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Today, in this age of information, the Christian is challenged in his typical understanding of his Christian faith like never before in the history of Christianity. These are challenges that Christians and Christian interpreters and believers must meet every day now. In a nutshell the pressing question remains: Which of our scriptures are to be regarded as "historical" and which as "mythical"? Let me rephrase this question in such a way that it is more relevant to the "truth-seeker" and "thinking-believer":
Few Christians have ever heard of Ignatius who was an early Church Father. Ignatius was the third Bishop of Antioch as is reported to have died between 98 and 117 C.E. He makes an astounding statement in his writings left to us. We need pay very close attention to what is being said at this most early date in the development of "historical Christianity". He observes: "I have heard some say, 'Unless I find it in the ancient writings, (the originals or archives) I will not believe it to be written in the gospel'. And when I said to them: 'It is written!' they replied to me 'It is found written before;'" in what they called the uncorrupted originals, which Ignatius will then proceed to denounce as corrupt copies of his original gospel. Ignatius goes on to day: "To me," he says, "Jesus Christ" stands instead of all the uncorrupted monuments in the world, together with those untouched (or incorruptible) monuments, his cross, his death, his resurrection, and the faith which is in him". Notice that Ignatius cares not that "his gospel" has been "written before"! This is amazing that reference is made to an "ancient gospel" concerning "Jesus Christ" and he flippantly does not seem to care or even inquire into its prior existence. The same standpoint was occupied by Professor Jowlett, when he wrote: "To us the preaching of the gospel is a New Beginning, from which we date all things, beyond we neither desire nor are able to inquire" (Gerald Massey, The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ, p. 1-2, Kessinger Publishing Co, Montana, U.S.A.). Professor Jowlette makes a critical mistake. It is within man and his nature to count the "birth" of something from the time when they first acquired a knowledge of them. So it was with primitive Christians who were ignorant of the natural beginnings and past ancient history of their Christian Faith that can be traced as far back as ancient Egypt. But they simply were not aware of the hoary beginnings of their "birth faith". But things have changed. We can "inquire" into these facts today like never before being benefit of this age of information in which we live. The difference is that unlike Professor Jowlett you and I may have the "desire to inquire" to this earlier understanding of "Jesus Christ" and this "ancient gospel" where others did not and may not yet even today.
It was not until this, the Era of Excavation, that we were able to dig down far enough to recover the fundamental facts to know anything certain concerning the remoter origins and evolution of the Christian System; the most ancient evidences having been neglected until now. We find upon examination that the original mythos and gnosis of Christianity were primarily derived from Egypt on various lines of descent, Hebrew, Persian, and Greek, Alexandrian, Essenian, and Nazarene, and that these converged in Rome, where the "History" was manufactured mainly from the identifiable matter of the Mythos recorded in the ancient Books of Wisdom, illustrated by Gnostic Art, and orally preserved amongst the secrets of the Mysteries. What cannot escape our attention when doing these studies is the undeniable fact that instead of the Roman Church being a vessel for purging the truth from error we must look upon it rather as the melting-pot, in which the greatest and highest Spiritual Truths held sacred to earliest mankind were "radically reinterpreted" and watered down to unrecognizable proportions and then stamped with a newer name, and re-issued under a later date. This is the Christianity that you and I have been taught; not the original. Oh yes, there was an "original Christianity" then you and I were never taught that existed thousands of years earlier than the "transmuted" one we received from Rome. The readings of these earlier "ancient writing" prove the case to those familiar with them as Augustine's famous quotes shows us:
That which is known as the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist; from the beginning of the human race until the time when Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion, which already existed began to be called Christianity. (Retractt. I, xiii, cited by Dr. Alvin Boyd Kuhn in his Shadow of The Third Century, Elizabeth N.J.: Academy Press, 1949, p.3).
Please take the time to re-read this quote above from Augustine and ponder its implications to our current "interpretation" of Christianity as given us from a "historical" and "literal" reading of the same "ancient writings" in our New Testaments which were never understood or interpreted the same as by the ancient Spiritual Masters of humanity who gave mankind them in the beginning of recorded time.
Discernment of Spiritual Truth when reading these ancient writings, many of which yet remain in our New Testaments, is determined on how we approach and read these sacred documents we have inherited by Rome. If we approach them only with an assumed "literal" and "historical" interpretation then we are guaranteed to miss completely their intended meanings for our lives; if we approach and read them as if they are the zenith of the highest Spiritual enlightenment capable to human minds consisting of the most elevated Spiritual Divine allegories, myths, and symbols then we truly have scaled to the most lofty Heavens and Spiritual knowledge.
Along this path of Spiritual enlightenment we will have cause to examine much evidence that supports such above statements. But the view is not always beautiful as one might hope. We shall see together that at the hands of Rome almost every good thing cherished by the Spiritually inclined ancients was re-dated, re-warranted, declared, and guaranteed to be the blessed result of Historic Christianity, as established by Jesus and his personal disciples. It can and will be demonstrated by us beyond any doubt to the "thinking-believer" and "truth-seeker" that Christianity pre-existed without the Personal historical and literal Christ, that it was continued by Christians who were misled by their authorities to accept a false approach in interpreting these ancient wisdom traditions and re-edited writings and in so doing to entirely rejected the ancient mystical, mythological, and Metaphysical understanding of these ancient writings and their intended meanings. We shall show the "truth-seeker" than the supposed historic portraiture in the Canonical Gospels was extant as mythical and mystical before the Gospels themselves existed. In short, the mythical theory can be proved beyond any doubt by recovering the Mythos and the Gnosis that has always laid veiling behind our "Jesus Story."
