The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

But not only are the teachings of Jesus subject to criticism, but his acts are equally so. Take for an example the manner in which he addressed his mother when found disputing with the doctors in the temple, but more particularly hear his words to his mother at the wedding in Cana. She told him that the wine had run out, and he answered in the most uncouth manner, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” That is to say, of what concern was his mother to him, and what had he to do with her trouble about the wine being out? Then the making of the wine, upon which the people got drunk, was by no means worthy of imitation. The quantity, according to some divines, was not less than two or three hogsheads of intoxicating drink, enough to last the balance of the week. The guests were already drunk, and, though the wine was made out of water, it was nevertheless highly intoxicating. We might also mention his rude answer when his mother desired to speak to him (Mark 3: 21-35). At the time of his triumphal entrance into Jerusalem he took an “ass and colt,” the private property of some person, without permission, and the bystanders so understood it. He went immediately to the temple and beat out with a whip all the merchants (whom he calls thieves), all legitimate dealers in animals and doves for religious sacrifice, and violently overthrew the tables of the money-changers, whose business seems also to have been legitimate. This act was a “breach of the peace,” and in any civilized country would have been followed by arrest and imprisonment. It was not right that he should assert his authority by such disorderly conduct, and that too upon the eve of the celebration of a religious ceremony. When waited on by a most respectable deputation of public men who served officially (Matt. 23: 21) and inquired of him “by what authority he did such things,” instead of answering them frankly and making known to them his mission, he raised an irrelevant question, and because they could not tell whether “John’s baptism was from earth or heaven,” he refused to give any apology or explanation of his most treasonable and violent actions. He addressed the Scribes and Pharisees in the most extreme language, calling them “vipers,” “blind guides,” “hypocrites,” “serpents,” etc., and used fulminations that were calculated to excite the worst passions and the most atrocious acts. He told them that they were “whited sepulchres” and “fools.” When he was accepting the hospitalities of a Pharisee (Luke 11:37-54) he abused and denounced both the host and his guests. He is said to have looked on the Pharisees “with anger,” thus violating what he taught. His unjustifiable conduct toward the “barren fig tree” will not be overlooked. It was not the season for figs; he had no right to expect to find fruit on that tree, yet he “cursed” it, and here again destroyed private property without rendering an equivalent. So with the swine of the Gadarenes. This story is childish and wicked, and his action resulted in the destruction of animals which must have been valued at about four thousand pounds sterling. He was also chargeable with dissimulation greatly at variance with moral rectitude. When his brothers would have him go to Jerusalem to attend the feast of tabernacles he declined, and advised them to go without him. But when they had gone, “then went up also to the feast, as it were in secret” (John 7: 2-10).

He certainly here practised deceit. When walking with the two disciples to Emmaus he pretended to be another person, and when they arrived there he “made as though he would go farther that is, he pretended what he did not intend…” (Luke 24:13). He practised the utmost dissimulation in several particulars in the affair of Judas, and carried it even farther than the traitor. (Read and study Matt. 26: 46-50 and context.)

We might pursue this subject indefinitely. It is enough for our present purpose to affirm that many of the errors in natural philosophy, physiology, astronomy, and other sciences that prevailed in that day are implied or incorporated in the Gospels, with many prevailing superstitions, and that there are more mistakes and a greater number of contradictions in the four Gospels than in any other writings of the same length now extant in any language.

There is no one subject upon which so many books have been written as what are called “harmonies of the Gospels.” There are now more than one hundred such books extant, besides thousands that have gone out of print. Long ago as the seventeenth century Thomas Munn of London published such a book, on the title-page of which he states that he has reconciled three thousand contradictions. What does all this imply? Has it ever been found necessary to so reconcile the writings of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Newton, or Bacon? Could not God make himself understood? It is an acknowledged fact among juriste that the discrepancies in the four Gospels would destroy the credibility of any four witnesses in any intelligent court of law.

