The words Jesus (Latin: Iesus; Hebrew: ישוע; Arabic: عيسى Isa; Greek: Ἰησοῦς Iēsous born c. 7-2 BC/BCE and died c. 30–36 AD/CE) and Christ (ancient Greek: Χριστός, Khristós, meaning ‘anointed’ as a king; (Hebrew: מָשִׁיחַ, ; Aramaic: משיחא, Greek: Μεσσίας, Arabic: المسيح, al-Masīḥ, Latin: Messias. It is a translation of the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (Māšîah), for Messiah) only of late became the name of a man recorded in the Christian New Testament. Christ was a given title, not a last name.
Originally, the word Messiah had two meanings: warrior and final prophet. They are not the same nor do they mean the same thing. The title Christ was never used by the man Jesus in the New Testament. It has always been used by others: e.g. Matthew 1:1, 1:18; Mark 1:1; John 1:17; 17:3; 9:22; Mark 9:40; Luke 2:11; 22:2. As a title it was bestowed on the New Testament Jesus by Peter, a non-relative and a rather minor disciple, in Luke 9:20.
The engraving reads DIA CHRSTOU O GOISTAIS. It is interpreted to mean either “by Christ the magician” or “the magician by Christ”. Bowl c. 200 BCE.
We have actual artifacts that the word Christ appeared at least by 200 BCE and was always accompanied by the message “the magician” and was the leader of a group of wise men and a conjurer of White Magic. The 200 BCE bowl has numerous subsequent bowls that are found as late as 100 CE, and in each they are associated with a magician titled The Christ and used for magical ceremonies.
The bowl, recently found, is very similar to one depicted on or with two early Egyptian earthenware statuettes that are thought to show a soothsaying ritual. This ritual was common around 3000 BCE and sometimes included the drinking of blood, but generally was used to hold wine that all soothsayers shared as a “common cup”. The bowl is not that old, and there are many problems with its too-clear inscription after being under water for 2000 years: it does not show the wear of time. Der Spiegel noted in an article, that Chrestos was a rather popular Greek name at that time: “Chrestos war in Griechenland ein gebräuchlicher männlicher Vorname”, erklärt der Historiker Manfred Clauss aus Frankfurt am Main, “das muss nichts mit Jesus zu tun haben.” It would have nothing to do with a New Testament Jesus, for the translation is: “Chrestos was commonly a man’s given name in Greece,” explains the historian Manfred Clauss of Frankfurt am Main. “That need not have anything to do with Jesus.” In this instance, the name Jesus would be more of a name used in soothsaying or some magical ritual, such as attempting to raise the dead (singularly or as a group).
It is a weak argument to say that chrestianos and christianos are interchangeable, as Tertullian registered disappointment, if not anger, when he was called a chrestianos. Tertullian was abrupt when he reiterated that he is a “Christian” not a “Chrestian.” (Tertullian, Nat. 1.3.8-9).
The engraving might be a dedication, or present, made by certain a “Chrestos“: a group that became popular in Rome, migrating from Alexandria during the reign of Julius Cesar. They were primarily a passive people, and entered Rome with a firm belief in an afterlife that included respect for the dead by burying each person under a headstone.
This headstone translates as:
(Lodovico Antonio Muratori (1739-1742). Novus Thesaurus Veterum Inscriptionum, Vol III. Class. XXIII, Mediolani (Milan), p. 1668, no. 6. Rendered here after Manni, Gaetano, Principi della religion cristiana in Firenze :appoggiati a’ più validi monumenti o si dica monumenti appartenenti alla medesima religione, 1764, p. 3).
This is unlike the militant christianos who argued for a warrior god who would cleanse the world. It is based on the marginalia of Matthew 10:34 that would be later incorporated into the gospel. It has been suggested that it belongs to a possible religious association called Ogoistais, but the term or name christianos does not appear anywhere before the reign of Nero who wrongfully has been indicted for supposedly accusing (approximately 64 CE), the Chrestianos of starting the fire that “burned [the wooden ghettos of] Rome, but then it was a perjorative word (1 Peter 4:16).
Chaldees – map of modern day Iraq with Ur of the Chaldees pointed out (where Noah and Abraham allegedly came before invading Canaan)
The word “Ogoistais” could be connected to known religious groups that worshipped early Greek and Egyptian gods and goddesses, such as Hermes, Athena and Isis. Isis was a popular deity throughout the Roman world, and is at times related to or synonymous with Asherah, Astarte, and other deities. Her devotion was part of the word that Hittite mercenaries, known as IS-RA-EL-ites, later used to distinguish themselves from other mercenaries as they were a more violent group most coming from the Chaldees (Iraq from which the mythological figures of Abraham and Noah come in quest of conquering Canaan–the reason for Noah’s infamous curse) and parts of India. There are numerous records of ancient Jews being warrior mercenaries throughout Egypt, numbering more than 30,000 at the time of Ptolemy I (Ludovici Mendelssohn schedis usus edidit Paulus Wendland (1900). Aristeae ad Philocratem Epistola etc. (Leipzig, Deutschland: Teubner § 13)
If it is a part of another cult, then the “word” could actually be a mélecture for ὁ γεύστης, “the one who tasted”? This would preclude it being salted, or a disk that would come from a “pot” but would rather be a ceremonial cup from which one would sample wine. Much of the wine would be “new wine” and invites a remembrance of the myth of the drunken state of Noah and Lot, both of whom were intoxicated and had sex in defiance of their own prohibitions.
Noah is drunk on new wine and naked
Noah is accused in the Bible of being drunk on wine and cursing Canaan (his grandson) without giving a reason, but most likely it was because of masturbation that stopped further fathering of warriors at that time, as the Bible clearly states that Noah was drunk, which later Apiru (Hebrews) would declare to be the “sin” of seeing a parent naked (Genesis 9:20-27: ). In the original text the word is used as exposing his genitals, and naked means arouse and passion; nude, on the other hand, is a state of being, as with a child and denotes innocense, purity, and union with the divine).
Lot commits incest with his daughters (Genesis 19)
It is also from this place that Lot and Abraham come. Lot is an unwelcomed guest in the city of Sodom and refuses to register with the city council strangers who sneak into the town while the community was at war. Lot leaves with his two daughters and travels to another City of the Plain (Zoar) where he is equally unwelcomed and flees to a cave in the surrounding mountains. In the cave Lot falls drunk on new wine and then commits incest with his two of his four daughters “so that they preserved his seed within them” (Genesis 19:36). The two who were married stayed in Sodom and perished with their bridegrooms, indicating rather recent and even hurried marriages since foreigners (the daughters) were suspected of treason and passing secrets to the enemy (Gen. Rabbah 50:9; פרקי רבי אליעזר : מהדורה מדעית Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, ed. Higger, Michael, and Horowitz Chaim M. בית המדרש למורים של ישיבת ר’ יצחק אלחנן, New York : Horev, 704-708 [1944-1948] chap. 25). Lot was considered the evil one. According to the midrash (Tanhuma, Vayera 12), Lot, from the moment he moved into the city, in fact before that when he told his uncle Abraham that he wanted to move to the city, Lot was determined to dwell in Sodom because he wanted to engage in the licentious behavior of its inhabitants: drinking excessively, engaging in gluttony, ignoring the poor, and so forth (Ezekiel 16:49). His self-righteous, ego-centric and barbaric behavior becomes clear when the townspeople mill about his door, demanding that he hand over the angels. Instead of doing what Jewish law and custom required, Lot offers his daughters to the mob. The Rabbis observe that a man usually allows himself to be killed in order to save his wife and children, while Lot was willing to allow the townspeople to abuse his daughters. It is for this reason that the gods of Lot told Lot: By your life, the improper act that you intended to be done to your daughters will indeed be committed, but to you. Nowhere in the original scrolls is Lot defended for protecting the messengers, nor does it use in any instance the sentence of homosexuality. It shows that Lot was totally depraved and beyond true redemption. In another midrash (אגדת בראשית : מדרש אגדה על ספר בראשית ריכא (רב) … midrash agadah ʻal sefer Bereshit meyuḥas leha-tana Aba Arikha[ed. Buber, Salomon; מנורה, מכון למחקר ולהוצאת כתבי־יד וספרים עתיקים, New York : Menorah, Makhon le-mehkar ule-hotsaʼat kitve-yad u-sefarim ʻatikim, 719 [1959] 25:1) regards the daughters’ act as punishment for their father’s own sexual promiscuity.
It is not surprising that later Rabbis praised the two daughters who seduced their father, as they were “preserving his seed” and the future of Judaism (Pesikta Rabbati 42). This was common in those days, as civilization depended on children to become fighters and preserve the “houses” (states) that existed. Another part of the story shows that Genesis was written without consideration of the Laws of Moses in Leviticus, as there is no condemnation of nudity nor of seeing one’s father naked (Leviticus 18:6-18).
The legend of Lot indicates a less sophisticated group who observed rituals and rites but not in the manner intended. Devotees would have sipped wine and “tasted it” with the injunction “taste from this cup that is the blood of the deity” and it would limited to “true believers” who would “taste it” but not drink it as with the chrestianos in Alexandria.
