Behind The Bible Fraud

[Stefanus]

Behind The Bible Fraud -
What Was The Church Trying To Hide?

By Robert Adams
New Dawn Magazine.com
6-21-5


When I first spoke to a close Christian friend of mine about the publishing of Tony Bushby's The Bible Fraud, her reaction was one that many Christians have expressed, and one that made me aghast. She didn't want the book available because it would "persuade them away from the Bible and the word of God." Further discussions with her and many other Christians around the world about The Bible Fraud all result in the Bible being quoted as the ultimate reference for the apparent "words of God," and therefore the basis for their arguments. The problem lies in that they believe the Bible is infallible.

If we examine the oldest known Bible to date, the "Sinai Bible" housed in the British Museum (I believe that, during his many years of research, Tony had a private viewing of this priceless book), we find a staggering 14,800 differences from today's Bible and yet it still remains the word of God?

As Tony points out, the history of our 'genuine' Bibles is a convoluted one. Firstly we cannot be sure that we have the full version as it was originally intended. In 1415 the Church of Rome took an extraordinary step to destroy all knowledge of two second century Jewish books that it said contained the true name of Jesus Christ. The Antipope Benedict XIII firstly singled out for condemnation a secret Latin treatise called "Mar Yesu" and then issued instructions to destroy all copies of the book of Elxai. The Rabbinic fraternity once held the destroyed manuscripts with great reverence for they were comprehensive original records reporting the life of Rabbi Jesus.

Later, Pope Alexander VI ordered all copies of the Talmud destroyed, with the Spanish Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada (1420-98) responsible for the elimination of 6,000 volumes at Salamanca alone.

Solomon Romano (1554) also burnt many thousands of Hebrew scrolls and, in 1559, every Hebrew book in the city of Prague was confiscated. The mass destruction of Jewish books included hundreds of copies of the Old Testament and caused the irretrievable loss of many original handwritten documents.

The oldest text of the Old Testament that survived, before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls" was said to be the Bodleian Codex (Oxford), which was dated to circa 1100 AD. In an attempt by the church to remove damaging Rabbinic information about Jesus Christ from the face of the earth, the Inquisition burnt 12,000 volumes of the Talmud.

In 1607, forty-seven men (some records say fifty four) took two years and nine months to re-write the Bible and make it ready for press. It was, by the order of King James, issued with a set of personal 'rules' the translators were to follow. Upon its completion in 1609, it was handed over to the King James for his final approval. However, "It was self evident that James was not competent to check their work and edit it, so he passed the manuscripts onto the greatest genius of all time... Sir Francis Bacon"

The first English language manuscripts of the Bible remained in Bacon's possession for nearly a year. During that time ... "he hammered the various styles of the translators into the unity, rhythm, and music of Shakespearean prose, wrote the prefaces and created the whole scheme of the Authorized Version. At the completion of the editing, King James ordered a 'dedication to the King' to be drawn up and included in the opening pages. He also wanted the phrase 'Appointed to be read in the churches' to appear on the title page.

The King James Bible is considered by many today to be the 'original' Bible and therefore 'genuine' and all later revisions simply counterfeits forged by 'higher critics'. Others think the King James Bible is 'authentic' and 'authorized' and presents the original words of the authors as translated into English from the 'original' Greek texts. However, as Tony points out, the 'original' Greek text was not written until around the mid fourth century and was a revised edition of writings compiled decades earlier in Aramaic and Hebrew. Those earlier documents no longer exist and the Bibles we have today are five linguistic removes from the first bibles written. What was written in the 'original originals' is quite unknown. It is important to remember that the words 'authorized' and 'original', as applied to the Bible do not mean 'genuine', 'authentic' or 'true'.

By the early third century, it became well noted that a problem was occurring . politics! In 251AD, the number of Presbyter's (roving orator or priest) writings had increased dramatically and bitter arguments raged between opposing factions about their conflicting stories. According to Presbyter Albius Theodoret (circa 255), there were "more than two hundred" variant gospels in use in his time. In 313, groups of Presbyters and Biscops (Bishops) violently clashed over the variations in their writings and "altar was set against altar" in competing for an audience and territory.

When Emperor Constantine conquered the East in 324, he sent his Spanish religious advisor, Osius of Cordoba, to Alexandria with letters to several Biscops exhorting them to make peace among their own. But the mission failed and Constantine, probably at the suggestions of Osius, then issued a decree commanding all Presbyters and their subordinates "be mounted on asses, mules and horses belonging to the public and travel to the city of Nicaea" in the Roman province of Bithymia, the country of Asia. The Presbyters were instructed by the Emperor to bring with them the manuscripts from which they orated to the rabble (that's us!) "wrapped and bound in leather".

Constantine saw in this developing system of belief the opportunity to make a combined state religion and protect it by law. The first general church council was thus convened and the year was 325.

On 21 June, the day of the Summer Solstice, (and under those cult conditions) a total of 2048 "presbyters, deacons, sub-deacons, acolytes and exorcists" gathered at Nicaea to decide what Christianity really was, what it would be, what writings were to be used and who was to be it's God.

Ancient church evidence established that a new 'god' was to be approved by the Roman Emperor and an earlier attempt (circa 210) to deify either Judas Khrestus or his twin brother Rabbi Jesus (or somebody else) had been 'declined'. Therefore, as late as 325, the Christian religion did not have an official god.

After a long and bitter debate, a vote was finally taken and it was with a majority show of hands that Judas Khrestus and Rabbi Jesus both became God (161votes for and 157 votes against). The Emperor effectively joined elements of the two individual life stories of the twin brothers into a singular creation. The doctrine of the Celtic / British church of the west was democratically attached to the Presbyters stories of the east.

A deification ceremony was then performed 'Apotheosis'. Thus the deified ones were then called 'saviours' and looked upon as gods. Temples, altars, and images with attributes of divinity were then erected and public holidays proclaimed on their birthdays.

Following the original example set by the deification of Caesar, their funerals were dramatized as the scene of their resurrection and immortality. All these godly attributes passed as a legal right to Emperor Constantine's new deity, Jesus Christ.

The Emperor then instructed Bishop Eusebius to compile a uniform collection of new writings "bound together as one" using the stories from the large collection of Presbyters as his reference source. Eusebius was to arrange for the production of "fifty sumptuous copies ... to be written on parchment in a legible manner, and in a convenient portable form, by professional scribes thoroughly accomplished in the art". This was the first mention of finished copies of a Christian 'New Testament' in the history of mankind.

As one can imagine, to condense the real life of the Jesus Christ, the Church and His teachings with supporting evidence into a short article is very difficult. It is therefore wise for those who wish to have supportable evidence to read and study Tony Bushby's epic work, The Bible Fraud, along with it's detailed blood lines (family trees) and over 869 references.

