From
The Christ Myth
by Arthur Dewes
(1909)
We are accustomed to look upon the Jewish religion as strictly monotheistic. In truth, it never was - Arthur Dewes
Persian Influence
For two hundred years after their return to their own land they were under Persian overlordship As a consequence of this they were in close connection politically and economically with the Achaemenidean Empire, and this did not cease when Alexander overthrew the Persian power and brought the whole Eastern world under Greek influence. During this lengthy period Persian modes of thinking and Persian religious views had influenced in many ways the old Jewish opinions, and had introduced a large number of new ideas. First of all the extreme dualism of the Persians had impressed a distinctly dual character upon Jewish Monotheism.

The Persian religion was not so much a religion of light and sun as of fire, the most important and remarkable manifestation of which was of course the sun.

Persian Origins of Yahweh
Following the same train of thought, the old national God Jahwe, in imitation of the Persian Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), had developed from a God of fire, light, and sky into a God of supernatural purity and holiness.

Mithra the Messiah
These ideas entered the circle of Jewish thought and there brought about a complete transformation of the former belief in a Messiah.

Concept of Heaven (Afterlife)
The Jewish agreed with the Persian view in this also, that it made a heavenly kingdom of undisturbed bliss "in the light of the everlasting life and in likeness of the angels" follow the earthly world-wide empire of the Messiah. This they imagined on exactly the same lines as the Persian Paradise.

  • Note: As explained elsewhere, the concept of the holy garden (paradios meaning "garden of God") and the idea immortality is purely Aryan. The Israelites inherited the idea from the Druids, Egyptians, and as Dewes confirms here, from the Persians.

The conception of a resurrection of the dead and a last judgment had hitherto been strange to the Jews.

With the acceptance of personal immortality the whole tone of religious thought was deepened and enriched in the direction of thought for the individual. Former Jewish morality had been essentially of a collective kind. It was not so much the individual as the people viewed collectively that was looked upon as the object of divine solicitude.

  • Note: Dewes states that key metaphysical concepts thought to be purely Judaic were in fact inherited from earlier tribes and races.

Grove and Tree
There would the holy drink of the "Water of Life" and nourish themselves on the fruit which hang upon the "Tree of Life."

Alexander the Great
Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire Palestine also was drawn within the circle of Hellenistic culture.

The customs and intellectual life of Greece forced their way into the quiet isolation of the priest-ruled Jewish state and could not be expelled again, despite the national reaction under the Maccabees against foreign influences.

Jewish Spiritualization
In the atmosphere of Greek philosophy and morality a still further transformation and purification of Jahwe took place. All common human
and material lineaments were dropped, and he developed into a spiritual being of perfect goodness, such as Plato had described the Godhead.

  • Note: Here we have the spiritualization of religious Jews, via Western metaphysics. The modern Jew may easily reject the heady metaphysics which imbues Western thinkers, but rarely will he abandon his religion. As shown elsewhere, the so-called occult tradition within Judaism was also inherited from the West, specifically from Persia and Greece. (See below.)

The Word of God
Among the ideas which were borrowed by Judaism from the Persian religion belonged those connected with the mediatory "Word." As the creative power of the Godhead, the bearer of revelation and representative of God upon earth, the expression "the word" had already appeared in aphoristic literature.

  • Note: As Massey and others show, the creative Word (the Logos) was also a principle of the Egyptian gods. The Jews also inherited their concept of spiritual Wisdom (Sophia) directly from the Persians.

Essenes (Jewish Gnostics)
We know from the Jewish historian Josephus that the Essenes clung to an extreme dualism of soul and body, in which, indeed, they agreed with the other religious associations of antiquity. Like all mystical sects, they regarded the body as the grave and prison-house of the immortal soul, to which it had been banished from an earlier life in light and blessedness.

But in the opinion of the Essenes it was essential above all to know the names of the angels and daemons who opened the passage to the different heavens, disposed one above another.

Syncretism
...we now know that this whole world of thought belonged to an exceedingly manifold syncretic religious system, composed of Babylonian, Persian, Jewish, and Greek ingredients, which ruled the whole of Western Asia in the last centuries before Christ. Its followers called themselves Adonsei, after the name of its supposed founder, Ado (? Adonis). It is, however, generally described as the Mandaic religion, according to another name for its followers, the so-called Mandsei (Gnostics).

