Article 268: Early Orthodox Christianity & Political Maneuvering

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In this article we will continue our discussion of Christianity.  We will review the early Orthodox Church fathers and their beliefs to see how they affected Christianity in the Dark Ages and beyond.  We will then take a brief look at some of the various versions of the Bible throughout history and how they have influenced Modern Christianity.  In the next article we will look at Christianity in the Dark Ages before moving onto a brief discussion of modern Christian fundamentalism.  We will end the next article with a look at W.L. Graham’s Bible Reality Check to attempt to untangle and clarify certain modern Christian beliefs.

Orthodox Christianity

Early on the Orthodox Church insisted that a chasm exists that separates humanity from its creator.  They taught that Jesus teaches sin and repentance, not illusion and enlightenment like the Gnostics did.  They firmly believed that Jesus is Lord and Son of God and will forever remain distinct from the rest of humanity.

Orthodox Christians accept the canon of the New Testament – the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – and none other to measure all future doctrine and practice.  They also confess the apostolic creed.  This refers to the belief that the one and only truth was bestowed upon the apostles, which is then handed down by the church.  They also affirm specific forms of church institution such as the hierarchy of authority.  This hierarchy from lowest to highest consists of: the laity, deacons, priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals and pope (Bishop of Rome). The use of the term “Pope” or “Papa” began with Pope Marcellinus in 304 AD.

Tertullian defines the orthodox position thusly:  “as Christ rose bodily from the grave, so every believer should anticipate the resurrection of the flesh.”  He declared anyone who denies the resurrection of the flesh is a heretic, not a Christian.  Furthermore he declared that questions that make people heretics are: Where does humanity come from, and how?  Where does evil come from, and why?

Here again I will insert a quote from Mark Booth that I used in Article 266: “How to recognize any false prophet?  Or any false, purportedly spiritual teaching?  False teaching usually has little or no moral dimension; the benefits of reawakening the chakras, for example, being recommended merely in terms of selfish ‘personal growth’.  True spiritual teaching puts love of others and love of humanity at its heart – intelligent love, freely given.  Beware too of teaching that doesn’t invite questioning, or tolerate mockery.  It is telling you, in effect, that God wants you to be stupid.”

The word Patristic relates to the lives, writings, philosophy and doctrines of the early Orthodox Church theologians.  These included the Ante-Nicene and the Post-Nicene Church fathers.  Ante-Nicene refers to the period before the First Council of Nicaea in 325 in which Christianity was changed forever.  We discuss this council in detail below.

The Ante-Nicene fathers were devoted to attacks upon paganism and to apologies and defenses of Christianity.  They assailed the entire structure of paganism and elevated the dictates of faith above those of reason.  They also emphasized the supremacy of man throughout the universe – “man” meaning the supremacy of humanity over Nature and all other living beings and the supremacy of man over woman.

There were several popular religious movements the Patristic fathers considered heresies in the early days that had to be wiped out.  These include:

• Gnosticism (2^nd to 4^th century) – discussed extensively in the previous article
• Marcionism (2^nd century) – taught the God of Jesus was a different God than the God of the Old Testament. This went against the dictates of monotheism.
• Montanism (2^nd century) – relied on prophetic revelations from the Holy Spirit. This went against the dictates that God can only be accessed through a priest or bishop.
• Adoptionsism (2^nd century) – taught Jesus was not born the Son of God but was adopted at his baptism, resurrection or ascension
• Docetism (2^nd to 3^rd century) – taught Jesus was a pure spirit and his physical form an illusion
• Sabellianism (3^rd century) – taught the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three modes of the one God and not the three separate persons of the Trinity
• Arianism (3^rd to 4^th century) – taught Jesus, as the Son, was subordinate to God the Father

Apostolic & Patristic Fathers

The Apostolic Fathers were supposedly taught by the original 12 disciples of Jesus.  The Patristic Fathers were those highly influential leaders who were taught by the Apostolic Fathers.  These were the ones who sculpted modern-day Orthodox Christianity.  We will briefly discuss some of their beliefs.