Idrimi, king of the Hapiru
Guzzling wine and drinking blood has been the description of a blood-thirsty group was known as Apiru (or Habiru, an Egyptian word the sprung from pr.w). was the name given by various Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Mitanni, and Ugaritic sources (dating between 1800 BCE and 1100 BCE). It is a reference to a group of people living as nomadic invaders in areas of the Fertile Crescent from Northeastern Mesopotamia and Iran (ancient Persia) to the borders of Egypt in Canaan and was the land fought over, plundered, and its villages destroyed by Abraham and Lot.
Cuneiform of Sumerian SA.GAZ and corresponding West Semitic ha-bi-ru
The Hittite forces called the IS[is]-Ra-El-ites after the goddess, the god of the sun, and the Lord over the family who was a minor god. The Apiru came from Sumeria or other parts bordering on the Fertile Crescent and are designated by a two-character cuneiform logogram transcribed as SA.GAZ that translates as ‘murderer, robber’, literally ‘one who smashes sinews’, is an original Sumerian nominal compound attested as early as ca. 2500 BC. It is later equated with Akkadian habbātu ‘plunderer, bandit’ and šaggāšu ‘murderer’ and are identified with the mythological judge known as Lot in Genesis. AS a group, are recorded in letters written by Canaanite scribes who had mastered the art of cuneiform-based characters or letters of the Akkadian language.
Scribes noted that Akkadian leaders complained about attacks by armed groups willing to fight and plunder for anyone who would given them war equipment including shields, swords, and sabers, food and drink provisions, and places where they could rest and quarter their lifestock. A second devious trick of the Apiru was for chieftains to sell of their wives as prostitutes (Genesis 12:10-20 and Genesis 20:1-7) and then reclaim them saying that their gods were offended; Abraham was a liar, pimp, and sacreligious at best, but in reality it is a story of no less than three men on a mission to establish a new kingdom and rule over it when they had sufficient people, Apiru, to conquer established cities and take control.
Apiru in hieroglyphs
Apiru were known as common thieves, their reputation advanced even by Egyptian pharaohs, such as Thutmose III. Amenhotep II boasted of capturing 89,600 people, of which 3,600 were Apiru, in his campaign in Canaan in 1420 BCE.
The Apiru were quick to take to magic rituals and employed “cups” to hold “the source of life”: usually blood or sperm that was consumed in “sacrifice to the gods of old”: the elohim (a plural noun that would be incorporated into the Hebrew language and theology: אֱלֹהִ֔ים). Ultimately the “source of life” became a ritual drinking of wine, with “new wine” reserved for leaders and gods.
Ancient Roman theater in the modern city of Alexandria, Egypt
The fact that the bowl was found at Alexandria in Egypt is significant. Alexandria was a cosmopolitan center where new and different faiths were always appearing while older faiths and religions were fading fast. Alexandria was a religious entreport, where faiths were constructed as rapidly as they appear and disappear on the universal landscape. Each faith claimed to be unique. Each religion was pure fraud, fashioned to make the priests and preachers rich at the expense of the poor, the miserable, the tired, who hoped for a better life–at least in the world to come.
The sole purpose of religions in Alexandria was to propose solutions to the problem of mortalkind, to offer a fleeting fancy of what might be but never had been. The mystery religions that rose faster than any Pentecostal group anywhere in the world offered a strangeness that was inviting and yet terrifying. It was a proto-Adventist colony looking for the return of any number of crucified saviors, a world that held many mysteries that could not be answered as education was denied. Education was only for a privileged few and not for the masses. If the laborers learned that they were being fooled into thinking that there was some being who truly looked after them but did not exist, the masses would rise up and throw off its predatory prelates prattling while dining on the fatted meats sacrificed to the gods (cp. 1 Corinthians 8:1).
The pontiffs of the ancient world were, without exception, claiming that the mysteries that true science could explain, such as earthquakes, storms, locust infestations, and more were the work of some god or goddess (both in singular and plural form). Myths like burning coals dropping from heaven, rivers running red with blood, and other curses were created for the gullible and enrichment of the priestly class (cp. Exodus 7:9, 8:2-4, 16 ff that can all be explained through natural science and the result of global warming) .
Education in the ancient world, universally, was weak at best, and was not meant nor permitted for everyone to experience. Religion presumed to have the answers to all questions asked and not asked. These magical answers were guarded by a self-serving priestly class that infected the thinking of many while robbing the poor for their “daily needs”.
Jesus: High Priest-King
Those who controlled the people were called priests or kings. Many had dual hierarchy being priest-kings who controlled religion and politics and some even proclaimed themselves professors (teachers) of science (with ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians arguing that the earth was flat as did Thallas and other Greeks, according to Aristotle (Burch, George Bosworth (1954). “The Counter-Earth”. Osirus (Saint Catherines Press) 11 (1): 267–294; cp. Rawlinson, George (1886). Ancient Egypt. London: T. Fisher Unwin, pp. 288-297). The Greek King installed on the Egyptian throne, Ptolemy and others, taught that the sun moved around the earth: Lawson, Russell M. (2004). Science in the ancient world: an encyclopedia. New York: NY: ABC-CLIO. pp. 29–30) and mathematics and philosophy but for the elevation and pseudo-intellectualism of an elite or royal class, for education was to advance fortunes not minds. Rote memorization was imperative for indoctrination; education was not meant to spur the conduct of inquiry as the city of Athens demanded when it called on Socrates to commit suicide matching any Christian family that attacks its members as being “different” or “queer” or “not Christian” leaving the attacked the singular option of suicide to escape their Christian or Mormon family’s bullying “in the name of Christ”.
The primary purpose of education was primitive: it was to indoctrinate not educate. All but the rulers were to follow unquestioning the dictates of kings and priests, whatever was commanded. It is the very heart of the word “islam” (الإسلام an active participle) that enjoins all to total submission.
All civilizations held the belief that their deity or his profit if it was paternalistic and patriarchal would be sacrificed so that they might live (either in this world or the next, and from it came the invention of an afterlife).
The cults of Isis, mysteries of Mithra, Krishna in India, and early Christianity bear witness to this as each had a crucified savior who journeyed with a special discipleship of twelve (each member actually representing a sign in the constellation as the magi were star-gazers seeking out messages and answers for what was not know) to spread “the news” of regeneration, resurrection or ascension. Each enlightened leader would end up being sacrificed for the presumed transgressions of the people or world. This was promised in the performance of a ritual requiring the eating of some form of bread and drinking from the cup or bowl that held the “fluid of life”.
The problem is with the inscription on the bowl that was found in Alexandria. Many fervent Christians today argue that it stands for Jesus Christ, seeking any form of “biblical [a book that means “book” of any religion that is considered scripture] archaeology” that would confirm their beliefs. The faithful, the gullible read into the inscription “DIA CHRSTOU O GOISTAIS,” but that is in error. There are no spaces in ancient Greek.
Christ in ancient Greek was normally spelled XRICTOC. There are a few inscriptions where H is used. However, XPHCTOC is also an adjective meaning ‘excellent’, ‘meek’, ‘useful’, ‘noble’. It is the antecedent for Chrestos and for his following Chrestianos. The Christ who was meek and mild, who invited little children to come to him, who had time for the weak and weary, the homeless and destitute, those who knew hunger or thirst, would not be the Christ of the church when it was created by the Emperor Constantine. This patient and tender Christ was added only as a reference point to give hope to the huddled masses, not as a real person but as a good story, to be replaced with the vengeful, hate-filled Jesus of Paul–a god only an emperor and warrior bishops could appreciate when they stood to gain armies and coin of the realm to build luxury churches and abodes while the poor suffered.
These facts, alone, significantly increases the number of interpretations of the inscription, as the O GOISTAIS may be a secret code for GOHC. GOHC means “charlatan” or “magician”, and are more in keeping with the Christos than the Chrestos. It refers, possibly, to a thief who cursed the magician (Christ) before his death–which would make sense grammatically as found in the phrase Gestas, through Christ [was saved or damned]; while some claim that the saved and repentent thief was Dismis, there is no record of the non-repentant thief in the imperially sanctioned canon being restored or taken to a special place of forgiveness and cleansing, but we still do not have all of the gospels and other writings that Constantine sent to the flames in fear that their content would lessen the faith, and more importantly the obedience, of the masses that he redefined as christianos. We do have the total Nag Hammadi scrolls or others still secreted in large earthen jars safely buried in the hills. They would be too controversial and too much like the exposure of the popes Innocent I-XIII who had little to offer but much to take.
The fact that the bowl was not made from any precious metal (gold or copper, and so forth) indicates that it was used by a small and impoverished community of magicians who had it created for one of two purposes. First, it was in this earthen bowl that special elixirs were concocted and mixed with wine to symbolize blood. To drink the potion would bring, it was hoped, the promise of eternal life. Second, the other possibility was that the bowl was created for a poor community that found poverty especially powerful when communicating with the gods who looked upon mortals as being made of clay or earth and thus creating a link between the two, especially if it contained some form of native hallucinogenic drug. Thus the Christos would proclaim, “Blessed are the poor” (Matthew 5:3), and continues to this day among Christians, who followed their ancient ancestors in hatred and venomous insults especially within the Roman Catholic Church and its Hitleresque attack on Liberation Theology (read here and here where the Roman Catholic Church under the mismanagement of Opus Dei Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne is destroying the nation of Peru), but that was not that way with Chrestos or chrestianos.
