Dear All, There follows the third and final part of my 'Serialisation' concerning the Mysteries of Christianity. I would like to reiterate that this Serialisation was written originally with the intention of publication in a national newspaper in the UK (to coincide with the launch of my new book 'When The Gods Came Down'). Unfortunately, all of the newspapers which were approached by my publisher declined to use the Serialisation. One newspaper, The Daily Mail (whose Editor is a leading freemason within the English Lodge), claimed that the material in the Serialisation was 'too sensitive' for the eyes of its readers. . . In order to circumvent this media boycott of my revolutionary discovery concerning the origins and meaning of Judaeo-Christian religion, I am encouraging you to distribute the forthcoming Serialisation (part by part) to anyone whom you know to be open-minded and curious about the origins of modern religion. Alan F. Alford Author 'Gods of the New Millennium', 'The Phoenix Solution' and 'When The Gods Came Down' Website: http://www.eridu.co.uk Was Jesus Christ an actor in an ancient Passion play? They are the ultimate questions of our times: what is the nature of God, what is Heaven, and who was Jesus Christ, the Son of God? In his new book, When The Gods Came Down, Alan F. Alford suggests that the original Jesus Christ was a Sky-god who had been sacrificed at the beginning of the world. Today, in the concluding part to our intriguing new series, Alford asks how Jesus the man of 1st century Judea fits in to the overall picture. What actually transpired in Jerusalem two thousand years ago to spark the beginning of Christianity? His conclusion make astonishing reading. ³FEAR NOT² said the Lord Jesus Christ: ³I am the Alpha and the Omega the First and the Last.² With this brief utterance, Jesus Christ revealed the essential duality of his god-like nature. On the one hand, he was a god of the Beginning, whom God had sent down to Earth to create all living things in his own imageı. On the other hand, he was a god of the End, who would descend to Earth at the End of Days to destroy the old world order and create in its place a new Heavens and a new Earthı. These two visitations should be understood, respectively, as the First Comingı of Christ, which occurred at the beginning of time, and the Second Comingı of Christ, which would occur at an untold moment in the future. Concerning the First Coming of Jesus Christ, this has clearly already happened, aeons ago, for otherwise mankind would not be here. But as for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, it is equally clear that this has not happened yet, for we are still awaiting the idyllic paradise of the new Earthı, which he promised. What, then, should we make of the Jesus Christ who appeared in Palestine two thousand years ago? This Jesus was neither a Christ of the Beginning, nor a Christ of the End. And nor was he any kind of god in the traditional, catastrophic sense of the word. This Jesus Christ, on the contrary, was a mortal human being. Or at least this is what the gospels would seem to imply. Who was this human being, whom we might call Jesus-the-manı? Why was this man crucified in Jerusalem two thousand years ago? I submit that Jesus-the-man was the lead actor in a Passion play a play which re-enacted the death of God (and by the same token the death of Christ) which had occurred at the beginning of the world. I submit that the gospels of the New Testament constitute an ingenious esoteric parable the meaning of which has hitherto been kept secret from the worldıs 1.9 billion Christians. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- IT IS a well-known fact that peoples of the ancient Near East performed Passion plays every New Year. Sometimes the plays re-enacted the sacred marriageı of the gods, which had caused the Virgin Earth to become fertile millions of years in the past. At other times the plays re-enacted the story of the dying-and-rising god, who was known variously as Dumuzi, Tammuz, Adonis or Osiris. One of the best known of the ancient Passion plays was the Mystery Play of Osiris, which was celebrated every New Year at Abydos in Upper Egypt. During this festival, an Egyptian priest would dress up as Osiris and personally re-enact the death, burial and resurrection of the god. Does a Passion play such as this lie at the heart of the Christian movement? Might such a play have been performed in Jerusalem two thousand years ago? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ACCORDING to the Church, Jesus-the-man was the Messiah of the End of Days, and he was put to death two thousand years ago in order that certain prophecies should be fulfilled. But what were these prophecies on which the Church built its case? One of the most important prophecies appears in the Old Testament book of Isaiah, chapters 52-53. Here we find the story of the Righteous Servantı who was woundedı and crushedı for the transgressions of mankind. The Righteous Servant, we are told, was arrested, judged, and taken away like a lamb to the slaughterı, and yet steadfastly refused to open his mouth in complaint. The story is almost identical to that told in the gospels, right down to the detail of Jesus remaining silent before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. But was Isaiah really granted the supernatural ability to predict the future, or might there be a more prosaic explanation for this so-called prophecy? A closer inspection of Isaiah 52-53 reveals something very odd. The Righteous Servant, we are told, had an appearance disfigured beyond that of any man beyond that of all mankindı. Why was this? It is a detail which jars with the idea of Jesus-the-man, who was not disfigured as far as we know. But it does match the notion that Jesus Christ was some kind of primeval god of the Beginning a god who had been cast down physically from Heaven to Earth. ANOTHER important prophecy is found in Psalm 22 of the Old Testament, which begins rather aptly with the words to be spoken centuries later by Jesus on the cross: ³My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?