From:    Ammond Shadowcraft 
To:      All Members                              Msg #128, 04-Apr-88 10:44edt
Subject: Pagan Christs

                         The Sacrifical God man

        How did the Christian mythos arise? Where did it come from?

        The Christian myth is almost totally Pagan in origin. I used to
    think that anything outside the Judeo/Christian/Moslem Belief System or
    worldview was Pagan. Such is not the case.

        The two main features of the CBS are the Eucharist and Sacrifice of
    a God man. These two features were well known and well loved by Pagan
    mystery cults centuries before the Christian Cults intergrated them
    into the Gospels.

        The Eucharist goes way back into history and is based upon the
    ritual consumption of the God man. Osiris, Dionysus, Attis and many
    others were ritually consumed. The practice dates back to prehistory
    when a human sacrifice was identified with the God (perhaps a
    Vegetative God) and was sacrificed and eaten. Over the ages human
    sacrifice was found detestable. Animals were then substituted and
    sacrificed as the ritual identifier of the God which was then followed
    by grain offerings, breads shaped into the form of the God, sometimes
    in the shapes of natural items (sun, moon, etc.).

        The mythos of the Jewish Christ integrated this practice into it's
    mysteries. There is strong reason for this. For some 200 plus years
    before the time recorded for Jesus the Greeks and their mystery cults
    invaded and changed Israel for all time. A war was instituted to
    diminish or wipeout the Hellenizing influence. Part of the Hellenizing
    influence was an effort to update or change the Jewish religion to
    something more applicable to the times. After the Maccabbes War the
    Hellenizing cultist were driven underground; right to the heart of the
    Jewish mystical culture. Hence the Greek influence upon the myth of
    Jesus.

        The sacrifice of the God man (Jesus, Attis, Adonis, Osiris) was a
    well known and well loved feature also. In fact it was necessary to
    have a willing sacrifice before a Eucharist could be performed. When
    the sacrifice was not willing the legs and sometimes arms of the
    sacrifice were broken to make it look like the sacrifice was willing
    (not struggling against the sacrificers). Jesus was a willing
    sacrifice.
        Images of Attis (Tammuz/Dummuzi) were nailed or impaled upon a pine
    tree. The Jews knew this and wrote "Cursed is he who hangs upon a
    tree." A goat was substituted for a boy in sacrifice to Dionysus at
    Potniae and a hart for a virgin at Laodicea. King Athamas had been
    called upon to sacrifice his first born son by the Delphic Oracle,
    Melenloas sacrificed two children in Egypt when stayed by contrary
    winds; three Persian boys were offered up at the battle of Salamis. It
    was only in the time of Hadrian that the annual human sacrifice to Zeus
    was abolished at Salamis in Cyprus. The God man Jesus was hung upon a
    tree; he was also the lamb of God. As such the sacrifice and Eucharist of
    the God man Jesus is purely Pagan in origin.

        Part of the older Pagan sacrifices was in the King sacrificing his
    only begotten son. Jesus was the only begotten son of the King of
    Israel, sacrificed to take away the sins of the world. This practice
    was overturned in the myth of Abraham and Issac when it was found
    detestable and injurious to the tribe or kingdom. Yet the God man Jesus
    was sacrificed in the flesh. This was done to appeal to the underground
    Greek mystery cults who had much in common with the Jewish Christian
    Cultist.

        "During centuries of this evolution, the Jewish people tasted many
    times the bitterness of despair and the profound doubt denounced by the
    last of the prophets. In periods when many went openly over to
    Hellenism, it could not be but the the ancient rites of the Semitic
    race were revived, as some are declared to have been in earlier times
    of trouble. Among the rites of expiation and propititiation, none stood
    traditionally higher than the sacrifice of the king, or the king's son.
    The Jews saw such an act performed for them, as it were, when the
    Romans under Anthony, at Herod's wish, scourged, crucified [lit. bound
    to stake], and beheaded Antigonous, the last of the Asmonean priest
    kings in 37 B.C." _Pagan_Christs_ page 44,45 by J. M. Robertson

        The mode of sacrifice was predetermined by previous Pagan doctrine.
    The type of sacrifice was also predetermined by Pagan doctrine. Both
    the sacrifice of the king, and the king's son were incorporated into
    the Gospel myth. The God man Jesus is both the King of the Jews and the
    son of God, the king of Israel.

