From: Ammond Shadowcraft To: All Members Msg #128, 04-Apr-88 10:44edt Subject: Pagan Christs The Sacrifical God man How did the Christian mythos arise? Where did it come from? The Christian myth is almost totally Pagan in origin. I used to think that anything outside the Judeo/Christian/Moslem Belief System or worldview was Pagan. Such is not the case. The two main features of the CBS are the Eucharist and Sacrifice of a God man. These two features were well known and well loved by Pagan mystery cults centuries before the Christian Cults intergrated them into the Gospels. The Eucharist goes way back into history and is based upon the ritual consumption of the God man. Osiris, Dionysus, Attis and many others were ritually consumed. The practice dates back to prehistory when a human sacrifice was identified with the God (perhaps a Vegetative God) and was sacrificed and eaten. Over the ages human sacrifice was found detestable. Animals were then substituted and sacrificed as the ritual identifier of the God which was then followed by grain offerings, breads shaped into the form of the God, sometimes in the shapes of natural items (sun, moon, etc.). The mythos of the Jewish Christ integrated this practice into it's mysteries. There is strong reason for this. For some 200 plus years before the time recorded for Jesus the Greeks and their mystery cults invaded and changed Israel for all time. A war was instituted to diminish or wipeout the Hellenizing influence. Part of the Hellenizing influence was an effort to update or change the Jewish religion to something more applicable to the times. After the Maccabbes War the Hellenizing cultist were driven underground; right to the heart of the Jewish mystical culture. Hence the Greek influence upon the myth of Jesus. The sacrifice of the God man (Jesus, Attis, Adonis, Osiris) was a well known and well loved feature also. In fact it was necessary to have a willing sacrifice before a Eucharist could be performed. When the sacrifice was not willing the legs and sometimes arms of the sacrifice were broken to make it look like the sacrifice was willing (not struggling against the sacrificers). Jesus was a willing sacrifice. Images of Attis (Tammuz/Dummuzi) were nailed or impaled upon a pine tree. The Jews knew this and wrote "Cursed is he who hangs upon a tree." A goat was substituted for a boy in sacrifice to Dionysus at Potniae and a hart for a virgin at Laodicea. King Athamas had been called upon to sacrifice his first born son by the Delphic Oracle, Melenloas sacrificed two children in Egypt when stayed by contrary winds; three Persian boys were offered up at the battle of Salamis. It was only in the time of Hadrian that the annual human sacrifice to Zeus was abolished at Salamis in Cyprus. The God man Jesus was hung upon a tree; he was also the lamb of God. As such the sacrifice and Eucharist of the God man Jesus is purely Pagan in origin. Part of the older Pagan sacrifices was in the King sacrificing his only begotten son. Jesus was the only begotten son of the King of Israel, sacrificed to take away the sins of the world. This practice was overturned in the myth of Abraham and Issac when it was found detestable and injurious to the tribe or kingdom. Yet the God man Jesus was sacrificed in the flesh. This was done to appeal to the underground Greek mystery cults who had much in common with the Jewish Christian Cultist. "During centuries of this evolution, the Jewish people tasted many times the bitterness of despair and the profound doubt denounced by the last of the prophets. In periods when many went openly over to Hellenism, it could not be but the the ancient rites of the Semitic race were revived, as some are declared to have been in earlier times of trouble. Among the rites of expiation and propititiation, none stood traditionally higher than the sacrifice of the king, or the king's son. The Jews saw such an act performed for them, as it were, when the Romans under Anthony, at Herod's wish, scourged, crucified [lit. bound to stake], and beheaded Antigonous, the last of the Asmonean priest kings in 37 B.C." _Pagan_Christs_ page 44,45 by J. M. Robertson The mode of sacrifice was predetermined by previous Pagan doctrine. The type of sacrifice was also predetermined by Pagan doctrine. Both the sacrifice of the king, and the king's son were incorporated into the Gospel myth. The God man Jesus is both the King of the Jews and the son of God, the king of Israel. As stated before the sacrifice of the king or king's son was found injurious to the state. Before animal and grain sacrifices, criminals and prisoners of war were substituted. Yet the criminal had to be identified with the king. This was done by putting royal robes on the sacrifice and parading the sacrifice around, calling it the king. "The number three was of mystic significance in many parts of the East. The Dravidians of India sacrificed three victims to the Sun-god. In western as in eastern