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IT would
take almost a life-time of original research to fathom or approximately gauge
the depths of ignorance in which the beginnings of Historic Christianity lie
sunken out of sight.
2. The current ignorance of those pre-Christian evidences that have been preserved
by the petrifying past must be well-nigh invincible, when a man like Professor Jowett could say, as if with the voice of superstition in its dotage, "To
us the preaching of the Gospel is a New Beginning, from which we date all things; beyond which we neither desire, nor are able, to inquire."
3. It is the commonly accepted orthodox belief that Christianity originated with
the life, miracles, sayings, and teachings; the birth, death, resurrection, and
ascension of an historic Jesus the Christ at the commencement of our era, called
Christian; whereas, the origins were manifold, but mostly concealed. It is
impossible to determine anything fundamental by an appeal to the documents
which, alone out of a hundred Gospels, were made Canonical. And when Eusebius
recorded his memorable boast that he had virtually made "all square"
for the Christians, it was an ominous announcement of what had been done to keep
out of sight the mythical and mystical rootage of historic Christianity. The
Gnostics had been muzzled, and their extant evidences, as far as possible,
masked. He and his co-conspirators did their worst in destroying documents and
effacing the tell-tale records of the past, to prevent the future from learning
what the bygone ages could have said directly for themselves. They made dumb all
Pagan voices that would have cried aloud their testimony against the
unparalleled imposture then being perfected in Rome. They had almost reduced the
first four centuries to silence on all matters of the most vital importance for
any proper understanding of the true origins of the Christian Superstition. The mythos
having been at last published as a human history everything else was suppressed
or forced to support the fraud. Christolatry is founded on the
Christ, who is mythical in one phase and mystical in the other; Egyptian (and
Gnostic) in both, but historical in neither. The Christ was a type and a title
that could not become a person. As such, the Christ of the Gnostics was the Horus continued from Egypt and Chaldea; and that which was original as mythos
ages earlier cannot be also original as a later personal history. We who
commence with our canonical Gospels are three or four centuries too late to
learn anything fundamental concerning the real beginnings of Christianity. You
have only to turn to the second Book of Esdras to learn that Jesus the Christ of
our canonical history was both pre-historic and, pre-Christian. This is one of
the books of the hidden wisdom which have been rejected and set apart as the
Apocrypha —considered to be spurious, because they are opposed to the received
history; whereas, they contain the secret Gnosis by which alone we can identify
the genuine Scripture. In this book it is said, "My son Jesus shall be
revealed with those that are with him . . . . and they that remain shall rejoice
within four hundred years; and after these years shall my son Christ die, and
all men shall have life." And this was to be even as it had been in the
former judgments at the end of the particular cycles of time, and the renewal of
the world, which was to occur according to date! Now, if an historic Jesus
Christ of prophecy is to be found anywhere it is here,—foretold even as the
prediction is supposed to have been fulfilled. Yet these books are not included
among the canonical Scriptures, because they prove too much; because they are
historical in the wrong sense,—i.e., they are not and could not be made
humanly historical; their Jesus Christ is entirely mythical,—is the Kronian
Christ; and his future coming therein announced was only the subject of
astronomical prophecy. The true Christ, whether mythical or mystical,
astronomical or spiritual, never could become an historical personage, and never
did originate in any human history. The types of themselves suffice to prove
that the Christ was, and could only be, typical, and never could have taken form
in historic personality. For one thing, the mystical Christ of the Gnosis and of
the pre-Christian types was a being of both sexes, as was the Egyptian Horus and
other of the Messiahs; because the mystical Christ typified the spirit or soul
which belongs to the female as well as to the male, and represents that which
could only be a human reality in the spiritual domain or the Pleroma of the
Gnostics. This is the Christ who appears as both male and female in the Book of
Revelation. And the same biune type was continued in the Christian portraits of
the Christ. In Didron's Iconography you will see that Jesus Christ is portrayed
as a female with the beard of a male, and is called Jesus Christ as Saint
Sophia,—i.e., the Wisdom, or the Spirit of both sexes. The early
Christians were ignorant of this typology; but the types still remain to be
interpreted by the Gnosis and to bear witness against the History. Both the type
and doctrine combine to show there could be no one personal Christ in this world
or any other. Howsoever the written word may lie, the truth is visibly engraved
upon the stones, and still survives in the Icons, symbols, and doctrines of the
Gnostics, which remain to prove that they preserved the truer tradition of the origines.
And so this particular pre-Christian type was continued as a portrait of the
historic Christ. It can be proved that the earliest Christians known were
Gnostics—the men who knew, and who never did or could accept Historic
Christianity. The Essenes were Christians in the Gnostic sense, and according to
Pliny the elder, they were a Hermetic Society that had existed for ages on ages
of time. Their name is best explained as Egyptian. They were known as the Eshai,
the healers or Therapeutæ, the physicians in Egypt; and Esha or Usha means to
doctor or heal, in Egyptian. The Sutites, the Mandaites, the Nazarites, as well
as the Docetae and Elkesites, were all Gnostic Christians; they all preceded,
and were all opposed to, the cult of the carnalised Christ. The followers
of Simon, the Samaritan, were Gnostic Christians, and they were of the Church at
Antioch, where it is said the name of Christian was primarily applied. Cerinthus
was a Gnostic Christian, who, according to Epiphanius, denied that Christ had
come in the flesh. The same writer informs us that, at the end of the fourth
century, there were Ebionite Christians, whose Christ was the mythical fulfiller
of the time-cycles, not an historic Jesus. Even Clement Alexander confesses that
his Christ was of a nature that did not require the nourishment of corporeal
food.
