What is the
origin of the legend of the Christed Son who was born of a virgin on December
25th? I
am sure you are familiar with his legend which states that he was born in a
manger surrounded by shepherds and then grew up to be One with his Father in
Heaven. And most certainly you recall the sequence of events when this
Christed Son gathered together his important disciples before enduring his
death by torture and his subsequent resurrection. And, finally, there is the
scene at the end of his time on Earth when he prophesied his return and then
ascended into Heaven.
Now for my
question to you: Who amongst you is now mumbling under his or her breath “This
can only be the legend of the Christians’ Jesus Christ”? Well…to the rest
of you, I would like to inform you that many years before the birth of Jesus a
legend identical to his was the accepted life story of the Persian Son of God,
Mithras. And before Mithras, a very similar legend was ascribed to various
other Sons of God worldwide, including the Greek Dionysus, the Egyptian Osiris,
the Sumerian Dammuzi, and the Hindu Murugan. In fact, if we keep going back in
time many thousands of years earlier we will discover that this universal
legend actually began with the Green Man, the Son of a virgin Goddess who was
born, died, and finally resurrected each and every
year.
So how did
this oft-used legend eventually become chosen to be the legend of Jesus? Let us
begin when it was the life story of the ancient Green Man and work forward to
the time of the Christian Son of God.
The Ancient Green Man
During the
Neolithic Age,
which was the era when, as some say, “God was a Woman,” the Goddess and Her
Son, the Green Man, were venerated by people worldwide for annually bringing
forth the Earth’s material abundance. A universal legend about them arose that
began with the annual impregnation of the “virgin” Earth Goddess by the Sun,
the “Father in Heaven,” and the subsequent birth of Her Son, the Green Man.
This important event occurred annually at the time of the Winter Solstice, when
the spirit of the Green Man that had been slumbering underground in the
underworld was shaken back to life. But although his dormant spirit had been
stirred, it was not yet fully awake. This did not occur until a few days later,
on December 25th, when the Sun or Solar Spirit completely reversed its downward
path and took measurable steps along a northerly route.
This was an
important “As Above, So Below” event. It was believed the renewed and
revitalized Solar Spirit above in the Heavens had re-awakened and revitalized
the spirit of his Son below and inside the Earth. And now the future
Green Man could begin his annual gestation period with the womb of his mother,
the virginal Earth, in anticipation of receiving a new, resurrected body in the
spring.
The legend
of the Goddess and Green Man then skips to the Vernal Equinox, when the Green
Man is ready to finally emerge from the womb of his mother. This is the time
when the “male” light equals the “female” darkness, and their male-female
polarity fully unites to produce a fresh infusion of life force to cover and
fertilize the land. The fetal body of the Green Man is now ready to push out of
the womb of his mother Earth in the form of the new tender sprouts of spring.
Soon, his annual resurrection will be complete. This will occur on or around
the same day as our Easter, a modern holiday associated with the much more
recent resurrection of another Son of a virgin.
The legend
of the Green Man then covers the hot summer months, when the Son rapidly
matures as the rapidly maturing vegetative growth of nature. He matures so fast,
in fact, that the Green Man not only becomes One with his Father in Heaven, but
he even mates with and inseminates his own mother. Their co-habitation produces
a second infusion of the fructifying life force on Earth and manifests as a
second proliferation of vegetation and accompanying harvest. Ultimately, this
event would serve to hasten the Green Man’s demise, and soon he would die again
with the decaying vegetation and the falling of leaves of autumn. The cause of
his death? The sacerdotal interpreters of his legend would later assert that it
occurred because of the sins of humanity. It was believed through original sin
humanity had given up not only its own right, but the right of all life on
Earth, to achieve eternal life.
At the close
of the Neolithic Age, when civilizations arose in place of a purely agrarian
culture, the ancient legend of the Goddess and Green Man expanded and took on
religious overtones. It became a standard myth that was annually recited and
dramatically staged in the temples and the mystery schools of the new fledgling
cities, nations and empires. A feature of its evolving storyline was that the
Green Man now took on the additional role of King of the World, which he
governed under the authority of his Earth mother. And in some renditions of the
legend the Son was said to have met his death in the fall at the hands of his
unscrupulous brother or a dark, evil lord.
Ishtar and Tammuz
In the
cities of Meopotamia the Neolithic legend transformed into the story of
the Goddess as Inanna or Ishtar who annually gave birth to a Green Man Son and
future king under the name of Dammuzi or Tammuz. It was said that
Dammuzi/Tammuz grew up to mate with his own mother while also governing the
Earth for her. In order that this ancient legend be reflected in their culture,
the inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent enthroned rulers of their city-states
who were acknowledged to be the embodiments of Dammuzi/Tammuz and the royal
servants of Goddess Inanna/Ishtar.
