Such being the environment of the Jewish residents of Alexandria, they soon acquired the vernacular and adopted the religion of the Greeks, who, having ever attached to their incarnate saviours the title signifying the Christ, or the anointed, were known as Christians. Encouraged
by the liberal policy of Philadelphus, the second Ptolemy, a body of their learned men, who had been educated in the Greek schools, founded a college for the education of their own people, which institution was ultimately known as the University of Alexandria. Under the auspices of Philadelphus the professors of that institution rendered their Hebrew sacred records into the Greek language, which translation is known as the Septuagint, or Alexandrian version of the Old Testament.
Having acquired from the Egyptian astrologers the arts of healing, thaumaturgy and necromancy, and teaching them in their school, the professors of the Jewish college of Alexandria assumed the title of Essenes, or Therapeutae, the Egyptian and Greek words signifying Doctors, Healers or Wonder Workers. Possessed of the sad and gloomy characteristics of their race, they adopted the "Contemplative Life," or asceticism of the Oriental Gnosticism, from which they derived the name of Ascetics. Founding a church for the propagation of their peculiar tenets, those who were set apart for the ministry assumed the title of Ecclesiastics. Inculcating rigid temperance and self-denial among their people, they were known as Enchratites, Nazarites or Abstainers; and the more devout among them retiring to monasteries, or to the solitude of caves and other secluded places, were also
designated as Monks, Cenobites, Friars, Eremites, Hermits or Solitaries.
The time having arrived, according to the cyclic teachings of Astral worship, for the manifestation of the tenth and last incarnation of God Sol, or, in other words, to, give a new name to the mythical genius of the sun, the professors of the Jewish school of Alexandria is resolved to inaugurate their own form of worship. While retaining the same title under which they had paid homage to Serapis and known as Christians, Essenes or Therapeutae, they substituted for their Christ the name of the Grecian Bacchus, which, composed of the letters ΙΗΣ, signifies Yes, Ies or Jes. In composing their version of the Gospel story, having, like their race, no inventive genius, they appropriated that of Serapis as its basis and laid its scene in the land of their ancestry, but inconsistently retained the sign of the cross and the phraseology connected there with, which, having special reference to the Nile River and its annual inundation, had no application whatever to the sterile land of Judea. Selecting what they conceived to be the best from other versions of the Gospel story, and assuming the title of Eclectics, they designated their system as the Eclectic Philosophy. In proof of the eclectic character of the Gospel and Epistles of ancient Christianity, we refer to the Asceticism inculcated therein, which, derived
from the Oriental Gnosticism, we find perpetuated in the scriptures of modern Christianity; we also refer to the miracle of converting water into wine, taken from the Gospel story of Bacchus, and to the statements that the Saviour was the son of a carpenter and was hung between two thieves, copied from the story of Christna, the Eighth, Avatar of the East Indian astrolatry. Thus we see that, although the scene of the Gospel story of ancient Christianity was laid in the land of Judea, its authors having adopted a Greek version of that story as its basis, given a Greek title and name to their Messiah, perpetuated a Greek name for their sect and quoted exclusively from the Septuagint, or Greek version of the Old Testament, the facts show conclusively that it was not Jews of Judea, but Hellenized Jews of Alexandria, who were the real authors of the ancient Christianity.
[THE PROPHECIES.]
The clergy having ever claimed that the prophecies are Divine revelations of events yet to occur, and having incessantly agitated society by preaching their speedy fulfillment, we propose to expose the fallacy of their teachings by showing that these scriptures are not the records of future events, Divinely reavealed, but that they originated with the founders of Astral worship, who predicated
them upon predetermined events of their own concoction, relative to the general judgment, and setting up of the kingdom of heaven, which were to occur as the finale of the plan of redemption and from which were derived the doctrines of second adventism; and, in determining the exact time when then were to occur, we have but to prove that it was coincident with the conclusion of the last half of the grand cycle of 12,000 years, which, as we have shown, was dedicated to man as the duration of his race on earth.
As evidence that the founders of the Jewish or ancient Christianity believed, like the votaries of other forms of Astral worship, that the prophecies were soon to be fulfilled, we find that the New Testament, of the original version of which they were the authors, is replete with such texts as "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," Matt. iv. 17; "There be some standing here which shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom," Matt. xxi. 28; "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand," Mark i. 15. That the original version of the New Testament was composed when the Vernal Equinox was in the sign of Aries we are assured by reason of the fact that it inculcates homage to the Lord under the symbol of the Lamb; and that it was during the last, or 30th degree of that sign, can readily be proven by