We must here express our conviction that the Gospels, which profess to give the life of Jesus, are not original, genuine productions, and it is time to show how they came into existence and were palmed off by ecclesiastics as the productions of those whose names they bear.

About the time of the birth of Christianity almost every system of philosophy and religion centred at Alexandria in Egypt. The Essenes, though scattered throughout all the provinces of the Roman empire, had their head-quarters at Alexandria, where existed a flourishing university. To this centre of learning seekers after truth from all countries of the globe found their way, and, comparing their various systems, the result was the evolution of the Eclectic philosophy, made up of what was regarded as the best of every known faith.

Palestine and Egypt were geographically contiguous, and the commerce between them was general and constant through Alexandria. Here the various sects of Judaism came into direct contact with Greek and Oriental thought and philosophy, with which they had been made quite familiar during their captivity in Babylon. Pythagorean, Platonic, and even Zoroastrian and Buddhistic speculations were rife—were in the very air of Alexandria. It is notorious that in that city Christian theology assumed a systematic form. The first and best Christian manuscripts were Alexandrian, and so were the first bishops; so says Prof. Calvin E. Stowe.

It is impossible for any party to escape entirely from the influence of its surroundings. How could a new sect eighteen hundred years ago escape the influences that dominated the very atmosphere of Alexandria? Christianity, so called, did not escape this influence, but in a short time took an eclectic form made up of the then existing systems of faith and philosophy, so that we now find in it ingredients taken from every known system of religion and philosophy, including Judaism, Platonism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism.

Mosheim says this Eclectic philosophy, which “chose the good and rejected the evil out of every system that had been propounded to mankind,” was taught in the university of Alexandria when Christianity came into existence. A very interesting question arises in this connection, which few have paused to ponder—viz. What became of the sects of the Essenes and Therapeutists after the commencement of the Christian era? That they suddenly disappeared as sects is an historical fact. But what became of them? Is there anything more natural than to assume that they became the pioneers of the Christian Church, and, in fact, that it was these people to whom the name “Christian” was first given at Antioch? The entire New-Testament Scriptures are full of phrases and allusions which clearly show the Essenean admixture, of which many examples might be quoted. Even Eusebius, styled the “Father of ecclesiastical history,” without whose writings little or nothing is known of the early Christian Church, not only admits the close resemblance between this sect and Christianity, but he even claims that they were Christians.

A thorough investigation of this matter drives one to the conclusion that our Catholic Christianity came from Alexandria—virtually from the Essenean monks who flourished before the Augustan age, and that their writings are the foundation of our Gospels, re-edited, changed, and interpolated to suit times and occasions. Catholicism is the undoubted offshoot of Egyptian monkery, as Protestantism is an offshoot of Catholicism, and improperly called a Reformation. Paul probably became a sort of Martin Luther, and led the great schism from the Essenean Church, and it was then from a certain time called Christian. The four Greek Gospels of our New Testament were made up at Alexandria from Egyptian asceticism, and consist largely of a union of Neo-Platonism with Judaism, and is full of the occult and mystical so common in that period. They were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as can be proved, and he who is called Jesus of Nazareth was nothing more than an Essenean impersonation. This view is honestly held by the writer, and did space permit he could give many pertinent reasons for it. Investigation in this direction would meet a rich reward.

Many pious persons here confront us, and inquire reproachfully, “What is the use of destroying the faith of the people in the Christian religion?” This question implies what is not true, as it is farthest possible from the object of these papers to ridicule or in any way to bring religion into disrepute. It is not only good principle, but it is also good policy, to always tell the truth. Why should we say, either directly or by implication, that Christianity is a supernatural religion when we know it to be of human origin, and can show just how, and when, and where it grew out of then existing creeds and systems of philosophy?