However, attempting to summarize what Tony has written..... in 325 AD, the first Christian council was called at Nicaea to bring the stories of twin brothers, Jesus 'the Rabbi' and Judas Khrestus into one deity that we now know as Jesus Christ. Tony says they were not born of virgin birth but to Nabatean Arab Mariamne Herod (now known as the Virgin Mary) and fathered by Tiberius ben Panthera, a Roman Centurion. The brothers were raised in the Essene community and became Khrists of their faith. Rabbi Jesus later was initiated in Egypt at the highest of levels similar to the 33rd degree of Freemasonry of which many Prime ministers and Presidents around the world today are members. He then later married three wives, one of whom we know as a Mary Magdalene, a Druidic Princess, stole the Torah from the temple and moved to Lud, now London.

Tony believes the reason Jesus stole the Torah was that he said it contained "a very special secret", which he was going to reveal that secret to the world. He was stoned to death and the Torah taken from him before he could.

The elder brother, Judas Khrestus, with his "Khrestian" followers conspired to take the throne of Rome, his royal birthright, and was captured, tried, and was sentenced to be crucified. (The "Khrestians" and the Essenic army, the Nazarenes, would today be likened to terrorists.) At the trial, Judas exercised his royal birthright to have a replacement in Simon of Cyrene (Luke 23:41) and then was sold as a slave to live out his days as a carpenter in India.

Rabbi Jesus spent a considerable amount of time at the Palace of the British in Rome and sometime around 48 AD, he left for Egypt to pursue his greatest esoteric goal. The spiritual knowledge from his secret education in the Essene and Druid movements was soon to be elevated to the highest level possible - initiation into the innermost rite of the Egyptian temples.

It was probable that Rabbi Jesus' earlier initiation into both the Essene and Druid schools played a major part in his acceptance into the Egyptian school. The Druids could claim a very early origin and the essence of their wisdom was also that of the Essenes. In the case of the Essenes, it is possible to show that their movement was specifically established to preserve secret information, for they knew and used the sacred writing of the Initiates. The full meaning of the point being made by Bushby is that in the case of all Secret Schools, the inner and ultimate Mystery was revealed only to a High Initiate.

Those who were initiated into the Ancient mysteries took a solemn oath never to reveal what had passed within the sacred walls. Every year only a comparatively few Egyptian initiations were conducted, and the number of persons who knew their secrets was never at any time large. The initiations always took place with the onset of darkness and the candidate was entranced for periods of varying length, depending upon the level of the degree for which he had entered.

The first initiatory step involved a forty-day procedure that basically involved purification, not only in physical form, but dissolving all tendencies to evil thoughts, purifying the mind as well. It appears that he would have fasted, alternatively on vegetables, juices and very special herbal concoctions.

The New Testament recorded that this happened to Rabbi Jesus who "was led into the desert.... and he fasted forty days and forty nights" (Matt. 4:1-2).

This trial period involved more than just fasting. During the forty days and nights' ordeal, Tony says the candidate was required to study astronomical charts to supplement his skills in astronomy and memorize charts of the heavens. They were also given a particular ritual from which to memorize certain passwords, secret signs and handclasps, skills that are still practiced to this day in Freemasonry.

These initiations were not limited to Egypt. The ancient civilizations inherited these Mysteries from a remote antiquity and they constituted part of a primitive revelation from the gods to the human race. Almost every people of pre-Christian times possessed its institution and tradition of the mysteries. The Romans, the Druids of Britain, the Greeks, the Cretans, the Syrians, the Hindus, the Persians, the Maya and the American Indians, among others, had corresponding temples and rites with a system of graduated illuminations for the initiates.

The modern world knows little of these ancient rites yet they were conducted in a huge variety of buildings the world over.

The 'Towers' that are found throughout the East in Asia were directly connected with the Mystery-initiations. The candidates for initiation were placed in them for three days and three nights, whenever there was no temple with a subterranean crypt close at hand.

In this aspect of the initiatory procedure, Tony points out a direct Gospel parallel with Rabbi Jesus saying, "After three days I shall rise again", for he knew the finishing process he was to undertake would take three days being a symbol of the period of time required to complete a condition of development. The ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts speak of an initiate as 'twice-born', and he was permitted to add to his name the words 'he who has renewed his life', so that on some ancient tomb-inscriptions archaeologists still discover these phases descriptive of the spiritual status of the deceased person.

So little did the later Gospel writers understand the initiatory process that they never perceived they were developing a story that included a Rabbi's (and Arch Druid of Britain) experience in an Egyptian Mystery School.

St Austin (c. 380) asserted that it was generally known in church circles that Rabbi Jesus had been initiated in Egypt, and that "he wrote books concerning magic". In the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Jews brought the same accusation before Pontius Pilate, "Did we not tell you he was a magician?" Celsus (c. 178) spoke of the same charge. In the Clementine Recognitions, the accusation was brought against Rabbi Jesus that he did not perform any miracles but practiced magic and carried about with him the figure of a seated skeleton.

Jewish tradition invariably asserted that Rabbi Jesus learned 'magic' in Egypt. Bushby says the kernel of this persistent accusation may perhaps be reduced to the simple historical element that Rabbi Jesus went to Egypt and returned with far wider and more enlightened views than those of his former religious associates.

Now, I'm sure that many of you are having trouble grasping some of the ideas presented in this article and I congratulate you on taking the effort to read this far. We all need to demand our local Church, the Church scholars, theologians and media make an open examination of the evidence compiled in Tony Bushby's The Bible Fraud. It may rattle some core beliefs but what is more important to you . the truth or what sits comfortably because it's what you've known all you life?

I leave you with a quote from one of the conspirators

"How well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ has been for us." Pope Leo X (1513-1521)

Article first published in New Dawn Magazine No 71, March 2002

[Stefanus]

The Bible Fraud

Fraud in the Bible
or It Sucks That You Don't Know Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic

What is Pious Fraud?

Pious fraud was a common technique employed by early Christian writers to make a point. Their intention was to convert anyone and everyone by any means available. One of the more persuasive methods was to write a text and falsely tell others that it was written in first person. For example, the four canonized gospel tales were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. That has been a well known fact for about 200 years. And to this day, no one knows who the gospel stories were written by. These texts are perfect examples of pious fraud. Pious fraud is the foundation of the deception known as Christianity and it continues to this day.

During the first couple of centuries of the Common Era the early Christian priest craft, which would eventually become the early Catholic fathers, were in the process of assimilating religions from all over Europe. Ultimately the new religion become known as the Christian religion, or more accurately The Catholic Church. The Bible was put together by hundreds of people who were either at the head of the fraud or were pawns in its assembly. Once the original languages were translated into Latin, it was only a matter of time before the original language nuances could be discarded. Ever wonder why it was punishable by death to read the Bible during the Middle Ages? Punishable by death by the common folk to read it, that is. Well, the reason was that the priest craft was well aware of the errors, inconsistencies and flat-out lies that riddled the Bible. If the common man found out, it could have been the death of the Church's authority, power and control over the masses. And since the original languages are rarely, if ever, used by those who read the Bible (well, those who actually READ it), the fraud is perpetuated.

