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The
Christ Conspiracy |
The
Christ Conspiracy: Controversial and explosive, The Christ Conspiracy marshals an enormous amount
of startling evidence that the religion of Christianity and Jesus Christ were
created by members of various secret societies, mystery schools and religions in
order to unify the Roman Empire under one state religion! This powerful book
maintains that these groups drew upon a multitude of myths and rituals that
already existed long before the Christian era and reworked them into the story
the Christian religion presents today-known to most Westerners as the Bible. Excerpt From the very beginning of our quest to unravel the Christ conspiracy, we encounter suspicious territory, as we look back in time and discover that the real foundation of Christianity appears nothing like the image provided by the clergy and mainstream authorities. Indeed, far more rosy and cheerful than the reality is the picture painted by the vested interests as to the origins of the Christian religion: To wit, a miracle-making founder and pious, inspired apostles who faithfully and infallibly recorded his words and deeds shortly after his advent, and then went about promulgating the faith with great gusto and success in "saving souls." Contrary to this popular delusion, the reality is that, in addition to the enormous amount of bloodshed which accompanies its foundation, Christianity's history is rife with forgery and fraud. So rampant is this treachery and chicanery that any serious researcher must immediately begin to wonder about the story itself. In truth, the Christian tale has always been as difficult to swallow as the myths and fables of other cultures; yet countless people have been able to overlook the rational mind and to willingly believe it, even though they may equally as easily dismiss the nearly identical stories of these other cultures.... Horus of Egypt The Egyptian sun god Horus, who predated the Christ character by thousands of years, shares the following in common with Jesus:
Furthermore, inscribed about 3,500 years ago on the walls of the Temple at Luxor were images of the Annunciation, Immaculate Conception, Birth and Adoration of Horus, with Thoth announcing to the Virgin Isis that she will conceive Horus; with Kneph, the 'Holy Ghost', impregnating the virgin; and with the infant being attended by three kings, or magi, bearing gifts. In addition, in the catacombs at Rome are pictures of the baby Horus being held by the virgin mother Isis—the original 'Madonna and Child'.
Devils
From Heaven Lately it has been my distinct privilege to be in the middle of a group conversation about the origins of religion. The emphasis has been on debunking, on exposing the fictional roots of allegedly divine events that continue to control so many of world's minds, and complicate so many of the world's problems. Many of these thinkers have lately focused their perceptual skills on the Macchiavellian machinations of the Jews, who claim to espouse an ethical ideology yet are primarily known in contemporary society as master manipulators, and revealed by their own holy scriptures as murderous maniacs who consider all non-Jews somewhat less than human, rendering their suspect creed profoundly offensive to all compassionate humans who encounter it. But this is no anti-Jewish rant. The adherents of all other spiritual disciplines suffer from a similar snobbery, even if their claims to exclusivity, divine sanction, and being the only true creeds are somewhat less vicious than the habit of Jews to refer to religious groups other than their own by using the names of lower animals — cockroaches, grasshoppers, and cattle (also known as goyim) being the most frequent insults they typically use. Still, Catholics have their own negative image, most notably the magical creation of their dogma some 1700 years ago that resulted in a worldwide pogrom against pagans (that, oddly, excluded Jews), which began the process now known as the Dark Ages, and carried out a process of ruthless extermination that decimated the native populations of the New World some six centuries prior to our own. Catholics also have their own sinister intelligence operations (Knights of Malta, Opus Dei, and the Jesuits), the scrutiny of which has probably created more conspiracy theorists than anything except those sleuths bent on ferreting out facts about the worldwide Jewish conspiracy or the ever-elusive Illuminati. But a Catholic friend of mine remains ever eager to point out that it is the Protestants who are always let off the hook in any debate about the negative influences of religion, but shouldn't be, as German Lutherans and English Puritans have been the most eager and efficient killers in world history, if you consider the still-continuing genocide of the natives in North America and the death totals from two World Wars — and numerous other colonialist abuses — in the 20th century. Arguably the most ancient among the still-existing but ever popular religions in the world today — and the one where real scholars (not those university idiots) will tell you