conduct research into the unproved but assumed historical Jesus, scholars take those qualities of Jesus that they know to be echoes and copies of mythology, and throw them out. (If there was a real Jesus, then these mythological themes must have been added on to his life after his death.) They strip him down until there is virtually nothing left except a vague idea of a spiritual teacher, and then try to build him back up through hypothesis and conjecture. Our question is, what good is this historical Jesus? Without his miracles, his parables, his moral example, and especially, without his death and

resurrection, what possible interest, other than a simple historical curiosity, can this man have for us? If Jesus was just a man, then he is worthless. He was not the way, truth and light; he was only a philosopher and magician. (There are dozens of Greek philosophers whose wisdom, moral guidance and spiritual eloquence make Jesus look like a charlatan.) While most Christians accept the Jesus of faith without looking for the Jesus of history, others are able to seek the historical Jesus without denying any of his mythological qualities. They already know that December 25th wasn't Jesus' real birthday, that Easter is a Pagan superstition, and that Jesus has a lot in common with earlier mythology. And although they claim that mythology copied from Jesus after, or possibly before Jesus came, this only strengthens their belief in God, Jesus and the Bible, by demonstrating how universal his plan really is. They see how the Biblical imagery and the gospel stories are reflected in older religious traditions, found all around the world, and say, See, the Bible is telling the Truth. The Bible is telling The Truth: It is telling the same, universal Truth, that all religions tell. It is not however, telling the only, need to buy this book or go to Hell, Truth; and just because it is telling a universal spiritual truth, does not mean that Jesus physically existed as a historical person. How can we separate the two? The mythology, the spirituality and salvation, the morality, soul, afterlife, presence of an infinite God, can still be there regardless of whether Jesus existed or not. There is no evidence that refutes or challenges it, and thus it can easily be continued, as a choice or practice, by anyone who is interested in believing or accepting that it is beneficial. The historical Jesus is something very different, because he was either there or he wasn't, regardless of what we believe. The historical Jesus has given rise to the notion that Christianity is a spiritual superior, the sole possessor of the "keys to the kingdom", who can only improve the world through assimilation and evangelization; not to mention the necessity of a Faith over Reason ideology in the face of preaching the historical Jesus at a disregard for empirical evidence. If Jesus was a mythological entity, on the other hand, then Christianity has suddenly become the peer, the brother, of countless other paths to salvation, and can work in harmony towards a better humanity. Not only is the mythical Jesus better because the evidence supports it and it does not conflict with reason, evidence, scientists, or other religious traditions, it is also better because it makes available a higher spiritual maturity, a limitless pathway through which to expand, search and question, without fear of falling into sin. Furthermore, a myth is much more powerful because it is personally applicable - we can take the story and apply it to our lives in order to improve ourselves. A historical story about miracles only generates awe - we say, Sure, he did great things, but he was Jesus for God's sake. I can't be like that. I'll just pray for him to save me." Rather than a God who gives us the power to grow,

reach, stretch, improve and mature, we have a God who wants us to cower, hide, fear, and cling onto the robes of Jesus, so that as he ascends into heaven he'll drag us up with him. Finally, the idea of a Just God and a Historical Jesus are absolutely incongruous - the presence of one logical refutes the other. If Jesus was a historical person, and if Jesus is the best (and possibly only) way towards eternal salvation, then God has already ambiguously stacked the odds in favor of those Western countries to whom the message of Jesus has, through imperialism and the slaughter of native inhabitants, reached. Not everyone will be saved, and those saved have been chosen not by their works or ethics or actions, but by the happy accident of being born into a Christian family or community, or being born with a certain temperament or character that is open towards the Christian message, or to have happened upon certain circumstances which have convinced them to accept Jesus Christ as their savior. In other words, Christian Salvation is not the result of a rational acceptance of God's free gift; it is a predetermined set of socio-psychological factors which are ambiguously thrust upon us. If Jesus Christ is nonetheless the Way, Truth and Life, it means that God is either oblivious to the eternal suffering of billions to whom the Christian faith does not come easily, or that he has caused the separation of peoples on purpose as a revolting display of pre-damnation; in which case, not only does he fail to live up to those highest ideals which we ascribe to him, but he also appears to be a meddlesome, revengeful nuisance and plague to human freedom and happiness. If the historical Jesus existed, then God is an unjust tyrant; and if it is impossible for the True God to be an unjust tyrant, then it is impossible for Jesus to have been both a historical person and the salvation Christians claim him to be.

Chapter 1: A Response to Critics

"The evidence is clear: The Jesus-myth is a groundless speculation, contrary to all evidence, and totally without basis. Here are our concluding thoughts on the matter: I have personally come to the conclusion that adherence to the "Jesus-myth" is not the result of careful deliberation of the evidence, but rather, is the product and province of skeptical minds in the grips of an obsession." http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist The idea that Jesus may not have existed is still very controversial. It is difficult to raise the subject and present argument and evidence because frankly, few people are willing to listen. Everybody has always believed in the historical Jesus or No serious scholars doubt that Jesus really lived or how

can so many people be wrong? are usual responses. Therefore, to even begin an argument, we need to get rid of some common objections. Ive listed a few below, with my retort. 1. There is no evidence for the Christ Myth theory. The Christ Myth theory is considered groundless speculation because there is no physical evidence that Jesus Christ did not exist. This is like arguing that, because there is no physical evidence that a giant purple monster is not standing on my head, I cannot prove that there is not one there. It is based on a logical rule that you can't prove a negative, or can't prove something that wasn't there. The flip-side of this criticism, however, is usually that there is evidence for a historical Jesus. This is nonsense. If there were such evidence, there would be no controversy - it would be ridiculous to claim that Jesus Christ was a myth if there were irrefutable evidence that he actually existed. In actuality, there is no evidence for Jesus whatsoever that is not hotly contested, which only shows that both theories are equally based on groundless speculation; the Christ Myth theory, however, is able to explain and answer a great many questions and historical factors which proponents of the historical Jesus are forced to ignore. 2. The Christ Myth is just a "proof from silence". A common attack on Christ Myth theory is that it often starts from a "proof from silence" argument. Many Christ Mythers try to show that there are few historical references to Jesus, and insinuate that, had Jesus existed, there would have been more. Critics argue that silence alone proves nothing; there were no TV or news casters in those days, and anyway, Jesus "flew under the radar" by staying mostly in the countryside. While I agree that the lack of historical references cannot prove anything about Jesus, I feel that critics miss the overall significance of this point. If there were any solid historical references to Jesus, then the Christ Myth theory is obviously untenable. While Christians have been, for at least 1,000 years, adamantly affirming the historical reliability of a few selected texts which they claim verify the historical Jesus, a Christ Myther, as well as any historian or secular scholar, (even those who believe that Jesus was historical,) can point out that these same historical documents are not reliable; their authorship and genuineness are continuing subjects of debate. Therefore, to even begin a Christ Myth hypothesis, it is highly relevant to show (as we have done in Evidence for the Historical Jesus) that the assumption of Jesus' ministry being the "most heavily documented event in the history of the world" is blatantly false. Only after we have cleared away the assumptions surrounding the historical Jesus can we begin to look for the Mythical Jesus. 3. Christ-Mythers are not scholars.

There have been only a small handful of marginally academic writers who have published on the Christ Myth theory, and critics point out that they are "out of their field." They don't have Ph.D's in relevant studies, they may not be trained in the rigorous investigation, clear logic and referencing that is now demanded in intellectual circles, and they may allow their passion for the subject to a) quote from sources they haven't personally checked or b) make comparisons and assumptions that can't be proved empirically. They may even (heaven forbid!) self-publish, or publish with an ill-reputed publishing company. I'll admit, as a "Christ Myther," or someone who doesn't believe in the historical Jesus, I can be accused of all the same flaws. I'm young, inexperienced, and sometimes don't care enough (at least at this point in my career, although I sincerely hope to improve) to back up every statement with irrefutable evidence, because I have seen that there is no evidence that is irrefutable - whoever does not agree with your conclusions will begin by questioning your research methods, and after that, attacking your character. In an attempt to tear apart the Christ Myth theory some critics will demonstrate that all of its proponents are uneducated attention seekers - and yet, the largest claims of the Christ Myth theory opens windows into Christian tradition which refuse to be shut again. In the proverbial "finger at the moon" story, a Zen master points at the moon and says "don't focus on the finger - look at what I'm pointing to." Criticism based on undermining professional experience simply cuts off the finger, hoping that without it, the moon will disappear. As more and more people become familiar with the Christ Myth theory, and recognize in it some questions that cannot be swept away by criticizing the author's biography, there may eventually be too people looking at the moon to cut off all the fingers. 4. No "real" scholars agree with the Christ Myth. I find this unfortunate, but can guess several reasons why traditional scholars have not yet supported the Christ Myth theory. First of all, the tendency of the academia is to focus on and study the specific, not the general. They may begin with a B.A. in Philosophy, then an M.A. in Religious Literature, and finally get a Ph.D. in "The Influence of Paul's Theology on the Writing of Mark's Gospel." They may be the experts of the details, but the Christ Myth theory is really about the big picture - comparing and making relationships between many historical and literary documents, from many cultures and time periods, and analyzing their similarities and possible influences. For example, a scholar might find the remains of a Roman crucifixion, analyze the wood and the nails, and determine with certainty exactly how the punishment was inflicted; these could be interpreted by other researchers as applicable to the death of Jesus Christ. The Christ Myther, on the other hand,

will search into mythology and religious traditions to find stories that echo the biblical description of Christ's passion, and then, finding an underlying spiritual theme, try to interpret the story as a metaphor and release its original meaning. It is unfair to compare a historian with a Christ Myther because they aren't really in the same field; Christ Mythers are primarily concerned with textual analysis and literary criticism. When placed in the field of "World Literature" or "Sociology", their methods no longer stand out as being unempirical. Further, it is ridiculous to dismiss the Christ Myth theory by trying to separate it from the Academic Community, because almost all scholars do agree that nearly everything in the gospels and in Christian tradition came from Pagan tradition. All professors of Religion or Theology recognize that Christianity developed out of previous traditions and that many of its ideas and symbols are not new. Most scholars also agree that when we cut out all of the Pagan influences, there is virtually nothing left to be said about the historical Jesus. The only difference between Christ Mythers and the average scholar is that, faced with a complete lack of evidence concerning the historical Jesus, scholars engage in sorting through the wreckage, dusting off the pieces, and trying to imagine what the historical Jesus would have been like. If he was a carpenter, what would his shop have been like? If he was married, what would his relationship have been like? In short, taking the Biblical testimony as a starting ground, they form a hypothesis and then try and support it through historical research. Allowing that their foundation is nothing more than the assumed historical Christ, is the Christ Myther any less credible? Lastly, I want to point out that the academia is not necessarily the best birthing ground for Truth. Being a researcher or a professor at a University is a public career, and depends on both innovative research and peer review. Backing a controversial theory is not a good idea for most scholars, who are concerned with career, status and nice things, just like everyone else. 5. Christ-Mythers make comparisons and connections that cannot be verified. I find it amazing that Christians can discredit Christ Mythers as fanatics, whose theories are absolutely without basis, because they see similarities between Jesus and other miraculous, dying and resurrecting sons of god. Even if we ignore every modern attempt to compare Jesus with other traditions, it is more than enough to provide just one quote from Justin Martyr, a Christian apologist who acknowledged the similarities between Jesus and Pagan gods around 1800 years ago. "When we say that the Word, who is first born of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven; we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter

(Zeus)." Justin Martyr, First Apology If, as Justin testifies, Christianity's central articles of faith (crucifixion, resurrection, ascension) are identical to Pagan mythology, is it any wonder Christ Mythers seek out more similarities, or question where these similarities came from? And while it is the overwhelming conclusion of modern scholars that Jesus was a historical person, there is plenty of evidence, especially from the first several centuries BC, that there has always been a debate over the historical Jesus. There were many heresies, decades after the alleged death of Jesus, that claimed Jesus had been born in appearance only, and was never an actual human being. Why should we believe the tradition of our Christian heritage, rather than investigating the claims of those other communities? Is it irrational, or crazy, to try to understand history from another point of view? Everyone knows that history is written by the winners; is there any reason to assume that in this case alone, the history written was absolutely free from prejudice? The Christ Myth theory is not a modern idea; it is a revival of a very ancient and very common criticism of Christianity: that Jesus did and said some things that other, earlier, Pagan god-men did and said. Critics try to knock down these similarities by either questioning the source, or calling them "coincidences" by playing up their differences. While Jesus was born of a Virgin, some other savior was born "without sexual union". While Jesus was crucified on a cross, some other savior was nailed to a tree, or a rock, or a T-shaped bar, or somewhere in the skies. The problem with focusing on the differences rather than the similarities is that, while it may work in one or two isolated cases, it cannot be applied to absolutely every proposed similarity without weakening in effect. And it also doesn't work on more specific cases; like Jesus was called "son of God", as were others, or born on December 25th, as were others. In response to these claims, critics will say that many of the so-called similarities really were added on to the story of Jesus by Pagan influences, but that these don't change the core Christian message. First off, if you agree that Christianity absorbed some of its symbols from mythological traditions, then you are a Christ Myther. Relegating our position to a simple "Jesus did not exist" is too easy: what we intend to show is that the person worshiped by Christians, along with all of his miraculous titles and abilities, is indebted to earlier traditions. It is meaningless to argue that Jesus was a historical person, but that motifs like his birth date, the virgin birth, crucifixion and resurrection, his role as son of god and savior were added into the tradition (and into the Bible!) by Pagans, and also that Jesus is still the Way, Truth and Life. What good is using this argument against Christ Mythers, and ending up with a human Jesus with no divine attributes? Critics will also argue that mythology may have prefigured Jesus in some way, but the things said

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about those Pagan gods were just stories, while Jesus was a real, physical human being. This doesn't answer why there should be any similarities at all. The only argument ever used to explain the similarities between Jesus and early Pagan saviors, which is continued by Christians in many ways today, is called "Diabolical Mimicry". This argument can only be accepted through a faith-based Christian paradigm that believes in a struggle between God and Satan, and for a non-Christian, it doesn't go far explain how a historical person mistakenly acted out the precise details of hundreds of diverse cultural mythologies. 6.) Christ-mythers have an agenda: to disprove the existence of Jesus. They already thought of

the end result and take material and twist it to fit into their hypothesis. All historians should know this is not how research is conducted. Again, this is an easy way to dismiss Christ myth theory without actually looking at the evidence it presents. Criticizing the methodology, the intention, and the characters of the people challenging traditional Christian history is like a magicians sleight of hand great at keeping your eyes focused on the wrong thing entirely because, if you were to look at the truth, the illusion would disappear.
In Conclusion I'm not beyond accepting that the Christ Myth theory may turn out to be wrong. It seems to me, given the available evidence, to be a very reasonable and highly probable version of Christian history, but I won't be upset if further evidence later induces me to change my ideas. However, what I find both disturbing and dangerous, is any attempt to disprove or vilify a hypothesis without referring to the argument itself or the evidence provided. To assume that the Christ Myth theory is false, because it wasn't convincing the first time it was given, and that every subsequent version of it is likewise false, shows an aversion to truth that is difficult to respond to.

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Chapter 2: On Paradox
This article explains that believing in Jesus Christ is very different from believing that Jesus Christ was historical. Christianitys claim of divine revelation is a claim of intervention into history; therefore it is not really a place for faith. History really happened, one way, and there is evidence to discover how it really went down. Christians belief in a fictional history is the weakest part of their creed, and always has been. It creates much unnecessary conflict between them and anyone interested in finding the truth.

"The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church." Ferdinand Magellan In a recent interview on BBC news, Professor Richard Dawkins, British scientist and author of the controversial book, The God Delusion, answered a caller's question concerning the fallibility of logic in the face of a transcendent deity: Q: Dawkins has lucidly demonstrated the logical inconsistencies of the existence of a deity. The question I'd like to ask is, why would an omnipotent deity be limited by the man-made invention of logic." A: "Well, if he's suggesting that we can't use logic, in order to bring our minds to bear upon the question of the existence of god, I find that a most incredibly cop-out. It means, in a sense, anything goes. That way, madness lies - because you could use that argument to demonstrate the existence of fairies, the flying spaghetti monster, the orbiting tea pot, a million things, golden unicorns - there's no limit to the number of things you could justify once you abandon logic." The question put before Dawkins is a common objection of the limitations of reason. The author of the website, Anti-Itch Meditation, says it this way: "If God is truly above us, I would expect Him to do things I can't understand and I would expect Him to do things I can't do. But that doesn't mean we don't have to have an answer ready for every question of our faith." I like this statement especially because it recognizes the need for dialogue and for developing answers to defend Christian faith. And I agree in principle: Yes, of course, I would expect God (who by

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definition, is infinite) to do things that I can't understand. This is the eternal Mystery of God: He is transcendent, I am limited. There will most probably always be things about him that while I can comprehend in theory, I'll never really be able to wrap my brain around and understand completely. But Mystery is very different from Paradox, and in the search for the historical Jesus, the distinction between these two concepts is fundamental. Mystery is, I can't understand that the universe is infinite. My brain can't grasp infinity. I know it, I have faith that it is true based on the evidence, but I can't really understand it. Paradox is, the Bible says the world was created 6,000 years ago, the world has believed it for 1,000 years, I'm Charles Darwin and research has just convinced me of Evolution. Do I need to continue believing what the Bible says, despite the evidence? Will God punish me if I don't? In order to distinguish between the Jesus of History and the Jesus of Myth, we need to begin from the assumption that there is no such thing as a natural paradox. A paradox is a logical argument or set of apparent truths which, when taken together, creates an absurd result. One of the oldest is in Zenos Paradox of the Tortoise and Achilles. The tortoise proves that he will beat Achilles, and the race is conceded before it even begins, even though in actuality, Achilles could have easily beaten the turtle. There are also linguistic paradoxes like this one: The The The following following following sentence sentence sentence is is is true. true. true.

The first sentence in this list is false. In some spiritual traditions, specifically, Zen Buddhism, paradox is a necessary tool to shut down the rational mind. Transcendental reality cannot be grasped by the human brain, only experienced through some non-rational part of us. Holy Blasphemy agrees with this use of paradox, and heavily endorses a non-rational approach to universal Truth, with the understanding that this universal Truth cannot have anything said about it through language. It cannot be communicated, and so, every religious transmission of spiritual knowledge is automatically suspect, at least in principle. In the search for the historical Jesus, we need to recognize that paradox is a result of problematic thought processes. A paradox is not real (inherent to the natural world), because, "nature abhors paradox." Paradox is an accident that happens when things that we think to be true contradict one

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another, and it is always a sign that we need to rethink our assumptions. If you were on a hiking trip and came up against a giant rock, what would you do? Sit down and try to figure out how to remove it, or go around? There are many paradoxes that arise in conjunction with the idea of the historical Jesus. The mythical Jesus is the only way to resolve these paradoxes. For example, Jesus has a lot in common with Pagan saviors, whose story of life, death and redemption are based on constellation mythology and stories about the sun. This means that Jesus has a lot in common earlier, mythological figures and also that the gospels stories reflect astrological events that can still be seen today. If Jesus was a historical person, he would have had to plan his entire life very carefully in order to mirror all of these mutual circumstances. And, although some groups recognized the similarities and were very clear that, unlike the other mythologies, Jesus alone was a real, physical person, other communities simultaneously continued to worship him as a myth. As the easiest way around the confusion, the path around the rock, we could accept that these details seem to imply that Jesus was a mythological character. The problem in proving Jesus didn't exist lies in the fact that people who believe in the historical Jesus also believe that natural paradoxes, like miracles, are possible. I have seen Christians absorb all of these details about Christian history and conclude that it only shows how God already had the plan of salvation in mind before he created the universe. He knew about the fall before He made the garden. He'd already decided the punishment, and already planned the redemption, and then, he made the stars and the moon and the sun, all of which needed to be so perfectly exact as to sustain life on earth, he made all of this, copying the events from the life and times of Jesus Christ, so that people could learn about Jesus by looking at the heavens. Once relinquishing some basic protests from common sense, in favor of the omnipotent, transcendent majesty of God, this viewpoint creates its own inner consistency and is very difficult to refute. However, commonly overlooked, is the fact that logical consistency is an absolute necessity for Christian faith. If God is completely other, completely unknowable, completely transcendental, then none of us can say anything about him; it is only through revelation that Christians maintain they have received the "keys to the kingdom". Knowledge of the Truth about God does not come through faith in Mystery, as many Christians believe, but through His intervention in history, His authorship of the Bible and His formation of the Church. They have faith that these events have taken place, as transcribed, and can be proved historically; and yet it is exactly the traditional view of Christian history, as we shall explore in this investigation, that is so easily refuted. This is a big, big Paradox, a circular dilemma: Christians can only know about God through revelation, and so revelation must have really happened, objectively and historically, for their faith to be justified, and yet this revelation

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cannot, in itself, be maintained without falling back on the support of faith. Christian faith is not just a suspension of reason, as is belief in fairies or golden unicorns, which cannot be evaluated or undermined, but a faith in a history which may never have happened. The great amount of frustration between people who have faith, and those who do not, is a language barrier. It is no use for me to explain my beliefs when my arguments are based on the assumption that logic can be used as a compass, when in fact my listeners believe the only compass to be God. However, the paradox of faith brings up questions that even Christians cannot ignore. For example, is it really true that, if there is an omnipotent God, He can do or be anything He wants? Can God be mean, selfish, racist and contradictory? Can he purposely hide the truth and wickedly tempt people away from it by planting false evidence? I argue that, if He can, then He does not live up to our conception of Him, and is not worthy of our reverence. I denounce this God. I reject him, as a fraud and phony. Like a powerful tyrant, He needs to be pulled from his throne. I hope most people will agree that, if God exists, then he is Good; and therefore these qualities cannot be assigned to him. But why would a good God, if he wanted us to find Jesus, make him so similar to so many other mythological saviors? Why tempt us into error, by giving us so many different paths to follow? The obvious answer is so that we may develop faith, but what good is faith? I have faith that God is good. That is easy for me. And yet, I'm asked to believe that this good God specifically challenges those who like to investigate, see patterns, and ask questions. Even if they are searching for Him, he hides and plants evidence to lead them astray, and then he punishes them for not accepting on faith what they could not understand through reason. Why? Another important question is, why did Jesus come down to one corner of the world? Why are 80% of Christians living in the Americas or Europe? Is God punishing the children of Asia, who didn't choose the social heritage they were born into? He seems to seek out the innocent, falsely accuse them through an impossible scheme of redemption, and then say, Sorry, too bad for you, you weren't born into a nice Christian home. Does God not recognize these problems? Am I then, smarter than God? Does he not care? Am I then, more loving? Has he no power to improve things in his own creation? The belief in a good God and the belief in a historical Jesus create a very large paradox. I have enough faith in God to believe with certainty that he is much more equipped to create a perfect universe than I am, and if, in my limited intelligence, I can find paradoxes in his work, I have faith enough not to exempt or remove God from the consequences of his creation by claiming, it's a mystery, but to instead adapt my own beliefs to encompass all parts of God's work without contradiction. It is my belief in a good God which causes me to refuse the historical Jesus and accept the mythical Jesus. Perhaps someone, with more faith than myself, can maintain that even a good, just, infallible God can

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make mistakes sometimes.

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Chapter 3: The Debate

Before we look at the evidence, it is important to look at the nature of the conflict. People have been arguing about the historical nature of Jesus since the very beginning of the Christian era. That this conflict exists at all is a clue that the evidence for the historical Jesus is lacking vitality. In this article we will briefly explain the "debate" over the historical nature of Jesus Christ, and the reasons why Jesus historicity begs to be questioned. The idea of a physical founder of Christianity is so intrinsic to our society that nowadays any opposing theory is simply discarded. Already in response to this website, I've gotten many emails saying things like, "Everybody has always believed in the historical Jesus," or "It's ridiculous to consider that everybody has just been wrong about Jesus for so long." One of the major writers in the field of the mythical Christ, Earl Doherty, got so much criticism for his book, "The Jesus Puzzle," that he wrote an entire article called, Responses to Critiques of the Mythicist Case. Some of the quotes he cites in this article, which is posted on his website, demonstrate that there is a bias against the idea of a mythical Jesus, which overshadows any research done in the area. He says: "In my critique of Mike Licona, I reproduced his quotes from 20th century scholars in regard to those who put forward the mythicist theory. They include: - Gunther Bornkamm: "to doubt the historical existence of Jesus at all...was reserved for an unrestrained, tendentious criticism of modern times into which it is not worthwhile to enter here." - Rudolf Bultmann: "Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement." - Paul Maier: "The total evidence [for the existence of Jesus] is so overpowering, so absolute that only the shallowest of intellects would dare to deny Jesus' existence. And yet this pathetic denial is still parroted by "the village atheist," bloggers on the internet, or such organizations as the Freedom from Religion Foundation." Is the theory of the mythical Jesus really a modern concept? Actually, its as old as Christianity, and has had plenty of resurgences. In the 19th century, many historical scholars were convinced that Jesus had never existed and wrote dozens of books to that effect. Just like today, however, the theory was met with incredulous disdain and scorn. Rev. Robert Taylor, arguing against the historical Jesus in

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1829, found himself in much the same position as Earl Doherty: surrounded by critics, who denounced his findings even while refusing to consider his evidence. "And from the apostolic age downwards, in a never interrupted succession, but never so strongly and emphatically as in the most primitive times, was the existence of Christ as a man most strenuously denied. So that though nothing is so convenient to some persons as to assume airs of contempt, and to cry out that those who deny that such a person as Jesus of Nazareth ever existed, are utterly unworthy of being answered, and would fly in the face of all historical evidence, the fact of the case is, that the being of no other individual mentioned in history ever labored under such a deficiency of evidence as to its reality, or was ever overset by a thousandth part of the weight of proof positive, that it was a creation of imagination only." Reverend R. Taylor, Diegesis Today, the debate over whether or not Jesus really existed has been completely ignored for the debate over Who Jesus Really Was. The controversial website, The Jesus Police, challenges every assumption about Jesus Christ and supplants them with new ideas, based on the latest evidence. However, they over-looked the one, most significant assumption: that Jesus actually lived at all. Not only has his existence never been proven, but for a guy whose historicity is apparently beyond question, he is notoriously hard to find. Even Christian scholars will admit that there are virtually no acceptable references to Jesus outside of the New Testament accounts. On his website, Mark D. Roberts, author of "Jesus Revealed", examines the evidence for the historical Jesus. He quickly dismisses the main Jewish and Roman sources used to support the historical Jesus, (as we will do later) and even makes the early Christian writings dispensable. In the end, he finds in the Bible plenty of evidence for the historical Jesus. "If all we had were the second-century Christian writings, we'd have a hard time sorting out what Jesus really did and said. The gulf between orthodox and heterodox treatments of Jesus was wide and growing wider in this century as Gnostics claimed Jesus as their heavenly redeemer while orthodox Christians insisted that his ministry included far more than revelation. At its core, they argued, it had to do with his death and resurrection, something the Gnostics rejected, preferring a revealer who didn't really suffer. But, I'm glad to say, we don't have only the second-century writings. In fact we have access to texts from the earliest days of Christian faith, writings which are collected in the New Testament." Mark D. Roberts, "How can we know anything about Jesus?" But is the Bible a historical document that can demonstrate the physical reality of Jesus Christ? In 1986, a man named Robert Funk created the Westar Institute with the aim of exploring this question. He organized the Jesus Seminar, an inter-disciplinary panel of top scholars, to investigate the historical accuracy of the New Testament sayings of Jesus. In 1993, the seminar published the

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findings of their vote-based investigation, in a work called, "The Five Gospels." Their conclusion? Only 16% of the words attributed to Jesus in the gospels may have actually been spoken by him. This may seem like a low number, but as critics of the Jesus Seminar point out, most of the members of the Jesus Seminars weren't Christian, and disregarded all of the supernatural, miraculous events because they couldn't have possibly happened. This harsh skepticism was used to remove the veil of divinity from Jesus Christ and reveal his humanity, but for spiritual persons who believe in the possibility of miracles, the findings of the Jesus Seminar are worthless as an investigation into the historical Jesus. After all, if the miracles recorded in the Bible really happened, they would surely be recorded in eye-witness accounts, which is what the New Testament gospels are believed to be. Just because they seem unlikely or impossible doesn't mean they didn't happen. (Skeptics will argue with me on this, but I promise to explain more later.) Secular researchers who are seeking critical evidence about the historical Jesus come up emptyhanded, and those who find plenty of evidence for the historical Christ in the Bible, have to begin from a point of faith that accepts miraculous events at face value. At this point, many people will say, "Well, it all happened a long time ago, and I guess there's no proof either way. People will just go on believing what they will." This is true in one sense: regardless of research, most people will go on believing what they want to. However, there is proof in the mythical Jesus. Lots of it - and more is coming to light all the time. First of all, it is easy to see from early Christian writings that the controversy over the historical Christ is very old. Early Christians who believed in a historical Jesus faced two big problems, the first were the similarities between Jesus and other Pagan gods, who were also born of a virgin, died for the sins of their followers, (often on a cross), and later rose from the dead. Since these other saviors were readily identified as mythological beings, everyone assumed that Jesus was just the newest version of an old story. These similarities were so obvious that Christian fathers never denied them. "When we say that the Word, who is first born of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven; we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter (Zeus)." Justin Martyr, First Apology (Chapter 21) The second problem was that, for as long as there has been the idea of a historical Jesus, it has been strenuously contested by others who denied that Jesus Christ had ever physically lived or died as a real man - and not only by Pagans, but Christian communities as well!

