Dear All, There follows the first part of a special three-part 'Serialisation' which I have written concerning the Mysteries of Christianity. The second part will be sent tomorrow (23rd April) and the third and final part will be sent on 24th April (Easter Monday). 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 OK, here it comes... Was Jesus Christ put to death at the beginning of the world? They are perhaps 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 the 2000th year of Christianity, a relatively unknown British author has emerged with a startling new theory which embraces all aspects of religion. In a new series, beginning today, Alan F. Alford presents a controversial opinion concerning the Biblical stories of God and Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Whilst the Daily xxxxxx does not necessarily endorse all of Alan Alfordıs views, we believe that they are well thought-out and deserve a proper airing. IN THE BEGINNING was the Word, and the Word was toward the God, and the Word was a god. He was with God in the beginning.ı So begins the gospel of John the fourth book of the New Testament with one of the most esoteric commentaries ever written on the origins of Jesus Christ, alias the Wordı. But this Jesus Christ, whom John wrote about, is not the Christ with whom we are most familiar. On the contrary, John was writing about Jesus Christıs primeval alter ego a godı who had existed alongside the heavenly Father at the very beginning of time, before the creation of the world as we know it. The gospel of John suggests that this pre-human Christ had descended from Heaven to bring light into the darkness of the world not two thousand years ago, but millions of years ago. According to Johnıs gospel and the letters of Paul, the pre-human Jesus Christ had been instrumental in the creation of the world and all things in it, including mankind itself. As many of us prepare to celebrate the 2000th anniversary of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is appropriate to ask ourselves whether we really understand the crucial event at the heart of the Christian calendar. Was Christ really a man who was put to death two thousand years ago, or was he a godı who was put to death at the beginning of time? Should we perhaps be celebrating not just the saving of mankind but also the creation of mankind and all life on Earth? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- IT IS OFTEN taken for granted that Christianity is founded upon mysteries. In the Catholic Mass, for example, the bread and the wine are transformed into the body and the blood of Jesus Christ by the supernatural presence of the Lord. This is a great mystery. But the entire Christian theology is in fact a mystery from start to finish from the mystery of Christıs birth to the Virgin Mary, to the mystery of Christıs miracles, to the ultimate mystery of Christıs bodily resurrection following his death by crucifixion. Above all, there is the mystery of how the shedding of Christıs blood managed to wash away the sins of mankind and offer us all access to the blessed kingdom of God. In addition to these mysteries, Christianity is also founded upon the mysteries of the Old Testament: the mystery of the sin which mankind incurred in the Garden of Eden, the mystery of how God created Adam and Eve, and the ultimate mystery concerning God himself, whom we might well describe as Mystery Personifiedı. All of these mysteries are supposed to be beyond the human ken unfathomable and irresolvable and the Church thus dictates that faith in God should be the be all and end allı of the religious quest. TWO THOUSAND years ago, however, when the Church was being founded, members of the well-educated classes did not seek religious faith but religious knowledge. Throughout the ancient world, an élite group of young men pursued their religious quest within mystery schoolsı, in which they aspired to learn the hidden secrets of the mysteries. During the 1st century ad, when Christianity emerged in ancient Rome, it did so against furious competition from mystery religions such as Mithraism and gnostic Christianity. Throughout the ancient world, mystery religions flourished in lands as far apart as Greece, Egypt, India and Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). In ancient Greece, the intellegentsia were able to pick and choose between the Mysteries of Demeter, the Mysteries of the Cabiri, the Mysteries of Sabazius, the Mysteries of Apollo, the Mysteries of Orpheus, the Mysteries of Hecate and the Mysteries of Dionysus. WHAT WERE THE SECRETS of these ancient mystery schools? Unfortunately for the modern aspirant, the rules of the ancient schools forbade their initiates from revealing publicly what they had learned. This code of silence in many cases under threat of mortal punishment has been maintained unfailingly over thousands of years. Modern scholars find themselves almost totally in the dark concerning the ancient mystery rituals and their religious meaning. What we do know, however, is intriguing. The most common themes, it would seem, were a bright light entering into the darkness of the underworld (i.e. into the subterranean region), and the arrival of a divine child, often in the midst of a brilliant fire. These themes echo the Christian mysteries, notably those of the primeval Christ bringing light into the darkness of the world, and the Christ child being born miraculously to the Virgin Mary. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- WAS THE EARLY CHURCH itself a mystery school? During the 1st century ad, prospective candidates for the Church had to go through a probationary period, a doctrinal instruction, a memorising of words, and a ritual baptism all things which were characteristic of mystery schools at that time. According to a letter written by Clement one of the early Church fathers the Church did indeed protect certain secrets, which Clement referred to as things not to be utteredı and that truth hidden by seven veilsı. In the same letter, to a man named Theodore, Clement declared that Mark had composed a more spiritual Gospelı which had been left to the church in Alexandria; there it was most carefully guarded, he said, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.ı Other letters by early Church fathers round out a picture of a Church which indeed began as a mystery school. Chrysostom, a Bishop of Constantinople during the 4th century ad, summed it up in one of his letters: I wish to speak openlyı, he wrote, but I dare not, on account of those who are not initiated.ı And in the same era, Cyril, a Bishop of Jerusalem, wrote: the Church reveals its mysteries to those who have advanced beyond the class of Catechumens [initiates for baptism]; we employ obscure terms with others.ı THE APOSTLE PAUL the man whom many regard as the true founder of Christianity was almost certainly an initiate into the ancient mysteries. In his letters, Paul claimed to have knowledge of the mystery of Christı, the mystery of Christ and the Churchı, the mystery of the gospelı, and the mystery of God and Christı. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote: we speak the wisdom of God in a mysteryı, whilst in his second letter to the Corinthians he described himself as one who had been caught upı to the Third Heavenı where he heard unspeakable words, which it is unlawful for a man to utterı. The gnostic teacher Valentinus indeed confirmed that Paul had been initiated into a secret doctrine of God, and suggested that Paul had initiated others but only the select few who were spiritually matureı. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT WAS THE MYSTERY of Christ referred to by Paul? Unfortunately for modern-day Christians, the New Testament has been composed according to the rules of the mystery schools, and it thus avoids explicit disclosure of its secrets. It does, however, make allusions to its secrets for those who have ears to hearı. This it does using code-words, metaphors and symbols which mean nothing to outsiders, but everything to the initiated. The parables taught by Jesus Christ in the gospels are a case in point. In the letter of Cyril, referred to earlier, the Bishop of Jerusalem wrote: The Lord spoke in parables to his hearers in general; but to his disciples he explained in private the parables and allegories which he spoke in public.ı In other words, the parables contained a secret meaning, which was not readily apparent to the uninitiated. The same point is made in the gospel of Mark, where Jesus told his disciples: ³The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those who are on the outside, all things are done in parables; so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand.² We should recognise in these words the classic stratagem used by the mystery schools to withhold their secrets from those on the outsideı. What, then, was the secret of the parables? A significant clue is provided in the gospel of Matthew, where Jesus was made to say: ³I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.² Might the true secrets of Christianity thus relate to the beginning of the world? The letters of Paul suggest that this was indeed the case. Time and time again, Paul alluded in his letters to a secret which related to the beginning of the world. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote: we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery that which was hidden which God ordained for our glory before the world began.ı Similarly in his Letter to the Ephesians, Paul wrote of the mystery which has been hidden in God since the beginning of the world.ı And in his Letter to the Romans, Paul referred to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the world beganı. Inevitably, one is reminded of the opening verses of Johnıs gospel: In the beginning was the Wordı, wrote John, and the Word was Christ a godı who was with God in the beginningı. Was the true mystery of Jesus Christ a mystery which transpired at the beginning of the world? Did the mystery appertain to the primeval alter ego of Jesus Christ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ONE OF THE MOST remarkable things about the gospels is the mystery therein concerning the identity of Jesus Christ. It is as if the four gospels constitute a mystery play in which the characters spend their time speculating on the identity of Jesus Christ. Was he the Son of God, the Son of David, the Messiah called Christ, the reincarnation of Elijah, or was he just another prophet? For the most part, Jesus neither confirmed, nor denied, any of these rumours as to his identity. But what he did say, repeatedly, was that he was Ben Adamah (or in Aramaic Bar Enash) commonly translated in the Bible as Son of Manı. What does this