JR'S Free Thought Pages
            No Gods  ~ No Masters   

                                                                                Is Jesus a Fictional Character?

                                                        Is Christianity "The Greatest Story Ever Sold"?

Introductory Note: It’s a fundamental tenet of logic that no one can prove that Jesus did not exist any more than they can prove that God, Santa Claus, Angels or the Invisible Flying Pink Unicorn do not exist. However, when there is a lack of substantive evidence for the existence of such entities or compelling counter arguments for the implausibility, incoherence or improbability of their existence then rationality and common sense dictate that we ought to disbelieve in them or at least reserve judgment.

Acharya S. has published two encyclopedic works of  quality scholarship. These are titled “The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold” (1999) and “Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled” (2004). Both are published by Adventures Unlimited Press.

What Acharya S. attempts to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt in her two scholarly tomes is that the revered character known as Jesus Christ is a completely contrived fictional character, and that Christianity has no credibility whatsoever. The entire edifice of Christianity, she argues, has nothing within it that was not stolen—created whole cloth out of pagan myths and traditions—from many of the world’s more ancient religions.

She does this by....

As Acharya S. puts it, “ . . . there is no evidence for the historicity of the Christian founder, that the earliest Christian proponents were as a whole either utterly credulous or astoundingly deceitful, and that said ‘defenders of the faith’ were compelled under incessant charges of fraud to admit that Christianity was a rehash of older religions.”

                    The Christ Conspiracy – The Greatest Story Ever Sold

                           by Acharya S  (1999)

                      Selected Passages & Conclusion

 Selected Passages

Pp 2-3

To deflect the horrible guilt off the shoulders of their own faith, religionists have pointed to supposedly secular ideologies such as Communism and Nazism as oppressors and murderers of the people. However, few realize or acknowledge that the originators of Communism were Jewish (Marx, Lenin, Hess, Trotsky)⁴ and that the most overtly violent leaders of both bloody movements were Roman Catholic (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco) or Eastern Orthodox Christian (Stalin), despotic and intolerant ideologies that breed fascistic dictators. In other words, these movements were not "atheistic," as religionists maintain. Indeed, Hitler proclaimed himself a "Christian" and fight for "his Lord and Savior," using the famous temple scene with Jesus driving out the "brood of vipers and adders" as a motivation for his evil deeds.

 Said Hitler:

    It is of no matter whether or not the individual Jew is decent. He possesses certain characteristics given to him by nature, and he can never rid himself of those characteristics. The Jew is harmful to us ... My feeling as a Christian leads me to be a fighter for my Lord and Savior. It leads me to the man who, at one time lonely and with only a few followers, recognized the Jews for what they were, and called on men to fight against them ... As a Christian, I owe something to my own people.

Hitler also remarked to one of his generals: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remains so." Whether or not Hitler was a "true" Christian is debatable, as he also reputedly considered Christianity a Jewish invention and part of the conspiracy for world domination. In addition, Hitler's paternal grandmother was allegedly Jewish. But Hitler himself was raised a Roman Catholic, and he was very much impressed by the power of the Church hierarchy. He pandered to it and used it and religion as a weapon. All during his regime, Hitler worked closely with the Catholic Church, quashing thousands of lawsuits against it and exchanging large sums of money with it. In addition, thousands of Nazis were later given safe passage by the Vatican, as well as by multinational governmental agencies, to a number of locales, including North and South America, via the "Ratline" from Germany through Switzerland and Italy.

In reality, Hitler was only building on a long line of imputation against the Jews as "Christ killers," a charge used numerous times over the centuries whenever the Catholic Church wanted to hold a pogrom against common Jews and seize their assets. The events of WWII, in fact, were the grisly culmination of a centuries ­old policy, started by the Church and continued by Martin Luther, as was well known by Hitler. Indeed, Hitler was embraced as a Christian instrument, as Walker relates

The rise of Hitler's Germany provides an interesting case in point, showing a nation swept by militaristic sentiment coupled with a sense of divine mission. The churches accepted Hitler's warmongering with religious joy. In April 1937, a Christian organization in the Rhineland passed a resolution that Hitler's word was the law of God and possessed "divine authority." Reichsminister for Church Affairs Hans Kerrl announced: "There has arisen a new authority as to what Christ and Christianity really are-that is Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler ...is the true Holy Ghost." And so the pious gave him their blessing, and the churches gave him God's.

Pp 14-15

The believers take the Judeo-Christian bible as the literal "Word of God," accepting "on faith" that everything contained within it is historical fact infallibly written by scribes "inspired by God." As we shall see, this position is absolutely untenable, and requires blind and unscientific devotion, since, even if we discount the countless mistakes committed over the centuries by scribes copying the texts, the so-called infallible "Word of God" is riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions, errors and yarns that stretch the credulity to the point of non-existence. In order to accept the alleged factuality of the Christian tale, i.e., that a male God came down from the heavens as his own son through the womb of a Jewish virgin, worked astonishing miracles, was killed, resurrected and ascended to heaven, we are not only to suspend critical thinking and integrity, but we must be prepared to tolerate a rather repulsive and generally false portrayal of the ancient world and peoples. In particular, we must be willing to believe fervently that the "gentle Jesus"-who was allegedly the all-powerful God-was mercilessly scourged, tortured and murdered by Romans and Jews, the latter of whom possess the ignominy and stigma of being considered for eternity as "vipers," "serpents," "spawn of Satan" and "Christ killers" guilty of deicide who gleefully shouted "Crucify him!" and "Let his blood be upon us and our children!"

