The Philosophers' Stone

How to Transmute the Elements by Engineering the Geometry of Standing Waves

A series of experiments has been carried out in Japan proving that chickens fed a diet deficient in calcium produced, as the end product of their biological processes, more calcium than they were ginven to live on. The conclusion is that the chickens created the calcium they needed by transmuting potassium.

This discovery challenges the basic concepts of science, and the more critically a discovery challenges the foundations of scientific belief, the less it is examined at all. But if potassium can be transmuted into calcium (and by chickens, no less), we had best construct a new model of the atom to explain how this might be possible. So let's get started, at the level of the subatomic particles that seem to be giving theorists so much difficulty.

After observing that light travels in straight lines to cast sharp shadows, Isaac Newton deduced that light beams could exist only if radiant energy possessed the characteristics of atomic particles. But Sir Isaac went on to pass beams of light through prisms observing the spectrum of colors projected. The fractioning of light into colors is possible only if radiant energy possesses the properties of waves. The problem became a matter of determining whether light was particulate or wavy in nature. Theorists decided that the ultimate elemental substance was both particle and wave, depending upon what it happened to be doing with itself when observed. Then realists proceeded to advance science without caring what light was. Nevertheless, the problem for the philosophers remains. The properties of particles categorically exclude the properties of waves, so how is it possible for an elemental substance, whatever it is, to manifest both properties in successions?

After the greatest scientists since Newton have given up, all a lay person has to do is take a couple of cartons of quarter-inch ball bearings to a billiard parlor, rent a table, and spread balls on the baize.

After you have managed to arrange them with a mathematically random distribution, you will see that each ball is equally distant from its neighbours Absolute chaos is identical to perfect order.

Now try to rearrange the balls so that groups are allowed, but the groupings are mathematically random. Eventually the pattern formed by the balls will follow a density of distribution described by the Bell Frequency Curve of random statistics. The Bell Frequency Curve is a sine-wave form; on a plane surface it is manifest as regular clusters, with small groups of roughly equal numbers being roughly equal distances apart. The smaller groups congregate into larger groups until the entire field can be described as a single sine-wave form of low frequency. Once again, you prove that utter disorder is identical to total organization.

If the balls are small enough and numerous enough in relation to the area you have to spread them on, you will discover the aggregations of particles will assume the pattern of a spiral generated by phi, the ratio between successive numbers in a series extended by adding consecutive numbers together; it is the ratio of 1:1.1618. All natural growth eventually fallows the form of a spiral generated by a phi ratio, from the distributions of atoms to the distributions of stars in galaxies. (In other words, the spiral structure of gas clouds in interstellar space is not necessarily due to the process of gravitational contraction and centrifugal force, as proponents of the Nebular Hypothesis of stellar generation would have us believe. The spiral structure is an inevitable consequence of random distribution.)

You can perform this experiment at less cost by making pencil dots on a large piece of paper, but you will be bothered by con- stant erasing until you get the dots distributed properly. With pencil and paper, however, you can perform the converse experiment. Draw lines at random, each line representing a wave front. If you have enough lines on enough paper, and enough randomness, the result will look exactly like the random distribution of balls on a billiard table, as the intersections of lines form groupings of density.

Whether you perceive a ball to be an atomic particle or an aggregation of particles depends upon the scale of your frame of view. Whether you perceive an aggregation to be a particle or a wave depends upon the scale of your resolution. At the limit of resolution, all structures register on all instruments of measurement as particles. And all structures that cannot be resolved sharply by the instrument of measurement register as waves. So the nature of the ultimate element is determined by the instruments of measurement; all we can really know about it is what our instruments measure. Whether you choose to interpret reality as waves or particles depends entirely on what you want to do. The manifestations of energy - i.e., motion - yield measurements as waves; the manifestations of static material yield measurements as particles.

As it happens, everything is moving. Therefore, all events yield accurate measurements only as wave functions. The use of the laser for measurement establishes the wave as the elemental unit of space, time, motion, and energy.

As when Pythagoras studied music, harmonics is still taught from the model of a vibrating string. A plucked string vibrates back and forth as a unit, forming a standing-wave structure, emitting vibrations through the air to be heard as a musical sound. The tone is the fundamental frequency of the standing wave.

As the string vibrates as a unit, it also divides itself into two halves along its length, and each half vibrates as two individual standing waves independently of the fundamental wave. The frequency of the half lengths is twice the frequency of the fundamental, and the sound emitted is the second harmonic overtone, an octave higher than the fundamental.

And at the same time as the string vibrates as a unit and as independent halves, it also divides its length into three equal parts, each third vibrating independently to emit a sound three times the frequency of the fundamental, called the third harmonic overtone. At the same time, the string also divides itself into fractional lengths of quarters, fifths, sixths, and so on to the elemental molecular unit of vibration, generating successively higher harmonic overtones all the way. The distribution of energy among the overtones determines the unique sound characteristic of each instrument. This is the way harmonics is taught.

Only one thing is wrong with the course of study: The instructors got it all backward, just as electricians are taught that electricity flows in the opposite direction from the way it really flows. Now all the musicians and acoustic engineers will protest; everyone can see the vibrating string, and the course in harmonics describes exactly what you see doesn't it? No, what is really happening is random motion. Whether or not you can hear the vibrations of a musical string above the audible threshold, the string is always vibrating due to the random molecular agitation of heat. (As far as the string is concerned, the extra vibration it gets from being plucked is just more heat.) Molecular motion along the string arranges itself into increasingly longer sine waves according to the Bell Frequency Curve of random distribution, until all the various fractional vibrations come into phase to generate the fundamental frequency. Fractions which do not coincide with the lower harmonics travel back and forth along the length of the string as moving waves until they come into direct opposition, transforming them into electromagnetic radiation. It's the loss of energy through electromagmetic transformation that causes the molecular vibrations to die down.

Electricians continue to learn their subject backward because which way the current flows makes no difference to the wiring; and besides, alternating current flows both ways. So what difference does it make whether harmonics is taught as division or integrations. Well, as long as you believe electricity flows from positive to negative, you will never be able to discover and implement electronics.

If you learn harmonics by dirtributing ball bearings on a pool table, the way Pythagoras did after he was initiated into the higher dimensions and forswore beans, you will discover how the universe unfolds.

An infinite number of particles distributed and moving randomly through infinite space will divide themselves along a fundamental axis; one half moving in one direction and the other half moving in the opposite direction. This flow corresponds to gravity and antigravity. The reason we rarely see antigravity is that all particles belonging to the opposite pole have already departed in the other direction, and very few are left around here.

Each half of the universal particles traveling in opposite directions along the fundamental axis will divide into two groups again, moving in opposite directions along a plane at right angles to the gravitational axis. This secondary harmonic corresponds to the centrifugal and centripetal forces. The second harmonic will also subdivide into another pair of equal and opposite accelerations that can be represented as a cylinder parallel to the centrifugal-centripetal plane. The tertiary harmonic corresponds to the precessional forces.

Like the conventional view of the musical string, the universe can be described as subdividing itself successively until the ultimate particle is reached whatever that ultimate particle is.

Of course, the universe does not really divide itself in this manner any more than the musical string does. It assembles its harmonics from random motion to coherent undertones. We proceed to analyze from the fundamental to the overtones only because it is convenient for our habit of thinking. We shall never know where the universal fundamental axis is, nor what the ultimate particle is, because in an infinite universe we must always find ourselves exactly in the middle of an infinite extension in both directions of whatever dimension we happen to be considering. What we call gravity, centrifugal-centripetal, and precessional forces are merely arbitrary conventions established for the convenience of our habitual mode of perception.

Once we perceive that all parts of space contain an indefinite number of particles moving at random to form the force fields we are familiar with, we understand how to engineer field energies directly. You see, one phase of precessional acceleration proceeds in the same direction as antigranty. To invent an antigravity engine, therefore, all you have to do is amplify the centrifugal harmonic until the antigravitational phase of the precessional harmonic exceeds the acceleration of gravity, and then eliminate the gravitational phase. This is exactly what Professor Eric Laithwaite calculated; he failed only because of errors in arithmetic. Other engineers have found the errors and corrected them. Whether or not the Laithwaite Engine worked, the fact remains that all antigravity engineering and all other field engineering can be reduced to the geometry of harmonics generated by random particles.

An infinite universe defined by an infinite number of randomly moving particles establishes the scientific principle of parity, meaning that energy will be equal in all directions and at all locations. In current physics, the concept of the cosmic hologram is still not accepted, so panty is limited to equality of motion in all directions.

When all the vectors of the gravitational-fundamental vibration and the centrifugal-centripetal secondary harmonic and the precessional tertiary harmonic and all the other harmonics are integrated into a resultant, the trajectory of any given particle must follow the course of a spiral vortex with a phi generator. Therefore, any part of space you choose as a frame of reference will be defined by a fundamental field vortex, subdivided into an indefinite number of harmonic overtone vortices.

A vortex can spin in only one direction. Parity demands that for every vortex there must be a countervortex. This is why all dynamic structures are created, like men and women, in equal and opposite numbers.

Two vortices spinning in the same direction flow in opposite directions along their interface, Therefore, if pushed together. they will annihilate each other. This is why when particle meets antiparticle, they are transformed into radiant energy. The closer two vortices spinning in the same direction are pushed together, the more energy is brought into opposition along their interface. Therefore, all vortices rotating in the same direction will tend to move away from each other until they are spaced equally apart.

Conversely, two vortices spinning in opposite directions are flowing in the same direction along their interface. Therefore, they tend to merge. But they are not drawn together so much as pushed together by the pressure of similar vortices.

It is evident that the mechanics of vortices determines the force physicists call charge. Spin determines polarity.

Physical experiment has proven conclusively that electrons and protons are monopoles. The fact that electric charge is monopolar while magnetic charge is dipolar is one of the problems in the search for a Unified-Field Theory. If the vortex model is valid, however, electrons and protons should be dipolar, depending on which way they are oriented. But protons always repel each other, so all respectable physicists are convinced the vortex model is mistaken.

