Our Lord Jesus Christ, Lord or Man? Options

During my internet years, I found info like Jesus married Maria Magdalena, went to India and studied there, that he did not die on the cross. I'm not sure what to believe in. Yesterday, I finished reading Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and in it I again read what I've found + Sarah, Jesus's daughter and how Constantine used the "perverted" new testament to make a god out of Jesus to win the Catholic over the Pagan. Altought the book has errors, it is still an interesting read.

What is your opinion on this? Jesus, the Lord or -just- a man?

I am a former devout 'born again' christian, and amateur bible scholar. Since my leaving the christian faith, I've continued my historical fascination, but without the 'blinders', studying a fairly wide body of church-taboo texts and alternative historical ideas. Now, don't read that as "ooooh credentials!". I'm only trying to say that I have reasons for what I think about all of this, and that they're based on some experience & education rather than 'feelings'. I'm pointedly NOT saying that I'm right, or that my opinion should have more value, it doesn't.

In my opinion, there was a man named jesus, or more accurately ישוע (Yeshua, Joshua), meaning "YHWH provides", which is believed to be a reference to the old testament story where abraham is told to sacrifice his son isaac on the mountain top, but at the last moment, is told "nevermind, sorry, i'll provide the sacrifice". But honestly, it wasn't a terribly uncommon name in that region & time period. There were a LOT of jews named Yeshua. In my opinion one of them was a bit of an ideological shit-disturber, much like the bible says he was. And in my opinion he was killed by the romans, likely by request of the hebrew religious bodies, in order to quell dissension and secure the status quo. I also think that he had a group of followers, who after his death "deified him", as that was actually a common practice in rome & greece at the time (both of which exerted strong cultural influence on israel). He may very well have called himself the son of god, but then again he supposedly repeatedly calls 'everyone' the children of god, so that doesn't necessarily confer any special status. It is even possible that Yeshua the man, was in fact trying to copy Mithra, with a hebrew twist. That's about as much as I'd say is 'legitimate' regarding the stories associated with Yeshua.

Jesus Christ the Messiah & miracle worker... on the other hand, was created in the first Council of Nicea in 325 C.E. and a later council in Carthage in 397 C.E. As well as being created in the years between 30 C.E. and 300 C.E. by members of the "christ cult" (the roman name for christianity prior to emperor constantine). There was a fair amount of 'one upsmanship' in the competing cults in the roman empire at the time. The more popular and older cult was the cult of Mithras, or mithraism. Mithra in this cult, prior to yeshua's birth, had already been 'the son of god', walked on water, turned water into wine, healed the sick, had 12 disciples, was crucified, and resurrected on the 3rd day, etc. All of which were details that the christ cult 'borrowed' ("yeah well our guy did all those things too!"). Then at the council of Nicea, you must remember, that the council was not formed by all the wise men of christian faith, so they could pray and discern the true word of god... it was a pantheistic gathering of the religious leadership & scholars of all of the religions in the roman empire, who were tasked by their emperor (who was himself a Helios worshiper by the way, and running the show, later recognized as the first pope) to come up with a single 'universal' roman religion. Incidentally, that is what 'catholic' means in The Holy Roman Catholic Church, catholic is latin for "universal", making the name of the christian religion "the holy roman universal church". The people who picked what texts went into the bible and what didn't, almost certainly 'wrote' some of the bible as well. For example there are phrases and ideological ideas which very obviously borrow from everything from kemeticism to buddhism to hindu to greek & roman pantheism, zoroastrianism, etc. "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is for example actually buddha's words, spoken 500 years before yeshua was born. The religion was originally designed to 'make everybody happy' and to take the best bits of philosophy and parable, mix them with a good story which is based more on mithraism than the christ cult, and turn out a single unified belief system for the far reaching and diverse pantheistic roman empire. If constantine's wife hadn't been a member of the christ cult, the 'bible' likely would have ended up being about Mithra instead of Yeshua, but the stories & ideology wouldn't have changed much either way, as they're really a composite of many religious ideas & stories.

Unfortunately for rome, it did not, as constantine hoped, solidify and strengthen rome, instead it rather weakened it and created significant dissension. And his idea of a single universal roman church probably hastened the fall of rome.

All of that of course speaking about origins, in the intervening 1600 years since that time, the christian religion has gone through continuous changes, and has arrived at a state which is... well a dim shadow of it's original eclecticism.

and of course the "holy spirit" is actually a chauvanist replacement for Mithas mother... and just a general user-friendly format for working with the egregoric energy of the church to practice christian magick.

"Dear god, save me from your followers"

This post has been edited by Kath: Nov 8 2009, 12:26 PM