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Article 266: Jesus Christ & Early Christianity

 

In this series of articles we will cover many aspects of the early formation of Christianity including the many key players in early Christianity and the politics of early Christian beliefs, dogmas and institutions.  We will begin, in this article, with a description of the entity known as Jesus Christ according to the esoteric stream of knowledge.  This is a unique angle, most likely different than what most have encountered, yet it is incredibly interesting to think about.

 

Jesus Christ

The one known as Jesus Christ went by many names.  These include:

  • Yeshua
  • Iesous (ee-yay-sous) in Greek
  • Jehoshua
  • Jescua Hammassiah (Ham = Om; massiah = Messiah, the anointed)

It is highly likely that Jesus Christ was a compilation of more than one person’s life story.  As Robert Lawlor writes: “There exists considerable documentation that the personality and the physical manifestation of Jesus Christ are literary fabrications.  There is also a large consensus of Biblical scholars who agree that the scant, so-called historical witness to the physical presence of Jesus is attributed to the writing of Flavius Josephus and is in total an inculcated “forgery”.  Flavius Josephus was a Hellenized Jewish military figure who acted as a rabbinical representative for the Pharisees, a group which dominated Palestinian and Middle Eastern traders.  [See Joseph Atwill’s book Caeser’s Messiah]

Who or what, then, was Jesus Christ?  From our symbolic-historic perspective Christ was a phantasm, consciously created through the magical art and science of phantasmic projection.”

 

Christ was glorified as the only true son of God.  To many Christians he is believed to be God himself who ‘came down’ to Earth in a human body to set humanity free from original sin.  When viewing these concepts with a larger perspective one must understand that all humankind is the son or daughter of God – or Children of the Universe – not just this one entity.

Christ was born of humble parents.  Most people alive today have heard the Biblical account of his birth.  This account is more of a myth and parable and did not occur as it was literally portrayed.  For instance, the church at the time ignored his physical birth and claimed his mother was an “immaculate virgin”.  This resulted in not only the degradation of sexuality, particularly feminine sexuality and its related functions, but it also caused humanity to ignore its relationship with nature and its feminine intuitive creative aspects.  God the Father would be recognized as the new deity.  The Earth Goddess would be forgotten.  Man would then believe he had dominion over the earth and all its creatures because God the Father had ‘given it to him’ to use as he pleased.

 

We also saw in the previous article how the life of Jesus and the life of Pythagoras have many parallels.  This is not by coincidence.  Mark Booth writes, “In fact the life of Christ Jesus as it has come down to us might look like a patchwork of events in the lives of those who came before him:  born to a carpenter and a Virgin like Krishna; born on December 25 like Mithras; heralded by a star in the East like Horus; walking on water and feeding the five thousand from a small basket like Buddha; performing healing miracles like Pythagoras; raising from the dead like Elisha; executed on a tree like Adonis; ascending to heaven like Hercules, Enoch and Elijah.  It is hard to find any act or saying ascribed to the Jesus of the Gospels that had not been foreshowed in some way.  Anyone minded to think corrosively will decide to see this as evidence that his life was a fiction.”  However, on a deeper level Jesus represents the birth of a new form of consciousness that humanity must endeavor to rise up to.  Some call this “Christ Consciousness”.

“His mission was to plant a seed,” Mark Booth explains.  “He felt other people’s pain as his own.  He was experiencing something – the gift of empathy – which no one had ever felt before…Jesus Christ introduced a new kind of love, a gracious love based on the gift of empathy.  An individual would be free to transcend the bonds of his or her isolated existence to share in what was taking place in another person’s innermost nature…Love in BC had been tribal or familial.  Now individuals were able to rise above blood ties and to choose freely who to love.”

As the esoteric tale goes, as a child Jesus became angry with a playmate.  He then put his hands on this playmate in anger and fatally wounded him.  At that moment he realized that within him dwelt a terrible potential.  He was determined from that point on to discover how to use this energy for the good, not the negative.  He became a Hebrew rabbi at a young age then quit the Hebrew church at age 13 ½ to continue his life of searching and seeking as he travelled throughout the eastern world.  In all likelihood he was taught many esoteric western mystery religions as well as esoteric eastern traditions including Hinduism and Buddhism.  Through the study of all these various holy works he discovered the true creation.  At age 25 he returned home to learn carpentry.

