Christianity
Christian Mythology 3
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, November 19, 1998
The Trinity
The Trinity of Christendom, as defined in the creed of Nicea, is a merging of three distinct entities into one single entity, while remaining three distinct entities. Christians must regard the three gods as one god because they are co-eternal, co-substantial and co-equal, though only the first had a life of his own! The others emanated from the first.
This Neo-Platonic doctrine is, of course, pagan not Jewish and, since the Jewish scriptures form part of the Christian bible, it is heretical (Isaiah 43:10) to imagine the Trinity as three separate gods. This mumbo-jumbo arises clearly and precisely because the first bishops opportunistically tried to merge Judaism with paganism. Most ancient religions were built upon some sort of threefold distinction. Deities were always trinities of some kind or consisted of successive emanation in threes.
The oldest and probably the original form of the Trinity is that found in Indian religion. Classical Hinduism dates back to at least 500BC, with roots extending as far back as 2000BC. The Hindus had a doctrine of the divine trinity called Tri-murti (Three-forms) consisting of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva: Brahma, the Father or supreme God, Vishnu, the incarnate Word and Creator, and Siva, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit or Ghost. It is an inseparable unity though three in form. Worshipers are told to worship them as one deity.
In one of the Hindu bibles, (the Puranas) more than two thousand years ago, a devotee addressing the Trinity of gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, saying that he recognised only one God. He asks the Three Lords which is the true divinity that he might address to him alone his vows and adorations. The three Gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, becoming manifest to him, replied,
Learn, O devotee, that there is no real distinction between us. What to you appears such is only by semblance. The single being appears under three forms by the acts of creation, preservation and destruction, but he is one.
Such concepts posed no problem to Hindu worshippers since they were used to worshipping curious gods. Ganesh had the body of a man and the head of an elephant, Hanuman was a monkey-faced god and other depictions of gods showed them with four, six or eight arms. Gods were strange entities so a god with three aspects was quite simple.
Sir William Jones says:
Very respectable natives have assured me, that one or two missionaries have been absurd enough to in their zeal for the conversion of the Gentiles, to urge that the Hindus were even now almost Christians; because their Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesa (Siva), were no other than the Christian Trinity.
The Christian fathers almost unanimously proclaimed the Trinity as a leading tenet of the Christian faith and a doctrine directly revealed to them from heaven. Yet a disciple of a pagan religion perhaps two thousand years older than Christianity, defines it precisely. The The doctrine of the Trinity was held by Brahmins, Persians, Chaldeans, Chinese, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Scandinavians, Druids, the natives of Siberia, Peruvians, Mexicans and Greeks mainly long before the council of Nicea of 325 AD officially recognized God’s trinitarian nature, and all quite independent of it .
The pagan Romans worshipped a Trinity. An oracle is said to have declared that there was First God, then the Word, and with them the Spirit. Here we see the distinctly enumerated, God, the Logos, and the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost, in ancient Rome, where the most celebrated temple of this capital—that of Jupiter Capitolinus—was dedicated to three deities, which three deities were honored with joint worship.
The ancient Egyptians also worshipped a trinity. Their symbol of a wing, a globe and a serpent is supposed to have stood for the different attributes of their god. The citizens of China and Japan worship Fo which is their name for Buddha. When they worship him they say “Fo, is one god but has three forms”. In this trinity, Vajrapani, Manjusri, and Avalokitesvara form a divine union of three gods into one god, Buddha.
St. Jerome testifies unequivocally,
All the ancient nations believed in the Trinity.
The Greeks also had their trinities. When making their sacrifices to their gods, they would sprinkle holy water on the altar three times, they would then sprinkle the people three times also. Frankincense was then taken with three fingers and strewed upon the alter three times. All of this was done because the oracle had proclaimed that all sacred things ought to be in threes.
An ancient Greek inscription on the great obelisk at Rome read: “The Mighty God, The Begotten of God, and Apollo the Spirit”. The Greeks had a first God, and second God, and third God, and the second was begotten by the first. And yet for all that they considered all these one.
