Most of you have already heard these questions and these charges, but I need to state them again: What if the entire New Testament was a construct, a forgery, a fake? What if Jesus never existed, and was instead a composite figure cobbled together from the myths of many other Gods that long pre-existed Christianity? For the sake of argument, let's say that this was the case- what would be the right course of action? For me, the answer is simple:We would have to pick up where we left off.
If Christianity's claims are shown to be unfounded and untrue, and its gospels were shown to be the products of forgers, liars, and men charged by a certain Roman Emperor or politicians to create an orthodoxy of religion for their empire, and if it continued to grow as a well-timed and placed falsehood, widening its power and political pull until evidence of its fraudulent foundations was either forgotten or covered up, we would have to conclude something very powerful.
We would have to conclude that the religions of the pre-Christian peoples were born from organic truth, that their Gods were more than likely quite real, and that the Pagan customs forcibly stopped under Christian political power were in fact traditional and proper ways of worshipping the real Gods and celebrating life.
Westerners everywhere would have to look back to what their Pagan ancestors were doing and believing if they wished to find their way back to the truth about the Gods.
Now, I don't imagine that even if direct evidence was shown that the New Testament was a forgery and Jesus never existed, that Christians everywhere would drop what they were doing and believing. The spell has gone on too long to be broken in that way. Christians need to believe the things they believe. They have to believe in an all-good God being in charge of the world, ultimately. They need to believe that there is a glorious heaven waiting for them. They need to believe these things, and if they lost them suddenly, quite a few of them would go mad.
I don't even want to guess at the impact of such a shift in spiritual paradigm, because it will never happen- even if shown conclusive evidence, 99% of Christians would ignore it, call it false without even looking into it, and go on believing just as they do now. That's the nature of their belief. Like the transition from the Pagan world to a Christian world, the change will have to come slowly, if it comes at all for the majority.
I have recently been shown an article which gives what I consider damning evidence for the falsehood of the establishment of Christianity, and all its claims of the divinity and resurrection of Jesus. I'd like to share the link, because it had quite an impact on me. What had the most impact on me was the discussion the author had about the Sinai Bible- why do most people not know about the Sinai Bible?
It contains the oldest version we have of the oldest Gospel- Mark- and that wouldn't be a problem, except that it's missing what modern Christians might think of as a few important little bits of doctrine. The author of the article names them:
It (the version of Mark in the Sinai Bible) starts with Jesus "at about the age of thirty" (Mark 1:9), and doesn't know of Mary, a virgin birth or mass murders of baby boys by Herod. Words describing Jesus Christ as "the son of God" do not appear in the opening narrative as they do in today's editions (Mark 1:1), and the modern-day family tree tracing a "messianic bloodline" back to King David is non-existent in all ancient Bibles, as are the now-called "messianic prophecies" (51 in total). The Sinai Bible carries a conflicting version of events surrounding the "raising of Lazarus", and reveals an extraordinary omission that later became the central doctrine of the Christian faith: the resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ and his ascension into Heaven. No supernatural appearance of a resurrected Jesus Christ is recorded in any ancient Gospels of Mark, but a description of over 500 words now appears in modern Bibles (Mark 16:9-20).
Despite a multitude of long-drawn-out self-justifications by Church apologists, there is no unanimity of Christian opinion regarding the non-existence of "resurrection" appearances in ancient Gospel accounts of the story. Not only are those narratives missing in the Sinai Bible, but they are absent in the Alexandrian Bible, the Vatican Bible, the Bezae Bible and an ancient Latin manuscript of Mark, code-named "K" by analysts. They are also lacking in the oldest Armenian version of the New Testament, in sixth-century manuscripts of the Ethiopic version and ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Bibles. However, some 12th-century Gospels have the now-known resurrection verses written within asterisks, marks used by scribes to indicate spurious passages in a literary document.
It is clear that Paul seems to know nothing about the "miraculous birth" (Virgin Birth) of Jesus; the article mentions this too. The case this author makes in a very short article for the artificial construction of the New Testament- and therefore all of Christianity- is a very good one. I would personally like to see Christian apologists explain to me, and the rest of the world, why all mentions of the resurrection, as well as many other claims to the divinity of Jesus, and miracle stories, are not in these earliest manuscripts of the Gospels. It is clear that they were added at a later date.
Here's the article:
The Forged Origins of The New Testament
As you read this article, understand something: I do not think that the sources used by the author have complete merit; my friend and polytheist colleague Erik Dutton has pointed out that the author uses "God's Book of Eskra" as one of his sources, which is certainly to my idea a spurious source. My focus on this article was not the article as a whole, but specifically the section on the Sinai Bible, which I find very interesting, and which actually has a foundation in reality.
What's written in this article may come as no news to many scholars of the Bible (and, it seems, to many Church scholars) but it would be news to the average Christian in the field who never gets around to reading Bible Scholarship that isn't first approved by their Church or their Pastor.For me, it is another nail in the coffin in the claims of Christianity, and part and parcel of the true Resurrection- the resurrection of the Old Religions and the Old Gods. We NEED to return to the Older Way of believing, especially people in the western world and people of European ancestry.
In much the same way that Native Americans don't really re-capture their dignity and their direction as people without practicing their true and original animistic beliefs, I firmly believe that people of European descent don't re-capture their ancestral dignity, the truth about themselves, or any sense of true spiritual direction and purpose in life without worshipping the Gods of their Ancestors. I believe that a return to the Old Ways isn't just a good idea, but an imperative, without which we can't hope for a better future.