At home it was clear that he had become “enlightened”.  He was a man illuminated by psychic realities, touched with the infinite realization that all individuals are, by virtue of existence, a contact between All-That-Is and humankind.  He saw that each person was a unique individual in which divinity and humanity met.  It was this meeting of humanity and divinity that each human was meant to reconcile within them in order to rise to their highest individual potential for the greatest good.  It was because of this that Jesus was often portrayed within a Vesica Piscis.  The Vesica Piscis symbolizes the birth portal (being “born again”) and the Third Eye 6th chakra/pineal gland.  When this chakra is balanced and activated properly one can be “born again” and gain direct experience and communication with the spiritual realms, your Higher Self, Higher beings and Cosmic Consciousness or God.  Christ was trying to teach humanity how to contact divinity by using their individual consciousness.  Of course this could not stand according to Roman Catholic dogma that believed the masses could only contact the divine through a third party priest.

 

Christ was a loving man who consorted with prostitutes, the sick and the poor.  He used priests as symbols of authority.  He turned water into wine, yet many who think themselves holy regard all alcoholic beverages as sinful.  His disciples were hardly respectable men that would be called “city fathers.”  Jane Roberts writes: he “used the vernacular of the times and in his own way spoke out against dogmatic ideas, as well as temples that pretended to be repositories of holy knowledge but were instead concerned with money and prestige.  Yet many who consider themselves followers of Christ now turn against the outcasts that he himself considered brothers and sisters.”

 

It needs to be understood that whether Christ was one man, a composite of many men, or strictly a myth, all the horrors connected with Christianity’s name came from “following the letter rather than the spirit of the law” or by insistence upon literal interpretations while the spiritual, imaginative and mystical concepts were ignored.

He spoke in the context of his times by using parables, symbols and even humor that made sense at the time.  Many of these, if not all, are misunderstood today by the current modern mind.  However his basic message was that each human is inherently good and is an individualized portion of the divine.  He desired to share love and compassion in as pure a manner as possible.  Some of his teachings are summarized as follows:

  • He teaches honesty in all relationships.
  • Love one another. Let love be without hypocrisy.
  • Treat others the way you would like to be treated.
  • As ye reap, so shall ye sow.
  • Overcome evil with good.
  • Be debt free. Owe no one anything, except…love.
  • Care for others more than yourself.
  • Be peacemakers.
  • Be affectionate and tender with each other.
  • Help others in everything good.
  • Forgive, don’t avenge, don’t damn.
  • Don’t hate, don’t judge others.
  • Don’t seek accumulating worldly wealth, or you may miss accumulating spiritual wealth.
  • Don’t fear. He who fears not has been perfected in love.
  • Don’t be arrogant. Be humble and respect others.
  • Strive in all we do to help others spiritually.
  • Don’t let sexuality or sexual desires get in the way of spiritual seeking.

Many, such as the Gnostics, Origen, and Clement of Alexandria, claim he had secret teachings related to the pre-existence of souls, reincarnation, the ability to create your own reality with consciousness, and the importance of love and forgiveness.  These were mostly expunged by the early church fathers (discussed extensively in the next two articles).  These lost gospels reflect the affirmation of the individual self, its continued existence after physical death, and teachings of love, compassion and forgiveness.

Much of his teachings were outright destroyed or changed to do the people very little good.  Examples include:

  • “Love they neighbor as yourself.” – This is an ironic humorous statement. In Biblical times no man loved his neighbor, but distrusted him deeply.  Much of his humor is lost on us today.
  • “The meek shall inherit the earth.” – What Christ meant here, as translated by Jane Roberts, is: “You form your own reality. Those who think thoughts of peace will find themselves safe from war and dissension.  They will be untouched by it.  They will escape, and indeed inherit the earth…Thoughts of peace particularly in the middle of chaos, take great energy.  People who can ignore the physical evidence of wars and purposely think thoughts of peace will triumph – but in your terminology the word “meek” has come to mean spineless, inadequate, lacking energy.  In Christ’s time, the phrase about the meek inheriting the earth implied the energetic use of affirmation, of love and peace.”
  • “Turn the other cheek.” (Matthew 5:39) – This saying was a psychologically crafty method of warding off violence – of not accepting violence into your life.  It symbolically represented an animal showing its belly to an adversary.  It was not meant to be the cringing act of a martyr who said, “Hit me again,” but represented a biologically pertinent statement – a communication of body language to back off.
  • “But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” – He was saying that our innermost thoughts are as real as physical objects. What a person thinks privately has a direct influence on the history of the cosmos.
  • “He that loveth his father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:37-38) – This relates to the idea that humans were meant to rise above blood ties and bloodlines and choose freely who to love and who to support. “Love was to be freely chosen rather than instinctual and tribal.”

