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CHRISTIANITY
 At
the heart of Christianity lies the miraculous story of Jesus
Christ – how he was crucified but came back to life,
and in so doing saved mankind from its sins. The Church insists – and
millions of Christians believe – that Jesus was a real
human being and that his crucifixion and resurrection were
historic events, played out in the city of Jerusalem some
two thousand years ago. God became man, it is said, and sacrificed
his flesh and blood in order that we all might see the light
and join the heavenly kingdom of God. But is this really
what
happened two thousand years ago, or has the Church deceived
us all by rewriting myth as history?
Consider.
The
essential story of Jesus Christ – his crucifixion and
resurrection – follows a millennia-old myth in which
God himself ‘died’ but returned to life as a
prelude to the creation of the Universe. In this myth, which
was told
and
retold continually for more than three thousand years prior
to the formation of the Church, God personified the death
and rebirth
of the Universe. It was the sacrifice of this Great God’s
body – of his cosmic flesh and blood – followed
by the resurrection of his spirit which saved the world and
washed
away the sins of the first generation of mankind.
In
this light, it should be assumed – unless it can
be proven otherwise – that the ‘death’ and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, as told in the gospels, retells
the age-old myth of the death and rebirth of the Universe.
Or, in other
words, Jesus Christ is synonymous with God.
Support
for this hypothesis is found in the gospel of John, which begins
with the following statement:
In
the beginning was the Word [Christ], and the Word was toward
the God, and the Word
was God. He [the Word]
was
with God in
the beginning. Through him all
things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made...
And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among
us. We
have seen his glory, the
glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
The
idea was that Christ, the Word, had descended from Heaven at
the beginning of time, and that his spirit had entered into
the world
and
mankind, thereby ‘becoming
flesh’.
Further
support for the myth of this primeval Christ is found in the
Old Testament, Psalm 22 and Isaiah 52-53. In the
former, a
worm-like being
is crucified in
the underworld in a remarkably similar manner to the supposedly
historic crucifixion of Jesus Christ in the gospels. In the latter, ‘the
righteous servant’ of
God is sacrificed for the transgressions of all mankind, and
bears his unjust treatment in a remarkably similar manner to
the supposedly
historic treatment
of Jesus Christ in the gospels. In my view, these Judaic scriptures,
far from being prophecies of the New Testament (as the Church
insists), allegorise the
suffering of the saviour of mankind at the beginning of time.
The
real meaning of Christianity is thus to be found in the myth
of the creation of the Universe, according to which an earlier
Universe, personified
by God-Christ,
was sacrificed to pave the way for the creation of the present
Universe.
The
gospels in their entirety would therefore be an esoteric parable
for the myth of creation.
As
for the Church’s assertion
that Jesus, a humble human being, died and came back to life
in a crucifixion in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, a possible
explanation is that this historic Jesus was an actor in
a Passion Play, in which
he sought to re-enact the myth of creation (a widespread
and popular tradition in the ancient world). This would, of
course, explain why the evidence for the
existence of ‘the Son of God’ two thousand
years ago is so sparse.
Conclusion
The
crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is myth, not history.
It relates the story of the ‘death’ and rebirth
of the Universe. Thus Jesus Christ personifies the myth of
creation.
Reading
List
A.F.
Alford, ‘When The Gods Came Down’, Hodder
and Stoughton, 2000.
T.
Freke and P. Gandy, ‘The Jesus
Mysteries’, HarperCollins, 2001. |
