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The new testament was written as an allegory on the annual appearant motion of the Sun, Moon and Stars, which was the basis of Sun worship, which looked upon the Sun as the visible representative of the great creative principle, hence the Sun of God.
I have given also another story pictured in the old testament of Uranus as the Son of the Sun God, which must not be confounded with the above.
The new testament was written to show what should be rather than what was, or as a beacon light to lead man on to a better life.
There is plenty of evidence that not one of the books of the new testament were written until 150 years after the supposed birth of Christ, and nobody knows who wrote them. These books are full of contradictions and errors. For Instance the Gospel of John says that Bethsaida was in Galilee, while there is no such town in the district and never was.
Bethsaida, says Potter’s Bible encyclopedia, was on the east side of the sea of Tiberias, where as Galilee was on the west side, would John not know where his own birth place was, as it is said he was born at Bethsaida; and if he wrote the book, would he have made such a mistake?
The amount of it is the priesthood were then making their living by preaching to the people as they are doing today, and in seeking for authority they gathered these books for text books as our school teachers use certain text books to day, and they gathered all kinds of books, astrological works, histories, good and bad, and allegories. It is a historical tact that at least one priest had in his canon, Josephus, Esoph’s Fables and other similar books.
When the priests got to quarreling about which books were the proper books to be used, they on more than one occasion threw out the books of Daniel and Revelation. These books are astrological and their prophesies are much extold by the preachers of today.
Says Bronson C. Keeler in a work entitled “A short history of the Bible.” published in 1888:
“When the Catholic Church began to be formed, about the year 170-180 A. D., the tendency was to use fewer books, and the ones accepted as authoritative began to be called divine.”
The Bible is no more sacred than any other book and no more inspired than other books, for if the God of the universe stooped to so small a thing as the authorship of such a book he would never have left it to poor weak man to blunder over in selections, translations and interpretation. In my “Agnostic’s Lament,” I have given the names of 23 books the Bible speaks of which were left out of it.
In that little work I also point out many contradictions and erors. The book also Contains three of as fine poems as ever written. ( price 10 cents.)
Says Mr, Keeler: “The first collection of New Testament books ever made was by Marcion, about the year 145 A. D. It consisted of one Gospel and ten of Paul’s Epistles, and they were not then considered the word of God.”
The first old Testament list was by Melito, bishop of Sardis, about 175 A. D.”
Mr. Keeler then gives the dates and places where bishops and priests selected the books they thought best, and gives the dates of their quarrels until they finally met in councils at different places to select their books, the first council was held 393 A.D. at Hippo, in Africa. In 419 A.D. another council was held at Carthage and in 431 A.D., a third council was held at Ephesus. By this time the disputes as to which books should be used had assumed factional fighting phases and both sides came to this council armed and were more disorderly than were our old political conventions and their brutish orgies compelled the authorities to patrol the streets with troops to keep order.
Mr. Keeler quotes from many authors to show the priesthood were but an ignorant rabble whose understanding of the books was so mixed, that they got the titles of books confounded. There met another council at Ephesus in 449. This was conducted so shamefully that one priest struck another and the friends of the assailing priest, like a pack of wolves, fell upon the fallen man and kicked him to death,” says Mr. Keeler, and he gives authority.
“Another council, called to meet in Nicea in 451 A.D., which was so unruly that it had to be summoned to Chaledea, across the straits from Constantinople, where the Emperor could reach it with his troops and compell order.
“Another council, held at Constantinople in 785 A.D., the soldiery burst into the chamber and dispersed the affrighted bishops because they did not approve of the bishops’ enactments and the second council of Nicea (787 A.D.) denounced this council of Constantinople as a synod of fools and mad men.”
Henry L, Count of Champagne, (1165 A.D.), wrote to John of Salisbury, secretary to Thomas A. Becket, asking him how many books there really were in the Bible, and who were their authors.” This shows how “little was known of the Bible.”
To show how little the leading church men or bishops knew of the books they were fighting about in (1318 A.D.), a Nestorian bishop gave a list of what he supposed were “divine books” In the old Testament he included Ecclesiasticus the wisdom of Solomon, Judith, the Story of Susanna, the Lesser Daniel and Baruch, which, later books are not now in the Bible, he also adds the books of Traditions of the Elders (the Mishna), the works of Josephus, the fables of Esoph, the history of the Son’s Samonas, the books of Macabre, the history of King Heard, the book of Last Desolation, of Jerusalem by Titus, Asthma, wife of Joseph, the Just son of Jacob, and the book of Tobias and Tobit, not seeming to know the two last mentioned, were one and the same. Here he excluded several books now in the Bible. He seemed to have no idea of the Bible as we now know it.”
