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Category: Ancient Rome

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Ancient Rome Tacitus

Caligula, 1

Marble portrait bust of the emperor Gaius, known as Caligula, A.D. 37–41.

Because the book Neo-Christianity is finally available (even if only in PDF for the moment), I have changed both the sticky post and the featured post. In both I used the symbol from George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels about the Weirwood tree (a tree that, if a greenseer touches it, he can paranormally see into the past of Westeros). I would like to exemplify what I meant in the sticky and the featured posts with a new series on the figure of Emperor Caligula. As can be read on pages 16-17 of Neo-Christianity:

The Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, who governed Palestine from 26 to 36 AD, was known for his aggressive treatment of the Jews. But things grew even worse for them after his removal from power and the ascension of Emperor Caligula in Rome. Hayim Ben-Sasson writes, “The reign of Caligula (37-41 AD) witnessed the first open break between the Jews and the Empire… Relations deteriorated seriously during this time.”

Years later, Emperor Claudius issued his third edict, Letter to the Alexandrians, in which he accused those Jews of “fomenting a general plague which infests the whole world.” This is a striking passage; it suggests that Jews all over the Middle East had succeeded in stirring up dangerous agitation toward the empire. It also marks the first occurrence in history of a “biological” epithet used against them. By the year 49, Claudius had to undertake yet another expulsion of Jews from Rome.

All this set the stage for the first major Jewish revolt, in the year 66. Also called the First Jewish-Roman War (there were three), this event was a major turning point in history.

This reminds us of what Eduardo Velasco wrote in the essay on Judea vs. Rome, which we translated for The Fair Race, book #2 on the list of thirteen books in the new featured post:

In 41, Caligula, who already promised to be an anti-Jewish emperor, was assassinated in Rome, which unleashed the violence of his German bodyguards who had not been able to prevent his death and who, because of their peculiar sense of fidelity, tried to avenge him by killing many conspirators, senators and even innocent bystanders who had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Claudius, the uncle of Caligula, would become the master of the situation and, after being appointed emperor by the Praetorian Guard, ordered the execution of the assassins of his nephew, many of whom were political magistrates who wanted to reinstate the Republic.

This is the probable cause of the unprecedented historical defamation of this emperor: the texts of Roman history would eventually fall into the hands of the Christians, who were mostly of Jewish origin and viscerally detested the emperors. Since, according to Orwell, ‘he who controls the past controls the present’ the Christians adulterated Roman historiography, turning the emperors who had opposed them and their Jewish ancestors into disturbed monsters.

Thus, we do not have a single Roman emperor who has participated in harsh Jewish reprisals who has not been defamed by accusations of homosexuality, cruelty or perversion. The Spanish historian José Manuel Roldán has dismantled many of the false accusations against the historical figure of Caligula.

Well, two months ago I received the book in Spanish by José Manuel Roldán Hervás, PhD in classical philology. Already in the prologue of Calígula, el Autócrata Inmaduro (Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros, 2012), Roldán quotes a sentence from Tacitus’ Annals: ‘The deeds of Tiberius and Gaius [Caligula], as well as those of Claudius and Nero, were falsified, out of fear, while they lived; and written, after their deaths, with hatred still fresh’.

In the next entry I will translate the whole prologue to Roldán’s book. For the moment I would just like, as I said, to illustrate what I alluded to in the sticky and featured posts: that the System demoralises the white man through historical lies.

For example, I recently interrupted the Netflix series on Caligula when I saw that they cast him, even before he was emperor, as the poisoner of Tiberius, the previous Roman emperor. One cannot contrast more that tale ‘with hatred still fresh’ with what we read in Roldán’s biography.

If we recall what Catherine Nixey wrote about the burning of entire libraries of the classical world by Christians, it cannot be more unfortunate that of Tacitus’ Annals, originally sixteen books on the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, the entire reign of Caligula has been lost. Unlike the writers who wrote with hatred, Tacitus is known to have been more objective.

