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If one consults a multitude of books on early church history one comes away from such an experience seeing that traditional Christian understanding of its own history - and the implicit understanding of most scholars - is that the evolution of Gentile Christianity was a gradual or incremental evolution away from Biblical Judaism and a gravitation backward to a "literalization" of the Ancient mystery religious doctrines that have more in common with astral and solar worship than with Moses and the Torah.
Answer for yourself: What did I just say? This is very complicated when you first begin to consider these "mystery religions" and their host of their "rising-dying sungods" but if you hang with it you eventually come to see that none of these "sungods" and their "lives" were ever believed to be "literal" by the devotees of various "gods" and "goddesses". I could go on and begin to teach what lies behind these "sungods" like they being the "personification of the Spirit of God in matter (flesh)" and further representations of "personifications of the Soul of man which is trapped in these fleshy bodies" but time and space will not allow. What you do need to hear and understand is that the evolution of Gentile Christianity away from Judaism was not good primarily because the antisemitic Gentiles would, in time, "literalize" almost all prior Ancient and Jewish metaphysical beliefs and understandings of the Divine Realm and in so doing create at the center of their "literalization" and "carnalization" of the "Divine" a similar "godman" figure we have come to know today as "Jesus". But this "Christ" or "Messiah" whom we as Christians call Jesus today was in the beginning intended to be a Jewish vehicle of Divine Truth and the human embodiment or vehicle for mankind to hear and receive the Ancients knowledge of the Divine as seen and expressed through the Jewish nation. Every nation has come to see this Divine Realm through their uniqueness as a nation and Israel was no different. They saw these Divine Truths through Jewish eyes as Babylon saw them through Babylonians eyes and as Egypt has previously seen them through Egyptian eyes. The "Christ" as the messenger and bridge between God (Spirit/Energy) and mankind (matter/flesh) was not unknown to these Ancient nations for all nations had their "Karsts, Christs" or "sungods". They were the same.
What we need to understand here is that Judaism received and carried these Ancient Divine and Religious truths as had earlier nations, like Egypt, and considered such Divine knowledge sacred no less than other nations which worshiped the One True God. They might have had different names for this One God but the concepts and central themes and ideas overlapped quite often. There is a "pattern" to be discerned here if you look at comparative religions and see the similar stories over and over; only the names have been changed.
Answer for yourself: Was this evolution away from Judaism and its "literalization" of all Ancient Spiritual allegories good or bad? Why does Christianity denigrate all "Ancient Religious Wisdom" and call it "pagan"? What is wrong with "pagan" mystery religions, astral worship, and solar worship? Why are we told by Christianity not to even read this information as many consider it a sin?
Well, honestly if you have done a lot, and I mean a lot of study into Gnosticism, Egyptian religion, Astronomy, and Anthropology then you will be equipped to answer the above question with a "maybe nothing" or with an "everything". You see, it is how you interpret and understand the Ancient Mystery religions that you either end up with either the most lofty Spiritual understanding of God that man can obtain in this physical existence or the basest idolatry and blasphemy known to man. In order to understand this answer it will take a whole website or two for your study in order to see the beauty and Spiritual superiority of the Mystery Religions when they are understood as "allegories" and "myths" of the highest Divine Truths ever known to mankind. Behind the current doctrinal and sacerdotal forms of "literalized Christianity" lie a deep Spiritual truth, a real Gnosis (Greek for "knowledge") of mankind's origin, nature, and destiny which has simply been "materialized" and "literalized" by the antisemitic Gentile Church of Rome in their traditional interpretation of the Hebrew and earlier Ancient "pagan" Scriptures. In so doing Rome destroyed the very beauty and awesome revelations of the Divine Realm that the Ancient civilizations cherished and revered. It is through the purposeful "literalization" and "carnalization" of these Ancient mystical understandings of the Invisible God that Christianity fell away for the Divine Truths that the Creator desired all mankind to come to understand. Very few professing lay Christians are aware to what extent the commonly received conceptions as to the origin of Christianity, based on the supposed historical veracity of the Gospel narratives, are in serious question today by those scholars who have made the closest study of the actual historical evidence. The correspondence of the Bible allegories with those of earlier Mystery Cults, such for example as those of Orpheus and of Mithra, as also those of more ancient Egyptian and Aryan sources, implies some historical connection in origins; and although this is exceeding obscure owing to the destruction by the early Gentile Roman Church creed-makers of every particle of evidence of this connection which they could lay their hands on, many clues still remain to which I must inform my readers. Although "literalized" almost beyond recognition, this Ancient Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom or Gnosis is embodied in the Christian Scriptures, albeit sadly overlaid with "the precepts and doctrines" of men. I am not using the