Theos-Talk Archives (August 2004 Message tt00104)

Aug 6 2004

Dear Andrew:

Have you, will you ? have a good look at the 2nd Vol. of ISIS UNVEILED.
On the history and accuracy of early "Gnostic, and Christian sects,"
"Christian" texts, Bible, and R C Church history. It is quite illuminating.


I wonder what you will think of HPB's work there (in ISIS UNVEILED ) on the
accuracy of the Old and New Testament.

As a rule, I find there is value in almost all original teachings (if over
the years, thanks to priestly obfuscation, and mis-translations), there has
not been to much mangling and distortion.  

The original speaker or writer may have been most accurate and helpful.  
His / her successors(and especially those who built up a religion on his
stature) may have their own motives, and made changes accordingly.

If you are interested I can send you a chronology relating to the history of
"Christianity." Let me know.

Take the present-day THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT -- in relative short period of
125 years there have been serious attempts to modify and obscure the
teachings of the Masters of wisdom as transmitted by HPB. 

The only group that adheres fiercely to independence and the right to study
and discuss the "Original Teachings" has been the UNITED LODGE OF
THEOSOPHISTS. Other groups, some much older than it is, have elected to
take the work and sayings of some "leader" or "President" as a basis for
their considerations, and the study of HPB's writings (as she wrote them)
has been gradually minimized or obstructed in various ways. 

The result is that a good knowledge of what THEOSOPHY teaches is absent.
What remains is the innate strength of the 

3 OBJECTS OF THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT 


THE OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY 

ENQUIRER. What are the objects of the "Theosophical Society"? 
 
THEOSOPHIST. They are three, and have been so from the beginning. 

(1.) To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without
distinction of race, colour, or creed. 

(2.) To promote the study of Aryan and other Scriptures, of the World's
religion and sciences, and to vindicate the importance of old Asiatic
literature, namely, of the Brahmanical, Buddhist, and Zoroastrian
philosophies. 

(3.) To investigate the hidden mysteries of Nature under every aspect
possible, and the psychic and spiritual powers latent in man especially. 

These are, broadly stated, the three chief objects of the Theosophical
Society. 

I mentioned the U L T Here is a copy of its DECLARATION

---------------------------------
 

UNITED LODGE OF THEOSOPHISTS 

DECLARATION: 

The policy of this Lodge is independent devotion to the cause of Theosophy,
without professing attachment to any Theosophical organization. It is loyal
to the great Founders of the Theosophical Movement, but does not concern
itself with dissensions or differences of individual opinion. 

The work it has on hand and the end it keeps in view are too absorbing and
too lofty to leave it the time or inclination to take part in side issues.
That work and that end is the dissemination of the Fundamental Principles of
the Philosophy of Theosophy, and the exemplification in practice of those
principles, through a truer realization of the SELF; a profounder conviction
of Universal Brotherhood. 

It holds that the unassailable basis for union among Theosophists, wherever
and however situated, is "similarity of aim, purpose and teaching," and
therefore has neither Constitution, By-Laws nor Officers, the sole bond
between its Associates being that basis. And it aims to disseminate this
idea among Theosophists in the furtherance of Unity. 

It regards as Theosophists all who are engaged in the true service of
Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, condition or
organization, and 

It welcomes to its Association all those who are in accord with its declared
purposes and who desire to fit themselves, by study and otherwise, to be the
better able to help and teach others. 

"The true Theosophist belongs to no cult or sect, yet belongs to each and
all." 

-----------------------------------------------

The following is the form signed by Associates of the United Lodge of
Theosophists: 

Being in sympathy with the purposes of this Lodge, as set forth in its
"Declaration," I hereby record my desire to be enrolled as an Associate, it
being understood that such association calls for no obligation on my part,
other than that which 1, myself, determine. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------


Best wishes, 

Dallas

=============================

A brief review:

THE BIBLE AND SECRET DOCTRINE


That the apostles had received a secret doctrine from Jesus is
evident from the words of Jerome who confessed it in an unguarded moment.
Writing to Bishop Chromatius and Bishop Heliodorus, he complains that:

"a difficult work is enjoined since this translation has been commanded
me by your Felicities, which St. Matthew, the Apostle, did not wish to be
openly written. He made up this book sealed up in the Hebrew characters,
which he put forth that the book might be possessed by the men most
religious. This very book they never gave to any one to be transcribed. This
book, having been published by Seleucus, a disciple of Manichaeus, who also
wrote falsely The Acts of the Apostles, exhibited matter not for
edification."

