Chrestianos, Christianos, Jesus, Paul, Pharisees and Myths

May 22, 2011 / Posted in  Ancient Egypt, Bible, Church history, crucifixon, Jesus Christ, Martin Luther, Nazis, Roman Catholicism

Over the years I have written at length that Saul of Tarsus never existed.  What has been written by others about Saul/Paul shows that he was an intolerant and bigoted man.  Orthodox Jews rejected the Paul of the New Testament, even though he came out of a Pharisee background: he was a man “cut-off” from the general Israelite community.  As a Pharisee (פרושים perushim/פרוש parush, meaning “set apart”; cf. (Ernest Klein (1987). Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language. Jerusalem : Carta ; [Haifa] : University of Haifa), Saul/Paul represented a group generally associated with being undesirables: tax collectors for the hated Roman occupation forces and the Roman Empire as well as relying on  prophetic or Mosaic authority for their interpretation of Jewish laws, while the Sadducees represented the authority of the priestly privileges and prerogatives established since the days of Solomon, when Zadok, their ancestor, officiated as High Priest.  There was also a form of class struggle between the two groups; the Pharisees were seen as poor and uneducated, while the Sadducees were seen as a “chosen people” who were among the elect of their god  YHWH since the Sadducees included the wealthy and aristocratic families who collaborated with the Romans at the expense of the general community, dined with foreign occupants and even ignored cultural traditions(read: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/deadsea.html#Essenes).

The Pharisees developed as a party within orthodox Judaism shortly after the time of the revolt of Judas Maccabaeus against the Greek overlords in the middle of the second century BCE. The Pharisees separated themselves from other forms of religious belief within Judaism to be the ‘godly people’ who would be saved, and unlike most Israelites, believed in an afterlife and a warrior savior (a messiah: מָשִׁיחַ) who would be anointed with the holy oil reserved for kings and generals and come to the earth to reign over all Israelites (Exodus 30:22-25) as a descendant of a King “David” (דָּביתדוד)   but the word has more than one meaning and actually is two words (a compound noun) meaning “beloved house” and indicative not of a man but of a dynasty or prophecy.  The Tel Dan stele tells of the victory of an Aramean king over “the king of Israel” a triumph that was not foreseen and in fact promised would never occur (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/sadducees_pharisees_essenes.html).  The promise of the Israelite god was that David’s House would rule “forever” was short-lived, as  John Hyrcanus established a new monarchy in the form of the priestly Hasmonean dynasty in 152 BCE — and putting into place priests as political as well as religious authorities.  While the Hasmoneans were heroes for resisting the Seleucids, their reign lacked the legitimacy conferred by descent from the Davidic dynasty of the First Temple Era.  This generated dissent among the group who would emerge as Pharisees largely out of the group of scribes and sages who harked back to Ezra and the Great Assembly and rejected all Hellenistic influences that they saw as corrupting Israelites.

Pharisees were known, frequently derisively, for their extreme public piety and literal obedience to the Law while ignoring its message. The Pharisees observed 365 commandments concerning the things they must not do, and around these they added a protective barrier of oral instruction and prohibition deigned to protect themselves from inadvertently breaking the Law of God.  This “addition” infuriated the more staid and ossified Sadducees as adding new laws had been prohibited in Babylonia and among Jews who survived the “captivity” as it was “adding to the Book” and thus against the original plan of “Moses”.  The Pharisees held them as authoritative—which in time became the extra works of Judaism known as the Talmud (Hebrew: תַּלְמוּד).  Oral Law, however, was not written down until Rabbi Judah the Prince’s, noting the extensive number of rabbis killed in the various revolts against non-Israelite force, decided to correct this omission c 200 CE.

Rabbi Judah codified the Oral Law in a work known as the Mishnah (Hebrew: משנה, “repetition”, from the verb shanah שנה, or “to study and review”). In the Mishnah Rabbi Judah wrote sixty-three tractates and unlike the Torah, systematically codified it by topic. The first of the six orders is called Zera’im (Seeds). They focus on agricultural rules of ancient Palestine (many coming from Babylon), particularly with the details of the produce that were to be presented as offerings at the Temple in Jerusalem, but the most famous tractate in Zera’im is Brakhot (Blessings) and it has little to do with agriculture; it records laws concerning different blessings and when they are to be recited. Other tractates include: Nezikin (Damages), which contains ten tractates summarizing Jewish civil and criminal law; Nashim (Women), covering issues between the sexes, including both laws of marriage (Kiddushin), and of divorce (Gittin); Kodashim, outlining the laws of sacrifices and ritual slaughter; Taharot, containing the laws of purity and impurity. (Cp. Source: Telushkin, Joseph (1991). Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1991.)  This ordering made it easier for Pharisees to look up any prohibition and know what not to do.

This Mishnah was not considered authoritative until 400 CE when the rabbis of Palestine edited their discussions of the Mishna and released (“published”) it as the Palestinian Talmud (in Hebrew, Talmud Yerushalmi, which literally means “Jerusalem Talmud”). More than a century later (c. 500 CE), some of the leading Babylonian rabbis compiled another editing of the discussions on the Mishna, but it was a late intervention as deliberations had been going on some three hundred years.

The Babylon edition, however, was far more extensive than its Palestinian counterpart, so that the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Bavli) became the most authoritative compilation of the Oral Law (See, Strack, Hermann (1945). Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, Jewish Publication Society, pp.11-12. “[The Oral Law] was handed down by word of mouth during a long period…The first attempts to write down the traditional matter, there is reason to believe, date from the first half of the second post-Christian century.” Strack believes that the growth of a Christian canon [the New Testament {that did not appear in book-format  until 380 CE at the earliest, according to Eusebius of Caesarea}] was a factor that influenced the Rabbis to record the oral law in writing).

Uniquely, while the Sadducees declared they were the descendents of Moses, the Pharisees traced their origins to those spoken about by the prophet Malachi:

Then the people who feared the Lord spoke to one another and the Lord listened and heard what they said and in his presence there was written down in a book a record of those who feared the Lord and respected him. ‘They will be my people,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘On the day when I act, they will be my very own.’ (Malachi 3:16-17)

There was no love in Malachi’s message, rather the prophet articulated the wrath of god and told people who unless they “feared the lord” (as repeated by Saul/Paul, Luther, Hitler, and others who would be god when they addressed their own constituency) they will not be among the “chosen race”: Israelite, Aryan, and so forth.  It was essential that the individual surrender himself to his god and his temporal leader to be saved (Gen 3:1-15, 12:1, 22:1-18; Ex 3:1 through 4:13; compare Heb 11:25; as “god’s people” had to be “set apart” from all other people: Ex 19:5,6; 22:31; Lev 20:7; Dt 7:6; 14:2 regardless of the sacrifice Lev 1), and thus go to war as did the crusaders, those who followed the Nazis into battle, and those who follow the Koch Brothers–without sense or self-thinking or self-judgment. It was as if “The hand of the Lord was upon me” (Ezek. 1:3; 3:14) implying a complete divine mastery over all things, leaving the individual without freedom of choice or selection, without determining his or her own direction or life–it was to become a robot.

