Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, July 04, 1999
Monday, 05 April 2004

The Magi and the Star of Bethlehem

As soon as god-begotten saviours were born, they were often visited by wise men—called in the apocryphal Christian gospels Magi, Persian priests. Magi, magic and magician are derivations from the same root, all suggesting a wisdom handed down by the gods. When the fame of Pythagoras (600 BC) reached Miletas and neighboring cities, their wise men came to visit him. In the Anacalypsis, Magi came from the East to offer gifts at Socrates’ birth, bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh, the very same offerings given to Christ. Gold, frankincense and myrrh were traditionally offered as gifts to the sun in Persia more than two and a half thousand years ago, and in Arabia about the same time. Zoroaster of Persia (700 BC), says he also was visited by Magi at his earthly advent.

Matthew tells us of a miraculous star bringing from the east to Judæa three wise men bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

We have seen his star in the east, and have come to worship him.

Mt 2:1

Details of now well known gospel traditions given by early writers in respect of the birth narratives show that they were not known in the same way as they emerged. This Christian Star story makes its first appearance about the year 119 AD in Rome and, curiously enough, three wise men had in 66  AD been brought to Rome from the east to worship the emperor! Moreover, a precursor of the story of Matthew’s travelling star occurs in Virgil (60 BC) where a star guides Æneas westward from Troy. Ignatius of Antioch in a letter of about 110 AD describes the star which appeared at the birth of Jesus:

A star shone in heaven brighter than all the stars. Its light was indescribable and its novelty caused amazement. The rest of the stars, along with the sun and the moon, formed a ring around it, yet it outshone them all.

This description sounds like a possible supernova, and the description in Revelation 12, if that is the same event, sounds more like a spectacular comet sweeping across the sky towards the sun rising in Virgo. Supposed astronomers have made a publishing industry latterly out of identifying the star of Bethlehem without arriving at anything conclusive. Though they call themselves scientists, all they really have is their own speculation to offer irrespective of the historical evidence that they seem uninterested in, depending simply on the gospels alone. Really most of them are Christian apolgists trying again to get bogus historical evidence for the gospel events. Apologists have stupidly suggested that the star was a meteorite, even though they move at huge speed and burn out in seconds.

For hundreds of years, astrology and meteorology had been used for predicting the future in Babylon and Persia, and even quite trivial celestial events had meaning, including the sound of thunder. Conjunctions of stars, and their relations to the moon, and the zodiac were common enough events, and the supposed star need not have been a supernova, or any complex meeting of the stars in the sky, even if the star described meant anything like this at all. It was a misunderstanding or deliberate dramatisation of the messianic title, “The Star”!

These wise men, led by a star, which nobody sees but themselves and which moves in such a way as to guide them across country, arrive at Jerusalem and lose the scent. The divine guidance then acts in a way which certainly perplexes the mere human mind. The sages go and tell King Herod that a new “King of the Jews” has been born somewhere and Herod, in a fury, and believing the statement with childish credulity, orders the murder of all the children in Bethlehem and the entire region under the age of two and a half years.

The little Almighty is taken, presumably on donkey-back, hundreds of miles across the desert, to get out of the way, and let the innocents suffer murder. Miracles and apparitions crowd the narrative but the simple miracle of changing the king’s heart and sparing the children does not occurs to God, or his chroniclers.

An apparent absurdity in Matthew’s story, is that the wise men followed the star in the east, when they were coming from the east. Unless they circumnavigated the world or walked backwards so that they pretended they were travelling east because that was the way they faced, they must have been travelling westward, which would place the star to their backs. The tale of the Magi reads like fairy tale but note, Matthew does not say the wise men followed the star but simply that they had “seen his star in the east”. He writes it was his star not just a star or even the star, suggesting a astrological or prophetic meaning—it could still contain genuine Nazarene tradition.

The stars have a clear role at the births of several of the saviours and to mark important events in their subsequent history. The ancients thought the arrival of gods and great people would be announced by a star. A star figured either before or at the birth of Abraham, Caesar, Pythagoras, Yu and Krishna. Zoroaster, about 1000 BC, prophetically announced to “the wise men” of that country that a saviour would be born, “attended by a star at noonday”. Simlarly when Nared had examined the stars, having heard of Krishna’s fame, he declared him to be from God—the Son of God. The Roman Calcidius speaks of a wonderful star, presaging the descent of a God amongst men. A star foretold of the birth of the Roman Julius Caesar. The Chinese God Yu was not only heralded by a star, but conceived and brought to mortal birth by a star.