“In 1441 a council at Florence adopted the list which the council of Trent subsequently reiterated.
“The council of Trent met Dec. 13, 1545, and on Feb. 12, 1546, the question of the cannon was brought forward. Luther had declared that the Bible alone was the source of authority. The church declared tradition to be of equal authority. Luther declared that the universally accepted books of the Old and New Testament, without any of the apocrypha be admitted. The questions were discussed in the council by about thirty eccleiastics in four sessions. For the second time in the history of the book came a compromise. Four factions were contending for the adoption of different views. All were agreed that tradition — hearsay, rumor — was of equal authority with written records.”
Here was the dividing of the ways between the Catholic and Protestants and two different Bibles chosen. Here were the real opening guns that deluged the world in blood.
“In 1827 the British and Foreign Bible societies decided they would no longer circulate the books of the Apocrypha. The American Bible Society followed its example, and thus it was that our Bible received its finishing touch, as we have been accustomed to see it. Except as it was recently patched up by the new translation. About that time the following cablegram was received from London, where the revision took place:
“A new revision at the Bible has just been completed, including the apocryha, upon which the revisers have been engaged since 1881, and it will shortly be issued from the Oxford Press in various sizes, uniform with the revised Old and New Testament.”
It is not a revision of the Bible that is needed. A new translation is demanded. The so called King James translation, if not a fraud of itself, as some scholars contend, was not a translation, but a revision, as every reader can see by comparing it with the Bishop’s Bible, which of itself was a revision of a still earlier revision. The first rendering, and that from the Latin Vulgate, has been the base of every subsequent pretended translation. The Catholic English Bible followed closely along the lines of King James’ revision, and so with the Jewish pretended translation of the Old Testament. So difficult is it to understand the original, and give it an honest rendering into English, a late writer who seems to know whereof he is discoursing says:
“If ten Greek scholars were given certain well-known texts In the Greek New Testament, and were instructed to give their own renderings, each ignorant of former translations, there would be ten different renderings — in many respects conveying entirely different ideas.”
And this is the reason for the multiplicity of revisions, and the avoidance of translations.
“Let It be remembered the books of the Bible were
not divided into chapters or punctuated, or even
divided into words, but ran together like this:
Godsolovedtheworldthathegavehisonlybegottenson
and so forth.”
If the reader looks back to the class of men who selected the books of the Bible and kicked out what they did not want, he may also understand they interprelated and placed in chapters which they did want. He may also understand these men were inferior in intelligence to the average of the American, English, German or French working man of today. But as Mr. Keeler says in his short Bible History:
“The origin of the books having been forgotten, men, credulous and in trouble, came to think that because the books were written of God they were writen by God. The reformers declared that the Bible and not the church was the sole source of authority. This succeeded, and the thunders of the Vatican were answered by the thunders of artillery. Armies swept across the face of Europe, and it was amid the roar of cannon, the shock of battle, and the shrieks of the dying, that the doctrine of the divine and infallible inspiration of the Bible grew.”
Oh! Religion, what cruelties and wrongs have been perpetrated in thy name!
How such great questions, as to the authorship of books, their true meanings, or the destiny of man in a future state, could be decided by the vote of men who depended upon the church for a living, whose financial interests would lead them to decide according to their personal views, whose passions, the court records of today show are in no better state of control than that of the average man, no one has ever thought to discuss.
Here is still a greater curiosity. These men calling themselves the chosen of God; oppose every step in true reform, bitterly oppose spiritualism, reincarnation, and evolution, and then declare a book infallible that they must know is an evolved work. It is certainly amusing to the true student, if it had not been a tragedy, but they had better stop now before it becomes a farce.
The priesthood must have better opportunities for gathering the truth than I have, which shows they willingly stand a stumbling block to mental progress, because of biggotry and superstition, or because of financial interests, such as I have shown, must be the interest of the Pope in opposing socialism. no discussion of the bible can be entered into properly which does not take this into consideration.
The church is not a natural reforming element, but
it's a mere money seeking institution, as shown by
the fact that it is always found where its
financial interests are the greatest, as was the
case during the American rebellion; the church
divided without a protest. Its excuse that it deals
with the spiritual only, is a mere subterfuge. As a
sky pilot it shows it knows nothing of the truth or
it would not be divided into a thousand factions.
(From the 1907 book by Lyman E. Stowe
Stowe's Bible Astrology: The Bible Founded on Astrology (Kessinger Publishing), pp. 204-210)
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