Asia, the number three would have its votaries in respect of trinitartian concepts as well as the primary notions of 'the heavens, the earth, and the underworld.' Traditionally, the Syrian rite called for a royal victim. The substitution of a criminal for the king or kings son was repugnet, however, to the higher doctrine that the victim be unblemished. To solve this problem one of the malefactors was distinguished from the other criminals by a ritual of mock-crowning and robing in the spirit of 'sympathetic magic'. By parading him as king, and calling the others what indeed they were, it was possible to attain the semblence of a truly august sacrifice." _Pagan_Christs_, by J.M. Robertson page 45 There is nothing in this mythos that did not originate in other cultures. "We can only conclude that the death ritual of the Christian creed was framed in a pagan environment and embodies some of the most widespread ideas of Pagan religion. the two aspects in which the historic Christ is typically presented to his worshipers, those of his infancy and death, are typically Pagan." _Pagan_Christs_ by J.M Roberts, page 52. What about the man Jesus then? Was he divine? Did he exist? Is/was he the Savior? Most, if not all, of the Christian Belief System is Pagan in origin. It is indeed hard to force oneself to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God when such titles were readily copied from Pagan doctrine. Perhaps the only item not borrowed from Pagan sources was the Messiah concept. That, of course, was taken from the Jewish hysteria of the time. In the siege of Jerusalem in 72 C.E. there were some 18 Messiahs inside Jerusalem alone. Neither the God man Jesus nor the self proclaimed militant messiahs saved Jerusalem. Such was the measure of hysterical superstition upon the nation of Israel. "There is not a conception associated with Christ that is not common to some or all of the Savior cults of antiquity. The title Savior was given in Judaism to Yahweh; among the Greeks to Zeus, Heilos, Artemis, Dionysus, Hercales, the Dioscurui, Ceybele and Aesculapius. It is the essential conception of Osiris. So, too, Osiris taketh away sin, is the judge of the dead and of the last judgment. Dionysus, the Lord of the UnderWorld and primarily a god of feasting ('the Son of Man commeth eating and drinking'), comes to be conceived as the Soul of the World and the inspirer of chastity and self purification. [J. M. Robertson may be referring to Attis here.] From the Mysteries of Dionysus and Isis comes the proclamation of the easy 'yoke'. Christ not only works the Dionysiac miracle, but calls himself the 'true vine.'" "Like Christ, and like Adonis and Attis, Osiris and Dionysus also suffer and die and rise again. To become one with them is the mystical passion of their worshippers. They are all alike in that their mysteries give immortality. From Mithraism Christ takes the symbolic keys of heaven and hell and assumes the function of the virgin-born Saoshyant, the destroyer of the Evil One. Like Mithra, Merodach, and the Egyptian Khousu, he is the Mediator; like Khousu, Horus and Merodach, he is one of a trinity, like Horus he is grouped with a Divine Mother; like Khousu he is joined to the Logos; and like Merodach he is associated with the Holy Spirit, one of whose symbols is fire." "In fundamentals, therefore, Christism is but paganism reshaped. It is only the economic and doctrinal evolution of the system--the first determined by Jewish practice and Roman environment, the second by Greek thought--that constitutes new phenomena in religious history." _Pagan_ _Christs_ by J.M. Robertson pages 52,53 No religion develops in a vacuum. All religions are influenced not only by it's predecessors but by the contemporaries of the time also. Such is the nature of Christism yesterday and today. Now about Jesus the man, did he exist? I think not. All the teaching of Jesus can be attributed to other sources and grafted over the Gospel myth. Nothing he said was substantially different in any way from previous sayings. Jesus was not a man but a contrived myth. "The Christian myth grew by absorbing details from pagan cults. The birth story is similar to many nativity myths in the pagan world. The Christ had to have a Virgin for a mother. Like the image of the child-god in the cult of Dionysus, he was pictured in swaddling clothes in a basket manger. He was born in a stable like Horus--the stable temple of the Virgin Goddess, Isis, Queen of Heaven. Again , like Dionysus, he turned water into wine, like Aesculapius, he raised men from the dead and gave sight to the blind; and like Attis and Adonis, he is mourned and rejoiced over by women. His resurrection took place, like that of Mithra, from a rock tomb." The man Jesus did not exist. There are however sources that speak of others seeing him. These were secondhand sources. No direct observations were made. At one time or another we have all had a vision of Deity in our