Jeweled chalice
The fact that the bowl was not fashioned from special substances or ornamentation shows that it was not used in mainline religious functions by more popular theologies, as compared with the jewel-encrusted cups found in today’s Orthodox, Catholic or some Protestant services. This gives a greater definition of the two groups in Rome: the chrestianos and the christianos.
The chrestianos came long before there were christianos. Chrestianos were an ancient people from Alexandria, Egypt, and were a people identified by the name based on their action. Originally they were a cosmopolitan class of people that included members from various parts of the world when the Roman Empire was founded. While legend has Rome founded on April 21, 753 BCE by twin brothers Romulus and Remus. Legends has it that they were born in 771 BCE and had a life similar to Cain and Abel. Romulus killed Remus after a quarrel, with Romulus being the first King of Rome. As King of Rome, Romulus created the foundation for what would be the Roman Empire, with Cesar Augustus being considered the first Roman emperor of what then was considered a republic in 27 BCE.
The Chrestianos were passive, caring, and considerate—the reasons for their downfall, as they became slaves (another definition of chrestianos) until sufficient time and abuse (especially by christianos) brought them to rebellion. It was the Christianos who were the violent, hot-tempered, self-righteous Pentecostalists who were determined to convert the world by force, intrigue and lies.
The word Chrestianos is a derivative of the adjective Chrestos. It is indicative, by definition of “that which is fit for use” and means “good”, “kindly”, “generous, “mild” and “pleasant”—the attributes that their leader Chrestos had and the message he delivered to those who would accept the rule of a secular prince or Cesar, “by rendering to Cesar that which belonged to Cesar, and to god that which belonged to god”. It is the word that the Hellenic Greeks used for their slaves who were “service oriented” or were “profitable” to their masters, and is copied in Romans 2:4: ἡ τοῦ πλούτου τῆς χρηστότητος αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς ἀνοχῆς καὶ τῆς μακροθυμίας καταφρονεῖς, ἀγνοῶν ὅτι τὸ χρηστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ εἰς μετάνοιαν σε ἄγει to denote goodness (καλοσύνη), closely related to katachraomi: meaning to “use to the fullest extent.”
Metropolitan Bishop Nikolai of Plovdiv, Representative of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church
The authors of “Paul” were determined to keep the chrestianos subservient to meet their needs and desires much the same way that the unholy Inquisition of the Middle Ages and the unholy Synods in the East (Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece) are determined to wear golden miters and carry jeweled crosses on their chests as they roar out condemnation and curse those they find wanting, demanding that they be stoned to death as is so common in Bulgaria in the Mephistophelean metropolitan Plovdiv Bishop Nikolai who deliberately lied and added yet another falsehood to the Bible when he proclaimed: “The task of the Orthodox Church assigned by our God Jesus Christ himself, is to protect the moral and ethical principles of scripture”. More vicious and vitriolic than Nikolai is Father Evgeni Yanakiev from the town of Sliven and a member of the unholy Synod of Bulgaria.
Benedict XVI (2012)
While the Jesus of the New Testament wore the poorest clothing (Luke 9:58 f), and John the Baptist (יוחנן המטביל) lived nude as there was no church to tend to any physical needs, the priests and bishops from the days of Constantine I wore raiment shot with gold and sewn with precious stones from 325 CE to this day. Cnstantine’s “catholic [universal] church” became the richest institution in the known world, with abbeys and monasteries and churches laying mortmain (dead hand) and frankalmoin (gifts to god; cf. Henrici Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus, cp. Kirkalfy, A. K. R. (1962).Potter’s Historical Introduction to English Law and Its Institutions. London: Sweet and Maxwell, p. 212) over the worldly goods of those who died “in the faith” and remains in control of the coffers of people and nations (read here and here and here).
Chrestos has nothing in common with Christos. The latter is translated and defined as “one who has been anointed or smeared with chrisma that is a psychotropic unguent reserved for kings and people of special hierarchical rank. The original inclusion of Chrestos in the scrolls was a statement that Jesus was a slave to his father (Mark 14:35-36 35, Matthew 26:39, 42, Luke 22:42; the original source is the Gospel of Mark, the oldest gospel), and not a king (Mark 15:2, Luke 23:3, which Jesus of the New Testament never claimed), but subjected individual will to one higher (not equal to as Constantine I pushed through his obliging bishops in their creation of the fabricated Abaddon Nicene Creed). The role of Constantine I was well known among his subjects: that he would be emperor-pontiff- priest and god (cf. Paul Stephenson (2009). Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor. Chapter 11 notes: The Emperor established and enforced orthodoxy for domestic tranquility and the efficacy of prayers in support of the empire).
It is easy to find a reference to the Chrestianos even in the forgery of Titus 3:1-4: Ὑπομίμνησκε αὐτοὺς ἀρχαῖς ἐξουσίαις ὑποτάσσεσθαι, πειθαρχεῖν, πρὸς πᾶν ἔργον ἀγαθὸν ἑτοίμους εἶναι, 2μηδένα βλασφημεῖν, ἀμάχους εἶναι, ἐπιεικεῖς, πᾶσαν ἐνδεικνυμένους πραΰτητα πρὸς πάντας ἀνθρώπους. 3Ἦμεν γὰρ ποτε καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀνόητοι, ἀπειθεῖς. πλανώμενοι, δουλεύοντες ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ ἠδοναῖς ποικίλαις, ἐν κακίᾳ καὶ φθόνῳ διάγοντες στυγητοί, μισοῦντες ἀλλήλους. 4ὅτε δὲ ἡ χρηστότης καὶ ἡ φιλανθρωπία ἐπεφάνη τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν θεοῦ, where the various redactors use the word chreia (χρηστότης)in the form or meaning of “good works” in keeping with the chrestianos. The passage reads “all our people are to learn to occupy themselves in doing good works for their practical needs”: to be “good slaves who are useful to the community.” This is furthered in 2 Timothy 2:14f, where to be “saved” a person must prove to be “profitable” to the community: “There is to be no wrangling about words: all that this ever profits is the destruction of those who are listening. Do all you can to present yourself … as a man who has no cause to be ashamed of his work … Have nothing to do with pointless philosophical discussions…” as that would be outside of blind faith—but one that the later church of Constantine would give permission to follow in their “teachings”. Augustine of Hippo the frequent visitors to whores by whom he had a bastard he called Adeodatus, by this definition, was a heretic, as he was not following the rubric that to be saved, one had to remain silent, work hard and never think for oneself.
The chrestianos devolution comes with the invention of Paul and the release of the group-work Letters to the Corinthians, especially as seen in I Corinthians 9:12. The writers of Corinthians are blunt in stating that they have “sown spiritual things” and would “harvest your spiritual things”. This theft from the people is what led to the uprising of the Alexandrian chrestianos, the burning of the wooden huts in Rome, and the attack on the nobility and the presbyters who were using religion to enrich themselves. It was equal to the Greek masters ordering slaves to work, then harvest, and sell it for the enrichment of the owner (the future church that within one hundred years following its official creation by the Emperor in 325) is one of the richest institutions on the planet while the people fall deeper into debt and peonage until they have to beg for slop and remains from the fattened clergy as their bishops build monstrous churches, basilicas, monasteries, etc. that house their god like the ancient temples housed their deities as the poor lived in thatched huts that were burned in sport by rogue illiterate nobility. Their sole claim to any respect was having their name changed to christianos: bound slaves to a leader of fiction to justify the existence of a church that was birthed from a foul womb of faith.
11th century forgery of Tacitus’ “Annals”
It was the chrestianos who Tacitus was referring to in his Annals Book XV (the earliest known extant manuscript of Tacitus was not written until the 11th century CE at the monastery of Monte Cassino; it is kept in the Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana). Medieval forgeries have the chrestianos changed into christianos in an effort to proclaim a group following the traditional Jesus of the New Testament, but this a Latinized koine Greek word with a meaning and etymology wholly separate from Christianoi. The fabrication is seen in this line auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat…Christus, which is to be translated as from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus …
The gross inaccuracy lies in the mention of Pilate as ‘procurator,’ when in fact Pilate was prefect of Judea. Tacitus himself had risen through the magisterial ranks to the status of proconsul, and therefore would have had a precise knowledge of the proper terminology as well as the succession of administrators. Even more absurd is that none of the early Christian writers, as later redacted and/or defined by the apologists make any mention of Tacitus.
Tacitus, Annales, XV.44 with marginalia
Tacitus refers to the chrestianos, not the christianos in his Annals XV:44 as being the vandals who set fire to Rome, and for their arson suffered numerous indignities and ultimate death. While references to Tacitus blog the church from the eleventh century to the present (with a rare citation from the eighth century redaction by zealous monks eager to improve on the original text and to give strength to their religious convictions), references to Tacitus’ claims of christianos do not appear before the eighth century CE, another clue as to their late creation.
Tacitus originally wrote “chrestianos” as can be seen with the erasure.
