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The Scripture
quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible,
PLUTARCH'S PARABLE LUX GOSPEL AND THE AXE OF THE APOSTLE By Copyright Gott, 2004, Highlandville, Missouri
"Pythagoras, it seems, was greatly admired,
Plutarch Introduction to Of Isis and Osiris
FOREWORD I wrote this book because of something I discovered just as I was wrapping up Gabriel's Gift, my previous book. I realized that what I'd found might be even more newsworthy than the secret story that I'd discovered in Luke's Gospel. The hidden message that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had children, after all, has been circulating for centuries. And other authors had offered various forms of proof that it was true, although none had used the Holy Bible, alone, as I had, to do so. But uncovering Luke's real identity has never, to my knowledge, been successfully accomplished, and to do that, I thought, would truly be "a first." When I started work on Plutarch's Parable, I knew I could prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Plutarch was the author of Luke-Acts. I had no idea -- absolutely no idea -- what other mysteries would be solved -- again inadvertently -- as a result of the research to prove Plutarch was Luke. It is my sincere desire that everyone who reads Plutarch's Parable will experience the Love and Compassion the heroes and heroines felt for us as they did their work. For some readers there might be a moment of fear -- fear of losing any hope of retaining deeply held convictions. But if that begins to happen, if fear of losing something dear creeps into your mind, take a moment of silence to permit the amazing experience of Their reassurance to enter your heart. Although it may at first seem disturbing, what you're about to learn is quite freeing: "You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free." That was his promise. The Truth frees all of us to finally admit that somehow, some way, we just knew there was something wrong with what we'd been told to believe without question. The Creator gave us brains -- and minds with which to explore the wondrous Universe. Blind faith stifles curiosity, and without curiosity, there can be no great discoveries. Blind unquestioning faith is the prison door that Jesus came to throw open. It was the superstitions keeping people oppressed that he sought to destroy. He had discovered the Truth, and the Source of the Truth. He had found Moses' secret doctrine and the glorious knowledge it contained. He wanted to share that knowledge with the world, even if it might cost him his life to do so. He knew that knowledge is Power. Let your curiosity lead you as you explore this exciting and renewing discovery of our Hero and Heroine as they really were. May you read this true story in the Peace, the Love and the Light with which they sent it to you. And may it bring into your life the Freedom from oppression and falsehood He promised to deliver to all people. Pax Amo Lux **** THE MAGIC NUMBER FOR LIGHT About three years ago I was rereading Luke's gospel and came upon the story of Anna the prophetess (Luke 2:36). I was struck by the strangeness of that story and began to wonder what in the world a woman was permitted to do in a Jewish temple ceremony in Jerusalem at the time Jesus was born. I decided to do some research and write a short article about what I found. But I immediately ran into a problem: I couldn't get past Anna's age: 84. Why in the world did Luke find it necessary to report her age? It just wasn't critical to the story. I had been studying "Sacred Numbers" and the various manipulations permitted by Plato and Pythagoras to solve their puzzles. And that may have been the reason I had an urge to multiply Anna's age by pi (22/7). The answer was 264. And by a sheer coincidence I had just finished reading a book by Bruce Cathie, The Energy Grid, in which he quoted Buckminister Fuller's work on DNA/RNA behaviors pertaining to the "birth process," and what is known as "the birth unzipping angle."1 "The Birth Unzipping Angle of the DNA/RNA behaviors" is 26,400 seconds of arc, a "harmonic" of 264.2 So what I discovered in Anna's age was a "harmonic" of the "birth unzipping angle," described by Buckminister Fuller (which corresponds with the Watson-Crick model) and quoted by Bruce Cathie. (Evidence of knowledge of DNA in ancient times is discussed in the Notes section following this chapter.) 4 Notice the "coincidence" here: Fuller's birth unzipping angle, and Luke's story of the ceremony surrounding the birth of Jesus are "harmonics": 264; 26,400. Coincidence? Maybe. There was only one way to find out, and that was to see if any of the other numbers scattered throughout Luke's gospel also revealed similar "coincidences." That was the beginning of a research project into the numbers to see if this "birth harmonics coincidence" was just a fluke, or if there was something everyone had missed for over two thousand years. What happened next changed my life forever. I went to chapter one to look for more numbers. There are only five scattered throughout the eighty verses in chapter one: 5, 6, 6, 3, 8. (These numbers can be found in the context of the biblical verses at the end of this chapter. 3 ) I had an urge to multiply the numbers in chapter one: 5 x 6 x 6 x 3 x 8 = 4320. I immediately recognized that number from my study of "Sacred Numbers." I knew it was considered "sacred" for this reason: Divide 4320 by 2 to get the diameter of the moon (2,160 miles); multiply 432,000 by 2 to get the diameter of the sun (864,000 miles); square 432 (432 x 432) to get the speed of light (186,624 miles per second). One number, 432, with and/or without one or more zeros, and applying just one mathematical function, reveals the diameter of the "night light" (the moon), the diameter of the day light (the sun) and light itself (the speed of light). I learned from research for writing this book that there are other equally significant meanings applied to 432. Those come later. Luke means light; Lux was the goddess of Light in ancient mythology, and there is evidence that a group associated with the sect of the Nazarenes referred to themselves as The Children of Light. There is also evidence that the Nazarenes were one of the groups that later became better known as the "Church-denigrated" gnostics. Gnostic simply means knowledge, and the knowledge these Nazarene Gnostics possessed was scientific and astronomical. These numbers that Luke threw out right off the bat in chapter one led to, and supports, the foundation of this work: Luke hid the Truth in coded numbers and words -- parables -- and anyone who seeks to know the truth must be willing to look for it by decoding Luke's puzzle clues. Luke wrote a great mystery novel, based on historical events, but a mystery nevertheless. And the 432 code is just one example of the evidence presented in my previous book, Gabriel's Gift: The Message and Mysteries in Luke and Acts, and this book, that suggests there is more to the stories than meets the eye. "Those with ears to hear and eyes to see" will quickly recognize there is indeed much, much more. Studied in light of this realization, Luke's opening paragraphs in both his works, Luke and Acts, provide far more information than appears on the surface: Luke 1:1-4: "Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed." (Emphasis added.) Acts 1:1-2: "In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. Many have wondered who Theophilus might have been. Once I prove that Luke-Acts contain coded messages, it will become clear that Theophilus is a code word that addresses you and me and anyone else who loves the study of religion. Theo is Greek for things religious (theology), and philus is Greek for love. By addressing his two books to Theophilus, Luke followed the tradition best explained and demonstrated by Philo of Alexandria. Philo has been credited with laying the foundation for the development of Christianity in the West and in the East. He died c. 50 ACE, and his essays are among the earliest Judeo-Christian texts written. One of his major contributions was setting down guidelines for reading and interpreting biblical texts on a literal and allegorical level. (All quotes below come from www.jewishencyclopedia.com): "Hence Philo addresses himself to the initiated among his audience, by whom he expects to be really comprehended." (Luke left no doubt in his introductions -- he was speaking to the initiated readers whom he addressed as Theophilus.) "Philo bases his hermeneutics on the assumption of a twofold meaning in the Bible, the literal and the allegorical . . . but the allegorical sense is the real one, which only the initiated comprehend." Philo "wrote the book" for recognizing biblical allegories in order to separate them from the literal. He advised looking for statements that are "senseless, contradictory, or inadmissible . . . or in which allegorical expressions are used for the avowed purpose of drawing the reader's attention to the fact that the literal sense is to be disregarded." (Emphasis added.) "There are . . . special rules that not only direct the reader to recognize the passages which demand an allegorical interpretation, but help the initiated to find the correct and intended meaning. These passages are such as contain: (1) the doubling of a phrase; (2) an apparently superfluous expression in the text; (Gott note: Example, Anna's age.) (3) the repetition of statements previously made; (4) a change of phraseology . . . (5) An entirely different meaning may also be found by a different combination of the words, disregarding the ordinarily accepted division of the sentence in question into phrases and clauses. (6) the synonyms must be carefully studied . . . (7) A play upon words must be utilized for finding a deeper meaning . . . (8) A definite allegorical sense may be gathered from certain particles, adverbs, prepositions, etc., and in certain cases it can be gathered even from . . . (9) the part of a word . . . (10) Every word must be explained in all its meanings, in order that different interpretations may be found. (11) The skillful interpreter may make slight changes in a word, following the rabbinical rule, 'Read not so, but so' . . . Philo, therefore, changed accents, breathings., etc., in Greek words. (12) Any peculiarity in a phrase justifies the assumption that some special meaning is intended . . . Details regarding the form of words are very important: (13) the number of the word, if it shows any peculiarity in the singular or the plural: the tense of the verb, etc., (14) the gender of the noun; (15) the presence of omission of the article; (16) the artificial interpretation of a single expression; (17) the position of the verses of a passage; (18) peculiar verse-combinations; (19) noteworthy omissions; (Gott note: similarly, too much information or erroneous information.) (20) striking statements; (21) numeral symbolism. Philo found much material for this symbolism in the Old Testament, and he developed it more thoroughly according to the methods of the Pythagoreans and Stoics." You will discover that several of these devices were employed by Luke in order to tell the "hidden story." In addition, when he placed Angels, Holy Spirits, or just plain Spirits in a scene, something very important was about to be transmitted. It almost seemed as if Luke was working from a copy of Philo's "Rules" for transmitting information to the initiated. What cannot be denied, as will be demonstrated, is that the "twofold meaning of the Bible" was very much in his mind as he composed Luke-Acts. One of the most important things to be discovered as we follow the trail of bread crumbs laid out by Luke is his true identity. He made it impossible for anyone who found the coded messages not to also discover his real name -- or at least the name by which he became famous. When I started, that was the primary focus of this work because Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus wanted the world to know not only the Truth, but he also wanted the world to know the truth about who wrote Luke-Acts. So he left fingerprints all over both texts and provided matching prints in virtually all of his other works, as well. And then he built a library! This is a story of constant surprises and new discoveries about Jesus, his life, his work, and his family. The hidden stories confirm many ancient Christian traditions, while it dispels others. What it reveals about the Apostle Paul may come as a shock, considering that two thousand years of religious history has said that Luke was one of Paul's faithful traveling companions. That turns out to be false, and the proof is in Luke's Acts of the Apostles. Church leaders may be able to oppose Dan Brown's, The DaVinci Code, by repeating over and over, "It's fiction." They may be able to belittle Laurence Gardner's claims in, Bloodline of the Holy Grail, as the imaginations of a madman. But how can they dispute Luke-Acts as "fiction" or "the work of a madman"? They've already invested too many years and too many lives proving that the scriptures are "The Word of God." What Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus has done, using the pseudonym, Luke (also a shortened version of his adopted first name), is to confirm both Gardner's and Brown's underlying theme: Jesus married, fathered children, and offered The Nazarene Way of Life to all the oppressed people of his time and of subsequent times. And modern Christianity, based almost entirely on the letters of Paul, has very little in common with The Nazarene Way of Life that Jesus and his disciples disseminated. But Luke's real identity and proof of the marriage and children wasn't the big news I thought it would be when I set out to report it. By the time I finished the research, all that had been eclipsed by the most shocking news of all time. However, it is absolutely necessary that the preliminary steps, laid out in the early chapters, be taken first, for without following the path of evidence, the conclusion is too unbelievable to accept. CHAPTER ONE FOOTNOTES 1 Bruce Cathie's quotation and explanation from Buckminister Fuller's work on DNA/RNA Behaviors and the "Birth Unzipping Angle": " . . . five tetrahedra, triple bonded to one another around a common edge axis fall short of 360 degrees by 7 degrees, 20 minutes. This gap is called the birth unzipping angle of the DNA/RNA behaviors. The unzipping occurring as the birth dichotomy, the new life breaking off from the old pattern with the perfect imprint and repeating the other's growth pattern." (Bruce Cathie, The Energy Grid, Adventures Unlimited Press, 1997, (ISBN 0-932813-44-5) p. 163.) Cathie then explains that 7 degrees, 20 minutes equal 26,400 seconds of arc. For the non-mathematical, such as myself, that determination comes from the measurement of circles by dividing them into "degrees," "minutes," and "seconds" of arc. To convert "degrees" and "minutes" to "seconds" in this case: 7 degrees x 60 minutes x 60 seconds = 25,200 seconds of arc in 7 degrees. 20 minutes x 60 seconds = 1,200 seconds of arc in 20 minutes. Adding the two together reveals the number of seconds of arc in 7 degrees, 20 minutes: 25,200 + 1,200 = 26,400 seconds of arc. 2 Cathie and others have described and explained "sacred numbers" and "harmonics" of numbers. Other examples of numbers that are "harmonics" of 264 and 26,400 are: 26.4, .00264, 264,000,000, etc. In other words, harmonics are numbers that have, as a foundation, a sequence of numbers that match. Zeros can be added to the left or right, and the decimal point can be moved to the left or right. Ancient philosophers and sages, such as Pythagoras, Plato, and other founders and teachers of mystery schools, taught and played with certain numbers that they declared to be "sacred," and "harmonics" were important in the puzzles and exercises they gave to their students. 3 Luke 1:24: "After those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion." 3 Luke 1:27: "In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth . . ." 3 Luke 1:36: "And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren." 3 Luke 1:56: "And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home." 3 Luke 1:59: "On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father." 4 Zechariah Sitchin, The Cosmic Code, suggests that knowledge of DNA existed in ancient times: Page 101: "The withheld knowledge, Marduk pointed out, was the secret of resurrecting the dead; that secret knowledge was imparted by Enki to Maraduk's brother, Ningishzidda/Thoth, but not to Marduk/Ra. "That secret knowledge, those powers granted to Thoth/Ningishzidda, found expression in Mesopotamian art and worship by depicting him by or with the symbol of the Entwined Serpents . . . A symbol that we have identified as a representation of the double helix DNA . . . a symbol that has survived to our time as the emblem of medicine and healing." Sitchen reviews the ancient myth of Isis and Osiris to introduce more of the history of DNA knowledge, p. 106: "Isis appealed to Thoth, the Keeper of the Divine Secrets, to help her. Extracting the 'essence' of Osiris from the dead god's available parts, Thoth helped Isis impregnate herself and give birth to a son, Horus. "The 'essence' (not 'seed'!), we now know, was what we nowadays call DNA -- the genetic nucleic acids that form chains on the chromosomes, chains that are arranged in base pairs in a double helix . . . At conception, when the male sperm enters the female egg, the entwined double helixes separate, and one strand from the male combines with one strand from the female to form a new double-helixed DNA for their offspring. It is thus essential not only to bring together the two double-helixed DNAs, but also to attain a separation -- an unwinding -- of the double strands, and then a recombining of only one strand from each source into the new entwined double-helixed DNA. "Pictorial depictions from ancient Egypt indicate that Thoth -- the son of Ptah/Enki -- was well aware of these biological-genetic processes and employed them in his genetic feats." That may seem like a bit of stretch, even with depictions that show entwined serpents that are, in appearance, similar to the double helix DNA strand. But another section either supports this conclusion or makes it even more bizarre. The following is a description of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian hero: Page 114: "He was . . . 'two-thirds divine because it was not his father but his mother who was a goddess, one of the female Anunnaki'." "Here, we believe, is the key to the puzzle of the succession rules and other emphasis on the mother. It is through her that an extra 'qualifying dose' was given to the hero or the heir (be it Anunnaki or patriarchal). "This seemed to make no sense even after the discovery, in 1953, of the double-helix structure of DNA and the understanding how the two strands unwind and separate so that only one strand from the female egg and one strand from the male sperm recombine, making the offspring a fifty-fifty image of its parents. Indeed, this understanding . . . defied the inexplicable claim of Gilgamesh to be two-thirds divine. "It was not until the 1980s that the ancient claims began to make sense. This came with the discovery that in addition to the DNA stored in the cells of both males and females in the double-helix structures on the chromosome stems, forming the cell's nucleus, there was another kind of DNA that floats in the cell outside the nucleus. Given the designation Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), it was found to be transmitted only from the mother as is, i.e. without splitting and recombining with any DNA from the male. "In other words, if the mother of Gilgamesh was a goddess, then he had indeed inherited both her half of the regular DNA plus her mtDNA, making him, as he had claimed, two-thirds divine. "It was this discovery of the existence and transmittal as is of mtDNA that has enabled scientists, from 1986 on, to trace the mtDNA in modern humans to an 'Eve' who had lived in Africa some 250,000 years ago." Sitchin provides much more -- far more complex explanations of DNA -- but this provides enough information to at least suggest that some of the hidden knowledge (gnosis), passed down through thousands of years in underground mystery schools, was quite advanced. **** BIOGRAPHIES "LUKE" I realized that Luke was a pseudonym for Plutarch just as I was wrapping up Gabriel's Gift. Since the discovery was inadvertent and not the purpose for writing that book, it received only nominal mention in it. I did realize, when I discovered that virtually all the characters who appeared in Acts were historical or mythological characters who had appeared in Plutarch's Parallel Lives, that I had been assigned another research and writing project. You're now reading the results of that assignment. Another clue that Plutarch was Luke was that his collection of works known as the Moralia contains teachings similar to those of Pythagoras and the Nazarenes and Essenes. The question was, could I support this deeply held "opinion" with data from other sources? And what about the two thousand year tradition that Luke was Paul's beloved physician? Before I could even begin to present convincing proof that Plutarch was Luke, I first had to determine if there was any real proof that he was a physician who traveled with Paul. All sources agree that the Church's position has long been that Luke's gospel was written by the person Paul named as the beloved physician at Colossians 4:14. Most people who have attempted to write a biographical history about Luke work under that assumption, and it is a deeply held conviction for most. But because Luke's gospel all but screams in protest to that tradition, I kept looking for something that might suggest the tradition was not based on any supportable facts. A most helpful web site, titled From Jesus to Christ: The Story of the Storytellers, can be found at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/luke. It's a collection of essays by various biblical and religious scholars. The first essay is by Harold W. Attridge: The Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament Yale Divinity School. It begins with the following: "Traditions report that Luke was a companion of Paul, a physician and therefore someone learned in Hellenistic literary and scientific culture. All of those are secondary traditions and most scholars view them as somewhat unreliable. What we can infer from the evidence of the Book of Acts and the third gospel is that the author was someone who was steeped in scripture, in the Septuagint, and who was aware of Hellenistic literary patterns, historiographical and novelistic. And these kinds of patterns certainly have an impact on his literary products." Attridge also reports that: "Luke was probably writing in the latter decades of the first century, probably in a thoroughly Hellenistic environment. Scholars speculate on whether the gospel was written in Antioch, which would have been a significant Hellenistic city, or in Asia Minor, in places like Ephesus or Smyrna. In either case, Luke would have been in touch with, and very heavily in dialogue with, Hellenistic culture broadly conceived." The same web site posted the following from an essay written by L. Michael White: Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin: "Luke's audience seems to be a much more cultured literary kind of audience. Luke's Greek is the highest quality in style of anything in the new testament. It reads more like a novel in the Greek tradition, rather than Mark's gospel, which has a kind of crude quality at times to the Greek grammar. So anyone on the street of a Greek city picking up Luke's gospel would have felt at home with it if they were able to read good Greek." White also notes: "Jesus in Luke's gospel comes across differently, he's much more like a philosophic teacher, kind of like Socrates: he's reasoned, he's dispassionate, he's a critic sometimes of society but he's certainly concerned about the way his teachings bear on society. And in the end he dies very much like Socrates. The death of Jesus in Luke's gospel is more like a martyr's death, it's much calmer, he goes inexorably to the cross, knowing that it is what must happen. Pilate isn't at fault at all. Pilate tries to get rid of the case by sending Jesus away to Herod ... Pilate isn't the enemy of Jesus, he isn't the bad guy. And once again this may reflect the kind of political concerns of Luke's gospel. Jesus also isn't a source of concern because he's not a kind of rebel figure now, rather he's a teacher, a philosopher, a social critic, a social reformer. He's a good member of the Greco-Roman world." According to Kenneth S. Wuest, Quotes About the Bible and History, www.bible-history.com/quotes/kenneth_s_wuest_1, taken from his book, Word studies in the Greek New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1979) pp..52-54: "Luke was a Greek, educated in the Greek schools, prepared for the medical practice which was held in high regard as a profession, and among the Greeks had attained to a place of eminence among the nations of the world. Greek doctors of medicine were in attendance upon many of the royal families of other nations. The Greeks were by nature and training, a race of creative thinkers who pursued their studies in a scientific manner. Their sense of what really constituted scientific accuracy and method in the recording of history was well developed." "The writings of Luke . . . demonstrates Luke's training as an historian." " . . . Luke arranges the facts of our Lord's life in historical order as they occurred. The other Gospels do not claim to do that." " . . . Luke had the historian's mind, a thing native to the educated Greek. Herodotus, the father of Greek history, exhibited the Greek determination to get at the truth no matter how much work it required . . . Sir William Ramsey said, 'I regard Luke as the greatest historian who has ever lived, save only Thucydides.' Thus we have no doubt but that Luke made a personal investigation of all the facts he had recorded. He interviewed every witness, visited every locality. If Mary was still alive, he, a doctor of medicine, investigated the story of the virgin birth by hearing from Mary's own lips. And as Professor John A. Scott, a great Greek scholar has said, 'You could not fool Doctor Luke.'" (Emphasis added.) So, even investigators who are clearly fundamentalist Christians, and who also believe the tradition that Luke was a physician, are forced to focus more on his "historian's mind" and Greek heritage than on his practice of medicine. There is simply no evidence that he practiced medicine except for Paul's reference to the beloved physician, and the fact that he was clearly quite well educated. The evidence is overwhelming, however, that he was a skilled writer, a historian, and a Greek, all of which describe Plutarch. Another web site has posted An Introduction to the New Testament by Richard Heard, (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1950), prepared for Religion-Online by Ted and Winnie Brock. (www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=531&C=553) "The tradition of Luke's authorship of the gospel remained undisputed till modern times, and can be traced back to the second half of the second century AD. An early prologue to the gospel survives, which was perhaps written to stress the genuineness of the full gospel against a garbled version which Marcion, a second century heretic, edited to propagate his own views. In this prologue are given a number of details about Luke which may well preserve much genuine tradition. 'Luke is a Syrian of Antioch, a doctor by profession, who was a disciple of apostles, and later followed Paul until his martyrdom. He served the Lord without distraction, unmarried, childless, and fell asleep at the age of 84 in Boeotia, full of the Holy Spirit.'" As stated in the article, it is known that this supplemental information about Luke was furnished almost a century after Luke wrote his gospel, and only after Marcion, described as a "second century heretic," became a significant competitor of the official Church. Marcion rejected the Old Testament and all gospels except Luke's, but he altered Luke's to exclude any reference to Old Testament texts. This prologue, then, was created by the official church to counter Marcion's competing religion. This hardly qualifies as proof that Luke was a physician, and it is pure conjecture that the tradition, " . . . may well preserve much genuine tradition." This tradition, though, has been adopted by many who repeat it without explanation of where and how it came to exist: "The reports of Luke's life after Paul's death are conflicting. Some early writers claim he was martyred, others say he lived a long life. Some say he preached in Greece, others in Gaul. The earliest tradition we have says that he died at Boeotia in 84 CE after settling in Greece to write his Gospel." (www.user.senet.com.au/~gwilym/Saint%20Luke) But buried in this tradition is a piece of information that is of immense importance to my hypothesis that Plutarch was Luke. Whoever created this description of Luke in the second half of the second century must have known that he wrote his gospel while residing in the province of Boeotia. And coincidentally, Plutarch's history includes the same province: " . . . Plutarch was probably born in 46 in the Boeotian town Chaeronea." (Note: Others offer 44 or 45 as his year of birth.) "In the 90's, Plutarch, who had seen much of the world, settled in his home town. When asked to explain his return to the province, he said that Chaeronea was in decline and that it would be even smaller if he did not settle there." (www.livius.org/pi-pm/plutarch/plutarch) Of course the province referred to here, Boeotia, is the very province in which church tradition says Luke settled to write his gospel! And the year of Luke's traditional death, 84 ACE (although contradicted by other sources), reminded me of Anna's age. My guess is that the church father who recognized what Plutarch had done, and realized that it was he who had written Luke-Acts, thought it might be clever to use Plutarch's "birth code number," 84, to allege his death in that year. After Plutarch settled back in Boeotia to live out his life where he was born, a library was built near the sanctuary in the holy city of Delphi, where he served as one of the two permanent priests: "In these years, a library was built near the sanctuary, and it is tempting to assume that Plutarch was behind this initiative." (www.livius.org/pi-pm/plutarch/plutarch.) I believe that would be a safe assumption; Plutarch accumulated all the ancient myths, plays, and stories, including his own, in one place so that people could read Luke-Acts and figure out exactly what the truth was, and also figure out who wrote them. The question, "Is there any real proof that Luke was a physician who traveled with Paul?" has, I think, been answered. All the church has to support the claim that Luke was Paul's physician comes from Paul's letter to the Colossians (4:14) and "church tradition," created decades, if not centuries, later. And the "traditions" surrounding Luke do not always agree. No real proof exists. Now I can set about to prove that Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus was Luke. "PLUTARCH" "Plutarch traveled widely, visiting central Greece, Sparta, Corinth, Patrae, Sardis, and Alexandria, but he made his normal residence at Chaeronea, where he held the chief magistracy and other municipal posts and directed a school with a wide curriculum in which philosophy, especially ethics, occupied the central place. "He maintained close links with the Academy at Athens (he possessed Athenian citizenship) and with Delphi, where, from about 95, he held a priesthood for life; he may have won Trajan's interest and support for the then-renewed vogue of the oracle . . . " . . . And perhaps enjoyed the acquaintance of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian." (www.crystalinks.com/plutarch) " . . . Plutarch's philosophy was eclectic, with borrowings from the Stoics, Pythagoreans, and Peripatetic (but not the Epicureans) grouped around a core of Platonism. His main interest was in ethics, though he developed a mystical side, especially in his later years; he reveals that he had been initiated into the mysteries of the cult of Dionysus, and both as a Platonist and as an initiate he believed in the immortality of the soul . . ." From www.livius.org/pi-pm/plutarch/plutarch: " . . . Plutarch was probably born in 46 in the Boeotian town Chaeronea. His parents were wealthy people, and after 67 (ACE), their son was able to study philosophy, rhetoric, and mathematics at the Platonist Academy of Athens. However, Plutarch never became a platonist puritan, but always remained open to influences from other philosophical schools, such as the Stoa and the school of Aristotle. It is likely that the young man was present when the Emperor Nero, who visited Greece at this time, declared the Greek towns to be free and autonomous. "Because Plutarch was a rich man, he became one of the leading citizens of Chaeronea and he is known to have represented his town on several occasions. For example, he visited the governor of Achaea, and traveled to Alexandria and Rome (several times). Again, this proves that he was a rich man. "Among his friends was Lucius Mestrius Florus, a consul during the reign of Vespasian, and Plutarch's guide during his visit to Bedriacum, where two important battles had been fought in 69, the year of the four emperors. Mestrius also secured the Roman citizenship for Plutarch, whose official name now became Mestrius Plutarchus. At the end of his life, he was honored with the procuratorship of Achaea, an important office that he probably held only in name. His involvement in the Roman world, although from a carefully maintained distance, explains why he shows so much interest in the history of Rome. "In the two first decades of the second century, he studied and wrote many books. According to an incomplete third-century catalogue, there were between 200 and 300 titles. These books brought him international fame, and the home of the famous author became a private school for young philosophers. He was often visited by Greeks and Romans, although not necessarily to study philosophy. The emperor Trajan may have been one of the visitors (winter 113/114?), and it may have been on this occasion that Trajan honored Plutarch with the ornaments of a consul, an important award. From now on, Plutarch was allowed to wear a golden ring and a white toga with a border made of purple. "Plutarch died after his procuratorship, which was in 119, and before 125 . . ." These various resources begin to paint pictures of Plutarch and Luke that contain an inordinate number of parallels: They were both city boys; both were wealthy; both were educated and had intimate knowledge about government and government positions. Both used the same unique phrases and words, and both used the same unique styles of writing. Only Luke mentions "Nazarenes" as being a "sect." And the traditions and teachings of Nazarenes, based on OT descriptions of "nazirites," describe the traditions and teachings of Pythagoras and Plato, both of whom Plutarch studied and imitated: he wore white, did not cut his hair, and was a vegetarian, among many other similarities.
