Another Virgin Birth
The Church’s version of Jesus is not historically accurate. A majority of writings conflict with that ‘official’ history.
A difficulty for the Church is the fact that the central Christian myth predates Jesus Christ. The outline of Christ’s story is as ancient as man. It has all been written down, time after time, for religious figureheads in many cultures. So close was the story of Mithra (or Mithras) that the Church Fathers identified it as the work of the devil intended deliberately to parody the story of Christ. The fact that the cult of Mithra existed long before the Christian Messiah was born did not faze these resourceful individuals: they simply claimed that the devil had gone backwards in time to plant a man who would discredit the ‘obvious’ originality of the story of Christ.
Guatama Buddha: born of the virgin Maya around 600 BCE
Dionysus: Greek god, born of a virgin in a stable, turned water into wine.
Quirrnus: An early Roman savior, born of a virgin.
Attis: born of the virgin Nama in Phrygia around 200 BCE
Indra: born of a virgin in Tibet around 700 BCE
Adonis: Babylonian god – born of the virgin Esther
Krishna: Hindu deity – born of the virgin Devaki in around 1200 BCE
Mithra: born of a virgin in a stable on 25 December around 600 BCE. His resurrection was celebrated at Easter.
It seems that over the centuries quite a lot of innocent young ladies were giving birth to the children of gods!
Mirthraism is a Syrian offshoot of the more ancient Persian cult of Zoraster. Its doctrines included baptism, a sacramental meal, belief in immortality, a savior god who died and rose again to act as a mediator between man and god, a resurrection, a last judgement and heaven and hell. Candles, incense and bells are used in its ceremonies. This was absorbed by the Christians. These were Roman additions to create a hybrid theology that would meet the widest possible number of citizens. If the plebeians had to have their superstitions, so the Romans eventually reasoned, why not have one that was state controlled?
Another essential problem is the true name of Christ. He was known as Yehoshua, meaning “Yahweh delivers”. In modern terms: “the one that will bring victory.” Today it would translate to Joshua. The addition of the title “Christ” is a Greek rendering of the Jewish title “Messiah.” The Hebrew/Aramaic term simply meant “a person that will become rightful king of the Jews.” All of Israel’s kings were associated with messiahs. The word meant “king to be” or “a king in waiting.” The Jewish concept of a messiah and his coming kingdom had no supernatural overtones at all. (1)
The word “messiah” appears only twice in the Old Testament, and is totally absent from the New Testament. The Jews looked forward to a time when they would govern themselves again. Once a rightful person took the throne of Israel, the future-tense title of “messiah” would no longer apply.
Translators used the Greek “Christos” wherever the Hebrew word “messiah” appeared. The term was far from unique, and was not restricted to one individual.
The Hebrew usage of the word “messiah” was far too passive, based in the real world of Jewish political aspirations. The Greek translation took on overtones of a Hellenistic mystery cult with the supernatural power to save souls and redeem the whole world. Norman Cohen described the Jewish Messiah:
“He will be, at most, a great military leader and a wise and just ruler. The notion of a transcendental saviors inhuman form is totally unknown to the Hebrew Bible.” (2)
The Christian claim of authority over the Old Testament must be very galling for modern Jewish scholars when they see their heritage was used to lend credence to a Roman mystery cult, largely of ancient Persian origin. This plundering of the twenty-two Jewish texts constituted the core of the Old Testament and became widespread when Christians searched for references which supported the beliefs of their fledgling cult.
The early Church considered themselves to be Jewish. By the second century Christians were Gentile converts who no longer considered themselves to be Jews at all. These cultural looters had no regard for context or accepted interpretation and felt free to quote at will from Jewish texts.
The Old Testament translated into Greek in the third century BCE was known as the Septuagint. Christians inserted new passages and whole books and then had the audacity to accuse the Jews of having deleted these sections from their own scriptures! This belief resulted in many future acts of vandalism. Twenty-four cartloads of Jewish scriptures were looted from synagogues before being burned. Twenty years later, King Jayme I of Aragon ordered that all Jewish books be destroyed.
Early Christian scholars read between the lines to see ‘obvious’ references to their Savior. The twenty-two books of holy scripture were suitably enlarged to create a ‘bumper’ Old Testament.
These additions by early Christian writers included Esdras, Judith, Tobit, Maccabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, the Prayer of Manasseh and, within the Book of Daniel, the Song of the Three Holy Children, the History of Susannah, and Beland the Dragon.