Now back to our metaphor. Unlike Martin’s fiction about the oldest religion of Westeros, its Weirwood trees and the gifted greenseers who saw the past when they touched them, in the real world we have no such window to know, with absolute precision, what happened in the time of those emperors of the first century c.e. But if I still use the metaphor it’s because books like Roldán’s are the closest we have to a truer history of what might have happened.

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Ancient Rome Catholic Church Josephus Judaism Judea v. Rome Nero New Testament

How Yahweh conquered Rome, 4

by Laurent Guyénot

 

The foundation of the Roman church under the Flavian dynasty

In 70, newly proclaimed emperor Vespasian and his son Titus brought to Rome about 97,000 Jewish captives (Josephus, Jewish War vi, 9), as well as members of the Jewish nobility rewarded for their support in the war in Judea—Josephus being the most famous of them.

Soon after, as Josephus started working on his Antiquities of the Jews in 20 volumes, we are told that the Gospels were written.[11]

In the same period, according to standard Church history, we already have in Rome a Christian church, headed by a certain Clement of Rome (88-99). Clement must have been an educated Jew like Josephus, because his only genuine epistle is characterized by numerous Hebraisms, abundant references to the Old Testament, and a Levitical mindset. An ancient and credible tradition makes him a freedman of consul Titus Flavius Clemens, a cousin of the Flavian emperors. We learn from Cassius Dio that Flavius Clemens was executed by Domitian, brother and successor of Titus, for ‘atheism’ and ‘deviation toward Judaic customs.’ His wife Flavia Domitilla was banished to the island of Pandateria (Ventotene). Over time, Flavius Clemens came to be regarded as a Christian martyr, and this gave rise to the idea of Domitian’s persecution of Christians. But historians now dismiss this notion (there is no clearly attested persecution of Christians prior to the middle of the third century),[12] and assume that Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla were simply accused of Judaizing, and the former perhaps of circumcising himself.[13] One of Domitian’s assassins in 96 was a steward of Domitilla named Stephanus, which may suggests a Jewish vengeance.

The attitude of the Flavians towards the Jews was apparently twofold. On the one hand, they seemed determined to do away with the Jewish religion, which they saw, correctly, as the source of Jewish separatism. Not content with having destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, Vespasian also ordered the destruction of the one in Leontopolis, Egypt. In general, the Romans used to integrate the vanquished gods with a ceremony of evocatio deorum, by which the god was granted a sanctuary in Rome. But the god Yahweh was considered inassimilable, which is why his objects of worship were treated as mere booty, according to Emily Schmidt: ‘The treatment of the Jewish god can be seen as an inversion of the typical Roman treatment of or attitude towards foreign gods, perhaps as an anti-evocatio.’[14]

On the other hand, Josephus’ biography shows that Vespasian and Titus were not just merciful, but even grateful to the Jews who had rallied to them in Judea. There is no contradiction between those two aspects of the Flavians’ Jewish policy: they repressed Jewish separatism and forbade Jewish proselytizing but encouraged Jewish assimilation. Assimilationist Jews abandoned circumcision and had no objection to the syncretic assimilation of Yahweh with Zeus or Jupiter. The same basic twofold policy was followed by the Flavians’ successors Trajan (98-117) and Hadrian (117-138).[15]

From these basic facts, and keeping in mind the pattern set by Ezra’s priestly circle in Babylon, it is not difficult to imagine what was going on in Rome in the first century. The theory I’m going to discuss now goes like this. The cornerstone of the Roman Catholic Church was first laid by a secret brotherhood of priestly Jews, who had been brought to Rome by Vespasian and Titus in the aftermath of the Jewish War that destroyed their Temple in 70 AD. Some had gained Vespasian’s favor and protection by handing him the fabulous Temple treasure that made possible his ascension to the imperial throne. Flavius Josephus, who had defected to the Romans in Galilee and was rewarded beyond measure by Vespasian, may have been an influential member of that Jewish circle. Those powerful, wealthy and self-conscious Jews, using assimilation for dissimulation, had the motive, the means and the opportunity to fabricate the syncretic religion that could serve as their Trojan horse.