Pp 106-7

List (not exhaustive) of “Saviour”/”Redemer”/”Son of God” myths that predate the Christian era. The list of these saviors and sons of God includes the following:

·         Adad and Marduk of Assyria, who was considered "the Word" (Logos)

·        Adonis, Aesclepius, Apollo (who was resurrected at the vernal equinox as the lamb), Dionysus, Heracles (Hercules) and Zeus of Greece

·        Alcides of Thebes, divine redeemer born of a virgin around 1200 BCE1

·         Attis of Phrygia

·         Baal or Bel of Babylon/ Phoenicia

·         Balder and Frey of Scandinavia

·         Bali of Afghanistan

·         Beddru of Japan

·         Buddha and Krishna of India

·         Chu Chulainn of Ireland

·         Codom and Deva Tat of Siam

·         Crite of Chaldea

·         Dahzbog of the Slavs

·         Dumuzi of Sumeria

·         Fo-hi, Lao-Kiun, Tien, and Chang-Ti of China, whose birth was attended by heavenly music, angels and shepherds

·         Hermes of Egypt/Greece, who was born of the Virgin Maia and called "the Logos" because he was the Messenger or Word of the Heavenly Father, Zeus.

·        Hesus of the Druids and Gauls

·        Horus, Osiris and Serapis of Egypt

·        Indra of Tibet/India

·         leo of China, who was "the great prophet, lawgiver and savior" with 70 disciples

·         Issa/Isa of Arabia, who was born of the Virgin Mary and was the "Divine Word" of the ancient Arabian Nasara/ Nazarenes around 400 BCE

·         Jao of Nepal

·         Jupiter/Jove of Rome

·         Mithra of Persia/India

·        Odin/Wodin/Woden/Wotan of the Scandinavians, who was "wounded with a spear."

·        Prometheus of Caucasus/ Greece

·        Quetzalcoatl of Mexico

·         Quirinius of Rome

·         Salivahana of southern India, who was a "divine child, born of a virgin, and was the son of a carpenter," himself also being called "the Carpenter," and whose name or title means "cross-borne" ("Salvation")

·        Tammuz of Syria, the savior god worshipped in Jerusalem

·        Thor of the Gauls

·        Universal Monarch of the Sibyls

·        Wittoba of the Bilingonese/Telingonese

·        Zalmoxis of Thrace, the savior who "promised eternal life to guests at his sacramental Last Supper. Then he went into the underworld, and rose again on the third day"

·        Zarathustra/ Zoroaster of Persia

·        Zoar of the Bonzes

This list does not pretend to be complete, nor is there adequate room here to go into detail of all these mythological characters. It should be noted that, as with Jesus, a number of these characters have been thought of in the past as being historical persons, but today almost none of them are considered as such.

Pp 298-99

As Pagels says, "Many Christians were themselves slave owners and took slavery for granted as unthinkingly as their pagan neighbors." In other words, no egalitarian Christianity existed, and Christians were discouraged from inciting slaves to demand their freedom. As for the Essenes, "There is not a single slave among them," says Philo.

Thus, the "freedom-loving" Paul exhorts the Christians to submit to authority, not to rebel, as presumably his purported master would do and supposedly did do, according to the gospel story. Paul even claims that those same authorities who allegedly destroyed Jesus should be both obeyed "in everything" and basically equated with God Himself:

       Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.... For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. (Rom. 13)

Furthermore, the author of 1 Peter entreats:

Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right.... Fear God. Honor the emperor.

So much for the rebellious Jesus and his movement. No Essene would be preaching such things, but we can pretty much guess who would.

As to the real state of "pure" Christianity and its adherents^, Fox relates:

"In privated houses nowadays," claimed the pagan Celsus, 170 BCE, "we see wool workers, cobblers, laundry workers and the most illiterate rustics who get hold of children and silly women in private and give out the most astonishing statements, saying that they must not listen to their father or schoolteachers, but must obey them. They alone know the right way to live, and if the children believe them, they will be happy. They whisper that they should leave their teachers and go down into the shops with their playmates in order to learn to be perfect. ..^"

Most of the early Christians were of the lower, uneducated classes, a fact that was a thorn in the side of Christia proselytizers, who were always very interested in gaining converts of high social status, by bribes of one sort or another. In the early Christian book the Octavius by Minucius, the protagonist  "complained that Christians assemble the `lowest dregs of society' and `credulous women, an easy prey because of the instability of their sex,' . . ." And, as Origen stated, most of the "lowest dregs and poor had "very bad characters."

As Keeler says, "It sounds strange to hear persons in these days express a desire for a `return to primitive Christianity, when all was peace and love.' There never was such a time."

Pp 340-41

The Council of Nicea

Rather than the advent and death a "historical" Christ, the single most important events in the history of Christianity were the "conversion" of the Pagan Emperor Constantine and the convening of the raucous Council of Nicea in 325, which in fact marked the true birth of Jesus Christ. Constantine, of course, "converted" to Christianity because it offered a "quick fix" to all of his heinous crimes, including the murder of several family members, removed simply by confession and "believing unto the Lord," absolutions he could not procure from other religions such as Mithraism, which did not cater to murderers.

At the Council of Nicea were not only Christian leaders from Alexandria, Antioch, Athens, Jerusalem and Rome but also the leaders of the many other cults, sects and religions, including those of Apollo, Demeter/Ceres, Dionysus/Bacchus/Iasios, Janus, Jupiter/Zeus, Oannes/Dagon, Osiris and Isis, and "Sol Invictus," the Invincible Sun, the object of Constantine's devotion. The purpose of this council was to unify the various competing cults under one universal or "catholic" church, which, of course, would be controlled by Constantine and Rome. As noted, Rome claimed the ultimate authority because it purported to be founded upon the "rock of Peter." Thus, the statue of Jupiter in Rome was converted into "St. Peter," whose phony bones were subsequently installed in the Vatican. In a typical religion-making move, the gods of these other cults were subjugated under the new god and changed into "apostles" and "saints."