The third-century Alexandrian Origen studied the texts and doubts were raised which led to the realization that the original Jewish version was the only correct one. The suggestion was made that all of the new scriptures in Christian churches be destroyed, but these arguments were soon buried in the general Christian desire to be a stand-alone religion with a differentiated scripture.
In the fourth century, Cyril of Jerusalem forbade the reading of these extraneous books, even in private.
The same cavalier people who had doctored the Old Testament assembled the New Testament.
Politics at the time of Jesus was a serious theological matter.
Nowhere in the New Testament does it prophesy the coming of a world savior. The Jews expected a leader to emerge who was in the mould of David and, however much Christians would like it, Jesus was NOT the Messiah of the line of David. He did not succeed in becoming the undisputed king of Israel. It is not a question of faith, it is a fact of history, beyond theological debate. The Church claims its ‘spiritual’ interpretation of the word is true and valid. The Christian and Jewish use of the term ‘messiah’ have nothing in common. The Church has no right to use the Old Testament as evidence regarding the coming of its Christ. To do so is bare-faced fraud. (3)
God and woman union is an ancient necessity for the parentage of all would-be man-gods in middle-eastern cultures. “Son of God” was an ancient title for claiming kingship. All kings established their right to rule through their descent from the gods.
The name of the murderer who was released instead of Christ at his trial was Barabbas. “Barabbas the wicked murderer whom the equally wicked Jews chose to release in preference to our Savior.” The baying of the crowd to crucify the Christ in preference to a common criminal is one of the New Testament’s pieces of evidence regarding the allegedly despicable nature of the Jews that has led to two thousand years of anti-Semitism.
“Barabbas” is not a name at all, but a title, meaning precisely “Son of God!” Early manuscripts of Matthew, in verse 27:16 used this man’s designation in its full form, “Jesus Barabbas.”
So the individual who was released and not crucified at the request of the crowd was, as an indisputable matter of Gospel record known as ”Jesus, the son of God.” The first name was deleted from the Gospel of Matthew at a much later date, by those that sought to establish facts to fit their Gentile beliefs. A deceit to avoid difficult questions that the Church would not, or more likely could not, answer.
The Gospels state that this other “Jesus, son of God” was accused of being a Jewish rebel who had killed people during an outbreak of insurrection. Barabbas was not a criminal but a Jewish fanatic, one facing a similar accusation to the one against Jesus. (4)
Two men of the same name with the same claim and much the same crime: how can we know which one was released? Jesus did not die on the cross. The symbolism of the crucified Christ is absolutely central to mainline Christianity, yet he did not die in this manner.
Evidence was from the New Testament itself, so Church critics have a hard time pushing this truth under the carpet. Most either pretend they did not read it or that it is some sort of mistake that can be rationalized away by the traditional process of talking in circles.
The legend of Jesus the Christ was an amalgam of supernatural yarns brought in from other mystery religions.
The Roman authorities moved against all known troublemakers at one moment. The Jews were a small but permanent thorn in the side of the Emperor and the expectation of a messiah to kick out the Romans was getting the population too excited. Roman authorities wiped out trouble before it got out of hand, as would be quite normal.
Two messiahs sprung up amongst two different groups in Judaea. The two messiahs were at their peak of popularity at the same time. They were both called Jesus by their followers, because it is given to the savior of the Jewish people – their provider of victory and future prosperity. One was known as ”Jesus, king of the Jews” and the other “Jesus, son of God.” As these criminals were paraded in public, Pontius Pilatus became aware that the situation was explosive, and fearing a bloodbath, he offered to let one of these two captive messiahs go. The crowd had to choose between their kingly messiah or their priestly messiah, and they chose the latter.
It is impossible to say whether the ‘real Jesus of the Christian faith was crucified or released.
There was a traditional requirement for there to actually be two messiahs to achieve victory. A kingly messiah from the tribe of Judah, the royal line of David, joined by a priestly messiah from the tribe of Levi. Jewish priests had to be Levites. Both messiahs were arrested and charged with causing civil insurrection. The Jesus from the line of Judah died on the cross. The Jesus from the priestly line of Levi went free.
Jesus, born to Mary, claimed messiah because he came from the royal line of David, and was born in David’s city of Bethlehem. However, as read in the opening verses of the New Testament, this descent was based upon the genealogy of Mary’s husband Joseph, who was not, according to Christian belief, the father of Jesus. A cruel twist of cold logic – if he was the son of God, he could not be the royal messiah!