The obvious forgery that has not eluded any serious scholar of the Tacitus manuscript is in the erasure of the original ‘eta’ in Chrestianos and the differently-inked ‘íota’ has rather noticeable counterparts elsewhere in the literature of early Christianity. This was the appraisal of then-director of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Dr. Teresa Lodi, who wrote «The “e”, written originally, of which there are still signs left at the erased area [Italian: rasura], was changed into “i” taking out the upper circle and the horizontal line, while the remaining part was corrected, in my opinion, with the same ink and the same hand, towards an “i”. Another hand added the dot above the “i” and the hyphen between “i” and “s”». Dr. Ida Giovanna Rao, head of the manuscript office (Responsabile Ufficio Manoscritti) at Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana concurred, noting: «with a great effort [Italian: “con molta fatica”] it is possible to hypothesize that there was an “e” under the actual “i”, because the correction is really very clean and the only real pieces of circumstantial evidence—and not proofs—are the apex on the “i” and the hyphen linking “chri” with “stianos”, drawn with a less dark ink, identical to the one that makes the marginal correction [which is rather a bookmark, she says] “Christiani”, beyond to the “i”, which is overdrawn and darker than the other letters, in which the ink in general is more vanished.» She adds (in English): «By “con molta fatica” I mean that the correction was made with accuracy, so that it is not “visible a prima vista” [at first glance] but only if one looks exactly.»
Codex Sinaiticus (divided into four institutions) c. late fourth century
This is especially true in the Codex Sinaiticus, the world’s oldest extant manuscript of the alleged Christian ‘Holy Bible,’ handwritten in Egypt in the fourth century and contains three closely identical and equally obvious forgeries. Nearly all of these forgeries occur around or immediately after the Emperor Constantine I of the Eastern Roman Empire called his bad of cutthroat bishops to his Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. It was then that the Emperor, not any bishop, had the assembly proclaim that the Jesus of the New Testament was the “son of god”—an ancient title reserved for Horus of Egypt who was born to Isis and Osiris.
The term, name or title Christianos is of recent invention. The invention of Christian/Christians is used only three times in theNew Testament – twice in the Acts of the Apostles, and once in the First Epistle of Peter. Both are forgeries. In Acts 11:26 it is printed: “in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.” In the oldest copies of these references, Acts 11:26 and 26:28, 1 Peter 4:16. In the earliest extant complete bible, Codex Sinaiticus (fourth century), the Greek words are even spelled out in the customary way, i.e. Chrestian/Chrestians that were hastily and clumsily reprinted Christian/Christians. Acts 26:27 is unaceptable as it is an insertion as noting the speech of Paul by his “intimate friend” Luke. Peter 4:16 “Christian” is used as a perjeroative and the writers of Peter use it to shore up the resolve of the faithful to persevere in the faith.
1 Peter 4:16 (forgery)
The invention of Christianos in the Bible is most easily seen in 1 Peter 4:16. The text, however, does not follow closely, and can be erased by a careful reading and studying of the original text of Acts 11:26.
Acts 11:26 (forgery)
Jesus is a shortening for the word Joshua: a nickname. At the time that Jesus allegedly lived and died, the name Jesus was extraordinarily common. It is true that there are numerous prophecies about a Messiah, but this warrior chief is never named. An historical Jesus is almost impossible to find in any historical record.
The established Church (the see at Constantinople that falsely claimed precedence over the one at Jerusalem and the other at Antioch) created the myth of a “forever virgin” Mary whereas in the original scrolls the word παρθενικός merely means “young girl” or “maiden” from the Hebrew word ‘almah that is taken from Isaiah 7:14 and means only that the maidenhead (the hymen) was broken and natural sperm entered to fertilize a released egg (ova). The Biblical Greek παρθένα became Παρθένος (parthenos)is incorrect and was pushed in the Septuagint (of LXX) by the Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian Orthodox communities without any legitimate support; it was followed by numerous editions until it was corrected in the Revised Standard Version. Her “perpetual virginity” or Mary being “ever virgin” (Ancient Greek: ἀειπαρθένος aeiparthenos) that is held by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and numerous Protestant churches and their original leaders (Calvin as noted on Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1882). Extraits des manuaux du Conseil d Lausanne, 1512 á 1536, Publiés et annotés par Ernest Chavannes p. 426, but in the end neither supported it nor rejected it as recorded in McKim, Donald K. and Wright, David F. (1992) Encyclopedia of the Reformed faith. Louisville, KY, USA: Westminster/John Knox Press; Edinburgh, Scotland: Saint Andrew Press, page 237; Zwingli was more emphatic: Zwingli, Ulrich; Egli, Emil; Finsler, Georg; Zwingli-Verein, Georg; Zürich (1905). “Eini Predigt von der ewig reinen Magd Maria.” (in German). Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke. 1. Berlin, Germany: C. A. Schwetschke und Sohn. p. 385; Luther as found in Pelikan, Jaroslav and Lehmann, Helmut T., eds. (1955). Luther’s Works (Philadelphia, PA, USA: Fortress Press, Vol. 43, p. 212); John Wesley as described by Coulter, A. C. (1964). John Wesley. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, p. 496) and Zwingli) is plain fraud, as is her exaltation into heaven nothing less than a plagiarism from ancient Egyptian theology that has Isis (known throughout Egypt as “Queen of Heaven”) rising to the sky to have the moon beneath her feet and stars above her head; for historical older antecedents, read here; for sacred texts read here).
The first mention that Mary was “ever virgin” does not appear before 374 CE, in the apologetics of Epiphanius. Mary had numerous children, by no less than two husbands (there is no historical nor Biblical proof that Joseph was an old man; cf. Tabor, James D. (2006). The Jesus Dynasty. New York, NY, USA: Simon & Schuster, pp. 65 ff) with Jesus’ brothers even acknowledged by the church historian Eusebius (Church History, II:23, III:19 relying, in part on John 2:12 patterned after Mark 3:31-32 and confirmed in Acts 1:14, cp. Mark 15:47, 16:1, cf. 6:3).
The account of Jesus in the New Testament is not the record preached by contemporary Christians of any affirmation, and distinctly not that of Pentecostals, Adventists, Southern Baptists or most evangelical extremists, Orthodox or Catholics of any branch. The New Testament Jesus dies one week before Passover, not the week of Passover. The original scroll of Luke (22:14-16) states that “I earnestly wanted to eat this Passover with you before I suffer but I won’t eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” A copyist inserted the word “again”—a word that appears nowhere in the early records. To argue that Jesus died during the Holy Week is not only bad scholarship, poor translation and inadequate interpretation, but shows the total lack of biblical knowledge of the history of the time, place, and political factors. This is buttressed by the comment that Jesus shared “a loaf of bread” (άρτοςor atros: ordinary bread that contains “leaven” or yeast) with his disciples, and not the bread of Passover. The bread of Passover is quite different. Passover bread is unleavened flat bread (matzos). Matzos can be “broken”, but atros bread must be torn or cut.
The absurdity of today’s translations have more in common with the character of Paul and nothing in common with the Jesus of the New Testament. Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 11:23: Ἐγὼ γὰρ παρέλαβον ἀπὸ τοῦ κυρίου, ὁ καὶ παρέδωκα ὑμῖν, ὅτι ὁ κύριος Ἰησοῦς ἐν τῇ νυκτὶ ᾗ παρεδίδετο ἔλαβεν ἄρτον. Cp. The Bulgarian: Защото аз от Господа приех това, което ви и предадох, че Господ Исус през нощта, когато беше предаден, взе хляб, ref. the Romanian: Căci am primit dela Domnul ce v’am învăţat; şi anume că, Domnul Isus, în noaptea în care a fost vîndut, a luat o pîne, with the Hebrew: כי כה קבלתי אנכי מן האדון את אשר גם מסרתי לכם כי האדון ישוע בלילה ההוא אשר נמסר בו לקח את הלחם׃. Passover was the following week, after the pre-Passover meal was eaten and the bread torn apart, the wine consumed, and no goat meat mentioned. It was one week after Jesus of the New Testament had died, and was buried. Everything else is a repeatition of the prophets in the Old Testament without referencing anything found in Q or other destroyed gospels. It is from the Old Testament prophets we read about Jesus wandering in the desert, immersion baptism in the nude for John the Baptist “walked down into the water” so there was no sprinkling (cp. Mark 1:5 with 2 Chronicles 22:2-5; cf. Matthew 3:1; 11:11 and Josephus Antiquities 18.5.2 with modern calibration in Beasley-Murray, G.R. (1975), “Baptism,” Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Colin Brown, Ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan), Vol. I, p. 144), riding into the city as King on the foal of an ass, and symbolically removing the “traders” from the “house of God” as “prophesized” by Zechariah, but more important his comment “One of you who is eating with me will betray me” (Mark 14:18) is directly lifted from Psalm 41:9, that reads “Even my bosom friend, in whom I trusted, who are of my bread, has lifted the heel against me”: Hebrew: גַּם־אִישׁ שְׁלֹומִי ׀ אֲשֶׁר־בָּטַחְתִּי בֹו אֹוכֵל לַחְמִי הִגְדִּיל עָלַי עָקֵב׃; Greek (Septuagint): και γαρ ο ανθρωπος της ειρηνης μου εφ’ ον ηλπισα ο εσθιων αρτους μου εμεγαλυνεν επ’ εμε πτερνισμον; Bulgarian: Да! самият ми близък приятел, комуто имах доверие, Който ядеше хляба ми, дигна своята пета против мене; Russian (Synodal translation with different numbering): (40:10) Даже человек мирный со мною, на которого я полагался, который ел хлеб мой, поднял на меня пяту; which created the Finnish: Niin myös minun ystäväni, johon minä uskalsin, joka sai minun leipääni, se tallasi minun jalkainsa alle, and Polish: Także i ten, z którymem żył w pokoju, któremum ufał, który chleb mój jadał, podniósł piętę przeciwko mnie. Just one hundred years earlier, according to the Dead Sea Scroll community, the Teacher of Righteousness had quoted the very Psalm when one of his inner council of twelve betrayed him (Dead Sea Scrolls, Thanksgiving Hymns 9:23-24).
