The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

The congregation of disciples at Jerusalem and their sympathizers in Palestine were designated as Nazore-ans and Ebionim. It is no great stretch of imagination to presume them to have been an offshoot of the Essenean brotherhood. These were zealous propagandists, and their modes of life and action coincide very closely with those of the early Church. The writers of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles describe the apostles and their converts as living after the manner of an Essenean commune. Jesus “ordained twelve that they should be with him;… and they went into a house,” or became as one family. This was precisely like the Essenes and Therapeutæ. “In the first place,” says Philo, “not one of them has a house of his own which does not belong to all of them.” For besides their living together in large societies, each house is also open to every visiting brother of the order. “Furthermore, all of them have one store of provisions and equal expenses; they have their garments in common, as they do with their provisions. They reside together, eat together, and have everything in common to an extent as it is carried out nowhere else.” Hence we read without surprise that the multitude came about them, so that they could not so much as eat bread. The apostolic congregation is also described as imitating the same form of living: “All that believed were together and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all of them as every one had need.... Neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. Neither was there any among them that lacked; for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the price of the things that were sold and laid them down at the apostles’ feet; and distribution was made unto every man as he had need.” For a time the apostles, it is stated, were stewards of the whole body, teaching them and supplying them with food, till finally seven Hellenistic Jews were selected and set apart for that purpose.

Eusebius comments upon the account given by Philo of the Therapeutæ, as follows: “These facts appear to have been stated by a man (Philo), who at least has paid attention to those that have expounded the sacred writings. But it is highly probable that the ancient commentaries which he says they have are the very Gospels and writings of the apostles, and probably some expositions of the ancient prophets, such as are contained in the Epistle to the Hebrews and many others of St. Paul’s Epistles.... Why need we add an account of their meetings, and the separate abodes of men and women in these meetings, and the exercises performed by them, which are still in vogue among us at the present day; and which, especially at the festival of our Saviour’s passion, we are accustomed to use in our fastings and watchings and in the study of the divine word! All these the above-mentioned author has accurately described and stated in his writings; and they are the same customs that are observed by us alone at the present day, particularly the vigils of the great festivals, and the exercises in them and the hymns that are commonly recited among us. He states that whilst one sings gracefully with a certain measure, the others, listening in silence, join in singing the final clauses of the hymns; also that on the above-mentioned days they lie on straw spread on the ground, and, to use his own words, they abstain altogether from wine and taste no flesh. Water is their only drink, and the relish of their bread, salt, and hyssop. Besides this, he describes the grades of dignity among those who administer the ecclesiastical services committed to them—those of the deacons and president of the episcopate as the highest. But whosoever desires to have a more accurate knowledge of these things may learn them from the history already cited; but that Philo, when he wrote those statements, had in view the first heralds of the gospel and the original practices handed down from the apostles must be obvious to all”

As if to afford further foundation for this conjecture of identity of the early disciples with the Ebionites, the Greek word for this designation, “ptochos,” usually translated “poor” and “beggar,” occurs in the New Testament in a manner which often suggests that the Ebionites are meant by the designation.

“Happy the poor in spirit,” says the Sermon on the Mount; “for the kingdom of the heavens is theirs.” “The gospel is preached to them” was the message sent to John the Baptist in his prison at Macheras. “If thou wilt be perfect,” says Jesus to the young man, “go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.” In the Gospel according to St Luke (6: 20) Jesus actually addresses his disciples as “ye poor,” or Ebionim. Lazarus is called Ptochos, or Ebioni, in the sixteenth chapter. Paul sternly rebukes the Galatian Christians for their conversion to Ebionism: “But then, not having seen God, you were servants to those that are not gods; but now having known God, or rather having been known by God, why do you turn about again to the weak and beggarly elements?”

Nevertheless, the conclusion of Eusebius, that the Essenes or Therapeutæ were only Christians of the apostolic age, is impossible. They were of greater antiquity, and flourished when Christians—or Chrestians, whichever they may be—had never been heard of. The converse is more probable by far—that the apostles and their Ebionite followers were religionists after the form of the Essenes.