But protons do not always repel each other! When they come close enough together, they cleave together with greater force than any glue known. Physicists call this attraction the nuclear force, and they are unable to explain why it can be so powerful, but only over extremely close distances, within the nucleus of the atom. The answer is self-evident by a simple experiment. If you float a number of bar magnets in a fluid medium, and enclose the experimental setup in an electromagnetic field, the field will align all the magnets in the same direction and they will repel each other like protons. But if the magnets are small enough, and are brought closely enough together, the mutual attraction of their opposite poles will overcome the force of the external field keeping them aligned - and they will flip, one relative to the other. With opposite poles tightly together, they will cleave together most tenaciously over a short distance. But once separated beyond the critical distance, the external field will align them in the same direction, and they will repel each other again. Scientists have come to perceive the electromagnetic field aligning particles in an atom as the electromagnetic field, so when particles flip and join in the nucleus with a thousand times more force than the attraction between proton and electron, a radically new force is postulated.

As it happens, Immanuel Velikovsky proposed an equivalent hypothesis to explain why planets in the Solar System do not collide. You see, if there is mutual gravitational attraction among the planets, they must clump together over the course of time. But observations prove that the planets maintain the greatest possible distance from each other. When an extreme condition is maintained indefinitely, you cannot explain it as accidental; there must be a physical force keeping the planets apart. Unfortunately, it was Velikovsky who proposed this hypothesis, and no scientist who is not independently wealthy and careless of reputation can afford to prove anything that Velikovsky said.

Field forces are defined, by many criteria, so physicists may be on firm ground when they establish a nuclear force distinct from the electromagnetic force - but the experiments proving electrical particles to be monopolar do not contribute to that support.

When harmonic calculations are transferred to spaces of more than one dimension (the musical string is the standard object lesson), the same principles are assumed to be valid. As a consequence, spherical harmonics is interpreted as a circular wave expanding from a point of origin on the global surface, and the harmonic ratios are measured along a radius. This conception works very well as far as it goes, but as you will learn, plane harmonics has some extremely practical differences from linear harmonics.

A plane cannot exist as a vibrating structure unless it has at least three sides. The triangle, therefore, must be established as the fundamental unit of plane harmonics. When the sides of an equilateral triangle are bisected and joined, the result is four triangles, just as a square makes four squares when its sides are bisected and joined. The operations of plane harmonics apparently observe the rules of plane geometry.

William H. Whamond, writing in Pursuit, pointed out that if the sides of a polygon are not of a ratio that mutually reinforces each other's vibrations, the plane structure will disintegrate. All equal-sided polygons maintain their sides by mutual reinforcement, but all those which cannot be triangulated in harmonic ratios must collapse under pressure. It is surprising that Buckminster Fuller was able to build a career without realizing the function of harmonics in maintaining basic stability of structure.

Whamond went further to point out that although stabilizing the dimensions of diagonals may be sufficient for practical structures, theoretical requirements are not satisfied unless the diametric vibratiom reinforce the perimetric vibrations to establish the polygon's rigidity through and through. The simplest polygon generated by a mutually harmonic reinforcement of both sides and center is the hexagon. This is the probable reason why six acquired a reputation for being the perfect number among the ancient philosophers, and why a circle's circumference was accepted as being three times its diameter. although every wheelwright knew better.

If you draw a grid of squares, and then draw all the diagonals, you will find yourself with a grid composed of two sets of squares. One set is rotated forty-five degrees from the other, and their dimension are related to each other by a ratio of the square root of 2. This self-evident transformation assumes engineering significance when harmonic structures extend into higher dimensions.

As Buckminster Fuller pointed out, not only is the triangle the basic unit of plane space, but the principle of triangulation also establishes the tetrahedron as the basic unit of solid space. Like the triangle, however, the tetrahedron maintains its structure only by the triangulated rigidity of the mutually reinforcing vibrations of its sides. In order to possess internal stability, the tetrahedron must be doubled, one intersecting another, with points aligned on a polar axis.

To establish stability, tetrahedrons must always be manifest in mutually opposed and supporting pairs in this way. When this geometrical structure takes form from universal vibrations, however, it is not the simple pair of tetrahedrons it appears to be at first sight.


If lines are drawn joining all the points of the paired tetrahedrons, you have a cube. If lines are drawn between the centers of each face of the cube, they form the edges of an octahedron.

If circles scribed around the bases of the two tetrahedrons are divided into five equal arcs and all the points joined by lines, a symmetrical polyhedron defined by twenty equilateral triangles is defined. If all the points are joined by lines through the center of the icosahedron, twenty equal tetrahedrons will be defined. The space defined by an icosahedron is stabilized by mutually reinforcing resonance around all sides, along all edges, and through all diameters. Like the hexagon, the twenty faceted icosahedron is the perfect solid.

Now, bisecting all the lines forming an icosahedron produces a twelve sided symmetrical polyhedron called a dodecahedron - the solid projection of the five-pointed star circumscribed by a pentagon. All ratios of the dodecahedron approximate the values of various mystical triangles, but they are incommensurate with the icosahedron by integers; the internal structure of the dodecahedron is irrational, like pi, phi, root 2, root 3, root 5, etc. As you know, the diagonal of a square is related to its sides by root 2 and the diagonal cross of a square is also the negative of the square. The dodecahedron is the negative of the icosahedron. In this context, the octahedron is the negative of the cube. Because a tetrahedron is the elemental unit of solid space, no other polyhedron can function as its inferior negative, so the tetrahedron is rotated 180 degrees to function as its own solid negative. Lines drawn from the points of a tetrahedron to its internal center form a linear structure called the Miraldi angle, resembling a caltrop, this is the true negative of the tetrahedron, but the field rotation required to transform a tetrahedron into a caltrop projects the structure into fewer dimensions.

Now, the relationship between a square and its diagonals is a 45-degree rotation on plane space, which is the projection of a rotation of 90 degrees in hyperspace. The relationship between the tetrahedron, the octahedron, the cube, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron is also established by a definite rotation through hyperspace. The notes of a musical scale are also defined by a definite rotation of energy through hyperspace, which transforms one frequency into another. As an illustration, rotation through hyperspace transforms the wavelength of the side of a square to the wavelength of its diagonal. The ratio of the side to the diagonal is the same as the ratio between G and C on the musical scale.

You have just made a discovery sought by philosophers throughout history; the regular Platonic solids are related to each other as musical notes on a hexatonic scale. Extend the sides of the dodecahedron until they meet, and you have the frame of a pair of tetrahedrons exactly twice the size of the pair you started with to continue the scale on the second octave. You have discovered the Music of the Spheres.


Parity is not satisfied by the creation of nuclear particles in the form of equal and opposing standing-wave vortices. The axes of the pair, you see, are both aligned in the same direction; that is a manifestation of directional preference. In order that axes be balanced in all directions, particles must congregate in groups of six; three pairs of mutually opposed particles with the axis of each pair at right angles to the other two. This assemblage puts each vortex at the vertex of an octahedron.

The octahedron is not stable because each pair of vortices grind gears against the other two. But if the equatorial pair of particles move away from each other along the polar axis, the six can mesh together like two pairs of crown gear clusters fitted at right angles to each other.

The vortex model suggests that the basic particle is likely to be composed of three pairs of finer particles bound together in the harmonic structure of an octahedron. The geometry of the three pairs bears a striking correspondence to the characteristics of the elusive quark. Charm, beauty, and color appear to he manifestations of angle in hyperspace; axial angles account for fractional electric charge.

The octahedron still does not quite satisfy parity. The polar pinions of the crown gear clusters are both spinning in the same direction; this will give the octahedron a net charge. If four more pair of vortices, forming the negative of the octahedron, are spaced in a cube arrangement between the vertices of the octahedron, all the gears will spin in the right direction, all spins will be equally opposed, and all axes will be balanced in all directions. The cube-octa is the likely conformation of the neutron. Proof will be slow coming because at least half the particles are in the quantum field at the instant any measurement is made; this is why the quarks are so damned elusive.

The cube-octa contains fourteen particles. If struck, it could collapse, with twelve arranging themselves around one in the center, in the form of a dodecahedron, while the fourteenth spins free into orbit. The transformation is remarkable similar to what appears to happen when a neutron is converted by impact into a proton and an electron.

If the proton has the geometry of a dodecahedron, it will be a charged particle, so every proton will seek another proton as a mate. This may be why hydrogen is a diatomic molecule. After the neutron collapses, parity is not reestablished absolutely until the helium atom is formed. This would explain why helium is monatomic, with all the properties of an overgrown neutron.

Now that we have our electrons, protons, and neutrons straightened out, let's put them all together!

Niels Bohr described the atom as a miniature Solar System, with the nucleus serving as a Sun, orbited by electron `planets'. The Bohr model is represented in all popular scientific literature despite the fact that any child can see it must be impossible. You see, if you have electrons orbiting in all directions around a nucleus, they are bound to collide; and on the atomic time scale, eventually is something sooner than a microsecond.

The atomic traffic problem was solved by gaving each electron a different radius to orbit, but this solution won't work, either. An electron's wavelength is defined by its orbit. If every electron has its own orbital radius, each electron will manifest a different wavelength. This does not happen.

Erwin Schrdinger resolved the problem by proposing that electrons were standing waves, but his equations required three dimensions for each electron. Although the standing-wave equations were accepted, the necessity for multiplied space was not. As a consequence, mathematical physicists are still searching for a model that will make the atom possible! They have given up seeking a model that can be represented as a mechanical structure, and physics builds increasingdy complicated and abstract equations.


The model of solid harmonics indicates that the node of the electronic standing wave revolves around the equator of the hydrogen nucleus. The node requires only half the quantum orbital space it has, so another electron can share the same shell to form a helium atom. To maintain parity, each moves to a polar hemisphere separated by the equator, and revolves in opposite directions.

Space is insufficient for a third electron, so the lithium atom must start another shell. The second shell has enough area for eight electrons, so the surface of each hemisphere is divided harmonically into successive halves, thirds, and quarters. Apparently the equatorial division establishes a hemispherical sector that is never crossed. The eight facets form the sides of an octahedron (the ubiquitous octahedron again) and each facet has just enough room to hold an electron; each facet is a quantum unit of space relative to the frequency of the electron. When the octahedron is complete, the atom is electrically neu- tral, as all octahedrons with their gears running smoothly are supposed to he, Neon is almost as inert as helium, but parity must be observed; and a second octahedron is laid over the first with the spins of each electron aligned at a different angle. The fourth orbital shell has sufficient radius for its surface to hold many more electrons. If you move the eight electrons to the vertices of the octahedron harmonic structure, so that each hemisphere is covered by a square pyramid with the equatorial cleavage separating them, you will find enough room to add another electron to the center of each facet, defining a cube- octa. The total of electrons will he eighteen; this is the number of electrons proven to be established in the subsequent shells in the generation of the Periodical Table of Elements. The electrons of each shell align their axes to balance parity.

