Blog: Layer by Layer

A bas relief sculpture at Naqsh-e Rostam, Iran, depicting the triumph of Shapur I over the Roman Emperor Valerian.

Having spent the last few years studying the series of great Iranian empires which preceded the conquest by Arabs, I’ve become familiar with the idea of an Iran bestriding the world like a Colosssus, as it has repeatedly and over a very long period, right into the modern era. (Maps of these empires,  below.) My feeling is that we are seeing something more than a struggle for regional ‘hegemony’ by Iran.

Iranians are generally aware of their history and cultural heritage (as best they may, considering that much is lost, perhaps irretrievably). I am still being surprised at how technically-inventive this culture was thousands of years ago, and how this technology has not been lost, but is still being used and even adopted by others.

An ice-pit – Yakhchal – in Yazd Province. In 400 BCE, Persian engineers had already mastered the technique of storing ice in the middle of summer in the desert.	Wind tower and qanat used for cooling.

To regard Iran as Third World, ‘Developing’ or in any way backward, would be to ignore how it has caught up in the last decades. Iran looks today to be a modern, technological nation. It’s military has a growing arsenal of very sophisticated weapons.

That apart, my interest is cultural and in that regard, I think I see signs that the Iranian elite not only values its past, regardless of it not being Islamic, but would aim at re-establishing as much of it as they can. I think Iran has done most of the work, already.

In the face of growing international sanctions, Pakistan is now offering support to Iran. Pakistan broke earlier sanctions to provide Iran with the science and technology to make the atomic bomb and there are voices inside Pakistan in support of a weaponised Iran in the face of US opposition. Iran and Pakistan may well seek to share Afghanistan between themselves once Nato departs.

The Iraqi government is led by pro-Iranians. If a regional war breaks out, do not be surprised to see Iranian forces move through Iraq without opposition. Next stop: Saudi (not just for the oil but also Mecca;) and possibly Jordan, to help its allies in Syria.

The concern over a possible Israeli strike against Iran misses the point, I think, for if Iran has qualms now over weaponising its nuclear power, these would disappear immediately in the face of an attack. A strike on Iran could be both a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom for Israel and the instigation of a sudden and dramatic expansion of Iranian power in the region.

Past empires:
Sassanid Persian Empire 241-651 CE

The Sassanid Empire in dark green, territory contested with the East Romans in medium green, maximum gains during Khosrau II’s rule in light green.

Parthian Empire 247 BCE – 224 CE

This probably became Scythian under Maues in the last century of the past era.

Seleucid Empire - at the height of its power, it included central Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, today’s Turkmenistan, Pamir and parts of Pakistan.

A Greek-Macedonian state created out of the eastern conquests of Alexander the Great.

Achaemenid Empire c. 550–330 BCE

httpv://youtu.be/v1AJjnl2y8U
March, 2003: The chief executive of News International admitting to a Select Committee of the UK Parliament to paying police for information:
“We have paid the police for information in the past.”

Archaeology cannot be divorced from the cultural layers it studies – and within which it exists.

Our study of the archaeology of Greek magic and associated cultic and religious practices using chrest/good to conjure divine men into existence during the first centuries of the modern era, defines this term as ’the great and the good‘ and this became a foundation stone of Western Civilisation.

This same expression was used recently by a commentator describing the elite British circles of power in the on-going clash with the Fourth Estate, in which for many years the police, ministers of the crown and parliamentarians generally regarded criminal activity and complicity between the media, police and politicians as both normal and acceptable.

If this complicity is not to be regarded as conspiracy, then it is a societal norm in which the great and good regard themselves as above all others (which in a class-ridden society, they generally are) and as a final, logical consequence, above the law.

The present furore follows others in a crescendo:

• Pension-selling scandals which made some very wealthy at the expense of pensioners.
• The Cash for Honours scandal in which police interviewed the Prime Minister.
• Banking crises of 2008-9 in which public funds were used to protect private money.
• The 2009 banking bonus scandal in which “Investment banks profit as the public suffers”.

In each of these and similar, recent “scandals”, the beneficiaries are within the elite, the victims are the general public – and the political class either openly favours the elite, or blithely ignores the plight of the victims.

Further, British police, security and intelligence forces have been seen to be involved in extra-judicial killings, allowing terrorists to move in and out of the country, and complicit in extraordinary rendition and torture.

A still from video footage obtained by The Guardian showing the aftermath of what appears to be a police assault of Ian Tomlinson on April 1, 2009. Homeless paper-seller Tomlinson was pushed from behind outside the Bank of England as he walked back from work. He died within minutes. Last year, Keir Starmer, Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales, announced that no charges would be brought due to conflicting medical evidence. That decision was placed under review after an inquest jury ruled last month that Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed.

