In the beginning
was darkness.
And
from the darkness man created fear.
And the
fear was manifest.
So man
created God.
Man
pleaded to God to save them from the fear.
And God
was manifest.
God was
given the Word and the Word was God.
All
things were said to be made by Him.
In Him
was life and life was the light of man.
The
light of man shone in the darkness and man praised God for this light.
And man
gave God dominion over man.
Man
called for testimony to bear witness to God.
And God
sent His son and His son brought the Word.
And the
Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.
He was
not the light but sent to bear witness to that light.
He was
in the world and the world knew Him not.
He came
unto His own and His own received Him not.
But to
those that did receive Him He gave the power to become the sons of God.
So man
fought with God over dominion of man.
And man
fought with man over dominion of God.
AMOS
375 AD.
CHAPTER 1
I am a Jew of some standing and subscribe and accept as
true, Essene beliefs. Older than the Pharisees and the Sadducees, we Essene are
as close to the God of Abraham as any people walking the earth today. Keenly
aware of prophecy and lineage, we have watched the descendants of the great
tribes of Israel from as far back as David and Aaron.
We were there in the beginning of this new
Christian religion, when Mary first conceived, and followed the path of
Christianity throughout the centuries, under many guises. We played a pivotal
role in the cultivation of the cult of Jesus and continue to hold its darkest
secrets.
As early exponents of the written word, we became
excellent record keepers and I, Amos, have all the documentation and evidence
to support the claim I make here today. It is a revelation I have known all my
life, a truth that my order has held for almost 400 years. A truth I have seen
distorted, altered and misconstrued, sometimes by manipulative, unscrupulous
scoundrels bent on their own lust for power or self-glorification, sometimes by
genuine over-enthusiastic fanatics, believing so much in the scheme of what
they have been taught, the spirit has been lost.
As a young scribe I was present at Nicaea
when Christianity became the single state religion of the Roman Empire. I was
there at the Council of Hippo when Augustine ratified all that was agreed upon
under Constantine's watchful eye. Yet even as I witnessed these events, no one
is more surprised than I that this, of all religions, would become the one to
bring peace to the Empire.
The scholars among you, no doubt, have
surmised I am not a young man. In fact at the end of the next season I will
have passed my eighty-first year and for the last forty have overseen the
finest scriptorium in the known world, here in Alexandria. But be assured my
mind is as clear now as in those early days when my teacher brought me from my
home in Narbonne to the Holy Lands to record the proceedings for ourselves.
And what is my great revelation? Quite
simply, that Jesus Christ was a man!
Using documents from this and other scriptoria,
I will give a firsthand account of the days, months and years surrounding the
life of Jesus Christ. Unpolluted by politic or favour, it is as accurate an
account as can be written.
Now that I see it written down, I think how
harmless these few plain words look on the pale parchment in front of me. But I
assure you, such a statement and the proof I have to back up this claim could,
in the wrong hands, kill.
You must forgive me if I stray, for although
my mind is clear and lucid, I am prone to rant, as the scribes within these
hallowed walls will be only too keen to testify. I am, I have been told,
outspoken. But such frankness is the prerogative of the old. Learned men, it is
my belief, should demonstrate a desire to direct the young in the ways of the
world, display an obligation to protect the less fortunate and always be
willing to rile the politicians and lawmakers into facing up to the truths of
this world. For only then, when we face the truth, the utter truth, can man
learn from all that has preceded him.
So I sit, safe within the sanctuary of my
domain, and dictate by candlelight to my young apprentice all that I have come
to learn and know as true about this turbulent time of history.
But how could such a lie, that Jesus Christ
was of flesh and blood and incapable of miracles, be perpetrated? And over so many, for so long? Because we allowed it, is the
simple answer. When a man has nothing to believe in, it is not that he believes
in nothing, rather he will believe in anything. Unscrupulous men know this and
use the written word as efficiently as a Roman soldier uses a gladiolus.
Marcion, the son of the Bishop of Sinope, is
an example. Taking a heavy hand in editing the books we are now to call The New
Testament, he removed from the Gospel of St. Luke any mention of The Christ's
birth, and included, for his own heretical ends, the works of his personal
favourite, St. Paul.
