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