The Jesus born to Mary could not technically be a kingly messiah, but he could possibly be the priestly version: his mother was a relation of John the Baptist, who was a Levite; so Jesus had Levite blood. This Jesus was not who died on the cross.
This ’double-Jesus’ situation is an obvious flaw in the Christian story of the messiah.
Principal Groups of Jerusalem
The three groups in the first century were Sadducees, Pharisees, and the Essenes.
The Sadducees were the priestly and aristocratic bureaucracy of Jerusalem. The ran the country according to Roman requirements rather than Jewish ones.
The Pharisees were devoted to the Law and tried to apply it in every avenue of life. The developed a tradition of interpretation by which all actions were minutely regulated. Pharisees created the opportunity for the eventual evolution of the structure of the rabbi and the synagogue to have access to God.
In 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered at Qumran. The scrolls tell about men who lived in a dry rocky valley around the middle of the second century BC to AD 68.
The all-embracing strictness of the Essene made the Pharisees look like carefree hedonists.
Membership was attained through individual, adult choice, not by birth. The Essenes thought of themselves as the sole custodians of the true religious teachings of Israel and believed they had established a ‘new covenant’, the ultimate and final form of the perfect alliance between the people of Israel and their God. This was solely for the members of the Essene community, due to their unerring respect for every one of the 613 commandments of the Law.
The authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls were Essenes, and these were the Nasoreans or the original Jerusalem Church. The Church’s argument that they are separate is an attempt to protect the ‘specialness’ of Jesus.
The leader of the Qumran Community around the fourth and fifth decades of the first century AD was James the Just, the brother of Jesus, who the Church accepts was the first Bishop of Jerusalem.
How did James divide his time between the two groups? The Qumran Community WAS the Jerusalem Church.
Qumranic lines in Christian ritual, such as “Thy kingdom come’, ‘the kingdom of the Lord’, the kingdom of God’ and “The kingdom of the House of David’ all referred to the same political objective.
“When Jesus was reported to have said, “My Kingdom is not of this world” (Jn 18:36), he did not mean that it was in heaven. In the Gospel of John all people are divided into two groups: (1) those of the world and (2) those not of the world. Those not of the world included Jesus and his followers who believed in him. They lived on the earth. They were not in heaven, but they were not the heathen. They belonged to “the church” in contrast to “the world.”’(5)
The terms were simple political statements. If you followed the independence movement you were in the ‘Kingdom of God’ and if you were not you were in the ordinary ‘world’. In Luke 17:20-21 a Pharisee asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God will come and received the reply:
‘The Kingdom of God will not come with observation, and they will not say, “Look here! or there” Look, the Kingdom of God is in your midst.’
The scripture’s new owners fondly thought of a paradise where good people go after their lives are over, possibly being reunited with their lost loved ones in a timeless ecstasy. This is a very long way from anything that any Jesus taught. The Aramaic word translated into Greek means ‘kingdom’, also means ‘government’ or ‘rule’ – the full usage of the term means ‘the land of Israel being ruled according to the Mosaic law’. In effect, when Jesus and his contemporaries referred to ‘the coming of the kingdom of heaven’, they quite simply meant ‘the time soon when we kick the foreign occupiers and their puppets out of Judaea, and get down to some strict observance of hard-line Jewish rules’.
The Hard Evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls
The connections between the New Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls are obvious, but the Catholic Church has tried to play them down. The interpretation of the scrolls was led by a Catholic group: Father de Vaux, Father Milik, Father Skehan, Father Puech and Father Benoit. Other independent figures complained that they were not given open access to many of the scrolls. They felt that there was a deliberate policy to distance the growing evidence of a commonality. (6)
Father de Vaux maintained that the Qumran Community was entirely different from the early Christians; he also observed that because John the Baptist was so close to the teachings of the Qumran Community he could not be considered to be a Christian, but merely a precursor of Christianity. As it is clear from the New Testament that John the Baptist was central to the establishment of Jesus’s ministry, such a connection is hard to play down.
The man who was Jesus the Christ was a leading Qumranian figure during the crucial years and there were around four thousand Essenes in total. It was a society that was hierarchical, from the Guardian or the Grand Master downwards to such inferior beings as married men or, worse still, women, especially menstruating women. Females at that point in their bodily cycle had to withdraw from any contact with men, including visible contact.