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"I have learned that certain ministers of Satan have wished to disturb you, some of them asserting that Jesus was born only in appearance, and was crucified in appearance, and died in appearance." Iraneaus, Against Valentinus (Chapter 2) It may be easy to understand how someone could get confused 2,000 years later, but how could the historical nature of Jesus be doubted so soon after his alleged resurrection? St. Ignatius, writing around 110AD, was already arguing against those who denied that Jesus really existed. This is within 30 years of the dating of Mark, which Christian tradition holds as the first gospel, written around 70AD. How is it that the Mark, disciple of Jesus, after waiting 40 years to publish his testimonial about Jesus Christ, finally writes the first account of his savior's words and deeds, and within 30 years there are people not only denying that Jesus existed, but worshiping that same non-existent Jesus? Did they read Mark's gospel about the ministry of Jesus, accept Jesus Christ as their savior, and then suddenly decide he wasn't real? If not from Mark, who wrote the first testimonial, how did they find out about Jesus? Certainly not from Jesus himself, nor from any eye-witnesses or 2nd or 3rd references; all of whom would have been sure to tell them of the miraculous deeds recently performed by the actual, physical Jesus Christ. When you read through the letters and writings of the Church fathers for the first several centuries of Christianity, a strong theme emerges, which shows just how large the "heresy" of the mythical Jesus really was. They all seem to be making the same point, that regardless of what everybody else was saying, Jesus had really existed. Unable to offer their enemies any proof for their faith in the historical Jesus, many church leaders resorted to name-calling. "For everyone who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is the antichrist; and whosoever does not confess the testimony of the cross, is a devil, and whosoever perverteth the oracles of the Lord (to serve) his own lusts, and saith there is neither resurrection nor a judgment, this man is a first born of Satan." St. Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians (Book 7, Chapter 1) Who were these other communities, who didn't believe a historical Jesus had physically completed the central motifs of Christianity? History has labeled them Gnostics due to their search for Gnosis, or Wisdom. After their version of Christianity became heretical, they were systematically exterminated, and nearly lost to history. In recent times, however, many of their original texts and scriptures have been recovered, translated and made available to the public. The Naq Hammadi Library alone, found in 1945, is a collection of Gnostic gospels and letters considerably larger than the New Testament. Some researchers count as many as 80 Gnostic gospels, and more, such as the Gospel according to Judas, continue to make headlines. Although Christian scholars argue that the New Testament gospels are the oldest, even this claim is hotly contested by Gnostic and secular experts.

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Do these gospels prove that Jesus didn't exist? Not on the surface. The Gnostic gospels, like the gospels of the New Testament, were written in a literary style known as Historical Narrative. This means they were stories which used real places and events to make them seem realistic. This was a common way of writing in those times, used also frequently in the Old Testament. "It is sufficient however, to represent in the style of a historical narrative what is intended to convey a secret meaning in the garb of history, that those who have the capacity may work out for themselves all that relates to the subject." Origen, Against Celsus (Book 5, Chapter 29) As time passed, the tradition of interpreting the mythical literature was lost, and communities were left with the text alone, which, on the surface, appears to be talking about historical events. "Many were led astray by reading the allegorical contents of the scriptures literally in the method of the Pharisees and Sadducees." Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History (I can no longer find the exact source for this quote, if anyone knows it please email me). We have been reading the stories about Jesus Christ literally for so long, it is very difficult to begin to see them as myths, even when, as is the case with most of the Gnostic gospels, they are overtly mythical in style and structure. As more of these gospels come to light and researchers slowly lose their grip on the assumption of a historical Jesus, we will begin to see Jesus in a whole new way. In the end, we have to acknowledge that the historical Jesus isn't and never has been the foregone conclusion of every sane researcher. In any just courtroom trial, a case may be opened up for reexamination whenever new evidence comes to light. Can we remove this standard from our quest for the historical Jesus, and say, "We've already decided the Truth in this matter, we will not consider any new evidence."? If you're willing to at least give the mythical Jesus a fair trial, please continue with the next part of this investigation.

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Chapter 4: The Evidence for the Historical Jesus

The road to the mythical Christ leads from an examination of the historical Jesus. As long as there is sufficiently credible evidence for the historical Christ, then of course the idea of claiming Jesus to have been a mythological figure is ridiculous. Research into the historical Christ, from a brief internet search to an in depth comparison of scholarly texts, always brings to light the same handful of historical passages, which have been used for well over 1,000 years as the definitive proof for the historical Jesus Christ. Answerbag.com gives this wonderfully short overview of these passages: The "proof" for the existence of Christ can be found in three main sources. The argument for the existence of Jesus is strengthened because the person of Jesus Christ is mentioned by independent Christian, Jewish, and Roman sources. Obviously the person of Jesus is mentioned quite thoroughly in the New Testament and other early Christian writings but Jesus is also mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus. The fact that Josephus, a practicing Jew and a man who was not actively involved Christian circles and not part of the early church mentions the existence of Jesus of Nazareth in his writings definitely gives credence to the argument for the existence of Jesus Christ. In turn, another of the most credible arguments for the existence of Jesus Christ are the writings of the Roman historian Tacitus. Tacitus was a Roman historian who also mentioned the existence of the crucifixion of Jesus in his writings. In turn, the writings of Tacitus are viewed by historians as crucial to not only understanding early Middle Eastern history but also what we know of early Germanic tribes in Europe. In essence, while the divinity of Jesus is not something that can be proven historically, the historical community is quite sure that a person named Jesus did live in the Middle East two thousand years ago and can look to independent historical sources to strengthen their argument. answerbag.com This short description makes the claim, as most Christians also do, that Jesus Christ is mentioned by independent Christian, Jewish, and Roman sources - but then provides only 1 Jewish source, and 1 Roman source, both of which, as we will see, are not accepted as reliable evidence by scholars, and neither of which were written by contemporaries of Jesus. As the ensuing argument stemming from the original answerbag passage shows, the verdict is still out on all of these sources. The three sources listed by Answerbag.com sum up the publicly known historical references to Jesus, and are the only ones that seem to continue to be used and relied on by Christians in defense of their faith, however we will add to them Pliny and Suetonius, whose writings are also sometimes used in divining the historical Jesus. Before we get into them individually, I want to point out, that the heated debate over even the validity of these passages already calls them into question. There is no other

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person in the history of mankind whose historicity has been so hotly contested as Jesus Christ. Not Caesar, not Buddha, not Mohammed; no other figure in the combined literature of the world has had so much trouble being accepted as a historical figure. This is because, as we shall see, all of the evidence in favor of the historical Jesus is so flimsy that it can be contested by those who don't believe in him. Rather than irrefutable proof, what we are left with is a collected body of historical references whose authenticity can only be believed in by those who want to believe in them. The Bible The Bible is the main text used by Christians as proof that Jesus was real. It is taken as a collection of four separate eye witness accounts, as well as other early Christian literature and letters, which demonstrate the founding of the early Church. The earliest copies of these documents were written in stylistic Greek literature, using many of the same terms as contemporary Greek philosophers, including concepts such as, soul, heaven, son of God, sin, redemption and salvation. The idea of the Word, or Logos of God, in particular, (who was with the father in the beginning, and created the world in his outpouring of creative energy,) began with the Greek philosopher Heraclitus about 5 centuries before the beginning of Christianity. The apostles of Jesus, on the other hand, were mostly poor, Jewish fisherman. Some may have been educated, some may have even learned Greek, but to write an entire book full of Greek philosophy, mythology, and even stories about other Pagan saviors, seems a little beyond their abilities. Even if these texts were inspired; why the similarities? As we will see in Diabolical Mimicry, there is nothing that Jesus said or did in the canonical gospels that were not previously done by other mythological figures. So we have to ask, did Jesus copy, either on purpose or accidentally, plot events from Pagan mythology? Or is it more likely that they were written in by the authors of the gospels in order to elevate him to divine status? As eye-witness accounts, the four gospels are horribly lacking - There aren't even any I's in them! Unlike Revelations, which is clearly a 1st person narrative, Then, in my vision, I saw a door open in heaven... (Rev. 4), the gospels are all in 3rd person. Instead of, I saw Jesus perform a miracle and was amazed, they say, The disciples saw Jesus perform a miracle, and they were afraid. This why sound like nominal semantics, but think of those people who walk around talking about themselves in 3rd person. Isn't it strange? Isn't it unusual? Why would anyone write a whole story like that, as if they were pretending not to be there. They are also, for eye-witness accounts, tremendously impersonal. As a small group of disciples that traveled with Jesus they should have become very close to him, and each other. But they tell no

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stories, share no opinions, and ignore their own personal experiences. There are no anecdotes, there is no spice of personality, and they never hint of even one private conversation between themselves and Jesus. They also never claim to be eye-witness accounts; unlike the letters of Paul, which say emphatically, "I, Paul, wrote this with my own hand. See, this is my own handwriting," the gospels have no authors attributed to them. It is only because the names of the gospels themselves, which were chosen later, match the names of the disciples listed in the text itself, has tradition assigned them to actual disciples of Christ. When we compare the three synoptic gospels, it becomes even clearer that they are not eye-witness accounts. Due to their similarity, scholars agree that Mark, the briefest of them, came first, and the other two synoptics, Matthew and Luke, copied from him, and added their own material. Why would an eye-witness account copy from another eye-witness account? Having the gospel of Mark in hand, wouldn't they have been more likely to provide details that Mark had missed, rather than merely collaborate his story? Many Christians are excited by historical research that has uncovered many of the people and places mentioned in the gospels, because these seem to support the bible's historicity. Actually, many scholars think that the earliest Christian documents were a simple collection of Jesus sayings, like a list of quotations, and that names, places and dates, all the physical details, were added in later. (And even this is only if we skip over the first documents used by the early church, like the Shepherd of Hermas, which doesn't mention Jesus at all.) We can see this progression in comparing Mark, which is sparse in historical detail, to Luke and Matthew, who add in lots of detail; although sometimes with contradictory results. It should also be understood that the gospels were written in a literary style known as Historical Narrative; they were stories about Jesus which included historical details in order to appear historical. How do we know? Historical Narrative is simply the literary style of the Bible this was well known to the church fathers, the majority of whom, for at least the first 5 or 6 centuries of Christianity, taught that scripture was metaphorical and needed to be interpreted. "It is sufficient however, to represent in the style of a historical narrative what is intended to convey a secret meaning in the garb of history, that those who have the capacity may work out for themselves all that relates to the subject." Origen, Against Celsus (Book 5, Chapter 29) On top of this, due to the early controversy concerning Jesus' historical nature, passages were written into the gospels specifically to prove his physical nature. To the already realistic style of historical narrative, scribes added in specific details, names, dates, as well as more and more examples of the physical Jesus interacting bodily with the world. Scholars can recognize these passages by changes in handwriting, spelling, grammar or style. This means that those passages which seem most useful as

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proofs for the historical Jesus, such as doubting Thomas sticking his finger into the wounds of Christ, or the resurrected Jesus eating fish, or Christ appearing to a large number of disciples, are actually the least reliable - because they were inserted precisely in order to be used as evidence that Jesus had been a real, physical person. The strongest evidence against the Bible as a historical text is the fact that all of the stories, parables, and actions of Jesus, as well as the language used to describe him, have corresponding passages in pre-Christian literature. This is, in fact, the main reason that most scholars have completely given up on the Bible as a historical document. The other reason, of course, is that those who do not come to Bible with a faith in the miraculous abilities of Jesus will read the gospel stories as obvious fiction. It takes a suspension of Newtonian laws, which in all other circumstances appear to govern our existence, even to consider that the gospels are historical. If we try to use the Bible as a historical document by removing all of those things that challenge logic, such as the miracles, the similarities between other traditions, and the phrases that literary critics don't believe Jesus really said, then we might get a figure similar to the 30 year study of the Westar Institute, which concluded that only 16% of the Bible might possibly be true. But isn't it enough that these gospels were written? Even if mostly false, don't they have to be grounded on a historical root that inspired the disciples? If there were no other evidence, then yes, even after proving that there are no plausible historical records for Jesus, I would still admit that he had to be someone, somewhere, because there were a lot of people talking about him. But in light of much more evidence than is generally recognized, we have discovered that Jesus was a mythological figure, just like Santa Claus. (The reason this evidence is not as well known as the "evidence" for the historical Jesus, is that virtually nobody is looking for the mythological Jesus. Once you have the idea of him, and you do research with him in mind, you soon get inundated with more evidence than you can handle!) Everybody talks about Santa Claus. He is mentioned in thousands of books, he is well known by millions of people. We know where he came from and what he does every year, the names of his reindeer, even his favorite food! Facts and details were added to make the story of Santa Claus to make it interesting and realistic. It is only our understanding of Santa as a myth that keeps him a myth - if someone were given The Night Before Christmas and told This really happened!, it would assume a cult status overnight, with people waiting, watching, for the return of Santa. A long time ago, everybody saw Jesus Christ in the same way that we see Santa Claus: as a story. I will leave the Bible alone for now because it will be dealt with in more detail later. We will see that, even if the Bible is historically accurate, and Jesus did physically complete all those miraculous events

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that had already been ascribed to earlier mythological saviors, it only opens an even larger can of worms. Did Jesus copy intentionally or accidentally? Was he a fake, or an idiot? Did the devil make all of the copies first to throw doubt on Jesus when he came? Why would the Devil have had that much power over God's only plan of salvation? To carry on then, the first and most widely quoted non-Christian reference to Jesus comes from a historian named Josephus, in his book, The Antiquities of the Jews. It is called the Testimoniam Flavianum. "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man. For he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first ceased not, for he appeared to them thereafter again the third day, as the divine prophets foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And even now the tribe of Christians so named from him is not extinct." wikipedia.org Wow! Great passage, right? Except Josephus is not Christian, but Jewish, and remained so all his life. He would never have called Jesus, "The Christ," which means Messiah. Origen, whose extensive writings quote Josephus many times, knows nothing about this passage, even though he would have seized upon it as evidence. Some scholars argue that at least some of this passage is genuine, but the majority see it as an inserted Christian passage. (It fits poorly into the surrounding text, and the style stands out as being dissimilar.) That means, rather than an unbiased Jewish source, it is most likely a Christian deception, possibly written by Emperor Constantine's church historian, Eusebius, who was also the first to quote from it. And while Christians today continue to use it as a proof for their faith, it was questioned as early as 1770 by Bishop Warburton of Gloucester, who called it a "rank forgery, and a stupid one, too." Over a hundred years ago it was discarded in more depth, by a book called Christian Mythology Unveiled, written by Mitchell Logan in 1842. "The famous passage which we find in Josephus, about Jesus Christ, was never mentioned nor alluded to in any way whatever by any of the fathers of the first, second, or third centuries; nor until the time of Eusebius, when it was first quoted by himself. The truth is, none of these fathers could quote or allude to a passage which did not exist in their times; but was to all points short of absolute certainty, forged and interpolated by Eusebius." Christian Mythology Unveiled, pg. 79 For die-hard supporters of this passage, we will recreate the Dr. Larner's more exhaustive effort, first published in 1760, and reprinted in T.W. Doane's 1882 book, Bible Myths and their Parallels in other

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Religions. (Appendix D: Jesus Never Existed.) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. testimony. 9. But, on the contrary, Origen openly affirms (ch. xxiv., bk. i, against Celsus), that Josephus, who had mentioned John the Baptist, did not acknowledge Christ. Moving on to the passage from Tacitus: "But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular." wikipedia.org Incidentally, this passage shows how disliked Christians were in the Roman world. They were hideous and shameful, mischievous, haters of mankind, and hated for their many blasphemies. The passage from Tacitus is often used to show that even a non-Christian believed in the historical Jesus, and knew certain details about him. Some consider it a forgery, like the passage in Josephus, others argue that Tacitus was only writing down what he knew about Jesus based on what he'd heard Christians themselves say of him. And while it is true that Christians believed Jesus to have been put to death under Pontius, this doesn't mean that it really happened. How reliable is this passage? Let's turn back It was never quoted by any of our Christian ancestors before Eusebius. Josephus has nowhere else mentioned the name or word Christ, in any of his works, It interrupts the narrative. The language is quite Christian. It is not quoted by Chrysostom, though he often refers to Josephus, and could not It is not quoted by Photius, though he has three articles concerning Josephus. Under the article Justus of Tiberius, this author (Photius) expressly states that this Neither Justin, in his dialogue with Typho the Jew, nor Clemens Alexandrinus, who

except the testimony above mentioned, and the passage concerning James, the Lord's brother.

have omitted quoting it, had it been then, in the text.

historian (Josephus), being a Jew, has not taken the least notice of Christ. made so many extracts from ancient authors, nor Origen against Celsus, have even mentioned this

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to Larner and Doane, who also regard this passage as a forgery: 10. This passage, which would have served the purpose of Christian quotation better than

any other in all the writings of Tacitus, or of any Pagan writer whatever, is not quoted by any of the Christian Fathers. 11. Tacitus. 12. improbability. 13. 14. This Father has spoken of Tacitus in a way that it is absolutely impossible that he It is not quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus, who set himself entirely to the work of should have spoken of him, had his writings contained such a passage. adducing and bringing together all the admissions and recognitions which Pagan authors had made of the existence of Christ Jesus or Christians before his time. 15. It has been nowhere stumbled upon by the laborious and all-seeking Eusebius, who could by no possibility have overlooked it, and whom it would have saved from the labor of forging the passage in Josephus; of adducing the correspondence of Christ Jesus and Abgarus, and the Sibylline verses; of forging a divine revelation from the god Apollo, in attestation of Christ Jesus' ascension into heaven; and innumerable other of his pious and holy cheats. 16. "Christians." 17. modern. 18. century 19. No reference whatever is made to this passage by any writer or historian, monkish or otherwise, before that time, which, to say the least, is very singular, considering that after that time it is quoted, or referred to, in an endless list of works, which by itself is all but conclusive that it was not in existence till the fifteenth century, which was an age of imposture and of credulity so immoderate that people were easily imposed upon, believing, as they did, without sufficient evidence, whatever was foisted upon them. 20. 21. The interpolator of the passage makes Tacitus speak of "Christ," not of Jesus the The word "Christ" is not a name, but a title; it being simply the Greek for the Hebrew Christ, showing thatlike the passage in Josephusit is, comparatively, a modern interpolation, for word "Messiah." Therefore, There is no vestige nor trace of its existence anywhere in the world before the 15th The use of this passage as part of the evidences of the Christian religion, is absolutely Tacitus has in no other part of his writings made the least allusion to "Christ" or And though his argument immediately called for the use of this quotation with so loud a voice (Apol. ch. v.), that his omission of it, if it had really existed, amounts to a violent It is not quoted by Tertullian, though he had read and largely quotes the works of

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22.

When Tacitus is made to speak of Jesus as "Christ," it is equivalent to my speaking of

Tacitus as "Historian," or George Washington as "General," or of any individual as "Mister," without adding a name by which either could be distinguished. And therefore, 23. 24. It has no sense or meaning as he is said to have used it. Tacitus is also made to say that the Christians had their denomination from Christ,

which would apply to any other of the so-called Christs who were put to death in Judea, as well as to Christ Jesus. And 25. "The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch" (Acts xi. 26), not because they were followers of a certain Jesus who claimed to be the Christ, but because "Christian" or "Chrstian," was a name applied, at that time, to any good man. And, 26. The worshipers of the Sun-god, Serapis, were also called "Christians," and his disciples "Bishops of Christ." "So much, then, for the celebrated passage in Tacitus." David W. Heley, whose homepage is a wealth of historical and religious trivia, adds this insightful description of the history of Tacitus' famous passage: "The original MSS. containing the "Annals of Tacitus" were "discovered" in the fifteenth century. Their existence cannot be traced back further than that time. And as it was an age of imposture, some persons are disposed to believe that not only portions of the Annals, but the whole work, was forged at that time. Mr. J. W. Ross, in an elaborate work published in London some years ago, contended that the Annals were forged by Poggio Bracciolini, their professed discoverer. At the time of Bracciolini the temptation was great to palm off literary forgeries, especially of the chief writers of antiquity, on account of the Popes, in their efforts to revive learning, giving money rewards and indulgences to those who should procure MS. copies of any of the ancient Greek or Roman authors. Manuscripts turned up as if by magic, in every direction; from libraries of monasteries, obscure as well as famous; the most out-of-the-way places,the bottom of exhausted wells, besmeared by snails, as the History of Velleius Paterculus, or from garrets, where they had been contending with cobwebs and dust, as the poems of Catullus." David W. Heley Not mentioned at answerbag.com are Pliny the younger, who asked emperor Trajan what to do about the Christian problem in 100AD, and Suetonius, who, writing around 120AD, announces that the Jews were being expelled from Rome, for stirring up trouble under the direction of their leader, Chrestus. Neither of these say anything about Jesus himself, but only agree with Tacitus that Christianity was a thorn in the side of Roman authority. The early Christian church, it may be noted, was not meek, nor pacifistic. The Christian religion was called strange and unlawful by a

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senatorial degree of the year 35. Tacitus called it deadly and hateful, while Suetonius said it was new and harmful; pretty harsh reviews from the same men whose references to Jesus are used as proof in his existence! At any rate, there are the sources used to justify the historical Christ. As we have seen, none of them can be accepted at face value as hard evidence, or even as genuine. Looking at the big picture, we have to be aware of something else: all of these few sources (including the gospels,) were written after Jesus' death. There are no contemporary accounts of Jesus of any kind - including the gospels, which at the very earliest were written several decades after the supposed death of Jesus - and as Kersey Graves pointed out in 1875, this is a big, big problem! "The fact that no history, sacred or profane,that not one of the three hundred histories of that age, makes the slightest allusion to Christ, or any of the miraculous incidents ingrafted into his life, certainly proves, with a cogency that no logic can overthrow, no sophistry can contradict, and no honest skepticism can resist, that there never was such a miraculously endowed being as his many orthodox disciples claim him to have been. The fact that Christ finds no place in the history of the era in which he lived,that not one event of his life is recorded by anybody but his own interested and prejudiced biographers,settles the conclusion, beyond cavil or criticism, that the godlike achievements ascribed to him are naught but fable or fiction. It not only proves he was not miraculously endowed, but proves he was not even naturally endowed to such an extraordinary degree as to make him an object of general attention. It would be a historical anomaly without a precedent, that Christ should have performed any of the extraordinary acts attributed to him in the Gospels, and no Roman or Grecian historian, and neither Philo nor Josephus, both writing in that age, and both living almost on the spot where they are said to have been witnessed, and both recording minutely all the religious events of that age and country, make the slightest mention of one of them, nor their reputed authors. Such a historical fact banishes the last shadow of faith in their reality." Kersey Graves, "All History Ignores Him." I'm not trying to prove, through only an evidence from silence type of argument, that Jesus didn't exist. Of course, silence alone can not show whether or not Jesus existed. But once we do admit the silence surrounding Jesus, we have lost all claims to the evidence of an overwhelming impact that Jesus was supposed to have made. The gospel story makes it seem like everybody was talking about him. What the silence does show is that the idea of mountains of physical, irrefutable evidence, sometimes claimed by Christians, is a fabrication. Instead there are, at most, 5 or 6 references to him in historical documents, which most scholars see as obvious forgeries. Let's go back to the passage from Answerbag.com, which I used at the beginning of this essay. In

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essence, while the divinity of Jesus is not something that can be proven historically, the historical community is quite sure that a person named Jesus did live in the Middle East two thousand years ago and can look to independent historical sources to strengthen their argument. I think the author of this passage may, unfortunately, be right. Although the historical community, as in the scholars who actively conduct historical research in Christianity, have found not one iota of proof for the historical Jesus, most of them are still confident that there was one. Based largely on assumption and a refusal to consider any new ideas, there is an overwhelming scholarly bias to consider Jesus as a historical figure. And it is also true that the lack of evidence, or absence of proof about Jesus, cannot begin to scratch this large shield of righteous indignation the historical Jesus has built up around him. But I will be content, if readers of this essay will leave it with one idea: that there are no historical documents which refer to Jesus Christ which can be accepted without first investing them with a powerful faith. After critically examining all the sources and historical texts, the Jesus of history becomes less than a shadow, and the continued search for him is likewise is a matter of faith. I cannot challenge faith; it is a self-sustained, non-rational system, and is beyond my powers to question. But the statement, I believe in Jesus Christ is very different from, I believe that there are historical documents which prove that Jesus actually lived on earth 2,000 years ago. Christians (and many scholars) have faith in documents that don't exist concerning a history that didn't happen. Because I see danger in the acceptance of this fabricated history, it is my right and duty to intervene. This part of the essay has been about the historical references used to prove the physical Jesus Christ, and I hope I've shown that, at the very least, they are not universally accepted as evidence. While this process is important in leaving the idea of the historical Jesus behind (for if he was historical, he almost certainly would have had more references than these, short, highly contested few!) we haven't gotten any closer to the idea of the mythical Christ, which is absolutely necessary to answer all of the questions that come up when we remove the idea of the historical Jesus. Proving that Jesus didn't exist, and only that, digs and abandons a big, gaping hole. If he didn't exist, where did the crazy idea of him come from? It must have come from somewhere - it didn't materialize out of thin air! The way to smooth the ground is to see that Jesus was first a mythology, who later become mistaken for a historical figure. But to begin with, I want to spend some time going over the proofs for the mythical Jesus, or the strongest evidences we have for believing that Jesus was mythological. That way, we can see the evidence for both interpretations of Jesus, side by side, and choose the most reasonable.

