Insights Into Biblical Contradictions, Hell and the Resurrection

Spiritual Master John Phillips is rightly regarded as a Renaissance Man in Barbados. Author, inventor (of pre-packaged cuccoo- a Barbadian delicacy), expert nutritionist and spiritual scholar, he has perhaps done as much or more theological research as any priest or minister.

For reference, John and I founded The Barbados Philosophical Society in 1974, and have been good friends since, despite my veering to atheism and John retaining an eclectic and open view on all spiritual systems.

In this particular exchange, we discussed the meaning of the Easter story and especially the degree of contradictions in the various accounts, from what the women who arrived at the tomb actually observed, to where the angelic messengers were situated, to whether Christ could be touched after the resurrection, to whether Christ stayed on Earth for a while to whether there was a resurrection at all. Oh, and whether Hell actually has a theological basis.

On the conflicting accounts in the King James Bible :

Most of these controversies arise because of citing the King James Bible. One must understand that this is the simplest of all the bibles, because it was designed to be written with no more than 8,000 different words in total. Obviously, it has more than a million words, but only 8,000 words are used repetitively to make up the one million- no more. So it was dsigned to appeal to the simplest minds possible and to serve the largest population possible.

 But as we know, being popular doesn't make it correct, nor does it confer absolute truth. As a matter of fact, with such low verbal density or use it would be comical to even suggest the King James Bible (or any other) comes remotely close to truth. What it does, for the masses, is present a cartoon version of reality. Because of this cartoon reality, there are bound to be contradictions and clashes because the writers themselves sought to portray complex real accounts in fictional or exaggerated forms.

It also needs to be emphasized that the King's printers had a monopoly on printing bibles. So,by around 1650, the KJV had driven the rival Geneva Bible totally out of the market. It wasn't because of being more accurate! It was because powerful interests leveraged that the KJV would reign supreme! Another startling historical fact is that what eventually became the "King James Bible" by 1526-30 was not in fact the original, but rather up to 90 percent adopted from William Tyndale's English New Testament, published in 1526. This version was actually published in defiance of then English law - so it is amazing so much of it was then incorporated into the original KJV.

Tyndale's tack was to render Scripture in the common language of his time to make it accessible even to a humble plow boy. By basing his manuscript on Hebrew and Greek texts he'd defied an English law from 1401 that forbade the publication of any English book without Church of England permission. Wise to the dangers, Tyndale conveniently went abroad while he was burned in effigy outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London.  They also consigned hundreds of copies of his New Testament translation to the flames. But, he got the last laugh, when a year after he was strangled for heresy in the Netherlands, King Henry VIII granted a license to a complete "King James Bible" that was more than three-fourths Tyndale's translation from his English New Testament!

Sadly, most of those who obsess over this Bible don't even know this!


But to return to the point again, it is clear most of the contradictions occur because of the haphazard way the KJV especially was assembled. For example, the translators assembled by 1650 were granted wide latitude in how they specifically formed different translations of the text. My point is that it may not have been necessarily that Luke or John disgreed with Matthew at all, but that the later translators so mucked up the original (already bastardized) manuscript of Erasmus that these things were in abundance.

But that's why no one can read it literally. And all those who say you can are fooling themselves!


On the resurrection - whether it really occurred:

From my studies the resurrection was a metaphor. It was how we'd like to have seen Christ rise up after being cruelly crucified but it didn't really happen. In the end, it doesn't matter, the resurrection has become the sine qua non goal of all Christians and that is fine. We or they can emulate Christ and aspire to a similar event though it didn't really take place. My take again, is either the original scribes embellished what actually occurred (likely the body spirited away by disciples) or the later translators did, or at least added more to the story. Say turning the young men originally in the tomb into 'angels'.

Given this, whether Christ as the man spirited away from his tomb was touched or not, is irrelevant. To me it is just one more red herring dredged up on the overall narrative, much like arguing over how many angels can dance on the tip of a pin!