Hippolytus was a teacher in Rome in 200 AD who wrote the Refutation of All Heresies to expose and refute the “wicked blasphemy of the heretics”.  It attacked pagan beliefs and 33 Gnostic systems including the work of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, the Brahmins of India, Zamolxis of Thrace, the Celtic Druids, Hesiod, the Chaldeans, the Metoposcopists, the Magicians, Valentinus, Simon Magus, Naassenes, the Peratae, the Sethians, Justinus, Basilides, Saturnilus, Marcion of Sinope, Carpocrates of Alexandria, the Docetae, Monoimus, Tatian, Hermogenes, the Phrygians, Montanus and more.

Hippolytus broke away from the church for a time because he did not approve of Pope Callixtus extending absolution to Christians who had committed sins such as adultery.  He did not like how the Pope softened the penitential system to accommodate the large number of new pagan converts.  However he was later received back into the Orthodox Church and upon his death was considered a martyr.

Clement of Rome (1-99 AD) is considered the first Apostolic Father of the Church.  He asserted the authority of the bishops/presbyters as rulers of the church on the ground that the Apostles had appointed them.  In the end he was supposedly martyred, however according to Jerome and Eusebius, this is not true. Julius Calpurnius Piso, a Roman elite discussed below and in the next article, wrote texts as Clement of Rome.  It is no surprise then that there are few details known about the life of Clement.  It is quite possible he did not exist and was only a character played by Julius Calpurnius Piso.

Ignatius of Antioch (35-108) was another chief Apostolic Father.  He is the earliest known Christian writer to emphasize loyalty to a single Bishop in each city assisted by presbyters and deacons.  He said, “It is not lawful to baptize or give communion without the consent of the bishop.  On the other hand, whatever has his approval is pleasing to God.”  He also stressed the value of the Eucharist and called it the “medicine of immortality” and insulted those who abstained from it.  He regarded salvation as one being free from fear of death and able to bravely face martyrdom – meaning torture and bloody martyrdom – of which he desired for himself very much.

Ignatius was also the first to argue in favor of replacing the Sabbath (Saturday) with the Lord’s Day (Sunday).  This served to highly insult Judaism.  He was also the one who coined the word “Catholic”.  Katholikos in Greek means universal, complete, whole, and thus the “Catholic Church” was officially born.

Ignatius of Antioch was desperate to be martyred.  This desire led to his being fed to ‘wild beasts’, supposedly in the Colosseum.  Before his death he wrote in his Letter to the Romans: “I am writing to all the Churches and I enjoin all that I am dying willingly for God’s sake, if only you do not prevent it. I beg you, do not do me an untimely kindness. Allow me to be eaten by the beasts, which are my way of reaching to God. I am God’s wheat, and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, so that I may become the pure bread of Christ.”

Pliny the Younger wrote as Ignatius, just as Julius Calpurnius Piso wrote as Clement of Rome. Absolutely nothing is known of Ignatius’s life except what is gleaned through his letters.  Once again, it is highly likely that Ignatius simply did not exist and was a character played by Pliny the Younger.  Julius and Pliny were related by marriage.

Polycarp of Smyrna (69-155) was the third chief Apostolic Father.  He believed in everlasting punishment for the wicked, which of course had a profound impact upon future Christianity.  He also condemned heretical teachers such as Valentinus, Marcion, Origen, and Tertullian as offensive novelties.

Proculus wrote as Polycarp of Smyrna.  Once again, nothing is known about the life of Polycarp except what can be gathered through his one surviving work and three other documents written by others.  Again, it is highly likely that Polycarp did not exist but was a character played by Proculus Calpurnius Piso.  This Proculus appears to be the same Proculus who was a jurist in the 1^st century who wrote at least eight books of legal epistles and practiced law under Nero.  The Pisos as the true authors of the New Testament will be discussed in great detail in the next article.

