- Once you base your whole life striving on a
desperate lie, and try to implement that lie, you instrument your own
undoing. - Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
-
-
- It's like taking candy away from a baby. The candy's
no good for the kid, but it will take him many years and much learning
to realize the favor you did for him. In the meantime he'll whine
about how mean you were and how wrong it was to do that. But when he's
a healthy adult, because of the very thing you took away, he may
actually develop the judgment and wisdom to thank you for what you
did. In any case, he'll be much healthier.
-
- So too with beliefs. If you believe in magic, that
some special phrase will keep you safe from harm in all situations and
even immunize you from death, you can't help but fail to perceive the
true reality of the world before your eyes - that all things must
pass, even though subtle aspects of us may journey onward through our
offspring.
-
- It's a beautiful system when you think about it, one
that governs every living thing in the known universe. And every
living thing is more than satisfied with it - in fact, prospers in its
vital joy because of it - except one. Us.
-
- Humans, normally very discerning in every aspect of
their infinitely varied lives, possess absolutely no standards at all
when it comes to one subject - death. It is often said that instinct
is stronger than reason, and in all the realms of human endeavor,
nowhere is this more evident than in the amusingly inventive
strategies humans develop to pretend they don't really die.
-
- The secondmost common human trait after survival is
the urge to prosper and be secure, so it should come as no surprise
that, very early on in our history, perceptive and enterprising
people, upon recognizing this universal human need to deny that we
die, rushed to develop and market products that satisfied the public
demand to alleviate this fear. Every culture ever known to man left
significant traces of this spiritual commerce.
-
- You know the argument. Can we live our lives and
accept that nothing follows? Or must we deceive ourselves and invent,
with the power of our infinite imaginations, a way past this daunting
wall of mortality. Well, the answer's in, and the human species has
clearly opted for the unprovable hope. But exactly what is the price
of this willful self-deception?
-
- This is no attempt to demean many thousands of years
of honest effort by sincere people to distill lessons essential to
healthy living into practical codes of conduct that reinforce the
cause of harmony and provide useful paths to peace of mind. But given
the nature of our affliction, of the terror of death we all have that
needs to be repressed for our own tranquility, it is not difficult to
understand how those who wield these secret formulas for happiness
might just be tempted to exploit them for their own selfish purposes.
It's called the temptation of power, and I don't think I need to
explain it to you.
-
- Furthermore, given that this problem has a higher
priority than any other we face in our entire lives, and also that to
each of us, the effectiveness of the cure is far more important than
the actual legitimacy of the method, this leaves us - as we know from
history - with a situation ripe for exploitation.
-
- Lastly, there is the little matter of actually
knowing the secrets of the universe. This we consign to the province
of priests, and we pay them to make us happy, to make up a story that
ties up all these loose, bleak ends which we don't want to think
about. But what if these beliefs hurt us in ways we don't realize.
Even as they may make us comfortable with simple tales that magically
explain everything, do we really understand what the concepts of
communion and resurrection really mean in terms of how we relate to
our neighbors and our world? What is the danger when logic is subsumed
by the magic of religious belief?
-
- First, we must understand the process by which
people think.
-
- There is alluring evidence that ancient cultures
actually possessed much more realistic religions than our own
contemporary society. And they were developed by studying the sky.
During the day, it was obvious that all life depended on the
beneficent properties of the Sun. And during the fearful night, humans
studied the stars for their cues to survival, and projected their own
thoughts onto these phenomena. These two things form the basis of all
existing religions, according to Acharya S.
-
- How do people think? We anthropomorphize everything.
It is how we learned to understand things. We talk to our plants and
our stuffed animals. We give them names. Thus is it has always been,
with all perceived phenomena. This is how stars became people, or at
least animals. From Amun Ra, piloting his boat of heaven across the
sky all those centuries ago, to the Great Bear, whom we still see
every night.
-
- The Sun became Krishna. The moon Inanna. Their
setting and disappearance created new gods reborn daily, or monthly or
yearly. They all got names, different ones, depending on where you
lived. Osiris. Tammuz. Orpheus. Mithra. Millions of names. Millennia
passed. One day, after thousands of years of war and peace, of
fighting and loving, of civilizations rising and falling, suddenly,
after a Roman conclave of regional movers and shakers, the approved
deity's name became Jesus. And he was still the Sun, and his disciples
were the stars (the twelve signs of the Zodiac, actually).
-
- Or so Acharya says, and I believe her. Why? Because
it's logical. It's actual history. And though still myth, it is
empirical rather than manipulative, a causative explanation rather
than the magic trick of some unfathomable man who showed up one day
and claimed he was God to people who wrote it all down and put it in a
book called the Bible.
