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| ISBN-13: | 9781426952975 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Trafford Publishing |
| Publication date: | 03/21/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 280 |
| File size: | 397 KB |
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The Mythical Life of JESUS
Based on the writings of Dr. Alvin Boyd Kuhn, PhDTrafford Publishing
Copyright © 2011 Reverend Larry MarshallAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4269-5295-1
Chapter One
The Mythical Birth of Jesus
The Advent of the Messiah
On the day of the advent, heaven's arches rang with the proclamation of peace and amity among humanity on the basis of the fact that a fragment of divinity had been lodged in the holy of holies of the temple of each human body. Emmanuel had come to dwell with humanity. But the exuberant joyousness of all mortal hearts over the event has been clogged. Only the shadow of the truth, no longer the substance, remains to kindle Yuletide ecstasy. The allegory of the birth in the stable or cave was devised to keep humankind in exultant memory of its divinity. Alas! It speaks no more of our divinity. It extols the godly nature of but One. The paeans of sacred hilarity that are raised for the birth of our Savior are appropriate and efficacious only as that Savior stands as a symbol of the glorious birth within ourselves.
Long ago, Angelus Silesius, a Christian mystic, admonished Christendom with these words:
Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born But not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn. The cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain Unless within thyself it be set up again.
If the birth of the god in each individual heart is not the interior meaning of the nativity, then we celebrate the event to no purpose. No amount of adoration accorded to a newborn king in Judea will avail to redeem a single wayward heart if the Christ child is not eventually domiciled in the breast of the individual. The King of Righteousness must be cradled in the manger of each human self ere the myth can work its magic in the world.
Christmas celebrates the emergence of the divine order of conscious mind in the human race and crowns the former pure animal level of existence. Christmas marks the entry of mind, reason, and the completely vast potential of the activity of thought into human motivation, installing the intellect as king over human action. The interior meaning of Christmas can never be grasped until it is understood that it celebrates the coming of mind as king over the lower instincts, and passions of the primitive animal stage of evolution. The Christmas advent of the Prince of Peace eventuates finally in the Easter crowning of the King of Love, for the mind is to be glorified in the end by the sweet aura and radiant light of love.
The Word Christmas
Christmas (Christ-mas) does not mean the Mass of Christ. The word is traced to the Egyptian word "mes," or "mas," meaning to steep, anoint, and also to be born. "Messu" was the Egyptian word for the anointed initiate in the mystery rites. Mess-iah or Mess-Jah means the "newborn Jah," or Jehovah God.
The Haunting Ghost of Egypt
The Church cannot escape the evidences that its foundations and ceremonies were drawn from Egypt; the Virgin Mother, the Son, and gods of Egypt were sealed up in the very corner stone of the church; the haunting ghost was in the church itself. In the book Natural Genesis, Massey puts it this way: "But it is well known as a matter of history that the worship of Isis and Horus descended in the early Christian centuries to Alexandria, where it took the form of the worship of the Virgin Mary and the infant Savior and so passed into the European ceremonial. We have, therefore, the Virgin Mary connected by linear succession and descent with that remote zodiacal cluster in the sky, the constellation Virgo.
The Egyptian Roots of Christmas
The fundamental thesis underlying the sun festival of divine rebirth can be traced back to the archaic Egyptian religion. Present everywhere in Egypt's religious system was the theme of the coming of Messiah Horus, the central Christ figure in the texts. He was described as "he who ever comes" or "he who comes regularly and continuously" or "he who comes periodically." In some hymns, Horus is hailed as "The Comer! The Comer!" Isis, the goddess mother and queen of heaven entreated him to come and lift her out of her desolation.
Of infinite significance is knowing that in all the antecedent and prophetic literature and religious ritual stemming into Judaism and Christianity from the lore of old Egypt, the messianic coming always refers to the advent of a new higher dispensation that would supervene on Earth from the birth of a spiritual principle (Messiah-Christ) in human beings. It was never referring to a physical birth of any personal Messiah.
Study of the ancient filed of religious literature reveals no notion that the Messiah would come to Earth in the form of a baby. This concept did not arise until about the second and third centuries of the Christian era, and then only in the region around the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Tersely, it can be stated as verifiable truth that the conception of the Messiah-Christ as a human being of flesh and blood had not been extant in the ancient world until it took form in the degenerative philosophy of the early Christian centuries.
The Egyptian "Christmas" Story
Fully five thousand years before Mary nursed the infant of Bethlehem that haloed Madonna and Child were extant in Egypt as Isis holding her infant Horus. On the walls of the Temple of Luxor, at a date as early as 1700 BCE, were carved four scenes that have been reproduced in the Gospels as first-century Christian history. The first scene depicts a group of angels on a cloud, making the annunciation of the coming of the Messiah King to a band of shepherds in the fields. The second represents a single angel announcing to a young maiden that she is to be the mother of this coming King. A third pictures the nativity scene, with the two animals, the ox and the ass, present. And the fourth shows three noblemen kneeling before a babe and offering gifts. How we are expected to accept the thesis that ancient Egyptian drama and symbolic representation of humanity's evolutionary history turned into factual history in the year 1 CE has not been made clear to any reasoning mind.