The “people” were those educated in the Torah and the Talmud—adults trained in the law, and generally among the oldest males within the community, and there was no room to listen to a child speak, thereby making it illogical (if not impossible) for the Pharisees to listen to the child Jesus who the various writers of the Gospel of Luke (2:46-47) argued “instructed” them on the law.  The most that could have happened is that he went to school there, but that does not fit the text, as his parents were returning to their home, therefore if he was to have had an education it would be at the local synagogue.

The Pharisees believed that they belonged to this chosen group who would be spared from the wrathful judgment of God and that they would become foot soldiers for the final battle against evil: foreigners in the land of Israel. Jesus was not the man who promised to drive out the foreign occupiers; on the contrary, he told the people of Israel to “love your enemy”–a message not a single Pharisee would understand as for centuries the message was “A great Messiah [warrior] will set you free.”

Out of this group of Pharisees came the mythological Paul who would transmogrify Christianity so much so that there would be numerous conflicts, bloodshed and wars between chrestianos and christianos who made up the early community of Christians, most desiring martyrdom, or like the Essenes (in modern Hebrew only אִסִּיִים as it did not exist in ancient Hebrew) who were a small group of Israelites who, according to popular convention, lived from the second century BCE until the first century CE and were prepared for martyrdom (the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (died c. 79 A.D.) in his Natural History(N’H,V,XV) argues that the Essenes, as a group of various numbers do not

marry, possess no money, and had existed for thousands of generations in Ein Gedi, next to the Dead Sea), while others were waiting for the day that the Emperor would recognize their sect—and some hoping that the Emperor himself would become a Christian, promising him eternal life in heaven and offering him the title of “Saint” (with him being pictured with a halo around his head, similar to the past Roman emperors who were hailed as gods).  Constantine (272 – 337 CE) never converted to Christianity, but the followers of Saul/Paul would invent the tale that he converted on his death-bed to give them legitimacy.

Who were the chrestianos? Chrestus was a familiar personal name throughout the Roman Empire. It was not, however, Israelite in origin. Instead it was the name of the Egyptian Serapis (Ancient Greek: Σάραπιςa, Graeco-Egyptian god. He was invented during the 3rd century BC on the orders of Ptolemy I of Egypt as a means to unify the Greeks and Egyptians in his realm, and whose main temple was in Alexandria, Egypt {read: Pausanias, Ἑλλάδος περιήγησις or Description of Greece, 1.18.4, second century CE}. The god was depicted as Greek in appearance, but with Egyptian trappings, and combined iconography from a great many cults, signifying both abundance and resurrection) or Osiris who would have a life and death similar to (but not identical with) the Jesus of the New Testament not yet written. 

Chrestus and his followers, the chrestianos, were numerous and strong, dedicated and determined.  They believed in an afterlife when their god would return riding a wild horse with a sword in hand. They would be numbered among “the elect [or chosen]” and in a rapture of light be appointed to senior positions in the next kingdom of the messiah.

The chrestianos had a large following at Borne, especially among the common people, as it was the common people who demanded a better life and no group other than the chrestianos offered them hope. This hope led the commoners, the poor, to envision a classless afterlife where all would be equal and quickly adopted the Egyptian promise of a life after death where their promise of enjoying the fruits of those save would be found when they would go to a special garden (paradise).  In the chrestianos paradise they would find it filled with all earthly delights including unlimited amounts of honey, lamps filled with oil that would stay lit permanently, and ease without the need to work.  There sole task was to sing praises and hymns to the Egyptian god once  their souls were individually weighed on Resurrection Day (the soul would be on one scale of the balance, and their good deeds the counterweight on the other scale).  If their endurance, faith, and good deeds weighed more than their transgressions they would be invited to join in a rapture of unexplainable intensity and fervor. 

Egyptian immigrants that flooded into Rome, who were primarily from Alexandria where the cult originated, were unwelcome and quickly received the title of being “evil”: people who could not be trust.  From this came the name “gypsies”.

History details the evil repute the The cult of Serapis and Isis had, and it exposed the chrestianos repeatedly to persecution: not merely to political considerations (Rome and Alexandria had been enemies for years), but also to moral and police suspicions and attacks. The lax morality associated with the worship of the Egyptian gods, especially the goddess Isis who married her brother Osiris, and from his dead body conceived a son (Horus), giving foundation to Roman revolution to the incestuous affair that was common everywhere.  More exactly it was the fanaticism of the chrestianos worshippers that repelled the Romans, and excited the suspicion that their cultus might be directed against the State. As Cumont noted:  “Their secret associations, which were chiefly recruited from the poorer people, might easily, under the cover of religion, become clubs of agitators and the resort of spies. These grounds for suspicion and hatred [!] contributed more, no doubt, to the rise of the persecution than purely theological considerations. We see how it subsides and flames out again according to the changes in the condition of general politics” (Burckhardt – Brandenberg, August and Cumont, Franz Valery Marie (1969) Die orientalischen Religionen im römischen Heidentum; nach der vierten franzosischen Aufl. Unter Zugrundelegung der ubersetzung Gerichs. Darmstadt : Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969; Cumont, Franz and Sehrich, Georg (1910) Die orientalischen Religionen im römischen Heidentum, Leipzig and Berlin, NP. by Gehrich (1910), p. 98.) The Roman people called the followers of Serapis-Chrestus “good” because they were precisely the contrary, and thus they damned them with feigned praise.