 

Mark Booth writes, “There is deliberate obfuscation by Church leaders when it comes to these and other key tenets of the Christian faith.  Modern liberal Christianity has tried to accommodate science by playing down its occult dimensions, but the sayings from the Sermon on the Mount such as “The meek shall inherit the earth”, “Faith moves mountains”, and “Ask and it shall be given”, are descriptions of how the supernatural operates in the universe.”  They directly point to the truth that consciousness creates physical reality.

 

Many were attracted to Jesus and his teachings in his day and followed him so they could try to become as he was.  The political rulers of the day, seeing that people were following Jesus, decided that they would lose control of the people if he was allowed to continue teaching.  They came to the conclusion that he must be destroyed.  Mark Booth explains how Jesus initiated Lazarus into this new consciousness in public and not within the closely guarded confines of a state-sponsored Mystery school.  “As a result Jesus Christ made deadly enemies of the Sadducees, who controlled the dissemination of initiatic knowledge on behalf of the ruling elite.  The act of initiating Lazarus in public was a revolutionary one, signaling that the tie that bound initiates to the ruling elite was being broken.  It was the beginning of the end of the Mystery schools and it prepared the way for the secret societies.”

 

Judas attempted to coerce Jesus to see the wisdom of using his power in order to rule others.  Judas was greatly mistaken.  Jesus did not acquiesce to the negative path of manipulation and control.  He remained upon the positive path of acceptance and forgiveness and thus became a martyr.

Jesus was supposedly 33 years of age when he was crucified.  This number might not be literal but it is highly symbolic and is discussed elsewhere in Cosmic Core.  According to the esoteric stream of knowledge Jesus actually lived much longer and was crucified in old age.

Upon the cross he was absolved karmically of killing his childhood playmate when he spoke “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”  He thus forgave his torturers and murderers and stopped the wheel of karma through his forgiveness.  The major point here is that Jesus was trying to teach us how to learn to forgive.  It is not just that he forgave humanity for its sins, he was trying to teach others to be like him – to forgive and stop the cycle of hatred, murder, abuse, trauma, betrayal, grudges, violence and destruction.  This message has certainly been lost on humanity.

Jane Roberts writes, “In a certain way the Christ personality was a manifestation of the evolution of consciousness, leading the race beyond the violent concepts of the times, and altering behavior that had prevailed up to that time…Christ was the symbol of man’s emerging consciousness, holding within himself the knowledge of man’s potential.  His message was meant to be carried beyond the times, but this interpretation is often not made.”

“One approach to understanding the significance of Jesus,” writes Jeremy Naydler in The Future of the Ancient World, “is that he – as an individual – carried this process [of individualization and self-awareness) to fruition.  He attained a level of consciousness in which he experienced the cosmic Logos as his own self.  His individuality, his individual self-consciousness, he experienced as completely merged with the divine cosmic creative principle.  The cosmic Logos thus came to fill the consciousness of this individual human being who lived his individuality to its divine depth…

What is essentially cosmic becomes human, and thus there are no longer any gods to be seen.  It is as if the dazzling reality of what is taking place here is so overpowering that the gods become invisible.”

 

Christ’s whole message was basically that the exterior world is a manifestation of the interior one – that the “Kingdom of God” is made flesh.  The physical world is a reflection of the consciousness of its inhabitants.  He was specifically involved in what is known as the evolution of consciousness (ego consciousness) and in regards to the importance of individuality and the individual’s relationship with the cosmos and one another.  “Before the time of Jesus Christ,” writes Mark Booth “there was very little sense of the importance of the individual, of the sanctity of individual life, the transcendental power of one’s individual’s freely chosen love for another…With Jesus Christ not only did the individual began to experience the sense we all have now that, parallel to the limitless, infinitely various cosmos out there, we each have inside us a cosmos which is equally rich and limitless, but Jesus Christ also introduced the sense that each of us now has a personal narrative history that weaves in and out of the general history.  Each of us may fall as humanity as a whole has fallen.  Each of us experiences crises of doubt and finds individual, personal redemption…