On Hell as any kind of real place of torment:

Hell was never an original teaching of the Church, and the only reason it's so frequently cited now is because the crazy fundamentalists have latched onto it. The most common afterlife teaching - by Clement of Alexandria and Origen of Adamantius-  in the early centuries after Christ’s death was metempsychosis. Unlike reincarnation, which metempsychosis is often confused with, the same soul exists and is resurrected in a succession of different human bodies in an evolutionary process. Ordinary reincarnation, meanwhile, allows for reincarnation into animal bodies, even after a human incarnation, which metempsychosis does not.

The Christian metempsychosis teaching probably endured for at least 500 years before later Church fathers decided at the 2nd Council of Constantinople, that it gave men too much time to seek God. So, a device had to be used to spur on and speed the desire for redemption. The device decided on was “Hell”. Now, recall this was around 400 A.D. and there were no evangelicals skulking around with their KJVs in hand. There was only one Church, one religion: the Catholic one. So anything that later accrued or occurred had to have been copied from these early times, Church teachings, doctrines, dogmas and canons.

So any claims evanglicals make to being "original" in anything - say especially their acceptance of Hell- is purely fantasy and self-delusion. They are merely lying to themselves and their people if they believe they are the first Christians. No! They spun off from the RC Church like all the other Protestants! Including King Henry the Eighth's Anglicans!

The modus operandi for inventing Hell was to simply take certain passages in the then Latin Vulgate that referred to “Gehenna”, which was really a dump for burning offal outside Jerusalem, and convert that earthly burning pit into an everlasting abode for punishment. What better way to punish than by fire, which is about the most painful, as anyone who’s ever touched a red hot frying pan or stove knows! Thus, Gehenna became the putative basis for eternal torment at the Council. All teachings to do with metempsychosis were ordered expunged, and any transgressors were to be listed as heretics. In a firm outline of the properties of Hell, the Council further mandated:

- It become the final abode of eternal punishment for all who rejected the Church's teachings or the Pope's authority


- It include the agency of fire and this fire never be quenched - and further it have the capacity to burn the soul without destroying it permanently (else there'd be no "eternal" aspect)


- Hell was under the governance of "Satan" or Lucifer, with a hierarchy of sub-Devils (Asmodeus, Belial, Pazuzu et al) to administer other punishments


- All non-Catholics, because of they're being outside the state of sanctifying grace, to be destined for Hell


The other job mandated by the Council was to insert the words and references to “Hell” into the scriptures and this duty was charged to various transcribers, translators. At key points also Jesus had to make the odd reference to it, including the threat of punishment for those who refused to believe, specifically “accepting” him as Savior (e.g. the bogus John 3: 16) .

  So, in the end must we accept a personal Savior?

Not at all. Christ as Savior for Gentiles never had been intended in the original scriptures. He was instead designated as a Messiah for the Jews!  It was Paul of Tarsus that sought to make Jesus'  (intended) localized religion worldwide. In fact, Jesus would have been appalled at that!

Besides that, Jesus was among a host of God-men fabricated through time, including Horus and Mithra. The evidence shows Jesus to be a much later creation by copyists who used the earlier Mithra legends. Almost everything in the original Mithra template, from the birth date (December 25th, identified with the winter solstice), to being born of a virgin, working miracles and dying on a cross then ascending. Christians copied the Mithra mythology because it fit in perfectly with their own narrative. However, in order to make this work they had to destroy all the Mithra texts - as they did when they burned down the library at Alexandria - to make it appear their narrative was the original.

Once the great ancient pagan library was reduced to ashes, the later Christian copyists could set to work!

By then,  over a century had passed since the days of Jesus and the Church- which had NO role to play during his life- had become institutionalized. It thereby became an entity to serve no other purpose than to perpetuate the teaching of Jesus in an indefinitely postponed “Parousia”.  This in turn, led to the impetus to add to, as well as further embellish and reinforce the Savior –Redeemer myth. The easiest way to do so was to copy legendary tales from earlier pagan sources and insert them into later translations. This mightily helped church leaders in their constant exhortations to the faithful to not lose sight of the goal.