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Chapter 5: The Evidence for the Mythical Christ

"To the question, then, On what grounds do you deny that such a person as Jesus Christ existed as a man? the proper answer is, Because his existence as a man has, from the earliest day on which it can be shown to have been asserted, been as earnestly and strenuously denied, and that, not by enemies of the Christian name, or unbelievers of the Christian faith, but by the most intelligent, most learned, most sincere of the Christian name, whoever left the world proofs of their intelligence and learning in their writings, and of their sincerity in their sufferings; And because the existence of no individual of the human race, that was real and positive, was ever, by a like conflict of jarring evidence, rendered equivocal and uncertain." Rev. Robert Taylor (1829) The majority of the articles on this website explain just how deeply Christianity is indebted to Paganism and Mythology, and as we will see, there is no way to remove the features Christianity shares with these traditions without cutting out the heart of the Jesus movement. However, there is even stronger evidence for the mythological Jesus, which we want to discuss at length before we get into the specifics of comparative mythology; details and quotes from the earliest stages of Christianity which are no less than mind-boggling, and lucidly cut through the assumption of Christian history as we know it. A brief introduction to the early literature of the Church fathers, shows clearly that early Christianity was full of disagreement and controversy. Letters between Christians say very little about their own religious beliefs, but focus on condemning and warning against all of the heresies, or those other communities who also worshiped Jesus, but whose beliefs were different from the author's. The most controversial issue for Christians of the first three centuries was or not Jesus was a physical human being. Was he a real man, or just a spirit? Did he bodily resurrect, or resurrect in appearance only? Did he, in fact, even exist as a historical person? There were many who didn't believe so. I have learned that certain ministers of Satan have wished to disturb you, some of them asserting that Jesus was born only in appearance, and was crucified in appearance, and died in appearance. Iraneaus, Against Valentinius Irenaeus wrote his Adversus Haereses around 180ad, but Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Smyrnaeans between 105ad and 115ad, is also familiar with those who refused the historical Jesus Christ. "For He suffered all these things for our sakes [that we might be saved]; and He suffered truly, as also

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He raised Himself truly; not as certain unbelievers say, that He suffered in semblance, being themselves mere semblance." Ignatius, Letter to Smyrnaens This is only around 30 years from the writing of the four biblical gospels, which, tradition ascribes to the apostolic tradition of Jesus' original followers. Think of the implications! How had the message of Jesus Christ, spreading by word of mouth until that time, been so vilely corrupted as to lead followers to question that Jesus Christ was a real, physical man? Imagine it: disciples of Jesus had seen him die on the cross, and later felt his resurrected physical body, and even watched him eat and drank after the resurrection. They then hit the road, spreading the good news, telling everyone they came in contact with about the miraculous powers of Jesus Christ. Would they have neglected to mention that Jesus was real, and that he rose bodily from the dead? Out of the question! It would have been the singular most important message to convey, in every detail. Those who didn't believe that a man could rise from the dead in the same physical body as he had died in, wouldn't believe the story, and would refrain from converting. But what we have are many, diverse communities, which believe in Jesus, but deny his physicality! And these are not a few, isolated incidences of the message going astray; Ignatius had to warn his followers about many, very distinct heresies which were believed in his day by other communities. It seems that more people had the "wrong" idea about Jesus, than those who got it right. "If any one preaches the one God of the law and the prophets, but denies Christ to be the Son of God, he is a liar, even as also is his father the devil, and is a Jew falsely so called, being possessed of mere carnal circumcision. If anyone confesses Christ Jesus the Lord, but denies the God of the law and of the prophets, saying that the Father of Christ is not the Maker of heaven and earth, he has not continued in the truth any more than his father the devil, and is a disciple of Simon Magus, not of the Holy Spirit. If anyone says there is one God, and also confesses Christ Jesus, but thinks the Lord to be a mere man, and not the only-begotten God, and Wisdom, and the Word of God, and deems Him to consist merely of a soul and body, such an one is a serpent, that preaches deceit and error for the destruction of men. And such a man is poor in understanding, even as by name he is an Ebionite. If anyone confesses the truths mentioned, but calls lawful wedlock, and the procreation of children, destruction and pollution, or deems certain kinds of food abominable, such a one has the apostate dragon dwelling within him. If anyone confesses the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and praises the creation, but calls the incarnation merely an appearance, and is ashamed of the passion, such a one has denied the faith, not less than the Jews who killed Christ. If anyone confesses these things, and that God the Word did dwell in a human body, being within it as the Word, even as the soul also is in the body, because it was God that inhabited it, and not a human soul, but affirms that unlawful unions are a good thing, and places the highest happiness in pleasure, as does the man who

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is falsely called a Nicolai tan, this person can neither be a lover of God, nor a lover of Christ, but is a corrupter of his own flesh, and therefore void of the Holy Spirit, and a stranger to Christ. All such persons are but monuments and sepulchers of the dead, upon which are written only the names of dead men. Flee, therefore, the wicked devices and snares of the spirit which now worketh in the children of this world, lest at any time being overcome, ye grow weak in your love." Ignatius, to the Philadelphians The Heresies This cannot be the result of one or two receivers of wisdom that accidentally misunderstood the true message of Jesus; it is as if, every time the story of Jesus Christ was told, everyone heard an entirely different message! And many of these communities believed the one thing that apostolic tradition should have rendered impossible; that Jesus wasn't a historical man. Bob Lunzer of spiritualcornerstones.com provides this summary of heresies: Nestorianism taught that Jesus the man was a different being from the spirit who was the Son of God. This heresy denies that God could become human. Mary is not acknowledged or honored as the mother of God. Monothelitism denies Jesus' full humanity, saying that he had no human will, only a divine will. Monophysitism denies Jesus' human nature, saying that he had only one nature, the divine nature. Eutychianism teaches that Christ's human nature was absorbed by His divine nature. Docetism says that Christ didn't have a human body. Therefore He only appeared to die on the cross. Also, as in Gnosticism, the incarnation is denied. Arianism teaches that Jesus was a created being. He was not one substance with the Father or Holy Spirit. This heresy denies that Christ was divine in the same way as the Father. Apollinarianism teaches that Christ was not fully human, that he had no human spirit. Adoptionism is a teaching that Christ was not divine until his baptism. At that point, as the Holy Spirit descended upon Him, He was adopted by God. This heresy is similar to Ebionism. Psilanthropism teaches that Jesus was only a man. Jesus was not God in any sense. This heresy denies Jesus' divinity.

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Some of these were firmly established and growing communities in Ignatius' time, powerful threats to his own church and beliefs. And Ignatius isn't the first to realize the threat of other Christian communities, with false ideas about Jesus. As Wikipedia.com notes, Though Christ himself is noted to have spoken out against false prophets and false christs within the Gospels themselves Mark 13:22 (some will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples), Matthew 7:5-20, Matthew 24:4, Matthew 24:11 Matthew 24:24. For false christs and false prophets will arise. On many occasions in Paul's epistles, he defends his own apostleship, and urges Christians in various places to beware of false teachers, or of anything contrary to what was handed to them by him. The epistles of John and Jude also warn of false teachers and prophets, as does the writer of the Book of Revelation and 1 Jn. 4:1, as did the Apostle Peter warn in 2 Pt. 2:1-3." wikipedia.com These weren't schools of idiots, founded by Satan, who led the faithful astray with evil glances. These were men of faith, who believed earnestly in their own spiritual message. It is improbable that these astoundingly diverse communities could have ever come into existence, if the idea of apostolic tradition is true. If Jesus Christ was a real person and there were real witnesses to his death and resurrection, while his stories and words and miracles may have been altered through transmission, the one idea that most certainly would not have changed, is his physical, historical, and bodily presence, both before and after the resurrection. The diversity of early Christian creeds shows that, whatever message was being conveyed, it didn't have enough details or evidence to prevent these heresies from forming. And we can see from Christian writings themselves, that in fact, Christians knew next to nothing about their savior. They never refer to details about his life or works that are not recorded in the gospels, and before the gospels were readily available, they would quote from Old Testament prophecies and apply them to the figure of Jesus. The further back in history we go, the less they have to say about the historical Jesus. Early Christians provided a kind of logical argument to support the possibility of their ideas, but never provide proof, either from eye-witnesses, oral tradition or other sources, to convince their critics of their faith. Instead of refuting the position of their adversaries, through fact or logic, they resort to name calling and character attacks. "For everyone who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is the antichrist; and whosoever does not confess the testimony of the cross, is a devil, and whosoever perverteth the oracles of the Lord (to serve) his own lusts, and saith there is neither resurrection nor a judgment, this man is a first born of Satan." St. Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians In fact, the idea of apostolic tradition was invented by later Christian communities, so that they could

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justify their beliefs in the face of heresies. If one community claimed that Jesus has appeared to them 321 days after his death and given them a final revelation, another community would write that Jesus had appeared 524 days after his death and passed on the definitive "last words". Apostolic Tradition Irenaeus, writing around 150 years after the alleged death of Jesus, was the first to argue that his "proto-orthodox" position was the same faith that Jesus gave to the apostles, and that the identity of the apostles, their successors, and the teachings of the same were all well-known public knowledge. (wikipedia.com) Paul makes it clear that he refuses the idea of apostolic tradition, by admonishing his followers for pulling rank based on their teacher. Amazingly, however, those Christians who so adamantly proclaimed an apostolic heritage were the least worthy to receive it. Most of the so-called Heresies were closer aligned with Paul's theology than the early Church fathers; like most of the Christian communities that were a threat to "orthodoxy", Paul did not believe in the Resurrection of the Flesh! It is the same too with the resurrection of the dead: what is sown in perishable, but what is raised is imperishable; what is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; what is sown is weak, but what is raised is powerful; what is sown is a natural body, and what is raised is a spiritual body. 1 Corinthians 15:43 What I am saying, brothers, is that mere human nature cannot inherit the kingdom of God: what is perishable cannot inherit what is imperishable. 1 Corinthians 15:50 Christians who affirmed the Resurrection of the Flesh knew that they were diverging from Paul's original message, and complained that this difference of doctrine was often pointed out to them. Instead of responding to the criticism, and recognizing that the heretics were closer aligned to Paul's theology, they pushed on undeterred. Among the other [truths] proclaimed by the apostle, there is also this one, "That flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." This is [the passage] which is adduced by all the heretics in support of their folly, with an attempt to annoy us, and to point out that the handiwork of God is not saved. Irenaeus, Against the Heresies Dismissing Paul and his higher mysteries, these Christians wanted their bodies preserved until some future period when they could reclaim them. The world at that time was steeped in some form of NeoPlatonism, which held the body was corrupt: the dying corpse that confined the eternal soul. Because of this, the idea of the Resurrection of the Flesh was met with contempt from Pagans, Romans, and

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also the majority of Christians. An eternal, physical body was seen as a disgusting and irrational idea. Justin Martyr succeeds in representing the opinion of the opposition, without answering any of the questions raised by them. They who maintain the wrong opinion say that there is no resurrection of the flesh; giving as their reason that it is impossible that what is corrupted and dissolved should be restored to the same as it had been. And besides the impossibility, they say that the salvation of the flesh is disadvantageous; and they abuse the flesh, adducing its infirmities, and declare that it is the cause of our sins, so that if the flesh, say they, rise again, our infirmities also rise with it. By these and such like arguments, they attempt to distract men from the faith. And there are some who maintain that even Jesus Himself appeared only as spiritual, and not in flesh, but presented merely the appearance of flesh: these persons seek to rob the flesh of the promise. Justin Martyr, 2nd Apology Significantly, the Christians who believed in the physical resurrection of the dead did not point to their own savior as proof, nor did they mention the miraculous raising of Lazarus found in the gospels. They neglected to offer the woman Peter raised to life in Jaffa, or the boy that Paul raised to life at Troas after he'd fallen out of a three story window, both of which were later recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. When asked to provide even one example of someone who has physically risen from the dead, they don't. "Then, as to your denying that the dead are raised--for you say, "Show me even one who has been raised from the dead, that seeing I may believe,"--first, what great thing is it if you believe when you have seen the thing done? Then, again, you believe that Hercules, who burned himself, lives; and that Aesculapius, who was struck with lightning, was raised; and do you disbelieve the things that are told you by God? But, suppose I should show you a dead man raised and alive, even this you would disbelieve." Theophilus, To Autolycus The greatest proof of the mythical Christ is the sheer size and range of heresies surrounding him, which had begun even before the gospels were written, and continued for several centuries. The entire collected literature of the early Church is a reaction to these heresies; however, rather than instructing and correcting them, through the proofs and special knowledges that should have been inherent in apostolic tradition, Christians could offer no evidence whatsoever for the historical Jesus, even decades after his death! Even apparent historical details, such as the reign of Pontius Pilate during the time of Jesus' crucifixion, were articles to be believed in through faith. I have perceived that you are firmly settled in unwavering faith, being nailed, as it were, to the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ in flesh and spirit, and firmly planted in love in the blood of Christ, being

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fully convinced as touching our Lord that He is truly of the race of David after the flesh, and Son of God after the Divine will and power, truly born of a virgin, baptized by John, that all righteousness might be fulfilled by Him, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch truly nailed for us in the flesh...And He truly suffered, as also that he truly raised himself up. Ignatius, Epistle to Smyrnaeans Rather than the majority, Christians who believed in the physical Christ were a select few, and ridiculed on all sides for their beliefs. A few years after the apparent death of their founder, Christians who believed in the historical Jesus already had to resort to faith in order to support their beliefs. Under these circumstances, the idea of a physical founder, who did specific things and gave specific instructions to a group of personal disciples, is absolutely ludicrous. The Created Name What is immanently more probable, is that there was no historical founder of Christianity; Jesus Christ was an ideological construction based on Jewish prophetic literature, which expected a Messiah to establish a divine kingdom, and the Greek mystery gods, which offered personal salvation and eternal life through a personal sacrifice. Sounds too incredible to be true? One final piece of evidence. Most people are familiar with the number 666, as the number of Satan, or the beast. What is less known is its opposite, the number 888, which was viewed as a divine number - a number of perfection and completion. The myth of Jesus Christ began when certain parties wrote a Jewish version of the Greek mystery cults. (That Christianity was a mystery religion, with various levels of initiation, will be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt further on in this investigation.) Using a number substitution code, a common practice among the Greek mysteries and Jewish mystics, they created a name for this savior with special mathematical significance.

Jesus (I) = I.E.S.O.U.S = 10+8+200+70+400+200 = 888

The principles behind this equation were well known in the first few centuries AD, and Iraneaus, although he doesn't seem to believe it himself, can clearly do the math involved. This is the name of Jesus; for this name, if you reckon up the numerical value of the letters, amounts to eight hundred and eighty eight. Thus, then, you have a clear statement of their opinion as to the origin of the supercelestial Jesus. Wherefore, also, the alphabet of the Greeks contains eight Monads, eight Decads, and eight Hecatads, which present the number eight hundred and eighty-eight, that is, Jesus, who is formed of all the numbers; and on this account He is called Alpha and Omega, indicating his origin from all. Iraneaus , Against the Heresies

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This figure was not only a sacred number, it was also a pictograph of the nature of God. 8 turned on its side becomes the symbol of eternity. Three 8's show the three identical persons of the eternal trinity. The numbers 888 can also be reversed, flipped, and substituted with each other without causing any change in their nature, reflecting the unchanging constancy of God. The concept of the Logos, represented by the divine number 888, was combined with the image of the awaited messiah and became the name Jesus Christ. It was an attempt to bridge Greek salvation philosophy and Jewish religious history, and did not refer to a real or actual person.

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Chapter 6: Diabolical Mimicry

Conventional wisdom views Jesus Christ as being a novel and revolutionary person, whose message of love and kindness was rejected by the wicked Jews and Pagans, because they were evil and stupid. This is Christian propaganda of the worst kind, and absolutely untrue; the reason that many could not accept Jesus Christ, was because they saw him as an obvious copy of Pagan spiritual tradition. Those who argue against the historical Jesus point out that the Jesus Christ of the gospels didn't say or do anything new - how could Jesus be the Word, Truth and Life, if his birth, death, resurrection, and every single detail of his earthly ministry was already recorded in earlier mythological traditions? There is no question that these similarities exist, and were often pointed out to Christians of the first few centuries of the Church, because Christians were always defending themselves against them. In all of the collected literature of the early Church, however, the similarities between Jesus and other Pagan figures were never denied by Christians. Nor, as they are today, were they called accidents or coincidences. Instead, early Christians formulated the only possible explanation they could think of, an argument referred to as "Diabolical Mimicry." "Diabolical Mimicry" is fascinating because the argument is nearly as old as the beginning of the Christian movement and used widely by Christian apologists for nearly 4 centuries, which shows that not only were the similarities between Jesus and Pagan gods apparent to both Christians and Pagans, but that they were never refused by apologists as coincidental, nor a result of reverse-copying, as is claimed today. Diabolical Mimicry was the earliest Christian response to the Christ Myth theory, which has plagued Christians who believe in the historical Jesus for nearly 2,000 years. The argument claims that Satan used "plagiarism by anticipation," or a pre-emptive strike against the gospel stories centuries before Jesus was born, by spreading rumors of other god-men who did what Jesus was going to do later. "But those who hand down the myths which the poets have made, adduce no proof to the youths who learn them; and we proceed to demonstrate that they have been uttered by the influence of the wicked demons, to deceive and lead astray the human race. For having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come, and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, they put forward many to be called sons of Jupiter, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things which were said with regard to Christ were mere marvelous tales, like the things which were said by the poets." Justin Martyr, First Apology However, along with blaming wicked demons (which is about as reliable as "The little green men did

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it!") Justin also makes the claim that Plato and the Egyptians, whose doctrines prefigure Christian theology, copied from the Old Testament! This argument is sometimes continued even today, by those who have read neither Plato nor the Old Testament; nor the ancient philosophical texts of the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Babylonians, in whose writings (which came several thousand years before even the Old Testament) can be found similar similarities. The truth is, there is an underlying mythological theme behind most of the world's religious and philosophical works, and if any of it was hand written by God, then all of it was. (Which, incidentally, is the aim of this website: not to disprove religion or spirituality, but to refute the primacy of any religion over any other.) Just what were these similarities between Jesus and Pagan gods that were so challenging and irrefutable that Christians could only blame Satan for them? Justin Martyr gives a brief list, which includes the Virgin Birth, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension! "When we say that the Word, who is first born of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven; we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter (Zeus)." Justin Martyr, First Apology Christ Mythers often include the following, based on comparisons between Attis, Adonis, Dionysus, Mithras, Osiris, Tammuz, Baal, Krishna and Buddha:

First-born Son of God Miracle worker (walked on water, raised the dead) Had 12 disciples Born of a virgin, in a manger, on December 25th Shepherds and wise men followed a star to worship him Taught people to love each other, turn the other cheek Offers eternal life to those who believe Was crucified for our sins Buried for three days, descended to Hell for three days Came back to life, ascended into heaven Will come again to judge the living and the dead Seated at the right hand of the Father Followers have a baptism and a ritual meal involving his body and blood.

Regarding the nature of the Eucharist, many critics say that Pagan mystery cults may have had a ritual meal of wine and bread, but there is no proof that they considered them to be the body and blood of their savior. Actually, the specific rituals, sacraments and customs of the early Church were identical to other mystery cults, including the Eucharist.

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"The devil, whose business is to pervert the truth, mimics the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments...Thus he celebrates the oblation of bread, and brings in the symbol of the resurrection. Let us therefore acknowledge the craftiness of the devil, who copies certain things of those that be Divine." Tertullian, (Jesus Mysteries) Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body; and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, This is My blood; and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn. Justin Martyr, First Apology "He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made on with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation." An inscription to Mithras If Christianity was similar to Greek and Roman religions, why was it persecuted? Isn't the fact that it was so widely criticized a proof that it really was different? Christianity acknowledged the similarities between themselves and Pagan traditions, but then concluded that there was one main difference: All of the other gods before Jesus were mythological, and Jesus Christ was real. "But in no instance, not even in any of those called sons of Jupiter, did they imitate the being crucified; for it was not understood by them, all the things said of it having been put symbolically." Justin Martyr, First Apology The same response is used by modern apologists: for example, if Pagans had a ritual meal involving the body and blood of their crucified lord, it was only symbolic, while the Christian Eucharist actually and miraculously, is really, the body and blood of Jesus Christ. This is like one of Magritte's surrealist paintings, that shows a picture of an apple, with the caption, "This is not an apple." Of course its not a real apple, but it would be impossible to prove that there isn't some correlation, some relationship, between an actual apple and a picture of an apple. Nevertheless, Christians believed that while Jesus was in nearly every way identical to other Pagan saviors, the fact that he TRULY completed all those great works made him something special. However, again it must be pointed out that early Christians could offer no evidence for their belief in the historical Jesus, and have always had to rely on faith in order to believe that Jesus was truly born, truly crucified (in the flesh), truly suffered (as a real person, not just as a myth), and truly came back from the dead. I have perceived that you are firmly settled in unwavering faith, being nailed, as it were, to the Cross

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of the Lord Jesus Christ in flesh and spirit, and firmly planted in love in the blood of Christ, being fully convinced as touching our Lord that He is truly of the race of David after the flesh, and Son of God after the Divine will and power, truly born of a virgin, baptized by John, that all righteousness might be fulfilled by Him, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch truly nailed for us in the flesh...And He truly suffered, as also that he truly raised himself up. Ignatius, Epistle to Smyrnaeans The Pagan Philosopher Celsus pointed out the obvious question, why should the Christian god be considered real, when everything said about him was identical to Pagan mythology? "Are these distinctive happenings unique to the Christians - and if so, how are they unique? Or are ours to be accounted myths and theirs believed? What reasons do the Christians give for the distinctiveness of their beliefs? In truth there is nothing at all unusual about what the Christians believe, except that they believe it to the exclusion of more comprehensive truths about God." Celsus, on Christianity A striking version of this argument can also be found on the excellent website, Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth: When Osiris is said to bring his believers eternal life in Egyptian Heaven, contemplating the unutterable, indescribable glory of God, we understand that as a myth. When the sacred rites of Demeter at Eleusis are described as bringing believers happiness in their eternal life, we understand that as a myth. When Vespatian's spittle healed a blind man, we understand that as a myth. When Apollonius of Tyana raised a girl from death, we understand that as a myth. When the Pythia , the priestess at the Oracle at Delphi, in Greece, prophesied, and over and over again for a thousand years, the prophecies came true, we understand that as a myth. When Dionysus turned water into wine, we understand that as a myth. When Alexander the Great is described as the Son of God, born of a mortal woman, we understand that as a myth. So how come when Jesus is described as the Son of God, born of a mortal woman, according to prophecy, turning water into wine, raising girls from the dead, and healing blind men with his spittle, and setting it up so His believers got eternal life in Heaven contemplating the unutterable, indescribable glory of God, and off to Hadeser, I mean Hellfor the bad folks... how come that's not a myth? Similarities between Jesus and Pagan gods are nearly always dismissed out of hand by apologists, who reject them as either coincidences, or the result of inter-faith "borrowing." Further, many see them as the wishful and deceptive thinking of Christ-mythers, who, having a specific agenda, cannot be trusted with empirical research. One Christian apologist, whose site www.kingdavid8.com gives an extensive and thoughtful refutation of Christ Myth theories and online sources, responds to the

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accusation that no evidence will satisfy him by saying, "Let me make it clear: Any source that isn't specifically trying to draw a parallel to Jesus WILL satisfy me." In this regard, the only sources available to skeptics of the Christ Myth theory are original sources; all the modern scholars who quote the similarities between Jesus and Pagan gods are Christ-mythers. Why would any modern scholar provide this kind of evidence, unless to draw a parallel to Jesus? And if you don't want to spend the time to learn a new language and do the research, then you can't trust anyone. To find similarities, skeptics should read the full texts in their original language, because the translations that have been produced often echo the culturally assimilated Christian paradigm of the author. However, reading the English version is better than nothing; I have been careful in this website to link all quotes to online, English translated sources from reputable 3rd parties, so that anyone interested can read the original texts. Given the lack of evidence surrounding Jesus, it is very difficult to say anything of consequence about him, (unless, of course, the Bible is taken to be a historical document on faith), either in support of or against his physical existence. What can be provided are thousands of little, inconsequential facts, quotes, and bits of historical trivia, which fill in the outline of a general theory concerning Jesus. While each one could be readily dismissed as either a coincidence (Jesus had 12 disciples, Israel had 12 tribes, the sun has 12 zodiac signs) or a later assimilation (Jesus, Attis, and Mithras, all born on December 25th), given that they are presented together in an encompassing theory, the ratio of possibility decreases with every dismissal. If I take 5 statements which support the mythical Jesus, and refuse each one as coincidence, with a reasonable estimate of probability at around 1 in 5, this ratio increases dramatically in proportion to the number of given statements. Specific similarities between Jesus and Pagan mythology are hotly contested, and the research used to obtain them always questioned and disbelieved; therefore I won't list any on this page. It is more than enough to show, as I have done, that the similarities include the very core beliefs of Christianity; for what would Jesus be if we remove the Virgin Birth, the Passion and Resurrection, and even his divine role as Son of God? And the fact the Diabolical Mimicry was used to aid Christian Apologists, who had no other explanation for the similarities between Christianity and earlier traditions, excuses the Christ mythicist from the accusation of "making it all up" or seeing connections that aren't there. They are there, because early Christians knew about them; therefore any scholar would be well within their rights to seek out possible connections between Christianity and Pagan mythology, because obviously those connections, which were once so apparent, have gotten harder to see. Christians have spent 2,000 years distorting and destroying the evidence of Jesus Christ's mythical background, and contemporary scholarship is so steeped in the tradition of the historical Jesus that a

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mere reference to Jesus can be listed with something like, No serious scholar doubts that Jesus was historical. Even the dictionaries and the encyclopedias, those havens for irrefutable facts, never question the historicity of Jesus; and yet, the debate over the historical Jesus continues. Are there any other facts that continue to be strenuously contested? Like all new theories, the idea of a mythical Jesus is up against the all-prevailing assumptions of society. It is true, there are not many direct sources which claim that Jesus was a myth. A Christ mythicist has to read into the available evidence and form a hypothesis, a theory; but they assume no more than any Christ-Historist, who looks into the absolute void of evidence surrounding the founder of Christianity, and still takes for granted that Jesus was a real person. It is most interesting to me that when approached with arguments for the mythical Christ, Christians will deny outright all similarities; the internet is full of people discussing Mithras, for example, as a prefigure to Christian mythology, and also of apologists protesting that Jesus and Mithras have nothing in common at all. Mithraism was a mystery cult popular among Roman soldiers, that spread throughout the Roman empire. It was a type of sun worship, full of astrological symbols, and also an initiation religion focused on spiritual liberation through death and rebirth. The similarities between Mithras and Jesus are easily dismissed today because the ancient practice of this religion is different than the modern practices of Christianity; however, early Christianity was not the same as its modern counterpart, and the similarities at one time were impossible to refute. They are heavily documented in early Christian writings because of the serious threat they posed to Christian faith. Denying these similarities takes a massive determination of will, as well as the ability to refuse as nonsense all historical records relating to the Christian movement. Charles Franois Dupuis wrote about the similarities between Mithraism and Christianity as early as 1798. Dupuis refers to the Christian apologists as sources for these similarities, as well as the arguments for Diabolical Mimicry. There are many more comparisons to be made than Dupuis notes, but I like his writing style and overall emphasis, and the fact that he, like many of his contemporaries, was endorsing the Christ Myth theory over 200 years ago. The following passage is quite long, but culminates in a striking paragraph on the primacy of Mithraism. "It is chiefly in the religion of Mithras or the God Sun, worshipped under that name by the Magi, that we find mostly those features of analogy with the death and resurrection of Christ and with the mysteries of the Christians. Mithras, who was also born on the 25th December like Christ, died as he did; and he had his sepulchre, over which his disciples came to shed tears. During the night the priests carried his image to a tomb, expressly prepared for him; he was laid out on a litter, like the

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Phnician Adonis. These funeral ceremonies, like those on good Friday, were accompanied with funeral dirges and the groans of his priests; after having spent some time with these expressions of feigned grief; after having lighted the sacred flambeau or their Paschal candle and anointed the image with Chrism or perfumes, one of them came forward and pronounced with the gravest mien these words: Be of good cheer, sacred band of Initiates (initis,) your God has risen from the dead; his pains and his sufferings shall be your salvation. "[...]And it would really seem, in this instance, as if Firmicus, in his onset on the ancient religions, had set his heart on it, to collect all the traits of analogy, which their mysteries had with those of the Christians. He clings chiefly to the Mithraic Initiation, of which he draws a pretty uniform parallel with that of Christ, and to which it has so much resemblance, merely because it is one and the same sect. It is true, he explains all this conformity, which exists between these two religions, by asserting, as Tertullian and St. Justin did, that a long time before there were Christians in existence, the Devil had taken pleasure to have their future mysteries and ceremonies copied by his worshippers. This may be an excellent reason for certain Christians, such as there are plenty in our days, but an extremely paltry one for men of common sense. As far as we are concerned, we, who do not believe in the Devil, and who are not, like them, in his secrets, we shall simply observe, that the religion of Christ, founded like all the others on the worship of the Sun, has preserved the same dogmas, the same practices, the same mysteries or very nearly so; that everything has been in common; because the God was the same; that there were only the accessories, which could differ, but that the basis was absolutely the same. "The oldest apologists of the Christian religion agree, that the Mithraic religion had its sacraments, its baptism, its penitence, its Eucharist and its consecration by mystical words; that the catechumens of that religion had preparatory trials, more rigorous than those of the Christians; that the Initiates or the faithful marked their foreheads with a sacred sign; that they admitted also the dogma of the resurrection; that they were presented with the crown, which ornamented the forehead of the martyrs; that their sovereign Pontiff was not allowed to marry several times; that they had their virgins and their laws of continence; finally, that they had everything, which has since been practiced by the Christians. "Of course, Tertullian calls again the Devil to his assistance, in order to explain away so complete a resemblance. But as there is not the slightest difficulty, without the intervention of the Devil, to perceive, that whenever two religions resemble each other so completely, the oldest must be the mother and the youngest the daughter, we shall conclude, that since the worship of Mithras is infinitely older than that of Christ, and its ceremonies a great deal anterior to those of the Christians, that therefore the Christians are incontestably either sectarians or plagiarists of the religion of the

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Magi." Dupuis, The Origin of All Religious Worship Today it is argued that Mithras borrowed from the Christians. While the dating of religious movements is difficult to trace exactly, it is significant that early Christians never made this claim. Instead they relied upon the Diabolical Mimicry argument, on else on the ancient tradition of the Old Testament, and argued that the Egyptians borrowed from Moses, and that Plato borrowed from the Egyptians, and so on until the entire wisdom of the world was taken from the Jews. A more enlightened Christian may agree with that great apologist of the 21st century, C.S. Lewis, who, responding to Jung and other mythologists, accepts and supports the idea of Pagan Christs: "The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happensat a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. . . . God is more than god, not less: Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about parallels and pagan Christs: they ought to be thereit would be a stumbling block if they werent. We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeicand is not the sky itself a mythshall we refuse to be mythopathic? For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher." C.S. Lewis, God In The Dock While I love C.S. Lewis for his clarity and honesty, I find that he tends to miss very large points; for example, why would Jesus re-enact ancient myths? He must have been familiar with them, so why not do something new? Unless he was purposely attempting to appear mythical, by copying Pagan fables. And more importantly, why would God choose to set up so confusing a system of salvation? And why would he choose to limit this salvation to those people who came into contact with the story of Jesus? This is an argument put forth by Celsus about 1800 years ago, and never adequately resolved by Christian apologists. It boils down to this: if Jesus Christ is the salvation, and God loves everybody, then Jesus cannot have been a historical person. The historical Jesus has not reached everyone, and even those whom he has reached, have not unanimously accepted him; not necessarily out of malice or impurity, but for various socio-political environmental factors not under their control. If Jesus was a historical person, and what Christians claim, then God is a discriminating tyrant, who has already chosen his favorites

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and placed them with Christ's saving graces. If we agree, however, with St. Anselm and the general public about God being the absolute best idea that we can have, then he must be good and wise enough to provide an equal amount of salvation to all, which, of necessity, rules out the historical Christ.

