The Ghebers of Hebron, an introduction to the Gheborim in the lands of the Sethim, the Moloch worship, the Jews as Brahmans, the shepherds of Canaan, the Amorites, Kheta, and Azarielites, the sun-temples on the high places, the pyramid and temple of Khufu, the Mithramysteries, the Mithrabaptism, and successive oriental conceptions from Jordan fireworship to Ebionism

Front matter

3tliaca. Njm ^nrk

TJ.O. DePosteU

The date shows when this volume was taken.

Introduction

When the sacred scribes of a Great Temple in the East wrote a work of magnitude describing the construction of the Temple, the rules for the priests and the people, all the regulations essential for the government of a theological state, provisions for cities of the priests, cities of refuge, singers in the temple, levites, laws, revenues, a fundamental philosophy and a religion laid down with directions for the observance of stated religious festivals on the new moons and the sabbaths and everything carefully prescribed like a ritual — no matter whether the work takes on the appearance of history or any other shape, — we should expect to find the theological element dominating and the chief thing pervading it. Such a work is both civil and religious in character, exhibiting the art of government by the Temple in the centre of an Arabian people. It was indeed "the call of the preacher in the Desert ! '*

The successes of the Makkabi, in the 2nd century before Christ, set up the Jews, for the first time in history, in power and renown, and ultimately at a later period led to the production and combination of the entire body of Hebrew-Jewish Scriptures in one great pandect, — the mega biblion. In this present volume we are considering a condition of Judsea and Arabia before the Books of Moses were written. To understand what preceded the Hebrew Scriptures we have to learn the religion of the Mysteries of Dionysus in Arabia, the Mystery of lacch or lauk in Arabia with his Seven, the Mystery of the Adon-Adam, the Mysteries of Kronos in Phoenicia, the Osiris Mysteries, and all the Jewish Mysteries from the Arabian Lifegod Aud in Audah or laudah (leudah) down.

X INTRODUCTION.

When tlie Scribes of the Jewish Temple made the statements in Genesis the Books of Hermes were already in existence, as could have been supposed from the identity of the verses of Genesis i. with several of the passages in the Poimander of Hermes. The Jewish philosophy rested on the doctrine of spirit ^ and matter, — the basis of the entire oriental philosophy from the Nile to India, including Assyria and Babylon.

Chapter Four deals with the emigrations from Philistia or Canaan into the Delta of Egypt and the connection of the Canaanite worship with the Osirian. Our endeavor has been to connect Palestine with Memphis in philosophy, in the common use of Semitic names, in close observation of the stars, and in religious sentiment. This similarity must be kept in view in reading the Hebrew Bible.

We next proceed to Hebrew gnosis, Philo and the Semitic Kabalah, and close the book with Messianist and Christian movements, the Nazoraioi (Nazori) of Matthew, Acts, and Epiphanius.' In about the year 176-177 Athenagoras makes no mention of lesu or his crucifixion; speaks of the Logos; who is (according to the Sohar to Gen. xl. 10 and Matthew, xxv. 34) the Anointed King.^ In 176, therefore, there were lessaians who believed what the Logos told them, and had a body of divinely-given instructions or teachings.* — Athenagoras, ed. Otto, pp. 50, 51, 174.

' " iubar sancti spiritus," = the sunbeam of the holy spirit.

> See the Postsoripta, pp. 1002-1006. On page 353, for "Markion's First Apology," read Justin's First Apology.

= This was Jewish doctrine. Acts, viii. 1, supplies an Ecclesia and apostles, but Josephus knows none at all.