The philosophy of the Greeks was primarily responsible for defining the Christian Trinitarian nature of God. This was done through the writings of the Greek philosopher Plato.
Plato sets forth the doctrine of the Trinity in his Phaedon, written four hundred years BC. His terms conform most striking with the Christian doctrine on this subject. Plato’s first term for the Trinity was in Greek, The Agathon, the supreme God or Father. Next was the Logos meaning the Word and then Psyche meaning the soul, spirit or ghost, the Holy Ghost. The first person was considered the planner of the work of creation, the second person the creator and the third person the ghost or spirit which moved upon the face of the waters, and infused life into the mighty deep at creation. The three names of the Christian Trinity, Father, Word, and Holy Ghost are given as plainly as possible. If Plato expressed the Christian Trinity four hundred years BC, how then was it divinely originated with the incarnation of Jesus?
The works of Plato were keenly studied by the Church Fathers. The passage :
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word Was God
is a fragment of Platonic philosophy. A Christian bishop wrote several centuries ago:
Such a similitude of Plato’s and John’s Trinity doctrines bespeaks a common origin.
St Augustine agreed that he had found the beginning of John’s Gospel in Plato’s Phaedon. So even Christian saints concur that the doctrine preceded Christianity. Amelius, a Pagan philosopher, says it is strictly applicable to Mercury who was the Logos. A Christian writer of the fifth century declared:
The Athenian sage Plato marvellously anticipated one of the most important and mysterious doctrines of the Christian religion
—meaning the Trinity. The gospels of the bible were called the Greek gospels not just because they were written in Greek but also because they entertained Greek philosophy. Either both are from heaven or both are pagan. If the former, then revelation and paganism mean the same. If the latter, then Christianity is pagan. Applying the title “Word” or “Logos” to Jesus is a pagan amalgamation with Essenism, and was not fully accepted until the middle of the second century. The Trinity is a pagan doctrine.
Divine Trinities were male Gods. No female was admitted into the triad of Gods composing the orthodox Trinity. Plainly there can never be males without females, so the whole idea is an obvious Patriarchal variant of an earlier belief in which one of the spirits in the Trinity must have been female. The truth is that he Trinity grew from a belief in the feminine principle as the mother and therefore creator of everything. The Patriarchs imposed a male Supreme god relegating the female principle to the role of his assistant as, his spirit, Word or Wisdom. That was not sufficient however and the divine son was introduced. Finally the female principle, now reduced to the Holy Ghost, the Word having been allocated to the Son, had a sex change and became masculine or neuter.
The Trinity was constituted of males simply because under the patriarchs women became mere tools of man’s convenience. Instead of having a place among the gods she became a servant, but the time is coming when she will rule both heaven and earth with the omnipotent power of her love nature. Then we shall have no war in heaven and no conflict with the earth.
The Descent into Hell
The gospels pretend to be matter of fact stories of some events in the life of the Christian God. They tell what people saw or heard. They claim they saw Jesus rise to heaven, but it is difficult to know how they could have known he descended to hell, unless they simply had the risen Jesus confessing it in one of his mysterious post mortem appearances. Anyway, it was not expressly written into the gospels. Nevertheless, it became and remains a firm belief among Christians that Jesus did descend to Hell. A Christian writer explains that the early Christians were united on the doctrine of Christ’s underground mission. It was too well settled to admit of dispute
The Apostles’ Creed teaches the doctrine explicitly and it was once thought of as equal in authority to the gospels, being supposedly written by the apostles themselves. It declares:
Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead.
Peter (1 Peter 3:18) is thought to be referring to the descent into hell when he writes: “being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison”. Prison must mean hell. In Acts 2:31 we find that “his soul was not left in hell”. The writer plainly considered Jesus’s soul had been there. The most positive declaration that Christ did descend into hell could not make it more certainly a scriptural Christian doctrine.
Where then did such a belief arise?
The most important event in the lives of Pagan Saviours, after their crucifixion, is that of their descent into hell. In the Vedas, written more than three thousand years ago, the Saviour Krishna:
…went down to hell to preach to the inmates of that dark and dreary prison, with the view of reforming them, and getting them back to heaven, and was willing himself to suffer to abridge the period of their torment.