Chapter 7: Astrological Roots of the Christ Myth Part I The Lion King
The study of astro-mythology, or astro-theology, is an enormous subject, spreading back several thousands of years. Whether or not you believe in astrology is irrelevant; the first human expressions of spirituality were reactions to heavenly bodies, and the stories they told about the stars and planets are deeply imbedded in every modern religion. It is from astrology that we get nearly all religious symbols, like the yin-yang, the cross, the anchor and the ankh, as well as the main motifs found in spiritual texts. These stories, in turn, have heavily influenced modern culture in a way that is rarely appreciated. Not only is the gospel account of Jesus Christ completely based on an ancient sun myth, for example, but so are the stories of Harry Potter, Narnia, the Lion King, Peter Pan, and many other modern heroes. Nowadays "sun worship" is regarded as some small-minded superstition which we have matured out of. However, we also teach in our science classes that all life comes from the sun; if it weren't just exactly what it is, where it is, as hot as it is, then life on earth would fail. Ancient cultures, much more dependent on the seasons and the success of their crops for survival, watched the sun very carefully. They divided the path of the sun into 12 equal portions, represented by specific constellations that the sun passes in front of on its journey - the way to keep track of the sun, they realized, was to recognize which constellation was behind it. This is easiest done at sunset, when the stars are just starting to come out. We get our modern zodiac or, "circle of animals", from these 12 constellations.

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I know some people right now are saying "ugh, you mean that newspaper fortune-telling garbage?" However, the zodiac signs are real constellations of stars in relation to the sun's path. They exist, and have been used for at least 6,000 years to keep track of the sun - whether or not they have any influence on us is beyond the scope of this article (but not this website). The Western zodiac signs are often seen in churches, catacombs, and Greco-Roman/Pagan temples going back three thousand years or more, and Ancient Chinese, Mayan, Babylonian and Sumerian zodiac wheels, which sometimes use different figures for the constellations, go back much farther. In this article I will provide a basic overview of sun-mythology, including the battle between light and dark, the birth, death and resurrection of a savior, and the triumph over darkness. Next I will give some contemporary examples to show how deeply, and yet unrecognized, the sun story influences our lives, and finally, I will prove that Jesus Christ shares more than an accidental similarity with the story of the sun. First, some basics: 1. 2. The sun is light, and light is Good. Therefore, daytime is Good, and night-time is Bad. Summer is Good. Winter is Bad.

Every year, the sun gets weaker and weaker. The seasons change, the crops die, the ground freezes. Then, the sun comes back and saves life as we know it. Into this story are added a few constellations, for example, Hydra, the sea-serpent. Hydra is the largest constellation, which stretches across most of the night sky. It was seen as the definitive symbol for darkness, night, winter, and evil. Every day the

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sun had to conquer Hydra, and every night the Hydra defeated the sun. It is a never-ending battle, being re-enacted even today.

Cultural myths about heroes defeating monstrous snakes stem from the sun's conflict with darkness and winter, represented by the Hydra. Even Yahweh in the Old Testament was given credit with defeating an ancient sea serpent, the Leviathan, although this story was probably taken from descriptions about Baal killing the serpent Lotan in Northern Canaan. Babylonian sun gods Izhdubar or Gizdhubar fought the dragon as Tiamat, Apollo slew the Python, and Zeus killed the Typhon. The story becomes a romance when we add in the figure of the moon. The moon was the sun's lover, lost or trapped in darkness, guarded over by the Hydra. The sun was always trying to find and rescue her. There are hundreds of versions of this story in mythology - a young hero has to enter into "the kingdom of death", or hell, or Somewhere Really Dangerous, and kill a big snake of some kind to rescue his girlfriend. The sun is usually defeated or killed before his journey is through, but escapes or resurrects in order to win the final battle.

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Another important constellation, besides the Hydra, is Leo, the Lion. Leo is the constellation of the sun, the constellation that the sun is exalted in. (The sun is in Leo in the middle of summer.) For this reason, while winter and darkness are represented by a snake, summer, light and the sun are represented by a lion. While snakes slither underground, the sun is flying over our heads in the sky his "kingdom of light" is above us, while the "kingdom of darkness" is below. This is why the personified sun is usually depicted with wings of some kind: a magical flying horse (Perseus saving Andromeda, above left), wings on his hat or feet (Hermes, Mercury), or a flying chariot so that he can get around more conveniently. In other versions, wings are presented in the form of a pet bird or winged side-kick. In the picture of Hercules killing the Hydra, (above right), he is shown both with a lion's head mask and wings, just like the most famous symbol of the sun, the Griffin - a lion with the wings and the beak of an eagle.

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Myths about the moon are sometimes blended with stories about the constellation Virgo, which is right next to Hydra and comes into the sky at the same time as it does. Virgo is the 2nd largest constellation, only a little smaller than Hydra, and the constellation was worshiped as a great goddess. Due to their close positions, myths about her always involved Hydra. Hydra is also a feminine constellation (the masculine form would be Hydrus), and sometimes these two great constellations were merged to create a larger symbol of night; a creature with the tail of a serpent and the upper body of a woman. The constellation Leo, the lion, immediately precedes Virgo in the night sky and seems to be escorting her past the treachery of Hydra. This is why, invariably, mythological sun saviors slay great serpents to save virtuous maidens. Their weapon of choice is almost always a sword, probably because it takes the same shaped as a cross, the oldest known symbol of the sun.

The Birth of the Sun

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The zodiac is a belt of 12 constellations that go around the world in a line, tracing the perceived path of the sun. But there is another important line, the Celestial Equator. The Celestial Equator is important for keeping track of the seasons. When the sun crosses over it going south, it is called the fall equinox. The hours of daylight and sunlight are equal on this day, but from then on there is more darkness than daylight. Likewise, when the sun crosses the Celestial Equator going North, the days are again equal, but this time they become longer. This is the spring equinox.

Something different happens during the winter and summer solstices; in the winter, the sun appears to be getting farther and farther away. Then there is a point where its movement appears to stop, before beginning to return. In the summer, the sun is getting closer, then it pauses before moving away again. "But the sun doesn't move!" Of course not, but it is possible to mark the seasons based on where it rises or sets on the horizon, and this point does move. This is how those stone temples like

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Stonehenge work; they put a little hole on the spot of the horizon where the sun will rise on one specific day of the year. Imagine this point on the horizon like a giant pendulum. Every day, it will move a little to the left or right, approaching one of the solstices. When it reaches the end of its path, it has to "slow down" and go back the other way. It will be seen on the same spot of the horizon for 3 days, before beginning to move in the opposite direction. On December 22nd, the winter solstice, the sun appears to stop moving. Early civilizations mythologized this event as a "death" of the sun darkness had triumphed. But three days later, on December 25th, the sun began moving again. This was a "birth" of the new sun, (and also a "resurrection" of the old sun), who would someday challenge the rulers of darkness and re-create the kingdom of light. This victory comes on the spring equinox, when light triumphs over darkness. The birth of a spiritual savior on December 25th had been celebrated for thousands of years before the advent of Christianity. In the face of a long winter, it was celebrated as a time for hope in the eventual return of life and light. That December 25th was originally a Pagan holiday is generally well known, but not everyone realizes that it was a birthday celebration for the infant sun. On December 24th, the priests waited for a sign that the sun had returned, and when they saw it they shouted "A child is born in the East!" The sign the priests saw was probably the star Sirius, one of the brightest stars in the winter sky, which rises just before dawn. "The coming of Sirius therefore to the Meridian at midnight became the sign and assurance of the sun have reached the very lowest point of his course, and therefore having arrived at the moment of his rebirth." Carpenter, Pagan & Christian Creeds People in those days believed that every night, the sun rested in a vast subterranean cave, before rising again in the East. Therefore this "birth" of the sun was pictured underground, in a cave, or sometimes a manger. Greeks, Egyptians and Romans carved little nativity scenes showing the heavenly child surrounded by his parents (the former sun-god and the moon-goddess, as we will see later), and also importantly, lots of animals. It is from the word "Zodiac" that we get the modern word "Zoo" - original nativity scenes showed the baby sun surrounded by the animals of the zodiac. Late to the birth were three wise men following a star. Many traditions have called the three stars of Orion's belt the "kings" or "magi". They form a direct line to Sirius, a very bright blue star, and appear to follow him straight to the birthplace of the sun. Try to find them early on Christmas morning they'll be the brightest stars you see.

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The Wicked Ruler

Winter begins on December 22nd with the winter solstice. At this time Saturn, king of winter, assumes his thrown. (The 22nd is the beginning of Capricorn. Just as Leo's ruling planet is the sun, Capricorn's ruling planet is Saturn.) Saturn, or in Greek, Chronos, was the father of time - from him we get words like "Chronology." In the picture below, Saturn is seen with his symbol, the scythe, and with a dragon biting its own tail; the symbol for infinity. The inevitable consequence of time, of course, is death. The modern day Grim Reaper, shown below holding an hourglass, is based on images of Saturn.

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In the Greek version of the myth, Chronos heard a prophecy from Uranus that one of his children would overthrow him; so he began to eat all of his children. After losing five kids this way, his wife Rhea saved the 6th, Zeus, by feeding Chronos a stone wrapped in blankets. Zeus grew up in exile, but came back in strength to challenge his father. The threat from an evil tyrant and escape of the infant sun is a common motif in sun myths. Just three days after Saturn comes to power on the December 22nd, the baby sun is born on the 25th. Saturn gets nervous and "eats all his babies", or "orders a massacre of infants." The infant son, however, is smuggled away safely, usually by his mother. This incident also begins the sun's travels: he is always moving, and generally going "up" and "down". The sun grows up in exile, becoming stronger all the time. After Saturn has lost his power, the sun will return to challenge the ruler of winter and overthrow his kingdom. This happens on the spring equinox, when there is more light than day. The sun has been victorious, at least until the fall equinox, when darkness comes to power again. This time, on December 22nd, the sun dies, is buried for three days, and "resurrects". (Like the birth, this is depicted underground.) Of course, there are many variations: sometimes he descends into Hades for three days, sometimes he sleeps, sometimes he is imprisoned, and sometimes people just think he's dead. In one Egyptian version of the sun myth, the moon goddess was Isis, while Osiris and Horus were both aspects of the sun. Isis gave birth to Osiris on December 25th, and he grew up to become his mother's lover. Isis then gave birth to the baby Horus, also on December 25th, when Isis' brother Set was in power. Set was a figure of darkness, and in later traditions became identified with Typhon, the giant serpent. Set killed Osiris and scattered his body parts down the banks of the Nile. Set wanted to kill Horus also, fearing that the child would someday usurp his thrown, but Isis was warned in time to flee and conceal the child. At the Spring Equinox, Isis gathered up the body parts of Osiris and put

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him back together. At the same time, Horus grew into manhood and defeated Set to avenge his father, freeing Isis from Set's tyranny. Horus took his father's place, and became Osiris. He and Isis would give birth to a new Horus the next year.

Snakes, Eagles, Lions - Oh my!

It may seem very foreign to give human characteristics to the sun, but you are probably more familiar with this story than you think. The sun rules the zodiac sign of Leo, the Lion. (The yellow color of this animal, as well as his flowing mane, have made it an ideal symbol for the sun.) Historical and mythological figures, in order to elevate them to a divine status, are often affiliated with lions for this reason. In fact, the easiest way to spot a sun-myth is to look for snakes and lions. Hercules, for example, kills two snakes in his crib, and is usually shown wearing a Lions head. Even historical figures such as Alexander the Great have been given mythical grandeur with these symbols. If you saw the 2004 movie by Warner Brothers, you probably remember that his mother, Angelina Jolie, was a snake freak and the young Alexander was surrounded with snakes as a child. But did you notice that Alexander's helmet is a lion? Or the scene when, to be even more explicit, he is wearing an actual lion's head? Alexander is also accompanied by a pet Eagle, and seems to have some psychic connection with it. Alexander strays farther away from his kingdom, where he is strong, and grows weaker and weaker until his own followers betray him.

So firmly is the brave, sword-wielding dragon-slaying hero entrenched in human consciousness that many contemporary heroes, including J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter, continue to act out the ancient motif. Harry is marked as a sun god by his placement in Gryffindor, whose emblem is a lion. (Or rather, a Griffin - a winged lion.) He also has his characteristic mark, the lightning bolt on his forehead; also the symbol of Zeus. He can fly, with a broomstick, and is also sometimes helped by

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Dumbledore's phoenix. Like the sun, an evil power threatens him at birth and he was hidden away in obscurity. He battles the basilisk, an enormous snake, with a magical sword, in order to save the lost but virtuous maiden, Ginny. Eventually (we may suppose) he will defeat Lord Voldemort and end the threat of darkness altogether - although he may have to pay for it with his own life.

The newest Peter Pan movie (2003, live action version) is also full of sun symbolism. In the beginning of the movie, never never land is frozen in a deep winter and the pirates' ship is stuck in ice. Spring hits fast and hard, the ice melts, letting the pirates know that Pan (the sun) has come back. Peter can also fly, of course, and instead of a phoenix is accompanied by Tink, a winged fairy. Peter battles Hook with a sword to save Wendy from the pirates, so she can be mother to the boys. And although the giant alligator is Hook's enemy, the creature is an effective representation of Hydra, the water serpent. There is also a significant scene, where the weather gets nasty because Peter is sad over Tink's death. The pirates think Pan is dead, and that they have won, only to have him reappear triumphantly.

In another movie, Narnia (2005), based on the original chronicles by C.S. Lewis, Aslan is an obvious sun-savior who has to battle with the queen of winter to restore life and spring to Narnia. He allows

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himself to be captured and tortured only to be instantly resurrected and continue the fight. Although many Christians considered Narnia to be a wholesome family movie, all of the ideas in Narnia stem from the sun myth, which predates Christianity by thousands of years. (Lewis' contemporary, Tolkien, criticized Narnia for being a poorly developed collection of Pagan symbolism). When the sun reaches his throne on the summer solstice, he is described as the king of kings, wearing a purple robe and a crown of golden rays. At the time when these stories developed, the summer solstice was actually in the sign of Leo. The sun could easily be identified as a lion king. Disney's The Lion King (1994) captures the sun myth surprisingly well. Simba can't fly himself, but he is always near his winged chaperone, the toucan Zazu. In the first five minutes, we are inundated with sun references. The infant king is anointed with the juice of a fruit that has been lifted up to the sun, the clouds part and a single beam of sunlight illuminates the child. The catchy opening song mentions the sun rolling high in a sapphire sky. Most people say that the Lion King plot is based on Shakespeare's "Hamlet," and I can see the connections; but I wonder whether Shakespeare didn't get his ideas from Greek stories like Oedipus, whose tale includes lots of sun symbolism. While Simba is still young and dreaming of being ruler, (I just can't wait to be king), there is a quip about the king of kings having so little hair. Some sun gods, when they reached maturity, were shown with long flowing hair to symbolize their strong rays of light, and short hair when they were newborn or weak. This is the reason that Samson, a biblical sun figure, was defeated by the winter goddess Delilah when she cut off all his hair. This is also why, when the lion king Aslan had his mane cut off by his enemies, it instantly grew back once he was resurrected. Soon after, Mufusa tells Simba, A king's time as ruler rises and falls like the sun. Someday, the sun will set on my time here and will rise with you as the new king. Mufusa's brother, Scar, is the ruler of death, or winter. He's in league with evil hyenas, and plots with them in a fiery cave full of dancing skeletons. Scar succeeds in killing Mufasa, but Simba escapes into exile. The whole land falls into darkness and shadow when Scar takes over, but Simba grows up quickly outside of the kingdom. Simba runs into Nana, who thinks he's back from the dead, and they have a brief spring love affair. (The sun and moon are necessarily lovers, in order for the new sun to be born each year). Simba is still struggling with the death of his father, but Rafiki the monkey-priest tells him, He's alive, and I'll show him to you. You are your father. You are the same. He lies in you. Simba journeys home through the wilderness landscape that had once flourished under his father's rule. The land is destroyed now and everyone is starving, on the brink of death. When Simba returns they assume he is Mufasa back from the dead. There is a battle between Scar and Simba, now exactly the same size and strength. They exchange blows, and finally Simba grows a little bigger and wins.

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This fight demonstrates the spring equinox, when the hours of sunlight struggle with and then surpass the hours of darkness. It is time, says Rafiki. A cooling rain falls as the new king climbs majestically up to his place of power on the throne. A skull is washed away, signifying the end of winter, and the earth springs to life again. At the end of the movie, Simba and Nana have a new child and repeat the cycle. You may have heard of another lion king, Jesus of Nazareth, also called the Lion of Judah and the King of Jews. Jesus has many symbols, one of which is the white dove; and, feathers or no, he has no trouble defying gravity. Like the sun, (and Harry Potter, and the Lion King) Jesus had to hide from an evil ruler soon after his birth, because King Herod heard a prophecy concerning a future savior. Jesus refers to himself as the light of the world, and his enemy, Satan, is represented by the symbol of the serpent. Jesus comes to save his love, the Holy Mother Church. (The earth-bound communities of those faithful to Jesus are always collectively feminine.) He uses the symbol of an upright cross, which looks just like a sword, to defeat his enemies.

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Do the basics of the gospel story come from the same source as the other sun-saviors? It would certainly help to explain a passage in the gospel of Luke that identifies Jesus' herald, John the Baptist, as the prophet of the rising sun: And you, little child, you shall be called Prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare a way for him, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the faithful love of our God in which the rising Sun has come from on high to visit us, to give light to those who live in darkness and shadow dark as death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1:76 Although most people consider sun-worship to be a superstitious and primitive practice, the truth is that we still worship the sun. Sitting your kids down in front of Peter Pan, Narnia or the Lion King is no different from attending a re-enactment of the adventures of Horus or Hercules 2,000 years ago. Harry Potter defeats his enemies with magic spells, and Jesus Christ overcomes his foes with miracles, but the symbolism from both stories comes from an ancient sun myth. Even if the similarities between Jesus and Pagan gods were accidental, how can we reconcile the evidence that early Christians themselves worshiped Jesus as the sun? Besides the many passages found in the Bible, there is also plenty of non-biblical evidence that Jesus was originally considered a sun myth by his own followers. The story of the sun was based on astronomical observations, and created hundreds of years before the rise of Christianity. The sun's movements have continued unchanged for billions of years, and

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many of the celestial details which led to the development of the sun myth can still be seen today. Therefore those parts of Christianity that come from the sun myth cannot be part of a tradition that begins with a historical Jesus. Unfortunately, removing the details of the sun myth from Christianity is like cutting out Jesus' heart - he cannot survive independently once separated from his Pagan roots. So far I've introduced a broad outline of the sun myth, but only hinted at the potential comparisons between it and Christian history. The next article focuses on the inherent details of both traditions so we can see just how tightly they are wound together.

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Chapter 8: Astrological Roots of the Christ Myth Part II Jesus Zodiac

Before King Herod tried to find and kill the infant Christ, who was smuggled safely into Egypt, a Pharaoh tried to kill the infant Moses, who also survived. Both returned to triumph over their adversaries. Before either of them came Horus and many others, all based on the sun myth. In the most recent adaptation of this story, the infant Harry Potter survived an attack from his enemy Voldemort, went into hiding, and likewise came back to challenge his would-be murderer. The miraculous circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth are entirely based on Pagan mythology - in fact you could take the lyrics of all the Christmas carols together, singing about a divine child, stars, wise men and angels, and apply it to dozens of pre-Christian stories. Only two of the four gospels even give a birth story, and there are few scholars today who would argue that they weren't copied from Pagan mythology. However, there is much more to say about Jesus than his miraculous birth. In this article, I'll explain how all of the details in the gospel account of Jesus' ministry are based on observations from the sun, and also how specific symbols identified with the Christian movement, like the crucifixion, the lamb and the fish, all came from astrology. After the infant sun ran away from the powerful ruler (Saturn), we hear nothing about him until he is thirty years old. Jesus also leaps from a child to a 30 year old man in the gospels, apparently because there is nothing worth mentioning during the early part of his life. Many authors have written about where Jesus might have spent these years, failing to appreciate the nature of mythological literature. (Incidentally, the very best ever fictional account of the early years of Jesus Christ is "The Gospel according to Biff".) When specific numbers are used in mythology, they are rarely random; instead they help preserve astronomical trivia and are a way of passing on wisdom to those who could decode their meaning. In the sun myth, the number 30 has an astrological significance.

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There are 360 degrees in the zodiac wheel, giving each of the 12 signs exactly 30 degrees. Saturn's reign is finished at the end of Capricorn, which means that after 30 degrees the sun can come out of hiding. For a real man, 30 years is a long time, but for the sun myth, the number 30 only represents the degrees of Capricorn and is just 1/12th of the distance he will have to go. This is the reason why the first 30 years of the sun savior are only the very beginning of the story. By the end of January, the sun has escaped the persecution of Saturn, but he is still weak and the weather is cold. Climbing up to the celestial equator, and defeating his enemies by crossing over it and ending winter, will be his final struggle and challenge. This process is often tied to the number forty, which like the years of the sun's age, has an astrological significance. The winter solstice in the sign of Capricorn lies 16 degrees below the celestial equator. The spring equinox in the sign of Aries, where the sun will triumph over darkness, is at 24 degrees above the celestial equator. Starting from his birth in Capricorn, the sun must climb a total of 40 degrees before he escapes from the clutches of winter. (16+24=40). This term forty represents the struggle of the sun in the wilderness, climbing toward salvation. With Israel, it was forty years in the wilderness, and with Noah, it was forty days of torrential rain, but regardless, the symbolism is the same; the plight of the young sun in the valley of Amenta, the Nether World, fighting his way to cross the forsaken territory between the zodiacal sign of the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Malik H. Jabber, The Astrological Foundation of the Christ Myth Jesus begins his ministry by spending 40 days in the desert being tested by the devil. Like the sun, he then needs passes through Aquarius (baptism) and Pisces (calling his "fishers of men") before he can be exalted at the spring equinox in the beginning of Aries (as the crucified lamb of God.) After climbing these 40 degrees, the sun is finally strong enough to defeat the darkness that has plagued him since birth. The length of days and nights on the spring equinox are exactly equal, but after the long battle that marks this day, the sun will be the victor. Crossing the celestial equator on the spring

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equinox was seen as the sun's definitive triumph over evil, but it was also viewed as a kind of perpetual suffering. Every year the sun had to face the same enemies, suffer defeat, and fight to regain his kingdom. Many myths illustrate the idea of the sun leading a life of toil for mankind, who brought light and life to the world at great personal cost. Tragic figures like Sisyphus, who was forced to push a boulder up a hill and then let it roll back again for eternity, or Prometheus, bound to a rock so his liver could be eaten every day, may represent the perpetual toil of the sun. Although climbing over the celestial equator is just one piece of the sun's never-ending torment, it became a symbol for his great sacrifice. As we already know from Justin Martyr, Jesus wasn't the first to be crucified; nearly all sun saviors met their deaths on a cross of some kind, or else hung from trees or were nailed to boulders. (Osiris was locked in a coffin that got stuck inside the trunk of a tree that was later used as a temple pillar.) While these grim endings may appear dissimilar, drawings or representations of these saviors usually show them in an X or cross-shaped position. Although the cross has always been a symbol of the sun the very first cave drawings include the "solar cross", which is thought to represent the sun's rays - the motif of the crucifixion comes from astronomy. The sun's apparent path around the earth, called an ecliptic, crosses over the celestial equator at an angle, making the shape of an X. Plato, in his dialog, Timaeus, said that when the Creator of the universe first formed the cosmos, He shaped its substance in the form of the letter X: the intersection between the sun's apparent path and the celestial equator. Many heroes met their fate with this cross, including the Greek King Sixion and St. Andrew, to show divine status.

Here someone might interject that Jesus was crucified on a vertical cross, like the one worn by modern Christians; but there is no evidence for this. More likely, Romans would have used a T-bar shaped cross because they were easier to build. And besides, some early versions of the gospels say Jesus was "hung on a tree", not crucified. However, we don't believe Jesus Christ was crucified any

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more than we believe Dionysus was ripped apart and eaten by his followers. The vertical cross is a spiritual symbol referring to a specific restorative salvation, not a historical souvenir. (But there is much more to the crucifixion story than the shape of the cross, and we will look at it in the next article.) The sun continues upwards until he reaches his northern-most peak at the beginning of summer. The summer solstice is the height of the sun's glory and the beginning of his reign, but he has also reached the end of his path and will begin to regress. He may warn that his enemies will overthrow him, or that he has to leave but will return again. On the fall equinox, when the night is again longer than the day, the sun is weakened, captured, and taunted. Just as the sun had to wait 30 degrees after his birth before beginning his mission, he also has to pass through the last 30 degrees which lead to his death. After passing through the twelve signs, he is delivered to his death at the beginning of Capricorn by the sign Sagittarius. For each degree that Sagittarius gains, the sun is closer to his death, leading to the idea of a betrayer who gets paid off to lure the sun to his death. In the gospels this is Judas, who sold Jesus to his enemies for thirty pieces of silver. Some scholars argue that Judas represented the sign of Scorpio, who is lord of the fall equinox. In this case, Judas leads Christ to his enemies in the fall, where he is tormented and afflicted for three months until his death at the hands of Sagittarius on the winter solstice. Either way, the motif of the 30 pieces of silver is a reference to degrees of the zodiac.

When the sun reaches the winter solstice and holds still for three days, he has died and been buried in the tomb or cave where he began. He will remain in the underworld, in the land of the dead, or in the tomb, for three days, until he begins his return. While maintaining the three day hiatus, the sun myth placed the death and resurrection together in the spring in order to tie it into the great victory reached when the sun crosses over the celestial equator. Jesus has been so far removed from his roots that identifying him with a Pagan sun cult may seem

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blasphemous even for non-Christians. For the early church however, it was all too easy to assign qualities of the sun myth to the Jesus story. In fact, at least one of the four gospels included in the Bible's New Testament was purposely written to emulate the sun myth.