Justin Martyr used only this Gospel, as also did most probably
Titian, his disciple. The genuine primitive Christians, the Gnostic
Ebionites , rejected all other Christian writings except this original
Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, since destroyed by the Church. The Ebionites and
also the Nazarenes believed that Jesus was but a man, according to
Epiphanius. 

Jerome states that the Hebrew book written by Matthew, though he
translated it twice, was nearly unintelligible to him, for it was arcane and
secret. Jerome knew that this original Gospel of Matthew was the expounder
of the only true doctrines of Christ, a work of the friend and companion of
Jesus.

The Church Fathers resorted to falsification of their scriptures.

Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew and not in Greek, as it was the
gospel of the Nazarenes and the Ebionite Gnostics. Jerome cunningly
translated it into Greek with numerous secret meanings purposely changed and
called it the original. Matthew’s original Hebrew Gospel did not
anthropomorphize Christ. 

There were many kicks, blows and murders at the early Church
councils where scriptures were edited and selected. Those who abided by the
true writings of Matthew were chastised and humiliated.

The Gospel of John was written by a Greek Platonist, a non-Jew, the
name being a forgery.

There is a Mosaic Bible in Hebrew, but written in the Samaritan
alphabet and also there is one written in the Samaritan language and
alphabet. They have textual differences in the length of the cycles between
the flood and Abraham's birth. Rome follows the chronology of the Hebrew
language text.

The Samaritans repudiated the books of Moses, the Psalms, the Talmud
and Mishna, claiming that the Talmudists had disfigured the books of Moses
and Joshua out of all recognition.

Hebrew did not exist either as a language or as an alphabet in the
days of Moses. The books that now pass current under his name are not the
true records. Moses did not write in Hebrew square letters nor in Samaritan
characters, for both alphabets belong to a later date than Moses.

The Hebrew alphabet is relatively recent and was probably derived
from the Palmyrene writing. The Hebrew Bible is written in the Chaldaic
phonographs of Hebrew words. The square letters Jews rely upon are
characters of an unknown, dead language as abstruse as the cuneiform letters
on the mountains of Assyria. Scholars do not carry the now known Hebrew
square letters beyond the period of the fourth century A.D. Ancient Hebrew
is neither Syriac nor Chaldaic, and was lost after 70 years captivity when
the Israelites assimilated Chaldaic. Ancient Hebrew ceased being spoken at
that time. 

Jewish history cannot be carried back one day earlier than the time
of Moses. The language of Abraham was not Hebrew, but Chaldaic. The Hebrew,
in truth, cannot be called an old language.

The name Jehovah was unknown to Moses or any Jew before David.
NEITHER DAVID NOR SOLOMON RECOGNIZED MOSES OR THE LAW OF MOSES. They aspired
to build Jehovic temples along the lines of Venus worship and discarded the
initiate teachings of Moses.

The Hebrew scriptures had been tampered with and remodeled, had been
lost and rewritten a dozen times before the days of Ezra. Ezra is probably
the renegade Azara, the ambitious Chaldean priest who refabricated the
ancient lost books taking stray records and combining them with the
numerical keys in which he was versed.

The Christian historians state that the scriptures perished in the
captivity of Nabuchodnonosar, after which Esdras, the Levite, became
inspired and restored again the whole ancient scriptures.

Kenealy states that the works of Esdras themselves must have been
destroyed by Antiochus. Judas Maccabeus or some unknown compilers must have
re created the Old Testament probably from Greek sources well after the
Christian era.

The Bible is a masterpiece of clever, ingenious fables, whose true
meaning is revealed only to initiates. It is tale and allegory, a repertory
of invented personages and of dark sayings and parables and thus quite
misleading to the ignorant. Moreover, exoterically, it is astrolatry and
Sabean worship, pure and simple. 

The Old Testament was most undeniably milked out of the most
ingenious brains of Hebrew Kabalists familiar with Egyptian and Babylonian
Sanskrit centers of learning and with Hindu Deities. The prototypes of
nearly all Biblical personages are found in the early pantheon of India. The
sons of Brahma have become the patriarchs.