The idea of "saving" or "salvation" itself is off because it inflates humans' self-importance. It is the same way with sin. That also inflates human self-importance. I mean, if a puny human can offend the Almighty God, imagine! The human must have vast powers indeed to affect an infinite Being.

Beyond that, humans are already 'saved' if that is the term. If we are all one energy of one Being then that Being can't be divided against itself. Also, if there is indeed a God and It is infinite there is simply no place for Hell to fit in, so in many respects, we all are one and no one can be abandoned. Even atheists!

Treating Advanced Fundagelical Psychosis

Two images shown on a fundagelical psycho's blog - depict a man who "got prostate cancer and failed to get right with God" before the cancer took him.

The whacko compares prostate cancer in this case to the "plagues" sent by "god" against Pharoah to get him to do right. He further intimates that the men who get this cancer "are not right" in their souls and the cancer is a warning of "imminent damnation".  "God", or at least the cosmic clown sociopath that passes for his god, is dictating what must be, and all "hard hearted Pharaohs" must heel to.

What I want to do is first show the marks of psychosis here, then propose an advanced treatment plan. The first key sign of psychosis, or what I call "fundagelical psychosis" is mistaking a 2,000+ year old ancient Jewish fantasy world for reality. Any normal human, with a normal brain allocation - or at least one not deformed- understands that what's in the Old Jewish Talmud are mainly fairy tales: thus, Joshua stopping the Sun in the sky, Jonah being swallowed by a whale (or "big fish") and Adam and Eve, are all fairy tales. Any one who believes they are facts based on an antiquated book is either an overgrown child in need of day care, or a psycho in need of a serious sanatarium, meds and ECT.

Second, prostate cancer isn't even mentioned - even by an euphemism - in any biblical passage, old or new. The argument can then be made that it bears NO analogy to "plagues" dispatched on any alleged Pharaoh. (Besides which, it is hyper- psychotic to compare any prostate cancer patient to an ancient Pharaoh!) The argument can also be made that in ancient times, even apart from the mythological nature of the scrolls or whatever, prostate cancer didn't exist. The reason is that the average male life span was only about half what it is today, and we now know prostate cancer is a cancer mostly seen with advancing age. Thus, 50% of males in their 40s likely have it as do 60% of those in their 50s and 70% of those in their 60s. But most males in ancient times barely reached the age of 35!  Hence, they'd not have lived sufficientfly long to get prostate cancer!

Third, "hell" is a fiction invented by a psychotic monk sometime in the 4th century. The story goes that the monk ingested an overload of "magic mushrooms"  and then had an all night bender in which he fantasized an eternal place of torment. A subsidiary theory is that he read some scrolls concerning "Gehenna" - the waste dump outside Jerusalem first- so this fueled his hallucinations. Later, the created fairy story was used to try to assert a doctrine (e.g. at the 2nd Council of Constantinople) that there was only "one life to live" and if man didn't make it right he was doomed to "hell".  This was intended to oppose the doctrine of reincarnation (or more technically, metempsychosis) advanced by Clement of Alexandria and Origen of Adamantius.

"Hell" became most popularized in the fiction of the Middle Ages with the publication of Dante's 'Divine Comedy', specifically 'The Inferno' (The Purgatorio and Paradasio made up the other two parts of the Comedy). But it remained for Gustave Dore (1832-1883) to actually transform Dante Alleghieri's verbal descriptions of the assorted 'circles' of Hell into an assortment of artistic plates. (These can be seen in the book, 'The Dore Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy', Dover Books, 1976). Therein one sees assorted renditions of the various tortures (peculiar to each "circle")  as well as "Satan".  What this work did was to render more concrete what had hitherto been only nebulous descriptions.