**** ELPENOR AND EUTYCHUS The argument most often presented as "supporting documentation" that Luke traveled with Paul, and was the Luke described as the physician, is based in part on the way the Acts of the Apostles, Luke's second volume, was written. The argument for Luke as Paul's traveling companion is based on the change of voice from third person to first person that occurs at Acts 16:8-10. And it is this argument that provides a perfect segue into the first item of proof that Luke's gospel was actually written by Plutarch. An example of the typical argument that is based on the change of voice can be found at (www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=76): "We have to go to Acts to follow the trail of Luke's Christian ministry. We know nothing about his conversion but looking at the language of Acts we can see where he joined Saint Paul. The story of the Acts is written in the third person, as an historian recording facts, up until the sixteenth chapter. In Acts 16:8-9 we hear of Paul's company 'So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, 'Come over to Macedonia and help us.' Then suddenly in 16:10 'they' becomes 'we': 'When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. "So Luke first joined Paul's company at Troas at about the year 51 and accompanied him into Macedonia . . . Luke then switches back to the third person which seems to indicate he was not thrown into prison with Paul and that when Paul left Philippi Luke stayed behind to encourage the Church there. In Acts 20:5, the switch to 'we' tells us that Luke has left Philippi to rejoin Paul in Troas in 58 where they first met up." But this frequently cited "proof" that Luke was Paul's traveling companion has been questioned by some biblical scholars, specifically those who also study ancient epics and Greek mythology. Some serious theologians have noted the similarities between Luke's Eutychus (Acts 20:7-12) and Homer's Elpenor in the Odyssey. An excellent example of this discovery can be found in an essay titled, Luke's Eutychus and Homer's Elpenor: Acts 20:7-12 and Odyssey 10-12, by Dennis R. MacDonald, published in the Journal of Higher Criticism, 1 (Fall 1994), pp. 4-24, Copyright @Institute for Higher Critical Studies, 1996. I found this article during one of my searches using Luke and Plutarch as key words at www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/mcdonald: "Homer's Odysseus speaks: 'There was one, Elpenor, the youngest of all, not over valiant in war nor sound of understanding, who had laid him down apart from his comrades in the sacred house of Circe, seeking the cool air, for he was heavy with wine. He heard the noise and the bustle of his comrades as they moved about, and suddenly sprang up, and forgot to go to the long ladder that he might come down again, but fell headlong from the roof, and his neck was broken away from the spine, and his spirit went down to the house of Hades. (Odyssey 10.552-60).'" Note the similarities apparent in Luke's story about Eutychus: Acts 20:8-12 : "There were many lamps in the room upstairs where we were meeting. A young man named Eutychus, who was sitting in the window, began to sink off into a deep sleep while Paul talked still longer. Overcome by sleep, he fell to the ground three floors below and was picked up dead. But Paul went down, and bending over him took him in his arms, and said, 'Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.' Then Paul went upstairs, and after he had broken bread and eaten, he continued to converse with them until dawn; then he left. Meanwhile they had taken the boy away alive and were not a little comforted." MacDonald notes: "Because of his strategic location immediately prior to, at the beginning of, and immediately following one of Homer's most memorable and controversial episodes, Elpenor became an ancient household word, even in Christian households. Clement of Alexandria, writing at the end of the second century cited the example of Elpenor's fall in order to discourage drunkenness and assumed that his readers would recognize the tale: 'just as Elpenor 'broke his neck' (Odyssey 10.560) when he fell down because he was drunk.'" (Emphasis added.) In other words, Luke would have been quite aware that all educated Greeks, and most educated Christians, would see the similarities between Eutychus and Elpenor. He wasn't plagiarizing out of laziness; he plagiarized in order to attract attention and raise questions in the minds of those who read his gospel. When a writer is creating a mystery novel, the clues must be strategically placed to help the reader solve the riddle! It becomes clear later that Luke placed numerous clues throughout Luke-Acts. MacDonald: "L. Mestrius Plutarchus (c. 50-120CE), Luke's contemporary, wrote two stories about young men who visited the netherworld; the one most relevant to Eutychus is that of Thespesius. . . " (Emphasis added.) Here we have a noted biblical scholar pointing to the similarities between one of Plutarch's characters and one of Luke's. MacDonald then demonstrates the similarities between Plutarch's Thespesius and Homer's Elpenor. What MacDonald has done, then, is to show how the stories of Homer's Elpenor, Plutarch's Thespesius, and Luke's Eutychus all tell the same story, using different names. Plutarch and Luke, of course, would have used Homer's Odyssey as their pattern. MacDonald's comparison of the Odyssey, 10-12, and Acts, 20:7-12, is most intriguing: 1. Odyssey 10-12: Odysseus and crew leave Troy and sail back to Achaea. Acts 20:7-12: Paul and crew stop at Troy, having left Achaea to sail back to Jerusalem. 2. Odyssey 10-12: First person plural (most of book 10). Acts 20:7-12: First person plural (20:1-8). (Gott note: these were switches from third person to first person.) 3. Odyssey 10-12: After a sojourn, a meal (10.466-77). Acts: 20:7-12: After a sojourn, a meal (20:6,7,11). 4. Odyssey 10-12: Circe's 'dark halls' (10.479.) Acts: 20:7-12: There were plenty of lamps in the upper room (20:8). 5. Odyssey 10-12: 'sweet sleep (glukon upnon, 10.548). Acts 20:7-12: 'deep sleep' (upno bathei, 20:9). 6. Odyssey 10-12: Switch to third person (10.552). Acts 20:7-12: Switch to third person (20:9). 7. Odyssey 10-12: There was one, Elpenor, the youngest of all lying on the roof (10.552). Acts 20:7-12: A certain young man named Eutychus was seated at a window (20:9). 8. Odyssey 10-12: Elpenor fell from a roof (10.559-11.64). Acts 20:7-12: Eutychus fell from the third story (20:9). 9. Odyssey 10-12: Elpenor's soul (psuche) goes to Hades (10.560-11.65). Acts 20:7-12: Eutychus's soul (psuche) stays in him (20:10). 10. Odyssey 10-12: Delay in burying Elpenor until dawn of the next day (12.1-15). Acts 20:7-12: Delay in raising Eutychus until dawn of the next day (20:11). 11. Odyssey 10-12: Associates fetch the body 12.10). Acts 20:7-12: Associates revive the body (20:12). "The parallels between these stories are more lexical, more detailed, and more sequential than the rewritings of the Elpenor story by Plato, Plutarch, Virgil, and Apuleius discussed earlier. "The literary critic Gerard Genette would call Luke's manipulation of the Elpenor story a 'hypertextual transvaluation,' a common literary strategy for replacing the values or perspectives of an earlier, targeted text (the 'hypotext') with alternative values or perspectives. For such a strategy to succeed, the hypertext must display, even if obscurely, its relationship to the hypotext. Obviously, the strategy has not succeeded with modern readers of Acts; no previous study of the text has suggested this relationship. Furthermore, evidence of ancient readings provide little encouragement that they understood the Homeric background either." (Emphasis added.) "On the other hand, two additional aspects of the story in Acts indicate that Luke advertised its Homeric hypertextuality, even though his readers failed to perceive it: The location of the story in Troas and the name Eutychus. "Troas, of course, is ancient Troy. To be sure, the city of Troy during Luke's day was not precisely on the location of the ancient city, but it was nearby, and the two were repeatedly identified with each other. No educated ancient would have been numb to Troy's rich mythological and Homeric associations, including the nostos of Odysseus and Elpenor back to Achaea from the Troad. By placing the story of Eutychus in Troy, Luke seems to be hinting that one should read it in light of Troy's legacy." (MacDonald's comment about the name, Eutychus, was that Homer's Elpenor described a young man who was very "unlucky," and Eutychus means "Lucky.") This writer suggests, then, that Luke wrote this story fully intending that the readers associate it with stories of ancient Troy. And he made the change in voice from third person to first, and back again, just as Homer had done in Odyssey, and at the very same point in the clearly similar stories. And if that was Luke's purpose here, it seems obvious that he intended to do the same with the other references to historical, mythical, and fictional characters scattered throughout Acts. Luke used stories and myths that were well known to the people of the time. And although others have noted that he used this technique, the real purpose behind it has been overlooked. Within the various stories, most of which can be easily associated with a historical event, a mythical or fictional character or a well-known location, is a coded message. It says, "The stories being told by other Christian narratives are not true. The doctrine being taught is not Jesus' doctrine. Herein lies the truth. Read Homer, Euripedes, Aratus, Tiresias, Epimenides. Read Plutarch!!!" MacDonald adds additional support: "Because of the popularity of Odysseus's visit to the netherworld in Odysseus Book 11, the famous nekyia, Luke could assume that his more educated readers would have recognized the similarities between the stories. (Emphasis added. The addressee's name, Theophilus, makes more sense already.) "If the hypothesis advanced here is correct -- namely, that the story in Acts 20:7-12 is a hypertextual transvaluation of Homer's Elpenor -- it bears weighty implications for our understanding of Acts as a whole. First, Luke apparently expected his primary audience (Theophilus, say) to have been sufficiently aware of The Odyssey in order to decode the Eutychus story as a clever transformation of a classical tale. Luke was writing for a sophisticated reader. "Second, other passages of Acts, especially other we-passages, may also play off against the Homeric epics or other Greek mythology. For example, the story of Paul and Silas dragged off to prison for exorcising a slave girl and their subsequent prison break has parallels in 'The Bacchae' of Euripides. Tiresias' prophecy to Odysseus concerning his death might compare with Agabus's prophecy to Paul about his death. One also must not overlook the famous shipwreck scene in Acts 27-28 and the story of the serpent at Malta. Odysseus too faces dreadful monsters on islands and outlives them. "Third, if the story of Elpenor lies behind that of Eutychus, it would add support to those who suggest that Acts ought not be read as an historical record but as an historical novel. One misses the point in the Eutychus tale if one insists that Luke intended the reader to view it as an historical event." (Emphasis added.) The third implication is where in my humble opinion everyone has gone wrong. Fundamental Christians believe Luke-Acts are accurate historical and literal records of events during the early days of Christianity. Intellectual agnostic scholars claim the works are completely fictional in content and have nothing to do with historical events. I propose another hypothesis: The exoteric stories are parables, written as historical novels and never intended to describe historical events; the esoteric messages, however, are historical records of historical events. The events that had actually occurred contradicted the government-supported church doctrine and church history. All references to the historical events, therefore, were being suppressed. The stories in Luke-Acts are a blend of ancient history-based tales, popular myths, and popular classical literature, and Luke used them to convey the historical truth about what had happened to Jesus and his message, called The Nazarene Way. The associations to other stories popular at the time, and the content of the associated texts, told the real story of Jesus and what had happened to him. And they also told the story of what was happening to the descendants of Jesus' and his faithful disciples at the time these two books addressed to Theophilus were written. Additional parallels can be found in Plutarch's stories and Luke-Acts. From The Life of Numa by Plutarch: "There the chief of the augurs turned the veiled head of Numa towards the south, while he himself, standing behind him, and laying the right hand on his head, prayed aloud, and turned his eyes in all directions to observe whatever birds or other omens might be sent from the gods. Then an incredible silence fell upon the vast multitude in the forum, who watched in eager suspense for the issue, until at last auspicious birds appeared and approached the scene on the right. Then Numa put on his royal robes and went down from the citadel to the multitude, where he was received with glad cries of welcome as the most pious of men and most beloved of the gods." Compare that scene to this one from Luke 3:21: "Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." The "entrance" of Jesus into his ministry is accompanied by birds and his anointing as "Beloved of God." Numa's "entrance" to serve his people is also accompanied by birds and he is described as the "most beloved of the gods." An essay on The Baptism and Geneaolgy of Jesus, found at a web site titled, bible.org, Trustworthy Bible Study Resources, provides collaborating commentary: www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1013: "To Greco-Roman hearers of Luke's narrative this would evoke echoes of the Roman use of the flight of birds of omen to discern the decrees of fate. For example, Plutarch in describing how Numa was chosen king after Romulus tells how Numa insisted that before he assumed the kingship his authority must first be ratified by heaven . . . In such a thought-world the Lukan narrative would be viewed as an omen of Jesus' status." Additional correlation can be found in Romulus by Plutarch, when he describes what occurred at Romulus' death: " . . . strange and unaccountable disorders and alterations took place in the air; the face of the sun was darkened, and the day turned into night, and that, too, no quiet, peaceable night, but with terrible thunderings, and boisterous winds from all quarters; during which the common people dispersed and fled, but the senators kept close together. The tempest being over and the light breaking out, when the people gathered again, they missed and inquired for their king; the senators suffered them not to search, or busy themselves about the matter, but commanded them to honor and worship Romulus as one taken up to the gods, and about to be to them, in the place of a good prince, now a propitious god. The multitude, hearing this, went away believing and rejoicing in hopes of good things from him; but there were some, who, canvassing the matter in a hostile temper, accused and aspersed the patricians, as men that persuaded the people to believe ridiculous tales, when they themselves were the murderers of the king." Luke 23:44-48: "It came now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.' Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, 'Certainly this man was innocent.' And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts." Luke 24:51: "While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God." Acts 1:9: "When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight." These are exit scenes as Romulus and Jesus leave the earth. Plutarch and Luke write of a darkened sun, Romulus and Jesus were both "taken up" and "became . . . god." The crowds that had gathered in both scenes "went away" and "rejoiced." And then there's this from Plutarch's Romulus: "Things being in this disorder, one, they say, of the patricians, of noble family and approved good character, and a faithful and familiar friend of Romulus himself, having come with him from Alba, Julius Proculus by name, presented himself in the forum; and, taking a most sacred oath, protested before them all, that, as he was traveling on the road, he had seen Romulus coming to meet him, looking taller and comelier than ever, dressed in shining and flaming armour; and he, being afrighted at the apparition, said, 'Why, O king, or for what purpose have you abandoned us to unjust and wicked surmises, and the whole city to bereavement and endless sorrow?' and that he made answer, 'It pleased the gods O Proculus, that we, who came from them, should remain so long a time amongst men as we did; and having built a city to be the greatest in the world for empire and glory, should again return to heaven. But farewell; and tell the Romans, that, by the exercise of temperance and fortitude, they shall attain the height of human power; we will be to you the propitious god Quirinus.'" (Emphasis added.) Luke 24:13-16: "Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him." Luke 24:31-49: "Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, 'Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?' That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, 'The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!' Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of bread. "While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, 'Peace be with you.' They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, 'Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.' And when he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?' They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. "Then he said to them, 'These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you -- that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.' Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, 'Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high." And of course Jesus, as did Romulus, then returned to heaven. Plutarch described a resurrected Romulus, seen by a friend and former traveling companion on a road who was "afrighted"; Luke described a resurrected Jesus, first seen on a road by two disciples who had traveled with him. They were "startled and terrified," and Jesus asked, "Why are you frightened?" Both Jesus and Romulus explained that they had come from heaven and were returning to heaven. Both writers used dialogue to bring these scenes to life, providing an addition similarity between the stories. Two web sites offer in-depth examinations of Luke's unique writing style and exclusive use of certain words. Both name Plutarch as one with which to compare the words and style found in Luke-Acts. I did not quote them here because they are difficult to read. But for the ultra-skeptic, they add more scholarly evidence. You will find them at http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sben0056/newbooklets/lukespirit.dochttp://www.ccel.org/r/robertson_at/wordpictures/htm/LU5.RWP Although neither author intentionally connected the person of Luke with the person of Plutarch, their analysis of Luke's unique words and writing style, comparing it with Plutarch's, accomplished it just the same. There are dozens of references to character and city names which can be associated with stories and poetry being circulated at the time Luke-Acts were written, and most of the names and places were also subjects Plutarch wrote about extensively at the very same time! Who but Plutarch would have had access to all the stories he was writing at the very same time Luke's gospel is said to have been penned? And the geographical location -- the province -- where "church tradition" says Luke wrote his gospel is the very same province in which Plutarch lived when he wrote the vast majority of his histories and biographies! Luke-Acts are historical novels, and they contain clues to puzzles Theophilus was supposed to solve. Both the history and the mystery were written so that the stories with which they could be associated revealed the truth about what was happening at the time. Theophilus should be able to solve the puzzles hidden within the gospel stories. This is no longer a small pile of evidence. A very large mound has been created, and there's still more to come! **** THE LEGACY OF TROY The verses that precede the story of Eutychus also refer to the "legacy of Troy," and one of the characters named bears careful scrutiny. But in order to find that character, it's necessary to seek out the modern Bible translations taken from the oldest available texts, rather than those that are mere re-translations of the King James Version: Acts 20:4-6: "He was accompanied by Sopater of Beroea, the son of Pyrrhus, . . . these went ahead and were waiting for us at Troas; but we sailed from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread, and in five days we joined them in Troas, where we stayed for seven days." The early translators did a strange thing with the name, Pyrrhus: They omitted it! And the King James Version did the same. The omission of this one name was crucial to subverting Luke's plan. Who was Pyrrhus to the Greeks? This is a most fascinating character, and his importance in solving the riddle becomes evident very quickly: Pyrrhus, The Fool of Hope, (319-272 BCE) was a story Plutarch wrote and titled at about the same time Luke's gospel was being penned. The text from which the following excerpts were taken can be found at www.e-classics.com/pyrrhus. " . . . Pyrrhus joined up with Demetrius, the husband of his sister . . ." "Pyrrhus also sent some agents, who pretended to be Macedonians. These spies spread the suggestion that now the time had come to be liberated from the harsh rule of Demetrius by joining Pyrrhus, who was a gracious friend of soldiers." "And so without fighting, Pyrrhus became King of Macedonia (286 BC)." The kings of Epirus were said to have been descended from Pyrrhus (who was also known as Neoptolemus) who was the son of Achilles, the famous Greek warrior of the Trojan War. Pyrrhus and Alexander were said to be worthy descendants of Achilles. Another tidbit about Pyrrhus is of great importance, and it's probably the reason his name was expunged from early biblical texts: He was one of the soldiers who hid inside the Trojan horse. And that is the best-known legacy from the legend of Troy. It's what everyone thinks of when Troy and the Trojan War are mentioned. The name Pyrrhus was inserted here in Luke's gospel in the same sentence as Troas to direct the reader to the legend of the Trojan Horse. Plutarch would have written Pyrrhus, The Fool of Hope after the early churches had begun using Paul's epistles as their "gospel." Plutarch wrote about this Fool of Hope to alert Theophilus to the truth about Paul, knowing that some would eventually see the parallel he had drawn between Pyrrhus and Paul. Here are some excerpts from one of Paul's letters that supports this astonishing claim: 2 Corinthians 13:11: "I have been a fool! You forced me to it, for I ought to have been commended by you. For I was not at all inferior to these superlative apostles, even though I am nothing." Also notable here is the underlying purpose behind Paul's writing of this letter: he was trying to set the record straight about his status among Jesus' apostles. It seems that the Corinthians considered Paul to be inferior to the Apostles and their doctrine, and he was offended. Paul also refers to himself as a fool at 2 Corinthians 11:16-29: "I repeat, let no one think that I am a fool; but if you do, then accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little. What I am saying in regard to this boastful confidence, I am saying not with the Lord's authority, but as a fool; since many boast according to human standards, I will also boast. For you gladly put up with fools, being wise yourselves! For you put up with it when someone makes slaves of you, or preys upon you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or gives you a slap in the face. To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that! "But whatever any dares to boast of -- I am speaking as a fool -- I also dare to boast of that. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman -- I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonment's, with countless floggings, and often near death." Luke has Paul say, Acts 23:6: " . . . I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead." Paul speaks again, Acts 24:15: "I have a hope in God -- a hope that they themselves also accept . . ." Paul again, Acts 26:6-7: " . . . I stand here on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors, a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship day and night. It is for this hope, your Excellency, that I am accused by Jews!" And again, Acts 28:20: " . . . it is for the sake of the hope of Israel . . ." Quite a lot of effort seems to have gone into connecting Paul to Pyrrhus. Paul called himself a fool in a ranting essay to the Corinthians that sounds as if it came from the mind and mouth of a mad man, and he says so himself. Luke also has Paul speak of "hope" repeatedly in a relatively small space in Acts. More than any other of the coded messages, it seems that Luke wanted to convey the message that learning about Pyrrhus will reveal the truth about Paul -- and also the truth about himself and who he really was. He couldn't write an essay called Paul: The Spy Who Pretended to be an Apostle of Jesus Who Infiltrated the Movement and Destroyed It from Inside. That essay would have been destroyed by the early church leaders supporting Paul. So he did the next best thing. He associated Paul with Pyrrhus in such a way that the connection could not be missed. No wonder the name Pyrrhus was removed from some of the translations of the Bible. Any fool could pick up on the message because virtually everyone knew that Pyrrhus hid inside the Trojan Horse! It was fortunate that some texts were salvaged, saved, and passed on through time. Otherwise, this story could not be told even today. It can be proved that the name Pyrrhus was removed from Luke's gospel -- texts more ancient than those from which the King James Version was translated confirm that at one time it was included in the story. I propose the name was removed because it was just too easily recognized as creating an association between the spy in the wooden horse and Paul. It might have been removed at the same time the anti-Marconian church leaders created the "history" of Luke in the "second half of the second century," reported in chapter one. Doesn't it seem reasonable to suspect that Luke's name was added to Paul's epistles at the same time, identifying him as "the beloved physician"? It was clear even then that the gospel had been written by an educated Greek, and physicians of the time represented the elite of the educated class. If it's known that Luke's "history and biography" was invented long after he wrote the gospel, then isn't it probable that Paul's epistles were doctored (pun intended!) to complete the deception? Luke is named in three of Paul's letters: Colossians, 2 Timothy, and Philemon. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, 1994, provides the following commentary, introducing 1 Timothy: "The two letters to Timothy and the one to Titus . . . are similar in character and in the problems they raise concerning authorship. It is difficult to ascribe them in their present form to the apostle Paul. The vocabulary and style of these letters differ widely from the acknowledged letters of Paul . . . In view of the widespread custom in antiquity of pseudonymous authorship (that is, the use of a respected name to give authority to a writing actually written by someone else), it is easier to assume that a loyal disciple of Paul composed these letters." The same source provides the following in the introduction to Philemon: " . . . Since most of those who are greeted at the end of the letter are also mentioned in the close of Colossians, it is probable that the two letters were written at nearly the same time, if Paul was the author of Colossians, or that the author of Colossians had Philemon at hand, if Paul was not the author (see Introduction to Colossians.)" The Introduction to Colossians reports that some biblical scholars doubt that Paul wrote Colossians, suspecting that it was actually a "disciple of Paul shortly after his time, to give Paul's authority to the continuing tradition of his teaching." It is at Colossians 4:14 that Luke is called physician: "Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you." Not only is Luke named in the closing, just as most of Paul's "coworkers" are named in closings, but biblical scholars are divided as to whether Paul even wrote these letters. Even if he did write them, the "Correctores" under the direction of the Church bishops certainly could have added the names in the closing verses in order to agree with the characters Luke placed with Paul in Acts. Who were these "Correctores"? In their introduction to the New Testament, the editors of The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, 1994, reveal the following about biblical changes made in translations: "At other times alterations were deliberately made; for example . . . (to) harmonize differing accounts in the Synoptic Gospels. Thus, not only inadvertence but also well-intentioned efforts resulted in the creation of thousands of divergencies among the manuscripts of the New Testament. "Among the relatively few variants that involve the essential meaning of the text, modern scholars are usually able to determine with more or less probability what the original text was. In deciding among the variant readings scholars usually give preference to those that are preserved in the older manuscripts . . ." "Another scribal tendency was the harmonization of divergent accounts. In general, the reading is preferred that best explains the rise of the other readings." (Emphasis added.) What's suggested here is this: If the scribes, under the direction of their bishops, noticed that Luke named people who were traveling with Paul, but Paul didn't mention them, especially if those names could be associated with ancient myths about gods and goddesses, they would have harmonized Paul's letters to match Luke's stories by adding those names. The early church leaders were determined to separate their religion from the pagan religions that still competed in the early years. Luke's secret gospel was probably discovered by the early church fathers. They would have been quite familiar with Homer's Odyssey and other ancient plays and myths that Luke copied. And since other texts, Gnostic and deemed heretical, told the same story Luke had hidden in his gospel, it was much easier for them to identify what he had managed to do -- get those stories into a gospel that had already become popular among the earliest Christian converts. Luke's gospel had already spread throughout Greece and beyond. And only Acts told the story of Paul's travels. It would have been a simple matter to just add all the names to Paul's letters that Luke had scattered throughout Acts as clues to solving the riddle. They just tacked the names on to the end of the letters as "greetings from . . ."