Western Civilization really came from — the Hindus still maintain very high standards for atrocious behavior with the social acceptability of the burning of women (checked out the bride-burning statistics lately?) and the continuing habit of strictly regimenting their society according to race, resulting in the daily persecution and extermination of the poor Dalits, also known as the Untouchables, who are just regular people with a darker skin pigmentation than most. In addition, the Hindu proclivity for burning and raping Muslims, and lately cozying up to cynical Israel on weapons deals, make them as scurrilious as all the rest of those repressive religions whose main objective is to keep their people powerless by focusing on the hereafter and ignoring the here-and-now. One cache of amazing information I've recently received is from an Odinist, who finds meaning in the historical legends of the Norse deities, and who has learned about a fascinating thread of history from a tome called the Oera Linda book, which details how a Baltic civilization so ancient as not to be remembered by most, actually colonized the Mediterranean basin and triggered the ascension of classical Greek culture. (No, I don’t know if I believe it, but it’s a fascinating thesis.) But he recently ran afoul of Islamic partisans when he bemoaned the influx of African and Arab immigrants into previously all-white northern Europe, with the argument that it is right and proper for ethnic groups to exist among themselves, as long as they harbor no Hitlerian delusions (which the Israelis appear to have copied) that the rest of the world should be stamped out in favor of absolute hegemony by The Chosen Master Race. The Muslims in our discussion group took him to task for denigrating the presence of immigrants in his part of the world, without perhaps realizing what so many others realize — that the push for diversity in so many previously one-color countries is actually a worldwide plot to diminish the individual, regional ethnic authorities that are generally representative of their local populations. A worldwide plot? I'll spell this out in more detail in a moment (as if you can't guess who I'm talking about), but first, let's finish with Earth's religious spectrum, or as far as I am able to consider it. Back to the Muslims, these days the most denigrated and vilified religious group in the American mind, largely because of Jewish control of U.S. media (the Jews want to steal Islamic land and the U.S. wants to continuing stealing Islamic oil). To my mind, the Muslims have never attacked America, unless you’re one of those dimwitted dupes who still believes the U.S. government’s version of 9/11 and all those suspicious terror bombings that bear the unmistakable imprint of CIA Black Ops. Like Christian dogma, Islamic scriptures generally preach peace, but are commendable in their outlook in that they recognize the right of others to worship as they please, a fact that is not widely known in the West because of all the terror-mongering by Jews. Just read the New York papers if you don’t believe me on this. Yet, as each creed contains its own brand of stormtroopers, so Muslims have theirs, most visibly represented by the strident imams of Iran, who thankfully are losing their grip on that most-ancient of countries to a democratic, secular movement, which may actually succeed if the United States and Israel don’t nuke them off the face of the earth first. If Islamics have something to be ashamed about, it would be that they haven’t noticed their countries are all controlled by Western-money whores pretending to be kings and presidents, and if any group is going to aspire toward preaching righteousness, it probably better start by having honest leaders who have not given up the game to their oppressors just for a few dinars. In that sense, the Iranian imams are to be congratulated for throwing off the manipulative yoke of Western oppression and at least establishing a government of, by, and for their own people. Their achievement was a rarity in world history, and if they executed a few people for violating a few arcane religious rules, at least they did not murder their own citizens at the behest of some foreign power, as so many truculent Islamic nations polluted by Western influences do now. Many seemingly wise people think that Buddhism is a creative way to address human spiritual needs, since that philosophy is so self-centered and so nebulous that it can't possibly harm other religious groups, but that is not exactly the case. Just like all the other creeds, Buddhism is based on the principle that somewhere else is more important than here, and as a consequence plays no role in political reality, as vividly evidenced by the Dalai Lama's conspicuous absence from contemporary political discourse, perhaps because he's too busy throwing parties for celebrities in and around Washington, D.C. We could at this point delve into a few more less-populous creeds practiced in faraway places, but the information would be probably be wasted on many TV-lobotomized American minds. To complete the spectrum of thought about