It is most interesting that many of Dante's images as captured by Dore, rather than being seen for what they really are- essentially elaborate cartoons - were instead invested with reality, mainly by evangelical preachers of the 19th century such as Rev. Josiah Strong. The cartoon images thereby became entrenched in fundies' lapsed brain cells as assorted 'Elmer Gantry' like preachers had at it. (Most of them highly liquored up before going off on their salvation hell rants.)

Of course, salvation itself is a total myth since Jesus or Yeshua was only a mere human, albeit endowed with charisma and special teaching talents.  The Gnostic were amongst the first early Christians to note this, and this is why they deemed the whole salvation theology (really a Paulist invention)  a 'blasphemy' because it raised a man to the level of an infinite God. Up to now, none of these fundie dolts have figured this out.

Meanwhile, the latest brain research - via positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission tomography (SPECT), shows that Jesus does indeed exist as a God and "savior" but only as an ideational obsession confined to a particular brain region, called the orientation association area (OAA) see e.g. the book ‘Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief’ by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and his asosciate Eugene Daquill M.D.. As the authors note: (p. 5)


“In normal circumstance, the OAA helps create a distinct, accurate sense of our physical orientation to the world. To do its job well….depends on a constant stream of nerve impulses from each of the body’s senses. The OAA sorts and processes these impulses virtually simultaneously during every moment of our lives”

So, in other words, without the benefit of the OAA brain region, we’d be essentially discombobulated vegetables, unable to even get out of bed in the morning. The authors’ investigation of how the brain’s OAA translates an image or idea into a religious reality is described in detail in their book, on pages 121-22. This is in connection with a person given an image of Christ and asked to focus on it. Within minutes, neurological measurements show electrical discharges spiraling down from the right attention area (right OAA) to the limbic system and hypothalamus “triggering the arousal section of the structure”.


Now, we know the hypothalamus has both arousal and quiescent components. The authors’ test results and measurements actually showed that as the subject focused on the image of Christ BOTH were activated. As assorted cortical thresholds were crossed, a maximal stimulation (given by spikes in the SPECT scans) produced a neural “flood” that generated feedback to the attention association area.

To make a long story short, the attention area of the OAA was seen to begin to deprive the right orientation area of the OAA of all neural input not originating with the contemplation of Jesus.

 In order to compensate, and thereby preserve the neuro-spatial matrix (in which the self could still exist) the right orientation area had to default to the attention area focusing on “Jesus”. As the authors put it (p. 121):

“ It has no choice but to create a spatial matrix out of nothing but the attention area’s single-minded contemplation of Jesus”

This single-minded "contemplation" effectively leads to psychosis and obsession. It entails not only "savior" baloney but hellfire BS if one doesn't get "saved" - hence forming a permanent mental 'electric fence'- preventing the fundie psycho from remotely considering anything other than the tautology: "Jesus = saved me = no hell for moi".  Hence, they end up on a one track pace to total mental degeneration. (Let us bear in mind here that no fundie or other Xtianoid is really "saved", it is only a trick of their minds to believe they are, as opposed to turning into a 3 oz. dust pile at death).

How can these hapless folks be saved from themselves? Talks in the 1970s with Dr. Pat Banister, who dealt with religious psychosis in Barbados lone mental hospital (called Jenkins) led to these standard treatments:

1) Isolate the person from all bibles which are deemed to be adverse sources of mental breakdown and obsession. If they try to quote  remembered bible verses out loud, gag them.(Obviously also, they can't be allowed to attend any church services either!)

2) Have the person commit to an intense physical exercise and therapy program to distract their obsessive brains from focusing on "salvation", "devils" or preaching to other patients.

3) Place them in an isolated (padded) cell if they insisted on preaching to other patients. Ensure they received largatyl with each meal.

4) Hook them up to an electro-convulsive therapy machine at least five times a week at first, especially if their obsessions are profound. This can be reduced as their obsessions with "salvation", "hell" are seen to be reduced.