Jesus Through the Zodiac

Stories about the sun often include zodiac animals in the course of the hero's quest; as the sun carved its path through the twelve zodiac signs, the hero would encounter or challenge the symbols which represented that sign. Krishna, for example, was chased by a snake and kills both a bull and a lion. Hercules, often portrayed wearing a lion skin, is most famous for his twelve labors, which correlate to the twelve signs of the zodiac. In Ovid's Phaeton, the Greek sun god Helios promises his mortal son a gift, because he feels guilty for never spending time with him. The boy begs for a chance to drive his father's golden chariot, which races across the sky bringing light to the world. Helios, knowing that only he can control the powerful horses, tries to dissuade his son. Are you fancying that there are all sorts of wonders up there, cities full of Gods and beautiful things? Nothing of the kind. You will have to pass beasts, fierce beasts of prey, and they are all that you will see. The Bull, the Lion, the Scorpion, and the great Crab, and all will try to harm you. Ovid, Metamorphoses II, Phaethon Of the four gospels in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark and Luke largely share the same stories and parables, but the order varies with each one. In Matthew's version of events, the parables and imagery are arranged to match the progression of the sun through the zodiac. The parables of Jesus' life are grouped into themes which match either the symbol or the influence of the signs. The imagery changes with the seasons and completes exactly a one year cycle, from December to December. Either the actual zodiac animal or the traits of the zodiac sign is used to keep the order. In some cases only a hint of the weather gives us an indication of the time of year, as if the author was trying to leave subtle clues. Notice the chronological order of the verse numbers.

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Aquarius, the Water Bearer - Matthew 3:13 (January) Although modern astrology begins with Aries, the first sign the sun encounters after his birth in Capricorn is Aquarius. This constellation is shown as a solitary figure with long hair, living in the wilderness of winter, pouring water from a vase. Jesus begins his ministry with his baptism at the hands of John, who is often portrayed standing in a river with long hair, pouring water out of a vase. John also lives alone in the wilderness, like Aquarius. Many scholars have questioned, why does Jesus, who is free from sin, need to be baptized?

Pisces, the Fish - Matthew 4:18 (February) Jesus calls his first disciples. They are fisherman, mending nets and fishing boats. Jesus tells them they will now be fishers of men.

Aries, the Ram - Matthew 5-11 (March) Aries is ruled by Mars, the Roman god of aggression and war. Jesus asserts his growing power and gives his first sermon, the Sermon on the Mount. He pities the crowd of people, calling them sheep without a shepherd. Jesus cautions against pride and anger, (both traits of Aries) but also admits that he came not to bring peace, but the sword. Jesus also asks us to look at the birds of the sky and think of the flowers in the field, demonstrating that it is spring.

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Taurus, the Bull - Matthew 11:28 (April) Come to me, all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light. This curious metaphor is wedged into the story abruptly, and has no parallels in the other gospels, nor anywhere else in the Bible, although it is similar to bull-centered cults like that of Attis and Mithras. Its inclusion at just this point, rather than anywhere else, is necessary to preserve the zodiacal order.

Gemini, the Twins - Matthew 12:1 (May) This is a sign of restlessness, communication, and inconsistency. The Pharisees began to plot against Jesus, trying to trap him with loaded questions about Jewish law. Jesus says, Everyone who is not with me is against me. His disciples pick ears of corn from the stalks, showing it is early summer and the harvest has not yet begun.

Cancer, the Crab - Matthew 12:25 (June) Cancer is a water sign and represents domestic life. Jesus uses three parables here. The first is a reference to Jonah and the whale. The next two concern the home and family, both within the influence of Cancer.

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Leo, the Lion - Matthew 13:1 (July) It's late summer now, and time for the harvest. Jesus speaks about reaping the rewards of what you sow. His parables are about the sower, the darnel, the mustard seed, and the yeast.

Virgo, the Virgin - Matthew 13:53 (August) Virgo is concerned with order, cleanliness and purity. Jesus argues with scribes over purity laws, saying, What goes into the mouth does not make anyone unclean; it is what comes out of the mouth that makes someone unclean. This section also begins a new chapter, called First Fruits of the Kingdom. The harvest is over and it's time to prepare for winter. Two separate miracles of loaves are here. People are hungry and Jesus produces bread for them.

Libra, the Scales - Matthew 16:13 (September) Libra's focus is on equality and justice. Jesus discusses heavenly rewards, rules and laws, judgment and financial matters. Topics include the danger of riches, the reward of renunciation, and the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. The themes of judgment and retribution come up frequently. This is also where Jesus casts the money changers, along with their fancy scales, out of the temple.

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Scorpio, the Scorpion - Matthew 21:18 (October) This section begins with the story of a barren fig tree. Often used to demonstrate the power of faith, it is also another indication of the season. There is no fruit on the tree because it is fall. Scorpio is the sign of union and marriage, so it is not surprising we find the entire collection of wedding parables here. Jesus talks about the bride, the bridegroom and the Wedding Chamber. There is a feeling of urgency, as Jesus warns that the end is very near and we must be careful not to be locked out in the cold. He tells us that when he is gone, we need to help those who thirst, are hungry, sick or without clothes. Winter is coming.

Sagittarius, the Archer - Matthew 26:36 (November) Many sun gods, although crucified, were actually killed on the cross (or under a tree, like Krishna and Attis) by an arrow; symbolically combining the betrayer Sagittarius at the beginning of December with the cross of the celestial equator. Jesus is betrayed by one of the twelve disciple for thirty pieces of silver. When confronted by a group of armed men he asks, Am I such a bandit that you had to set out to capture me with swords and clubs? Jesus was not killed by the cross, but by the soldier who stuck a lance, or in some translations an arrow, into his side.

Capricorn, the Goat - Matthew 26:57 (December) Jesus is scourged, tried and crucified at Golgotha, which means the place of the skull, and is linked linguistically with the word Capricorn.

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The sun has reached its farthest, weakest point. There is an emphasis on darkness. From the sixth hour there was darkness all over the land until the ninth hour, showing that it is December 21st, the darkest day of the year. Jesus is buried in a tomb, which is found empty three days later. He has been resurrected, and will come again in power. Even if we ignore the astrological associations and only look at the seasonal clues, it is clear that the ministry of Jesus lasted for one year and ended in December. But why, if Matthew shows his death in winter, do Christians celebrate Easter during the spring? Actually, many early Christians were also confused by this issue. Enough of them, in fact, to make church fathers commit the heresy to ink and lasting memory. They endeavor, for instance, to demonstrate that passion which, they say, happened in the case of the twelfth Aeon, from this fact, that the passion of the Savior was brought about by the twelfth apostle, and happened in the twelfth month. For they hold that He preached only for one year after His baptism. Ireneaus, Against the Heresies In thousands of cathedrals across Europe and Africa, the center dome is decorated with a giant zodiac wheel, with Jesus in the center radiating light and his twelve apostles surrounding him in even sections. Even the 12 stations of the cross, which Christians believe represent 12 specific events during the Passion of Jesus, may be a residual influence of the beliefs of early Christian communities who saw Jesus as the sun of God passing through the 12 signs of the zodiac.

The Lamb of God

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Besides the lion, the animal most often associated with Jesus is the lamb. The choice of this animal, along with nearly all other Christian symbolism, comes from constellation mythology. Jesus' role as the sacrificial lamb is linked to an astrological phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes. As the sun passes through the twelve zodiac signs, the four signs that govern the four cardinal events in the sun's journey are the most significant. Of supreme importance is the sign under which the sun crosses the celestial equator on the spring equinox. Astrological ages are named after this sign; today we are somewhere at the end of the age of Pisces, because Pisces is the sign behind the sun when it crosses its midway point in the spring. Due to a slight imbalance in the earth's wobble, these four signs change roughly every 2,200 years, in a gradual process called the precession of the equinoxes. It takes an entire 26,000 years for all twelve signs of the zodiac to pass behind the place where the sun crosses the celestial equator during the spring equinox. Every 72 years we slip backwards 1 degree of the zodiac, meaning that soon we will be entering the age of Aquarius.

Before the present age of Pisces was the age of Aries from about 2400 to 200BC, and before that was the age of Taurus from 4600 to 2400BC. During that period, the spring equinox was in Taurus, the summer solstice in Leo, the winter solstice in Aquarius, and the fall equinox in Scorpio. Although Scorpio is today represented by the Scorpion, that part of the sky used to be represented by another

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constellation, the Eagle or Phoenix. The symbols which represent these signs, the Lion, Eagle, Bull and Man, are often found in religious and mythological texts which developed during the age of Taurus. Fall Equinox - Scorpio, Summer Solstice - Leo, Winter Solstice - Aquarius, Spring Equinox - Taurus

Age of Taurus, 4600BC 2400BC There are several references to these four animals in the Old Testament, which were later copied into the New Testament book of Revelations. These four symbols, which represented the four seasons and the four elements, were later assigned to four specific apostles whose names were given to the four books of the gospels. (Matthew=Human, Mark=Lion, Luke=Ox, John=Eagle.) "The first living creature was like a lion, the second like a bull, the third living creature had a human face, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle." Rev. 4:7 The four elements, (fire, earth, water, air), were seen as the basic substance upholding the physical universe, and are often put into the corners of religious iconography. Among other things, they correlate to the four houses at Hogwarts, the four children of Narnia, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and the four suits of a deck of poker cards. During times of persecution, some societies developed a non-verbal language of symbols to preserve ancient wisdom. The same four animals from the book of revelations are also shown in the esoteric Tarot tradition of A.E. Waite, a mystic who developed illustrations for his Tarot deck based on the writings of 19th century occultist, Eliphas Levi.

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In the Wheel of Fortune card, the Bull, Eagle, Man and Lion surround a wheel, which is ruled over by another lion with a sword that represents the sun controlling the universe. The dog-headed man is the constellation Orion, who has ties to the Egyptian god Osiris. The three stars of Orion's belt point to and follow the bright star Sirius, which is found in Canis Major, or the big dog constellation. The snake is Hydra, which appears to chase Orion around the world.

During the age of Taurus, (4600BC to 2400BC), bulls were sacred animals that figured prominently in religious worship and mythology. Sumerians regarded a bull as the bringer of spring, and the bull cult of Minoan Crete arose during this time. For Egyptians this was the period of Montu, the Bull, and it was also the time of the biblical golden calf. Taurus is a feminine earth sign, ruled over by the planet Venus, and goddess-centered religions flourished during this period. The oldest structures on earth are the fertility goddess temples on the island of Malta, which were built and used doing the age of Taurus. (Megaliths of this type were built for the purpose of making exact astronomical observations.) The symbolism in Tarot cards is based on ancient wisdom. When the sun rose in Taurus during the spring equinox, the bull became a symbol for the sun and shared his fate. Both were crucified on the celestial cross, sacrificing themselves to renew the earth. The blood of the bull became a sacrificial atonement for sins. During this period the sun was also transformed into many bull-slaying deities like Mithras, whose great victory during the spring equinox depended on him defeating or passing through the bull. In ancient murals and sculptures, Mithras was often shown driving his sword deep into a bull, clenching it like a massive lever, surrounded by the zodiac wheel. It is possible that besides representing the sun meeting the celestial cross under the sign of Taurus, Mithras was also seen as the divine force causing the precession of the equinoxes. His great act of slaying the bull would then also include ending the age of Taurus and rotating the zodiac wheel into the next sign. Mithras slew the bull with a sword, and

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it was this symbol, identical to an upright cross, that his followers imprinted on the round buns they used for their communion. To further clarify matters, sometimes the sword symbol was combined with an X shaped figure to show the cross of the celestial equator and ecliptic. Symbolically, the act of slaying a bull with a sword is identical to crucifying it on a cross.

The age of Taurus was followed by the age of Aries, the Ram. Most of the symbols used in bull cults were adapted to reflect this shift. The lamb became a holy animal, identified with the sun and his celestial triumph. Like the bull, it died on the cross with the sun, and was considered a restorative offering. In ancient Egypt, lambs were sacred during this period, and sacrificed to the sun during the spring equinox. Linked to the sun's resurrection, the lamb was regarded as having regenerative powers. In Egypt the lamb-sun god was called Amun, and many enormous temple complexes were

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built, with exact celestial precision, in honor of him. Pharaohs like Tut-ankh-Amun were named after this god to give them supernatural status. Many of the psalms in the Old Testament bear uncanny resemblance to Egyptian prayers to Amun, and it is possible that Christians to this day invoke this Egyptian god's name at the end of their prayers by saying Amen. This word is commonly associated with truth, and used to mean truly or verily. This is because when the Old Testament was translated into English, the word Amen became truth. "That he who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth, and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth, because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from mine eyes." Isaiah 65:16 The Jewish communities spent a long time in Egypt, and some of their religious ideas may have been taken from Egyptian practices. If you replace the original Amen into this passage and read it as a name, it can be seen as a psalm to the God of Amun, the lamb-headed sun god of Egypt. Even the concept of Israel in the Old Testament, made up of 12 tribes, shares remarkable similarity with the sun myth. The founder of the covenant, Abraham, was given a test to prove his obedience to God he was asked to sacrifice his first and only son Isaac. At the last minute God intervened and provided a ram to use instead. This story may be an astrological myth about how Aries came to be stuck on the celestial cross. (Genesis 22:1) In an interesting reversal of the Abraham tale, Yahweh later rescued Israel out of Egypt by killing all of the first born among the Egyptians. Israelites were told to mark their doorways with the blood of a specifically prepared sacrificial lamb, so that Yahweh could take note of which homes to pass over during his ethnic cleansing. (Exodus 12:1) Fall Equinox - Libra, Summer Solstice - Cancer, Winter Solstice - Capricorn, Spring Equinox - Aries

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Age of Aries, 2400BC 200BC The Passover Lamb became an integral feature of Judaism, and many Jews along with Orthodox Christians in Italy and Greece, continue to slaughter a lamb every year. Muslims follow similar procedures to prepare lambs for their own festival of sacrifice, Eidul-Adha, which is a commemoration of Abraham and Isaac. In fact, despite passages in the Old Testament that claim God does not need or want burnt offerings, tens of millions of lambs are sacrificed to him every year. The lamb had to be carefully prepared. It was placed on a cross-shaped spit made by the intersection of two sticks. Early Christians continued this practice, as recorded in the following passage by Justin Martyr. For the lamb, which is roasted, is roasted and dressed up in the form of the cross. For one spit is transfixed right through from the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the legs of the lamb. Justin Martyr, Dialog with Trypho, 11 Jesus was identified with the sacrificial lamb of Passover. Like the sign of Aries on the ecliptic and the Passover Lamb on the spit, Jesus makes his great restoration on a cross. Like the lamb, his death was a great sacrifice, and his blood washed away sin. The details recorded in the gospels about his crucifixion were written in order to clearly bring out this identification. Jesus had to die on the cross, for example, without having any of his bones broken, because God commanded that the Passover Lamb be without blemish or broken bones. However, it is difficult to crucify a man's body to a cross in such a way that the nails support his weight without breaking his bones, and it isn't likely that the Roman soldiers would have been extra careful with Jesus in order to fulfill Jewish prophecy. The

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gospel writers were more concerned with spiritual allegory than actual circumstances, and took liberties with their version of events.

Early Christian catacombs, although sparsely decorated, identify Jesus as the sun god tied to the precession of the equinoxes rather than a historical victim of crucifixion. One of the symbols used was the Chi-Rho, also called the Monogram of Christ because it is made up of the first two letters in the Greek word Christos. Although Christians claim that this symbol is unique to them, it was used for centuries before the Christian era as symbol for luck and fortune. It was also a solar symbol, and includes the X shaped cross as a symbol of the sun's triumph at the Vernal Equinox. Instead of a crucified savior, the image of Christ often found in the catacombs is that of the good shepherd, carrying a lamb over his shoulders, identifying him as a Lamb-God like Amun. Statues of other sunsaviors, carrying lambs to link them with the sign of Aries, have been found to predate Christianity by centuries. A contemporary of Jesus, the Gnostic god Abraxas, was drawn with the age of Aries at his head and the age of Pisces at his feet. Some statues, like the one below made in Athens around 570BC, shows the Good Shepherd with a calf, a remnant of age Taurus. Incidentally, the Egyptian god Osiris was called "The Good Shepherd" long before Jesus. He is always shown with the Crook and Flail, shepherd's tools that became symbols of leadership carried by Pharoahs.

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Jesus became not only the Good Shepherd, but also the sacrificial lamb itself. As the sun, he shared the fate of Aries when it met the celestial cross. His suffering there was an act of restoration, and Christians refer to being washed in the blood of the lamb for the forgiveness of sins, just as Mithra's followers were previously washed in the blood of the bull. After the lamb, the next most popular symbol found in Christian catacombs is the fish - specifically, two fish swimming in opposite directions, or the zodiac glyph of Pisces. Early Christians identified themselves with this sign more than all others, calling each other little fishes and using symbols of fish to identify each other. As the mover of the equinoxes, it was Jesus' role to end the Age of Aries and begin the age of Pisces.

Although Christianity has tried to separate itself from its Pagan beginnings, some customs have proved difficult to suppress. After nearly 2,000 years, we still use trees and wreaths, and give gifts during the Dies Natilis Invictus Solis, the birthday of the unconquered sun. And while many profess to worship the birth of Jesus on December 25th, it is not hard to compare the most popular Christmas icon, Santa Claus, flying around the world in one night on a magical flying sled bringing presents and good cheer, with Sol Invictus and his golden Chariot. (Actually, Santa Claus, with his lamp and white beard, is just copy of "father time", a direct descendant of Saturn and Chronos.)

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If constellations and the movements of the sun are the foundation for the biographical framework of the sun myth, how can we explain the similarities between the gospel stories and myths about the other sun-saviors? Can we expand the idea of diabolical mimicry, put forth by the church fathers, to say that Satan put the sun and the planets in orbit in just such a way as to cast suspicion on the later ministry of Jesus Christ? Is Satan then, the real creator of the universe?

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Chapter 9: Draco, the Dragon

In the last section we examined how the basic biographical details of Jesus Christ can be traced to an ancient story about the sun. For many Christians, however, the biography of Jesus is not the important part anyway - it is his role as mediator, his divine sonship, and his sacrifice for our sins that sum up the real purpose and message of Christ's ministry. These are powerful spiritual ideas which cannot be removed even by questioning the historical Jesus. Luckily, there is another way. Like the details of the sun myth, the spiritual essence of Christian salvation can also be found in many preChristian belief systems. When we explore the roots of these other systems, we find that they are also based on astrology. In the biblical story of Genesis, God created the earth, the stars, the trees and animals before creating the first humans, Adam and Eve. Everything was made perfectly, according to his plan, and he announced that it was all very good. In the world he created, there was no death and no suffering, which suggests that Time, and the basic laws of physics which usually come with it, hadn't yet been installed. It is only after the snake tempted Eve that the real world, with the moving planets and consequential seasons, came into being. This is farther demonstrated by the penalties incurred from the fall. They are the characteristics of the natural world: humanity would be cold and hungry, and there would be pain and death. They were given clothes to protect themselves from the weather and told that they must provide for themselves by the sweat of their brow.

Adam and Eve may have begun as symbols for the sun and moon. It is the moon, like Eve, that falls first into darkness, and it is the sun, like Adam, who follows her. Adam, like the sun, becomes an eternal enemy of the snake, and begins the daily cycle of light and darkness. I shall put enmity between you and the woman, and between her offspring and hers; it will bruise your head and you will

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strike its heel. Genesis 3:1539 The Christian interpretation of the story is that God must be obeyed at all costs, and that the snake is a liar and deceiver. Another interpretation, however, is that the snake was the real creator of the world. Death and suffering may be scary, but without them we would never experience joy and happiness. It seems that Adam and Eve even gained self-consciousness from eating the apple - they became aware that they were naked, and felt fear for the first time. They covered themselves with leaves and hid from God. While some Christians would still like to view the garden story as recorded history, the biblical creation myth is not unique to the Christian tradition. Early explorers to the Middle and Far East were shocked to find ancient relief carvings and paintings of a very similar story, including a man, a woman, a snake and a tree. In fact, creation stories about a man and a woman and a snake are universal in world mythology. Unlike Christianity, most other religions treated the serpent as a sacred icon, and he can be found in temples everywhere, from Mexico to Japan to ancient Egypt. This doesn't mean that the snake was always seen as good - only that he was a very important spiritual icon. Generally, the snake was a symbol for this world, sickness and death, and the desires of the physical body. Many heroes or gods are shown stepping on, clutching or killing snakes, to demonstrate their power to transcend the snares of the flesh.)

Associate Professor Sheila Coulson, from the University of Oslo, recently discovered that the San people of Botswana worshiped a python diety in a little cave around 70,000 years ago - making it the world's oldest known ritual. Where did the symbol of the snake really come from? Why is it always found in conjunction with stories about the beginning of the physical world and the end of a balanced

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unity? Many Christians identify the snake of the Genesis story with the devil, but if the snake is a symbol of evil, why give him such a powerful role in creation? The only thing that these early people had in common was the night sky, shared among them equally. And in the very center of all those whirling stars and planets, there was one constellation that always stayed in the middle. As the heavens spin around, the point in the sky that is above the North Pole seems to remain in place, while the other stars revolve around it. This led to the idea that this spot was the center and birthplace of the universe. Today, the North Pole points roughly towards the star Polaris, but because of the precession of the equinoxes, the North Pole wobbles and changes its orientation. About 4,000 years ago it was pointing at the star Thuban, which is in the tail of the S-shaped constellation, Draco the Dragon.

In the Greek myth about Draco, Minerva the Goddess of Wisdom seized the great dragon by its tail and hurled it from the Earth. As the dragon sailed away into the void of Heaven, it started to spin and got itself twisted up in knots. The dragon struck the dome of the stars and became tangled in the rotation of the heavens. Before it had time to undo all the knots in its body, the dragon froze because it was so close to the North Celestial Pole where it is always very cold. In India, in order to produce a liquid of immortality, the gods wound the snake Visiku around a mountain and began to spin him, gods at the tail, and demons at the head. They spun until venom began to pour downwards towards the earth out of his mouth. To save the world from destruction, Siva drank the poison. The venom became a sea of milk, and produced many things, including the world. This story is remarkably similar to the account in the biblical book of Revelations:

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As soon as the dragon found himself hurdled down to the earth, he sprang in pursuit of the woman, the mother of the male child, but she was given a pair of the great eagle's wings to fly away from the serpent into the desert, to the place where she was to be looked after for a time, two times and half a time. So the serpent vomited water from his mouth, like a river, after the woman, to sweep her away in the current, but the earth came to her rescue; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river spewed from the dragon's mouth. Revelations 12:1 Draco used to spin around the Celestial North Pole like the hands of a giant clock. In its central location it looked like Draco was actually causing the rotation of the other fixed stars. Because of this, Draco was made the epicenter of all ancient star charts, and given the role of creating the cosmos and time.

The spinning Draco may have been the inspiration for one of humanity's oldest symbols, the swastika. Draco would complete a full revolution every 24 hours, which, given its shape, would appear as a cross with its arms bent at right angles. A spiritual symbol since pre-history, the equal armed cross with arms at right angles is still considered a holy icon by Hindus, Jainists and Buddhists. The swastika symbolizes prosperity and well-being, but also represents the wheel of time.

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Before compasses, finding north at night would have been nearly impossible without the fixed stars over the North Pole. In hundreds of thousands of jade carvings found throughout asia, Draco is presented in the center of a small disk, with the constellations spinning around him. Sometimes there is a hole in the center of these discs, which are always decorated with dragons. This may have been used for navigational purposes - by placing Thuban or Draco in the hole, you would be able to find north. In the most rudimentary jade carvings, Draco is depicted as a simple S-shaped line in the center of a circle, an image which is probably the origin of the modern "Yin-Yang" symbol.

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Most people know that Yin and Yang represent forces of positive and negative energy, which balance each other and sustain the universe - but an older myth gives the same role to the serpent. Many stories tell how the serpent was divided in half - given a male, positive head and a female, negative tail. (However, in many versions the tail has been completely severed and thus appears as entirely feminine.) This is why Draco is always spinning, or "chasing its tail". Draco had been divided and was trying to get back together. The sun often become a symbol for the dragon's head while the moon became a symbol for the tail.

The Tao and the Logos

In Chinese, "Yin" literally means "moon". The dark patch, with the white sphere inside, represents the moon (often portrayed as a woman with a snake's body, as in the picture of the garden of Eden above). Yang literally means "sun", and is represented by a Tiger (similar to the Western sun-symbol, the lion. The interplay and balance of these two forces is known in the East as the Tao. The Tao begot one. One begot two. Two begot three. And three begot the ten thousand things. Tao Te Ching, 42 The Tao was the original unity that expanded into all things. A similar idea can be found in early Western creation stories. They begin with an original unity, that somehow made a perfect copy of itself. Greeks, Romans and Egyptians referred to these two powers as the Father and the Son. Together, they created a third, and from the three emerged the physical world. Around the 6th century BC, a philosopher from the Ephesian school named Heraclitus associated the ultimate unity, and specifically the 2nd person or Son, with the Greek word Logos. He described the Logos as a kind of divine logic which created and sustained the universe, in language that is almost identical with Eastern concepts of the Tao. Heraclitus taught that the Logos was a common truth, a voice of wisdom inherent in every person. Equating the Logos with fire, he saw this wisdom as a kind of divine spark. He complains, however, that most people do not even recognize that it is there. Men have no comprehension of the Logos, as I've described it, just as much after they hear about it as they did before they heard about it. Even though all things occur according to the Logos, men seem to have no experience whatsoever, even when they experience the words and deeds which I use to explain physics, of how the Logos applies to each thing, and what it is. Quoted in Sextus Empiricus

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The Logos is a mysterious, unknown force, a piece of divine energy which resides inside us. It is the fire that Prometheus stole from the gods and brought to humanity, but it is ignored by most people. Philo of Alexandria later equated the Logos with the sun, and almost all of the resurrecting sunsaviors, including Mithras and Osiris, were identified as the 2nd person in the Trinity as well as with the concept of the Logos. Christian theologians borrowed terms from this philosophical tradition to clarify the cosmic nature of their own savior, Jesus Christ. The gospel of John in particular relies heavily on the concept of Logos, which is usually translated into English as The Word. In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning, through him all things came into being, not one thing came into being except through him. John 1:1 Jesus became not only a sacrificial offering, crucified on the cross of heaven, but also a super transcendent, eternal force. He was a pre-existent quality of the Father, that created and sustained the universe, and also came into the physical world. The Word was the real light that gives light to everyone, he was coming into the world. He was in the world that had come into being through him, and the world did not recognize him. He came to his own and his own people did not accept him. John 1:9 Something that comes with time, of course, is death. With the division of the polarities, the expansion of matter into the universe (which Draco was given credit for) there is constant change, uncertainty, instability. Draco was up there spinning the seasons and the years like a conductor - so he became seen as the cause of suffering. In the West, myths were created about gallant knights who would go out and slay dragons. In the East, the dragon is our spiritual energy, winding upwards to be reunited with the universal Tao or Logos. The secret meaning in both traditions is that the masculine and feminine principles had been divided - this caused what Heraclitus called "Love and Strife", the two polar energies. (Imagine them like two magnets that either repel or attract.) Yearning for immortality, the serpent became seen as the enemy of goodness and the lord of evil. She was the inevitable beast of time and the earthly passions which led men into death. Even the constellations once worshiped became symbols of evil. In Persia, Draco was called Ashdehj, the Maneating Serpent, and Arabian astronomers referred to it as the Poisonous Dragon. Sun gods no longer slayed dragons in order to end winter; now they fought them as symbols of darkness in general. The literal battle between light and dark became a symbolic battle between good

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and evil. Despite the shift, the symbols and language used in the story have continued to this day. In the mythological paradigm of contemporary culture, Harry Potter faces his nemesis, Malfoy Draco.

To cheat death and achieve immortality, mystics and spiritualists began to try and unite the divided polarities within themselves, in this lifetime. The male had to seek out and rejoin the female; the sun had to catch up with the moon. As above, so below. Draco became the guardian of immortality, as in the Greek myth of Heracles and the golden apples, where he has to defeat the dragon Ladon in the garden of Hesperides. In the next chapter, we will explore how most religious traditions, all based on the same background, focus on reuniting these divided energies.