* Preoeptis utpote non humania sed a deo traditis. Athenagoras p. 170 strictly objects to too much kissing ; and says that the rule of the order is to regard her as his wife whom he has married legally. But having the hope of eternal life they contemned the things of this life. — p. 170. Philo called these Essaians and Therapeutes ; Josephus calls them Essenes. They were Jews worshipping the Logos. — Rev. xix. 8, 13. Bplphanius calls them lessaians. In the Apokalypse, xiv. 4, xix. 11, 13, they are looking for the Coming of the Logos. Philo Judaeus is one who believed in a Great Archangel who was the Logos, but not in the flesh. The SPIRIT, then, and the power from the God it is not proper to think ■anything else than the Logos. — Justin, Apol. , I. p. 14s. Being His Logos and firstbegotten and power. — ib. p. 144. Hermes the Hermeneutic

INTBODUOTION. xi

No such Antipharisee demonstration, such as Luke or Matthew relate, could have grown up in Jerusalem before a.d. 70. It was the nest of the Pharisee sect. The Antipharisee feelinggrew up in the Transjordan region among the Beni Abrahm in the 2nd century ; after Jerusalem was destroyed. The Law of Moses still continued to prevail among a kindred population (Gal. ii. 7, 8, 19, 21 ; v. 2 ; Mt. v. 17, 18), but Matthew's Nazoria, the 2d century Transjordans, hated the Scribes and Pharisees^ lawyers ! If lesu were a Galilean Jew, none but a late 2nd century Nazori needed the testimony of the Magi ! Why introduce Magi, except to convert the Nazoria, who knew them in Arabia ? There were no Magi among the Jews.

Under the Romans the Arabia beyond the Jordan was one of the most fertile and populous countries on earth. Not many years ago 446 ruined or deserted places were counted in the districts beyond the Jordan. — Syria and the Holy Land, p. 443. Our Transjordan Nazorenes lived there as far as the Hauran and Damaskus. The Gospels, including that of Peter, blame the Jews, not Pilate nor the Romans, for the Crucifixion. Matthew is careful to give Caesar all his rights. But the Revelation of John, xiv. 8, xvii., xviii., hopes Rome will be destroyed and burned up. Rev. ii. 9, 14, 20, 26, 27, sides with the Jews against Rome, the Gentiles and Nikolaitans. In some parts Revelations is lessaian ; hence it does not even mention the word Nazorene. It is therefore an older work than the Gospels that mention the Nazorene ! Rev. ii. 6 ; iii. 9, 12 ; xiv. 4, is lessaean (quite Essene), yet not altogether Nazorine. Therefore Rev. xvii., xviii., prophesies the biirning and total destruction of Caesar's City Rome, while the Nazorine Matthew, xxii. 17, 19, 21, says : Pay tribute to Caesar. The Essaians were followed by the lessaians, and from the lessaians issued the later

Logos and Teacher of all. — lb. p. 143. Hermes the Logos bringing-messages from God. — lb. 143. The Passion of Dionysus is a sacred stort about the being bom again ! — Plutarch, Sarkophagia, vii. They consider the Adon Dionysus. — ib. Sumpos. ProbL iv. 5, 8. The Adon dies and the remains of Dionysus are laid away near the oracle at Delphi. — ib. De Iside, 35. Athenagoras, however, p. 166, seems to quote almost literally Matthew, v. 38. The Nazoria were John's disciples.

xii INTRODUCTION.

Naz5renes and Ebionites. Since Justin always speaks of Magi "from Arrhabia" the NazSrenes, like the lessaeans, lived beyond the Jordan in Arabia. — Eev. xii. 6 ; xvii. 3. The Codex Nazoria lands John the Baptist on the Jordan. There was close intercourse in the 2nd century between Arabia, Syria, Galilee, Antioch, Phoenicia and Asia Minor. lessaians were in the Desert ; supposed to be there. — Bev. xii. 6, 14 ; xiv. 4 ; xvii. 3. The lessaians, Jews in most respects, as Bpiphanius held, followed Moses' laws, as Philo held that the Essaians did. The Apokalypse comes after the year 70, since it twice mentions the New Jerusalem. Titus in 70 destroyed Jerusalem. While the Old One was in good condition, a new one was not in demand.