The problem of the chrestianos is their long and bloody history which they both experienced and caused.  In 48 BCE, the Roman Senate ordered that all chapels devoted to Isis and other images of Egyptian gods be broken. The hatred for Egyptians as demonstrated by Roman senators and carried out by Roman born citizens and its military took another sinister turn in 28 CE.  In 28 CE, the Roman senate launched another attack upon the Egyptians, excluding all Alexandrian divinities from the limits of the Pomoerium (the sacred boundary of the city of Rome: beyond the walls of Rome, Romans considered the rest to be “just land”)—a proscription that Agrippa extended for an additional seven years and increased the sphere a thousand paces from the city.  By 49 CE, the feeling against the Egyptians ran so high, on account of a scandal in which Egyptian

priests were involved, that the most drastic proceedings were taken against the followers of Serapis and on any Jew who was from Alexandria (the majority of Jews in Rome came from Alexandria) or other cities in Egypt.  Frustrated Romans riled against the rabble whom they labeled as “Chrestiani.” Tacitus stated in Annals, ii, 85, that at that time the proscription of the Egyptian and Jewish religious practices was discussed, and the Senate decided to send “four thousand men infected with their superstitions,” who were from “the class of freedmen,” to the island of Sardinia, to fight bandits in the hope that the unhealthy climate of the island would make an end of them. Josephus confirms this in his Antiquities xviii, 3, 5.

 A few years later, under Claudius, “the Senate decreed the expulsion of all “mathematicians” from Italy, though the decree was not put in force” (Tacitus, Annales xii, 52).  The mathematicians (actually, astrologers) were, once again, Egyptians and Egyptian Jews, the followers of Chrestus, as Flavius Vopiscus wrote in the letter dictated by the Emperor Hadrian to his brother-in-law Servius: “Those who worship Serapis are the Chrestians, and those who call themselves priests of Chrestus are devoted to Serapis. There is not a high-priest of the Jews, a Samaritan, or a priest of Chrestus who is not a mathematician [astrologer], soothsayer, or quack. Even the patriarch, when he goes to Egypt, is compelled by some to worship Serapis, by others to worship Chrestus. They are a turbulent, inflated, lawless body of men. They have only one God, who is worshipped by the Chrestians, the Jews, and all the peoples [sic] of Egypt.” Today, this letter is considered a fourth century forgery—as are most of the statements of persecutions, martyrdoms, and the hostilities shown to “Christians”.

For that reason “Chrestiani” may be either the followers of a man named Chrestus, or of Serapis as the documents that existed either are buried in the Vatican vaults or have been destroyed. What they had in common with the christianos was the belief in a warrior messiah who would return, and whose affairs on earth would be carried out by a surrogate who would eventually become Paul.  What would happen, as a way of encouraging the chrestianosto accept the Paulinity of the new church was to adopt some of the Egyptian deities.  Ultimately, the Egyptian Trinity (Osiris, Isis, Horus) would become part of

the theology of Christianity, but with the Etruscan order (Tinia [chief Etruscan God, the ruler of the skies, husband of Uni, and father of Hercle; he was associated with the Greek Zeus and Roman Jupiter with characteristics similar to Yahweh {Egyptian deity frequently depicted as a cow}], Uni [Uni was the equivalent of the Roman Juno, whose name Uni may be derived from, and the Greek Hera and was both a warrior and a healer and was supreme goddess of the Etruscan pantheon] and Menrva [(also Menarva) was the Goddess of wisdom, war, art, schools, and commerce, and, like Athena, was born from her father’s head; Menrva found men distasteful; she decided that a man was a woman inside and shouldn’t be allowed to roam the lands as a “man”] that undoubtedly came

from the matriarchal theology of ancient Mycenae where the chief goddess was the Creatrix, the daughter the savior, and the sister/grandmother the Inspirer or Ghost of Promise, as defined in fifteenth century BCE Hieroglyphs and Linear B tablets; see: Corpus speculorum Etruscorum. Città del Vaticano. Roma : “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, c1995- (multivolumes) , and Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae with the more authoritative reading of Helmut Rix, Etruskische Texte : editio minor / herausgegeben von Helmut Rix, in Zusammenarbeit mit Gerhard Meiser ; unter Mitwirkung von Fritz Kouba [et al.] Tübingen : G. Narr, c1991, 2 vols. ) but change the sacred three from being female to becoming male in keeping with the patriarchy of Israelite theology.

Saul of Tarsus/Paul was a fourth century invention that condemned the church established by the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, and has been both a plague on mortals as well as a bastardization of the message of the alleged Jesus of the New Testament. Saul/Paul is an invention is easily proved. Paul is not known outside of the New Testament and he is given authorship of thirteen writings (letters/books) in the New Testament that have the name Paul (Παῦλος) as the first word, hence claiming authorship by Paul the Apostle, none which were initially accepted as authentic or valid, but went into the canon (and the back of the Bible) because of political and ecclesiastical pressures (The Letter to the Hebrews, today, is commonly thought of as a forgery or not written by Saul/Paul, while 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are held to be pseudepigraphic by the majority of modern scholars (New Testament Letter Structure, from Catholic Resources by Felix Just, S.J.: http://catholic-resources.org/Bible/Paul-Disputed.htm). 

There are no writings by Greek, Jewish or Roman scholars about Saul/Paul during his lifetime. There are no true records (letters) that he wrote, as all show numerous different styles of composition, word choice, and plagiarisms and read as though they were written as an official statement for public reading. They are similar to that which came out of the writing centers where scribes recorded the commands, commandments, and injunctions (edicts, for example) of the Imperial House from the time of Constantine and his successors). The authors of the day did not notice anything profound or of significant influence in what Saul/Paul wrote, and, indeed, it took three centuries before the impact of his work was such as to change the history of the Roman world (http://www.gordonmoyes.com/2009/07/01/paul-the-pharisee/).

The only Biblical record of Saul/Paul is in the “Acts of the Apostles” that is also a record of uncertain origin.  As for Saul/Paul being the author, it is commonly know that Paul used to dictate his letters to a secretary or “amanuensis” (Once the amanuensis identified himself as Tertius; cf. Romans 16:22: ασπαζομαι υμας εγω τερτιος ο γραψας την επιστολην εν κυριω) who would take down in a form of shorthand the dictation of Paul, scribing with a stylus on a waxed tablet the notes that were then written in longhand, transcribed by pen and ink onto papyrus scrolls. It is possible that Luke and Timothy also acted as secretary to Paul.

It has been claimed that Paul always personally signed his letters – as he indicated a number of times (cf. 1 Corinthians 16:21: ο ασπασμος τη εμη χειρι παυλου), and considered, with great arrogance, that he was specially chosen (similar to the Jesus of the Bible) to do the work of the Israelite god.  There is little that is original in the Letters of Saul/Paul, for they are in most cases a of a graduate’s plagiarism, taking from previous Hebrew texts and making his Christ to appear as the promised Messiah.  For example, in Galatians he used the following ideas of Jeremiah: “I chose you before I gave you life, and before you were born I selected you to be a prophet to the nations” (Galatians 1:15: οτε δε ευδοκησεν ο θεος ο αφορισας με εκ κοιλιας μητρος μου και καλεσας δια της χαριτος αυτου, using Jeremiah 1:5:  בְּטֶרֶם [כ= אֶצֹּורְךָ] [ק= אֶצָּרְךָ] בַבֶּטֶן יְדַעְתִּיךָ וּבְטֶרֶם תֵּצֵא מֵרֶחֶם הִקְדַּשְׁתִּיךָ נָבִיא לַגֹּויִם נְתַתִּיךָ׃).