Is religion such a sham that it can best be subserved by falsehood and imposture? We think not. And if we should adopt the Jesuistic maxims, that “the end justifies the means” and that “pious intent hallows deceit,” it is simply impossible in this inquisitive scientific age to keep up a deception, however venerable for age and sacred from association. Knowledge is on the increase, and the people will not for ever wear bandages over their eyes, and, thus hoodwinked, swallow without question whatever is put into their mouths by the dispensers of theologic twaddle and priestly pap. Regarding Christianity as a special divine revelation recently made, it will not stand scientific and historic examination; but regarding it as of human origin, an evolution, a product of that age of pessimism which resulted from the disappointment of the Jews as to their national Messiah, and the disintegration and coming decadence and downfall of the Roman empire, coupled with the proclamation of the speedy destruction of the world itself, it is just what might have been expected—a religion of pessimism, of sorrow, of unworldliness, of evil forebodings.

“When the devil got sick, the devil a monk would be.” When Charles IV. of Spain was discomfited by the misfortunes of war, he sought solace in embroidering a petticoat for the Virgin Mary. Rancé had a domestic tragedy, and he founded the order of Trappist monks. Loyola would never have founded Jesuitism if he had not first been disfigured and crippled in a military siege. Dante was an exile when he wrote his Inferno, and John Calvin was a dyspeptic and suffered from rheumatism, gout, and stone when he wrote his Institutes. The most distinguished devotees to the religion of self-reproach have always been sufferers from headache and neuralgia, as “crippled foxes decry the vintage,” and grapes are always sour that are beyond reach.

The germs of Christianity grew out of the decaying carcasses of the Jewish commonwealth and the Roman empire, and as the worship of sorrow and unnaturalness it is not promotive of the highest virtue and the best interests of human society. It is only when the distinctive asceticism is eliminated and its extreme pessimism is destroyed by a rational optimism that it becomes a real blessing to humanity.

Every religion reflects the characteristics of the place and time of its birth, and the gloomy and melancholic temperaments of the dwellers by the Jordan, the Nile, and the Euphrates thoroughly permeated and impregnated the sects of those countries.

Regarding Christianity as of human origin, we are at liberty to cast aside its lugubrious spirit, its impracticable unworldliness and unnaturalness, and with higher esteem, and a more genuine heartfelt appreciation, and a sincere acceptance and approval we are free to adopt and glorify its general humane spirit under the divine impulse of the universal Fatherhood of God.

The real religious basis is that he serves God best who serves man best, and the coming of the kingdom of God is concomitant with the coming of the kingdom of man.

The claim of infallibility is always suspicious, and there is no finality in religious truth and progress; and it cannot be doubted that the religion of the nineteenth century is as great an improvement upon the religion of the first as our civilization, science, commerce, and the mechanic arts are superior. Prof. Max Müller, of the orthodox University of Oxford, well says: “The elements and roots of religion were there as far back as we can trace the history of man, and the history of religion, like the history of language, shows us throughout a succession of new combinations of the same radical elements.” In no system of religion is the principle of combination, of previously existing forms of creed and conduct, so apparent as in the Christian religion. It is the best because it is the latest of the great religions, and contains the best selections and combinations of all previously existing ones, Jewish and pagan.

Our faith in the sublime moral precepts of Christianity is increased and strengthened as we realize that they are thousands of years old, that they are the accumulated products of the ages—an evolution from the consummated wisdom of all previously existing religionists of all times and countries. God’s real revelations to man are from within, and they would not be any more divine if they were from without. Of nothing can we be so sure as that God will take care of his own eternal truth, and cause it to shine forth with more radiant splendor as knowledge shall increase and true science shall learn to read more intelligently the records of the divine character and will in the infallible book of nature.

Ecclesiastical tomtits may twitter and flutter, and theological owls may look solemn and wise and hoot out their gloomy forebodings, but the true ark of Nature’s covenant is safe.:

 
“Ever the truth comes uppermost,
And ever is justice done.”
 

The only safe position, because it is the only true one, is that there is a God in the universe, and that it is the divine order to make known his will by slow and uniform processes, and not by sudden and miraculous revelations.

