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GNOSTIC AND HISTORIC
CHRISTIANITY
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MY purpose in the present lectures is to enforce with
further evidence, and sustain with ampler detail, the interpretation of facts,
which has been already outlined in the "Natural Genesis." My contention is, that
the original mythos and gnosis of Christianity were primarily derived from Egypt
on various lines of descent, Hebrew, Persian, and Greek, Alexandrian, Essenian,
and Nazarene, and that these converged in Rome, where the History was
manufactured mainly from the identifiable matter of the Mythos recorded in the
ancient Books of Wisdom, illustrated by Gnostic Art, and orally preserved
amongst the secrets of the Mysteries.
2. My stand-point had not previously been taken.
It was not until this, the Era of Excavation, that we were able to dig down far
enough to recover the fundamental facts that were most essential for the Student
of Survivals and development to know anything certain concerning the remoter
origins and evolution of the Christian System; the most ancient evidences having
been neglected until now.
3. Instead of the Roman Church being a crucible for
purging the truth from the dross of error, to give it forth pure gold, we shall
have to look upon it rather as the melting-pot, in which the beautiful and noble
mental coinage of Greece and Egypt was fused down and made featureless, to be
run into another mould, stamped with a newer name, and re-issued under a later
date.
4. In the course of establishing Apostolic Christianity
upon historical foundations, there was such a reversal of cause and outcome that
the substance and the shadow had to change places, and the husk and kernel lost
their natural relationship and value. All that was first in time and in
originality has been put latest, in order that the prophecy might be fulfilled,
and the last become first. All that preceded Christianity in the religion
of knowledge, of the Gnostics, has come to be looked back upon as if it were
like that representation in the German play where Adam is seen crossing the
stage in the act of going to be created!
5. Historic Christianity has gathered in the crops that
were not of its kind, but were garnered from the seed already in the soil.
Whosoever tilled and sowed, it has assumed the credit, and been permitted to
reap the harvest, as undisputed master of the field. It claimed, and was
gradually allowed, to be the source of almost every true word and perfect work
that was previously extant; and these were assigned to a personal Christ as the
veritable Author and Finisher of the Faith. Every good thing was re-dated,
re-warranted, declared, and guaranteed to be the blessed result of Historic
Christianity, as established by Jesus and his personal disciples. It can
be demonstrated that Christianity pre-existed without the Personal Christ, that
it was continued by Christians who entirely rejected the historical character in
the second century, and that the supposed historic portraiture in the Canonical
Gospels was extant as mythical and mystical before the Gospels themselves
existed. In short, the mythical theory can be proved by recovering the
Mythos and the Gnosis.
6. The picture of the New Beginning commonly presented
is Rembrandt-like in tone. The whole world around Judea lay in the shadow
of outer darkness, when suddenly there was a great light seen at the centre of
all, and the face of the startled universe was illuminated by an apparition of
the child-Christ lying in the lap of Mary. Such was the dawn of
Christianity, in which the Light of the World had come to it at last! That
explanation is beautifully simple for the simple-minded; but the picture is
purely ideal—or, in sterner words, it is entirely false.
7. When the fountain-heads of the Nile were reached at
last, it was perceived that the great river did not rise from any single source
in one particular place, but from a vast concourse of many tributary springs.
So when we come to examine for ourselves the vast complex that passes under the
vague name of Christianity, we learn that it can be traced to no one single
source or locality. So far from its being an original system as product of
the life, character, work, and teachings of a personal founder, we have to
acknowledge sooner or later that it is more like a unique specimen of what
school-boys profanely call a "Resurrection pie."
8. Another popular delusion most ignorantly cherished
is, that there was a golden age of primitive Christianity, which followed the
preaching of the Founder and the practice of his apostles; and that there was a
falling away from this paradisiacal state of primordial perfection when the
Catholic Church in Rome lapsed into idolatry, Paganised and perverted the
original religion, and poisoned the springs of the faith at the very
fountain-head of their flowing purity. Such is the pious opinion of those
orthodox Protestants who are always clamouring to get back beyond the Roman
Church to that ideal of primitive perfection supposed to be found in the simple
teachings of Jesus, and the lives of his personal followers, as recorded in the
four canonical gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles. But when we do
penetrate far enough into the past to see somewhat clearly through and beyond
the cloud of dust that was the cause of a great obscuration in the first two
centuries of our era, we find that there was no such new beginning, that the
earliest days of the purest Christianity were pre-historic, and that the real
golden age of knowledge and simple morality preceded, and did not follow, the
Apostolic Roman Church, or the Deification of its Founder, or the humanising of
the "Lamb of God," whom Lucian calls the "Impaled One of Palestine."
9. In an interesting book just published, entitled
"Buddhism in Christendom," Mr. Lillie thinks he has found Jesus, the
author of Christianity, as one of the Essenes, and a Buddhist! But there
is no need of craning one's neck out of joint in looking to India, or straining
in that direction at all, for the origin of that which was Egyptian born and
Gnostic bred! Essenism was no new birth of Hindu Buddhism, brought to
Alexandria about two centuries before our era; and Christianity, whether
considered to be mystical or historical, was not derived from Buddhism at any
time. They have some things in common, because there is a Beyond to both.
The crucial test, however, is to be found on the threshold, at the first step we
take, in the doctrine of the divine Fatherhood. The supreme rôle assigned
to the Christ of the Gospels, as of the Gnostics, is that of Manifestor and
Revealer of the Father in heaven. His sign-manual is the seal of the
Father. A dozen times, according to Matthew, he calls God, "My Father." In
John's Gospel, he says, "I and my Father are one." "I am come in my Father's
name." "My Father hath sent me." "My Father hath taught me." "I am in my
Father." "The word ye hear is my Father's." Buddha makes no revelation of the
mythology. The Buddha is the veiled God unveiled, the un-manifested made
manifest, Buddha, like Putha (or Khepr-Ptah), was begotten by his own becoming,
before the time of the divine paternity. There being no real Father-God in
Buddhism, the Buddha has none to make known on earth. The doctrine was
Egyptian, as when it is proclaimed in the Texts that Horus is "the son who
proceeds from his father," and Osiris is the "father who proceeds from his son."
10. Again, in the Hindu myth of the ascent and
transfiguration on the Mount, the Six Glories of the Buddha's head are
represented as shining out with a brilliance that was blinding to mortal sight.