-
- That's the short version. The long version is two
thousand years of suppressed scholarship, kept secret because it
simply didn't gibe with the propaganda organized religions produce to
attract and addict adherents to their own particular interpretation of
cosmic events and everyday life. But this more scientific explanation
has always been out there, and reasonable, thinking people, who aren't
blinded by their own fear and cowed by their own self-inflicted
spiritual gurus, have always known about it.
-
- And Acharya S. has gathered it, folded it neatly and
logically into two encyclopedic volumes of scholarly excellence. These
are titled "The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold"
(1999) and "Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled" (2004).
Both are published by Adventures Unlimited Press
<http://www.adventuresunlimitedpress.com/>
-
- Look at the world today. Endless wars, festering
hatreds, a multitude of government lies telling us the world is one
way when we suspect that's not really the way it is. We should listen
to our own voices and not blindly accept the smug statements of
"authority" figures. How did we learn to do that? Guess. Just take a
wild guess.
-
- This story is not about taking your God away. Only
an idiot would insist that men created the sunset, the orbits of the
planets, or baby drool. This story is about analyzing the terminology
you use to explain the way you see your life and the universe. And
most of all, it is about the lies we have been told to keep us in our
mental chains while those who control us - our preachers, priests,
rabbis, mullahs, lamas and other assorted "holy" men - reinforce fear,
abet slaughter, and profit mightily from the conspicuous lies that
they promote as sacred gospel.
-
- Sorry to be so blunt. You need to pay attention to
this. The future of human society depends on your understanding what
you are reading at this moment, and even that is kind of an
understatement.
-
- To our contemporary Christianized Western minds, the
most astonishing thing Acharya S. proves beyond doubt in her two
scholarly tomes is that the much-revered personality known as Jesus
Christ is a completely contrived fictional character, and that
Christianity has no substance whatsoever that was not stolen
- - created whole cloth out of pagan myths and
traditions - from many of the world's more ancient religions.
-
- How does she prove this?
-
- * By telling you about the many other "saviors" who
existed prior to the creation of Jesus, many of whom were born in late
December of virgin mothers and were of divine origin, most of whom
performed miracles, held high morals, healed the sick, were the
catalysts for salvation, were called "Savior" or "Redeemer," and were
crucified; whose legends all contain elements that were later
plagiarized by unscrupulous Roman plutocrats when they got together to
construct the Jesus myth as a method to usurp and unify preexisting
creeds to better control their diverse and obstreperous masses.
-
- * By analyzing all the contributions of known
writers of that ancient time, through decades of study of the works of
skeptical historians who have been researching this hoax for
centuries, and observing that virtually none of these early historians
ever mentions Christ or Christians, except for the works of a special
few, and deeper analysis reveals these works to have been tinkered
with, or outright fabricated, for the benefit of the manipulative
politicians who created the most powerful mindlock human society has
ever known.
-
- * And by providing a detailed and accurate portrait
of the actual evolution of religious myth, with a clear explanation of
how all messiahs are merely anthropomorphic representations of the
Sun, and how all the other mythological supporting characters,
particularly when they are described in groups of 12, are merely
personalities projected onto the stars.
-
- This, not the debunking of the Jesus myth, is the
overarching value of the book, and makes Acharya, in my sincere
estimation, the ranking religious philosopher of our age, simply
because she cuts through the sanctimonious crap and deals empirically
and forthrightly with the facts.
-
- But more than that, in this age of deliberate
disinformation and mass mind control, the works of Acharya provide
those who wish to think deeply about the nature of the human condition
with a startling survey of priestly misbehavior and deliberate
deception, which is what religion really is - a magic show that
exploits people's need for answers to unanswerable questions.
-
- As such, her works furnish us with an essential tool
to help us understand why we are powerless against an onslaught of
facile mass media that keep telling us things we know are not true.
What the state does the church first perfected with threats, violence,
and forcing us to believe in our inmost hearts things that were never
true.
-
- But it's the Jesus argument that gets everybody's
attention.
-
- Or, as Acharya puts it, " ... there is no evidence
for the historicity of the Christian founder, that the earliest
Christian proponents were as a whole either utterly credulous or
astoundingly deceitful, and that said 'defenders of the faith' were
compelled under incessant charges of fraud to admit that Christianity
was a rehash of older religions."
-
- Let's start with legendary figures of far greater
antiquity whose attributes appear to uncannily resemble the much later
legend known as Jesus Christ.
-
- "The Jesus story incorporated elements from the
tales of other deities recorded in this widespread area of the ancient
world, including several of the following world saviors, most or all
of whom predate the Christian myth," Acharya writes.