Only in the most extreme cases, where the patients were a definite threat to themselves did she recommend chemical or surgical lobotomy. Of course, at that time, pre-frontal lobotomy was basically all that was known, so patients likely ended up as vegetables.

These are some extreme means of therapy to be sure, but they may be the only means - in the end - to finally eradicate irrational fundagelical ideations of the type illustrated above! We have too many wretched, over zealous fundie brains running loose, and these all have to be brought into submission to the higher brain centers - or we'll all end up in a new Dark Ages.

Who the HELL cares? NO sane person!

One of the readers on this site just sent me a link for a new Pastor Mike screed about "Hell". Seems the goodly pastor is fully exercised (exorcised?) that not enough people are taking that infernal abode seriously. Those who can stomach it, can read more here:

http://www.pastormstahlschurch.com/index.php?p=1_82_WHO-THE-HELL-CARES-

One thing that comes across from this dreck, as my notifier observed, is that (according to the Pastor) MOST humans are DAMNED! Evidently only about a handful of our species will walk through those pearly gates, and enjoy ....what? I guess sitting on a cloud, playing a harp whilst occasionally glancing over to see 100 billion fellow beings burning - while basking in an unseemly air of self-righteousness. (No wonder when faced with this option, people prefer Hell by 5 to 1)

Again, this is absolute nonsense. The Roman Catholic Church wisely moved away from Hell-bending and obsession with good reason. It was undermining their rational stance, and making them appear like the medieval demagogoues so many critics claimed. It didn't help that creepy exorcisms were also sometimes televised, such as a memorable one about fifteen years ago on a Larry King show about the Devil and Hell.

On that show, skeptic author Paul Kurtz totally pulverized his RC padre opponent and made him look like someone who just came through a time machine from the middle ages.

Here is what we do know: Hell isn't even an original concept. Christians hijacked it from early pagan mystery cults-religions sometime around the Second Council of Constantinople. Up until then, the early Christian Fathers (e.g. Origin of Adamantius, Clement of Alexandria) had taught the more subtle and sane doctrine of metempsychosis. Which when you delve into it, makes vastly more sense than the juvenile "heaven and hell".

In metempsychosis, the soul is held in abeyance for some interval - which could be from 1 day to 100,000 years - before being allowed to "emigrate" into a new body via conception. As we see from this, the soul does not originate at conception, but rather is pre-existing and externally transferred to the new zygote. Is it possible to have a soulless human? Yes, according to metempsychosis it is! There may in fact be humans who have not been subsequently habitated by a soul, for whatever reason.

One can think here of total monsters like Adolf Hitler, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer. In each of these cases, the degree of monstrosity in their assorted acts is concomitant with nary an ounce of regret, and discloses the existence of a soulless monster. Or does it?

To the atheist-Materialist such as I am, this is all specious nonsense, since we don't accept "souls" or afterlives or transferral of the intangible energies of souls via metempsychosis or reincarnation for that matter (which differs from metempsychosis in that the SAME soul is given to return time and again to different bodies.). However, we do recognize the relativity of nonsense. Not all nonsense is create equally, in other words.

For example, metempsychosis may be nonsense, but on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the most egregious nonsense) it is maybe a '2' while "Heaven-Hell" occupy a 10.

Similarly, Bigfoot may be nonsense, but it is at maybe a '4' or '5' while fairies are a '10'. Alien abductions of suburban white matrons to harvest their eggs may be nonsense, but it is at a 1 or 2, compared with werewolves wreaking havoc.

It's all relative.

Unfortunately, the other main problem with Hell belief as espoused and laid out by the goodly Pastor, is that it is a sure symptom of psychosis. I went into this briefly in an early blog spot concerning a teen girl in Barbados who "lost it" because she believed demons were pursuing her.

