The dates of Jesus’ birth, death, and ministry has been the subject of debates almost from the beginning of the Christian Church. I will not make any attempt to define and elaborate on these except to offer the following quote and suggest that the reader undertake the subject for research. Salmon Reinach in his history of religion, writes: "Matthew places his [Jesus’] birth in the reign of Herod, that is to say, at the latest in the year 4 B.C. Luke dates it at the time of a census which took place ten years after, in 6 A.D. Luke makes the ministry of Jesus last only a year and a half, whereas, according to John, it lasted three and a half years." "Luke says that Jesus was thirty in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, 29 A.D., the year to which he assigns the baptism of Jesus by St. John; but the fourth Gospel makes the Jews say to Jesus: ‘Thou are not yet fifty years old,’ from which certain early churches inferred that he was about forty-nine at his death; but, in that case, if he was born in 4 B.C., he must have died A.D. 45, not under Tiberius, but under Claudius, and indeed one of the reports attributed by the Christians to Pilatus is addressed to Claudius."

We have touched on some of the above difficulties in this book, but suffice it to say that apart from these, there are numerous ancient records that cast doubts on the dating of the Gospel accounts. To state it bluntly, it is only from a biased and totally prejudiced view that the majority of Christians accept their church’s chronology.

Again the key word here is faith because it sure would take faith to believe that such odds were fulfilled in Jesus, especially in light of the fact that history and indeed the New Testament itself does not backup these supposed "fulfillment’s" of prophecy!

We have already discussed Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River, and its pagan connection to the dove of the Babylonian Mysteries. Regarding the story of John the Baptist, we shall skip over this and pick it up in the discussion of Malachi’s prophecy of the Elijah to come.

As to the ministry of Jesus, a very odd account precedes its beginning: his fast of forty days and forty nights. That one can go without food for forty days is possible, but going without water for that period of time would require a miracle! Even assuming that such a miracle occurred, how do we account for the fact that the story is almost identical to the fast of the mythological savior-Sun-gods? The rest of the story is that, in the midst of his tormenting hunger and thirst, Jesus was tempted by Satan himself, who offered him the world if he would worship him.

Because the story was so pagan in content, a number of early church fathers disputed it and did not want it repeated in the Gospels. However, the account became part of the Christian Church for the same reasons that the pagan festivals of Christmas and Easter were established: the wholesale "conversion" of pagans into the Roman Church.

Although the pagan content of the story has long since been forgotten by the Christian Church, it cannot erase the fact that the same account was known in other mythologies long before the advent of Christianity. For example, there is the "sacred account" of Buddha, who, while fasting, was tempted by the Prince of Evil, Mara, who offered him the rulership of the world! Here is Buddha’s reply: "Take heed, O Mara; . . . I know that the pursuit of religion is better than the empire of the world. You, thinking only of evil lust, would force me to leave all beings without guidance into your power. Avaunt! Get thou away from me!"

This account wasn’t the only one found in mythology. Zoraster, the founder of the religion of the Persians (i.e., what may be now called basic Mithraism), was also tempted by the "devil," who offered him great rewards if he would worship him. "Quetzalcoatle, the virgin-born Mexican Saviour, was also tempted by the devil, and the forty days’ fast was found among them." The fact of this fast among the ancient natives of America carries us back into Mesopotamia¾ particularly to Babylon¾ at a remote time. It takes us specifically to the forty days of fasting which has entered Roman Catholicism as lent. Even though today the Lenten fast is believed to commemorate the fast of Jesus, the tradition of lent is by no means founded in that supposed incident. So the story of a forty days’ fast is especially disturbing when we find it, along with the many other pagan legends, attached to the story of Jesus, which was recorded in a book that surfaced within the Roman Catholic Church!

That Jesus began his ministry with "Son of God" among his other titles is also no coincidence. Most of his titles are known in the pagan Mysteries. The Greek title of Christos is the most obvious, but add to this the title of "the Good Shepherd" which Osiris and Tammuz bore; "Lord of Death and King of Glory" attached to Sarapis; "the Light of the World" and "Sun of Righteousness" which were the titles of Mithra and Heracles; "Rising Sun" attributed to Helios; "King of Kings, God of Gods" as Dionysus was called; "Enlightened One" and the "Logos" assigned to Hermes; the "Son of Man" and "Messiah" titles of Vishnu and Mithra; "Lord and the Bridegroom" as Adonis was known; "the Lamb of God" as Mot-Aleyin was called, and add to all of the above the title of Savior! All in all, the Christian savior-god Jesus had quite a heritage with which to begin his ministry!