“Unearthed
in the main room of the palace of Arad. It depicts two almost identical images
of a man with a branch- or sheaf shaped head, one lying down and the other
standing. It may represent the fertility god Tammuz or a similar deity, who
died in summer and was resurrected in spring, Museum of Israel.” (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
This was
also true in Egypt, where the ruling pharaohs were regarded to be incarnations
of Horus, the Son of Goddess Isis, and governed under her authority. But in the
land of Khemit, although the spirit of the incumbent pharaoh was Horus, his
physical body was formed by Seth, the god who governed the crystallization of
energy into physical flesh. Together, Horus and Seth as the “Twins” created and
comprised the physical body of the pharaoh, thus making the Egyptian monarchs
modern representatives of the first and greatest king, Green Man Osiris.
Egyptian
deity, Osiris as Green Man. (Public Domain)
Like the
ancient Green Man, Osiris was similarly said to die and become resurrected
annually in concert with the life and death of nature’s vegetation. Osiris’s
annual resurrection ceremony took place during the annual flood of the Nile
River, when the first tender sprouts of nature initially stuck their fragile
heads above the surface of the Earth.
Semele and Dionysus
One version
of Osiris’s popular Egyptian myth had him annually murdered by his jealous and
evil brother Set each fall. This event was reflected in the legend of Osiris’s
counterpart in Greece, Green Man Dionysus, who was annually slain by his
relatives, the evil Titans, but later resurrected. Similar to Green Man Osiris,
the mother of Dionysus was an Earth Goddess named Semele, meaning “Earth,” and
his father was Zeus, the Father in Heaven.
Dionysus
as the Green Man (Public Domain)
In order to
awaken Dionysus from his slumber at the time of the Winter Solstice, female
representatives of the Goddess would loudly bang pots and pans as they danced
their way in ritual procession to the snowy summit of Mount Parnassus.
And then after receiving his new set of clothes at the following spring
equinox, the Divine Son would cavort in nature along with his own reflection
and alter-ego, Pan, a name meaning “the All,” as in “All of Nature.”
Like Osiris,
Dionysus became the King of the World, and like his Egyptian counterpart,
Dionysus was reputed to have once completely covered the globe while teaching
his diverse subjects the art of making and ritually consuming wine.
A
young Dionysus. (Public Domain)
Wine made
from grapes was recognized as the blood of nature, and since Dionysus was all
of nature, it was his blood. Thus began the ritual of a holy communion through
consuming the body and blood of the Divine Son.
When the
Greek conqueror Alexander the Great arrived in India he was surrounded by
an abundance of rituals and venerated effigies of a Divine Son that reminded
him of his beloved Dionysus. These reminders were so prevalent that that
Alexander and his men were finally compelled to exclaim, “We know your Divine
Son, he is also ours. We call him Dionysus.”
Dionysus
with Thrysus Spear. (Public Domain)
In fact, so
close was the Hindu Divine Son to Dionysus that a story arose that the Greek
Son had himself either been born in India or spent much of his early upbringing
there before going to Greece. A town named Nyssa, which is the same name as
Dionysus’s birth town in the west, was subsequently discovered in India and the
Divine Son of the Greeks and Hindus became synonymous. The name Dionysus
denotes “the God of Nyssa.”
Similar to
his counterpart, the forever young and effeminate Dionysus, the Hindus’ Divine
Son was the pre-pubescent Murugan, meaning the “beautiful.”
His other
names included Sanat Kumara and Karttikeya, a title denoting “Son of the
Pleiades.” Both the Greek Dionysus and the Hindu Karttikeya were intimately
associated with the Seven Sisters, who during their infancy manifested
physically as their nursemaids. And like Dionysus, Karttikeya/Murugan had been
born from the Earth mother, the Hindu Shakti, meaning “Energy,” through mating
with the invisible Father in Heaven, Shiva.
Dionysus
on cross with seven stars of the Pleiades above him. (Public Domain)
Both
Dionysus and Murugan became monarchs of Earth, but they were also recognized as
the greatest of warriors who carried and fought with versions of their favored
weapon, the spear. Dionysus carried the Thrysus Spear and Murugan met his
opponents on the battlefield with his Vel Spear. Both Dionysus and Murugan
eventually became the commanders of great armies of righteous soldiers that
fought for Zeus or Shiva, the Father in Heaven.
Dionysus
with Thrysus Spear. (Public Domain)
Murugan
with Vel Spear (Public Domain)
The Solar Heritage of Mitra
While
Alexander and his men were linking Karttikeya and Dionysus, the counterpart of
these two Divine Sons was being venerated in both India and then Persia. This
was the Christed Son, Mitra. The name Mitra denotes friendship, contracts,
mediation and balance.
