UNTOLD HISTORY: Constructing the New Testament - How the Famous Book ACTUALLY Came to Be [Part 5]

"In the relentless pursuit of truth, one must indeed not be afraid of searching..."

If you would have asked me even five years ago if I would ever consider researching religion, I would have looked at you in confusion as to why I would ever become involved in such a thing. I would have told you I see no need to investigate something like the Bible. I likely would have added investigations are for other topics, like Big Pharma and the CIA. But when I recently began questioning my religion, I wanted answers - answers which could not be found in the Bible, nor with a Google search (which points you back to the Bible). If you’re curious, I outlined my childhood and how I began questioning in Part 1 of this series, appropriately titled Questioning My Religion.

In Parts 2 and 3 I began digging into what the Bible (New Testament) teaches about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and comparing it to history and through this process, I made some puzzling discoveries. To summarize, little of it makes sense when compared to true history and much of it ranges from highly unlikely to completely debunked and some of it is now avoided entirely by Christian historians (yet it continues to be preached in my church as historical fact). These findings led me to ask “Who wrote the Bible?” (Part 4). In that part of the series I realized that pretty much everything I assumed was wrong. It’s always a fun day when you learn 40 years worth of what you thought you knew is factually inaccurate (that was sarcasm, btw). The good news was these discoveries led me to search deeper into history. Here’s what I uncovered and I find it to be utterly fascinating because I love learning and I love Truth…

Researching my religion has been incredibly difficult because very little timely content exists regarding the early days of what we now call Christianity. This is not because nothing was written back then. We will dive into the real reason why so little original content remains in the next part of this series which, in my opinion, is one of the most interesting of all, so don’t miss it:

At this point in my research, since we don’t know who actually wrote the New Testament, my goal is to find out how it came to be. What we do know is that, starting in the 2nd century (101-200 AD, which puts us at at least 65 years after Jesus’ death), a book called the Pastor of Hermas (now called The Shepherd of Hermas) was “considered a valuable book by many Christians, and considered canonical scripture by some of the early Church fathers such as Irenaeus.”. To quote Wikipedia, “The book consists of five visions granted to Hermas, a former slave. This is followed by twelve mandates or commandments, and ten similitudes (aka parables)”. As Hermas is on the road to Cumae, he has a vision of Rhoda (a woman he loved as a sister). “She tells him that she is now his accuser in heaven, on account of unchaste and impure thoughts the (now) married narrator once had regarding her. He is to repent and pray for forgiveness, for himself and all his house. He is consoled by a vision of the Church in the form of an aged woman, weak and helpless from the sins of her unfaithful children, who tells him to bear fruits of repentance and to correct the sins of his children. Subsequently, after his repentance he sees her made younger, yet still wrinkled and with white hair; then again, later she appears as quite young but still with white hair; and lastly, she shows herself as a glorious Bride”.

Now to quote from A Short History of Christianity, “[Pastor of Hermas] never once mentions the name Jesus or the name Christ, and never quotes from any book in either Testament, nor alludes to a crucifixion or a eucharist; but speaks of One God, a Holy Spirit, and a Son of God who underwent labours and sufferings; of a “Church” which appears to mean the community of all good men; and of bishops and apostles and presbyters”. Although the book does cite some kind of secret Jewish work, there is no mention of Jewish scripture. - so here we have something similar to Christianity, seemingly sharing the same overall concepts and even being used as scripture many decades after Jesus yet there is no mention of what we know as Christianity. This book remained hugely popular through the 4th century (which began in the 300s) and was still being used as scripture during these centuries.

THE 300s

Sometime during Pastor of Hermas era, what we now call Christianity became popular. Exactly what occurred is essentially a mystery due to so much source material vanishing with little trace (in combination with the frauds and forgeries mentioned previously in this series). You can easily locate modern day information on page one of a Google search and it will give you reasons for the rise of Christianity but if you look at the sources it’s pulling from then look at the sources of the source, you realize it’s all “best guess”. This “best guess” phenomenon is not the fault of the researchers, it is due to lack of (authentic) records.