The Septuagint manuscript is our most primary source of the Old
Testament, and it is claimed to have a miraculous inspiration when first
written in Greek, which copy has long been “lost.” The texts used are Hebrew
copies that were made from this destroyed Greek manuscript. 

There is much dishonesty surrounding even the writing of the
Septuagint manuscript. Yet people persist in talking of the ancient Hebrew
as if one man alive knows one word of it!
  
The Hebrew Bible exists no more. What exists now are garbled
falsifications. I U II 135 165

With the exception of Paul and Clement of Alexandria, none of the
Church Fathers knew much of truth. They were mostly ignorant and uneducated.
Learning and sin were considered synonymous with the early Christians. They
were painfully ignorant of contemporary teachings on the sphericity of the
Earth and the heliocentric system! How great was their ignorance.

There is little of Paul left in the writings attributed to him. He
was a brave, honest and sincere man who believed not in a personal Christ,
but in a non anthropomorphic abstract Christ ideal. Paul was a profoundly
learned scholar and high initiate. He had never met Jesus. He was converted
solely on metaphysical philosophy and belonged to the same mystery school as
Jesus, analogous to an ancient Masonic Lodge. Thus Paul calls himself a
"Master Builder," a code name of rank in the secret schools then and still
used in Masonry today. 

Such men as Irenaeus , Epiphanius and Eusebius have transmitted to
posterity a reputation for such untruth and dishonest practices that the
heart sickens at the story of their crimes of that period. The whole
Christian scheme rests upon their sayings.

THE SORTES SANCTORUM

We must not forget that the Christian Church owes its present
Gospels and its dogmatism to the Sortes Sanctorum. Unable to agree as to
which were the most divinely inspired of the numerous gospels of the time,
the mysterious Council of Nicea concluded to leave the decision to
miraculous intervention. There were 318 bishops in the council and they were
a set of illiterate, simple creatures that understood nothing, according to
Sabinus, which is equivalent to saying that they were a set of fools.  

Pappus tells of the bit of magic resorted to, to decide which were
the true gospels. In his Synodicon to the council Pappus says:

"having promiscuously put all the books that were referred to the Council
for determination under a communion table in a church, the bishops besought
the Lord that the inspired writings might get upon the table, while the
spurious ones remained underneath, and it happened accordingly." 

But we are not told who kept the keys of the council chamber
overnight!  

The following letter written by Saint Gregory of Nazianzen, one of
the most respected Church Fathers, to Saint Jerome, shows what posterity
got instead of the truth: 

"Nothing can impose better on a people than verbiage; the less they
understand, the more they admire. Our fathers and doctors have often said,
not what they thought, but what circumstances and necessity forced them to
say." IU II 183

-	Collected from The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled by H. P.
Blavatsky 



 
==========================
CHRISTIANITY - EARLY SECTS.DOC


The Middle East and Iraq have among its people some of the oldest Christian
sects -- the Sabeans, Mendeans, Nabatheans, and St. John Christians (some
located in the swamp and marshes near Basra).

----------------


CODEX NAZARAEUS (LAT.) THE “BOOK OF ADAM” — the latter name meaning
anthropos, Man or Humanity. The Nazarene faith is called sometimes the
Bardesanian system, though Bardesanes (B.C. 155 to 228) does not seem
to have had any connection with it. True, he was born at Edessa in
Syria, and was a famous astrologer and Sabian before his alleged
conversion. But he was a well-educated man of noble family, and would
not have used the almost incomprehensible Chaldeo dialect mixed with
the mystery language of the Gnostics, in which the Codex is written.
The sect of the Nazarenes was pre-Christian. Pliny and Josephus speak
of the Nazarites as settled on the banks of the Jordan 150 years B.C.
(Ant. Jud. xiii. p. 9); and Munk says that the “Naziareate was an
institution established before the laws of Musah” or Moses. (Munk p.
169.) Their modern name is in Arabic— El Mogtasila; in European
languages—the Mendæans or “Christians of St. John”. (See “Baptism”.) 
But if the term Baptists may well be applied to them, it is not with the
Christian
meaning: for while they were, and still are Sabians, or pure
astrolaters, the Mendæans of Syria, called the Galileans, are pure
polytheists, as every traveller in Syria and on the Euphrates can
ascertain, once he acquaints himself with their mysterious rites and
ceremonies. (See Isis Unv. ii. 290, et seq.) So secretly did they
preserve their beliefs from the very beginning, that Epiphanius who
wrote against the Heresies in the 14th century confesses himself unable
to say what they believed in (i. 122); he simply states that they
never mention the name of Jesus, nor do they call themselves
Christians (loc. cit. 190. Yet it is undeniable that some of the
alleged philosophical views and doctrines of Bardesanes are found in
the codex of the Nazarenes. (See Norberg’s Codex Nazaræous or the
“Book of Adam ‘, and also “Mendæans “.)	Glos pp 85-6