But apparently it is a long way from helium to the next perfect atomic geometry. If the equatorial cleft is retained throughout the generation of elements, the model of heavier atoms will assume the dumbbell configuration of the electromagnetic field surrounding a bar magnet. (Structural weakness at the waist may be the reason that atoms heavier than bismuth break spontanenusly.)

To illustrate how the geometry works in prarctice, the atom of carbon has a pair of miter caps, one over each polar hemisphere. There is space for two more electrons in each hemisphere to complete the octahedron. When it takes the electrons attached to hydrogen atoms, the hydrogen nucleus is going to stick out as a lump. In order to maintain parity, the angles at which the hydrogen atoms will join the carbon atom to form methane conform to the points of a tetrahedron. This fact is taken for granted in stereochemistry today, but established authorities put down the first chemist who suggested that molecules had solid structures, quite different from the empirical formulas used to describe them.

The oxygen atom is capped by three-sided pyramids with room for one more electron in each hemisphere. Parity allows a 120-degree angle between the hydrogen nuclei, and so water forms ice crystals in a hexagonal geometry.


Outside of the innermost shells, electrons do not orbit the nucleus of their atoms at all; they orbit the space of their octahedronal facet at a constant radius. This geometry makes it possible to avert collisions and maintain a constant frequency of orbit, regardless of an electron's distance from its atomic center. When atoms are excited by absorbing radiation, a rotation in hyperspace causes the shells to move out to a greater radius from the nucleus to the positions calculated from experiment.


You have been taken along this line of superficial physics and chemistry to give you a basis for the possibility that all molecular structures are generated from the elementary geometry of the Platonic solids, with the elements combined in various combinations of harmonically integrated angles, like crystals. If this is so, then each chemical element and compound will resonate in sympathy to a specific geometric solid. Furthermore, each solid structure can be excited and modulated by musical sound. This is not a novel concept, but the very basis of alchemy.

Now, each solid can be transformed into another structure by a regular rotation through the hyperspace of the quantum field. Each chemical atom is also transformed by a rotation of its geometrical structure in hyperspace. Therefore, by employing tuned vibrations it is theoretically possible to transform lead into gold (or gold into oil, which is considerably more valuable these days).

Fitting experimental data to the theory of solid harmonics is a task requiring professional competence. Even if the essential concept is correct, coflicting data is turning up day by day inspiring many false starts.
In the meantime, back at the bench, we have discovered the Philosophers' Stone. If a birdbrain can transmute the elements, so can engineering geniuses - as soon as we figure out how those stupid chickens did it. 

[Source: T.B.Pawlicki - How to transmute the elements by engineering the geometry of standing waves]

Forged Origins of the New Testament

What the Church doesn't want you to know
[...]The majority of modern-day Christian writers suppress the truth about the development of their religion and conceal Constantine's efforts to curb the disreputable character of the presbyters who are now called "Church Fathers" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. xiv, pp. 370-1). They were "maddened", he said (Life of Constantine, attributed to Eusebius Pamphilius of Caesarea, c. 335, vol. iii, p. 171; The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, cited as N&PNF, attributed to St Ambrose, Rev. Prof. Roberts, DD, and Principal James Donaldson, LLD, editors, 1891, vol. iv, p. 467). The "peculiar type of oratory" expounded by them was a challenge to a settled religious order (The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Religion, Literature and Art, Oskar Seyffert, Gramercy, New York, 1995, pp. 544-5). Ancient records reveal the true nature of the presbyters, and the low regard in which they were held has been subtly suppressed by modern Church historians. In reality, they were:

"...the most rustic fellows, teaching strange paradoxes. They openly declared that none but the ignorant was fit to hear their discourses ... they never appeared in the circles of the wiser and better sort, but always took care to intrude themselves among the ignorant and uncultured, rambling around to play tricks at fairs and markets ... they lard their lean books with the fat of old fables ... and still the less do they understand ... and they write nonsense on vellum ... and still be doing, never done." (Contra Celsum ["Against Celsus"], Origen of Alexandria, c. 251, Bk I, p. lxvii, Bk III, p. xliv, passim)

Clusters of presbyters had developed "many gods and many lords" (1 Cor. 8:5) and numerous religious sects existed, each with differing doctrines (Gal. 1:6). Presbyterial groups clashed over attributes of their various gods and "altar was set against altar" in competing for an audience (Optatus of Milevis, 1:15, 19, early fourth century). From Constantine's point of view, there were several factions that needed satisfying, and he set out to develop an all-embracing religion during a period of irreverent confusion. In an age of crass ignorance, with nine-tenths of the peoples of Europe illiterate, stabilising religious splinter groups was only one of Constantine's problems. The smooth generalisation, which so many historians are content to repeat, that Constantine "embraced the Christian religion" and subsequently granted "official toleration", is "contrary to historical fact" and should be erased from our literature forever (Catholic Encyclopedia, Pecci ed., vol. iii, p. 299, passim). Simply put, there was no Christian religion at Constantine's time, and the Church acknowledges that the tale of his "conversion" and "baptism" are "entirely legendary" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. xiv, pp. 370-1).

Constantine "never acquired a solid theological knowledge" and "depended heavily on his advisers in religious questions" (Catholic Encyclopedia, New Edition, vol. xii, p. 576, passim). According to Eusebeius (260-339), Constantine noted that among the presbyterian factions "strife had grown so serious, vigorous action was necessary to establish a more religious state", but he could not bring about a settlement between rival god factions (Life of Constantine, op. cit., pp. 26-8). His advisers warned him that the presbyters' religions were "destitute of foundation" and needed official stabilisation (ibid.).

Constantine saw in this confused system of fragmented dogmas the opportunity to create a new and combined State religion, neutral in concept, and to protect it by law. When he conquered the East in 324 he sent his Spanish religious adviser, Osius of Córdoba, to Alexandria with letters to several bishops exhorting them to make peace among themselves. The mission failed and Constantine, probably at the suggestion of Osius, then issued a decree commanding all presbyters and their subordinates "be mounted on asses, mules and horses belonging to the public, and travel to the city of Nicaea" in the Roman province of Bithynia in Asia Minor. They were instructed to bring with them the testimonies they orated to the rabble, "bound in leather" for protection during the long journey, and surrender them to Constantine upon arrival in Nicaea (The Catholic Dictionary, Addis and Arnold, 1917, "Council of Nicaea" entry). Their writings totalled "in all, two thousand two hundred and thirty-one scrolls and legendary tales of gods and saviours, together with a record of the doctrines orated by them" (Life of Constantine, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 73; N&PNF, op. cit., vol. i, p. 518).

The First Council of Nicaea and the "missing records"
Thus, the first ecclesiastical gathering in history was summoned and is today known as the Council of Nicaea. It was a bizarre event that provided many details of early clerical thinking and presents a clear picture of the intellectual climate prevailing at the time. It was at this gathering that Christianity was born, and the ramifications of decisions made at the time are difficult to calculate. About four years prior to chairing the Council, Constantine had been initiated into the religious order of Sol Invictus, one of the two thriving cults that regarded the Sun as the one and only Supreme God (the other was Mithraism). Because of his Sun worship, he instructed Eusebius to convene the first of three sittings on the summer solstice, 21 June 325 (Catholic Encyclopedia, New Edition, vol. i, p. 792), and it was "held in a hall in Osius's palace" (Ecclesiastical History, Bishop Louis Dupin, Paris, 1686, vol. i, p. 598). In an account of the proceedings of the conclave of presbyters gathered at Nicaea, Sabinius, Bishop of Hereclea, who was in attendance, said, "Excepting Constantine himself and Eusebius Pamphilius, they were a set of illiterate, simple creatures who understood nothing" (Secrets of the Christian Fathers, Bishop J. W. Sergerus, 1685, 1897 reprint).

This is another luminous confession of the ignorance and uncritical credulity of early churchmen. Dr Richard Watson (1737-1816), a disillusioned Christian historian and one-time Bishop of Llandaff in Wales (1782), referred to them as "a set of gibbering idiots" (An Apology for Christianity, 1776, 1796 reprint; also, Theological Tracts, Dr Richard Watson, "On Councils" entry, vol. 2, London, 1786, revised reprint 1791). From his extensive research into Church councils, Dr Watson concluded that "the clergy at the Council of Nicaea were all under the power of the devil, and the convention was composed of the lowest rabble and patronised the vilest abominations" (An Apology for Christianity, op. cit.). It was that infantile body of men who were responsible for the commencement of a new religion and the theological creation of Jesus Christ.

The Church admits that vital elements of the proceedings at Nicaea are "strangely absent from the canons" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. iii, p. 160). We shall see shortly what happened to them. However, according to records that endured, Eusebius "occupied the first seat on the right of the emperor and delivered the inaugural address on the emperor's behalf" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. v, pp. 619-620). There were no British presbyters at the council but many Greek delegates. "Seventy Eastern bishops" represented Asiatic factions, and small numbers came from other areas (Ecclesiastical History, ibid.). Caecilian of Carthage travelled from Africa, Paphnutius of Thebes from Egypt, Nicasius of Die (Dijon) from Gaul, and Donnus of Stridon made the journey from Pannonia.

It was at that puerile assembly, and with so many cults represented, that a total of 318 "bishops, priests, deacons, subdeacons, acolytes and exorcists" gathered to debate and decide upon a unified belief system that encompassed only one god (An Apology for Christianity, op. cit.). By this time, a huge assortment of "wild texts" (Catholic Encyclopedia, New Edition, "Gospel and Gospels") circulated amongst presbyters and they supported a great variety of Eastern and Western gods and goddesses: Jove, Jupiter, Salenus, Baal, Thor, Gade, Apollo, Juno, Aries, Taurus, Minerva, Rhets, Mithra, Theo, Fragapatti, Atys, Durga, Indra, Neptune, Vulcan, Kriste, Agni, Croesus, Pelides, Huit, Hermes, Thulis, Thammus, Eguptus, Iao, Aph, Saturn, Gitchens, Minos, Maximo, Hecla and Phernes (God's Book of Eskra, anon., ch. xlviii, paragraph 36).