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Chapter 10: Snakes and Ladders

In the last article we discovered how many creations myths include the icon of a serpent which divided the polarities - an idea inspired by the constellation Draco spinning over the north pole. In this article, I want to focus on the philosophy of expansion and retraction - how religious traditions portrayed the "fall" with holy icons and symbols, and how they developed theories of salvation as a means to return to the original unity. This topic is very difficult to discuss because it assumes that symbols have hidden layers of meaning, and that I alone of all people know what the real meaning is. I've come to appreciate the symbolic interpretation of common religious symbols because of my studies of esoteric philosophy. Most religious traditions have a history of mysticism and also a caste system - members could progress up the levels of spirituality, and the motifs and imagery of the religion was revealed to them piece by piece. While many modern religions have lost track of the metaphoric interpretations of their own symbols, the writings of certain philosophers, mystics and spiritualists, can help us explore the original meaning of these symbols. In nearly all early cosmology theories, the universe began as a single point and expanded downwards into the physical world. (This is also the "Big Bang" theory, which has matured little in the 2,000 since Plato.) The transition from above to below, and the process of going back up, is the secret principle underlying all religious symbols. For example, as demonstrated in Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, the primal symbols for Man and Woman are both triangles, one pointed up and the other pointed down. The one pointing up is the masculine energy, positively charged, pointing upwards towards unification. The one pointing down is the feminine energy, negatively charged, pointing downwards. (Incidentally - this isn't to signify that "females" are lowly, to be dominated by males. Each human being, regardless of sex, is a product of this balanced system and is ruled by both energies.)

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Together, the two triangles form a magical symbol, the Seal or Star of Soloman - which represents the unified universe in much the same way as the Yin-Yang symbol does. While the six-pointed star symbolizes balance and completion, a five-pointed star shows movement. The pentacle has 4 points for the 4 elements, wind, water, fire and air, with a 5 point for spirit. Pointed upwards it is a holy symbol, aimed at restitution, but pointed downwards it becomes a symbol of evil - sometimes exaggerated with the image of the demon "baphomet", which can be formed from an inverted pentacle. Strictly speaking, there is nothing satanic about the physical world, other than the obvious drawbacks of sickness and death - but the process of dividing and separating was seen as sullying the pure, clean original substance. (Much like smashing a diamond into pieces. You end up with equal amounts of diamond, but the little pieces are worthless. The value was in the unified gem.) Rather than a specific mastermind ruling the underworld, Satan is a composite character whose images reflect the process of expansion and separation. We can see this more clearly by contrasting two of the cards from A. E. Waite's Tarot deck.

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The Devil is crowned by an inverted pentacle, which seems to cut his horns in two which then curve down - demonstrating both the separation, and the downward expansion, of the polar energies. In case we missed the point, his head is also an inverted triangle, and he is even pointing a torch downwards to signify the fall of the Logos, or divine spark. (Many myths have a hero who "stole fire" from the gods and gave it to humanity). The male and female are separate, naked and in chains, signifying their helplessness to their physical desires. They are also horned and tailed, (governed by their animal senses), and gazing downwards. The Lovers card, on the other hand, demonstrates the restoration. There is a large triangle, (the mountain,) in the middle of the card pointing up. The woman represents the fallen Sophia. She is next to a snake in a tree. As we will see in a few moments, a snake winding around a pole always symbolizes spiritual awakening. The man on the right has his own tree - but it is almost barren. There are exactly 12 leaves, hinting that, until the restoration, he is still stuck beneath the 12 Zodiac signs, and subject to Time and Death. They are both looking up, at the large welcoming angel and dazzling sun. I give this lengthy interpretation of the Tarot cards because it helps to see the same pattern in less obvious symbols. Take, for example, the upright cross. Ancient philosophers used the cross to represent the physical world, which they believed had four directions and was made of four elements. It also, however, demonstrated the path between heaven and hell (vertical bar) and the process of time in the physical world (horizontal bar.) An upright cross places the horizontal bar up high, showing the restoration.

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This is why it is the symbol of Jesus - who, as the Logos or First Born Son very literally is the bridge between heaven and earth. In most paintings of the crucifixion, there are two criminals crucified with him. One is looking up, and the other is looking down. (In the Bible - Jesus tells only one that he will go up to heaven.) Jesus is in the middle of the two - the animating principle, or consciousness, which fell from the original unity and which we need to get back up. However, Jesus wasn't the first to use this cross - it was also the symbol of Mithras. Like Christians, the followers of Mithras used to have a ritual meal with flat bread imbued with the power of this cross.

Of course, rather than a symbol of the crucifixion, the sword of Mithras was supposed to

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commemorate his act of slaying the zodiacal Bull of Taurus. It is easy to play up differences and claim the cross and the sword are only alike in appearance, but they have precisely the same function. Mithras slew the sacred bull (initiating the age of Taurus), and his followers were cleaned of their sins through its blood. Jesus slew the sacred lamb (initiating the age of Aries) and his followers were cleaned of their sins through its blood. In a fascinatingly prophetic passage, Jesus even says, "Do you think I came to bring peace? I tell you, I came not to bring peace but the sword." The modern peace symbol is actually a picture of an inverted cross with broken arms - showing the defeat of Christianity, but more importantly, the process of downwards expansion. The "sword" Jesus mentions is probably the opposite, a vertical cross. (Although, the true opposite of the peace symbol would look like Poseidons trident, another ancient symbol of magic.)

Incidentally, the inverted cross has always been associated with the apostle Peter. It was said that he chose to be crucified upside down out of respect for Christ, however, there is a more logical reason. Peter was singled out by Jesus to represent humanity as a whole. He was even renamed Cephas, or "the rock", to make this symbolism more concrete. It is no surprise that, while Jesus symbolizes the higher power of the logos and is represented by an upright cross, Peter represents fallen humanity and is represented by an inverted cross. An elaboration of the cross is the anchor symbol. This ancient magical icon is a representation of the created universe, including the fall and the division of polarities. Pictures of anchors are more common in early Christian art and architecture than crosses. The anchor shows the trinity (the top point is sometimes a loop, to show the eternal unity), the descent, and then the two polarities which are divided. Many anchor symbols are drawn with either a snake, or a rope winding up it, to show the process back up to the top.

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If you look again at the Lovers card above you will see that, if you combined the two trees, the entire picture would also form an anchor. This symbolism is common in Christian iconography and church paintings. In the following picture from Oregon's Portland Grotto, the bird or Holy Spirit is on top, then the Father and Son, holding a crown out to Mary, who is descending down below them. At her feet are two angels, a male and female. Around her head are 12 stars - the Zodiac. Until the restoration, she is bound within the limits of time. I've overlaid the anchor symbol to show how precisely the scene was laid out. The other picture below is a mystical symbol, depicting the anchor as a kind of fishing hook, cast back up to the cross from the heart of the world.

The Tree of Life

Jesus calls himself the "Tree of Life", referring to Genesis and the gospel story. There were two trees in the Garden, the Tree of Life (eternity, unity) and the Tree of Knowledge (self-consciousness,

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division, time, death.) Once Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge, God took the Tree of Life away from them, afraid that they would live forever and become gods themselves. Of course, if Jesus really is the Tree of Life, it means that God has changed his mind about the whole garden thing and decided to let us have the tree after all.

The symbol of the tree is not limited to Christianity - it was often seen as bridge between heaven and earth, with its roots in the ground and its leaves in the air. Many other deities are associated with a sacred tree, including Attis, Buddha and Krishna.

As we mentioned before, the process of restoration, of going back up and uniting the polarities, is always represented by a snake climbing up a pole. In India meditation is practiced with the aim of releasing the Kundalini energy, often described as the serpentine energy located at the base of the spine. It is believed that the seven Chakras must be opened, in order, and then the Kundalini can connect with the universal energy located at the crown of the head.

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When the lower spiritual self unites with the universal Spirit, a person experiences 'enlightenment', which is the absolution of opposites, the end of death and time. It is often described as being one with everything. The Biblical book of Revelations records a similar spiritual process, which it claims that the 7 seals from the book of life are opened the world will come to an end. The Jewish Kabala uses the symbol of the "Tree of Life" as a guide or plan for spiritual purification. In some images, the 10 points of the tree are connected with a snake, showing the proper order. The symbol of a snake climbing a pole is known as "The Staff of Aesculapius." A similar symbol is "The Caduceus", which has wings at the top of the pole. While the snake represents the physical world and its rise towards redemption, the heavenly world is usually represented by a bird. (The snake lives in the ground under the roots of the tree, the bird lives in its branches - the tree represents the path or bridge between the two.) Therefore, another symbol representing the union of heaven and earth is a bird and a snake together. Many modern health organization continue to use either the Staff of Aesculapius of The Caduceus in their Logo, because of their ancient associations with healing.

The Number 7
The snakes in both these symbols often cross the poles exactly 7 times. In the ancient world, it was believed that the Sophia fell through 7 heavens before getting stuck in our universe, and that when we return, we will also have to pass through these 7 heavens. The number 7 is not merely an arbitrary choice - the Pythagoreans in particular believed that the universe was built on musical principles. There were 7 known planets, each with its each own frequency. (There are 7 notes on a scale, the 8th note in an octave is just the beginning of a new chord.) White light can also be divided into the seven colors of the spectrum.

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In Asia, there is a story about the goddess Nuwa creating the rainbow. Nuwa is often shown a creature with woman's torso and a serpent's body. She is almost identical in form and function to the serpent in the Garden of Eden - through the descent and separation of the tail (feminine) part of the original unity, the universe was split into 7 layers. Yahweh in the Old Testament, makes his the rainbow a symbol of his covenant with Israel - reaffirming the practical implications of the covenant: The uniting of the 12 tribes into one kingdom.

We find the number 7 in many myths. In the story of Hercules, the Hydra he kills has seven heads. When Buddha reached enlightenment, a seven-headed cobra spread its hood over him to protect him from the rain. When Jesus met Mary, he cast out 7 demons. And when Snow White gets lost in the woods, she meets 7 dwarves. You might think, "Bah! A coincidence - Snow White can have nothing to do with ancient mystic symbolism." Actually, most "fairy tales" were actually stories used to preserve mythological wisdom that was being lost under the persecution of the Catholic Church. Snow White is a very clear and obvious reference to a universal and ancient story of love between Sophia and the Logos. Snow White pines for a prince she's never met, but knows intuitively. She gets lost in the woods, but meets the 7 dwarves. (The 7 planets, who have to go to work every day and are only around at night.) She eats a poisonous apple and falls into a deep sleep. (A fruit or apple is often the root of "death",

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just like in the Garden of Eden.") But, when the charming prince comes and kisses her, they go off to live happily ever after. Originally, the story was told about Sophia. Later, she was transformed into "The Holy Mother Church." When Jesus (the Logos) comes down and we reunite with him, we will live forever. The early Church had an extra sacrament called "The Wedding Chamber", which was an explicit sexual/metaphysical union with our higher and lower selves. All these stories suggest that the fallen spark has to get past the seven layers of the fallen world, before reuniting with the universal Logos. Certain institutions were set up in the Greek and Roman world to teach this kind of transformative spirituality. Because of their secrecy and levels of initiation, they were called the "Mystery" schools. In the next article, I will explore some of the early beliefs of these schools and prove that Christianity, from its earliest stages, was one of them.

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Chapter 11: The Mystery Schools

A lot of the articles I've provided so far have been background information, which is indispensible for first becoming aware of the possibility of the mythological Jesus, and then developing the ability to recognize him within the available evidence. I recognize that the material I've provided so far, while educational and fascinating, may still be dismissed as conjecture or fabrication by those who refuse to believe in the mythological Jesus Christ. However, as we approach the end of my argument that Jesus was never a historical person, I am finally ready to divulge the core of the Christ Myth theory - the proof that shows Christianity itself was really based on previous Pagan ideologies. Not simply by pointing out the similarities between mythological traditions and budding Christianity, but by analyzing the early Christian writings which clearly describe Christianity as a "Mystery religion", demonstrating that Paul and the early church leaders were spreading an initiation cult with different levels of meaning, and most importantly, showing that Bible records exactly how some of Paul's followers began to accidentally think of Jesus as a historical person. In this article, I'll focus on what are called "The Ancient Mysteries", and demonstrate that Christianity was one. "A mystery religion is any religion with an arcanum, or secret wisdom. In a mystery religion, an inner core of beliefs, practices, and the religion's true nature, are revealed only to those who have been initiated into its secrets. (The ancient Greek term (mysteria) means "initiation", notably in the context of the Eleusinian Mysteries.) Ancient mystery religions of the eastern Mediterranean area generally focused on mythic figures who had descended into Hades and returned or who otherwise exemplified death and rebirth, such as Bacchus, Orpheus, Osiris, and Tammuz." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_schools The earliest mysteries appear to have been brought from Egypt by Greek travelers - in fact, although Western philosophy attributes its birth to the early "Naturalist Philosophers" of Greece, these same philosophers admit to have gained their wisdom in Egypt, where they had become initiates of the mysteries there. (Thales made this claim around 600 BC.)

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"Thales was the first to go to Egypt and bring back to Greece this study [geometry]; he himself discovered many propositions, and disclosed the underlying principles of many others to his successors, in some cases his method being more general, in others more empirical." Proclus It is possible that early versions of the mysteries, such as those found in Egypt, used spiritual symbols and mythology to preserve geometrical and scientific knowledge, which was then passed on through initiates or the "priestly castes." However, it is a mistake to view initiates as hard-nosed scientists

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alone. These philosophers were passionate mystics, who searched into the natural and physical laws in order to find the absolute essence of the universe. Pythagoras, for example, is often remembered for his "Pythagorean theory", but Pythagoras was much more than a mathematician. Pythagoras once said that "number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons." After returning from his studies in Egypt, he founded a community of followers who lived together in a school, owned no possessions, followed strict rules of moral conduct and ate no meat. There were also codes of silence. Time was spent reading, playing music, and studying. He may have based this school on the early Orphic Mysteries, which some consider to be the first proper mystery school based on esoteric wisdom and initiation.

Perhaps in the beginning, only those with the dedication, perseverance and intelligence were admitted into the higher mysteries. However, when these ancient practices were assimilated into the cosmopolitan societies of Greco-Roman civilization, initiates opened schools and actively recruited members. These schools were usually centered around highly charismatic leaders, who were attributed with miraculous powers. As membership became a sign of status, some schools charged fees, and became high society clubs rather than genuine havens for wisdom. It is estimated that in Athens alone there were over 600 mystery schools. Nearly all of the Greek philosophers were members of at least one branch. It is likely, in fact, that what we know as Greek philosophy was really just an attempt to describe the cosmology of the mysteries in academic terms. Unfortunately, much of what we know about the mysteries was preserved by condemnation or criticism from external sources. Due to the secretive nature of the mysteries, we may never know exactly what was taught at the higher levels. However, we can piece together something about these

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groups from the clues they left. Initiates of Mithras, for example, could ascend up through seven levels, represented by the seven planets. After each level they would be awarded a new title as well as some external symbol of their status. An initiate at the highest level was called Father, and wore a red cap, a mantle, a ring, and carried a shepherd's staff. (Like Jesus, and the Egyptian Osiris, Mithras was called the "good shepherd".) The traditional outfit for the Catholic Pope is very similar. Initiates of Mithras would first be baptized and born again as infants into their new life, and then made to fast and keep a special diet in order to gain control over their bodies. Once their physical drives were in check, they would perform a ritual death, often actually dressing in death rags and being buried or sealed in a tomb. The goal of Mithraism was the unification of the lower self with the Logos, for which they used the name Perseus, during a ritual called the Wedding Chamber. Having completed all of the levels, initiates would be branded or tattooed with a symbol of the organization and allowed to teach. Although there are few written remains of Mithraism, we can tell a lot about how his followers viewed him by looking at the artwork left in their tomb-like temples. Mithras was often shown standing on a globe with a cross through it, wearing a lion's head mask, to identify him with the victorious sun on the spring equinox. Sometimes he was shown with the zodiac circle surrounding him. Many statues give him wings and a snake around his legs, and show him raising a lit torch - like the symbol of the Caduceus. He was seen as the bridge between heaven and earth.

We also have the testimony of early Christian apologists, who recognized the similarities between Mithraism and Christianity and claimed that they were inspired by Satan. The following passages by Justin Martyr and Tertullian include Baptism, Communion, Confirmation (formerly known as the

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Chrism - anointing the forehead with oil, a magical symbol and sometimes a tattoo) and even the Resurrection. Tertullian also mentions a rite of initiation which may have been lost from the Christian tradition, which includes kneeling before a sword and being crowned. "For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, "This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body; "and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, "This is My blood; "and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn." Justin Martyr, First Apology 60 "The question will arise, By whom is to be interpreted the sense of the passages which make for heresies? By the devil, of course, to whom pertain those wiles which pervert the truth, and who, by the mystic rites of his idols, vies even with the essential portions of the sacraments of God. He, too, baptizes some-that is, his own believers and faithful followers; he promises the putting away of sins by a layer (of his own); and if my memory still serves me, Mithras there, (in the kingdom of Satan, ) sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers; celebrates also the oblation of bread, and introduces an image of a resurrection, and before a sword wreathes a crown." Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum 40 "Blush, ye fellow-soldiers of his, henceforth not to be condemned even by him, but by some soldier of Mithras, who, at his initiation in the gloomy cavern, in the camp, it may well be said, of darkness, when at the sword's point a crown is presented to him, as though in mimicry of martyrdom, and thereupon put upon his head, is admonished to resist and east it off, and, if you like, transfer it to his shoulder, saying that Mithras is his crown. And thenceforth he is never crowned; and he has that for a mark to show who he is, if anywhere he be subjected to trial in respect of his religion; and he is at once believed to be a soldier of Mithras if he throws the crown away----if he say that in his god he has his crown. Let us take note of the devices of the devil, who is wont to ape some of God's things with no other design than, by the faithfulness of his servants, to put us to shame, and to condemn us." Tertullian, De corona. 15. Already, I hope you can see that there are some similarities between Mithraism and Christianity. Modern apologists denounce these parallels by claiming that either A) they aren't there or B) Christianity came first, so any "borrowing" was done by Mithraism. But neither of these defenses were used by the early Christian communities, who had serious difficulties explaining how and why the Mithras cult seemed to have so much in common with Christianity.

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Mithras is the Persian sun-god, but his mysteries share much of the symbolism from other forms of Greek and Roman mysteries. In fact, all of these initiation cults are related, because it was usually an initiate of one who then moved into a new location and started his own version based on the local gods. In this picture of Hercules, the Greek sun god (strictly speaking, Apollo is the sun God, but Hercules absorbed a lot of sun myth symbolism), Hercules is being crowned with Laurels. He is surrounded with all of the symbols of the mysteries - a conquered dragon at his feet, a dragon head behind him, a sacred tree, the tips of a pair of wings, his consort who "kings" him, and even a globe showing the intersection of the celestial equator and the ecliptic. These are the same symbols found in the pictures of Mithras above, and - although they are very well hidden - in the story of Christ's ministry.

Jesus is the Lion King - "Christ" means anointed, or crowned. He is always associated with a lion, and called the Lion of Judea. He is the defeater of Satan, the serpent. He was born in a cave and surrounded by animals - often mistranslated as "in a manger". He is the tree of life, the bridge between heaven and earth, and like Mithras he is the controller of the precession of equinoxes. While Mithras defeated the bull under Taurus, in the time of Jesus the spring equinox had already progressed into Aries, the lamb. Jesus receives his kingship, christ-hood or "anointing", at the hands of his consort, Mary Magdalene. Jesus Christ was a Jewish version of the same mythological figures worshiped by the various mystery

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cults. His sacrificial role, and the rituals designed to save his followers, were also based on mystery religions. We know this because we have a lot of evidence pointing from one direction, and a lot of evidence pointing from the other. One the one hand, we have all the similarities between Christianity and other mystery religions. On the other hand, we have Christian testimony from both the Bible and apocryphal gospels which clearly describe Christianity as a mystery religion. What we don't know, for certain, is how and why somebody created a Jewish version of the mysteries - but it doesn't really matter. Given the evidence, they must have. I'm going to tell you what I think happened, and then I'll bombard you with physical evidence until you're weak in the knees.

The Jesus Mysteries

Jesus said to the 12 apostles: "You have been given the mystery of the Kingdom of God, but to those, the ones outside, everything is given in parables, so that seeing, they may see and not perceive, and hearing, they may hear but not understand. Mark 4:11 Starting from around 230BC, the land of Israel fell under Roman rule. The Roman policy was to conquer, improve public facilities, collect taxes, and have people honor the emperor. While many communities lived peacefully under foreign rule, the Jews believed that Israel was given to them by God and could not be taken from them. They considered themselves a holy people, and thought that they were to stay pure by separating themselves from the world in dress, custom and diet. When Romans began to raise temples and statues to Roman gods in Jerusalem, it presented Jews with a theological problem. They reasoned that either they had forgotten to fulfill their religious duties, and were being punished, or that God was expecting them to fight back against Rome and reclaim their homeland. There were many rebellions during this period, but every uprising against the Romans finished in heavy losses for the Jews. Taking pieces from their scriptures which spoke of a future prophet or king and weaving them together, they formed a description of a savior figure who would liberate them from Roman rule. They pictured a powerful ruler from Israel's royal dynasty, the line of David, who would unify the country, restore the tribes of Israel, and defeat the Romans in a final holy war. Kings were always anointed on the forehead, so they referred to this messiah as The Christ, which means anointed one. At the same time, Jews who lived outside of Jerusalem sometimes became less austere with their dress and customs, assimilating into their new surroundings. Some became educated in Greek thought and language, and no doubt they came in contact with mystery religions and sun gods through public festivals and holidays. Some may have even become initiates themselves, but even if

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they didn't, Greek philosophers spoke plainly about concepts like Sophia and Logos and it would have been impossible not to learn something about them. Around 2,000 years ago, probably in Alexandria, someone began writing a Jewish version of the Greek mysteries. Maybe someone found in them some pearl of wisdom they wished to share with their people. Or perhaps they felt guilty for allowing themselves to become involved with Pagan culture and were trying to justify their actions through a Yahweh centered version of the Logos myth. At any rate, the new, Jewish version of the mysteries offered Jews a way to integrate culturally while preserving their own theological heritage. These stories were written by people who had most likely never been to Israel, and like the Egyptians used locations metaphorically to describe the sun's ascent and descent. Using a number substitution code, a common practice among the Greek mysteries and Jewish mystics, they created a name for this savior with special mathematical significance. Jesus (I) = I.E.S.O.U.S = 10+8+200+70+400+200 = 888 The principles behind this equation were well known in the first few centuries AD, and the church father Iraneaus, although he doesn't seem to believe it himself, can clearly do the math involved. This is the name of Jesus; for this name, if you reckon up the numerical value of the letters, amounts to eight hundred and eighty eight. Thus, then, you have a clear statement of their opinion as to the origin of the super celestial Jesus. Wherefore, also, the alphabet of the Greeks contains eight Monads, eight Decads, and eight Hecatads, which present the number eight hundred and eighty-eight, that is, Jesus, who is formed of all the numbers; and on this account He is called Alpha and Omega, indicating his origin from all. Iraneaus , Against the Heresies This figure was not only a sacred number, it was also a pictograph of the nature of God. 8 turned on its side becomes the symbol of eternity. Three 8's show the three identical persons of the eternal trinity. The numbers 888 can also be reversed, flipped, and substituted with each other without causing any change in their nature, reflecting the unchanging constancy of God. The concept of the Logos, represented by the divine number 888, was combined with the image of the awaited messiah and became the name Jesus Christ. It was an attempt to bridge Greek salvation philosophy and Jewish religious history, and did not refer to a real or actual person. This explains the few often quoted passages in the Bible which portray Jesus as a special name, a name above all others. It is not Jesus the historical man who holds the key to salvation, but the Logos and his innate relationship with the Father and original unity.

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I am the Way; I am Truth and Life. No one can come to the Father except through me. John 13:14 Similar to passages in the Egyptian book of the dead, the secret to immortality in the early church lay in knowing God's true name, almost like a secret password. It was the name Iesous itself, and not just the person or function of Jesus, that held power. Like abracadabra, Iesous was a special word, that when pronounced properly could produce marvelous effects. But some itinerant Jewish exorcists too tried pronouncing the name of the Lord Jesus over people who were possessed by evil spirits; they used to say, 'I adjure you by the Jesus whose spokesman is Paul.' Acts 19:11 Although for Greeks this new mystery was just one among hundreds, to some Jews this was their first glimpse of the mystery salvation philosophy. The permanence of the soul in particular may have been an attractive idea for them, and a community grew up around these stories. These groups taught the Greek mysteries in a Jewish framework, and offered Diaspora Jews the opportunity to become initiates without feeling guilty for abandoning their own culture. Rather than believe the Messiah to be a historical figure, they imagined that he was the Logos, who gave mankind internal salvation. Paying taxes and living under Roman law was inconsequential after having been saved by the Logos, and even death held no power over those saved. Instead of depending on external forces to liberate them, initiates believed each person could become their own messiah. Because of this, they called themselves anointed ones, or Christians.

The Bridal Chamber

The writings from some early Christian communities, later branded as heretical and lost for centuries, clearly fall within the mystery tradition. Many of these texts have re-emerged only this century, quickly changing the traditional understanding of the early church. Although cast out of the Roman Catholic fold, these communities considered themselves to be the true followers of Christ. Like other mysteries, these early Christians had a baptism, a communal meal, and a bridal chamber aimed at uniting the upper and lower selves. The Lord did everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber. Gospel of Philip

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The Greek word used for mystery in this fragment can be found frequently in the Bible under its Latin counterpart, sacrament. Although the church has always argued about the nature and number of sacraments, those cited by Philip are roughly the same as those still used by many churches. The chrism is an anointing of oil, marking the initiate's forehead with the cross to make them christs. It continues today in the form of confirmation. Although the Apostle Paul clearly recommended celibacy over marriage, when the true meaning of the Wedding Chamber was lost, the sacrament changed from a mysterious transformation of the soul into a binding love between a mortal man and woman. Despite claims that marriage is a sacred institution, priests of most Christians denominations aren't even allowed to enter into it. How could the marriage between two people be both a sacrament, sanctified by God, and unacceptable for priests? The answer is that originally, the sacrament of marriage referred to the mystery of the Wedding Chamber, and the fusion between the Sophia and the Logos inside each person. The mysteries of Jesus Christ copied the Greek mysteries in every fashion, including the universal sun myth figure. Initiates would first be introduced to Jesus as a resurrecting son of God, and later guided to understand the mythical interpretation of the story. The final purpose of the Christian mysteries, identical to the mysteries of Mithras, was to use the re-joined bride and groom like a mirror, to see back to the beginning. There is a rebirth and an image of rebirth: It is necessary that they should be born again through the image. What is the resurrection? The image must rise again through the Image. The bridegroom and the image must enter through the Image into the Truth: this is the Restoration. Gospel of Philip The bridal chamber was a metaphysical union between the male Logos with the female Sophia, or the soul's return to God. Its true meaning was kept hidden from initiates of the lower levels through stories and parables attributed to the savior. Secrecy was very important, because if initiates heard the truth before they were spiritually ready, it would be spoiled for them.

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If a marriage is open to the public, it has become prostitution, and the bride plays the harlot not only when she is impregnated by another man but even if she slips out of her bedroom and is seen. Bridegrooms and brides belong to the bridal chamber. No one shall be able to see the bridegroom with the bride unless he becomes one himself. Gospel of Philip At higher levels, initiates could freely interpret the philosophical implications of the stories, weaving Greek and Jewish thought together freely. Substituting Christ into the role of the Logos, they explain that his role is to repair the separation that happened in the beginning. If the woman would not separate from the man, she would not die with him. His separation became the beginning of death. Because of this Christ came to repair the separation which was from the beginning and unite them. But the woman is united to the husband in the bridal chamber. Indeed, those who have been united in the bridal chamber will no longer be separated. Thus Eve separated from Adam because she was never united with him in the Bridal Chamber. Gospel of Philip Just as the sun had a female companion, the moon, and the Logos had a female companion, Sophia, the stories about Jesus also incorporated a woman as his friend and companion. As for the Wisdom who is called the barren, she is the mother of the angels, and the companion of the Savior, who is also Mary Magdalene. Gospel of Philip Many texts describe the ecstasy encountered between Mary and Jesus, which represent the Logos and the Sophia as they are fused into one in the Wedding Chamber. It is no wonder that there are so many books written about the sexual exploits of Jesus and Mary, and even the possibility of their royal offspring. As long as Jesus is assumed to be historical, Mary must be viewed as his real, physical companion.