The commonality between the admittance to an official body of bribing police (the video, top) and the unlawful killing of the newspaper seller is that although both were witnessed by many in authority, they all chose to fail in their public duty, while the public is unsurprised by this reaction to the point of general acceptance.

Late Roman marble copy of the Kriophoros of Kalamis (Museo Barracco, Rome).

The Good Shepherd. Ceiling - S. Callisto catacomb.

The character of the problem is thus defined as both shepherd and sheep complicit in their situation and role.

Sheep, of course, are to be shorn regularly and at the appropriate time, slaughtered and eaten; ensuring this is the role of the shepherd.

The office of episkopos (now: bishop) over his flock has not changed in its basic function since Philip II of Macedon – father of the Alexander who became in the modern era a god – emulated the Persian “King’s Eye”.

I do not know yet when Jesus Christ and the Christian Church first appear, though I have been searching assiduously across the archaeology from the first century and onwards, to report here my findings. As we reach the 4th century, there is nothing but Manicheism with its Jesus Chrest from Parthia and when we look at copies of the New Testament made for Constantine I, there is no Christ there, either. No doubt we will find him eventually, though he becomes increasing ‘late’.

The Roman Church will appear out of the shadows of the Religio Romana with its Pontifex Maximus and other offices such as the Archigallus, colleges and rituals.

Drawing of a relief picturing an Archigallus. A Gallus was a eunuch priest of the Phrygian goddess Cybele. In Rome the head of the galli was known as the archigallus, at least from the period of Claudius on. A number of archaeological finds depict the archigallus wearing luxurious and extravagant costumes.

The Roman Church was built, quite literally, atop the Panhellenistic.

From a great number of inscriptions, in both Greek and Latin, we know that there was a sanctuary of Cybele and Attis on the other side of the Tiber, close to the Circus of Gaius (Caliglua) and Nero. In an old description of Rome it is referred to as the Phrygianum. Since in 1609 most of the altars were found below the facade of St Peter’s, on the Piazza San Pietro or in its immediate surroundings it must be assumed that the building was situated there. But up till now it has not been excavated. From the extent of the area throughout which these scattered finds were made it may be concluded that this temple, just like the one at Ostia, probably had sacred grounds, where the monuments stood in the open air. Practically all these altars had been erected to commemorate a taurobolium or a criobolium, and they are sometimes decorated with extremely beautiful reliefs. Consequently it is clear that these ceremonies were exclusively performed here on the Vatican Hill, and not on the Palatine. Most of the altars date from the fourth century AD, but with a gap of twenty-eight years. Practically all archaeologists associate this period in which no altars were erected with the first construction of St. Peter’s by Constantine. The enormous building activity in this area made it inconvenient for the followers of the “Phrygian” cult to carry out their rites in peace. It is now known when the Phrygianum was built, but it is highly probable that this took place under Antoninus Pius, if not earlier, in the first century under the emperor Claudius. (M.J. Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis)

Ceiling Mosaic - Chrestus Helios, the mosaic of Sol in Mausoleum M. Detail of vault mosaic in the Mausoleum of the Julii. From the necropolis under St. Peter's Mid-3rd century, Grotte Vaticane, Rome.

The “Tomb of the Julii” (Mausoleum “M”) survives in the Vatican Necropolis beneath St. Peter’s Basilica. The discovery (left) near the crypt has a vaulted ceiling bearing a mosaic depicting Helios (Roman Sol Invictus) with an aureole riding in his chariot, within a framing of vine leaves.

This Dionysiac scene dated to the late 3rd century to early 4th century has been related to the True Vine imagery of Gospel of John 15.1. Other mosaics in this tomb depicting Jonah and the whale, the Good Shepherd carrying a lamb (the kriophoros motif), and fishermen.

Both the Christian Church and its divine man are constructs of Late Antiquity, at the earliest, and its history is fiction, expropriated from other faiths, cultic practises, nations and people.

The counter-argument that the Christian Church left no footprint because it was both secret and persecuted is self-defeating, for it cannot be both at the same time.

The Tradition it began to fabricate for itself in the 4th century – through the archaeological fakery of the Empress Helena, the first New Testament with its Jesus the Good, and the fictive Ecclesiastical History by an assembly of imperial clerics labelled ‘Eusebius of Caesaria’ – has never had substance, nor withstood scrutiny and invited rejection by all but the chronically-credulous.

Instead, the institutions of Western Civilisation, including and especially universities and governments, have spun a culture of dishonesty to dress an ugly, corrupt, self-interested, greedy and ultimately dangerously-violent elite in piety and self-righteousness.