-
- These include (and I'll edit this list, because it's
very long)
-
- * Adad and Marduk of Assyria.
- * Adonis, Aesclepius, Apollo, Dionysus, Heracles,
and Zeus of Greece.
- * Alcides of Thebes, divine redeemer born of a
virgin around 1200 BCE.
- * Attis of Phyrgia.
- * Baal or Bel of Babylon/Phoenicia.
- * Buddha and Krishna of India.
- * Hermes of Egypt/Greece.
- * Hesus of the Druids.
- * Horus, Osiris, and Serapis of Egypt.
- * Indra of Tibet/India.
- * Ieo of China.
- * Issa of Arabia, born of the Virgin Mary in 400
BCE.
- * Jupiter/Jove of Rome.
- * Mithra of Persia/India.
- * Odin/Wodin/Woden/Wotan of Scandinavia.
- * Prometheus of Caucasus/Greece.
- * Quetzalcoatl of Mexico.
- * Salivahana of southern India, "who was a divine
child, born of a virgin, and son of a carpenter."
- * Tammuz of Syria, the savior god worshipped in
Jerusalem.
- * Thor of the Gauls.
- * Zoroaster of Persia.
-
- Attis of Phrygia was born on December 25 of the
Virgin Nana, and considered the savior who was slain for the salvation
of mankind. His body as bread was eaten by his worshippers. He was
crucified on a tree, descended into the underworld and was resurrected
annually on March 25 as the "most high god," many centuries before
Christianity was invented.
-
- Buddha was born on December 25 of the virgin Maya,
and his birth was accompanied by a special star, wise men and angels.
He was baptized in water with the holy ghost present. He was
resurrected and will return in the "latter days" to judge all men. His
legends extend back more than a thousand years before Christ.
-
- The Greek god of wine was actually a savior (as any
drinker will tell you). Dionysus, born of a virgin, who rode in a
triumphal procession on an ass, is considered by some scholars as the
prototype of Christ.
-
- The real model for all saviors, according to
Acharya, was the Egyptian god Osiris. Quoting Barbara Walker, from
"The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" (Harpers,
1983):
-
- Of all the savior gods worshipped at the beginning
of the Christian era, Osiris may have contributed more details to the
evolving Christ figure than any other. Already very old in Egypt,
Osiris was identified with nearly every other Egyptian god and was on
the way to absorbing them all. He had well over 200 divine names. He
was called the Lord of Lords, King of Kings, God of Gods. He was the
Resurrection and the Life, the Good Shepherd, Eternity and
Everlastingness, "the god who made men and women to be born again."
(Sir Wallis) Budge (once the preeminent Egyptologist) says, "From
first to last, Osiris was to the Egyptians the god-man who suffered,
and died, and rose again, and reigned eternally in heaven. They
believed that they would inherit eternal life, just as he had done
...
-
- Some claim Osiris lived up to 22,000 years ago.
Acharya writes:
-
- As Col. James Churchward naively exclaims, "The
teachings of Osiris and Jesus are wonderfully alike. Many passages are
identically the same, word for word."
-
- Acharya also exhaustively compares the details of
Krishna and Mithra, as well as Prometheus, Quetzalcoatl, and Serapis.
The reader soon begins to realize that all these stories the same.
Conclusion?
-
- It is evident that Jesus Christ is a mythical
character based on these various ubiquitous godmen and universal
saviors who were part of the ancient world for thousands of years
prior to the Christian era.
-
- Now, once you realize that, you know you have to
prepare for the onslaught of true believers, who, when you mention
that Jesus was a fictional character, are going to come at you with
every verbal weapon they have retained during their misguided and
propagandized lives.
-
- The Bible is not a valid historical document. It is
work of political and philosophical propaganda, designed to deceive
and control, and take advantage of people's need to have answers to
questions that really have no answers, as far as human perception is
concerned.
-
- Often, fundamentalist Christians try to cite
classical historical sources to buttress their unshakable belief that
Jesus resurrected and (according to George Bush and the neocons) will
return one day to blow up Jerusalem and lead his followers to a
pleasant destination in the sky.
-
- This may be the most valuable aspect of Acharya's
work. She considers the name of every known historian of the period
and explains why what Christian fanatics insist they said can't
possibly be accurate.
-
- Using thousands of footnotes from serious scholars
over the many centuries, Acharya deftly explains all the revisions,
interpolations and forgeries that allow some of the diehard faithful
to argue that there actually is historical evidence of the existence
of Jesus - when in fact there is not.
-
- All the great first century historians - Pliny the
Elder and Younger, Suetonius, Dio Chrysostom, Livy, Petronius,
Plutarch, Seneca and many others whose works are still extant - never
make any mention of the founder of Christianity.