Initiation required vows of secrecy that carried threat of horrible punishments should the secrets of their brotherhood be revealed. This sounds like Masonic practice but the Qumranians meant them literally.
A revolutionary Jewish group which included Jesus was central to the Jewish revolt that eventually led to the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple once again.
The Templars excavated the ruins of Herod’s Temple, and whatever they found must have been hidden between the early years of the first century, when it was in the early stages of construction, and AD 70, when it was destroyed. This left a period of seventy years during which material could have been hidden. The Copper Scroll was actually engraved on sheets of copper – found at Qumran – tells how the Community hid its treasures and writings under the Temple shortly before AD 70. The Templars possessed the purest ‘Christian’ documents possible – far more important than the Synoptic Gospels!
The Qumran Essenes, the Knights Templar and Freemasonry all focus on the mystical and physical rebuilding of King Solomon’s Temple. This could not be fraudulent association because the Grand Lodge of England and its teachings about the building of a spiritual Temple predates the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls by well over two hundred years.
The Family of Jesus
Jesus had brothers, and probably sisters as well. References are found in first-and-second-century documents, including the New Testament itself.
The Roman Catholic Douai Bible: ‘...Helvidius and other heretics most impiously inferred that the Blessed Virgin Mary had other children besides Christ:’
Matthew 13:55-56 contradicts: ‘Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Jude? And his sisters, are they not all with us?’
The response of the editors of the Douai Bible claim: ‘These were the children of Mary...the sister to our Blessed Lady and therefore, according to the usual style of the scripture, they were called brethren, that is, near relations to our Savior.’
It was not very imaginative of Jesus’s maternal grandparents to have two daughters and called them both Mary. His younger brother Ya’acov (in English, Jacob, and in Greek, James) outlived Jesus by approximately thirty years and preserved Jesus’s true teachings so they could eventually triumph in the face of unbelievable odds.
The Birth of a New Religion
Pope Leo X is on record saying: ‘It has served us well, this myth of Christ.’
In Rome the legend of Romulus and Remus was retold with two new lesser gods, the great saints Peter and Paul. The sun god Sol had his birthday on 25 December and this date was thought to be suitable for Jesus’s birthday too, so the great gods could be celebrated on the same feastday.
The citizens of the Roman Empire, like most people throughout history, had little use for logic, preferring to take enjoyment from the emotion of it all. Christianity became a cult of ritual rather than ideas, and theology took a backseat to political control.
The Roman Empire found ;that control of minds was far more effective than controlling bodies. Christianity gave Rome ;the mechanism to establish unparalleled political might based on unsophisticated masses who would be offered a better life after death if they did the Church’s bidding.
‘The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.’
(9) In Turkey on 20 May AD 325, at the Council of Nicaea, Emperor Constantine decided to take control of his fragmenting Empire once and for all. At the time Constantine was extremely unpopular, but he could hold sway over his people if he could insert himself into the spiritual beliefs.
Constantine was a follower of the Sol Invictus sun-god cult right up until the time he was on his death bed, when he finally accepted baptism on the off-chance that the Christians might have got it right all along. A sensible and inexpensive piece of after-life insurance.
At the time there were two emperors – Constantine ruling the west and Licinius the east. Constantine put it to his c0unterpart that all monotheists should no longer be persecuted. Licinius readily agreed. Then Constantine had him murdered on the basis of protecting the religious freedoms of his citizens.
Constantine convened the first international council of Christians to establish a single official view concerning the Christian cult and their Jewish prophet Jesus the Christ. Constantine sat at the centre with the bishops sitting around him so that his authority was stamped on all discussions. The Emperor thus positioned himself as the ‘current’ Christ. He considered Jesus to be a warlike and sacred figure like himself, but whereas the Jewish king had failed, he had not.
Ever since, Christians have viewed him as a great leader who defeated the heretics. A story was soon told of his conversion to Christianity when at the Battle of Milvian Bridge the Emperor followed an instruction received in a prophetic dream and painted the symbol of the true God on the shields of his army. However, Constantine never became a Christian. The image on those shields was the blazing sun of his ‘true god’, Sol Invictus. The Emperor had just been admitted a member of the Sol Invictus cult and spent the rest of his life as its high priest. He would not have used any other imagery.
The result of the Council was the ‘Nicene Creed’, The rulings still provide the basis for most Church establishments today, such as when congregations should stand and when they should sit. The central issue was Jesus the Christ. What was the precise nature of his divinity?