From Sunday School and divinity lessons for children, to bible scholarship and Divinity Schools within universities, to the perversion of historiography and the provision of false contexts to archaeology, scholarship at all levels has failed utterly to abide by its own standards.

Instead of looking to primary sources, using empirical evidences and reasoning, the peer-review process has been systematically perverted to produce a structure with no more substance than a house of cards.

Publications of archaeology use ‘Before Christ’ and ‘Anno Domini’ as a warning sign of their intellectual corruption.

That the world is changing and generally – if slowly – for the better, in due less to some magical betterment of humankind and more to technology, specifically Web 2.0, which has produced the social media generation, blogging and the twitterati.

A sniper takes aim at the cameraman and apparently shoots him dead: Syrian forces 'targeting mobile-phone videos'. The Independent, 5 July 2011

The cultural revolution sweeping North Africa, the Near East and Arabia began with Wikileaks and a tweet, and continues through Facebook and Youtube.

The news media has been liberated by the hashtag and news anchors are now the young men and women with mobile phones facing snipers, machine guns and tanks.

The revolution is coming your way and may be seen in your street any day soon.

The great and the good are neither great, nor good, any more than Christ is Chrest is actually divine.

Manichaean priests: Manuscript from Khocho, Tarim Basin

We have been in error, accepting the view of biblical scholarship and Christian tradition which dates the canonical gospels to the early period of the Roman Empire.

This error is personally mortifying, for I recognised and declared long ago the danger inherent in this approach. This is the sort of nonsense we accepted:

Even within the period that runs from c. A.D. 100-300 it is possible for paleographers to be more specific on the relative date of the papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament. For about sixty years now a tiny papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John has been the oldest “manuscript” of the New Testament. This manuscript (P52) has generally been dated to ca. A.D. 125. This fact alone proved that the original Gospel of John was written earlier, viz. in the first century A.D., as had always been upheld by conservative scholars. (Dating the Oldest New Testament Manuscripts by Peter van Minnen)

Use of the terms “fact” and “proved” is wrong. The early fragments of the New Testament do not have a secure, archaeological context and none have been radiocarbon-dated, relying instead on paleography. Here is better thinking:

What emerges from this survey is nothing surprising to papyrologists: paleography is not the most effective method for dating texts, particularly those written in a literary hand. Roberts himself noted this point in his edition of P52. The real problem is the way scholars of the New Testament have used and abused papyrological evidence. I have not radically revised Roberts’s work. I have not provided any third-century documentary papyri that are absolute “dead ringers” for the handwriting of P52, and even had I done so, that would not force us to date P52 at some exact point in the third century. Paleographic evidence does not work that way. What I have done is to show that any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries. Thus, P52 cannot be used as evidence to silence other debates about the existence (or non-existence) of the Gospel of John in the first half of the second century. Only a papyrus containing an explicit date or one found in a clear archaeological stratigraphic context could do the work scholars want P52 to do. As it stands now, the papyrological evidence should take a second place to other forms of evidence in addressing debates about the dating of the Fourth Gospel. (“The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel” by Brent Nongbri, Harvard Theological Review 98:23-52, 2005.)

The non-canonical Gospel of Judas has been radiocarbon dated to 280 CE +/- 60 years and I now declare that the canonical gospels in their near-final form likely belong to this period.

Late Roman marble copy of the Kriophoros of Kalamis (Museo Barracco, Rome)

Here is how I reached this position:

• In The vacuum of evidence for pre-4th century Christianity, I presented our findings from surveying the archaeology of this period: there is no clear, unambiguous use of the term ‘Christ’ (including ‘Christian’ and ‘Christianity’) in any medium, before the fourth century. One must note that Christ is translated as Messiah, the annointed.
• In Archaeology of ‘Chrest’ I presented various artefacts that mention ‘Chrest’, ‘Isu Chrest’ and ‘Jesus Chrest’. One must note that Chrest is translated as Good.
• With no archaeology – and this includes texts – for Christ or Christianity before the fourth century, there is no Christian Church: no offices and officers, including Popes; no churches; no iconography of Jesus Christ. The Good Shepherd motif is Panhellenistic, specifically of Hermes Kriophoros.
• The warning for this Christian vacuity comes from Josephus, whose chronicles fail to describe even a nascent Christianity. He makes references to the Sadducees, Jewish High Priests of the time, Pharisees and Essenes, the Herodian Temple, Quirinius’ census and the Zealots, and to such figures as Pontius Pilate, Herod the Great, Agrippa I and Agrippa II. Regardless of the disputed reference to “Jesus, who was called Christ”, Josephus is an important source for studies of immediate post-Temple Judaism and the context of early Christianity, yet says nothing of it: this is so unlikely as to be almost impossible.
• When Hadrian invented the cult of his Antinous, he created masses of good archaeology for us to find: an entire city, temples, very many statues and even the obelisk describing how Antinous was made a god. Though Christianity claims to be empire-wide and with many adherents belonging to the Greco-Roman elite, it has nothing. That is another impossible position. We can prove that the first-century miracle worker Apollonius of Tyana existed, but not that anyone was Christian until the fourth century.