I borrow this theory from Flavio Barbiero’s book The Secret Society of Moses: The Mosaic Bloodline and a Conspiracy Spanning Three Millennia (2010). The author is not a trained historian, but a scientist with a sharp inquisitive and logical mind combined with a great imagination and a taste for sweeping theories. There is a great deal of speculation in the grand story he unfolds, from Moses to modern times, but it is insightful and consistent. At least it is a good starting point for trying to answer the question of how the Jews created Christianity.

According to that thesis, these priestly Jews brought to Rome by Vespasian and Titus had come to terms with the ruin of their nation and Temple, but they had not given up on their biblical program of Jewish supremacy; they simply reinterpreted it from their new vantage point inside the Empire’s capital. Still jealous of their birth and strictly endogamous, they retained and passed on to their progeny a sense of mission to pave for Israel a new road towards its destiny. Can we not even assume that, under their apparent loyalty to the Emperor, they shared the same hatred of Rome that inspired first-century Jewish texts like the Apocalypses of Ezra and of Baruch?

In Ezra, the roar of the Lion of Judah makes the Roman eagle bursts into flame, and a reunited and free Israel is gathered in Palestine. In Baruch, the Messiah routs and destroys the Roman armies, then brings the Roman emperor in chains to Mount Zion and puts him to death.[16] The same hatred of Rome permeates the Book of Revelation, where Rome, under the thin veil of Babylon, is called the Great Harlot, whose flesh will be consumed by God’s wrath, to make way for a brand new Jerusalem.
 

______ 卐 ______

 
Editor’s note: Already from Nietzsche’s texts it was clear that the author of the Book of Revelation was a Jew who hated Rome in a hellish way. If there is one overtly anti-Roman text in the New Testament it is the one attributed to the Jew John of Patmos (not to be confused with John the Evangelist, let alone the fictional figure of John the Apostle).

It was a book written after the destruction of Jerusalem. No wonder the Jew John of Patmos dreamed of a ‘New Jerusalem’ in the final book of the Bible!

______ 卐 ______

 
Let us consider, as a working hypothesis, that these Jewish priests had a plan. They adopted the network strategy that had allowed their distant ancestors to infiltrate the Persian court and thereby regain their lost power under the patronage of Ezra. Their goal, according to Flavio Barbiero, was ‘taking possession of the newborn Christian religion and transforming it into a solid power basis for the priestly family’ (p. 146). There existed already a cult of Christ, attested by Paul’s epistles written in the 50s, but the Gospels gave it a completely different orientation in the decades following the destruction of the Temple. The Law-abiding Peter, presented as the head of the Jerusalem Church by the Gospel of Matthew, was made the founder of the Roman papacy in the literature attributed to Clement of Rome, thus establishing a spiritual bond between Rome and Jerusalem.

To get a better understanding of the Jewish community that elaborated these traditions, we must take a closer look at the first Jewish war. In 67, emperor Nero sent his army commander Vespasian to crush the rebellion of the priestly Sadducees who had defied Roman power by banning from the Temple the daily sacrifices offered in the name and at the expense of the Emperor. When, after Nero’s death, Vespasian was declared emperor in December 69, his son Titus was left in Judea to finish putting down the rebellion.

In Book vi of Josephus’ Jewish War we learn that, from the early stage of Titus’ siege of Jerusalem, many Jews went over to the Romans, including ‘heads of the priestly families.’ Titus ‘not only received these men very kindly in other respects, but […] told them, that when he was gotten clear of this war, he would restore each of them to their possessions again.’ Until the last days of the siege, Josephus informs us, some priests obtained safe conduct under the condition that they handed to Titus some of the Temple’s wealth.

One, named Jesus, delivered ‘two candlesticks similar to those that were deposited in the Temple, some tables, some drinking chalices and cups, all of solid gold. He also handed over the curtains [those that were torn as Jesus expired according to Matthew 27:51], the robes of the high priest, with the precious stones and many other objects used for sacrifices.’ Another, named Phineas, introduced by Josephus as ‘the guardian of the Temple treasure,’ handed over ‘the priests’ tunics and belts, a large quantity of purple and scarlet cloth […] and a large quantity of the sacred ornaments, thanks to which, even if he was a prisoner of war, he obtained the amnesty reserved for deserters.’