². In this psalm, we are introduced to an innocent victim (unnamed), who complains of being mocked and despised by the assembly of the wickedı. The victim describes how he was attacked by strong and fertile bulls, causing his body to be poured out like water and his bones to be pulled out of joint. It is a description which once again sits uncomfortably with the idea of Jesus-the-man but fits perfectly with the notion of Jesus Christ the primeval god, who had been cast down out of Heaven to the Earth. Psalm 22 goes on to describe the unnamed victim being piercedı apparently crucified by the assembly of the wicked. And it describes the garments of the victim being divided by the casting of lots a detail which is echoed in all four gospels of the New Testament. But the crucifixion scene in Psalm 22 differs from the story of the gospels in one quite astonishing detail the torture is perpetrated in Sheol (the place of deathı), otherwise known as the Jewish underworld. Why would Jesus be executed in the mythical underworld? Might it be that the so-called prophecies of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 52-53 were not referring to future events in Jerusalem but to events in the past events which occurred at the mythical beginning of time? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MY RESEARCH into the pagan literature of ancient Egypt and Sumer has uncovered a secret with awesome implications for Christianity. The worldıs oldest written texts describe catastrophic events which occurred thousands of years before Christianity began. Fireballs were observed in the sky and destructive meteorite-storms were experienced on the Earth. And, as a direct result of these events, ancient peoples began to worship meteorites, imagining them to be physical fragments of God. Eventually, these peoples composed legends which described a battle of the gods, or the sacrifice of a god at the beginning of time. Basing their story on the meteoric model, they described how the gods had abandoned Heaven and entered into the Earthıs underworld the subterranean region. There, the meteorite-gods had impregnated the womb of Mother Earth and seeded the beginning of all life. Mankind itself was said to have been created in this way from the fleshı and bloodı of a sacrificed god. CHRISTIANITY, just like the pagan religions, is concerned with a mystery of the beginning. The gospel of John describes the primeval Christ as the Word which was made fleshı, and which came forth from the Fatherı, thus bringing light to the world and life to mankind. In the letters of Paul, we read of the mystery which has been hidden in God since the beginning of the worldı and the mystery which was kept secret since the world beganı. And in the sayings attributed to Jesus, we find the remarkable declaration: ³I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.² The true mystery of Christianity was thus concerned with the beginning of the world, and the secrets were safeguarded by the use of parables, allegories, code-words and symbols. To the initiated the New Testament was full of such esoteric metaphors. For example, Jesus referred to himself as the Seed of Mankindı and the corner stone which the builders rejectedı, whilst others called Jesus the Wordı or the Lamb of Godı. To those who had ears to hearı, these epithets evoked the sacrifice of the primeval Christ, who had descended physically from Heaven, created the world as we know it, and sown therein the seeds of all living things. As for the Old Testament scriptures which supposedly prophesied the future crucifixion of Christ, the initiated would have understood these to be mytho-historic legends, relating to the death of the Son of God at the beginning of the world. In other words, the crucifixion scene belonged not to the End of Days, but to the Beginning of Days. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL OF THIS leads to an intriguing hypothesis that Jesus-the-man was the lead actor in an ancient Passion play, which celebrated the beginning of life on Earth; and consequently that the Christian gospels represent an adaptation of this Passion play. A controversial theory? Perhaps so. It can be stated with certainty, however, that the celebrations this Easter (and every Easter) relate to a mystery of Alpha and Omega the Beginning and the End. On the one hand, the dying Christ evokes the sacred mystery of the Beginning; whilst on the other hand, the rising Christ encapsulates the sacred mystery of the End the hope of all souls that they will, one day, return to the Source. As we enter a new millennium, the questions which we must ask are: what was that Source, did it really create life on Earth, and how might we return to it? As an old Sumerian sage used to say, ³Let the wise teach the mystery to the wise.² ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright Alan F. Alford; adapted from his book When The Gods Came Down, published by Hodder & Stoughton (UK) on 6th April at £20.00. Available by mail order from Eridu Books (http://www.eridu.co.uk). 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