****
MacDonald's essay referenced similarities between stories in Acts and The Bacchae by Euripides, and this, of course, piqued my curiosity. (Euripides was reported as being one of Plutarch's favorite poets and dramatists.) I looked it up on the Internet: www.4literature.net/Euripides/Bacchae/. There were a couple of other things in Bacchae that seem to apply here: The main character is Dionysus, son of Zeus. Zeus is actually named in Acts, as well as Dionysius: Acts 13:11: "And when the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices saying in Lycaonian, 'The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!' Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, because he was the chief speaker, they called Hermes." Acts 17:34: "But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them." First Barnabas, Paul's companion, is called Zeus. Then Dionysius becomes another of Paul's companions. Twice Acts refers the educated reader to myths about Zeus, and specifically to the story of Dionysus in Bacchae by Euripides. What can Bacchae tell us about Paul? Bacchae's Cadmus speaks words which are of great importance: "Even though he is no god, as you assert, still say he is; be guilty of a splendid fraud, declaring him the son of Semele, that she may be thought the mother of a god and we and all our race gain honor." In the very early years of Christianity, there was a great debate and a great division between two opposing factions fighting for dominance. One side, represented by those later labeled Gnostics: Nazarenes, Essenes, Pythagoreans, and others, said Jesus was a spiritually evolved teacher. The other side, Paul's supporters, claimed that Jesus was a god -- the God, in fact. It's clear which faction won out and which faction the church would eventually label heretics. Later in the story Dionysus is bound and thrown into a stall; he describes the events: Dionysus: "Meantime came the Bacchic god and made the house quake . . ." Luke 16:26: ". . . and suddenly there was a great earthquake . . . " Dionysus: " . . . and thinking maybe that I had escaped, rushed into the palace with his murderous sword unsheathed." Luke 16:27: " . . . he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped . . ." Later Dionysus speaks to Pentheus: " . . . you are so eager to see what is forbidden, and to show your zeal in an unworthy cause, come before the palace, let me see you clad as a woman . . . to spy upon your own mother and her company." Dionysus, again to Pentheus: "You shall hide in the place that fate appoints, coming by stealth to spy upon the Bacchanals." Another of Plutarch's characters shows up at Acts 28:11: "Now in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the leading man of the island, named Publius, who received us and entertained us hospitably for three days. It so happened that the father of Publius lay sick in bed with fever and dysentery. Paul visited him and cured him by praying and putting his hands on him. After this happened, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured. They bestowed many honors on us, and when we were about to sail, they put on board all the provisions we needed." Who is Publius? An Internet search turned up a web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publius_Clodius_Pulcher: " . . . according to Plutarch (Cicero, 29), he (Publius) rendered Cicero every assistance and acted as one of his bodyguards." Both Luke's and Plutarch's Publius was described as helpful and hospitable. "The affair of the mysteries of the Bona Dea, however, caused a breach between Clodius and Cicero in December 62. Clodius, dressed as a woman (men were not admitted to the mysteries), entered the house of Caesar (then pontifex maximus), where the mysteries were being celebrated, in order to carry on an intrigue with Pompeia Sulla, Caesar's wife. He was detected and brought to trial, but escaped condemnation by bribing the jury." Son of a gun! Publius, like Bacchae's Pentheus, is another spy dressed as a woman and sneaking into the religious ceremonies of women. And he appears in a gospel frequently referred to by modern biblical scholars as "The feminist gospel," and/or a gospel that is "sensitive to women." There are many web sites that present essays and arguments supporting this suggestion. Some examples:
With so many references to stories about spies infiltrating and attacking mystery religions practiced by women, Luke's secret message begins to show through the transparent stories about Paul's exploits. The Pythagoreans and Platonists considered women to be of equal value with men; so did Jesus, considering how he interacted and treated them, according to Luke. Luke names more women in his gospel than all the other gospels combined. But the real importance of these women and what Paul did to their religion, lies just below the surface. Posing as a disciple of Jesus, Paul infiltrated this new religion that was more than just friendly toward women, it permitted them to teach it! And once accepted as an Apostle, he changed it to fit the preferences of the Roman government and the temple priests. And since it was also preferred by the masses because it permitted them to sin and still get to heaven, it became the official new religion. Jesus' proclamation when he first started his ministry was a quotation from Isaiah 61:1, described at Luke 4:18-21: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. "And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing'." But what happened to the captives and the oppressed after Paul took control of the church? He instructed the slaves to obey their masters. He forbid women to speak in church. The poor and infirm were all but forgotten as the "official" church eventually became the wealthiest and most brutal organization in the history of the world. What Jesus and his disciples taught, "As you do unto others shall it be done unto you" -- in other words, "works not faith," became heresy. Those who tried to teach it were condemned, tortured, and killed. While Paul's "faith not works" religion -- "believe the scapegoat, Jesus, died for your sins" -- is proclaimed to be "the word of God." Even today, people who attempt to restore the religion Jesus taught are declared heretics and sinners, while Paul's faithful followers proclaim his epistles to be "the one true faith." Paul was opposed by the very people whose doctrine would later be labeled heretical. They opposed him, no doubt, because what he taught was so different from what Jesus and the men and women who traveled with him taught. Paul, of course, never met Jesus! Other texts from antiquity, those deemed heretical by the official church, also rejected Paul's claim to Apostlehood. Some scholars studying the Qumran and Nag Hammadi texts suspect it is Paul who was called The Liar by those who hid the documents in caves. And Luke's coded story supports that suspicion. The layers of proof that Plutarch was Luke, and that Luke was no friend of Paul, have just begun to pile up. More follows -- much more! **** THE ENIGMA THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH Perhaps the most provocative piece of evidence that points to Plutarch as the author of Luke-Acts is the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. Once I became familiar with Luke's methods of communicating his hidden message, I realized that the appearance of an Angel, or a Spirit, or the Holy Spirit meant, "Pay attention!" Notice the presence of all of these in the biblical quotations that follow. Acts 8.26: "Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, 'Get up and go toward the south (footnote: 'or go at noon') to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.' (This is a wilderness road.)" Acts 8.27-28: "So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Acts 8.29-31: Then the Spirit said to Philip, 'Go over to this chariot and join it.' So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, 'Do you understand what you are reading?' He replied, 'How can I, unless someone guides me?' And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him Acts 8.32-33: "Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: 'Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.'" Acts 8.34-40: "The eunuch asked Philip, 'About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?' Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, 'Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?' He commanded the chariot to stop and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea." Many biblical scholars have pointed out numerous and blatant errors in Luke's gospel. But careful examination shows that these errors are consistently juxtaposed before, after, and within information from Old Testament references or names connected with ancient stories and myths from various countries and cultures. The errors seem to be intentionally placed in order to attract attention, stop the flow of the story, and invite questions. With errors, Angels, Holy Spirits, Old Testament quotations, and references to ancient myths all appearing in this short section, the hidden information must be of extreme importance. The most obvious error in these verses is that a eunuch would not have been permitted to worship at the temple in Jerusalem. Eunuchs were forbidden from entering the temple at all. Only Plutarch tells the story of an Ethiopian queen, named Aso, who helped a eunuch trick Osiris. The name Aso is similar to another name, Assos, which can be found in Acts 20.13-14: "We went ahead to the ship and set sail for Assos, intending to take Paul on board there; for he had made this arrangement, intending to go by land himself. When he met us in Assos, we took him on board and went to Mitylene." According to the annotation for this verse provided in The New Oxford Annotated Bible, "Mitylene (was) the capital city of the island of Lesbos." Of course the term lesbian comes from ancient mythological tales about women who lived on the island of Lesbos. Plutarch wrote several stories about this island and some of the mythological characters who lived there and the events in their lives. An essay titled, Missing Phallus by morphvs, posted on the web site of aiwaz.net institute, at www.aiwaz.net/giza/missingphallus, provides valuable information about Plutarch's version of the story of Isis and Osiris: "The most famous Egyptian myth was recorded by Plutarch under the title Of Isis and Osiris. It preserves a version of the myth about Isis and Osiris that stands in the center of Egyptian magick. It describes the most fundamental formula of the Eon called the Dying God, simply put, a formula representing death and resurrection. The same magickal formula is repeated many times in different disguises, from the worship of Phoenician Adonis, Hellenic Attis, Dionysus, Mithras, and finally to the worship of Christian Jesus. They all repeated and elaborated the same source, the ancient cult of the dying God Osiris, modifying it according to their needs . . . " And in the subsequent paragraph: " . . . Plutarch's version of the myth says that Osiris' body was torn into 14 pieces, or 13 + the missing Phallus." Additional information about this famous myth is presented in an essay titled, Osiris, posted at www.sobek.colorado.edu/LAB/GODS/osiris: "Isis gave birth to Horus after his (Osiris') death, having impregnated herself with semen from his corpse . . ." "One of the so-called 'dying gods,' he was the focus of a famous legend in which he was killed by the rival god Seth. At a banquet of the gods, Seth fooled Osiris into stepping into a coffin, which he promptly slammed shut and cast into the Nile. The coffin was born by the Nile to the delta town of Byblos, where it became enclosed in a tamarisk tree. Isis, the wife of Osiris, discovered the coffin and brought it back. (The story to this point is attested only by the Greek writer Plutarch, although Seth was identified as his murderer as early as the Pyramid era of the Old Kingdom.") (Emphasis added.) "Seth took advantage of Isis's temporary absence on one occasion, cut the body into pieces, and cast them into the Nile. (In the Egyptian texts this incident alone accounts for the murder of Osiris.) Isis searched the land for the body parts of Osiris, and was eventually able to piece together his body, whole save for the penis, which had been swallowed by a crocodile (according to Plutarch) or a fish (according to Egyptian texts). In some Egyptian texts, the penis is buried at Memphis. Isis replaced the penis with a reasonable facsimile, and she was often portrayed in the form of a kite being impregnated by the ithyphallic corpse of Osiris." (Emphasis added.) Plutarch changed the story from a fish swallowing Osiris to a crocodile swallowing him. Why he would do so may be explained by the word messiah. That word comes from a Hebrew verb mashiah, which means to anoint. But that word came from the Egyptian word messeh, which refers to the fat from the crocodile which was used to anoint the Pharoahs. So Plutarch's crocodile that ate Osiris'penis must be intended as another means of association between the god Osiris and Jesus, known as the Messiah. Another essay, titled Isis, adds to the evidence of an association between Plutarch's works and information the author of Luke-Acts seems determined to share. The following quotes come from web site, www.themystica.org/mythical-folk/articles/isis: "When Osiris' treacherous brother, Seth (or Set), murdered and dismembered him, Isis scoured the land finding the body parts. When finding them, Isis used her magic to assemble them and breathed life into the body so she and Osiris could be together for one last time before he went to the underworld. A son, Horus, was born posthumously and in a virgin birth. Isis protected the child Horus from Set until he was old enough to defend himself by fighting. In art, she is often pictured as holding Horus in her arms. After the child's birth, Set returned once more to cut Osiris' body into fourteen pieces, which he scattered in the Nile. Again Isis searched for the body parts, but this time when finding them, she buried each piece where she found it so it would fertilize the land." (Emphasis added.) "Isis has been connected to Hermetic wisdom. Plutarch said that numerous ancient writers believed Isis to be the daughter of Hermes, others said she was the daughter of Prometheus . . . ." (Gott note: Recall Acts 14:12: "Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes . . .") " . . . Plutarch claimed Isis meant wisdom. She was known as the goddess of 10,000 applications. In the Egyptian mysteries, Isis represented the female aspect of the Deity to mankind; she was the Universal Mother to all that lives; wisdom, truth, and power . . ." "It is thought in Hermetic wisdom that Hermes schooled Isis, the Goddess of Women. She, with the knowledge that he taught her, invented the writings of all nations, caused men to love women, invented sailing, gave mankind its laws, ended cannibalism, made justice more powerful than silver or gold, instructed mankind in the mysteries, and caused truth to be considered beautiful. An inscription in her temple at Sais read: "I am that which is, which hath been, and which shall be; and no man has ever lifted the veil that hides my Divinity from mortal eyes . . ." " . . . In Christianity, some hold that the Virgin Mary partially absorbed Isis." (Gott note: It is more likely that Mary Magdalene completely absorbed Isis, according to Luke's coded gospel.) The evidence supporting Plutarch as the author of Luke-Acts becomes overwhelming when the story of the Ethiopian eunuch is added to the other names of characters and locations scattered throughout. Plutarch was a Greek philosopher and teacher and has never been associated with Christianity and Paul. What he believed and taught can be found throughout the two volumes of his works, Parallel Lives and Moralia. In Of Isis and Osiris, he revealed his philosophy when he named those he considered to be "the wisest of the Greeks," and he revealed some aspects of his style of writing as he introduced the myth. Plutarch's opening paragraphs introducing the story of Isis and Osiris address a priestess named Clea, just as Luke addressed Theophilus. Both addressees are told that the purpose of the stories is to transmit "truth": Plutarch: "All good things, my dear Clea, sensible men must ask . . . For we believe that there is nothing more important . . . or more ennobling for God of His grace to grant, than the truth." (Emphasis added.) Luke 1.1-4: "Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have . . . (occurred), just as they were handed on to us by those who . . . were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed." (Emphasis added.) Acts 1.1-2: "In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught . . . until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen." The words, style, and tempo of the introductions of all three works are similar. Plutarch's personal philosophy is revealed as he proceeds with his introduction to Clea: "Moreover, most people believe that Amoun is the name given to Zeus in the land of the Egyptians, a name which we, with a slight alteration, pronounce Ammon. But Manetho of Sebennytus thinks that the meaning 'concealed' or 'concealment' lies in this word. Hecataeus of Abdera, however, says that the Egyptians use this expression one to another whenever they call to anyone, for the word is a form of address. When they, therefore, address the supreme god, whom they believe to be the same as the Universe, as if he were invisible and concealed, and implore him to make himself visible and manifest to them, they use the word 'Amoun'; so great, then, was the circumspection of the Egyptians in their wisdom touching all that had to do with the gods. "Witness to this also are the wisest of the Greeks: Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, who came to Egypt and consorted with the priests . . . Pythagoras, it seems, was greatly admired, and he also greatly admired the Egyptian priests, and, copying their symbolism and secret teachings, incorporated his doctrines in enigmas. As a matter of fact most of the Pythagorean precepts do not at all fall short of the writings that are called hieroglyphs; such, for example, as these: 'Do not eat upon a stool'; 'Do not sit upon a peck measure'; 'Do not lop off the shoots of a palm-tree'; 'Do not poke a fire with a sword within the house.' "For my part, I think also that their naming unity 'Apollo,' duality 'Artemis,' the hebdomad 'Athena,' and the first cube 'Poseidon,' bears a resemblance to the statues and even to the sculptures and painting with which their shrines are embellished. For their King and Lord Osiris they portray by means of an eye and a sceptre; there are even some who explain the meaning of the name as 'many-eyed' on the theory that os in the Egyptian language means 'many' and iri 'eye'; and the heavens, since they are ageless because of their eternity, they portray by a heart with a censer beneath . . . "Therefore, Clea, whenever you hear the traditional tales which the Egyptians tell about the gods, their wanderings, dismemberments, and many experiences of this sort, you must remember what has been already said, and you must not think that any of these tales actually happened in the manner in which they are related. The facts are that they do not call a dog by the name Hermes as his proper name, but they bring into association with the most astute of their gods that animal's watchfulness and wakefulness and wisdom, since he distinguishes between what is friendly and what is hostile by his knowledge of the one and his ignorance of the other, as Plato remarks. Nor, again, do they believe that the sun rises as a newborn babe from the louts, but they portray the rising of the sun in this manner to indicate allegorically the enkindling of the sun from the waters . . ." " . . . If, then, you listen to the stories about the gods in this way, accepting them from those who interpret the story reverently and philosophically, and if you always perform and observe the established rites of worship, and believe that no sacrifice that you can offer, no deed that you may do, will be more likely to find favour with the gods than your brief in their true nature, you may avoid superstition which is no less an evil than atheism. "Here follows the story related in the briefest possible words with the omission of everything that is merely unprofitable or superfluous: . . ." (Emphasis added.) After the lengthy introduction from which these quotations were taken, Plutarch begins the story of Isis and Osiris. Compare the similarities in style between Plutarch's phrase, " . . . Pythagorean precepts do not at all fall short," with the following phrases from Acts: Acts 12:18: " . . . there was no small commotion among the soldiers." Acts 17.4: " . . . devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women." Acts 17.12: " . . . including not a few Greek women and men of high standing." The writing style and word order are similar, just as the introductions show similarities in style and tempo. Plutarch's fingerprints are all over Luke-Acts when examined carefully and with an open mind. As I worked to finalize this section, highlighting Plutarch's words in his introduction to Clea that seemed applicable to my hypothesis that he wrote Luke-Acts, I suddenly understood! Plutarch wrote this introduction to Clea for a very specific purpose -- and it wasn't simply to help Clea understand the myth Of Isis and Osiris. "Bringing into association" (his words, not mine) the eunuchs in Luke-Acts and Isis and Osiris, Theophilus would be able to understand that Luke-Acts transmitted doctrine by "copying . . . symbolism and secret teachings . . ." and that "Luke" " . . . incorporated his doctrines in enigmas." Once the association was made, Theophilus would recognize that Luke's gospel was in the style of Pythagoras: "As a matter of fact most of the Pythagorean precepts do not at all fall short of the writings that are called hieroglyphs . . ." Still skeptical? A quotation from Plutarch's Pyrrhus: Fool of Hope, may provide the final straw for those still in doubt and needing more proof that Luke-Acts were written by Plutarch. "That night, the Spartans dug a trench six feet deep, nine feet wide, and eight hundred feet long." Doesn't that seem like a lot of unnecessary information? Not if you're trying to leave clues as to your true identity and your participation in the Nazarean/Essene movement. Multiply those three numbers: 6 x 9 x 800. (Hint: it's a harmonic of the number first discovered in Luke's chapter one.) 6 x 9 x 800 is 43,200!! Plutarch's biographers reported that he had been initiated into " . . . the mysteries of the cult of Dionysus, and both as a Platonist and as an initiate he believed in the immortality of the soul." But what hadn't been known before is that the "mystery school" into which he was initiated was the same mystery school that initiated Enoch, Moses, Isaiah, Zechariah, and Jesus. The association which proves they were all trained in the same school and taught how to use the same teaching techniques, described as enigmas by Plutarch but also known as parables, is the number 432. And that number, which connects Plutarch with Luke beyond any shadow of a doubt, requires a brief side journey. But it is a journey full of surprises!