COLLEGE OF RABBIS. A college at Babylon; most famous during the
early centuries of Christianity. Its glory, however, was greatly
darkened by the appearance in Alexandria of Hellenic teachers, such as
Philo Judæus, Josephus, Aristobulus and others. The former avenged
themselves on their successful rivals by speaking of the Alexandrians
as theurgists and unclean prophets. But the Alexandrian believers in
thaumaturgy were not regarded as sinners or impostors when orthodox
Jews were at the head of such schools of “hazim “. These were colleges
for teaching prophecy and occult sciences. Samuel was the chief of
such a college at Ramah; Elisha at Jericho. Hillel had a regular
academy for prophets and seers; and it is Hillel, a pupil of the
Babylonian College, who was the founder of the Sect of the Pharisees
and the great orthodox Rabbis. Glos p. 87



BARDESANES or BARDAISAN. A Syrian Gnostic, erroneously regarded
as a Christian theologian, born at Edessa (Edessene Chronicle) in 155
of our era (Assernani Bibl.. Orient. i. 389). He was a great
astrologer following the Eastern Occult System. According to Porphyry
(who calls him the Babylonian, probably on account of his Chaldeeism
or astrology), “Bardesanes . . . . held intercourse with the Indians
that had been sent to the Caesar with Damadamis at their head” (De
Abst. iv. 17), and had his information from the Indian gymnosophists.
The fact is that most of his teachings, however much they may have
been altered by his numerous Gnostic followers, can be traced to
Indian philosophy, and still more to the Occult teachings of the
Secret System. Thus in his Hymns he speaks of the creative Deity as
“Father-Mother “, and elsewhere of Astral Destiny “(Karma) of “ Minds
of Fire” (the Agni-Devas) &c. He connected the Soul (the personal
Manas) with the Seven Stars, deriving its origin from the Higher
Beings (the divine Ego); and therefore “admitted spiritual
resurrection but denied the resurrection of the body “, as charged
with by the Church Fathers. Ephraim shows him preaching the signs of
the Zodiac, the importance of the birth-hours and “proclaiming the
seven”. Calling the Sun the” Father of Life” and the Moon the” Mother
of Life “, he shows the latter “laying aside her garment of light
(principles) for the renewal of the Earth “. Photius cannot understand
how, while accepting “the Soul free from the power of genesis (destiny
of birth)” and possessing free will, he still placed the body under
the rule of birth (genesis). For “they (the Bardesanists) say, that
wealth and poverty and sickness and health and death and all things
not within our control are works of destiny” (Bibl. Cod. 223,
p.221—f). This is Karma, most evidently, which does not preclude at
all free-will. Hippolytus makes him a representative of the Eastern
School. Speaking of Baptism, Bardesanes is made to say (loc. cit. pp.
985-ff “It is not however the Bath alone which makes us free, but the
Knowledge of who we are, what we are become, where we were before,
whither we are hastening, whence we are redeemed; what is generation
(birth), what is re-generation (rebirth) “. This points plainly to
the doctrine of re-incarnation. His conversation (Dialogue) with Awida
and Barjamina on Destiny and Free Will shows it. “What is called
Destiny, is an order of outflow given to the Rulers (Gods) and the
Elements, according to which order the Intelligences (Spirit-Egos) are
changed by their descent into the Soul, and the Soul by its descent
into the body “. (See Treatise, found in its Syriac original, and
published with English translation in 1855 by Dr. Cureton, Spicileg.
Syriac. in British Museum.)	Glos pp 50-1

 