The
Solar God, Mitras. (Public Domain)
It refers to
the balance that is created through the union of the universal male-female
polarity. Like Karttikeya and Dionysus, Mitra was a product of the universal
polarity. His mother was of the Earth and his Solar Father in Heaven was known
by the name of Ahura Mazda. Both Murugan and Mitra explicitly displayed their
solar heritage through their distinctive solar flags, as well as by counting
the colorful cock as their most sacred animal. Recognized worldwide as the
quintessential solar animal, the cock daily crows to ensure the rising of the
morning Sun.
Mithra
(left) in a 4th-century investiture sculpture at Taq-e Bostan in western Iran.
(CC BY 2.5)
Mitra was
eventually taken west by the Persians and then became known as Mithras, the
beloved monarch-warrior-general of the Roman Legions. Mitra as Mithras became
identified as the spirit embodied by the many Roman Emperors who sat upon the
throne of the world while proclaiming themselves to be its universal king. By
another name, Mithras was Sol Invictus, an epithet synonymous with the Solar
Father in Heaven. In order to honor his beloved Mithras, the Emperor
Charlemagne chose his day of Sunday, the day of the Sun, to be the holiest day
of the week.
Jesus, incarnation of the Green Man
Now it is
time to draw in the legend of Jesus, believed to be the Christian Son of God,
who remains today one of the last incarnations of the ancient Green Man.
His rise to fame began at the height of Mithras’s popularity, when a future
Roman Soldier named Saul was born in Tarsus of Cilicia, the great bastion of
Mithras worship in the Middle East. From a young age, Saul or Paul, was
indoctrinated into the mysteries of Mithras by the Roman Soldiers, whom he
daily served as their tent maker. While growing up in Tarsus, Paul learned from
these soldiers that Mithras had been born in a manger to a virgin on December
25th and that he was surrounded by shepherds. He learned that Mithras was One
with Ahura Mazda, the Father in Heaven, and had arrived on Earth to do his
Father’s work. And he was informed that after a prolonged battle with
Ahriman, the Evil One, Mithras gathered together 12 devotees for a Last Supper,
during which a communion of wine and bread representing his blood and body were
consumed by all those present. Mithras died soon after this event, but then he
arose from the dead three days later. Then, while preparing for his Ascension,
Mithras prophesied his return at the End of Time for one last battle against
Ahriman.
When Paul
was old enough he was sent to Jerusalem with other Roman Soldiers to guard some
of the Jewish temples in the city. According to the early Christian historian
Epiphanius, Paul was not a Jew when he subsequently arrived in Jerusalem, but
converted to the faith after falling in love with the daughter of a Jewish
priest and seeking her hand in marriage. When his proposal was subsequently
rejected, Paul took out his rage on many Jews, including the Ebionites, the
“Poor Ones,” a Jewish sect that championed the life story of a recently
deceased Jewish holy man named Jeshua ben Joseph. When Paul learned the
entire legend he soon began to associate Jeshua with the Persian Son. His
suspicions of their special link grew stronger when he remembered a Persian
prophecy – that Mithras would return to Earth at the End of Time for one last
battle with Ahriman. According to the temple priests of Jerusalem, the world
was at the end of the Age of Aries and the End of Times had indeed arrived, so
it made perfect sense that Mithras would have incarnated as Jeshua.
The most
convincing event that influenced Paul’s thinking was yet to come, however. This
occurred during his journey to Damascus, when the Roman Soldier was blinded by
an overwhelming light, and thrown off his horse. As an inveterate lover of
Mithras, Paul would have instantly associated the intense light as being a
manifestation of his beloved solar deity. And then, when a voice emerged from
the light calling itself Jeshua and imploring him not to persecute his
followers anymore, Paul knew for certain that Mithras must indeed be synonymous
with Jeshua.
Detail,
The Conversion of St. Paul. Paul and companions are knocked to the ground
during the profound event. (Public Domain)
When Paul
retired from military service soon afterwards he traveled throughout the Middle
East in order to alert the gentiles of his discovery—that the world’s savior
had come and gone—and in the process of his travels he created the new religion
of “Christianity.” Within this new faith Mithras was fully assimilated into
Jesus, who then wielded the life story, titles and characteristics once solely
ascribed to the ancient Persian Son. His new titles included “One with the
Father” and “the One and the Only Son of God.”
Thanks to
Saint Paul and his Christ Myth, the ancient Green Man received a new suit of
clothes. As Jesus, the ancient Green Man could now begin his tenure as one of
the most adored religious figures the world has ever known.