Constantine’s Gentile mind explained ‘God the father’ and ‘God the son’. Nobody believes that they and their own father are different manifestations of the same entity. There would only be one human. The inescapable conclusion is that Christianity is not a monotheistic religion at all; it just deludes itself by keeping its thinking supremely muddled.
The Nicaean Council members also posed themselves the awkward question, ’There must have been a God the Father before he built the world, but what could he have been doing when he was all alone?’ A century later St Augustine of Hippo neatly suggested that ‘God had spent that time building a special hell for those that ask such questions!’
Arius, a priest from Alexandria argued that Jesus could only become divine through his actions. He produced a staggering array of scriptural argument to support his thesis that Christ was a man. Opinion was put to the vote. Arius lost. His penalty was his name became despised as synonymous with evil under the designation ‘the Arius Heresy’.
The truth became what the Emperor said it was; the rest was heresy, the work of the devil. Scriptures were outlawed, and the label ‘Gnostic’ applied which effectively removed them from the now narrowly defined creed of Christianity.
The document, ‘Donation of Constantine’ was an instruction that the Church of Rome have absolute authority in secular affairs because St Peter, the successor to Jesus as leader of the Church, passed such authority to the bishop of Rome. This is now universally accepted to be a poor forgery, but the Roman Catholic Church still clings to the rights of this bogus document. The claim that Peter gave the keys of Heaven to the Pope is obviously another deliberate falsehood. The first ten bishops of the Jerusalem Church were all circumcised Jews who kept Jewish dietary laws, used Jewish daily prayers, and recognized only the Jewish Sabbaths, including the day of atonement. They did not regard the death of Jesus as atoning for their sins!
Constantine’s mother, the Empress Helena sent out teams of investigator who had instructions not to return until they had discovered every holy location and artifact from the burning bush of Moses to the True Cross itself.
Christ’s tomb was duly found in Jerusalem beneath Jupiter’s temple and the site of the crucifixion identified a short distance away. The very spot where Mary Magdalene stood when she heard the good news of the resurrection was marked with a star – all this three hundred years after the events had taken place and two hundred and fifty years after the Romans had destroyed the city. By a miraculous coincidence it was Helena herself who stumbled across the True Cross, complete with Pontius Pilatus’s ‘King of the Jews’ plaque. Perhaps her servants were just a little too eager to please.
The Empress founded churches on the Mount of Olives marking the place where Christ ascended up to Heaven, and at the supposed site of his birth in Bethlehem. One of the sites identified was where God spoke to Moses from the burning bush on top of Mount Horeb in the Sinai Desert which is now the location of St Catherine’s Monastery.
Once the Imperial family saw the practical value of Christianity, it certainly threw itself into public celebration of the legends of the new cult.
Truth Within the Heresies
The early Roman Church set about the task of destroying everything that did not meet its required dogma. Truth was unimportant. Nothing was known about Jesus outside the meagre information given in the New Testament. It is strange how a man who is the basis of the principal religion of the Western world can leave so little trace. The almost total absence of references to Jesus is due to the knives of the censors.
The Romanised Church destroyed any evidence that portrayed its saviour as a mortal rather than a god. In one of the greatest acts of vandalism, Christians burnt the library at Alexandria in Egypt to the ground because it contained so much information about the real Jerusalem Church. In doing so they destroyed the greatest collection of ancient texts the world has ever seen. The writings of the founding fathers of the official Church unintentionally shed a lot of light on the people and the thoughts they sought to destroy. The works of early Christian thinkers sometimes escaped the sensor because they were felt to be harmless. The pen of Clement of Alexandria was deemed acceptable. A letter that he wrote to an unknown man by the name of Theodore survived:
’You did well in silencing the unspeakable teachings of the Carpocratians. Such people are to be opposed in all ways and altogether. For even if they should say something true, one who loves the truth, should not even so, agree with them. For not all true things are the truth, nor should that truth which merely seems true according to human opinions be preferred to the true truth, that according to faith.
Now of the things they keep saying about the divinely inspired Gospel according to Mark, some are altogether falsifications, and others, even if they do contain some true parts, nevertheless are not reported truly. For the true things being mixed with inventions, are falsified. During Peter’s stay in Rome he wrote an account of the Lord’s doings, not, however, declaring all, nor yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting those he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed.