All nations once believed that the planetary bodies or their inhabitants controlled the affairs of men, and even their births. That is astrology which still holds sway over many gullible people. Early people thought a star was alive, because it appeared to move, and acted as though controlled by a living spirit. In Job 38:9, the morning stars join in a chorus and sing together. Pliny in his Natural History records that the people of Rome fancied they saw a man they took for a god in a star or comet. The apocryphal book of Seth relates that a star descended from heaven and lighted on a mountain, in the midst of which a divine child was seen bearing a cross. Jews, Pagans and Christian could have had no idea that stars were immensely bigger than the earth and even the nearest was untold millions of miles away and could hardly hop hither and thither as international guides.

The practice of calculating destinies by the stars had long been popular in the East at the time of Christ’s birth and, indeed, the Essenes were adept at it, as the astrological texts of the scrolls indicate. An astrological interpretation of the star of Bethlehem makes more sense than the notion of a star leaving the firmament and travelling untold light years to stand over the young child Jesus, as he lay amongst the oxen and asses in a stable (Mt 2:7). To those who like to see God grossly violating his own laws of nature, they might as well believe, since it would have been much easier, even for God, that the star was a large electric light bulb suspended on a wire from heaven.

Using Chris A Marritt’s SkyMap Pro to look at the movements of the planets from Jerusalem, 5.00am on 21 September 11 BC proves to be a likely time for ancient astrologers to think that a great king had been born. It was the autumn equinox. Mercury, the messenger of the gods, had risen at 4.02. Venus had risen at 4.34. The sun was to rise at 5.25 and Mars at 7.38 followed by Jupiter at 8.37. Most important however was that the constellation of the Virgin with her infant Spica rose at the very time that the sun itself rose. Thus Spica, the infant, seemed to be the sun on this occasion, and had been preceded by the planet Venus and the messenger only shortly before.

The heliacal rising of Spica was not itself unusual, so the portents depended on the planets coming into conjunction with it. Moreover, within a few days the four planets Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Mercury were in the same part of the sky as the sun, the new born infant, and so were eclipsed by it. On 6 November 11 BC, all five heavenly bodies set together in Scorpio. It might well have been seen as an eschatological omen by Persian and Babylonian astrologers, and soon would be seen as an omen of a great victory over the eagles, the Romans, Scorpio being also considered the eagle by the ancients.

It seems odd that the divine Father chose to reveal the birth of his son, Jesus, to heathen idolaters hundreds of miles distant in Persia. And why should a skill in astrology give them the privilege of seeing the world saviour at birth while people of God’s own election—His Chosen—were denied the honour? Indeed they were denounced as fools and a vipers, despite their having put up with countless troubles at His behest, in attempting to stave off the pressures of mightier surrounding nations with their heathen gods in favour of Him, Yehouah, the ungrateful god.

Matthew mentions the word east three times in nine verses, and curiously it is the same word translated “dayspring” in Luke 1:78 which also means a branch! Now this might seem coincidental since a title of Jesus was “the Branch” but “the star” referred to is a metaphorical use of the messianic scriptural citation Numbers 24:17. Since the reference to “a branch” is also messianic, the coincidence is beginning not to look accidental. Matthew records:

When they saw the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

Matthew 2:10

This verse makes much more sense if in “the star” they recognize a man of destiny rather than a twinkle in the sky. The first part of Matthew 2:11 has been inserted, for without it the wise men rejoice with exceeding great joy then fall down and worship him—all very natural if “the star” is human. Essenes were organized such that there were twelve leaders and three priests. It seems from the clues remaining that the three wise men are really three Zadokite priests, the leadership of the Essenes. In reality they were present to participate in the crowning ceremony, the baptism in the gospels, but have been moved back thirty years in Matthew to appear at the actual birth rather than the ritual rebirth of the baptism. It seems then that a call on the lines of, “Where is he that is born prince of Israel? for he is the star, and he is the branch”, was part of the coronation ceremony.

Matthew immediately records that Herod heard of this and was troubled. Herod was the paranoid Idumaean king of the Jews who murdered half of his sons, young princes he suspected of plotting against him. When Augustus Caesar heard of Herod condemning his son Antipater, he remarked: “It is better to be Herod’s pig (hus) than his son (huios)”. If Herod had discovered that part of an Essene ritual involved crowning a prince, he would have been outraged. Now Josephus says that Herod and the Essenes were on good terms but that seems belied by the fact that the Essene centre at Qumran was deserted during most of Herod’s reign. If Matthew 2:1-18 is anything to go by, Herod did not get on with the Essenes.

Shepherds and Angels

In many mythologies, as soon as god-begotten saviours were born into the world they were adored by shepherds. Instead of wise men Luke 2:8-21 has lowly shepherds, who had been “watching their flock”, coming a-visiting, notified by angels of the birth of God. Sometimes the visitors were angels, leaving the splendid perfection of heaven to adore the new born saviour of this wicked world. Christian imagery usually has both!