What is universally accepted now is the fact that Saul/Paul did not write the Letter to the Hebrews.  Most of the rest of the Letters ascribed to Saul/Paul are suspected to be forgeries planted to make Constantine’s’ Christianity and the Christian Church created by the Emperor Constantine at his Council of Nicaea to be supreme to buttress his throne and keep together his fragile empire.

The letters of Saul/Paul (none of the originals exist, as what is known is the report from secondary and tertiary sources, including the “apostle Luke” who is given authorship of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which “Luke” admits he had to do research to complete: Acts 1:1-4: τον μεν πρωτον λογον εποιησαμην περι παντων ω θεοφιλε ων ηρξατο ο ιησους ποιειν τε και διδασκειν αχρι ης ημερας εντειλαμενος τοις αποστολοις δια πνευματος αγιου ους εξελεξατο ανεληφθη οις και παρεστησεν εαυτον ζωντα μετα το παθειν αυτον εν πολλοις τεκμηριοις δι ημερων τεσσαρακοντα οπτανομενος αυτοις και λεγων τα περι της βασιλειας του θεου και συναλιζομενος παρηγγειλεν αυτοις απο ιεροσολυμων μη χωριζεσθαι αλλα περιμενειν την επαγγελιαν του πατρος ην ηκουσατε μου; Luke 1:1-4: επειδηπερ πολλοι επεχειρησαν αναταξασθαι διηγησιν περι των πεπληροφορημενων εν ημιν πραγματων καθως παρεδοσαν ημιν οι απ αρχης αυτοπται και υπηρεται γενομενοι του λογου εδοξεν καμοι παρηκολουθηκοτι ανωθεν πασιν ακριβως καθεξης σοι γραψαι κρατιστε θεοφιλε ινα επιγνως περι ων κατηχηθης λογων την ασφαλειαν) were meant to entertain, not to educate, correct, inspire, and so forth. This can be seen in Paul’s use of chiasmus – the lyrical device of developing a theme in one sentence word-by-word, then reversing the order in the remaining half of the sentence (look, for example, at 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20). Some scholars have identified many places where the form of Paul’s sentence goes abc-cba. 

Paul frequently quoted other authors, even on occasions quoting hymns from the early church. One such hymn is found in the great passage on the incarnation of Christ (Philippians 2:5-11); another is in his letter to Timothy, where he encouraged loyalty to Christ (2 Timothy 1:11-13). When he addressed the philosophers in Athens, he quoted Greek poets and quoted on other occasions extensively from the Old Testament.  This is why many biblical scholars and theologians argue that today’s Christianity is really Paulinity, and rather than read the words of the Jesus of the New Testament, Christians read the words of Saul/Paul with his Hellenic background.

Adolf Hitler once said of Paul: “Christ was an Aryan. But Paul used his teaching to mobilise the underworld and to organise an earlier Bolshevism” (Hitler [Table-Talk, p. 143] in Trevor-Roper, H.R. (1953). [Introduction], Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-44: His Private Conversations, Redwood Press, Ltd.).  Whenever Hitler mentions Christ, Hitler has nothing but admiration, his words glowing, pulsating with a rich vigor that was nearly apocalyptical and foretelling of his own identification with the one many called Jesus of Nazareth, for Hitler saw himself as a popular leader of “the people of the Lord”:

“Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism the destroyer. Nevertheless, the Galilean, who later was called Christ, intended something quite different. He must be regarded as a popular leader who too up His position against Jewry. Galilee was a colony where the Romans had probably installed Gallic legionaries, and it’s certain that Jesus was not a Jew. The Jews, by the way, regarded Him as the son of a whore– of a whore and a Roman soldier.”  Hitler went on further with his blisteringly baited attack on Saul / Paul of Tarsus contending in the harshest tone, for Hitler became like Martin Luther was in his last years, strongly antisemitic, pounding his political pulpit as Luther pounded his pen against parchment when writing that Jewish homes should be destroyed, their synagogues burned, money confiscated and liberty curtailed (ref.:  Hendrix, Scott H. “The Controversial Luther”, Word & World 3/4 (1983), Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN, p. 393: “And, finally, after the Holocaust and the use of his anti-Jewish statements by National Socialists, Luther’s anti-semitic outbursts are now unmentionable, though they were already repulsive in the sixteenth century. As a result, Luther has become as controversial in the twentieth century as he was in the sixteenth.” ), Hitler roared:

“The decisive falsification of Jesus’s doctrine was the work of St. Paul. He gave himself to this work with subtlety and for purposes of personal exploitation. For the Galilean’s object was to liberate His country from Jewish oppression. He set Himself against Jewish capitalism, and that’s why the Jews liquidated Him.”

As tortured as Hitler’s logic is, He never condemns Jesus. On the contrary, he sees Jesus as an Aryan, a liberator against Jewish oppression! If Hitler did not see himself as a Christian, then why doesn’t he condemn Jesus? Why doesn’t he accuse Christ as being a Jew? Why does he see Christ as a liberator?

Those who would have the world believe that Hitler was at worse an atheist, or at least anti-Christian base their fabrications on quotes taken out of context in the German text of the Hitler’s Table Talk (or Conversations) that do not include them—they were made up by François Genoud, the translator of the French version who openly avowed he would expose Hitler in the worse way (see: The testament of Adolf Hitler; the Hitler-Bormann documents, February-April 1945, edited by François Genoud. Translated from the German by R.H. Stevens. With an introduction by H.R. Trevor-Roper [2d edition] London, Cassell {1961, c1960}).  Hitler’s hatred for the Jews is well documented in the German, especially in Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf.  Hitler was following his mentors, especially and primarily the German renegade month Martin Luther.  Hitler also turned to, in a limited extent Frederick Nietzsche, who in turn wrote: “A God who died for our sins; redemption through faith; resurrection after death – all these are counterfeits of true Christianity, for which that disastrous, wrong-headed fellow Paul must be held responsible.”

