According to the astral theology of ancient religious systems, this cycle of 608 (or 600) years represented a Messianic period, at the completion of which a new messiah or avatar or savior was born upon the earth.
The one prior to Jesus was Cyrus, who gave orders for the building of the temple at Jerusalem just six hundred years before Christ. Manatheo speaks of a “Cyrus,” son of Cambyses, first king of the twenty-second dynasty, but no Cyrus appears in the Egyptian annals. The biblical Cyrus is only another form of Osiris, and is in reality a sun-savior. The Arabs used the same system, for their Mohammed comes in just about six hundred years after Christ, and their era commences with their commencement of a new year, which dates from 622 A. D. Even our latest era—Anno Domini—did not come into general use until about one thousand years after the event it is said to commemorate had passed. This epoch was introduced into Italy in the sixth century by Dionysius the Little, a Roman abbot, and it began to be used in Gaul in the eighth, but was not generally followed until the ninth century. From extant charters in England it is known to have been used a little before the ninth century, but it did not come into common use for a century later. Time was, for centuries after the alleged birth of Christ, calculated from January 1 in the 4th of the 194th Olympiad, the 753d A. u. c. of the foundation of Rome, and 4714th of the Julian period.
The astro-theological foundation of the New Testament being demonstrated, the actual date of the compilation of the matter becomes of secondary importance, inasmuch as celestial phenomena are as true today as they were when first used to symbolize the intellectual and spiritual nature of man. As all nations that have any pretensions to be considered civilized have had the same phenomena for their religious systems, and as the path of the solar orb has been utilized for the history of its various personifications, the question arises, Which out of the many messiahs or sun-saviors are true, and which are false? As has been already noted, the leading incidents in the memoirs of Osiris, Buddha, Chrishna, and Jesus are identical in conception, but more or less varied in expression according to the idiosyncrasies of the writers. The logical and true method is to regard one and all as allegorical symbols, clothed not merely with an eclectic intellectuality, but vested with a moral power that can affect the heart and conscience of men for good.
The parentage of Christianism is in Egyptian Osirianism, while that of what we understand as Judaism is attributable to Chaldean sources, both converging to a common centre and finding a new expression through two diverse orders, yet both equally versed in Cabalistic science, modified by the eclectic influences which were active at the period of their production.
The ecclesiastical party, for reasons which are well understood, never allowed the laity to be taught other than the literal and surface meaning, while the mystic brotherhoods were forbidden by the rules of their orders to make public the real meaning of the symbols, of which only the highest degree of initiates were allowed to know.
Mr. William Oxley further thinks that if it were possible to raise the veil that obscures the historic past it would be found that the divine-human ideal figure of Jesus Christ is the combination of the Western Hesus and Eastern Christus. This accounts for the title, while the incidents in the life of the historic Apollonius of Tyana would supply material for the personal narrative. In fact, the nervous desire of ecclesiastical reviewers to suppress or explain away the too patent similarity between his and the Gospel life of Jesus is a half admission of there being a substratum of truth in the allegation.
Oxley says: “Against the claim for a very high antiquity in regard to even the Old Testament, we are confronted with the fact that all the Hebrew words used in its compilation have their roots in the Arabic language (or Aramaic, which closely borders upon the Arabic); and what is not less strange is, that many of the so-called apocryphal writings of the Christians are still extant in the same language. As Christian productions this fact is inexplicable, but considered as Chrestonian tales or legends, it is easy to understand, seeing that they relate to the humanized deity of that geographical district.”
He concludes that Christianity, considered as a living spiritual truth, is the gradual development of a system of thought, and is the resultant of the highest and best conception of the human mind as an ideal of purity and every virtue that it is capable of expressing; and, further, that this ideal was presented to different nations long before the Christian one was known, and that it was the literalizing or personification of this written ideal that afforded conditions for the superstructure of ecclesiastical systems, dependent on a separate caste of men set apart for the purpose of its support and propaganda. As these men were able to grasp and wield power over the intellect, and even persons, of their votaries, so in exact ratio the spiritual and intellectual ideal (which is not a monad, but universal) was lost, and the assumed historical personage is exalted at the expense of spiritual liberty and the birthright prerogative of humanity. In short, the supposed Founder of Christianity is not an historical personage, but an old ideal presented in a newer and better and higher form than its predecessors; and, further, this ideal is not dependent upon a past historical, but is held up as the standard of attainment by humanity; and as each realizes the truth within him or herself, then they will find that the real “Christ” is not and was not an historical person, but a spiritual life-giving principle within themselves.
The records of history show that a dramatic Christ has come down the stream of time from the earliest periods; from India through Egypt, China, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Arabia, Asia Minor, and Palestine, until the present time—from the Buddha of the Tauric constellations to the Aries and Pisces of the modern Christ; and all his manifestations possess the essential characteristics of the one sun-god. Midway between Buddhists and the Christians appears the sublimely idealistic mythology of Greece, shining all over with the glory of the solar legend. Very prominent in this system is the god-man Prometheus. The name is synonymous with Logos, which is used in the fourth Gospel in reference to Jesus, and signifies a demi-deity; and Prometheus means Providence, and is represented by the all-seeing Eye. We select him rather than other notable impersonations, for the purpose of referring to the wonderful Greek drama written by Æschylus (Prometheus Bound), which was acted in the theatre of Athens at least five hundred years before the Christian era. The plot was derived from material even then of great antiquity, and contains all the essential features of the modern “Passion Play” so beautifully portrayed upon canvas in our churches and eloquently described by our ministers of the present day. No author ever displayed greater powers of poetry in supporting through this Promethean play the august character of this divine sufferer. We give a few lines from Potter’s translation.:
“I will speak,
Not as upbraiding them, but my own gifts
Commending. ’Twas I who brought sweet hope
To inhabit in their hearts; I brought
The fire of heaven to animate their clay,
And through the clouds of barbarous ignorance
Diffused the beams of knowledge. In a word,
Prometheus taught each useful art to man.”