Irenaeus of Lyons (130-202) was a Patristic Father who wrote a detailed attack against Gnosticism called Against Heresies in 180 AD.  He also wrote five volumes entitled The Destruction and Overthrow of Falsely So-called Knowledge.  In these volumes his description of Gnosticism was largely inaccurate and polemic in nature.  He maintained that bishops provided the only safe guide to the interpretation of Scripture and cited the Roman church as an unbroken chain of authority.  He also asserted the primacy of Rome over Eastern churches by virtue of its preeminent authority.

Irenaus’s broad view of a “heretic” was anyone whose outlook someone else dislikes or denounces!  This means every single human being alive today would be a heretic to him!  Naturally he insisted there could be only one church, outside of which there is no salvation.  John Michell writes, “[St. Irenaeus’s] manner of writing was like that of a scandalmonger journalist who presents a selective version of his victims’ point of view in order to make them look absurd or sinister.”

Clement of Alexandria (150-215) was another early church father who had extensive knowledge of paganism, Gnosticism and ancient mystery religions yet he thought that only through conversion to Christianity can man fully participate in the Logos or universal truth.

Many of his beliefs were thought heretical.  Some of these include:

• His belief that matter and thought are eternal and did not originate from God. This contradicted the doctrine of creation ex nihilo.
• His belief in cosmic cycles predating the creation of the world.
• His belief in the equality of the sexes.
• His belief that through striving to imitate Christ, humanity can achieve salvation.
• His belief that Eve was created from Adam’s sperm after he ejaculated during the night.
• His belief that Genesis 6:2 implies angles had sex with human women. Angels were considered sexless by the Orthodox.
• His belief in reincarnation and the transmigration of souls.
• His ambivalence towards the idea that Christ’s earthly body was an illusion, not physical.

Clement was surprisingly venerated as a saint until 1586 when he was removed by Pope Sixtus V.

Origen of Alexandria (185-254) was an important early Christian figure and student of Clement of Alexandria.  Clement was never canonized and was thought heretical by the Orthodox fathers.  Origen lived a life of extreme asceticism.  He taught the pre-existence of souls and believed in reincarnation.  He said, “The soul has neither beginning nor end…[Souls] come into this world strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of their previous lives.”  His writings were mistranslated from Greek into Latin and his teachings of reincarnation were expunged.  He was a Platonist with traces of Stoic philosophy and thought the scriptures were divinely inspired and he sought to discover the deeper meanings.

Not surprisingly he was condemned to death and thrown into prison.  Eusebius recounted “how Origen suffered bodily tortures and torments under the iron collar and in the dungeon; and how for many days with his feet stretched four spaces in the stocks”.

“Both Origen and his teacher, Clement of Alexandria, wrote about receiving secret teachings from Jehoshua [Jesus] that were passed to them through the apostles,” writes researcher David Wilcock.  “They ardently insisted that reincarnation and preexistence were one of Jehoshua’s most important secret teachings.”

Tertullian (155-222) qualified Christianity as the one true religion, calling the classical Roman Empire religion as superstition.  His beliefs are discussed in more detail in the previous article.

Athanasius of Alexandria (293-373) was a Patristic Church Father and the chief defender of Trinitarianism against Arianism.  Trinitarianism defines God as three persons or expressions and claims Jesus is God.  Arianism asserts that Jesus is the son of God, not God directly.  Jesus is a distinct entity who is subordinate to God.  This led to the Arian controversy which is discussed below.

The Cappadocian Fathers were a 4^th century monastic family that advanced the development of the Trinity.  It consisted of two brothers, Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa and their close friend Gregory of Nazianzus.  They resided in what is now Turkey.  These three men, as stated in Wikipedia, “set out to demonstrate that Christians could hold their own in conversations with learned Greek-speaking intellectuals and that Christian faith, while it was against many of the ideas of Plato and Aristotle (and other Greek philosophers), was an almost scientific and distinctive movement with the healing of the soul of man and his union with God at its center—one best represented by monasticism.”  They also held a higher regard for women than their contemporaries.

