In the words of the song “What
it says in the Baable: it aint so relaable”. It is not what people say or write
in a book which is “necessarily so” in telling the truth of a matter. After all
it could be just wishful thinking or religious spin couldn’t it? Instead of immediately
believing the truth of a text, the better question to ask is not, ”What does it
mean?” but “Why was it written down?” Remember the Bible was written by men in
authority for the instruction of illiterate people to support the cause of
those in power.
As evidenced by Paul’s writings
and those books written in his name in the early centuries of what we now call
Christianity; there were many cults vying for dominance. That is why Paul gets his
knickers in a twist when others came up with private doctrines at odds with his
own formulas. (1Tim 6:4,5) It is significant that christ-cults were legion back
then, declaring their own christs as the true one such as Attis, Dionysus,
Orpheus and Mithra for example. The Jesus brand came late on the christ scene
and there is not much evidence for the name of Jesus in the extant texts from
before the third quarter of the second century). It is worth noting that Jesus
Christianity kept evolving and insertions of key names and events were made
into the standard hand-written texts over many subsequent centuries.
Christianity as a Church is
essentially a fourth century phenomenon, consequently all organised
Christianity today stems from what emerged out of the Roman Catholic bottleneck of belief. The idea of a divinely
ordained primitive and pure Christianity existing before then is largely
fiction. It was Emperor Constantine’s
empowerment of his Roman Church to serve his political objectives which was the
real birth.
It was by chance that Constantine
had a lowly born mother the daughter of an inn-keeper who had adopted Jesus
Christianity in the late third century. Constantine had no religious scruples
himself (he had his son murdered and his wife thrown into boiling water) his
interest was, not surprisingly, in power and the retention of power, lessons he
learned from his mentor Diocletian, the systematic persecutor of Christians. Constantine’s
endorsement of Christianity was purely for superstitious reasons and prompted
by maternal sentiment.
A key to understanding to how
Jesus Christianity trumped the other pagan cults is to be found in the politics
of Rome under Constantine with its religious tolerance, at least up until the
death of the Emperor. There was political capital in having Rome control all of
the cults under the one state umbrella...total control is after all the most
useful ploy for tyrants. Fusion of the cults, otherwise known by the process of syncretism,
meant the acceptance into the fold of virtually all prevailing pagan doctrines.
This has a significant precedence, it was the same method used by the Roman Empire
to enlarge its sphere of influence by subduing its enemies, adopting them and
assimilating them and their gods into Roman culture.
It was no mean task, but the
bishops of all the pagan cults were bribed and given privileges to join the
Catholic (meaning all embracing) Roman Church. In turn they contributed their
dogma and personnel. In the quest for orthodoxy one of the most popular Roman
cults, that of Mithra (Mithras) had to be assimilated without loss of face
since it held a prominent role in the religious milieu . Bearing in mind there
was no fierce partisanship among the non-Jesus cults, the Roman church needed to
subdue and eliminate the ever popular Mithraism. How could it be done more
diplomatically than by saying that the Jesus figure will build his Church on
the ’Rock’. Easily explained away in Roman Catholicism today as an explanation
of the first pope but in reality a cryptic promise to Mithraics
to build the Catholic Church on their foundations. Which it did in the
most literal way at the Vatican City on top of the great ‘mithraeum’ (Mithraic
church) of the catacombs and metaphorically so by using their principal doctrines;
notably the last supper and the eschatology (end times) as taught by Mithaism. Of
course Saint Jerome would say they had different beliefs because he was right
they did (he was the son of the Christian writer /forger/ biographer Eusebius
by the way) but in the great syncretism all accommodation of all politically
useful beliefs were eventually absorbed into the Catholic melting pot.
Surprising it is that Jerome might talk about the hopes after death being
different in Mithraism when yet again one of the many Catholic borrowings was from their belief in heavenly reward for the righteous and hell-fire for the damned.
Jerome lived in the post Constantine period when a state sponsored blanket condemnation
of “paganism” began which deliberately set out to destroy and obscure the
rustic folk origins of the Christ cults and their unholy fusion. This policy of
distancing itself from its true origins
is critical in understanding the authority the Catholic Church awarded itself
as the all embracing holy and exclusive Church.
It would be implausible that Jesus
(a literary figure) or any of the other cult figureheads could announce the establishment
of their own church, being the ones who were the object of its worship! If it was
written so, as it is in the case of Jesus, it exposes the mythical nature of
the text which contains the information.
(sorry for the length)