The Date of Jesus's Birth
A faulty conception of the "birth of Christ" and the "coming of the Messiah" has widely ingrained the bland assumption that by an alleged historical event in Bethlehem, Jesus has been injected into humanity, resulting in the immediate spiritualization and transfiguration of the world's population and morality. This opinion has altered little from the succeeding time to the present. Vague Christian belief credits this birth of Jesus with bringing the first true light to shine in heathen darkness and credulously propagates the legend that the world has been elevated to a higher level of righteousness and spirituality as a result of this event of two thousand years ago.
There is the matter of the date, the year, month and day of the Christmas celebration. In all Christian understanding, the assumption is that Christmas commemorates the birth of the infant Jesus at a given place and hour. The assumption is misleading; all that we're told in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke is that Jesus was born "in the days of Caesar Augustus ... in the time of Herod." No time, no year, no month. In one Gospel, Mary and Joseph live in Nazareth and journey to Bethlehem. In the other, they have been living in Bethlehem and later move to Nazareth.
No date is given in either Gospel. December 25 is accepted now as a token date of the birth, though few ever pause to wonder anymore what led to the selection of this date, if it is not to be held to be the actual birthday of Jesus.
Why December 25?
In the case of a festival of such importance and prominence as Christmas, it is of no light insignificance that the early Christians celebrated the birth of their Savior on March 25 during the first three and a half centuries. The words of the decree issued by Pope Julian II, in the year 345 CE, inform us that in that year, he decreed that henceforth it was fitting that the followers of the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, "should unite with the followers of Mithra and of Bacchus" in celebrating the rebirth of the deity under the solar symbolism at the winter solstice! The day and date of the Christmas event was not an original Christian institution; it was an accommodation of Christian practice to paganism. In the same decree, it was established that the date set as an anniversary commemoration since the only consideration governing its selection is astrological symbolism. No pretense is made that it is to be regarded as the birth of the Son of God in a human body.
The Twelfth Day of Christmas
Most Christians have been led to believe that the Twelfth Day of Christmas celebrates the arrival of the Magi to the Christ Child. Nonsense. It has nothing to do with the Magi. Christian heads are for the most part guiltless of any suspicion of the reason for the date. Without ancient Egyptian background of data leaves the matter still obscure. The Christ would be "born" in humanity when his gradual infiltration into human consciousness had unfolded to perfection the twelve rays of divine mind that humanity is to express. The inchoate divine light in humankind was to increase by twelve stages of growth to the full shining of Christhood in all hearts. What more natural symbolism, then, could be adopted than the counting of the first twelve days of increasing light from the solstice of darkness, figured as December 25? And after twelve days came the thirteenth, on which the whole twelve powers were synthesized in the unified being of the Christos. So that now with the resort again to Egyptian constructions of imagery, there can be announced for the first time to the Christian population the correct significance of their celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25 and January 6. As the Egyptian would have said, the December solstitial date commemorated the birth of Horus the Younger, the infant Horus, type of the first or natural man, Adam; while the January date thirteen days later marked the day of the birth of Horus the Elder, Horus the adult, the man made perfect, the spiritualized man, the second Adam. In simpler terms, the December date marked the physical beginning of the birth of the Christ spirit in humanity, and the January date marked the concluding stage of its aeonial increase.
The Birth at Wintertime
The pageantry of snowy winter attending the Messiah's birth, is of course, altogether Northern and astrological symbolism. It depicts the winter solstice and the northern winter with its snow and all its poetic imagery. But the true sense of all this has been lost. The iciness of the season is the outward symbol of the cold deadness of our souls when they have gone to their torpid sleep of inertness, their "hibernation," under human nature's chilling spell, and lie wrapped in our consciousness, like the wheat grains in winter's soil, until awakened to new life and regeneration by April's strengthening sun of the Christ.
The Birth at Midnight
Practically every archaic scripture has represented the birth as occurring at midnight of the solstice, December 25. Not only the time but also the condition of midnight was noted. Christ was born in the stillness of midnight. "Silent night, holy night." "O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie." The Christ is born in the motionless midnight pause of our spiritual evolution, when the two forces of sun and moon, light and day, soul and sense, spirit and matter, body and soul, humanity and divinity, and God and humanity are stabilized and held in equipoise.
No Crying He Makes
The Christ does not cry because he's asleep, asleep in our consciousness, unrecognized and unacknowledged. When we become aware of the Christ presence, he will awake and cry out. It is then that we begin to nourish and nurture him. Like Jesus, asleep in the stern of the boat, the storms rage around us until, like the disciples, we wake him and cry out for help. It is then the Christ stills the rage, anger, and confusion of our lives and speaks the word: "Peace; be still."