  • Note: Again the crux is that a great deal of amalgamation occurred in the formation of what was later deceptively presented as a monotheistic theology. Since a great many of the "Mysteries" appropriated belonged to more ancient cultures, the Jews had, for the most part, no idea whatsoever what they were really about. Consequently, their mythmongers plastered onto the Mysteries utterly preposterous meanings and connotations. This is especially true of Kabala, which was appropriated from the Aryan Persians. The word itself hearkening to the Persian goddess Cybele (also known as Anahita).
Of a great number of modes of expression and images in the New Testament we know that they originated from the common treasury of the languages of the secret sects of the Orient, having their source above all in Mandaism and the Mithraic religion - Athur Dewes
Jesus of Nazareth?
It is only in the later phases of the tradition that the name appears in the New Testament as a place-name. In the earlier ones the Nazorean (Nazarene) only signifies the follower of a particular sect, or is a surname of Jesus which characterizes the significance attached to him in the thoughts of his followers.

"He shall be called a Nazarene"...does not signify that he was to be born in the small village of Nazareth, which probably did not exist in the time of Jesus, but that he is the promised netzer or Zemah, who makes all new, and restores the time when "one loads the other beneath vine and fig-tree," and wonderful increase will appear.

...the possibility is not excluded of the name of the Nazareans having been confused with that of the Nasiraes (Nazirites), those "holy" or "dedicated" ones, who were a survival in Judea from the times when the Israelite tribes were nomads.

Sacrifice
it appears that human sacrifice formed a regular part of the Jewish religion in the period before the Exile; which indeed was but to be expected, considering the relationship between Jahwe and the Phoenician
Baal.

Even during the Babylonian captivity, despite the voices raised against it by some prophets in the last years of the Jewish state, sacrifices of this kind were offered by the Jews ; until they were suppressed under the rule of the Persians, and in the new Jewish state were expressly forbidden.

Note: Despite the ban by the Persians, we wonder whether the practice of sacrifice was indeed abandoned by the Jews. Perhaps a few sects revived the practice.

The Son of God
in Persian the word for son is Cyrus (Khoro, Greek Kyros), and Kyris or Kiris is the name of Adonis in Cyprus.

David the Beloved
Another name of Adonis or Tammuz is Dod, Dodo, Daud, or David. This signifies "the Beloved" and indicates "the beloved son" of the heavenly father, who offers himself for mankind, or "the Beloved" of the Queen of heaven (Atargatis, Mylitta, Istar).

Mythmongering
it was David himself who would appear as the Messiah and re-establish Israel in its ancient glory. Indeed, this even appears to have been the original conception of the Messiah. The Messiah David seems to have been changed into a descendant of David only with the progress of the monotheistic conception of God, under the influence of the Persian doctrine concerning Saoshyant, the man "of the seed of Zarathustra."

...David was supposed to have been born at Bethlehem. But in Bethlehem there was, as Jerome informs was an ancient grove and sanctuary of the Syrian Adonis, and as Jerome himself complains the very place where the Savior first saw the light resounded with the lamentations over 'Tammuz.'

  • Note: The presence of the grove connotes the Arya. We see that the stories contained in the Old and New Testaments are certainly poor, garbled rescriptings of earlier Aryan lore. Adonis, lord of the garden, was an early Phoenician tree deity. He appears elsewhere as Odin, Don, Donar, Dionysus, Adonai and Aton.

The Everlasting Zone
The metaphorical name of "stable" for the place of sacrifice attains a new significance from the fact that the sun during a certain epoch of the world (something between 3000 and 800 BC) at the beginning of spring passed through the constellation of the Bull, and at the time of the winter solstice commenced its course between the Ox (Bull) and the Great Bear, which anciently was also called the Ass. The birth of the God is said to have been in secret because it took place at night. His mother is a " virgin " since at midnight of the winter solstice the constellation of the Virgin is on the eastern horizon.

  • Note: I write about this circumpolar zone or "garden" and its significance in the book. (Here for more...)