Up until the First Council of Nicaea, the Roman aristocracy primarily worshipped two Greek gods-Apollo and Zeus-but the great bulk of common people idolised either Julius Caesar or Mithras (the Romanised version of the Persian deity Mithra). Caesar was deified by the Roman Senate after his death (15 March 44 BC) and subsequently venerated as "the Divine Julius". The word "Saviour" was affixed to his name, its literal meaning being "one who sows the seed", i.e., he was a phallic god. Julius Caesar was hailed as "God made manifest and universal Saviour of human life", and his successor Augustus was called the "ancestral God and Saviour of the whole human race" (Man and his Gods, Homer Smith, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1952). Emperor Nero (54-68), whose original name was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (37-68), was immortalised on his coins as the "Saviour of mankind" (ibid.). The Divine Julius as Roman Saviour and "Father of the Empire" was considered "God" among the Roman rabble for more than 300 years. He was the deity in some Western presbyters' texts, but was not recognised in Eastern or Oriental writings.

Constantine's intention at Nicaea was to create an entirely new god for his empire who would unite all religious factions under one deity. Presbyters were asked to debate and decide who their new god would be. Delegates argued among themselves, expressing personal motives for inclusion of particular writings that promoted the finer traits of their own special deity. Throughout the meeting, howling factions were immersed in heated debates, and the names of 53 gods were tabled for discussion. "As yet, no God had been selected by the council, and so they balloted in order to determine that matter... For one year and five months the balloting lasted..." (God's Book of Eskra, Prof. S. L. MacGuire's translation, Salisbury, 1922, chapter xlviii, paragraphs 36, 41).

At the end of that time, Constantine returned to the gathering to discover that the presbyters had not agreed on a new deity but had balloted down to a shortlist of five prospects: Caesar, Krishna, Mithra, Horus and Zeus (Historia Ecclesiastica, Eusebius, c. 325). Constantine was the ruling spirit at Nicaea and he ultimately decided upon a new god for them. To involve British factions, he ruled that the name of the great Druid god, Hesus, be joined with the Eastern Saviour-god, Krishna (Krishna is Sanskrit for Christ), and thus Hesus Krishna would be the official name of the new Roman god. A vote was taken and it was with a majority show of hands (161 votes to 157) that both divinities became one God. Following longstanding heathen custom, Constantine used the official gathering and the Roman apotheosis decree to legally deify two deities as one, and did so by democratic consent. A new god was proclaimed and "officially" ratified by Constantine (Acta Concilii Nicaeni, 1618). That purely political act of deification effectively and legally placed Hesus and Krishna among the Roman gods as one individual composite. That abstraction lent Earthly existence to amalgamated doctrines for the Empire's new religion; and because there was no letter "J" in alphabets until around the ninth century, the name subsequently evolved into "Jesus Christ".

How the Gospels were created
Constantine then instructed Eusebius to organise the compilation of a uniform collection of new writings developed from primary aspects of the religious texts submitted at the council. His instructions were:

"Search ye these books, and whatever is good in them, that retain; but whatsoever is evil, that cast away. What is good in one book, unite ye with that which is good in another book. And whatsoever is thus brought together shall be called The Book of Books. And it shall be the doctrine of my people, which I will recommend unto all nations, that there shall be no more war for religions' sake." (God's Book of Eskra, op. cit., chapter xlviii, paragraph 31)

"Make them to astonish" said Constantine, and "the books were written accordingly" (Life of Constantine, vol. iv, pp. 36-39). Eusebius amalgamated the "legendary tales of all the religious doctrines of the world together as one", using the standard god-myths from the presbyters' manuscripts as his exemplars. Merging the supernatural "god" stories of Mithra and Krishna with British Culdean beliefs effectively joined the orations of Eastern and Western presbyters together "to form a new universal belief" (ibid.). Constantine believed that the amalgamated collection of myths would unite variant and opposing religious factions under one representative story. Eusebius then arranged for scribes to produce "fifty sumptuous copies ... to be written on parchment in a legible manner, and in a convenient portable form, by professional scribes thoroughly accomplished in their art" (ibid.). "These orders," said Eusebius, "were followed by the immediate execution of the work itself ... we sent him [Constantine] magnificently and elaborately bound volumes of three-fold and four-fold forms" (Life of Constantine, vol. iv, p. 36). They were the "New Testimonies", and this is the first mention (c. 331) of the New Testament in the historical record.

With his instructions fulfilled, Constantine then decreed that the New Testimonies would thereafter be called the "word of the Roman Saviour God" (Life of Constantine, vol. iii, p. 29) and official to all presbyters sermonising in the Roman Empire. He then ordered earlier presbyterial manuscripts and the records of the council "burnt" and declared that "any man found concealing writings should be stricken off from his shoulders" (beheaded) (ibid.). As the record shows, presbyterial writings previous to the Council of Nicaea no longer exist, except for some fragments that have survived. Some council records also survived, and they provide alarming ramifications for the Church.Some old documents say that the First Council of Nicaea ended in mid-November 326, while others say the struggle to establish a god was so fierce that it extended "for four years and seven months" from its beginning in June 325 (Secrets of the Christian Fathers, op. cit.). Regardless of when it ended, the savagery and violence it encompassed were concealed under the glossy title "Great and Holy Synod", assigned to the assembly by the Church in the 18th century. Earlier Churchmen, however, expressed a different opinion.

The Second Council of Nicaea in 786-87 denounced the First Council of Nicaea as "a synod of fools and madmen" and sought to annul "decisions passed by men with troubled brains" (History of the Christian Church, H. H. Milman, DD, 1871). If one chooses to read the records of the Second Nicaean Council and notes references to "affrighted bishops" and the "soldiery" needed to "quell proceedings", the "fools and madmen" declaration is surely an example of the pot calling the kettle black.

Constantine died in 337 and his outgrowth of many now-called pagan beliefs into a new religious system brought many converts. Later Church writers made him "the great champion of Christianity" which he gave "legal status as the religion of the Roman Empire" (Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire, Matthew Bunson, Facts on File, New York, 1994, p. 86). Historical records reveal this to be incorrect, for it was "self-interest" that led him to create Christianity (A Smaller Classical Dictionary, J. M. Dent, London, 1910, p. 161). Yet it wasn't called "Christianity" until the 15th century (How The Great Pan Died, Professor Edmond S. Bordeaux [Vatican archivist], Mille Meditations, USA, MCMLXVIII, pp. 45-7).

Over the ensuing centuries, Constantine's New Testimonies were expanded upon, "interpolations" were added and other writings included (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. vi, pp. 135-137; also, Pecci ed., vol. ii, pp. 121-122). For example, in 397 John "golden-mouthed" Chrysostom restructured the writings of Apollonius of Tyana, a first-century wandering sage, and made them part of the New Testimonies (Secrets of the Christian Fathers, op. cit.). The Latinised name for Apollonius is Paulus (A Latin-English Dictionary, J. T. White and J. E. Riddle, Ginn & Heath, Boston, 1880), and the Church today calls those writings the Epistles of Paul. Apollonius's personal attendant, Damis, an Assyrian scribe, is Demis in the New Testament (2 Tim. 4:10).

The Church hierarchy knows the truth about the origin of its Epistles, for Cardinal Bembo (d. 1547), secretary to Pope Leo X (d. 1521), advised his associate, Cardinal Sadoleto, to disregard them, saying "put away these trifles, for such absurdities do not become a man of dignity; they were introduced on the scene later by a sly voice from heaven" (Cardinal Bembo: His Letters and Comments on Pope Leo X, A. L. Collins, London, 1842 reprint). The Church admits that the Epistles of Paul are forgeries, saying, "Even the genuine Epistles were greatly interpolated to lend weight to the personal views of their authors" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. vii, p. 645). Likewise, St Jerome (d. 420) declared that the Acts of the Apostles, the fifth book of the New Testament, was also "falsely written" ("The Letters of Jerome", Library of the Fathers, Oxford Movement, 1833-45, vol. v, p. 445).

The Shock Discovery of an ancient Bible
The New Testament subsequently evolved into a fulsome piece of priesthood propaganda, and the Church claimed it recorded the intervention of a divine Jesus Christ into Earthly affairs. However, a spectacular discovery in a remote Egyptian monastery revealed to the world the extent of later falsifications of the Christian texts, themselves only an "assemblage of legendary tales" (Encyclopédie, Diderot, 1759). On 4 February 1859, 346 leaves of an ancient codex were discovered in the furnace room at St Catherine's monastery at Mt Sinai, and its contents sent shockwaves through the Christian world. Along with other old codices, it was scheduled to be burned in the kilns to provide winter warmth for the inhabitants of the monastery. Written in Greek on donkey skins, it carried both the Old and New Testaments, and later in time archaeologists dated its composition to around the year 380. It was discovered by Dr Constantin von Tischendorf (1815-1874), a brilliant and pious German biblical scholar, and he called it the Sinaiticus, the Sinai Bible. Tischendorf was a professor of theology who devoted his entire life to the study of New Testament origins, and his desire to read all the ancient Christian texts led him on the long, camel-mounted journey to St Catherine's Monastery.

During his lifetime, Tischendorf had access to other ancient Bibles unavailable to the public, such as the Alexandrian (or Alexandrinus) Bible, believed to be the second oldest Bible in the world. It was so named because in 1627 it was taken from Alexandria to Britain and gifted to King Charles I (1600-49). Today it is displayed alongside the world's oldest known Bible, the Sinaiticus, in the British Library in London. During his research, Tischendorf had access to the Vaticanus, the Vatican Bible, believed to be the third oldest in the world and dated to the mid-sixth century (The Various Versions of the Bible, Dr Constantin von Tischendorf, 1874, available in the British Library). It was locked away in the Vatican's inner library. Tischendorf asked if he could extract handwritten notes, but his request was declined. However, when his guard took refreshment breaks, Tischendorf wrote comparative narratives on the palm of his hand and sometimes on his fingernails ("Are Our Gospels Genuine or Not?", Dr Constantin von Tischendorf, lecture, 1869, available in the British Library). Today, there are several other Bibles written in various languages during the fifth and sixth centuries, examples being the Syriacus, the Cantabrigiensis (Bezae), the Sarravianus and the Marchalianus.