What we do know is that nearly 300 years after Jesus, The Council of Nicaea was held by Roman Emperor Constantine (325 AD). This was when approximately 300 high-up members of the church met to decide details of the religion. These high-ranking church leaders were brought in from Egypt and Libya, 50 came from Palestine and Syria, and more than 100 from Asia Minor. Representatives from Persia and Scythia were present, even as far as Córdoba, Spain. The expenses of the council, including the travel of the bishops, were paid by the imperial treasury.

The main purpose of this meeting was to create consensus on issues within the religion, specifically, it could not be agreed upon if Jesus is also God. If Jesus is not God, how are we to only worship one God and also worship Jesus? This is when the Holy Trinity was proposed. The concept of a Trinity was not a new concept, it had been referenced 200 years prior by Theophilus of Antioch. Theophilus was head of the church of Antioch and used the term Trinity to describe Theos, the Logos, and Sophia.

Also at this meeting, the Nicene Creed was created (I’m sure you’ve said this in church many times. You might know it as The Apostles Creed because the Apostles Creed is believed to have been later born from the Nicene Creed; “We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible…). This Creed was not an oath to God necessarily, it was written to define the debate over Jesus’s relationship to God and whether they are one entity or two. In it, Jesus is said to be "of one substance with the Father", the "true God" and God the Father is also the "true God", therefore they are "of one substance" therefore worshiping both God and/or Jesus would be acceptable moving forward in the single-God religion.

Another topic that was up for debate was what day would be Easter. The feast of Easter is actually linked to the Jewish Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread therefore it was a date from the Jewish calendar. In efforts to distance the religion from Judaism, the Council determined Easter would be on a Sunday in a lunar month chosen according to Christian criteria not in the month of Nisan as defined by Jews. This means Easter is not truly what I was told in church, meaning it is not technically the day Jesus was resurrected because it is instead a day selected to represent such. Call me crazy, but I thought Easter Sunday was the literal day, preceded by the Crucifixion occurring on what we term “Good Friday”.

The Council also created new church laws and doubled-down on existing laws. Here’s a couple of interest:

1. Recognition of the honorary rights of the see of Jerusalem (This is important because this was when it was decided that Jerusalem was to be

   a historically and spiritually significant part of Christianity. Prior to this, Jerusalem was a place where Jews lived which was under Roman control, but now Christianity was making claim to it on the grounds of religious importance. Keep in mind, we are now hundreds of years after Jesus’ death)

2. The bishops of Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch were given jurisdiction over large regions

3. Usury was prohibited among the clergy. In this case, this meant the clergy could not extort the poor which was such a big problem it would be addressed again a century from now!

4. Prohibition of kneeling on Sundays and during the Pentecost (the fifty days commencing on Easter). The congregation must stand. I found this one to be really interesting because my church (Catholic) did not allow kneeling, ever, but then I would go to other people’s churches and they would kneel all the time. I never knew why.

ENFORCING THE TEACHINGS

Immediately following this meeting, Constantine stated everybody who refused to endorse the Creed would be exiled - and he wasn’t kidding. Excommunication began right away when Secundus refused to adhere to the Creed and was exiled to Illyria. Anyone who supported Secundus or his questioning of the single-entity determination was to be considered "enemies of Christianity". Eusebius of Caesaria was also excommunicated because of his contention that the Father and the Son were of two separate beings. Moving forward, there were to be zero questions from within the religion and everyone was supposed to be on the same page, promoting the identical teachings throughout the vast area shown on the map we looked at earlier:

In 331, Constantine commissioned fifty Bibles for the use of the Bishop of Constantinople. These bibles were said to be created on the same type of paper that we still use for Bibles (velum)! Who knew they had velum back then?! It is unclear exactly these Bibles contained. Many suspect these Bibles were the first productions of the New Testament but reality is, we have no way of knowing and it isn’t likely (you’ll see why in a moment).