When a pious fraud is knowingly perpetuated in the name of power and money, you have deception. Remember, 1700-2000 years ago, when these texts were being assembled into a 'new testament', the vast majority of humanity was illiterate. Science was not known. Demons rules the world. Anything could be put forth and said to be 'absolute truth' when it was in fact, completely fraudulent.

What is the implication of this? The implication is self-evident. The story of Genesis, that Christian proselytizers love to advance (althou it is part of the much older Jewish texts), is a complete and utter forgery. In that story we are led to believe that there was a single god who created the earth, etc. in 6 days. Not only has science proven the timeline to be completely false, the religious aspect is a complete fabrication. At the time that the Genesis story was supposed to have been written the Hebrew people were not monotheistic. That's history. They believed in many gods and Genesis proves it. The story actually goes back to before the Hebrews were a distinct people-it is not Hebrew in origin.


Pious Fraud in Translation

Let's take a look at the very first words of the book of Genesis. Note very carefully that the Hebrew culture, at the time of this writing, was not monotheistic, but rather, polytheistic. Will your priest, minister or preacher tell you that? No. But you can find out for yourself with a simple dictionary.

The Hebrew word for God is el; the plural is elohim, gods. What is the first sentence in the Bible?

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen. 1:1).

Here is Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew (transliterated into the Latin alphabet, of course):

"Bereshith bara elohim," etc.,

"In-beginning created (the) gods (the) heavens and (the) earth."

In the same chapter the word "elohim" (gods) is used thirty times., Those gods are the ones who created the 'universe' in 6 days.

To clarify, here is the translation of the Hebrew text of Genesis 1. Notice how Jewish and Christian 'fathers' don't bother to tell you what the original text says. They would like you to believe that a single god created everything. But, they messed up big time and actually translated it properly. In plain English, the translation reads 'let us make man in our image':

Here are three examples of the Hebrew plural gods mentioned in Genesis: 1. "And-said elohim (gods), let-US-make man (adam) in-image-OUR, after-likeness-OUR" (1:26).

2. And when "adam" had eaten of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, "the Lord God" said, "Behold, the-man has become like one of US, to know good and evil" (3:27).

3. And when the Tower of Babel was being built: "The Lord [Heb. Yahveh] said ... Come, let US go down," etc.

Elohim

When speaking of the Hebrew deity, Yahveh, elohim, (gods) is used in the Hebrew texts, The plural elohim is used 2570 times. It is always falsely translated to the singular "God", thus falsely making us believe that this text was written at a time when the Hebrew people were monothestic, when it clearly is the case (written at least 2570 times, no less!) that they WERE NOT.

In the three Genesis verses above, there are three different designations of the Hebrew deity or deities: elohim, (gods), falsely translated "God":

Lord God (Heb. Yahveh-elohim); and Lord (Heb. Yahveh). Yahveh is the proper name of the Hebrew God, which, in English, is Jehovah.

Yahveh-elohim is a Hebrew "construct-form" which is translated to "Yahveh-of-the-gods." Invariably these personal names were falsely translated "Lord" and "Lord God," respectively, for purposes of pious fraud.


First Man, First Woman

There was no first man "Adam," according to the Hebrew text. The word adam in Hebrew is a common noun, meaning man in a generic sense and in Genesis 1:26, it states:

"And elohim (gods) said, Let us make adam (man)"; and so "elohim created ha- adam (the-man); ... male and female created he them" (1: 27).

In the second creation story, where man is first made alone:

"Yahveh formed ha-adam (the-man) out of the dust of ha-adamah-the ground" (2:7).

Man is called in Hebrew adam because he was formed out of adamah, the ground; just as in Latin man is called homo because he was formed from humus, the ground. Early Christian father Lactantius stated it as 'homo ex humo' ('man from the ground', or 'dust' as it commonly stated today).

The forging of the name Adam from the Hebrew noun adam into a mythical proper name Adam, was after the so-called Exodus. The fraud in the forging of fictitious genealogies from "in the beginning" to Father Abraham.

And this wasn't done by Christians, but rather by early Hebrew priests. Nonetheless, early Christians took this deception and used it for their own newly forged religion.

Who has a Soul?

In Genesis 1 is the account of the creation of the elohim-gods-on the fifth day, of "nephesh hayyah" which is "the moving creature that hath life," and of "nephesh hayyah-every living creature" out of the waters (1:20, 21); and on the sixth day of "nephesh hayyah-the living creature" out of the ground (1:24); and he gave to ha-adam-the-man dominion over "kol nephesh hagyah-everything wherein there is life," (1:30.)

The Hebrew text states that all animal living creatures are by God called "nephesh hayyah," literally "living soul".

In Chapter 2 is the history of ha-adam made from ha-adamah; and, in contrast to these lowly "living creatures" (nephesh hayyah), Yahveh-clohim "breathed into his nostrils nishmath hayyim -- (living breaths), and ha-adam became nephesh hayyah-a living soul". (2:7)

In Hebrew everywhere you read the word nephesh it simply means soul, and hayyah (living) is the feminine singular adjective from hai, life.

In the original Hebrew texts, Man was created exactly the same as the other animals. All had or were 'nephesh hayyah' or living souls.

Remember, tho, that the reason there are two creation stories is because two culture's stories of creation were woven together by the early Hebrew priest craft.

Unknown scribes, in translation, made animals merely creatures, and "Creation's masterpiece, Man," became a "living soul." They falsely altered these plain words so as to deceive us into believing a special God-breathed soul is in man which is completely different from animal that merely perishes to dust.

The implication of this is that someone has fraudulently decided that we are a special creation that has a soul, and eliminated the actual words of what Genesis says. Now all other animals don't have a soul. According to the story, all things that live have a soul. So what happened here? Forgery. That's what happened.

Chalk one up for vegetarians.

There Was No Continuous Hebrew Monotheistic Culture

When Yahveh appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush, and announced himself as "the God of thy fathers," he was a total stranger to Moses. How do I know? Read the account. It doesn't take a scholar to read where Moses ASKS who's taking. No, Moses wasn't merely surprised at the voice he simply didn't know what was going on. (The fact that Moses is just a rehash of the Egyptian Mises is another essay altogether. But for the purposes of this essay, I'm pretending that Moses was a real person.)

Moses did not know this Yahveh, and had never heard of him. So that he asked, "What is thy name?" -so that he could report it to the people back home in Egypt, who had never heard it. After some intermission, the God came directly to the point, and declared-here are the exact words-one of the most notorious falsities in the Hebrew text:

"And elohim spake unto Moses, and said unto him., anoki Yahveh -- I am the Lord!

