it's thursday….

New Testament: Acts 1:9-11 “he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him.  As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them.  “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why are you standing here staring into the heavens? Jesus has been taken from you into the heavens, but someday he will return in the same way you saw him go!”

The Modern Christian religion is based on the New Testament of the Bible which was endorsed around 400AD when the Christian Church was under the control of the Roman Emperor Constantine and his appointed Bishop of Rome. The endorsed historical narrative declares that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified because the Roman Governor believed he had revolutionary messianic aspirations to be king of the Jews. Apart from the Essene priestly sect, there were numerous Jewish revolutionaries declaring messianic ambitions in that land in those times of Roman occupation. According to historians of the1st century, in 4bc a shepherd named Athronges gathered up a number of followers and proclaimed himself as king of the Jews, they were all slaughtered by Roman soldiers. Pontius Pilate crucified another called only ‘The Samaritan’ to whom the title Messiah had been used. Other messianic aspirants mentioned in history are Hezekiah the bandit, Simon of Peraea, Judas the Galilean, Menahem, Simon son of Giora, and Simon son of Kochba, all of whom were executed. In first century Palestine, even to publicly state ‘this is the messiah’, was a crime punishable by crucifixion, such was the paranoia of the Romans with the potential for a Jewish uprising against Roman occupation. The difference between Jesus and those would-be messsiahs executed for the same crime against Rome, was Jesus’ recovery from a crucified death and his subsequent ascension into a hovering cloud in the sky from the Mount of Olives. This is actually the true basis of the religion for it was based on witnessing this event that his followers had the conviction and courage to face persecution, torture and cruel death to challenge Rome by promoting Jesus as having risen from the death that had been inflicted upon him by the Romans. In effect that Jesus was therefore more powerful than the Emperor and might of Rome.

In considering the Easter narrative that Jesus died on the cross and on the third day was resurrected as God, pause to recall the Roman Catholic Church’s choice for Jesus’ birth day celebration as the 25 December which is the third day after the winter solstice when the sun had descended onto the Crux (cross) constellation and was below the horizon until the third day when it rose again. So his birth narrative has an uncanny synchronicity with his death. For a Church which believed that Jesus’ resurrection and physical ascension into the heavens demonstrated the triumph of God over the pagan forces of nature, it is peculiar then that the date of Easter changes annually, based on the timing of the first weekend following the full moon that followed the Spring Equinox. The timing also accommodates the Jewish Passover festival which again is a movable feast based around the Spring Equinox. This is an undeniably pagan calendar and coincides with a long-established Spring Equinox pagan festival. This came about because in 595 AD, Pope Gregory sent a mission of 40 monks led by a Benedictine monk called Augustine, who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, with instructions to convert Pagans to Christianity by superimposing Christian events over established Pagan festivals. The Spring equinox celebration in paganism (witchcraft) today is called the feast of the Germanic goddess of fertility and new birth “Ostara” or “Oeste”, which is clearly the root name for our Easter. This is one of the eight neopagan holidays that make up the pagan wheel of the year. And if we dig a little deeper in history to paganism in Rome at the time of Emperor Constantine, we also find the older Spring Equinox festival where they believed in a goddess Cybele, the great mother of Gods, who had a consort named Attis. Attis had been a shepherd who was believed born of a virgin birth from his mother, Nana. Attis died from self mutilation beneath a pine tree having broken a promise to Cybelle but, according to myth, by the power of Zeus his body did not decompose and he was resuscitated.

This Roman Pagan Spring festival was celebrated over a three day period 10-7 days before the April new moon. The 3rd day of the festival, called Hilaria, was a day of rejoicing at Attis’ resurrection. It is recorded that during this festival a pine tree was cut in the woods and brought to the sanctuary of Cybele. The duty of carrying the tree was entrusted to a guild of Tree bearers. The trunk was swathed like a corpse with woolen bands and decked with wreaths of violets (violets were reputed to have sprung from the blood of Attis). The parallel to our Christian mourning of Jesus bearing the cross through the streets of Jerusalem to Golgotha is uncanny. On the third day of the festival the high priest (Archigallus) drew blood from his arm and offered it as a sacrifice. The lower rank clergy also danced their way into a frenzy of self-mutilation to splatter their blood on the tree. The splattering of blood was supposed to be an aid to resurrection. Again, the sacrament of the blood of Christ offered up at the last supper is an uncanny parallel. The subsequent rebirth of nature as spring progressed is then seen as proof of the restoration of life. The worship of Cybele and Attis was brought to Rome from Phygria (Asia Minor) in 204 bc. Attis was made a solar deity in the 2nd century ad so was an established Roman god at the time of Nicaea. The black stone (meteorite) in which the spirit of the goddess was embodied was entrusted to the Romans who installed it in the temple of Victory on the Palatine Hill. The subsequent harvest was exceptionally good and her position in their belief system was established.

And so it came about that the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension into a hovering cloud in the heavens of Jesus the Nazarene co-existed with, or overwrote, the existing Pagan narratives as the official Roman Cybele-Attis cult celebration of the rebirth of Spring. There are three published records in the New Testament of Jesus’ being with his trusted followers after his crucifixion but each one was a very secretive contact, Jesus and his angels in white robes were not going to give the High Priests and Romans a second opportunity at crucifixion. And from the last meeting at Bethany, he literally disappeared into the sky and according to the Bible was never seen in person again.

