The Foundations of Christianity

Actually Christians are practicing a faith which is not only older than the Roman (Augustinian) church but is far older than Christianity. The basic elements of Christian theology are all inherited directly from ancient religions.

The Christ figure is just the latest in a long line of representations of the original Osiris of Egypt, the Redeemer and Mediator, Son of Ra. He is both God and man. He died and was resurrected, promises eternal life to his followers, and is remembered in the sacred meal.

The sacred meal involves wheat bread, and to this day the wafer used to portray the Body of Christ in Roman and Anglican eucharist is required to be of wheat, never barley or other grain. The wheat symbol is portrayed on many Greek vases by worshippers of their Osiris, Dionysus, and excavations of tombs in the Valley of the Nile commonly produce grains of wheat typically buried with the dead.

These symbolize resurrection, expressed by the Greeks in the story of Persephone and Ceres, for whom we name "cereals." In Egyptian religion, they have the phrases later borrowed by the Christian Osiris, Jesus, when he says he is the corn of wheat which falleth into the ground and when it dieth it bringeth forth new life etc. This Osiris is praised by Christians in hymns, and their "O for a thousand tongues to sing the great Redeemer's praise" (words not in their Bible, BTW) are direct quotations from the "Hymn to Isis."

The main library of the ancient Egyptian religion was at Byblos, and that is the root of our word "Bible." Byblos is in Asia Minor, as is Phrygia. At Galatia in Phrygia, the Christian church maintained holidays of the indigenous religion of Attis (Osiris, Jesus) and Cybele (Isis, Mary) and they called their redeemer "Pappa," the word still used today in Italian for "Pope." The Temple of Cybele in Rome is still there in the foundations of the Basilica of St. Peter. The celebration of Christmas and Easter is from that Phrygian precursor of Christianity and has nothing to do with Y'shua the Galilean. It was Attis whose crucified body was buried in a tomb sealed by a stone rolled away after three days and then found empty, that discovery reenacted each Easter morning hailed with cheers of "He is risen!"

Through the Essenes, a lot of Persian religion entered Christianity. Then when Augustine established "original sin" and the Trinity, he conveyed into Christian orthodoxy concepts from the Zoroastrianism of Mani in which he had been educated before converting. Satan, for example, is a Zoroastrian figure, the Prince of Darkness. Most toxic of all, the Zoroastrians taught that theirs was the only true religion, and this exclusiveness which has led to so much bloodshed was adopted by the Christians and later taken to new extremes by Islam.

The Great Temptation, when Jesus is lifted high to be offered dominion over all the kingdoms of the world if he would only renounce his faith, is plagiarized directly from the life of Siddhartha the Buddha.

Christianity is not new or original but is a successful synthesis of much older religions with a Hellenizing overlay of Pythagoras and Plato. Paul is indeed a genius for pulling it off. In our time he would be a blend of Bill Gates, Martha Stewart and Billy Graham..

See The Other Messiahs