"And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of el-shaddai, but by my name Yahveh (JEHOVAH) was I not known to them." (Ex. 6:2, 8.)

The Hebrew God for the first time since the world began, is "revealed" to mankind the "ineffable name" of Yahveh, here first appearing in the Bible translations, and there printed as JEHOVAH in capital letters; for more vivid and awe-inspiring impression.

But this is a notorious lie-since we known that Moses did not write the first five books of the Hebrew text.

In Genesis 2:4, the name YAHVEH first appears; "in the day that Yahveh-elohim made the earth and the heavens." Its first recorded use as a mystical personage, was when Eve "conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from Yahveh-the Lord." (Gen. 4:1.)

The personal name YAHVEH occurs in the Book of Genesis one hundred and fifty-six times. It's spoken dozens of times by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as any one can read in Genesis. Every single time that the title "the Lord" and "the Lord God" appears, it is a false translation by the priests for the Hebrew personal name YAHVEH.

Throughout the Hebrew "scriptures" it occurs thousands of times: "The sacred name occurs in Genesis ~156 times; and is found in the Old Testament approximately 6000 times, either alone or in along with another Divine name."

More exactly, the Tetragrammaton (YHVH), appears in the Old Testament 6823 times as the proper name of God as the God of Israel. As such it serves to distinguish him from the gods of the other nations." Thus was the Hebrew tribal god YAHVEH distinguished from Bel, and Chemosh, and Dagon, and Shamash, and the dozens of "gods of the nations". Just as James would distinguish his name from Rudolph, or Cary, this was precisely the Hebrew usage-to distinguish one heathen god from another.

And this the pious translators, foisting their fraud on us, sought to hide, giving names to all the "other gods," but suppressing a name for the Hebrew deity, who as "the Lord," or "the Lord God," was high and unique, "a god above all gods," -the one and only true God-thru the use of a tetragrammaton.

But yet a more malicious and evil-intentioned deception, 6828 times, is the name of the Hebrew God concealed by false rendition for the deliberate purpose of forging the whole Hebrew texts, as translated, into a semblance of harmony with the false declaration of Exodus 6:3, that "by my name YAHVEH was I not know unto them."

Search as one may, outside Exodus 6:3, the god-name YAHVEH (Jehovah) is never to be found in the translations, except in Psalm 78:18, and Isaiah 12:2 and 26:4. (But they are irrelevant for this discussion because those passages were written well after the original 5 books were forged.)

The false translations thus "make truth to be a liar," the lie of Exodus 6:3 to seem the truth; and a barbarous heathen tribal god among a hundred neighbor and competitive gods to be the nameless One Lord God of the Universe. For more on this tribal god, you can read

Who is this Jehovah and Where Does He Live?

What does this imply? It implies this: the Hebrew-Christian-One-God is a patent forgery and myth; a mythological Father-god can have no "only begotten Son"; Jesus Christ is a myth even before he is mythically born by the forged whimsy of the early Christian 'fathers'.


A Few Translations

These translations, while only three in number, will change your whole way of thinking about what is being presented in your Bible.

Son of Man: In all three major Semitic languages (Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic) the term barnasha means "human being". Jesus often referred to himself as a human being (28 times in the Gospels). Barnasha comes from bar (son) and nasha (man). The meaning of barnasha has created a lot of confusion in the Gospels. It is impossible to translate the Aramaic term of barnasha literally as "son of man" - and yet most biblical translators have and still do just that to this day. In the Aramaic language the word bar is combined with many other words to create different meanings - most specifically is means a "likeness." For example barabba means "resembles his father". Barhila translated literally would mean "son of power" but in reality it means "soldier". So when we read in the Gospels the phrase "son of man" it should be read correctly as "human being".

Son of God: The word bar means a likeness or resemblance to the suffix word. The Aramaic term that Son of God comes from is bardalaha. Translated literally as "son of God" it does not mean this. Bardalaha in reality means "like God" or "God-like". So when Jesus is referred to as the "Son of God" we should read this correctly as "God-like" or "like God". So what does that tell you about the translation we read in today's Bibles? It tells you that Jesus was not the Son of God - but that he was "God-like". There is a big difference. Jesus himself repeatedly referred to himself as a "human being". The Aramaic reference does not mean one is physically divine - it means there is an important spiritual relationship between God and the man whom is bestowed that phraseology. In addition, don't forget that the Council of Nicea in 325 CE voted to change the human Jesus to a supernatural being. It wasn't until that time that any church thought of Jesus as such.

Only Begotten Son: The world ehedaya is Aramaic. It is very important to understand its meaning when hearing that phrase being bantered about. When we read that Jesus was God's "only begotten son" - it is an incorrect translation of the Aramaic word. The term is found exclusively in the Gospel of John. The phrase we read in English was translated from a Greek word, monogenes. Monos means "single" or "one" and genos means "kind". So the Greek translation originally was with "one-of-a-kind". So where does 'begotten' come from? The Greek word genos is distantly related to the verb gennan which means "to beget". Thus, to translate monogenes as "only begotten" is improper and incorrect--which is an indication of an ill-trained translator being involved with the text. The actual translation should be "unique son" or "one-of-a-kind". The Aramaic word ehedaya means "sole heir" and "the beloved". So when we combine monogenes ehedaya we get "one-of-a-kind, beloved son". That's considerably different from 'only begotten son'.

[Stefanus]

The Bible Fraud

The Bible Fraud

by Tony Bushby

TWO CONFUSED STORIES IN THE GOSPELS

Jesus Christ has captured the imagination of millions of people around the world for almost 2,000 years. Few people know that he represents something far different, and the following chapters unravel an entirely new story about the circumstances surrounding the birth and emergence of the Christian religion.

In order to cover this ground, it is necessary to consider the New Testament stories from a different perspective. By stripping away their supernatural elements, the earliest Church writings relay a confused skeletal outline of the lives of two separate men. This work unravels those stories and shows how the New Testament came into being and what it really is. Until now, this aspect of the Gospel story has never been fully developed; and by coordinating new information with surviving records, a reconstruction of the probable course of events that resulted in Christianity today is presented.

WHAT WAS THE CHURCH TRYING TO HIDE?

In 1415, the Church of Rome took an extraordinary step to destroy all knowledge of two second-century Jewish books that it said contained "the true name of Jesus Christ". The antipope Benedict XIII firstly singled out for condemnation a secret Latin treatise called Mar Yesu, and then issued instructions to destroy all copies of the Book of Elxai. No editions of these writings now publicly exist, but Church archives recorded that they were once in popular circulation and known to the early presbyters.