India
In its symbols also the earliest Christianity coincides with Indian thought in such a striking manner that it can scarcely be explained as chance.

Jesus & Krishna
For the rest the supposition of Indian influences in the Gospel story is not by any means an improbable one.

  • Note: Dewes points out the similarities between the pre-Vedic gods Agni and Indra and the later personages of Krishna, Mithra and Jesus, etc. He believes that the Mandean-Gnostics of Iran were influenced by Vedic traditions, and that Buddhism is also a late reprise of the earlier Indo-Aryan pantheon and tradition. Agni is the great artifex and artisan-carpenter of the universe. He is Savitar, Lord of Creation. The figure of Jesus and his father Joseph were based on Agni. Maya, the mother of Agni, turns up as Mary, mother of Jesus. Agni, like Prometheus, gave mankind the gift of fire, and is worshiped by way of fiery rituals. The Chaldeans of Mesopotamia were fire-worshipers; their name from calneh, meaning "the burners." The Indians, however, received the totemic figures in their pantheon from Persian-Aryans from the West. (Here for more...)

Holy Ghost?
in Hebrew the word "spirit" (ruach) is of feminine gender. As a consequence of this the Holy Ghost was looked upon by the Nassenes and the earliest Christians as the "mother" of Jesus.

But it was not the Nassenes alone (Ophites) who called the Holy Spirit "the first word" and "the mother of all living things;" other Gnostic sects, such as the Valentinians, regarded the Spirit which descended in the shape of a dove as the "word of the mother from above, of wisdom."
Jesus and John represent the two halves of the year or zodiac. They are astrological "twins" representing the ecliptic and celestial sphere or simply the two phases of the yearly cycle, the overworld and underworld sojourns of the sun. We are told that John was born six months before Jesus. Six months of the northern traversal and six months of the southern traversal. John holds the cross which, astronomically speaking, symbolizes the Winter Solstice "crossing" point when the old year dies giving birth to the new. The Romans had Janus and the Christians have their Jesus and John. That the former goes on to have 12 disciples is yet another allusion to the zodiac. The act of baptism, unknown to orthodox Judaism, is an earlier rite known to sun-worshipers. In the Gospels it celebrates the transition of the sun from one sign to another; the precessional move of the sun from the "age" of Taurus the Bull to that of Aries the Ram. John represents the passing age. Like Anubis he opens the way for the new sun, the new gospel. In this sidereal sense, Jesus becomes Agnus Dei, or "Lamb of God."
Agni the Messiah
In Hebrew Messiah means " the anointed." But Agni too as God of Sacrifices bears the name of the anointed, akta.
The paschal lamb is slaughtered at Easter, in expiation of sins. Jesus takes over the role. It's pure astro-theology. The sun arises in the sign of the Ram every morning. The "blood" or light of the sun is shed over the land, bringing life.
Lamb of God
During the first century after Christ the lamb in association with light and fire was among the most popular images in ecclesiastical language and symbolism.

Nimbus (Halo)
The nimbus, too, is an old Indian symbol, and thus indicates that the whole conception was borrowed from the circle of Indian ideas.

Crucifixion?
The conception of Christ being put to death upon the cross is, comparatively speaking, a late one. The connection of Christ with the cross was originally not a reproduction of the manner of his death.

Not a Cross
In the whole of Christendom it passes as a settled matter that Jesus" died upon the cross:" but this has the shape, as it is usually represented among painters, of the so-called Latin cross, in which the horizontal crosspiece is shorter than the vertical beam. On what then does the opinion rest that the cross is the gibbet? The Evangelists themselves give us no information on this point. The Jews described the instrument which they made use of in executions by the expression "wood" or "tree."

Among the Jews also the condemned used to be hanged upon a simple stake or beam, and exposed to a lingering death from heat, hunger, and thirst, as well as from the natural tension of his muscles.

The only place in the Gospels where there is any mention of the "marks of the nails" (John 200-25) belongs, as does the whole Gospel, to a relatively later time, and appears, as does so much in John, as a mere strengthening and exaggeration of the original story.