The greatest fraud is the communion service (“Last Supper”). It has no complement or correlation with anything Jewish. Jesus in the New Testament was a Jew–and proud of his heritage and religion. The passages in Mark and Matthew are based on Luke, the unapologetic advocate and “intimate friend” of Paul, who also, allegedly, authored the Acts of the Apostles. The cautionary note “allegedly” must be used as there are too many variations in the handwriting, word choice, and so forth to be the work of one person.
The words “eat my body” and “drink my blood” care from far older theologies, including those of ancient Egypt. This is shown in the Didache, dating back to the early second century CE. It is in the Didache that we find the ceremony of the Eucharist, but it reads this way:
With respect to the Eucharist you shall give thanks as follows: First, with respect to the cup [say]: “We give you thanks our Father for the holy vine of David, your child which you made known to us through Jesus your child. To you be the glory forever.” And with respect to the bread [say]: “We give you thanks our Father for the life and knowledge that you made known to us through Jesus your child. To you be the glory forever.” (Didache 9:1-3, in Bart Enrman, trans. (2003). The Apostolic Fathers, Loeb Classical Library 24, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press), p. 431). There is no mention of the wine representing or transfiguring into blood, nor is there a mention of bread representing or transfiguring into body. In short, there is no Transubstantiation (Roman Catholic and Orthodox), nor Consubstantiation (Lutheran and other Protestant sects). It shows that the early communities of Christians( neither chrestianos nor christianos) had any concept or knowledge of a man called Paul. The legendary Paul, furthermore, through those who wrote in his name, had no familiarity with the brummagenic Last Supper, for Paul’s accounts reverse the order of the celebration.
In Paul we read that Jesus blessed first the bread, and then the wine. Luke, however, reports that Jesus first blessed the wine and then the bread. This faux pas is a strong indication that Luke did not know the Paul of the Letters. Based on the calligraphy in the text is most likely the result of at least two or three generations working on the composition of the imperial synoptic gospels and have no external authenticity.
In Luke’s account the “fruit of the vine” (Luke 22:18) has more in keeping with the intoxication of Noah than it does with the Last Supper, but whereas Noah awakens naked in a tent beside a vineyard after having drank the wine and curses a young boy (his grandson Canaan), Jesus drinks the wine before he goes into a Garden is followed out of the garden by a young and handsome boy who is naked who “the soldiers lay hands upon” (Mark 14:51: Καὶ εἷς τις νεανίσκος ἠκολούθησεν αὐτῷ, περιβεβλημένος σινδόνα ἐπὶ γυμνοῦ· καὶ κρατοῦσιν αὐτόν οἱ νεανίσκοι in the Greek Orthodox Church impression, cp. Greek New Testament Tischendorf 8th Edition with Diacritics: Καὶ εἷς τις νεανίσκος συνηκολούθει αὐτῷ περιβεβλημένος σινδόνα ἐπὶ γυμνοῦ, καὶ κρατοῦσιν αὐτόν· the word νεανισκοι is not included, and note the difference in the 1551 edition: και εις τις νεανισκος ηκολουθει αυτω περιβεβλημενος σινδονα επι γυμνου και κρατουσιν αυτον οι νεανισκοι, with the Ukrainian including a notation: А один якийся молодець ійшов за ним, одягнений полотном по нагому, й хапають його молодці (воїни); at best the story of the mental agony of Jesus is a repeat of the Noah story of whom there is no record of any suffering prior to drinking the wine).
After Jesus died and was buried (twice), his organization or community (now rendered as “church”) was taken over by his brother James—not by Peter, as Eusebius wrote in Church History. II:23-24, preserving the testimony of Hegesippus (Ἅγιος Ἡγήσιππος c. 110 — c. April 7, 180 CE, writing at least 150 years after the death of the Jesus of the New Testament):
The succession of the church passed [the Greek here is διαδέχομαι or diadexomat, meaning “to succeed”] to James the brother of the Lord, together with the Apostles [of whom Paul was not numbered]
See the Syriac Ascent of James that has been embedded in the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions I:33-74 that is discussed in Van Voorst, Robert E. (1989). The Ascent of James: History and Theology of a Jewish-Christian Community, SBL Dissertation Series 112 (Atlanta, GA, USA: Scholars Press). James was called the “Just” by all men from the Lord’s time until ours, since many are called James, but he was holy from his mother’s womb.
There are numerous civil records against grave robbing and the movement of corpses from imperial decrees, as with “Ordinances of Caesar (which Caesar is uncertain; it may be Emperor Tiberitus (14-37) or Claudius (41-54)”:
it is my pleasure that graves and tombs remain undisturbed in perpetuity for those who have made them for the cult of their ancestors or children or members of their house. If, however, any man lay information that another has either demolished them, or has in any other way extracted the buried, or has maliciously transferred them to other places in order to wrong them, or has displaced the sealing of other stones, against such one I order that a trial be instituted, as in respect of the gods, so in regard to the cult of mortals. For it shall be much more obligatory to honor the buried. Let it be absolutely forbidden for anyone to disturb them, in case of contravention I desire that the offender be sentenced to capital punishment on charge of violation of sepuiture [early non-Christian writings on death of Jesus].
A page from a 1466 copy of Josephus’ “Antiquities of the Jews”
One of those who wrote about the non-historical Jesus, in fact, not in redaction, is Josephus who penned: “”(Ananus) assembled the Sanhedrin of the judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned” (Antiquities XX 9:1). This was later echoed by Suetonius (c. A.D. 120), a Roman Historian and court official under Hadrian made two references to Christ. In the Life of Claudius (25.4) he wrote
“As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chestus, he [Claudius] expelled them from Rome.”
In the Lives of the Caesars (26.2) Suetonius wrote:
“Punishment by Nero was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition.”
Most of the people who heard the legend of Jesus of the New Testament were amused. Most had a better command of science of nature than the christianos—leading Paul to denounce those who studied philosophy. Paul’s brief mention was used by the pagan Thallus (c. 52 CE, who was a Samaritan-born historian and wrote that the sky turned black when Jesus died, the earth moved (an earthquake), and other “wondrous” happens occurred, relying on the gospel tradition of a “darkness” at the death of Christ (see Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44; and Matthew 27:51-53, whose account includes an earthquake, split rocks, and the rise of zombies).
Thallus appalling disregard for reality, formalized in his book Histories, was legendary in his own day as a solar eclipse should mark the death of a king as was common lore among Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples (Herodotus, History, 7.37, Plutarch, Pelopidas 31.3 and Aemilius Paulus 17.7-11, Dio Cassius 55.29.3, John Lydus, De Ostentis 70.a), as were such events that corresponded with earthquakes were also a scientific superstition (Aristotle Meteorology 367.b.2, Pliny Natural History 2.195, Virgil Georgics 2.47.478-80; cp. Jacoby, Felix (1923-1958). Fragmente der griechischen Historiker [Fragments of the Greek Historians,] Berlin, Germany: Weidmann, 1923-1958).
The Gospel of John makes no mention of any such events, nor does Paul or any other New Testament author. Thallus was basically ignored, until the day of Julius Africanus (c. 221 CE) who re jected Thallus doubting the eclipse because Easter happens near the full moon and a solar eclipse would have been impossible at that time, as was well-known. Africanus wrote:
Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Cæsar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth hour to the ninth – manifestly that one of which we speak. But what has an eclipse in common with an earthquake, the rending rocks, and the resurrection of the dead, and so great a perturbation throughout the universe? . . . And calculation makes out that the period of 70 weeks, as noted in Daniel [9:24-26a], is completed at this time.” (Julius Africanus, Chronographia 18.1) Here, as with others, the insistance was that all marks in the life of Jesus, from birth to death, has to be a fulfillment of Old Testament lore that sprung from Assyrian and Babylonian antecedents–as is the case with the Book of Daniel.
Africanus’ writings were restored by Eusebius and brought his mythology to light, writing with some contempt:
“Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away this darkness [at the time of the crucifixion] as an eclipse of the sun-unreasonably, as it seems to me.”
At the time of the paschal there was a full moon, and an eclipse would have been impossible when Christ died. Furthermore, there is no other scientific explanation, but literature does show select saviors dying when the sun or moon is overhead.
The possibility that Jesus was a real man, but no god, nor a savior or messiah was especially punctuated in the Jewish Talmud that was completed by 500 CE. The Babylonian Talmud reference to Jesus reads:
“On the eve of Passover they hanged Yeshu [of Nazareth] and them herald went before him for forty days saying [Yeshu of Nazareth] is going to be stoned in that he hath practiced sorcery and beguiled and led astray Israel. Let everyone knowing aught in his defense come and plead for him. But they found naught in his defense and hanged him on the eve of Passover” (Sanhedrin 43a, “Eve of Passover”).
Many refer to Josephus as attesting to the historicity and manhood of Jesus, but their citations overlook critical words:
“At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. . . . Pilate condemned Him to be condemned and to die. And those who had become His disciples did not abandon His discipleship. They reported that He had appeared to them three days after His crucifixion and that He was alive; accordingly, He was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders” (Antiquities, xviii.ch. 3, subtopic 3, Arabic text).