John Chrysostom (347-407) was known for his eloquence in preaching and public speaking and his denunciation of abuse by authority figures.  Unfortunately he is also noted for eight sermons that helped develop Christian anti-Semitism.  These sermons were meant to prevent Christians from participating in Jewish customs.  Later they were extensively cited by the Nazis in their campaign against the Jews.  John Chrysostom also preached vehemently against homosexuality calling it a sin even greater than murder, and one that would land its transgressors in hell!

Cyril of Alexandria (378-444) was responsible for the death of Hypatia by publicly denouncing her and inciting mob violence.  He was jealous of her knowledge, influence and political power.

Cyprian of Carthage (200-258) emphasized the necessity of unity of Christians with their bishops and the authority of the Roman See – the source of “priestly unity”.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) elevated the church and its dogmas to a position of absolute infallibility – a position which it successfully maintained until the Reformation.  He helped formulate the doctrine of original sin and predestination; he rejected homicidal attitudes towards Jews and disliked slavery believing “slavery is the result of sin” yet he accepted it as lawful and proposed that slaves “may themselves make their slavery in some sort free, by serving not in crafty fear, but in faithful love…until all unrighteousness pass away, and all principality and every human power be brought to nothing, and God be all in all.”

Augustine argued against magic and differentiated it from miracle as an attempt to fight paganism.  This later became a central thesis in the denunciation of witches and witchcraft, and “when the Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate, Augustine imagined the Church as a spiritual City of God, distinct from the material Earthly City,” states Wikipedia.  His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview in many ways.

The Arian Controversy

The Arian controversy concerns the nature of humanity and how we are “saved”.  The crux of the matter was: Either Jesus Christ was a God who had always been God or he was a human who became God’s Son.  If he was a human who became God’s Son it implied other humans could also become “Sons of God”.  This idea was unacceptable to the orthodox.  They insisted Jesus had always been God and was entirely different from all other created beings.  The Church’s theological position was mostly dictated by its political needs as we saw in the previous article.  The Arian position that believed Jesus to be inferior to the Father was headed by Arius.  This position had the potential to erode the authority of the Church since it implied that the soul did not need the Church to achieve salvation.

Earlier the Orthodox Church decided that the human soul is not now and never has been a part of God.  Instead it belongs to the material world and is separated from God by a great chasm.  They rejected the idea that the soul is immortal and spiritual, which was originally a part of early Christian thought in the 1^st and 2^nd centuries and taught by Clement and Origen.  The early Patristic Fathers developed the concept of creatio ex nihilo – creation out of nothing.  If the soul were not a part of God, the orthodox theologians reasoned, it could not have been created out of His essence.

This creatio ex nihilo doctrine persists to this day.  By denying man’s divine origin and potential the doctrine of ‘creation out of nothing’ rules out both preexistence of souls and reincarnation.  These were very dangerous concepts to the rising fear-based power structure of the Orthodox Church that would assert either eternal hell or eternal heaven awaited the dead – there were no second chances.

The Orthodox Church based their theology on the changeability of the soul.  How could the soul be divine and immortal, they asked, if it is capable of changing, falling and sinning? They reasoned that the soul could not possibly be like God who is unchangeable.

The Church still teaches the soul is created at the same time as the body and therefore the soul and body are a unit.  It tells us that the Arian controversy was a struggle against blasphemers who said Christ was not God.  But the crucial issue in the debate was:  How is humanity saved – through emulating Jesus or through worshiping him?

The Orthodox Church, by creating a gulf between Jesus and the rest of us, denied that we could become Sons in the same way he did.  The reason why the Church had such a hard time seeing Jesus’s humanity was that they could not understand how anyone could be human and divine at the same time.

Clement tells us that each human has the “image of the Word [Logos]” within him and that it is for this reason that Genesis says that humanity is made “in the image and likeness of God”.  The Logos, then, is the spark of divinity, the seed of Christ that is within our hearts.  The Orthodox rejected and/or ignored this concept altogether.