We have indicated the evident similarity of these sectaries with the Mithraic initiates, and the fact has also been shown that many of the Christians of the first centuries also observed the rites of that worship. That the astrological features of each were identical and are manifest in the story of Jesus has also been illustrated. We may now treat the final question, that of the person of Jesus himself.

It is the easiest way just now to concede his physical existence, and reject the marvels, exaggerations, and other incredibilities of the Gospel narratives. A Roman Catholic writer of great acuteness has marked out that very course. He explains his position so aptly that we will reproduce the principal features, which certainly seem in a great degree to sustain our proposition. “Where intellect sees an idea, an abstraction,” says he, “religion sees a person. This involves a superior development of the consciousness; inasmuch while intellect of itself, having neither motive nor force, could not have created, personality includes intellect and all else that is indispensable to action—namely, feeling and energy.”

He sets forth Christianity as a religion in Palestine “which consisted in the worship of a Divine Being incarnated in human form in order to redeem fallen man, born of a virgin, teaching immortality, working wonders of benevolence, dying through the hostile machinations of the spirit of evil, rising from death, reascend-ing into heaven, and becoming judge of the dead. As representative of the sun the festivals appointed in his honor were fixed in accordance with the seasons, his birth being at the end of the winter solstice; his death at the spring equinox; his rising soon afterward, and then his ascension into heaven, whence he showers down benefits on man.”

The same author indicates the Essenes as cherishing these beliefs: “Deriving their tenets from the East, they believed in the Persian dualism, regarded the sun as the impersonation of the Supreme Light, and worshipped it in a modified way.” He adds: “To the sect of the Essenes the originals of John the Baptist and Jesus must have belonged.”

“We may possess a trustworthy account of the spirit that was in Jesus,” he says again, “and yet be altogether in the dark respecting his precise sayings and doings. The condition of the world at this period being such as I have described, it was inevitable that any impressive personality whose career enabled such things, with however small a modicum of truth, to be predicated of it as were predicated of Jesus, should be seized upon and appropriated to the purposes of a new religion....

“For the masses the spectacle of an heroic crusade against the authority, respectability, and pharisaism of an established ecclesiasticism, combined with complete self-devotion, with teaching of the most absolute perfection in morals—a perfection readily recognizable by the intuitive perceptions of all—and with a confident mysticism that seemed to imply unbounded supernatural knowledge—all characteristics of the sect of Essenes to which he and the Baptist manifestly belonged,—these were amply sufficient to win belief in Jesus as a divine personage. And especially so when they found him persistently reported not only as having performed miracles in his life, but as having shown that traditional superiority to all the limitation of humanity which was ascribed to their previous divinities by rising from the dead and ascending into heaven. Familiar as they were with the notion of incarnations in which the sun played a principal part, and accustomed to associate such events with virgin mothers impregnated by deities, births in stables or caves, hazardous careers in the exercise of benevolence, violent deaths, and descents into the kingdom of darkness, resurrections and ascensions into heaven, to be followed by the descent of blessings upon mankind,—it required but the suggestion that Jesus of Nazareth was a new and nobler incarnation of the Deity, who had so often before been incarnate and put to death for man’s salvation, to transfer to him the whole paraphernalia of doctrine and rite deemed appropriate to the office.”