Angels and wise men appeared to Confucius who was born in 598 BC. Five wise men came from afar to the house where the infant lay to present their offerings to him. Celestial music was heard in the skies, and angels attended the scene. The only difference in the Christian story is the number of wise men. Matthew (Mt 2:1) does not give the number, but popularly it is three. Luke speaks of a multitude of the heavenly host praising God (Lk 2:13). Popularly the heavenly host was singing its praises so we have another way of saying that celestial music was heard. How complete the parallel!

It goes further. Confucius, like Christ, had twelve chosen disciples. He was descended from a royal house of princes, as Christ from the royal house of David, and like Christ was born poor. He had a disagreement with a monarch and retired for a long period from society into religious contemplative seclusion. He taught the same Golden Rule of doing to others as we desire them to do toward us, and other moral maxims equal in importance to anything in the Christian scriptures.

In Luke, an angel saluted Mary:

Hail, thou that art highly favoured; the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women.

Lk 1:28

In the next chapter the angel joins with the heavenly host in praising God. The same is found in the Ramayana, when Brahma and Siva, with a host of attending spirits, came to the mother of Krishna, the eighth avatar of India (1200 BC), and sang:

In thy delivery, O favoured among women, all nations shall have cause to exult.

When Krishna was born, he was inundated in flowers by the gods, the equivalent of Christian angels. Pipes and drums were played in the heavens, trees blossomed and pools were filled with clear water. The room was illuminated by his light, and the countenance of his father and mother shone with its brightness and glory. They had an image of him as a king and, realising he was the preserver of the world, they began to worship him, but like the virgin Mary quickly forgot all this and soon regarded him as an ordinary infant!

The ninth avatar of India, Buddha (600 BC), is similar. On a silver plate in a cave in India is an inscription stating that a saint in the woods, at the time of the advent of Buddha, learned by inspiration that an avatar had appeared in the house of Rajah of Lailas. He flew through the air to the place beheld the new-born saviour. He declared him to be the great avatar destined to establish a new religion.

The metaphor of a shepherd is one of those that the Essenes were fond of—which is why it appears so often in Christianity. The Essenes, among many other things, called themselves “the watchers for the kingdom”. Thus the Master in the Community Rule is commanded to watch always for the judgement of God. We have noted that the Damascus Document interprets Zechariah 13:7—a very important passage for Essenes and Christians—by applying the metaphors the “humble of the flock” and “those who watch for him” to the Essenes themselves. Luke has used the same metaphor of the watchers and their flock, the children of Israel, and dramatized it into the birth story. One scroll fragment, discussing the expected visitation, even uses the same terms as Luke—“the holy spirit”, “the meek”, “glad tidings”, “the messiah shepherds the holy ones” and “commands the heavens and the earth including the heavenly host”.

The heavenly host in Luke 2:14 are calling for the kingdom of God when they sing:

Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, good will towards men.

Though a desirable sentiment the offer of goodwill to all men is not meant. The proper translation of the best manuscripts is given as:

on earth peace to men in whom He is well pleased.

The men in whom God is well pleased are the Essenes, His righteous, to whom glory and peace come in His kingdom, because those who…

…walk by the spirit of truth shall receive abundance of peace and everlasting joy in a life without end.

Next Luke 2:22-38 has Mary and Joseph—described as the parents thus acknowledging Joseph as the father (in short, a passage preceding the invention of the Virgin Birth)—present at the temple for Mary’s ritual purification after childbirth. There an unknown man described as “just” and “devout”, “waiting for the consolation of Israel”, and “having the holy spirit upon him” chants his Nunc Dimittis before Jesus. These words denote him as an Essene.

The word translated “devout” is peculiar to Luke and might be his translation of “Nazarite”. The clergy have always denied any connection with the Nazarites, perhaps because they did not like others besides Jesus in the story consecrated to God, and because the word is remarkably similar to Nazarene, suggesting that the latter might have had nothing to do with Nazareth. So Luke or an editor avoids it. “Waiting for the consolation of Israel” meant he was waiting for the messiah and therefore the kingdom.

The word “Lord” beginning the song in Luke 2:29 is a mistranslation—it should be “Master”, immediately showing its Essene origins and that it is the departing Master recognizing the new Master. The song is litany from the coronation or transference ceremony of the Nasi. Luke being a gentile has altered verse 2:32. Originally, following Isaiah 9:2, it will have read, “a light to lighten the darkness”, meaning the sins of the people, but Luke had a good knowledge of the scriptures and knew that Israel was “the light of the gentiles” (Isa 49:6) and merely substituted this here. Anna the prophetess is one of Luke’s female additions to placate the church’s female congregations.

