Be wary of those who lead us in his name, including Prime Ministers & Presidents!
The Jesus Mysteries: Was the 'Original' Jesus a Pagan God? By Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy
Part 1
Timothy Freke has a honours degree in philosophy and is an authority on world spirituality and the author of more than twenty books. Peter Gandy has an MA in Classical Civilisation. For more information about the authors, their books, lectures and seminars, visit www.jesusmysteries.demon.co.uk
On the site where the Vatican now stands, there once stood a Pagan temple. Here Pagan priests observed sacred ceremonies which early Christians found so disturbing that they tried to erase all evidence of them ever having been practised. What were these shocking Pagan rites? Gruesome sacrifices or obscene orgies perhaps? This is what we have been led to believe. But the truth is far stranger than this fiction.
Where today the gathered faithful revere their Lord Jesus Christ, the ancients worshipped another godman who, like Jesus, had been miraculously born on the 25th of December before three shepherds. In this ancient sanctuary Pagan congregations once glorified a Pagan redeemer who, like Jesus, was said to have ascended to heaven, and to have promised to come again at the end of time to judge the quick and the dead. On the same spot where the Pope celebrates the Catholic mass, Pagan priests had also celebrated a symbolic meal of bread and wine in memory of their saviour who, just like Jesus, had declared
"He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him the same shall not know salvation."
When we began to uncover such extraordinary similarities between the story of Jesus and Pagan myth we were stunned. We had been brought up in a culture which portrays Paganism and Christianity as entirely antagonistic religious perspectives. How could such astonishing resemblances be explained? We were intrigued and began to search further. The more we looked, the more resemblances we found. To account for the wealth of evidence we were unearthing we felt compelled to completely review our understanding of the relationship between Paganism and Christianity; to question beliefs that we previously regarded as unquestionable and imagine possibilities which at first seemed impossible.
Our conclusion is that the story of Jesus is not the biography of an historical Messiah, but a myth based on perennial Pagan stories. Christianity was not a new and unique revelation but is actually a Jewish adaptation of the ancient Pagan Mystery religion. This is what we have called the 'Jesus Mysteries Thesis'. It may sound farfetched at first, just as it did initially to us. There is, after all, a great deal of unsubstantiated nonsense written about the 'real' Jesus, so any revolutionary theory should be approached with a healthy dose of scepticism. But, although this book makes sensational claims, it is not just fanciful speculation. It is firmly based upon years of meticulous scholarly research and in our book we provide extensive references so that people can check our sources for themselves.
Part 2 The Pagan Mysteries During the centuries leading up to the birth of Christianity, the Pagan Mystery religion, often known simply as the 'Mysteries', had spread throughout the ancient Mediterranean. Many of the greatest figures of the Pagan world were initiated into these Mysteries, and regarded them as the very source of civilisation. Each Mystery tradition had exoteric Outer Mysteries, consisting of myths which were common knowledge, and rituals which were open to anyone who wanted to participate. There were also esoteric Inner Mysteries, however, which were a sacred secret only known to those who had undergone a powerful process of initiation. Initiates of the Inner Mysteries had the mystical meaning of the rituals and myths of the Outer Mysteries revealed to them, bringing about personal transformation and spiritual enlightenment.
At the heart of the Mysteries were myths concerning a dying and resurrecting godman, who was known by many different names. In Egypt he was known as Osiris, in Greece as Dionysus, in Asia Minor as Attis, in Syria as Adonis, in Italy as Bacchus, in Persia as Mithras. Fundamentally all these godmen are the same mythical being, who the ancients called 'Osiris-Dionysus'. As we studied these myths, it became obvious that the story of Jesus had all the characteristics of another version of the same perennial tale. Event by event, we found we were able to construct the Jesus story from mythic motifs previously relating to Osiris-Dionysus.
Osiris-Dionysus is God made flesh; the saviour and 'Son of God' His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin. He is born in a cave or humble cow shed on the 25th of December before three shepherds. He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism. He miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony. He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honour him. He dies at Easter time as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. After his death he descends to Hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven in glory. His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days. His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine which symbolise his body and blood.
These are just some of the mythic motifs the tales of Osiris-Dionysus share in common with the supposed 'biography' of Jesus. Why are these remarkable similarities not common knowledge? Because, as we were to discover later, the early Roman Church did everything in its power to prevent us perceiving them. It systematically destroyed Pagan sacred literature in a brutal programme of eradicating the Mysteries - a task it performed so completely that today Paganism is regarded as a 'dead' religion.
Although surprising to us today, to writers of the first few centuries these similarities between the new Christian religion and the ancient Mysteries were extremely obvious. Pagan critics of Christianity, such the satirist Celsus, complained that this recent religion was nothing more than a pale reflection of their own ancient teachings. Early 'church fathers', such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Irenaeus, were understandably disturbed and resorted to the desperate claim that these similarities were the result of 'diabolical mimicry'. Using one of the most absurd arguments ever advanced, they accused the Devil of 'plagiarism by anticipation'; of deviously copying the true story of Jesus before it had actually happened in an attempt to mislead the gullible! These church fathers struck us as no less devious than the Devil they hoped to incriminate.
The obvious explanation was that, as early Christianity became the dominant power in the previously Pagan world, popular motifs from Pagan mythology had become grafted onto the biography of Jesus. However, to us this explanation seemed inadequate. We had collated such a comprehensive body of similarities that there remained no significant elements in the biography of Jesus that we did not find prefigured by the Mysteries. On top of this, we discovered that even Jesus' teachings were not original, but had been taught by the sages of the Pagan Mysteries for centuries! If there was a 'real' Jesus somewhere underneath all of this, we would have to acknowledge that we could know absolutely nothing about him, for all that remained for us was later Pagan accretions! Such a position seemed absurd. Surely there was a more elegant solution to this conundrum?