4. Now, from the time of Irenæus to that of Mansell, it has been confidently
asserted that Gnosticism was a heresy of the second century, a backsliding and
apostacy from the true faith of historic Christianity. This is simply a delusion
of the ignorant, founded on the original lie of the falsifiers! Later teachers
of Gnosticism, such as Basilides and Saturninus, did arise during the second
century; but these were not the founders of any fresh doctrines, nor did they
make any new departure. They were Revivalists! The Christian Fathers only knew
of the Gnostics of their time; they never troubled to trace the roots of
Gnosticism in the remoter past.
5. The Christian report respecting the Gnostics, Docetae, and others, always
assumes the human reality of the supposed history, and then explains the
non-human interpretation of the Gnostics themselves as an heretic denial, or
perversion of the alleged facts. Hence the Gnostics are charged by Irenæus with
falsifying the oracles of God, and trying to discredit the word of revelation
with their own wicked inventions.
6. We learn from Origen that, during the third century, there were various
different versions of Matthew's gospel in circulation, and this he attributes
partly to the forgers of gospels. Jerome, at the end of the fourth century,
asserts the same thing; and of the Latin versions he says, there were as many
different texts as manuscripts. The Gnostics, who had brought on the original
and pre-Christian matter of the mysteries that were taught orally, no sooner
placed it on record than they were said to be forging the Scriptures of
Anti-Christ, whereas it was the Gnosis of the Ante-Christ of whom they, the
Christians, were ignorant.
7. Theirs is altogether a false mode of describing the position of those who always
and utterly denied that the Christ could be made flesh, to suffer and die upon a
veritable cross. Here is a specimen of the way in which the Gnostic doctrines
had been turned to historic account:—The true light which lighteth every man
coming into the world was Gnostic, and had been Gnostic ages before the prologue
of John was written; and as Gnostic doctrine it has to be read. This Light
of the world, born, as the Gnostics held, with every one coming into the world,
is the immortal principle in man! Hyppolytus, referring to the teaching of
Basilides, a Gnostic teacher of the second century, shows us how the doctrine of
the Gnostics was falsified. "And this," says he, "it is
which is said in the Gospels, 'The true light which lighteth every man was
coming into the world!'" "Was coming" is an interpolation of
the believers in the fact of historic fulfilment applied to that eternal light
which lighted every man coming into the world; the light that dawned within, and
could not come without in any form of flesh or historic personality. The Emperor
Julian also remarks on the monstrous doings and fraudulent machinations of the
fabricators of Historic Christianity. We may look upon the Gnostics as Inside
Christians; the others as Christians Without.
8. Never were mortals more perplexed, bewildered, and taken back, than the
Christians of the second, third, and fourth centuries, who had started from
their own new beginning, warranted to be solely historic, when they found that
an apparition of their faith was following them one way and confronting them in
another—a faith not founded on their alleged facts, claiming to be the original
religion, and ages on ages earlier in the world—a shadow that threatened to
steal away their substance, mocking them with its aerial unreality—the hollow
ghost of that body of truth which they had embraced as a solid and eternal
possession! It was horrible. It was devilish. It was the devil, they said; and
so they sought to account for Gnosticism, and fight down their fears of the
phantom terrifying them in front and rear: the Gnostic ante-Christ who had now
become their anti-Christ. The only primitive Christians then apart from, or
preceding, the Christianised pagan church of Rome, were the various sects of
Gnostics, not one of which was founded on an historical Christ. One and all they
based upon the mystical Christ of the Gnosis, and the mythical Messiah,—Him who
should come because he was the Ever-Coming One, as a type of the Eternal,
manifesting figuratively in time. Historic Christianity can furnish no
sufficient reason why the biography of its personal founder should have been
held back; why the facts of its origin should have been kept dark; and why there
should have been no authorised record made known earlier. The conversion of the mythos, and of the Docetic doctrines of the Gnosis into human history, alone
will account for the fatal fact. The truth is, the earliest gospels are the
furthest removed from the supposed human history. That came last; and only when
the spiritual Christ of the Gnosis had been rendered concrete in the density of
Christian ignorance! Christianity began as Gnosticism continued, by means of a
conversion and perversion, that were opposed in vain by Paul. The mysteries of
the Gnostics were continued, with a difference, as Christian. The
newly-christened re-beginnings were not only shrouded in mystery, they were the
same mysteries at root as those that were pre-extant. The first Christians
founded on secret doctrines that were only explained to initiates during a long
course of years. These mysteries were never to be divulged or promulgated until
the belief in historic Christianity had taken permanent root. We are told how it
was held by some that the Apocrypha ought only to be read by those who were
perfected, and that these writings were reserved exclusively for the Christian
adepts. It must be obvious that the doctrine or knowledge that was forced to be
kept so sacredly secret as that, could have had no relation to the human
history, personality, or teachings of an inspired founder of that primitive
Christianity supposed to have had so simple an origin. True history is not
established in that way, although the false may be—as it has been. Nobody was
allowed by Peter to interpret anything except in accordance with "our
tradition!" Nobody, says Justin Martyr, is permitted to partake of the
Eucharist "unless he accepts as true that which is taught by us"—and
unless he received the bread and wine as the very flesh and blood of that Jesus
who was made flesh. In this we see the forgers fighting against the Gnostic
Christ. There were many sects of so-called Christians, and various versions of
the Christ; whether Kronian, mythical, or mystical. But the Church of Rome was
the Christian church with foundations in Egypt; hence the deities of Egypt which
have been discovered at the foundations of Rome; and when historic Christianity
hasn't a bit of ground left to stand upon, the Church of Rome will be able and
prepared to say, "We never did really stand on that ground, and now we
alone can stand without it. We are the one true church with foundations in an
illimitable past."
