In addition to the “lives” of Christ and the twelve, virtually the entire gospel story can be found in older mythologies as part of the ancient mythos revolving around the celestial bodies and movements. Many of these elements have already been discussed, and a thorough exploration would require another volume, but we can examine a number of such aspects of the Christian tale and doctrine in greater detail, beginning with the creation of the universe and the all-important fall that requires the saving grace of Jesus.
Genesis
It has long been known that the story of cosmic origins as found in the Judeo- Christian bible is a lift from more ancient versions, especially those of Egypt and Babylon. The tale can also be found in China, Japan, India, Scandinavia, and the British and Irish isles, to name a few. Obviously, then, no one culture has a lock on
“God” or creation—a fact that cannot be emphasized enough. Nor has the biblical story ever been adequate to explain truly the origins of the cosmos; in fact, it is merely a mythologized, simplified explanation filtered through and for finite minds. Of the biblical Genesis, Walker says, “However absurd, these myths still maintain a hold on vast numbers of people deliberately kept in ignorance by an obsolete fundamentalism. Even educated adults sometimes insist that an omniscient god created the world for a purpose of his own.”cdxci
Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden
Like other major biblical characters and tales, the fable of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden is based on much older versions found in numerous cultures around the globe. The Hindu version of the first couple was of Adima and Heva, hundreds if not thousands of years before the Hebraic version, as has been firmly pointed out by Hindus to Christian missionaries for centuries. Jackson relates that these myths
“seemed to have originated in Africa, but they were told all over the world in ancient times. . .” Obviously, then, we will not find any historical Adam and Eve in Mesopotamia.
In the Sumerian and Babylonian versions of the Garden of Eden myth, from which the Hebrew one is also derived, the original couple were created equal in stature by the great Goddess. When the fervent patriarchy took over the story, it changed it to make women not only inferior but also guilty of the downfall of all mankind. Of this demotion, Stone says:
Woman, as sagacious advisor or wise counselor, human interpreter of the divine will of the Goddess, was no longer to be respected, but to be hated, feared or at best doubted or ignored. . . . Women were to be regarded as mindless, carnal creatures, both attitudes justified and “proved” by the Paradise myth. . . . Statements carefully designed to suppress the earlier social structure continually presented the myth of Adam and Eve as divine proof that man must hold the ultimate authority.cdxcii
Far from being literal, the Garden of Eden/Paradise story takes place in the heavens. According to Hazelrigg, the word “Paradise” means “among the stars,” and he points out that the tale as taken literally by the “devoted biblicist” is a demeaning portrayal of “God,” as it declares that “God” is vengeful towards his own flawed progeny, “the gullible pair whom He had created ‘in His image’ seemingly for the sole purpose that He might send a serpent of iniquity to tempt the weakness and
depravity so inadvertently implanted in their godly-begotten natures. A monstrous doctrine, indeed, that can picture a God so sinister in purpose as to betray the innocence of His own offspring!”cdxciii
Yet, common sense has failed to prevail, as numerous theories have sprung up as to the “true” location of the Garden of Eden.
Walker further states:
Seventeen hundred years ago, Origen wrote of the Garden of Eden myth: “No one would be so foolish as to take this allegory as a description of actual fact.” But Origen was excommunicated, and countless millions have been precisely that foolish.cdxciv
Adam
Adam is not a historical character, as the word “Adam” simply means “man” and is not a person’s name. Adam is Atum or Amen in Egypt, the archetypal man and son of Ptah the Father.cdxcv In the Chaldean scriptures, from which the Israelite writings were in large part plagiarized, he is called “Adami,” and in the Babylonian he is
“Adamu.” As in the Hebrew version, the Sumero-Babylonian Adamu was prevented by the gods from eating the fruit of immortality, so that he would not “be as a god.”