EBIONITES (Heb.). it., “the poor”; the earliest sect of Jewish
Christians, the other being the Nazarenes. They existed when the term
“Christian” was not yet heard of. Many of the relations of Iassou
(Jesus), the adept ascetic around whom the legend of Christ was
formed, were among the Ebionites. As the existence of these mendicant
ascetics can be traced at least a century earlier than chronological
Christianity, it is an additional proof that lassozi or Jeshu lived
during the reign of Alexander Jannæus at Lyd (or Lud), where he was
put to death as stated in the Sepher Toldos Jeshu.
T Glos 108-9


ESSENES	A hellenized word, from the Hebrew Asa, a “healer”. A
mysterious sect of Jews said by Pliny to have lived near the Dead Sea
per millia saeculorum—for thousands of ages. “ Some have supposed them
to be extreme Pharisees, and others—which may be the true theory—the
descendants of the Benim-nabim of the Bible, and think that they were
‘Kenites and Nazarites. They had many Buddhistic ideas and practices;
and it is noteworthy that the priests of the Great Mother at Ephesus,
Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were also so denominated. Eusebius,
and after him De Quincey, declared them to be the same as the early
Christians, which is more than probable. The title ‘ brother’, used in
the early Church, was Essenean ; they were a fraternity, or a
koinobion or community like the early converts.” (Isis Unveiled.)
T Glos 115


MENDÆANS (Gr.). Also called SABIANS, and ST. JOHN CHRISTIANS.
he latter is absurd, since, according to all accounts, and even their
own, they have nothing at all to do with Christianity, which they
abominate. The modern sect of the Mendæans is widely scattered over
Asia Minor and elsewhere, and is rightly believed by several
Orientalists to be a direct surviving relic of the Gnostics. For as
explained in the Dictionnaire des Apocryphes by the Abbé Migrie (art.
“Le Code Nazaréan” vulgairement appele “Livre d’Adam”), the Mendæans
(written in French Mandaites, which name they pronounce as Mandai)
“properly signifies science, knowledge or Gnosis. Thus it is the
equivalent of Gnostics” (loc. cit. note p. 3). As the above cited work
shows, although many travellers have spoken of a sect whose followers
are variously named Sabians, St. John’s Christians and Mendæans, and
who are scattered around Schat-Etarab at the junction of the Tigris
and Euphrates (principally at Bassorah, [Basra], Hoveiza, Korna,
etc.), it was Norberg who was the first to point out a tribe belonging
to the same sect established in Syria. And they are the most
interesting of all. This tribe, some 14,000 or 15,000 in number, lives
at a day’s march east of Mount Lebanon, principally at Elmerkah,
(Lata-Kieh). They call themselves indifferently Nazarenes and
Galileans, as they originally come to Syria from Galilee. They claim
that their religion is the same as that of St. John the Baptist, and
that it has not changed one bit since his day. On festival days they
clothe them selves in camel’s skins, sleep on camel’s skins, and eat
locusts and honey as did their “Father, St. John the Baptist”. Yet
they call Jesus Christ an impostor, a false Messiah, and Nebso (or the
planet Mercury in its evil side), and show him as a production of the
Spirit of the “seven badly- disposed stellars” (or planets). See Codex
Nazaræus, which is their Scripture.	T Glos 212


NABATHEANS. A sect almost identical in their beliefs with the
Nazarenes and Sabeans, who had more reverence for John the Baptist
than for Jesus. Maimonides identifies them with the astrolaters.
“Respecting the beliefs of the Sabeans”, he says, “the most famous is
the book, The agriculture of the Nabatheans”. And we know that the
Ebionites, the first of whom were the friends and relatives of Jesus,
according to tradition, in other words, the earliest and first
Christians, “were the direct followers and disciples of the Nazarene
sect”, according to Epiphanius and Theodoret (See the Contra Ebionites
of Epiphanius, and also “Galileans” and “Nazarenes”).
T. Glos p. 221