The Greek text is highly suspected as it was copied down by Greek Christians and does not match the original texts and appears centuries later; it reads:
“Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works–a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew ever to him both many of the Jews, and many Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestions of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to be condemned and to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and the ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day” (Antiquities, xviii.ch. 3, subtopic 3, Greek text).
This is clearly apologetic plagiarism as nowhere does Josephus claim that he believed that Jesus was “the Christ”, in keeping with his writings. Josephus remained a Jew and no unbelieving Jew would make such statements about Jesus. The name Jesus Christ does not appear in the New Testament (it is either Jesus or Christ) but does appear in the Old Testament as Yeshua Ha’Mashiach (מְנוֹרָה) which is a part of a Menorah, but today’s apologists misuse a word for an object rather than for a person.
The works of Josephus refer to at least twenty different people with the name Jesus. In chapter 9 of Book 20, there is also a reference to Jesus son of Damneus who was a High Priest of Israel and is distinct from the reference to “Jesus called [the] Christ” mentioned along with the identification of James. There are an increasing number of scholars who question the authenticity of the reference, based on various arguments, but primarily based on the observation that various details in The Jewish War differ from it (Habermas, Gary R. (1996). The Historical Jesus, Joplin, MO: College Press Pub. Co., pp. 33-37, and Wells, George Albert (1986). Did Jesus Exist? London, UK: Pemberton Publishing Co., p. 11; cp. Ed. London : Elek, 1975). The earliest known reference to Josephus’ work is found in the writings of the third century patristic author Origen. Origen, however, does not provide any direct reference to the passages involving Jesus. The three references found in Book 18 and Book 20 of the Antiquities do not appear in any other versions of Josephus’ The Jewish War, except for a Slavonic version of the Testimonium Flavomium (at times called Testimonium Slavonium) that surfaced in the west at the beginning of the 20th century, after its discovery in Russia at the end of the 19th century.
Josephus’ tracts are, primarily, forgeries cleverly crafted by Christian monks in the eleventh century (Van Voorst, Robert E. (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence. Grand Rapids, MI, USA: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., pp. 508-509). The Jews did not preserve the writings of Josephus because they considered him to be a traitor (Flavius Josephus; Leeming, Henry; Osinkina, Lyubov V.; Leeming, Katherine (2003). Josephus’ Jewish War and Its Slavonic Version: A Synoptic Comparison of the English Translation by H. St. Thackeray with the Critical Edition by N.A. Meščerskij of the Slavonic Version in the Vilna Manuscript Translated into English by H. Leeming and L. Osinkina.. Leiden: Brill, p. 26).
Outside of the spurious sentences sung by later apologists for Jesus the Christ, there are no primary sources that claim Jesus of the New Testament lived, died, or ever rose from the dead. Jesus is now, and was then, a myth.
As Jesus is/was a myth, so too is the very fabrication of Christianity. It does not come into being until the Emperor Constantine I hand-crafts it into being a bulkwark against mercenaries the empire hired but never paid, and were at that time banging against the gates and walls that provided protections to Roman citizens and their slaves. While there were communities of believers (chrestianos and christianos) thre was no Christian church as the Emperor had not yet created it. The favored line in Matthew 16:18 (καγὼ δέ σοι λέγω ὅτι σὺ εἶ Πέτρος καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς) is poorly read and far worse understood (notice the play on Πέτρος and πέτρᾳ). The word ἐκκλησίαν actually is “assembly”–not a building nor an institution. As assembly can be gathered together–not a group of building–as we find in συναγαγόντες τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἀνήγγελλον ὅσα (Acts 14:27) and refers to a group of people who can be greeted: ἀσπασάμενος τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, κατέβη εἰς (Acts 18:22), or dismissed: ἀπέλυσεν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν (Acts 19:41). A shepherd can feed people, not buildings or organizations: ποιμαίνειν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ (Acts 20:28), and greet people (not churches) in homes: οἶκον αὐτῶν ἐκκλησίαν. ἀσπάσασθε (Romans 16:5, Colosians 4:5) as the Jesus of the New Testament love people not buildings or institutions: ἠγάπησεν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν καὶ ἑαυτὸν (Ephesians 5:25). Even Paul admits he persecuted people, not institutions: διώκων τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, κατὰ δικαιοσύνην (Philippians 3:6). There was no church until Constantine created one; there was no set organization of Christianity as there were various sects and cults, each proclaiming it had the ultimate answer, some killing others while there were also suicide cults willing to die to hurry the End Times promised by so many charlatans.
Coin of Roman Emperor Constantine I depicting Sol Invictus Apollo (Constantine I was hailed as a god after he died–not as a Christian)
There was no Roman Catholic Church before 325 CE. It was not until 325 CE that the Emperor in the East, Constantine I, called his council of warrior bishops to meet with him in the city of Nicaea (Νίκαια in contemporary Iznik, Turkey; it was the ancient city of Bithynia in northwest Asia Minor, and ultimately, before the advent of Christianity, was given to the Thessalian general Lysimachus (Lysimakhos) (circa 355 BC-281 BC) in 301 BC as his share of the lands after Antigonus (who had served under Alexander the Great) was defeated. Lysimachus renamed the city Nicaea in tribute to his wife Nicaea, who was a daughter of Antipater: Macedonian general and a supporter of kings Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great). There he announced the formation of a “catholic [universal] church”—with no representative (presbyters) from Rome present. There were no recognized Popes of Rome, until much later, by the emperors.
The first list of “popes” [i.e. “fathers”] of Rome does not appear until St. Irenaeus, writing between 175 and 190, prepared a highly questionable list of pontiffs. This list appears not many years after his Roman holiday that lasted longer than he anticipated. Irenaeus (Εἰρηναῖος), (2nd century AD – c. 202; he was bishop of what today is Lyons, France) enumerates the series from Peter to Eleutherius in his Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) III.3.3, which is used 150 years later by the bishop Eusebius of Cesaraea in his Historia Ecclesiastica : Church History V.6).
Irenaeus had a specific object in mind when he created this list that most contemporaries knew was false. The list was created to establish the orthodoxy of the traditional doctrine as defined by second century bishops after the original Council of Apostles (that did not include Paul) had died. It was used as a tool to fight what Irenaeus referred to as heretical novelties, by showing that the bishop of Rome (based on a myth by misinterpreting Matthew 16:18-19), and all bishops, was the natural inheritor of the Apostolic teaching.
The fraudulency of Irenaeus’ claims can be seen within his imaginary list as the bishop of Lyons gives only the names of the pretend or reputed bishops (pontifex maximus was a title (read here) reserved for the emperor who did not always go to war but who perform sacrifice [ῥέζειν] for victory acting as chief intercessors to the gods: γεφυροποιοί) alone, not the length of the various episcopates. It has been noted that one of the greatest absurdities in the emerging church and crystallizing fully in the medieval church was the Roman bishops assuming the title of pontifex maximus despites its pagan and civil context, uses, and understanding (“In the matter of hierarchical nomenclature, one of the most striking instances is the adoption of the term pontifex for a bishop” (Paul Pascal (1966). Medieval Uses of Antiquity in The Classical Journal, Vol. 61, No. 5 [February], pp. 193–197).). Judas, by early records was no traitor and betrayed no one; it was a plan that backfired.
To grant Paul space in the invention of Christianity is unusual and short sighted, showing a contempt for the absense of any record in civil order (it is a grave error to attempt to use the Bible to prove the contents of the Bible, and is bad scholarship without supporting primary sources). Paul condemns himself in his words as being knowledgeable about and an instrument of Jesus of the New Testament, as Paul only twice refers to the sayings of Jesus in all the letters (epistles) that are ascribed to his authorship. These references are in 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 and 9:14.
The bulk of Paul’s letters reflect an abrupt and un-Jesus-like message. For example, whereas Jesus warned his followers against judging others (Matthew 7:1), Paul had no problem with it (Romans 1:18-28 although only verses 26-27 are pounded out on pulpits and in pernicious preaching today, whereas the entire condemnation is for those who are educated and consider themselves wise in the first century through today, while verses 29-32 spell it out even more in opposition to Acts 10:34. The festering infection that is synonymous with the Epistles of Paul are best seen in the vociferating umbrage of the authors of Romans who wrote: that evil people are filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them [29πεπληρωμένους πάσῃ ἀδικίᾳ πονηρίᾳ πλεονεξίᾳ κακίᾳ, μεστοὺς φθόνου φόνου ἔριδος δόλου κακοηθείας ψιθυριστάς 30καταλάλους θεοστυγεῖς ὑβριστὰς ὑπερηφάνους ἀλαζόνας, ἐφευρετὰς κακῶν, γονεῦσιν ἀπειθεῖς, 31ἀσυνέτους ἀσυνθέτους ἀστόργους ἀνελεήμονας· 32οἵτινες τὸ δικαίωμα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐπιγνόντες ὅτι οἱ τὰ τοιαῦτα πράσσοντες ἄξιοι θανάτου εἰσίν, οὐ μόνον αὐτὰ ποιοῦσιν ἀλλὰ καὶ συνευδοκοῦσιν τοῖς πράσσουσιν. None of this is found in any Gospel, the sayings of Jesus recorded in Q or in any other scroll (Thiede, Carsten Peter and D’Ancona, Matthew (1996). The Jesus Papyrus. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson). It is a later fiction, much like the redactions of Josephus and Tacitus]; cp. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and 1 Timothy 1:10)
One thing is clear in the original scrolls: Paul never knew Jesus. He wrote about the Jesus of the New Testament no less than twenty to thirty years after Jesus died, and during this time period all biblical scholars agree that there are no surviving records. Even then, as with the Letter to the Galatians, the work is more autobiographical than biographical.