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Like Sophia, Mary was sometimes called a whore, as were many consorts of the sun. She was the one who was lost, sullied in matter, trapped and in need of rescue. Significantly, Mary is identified in the Bible as the woman out of whom seven devils were cast. After Mary had her seven demons removed, or ascended past the seven illusionary heavens, she was able to become Christ's partner and lover in the bridal chamber. In an ancient manuscript called the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Mary was not only Christ's beloved disciple, but also the revealer of secret mysteries. Peter said to Mary, Sister we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of woman. Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember which you know, but we do not, nor have we heard them. Mary answered and said, what is hidden from you I will proclaim to you. Gospel according the Mary Magdalene Later, when a certain branch of Christianity refused the higher mysteries, they viewed this form of Mary as a threat because of the authority it gave to women. The symbol for Sophia, the bride of Christ, changed from Mary Magdalene into The Holy Mother Church. Christ was viewed as the head of his body, the Church, and his great sacrifice was undertaken for the sake of this body. The Church, like Sophia, was the collection of individual sparks trapped in the world. (If you've been paying attention, you'll recognize that this relationship is identical to the body/tail division of Draco.) Once the meaning of the Wedding Chamber was lost, this relationship between Christ and the Church became a metaphor for human marriages rather than the relationship between the higher and lower selves. Husbands should love their wives, just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy by washing her in cleansing water with a form of words, so that when he took the Church to himself she would be glorious. . . .This is why a man leaves his mother and father and becomes attached to his wife, and the two become one flesh. This mystery has great significance, but I am applying it to Christ and the Church. Ephesians 5:25 Jesus also shared a common heritage with Mithras as the body of the Caduceus. When Moses came down from the mountain and found his people with the golden calf, he smashed the idol and replaced it with a bronze serpent fixed it to a pole. He claimed anyone bitten by poisonous vipers could look at it and live.

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While the bull was a symbol of astrological precession, the snake on the pole represented the soul's ascent to the One. Moses was introducing a new spirituality based on personal transformation rather than celestial observation. The writer of John's gospel links Jesus to the serpent on a pole, giving him the role of Mithras as the pathway to spiritual perfection. "As Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life." Ephesians 5:25

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Jesus has fallen into matter, and in this state he appears crucified, or stuck. All of the pieces of him, his body, need to be lifted up and rejoined to the head. The pieces of him were called Sophia, the wisdom of God, and many biblical passages state clearly that Jesus crucified is Sophia. The relationship between these two is obscured by translating Sophia into Wisdom. We are preaching a crucified Christ...who is both the power of God and the wisdom (Sophia) of God. 1 Corinthians 1:22 Prometheus, who brought fire to mankind, was chained to a rock and tortured. Krishna and Attis died at the base of a tree, pierced by arrows. Dionysus was ripped apart by his followers so that they could have life by eating his flesh, and in the Egyptian story, Osiris was butchered into little pieces. Heraclitus, developing into a mythological figure himself, was reportedly torn apart by dried dung. According to the text attributed to the apostle Philip, Jesus met the same fate on the cross. My God, my God, why, O Lord, have you forsaken me? It was on the cross that He said these words, for it was there that he was divided and separated. The Gospel of Philip The reason that these passages seem strange to us today, is that for most of the past 2,000 years Jesus Christ has been considered a historical person. Our preconceptions about Jesus radically and fundamentally alters our reading of the stories about him. Although the early Christian communities that believed in a historical Jesus had to battle long and hard against their critics, they eventually won the war and erased all traces of their adversaries. They structured the Bible in a way that makes the historical Jesus appear obvious, and almost completely hides traces of the mythological Christ. When

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we re-read the Bible without the assumption that Jesus was a historical figure, we can find not only evidence that Christianity was a mystery religion, but also the most crucial of answers: If Jesus was a myth that was accidentally mistaken for a historical person, how could such a colossal mistake have been made?

Chapter 12: St. Paul's Worst Pupils

Finally we get to the crucial question: if Jesus was mythological, how and why did people ever start to imagine that he was a historical person? The answer is accidentally preserved in the biblical "Acts of the Apostles" and in the letters of Paul. The New Testament is arranged to appear chronological: the four gospels present the story of Jesus' ministry, Acts of the Apostles narrates the adventures of the disciples, and the letters of Paul - written to the growing Christian communities - are included at the end. This arrangement is misleading. The letters of Paul are the earliest. Once you've already read the gospels and established the idea that Jesus was a physical person, you subconsciously bring that image with you into Paul's letters however, Paul never talks about Jesus in terms of a recently executed historical figure. Instead, he makes it clear that his "Jesus Christ" is a Jewish version of the Greek mysteries, which have been around for some time. The only difference is that it is a mystery religion for Jews, God's chosen people, and is thus superior because it is enhanced by Israel's holy covenant.

I was made a servant with the responsibility. . . of completing God's message, the message which was a mystery hidden for generations and centuries and has now been revealed to his holy people. It was God's purpose to reveal to them how is the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; it is Christ among you. Colossians 1:25

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He was saying, The Greeks have used this mystery for years and it works great for them. Now I'm giving it to you, under the name of Christ, so that you can participate too. Paul was a priest charged with rounding up the Diaspora Jews who were participating in the Jewish Mysteries - but once he started to investigate them, he converted and became a supporter. Because of his connections and his priestly training, he was a persuasive missionary. To Jews and Gentiles alike, he told the story of Jesus Christ, Son of God, who was crucified and resurrected from the dead. New initiates would be baptized and urged to control their physical desires through fasting and abstinence. Paul would then leave a few initiates in charge and promise to return with further revelations. The epistles of Paul are notoriously obtuse and contradictory, because he seems to be saying different things in every one. This is because not every community was at the same level in the process of initiation. As a mystery religion, Christianity had several layers of meaning that would be divulged slowly as initiates proved their worth. To the beginners, Paul was careful not to reveal too much; the higher teaching would be wasted on them if they weren't spiritually prepared, and the process could be ruined if rushed. To strengthen their willpower, Paul told them have faith, to be strict in their habits and diet, and to become masters over their physical bodies. Once members had shown a certain level of spiritual maturity, they would be initiated into the higher mysteries and told that the Christ story was a metaphor for spiritual transformation. These advanced pupils, who believed in developing personal wisdom, or Gnosis, are the communities referred to by historians as Gnostics. To these higher level initiates, Paul left behind the initial steps and skipped ahead to more advanced topics. Let us leave behind all the elementary teaching about Christ and go on to its completion, without going over the fundamental doctrines again; the turning away from dead actions, faith in God, the teaching about baptisms and the laying on of hands, about the resurrection of the dead and the eternal judgment. Hebrews 6

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He could also write freely now about the mythical interpretations of the stories he'd shared with them. While in the beginning they had learned that their savior Christ was a man from Palestine, they were now to leave even this idea behind. From now onwards, then, we will not consider anyone by human standards: even if we were once on familiar terms with Christ according to human standards, we do not know him in that way any longer. 2 Corinthians 5:16 Paul revealed Christ as the Logos and explained his role as divine intermediary. Initiates would undergo the ritual of the Wedding Chamber to unite the Sophia with the Logos, or the Magdalene with the Jesus, and finally perform a ritual death of their lower, personal selves. After that, they would be one with the Logos, or Christ. I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me. Galatians 2:20

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Paul used unambiguous terms and images, exhibiting a mastery of Greek language and mystery school philosophy. After removing the seven veils of corporeality, Paul's higher initiates could reflect the light of God like living mirrors. And all of us, with our unveiled faces like mirror reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the image that we reflect in brighter and brighter glory; this is the working of the Lord who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:16 Although the early stages of the mysteries prescribed strict rules of conduct, after their own rite of resurrection initiates were theoretically dead to their animal selves. Moral action from then on was supposed to come directly from the Logos within them and be spontaneous. However, eradication of desire through this symbolic death was a continuous process; Paul often had to remind his pupils of the implied morality that came with their elevated status. You have stripped off your old behavior with your old self, and you have put on a new self which will progress towards true knowledge the more it is renewed in the image of its creator. Colossians 3:8 All who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified self with all its passions and its desires. Since we are living by the spirit, let our behavior be guided by the Spirit and let us not be conceited or provocative and envious of one another. Galatians 5:24 Initiates at the highest level, including Paul, understood that in reality there was no right and wrong, no good and evil, because all opposites were united in the Logos. For these initiates, moral excellence was not found in empty physical posturing, but in natural accord with the internal spirit. The laws and rules of the early stages had been like training wheels, which had served their purpose and could now be removed. If you have really died with Christ to the principles of this world, why do you still let rules dictate

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you, as though you were still living in the world? Do not pick up this, do not eat that, do not touch the other, and all about things which perish even while they are being used according to merely human commandments and doctrines! Colossians 2:20

The important thing, rather than moral codes of external action, was to cultivate an internal state of tranquility. The soul was described as a pool of water which needed to be kept still in order to reflect the image of God. This peaceful internal state was more important even than specific details of the faith. Within yourself, before God, hold on to what you already believe. Blessed is the person whose principles do not condemn his practice. But anyone who eats with qualms of conscious is already condemned, because this eating does not spring from faith and every action that does not spring from faith is sin. Romans 14:22 Any action that caused worry, guilt, or internal discord was a sin because it splashed the water of the soul, and God could no longer be seen clearly. Those initiates who could act without rippling the water had total freedom from the strict Jewish dietary laws and moral customs. However, they needed to be careful around the lower level initiates, who had not yet reached this ambivalent attitude towards sin. One person may have faith enough to eat any kind of food; another, less strong, will eat only vegetables. Those who feel free to eat freely are not to condemn those who are unwilling to eat freely; nor must the person who does not eat freely pass judgment on those who does...the one who eats freely, eats in honor of the Lord and makes his thanksgiving to God; and the one who does not, abstains from eating in the honor of the Lord and makes his thanksgiving to God. Romans 14:2

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Stupid Galatians!
The Greek mysteries were well established in Greek and Roman culture, and most likely had an established network of teachers. The basic initiation process would have been common knowledge to new initiates. Paul's Diaspora Jews, on the other hand, were not familiar with the procedures involved in this type of religious system. When Paul came preaching the arrival of the Messiah, Diaspora Jews were excited. They believed him, and told their friends the good news. After Paul had left, his communities continued to meet and talk about what they had learned.

Some of them, believing that they were adequately versed in the faith, assumed leadership roles and began to teach new initiates. However, since they themselves had not yet received the higher mysteries, they taught only the basics and made no mention of further revelations. The Acts of the Apostles gives us an example of one of these teachers, a confident and bold, who created many new disciples of Jesus. He even traveled to spread the good news. And yet, the Acts of the Apostles makes it clear that he did not have the full message. An Alexandrian Jew named Apollos now arrived in Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, with sound knowledge of the scriptures, and yet, though he had been given instruction in the way of the Lord and preached with great spiritual fervor and was accurate in all the details he taught about Jesus, he had experienced only the baptism of John. He began to teach fearlessly in the synagogue and, when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they attached themselves to him and give him a more detailed instruction about the way. Acts 18:24 Who were the women that instructed Apollos about the Way of the Lord? How did they know about the baptism of Jesus while Apollos only knew about the baptism of John? It appears that there was already a Gnostic community in Ephesus when Apollos stumbled in proclaiming Jesus Christ. Unlike

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later Christians who took the Wedding Chamber at face value and assumed women were of lower status than men, Gnostics had no qualms about letting women teach and assume leadership roles. If anyone doubts that Christianity was originally a mystery religion, this passage is the Biblical proof. We can assume that the two baptisms refer to different levels of initiation, the baptism of Jesus being the higher level which Apollos hadn't yet received. In the Bible, John the Baptist warns against being satisfied with his baptism, because Jesus would come later with more powerful rituals. I baptize you with water, but one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the holy spirit and with fire. Matthew 3:11, Luke 3:16 Each baptism marked a special initiation into a higher level of Christian spirituality, and involved a complicated ritual of herbs, oils, proper attire, special numbers and magical seals. The following ancient passage from the Coptic church describes the ceremony of the baptism of fire in great detail. Jesus said to his disciples, Bring me grapevines, so that you may receive the baptism of fire. And the disciples brought him the grapevines. He offered up incense. He sent up juniper berries and myrrh, along with frankincense, mastic, nard, cassia flowers, turpentine, and oil of myrrh. And he also spread a linen cloth on the place of offering, and set upon it a chalice of wine, and set loaves of bread upon it according to the number of the disciples. And he had all of his disciples dress themselves with linen garments, and crowned them with the plant pigeon grass, and put the plant doghead in their mouths. And he had them put the pebble with the seven voices into their two hands, namely 9879. And he put the plant chrysanthemum in their two hands, and put the plant knotgrass under their feet. And he placed them before the incense which he had offered up. And he had them put their feet together. And Jesus came behind the incense which he had offered up and sealed them with this seal. Ancient Christian Magic Once Christianity divorced itself from metaphorical interpretation, and denied the secretive esoteric wisdom of the higher initiates, it was decided that one baptism was more than enough. A new creed was written, "We believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins."

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Incidentally, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit the Baptism of Fire become transformed into the tradition of pentecost - the Holy Spirit came down and "enlightened" all of the apostles with Wisdom, so that they could go and spread God's word. Modern Pentecostal Christians have revived these Baptisms, in the form of intensely enthusiastic evangelism.

Unfortunately, Apollos seems to have spread his limited version of Jesus Christ to a lot of people

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before he was stopped. Paul faced entire communities who had somehow been cut off from the higher levels of initiation. Paul made his way overland as far as Ephesus, where he found a number of disciples. When he asked, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers? They answered, No, we were never even told there was such thing as a Holy Spirit. He asked, Then how were you baptized? They replied, With John's Baptism. Paul said, John's baptism was a baptism of repentance, but he insisted that the people should believe in the one who was to come after him- namely Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Acts 19 Due to the ease of communication within the Roman empire, some of Paul's communities began to interact with each other independently. Followers who had only been taught the lowest levels of the mysteries got wind of other groups doing things differently, even believing in Jesus Christ differently. The community of Corinth seems to have received only the basics of the Jesus mysteries, which were, in Paul's own words, the turning away from dead actions, faith in God, the teaching about baptisms and the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and the eternal judgment. Hebrews 6 They heard rumors of secret knowledge that Paul was revealing to other Christians, and wrote to him demanding answers. Was there really more to the story? And if so, why hadn't they been told? Paul responded that they were not yet ready to hear the higher mysteries, and that by demonstrating their personal rivalries, they had shown that they still weren't ready. And so, brothers, I was not able to talk to you as spiritual people; I had to talk to you as people living by your natural inclinations, still infants in Christ; I fed you with milk and not solid food, for you were not yet able to take it and even now, you are still not able to, for you are still living by your natural inclinations. As long as there is still jealousy and rivalry among you, that surely means that you are still living by your natural inclinations and by merely human principles. 1 Corinthians 3:1 Apollos and the community at Ephesus were happy to be instructed in the nuances of the faith, but others weren't so cooperative. Paul wasn't sure which communities would still accept his authority, and expressed concerns to his communities about how he would be received during his next visit. He described his fears in such detail it seems clear that he was already experiencing most of them, and becoming frustrated. I am afraid that in one way or another, when I come, I may find you different from what I should like you to be, and you may find me what you would not like me to be; so that in one way or the other there will be rivalry, jealousy, bad temper, quarrels, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder. 2

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Corinthians 12:19

Trying to restore order, and make sure that the higher mysteries were preserved, Paul may have returned to some of the younger communities and hastily given the baptism of Jesus or other rites to initiates who weren't yet spiritually ready to receive them. Uncomfortable with the new philosophical view of Christ, or perhaps afraid of making themselves unpopular by refuting an earthly Messiah, some of these initiates reverted back to firmer ground, and continued to teach only the basics that they were familiar with. Paul was furious. You stupid people in Galatia! After you had a clear picture of Jesus Christ crucified, right in front of your eyes, who has put a spell on you? There is only one thing I should like you to tell me: How was it that you received the Spirit - was it by the practice of the Law, or by believing in some message you heard? Having begun in the spirit, can you be so stupid as to end in the flesh? Can all the favors you have received have had no effect - if there really has been no effect? Galatians 3:1 In the ancient world, the planets were gods who had influence over the physical body. The Pagan mysteries celebrated astrological events as a method to keep track of celestial movements, such as solstices, and related these dates to stories about their savior. In the early levels of the Jewish mysteries, Jesus Christ was introduced as a real person, and initiates were allowed to celebrate these special times in the guise of commemorative events, such as Christmas and Easter.

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However, for the initiates who had reached the higher levels and died to their physical bodies, these special dates should have lost their meaning. Some of Paul's communities continued to celebrate these dates even after they had received the full initiation, proving to him that they hadn't really understood his message. But formerly, when you did not know God, you were kept in slavery to things which are not really gods at all, whereas now that you have come to recognize God, or rather, be recognized by God, how can you now turn back again to those powerless and bankrupt elements who's slaves you now want to be all over again? You are keeping special days, and months, and seasons and years - I am beginning to be afraid that I may, after all, have wasted my efforts on you. Galatians 4:8 It is interesting that the Pauline letters preserved in the Christian Bible were written to communities he was unhappy with; these are the communities that became the modern church. Besides constantly reprimanding these communities for their selfishness, contentiousness and debauchery, Paul was also frustrated by their inability to understand the finer points of his message. On this subject we have many things to say, and they are difficult to explain because you have grown so slow at understanding. Indeed, when you should by this time have become masters, you need someone to teach you all over again the elements of the principles of God's sayings; you have gone back to needing milk, and not solid food. Hebrews 5:11 The pattern of Paul's initiation was to first tell the stories about Jesus as a man, and later expand those teachings into a transformative spirituality in which the figure of Jesus Christ as an actual person could be discarded. Initiates at higher levels were told to develop Gnosis, and use the Logos as a mirror to transform themselves into Christs. They were also told that laws concerning specific moral conduct were no longer necessary, because the Logos living in them would spontaneously seek out the greater good. For some communities, the philosophical notions of the Logos were impractical, and the everything is permissible morality of Paul's Gnostics was too difficult to enforce. These initiates turned away from Paul, denying his higher mysteries and refusing to accept any interpretation of the original message. They preferred the idea that Jesus was a real man, who said and did real things, and constructed a simple faith based on ritual and moral law. It was these groups, who considered Christ as a historical person, that eventual won control of the church and assumed the name, Christian. When Paul and others criticized them, these communities attempted to defend themselves by providing rational arguments in favor of their misguided beliefs. They developed their own,

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independent theology, based on Hebrew scripture and a literal reading of sacred texts. Paul complained that his followers were being stolen away from him and his teachings perverted. By the grace of God which was given to me I laid the foundations like a trained master builder, and someone else is building on them. 1 Corinthians 3:10 Some groups even began forging letters from Paul, attempting to justify their beliefs through the authority of his name. Only 7 of the 14 Pauline letters included in the Bible are considered authentic. Timothy 1 and 2, along with the letter to Titus, are universally considered forgeries, while Ephesians, Colossians and 2 Thessalonians continue to be disputed. Many of these letters end by affirming that they really are from Paul, and try to use Paul's signature as proof. This greeting is in my own hand - PAUL. It is the mark of genuineness in every letter; this is my own writing. 2 Thessalonians 3:17

While Paul taught that Jesus Christ crucified was the Sophia inside us, and that the kingdom of God had already come, these rebellious communities believed that Jesus was a real man who had recently risen from the dead. Rather than create our salvation inside of us, they believed Jesus would return at some point in the future to restore the kingdom of God on earth. Using Paul's own name against him, they warned other communities against believing that the kingdom could be accessed immediately. About the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, brothers, and our being gathered to him: please do not be too easily thrown into confusion or alarmed by any manifestation of the Spirit or any statement or any letter claiming to come from us, suggesting that the Day of the Lord has already arrived.2 Thessalonians 2:1

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Which letters were considered genuine would depend on which ones arrived first. Through this kind of letter, even communities who remained loyal to Paul may have been tricked into refusing his instruction. The forged letters turn away from the ideology of Paul's mysteries, and focus on creating a modest and chaste society, based on a literal reading of scripture and strict moral obedience. Unlike Paul, whose close companions and fellow teachers included Priscilla and Aquila, the groups who wrote these letters were uncomfortable with women in roles of authority, and severely limited their function. Similarly, women are to wear suitable clothes and to be dressed quietly and modestly, without braided hair or gold and jewelry or expensive clothes; their adornment is to do the good works that are proper for women who claim to be religious. During instruction, a woman should be quiet and respectful. I give no permission for a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. 1 Timothy 2:9 Paul left a legacy of two very different types of Christianity. The Gnostics emphasized the return of the spirit to God and believed Christ's death was a philosophical truth, necessary for the restoration. They had at least three ritual baptisms and holy seals, (water, fire and spirit) representing stages of spiritual initiation. The Christians, who placed their faith in Christ as a historical reality and believed that he would come back at the end of time, focused on good works and faith alone. Like the modern church, Christian communities had just one baptism, for the forgiveness of sins, and adopted only one magical seal, the upright cross. The theology inherited from this early period of Christian history, which continues today in most Christian churches, is the repressive theology of Paul's least favored students.

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Chapter 13: The Promise of the Flesh

Many were led astray by reading the allegorical contents of the scriptures literally in the method of the Pharisees and Sadducees Eusebius, Ecclestical History I believed in Santa Claus until I was nearly thirteen years old. Like my friends, I'd been brought up to think of him as a real person, who made his rounds on a sled pulled by magic reindeer. One day in my parent's kitchen, my best friend told me the truth. His parents had just revealed to him that it was really his own father who ate the cookies and filled the stockings. I had accepted the idea of Santa Claus for so long, it wasn't possible for me to entertain the notion that he wasn't real. Instead of listening to my friend, I began to try and justify my beliefs. I argued that just because something was unlikely didn't make it impossible. How do we know he isn't real? Can you prove it? I began providing examples to show how it was possible that Santa Claus really did do all those amazing things. Paul's Gnostic communities were generally educated Greeks or Jews, who could easily see the relationship between Jesus and other mystery faiths. When they wrote stories about Jesus, they would often use Greek terms and images. Sometimes they would even take pre-existing texts from other traditions and just add, Jesus said to every statement of faith in order to expand their spiritual literature. For them, it was the spiritual message, and not the words or the details that were important. The other Christian communities, which refused to change their initial understanding of the faith, had more trouble expressing themselves. When they heard from Paul and the Gnostics that Jesus didn't exist, they reacted in the same way as I had when my friend told me that Santa Claus wasn't real. Rather than face the evidence, they asked, why couldn't he be real?, and then tried to prove that he was. They were met with much opposition. The idea that Jesus could have been a historical man was a ridiculous concept to many. The Logos, the Son of God, was the collection of all of the sparks that existed in every person. His sacrifice and crucifixion were the story of how he became divided and stuck here with us, giving us the opportunity to return to God through him. The Greeks, Gnostics, and Romans who were familiar with the motifs behind the story told the Christians, You've got it wrong. You've got the basics right, but let us tell you what it means. Believing in Jesus as a historical figure, Christians met opposition from every side. Paul and his

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Gnostic communities viewed them as infants in Christ and called them animal men. Greek philosophers were astounded at their simplicity, and the ruling Roman authorities were unnerved by their lack of common sense. Of all of the communities who believed in Jesus Christ, they seemed to be the only ones that declared Jesus was historical rather than mythological. Letters between these groups generally communicated the same point: beware of what everyone else is saying. When they were told that the story of Jesus Christ was an obvious myth copied from Pagan sources and was not meant to be taken literally, they could not show otherwise. They rarely appealed to Christ's actual words, or deeds, or events in his life, except through Old Testament passages which seemed to prophecy a future savior. They could find no physical proof that Jesus Christ had ever lived, even less than a century after his supposed death. In Greek and Roman culture, arguments were won through their rational appeal and the speaker's powers of persuasion. As Christians became more outspoken, adamant about the physical death of their Lord Jesus, Pagans engaged them in a battle of wits. Some Pagans published whole books to display the inherent absurdity of the new faith. The spirit-saving philosophy of the Logos which was taught through the mysteries had developed over thousands of years. The novelty of pinning this philosophy into one historical man required a philosophical dexterity which, unfortunately, these Christians didn't have. Their arguments, though full of zeal, were logically weak, inconsistent, and often missed the point entirely. Many times, when they couldn't answer their opponents questions, they would resort to character attacks and personal insults. Christians who believed in the historical Jesus also differed among themselves in serious points of doctrine. They called each other heretics, each claiming to be the true church. Assuming Jesus to be real, they invented the idea of "apostolic tradition" and made the claim that Jesus had personally taught the message that had been transmitted to them with apostolic authority. The most serious point of contention between these communities and their adversaries concerned the resurrection of the flesh. Against the rumor that Christ was crucified in appearance only, they struggled to prove that he had been crucified and resurrected from the dead physically, in the flesh. Since he never died, he must have ascended bodily into heaven, meaning that the real, physical body of Christ flew up through the seven heavens and remains there still.

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In the other mysteries, resurrection was a symbol for personal transformation. Each initiate could die in this life to his physical body, and be resurrected, in this life, to a spiritual body. Christians who had been taught about the resurrection but couldn't understand the spiritual significance of the doctrine began to believe that they would, like Jesus, be resurrected along with their physical bodies. This was extremely controversial. In Neo-Platonism and other contemporary philosophies, the body was little more than a dirty beast, which trapped the pure soul like a prison. The point of philosophies like Stoicism, Epicureanism, Platonism, and the other mystery schools, was to release the soul from the body. Even Paul clearly said that what was to be resurrected was a spiritual body, not a physical one. It is the same too with the resurrection of the dead: what is sown in perishable, but what is raised is imperishable; what is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; what is sown is weak, but what is raised is powerful; what is sown is a natural body, and what is raised is a spiritual body. 1 Corinthians 15:43 What I am saying, brothers, is that mere human nature cannot inherit the kingdom of God: what is perishable cannot inherit what is imperishable. 1 Corinthians 15:50 Christians who affirmed the resurrection of the flesh knew that they were diverging from Paul's original message, and complained that this difference of doctrine was often pointed out to them. Instead of responding to the criticism, and recognizing that the heretics were closer aligned to Paul's theology, they pushed ahead undeterred. Among the other [truths] proclaimed by the apostle, there is also this one, "That flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." This is [the passage] which is adduced by all the heretics in support of their folly, with an attempt to annoy us, and to point out that the handiwork of God is not saved. Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, 5:9 Dismissing Paul and his higher mysteries, these Christians wanted their bodies preserved until some future period when they could reclaim them. The idea was met with disgust and contempt. Justin Martyr succeeds in representing the opinion of the opposition, without answering any of the questions raised by them. They who maintain the wrong opinion say that there is no resurrection of the flesh; giving as their reason that it is impossible that what is corrupted and dissolved should be restored to the same as it had been. And besides the impossibility, they say that the salvation of the flesh is disadvantageous; and they abuse the flesh, adducing its infirmities, and declare that it is the cause of our sins, so that if the flesh, say they, rise again, our infirmities also rise with it. By these and such like arguments, they attempt to distract men from the faith. And there are some who maintain that even Jesus Himself appeared only as spiritual, and not in flesh, but presented merely the appearance of flesh: these persons seek to rob the flesh of the promise. Justin Martyr, Fragments of On Resurrection" chapter 2.

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Significantly, the Christians who believed in the physical resurrection of the dead did not point to their own savior as proof, nor did they mention the miraculous raising of Lazarus found in the gospels. They neglected to offer the woman Peter raised to life in Jaffa, or the boy that Paul raised to life at Troas after he'd fallen out of a three story window, both of which were later recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. When asked to provide even one example of someone who has physically risen from the dead, they don't. Then, as to your denying that the dead are raised for you say, Show me even one who has been raised from the dead, that seeing I may believe...but suppose I should show you a dead man raised and alive, even this you would disbelieve. Theophilus, To Autolycus, chapter 8. Instead, they argue that God, who causes the dying and rebirth of wheat, grain and grass, must also have the power to raise a man from the dead. One gives the example of a sparrow who swallows a seed, and later leaves the seed in its droppings. If the seed can still produce a tree after such an ordeal, why couldn't God re-animate a dead body? They even attempt to prove the physical resurrection through the example of the planets, which lead to the development of the spiritual symbolism in the first place.