These Six Glories are equivalent to the six manifestations of the Moon-God in
the six Upper Signs, or, as it was set forth, in the Lunar Mount. During
six months, the Horus, or Buddha, as Lord of Light in the Moon, did battle with
the Powers of Darkness by night, whilst the Sun itself was fighting his way
through the Six Lower Signs. Now, in the Gospel according to John, there
is no contest with Satan, and no Transfiguration on the Mount! Instead, we
have the "Light of the world," which is in heaven, warring with the Darkness,
and manifesting His glory in six miracles—no more, no less—answering the Six
Glories of the Buddha's head on the Mount, or the six manifestations in the
luminous hemisphere of the superior signs. The "beginning of his signs,"
by which Jesus "manifested his glory," was the turning of water into wine.
The sixth, and last, of these, was the raising of Lazarus, which corresponds
exactly with the rising of the Mummy-constellation (Sahu) of Orion, which
ascended as the star of the Resurrection, when the solar god returned from the
dark hemisphere of the under-world, or the sun re-entered the sign of the Bull
at the vernal equinox. The source of all is the identifiable astronomical
allegory in the Soli-Lunar phase, but the fable followed in the Gospel is
Egyptian, not Buddhist. The Christ is one with Horus as Lord of the Lunar
light, who manifested the glory (or the Six Glories) of his father, in the six
upper signs, as his only-begotten Son. The claim now made is that the
common Mythos determined the number of the six Glories, or six Miracles, and the
history was moulded accordingly.
11. I also think that Jesus—or Joshua-ben-Pandira—was an
Essene. That is, he was a Nazarite, and the Nazarites were one with the
Essenes. And these, for example, are amongst the "sayings" in the Book of
the Nazarenes. "Blessed are the peacemakers, the just, and 'faithful.'"
"Feed the hungry; give drink to the thirsty; clothe the naked." "When thou
makest a gift, seek no witness whereof, to mar thy bounty. Let thy right
hand be ignorant of the gifts of thy left." Such were common to all the Gnostic
Scriptures, going back to the Egyptian. This is a Nazarene saying from the
Book of Adam:—"No poor sculpture of earth has fashioned his throne. The
palace of the King was not built up by earthly masons." And this is from an
Egyptian hymn:—"He is not graven in marble, nor adored in sanctuaries.
There is no building that can contain him." In the ancient Egyptian "Maxims of
Ani" we read:—"The sanctuary of God abhors noisy demonstrations. Pray
humbly with a loving heart, all the words of which are uttered in secret.
He will listen to thy words; He will accept thy offerings. Exaggerate not
the liturgical prescriptions; it is forbidden to offer more than is prescribed.
Thou shalt make adorations in his name." These contain the essence of the early
verses in the 6th chapter of Matthew, where the injunctions given are:—"Sound
not a trumpet before thee, etc. Pray in secret to thy Father, which is in
secret, and he shall recompense thee. And in praying use not vain
repetitions." Ani denotes one of the names of Taht who, as Mati = Matthew, wrote
down the Sayings of the Lord, some of which are amongst these Maxims. But,
unfortunately, you cannot prove anything, or, still more unfortunately, you can
prove anything from the Gospels! You must first catch your Jesus, before
you pretend to tell us what he was personally, and what were his own individual
teachings. These "sayings of mine," cannot be judged as his if they were
pre-extant, and can be proved to be anyone's sayings, or may be identified as
ancient sayings, whether Buddhist, Nazarene, Apocryphal, or Egyptian.
Also, there are different versions of the same sayings in the Gospels! In
Matthew, we read: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness."
In Luke it is:—"Blessed are ye that hunger now." In Matthew:—"Blessed are the
poor in spirit." In Luke: — "Blessed be ye poor. Woe unto you that are
rich!" Which, then, is the version that is personal to Jesus, the Nazarene?
or where is the sense of claiming that the personal Jesus was an Essene or
Nazarite—one of those who never touched wine, or strong drink—when one of the
inspired writers testifies that he was described as a glutton, and a
wine-bibber; and, according to another, his very first miracle was the turning
of water into wine for a marriage feast? Suppose we admit that you have
laid hold of Joshua, the Essene, the Nazarite, the reputed Great Healer, the
Comforter, what can you make of a character so unhuman as this?
12. A poor Canaanitish woman comes to him from a long
distance and beseeches him to cure her daughter who is grievously obsessed.
"Have mercy on me, O Lord," she pleads. But he answered her not a word.
The disciples, brutes as they were, if the scene were real, besought him to send
her away because she cried after them. Jesus answered, and said:—"I was
only sent to the lost sheep of the House of Israel." She worships him, and he
calls her one of the dogs. And it is only her extreme deference that wins
a kindly word from him at last. The Essenes and Gnostics absolutely denied
the physical resurrection, because they were Spiritualists; therefore, it was
impossible for an Essene to have taught the resurrection of the dead at the Last
Day as Jesus is made to do. (John vi. 39, 40, and xi. 24.)
13. Again, if the pupil of Ben Perachia was an Essene,
or, as reputed, an initiate in Egyptian mysteries, he never could have endorsed
the mistakes attributed to Moses; never would have died for the reality of a
parable, which he must have known to be astronomical. As one of the Magi
or an Essene, he would understand the "Doctrine of Angels," i.e., of the cycles
of time, the character of the Kronian Messiah and the Coming in 400 years,
according to the prophecy of Esdras. He would know the celestial nature of
the Seventy-two whose names were written in Heaven as servants of the Lord of
Light, and who had been with him "from the beginning" as the opponents of the
Seventy-two Sami who served Sut-Typhon, the devil of darkness. He would
know that the myths were not to be fulfilled in human history, and could not
have personally set up the crazy claim that he was the messenger of Hebrew
prophecy in person. No. The claims are made in his name by those who
naturalized the Mythos on its Hebrew-Aramaic line of descent in Matthew,
Egyptian in Luke, and Greek in John. What we do hear is not the voice of
the founder teaching one thing at one time and the direct opposite at another;
we hear the voices of the different sections, each proclaiming its own
particular doctrines and dogmas, each assigning them to the Christ as their
typical teacher, in the course of making out a personal history from the Mythos,
and of giving vent to their own particular prejudices. The sayings of the
Lord were pre-historic, as the sayings of David (who was an earlier Christ), the
sayings of Horus the Lord, of Elijah the Lord, of Mana the Lord, of Christ the
Lord, as the divine directions conveyed by the ancient teachings. As the
"Sayings of the Lord" they were collected in Aramaic to become the nuclei of the
earliest Christian gospel according to Matthew. So says Papias. At a
later date they were put forth as the original revelation of a personal teacher,
and were made the foundation of the historical fiction concocted in the four
gospels that were canonized at last. In proving that Joshua or Jesus was
an Essene there would be no more rest here than anywhere else for the sole of
your foot upon the ground of historic fact. You could not make him to be
the Founder of the Essene, Nazarite or Gnostic Brotherhoods, and communities of
the genuine primitive Christians that were extant in various countries a very
long while before the Era called Christian.