Adam is also “adamah,” which means “bloody clay,” referring to menstrual blood.cdxcvi Walker explains that “the biblical story of God’s creation of Adam out of clay was plagiarized from ancient texts with the patriarchs’ usual sex-change of the deity,” who was the Sumero-Babylonian “Potter” goddess Aruru.cdxcvii
Eve
Eve is also not a literal figure who either caused the downfall of mankind or gave birth to it. Rather, Eve is the archetypal female and goddess found around the globe:
The biblical title of Eve, “Mother of All Living,” was a translation of Kali Ma’s title Jaganmata. She was also known in India as Jiva or Ieva, the Creatress of all manifested forms.cdxcviii
As stated, earlier mythologies placed the created woman on the same par with the man, rather than as a mere “rib.” In some of these ancient tales, Eve was superior to Adam and even to God, as his “stern mother.”cdxcix According to one myth, before God made Eve he created Lilith as Adam’s equal, but she proved to be too troublesome for the patriarchy, as she did not want to submit to Adam’s sexual advances and demanded her own house. The liberated Lilith thus had to be killed off by both God and biblical scribes. One may suspect there was more to the story, as Walker explains: “Hebraic tradition said Adam was married to Lilith because he grew tired of coupling with beasts, a common custom of Middle-Eastern herdsmen, though the Old Testament declared it a sin.”d
Eve is one with Isis-Meri and, therefore, the Virgin Mary and the constellation of Virgo, as well as the moon.di In the original astrotheological tale, as Virgo rises she is followed or “bitten on the heel by Serpens, who, with Scorpio, rises immediately behind her.”dii This astronomical observation is behind the passage at Revelation 12:14: “But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness . . .” As noted, Scorpio is not only represented by the scorpion but by the eagle as well.
The Serpent
The serpent symbol is found around the world and represents divine wisdom, as is confirmed by Jesus, when he is made to say, “Be ye wise as serpents.” The serpent
was the “phallic consort” of the Goddess, and serpents were found under her temples, apparently used to induce prophetic and hallucinatory trances by their venom. The Egyptian queen Cleopatra may have died during such a ritual with an asp, if this is not an apocryphal story. These female priestesses were called
“pythonesses” and, as receivers of prophecy and divine revelation, were reviled by Ezekiel for gaining knowledge “out of their own heads,” as if their manner of revelation were different from his own.
The serpent’s shedding of the skin and constant renewal made it a symbol of eternity and immortality, and thus of divinity and many gods. In fact, the title of
“serpent” formerly conveyed sacerdotal duties, as opposed to being an aspersion. As Pike relates:
In the Mysteries of the bull-horned Bacchus, the officers held serpents in their hands, raised them above their heads, and cried aloud “Eva!” the generic oriental name of the serpent, and the particular name of the constellation in which the Persians place Eve and the serpent.diii
This description reveals the origins of the New Testament exhortation to “take up serpents,” and those who participate in such rituals are continuing an ancient tradition that dates back at least 4,000 years.
Although the serpent is portrayed as evil in the Judeo-Christian ideology, it was not always considered so by the Hebrews. As Walker relates:
Early Hebrews adopted the serpent-god all their contemporaries revered, and the Jewish priestly clan of Levites were “sons of the Great Serpent,” i.e., of Leviathan,
“the wriggly one.”div
The Hebrew veneration for the serpent-god is clear from Numbers 21:9: “Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass he lived.” Of this interesting fetish, which is also the caduceus of Aesclepius, the Greek god of healing, Stone says,
“And in Jerusalem itself was the serpent of bronze, said to date back to the time of Moses and treasured as a sacred idol in the temple there until about 700 BC.”dv
As noted, Moses’s serpent cult fell out of favor during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, who “removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had burned incense to it; it was called Nehushtan.” (2 Kings 18:4) Moreover, Walker relates:
The biblical Nehushtan was a deliberate masculinization of a similar oracular she- serpent, Nehushtah, Goddess of Kadesh (meaning “Holy”), a shrine like that of the Pythonesses. Israelites apparently violated the sanctuary and raped its priestesses, but “Moses and Yahweh had to placate the angry serpent goddess of Kadesh, now deposed, by erecting her brazen image . . . . Mythologically, the serpent is always a female divinity.”dvi
In addition, in the Bible the serpent, vilified “in the beginning,” then venerated, then vilified again, is once more venerated as it is later associated with Christ, as a
“type of” him: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” (Jn. 3:15) Indeed, the serpent was considered the savior of mankind for its role in bringing wisdom.
The serpent is, naturally, a celestial symbol, representing both the constellation of Serpens and the entire heavens, with the sun as one eye and the moon as another.
The serpent was the “Prince of Darkness,” the ruler of the night sky, and its vilification is also a rejection of the stellar cult in favor of the solar.