Mark Amaru Pinkham
is the author of six books that cover any of the world’s mysteries. They
include: The Return of the
Serpents of Wisdom, The Truth Behind the Christ Myth, Guardians of the Holy
Grail, World Gnosis: The Coming Gnostic Civilization, and his most
recent book, Sedona: City of the Star People. See the
entire catalogue at: http://store.gnostictemplars.org/catalog/
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"The
reproaching cry of heretic, infidel, atheist, etc., will be raised against the
author of these lectures, by every fiery intolerant bigot into whose hand they
may fall. But he alone is the true infidel who forsakes the laws of his nature,
and gives up his mind to a belief in fabulous and demoralizing legends, which
contradict all experience, and stand in opposition to the testimony of his own
sense and reason."
-Christian Mythology Unveiled, 1842
While the Western world begins its new millennium, little has changed in terms of religious understanding, and the world
in general continues to be divided largely along the lines of faith. The
proselytizers, proponents and propagandists of these various faiths persist in
fighting over bodies and souls, in an endless religious tug-of-war that has
ruined culture, wrecked minds and wreaked havoc. It also invades privacy and
stomps all over individual rights. Religion is motivated by fear and
insecurity: People want to believe, in God, Jesus, Krishna, Buddha—something,
anything, so as not to feel so alone, helpless and forgotten.
Life is a cruel,
sadistic torment in countless places around the globe. This fact should create
more questions than it does about whether or not there is any good god in
charge of everything and whether or not religion has any value in the first
place. Yet, in the face of tragedy, rationality and logic fail to win out over
powerlessness that desperately needs to believe in the Other, somewhere
"out there." What this insight reveals is that God is a popular
concept not because people have reasoned it through and proved it true, but
because humans are terrified of the opposite notion: If God is not, all is for
naught.
The concepts of God and religion have varied greatly over the millennia,
in the sense that they have been developed within cultural contexts, with odd
details and interpretations based chiefly on race, gender, language and
environment. Thus, goddess worship rather than god worship dominated in a
variety of places globally for thousands of years, and gods and goddesses often
have been of the same color and mentality, and speaking the same language, as
the culture in which they are developed. These variances have led to a
horrendous amount of suffering and terror, as fanatics of sundry religions,
sects, cults, etc., have believed themselves superior to all the rest, and have
attempted to force themselves upon everyone else. This aggressive behavior also
is out of insecurity, as beliefs are flimsy things, and it is imagined that the
more people who believe, the more these beliefs will be real. Not so, unless as
a phantasmagoria, a nightmare....
The Intolerance of Religion
In this day and age, when the world becomes smaller than ever before, there is an increasing need for investigation and education in
religion, as it is one of the most important and volatile of all human issues.
Save for the few enlightened periods and places, throughout history people of
faiths different from the ruling religion have been persecuted mercilessly.
Oddly enough, the Roman Empire, which was notorious for hardship and horror,
nevertheless exercised religious tolerance to an extreme degree; yet, cultures
with the pretense of being more civilized than Rome terrorize and kill those
who do not follow the prescribed path and preferred god. Thankfully, some
nations have achieved a standard of not persecuting and prosecuting members of
minority religions and non-religious freethinkers for "blasphemy" and
"heresy." However, in many countries freethinkers, secularists,
agnostics and atheists remain pariahs and outcastes, even though many of the
world's greatest thinkers have been of this inclination.
Among the countless atrocities committed in the name of God and religion
over the millennia looms large the practice of human sacrifice. This bloody and
common ritual allowed for marauding Christian armies to justify the cultural
destruction and genocide perpetrated in so many nations globally, including in
the Americas, as a prime example. In other words, in order to stop human
sacrifice, Christian armies sacrificed millions of humans. Moreover, the god of
the Old Testament was hardly a paragon of peace and love, and the list of
atrocities gleefully boasted about in the Bible is long indeed. As British
royal physician Dr. Thomas Inman states in Ancient Faiths and Modern:
"…Is there
any human king who ever promulgated a more bloody order than did Jehovah
Sabaoth, the God which, amongst the Hebrews, corresponded to the Mexican god of
war, when he commissioned Samuel to say to Saul (1 Sam. 15:3), 'Now go and
smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; slay both man and woman,
infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass!' After such a destruction of
the Midianites as is narrated in Numb. 31, the fearful slaughter, effected by
Crusaders, of Jews, Turks, and heretics, is scarcely worth mentioning.
"…and surely,
when our Bible, which is treasured by so many as the only rule of faith amongst
us, details such horrible religious slaughters as are to be found in its pages,
and abounds with persecuting precepts, we had better not talk too much about
Mexican sacrifice. Was there any Aztec minister so brutal in his religious fury
as Samuel was (1 Sam. 15:33), who hewed Agag into pieces? The Mexican was
merciful to his victim; the Hebrew was like a modern Chinese executioner, who
kills the criminal by degrees….
"Surely the
Christians have too much sin amongst themselves to cast a stone at the inhabitants
of Mexico.