Martin Luther, who was once a Catholic monk, denounced the Catholic hierarchy as the work of the anti-Christ and established by the Devil [Against the Papacy established by the Devil (1545)]. Hitler said: “Luther had the merit of rising against the Pope and the organisation of the Church. It was the first of the great revolutions. And thanks to his translation of the Bible, Luther replaced our dialects by the great German language!” (Hitler, Adolf, Table-Talk [p. 9]).  It must be remembered that not only did Martin Luther praise Saul/Paul, but cited him more frequently than any other figure in the Bible.  Hitler did this, without qualms, as Hitler knew (as he was informed by Protestant theologians and religious supporters; read: Richard, Steigmann-Gall (2003). The Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, pp. 5-6.), it gave him his biblical foundation on which to build the reign of terror of the Third Reich under the stated purpose of erecting a magnificent new capital at Berlin (Welthauptstadt Germania), has been described as attempting to build a version of the New Jerusalem (Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (1895, 1992, etc).  The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935. New York University Press paperback).

Those who knew Hitler remarked about his Christian views. For example, Minister Rust, in a speech to a mass meeting of German Christians on June 29, 1933 [Helmreich, Helmreich, Ernst Christian (1979). The German Churches Under Hitler, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, hereafter cited as Helmreich, p. 138] declared: “If anyone can lay claim to God’s help, then it is Hitler, for without God’s benevolent fatherly hand, without his blessing, the nation would not be where it stands today. It is an unbelievable miracle that God has bestowed on our people.”

The established (officially recognized) Methodist church paper, Friedensglocke, vouched for the authenticity of a story about Hitler where he invited a group of deaconesses from the Bethel Institutions into his home at Obersalzberg: “The deaconesses entered the chamber and were astonished to see the pictures of Frederick the Great, Luther, and Bismarck on the wall. Then Hitler said: ‘Those are the three greatest men that God has given the German people. From Frederick the Great I have learned bravery, and from Bismarck statecraft. The greatest of the three is Dr. Martin Luther, for he made it possible to bring unity among the German tribes by giving them a common language through his translation of the Bible into German….’ [Note that Hitler’s own words about his admiration for Martin Luther are expressed in Mein Kampf.] One sister could not refrain from saying: Herr Reichkanzler, from where do you get the courage to undertake the great changes in the whole Reich? Thereupon Hitler took out of his pocket the New Testament of Dr. Martin Luther, which one could see had been used very much, and said earnestly: ‘From God’s word.’ “Helmreich, op. cit., p. 139).  Even the Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich who visited Hitler at his mountain retreat in Obersalzburg confessed: “Without a doubt the chancellor lives in faith in God. He recognizes Christianity as the foundation of Western culture…” (Helmreich, op. cit. p.279).

The English philosopher and democratic apologist who wrote on freedom, John Stuart Mill, commented: “I hold St Paul to have been the first great corrupter of Christianity.” (https://www.westminster.coresense.com/pdf_files/9780852346266.pdf) The German psychologist, Carl Jung, said: “It is frankly disappointing to see how Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in.” (For other critiques and criticisms of Saul/Paul read http://www.metalog.org/files/paul_p1.html cp. a critical response at http://www.innominatesociety.com/Articles/The%20Thorn%20In%20The%20Flesh.htm)  

The only reason that “Paul” was successful was because of his transmogrification of the words of the New Testament Jesus—taking the bitterness, hatred, and war mongering of the Jesus of the Gospel,  and refining them into a gentleness that the christianos demanded to counter the martial mentality of the chrestianos (which, as detailed by Roger Viklund at http://rogerviklund.wordpress.com/category/erik-zara/, we find in Epistulae genuina e S. Ignatii Martyris, printed by Isaak Vossius in 1646, stating: Ἐκ τῶν ἐπιστολῶν τοῦ ἁγιωτάτου Κλήμεντος τοῦ Στρωματέως Θεοδώρῳ,with the word being recreated in 1050 CE in the Second Medicean Manuscript(M. II) while  the sentence ”Auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat” is removed from the current text, in accordance with the hypothesis that Tacitus never wrote this, and a text equivalent to ”Auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat” was created and inserted in the margin, in accordance with the theory that such a text only existed as a marginal note, a gloss, in the beginning, before it was inserted into the text when a new transcript was made of the manuscript; plagiarism and false-copying [marginalia: also translated as marginal comments] was common in what passed for scholarship), of Rome and the empire that was leading followers of a Christ (the word actually means “senior magician”) into a docile and nearly effeminate Jesus that would create peace among war factions of the new cult and stabilize the empire. Here is a modified image of M.II, containing the Christus-passage. Montage and drawing ©2010, Dr. R. A. Daniel Pihl.

Why the mention of Christ in the Annales of Tacitus cannot be considered a part of the original text is simple: (1) Christians until (or for centuries after) Sulpicius Severus did not refer to the passage – it was not about them; and (2) Pontius Pilate is in the Christus sentence mentioned as a procurator, but there is not one other Roman historian who deemed it necessary to even mention Pilate. The only argument for this is that the readers of Tacitus did not know who he was and needed additional information.  Christians of course knew who Pilate was and erroneously called him procurator and not prefect (“Pontio Pilato, Syriam tunc ex parte Romana procuranti” (read: Tertullian, Apologia XXI.18, “Pontius Pilatus procurator Judaeae a Tiberio mittitur”, and Eusebius’ Chronicle in Jerome’s translation) thereby ignoring Pilate’s real function. Uniquely, Tacitus, who Christians claim knew the story of Jesus, never mentions Saul/Paul nor the self-proclaimed Apostle’s journeys, imprisonment, and so forth. Roger Viklund shows precisely how the document was altered.

To assume that  Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus, writing in 117 CE, two full generations after the mythological Jesus died a legendary death, was a careful researcher or had access to historical archives is absurd to say the least.  J. Weiss noted: “Archival studies,” as printed in the Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, (München : C.H. Beck, 1920-<2004>) “are not very familiar to ancient historiography; and Tacitus has paid very little attention to the acta diurna and the records of the Senate.” (J. Weiss, ibid. viii, 2 Abt., Heft 2, under “Tacitus.”) Some historians even claim Tacitus never researched his claims, studied in any archive or did more than copy and paste the work of others. (Schiller, Hermann (1872) Hermann Schiller says, in his Geschichte des Römischen Kaiserreichs unter der Regierung des Nero. Berlin, Weidmann, 1872 and also under the imprint of Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1872, p. 7). As Weiss argued: “The execution of a Nazareth carpenter was one of the most insignificant events conceivable among the movements of Roman history in those decades; it completely disappeared [sic] beneath the innumerable executions inflicted by the Roman provincial authorities. It would be one of the most remarkable instances of chance in the world if it were mentioned in any official report” (Weiss, loc. cit. p. 92). 

