~ Plutarch's Parable Part 2 ~ Lux Gospel and the Axe of the Apostle By Paula J. Gott

 "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 . . . " ~ Plutarch; Introduction to Of Isis and Osiris  

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 CHAPTER SEVEN

"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. But 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 8:26-33: "Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, 'Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.' (This is a wilderness road.) 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. 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’ 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.'"

This quotation comes from Isaiah 53:7-8, and the line breaks are exactly as they appear in the biblical text. 

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. 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 in 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." Luke 12:25.

And then 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.)

In other words, Luke has made a blatant error or omission in reporting the name of this "son of Jesus"! What is the hidden message Luke might be trying to send? It appears to me that 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 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. Since Zeus was the primary Greek God, one can surmise that El also represented God in Greek.

Mas is the root for masculine and is sometimes used to represent husband or father. That means that El y mas could be saying that "Bar Jesus' Father is God."

Another guess might be that the original word was actually El y maz.  Maz is a Greek word that means wisdom or wise. That seems to fit nicely here, too, since magi also means wise.  With y as a connecting verb, then, El y maz means wise man who is of God.

This is really important!! Luke has hidden the message that Saul/Paul, in the first scene of his very first missionary journey, meets and has a major disagreement over doctrine with a young man who is described as, "a wise man of God" (El y maz), "son of Jesus" (Bar Jesus). 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 God or Zeus.

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 in their encounter. Were there two sons? This is rather flimsy evidence to support this hypothesis, but there is more to come.

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 (or Elymaz), which means either "God-his father" or "A wise man of God."

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! 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).

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!

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.

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  CHAPTER EIGHT

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 contain 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, equals 3168 (12 x 7 x 12 = 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; it's insignificant here.

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.

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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!

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CHAPTER NINE

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 intimately involved in 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."

Luke 8:43

 " . . . For he had an only daughter . . . "

Acts 7:29

---

CHAPTER TEN

 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 in. 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. Einstein would have called them Energy and Light (E=mC², which can also be written: m = E/C2 -- Mass = Energy divided by the speed of light squared.)

            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

CHAPTER ELEVEN

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 is also associated with Delphi, and there is some evidence that he taught there for a time. 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!

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.

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 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, and Q 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 coconspirators 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."

Since when is Apollos a Jewish name? 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."(Gott note: Acts 18:14: "Now there came to Ephesus a Jew named Apollos . . . " This now makes sense -- the "Jew" was Jesus-Apollos.)

"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 Delphic 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 books 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 perhaps his "final trip" -- to Ethiopia -- was to take her back to her homeland where she could die among her own people.

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.

---

CHAPTER TWELVE

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 altered to 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.)

Theo-Philus, meet Philo of Alexandria, whose 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 connects 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!)

"He laid the foundation for the development of Christianity in the West and in the East."

"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 indicates that he possessed the knowledge of "432" which was the "mystery gnosis" hidden in the Torah by Moses.)

"His praise of the contemplative life of the monastic Therapeutae in Alexandria attests to his preference of bios theoreticos over bios practicos."

 "He adheres to the Platonic picture of the souls descending into the material realm and that only the souls of Philosophers are able to come to the surface and return to their realm in heaven."

"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."

"Alexander's two sons, Marcus and Tiberius Julius Alexander were involved in Roman affairs."

"Marcus married Bernice, the daughter of Herod Agrippa I, who is mentioned in Acts 25:13, 13; 26:30." (Interesting coincidence, huh?)

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 and the association.)

By the time Apollonius returned and Philo "died," around 50 ACE, the children would have been in their late teens or early twenties. It's time that we try to identify them:

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: "And then after completing their mission Barnabas and Saul returned from 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 disputes with 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.

Hiippolytus 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 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's gospel 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, and Paul's epistles were full of outright lies. They had to write Luke's gospel 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 in 29 ACE, he was about 33 when he died in 62 ACE, still a young man, and his death may have been 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. It was necessary in order to be able 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 30, 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! "THE HOLY FAMILY" sought refuge after fleeing from Judea and King Herod." Who in the world did we think this tradition was referring to? Now it's quite clear "The Holy Family" was 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 30 ACE. 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 certainly helped write it, surely the other son would have been given the same honor.

But Matthew's gospel was clearly written to aid in the cover, deleting clues and adding detours. For example, Matthew explained why Jesus was called a Nazarene: 2:23: "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 Nazarene."

Most scholars now agree that "Nazareth" did not exist when Jesus was born. It was invented and settled after Constantine's mother went to find the place of the Holy Birth and discovered there was no Nazareth. No historian, cartographer, or map shows Nazareth at the time Jesus was born. Jesus was called a Nazarene because he was a Nazarene -- meaning the "sect" that Luke revealed at various places in Acts. Mattthew attempted to separate him from the "sect" by claiming he was called a Nazarene because he was from Nazareth.

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 served 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 and his collaboration with Plutarch, 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.

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 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.

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 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 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.

 

****

 

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!

A very big question remains, of course. What will the Christians do with this information? 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, 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." (Gardner, Laurence, Bloodline of the Holy Grail, Fair Winds Press, Gloucester, Massachusets, 2001, p. 132.)

Jesus did  not 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). Strictly speaking, we cannot make any positive or negative statements about God: 'Who can venture to affirm that ... He is a body, or that he is incorporeal, or that he has such and such distinctive qualities, or that he has no such qualities? ... But he alone can utter a positive assertion respecting himself, since he alone has an accurate knowledge of his own nature' (LA 3.206). Moreover, since the essence of God is single, therefore its property must be one which Philo denotes as acting 'Now it is an especial attribute of God to create, and this faculty it is impious to ascribe to any created being' (Cher.77). The expression of this act of God, which is at the same time his thinking, is his Logos (Prov. 1.7; Sacr. 65; Mos 1.283). Though God is hidden his reality is made manifest by the Logos that is God's image (Somn. 1.239; Conf. 147-148) and by the sensible universe, which in turn is the image of the Logos, that is 'the archetypal model, the idea of ideas' (Op.25). Because of this we can perceive God's existence, though we cannot fathom his essence."

That's an example. Read Philo, and you will hear Jesus' voice again!

Back to the question: What will this mean to the 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 upon reading this book? It depends on whether people are dedicated to Jesus and his teachings or 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 and wearing leather! 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 his students how the Law worked and left it up to them to either live by it or suffer the consequences of ignoring it. The Ten Commandments Moses wrote 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."

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.

 

****

 

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 just got overturned. The time has come for Science and Mysticism and Religion join forces to get some accurate answers to where we came from, and where we're going.

 

 

****

  

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 and Philo of Alexandria. That will truly give us what we need in order to ascend to Heaven, as he did.

 

****

 

EPILOGUE

 

            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/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.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

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