What History Reveals

Next Part The Mother and the Saviour

We are now prepared to examine the astonishing record from history, and allow it to expose the popular “Jesus” worshipped today for who he really is. Prepare to be stunned—and, hopefully, even more deeply motivated to take action about all that you are learning!

First, there is this: “…the conception of a Saviour-God was quite normal in the ancient pagan world…a conception of salvation underlies the notion of such Gods as Osiris, Attis, and Adonis…” (John M. Robertson, Christianity and Mythology, p. 395).

And then this incredible admission: “It has often been urged that this belief in the Resurrection of Jesus is due to ideas of divine resurrection current in the contemporary world…stories of Attis, Adonis, and Osiris…In the pagan stories the rising again is a joyous reversal of defeat; in the Christian story it is the complement of victorious death. It may be said that Attis and Osiris saved by rising again, Jesus by dying…the Easter observance did not arise at once out of belief in the Resurrection, but developed later by gradual stages out of the Jewish Pasch. The notion implied in the Easter greeting Christ is risen is a secondary development; the idea comes from this festival and from its occurrence in spring; the festival does not come from the idea. The idea of Christ’s resurrection was injected into the old practice of Easter observance and not the other way around” (A. Nock, Early Gentile Christianity and its Hellenistic Background, pp. 105-107, emphasis ours throughout).

The powerful theme of this oft-repeated counterfeit is made absolutely clear by the famous historian, James George Frazer: “Now the death and resurrection of Attis were officially celebrated at Rome on the 24th and 25th of March, the latter being regarded as the spring equinox, and…according to an ancient and widespread tradition Christ suffered on the 25th of March…the tradition which placed the death of Christ on the 25th of March…is all the more remarkable because astronomical considerations prove that it can have had no historical foundation…When we remember that the festival of St. George in April has replaced the ancient pagan festival of the Parilia; that the festival of St. John the Baptist in June has succeeded to a heathen Midsummer festival of water; that the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin in August has ousted the festival of Diana; that the feast of All Souls [Halloween] in November is a continuation of an old heathen feast of the dead; and that the Nativity of Christ himself was assigned to the winter solstice in December because that day was deemed the Nativity of the Sun; we can hardly be thought to be rash or unreasonable in conjecturing that the other cardinal festival of the Christian church—the solemnization of Easter—may have been in like manner, and from like motives of edification, adapted to a similar celebration of the Phyrigian god Attis at the vernal equinox…It is a remarkable coincidence…that the Christian and the heathen festivals of the divine death and resurrection should have been solemnized at the same season…It is difficult to regard the coincidence as purely accidental” (The Golden Bough, Vol. I, pp. 306-309, emphasis ours).

While very extensive, this next and final source is perhaps the most powerful—and the most fascinating to understand. Let its message crash on your ears: “The similarity of ancient pagan legends and beliefs with Christian traditions was so great that they excited the attention and undisquised [sic] wrath of the early Christian…not knowing how to explain it. Tertulian said, ‘The Devil, by the mysteries of his idols, imitates even the main part of the divine mysteries.’ Furthermore Cortez, too, complained that the Devil had possibly taught the Mexicans that same thing that God taught Christendom.

The common idea is that pagan gods fled away at Christ’s coming, yet it is well known to every Bible student [that] this is contrary to fact. At the time of the recorded appearance of Jesus, and for some centuries before, there were temples without dedicated to Apollo or Dionysius among the Greeks, or Hercules among the Romans, Mithra among the Persians, Baal and Astarte among the Babylonians, and temples dedicated to other gods.

An outstanding phenomenon is apparent: notwithstanding great geographic distance, racial difference between cults and in detail of services, the general outline of creeds and ceremonies were—if not identical—markedly similar. A fact that cannot be considered coincidental is, that of 11 main deities from the seven countries, it was believed of all or nearly all that these deities’ births were on or near Christmas, of a virgin mother, in a cave underground, that they led a life of toil for man.

They were thought to have been light bringers, healers, mediators, and into saviours. They were vanguished [sic] by the power of darkness, descended into hell or the underworld, to have arisen to become pioneers of mankind to a heavenly world…Krishna [part of the Hindu trinity], the god of India is an outstanding example of a parallel with the life of Christ. The idea of God sacrificing his son for the salvation of the world is so remote and remarkable—yet it ranges through all ancient religion and back to the earliest times and is embodied in their rituals” (Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds).

We can summarize the last two sources. The universal church at Rome had a practice of incorporating pagan festivals—of pasting “Christian” names over them and calling them “Christian.” This was done to make Christianity more palatable and familiar to heathen worshippers, whom the Church was trying to attract. It became easy—natural—that, as the masses accepted Christianity, they be permitted to bring the familiar customs, traditions and beliefs about their own “saviour” into worship of the new “saviour,” from then on to be referred to as Jesus.

While there is not space in this book to thoroughly cover the entire history and origin of this different “Jesus,” a brief summary, followed by one more revealing statement from history, is helpful.