        As stated before the sacrifice of the king or king's son was found
    injurious to the state. Before animal and grain sacrifices, criminals
    and prisoners of war were substituted. Yet the criminal had to be
    identified with the king. This was done by putting royal robes on the
    sacrifice and parading the sacrifice around, calling it the king.
        "The number three was of mystic significance in many parts of the
    East. The Dravidians of India sacrificed three victims to the Sun-god.
    In western as in eastern Asia, the number three would have its votaries
    in respect of trinitartian concepts as well as the primary notions of
    'the heavens, the earth, and the underworld.' Traditionally, the Syrian
    rite called for a royal victim. The substitution of a criminal for the
    king or kings son was repugnet, however, to the higher doctrine that
    the victim be unblemished. To solve this problem one of the malefactors
    was distinguished from the other criminals by a ritual of mock-crowning
    and robing in the spirit of 'sympathetic magic'. By parading him as
    king, and calling the others what indeed they were, it was possible to
    attain the semblence of a truly august sacrifice." _Pagan_Christs_, by
    J.M. Robertson page 45

        There is nothing in this mythos that did not originate in other
    cultures.

        "We can only conclude that the death ritual of the Christian creed
    was framed in a pagan environment and embodies some of the most
    widespread ideas of Pagan religion. the two aspects in which the
    historic Christ is typically presented to his worshipers, those of his
    infancy and death, are typically Pagan." _Pagan_Christs_ by J.M
    Roberts, page 52.

        What about the man Jesus then? Was he divine? Did he exist? Is/was
    he the Savior?

        Most, if not all, of the Christian Belief System is Pagan in
    origin.  It is indeed hard to force oneself to believe that Jesus is
    the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God when such titles were readily
    copied from Pagan doctrine. Perhaps the only item not borrowed from
    Pagan sources was the Messiah concept. That, of course, was taken from
    the Jewish hysteria of the time. In the siege of Jerusalem in 72 C.E.
    there were some 18 Messiahs inside Jerusalem alone. Neither the God man
    Jesus nor the self proclaimed militant messiahs saved Jerusalem. Such
    was the measure of hysterical superstition upon the nation of Israel.
        "There is not a conception associated with Christ that is not
    common to some or all of the Savior cults of antiquity. The title
    Savior was given in Judaism to Yahweh; among the Greeks to Zeus,
    Heilos, Artemis, Dionysus, Hercales, the Dioscurui, Ceybele and
    Aesculapius. It is the essential conception of Osiris. So, too, Osiris
    taketh away sin, is the judge of the dead and of the last judgment.
    Dionysus, the Lord of the UnderWorld and primarily a god of feasting
    ('the Son of Man commeth eating and drinking'), comes to be conceived
    as the Soul of the World and the inspirer of chastity and self
    purification. [J. M. Robertson may be referring to Attis here.] From the
    Mysteries of Dionysus and Isis comes the proclamation of the easy
    'yoke'. Christ not only works the Dionysiac miracle, but calls himself
    the 'true vine.'"

        "Like Christ, and like Adonis and Attis, Osiris and Dionysus also
    suffer and die and rise again. To become one with them is the mystical
    passion of their worshippers. They are all alike in that their
    mysteries give immortality. From Mithraism Christ takes the symbolic
    keys of heaven and hell and assumes the function of the virgin-born
    Saoshyant, the destroyer of the Evil One. Like Mithra, Merodach, and
    the Egyptian Khousu, he is the Mediator; like Khousu, Horus and
    Merodach, he is one of a trinity, like Horus he is grouped with a
    Divine Mother; like Khousu he is joined to the Logos; and like Merodach
    he is associated with the Holy Spirit, one of whose symbols is fire."

        "In fundamentals, therefore, Christism is but paganism reshaped. It
    is only the economic and doctrinal evolution of the system--the first
    determined by Jewish practice and Roman environment, the second by Greek
    thought--that constitutes new phenomena in religious history." _Pagan_
    _Christs_ by J.M. Robertson pages 52,53

        No religion develops in a vacuum. All religions are influenced not
    only by it's predecessors but by the contemporaries of the time also.
    Such is the nature of Christism yesterday and today.

        Now about Jesus the man, did he exist? I think not. All the
    teaching of Jesus can be attributed to other sources and grafted over
    the Gospel myth. Nothing he said was substantially different in any way
    from previous sayings. Jesus was not a man but a contrived myth.

        "The Christian myth grew by absorbing details from pagan cults. The
    birth story is similar to many nativity myths in the pagan world. The
    Christ had to have a Virgin for a mother. Like the image of the
    child-god in the cult of Dionysus, he was pictured in swaddling clothes
    in a basket manger. He was born in a stable like Horus--the stable
    temple of the Virgin Goddess, Isis, Queen of Heaven. Again , like
    Dionysus, he turned water into wine, like Aesculapius, he raised men
    from the dead and gave sight to the blind; and like Attis and Adonis,
    he is mourned and rejoiced over by women. His resurrection took place,
    like that of Mithra, from a rock tomb."