The Massacre of the Infants

Matthew 2:13-18 says Joseph learnt in a dream that Herod would kill the baby and so took off to Egypt just in time to miss the massacre of the innocents of Bethlehem by Herod, who sure enough decreed the murder of all children under two years old. Joseph heeded the divine warning, and fled as directed, only returning after Herod had died.

Such a massacre and hiding of a child of great promise from the wrath of a king is one of the oldest themes in mythology. Many of the infant saviours were threatened with death and yet were miraculously preserved—the saviour saved! The tyrant king or ruler of the country usually feared the young god, by his superior power and goodness, would prove a rival king, and so took measures to destroy him. It has already happened in the Christian bible:

And the King of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives… And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools, if it be a son, then ye shall kill him.

Exodus 1:15-22

And so Moses was, like Sargon of Babylon a thousand years before, hidden in an ark of bulrushes on the river. Herodotus, the Greek historian, tells us that King Cyrus of Persia had similarly to be hidden away at birth from a jealous king, and every Jew knew the story of Cyrus. Suetonius, the Roman historian, gives a similar legend about the birth of the Emperor Augustus. The wholesale “massacre” alone is peculiar to the Jesus story and that horrible detail is enough of itself to damn it. No Roman or Jewish writer ever heard of the horror.

Not one writer of that age, or of any nation, makes any mention of Herod’s massacre even when they are listing crimes. Even the Rabbinical writers who detail his wicked life so minutely, fail to record such an atrocious act, which must have been published far and wide. Josephus, a Jew contemporaneous with Matthew, who records all the crimes of Herod, does not mention this atrocity (about fourteen thousand in number) in Judæa. Roman historians who give us any account of Herod’s character do not say anything about any such deed. Nor does Luke, who has a reputation among theologians as a good historian. Nevertheless the story places the nativity in the reign of Herod the Great, 37 to 4 BC, and so Jesus was born sometime before 4 AD.

Dionysos Exiguus, a sixth century monk, calculated the year of Herod’s death and assumed it was also the year of Jesus’s birth. Unfortunately his calculation was four years out and so our calendar has been ever since. Herod’s death is now recorded as 4 BC rather than 1 AD as it would have been if the monk were correct.

In any case was he right to assume Jesus was born in the same year that Herod died? For it to be true, Jesus must have been born before Christians think he was. Herod died in 4 BC when the holy family was already hiding in Egypt where they had fled to escape him, according to Matthew. When they fled, Jesus was no longer a new born child, because Herod had been looking for boys up to the age of two. The implications are that Jesus was born before 4 BC and possibly even before 6 BC to allow time for fleeing, the infant to be up to two years old and an indeterminate number of years abroad.

Since Herod was an old man when he heard the news of the birth of his rival—not less than sixty-eight according to Josephus—he could hardly have been worried about an infant rival. By the time the infant was adult Herod would have been dead. Nor can it be argued that he worried for the sovereignty of his children, who he treated abysmally, if he allowed them to survive at all.

The elements of truth in the story of Herod are that he was an ogre and that at this time Herod suppressed the Essenes. He literally did murder thousands of children but they were the same Children as those of the gospels. They were not infants but the Children or Sons of Israel, meaning the Jews. And he certainly was paranoid because the children he could correctly be accused of murdering were his own children—some of his own sons who he feared as rivals—but they were adults when murdered.

Josephus says the Essenes were favoured by Herod because one of them, Menehem, had accurately prophesied that Herod would be king. They were allowed not to make an oath of fealty to him unlike all other Jews except Pharisees. Essenes would not, of course, recognize any Lord but God and, short of butchering them all, Herod perhaps had no choice. Josephus relates this tale immediately before he describes Herod’s reconstruction of the temple in 19 AD even though the event itself occurred twenty years before—even before Herod became king. The association of the favouring of the Essenes with the construction of the temple implies that Herod sought the Essenes’ support in his project which was initially unpopular.

The help he might have needed was an army of priests trained as masons to build the sacred inner buildings, the holy of holies and its approach. Bribed with the promise that the Zadokites would be established as the accepted priesthood, it seems the Essenes agreed only later to find they had been tricked. Assembling the materials must have taken a year or so, the construction of the inner buildings took eighteen months and the outer cloisters another eight years, but the surrounding porticoes and the immense platform supporting the temple courts took many more years to build. The Essenes might have been fobbed off with Herod’s excuses for not instating them during the eight year period but surely for no longer and so they could have fallen out of favour between about 15 and 8 BC.