9. According to the unquestioned tradition of the Christian Fathers, which has
always been accepted by the Church, the primary nucleus of our canonical gospels
was not a life of Jesus at all, but a collection of the Logia, oracles, or
sayings, the Logia Kuriaka, which were written down in Hebrew or Aramaic, by one
Matthew, as the scribe of the Lord. Clement Alexander, Origen, and Irenæus
agree in stating that Matthew's was the primary gospel. This tradition rests
upon the testimony of Papias, Bishop of Hieropolis, and friend of Polycarp, who
is said to have suffered martyrdom for his faith during the reign of Marcus
Aurelius, about 165-167 A.D. Papias is named with Pantœus,
Clement, and Ammonius as one of the ancient interpreters who agreed to
understand the Hexæmeron as referring to an historic Christ and the Church. He
was a believer in the millennium, and the second coming of the Lord, and
therefore a literaliser of mythology. But there is no reason to suspect the
trustworthiness of his testimony, as he no doubt believed these "sayings"
to have been the spoken words of an historic Jesus, written down in Hebrew
by a personal follower named Matthew. He wrote a work on the subject, entitled Logion
Kuriakon Exegesis, a commentary on the sayings of the Lord. A surviving
fragment of this last work, quoted by Eusebius, tells us that Matthew wrote the
sayings in the Hebrew dialect, and each one of the believers interpreted them as
he was best able. Thus, the beginning of the earliest gospel was not
biographical. It was no record of the life and doings of Jesus; it contained no
actual historic element, nothing more than the Sayings of the Lord.
10. It is not pretended that our gospel, according to Matthew, is the identical work
of the scribe who first wrote down the logia, but the statement of Papias is so
far corroborated inasmuch as the sayings ascribed to Jesus are the basis of the
Book. We read "When Jesus had finished these sayings," or
parables, several times over. Now, there is plenty of evidence to show that
these sayings, which are the admitted foundations of the canonical gospels, were
not first uttered by a personal Founder of Christianity, nor invented afterwards
by any of his followers. Many of them were pre-extant, pre-historic, and pre-christian. And if it can be proved that these oracles of God and Logia of the Lord are not
original, if they can be identified as a collection, an olla podrida of
Egyptian, Hebrew, and Gnostic sayings, they can afford no evidence that the
Jesus of the Gospels ever lived as an historic teacher. To begin with, two of
the sayings assigned to Matthew to Jesus as the personal teacher of men are
these:—"Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon earth," etc.,
and, "If ye forgive men their trespasses your heavenly Father will also
forgive you"! But these sayings had already been uttered by the
feminine Logos called Wisdom, in the Apocrypha. We find them in the Book of Ecclesiasticus; "Lay up thy treasure according to the Commandments of
the Most High, and it shall bring thee more profit than gold," and "Forgive
thy neighbour the hurt that he hath done thee, so shall thy sins also be
forgiven when thou prayest"! Wisdom was the Sayer personified long
anterior to the Christ. But it has never been pretended or admitted by mankind
that wisdom was ever incarnated on this earth as a woman! Yet Wisdom, or Charis,
had the primary right to incarnation, for she preceded the Christ. Luke also
quotes a saying of Wisdom—"Therefore also said the Wisdom of God, 'I
will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and
persecute';" "that the blood of all the prophets which was shed from
the foundation of the world may be required of this generation." This
also is quoted or adapted from the words of Wisdom recorded in a Book of Wisdom
(Esdras 2nd), where we read "I sent unto you my servants, the prophets,
whom ye have taken and slain, and torn their bodies in pieces, whose blood I
will require of your hands, said the Lord. Thus saith the Almighty Lord, your
house is desolate"! In the verses immediately preceding, the speaker in
the Book of Esdras had said. "Thus saith the Almighty Lord, Have I not
prayed you as a Father his sons, as a mother her daughters, and a nurse her
young babes, that ye would be my people, and I should be your God; that ye would
be my children, and I should be your Father? I gathered you together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings; but now what shall I do unto you? I will
cast you out." This is in one of the Books of Wisdom hidden away in our
Apocrypha. Now, if we turn to the gospels of Luke and Matthew we shall find that
they have quoted these words of Wisdom: but we now see that Wisdom is not
credited with her own sayings concerning the Father God! On the contrary, they
are given to an historic Christ, as a personal teacher and a prophet. That which
was said of the house of Israel by Wisdom in Esdras is now applied to the city
of Jerusalem by the Christ; and if you re-date a saying like that by a few
hundred years there is little wonder if it dislocates the history. Paul likewise
quotes the saying from the Book of Esdras when he says, "I will receive
you and will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me Sons and Daughters saith
the Lord Almighty." But he does not refer or re-apply it to Jesus as is
done in the Gospels! Here we see the current coinage of Wisdom has been defaced
by the Gospel compilers—not by Paul—and then re-issued under the sign and
superscription of another name, that of Jesus the Christ; and historic evidence
of a nature like that is as futile as the negro's non-effective charge of
gunpowder which he shrewdly suspected of having been fired off before.