The Original Fall/Sin
The “original fall” or “sin” has been interpreted by literalists as meaning both the transgression of Adam and Eve in disobeying God and getting kicked out of Eden, and the manner in which humans procreate, i.e., sex. It has been admitted by Christians that without the concept of the original fall/sin of man and his expulsion from the Garden of Eden, there would be no need for a savior or for the Christian religion. For example, “reformed” ex-Father Peter Martyr said:
Were this Article [of faith] be taken away, there would be no original sin; the promise of Christ would become void, and all the vital force of our religion would be destroyed.dvii
This fervent belief is why Christian proponents are so vehemently opposed to the theory of evolution, as it demonstrates the lack of an original fall or sin that requires a savior. Regarding the theory of evolution and its effect on Christianity, Walker relates:
The American Episcopal Church said: “If this hypothesis be true, then is the Bible an unbearable fiction. . . then have Christians for nearly two thousands years been duped by a monstrous lie.”dviii
Indeed, Jackson expresses his disgust at “. . . that damnable doctrine of original sin, which slanders nature and insults all mankind . . .”dix And Higgins remarked, in the early 1800’s:
Perhaps we do not find in history any doctrine which has been more pernicious than that of Original Sin. It is now demoralizing Britain. It caused all the human sacrifices in ancient times, and actually converted the Jews into a nation of Cannibals, as Lord Kingsborough . . . has proved that they were.dx
Like so many aspect of Christianity, the notion of original sin was unoriginal:
“The Indians are not strangers to the doctrine of original sin. It is their invariable belief that man is a fallen being; admitted by them from time immemorial.”dxi
Rather than representing the sinful nature of man, however, the “fall” never happened, as Gerald Massey affirms:
The fall is absolutely non-historical, and the first bit of standing-ground for an actual Christ the Redeemer is missing in the very beginning, consequently anyone who set up, or was set up for, an historical Savior, from a non-historical fall, could only be an historical impostor.dxii
The Garden of Eden tale is not literal but allegorical, occurring in the heavens, as the Fall actually takes place when the sun passes through the autumnal equinox, in the sign of the Virgin (Eve). As the sun crosses into Libra, “he” descends or falls into
“the winter quarter or ‘fall’ of the year—a title most consistent with the phenomenon itself,” as Hazelrigg says. Hazelrigg further outlines the “deep astrology” of the celestial Garden of Eden drama:
The serpent of iniquity, who plays the part of the Tempter, must therefore be viewed in an astronomical rather than an ethical or moral character, which, for purposes of allegory, has not been made an enviable one. He is the villain of the drama, and rather an elongated one at that, for, as found described on the planisphere “his tail drew after him a third part of the stars of heaven” (Rev. xii, 4), or from Cancer to Libra, which are four constellations, a third of the twelve. Going before, he leads the woman towards the setting point in the west, therefore his office is to “seduce” (Latin seducere, to lead on or go before), while the enamored Adam follows in true conjugal spirit towards the horizon, driven forth by the Power that causes the revolution of the heavens which carries them out of the Garden. At the moment of expulsion, or as the figures of Adam (Bootes) and Eve [Virgo] are sinking from sight below the western
line, the constellation Perseus appears in the east, grim in armor and helmet, a being of vengeance holding aloft a flaming sword.dxiii
Regarding the Garden of Eden tale, Graham spells it out:
The world was not created by this God in six days or a million. There was no Garden of Eden or talking snake. There was no first man, Adam, or woman, Eve. They did not commit a moral sin and so we are not under condemnation for it. They did not fall from grace and so there is no need for redemption.dxiv
Thus, Christianity’s foundation is false, mythical and unoriginal, as is the gospel story itself.
The Virgin Mother of the Divine Redeemer
As demonstrated, the virgin mother and her divine child constitute a motif ubiquitous in the ancient world, long before the Christian era. In the solar myth, the
“sun of God” was considered to be born of the new, or virgin, moon. The Virgin birth aspect also comes from the observation that during certain ages the constellation of Virgo rose with the sun:
At the moment of the Winter Solstice, the Virgin rose heliacally (with the Sun), having the Sun (Horus) in her bosom. . . . Virgo was Isis; and her representation, carrying a child (Horus) in her arms, exhibited in her temple, was accompanied by this inscription: “I AM ALL THAT IS, THAT WAS, AND THAT SHALL BE; and the fruit which I brought forth is the Sun.”dxv
Bethlehem
As was admitted by the early Christian doctor Jerome, the “little town of Bethlehem” was a sacred grove devoted to the Syrian solar-fertility-savior god Adonis (Tammuz), who was born hundreds of years before the Christian era in the same cave later held to be that of the birthplace of Jesus. Like Jesus, Adonis was born on December 25thdxvi of the Virgin Myrrha, who was:
. . . a temple-woman or hierodule, identified with Mary by early Christians, who called Jesus’s mother Myrrh of the Sea. . . . Syrian Adonis died at Easter time. . . Adonis died and rose again in periodic cycles, like all gods of vegetation and fertility.