minds. Such is the sight of Jesus, a mental image. What of the Gospels then? They are passion plays designed to be read or acted out in front of an audience. Passion plays were a common feature of pagan religion. Looking at the Gospels themselves one finds a chopply written, scene by scene, display of the life of the God man. Only the important aspects of his life are described. The minor events and influences of the life of Jesus are not recorded, which leaves one to think that the Gospels are indeed a play. "When we turn from the reputed teaching of Jesus to the story of his career, the presumption is that it has a factual basis is so slender as to be negligible. The Church found it so difficult to settle the date of its alleged founder's birth that the Christian era was made to begin some years before the year which chronologists latter inferred on the strength of other documents. The nativity was placed at the winter solstice, thus coinciding with the birthday of the Sun-god. And the date for the crucifiction was made to vary from year to year to conform to the astronomical principle which fixed the Jewish Passover. [The Passover is moon based, an already familiar pagan method of cyclic, monthly dating.] In between the birth and death of Jesus, there is an almost total absence of information except about the brief period of his ministry. Of his life between the ages of twelve and thirty we know nothing. There are not even any myths. It is impossible to establish with any accuracy the duration of the ministry from the Gospels. According to the tradition it lasted one year, which suggests that it was either based on the formula 'the acceptable year of the Lord', or on the myth of the Sun-god." _Pagan_Christs_ by J.M. Robertson, page 68 The Quest for the Historical Jesus "...It is only in comparitively modern times that the possibility was considered that Jesus does not belong to history at all. Those who come across this idea for the first time are naturally startled by it. In fact the suspicion that Jesus might be as mythical as other ancient saviors as Osiris, Mithra and Krishna arose as a result of a serious effort to discover his real voice and actions. the most scrupulous of analysis of the texts failed to reveal a convincing picture of an authentic person." _Pagan_Christs_, page 63 Well such is what J.M. Robertson claims. "Modern biblical critics freely admit that some of the Gospel narritive must be fiction. We know now that much of it was composed well after the events it purports to describe. Comparitive religion has drawn attention to close pagan parallels--to the essential features of the story--the virgin birth, the sacrifical death and resurrection. The same is true of the rites of baptism and sacramental communion. Many critics still feel, however, that these are accretions which, together with, togehter with the miracles, can be safely shed without injury to a nucleus if historical fact. The argue that pagan Gods may have some of the attributes of Jesus, and although they may have been regarded as law givers and teachers, they did not leave behind a coherent and profound teaching. Apollo, Osiris and the rest seem, therefore, to be obviously mythical, whereas Buddha and Jesus are not. The teachings of each of the latter, it is felt, bear the unmistakable of a single, unique mind. Such a doctrine could not have formed itself spontaneously." _Pagan_Christs_, page 64. The rite of baptism has already been discussed in this topic. Robertson contends that the rite of baptism superceeded the rite of circumsicion. This makes sense to me. It is much less painful and physically safer to undergo ritual initiation through baptism by water than by ritual circumcision. The gentile Christists would contend for this; and as the Jewish Christists died baptism did replace circumcision as a physical sign of new spiritual being. "We shall consider the case of Buddha later. First let us look at the main objections to this view that the existence of a body of teaching is overwhelming evidence of the existence of an historical teacher. The earliest Christian documents are ascribed to Paul. These epistles were written long before the canonical gospels were put together and accepted by the Church. The older protions, however, tell us nothing about the life of Jesus. The silence of paul is remarkable if indeed he was familiar with the Jesuine biography. Secondly, the unity of teaching, which it is said, would show it to have been the work of one mind is conspicuously absent. So far from displaying coherence, the ethical precepts are frequently obscure and contradictory. So far from being original, many of the sayings are merely quotations from Hebrew literature, and some have pagan parallels. As for the Sermon on the Mount, it is no more than a patchwork of utterances found in the Old Testament." _Pagan_Christs_ pg. 64 I was suprised to hear that some of the Epistles of Paul are the earliest of the Christian