As stated, it is maintained that during the Nicene council the names Jesus and Christ were put together for the first time in the phrase "Jesus Christ" or "Christ Jesus," uniting two of the major factions, with Jesus representing the Hesus of the Druids^, Joshua/Jesus of the Israelites, Horus/lusa of the Egyptians and IES/lesios of the Dionysians/Samothracians, and Christ representing the Krishna/ Christos of India, the Anointed of the Jews and KRST of Egypt, among others. It is thus alleged that the of phrase "Jesus Christ," which had never been a name, appear in Greek or Latin authors prior to the first Council of Nicea. Hence, just as the name "Hermes Trismegistus "represents a tradition rather than a single man, "13 so does "Jesus Christ." It is also purported that one Bishop Eunomius charged fraud and blew the whistle on the Council of Nicea, the record of which was never published, even though it was supposedly made and may be in the Vatican vault to this day. Regarding the compilation of the Bible and the creation of Christianity, Roberts says:

Every rational person might have known that the writings of the New Testament were the works of a man or a school of men who sought to blend such portions of the preceding creeds, doctrines, ceremonies, practices and religious formulas into a single religion, that would serve to harmonize and united mankind in one common effort to advance the welfare of all.... The religious systems of China, India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Palestine, and even the Druidical system of Northern and Western Europe, were largely drawn from to make up the Eclectic system of religion ...

Walker states:

Far-Eastern traditions were utilized too. The Roman Empire was well aware of the teachings and myths of Buddhism. Buddha images in classic Greek style were made in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the first century A.D. Buddhist ideas like the "footprints of Buddha" appeared among Christians. Bishop Sulpicus of Jerusalem reported that, as in India, "In the dust where Christ trod the marks of His step can still be seen, and the earth still bears the print of His feet." Buddhist metaphors and phrasing also appeared in the Gospels. Jesus's formula, "Dearly Beloved," was the conventional way for Tantric deities to address their teachings to Devi, their Goddess.

And Wheless relates:

Cardinal Newman ... says that Milman arrays facts "admitted on all hands," to wit: "that the doctrine of the Logos is Platonic; that of the Incarnation Indian; that of a divine Kingdom Judaic; that of angels and demons (and a Mediator) Persian; that the connection of sin with the body is Gnostic; the idea of a new birth Chinese and Eleusinian; that of sacramental virtue Pythagorean; that of Trinity common to East and West; and that of the rites of baptism and sacrifice equally ubiquitous"'

Pp 356-57

The Making of a Myth

In creating their state religion, the Christian conspirators not only founded the world's greatest forgery mill but also went on a censorship rampage that silenced millions of dissident voices by murder and destroyed books, temples, statues, inscriptions and other traces of the previous cultures, eventually leading to immense ignorance and the virtual illiteracy of the Western world. As Roberts says:

To get rid of the damning fact that there is no historical basis for their theological fictions, the Christian priesthood have been guilty -of the heinous crime of destroying nearly all traces of the concurrent history of the first two centuries of the Christian era. What little of it they have permitted to come down to us, they have so altered and changed, as to destroy its historical value.

These censoring Christians were no doubt well aware what literacy and books really represented, as the words "library" and "liberty" share the same root, "liber," the Latin word for "book." Walker relates the Church's modus operandi:

It was always important for religious authorities to control literature, and to gain the legal right to destroy books that contradicted their own teachings. Few people were so assiduous in this endeavor as Christians. In the third to sixth centuries, whole libraries were burned, schools and universities destroyed and citizens' books confiscated throughout the Roman world, on the pretext of defending the church against paganism. Under the early Christian emperors, people were framed by ecclesiastical investigators who planted "magical writings" in their houses, then legally confiscated all possessions.'

After the Council of Nicea, per the murderous Constantine's orders, the Christians turned up the heat on censorship, leading to the centuries-long orgy that obliterated millions of texts. One of the greatest crimes in human history was the destruction in 391 of the library at Alexandria perpetrated by Christian fanatics under Theophilus bent on hiding the truth about their religion and its alleged founder. Because of this villainy, we have lost priceless information as to the true state of the ancient world, with such desolation also setting back civilization at least 1,000 years. The portion of the Alexandrian library placed in the Temple of Serapis also perished, "as this very valuable library was wilfully destroyed by the Christian Theophilus, and on the spot where this beautiful temple of Serapis stood, in fact, on its very foundation, was erected a church in honor of the `noble army of martyrs,' who never existed." Of this nefarious demolition of the Serapion, Roberts asks:

Will any Catholic or Protestant prelate, priest or clergyman tell us why the Christian emperor, Theodosius the First, should have ordered the destruction of the Serapeum Library of Alexandria, if not to destroy the evidence it contained of the spurious nature of the Christian religion and its heathen philosophical origin?

Some decades later, the Christian patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril, instigated mobs to terrorize Jews and to hideously torture and murder the exalted female Pagan philosopher Hypatia (c. 370-415) by scraping the flesh from her bones with oyster shells. For his evil acts, Cyril was later canonized by the "infallible" Church. Hypatia was so esteemed and renowned for her wisdom and brilliance that her murder has been considered the "death of the Pagan world."

The destruction did not end there, however, as the ruination of literacy and history became an all-consuming Christian pursuit. As Graham states, "By the fifth century the destruction was so complete Archbishop Chrystostom could boast of it thus: Every trace of the old philosophy and literature of the ancient world has vanished from the face of the earth.'"

At some point, a death penalty was enacted for reading unapproved books, e.g., those that demonstrated the faith was a sham. Pope after pope continued the assault on books and learning. Gregory, Bishop of Constantinople (@ 540-604), the last of the "doctors" of the Church, actively engaged in book-burning. In the 11th century, "Saint" Gregory had the Library of Palatine Apollo burned, and the Council of Trent (1545-63) reconfirmed the policy against "heathen" learning.

Where the Christians did not destroy the works of the ancient authors, they corrupted and mutilated them. Indeed, in order to preserve their texts from these violent hands, the Gnostics themselves were compelled to Christianize them, such that they also had to historicize their mythical characters. So extensive was this practice of fraud that evidently no ancient author's work maintains its original integrity. Walker elaborates upon the extent of the fraud:

After burning books and closing pagan schools, the church dealt in another kind of forgery: falsification by omission. All European history was extensively edited by a church that managed to make itself the sole repository of literary and historical records. With all important documents assembled in the monasteries, and the lay public rendered illiterate, Christian history could be forged with impunity.

