The Origins of Christianity

By Acharya S

Footnotes Page 3

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The Eucharist, or the sharing of the god's blood and body, has been a sacred ritual within many ancient mystery religions and is part of the Mythos and Ritual. In a standard ritual that was practiced around the world, and which continues in some places, participants in the ritual actually ate and drank the "god's" body and blood, which was in reality that of a sacrificed human (king) or animal. The Christian form of the Eucharist is very similar to the ritual that was practiced as part of the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, in detail, as is outlined by Taylor. The Eleusinian Eucharist honored both Ceres, goddess of wheat, and Bacchus/Dionysus, god of the vine. The Christians also adopted the Bacchanal symbol IHS (Greek) or IES - Iesu/Jesus. These letters stood for the sun. (See below.) "Mr. Higgins observes, 'The whole paschal supper (the Lord's supper with the Christians) was in fact a festival of joy to celebrate the passage of the sun across the equinox of spring.'" (Graves)

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At this point, the following needs to be addressed: Jesus believers distinguish their godman from all these others by claiming a historical framework, which gives more credence to their "Savior" being the "right" one. We contend that this is precisely why the sungod mythos was carnalized or made historical in the first place. However, let us pretend that Jesus was historical. Followers of Krishna also claim he was historical, yet his advent predates that of Jesus by hundreds to thousands of years. If we assume both are historical, and both are teaching nearly the identical thing, why should we not go to the source and become Krishna followers? Here we see clearly the ugly head of cultural bigotry, when the Christians claim their godman superior to one already in existence that is virtually identical. Why not go with Krishna? Because he was not of the "right" ethnicity. The question is moot, however, since both characters are mythological and, by the arguments of the Christians, should then be dismissed. However, we must not dismiss the Mythos upon which they are formulated, as it is true revelation of the workings of the cosmos.

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As with "Buddha," a number of people have disputed the "virgin" status of Krishna's mother. As Joseph McCabe says, "The orthodox legend of Krishna is that he was born of a married woman, Devaki; but like Maya, Buddha's mother, she was considered to have had a miraculous conception. . . . Thus one of the familiar religious emblems of India was the statue of the virgin mother (as the Hindus repute her) Devaki and her divine son Krishna, an incarnation of the great god Vishnu. Christian writers have held that this model was borrowed from Christianity, but, as Mr. Robertson observes, the Hindus had far earlier been in communication with Egypt and were more likely to borrow the model of Isis and Horus."

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The Book Your Church . . . p. 185. See also Taylor.

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Graves, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors: "And we have the statement from Mr. Higgins, that the same assortment of spices (with the gold) constituted the materials offered as gifts to the sun, in Persia more than three thousand years ago; and likewise in Arabia near the same era."

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It should be noted that the terrible story of Herod killing the infants as portrayed in Matthew is not found in any histories of the day, including Josephus, who does otherwise expose Herod's real abuses. The "slaughter of the infants" is yet another part of the standard Mythos. This story is a rehash of the Krishna tale: "[The tyrant Kansa] ordained the massacre in all his states, of all the children of the male sex, born during the night of the birth of Christna. . ." (Jacolliot)

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Graves, p. 110.

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Jacolliot, p. 250.

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Ibid., p. 306.

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The Book Your Church; Graves; Taylor. The crucifixion of the godman between two "thieves" is an element of the Mythos, and is found in a number of sungod traditions that predate the Christian myth. "Anup on one side of Horus, and Aan on the other, are the two thieves on either hand of the Kamite Christ upon the cross at Easter." (Massey, MC) Anup and Aan are also the two "witnesses" of Horus, and are the predecessors of the two Johns who are Jesus's witnesses. (Churchward, Massey, ibid.)

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Blavatsky, Walker, Graves.

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"At first, Christianity did not hold to the Trinity doctrine. That doctrine developed slowly and did not become officially the creedal fact until C.E. 325." (Adrian Swindler, The Book Your Church) Walker: "From the earliest ages, the concept of the Great Goddess was a trinity and the model for all subsequent trinities, female, male or mixed. . . .Even though Brahmans evolved a male trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva to play these parts [of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer], Tantric scriptures insisted that the Triple Goddess had created these gods in the first place. . . . The Middle East had many trinities, most originally female. As time went on, one or two members of the triad turned male. The usual pattern was Father-Mother-Son, the Son figure envisioned as a Savior. . . . Among Arabian Christians there was apparently a holy trinity of God, Mary, and Jesus, worshipped as an interchangeable replacement for the Egyptian trinity of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. . . " Jacolliot: "The Trinity in Unity, rejected by Moses, became afterwards the foundation of Christian theology, which incontestably acquired it from India."

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Graves.

