British
authors
insist
that
there
is
barely
a
shred
of
evidence
for
the
existence
of
a
historical
Jesus.
The traditional history of Christianity is hopelessly inadequate to the facts. From our research into ancient spirituality it has become obvious that we must fundamentally revise our understanding of Christian origins in the most shocking of ways. Our conclusion, supported by a considerable body of evidence in our book, The Jesus Mysteries, is that Christianity was not a new revelation. It was a continuation of Paganism by another name. The gospel story of Jesus is not the biography of an historical Messiah. It is a Jewish reworking of ancient Pagan myths of the dying and resurrecting Godman Osiris-Dionysus, which had been popular for centuries throughout the ancient Mediterranean.
The stories told about Osiris-Dionysus will no doubt sound familiar. He is the Son of God who is born to a virgin on the 25th of December before three shepherds. He is a prophet who offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism. He is a wonderworker who raises the dead and miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony. He is God incarnate who dies at Easter, sometimes through crucifixion, but who resurrects on the third day. He is a savior who offers his followers redemption through partaking in a meal of bread and wine, symbolic of his body and blood. The Jesus story is a synthesis of the Jewish myth of the Messiah Joshua (in Greek Jesus) with these Pagan myths of the dying and resurrecting Godman.
It
is
hard
for
us
today
to
imagine
the
Jesus
story
being
consciously
created,
but
this
is
because
we
have
misunderstood
ancient
spirituality.
Myths
were
not
seen
as
untruths
as
they
are
now.
They
were
understood
as
allegories
of
spiritual
initiation,
which
encoded
profound
mystical
teachings.
Reworking
old
myths
to
create
new
ones
was
a
standard
practice
in
the
ancient
world.
The
conquests
of
Alexander
the
Great
had
turned
the
Mediterranean
world
into
one
culture
with
a
common
language.
This
created
an
age
of
eclecticism,
much
like
our
own,
in
which
different
spiritual
traditions
met
and
synthesized.
Jewish
mystics
of
this
period,
such
as
Philo
Judeas,
were
obsessed
with
synthesizing
Jewish
and
Pagan
mythology.
In
light
of
all
this,
it
is
actually
no
surprise
that
some
group
of
Jewish
mystics
should
synthesize
the
great
mythic
hero
of
the
Jews,
Joshua
the
Messiah,
with
the
great
mythic
hero
of
the
Pagans,
Osiris-Dionysus.
At
the
time,
both
Pagans
and
Christians
were
well
aware
that
the
Jesus
story
was
a
myth.
The
early
Christians,
known
as
Gnostics,
understood
the
Jesus
story
as
allegory,
not
history,
and
even
called
Jesus
by
the
names
of
the
Pagan
Godman.
The
Gnostics
were
brutally
eradicated
by
the
Roman
Church
in
the
4th
and
5th
centuries,
and
since
then
we
have
believed
the
official
propaganda
that
these
Christians
were
dangerous
heretics
who
had
gone
Pagan.
Actually
the
evidence
suggests
the
opposite
is
closer
to
the
truth.
The
Gnostics
were
the
original
Christians,
just
as
they
themselves
claimed.
They
had
synthesized
Jewish
and
Pagan
mythology
to
produce
the
Jesus
story
and
many
other
extraordinary
Christian
myths
largely
unknown
today.
The
Roman
Church
was
a
later
deviation,
which
misunderstood
the
Jesus
story
as
history.
It
was,
as
the
Gnostics
said
at
the
time,
an
imitation
Church
teaching
a
superficial
Christianity
designed
for
the
masses.
Roman
Christianity,
and
all
its
subsequent
offshoots,
is
based
on
the
idea
that
if
you
believe
in
the
existence
of
an
historical
Jesus
you
will
go
to
heaven
when
you
die.
For
the
Gnostics,
however,
Jesus
is
an
everyman
figure
in
an
initiation
allegory.
They
taught
that
if
you
yourself
go
through
the
process
of
initiation
symbolized
by
the
Jesus
myth,
you
would
die
to
your
old
self
and
resurrect
in
a
new
way.
The
Greek
word
we
translate
as
resurrect
also
means
awaken.
For
the
Gnostics,
Christianity
was
about
dying
--
the
idea
of
giving
up
your
mortal
body
and
awakening
to
your
immortal
essence
as
the
Christ
within
--
the
One
Consciousness
of
the
Universe.
This
mystical
enlightenment
was
not
something
that
happened
after
death,
but
could
happen
here
and
now.
The historical figure of Jesus has been so central to Western culture that it is hard to question his existence. As soon as we hear his name we can see him in our mind's eye, in his flowing white robes, with long hair and a beard.
Yet this picture of Jesus was not created until the 8th century. Early portrayals of Jesus show him clean-shaven with short hair and wearing a Roman tunic. St Paul says that long hair disgraces a man, so presumably his image of Jesus was not the same as ours.
The
fact
is
that
everything
we
think
we
know
about
Jesus,
like
this
romantic
picture
of
the
bearded
savior,
is
a
creation
of
the
human
imagination.
Actually
there
is
barely
a
shred
of
evidence
for
the
existence
of
an
historical
Jesus
and
this
dissolves
on
closer
inspection.
Paul,
the
earliest
Christian
source,
shows
no
knowledge
of
an
historical
man,
only
a
mystical
Christ.
The
gospels
have
been
thoroughly
discredited
as
eyewitness
reports.
Other
bits
of
traditional
evidence,
such
as
references
to
Jesus
by
the
Jewish
historian
Josephus,
have
been
shown
to
be
later
forgeries.
If
solid
evidence
had
existed,
there
would
have
been
no
need
to
have
created
such
fabrications.
A
little
over
a
century
ago
most
people
believed
the
story
of
Adam
and
Eve
to
be
history.
To
most
thinking
people
today
its
is
obviously
a
myth.
We
predict
that
within
a
generation
a
similar
revolution
will
have
taken
place
in
our
understanding
of
the
gospels.
People
will
look
back
at
the
beginning
of
the
21st
century
and
be
amazed
that
a
culture
with
the
technology
to
travel
to
the
moon
could
see
the
fabulous
story
of
Jesus
as
anything
other
than
a
myth.
However,
we
do
not
want
to
dismiss
the
Jesus
story
as
nonsense.
For
us
it
is
truly
the
greatest
story
ever
told,
because
it
has
been
thousands
of
years
in
the
making.
It
is
a
perennial
tale
that
has
fascinated
the
human
soul
since
the
dawn
of
time.
Whilst our ideas clearly rewrite history, we do not see ourselves as undermining Christianity. On the contrary we are suggesting that Christianity is in fact richer than we previously imagined. According to the original Gnostic Christians, the Jesus story is a perennial myth with the power to impart the mystical experience of Gnosis, which can transform each one of us into a Christ, not merely a history of events that happened to someone else two thousand years ago.
posted by Brian Worley Ex-Minister.org All rights reserved