Judeo-Christian Beliefs II

Specifically in the teaching of Paul we find no reference to:

• Jesus being born in Bethlehem;
• Jesus growing up in Nazareth;
• Jesus being crucified under Pontius Pilate;
• Jesus being seen physically by any of the Apostles.

Even more specifically, Paul introduced into his teaching the Gnostic concept of a Redeemer: 'Our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this evil world' (Galatians, 1:3-4). Neither the Essenes nor Peter interpreted the resurrection of Jesus as an act of redemption for mankind. (? did Peter focus on the crucifixion as that act)
After his third missionary voyage, Paul was threatened with death at the hands of the Jews on account of these doctrinal differences. He appealed to Caesar, and after two years' imprisonment in Rome met his death between AD.64 and 68 - a victim of Nero's persecution of the Christians. Shortly afterwards, in the aftermath of a Jewish revolt in AD.70, the Roman general Pompey sacked and destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, and all Jews including the Essenes were forced to leave the city. Peter and his Judaeo-Christian branch of the church vanished without trace.
In the years that followed the four canonical Gospels appeared. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John accepted that John the Baptist's followers had witnessed the appearance of Jesus, and declared Joshua to be a 'pre-existence' of Jesus. This denial of the Jesus of the Old Testament was essential if they were to place the life, suffering and death of Jesus in the Roman era, including the virgin birth at Bethlehem, his childhood in Nazareth, his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, and his resurrection and subsequent physical appearance to the Jerusalem apostles. They also drew on the Old Testament for the basis of his teaching. The Gospels, therefore, should be looked upon as theological rather than historical works.
By the end of the first century AD, the centre of Christian activity having shifted to Rome after the sack of Jerusalem, Clement, Bishop of Rome (c.AD.90-100) argued that church leaders- bishops, priests and deacons - were delegated by God as 'rulers on earth' and that in order to be saved the laity should submit to them. Other branches of the church increasingly followed Rome's example, and by the end of the 2nd century a unified church began to emerge.
The Gnostics, who throughout their history had never adopted a priestly hierarchy, were condemned as heretics. The earlier Jerusalem compromise that Peter would be apostle to the Jews and Paul apostle to the Gentiles was overthrown. Although the Gentile church, and therefore the church in Rome, had been founded on Paul's teaching, and Paul had derived his belief and inspiration from the Gnostics, the new Roman hierarchy claimed that the line of apostolic succession derived from Peter and the Jerusalem Judaeo-Christian church.
Paul became diminished and extravagant claims were made to enhance the importance of Peter:

• Peter was the first person to encounter the resurrected Christ, who named Peter as his successor;
• Peter visited Rome and lived there for 25 years before his martyrdom at the hands of Nero;
• Babylon, the source of Peter's first epistle, was 'a code name for Rome'.

None of these claims had any substance whatsoever, but by the 3rd century AD tradition had it that Peter was buried on the Vatican Hill, which thus became the seat of the Popes.
This rewriting of history was continued in the Acts of the
Apostles, first mentioned by the Early Church Father Bishop
Irenaeus, writing between AD.170 and 180. The Acts distorts
Paul's autobiographical record:

• no mention is made of his years in 'Arabia'
• his conversion links him with the Jerusalem church as the source of his faith (the road to Damascus);
• his baptism was at the hands of the Judaeo-Christian Ananaias;
• he preached Christ in the synagogues (i.e. he preached what he had learned from the Judaeo-Christians).

Because the Gnostics remained resolutely opposed to the division of the church into clergy and laity, the bishops determined to define what they regarded as the true faith. The Creed was the result; anyone who held alternative beliefs was regarded as a heretic. The orthodox Christianity that emerged around the middle of the 2nd century AD was a result of conflict between the bishops and Gnostic teachers. When, in the 4th century AD, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the bishops, now empowered by the state, declared possession of heretical books a criminal offence, and ordered them to be seized and destroyed. It was then that the Gnostics at Nag Hammadi saved their library by burying it in a cliff, a precaution which on its discovery some fifteen centuries later has allowed further evidence of where the true roots of Christianity lie - not in Judaea but in Egypt - to come to light.
So the Roman church, the church of the bishops, buttressed the mythical Jesus of the Gospels with the strength of dogmatic belief; reinvented Paul to sever him from the Gnostic tradition and gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom; suppressed, at the hands of the Roman bishop of Alexandria, the cult of Serapis, burning its temple and the contents of its library; and persecuted as heretics all those who continued to worship according to the Essene and Gnostic traditions.
The suppression and defacement of Ancient Egypt's records and monuments by the Early Church is only paralleled by the fever of excitement which has attended the discovery and often trans-shipment of Egyptian artefacts in modern times coupled with the cracking of the hieroglyphic code. Neo-Platonism had always given Egypt its due, hence the great obelisk erected for the Pope by Bernini in Piazza Navona, Rome. Tens of thousands of Londoners swarmed beside the Thames and on its bridges to witness the raising of 'Cleopatra's Needle' on the embankment. Huge excitement and interest greeted Tutankhamun when he was resurrected by Howard Carter in 1935, and the post-war exhibitions of the spectacular tomb findings attracted millions of visitors. One might almost call them worshippers as they gazed at the funerary mask of the boy king and sacrifician victim.