Regardless of what the Bibles contained, Constantine died only a few years later and his son Constantius II took over. Constantius II had different beliefs from his father and wanted to rewrite the Creed because he felt Jesus was not the same entity as God. As you can see, even by this point in time, there had already been a lot of writing, rewriting, revising and structuring of the religion. All of this is adding-onto and changing whatever it was that previously existed - and we’re not even in the year 400 yet!

There were also debates regarding the Holy Spirit, which sects within the religion were now denying the divinity of. Apparently some didn’t like the idea of a Holy Ghost / Spirit. They thought the concept was nonsense and wanted to stick to only Jesus and God with no third party in the equation, but the majority was in favor of the third entity, so this topic was causing another problem.

By this point in time, churches were erected to be used as both places of worship and rituals (churches for worship purposes were uncommon in the 2nd century as temples were still the go-to for assorted religions).

In 380, Theodosius I was Emperor of Rome and went back to Constantine’s beliefs, thus scrapping the newer version of the Creed and reestablishing the former belief system (one must assume this required more revisions to the literature).

By 381 the religious friction had reached a boiling point. Remember, Constantine’s Council was supposed to resolve all of the issues and everyone was supposed to be on the same page and preaching the identical content but this just wasn’t happening. This led to the First Council of Constantinople being held by Theodosius I. It was at this Council that the Creed was revised and became the "Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed". This newest version of the Creed defined the Holy Ghost and doubled down on Jesus and God being one entity:

“And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver-of-Life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.”

There wasn’t resistance to the changes in the revised creed because those who didn’t support the Creed or its revisions weren’t allowed into the meeting. This means the Holy Spirit officially became a part of the religion approximately 350 years after Jesus’ death. Again, here we see more revisions required to the text accommodating the religion.

This next part is fascinating: Theodosius took it a step further and in 381 made Nicene Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire but, if you look deeper, this isn’t the full story. The truth is the edict did not declare Christianity as the exclusive state religion of the empire and it did not mandate conversion for pagans or Jews or any other religion. What it actually did was target Christians who did not adhere to the Nicene Creed, declaring them “infames” (basically meaning to be hated) and it prohibited them from using Christian churches. So, what this official religion decree did was smash down all resistance-to or questions-of the declarations made at the First Council of Constantinople. Basically, if you want to call yourself a Christian, this will be your belief system… or you will face the repercussions…

The following year, a meeting was held in Rome by Pope Damasus I. This meeting settled on the 27 books that would be included in the New Testament. Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome (a priest and translator) to “revise” the Bible (Vetus Latina) to create a whole new version. What Jerome’s revisions were, we have no idea because the originals have since vanished, but we know he revised a great deal of it and also made revisions in the Old Testament, even writing his own content for it. The remainder of the Bible was “revised” by “other scholars” whose identities are unknown.

Now this might blow your mind as much as it did mine; when did the New Testament officially come to be? It was officially canonized at the Council of Trent in 1546! The Council of Trent is fascinating in itself, but I will hold off on that for now and instead include it in The Book of True History that I am writing (it’s going to be great! Religion won’t be in much, so regardless of where you stand on this topic, you’ll enjoy the book. Be sure to sub so you get 95% of it for free:)

The next major movement we see in Christianity comes in the year 431 (400 years after Jesus’s death), and this one is really interesting; the Council of Ephesus. Here we see another really big debate in the religion, this time it is over Jesus; was the man crucified by Pontius Pilate a man, a man-God or a God? Did the crucified individual have human biology? Is the man that was crucified the same entity as He who rose from the dead or was the crucified a man then became God due to a transformation?

To understand what was being discussed, we can look at what survives from the Council (what survives means this is all we have to work with, but clearly more content existed - again, we will discuss the reason everything vanished in the next part of this series)

(I’m going to summarize very lengthy text into a couple sentences. If you want the full transcripts you can find them here.)