A shudder of apprehension echoed through Christendom in the last quarter of the 19th century when English-language versions of the Sinai Bible were published. Recorded within these pages is information that disputes Christianity's claim of historicity. Christians were provided with irrefutable evidence of wilful falsifications in all modern New Testaments. So different was the Sinai Bible's New Testament from versions then being published that the Church angrily tried to annul the dramatic new evidence that challenged its very existence. In a series of articles published in the London Quarterly Review in 1883, John W. Burgon, Dean of Chichester, used every rhetorical device at his disposal to attack the Sinaiticus' earlier and opposing story of Jesus Christ, saying that "...without a particle of hesitation, the Sinaiticus is scandalously corrupt ... exhibiting the most shamefully mutilated texts which are anywhere to be met with; they have become, by whatever process, the depositories of the largest amount of fabricated readings, ancient blunders and intentional perversions of the truth which are discoverable in any known copies of the word of God". Dean Burgon's concerns mirror opposing aspects of Gospel stories then current, having by now evolved to a new stage through centuries of tampering with the fabric of an already unhistorical document.

The revelations of ultraviolet light testing
In 1933, the British Museum in London purchased the Sinai Bible from the Soviet government for £100,000, of which £65,000 was gifted by public subscription. Prior to the acquisition, this Bible was displayed in the Imperial Library in St Petersburg, Russia, and "few scholars had set eyes on it" (The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, 11 January 1938, p. 3). When it went on display in 1933 as "the oldest Bible in the world" (ibid.), it became the centre of a pilgrimage unequalled in the history of the British Museum.

Before I summarise its conflictions, it should be noted that this old codex is by no means a reliable guide to New Testament study as it contains superabundant errors and serious re-editing. These anomalies were exposed as a result of the months of ultraviolet-light tests carried out at the British Museum in the mid-1930s. The findings revealed replacements of numerous passages by at least nine different editors. Photographs taken during testing revealed that ink pigments had been retained deep in the pores of the skin. The original words were readable under ultraviolet light. Anybody wishing to read the results of the tests should refer to the book written by the researchers who did the analysis: the Keepers of the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum (Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus, H. J. M. Milne and T. C. Skeat, British Museum, London, 1938).

Forgery in the Gospels
When the New Testament in the Sinai Bible is compared with a modern-day New Testament, a staggering 14,800 editorial alterations can be identified. These amendments can be recognised by a simple comparative exercise that anybody can and should do. Serious study of Christian origins must emanate from the Sinai Bible's version of the New Testament, not modern editions. Of importance is the fact that the Sinaiticus carries three Gospels since rejected: the Shepherd of Hermas (written by two resurrected ghosts, Charinus and Lenthius), the Missive of Barnabas and the Odes of Solomon. Space excludes elaboration on these bizarre writings and also discussion on dilemmas associated with translation variations.

Modern Bibles are five removes in translation from early editions, and disputes rage between translators over variant interpretations of more than 5,000 ancient words. However, it is what is not written in that old Bible that embarrasses the Church, and this article discusses only a few of those omissions. One glaring example is subtly revealed in the Encyclopaedia Biblica (Adam & Charles Black, London, 1899, vol. iii, p. 3344), where the Church divulges its knowledge about exclusions in old Bibles, saying: "The remark has long ago and often been made that, like Paul, even the earliest Gospels knew nothing of the miraculous birth of our Saviour". That is because there never was a virgin birth.

It is apparent that when Eusebius assembled scribes to write the New Testimonies, he first produced a single document that provided an exemplar or master version. Today it is called the Gospel of Mark, and the Church admits that it was "the first Gospel written" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. vi, p. 657), even though it appears second in the New Testament today. The scribes of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were dependent upon the Mark writing as the source and framework for the compilation of their works. The Gospel of John is independent of those writings, and the late-15th-century theory that it was written later to support the earlier writings is the truth (The Crucifixion of Truth, Tony Bushby, Joshua Books, 2004, pp. 33-40).

Thus, the Gospel of Mark in the Sinai Bible carries the "first" story of Jesus Christ in history, one completely different to what is in modern Bibles. It starts with Jesus "at about the age of thirty" (Mark 1:9), and doesn't know of Mary, a virgin birth or mass murders of baby boys by Herod. Words describing Jesus Christ as "the son of God" do not appear in the opening narrative as they do in today's editions (Mark 1:1), and the modern-day family tree tracing a "messianic bloodline" back to King David is non-existent in all ancient Bibles, as are the now-called "messianic prophecies" (51 in total). The Sinai Bible carries a conflicting version of events surrounding the "raising of Lazarus", and reveals an extraordinary omission that later became the central doctrine of the Christian faith: the resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ and his ascension into Heaven. No supernatural appearance of a resurrected Jesus Christ is recorded in any ancient Gospels of Mark, but a description of over 500 words now appears in modern Bibles (Mark 16:9-20).

Despite a multitude of long-drawn-out self-justifications by Church apologists, there is no unanimity of Christian opinion regarding the non-existence of "resurrection" appearances in ancient Gospel accounts of the story. Not only are those narratives missing in the Sinai Bible, but they are absent in the Alexandrian Bible, the Vatican Bible, the Bezae Bible and an ancient Latin manuscript of Mark, code-named "K" by analysts. They are also lacking in the oldest Armenian version of the New Testament, in sixth-century manuscripts of the Ethiopic version and ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Bibles. However, some 12th-century Gospels have the now-known resurrection verses written within asterisks Ñ, marks used by scribes to indicate spurious passages in a literary document.

The Church claims that "the resurrection is the fundamental argument for our Christian belief" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. xii, p. 792), yet no supernatural appearance of a resurrected Jesus Christ is recorded in any of the earliest Gospels of Mark available. A resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ is the sine qua non ("without which, nothing") of Christianity (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. xii, p. 792), confirmed by words attributed to Paul: "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain" (1 Cor. 5:17). The resurrection verses in today's Gospels of Mark are universally acknowledged as forgeries and the Church agrees, saying "the conclusion of Mark is admittedly not genuine ... almost the entire section is a later compilation" (Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. ii, p. 1880, vol. iii, pp. 1767, 1781; also, Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. iii, under the heading "The Evidence of its Spuriousness"; Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. iii, pp. 274-9 under heading "Canons"). Undaunted, however, the Church accepted the forgery into its dogma and made it the basis of Christianity.

The trend of fictitious resurrection narratives continues. The final chapter of the Gospel of John (21) is a sixth-century forgery, one entirely devoted to describing Jesus' resurrection to his disciples. The Church admits: "The sole conclusion that can be deduced from this is that the 21st chapter was afterwards added and is therefore to be regarded as an appendix to the Gospel" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. viii, pp. 441-442; New Catholic Encyclopedia (NCE), "Gospel of John", p. 1080; also NCE, vol. xii, p. 407).

"The Great Insertion" and "The Great Omission"
Modern-day versions of the Gospel of Luke have a staggering 10,000 more words than the same Gospel in the Sinai Bible. Six of those words say of Jesus "and was carried up into heaven", but this narrative does not appear in any of the oldest Gospels of Luke available today ("Three Early Doctrinal Modifications of the Text of the Gospels", F. C. Conybeare, The Hibbert Journal, London, vol. 1, no. 1, Oct 1902, pp. 96-113). Ancient versions do not verify modern-day accounts of an ascension of Jesus Christ, and this falsification clearly indicates an intention to deceive.

Today, the Gospel of Luke is the longest of the canonical Gospels because it now includes "The Great Insertion", an extraordinary 15th-century addition totalling around 8,500 words (Luke 9:51-18:14). The insertion of these forgeries into that Gospel bewilders modern Christian analysts, and of them the Church said: "The character of these passages makes it dangerous to draw inferences" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Pecci ed., vol. ii, p. 407).

Just as remarkable, the oldest Gospels of Luke omit all verses from 6:45 to 8:26, known in priesthood circles as "The Great Omission", a total of 1,547 words. In today's versions, that hole has been "plugged up" with passages plagiarised from other Gospels. Dr Tischendorf found that three paragraphs in newer versions of the Gospel of Luke's version of the Last Supper appeared in the 15th century, but the Church still passes its Gospels off as the unadulterated "word of God" ("Are Our Gospels Genuine or Not?", op. cit.)

The "Expurgatory Index"
As was the case with the New Testament, so also were damaging writings of early "Church Fathers" modified in centuries of copying, and many of their records were intentionally rewritten or suppressed. Adopting the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545-63), the Church subsequently extended the process of erasure and ordered the preparation of a special list of specific information to be expunged from early Christian writings (Delineation of Roman Catholicism, Rev. Charles Elliott, DD, G. Lane & P. P. Sandford, New York, 1842, p. 89; also, The Vatican Censors, Professor Peter Elmsley, Oxford, p. 327, pub. date n/a). In 1562, the Vatican established a special censoring office called Index Expurgatorius. Its purpose was to prohibit publication of "erroneous passages of the early Church Fathers" that carried statements opposing modern-day doctrine. When Vatican archivists came across "genuine copies of the Fathers, they corrected them according to the Expurgatory Index" (Index Expurgatorius Vaticanus, R. Gibbings, ed., Dublin, 1837; The Literary Policy of the Church of Rome, Joseph Mendham, J. Duncan, London, 1830, 2nd ed., 1840; The Vatican Censors, op. cit., p. 328). This Church record provides researchers with "grave doubts about the value of all patristic writings released to the public" (The Propaganda Press of Rome, Sir James W. L. Claxton, Whitehaven Books, London, 1942, p. 182).