The Church did not understand (or could not admit) that Jesus came to demonstrate the process by which the human nature is transformed into the divine.  But Origen had found it easy to explain.  He believed that the human and divine natures can be woven together day by day.  He tells us that in Jesus “the divine and human nature began to interpenetrate in such a way that the human nature, by its communion with the divine, would itself become divine”.   Origen tells us that the option for the transformation of humanity into divinity is available not just for Jesus but for “all who take up in faith the life which Jesus taught”.

Emperor Constantine was a Roman Emperor who ruled between 306 and 337 AD and the first Roman Emperor to ‘allegedly’ convert to Christianity.  He headed the Council of Nicaea (discussed below) and made Christianity the officially approved religion of the Roman Empire.  Christian bishops, previously victimized by the police, now commanded them.  This led to all kinds of new problems.  Heretical books were burned and destroyed and the Bible was altered to fit a specific, militaristic and power-control agenda.  It was through all this that the Orthodox Church first gained military support in the 4^th century, changing world history forever.  Afterwards, the penalty for heresy escalated, Christianity was forever altered, and western society would never be the same.

W.L. Graham writes of Constantine: “To briefly summarize this view of Christianity’s early development, Emperor Constantine sought a One World religious institution as a solution to numerous religious conflicts that brought chaos and civil disorder to the expansive Roman Empire. Constantine issued decrees favorable to Christianity and gave the Council of Bishops at Nicaea, and the subsequent convening councils, full authority to determine every detail of Christian doctrine, an enterprise full of controversy, strife and political intrigue, with the power to brutally enforce their dominance throughout the Empire. Though it has been said that Constantine was converted to Christianity, there is no historical evidence to prove that claim. What is known is that, like most other military commanders and elder statesmen of Rome, Constantine was a member of the secretive Mithraic Order, holding the highest rank of “Father.” He erected many monuments honoring Mithras and other pagan deities following each of his successful war campaigns throughout his life.”

The Council of Nicaea

To begin, David Wilcock reminds us, “Let’s not forget that Christianity was a government sponsored religion by an empire that was in decline and scrambling for power.”  The Council of Nicaea, assembled by Emperor Constantine in 325 AD in Rome addressed this very issue.

Constantine was faced with the problem of uncontrollable disorder amongst presbyters and their varied beliefs in numerous gods, paganism and Gnosticism in theses rapidly changing times.  Presbyters supported a great variety of Eastern and Western gods and goddesses at that time: Jove, Jupiter, Salenus, Baal, Thor, Gade, Apollo, Juno, Aries, Taurus, Minerva, Rhets, Mithras, Theo, Fragapatti, Atys, Durga, Indra, Neptune, Vulcan, Kriste, Agni, Croesus, Pelides, Huit, Hermes, Thulis, Thammus, Eguptus, Iao, Aph, Saturn, Gitchens, Minos, Maximo, Hecla and Phernes to name a few.

To solve this problem Constantine gathered 318 bishops, priests, deacons, sub-deacons, acolytes and exorcists to debate and decide upon a unified belief system and a monotheistic new god for all.  Ernest Scott writes in The People of the Secret: “Unanimity was essential if the inspiration of the Holy Spirit was to be claimed for the Council’s conclusions.  Both unanimity and the approval of deity were matters of personal concern to Constantine, and he proceeded to ensure both by the simple expedient of having the two dissenting Bishops removed from the meeting.  Thus the datum point of Christianity for the next 1,500 years seems to have been decided by nothing more than an overt act of political gamesmanship.”

This new God involved British factions and their great Druid god named Hesus, joined with Eastern factions and their Savior-god Krishna.  Krishna is actually the Sanskrit word for Christ.  Therefore, Hesus Krishna (Jesus Christ) became the official name of the new Roman Orthodox Church god.