Elsewhere we find that Krishna “even descended into hell to teach souls in bondage”. We have references to prison and to bondage. Hell is a prison and souls are in bondage. Souls are therefore in prison just as Peter says. Luke and Peter seem greatly indebted to the Hindu bible in these passages.
Another God who descended into hell was Quexalcoatl of Mexico (300 BC) The story will be found in the Codex Borgianus, wherein is related the account of his death, and burial after crucifixion, his descent into hell, and subsequent resurrection. After Adonis descended into hell, he rose again to life and immortality. Prometheus of Caucasus (600 BC) also suffered and descended into hell, rising again from the dead, and ascending to heaven. Horus first reigned a thousand years, then died, and was buried for three days, at the end of which time he triumphed over Typhon, the evil principle, and rose again to life evermore. And Osiris of Egypt also descended into hell and after a period of three days rose again.
Homer and Virgil speak of Hercules, Ulysses and AEneas descending into Hades. The Gods became incarnate, and descended into hell to teach humility and set an example of suffering.
The story of their descent into hell was doubtless invented to occupy them during their three days in the tomb. The story of the three days’ entombment has an astronomical explanation.
The sun lies still and apparently motionless, neither ascending nor descending, for nearly three days at the midwinter solstice. It is in the tomb for three days having descended to Hell, the lowest point of its annual cycle. The prayer was that it would rise again and the prayer always worked, the sun was born each year at midwinter. However the battle of light with darkness continued until the vernal equinox and only when the days became longer than the nights were the ancient astrologer priests happy to celebrate the sun’s rebirth.
So, the birth of god was at the midwinter solstice but he was “born again” at the vernal equinox. Hence, spring was chosen to represent the three days’ descent of the gods into hell. The Persians had an astronomical figure representing the descent of a god into hell and returning at the time that Orsus, the goddess of spring, had conquered the god of winter. The author of Revelation describes the Lamb of God (Rev 12) as conquering the dragon, which is the Scorpion or Dragon of the first month of winter, October, being conquered by the Lamb of March or spring.
Prophecies of Jesus Crushing a Serpent
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise his heel.Gen 3:15
This text is often cited by Christian writers and controversialists as prefiguring the mission of the Christian saviour—the destruction of the serpent, alias the devil. In Revelation 12:8:
The grand adversary of souls which deceiveth the whole world
is
the dragon, the serpent, the devil, and Satan.
The serpent is the devil. The dragon, the serpent, the devil and Satan are all one. Indeed many of those professed Christians, who never read the Christian holy book, think Jesus actually crushed the head of a serpent.
If “it shall bruise thy head” is a prophetic reference to a saviour, it is a curious one because the neuter pronoun it always refers to a thing without sex. Perhaps Christians should consider the implications of this if they want to persist in it as a reference to Jesus. Plainly it refers to the seed meaning human beings—the offspring of Adam and Eve.
The serpent is found in several heathen systems of older date than Genesis, proving that Christians who assume it to be a revelation from heaven are ignorant of religious history.
Some of the other saviours perform a drama with a serpent. Osiris of Egypt bruised the head of the serpent after it had bitten his heel. Hercules contended with a serpent which guarded the tree with golden fruit in the midst of the garden Hesperides, the Greek Eden. Its head is shown under his foot. The same tradition appears in the Phoenician fable of Ophion or Ophiones.
Krishna of India is shown on ancient sculptures and stone monuments with his heel on the head of a serpent. In the ancient temples of India the image of Krishna is sculptured sometimes wreathed in the folds of a serpent which is biting his foot, and sometimes treading victoriously on the head of a serpent. The ancient Persians had the tradition of a virgin, from whom they predicted would be born, or would spring up, a shoot, a son, that would crush the serpent’s head, and thus deliver the world from sin. Both the serpent and the virgin are shown in their zodiac.