        The man Jesus did not exist. There are however sources that speak
    of others seeing him. These were secondhand sources. No direct
    observations were made. At one time or another we have all had a vision
    of Deity in our minds. Such is the sight of Jesus, a mental image.

        What of the Gospels then? They are passion plays designed to be
    read or acted out in front of an audience. Passion plays were a common
    feature of pagan religion. Looking at the Gospels themselves one finds
    a chopply written, scene by scene, display of the life of the God man.
    Only the important aspects of his life are described. The minor events
    and influences of the life of Jesus are not recorded, which leaves one
    to think that the Gospels are indeed a play.

        "When we turn from the reputed teaching of Jesus to the story of
    his career, the presumption is that it has a factual basis is so
    slender as to be negligible. The Church found it so difficult to settle
    the date of its alleged founder's birth that the Christian era was made
    to begin some years before the year which chronologists latter inferred
    on the strength of other documents. The nativity was placed at the
    winter solstice, thus coinciding with the birthday of the Sun-god. And
    the date for the crucifiction was made to vary from year to year to
    conform to the astronomical principle which fixed the Jewish Passover.
    [The Passover is moon based, an already familiar pagan method of
    cyclic, monthly dating.] In between the birth and death of Jesus, there
    is an almost total absence of information except about the brief period
    of his ministry. Of his life between the ages of twelve and thirty we
    know nothing. There are not even any myths. It is impossible to
    establish with any accuracy the duration of the ministry from the
    Gospels. According to the tradition it lasted one year, which suggests
    that it was either based on the formula 'the acceptable year of the
    Lord', or on the myth of the Sun-god." _Pagan_Christs_ by J.M.
    Robertson, page 68

                    The Quest for the Historical Jesus

  "...It is only in comparitively modern times that the possibility was
 considered that Jesus does not belong to history at all. Those who come
across this idea for the first time are naturally startled by it. In fact the
suspicion that Jesus might be as mythical as other ancient saviors as Osiris,
Mithra and Krishna arose as a result of a serious effort to discover his real
voice and actions. the most scrupulous of analysis of the texts failed to
reveal a convincing picture of an authentic person."
_Pagan_Christs_, page 63

  Well such is what J.M. Robertson claims.

  "Modern biblical critics freely admit that some of the Gospel narritive
 must be fiction. We know now that much of it was composed well after the
events it purports to describe. Comparitive religion has drawn attention to
close pagan parallels--to the essential features of the story--the virgin
birth, the sacrifical death and resurrection. The same is true of the rites of
baptism and sacramental communion. Many critics still feel, however, that
these are accretions which, together with, togehter with the miracles, can be
safely shed without injury to a nucleus if historical fact. The argue that
pagan Gods may have some of the attributes of Jesus, and although they may
have been regarded as law givers and teachers, they did not leave behind a
coherent and profound teaching. Apollo, Osiris and the rest seem, therefore,
to be obviously mythical, whereas Buddha and Jesus are not. The teachings of
each of the latter, it is felt, bear the unmistakable of a single, unique
mind. Such a doctrine could not have formed itself spontaneously."
_Pagan_Christs_, page 64.

 The rite of baptism has already been discussed in this topic. Robertson
 contends that the rite of baptism superceeded the rite of circumsicion. This
makes sense to me. It is much less painful and physically safer to undergo
ritual initiation through baptism by water than by ritual circumcision. The
gentile Christists would contend for this; and as the Jewish Christists died
baptism did replace circumcision as a physical sign of new spiritual being.

 "We shall consider the case of Buddha later. First let us look at the main
 objections to this view that the existence of a body of teaching is
overwhelming evidence of the existence of an historical teacher. The earliest
Christian documents are ascribed to Paul. These epistles were written long
before the canonical gospels were put together and accepted by the Church. The
older protions, however, tell us nothing about the life of Jesus. The silence
of paul is remarkable if indeed he was familiar with the Jesuine biography.
Secondly, the unity of teaching, which it is said, would show it to have been
the work of one mind is conspicuously absent. So far from displaying
coherence, the ethical precepts are frequently obscure and contradictory. So
far from being original, many of the sayings are merely quotations from Hebrew
literature, and some have pagan parallels. As for the Sermon on the Mount, it
is no more than a patchwork of utterances found in the Old Testament."
_Pagan_Christs_ pg. 64

 I was suprised to hear that some of the Epistles of Paul are the earliest
 of the Christian writings. Anyone care to point us to an already typed in
dating of the N.T.? Care to type one in? If such is the case then it is
outstanding that as Paul was the first to write about mystery of the sacrifice
of Christ he tells us nothing of the life of Christ. It's as if he didn't
know. Surely he would have known such details being close to the original
twelve. Perhaps he didn't care, such details being meaningless as the ethics,
mystery and sacrifice of the God man were most important.