The principle of evolution is just as true in its application to moral and spiritual things as it is in regard to the material world, and another Darwin will some day arise who will demonstrate the fact. Indeed, this field is “ripe for the harvest,” as several new sciences, not dreamed of until within a half century past, are revealing facts and establishing principles which are sure to consign the old supernaturalism to regions of superstition and priestcraft.

CHAPTER XIV. A FEW FRAGMENTS

“Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.”—John 6:12.

GNOSTICISM.

SINCE preparing Chapter XI., on The Ideal Christ, and quoting freely from Mr. Gerald Massey regarding the Gnostics, some doubts have been suggested as to the soundness of his views. We have therefore carefully reviewed this matter, and can find no reason to abate one tittle from the conclusions presented by this painstaking and able writer.

The word gnosis, meaning knowledge, does not apply exclusively to a party or sect The Gnostics were not distinguished from Christians at first by sectarian lines. The Epistles of Paul, both genuine and spurious, recognize the gnosis, and there were Gnostic sects, as well as individual Gnostics, both before and after the Christian era. The gnosis consisted in knowing, and mainly in not accepting as historical and literal what was really only allegorical. The chief Gnostic sects held as secret their essential doctrines, and at the same time they had an exoteric statement which they gave to the common people. Even Paul, who seems to have been a first-class Gnostic, preached one gospel publicly to the Gentiles, and another which he gave “privately to them that were of reputation” (Gal. 2: 2). His teachings were highly Cabalistic, and he seems to have delighted in “mysteries.” He had no conference with any of the other apostles as to what he should teach, but went to Arabia, where he doubtless met the Essenean brotherhood, and probably learned from them instead of the Judean teachers. The Essenes were famous for the cultivation of sacred literature, and had their personified Christ, as we have reason to believe. Mr. C. Staniland Wake thinks, with good reason, that the Essenes were Mithrasts, and that they worshipped the sun, and Mithras, the Persian savior, was a personification of the sun. The Essenes, according to Josephus, treated the sun with great veneration, and offered certain prayers early in the morning, as if they made supplication for its rising. The Essenes and Mithrasts were Gnostics in that they held to a personified savior, and not a literal man of flesh and blood. The symbolism of the universe afforded models for the secrets of their religion, and their rites were introduced into every part of the Roman empire—of course including Palestine—and for nearly four centuries the Mithraic religion wellnigh overshadowed Christianity. Much that was written of Jesus indicates the characteristics of the secret initiations. It may appear strange to the superficially informed when we affirm, as heretofore, that many of those matters which Paul set forth with such seeming literalness were in fact mystic and arcane, the transcript of older doctrines, and were made up throughout of astrological symbolism.

The systems of many ancient peoples centuries before Christianity contain doctrines and dramatic stories closely analogous to the gospel story of Jesus. The Neo-Platonists held that these occult rites were merely a form of representing philosophic thought as if in scenes of daily life. While Paul refers to certain matters as apparently historical, he never overlooks their symbolic import. The interpolators of his writings misrepresented his real views, as is evinced by internal evidence in the writings themselves.

The fourth Gospel, falsely credited to John, was written for the evident purpose of opposing the Gnostic doctrine of Jesus not made flesh by presenting the Neo-Platonic dogma of “the Word made flesh.” In many places throughout the New Testament there is an implication that there were those who denied that Jesus came in the flesh: “And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 1: 3). In 2 John, 7th verse, it is said: “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.” How does this comport with the assumption that the existence of the human Jesus was never doubted in the apostolic age? The ignorant and disingenuous ecclesiastics who wrote on Gnosticism in early ages always observed one rule, and that was to represent it as a mere offshoot and corruption of Christianity, invented because of disappointed ambition by apostates from the religion established by the apostles. The Rev. Mr. King, in his Gnostics, and their Remains, affirms that such representations “are entirely false.” The truth is, that Gnosticism did not purport to be a Christian system, except by a kind of syncretism to reconcile different faiths. The Neo-Platonists attempted this, and Gnostics did the same on an analogous plan. The historical existence of Jesus was little else than a concession made to the unreasoning multitude, while the esoteric doctrine was so much older as to make such an existence of no possible account except as a piece of folk-lore to hang illustrations of doctrines upon. This is the central idea of every branch of Gnosticism. The forms set forth by different expositors are secondary and incidental, liable to mislead those who attempt to place them in the front and draw deductions from them; and hence Saturninus taught that all that was considered physical in Jesus was only a phantasy, and that what was from God was spiritual only, and not at all corporeal. As for the writings of Tatian, they are “lost”—that is, destroyed—and we are under no obligations to accept what his enemies have said of them. The period was one in which calumny, slander, and forgery were the rule, as well as the main dependence for refuting an adversary. We know nothing of Cerinthus except through Epiphanius, whose reputation for truth and veracity is so bad that he would make falsehood appear like truth by his manner of telling it. Our evidence respecting Cerinthus comes chiefly from Epiphanius, who once professed to be a Gnostic (Macosian), and afterward turned Catholic, and, Judas-like, betrayed some scores of his former associates, including seventy women, to the persecuting civil authorities.