Overzealous writers of the early Christian
church, the likes of Irenaius the Bishop of Lyon, who issued his violent and dogmatic
attack on those who differed from his fanatical infatuation with his own
canonical works, Adversius Haereses, or Eusebius the Bishop of Caesarea, who
went so far as to write to his benefactor, the Emperor Constantine, saying he
believed the Emperor to be the next and greatest Messiah. Tertullian, also an
early Christian Father, refuted the very words of Jesus Christ when they
clashed with his views on communion, insisting they were the words of Satan.
Too much focus has been placed on historians
the caliber of Flavious Josepheus who, after leading a failed revolt against
the Romans in Galilee, returned willingly to Rome with his captives to record a
defiled history of his people, 'Antiquities Of The Jews'. The remainder of his
life was spent in seclusion, hiding for fear of death, within the walls of the
Emperor Vespasian's palace.
And what of Augustine of Hippo? Too intent in his own dislike of physical
pleasure and of his now, almost assured beatification, to be concerned with the
truth, to this day he will never let the evidence hinder his lust for his own
celebrated grandeur.
But if blame is to be apportioned, let
Constantine be served the largest slice. With the
unity of his newly acquired empire as his only deity and seeing himself as a
leader of Messianic proportions, he cunningly amalgamated the major religions
of the day; Changing the date of Christ's birth from the accepted 6th of
January to the more popular date of the 25th of December, to coincide with two
major pagan festivals, then taking the 'Aureole of Light' from the Sun God and
turning it into the Christian halo, crowning the heads of the saintly. And of
course at his Council of Nicaea, where Jesus was transformed from man to the
'Divine' by way of a vote, winning 217 to 3. His mother Mary became a virgin on
the very next day.
These men, and others, have unwittingly set
into motion their own series of apostate, rotting the core in the hope of
preserving the husk. Realizing that knowledge is the enemy of their faith, they
have shamelessly and systematically hidden and buried the truth, the truth I am
about to expose - that the Lord thy God, Jesus Christ, was a man and only a man.
***
So that you may understand the anticipation and yearning
the Jews were experiencing, I must give you a brief history of the time in
Israel.
The King had long been defeated by the Roman
Legion of Mark Anthony, led by the self-titled 'Herod the Great'. Installed by
the Emperor Augustus as Prefect, Herod, foolishly thinking he could legitimise
his crown, married Miriame, a Maccabean Princess and rebuilt the Holy Temple of
Jerusalem. This, however, did not pacify a people who felt a kinship and a
right for self-determination over the land bequeathed to them, they believed,
by God Himself.
Realizing he had failed to appease his Jewish
subjects, Herod, who had already murdered Miriame's brother, did the same to
her and to the two sons the Jewish Princess bore him.
It was not the first time Herod had his sons put to death, nor indeed the last.
It was such actions that prompted the Emperor Augustus to famously say upon
signing yet another death warrant, 'I would rather be Herod's pig than his
son'. To add insult to an already salted wound, Herod desecrated the most
hallowed of all Jewish shrines, the newly restored Temple, by placing the Roman
symbol of an eagle above the doors.
Inspired more by the Temple violation than
the slaying of the Maccabeans, a revolt ensued. The Romans refused to give
quarter, lest they be seen as weak and the Zealots refused to accept anything
less than a Jewish King on a Jewish throne. Such uprisings and insurrections
were a daily occurrence, particularly in Galilee, where the rebels found easy
cover in the vast deserts.
The Sadducees and, to a greater extent the
Pharisees, accepted or at least tolerated the Romans. Both factions obeyed
Roman law, collecting and passing on the Emperor's taxes. Some became fiercely
loyal to their Roman overlords; others secretly helped the rebels when
possible. But all shared one common hope; all were waiting, praying, for the
coming of the Messiah.
The many different factions of Judaism were
in constant quarrel on how to interpret the Prophets. It seemed if an agreement
could be reached, then one or more parties must invariably be wrong. The
Pharisees laid blame at the feet of the Sadducees, they the Romans. Others saw
the Rabbis as the authors of their own destruction and only when all the in-fighting
ceased would God deliver unto them all that was promised. But still they hoped
and still they prayed and still they waited for God to send the Messiah to
deliver his beleaguered people, a people they passionately believed were God's
'Chosen', out of the shackles of a terrible wickedness and into a golden age to
rival the days of Solomon and David, where justice was served and the law made
not by power hungry tyrants, but by righteous men and God's love was felt
throughout the world as Israel prospered.
It is this debacle of history, this hotbed of
revolt, murder and intrigue, where our records first
come across the name Jesus bar Joseph.