RSS Feed
November 30th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Dr M D Magee (1998)
The Origin of God’s Word
Christians try to deny that, when they achieved total power at the end of the fourth century, they ravaged the Pagan learning accumulated over the whole of previous history. Since this vandalism started the Dark Ages, it is quite difficult to prove, simply because the destruction of learning meant there was little recorded evidence about it that was not written down by Christians—the few left who could write.
Christians have come up with almost any other explanation because they cannot admit that their own saintly predecessors were in fact uncivilised bigots. They claim the destruction of classical works and libraries was caused by accidental or deliberate fires, neglect and barbarian invasions or the collapse of society caused by barbarian invasions. Christians, on the other hand tried to preserve classical and Pagan works, and it is because they succeeded so well that we have them today. That claim is belied even in the New Testament itself where in Acts 19:19, Christian converts burn magical books worth sixty thousand pieces of silver! If the vicar to the gentiles could condone that, then who were ignorant bishops to dissent from it?
Let us return to that later. First consider what the Christian bishops did as soon as they had any power at all. They had no power over anyone other than their own flocks until Constantine merged the solar cults of the Empire under the direction of the Christian bishops in the fourth century. But Jesus had scarcely settled on the right hand of God before the gentile bishops were telling their flocks what they could and could not read.
The original followers of Jesus thought his resurrection was the first of the general resurrection of Hosea 6:2. They believed that up to forty years would follow in which there would be many trials and tribulations because a cosmic battle was being fought between good and evil. That is the meaning of the mini-apocalypse of Mark 13. The battle would end with the angel Michael appearing with a heavenly host to cleanse the world of sin and corruption and instate the kingdom of God.
The archangel Michael was the heavenly messiah while the followers of Jesus believed he was the earthly messiah. The point though was that the righteous people, the saints, would be resurrected into incorruptible bodies. That meant they were angels. So it seems likely that the simple converts of Jesus believed that when he returned—his Parousia—he would be the archangel Michael. So the earliest Christians were content to wait for the kingdom of God. It is plain from much of the New Testament that the earliest Christians lived with the knowledge that, having repented and been baptised, they would enter God’s kingdom.
The point of this little explanatory digression is that nothing was written down about Jesus for about forty years after his death. The gospel was that the kingdom of God was nigh, and the resurrection of Jesus as the first fruits was sufficient proof. However forty years is a long time—time enough for two generations of Christians to have arrived. It seems likely that Mark composed his gospel toward the end of Peter’s life, to record the stories of Jesus to convince the latest generation of Christians of the good news. But the message it contains is still that the kingdom is nigh.
Jesus was crucified in 21 AD. It follows that by 61 AD he should have returned. It is incredible that the first Christians did not mark off the years in anticipation of the event and indeed they might have done just that. But the first Christians were Jews and we cannot be sure that precise details followed Paul into the gentile religion he was preaching in Greece and Asia Minor. Indeed Paul seems to know nothing precise about the events of Jesus’s life. Furthermore the bishops might not have been willing to tell their flocks any precise dates, just in case. If so, they were obviously very wise because nothing had happened by 61 AD!
In the new circumstances, the written record of Mark assumed new importance, but shortly thereafter the Jews began their revolt against the Romans, and there is little doubt that Mark was edited to make it anti-Jewish and pro-Roman in the war situation. Evidence that there was an earlier version of Mark actually exists in Mark as it stands. The repetition of the mass feeding is probably because two versions of the event were bound together making it seem as if there were two feedings. In truth there were probably many mass feedings but it is doubtful that Jesus, in an 18 month career presided over more than two, and only one need have been described.
By now the original gentile converts who believed the Parousia was due in their lifetimes were dying off, but the new generations were like every Christian since—happy to live and die believing it would happen soon! Anyway it started a publishing industry which in the second century really blossomed. Pious works were written by the barrow load. That was too much for the bishops who saw the situation getting out of hand. The campaign to restrict the reading of Christians to certain prescribed books was led by Marcion, a Christian bishop who—like many later Christians—was particularly incensed that the son of God was a Jew.
This was quite understandable at the time because the Jews had just been rebelling yet again and twelve legions were needed to suppress the unrest. This was the rebellion of Bar Kosiba in 132 AD. Marcion felt the Jews were giving everyone a hard time and particularly Christians whose god was Jewish. He concluded that it was all a lie and recommended that only ten letters of Paul, who Marcion considered sufficiently un-Jewish, and the gospel of Luke, suitably freed of its Jewish content, should be accepted.