The issue of “Christians” in the time of Tacitus is more ambiguous.  Moreover, there must be serious doubt about the accuracy, veracity, and content of Tacitus (as well as Josephus) as the oldest extant manuscripts of Tacitus and Suetonius come from the ninth century, while those of Josephus date back only to the eleventh century. We’re talking about a time gap of 800 to 1,000 years between the autographs and the extant manuscripts.  To give unlimited and unquestioned authenticity to such documents defies the imagination–it is tantamount to using the bible chronology to claim that the planet Earth is only 6000 years old.

The expression “Christians,” was by no means common in the time of Nero. Not a single Greek or Roman writer of the first century mentions the name: neither Juvenal nor Persius, Lucian or Martial, the older Pliny or Seneca. Even Dio Cassius never uses it, and his abbreviator, the monk Xiphilinus, sees no reason to break his silence, but speaks of the Christians who were persecuted under Domitian as followers of the Jewish religion and the were the chrestianos who sought an immediate confrontation with Rome to ensure the rapid return of a warrior messiah.  The chrestianos called themselves Jessaeans, or Nazoraeans, the Elect, the Saints, the Faithful, etc., were universally regarded as Jews. They observed the Mosaic law, and the people could not distinguish them from the other Jews and they were looking for immediate “salvation” by means of carrying the sword. 

Even the word the word Christus did not mean Jesus of Nazareth, it only meant an anointed warrior.  All Jews without exception looked forward to a Christus or Messiah warrior, and believed that his coming was near at hand. It is, therefore, not clear how the fact of being a “Christian” could, in the time of Nero or of Tacitus, distinguish the followers of Jesus from other believers in a Christus or Messiah, general acceptation of the name Christian can, according to Harnack, only be traced to the end of the reign of Hadrian and that of Pius (Harnack, Adolf von (1902). Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christenthums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, Leipzig: Hinrichs, p. 296).  The use of the Christians as “living torches,” as Tacitus describes, and all the other atrocities that were committed against them, have no credence, and suggest an imagination exalted by reading stories of the later Christian martyrs and the base works of Juvenal and Seneca that have no bearing on this as neither writer was connected with the Christians, and need not in the least be regarded as references to the members of the new sect sacrificed by Nero. The victims cannot possibly have been given to the flames in the gardens of Nero, as Tacitus says for Tacitus admits that the imperial gardens were the refuge of those whose homes had been burned.  The gardens were full of tents and wooden sheds.

It is beyond logic that Nero would incur the risk of a second fire by his “living torches,” and still less probable that he mingled with the crowd and feasted his eyes on the ghastly spectacle. For Tacitus, or anyone else, to write that the gardens were used for mass slaughter is not only unhistorical but illogical; at best it was later propaganda for the future site of today’s Vatican that was chosen as the theatre of the deed merely to strengthen the legend that the holy of holies of Christianity, the Church of the apostle Peter—but even Peter is a legend with no foundation for being a real person except for passages in the Bible, and within the Bible (1 Peter 5:12; the second letter [2 Peter] is an absurdity, because its internal structure shows that it could not be written before 150 CE at the earliest,  it incorporates almost all of Jude in 2:2-17, it mentions the death of “the fathers” of the early church in 3:4, and it alludes to

Pauline epistles as “scriptures” (3:15-16) which was a term (γραπτώς for “writing”) that is used only once in the New Testament. Furthermore, “scriptures” was applied during the Apostolic Age only to books of the Old Testament), Peter admits he is neither writer nor a great thinker (only a fisherman). Furthermore, when one considers what is claimed to be the writings of Peter, a careful study of these writings shows them to be an incorporation of far older (ancient) mythology into Christian scriptures. For example: 2 Peter 2:4 is one of the most classic examples, with “angels” (actually messengers) cast into hell: ει γαρ ο θεος αγγελων αμαρτησαντων ουκ εφεισατο αλλα σειραις ζοφου ταρταρωσας παρεδωκεν εις κρισιν τηρουμενους. The word “Tartarus” (ταρταρωσας), in Greek mythology, is used to describe a subterranean place or region, allegedly the lowest realm of Hades, or perhaps even lower than Hades, where, it was claimed, that the immortal souls/spirits of the vilest people were supposed to go after death. Peter introduces Greek mythology in an effort to strengthen the weak credentials of Christianity. This mythology is carried further by the various writers of the Letter to the Ephesians (2:2 εν αις ποτε περιεπατησατε κατα τον αιωνα του κοσμου τουτου κατα τον αρχοντα της εξουσιας του αερος του πνευματος του νυν ενεργουντος εν τοις υιοις της απειθειας) where spirits are lighter than air and still exist in the air seeking to spark havoc against and amongst mortals. It is bad scholarship, at best, but more realistic it is fraud, to attempt to prove or disprove the bible. No scholar would ever attempt to prove any book by citing the book itself that was to be proved, as the Bible (like the Koran/Qur’an, Torah and other holy scriptures) is based on far older mythologies and spurious authorship.

None of the evangelists applies the name Christians to the followers of Jesus.   It is never used in the New Testament as a description of themselves or other believers in Jesus, and the relevant passage in Acts 9:26 ( παραγενομενος δε ο σαυλος εν ιερουσαλημ επειρατο κολλασθαι τοις μαθηταις και παντες εφοβουντο αυτον μη πιστευοντες οτι εστιν μαθητης) does not call believers Christians but disciples—and “Paul” is still called “Saul”. The name change (from Saul to Paul) does not happen until the fourth century, and then it is a term that comes after the Imperial Council of Nicaea.

The titles Annales and Historiae are 16th century, as the manuscripts present both works under the title Ab excessu divi Augusti. Historiae 1-5 appear as books 17-21 in the MS.  The first six book of the Annales were written (or copied in a scriptorium) around 850 CE in Germany.   The script is a pre-carolingian hand. It is generally agreed that it was copied from a text written in ‘insular’ script which was copied from a manuscript in ‘rustic capitals’, and it has been suggested that this latter was at least 4th and probably 3rd century; it is not the script of Tacitus.

The distinctive type of script suggests the event took place in the scriptorium of the Benedictine abbey of Fulda, and this is supported by an explicit reference to Tacitus in the Annales Fuldenses for 852 (Cornelius Tacitus, scriptor rerum a Romanis in ea gente gestarum) that seems to show knowledge of Annales 2,9.  The entire issue in Tacitus is a well-conceived but poorly executed fraud. Even among the most pedestrian, and profane writers, the atrocities that martyrologists would embellish, especially Justin Martyr, ignores reality and even invents the martyrdom of “Peter”—a reverse (upside-down) crucifixion that never took place. 