-
- Even though he lived in Jerusalem during the time
Jesus was supposed to have existed, the well-known Jewish philosopher
Philo Judaeus of Alexandria never mentions Christ or Christianity even
once. Acharya quotes religious scholar John Remsburg about
Philo:
-
- He was there when the crucifixion with its attendant
earthquake, supernatural darkness, and resurrection of the dead took
place, and in the presence of many witnesses ascended into heaven.
These marvelous events which must have filled the world with
amazement, had they really occurred, were unknown to him.
-
- The well-traveled Philo had pleaded the Jewish cause
in Rome, knew of Pilate, the Essenes and the Therapeuts, yet never
once mentioned Jesus or Christians.
-
- As Acharya surmised: "One would think that if ...
Jesus had suddenly appeared in Philo's homeland, during his life, when
he was a sentient adult, Philo would not only have noticed but would
have jumped for joy, and written reams about the glorious event,
seeing the promises and prophecies of Israel fulfilled. It could not
be more obvious that nothing of the sort happened during Philo's
lifetime."
-
- But most Christian apologists don't even know about
Philo. The one historian they most often use to legitimize their
claims that Jesus Christ was an actual historical personage is Flavius
Josephus. And Acharya devotes a considerable amount of space
demolishing those claims.
-
- Josephus (37-95 CE) is the most famous Jewish
historian of the time. Acharya writes:
-
- ... in the entire work of Josephus, which constitute
many volumes of great detail encompassing centuries of history, there
is no mention of Paul or the Christians, and there are only two brief
paragraphs that purport to relate to Jesus. Although much has been
made of these "references," they have been dismissed by scholars and
Christian apologists alike as forgeries ...
-
- Many scholars investigating the matter believe that
single mention of Jesus in all of the works Josephus was forged -
interpolated - centuries later by an unscrupulous Christian named
Bishop Eusebius.
-
- In her second book, Acharya recounts the analysis of
Bible expert Dr. Nathaniel Lardner (1684-1768):
-
- Mattathias, the father of Josephus, must have been a
witness to the miracles which are said to have been performed by
Jesus, and Josephus was born within two years after the crucifixion,
yet in all the works he says nothing whatever about the life or death
of Jesus Christ; as for the interpolated passage it is now universally
acknowledged to be a forgery.
-
- But perhaps the most curious episode Acharya covers
involves the Roman historian Tacitus, whose oft-cited passage about
Nero persecuting the Christians is revealed as a fraud. And that leads
to an interesting story so typical of the questionable construction of
the Christian myth.
-
- It seems that this particular mention by Tacitus,
who lived in the first century CE, does not appear in literature until
the 15th century, because numerous scholars have noted that not even
the most ardent Christian apologists ever mentioned it until then. But
that's not the worst part.
-
- Perhaps the quintessential bogus reproduction of a
classical source for devious Christian purposes resides the famous
passage in "The Annals" by Tacitus that describes Nero blaming
Christians for the burning of Rome. Unfortunately for the Roman
church's propaganda machine, numerous experts have deduced that since
neither Eusebius nor Tertullian nor any of the other devoted church
fathers knew of the existence of this passage - because they surely
would have mentioned it because it was so vividly sympathetic to their
cause - it is likely that this entire book - The Annals of Tacitus,
which is a staple of some classical libraries - is a 15th century
forgery about a 1st century event meant to improve the nonexistent
historical veracity of the Christian church.
-
- But the history of real religion, ah, that's a
different and happier story. Acharya quotes Indian scholar S. B. Roy
from his "Prehistoric Lunar Astronomy":
-
- To the ancients ... heaven was the land of gods and
mystery. The sky - the Dyaus of the Rig Veda - was itself living. The
stars were the abodes of the gods. The shining stars were indeed
themselves luminous gods. Astronomy was the knowledge of not of
heavenly bodies, but of heavenly beings.
-
- "Astronomical or astrotheological knowledge reaches
back to the dawn of humanity, appearing widespread and becoming highly
developed over a period of millennia," Acharya writes, and after a
thorough examination of the subject, concludes:
-
- The church fathers and other Christian writers also
acknowledged this astrotheology and its antiquity, but denigrated it
as much as possible. Why? ... the knowledge about astrotheology would
reveal the Christians' own religion to be Pagan in virtually every
significant aspect .... the restoration of this knowledge is not to be
despaired but rejoiced.
-
- Summation:
-
- The Christian religion - as well as its monotheistic
cousins, Judaism and Islam - are all based on primitive vestiges from
a dim past that certainly most of their adherents do not adequately
understand and doubtless many of its top officials do not comprehend,
either. These are cannibalism and child sacrifice.