"We find a very strong offset to the horror of Aztec cruelty in the
very Bible, which we regard as the mainstay of our religious world. What, for
example, is the essential difference between a Mexican monarch sacrificing one
or ten thousand men taken in battle, and Moses commanding the extermination of
the inhabitants of Canaan, and only saving, out of Midian, thirty-two thousand
virgins, that they might minister to the lust of Hebrew followers? What, again,
are we to say of David's God, who would not turn away from his anger from Judah
until seven sons of the preceding king had been offered up as victims? And
lastly--thought still more awful! what must we say of the fundamental doctrines
of Christianity, that Jehovah Himself sacrificed His own Son by a cruel death;
and not only so, but that He had intercourse with an earthly woman, and had
thus a son by her, for the sole purpose of bringing about his murder?"
Furthermore, while there certainly was a tremendous amount of barbarity
perpetrated by Mexicans, the Spanish propagandists have been accused of
exaggerating the brutality in order to justify committing atrocities of their
own, at which they were well skilled, per their own chroniclers.
Does Martyrdom Make a Religion True?
In another specious argument it is claimed that a religion is determined
to be "superior" and "genuine" based
on "miracles" and the number of people who have been willing to die
for it. Concerning the "martyrdom" argument, often used by
Christians, Walter Cassels remarks:
"Every religion has had its martyrs, every error its devoted
victims. Does the marvellous endurance of the Hindu, whose limbs wither after
years of painful persistence in vows to his Deity, prove the truth of
Brahmanism? Or do the fanatical believers who cast themselves under the wheels
of the car of Jagganath establish the soundness of their creed? Do the Jews,
who for centuries bore the fiercest contumelies [insults] of the world, and were
persecuted, hunted and done to death by every conceivable torture for
persisting in their denial of the truth of the Incarnation, Resurrection and
Ascension, and in their rejection of Jesus Christ, do they thus furnish a
convincing argument for the truth of their belief and the falsity of
Christianity?… History is full of the records of men who have honestly believed
every kind of error and heresy, and have been steadfast to the death, through
persecution and torture, in their mistaken belief. There is nothing so
inflexible as superstitious fanaticism, and persecution, instead of
extinguishing it, has invariably been the most certain means of its
propagation. The sufferings of the Apostles, therefore, cannot prove anything
beyond their own belief, and the question what it was they really did believe
and suffered for is by no means as simple as it sounds."
Even in ancient times rational critics found the idea of martyrdom
appalling. As Porphyry, the Pagan writer of the third century, remarked,
"…it is not befitting the will of God--nor even the wishes of a good man—that
thousands should be tortured for their beliefs…"
Moreover, Muslims have regularly martyred themselves—would a Christian
then agree that Islam is the "truth faith?" Since millions of
so-called Pagans have been willing to die for their faith, by this
faulty martyrdom logic Paganism must be the "true faith!" In
the final analysis, martyrdom proves nothing, except the fervor of the
believer. Also, it should be kept in mind that, for many of us, those
"Pagan" people who were tortured, killed and had their property
stolen and cultures destroyed in the name of God, by whatever religious mania,
were our ancestors. When Christians, for example, rant about
"heathens" and "pagans," they are talking about our
ancestors and, in many cases, their own. This
"ancestor-hatred" is in exact opposition to practices found in many
places around the world, dating back thousands of years, and has led to a
tremendous amount of disrespect for ancient traditions, as well as for our own
family members....
The Past Destroyed
When it comes to religion, alternative perspectives are considered
highly suspect and are subject to intense scrutiny, held up to
impossible standards of proof, while the accepted paradigm is lightly handled
and can pass with little or no evidence at all. Those who step outside the box
are dunned with requests for credentials and bibliographies, while believers in
the mainstream ideology require no credentials except belief and seem not to
need to read much at all, including the very "sacred scriptures" they
defend. In any case, when one is doing investigative research, dating back
thousands of years, one must use a variety of sources, ancient and modern. If
one uses works too modern, the hue and cry is for "primary sources!"
If one uses material "too old," the criticism is that it is
"outdated." Hence, the scholar is put in a double bind, while the
critic is never satisfied. In such a picky environment, it is a wonder anything
important ever gets written or read.
The "outdated" argument becomes specious when it is understood
that the work of more "modern" authors is nonetheless based on those
who proceeded. To become a scholar one must study as much as is
possible; obviously, whatever one is studying must have come before. The
current studies are based on the past studies. No modern writer can
possibly be called a scholar if he or she has not studied the works of the
past; hence, he or she is using what detractors will call "outdated"
material. Since true scholarship is founded upon the studies of the centuries
and millennia past, it could all be deemed "outdated" by these
illogical and impossible standards. It should not be necessary to point out
this fact, but it often seems as if sense were not common at all, and every
little detail, every meaning between the lines, must be clearly spelled out or
else misrepresentation, misconstruing and misunderstanding will follow. In any
case, the date of a book is frequently irrelevant, as truth is timeless.