term "Gnosis" as applying merely to the tents of certain Gnostic sects which were more or less in evidence in the early centuries of the Christian era, but in connection with a "super-knowledge" which can be traced back to the remotest ages and the oldest Scriptures of which we have any literary records, and which was taught by Initiates, Adepts, and Masters of the Ancient Wisdom in the inner circles of those Mysteries and Mystery Cults which are know to have existed in Egypt and elsewhere, even in the remotest times. That is the sense in which the term "Gnosis" must originally be understood.Central to this "Gnosis" is the understanding that the God of the Cosmos has fashioned all things after a "Pattern", on "Order" that is maintained and functions through the operation of God's Laws. These Laws were seen "central" for all existence in the Heavens above and the Earth below. Such Laws, when modeled by mankind, assured mankind that God's Kingdom in Heaven would be manifested "on Earth". The very center of Egyptian Religion has as its creed: "So Above, So Beneath". Hidden in the New Testament we find a glimpse of this earlier "gnosis":
Matt 6:10 10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. (KJV)
The revelation of this Divine Principle was brought to man by "the Karast/Christ" which is the Divine Spark that animates all matter. This Christ "indwells" every man and woman and when man "awakens" to this "Christ within" then his Soul is "birthed" into a Spiritual awareness not known before and this Divine Energy within empowers man to rise above the carnal and animal impulses that reside in his fleshly body. Through patterning one' life after the Laws of God one attains a Spiritual perfection and maturity which is the goal of his existence. This indwelling Spark of the Divine God, Creator of the Cosmos, is the "Christ within", the Logos, the "Word" which illuminates and empowers man to be "Sons of God" in this earthly plane of existence. Gradually however, as "Christian" doctrine became hardened and more and more dogmatic, and the government of the Church fell into the hands of ambitious antisemites who were ambitious for worldly power, and quarrelling among themselves for precedence, this higher knowledge of the "Divine Christ within" became a heresy and along with that the "Laws of God" were made to "cease" through the forgery of the Roman New Testament and its purposeful misquotations and misapplication of Hebrew Scriptures.What records of this earlier The absolutes of God were negated and every man became a "law unto himself" and chaos ensued; we call it the Dark Ages. This "Ancient Wisdom" yet remains today but much of it is nothing more than gross misrepresentations from the pens of its bitter opponents among the Church "Fathers". The traditional dogmas of the Church which have come down to us through the centuries are seen in light of this restored "Ancient Wisdom and Gnosis" today as little more than gross "materializations" of the real teachings as to the Spiritual Nature and origin of mankind as contained in this Gnosis. These "materializations" of the real teachings and dogmas of the Ancients are found in the Gentile Church's literal historicizing of narratives of Jesus as "the Christ"; narratives which were originally intended as allegories covering deep Spiritual Truths which were not only identical but can be found as far back as 10,000 B.C.E. The stories of these "sungods" and "christs" are the same, the sacred "sayings" of these various nation's "christs" are the same; there is little if anything different between them from nation to nation for thousands of years other than what was originally understood and intended to be comprehended as stores depicting the "Divine birth, life, growth, temptations, spiritual maturation, and death of God/the Soul in matter (flesh)" as a picture or paradigm for all mankind to emulate became not that; rather became at the hands of Rome an isolated "literalized" event of only one person separate from all the others of mankind. "The Christ" was taken from mankind and confined into the supposed historical body of only one person; a person by the way who is no longer here but ascended.The real fact, therefore, is not that Gnosticism was a "heresy," a departure from the true "Christianity," but precisely the opposite; i.e. that Christianity in its dogmatic and ecclesiastical development was a travesty of the original Gnostic teachings of God's Law and the "Christ Within" all mankind and not limited to but one person as does the New Testament with is depiction of "Jesus" as "the Christ" (William Kingsland,The Gnosis or Ancient Wisdom in the Scriptures, p. 11-17). On several of Bet Emet Ministries websites I show you in detail how such a lofty and wonderful Spiritual Revelation can be debased into the grossest idolatry possible by mankind. Rome chose the latter. This "idolatry" goes unnoticed in our churches today in the worship of this "literalized Jesus" where the Torah and Ancient Wisdom understood that these "christs" are within all mankind and that mankinds' worship is to be reserved for the One True God alone. This is the problem with Gentile Christianity who not only "literalized" the Christ but denigrated God's Laws and deemed them "old, archaic, and obsolete and passed away" in the New Testament. No wonder there anarchy in the world today when you have no longer Divine Absolutes and a judgment at the end of life as we know it as Egypt and Judaism teaches; in its place Christianity have its devotees a "get out of jail free" card with Jesus' picture on it this simply does not exist. Only only has to follow the logical thought and study of Bet Emet's Websites to see this for yourself and it begins with this website as we see the conflicting dogmas of Christianity as opposite Judaism and how Christianity so tragically misrepresented the Hebrew Scriptures.