I later had occasion to speak with her then pscyhiatrist - not about the girl personally- but rather the whole meme of Hell belief and promotion.

The psychiatrist, a Dr. Pat Bannister, informed me that while not all Hell believers she had met were psychotics, nearly all psychotics were strong Hell believers. And not just any old "hell" but the old fire and brimstone variety.

In fact, John Wayne Gacy - when he confessed to the 29 or so murders he committed, was heard to say: "Now, I am gonna burn forever in Hell!"

A key component of a Hell-psychotic, as Dr. Bannister put it to me in 1972, was that they not only believed in this abode themselves, but believed it applied to all who didn't fit into their behavioral mode. That usually meant, in the case of hyper-religious folk (who could also be classified as partial psychotics): Unbelievers, or....good faithful Christians who merely believed Jesus was a great man and not a God.

The other key attibute of the Hell psychotic is manifested when they are hypnotized, and convinced during the hypnosis that there is NO Hell.

On coming out of the trance, they typically go bonkers - shouting, pulling their hair out, cutting themselves with razors. According to one therp - one such person even tried to jump through a window. The only solution was to put them back into the trance and re-introduce the Hell belief for their survival.

Why? Why did the presence of the Hell belief matter to their sanity? One would have thought the opposite.

As Dr. Bannister put it, the reason is that Hell is the ultimate sanction and backstop for their morality. If there is no ultimate sanction, their morality is meaningless. In other words, screwy as it sounds to a rational mind, the morality these pathetic dregs follow is contingent on an ultimate place of punishment for all those who DON'T follow it! Their mental peace resides on knowing that all others face eternal destruction if they don't follow the same rules.

In addition, no rational appeals based on a loving God are any use. The crazed, psychotic Hell believer will simply rationalize away all challenges and find a reason that even a loving God HAD to invent Hell.

Is it possible to rescue these pathological people from themselves? In an unpublished manuscript entitled The Hell Delusion, written ca. 1979, I actually included a chapter wherein I dealt with this issue. I suggested that all of these extreme Hellists be rounded up and implanted with electrodes in their limbic systems.

While in 1979 this perhaps sounded preposterous, it no longer is with the advent of quantum dot electrodes - which can easily be inserted into a brain synapse or neural junction. Although you don't hear very much about it (we can understand why!) it is now possible that negative emotions emanating from the brain's amygdala or hippocampus can be suitably regulated or modulated by properly installed quantum electrodes or even micro-chips.

Within such devices also resides the possible end to all prisons. Instead of squandering so much in the way of money and resources to keep the anti-social locked up, electrodes-chips are simply implanted in their brains to regulate behavior. Ordinary people may also wish to seek the benefit of these devices, which once wedded to the neural chassis, are bound to make for a more productive and efficient being.

In the meantime, the most important use for these chips, electrodes and quantum dots is surely to control and manage the Hellish ideations of those like Pastor Mike. At the very least, so they don't spread their mental contamination and craziness to more vulnerable and impressionable minds. We don't need any more psychos in this country!

BLASTING THE SATAN & HELL MYTHS

The Satan and Hell myths have always been among the most disreputable and primitive anachronistic baggage and garbage to poison the well of Christianity's core message of love. Tragically, neither of these additions were even original, but further cases of plagiarization from pagan religions that preceded Christianity.

For example, "Hell" had long been intertwined and promoted in the Mithraic tradition for Persian Mithraism. While no literal “Book of Mithras” persists – there have been segmented texts referred to as “pagan epistles” which were known originally as the Izeds (28 in number) appearing in The Zendavesta. The Zendavesta, literally "text and comment," is the doctrine of Zoroaster (Zarathrustra), comprised in eight parts, written at different periods, but of which the earliest have been assigned to the date of B.C. 1200-1000.