As stated, in addition to destroying and mutilating books, the Christians demolished and desecrated the temples, statues and sacred sites of their predecessors and competitors.

                                                 {Conclusion}   pp 405-417

For nearly 2,000 years hundreds of millions of people have been taught that a historical "son of God" called Jesus Christ lived, did miracles, suffered and died as a blood-atonement especially established once and for all by God Himself, the Creator of the entire cosmos. In reality, the gospel story of Jesus is not a factual portrayal of a historical "master" who walked the earth 2,000 years ago but a myth built upon other myths and godmen, who in turn were personifications of the ubiquitous solar mythos and ritual found in countless cultures around the world thousands of years before the Christian era. As such, the tale served to amalgamate the numerous religions, cults and sects of the Roman Empire and beyond, to create a state religion that was promulgated through forgery, fraud and force.

Nevertheless, countless believers have insisted that the gospel tale happened, not because of any evidence, but merely because they have been told it was so and blindly accepted it, against common sense and better judgment. Furthermore, historicizing scholars and other evemerists, funded by the same agencies that created the myth, have thrown their scientific minds out the window and dishonestly begun their desperate work with the wrong premise, thereafter constantly trying to shore up the impossible, with endless tortured speculation where there are no facts at all. The actuality is that, had Jesus been real, the world would have developed differently than it did, particularly immediately after his alleged miraculous advent; yet, the world went on as if nothing had ever happened. Earl Doherty summarizes the problem with the gospel "history":

If this man Jesus had had the explosive effect on his followers that is said of him, and on the thousands of believers who responded so readily to the message about him, such a man would have had to blaze in the firmament of his time. That impact would have been based on the force of his personality, on the unique things he said and did. There is no other way. And yet the picture we see immediately after Jesus' death, and for the next two generations in every extant document, flatly contradicts this. The blazing star immediately drops out of sight. No contemporary historian, philosopher or popular writer records him. There is no sign of any tradition or phenomenon associated with him. For over half a century Christian writers themselves totally ignore his life and ministry. Not a saying is quoted. Not a miracle is marveled at. No aspect of his human personality, anchored within any biographical setting, is ever referred to. The details of his life, the places of his career: they raise no interest in any of his believers. This is an eclipse that does not even grant us a trace of a corona! If, on the other hand, Jesus was simply an ordinary human man, an unassuming (if somewhat charismatic) Jewish preacher, who really said little of what has been imputed to him, who performed no real miracles, and who of course did not rise from the dead - all of which might explain why he attracted no great attention and could have his life ignored as unimportant by his later followers - what, then, is the explanation for how such a life and personality could have given rise to the vast range of response the scholars postulate, to the cosmic theology about him, to the conviction that he had risen from the dead, to the unstoppable movement which early Christianity seems to have been? This is an unsolvable dilemma. (from The Jesus Puzzle: http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/home.htm]

When pressed, scholars and clergy alike will admit that the founding of the Christian religion is shrouded in centuries of intrigue and fraud. They will confess that there is not a single mention of Jesus by any historian contemporaneous with his alleged advent and that the biblical accounts are basically spurious, not written by their pretended authors and riddled with tens of thousands of errors, impossibilities and contradictions. They will even admit that such texts had been forged by the hundreds and later interpolated and mutilated. Such "experts" may even go so far as to concede that the historicity of Christ has been called into question from the beginning, with that fact itself being cloaked in euphemism and deceit. They may further confess that there is absolutely no physical evidence of the event or the man, and that the numerous relics, including the infamous Shroud of Turin, are fakes, as are the tourist spots where the drama allegedly took place. These scholars may even have the courage to admit that the Jewish religion, upon which Christianity claims to be based, is itself not what it is asserted to be but is basically a rehash of older myths and theologies, as, in the end, is Christianity.

In other words, like the Christian fathers, these scholars and experts will concede that the gospel tale and Christian ideology constitute a direct lift from so-called Paganism. They will even admit that the gospel story is fiction, cagily calling it "benign deceit." Yet, these scholars and researchers will continue in their quest to find a "historical" Jesus, endlessly pumping out tomes that would be better off as trees. Waite describes their futile endeavors:

Many attempts have been made to write the life of Christ. But it is difficult to see where, outside of the gospels the material for such a work is to come from; while, if the gospels are to be taken as a basis, it is equally difficult to understand what is to be gained by rewriting what is contained in them. Any such attempt only brings out, in plainer light, the discrepancies in those accounts, and finally results in a mere display of ingenuity on the part of the biographer, in his efforts to reconcile them; or, as in the case of some writers, in a sublime unconsciousness of any discrepancies whatever.¹

Indeed, the efforts to find a historical Jesus have been pitiful and agonizing, based mainly on what he was not: To wit, the virgin birth is not history, and Jesus' parents were not called Mary and Joseph. Jesus was not from Nazareth, which didn't exist at the time, and the magi, star, angels and shepherds did not appear at his birth. He didn't escape to Egypt, because Herod was not slaughtering children, and he didn't amaze the priests with his teaching at age 12 in the temple. He did not suddenly at 30 reappear out of nowhere to mystify people who, if the birth stories had been true, would have already known him. The "historical" Jesus didn't do miracles or raise the dead. The sayings and sermons weren't originally his. He wasn't betrayed by Judas, since that would be illogical if he were already "world famous." There was no trial, no crucifixion and no resurrection.

Such are some of the numerous parts of the gospel story that have been thrown out by "skeptical" historicizers and evemerists over the centuries because they represent elements found ubiquitously in the myths of the solar heroes and in mystery rites. Tossing all these parts out, we might wonder, even more skeptically, where is the historical Jesus Christ? Have we found the core in the onion? The leap of faith even among evemerists is mindboggling. If 99 percent of this story is based on the myths and only one percent on any "history," what are people admiring and worshipping?