The aim of this evolution [taught by Christ] was a beautiful one – that people would be able to take joy in their individual intellectual strength and superiority, and that they should be able to choose to move freely, powerfully and lovingly not only through the material world but also through the spirit worlds…

In fact, after Jesus Christ no other individual has done so much to develop and expand the human sense of an interior life.  If Jesus Christ planted the seed of interior life, Shakespeare helped it to grow, populated it and gave us the sense we all have today that we each contain inside us an inner cosmos as expansive as the outer cosmos.”

However the rising tide of the power structure of this ego consciousness ignored this message and instead used religion negatively as a means for domination and control.  We will explore this theme in detail in the next two articles.  In brief, fundamentalism in Christianity (and other religions) wants to repress individual free will and intelligence and lure us into unenlightening ecstasy and mindless adoration.  On the other hand, militant scientific materialism wants to snuff out the human spirit and push technology onto humanity to the point that humans are no longer human, but machine.  As a whole humanity is still weaving its way through these psychological extremes to find balance in “Christ Consciousness”.  How much farther do we have to go?

 

We will end this section with another quote from Mark Booth: “How to recognize any false prophet?  Or any false, purportedly spiritual teaching?  False teaching usually has little or no moral dimension; the benefits of reawakening the chakras, for example, being recommended merely in terms of selfish ‘personal growth’.  True spiritual teaching puts love of others and love of humanity at its heart – intelligent love, freely given.  Beware too of teaching that doesn’t invite questioning, or tolerate mockery.  It is telling you, in effect, that God wants you to be stupid.”

 

The Essenes

The Essenes were a prominent early Syrian sect and the early educators of Jesus.  They lived lives of asceticism; spent their days in simple labor including animal husbandry, carpentry and pottery; and spent their evenings in prayer.  Their methods of prayer, meditation and fasting were not unlike the holy men of the East.  They taught immortality of the soul and believed the purpose of their existence was to heal the sick in body, mind and soul.

Joseph and Mary, parents of Jesus, were Essenes.  A high priest of the Essenes told them to prepare a body for the coming of a great soul.  “Thus of an immaculate conception Jesus was born.  By immaculate is meant clean, rather than supernatural,” explains Manly P Hall.

 

Nag Hammadi Gnostic Texts

The Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts were discovered in 1945 by Muhammad Ali al-Samman in a mountain, Jabal al-Tarif, honeycombed with more than 150 caves.  These were diverse texts ranging from secret gospels, poems, quasi-philosophic descriptions of the origin of the universe, myths, magic, and instructions for mystical practice and were denounced as heresy by orthodox Christians in the middle of the 2nd century.  Presumably they were hidden as to save them from almost certain destruction by the orthodox church.

An overview of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures from http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html is as follows:

The Gospel of Philip alluded to intimate relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus and criticized belief of the Virgin birth and the bodily resurrection as naive misunderstandings.  The Apocryphon (secret book) of John discussed the secret teachings of Jesus and the Testimony of Truth tells the Garden of Eden story from the perspective of the serpent.  It also does not portray martyrdom as something to be glorified.

 

Simon Magus (1st century AD)

Simon Magus was a practitioner of magical arts most likely from Biblical Samaria.  He was the founder of Gnosticism.  Words of Simon Magus recorded by Hippolytus are as follows:

“Of the universal aeons there are two shoots, without beginning or end, springing from one Root, which is the power invisible, inapprehensible silence.  Of these shoots one is manifested from above, which is the Great Power, the Universal Mind ordering all things, male, and the other from below, the Great Thought, female, producing all things.  Hence pairing with each other, they unite and manifest the Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air, without beginning or end.  In this is the Father Who sustains all things, and nourishes those things which have a beginning and end.”

 

Gnosticism

Gnosticism first appeared in the latter part of 1st century AD.  It is a system of emanationism, interpreting Christianity in terms of Greek, Egyptian, and Persian metaphysics.  Emanationism, according to Wikipedia, describes the mode by which all things are derived from the first reality or principle.  “All things are derived from the first reality or perfect God by steps of degradation to lesser degrees of the first reality or God, and at every step the emanating beings are less pure, less perfect, less divine. Emanationism is a transcendent principle from which everything is derived, and is opposed to both creationism (wherein the universe is created by a sentient God who is separate from creation) and materialism (which posits no underlying subjective and/or ontological nature behind phenomena being immanent).”

