JESUS AND THE DAEMON

For the Gnostics Jesus is a figure who must be understood on many levels. Since the destruction of Gnosticism we have only been taught the lowest level of understanding and have been denied access to the secret Inner Mys�teries of the Gnostics, which reveal the true allegorical nature of the Jesus story. Has this led us to mistake Jesus for a historical figure? Let's examines some of the evidence again:��������������������������������������

�As in the Pagan Mysteries, Gnostics initiated into the Inner Mysteries understood scripture as mythical allegory, which could be altered and improved upon, not literal history, which must be preserved intact.

�Like the Pagan philosophers, the Gnostics used gematria and number symbolism to encode complex sacred mathematical teachings. The name lesous, which we translate as "Jesus," is an artificial transliteration of the Jewish name Joshua into Greek to make sure that it equals the mystically significant number 888. This remarkable fact was even acknowledged by Literalists.

Like Osiris-Dionysus, Jesus symbolizes the Daemon of the initiate. As in Pagan myth, sometimes another figure representing the eidolon is sym�bolically portrayed as dying the godman's death as a substitute.

�In the same way that the Pagan sages understood the myths of Osiris-Dionysus as allegorical teaching stories, so the Gnostics understood the Jesus story to be a mystical initiation myth leading to spiritual resurrec�tion.

As in the Pagan Mysteries, the Gnostics practiced a ritual sacred mar�riage of the Daemon and eidolon as part of their initiations.�

Like Osiris-Dionysus, the Gnostic Jesus represents the universal Daemon, which has been dismembered and needs to be re-membered. nitiates in the Pagan Mysteries who realized their true nature as the Universal Daemon became an "Osiris" or a "Dionysus." Likewise, gnostic initiates became a "Christ."

Like the Pagan Mysteries, Gnosticism viewed a human being as having our levels of identity: physical, psychological, spiritual, and mystical. As in the Pagan Mysteries, these were linked to the four elements� earth, water, air, and fire�and initiates were led through these levels of identity by elemental baptisms.

The Gnostics did not necessarily deny the historicity of the gospels, but viewed taking the Jesus story literally as only the first stage in their Mysteries

Could the Jesus story have been taught as a history to beginners in the faith as of the Outer Mysteries and then revealed in the secret Inner Mysteries to be an initiatory myth? Could this myth of Jesus have been based on the ubiquitous myths of Osiris-Dionysus? Could Gnosticism have been the original Christianity, which developed as a Jewish version of the Pagan Mysteries? Could Literalist Christianity be a later "heresy," which maintained only the outer Mysteries of Christianity? At first such possibilities seemed outrageous, but only by rethinking the whole of the traditional history of Christianity could we begin to make sense of the evidence before us.

Seeing the Jesus story as a myth developed from Pagan mythology lined its uncanny resemblances to the myths of Osiris-Dionysus. Seeing Christianity as a Jewish version of the Pagan Mysteries explained why the lungs put into the mouth of Jesus in the gospels resemble the teachings of Pagan sages. Seeing Gnosticism as existing before Literalism actually made more sense of the historical evidence than the traditional view that Gnosticism was a later deviation. Even by their own evidence, the Literalists' account makes no sense. All the Literalist heresy-hunters trace the so-called heresy of Gnosticism back to a Gnosticlestic sage called Simon Magus, whom they regard as the arch-heretic. Irenaeus tells us: "The falsely so-called Gnosis took its beginnings, as one may learn from their own assertions, from the followers of Simon." Yet Simon Magus is meant to have been a contemporary of Jesus and is men-fed in the Acts of the Apostles. More reliable sources suggest that Simon was a Samaritan, who received his education in Alexandria where,*** according to some scholars, he was directly influenced by the Jewish Pythagorean Philo.¹²⁵ Could the original teachings of a historical Jesus really] have been so quickly perverted by his contemporary Simon, as the traditional� picture requires? If Simon had wanted to preach an utterly different doctrine from Jesus, why would he not have simply set up his own cult, which had nothing to do with Christianity?��

Moreover, the heresy-hunters tell us of a Gnostic sage called Dositheus! who was the precursor of Simon and lived around 100 bce or earlier! If by the evidence of the Literalists themselves, Gnosticism predates when Jesus is supposed to have lived, how can it have been a later perversion of his teachings? Not only this, but we know that even the name Jesus has been deliberately constructed to equal in gematria the mystical number 888, which strongly suggests it was invented by Gnostics. Faced with all of this evidence it seemed to us that we had no choice but to completely reverse the traditional picture and see Literalism as a degenerate form of the original "Jesus Mysteries" of the Gnostics.���� ������������������

A radically new picture of the origins of Christianity was emerging, which we called "The Jesus Mysteries Thesis." In essence it is this. Nearly all the

peoples around the Mediterranean had at some point adopted the Pagan Mys�teries and adapted them to their own national taste. At some point in the first few centuries bce a group of Jews had done likewise and produced a Jew�ish version of the Mysteries. Jewish initiates adapted the myths of Osiris-Dionysus to produce the story of a Jewish dying and resurrecting godman, Jesus the Messiah. In time this myth came to be interpreted as historical fact and Literalist Christianity was the product.

These ideas seemed revolutionary, but nothing else explained the facts. But before adopting a theory as radical as the Jesus Mysteries Thesis we knew there was more important research to be done. Wasn't there incontrovertible proof that there had been a Jewish teacher called Jesus? If there was then the Jesus story obviously could not be a Jewish adaptation of the myth of Osiris-Dionysus. We therefore began looking for evidence for the existence of Jesus the man. This was someone who had supposedly thrown money-lenders out of the temple in Jerusalem, miraculously fed thousands of people, and raised the dead; at his death the whole Earth was said to have quaked and split open, the dead had risen from their graves, and a great unnatural darkness had covered the land. If he really was more than mythical, surely someone some�where would have mentioned it in the records of the times?