Paul likewise quotes or refers to one of the sayings found in Matthew. "Faithful
is the saying," he writes to Timothy. But although he is speaking of
the Christ, he does not say his saying, nor refer it to an historic
teacher.
11. It was one of the sayings, or true words, called the "Logia,"
which had been the dark sayings and parables of the pre-christian mysteries from
of old, and which in Egypt were the sayings of Truth herself. The Hebrew
Psalmist says, "I will utter dark sayings of old." The Proverbs
of Solomon are the sayings. The Jewish Haggadah were the sayings. The
Commandments were sayings, as is shown by Paul, Rom. xiii. 9. Peter, in the
Clementine Recognitions, does not pretend to "pronounce the sayings of
the Lord as spoken by himself" (or profess that they were spoken by
himself in person, as I read the passage), he admits that it is not in their
commission to say this. But they are to teach and to show from the sayings how
every one of them is based upon truth. This is in reply to Simon Magus, who has
pointed out the contradictory nature of the sayings. I hold it only to be a
matter of time and research to prove that the sayings in general assigned to
Jesus, which are taken to demonstrate his historic existence as a personal
teacher, were pre-extant, pre-historic, and pre-christian. One of the sayings in
the Mysteries reported by Plato was, "Many are the Thyrsus-bearers but
few are the Mystics," which is echoed twice over by Matthew in the
saying, "Many are called but few are chosen." "It is more
blessed to give than to receive," is one of the Logia of the Lord
quoted in the book of Acts, but not found in the Gospels. Two of the sayings are
identified as Essenic by Josephus, who says the Essenes swear not at all, but
whatsoever they say is firmer than an oath; and when Jesus says, "A new
commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another," there was
certainly nothing new in that which had been a command and a practice of the
Essenes ages before. Men knew who were the Essenes by their love for one
another. Some of the parables appear in the Talmud, amongst them are those of
the Wise and Unwise Builders and that of the Marriage Feast. Various sayings are
collected from the Talmud, such as the golden rule, "Do unto others as
ye would they should do unto you." "Love thy neighbour as
thyself." "With the measure we mete we shall be measured again."
"Let thy yea be just and thy nay be likewise just." "Whoso
looketh upon the wife of another with a lustful eye is considered as if he had
committed adultery." "Be of them that are persecuted, not of them that
persecute." But as Deutsch has said, to assume that the Talmud borrowed
these from the New Testament would be like assuming that Sanskrit sprang from
Latin.
12. The nature of the "Sayings" is acknowledged by Irenæus when he says, "According
to no one Saying of the heretics is the word of God made flesh." That
is the Sayings which were current among the Gnostics as Knowers. Marcion knew
and quoted the Gnostic saying which was afterwards amplified and quoted in
John's Gospel—"No one knew the father save the son, nor the son save
the father, and he to whom he will reveal him." This is a Gnostic
saying, and it involves the Gnostic doctrine which cannot be understood
independently of the Gnosis. It is quoted as one of the sayings before it was
reproduced in the Gospel according to John.
13. Such sayings were the Oral teachings in all the mysteries ages before they were
written down. Some of them are so ancient as to be the common property of
several nations. Prescott gives a few Mexican sayings; one of these, also found
in the Talmud and the New Testament, is called the "the old
proverb." "As the old proverb says—'Whoso regards a woman with
curiosity commits adultery with his eyes.'" And the third commandment
according to Buddha is—"Commit no adultery, the law is broken by even
looking at the wife of another man with lust in the mind." Amongst
other sayings assigned to Buddha we find the one respecting the wheat and the
tares.
14. Another is the parable of the sower. Buddha likewise told of the hidden treasure
which may be laid up by a man and kept securely where a thief cannot break in
and steal; the treasure that a man may carry away with him when he goes. The
story of the rich young man who was commanded to sell all he had and give to the
poor is told of Buddha. It is reported that he also said—"You may
remove from their base the snowy mountains, you may exhaust the waters of the
ocean, the firmament may fall to earth, but my words in the end will be
accomplished."