Although they are taught that "Jesus" represented a stunning break from the "old Pagan world," believers are worshipping basically the same deity or deities as the Pagans-in fact, practically all of them rolled into one. Yet, not knowing this, the faithful smugly set themselves apart in an atmosphere of superiority and pity, if not outright hatred, for so-called Heathens and Pagans, i.e. , "those not of the faith." As Jackson says, "Many Christians denounce Paganism as a false religion. If this is correct, then Christianity is also false, for it is of pagan origin, and if one is not true, then neither is the other."²

To reiterate, as Robertson says, "There is not a conception associated with Christ that is not common to some or all of the Savior cults of antiquity."³ And Carpenter states that "the doctrine of the Saviour is world-wide and world-old, and that Christianity merely appropriated the same (as the other cults did) and gave it a special flavor."⁴ He also remarks:

The main Christian doctrines and festivals, besides a great mass of affiliated legend and ceremonial, are really quite directly derived from, and related to, preceding Nature worships; and it has only been by a good deal of deliberate mystification and falsification that this derivation has been kept out of sight.⁵

And Jordan Maxwell says:

All that we find in Judaism and Christianity-there is virtually not one concept, belief, or idea expressed in Judaism or Christianity, not one-that cannot be traced back many, many times to many different religions. It's a very old, ancient story. It's the greatest story ever told.⁶

Of this greatest story ever sold, Massey states:

In this way it can be proved that our Christology is mummified mythology, and legendary lore, which have been palmed off upon us in the Old Testament and the New, as divine revelation uttered by the very voice of God. We have the same conversion of myth into history in the New Testament that there is in the Old­the one being effected in a supposed fulfillment of the other! Mythos and history have changed places once, and have to change them again before we can understand their right relationship, or real significance."⁷

The gospel story, fought so widely from the beginning because it was misrepresented as true, has now become through constant force and proselytizing unhealthily lodged in the human psyche, a meme that has caused a large proportion of the human race to live in a world of awful fantasy and endless waiting for the miraculous, for the divine to step in, like "he" purportedly did 2,000 years ago. Yet this alleged "miracle" of Jesus's advent was no more factual than that of Osiris, Krishna, Horus, Quetzalcoatl or any of the numerous other myths and savior gods upon which the Christ character is predicated. To believe that the mythical is the historical is not only to be dishonest but also to destroy the meaning of the mythical and to ruin its real miracle. Indeed, the historicizing of the mythos removes its value and makes the mind idiotic; but, to understand the gnosis behind it is to become wise. As Massey also says: 

[I]t is the miraculous that shows the mythical nature of the history; the identical miracles of Christ the healer that proves him to have been the same character as the healer lu-em-hept, or Aesclapius, and the caster-out of demons, Khunsu. It was the human history that accreted round the divinity, and not a human being who became divine. On the theory of an historic origin and interpretation the discrepancies may be paralleled for ever with no possibility of attaining the truth; the matter can never be moulded into coherent consistency. But the mythical origin explains all.... The mythical origins only can explain why there are two Marys both of whom are described as being the mother of Jesus. The mythical origins only can explain why Jesus should have been rebegotten as the anointed son at thirty years of age ... The mythical origins only can explain why there is no history furnished from the time when the child-Christ was about twelve years of age to that of the adultship of thirty years. The mythical origins only can show how the Word, or Manifestor, from the first could be said to be made flesh.... The mythical Christ could have two birthdays like the dual-natured Horus, one at the solstice and one at the equinox.⁸

Massey further states:

The Christ of the gospels is in no sense an historical personage or a supreme model of humanity, a hero who strove, and suffered, and failed to save the world by his death. It is impossible to establish the existence of an historical character even as an impostor. For such a one the two witnesses, astronomical mythology and Gnosticism, completely prove an alibi. The Christ is a popular lay-figure that never lived, and a lay-figure of Pagan origin; a lay-figure that was once the Ram and afterwards the Fish; a lay-figure that in human form was the portrait and image of a dozen different gods.

As to the hackneyed evemerist arguments in favor of these "dozen different gods" and any others being legendary heroes of old, rather than aspects of the celestial mythos, Higgins demonstrates their error and its consequences, obviously understood in his time over 160 years ago but suppressed:

The following is the state of ancient history given by Mr. Bryant, and nothing can be more true: "... it is evident that most of the deified personages never existed: but were mere titles of the Deity, the Sun; as has been in great measure proved by Macrobius. Nor was there ever any thing such detriment to ancient history, as supposing that the Gods of the Gentile world had been -natives of the countries where they were worshipped. They have been by these means admitted into the annals of times: and it has been the chief study of the learned to register the legendary stories concerning them: to conciliate absurdities, and to arrange the whole into a chronological series-a fruitless labor, and inexplicable: for there are in these fables such inconsistencies and contradictions as no art, nor industry, can remedy."⁹

The Age of Darkness

There is indeed nothing new under the sun. And "Jesus" is, basically, the same old sun, the Hellenized Joshua, the Judaized Horus and Krishna, thought by the deceived masses to have been a native of the country in which he was worshipped. Is it mere coincidence that, after the celestial mythos and astronomical knowledge had become completely eclipsed and subverted, the Western world was plunged into the Dark Ages? 

Jackson describes the results of this putting out of the light of the sun:

[T]he Gnostic wisdom was not wholly lost to the world but its great, universal educational system was supplanted. It is a well­established historical fact, not denied by the church that it required about 500 years to accomplish this submersion of Gnosticism, and to degrade the new generations in ignorance equal to the state of imbecility. History again points its accusing finger at the living evidence. The horrible results of such a crime against nature and mankind are pictured in the Dark Ages ... Not even priests or prelates were permitted to learn to read or write. Even bishops could barely spell out their Latin. During this period of mental darkness, the ignorant masses were trained in intolerance, bigotry, fanaticism, and superstitious fear of an invisible power secretly controlled by the church; all of which begat a state of hysteria and imbecility.¹⁰

Robertson explains why Christianity arose and what its purpose was:

Religions, like organisms and opinions, struggle for survival and the fittest survive. That is to say, those survive which are fittest for the actual environment, not fittest from the point of view of another higher environment. What, then, was the religion best adapted to the populations of the decaying Roman Empire, in which ignorance and mean subjection were slowly corroding alike intelligence and character, leaving the civilized provinces unable to hold their ground against the barbarians? . . . Christianity ... This was the religion for the Dark Ages ...¹¹

And Larson states:

We believe that, had there been no Christianity, Greek enlightenment would, after a fierce struggle with Mithraism and its offspring Manichaeism, have emerged victorious. There would have been no Dark Ages. ...¹²

During this appalling Age of Darkness without the Sun, learning and literacy were all but destroyed. Libraries were burned, in order to hide the horrible secret of the Christian religion, and a world that had been reaching for the stars, with great thinkers appearing in numerous places, was now subjugated in darkness falsely portraying itself as the "light of the world." As Pike says:

The Church of Rome claimed despotism over the soul, and over the whole life from the cradle to the grave. It gave and sold absolutions for past and future sins. It claimed to be infallible in matters of faith. It decimated Europe to purge it of heretics. It decimated America to convert the Mexicans and Peruvians. . The history of all is or will be the same-acquisition, dismemberment and ruin.... To seek to subjugate the will of others and to take the soul captive, because it is the exercise of the highest power, seems to be the highest object of human ambition. It is at the bottom of all proselytizing and propagandizing..¹³

And, as Wheless declares:

Holy Fraud and Forgery having achieved their initial triumph for the Faith, the "Truth of Christ" must now be maintained and enforced upon humanity by a millennial series of bloody brutal Clerical Laws of pains and penalties, confiscations, civil disabilities, torture and death by rack, fire and sword, which constitute the foulest chapter of the Book of human history-the History of the Church! ¹⁴

The Origins of Cultural Bigotry and Racism

One of the most unfortunate aspects of the historicizing of this "oldest story ever sold" was that one particular ethnic group, and that one only, became esteemed above all others for being "God's chosen people," the "priestly nation" and the spiritual masters of mankind. Another calamitous aspect has been the vilification of these same people as "Christ killers" and foaming-at-­the-mouth murderers of the Almighty Lord God himself. Thus, in believing the gospel tale Christians have been forced into a love-­hate relationship with the Jews, who are to be perceived as "God's chosen" and "Christ killers" at the same time. Not only is this schizophrenic salvation plan and legacy not the product of any good god, it is utterly divisive, setting people against each other all over the world.

Furthermore, not a few people have wondered why these identical stories found outside of the Bible and revolving around "Gentile" or "Pagan" characters are "myths," while the biblical tales told about Hebrews and Jews are "history." As Jacolliot remarks:

We have repudiated Greek and Roman mythologies with disdain. Why, then, admit with respect the mythology of the Jews? Ought the miracles of Jehovah to impress us more than those of Jupiter? ... I have much more respect for the Greek Jupiter than for the God of Moses; for if he gives some examples not of the purest morality, at least he does not flood his altar with streams of human blood. ¹⁵

The gospel story constitutes cultural bigotry and does a disservice to the history of humanity. Contrary to popular belief, the ancients were not an ignorant and superstitious lot who actually believed their deities to be literal characters. Nor were they as a whole immoral or unenlightened. This propaganda has been part of the conspiracy to make the ancients appear as if they were truly the dark and dumb rabble that was in need of the "light of Jesus." As Massey says:

The picture of the New Beginning commonly presented is Rembrandt-like in tone. The whole world around Judea lay in the shadow of outer darkness, when suddenly there was a great light seen at the centre of all, and the face of the startled universe was illuminated by an apparition of the child-Christ lying in the lap of Mary. Such was the dawn of Christianity, in which the Light of the World had come to it at last! That explanation is beautifully simple for the simple-minded; but the picture is purely false-or, in sterner words, it is entirely false. ¹⁶

And Pikes asks, "Did the Deity leave the whole world without Light for two score centuries, to illuminate only a little corner of Palestine and a brutal, ignorant, and ungrateful people?"¹⁷

The reality is that the ancients were no less advanced in their morals and spiritual practices, and in many cases were far more enlightened, than the Christians in their own supposed morality and ideology, which, in its very attempt at historicity, is in actuality a degradation of the ancient celestial and terrestrial religion. Indeed, unlike the Christians, the true intelligentsia among the ancients were well aware that their gods were astronomical and atmospheric in nature. Even the much vilified Babylonians declared that their gods and those of other cultures and ages were the sun, moon, stars and planets, demonstrating that they were not only advanced but honest in this matter. In addition, the eminent Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle surely knew that their gods, such as Zeus, the sky-god father-figure who migrated to Greece from India and/or Egypt, were never real people.

These three great Greek luminaries were, oddly enough, highly esteemed by early Christian conspirators, who, as they had with so many preceding purveyors of wisdom and ideologies, falsely presented these savants' known accomplishments in philosophy as divine revelation to the Church. Such appropriation was recognized by the ancients themselves. For instance, Amelius, a Platonist of the 3rd century, "upon reading the first verse of St. John the Evangelist, exclaimed, By Jove, this barbarian agrees with our Plato.'"¹⁸ Cardinal Palavicino is quoted as saying, "Without Aristotle we should be without many Articles of Faith."¹⁹ It is amusing to consider that the omniscient "Lord," who came to deliver a "New Dispensation," needed the writings of Aristotle to determine doctrine for "his" Church. It is likewise interesting that, by constantly "borrowing from" and aligning themselves with exalted philosophers who were recognized as having penetrated the mysteries of the cosmos, the Christians themselves admitted just how advanced were their predecessors. Thus, we discover that the image of the ancient world as portrayed by Christianity is utterly false.

In fact, rather than serving as an improvement, Christianity has been a psychic trauma, uprooting ideas and deities that were worshipped since Neolithic times, particularly nature gods and goddesses. The sexist Judeo-Christian-Islamic ideology has been a war on all things considered female, including Nature and Mother Earth. The patriarchal age has represented the military campaign of the sky-god father-figure against the earth-goddess mother-figure. In the process, the Goddess's groves-so sacred to the ancients that to cut them down was sometimes a capital offense-have been plowed under and her creatures butchered in a vicious quest for riches and "heaven." The current culture is now headed for environmental cataclysm, because this ideology has served to disconnect human beings from the earth, to constantly focus their attention not on this life and this reality but on an afterlife and another world altogether.