If you think the above statements are not true then I challenge you to do your own personal study into these areas and disciplines above. Detailed and sustained study in these areas, when done in an unbiased way, can do nothing but confirm the the truthfulness of my answer. My assessment of Rome as bringing the world the grossest idolatry in the name of "Jesus" cannot be proven wrong once you possess adequate knowledge to see the whole of the "Jesus Puzzle". Humbly, if you do these studies then my position is invincible; you won't be able support the Roman Christian position any longer because the facts uncovered by your diligent study and hard evidence that comes before your face will not change; fables do. It can be proven by the testimony of many scholars today as well as the overwhelming evidence from archeology along with comparison of manuscripts that the later Gentile church modified or added to the Ancient Wisdom tradition once handed them and in so doing taught a "materialized" and "carnalized" historical Jesus (Bart Ehrman,The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture). What started with the teachings of "the Christ", understood as the vehicle in mankind's flesh to accomplish God's Salvation (the Hebrew name Joshua=the name Jesus=which means "God's Salvation") as the basic structure and true "gospel" which brought Biblical Judaism to it's zenith, ended up when remanufactured by Rome, as a rejection of almost all of what Judaism believed and stood far. This salvation from God for all mankind is ironically His "Joshua/Jesus", or should I say "Jesus"; but sadly this "literalized-materialized-carnalized Jesus" Rome gave us is not the "Jesus" God first gave mankind in the beginning of time and which was cherished among the Ancients for thousands of years. Simply said, Gentile antisemitism and aversion to the Laws of God successfully mutated Biblical Judaism and almost successfully destroyed all traces of it. Rome had to to this since the "anointed" Messiah promised since Egypt to Israel was to be a Jew and the Jews revered the Laws of God. Rome will not. This "Christ" given to Israel came teaching the same "gospel" and "message" which had been taught since the beginning of recorded time and as found in Egypt for thousands and thousands of years. It was the same message of Moses, himself better known as the Hebrew Pharaoh Akhenaten of the 18 Dynasty. This Ancient Wisdom and message stressed the Laws of God for mankind's welfare and salvation:
Matt 5:17-19 17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. 19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (KJV)
This "Christ/Anointed" was to be God's "Joshua/Jesus" to Israel and anyone familiar with that fact and what it entails would have a hard time swallowing Roman replacement religion which was "lawless" and without God's Torah.
The history of Christianity that B. Ehrman, and a host of other scholars propose, by contrast, is not one of smooth and natural development. It is rather a bumpy ride with a succession of crossroads and turning points that confronted the Jewish and Gentile followers of the Jewish Christ (we can call him "Jesus" because the logia, or teachings of the Jewish Christ are really "God's Salvation". Note the word play with the word "Jesus".
Answer for yourself: Since I have repeatedly said that Rome "literalized" and made historical "the Christ as this Jesus" when it can be shown up to this time all Divine and Ancient Wisdom taught only "the Christ within all mankind as his Soul" then can you see how Roman Gentile writers would later "literalize" the very message of "God's Salvation" in the form of this "Jesus" as a historical person? THINK. This dear ones is what was done.
Events will occur that will cause fundamental alterations in the then current "orthodox" beliefs of Judaism and separation from these doctrinal positions by the "non-Jews" which create a separate movement which will come to be known as Gentile Christianity. Coming to grips with these changes in the "faith of Jesus" is essential to understanding the teachings of the Jewish Christ (Jesus), because it is through these changes that the Gentile church not only altered, but destroyed the "Jewish Messiah" and the "Jewish Christ" and replaced him with a "Christ of faith" of their own making who was patterned after the "literalized" godmen of the ages. Early Christian history seems so contradictory because it was "contradictory" - so many people were saying so many different things at such an early stage of Christian history. Religious pluralism thrived in this age of apocalyticism. This is the fruit of the apocalyptic enthusiasm that had gripped the nation prior to and after the first century when the Jews' were desperate for deliverance and the hope of the prophets drew near.
