I just read a bit in Jonathan Z. Smith's book yesterday that made me sort of go "duuh!" He points out that in an edict, emperor Claudius denied the Alexandrians Roman citizenship. Apparently the reason was that being a Roman citizen meant you had to honor the Roman gods and emperors-as-gods which no Jew would do.
Obviously, that means that the claim in Acts that Paul was a Roman citizen has to be bogus.
I've just been reading a book to see if it had and information on the situation in Rome and surrounding areas around the time of Jesus. The book is a fascinating attempt to work back through time to try and find the original religion. His ability to envisage how languages and alphabets were formed by comparing the alphabets of the Druids of Scotland, Ireland, England back to India and Europe and Middle East is page turning. At the time of his writing c1830 lots of things were being found in India ,Egypt and elsewhere. which he acknowledged were, in his own time, being hidden or obscured by the Church ,surprise, surprise. But I imagine a lot of what he wrote about
will not be available to us today. He translates a lot of scripture and, according to him, corrects a lot of mistranslations. His exposition of the hidden religion for the select and the proclaimed to us rabble takes 900 pages. Trying to pick out relevant pieces is near to impossible as everything is a continual proving of the last sentence.
His disgust of Cardinals clergy, bishops, Luther Knox Calvin is palpable. All religion, without exception, is at the base the same. His discovery of Jews ( using the term loosely)in Cashmere, Afghanastan, North and South India Siam and Ceylon through language and place names, now all changed of course, and probably for a reason is really hard to deny. All religion is based on Astrology pure and simple involving cycles within cycles never ending.
The 600 yr cycle is particularly interesting, e.g. Alexander the Great, Cyrus, Romulus, Caesar, Jesus and Mohammed, not in that order of course . I'm a bit confused now with information overload and will need time to reread certain parts.
I have copied a few excerpts to give a feel but out of 900 pages what do you pick? His comments on St. Paul might be based on what Laura has found out, that words were put into his mouth. His classification of Jews, Christians and Gentiles seems to operate both before Christ and after him so I not really sure who he is calling the Christians or Chrestians. Some of the Greek words I cannot reprint. I think only Laura will be able to tell me if I'm barking up the wrong tree, even if his geography and knowledge of druids, their beliefs and buildings spread across the world is amazing. In no 3 and 4 below there are 3 Greek words that have not copied correctly and as he didn't give a translation of them I don't know how I may find their meaning.
1 I consider that the book of John contains clear and abundant proofs, that the original doctrine, though perhaps the secret doctrine of the Romish Church, was uncorrupted Gnosticism,—the Pandaean religion of the Golden age, when no icons were used, and when the Gods had no names. How they then were supposed to exist will be
clearly explained in a future book.
2 gods of the Romans or Janus, after whom St. Peter, Bar-Jona, with his barque and keys, is modelled. At the foot of the statue of Janus were placed twelve altars, dedicated to the twelve months. As Janus was the chief of the twelve lesser gods, Peter was the chief of the apostles •and, as I have said in Book X. Chap. IV., as Janus held the keys of heaven, so does Peter. The Valentinians supposed that Christ commenced his mission at thirty years of age
because it was the number of degrees in a sign of the Zodiac, and that he was crucified in the twelfth month ; so that his career had one year, like that of the sun in the Twelve Labours of Hercules. It is very evident that the Valentinians considered Jesus as a Ray or Emanation from the Sun, and that he formed a microcosm of the Solar orb, each being a microcosm of a superior being. The Romists evidently do the same in their annual scenic representation of the acts of the Saviour's life. It is said that Christ fixed the number of his apostles at twelve, because there were twelve months in the year ; and that John the Baptist fixed his at thirty, because the months have thirty days. 1 Clemens Alexandrinus, on the oriental doctrine, says, that the Valentinian Theodotus maintained that the twelve apostles held, in the church, the same place that the signs of the Zodiac held in nature ; because, as the twelve constellations govern the world of generation, the twelve apostles govern the world of regeneration. In Dupuis many other striking circumstances relating to the number twelve may be seen. Why did Jesus choose twelve apostles and seventy-two disciples ? Why did seventy-two men come from Medina to Mohamed ; and why did he retain with him twelve as his apostles ? Why does the college of Cardinals consist of seventy-two persons ? Why did Ptolemy take seventy two men to translate the Pentateuch ? All accident, as usual ?