Eusebius then consolidated “legendary tales of all the religious doctrines of the world together as one” using the standard god-myths from the presbyters’ manuscripts.  This is why the story of Jesus Christ (discussed in Article 266) bears such astrological and symbolic resemblance to the stories of other “Sun-gods”.  In this way the supernatural god stories of Mithra, Krishna and others merged with British Culdean beliefs and the orations of Eastern and Western presbyters to form a “new universal belief” for the masses.

Some of the interesting things found in the Bible include:

• Narratives from the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, appear verbatim in the Gospels today (e.g., Matt. 1:25, 2:11, 8:1-4, 9:1-8, 9:18-26).
• Passages from the Phenomena of the Greek statesman Aratus of Sicyon (271-213 BC) are in the New Testament.
• Extracts from the Hymn to Zeus written by Greek philosopher Cleanthes (c. 331-232 BC) are found in the Gospels.
• 207 words from the Thais of Menander (c. 343-291) one of the “seven wise men” of Greece are also found in the Gospels.
• Quotes from the semi-legendary Greek poet Epimenides (7th or 6th century BC) are applied to the lips of Jesus Christ.
• Seven passages from the Ode of Jupiter (c. 150 BC; author unknown) are reprinted in the New Testament.
• In the next article, when we study Joseph Atwill’s Caesar’s Messiah, we will see many more interesting additions in the New Testament.

One of the most significant aspects of the Council of Nicaea is that it marked the beginning of the end of the concepts of the preexistence of souls, reincarnation, and salvation through union with God in Christian doctrine.  It took another two hundred years for these ideas to be fully expunged.

In the Gnostic text, the Secret Book of John, reincarnation is placed at the heart of its discussion of the salvation of souls.  Written during 185 AD at the latest the Secret Book of John’s perspective on reincarnation is as follows:

“All people have drunk the water of forgetfulness and exist in a state of ignorance.  Some are able to overcome ignorance through the Spirit of life that descends upon them.  These souls “will be saved and will become perfect,” that is, escape the round of rebirth.  John asks Jesus what will happen to those who do not attain salvation.  They are hurled down “into forgetfulness” and thrown into “prison”, the Gnostic code word for ‘new body’.  The only way for these souls to escape, says Jesus, is to emerge from forgetfulness and acquire knowledge.  A soul in this situation can do so by finding a teacher or savior who has the strength to lead her home.  “This soul needs to follow another soul in whom the Spirit of life dwells, because she is saved through the Spirit.  Then she will never be thrust into flesh again.”

Another important aspect of the Council of Nicaea was the adoption of the Nicene Creed.  This creed repeats several redundancies to identify the Son with the Father rather than with the creation.  It goes:

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father. By whom all things were made … Who … was incarnate and was made human …”

This creed is more than an affirmation of Jesus’s divinity; it is also an affirmation of our separation from God and Christ.  It describes Jesus as God in order to deny that he is part of God’s creation.  He is “begotten, not made,” therefore totally separate from humanity, the created beings.

William Bramley writes in The Gods of Eden: “To enforce these often unpopular tenets, Constantine put the power of the state at the disposal of the newly “Romanized” Christian church.  Constantine’s reign was notable for another achievement.  It marked the beginning of the European Middle Ages.  Constantine is credited with laying the foundation for medieval serfdom and feudalism.  As in the Hindu caste system, Constantine made most occupations hereditary.  He decreed that the ‘coloni’ (a class of tenant farmers) were to be permanently attached to the soil on which they lived. Constantine’s “Romanized” Christianity (which came to be known as Roman Catholicism) and his oppressive feudalism caused Christianity to move sharpy away from the surviving teachings of Jesus…”

Constantine died in 337, twelve years after the Council of Nicaea changed Christianity forever.  His outgrowth of many now-called pagan beliefs into a new religious system brought many converts. Later Church writers made him “the great champion of Christianity”.  Historical records reveal this to be incorrect, for it was “self-interest” that led him to create Christianity, not his love of Christ and Christ’s teachings.