Luke 2:1-7 tells us Caesar Augustus decreed a taxation and associates the birth with the necessary census. Matthew has no record of there being a census and no census in the reign of Augustus is known in Judæa near the supposed year of Jesus’s birth, though there certainly was one about 6 or 7 AD conducted by Quirinius, Legate of Syria, putting Jesus’s birth date at least ten years later than Matthew. Such a late date means either that Jesus was crucified at the age of 30 in the year that Pilate was recalled, or that he was younger than 30 when he died. If the length of his ministry in John is correct, Jesus must then have been only around 25 when he started his ministry. And, if the census was that of 6 AD it is not clear why Jesus’s family had to be assessed for tax by the Romans when Quirinius taxed Judæa since they lived in Galilee and Galilee was not ruled by the Romans but by the puppet king Herod Antipas. Furthermore Roman custom was to register people for a census at their place of residence not at their place of birth which would impose absurd burdens on people who had established themselves elsewhere, and many enterprising Jews had done this even in those distant times.

Christian apologists try to explain all this by asserting without sure foundation there was another census ten or fourteen years earlier—from Augustus, Romans carried out a census every fourteen years in their dominions—and indeed Herod could have agreed to a census when the Jews were persuaded to pay tribute to Rome. This takes us again to about 8 BC by which time the Essenes had fallen out of favour with Herod, and Jesus’s family was fleeing to Egypt in Matthew. It is also about the time that Qumran began to be reoccupied after several decades of desertion. Indeed Egypt might have been Essene code for Qumran. It all ties together but there is no evidence for the earlier census. Why, for example, doesn’t Matthew mention it? And why was there no rebellion when the earlier taxation was imposed as there was for the later one? The Essenes would certainly have been opposed to it.

We have to admit that there is no solid evidence about when Jesus was born, though it was before 4 BC when Herod died. Christian clergymen teach the children in their charge the dates of Jesus’s life as if they were certain of it. Perhaps when the children are a little older the priests admit that no one really knows, but then they say it does not really matter. For professional Christians, truth does not matter. Only God’s truth matters. What then is God’s truth but pious lies?

If Matthew was written in Alexandria in Egypt, his birth narrative is merely a little touch to humour the large Jewish population of the city, suggesting that the Son of God was sheltered in Egypt, presumably by Egyptian Jews. An angel and a dream save the baby saviour from massacre. It was not new! The same methods had earlier rescued other heroes.The story is the same as that of Abraham who Nimrod attempted to murder by killing all the infants in the land, the Jewish first born in Egypt who were threatened by the Pharaoh to eliminate Moses, and Hadad, who fled to Egypt when Joab tried to account for him by killing all the men of Edom. Suetonius says that the Roman Senate tried to get rid of the baby Octavius, (the Emperor Augustus) in the same way. Matthew wants to show Jesus as the equal of Moses and so exalts him by giving him an equal history.

The story of the popular Hindu deity, Krishna, is strikingly similar in nearly every feature. It is so close in some details that earlier scholars thought that these were derived from an early Christian mission to India. Modern scholars reject the idea, and they wonder only if some parts of the Christ and the Krishna legend did not come from a common source, a source which some find in the legends about the Persian King Cyrus given by the Greek historian Herodotus.

The Hindu branch of the Hindu and Persian race, the eastern part of the Aryan race, lost the severity of the original religion, and developed its phallic and sensual elements. Buddhism failed and the cult of Krishna gained in popularity until it appealed more than any other of the numerous religions of India. It flourished in India two or three centuries before Christ, but no one is sure whether there is a historical person at the root of it, as in the cases of Buddhism and Jesus.

The legend of Krishna is that he was born of a married woman, Devaki, but like Maya, Buddha’s mother, she was considered to have had a miraculous conception. King Kansa was warned in a vision that the son of Devaki would destroy him, and take his place, and the child had at once to be taken away out of reach of the monarch. The king had Devaki’s earlier children put to death (“murder of the innocents”), and Krishna had to be saved, as King Cyrus was saved from the King of the Medes and Moses from the King of Egypt. Krishna, moreover, gave signs of his real divine origin soon after his birth and in his boyhood. In the end Krishna—who is most unchristlike in his amorous adventures among the milkmaids, which endear him to the unascetic Hindu—killed King Kansa, took his place, and wrought marvelous things for his people.

A familiar religious emblem of India was the statue of the virgin mother, Devaki and her divine son Krishna, an incarnation of the great god Vishnu. Christians say the story was taken from Christianity, but, if the Hindus were to adopt any foreign model for their own gods, they had extensive contact with Egypt and Isis and Horus would be models rather than the hero of some minute and unimportant sect of a minute and unimportant people. In fact mother and child images are age old in religion and probably go back to Mother Goddess religions.