NAZARENES (Heb.). The same as the St. John Christians;
called the Mend or Sabeans. Those Nazarenes who left Galilee several
hundred years ago and settled in Syria, east of Mount Lebanon, call
themselves also Galileans ; though they designate Christ “a false
Messiah” and recognise only St. John the Baptist, whom they call the
“Great Nazar”. The Nabatheans with very little difference adhered to
the same belief as the Nazarenes or the Sabeans. More than this— the
Ebionites, whom Renan shows as numbering among their sect all the
surviving relatives of Jesus, seem to have been followers of the same
sect if we have to believe St. Jerome, who writes: “ I received
permission from the Nazaræans who at Beræa of Syria used this (Gospel
of Matthew written in Hebrew) to translate it The Evangel which the
Nazarenes and Ebionites use which recently I translated from Hebrew
into Greek.’ (Hieronymus’ Comment. to Matthew, Book II., chapter xii.,
and Hieronymus’ De Viris Illust. cap 3.) Now this supposed Evangel of
Matthew, by whomsoever written, “exhibited matter”, as Jerome
complains (bc. cit.), “not for edification but for destruction”(of
Christianity). But the fact that the Ebionites, the genuine primitive
Christians, “rejecting the rest of the apostolic writings, made use
only of this (Matthew’s Hebrew) Gospel” (Adv. Hær., i. 26) is very
suggestive. For, as Epiphanius declares, the Ebionites firmly
believed, with the Nazarenes, that Jesus was but a man “of the seed of
a man” (Epiph. Contra Ebionites). Moreover we know from the Codex of
the Nazarenes, of which the “Evangel according to Matthew” formed a
portion, that these Gnostics, whether Galilean, Nazarene or Gentile,
call Jesus, in their hatred of astrolatry, in their Codex
Naboo-Meschiha or “ Mercury”. (See “ Mendæans”). This does not shew
much orthodox Christianity either in the Nazarenes or the Ebionites;
but seems to prove on the contrary that the Christianity of the early
centuries and modern Christian theology are two entirely opposite
things. T. Glos pp 226


SABIANISM. The religion of the ancient Chaldees. The
latter believing in one impersonal, universal, deific Principle, never
mentioned It, but offered worship to the solar, lunar, and planetary
gods and rulers, regarding the stars and other celestial bodies as
their respective symbols.. THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY p. 282


-------------------------------


LOGIA (Gr.). The secret discourses and teachings of Jesus contained
in the Evangel of Matthew—in the original Hebrew, not the spurious
Greek text we have—and preserved by the Ebionites and the Nazarenes in
the library collected by Pamphilus, at Caesarea. This “Evangel” called
by many writers “the genuine Gospel of Matthew”, was used according to
(St.) Jerome, by the Nazarenes and Ebionites of Beroea, Syria, in his
own day (4th century). Like the Aporrheta or secret discourses, of the
Mysteries, these Logia could only be understood with a key. Sent by
the Bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, Jerome, after having obtained
permission, translated them, but found it “a difficult task” (truly
so!) to reconcile the text of the “genuine” with that of the spurious
Greek gospel he was acquainted with. (See Isis Unveiled II., 180 et
seq.)	T Glos p. 190

DRUZES.	A large sect, numbering about 100,000 adherents, living on
Mount Lebanon in Syria. Their rites are very mysterious, and no
traveller, who has written anything about them, knows for a certainty
the whole truth. They are the Sufis of Syria. They resent being called
Druzes as an insult, but call themselves the “disciples of Hamsa “,
their Messiah, who came to them in the ninth century from the “Land of
the Word of God”, which land and word they kept religiously secret.
The Messiah to come will be the same Hamsa, but called Hakem—the
All-Healer “. (See Isis Unveiled, II 308, et seq.)	T Glos 105



[ Extracts from the THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY ]


 



===========================



-----Original Message-----

From: A S
Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 8:18 AM
To: 
Subject: RE: ??? A Message: ---


With some editing, here is a message I posted to my Gnostic Group. It may
have some relevance, or muddy the waters thoroughly. Cheers!


I, for one, unequivocally, gave up any belief in a personal, or person
named, Jesus (Yahshua, etc.) when I finally explored the "Old Testament" and
gave up on Jehovah as the god who created us. Maybe I just cut the "Gordian
Knot," but there is just no evidence for either "person" that can convince
me. The history of what's known as the "Bible Period" is terminally
confused and no one on earth or in the heavens (shaymayim) can decipher it
satisfactorily. A. B. Kuhn, Carlo Suares, and Theosophy, and a few others,
are on the right track, but I think as Nietzsche said, "The first and last
Christian died on the cross." So whatever or whoever the myth called Jesus
was, he was nothing more than another criminal crucified by Rome if he lived
at all. Paul, called "The Apostle," had fevered, guilt-ridden visions that
created (Roman) Christendom and the "New Testament."  

If you disagree with the way I explained it, see the quotation below.

A W S

"Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still." --- T.S.Eliot