Paul belonged (as far as his writings) to a later period than the Apokalypse. Paul was in Acts declared to be a Nazorine. The Nazorines belonged not so much to the time of the lessaeans as to that of the Epistle to the Galatians. Both lessaeans and Nazorenes across the Jordan (like the Ebionites and Kerinthus) were mainly Jews, were called such. Across the Jordan was Arabia, even if the Bible calls it Moab, etc. The Transjordan Messianists were circumcised ; — Galatians, ii. 12, 14, 15, 16, 21 ; V. 3 ; vi. 12 ; and stuck to the Law of Moses.— Mt. v. 16, 17. Matthew does not commit himself on the question of circumcision, says not a word about it ; the reason is plain, if he was a later Nazorine, and accepted only Galatians, v. 19-25. They who lived with reason are Christians, . . . the ancients living without it were bad and hostile to the Christ. — Justin, Apol., I., p. 153.

The question of the individual existence of the lesua as a man has been kept out of sight by oriental teachings in the form of parables, statements that cannot be verified, the Essaian-Iessaian socialist communist theories and the forced application of earlier Jewish passages in the Old Testament to the arguments and assertions in the New. The art of the Greek-Oriental Sophist was to claim by arguments and theories the admission of what he had never proved as fact. He has collected the

INTBODUOTION. xiii

best moral doctrines and sayings of the lessaians and the East and placed them in the mouth of an individual whose existence he has never even attempted by proper evidence to establish, and whose body no one has ever found. — Matthew, xxviii. 13. Mt. xxviii. 6, 7, 13, indicates the resurrection of the body ! — Luke, xxiv. 39.

India between the Indus and Ganges rivers was walled in on the north by nearly impenetrable mountains. This warded off northern incursions except in the regions around and between the Caspian and Black seas ; so that the Indus Eiver could be reached from the northwest. The influences of the Arians, Medes (Axeioi), Persians, Assyrians and Chaldeans or Mesopotamians ^ could reach India from the north and west. We find a mythic King Ariaios at Babylon, we find the land Ariana, the names Ares, Ariel, Aria (liepo-iK^ Xcopa), and the Persians called Artaioi. — Lassen, I. pp. 7, 8. Bel, Saturn, Mithra and the Sun were Assyrian Gods. Abrahm and Israel were held to be names of Saturn by Dr. Movers, in his work on the Phoenicians. The Old Kashmir was originally inhabited by Arians. — Heinrich Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, 33, 34, 102. Maurice,. Hist. Hindostan, I. 229 (London, 1795) mentions Arian consanguinity of the Persians with the Indi. The Hindu year begins in April. So does the Persian year. The Nauruz (Persian Festival) is in April. The way of thinking in the New Testament Gospel narratives resembles that in the narratives related of Vishnu and Budha.^ Asmi, asi, asti (the Sanskrit verb " to be ") compares with the Greek emmi, essi, esti and the Latin sum, es, est. So that the consanguinity of language seems to hold in this instance, and Max Miiller, p. 191, finds some primitive Lituanian words in Russia and Prussia almost identical with Sanskrit. All records and all traditions refer to the west and the northwest as the source whence the population flowed into the country. — Allen's India Anc. and Mod. p. 22. The Kadusians dwelt in the mountains between the Black and Caspian seas.^ Natio majoris Armeniae, Cadusiique, Cappadoces,

> 761, 838.

" Maurice, Hindostan, II. chapters iii. iv. p. 337-499. = Univ. Hist. v. 283, 331.