But when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge (gnosis). Thus, he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected. Nevertheless, he yet did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic teachings of the Lord, but to stories already written he added yet others and, moreover, brought in certain saying of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven. Thus, he prearranged matters, and, dying, he left his composition to the church in Alexandria, where it even yet is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are initiated into the great mysteries.
Carpocrates enslaved a certain presbyter of the church in Alexandria to get a copy of the secret Gospel, which he both interpreted according to his blasphemous and carnal doctrine and, moreover, polluted, mixing with the spotless and holy words utterly shameless lies. From this mixture is drawn off the teaching of the Carpocratians.
For this reason the Wisdom of God, through Solomon, advises, “Answer the fool from his folly, ”teaching that the light of the truth should be hidden from those who are mentally blind.
To you, therefore, I shall not hesitate to answer the questions you have asked, refuting the falsifications by the very words of the Gospel. For example, after “And they were in the road going up to Jerusalem” and what follows, until “After three days he shall arise,” the secret Gospel brings the following material word for word: “And they come to Bethany and a certain woman, whose brother had died, was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me.’ But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near, Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich.. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.”
After these words follows the text, “And James and John come to him,” and all that section, but “naked man with naked man” and the other things about which you wrote are not found.
And after the words,” And he comes into Jericho,” the secret Gospel adds only, “And the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them. (10)
The letter stops mid-page.
This reference to a secret Gospel, and more importantly, to a secret inner ceremony conducted by Jesus himself, was a great find. There is a strong similarity between the references to ‘the young man naked except for a linen cloth’ and the unexplained incident at the time of the arrest of Jesus at Gethsemane, as described in Mark 14:51-52:
’And a certain young man followed him, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body. And they laid hold on him. But he, casting off the linen cloth, fled from them naked.’
The Carpocratians were a particularly unpleasant early Christian sect who believed that sin was a means of salvation.
In Masonic ceremonies, the candidate is clothed only in white linen, and the mantle of the Templars was originally plain white linen.
Clement’s surviving treatises have been tampered with by later Christian censors. In a short work entitled The Mysteries of the Faith not to be Divulged to All ,he indicates that knowledge is not made available to everyone.
There was a secret tradition present within the Bible, written in such a manner that the uninitiated would accept the parable on a literal level, while the informed would discern something far more important and meaningful. Jesus turning water into wine or raising the dead conceals cryptic messages behind the impossible acts they refer to.
Naassenes claimed to have beliefs handed down from James. They consider the intercourse of women with men to be a wicked and filthy practice, while washing in life-giving water was a splendid thing. Hippolytus goes on to say:
‘The Egyptians were the first to proclaim the rites and orgies of all the Gods, as well as the species of things, have the sacred and august, and for those who are not initiated, unspeakable mysteries of Isis. These, however, are not anything else than that by her of the seven dresses and sable robe was sought and snatched away, namely, the pudendum of Osiris. And they say that Osiris is water. But the seven-robed nature, encircled and arrayed with seven mantles of ethereal texture (for so they call the planetary stars, allegorizing and denominating them ethereal robes, is at it were the changeable generation, and is exhibited as the creature transformed by the ineffable and unportrayable, and inconceivable and figureless one. And this, the Naassene says, is what is declared in scripture, “The just will fall seven times, and rise again.” For these falls, he says are the changes of the stars.
The term Naassene is another form of ‘Nasorean’, the name adopted by the original followers of Jesus who formed the Jerusalem Church. The fixation with the number seven dovetails interestingly into the reference in Clement’s letter to ‘the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven.’
A Positive Link between Jesus and the Templars
Jesus and his followers were originally called Nasoreans (or Nazarenes). Matthew 2:23:
’…he dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was said by the prophets: that he shall be called a Nazarene.’
A major flaw in the New Testament claim that people called their saviour ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ is the evidence that the town of Nazareth simply did not exist at the time of Jesus! There are no historical records referring to the town, which is a unique situation as the Romans kept excellent records throughout their empire. The term actually used was ‘Jesus the Nasorean’ because he was a senior member of a movement that bore that name. (11)
Jesus was a member of the Nasorean sect, not its original leader.
Underwater around Sharm el Sheik in Egypt is called Ras Nasrani. Ras translated to “head” or “point” and “Nasrani” was a word for lots of little fish.
At the monastery of St Catherine, an Arab described Christians with precisely the same word, “nasrani.” This is the normal Arabic word for the followers of the major prophet called Jesus.