writings. Anyone care to point us to an already typed in dating of the N.T.? Care to type one in? If such is the case then it is outstanding that as Paul was the first to write about mystery of the sacrifice of Christ he tells us nothing of the life of Christ. It's as if he didn't know. Surely he would have known such details being close to the original twelve. Perhaps he didn't care, such details being meaningless as the ethics, mystery and sacrifice of the God man were most important. It seems the earliest of the gospel forms was lost with Matthew and Mark being dependent opon these lost forms. This scans nicely. The earliest forms were probably the purest of the Jewish Christian story of the Messiah. As time went by more of the pagan gentile influence was felt as needed. Various features of the virgin birth of the God man, the nativity scenes, the Last Supper, the betrayal, the crucifiction and mysterious ressurection were incoroprated into the present gospels to appeal to pagan cultist. Some scholars indicate that Revelations was next inline. This scans nicely as it presents a supposedly Jewish-Christian eschotology. When one looks at the symbolism one can see the Mazedian influence in Revelations. Revelations seems to present a first or second step in the evolution of the Sacrifice and Resurrection of the God man. Perhaps a middle step is more appropriate. A middle step between Jewish Messiah cults and Gentile Savour cults. It would be monumental to eliminate all supposedly contradictory and questionable passages from the Gospels. Fortunately that work has already been done with some suprising, for me at least, outcomes. Here's one.. "For over a hundred years German scholars have been struggling to solve this problem, and their efforts have been unavailing. In order to establish some solid textual foundation for the historicity of Jesus, they have piled hypothesis upon hypothesis with ever new refinements. The retreat from this hopless task was finally sounded by the emminent German critic, O. Schmeidel. Afer an exhuastive search, he was satisfied that he had discovered some texts which passes the most severe tests and were entirely credible. But in the whole of the gospels all he could salvage were NINE such texts. Let us enumerate this forlorn handful of unwounded survivors. 1) Mark XXX.17 [really mark 10.17] f.f. "Why callest me thou good?" etc. 2) Matt XII.31 f.f. "Blasphemy against the Son of Man pardonable" 3) Mark III.21 "He is beside himself" 4) Mark XII.32 "Of that hour and day knoweth no man" 5) Mark XV.34, Matt "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" etc. 6) Mark VIII.12 "No sign shall be given this generation." 7) Mark VI.5 "He was able to do no mighty work there." 8) Mark VIII.14-21 Rebuke to disciples concerning bread and leaven.." 9) Matt XI.5, Luke VII.22 Passage to be taken in the sense of spiritual healing, since it ends with mention of preaching--not a miracle at all." _Pagan_Christs_ pgs 64,65. What was the basis for selecting these texts? Basicly O. Sshmeiedel felt that where Jesus speaks simply as a man, making no pretense to divinity, or to miraculous powers, and where he is presented as failing to impress his relatives and neighbors with any sense of his superiority--there the record is entirely credible. I'll have to quote this because of the logical content... J.M. Roberts quoting Schmeidel: "According to Schmidel, these passages represent "the foundation pillars for a truly scientific life of Jesus... They prove not only that in the person of Jesus we have to do with a completely human being, and that the divine is sought in him only in the form in which it is capable of being found in a man; THEY ALSO PROVE THAT HE REALLY DID EXIST, and that the Gospels contain at least SOME ABSOLUTELY TURSTWORTHY FACTS concerning him. This will shock the believer without satisfying the scientific naturalist. I submit that the propostition I have italicized is absolutely untenable. On this point may be staked the whole dispute about the actuality of the gospel Jesus. It simply does not follow that because a statement is credible it is therefore trustworth or proved. If it were so, half the characters in fiction could be "proved" to be real people. Perfectly credible statements are made about them." _Pagan_Christs_ pgs 64-65. And I would add that perfectly credible statements are made by fictional characters also. It is credible to pronounce that Joe Catholic said a hundred Hail Marys this morning. Such is a credible statement concerning Catholics. But is it trustworthy? Such thinking requires a leap. The leap involves a thought process that says what is possible must indeed be true. T.X. Huxley makes this same mistake. Huxley says that Sauls visit with the Witch of Endor is entirely probable, so there is no reason not to believe it. It is probable that I, as a child, fell into a dark hole for 3 days and nights. History is full of discredited "probablilites".