  • Note: Remember that when it comes to the Gospels and other Biblical Scriptures, or any text, it matters not only what is said, but what isn't said. What is left out is as important as what gets included. Three so-called synoptic (eye-witnesses) to the crucifixion do not mention wounds created by nails. John, which is not based on direct eye-witness accounts, does not specify nail marks or wounds So it goes throughout the four gospels.

How, then, did the idea come into existence that Jesus did not die upon a simple gallows, but rather upon wood having the well-known form of the cross

Sign of the Cross
According to some it was the sign which Jahwe ordered the Israelites to paint upon their doors with the blood of the lamb when he sent the angel of death to destroy the first-born of their Egyptian oppressors. It played a similar part also in Isaiah and Ezekiel,t when it was a question of separating the god-fearing Israelites from the crowd of other men whom Jahwe purposed to destroy. When the Israelites were pressed in battle by the Amalekites Moses is said to have been helped by Aaron and Hur to stretch out his arms in the shape of that magic sign, and thus to have rendered possible a victory for his people over their enemies. I Among the other nations of antiquity also — the Greeks, Thracians, the Gaulish Druids, and so on — the Tau was applied in a similar manner to ritualistic and mystic ends. It appears as an ornament on the images of the most different divinities and heroes e.g., Apollo, Dionysus, Demeter, Diana (the Phoenician Astarte). It is also found upon innumerable Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Phoenician coins, upon vases, pictures, jewellery, &c. In Alexandria the Christians found it chiselled upon the stone when the temple of Serapis was destroyed, in 391. In this temple Serapis himself was represented of superhuman size, with arms outstretched in the form of a cross, as though embracing the universe.

In Rome the Vestal virgins wore the cross upon a ribbon round the neck. Indeed, it even served as an ornament upon the weapons of the Roman legions and upon the standards of the cavalry long before Constantine, by his well-known "vision," gave occasion for its being expressly introduced under the form of the so-called "Monogram of Christ" into the army as a military sign.

But in the North also we find the cross, not only in the shape of the hooked-cross and the three-armed cross (Triskele), but also in the form of Thor's hammer, upon runic, stones, weapons, utensils, ornaments, amulets, etc.

Hochart considers the cross in the shape of the Greek Tau as the inserted stick (pramantha) of the Vedic priests,

In America, too, among the Mexicans and Incas, it played a part in worship long before the arrival of Europeans.

  • Note: See the work of Albert Churchward for early images of South American and Mexican renditions of the cross. (Here for more...)

The Tat or Djed
For example, the stake furnished with four oblique sticks (like a telegraph post), which went by the name of the tatu, tat, dad, or ded and was planted at the feast of Osiris in Egypt, often had a rough picture of the god painted upon it.

Christians vs. Nazarenes
For it was at Antioch where, according to the Acts, the name "Christians" was first used for the adherents of the new religion, who had till then been usually called Nazarenes.

Jerusalem?
That certainly is in sharpest contradiction to tradition, according to which Christianity is supposed to have risen in Jerusalem and to have been thence spread abroad among the heathen.

Who Was Jesus?
faith in a Jesus had been for a long time in existence among innumerable Mandaic sects in Asia Minor, which differed in many ways from each other, before this faith obtained a definite shape in the religion of Jesus, and its adherents became conscious of their religious peculiarities and their divergence from the official Jewish religion.

Eye-Witness Accounts?
The New Testament with its four Gospels is not previous to the Church, but the latter is antecedent to them; and the Gospels are the derivatives, consequently forming a support for the propaganda of the Church, and being without any claim to historical significance.

Of our four Gospels, two bear the names of apostles and two the names of companions and pupils of apostles, viz., Mark and Luke. In this, of course, it is in no way meant that they were really written by these persons. According to Chrysostom these names were first assigned to them towards the end of the second century.

Of these Gospels, again, that of John ranks as the latest. It presupposes the others, and shows such a dogmatic tendency, that it cannot be considered the source of the story.

Of the remaining Gospels, which on account of their similarity as to form and matter have been termed "Synoptic" {i.e., such as must be dealt with in connection with each other and thus only give a real idea of the Saviour's personality), that of Mark is generally regarded as the oldest...It is believed that this was written shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem

Mark wishes to lead all his readers, among whom he counts the Heathens and Gentile Christians, to the recognition of what the heathen centurion said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!" The whole account is directed to this end.