The problem arose: “if we reject the hypostatic union as being either impossible or too unlovely for the Word, we fall into the fallacy of speaking of two sons”. Meaning, they’re basically like, “We’re saying this man, Jesus, was the son of David, son of Abraham and born of Mary and Joseph, but this doesn’t make sense because that would make him a man with a bloodline. How can we make him God, or the son of God, if he is also a man of the bloodline? And how can we justify this without saying there were two different entities, one being Jesus and the other being Christ?”

The reply was pretty much, “The Holy fathers had the Holy Spirit speaking through them when they said the following therefore it is fact and it is what we must teach: Jesus was the Word of God. God took flesh from Mary and made it his own. We assume Jesus was flesh and blood but he was God in nature and truth. His flesh didn’t turn into God and the Word of God didn’t turn into flesh. God is everything so we can’t say what exactly God is, but because he is everything he is also Jesus. Jesus was the “mediator between God and humanity””. (And you guys think I’m being horrible for, after 40 years, asking questions my religion? The dudes who were in charge of figuring out the religion were having problems figuring it out themselves!)

And that was it. That was what was to be taught and now that it had been decided upon, anyone who didn’t teach exactly that was to be “anathema”

ANATHEMA

This Council was all about enforcing the religion. It was here that The Twelve Anathemas came to be (I’ll post them in the Sources section at the bottom of this document or you can read them in the Council transcripts).

These anathemas stated, essentially, you will believe Jesus is God in truth, you will believe they are one, you will never speak of them as two, and do not mention Jesus as flesh and blood. - I’ll be honest with you folks, it’s super confusing and leads to a ton of questions, hence the reason for the figurative chopping block that was then installed into the church system:

Beginning at this Council, bishops were exiled by the masses; 33 in a single swoop were cursed and exiled for not subscribing fully to the new changes or definitions. Because they questioned the changes or asked for explanations they were accused of “preaching hate” and “doing harm” then removed from the congregation and shunned.

What happened next was, it was made “illegal” to create any other Creed or content because it could conflict with what the church decided was the content.

TITHING

If we skip ahead to the 500s, Council of Tours obligated bishops to encourage tithing (financial gifting from patrons to the church). Two decades later, at the Third Council of Mâcon, tithing became church law, now patrons were to be required to financially give to the church. Fun fact: The Second Council of Mâcon imposed a curfew against Jews, banning them from the streets at all times “between Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday”. Jews were also prohibited from from talking to nuns.

So at this point in time, hundreds of years after Jesus, we had ironed out the kinks in the religion to clarify who will be worshipped, added in the Holy Spirit, (somewhat) clarified the relationship between Jesus and God, created a new Bible and “revised” the Old Testament, and developed a system in which anyone who questioned was to be disavowed permanently. We then created a mandatory donation program in which 10%-20% of every church member’s income was to be gifted to the organization. Now that this had been accomplished, the next step was…

NEXT READ: THE MASS DELETION: HOW THE CHURCH CREATED CHRISTIANITY THROUGH SUPPRESSION, FORGERY AND REVISIONS

But first, if you appreciate me throwing myself on the sword by researching topics that are supposed to be unquestionable, consider supporting the time and energy I put into spreading truth:

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SOURCES, NOTES & OTHER STUFF

The 12 Anathemas

1. If anyone does not confess that Emmanuel is God in truth, and therefore that the holy virgin is the mother of God (for she bore in a fleshly way the Word of God become flesh, let him be anathema.

2. If anyone does not confess that the Word from God the Father has been united by hypostasis with the flesh and is one Christ with his own flesh, and is therefore God and man together, let him be anathema.

3. If anyone divides in the one Christ the hypostases after the union, joining them only by a conjunction of dignity or authority or power, and not rather by a coming together in a union by nature, let him be anathema.