There appears no reasonable doubt of the relationship of Jesus to the Essenean brothers. Not only does the name itself imply a personification of that peculiar people, but he is represented as uttering their distinctive doctrines. In the Sermon on the Mount he required from his disciples, as did the Essenean teachers, a righteousness exceeding that of the Scribes and Pharisees; and the Beatitudes are distinctly of the same character. He prohibits the oath, as the Esseneans also did, enjoined non-resistance to violent assault and forgiveness of injuries, and exhorted to take no thought for the morrow, which he described as serving Mammon. He also charged against divulging the interior doctrines, comparing it to giving the holy bread to dogs and casting pearls to the swine, the latter treading the precious jewels under foot and the dogs turning to rend the giver. Indeed, the whole discourse is one which a teacher of the fraternity would deliver to candidates. “These things,” he declares, “are hid from the wise and prudent, but are revealed to babes.” When his disciples demur at his rigid tenets in regard to marriage, permitting divorce only for lewdness or false religion, he sanctions their inference that it is not good to marry. “He that is able to receive this doctrine,” added he, “let him receive it.” To the young man who desired to know the way to perfection he first gave a reproof for calling him good when there was no one so but the one God, and then commanded him to sell all his possessions and give to the poor, probably meaning the Ebionim. In the parable in Luke the rich man after death is tormented, while the other, the ptochos or Ebionite Lazarus, is compensated in the lap of Abraham. Yet except the few cases when the terms “brethren” and “disciple” are used there are few direct references to the Essenes. But he is continually exhorting against the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and denouncing the former. Meanwhile, he nowhere fills a page in history. He has left no mark of his individual existence.

We have observed that Judaism was chiefly the counterpart of Persian Mazdaism, the Supreme Being, the seven Amesha-spentas, Yazatas, Evil Spirit and devas, being reproduced in Jehovah with his angels and seven archangels, Satan and his wicked crew. Essenism, in turn, appears to have been a form of the Persian religion, including the worship of the sun, astral and prophetic doctrines, occult science, a cultus and sacraments; and as the Persian doctrines were ascribed to the unknown Zarathustra, so those of the Essenean brotherhood are personified in the character of a gifted teacher, born on the natal day of Mithras, inculcating truth and right action, and in every way representing and personifying the religious system. This was, as has been observed, a common practice in former times. As soon as we consider Jesus as Essenism personified we find the difficulties vanish which every other theory presents. But Essenism was much older than the Christian era, despite the pretense of Eusebius of the absolute identity of Essenes and the early Christians. We may also remark that there are fragments of books in existence which treat of a Jew, the son of a soldier and temple-woman, who exhibits characteristics of the Jesus of the Gospels sufficient to intimate the identity of the two. They place his career in the time of the earlier Asmonean kings, about the period when the Essenes are first mentioned by that name. We do not attach great importance to these works, except for the fact that they would not have appeared, unless there had existed a comprehensive account of some kind, parabolic or historic, to suggest their preparation. The Toldoth Jeshu, or Generations of Jesus, to which we refer, has several characteristics which are worth noting. The father of Jesus, being a soldier, probably denoted a “soldier of Mithras,” and the alma or Blessed Virgin, a Hebrew maiden set apart for a time, as was the practice for young maids in Athens, to work and be initiated at the temple. It is also asserted that Jesus spent a season in Egypt, where he learned magic. The Therapeutæ had communes in that country as well as in Arabia and Palestine, and were addicted to the study of medical knowledge, astrology, and other arts, which, being derived from the Magi or priest-caste of the East, were denominated magic. This term originally carried with it no reproachful meaning, but meant all learning of a liberal character, and occult science was only such knowledge as was considered too sacred for profane individuals. “He who pours water into a muddy well,” says Jamblichus, “does but disturb the mud.” Doubtless the primitive Essenean gospel described Jesus as a young man of rare qualities, the son of a Mithraic or Essenean adept, who was instructed at the school of Alexandria or in the priest-colleges of ancient Egypt, and became expert in the technic of religious and scientific wisdom. Thus, the great Siddartha was taught by the Jaina sage Mahavira before he became himself a teacher and a sage. As the sacraments of the Church are like the observances of the Essenes and those which are also celebrated at the Mithraic initiations, this is abundantly plausible. The departure made by Paul and others from the methods of the order afford the reason for the assigned origin of Christianity at the period known as the “year of our Lord,” Anno Domini.