In the earliest times, Christians were ‘the little fishes.’
This is based on the ‘fisher of men’ imagery, which is based on the ancient association of the priest and the fish. Members of the Nasorean sect went around the holy places and marked their sacred places with two arcs that formed the famous sign of the fish. The symbol of the organization was originally a fish and not a cross. The execution of Jesus was not so important at that time.
Peter and John were high-ranking members of the Nasorean sect who recruited others and therefore became known as ‘fishermen’ in recognition of the recruitment activities rather than as a literal reference to a trade. The Dead Sea area has no real fish; so the authors of the New Testament had to shift the origins of these ‘fishermen’ to the Sea of Galilee – which was well stocked with fish – to overcome this contradiction.
Epiphanius speaks of the pre-Christian group called the Nasaraioi, out of which the figure of Jesus emerged.
The Nasorean sect never quite died out; it still survives in southern Iraq as part of the larger Mandaean sect whose members trace their religious heritage back, not to Jesus but to Yahia Yuhana, better known to Christians as John the Baptist! Their literature uses the similar word ‘natzoraje’ to describe themselves. The believe that Yshu Mshiha (Jesus) was a Nasorean but one who was a rebel and heretic who betrayed secret doctrines that had been entrusted to him.
’The Mandaeans,a small but tenacious community which dwells in Iraq, follows and ancient form of Gnosticism, which practices initiation, ecstasy and some rituals which have been said to resemble those of the Freemasons.’(12)
Mandaeans of today call their priests ‘Nasoreans’! ‘Manda’ means ‘secret knowledge’.
The Star of the Mandaeans
The Essenes believed that good souls have their inhabitation beyond the ocean. The Mandaeans believe that the inhabitants of this far land are so pure that mortal eyes will not see them and that this place is marked by a star, the name of which is ‘Merica’.
The morning star important to the Nasoreans and the evening star, the star of the west, is the same celestial body – the planet Venus.
The United State of America was created by Freemasons and its constitution is based on Masonic principles. The morning star is the one that every newly raised Master Mason is required to look towards. The following questions are asked by the Worshipful Master:
Q: Whither are you directing your steps?
A: Towards the West.
Q: Why leave the East to go to the West?
A: In search for that which was lost.
Q: What was that which was lost?
A: The genuine secrets of a Master Mason.
The Star of America
The Mandaeans were the direct descendants of the Nasoreans, who were the same group as the Qumranians, who buried their secret scrolls under Herod’s Temple. The forefathers of the Mandaeans were the authors of the scrolls which the Templars unearthed, the mystical land beneath a star called ‘Merica’ recorded in their secret writings was what the Templars learnt about. A wonderful land beneath the bright lone star ‘Merica.’ And they sailed west to find it.
Templar descendants had been involved in naming the new continent.
Templar ships and their navigation was far from crude. They had the perfect motive to find the New World and to leave the Old – survival.
The Templars set said westward, flying their maritime battle flag, the skull and cross-bones. They found the land of the western star, a hundred and eighty-five years before Columbus.
Rosslyn Chapel’s whole building is decorated with carvings of Masonic significance…and botanical significance.
The plant carvings include the aloe cactus and maize cobs.
The first turf was cut in 1441 and all work was completed forty-five years later in 1486. The carvings were in place no later than 1470.
Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492,Puerto Rico in 1493,Cuba in 1494, but he never did actually set foot on the mainland. The aloe cactus and Indian maize, or corn were supposedly unknown outside that continent until well into the sixteenth century.
The carvings were created when Christopher Columbus was still a schoolboy. Someone else had traveled to America and brought back plants. And the proof is present in a Templar/Masonic building!
CONCLUSION
There was far more to the Qumranian’s structure and belief system than can be attributed to the Old Testament.
The rituals of Freemasonry might have been invented by the Qumranians, but they must be much, much older.
(1) S. Mowinckel: He That Cometh
(2) Norman Cohen: Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come
(3) If there ever was a true Jewish messiah, it can only have been David Ben Gurion, the Zionist activist because he became the first’ king’ of a self-governing Jewish state in 1948. His modern title was ‘prime minister.’ Whether or not he was from the line of David, we do not know.
(4) Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
(5) George Wesley Buchanan: Jesus – The King and His Kingdom
(6) M. Baigent and R. Leigh: The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception
(9) Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
(10) Morton Smith: The Secret Gospel
(11)Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
(12)Arkon Daraul:Secret Societies
