The Bible Is A Forgery

The Bible is not the word of God.

Jesus did not write the Bible.

Nor did God.

It is the work of priests appointed by the Emperors of the Roman Empire who were ordered to create a hierarchical centralised state religion in order to control the politics and religions of the Roman Empire.

The Bible is a book put together in order to serve the Empire, not Christ.

To accept the validity of the Bible, one has to accept that the same people who killed Christ were the ones who wrote the book about him after his death.

The true teachings of Christ in the Gnostic Gospels were burnt by the Roman Empire under penalty of death for their possession.

If you read the Gnostic Gospels and the works of the Gnostic Christ you find such things as ;

1) Yahweh / Jehovah is a demon called Yaldaboath

2) That Christ rejected Yahweh / Jehovah and taught his followers two teachings - the exoteric one for the spirutually unenlightened ( The Psychics and Hylics led by Peter and the Petrian Succession ) and an esoteric Gnosis to the spiritually enlightened ( The Pneumatics who were led by John who are the Johannine Succession of the Spirit )

As one of the comments on the article states ;

Paul turned the Teaching of Jesus upside down through the doctrine of "vicarious atonement" and the pagan-Egyptian, metaphysical doctrine of the raising of a dead physical body from the grave; when Jesus taught the Doctrine of "resurrection" as a Doctrine of 'Rebirth'; hence the conflict with both the Sadducees & the Pharisees in the first place.

ONE consequence of this ONE Doctrinal error was the extermination of tens of thousands of Albigensians.

A second consequence was the Holocaust.


3) That Christians are not Christians as they reject the Gnosis of Christ - they are Constantians in that they worship the state religion created by Constantine and hence reject the Gnosis that allows them to discover ' The Christ within' and that 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within' and hence experience spiritual rebirth and release from material captivity.

This article adds more detail to the forgery thesis ;

freethoughtnation.com...

Some 80 years after lawyer Joseph Wheless wrote his classic Forgery in Christianity, it seems some - or at least one - mainstream scholars are catching up to the fact that the New Testament is not what it appears to be and what hundreds of millions have been taught around the world for the past 2,000 or so years.

Published in 1930, Wheless's work - which was a major influence on my own after I found it on a bookshelf some 20 years ago - essentially consists of quoting the authoritative Catholic Encyclopedia's admissions against interest about the New Testament books and epistles, as well as the writings of the early Church fathers. Although the Catholic Encyclopedia ("CE") does not go so far as to admit that Christianity itself is forged, its editors were fairly honest in their scholarly analyses of some of the individual texts. Obviously, in order to maintain the party line and their vocations, CE editors couldn't go so far as New Testament scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman has done in his new book Forged: Writing in the Name of God, but even he doesn't go as far as Wheless did, which was to call the entire gospel tale into question, including the very historicity of its main character, Jesus Christ.

Yet, Ehrman's hat in the ring of scholarship basically proving textual forgery is a step in the right direction. If one truly studies the literature from the Mythicist School beginning at the latest in the 18th century, one will find as much merit in it as in this "new" analysis of many New Testament texts as forged. It's just a very small step, really, when one realizes how much of the NT is bogus and how little credible, scientific evidence exists that the gospel tale actually took place when and where claimed or that its main characters were even "historical."

The Article continues online.


Moderator note: Please don't quote more than 3 paragraphs.

Does this mean that the rapture and the beginning of the end of the world won't be happening this Saturday? Dang it, I was planning on partying with strippers and going out with a bang.

While I do appreciate facts, it seems this post is another useless attack on Christianity, for whatever reason. For centuries, attacks have been made against the Christian church. ATS members spend a lot of their time and talents working up these attacks. I suppose there is some cleansing that they feel if they get it off their chest, but I have yet to see any substantial information.

Turn the other cheek
Give to Ceasar what is Ceasars

Probably some things I'd put in there if I wanted passive taxpaying subjects.

Originally posted by Jim Scott
While I do appreciate facts, it seems this post is another useless attack on Christianity, for whatever reason. For centuries, attacks have been made against the Christian church. ATS members spend a lot of their time and talents working up these attacks. I suppose there is some cleansing that they feel if they get it off their chest, but I have yet to see any substantial information.

The Christian Church for centuries hunted down and murdered millions of people who were taught and passed on the Gnosis - from those who were taught the Gnosis by Christ to those like the Cathars who became aware of the Gnosis again and taught it in defiance of the power of the Roman Church.

This is a critique on Christianity, in order to liberate the Gnosis and to finally allow the teachings of the Gnostic Christ to liberate Christians from the lies of the demiurge and the Roman Empire.

The Second Coming of Christ has already occured.