The first unequivocal mention of the Neronian persecution in connection with the burning of Rome is a blatant and easily discovered and proven forgery found in the corrupted correspondence of Seneca to the wayward apostle Paul, but even that belongs to the fourth century. A fuller account of these atrocities is then given in the Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus (died 403 CE), but it is mixed with the most transparent Christian legends, including the death of Simon Magus, the bishopric and sojourn of Peter at Rome (who never left Jerusalem as he was married at the time and Jewish law and custom required that he provide for his wife), and so forth and used as the background for Tacitus, Annales 15:44 f. (Cf. Hochart, Polydore (1890), De l’Authenticity des Histoires et des Annales de Tacite Paris: Ernest Thorin, 1890, points out that, whereas the Life of St. Martin and the Dialogues of Sulpicius were found in many libraries, there was only one manuscript of his Chronicle, probably of the eleventh century, which is now in the Vatican (only Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini {February 11, 1380 – October 30, 1459}, an Italian intellectual who lived at the beginning of the Italian Renaissance and had the privilege of studying Latin under Giovanni Malpaghino of Ravenna, the friend and protégé of Petrarch, and some Greek in Rome was known as a superior copyist of old manuscripts, seems by some lucky chance to have discovered and read this manuscript (ibid, p. 225).

Bracciolini’s hobby was unearthing lost manuscripts of Lucretius, Columella, Silius Italicus, Manilius and Vitruvius that he copied by hand and communicated to the learned. (Cf. Hochart, Polydore (1897) Nouvelles Considerations au sujet des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite, Paris: Thorin, 1894. pp. 142-72.)   Hence the work was almost unknown throughout the Middle Ages, and no one was aware of the reference in it to a Roman persecution of the Christians as such a persecution did not exist).  What has been forgotten (or, more exactly, deliberately erased) was the memory of the numerous savior gods and sons of gods who claimed allegiance of faithful “Christians”  (chrestianos and christianos) throughout Rome and the Empire, so the word “Christian” actually meant little in the imperial or judicial courts (Bauer, Bruno. Christus und die Caesaren. Der Ursprung des Christenhums aus dem römischen Griechenthum … Zweite Auflage (Berlin: NP), p. 216).

Truth is the first to suffer at the hands of the unscrupulous in government and religion, and this was the clearly the case in the efforts of warrior bishops who sought power and control over the masses, much in the same manner as Pope Julius II would in the days of the Renaissance.   The lies grew, as Hochart detailed, under a threefold influence: (1) The apocalyptic idea that transformed a tragic but not evil emperor, Nero, into the mythological Antichrist: The embodiment of all evil, the terrible adversary of the Messiah and his followers, by being the first to persecute a sect (chrestianos) which sought out, deliberately, martyrdom so that they could libel Nero as claiming that he was pure evil, or, as Sulpicius puts it, “because vice is always the enemy of the good” (Compare Eusebius,  Historia Ecclesiastica, ii, 28.)  (2) The political interest of the chrestianos in representing themselves as Nero’s victims so that they could win the favor and protection of his successors on that account. (3) The special interest of the bishops of the Roman Church who were hardly saints and required the invention of the two chief apostles who history was rewritten to include their martyrdom at Rome: Peter and Paul.

The author of the letters of Seneca to Paul enlarged the legend in its primitive form, brought it into agreement with the ideas of this time, giving it a political turn. The vague charges of incendiarism assumed a more definite form complete with a background of the character of the Antichrist and graphic details of how he inflicted pathetically horrible martyrdoms on the chrestianos so that their fantasy would become the Chronicle of Sulpicius. Finally a clever forger (Poggio? He was a copyist and had the talent to match handwriting and sentence structure) smuggled the dramatic account of this persecution into the Annales of Tacitus, and thus secured the acceptance as historical fact of a purely imaginary story. But before the secret document could be made public, there had to be antecedents, and the early community of Christians had their own apologists and agenda—by declaring that the Emperor Constantine had converted and was baptized (by an Arian) on his death-bed (although the Emperor denied such a claim), and sought the persecution of Arians and others who opposed Rome. To this end an entire new theology would be founded, built on falsification of ancient documents known as holy scripture.

To change this popular plebian perception, if such a Jesus ever did exist, required near Herculean prowess to change the course of history.  This was achieved only when the emperors of the empire wanted to silence the rioting chrestianos and turned to the more pacific christianos to gain their support.  In exchange for the latter’s support, the emperors legalized the sect in the empire, but as a religion plagued with bitter divisions there was consternation among the emperors as what they should do.  The emerging Christian Church was so divided that there was no unity from 325 – 787 CE (a final rupture between east and west toke place in 1054 CE) that Christianity was not recognize as a state religion until 380 when the Emperor Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica (known as Cunctos populos, was delivered on 27 February 380 by Theodosius I, Gratian, and Valentinian II in order that all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of Rome; Ferguson, Everett; McHugh, Michael P.; Norris, Frederick W. (1999). Encyclopedia of early Christianity, New York: Taylor & Francis, p. 1126), establishing Christianity as the official state religion.  The new state religion specifically was that established at the Council of Nicaea in 325 following the instructions and interests of Constantine. 

By creating a national religion it was the imperial goal to settle the blood wars between sects over the persistent debate between the homoousian (ὁμοούσιος, from the Greek: ὁμός, homós, “same” and οὐσία, ousía, “essence, being the theory put forward by Athanasius, thereby known as the Athanasian thesis) viewpoint that the Father and the Son are one and the same, eternal, and the homoiousian (from the Greek: ὅμοιος, hómoios, “similar” and οὐσία, ousía, “essence, being”), or Arian interpretation that the Father and the Son are separate, but both divine. The ultimate ruling was that Jesus was “like [the Father] in all [respects]” (ὅμοιον κατὰ πάντα, hómoion katà pánta), and those who refused to accept this judgment were openly persecuted and put to death.  

Thousands were butchered over the single letter “I” and the understanding of the words “same” and “similar” which actually have nothing in common (sadly, in contemporary education many professors teach and students believe words to be compatible and identical and fail to recognize the fine-line of distinction between words that can, if wrongly interpreted, lead to conflict, bloodshed, and the carnage of wars; cp. Halsall, Paul (June 1997). “Theodosian Code XVI.i.2”. Medieval Sourcebook: Banning of Other Religions; the code is on-line at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/theodcodeXVI.html).