Furthermore, as Graham says, "Such a story as the Gospels tell us is unworthy of man's respect; it is, we repeat, the greatest fraud and hoax ever perpetrated upon mankind."²⁰ No human culture can survive that bases its fundamental beliefs and perceptions on a hoax, particularly one in which the result has been the needless torture and slaughter of millions around the globe.

In reality, Christianity was the product of a multinational cabal composed of members of a variety of brotherhoods, secret societies and mystery schools, and was designed to empower and enrich such individuals and to unify their empire. To do so, these conspirators took myriad myths and rituals of virtually all the known cultures and combined them into one, producing a godman to beat them all. This unreachable fictional character has since been considered the "greatest man who ever walked the earth," to whom no one else can compare and besides whom nobody else deserves much recognition and appreciation. All others are, in fact, pathetic, born-in-sin wretches. But, he did not walk the earth, and we must hereafter allow the dignity of sanctity to be bestowed upon not just one "man" but all of creation.

The prejudice and bigotry promulgated by Christianity and other monolithic yet divisive ideologies have caused an atrocious amount of destruction of cultural diversity. It has been demonstrated what a wonderfully colorful and varied world it is in which we live. Around the globe for millennia has appeared a mythos, a core of understanding that is cosmic and eternal in nature. It once had an infinite variety of flavors and incorporated much of creation in a divine and respectful play. To reduce all this glory to a handful of characters of a particular ethnicity who allegedly played out the cosmic drama one time in history robs us not only of the truth but also of our diversity and universality as well. Furthermore, by removing our ability to question "authority" and to develop our own individuality, this ideology homogenizes us in a way that it is not beneficial but ugly and sheepish. By understanding the terrestrial and cosmic mythos conveyed for millennia, we can move ourselves at last into an age of enlightenment and enjoy the multiplicity of the human mind, unfettered by controlling concepts and "thought police" that limit creativity and wisdom.

The New Age

It has been demonstrated that Christianity pretty much got it all wrong-except the end to its erroneous means: It succeeded in enriching and empowering its most effective proponents many times over. According to the same astrological system used to create Christianity, the age for such divisiveness, fascism and hierarchical exploitation is now drawing to a close, and lying, deceit, cheating and stealing will fall by the wayside. Included in this age in which "the truth will be shouted from the rooftops" is the exposure of Earth's "dirty little secret." As Jacolliot says:

Apostles of Jesus, you have counted too much upon human credulity, trusted too much that the future might not unveil your maneuvers and your fabricated recitals-the sanctity of your object made you too oblivious of means, and you have taken the good faith of peoples by surprise in re-producing the fables of another age, which you believed buried for ever.²¹

But the future is now, and the maneuvers are being unveiled. As far as Christianity's role in this "New Age," Carpenter states:

 Christianity therefore, as I say, must either now come frankly forward and, acknowledging its parentage from the great Order of the past, seek to rehabilitate that and carry mankind one step forward in the path of evolution-or else it must perish. There is no alternative.²²

Despite the vilification of the so-called New Age movement, the fact is that we are entering into a new age. "I am with you always to the close of the age"-so ends the Gospel of Matthew. What does this mysterious statement mean, and why was this all ­important book ended with it? The age referred to in the gospel tale is that of Pisces, and, through contrivance and duplicity, coercion and slaughter, the fish-god "Jesus," the Piscean Solar Avatar, has indeed been with us, but now it is the close of the age, and his time is over.

As Hancock says, "We live today in the astrological no man's land at the end of the `Age of Pisces,' on the threshold of the `New Age' of Aquarius. Traditionally these times of transition between one age and the next have been regarded as ill-omened."²³ Ill-­omened verily, as the ongoing destruction of the earth and the endless warfare over ideology will indeed produce the "Armageddon" so long awaited and planned for by those who cannot live for today but must look towards an afterlife. By realizing the cultural unity revealed behind the Christ conspiracy, however, humanity can pull together and prevent this fall, to create a better world.

References for Footnotes: (Conclusion only)

Carpenter, Edward, Pagan and Christian Creeds, Heath Research, 1975

Graham, Llloyd, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, Citadel, 1991

Hancock, Graham, Fingerprints of the Gods, Crown, 1995

Higgins, Godfrey, Anacalypsis, A&B Books, 1992

Jackson, John G., Christianity Before Christ, American Atheists, 1985

Jacolliot, Louis, The Bible in India, Sun Books, 1992

Larson, Martin A., The Story of Christian Origins, Village, 1977

Massey, Gerald, The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ, Heath Research

Pike, Albert, The Morals and Dogma of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, LH Jenkins, 1928

Robertson, JM, Pagan Christs, Dorset, 1966

Waite, Charles, History of the Christian Religion to the Year 200, Caroll Bierbower, 1992

Wheless, Joeseph, Forgery in Christianity, Heath Research, 1990

Footnotes:

1. Waite, 22.

2. Jackson, 213.

3. Robertson, 52.

4. Carpenter, 130.

5. Carpenter, 19.

6. "The Naked Truth."

7. Massey, Lectures on the Moon

8. Massey, HJMC, 182.

9. Higgins, I, 371.

10. Jackson, 122.

11. Robertson, 128-9.

12. Larson, 416.

13. Pike, 74.

14. Wheless, FC, 303­

15. Jacolliot, 119

16. Massey, GHC, 2.

17. Pike, 102.

18. Wheless, FC, 33.

19. Wheless, FC, 33.

20. Graham, 356

21. Jacolliot, 304.

22. Carpenter, 264.

23. Hancock, 240.

Special Note: An "evemerist" is someone who believes that Jesus was a real individual, though not a god. Evemerism is named after Evemeras, a 4th  Century B.C.E. Greek philosopher who developed the idea that, rather than being mythological creatures as was accepted by the reigning  intellectuals, the gods of old were in fact historical  characters, kings, emperors and heroes whose  exploits were then deified.
 