The Incarnation of the Soul
Likening the descent of the soul into body matter to the falling direction and decreasing power of the sun from June to December, the symbologists of old figured the birth of the divine sun of soul at the December solstice, following upon its conception in the cosmic mind at the June solstice. Descending from the June point of generation in God mind, it entered into matter at the September equinox, which would signalize its physical conception in Mother Nature's womb. From September 21 to March, it endured its embodiment in matter, its period of gestation preparatory to its ultimate birth at Easter. But from September to December, it plunged deeper and deeper into the darkness of bodily "imprisonment." Daily it lost to the powers of matter, growing more inert, the spiritual awareness sinking into a sleep, or coma, as it was progressively submerged under the dominance of the flesh. In this, its deepest immersion in matter, all ancient allegory depicted the Christ as lying inert in "death." From the "death," its resurrection would come at Easter.
The Incarnation and Cosmology
The significant issue of this drama is that at the December Solstice, the sun, or soul, halts its descent and stands balanced with the powers of matter for a time. The inertia of matter, offering resistance to the energies of spirit, brings the downward movement of soul into matter to a full stop and, for the period of the solstice, holds it immovable in its embrace. At this point, in this "stable" condition, the soul of the spiritual energy, which has gone "dead" in matter, is suddenly "quickened" out of its torpid state and feels the first touch of its awakening to birth for a new cycle of growth. Having "descended into hell," (the body) as the Creed has it, the Christ now awakes to an incipient awareness of his position and the consciousness of his newborn strength. That which lay buried in the "tomb" of "death" is now "quickened" in its "womb" of new birth. And as any mother-to-be suddenly feels the stirring of the baby within her, so Mother Nature (Matter) feels the same stirring of a newborn mind and the Christly impulse within her. As St. Paul so strikingly puts it, "All creation groans and travails in pain until now, waiting for the manifestation of the Sons of God." Christmas at the winter solstice then memorializes this quickening of the fetal Christ within the heart, mind, and soul of humanity. The season thus commemorates the birth to activity of the Christ mind in the nature and body of humankind.
The First Gospel
According to the tradition of the Christian Fathers, the primary nucleus of the canonical Gospels was not the life of Jesus at all, but a collection of logia, or sayings, which were written down in Hebrew or Aramaic by Matthew, the scribe of the Lord, and attributed to Jesus. An early writer bearing testimony in Christian history is Bishop Papias (60–130 CE), who emphatically declared that the Christian Gospels were founded on and originated in the logia. (Incidentally Papias said that Jesus died at home in bed of old age!) Matthew, he says, put the oracles of the Lord in the Hebrew language, "and each one interpreted them as best he could." Clement of Alexandria (150–215 CE), Origen (185–254 CE), and Iranaeus (130–200 CE) agree with Papias that Matthew's was the primary Gospel, disputing Eusebius's story of Mark's primacy.
There is a fascinating sidebar to this claim. Writing to Bishops Chromatius (d.407) and Heliodorus, Jerome (342–420 CE) complains that his translation of Matthew's Gospel from Hebrew into Latin is "difficult work since St. Matthew himself, the apostle and evangelist, did not wish to be openly written. (For more information on this, see The Shadow of the Third Century, p. 129.) There is more than a hint here that St. Matthew's Gospel had not been written down but had been handed down from generation to generation of men cherishing these writings as secret manuals of truth, not to be given to the multitude. The situation just described is worthy of a spy novel!
Bishop Papias (60–130 CE) is also named as one of the ancient interpreters who agreed to accept the logia as referring to a historical Christ. He was a literalizer of mythology. He believed the sayings to have been actually spoken by a historical Jesus, written down in Hebrew by a follower named Matthew. Thus the basis of the first Gospel was in no way a biography, record, or history of Jesus. It was only the "sayings of the Lord," which couldn't have been uttered by Jesus originally. Why? It's because the sayings were preexistent, prehistoric, and pre-Christian. They were collections of Egyptian, Hebrew, and Gnostic sayings, thus depriving any hard evidence that the Jesus of the Gospels was the first to have spoken them. The sayings were all oral teachings in all the mysteries ages before they were written down.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Mythical Life of JESUS Copyright © 2011 by Reverend Larry Marshall. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
A Personal Note....................xiiiThe Life and Writings of Alvin Boyd Kuhn....................xxi
Chapter 1 The Mythical Birth of Jesus....................1
Chapter 2 The Mythical Childhood of Jesus....................51
Chapter 3 The Mythical Baptism of Jesus....................57
Chapter 4 The Mythical Temptations of Jesus....................79
Chapter 5 The Mythical Disciples....................84
Chapter 6 The Mythical Sermon on the Mount....................91
Chapter 7 The Mythical Miracles....................108
Chapter 8 The Mythical Healings....................133
Chapter 9 The Mythical Transfiguration....................150
Chapter 10 The Mythical Palm Sunday....................153
Chapter 11 The Mythical Last Supper....................156
Chapter 12 The Mythical Trial of Jesus....................168
Chapter 13 The Mythical Crucifixion....................172
Chapter 14 The Mythical Resurrection....................191
Chapter 15 The Recovery of Christianity....................219
Appendix One: The Keys to Kuhn's Theology....................225
Appendix Two: The Significance of Kuhn....................250
Works, Writings, and Recommended Reading....................255