14. Nor is there any need to go to India for the
original healers, called Essenes or Therapeutæ. The dawn of civilisation
arose in Egypt, with healing on its wings. Egypt was the land of
physicians through all her monumental history. Amongst the nations of
antiquity she stands a head and shoulders above the rest; first in time and
pre-eminent in attainment. Egypt was the great physician of the human
race, and she sent out her medical missionaries from the earliest times.
The Essenes were the same as the Therapeutæ or Healers, and they are the healers
by name in Egyptian. Philo farther identifies their name with Essa in
Hebrew, for healing. But Egypt had given birth to the Essenic name, and,
therefore, to the persons named, before the letter E existed; that was previous
to the middle empire (which ended over 4,000 years ago). In old Egyptian,
the word Usha means to doctor. Whence the Ushai, later, Eshai, or Essenes,
are the healers and physicians Josephus has compared the Pythagoreans with the
Egyptian Therapeutæ or Alexandrian Essenes; and attempts have been made to show
the derivation of Buddhist doctrines from India through Pythagoras whose name
has been derived from Put = Buddha and Guru, a teacher with intent to prove that
he was a teacher of the religion of Buddha. But the Egyptian Putha (the
original of Buddha as I suggest) is indefinitely older than any known Buddha in
India; therefore, as Pythagoras was learned in the wisdom of Egypt and was a
teacher of it, I should derive his name from Putha (Ptah) and Khuru (Eg.), the
Voice or Word of; as a teacher of the Cult of Putha or Ptah, the Opener and
"Lord of Life."
15. Also, when he entered the first stage of the Essenic
mysteries as a student of divinity, the Initiate was presented with an axe; that
is the Egyptian hieroglyphic of divinity, called the Nuter; the sign with which
the name of the priest, prophet, or Holy Father, was written. Philo
informs us that the Jewish lawgiver (Moses) had trained into fellowship a large
number of those who bore the name of Essenes. There were both Egyptian and
Jewish communities of the healers preceding those that were known by the
Christian or Gnostic names. Jerome calls the Essenes or Therapeuts "The
monks of the old law," and Evagrius Ponticus speaks of "A monk of great renown
who belonged to a sect of the Gnostics" that dwelt near Alexandria, and were
known by name as the "Christian Gnostics." Clement of Alexandria also claimed to
be a Gnostic Christian. As M. Renan points out, the life of the
so-called Christian hermits was first commenced in Egypt. Ages earlier
there had been Egyptian communities of recluses, both male and female, near the
Serapæum of Memphis, which were supported by the State. In Philo's letter
to Hephæstion, he says the cells of the Egyptian healers are scattered about the
region on the farther shore of Lake Mareotis, in Egypt. Pliny speaks of
the "Ages on ages" during which the Essenes had existed, and Epiphanius, about
the year 400, says,—"The Essenes continue in their first position, and have not
changed at all." Such permanency, of course, demands a long period of induration.
But it is enough for the present argument to know they were extant for at least
150 years before the Christian era. Epiphanius also admits that the
Christians were at first called Therapeutæ and Jesseans, an equivalent name, as
he explains, for the Essenes. They were all healers and doctors. As
the Ushai or Jesseans they were already extant as the healers by name,
independently of any personal Jesus or Joshua the Healer. Also, in Greek
the verb for healing comes from the same root as the name of Jesus. The
Essenes were healers, not because they were the workers of mythical miracles
like Jesus, but because they were profound students of Nature's secret powers;
because they were masters of the science of mental medicine, consciously able to
draw on the spirit-world for healing influences!
16. They had discovered that health was infectious as
well as disease, and that the capacity for receiving and giving, as a medium of
the higher life, depended on conditions that could be cultivated in this life.
Hence the stress they laid on personal purity and its eight stages of
attainment. They were healers by virtue of the Christ within. Again,
we learn from pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite, that the name of healer, i.e.,
the "Essene" or Therapeut, whom Eusebius calls the Curate, was employed in the
early Church to denote the perfected Adept, who had attained the highest
standing, just as it was with the earlier Essenes. The current
expression,—"A Cure of Souls," or a "Curacy," still shows the Christian line of
descent from the pre-Christian healers.
17. We sometimes hear of early Christian Communities in
which there was no private property, but all things were held in common, as we
read in the Book of Acts; although in that case the Twelve would but constitute
a late community. The members of these brotherhoods are said to have dwelt
together in perfect equality; in fact, to have lived according to those
principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity which were formulated as an aim
of the French Revolution! But such societies did not first originate as
the result of establishing "Historic Christianity." They did not come from the
Twelve Apostles, nor from the church at Jerusalem, nor from Rome. They
were founded by the prehistoric Christians, who were primitive enough to
practise their creed instead of merely preaching it as a faith. But such
primitive Christians were quietly at work in various parts of the world, giving
health to the sick, peace to the troubled, freedom to the slave, and knowledge
to the ignorant, long before the existence of Papal or Apostolic Christianity.
18. Philo-Judæus, who was one of the Essenes—but does
not seem to have met with the Gospel Jesus amongst them, or heard of him—Philo
says of them,—"Three things regulate all they learn and do—viz., love to God,
love of virtue, love for man. A proof of the first is the matchless
sanctity of their entire life, their fear of oaths and lies, and the conviction
that God is only the originator of good, never of evil. They show their
love of virtue by their indifference to gain, glory, and pleasure; by their
temperance, perseverance, simplicity, absence of wants, humility, faithfulness,
and straightforwardness. They exemplify their love for their
fellow-creatures by kindness, absence of pretensions, and lastly by the
community of goods." There you have what is termed an Ideal Christian Community!
but this was a Reality, and it was not founded by any personal Jesus; nor was it
a result of his personal teachings being reduced to practice. It preceded,
and was not a birth of, Historic Christianity.
19. Philo tells us that those who retired from the
turmoil of public life to dwell apart in solitary places (these being the
precursors of the monks and nuns in the Roman Church) handed over their private
property to others, and left their parents, brothers and sisters, wife and
child, and gave up all to the mysteries of a dedicated life. This, which
was a common reality with the Essenes, is set forth as an Ideal when the
Canonical Teacher says—"If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his own father
and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life
also, he cannot be my disciple." Here the ideal is perhaps a trifle overdone.