To finish this section with another quote from Bramley: “In the earliest days of the Church, Christian leaders felt that people could only be made Christians by appealing to their reason, and that no one could be, or should be, forced.  After Constantine, leaders of the new Roman orthodoxies took an entirely different view.  They demanded obedience as a matter of law, and belief on the basis of faith alone rather than reason.  With those changes came new punishments.  No longer was excommunication the severest penalty of the church, although it was still practiced. Physical and economic sanctions were also applied.”

Rewrites, Alterations and Different Versions of the Bible

The Bible has been altered and rewritten several different times throughout history.  There are at least 500 versions of it in the English language alone and many more in other languages.  Naturally each version was translated by groups of people with varying ideas about life, death, politics, government and religion that were influenced by their culture at the time.

In future articles we will discuss the origins of the Hebrew Old Testament.  Here we focus exclusively on the New Testament since it is specifically related to Christianity.

The main authors of the New Testament were powerful and well-connected Roman aristocrats with ancient family lineages including: Arius Calpurnius Piso (pen name: Flavius Josephus); his son Fabius Justus; his granddaughter’s husband Pliny the Younger; and his son Julius.  These Roman aristocrats saw their power slipping and so conspired to regain control of not only the Roman masses, but eventually the world population.  This will be discussed in far more detail in the next article.  The following is a list of the true authorship of the books of the New Testament as compiled by Abelard Reuchlin:

Furthermore, as Abelard Reuchlin writes: “Julius wrote an epistle as Clement of Rome. Pliny wrote a number of epistles as St. Ignatius. Proculus wrote one as St. Polycarp. By these writings, the authors were installing themselves, in their own time, as the legitimate successors of the apostles Peter and Paul who had supposedly written in the middle of the past century. This facade entitled them, as they now went among their new believers, to be the legitimate propagandizers and interpreters of the Christian writings.”

The Codex Vaticanus was compiled between 300 and 325 AD immediately before the Council of Nicaea, in Koine Greek and is considered the oldest extant manuscript of a Greek Bible.  This text included versions of the original Piso documents.

The Codex Sinaiticus (Sinai Bible) was written in Koine Greek between 330 and 360 AD, right after the time of the Council of Nicaea.  When the New Testament in the Sinai Bible is compared with a modern-day New Testament, a staggering 14,800 editorial alterations can be identified.

The Vetus Latina refers to the Latin translations of the Old Testament Septuagint (written in Hebrew) and New Testament passages from the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, both written in Greek.

The Latin Vulgate Bible was compiled from the Vetus Latina and written in the late 4^th century by Jerome (347-420).  It was declared the official Latin Bible of the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) and it is still used fundamentally in the Latin Church to this day.

The King James Version became a very influential version of the Bible in English speaking countries.  This version was an English translation for the Church of England sponsored by King James that took place from 1604-1611.  Prior to this, the first generation of Protestant Reformers had created the Geneva Bible of 1560 from the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures.  This version was influential in the creation of the King James Version.

Though controversial, according the esoteric stream of knowledge (and backed up by large amounts of evidence) it was Francis Bacon (1561-1626) who translated and edited the King James Version.  It was also Francis Bacon who wrote the Shakespearean canon of poetry and plays.  He was a true literary (and scientific) genius, whatever his true intentions might have been.  Even today, whether you agree with them or not, these two canons are considered the greatest literary masterpieces of the English language.  Future articles will be dedicated to the life and works of Francis Bacon – which is a large and complex topic indeed.

Francis Bacon was very close to King James (1566-1625), as he had been close to James’ predecessor Elizabeth I (1533-1603).  It was under King James that the “Golden Age” of Elizabethan literature continued which included works by Francis Bacon, John Donne and Ben Jonson, as well as *cough* “Shakespeare”.