15. Some of Buddha's sayings are uttered in the same character as that of the
canonical Christ. For example, when speaking of his departure Buddha, like the
Christ, promises to send the Paraclete, even the spirit of truth, who shall bear
witness of him and lead his followers to the truth. The Gnostic Horus says the
same things in the same character, and these sayings, by whomsoever uttered,
carry the mythical character with them. The sayings of Krishna as well as those
of the Buddha are frequently identical with those of the Christ. I am the letter
A, cries the one. I am the Alpha and Omega (or the A.O.), exclaims the other. I
am the beginning, the middle, and the end, says Krishna—"I am the
Light, I am the Life, I am the Sacrifice." Speaking of his disciples,
he affirms that they dwell in him and he dwells in them.
16. The attitude of the Sayer as the personal revealer, the veritable and visible
image of the hidden God in the Gospels, is that of the mythical Horus, the
representative of Osiris—of Iu as manifestor of Atum, and of Khunsu as the son
of Amen-Ra, who was the hidden God by name. The status had been attained, and
the stand was occupied by the mythical divinity, and no room was left for a
human Claimant many centuries later. If we take the transfiguration on the
Mount, Buddha ascended the mountain in Ceylon called Pandava or Yellow-White. There the heaven opened, and a great light was in full flood around him, and the
glory of his person shone forth with "double power." He "shone
as the brightness of Sun and Moon." This was the transfiguration of
Buddha, identical with that of the Christ, and both are the same as that of
Osiris in his ascent of the Mount of the Moon. The same scene of the temptation
on the Mount was previously portrayed in the Persian account of the Devil
tempting Zarathustra, and inviting him to curse the Good Belief. But these
several forms of the one character do not meet, and did not originate in any
human history—lived either in Egypt, India, Persia, or Judea. They only meet in
the Mythos, which may be traced to a common origin in Egypt, where we can delve
down to the real root of the matter. Astronomical mythology claims, and Egypt
can account for, at least 30,000 years of time; and that alone will explain
these relationships and likenesses found on the surface by an original identity
at root. The myths of Christianity and Buddhism had a common origin, and
branched from the same root in the soil of Egypt, whence emanated several
dogmas, like that of the Immaculate virgin motherhood, and the divine child who
is the ancestral soul self-reproduced. And in company with the doctrines we
naturally find a few of the sayings of the Buddha, which have often been
paralleled with some of those assigned to the Christ.
17. The Logia or sayings are the mythoi in Greek. They were mythical sayings
assigned to Sayers, who were also mythical in that mythology which preceded and
accounts for our Theology and Christology. The sayings were the oral wisdom,
and, as the name implies, that wisdom was uttered by word of mouth alone. They
existed before writing, and were not allowed to be written afterwards. The mode
of communicating them in the Mysteries, as in Masonry, was from mouth to ear;
and, in passing, it may be remarked that the war of the Papacy against Masonry
is because it is a survival of the pre-Christian Mysteries, and a living,
however imperfect, witness against Historic Christianity! Mythos or myth denotes
anything delivered by word of mouth, myth and mouth being identical at root. Now, as the mouth of utterance preceded the word that was uttered, it follows
that the first form of the sayer or Logos was female, and that the feminine
wisdom was first, although she has not yet been made flesh. The mother was
primordial, and the earliest soul or spirit was attributed to her; she was the
mouth, utterer, or sayer, long before the sayings were assigned to the male
Logos or Christ. Thus in the Apocrypha, as in other Gnostic books, the sayings
of Wisdom are found which have been made counterfeit in the mouth of the Christ
made historic. She was the primal type of Wisdom, who built her house with the
Seven Pillars, and who was set in the heavens as Kefa, later Sefekh, and latest
Sophia. She is called the Living Word or Logos at Ombos, because as her
constellation, the Great Bear, turned round annually, it told the time of the
year. She is portrayed in the planisphere with her tongue hanging out to show
that she is the mouthpiece of time who utters the Word. Wisdom was also the
earliest teller of human time. In her mystical phase she told the time for the
sexes to come together. Thus, on the ground of natural phenomena, the Logia were
first uttered by the Lady, and not by the Lord. This is the woman who has been
so badly abused by those who desired to dethrone her; the primitive protestants
who set up the male image in her place and on her pedestal. In Egypt the Sayings
were assigned to various divinities, that is mythical characters. One of these
was the Solar God Iu-em-hept, the Egyptian Jesus, who was the son of Atum, and
who is called "the Eternal Word" in the "Book of the
Dead." After these sayings had been recorded it is said of them in a
text at least 5000 years old, "I have heard the words of Iu-em-hept and
Har-ta-tef as it is said in their sayings!" The Osirian form of the "the
Lord" who utters the Logia in the Egyptian Ritual is Horus, he whose
name signifies the Lord.