Paul, patronizingly, admits “I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:19). Paul does not refer to James as “an apostle” but accords him greater dignity as “the Lord’s brother.”
The list of actual apostles is clearly stated in Acts: 1:13, detailing the leaders present in the Upper Room in Jerusalem: “Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Mathew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas brother of James,” and then notes emphatically in verse 14: “All these [the Eleven] were constantly devoting themselves to prayer together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus as well as his brothers” (Compare the brothers with Acts 12:17; cp. Tabor, James D. (2006). The Jesus Dynasty: the Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity. New York, NY, USA: Simon & Schuster). The brothers included Simon the Zealot and Judas the brother of James.
Mary, definitely, was not a virgin in reference to a hymen or by youth. In the New Testament she is given special dignity, not just as the Mother of Jesus, but also within the Council of the Twelve. This matches ancient Egyptian theology where Isis is accorded superiority over her son Horus and the Twelve gods who assist him.
Paul gives James superiority, over Peter and John (Galatians 2:9). The order of the brothers and other apostles reflect not mortals but members of the constellation that would iconize the mother Mary, similar to the way Isis had been enshrined. There is no proof that Paul (or Peter) ever died in Rome.
Paul was the antithesis of ancient Christianity. Diabolical and sinister those who created Paul did everything to undo the simple message that the Jesus of the New Testament had and instructed his seventy disciples (Luke 10:1) to spread “to all nations” the words of the Old Testament, not a novel New Testament (cp. Jeremiah 31:31 and Luke 22:30). Paul had not obtained any authority from Jesus, for Jesus was dead and never knew Paul, and Paul had little contact with James, the leader of the new Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem. Paul showed only contempt for the leaders of the community in Jerusalem, noting that “what they were means nothing to me” (Galatians 2:6, 9). Furthermore, Paul did not hesitate to hide his condemnation and rejection of the religion of Jesus, scorning the Torah (Galatians 3:24-25, Philippians 3:2-3) and denounced those who underwent the required Jewish ceremony of circumcision (Galatians 5:12) even though the Twelve in Jerusalem followed the lead of Jesus’ brother James who said it was not necessary for the Gentiles to follow the Jewish way (Acts 15:19-21). To make his separation more cutting, Paul uttered what would later be considered a heresy, by claiming that Jesus Histories was not truly born but had existed from all time (Philippians 2:6).
Whereas the emerging church, belching breathlessly out of the community of believers into a stratified, stagnant and sordid institution, had once be thought to argue that Paul was next to or even coequal with Peter, the Letters of Paul show the contrary. Paul hated and diminished Peter in word and deed, working harder than all of the other Apostles (1 Corinthians 15:10) and suffering more than Jesus suffered, stating that he was “filling up what was lacking in Christ’s suffering” (Colossians 1:24: Νῦν χαίρω ἐν τοῖς παθήμασιν ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν καὶ ἀνταναπληρῶ τὰ ὑστερήματα τῶν θλίψεων τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐν τῇ σαρκί μου ὑπὲρ τοῦ σώματος αὐτοῦ, ὅ ἐστιν ἡ ἐκκλησία,) as he “opposed Peter to his face because he stood condemned” over a dispute involving Jewish and Gentile table fellowship (Galatians 2:11: Ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν Κηφᾶς εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν, κατὰ πρόσωπον αὐτῷ ἀντέστην, ὅτι κατεγνωσμένος ἦν and the Armenian Սակայն երբ Պետրոս եկաւ Անտիոք՝ ես դիմադարձեցի անոր, որովհետեւ պարսաւելի էր:). Paul labels Peter a hypocrite with vitriol in Galatians that is more repugnant and pathetic than all the prattling of Paul in other epistles. To strengthen his lies, Paul more than likely created the two letters attributed to Peter as they sound more like Paul than anyone else.
There is no tangible, incontrovertible proof of a Peter or any immediate successors of Peter or popes during the first one-hundred years in the city of Rome. The lack of proof, that constitutes evidence, is found in the liturgical tradition of the fourth-century Roman Church, because it was only at the end of the second century that any special feast of martyrs was instituted and there is no first century “popes” recognized, especially Linus who allegedly followed the mythological Peter. For that reason no Linus, nor any of his alleged successors, appears in the fourth-century lists of the feasts of the Roman saints.
According to Torrigio (Le sacre grotte Vaticane, Viterbo, Italy: Discepoli 1618, p. 53; text is in Italian) when the present confession was constructed in St. Peter’s (1615), sarcophagi were found, and among them was one which bore the word Linus. The explanation given by Severano of this discovery (Memorie delle sette chiese di Roma e di altri luoghi che si trovano per le strade di esse, parte prima in cui si tratta dell’antichita di dette chiese, Roma, Italy: per Giacomo Mascardi, 1630, p. 120) is that probably these sarcophagi contained the remains of the first Roman bishops, and that the one bearing that inscription was Linus’ burial place. This assertion was repeated later on by different writers. But from a MS. of Torrigio’s we see that on the sarcophagus in question there were other letters beside the word Linus, so that they rather belonged to some other name (cp. Aquilinus, De praescriptione, xxxii Anullinus). The place of the discovery of the tomb is a proof that it could not be the tomb of Linus. (De Rossi, Giovanni Battista and Silvagni, Angelo (1935) Società romana di storia patria.; Pontificio istituto di archeologia cristiana. Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae séptimo saeculo antiquiores, Vol. II: Coemeteria in Viis Cornelia, Aurelia, Portuensi et Ostiensi. Romae : Pontificium institutum archaeologiae christianae, pp. 236-7, in Latin). Even more condemning is Tertullian’s argument that St. Clement followed St. Peter (De praescriptione, xxxii), yet confusion reigns even here especially with Irenaeus of Lyons. Iremeus (as he is styled in the original Catholic Encyclopedia but should be Irenaeus) has Linus, Anacletus, and Clement; whereas Augustine and Optatus put Clement before Anacletus. On the other hand, the “Catalogus Liberianus”, the “Carmen contra Marcionem” and the “Liber Pontificalis”, all most respectable for their antiquity, make Cletus and Anacletus distinct from each other; while the “Catalogus Felicianus” even sets the latter down as a Greek, the former as a Roman. Among the moderns, Hergenröther, Joseph Adam Gustav (trans. Belet, P abbé) Histoire de l’Eglise. Paris, Delhomme & Briguet [1878?]-1892, Vol. I, 542, note) pronounces for their identity, cf. Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger (1868). Christenthum und Kirche in der Zeit der Grundlegung, 2. verb. Aufl, Regensburg, Deutschland: G.J. Manz, p. 315) declares that “they are, without doubt, the same person”; and that “the `Catalogue of Liberius’ merits little confidence before 230.” Duchesne, Louis Marie Oliver (1889). Origines du culte chrétien: etude sur la liturgie latine avant Charlemagne. Paris, France: Thorin, 1889, in French, ranges himself on that side also.
The dating of papal rule does not appear until 354 and then in the controversial and easily disproven Liberian Catalogue (actually entitled Catalogus Liberianus, after the last pope named: Liberius; it is part of an illuminated manuscript known as Chronographus anni 354 [Chronography of 354]) apparently written by one Furius Dionysius Philocalus. (The copyists did include the rampant anti-Semitism, especially that of St. John Chrysostom in his Homilies 1 through 8, etc. The history of the Roman popes can be read in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Chronica Minora I (1892 text in Latin; Berolini : apud Weidmannos, 1892-1898), pp. 73-76) Not only does this late list start with a minor apostle, Peter, but ends with a nondescript pope Liberius, but it does include the assumed length of their respective episcopates (citing no records or other data to firm the tome, its research faulty at best), the consular dates, the name of the reigning emperor (both which have numerous public citations), and in many cases other details that cannot be proven nor disproven as most are falsified from legends without even eye witness verification.
Today, scholars recognized that the Liberian Catalogue earlier part was crafted as far as Pontian (230-35) by Hippolytus of Portus, as it is close to his work Chronica Minora (Lipsiae, in aedibus B.G. Teubneri, 1892; text is in ancient Greek [to 1453]). The highly respected Anglican theologian Lightfoot bishop of Durham who, from 1854 to 1859, edited the Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, argued that this list originally contained nothing but the names of the bishops and the duration of their episcopates (Ramsey, Arthur Michael. From Gore to Temple. London, UK: Longmans(1960) p. 1616). Lightfoot argues that the remaining notes were additions by a later hand, most likely by zealous copyists. Several inaccuracies occur; for example, the list of popes in the Liberian Catalogue is identical with that of Irenaeus, except that Anacletus is doubled into Cletus and Anacletus (creating two popes out of one), while Clement appears before, instead of after, these two names. Then, too, the order of Popes Pius and Anicetus has also been interchanged, thus weakening any relevance of the document. All later lists, such as the list by Eusebius, come no less than three hundred years after the alleged first pontifical reign—and are at best staging of a lie. For example, Eusebius in his Church History IV.22 writes that in the middle of the second century (at least one hundred or more years after Peter allegedly was crucified in Rome—that has no historical basis) Hegesippus, a Hebrew Christian, visited Rome and drew up a list of bishops as far as Anicetus for his own use.