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Jacolliot, p. 251. "As we have seen, all these names of Jesus, Jeosuah, Josias, Josué derive from two Sanscrit words Zeus and Jezeus, which signify, one, the Supreme Being, and the other, the Divine Essence. These names, moreover, were common not only amongst the Jews, but throughout the East." (Ibid., p. 301.)

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Jacolliot, p. 282.

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The "Word" is a very ancient concept and does not originate with Christianity. The term "Logos" is Greek, and it is obvious that the Christian copyists adopted the Word concept directly from the Greeks, whether it be from Plato or applicable to the gods Prometheus and Hermes. However, the Greeks in turn had adopted this idea from more ancient traditions, such as the Indian and Egyptian. Graves states, ". . . the Chinese bible, much older than the Christian's New Testament, likewise declares, 'God pronounced the primeval Word, and his own eternal and glorious abode sprang into existence.' Mr. Guizot, in a note on Gibbon's work, says, 'According to the Zend-Avesta (the Persian bible, more than three thousand years old), it is by the Word, more ancient than the world, that Ormuzd created the universe.' . . . And the ancient Greek writer Amelias, speaking of the God Mercury [Hermes] says, 'And this plainly was the Logos (the Word), by whom all things were made, he being himself eternal, as Heraclitus would say, . . . He assumed to be with God, and to be God, and in him everything that was made, has its life and being, who, descending into body, and putting on flesh, took the appearance of a man, though still retaining the majesty of his nature.' Here is 'the Word made flesh,' set forth in most explicit terms."

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Taylor, The Diegesis, pp. 192-4. Taylor indicates that the following stanza is found in "Potter's beautiful translation" of Aeschylsus's play: "Lo, streaming from the fatal tree, His all-atoning blood! Is this the Infinite? 'Tis he - Prometheus, and a God! Well might the sun in darkness hide, And veil his glories in, When God, the great Prometheus, died, For man, the creature's sin." However, this stanza apparently does not appear in modern translations, including Potter's. It is well-known that the Christians mutilated or destroyed virtually all of the works of ancient Greek and Roman authors, such that we might suspect this stanza has either been removed or obfuscated through mistranslation. On the other hand, it may be a mistake on Taylor's part or a result of his ambiguous language preceding the passage, or he may have been thinking of another "Prometheus Bound" written after the Christian era, perhaps by Milton. Taylor was in prison when he wrote The Diegesis, thereby having difficulty accessing books, so he is to be excused for errors that invariably creep into anyone's work.

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"To get rid of the damning fact that there is no historical basis for their theological fictions, the Christian priesthood have been guilty of the heinous crime of destroying nearly all traces of the concurrent history of the first two centuries of the Christian era. What little of it they have permitted to come down to us, they have so altered and changed, as to destroy its historical value." (JM Roberts, Esq.) "In some of the ancient Egyptian temples the Christian iconoclasts, when tired of hacking and hewing at the symbolic figures incised in the chambers of imagery, and defacing the most prominent features of the monuments, found they could not dig out the hieroglyphics, and took to covering them over with plaster; and this plaster, intended to hide the meaning and stop the mouth of the stone word, has served to preserve the ancient writings as fresh in hue and sharp in outline as when they were first cut and colored. In a similar manner the temple of ancient religion was invaded and possession gradually gained by connivance of Roman power; and that enduring fortress, not built but quarried out of sold rock, was stuccoed all over the front and made white a-while with its look of brand-newness, and reopened under the sign of another name - that of the carnalized Christ." (Massey, MC)

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Wheless, p. 147.

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Ibid., p. 144.

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Mangasarian: "The idea of a Son of God is as old as the oldest cult. The sun is the son of heaven in all primitive faiths. The physical sun becomes in the course of evolution, the Son of Righteousness, or the Son of God, and heaven is personified as the Father on High. The halo around the head of Jesus, the horns of the older deities, the rays of light radiating from the heads of Hindu and Pagan gods are incontrovertible evidence that all gods were at one time - the sun in heaven."

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Jordan Maxwell, The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read, Pagan and Christian Creeds, by Carpenter, The Diegesis by Taylor. See also Massey, Churchward, Hotema, Graves, et al.

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The logical question arises: Why, if Jesus is a historical character, are there are presently two dates for both Christmas and Easter? This purportedly well-known character, who set the world on fire, has no birthdate whatsoever, and the "historical" references and genealogies found in the gospel accounts differ from each other. The gospels are not history at all but a retelling of the Mythos. The historical Jesus is a phantom. "These, which cannot both be historical, are based on the two birthdays of the double Horus in Egypt." (Massey, as related by Jackson) In addition, early Christian "doctors" were constantly contradicting themselves as to when exactly "the Lord" died or "ascended to heaven" after "he" was resurrected. Two of the most powerful early bishops, Irenaeus and Papias opined that Christ lived to be very old, "flatly denying as 'heresy' the Gospel stories as to his crucifixion at about thirty years of age." (Wheless)

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See above. In "The Truth about Jesus, M. Mangasarian states: "The selection of the twenty-fifth of December as his birthday is not only an arbitrary one, but that date, having been from time immemorial dedicated to the Sun, the inference is that the Son of God and the Sun of heaven enjoying the same birthday, were at one time identical beings. The fact that Jesus' death was accompanied with the darkening of the Sun, and that the date of his resurrection is also associated with the position of the Sun at the time of the vernal equinox, is a further intimation that we have in the story of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, an ancient and nearly universal Sun-myth, instead of verifiable historical events."