Acharya S, the author of this piece, has a Web Site that is worth a visit. You can get there by pointing your browser to:  http://www.truthbeknown.com/christcon.htm There you will find several interesting links and information about the book The Christ Conspiracy - The Greatest Story Ever Sold.

A most impressive site presenting compelling arguments for the non-existence of Jesus can be found at                                                                     www.jesusneverexisted.com

On the same theme, check out an excellent essay titled Did Jesus Exist and Does it Matter?

Addendum:

The following excerpt immediately below is taken from an engaging essay published on the internet on Acharya S. by John Kaminski called Detoxifying Self-Deception. What follows is the summary of that essay.

The Christian religion—as well as its monotheistic cousins, Judaism and Islam—are all based on primitive vestiges from a dim past that certainly most of their adherents do not adequately understand and doubtless many of its top officials do not comprehend, either. These are cannibalism and child sacrifice.

The tangent to cannibalism can be clearly seen in the act of Holy Communion, in which the faithful are urged to swallow “the body of Christ.” The example of child sacrifice occurs in the myth of “God” supposed sending his only son into the corporeal realm only to be tortured and murdered. This has always sounded to me like deep cover conditioning to indoctrinate believing dupes into being willing to die, or sending their children off to die, for their blessed country.

I don’t know of any literature that adequately analyzes the psychological ramifications of these two symbolically barbaric acts. But I do know that billions of people have participated in these crazed rituals and based their lives on the veneration of them. And we see too clearly the results of the belief paradigm in the senseless murder of billions over the century generated by the blind and savage faith in this supposedly holy cause.

Though there are infinite examples, the two that initially come to mind are the centuries of slaughter in the Western hemisphere by Spanish conquistadores and British pioneers who regarded different-looking fellow humans as mere animals eligible for thoughtless extermination. And now, there are the perverse rape- murders of innocent Iraqis by drug-addled and uranium-poisoned American, British and Israeli heroes. Same ballgame, different day—every single bit of it directly attributable to this bloodthirsty Judeo-Christian legacy.

And I also know one other important thing in these matters. When you live your life convinced that reality is a certain way and base your life on it, your life will turn out to be exactly what you believe. I believe there is a direct connection between the great Christian lie that you will survive death if you do what the priest says, and the ever present reality of violence in the world.

The church teaches you to believe in the infallibility of what its leaders say, and to follow their orders no matter what, or you will roast in the fires of hell. History shows us, clearly, that no matter what denomination, the church fathers have lied terribly and caused billions of needless deaths. This lying, sanctimoniously emulated by government leaders—be they kings or presidents—has transferred this supernatural authority to the secular realm, and allowed our leaders to dupe their populations into endless killing for what our leaders said was right, but for what were ultimately deceitful reasons because they were based on deliberate lies. Just like the Christian religion, and its monotheistic cousins.

The population’s willingness to believe these lies relates directly to what their holy men told them—believe this, or you will suffer in hell for eternity.

What you believe is what you become, and this attitude engendered by the Christian church and its maniacal monotheistic counterparts have, with their transparent lies that have been swallowed by millions of gullible people, lived up to the impotent threats of their insincere promises by creating hell on earth to convince you that they are right.

This holy mind-lock has never been more obvious—nor more lethal—than it is today, in the year 2005, in which a despotic U.S. president who insists he talks to God has killed and is killing hundreds of thousands people all over the world, for reasons that anyone with a whit of sense knows are lies.

The two voluminous, solidly referenced works of the woman known only as Acharya S—“The Christ Conspiracy” and “Suns of God”—provide a valuable first step for many bewildered believers who have come to disbelieve the doubletalk of their religious leaders in detoxifying the self-deceptive misinformation that most of us have been bombarded with throughout our lives.

This knowledge has always been known, but it has been suppressed by the spin machine that organized religion, conferring its corrupt grace on tyrants for centuries, has always censored. The real picture of our misguided Christian believer was probably best expressed by St. Augustine himself all those long and agonizing years ago, in this passage recounted by Acharya S:

 . . . one of the most famed and respected Christian doctors was St. Augustine, who “stakes his eternal salvation” on his assertion that he preached the gospel to “a whole nation of men and women, who had no heads, but had their eyes in their bosoms.”

Footnote: Just who exactly is Acharya S and why is she so hard to find? Really, it’s because of the persecution she has been forced to endure because of her work. Right now, not even her publisher knows where she is. She has gone underground after several unpleasant incidents during the past few years, one of which was the kidnapping of her son, a crime that was happily resolved after some period of intense stress that may have involved a well-known New Age guru.

A study in contradictions, Acharya S is obviously a nom de plume for an archeologist, historian, mythologist and linguist who has the qualifications, courage, and integrity to so professionally and thoroughly debunk the collective religious spin machine. But to talk to Acharya S is markedly different than reading her work - about like the difference between a biker chick and a college professor, leading some to speculate if the rough-edged radical and the creator of the meticulously argued and scholarly tomes which bear her name are actually the same person.

Nevertheless, her two meticulously footnoted books present the lay reader and professional historian alike with a stark assessment of the outright lies the Christian church has told about its namesake. You can order the books from www.adventuresunlimitedpress.com/ or find out more about Acharya at www.truthbeknown.com/

If you read these books, it’s extremely doubtful you’ll ever go to church again. And if you do, you must carry with you the reverberating question: What happens to you when you know that what you have believed in the deepest recesses of your own heart is false?

All this time, in the name of a bogus magic formula stolen from others and renamed with lie upon lie, billions have been slaughtered, and billions more about to be. Open your eyes, for the real God’s sake, for the beauty of this universe that gives us life, that does not distinguish between man or beast, but gives everything that breathes this exquisite gift, with only one, single string attached—a string attached to everything that lives.

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