Moreover, the so-called outdated scholarship on the origins of religion
in general, and Christianity in particular, that arose in the past few
centuries is actually superior not only in depth but also in perspective
to what is often produced today. Furthermore, these various authorities
preserved information regarding literature and iconography since destroyed—and
there has been a great deal of destruction during the past three centuries,
including two World Wars. Indeed, the reconstruction of the ancient world and
its religion has been difficult to determine because of the passage of time and
the vast desolation of cultures worldwide. The eradication of evidence has been
so rampant and thorough that it is amazing anything can be said with any
certainty at all. However, enough does survive, in bits and pieces, that we can
gain a good idea of what was going on, at least in the past few thousand years.
When critics clamor for "primary sources," the din actually serves to
raise up the fact of this criminal and shameful cultural destruction, the
purpose of which frequently was to cover the tracks of conspirators gleefully
plagiarizing others' religions and falsely presenting their own as "divine
revelation." The "primary source" argument can be used in response
by asking, where are the primary sources that prove Christianity and the
existence of Jesus Christ? Where are the precious originals of the gospels,
written by the very hands of the apostles and other witnesses to Jesus's
alleged advent? The earliest New Testament manuscripts in existence can be
dated only to the third or fourth century. Not only are there no primary
sources proving Christian claims, but what texts we do possess have been
altered tens of thousands of times.
Ancient Cultural Commonality
One significant example of how
cultural destruction has prevented us from gaining ancient knowledge and obtaining "primary sources" can be found in Central
America, where the invading Spaniards were astonished to find a
religious/governing system nearly identical to both Judaism and Christianity.
This fact of similarity led crazed Christian authorities to destroy thousands
of Mexican codices containing much evidence that Christianity was not
"unique" or "original." Since this discovery, the subject
has been ignored, especially in the past century, during which time scholarship
on religion and mythology has taken a nosedive after a backlash by those vested
in the Christ myth.
Fortunately, despite the massive destruction enough remains to
reconstruct a picture of the pre-Christian Mexican life. In 1831, the eminent
Lord Kingsborough published a multi-volume series called Antiquities of
Mexico, in which he outlined the numerous correspondences between the
Christian religion and that of the pre-Columbian Central Americans. The Mexican
mythology included an omniscient, omnipresent god, who was, like the typical
monotheistic god, "invisible, incorporeal, a being of absolute perfection
and perfect purity," as Dr. Inman says. In the same manner as the
"polytheistic monotheism" of other cultures, including the
Judeo-Christian, this "one god" was divided into angels and devils.
Regarding the Mexican religion, Lewis Spence remarks:
"The various
classes of the priesthood were in the habit of addressing the several gods to
whom they ministered as 'omnipotent,' 'endless,' 'invisible,' 'the one god
complete in perfection and unity,' and 'the Maker and Moulder of All.'"
Concerning the Mesoamerican system, Inman states:
"This great
Mexican divinity was essentially the same as the Jehovah Tsebaoth of the
Hebrew Scriptures… His portrait is identical, apparently, with the commonly
received likeness of Jesus…."
Other similarities
between the Mexican and Christian religions including baptism and the
end-of-October festival of "All Souls" or "All Saints Day."
The Mexican fast for 40 days as a tribute to the god was essentially the same
as the fasting of Jesus "forty days upon a mountain." Also, like
Jesus and Lucifer, the Mexican god Quetzalcoatl was the "morning
star." Furthermore, the Mexicans revered the cross, upon which their god
was nailed. Likewise, the Madonna and Child were adored, and many Mexican
sayings find their equivalents in the Judeo-Christian bible. Moreover, the
Mexican priesthood was startlingly similar to that of Catholicism, with
"fathers" who acted as confessors listening to penitents' sin and who
prescribed prayers, penance and fasting. Like that of Catholicism, the Mexican
priesthood exacted tithes in order to support itself, and priests and nuns
constituted the populace's teachers. Other commonalities between the
Judeo-Christian and Mexican religions, concerning in specific human sacrifice,
so notoriously found in Mesoamerica, but not widely perceived as existing
within Judeo-Christianity, are outlined thus by Inman:
"The
necessity of sacrifice, as atonement for sin, forms an essential, though
bloody, part of both the Hebrew and the Christian faiths, and history has long
taught us that the slaughter of a man, woman, or child, formed, in the
estimation of the Ancient Greeks, and other nations, one of the most acceptable
of the forms of homage paid by a human being to the Creator. This idea is at
the very basis of the Christian theology…. In Hebrews 10:12, we find this
doctrine very distinctly enunciated, in the words, 'this man, after he had
offered one sacrifice of sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God'…
Again, in Heb. 9:26, 'once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away
sin by the sacrifice of himself;' and in Heb. 10:10, 'we are sanctified through
the offering of the body of Jesus Christ;' and in 9:28, 'Christ once offered to
bear the sins of many.'"