Furthermore, as Wikipedia states, Gnosticism “emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) over orthodox teachings, traditions, and ecclesiastical authority. They considered the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the supreme divinity, experienced as intuitive or esoteric insight. Generally, Gnostic cosmogony presents a distinction between a supreme, transcendent God and a blind, evil demiurge responsible for creating the material universe, thereby trapping the divine spark within matter. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment.”

Gnostic and Hermetic texts were translated into Greek and Latin around the time of Christ.  They were immediately stigmatized as heresy by the ante-Nicene Church Fathers.  The writings use Christian terminology related to a Jewish heritage.

Gnosis (knowing) “involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself, yet to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God.  It teaches that humanity and the divine are interwoven and One.  In Gnosticism Jesus is not Lord, but a spiritual guide.  Furthermore, Gnosticism considered original creative invention to be the mark of anyone who becomes spiritually alive; it resisted accepting authority of the clergy, the creed and the New Testament canon, leading them to be thought of as heretical by the Orthodox.  It disagreed with women being denied participation in the Orthodox Church and it also disagreed with martyrdom.

After the 3rd century Gnostics practically vanished from the philosophic world.  However they did not actually vanish; they just went underground and their philosophy became the premise for various secret societies alive today.  Because of this Gnosticism splintered into many branches, some of which were positive; some of which were extremely negative such as Luciferianism.

 

John Michell writes, “The Gnostics were so called because they claimed to have the gnosis, or knowledge, through personal experience, acquired by initiation into a reformed version of the pagan mysteries.  Gnostic religion developed at the start of the Christian era, probably in Alexandria, from a fusion of Hebrew mysticism, Greek philosophy, and the hermetic traditions of Egypt and the East.  By the second century, it was under pressure from the authorities of the Christian Church, now established in the capital of its old enemy, imperial Rome, and the gnostic sects were persecuted into oblivion.

One of the points of difference between he Gnostics and the Church was whether or not Christianity should acknowledge any debt to previous forms of religion.  The Gnostics were proud of the knowledge they had inherited from the ancient world, and claimed that the numerical science of the pagan philosophers could be adapted to prove the truth of Christianity.  The Church, on the other hand, taught that the coming of Christ was a unique event that had raised human understanding above its previous level, rendering all earlier religions obsolete.  Roman policy was to extirpate the traditions and records of pagan science, particularly among Christians, with the result that information about the Gnostics’ number theology is nowhere to be found but in the works of those church fathers, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus above all, who wrote in order to discredit it.”

 

Two Branches of Gnosticism

There were two main branches of early Gnosticism.  These were the:

 

  1. Syrian Cult – This cult was dualistic and originated from the teachings of Simon Magus. It believed in the Demiurgus (the creator Yahweh) & God (the highest).

 

  1. Alexandrian Cult – This cult was pantheistic and originated from Basilides, an Egyptian Christian. This branch included Egyptian Hermeticism, Oriental occultism, Chaldean astrology and Persian philosophy.  It sought to unite the schools of early Christianity with the ancient pagan Mysteries.  Valentinus took over when Basilides died.  Heracleon was a distinguished gnostic teacher student of Valentinus.

 

 

Early Christianity

Elaine Pagels tells us, “What we call Eastern and Western religions, and tend to regard as separate streams, were not clearly differentiated 2000 years ago.”  Christianity was actually far more diverse than nearly anyone expected before the Nag Hammadi discoveries.

To begin, early Christians were called Nazarenes, not ‘Christians’.  The first 200 years had loose associations of Nazarenes with varying belief systems that mixed paganism, ancient mystery teachings, Gnosticism and new Christian thought.  Their ideals were basically based upon high moral standards of the pagan Mysteries and their beliefs were and adaptation of Mithraism welded with the Druidic principles of the Culdees; Egyptian elements such as The Mysteries of Osiris and Isis (the pre-Christian book of Revelation); Greek philosophy; and various aspects of Hinduism.

“The first Christians who met under the city of Rome used as their places of worship the subterranean temples of Mithras, from whose cult have been borrowed much of the sacerdotalism of the modern church,” Manly P. Hall tells us.