Aspects of Mithraism - such as "Hell" and "Shaitan" or Satan - that later filtered in the Graeco-Roman world undoubtedly came from this text (the Izeds, wherein “Mithras” was chief and ruler) as well as others likely destroyed with the burning of the library at Alexandria. (See, e.g. J.M. Robertson’s ‘Pagan Christs’, 1966) Since Mithraism was a secret cult or mystery religion, this wouldn’t pose too much of a problem since its precepts, rituals were held in confidence anyway – as a secret society would. (Much like today’s FreeMasons who maintain absolute silence as regards their rituals.)

More authoritative texts-sources include: 'The Origin Of Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World', Oxford Univ. Press, 1989, Origin of All Religious Myths- The New Testament Exposed, by James B. Pullen, Jr. and Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development, by Helmut Koester.

All of them point to the fact that Christians copied at will from ancient books that predated Christianity by a thousand years or more. Christian Fathers, for their part, regularly and uniformly lost it whenever they encountered those predated references from Mithraism - whether to "the Last Supper", or the "virgin Birth", or Mithra's crucifixion, or his Ascension into heaven. It infuriated them because they desired such accounts be solely in reference to the Christian Savior (who they actually confabulated from Mithraic descriptions)

By way of example, after describing the “Lord’s Supper’ as told by and for Mithraists, Church Father Justin Martyr evinces outrage as he writes :

“WHICH THE WICKED DEVILS HAVE IMITATED IN THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRA, COMMANDING THE SAME THING TO BE DONE.”.

Tertullian also bears this out, scolding:

“The Devil, by the mysteries of his idols, IMITATES EVEN THE MAIN PARTS OF THE DIVINE MYSTERIES. HE ALSO BAPTIZES HIS FOLLOWERS IN WATER THAT PURIFIES THEM OF THEIR SINS”


While a careless Christian may still infer (after Justin Martyr) that the Mithraists copied from the Christians instead of the other way around, the reading of more of Justin Martyr's works dispels this. Martyr expressly argues that:

"the demons anticipated the Christian mysteries and prepared parodies of them beforehand".

The use of term "anticipated" clearly shows Justin recognizes the Mithraist mysteries occurred BEFORE the mysteries portrayed in the Gospels. If he knew this, the question remains of why he simply didn't refer to imitation alone, rather than introduce "demonic anticipation"? Tertullian also records such anticipatory recognition.

Again, what strikes a person is the desperate need to preserve these as exclusively Christian.

As to the origins of Hell, we know up to the time of the 2nd Council of Constantinople the general doctrine was one of metempsychosis a form of reincarnation taught by Clement of Alexandria and Origen of Adamantius. These doctrines were rejected by the 2nd Council, however, because they were believed to "give Man too much time to seek God".

Thereby Hell was seized from the scriptures- Izeds of the Mithraists and put to work in the Christian format. If then Hell could be pushed as the "end" for unbelievers, for the "one life to live" paradigm, then the Church might garner far more converts in a shorter time.

Alas, it didn't work out that way, and the evil in the world merely seemed to multiply as the Inquisition and Crusades showed.

Satan was also borrowed as the primary tender and Manager of "Hell" and he also arrived by way of earlier Mithraic texts. There is nothing in any of the earliest scrolls or Christian documents that singularly refer to a "Satan" which were not already plagiarized from the Mithraists.

So why keep using these primitive and deceitful creations? Because the latter day Christians - Fundies mainly -possess such a meager and bankrupt faith that they have no other options to try to drive the unwilling into their tent. The true fact here, as Bertrand Russell once pointed out (Why I Am Not A Christian) is that once a religion succumbs to dignifying fear, by exploiting it in brazen ways to grab converts- it loses the battles for heart, minds and would-be souls.

The reason is that the only ones who will belong to such a discredited faith will be those prepared to sacrifice their integrity and minds, or those who are in some way already insane. At least now there has emerged a site dedicated totally to exposing the basis of the Hell and Satan myths and the regressive minds that have always embraced them. One can find that site here:

http://sites.google.com/site/satanandthechristianfundies/