It was the discovery of the lost Gnosis hidden in the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Originally posted by taccj9903
Does this mean that the rapture and the beginning of the end of the world won't be happening this Saturday? Dang it, I was planning on partying with strippers and going out with a bang.

Sorry mate - there wont be any rapture this weekend.

Trying to find the date of the Rapture in the Bible is like trying to find the date of the Rapture in the Readers Digest.

It aint gonna happen.

It never has and never will.

Spiritual liberation comes from the Christ within, not from without.

Originally posted by mayabong
Turn the other cheek
Give to Ceasar what is Ceasars

Probably some things I'd put in there if I wanted passive taxpaying subjects.

Exactly.

If the Bible was written today by Obama and the Congress after they crucified / executed Christ for being a radical freedom fighter / terrorist who fought against the politically correct pharisees and the New World Order / Rome then it would contain similar sentiments.

Gotta pay those taxes.

Give unto Obama what is Obama's.

The New World Order is gods order.

Christ taught that Yaldaboath changed his guises in order to constantly evolve in order to entrap men in his lies - first he assumed the form of Jehovah / Yahweh in Judaism - then he assumed the form of Roman Empire Christianity and then he assumed the form of Islam.

Each are Yaldaboath in a different guise - each designed to entrap men and to hide from men the Gnosis / knowledge that release and liberation are within.

Thats what the Gnostic Christ taught men - how to find liberation from within not via obeying external authority eg a cruel god or a cruel church or cruel priests / rabbis / imams.

reply to post by leejohnbarnes

What do you make of the book " The Mythmaker " by Hyam Maccoby? I read it ten years ago and it made sense to me generally.

reply to post by leejohnbarnes


I agree with everything you wrote except maybe that the bible is a forgery. I think it would be more accurate to say its a collection of writings that were selectively put together in order to promote one particular myth, some of them may be genuine, so it's more a kind of propaganda exercise.

I've never understood how some christians look at the modern version of the bible and believe it to be the infallible word of God. It was put together by men with political agendas and ambitions and then re-interpreted by others with similar motivations along the years. As far as I know God didn't say to leave particular writings out.

If you are a christian, why do you not read all the gospels that were left out of the canon known as the bible?

I don't think we will ever progress as human beings if we stick to the idea that following the static words in one particular book are the key to everything. We have been duped, the answers have been within us all along.

Originally posted by DrHammondStoat
reply to post by leejohnbarnes

 

I agree with everything you wrote except maybe that the bible is a forgery. I think it would be more accurate to say its a collection of writings that were selectively put together in order to promote one particular myth, some of them may be genuine, so it's more a kind of propaganda exercise.

I've never understood how some christians look at the modern version of the bible and believe it to be the infallible word of God. It was put together by men with political agendas and ambitions and then re-interpreted by others with similar motivations along the years. As far as I know God didn't say to leave particular writings out.

If you are a christian, why do you not read all the gospels that were left out of the canon known as the bible?

I don't think we will ever progress as human beings if we stick to the idea that following the static words in one particular book are the key to everything. We have been duped, the answers have been within us all along.

I agree 100 % on what you say

I just didnt think I could type in "The Bible is a Propaganda Excercise mixture of myth and fact " as a thread title and get it all on the page !

Originally posted by TerryMcGuire
reply to post by leejohnbarnes

 

What do you make of the book " The Mythmaker " by Hyam Maccoby? I read it ten years ago and it made sense to me generally.

edit on 17-5-2011 by TerryMcGuire because: (no reason given)

I havent read it - I will look out for it now though.

Thanks for the tip to read it.

"this post is another useless attack on Christianity" - I hate to be blunt or offensive, but there is no such thing as a useless attack on any religion. Religion should be met with hostility and violence. Superstition might be the downfall of man unless we stop it.

Originally posted by Jax27
"this post is another useless attack on Christianity" - I hate to be blunt or offensive, but there is no such thing as a useless attack on any religion. Religion should be met with hostility and violence. Superstition might be the downfall of man unless we stop it.

Worse than the danger of religious dogma is the religious fanatic armed with the weapons of mass destruction of science.

Imagine a President with nuclear bombs inspired by Bible scripture to launch them to start the Apocalypse.

Imagine Al Qaeda armed with nuclear bombs.

Remember George Bush attacking Iraq as God told him to attack Babylon with cruise missiles and jets and tanks.

A religious fanatic with a sword is a threat to society - a religious fanatic in the White House or Parliament armed with nuclear weapons is a threat to the world.

Science provides the religious fanatic with the means to destroy the whole planet in the name of their religion.

reply to post by leejohnbarnes


I to believe that our Bible is a forgery of Gods word. Our Bible and scripture is a human inspiration of Gods words. But that is not all that our Bible is. It is also about different traditions and rituals from specific regions based on their specific traditions, rituals and believes.