**** "They shall make an ark of acacia wood; it shall be two and a half cubits long . . ." Exodus 25:10 SEARCH FOR THE STREAM "When a great crowd gathered and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable: 'A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell on the path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil, and when it grew, it produced a hundredfold.' As he said this, he called out, 'Let anyone with ears to hear listen!'" "Then his disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, 'To you it has been given to know the secrets (or mysteries) of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that 'looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand.'" Luke 8:4-10. The importance of this parable is that it sets the groundwork and supports the proposal that the gospels contain hidden, or coded, messages. Jesus says it clearly in paragraph two above: "To you it has been given to know the secrets/mysteries of the kingdom of God . . ." It's clear the gospel writers wanted to convey the message that Jesus was not able to teach "the word of God" openly (paragraph 3: "The seed is the word of God."). If Jesus found it necessary to speak in parables, which are nothing more or less than coded messages, it stands to reason that the gospel writers were also forced to write in code. Only the four gospels, Revelation, and the epistles of Paul were canonized by the council of Nicea in 325 AD. The Church supported by Constantine and later government and church leaders declared all other texts to be heretical, and their proponents and supporters were tortured and killed. Merely possessing one of the heretical texts was grounds for execution. But what if there were ulterior motives behind the rejection of certain texts? There were major controversies in the early years and centuries of the Christian movement. As in all histories, the victor created the "history," whether or not the accounts were true. Jesus, his disciples, and the gospel writers went to great pains to preserve the truth. But in order for this truth to be known, someone has to be willing to search through the Bible for the stream that leads to it! Once I realized that the gospels contained hidden messages, it seemed reasonable to suspect that this practice didn't just begin in the first century. I went to the Old Testament to see if I could discover exactly when the "secret numbers" first appeared. What I discovered was that hidden messages appeared at the earliest recording of biblical scripture. Some of the clues to the hidden messages in the Bible come from The Dead Sea Scrolls, found hidden in caves near Qumran in Israel, and texts discovered near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Most modern scholars are now supporting the theory that the people who hid these texts were the Essenes, a group mentioned by Josephus Flavius, Philo of Alexandria, and Pliny the Elder. (For articles and books go to www.thenazareneway.com) In order to break the codes used by the gospel writers, it's imperative that the Essenes be better understood. Where did they come from? What did they teach? How were they related to Jesus? And were they involved in writing the gospels? Josephus wrote that the Essenes ". . . have existed from time immemorial," and ". . . for countless generations . . . " Philo called the Essenes " . . . the most ancient of all the initiates . . ." and described their teachings as " . . . perpetuated through an immense space of ages . . ." Some sources trace the Essenes to Enoch, a name which means founder or initiator. In the Book of Genesis, chapter five, Enoch is described as being the seventh generation from Adam. Seven in Esoteric numerology, represents completion, so Enoch as the seventh generation of humanity represented perfected humanity. According to Genesis 5:23, Enoch lived on earth 365 years (the number of days in the solar year). And rather than dying, "Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him." (Genesis 5:24). There are two things that are significant here: This is the first suggestion of a "numeric code" in biblical texts, and the writer was aware of the 365-day year. Also significant is that Enoch was the only man listed in Genesis who did not die. In other words, Enoch's exit from earth was similar to Jesus': ". . . a cloud took him out of their sight." (Acts 1:8). This is just one of dozens of associations between Luke-Acts and Old Testament texts. The challenge is to connect the hidden dots as they traverse the stream of knowledge from Enoch, through Moses, and finally to Jesus and beyond. As previously shown, hidden among the stories in Luke's chapter one is a number (4320) that coincides with the light that shines in the day, the light that shines at night, and the speed of light. The "hidden message" was that there is a hidden message, and Luke used numbers that would demonstrate his knowledge of astronomy and physics to clue us in to that information. What we're looking for, then, are similar numbers in the Old Testament that would indicate that Luke's gospel contained knowledge that came from a "stream of knowledge" that goes back to the Old Testament. Shortly following Genesis 5:23, Enoch's age, Genesis 6:15 offers another clue when God gives Noah the dimensions for the ark: "This is how you are to make it, the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits." The key to decoding this riddle lies in the length of the cubit. If you go to virtually any resource, the cubit is given as eighteen inches, or one and one-half feet. But there was/is another cubit known as "the Egyptian Royal Cubit," and it is the "Rosetta Stone" of the Old Testament. Remember, Moses was raised in the Pharoah's palace. He would have been taught about the Egyptian Royal Cubit. Perhaps this cubit's actual length was part of the method of keeping the "secrets" of the mystery school of the Old Testament. Whatever the reason, it is this measurement that opens the flood gates and releases the stream of knowledge that can connect the Essenes at Qumran and Nag Hammadi with the Nazarenes at Mount Carmel and also connect them all with Moses and Enoch. The Egyptian Royal Cubit is 1.728 feet. That information can be found at several web sites using any search engine. John Michell, The Dimensions of Paradise, The Proportions and Symbolic Numbers of Ancient Cosmology, p. 96, writes: "The corresponding cubit is of 1.728 ft., and is known as the Egyptian royal cubit. There are 1750 of these cubits in the Pyramid's base perimeter." Michell refers, of course, to the Great Pyramid at Giza. Michell has done an amazing job of documenting and explaining symbolic numbers in ancient cosmology, and his book is a must-read for anyone interested in an in-depth study of biblical and ancient Greek and Roman numbers and their mystery meanings. Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval, The Message of the Sphinx, report (pp.. 37-8): "Equally 'impossible' . . . for a people like the ancient Egyptians who are supposed to have known nothing about the true shape and size of our planet -- is the relationship in a scale of 1:43,200, that exists between the dimensions of the Pyramid and the dimensions of the earth." Here's what this means: if you multiply the original height of the pyramid, 481.3949 feet, by 43,200 and convert it to miles (481.3949 x 43,200 divided by 5,280 ft/mi), the result is 3938.685 miles, very close to 3,960 miles, the most frequently used number for the radius of the earth. Multiply the perimeter of the pyramid at its base, 3,023.16 feet by 43,200 (3,023.16 x 43,200 divided by 5,280 ft/mi), and the result is 24,734.94 miles. The most frequently quoted equatorial circumference of the earth is 24,902, but the ancients used 24,883.2 miles (7920 x pi (864/275). There are quite different opinions about exactly when the Great Pyramid was built, but the estimates range from around 3,500 BCE all the way to 10,500 BCE. Either estimate is long before Moses entered the scene. So this "mystery number," 432, was being passed through time many centuries before the Old Testament was written. The Stream, it seems, goes well beyond biblical history. When I discovered the "Egyptian Royal Cubit," I wondered where it had come from. I had a hunch: I divided 12 by 10 to convert the 12-inch foot to a foot divided into tenths: 12 divided by 10 = 1.2. Seeing that I "cubed it." 1.2 times 1.2 times 1.2 = 1.728! The Egyptian Royal Cubit, or "cube it" is nothing more than the standard 12 inch foot, converted to tenths, and then cubed. Now maybe the masses in the world at the time of Moses, or before, had never heard of the 12 inch foot. But it certainly appears as if the "mystery schools" or the schools attended by the Egyptian Royal family members had. Now, what happens when the measurements of Noah's ark are converted using this cubit? Length: 300 cubits times 1.728 = 518.40 ft. Width: 50 cubits times 1.728 = 86.40 ft. Height: 30 cubits times 1.728 = 51.84 ft. Are these numbers similar in any way to Luke's 4,320 in his Chapter 1? The width is quickly identifiable as 43.20 x 2. But there is greater significance in these three numbers. Precession of the equinoxes, the "great cycle" caused by the tilt of the earth's axis, is calculated to complete one 360 degree circle in 25,920 years. Two of those cycles is 51,840 years. Two of the measurements of the ark, the length and the height, contain the same numbers -- a "harmonic" of the number. Not only that, but the diameter of the sun is 864,000 miles, the same numbers that are found in the width of the ark. Genesis, indeed, contains the knowledge hidden within the New Testament, and it's just behind the thin veil of the measurements of Noah's ark. Genesis 7:17-20 provides additional support: "The flood continued forty days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. Genesis 7:24: "And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days." 15 cubits times 1.728 ft. = 259.2 ft. Once again, Genesis reports the precession of the equinoxes (25,920 years). I was curious about what numbers I might find if I multiplied the "one hundred fifty days" by 24 hours to see how many hours the earth was covered. Seeing that number I was curious about how many minutes and seconds it was covered: 150 days times 24 hours = 3600 hours; 3600 hours times 60 minutes per hour = 216,000 minutes; 216,000 minutes times 60 seconds per minute = 12,960,000 seconds. But what did all these numbers mean to the person writing about the flood? A little more research turned up the answers, because other researchers have also looked into ancient texts, including the Bible, for signs of the meanings of these same numbers. From www.greatdreams.com/432: "In Joseph Campbell's, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, he writes about the similarity between the Babylonian and Genesis flood stories. As I remember it, he said something like this -- In the Babylonian story, there were ten kings who lived very long lives from creation to the time of the flood. This is given as a total of 432,000 years. In the Biblical account, there were ten patriarchs between Adam and Noah, who also lived long lives. Noah was 600 years old at the time of the landing of the Ark . . . The total years add up to 1,656. In that number of years, there are 86,400 weeks, and half that number is 43,200. There are myths about cycles in time, and out of time, so this doubling/halving is not uncommon. He believed that someone carefully gave the age of Noah to secretly hide the time cycle number." (To calculate this claim, multiply 1,656 yrs. x 365.2174 days/yr., then divide by 7 days/week = 86,400 weeks. With this insight, the number 864, which is two times 432, appears in the story of Noah and the Flood two times: the width of the boat and the lives of the patriarchs.) Zechariah Sitchin has written a series of controversial and fascinating books called The Earth Chronicles; Volume VI is The Cosmic Code. Sitchin has studied and deciphered ancient clay cylinders that contain a Flood Story that predates the Old Testament and on which many biblical scholars now believe the Genesis story was based. (There are other scholars who disagree with Sitchin's translation of many of the texts.) I quote him here because of a number that he found on one of the cylinders. Sitchin writes (p.54): "The story of the Great Flood is one of the longest in the Bible . . . but it is a short version of much longer and more detailed Sumerian and Akkadian texts that deal with this watershed event." "On the eve of the Deluge, the Anunnaki took to their craft to escape the calamity, watching the havoc and total destruction from Earth's skies. Not only Mankind perished: All that the Anunnaki had built in the past 432,000 years was wiped off the face of the Earth or buried under miles-thick layers of mud; and that included the spaceport they had in the E.DIN." I make no judgment on Sitchin's translation of the texts; what's important is the discovery of the number, 432,000. This earliest civilization, which Sitchin's interpretation shows came to Earth from another planet, was using the 432 number in their stories. And their use of this number could indicate some sort of cycle of which they were aware. Sitchin has more to say about this number on page 176: "The Sumerian King List asserts that 432,000 years (120 orbits of Nibiru) had passed from the arrival of the Anunnaki on Earth until the Deluge. The number 432,000 is also key in the Hindu and other concepts of Ages and the periodic catastrophes that befall the Earth. "The number 432,000 also embraces 72 precisely 6,000 times. And it is perhaps worth keeping in mind that according to Jewish sages the count of years in the Jewish calendar -- 5,758 in AD 1998 -- will come to a completion, a terminus, when it reaches 6,000; it is then that it will all come full cycle." The other numbers hidden in the story of Noah are also explained by Sitchen, p. 173-4: "In our book When Time Began we have suggested that the Anunnaki, coming from a planet whose orbital period (one year on Nibiru) equaled 3,600 orbits of the planet Earth, needed some kind of a common denominator for such diverse periods -- and have found one in the phenomenon of Precession (which only they, not men with the shorter life spans dictated by Earth's cycles, could have discovered). When they divided the celestial circle into twelve parts, the precessional retardation -- that could be easily observed by them -- was 2,160 years per 'house.' That, we have suggested, led to the ratio of 3,600:2,160 or 10:6 (the eventual Golden Ratio of the Greeks), and to the sexagesimal system that ran 6 x 10 x 6 x 10 and so on (resulting in 60, 360, 3,600 . . ." (21,600, 216,000) " . . . to the immense number 12,960,000." (Emphasis added.) It bears noting again that Noah's 150 days of flooding provided these same results: 150 x 24 hr/day = 3,600 hours of flooding 3,600 x 60 min/hr = 216,000 minutes of flooding 216,000 x 60 min/sec = 12,960,000 seconds of flooding. There can be no doubt that the story of Noah's Flood contains numbers that connect it to ancient hidden knowledge about cyclical events in Earth's history. The story of Noah, it seems, is a description of a "cycle of destruction" of some duration: 2,160 years (one twelfth of precession), 12,960 years (one half precession) or 25,920 years (one complete cycle of precession). Taking into account current geological data that tells the story of earth's four billion year history, the evidence seems to indicate that the most recent ice age ended approximately 13,000 years ago. That's darn close to 12,960 years, one-half precession. Scientists are now suggesting that we've moved into a cycle of "global warming," during which time the north and south polar ice caps will continue to melt away, causing the oceans to reclaim vast portions of land. That means major coastal flooding events reminiscent of Noah's time. Could it be that, as the earth's axis wobbles around it's 360 degree, 25,920 year journey, season-like changes occur, lasting for a predictable length of time? Just as the tilt of the earth's axis creates summer and winter, each lasting approximately five months with a month or so of transition weather, could the wobble of that tilt create "Great Summer and Winter" cycles of alternating ice ages and flood ages? (For a scientific explanation of these great cycles and where the earth is at this point in time, check out www.ascension2000.com -- The Divine Cosmos, by David Wilcock.) The story of Noah's ark demonstrates that the writer was a member of a mystery school and had access to knowledge the masses could not understand and the powerful feared. If he wanted to leave that knowledge for mankind to find, but feared it would be destroyed by either the ignorant or the powerful, isn't is reasonable that he would write stories using a code that other people trained in the mystery schools could find and interpret? I think there's ample evidence that Luke was just another of a long line of "guardians of the knowledge." Noah's ark is the vessel that was set afloat in the OT on this river of knowledge. It contains in its measurements part of the message, the clue that the knowledge is hidden in the stories. Once the "cubit code" is discovered, all of the items constructed as described in the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) can be associated with one or more astronomical or scientific numbers. There are thirty-seven verses from Genesis through Deuteronomy that contain the words cubit or cubits at least one time. If I counted correctly, there are a total of 70 times one of these words is used in the Torah. Of course there's more to the stories than just the astronomical measurements. Just as Noah's ark tells the story of the Great Cycles of Earth Changes, and how they affect life on earth, the other stories contain important messages, as well. Interpreting those stories is a project I'll leave for someone else. The scope of this book is to simply show where the river of knowledge was picked up in the OT, and how it can be traced through the generations from Moses to Luke and the other gospel writers, and beyond. The first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah, are also known as The Five Books of Moses. Surely Moses left more associations with 432 in the other books. Moses was born of a Levite man and woman. But Pharoah commanded (Exodus 1:22): " . . . 'Every boy that is born to the Hebrews, you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.'" So in order to save his life, we're told that Moses' mother placed him in a basket which she floated down the Nile. Pharoah's daughter discovered the baby and took him as her son. Eventually, God paid a visit to Moses and gave him instructions on how he was to spend his life. Moses offered some resistance, but eventually he agreed to do God's work. In time, God instructed Moses to " . . . make an ark of acacia wood . . ." (Exodus 25:10). The measurement were given as: " . . . two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high." The question is, do these numbers continue the stream of knowledge first discovered in the dimensions of Noah's ark? 2.5 cubits times 1.728 = 4.32 ft. 1.5 cubits times 1.728 = 2.592 1.5 cubits times 1.728 = 2.592 Precession of the equinoxes is represented twice -- it must be a very important cycle. But the other number is the one we 're looking for: Luke's "magic number for Light," 4,320 and Moses' 4.32 prove they were working with the same stream of knowledge. The numbers in Genesis and Exodus and the numbers in Luke's gospel are harmonics and identical, but is there any indication in the Bible that the doctrine of the Nazarene/Essenes was taught in Moses' generations? There is; Numbers 6:1-26: "The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'When either men or women make a special vow, the vow of a nazirite to separate themselves to the Lord, they shall separate themselves from wine and strong drink; they shall drink no wine vinegar or other vinegar, and shall not drink any grape juice or eat grapes, fresh or dried. All their days as nazirites they shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins. "'All the days of their nazirite vow no razor shall come upon the head; until the time is completed for which they separate themselves to the Lord, they shall be holy; they shall let the locks of the head grow long . . ." " . . . The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the Israelites: You shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.'" This OT text may provide the most important clues to reaching an understanding of the Nazarenes who raised Jesus and the presence of their ancestors in Moses' life and time. And if the Nazarenes can be connected to the Essenes, then this chapter in the OT will take us a long way toward determining who the Essenes were and from where their knowledge came. This connection may be as simple as combining "nazirite" and "Essene" to become "Nazarene." The first thing of immense importance in Numbers 6 is verse 2: " . . . When either men or women make a special vow . . . of a nazirite . . ." It's clear from this statement that "nazirites" could be either male or female. Remember this was a patriarchal society in which women were seen as chattel and valued only for their ability to produce children. To find a suggestion that a "special group" of Israelites, "separated" or "consecrated" (the Hebrew meaning of the word nazirite) "to God," included women on equal terms with men, is most unusual. Perhaps this discovery adds credibility to some of the Nicean rejected texts, such as The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, The Gospel of Thomas, and The Gospel of Philip, all of which show that Jesus treated women far differently than traditional Jewish custom would have permitted. In fact, several of the ancient texts insist that Mary Magdalene was equal with the other apostles, even superior to them in some ways. Numbers 6 suggests that the vow of the nazirite was a temporary agreement. But during the time of the vow, the nazirites could not drink wine or strong drink, could not cut their hair, and could not go near a dead body. Many will be quick to point out that according to the gospel writers Jesus drank wine and touched dead bodies. That, one might argue, proves Jesus was not a nazirite. But remember, several centuries had passed between this first description of nazirites and Jesus' ministry. Traditions change, even those passed on by religious leaders. In my humble opinion, Jesus had every right to modify any rule or regulation that tradition had demanded of his ancestors. Moses had no more direct line to the Lord than did Jesus. If Jesus was given permission to drink wine and raise the dead, I have no problem with it. Perhaps the combining of "nazirite" with "Essene" to become "Nazarene" was a joining of certain traditions and the elimination of others. It's clear from the text that "Nazarene-ness" was not a temporary condition as "nazirite-ness" was. By the time Jesus became known as "The Nazarene," it was not due to any vow but was rather due to a way of life. According to Acts, the Nazarenes were a sect of Judaism. It seems reasonable that some of the original vows would have been retained and some of them discarded when the term "nazirite" was adapted and converted to "Nazarene." Numbers 6 ends with what is known as "The Aaronic benediction." That benediction ends with the words " . . . and give you peace." Ancient texts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, report that the greeting used by Essenes, both before and after any interaction with anyone, was always the same: "Peace be with you." And it's the same greeting Jesus used at Luke 24:36: "While they were talking about his, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, 'Peace be with you.'" It seems the Essenes adopted certain traditions from the nazirites of Moses' time. In addition to this farewell phrase, the Essenes drank nothing that came from grapes, neither wine nor juice, did not cut their hair, and were vegetarians, perhaps a broad interpretation of the vow that "they shall not go near a corpse." According to some ancient texts, the Essenes were called The Children of Light. The OT makes this claim in a roundabout way for the nazirites at Judges 13:1-7: "The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of the Philistines forty years. "There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. His wife was barren, having borne no children. And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, 'Although you are barren, having borne no children, you shall conceive and bear a son. Now be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, or to eat anything unclean, for you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor is to come on his head, for the boy shall be a nazirite to God from birth. It is he who shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines.' Then the woman came and told her husband, 'A man of God came to me, and his appearance was like that of an angel of God, most awe-inspiring; I did not ask him where he came from, and he did not tell me his name; but he said to me, 'You shall conceive and bear a son. So then drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for the boy shall be a nazirite to God from birth to the day of his death.'" (Notice that Luke's description of John the Baptist's pre-birth story (Luke 1:5-20) was taken from this Old Testament story. The message was, Baby John is a nazirite.) Judges 13:24: "The woman bore a son, and named him Samson." A footnote provides the pertinent information: "The name Samson is related to the Hebrew word for sun." Perhaps it is from this OT text that the Nazarene/Essenes came to call themselves, "Children of Light." Samson in Hebrew indicated that he was a "Child of the Sun," or a "Child of Light." It must be noted that Samson was anything but a poster child for nazirites or Nazarenes if the stories about him were intended as biographical (which I doubt), but that's another story for another researcher. The similarities between nazirites and Essenes are many, enough to show, I think, a common origin. It appears that the Essenes of Jesus' time retained all the vows of a nazirite, whereas the Nazarenes, including Jesus, modified some of the vows, probably for practical reasons. (A bountiful amount of information supporting this claim can be found at www.thenazareneway.com) This could be compared to modern differences within certain religious denominations: Some Catholics, for instance, marry and raise large families while others vow a lifetime of celibacy. Both are practicing the same religion but following their own conscience as to how they can best serve their God and mankind. In fact, geological evidence seems to suggest that the Qumran Essenes were celibate men, whereas the Nazarenes of Mount Carmel raised large families. This would be the precursor to modern communities of a predominant religion and nearby monasteries of celibate monks. The Essenes separated themselves from the cities and from other people. They lived in isolation, practicing their religion in a most strict and private way. Jesus the Nazarene and his disciples made an effort to share "The Way" with the masses who were suffering under the strong hand of the Romans and their puppets, the temple priests. His acts demonstrated the unselfishness and the love that he had for mankind. He could have joined the Essenes at Qumran, or he could have remained at Mount Carmel or gone to Alexandria and lived out his life in peace and relative safety. That was not his calling. He was called to carry the knowledge to everyone who was being oppressed and who had "ears to hear." He placed himself in mortal danger to share that knowledge with the ignorant under the noses of the powerful. Just as it was when the ark was placed on the river of knowledge in Moses' time, the ignorant and superstitious -- and the men in power -- feared what knowledge might mean in the hands of others. It's really not much different today. There's a large group of people who want to discard scientific evidence in favor of their faith in their preacher's interpretation of biblical texts. They want the theory of evolution removed and their faith in the fact of a "Creator Being" taught as history. Our government leaders, whether Democrat or Republican, have reduced funding for education to the point where teachers are buying supplies with their own money and students are graduating from high school unable to read or write with any degree of competency. Tax dollars are being channeled to religious organizations and these organizations are then teaching students their understanding of "biblical science." Of course they don't have the "cubit key" to the real knowledge our Bible contains. Like their ancestors, they read the stories at the surface level, never realizing that there is a veil between the "myths" and the hidden meanings. Here we are with the scientific knowledge acquired by using the "scientific method" that can prove the river of knowledge has continued to flow over eons of time. But the old fears of losing power, power held by religious and government leaders, leads them to keep the masses in ignorance. And the masses, in their ignorance, choose to keep their masters in power. "The more things seem to change, the more things stay the same." **** "AND HE SHALL SEE HIS OFFSPRING" In Chapter 7, Part Two, of Gabriel's Gift, I quoted the biblical passage that introduced Saul/Paul and described his first missionary journey, then asked a question that I wasn't able to answer at the time: "Acts 13:1: 'Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the ruler, and Saul.' " . . . Niger means black, so we have another man of color! What in the world does this mean? There weren't a lot of black people traveling around Judea and Galilee, were there? Isn't it kind of strange that so many would show up in Acts at almost the same time? Luke must be trying to send a message, but what might it be? Is one of the main characters a person of color?" (Gabriel's Gift, p. 205) I was certain at least one of the characters was a person with black skin, darker than the suntanned chocolate of the people of Galilee. Luke had used the term Niger, as well as describing another character as "Ethiopian," just five chapters earlier (Acts 8:27). So Luke seemed intent upon placing the image of a "black person" into the minds of his readers. But it wasn't until I was well into the writing of this book that I came upon the answer to my unspoken question: "Who is the main character in Acts with black skin?" Several months ago I read Margaret Starbird's book, The Woman with the Alabaster Jar. She wrote of the "Black Madonna" and offered the opinion that Mary Magdalene was the Black Madonna, so portrayed because of the secrecy of her relationship with Jesus and the birth of their child. "Black Madonna," Starbird offered, was intended as a code for hidden. And Mary Magdalene was forced into hiding because of the danger to her life and to the life of their unborn child if those who were threatened by the power of Jesus and his family learned where they were. Starbird also points out that Egyptian goddesses, including Isis, were frequently depicted as having black skin. Several more months passed before that memory kicked at my brain so hard that I found myself searching the Internet for information about the "Black Madonna." An article titled, "Czestochowa, Poland: The Black Madonna" is located at www.christusrex.org/www1/apparitions/pr00002.htm. When I read the first paragraph, I was stunned: "The Black Madonna was painted by St. Luke the Evangelist; and it was while painting the picture Mary told him about the life of Jesus, which he later incorporated into his gospel." A Black Madonna painted by Luke! A black mother and black child painted by Luke! I could not believe what I was reading. Eventually, of course, I realized that I was in a minority of people who would read that paragraph and connect the Black Madonna to Mary Magdalene and Jesus' child, not the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. But Plutarch was not a painter, so this claim presented a contradiction that he and Luke were the same person. Additional research eventually discounted this tradition that Luke actually was a painter. Most scholars agree with the following from www.users.senet.com.au/~gwilym/Saint%20Luke: "A tradition that Luke was a painter seems to have no basis in fact. Several images of Mary appeared in later centuries claiming him as a painter but these claims were proved false. Because of this tradition, however, he is considered a patron of painters of pictures and is often portrayed as painting pictures of Mary." Luke's message about Jesus fathering children is quite clear, and it's the story of the Ethiopian eunuch that delivers it: Acts 8:34-35: "The eunuch asked Philip, 'About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?' "Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus." What is Luke trying to tell us? "Philip . . . starting with this scripture . . ." tells us that Philip continued to read Isaiah past the verses the eunuch had just read out loud (Isaiah 53:7-8). And what does he say about what he was about to read? It is "The good news about Jesus." Isaiah 53:10: " . . . he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper." Can Luke make it any clearer? Hidden within Isaiah is the "good news": " . . . he (Jesus) shall see his offspring!" The stage is set, and the tension is building. But like any good mystery writer, Luke puts this story on hold and breaks away to describe Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus, his encounter with Ananias at the house of Judas, and to tell the story of Peter's experience with Cornelius. He describes the death of James, the brother of John, and the arrest of Peter. And he returns Saul to Jerusalem, now accompanied by "John, whose other name was Mark." (Acts 12:25) Luke makes certain that it's clear that John Mark is traveling with Saul and Barnabas by adding, " . . . And they had John also to assist them." (Acts 13:5) And then in the next verse Luke describes a very strange encounter between Saul and a "certain magician." Acts 13:6: "When they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they met a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet named Bar-Jesus." First, magician and magi meant the same thing two thousand years ago. The magi brought gifts to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem and saved his life by telling Joseph and Mary that Herod was looking for the child in order to slay him. Luke provides a name for the magi of Acts 13:6. His name is Bar Jesus; Bar means son of. Luke called Bar Jesus a "Jewish false prophet," which appears on the surface to eliminate this person as a "son of Jesus" the Nazarene. But we must remember that the sect of the Nazarenes were not accepted by the Jewish temple priests. The Nazarenes were outcasts. So according to the Jewish leaders, Jesus was a false prophet (they did crucify him!). Clearly any child of Jesus would be considered a "Jewish false prophet" by the Jewish leadership! Acts 13:7: "He" (Bar Jesus) "was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man, who summoned Barnabas and Saul and wanted to hear the word of God." Why would it be necessary to reveal that Bar Jesus' traveling companion was "an intelligent man"? Remember the other description frequently applied to the "three magi" who visited the baby Jesus? "Three Wise Men." The Magi were considered wise, or intelligent, so Bar Jesus and his companion are confirmed to be magi, wise men, not "evil magicians." In fact, a footnote provided by the editors of The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, p. 3NT, at Matthew 2:1 makes it very clear. Other terms for: "wise men" are given as "astrologers; Greek: magi." Acts 13:8: "But the magician Elymas (for that is the translation of his name) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith." The New Oxford editors provide an annotation that attempts to explain why Luke reported the magician's name is Bar Jesus in verse 6, only to report that the "translation of his name" is Elymas in verse 8: "Elymas does not mean 'Bar-Jesus.' Perhaps his name was Elymas, son of Jesus'." (New Oxford, p. 179NT.) Remember Philo's "Rules" for identifying the "hidden message"? This strange addition of another name is to attract attention. Luke has made a blatant error or omission in reporting the name of this "son of Jesus" He took a great risk when he openly reported that "Jesus had a son" by naming this "magi," Bar Jesus. Of course the story line is that this magician's "father Jesus" couldn't possibly be our Jesus. But Luke makes this confusing error, and it's obvious to even a casual reader of biblical texts: he gave the magi two names. Perhaps Luke wanted Theophilus to carefully examine the second name, breaking it into separate sections (again following Philo's "rules") and translating those words: El y mas. I don't know a lot of Hebrew or Greek, but I do know that El means God in Hebrew, and it refers to sun or Zeus in Greek. Mas is the root for masculine and is sometimes used to represent husband or father. That means that El y mas could mean that "Bar Jesus' Father is Zeus (or God)." But, Je sus, probably would have been pronounced, Hey-Zeus. Adding bar makes it "son of Hey-Zeus." Now adding the fact that Luke also used, El y mas, meaning "father is Zeus," we have an example of Philo's, "duplication of terms." There is a hidden meaning here! This is really important!! Luke has hidden the message that Saul/Paul, meets and has a major disagreement over doctrine with a young man, Bar Jesus meaning, "son of Hey Zeus" He then gives another name, El y mas, which means "father is Zeus (God)." And this all occurs just five chapters after Philip and the eunuch discover that "Jesus shall see his offspring" -- only about five minutes of reading time. In the intervening chapters, he has named Ananias, Judas, and John Mark, and he's given the magi two names: Bar Jesus (son of Jesus), and El y mas (father is Zeus (or God)). And I can assure you it's repeated here to draw attention! This is something you will want to remember! At the time Paul initiated his religious movement, any child born to Jesus in the years between 30 to 35 ACE would have been twenty to twenty-five years old. If there is any historical information in this story, Jesus Junior was of an age that he could have encountered Saul/Paul. I think it's doubtful any meeting occurred, but that isn't the point. Luke is simply trying to tell the truth: Saul/Paul did not support Jesus' teachings in any way. More importantly Luke hid the message: Jesus had a son, and he was also a wise man of God who opposed Saul/Paul's doctrine. Paul's letters are the foundation for a religious movement that diverged from Jesus and his disciples' religious teachings almost immediately. There were people trying to destroy the true story of Jesus and his message which Luke promised to tell. Luke couldn't very well have written, "Opposing Saul/Paul was Jesus, Junior, a wise and holy man of God, son of Jesus the Nazarene." But he certainly did the next best thing by making it extremely easy to find that message here at Acts 13! Acts 13:8: "But the magician Elymas . . . opposed them," (Saul and Barnabas) "and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith." Notice that this does not say he tried to turn him away from "the word of God." What it says is that they tried to turn him away from "the faith not works" religion preached by Paul. Saul/Paul is so incensed that Jesus Junior "tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith" not works doctrine that Luke describes him as flying into an angry tirade: Acts 13:10: " . . . You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now listen -- the hand of the Lord is against you, and you see the sun.' Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he went about groping for someone to lead him by the hand. When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was astonished at the teaching about the Lord." When Paul finishes his cursing, Luke does another significant thing: he describes a "mist and darkness" coming "over him." Exactly who "him" refers to, Luke left ambiguous. But the next phrase helps clear it up: " . . . and he went about groping for someone to lead him by the hand." This leaves the impression that someone can't see. And because of the ambiguity of "him," it could be either Paul or Jesus Junior. But everyone would have known of Paul's "road to Damascus" experience that left him blind, because Luke just told it at Acts 9:8: "Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus." He even used the same words, " . . . led (lead) him by the hand . . ." And just in case it was missed there, Luke repeated the story about Saul's blindness later in Acts two more times! And he recited a different version each time. Lies, lies, lies. Association! Association! Association! What can this possibly mean except that Jesus had a son, Jesus Junior? Or perhaps two sons. John Mark is later rejected by Paul, just as Bar-Jesus was rejected. And the reason Paul rejected him is because immediately after the encounter between Saul and Bar Jesus, John Mark stopped traveling with Saul: "John, however, left them and returned to Jerusalem." (Acts 13:13) Luke carefully signaled that John Mark was with Saul and Barnabas just before they met Bar Jesus; he carefully signaled that he left them for Jerusalem immediately after the meeting. That means John Mark was present and in the scene, even though he isn't specifically mentioned. Skip forward four more chapters, about five more minutes of reading time, to Acts 17:28: "'For we too are his offspring.'" That's amazing considering how closely this follows " . . . he shall see his offspring . . ." and "Bar Jesus," and "El y mas." But in what context does Luke place this information? Acts 17:29-34: "Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurances to all by raising him from the dead.' "When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, 'We will hear you again about this.' At that point Paul left them. But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them." Time to review the clues to this mystery as they were presented: Acts 8:34-35 reports that "He (Jesus) shall see his offspring." Acts 13:6-8 is a scene that stars "Bar Jesus . . . with . . . an intelligent man . . . " This "Son of Jesus" was also named Elymas, which means, "God-his father," or "Zeus his father." And at Acts 17:28, Luke finishes the story: "We . . . are his offspring" and drops two names: Acts 17:34: "Dionysius" and "Damaris." In Greek mythology, Dionysus is the son of Zeus, born of a mortal woman! By giving him two names, Bar-Jesus and Elymas, Luke describes the "offspring" as "son of a Greek god" (Zeus), and "son of a Hebrew god" (El). Di is the Greek prefix which means two, perhaps a fact not to be overlooked in the context of this story. Di on y sus could mean "two sons of Zeus." Another association occurs here. One of Zeus's wives, though not the mother of Dionysus, was Danae. The most famous of Egyptian goddesses was Isis. Look at what happens when Danae and Isis are combined with the name Mary: Da Mar Is. Damaris combines three goddesses into one name. Doesn't there come a time when coincidences tip the scale to intentional, hidden messages? Any texts that attempted to tell this story had been, or were being, destroyed. And the people who possessed the texts were executed, usually after being viciously tortured. It was for this crime of heresy that people were burned at the stake. But Luke/Plutarch and his sources were determined to keep the true story alive. Think of how amazing it is that they accomplished this by getting it into the APPROVED Holy Bible! What less than Divine Intervention could have accomplished such an impossible task? But there's more, and perhaps now that Plutarch/Luke has revealed himself, it will become easier to decode the hidden message. Heretical traditions and legends tell of a first child born to Jesus and Mary Magdalene -- a daughter. **** " . . . For he had an only daughter . . . " Luke 8:43 JAIRUS' DAUGHTER AND THE BLEEDING WOMAN Now that we've established that there is, indeed, hidden knowledge and information throughout biblical texts, from the Old Testament to the New, we'll continue examining Luke's two gospels for more information. One of the most exciting and revealing is the story of Jairus' daughter and the bleeding woman. Both Luke and Matthew adopted this section of their gospels from Mark, but Luke retained most of Mark's as it was written while Matthew abbreviated much of the story, leaving out, or sometimes changing, significant portions -- many of which contained clues. Luke's version appears at the end of Chapter 8, and the numbers he incorporated into his various stories throughout Chapter 8 were: 12, 7, 12, and 12. Luke 8:1-2: (1) "Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, (2) as well as some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means." Luke 8:42: " . . . For he had an only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she was dying." Luke 8:43: "Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years; . . ." Two very interesting numbers appear in the first two verses: 12 and 7: 12 x 7 = 84; 84 x pi (22/7) = 264; "the birth unzipping angle of the DNA/RNA behavior is 26,400 seconds of arc." Since 264 is a harmonic of 26,400, verses 1 and 2 must be an introduction to another important birth. The next number, 12, appears in verse 42 with the statement, " . . . he had an only daughter about twelve. . ." Multiplying the first three numbers in Chapter 8 reveals another number important to this story of a birth: 12 x 7 x 12 = 1008; 1008 x pi (22/7) = 3168. That number is easily recognizable because it is a harmonic of the measurement of the perimeter of a square drawn around the earth: 7920 miles x 4 = 31,680 miles. But it has greater significance in the context of this story if you're aware of the ancient science of Gematria. Vast amounts of information about Gematria can be found at various web sites, and Zecharia Sitchin provides a great description, along with a little background, in The Cosmic Code, p. 162-3: "Other tablets in which Sumerian terminology was retained even in Akkadian texts . . . point to the early use of numerology as a secret code, especially when the gods were involved. "It is no wonder then that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet were granted numerical values . . . and that such values played a much greater role in the encoding and the decoding of secret knowledge than the letters by themselves. When the Greeks adopted the alphabet, they retained the practice of assigning numerical values to letters; and it is from Greek that the art of and rules for the interpretation of letters, words or groups of words by their numerical values was given the name Gematria." "Beginning in the time of the Second Temple, the numerological Gematria became a tool in the hands of scholars as well as gnostics to pry out of the biblical verses and words untold numbers of hidden meanings or bits of information . . ." (Emphasis added.) The information that the ancients used "numerology as a secret code . . . when the gods were involved" is quite important here, and Sitchin also notes that Gematria was a tool used by Gnostics. What follows is very important: When the Greek letters that spell out the words Lord Jesus Christ are assigned their numeric equivalent, and those numbers are added, the sum is 3168. Therefore, the Greek Gematrian number for Lord Jesus Christ is 3168. This means that an undercover Gnostic, using Gematrian numbers and rules, recorded these numbers in chapter eight, 12, 7, and 12. And the final number, 12, Luke 8:42, falls within this sentence: "for he had an only daughter . . ." Let's review this very important section of Luke's gospel because what it reveals is astounding: 1. Greek Gnostics used Gematria, even created rules for its use, and they used it "especially when speaking of gods." 2. Luke wrote: " . . . he had an only daughter . . ." in a sentence in which the third number used in the chapter, multiplied by the previous two, then the product multiplied by pi, equals 3168 (12 x 7 x 12 = 1008 x 22/7 = 3168). 3. Greek Gematria for Lord Jesus Christ is 3168. 4. The hidden message: "He, 3168 (Lord Jesus Christ), had a daughter." Remember, the number 84 first appeared in Chapter 2 of Luke's gospel during the telling of the story of Jesus' birth and the ceremony surrounding his birth: Anna was 84 years old. The women named above in Luke 8:1-2, Joanna and Susanna, appear only in Luke's gospel and may serve as a reminder to anyone suspecting a hidden message to recall Anna and Jesus' birth. Certainly, combined with the number 84, the message cannot be denied. The operative word for Luke's Chapter 8 is "birth." Luke 8:43-44: "Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years; and though she had spent all she had on physicians, no one could cure her. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his clothes, and immediately her hemorrhage stopped." What does bleeding in a woman normally indicate? And what does it mean when a woman ceases bleeding? Women of childbearing age bleed monthly as long as they are not pregnant. The first sign of pregnancy is when a woman ceases this monthly "hemorrhaging." Luke 8:48: "He said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace." All three gospel narratives quote Jesus as calling the bleeding woman, "Daughter." This is the only story in any of the gospels in which Jesus used that term. All three begin the story with Jairus' dying daughter, interrupt it with the bleeding woman, and return to Jairus' daughter when the bleeding ceases. If you're looking for hidden messages in Luke's gospel, this section tells you that someone got pregnant. The question is, who got pregnant and by whom did she become pregnant? Luke 8:46: "But Jesus said, 'Someone touched me; for I noticed that power had gone out from me.'" What is the father's function in a woman's pregnancy? And how does he feel immediately after he's performed that function? Jesus says, "power had gone out from me," and the woman's bleeding immediately stopped. If Luke was determined to find a way to pass the truth on by way of a coded message, how better could he have said, "Jesus fathered a child"? Both Luke and Mark wrote the story in such a way that this information might be saved. Matthew, as is most often the case, copied enough of Mark's gospel to tell a story, but not enough to tell the story Matthew's gospel, in fact, contains much information that hides the Truth, but that's another story, perhaps another book. Who is most likely the pregnant woman? Perhaps the woman whose name is mentioned first in Chapter 8: Luke 8:2: " . . . as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out . . ." It isn't just a coincidence that the word infirmities is used immediately preceding "Mary, called Magdalene"? Luke wanted Theophilus to associate Mary Magdalene with the bleeding woman. It's also significant that Luke reported " . . . Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out . . . " All the mystery schools which predate the Christian era considered the number seven to be highly significant. Most agree that seven indicates perfection, the successful completion of the earthly lessons, making it possible for the person to enter the realm of the Heavenly Father, the realm of Spirit. In Essene numerology, seven is the number of earthly perfection. Being ridded of seven demons, then, would refer to a "perfecting of the human body," making Mary Magdalene suitable to carry the Holy Child, fathered by Jesus. Sitchin's research has revealed another hidden meaning for seven that is also meaningful here. He explains, The Cosmic Code, p.174, why the number seven was significant to the ancient Sumerians: " . . . Coming from the far-out Nibiru, Pluto would be the first planet, Neptune and Uranus the second and third, Saturn and Jupiter the fourth and fifth, Mars, would the sixth, and Earth the seventh . . ." So seven, representing Earth, would have also represented Mother to the Gnostics who spoke and taught that our "Heavenly Father and Earthly Mother" were Co-Creators of all life. Associating Mary Magdalene with the number seven, then, also associates her with Mother. There are Christian texts, rejected and destroyed by the early Church fathers, that reported Jesus' maternal grandfather and grandmother were Joachim and Anna. If Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a daughter, what better name than JoAnna to suggest the birth of this child? JoAnna was also with Mary Magdalene after the crucifixion, according to Luke -- Susanna is not. JoAnna is an important character in Jesus' life, just as Mary Magdalene was.
CHAPTER NINE NOTES Sitchin provided much information that relates to my hypothesis. I suggest you read his entire Six Volume Set, The Earth Chronicles. The Cosmic Code, p. 160: "Such a use of numbers to encode word-syllables appears in a text known as An Exaltation to Ishtar, where the worshipper signed his name not with letters but with numbers: 21-35-35-26-41 the son of 21-11-20-42. The key to such numerical encodings remains undeciphered. But we have reason to believe that such Mesopotamian encoding methods were known to the Hebrew Prophets." I was curious, so I added all the numbers found in this ancient text and multiplied the sum by pi (22/7): 252 x pi = 792. The diameter of the earth is 7,920 miles. I also multiplied the sum by the Egyptian Royal Cubit: 252 x 1.728 = 435.456. That was very close to 432.000, so I subtracted to determine the difference: 435.456 minus 432.000 is 3.456. A square drawn around the sun (864,000 x 4) = 3,456,000 miles. Perhaps the hidden message was: "I am the Earth, born of the Sun, and the Great Cycle is 432,000 years." Quite advanced astronomical knowledge for people predating Moses! **** COMPARING DOCTRINES How would a Pythagorean, Platonist, pagan priest and sage have any knowledge of the truth about the life of Jesus and the acts of his chosen apostles? That question can be answered by comparing the King James translation of biblical texts to modern translations using the most ancient scriptures. The phrase, "Jesus the Nazarene," was changed to "Jesus of Nazareth" in about fifteen instances in the translation from which the King James Version was taken. Some modern Bibles provide this information as a footnote while others have corrected the actual text. What this reveals is that somewhere along the interpretional route the Bible has traveled, someone or some group attempted to separate Jesus from the Nazarenes. There is still disagreement about who the Nazarenes were and what they taught, but it is becoming widely accepted that they were not the typical "Jewish sect" practicing typical Jewish rituals. Acts provides support for this theory; only Acts reveals the presence of a "sect of the Nazarenes" in the story of Christianity: Acts 24.5-8: "We have, in fact, found this man a pestilent fellow, an agitator among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. He even tried to profane the temple, and so we seized him. By examining him yourself you will be able to learn from him concerning everything of which we accuse him." These verses, of course, are speaking of Paul, not Jesus. Jesus has been completely separated from any relationship with a "sect of Nazarenes." The next verse tells how the Jews viewed this sect: Acts 24.9: "The Jews also joined in the charge by asserting that all this was true." The author of Acts has disclosed important information that seems to have been missed by virtually everyone: The temple of the Jews was profaned if members of the sect of the Nazarenes entered into it. In other words, the Nazarenes were no more welcomed in the temple at Jerusalem than were the eunuchs. But why? The answer can only be that their beliefs and rituals were so at odds with those of the Sadducees and the Pharisees that they were considered and treated as outcasts. Jesus was a Nazarene, and what he would have been teaching from Nazarene doctrine would have been rejected by the typical Jew of the time. The Roman authorities who helped support the Jewish priests, and Herod Agrippa, who helped fund the magnificent temple at Jerusalem, would have joined forces opposing Jesus and the Nazarene teachings, which were called, "The Way" (Acts 24.14). Both history and the gospels report that this is exactly what happened. But what was the doctrine of the Nazarenes? And how did it differ from the doctrines of the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Those questions are dealt with in depth in Gabriel's Gift, but to summarize briefly, Paul's epistles give the best answers. When Paul wrote to the various churches, he answered questions about doctrine. Paul admits in his letters that he and Peter, and he and James and other disciples of Jesus, had serious disagreements about doctrine. Paul's own letters provide the best evidence that many people in the early days of the new religion rejected him and his doctrine; he (or a disciple on his behalf) proclaims that he is not a liar (Romans 9:1; 1 Timothy 2:7; 2 Corinthians 11:31; Galatians 1:20). And he (or a disciple on his behalf) accused others of being deceitful (Romans 16:18; Ephesians 5:6; 2 Timothy 3:13; Titus 1:10). You don't deny being a liar unless you're accused of lying. He wrote the letter to the Galatians, according to him, because they had deserted his doctrine. (Perhaps because others had accused him of lying): Galatians 1:6-7: "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel -- not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ." (Paul's version, of course.) Galatians 1:8-9: "But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!" (Emphasis added.) In Paul's own words, there was more than one gospel being preached to the Galatians and others. There was opposition to Paul's doctrine, clearly, but who opposed him? He answers that question for us: Galatians 2:l-6: "Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up in response to a revelation. Then I laid before them (though only in a private meeting with the acknowledge leaders) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain. But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. But because of false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us -- we did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you. And from those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders (what they actually were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality) -- those leaders contributed nothing to me." It turns out that those who opposed him, according to Paul, were "the acknowledged leaders," including men he called "false brothers." Paul declared that he "did not submit" to the acknowledged leaders, which indicates that his gospel was rejected by them. Who were the "acknowledged leaders"? Galatians 2:9: " . . . James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars . . ." We know Cephas is Peter and John was one of the Apostles, but which James is this? Galatians 1:19-20: " . . . But I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord's brother. In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!" Paul proclaims, "before God," he did not lie. Why make such a denial unless someone else claimed that he did? Perhaps his claim that "the acknowledged leaders gave him their blessings" was the reason he was accused of lying. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain references to "The Spouter of Lies," and many scholars who have studied the texts suggest this referred to Paul. Not all agree, but it must be considered in the context of Paul's fervent defense and his admitted opposition to James and the other appointed Apostles. I don't want to belabor this point because I'm probably preaching to the choir. But it's beyond me how anyone can doubt that Paul's "gospel" was different than the gospel preached by Peter, John, and James the Lord's own brother. We can be certain that Jesus and James were the Nazarenes; Peter and John were probably Jewish converts to The Nazarene Way. And Paul admitted that his doctrine was different, and he called on the Galatians to "accurse" those who dared to "pervert" his gospel! I guess they finally did. I guess they all finally did. The major differences between the two competing doctrines can be discovered by looking at some of the questions that were being asked of Paul by the people in the various churches, exemplified by his first letter to the Corinthians. We aren't provided with the questions, but based on Paul's answers, it's easy enough to surmise what the questions must have been: Assumed Question: "Apollos and Cephas taught us that women are equal to men and may preach the Nazarene doctrine. Should women be allowed to preach?" Paul's response, I Corinthians 14:33-36: " . . . women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached?" I Timothy 2:11-15: "Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent." Assumed Question: "Apollos and Cephas taught us that men should not cut their hair. Should we wear our hair long?" (The vow of the nazirites included not cutting their hair, Numbers 6.5.) Paul's response, I Corinthians 11:14: "Does not nature itself teach you that for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him . . ." Assumed Question: "Apollos and Cephas taught us that we should not eat meat. Are we to be vegetarians?" Paul's response, Romans 14:1: " . . . Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables." Colossians 2:16: " . . . do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths." Assumed Question: "Apollos and Cephas taught us that all people deserve to be free from slavery and oppression. But my owner, a Christian, tells me I will not be set free. Why am I, and other men and women, still being held as slaves?" Paul's response, Colossians 3:22-25: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong has been done, and there is no partiality." I Timothy 6:1-5: "Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be blasphemed. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful to them on the ground that they are members of the church; rather they must serve them all the more, since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved." Pythagoras, Plato, and Plutarch, were vegetarians and considered women to be equal, allowing them to teach alongside the men. They wore their hair long and abhorred slavery. When the teachings which Paul opposed, those of Jesus' disciples after his death, are compared with those of the Greek philosophers, ancient mystery schools, and some Eastern religions, the similarities become obvious. Compare them to the rituals and rules of the patriarchal temple priests supported by Herod, and there are no similarities. Paul's answers to the churches in all questions of doctrine disagreed with Jesus' disciples and agreed with the Pharisees'. What is known of the Nazarene Way of Life comes, primarily, from those who wrote against the Nazarenes. Some additional light has been shed on them by relatively modern discoveries at Qumran and Nag Hammadi. Virtually all of the descriptions from all sources indicate that their doctrine and way of life was based on the Pythagorean model: communal villages, vegetarian diets and herbal healing, studies of the "mysteries," the numbers, the earth, moon, stars, and nature. Everything that has been rediscovered about the Nazarenes puts them much closer to Greek philosophy than to the Jewish Pharisee customs in which Paul was raised, according to Acts 23:6. An Internet article titled James, Paul, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, voiced an observation I've seen elsewhere (www.sullivan-county.com/id2/james): "About (James') election to succeed Jesus, and about his death, WE ARE NOT INFORMED BY CANONICAL ACTS. We must go to other sources, Eusebius of Caesarea (260-340 CE), Archbishop under Constantine tells us in his Ecclesiastical History that James was 'the Lord's brother, who had been elected by the Apostles to the Episcopal throne at Jerusalem.' (E.H.2.23). Knowing Jesus would soon depart from them, his disciples, according to the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, asked him who would lead them, 'And Jesus said to them, 'In the place you are to go, go to James the Righteous, for whose sake Heaven and Earth came into existence,'" (Nag Hammadi, logion 12)." (Some translations use "James the Just.") "The second century Syriac 'Apostolic Constitutions' tells us that James was 'the brother of Christ according to the flesh ... and one appointed Bishop of Jerusalem by the Lord Himself,' (8.35). "In a passage surviving only in Eusebius, Clement of Alexandria (150-215 CE) tells us that the 'Gift of Knowledge' was imparted by Jesus to 'James the Righteous, to John, and to Peter,' and that these in turn 'delivered it to the rest of the Apostles, and they to the Seventy, of whom Barnabas was one,' (E.H. 2.1). "For his part, Jerome, in his Lives, writes 'This same Josephus records the tradition that this James was of great Holiness and reputation among the people that the destruction of Jerusalem was believed to have occurred on account of his death,' and in his Commentary that '(s)o Holy was James that the people zealously tried to touch the fringes of his garment,' (Commentary on Galatians 1:19, 396) . . ." "Josephus and Hegesippus -- and because of them, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus (160-235 CE), Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome -- even ancient Christian literature recently found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt (In the lost Gospel of Thomas above) know of James' death, but not, oddly, Acts. Because Josephus knew of it first hand, it would seem best to use his account. According to him, when the Roman Governor died in 66 CE -- and the new one was still on the way -- Establishment High Priest Ananus ben Ananus used the occasion to try and execute Jesus' brother James, because of his role as supreme leader of the Jesus Movement: 'He assembled the Sanhedrin (the 'Supreme Court') of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some of his companions. And when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the Law, he delivered them to be stoned. But those citizens who seemed the most equitable and THE MOST CAREFUL IN THE OBSERVATION OF THE LAW were offended by this,' (Antiquities of the Jews 20.1)." This writer's assertion that James' death was not reported in Acts is a common observation and sometimes used by scholars attempting to date it. In Gabriel's Gift I offered a hypothesis that the stoning of Stephen was Luke's hidden report of the stoning of James, Jesus' brother. A recent Internet search reveals that others have also noted the similarities between Luke's stoning of Stephen and descriptions of the stoning of James, Jesus' brother. None, however, have finished the picture by showing that this was an intentional "hypertextual transvaluation" constructed to tell the true story of what happened to James in a climate determined to protect his persecutors. A review of Robert Eisenman's James the Brother of Jesus: A Higher-Critical Evaluation, by Robert M. Price, Drew University, www.dhushara.com/book/yeshua/desposyn provides ample evidence that Stephen's real identity was James: "Third, Eisenman brings to bear on the narratives of Acts the model of a 'mix and match' redactional technique whereby Luke is seen to have composed his stories by recombining the salient features of very different stories from his sources. When Luke finishes, only bits of either the paradigmatic or syntagmic composition of the originals are left, but there is enough to recognize the one as the mutation of the other. This is the procedure used recently to great effect by a number of scholars, not the least John Dominc Crossan (who shows the Passion Narrative to be built up from various Old Testament proof texts), Randel Helms (who in Gospel Fictions shows case after case of a gospel story's derivation from a similar Septuagint story), and Thomas L. Brodie (who unscrambles numerous Lukan tales into their original Deuteronomic components). Eisenman's originality at this point lies not in the technique but rather in his willingness to take seriously Luke's use of Josephus as a source. (Again, this is something no one who wants an early date for Luke or a historical basis for Acts is likely to consider seriously, but then we have another case of apologetics masquerading as criticism.) And Eisenman's redactional analyses of Luke on Josephus provide but one of the major advances of James the Brother of Jesus. It seems not to much to say that the book ushers in a new era in the study of Acts." (Gott note: Flavius Josephus was born c. 37 ACE and died c. 100 ACE. He was writing during the same time that Luke/Plutarch was also writing.) "This is not to say, however, that Eisenman limits his use of the technique to Luke's use of Josephus. Far from it: he is able to distill traditions from various sources and to identify them in their new guises in Luke-Acts and elsewhere in the New Testament. I propose now to provide summaries of a few of Eisenman's reconstructions, showing in broad outline what he sees Luke (or others) having made of originally quite different traditions. " . . . A telltale sign of the story's originally having dealt with James' election is the proof-text, 'his bishopric let another man take' (Acts 1:20/Psalms 109:8). James has simply been excised from various tales in Acts where we should expect to read of all three Pillars but now read of only the dynamic duo of Peter and John. "As Hans-Joachim Schoeps had already surmised, the stoning of Stephen has in precisely the same way supplanted the stoning of James (actually a conflation of James' ultimate stoning at the command of Ananus and an earlier assault by Saul on the temple steps preserved as a separate incident in the Recognitions). The name Stephen has been borrowed from a Roman official beaten by Jewish insurgents whom Josephus depicts ambushing him outside the city walls. Why this name? Because of a pun: Stephen means 'crown' and was suggested both by the 'crown' of long hair worn by the Nazirite (which James was, according to early church writers) and by the crown of martyrdom. To Stephen has been transferred James' declaration of the Son of Man at the right hand of God in heaven, as well as James' 'Christlike' prayer for his persecutors. (Eisenman might have noted, too, that the martyr's original identity as James the Just is signaled by Acts 7:52, 'The Just, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become'!)" (Some translations use "The Righteous," rather than "The Just," and James is also described as "The Righteous.") "We read that a young man named Saul was playing coat checker for the executioners of Stephen and, his taste for blood whetted, immediately began to foment persecution in Jerusalem and Damascus. This has been drawn, again, from the lore of James as well as Josephus. The clothing motif was suggested by the final blow to James' head with a fuller's club, while just after his own account of James' death, Josephus tells of the rioting started by a Herodian named Saulus in Jerusalem!(Apparently a fuller's club is used to beat clothes to clean them.) "Eisenman sees various Jamesian themes floating around to link up in entirely different forms elsewhere in Christian scripture. For instance, the Transfiguration has Jesus glimpsed in heavenly glory as Stephen saw him and James proclaimed him. And of course 'James' is there on the scene. The 'fuller' element is repeated in the form of Jesus' shining clothes, whiter than any fuller on earth could have bleached them. Again, in the Recognitions, Saul is pursuing James and the Jerusalem saints out to Jerico (the vicinity of the Qumran 'Damascus'), and somehow they are protected by the spectacle of two martyr's tombs which miraculously whiten every year. There is the whitening element linked with Saul's persecution. Again, at the empty tomb (recalling those martyrs' tombs), we meet a 'young man' (the epithet applied to Saul in Act's stoning of Stephen) who is dressed in white (the fuller motif) and sitting at the right, this time, of Jesus' resting place (just as Stephen saw Jesus at the right hand of God)." Robert Eisenman is a rather famous biblical scholar and a prolific author, and he, too, has recognized Luke's "hypertextual transvaluation" technique, described by MacDonald. But neither Eisenman, MacDonald, nor Price have realized that it was an intentional ploy by Plutarch, writing under the name, Luke, attempting to tell a story that the Roman government and early church leaders were determined to destroy. Josephus' "Saul" and Luke's "Saul/Paul" were one and the same person. Saul/Paul not only infiltrated the movement, but he was fully involved and probably led the stoning of Jesus' brother, James, a story told in Acts that only thinly disguises James as Stephen. It's all there in Acts! Plutarch constructed the puzzles and provided just enough clues to tell the story, but not enough to be obvious. Once discovered, however, it's almost a "DUH!!!" experience. Once discovered it all seems so obvious.
