THE JESUS MYSTERIES

Over 40 years ago, I remember coming upon a copy of a book by J.M. Robertson entitled Pagan Christs published around 1910 and which created a huge stir among the clergy of the day. Their basic argument was that despite acknowledged similarities with dying and resurrected vegetation gods of the Middle East, the Gospels represented an actual historical series of events rather than an archetypal myth. Around the same time, I had been reading the abridged version of Sir J.G. Frazer's Golden Bough as well as an informative book by Grant Allen called The Evolution of the Idea of God and Gilbert Murray's Five Stages of Greek Religion. Along with more than 150 years of biblical scholarship, these writings made it impossible for me to interpret the Bible as the literal Word of God. In these two erudite studies containing over 180 pages of footnotes plus extensive references, the authors make a strong case for the gospels being knowingly infused with ideas from the Greek mystery traditions, but go so far as to cast doubt on the very historical existence of Jesus. Whether or not one accepts this radical hypothesis, there is no doubt that initiatic patterns are clearly discernible, especially in relation to death and resurrection motifs – these have their roots in the Egyptian rites of Osiris, just as the figure of Isis is incorporated into Mary.

The first book asks the question whether the original Jesus was a pagan god, and the authors propose that he is portrayed as a composite figure of a pagan godman and the Jewish Messiah. Resemblances to paganism were written off by Christian apologists as diabolical mimicry, even if these sources predated Christianity by several centuries. Pagan critics like Celsus, extensively quoted here, pour scorn on such notions, wondering how people can take them seriously. Biblical scholarship has highlighted inconsistencies and interpolations within scriptures, often carried out with theological intent and usually to reinforce the claims of what subsequently emerged as orthodoxy; many illustrations are given here. The later letters of Paul are now generally agreed to be forgeries designed to combat the influence of Gnosticism. Correspondingly, Church history was rewritten by Eusebius and many texts such as the 15 volumes of Porphyry were burnt along with their heretical authors, not to mention the entire library of Alexandria.

The key tension identified in both volumes is between Gnostics and Literalists representing the inner and outer mysteries respectively. Writing in about 150 A.D., Clement of Alexandria equated pistis or faith with the outer, and gnosis as direct knowledge of the self with the inner or deeper level of initiation. The destruction of Gnosticism and paganism was completed during the fourth century with the triumph of Literalism, which the authors argue is inherently intolerant due to its insistence on its unique historical rather than mythical basis. The autocratic Emperor Constantine helped establish a dogmatic and authoritarian structure demanding obedience and the corresponding suppression of individualist heretics and dissident viewpoints – all for their own good, of course. Philosophical mysticism was lost in the process, cutting our culture off from its mystical roots, and only re-emerging to prominence with the Renaissance.

They bring many sources to bear in arguing for the fundamentally allegorical nature of the gospels, and it is interesting to read a quotation from Origen about hidden meanings included in the stories about Jesus 'indicating certain Mysteries through a semblance of history and not through actual events.' He adds that these recorded actual events did not happen literally. Resurrection – anastasis in Greek – also means awakening to one's true nature – Pythagoras' 'knowledge of being' where the eidolon becomes the Daemon. The authors explain the different levels of initiation and identity, beginning with the body and proceeding through three baptisms: acceptance of a literal sense through water, the mythical, allegorical sense through air and the mystical through fire, corresponding as Paul put it to realising one's identity as Christ or the shared Universal Self.

Along with other scholars like Elaine Pagels and April DeConick, they argue for a Gnostic interpretation of Paul before he was subsequently co-opted by the Literalists. They then examine the Hellenistic influences on Judaism, especially in Alexandria and in the writings of Philo. It is on this basis that they advance the thesis of Jesus as a composite character and analyse the structure of the gospels in this light. Although they make a good case, I was not completely persuaded by their arguments for the nonexistence of a historical Jesus even though it is undeniable that much was appropriated from pagan religions - and from the myths of Osiris-Dionysus - including the major feasts of Christmas and Easter.

The conclusion of the first volume segues into the second by noting that the adoption of the Jewish Father God Jehovah was accompanied by a subjugation of the Divine Feminine. Jesus and the Lost Goddess explains the secret Gnostic teachings of the original Christians in a masterly fashion, restating some of the central themes. The authors remark that the great revelation of Gnosticism 'is that our essential identity is Consciousness.' They quote Clement of Alexandria as writing: 'the greatest of all lessons is to know your Self, for when a man knows himself he knows God' – this is gnosis, or, as Plotinus explains it, 'if we hold through our own centre to the centre of all centres,' we will discover that our consciousness is the one Consciousness of God. He adds that 'all beings may be thought of as centres uniting at one central centre,' (p. 65) a formulation remarkably similar to that of Thomas Troward. This journey towards the centre is the realisation not only that all is One, but we are essentially the same One: not just a part of the whole, but the Whole itself. Spiritually, this is resurrection to our true identity, the culmination of a journey from unconscious unity to conscious Oneness. This is also described as the ascent from the cave (ignorance), an image that plays an important role in the story of Lazarus (p. 117) and the emergence from the tomb.

The lost Goddess is the story of Sophia and her passage through the initiation process, culminating in the mystical marriage, which is at one level gnosis (union of the knower and the known), but at another a coming together of masculine and feminine in the bridal chamber. Although the authors do not take this view, I also see the coming together of Yeshua and Mary Magdalene in this way, as in the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of the Beloved Companion. Mother Mary is characterised as the higher Sophia and Mary Magdalene as fallen, although I attribute much of this picture to Gregory the Great's sermon of 592 – only as recently as 2016 did Mary Magdalene receive the title Apostle to the Apostles. The Gnostic Gospels portray Mary Magdalene as having attained gnosis and in both the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Beloved Companion, she is the awakened leader who knows, while Peter – apparently representing the ego – cannot go beyond the literal (GBC only appeared in 2010) and denigrates women. Cosmologically, God and Goddess emerge as polarities from 'the Mystery of the dazzling darkness of Consciousness.' Importantly, the Holy Spirit is Sophia, rather than the wholly masculine Trinity of the Orthodox churches. These dualities are transcended where 'Gnosis is Consciousness, which requires the apparent duality of subject and object, aware of the essential Oneness. It is the realisation of unity through duality.' (p. 148) Interestingly, the Ankh (p. 158) represents this in symbolic form.

In bringing the story into contemporary terms, the authors observe that certainty divides us, while doubt unites us. Literalism, the letter and the law divide, while gnosis and the spirit unite. Significantly, the words Gnostic and scientist both mean knower, and while religion based on belief creates antagonism between science and religion, the same does not apply to spirituality and gnosis, both of which, like science, question authority. Scientific materialism represents a current form of literalism – that only matter is ultimate. Those who experience gnosis know this to be a superficial view corresponding to the outer mysteries – I regard the NDE as a form of gnosis or initiation. I see it as part of the purpose of the Galileo Commission to recover the validity of gnosis as a valid and indeed deeper way of knowing whereby we experience that All is One. The appendix provides a brilliant summary of the structures of initiations and identity, inviting readers to step into a personal realisation of gnosis where 'we find ourselves no longer separate from others, or indeed from anything, but at one in the Mystery with all that is. We dissolve into mystical communion. We are in love with all beings.' (p. 204)

These books are far richer in detail and spiritual insight than can be conveyed in this review, and I strongly encourage readers interested in this field to read and ponder these penetrating studies. I find it profoundly encouraging to live in a time when gnosis and the soul are being recovered in our culture, and that this may result in a spiritually infused science of consciousness as well as a planetary ethic of interconnectedness.