The original books from which the Gospels were compiled have perished. There was a Gospel in the possession of the Ebionites carefully guarded as a sacred or arcane book, a copy of which Jerome procured with great difficulty, but which has since been lost and forgotten. The sect disappeared, melting away into the church or the synagogue, and we now read of them loaded with the opprobrious slanders of Irenæus and Epiphanius. They were the original disciples in Judea, and were subjected, in common with other Jews, to the hardships and persecutions which followed upon the destruction of the national polity. This Hebrew Gospel and such writings as the Catholic Epistles of James and Peter contained their peculiar doctrines. They regarded Jesus as a teacher or exemplar, but not as a superhuman being in any sense of the term. That notion came from the pagans.

Indeed, it was not their belief that such a man had literally existed. The Doketæ (or Illusionists) held that he was a symbolic being, an ideality. The Gnostics generally, whom Gibbon describes as “the most polite, the most learned, and most wealthy of the Christian name,” described him as an aion or spiritual principle; and considered the crucifixion as metaphorical and not a literal event. The real Christ, Chrëstos or divine principle, they regarded as still in heaven, intact.

The apostle Paul was the great innovator upon the Ebionite and Essenean doctrines. He was too broad and far-seeing to overlook the fact that the exclusiveness of Judaism would arrest any universal dissemination of the faith in the world. Hence he struck out boldly on his own account. He had a gospel, he declares to the Galatians, which he had received from no man; it was not “according to any man,” but a distinct, differentiated matter, the apocalypse of Jesus Christ. “Let the man, or even angel, that preaches any other gospel be anathema,” he declares. He did not hesitate to denounce the Ebionist apostles, nor they in turn to set him forth as an impostor, holding the doctrine of Balaam and teaching faith without works or rites. At Antioch he withstood Peter to the face, and declares him condemned. Writing to the Corinthians, he denounces the schisms and deprecates the influence of Apollos, a Jew from Alexandria. “I, the wise architect, have laid the foundation,” says he, “but another has built upon it. That foundation is Christ.” It is very plain, however, that the Christ that he taught was rather an ideal than a literal personage. “I have seen the Lord,” he declares, and again avows that he preached “Jesus Christ and the Crucified One.” Yet when he refers to the death and resurrection he always treats of them as figurative matters, pertaining to the spiritual and not to the corporeal nature. A Christ that he had seen could but be a spiritual entity. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” he declares, “neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” This is a complete setting aside of any gross, literal sense to be given to his language. Others who received the gospel were crucified as Christ was, and rose again to a new life while yet embodied in mortal flesh. He was the type, the model, the exemplar, and they who believed were walking in his footsteps. “Know ye not,” he asks the Roman believers, “that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? We then are buried with him by this baptism into his death; so that as Christ was raised up from the dead, even so we should walk in a new life. For if we have become planted together in the likeness of his death, we are also, on the other hand, in that of his resurrection: knowing this, that our old man was crucified together, that the body of sin might be made inert, that we may no longer be enslaved to sin. If we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live to him; being aware that Christ having risen from the dead is no longer dying, death no longer rules him. For wherein he died, he died to sin once for all; but wherein he lives, he lives to God. So likewise reckon ye yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

A spiritual crucifixion, death, and resurrection, in strict analogy with the equinoctial crucifixion, death, and resurrection of the mystic rites, is the foremost idea of this passage. The baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan and his forty days’ temptation in the wilderness were of the same character. There was no literal dying signified in the case. Indeed, nobody knew better than Paul that the Jewish Sanhedrim did not sit and that capital punishments were not inflicted at the period of the Passover, the day of the crucifixion, being, according to the law, “a day of holy convocation.” The crucifixion being figurative and suggested by an astrological period, we are fully warranted in the hypothesis that the victim likewise was a symbolic personage of an astral character.