Important for our story is the fact that the Encyclopaedia Biblica reveals that around 1,200 years of Christian history are unknown: "Unfortunately, only few of the records [of the Church] prior to the year 1198 have been released". It was not by chance that, in that same year (1198), Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) suppressed all records of earlier Church history by establishing the Secret Archives (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. xv, p. 287). Some seven-and-a-half centuries later, and after spending some years in those Archives, Professor Edmond S. Bordeaux wrote How The Great Pan Died. In a chapter titled "The Whole of Church History is Nothing but a Retroactive Fabrication", he said this (in part):

"The Church ante-dated all her late works, some newly made, some revised and some counterfeited, which contained the final expression of her history ... her technique was to make it appear that much later works written by Church writers were composed a long time earlier, so that they might become evidence of the first, second or third centuries." (How The Great Pan Died, op. cit., p. 46)

Supporting Professor Bordeaux's findings is the fact that, in 1587, Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) established an official Vatican publishing division and said in his own words, "Church history will be now be established ... we shall seek to print our own account"Encyclopédie, Diderot, 1759). Vatican records also reveal that Sixtus V spent 18 months of his life as pope personally writing a new Bible and then introduced into Catholicism a "New Learning" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. v, p. 442, vol. xv, p. 376). The evidence that the Church wrote its own history is found in Diderot's Encyclopédie, and it reveals the reason why Pope Clement XIII (1758-69) ordered all volumes to be destroyed immediately after publication in 1759.

Gospel authors exposed as imposters
There is something else involved in this scenario and it is recorded in the Catholic Encyclopedia. An appreciation of the clerical mindset arises when the Church itself admits that it does not know who wrote its Gospels and Epistles, confessing that all 27 New Testament writings began life anonymously:

"It thus appears that the present titles of the Gospels are not traceable to the evangelists themselves ... they [the New Testament collection] are supplied with titles which, however ancient, do not go back to the respective authors of those writings." (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. vi, pp. 655-6)

The Church maintains that "the titles of our Gospels were not intended to indicate authorship", adding that "the headings ... were affixed to them" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. i, p. 117, vol. vi, pp. 655, 656). Therefore they are not Gospels written "according to Matthew, Mark, Luke or John", as publicly stated. The full force of this confession reveals that there are no genuine apostolic Gospels, and that the Church's shadowy writings today embody the very ground and pillar of Christian foundations and faith. The consequences are fatal to the pretence of Divine origin of the entire New Testament and expose Christian texts as having no special authority. For centuries, fabricated Gospels bore Church certification of authenticity now confessed to be false, and this provides evidence that Christian writings are wholly fallacious.

After years of dedicated New Testament research, Dr Tischendorf expressed dismay at the differences between the oldest and newest Gospels, and had trouble understanding...

"...how scribes could allow themselves to bring in here and there changes which were not simply verbal ones, but such as materially affected the very meaning and, what is worse still, did not shrink from cutting out a passage or inserting one." (Alterations to the Sinai Bible, Dr Constantin von Tischendorf, 1863, available in the British Library, London)

After years of validating the fabricated nature of the New Testament, a disillusioned Dr Tischendorf confessed that modern-day editions have "been altered in many places" and are "not to be accepted as true" (When Were Our Gospels Written?, Dr Constantin von Tischendorf, 1865, British Library, London).

Just what is Christianity?
The important question then to ask is this: if the New Testament is not historical, what is it? Dr Tischendorf provided part of the answer when he said in his 15,000 pages of critical notes on the Sinai Bible that "it seems that the personage of Jesus Christ was made narrator for many religions". This explains how narratives from the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, appear verbatim in the Gospels today (e.g., Matt. 1:25, 2:11, 8:1-4, 9:1-8, 9:18-26), and why passages from the Phenomena of the Greek statesman Aratus of Sicyon (271-213 BC) are in the New Testament. Extracts from the Hymn to Zeus, written by Greek philosopher Cleanthes (c. 331-232 BC), are also found in the Gospels, as are 207 words from the Thais of Menander (c. 343-291), one of the "seven wise men" of Greece. Quotes from the semi-legendary Greek poet Epimenides (7th or 6th century BC) are applied to the lips of Jesus Christ, and seven passages from the curious Ode of Jupiter (c. 150 BC; author unknown) are reprinted in the New Testament.

Tischendorf's conclusion also supports Professor Bordeaux's Vatican findings that reveal the allegory of Jesus Christ derived from the fable of Mithra, the divine son of God (Ahura Mazda) and messiah of the first kings of the Persian Empire around 400 BC. His birth in a grotto was attended by magi who followed a star from the East. They brought "gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh" (as in Matt. 2:11) and the newborn baby was adored by shepherds. He came into the world wearing the Mithraic cap, which popes imitated in various designs until well into the 15th century. Mithra, one of a trinity, stood on a rock, the emblem of the foundation of his religion, and was anointed with honey. After a last supper with Helios and 11 other companions, Mithra was crucified on a cross, bound in linen, placed in a rock tomb and rose on the third day or around 25 March (the full moon at the spring equinox, a time now called Easter after the Babylonian goddess Ishtar). The fiery destruction of the universe was a major doctrine of Mithraism-a time in which Mithra promised to return in person to Earth and save deserving souls. Devotees of Mithra partook in a sacred communion banquet of bread and wine, a ceremony that paralleled the Christian Eucharist and preceded it by more than four centuries.

Christianity is an adaptation of Mithraism welded with the Druidic principles of the Culdees, some Egyptian elements (the pre-Christian Book of Revelation was originally called The Mysteries of Osiris and Isis), Greek philosophy and various aspects of Hinduism.

Why there are no records of Jesus Christ
It is not possible to find in any legitimate religious or historical writings compiled between the beginning of the first century and well into the fourth century any reference to Jesus Christ and the spectacular events that the Church says accompanied his life. This confirmation comes from Frederic Farrar (1831-1903) of Trinity College, Cambridge:

"It is amazing that history has not embalmed for us even one certain or definite saying or circumstance in the life of the Saviour of mankind ... there is no statement in all history that says anyone saw Jesus or talked with him. Nothing in history is more astonishing than the silence of contemporary writers about events relayed in the four Gospels." (The Life of Christ, Frederic W. Farrar, Cassell, London, 1874)

This situation arises from a conflict between history and New Testament narratives. Dr Tischendorf made this comment:

"We must frankly admit that we have no source of information with respect to the life of Jesus Christ other than ecclesiastic writings assembled during the fourth century." (Codex Sinaiticus, Dr Constantin von Tischendorf, British Library, London)

There is an explanation for those hundreds of years of silence: the construct of Christianity did not begin until after the first quarter of the fourth century, and that is why Pope Leo X (d. 1521) called Christ a "fable" (Cardinal Bembo: His Letters..., op. cit.).

[Source - Tony Bushby - Forged Origins of the New Testament, Nexus Magazine Volume 14, Number 4 (June - July 2007]

Judaism and Christianity - Two Thousand Years of Lies

[...] The Hebrew Bible is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a historical document, and trying to understand the history of Palestine by reading the Bible is like trying to understand Medieval history by reading Ivanhoe. Niels Peter Lemche, a biblical scholar at the University of Copenhagen, writes:

[...]there is very little correlation between the biblical portrait of the past and the nonbiblical evidence from actual Bronze Age cultures. We must conclude, however, not that the biblical authors were unsuccessful historians but that they were not at all interested in providing anything like a historical report of the past. They wrote for other reasons, and they used history as the vehicle for their message. When approaching the literature of the Old Testament, people of modern times must realize that the ancient authors did not write primarily for posterity, that is, for us, but for the benefit of their contemporary audience. They followed the moral and aesthetic expectations of their time; they would have had no idea of the rules that govern modern historical studies and interests.

[...]The liberation from Egypt is a critical moment in the history of Israel. A nation and its religion depend upon it. Without it, Israel's nationhood would have been a historical footnote, and its faith in Yahweh as the God of Israel would have remained insignificant. The Exodus represents more than a national liberation: it marks the birth of a nation and justifies that nation's very existence.

Two other events become important "foundation legends" for the Israelites: the revelation at Sinai, and the occupation of Canaan. The Exodus marks the beginning of the people and the source of its identity, but the people also need a religion and a land. Without both, the people cannot survive but will face annihilation. A national identity requires a concrete, physical space within which to develop. Without its religion, the people would wander aimlessly through the wilderness like ghostly figures.

At Sinai, Yahweh presents himself as the God who liberated Israel from Egyptian bondage - the very same God who at the beginning of history entered into an exclusive relationship with the patriarchs and promised them a beautiful land.[...]

Finally, at Sinai, Yahweh becomes Israel's God in concreto. A contract or "covenant" seals this bond between a people and its God. Thus, the law of Yahweh becomes the legal basis for the nation and for the Israelites' everlasting obligation to their God. Two principles of this covenant inexorably solidify their religious identity. First, the collective religious consciousness of the Israelites confirms that Yahweh is and always will be their God. Second, all Israelites must now and forever conform to the lay of Yahweh, in effect, Israel's "constitution." Thus, the law simplifies what it means to be an Israelite, under God's protection. And anyone who fails to obey is no longer a member of that people.

As for the land, the fulfillment of that promise lies in the future. Yet God makes a pledge at Sinai: if they adhere to the stipulations of the law, the people will inhabit the land and own it. This is not merely a story about a divine revelation; rather, it represents a program for the future of the Israelite nation. Until the people finally live in the "land," one cannot truly call the people "Israel."

In this way, the denial of the historicity of these bedrock elements of the Israelite historical narratives comes close to a denial of the very existence of the Israelite people. Thus, dismissing the Exodus narrative as a historical source is far more serious than taking a critical view of the historical content of the patriarchal tradition. [...]

Predictably, many conservative Christians and Jews become troubled by skeptical voices that question the historicity of the Exodus narratives. Both Christians and Jews consider themselves Israel's true descendants; therefore, to them, these criticisms represent "negative" or even heretical opinions. They do not view these theories as objective analyses of the Exodus or the revelation at Sinai; they see them as attacks on their own religious identities.

If, however, we disregard such concerns - it is after all not the purpose of a critical investigation to protect the presumed identity between the living and the dead members of a certain religious community - it is quite obvious that the Exodus narrative is largely made up of literary elements that closely resemble the ones already found in the book of Genesis. ... The book of Exodus represents a literary quilt, pieced together from the fragments of universal and timeless adventure stories and legends. These are examples of narrative art rather than specifically Israelite folk literature. Appreciating the utility of their plots and characters, the biblical authors appropriated these universal tales and reconstituted them with their own Israelite template. [...]