18. I cannot prove that sets of the sayings of the Lord, as Horus, were continued
intact up to the time of Papias. Nor is that necessary. For, according to the
nature of the hidden wisdom they remained oral and were not intended to be
written down. They were not collected to be published as historic until the
mysteries had come to an end or, on one line of their descent, were merged in
Christianity. But a few most significant ones may be found in the Book of the
Dead. In one particular passage the speaker says he has given food to the
hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, and a boat to the
shipwrecked; and, as the Osirified has done these things, the Judges say to him,
"Come, come in peace," and he is welcomed to the festival which
is called "Come thou to me." Those who have done these things
on earth are held to have done them to Horus, the Lord; and they are invited to
come to him as the blessed ones of his father Osiris. In this passage we have
not only the sayings reproduced by Matthew, but also the drama and the scenes of
the Last Judgment represented in the Great Hall of Justice, where a person is
separated from his sins, and those who have sided with Sut against Horus are
transformed into goats. Here it is noticeable that Matthew only of the four
Evangelists represents this drama of the Egyptian Ritual! Among the sayings of
Jesus, or Logia of the Lord, is the saying that "the very hairs of your
head are numbered;" and in the Ritual every hair is weighed; also the
night of the judgment-day is designated that of "weighing a hair." Various
chapters of the Ritual are the "sayings." They are preceded by
the formula, "said by the deceased," or "said to the
deceased." Horus, the Lord, is the divine Sayer. "Says Horus"
is a common statement; and the souls repeat his sayings. He is the Lord by
name, and therefore his are the original sayings, or Logia of the Lord. These
sayings, or Logia of the Lord, were written by Hermes or Taht, the Scribe of the
Gods, and they constituted the original Hermean or inspired Scriptures, which
the Book of the Dead declares were written in Hieroglyphics by the finger of
Hermes himself. This Recorder of the sayings is said to have power to grant the Makheru to the Solar God—that is, the gift of speaking the Truth by means of
the Word, because he is the Registrar of the "sayings"—the
scribe of the wisdom uttered orally, the means, therefore, by which the Word was
made Truth to men; not flesh in human form. This is the part assigned to
Matthew, the called one, the Evangelist and Scribe, who first wrote down the
Logia, or sayings of the Lord. Now, the special name or title of Hermes in the
particular character of the Recorder and Registrar in the Hall of the Double
Truth, or Justice, is Matthew in Egyptian—that is, Matiu. And my claim is not
only that the primary Logia of the Lord were the sayings of Horus, whose name
means "the lord," but also that the Matthew who,
according to the testimony of Papias, first wrote down the Logia of the Lord,
was none other than Matiu, or Hermes, the recorder of the sayings in the
Egyptian Ritual, who has been made an historic personage in the Canonical Gospel
in exact accordance with the humanising of the Mythical Christ.
19. One mode of manipulating the sayings, and making out a history is apparent, and
can be followed. This was by looking it out in the alleged Hebrew prophecies,
and inserting it piecemeal between the groups of sayings. There is proof that,
with the sayings as primary data, the history of the Canonical Gospel, according
to Matthew, was written on the principle of fulfilling the supposed prophecies
found in the Old Testament, or elsewhere. The compiler was too uninstructed to
know that the prophecies themselves belonged entirely to the Astronomical
Allegory, and never did or could relate to forthcoming events that were to be fulfilled
in human history; and never were supposed to do so, except by the
ignorant, who knew no better, and who, in fact, thought the zodiacal Virgin had
brought forth her child on earth; which could only be born, and that
figuratively, in heaven. Those who did know better, whether Jews, Samaritans, Essenes, or Gnostics, entirely repudiated the historic interpretation, and did
not become Christians. They could no more join the ignorant, fanatical Salvation
Army in the first century than we can in the nineteenth. The so-called
prophecies not only supply a raison d'être for the history in the
gospels, the events and circumstances themselves are manufactured one after
another from the prophecies and sayings—that is, from the mythos which was
pre-extant, in the course of the literalisation into a human life, and the
localisation in Judea, under the pretext, or in the blind belief, that the
impossible had come to pass. Justin Martyr's great appeal for historical proofs
is made to the Old Testament prophecies; and so is Matthew's. According to him,
Jesus was born at Bethlehem in order that it might be fulfilled which was said by
Micah that a Governor and Shepherd for Israel should come out of Bethlehem in
Judea. That was in the Celestial Bethlehem or House of Bread-Corn, the zodiacal
sign of the Fishes, where the mythical Messiah was to be reborn about the year
255 B.C.
20. Again, the young child was only taken to Nazareth that it might be
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, that he should be called a Nazarene. And yet
he would no more become a Nazarene in that way than a man could become a horse
by being born in a stable. Jesus came to dwell in Capernaum, on the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali,
that a saying of Isaiah's might be fulfilled!
21. He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all that were sick, that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet. For the same impotent
reason he charged his followers not to make him known to men as the
Christ! He taught the multitude in parables only that it might be fulfilled which
had been spoken by the prophet. Although Jesus wrought his miracles, and did so
many wonderful works, yet the people believed not on him, because Isaiah
had previously said: "Lord! who hath believed our report? and to
whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?" For this cause (or on
this account) they could not believe! And where, then, was the sense in
expecting them to believe? Jesus only sent the two disciples to steal the ass
and colt, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet Zechariah.
The choosing of Judas as one of the disciples, and his consequent treachery, do
but occur in the Gospels, because it had been written by the Psalmist: "Yea,
mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath
lifted up his heel against me!" which refers to an identifiably
Egyptian Mythos. In another Psalm assigned to David, the speaker cries: "My
God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me! They part my garments among them, and
cast lots upon my vesture." And in another he exclaims: "They
gave me also gall for meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to
drink." And these sayings, which were pre-extant and pre-applied,
constitute the Christian record of the historic crucifixion! It cannot be
pretended that they are prophecies. The transactions and sayings in the Psalms
are personal to the speaker there and then, whether Mythical or Historical, and not
to any future sufferer; and the tremendous transactions portrayed in the
Gospels are actually based upon a repetition of that which had already occurred!