Those priests obviously bargained their lives and their freedom with parts of the Temple treasure. The Temple was not just a religious sanctuary, it was, in a real sense, a central bank and a giant vault, harboring enormous quantities of gold, silver, and precious artifacts financed by tithes from around the world. One of the purposes of the Temple, we could say, was to satisfy Yahweh’s greed: ‘I shall fill this Temple with glory, says Yahweh Sabaoth. Mine is the silver, mine the gold!’ (Haggai 2:7).[17] According to the Copper Scroll found near the Dead Sea in 1952, the Temple treasure, amounting to tons of gold, silver, and precious items, had been hidden during the siege in 64 locations.[18] So it is logical to assume, as Barbiero does, that Titus and Vespasian were only able to get their hands on it with the help of high-ranking priests.

This huge booty, of which the symbolic centerpiece was the enormous menorah depicted on the Arch of Titus (opening picture), certainly helped Vespasian to earn the acclamation of his troops as emperor, and then to convince the Senate. The construction of the Coliseum, between 70 and 80, was entirely financed by this booty.

______________

[11] The earliest gospel, the Gospel of Mark, is commonly dated in the late 60s, but that date is much too early, especially since it mentions the destruction of the Temple.

[12] Tacitus wrote in the Annals (xv, 44) that Nero accused Christians of starting the great fire of Rome in 64, and had many of them ‘thrown to the beasts, crucified, and burned alive.’ But this is the only attestation of that story, and some modern scholars have cast doubt on its credibility. Richard Carrier sees it as a later Christian interpolation, and Brent Shaw argues that Nero’s persecution is a myth. There is one other mention of persecution against Christians before the third century, in a letter written to Trajan by Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia (north of Asia Minor). But this letter is of dubious authenticity as well, belonging to a book of 121 letters found in the 16th century, copied, and lost again.

[13] Paul Mattei, Le Christianisme antique: De Jésus à Constantin, Armand Colin, 2011, p. 119.

[14] Emily A. Schmidt, ‘The Flavian Triumph and the Arch of Titus: The Jewish God in Flavian Rome,’ UC Santa Barbara: Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group, 2010.

[15] Trajan is said to have had a pro-Jewish wife, Pompeia Plotina, and he once sentenced to death a Greek dignitary named Hermaiskos for having complained that the emperor’s entourage was ‘full of impious Jews.’ (Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski, The Jews of Egypt – From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian, Princeton University Press, 1997, p. 193-196). But Hadrian is credited for having banned circumcision, and, when faced in 132 with a new anti-Roman Jewish uprising in Judea, led by Simon bar Kokhba, he destroyed Jerusalem once more, converted it into a Greek city named Aelia Capitolina, and forbade Jews to enter it.

[16] Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, Essential Books, 1957, p. 4.

[17] According to 1Kings 10:14, the amount of gold hoarded each year into Salomon’s temple was ‘666 talents of gold’ (1 talent = 30kg). Salomon’s treasure may be legendary, but it illustrates what the Jerusalem Temple still meant for the priests of the first century AD.

[18] Because the Copper Scroll is part of the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls, which have been wrongly assigned an Essenian origin for decades, its content was long considered fictional. The revision of this misguided theory, pioneered by Norman Golb in Who wrote the Dead Sea scrolls?: The search for the secret of Qumran, Scribner, 1995, has corrected that bias.

Categories
Ancient Rome Judaism Judea v. Rome

How Yahweh conquered Rome, 1

Editor’s note: With the subtitle ‘Christianity and the Big Lie’, this 12,400-word essay by Laurent Guyénot was published in The Unz Review at Christmas 2020. It will be republished here, excerpted, in five parts.
 