The Essenes did not express or inculcate any such spirit of hatred to all one's
relations. They were no such rabid anti-naturalists as that! The
peaceful Essenic spirit is not present, but rather the spirit of Christian
persecution that lighted the fires of martyrdom.
20. Of those Essenes who moved about in the world
Josephus tells us (he also was an Essene in early life who did not find Jesus),
"They have no one certain city, but many of them dwell in every city; and if any
of them come from other places, what they have lies open for the strangers, just
as if it were their own—for which reason they carry nothing at all with them on
their travels; nor do they buy or sell anything one to another, but every one of
those who have gives to him that requires it."
21. The Essenes were phenomenal Spiritualists, in the
current sense, who walked with open sight, and could never become the blind
followers of the shut-eyed faith of the Historicisers, who banned the "malignant
spirit of free inquiry." As Spiritualists they could not, and did not, believe
in the resurrection of the body, consequently a corporeal resurrection of the
Christ was a fundamental fallacy upon which no Essene or Gnostic could found at
any time. So Anti-Christian were they in the Catholic sense, and so
opposed to the Messiah of pubescence, the Christ according to the flesh, that
they repudiated anointing with oil, and considered it to be a filthy defilement.
Therefore their Christ did not depend upon any external anointing in baptism at
the age of thirty years, and they never could become Christians as the anointed
ones. They were the opponents of all blood-sacrifice, animal or human.
The only sacrifice upheld by them was that of the self. Therefore they did
not accept the bloody sacrifice of the incarnate Son of God when it was
proclaimed. The Essenes as Gnostics held that every man must be his own
Christ. Their Christ came within—the Christ that could not become
historical without. In the minds of those who knew, Historic Christianity
was repudiated beforehand; and it was as impossible after the facts were forged,
the falsehood established, and the dogma was founded, as it was before;
consequently those Gnostics who had been Ante-Christians beforehand were of
necessity Anti-Christians afterwards.
22. The Essenes discarded the Pentateuch and repudiated
most of the later prophets—that is, they rejected the ground-work of the future
redemption of mankind, together with the Fall that never was a fact, and the
fulfilment of prophecy which never could be human. The Essenes and other
Gnostics are constantly charged by the ignorant Christians with turning very
plain matters of fact into fantastical parables. M. Renan talks of
Simon's and Philo's allegorising exegesis as if the ancient fables had been
historic facts which the Gnostics perverted into myths. They were nothing
of the kind. They were fables and allegories from the first—the mysteries
that were taught in parables—and all Gnostics rejected the historic explanation
from beginning to end, because they preserved the true interpretation of the
supposed history. Philo tells us—"They regard the letter of each utterance
as the symbol of that which was concealed from sight, but was revealed in the
hidden meaning"—not by its being rationalised into history. Mythology is,
in its way, as real as mathematics, but its way is not that of the literalisers,
who have made the symbolism false on the face of it to the underlying natural
facts.
23. The fall of man, the temptation of the serpent and
the coming of a Messiah were not historic realities, which the Gnostics
converted into their allegories. It is altogether misleading to speak of
the allegorizing Essenic and Docetic methods of exegesis, as if the Gnosis
consisted in whittling away and attenuating the solid facts of history!
That is merely echoing the language of those who were at war with the Gnostic
interpretation, on behalf of the supposed history by which we have been misled.
The allegories were first; and they are final; the history had no deeper
foundations. The Essenes knew the hidden nature of these representations
and taught it "through symbols, with time-honoured zeal," being in possession of
the books of wisdom and other scriptures than ours. They were the jealous
preservers of the hidden Gnosis, and qualified expounders of the ancient
mysteries by means of the secret tradition. The initiate was sworn to keep
secret the scriptures of the hidden wisdom and not to communicate the Gnosis to
others, not even to a new member except in the same way in which it had been
communicated to him. But it was especially prescribed that the "Doctrine
of the Angels," i.e. of the time cycles, was not to be revealed to any
non-Essene. Unfortunately that secrecy in the mode of communication became
the fatal curse of all the ancient knowledge by allowing the false to come first
in being publicly proclaimed.
24. De Quincy, in his essay on the Essenes, has remarked
on the monstrosity of the omission when the Christians are not even mentioned by
the Jewish historian, Josephus. There is the same portentous omission when
the Essenes are never mentioned in the Christian Gospels. They are there
in fact, though not by name; nor as any new-born brotherhood. They are
only there in disguise, because historic Christianity has drawn the mask over
the features of primitive Christianity. The existence of primitive and
pre-historic Christians is acknowledged in the Gospel according to Mark when
John says,—"Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth
not us." That, as the context shows, was done in the name of the Christ, and,
consequently, such were Christians. According to the account in Matthew,
before ever a disciple had gone forth or could have begun to preach historic
Christianity, there was a widespread secret organization ready to receive and
bound to succour those who were sent out in every city of Israel. Who,
then, are these? They are called "The Worthy." That is, as with the
Essenes, those who have stood the tests, proved faithful, and been found worthy.
According to the canonical account these were the pre-historic Christians,
whether called Essenes or Nazarenes; the worthy, the faithful, or the Brethren
of the Lord. "Peace be with you!" was the greeting or pass-word of the
Essenes, and also of the Nazarenes, to judge from its appearing in the book of
Adam. And in the instructions given to the Seventy (Luke x. 5) it is
said:—"Into whatsoever house ye enter first say, 'Peace be to this house.'"
25. After the resurrection the mystic pass-word is
employed three times over by the risen Christ. And "He who comes with
peace" is the name of the Egyptian God, Iu-em-hept, the son of Atum, who, as the
coming son, is Iu-su = Jesus. We also learn from the Clementine Homilies
(3, 19) that the "Mystery of the Scriptures" which was taught by (or ascribed
to) Christ was identical with that which from the first had been communicated to
those who were the Worthy. We may learn from the Gospel according to Luke
that the "Worthy" were those who had been initiated into the Mysteries of the
Gnosis, and who were "accounted Worthy" to attain that "resurrection from the
dead" in this life, which Paul was not altogether sure about—"those who knew
that they could die no more, being equal to the angels as sons of God and sons
of the Resurrection." Such were then extant as pre-Historic Christians (ch.
xx. 35-6).