Our rituals, believes and traditions are tied to our Gregorian calendar. Other nations fallow different traditions based on a different calendar.

A calendar is a form of control mechanism that a group of people or society fallows. Traditions and rituals are tied to a specific time and dates.

The other part of our Bible is about Gods word. Gods word comes from human inspirations where specific people say that God has spoken to them through different means; like light, dreams, visions, appearing Angles and deeds.

Human inspirations and observations can not be a observable fact that they communicated with thee God. Because thee God that the observers said they saw didn't want to ID them selves by other means then their deeds.

Lord Gods deeds are quite questionable because he demands humans to be good to some and evil to others. Lord God also give property and land and specific rights to he's people. But then goes on to say we are all created equal with equal rights, and that we should all love each other and get along.

How can we be equal and get along if Lord God gives Jews specific rights and the right to kill other people?

Could it be because Lord God is just a made up character based on a Jewish dream?

I like Mark Twain's brief explanation of the bible...

"It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies."

First let me say I am no follower of religion in any form - man made traditions are evil. Second, I am a follower of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. If you wonder what that last phrase means read the Gospel of John. My aim is to give another viewpoint, a historical one, and then at the end show from the scriptures themselves that Gnosticism was considered a danger by the apostles John and Paul.

The earliest origins of Gnosticism are still obscure and disputed, but they probably include influence from Plato, Middle Platonism and Neo-Pythagoreanism academies or schools of thought, and this seems to be true both of the more Sethian Gnostics, and of the Valentinian Gnostics. Further, if we compare different Sethian texts to each other in an attempted chronology of the development of Sethianism during the first few centuries, it seems that later texts are continuing to interact with Platonism. Earlier texts such as Apocalypse of Adam show signs of being pre-Christian and focus on the Seth, third son of Adam and Eve. These early Sethians may be identical to or related to the Notzrim, Ophites or to the sectarian group called the Minuth by Philo. The term "minim" in the Talmud often refers to gnostics, as Friedländer, and before him Krochmal and Grätz, have pointed out. Later Sethian texts such as Zostrianos and Allogenes draw on the imagery of older Sethian texts, but utilize "a large fund of philosophical conceptuality derived from contemporary Platonism, (that is late middle Platonism) with no traces of Christian content." Indeed the doctrine of the "triple-powered one" found in the text Allogenes, as discovered in the Nag Hammadi Library, is "the same doctrine as found in the anonymous Parmenides commentary (Fragment XIV) ascribed by Hadot to Porphyry [...] and is also found in Plotinus' Ennead 6.7, 17, 13-26." (Turner, John (1986). "Sethian Gnosticism: A Literary History" in Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism and Early Christianity. pp. 59.; Aufstieg Und Niedergang Der Romischen Welt/Rise and Decline of the Roman World Bd 21/1 Volume 2; Volume 21 By Hildegard Temporini, Joseph Vogt, Wolfgang Haase Publisher: Walter de Gruyter (December 31, 1983) Language: German ISBN 3-11-008845-2 ISBN 978-3-11-008845-8

At its core, Gnosticism formed a speculative interest in the relationship of the oneness of God to the ‘triplicity’ of his manifestations. It seems to have taken Neoplatonic metaphysics of substance and hypostases [“being”] as a departure point for interpreting the relationship of the “Father” to the “Son” in its attempt to define a new theology. The crisis of the later Roman Empire and move towards the east brought a “new realism” which may have inclined Christians to accept the new theological doctrine A new theological vocabulary capable of explaining this doctrine was created [e.g. homoousios=same essence]. Adopting an idea of Origen’s that easterners would appreciate in their own Sabellianism ( the nontrinitarian belief that the Heavenly Father, Resurrected Son and Holy Spirit are different modes or aspects of one God, as perceived by the believer, rather than three distinct persons in God Himself.) This would point to the infamous theological controversies by Arius against followers of the Greek Alexandrian school, headed by Athanasius. Arius preached that, “before Christ, God was not yet a Father…there was when he [Jesus] was not.” Since most of his works are lost, the accounts are based on reports of others. Alexandria had long been a hotbed of theological innovation and debate where high ranking Christian thinkers used methods from Greek philosophy as well as Jewish and Christian sources for their teachings. “Was the Lord’s prayer addressed only to the hypostasis of the Father as ‘our Father’ and the Father of the Son, or to the entire ousia of the Godhead?” (Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Vol. 1, the Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600). Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1971.)

Gnosticism flourished in the second and third centuries AD. It was having its greatest popularity after the days of the apostles. However, early forms of Gnosticism were creeping into the church in the first century. The apostle John addressed this early form of Gnosticism, often called "Incipient Gnosticism," in I John 1:1: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life."