title Son of Man actually mean? According to one expert, it simply stressed the mortality of the human condition, thereby emphasising the idea that Jesus had incarnated into human flesh. But this does not explain why Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Manı even in his future role of descending from Heaven at the End of Days. That Jesus should have emphasised his human-like mortality in such an eschatological context seems, quite frankly, to be an absurd idea. It transpires, however, that the title Ben Adamah (or Bar Enash) had a different meaning for those initiates who had the ears to hearı. This ambiguity arose from the fact that the word Ben could mean both sonı and seedı. Consequently, the title Ben Adamah could also be understood as Seed of Manı or Seed of Mankindı. Now the expression Seed of Mankind does not necessarily relate to the seed which man produces, but rather relates to the seed which produced man. Indeed it is here, in this latter possibility, that we find the absolute essence the absolute corner stone of the ancient Christian mysteries. It is, after all, written in the gospel of John and the letters of Paul that all things on Earth were created through Jesus Christ. It thus follows that Jesus Christ in his primeval, pre-human form was indeed the Seed of Mankind, i.e. the seed which produced mankind. CONSIDER NOW the famous parable known as The Parable of the Sower. In the gospel of Luke, the parable is related by Jesus as follows: ³A sower went out to sow his seed, and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and it was trodden down... And some fell upon a rock, and as soon as it was sprung up it withered away... And some fell among thorns, and the thorns choked it. And other seed fell on good soil, and sprang up, and yielded fruit a hundred times more than was sown... He who has ears to hear, let him hear.² Do we have ears to hearı and to understand this parable? The disciples of Jesus were slow to catch on and so they asked him to explain it further. Jesus then responded as follows: ³This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the Word of God.² Once again, we are reminded of the opening verses of Johnıs gospel: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward the God, and the Word was a god. He was with God in the beginning.ı According to John, this Wordı of God was the primeval Christ, whilst according to The Parable of the Sower, the Word of Godı was the seedı sown by God. Putting these clues together, one can see clearly that the parable related to the beginning of the world, when God had sown seeds in the Earth for both good and evil men. And the means which God had used to sow these seeds of men was the primeval god Jesus Christ known to initiates as the Seed of Mankind. Lest there be any doubt about this, another parable The Parable of the Weeds expresses the cosmic allegory thus: ³He that sowed the good seed is Jesus Christ. The field is the world...² ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- HOW WAS IT that the Wordı of God sowed the seeds of mankind (and all other living things) in the Earth? What was this Word and, by implication, what was the primeval godı known as Jesus Christ, the Word? As far as Christians are concerned, the primeval Christ was a pure Spirit-being who assisted God in the creation of the world. And as for the creation of the world, Christians regard this as a supernatural or metaphysical event something not to be fathomed by the mind of man. Indeed, from the very first verses of the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, the impression is given that God (and by the same token Christ) was a non-physical force, whose Spirit moved mysteriously upon the face of the waters. But was this really the case? It is noticeable that, once the book of Genesis moves on from its six-day cosmogony, God becomes more and more physical and violent in nature. In Genesis chapters 6-9, for example, we find God bringing cataclysm to Earth via the Great Deluge. Then, in Genesis 11, we read that God went down to the Earth in order to scatter the people who were building the Tower of Babel. Next, in Genesis 19, we find God hurling brimstone and fire down from the Sky upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And this was only the beginning. As one reads through the Old Testament, the image of the supernatural God of Genesis 1 evaporates before oneıs eyes. A typical passage, found in the book of Deuteronomy has God declare that: ³A fire is kindled in mine anger, and it shall burn unto the depths of Sheol [the underworld]. It shall consume the Earth with her abundance, and shall set on fire the foundations of the mountains.² As for the mysterious Word of God, the book of Jeremiah has God ask: ³Is not my Word like a fire and like a hammer that breaketh the Rock in pieces?² The Word of God thus appears to be a fiery and cataclysmic force. This note of catastrophism should not surprise us. In fact, the entire ancient Near East regarded the Word of Godı as a creative but catastrophic force. In the Sumerian texts, for example, the goddess Aruru was referred to with the lines: Her Word shakes the heavens; her utterance is a howling storm.