26. These communities of the primitive Christians had
long been accustomed to send forth their bare-footed apostles into all the known
world, to inculcate the common brotherhood of man, founded on the common
fatherhood of God, and to labour for the family of the human race. That
had been the practice in the past which was afterwards made a matter of precept
in the present, and a prospect for the future! For this ancient practice
of the Essenes is reduced to the precept of the teacher made personal, who says,
"Go your way; carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes;" and gives instructions
to do the very things the Essenes had always done! The supposed personal
teacher and historic founder of primitive Christianity is made to say to his
followers, "A new commandment I give unto you that ye love one another." But the
statement is entirely untrue. There was nothing new in it! This was
a primary commandment of the Essenic communities who had practised the
principles they professed, and had lived for ages according to the golden rule
which is afterwards laid down as a divine command, a direct revelation from God,
in the Gospels. No matter who the plagiarist may be, the teaching now held
to be divine was drawn from older human sources, and palmed off under false
pretensions. Josephus declares in his account of the Essenes, that
"Whatever they say is firmer than an oath; but swearing is entirely avoided by
them. They consider it worse than perjury." And such is the original
revelation in the Gospel. But I was sorry to find, in the Clementine
Homilies, that the same speaker breaks the Essenic pledge, for it is there
written,—"And Christ said (with an oath), Verily I say unto you, unless ye be
born again of the water of life, ye cannot enter in the kingdom of heaven." Thus
we have an Essene who swears as well as tipples and plays the part of Bacchus.
Again, Jesus is presented as the original revealer of the mysteries and author
of the Gnosis. He says to his disciples,—"It is given you to know the
mysteries of heaven;" but the Essenic Communities always had been composed of
those who were in possession of the Gnosis, and had already obtained and
sacredly preserved the knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven,
which they had taught only in parables.
27. The divine morality inculcated in the Sayings
ascribed to Jesus had been completely forestalled by the Essenes in their lives
and works, their individual characters, common practices, and societary
conditions. His words are but a later echo of their very human deeds.
We are told that Jesus taught mankind to pray,—"Thy kingdom come, thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven." But this was exactly what the pre-historic
Christians had been working out in life. They strove to found the kingdom
there and then, and realise the world to come in this. Everything noble
and ennobling, unselfish and spiritual, in the ethics of Jesus, or rather in the
sayings assigned to him as a teacher of men, had been anticipated by the
Egyptians, the Essenes, and the primitive Christians of the Gnostic religion.
Nothing new remained to be inculcated by the Gospel of the new teacher, who is
merely made to repeat the old sayings with a pretentious air of supernatural
authority; the result being that the true sayings of old are, of necessity,
conveyed to later times in a delusive manner. The commandments are not
new. Life and immortality were not brought to light by any personal Jesus,
but by the Christ of the Gnosis. The most important proclamation assigned
to Jesus turned out to be false. The kingdom of God was not at hand; the
world was not nearing its end; the catastrophe foretold never occurred; the
second coming was no more actual than the first; the lost sheep of Israel are
not yet saved. And the supposed Divine Truth in very person remains
exposed as the genuine false prophet to this day, or rather as the mere
mouthpiece of the most ignorant beliefs of that day.
28. It may be said more justly of Historic Christianity,
than of anything else within the compass of my knowledge, that what is true in
it was not new, and that which was new in it is not true! It is not new,
because it represents the ancient Mythos under an intended disguise. It is
not true, because it is not a genuine history. The supposed human
original, set forth in the Gospels, is but the mundane shadow of the Gnostic
Christ.
29. Christianity began as Gnosticism, refaced with
falsehoods concerning a series of facts alleged to have been historical, but
which are demonstrably mythical. By which I do not mean mythical as
exaggerations or perversions of historic truth, but belonging to the pre-extant
Mythos. Of course, the setting-up of this vast falsehood made all truth a
blasphemy. "The Gnostics," says Irenæus, "have no gospel which is not full
of blasphemy." Their crime was that they denied the Christ carnalized, and they
were denounced as being Anti-Christian, because they were Ante-Christian!
30. We are told in the Book of Acts that the name of the
Christiani was first given at Antioch; but so late as the year 200 A.D. no
canonical New Testament was known at Antioch, the alleged birth-place of the
Christian name. There was no special reason why "the disciples" should
first have been named as Christians at Antioch, except that this was a great
centre of the Gnostic Christians, who were previously identified with the
teachings of the mage Simon of Samaria. Simon had taught the people of
Antioch for a "long time" before, and had been accepted by them "from the least
to the greatest" (Acts). Simon was the great Anti-Christ in the eyes of
the founders of the belief in Historic Christianity, for whom the Ante-Christ
was always, and everywhere, the Anti-Christ; and it was necessary to account for
there being Christians, other, and earlier, than the believers in a carnalized
Christ. This was clumsily attempted in the "Acts," by making Simon become
a baptised convert to the new superstition, and then back-sliding—a common mode
of accounting for Gnostic heretics, but false on the face of it. Irenæus
shall furnish us with a crucial instance of the orthodox lying on this subject.
He tells us that the Gnostics, such as those who followed Valentinus and Marcion,
in the second century, had no existence before these later teachers (B.
III. ch. 4, 3); whereas he had already stated in his first book,
that Simon of Samaria was the first and foremost of all the founders of
Gnosticism, and the father of all its heresies; and he was a century earlier.
Simon had brought in the Gnosis from Alexandria. He taught his doctrines,
and wrought his wonders long anterior to the apostles of the later creed.
Epiphanius acknowledges that all the heretical forms of Christianity were
derived from the Pagan Mythology—that is, they were survivals of the original
pre-historic Gnostic religion.
31. It is obvious that the Roman Church remained Gnostic
at the beginning of the second century, and for some time afterwards.
Marcion, the great Gnostic, did not separate from it until about the year 136
A.D. Tatian did not break with it until long after that. In each
case the cause of quarrel was the same. They left the Church that was
setting up the fraud of Historic Christianity. They left it as Gnostic
Christians, who were anathematised as heretics, because they rejected the Christ
made flesh and the new foundations of religion in a spurious Jewish history.
32. The Church in Jerusalem, at the head of which was
James, called the "brother of the Lord," was one of the Essenic or Therapeutic
communities that were founded by the Gnostic Nazarenes. James was reputed
to have been a follower of Joshua, the Nazarene—i.e., Ben Pandira—who was
converted more or less into the later Jesus of Nazareth. The Jewish
legends show that he was of the Nazarene sect. But no Nazarene brotherhood
could have been founded on any supposed Jesus of Nazareth. They also show
that James was a Nazarene of the ancient ascetic type—one of those who were set
apart and consecrated from the mother's womb—one who never shaved or cut his
hair, who drank neither wine nor strong drink, nor ate of any animal food; he
would not anoint himself with oil, nor wear woollen garments. Bishop
Lightfoot admits that the members of the early Church at Jerusalem were
Gnostics, like the other Essenes: only, for him, they were heretics. He
cannot make out the hiatus, which was not then filled in with the Gospel
history.