Mark's main proof for this purpose is that of miracles. Jesus' doctrines are with Mark of so much less importance than his miracles, that we never learn exactly what Jesus preached.

Matthew and Luke rely on Mark, and all three, according to the prevailing view, are indebted to a common Aramiac source, wherein Jesus' didactic sermons are supposed to have been contained.

  • Note: Not only have earlier manuscripts not manifested, but in the case of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scroll, Jewish texts serve to contradict Christian texts. For this reason the Church prevented their public publication for decades.
 
What Jesus himself thought, what he did, what he taught, what his life was, and, might we say it - whether he ever lived at all - that is not to be learnt from the Gospels.

Fraud & Forgery
Of the epistles in his name which have been handed down to us, that to the Hebrews is quite certainly not Paul's. But also the two epistles to the Thessalonians, that to the Bphesians, as well as the so-called pastoral epistles (to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon), are considered by the overwhelming majority of theologians to be forgeries; and also the authenticity of the epistles to the Colossians and Philippians is negatived by considerations of great weight.

Of the epistles in his name which have been handed down to us, that to the Hebrews is quite certainly not Paul's. But also the two epistles to the Thessalonians, that to the Bphesians, as well as the so-called pastoral epistles (to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon), are considered by the overwhelming majority of theologians to be forgeries; and also the authenticity of the epistles to the Colossians and Philippians is negatived by considerations of great weight.

...a conclusive proof that Paul was really the author of the epistles current in his name cannot be given.

They have attempted to prove the Pauline epistles, as a literary product, to be the work of a whole school of second-century theologians, authors who either simultaneously or successively wrote for the growing Church.

With regard to this it must always remain a ground for doubt that Luke, who accompanied Paul on his missionary travels, was completely silent as to such literary activity of the apostle; and this, although he devoted the greatest portion of his account in the Acts to Paul's activities.

Also the proof given by Smith, that the Pauline epistles were as yet completely unknown in the first century AD., that in particular the existence of the Epistle to the Romans is not testified to before the middle of the second century, must speak seriously against Paul's authorship, and is evidence that those epistles cannot be accepted as the primary source of the Pauline doctrines.

Of the works of the Old Testament neither the Psalms, nor the Proverbs, nor the so-called Preacher, nor the Book of Wisdom, can be connected with the historical kings David and Solomon, whose names they bear; and the prophet Daniel is just such a fictitious personality as the Enoch and the Ezra of the Apocalypses known under their names. Even the so-called Five Books of Moses are the literary product of an age much later than the one in which Moses is supposed to have lived, while Joshua  s the name of an old Israelite God after whom the book in question is called.

There has never anywhere been such a Moses as the one described in the Old Testament.

Pious Frauds
The possibility of the so-called Pauline epistles having been the work of later theologians, and of having been christened in the name of Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, only to increase their authority in the community, is therefore by no means excluded, especially when we consider how exuberantly literary falsifications and "pious frauds" flourished in the first century, and at other times also, in the interests of the Christian Church.

  • Note: It was all accepted by theologians because Paul said he had a vision of jesus on the road to Damascus, after which he became a devout follower of Christ. A purely subjective experience and personal statement launches Christianity. We have no objective facts at all. Indeed, historical facts fly in the face of most Biblical accounts. Religion exists by way of "fath." not facts. It exists in having faith in another person's faith.

Huge Ommission
the Risen Jesus is said to have been seen by "more than five hundred Brethren at once." But of this the four gospels know nothing.

"Brother James"
James as "the Brother of the Lord" is perhaps only an after-insertion in the Epistle to the Galatians in order thereby to have the bodily relationship between James and Jesus confirmed by Paul himself...Jesus' parents are not historical personalities; and it is probably the same with his brothers and sisters.

Paul never refers to the testimony of the brothers or of the disciples of Jesus concerning their Master; though this would have been most reasonable had they really known any more of Jesus than he himself did.