In an ancient Etrurian story, instead of the son, it is the woman herself who stands with one foot on the head of a serpent biting a twig of an apple tree to which an apple is suspended. Its tail is twisted around a celestial globe, reminding us of the dragon of Revelation hauling down one-third of the stars with his tail (Rev 12:4). In the Etrurian zodiac, the head of the virgin is surmounted with a crown of stars—doubtless the same legend from which John borrowed his metaphor of a woman with a crown of twelve stars on her head (Rev 13). The Regina Stellarum (Queen of the Stars) spoken of in some of the ancient religions is the same fable. The myth of Achilles being vulnerable in the heel, as related by Homer, might be a remnant of the same tradition.
Consider now the story of the original transgression and fall of man—two cardinal doctrines of the Christian religion. These doctrines also are taught in heathen faiths whose antiquity even antedates Moses. In the Persian tradition the first man and first woman, Mashya and Mashyoi, were pure, and submitted to Ormuzd, their maker. But Ahriman, the evil one, saw them and envied them their happiness. He approached them under the form of a serpent, presented fruits to them, and persuaded them that he was the maker of man, of animals, of plants, and of the beautiful universe in which they dwelt. They believed it. Since that time Ahriman was their master. Their natures became corrupt, and this corruption infested their whole posterity. This story is in the Vendidad of the Persians.
The Indian story is that the Gods, who were evidently not originally immortal, tried every means to obtain it. After many inquiries and trials, they realised they would find it in the tree of life. They succeeded, and by eating once in a while of the fruits of that tree, they kept their immortality. A snake saw that the tree of life had been found by the gods of the second order. As he had been entrusted with guarding the tree, he became angry because his vigilance had been deceived, that he poured out a large amount of poison, which spread over the whole earth.
Not dissimilar is the story of Revelation:
And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood (Rev 12:15).
The idea of a snake or serpent inundating the earth from its mouth is so far removed from nature that one must be borrowed from the other, or both come from a common source. Since the Hindu religion precedes the time of Moses, the question is settled as to which who borrowed from who.
Note that three out of four of the principal doctrines of Christianity are taught in the two heathen mythological stories of creation, Original Sin, the fall of man caused by a serpent, the consequent corruption and depravity of the human race. These doctrines cannot be, as Christians claim, important truths revealed from heaven, but plainly are originally heathen.
No Other God
Can anyone believe that a god will command that mankind should have no other god, then appear on earth as a man saying he is a god (Jn 10:30)? Christians do! If a god were really to do any such thing, it would surely be to test the faithful. And what would the faithful do? They can say that this man is a fraud because there is only one god. That is the response that the god should expect of the faithful who are following his own commandment. That indeed is what the Jews in the gospel are deemed to have done—they rejected someone who seemed to be falsely claiming to be god. But, since the god actually has appeared on earth as a man to test his worshippers, and has been spotted by some of them actually as the god, he must accept that those who adore him as a man are doing no wrong. He is the god, nevertheless. It seems that mankind is correct in either case and the god’s test is a pretty poor one.
Now, accepting that this god is like the God of the Hebrews, Jews and Christians must agree that both have passed the test and both are right. It’s just God who is pretty hopeless! let us then agree that, if the gos were to try such a test, he would not appear on earth himself as a man claiming to be the god, but would send one of his angels in the role. The trouble with this is that few people would be abe to tell a god apart from an angel, if they were disguised as a man. After all, an angel is a god—just a junior one. So, they might see a god inside the man even though it is really only an angel. Will the god expect them to know better? His best bet is to delude a man into thinking he was a god, influence him to behave appropriately and find out whether the believers see through his pretence or delusion. Now the test is foolproof. Which category is Jesus in? Christians say, the first—he is God. Jews say the last—he was a fraud or deluded. Who is correct? Many men have claimed to be god but Christians reject their claims, or those of their followers. The general rule they adopt is that men who claim to be gods are frauds. How are they so sure that their own candidate is a god? If God wanted to pass on some important message to mankind, he could hardly have chosen a worse method. In fact, since god is supposed to know everything, it is impossible for anyone with an intact brain to accept he would have used such a method.