33. Now, whether it be called Christian or
pre-Christian, the Gospel of James is good, as far as it goes. It was
undoubtedly the same Gospel of the Essenes that opened the poor man's door to
heaven. It teaches their doctrines in their own language, and without the
Historic apparatus. It puts certain things which have been disestablished
on their original foothold. In the Lord's Prayer we are taught to ask the
Divine Father not to lead us, his children, into temptation. But James
declares emphatically that "no man should say he is tempted of God, for God
cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man." The Epistle of
James is of supreme importance.
34. Eusebius, the suspected forger and falsifier, when
he made his fatal admission, must have known that the Scriptures of the Essenes
had been utilised as ground-work for the Epistles and the later Canonical
history. He claims the Essenes themselves as Christians when he tells us
that Philo "describes with the closest accuracy the lives of our ascetics"—that
is, of the Therapeutæ. He confesses "it is highly probable that the
ancient commentaries, which Philo says they have, are the very gospels and
writings of the apostles, and probably some expositions of the ancient prophets,
such as are contained in the Epistle to the Hebrews and many other of Paul's
epistles." He might have said, including the Ebionite Epistle of James, only
that was to be denounced as spurious. But it is impossible to claim the
Essenic Scriptures as being identical with the Canonical records, without, at
the same time, admitting their pre-historic existence, their non-historical
nature, and their anti-historical testimony. They could only be the same
in the time of Eusebius by the non-historical having been falsely converted into
the historical. This was what had been done, and that alone will explain
why the earliest scriptures, which ought to have contained the historical
record, have not been preserved, but were got rid of altogether when the Council
of Nice "suppressed all the devices of the heretics."
35. I have previously shown that the real root of the
whole matter can be delved down to and identified in the mythology and mysteries
of Egypt. When we see the Child-Horus emerging from the lily-lotus, or
holding the forefinger to his mouth, as portrayed upon the Gnostic stones and in
the Catacombs of Rome, absolutely the same as on the Egyptian monuments, we know
that it is the identical divinity, no matter how it came to represent the
Christian Christ. But identification is more difficult when the mythical
type has passed into the more mystical phase. That is, the portraits of
deities are more recognisable than the hidden doctrines and veiled features of
the Gnosis. Yet, the Egyptian doctrines were as surely continued by the
Gnostics and the Christians as the personal likenesses of Egyptian deities were
reproduced by Gnostic Art in Rome. And by aid of the Gnosis, we can
recover much that has been dislimned and made indefinite in the doctrinal stage,
to be left as an unfathomable mystery! For example, the Child-Horus, with
finger to mouth, wherever found, indicates the divine Word or Logos in a
particular way. He was the child of the Virgin mother alone, and always
remained the child. He, therefore, was not the True Voice, or Voice of
Truth, only the Imperfect Word, the Inarticulate Discourse, as Plutarch calls
the first Horus. But, just as the voice of the boy changes and becomes
manly at puberty, so in his second or virile character Horus, as representative
of the Father, becomes a True Voice, and is the "Word of Truth" personified!
In this character he was designated Har-Makheru, i.e., Horus, the "Word of
Truth," from Ma, Truth; Kheru, the Word. In the Egyptian texts the Word of
Horus is Truth; the function confided to him by the Father! He vanquishes
his enemies with the Word of Truth. It is said of the Osirified deceased,
He goes forth with the Word of Truth. To make the Truth by means of the
Word is synonymous with the giving of life here or hereafter. In a prayer
to the Pharaoh it is said, "Grant us breath by the gift which is in thee of the
'Word of Truth.'" Moreover, men conquer their sins by means of this "Word of
Truth" within, the Makheru conferred on them by the Deity!
36. This title of Makheru, the Word of Truth, was
translated the Justified by Dr. Birch, which M. Pierret says is
"unfortunate." But there is a Christian sense in which that is a correct
rendering. With the Egyptians, the Christians (oiv crhstoiv), the faithful
Departed, were actually called by this title of Makheru or the Justified.
They were those who always had been saved by the "Word-of-Truth!" in Egypt long
Ages before the Christian Era!
37. Now, let us return for a moment to the Epistle of
James canonised in the New Testament, and called by Luther "an Epistle of
Straw," because it had not a grain of Historic Christianity in it. James
was the head of the Church in Jerusalem. He was titled a brother of the
Lord—no doubt in relation to the Nazarite Brotherhood; the Lord being a typical
character like Horus, Mana, or Elias, who was ignorantly assumed by the
literalizers of legends to have been a Judean peasant named Jesus or Joshua.
Hence the imposition of certain family details in the Canonical Gospels, which
will be traced hereafter. James is believed to have died about A.D.
60. But in the whole seven chapters of this Epistle of James, excepting an
opening salutation, there is not one single sign of Historic Christianity!
It recognises no Jesus of Nazareth, and it announces no salvation through the
atoning blood, the death, resurrection and ascension of a personal Christ.
38. Nothing whatever begins with or is based on the
history which was afterwards made canonical, nor on the Christ that was
localized at a later stage of development. Everything is absent that was
and still is essential to the physical faith. Instead, we find the exact
opposite of all that was made historic in the Gospels. The doctrine of
salvation is Gnostic, Essenic and Egyptian. Salvation, according to James,
cometh of the "Word of Truth." Speaking of the "Father of Lights" (Lord of
Lights being a title of Horus) he says:—"Of his own will begat he us with the
'Word of Truth' that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures."
"Wherefore receive ye with meekness the implanted Word which is able to save
your souls." The transaction is direct between the divine father and the human
soul. The Christ within is the only saviour! The total teaching of
the Epistle of James is based on this ancient Egyptian Word of Truth; the
implanted Word which confers the Makheru on man, which never could be
represented by an historical Christ. The "Word of Truth" as rendered by
James is the best possible translation of the Egyptian "Ma-Kheru." Moreover, the
context shows that the Word of Truth is the Egyptian Makheru by the exhortation,
"Be ye doers of the Word," which renders good Egyptian doctrine in perfect
accordance with exact Egyptian phraseology.
