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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".