The Ophites were certainly mystics, and read everything concerning Jesus as a sacred allegory. Many think that Christos was with them Chrëstos, the good, the incarnation and associate of Sophia, “the wisdom from on high.” The “wisdom religion” was extensively symbolized. Pythagoras named his esoteric doctrine the gnosis or “knowledge,” and Plato used a similar expression to indicate the “interior knowledge.” Marcion was evidently Persian and used Mithraic symbolism. The ceremonials of Mithraism (red-cap Christians) and astral rites were adopted by the Catholic Church, besides many other rites of paganism. The Jewish Cabala and the Gnostics had much in common. The Sethites were of Jewish origin, and they held that Seth was the son of Sophia, who had filled him with the divine gnosis, and that his descendants were a spiritual race.

The Mandaites were Gnostics, as their name indicates, and they found in the system the older type of doctrine which obtained in Mesopotamia and in the old and elaborate Babylonian religion. This is seen from the fact that the names of the old pantheon were adopted.

The variety of legends regarding Jesus show that he was not an historical character. Deriving the bulk of their theosophy from beyond the Euphrates, and even much from beyond the Indus, the early ecclesiastics changed names, but retained their original ideas. Nearly all Christian festivals are the equivalents of pagan observances, as is well known. Prof. F. W. Newman denounces the assertions of Tischendorf and Canon Westcott, concerning the Gnostics as “unworthy of scholars, and only calculated to mislead readers, who most generally are ignorant of the actual facts in in the case.” “The uncritical and inaccurate character of the Fathers rendered them peculiarly liable to be misled by forgone conclusions.”

Oriental Christianity and Parseeism furnish a striking example of religious syncretism. In the Gnostic basis itself it is not difficult to recognize the general features of the religion of ancient Babylon, and thus we are brought nearer to a solution of the problem as to the real origin of Gnosticism in general.

Dr. John Tulloch, principal of St. Andrew's University and the writer of the article on the Gnostics in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (ninth edition), truly says: “The sources of Gnosticism are to be found in diverse forms of religion and speculative culture antecedent to Christianity, especially in the theology of the Alexandrian Jews as represented in the writings of Philo, and again in the influences flowing from the old Persian or Zarathustrian religion and the Buddhistic faiths of the East.” He also says it is “the fact that the spirit of Gnosticism and the language which it afterward developed were in the air of the apostolic age, and that the last thing to seek in the early Fathers is either accuracy of chronology or a clear sequence of thought.”

In Appletons’ New American Cyclopedia, under the title “Gnostics,” it is said: “The Gnostics numbered two classes—the select few who were admitted to the divine secrets, and the large class of common believers who were not able to rise above the physical condition.” The point is that the Gnostics had a secret doctrine which their adversaries did not know. The recognition of Jesus as an actual person was only apparent, and hence different people differed in that respect. The doctrine came from the far East, and teachers only sought to harmonize it with the new worship, as they also did with Mithraism. The real Gnostics were the spiritual men of the times, and mere externalists could not understand them. It would be amusing if it were not so serious to see men often affecting great learning, themselves not professing orthodoxy, yet vehement for what can only be called Roman ecclesiasticism. “The letter killeth,” and “the wise shall understand.”