In all honesty, whether the accusation that Christianity is more mythical, mystical, and Metaphysical than historical can be sustained by the evidences available to us today is of major importance to a "thinking believer" and a "truth-seeker" than possibly any other thing in life. If such a challenge to Christianity can be made and proved then the ramifications of this challenge once proved discredits the Christian faith as it now stands and begins to open the doors of our minds to the fact that we have not understood this Bible "correctly" when we read it nor the traditions that we have inherited from our Christian Faith.
The Christian church stands teetering today on the abyss that separates two different and opposing theological messages in the New Testament; one message from the Jewish Jesus and the other from a "Romanized Paul" from the hands of Rome. Hidden in all of this is the opposition between a supposed the historical Jesus; the story of which is approached and interpreted "literally" and "historically" and the "Christ of Faith" which is more mystical, mythical, and Metaphysical. Without serious study one is hopeless in determining which of these theologies are correct; the one from a supposed "literal" and "historical" Jesus Christ that stems from a "Romanized Pauline" theology created long after the time for the life of this supposed historical person and the other which is legacy of the ancient Spiritual Wisdom and the Spiritual Allegories of the Divine Realm and the Mind of God and His "Krst/Christ" which have "fallen" into material manifestation and humanity. This is the "Krst/Christ" of Faith and the Mind of Christ which resides awaiting awakening in every child of God. The true proponents of this idea is expressed in our New Testaments by two sources; the teachings of the "Jewish Christ" and the "Gnostic Paul" who both teach the progressively evolving Christ Mind in mankind; this "mind of Christ" in you and me. We will come together to see that this "Jesus Story" is your story, my story; our "pattern" of sorts to lead our Souls through life.
Many Jewish and Christian Scholars, along with ordinary Christians, would consider that the historical Jesus is by definition all-important for Christian faith. The vast majority of believing Christians today have not the slightest idea concerning the difference between "the Christ of faith" and "the Jesus of history."
If it turns out that the real Gnostic Paul was not very interested in any supposed "historical Jesus", then traditional assumptions about the historical nature and basis of Christian faith are put in jeopardy. Christians traditionally have claimed that the distinctive thing about Christian faith is its historical basis: Its so-called "particularity" lies in its assertion that God's salvation came to humanity in particular historical events - Christ '"as handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification" according again to this "Romanized" Paul and "his gospel" (Rom 4:25). We are assured that Christianity, as re-defined by Rome, is not myth or philosophy or a system of ethics but a historical revelation. Somebody is right and somebody is wrong here; we cannot have it both ways. The "truth" is out there and you can have it if you wish. If, however, it can be shown beyond any doubt that a Gnostic Paul, as the first author of the earliest epistles on the "indwelling Christ" and the most influential exponent of Christian faith in the early church, did not see a "historical Jesus" as especially important, then we will have to conclude that our view of Christian faith was not that of many of the earliest Christians, since Paul was surely not alone in his attitudes.
If Paul, perhaps influenced by the Greek mystery religions, was interested in the proclamation of a dying and rising Christ within mankind rather than in some supposed "literalized" history of Jesus, then we may be forced to conclude that early Christianity was more mythological and less historical than we supposed.
The "key" to these truths surrounding our "Jesus Story" and the real identity of "Jesus Christ" lies in the interpretation of these New Testament documents, their reliability and their later forgery when compared to the much earlier existing ancient writings to which we alluded earlier in Ignatius comment. What I have shared with the readers is the very conclusion reached by a host of scholars in the last centuries. S. G. Wilson in his article surveying the history of recent Jesus-Paul study sums it up for us when he finds himself forced by the meager evidence for Paul's interest in Jesus to come to this theological conclusion:
Driven by reflection on both the theory and practice of our historical craft to the view that there is little we can confidently assert apart from the mere fact of Jesus' life and death, we are forced to fall back on a mythological figure (the Christ of faith, Pauline or otherwise) and adopt a position which verges on the docetic (Peter Richardson (editor), From Jesus to Paul: Studies in Honour of Francis Wright Beare, p. 20)
So, if we have learned anything it should be this. It is hopeless to try to understand anything correctly in our Bibles and especially our New Testament unless we approach these "re-edited" documents armed with the same "hermeneutic" and method of approach and interpretation as held by the ancient writers of these sacred writings as well as their comparison with the more ancient traditions that exist which show us that there is nothing really new in our "Jesus Story". Only in this way can we be assured of arriving at the truth and what honestly lies behind our "Jesus Story"; a story way too many people accept as interpreted today "by faith" and never studying it out for themselves to make sure that they have "the Faith of Jesus" and not merely a "Faith in Jesus".
2 Cor 13:5 5 Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? (KJV)
