EXTRACT FOR
The Gospel Truth
(Author Unknown)

In the beginning was darkness.

And from the darkness man created fear.

And the fear was manifest.

So man created God.

Man pleaded to God to save them from the fear.

And God was manifest.



God was given the Word and the Word was God.

All things were said to be made by Him.

In Him was life and life was the light of man.

The light of man shone in the darkness and man praised God for this light.

And man gave God dominion over man.



Man called for testimony to bear witness to God.

And God sent His son and His son brought the Word.

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

He was not the light but sent to bear witness to that light.

He was in the world and the world knew Him not.

He came unto His own and His own received Him not.

But to those that did receive Him He gave the power to become the sons of God.



So man fought with God over dominion of man.

And man fought with man over dominion of God.



AMOS

375 AD.



 



CHAPTER 1



I am a Jew of some standing and subscribe and accept as true, Essene beliefs. Older than the Pharisees and the Sadducees, we Essene are as close to the God of Abraham as any people walking the earth today. Keenly aware of prophecy and lineage, we have watched the descendants of the great tribes of Israel from as far back as David and Aaron.

      We were there in the beginning of this new Christian religion, when Mary first conceived, and followed the path of Christianity throughout the centuries, under many guises. We played a pivotal role in the cultivation of the cult of Jesus and continue to hold its darkest secrets.

      As early exponents of the written word, we became excellent record keepers and I, Amos, have all the documentation and evidence to support the claim I make here today. It is a revelation I have known all my life, a truth that my order has held for almost 400 years. A truth I have seen distorted, altered and misconstrued, sometimes by manipulative, unscrupulous scoundrels bent on their own lust for power or self-glorification, sometimes by genuine over-enthusiastic fanatics, believing so much in the scheme of what they have been taught, the spirit has been lost.

      As a young scribe I was present at Nicaea when Christianity became the single state religion of the Roman Empire. I was there at the Council of Hippo when Augustine ratified all that was agreed upon under Constantine's watchful eye. Yet even as I witnessed these events, no one is more surprised than I that this, of all religions, would become the one to bring peace to the Empire.

      The scholars among you, no doubt, have surmised I am not a young man. In fact at the end of the next season I will have passed my eighty-first year and for the last forty have overseen the finest scriptorium in the known world, here in Alexandria. But be assured my mind is as clear now as in those early days when my teacher brought me from my home in Narbonne to the Holy Lands to record the proceedings for ourselves.

      And what is my great revelation? Quite simply, that Jesus Christ was a man! 

      Using documents from this and other scriptoria, I will give a firsthand account of the days, months and years surrounding the life of Jesus Christ. Unpolluted by politic or favour, it is as accurate an account as can be written.

      Now that I see it written down, I think how harmless these few plain words look on the pale parchment in front of me. But I assure you, such a statement and the proof I have to back up this claim could, in the wrong hands, kill.

      You must forgive me if I stray, for although my mind is clear and lucid, I am prone to rant, as the scribes within these hallowed walls will be only too keen to testify. I am, I have been told, outspoken. But such frankness is the prerogative of the old. Learned men, it is my belief, should demonstrate a desire to direct the young in the ways of the world, display an obligation to protect the less fortunate and always be willing to rile the politicians and lawmakers into facing up to the truths of this world. For only then, when we face the truth, the utter truth, can man learn from all that has preceded him.

      So I sit, safe within the sanctuary of my domain, and dictate by candlelight to my young apprentice all that I have come to learn and know as true about this turbulent time of history.

      But how could such a lie, that Jesus Christ was of flesh and blood and incapable of miracles, be perpetrated? And over so many, for so long? Because we allowed it, is the simple answer. When a man has nothing to believe in, it is not that he believes in nothing, rather he will believe in anything. Unscrupulous men know this and use the written word as efficiently as a Roman soldier uses a gladiolus. 

      Marcion, the son of the Bishop of Sinope, is an example. Taking a heavy hand in editing the books we are now to call The New Testament, he removed from the Gospel of St. Luke any mention of The Christ's birth, and included, for his own heretical ends, the works of his personal favourite, St. Paul.