-
- The tangent to cannibalism can be clearly seen in
the act of Holy Communion, in which the faithful are urged to swallow
"the body of Christ." The example of child sacrifice occurs in the
myth of "God" supposed sending his only son into the corporeal realm
only to be tortured and murdered. This has always sounded to me like
deep cover conditioning to indoctrinate believing dupes into being
willing to die, or sending their children off to die, for their
blessed country.
-
- I don't know of any literature that adequately
analyzes the psychological ramifications of these two symbolically
barbaric acts. But I do know that billions of people have participated
in these crazed rituals and based their lives on the veneration of
them. And we see too clearly the results of the belief paradigm in the
senseless murder of billions over the century generated by the blind
and savage faith in this supposedly holy cause.
-
- Though there are infinite examples, the two that
initially come to mind are the centuries of slaughter in the Western
hemisphere by Spanish conquistadores and British pioneers who regarded
different-looking fellow humans as mere animals eligible for
thoughtless extermination. And now, there are the perverse rape-
murders of innocent Iraqis by drug-addled and uranium-poisoned
American, British and Israeli heroes. Same ballgame, different day -
every single bit of it directly attributable to this bloodthirsty
Judeo-Christian legacy.
-
- And I also know one other important thing in these
matters. When you live your life convinced that reality is a certain
way and base your life on it, your life will turn out to be exactly
what you believe. I believe there is a direct connection between the
great Christian lie that you will survive death if you do what the
priest says, and the everpresent reality of violence in the
world.
-
- The church teaches you to believe in the
infallibility of what its leaders say, and to follow their orders no
matter what, or you will roast in the fires of hell. History shows us,
clearly, that no matter what denomination, the church fathers have
lied terribly and caused billions of needless deaths. This lying,
sanctimoniously emulated by government leaders - be they kings or
presidents - has transferred this supernatural authority to the
secular realm, and allowed our leaders to dupe their populations into
endless killing for what our leaders said was right, but for what were
ultimately deceitful reasons because they were based on deliberate
lies. Just like the Christian religion, and its monotheistic
cousins.
-
- The population's willingness to believe these lies
relates directly to what their holy men told them - believe this, or
you will suffer in hell for eternity.
- What you believe is what you become, and this
attitude engendered by the Christian church and its maniacal
monotheistic counterparts have, with their transparent lies that have
been swallowed by millions of gullible people, lived up to the
impotent threats of their insincere promises by creating hell on earth
to convince you that they are right.
-
- This holy mindlock has never been more obvious - nor
more lethal - than it is today, in the year 2005, in which a despotic
U.S. president who insists he talks to God has killed and is killing
hundreds of thousands people all over the world, for reasons that
anyone with a whit of sense knows are lies.
-
- The two voluminous, solidly referenced works of the
woman known only as Acharya S - "The Christ Conspiracy" and "Suns of
God" - provide a valuable first step for many bewildered believers who
have come to disbelieve the doubletalk of their religious leaders in
detoxifying the self-deceptive misinformation that most of us have
been bombarded with throughout our lives.
-
- This knowledge has always been known, but it has
been suppressed by the spin machine that organized religion,
conferring its corrupt grace on tyrants for centuries, has always
censored. The real picture of our misguided Christian believer was
probably best expressed by St. Augustine himself all those long and
agonizing years ago, in this passage recounted by Acharya S:
-
- ... one of the most famed and respected Christian
doctors was St. Augustine, who "stakes his eternal salvation" on his
assertion that he preached the gospel to "a whole nation of men and
women, who had no heads, but had their eyes in their bosoms."
-
- * * *
-
- Footnote: Just who exactly is Acharya S and why is
she so hard to find? Really, it's because of the persecution she has
been forced to endure because of her work. Right now, not even her
publisher knows where she is. She has gone underground after several
unpleasant incidents during the past few years, one of which was the
kidnapping of her son, a crime that was happily resolved after some
period of intense stress that may have involved a well-known New Age
guru.
-
- A study in contradictions, Acharya S is obviously a
nom de plume for an archeologist, historian, mythologist and linguist
who has the qualifications, courage, and integrity to so
professionally and thoroughly debunk the collective religious spin
machine. But to talk to Acharya S is markedly different than reading
her work, about the like the difference between a biker chick and a
college professor, leading some to speculate if the rough-edged
radical and the creator of the meticulously argued and scholarly tomes
which bear her name are actually the same person.
