Man's Search For Spirituality - E Christopher Reyes (jenna bush book club .TXT) 📗

parties had polarized, each defending their own interpretations, the Pauline system of belief of 64 AD differentiating with those of Justin, by 160 CE.
The Apostle, Mark, will reverse the historical process by providing an adequate core for the historical Jesus of Paul. Then, further enhancement to the created mythological figure will be furnished with  Mark II, a supplemental to Mark I, producing the current Gospel, which threatened the Paulinists version.  Mark’s 'Divine Jesus' will now forgive sins, regulate the Sabbath, walk on water, calm the brutal seas, raise the dead, perform various sundry miracles, and predict his own death, to allegedly fulfill God’s plan in the Hebrew Scriptures. Mark no longer predicts that the baffling Son of Man will come in the future, nor that he himself will become this figure after his death. Now, during his lifetime, Jesus will become the Son of Man. Later, in Matthew and Luke, Jesus is proclaimed 'Divine' even before his Baptism, and the Gospel of John has Jesus “Eternally Divine.” ~See “..The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” ~John 1:1. 
The priestly symbols were a staff, a ring, a hat, and a hooked sword; members are called brothers, and priests are called “Father.” The “Mitre” hats worn by today's Orthodox Bishops were first worn by Mithrasian high priests, as the hat's name, mitre [mitra] suggests. The “Dog collar” worn by today's clergy dates back to the ring or halo associated with another Roman god, Saturnus, whose feast was celebrated on December 25th. Christians took the Mithras' festival, the festival of the “Resurrection of Mithras,” and turn it into what would later became Easter.
“Speaking from the standpoint of pure history, no one will deny that much in the antecedent and environing aspirations and ideals of paganism formed, to use the Church phrase, a praeparatio evangelica of high value. 'Christo jam tum venienti, crede, parata via est.' sings the Hymn of Prudentius. The pagan world 'saw the road,' Augustine could say, 'from its hill-top.' 'Et ipse Pitaetus Christianus est.' said the Priest of Attis; while, of Heraclitus and the old Philosophers, Justin avers that 'there were Christians before Christ.' Indeed, the earlier apologists for Christianity go far beyond anything we should wish to say, and indeed made difficulties for their successors.” ~Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XI, p. 393.
The architecture of the Christian Church, from the cavernous interiors to the ceremonial altars are borrowed straight from the Mithraic temples, which were destroyed. The early Christians desecrated the Mithraic Temples, and built their own churches, oftentimes on the same foundations as the old Mithraic Temples.
December is a special month for the followers of Mithra and many other religions of this time, for on December 21st and 22nd, the sun, traveling south, reaches its lowest points in the sky, otherwise known as the winter solstice.
By December 25th, the sun is returning northward. Mithraic teachings traveled with Alexander the Great and in 250 C.E., become a major rival to Christianity that had to be eliminated. This cult is also in existence when Pompeii returned to Rome after capturing Jerusalem in BC 63 [Before Christ]. Their celebration of December 25th is the spring equinox [Estra or Easter], the forty days, which are later to become Christian Lent. Mithra is born at midnight of December 25th the exact moment the year turns from growing obscurity and darkness to that of light. Early Christian Fathers are hard pressed to explain the similarities of Christianity and Mithraism and actually claim that the Christians believed in rebirth and resurrection first which is hard to accept now in light of sequential historical facts.
“Owing to the cult's secrecy, we possess almost no literary evidence about the beliefs of Mithraism. The few texts that do refer to the cult come not from Mithraic devotees themselves, but rather from outsiders such as early Church fathers, who mentioned Mithraism in order to attack it, and Platonic philosophers, who attempted to find support in Mithraic symbolism for their own philosophical ideas.”
“However, although our literary sources for the “Mithraic Mysteries” are extremely sparse, an abundance of material evidence for the cult exists in the many Mithraic temples and artifacts that archaeologists have found scattered throughout the Roman Empire, from England in the north and west to Palestine in the south and east. The temples, called Mithraea by scholars, were usually built underground in imitation of caves. These subterranean temples were filled with an extremely elaborate iconography: carved reliefs, statues, and paintings, depicting a variety of enigmatic figures and scenes. This iconography is our primary source of knowledge about Mithraic beliefs, but because we do not have any written accounts of it’s meaning the ideas that it expresses have proven extraordinarily difficult to decipher.”~from The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras, by David Ulansey, http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html.
David Ulansey further states, “The celestial equator was often described in ancient popular literature about the stars. Plato, for example, in his dialogue Timaeus said that when the creator of the universe first formed the cosmos, he shaped its substance in the form of the letter ‘X,’ representing the intersection of the two celestial circles of the zodiac and the celestial equator. This cross-shaped symbol was often depicted in ancient art to indicate the cosmic sphere. In fact, one of the most famous examples of this motif is a Mithraic stone carving showing the so-called ‘Lion-headed god,’ whose image is often found in Mithraic temples, standing on a globe that is marked with the cross representing the two circles of the zodiac and the celestial equator. Mithraic temples were built in imitation of caves. But caves are precisely hollows within the rocky earth, which suggests that the rock from which Mithras is born is meant to represent the Mithraic cave as seen from the outside. Now as we saw earlier, the ancient author Porphyry records the tradition that the Mithraic cave was intended to be ‘an image of the cosmos.’”