Initially, this Exodus-Sinai complex seems like a coherent narrative unit. Yet upon further examination, the events and legislation at Mount Sinai represent the narrative's literal and figurative high points. The importance of the Sinai event is so profound that it disturbs the narrative balance of the Exodus-Sinai complex. Sinai simply disrupts the narrative that takes the reader from Egypt to Canaan. Without regard for the narrative consistency, Mount Sinai bursts into the Israelites otherwise uninterrupted march from the Sea of Reeds to the Jordan River.

For years, Old Testament scholars have recognized the narrative discontinuity between the Sinai complex and the Pentateuch's overall narrative scheme.

Thus, almost sixty years ago, Gerhard von Rad suggested that the Sinai complex is not one of the original narrative components of the Pentateuch. For him, these are two originally independent narrative units, on the one side the Exodus and wilderness stories, and on the other the Sinai revelation. They were written independently and only later joined together. (See von Rad, "The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch," in "The problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (trans. E.W. Trueman Dicken; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966).

For von Rad, the borderline between the Exodus narrative and the Sinai revelation is in Exodus 14 (Exod 15, the renowned "Song of the Sea," is an independent unit and not part of either complex). ... clearly, the Exodus narrative is related to the Passover, and Sinai to the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost). The two traditions merge much later. The inclusion of the Sinai revelation into the narrative string of the Exodus and wilderness stories must perforce be later than the composition of a credo text such as Deut 26: 5-9.

Of course, the late combination of two originally independent narrative units does not exclude further elaborations and additions, especially those which create smooth literary transitions between the Exodus and Sinai material. Each narrative complex carries its own religious meaning and background. They arose independently and came together at a later date. Consequently, we must consider their historicity separately. If we confirm the historicity of one complex, we cannot assume the historicity of the other.

Moses, the towering figure of the narrative, guarantees the fundamental unity of the Exodus-Sinai wilderness complex. Moses himself functions as the glue that holds together the Exodus-Numbers tradition, each episode of which is inexorably linked to and defined by its hero. There is, however, reason to doubt that Moses is also the historical link between the Sinai revelation and its surrounding narrative complex. From a historian's vantage point, it might be questionable to see one and the same person as the center of two originally separate narrative units. This observation is important because it is almost impossible to separate Moses from either unit and consider him primary to one of them while secondary to the other. What is the Exodus narrative without Moses? Could Israel accept the tablets of the law from anyone other than Moses himself? Everything points to the narrative units' having been composed from the beginning with Moses in mind.

When they wrote their stories about Israel's past, the authors and the collectors of tradition saw Moses as more important than any of the narrative elements that they combined into the Exodus-Sinai wilderness complex. Thus, from the moment of its composition, Moses dominates the Exodus - Numbers complex. As a consequence of Moses' being an integral part of the narrative units in Exodus-Numbers, it must be concluded that he did not participate in any of the events recorded, which is a paradox since the narratives would not live without his presence. [...]

This uncertainty about Moses' identity surfaces again when we consider his many different roles. In some narratives he is portrayed with a multitude of characteristics, while other narratives characterize him more uniformly. The infant Moses' rescue from the river foreshadows his role as Israel's liberator, the figure of a prototypical ancient Near Eastern adventurer-hero. Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians all knew of tales about such child prodigies, a noteworthy example being the Akkadian hero-king Sargon. [...]

The legendary tales of Moses and Sargon foretell the future greatness of two marvelous heroes. Their authors used the rescue theme to distance their heroes from ordinary people. In this way, the hero is allowed to transgress the social conventions that normal people must follow. Without this freedom, no hero would ever succeed in radically changing the fortunes of his nation. [...]

When we consider the several components of the image of Moses in the Pentateuch, his role as the creator and legislator of the Israelite religion is clearly central. At Sinai, Moses mediates the covenant between Yahweh and Israel and conveys the content of God's law to the Israelites. That Moses should also function as Israel's supreme judge and ruler with the same power as the later Israelite kings will, in light of his other functions, hardly come as a surprise.

Moses is simply the unifying literary component in the Egypt-Sinai wilderness complex. Thorough him the authors spin a red thread that connects all the different episodes belonging to this complex of narratives. Yet one question persists: does any of this relate to a historical person called Moses? As we already noted, the Exodus-wilderness complex on the one hand and the Sinai periscope on the other were originally two independent literary units. Unity between them was only reached by introducing the figure of Moses to both narrative complexes. Before that happened, these narratives developed independently; without Moses, their authors would hardly have succeeded in bringing them together.

It is frequently said that the history of Israel's origin and religion presupposes one central and historical individual and is totally unfathomable without that person. Thus, it is quipped that if there had been no Moses, somebody would have to invent one! They say that Israel's early history is inconceivable without a genuine architect The answer is easy: yes, they did in fact invent Him! [...]

Sinai presents another dilemma. Where exactly did God appear to the Israelites? The ecclesiastical tradition that connects the present-day Jebel Musa (the Arab name means "mountain of Moses") with the biblical Mount Sinai only partially conforms to the biblical tradition. In the late narrative that begins in Exodus 19, a mountain appears. However, the description of the journey as well as other hints preserved by the narrative - does not point in the direction of Jebel Musa... [but] rather leads toward the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula and, more precisely, to the oasis Kadesh-barnea.

[A]nother problem persists. The divine revelation at Sinai described in the Old Testament cannot be reduced to a part of the history of early Israel. Such a revelation simply goes beyond what is from a historian's point of view acceptable, because God cannot be the subject of historical reflection ... they must rely on empirical facts. By nature, the Sinai revelation is not a historical subject. [...]

[This] applies as well to the desert wanderings. They must also conform to the criteria and scrutiny of scientific research. ...

Already, problems arise. The census in Numbers describes a massive migration composed of several hundred thousand people, who wandered the desert for forty years. And yet the general description in the Old Testament of the Israelite's desert sojourn has little in common with living conditions in such a place; it rather looks like a snapshot of a religious procession within a settled culture. The number of participants is astonishing. How could so many people survive in the desert? Already the biblical authors were met with such questions and they knew very well how to answer them clearly and absolutely: God provides for his people! Literature can handle miracles, history cannot. The biblical authors interject an intriguing answer to Israel's desert dilemmas, namely, God. Repeatedly, God solves the wanderers' problems with a series of mighty deeds... [...]

So the depiction of the desert wanderings found in Exodus through Numbers is a tradition that does not relate historical circumstances of immigration or life in the desert. This narrative is no more and no less than a literary fiction that has only one goal, namely, to move the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan. Only the most dedicated believer clings desperately to the notion that hundreds of thousand of humans survived forty years in the desert: clearly a barren and inhospitable environment.

To justify the historicity of the desert wanderings, we must modify the number of refugees leaving Egypt and tone down God's miraculous deeds so that we can analyze the historicity of the events they describe. Ultimately, the results will do violence to the biblical descriptions. Why? Because they run counter to the biblical version that not a few persons but a whole nation took part in those events. [...]

If we reduce these stories in the usual, but unlikely, way - taking them to be the memory of only a very small and unimportant group of Asians who escaped from Egypt sometime in the late second millennium BCE - then we must conclude that the Old Testament narratives are unhistorical. The Israelite people never lived in ancient Egypt. The authors of the Biblical narrative may have borrowed from the remembrance of a small group of persons who once had been in Egypt. This group eventually might have become part of the Israelite nation and their tradition a part of the national heritage.

When scholars accept a "small group" hypothesis, they do so to bypass the many historical problems raised by this narrative. Consequently, it is impossible to prove that such a group of emigrants from Egypt ever existed. By drastically reducing the number of people involved in the escape from Egypt, Scholars have made them invisible to the historian. [...]
Ultimately, the authors of the book of Exodus created the narratives as we know them. These writers - just like the authors of the patriarchal narratives in Genesis - created their own narrative universe. They wrote about places and events that never existed... they describe a literary world, not historical facts. [...]

[T]he Exodus and Sinai narratives were combined in a religious environment where the Law - the Torah - was already dominant, in other words, in an Israelite, or preferably Jewish, context. [...]

Long before scholars began to interpret the Egyptian clues about Yahweh, many tried to find the historical background for Moses' visit to Midian, the first place Yahweh confronted Moses. Apart from the question of the historicity of Exodus 3, one unique feature stands out in this Moses-in-Midian story: if Yahweh appeared in Midian, then Israel's God lived in a foreign land and mingled with foreigners (the Midianites). Evidently this was the case.

Clearly, the Old Testament consciously connects Yahweh with the southern Palestine, indicating the originality of the information contained in these narratives. These historical kernels in the Exodus narratives suggest that either the Israelites lived in southern Palestine or Midianites (according to other biblical information, the Kenites) brought the worship of Yahweh to Palestine. Consequently, Yahwism spread throughout the region until finally Yahweh became Israel's national God. In support of such a theory scholars refer to the evidence that Moses' father-in-law was either a Midianite of a Kenite. [...]


Here I must interject a bit about the Kenites:

In the ancient Levant, the Kenites were a nomadic clan sent under Jethro to priest Midian. According to the Hebrew Bible, they played an important role in the history of ancient Israel. The Kenites were coppersmiths and metalworkers. Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, was a shepherd and a priest of the Kenites. The Kenites apparently assimilated into the Israelite population, though the Kenites descended from Rechab maintained a distinct, nomadic lifestyle for some time.

The Kenites were the descendants of Kenan, but have been understood as the descendents of Cain, the son of Adam and Eve who murdered his brother, Abel.

Moses apparently identified Jethro's god, El Shaddai, with Yahweh, the Israelites' god.[1] According to the Kenite hypothesis, Yahweh was originally the tribal god of the Kenites, borrowed and adapted by the Hebrews. (Wikipedia)


A literary analysis of the Pentateuch proves incontrovertibly that its narratives are not reliable sources for the study of antiquity; rather, they are works of art. Without regard for exact historical data regarding the development of their people, those writers used every weapon in their literary arsenal to create powerful and dramatic narratives. ... One cannot reconstruct Near Eastern history from these narratives; rather, we must be content with what they are: adventure stories and legends, crafted and written by late author-compilers to discuss "the old days" with their audience. Clearly, that audience did not measure the historic by historical standards. (Niels Peter Lemche: Prelude to Israel's Past, excerpts through page 63)

The history of ancient Palestine has been ignored and silenced by biblical studies because its object of interest has been an ancient Israel conceived and presented as the taproot of Western civilization. [...]