The evidence for diversity in early Christianity is widespread and comes from the writings of early church leaders, from historical accounts, and the New Testament itself. The literature of early Christianity is often strongly controversial, and the bitterness of the attacks on other followers of Jesus who are "misrepresenting" Christianity is quickly apparent. If you read the above articles on the contrasting and conflicting "Salvation Messages" of Jesus and "Salvation Messages" of Paul you saw such an example of conflicting teachings as both "paths" to salvation are diametrically opposed.
From this short summary list above anyone can see for themselves that early Christianity was not at all stable and had not one set of adopted and supported consensus of religious opinion. That would come but not after centuries of councils where these ideas would be debated and even submitted to murder and violence before a consensus would be achieved in order to stabilize Gentile Christianity. Glory to God in the highest; God has given the Gentile church His will after they cleaned up the blood off the floor of their Councils as they determined and added to this "Jesus Story". The winners of these battles and blood-baths gave us the New Testament which is the rejection of Judaism and its Divine Revelation which can be traced as far back as Ancient Egypt.
"Stability" is a characteristic of later Christianity, beginning about the time of Constantine and the council of Nicaea (in the year 325). It will take the power of Rome to bring religious ideas together and that itself will take centuries. After Constantine and the controversies raised at the council of Nicaea, there were still serious disputes, but they had a much narrower focus and did not occur nearly as frequently. Nicea was the theological watershed and the death knoll for Jewish Christianity. In fact, there were only three truly great heresies after this point.
The first was the monophysite controversy, which concerned whether or not Christ had one or two natures; later there was the split between Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox over the authority of the pope; finally, there was the greatest heresy of all, that of Martin Luther and others, which launched the Protestant reformation (Akers, The Lost Religion of Jesus, p. 10).
For over 1600 years following Constantine, controversy over doctrinal matters - while it did occur - was the exception rather than the rule. But during the first four centuries after Jesus, Christianity was even more doctrinally divided than it is today. Moreover, these disputes did not involve political questions of church authority, nor obscure theological points that most ordinary Christians had difficulty understanding; they involved the very nature of God, Jesus, and salvation.
In Christian history, these early theological disagreements are both admitted and denied. Eusebius' fourth-century Ecclesiastical History details for us these various theological disagreements which threatened the church but they are not presented as serious but just as bumps on the road of church history, due to the sorts of misunderstandings that were bound to arise as any message was carried forward. Eusebius, in his Ecclesiastical History, distorts the truth of the events he reports. He presents a story of the followers of Jesus as having established a church and who wrote down the teachings of the Christ. They, according to Eusebius, faced opposition, persecution, and even setbacks along the way, but in general the gospel gained increasing numbers of adherents as time progressed. What the casual reader of Eusebius fails to note is that all along this route of theological diversity the religion and religious belief system of the Jewish "Jesus" and his first followers is continually being altered and changed by the antisemitic Roman Gentile juggernaut called "Roman Christianity". Three hundred years after the supposed death of Jesus the Roman Empire is made to look as if only "embraced" and "sanctioned" an exiting faith instead of altering it almost beyond recognition as it conformed it to their already existing "literalized" pagan ideas surrounding their sungods. Eusebius portrays Christian history as the record of revelation gaining increasing acceptance over time. That it did, but at the expense of the truth about a religion that carried both the legacy of Egypt and beyond as well as the Sacred Wisdom of the Ancients which promoted mankind's adherence to the Laws of God. Today we have the task of recovering the faith of the "Jewish Christ, the Jewish Jesus", "the faith once given to the saints".
From the above information alone you should have seen that Christianity did not emerge as a gradual and natural evolution or development from the teachings of Jesus, Moses, or the Prophets. Rather, you should have seen that Christianity, as it has become today, is a rejection and continual modification of Biblical Judaism whereby the "non-Jew", instead of finding his place within the Israel of God, has totally replaced God's message in Judaism along with the Jewish understanding of its "Christ/Messiah" and in so doing has destroyed the Ancient Spiritual Wisdom given mankind for all Eternity. Due to these theological diversities or, as some have called it, theological crises that shaped the direction of the Gentile church, we have almost totally lost today the truths once held dear and sacred by Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets. If you see and understand what has been said then the reality of the situation should hit home hard; namely, that the "historical Jesus" as depicted in the Gospel of John and often in the Synoptic Gospels, has little if anything in common with the religious doctrines that exist in his "Name" and are cherished by those who believe to be his followers or the followers of the "Jewish Christ". I guess you might have to ask, in light of what I have shared with you on this article, if you are really a follower of this Jewish Christ or this Jewish Jesus at all?