The human sacrifice ritual in Mexico was very similar to that of the
biblical Jews and that which is recorded in the gospel story. This fact is
sadly ironic considering the excuse used for centuries for destroying these
cultures in the first place: to wit because they practiced human sacrifice. In
reality, the destruction was motivated in large part because of the
correspondences between the Mexican and Catholic cultures, as well as the quest
for booty.
Pre-Christian Christianity in Asia
As distressing to the Catholic Church as was the discovery of their
mythos and ritual in Mexico was finding it in Asia, from
the Near to Far East. In the 19th century, Catholic missionary Abbé
Huc traveled to Asia, where he encountered rites and rituals startlingly
similar to those of Catholicism. In his book Christianity in China, Tartary,
and Thibet, Huc makes the following surprising statements:
"The Gospel
of the Christian religion, when preached successively to all the nations of the
earth, excited no astonishment, for it had been everywhere prophesied, and was
universally expected. A Divine Incarnation, the birth of a Man-God, was the
common faith of humanity--the great dogma that under forms, more or less
mysterious, appears in the oldest modes of worship, and may be traced in the
most ancient religions. The Messiah, the Redeemer, promised to fallen man in
the terrestrial Paradise, had been announced uninterruptedly from age to age;
and the nation specially chosen to be the depository of this promise had spread
hope abroad among men for centuries before its fulfillment; such was, under
Providence, the result of the great revolutions which agitated the Jews, and
dispersed them over all Asia and the world at large."
Abbé Huc is thus admitting that the basic gospel story was found
"everywhere," ages ago, in the "most ancient religions."
Fortunately, Huc was honest enough to acknowledge the profound correspondences
between Christianity and this pre-Christian worship he discovered, which proved
the unoriginality of Christianity. In order to explain these similarities,
which were profound and not casual, Huc asserts that "agitated Jews"
spread the fables, and he then puts forth the claim made repeatedly by
apologists over the ages, i.e., that these tales were prophecy fulfilled in
Christ:
"When the
Christ appeared, it was not only in Judea, among the Hebrews, that he was
looked for; he was expected also at Rome, among the Goths and Scandinavians, in
India, in China, in High Asia especially, where almost all religious systems
are founded on the dogma of a Divine Incarnation. Long before the coming of the
Messiah, a reconciliation of man with a Saviour, a King of righteousness and
peace, had been announced throughout the world. This expectation is often
mentioned in the Puranas, the mythological books of India."
This paragraph is extremely revealing; yet, what is not disclosed is
that in "High Asia," this Divine Incarnation had already arrived,
several times in fact, as the many Buddhas and incarnations of Indian gods,
such as Krishna. Moreover, a Christian missionary pronouncing the sacred
scriptures of another culture "mythological books," while evidently
maintaining his own to be the "historical Word of God," represents
propaganda and the puerile game of "my god is bigger and better than yours."
Concerning the resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity, Huc says:
"Those who have studied the system of Buddhism in Upper Asia, have
been often struck with the analogy, in many points, between its doctrines,
moral precepts, and liturgy, and those of Christian Churches. Unbelievers have
exulted at these resemblances, and have inferred immediately that Christianity
was copied from the religious systems of India and China."
Again, basic biblical stories and doctrines were found widespread in
these vast and isolated regions, established long prior to the arrival of
Christian missionaries. The missionary Huc, being a pious man no doubt
terrified of what would and eventually did happen to him—excommunication—could
not admit to Christian plagiarism, and thus sought to establish the opposite
reason for why "Christianity" or the basic astrotheological religion
was to be found in Asian countries, before missionaries had arrived there.
Hence, he claimed that the "descendants of Noah," having spread out
from Judea centuries before the Christian era, were accountable for the
correspondences....
The Bible As History—Not!
The reality is that the basic gospel tale and numerous other major
biblical stories are found in a variety of cultures, before the
Christian and Jewish eras. The reason for this scenario is not because the same
"history" played out over and over again in various ages and places,
like some bizarre and bloody film loop, but because these stories are myths
that reflect natural, recurrent phenomena that are perceivable worldwide.
Modern science and scholarship, based on numerous archaeological discoveries,
biblical criticism and comparative mythology, have shown that the Bible is in
large part myth.
Included in the most recent developments is the work of Israeli
archaeologists Ze'ev Herzog and Israel Finkelstein, the latter being the
director of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University and the
co-author with Neil Asher Silberman of The Bible Unearthed. Also holding
down the fort of biblical criticism formerly occupied by the German and English
is the Danish school, including Thomas Thompson, author of The Mythic Past:
Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel. This fact of biblical
non-historicity has been known for centuries, however, and was particularly
revealed in the 19th century. One of these 19th-century
scholars was Dr. Inman, who wrote:
"We have
demonstrated, as far as such a matter is capable of demonstration, that the Old
Testament, which has descended to us from the Jews, is not the mine of truth
which it has been supposed by so many to be: that not only it is not a
revelation given by God to man, but that it is founded upon ideas of the
Almighty which are contradicted by the whole of animate and inanimate nature.