Knowledge of these writings survived from quotations made by Bishop Hippolytus of Rome (176-236) and St Epiphanius of Salamis (315-403), along with references in some early editions of the Talmud of Palestine and of Babylonia. The Rabbinic fraternity once held the destroyed manuscripts with great reverence, for they were comprehensive original records reporting "the life of Rabbi Jesus".

Later, in a similar manner, Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) ordered all copies of the Talmud destroyed. The Council of the Inquisition required as many Jewish writings as possible to be burned, with the Spanish Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada (1420-98) responsible for the elimination of 6,000 volumes at Salamanca. In 1550, Cardinal Caraffa, the Inquisitor-General, procured a Bull from the Pope, repealing all previous permission for priests to read the Talmud which he said contained "hostile stories about Jesus Christ".

Bursting forth with fury at the head of his minions, he seized every copy he could find in Rome and burned them. Solomon Romano (1554) also burned many thousands of Hebrew scrolls, and in 1559 every Hebrew book in the city of Prague was confiscated.

The mass destruction of Jewish books included hundreds of copies of the Old Testament and caused the irretrievable loss of many original handwritten documents. The oldest text of the Old Testament that survived, before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, was said to be the Bodleian Codex (Oxford), which was dated to circa 1100. In an attempt by the Church to remove damaging Rabbinic information about Jesus Christ from the face of the Earth, the Inquisition burned 12,000 volumes of the Talmud. However, many copies survived and today provide opposing traditions about the person called Jesus Christ.

In the mass destruction of Jewish writings, the Church overlooked two particular British documents that also recorded "the true name of Jesus Christ". They survive to this day in the British Museum, and are called the Chronicles and the Myvyean Manuscript - treasured ancient documents with a very early origin. Supporting evidence was also found on early first-century gold, silver and bronze coins discovered at the site of an ancient mint at Camulodunum (Colchester) in Britain.

"Thus the testimony of the Briton coins establishes clearly and positively the historicity of the traditional ancient ?Chronicles? as authentic historical records."

The evidence is compelling, and additional supporting clues are found on a mysterious headstone in Germany, in Vatican art treasures and in a series of coded sentences in the Shakespearean plays. Further concealed information was left in the form of specially created statues commissioned by a Catholic priest and positioned in a small hilltop church in southern France. Coded ciphers were also secreted into the first English-language printings of the Bible, and a combination of all clues provides interlocking information and presents a new insight into the origin of Christianity.


Secret Ciphers in the New Testament

It was the "wisest fool in Christendom" who "authorized" the translation and publication of the first Protestant version of the Bible in English. He came to the English throne in 1603 and quickly became unpopular because of "his disgusting personal habits and his unsavoury character". He pretended to be a scholar in theology and philosophy, but his learning was shallow and superficial. He wallowed in filth, moral and physical, but was endowed with a share of cunning that his associates called "a kind of crooked wisdom".

For his new edition of the Bible, King James I issued a set of personal "Rules" the translators were to follow and ordered revisions to proceed, although he never contributed a farthing to its cost. Work began early in 1607 and took a committee of 47 men (some records say 54, others say 50) two years and nine months to rewrite the Bible and make it ready for the press. Each man received 30 shillings per week for his contribution.

Upon its completion in 1609, a remarkable event occurred. The translators handed over the reviser?s manuscripts of what is now called the King James Bible to the King for his final personal approval.

"It was self-evident that James was not competent to check their work and edit it, so he passed the manuscripts on to the greatest genius of all time... Sir Francis Bacon."

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was a man of many talents, a lawyer, linguist and composer. He mastered every subject he undertook: mathematics, geometry, music, poetry, painting, astronomy, classical drama and poetry, philosophy, history, theology and architecture. He was a man of many aims and purposes, the father of modern science, remodeller of modern law, patron of modern democracy and possibly the reviver of Freemasonry.

His life and works are extensively documented and his intellectual accomplishments widely recognized, particularly in academic circles. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to Paris "direct from the Queen?s Hand" and there studied Egyptian, Arabian, Indian and Greek philosophy, with particular attention given to the ancient mysteries and their ritual rites. He personally recorded that while in Paris he created a secret cipher system that could be inserted into a document without arousing suspicion.

While living in Europe, Francis Bacon was initiated into the mysterious Order of the Knights Templar and learned a very special secret. Before he returned to London, he travelled through France, Italy, Germany and Spain, and at the age of twenty he completely devoted himself to the study of law. From his understanding of the secret information he had learned during his initiation into the Knights Templar, he conceived the idea of reactivating various secret societies and in 1580 founded the secret Rosicrosse Literary Society in Gray?s Inn. Later in the same year, he founded the Lodge of Free and Accepted or Speculative Masons, also at Gray?s Inn.

On 25 June 1607, Sir Francis Bacon was appointed Solicitor-General and Chief Adviser to the Crown. He had presented new ideas to the government for the reformation of the Church and was officially instructed to commence restructuring the Bible. Research in the Records Office of the British Museum revealed that original documents still exist which refer to important proceedings associated with Sir Francis Bacon?s involvement with the editing of both the Old and New Testaments.

They reveal that he personally selected and paid the revisers of the New Testament, who completed their task under the instructions of Bacon?s long-time friend, Dr Andrews. The first English-language manuscripts of the Bible remained in Bacon?s possession for nearly a year. During that time:

...he hammered the various styles of the translators into the unity, rhythm, and music of Shakespearean prose, wrote the Prefaces and created the whole scheme of the Authorized Version.

He also encoded secret information into both the Old and New Testaments. An ancient document recorded that the true history of early Christianity was known to the initiates of the Order of the Knights Templar, having originally been:

...imparted to Hugh de Payens by the Grand-Pontiff of the Order of the Temple (of the Nazarene sect), one named Theocletes, after which it was learned by some Knights in Palestine.

Regarding the months of editing work applied to the Bible by Bacon, his biographer, William T. Smedley, confirmed the extent of the editing:

It will eventually be proved that the whole structure of the Authorized Bible was Francis Bacon?s. He was an ardent student not only of the Bible, but also of early manuscripts. St Augustine, St Jerome, and writers of theological works were studied by him with industry.

At the completion of the editing, Sir Francis Bacon and King James I had a series of meetings to finalize editorial matters associated with the new Bible. It was at this time that King James ordered a "Dedication to the King" to be drawn up and included in the opening pages. He also wanted the phrase "Appointed to be read in the Churches" to appear on the title page. This was an announcement clarifying that King James had personally given the Church [of England] "special command" for this particular version of the Bible to be used in preference to the vast array of Greek and Latin Vulgate Bibles current at the time.

His reason was personal, as King James had previously instructed the revisers to "defend the position of the King" in their restructuring of the texts. This was seen as an attempt to distance the Protestant Bible from the Catholic version. The Protestant versions of the Bible are thinner by seven books than the Catholic version and the variant churches have never agreed on a uniform Bible. In their translation of 1 Peter 2:13, the revisers changed the phrase "the emperor, as supreme" to "the king, as supreme".