When Jesus is represented by John as being in his death-agony, he only said, "I
thirst," in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled—and not because
he was thirsty!—the Scripture being these Sayings previously attributed to the
psalmist David. The earlier sayings are repeated as the later doings, and the
non-historical is finally the sole evidence for the Historical. When the
Roman soldiers had crucified Jesus they took the vesture that was without a
seam, and said: "Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it," that the
Scripture might be fulfilled which saith: "They parted my garments among
them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots." Such was the familiarity
of the Roman soldiers with the Jewish Scriptures, and such their respect for
them, that they could do nothing that was not laid down in the Hebrew Writings
to be interpreted as prophecy! And in such a desperate way the prophecies had to
be fulfilled in order that the History might be written. In the first place the
sayings are not original, not personal to any historical Jesus, and yet they are
the acknowledged foundations of the four gospels. Therefore in them we have the
foundations laid independently of any supposed Founder of Christianity. Next, we
have more or less seen how a part of the history superimposed on the
sayings first collected by Matthew was extracted piecemeal from the parables,
oracles, alleged prophecies, and un-alleged Mythos of the Old Testament; and
thus we get upon the track of the compilers, and can trace their method of
working from the matter of the Mythos. Now, when we find, and can identify, the
skeleton of some particular person, we have got the foundation of the man, no
matter where the rest of him may be—recoverable or not. So is it with the
Christ of our Canonical Gospels. The mythical Christ is the skeleton, and that
is identifiably Egyptian. This mythical Christ, as Horus, was continued in the
more mystical phase as the Horus of the Gnostics. The Gnostic Rituals repeat the
matter, names, symbols, and doctrines found in some later chapters of the
Egyptian Book of the Dead. The Gnostics supply the missing links between the
oral sayings and the written Word; between the Egyptian and the Canonical
Gospels; between the Matthew who wrote down the sayings of the Lord in Hebrew or
Aramaic, and the Matiu who is said to have written the Ritual in hieroglyphics
with the very finger of Hermes himself. The Gnostics were the knowers by name;
their artists perpetuated the Egyptian types; and the original myths, symbols,
and doctrines now recovered from the buried land of Egypt vouch for their
knowledge of the mysteries which lurk in the sayings, parables, events, and
characters that have been gathered up in our Gospels, to be naturalised and
re-issued in an historic narrative as the fulfilment of prophecy. They inherited
the Gnosis of Egypt, which remained unwritten, and therefore was unknown to the
Christians in general; the mysteries that were performed in secret, and the
science kept concealed. The Gnostics complained, and truly maintained, that
their mysteries had been made mundane in the Christian Gospels; that celestial
persons and celestial scenes, which could only belong to the pleroma—could only
be explained by the secret wisdom or gnosis—had been transferred to earth and
translated into a human history; that their Christ, who could not be made flesh,
had been converted into an historical character; that their Anthropos was turned
into the Son of Man—according to Matthew—Monogenes into the Only-begotten,
according to John, their Hemorrhoidal Sophia into the woman who suffered from
the issue of blood, the mother of the seven inferior powers into Mary Magdalene
possessed by her seven devils, and the twelve Æons into the twelve Apostles. Thus, the Gnostics enable us to double the proof which can be derived directly
and independently from Egypt. They claim that the miracle of the man who was
born blind, and whose sight was restored by Jesus, was their mystery of the Æon,
who was produced by the Only-begotten as the sightless creature of a soulless
Creator. Irenæus, in reporting this, makes great fun of the Word that was born
blind! He did not know that this Gnostic mystery was a survival of the Egyptian
myth of the two Horuses, one of whom was the blind Horus, who exclaims in his
blindness—"I come to search for mine eyes," and has his sight
restored at the coming of the Second Horus—the light of the world. Nor did he
dream that the two-fold Horus would explain why the blind man in our Gospels
should be single in one version and two-fold in another account of the same
miracle. The Gnostic Horus came to seek and to save the poor lost mother,
Sophia, who had wandered out of the pleroma, and the Gnostics identified this
myth with the statement assigned to Jesus when he said he had only come after
that lost sheep which was gone astray. For, as Irenæus says, they explain the
wandering sheep to mean their mother. This shows how the character of the Christ
was limited to the mould of the Mythos and the likeness of Horus. But the lost
sheep of the House of Israel has not yet found Jesus.