The Josephus texts contain two other, important warnings: testimonia (claims for texts which are not extant) and forgery.

'Chrest' changed later to 'Christ' in the Codex Sinaiticus

An argument used to support the claim that Josephus mentions Jesus Christ is that this was then mentioned by Origen, but the fact is we do not have any original text by Origen and no contemporaneous evidence for either Origen, or works attributed to him.

We do not have any original text by Josephus either, for the oldest are medieval. Even if he did write of Jesus, we do not know if he wrote Christ or Chrest.

The Aramaic Josephus is missing. That is another warning.

• As well as the danger of relying on texts which do not exist, there is the massive problem of known texts which have been ‘lost’ (such as the declarations of loyalty to Diocletian from every town and city in the empire) and the enormous quantity of texts which Christian scholars and the Christian Church admit to being forgeries. Between the destruction of important texts and inscriptions, and the admitted dishonesty for Christian texts, a scholar is faced with the unedifying task of investigating a religion which, down to its roots, is riddled with lies and fakery.

Jesus Abermentho mosaic at Brading Villa. 4th century.

Judaic religious texts are renowned for their integrity and as Christianity likes to claim a Judaic heritage, Christians may imagine that their own texts have the same integrity, but this is demonstrably untrue. One of the two oldest codices of the New Testament is Sinaiticus, which contains some 20,000 alterations, to become one of the most altered texts in existence. We found also how Chrest was altered to read Christ (right).

The archaeology we have for Chrest and Jesus Chrest is for a figure of Greek magic, a Jesus Aberamentho with the head of a cockerel. The Jesus Chrest in the earliest gospels is a fully-formed man, more in the traditon of Apollonius of Tyana than a deity to be commanded to perform an exorcism. He is not first or second century, but from the third at the earliest and probably the fourth. That brings us back to the one gospel which is dated reliably: 280 +/- 60 years.

A canonical epistle by Mani, from a Coptic papyrus codex at Kellis, Egypt

From whence does the canonical Jesus Chrest derive? That is an easy answer, now we have the period, for there is but one source: from the East, the Jesus Chrestos of Mani (ca 216-276 CE).

I hope and expect that we will be able, by looking within the Parthian Empire, to come to understand the Parthian Jesus Chrest. The magical bowl inscribed with Chrest Magus was made in Syria during the last years of the past era, and both Thrace and Parthia have various historical characters taking the title ‘Servant of Jesus’ in both the past era and the first century of the modern.

The Healing of the Paralytic – the oldest known image of Jesus, from the Syrian city of Dura Europos, dating from c. 235 CE.

We will look further, at a future time, at how the Church of Mani became the Christian Church, but in short, it had to have been merged with the Religio Romana, adopting many of its offices and adapting its rituals. I will argue that a likely medium to bring this Jesus Chrest to Rome was one of Mani’s converts, Zenobia, who saw the story by Josephus (taken from royal archives) for an angel visiting Monobaz while his sister/wife Helen was pregnant with Izates (Angel), as part of her own heritage.

The lack of archaeology for Christ and Christianity, in contrast with the reliable archaeology for the Jesus Chrest of Mani, then his conversion of Zenobia, forces us to look to Aurelian and his principle of “one god, one empire”, which was later adopted to a full extent by Constantine I.

This is a short period, with only a small number of principal characters, including Constantius I and Helen, the forger of Christian archaeology on a grand scale.

We will have to cast a critical eye at ‘Eusebius’ – of Nicomedia and of Caesarea – and the claims by the latter for Origen (“child of Horus”), who, whatever he was, was not a Christian.

Professor McGuckin replied to my inquiry on archaeology to support the historicity for Origen by referring me to his The Westminster handbook to Origen, though to my mind, this tome exposes the weakness of his case, for rather than using extant sources contemporaneous to Origen, he relies on later, unsubstantiated claims. Such is the nature of the ‘glittering web’.

We should not accept the historicity of characters who leave no footprint upon the world, most especially when they are said to move in exalted and literate circles, and author important books (which do not exist). When temptation overcomes caution, then reference to these books should never assume authority, for it is important to know what is known and what is not.

Christian tradition exists precisely because it is not history; to pretend otherwise is both foolish and dishonest.

There is much to do and much to undo.