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

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Jordan Maxwell, "The Naked Truth."

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Mangasarian: "Like the dogmas of the Trinity, the virgin birth, and the resurrection, the sign of the cross or the cross as an emblem or a symbol was borrowed from the more ancient faiths of Asia." Walker: "Early Christians even repudiated the cross because it was pagan. . . . Early images of Jesus represented him not on a cross, but in the guise of the Osirian or Hermetic 'Good Shepherd,' carrying a lamb." In Christianity, the original occupant of the cross was a lamb, not a man. The man hanging on the cross did not occur until the 7th cent. C.E. "The stave, stake, prop or stay of the suffering sun was the Stauros, which was primarily a stake for supporting, shaped as a cross." (Massey, MC) This image can be found in crosses that have a circle on them. Taylor: "On a Phoenician medal found in the ruins of Citium, and engraved in Dr. Clarke's Travels, and proved by him to be Phoenician, are inscribed not only the cross, but the rosary, or string of beads, attached to it, together with the identical Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world." Graves: ". . . the consecrated twenty-fifth of March is also the day marked in our calendars as the date of the conception and annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary." March 25th was considered the end of the sun's passing through the vernal equinox, when the sun was "resurrected," i.e., the day was now longer than the night.

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"The picture of the New Beginning commonly presented is Rembrandt-like in tone. The whole world around Judea lay in the shadow of outer darkness, when suddenly there was a great light seen at the centre of all, and the face of the startled universe was illuminated by an apparition of the child-Christ lying in the lap of Mary. Such was the dawn of Christianity, in which the Light of the World had come to it at last! That explanation is beautifully simple for the simple-minded; but the picture is purely false - or, in sterner words, it is entirely false." (Massey, G&HC) Jacolliot: "We have repudiated Greek and Roman mythologies with disdain. Why, then, admit with respect the mythology of the Jews? Ought the miracles of Jehovah to impress us more that those of Jupiter?... I have much more respect for the Greek Jupiter [Zeus] than for the God of Moses; for if he gives some examples not of the purest morality, at least he does not flood his altar with streams of human blood."

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As it had with so many preceding purveyors of wisdom and ideologies, the Church ripped off both Aristotle and Plato, presenting their known accomplishments in philosophy. The "Logos" is pure Platonism, which refined the "Word" aspect of the extant Mythos, the Logos in Greece being Hermes, who is also found in Egypt as the "Trismegistus." Cardinal Palavicino is quoted as saying, "Without Aristotle we should be without many Articles of Faith." It is amusing to consider that the omniscient "Lord," who came to deliver a "New Dispensation," needed the writings of Aristotle to determine doctrine for his Church.

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As concerns the "Jesus Lived in India" theory by Kersten, et al., it is claimed that in Kashmir is a tomb of a traveling prophet named "Yuz Asaf," which is an Arab name that some have attempted to link to "Jesus." Notovich claimed to have found a text in Tibet about the "Life of Saint Issa." It is also claimed that the tombs of "Moses" and "Thomas" are in India. And there are several places where the "Virgin Mary" purportedly rested and/or died. It should be noted that there were innumerable "traveling prophets" throughout the ancient world, all spouting the same parables and platitudes and doing the standard bag of magic tricks, as do the countless Indian yogis of today. It is difficult to believe that the Indians or Tibetans would be very impressed by such stories, since they have had numerous miraculous godmen of their own. It has also been claimed by the Athenians that the olive tree alive today on the Acropolis was miraculously planted by the goddess Athena, an act for which she was honored by having that city-state named after her; and, there are numberless "footprints" of this Buddha and that throughout Buddhist countries. In addition, in the Notovich text concerning the "Life of Saint Issa," which is of late date, it says at the very beginning, "This is what is related on this subject by the merchants who have come from Israel," thus demonstrating both that it is not an eyewitness account of a visit by the Jewish godman and that there was an extensive trading and brotherhood network which would readily allow for such stories to spread. Again, all around the globe are stories of where this god or that set foot, did miracles, was born or died. This is standard in the world of mythmaking, and it is not an indication or evidence of historicity.

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The Egyptian Book of the Dead by Massey, pp. 1-2. Morals and Dogma of Freemasonry, p. 78. Taylor: "'. . . Chrishna in Irish means the Sun.'"