The Liber Pontificalis, long accepted as an authority of the highest value, is now acknowledged to have been originally composed at the beginning of the fifth century, and, as regards the early popes, to be dependent on the “Liberian Catalogue”. This list is haphazard and includes both popes and antipopes. As the New Catholic Encyclopedia notes, previous “to the middle of the eleventh century, the information is of uncertain value” (Joyce, G. (1911). “Chronological Lists of Popes.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company).
Emperor Nero
As for there being any active church before Constantine, that is a well-placed fable. It is similar to the legend that Christians/Chrestianos were singled out for persecution. There were no persecution of Christians, but of chrestianos until the fire (Magnum Incendium) that swept the slums of Rome in 64 CE, and the few Christians who did “confess,” confessed under torture but their confession is unclear if they were admitting to being arsons lighting their homes in a drunken stupor or they were proclaiming themselves to be chrestianos to set the sect apart from christianos and thus bear the wrath of the empire (Tacitus, Annals XV.44). Arson in Rome, deliberate or accidental, was not new in the imperial city at this time, as there were other such conflagrations under Vitellius in 69 during the seige of Vespasian (where the culprits were his troops) and under Titus in 80 (Suetonius, Lives of Twelve Caesars, Life of Titus, 8). The fact that Tacitus’ copyists were quick to blame the Christians and create a false aura of martyrdom were to be subject death rather than acknowledge that Chrestianos being a people eager for martyrdom can be seen in the earliest extant manuscript, the second Medicean, as the e in “Chrestianos”, the Chrestians, has been changed into an i; cf. Gerd Theißen, Annette Merz (2001). Der historische Jesus: ein Lehrbuch. Göttingen, Deutschland: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (originally published in 1996), p. 89 so as to place blame on both sects. The reading Christianos, Christians, is, therefore, doubtful. There are no primary accounts (written by Fabius Rusticus, Cluvius Rufus and Pliny the Elder) are described as contradictory and gross exaggerations in keeping with Constantine’s desire to show the Christians being wrongly persecuted and singling them out as the True Faith-keepers, and their scrolls burned in the emperor’s holocaust of writings when the works of Arius were also consigned to the flames (ref: Tacitus, Annals XV.38-39 where Tacitus claims the fire was an accident. Nero was in Antium, so could not have set drunkards out to ignite the homes of the poor while he played a lyre on a hill and watched as we read in Cassius Dio, Roman History LXII.16-17 and Suetonius. “Life of Nero”. Lives of Twelve Caesars. p. 38).
During the Ante-Nicene period following the Apostolic Age (from the death of the last official Apostle, until the reign of the Emperor Constantine I), there was a great diversity of views among the various community that emerged nearly simultaneously with strong unifying characteristics lacking in the apostolic period. The most popular views were those held by the Docetics who taught that Jesus did not appear in the flesh, but as a ghost, and thus could not die; what died was the shell of a man that the ghost had invaded (Ignatius, Trallians 9-11). The Gnostic movement had far more intelligent thinkers, teachers, and preachers than did the movement within Paulinity; these greats included Satornilus of Antioch, who labored before 1500 and Basilides, who taught in Alexandria around 130; and, most important of all, Valentinus, who was active in Rome from c. 135-165 and was regarded as the most gifted figure and thinker of his day. There are no historical records (outside of the Christian Bible which has no foundation in provable and documented history) that lists a Peter. Valentinus was far more important in real life than the imaginary initial betrayer of the Jesus of the New Testament.
Maricon made a distinct impact on Rome. He showed how the New Testament Jesus was far superior in kindness than the violent-enraged Old Testament god. This made people think and encouraged many to give up Judaism.
Since Marcion preached a message of a loving Jesus, he quickly became unpopular with the rise of the militant community that sought the return of a marshal military Jesus proclaimed in Matthew 10:34. A struggle broke out and the presbyters that controlled churches in Rome in the name of Paul (nt Peter), demanded the ouster of Marcion. Their action further alienated the believers and caused one of the first rifts in the community that had not yet been solidified into a single church: a collective community recognizing a single head.
The struggle was intensified with the rise of Montanism that distinctly and sharply followed the teaching of the New Testament Jesus. The Montanists denounced the worldliness of the church and condemned the priests who claimed they were ministers of Jesus for their lavish living and corrupt secular lifestyle. Those who denounced the worldliness of the church and its leaders were categorized as “fallen” people: apostasia (“ἀποστασία”) meaning defecting, departuring, revolting or being in rebellion against the church. Once the Roman Catholic Church had a forceful stranglehold on Western Europe in the nefarious form of the Inquisition (restored by Pope Paul VI (1963-1978) and embellished by Benedict XVI in the manner of Scott Lively, Bill Donahue of the Catholic League, Maggie Gallagher of NOM (read here and here), Brian Fischer (American Family Association) and the two most vile cardinals in history: Timothy Dolan of New York and the wretched Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco with others who despise freedom), Pope Innocent III declared: “Anyone who attempts to construe a personal view of God that conflicts with church dogma must be burned without pity.”
While the Roman Catholic Church was the most worldly and among the richest and wretched in western Christiandom, the Eastern Orthodox was the epitome of any organization under criminal control with the patriarchal throne of Constantinople frequently sold to the highest bidder, while new patriarchal investiture was accompanied by heavy payment to the government (read here and here). To recoup their losses, patriarchs and bishops heavily taxed the local parishes and their clergy to the point of bankrupting most.
The Greek patriarchal throne was never secure. Few patriarchs between the 15th and the 19th centuries died a natural death while in office, instead there was a plethora of forced abdications, drowning, exiles, hangings, and poisonings of patriarchs from Constantinople to Sofia and into Moscow. The hanging of Patriarch Gregory V (Γρηγόριος Ε΄, born Georgios Angelopoulos) from the gate of the patriarchate on Easter Sunday 1821 for becaming a member of the Filiki Eteria (Φιλική Εταιρεία: Friendly Society; cp. Alison, Phillips W. (1897). The war of Greek independence, 1821 to 1833. London, UK: Smith, Elder. pp. 20, 21) that was preparing for a revolt against the Turkish rule; his execution was accompanied by the execution of two metropolitans and twelve bishops, leading to whole-scale burnings of the Bible and the writings of clergy.
The official christiano movement was trotted in by Irenaeus of Lyons, who had little knowledge of the Bible and even less of history—much like the bishops of today, especially those sitting on the Council of Bishops of the USA, and the Perú Council of Bishops. Irenaeus, writing about 185 CE, claimed that the Gospels of Matthew and John were actually written by the Apostles (which has been repeatedly proven to be false), while Mark (on which all synoptic gospels are based) was claimed to have reproduced the message of Peter and Luke. Irenaeus went so far as to claim that the Gospels said nothing about Gnosticism, further proving his ignorance of the Bible, either rejecting or more likely not knowing 1 Corinthians 2:6 (cp. Irenaeus, Heresies 3.4.1). Still the early movement in Rome thrived as the Gnostic movement was far more open and generous than Pauline Christianity that most considered to be a barbaric transmogrification of anything Jesus said, did, or wanted to occur. It was especially popular from 135-160 CE that it threatened to destroy Paulinity that was being cultivated by Imperial Rome as a way to foster and gain adherents to the empire as it argued for spiritual knowledge (γνωσις) over physical or philosophic knowledge and being more passive led to the legalization of Christianity in 313 CE.
Many of those who had entered the early church also left it, such as Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, c. 160-225 CE), the first ecclesiastical writer of prominence to use Latin in his letters (even the presbyters of Rome used Greek), and unfortunately authored the absurdity of their being an “original sin” (Tertullian, Anima 41, that could only be undone by the power of the grace of God: verse 21). Tertullian also popularized the Egyptian concept of a Trinity (Tertullian, Praxeas 2), although it was a term that was used earlier than Tertullian by Theophilus of Antioch in Ad Autolycum 2.15 to refer to God, God’s Logos (Jesus), and God’s Sophia (Holy Spirit). Tertullian and his wife abandoned Christianity for the more views of Montanism. Cp. J. Kaye, Bishop of Lincoln (1845, third edition) The Ecclesiastical History of the Second and Third Centuries, illustrated from the writings of Tertullian. London: Rivington.
Part of the unifying trend of chrestianos and christianos among Gentile was an increasingly harsh rejection of Judaism and Jewish practices. Early Christianity gradually grew apart from Judaism during the first two centuries and established itself as a predominantly Gentile religion in the Roman Empire causing many to leave the new cult. Christianity only became the official religion in 325 CE and then because of the order of Constantine and the support of the army of Rome (Paul Stephenson (2009, 2010). Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor. New York : Overlook Press, 2010.Chapter 11). Constantine’s Catholic Church that emerged as today’s Roman Catholic, Orthodox of Protestant Christianity rejected, totally, the words of Jesus of the New Testament: “Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle [meek] and humble [lowly] in heart, and you will find rest (relief and ease, refreshment, recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls. For My yoke is wholesome [useful, good — not harsh, sharp, or pressing, but comfortable, gracious, and pleasant] and My burden is light and easy to be borne” (Matthew 11:29-30).
Reblogged this on Critical Thinking – A World View and commented:
As always highly informative.
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