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The People of the Lie

Primo Levi, Italian author of If this is a man (1947)—‘a pillar of Holocaust literature’ according to Wikipedia—, wrote a short fictional story titled Un testamento, consisting of the last recommendation of a member of the guild of the ‘tooth-pullers’ to his son. Its ends with these words:

From all that you have just read you can deduce that lying is a sin for others, and for us a virtue. Lying is one with our job: we should lie by words, by eyes, by smile, by clothing. Not only to deceive patients; as you know, our purpose is higher, and the lie, not the twist of hand, makes our real strength. With the lie, patiently learned and piously exercised, if God helps us we will come to dominate this country and perhaps the world: but this can only be done on the condition of having been able to lie better and longer than our enemies. I will not see that day, but you will see it: it will be a new golden age, when only the last resorts will force us to pluck out teeth again, while it will be enough for us to govern the State and administer public affairs, to lavish the pious lies that we have learned to bring to perfection. If we prove ourselves capable of this, the empire of the tooth-pullers will extend from East to West until the most distant islands, and it will have no end.[1]

There is no literary value in this prose. Its only interest is the question it begs: Who does Levi mean by this society of professional liars, whose trade is passed on from father to son, and whose plan is to conquer the world? Of whom are they the metaphor? And perhaps this other question: What is this ‘testament’ of theirs?

Even if we didn’t know what gang of professional liars Levi belonged to, their ‘God’ would give them away: there is only one god who trained his people to lie and promised them world domination, and that is the god of Israel. ‘Israel,’ remember, is the name Yahweh gave to Jacob, after Jacob lied to his aging father Isaac, by words and by clothing: ‘I am Esau your first-born,’ he said, dressed up in ‘Esau’s best clothes,’ in order to cheat Esau out of his birthright (Genesis 27:15-19). This is, in the literal—and literary—sense, the founding story of Israel. As long as Christians fail to see the malice of it, and its correlation with Jewish behavior, they will continue to play the part of Esau.

What is the biggest Jewish lie in history? Without contest, it is the claim that Jews, of all the nations inhabiting this earth, were once ‘chosen’ by the almighty Creator of the Universe to enlighten and rule over mankind—while all their enemies were cursed by the same Creator. What is truly bewildering is not the enormity of the lie: many individuals may feel chosen by God, and even nations have done so. But only the Jews have managed to convince billions of non-Jews (Christians and Muslims) of their chosenness. How did they do it? ‘Almost by accident,’ wrote Jewish author Marcus Eli Ravage in his must-read 1928 article ‘A real case against the Jews.’ I think the accidental factor was rather minor. [Editor’s note: Remember the article by Marcus Eli Ravage published in The Fair Race: the only article by a Jew to appear in that anthology. Even the Nazis translated it for the Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung.]

The Christians’ theory that, after choosing the Jews, God cursed them for their rejection of Christ doesn’t contradict, but rather validates the Jews’ claim that they are the only ethnic group that God chose, loved exclusively and guided personally through his prophets for thousands of years.

I have argued in ‘The Holy Hook’ that this has given the Jews an ambivalent but decisive spiritual authority over Gentiles. In fact, even the Jews’ ‘cursedness’ that goes with their chosenness in the Christian view has been beneficial to them, because Jewishness cannot survive without hostility to and from the Gentile world; that’s part of its biblical DNA. Jesus saved the Jews in the sense that their hatred of Christianity preserved their identity, which might otherwise have perished without the Temple. According to Jacob Neusner ‘Judaism as we know it was born in the encounter with triumphant Christianity.’[2] Christian Judeophobia had an advantage over Pagan Judeophobia: with Christianity, the Jews were not just hated as atavistically antisocial (i.e., Tacitus’ Histories v, 3-5), but as God’s once chosen people, and their Torah became the world bestseller. [Editor’s note: Compare this with Kevin MacDonald’s ‘adaptive Christianity’: a supposedly good Christianity. In our view, all Christianity was bad for Aryan DNA. Tom Sunic in Homo Americanus blames American Christianity for the crime they committed against the Germans in the last century.]

Chosenness is an unbeatable trump card in the game of nations. If you doubt its power, just ask yourself: would the Jews have gotten Palestine in 1948 without that card? The Holocaust joker alone would not have done it!