creeds (so we can get to the good stuff), it is worth mentioning just a bit about the division of American Christianity into a gaggle of mostly evil subcults. Did you ever wonder why the nation of Israel bought Jerry Falwell a passenger jet? Or why they won’t allow him to talk about Christianity when he’s in Israel? Beyond the Catholic church (which many people say is a watered-down version of its old self since the Vatican II document was approved during the 1960s and masses began to be spoken in English), Christians known as Protestants are divided up into innumerable variations, which can be best generalized into two groups: old-line and evangelical. The old-line churches (Episcopal, Methodist, Congregational, etc.) are generally unobtrusive, not too demanding of their adherents, and almost completely supportive of the governments which permit them to operate. So too are the evangelical denominations, except for the glaring exceptions that they, like the Jews, consider other creeds the spawn of the devil, and generally support violence against others not of their faith, another very Jewish trait (and Hindu, as well). So there we have it, except for Quakers, Taoists, Jains, Wiccans, Shintoists and various assorted New Age conglomerations of worshippers — the spectrum of religions in the world, at least as seen from the United States. And each group argues that only their creed is the right one. How
can any argument possibly be solved using any of these religious perspectives? Let’s go at this from a slightly different angle. Imagine a visitor from outer space were to come down and try to discern a viable representation of human religion. Suppose he listened to George W. Bush first. “God told me to bomb Afghanistan!” Then he watched Pat Robertson on television. Then he read of Abe Foxman talking about Mel Gibson’s new movie in the newspapers, especially when Foxman suggests Jews should be allowed to rewrite the Bible. With all this heated invective being vented over stories that could not be proven one way or the other — in any rational sense — do you know what this visitor would conclude? He would conclude that the human race is completely insane. And you know what? He would be right. ••• Now, I said all that to say this, to tell you about some interesting facts I’ve have heard in Internet conversations, all of which tend to verify my conviction that all religions are false, meant to be used to control restless populations looking for meaning, and troubled humans with infinite imaginations in finite minds looking for a little consolation for the knowledge they will one day, like all living things, be dead. Most
revealing was the piece by M-Theory on RumorMillNews In “The Christ Conspiracy,” Acharya writes that many religious precepts [that] Christians assume come from the Bible, came from Zorastrianism, including the concepts of heaven and hell; the use of water for baptism; the savior born of a virgin mother; personal immortality and the single life of every human soul; and the final tribulation before the Second Coming.And thousands of years before the time of the so-called Jesus, there are these interesting facts in the legend of Horus of Egypt: he was born of the virgin Isis-Meri on December 25th in a cave/manger with his birth being announced by a star in the East and attended by three wise men; he performed miracles, exorcised demons and raised El-Azarus (El-Osiris) from the dead. Horus also walked on water and delivered a "Sermon on the Mount." He was crucified between two thieves, buried for three days in a tomb, and resurrected. He was "the Fisher" and was associated with the Fish, Lamb and Lion. Horus was called "the KRST," or the "Anointed One." And these Savior events and stories were attributed to many besides Horus long before the alleged time of Jesus, names such as Buddha, Krishna, Mithra, Prometheus, Apollo, Heracles and Zeus, and many more. The legend of saviors just like Jesus had been around a long, long time before Jesus. Some
insist Christianity is a completely plagiarized religion. The first “The Four Gospels were unknown to the early Christian Fathers. Justin Martyr, the most eminent of the early Fathers, wrote about the middle of the second century. His writings in proof of the divinity of Christ demanded the use of these Gospels, had they existed in his time. He makes more than 300 quotations from the books of the Old Testament, and nearly one hundred from the Apocryphal books of the New Testament, but none from the four Gospels. The very names of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are never mentioned by Justin — do not occur once in all his writings," wrote John Remsburg in “The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read.”" One of my correspondents wrote, “Christianity, like most religions, was set up to disempower people and control them. It was set up as a political vehicle. Sell people on their unworthiness and guilt and you can control them.” Another participant in my e-mail discussions wrote harshly about the events during the formal creation of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine in 325 A.D.
