The word, "bible," came from BABYLOS, the City of the Great Mother, the oldest continuously occupied temple in the world. The Goddess (called Astarte, Baalat, Hathor, etc.) patronized learning and her Priestess collected a library of paypyrus scrolls. So it came to be that the Greeks called any papyrus, "byblos," which came to mean any HOLY BOOK.
SOME OF THE MIRACLES ATTRIBUTED TO BIBLICAL HEROES WERE COPIED FROM "OLDER" MYTHS OF THE GODDESS. For example, Joshua's arrest of the sun was formerly credited to priestess of ISIS, Hecate, and the Thessalian Great Mother, who were said to stop heavenly bodies in their courses, thus lengthening the day or night at will. Moses' flowering rod, river of blood, and tablets of the law were all SYMBOLS OF THE ANCIENT GODDESS.
Moses' miracle of drawing water from a rock was first performed by Mother Rhea after she gave birth of Zeus, and by Atalanta with the help of Artemis. Moses' miracle of drying up waters to travel dry-shod was earlier performed by Isis, or Hathor, on her way to BYBLOS !
THE GREATEST MISTAKE OF RELIGIOUS AUTHORITIES IN THE WESTERN WORLD was their view of the Bible as intrinsically different from other ancient scriptures, and that it was "dictated word for word BY GOD" instead of collected slowly, rewritten and miswritten, revised and reworked over and over again BY HUMAN BEINGS for a very long time!
According to prevailing myth, THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS SUPPOSE TO HAVE BEEN TRANSLATED FROM HEBREW TO GREEK BY 72 TRANSLATORS sent to Ptolemy by Eleaszar, a Jewish high priest, in the 3rd century BC., hence its name, Septuagint. Ptolemy then locked the scholars in individual cells on the island, Pharos, where each one made his own Greek version in exactly 72 days. Interestingly, each translation was to agree exactly, in every word, with the other 71 translations. Well, this never happened.
A collection appeared in the 1st century BC and again in the 1st century AD that were accepted by the Jews of the Diaspora as sacred and passed on to the Christians. While in the hands of the Jews and Christians, the papyri underwent many changes. In the 4th century A.D., St. Jerome collected some Hebrew manuscripts and edited them to produce the Latin Vulgate, a Bible of considerable inaccuracy, differing markedly from Jerome's stern texts.
The KING JAMES BIBLE relied mostly on a Greek text collected and edited by Erasmus, in the 16th century, which in turn relied on a Byzantine collection assembled gradually at Constantinople between the 4th-8th centuries.
A few older texts have been discovered, namely, the Codex Sinaitcus, the Codex Vaticanus, the Codex Alexandrinus, and the Chester Beatty papyri. It's interesting to note that ALL differ from one another and from the King James version. There are no known portions of the Bible older than the 4th century AD.
The Revised Version of the NEW TESTAMENT (published in 1881) tried to correct some of the more glaring errors.
For example, it erased the final twelve verses of Mark, which were late interpolations, including the words that caused centuries of suffering: "He hath believeth not shall be damned."
It eliminated the fraudulent translation, "Joseph and his mother," intended to preserve the dogma of the VIRGIN BIRTH, and restored the original "his father and his mother."
It omitted the forged interpolation intended to preserve the dogma of the Trinity: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." These words appeared nowhere BEFORE the 15th century AD. However, the Christian Church insisted on retaining the forgery!
The Churchmen argued that if the verses were interpolation (changed by introducing new or false information) "could the Holy Spirit, who guides and directs the Church, have allowed her to regard this lofty affirmation of the Trinity as authentic, and permitted its insertion in the official edition of the sacred books?" Well, apparently not - in 1897, the Congregation of the Index, with the approval of Pope Leo XIII, forbid any further research into the origins of the text!
To make matters worse, the Church forbade not only research but also the reading of the Bible by laymen! Throughout the Middle Ages, possession of a Bible written in the vernacular was a crime punished by "burning at the stake!"
With Reformation, Bible-reading came in search of a new basis for faith, and in the process, many new grounds of skepticism emerged.
Richard Simon (author of the 17th-century "Critical History of the Old Testament") exhibited that the books of Moses were NOT written by Moses but were a compilation by many hands at a much later date! Subsequently, Bishop Bossuet drove the Richard Simon out of the Oratory and ordered the entire first edition of his book burned.
Dr. Alexander Geddes, a Catholic scholar, translated the Old Testament in 1792, proving the Pentateuch could not have been written by Moses, nor at any time prior to the reign of David. Subsequently, he was denounced as "a would-be corrector of the Holy Ghost."
As the years passed, it became increasingly clear that the Holy Ghost needed correcting. What followed were more examples of censorship and denouncements. In 1860, Seven clerical scholars published Essays and Reviews, defining the new science of Bible criticism. All were denounced and two were suspended from office, but the two who were suspended from office, took their case to court and won!
In 1869 Kuenen's The Religion of Israel established Bible criticism as a valid field of investigation. He was followed by many others in Holland, Germany and France. In 1889, the book of biblical essays Lux Mundi refuted the scripture's historicity or divine inspiration, admitting that the Bible is a "mass of myth, legend, and garbled history, often contradicting provable facts."