ı Another Sumerian text described The Word of Anuı as a great storm which would make the Earth shake and the heavens tremble. Ancient Egyptian traditions expressed a very similar idea. One legend recalled how the creator-god had uttered Seven Wordsı which had supposedly structured the world. The Egyptians believed that to repeat these Seven Words out aloud would bring about the catastrophic end of the world. But the most intriguing reference to the Wordı is found in the ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts (a collection of prayers for the dead), where it is stated somewhat cryptically: This is the Word which was in darkness; fire is about it that which contains the efflux of Osiris...ı Other verses elaborate on this particular passage by equating the Word with something which had landed on the desert of sand having fallen physically from the ex Sky-god Osiris. Might these ancient texts give away the great secret of the Christian scriptures? Could it be that Christ the Word was not a spiritual force but a physical force something which came down from Heaven at the beginning of time and seeded the Earth by physical means? And, if so, what would this revelation of Christ the Son imply for our concept of God the Father? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- IN THE BEGINNING, God created Heaven and Earth, according to the book of Genesis. But how did he do it physically or non-physically? And who or what was God anyway? All is a mystery. Who were Adam and Eve, and how was it that God created them in his own imageı? This too is a great mystery. All we are told is that God created Adam from clay and Eve from the rib of Adam, and then expelled both of them from the Garden of Eden. But even if we understand this tale as an allegory for a paradise lost, it does not tell us where this paradise was, and it provides us with only the barest details concerning who our ancestors, Adam and Eve, actually were. To make matters worse, a recent survey revealed that less than three per cent of leading churchmen in the UK believed in the creation story as described in the book of Genesis, and only one in five of them believed in the story of Adam and Eve. These statistics suggest that the vast majority of Churchmen are as much in the dark as the rest of us. The teachers of Christianity no longer understand the mysteries on which the Bible is based. To the superstitious man of yesteryear, this was not a problem, because faith in the scriptures and their mysteries was the be all and end allı of the religious quest. Only the heretics dared to ask for knowledge of the mysteries. Today, however, the Church faces a new challenge. Twenty-first century man is inquisitive, sceptical and well-educated, and will not be fobbed off with an impenetrable mystery. Instead, he seeks knowledge of who or what God actually was, and knowledge of how God created mankind in his own image. In short, twenty-first century man demands to be initiated into the secrets of the religious mysteries. I CONTEND that the secrets of Judaeo-Christianity can indeed be cracked even at this late stage in the game if we utilise the information which is already in the public domain. For more than a century now, archaeologists and scholars have been recovering and deciphering long lost religious texts from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. In the legends of these peoples, we find numerous parallels to events in the Bible; there is a battle of the gods, a creation of Heaven and Earth, a creation of mankind in the image of the gods, and the destruction of mankind via a Great Deluge from the heavens. In short, a considerable light has been shone on the origins of the Biblical scriptures. What emerges from these ancient pagan texts is an amazing tale which has been occulted from the Bible as we know it. It is a tale of a physical God who suffered a physical death at the beginning of time, and only then resurrected himself metaphysically to become the Spiritual God who appears in Genesis chapter 1. This pagan story as yet untold in modern times bears an extraordinary resemblance to that told in the Christian gospels. Indeed it provides, when properly decoded, a perfect scientific understanding of the Christian mysteries. More than this, it leads to an astonishing but totally plausible theory concerning the events which transpired in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. But before this theory may be developed it is first necessary to probe a little deeper into the origins of religion as we know it. If we seek to understand the mysteries of the Bible, we must first seek to stand under their foundations. We set our course, then, towards the civilisations of ancient Egypt and Sumer, where familiar Biblical legends were first recorded in writing some five thousand years ago. It it here that we will discover the secrets of the day When The Gods Came Down. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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). TOMORROW: PART TWO: 'THE SECRETS OF THE GODS REVEALED'. NOTE: You are on this Mailing List as a result of your correspondences with me via my books and website but I am conscious of the fact that my ideas have changed significantly in recent years and I suspect that some of you will no longer wish to be involved with my continuing research. If this is the case and if you do not wish to receive this Serialisation or any further updates from me, then please refer to the email sent yesterday which can be used to request REMOVAL from my Mailing List.