From Paul, therefore, there is nothing of a detailed nature to be learnt about the historical Jesus.

ll expressions concerning Jesus which are found in Paul are accordingly of no consequence for the hypothesis of an historical person of that name. The so-called "words of the Lord" quoted by him refer to quite unimportant points in the teachings of Jesus.

Paul did not give himself the least trouble to bring the Saviour as a man nearer to his readers. He seems to know nothing of any miraculous power in Jesus. He says nothing of his sympathy with the poor and oppressed.

The "humanity" of Jesus stands as the central point of the Pauline idea. And yet the Jesus painted by Paul is not a man, but a purely divine personality, a heavenly spirit without flesh and blood, an unindividual superhuman phantom.

Jesus the Archetype
As we have stated, the belief in such a Jesus had been for a long time the property of Jewish sects, when Paul succeeded, on the ground of his astounding personal experiences, in drawing it into the light from the privacy of religious arcana, and setting it up as the central point of a new religion distinct from Judaism.

  • Note: This does not rule out the historicity of a man Jesus, but does indicate that Paul's accounts are almost wholly spurious. Paul's character is the iconic archetypal being gleaned from many sun-kings of many traditions, Judaic and other. What this means is that if a true Jesus is finally discovered - as Ralph Ellis claims in his work - he may bear little to no likeness at all to the figure presented in the New Testament, especially in works allegedly written by St. Paul.

Archetype or Stereotype?
Paul did not preach the man Jesus, but the heavenly spiritual being, Christ
.
  • Note: The difference is mightily important. As pointed out in my Irish Origins books, there are really two Jesuses; the supernatural being from a higher world, and the ordinary Galilean born of a carpenter. If he is the son of Joseph, he's a human male, and contender for earthly nobility. If he's God's son, then he is one more of a myriad solar kings worshiped by all humanity across the planet. More vitally, what we have of Christianity is of the nature of man. The stereotype is Paul himself. It's his preferred manufactured "religion" that became widespread. Christianity is indeed all-too-human. What Dewes and others reveal is that the Christian religion bears all the signs and imprints of paganism and solar cultism that would not normally be associated with an individual. That conflation is found indicates human industry and inventiveness. It indicates mythmongering on a colossal level. A study of Judaism also proves this beyond all doubt. (Here for more...)

The public to which Paul turned consisted for the most part of Gentiles ; and to these the conception of a spiritual being presented no difficulties.

The story of his life, as presented in the Gospels, is the rendering into history of a primitive religious myth. Most of the great heroes of the legend, which passes as historical, are similar incarnate Gods -- such as Jason, Hercules, Achilles, Theseus, Perseus, Siegfried, etc, in these we have nothing but the old Aryan sun — champion in the struggle against the powers of darkness and of death.

If we cannot doubt that Moses, the founder of the old covenant, was a fictitious figure, and that his "history" was invented by the priests at Jerusalem only for the purpose of sanctioning and basing on his authority the law of the priests named after him...Why may not also the founder of the new covenant as an historical person belong entirely to pious legend?

Paul of Tarsus
Paul is said to have been born in the Greek city of Tarsus in Cilicia, the son of Jewish parents. At that time Tarsus was, like Alexandria, an important seat of Greek learning. Here flourished the school of the younger Stoics, with its mixture of old Stoic, Orphic, and Platonic ideas. Here the ethical principles of that school were preached in a popular form, in street and market-place, by orators of the people.

Tarsus was also at the same time a centre for the mystery-religions of the East. The worship of Mithras, in particular, flourished there, with its doctrine of the mystic death and re-birth of those received into the communion, who were thereby purified from the guilt of their past life and won a new immortal life in the "Spirit," with its sacred feast, at which the believers entered into a communion of life with Mithra by partaking of the consecrated bread and chalice, with its conception of the magic effect of the victim's blood, which washed away all sins, and with its ardent desire for redemption, purification, and sanctification of the soul. Paul was not unaffected by these and similar ideas.

...the Pauline expression, that the consecrated chalice and bread at the Lord's Supper are the "communion of the blood and body of Christ," it reminds us too forcibly of the method of expression in the Mysteries for this agreement to be purely a coincidence.