Because King James?s Bible was written to support the authority of a king, the later Church often referred to it as the one from "authority", and it later came to be presented as if officially "authorized". In subsequent revisions, the word "authorized" found its way onto the title page and later still came to be printed on the cover, giving King James?s new Bible a false sense of authenticity.

The King James Bible is considered by many today to be the "original" Bible and therefore "genuine", and all later revisions simply counterfeits forged by "higher critics". Others think the King James Bible is "authentic" and "authorized" and presents the original words of the authors as translated into English from the "original" Greek text.

However, the "original" Greek text was not written until around the mid-fourth century and was a revised edition of writings compiled decades earlier in Aramaic and Hebrew. Those earlier documents no longer exist, and the Bibles we have today are five linguistic removes from the first Bibles written. What was written in the "original originals" is quite unknown. It is important to remember that the words "authorized" and "original", as applied to the Bible, do not mean "genuine", "authentic" or "true"...


JUST WHO WERE THE PARENTS OF Jesus CHRIST?

In the opening sentence of a New Testament parable, Jesus stated:

A man of noble birth was on a long journey abroad, to have himself appointed king, and return. (Luke 19:12)

Herein lies part of a profound Gospel truth revealing the substance of historical information that the Church has strived for 2,000 years to conceal. This tale of long-ago misconceptions and mistaken identities must be clarified so that the original story may be seen to rest upon a true and sure foundation. For this purpose, we begin with the examination of Church writings purporting to record the birth of Jesus Christ.

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke state that Jesus Christ was the first-born of Mary and Joseph and that he had four younger brothers and at least two sisters (Mark 6:3). Roman Catholics are obliged to hold the opinion that the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ were the children of Joseph by a former marriage. This conclusion originally stemmed from the Gospel of James (the Protevanglium) which refers to the age of Joseph at the birth of Jesus.

However, it is clearly recorded that Joseph had sexual relations with Mary after the birth of Jesus. The statement in the Gospel of Matthew that Joseph "knew her not until she had born a son" (Matt. 1:25) eliminated the Church?s claim that Mary was a perpetual virgin. From the statements in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, it is clear that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were subsequent children of Mary in the fullest sense.

Joseph returned to Galilee with the intention of marrying Mary. The Gospels according to Matthew and Luke clearly explain that they were "betrothed" before Joseph?s departure. This was the equivalent of being "engaged" in modern-day terminology. However, upon his return some months later, it was plainly apparent that Mary "was with child" (Luke 2:5) and it "could not be hid from Joseph".

The Gospel of Matthew elaborated extensively upon the feelings of Joseph when he saw the violated condition of his bride-to-be. He was uneasy, and being unwilling to defame her he privately discussed ending their engagement (Matt. 1:19). From the description in the Gospels, it is clear that Joseph was not the biological father of Mary?s child. So, who was?


The Evidence of the Rabbis

The Jewish records of the Rabbis are of extreme importance in determining Gospel origins and the value of the Church presentation of the virgin birth story of Jesus Christ. A common appellation for Jesus in the Talmud is Yeshu?a ben Panthera, an allusion to the widespread Jewish belief during the earliest centuries of the Christian era that Jesus was the result of an illegitimate union between his mother and a Roman soldier named Tiberius Julius Abdes Panthera.

The Talmud enshrines within its pages Jewish oral law. It is divided into two parts, the Mishna and the Gemara. The first discusses such subjects as festivals and sacred things. The Gemara is basically a commentary on these subjects. When the Talmud was written is not known. Some authorities suggest a date of 150-160, around the same time the Christian Gospels began to emerge, while others say 450.

The Talmud writers mention Jesus? name 20 times and quite specifically documents that he was born an illegitimate son of a Roman soldier called Panthera, nicknamed "the Panther". Panthera?s existence was confirmed by the discovery of a mysterious tombstone at Bingerbr?ck in Germany. The engraving etched in the headstone reads:

Tiberius Julius Abdes Panthera, an archer, native of Sidon, Phoenicia, who in 9 AD was transferred to service in Rhineland [Germany].

This inscription adds fuel to the theory that Jesus was the illegitimate son of Mary and the soldier Panthera. Classical scholar Professor Morton Smith of Columbia University, USA, describes the tombstone as possibly "our only genuine relic of the holy family". In many Jewish references, Jesus is often referred to as "ben Panthera", ben meaning "son of". However cautious one ought to be in accepting anything about Jesus from Jewish sources, in the matter of Jesus ben Panthera the writers seem more consistent than the men we now call the Church fathers.

Scholars over the centuries have discussed at length why Jesus was so regularly called ben Panthera. Adamantius Origen, an early Christian historian and Church father (185-251), recorded the following verses about Mary from the research records of a highly regarded second-century historian and author named Celsus (c. 178):

Mary was turned out by her husband, a carpenter by profession, after she had been convicted of unfaithfulness. Cut off by her spouse, she gave birth to Jesus, a bastard; that Jesus, on account of his poverty, was hired out to go to Egypt; that while there he acquired certain (magical) powers which Egyptians pride themselves on possessing.

Later, in passage 1:32, Origen supports the Jewish records and confirms that the paramour of the mother of Jesus was a Roman soldier called Panthera, a name he repeats in verse 1:69. Some time during the 17th century, those sentences were erased from the oldest Vatican manuscripts and other codices under Church control.

The traditional Church writings of St Epiphanius, the Bishop of Salamis (315-403), again confirm the ben Panthera story, and his information is of a startling nature. This champion of Christian orthodoxy and saint of Roman Catholicism states:

Jesus was the son of a certain Julius whose surname was Panthera.

This is an extraordinary declaration, simply recorded in ancient records as accepted Church history. The ben Panthera legend was so widespread that two early stalwarts of the Christian Church inserted the name in the genealogies of Jesus and Mary as a matter of fact. Enlarging on that statement, this passage from the Talmud:

Rabbi Shiemon ben Azzai has said: I found in Jerusalem a book of genealogies; therein was written that Such-an-one [Jesus] is the bastard son of an adulteress.

"Such-an-one" was one of the well-known substitutes for Jesus in the Talmud, as has been proved and admitted on either side. Shiemon ben Azzai flourished at the end of the first century and beginning of the second. He was one of four famous Rabbis who, according to Talmudic tradition, "entered Paradise". He was a Chassid (the pious Jews of Palestine), most probably an Essene, and remained a celibate and rigid ascetic until his death.

The story of Mary?s pregnancy by a Roman soldier also appears in the sacred book of the Moslems, the Koran. It states that "a full-grown man" forced his attentions on Mary, and in her fear of the disgrace that would follow she left the area and bore Jesus in secret. This story was supported in the Gospel of Luke, with the description of the departure of Joseph and Mary from their home prior to the birth.