Yet by AD 200 Christianity had already become a three-rank hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons.  They believed themselves to be guardians of the only true faith.  At this point Elaine Pagels writes, “we now begin to see that what we call Christianity – and what we identify as Christian tradition – actually represents only a small selection of specific sources, chosen from among dozens of others.  Who made that selection, and for what reasons?”  We will explore these questions in detail in the next two articles.

It is to be noted, according to Manly P. Hall: “The discrepancies in the writings of the early Church Fathers not only are irreconcilable, but demonstrate beyond question that even during the first five centuries after Christ these learned men had for the basis of their writings little more substantial than folklore and hearsay.”  This can be seen in the parallels of Christianity with astrological pagan religious mythology.

 

Astrological Pagan Religious Mythology

“Were the incidents in the life of Jesus purposely altered so that His actions would fit more closely into the pattern established by the numerous Savior-Gods who preceded him,” asks Manly P Hall?  It certainly appears so.

Clearly numerous deities lives follow the same solar mythology:  Horus (Egypt 3000 BC); Attis (Greece 1200 BC); Mithra (Persia 1200 BC); Krishna (India 900 BC); Dionysus (Greece 500 BC), and many more.  All were born of a virgin; born on December 25; a star in the east signaled their birth; they all performed miracles; they all had 12 disciples; they were all crucified; they were all dead for 3 days; and finally they were all resurrected.

The star in the east refers to Sirius the brightest star in the night sky.  On December 24 it aligns with the three brightest stars in Orion’s belt called the “Three Kings”.  These stars point to the place of sunrise on December 25.  This signifies the birth of “God’s sun (son)” at winter solstice.

The twelve disciples represent the twelve constellations of the zodiac and the twelve ages of the Precession of the Equinoxes.  Virgo (August 23-September 22) is the house of the “virgin” and the “House of Bread”.  Its symbol is a virgin holding wheat symbolizing August and September, the time of harvest.  Incidentally, Bethlehem translates as “House of Bread”.  This is a reference to Virgo, an ‘age’ in Precession and a place in the sky or cosmos, not on Earth.

With winter comes shorter days, dark, cold, barren fields and no crops.  Winter thus symbolizes the process of death and the greater ‘death of the sun’.  On December 22 the sun is at its lowest.  It stops moving (perceptibly) for three days on December 22, 23 and 24.  It resides in sky with the Southern Cross constellation during this time.  On December 25 the sun moves 1 degree north, symbolizing warmer days, life, growth, abundance and spring.

So, the “Son/Sun” dies on the Cross (Southern Cross), is dead for three days, then is resurrected, or born again December 25.  This perfectly describes the story of Jesus who wears a crown of thorns that symbolize the sun’s rays.

And remember, Jesus was supposedly crucified on the cross at age 33.  “In the Gospel narratives the Christos represents the perfect man who, having passed through the various stages of the “World Mystery” symbolized by the 33 years, ascends to the heavenly sphere where he is reunited with his Eternal Father,” writes Manly P Hall.  Thirty-three is also another reference to the pineal gland/Third Eye chakra.  There are 32 vertebral segments of the human spine.  The 33rd segment represents the pineal gland in the geometric center of the head as the doorway into the spiritual realms and the symbol of the awakening of a ‘higher’ consciousness.

In the next two articles we will continue our discussion of Early Christianity and its effects on modern Christianity.  This will include the politics of why some of the early church decisions were made and dogmas were formed.  These include decisions about the: Resurrection, Monotheism, God the Father/God the Mother, Passion of the Christ, Persecution of Christians & Martyrdom, the “One True Church, and Knowing God.  This information is sourced from The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels.

We will then discuss the early church fathers of Christianity, the Council of Nicea, the Arian controversy, Christianity in the Dark Ages, modern fundamentalism, and W.L. Graham’s Bible Reality Check with does an excellent job untangling and clarifying some of the more confusing and obtuse aspects found in the version of the Bible we know today.

Lastly we will discuss the revelations from Joseph Atwill’s Caesar’s Messiah to see how the Roman elite at the time manipulated the population by writing the books of New Testament to suit their desires.  This does not mean that Jesus was not an actual person that was attempting to enlighten humanity; it just means that the story told in the Bible is not accurate to his actual life.

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