  • Note: Conflating Jesus with the sun-kings of old has metaphysical ramifications. Paul isn't interested in the stereotype confined to the human world. Therefore, he asks us not to have knowledge, but faith. It is for each person to decide for him or herself whether this is the path for them. Since there is no guarantee that faith leads to knowledge (as Christians might believe) one must make their selection. What is it one cherishes and values more, knowledge or faith? And is one's "knowledge" merely subjective, like one's faith? Which are objective, in any true sense? And should one say they choose knowledge and proof, what will be there stance with Christian religion? What could be found that proves the divinity of Christ?

In Plato intellectual contemplation formed the basis of cognition. He placed the wise man at the head of the social organism, and regarded the philosopher as the only man fitted for the government of the world.

...man obtains unity with God and certainty as to the true reality, not by an abstract dialectic, as Plato supposed; not by logical insight into the cosmos in the sense of an abstract knowledge attainable only by the few, but through faith, through the divine act of redemption.

  • Note: Here is the basic contradiction introduced by Chritianity. If reason, logic and knowledge are so worthless, and if faith is all we require, why were the former imparted to humanity by God? We see that the elevation of the doctrine of faith automatically denigrates objective knowledge and reason. Why? And how is it that  this predicament is permitted by a loving, good God? Why does one part of man take second place to another? Why does our faith in Christ demand division and dualism? Is not that which weakens and fragments not in itself flawed and impaired? Must not the truly spiritual unite and strengthen on all levels? The true sage knows that what is to be valued is that which serves to banish illusion. Knowledge is cherished in this regard. It serves us physically and spiritually, and cannot under any circumstances demoted or rejected. Since faith does not release us from the bonds of ignorance and delusion, it must be rejected, regardless of how many priests state otherwise.

The fact is therefore settled, that Paul knew nothing of an historical Jesus; and that even if he had known anything of him, this Jesus in any case plays no part for him, and exercised no influence over the development of his religious view of the world.

A great lack of reason, a great mental confusion, an immense flight of imagination, would be necessary to transform a man not long dead, who was still clearly remembered by his relatives and contemporaries, not merely into a divine hero or demi-god, but into the world-forming spiritual principle, into the metaphysical mediator of redemption and the " second God."

Christ's life and death are for Paul neither the moral achievement of a man nor in any way historical facts, but something super-historical, events in the supersensible world.

...without Paul the Christian movement would have disappeared in the sand, just as the many other Jewish religions have done — at best to afford interest to investigators as an historical curiosity.

The view is becoming more common that the original Christian movement under the name of Jesus would have remained an insignificant and transient movement within Judaism but for Paul, who first gave it a religious view of the world by his metaphysics of redemption, and who by his break with the Jewish Law really founded the new religion.

It will be necessary to concede that the Christ-faith arose quite independently of any historical personality known to us; that indeed Jesus was in this sense a product of the religious "social soul" and was made by Paul.

The "historical" Jesus is not earlier but later than Paul; and as such he has always existed merely as an idea, as a pious fiction in the minds of members of the community.

The formation and development of the Christian religion began long before the Jesus of the Gospels appeared, and was completed independently of the historical Jesus of theology.

The question raised at the beginning, as to what we learn from Paul about the historical Jesus, has found its answer -- nothing.

The truth is that the Pauline epistles contain nothing which would force us to the belief in an historical Jesus.

It must be considered that, if the Pauline epistles stood in the edition of the New Testament where they really belong -- that is, before the Gospels — hardly any one would think that Jesus, as he there meets him, was a real man and had wandered on the earth in flesh and blood

Christianity & Stoicism
...his epistles are full of the expressions and ideas of the Stoic philosopher Seneca, and to this are due the efforts which have been made to make Seneca a pupil of Paul's, or the reverse, to make Paul a pupil of Seneca's.

Gnosticism
Christianity was originally developed from Gnosticism (Mandaism). The Pauline religion was only one form of the many syncretising efforts to satisfy contemporary humanity's need of redemption by a fusion of religious conceptions derived from different sources. So much the greater was the danger which threatened to spring up on this side of the youthful Church.

Gnosticism agreed with Christianity in its pessimistic valuation of the world, in its belief in the inability of man to obtain religious salvation by himself, in the necessity for a divine mediation of "Life." Like Christianity, it expected the deliverance of the oppressed souls of men by a supernatural Redeemer.