Fortunately for Christianity as it is, Marcion was an unpopular man and his absurd views were rejected—but not the principle of controlling what the faithful could read. The Catholic bishops came up with their own list of approved works—all four gospels and thirteen of Paul’s letters! Marcion wanted to limit the reading of Christians to eleven books, but the church leaders were so liberal, they admitted another six!
Pagan Libraries
With that sort of background, it is hardly surprising that once the church leaders got control of the publication of books, they launched an all out destruction of any literature they did not like. To counter this, modern Christians like to claim that the church fathers cited classical works widely and favourably in their writings, maintained them in their personal libraries, and made attempts to preserve them. More to the point is that the earliest Christian intellectuals were converts brought up in the Pagan schools. Naturally Pagan books would have been the original stock of their libraries, but that is hardly an argument that Christians in general aimed to preserve Pagan books. Arguments like this are intended to fool the gullible and the simple minded.
Furthermore, these early church intellectuals, having taken the step of joining the new religion themselves, were keen to explain its benefits to their Pagan friends. In fact, their friends were not too friendly in the main. Mostly they regarded Christianity as a superstition for the ignorant. It lacked depth, had no philosophical background and seemed like a new version of the mystery religions. Nevertheless, the converts felt obliged to justify their new position and wrote apologetic works in defence of their newly adopted stance. To do this, they used the forms and styles of classical oratory and rhetoric and took instances from the Pagan books their opponents knew. Christian polemicists had to rely on the rhetoric and literature of the Paganism which had taught them. Christianity had little of its own, just a few gospels and a few more letters, and these were quite unfamiliar to most people.
Even if any of these early converts had tried to shrug off their old habits, it plainly would have been impossible. They had been brought up in Pagan culture, they had imbibed classical habits with their mother’s milk. In short, society itself was Pagan and there was no way they could avoid its influence. Christians might argue that these early saints were able to do it because they were guided by the Holy Ghost. It does not need saying, that, as an argument, this is fatuous, but even if we were to accept it, we could get no further because the Holy Ghost is quite inept to judge by its efforts to make the gospels coherent.
A few church leaders founded libraries and in the earliest days these libraries included Pagan works for the reason explained. The church never burned all Pagan books anyway. There were always some Pagan books, mainly now called “the classics,” the Christians book-burners allowed to survive, so they are the only ancient works that can be called “classics”. Books like Homer’s Odyssey were thought to be allegorical accounts of the struggle for faith. The books of Plato were thought quite compatible with Christian thought and particularly useful since Christianity had no philosophy of its own. It is therefore not surprising that these books were placed by Christians in their own libraries and have therefore survived to this day. Many other books were not so favoured and have been lost. One source has put it:
The study of classical literature was continued and the intellectual discipline involved valued so long as these could serve the Christian purpose, without endangering the new Christian Society.
Many Church fathers quoted from Pagan books not with approval but with scorn. They quoted them to mock them.
Where were the Pagan libraries in Greece and Rome that eventually were destroyed? Roman emperors liked to commission public libraries. Temples usually had libraries attached to them, and schools, colleges and even public baths had libraries. In addition there were public libraries funded by government or local government, official archives which were not public, and private libraries. The first private library in Rome was composed of the captured library of Aristotle, and they were common by 50 BC. According to Seneca, by 65 AD, almost all the upper-class homes in Rome had private libraries.
It is plain that as the Christians closed Pagan temples and the Pagan academies so too they destroyed or at least dispersed their libraries. Public libraries, once the Empire was administered by Christians, had their Pagan books progressively replaced by Christian books. Even as early as 235 AD Christians, like Sextus Julius Africanus, were in powerful and influential positions in Rome. Africanus, a Christian scholar, was put in charge of the public library founded by the Emperor Severus on a site near the Pantheon. Knowing the subsequent history of the Christians’ bigotry with their missionary zeal for foisting their One True God on to everyone else in the world, it is interesting to wonder what influential people like Julius Africanus got up to even before Christianity triumphed.
Official archives contained state reports and these too were purged of any sources which were not favourable to Christianity, once the Christians took control. This is why the official reports of Pontius Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius, the Acta Pilati, disappeared. It showed that Jesus was a Jewish rebel, a member of the gang of Galilaeans founded by Judas of Galilee when Jesus was a youth. Pagan private libraries were dispersed when the Pagan aristocracy were impoverished by the Christians.
Related posts:
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