Many writers on Gnosticism seem to know no more than the cock on the dunghill knows of the jewels that lie before him. The fact is, that the writings of the so-called Fathers, and of the New Testament itself, have come down to us percolated through Roman sacerdotalism, and must be taken with many grains of allowance. There were many men named Jesus at the commencement of the Christian era, but that a Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead is not supported by a particle of evidence. The anonymous author of the great English book, Supernatural Religion, has shown how utterly valueless the Gospels are as sources of evidence; and where else shall we look for an historical Jesus? We can have no faith in historical “phantoms,” “aions,” and “illusions.” Neither pagan nor Jewish contemporaneous history gives any countenance to the orthodox claim of a personal, crucified, and risen Jesus.

ORIGIN OF THE CHRIST STORY.

The Gospels were doubtless compiled nearly two hundred years after the beginning of the Christian era from the mythological and superstitious lore that was then circulating in great abundance; and Christ himself is only a mythological personage who, if such a person ever had any existence at all, existed many centuries before the Christian era, and was very different from the Christ of the Gospels, being originally Æsculapius or some other character of the like fame, and serving only as the basis of the Christian fable. It is certain that the primitive teachers of Christianity converted to their own purposes the writings of ancient poets and philosophers, mixing together the Oriental Gnosticism and Greek philosophy, and palming them on the world in a new form as things especially revealed to themselves.

It may further be remarked that at a most early period of the Christian era there appears to have been great doubts as to the real existence of Christ. The Manichees, as Augustine informs us, denied that he was a man, while others maintained that he was a man, but denied that he was a God (August. Serm. xxxvii. c. 12). There is, therefore, considerable force in the expressions of a modern writer that the being of no other individual mentioned in history ever labored under such a deficiency of evidence as to its reality, or ever was overset by a thousandth part of the weight of positive proof that it was a creation of imagination only, as that of Jesus Christ. His existence as a man has, from the earliest day on which it can be shown to have been asserted, been earnestly and strenuously denied; and that not by the enemies of the Christian faith, but by the most intelligent, most learned, and most sincere of the Christian name who have left to the world proofs of their intelligence and learning in their writings and of their sincerity in their sufferings. The existence of no individual of the human race that was real and positive was ever by a like conflict of jarring evidence rendered equivocal and uncertain. Nothing, however, is more common than for some persons to assume an air of contempt, and to cry out that those who deny that such a person as Jesus of Nazareth ever existed are utterly unworthy of being answered. It is, truly, very convenient for them thus to shelter themselves by assuming his existence as incontrovertible, instead of fairly meeting historical facts which, to say the least, render his existence very problemetical. It is to no purpose to urge that it might as well be denied that no such a person as Alexander the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte ever existed as to set at defiance the evidence of the existence of Jesus. For the existence of neither Alexander nor Napoleon was miraculous, and there never was on earth one other real personage whose existence, as a real personage, was denied and disclaimed even as soon as ever it was asserted, as was the case with respect to the assumed personality of Christ. But the only common character that runs through the whole body of the evidence of heretics is, that they, one and all, from first to last, deny the existence of Jesus Christ as a man, and, professing their faith in him as a God and Saviour, yet uniformly and consistently hold the whole story of his life and actions to be allegorical. The very earliest Christian writings that have come down to us are of a controversial character and written in attempted refutation of heresies. These heresies must therefore have been of so much earlier date and prior prevalence; they could not have been considered of sufficient consequence to have called (as they seem to have done) for the entire devotion and enthusiastic zeal of the orthodox party to extirpate or keep them under, if they had not acquired deep root and become of serious notoriety—an inference which leads directly to the conclusion that they were of anterior origination to any date that has hitherto been ascribed to the Gospel history.