“Of course, the hollow cave would have to be an image of the cosmos as seen from the inside, looking out at the enclosing, cave-like sphere of the stars. However, if the cave symbolizes the cosmos as seen from the inside, it follows that the rock out of which Mithras is born must ultimately be a symbol for the cosmos as seen from the outside. This idea is not as abstract as might first appear, for artistic representations of the cosmos as seen from the outside were in fact very common in antiquity. A famous example is the ‘Atlas Farnese’ statue, showing Atlas bearing on his shoulder the cosmic globe, on which are depicted the constellations as they would appear from an imaginary vantage point outside of the universe.. .the rock from which Mithras is born … Represents the cosmos, which is proven by the snake that entwines it: for this image evokes unmistakably the famous Orphic myth of the snake-entwined ‘Cosmic Eegg’ out of which the universe was formed when the creator-god Phanes emerged from it at the beginning of time. Indeed, the Mithraists themselves explicitly identified Mithras with Phanes, as we know from an inscription found in Rome and from the iconography of a Mithraic monument located in England.”
“The birth of Mithras from the rock, therefore, would appear to represent the idea that he is in some sense greater than the cosmos. Capable of moving the entire universe, he cannot be contained within the cosmic sphere, and is therefore depicted in the rock-birth as bursting out of the enclosing cave of the universe, and establishing his presence in the transcendent space beyond the cosmos. This imaginary ‘Place beyond the universe,’ had been described vividly by Plato, several centuries before the origins of Mithraism. In his dialogue ‘Phaedrus,” BC 247, Plato envisions a journey by a soul to the outermost boundary of the cosmos, and then gives us a glimpse of what the soul would see if for a brief moment it were able to “Look upon the regions without.”
“Of that place beyond the heavens, none of our earthly poets has yet sung, and none shall sing worthily.” ~Plato
BC 600-The human sacrificing of children is outlawed in the Kingdom of Israel.
BC 600-The Plates of Brass are brought by the people of Lehi from Jerusalem containing “The Five Books of Moses” and also a record of the Jews from the beginning, ...down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah, King of Judah. Quotations from the Book of Mormon are cited in Isaiah and other Biblical and nonbiblical prophets. ~From the Book of Mormon.
AD 606- Amid the convulsions, confusions, and spiritual despots of the nations, Pope Sabinian, of Rome is made ‘Universal Bishop,’ with the ten chief kingdoms of Europe recognizing him as ‘Christ's Vicar’ on earth, the only center of unity, the only source of stability to their thrones, the only voice of God on earth.
There is hardly a form of “Pious Fraud” or saintly imposture practiced to this day along the banks of the Tiber River, in ‘God’s City,’ that cannot be proved to have had its counterpart on the banks of the Euphrates, or in the structures that come from it. Even the images of the Virgin Mary, made to shed tears, tears long ago shed by the pagan images, oftentimes destroyed by the good Christians, who would adorn the images with images they will call their own. To these tender-hearted idols Lucan alludes, when, speaking of the prodigies that occurred during the civil wars, he says, “Tears shed by gods, our country's patrons, and sweat from Lares, told the city's woes.” Virgil will also refer to the same hypocrisy when he says, “The weeping statues did the wars foretell, and holy sweat from brazen idols fell.” ~The Two Babylons by Rev. Alexander Hislop.
Virgil tell us that when the priests put forth their magic powers, “Then statues laughed, and lamps were spontaneously enkindled.” When in the consulship of Appius Claudius, 300 BC, and Marcus Perpenna, Publius Crassus is slain in a dreadful battle with Aristonicus, Apollo's statue, at Cumae, is said to shed tears for four days without intermission.
BC 597-538-The concept of Angels as messengers and celestial beings is being developed. Jewish faith is influenced by Babylonian beliefs that show pictorial representation of beings with wings.
BC 593-Space Aliens(?) Disputed space ship/vehicle encounter of Biblical Ezekiel. In the Bible, Ezekial sees a whirling wheel within a wheel turning together in the sky.
BC 587-Nebuchanessar, Chaldean King, casts out the remaining two tribes of the House of Judah from Southern Israel. Upon conquering Jerusalem, he has the Hebrew Temples and ancient scrolls destroyed. Many of the Jews are taken prisoner to Babylon [70 years of captivity] The Temple of Solomon is ordered destroyed during the reign of Zedekiah, BC 588, leaving only the foundation. ~2 Kings 25:8-9, 2 Chronicles 36:19-20.
BC 586-538-Genesis and Numbers of the Old Testament are formally written down for future generations of Jews. The Jews, being conquered and enslaved by the Babylonians, practice the first true separation of church and state. They do not consider themselves citizens of Babylonia, but of the Jewish faith. Caesaropapism is the term to be accepted by the Church, which denotes the subordination of the Church to the religious claims of the dominant political power until the advent of Pope Gelasius I in 492 CE who will declare the “Two Swords Doctrine” in which the church and state are accepted as co-equals [spiritual and temporal].
“Out of 182 works accepted for centuries as the genuine writings of Christians during the first 180 years of the present era, only twelve are now contended by theologians to be genuine; 170 forged writings permitted by the alleged 'Guider into all Truth' to have existed for centuries, and believed in by poor, feeble man.” ~Julian, Old and