Among features in common is the angel warning, and Krishna’s angel was not only thoughtful enough to warn the parents to flee, but informed the tyrant ruler, to make sure he played his proper role. Kansa, the ruler, heard an angel voice announcing that a rival ruler had been born in his kingdom. In the Christian story it was slightly hit and miss, depending upon the Magi to inform Herod almost accidentally.

Kansa, like Herod, set about devising a way to destroy his infant rival. Herod’s decree required the destruction of all infants under two years of age (Mt 2:16), even though he had commanded earlier that the young child should be sought diligently (Mt 2:8). Kansa decreed that active search be made for whatever young children there may be upon earth, that every boy in whom there may be found signs of unusual greatness be slain without remorse.

There was in a cave temple at Elephanta in India a sculpture—universally admitted to be much older than Christianity—of a king with a drawn sword, surrounded by slaughtered infants. The slaughtered infants in the cave are all boys surrounded by groups of men and women in supplication. For those with ears to hear, the story in Matthew is copied from the Hindu religion and was surely learnt from Sadhus in Alexandria or from Persia.

In each case:

• There was an angel warning about the impending danger
• The governor or ruler was hostile to the mission of the young saviour
• A bloody decree was issued aimed at the destruction of the infant Messiah
• The hurried flight of the parents takes place
• the Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus, for hundreds of years believed by Christians to be inspired by divine authority, relates that Christ and his parents sojourned for a time at a place called Matarea. One place claimed as the birth place of Krishna was Mathura.

As Krishna and his parents crossed the River Jumna in their flight, they nearly drowned but the infant Krishna noticed and with his foot parted the waters and they passed over safely, like Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. Egyptian legend has similar stories. The mother of Zoroaster had alarming dreams of evil spirits seeking to destroy her unborn child. A good spirit consoled her, saying:

Fear not. Ormuzd, Most High God, will protect the infant, sent as a prophet to the people and the world who are waiting for him.

Christ and Krishna are otherwise quite different stereotypes. Yet worshippers on the plains of India saw the appearance on earth of their god much as the Christians of the first century saw theirs. Was there a common source in some of the older myths, or simply a parallel evolution of the religious imagination playing about the birth of a god? Who knows but The Jesus ideal is just one version of a legend which stretches over three thousand years of time and is found equally in Egypt and Syria, Greece and Rome.

Early Proof of Divinity

Asiatic religion had its Christs as well as the religions of nearer Asia and of Europe. The Sheng Mu (Holy Mother) of the Chinese and Japanese is commonly represented with a divine son. The God Yu, who was concealed in a manner similar to that of Moses was depicted as a babe on the knee or in her arms of his virgin. Even Kong-fu-tse, who escaped the common fate of reformers—deification—was credited with supernatural portents at birth. It is a natural urge of the devout mind to invest its hero with superhuman experiences.

Buddha’s teaching, as settled by modern scholars, was so decidedly non-religious that one would not expect him ever to be adorned with a supernatural halo. He not only plainly disavowed all the gods of India, but he bade his disciples waste no time in disputing about God and personal immortality. He was an Agnostic, a humanitarian. Yet, pure Buddhism almost perished from the earth. What is generally called Buddhism in Asia has no more relation to Buddha’s teaching than Roman Catholicism has to the teaching of Jesus. It is a system of temples and statues, priests and monks, rosaries and censers, rites and vestments, heavens and bells.

Buddha himself was degraded to the divine level. What would seem admirable and superior in Buddha and Jesus if they were men, becomes petty and trivial when one measures them by a divine standard. Christian apologists deny that there is any parallel between Buddha and Jesus because Buddha’s mother, Maya, was married. The real parallel is that Buddhists were like Christians in that they could not have their god born of carnal intercourse, and so his conception was miraculous. It does not matter that a woman who is not a virgin gives birth without intercourse. The point is not that the woman had had intercourse but that she had not had intercourse on this occasion. Buddhists did not call Maya “a virgin”. They believed in a “virgin birth”.

Krishna, Hercules, Zoroaster, Yu, Bacchus, Romulus, Moses and Cyrus, were each threatened with death but were miraculously preserved. The case of Augustus is related by Suetonius, that of Romulus by Livy, and that of Cyrus by Herodotus. Pharaoh, like Herod, to kill the infant Moses, ordered the death of all the male infants—though Herod did not exclude female infants. And cuneiform tablets found in Mesopotamia relate the same story as that of Moses about the great semitic king Sargon of Akkadia in the third millenium BC!

Saviours generally in early childhood have the ability to conquer danger or mental superiority over their opponents in argument. Christ proved his divine nature by equalling the doctors in the temple when only about twelve years of age.