****
" . . . our people in Egypt increased and multiplied." Acts 7:17 " . . . he became the father of two sons." Acts 7:29 JOURNEY TO EGYPT There are so many hidden messages in Luke-Acts it will take years of study to uncover all of them. There is just one remaining, however, important enough to include here. What happened to Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the children? For the answer to that question, Plutarch gave us Jesus' brother, James. His speech, as Stephen, draws attention because of its length and apparent rambling, especially since he's about to be stoned to death. But it's at that moment that he wants to retell the story of Abraham. And as always, Luke makes obvious errors in Stephen's telling of the story. According to Acts 7:14-16, Jacob died in Egypt, "as well as our ancestors," and their bodies brought back to Sechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in Sechem. Problem is, according to Genesis 50:13, Jacob was buried at Hebron, not Sechem. According to Genesis 33:19 and Joshua 24:32 it was Jacob who bought the tomb at Shechem, not Abraham. So Luke's version puts a body in a tomb that can't possibly be there. That probably means the "body" in "Jesus' tomb" isn't there. Jesus is still alive. But where is he? Luke referred to Egypt, thirteen times in Stephen's speech between Acts 7:9 and 7:40. That'll get your attention! There was a large group of Nazarenes that resided near Alexandria, Egypt, at Lake Mareotis. What better place for a Nazarene to hide? And it would have been the perfect place for him and his wife to care for their children. And he could continue to teach there, perhaps under an assumed name. Acts 7:17: "But as the time drew near for the fulfillment of the promise that God had made to Abraham, our people in Egypt increased and multiplied." Acts 7:29: "When he heard this, Moses fled and became a resident alien in the land of Midian. There he became the father of two sons." Remember, Stephen is about to be stoned in this dramatic scene, but his last words are about "our people in Egypt" increasing and multiplying and someone becoming the "father of two sons." The name Jacob is used eight times between Acts 7:8 and 7:46; Jacob is Hebrew, and James is the Greek equivalent. The name Joseph is used five times between Acts 7:9 and 7:18. Laurence Gardner contends (Bloodline of the Holy Grail, p. 119) that Joseph and Jacob are Nazarene patriarchal titles, with Joseph being the first born and leader, and Jacob/James being the second born and second in command. This seems to be supported by Luke's gospel: Jesus (also a variation of Joseph) was replaced as leader of the Nazarenes by his brother, James. Taking this one step further, Jesus' sons would have been given the titular names: Joseph, the first born and first in line for the position of High Priest; Jacob/James would be the "second son." Hence, " . . . he became the father of two sons," the information given at Acts 7:29. And it's possible they were twin sons. The daughter who Luke identified as "DaMarIs," to show her "goddess" lineage, was born first, probably in Egypt, but perhaps on the way there; the two sons were definitely born in Egypt as Stephen reported in his speech. The first-born daughter of Nazarene Royalty was also given a certain title, just as sons were titled. The first-born daughters were known as JoAnnas. Is that familiar? How long the Royal Family stayed in Egypt isn't reported here, but they eventually left for points north. (The length of time they spent in Egypt will be revealed, but it comes from another source.) Acts 28:11-14 " . . . After three months we set sail in a ship which had wintered in the island, a ship of Alexandria, with the Twin Brothers as figurehead. Putting in at Syracuse, we stayed there for three days. And from there we made a circuit and arrived at Rhegium; and after one day a south wind sprang up, and on the second day we came to Puteoli. There we found brethren, and were invited to stay with them for seven days." It could be assumed that the journey ended at Puteoli because they stayed there seven days, the Gnostic code for complete. Or perhaps Plutarch simply wanted to draw attention to Puteoli for some reason. Perhaps another association. Twin Brothers is a reference to the popular mythological twins, Castor and Pollux. According to this tale, Zeus, disguised as a swan, impregnated Leda who gave birth to two eggs. From these eggs came a daughter (first egg) and twin sons (second egg). Beginning with the story of the sailing ship, Acts 28:11-30 contains seven numbers: 3, 3, 2, 7, 3, 3, 2. Multiplied the product is 2268. That was vaguely familiar but not one of the "sacred numbers" that I had become so familiar with. So I searched using 2268 and Gematria. The web site that was listed was www.odeion.org/gematria/gemapp-b. What appeared on the opening page was a sketch of a circle within a square. The circle touched the square on all four sides, so it was the largest possible circle that could have been drawn inside the square. The text that described it in the context of Greek Gematria just blew me away! "When the perimeter of the Square is 1270, that of the circle is 998, and 1270 = The Bridegroom. 998 = The Bride, . . . of certain Gnostics. 2268 = The Bridegroom and The Bride." Jesus and Mary Magdalene were on the ship! Acts ends with a speech from Paul's mouth, a quote from Isaiah 6:9-10. Plutarch's last message, disguised as Luke, says it all: "The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your ancestors, through the prophet Isaiah, 'Go to this people, and say, You will indeed listen, but never understand, And you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn -- and I would heal them.' Let it be known to you then that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.'" But this story isn't complete without reading the rest of Isaiah 6, verses 11-13: "Then I said, 'How long, O Lord?' And he said: "Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate; until the Lord sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land. even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing when it is felled.' The holy seed is its stump." The "oak whose stump remains standing" creates the image of the biblical tree of life which appeared first in the Bible at Genesis 2:9: "And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Genesis 2:10: "A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden . . ." The Tree of Life is at the center of the garden, and the river flows out of the garden. The Nazarenes placed tremendous importance on The Tree of Life and built some of their most important traditions around it. The branches on the Tree of Life represented the seven Angels of the Heavenly Father, and the roots represented the seven Angels of the Earthly Mother. The Nazarenes understood that creation required the interaction of masculine and feminine energies. Modern physicists use the terms electromagnetism and gravity. It's all the same. Nothing can be created without the interaction of these two forces. The Nazarenes had this knowledge, and it was represented in their Tree of Life. The Book of Revelation, the last book in the bible, closes with the following, Chapter 22, verse 2: " . . . Through the middle of the street of the city, and on either side of the river, is the tree of life . . ." Jesus says, Revelation 22:13-14: "'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.' Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates." The beginning of the stream of knowledge in the Bible is in Genesis, and the end is in Revelation. In order to "wash their robes," the "Blessed" must find the river. And when they find the river and use it to cleanse their garments, they then "have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gate." In the River is the Hidden Knowledge, the knowledge of the Numbers, the Foundation of all the Universe. The Numbers reveal the knowledge of all times, the Great Cycles of Destruction, and the Great Cycles of Rebirth. It is the Knowledge of the Numbers and the Cycles that sets us Free. It is the Tree of Life and the River that ignorance has hidden from the masses for the past two thousand years, and before. It is the Tree of Life that was cut down by the Axe of Paul. "The Holy Seed is its stump."
**** "And a second time I said to him, 'What are these two branches of the olive trees, which pour out the gold through the two golden pipes? He said to me, 'Do you not know what these are?' I said, 'No, my lord.' Then he said, 'These are the two anointed ones who stand by the Lord of the whole earth.'" Zechariah 4:12-14
PLUTARCH'S CO-CONSPIRATOR The destination of The Bridegroom and The Bride, Puteoli, leads to the concluding chapters in Plutarch's Parable as Luke passes the torch to others. It's in Puteoli that the final associations can be made, for it's in Puteoli that another of Plutarch's contemporaries, Apollonius of Tyana, crosses paths with Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the children. I strongly urge you to search the Internet using Apollonius and Jesus. Many people, both scholars and lay investigators, have noticed striking similarities between Jesus and Apollonius. In fact, early in the history of Christianity the similarities were discussed and argued at great length. Many of the Church Fathers used quite a lot of ink trying to set the concerns aside. They claimed, generally, that the stories of Apollonius were merely plagiarized from biblical accounts of Jesus. I find none of them, however, trying to separate Apollonius from Paul. Only relatively modern investigators have made that suggestion: "Why not compare Apollonius and Paul? The resemblances are striking, nay, the coincidences are absolutely startling. Paul was educated at Tarsus; so was Apollonius. Paul fought with wild beasts at Ephesus; so did Apollonius. Paul preached at Athens; so did Apollonius. Paul noticed the alter to the unknown God; so did Apollonius. Paul's bonds were loosed in prison; so was it with Apollonius. Paul appeared before Caesar's judgment seat; so did Apollonius. Paul, on his way to Rome, landed at Puteoli; so did Apollonius. Paul was suffered to dwell by himself; Apollonius was at first treated with similar civility. Paul withstood Peter; Apollonius withstood Euphrates. Paul had a thorn in the flesh; Apollonius had Damis. Paul woke Eutychus, who had fallen asleep; Apollonius woke the Roman maiden. There are various traditions of Paul's death, and no one knows the end of Apollonius. Finally the Corinthian disciples of Paul assumed his name, and the Greek disciples of Apollonius took upon them the name of their master." (www.christianism.com/additions/26; emphasis added.) The same source asks another important question: "Philostratus (c. 170 - c. 245) claims that PAGANISM at Ephesus, Antioch, Smyrna, Corinth, and Athens (all claimed to have been Christian centers in Paul's day) was remodeled and reformed through the preaching of Apollonius, and that churches and bishops were established there long before Paul's time. All this seems quite rational enough when we consider that there is no account of any Christian teachers visiting Rome, Ephesus, Antioch, etc., prior to Paul. And yet Paul addresses large congregations and prosperous churches there. WHAT CHURCHES? There is no evidence outside of merely Paul's word or the interpolator (writer!) that these churches, bishops, deacons, presbyters were Christians; on the contrary, they appear to be strongly pagan." (Prior to Apollonius' arrival they were pagan, afterward they were Pythagoreans.) More associations between Apollonius and Luke's stories of Paul can be found at www.livius.org/ap-ark/apollonius/apollonius_life: "Through the intervention of Aelianus, Apollonius is transferred to the prison with a mild regime (7.40). He sends Damis back to Dicaearchia (Puteoli) (7.41) . . ." (Apollonius is in prison in Rome.) "Philostratus mentions that this book and a number of letters written by Apollonius are preserved in the emperor Hadrian's villa in Antium (8.20). After staying in Greece for two years, Apollonius moves on to Ionia, staying in Smyrna, Epheus and elsewhere (8.24). Notice the coincidences in this record of Apollonius' travels and Plutarch's descriptions applied to Paul's final stop: Acts 28:16: "When we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself, with the soldier who was guarding him." It certainly sounds as if Paul was imprisoned in Rome by a "mild regime." Acts 28:30: "(Paul) lived there two whole years at his own expense . . ." Another coincidence since Apollonius stayed in Greece for two years, as well." A previous section of the source quoted just above adds to the associations: "(Apollonius) then proceeds to Pergamum, where he visits the shrine of Asclepius, and to Troy, where he spends the night on the mound of Achilles (4.11). He boards a ship bound for Greece, visiting the grave of Palamedes on the Aeolian coast (4.13) and the shrine of Orpheus on Lesbos (4.14) on the way." (Emphasis added -- note his visits to cities Luke used to describe Paul's visits to various locations; Achilles associates with Pyrrhus, Achilles' son.) " . . . Chapters 27ff are centered on Apollonius' contacts with the new emperor Vespasian . . . Apollonius replies to his request to make him emperor that he has already done so by praying to the gods for a ruler like Vespasian (4.28) . . . " (Vespasian was emperor from 69 to 79 ACE, so this meeting must have occurred in 69 or 70 ACE. Apollonius was about 74.) And that brings us to another association that puts a fork in this road, because this association leads, not to Paul or to Jesus, or even Apollonius, but to Plutarch. "The widespread use of the resurrection motif in many forms of Roman imperial fictional writing -- erotic, romance, hagiography, mythological revisionism, and satire -- suggests an unusually great interest in this subject far beyond any interest documented for earlier periods. It even shows up in the theater, in the most surprising circumstances. As Jack Winkler (John J. Winkler, author: The Constraints of Desire, 1990; etc.) perceptively pointed out more than a decade ago, . . . Journal of Hellenic Studies 100 (1980), 155-181 . . . The sober and genial Plutarch . . . recorded with great respect his admiration for a performer who could simulate death perfectly and thereby astound the audience by his visible return to life. What is so remarkable about the performer that Plutarch saw is that he was a dog. "'He (the dog) gave a fine performance of various actions and emotions required by the plot, and in particular when they experimented on him with a supposedly deadly poison (which in the plot turned out to be merely a sleeping potion), he took the bread soaked in poison and, after gulping it down, he began in a moment to shudder and misstep and let his head sag down. Finally he lay stretched out on the ground like a corpse and let them drag his body and carry him around as the plot of the drama required. And, when he noticed his cue in certain words and movements of the actors, he first began to stir gently, as if waking up from a deep slumber, and then, raising his head, he looked around. To the wonder of the audience he then got up and went to the right actor and fawned on him, wagging his tail and showing all the signs of canine affection. Everyone was thrilled, even the emperor, for the aged Vespasian (Emperor 69-79 C.E. (9 - 79) was present in the audience." (42. Plut. De Soll. Anim. 973e - 974a.) (www.christianism.com/additions/26) Vespasian is with Apollonius in 69 or 70 ACE, and then an "aged" Vespasian is with Plutarch, dating this encounter c. 78 or 79 ACE -- nine or ten years later. Both Apollonius and Plutarch socialized with Vespasian. This writer also helps identify Plutarch as Luke, although quite inadvertently: "It is equally remarkable that, although Plutarch's . . . miscellaneous writings make mention or allude with unerring certainty to nearly every ethical or theurgic . . . opinion of his time (AD 50 to 120 AD), he . . . is ABSOLUTELY SILENT ON THE SUBJECT OF CHRISTIANITY. And this is more singular because the provinces of Bithynia and Pontus, only a few days' journey from Boeotia, were, if we may believe Christian writers, already swarming with the proselytes of Christianity. And on like authority, Athens, Cornith, Ephesus, and Philippi were centers of great Christian revivals. He ought to have remembered Nero's persecution of the Christians; yet while he speaks of every other persecution, he is persistently silent upon the great event of the day." The reason Plutarch was silent was because anyone who wrote about what was actually going on, and who was involved in it or supported it, was being executed and their texts were being destroyed! The Nazarene/Essenes who hid texts in the caves at Qumran and Nag Hammadi fled the scene to save their lives. James had been stoned to death! Plutarch was a historian, and the "history of the victors" wasn't history, it was a fabrication. Plutarch wrote as Luke, and he wrote the story the victors wanted written -- at least it looked as if he had. As it turns out, Plutarch, as Luke, wrote the only complete version of the real history that was to survive. Luke left The Bridegroom and The Bride in Puteoli so that Theophilus could pick up the rest of the story by associating Puteoli with Apollonius. And this is where the story really gets interesting. Dr. R.W. Bernard, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (1964) wrote Apollonius the Nazarene, Part 4, Events in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana: Birth and Youth of Apollonius, as recorded in 'The Life of Apollonius of Tyana' by his biographer, Philostratus . . ." (www.apollonius.net/bernard4e) "When the three Magi of Chaldea were approaching Bethlehem, according to legend on the night when the famous star was supposed to have appeared on the eastern horizon, a child was born in the little town of Tyana, in Cappadocia, who was destined to alter the course of human history for two thousand years -- even though, as the Delphic Oracle predicted, after his passing, his name was calumniated, and a fictitious substitute put in his place. "The country people said that he was the son of Zeus; others called him a son of Apollo; while still others considered him as an incarnation of Proteus, the God of Wisdom, who prior to his birth, appeared to his mother and told her that she would bear a child who would be an incarnation of himself. "Apollonius was born in the year 4 B.C., the acknowledged year of the birth of Christ. His birth, like his conception, was miraculous. Just before his nativity, his mother was walking in a meadow, where she lay down on the grass and went to sleep. Some wild swans, at the end of a long flight approached her and by their cries and the beating of their wings, awakened her so suddenly that her child was born before its time. The swans, apparently, had foreseen and marked by their presence the fact that on that day was to be born a being whose soul would be as white as their own plumage and who, like them, would be a glorious wanderer." "Apollonius was a neo-Pythagorean, a vegetarian . . . abstained from wine . . . He left his home at an early age and went to Tarsus to study the theories of Pythagoras and Plato . . ." "Concerning Apollonius' life in the temple of Aegae, Stobart writes: 'Marvelous cures are attributed to Apollonius, for like his great master, Pythagoras, he considered healing the most important of the divine arts; and in addition, under his guidance, the temple became also a centre for philosophy and for the science of religion. His aim was to purify the temple worship and to reform the ancient Greek religion from within, by revising, along Pythagorean lines, the understanding of the spiritual truths which were at the basis of the esoteric mysteries.'" "(The school of Pythagoras formed at that time a secret order which had several stages of initiation, the members of which recognized each other by certain signs and symbols, in order that the doctrine remain unintelligible to the profane. Music, geometry, and astronomy were studied, not as they are now but rather as discipline to prepare the mind for the awakening of super-sensory spiritual facilities of perception. The aim of the Pythagorean teaching was physical, mental and spiritual regeneration, which Pythagoras founded on a vegetarian diet and continence. . . .)" (Emphasis added.) "Apollonius took up his residence in the temple of Aesculapius at Aegae in the company of the priests, manifesting an amazing eagerness to acquire their secret knowledge, and had an astonishing gift for healing and clairvoyance. And, following Pythagorean custom, he let his hair grow long, abstained from the flesh of animals and from wine; walked barefooted or with bark sandals, and clad only in white linen garments, giving up all that was made from leather, wool or any other animal material." I could continue quoting from this material, but surely the similarities between Apollonius and the Nazarene/Essenes who produced Jesus are now clear. Apollonius resided at the temple of Aesculapius at Aegae for a period of time, and Plutarch was a priest at the Oracle of Delphi. Apollonius also taught at the Oracle of Delphi. It was at that Oracle, the story says, that his mother was told his name would be "calumniated from history." Apollonius and Plutarch were "Priests" teaching the same philosophy and way of life -- and what they taught was exactly what Jesus taught, known as The Nazarene Way! Plutarch spent some time at Rome, where he was employed to teach the future Emperor, Hadrian. (www.malaspina.org/home) The same Hadrian collected the works of Apollonius, preserving them in his palace at Antium. (www.whisperingwood.homestead.com/NLJune 2003) Plutarch and Apollonius knew one another, probably quite well, in fact. Professor William Smith & Others, London, 1890, wrote A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Professor Smith was a Catholic apologist and had investigated the claims about Apollonius to determine if he was a documentable historical philosopher, or if he had been created by anti-Christians as an alternative to Jesus as some people claimed. When he determined that Apollonius did live and teach, as Damis his companion had documented, he then set about disputing some of the claims found in Apollonius of Tyana's biography by Philostratus. (www.apollonius.net/tyanaeus: Apollonius of Tyana: The Monkey of Christ? by Robertino Solarion circa 1999.): "His life by Philostratus is a mass of incongruities and fables; whether it has any groundwork of historical truth, and whether it were written wholly or partly with a controversial aim are questions we shall be better prepared to discuss after giving an account of the contents of the work itself." Smith concluded: "On the whole, then, we conclude . . . that the life of Apollonius was not written with a controversial aim . . . and exhibit no trace of a systematic parallel." Some of the history Smith and his co-authors investigated and reported is of immense interest to Plutarch's story of Jesus: "He was called to Tyana, in the twentieth year of his age, by his father's death . . . (afterward) he returned to the discipline of Pythagoras, and for five years preserved the mystic silence, during which alone the secret truths of philosophy were disclosed. "At the end of the five years, he travelled in Asia Minor, going from city to city, and everywhere disputing, like Pythagoras, upon divine rites. There is a blank in his biography, at this period of his life, of about twenty years, during which we must suppose the same employment to have continued, unless indeed we have reason to suspect that the received date of his birth has been anticipated twenty years. "He was between forty and fifty years old when he set out on his travels to the east; and here Philostratus sends forth his hero on a voyage of discovery, in which we must be content rapidly to follow him. "From Aegae he went to Ninevah, where he met Damis, the future chronicler of his actions, and, proceeding on his route to India, he discoursed at Babylon with Bardanes, the Parthian king, and consulted the Magi and Brahmins, who were supposed to have imparted to him some theurgic secrets." It's time to do a little calculating; that "twenty year blank" deserves investigating: 20 years old -- Apollonius' father died; 5 years -- self-imposed silence as he studied Pythagoras; 5 years -- (estimated) as "he travelled in Asia Minor . . . city to city." That puts Apollonius at around thirty when a "twenty-year blank" shows up in his biography, and it doesn't pick up again until he was "between forty and fifty years old." One must assume if he was thirty when the "blank in his biography" began, and the "blank" extended about "twenty years," he must have been closer to fifty when he reappeared and set out on travels to the east, during which he met Damis. Where in the world could he have been for twenty years after being so visible and so successful as a philosopher and teacher of the Pythagorean Way of Life until he reached thirty years of age? Luke 3:23: "Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work." You do know what we've just discovered, right? Just to be sure, though, we'll review all the information gathered from the various sources that have been quoted, alluded to, or recorded in Luke's gospel and apply it to Luke's Secret Gospel for the Children of Light. It's important to keep at the forefront of your mind that Plutarch was writing about these things in the latter part of the first century, perhaps around 80 - 85 ACE., after his encounter with Vespasian and the dog. So he would have had the following information before him: Paul's letters to the Churches, Mark's Gospel, Q Gospel, and possibly Matthew's gospel. But where did Plutarch get his information about Apollonius? I'm willing to assert that Apollonius himself was involved in writing Luke's Gospel. He would have been over eighty, but he is said to have lived to be a hundred years old, and toward the end of his life he spent two years in Greece. Luke reported that Jesus was born when Herod was King of Judea. Herod died in 4 BC, making that the latest year Jesus could have been born. Apollonius was born in 4 BC. No other gospel writer provided any information that could date Jesus' birth -- only Luke. Luke left clues that Jesus and John the Baptist were Nazarenes by alluding to OT texts about nazirites. The only birth and childhood narratives came from Matthew and Luke; Mark, the gospel from which both copied some of their text, opened with Jesus and John the Baptist fully grown at the baptizing of Jesus by John. According to Luke -- alone -- Jesus was baptized when he was thirty; Luke then wrote of a traveling ministry, a doctrine, a lifestyle, physical appearance, and attire that described Apollonius, but was attributed to Jesus. (Ever wonder why Jesus is depicted with light skin and blue eyes even in very early depictions?) In Luke's version of the crucifixion scene, Jesus cried with a loud voice: "'Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.' Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken place he praised God and said, 'Certainly this man was innocent'." (Luke 23:46-47.) Based on this quote, one might be tempted to consider whether the centurion was a disciple, not a mortal enemy. The people left the scene, and Joseph of Arimathea appeared, took Jesus off the cross, wrapped him in a linen cloth, and laid his lifeless body in a tomb. Plutarch's explanation of the "resurrection," comes via his story of the dog given a "sleeping potion" that created the appearance of death. Plutarch's dog story was recorded to answer the question Theophilus would surely ask: "Did Jesus actually die on the cross?" He didn't. The centurion and Joseph of Arimathea were disciples, skilled in the healing arts practiced by Apollonius, Pythagoras, the Nazarenes, the Essenes, and the Theraputae of Egypt. In Plutarch's story about the resurrected dog, he was given a piece of bread soaked with a sleeping potion. According to Mark's gospel, Jesus was given a "sponge soaked with sour wine" just before he "breathed his last." (Mark 15:36-37). Luke 23:36: "The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine . . . " It was sour because it contained a "sleeping potion." Just like Plutarch's dog, Jesus eventually regained consciousness, no worse for the wear. Apollonius' adopted "Brothers," James, Judas, Simon -- and the Apostles, continued the work in Judea. Apollonius remained incognito for about twenty years. He then resumed his traveling ministry as Apollonius. This neo-Pythagorean movement was enjoying great success and attracting very large numbers of converts. It took Jewish worshippers and their money from the temple Priests, and it took Pagans and their money from the superstitious cults also prevalent at the time. It spread through Judea, via James, John, Peter, and the others, just as it had spread through Greece, Rome, Egypt, Ethopia, and elsewhere via Apollonius. But then something happened that threatened the movement. James was stoned to death in Jerusalem and the temple was destroyed. The Judean branch was forced to disperse and flee for their lives. And something else happened: Saul, a Jew who claimed to be from Tarsus, assumed a new name. And he assumed a biography, taken directly from the travels of Apollonius prior to his unexplained disappearance. He was so brazen that he even plagiarized his name from the shortened version of Apollonius, Pol, calling himself Paul. Saul/Paul was an impostor who infiltrated the neo-Pythagorean religion that was spreading throughout the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Ethopian, and Judean countryside, spread by Apollonius to most, by Apollonius using the name Jesus to the Judeans. The Jewish temple priests had been infuriated as they saw their power being usurped, their coffers drained, and their flocks being taken away. Even with Herod's financial and military assistance, they were still losing members by the thousands. Then around 50 ACE, someone came up with a grand plan: assume the identity of Apollonius, connect his doctrine with the crucified Jew, Jesus (they were, after all, the same person), and then change the doctrine! Retain the patriarchal, oppressive Pharisee religion to appease the Jews fighting to retain their power; toss in a bit of Pagan mythologies and ceremonies to appease the Pagans, and convince the followers of Apollonius that he was one of Paul's fellow ministers. If successful, the Jews for Jesus, the Pagans, and Apollonius' Pythagoreans could all be "converted" to the new religion. It was a combination of all three, and it became known as Christianity. The new religion created by Paul claimed Jesus as the Jewish-anticipated "Savior" who was born of a virgin, died on a cross and was resurrected, just as Osiris and countless other gods had been described. The converted Jews and Pagans could continue sinning because they were assured they would be forgiven, which was what they all really wanted -- that and to be able to eat meat and drink wine. With Paul's religion they could have all that. All they had to do was accept Jesus as their blood sacrifice, replacing lambs, goats, and birds, and hand over some money -- preferably a tenth of their earnings -- each week. And the temple priests could continue in their lucrative trade in meat, one of their primary sources of income. Although he probably did visit some if not all of the churches, Paul and his co-conspirators could have done all this without ever leaving Jerusalem by taking the names of the cities Apollonius visited and composing letters to the neo-Pythagoraean groups that were active there. His letters "corrected" the misunderstandings and the "lies" being taught by Peter, John, and Apollonius, and in their "corrections" and accusations, the letters established the new doctrine. The letters claimed that Paul was Apollonius' friend: I Corinthians 1:11-12: " . . . It has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, 'I belong to Paul,' or 'I belong to Apollos,' or 'I belong to Cephas,' or 'I belong to Christ.' Has Christ been divided?" I Corinthians 3:4-6: "For when one says, 'I belong to Paul,' and another, 'I belong to Apollos,' are you not merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth." I Corinthians 3:22-23: " . . . Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future -- all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God." I Corinthians 4:6: "I have applied all this to Apollos and myself for your benefit, brothers and sisters, so that you may learn through us the meaning of the saying, 'Nothing beyond what is written,' so that none of you will be puffed up in favor of one against another." I Corinthians 16:12: "Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers, but he was not at all willing to come now. He will come when he has the opportunity." Most scholars date this letter between 51 and 55 ACE. Be assured that "Apollos" is indeed "Apollonius." All scholars agree it is the same name. And the Apollos that had visited Corinth and established the church there, according to all historical records of the time, was Apollonius of Tyana. Knowing what we now know, it's easy to see that Paul was facing questions about why his doctrine differed from Apollonius', and he assured the questioners that he and Apollos and Cephas were all "servants" of God. He claimed that he "strongly urged (Apollos) to visit, but he wasn't willing." And he wanted them to believe that what Apollonius said before was being supplanted with his letters to them and to the other churches: " . . . learn through us the meaning of the saying, 'Nothing beyond what is written'." Acts described Apollos, 18:24: "Now there came to Ephesus a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria. He was an eloquent man, well-versed in the scriptures. He had been instructed in the Way of the Lord; and he spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John." Although there were a large number of Jews in Alexandria at the time, it was also a stronghold of Nazarenes, known there as Theraputae -- healers. And the capitalization of "Way" indicates that the term refers to "The Nazarene Way," the Pythagorean doctrine taught by Jesus and about which Paul was completely silent. Only Acts contains the references which reveal the importance of the Nazarenes in Jesus' story and restored his identification in all four gospels, and Acts, as Jesus the Nazarene, not Jesus of Nazareth. And the historical records and letters written at the time connect Apollonius the Pythagorean with the Nazarenes and with Alexandria. According to Professor William Smith's essay into the veracity of Philostratus' historical account, Apollonius left the Magi and Brahmins and "next visited Taxila, the capital of Phraotes, an Indian province, where he met Iarchas, the chief of the Brahmins, and disputed with Indian Gymnosophists already versed in Alexandrian philosophy." Smith reported "This eastern journey lasted five years; at its conclusion, he returned to the Ionian cities, where we first hear of his pretensions to miraculous power, founded, as it would seem, on the possession of some divine knowledge derived from the east. If it be true that the honours of a god were decreed to him at this period of his life, we are of course led to suspect some collusion with the priests, who are said to have referred the sick to him for relief." (Robert Solarian, in 1999, corrected Smith: "Comment: It is incorrect that the eastern journey lasted five years. It lasted only about 3.5 years. See 'Chronology by Sir Flinders Petrie'.") Smith then reported that, "From Ionia he crossed over into Greece, visited the temples and oracles which lay in his way, everywhere disputing about religion, and assuming the authority of a divine legislator. At the Elusinian mysteries he was rejected as a magician, and did not obtain admission to them until a later period of his life . . ." "After visiting Lacedaemon, Corinth, and the other towns of Greece, he bent his course towards Rome and arrived there just after an edict against magicians had been issued by Nero. He was immediately brought before Telesinus the consul, and Tigellinus, the favourite of the emperor, the first of whom dismissed him, we are told, from the love of philosophy, and the latter from the fear of a magic power, which could make the letters vanish from the indictment. "On his acquittal, he went to Spain, Africa, and Athens, where, on a second application, he was admitted to the mysteries; and from Athens proceeded to Alexandria, where Vespasian, who was maturing his revolt, soon saw the use which might be made of such an ally. The story of their meeting may be genuine, and is certainly curious as exhibiting Apollonius in the third of the threefold characters assumed by Pythagoras -- philosopher, mystic, and politician. "Vespasian was met at the entrance of the city by a body of magistrates, praefects and philsophers, and hastily asked whether the Tyanaean was among the number. Being told that he was philosophizing in the Serapeum, he proceed thither, and begged Apollonius to make him emperor; the philosopher replied that 'he had already done so, in praying the gods for a just and venerable sovereign'; upon which Vespasian declared that he resigned himself entirely into his hands." " . . . The last journey of Apollonius was to Ethiopia, whence he returned to settle in the Ionian cities. The same friendship which his father had shown was continued toward him by the emperor Titus, who is said to have invited him to Argos in Cilicia, and to have obtained a promise that he would one day visit Rome. "On the accession of Domitian, Apollonius endeavored to excite the provinces of Asia Minor against the tyrant. An order was sent to bring him to Rome, which he thought proper to anticipate by voluntarily surrendering himself, to avoid bringing suspicions on his companions. "On being conducted into the emperor's presence, his prudence deserted him; he launched forth into the praise of Nerva, and was hurried to prison, loaded with chains. The charges against him resolved themselves into three heads -- the singularity of his dress and appearance, his being worshipped as a god, and his sacrificing a child with Nerva for an augury. As destruction seemed impending, it was time to display his miraculous powers; he vanished from his prosecutors; and after appearing to Damis at Puteoli at the same hour he disappeared from Rome, he passed over into Greece, where he remained two years, having given out that the emperor had publicly acquitted him. "The last years of his life were probably spent at Ephesus, where he is said to have proclaimed the death of the tyrant Domitian at the instant it took place. Three places -- Ephesus, Rhodes, and Crete -- laid claim to the honour of being his last dwelling place. Tyana, where a temple was dedicated to him, became henceforth one of the sacred cities, and possessed the privilege of electing its own magistrates." "We now proceed to discuss very briefly three questions. 1. The historical groundwork on which the narrative of Philostratus was founded. 2. How far, if at all, it was designed as a rival to the Gospel history. 3. The real character of Apollonius himself. "1. However impossible it may be to separate truth from falsehood in the narrative of Philostratus, we cannot conceive that a professed history, appealed to as such by contemporary authors, and written about a hundred years after the death of Apollonius himself, should be simply the invention of a writer of romance. It must be allowed, that all the absurd fables of Ctesias, the confused falsehoods of all mythologies (which become more and more absurd as they are farther distant), eastern fairy tales, and perhaps a parody of some of the Christian miracles, are all pressed into the service of Philostratus to adorn the life of his hero; it will be allowed further, that the history itself, stripped of the miracles, is probably as false as the miracles themselves. "Still we cannot account for reception of the narrative among the ancients, and even among the fathers themselves, unless there had been some independent tradition of the character of Apollonius on which it rested. Eusebius of Caesarea, who answered the 'Logos filalethes pros Christianous' of Hierocles (in which a comparison was attempted between our Lord and Apollonius), seems to allow the truth of Philostratus' narrative in the main, with the exception of what is miraculous. "And the parody, if it may be so termed, of the life of Pythagoras, may be rather traceable to the impostor himself than to the ingenuity of his biographer. Statues and temples still existed in his honour; his letters and supposed writings were extant; the manuscript of his life by Damis the Assyrian was the original work which was dressed out by the rhetoric of Philostratus; and many notices of his visits and acts might be found in the public records of Asiatic cities, which would have at once disproved the history, if inconsistent with it." "Add to this, that another life of Apollonius of Tyana, by Moeragenes, is mentioned, which was professedly disregarded by Philostratus, because, he says, it omitted many important particulars, and which Origen, who had read it records to have spoken of Apollonius as a magician whose imposture had deceived many celebrated philosophers. The conclusion we seem to come to on the whole is that at the period when there was a general belief in magical powers, Apollonius did attain great influence by pretending to them, and that the history of Philostratus gives a just idea of his character and reputation, however inconsistent in its facts and absurd in its marvels. 2. We have purposely omitted the wonders with which Philostratus has garnished his narrative, of which they do not in general form an essential part. Many of these are curiously coincident with the Christian miracles. The proclamation of the birth of Apollonius to his mother by Proteus, and the incarnation of Proteus himself, the chorus of swans which sung for joy on the occasion, the casting out of devils, raising the dead, and healing the sick, the sudden disappearances and reappearances of Apollonius, his adventures in the cave of Trophonius, and the sacred voice which called him at his death, to which may be added his claim as a teacher having authority to reform the world -- cannot fail to suggest the parallel passages in the Gospel history. "We know, too, that Apollonius was one among many rivals set up by the Eclestics (as for instance, by Hierocles of Nocomedia in the time of Diocletian) to our Saviour -- an attempt, it may be worth remarking, renewed by the English freethinkers, Blount and Lord Herbert. "Still it must be allowed that the resemblances are very general, that where Philostratus has borrowed from the Gospel narrative, it is only as he has borrowed from all other wonderful history, and that the idea of a controversial aim is inconsistent with the account which make the life written by Damis the groundwork of the more recent story. "3. The character of Apollonius as well as the facts of his life bear a remarkable resemblance to those of Pythagoras, whom he professedly followed. Travel, mysticism, and disputation, are the three words in which the earlier half of both their lives may be summed up. There can be no doubt that Apollonius pretended to supernatural powers, and was variously regarded by the ancients as a magician and a divine being. "The object of his scheme, as far as it can be traced, was twofold -- partly philosophical and partly religions. As a philosopher, he is to be considered as one of the middle terms between the Greek and Oriental systems, which he endeavoured to harmonize in the symbolic lore of Pythagoras. The Pythagorean doctrine of numbers, and their principles of music and astronomy, he looked upon as quite subordinate, while his main efforts were directed to re-establish the old religion on a Pythagorean basis. "His aim was to purify the worship of Paganism from the corruptions which he said the fables of the poets had introduced, and restore the rites of the temples in all their power and meaning. In his works on divination by the stars, and on offerings, he rejects sacrifices as impure in the sight of God. "All objects of sense, even fire, partook of a material and corruptible nature; prayer itself should be the untainted offering of the heart, and was polluted by passing through the lips. "This objection to sacrifice was doubtless connected with the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls. In the miracles attributed to him we see the same trace of a Pythagorean character; they are chiefly prophecies, and it is not the power of controlling the laws of nature which Apollonius lays claim to, but rather a wonder-working secret, which gives him a deeper insight into them than is possessed by ordinary men. Upon the whole, we may place Apollonius midway between the mystic philosopher and the mere impostor, between Pythagoras and Lucian's Alexander; and in this double character he was regarded by the ancients themselves." (By "ancient's" here, Smith probably refers to the church fathers -- he used the same term when introducing Eusebius' letter to Hierocles.) Apollonius' decision to go back to Greece was, without doubt, to enlist the help of his fellow Delphi Priest, Plutarch. During the two years he was there, together they concocted and carried out a plan to preserve the truth. Many have wondered how Plutarch could have been so very prolific; the answer is, he had help! With Plutarch's help they could accomplish something Apollonius could not accomplish alone. They could get texts copied in large quantities and distributed to distant lands in a relatively short period of time. They could put enough copies of Luke's gospel into circulation that no one could possibly find and destroy them all -- even if someone figured out what they'd done. And they could have hundreds of Black Madonna's painted and sculpted and scattered throughout the land -- too many to destroy. This explains all the Black Madonna's in France and elsewhere. Did they, as Margaret Starbird suggested, paint her black to suggest that she lived her life in hiding and to mimic the paintings of Isis? I'll answer that with another question. Why an Ethiopian eunuch? Plutarch put the Ethiopian eunuch in Of Isis and Osiris, and he put the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts. The eunuch could have been of any race; after all, his presence was to serve as an association tool. Apollonius traveled to Ethiopia several times. It was there, I believe, that he found his soul-mate -- the woman now known as Mary Magdalene. And I believe she had black skin and was probably from a Royal family, as hinted in Acts when the eunuch's employer was described as a "queen of Ethiopia." And perhaps his "final trip" -- to Ethiopia -- was to take her back to her homeland where she could die among her own people and receive the Royal burial which she deserved. The number of Black Madonna's scattered throughout Europe is unknown, primarily because the church tried to destroy them, even attempting to paint some of them white. But there were so many they couldn't all be guarded or destroyed. St. Luke was said to be responsible for the famous Black Madonna painting -- there is some truth to that tradition. The co-conspirators commissioned an artist to paint it for them, and they commissioned other artists to paint others -- and sculptors to sculpt them. Of course they knew exactly what the appearance of the Mother and Child was -- Apollonius was their husband and father! Take a close look at that child and tell me it isn't a girl. **** THE TRINITY According to his companion, Damis, Apollonius' never married and had no children. But Damis' biography was what Apollonius wanted it to be. It was absolutely necessary that the biography be composed in a way that would protect his wife and children by claiming he was childless. The twenty-year "blank" was never filled in; Professor Smith made a guess when he said that we, "suppose the same employment to have continued . . ." which it did -- in Alexandria. (This is the last crossroad, I promise.) Theophilus , meet Philo of Alexandria -- again (he first appeared in chapter one). It appears that Philo may have done more than "write the book" on how to read biblical texts allegorically. It is almost certain that he actually wrote, or helped write, at least two of the biblical texts himself. Philo's date of birth is uncertain (estimates range from 10 BC to 20 BC). All sources agree, however, that he "died" c. 50 ACE -- also the approximate date that Apollonius reappeared and resumed his traveling ministry. Philo of Alexandria left a vast amount of information about his philosophy and religion, all of which connect him with Jesus and Apollonius. The following tidbits come from an article, Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C.E. - 50 C.E.) www.iep.utm.edu/p/philo: "Clement of Alexandria . . . called Philo 'the Pythagorean.'" "If there are gaps in his knowledge, they are rather in his Jewish tradition as evidenced by his relying on the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible." (Gott note: He was Greek, not Hebrew!) "Philo was thoroughly educated in Greek philosophy and culture as can be seen from his superb knowledge of classical Greek literature." "Philo's philosophy represented contemporary Platonism which was its revised version incorporating Stoic doctrine and terminology . . . as well as elements of Aristotelian logic and ethics and Pyrhagorean ideas." "One has the impression that he attempted to show that the philosophical Platonic or Stoic ideas were nothing but the deductions made from the biblical verses of Moses." (Gott Note: This suggests that he possessed the knowledge of "432" which was the "mystery gnosis" hidden in the Torah by Moses.) "Philo's primary importance is in the development of the philosophical and theological foundations of Christianity." "Jerome (345-420 C.E.) even lists him as a church Father." "He came from a wealthy and prominent family and appears to be a leader in his community. Once he visited Jerusalem and the temple, as he himself stated in Prov. 2.65. Philo's brother, Alexander, was a wealthy, prominent Roman government official, a custom agent responsible for collecting dues on all goods imported into Egypt from the East." Last but not least is this quote that deserves to be read at least three times: "Philo seeks out the hidden message beneath the surface of any particular text and tries to read back a new doctrine into the work of the past. In a similar way Plutarch allegorized the ancient Egyptian mythology giving it a new meaning." (That's a quote, folks! Read it again to be certain you get the implication, the association, and the two names.) Most of Philo's works are dated between c. 30 ACE, and c. 50. When I discovered that at least one was dated c. 25, prior to Apollonius' twenty-year disappearance, also c. 30 to 50, my hypothesis that Philo was Apollonius seemed to be in jeopardy. But a statement made by R. W. Bernard, Apollonius the Nazarene, Part 8, answered this dilemma: "According to Mead, the Gymnosophists were really a sect of advanced Essenes, or Therapeuts, as described by Philo in his 'On the Contemplative life,' the description that Philo gives of the Therapeut community that he visited on the shore of Lake Mareotis near Alexandria, corresponding almost exactly with Damis' description of the Gymnosophis community in Upper Egypt . . . indeed the Gymnosophical community that Apollonius visited could very well have been one of the Therapeut communities described by Philo and which he visited at about the same period." (www.apollonius.net/bernard8e) Therein lies the answer: One visit, two accounts; one as Philo describing his visit, the other, by Damis, describing Apollonius' visit. This suggests that during at least a portion of his identity exchanges, either from Apollonius to Jesus to Philo or from Philo back to Apollonius, he assumed the identities of two at the same time -- not difficult two thousand years ago. And he left clues by having both accounts "correspond almost exactly" so the association could be made. And they left the association at Acts 18:24: "Now there came to Ephesus a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria." Doesn't Apollos seem like a strange name for a Jew? It now makes sense -- the "Jew" who was a "native of Alexandria," Apollos, was the final association -- Apollos was known for twenty years as Philo of Alexandria. He was forced to return as Apollonius to attempt to repel the infiltration and attack by Saul in order to restore the true teachings. By the time Apollonius returned and Philo "died," around 50 ACE, the children would have been in their late teens or early twenties. And it's time to identify them, because one of them was called to Alexandria to assume Philo's vacated position: Acts 12:12: "As soon as he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many had gathered and were praying." Acts 12:25: "Then after completing their mission Barnabas and Saul returned to Jerusalem and brought with them John, whose other name was Mark. Acts 13:5: "When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. And they had John also to assist them." (This is John Mark.) It is in the next verse that "Bar-Jesus" appears and is verbally attacked by Paul. Plutarch did virtually nothing without good reason. And the reason he placed "John" a.k.a., Mark, in verse 5, and Bar-Jesus in verse 6 is to place both sons in the same scene. John Mark, son of Mary, and Bar-Jesus, son of Jesus, are brothers. John Mark shows up again in Acts 13:13: "Then Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. John, however, left them and returned to Jerusalem." Acts 15:36-40: " . . . Paul said to Barnabas, 'Come, let us return and visit the believers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.' Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark. But Paul decided not to take with the one who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not accompanied them in the work. The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed to Cyprus." (Emphasis added.) Plutarch added a little extra clue, associating John Mark with Bar-Jesus by showing Paul was opposed to and rejected both of them. Hippolytus of Rome, and Eseubius of Caesarea at a later date, identified Mark, the gospel writer, as "First Bishop of Alexandria." And the following adds even more intrigue: "This listing by Hippolytus is made complicated and becomes difficult to appreciate for its applauded intent, when it is observed that at the fifty-sixth position, we meet "Mark, cousin of Barnabas, bishop of Apollonia,' and at the sixty-fifty position, 'Mark, who is also John, bishop of Bibloupolis,' for both of these are the same 'Mark' of the New Testament." (www.gospelcom.net/dacb/stories/egypt/markthe_evang) Was that a Freudian slip, perhaps? Mark (son of Jesus), "Bishop of Apollonia"? A possible answer can be found at www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/coptic/coptic: "There are few sources of information on the beginning of Christianity in Egypt. According to tradition, Saint Mark brought the new faith to Egypt. There may have been a second missionary in the first century AD named Apollos." It seems more likely that Mark's intended name for the Judeo-Pythagorean doctrine he had learned from his father was going to be Apollonia, it's adherents, Apollonians -- a fitting honor for it's founder's birth name -- thus, "Mark, Bishop of Apollonia." Mark was controversial in the very early church, a fact exposed only by a letter Clement wrote to Theodore, in which he explained: "As for Mark, then, during Peter's stay in Rome he wrote an account of the Lord's doings, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting what he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed. But when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge. Thus he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected. (Cameron 1982:69--70)." In the same letter, however, Clement worries that "the gospel of Mark has been misinterpreted by that Gnostic teacher of the early second century in Alexandria, Carpocrates by name, who 'so enslaved a certain presbyter of the church in Alexandria that he got from him a copy of the secret Gospel, which he both interpreted according to his blasphemous and carnal doctrine and, moreover, polluted, mixing with the spotless and holy words utterly shameless lies' (Cameron 1982: 70). Thus the real issue is one of developing exegetical method, within especially the church at Alexandria by the time of Clement, so as to differentiate the 'hierophantic teaching of the Lord' or 'things not to be uttered' among those not yet catechumens, from the 'more spiritual gospel' with its 'secret teachings' reserved for the truly knowledgeable faithful (Grant 1993: 95-96)." This indicates, of course, that Mark wrote a gospel that became "secret" and "not to be uttered." The church distributed another gospel using his name that contained the dogma it wanted disseminated in place of the "Gnostic" doctrine it actually contained. Here from his own hand Clement (150-215 ACE) admits the original gospel according to Mark was seriously edited before it was distributed. This is another reason Luke-Acts had to be written. Think about it. Mark's gospel was edited to remove any hint of gnosticism, other gospels that contained any gnosticism were completely rejected and copies destroyed, Matthew's gospel was composed to mislead, and Paul's epistles were full of outright lies. They had to write Luke-Acts if the Truth was to ever be told. Later, Jerome (347-420) in his Lives of Illustrious Men added to what is known about Mark: " . . . But for Mark, . . . we have solidified the association with the church at Alexandria, so that the gospel 'which he himself composed' was taken with him from Italy to Egypt. We now learn specifically, from this recalled bit of chronological data, that Mark 'died in the eighth year of Nero <i.e., A.D. 62, opting thereby for one of the two possibilities derived from Eusebious> and was buried at Alexandria, Annianus succeeding him'." If Mark had been born c. 30 ACE, he was about 32 when he died in 62 ACE, still a young man, and his death is probably what motivated Plutarch to write a letter, "Consolation to Apollonius": "As soon, Apollonius, as I heard the news of the untimely death of your son, who was very dear to us all, I fell sick of the same grief with you, and shared your misfortune with all the tenderness of sympathy. For he was a sweet and modest young man, devout towards the Gods, obedient to his parents, and obliging to his friends; indeed doing all things that were just." (Yes, you keen observers, Plutarch was born c. 45 ACE; he was between sixteen and nineteen years of age in 62 ACE. In the Consolation he explains why he hadn't written it sooner. What's probable is that it was written during the time he and Apollonius created the documents for The Great Treasure Hunt for Theophilus. Consolation was written in order to link John Mark's death with the death of Apollonius' son. They included the explanation of the delay in its writing to answer this question about Plutarch's age.) John Mark, son of Mary, enemy of Paul, First Bishop of Alexandria -- Bishop of Apollonia -- who died at the age of 32, was Apollonius' young son about whom Plutarch wrote Consolation to Apollonius. The following words are scrawled on the sign at the Church of Saint Barbara in Alexandria: "THE CRYPT OF THE HOLY FAMILY, UNDER SAINT SERGIUS CHURCH, WHERE THE HOLY FAMILY LIVED FOR SOME TIMES AND THE CHURCH OF SAINT BARBARA." It's posted at www.egyptologyonline.com/coptic_egypt. (Emphasis added.) The text that accompanies the picture reads: "The Coptic Church is based upon the teachings of St Mark, who brought Christianity to Egypt in around 50 AD. St Mark was one of the four gospels . . . And the gospel of St Mark is the oldest canonical gospel. "A small community of Christians developed in Alexandria in the late first century, and became more numerous by the end of the second century. The Egyptians embraced the new faith, and Christianity quickly spread throughout Egypt within half a century of St Mark's arrival in Alexandria. Some similarities in beliefs helped Christianity to be accepted by Egyptians, including the beliefs that the Egyptian god Osiris was both human and god, the resurrection of Osiris, and the godly triad of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. "There are many sites throughout Egypt at which the holy family are said to have taken shelter and sought refuge during the three years that they spent in Egypt after fleeing from Judea and King Herod. Many ancient churches have been built upon these sites." Hold it! This could be important information. "THE HOLY FAMILY" sought refuge after fleeing from Judea and King Herod." Matthew's gospel provides a story that leads one to believe that it was Joseph, Mary, and the Baby Jesus that took refuge in Egypt. But as I've previously shown, Matthew's gospel, read with a critical eye and using the earliest known texts, contains much that was clearly designed to misdirect and mislead. The best example is 2:23, Matthew's "explanation" of why Jesus was called "a Nazorean: "There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, 'He will be called a Nazorean.'" That verse supports the change made by translators, prior to the King James Version, when about fifteen references to "Jesus the Nazarene," became references to "Jesus of Nazareth." Matthew's "explanation" supports those changes and attempts to give a reason for them. But as Luke reported in Acts, the "Nazarenes" were a "sect." They are descendants of the nazirites of the Old Testament, "men and women who consecrated themselves to God." Their doctrine was very different from the Sadducee and Pharisee Judaism. People living in the very early decades and centuries of the new religion KNEW that Nazarenes, (spelled Nazoreans by Matthew) had nothing to do with geography and everything to do with doctrine. In many parts of the Middle East today, "Christians" are still called "Nazarenes." Biblical scholars have also been confused about Matthew's claim that the "prophets" were fulfilled. There is nothing in the Old Testament prophets saying that the Messiah "will be called a Nazorean." And, at the time Jesus was born, no map or other historical text existed showing a Galilean town named Nazareth. Indeed there was a community of Nazarenes in the area of Mount Carmel, but no town named Nazareth. These points surely serve as adequate proof that Matthew's version of the nativity was designed to mislead about Jesus' doctrinal heritage. With that as a foundation, the next step is to ask if the other bit of news is just as misleading. Matthew 2:15: " . . . and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I have called my son.'" Again, there is nothing in the prophets making such a prediction about the coming Messiah. And the reason Matthew gave for taking Jesus to Egypt in the first place, Herod's declaration that all infant boys were to be slaughtered, has no historian nor any other gospel writer supporting the story. It's just as likely -- no, more likely -- that the references to "The Holy Family fleeing from Judea and King Herod," referred to the Holy Family that actually existed, Jesus, Mary, JoAnna, John Mark, and Bar-Jesus -- the other son. We can now date the Holy Family's departure from Alexandria -- three years after the crucifixion -- around 33 ACE, by combining the Alexandrian churches' claims and Acts secret message: "Three months later we set sail on a ship that had wintered at the island, an Alexandrian ship with the Twin Brothers as its figurehead." (Acts 28:11) It wasn't "three months later," it was "three years later." Mary Magdalene, probably with the help of family and friends, raised the children quietly in Gaul or Greece -- possibly Italy. Apollonius returned to Alexandria to continue his work as the unmarried philosopher, Philo. He would move the boys to Alexandria when they were older. That still leaves the other son to identify, referred to as "Bar Jesus" in Acts. If Mark was given the honor of having a gospel attributed to him, even though Apollonius probably wrote it, surely the other son would have been given the same honor. But Matthew's gospel was clearly written to aid in the deceit, deleting clues and adding detours. It finally dawned on me that the other son's gospel could have been one of those rejected by the early church. My first thought was The Gospel of Thomas. That gospel was rejected by the early church fathers and the Council of Nicea as "too Gnostic." (Perhaps too Gnostic just as Mark's original gospel had been confiscated and "misinterpreted by the Gnostic, Carpocrates.") The Gospel of Thomas was discovered late in the 19th century in Egypt, and another copy of it was discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945. Many scholars believe it was originally written in the latter decades of the first century ACE. It begins with a prologue that provides the association: "These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded." Judas is the only name of the three that would have been given to a son. Didymos is a Greek word that means twin; Thomas is a Semitic word that means twin. So Judas is a twin in two languages. I believe we have the name of John Mark's brother! And I believe we know why the ship that carried "The Bridegroom and The Bride" from Alexandria had The Twin Brothers as its figurehead (Acts 28:11). The fact that Thomas opened his gospel with such a strange introduction has been debated since it was first discovered. Why describe himself as a twin in two different languages? The answer is now simple: He was a twin son of Apollonius, the Cappadocian; he was a twin son of Jesus, the Galilean. Damis, Apollonius' chronicler, also wrote down "secret sayings the living Jesus spoke," using another name. Just as Apollonius was Jesus, Damis was Thomas. The second son, John Mark's twin, was named Judas bar-Jesus. Damis also serves as an association word for Damaris, the tri-named goddess that represented the first-born daughter. That brings us to the daughter, JoAnna-Damaris, the first born of the children. Damis reported that Apollonius made at least two trips to Gaul. The first trip may have been to deliver Mary Magdalene, John Mark, Judas, and JoAnna to Europe, a much safer haven than Alexandria of the first century. This would explain the quick spread of the "Magdalene Cult" throughout Europe where it still exists today. The boys joined their father in Egypt when they were old enough, and JoAnna remained with Mary Magdalene. Remember Sitchin's translation of ancient Sumerian cylinders and the explanation that it is the female that transmits the most genetic markers? The most important "blood" was that of the women -- "two-thirds" of the genetic material transmitted to the child come from the mother. Sitchin's words need to be repeated here: "He was . . . 'two-thirds divine because it was not his father but his mother who was a goddess, one of the female Anunnaki.' "Here, we believe, is the key to the puzzle of the succession rules and other emphasis on the mother. It is through her that an extra 'qualifying dose' was given to the hero or the heir (be it Anunnaki or patriarchal)." The same emphasis would be placed on the Holy Child. It was the daughter, not the sons, who was responsible for passing on the greater part of Jesus' genetic heritage. It was her safety and identity that was most important to protect. The sons could work with their father in Alexandria, but it was not a safe place to be. When Apollonius was forced to leave for Greece, around 50 ACE, John Mark assumed the leadership role in Alexandria at the very young age of about twenty. He died around 62 ACE. Damis, same age as John Mark -- they were twins -- traveled with his father as both chronicler for Apollonius and recorder of "secret sayings" for Jesus. Wow! If anything ever deserved a synopsis, this information does, so here it is: Circa 4 BCE to about 26 ACE (Birth to thirty years), Apollonius lived, studied, traveled, taught, and established groups studying Pythagorean philosophy. (No word other than Luke's about where Jesus was during this time -- he conversed with the teachers at twelve, Apollonius' age when he went to Tarsus to study with the Pythagorean teachers whom he quickly eclipsed.) Circa 26 ACE to about 29 ACE (thirty to thirty-three years of age), Jesus lived, traveled, taught, and established groups that studied his philosophy which was a blend of Judaism and Pythagorean doctrine. (Apollonius disappeared at exactly the same time Jesus appeared.) Circa 30 ACE to about 50 ACE (thirty-four to fifty-four) Jesus is in heaven; Apollonius' whereabouts remain unknown, but Philo of Alexandria is prominent in Egypt. Circa 30 ACE to about 50 ACE, Philo of Alexandria, about the same age as Apollonius, lived, taught and established groups studying a blend of Judaism and Pythagorean philosophy in Alexandria. His primary focus was interpreting the Old Testament allegorically and teaching others how to do the same. Circa 50 Philo "died" and Apollonius reappeared, traveling with Damis, teaching, and establishing groups studying Pythagorean philosophy until around 96 ACE when he disappeared for the last time. Apollonius' reappearance coincided exactly with Saul's "conversion" and the appearance of his letters to the communities Apollonius had visited and converted to Pythagoreanism. If Saul hadn't assumed Apollonius' biography and mangled the doctrine, Apollonius would probably have lived his life out as Philo of Alexandria. He could have done so anyway. But that isn't what he chose to do. Instead he resumed his original identity as Apollonius, went to Greece and eventually enlisted Plutarch's help in order to devise and implement their own infiltration scheme. And then they left it up to Theophilus to figure it all out. I wonder if they had any idea how long that would take! If you really want to know what Jesus taught, read Philo's works. There can be no question that Apollonius, Jesus, and Philo occupied the same body for around a hundred years. What Jesus taught has been horribly misunderstood and turned into the very type of "superstitious" religion Apollonius-Jesus-Philo abhorred. An examination of some of Philo's philosophy, can be found at www.iep.utm.edu/p/philo: Philio's Mysticism and Transcendence of God Source of Intuition of the Infinite Reality Philo's Doctrine of Creation Philo's Model of Creation Eternal Creation Doctrine of Miracles: Naturalism and Comprehension Doctrine of the Logos in Philo's Writings The Utterance of God The Divine Mind God's Transcendent Power First-Born Son of God Universal Bond: in the Physical World and in the Human Soul Immanent Reason Immanent Mediator of the Physical Universe The Angel of the Lord, Revealer of God Multi-Named Archetype Soul-Nourishing Manna and Wisdom Intermediary Power "God" Summary of Philo's Concept of the Logos What you'll discover when you read the referenced article and Philo's essays is an expanded version of what Jesus tried to teach -- the doctrine of the Nazarenes, a branch of Pythagoreanism with a heavy dose of Moses' esoteric Judaism. Here's what probably happened: Apollonius discovered that Pythagoras had received his knowledge from the stream that stretched back to Moses -- the pure stream running underground. Apollonius wanted to strip the superstition from Judaism and restore it to its purity. To do that he had to become a Jew. That's when he approached Joseph, (the tekton, erroneously translated as carpenter). Joseph (the elder son and leader), was probably the High Priest of the Nazarenes at Mount Carmel. Apollonius asked to be adopted into the family. It was the chance of a lifetime for a Nazarene community to be able to take their pure Torah to the Jews of Judea. And, Apollonius would have been hard to say no to. After the crucifixion Apollonius retained his Jewish identity -- he still had work to do within Judaism. He changed his name to Philo when he arrived in Alexandria where he continued to teach and where he wrote the doctrine that restored the stream of knowledge from antiquity as it flowed along and nourished the Tree of Life. Apollonius did not randomly choose his new name; his new name was another message, a parable -- a pun. His whole life was dedicated to teaching about Love, and so he chose the Greek word Philo -- a man who loves. And its association to Theophilus is obvious. That realization brought another association: Philadelphia -- City of Brotherly Love. Breaking it down raises a question: Phila means love; Delphi was the Oracle where both Plutarch and Apollonius taught. Did our founding fathers know something we haven't been told? Apollonius' biography and Luke-Acts were probably written at the same time in order to "harmonize" them for easier association during the anticipated "Treasure Hunt for the Truth" that we just completed. And they would have left only veiled clues to the existence and whereabouts of the Holy Child -- the Holy Grail -- the only daughter, JoAnna. But you can bet that her blood, and His, flows in many people scattered throughout the world today. Their Spirit and their Knowledge is available to all. And that was why he chose to come to earth two thousand years ago.
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So there you have it! Luke-Acts as it was intended to be read and understood by the Children of Light of some future time. The time is now -- the Light Shines. Jesus and Mary Magdalene have been resurrected, and the world can now know how they actually lived, what they taught, and the incredible events in their amazing lives! One of the early church fathers, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon (born c.120 ACE) declared that "Jesus practiced the wrong religion and was personally mistaken in his beliefs." In a letter critical of the Nazarenes, whom he called Ebionites (the poor ones), he offered this telling criticism: "They, like Jesus himself, as well as the Essenes and Zadokites of two centuries before, expound upon the prophetic books of the Old Testament. They reject the Pauline epistles, and they reject the apostle Paul, calling him an apostate of the Law." (Emphasis added.) (Gardner, Laurence, Bloodline of the Holy Grail, Fair Winds Press, Gloucester, Massachusets, 2001, p. 132.) If Iranaeus rejected Jesus' teachings in the second century, I wonder what this information will mean to modern Christians who have believed with all their hearts and minds that "Jesus died for their sins"? Can a two thousand year old tradition be relinquished just by reading this book? It depends on whether people are dedicated to Jesus and his teachings or more attached to their traditions. There will be many who won't want to accept the personal responsibility this discovery puts on them. And there will be many who won't want to give up eating meat! But there's good news for them: Apollonius didn't actually require these practices of his students; he required it only of those who wanted to become teachers. Apollonius didn't "require" anything. He simply taught how the Law worked and left it up to the individual to either live by it or suffer the consequences of ignoring it. Moses' Ten Commandments for the children of Israel simplified the Law for those who needed specifics. Apollonius tried to teach the Law so that it could be understood in Its fullness without creating specific "Do's and Don'ts." As long as you're treating others the way you want them to treat you, there's no need for "Do's and Don't's." Another thing to be learned from Philo's magnificent books: No one will be "LEFT BEHIND." It's impossible. The Soul is immortal, eternal, One with the One. Some will require more incarnations, but all will eventually return to the Father, the Creator, the One Ocean of Divine Consciousness. Jesus didn't believe in blood sacrifices of any kind. Jesus, as Philo, taught of an invisible and indescribable "Creator," not a personified being created in the image of man: "Philo's biblical tradition in which one could not name or describe God was the major factor in accepting the Greek Platonic concepts and emphasis on God's transcendence. But this position is rather alien to biblical and rabbinical understanding. In the Bible, God is represented in a "material" and "physical" way. Philosophically, however, Philo differentiated between the existence of God, which could be demonstrated, and the nature of God which humans are not able to cognize. God's essence is beyond any human experience or cognition, therefore it can be described only by stating what God is not or by depriving him of any attribute of sensible objects and putting God beyond any existence in his essence. (Det.160). Philo states in many places that God's essence is one and single, that he does not belong to any class or that there is in God any distinction of genus and species. Therefore, we cannot say anything about his qualities 'For God is not only devoid of peculiar qualities, but he is likewise not of the form of man' (LA 1.36); he 'is free from distinctive qualities' (LA 1.51; 3.36 Deus 55). (www.iep.utm.edu/p/philo) If you're truly interested in what Jesus taught about the Creator, read Philo's essays. Jesus fully intended for us to make this discovery. He would not have joined forces with Plutarch to create the clues if it hadn't been important to him that the Truth be made known to "those with eyes to see and ears to hear." He wanted us to know so we could find his own words by reading Philo's amazing essays. (The best source I've found is www.earlychristianwritings.com.)
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There should be a zillion questions running through your mind. How did they have all that scientific knowledge? How would they have known about DNA/RNA behaviors? Does Zechariah Sitchin have it right and his critics have it wrong? If they knew about DNA, even knew how it appeared as entwined serpents -- the double helix -- could there actually be something to the multitude of stories of gods born of virgins, just as the ancient Sumarian hieroglyphs reported? Did they know how to accomplish invitro fertilization? Did they know how to clone humans? Was the "Holy Grail," the "Holy Daughter," important because she had blood from "the gods," just as Apollonius had god-blood? And if Sitchin is right -- read his Chronicles -- does that mean the gods are still at work today? (I prefer the terms Angels, or Guides, but that's just me.) Does this have anything to do with UFO's and alien visits from outer space? Now is the time to start asking questions. What we thought we knew of the Universe and World History has all but been overturned. The time has come for Science and Mysticism and Religion to join forces to get some accurate answers to where we came from, and where we're going.
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I hope I've served them well. I am honored and humbled beyond words to be the vehicle for this amazing news. I knew the Truth was hidden in there somewhere if I'd just persevere. I was on the right track when I wrote Gabriel's Gift, and my earlier work, Jesus: Master of Science, Lessons of Light. But I got some of it wrong, and I certainly didn't get all of it. As a result, the three can be read as a trilogy, and the complete journey to get to here will become obvious. (I would still like to sell some of those books, too.) The Bible -- The Word of God -- truly contains The Greatest Story Ever Told. It just wasn't the story it appeared to be. I hope others will be as thrilled as I am to learn that Jesus didn't die that horrible death depicted in The Passion of Christ. I hope others will help me celebrate His life, and Plutarch's, as well, by studying what Jesus left under the names Apollonius of Tyana and Philo of Alexandria. **** As I was concluding this project, I went to Barnes and Noble to pick up a book that had been recommended to me by a friend. On my way to check out I saw another book on a sales rack that I couldn't pass by: Rosslyn: Guardian of the Secrets of the Holy Grail, by Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins. It was first published in 1999, four years before Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, and it examines Rosslyn Chapel, which Brown’s book made famous, and six other sacred churches scattered throughout Europe. What the authors discovered about the configuration and alignment of the six churches, as they relate to one another and as they relate to the solar system, is fascinating. But something truly amazing was disclosed on page 121, and I have to tell you it jumped on me with both feet!: "The Knights Templar who reached Scotland fought as allies of Robert the Bruce and gained royal protection. According to one of his descendants, 432 Templar knights . . . took part in the charge at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314.” These authors, as well as Dan Brown, Lawrence Gardner, and others, have presented arguments for a mystery school that was retained through the centuries by various underground groups forced to hide the knowledge from the Church authorities. It appears that the number used by the builders of the Great Pyramid, Moses, Luke, and Plutarch remains the key to the mysteries held by the keepers of the code. Just this morning MSNBC reported the discovery of a stone slab on which is carved a scene copied from an artist suspected of being associated with the Priori of Scion and the Knights Templar. On the slab are letters that cryptologists are trying to decipher at this very moment. Perhaps the story told here is about to receive validation from other sources. Jesus, and the story entombed for two thousand years, is about to be resurrected. The Tree of Life is about to bloom!
Gott, November 28, 2004
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cathie, Bruce, The Energy Grid: Harmonic 695 The Pulse of the Universe, Kempton, Illinois, Adventures Unlimited Press, 1997.
Gardner, Laurence, Bloodline of the Holy Grail: The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed, Glouchester, Massachusetts, Fair Winds Press, 2001.
Michell, John, The Dimensions of Paradise: The Proportions and Symbolic Numbers of Ancient Cosmology, Kempton, Illinois, Adventures Unlimited Press, 2001.
Miller, Robert J., editor, The Complete Gospels, San Francisco, California, A Polebridge Press Book, 1994.
Sitchin, Zechariah, The Cosmic Code, New York, Avon Books, 1998.
Starbird, Margaret, The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail, Rochester, Vermont: Bear and Company, 1993.
Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins, Rosslyn: Guardian of the Secrets of the Holy Grail, Barnes & Noble Books, 2000.
WEB SITE BIBLIOGRAPHY
www.4literature.net/Euripides/Bacchae www.aiwaz.net/giza/missingphallus Missing Phallus by morphvs www.allaboutturkey.com www.apollonius.net/bernard4e Dr. R.W. Bernard, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (1964) wrote Apollonius the Nazarene, Part 4, Events in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana: Birth and Youth of Apollonius, as recorded in 'The Life of Apollonius of Tyana' by his biographer, Philostratus . . .'" Www.apollonius.net/mead Solarion, Robertino, Apollonius of Tyana: The Monkey of Christ? Circa 1999, quoting G.R.S. Mead, G.R.S. Mead On Apollonius www.apollonius.net/tyanaeus Solarion, Robertino, Apollonius of Tyana: The Monkey of Christ? circa 1999, quoting Professor William Smith & Others, London, 1890, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology www.bartleby.com www.bible-history.com/quotes/kenneth_s_wuest_1 Wuest, Kenneth S., Quotes About the Bible and History, from his book, Word studies in the Greek New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1979) pp..52-54: www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1013 The Baptism and Geneaolgy of Jesus, Trustworthy Bible Study Resources www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=76): www.ccel.org/r/robertson_at/wordpictures/htm/LU5.RWP: www.christianism.com/additions/26 www.christusrex.org/www1/apparitions/pr00002 "Czestochowa, Poland: The Black Madonna" www.courses.smsu.edu/mdg421f/reli320/43l320.04 www.crosswalk.com www.crystalinks.com/plutarch www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/mcdonald MacDonald, Dennis R., Luke's Eutychus and Homer's Elpenor: Acts 20:7-12 and Odyssey 10-12, published in the JHC 1 (Fall 1994), pp. 4-24, Copyright @Institute for Higher Critical Studies, 1996. www.dhushara.com/book/yeshua/desposyn Price, Robert M. James the Brother of Jesus: A Higher-Critical Evaluation, Drew University, a review of Robert Eisenman's book. www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/coptic/coptic www.e-classics.com/pyrrhus.htm: www.earlychristianwritings.com: Philo's complete essays, web site posted by Peter Kirby. www.essene.com www.gendertree.com/Egyptian www.geocities.com/albioncelt/ari www.gospelcom.net/dacb/stories/egypt/markthe_evang www.greatdreams.com/432 www.hao.ucar.edu: www..iep.utm.edu/p/philo www.livius.org/ap-ark/apollonius/apollonius_life www.livius.org/pi-pm/plutarch/plutarch: www.malaspina.com/site/person_1085.asp www.odeion.org/gematria/gemapp-b: Gematria by Frederick Bligh Bond, F.R.I.B.A. And Thomas Simcox Lea, D.D., Annotated and Transcribed by Peter Wakefield Sault. www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/luke From Jesus to Christ: The Story of the Storytellers www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=531&C=553 An Introduction to the New Testament by Richard Heard, (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1950), prepared for Religion-Online by Ted and Winnie Brock. www.sobek.colorado.edu/LAB/GODS/osiris Osiris, www.sullivan-county.com/id2/james www.theatrehistory.com/ancient/euripides009.html www.themystica.org/mythical-folk/articles/isis Isis www.thenazareneway.com www.theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jul1986/v43-2-article4.htm www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moral www.users.ox.ac.uk/~sben0056/newbooklets/lukespirit.doc www.user.senet.com.au/~gwilym/Saint%20Luke www.wfu.edu/~matthetl/perspectives/twentyeight.html www.whisperingwood.homestead.com/NLJune 2003
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