      Overzealous writers of the early Christian church, the likes of Irenaius the Bishop of Lyon, who issued his violent and dogmatic attack on those who differed from his fanatical infatuation with his own canonical works, Adversius Haereses, or Eusebius the Bishop of Caesarea, who went so far as to write to his benefactor, the Emperor Constantine, saying he believed the Emperor to be the next and greatest Messiah. Tertullian, also an early Christian Father, refuted the very words of Jesus Christ when they clashed with his views on communion, insisting they were the words of Satan.

      Too much focus has been placed on historians the caliber of Flavious Josepheus who, after leading a failed revolt against the Romans in Galilee, returned willingly to Rome with his captives to record a defiled history of his people, 'Antiquities Of The Jews'. The remainder of his life was spent in seclusion, hiding for fear of death, within the walls of the Emperor Vespasian's palace.

      And what of Augustine of Hippo? Too intent in his own dislike of physical pleasure and of his now, almost assured beatification, to be concerned with the truth, to this day he will never let the evidence hinder his lust for his own celebrated grandeur.

      But if blame is to be apportioned, let Constantine be served the largest slice. With the unity of his newly acquired empire as his only deity and seeing himself as a leader of Messianic proportions, he cunningly amalgamated the major religions of the day; Changing the date of Christ's birth from the accepted 6th of January to the more popular date of the 25th of December, to coincide with two major pagan festivals, then taking the 'Aureole of Light' from the Sun God and turning it into the Christian halo, crowning the heads of the saintly. And of course at his Council of Nicaea, where Jesus was transformed from man to the 'Divine' by way of a vote, winning 217 to 3. His mother Mary became a virgin on the very next day. 

      These men, and others, have unwittingly set into motion their own series of apostate, rotting the core in the hope of preserving the husk. Realizing that knowledge is the enemy of their faith, they have shamelessly and systematically hidden and buried the truth, the truth I am about to expose ??" that the Lord thy God, Jesus Christ, was a man and only a man.

      

***

      

So that you may understand the anticipation and yearning the Jews were experiencing, I must give you a brief history of the time in Israel.

      The King had long been defeated by the Roman Legion of Mark Anthony, led by the self-titled 'Herod the Great'. Installed by the Emperor Augustus as Prefect, Herod, foolishly thinking he could legitimise his crown, married Miriame, a Maccabean Princess and rebuilt the Holy Temple of Jerusalem. This, however, did not pacify a people who felt a kinship and a right for self-determination over the land bequeathed to them, they believed, by God Himself. 

      Realizing he had failed to appease his Jewish subjects, Herod, who had already murdered Miriame's brother, did the same to her and to the two sons the Jewish Princess bore him. It was not the first time Herod had his sons put to death, nor indeed the last. It was such actions that prompted the Emperor Augustus to famously say upon signing yet another death warrant, 'I would rather be Herod's pig than his son'. To add insult to an already salted wound, Herod desecrated the most hallowed of all Jewish shrines, the newly restored Temple, by placing the Roman symbol of an eagle above the doors.

      Inspired more by the Temple violation than the slaying of the Maccabeans, a revolt ensued. The Romans refused to give quarter, lest they be seen as weak and the Zealots refused to accept anything less than a Jewish King on a Jewish throne. Such uprisings and insurrections were a daily occurrence, particularly in Galilee, where the rebels found easy cover in the vast deserts. 

      The Sadducees and, to a greater extent the Pharisees, accepted or at least tolerated the Romans. Both factions obeyed Roman law, collecting and passing on the Emperor's taxes. Some became fiercely loyal to their Roman overlords; others secretly helped the rebels when possible. But all shared one common hope; all were waiting, praying, for the coming of the Messiah.

      The many different factions of Judaism were in constant quarrel on how to interpret the Prophets. It seemed if an agreement could be reached, then one or more parties must invariably be wrong. The Pharisees laid blame at the feet of the Sadducees, they the Romans. Others saw the Rabbis as the authors of their own destruction and only when all the in-fighting ceased would God deliver unto them all that was promised. But still they hoped and still they prayed and still they waited for God to send the Messiah to deliver his beleaguered people, a people they passionately believed were God's 'Chosen', out of the shackles of a terrible wickedness and into a golden age to rival the days of Solomon and David, where justice was served and the law made not by power hungry tyrants, but by righteous men and God's love was felt throughout the world as Israel prospered.

      It is this debacle of history, this hotbed of revolt, murder and intrigue, where our records first come across the name Jesus bar Joseph.