All the way through my Roman Catholic upbringing, the core of our faith was based on the dogma ‘that Jesus, son of God, died on the cross for man’s sins; so that man could now become righteous in God’s eyes’ 1 Peter 2:24: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.” This dogma referenced back to the last supper on Good Thursday, the commemoration of the start of the four day drama that would result in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah was the evening of his last meal with his closest disciples. During the meal he metaphorically handed them his body, in the form of bread, and poured his blood, in the form of wine, instructing his disciples to continue to perform this ceremony in memory of him; and Christians continue this ritual to this day. In the gospels, there is no deeper explanation of the meaning; it simply manifests the message for which Jesus wished to be remembered. It bears, however, an uncanny reference to an event that was recently discovered written on clay tablets dating back to 1650 BCE, buried in what was the first Assyrian palace built by King Sargon 11 near Ninevah in 709BC. Tens of thousands of clay tablets which were removed for translation and preservation. The texts, written around 1650 bee, 250 years before Moses, were slowly decoded and eventually published in 1965 by W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard. The texts actually contain an account of the the minor gods rebelling against the heavy workload they were forced to do with the solution being the sacrifice of a God in order to create intelligent man to become their slaves.

“Let her create, then, a human, a man, Let him bear the yoke! Let him bear the yoke! Let man assume the drudgery of the gods. They slaughtered Aw-ilu, who had the inspiration, in their assembly. Nintu mixed clay with his flesh and blood. That same god and man were thoroughly mixed in the clay. For the rest of the time they would hear the drum. From the flesh of the god the spirit remained. It would make the living know its sign.  Lest he be allowed to be forgotten, the spirit remained.”

If I had to think about the Roman Catholic account by comparison, I would have to puzzle over why Yeshua would need to suffer torture and die a cruel death as a means of atoning for the evils of man. There seems no co-relation. How would being rejected, tortured, and killed by humans make humans more acceptable to God as a righteous species? But once Rome became the holy seat of the Church rather than Jerusalem, the blame for Jesus’ death was attributed to a divine decision to sacrifice his son for the forgiveness of the sins of all men, rather than being a military execution of a dissident by the Roman Governor. Jesus’ mission was clarified as not that of a descendant of King David, ordained to free the Jews from the yoke of Rome, but rather as one of saving the souls of all mankind. It was ‘agreed’ that Yehshua died, not for the crime of sedition against the Roman occupiers of Israel and their Rabbi puppets, but rather in atonement for the sins of all mankind. It became almost as if the Romans had been given no choice but to crucify Yehshua because this death was ordained by God, who had predetermined to sacrifice his son in atonement for the sins of all humans. It wouldn’t be the first time that history was rewritten.

How much do we really now know, then, about the early Christians? And what did they really believe? How closely did the early Christians’ records of the life of Yahshua align with the narrative that Constantine of Rome endorsed, for political reasons, 300 years after Yehshua’s death. It was Peter, and later Paul, who first started preaching to the Romans, sometime after the crucifixion. But this caused divisiveness with the Christians who remained in Jerusalem and stayed faithful to the original mission as stated by Mathew’s (10:5) account of Jesus’ instruction. “Do not turn your steps into pagan territory and do not enter any Samaritans town; go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.” And later in Mathew 15:12 when a Canaanite woman asked for help, Jesus replied “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel……it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house dogs.” And Jesus most certainly was not setting out to replace Judaism when he said in Mathew 5-17:“Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose.” When apostles spoke to Jesus after his resurrection, Acts1:6-8, and asked him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?” He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know.” Very clear Judaic messages with a direct reference to the freeing of the kingdom of Israel from the Romans. But the moment the new Christian dogma was signed off in Nicaea, all links with Israel and Judaism were severed. And when the Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century, it was the Church of Rome that continued the Roman mission, both religiously and militarily, to control western Europe and then onwards to the new world.

Devout Christians today take comfort in the promise of the two men in white who spoke to the apostles of Jesus when he was taken up into a cloud and assured them that “he will return in the same way you saw him go.” Constantine may not have grasped the literal meaning of the narratives of the circumstances of both the birth and death of Yehshua, and I suspect that most Christians still do not really grasp it either in a literal sense as they chant at their festivals. What they believe or not is their own business. Of more concern would be what truths of the life and experiences of Yehshua have been edited, changed, destroyed or hidden from us solely in the interests of controlling the narrative as originally established by Emperor Constantine. It has been said the the Roman empire never ended, it just reinvented itself as a church. There are many countries in the Orient, Pacifica and the Americas who would concur with that view.

For another perspective, in 1899 Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a 19th century Indian religious leader and the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam, announced that he had located what he claimed is Yahshua,/Jesus’ tomb in the Khanyar Street of the city of Srinagar, where it can still be visited. In his report of the claim he said: ‘From the evidence of reliable persons it has been proved that this tomb has been in existence for about 1900 years, and the Muslims hold it in great reverence and respect and frequent it.’ Further adding: ‘The general view is that a venerable messenger is buried in this tomb, who came to Kashmir from another country to preach to the people. They say that he lived some 600 years before our Holy Prophet Muhammad (570-632 ad). The name of the holy man buried in the shrine is Youza Asaph, but followers of the Ahmadiyya movement believe that is the name Jesus adopted with Asaph meaning the ‘gatherer’ in reference to the gathering of the lost tribes of Israel. The followers of Ahmadiyya believe that Yahshua, having survived the crucifixion and escaped from Palestine, continued his stated mission eastwards amongst the lost tribes of Israel who had been exiled to the east seven hundred years earlier, following conquest of Israel by the Assyrian empire. Eventually, they believe, Jesus reached Kashmir where he lived out his days as a prophet/ holy man.

Perhaps the cloud was only for a quick evacuation from the immediate danger of the High Priests and the Romans. A two seater helicopter would see Jesus at the right hand side of a pilot-lord. It wouldn’t be the first reference in the Bible of flying craft; Exodus springs to mind with the daily aerial drops of bread, the landing platform built for meetings with the Lord Yahweh and the ‘pillar of light’ guiding them during the night. Something to think about while you enjoy your Oeste egg.