The search for ancient Israel, in which I include for shorthand purposes second Temple Judaism, has consumed phenomenal intellectual and material resources in our universities, faculties of theology, divinity schools, theological colleges, seminaries, and departments of archaeology, particularly in the USA, Europe, and Israel. A quick glance through the prospectuses and catalogues of these institutions will reveal numerous courses on the history and archaeology of ancient Israel conducted in the context of the study of the Hebrew Bible from Jewish and Christian perspectives. This is just as true in 'secular' universities with departments of Religious Studies rather than faculties of theology. Interestingly, and revealingly, I have been able to discover very few courses on the history of ancient Israel in departments of History or Ancient History. It seems that ancient Israelite history is the domain of Religion or Theology and not of History. [...]

Biblical studies has been dominated from its inception by a concern for the history of ancient Israel as the key to understanding the Hebrew Bible. It has been of fundamental concern for Christian theology since Christianity is conceived of as a religion based upon revelation within history. Philip Davies has demonstrated, however, that the 'ancient Israel' of biblical studies is a scholarly construct based upon a misreading of the biblical traditions and divorced from historical reality. [...]

[T]here are so many facets of history that our political and theological histories do not address. ... Much of the data that pertain to these areas of study are still in unpublished form, hampering the realization of the project [of producing a factual history of ancient Palestine]. However, it is the network of connections in which these scholarly investigations are set which is the greatest hindrance. [...]

The cultural and political factors that have dominated biblical studies discourse on ancient Israel have denied the development of a strategy for investigating such issues. Ironically, much of the archaeological work, the regional surveys and site excavations, which have contributed to the paradigm shift are coloured by the overwhelming search for ancient Israel, the material reality which, it is presumed, will help to illuminate the Hebrew Bible. ... It has been difficult to uncover or document sufficiently the subtle political and ideological influences which have shaped historical research in biblical studies.
(Keith W. Whitelam: The Invention of Ancient Israel - The Silencing of Palestinian History.


On the subject of mythmaking and religion, Burton Mack writes about this topic extensively in his analyses of the New Testament. Many of the scholars of the Old Testament also point to myth-making as the reason for its existence but Mack makes it pretty easy to understand. He writes:

That early Christians engaged in mythmaking may be difficult for modern Christians to accept. The usual connotations of the term myth are almost entirely negative. And when it is used to describe the content of the New Testament gospels there is invariably a hue and cry. That is because, in distinction from most mythologies that begin with a "once upon a time," the Christian myth is set in historical time and place. It seems therefore to demand the belief that the events of the gospel story really happened. And that means that the story cannot be "myth." It may help some to note (1) that mythmaking is a normal and necessary social activity, (2) that early Christian mythmaking was due more to borrowing and rearranging myths taken for granted in the cultures of context than to firsthand speculation, and (3) that the myths they came up with made eminent sense, not only for their times and circumstance, but also for the social experiments in which they were invested. [...]

Every culture has a set of stories that account for the world in which a people find themselves. These stories usually tell of the creation of the world, the appearance of the first people, ancestral heroes and their achievements, and the glorious beginnings of society as a people experience it. Terrain, village patterns, shrines, temples, cities, and kingdoms are often set in place or planned at the beginning of time. Scholars understand these myths as the distillation of human-interest stories first told in the course of routine patterns of living together, then rehearsed for many generations. Telling stories about one another is what we do. It belongs to the life and work of maintaining human relations and constructing societies. [...]

Epic is a rehearsal of the past that puts the present in its light. Setting the present in the light of an illustrious past makes it honorable, legitimate, right, and reasonable. The present institution is then worth celebrating.

Naturally, both the past and the present may be highly romanticized or idealized, for epic is myth in the genre of history. The stories of Gilgamesh in ancient Sumerian and Akkadian civilizations were epic. For the Greeks, Homer was epic. Pindar's poetry of illustrious family lines was epic on a small scale. The local histories of shrines, temples, and peoples in the eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic period were epic on a medium-sized scale. And the history of Israel, which, from the very beginning of the world aimed at the establishment of a temple-state in Jerusalem, was epic for the Jews.

When the [alleged] second temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., the Jews had a problem on their hands. Not only their ancient history, contained in the five books of Moses, but an immense body of literature from the Hellenistic period documented their intellectual investment in the temple-state as the proper goal of human history from the foundation of the world. Christians also had a problem. They had no right to claim the history of Israel as their own. But early Jewish Christians had wanted to think of themselves as the people of God, heirs of the promises to Israel, or even the new Israel for a new day. ... All of the early myths about Jess were attempts to paint him and his followers in acceptable colors from the Israel epic. But these attempts were fanciful, ad hoc, and incapable of competing with the obvious logic of the Jewish epic. The Jewish epic was a history that aimed at the establishment of a temple-state in Jerusalem, not a Christian congregation. When the temple's end came, however, and the epic's logic was in total disarray, Christians had their chance to revise it in their favor. It was then that revising the Israel epic became a major focus for early Christian myth-making. [...]

And then, from the middle of the second century on, the fur really started to fly. Both Jews and Christians wanted to read the history of Israel in their favor, and each needed the Jewish scriptures as documentation for social formations that did not match the temple-state at the end of Israel's story. Two myths were devised then, and they are still playing havoc with what otherwise might be a reasonable conversation between Christians and Jews about the texts we sometimes call the Hebrew Bible, sometimes the Old Testament. [...]

Just as with each separate writing, so the Bible itself came together at a certain juncture of social and cultural history. The reasons for the selection and arrangement of writings in the Bible cannot be found in any of the individual books read separately. The reasons have to be taken from the Christian authors of the second to the fourth centuries. Only at the end of this period, when we finally catch sight of the Bible as we know it, will we see that it demands a particular way of reading the history of Israel, puts a special spin on the appearance of the Christ, and grants uncommon authority to the apostles and their missions. By then it will be clear to us that the book was important because it gave the church the credentials it needed for its role in Constantine's empire. We may then call it the myth of origin for the Christian religion. It will be the Christian myth in the form of the biblical epic that granted the Christian church its charter. It will be that epic that determines the Bible's hold upon our American mind. The Bible's mystique is oddly mis-named by calling it the "Word of God." We must come to see that, or we shall never be able to talk about the Bible in public forum when discussing our cultural history and its present state of affairs.
(Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament)


When, finally, the Jewish scriptures and the "apostolic" writings were combined in a single book, the church was off and running; it had its story straight. The Hebrew bible could be used to claim extreme antiquity for the Christian religion, and served as the "Christian Epic." Having claimed all these texts, traditions, and ancient history, the Christian church achieved honor in the eyes of the Greco-Roman world. (Which is why they did it!) Without the Old and New Testaments together, the Christian church would not have had an appropriate pedigree in the eyes of 4th century people. And, of course, that history was amazing! Never mind that it was created by schizoidal psychopaths who wanted to create a Jewish Temple State in Israel with the help of the Persians, or that parts of it were used to justify the kingship of the Hasmoneans. It had been revised and adjusted so many times, that whatever history had ever been incorporated was now lost in layers of manipulative gloss.

Christianity was driven by two schizoidal urges: to continue the expansion of Christendom by whatever means necessary, and to "return" to the Holy Land where all the significant events of the founding of the religion were supposed to have taken place. The thrust of Christianity is thus, backward in time, inward toward a psychological repeating of the founding events, and toward a specific location: Israel.

There is a certain irony to this because the original claim that Christianity made on the epic that belonged to Israel was based on the fact that Jerusalem was desolated and destroyed, so of course, God had abandoned it and chosen a new people - Christians - on whom he would bestow his favoritism. It was the destruction of Jerusalem that made it possible for Christians to steal the Jew's epic "history" and interpret that destruction as God's desire to expand his territory to include the whole world. So why, one might ask, would Christians want to go back to Jerusalem? That's not logical.

But, not to worry: an explanation was soon forthcoming! It was declared that God logically wanted Christians to redeem Israel.

And so, finally, the Global Temple State had a chance to come into being under Christianity - the Catholic Church was positioned at the apex of power; even princes bowed to the pope. The power of God was in its hands and the intent was to shape the minds of all humanity from kings down to the lowliest serf.

The Christian church claims to represents the kingdom of God on earth and its whole rant is that people must prepare for a future life in heaven under threat of an apocalyptic alternative. How's that for mind control? The church can call society to task for not living up to God's standards, all the while pointing to some other time and place (never now, of course), when that kingdom of God will finally manifest.

[...]The Bible is the only object in the Christian religions that all forms of Christianity have in common. For almost 2 thousand years, the church has forced people after people into alignment with the Biblical epic and "history" and the history of Western Civilization that is the result of that ancient epic. The traditions and customs of culture after culture have been subsumed, eradicated, erased from collective memory, and those people have been forced to adopt the Epic of Israel as their own - as if it were their own history. To become a Christian means that one must accept this epic as the only one that matters. Saying "yes" to the Epic of Israel is the price one pays to become part of Western Civilization.

Additionally, the Bible functions as America's Epic, the dream of creating "One Nation, Under God, indivisible..." One doesn't even have to be a Christian to think that way. One only needs to think of America as the "flowering of Western Civilization" - but don't forget that the roots of that civilization are supposed to be firmly planted in Israel.

Are you getting the impression that Christianity was created to serve Judaism?

Well, that's not exactly the case. Israel was literally created by Christianity in order to fulfill the Christian apocalyptic agenda. As Keith Whitelam writes:

The production of a "master story" of ancient Israel has formed part of a theological enterprise conducted mainly in faculties of theology and divinity in the West.

The biblical epic of Israel seen through the lens of Christianity, is based on a worldview that is universalist in scope, monolinear in history, hierarchical in power, dualistic in anthropology, and it requires miracles, breakthroughs and other cosmic dramas at regular intervals to rectify social situations that have run amok. [...]

[Source: Laura Knight-Jadczyk - Judaism and Christianity - Two Thousand Years of Lies - 60 Years of State Terrorism ]
 
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