We showed that its composition was wholly of human origin, and that its authors
had a very mean and degrading notion of the Lord of Heaven and Earth. We
proved, what indeed [Bishop] Colenso [1814-1883] and a host of German critics
have demonstrated in another fashion, that its historical portions are not to
be depended upon; that its stories are of no more real value than so many fairy
tales or national legends; that its myths can now be readily traced to Grecian,
Babylonian, and Persian sources; that its miracles are as apocryphal as those
told of Vishnu and Siva; and its prophecies absolutely worthless. We proved,
moreover, that the remote antiquity of its authorship has been greatly
exaggerated; that the stories of the creation, of the flood, of Abraham, of
Jacob, of the descent into, and the exodus from, Egypt, of the career of Moses
and the Jews in the desert, of Joshua and his soldiers, of the judges and their
clients, are all apocryphal, and were fabricated at a late period of Jewish
history…; that the so-called Mosaic laws were not known until long after the
time of David…
We showed that the
Jewish conception of the Almighty, and of His heavenly host, did not materially
differ from the Greek idea of Jupiter and his inferior deities… We called
attention to the apparently utter ignorance of the Jews that certain laws of
nature existed, and of their consequent belief that defeat, disease, famine,
slaughter, pestilence, and the like, were direct punishments of ceremonial or
other guilt; while victory, wealth, virility, and old age were special and decided
proofs of Divine favour. We showed that the Jews were, in general, an abject
but very boastful race, and their spiritual guides—the so-called prophets—were
constantly promising, but always vainly, a striking manifestation of the
Almighty's power in favour of the Hebrews…that histories were fabricated to
give colour to these statements… we showed, moreover, that the race was
imitative and readily adopted the religious ideas and practices of those who
conquered them…. In fine, we showed that the Hebrews could not sustain the
claim they made to be the especial people of God, and that their writings are
of no more value, as records of absolute truth, or of Divine revelation, than
the books of the Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Hindoos, Chinese or the more modern
Mahometans."
As we can see, over a century ago what is just being exposed to the
public was already known, in detail, and was accurately summarized, even
without the benefit of modern archaeological discoveries. Concerning biblical
imposture, Inman further remarks:
"…according
to what is known as Mosaic law, it was a crime punishable by a lingering death
to gather sticks on a Sabbath day (Num. 15:32-36); but it was no crime to kill
all the males and women of a whole nation, and retain the maidens for private
prostitution and for the use of the priest (Num. 31: 17, 18, 40, 41). In such a
nation it was no crime to commit forgery—and of all the bearers of false
witness, none exceeded in ancient times the Jewish writers in the Bible—but in
mercantile England, the former has been at one time punished with death, and
the latter by ignominious penalties."
The sentiments expressed by Inman and so many others during the 19th
century came on the heels of the higher biblical criticism that so handily
exposed the mythical nature of biblical texts. Indeed, the cacophony concerning
the Bible, a book that had been violently compelled upon Europeans for
centuries, was loud and nearly universal at that time. It is clear is that
these critics, who included freethinkers, Christians and Jews alike, upon
discovering that they had been duped, understandably became angry. Instead of
junking the old, cruel, bogus and bigoted system, and creating a new and
improved ethic, however, the vested interests regrouped and fired back, with
the result that critics were stifled and the scholarship subsequent to WWII did
not approach that of the previous two centuries. The ridicule, by those who
believed the ridiculous, and the economic pressure, by those who held the purse
strings, won out. It is also apparent that the educational system was
deliberately dumbed down.
Before the reader enters into a brave new world, she or he is asked to
inquire of her or himself: Do you truly want to continue to have religious
"enemies?" Do you really wish to think of your friends, family
members and neighbors, who may not believe as you do, as being
"lost," "infidel" or "evil," and to live in
suspicion and fear of them? Or feeling superior to them? Would it not be more
pleasant and refreshing to know that, behind mythological and fantastical
accretions, your beliefs and morals are essentially the same as those of your
so-called adversaries? That most of us are human beings trying to manage and
make sense of the world the best we can? That we are, in fact, one family
sharing one home? In reality, the study of the origin of religion demonstrates
that, despite the obvious divisiveness of modern religions, many cultures worldwide
share a common heritage, one more fascinating and wondrous than has been
perceived or depicted over the past few millennia. It is to this engrossing and
shared inheritance that we shall now turn, with a mind to understanding our
past and progressing in our future.
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