“In the first several centuries after the Council of Nicea selected the four Gospels out of 80 then in circulation because only these four presented a divine savior, rather than an itinerant mortal Jewish reformer, advocates of the new state-sanctioned revision of the Judaic tradition used all of these tactics and more. “It would be easy for us to lose sight of the millions of persons executed by Judeochristians through a reign of terror that lasted over 500 years and resulted in the burning of the priceless collections of human technology, philosophy, and the humanities as a Judeochristian mob burned the Library at Alexandria.
Among a list of Christian atrocities from Rassias’ book, published only in Greek in the year 2000 (ISBN 960-7748-20-4), Emperor Constantine began a centuries-long run of torture, destruction and extermination of all things not Christian, eradicating ancient Greek temples and stealing their treasures. Subsequent Roman emperors in Constantinople executed everyone not accepting the new Christian faith. Then libraries were burned, and all contrary teachings outlawed. In 380, Christian priests lead the hungry mob against the Temple of Goddess Demeter in Eleusis and try to lynch the hierophants Nestorius and Priskus. The 95-year-old hierophant Nestorius ended the Eleusinian Mysteries and announced the predominance of mental darkness over the human race. Sounds familiar today, doesn’t it? For another thousand years, the primary occupation of state-sanctioned Christians was to exterminate those who would not accept the fictional documents constructed into a Bible at the Council of Nicea. Christian barbarism continued well into the future. In 1493, Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella issued an edict demanding death for all those who would not accept “the true faith,” and Columbus and others began slaughtering natives of the Western Hemisphere by the millions, not because they would not accept the faith, but because they could not understand the question, because they could not speak Spanish. (For more information on this part of Christian history, write to the United Confederation of Taino People, uctp1493@yahoo.com) Praise be to God! Let’s bring God into our discussions! If we can just believe in God, everything will be fine! Just ask President Bush. Yeah, right. OK, I’ve gone far afield here from my original objective. First, I promised to tell you about a worldwide plot that involved opening everyone’s borders (are you listening, you folks in New Mexico?) and flooding countries possessing established ethnic and religious structures with hordes of newcomers to destabilize them and diminish existing authority. Who would advocate such a thing? You know who. The recurring theme in Jewish history from the time they first migrated into eastern Europe from the northern shore of the Black Sea is that they were unwanted, so they kept to themselves and were persecuted. Or perhaps the reverse was true — that they kept to themselves and had their own peculiar habits, so that’s why they were unwanted. Either way, it was an uneasy situation. Stipulations in their holy book, the Talmud, that non-Jews were to be regarded as less than human certainly didn’t help their cause. Nor did their antipathy toward farming and industrial labor, which was the backbone of the Eastern European societies they invaded. To their credit, however, the Jews figured out how to solve their problem, or figured out part of it, anyway. They observed the habits of the cultures that rejected them, determined what would be the best ways to overcome the obstacles that confronted them, and mastered the skills necessary to removing the barriers to their comfort and prosperity. These skills, as many of us can see so clearly now, were the manipulation of money (primarily through their time-honored talent for usury and bribery — and you can’t blame someone for bribery unless you blame both the briber and the bribee) and control of what we now call the media, particularly the entertainment media. And not to denigrate the Jewish achievement, they worked hard, and they studied hard, coming to dominate the essential fields of law, medicine, and education. The invention of psychology was a particularly sagacious move, the one that finally brought down the church, their principal obstacle to respectability and control. Adopting the strategy of the Christian religion, Jews who amassed fortunes through savvy business deals also captured the engines of entertainment — the newspapers and the movie studios, primarily — and soon controlled the minds of most of the Western world. From that vantage point, in control of the banks and the information, it’s kind of surprising that it has taken them this long to gain control of the entire world, which if you look at a picture of the world in 2004, they surely have. And it’s a well-deserved triumph. There is much to admire about the consistent solidarity of the Jewish community. But much to worry about, too, which takes us back to the subject of religion. Let me first say something about religious perspective. It has been my observation , in reading various tracts about Jews, that all too often complaints originate from those espousing a competing religious discipline, most commonly fundamental Christianity. It has always disturbed me that subjective religious favoritism