As I have become increasingly aware of the resonance between the spiritual and the genetic, as well as of the Jewish war against White identity, I have come to wonder if the revealed notion of Jewish divine preference and predestination has not been a slow debilitating poison injected into our collective soul. Jewish chosenness means a metaphysical superiority that makes us, non-Jews, God’s second choice at best.

Sure, this is not an explicit dogma of Christianity—the Credo doesn’t include ‘I believe that God chose the Jews’—, but only an underlying postulate of Christology. Does that make it less, or more efficient against our rational immune system? It is hard to tell. I believe that Jews have carried their chosenness by the Jealous One as a kind of spooky aura not unlike the mark of Cain that says, ‘Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance’ (Genesis 4:15). (It is appropriate to mention here that Cain is the eponymous ancestor of the Kenites, a Midianite tribe allied to the Israelites during the conquest of Canaan, and that according to the scholarly ‘Kenite hypothesis,’ the Yahwist cult is of Kenite origin.)[3]

How did they do it? How did the Jews manage to smuggle their Big Lie into the exclusive religion of European nations? That is a legitimate and important question, isn’t it? From a purely historical perspective, it remains one of the greatest puzzles; one that secular historians prefer to leave to Church historians, who are comfortable with Constantine hearing voices near the Milvius Bridge. [Editor’s Note: The exception is David Skrbina. See the excerpts we recently published from his book The Jesus Hoax.]

The question is, very simply: How is it that Rome ended up adopting as its spiritual foundation a doctrine and a book claiming that God chose the Jews, at a period of widespread Roman Judeophobia? And how is it possible, that, less than two centuries after turning Jerusalem into a Greek city named Aelia Capitolina, where Jews were forbidden to enter, Rome adopted officially a religion that announced the fall of Rome and a new Jerusalem?

One part of the answer is that uniting the Empire under a common religion has been a major concern of Roman emperors from the very beginning. Before Christianity, it was not a question of eliminating local religions, but of creating a common cult to give a divine legitimacy and a religious bond to the Empire. When they searched for religious inspiration, the Romans generally turned to Egypt. The cults of Osiris (or Serapis, as he came to be called from the third century BC), of his sister-spouse Isis, and of their son Horus (or Harpocrates, Horus the Child) were extremely popular all around the Mediterranean, and provided the Romans with the closest thing to an international religion.

Hadrian (117-138) gave Osiris the features of Antinous, to whom he also dedicated a new city, new games, and a constellation. The origin of Antinous is unclear. The Augustan History tells us that he was the gay lover (eromenos) of Emperor Hadrian, and many historians still reproduce that story, even though the Augustan History has been exposed as the work of an impostor. In all likelihood this story is a Christian propaganda against a competing religion.

Antinous, whose name is formed of anti, ‘like’, and nous, ‘spirit’, is supposed to have drowned in the Nile on a 24th of October, just like Osiris, and his death was interpreted as a sacrifice. As a divinity, Antinous was assimilated to Osiris, and by extension to Hermes, Dionysos and Bacchus, all divinities of the Afterworld. On a monolithic obelisque found in Rome but built in Antinopolis, Antinous is designated as Osiris Antinous. His cult must therefore be seen as a new expression of the cult of Osiris sponsored by the Empire. Antinous’ face and body, sculpted in thousands of copies, were a self-celebration of the White race that then dominated the world, from Anatolia to Spain, and from Great Britain to Egypt.[4] [Color emphasis by Editor.]

(Left, Antinous as Bacchus, colossal sculpture presumed to have been from Hadrian’s villa in Palestrina.) What a contrast with its competitor, the cult of the Crucified! The question, then, becomes: Why did Christ ultimately supplant Osiris, even absorbing the cult of Isis? How is it that the glorious and self-confident Roman Empire converted to the cult of a Jewish healer tortured and executed by Roman authorities for sedition? This is the Jewish question that few people want to ask. Assuming that Christianity is a human creation—and that’s my premise—, it is obviously a Jewish creation to a large extent. How did Jews manage to create a religion for Gentiles that would ultimately eradicate all other religions in the Empire—beginning with the imperial cult?