The King James Version was published in 1611 and the first folio of the Collected Works of William Shakespeare was published in 1623.  The actual man ‘William Shakespeare’ was illiterate, as were his parents and children.  The King James Version was supposedly edited by 54 different translators.  Few of these left behind any other literary works and what was left behind is average and uninspiring at best.  To think these average literary talents created the beautifully written and extremely influential King James Version is ludicrous.  Only one at the time proved to be able to write with such beauty, depth and flair – “Shakespeare” or in other words: Francis Bacon.

The King James Version is still widely used today, as I write this in 2020.  Other English versions include:

• Christian Standard Bible
• English Standard Version
• Good News Translation
• GOD’S WORD Translation
• The Message
• New American Standard Bible
• New English Translation
• New International Reader’s Version
• New International Version
• New King James Version
• New Living Translation

Theodosius I (379-392) was a Roman Emperor, the last to rule over both the Eastern and Western halves, who issued decrees that made Orthodox Nicene Christianity the official state church of the Roman Empire.  He denounced Arianism and declared the Nicene Trinitarian belief system to be the only legitimate imperial religion and the only one entitled to call itself Catholic.  He described those who did not support the Trinity as “foolish madmen”.

Theodosius also ended state support for the traditional polytheist religions and began the Christian persecution of those who still practiced the pagan Roman religion.  He neither prevented nor punished destruction of prominent Hellenistic temples of classical antiquity, dissolved the order of the vestal virgins in Rome and banned the pagan rituals of the Olympics in Ancient Greece in 393.  They did not return until 1896, over 1500 years later.  Interestingly, though he despised the ancient pagan symbols, he oversaw the removal of an Egyptian obelisk from Alexandria to the Eastern Roman power center Constantinople in 360.  This obelisk still stands in the Hippodrome in modern-day Istanbul.

Under Theodosius, Christians who had been persecuted for so many years now became the persecutors.  The orthodox Christians practiced sanctions and violence against all heretics including Gnostics, those who followed Origen, pagans and Jews.  In this climate, it became dangerous to profess the ideas of innate divinity and the pursuit of union with God.  The Dark Ages were beginning to ascend.

Justinian I (482-565) was a Byzantine (East Roman) Emperor known as the most active in meddling with Christian theology.  He was obsessed with restoring the Roman Empire by unifying its Eastern and Western halves, although this did not occur in his lifetime.  He was a despot who forced all to live under his authoritarian rule and he had no problem persecuting any with a different belief system than his.

Justinian issued edicts that he expected the Church to rubber-stamp; he appointed bishops and even imprisoned the pope.  He decreed the total destruction of paganism, even in private life – with severe persecutions as well as restricting the civil rights of Jews and threatening their religious privileges.

William Bramley writes, “By the middle of the sixth century AD the death penalty came into use against heretics and pagans.  A campaign of genocide was ordered by Justinian to more quickly establish the Christian orthodoxies.  In Byzantine alone, an estimated 100,000 people were murdered.  Under Justinian, the hunting of heretics became a frequent activity and the practice of burning heretics at the stake began.”

He convened the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553 A.D. which included only six bishops of the Western Church in attendance and 159 bishops of the Eastern Church – which Justinian firmly controlled.  David Wilcock writes, “In AD 553, the Roman government officially declared that it was illegal to believe in or teach the concept of reincarnation.  The exact edict reads: “If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it, let him be anathema [excommunicated].”

Justinian also discussed the controversy over the so-called “Three Chapters”.  These were writings of three theologians whose views bordered on the heretical.  He wanted the writings to be condemned and he expected the council to oblige him.  He had also been trying to coerce the pope into agreeing with him since 545.  He had essentially arrested the pope in Rome and brought him to Constantinople, where he held him for four years. When the pope escaped and later refused to attend the council, Justinian went ahead and convened it without him.

In the next article we will continue with Christianity in the “Dark Ages before we move onto a brief discussion of modern fundamentalism.  We will end with a look at W.L. Grahams Bible Reality Check to attempt to untangle and clarify certain aspects of modern Christian belief.

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