should be used in criticizing another creed, which inevitably leads to biased, partisan judgments, and leaves the writer deservedly eligible for the charge of hate crime.I have observed this in much literature that could be classified as anti-Semitic, in which hateful terms are clearly the products of jealousies and rivalries with people who simply do things differently, and believe different things. I trust the summary judgments on the religions noted above will dispel any notion any reader might have that I am advocating some religious alternative to Judaism, and would remind the reader that making observations on the questionable behavior of political entities (which all churches are) is not a hate crime, and is in no way aimed at those who have no valid perspective on the behavior of those who share the same spiritual and philosophical beliefs. That said, there is definitely a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to control the world. Though Russia slipped from their grasp many decades ago, it is fair to say the United States is definitely controlled by Jewish interests on almost every level. The worldwide plot to establish diversity everywhere eliminates the very forces that persecuted Jews throughout their history, so when observing a problem such as the relocation of Africans to northern Europe, or the tidal wave of Mexicans into the United States, it helps to see that as a reinforcement of Jewish control. The white Wasp establishment, or what part of it that has not been bought off by Jewish money, will never trouble them again. The problem has been wiped out by the continuing and deliberate flood of immigrants. The problem for all Americans, however, is the little matter of Talmud, the Jewish holy book, that says it’s OK for a Jew to kill a non-Jew, or a Jew to rob a non-Jew. Because that’s exactly what we’re seeing happening all around the world, and especially in America and in the Middle East, where Israel works assiduously every day to exterminate every single one of the indigenous Arab population who dares to stand in its way, while the United States tags along, teaching its sons and daughters to be good killers, just like the Israelis, without really knowing what the real score is. Is there any doubt about this? Haven’t 55 years of no-holds-barred terrorism, plus the undeniable capture of the American political system, proved this beyond the merest penumbra of a doubt? I would suspect anyone who would oppose this proposition would either be a Jew, or a fake Christian who has been bought off by the Jews, like all those Christian Zionists. And here, perhaps, we come to sickest of all the phony religious/political deals that has ever been struck on this planet. Or perhaps just the sickest one since the days of the Roman Empire, when the ascendant Romans gave the Jews special status because they created this fantastic crowd sedative — the Christian religion — that kept the rabble in its place, urged them to turn the other cheek when they were robbed and raped by their betters, and invented a time-tested messiah by stealing bits and pieces of mythological masters from other times and places to keep the peons from rising up against their masters. What a great invention that was! It didn’t last forever, but what does? Nevertheless, it lasted almost a millennium, more or less, but when the Roman aristocracy faded out, so did the Jews’ privileged position, despite all the intrigues. This time around, wouldn’t you know, the Christian religion and the Jews are working together again. Evangelicals are doing everything they can to support Israel’s monstrous policies because they figure, according to the script featured in the Bible’s Book of Revelation, that their wished-for messiah will arrive after Armageddon happens in Israel. The U.S. government appears to be following this script, doing everything it can to make sure it happens. Thus, consider this psychotic religious alliance: evangelical Christians support Israel because Israel is intent on blowing itself up, thereby enabling the Christian messiah — you know, the Horus clone and his father El Shaddai — to return to Earth and choose 144,000 of their most pious followers to come and board and trek off to (ha) God knows where. The Israelis keep taking money from the evangelicals (as well as all Americans through excessive foreign aid), but prohibit visiting Christians from talking about Jesus while they’re there. The Jews won’t make the mistake they made in Rome. Now, they have the nukes. And a time-tested argument is now on their side, instead of working against them. It goes like this. Once you can get people to believe things you can definitely prove are not true, you can get them to believe anything. Are you listening, Baby Jesus? No, I didn’t think so. Mythological political constructs don’t hear that well. The claim that Israel has a right to steal all that land in the Middle East because of some Biblical reference is utterly false, for a multitude of reasons, only some of which have been alluded to here. The human race desperately needs to understand the difference between its need to believe and what it actually believes IN. But by the time we figure that out, it will probably be too late, and the evangelicals will get their wish. The human race, grasshoppers and all, will get that same wish, too — that death wish.