A full understanding of this question will probably never be reached, but with what we have learned about Jewish ways in the last hundred years, we can try to formulate some reasonable scenario, one that doesn’t involve God talking to emperors, but another talking device—money—as well as political leverage by a Jewish transgenerational network determined to seize control of the religious policy of the Empire. We, today, know that such Jewish transgenerational networks, capable of driving their host Empires or nations to their ruin, do exist. We also know that they are good at fabricating and promoting their Judeocentric macabre religion for the Goyim.

____________

[1] Translated from the French: Primo Levi, Lilith et autres nouvelles, Le Livre de Poche, 1989.

[2] Jacob Neusner, Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine: History, Messiah, Israel, and the Initial Confrontation, University of Chicago Press, 1987 , pp. ix-xi.

[3] Read Thomas Römer, The Invention of God, Harvard UP, 2015, pp. 137-138, or Hyam Maccoby, The Sacred Executioner, Thames & Hudson, 1982, pp. 13-51. I broached on this topic in my book ‘Our God Is Your God Too, But He Has Chosen Us’: Essays on Jewish Power, AFNIL, 2020, pp. 42-45.

[4] Royston Lambert, Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous, Phoenix Giant, 1984; Christopher Jones, New Heroes in Antiquity, op. cit., pp. 75-83.

Categories
Ancient Rome New Testament St Paul

The Jesus Hoax, 6

CHAPTER 6: TAKING STOCK, LOOKING AHEAD

Let’s take stock at this point by briefly recapping the central facts.

The oldest existing Bible dates from the year 350; as we move backward in time from there, our confidence in the actual text diminishes significantly—some parts being much more uncertain than others. Expert consensus is that the four Gospels date to the years 70 to 95 AD, and Paul’s letters to 50 to 70 AD. Paul, the Gospel authors, Jesus, Joseph, the Virgin Mary, and all twelve apostles were Jews. Many Jews had been in active and passive resistance to Rome from virtually the beginning of the takeover in 63 BC. Between the years zero and 93 AD we have absolutely no independent, corroborating evidence for such things as the Bethlehem star, any of Jesus’ 36 miracles, any of the apostles’ miracles, or any of the Christian-specific events depicted in the New Testament.
 

Critiquing antagonism

My thesis addresses the question of motive, something that’s utterly lacking in the other skeptics. I have shown how the Jews had a deep hatred for the Gentile masses and the Romans in particular, and thus how individuals would have done anything—including lie, and including placing themselves at mortal risk—to benefit the Jewish people. The mythicists and other skeptics have no good account of a motive… The Antagonism Thesis is by far the most credible analysis. It best accounts for all the known facts, and identifies an actual and fact-based motive for the whole construction. All signs point to a Jesus Hoax.

So, what’s the counter reply to the Antagonism Thesis? The basic elements of it have been around for over a century. Obviously it had been considered before and apparently rejected, since none of the recent Jesus skeptics defend it. What would they say in reply, to challenge that thesis?

In fact I have raised this question with a number of experts, precisely so that I could gauge the strength of the thesis. Let me mention their comments and then offer my responses.

“It’s not clear that all the Gospel authors, apart from Matthew, were Jews. John certainly was not.”

As I’ve replied earlier, the Gospel of Mark was written for a Gentile audience and thus takes on the superficial appearance of a Gentile work. There is a strong consensus that Mark himself was Jewish. The extensive OT references in all four Gospels argue strongly for Jewish authorship. There is no real evidence that Luke was a Gentile save his name, but as we know from Paul, it was not unheard of for Jews to change to Gentile names. The scattered anti-Jewish statements in all the Gospels—especially John—more reflect an internal Jewish battle over ideology than an external, Gentile attack. Paul is clearly and obviously Jewish.

“You are making sweeping generalizations. Not all Jews opposed Rome, and not all NT writers and characters are necessarily Jewish.”