-
- Nevertheless, her two meticulously footnoted books
present the lay reader and professional historian alike with a stark
assessment of the outright lies the Christian church has told about
its namesake. You can order the books from
http://www.adventuresunlimitedpress.com/ or find out more about
Acharya at http://truthbeknown.com/
-
- If you read these books, it's extremely doubtful
you'll ever go to church again. And if you do, you must carry with you
the reverberating question: What happens to you when you know that
what you have believed in the deepest recesses of your own heart is
false?
-
- All this time, in the name of a bogus magic formula
stolen from others and renamed with lie upon lie, billions have been
slaughtered, and billions more about to be. Open your eyes, for the
real God's sake, for the beauty of this universe that gives us life,
that does not distinguish between man or beast, but gives everything
that breathes this exquisite gift, with only one, single string
attached - a string attached to everything that lives.
-
- -------
-
- John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf
Coast of Florida and writes essays seen on hundreds of websites around
the world. These stories have been collected into two anthologies,
"America's Autopsy Report" and "The Perfect Enemy." In addition, "The
Day America Died: Why You Shouldn't Believe the Official Story of What
Happened on September 11, 2001," is a 48-page booklet written for
those who still believe the government's phony version of the events
of that tragic day. For information on his books, check out
http://www.johnkaminski.com/
-
-
- Comment
Alton
Raines
8-3-5
-
- Whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God
is not the debate here. That is a matter of faith and personal
revelation. What Kaminski has adopted as his proof that Jesus of
Nazareth never even existed as a man, that he was some conglomerate of
preceding myths, mostly from "Acharya S" (well known, respected
historian, archaeologist, anthropologist? Errr...No) is a well crafted
series of ipso factos; if x is likely and y is very likely, the rest
of the alphabet can be tossed out. Not very rational.
-
- Is there physical, historical evidence for the
existence of this crucified Jewish teacher who began a movement which
re-shaped Western Civilization to extremes and measures surpassing the
exploits and works of even more contemporary, historically validated
figures of immense power and influence? Yes, there indeed is, despite
all the tricky nonsense employed by the likes of Acharya S and others
who are so convinced Jesus did not exist -- so much so that nothing
will ever satisfy them by way of evidence.
-
- They begin by gutting the written historical record
of scripture. Despite the fact that innumerable aspects of what was
written in the scriptures have been proven historically factual, they
simply dismiss this and make claims that the original authors and
subsequent 'editors' were utterly untrustworthy rogues, political
manipulators, liars and charlatans (who somehow managed to craft the
story of a mythic Jesus while keeping intact literally thousands of
historical accuracies surrounding his life and generation).
Simultaneously they ignore the horrific sufferings the originators of
the lie underwent to protect their "fable." They ask us to believe
that they either never existed either or valid historical accounts of
their lives are bogus or inflated.
-
- Considering that in 70 AD, roughly 40 years after
the crucifixion of Jesus, Titus of Rome had Jerusalem sacked and
literally 'plowed' leaving no stone atop another, we're dealing with
finding evidence for a single man whose entire ministry lasted a tiny
three and one half years and who traveled only several hundred miles
in the course of his adult life in the land of Israel/Palestine. So,
finding historical evidence for his actual physical existence becomes
a little difficult. He came from a culture where making graven images
of a person was forbidden, so there are no statues of him (though for
some Greek and Roman figures, such is all that exists to the memory of
them, and yet they are widely accepted as real figures of history). He
apparently did not personally write anything, but was an orator, which
was the more common means of dispersing knowledge and information in
his culture. He was, indeed, in his time, one among many who were
thought to fit the description of the prophesied "Meschiach"
(Messiah), which the prophet Daniel pinpointed to arrive at a precise
time calculatable from the signing of a decree by Artaxerses
Longanimus is 444 B.C., granting the Jews return passage to Jerusalem
to rebuild their devastated city. His life was a humble one, leaving
little trace, until the very last three years; but what he did in
those last three years sent shockwaves through human history still
reverberating to this very day.
-
- We know that there were many being sought after or
acknowledged as the Messiah at the time of Jesus, for even the Gospel
accounts tell us that John the Baptist was confused for the Christ on
many occasions and by the multitudes, even after he declared he was
not. (One would think the 'devious' myth-makers of the New Testament
would have avoided any possible confusion on this issue, but instead
they almost leave the door open to the possibility!). Even into the
book of Acts, following the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus,
Paul encountered Jews who had been converted but knew little or
nothing of Jesus himself, but called themselves according to the
"Baptism of John." For them, he was the Messiah. No one would say
there was not some confusion in those days, and the Bible tells us so
-- even of the story of Simon Magus, a magician, who sought to buy
from Peter the power he saw that Peter had over the sick and dead, and
many stories have sprung up over the centuries regarding Magus, some
even declaring that he was the first self-appointed 'papa' (Pope) of
the occult Roman Catholic Church. Is there any wonder then that there
is difficulty in finding physical evidence of Jesus the man? Jesus
owned no property and clearly gathered no wealth or artifacts to his
personal belongings by which one could normally trace the evidence of
existence. Most scholars agree, he signed no documents and wrote no
letters, though some contend he did pen one letter to a particular
ruling monarch in the east who requested his healing powers -- there
is simply not enough extant material upon which to judge the
authenticity of this odd document. Contrast this to the scriptures,
for which there are literally thousands of extant manuscripts through
which their authenticity can be verified.