Needless to say, these scholars caused great grief to the Church. Many Churchmen insisted that the Bible's only author was God. But had they read the Bible closely enough, they would have seen where God had contracted himself.
One reason ORGANIZED RELIGION insisted on maintaining the literal interpretation of biblical myth was because they had an economic interest at stake.
The theologians complained that viewing the Bible as myth would destroy the very structure their livelihood and self-respect depended upon. In other words, they would be out of a job!
David Straus's Leben Jesu disposed the historicity of the Gospel stories, Renan's Vie de Jesus showed that the Gospels canNOT be taken as literal truth but only as romantic symbolism, and the list goes on. These published works compelled the Rev. Maurice Jones to exclaim, "If the Christ-Myth theory is true, and if Jesus never lived, the whole civilized world has for close upon 2000 years lain under the spell of a lie."
The more intelligent orthodoxed theologians had to know the Bible was full of myths and legends, they just had no idea of their meaning. If they had studied the corresponding myths and legends of other cultures - ancient paganism, modern mysticism, the non-Christian beliefs of people both civilized and uncivilized throughout the rest of the world - they would have realized the Bible shared the same myths and legends.
THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES THOUGHT THEIR WAY WAS THE ONLY PIPELINE TO DIVINITY, and the dieties of all other people throughout the world were devils. They professed that the myths of the Bible were absolutely true, whereas all other myths were absolutely false. The Christian missionaries were, and to a large degree still a scary group. The Christian missionaries not only falsely preached that THEIR way was the ONLY way, their arrogant vandalism of other cultures proved their way was also self-righteous!
THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES BURNED BOOKS and artworks, smashed images, figurines, statues, forbid the singing of songs and poems of heathen tradition instead of listening and recording them in order so that they may understand the people while paying respect for what they held sacred. Had they listened and learned, they would have discovered the mythology of the Bible, for nearly all civilizations in the world shared the same fables of the creation, the flood, the magical garden of the Tree of Life, the wise serpent, the heaven-piercing tower, the divided waters, the chosen people, the virgin mothers, the saviors and all the rest. Both testaments of the Bible are recent corrupt derivations from a world-wide cycle of archetypal myths.
The righteous Christians' awe of the Bible rested on a foundation of magical superstition. Legal oaths were taken in physical contact with the Bible because of a very primitive belief in the destructive mana, which would automatically punish perjurors. This practice led to the procedure of laying one's hand on the Bible when taking an oath in a court of law.
Both Jews and Christians used their Bible for divination, just as a witch might use a crystal ball, or an African might use a thunder-stone, or a Roman augur might use the sacred chickens. Although bibliomancy (taking omens from the Bible) was sometimes deplored, from the 4th to the 14th centuries this was repeatedly practiced by Kings, Bishops, and Saints. To this day, in Europe and America, the Bible is still used to give omens.
Despite the many discoveries and clarifications that have been made by biblical scholars within the last 100 years, the average Christian's attitude toward the Bible is no more sophisticated than simple-minded magic. Churchmen see to it that their congregation are NOT told the true origins of the biblical myths. The real explanations of the sources of these stories (which have been uncovered by the careful researches of the higher critics) is seldom mentioned, if at all.
Traditional views of the Bible origins and meanings are doggedly preserved by male chavinists; the canonical books were deliberately selected and edited to wipe out all the feminine images of divinity and saction religious suppression of women.
One of the erroneous notions that keep women shackled to their Bible-based "inferior" image is that Christianity was founded on the New Testament, when in fact the early churches had NO Gospels but rather created and produced their own!
The churchmen falsely pretended there was an apostolic origin of their scriptures and weeded out all references to female authority or participation in Christian origins. Only the forbidden Gnostic Gospels retained hints that Jesus had 12 female disciples corresponding to the 12 male disciples, or that Mary Magdalene was the leader of them all! These things the Church does NOT want you to know about. Betide those who read the Gnostic Gospels.
Saint Jerome openly admitted that his co-authors of the Vulgate were two learned women; but later scholars erased the women's names and substituted the words, "venerable brothers."
"The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets"
by Barbara G. Walker
Furthermore, in 325 AD, the Council of Nicea convened and decided what they thought the common masses were capable of understanding. They chose what to canonize and what to include as the "word of God" in the Bible. Arguments ensued and sections of the bible were edited and deleted, detrimental to their interpretation.
Additionally, the scholars who composed the King James version of the New Testament admitted to "a minimum of 77,000 translational errors, and these errors excluded the more ancient Hebrew of the Old Testament, which would include an even more embarrassing number of direct translational errors, as each Hebrew letter stands for a whole concept in and off itself with no comparison to the limited and stifled English language."
Other disturbing matters: the Beatitudes were found word-for-word within the Dead Sea Scrolls of Qumran...many New Testament passages were found within the older Nag Hammadi text - some directly quoting Ancient Egyptian passages - which proves the authors of the Bible were profoundly influenced by many older sources/cultures.
Now you know the rest of the story; the story the Church will NOT tell you and does NOT want you to know.
I know this may be upsetting to many, but these are the facts and these facts are indisputable. You can close your eyes and ears to these facts and live the remainder of your life in denial, or, you can open your mind to the Truth and begin to think for yourself.
The Bible is NOT the book you have been trained to believe.
Thank you for your attention.
Please continue to hear other views.
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