The Jesus Puzzle Putting the Jesus Puzzle Together in 12 Easy Pieces A new presentation of the argument that no historical Jesus
existed. A full and comprehensive survey of the question through an examination
of the early Christian record, canonical and non-canonical, from Q to the
Gospels, from the earliest Pauline epistles to the second century apologists,
along with Jewish, Gnostic, and Greco-Roman documents of the time. The
philosophy of the era, its religious expression in the pagan mystery cults,
fascinating glimpses into the historical background of the period, an in-depth
consideration of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, are only some of the
additional topics covered in the book. A richly-detailed, highly lucid and
entertaining account of how Christianity began without an historical Jesus of
Nazareth, who came to life only on the pages of the Gospels. While based on the
author's work for The Jesus Puzzle website, the book is almost entirely an
original writing, not a compilation of website articles. Like the website
itself, the book has been styled for the general reader, though the scholarly
community will find it of value as well.
_________________________________________________________________ QUICK ASSEMBLY Piece No. 1: A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE The Gospel story, with its figure of Jesus of Nazareth, cannot be found before the Gospels. In Christian writings earlier than Mark, including almost all of the New Testament epistles, as well as in many writings from the second century, the object of Christian faith is never spoken of as a human man who had recently lived, taught, performed miracles, suffered and died at the hands of human authorities, or rose from a tomb outside Jerusalem. There is no sign in the epistles of Mary or Joseph, Judas or John the Baptist, no birth story, teaching or appointment of apostles by Jesus, no mention of holy places or sites of Jesus’ career, not even the hill of Calvary or the empty tomb. This silence is so pervasive and so perplexing that attempted explanations for it have proven inadequate. [See "Part One" of the Main Articles] Piece No. 2: A MUTE RECORD WORLD WIDE The first clear non-Christian reference to Jesus as a human man in recent history is made by the Roman historian Tacitus around 115 CE, but he may simply be repeating newly-developed Christian belief in an historical Jesus in the Rome of his day. Several earlier Jewish and pagan writers are notably silent. The Antiquities of the Jews by the Jewish historian Josephus, published in the 90s, contains two famous references to Jesus, but these are inconclusive. The first passage, as it stands, is universally acknowledged to be a later Christian insertion, and attempts have failed to prove some form of authentic original; the second also shows signs of later Christian tampering. References to Jesus in the Jewish Talmud are garbled and come from traditions which were only recorded in the third century and later. [See "Postscript" in the Main Articles and Reader Feedback responses to Sean and Steven.] Piece No. 3: REVEALING THE SECRET OF CHRIST Paul and other early writers speak of the divine Son of their faith entirely in terms of a spiritual, heavenly figure; they never identify this entity called "Christ Jesus" (literally, "Anointed Savior" or "Savior Messiah") as a man who had lived and died in recent history. Instead, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, God has revealed the existence of his Son and the role he has played in the divine plan for salvation. These early writers talk of long-hidden secrets being disclosed for the first time to apostles like Paul, with no mention of an historical Jesus who played any part in revealing himself, thus leaving no room for a human man at the beginning of the Christian movement. Paul makes it clear that his knowledge and message about the Christ is derived from scripture under God’s inspiration. [See "Part Two" and Supplementary Articles Nos. 1 and 6.] Piece No. 4: A SACRIFICE IN THE SPIRITUAL REALM Paul does not locate the death and resurrection of Christ on earth or in history. According to him, the crucifixion took place in the spiritual world, in a supernatural dimension above the earth, at the hands of the demon spirits (which many scholars agree is the meaning of "rulers of this age" in 1 Corinthians 2:8). The Epistle to the Hebrews locates Christ’s sacrifice in a heavenly sanctuary (ch. 8, 9). The Ascension of Isaiah, a composite Jewish-Christian work of the late first century, describes (9:13-15) Christ’s crucifixion by Satan and his demons in the firmament (the heavenly sphere between earth and moon). Knowledge of these events was derived from visionary experiences and from scripture, which was seen as a ‘window’ onto the higher spiritual world of God and his workings. [See "Part Two" and Supplementary Articles Nos. 3 