39. Just as Horus Makheru was the Word of Truth; or that
which was said was fulfilled indeed, so men are re-begotten in the divine
likeness by the Word of Truth; and as livers or doers of that Word they are to
be saved—as it was taught in Egypt thousands of years previously without the
Word of Truth becoming incarnate in Horus as a human person. This Word of
Truth, the Christ of James and Paul, which alone was able to save, is identical
with that made known aforetime, which needed not to be brought down from heaven
for any personal incarnation; needed not to be brought up from the dead by any
physical resurrection; needed not to be sent from over the sea, because, as was
said by the Mosaic mouthpiece of Egypt's Wisdom, "that Word is in thy heart that
thou mayest do it!" And this is the position re-occupied; this is the teaching
re-echoed by Paul, in whose mouth the Word of Truth becomes doubly anti-historic
(cf. Deut. xxx. 12-14, with Romans x. 6, 7).
40. There is also a reference to the "Word of Truth" in
Paul's Epistle to Timothy, which still further identifies the Makheru. The
word Ma, for that which is true, originally means to hold out straight before
one. And Paul exhorts Timothy, as a workman, to hold a straight course
according to the Ma-kheru, or "Word of Truth." This True Voice or Word of Truth
is, I take it, that living and abiding voice which is appealed to by Papias as
evidence for his Christ, who was the Lord of the Logia; and, if so, his
testimony thus far does not make for, but tends to invalidate, the history.
Of course, he is supposed to mean the voice of contemporaries when he decries
what would be the more certain voice of written records; but that is not what he
means. He prefers, in reality, the traditions of the oral wisdom, and may
be claimed as another witness for the non-Historical Christ. Also, the
epistle to Diognetus, supposed to have been written by Marcion, contains the
same doctrine as the epistle of James. Speaking of the Gnostic Christians,
he says:—"They are put to death and they come to life again," and the reason of
this is that "God the Invisible hath himself from Heaven planted the truth and
the holy incomprehensible Word and established him in their hearts." This
epistle of James is indefinitely older than the Canonical history. James
is believed to have died about the year 60 of our era, and in this, one of the
earliest utterances of the Church, instead of the History, we find the divine
Makheru of the Egyptian mythos in a mystical and doctrinal phase.
41. Instead of an original gospel based on the life,
character, and teachings of his own human brother, James presents us with the
translated Word-of-truth—the Horus of Egypt, and the Christ of the Gnostics, who
could not become historical. This beginning, then, is doctrinal, and the
doctrine, like the portrait, is Egyptian. The same mythos was visibly
continued in the Gnostic phase. In the Gospels, which were being compiled
at least one hundred years later, we find this same Word of Truth, which was
personated by Horus-Makheru and by Iu-em-hept in Egypt some 3,000 years earlier,
is now represented in a personal character as Jesus the Christ.
42. This Word of Truth, which is doctrinal and
non-historical, according to James, is the Word of Truth made flesh according to
John. Also, the Christ is the Horus continued in his two characters.
Hence the Word, or Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, is to come
as the mystic Paraclete who shall testify to the reality of an historic Jesus.
43. These two characters, as the Sayer and Doer,
constitute the double foundation of the Christ in the other Gospels. The
Christ of Matthew is chiefly the Sayer. The Christ of Luke is mainly the
Doer. He is mighty in deed and word! He is the Healer or Doer with
the Word. "What a Word is this"! exclaim the multitude, who are
amazed at the miracles. Both characters had been blended in one as
Horus-Makheru, the Word of Truth, who was mythical in Egypt, and who is mythical
in the teaching of James before the Word was described as being made flesh, to
become an historical personage in the later Gospel according to John. This
is the fatal kind of fact that turns the canonical history into fiction, and
brands the falsifiers full in the face. There is no room left here for any
historic fulfilment, and no need of any personal Savior or vicarious victim.
The Word of Truth is the Spirit of God, the Begetter of Souls, the Christ
within, the Bringer of Immortality to Man, as it is in the teaching of Hermes,
of Zarathustra, of Philo, and of Paul, as well as James; as it was in Egypt, in
Chaldea, in India, in all the Mysteries, no matter where the Gnosis or Kabalah
may be found. In presence of the Gnosis, here as elsewhere, there is no
place, no significance, in the alleged facts of a human history, lived for us by
a carnalized Christ. And yet such a history was made out, and we are now
able to get a glimpse of the forgers engaged in the process of making it out!
44. Our Canonical Gospels are a Palimpsest, with one
writing so elaborated over another that the first is almost crossed out, and the
rest are thoroughly confused. Yet, the whole of them have to be seen
through before the matter can be really read. By holding this Palimpsest
up to the light, and looking at it long and closely, we can trace the large
outline, the water-mark, of the Egyptian mythos, with its virgin-mother, who was
Hathor-Meri—the Madonna—its child-Christ of 12 years, and the virile adult of 30
years, who was Horus, the anointed son of that Father in heaven whom he came to
reveal. This is the earliest and most fundamental of the nuclei.
Next we find a collection of Sayings as the nucleus of the Gospel of Matthew.
These sayings were attributed to the Lord, and that Lord is supposed to have
been a Judean peasant, as the original author! It is noticeable, though,
that the title of the Lord is not once applied to Jesus by Matthew in the
earth-life, but after the resurrection he is called the "Lord." Now, it is well
known to scholars that the Gospel according to Luke is based upon, or concocted,
with suitable alterations, from an earlier "Gospel of the Lord." That is, the
latest gospel according to the Gnostics, preceded the earliest of those that
were made canonical. This was called the "Gospel of the Lord"—the kurios—and
it is commonly referred to as the gospel of Marcion, the great Gnostic.
But the Lord, as known to the Gnostics, was not a character that could become
historical. As Irenæus declares, according to no one gospel of the
heretics could the Christ become flesh; consequently the gospel of Marcion, who
was the arch-heretic and very Anti-Christ of the second century, in the sight of
the incipient Catholic Church, could not have been a gospel of the Christ made
historical; and we have now the means of proving that it was not. When
once we know that the origins were mythical, that the Christ was mystical, and
the teachings in the mysteries were typical, we shall be able to utilise the
gospel of Marcion as a connecting link between the Egyptian Mythos, the epistle
of the Word of Truth, and the canonical history according to Luke.