Rape was a common event in Palestine during the Roman occupation, and soldiers were notorious for their treatment of young women. It would be unthinkable for Mary to admit such an event had occurred, for under the Law of Moses a betrothed virgin who had sex with any man during the period of her betrothal was to be stoned to death by the men of the city (Deut. 22:21). Simply put, Mary faced the death penalty unless she could prove her innocence.


The Mother?s Name

There is another, lesser-known name Jesus was called during those early years, and that is "Yeshu?a ben Stada" (son of Stada). This name is recorded in the records of the Sanhedrin and also in the Talmud.

What can also be found in the Gemara, and has embarrassed Christian authorities for centuries, is this:

Ben Stada was ben Panthera, Rabbi Chisda said; the husband was Stada, the lover Panthera. Another said the husband was Paphos ben Jehuda; Stada was his mother... and she was unfaithful to her husband.

These apparently contradictory assertions can be ironed out when read in context. In summary, Stada was Yeshu?a (Jesus) ben Panthera?s mother.

The Gemara goes on to record that Yeshu?a ben Panthera "was hanged on the day before the Passover". That is to say, apparently, that after the stoning, ben Panthera?s body was hung or exposed on a vertical stake. Crucifixion was an unused mode of execution amongst the Jews, who favoured stoning as the main form of capital punishment. To shorten the cruelty of death by stoning, the victim was first rendered unconscious by a soporific drink, and subsequently the stoned body was exposed on a vertical stake as a warning to others.


The Evidence of the Safed Scroll

The name "ben Stada", given to Jesus in the Talmud, was found to be paralleled in the ancient Mehgheehlla Scroll, which was discovered by Russian physician D. B. de Waltoff near Lake Tiberius in 1882 and is now called simply "the Safed Scroll".

In this old text, there were two brothers called Yeshai and Judas ben Halachmee who were the illegitimate twin sons born of a fifteen-year-old girl called Stadea. The closeness of the name "Stada" in the Talmud to the "Stadea" in the Safed Scroll is extraordinary, and the slight difference in spelling can be explained by variations in translations. The interesting point here is that the name "ben Halachmee" was the name of Stadea?s later husband, not the biological father of her sons. Unfortunately, no mention is made of the real father?s name, but ben Halachmee was the name given to Stadea?s illegitimate twin boys.

According to the Safed Scroll, Yeshai and his brother Judas ben Halachmee were taken in, raised and educated by the religious order of Essene monks. The Essenes were a perennial Jewish colony that particularly flourished in Judea for some centuries previous to the time ascribed to the New Testament stories. Subsequently, one of the boys became a student of Rabbi Hillel?s school of philosophy and the other became the leader of the Essenes. An older Essene named Joseph was assigned as Yeshai?s "religious father" and guardian.

The Safed Scroll suggests that, eventually, Yeshai ben Halachmee?s outspoken religious views angered the Jewish priests. He was tried by a Roman court on a charge of inciting the people to rebel against the Roman Government. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, but escaped, left the area and travelled to India.

The Mehgheehlla Scroll mirrors aspects of the hidden story in the Gospels and provides external evidence that the conclusion reached in this volume was known in ancient tradition.


Who was Stada/Stadea?

One of the most popular aspects of etymology is the history of names--those words or phrases which uniquely identify persons, animals, places, concepts or things. The earlier forms of a name are often uncertain, and different dialect pronunciations have led to divergent spellings of the same name.

The social pressure to use a standard spelling did not emerge until the 18th century, and earlier writers saw no problem presenting a person?s name in a variety of ways. In one study, for example, over 130 variants of the name "Mainwaring" were found among the parchments belonging to that family.

Many Hebrew names in the Old Testament are believed to bear a special significance, as individual subjects originally were called by a name expressive of some characteristic, e.g., Edom, red; Esau, hairy; Jacob, supplanter; and Sarai (Sara), from the base word sharat. A similar concept applied in Jewish writings and for a long time confused researchers.

Like Roman and Hebrew tradition, the names of the characters "often appear in distorted form in Rabbinic literature" and were sometimes an attempt to disguise their true personality. This type of understanding provided the key that enabled researchers to unlock the true essence of what was really being relayed in ancient writings.

"Names research" is an open-ended and complex domain, and one which is particularly greedy of the researcher?s time. In any study of the New Testament, however, it must be remembered that the first Gospels were written in Hebrew, and this is a vital point in determining who Stadea really was. "The name [Stadea] has various forms and may have been borrowed from a fanciful name that meant a scholar; or had a regional identity like Stabiae or Statila, or a woman of good family."

According to Jewish writings, Stadea was "the descendent of princes and rulers" and her royal heritage provided a clue to her real name. The Talmud further states that Yeshu?a (Jesus) ben Panthera?s mother "was also called Miriam, yes, but she was nicknamed Stada... Stat-da, this one has turned away, being unfaithful [Stat-da] to her husband".

St Jerome explained the difficulty that he had in translating the earliest Gospels into Latin and added that the "original Hebrew" versions of Matthew?s Gospel and the earliest Luke Gospels were written in the Chaldaic language but with Hebrew letters. The "original Hebrew" version of the name "Mary" was "Mariamne". Therefore, "Mary" in the English-language Gospels of today was originally written "Mariamne" in the Hebrew versions and was sometimes translated as "Miriam".


Mary Unknown in Early Church History

What was actually recorded of Mary/Mariamne in the only accepted Christian writings provides scant information indeed about the woman the Church now calls "the Mother of God". In the Gospels she is rarely mentioned. In fact, she is not mentioned by name in the oldest version of the Mark Gospel in the oldest Bibles. Nor is she mentioned in the oldest version of the John Gospel.

The Church has said that,

"the reader of the Gospels is at first surprised to find so little about Mary... this obscurity has been studied at length".

Both the Gospels of Mark and John introduce Jesus as an adult. Only in contrived narratives does Mary play an important role in the biblical texts and, excluding these, she is mentioned only briefly on three occasions.

The church presbyters were also silent on Mary. There was nothing recorded of her, external to the Church, for more than four centuries after the time she was said to have lived. She had no ancestry or background except in spurious apocrypha.

The earliest documented reference to Mary can be found in the Mark Gospel of the Sinai Bible (Mark 3:32). This narrative refers to her as simply the earthly mother of several sons and daughters. The reference is actually about a group of people who addressed Jesus and said, "Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you".

Here is a profound truth. Modern Bibles show the three words "and your sisters" to have been removed or indexed to a footnote. From here onwards, Mary almost vanished from the Church texts and, apart from an obscure final reference to her in the Acts of the Apostles (1:14), she disappeared forever from the New Testament.