John is telling us two important things about the Lord Jesus Christ. First, John is saying that Jesus Christ "was from the beginning." Gnostics believe in several emanations of deity. They are called "aeons," emanations of being from the ultimate unknowable Being, God Himself. Gnostics distinguish between an inferior god whom they felt was responsible for the creation, and the superior deity. They believe that there is the real God, but also several emanations of deity, lower in rank and glory. But according to John, Jesus Christ was from "the beginning."

John makes the same point, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God" (John 1:1-2).

But there is a second thing that John is saying in I John 1:1 and that is that Jesus Christ had a physical body. "That which was from the beginning, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled." Jesus was no phantom. He was no ghost.

The Apostle Paul also addressed the issue of Incipient Gnosticism. In Colossians 2:9 the apostle writes of Jesus and says, "For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." The word "fullness" is a translation of the word pleroma. Significantly, this is the word that the Gnostics used to describe the highest principle of Being, the infinite and unknowable God. But Paul says all of that fullness dwells in Jesus. That is quite a statement. There is no higher being, no greater deity. Jesus is God.

So, yes, Gnosticism is addressed by the New Testament. The early church father Irenaeus, who died around AD 200, records that John wrote his Gospel to deal with the heresies of the Gnostic heretic, Cerinthus.

Its easy to say that the bible is a forgery, its another to prove the forgery. The weight of evidence is against Gnostic theology. There are too many witnesses against the Gnostic and their Greek philosophical derived theological error.

reply to post by leejohnbarnes


Agree with you.
The bible, well the new testament anyway, is a fake.
Just read the first few pages, where Jesus is descended through a long line of males all forebears of Joseph.
And we are meant to believe that he is the "son of god" and not the son of Joseph.
So that lineage is thus totally false and is just the first of many lies in the Christian fable that is the new testament.

To the op i would like to ask how the gnostic gospels, actually make the new testament false. Many of the Gnostic gospels actually agree with alot of the text in the new testament?

Originally posted by metachoi
First let me say I am no follower of religion in any form - man made traditions are evil. Second, I am a follower of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. If you wonder what that last phrase means read the Gospel of John. My aim is to give another viewpoint, a historical one, and then at the end show from the scriptures themselves that Gnosticism was considered a danger by the apostles John and Paul.

The earliest origins of Gnosticism are still obscure and disputed, but they probably include influence from Plato, Middle Platonism and Neo-Pythagoreanism academies or schools of thought, and this seems to be true both of the more Sethian Gnostics, and of the Valentinian Gnostics.

The witnesses against the Gnostic Gospels are ones apponted by the church and the emperor.

They killed all the witnesses for the gnostic gospels.

So there were no witnesses for the gonostic texts, as soon as a witness appeard - they killed them and burnt their texts.

Not a very christian thing to do was it, if the church and early chirstians were supposedly follwing the teachings of Christ.

One of which was 'Thou Shalt Not Kill'.

As for Iraneaus - thats like arging because a member of the SS said the Holocaust did not happen, then it must be true.

Iranaeus was a member of the Roman Church imposing and supporting Roman Church teachings and orthodoxy - hardly an independent voice wouldnt you agree ?


And unless Iranaeus lived for over 200 plus years - then he neever knew what Christ taught and preached - he only knew what he had been told Christ taught and preached.

Therefore what Iranaeus says is irreleveant and proves nothing.

I can read what happened on the Titanic, but seeing as I want on it and wasnt born when it happened - then my opinion is based on second hand / third hand / fourth hand testimony and is then merely subjective opinion and not objective fact.

reply to post by metachoi

John is telling us two important things about the Lord Jesus Christ. First, John is saying that Jesus Christ "was from the beginning." Gnostics believe in several emanations of deity. They are called "aeons," emanations of being from the ultimate unknowable Being, God Himself. Gnostics distinguish between an inferior god whom they felt was responsible for the creation, and the superior deity. They believe that there is the real God, but also several emanations of deity, lower in rank and glory. But according to John, Jesus Christ was from "the beginning."

I'm trying to grasp what you mean by Jesus being God/Son of God. Do you mean in a literal sense that he was borne physically into this world as a God or figuretively as an emanation of the divine spark of God (such as a higher dimensional being purposely put on earth for a divine purpose)? Is this divination something we can all aspire towards and reach?

What do you mean by Gnostics distinctions of gods/God?
I guess I struggle with fully comprehending the catagorizing deity in ranks such as superior, inferior, etc...
Did the "true" Gnostics have many gods?

Can you recommend reading material? Thanks for your interesting post.