  It seems the earliest of the gospel forms was lost with Matthew and Mark
 being dependent opon these lost forms. This scans nicely. The earliest forms
were probably the purest of the Jewish Christian story of the Messiah. As time
went by more of the pagan gentile influence was felt as needed. Various
features of the virgin birth of the God man, the nativity scenes, the Last
Supper, the betrayal, the crucifiction and mysterious ressurection were
incoroprated into the present gospels to appeal to pagan cultist.

  Some scholars indicate that Revelations was next inline. This scans
 nicely as it presents a supposedly Jewish-Christian eschotology. When one
looks at the symbolism one can see the Mazedian influence in Revelations.
Revelations seems to present a first or second step in the evolution of the
Sacrifice and Resurrection of the God man. Perhaps a middle step is more
appropriate. A middle step between Jewish Messiah cults and Gentile Savour
cults.

  It would be monumental to eliminate all supposedly contradictory and
 questionable passages from the Gospels. Fortunately that work has already
been done with some suprising, for me at least, outcomes. Here's one..

  "For over a hundred years German scholars have been struggling to solve
 this problem, and their efforts have been unavailing. In order to establish
some solid textual foundation for the historicity of Jesus, they have piled
hypothesis upon hypothesis with ever new refinements. The retreat from this
hopless task was finally sounded by the emminent German critic, O. Schmeidel.
Afer an exhuastive search, he was satisfied that he had discovered some texts
which passes the most severe tests and were entirely credible. But in the
whole of the gospels all he could salvage were NINE such texts. Let us
enumerate this forlorn handful of unwounded survivors.

 1) Mark XXX.17 [really mark 10.17] f.f. "Why callest me thou good?" etc. 2)
Matt XII.31 f.f. "Blasphemy against the Son of Man pardonable" 3) Mark III.21
"He is beside himself" 4) Mark XII.32 "Of that hour and day knoweth no man" 5)
Mark XV.34, Matt "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" etc. 6) Mark
VIII.12 "No sign shall be given this generation." 7) Mark VI.5 "He was able to
do no mighty work there." 8) Mark VIII.14-21 Rebuke to disciples concerning
bread and leaven.." 9) Matt XI.5, Luke VII.22 Passage to be taken in the sense
of spiritual
   healing, since it ends with mention of preaching--not a miracle at all."
_Pagan_Christs_ pgs 64,65.

  What was the basis for selecting these texts? Basicly O. Sshmeiedel felt
 that where Jesus speaks simply as a man, making no pretense to divinity, or
to miraculous powers, and where he is presented as failing to impress his
relatives and neighbors with any sense of his superiority--there the record is
entirely credible. I'll have to quote this because of the logical content...

  J.M. Roberts quoting Schmeidel:
  "According to Schmidel, these passages represent "the foundation pillars
 for a truly scientific life of Jesus... They prove not only that in the
person of Jesus we have to do with a completely human being, and that the
divine is sought in him only in the form in which it is capable of being found
in a man; THEY ALSO PROVE THAT HE REALLY DID EXIST, and that the Gospels
contain at least SOME ABSOLUTELY TURSTWORTHY FACTS concerning him.

  This will shock the believer without satisfying the scientific
 naturalist. I submit that the propostition I have italicized is absolutely
untenable. On this point may be staked the whole dispute about the actuality
of the gospel Jesus. It simply does not follow that because a statement is
credible it is therefore trustworth or proved. If it were so, half the
characters in fiction could be "proved" to be real people. Perfectly credible
statements are made about them." _Pagan_Christs_ pgs 64-65.

  And I would add that perfectly credible statements are made by fictional
 characters also. It is credible to pronounce that Joe Catholic said a hundred
Hail Marys this morning. Such is a credible statement concerning Catholics.
But is it trustworthy?

  Such thinking requires a leap. The leap involves a thought process that
 says what is possible must indeed be true. T.X. Huxley makes this same
mistake. Huxley says that Sauls visit with the Witch of Endor is entirely
probable, so there is no reason not to believe it. It is probable that I, as a
child, fell into a dark hole for 3 days and nights. History is full of
discredited "probablilites".