-
- What physical evidence is there? For one, there is
the Titulus Crucis, which we also read about in the Gospel accounts.
This placard of wood, inscribed under the order of Pilate to read
"Jesus of Nazareth King of Jews" in three languages, Greek, Latin and
Hebrew, exists today and has been dated and found to be authentic in
time period, text and material -- additionally, placing it beyond the
likelihood of being a forgery, peculiarities in the text and letters
used, place it firmly in the first century time period when particular
ways of writing are documented and well known. Interestingly enough,
what was written on the headboard differs from gospel to gospel, and
likewise, the Titulus Crucis we have today differs also. A forger
would surely attempt to imitate at least one of the gospel accounts!
(Photo: http://digilander.libero.it/elam/bibbia/img/titulus.jpg)
-
- The Titulus Crucis is 25x14 cm in size, 2.6 cm thick
and has a weight of 687 g. It is inscribed on one side with three
lines, of which the first one is mostly destroyed. The second line is
written in Greek letters and reversed script, the third in Latin
letters, also with reversed script. We can read the words
- 1.line: z&laqno;nh
- 2.line: BSUNERAZA(H)N.SI
- 3.line: ERSUNIRAZAN .I
- Read from right to left, obviously in imitation of
the Jewish way of writing, we can read: I. NAZARINUS RE, obviously a
part of the inscription of the cross, as quoted in the Latin
translation of the Gospel according to St. John (19,19) as "Iesus
Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum". Interestingly enough, the Greek line is a
mere Greek transcription of the Latin line rather than a translation,
in contrast to the original Greek quote of the Gospel according to St.
John as "Ihsous Nazoraios Basileus ton Ioudaion". The variations from
the version of St. John are:
- 1. The order of the lines (St. John: Hebrew, Latin,
Greek; Titulus Crucis: Hebrew, Greek, Latin)
- 2. The reverse writing, not mentioned by St.
John
- 3. The Initials "JS" and "I." instead of the full
name "Iesous/Iesus".
- 4. The use of the Latin "Nazarinus/Nazarenous"
instead of the Greek "Nazoraios", even in the Greek line.
-
- Two experts, Prof. Thiede and Prof. Roll, consider
this a major indication of the authenticity of the Titulus Crucis.
First of all, a variation of Joh. 19,19 is a freedom no forger would
ever risk. But it makes sense, since Pontius Pilatus, who, according
to the gospels, dictated the inscription, was a Roman magistrate and
used, especially for official documents, the official language Latin.
It was up to the writer to create a version in the other two
languages, and therefore it was rather unlikely that he transferred
the term "Nazarinus" in the correct Greek form. The abbreviation of
the name "Iesous/Iesus" as "I." is typical for Roman Latin
inscriptions. Since "Yeshu/Yehoshua" was a common name during the 1st
century -Flavius Josephus mentions 16 persons with this name-, the
unique "Nazarinus" rather pointed to the Savior from a small village
in Galilee, at least for a Roman magistrate, although such an
abbreviation in contrast to John 19,19 would be unthinkable for a
Crucisan forger. CONCLUSION: None of the consulted experts for Hebrew,
Greek and Latin Palaeography found any indication of a medieval or
late antique forgery. Instead, they all dated it in the timeframe
between the 1st and the 3./4th century AD, with a majority of experts
preferring and none of them excluding the 1st century. Therefore it is
very well possible that the "Titulus Crucis Crucis" is indeed the
title of the cross of Our Lord. (M. Hesemann) In addition, it has
recently been discovered that a particular letter shape used by the
inscriptionist is a quasi-abbreviation known to have been used by
Romans only during the time period of Christ and which died out in use
by the 2nd century.