and 9.] Piece No. 5: SALVATION IN A LAYERED UNIVERSE The activities of gods in the spiritual realm were part of ancient views (Greek and Jewish) of a multi-layered universe, which extended from the base world of matter where humans lived, through several spheres of heaven populated by various divine beings, angels and demons, to the highest level of pure spirit where the ultimate God dwelled. In Platonic philosophy (which influenced Jewish thought), the upper spiritual world was timeless and perfect, serving as a model for the imperfect and transient material world below; the former was the "genuine" reality, accessible to the intellect. Spiritual processes took place there, with their effects, including salvation, on humanity below. Certain "human characteristics" given to Christ (e.g., Romans 1:3) were aspects of his spirit world nature, higher counterparts to material world equivalents, and were often dependent on readings of scripture. [See "Part Two" and Supplementary Articles Nos. 3 and 8.] Piece No. 6: A WORLD OF SAVIOR DEITIES Christ’s features and myths are in many ways similar to those of the Greco-Roman salvation cults of the time known as "mystery religions", each having its own savior god or goddess. Most of these (e.g., Dionysos, Mithras, Attis, Isis, Osiris) were part of myths in which the deity had overcome death in some way, or performed some act which conferred benefits and salvation on their devotees. Such activities were viewed as taking place in the upper spirit realm, not on earth or in history. Most of these cults had sacred meals (like Paul’s Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:23f) and envisioned mystical relationships between the believer and the god similar to what Paul speaks of with Christ. Early Christianity was a Jewish sectarian version of this widespread type of belief system, though with its own strong Jewish features and background. [See "Part Two" and responses to Miles and Anna.] Piece No. 7: THE INTERMEDIARY SON The Christian "Son" is also an expression of the overriding religious concept of the Hellenistic age, that the ultimate God is transcendent and can have no direct contact with the world of matter. He must reveal himself and deal with humanity through an intermediary force, such as the "Logos" of Platonic (Greek) philosophy or the figure of "personified Wisdom" of Jewish thinking; the latter is found in documents like Proverbs, Baruch and the Wisdom of Solomon. This force was viewed as an emanation of God, his outward image, an agency which had helped create and sustain the universe and now served as a channel of knowledge and communion between God and the world. All these features are part of the language used by early Christian writers about their spiritual "Christ Jesus", a heavenly figure who was a Jewish sectarian version of these prevailing myths and thought patterns. [See "Part Two" and Supplementary Articles Nos. 4 and 5.] Piece No. 8: A SINGLE STORY OF JESUS All the Gospels derive their basic story of Jesus of Nazareth from a single source: whoever produced the first version of Mark. That Matthew and Luke are reworkings of Mark with extra, mostly teaching, material added is now an almost universal scholarly conclusion, while many also consider that John has drawn his framework for Jesus’ ministry and death from a Synoptic source as well. We thus have a Christian movement spanning half the empire and a full century which nevertheless has managed to produce only one version of the events that are supposed to lie at its inception. Acts, as an historical witness to Jesus and the beginnings of the Christian movement, cannot be relied upon, since it is a tendentious creation of the second century, dependent on the Gospels and designed to create a picture of Christian origins traceable to a unified body of apostles in Jerusalem who were followers of an historical Jesus. Many scholars now admit that much of Acts is sheer fabrication. [See "Part Three", and response to Victor.] Piece No. 9: THE GOSPELS AS (FICTIONAL) "MIDRASH" Not only do the Gospels contain basic and irreconcilable differences in their accounts of Jesus, they have been put together according to a traditional Jewish practice known as "midrash", which involved reworking and enlarging on scripture. This could entail the retelling of older biblical stories in new settings. Thus, Mark’s Jesus of Nazareth was portrayed as a new Moses, with features that paralleled the stories of Moses. Many details were fashioned out of specific passages in scripture. The Passion story itself is a pastiche of verses from the Psalms, Isaiah and other prophets, and as a whole it retells a common tale found throughout ancient Jewish writings, that of the Suffering and Vindication of the Innocent Righteous One. It is quite possible that Mark, at least, did not intend his Gospel to represent an historical figure or historical events, and