Rehearsals of His Subsequent Incarnation. . . . Thus was He ever learning even as God to converse with men upon earth, being no other than the Word which was to be made flesh. But He was thus learning (or rehearsing), in order to level for us the way of faith, that we might the more readily believe that the Son of God had come down into the world, if we knew that in times past also something similar had been done.
It is more than a little odd that the “omniscient” God would need to learn how to be a human, especially when humans themselves do not receive such an opportunity to “rehearse.” In reality, Tertullian’s pitiful “excuse” sounds more as if “God” is acting in a play (and as if Tertullian has a screw loose).
In his First Apology, Christian father Justin Martyr (c. 100-165) acknowledged the similarities between the older Pagan gods and religions and those of Christianity, when he attempted to demonstrate, in the face of ridicule, that Christianity was no more ridiculous than the earlier myths:
ANALOGIES TO THE HISTORY OF CHRIST. And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre?
In his endless apologizing, Justin reiterates the similarities between his godman and the gods of other cultures:
As to the objection of our Jesus’s being crucified, I say, that suffering was common to all the aforementioned sons of Jove [Jupiter] . . . As to his being born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance that. As to his curing the lame, and the paralytic, and such as were cripples from birth, this is little more than what you say of your Aesculapius.cxxiv
In making these comparisons between Christianity and its predecessor Paganism, however, Martyr sinisterly spluttered:
It having reached the Devil’s ears that the prophets had foretold the coming of Christ, the Son of God, he set the heathen Poets to bring forward a great many who should be called the sons of Jove. The Devil laying his scheme in this, to get men to imagine that the true history of Christ was of the same characters the prodigious fables related of the sons of Jove.cxxv
In his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, Martyr again admits the pre-existence of the Christian tale and then uses his standard, irrational and self-serving apology, i.e.,
“the devil got there first”:
Be well assured, then, Trypho, that I am established in the knowledge of and faith in the Scriptures by those counterfeits which he who is called the devil is said to have performed among the Greeks; just as some were wrought by the Magi in Egypt, and others by the false prophets in Elijah’s days. For when they tell that Bacchus, son of Jupiter, was begotten by [Jupiter’s] intercourse with Semele, and that he was the discoverer of the vine; and when they relate, that being torn in pieces, and having died, he rose again, and ascended to heaven; and when they introduce wine into his mysteries, do I not perceive that [the devil] has imitated the prophecy announced by
the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses? And when they tell that Hercules was strong, and travelled over all the world, and was begotten by Jove of Alcmene, and ascended to heaven when he died, do I not perceive that the Scripture which speaks of Christ, “strong as a giant to run his race,” has been in like manner imitated? And when he [the devil] brings forward Aesculapius as the raiser of the dead and healer of all diseases, may I not say that in this matter likewise he has imitated the prophecies about Christ? . . . And when I hear, Trypho, that Perseus was begotten of a virgin, I understand that the deceiving serpent counterfeited also this.
This “devil did it” response became de rigeur in the face of persistent and rational criticism. As Doane relates:
Tertullian and St. Justin explain all the conformity which exists between Christianity and Paganism, by asserting “that a long time before there were Christians in existence, the devil had taken pleasure to have their future mysteries and ceremonies copied by his worshipers.”cxxvi
Christian author Lactantius (240-330), in his attempts to confirm the emperor Constantine in his new faith and to convert the “Pagan” elite, also widely appealed to the Pagan stories as proof that Christianity was not absurd but equally viable as they were, even though naturally he dismissed these earlier versions as works of the devil.
As Wheless says, “In a word, Christianity is founded on and proved by Pagan myths.”cxxvii
Other Christians were more blunt in their confessions as to the nature and purpose of the Christian tale, making no pretense to being believers in higher realms of spirituality, but demonstrating more practical reasons for fanatically adhering to their incredible doctrines. For example, Pope Leo X, privy to the truth because of his high rank, made this curious declaration, “What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!” As Wheless also says, “The proofs of my indictment are marvellously easy.”
The Gnostics
Although the Christian conspirators were quite thorough in their criminal destruction of the evidence, especially of ancient texts, such that much irreplaceable knowledge was lost, from what remains we can see that the scholars of other schools and sects never gave up their arguments against the historicizing of a very ancient mythological creature. This group of critics included many Gnostics, who strenuously objected to the carnalization and Judaization of their allegorical texts and characters by the Christians.
The impression has been cast that the philosophy or religion of Gnosticism began only during the Christian era and that the former was a corruption of the latter. However, Gnosticism is far older than Christianity, extending back thousands of years. The term Gnosticism, in fact, comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge, and “Gnostic” simply means “one who knows,” rather than designating a follower of a particular doctrine. From time immemorial, those who understood “the mysteries” were considered “keepers of the gnosis.” The Greek philosophers Pythagoras and Plato were “Gnostics,” as was the historian Philo, whose works influenced the writer of the Gospel of John.