4. If anyone distributes between the two persons or hypostases the expressions used either in the gospels or in the apostolic writings, whether they are used by the holy writers of Christ or by him about himself, and ascribes some to him as to a man, thought of separately from the Word from God, and others, as befitting God, to him as to the Word from God the Father, let him be anathema.

5. If anyone dares to say that Christ was a God-bearing man and not rather God in truth, being by nature one Son, even as “the Word became flesh”, and is made partaker of blood and flesh precisely like us, let him be anathema.

6. If anyone says that the Word from God the Father was the God or master of Christ, and does not rather confess the same both God and man, the Word having become flesh, according to the scriptures, let him be anathema.

7. If anyone says that as man Jesus was activated by the Word of God and was clothed with the glory of the Only-begotten, as a being separate from him, let him be anathema.

8. If anyone dares to say that the man who was assumed ought to be worshipped and glorified together with the divine Word and be called God along with him, while being separate from him, (for the addition of “with” must always compel us to think in this way), and will not rather worship Emmanuel with one veneration and send up to him one doxology, even as “the Word became flesh”, let him be anathema.

9. If anyone says that the one Lord Jesus Christ was glorified by the Spirit, as making use of an alien power that worked through him and as having received from him the power to master unclean spirits and to work divine wonders among people, and does not rather say that it was his own proper Spirit through whom he worked the divine wonders, let him be anathema.

10. The divine scripture says Christ became “the high priest and apostle of our confession”; he offered himself to God the Father in an odour of sweetness for our sake. If anyone, therefore, says that it was not the very Word from God who became our high priest and apostle, when he became flesh and a man like us, but as it were another who was separate from him, in particular a man from a woman, or if anyone says that he offered the sacrifice also for himself and not rather for us alone (for he who knew no sin needed no offering), let him be anathema.

11. If anyone does not confess that the flesh of the Lord is life-giving and belongs to the Word from God the Father, but maintains that it belongs to another besides him, united with him in dignity or as enjoying a mere divine indwelling, and is not rather life-giving, as we said, since it became the flesh belonging to the Word who has power to bring all things to life, let him be anathema.

12. If anyone does not confess that the Word of God suffered in the flesh and was crucified in the flesh and tasted death in the flesh and became the first born of the dead, although as God he is life and life-giving, let him be anathema.

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14741b.htm

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/52550/pg52550-images.html

https://archive.org/details/howgreatpandied0000edmo/page/70/mode/2up

4th century Talmud created

The church proceeded to select a location for Jesus’s birth. For this they chose a remote location

THE MILLENNARIAN https://archive.org/details/howgreatpandied0000edmo/page/50/mode/2up?view=theater

Inventing Paul https://archive.org/details/howgreatpandied0000edmo/page/28/mode/2up?view=theater

https://archive.org/details/howgreatpandied0000edmo/page/18/mode/2up?view=theater

Osiris Cross - Ankh

Cross of the Magi

https://podcast.scouting.org/cubcast/2019/december-2019-religious-emblems/

27 books in the new testament is 3 to the third power

https://archive.org/details/howgreatpandied0000edmo/page/14/mode/2up?view=theater

https://archive.org/details/howgreatpandied0000edmo/page/18/mode/2up?view=theater

https://archive.org/details/TheMythmaker/page/n13/mode/2up

https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/religion.occult.new_age/occult.conspiracy.and.related/Bushby,%20Tony%20-%20Forged%20Origins%20of%20the%20New%20Testament.pdf

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/biblianazar/esp_biblianazar_40.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20120629031334/http://www.vatileaks.com/_blog/Vati_Leaks/post/The_suppression_of_the_origin_of_Mass/

https://web.archive.org/web/20120701151936/http://www.vatileaks.com/

https://archive.org/details/bushbytonytheforgedoriginsofthenewtestament/mode/2up?view=theater

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group_folder/266160

https://archive.org/details/apologyforchrist0000wats

https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/violence-in-the-new-testament/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Judas

