Christian bigots! We well know the angry, fiery glance with which you receive truths shocking to your prejudices; but it is time you should be told in plain terms, that this divine Testament upon which Paul comments with so much respect and veneration, and of the spirit whereof he declares himself an able minister, was no other than the FAMOUS ATHENIAN TESTAMENT, the archetype of the sibyline books of the Romans, and which was older than the time of Solon. After the abolition of the Athenian superstition, this testament was found to be a legitimate child of theology, being filled with the grossest impostures. Paul tells us that he had the happy knack of being "all things to all men;" but his pretended veneration for this sacred volume of the Greeks, was a masterly stroke of policy, and extremely well calculated to secure his good reception amongst them. The word new, as we find it in the conundrums of Paul, and prefixed to the modern Testament, is easily accounted for by any person who is at all acquainted with the shameless falsifications and interpolations of those who fabricated our religion. Thus did the famous Athenian Testament become not only the prototype of the sibyline* books, but that of the new will of the Jewish deity also; whereof the writings attributed to this Paul formed a large portion, at that subsequent period when the approved collection was voted to be the "Word of God."
* The sibyline verses of the Romans are known to have
existed as far back as the time of Tarquinius Priscus, 717
years b.c.; they are quoted by the fathers from Tertullian,
in the second, to the Christian writer, Lactantius, in the
fourth century. They relate the whole story of Christ's
incarnation, miracles, death, and resurrection, in almost
the same words as the gospels.
In regard to this miscellany, the Manicheans say that it was formed from scraps of legends and traditions which the itinerant fathers happened to pick up in their journeyings in the eastern countries, in search of "gospel truth." "Thus some parts would be, as we find them, Indian, some Persian, some Egyptian, etc., etc., all jumbled together, and forming, after undergoing the required fittings and alterations, the mass which we now possess. Thus from India came the murder of the Innocents; from all quarters of the heathen world came the Trinity, the crucifixion of Christ, the Lord Sol, and Iao, born at the winter solstice, and triumphing over the powers of hell, or cold and darkness, and rising into light or glory, as the Regenerator and Savior, at the vernal equinox: from the Egyptian—perhaps the Eleusinian mysteries, came the worship of the virgin and child; and from all the countries of the east, the miraculous conception."
On a careful examination of the quirks and quibbles of St. Paul, it plainly appears that he had some smattering of the Pagan mysteries; and just as it suited his interest for the time being, or the degree of knowledge in his auditors, he used the exoteric or esoteric doctrines; the former was adapted for street-preaching, and bamboozling the long-eared multitude; and the latter was used only when he was addressing the initiated few, some of whom were, in all probability, playing the same game as himself.* He designates these mysteries as being "shadows of heavenly things;" and "patterns of things in the heavens" (Hebrews viii., 5, and ix., 23), meaning, unquestionably, astronomical truths concealed from the million, under the veil of allegory; for that word is used by him, and he frequently makes use of the term veil. St. Barnabas, in his Gospel, denies the truth of Paul's exoteric doctrine, declaring that no person called Christ did actually and bona fide die upon the cross: hence the quarrel between the two; and from this cause was Barnabas' Gospel rejected. In further proof that there were two doctrines in use, the ostensible and the hidden, Jesus is made to say, Matthew xiii., 11, "To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven." This compliment could be addressed to none but such as were initiated in the symbolical worship of the sun, and other celestial bodies; whilst to the rabble multitude the secret was concealed under metaphor or parable, in order that, "hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand; and seeing, ye shall see and not perceive." (Acts xxviii., 26.) Paul, in his epistle to the Ephesians (iii., 4), boasts of a knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which he says in the 5th verse, "was not in other ages made known to the sons of men." Now, this could not possibly allude to Jesus of the New Testament, with whom, as some of the fathers have assumed, Paul was contemporary; and therefore, in speaking of "other ages" it inevitably follows that he was alluding to a Gentile divinity, a Christ ** whose name had belonged to the heathen mysteries, in "ages" long prior to the reputed time of Jesus. In the 16th chapter of the Romans, Paul again lets out the secret in the 25th and 26th verses, where he speaks of "his gospel," and the preaching of Jesus Christ, "according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began." What mystery of Christ can he mean, that was thus kept secret since the world began? He assuredly alludes to the esoteric doctrines of the Egyptian priests of Osiris; the Eleusinian mysteries; the Bacchanal orgies; and to all the ancient mythoses in which the sun, under many different names, was the secret object of adoration in all the countries of the east, as the glorious savior who annually redeems the world from the reign of cold and darkness; and of whose mysterious worship Paul had gained some knowledge.
* He makes a plain confession of having two gospels, in his
Epistle to the Galatians, ii., 2. The "cloven tongues" so
much spoken of, designated those who were capable of holding
forth the exoteric, or esotoric doctrine, as occasion might
require. Paul's tongue appears to have been cloven into more
than two parts.
** Did not Cicero, when he travelled in Greece, find
inscriptions on monuments to many Christs?
In the reign of Adrian, the Egyptian priests of the idol Priapus, were called the bishops of Christ. Priapus was a symbol of the generative power of the sun. Socrates and Sozomen say, that when the temple of this god was destroyed, the monogram of Christ was found beneath the foundation.
"We speak wisdom," says he, "to them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world." Certainly not; for his secret doctrine was the celestial theosophy, or astronomy in disguise; but as these mysteries were known only to the initiated few, they were wisdom to them alone. But when these truth-conveying allegories were spoken to the uninitiated rabble, they were received in the exoteric, or literal sense, which Paul elsewhere calls "foolishness;" yet nothing is so common in the present day as that same foolishness. None but minds who not only choose, but are determined to be deceived, can resist the obvious meaning conveyed in his Epistle to the Philippians, iii., 20. "For our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ." That is, the return of the Lord the Sun to the zodiacal signs of spring and summer, when he alone is truly the savior.* That even the fable of the flood is an astronomical allegory, is proven in 1st Peter iii., where the writer, speaking of the ark, wherein the "eight souls were saved by water," concludes the parables thus,—"the like FIGURE hereunto even baptism doth now save us."
* As the sun is the only true physical savior of everything
that has life upon this globe, so is a free printing press
the true moral and intellectual savior of the human race.
Thus it is an astronomical key that lays open the secret arcanum of all that Paul, or any other of the New Testament writers say about "Christ and heavenly things;" for these, when the veil of allegory is withdrawn, stand confessed in the Sun,* (the Mithras, or Mediator) moon, stars, the elements and seasons, the deification of which formed the occult astro-theology which was the basis of all the religions of the east; and from which Christianism is only a distorted emanation.
* Neither Origen nor Tertullian attempts to prove the
existence of Jesus Christ on historical documents, and to
establish his birth and death on unquestionable authority.