However, when the name "Mary" in the Gospels was replaced with the original Hebrew version, "Mariamne", an historic aspect arose. Combining the evidence available, the position advanced in this book is that Mary, the mother of Jesus in the Gospels, Stadea of the Jewish writings, and Mariamne of the House of Herod were one and the same person.

At the time of the development of the Gospels, Mariamne was the younger sister of Herodias and the two girls were an integral part of the vast "family of Herodes" ("Herod" today). They were the much-loved granddaughters of King Herod and he "cared for them with great devotion". Their mother, Berenice, later remarried and moved with her teenage daughters to live in Rome, where she gained the friendship of Emperor Augustus.

Mariamne and Herodias Herod were of noble birth through King Herod (c. 73-74 BC) and his wife, Mariamne I. Mariamne Herod?s father was Aristobulus, the son of Herod the Great, and her mother Berenice was the daughter of Herod?s sister, Salome. Mariamne also had two brothers named Herod II, King of Chalcis, and Agrippa, who became Agrippa I. King Herod himself was descended from a noble line of kings through his Nabatean mother, Cypros of Petra.

The Nabateans were a Semitic people and the earliest sources regarded them as Arabs. Today they are generally referred to as Nabatean Arabs. Owing to its secure location, Petra was adopted by the Nabatean kings as their capital city, and it became incorporated into the Roman Empire in 106. The Nabatean Arabs passed out of history with the advent of Islam.

The House of Herod was founded by the marriage of Cypros of Petra to Antipater (Antipas) the Idumean, to whom Cypros bore four sons, Herod being one. The name "Herod" subsequently became the title of seven rulers mentioned in the New Testament and in Roman history.

King Herod was known to the Romans as "the Great", but in the eyes of the people over whom he ruled he was always known as "the Impious", despite his costly restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem. Herod was a Roman citizen, Governor of Galilee by 47 BC, and then King of Judea from 37 to 4 BC.

He was one of the major figures in politics of Palestine in the early years of the Roman Empire. In 7 BC he strangled to death two of his sons, Aristobulus and Alexander, drawing a comment from Roman Emperor Augustus (27 BC-14 AD) that it was safer to be one of Herod?s pigs than one of his sons. Another son was later born to Herod and, for his safety, his mother dispatched him to the care of her family in Ariminum, a city near Ravenna in northern Italy. He was Prince Joseph, the Joseph of Arimathea in the Gospels, and he later became the unseen power behind his father?s throne.

Mariamne Herod?s ancestors can be traced back on her grandmother?s (Mariamne I) side to the Hasmonean "priest-kings" and "hereditary priests" from the tribe of Benjamin. She, her sister and her brothers were descendants of the legitimate Hasmonean dynasty and "carried the Hasmonean blood".

They also carried the blood of the Nabatean Arabs, so much so that King Aretas IV, who was legally confirmed a Nabatean Arab king by Emperor Augustus, divorced his wife to marry Herodias (who died after AD 41) to maintain the Nabatean bloodline, but she declined him. It was Herodias who was involved in the Gospel story of the beheading of John the Baptist, for which she received a level of notoriety and defamation similar to that of Mary Magdalene.

The available records reflect an intricate tangle of marriages, intermarriages and divorces between the Herods and the Romans. In the account of the Gospel of Mark (6:17), for example, Herodias later married Herod Philip I, her own uncle, by whom she had a daughter, Salome. Salome was named after her Hasmodean ancestor Salome Alexandra, herself a "priestess-queen".

Later in time, Herod Antipas ("without-land") apparently fell in love with Herodias and proposed to her. Seeing that his fortunes were rising faster than her husband?s, Herodias accepted his hand. She longed for social distinction, and accordingly left her husband and initially entered into an adulterous union with Herod Antipas, who was also her uncle. She was not married to Antipas at this time, but married him at a much later stage (c. 38).

When Herodias saw how well her brother Agrippa I had fared in Rome, whence he returned a king, she urged her husband Herod Antipas to go to Caesar and obtain the royal title, for she believed his claim to it was far greater than that of her brother. Antipas was not king, but only Tetrarch of Galilee. Contrary to his better judgment he went, and soon learned by messengers that Agrippa I had accused him before Emperor Caligula of conspiracy against the Romans. The Emperor banished Herod Antipas to Lyons, Gaul (France), in 41, and although he permitted Herodias to return to her home in Rome she chose to accompany her husband into exile.

It was recorded that the male offspring of the House of Herod were forced to become circumcised Jews in the reign of John Hyrcanus, a Hasmonean of the earlier Maccabean period. In other words, the Herod family adopted the religion of Judaism. The religious movement of the Essenes was also connected to the Hasmonean bloodline through the High Priest Mattathias, the father of the military king Judas Maccabeus.

We know that Herod the Great was favourable towards the Essenes, maybe because they made it their invariable practice to refrain from disobedience to the political authority. The Jewish historical writer Philo recorded that they had never clashed with any ruler of Palestine, however tyrannical, until his lifetime in the mid-first century. This was a passive attitude which could not fail to commend itself to King Herod, and it was reported he even went so far as to exempt the Essenes, like the Pharisees, from the oath of loyalty to himself.

In the reconstruction of the story, and drawing upon the concept of the Safed Scroll, the pregnant Stadea (Mariamne Herod, n?e Mary) secretly went to one of the Essene communities until the time of the birth, and bore twin boys. Numerous groups of Essenes existed "all over, as they were a very numerous sect" and were found in secluded country areas as well as cities.

Upon the birth of the twins, she then moved into the palace of Emperor Augustus and there she lived until the boys were old enough to receive schooling. It was due to their solidarity and the family affinity that the young Mariamne Herod had her illegitimate twin boys educated within the Essene community. The Essene hierarchy were her blood relatives and expounded similar principles and traditions to the Herodian philosophy.

"They perpetuated their sect by adopting children... above all, the Essenes were the educators of the nobility, their instruction being varied and extensive."

To avoid confusion in developing the premise provided in this work, Mary, the mother of Jesus in the New Testament, shall be called Mariamne Herod, except when quoting from the Gospels.

[Jannie]

The bible is just a guide. Compare the English and Afrikaans Bible and you will notice that there are differences. Two different guides for two different people.

[Stefanus]

Re: Behind The Bible Fraud

The bible is just a guide. Compare the English and Afrikaans Bible and you will notice that there are differences. Two different guides for two different people.

When the guide is not trustworthy, do we still have to follow it to the letter without fear?

Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. Joh 5:39

[knipmes]

Re: Behind The Bible Fraud

When the guide is not trustworthy, do we still have to follow it to the letter without fear?

Dis die dat ek nog mos nooit 'n ander namens my voorspraak laat doen met my Hemelse Ouers nie!

You bypass the so-called earthly "Angels" and go straight to God"



groetnis
knipmes