The Persians had twelve angels who presided over the twelve months. He who presided over the first month was called the treasurer of Paradise. 2 Probably, like Peter and J anus, he carried the keys.
The Gentiles had precisely the same astrological mythos as the Jews and Christians. The commanders of the Greeks against Troy, including Philoctetes, who, though absent, was one of them in the league—one of the confederates—were seventy-two. 3 Osiris was killed by seventy two conspirators. 4 According to Keating, the Irish divided the languages into seventy-two. Proofs, which cannot be impeached, of the astrological character of the temple and its sacred numbers, may be seen in Josephus. 5
The Greek mina or pound was raised by Solon, as we learn from Plutarch, 6 from seventy-two drachma? to a hundred. 7 The number seven is equally a sacred number in the Gentile religion as in the Christian. The number of the planets has been copied in the Christian religion in the seven sacraments, seven deadly sins, seven gifts of the holy spirit. 8 From the number of the days of the least of the cycles, seven, being identical with the number of the planetary bodies, it can never be known with a certainty when one is alluded to separately
from the other.
3. Faustus is made, by Augustin, to say, Christ is the wisdom of God. 1 Now this we might infer, from what we have before observed respecting Gnosticism and Manichaeism. (But the Christ ought to be the Chreest.) As the Xpjs(Wisdom) was the Logos, and the Logos was Wisdom, it follows that the Xp?j£ must be Wisdom. Here, in either case, we arrive at Rasit again, and thus Jesus, or the Logos, is the Creator. Here we have a key to much of the recondite and misunderstood doctrines of the Gnostic, that is, the initiated Christians—the initiated Christians, or Gnostici, against whom
St. Paul preached, of which I shall say much more hereafter. rrence of the numbers connected intimately with the decans, dodecans, &c, 7, 12, 72, 360 not 365, 432, &c, into which the sphere was divided, sufficiently prove their intimate connexion. They are all closely bound together,
4 I now beg my reader to recall to his recollection what I have said respecting the Xp^g-oj, and I think he will have no difficulty in agreeing with me that originally the religion of Jesus was Xg^s-ianity, and that it was not, in fact, until the
Paulites got possession of the Papal chair, by a compromise, that
Paul's pernicious doctrines were admitted into it,—by which its whole character was changed, and it became Christianity, such as it was for a thousand years,—quarrelling, persecuting, and devil-driving : and very different indeed from the
Chrestianity of the
first fathers, and from the secret doctrines of the temples of Eleusis and Jerusalem, of the Gentiles, and of Jesus of Nazareth, all of which were the same.
There was no man in the first two centuries of the Christian sera to be preferred to Clemens as an authority on this dry matter of fact, that there was a secret doctrine and of what nature that secret doctrine was. He was followed by Origen, who confirmed his assertion, and was the most learned of all the early Christians; and he and Clemens were at the very top—they were in fact the Patriarchs of the Christian community. Mosheim endeavours to disguise the doctrine, but the actual existence of the Tvaxrig is evident enough
Paul was really, as is evident from his letters, a well meaning but insane fanatic.
In the Chrestologia of St. Paul and Justin Martyr we have the esoteric religion of the Vatican, a refined Gnosticism for the cardinals, a more gross one for the people
I know not a single passage in our canon which can justify the construction, that twelve tongues of fire was this
person. The prophecy of another person to come connects the whole with the system of the cycles of India, of Virgil, and of Juvenal; it completes the system, and shows that the millenary cycles were an integral part of Gnosticism, and that
Gnosticism uncorrupted was Christianity.
Having those would be helpful in identifying its worth.
www.ancient.eu