45. "The Lord" had been Horus by name in Egypt, and the
Greek kuriou, or kurios, agrees with the Egyptian kheru, for the Word, Voice, or
Logos, as in Ma-kheru (earlier, Ma-khuru). This was the Lord continued as
the Gnostic manifestor, their Horus, or Christ. Marcion assigned his
gospel to the Christ, in the same way that the Egyptian Ritual is ascribed to
Hermes. Later on, the sayings of the Lord were also called the writings,
as we see by pseudo-Dionysius, who charges the Gnostics with having falsified
the Writings of the Lord.
46. Marcion claimed that his was the one true Gospel—the
one—and he pointed to the multiplicity of the Catholic Gospels, full as they
were of discrepancies, in proof that they could not be genuine. In the
fourth century even, there were as many different gospels as texts. As
transmitted to us by the Christian copyists, who were nothing if not
historicisers, Marcion's gospel opens with the statement, that "In the fifteenth
year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate ruling in Judea, Jesus came
down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee," or "into Judea," as reported by Irenæus.
47. Tertullian says,—"According to the gospel of Marcion,
in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, Christ Jesus deigned to emanate from heaven,
a salutary spirit." But, he also says, according to this "Great Anti-Christian,"
the Christ was a phantom, who appeared suddenly at the synagogue of Capernaum in
the likeness of a full-grown man for the purpose of protesting against the law
and the prophets! It would be difficult to date the descent of a phantom
Christ, and impossible to date the descent of the Gnostic Christ at all, except
as Lord of the æon in relation to an astronomical period! But it is
certain that the Lord or Christ of Marcion is entirely non-historical. He
has no genealogy or Jewish line of descent; no earthly mother, no father, no
mundane birthplace or human birth. The Gnostic nature of this Christ is
further and fully corroborated by both Irenæus and Tertullian. Clearly
then nothing can be made of the statement on behalf of the Canonical history.
This statement in Marcion's gospel takes the place of the baptism and descent of
the holy spirit in Luke's; and this same date is quoted by Luke for the time
when the Word of God came to John in the wilderness, which is followed by the
baptism of Jesus and the transformation into the Christ or Horus of 30 years,
whose unpronounceable name contained 30 letters, according to the Gnosis.
Such a beginning is entirely unhistorical, and applicable solely to the mythical
Christ, who became the virile adult, the anointed son of the father at 30 years
of age. Of course Christian apologists like Irenæus and Tertullian
maintained that Marcion had mutilated their version of Luke; and they managed to
get rid of the "Gospel of the Lord," and to suppress the writings of Marcion in
proof to save us the trouble of judging for ourselves. But that was only
another Christian lie, as we have now the means of knowing. The Gnostics
were not the falsifiers of the historic scriptures; it was not they who had
anything to falsify! Hitherto the forgers and falsifiers have been
believed, and now the accusers and accused are about to change places in the
witness-box and the dock. Everywhere the Gnosis was first; the history was
last. You are only asked to take this view tentatively, and then let us
watch the process and see how the compilers and forgers of our Luke put in the
touches by which the mythos was rationalized and the human history was added to
the Gnostic "Gospel of the Lord." The "Sayings of the Lord" were first, and they
were not personal. The "Gospel of the Lord" was first, and the Lord was
not historical.
48. The Jesus of Marcion like the Jesus of Esdras, of
Paul, and other Gnostics, is no Jesus of Nazareth. This title has been
added by Luke. Marcion's Jesus being mythical and not historical, he has
no Jewish father and mother; consequently we find the test question:—"Is not
this Joseph's son? " does not appear in the "Gospel of the Lord." It has
been added by Luke. Again, the statement, "there came to him his mother
and brethren; and they could not get at him for the crowd" (Luke viii. 9),
is not to be found in Marcion's gospel; it has been added by Luke. And for
what? but to manufacture and make out that human history which was at last
believed in, but which had no place in any gospel according to the Gnostics or
true primitive Christians! It can be proved how passage after passage has
been added to the earlier gospel, in the course of manufacturing the later
history. For example, the mourning over Jerusalem (Luke xiii. 29-35)
is taken verbatim from the 2nd Esdras (i. 28-33) without acknowledgment,
and the words previously uttered by the "Almighty Lord" are here assigned to
Jesus as the original speaker. The account of Pilate's shedding the blood
of the Galileans and mingling it with their sacrifices (Luke xiii. 1) has
been added by some one so ignorant of Hebrew history, that he has ascribed to
Pilate an act which was committed when Quirinus was governor, twenty-four years
earlier than the alleged appearance of Jesus. Again, the anti-Nazarene,
anti-Gnostic passage about the publicans being baptised with water, and the Son
of Man coming eating and drinking as a glutton and a wine-bibber, has been
added.
49. In the scene on the Mount of Transfiguration, which
is purely mythical, and therefore common to Osiris, Buddha, and Zarathustra, we
are witness to the forging of another historical nexus in the statement that
"Moses and Elijah appeared in glory and spake of his decease which he was about
to accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke ix. 31). This passage does not
appear in the "Gospel of the Lord." Nor does the statement (Luke xviii.
31-34), "And he took unto him the Twelve, and said unto them, 'Behold, we go up
to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets shall be
accomplished by the Son of Man.'" This mode of making out the history in the New
Testament by fulfilment of prophecy found in the Old was not adopted by the
compilers of Marcion's "Gospel of the Lord." The story of the colt and the
riding into Jerusalem in triumph, to turn all the Jews out of their sacred Stock
Exchange, are additions to the earlier Gospel! In the scene of the Last
Supper almost the whole of the text is missing from Marcion's Gospel.
Twelve verses of Luke 22 have been added!
50. In Marcion's Gospel there is no distribution of the
Paschal Cup amongst the disciples; no promise is given that the Apostles shall
eat and drink and judge the twelve tribes of Israel in the kingdom of Christ;
nor is there any appointment made with the dying thief on the Cross to meet him
that day in Paradise! These have been added. Now, this is no mere
matter of a difference in doctrine! We are witnessing the very forgery of
the human foundations and the insertion of the manufactured facts upon which the
history was established.
51. The Primitive Christiani, the so-called heretics,
who preceded the historic Christians, were all of them spiritualists in the
modern sense.
52. In the sight of Bishop Lightfoot the Gnostic
Spiritualism was "a shadowy mysticism which loses itself in the contemplation of
an unseen world." This he looks upon as the false teaching and the heresy of the
Gnostics! He knows nothing of any underlying natural verities, or
phenomenal facts; only sees a refining, a mysticising and a whittling away of
the Gospel histories.
53. But as practical Spiritualists, the Essenes had
eight stages in the evolution of perfect personal purity and the attainment of
the highest spiritual powers:—
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