And it is possible to believe and worship as our Ancestors did- modern Pagan religious reconstructions, from Germanic to Celtic, Greek, Roman, and Slavic, have been given much attention, carefully reconstructed in the spirit of the original faiths. It's true that some people have abused the activity of reconstruction with their own political agendas, but the core of the Pagan faithful today are good people who are smart enough (generally) to see through it. The larger these Pagan religious communities become, the more quality and sincere spirit we will see. In my decade of involvement, I've already seen and experienced so much true religion.
Like it or not, the state of evidence is clear- a return to the Old Ways is the only sane and realistic option we have. No other way escapes the corruption, distortions, and political conspiracies of the past. No other way takes us back to where we belong- with one another, the Sncestors, the Gods, the land, and the sky.
When I think of the crimes committed by the arch-fiend Olaf Trygvasson, the King of Norway who murdered his own people, burned their farms, cut off their hands and blinded them, all because they refused to convert to Christianity, I remember why I do what I do- I remember the great wrongs, the monstrously and universally huge crimes committed against our Grandmothers and Grandfathers at the hands of politicians that had forged unholy alliances with Christianity. I praise the wisdom of those Pagans who resisted Christianity- they saw it for the falsehood it was.
There is no sanity without returning to the old Polytheistic ways of our ancestors. The Gods are real, and have waited for us, helped us, guided us, and even protected us in their anonymity, ever since their names were silenced on people's lips. They never left us; what came among us was a pernicious ignorance and falsehood which tainted our people, forcing us into the shadow world that we now live in. You all know that world- the world of endless spiritual paper-chases that end in nothing but spiritually dis-satisfied people, repressed people, crazy people, or worst of all, good people who lack the courage or inclination to question why they believe what they believe, and who have settled down to believe falsehoods- good people who will die expecting things to happen that are never going to happen. There is the comfort of Truth to be found in realizing that our deaths lead us to exist as spiritual beings in the Underworld, or perhaps in another of the many worlds, and that "physical resurrection" is a nonsensical idea. It's contrary to Fate, contrary to natural reason and to the natural forces that create and destroy all things. There is comfort in coming to know the great Sky Father, Tiwaz, and the Earth Mother below us, mother of all life. There is power in knowing the Allfather, creator of all worlds, and the mighty Thunderer, and consciously knowing them and gaining their protection and favors.
There is comfort in knowing the spirits of your Ancestors are always with you, living in your flesh, blood, and even able to know you from across the divide of time and the other worlds. There is comfort in knowing that Destiny or Fate is the supreme decider of what must come to pass, not some "all-good God" who still somehow allows horrors off the scale to occur, even to his faithful, and whose so-called "love" includes an eternal roasting if you dared to question the church, have the wrong political and social views, or if you ended up just attending the wrong church.
There is comfort in knowing that there is a natural, organic, and right way to live that doesn't include the ridiculous alien moral codes that are found in the so-called "scriptures" which were lies the first day they were written. Our Indo-European Ancestors had deep and powerful moral and ethical codes, religious beliefs, and myths that were and are appropriate to them and their descendants- we do not need Middle-Eastern and Oriental religious beliefs, which are spiritual invaders to our old homelands, and which do not speak to our spirits truly. These spiritual invaders also deny the truth of the Many Gods and Goddesses, and thus, deny life itself- for there is no life or peace without the Truth. Native Indo-European religiosity is a long-standing, historically attested-to reality; it is distinct from Semitic or Oriental religiosity, and we must reclaim it, forsaking all alien creeds.
Someone actually tried to comment to this article asking me the question why Indo-European polytheism? They actually asked me why Semitic polytheism or Asian polytheism wasn't "good enough" for me. They tried to be a bit insulting, and tried to insinuate that I was some sort of racist, while they were at it. I expected ignorant people to try such a thing. Why Indo-European polytheism? Because I and my family and friends are the descendants of Indo-Europeans, and Indo-European polytheism is part of our heritage. We ARE those same Ancestors who lived then, alive today in these bodies. There is an ancestral connection here that most outsiders cannot understand, as clearly the person who asked me this question does not understand.
The question that was asked to me is as nonsensical as asking a Native American "Why Native American animistic beliefs?" I never said that IE Polytheism was ontologically better than others; but it is better for me and for people who are descendants of European people.
I don't think we can trust last names or skin color to prove who is a descendant of "Old Europe" in the modern day, so we have no choice but to allow all who would worship the Gods with honesty in their hearts, into our religious communities. But for those of us who do clearly come from European ancestors, I think nothing short of a re-embracing of the Old Ways is a requirement for true happiness.
If we would be truly free people, we have to consider the scenario in our heads, really consider it: there our ancestors were, believing as their people had believed since time immemorial, knowing the Gods and one another in Troth, in the bonds of ancient ritual and worship, and then, Christian missionaries came, peddling lies that were written so long ago that even the missionaries didn't realize that they were peddling nonsense. They converted kings with promises of political favor, and with absurd promises of physical immortality, and they used their influence to have laws passed BANNING the ancient and traditional faiths which were part and parcel of our spiritual identities. Murder enters into this- death was used as a penalty for those who refused conversion or who backslid into Pagan practices.
This was one of history's greatest outrages; the theft of our spiritual identities and our destines as the sons and daughters of Old Europe. This was the downfall of the West. We don't know who we are and never will until we re-embrace what our Ancestors believed and come to know their Gods once more.