Nevertheless, during the early centuries of the Christian era, “Gnosticism”
became more of a monolithic movement, as certain groups and individuals began to amalgamate the many religions, sects, cults, mystery schools and ideologies that permeated the Roman Empire and beyond, from England to Egypt to India and China. This latest infusion of Gnosticism traced its roots to Syria, oddly enough the same nation in which Christians were first so called, at Antioch. Of this development,
Massey says:
We are told in the Book of Acts that the name of the Christiani was first given at Antioch; but so late as the year 200 A.D. no canonical New Testament was known at Antioch, the alleged birth-place of the Christian name. There was no special reason why “the disciples” should have been named as Christians at Antioch, except that this was a great centre of the Gnostic Christians, who were previously identified with the teachings and works of the mage Simon of Samaria.cxxviii
These Antiochan Gnostic-Christians were followers of “Simon the Magus,” who was impugned as the “heresiarch” or originator of all Christian heresies. Yet, this Simon Magus appears to have been a mythical character derived from two mystical entities, Saman and Maga, esteemed by the Syrians prior to the Christian era. This religion could be called Syro-Samaritan Gnostic Christianity. Syro-Judeo- Gnosticism, on the other hand, was originally a Jewish heresy, starting with Mandaeanism, a highly astrological ideology dating to the fourth century BCE that tried to bridge between Judaism and Zoroastrianism and that was very influential on Christianity. The Gnostic tree of thought thus had many branches, such that it was not uniform and was colored by the variety of cultures and places in which it appeared, a development that created competition. Pagels says, “These so-called gnostics, then, did not share a single ideology or belong to a specific group; not all, in fact, were Christians.”cxxix Indeed, the various Gnostic “Christian” texts from Chenoboskion were found in non-Christian, Pagan tombs.cxxx Thus, we find in the ancient world Syrian or Samaritan Gnosticism, Jewish Gnosticism, Christian Gnosticism and Pagan Gnosticism.
Yet, as stated, Gnosticism was eclectic, gathering together virtually all religious and cultic ideologies of the time, and constituting a combination of “the philosophies of Plato and Philo, the Avesta and the Kabbala, the mysteries of Samothrace, Eleusis and of Orphism.”cxxxi Buddhism and Osirianism were major influences as well.
The Gnostic texts were multinational, using terms from the Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Syriac/Aramaic, Sanskrit and Egyptian languages.
Although there now seems to be a clear-cut distinction between Gnostics and Christians, there was not one at the beginning, and the fact is that Gnosticism was proto-Christianity. The distinction was not even very great as late as the third century, when Neoplatonic philosopher and fierce Christian critic Porphyry attacked “Gnostics,” whom he considered to be Christians, as did Plotinus (205- 270), both of whom indicted the Christians/Gnostics for making up their texts.
Pagels describes the murky division between the “Gnostics” and the “Christians”:
. . . one revered father of the church, Clement of Alexandria . . . writing in Egypt c.
180, identifies himself as orthodox, although he knows members of gnostic groups and their writings well: some even suggest that he was himself a gnostic initiate.cxxxii In fact, Bishop Irenaeus was a Gnostic and had a zodiac on the floor of his church at Lyons.cxxxiii Furthermore, the great “Christian” saint Augustine was originally a Mandaean, i.e., a Gnostic, until after the Council of Nicea, when he was
“converted,” i.e., promised a prominent place in the newly formed Catholic Church, such that he then excoriated his former sect.
Concerning this confusion between the Christians and Gnostics, Waite relates,
“Most of the Christian writers of the second century who immediately succeeded the apostolic fathers, advocated doctrines which were afterward considered heretical.”cxxxiv Yet, the orthodox Christians used whatever doctrine they could to benefit their cause, exalting these same “heretics,” including Origen (@ 185-254) and Tertullian, as founding fathers.
Many “Christian” concepts are in fact “Gnostic,” such as the disdain for the flesh
and for matter in general. In actuality, the Gnostic-Christian ideology deemed as evil both matter and the god of the material world, the “Demiurge,” also called the “god of this world,” or the “prince of this world,” as well as “Ialdabaôth,” the jealous god.
Jesus’s own Gnosticism is revealed at John 7:7: “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil.” And Paul’s Gnostic thought appears where he reveals his abhorrence of the flesh and at 2 Corinthians 4:4, for example, where he speaks gnostically about the “god of this world” being evil. In this passage, the apostle also reveals that the scriptures were tampered with and suggests that he and his cohorts themselves were at some point guilty of “underhanded ways,”
apparently including such mutilation of texts, which they were thereafter giving up:
We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word . . . And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ . . .
Concerning these sentiments, Massey comments:
Speaking from his Gnostic standpoint, Paul declared to the historic Christians who followed John and Peter, that God had sent them a working of error, that they should believe a lie, because they rejected the truth as it was according to his spiritual Gospel!cxxxv
Not only was Paul propounding a “veiled” or “spiritual” gospel, he was a classic Gnostic, called, in fact, the “Apostle of the Gnostics,” in that he did not acknowledge a historical Christ. As Massey further says:
. . . Paul opposed the setting up of a Christ carnalized, and fought the Sarkolaters [carnalizers] tooth and nail. . . . If the writings of Paul were retouched by the carnalizers, that will account for the two voices heard at times in his Epistles and the apparent duplicity of his doctrine . . . Paul passed away and his writings remained with the enemy, to be withheld, tampered with, reindoctrinated, and turned to account by his old opponents who preached the gospel of Christ carnalized.cxxxvi
The Gnostic Christ of Paul is also reflected at Galatians 3:27-8: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Regarding this concept, Massey says:
The Christ of the Gnostics was a mystical type continued from mythology to portray a spiritual reality of the interior life. Hence the Christ in this human phase could be female as well as male; for such to become historical, or be made so, except by ignorantly mistaking a mythical Impersonation for a Hermaphrodite in Person!cxxxvii The Gnostic focus on attaining gnosis, or the “kingdom of God within,” is also a concept that made it into the Christian religion and bible but that is widely ignored in favor of “a-gnosis,” or ignorance, and “pistis,” or blind faith.
The fact is that Gnosticism existed first and was eventually changed into orthodox Christianity around 220 CE. As time went on, the carnalizing Christians created distance between themselves and their Gnostic roots by rewriting texts for their own benefit. As Jackson says, “It will be noticed that generally speaking the earlier Epistles show signs of Gnostic influence, while the later show signs of anti- Gnostic bias.”cxxxviii
In turn, the Gnostics likened the orthodox Christians to “dumb animals” and stated that it was the orthodoxy, not the Gnostics themselves, who were the blasphemers, because the orthodoxy did not know “who Christ is.”cxxxix As Pagels relates, “Gnostic Christians . . . castigated the orthodox for making the mistake of reading the Scriptures—and especially Genesis—literally, and thereby missing its
‘deeper meaning.’”cxl In fact, as Massey says:
Historic Christianity originated with turning the Gnostic and Esoteric teachings inside out and externalising the mythical allegory in a personal human history.cxli
As stated, many of the Gnostics were fervently “anti-material,” such that when the historicizers appeared and began to insist that the Christian savior had indeed
“come in the flesh,” the Gnostics equally zealously held that their Christ could never take human form. These, in fact, were the Christian “heretics” noted by Taylor as the
“first class of professing Christians.”
This denial of Christ “come in the flesh” was called “Docetism,” a term used by the conspirators to gloss over the disbelief in the incarnation by saying it meant that Christ existed but had never taken a material body, rather than serving as a rejection of the gospel story. While later Gnostics may have followed this opinion, the pioneers did not, nor did the Pagans, who were more blunt in their assessment as to the historical nature of Christ. Of Docetism, Massey says:
The Docetae sects, for example, are supposed to have held that the transactions of the gospel narrative did occur, but in a phantasmagoria of unreality. This, however, is but a false mode of describing the position of those who denied that the Christ could be incarnated and become human to suffer and die upon the cross. The Christians who report the beliefs of the Gnostics, Docetae, and others, always assume the actual history and then try to explain the non-human interpretation as an heretical denial of the alleged facts. But the docetic interpretation was first, was pre- historical . . . cxlii
In Against Heresies, Irenaeus speaks of the followers of the Gnostic-Christian Valentinus (2nd cent.), who preceded Irenaeus and was so orthodox that he was nearly elected bishop:
For, according to them, the Word did not originally become flesh. For they maintain that the Saviour assumed an animal body, formed in accordance with a special dispensation by an unspeakable providence, so as to become visible and palpable.
. . . At the same time, they deny that He assumed anything material [into His nature], since indeed matter is incapable of salvation.
Irenaeus further complains about and threatens the Docetics, while acknowledging them as followers of the Master, i.e., Christians:
He shall also judge those who describe Christ as [having become man] only in [human] opinion. For how can they imagine that they do themselves carry on a real discussion, when their Master was a mere imaginary being? Or how can they receive anything steadfast from Him, if He was a merely imagined being, and not a verity?
And how can these men really be partaken of salvation, if He in whom they profess to believe, manifested Himself as a merely imaginary being?
In addition to denying that Christ came in the flesh, the early followers were extremely confused as to the “history” of their savior, depicting his death, for example, in dozens of different ways, even though such astounding events should have been seared into memory. Irenaeus recounts other Gnostic-Christian
“heresies,” beginning with the Samaritan belief that it was not Christ who had died on the cross but “Simon,” a peculiar development if Jesus’s “history” had been based in fact and widely known from the time of his alleged advent.
In his diatribe against the Gnostics Valentinus, Marcion, Basilides and Saturninus, in particular, Irenaeus recapitulates their diverse beliefs and doctrines:
But according to Marcion, and those like him, neither was the world made by Him;
nor did He come to His own things, but to those of another. And, according to certain of the Gnostics, this world was made by angels, and not by the Word of God. But according to the followers of Valentinus, the world was not made by Him, but by the