This ideal Jesus, with the emphatic but ambiguous phrase of Paul—“Him crucified”—was not sufficient for the exigencies of the Christian leaders of the subsequent century. The Gnostics and other cultured men were satisfied, but the lower classes wanted a more tangible character, a physical corporeity. The great want, therefore, was some proof of the literal existence of the individual by the evidence of men that had seen him and been familiar with him. This was now furnished by the production of the three synoptic Gospels and their adoption in the place of other evangelical literature. Afterward, Irenæus or some one with his approval added the Gospel according to John. The fiction of an apostolic succession was then originated, and forgery for religious purposes was a general practice. The quarrels of Christians with Christians were for centuries more scandalous than all the atrocities of actual martyrdom.

Previous to this the Church had labored indefatigably and successfully to destroy the influence and reputation of Paul. He was now taken into favor; his Epistles were revised, interpolated, toned down, and accepted as canonical. The Acts of the Apostles was next produced. It is a work in two parts—one set apart to the story of the apostle Peter, and the other to the achievements of Paul. The purpose evidently was to indicate that the two were not at variance, but were laborers in the same field. The work of harmonizing must have been difficult. In our day it would not have been possible. Books cannot be got out of the way as in former centuries, and inconsistencies of writers are sure to be exposed.

Justin Martyr lived at Rome in the reign of the Antonines and wrote a Defence of the Christians. Yet he makes no mention of “St. Peter the first bishop.” He had never heard of him. Irenæus, however, did not hesitate to say anything to advance the gospel, and accordingly boldly asserts that Peter and Paul founded the church at Rome; overlooking their reciprocal animosity, and the fact that the Epistle of Paul to the Romans addresses the “saints,” but makes no mention of a church. Claudius had banished the Jews from Rome for their turbulent conduct under the instigations of Chrestos, and the emperors Trajan and Adrian seem to have known of Christians only from information which they had derived solely from the provinces in the East. But all this made no difficulty for Irenæus. This French prelate also declared that the ministry of Jesus lasted upward of ten years; also that he lived to be an elderly man. The anachronisms and bad geography of the Gospels are notorious, but they do not compare with the absurdities of Irenæus. He invented the name Antichrist, and hurled it with ferocious rage whenever he had been assailed and hard pushed in controversy. He was never so much in his element as when quarrelling; and his designation of Irenæus (a man of peace) is one of the most stupendous misnomers ever heard of.

We have alluded to the fact that passages had been interpolated into the Epistles of Paul. The object was to harmonize the Logos of Philo and his school with the Christ or Chrêstos of the apostle. It would have been a futile attempt if it had been made when Paul was castigating the Corinthian Christians in regard to Apollos. A dead man’s words, however, can be mutilated and perverted without his resistance. We accordingly find the sturdy Hebrew diction of the apostle interlarded with Gnostic utterances, and new epistles purporting to have been written by him which give a different complexion to his doctrines. The pleroma or fulness which is treated of in the Epistle to the Ephesians was taken bodily from the Gnostics.

The pre-existence of Christ as the Creator of the world was asserted in a spurious document purporting to be a letter from him to the Colossians, and interpolations of a corresponding nature were made in the genuine Corinthian Epistles. Thus in the famous chapter on the resurrection we find the following sentiment of Philo in an amplified form: “Man, being freed by the Logos (or Word) from all corruption, shall be entitled to immortality.”

Gibbon has shown us that the first regular church government was instituted at Alexandria. This is in keeping with the other facts. The dogmas of an incarnate God, of the Trinity, and the sacred character of the Blessed Virgin were all introduced into the creed by the influence of the Alexandrians, and it would therefore seem to be legitimately their right to institute the government. We have noticed already that the Therapeutæ of that country had offices with similar titles and functions as those now possessed by officers of the Church, and as they and the Christians were closely allied, we have good reason for the belief that they had united with the new organization in such numbers as to outvote the original members. Certain it is, that thenceforth the names of Essenes and Therapeutæ occurred no more. But the sect which gave shape to the concept had thus, to a certain degree at least, resumed control over the whole matter.