  • Note: Therefore Christian apologists cannot, as they are wont to do, deny that their religion is not only perforated with gnostic elements, but that it is a veritable branch of Gnosticism. That their savior came from "heaven" (outside this world), and that the world/universe is itself a "creation" (by way of a external supernatural hand) makes Christianity purely Gnostic in complexion.

Gnosticism also involves a completely dualistic philosophy in its opposition of God and world, of spirit and matter, of soul and body, etc.

The individual must know that his soul comes from God, that it is only temporarily confined in this prison of the body, and that it is intended for something higher than to be lost here in the obscurity of ignorance, of evil and of sin; so that he is already freed from the trammels of the flesh, and finds a new life for himself.

Gnosticism pledges itself, on the basis of the "revelation" received directly from God, to open to those who strive for the highest knowledge all the heights and depths of Heaven and of earth.

...Gnosticism of the first century after Christ was a wonderfully opalescent and intricate structure -- half religious speculation, half religion, a mixture of Theosophy, uncritical mythological superstition, and deep religious mysticism.

In it Babylonian beliefs as to Gods and stars, Parsee mythology, and Indian doctrines of metempsychosis and Karma were combined with Jewish theology and Mystery-rites of Western Asia; and through the whole blew a breath of Hellenic philosophy, which chiefly strove to fix the fantastic creatures of speculation in a comprehensible form, and to work up the confusion of Oriental licence and extravagance of thought into the form of a philosophical view of the world.

The Gnostics also called their mediating deity, as we have already seen of the Maudaic sect of the Nassenes, "Jesus," and indulged in a picture rendering of his pre-worldly existence and supernatural divine majesty. They agreed with the Christians that Jesus had been "human."

  • Note: Paul attempted to distance his Jesus from the Jewish tradition with its absurdities and concoctions. His aim was to aim at Gentiles even if it meant annoying Jews, who objected to Gnosticism. The less overtly Jewish and ascetic Paul made his jesus, the more the latter appealed to the Gentile world. Paul's prefence for the good Jesus and loving creator, repackaged Gnostic elements, making them less conspicuous. These elements, downplayed and colored by Paul, are, however, still discernable in the Gospels. His character is clearly based on the Gnostic Logos and Monogenes.

The author who wrote the Gospel in the name of John, the "favourite disciple of Jesus," probably about 140 AD, agrees with Gnosticism in its dualistic conception of the universe.

On one side is the world, the kingdom of darkness, deceit, and evil, in deadly enmity to the divine kingdom of light, the kingdom of truth and life. At the head of the divine kingdom is God, who is himself Light, Truth, Life, and Spirit — following Parsee thought. At the head of the kingdom of earth is Satan (Angromainyu) In the middle, between them, is placed man. But mankind is also divided, as all the rest of existence, into two essentially different kinds.

The souls of the one part of mankind are derived from God, those of the other from Satan.

The "children of Satan" -- among whom John, in agreement with the Gnostics, counts the Jews before all — are not susceptible of anything divine and are assigned to eternal damnation.

  • Note: This damning of the Jews was to make Christianity palatable to a Gentile audience. Words were put into the mouth of the fictional Jesus condemning the Pharisees and members of the synagogue at Jerusalem. Scenes were added where Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin and delivered over to the Romans for execution.

...how then does the Logos bring about redemption? He becomes flesh, that is, he assumes the form of the "man" Jesus, without, however, ceasing to be the supernatural Logos, and as such brings to men the "Life" which he himself is, by revealing wisdom and love.

In all this the influence of Gnosticism and of the Philonic doctrine of the Logos is unmistakable.

Modern-day Christians
What devout people of to-day call Christianity, a religion of the individual, a principle of personal salvation, would have been an offense and an absurdity to the whole of ancient Christendom.

  • Note: Modern Christians move the goalposts and are reluctant to delve into matters that reveal the truth about their religion's shaky origins.

What is being practiced as Christianity today, and especially fundamentalist Christianity, has literally no relationship, bearing, nor even the slightest resemblance to original Christianity - Alexander Holub (The Gospel Truth)