The Apostolic Constitutions - also fake, 300 years after Apostles

First Peter and 2nd Peter are not the same authors. Peter was a fisherman in Gallile. Low education, illiterate . Peter is written in Greek, he spoke Aramaic

13 Letters by Paul, all but 7 have been deemed fake

The Apostolic Constitutions - also fake, 300 years after Apostles

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/invention-of-sacred-tradition/forgery-in-the-new-testament/54D9A9CB640BA8A5B70FE8A8527D54D7

https://jamesbishopblog.com/2020/06/23/greek-philsopher-celsus-on-the-historical-jesus/

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY

Chap. I—The Beginnings

§ 1.Documentary Clues1§ 2.The Earliest Christian Sects5§ 3.Personality of the Nominal Founder10§ 4.Myth of the Twelve Apostles16§ 5.Primary Forms of the Cult20§ 6.Rise of Gentile Christism28§ 7.Growth of the Christ Myth36

Chap. II—The Environment

§ 1.Social and Mental Conditions in the Roman Empire41§ 2.Jewish Orthodoxy46§ 3.Jewish Sects: the Essenes49§ 4.Gentile Cults51§ 5.Ethics: Popular and Philosophic60

Chap. III—Conditions of Survival

§ 1.Popular Appeal67§ 2.Economic Causation69§ 3.Organization and Sacred Books72§ 4.Concession and Fixation75§ 5.Cosmic Philosophy78

Part II

CHRISTIANITY FROM THE SECOND CENTURY TO THE RISE OF ISLAM

Chap. I—Developments in the Unestablished Church

§ 1.Numbers and Inner Life[vi]81§ 2.Growth of the Priesthood87§ 3.The Gnostic Movement in the Second Century91§ 4.Marcionism and Montanism97§ 5.Rites and Ceremonies101§ 6.Strifes over Primary Dogma102

Chap. II—Relations of Church and State

§ 1.Persecutions106§ 2.Establishment and Creed-Making114§ 3.Reaction under Julian127§ 4.Re-establishment: Disestablishment of Paganism133

Chap. III—Failure with Survival

§ 1.The Overthrow of Arianism142§ 2.The Cost of Orthodoxy146§ 3.Moral and Intellectual Stagnation153§ 4.The Social Failure159

Part III

MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY

Chap. I—Expansion and Organization

§ 1.Position in the Seventh Century165§ 2.Methods of Expansion168§ 3.Growth of the Papacy174

Chap. II—Religious Evolution and Strife

§ 1.Growth of Idolatry and Polytheism184§ 2.Doctrines of the Eucharist, Purgatory, and Confession189§ 3.Rationalistic Heresies194§ 4.Anti-clerical Heresies197

Chap. III—The Social Life and Structure

§ 1.The Clergy, Regular and Secular205§ 2.The Higher Theology and its Effects211§ 3.Christianity and Feudalism213§ 4.Influence of the Crusades218

Chap. IV—The Intellectual Life

§ 1.Superstition and Intolerance224§ 2.The Inquisition227§ 3.Classic Survivals and Saracen Contacts231§ 4.Religion and Art236

Chap. V—Byzantine Christianity 238[vii]

Part IV

MODERN CHRISTIANITY

Chap. I—The Reformation

§ 1.Moral and Intellectual Forces245§ 2.Political and Economic Forces249§ 3.Social and Political Results257§ 4.Intellectual Results265

Chap. II—Progress of Anti-Christian Thought

§ 1.The Physical Sciences278§ 2.Philosophy, Cosmic and Moral283§ 3.Biblical and Historical Criticism286

Chap. III—Popular Acceptance

§ 1.Catholic Christianity292§ 2.Protestant Christianity296§ 3.Greek Christianity303

Chap. IV—The Relation to Progress

§ 1.Moral Influence310§ 2.Intellectual Influence315§ 3.Conclusion and Prognosis319

Synopsis of Literature 323