-
- Considering that even his followers, which only
numbered (according to scriptural accounts) at around 170 people up to
the time of his arrest and crucifixion, it stands as remarkable that
we have any physical evidence at all of Jesus the Man - who was
crucified as a common criminal, one among many thousands. A superb
point made by author and Bible Scholar Grant Jefferies speaks volumes
to the Kaminski/Acharya approach to historicity: "An example of the
arbitrary rejection of historical evidence about Jesus by modern
skeptical theologians is found in Bultmann's often stated theory of
"double dissimilarity." This strange theory states that any Gospel
saying of Jesus that can be found paralleled in either Christian and
Jewish sources (First Century) must be rejected as "inauthentic" or
"invented by Christian editors." The absurdity of this double
dissimilarity argument can be demonstrated by imagining applying the
same rejection of quotations to someone like Winston Churchill. This
technique would require us to reject as inauthentic any quotation from
Churchill that found any parallel in English literature or any
statement that was quoted by Churchill's biographers or admirers.
Bultmann's theory, if applied to other historical personages, would
virtually eliminate historical study."
-
- And as stated in rebuttal to a previous article
regarding 'The Bible Fraud," - Further than the oft disputed quote of
Josephus, there is other evidence Jesus existed. There is the
inscription of Pontius Pilate (http://www.bible-history.com/empires/pilate.html)
which tells us the Gospels are accurate in naming him the Governor of
Judea when little or no reliable historical data exists for this small
time procurator of then obscure little Judea. There is also now the
discovery of an ossuary found in Jerusalem bearing the inscription,
"James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" written in a cursive form of
Aramaic used only between 10 to 70 A.D, and the ossurary itself has
been dated to around 63 A.D. -- Josephus records that James was stoned
to death as a heretic in A.D. 62. Which is also auxiliary evidence,
for if there were no Jesus to begin with ( or some strange confusion
over many Jesii existed ) the latter evidence of James as head of the
earliest Christian sect in Jerusalem would make little or no sense in
the historical annals of Josephus! (duh)
- (http://www.wordnews.org/archaeology_mag_
points_to_evidence_of_Jesus.2002.htm).
-
- There is also this extremely contemporary (to Jesus'
time) historical record that just about details the entire Christian
story in one swoop, written by Cornelius Tacitus (55-120 AD), writes
concerning the Nero's attempt to divert blame directed at him for the
burning of Rome: "Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero
fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a
class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.
Christus, 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, and a most mischievous superstition,
thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the
first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous
and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become
popular."
-
- I'd also like to take issue with Kaminski's
ridiculous statement: "Often, fundamentalist Christians try to cite
classical historical sources to buttress their unshakable belief that
Jesus resurrected and (according to George Bush and the neocons) will
return one day to blow up Jerusalem and lead his followers to a
pleasant destination in the sky."
-
- Citing classical 'historical' sources is now off the
table? Well, the antichrist crowd certainly is living up to Grant
Jefferies' comment, aren't they? No evidence is acceptable to them,
and never will be. Then to make the asinine statement that
Fundamentalists (like Bush?) believe Jesus is returning to "blow up"
Jerusalem -- errr... on the contrary, Fundamentalists believe Jesus is
returning to STOP Jerusalem from being blown up, along with the rest
of planet earth and usher in a kingdom of peace ("they shall beat
their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks" ring
a bell? No "pleasant destination in the sky" -- sorry). It simply
demonstrates that Kaminski has not bothered to learn a stitch about
Christianity, except where he can criticize it, malign it, impugn it
and blaspheme. Comments like this make dolts like Bush look like a
genius in comparison to Kaminski. If Bush is a 'real' Fundamentalist
Christian he believes Christ is returning to earth to establish the
everlasting righteous kingdom, put an end to all wars, all death, all
suffering and misery.
-
- Another profoundly myopic and ignorant assertion by
Kaminski: "I believe there is a direct connection between the great
Christian lie that you will survive death if you do what the priest
says, and the everpresent reality of violence in the world." There was
no lack bloodshed and violence under Mao in a godless Communist China,
neither did the godless automatons of Stalin's regime seem to have any
difficulty slaughtering millions, without "religion" to sucker them
into shedding blood.
-
- Whether this Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God is
an issue of faith. The fact that throughout the world there exist
countless seemingly similar ancient-world tales and myths and legends
which appear to closely resemble the "god-man" or "son of God" premise
is, to the person of faith, just one more example of how God has not
left the world without a witness to the truth (though many of these
ancient tales differ so wildly from the life and truth and teachings
of Jesus as to be ridiculous to classify as even similar). But as to
the existence of a man who revolutionized the world through his
teachings and sacrificial act, only those who want to make Jesus
disappear and have already made up their minds will entertain and
promote the nonsense of Acharya and other antichrists.
-
-
- Comment
Duncan
Holland
- 8-4-5
-
- Alton Raines stated as proof on 8-3-05,
-
|