designed it to provide liturgical readings for Christian services on the Jewish model. Liberal scholars now regard the Gospels as "faith documents" and not accurate historical accounts. [See "Part Three", the John Shelby Spong book review, and responses to Jan and Johnson.] Piece No. 10: THE COMMUNITY OF "Q" In Galilean circles distinct from those of the evangelists (who were probably all located in Syria), a Jewish movement of the mid-first century preaching the coming of the Kingdom of God put together over time a collection of sayings, ethical and prophetic, now known as Q. The Q community eventually invented for itself a human founder figure who was regarded as the originator of the sayings. In ways not yet fully understood, this figure fed into the creation of the Gospel Jesus, and the sayings document was used by Matthew and Luke to flesh out their reworking of Mark’s Gospel. Some modern scholars believe they have located the "genuine" Jesus at the roots of Q, but Q’s details and pattern of evolution suggest that no Jesus was present in its earlier phases, and those roots point to a Greek style of teaching known as Cynicism, one unlikely to belong to any individual, let alone a Jewish preacher of the Kingdom. [See "Part Three" and the Burton Mack book review.] Piece No. 11: A RIOTOUS DIVERSITY The documentary record reveals an early Christian landscape dotted with a bewildering variety of communities and sects, rituals and beliefs about a Christ/Jesus entity, most of which show little common ground and no central authority. Also missing is any idea of apostolic tradition tracing back to a human man and his circle of disciples. Scholars like to style this situation as a multiplicity of different responses to the historical Jesus, but such a phenomenon is not only incredible, it is nowhere attested to in the evidence itself. Instead, all this diversity reflects independent expressions of the wider religious trends of the day, based on expectation of God’s Kingdom, and on belief in an intermediary divine force which provided knowledge of God and a path to salvation. Only with the Gospels, which began to appear probably toward the end of the first century, were many of these elements brought together to produce the composite figure of Jesus of Nazareth, set in a midrashic story about a life, ministry and death located in the time of Herod and Pontius Pilate. [See "Part Three" and the Burton Mack and Robert Funk book reviews.] Piece No. 12: JESUS BECOMES HISTORY As the midrashic nature of the Gospels was lost sight of by later generations of gentile Christians, the second century saw the gradual adoption of the Gospel Jesus as an historical figure, motivated by political considerations in the struggle to establish orthodoxy and a central power amid the profusion of early Christian sects and beliefs. Only with Ignatius of Antioch, just after the start of the second century, do we see the first expression in Christian (non-Gospel) writings of a belief that Jesus had lived and died under Pilate, and only toward the middle of that century do we find any familiarity in the wider Christian world with written Gospels and their acceptance as historical accounts. Many Christian apologists, however, even in the latter part of the century, ignore the existence of a human founder in their picture and defense of the faith. By the year 200, a canon of authoritative documents had been formed, reinterpreted to apply to the Jesus of the Gospels, now regarded as a real historical man. Christianity entered a new future founded on a monumental misunderstanding of its own past. [See "The Second Century Apologists".] THE ASSEMBLED PUZZLE Modern critical scholars have been dismantling the story of Jesus, attempting to salvage from it an inspiring sage for a more rational, enlightened future, and letting go the sacrificial divine Savior of an archaic past. Some of them are edging toward the admission that Paul's Christ had nothing to do with an historical man, while positioning their new teaching Jesus as only one element in the Jewish-Hellenistic synthesis which led to Christianity. The sage, however, is an artificial construct, a misreading (then and now) of the broader sectarian expressions of the day. And the links and lines of development between the various strands which scholars have created to make their scenarios hang together are largely unsupported by the evidence. The pieces of the Jesus Puzzle will not fit together except by abandoning any expectation of encountering an historical, human face. (The image assembled here is the glorified divine Christ of medieval Byzantine worship.) I hope, through the cumulative analysis on this site, to lead the open-minded reader to the same conclusion: that there was no historical Jesus. You are invited to return to the Home Page and proceed to the Main Articles.
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