XIV INTRODUOTION.

et Syri et Medi.' Zoroaster is said to have altered the ancient religion about B.C. 520. Univ. Hist. v. 384-387. The Ancient Hindus worshipped the God of the' seasons. The Hindus, Egyptians, Persians and others concealed their religious doctrines in Mysteries from all but the priests and the Initiated. The Hebrews did the same in their Pentateuch, — Genesis, for instance. The Egyptians represented the Sun in 4 equilateral triangles. The Hindus represented the Sun in the centre of an equilateral triangle. The pyramid exhibits 4 equilateral triangles®. The ancient religions were based on Chaldean doctrines, but the deity names and the narratives varied. The principles and doctrines on which the ancient religions of the Orient, the Babylonian, Egyptian, Jewish, Greek and Hindu were based, were substantially the same. The names and narratives usually differed. Galilee was in position to choose between Persian and Jewish religion. The Mithra religion under various forms ultimately was known in Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Judea, Tarsus.

To fully understand the religion of Moses we must know its relations to Chaldean, Egyptian, Persian and Hindu religions. The Book of Genesis drops some hint of Chaldean Civilisation ^ and refers positively to conflicts between Arabians, Syrians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Sos, and Hyksos. Maurice Hess (in translating a work of H. Graetz, entitled Sinai and Golgotha, or Les Origines du Judaisme et du Christianisme, 1867) states that some tribes of Semitic stock established between the Euphrates and Tigris were, to all appearance, pushed by a migration, as far as the coasts of the Mediterranean. Among these Semitic tribes were found the Therachites or Hebrews. — Hess, pp. 1, 2. But the Hebrew tongue is known to be Arabic,^ and the relations between Babylonia and Arabia were intimate. — Gen. x. 10, 11, xi. 9. If the doctrine of the Resurrection was denied bj the Saducees, what else are the Chris-

• QuintuB Cartius, iv. 47.

2 Babylonian and Arabian proper cleanliness, B.C. 4.50.— Herodotus, I. 198.

« The Hebrew language is pure Arabic— A. H. Sayoe, Science of Language, T. 29, 30.

INTHODUOTION. xv

tians but Pharisees holding a disputed doctrine of immortality ? The Christian Eeligion follows directly from the Persian Mithraworship and the Mithrabaptists, John the Baptist in Arabia being the approximate intermediate link. The Hebrew Bible (B.C. 150-200'iprobably) directly derives the Jews from Mesopotamia (Chaldea) and there was a population of Therachites or Arabs in Chaldea from the earliest known times. ^ Connecting the Chaldee-Persian Mithra-Messiah (Mithra-Christos) with John the Baptist and Mithra-Baptism we recognise a prechristian Mesopotamian Nazarenism associated with the waters of Mithra. On this foundation Matthew bases his Gospel, and the God of Abrahm, Isaak and lacob was God of Saturn and Saturday (Saturno die) in Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre, Sidon, and further east. Euhemerus held that the Gods had been men. The names of the patriarchs in Genesis often look like deity names or tribe-names altered so as to seem to be names of persons.^

"Bel, quadam Sacrorum ratione, Saturnus et Sol."

Gnosis existed prior to Markion and Valentinus. The Essenes, Mandaites and NazareneS were all Gnostics ; which sects preceded the cultus of the carnalized Christ. Elkesai said that the Christ born of a Virgin was aeonian.' The Elkesites held that the Christ had been continually transformed and manifested in various bodies at many different times. — Gerald Massey, Natural Genesis, II. 483. The Jewish Kabalah says : The Mystery of Adam is the Mystery of the Messiah. This is Mithra (Shilo). Mithra and Christ both born at Dec. 25th.

> Genesis, xi. 38, 31 ; Matthew, i. 17. Hebrew differs no more from tlie Kanaanite Dialects than Assyrian differs from Babylonian, than Somersetshire from Dorsetshire English. — Sayce, II. 169. The language of the Assyrian Inscriptions remains almost unaltered during a period of 3,000 years. — ibid. I. 199.

^In this way a statement concerning doctrinal secrets or mysteries could be avoided by the priests.— Ghebera of Hebron, pp. 940, 137, 128, 130.

' Eternal. — Hippolytus.

Before Antioch, 360

CHAPTER BIGHT.

The Nazarenbs, 438