He was also identified with the sun that died and rose again in heaven.dxvii
As noted, Adonis/Tammuz was a favorite Semitic and Hebrew god, and each year during his passion in Jerusalem, women “wailed for the dead savior Tammuz in the temple of Jerusalem, where Ishtar was worshipped as Mari, Queen of Heaven (Ezekiel 8:14).”dxviii At this time, Adonis/Tammuz wore a “crown of thorns” made of myrrh. Walker relates of Tammuz:
The Christos or sacred king annually sacrificed in the temple at Jerusalem . . . the Romans called Tammuz the chief god of the Jews. . . . A month of the Jewish calendar is still named after Tammuz . . . Tammuz was imported from Babylon by the Jews, but he was even older than Babylon. He began as the Sumerian savior-god Dumuzi, or Damu, “only-begotten Son,” or “Son of the Blood.” He fertilized the earth with his blood at the time of his death, and was called Healer, Savior, Heavenly Shepherd. He tended the flocks of stars, which were considered souls of the dead in heaven. Each year on the Day of Atonement he was sacrificed in the form of a lamb . . . Though Tammuz occupied the central position in the sacred drama at Jerusalem, the New Testament transformed him into a mere apostle of the new dying god, under the Greek form of his name, Thomas.dxix
As a fertility god, Adonis/Tammuz was representative of “the spirit of the corn,”
and “Bethlehem” means, the “House of Bread,” “House of Corn,” or “house of bread-
corn, grain or wheat.”dxx This motif is passed down in the Christian myth when Jesus, like his predecessor Horus, says, “I am the bread of life” (Jn. 6:48). Like so many other places in Israel, Bethlehem was first situated in the mythos and then given location on Earth.
Nazareth
The town of Nazareth did not appear on Earth until after the gospel tale was known. As Holley says, “There is no such place as Nazareth in the Old Testament or in Josephus’ works, or on early maps of the Holy Land. The name was apparently a later Christian invention.” In fact, the town now designated as Nazareth is near Mt.
Carmel, indicating it was the Carmelites who created it.
Jesus, therefore, was not from Nazareth, which did not exist at the time of his purported advent. The real purpose for putting him there was to make of him a Nazarene or Nazarite, as he was the same as the most famous Nazarite, Samson, a solar myth. The title comes from the Egyptian word “natzr,” which refers to “the plant, the shoot, the natzar. . . . the true vine,” and Nazarite is an epithet for the sun, which gives life to the grape vine.dxxi Nazarite is also translated as “prince,” as in
“prince of peace.” The Nazarites/Nazarenes were the ascetics who were not to shave their heads or beards unless for ritualistic purpose, because their hair was a symbol of holiness and strength, representing in fact the sun’s “hair” or rays, which is why the solar hero becomes weak when the woman cuts his hair. When the hair was long, the Nazarite would have nothing to do with the grape, vine or wine, but when the Nazarite was shorn in a ritual, he would then drink wine. This story reflects the time of the year when the grapes ripen and wine is made, as the sun’s rays weaken.
Thus, we see that Nazareth is not the birthplace of Jesus but represents yet another aspect of the mythos. As Massey states, “The actual birthplace of the carnalized Christ was NEITHER BETHLEHEM NOR NAZARETH, BUT ROME!”dxxii
The Manger and Cave, Birthplace of Many Gods
In Christian tradition, Jesus was said to be born variously in a manger, stable and/or cave, like many other preceding gods. As stated, the divine babe Adonis/Tammuz was born in the very cave in Bethlehem now considered the birthplace of Jesus, long before the Christian era. Regarding the Adonis cave, Christian apologist Weigall admits:
The propriety of this appropriation was increased by the fact that the worship of a god in a cave was a commonplace in paganism: Apollo, Cybele, Demeter, Herakles, Hermes, Mithra and Poseidon were all adored in caves; Hermes, the Greek logos being born of Maia in a cave, and Mithra being rock-born.dxxiii
Like Jesus, the Greek god Hermes was also wrapped in swaddling clothing and placed in a manger, as was Dionysus.dxxiv
The cave/manger motif is part of the mythos, representing both the winter and the setting of the sun, when it appears to go underground or into the underworld, which is the womb of both the heavens and earth. Walker says, “The cave was universally identified with the womb of Mother Earth, the logical place for symbolic birth and regeneration.”
The confusing stories regarding the solar babe being born in a cave, manger and/or stable reflect the changing of the heavens, specifically the precession of the equinoxes. As Massey states:
Thus the cave and the stable are two types of the birthplace at the solstice. . . . No Messiah, however, whether called Mithras, Horus or Christ could have been born in