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"'Ies,' the Phoenician name of the god Bacchus or the Sun personified; the etymological meaning of that title being, 'i' the one and 'es' the fire or light; or taken as one word 'ies' the one light. This is none other than the light of St. John's gospel; and this name is to be found everywhere on Christian altars, both Protestant and Catholic, thus clearly showing that the Christian religion is but a modification of Oriental Sun Worship, attributed to Zoroaster. The same letters IHS, which are in the Greek text, are read by Christians 'Jes,' and the Roman Christian priesthood added the terminus 'us'. . ." (Roberts)

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Dujardin says, "The title of Messiah is one that the Rabbis seldom apply to the Liberator; it is mainly the Christians who state that the Jews expected 'the Messiah.'"

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The Diegesis, p. 7.

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Introduction to The Egyptian Book of the Dead by Massey, p. 9.

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Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, by Lloyd Graham, p. 338.

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Massey, Gnostic and Historic Christianity, p. 3.

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See Walker, Massey, Churchward.

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Ibid.

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See Massey, Churchward and Graham.

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Ibid.

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Massey, Mythical Christ, pp. 3-6 Wheless cites the Encyclopedia Biblica: "The author of Revelation calls himself John the Apostle. As he was not John the Apostle, who died perhaps in Palestine about 66, he was a forger." We would that "died perhaps" is also accurate, in that John "lived not at all."

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Jacolliot states that "Zoroaster" is a Persian version of the more ancient Indian "Zuryastara (who restores the worship of the sun) from which comes this name of Zoroaster, which is itself but a title assigned to a political and religious legislator."

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Churchward, 399.

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Ibid., p. 397. There are two astrotheological interpretations of John-Anup the Baptist, neither of which necessarily precludes the other, since the Mythos was ever-changing and evolving. As stated above, John the Baptist was considered the month of Aquarius, the initiation time of the sun, which was "born" in the previous month. The other interpretation, of which the Bible and other Christian-Pagan traditions and rituals serve as evidence, revolves around Saint John's day, June 25th, which would be precisely the opposite of December 25th; in other words, as the sun is "born again" on December 25th, the edge of the winter solstice, and its strength continues to increase, while on June 25th, the edge of the summer solstice, its strength begins to decrease again. This drama is reflected in the enigmatic statement by John the Baptist at John 3:30: "He must increase, but I must decrease." This curious remark only makes sense in astrotheological terms, in the sungod mythos.

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Walker.

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Hotema, Intro, Egyptian Book of the Dead by Massey. Like the New Testament, the Old Testament is also filled with sungod stories, such as the tale of Sampson, or Samson, which means "sun," whose "hair" (rays) was cut off by Delilah. "Sol-om-on" refers to the sun in three different languages. In 2 Kings 23:11 is clear evidence of Jewish sunworshipping, as the king Josiah, "removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. . . " More obscure references such as those referring to "eternal light" or any variety of names that mean "sun" are found peppered throughout the Judeo-Christian bible.

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Walker, p. 5. Dujardin: "Many of the old Baals of Palestine were assimilated by Judaism, which converted them into heroes in the cause of Jahveh [Yahweh], and in fact many scholars agree that the patriarchs of the Bible are the ancient gods of Palestine."

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Dujardin and others demonstrate that the Christ drama, with its obvious Passion play, is indeed a play, with its condensed time-frame, stage directions and ritualistic lines. The entire gospel story purports to take place over a period of a few days. In content and form, it is clearly a sacred king drama, based originally on the sun and other elements such as fertility rites, that became a ritual practiced yearly or at some other increment. This sacrificial and/or redemptive drama was acted out in numerous places over the millennia, long before the Jesus story, in much the same form as that presented in the gospels. In an imitation of the earlier Mythos, in which this drama took place in the heavens, with the sun as the sacrificed Son of God, etc., ancient practitioners would sacrifice a surrogate for the god in order to ensure fecundity and prosperity. This "victim" of the sacrifice was at times a human, usually a king or other high official, or an animal or grain offering. When the surrogate was killed, the blood was sprinkled upon the congregation or audience of the play, who would cry, "Let his blood be upon us and our children," a standard play/ritual line that was designed to ensure future fertility and the continuation of life. Later, wine was substituted for blood. The Passion only makes sense as part of the Mythos and Ritual. As a historical tale about foaming-at-the-mouth Jews calling for the blood of the "gentle" Jesus, it is not only an ugly insult to Jews but a dangerous, unfounded belief that has led to innumerable pogroms and much prejudice against them for nearly 2,000 years, as they have thus been perceived as rabid, evil "Christkillers." As Dujardin says, "It is absurd to imagine that the crowd would demand the death of an innocent man and would wish his blood to be on their heads and those of their children."