The fame of Christ went out through all the region round about, according to Luke 4:14. The voice of fame soon published the birth of a miraculous child—not Christ this time but Æsculapius—and the people flocked from all quarters to behold him. In China, Confucius’s extensive knowledge and great wisdom soon made him known, and kings were governed by his counsels, and the people adored him wherever he went. He was rational and able from infancy. When the God Shang-ti, was questioned on the subject of government and the duties of princes while yet a child, his answers were such as to astonish the whole empire by his knowledge and wisdom.

One Grecian god killed serpents which attempted to bite him while in his cradle. The proof of Osiris’s divinity was a blaze of light shining around his cradle soon after he was born. Pythagoras displayed such a remarkable character, even in youth, he attractd the attention of all who saw and heard him speak. He was never at any time angry, never laughed, never acted irrationally or behaved badly. Because of his fame people flocked in multitudes to see him.

The people were astonished at Christ’s understanding and answers (Luke 2:47). The Gospel of the Infancy says that his tutor Zacheas was astonished at his learning. In the Mahabarata, the parents of the Saviour Krishna, to secure his education, sent him to a learned Brahmin, whom he astonished with his learning, and under whose tuition he mastered the sciences in a day and a night. Men, seeing the wonders performed by this child, told Nanda, his adopted father, that this could not possibly be his son.

As soon as Buddha was born, a light shone around his cradle, when he stood up and proclaimed his mission, and the River Ganges rose in a miraculous manner, but was stilled by his divine power, just as Christ stilled the tempest on the sea. He was born amidst great miracles, and soon as born, most solemnly proclaims his mission. The divine power and mission of Yu of China was very early evinced by the display of great miracles.

Moses, Solomon and Samuel showed mental superiority in early life; proving that if they were not considered by the Jews as gods, they were at least “from God”, endowed by him with divine power while yet mere children.

The Immaculate Conception of Jesus

The natural conception of Mary is exclusively “The Immaculate Conception” to Catholics, dirty and sinful though Christians consider sex to be, especially out of wedlock. But surely there can be no more immaculate conception than a conception by God Himself, not by the normal sinful biological appendage but by a miracle. Let us conclude with a concise summary of some puzzles and questions about Jesus’s supremely “immaculate” conception and virgin birth.

• The gospels show that Christ himself did not claim to have a miraculous birth. He did not once allude to it, though as the principal evidence of his divinity, as Christians claim, he would have done so.
• His paternal genealogy, as made out by Matthew and Luke, completely confounds his Virgin Birth. They both trace his lineage through Joseph, which they could only do if Joseph was his father.
• His own disciple, Philip, declared him to be the son of Joseph, and several texts show that it was the original belief.
• The story of the Virgin Birth rests on the slender foundations of an angel and a dream. Mary got it by an angel, and Joseph by a dream, and thereby we have the whole of the story of the divinity of Jesus Christ.
• However, we have neither Joseph’s nor Mary’s report of these things, but only Matthew and Luke’s. We do not know that either of them ever saw or spoke with Joseph or Mary on the subject.
• If Christ were a miraculously born god, would his mother have reproved him for misconduct when she found him in the temple, as she, if no one else, must have known his nature?
• If Mary conceived miraculously, why was it kept so long from Joseph? Did the concubine of God intend to deceive her lawful husband? An angel had to be sent from heaven to let him into the secret.
• Why did not God inform Joseph by “inspiration” instead of using the round about way of sending an angel to do it?
• “Mary was found with child of the Holy Ghost”, but as we are told nothing more about the circumstances, does it not leave us suspicious?
• Since it all seems to have been based on dreams, was carried on through dreams, and has no better foundation than dreams, why should we give it better credit than similar stories found in heathen mythology? Or is it that Christianity is just a dreamy religion?
• In an educated and scientific age, should we accept reports of the birth of a God based on no better a foundation than dreams, angels and the legends of oriental mythology? In particular, can any scientist entertain the idea of infinite beings, themselves mere conjecture, actually impregnating human females?
• Essene belief was that sexual intercourse was sinful, procreation was impure and human children were born thus contaminated. Human beings were imperfect and any god sent into the world as a saviour had to avoid such contamination. The solution was that incarnate gods entered the world through human virgins to avoid the impurity and the slander that the saviour might have arisen in more normal ways if the mother were not a virgin. Can anyone unbiased deny that such thinking is the source of the origin of the story of Christ’s Virgin Birth?
• If Christ had to come into the world avoiding the impurity of human conception and birth, why did he not descend directly from heaven in person? If he can descend on the clouds at his—still awaited—second advent, why could he not do the same at his first advent, thereby pre-empting reasons for doubt and saving far more of fallen humanity?
• Could anyone, free of religious guilt and indoctrination, presented with these stories as the truth today, willingly and joyfully accept them as proof that someone was a god? Or would they consider them to be fraudulent inventions, intended to gull the credulous?