22. The very same transactions and teachings ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels are
assigned to the Gnostic Christ, who, like the Egyptian Horus, is the Sayer in
heaven, or within the pleroma, and not upon our earth. And, in the Gospel
according to John, we have Jesus identifying himself as the Son of Man which is
in heaven, whilst at the same time he is represented as talking and teaching the
Gnosis of the mysteries on earth. He tells Nicodemus, who came to him by night,
that "No man hath ascended into heaven but he that descended out of
heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven," as was Anthropos when
he taught the twelve according to the Gnostic account of the transactions within
the pleroma. Also, the twelve Æons are addressed in the language of the Gnosis
when Jesus says to the twelve—"Ye also shall bear witness, because ye
have been with me from the beginning." They tell us, says Irenæus,
that the knowledge communicated by the Christ to the Æons within the pleroma
has not been openly divulged, because all are not capable of receiving it; but
it was mystically made known, by means of parables, to those who were qualified
for receiving it. The Gnostic Christ reveals the mysteries of the kingdom of
heaven to the twelve Æons in parables. And in the Gospel the Christ speaks to
the twelve in parables only, and to them alone is it given to know the mysteries
of the kingdom of heaven. In this process of converting the mythical into
the historical we are told that Jesus, the very Son of God, was sent into the
world to teach and enlighten and save mankind, and yet he spoke his teaching in
parables which the people could not, and were not intended to, understand. "All
these things spake Jesus in parables to the multitude; and without a parable spake he nothing unto them," in order that it might be fulfiled which
was spoken by the prophet, saying, "I will open my mouth in parables; I
will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world!" He spoke to
the multitudes in this wise, so that they might not understand. Yet in the
chapter following it is said—"He called to him the multitude (not
the disciples) and said unto them, Hear and understand," and
immediately uttered a dark saying. We are also told that the common people heard
him gladly! In another instance, as crucial as it is interesting—illustrative
of the way in which the mythical, the Kronian Christ, was made human as the
instructor of man—it is said as Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives the disciples
came to him privately, and asked him to tell them about his coming in the clouds
at the end of the world. And amongst other things they are to do, he says,—Let
them that are in Judea flee unto the mountains. Let him that is on the
house-tops not go down. But what sense is there in advising any such mode of
escape from the great tribulation and catastrophe which involved the end of the
world? There would not be much advantage on the house-top or even the hill-top
if the stars were falling from heaven, with the firmament raining all round with
flames, and the end of all things had indeed come. We might just as well seek
refuge at the top of a fire-escape. And they are to pray that their flight may
not be in winter, or on the Sabbath, as if it could possibly matter to any
mortal in what season of the year, or day of the week, such a catastrophe should
occur. The final explanation of all such foolishness is that the matter is
mythical, and, of course, it refuses to be realised in any such literal way. The
parable never meant the end of this world; the literalisers of the mythos
thought it did. That was only a false inference of ignorant belief. But such are
the foundations of the faith. Such desperate dilemmas as these are the
inevitable result of representing the Mythical Sayer in heaven as an historical
teacher on earth.
23. The two chief abiding places to which the peripatetic Christ retires are called "the
Mountain" and "the Desert." These localities in the
Egyptian mythos are the upper and lower heavens, otherwise the mount of the
equinox and the wilderness of the underworld; and where John cries in the
wilderness, Aan or Anup howled in the desert. Now, according to Egyptian
thought and mode of expression the dead are those who are on the mountain; the
living are those who are in the valley or on the earth. Horus on earth, or
in the valley, is mortal, the child of the immaculate mother Isis alone. Horus on the
mountain is spiritualised as the son of the Father Osiris, in whose power he
overcomes the devil. Sut or Satan has the best of it down in the wilderness, and
Horus conquers up on the mount, in the day of their Great Battle. Jesus
undergoes the same change as Horus does in his baptism. He likewise becomes the
son of the Father, and in the strength of his adultship he ascends the mountain
and becomes the vanquisher of Satan. This typical mountain is a pivot on which a
good deal may be said to turn. The contest between Jesus and Satan, called the
temptation on the Mount, is portrayed upon the monuments in a scene where Horus
and Sut contend for supremacy, and at last agree to divide the whole world
between them. Horus takes the south, and Sut the north, called the hinder part,
where Jesus says,—"Get thee behind me, Satan!" The devil's
long tail is an extant sign of this hinder part, which was typified in Egypt by
the tail. If the Christ had been historical in this transaction, the devil must
be historical too. Both stand on the same footing of fact or fable. According to
the record, Satan must have been as real as the Christ, or Christ as mythical as
the devil. Was Satan also incarnated for life in the flesh? If so, when did he
die? where was the place of his burial? and did he also rise
again? Nobody seems to care what became of the poor devil after he was told to
get behind, or take a back seat, that of the hinder part. The scene in the Mount
of Transfiguration is obviously derived from the ascent of Osiris (or Horus),
and his transfiguration in the Mount of the Moon. The sixth day was celebrated
as that of the change and transfiguration of the solar god in the lunar orb,
which he re-entered as the regenerator of its light. With this we may compare
the statement made by Matthew that "After six days Jesus" went "up
into a high mountain apart, and he was transfigured." "And his face
did shine as the sun" (of course!), "and his garments became
white as the light."
24. The natural phenomena on which these Egyptian
legends or myths were founded are the contentions of light and darkness at the
time of the equinox, or in the waxing and waning of the light in the lunar orb. "He must increase, but
I must decrease," says John, who plays the part of Sut-Aan to Jesus as
the Light of the World. This was the battle between Horus and Satan. In one
legend it is said that Sut was seven days fleeing on the back of an ass from his
battle with Horus. That means the seven days of the second quarter of the moon,
during which Horus triumphs as Lord of the growing light. And here we can point
to a curious survival! The Unicorn was a type of Sut, and the Lion of Horus; and
their conflict is described in our legend— |