At the same time, by the Council of Toledo, it became a crime to think independent of the church, or to question a “doctor of the church” or a mere ecclesiastical functionary.  This was in celebration of Saul/Paul’s quest for there to be universal ignorance:

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ …
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness …
But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant … For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” Colossians 2.8

Lucius Lactantius wrote

“What purpose does knowledge serve – for as to knowledge of natural causes, what blessing is there for me if I should know where the Nile rises, or whatever else under the heavens the ‘scientists’ rave about?”

 “What does it matter by which wisdom each of us arrives at the truth?
It is not possible that only one road leads to so sublime a mystery.”

– A plea from one of the last pagan senators, Aurelius Symmacus, to the boy emperor Valentinian II in 383, asking for freedom of thought.

 “What you are ignorant of, we know from the Word of God. And what you try to infer, we have established as truth from the very Wisdom of God.”

– Bishop Ambrose replies on behalf of the emperor

Ignorance was returning full strength with the advent of Constantine’s Christian church.  Free thought, scholarly research and writing was prohibited, and the people who lived within the empire were given no choice but to believe lies, based on the line included in a later edition of the Bible that a Boy Jesus taught lawyers and learned men in the Temple. Returning to this issue of whether or not the Jesus of the New Testament ever taught in the Temple (Luke 2:39-53) there is no document that can be dated to 20 CE (given Jesus’ age which would be under twenty), nor is there any record of any quarrel among the Pharisees about a youth instructing his elders.  However, the story of Jesus teaching in the Temple follows the theological line and mythologies of Hinduism, Greece, Rome, Tibet and other  areas.  It is simple to find tales of young teachers preaching to their elders in Ganesha; of  Minerva/Athena as a young goddess of wisdom and learning teaching in temples that would be ultimately dedicated to her; in India Acharyadevo Bhava is a teaching as a Son of God; and, in Buddhism (also out of India), The Buddha (Siddhārtha Gautama [सिद्धार्थ गौतम] or in Pali: Siddhattha Gotama), who had a beginning and life identical to the Jesus of the New Testament [The Mahāpadāna Sutta and Acchariyaabbhuta Sutta both recount miraculous events surrounding Gautama’s birth, such as the bodhisattva’s descent from Tuṣita [Heaven] into his mother’s womb, for example; at age 29/30 The Buddha would begin his public ministry; and, according to the holy scriptures of The Buddha, his father approached him and said: “Ours is the warrior lineage of Mahamassata, and not a single warrior has gone seeking alms” equal to the chrestiano belief in a warrior messiah], and was the spiritual teacher who founded Buddhism) but explicitly rejected a creator god, denied endorsing any views on creation and stated that questions on the origin of the world are worthless.

The Buddha taught at a young age.  Those who followed and still follow the teaching of The Buddha sought / seek the advice of children for answers.

The Buddha has been integrated into numerous other religions: The Buddha is regarded as a prophet by the Ahmadiyyas and a Manifestation of God in the Bahá’í faith. Some early Chinese Taoist-Buddhists thought the Buddha to be a reincarnation of Lao Tzu. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches integrated the Buddha, as so many other religious figures in other faiths were merged into the choir of martyrs and saints in Christianity (such as “St. Christopher (Reprobus) who lived during the Christian persecutions of the Roman emperor Decius.  He was captured and martyred by the governor of Antioch. and according to legend was a Canaanite 5 cubits (7.5 feet (2.3 m)) tall and with a fearsome face and for that reason is frequently pictured with the head of a dog;

in the Eastern Orthodox faith, Christopher is remembered on May 9th, with the salutation: “Thou who wast terrifying both in strength and in countenance, for thy Creator’s sake thou didst surrender thyself willingly to them that sought thee; for thou didst persuade both them and the women that sought to arouse in thee the fire of lust, and they followed thee in the path of martyrdom. And in torments thou didst prove to be courageous. Wherefore, we have gained thee as our great protector, O great Christopher” in the Kontakion in the Fourth Tone (hymn) Holy Transfiguration Monastery, (translation), “Kontakion in the Fourth Tone”, Saints, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, 2009; Although the Roman Catholic Church still approves devotion to him, listing him in the Roman Martyrology among the saints venerated on 25 July, Pope Paul VI removed his feast day from the Roman Catholic calendar of saints in his 1969 motu proprio Mysterii Paschalis), into their faith through St. Josaphat and Blessed Barlaam both males being acknowledged as being “enlightened” [“along the difficult path of seeking ultimate truth”–Buddhism] (Read: “Barlaam and Josaphat”. Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1913 on-line at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Barlaam_and_Josaphat; see also: Conybeare, F. C. (2007). The Barlaam and Josaphat legend in the ancient Georgian and Armenian literatures. Piscataway: Gorgias Press).  Although Barlaam was never formally canonized, Josaphat was, and both were included in earlier editions of the Roman Martyrology (feast day 27 November) but not in the Roman Missal; both, however, appear in the Eastern Orthodox Church liturgical calendar (26 August).  While preaching was acceptable in many ancient civilizations, and youths did take religious vows to speak for (interpret) gods, as occurred in Egypt and India, there is no mention of it in any Jewish record; therefore, the answer from a historical or logical perspective of whether or not Jesus did teach and / or preach in the Temple at Jerusalem, is negative, and the Bible does not state that Jesus was teaching at a young age (legend has it that he was twelve years of age).

On the contrary, as opposed to some current Sunday School art, the passage is quite different in Luke 2 (it is the only account to carry the story) for it details that his parents, finding their son missing went back to Jerusalem and “[46] After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. [47] Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers” (και εγενετο μεθ ημερας τρεις ευρον αυτον εν τω ιερω καθεζομενον εν μεσω των διδασκαλων και ακουοντα αυτων και επερωτωντα αυτους εξισταντο δε παντες οι ακουοντες αυτου επι τη συνεσει και ταις αποκρισεσιν αυτου).  Jesus is, according to the current versions of the Christian Bible, an adult before he attempts to teach (Luke 5:17 Καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν μιᾷ τῶν ἡμερῶν καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν διδάσκων, καὶ ἦσαν καθήμενοι Φαρισαῖοι καὶ νομοδιδάσκαλοι οἳ ἦσαν ἐληλυθότες ἐκ πάσης κώμης τῆς Γαλιλαίας καὶ Ἰουδαίας καὶ Ἰερουσαλήμ· κὰι δύναμις κυρίου ἦν εἰς τὸ ἰᾶσθαι αὐτόν).  The reason is simple:  Children were never allowed to preach or teach in the temple or a synagogue, for they were not trained in the laws or writings of prophets.