There are so many incongruities in divine revelation that it becomes knavery to dismiss them as God’s mysterious ways, as Christians and Jews do. Yet both agree that God gave us reason. So why doesn’t He expect us to use it when He chooses to reveal something to us? Why are Christians so sure that they have not been hoodwinked by the Devil posing as God? As a supernatural theory of the events of the world, it makes more sense than the Christian idea.

Christ a Powerful God

The birth of an incarnate god had been annually celebrated for ages in the ancient world, and particularly where Christianity developed. Then, according to Christians, it actually happened! It is as plausible as Superman arriving today from the planet Krypton. The early Christians obviously attributed to their Saviour the kind of birth that was ascribed to rival gods.

Admittedly, this is a deduction, not a known fact, but the late acceptance of the idea among Christians noted for their gullibility tells against it being known among the first followers of the Christ. It is plausible if later converts from Pagan religions expected that such a god would be born in the conventional way for gods, and eventually so it was.

Paul knows nothing of it. Mark, which on many grounds we know to be the oldest gospel, knows nothing of it. Matthew in its original form knows nothing of it. Luke, the latest of the synoptics, has a long story about it. We reach something like the third decade of the second century before the story appears, though it must unquestionably have circulated in the Churches for some time before Luke could write it.

We are invited to believe that Christ the saviour is really a powerful god merely adopting the cloak of human form so that he can save the human race. A god disguised as an infant is surely still a god with the powers of a god. Why then is it that the powers of this disguised god seem to grow as a human grows? He is vulnerable to human enemies as an infant because he has not yet grown powerful enough. As an infant this saviour of the world cannot even save himself from wicked human beings.

If that is the case why did the hugely powerful Devil, the supposedly evil god, not notice and take advantage of the baby god’s weakness? Millions of human beings were later to die as devils, condemned by the professors of this loving religion, Christianity, yet the Devil was so weak or stupid that he could not succeed even when his enemy deliberately made himself helpless! If murdering innocent people is the criterion of the work of the Devil, then Christianity is the best candidate.

Christians claimed Pagan religions were devilish yet took from them. Some modern Christians think this is an unanswerable refutation of Christian “borrowing”. It is not at all unanswerable or a secure position. Those that think it is, think in terms of Christianity as it is now—complete, as they see it. In the early years of its adoption into the empire, it was not complete, was extremely malleable and church Fathers often used Pagan arguments as arguments for Christianity. They were ready to say, “Our religion is just like yours in such and such a respect”.

Rome, when it forced Christianity upon Europe, deliberately adopted a large amount of Paganism. Bits of ritual, altars, statues, hymns, local deities, were taken into the new religion. Does even the orthodox suppose that Jesus ordered the use of candles, incense, holy water and vestments? Yet these things were adopted by the new religion.

We have little historical knowledge of the Christians of the first century. Between the simple groups of Jesus worshippers of Paul’s Epistles and Acts, and the developed Christian doctrine of the second century, lies a whole world of evolution on which we have no positive light. The reasonable view is that the influence of the Old Testament, the shape given by the Jews to the supposed messianic prophecies, the natural impulse of ascetic and Essenic believers to isolate Jesus from all sexual intercourse and the broad beliefs of the Persians, Egyptians and Greeks about the birth of their saviours, together gave shape to the traditional figure of Jesus.

The impregnation of a woman by a god was a familiar idea, and, if she had been hitherto a virgin, she was held to be a virgin mother. Most prominent of all were the greatest of Egyptian goddesses, Isis, and the greatest of Greek goddesses, Cybele. When at last the Church was forced to permit a veneration of a semi-divine mother, to compete with the most popular feature of Pagan religion, statues of and hymns to Isis and Cybele were appropriated to Mary.

If religious history is to be believed, God had many well-beloved sons, born of pious and holy virgins, besides Jesus Christ. Despite this each is his only begotten, or his first begotten, son. All are as well authenticated as the story of Jesus Christ, that is, not very!

Skeptical Resources—Internet infidels | Jesus Never Existed | Steven Carr’s Website | Christianism | Early Christian Writings | God is Imaginary | “Religion Detoxification” | Our Judaio-Christian Heritage | Archaeoastronomy | No Deity | No Beliefs | Evil Bible | Bible God | ex-Christians | Jesus Police | Islamic Faith Freedom | Atheist Experience | American Atheists | Jovial Atheist | Askwhy! books
Other Resources—Early Christian Docs | Resources for Study | Traditional Bible-History | Traditional Bible World History | Traditional Bible History | about.com biblical history | Apologetics web sites | Advent Ch Fathers | Orion center links | Wikipedia | Traditional Jewish History