The miracles of Jesus were claimed as signs of the savior-gods of paganism many centuries before the Nazarene carpenter ever lived. Not similar miracles mind you, but the very same ones! The most obvious of these were performed by the savior-god Krishna, but we shall save him for the special presentation in the appendix. However, the Sun-god of Egypt, Horus, is represented on several ancient monuments with a wand in his hand, raising the dead to life. Likewise, we find that Buddha did the same: "Prof. Max Muller says: ‘The Buddhist legends teem with miracles attributed to Buddha and his disciples¾ miracles which in wonderfulness certainly surpass the miracles of any other religion." Buddha is called the "Great Physician." "At his appearance the ‘sick are healed, the deaf are cured, the blind see, the poor are relieved.’" Of course, Buddha, being in part just a continuation of the Babylonian family of gods, was not alone in performing these types of miracles. To the list we can add Zoraster; Bochia; Horus of Egypt; Osiris, to whom is attributed the healing of the blind, lame, and dumb; Serapis, called the "Healer of the World"; Marduk, who was the "Logos, Eldest Son of Hea, Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Merciful One, Life-Giver, etc.," and who is also remembered for raising the dead to life: Bacchus, the Christos, and son of Zeus, is remembered for changing WATER INTO WINE, and a number of other miracles which just happened to surface in the catalog of Jesus’ miracles. In fact, the great church father Justin Martyr wrote to the Emperor Hadrian in the defense of Christian Church: "As to our Jesus curing the lame, and the paralytic, and such as were crippled from birth, this is little more than what you say of your Ęculapius [a pagan Sun-god]."

Jesus’ miracle of changing water into wine would have particularly been brought into his legends if his life was based on the pagan Sun-gods¾ all of whom were connected to this drink. Indeed, we find several Sun-gods performing the same miracle in their earthly life. In fact, one of the most popular gods in Rome at the birth of the Christian religion was the Christos Bacchus, the Sun-god of wine, and from whom the great celebration of Bacchanalia was derived (outlined in volume one under the Christmas discussion). We should also understand that the wine miracle of Jesus taking place during a "feast" in the New Testament account, may be but one more indication that the tradition of a wine-drunken Bacchanalian feast was merely cleaned up for later Christian consumption.

Having gone into great detail in volume one to show how Roman Christianity underwent a great transformation from its Jewish framework to its final and completely pagan form, it is really not surprising to find one of the miracles of Bacchus attributed to Jesus. What is more, and certainly significant to this story, there was a secret worship of Bacchus in the environs of Judea in the first century, particularly in Samaria where, as we will soon see, more than one "Jesus" myth originated! Perhaps this explains why Luke’s Gospel has Jesus being placed in a manger at his birth, because another facet of Bacchus’ myth was that when he was born of a virgin in a cave/stable, he was laid in a manger.

Then there is the incident of Jesus walking on water: this will at once recall to mind the mythological Poseidon, the god of the sea, who was often depicted as not only walking swiftly across the surface of the water, but who had the power to command the sea itself¾ a story that is paralleled in the Gospels. And yes, there were those who believed in and worshipped this deity who came into the Christian Church in the first century, which answers the question as to why we find the story of Jesus not only walking on water, but commanding the sea to be silent in the face of a great storm. (Here too, we can refer to the first volume where the connection of water to the Sun-god was completely explained and documented.)

I should also like to comment on the above "miracles" that it would simply make no sense for the real Messiah to perform such "signs" in the sight of only a handful of men, when, first of all, he was to come to all Twelve Tribes of Israel¾ multiple-millions of people.

Yet, when Jesus restores the sight of two blind men we are to believe that this too proves his Messiahship. However, all it does in reality is but recalls a miracle performed by another savior-god, Ęsculapius, who was a Roman Sun-god that "restored two blind men to sight." The only problem for Christianity is that this "god" performed his "miracle" before Jesus was born! Actually, if you want to get specific about Jesus healing the blind with spittle, then take into account the following legend: ". . . the priestesses at Nineveh cured the blind with spittle, and the story was repeated of many different [Sun] gods and their incarnations." In other words, to make the point again, the story had been well represented among the savior-gods of the

Mysteries countless centuries before the time of Jesus, and history tells us that it originated in Babylon/Assyria!

We can also put into the above categories the accounts of Jesus casting out demons. That all the savior-gods of mythology were also given credit for this is a fact of history. Yet, in at least one spectacular instance, the account attributed to Jesus seems to have been borrowed directly from a nearby pagan miracle. When Jesus cast a legion of demons out of a man into a herd of swine, as told in Mark 5:11-13, it does at first raise the question as to why a herd of swine would be in an area occupied by Jews. This was answered by the feat taking place near the Greek city of Gadara, on the east coast of the Sea of Galilee¾ completely off the "beaten path" of Jesus’ normal territory¾ especially since, as the Messiah, he was to come only to the House of Israel. But it seems that not only did Greek Gentiles own the swine in question, they owned the "infallible" legend itself.

In pagan tradition the worst punishment for a demon was to be cast out of whoever (or whatever) they had possessed and to be sent to the underworld. So too in Christianity. This is what is meant in Mark’s account when the demons plead with Jesus not to be sent "out of the country," or in Luke’s account "to the deep," or the Abyss. In other words, they wanted to stay in the world of humans. This odd tale can be understood by considering a contemporary local pagan Greek Gadarene folk tale about casting demons into swine, which may have been originally part of a legend about the local Greek Sun-god. The Gospel tale is even more curious when we find the pigs running over a cliff of sorts, and perishing, because part of the Greek worship of their gods entailed sacrificing pigs in this way: the gods were appeased by "pigs falling into a crevice in the earth."

We could go on citing other examples of Jesus’ miracles, which were known centuries or millennia before his time in the stories of the pagan gods. But the examples given here should be sufficient to send you to do your own research, after which the only possible conclusion is to ascribe them as entering the Gospel accounts the same way that Easter and Christmas entered the early Christian Church.