The Great Cover Up [of Christianity]

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy discovered in their research which led to their

thesis of: " The Jesus Mysteries " that there was a 'Great Cover Up' with regard

to the early beginnings of Christianity. i am still reeling from the shock of

this discovery!

 

regards to all,

 

violet

 

 

The Great Cover Up (Except from Chapter 1)

 

(P.12) Our new account of the origins of Christianity only seemed improbable

because it contradicted the received view. As we pushed further with our

research, the traditional picture began to completely unravel all around us. We

found ourselves embroiled in a world of schism and power struggles, of forged

documents and false identities, of letters that had been edited and added to,

and of the wholesale destruction of historical evidence. (P.13) We focused

forensically on the few facts we could be confident of, as if we were detectives

on the verge of cracking a sensational 'whodunnit', or perhaps more accurately

as if we were uncovering an ancient and unacknowledged miscarriage of justice.

For, time and again, when we critically examined what genuine evidence remained,

we found that the history of Christianity bequeathed to us by the Roman Church

was a gross distortion of the truth. Actually the evidence completely endorsed

the Jesus Mysteries Thesis! It was becoming increasingly obvious that we had

been deliberately deceived, that the Gnostics were indeed the original

Christians, and that their anarchic mysticism had been hijacked by an

authoritarian institution which had created from it a dogmatic religion - and

then brutally enforced the greatest cover-up in history.

 

One of the major players in this cover-up operation was a character called

Eusebius who, at the beginning of the fourth century, compiled from legends,

fabrications and his own imagination the only early history of Christianity that

still exists today. All subsequent histories have been forced to base themselves

on Eusebius' dubious claims, because there has been little other information to

draw on. All those with a different perspective on Christianity were branded as

heretics and eradicated. In this way falsehoods compiled in the fourth century

have come down to us as established facts.

 

Eusebius was employed by the Roman Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity

the state religion of the Empire and gave Literalist Christianity the power it

needed to begin the final eradication of Paganism and Gnosticism. Constantine

wanted 'one God, one religion' to consolidate his claim of 'one Empire, one

Emperor'. He oversaw the creation of the Nicene creed - the article of faith

repeated in churches to this day - and Christians who refused to assent to this

creed were banished from the Empire or otherwise silenced.

 

(P.14) This 'Christian' Emperor then returned home from Nicaea and had his wife

suffocated and his son murdered. He deliberately remained unbaptized until his

deathbed so that he could continue his atrocities and still receive forgiveness

of sins and a guaranteed place in heaven by being baptized at the last moment.

Although he had his 'spin doctor' Eusebius compose a suitably obsequious

biography for him, he was actually a monster - just like many Roman Emperors

before him. Is it really at all surprising that a 'history' of the origins of

Christianity created by an employee in the service of a Roman tyrant should turn

out to be a pack of lies?

 

Elaine Pagels, one of the foremost academic authorities on early Christianity

writes:

 

'It is the winners who write history - their way. No wonder, then, that the

traditional accounts of the origins of Christianity first defined the terms

(naming themselves " orthodox " and their opponents " heretics " ); then they

proceeded to demonstrate - at least to their own satisfaction - that their

triumph was historically inevitable, or, in religious terms, " guided by the Holy

Spirit " . But the discoveries [of the Gnostic gospels] at Nag Hammadi reopen

fundamental questions.'[7]

 

History is indeed written by the victors. The creation of an appropriate history

has always been part of the arsenal of political manipulation. The Roman Church

created a history of the triumph of Literalist Christianity in much the same

partisan way that, two millennia later, Hollywood created tales of 'cowboys and

Indians' to relate 'how the West was won' not 'how the West was lost'. History

is not simply related, it is created. Ideally, the motivation is to explain

historical evidence and come to an accurate understanding of how the present has

been created by the past. All too often, however, it is simply to glorify and

justify the status quo. Such histories conceal as much as they reveal.

 

(P.15) To dare to question a received history is not easy. It is difficult to

believe that something which you have been told is true from childhood could

actually be a product of falsification and fantasy. It must have been hard for

those Russians brought up on the tales of kindly 'Uncle Joe' Stalin to accept

that he was actually responsible for the deaths of millions. It must have

strained credibility when those opposing his regime claimed that he had in fact

murdered many of the heroes of the Russian revolution. It must have seemed

ridiculous when they asserted that he had even had the images of his rivals

removed from photographs and completely fabricated historical events. Yet all

these things are true.

 

It is easy to believe that something 'must' be true because everyone else

believes it. But the truth often only comes to light by daring to question the

unquestionable, by doubting notions which are so commonly believed that they are

taken for granted. The Jesus Mysteries Thesis is the product of such openness of

mind. When it first occurred to us, it seemed absurd and impossible. Now it

seems obvious and ordinary. the Vatican was constructed upon the site of an

ancient Pagan sanctuary because the new is always built upon the old. In the

same way Christianity itself has as its foundations the Pagan spirituality that

preceded it. What is more plausible than to posit the gradual evolution of

spiritual ideas, with Christianity emerging from the ancient Pagan Mysteries in

a seamless historical continuum? It is only because the conventional history has

been so widely believed for so long that this idea could be seen as heretical

and shocking.

 

The Jesus Mysteries

Was the Original Jesus A Pagan God?

Chapter 1 - p.12-15

Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

Element (imprint of HarperCollins'Publishers')

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

ISBN-13 978-0-7225-3677-3

ISBN-10 0-7225-3677-1

 

Notes

 

[7] Pagels, E. (1979), 147