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And if you would witness a more wondrous sight, which may prove a resurrection not only of earthly but of heavenly bodies, consider the resurrection of the moon, which occurs monthly; how it wanes, dies, and rises again. Theophilus, To Autolycus (8) Again, they offer no eye-witnesses, and no physical evidence. The only argument ever put forward to defend Christ's physical death and resurrection was, It isn't impossible. It may have happened; and we believe that it did. One common criticism of the idea that the Logos had a physical incarnation, was the impossibility of what is eternal and unchanging to lower itself and become mortal while maintaining its divinity. God could not be fully god and fully man any more than white light could remain both white and another color at the same time. Another point was raised by the philosopher Celsus, who questioned why God would send his spirit down to one fixed geographical location, rather than allow it to be accessed by the entire human race equally. Again, if God, like Jupiter in the comedy, should, on awaking from a lengthened slumber, desire to rescue the human race from evil, why did He send this Spirit of which you speak into one corner (of the earth)? He ought to have breathed it alike into many bodies, and have sent them out into all the world. Recorded by Origen, Contra Celsus, 6:78 This is still the strongest argument ever made against Christian faith: only a very small fraction of the human race has ever been Christian, and today the numbers, while healthy, are declining. Over 90% of Christians live in the Americas and Europe, while over 90% of people in many other countries, like India or China, are not Christian. This implies that salvation is given out by God randomly and unjustly. Someone lucky enough to be born in the right country is likely to be saved, while being born in the wrong country will most likely result in damnation. The Christians could not compete with the skilled Greek debaters, nor with the Gnostics who also claimed to be disciples of Paul. They couldn't even provide answers to the logical inconsistencies that arose out of their faith. Constantly confronted by rational arguments and logical debates, of which they never seemed to get the upper hand, they began to see reason itself as a threat to the truth they believed in. The gospels, which were written in the guise of history in order to transmit spiritual truths, became a source of information for the wished-for savior that Christians were proclaiming. They took examples from the stories, which were originally meant as mythological narratives, and tried to use them to support their theology of the flesh. This would be like proving that Santa Claus really flew a magical sleigh because it was written down by an eye-witness in The Night Before Christmas.

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Groups that believed in Jesus as a historical being would use scripture to back up their opinions about him. When the scriptures didn't support their views, they would edit them, inserting passages and then quoting those same passages in their arguments. By comparing handwriting and literary style, scholars can identify alterations that have been made to original texts. The passages in the Bible which scholars agree were later insertions add geographical and political details to show that the story actually happened in recent history, and edited the resurrection story to show that Jesus not only lived in the flesh but also rose from the dead in the flesh. Later insertions include post-resurrection passages such as doubting Thomas poking his finger into the wounds of Christ, or of Jesus being hungry and eating fish, or Jesus appearing to such and such number of disciples. They are all attempts to justify the historical Jesus and the physical resurrection. Unfortunately for Jesus, having been lifted up in the flesh, he will presumably bear these physical wounds for all eternity. Once the texts adequately represented the beliefs of the community, they were considered sacred and without error. However, because most of these scriptures were taken straight from the original mysteries of Jesus Christ, they were full of mystical symbols and formulas which didn't make sense if accepted at face value. The Old Testament in particular was meant to be interpreted. Moses Maimonides, a respected Jewish spiritualist, taught that scripture was allegorical in nature. Every time that you find in our books a tale the reality of which seems impossible, a story which is repugnant to both reason and common sense, then be sure that the tale contains a profound allegory veiling a deeply mysterious truth; and the greater the absurdity of the letter, the deeper the wisdom of the spirit. Moses Maimonides Paul often uses scripture allegorically in order to present spiritual truths. Even stories from the Old Testament which are commonly assumed historical were used by him symbolically. For example, in the letter to the community in Galatia he describes how Abraham's two sons represent the physical and spiritual aspects of our dual natures. Scripture says that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave girl and one by the free woman. The son of the slave girl came to be born in the way of human nature; but the son of the free woman came to be born through a promise. There is an allegory here: these women stand for the two covenants. Galatians 4:22 Many of the stories in the gospels also have mathematical significance, like the name of Jesus, and use numbers to convey geometrical truths. Jesus often says things like, Let those who have ears, hear!, or Let those who have eyes, see!, alluding to the need to seek a deeper interpretation for his parables. He also chastises his apostles frequently for not understanding the actual significance behind his stories.

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One example is the appearance of Jesus on the shore of Tiberias, after he has been resurrected. He comes to his disciples, which had all abandoned him and gone back to fishing, and helps them catch exactly 153 fish. While this number may seem like a supercilious detail, its very lack of significance lending credence to the idea that this miracle really took place, in fact it has a very serious role to play. There is a similar story about Pythagoras, and although the exact number of fish that Pythagoras caught has been lost, it may well have been the same figure. 153 was a sacred number Pythagorean communities, a number with special significance. The fish, and the number, are references to a mathematical principle often used in the mysteries called Vesica Piscis, or the measure of the fish. When two equal circles are joined so that the perimeter of one passes the epicenter of the other, it produces a third, intermediate section, which resembles the shape of a fish. This section further contains two equilateral triangles. The mathematical ratio of its width (measured to the endpoints of the body) is nearly 265:153, yielding the number 1.73203, or the square root of 3.

This symbol was used in the mysteries to show the unification of divine principles. Three circles joined this way were used to represent the eternal trinity; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, united in one God. In the mysteries of Ephesus, the Goddess wore this symbol over her genital region, and in the Osiris story, the lost penis was swallowed by a fish which represented the vulva of Isis. Having refused allegorical meaning and interpretation, these details were left unexplained, and subsequently lost. Much like the original story, Christianity has maintained the external form of the Vesica Piscis, seen on a thousand posters, bumper stickers, and websites, without retaining any of the symbolic wisdom. Instead it became an acronym for Jesus Christ, his nature and title, which can be made from the Greek letters for fish.

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Iesous Christos Theou Huios Soter = Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior

Without access to the allegorical meaning, the scriptures became obtuse and difficult, full of contradiction and confusing parables. Church fathers had to keep their flock away from communities who actually knew how to interpret these symbols, and taught that some of scripture's secrets, like the natural world, were meant to be known only by God. If, therefore, even with respect to creation, there are some things (the knowledge of) which belongs only to God, and others which come within the range of our own knowledge, what ground is there for complaint, if, in regard to those things which we investigate in the Scriptures (which are throughout spiritual), we are able by the grace of God to explain some of them, while we must leave others in the hands of God. St. Iraneaus, Against the Heresies (book 2, chap 8:3). The very word, mystery, which used to represent a level that had not yet been attained, began to mean something which was simply forever kept a secret from us, or something that God had chosen not to reveal. We should leave things of that nature to God who created us, being most properly assured that the scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the Word of God and his Spirit; but we, inasmuch as we are inferior to, and later in existence than, the Word of God and His Spirit, are on that very account destitute of the knowledge of His mysteries. St. Iraneaus, Against the Heresies (book 2 chap. 8:2) The teachers of this form of Christianity, who had all the details but none of the spiritual implications, didn't know what to tell their initiates when they came asking questions. Reason began to be viewed as an enemy to the truth, while blind faith in scripture, and a blind eye to anyone teaching different ideas, became the highest virtues.

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You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen me and yet believe. John 20:27 Rather than question why their faith had so many critics, they claimed that God had made the gospel sound foolish as a stumbling block to all but the chosen. Since in the wisdom of God the world was unable to recognize God through wisdom, it was God's own pleasure to save believers through the folly of the gospel. While the Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom, we are preaching a crucified Christ: to the Jews an obstacle they cannot get over, to the Gentiles foolishness. 1 Corinthians 1:21 The Roman empire of the first few centuries of the Christian movement had hundreds of religions to choose from, as well as dozens that appeared very similar to Christianity. Their relative success depended mostly on professional contacts, the clarity of their doctrine, and the ability to produce some kind of spiritual transformation. While lacking in these categories, there was still something so intoxicating about the Christian movement that it quickly became popular among the masses. In the next chapter we will focus on how the most repudiated form of Christianity, whose beliefs met with so much opposition, rooted out all the competition and became the controlling power in Europe for over a thousand years.

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Chapter 14: From Faith to History

Before God and before Christ Jesus who is to be judge of the living and the dead, I charge you, in the name of his appearing and of his kingdom: proclaim the message and, welcome or unwelcome, insist on it. 2 Timothy 4 Believing that Jesus Christ was a radically new kind of savior, Christians were excited to spread the word. Obeying the scriptures and the commands of the church fathers, many gave up their possessions and began actively converting people. Mimicking the gospel stories, Christians enacted a great number of social services like feeding the poor and taking care of the sick. Unlike the other mysteries which charged admission fees, Christians invited everyone to be baptized free of charge. They gained a reputation for their healing prayers, care of the poor, and selflessness. Emperor Julian, hoping to revive Paganism against the spread of Christianity in the mid 300's, notes that it was this philanthropy which greatly advanced the Christian cause. (Christianity was) specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers and through their care of the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not a single Jew who is a beggar and that the Christians care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help we should render them. Cyril of Alexandria, Against Julian New followers were told that they would be saved from death through only a few simple rites, and for publicly pronouncing the name of Jesus. Christian leaders expected very little other than blind faith in the historical figure of Jesus Christ, and as neither wealth nor intellectual prowess were required, many of their recruits were poor and uneducated. Paul admits that the Christian message was popular among those who had no merits in the worldly sense. Consider, brothers, how you have been called; not many of you are wise by human standards, not many influential, not many from noble families. No, God chose those who by human standards are fools to shame the wise; he chose those who by human standards are weak to shame the strong, those who by human standards are common and contemptible-indeed those who count for nothing-to reduce to nothing all those that do count for something, so that no human being might feel boastful before God. 1 Cor. 1:26 Belief in the bodily resurrection allowed Christians to face their own deaths courageously, almost to the point of reckless living. While everyone else ran away during plagues or natural catastrophes, Christians would stay and tend to the victims. Some even sought out danger, eager for heavenly rewards. Christians became known for their fearlessness and disregard for personal safety. It may also be assumed that these Christians had trouble obeying the law and respecting the proper authorities, because Paul often had to remind them to keep out of trouble.

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Everyone is to obey the governing authorities, because there is no authority except from God and so whatever authorities exist have been appointed by God. Romans 1 Rome asked its citizens to honor the emperor as a god, and offer a small prayer or sacrifice to him. This rule was seldom enforced, unless specific complaints were made, and even then the accused was allowed to make a public offering to clear his name. Many Christian communities saw no difficulty in this, and encouraged their followers keep a low profile. I urge then, first of all that petitions, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving should be offered to everyone, for kings and others in authority, so that we may be able to live peaceful and quiet lives with all devotion and propriety. 1 Timothy 2 Those Christians who read scripture literally identified Jesus with the jealous god of the Old Testament and saw these offerings as idolatry. They received a reputation for stubbornly refusing to obey the law. When brought to trial, they were sometimes asked to worship the emperor and deny Christ. For many, the basis of Christian faith consisted in affirming the name of Christ Jesus, even though they hadn't been taught its mystical significance, and so this request was adamantly refused. The church fathers taught that the important part of being Christian, virtually the only part, was to proclaim the reality of Christ against critics. They promised initiates immediate rewards in heaven if they faced persecution bravely; much like the spiritual leaders of today's terrorists. The Romans were primarily concerned with maintaining peace and order, and would sometimes make allowances to let Christian go free. However, some Christians refused to cooperate, hoping for the esteem of a martyr's death. For slaves, the poor, and melodramatic teenagers, exchanging their lives for an eternity of paradise was an attractive proposition. I write to the Churches, and impress on them all, that I shall willingly die for God, unless ye hinder me. I beseech you not to show an unreasonable good-will towards me. Suffer me to become food for the wild beasts, though whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather entice the wild beasts, that they may become my tomb, and leave nothing of my body; so that when I have fallen asleep (in death) I may be no trouble to anyone. Then shall I truly be a disciple of Christ, when the world shall not see so much as my body. Ignatius, Romans (chap. 4) This reckless disregard for life, a nuisance to the Roman government, was considered the very image of courage to new converts. Passionate novellas were written about the virtues of martyrdom. Several young idealistic women practically threw themselves to the beasts in spite of their family's attempts to reconcile them. These acts agitated the public, and Christianity continued to draw numbers, although almost exclusively from the poorer

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classes. Convinced that they had received a radical new truth which was superior to all others, Christians treated the philosophers and other religious traditions with condescension and scorn. They even sullied the sacred mysteries by learning about them and then going public, breaking the strict code secrecy. And now, for it is time, I will prove their orgies to be full of imposture and quackery. And if you have been initiated, you will laugh all the more at these fables of yours which have been held in honor. I publish without reserve what has been involved in secrecy, not ashamed to tell what you are not ashamed to worship. Clement, Exhortation to the Heathen Taking Pagan myths at face value and interpreting them literally, as they did their own scriptures, Christians accused spiritual mythology of being merely ludicrous fables. They mocked and ridiculed everyone outside of their faith as superstitious fools. Poor wretches that ye are, who have filled with unholy jesting the whole compass of your life a life in reality devoid of life! Oh, happier far the beasts than men involved in error! Who live in ignorance as you, but do not counterfeit the truth. There are no tribes of flatterers among them. Fishes have no superstition: the birds worship not a single image; only they look with admiration on heaven, since, deprived as they are of reason, they are unable to know God. So are you not ashamed for living through so many periods of life in impiety, making yourselves more irrational than irrational creatures? Clement, Exhortation to the Heathen, 1 It is hard to imagine the public outrage caused by Clement of Alexandria when he declared that the ancient Pagan gods were dead; it would be nearly 1,500 years before Nietzsche could claim the same blasphemous statement. For Zeus is dead, be not distressed, as Leda is dead, and the swan, and the eagle, and the libertine, and the serpent. Clement, Exhortation to the Heathen, 1 Like the Jews, these Christians obeyed the Second Commandment, which forbid making and worshiping an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below." Although this commandment forbids religious art in general and is now broken in every church and Christian home around the world, strict adherence to it was one of the defining characteristics of the early church. Christians challenged the local deities, seeing them as bits of wood and stone, and called attention to themselves as blasphemers and enemies of the divine powers. For the Pagans, everything in life was governed and provided by some demi-god. The public feasts were ways of thanking the universe for the food and drink they had received, for their good health, the fine weather, and blessed fortunes. To withhold gratitude to these forces showed marvelous audacity, and was seen as taking life for

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granted. Christians who refused to participate in public feasts and events of thanksgiving to these gods were considered self-absorbed ingrates. The philosopher Celsus tried to explain to them that they should either respect the positive forces of life, or embrace death without delay. "They must make their choice between two alternatives. If they refuse to render due service to the gods, and to respect those who are set over this service, let them not come to manhood, or marry wives, or have children, or indeed take any share in the affairs of life; but let them depart hence with all speed, and leave no posterity behind them, that such a race may become extinct from the face of the earth." Celsus, recorded by Origen (8:35) To fuel the fire of public indignation, Christians refused to offer either evidence or argument in favor of their faith. They could not describe their own rational motives for believing nor answer even basic questions about the savior they claimed was historically crucified. When pressed, they would announce they believed what they believed because it was true, and that you should too. The Pagan philosopher Celsus wrote an entire book in order to discredit these Christians. He claims that when interrogated, they exclaim, Do not examine, but believe! and, Your faith will save you! He also refers to what was assumed to be a common phrase of the early Christian community, The wisdom of this life is bad, but foolishness is a good thing! (Contra Celsus 1:9) Celsus characterizes Christianity as a faith of fools, opposed to reason. "The following are the rules laid down by them. Let no one come to us who has been instructed, or who is wise or prudent (for such qualifications are deemed evil by us); but if there be any ignorant, or unintelligent, or uninstructed, or foolish persons, let them come with confidence. By which words, acknowledging that such individuals are worthy of their God they manifestly show that they desire and are able to gain over only the silly, and the mean, and the stupid, with women and children." Recorded by Origen, Against Celsus 3:44 As Christians grew in numbers and spread through the empire, Christianity became seen as a threat to Roman order. The Christian religion was called strange and unlawful by a senatorial decree of the year 35. Tacitus called it deadly and hateful, Suetonius said it was new and harmful, and Minucius accused it of being mysterious and opposed to light. For these reasons it was persecuted by different emperors throughout the first several centuries of its existence. It wasn't until 313, under the emperor Constantine, that the Christian movement had a sudden change of fortune. Constantine reportedly had a miraculous dream, wherein he saw a figure of the cross (the Chi-Rho) and was told, with this, conquer. After he won the battle which made him emperor, he was Christianity's new champion. In 313 he issued the edict of Milan, which granted liberty of worship to all Romans, and restored Christian church property that had been confiscated during earlier persecutions.

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Constantine was particularly attracted to Christianity because of its monotheism. His mantra, One God, One Emperor reflected his ambitions to unify the entire empire under one universal religion. In an attempt to turn Christianity into the empire's official faith, Constantine changed the face of the Christian movement. He made it as easy as possible for his people to accept the new religion, by tailoring Christianity to pre-existent Pagan customs. Constantine decreed Sunday the day of rest, as opposed to Yahweh's preference of Saturday, further aligning Christ with the cult of Sol Invictus, and turned the invisible God of the Christians into a savior with a human face. The Pagan festival of Saturnalia continued nearly unchanged, even though it was officially changed to Christmas. Candles, incense and garlands were adopted, as well as Pagan temples, with their doors facing East to greet the sun. Veneration of Mary became an easy substitute for Pagans who had previously worshiped goddesses. Egyptian statues of Isis with the infant Horus can still be found in some Christian churches. Although Christians proclaimed one God, saints and martyrs rapidly filled the ranks of the minor deities, sometimes even moving directly into their temples. The Jews, and the early Christians after them, had been meticulously careful not to venerate any graven image, that is, any statue or picture made by man to represent God. A large part of their previous persecution had been based on their respect for this custom. Their God was silent, invisible, and did not live in grand temples or images but in the heart. When Christianity became the state religion, the Pagan obsession with art proved too difficult to break, and grand cathedrals, built in the style of Pagan temples, were flooded with statues and paintings depicting divine stories. Constantine further helped the church by making clergy exempt from government duty. Positions in the clergy became reserved for wealthy families with powerful ties, and could be bought and sold. In order to stifle disagreements and unify the empire under one, simplified religion, Emperor Constantine summoned the Council of Niceae in 325. One of the biggest controversies during this council was whether or not Jesus was a physical man. Many of his followers believed that Jesus was all powerful and completely divine. Others argued that this made his suffering inconsequential, and preferred a human Jesus who felt genuine pain on the cross. A consensus was not reached at this council, and the emperor himself composed a compromise to be signed by all the bishops, under the threat of exile.

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Jesus was declared both fully God and fully man, the first of many logical inconsistencies in the Christian faith. Rather than through the guiding influence of the Holy Spirit, this insight was hammered together by a Pagan emperor, who had no interest in theology. The Nicene creed, still a staple of faith in many Christian churches, is the result of this council. In 330 the temple on Vatican Hill, a center for Pagan worship of the goddess Cybele for hundreds of years, became the site of the St. Peter's Basilica of Rome. The books of the biblical canon were chosen in 340, and Eusebius of Caesarea, Constantine's personal theologian and church historian, wrote a new history for the Christian empire. Although today scholars conclude that it is largely erroneous and full of propaganda, it was viewed as the definitive historical reference for well over a thousand years. Constantine's own mother traveled to the Holy Land and after three centuries, claimed to have found the actual cross used in the crucifixion. She founded the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, on a plot of land that even Christian scholars believe could never have been the true site of the crucifixion, and Christian pilgrimages to the site have been made ever since. Although Christians had found favor with the empire, it would be impossible for Pagan customs to continue alongside of Christianity because of the obvious roots they shared. Christians, with the power of the empire behind them, now had the means to eradicate Paganism and erase its own embarrassing history. Between 375 and 383 Emperor Gratian confiscated temples and abolished privileges for heathen priests. In 380 Christianity was declared the official religion of the empire by Emperor Theodosius I, who forbid heathen religious observances from 379 to 395. By 435, Theodosius II commanded that all temples be destroyed or turned into churches. Emperor Justinian prohibited heathenism on pain of death, and abolished the 900 year old school of Athens in 529. The ancient temple of Alexandria, with the world's largest collection of academic books and scrolls, was burned to the ground during this period. Christian similarities to Greek philosophy and Pagan mystery texts were obscured when the gospels were translated into Latin by St. Jerome. Between 340 and 420, the Latin Vulgate Bible became the standard Western Christian Bible. The translator, despite his reputation as hot-tempered and quarrelsome, was made a saint. Christianity was steered further towards its present state by a young bishop named Augustine. Unable to read Greek, he relied only on Jerome's Latin translation which did not express the original spirituality found in the Greek version. Augustine made a radical departure from previous Christian doctrine. While the church had always taught that each person was completely free to heed the call of God, Augustine claimed that, through the original sin of Adam, we were born sinners. Sin was no longer an action that stirred the lake of the soul, but a birth defect, which we had no way of repairing.

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No one was capable of redeeming themselves, or of even choosing to break with sin. Humanity was irreparably humbled in sin, and it was only through God's actions that we were saved. Augustine was made a saint on the basis of this theological twist, even though late in his life, Augustine denounced his earlier writings, which he admitted were mistaken. Various interpretations of Christianity were no longer acceptable. If Christ was historical, and had really given a specific message to his apostles, then there must be only one version of it. All Christian churches were ordered to bow their heads to the authority of Rome, or be cast out of the fold, and in this way only the orthodox version of events was passed down. After 2,000 years, in a time of unparalleled technological and scientific advancement, when research has questioned the historical Jesus and logic conflicts with central tenets of Christian belief, the passion of Christ is still considered a historical fact by Christians and non-believers alike. Those who keep the faith continue to cling desperately to the historicity of Jesus rather than explore and fulfill his spiritual message. In Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ, we see the same story repeated, full of human emotion, gore, grief, and touching kindnesses between strangers. Subtly reasserting the message of Christ's historicity are objects which will later become prize relics in Cathedrals throughout Europe; the cloth that caught an imprint of his face, the thorned crown and the nails, laid out and ready to be enshrined. This really happened, the story says, and there is a surplus of evidence to prove it. The bloody mess of Jesus is triumphantly raised to life in the body, still bearing his wounds from the crucifixion, continually ignoring the obvious disadvantages of spending eternity in our physical bodies. Like the early communities who strayed from Paul's teachings, Christians today claim that Jesus was a real historical man, who urged us to share his message and spread the good news. They are also wary of any investigation, whether rational or scientific, which may conflict with their beliefs. Finding solidarity with one another against those mysterious forces of evil who are seeking to disrupt, they inspire each other to keep believing, despite the criticism, despite the questions, despite reason. Many Christians are also waiting, some a little too eagerly, for the end of the world. They are excited to receive their rewards, to be greeted by Jesus at the final judgment; excited to be proved right after all these years. Although Jesus says many times in the Bible that the kingdom of God is within them now, and not somewhere in the future, they rely on another passage, which reads, I will be with you until the end of the age. Usually assumed to mean that Jesus will be present until the end of time, the word age was an astrological concept that corresponded to one zodiac rotation caused by the precession of the equinoxes. 4,000 years ago Mithras conquered the age of Taurus by slaying a bull, initiating the age of Aries. 2,000 years ago Jesus

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slaughtered a lamb, and begun the age of Pisces. The sun continues burn, and the earth continues its annual orbit. For 2,000 years, the myth of Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, crucified for the sins of the world, has been mistakenly viewed as a historical figure. Maybe after all this time, we can finally remove the training wheels and appreciate the spiritual meaning of the Christian myth. Maybe we can move from milk to solid food. However, if we are going to start the story all over again, it is time to take down the lamb from the cross. The age of Pisces is ending. This time, we need to crucify a fish.

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Conclusions and Final Thoughts

Some people may feel, after finishing these articles, that I haven't proved my point at all. Just because Christianity borrowed some ideas from the Pagans doesn't prove that Jesus didn't exist. After all, it's only natural that after a community's founder has passed on, it will continue to grow and expand, borrowing things from other traditions. That doesn't mean that Jesus couldn't still have been a real man. I've had some Christian friends say, I know that December 25th isn't really Jesus' birthday, and I understand that Christians chose that date because it was important to the Pagans, but that doesn't change my belief that Jesus was historical. Why can't a Christian have this information and continue to be a Christian? Well, first of all, they can! There is nothing at all wrong with Christianity. It is a fine spiritual tradition, full of wisdom and good advice. Jesus Christ is also a great moral example. However, if we want to continue believing in a historical Jesus, we need to recognize that some of the defining characteristics of Christianity did not originate with him. Most people can agree that December 25th wasn't Jesus' real birthday, so let's give up that idea. We'll say that it isn't important to the Christian message. But what about all the other things Jesus shared with the Pagans? How about the Virgin Birth? A lot of Pagan gods were born of a virgin, so we'll have to give that up, too. The tough question is, where do we stop? Pagan gods also had a death and resurrection. Many were crucified, all of them were sons of God and saviors. They redeemed their followers through a great sacrifice. The cross was already a sacred symbol, and many mystery religions even practiced Baptism, Confirmation, and the other sacraments. Can we take those things away from Christian faith without influencing it? How far can we go without stripping Christianity of all of its meaning and spiritual value? The purpose of this website has been to show that the Jesus we all know and love, the one we learned about in Sunday School, the one who performed miracles, raised the dead, died for our sins, and is seated at the right hand of the father, never walked on earth as a physical human being. Although this may still seem like a controversial assertion, it doesn't necessarily undermine the valuable spiritual tradition which records the stories of Jesus Christ. It's true, I can't prove that there wasn't some historical man that acted as a nucleus for the beginning of Christianity. But if there was, he did very little to inspire anyone, his disciples forgot about him, he said nothing new or original, and his promises of salvation were vague echoes of earlier traditions. Shepherds didn't follow a star to his birth in a manger, he didn't walk on water, feed the 5,000, raise the dead or turn water into wine. He

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wasn't the Son of God, he wasn't crucified or resurrected from the dead, and his name definitely wasn't Jesus Christ. If affirming Christ's historicity makes us focus on his physical shell and give up all of the principles and values of Christian faith, how can this concept of Jesus still be important to us? At the end of this line of investigation, the emphasis lies with faith in a reality that can't possibly be true, which cannot help but clash violently with all progressive and free-thinking societies. On the other hand, by accepting and appreciating Jesus Christ's mythological legacy, very little about Christianity has to change. Jesus is still the Son of God, the Savior, who was crucified (symbolically, at the beginning of time), for the removal of our sins (to remove our separation from God, by giving us the light of wisdom, Sophia). All the motifs of Christianity remain unchanged, as does Christ's spiritual significance, importance, and active role as an ever-present moral guide. Jesus Christ does save; he is our higher selves, our voice of reason and guidance, our intuition and goodness. He is what separates us from animals and what drives us to become better people. He has many names, and the expressions of his faith are as diverse as all the world's many distinct cultures. Regardless of personal opinions about this controversial subject, this much is true: we are on a threshold of a very great change in human spirituality. We can either continue to view Jesus as a real person and remove the body of mythological literature from our ideas about him, or we can relinquish his physical reality and keep his transcendent, omnipresent, spiritual influence. Either way, the evidence is overwhelming and very clear: the central figure of the Biblical tradition, Jesus Christ, is a composite mythology that was never intended to stand for a historical figure. The subsequent perversions of Christian teachings and the accidental assumption that Jesus was a real person, is perhaps the greatest mistake in the history of religion.

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The reason that these passages seem strange to us today, is that for most of the past 2,000 years Jesus Christ has been considered a historical person. Our preconceptions about Jesus radically and fundamentally alters our reading of the stories about him. Although the early Christian communities that believed in a historical Jesus had to battle long and hard against their critics, they eventually won the war and erased all traces of their adversaries. They structured the Bible in a way that makes the historical Jesus appear obvious, and almost completely hides traces of the mythological Christ. When we re-read the Bible without the assumption that Jesus was a historical figure, we can find not only evidence that Christianity was a mystery religion, but also the most crucial of answers: If Jesus was a myth that was accidentally mistaken for a historical person, how could such a colossal mistake have been made?

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