On the first point, of course, as I stated, many Jews acquiesced to Roman rule. Probably a large majority accepted it, even if begrudgingly. But the elite Jews were sure incensed, and there was certainly a substantial minority of Zealots and others violently opposed. My thesis doesn’t require that all or even most Jews opposed Rome, only that a small band—Paul and friends—did so, and acted on that basis. Regarding the NT writers, that’s addressed above. Regarding the characters in the story—Jesus, Mary, Joseph, et al—we can only go by the words written down, and the text is conclusive: all were Jews.

One knowledgeable colleague listed a number of specific problems for any such hoax theory:

  • Needs a motive. Discussed above. The motive was revenge against Rome, and an attempt to undermine its support by confusing and corrupting the masses.
  • The depiction of Jesus as Messiah conflicts with Jewish expectations of the time. Certainly, and that’s why the majority of the Pharisees opposed Paul’s gang. Paul didn’t concoct his hoax for the Jews; it was strictly for the ‘benefit’ of the gullible Gentiles [1] …

There is no reason that the militant Jews would have given up; rather, they changed direction. [S.G.W.] Brandon’s best defense is that the last Gospel, John, does indeed drop most all talk of revolution, as I noted previously. But that is better attributed to John’s new, more intellectual audience than to any utter resignation on the part of the cabal.

The main point, though, is that the apologists never quite get around to explaining how exactly the Zealot thesis has been “discredited.” And they can’t. They can point to Jesus saying “love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek,” but that’s about it.

Let me take a moment to respond to a number of questions that may arise at this point—some of which I’ve covered already, and some not.

Question: “Okay, as a Christian I’ve read and absorbed your whole shocking message. What am I supposed to do about all this?”

Answer: First, try to confirm as much of the evidence cited here as possible [Editor’s note: This image doesn’t appear in Skrbina’s text. He is wise, but an amateur New Testament scholar. I suggest that the reader begin studying a professional NT scholar, for the reasons given in my book Daybreak. Skrbina continues—his italics:] You have been swindled. Tell them you want your money back. And your time. And your life—everything that you’ve invested, and lost, in the most famous hoax in history.

Question: “What about all those pro-Roman, anti-war passages?: ‘Render unto Caesar’ (Mark 12:17), ‘let every person be subject to the governing authorities’ (Rom 13:1), ‘pay your taxes’, ‘perish by the sword’ (Mt 26:52), ‘turn the other cheek’ (Mt 5:39)—not to mention, ‘love thy neighbor’! Don’t these undermine your thesis?”

Answer: This is the “peaceable Jesus” reply. We all know those famous lines, and they get repeated ad nauseum. My general reply is (a) the Jewish cabal was compelled to insert such lines for cover; too much explicit talk of rebellion was dangerous. Also (b) these relatively few lines are outnumbered by far more that imply rebellion and war—see my discussion in chapter five. And in any case, “rendering to Caesar” says nothing about not also working for his downfall. And sure, you may perish by the sword, but that’s what happens in war. I particularly appreciate “love thy neighbor”: Who, after all, was “the neighbor” if not the Jew?

Question: “The Jews come off looking pretty bad here. Isn’t all this terribly anti-Semitic?”

Answer: People are overly sensitive these days, particularly about Jews, probably because we hear so much about them and anti-Semitism in the media… I see no good reason why Jews should continue to merit special sensitivity, especially in light of Israeli crimes in the middle East. (Editor’s note: The last ten words appear in the printed book, not in the online version available on the internet. Skrbina probably made some last-minute changes.)

Question: “How could so many people be fooled for so long? It doesn’t seem possible.”

Answer: Actually there have been several famous examples in history when many people, even many smart people, have been fooled for a very long time. The Donation of Constantine was a fraudulent document in which Emperor Constantine allegedly gave his empire to the Catholic Church in 315 AD. In fact it was forged in the 700s and not exposed until 1440 by Lorenzo Valla.

Witches have been condemned and burned since at least 300 BC, and during the peak period in Europe—from 1450 to 1750—some 500,000 were killed. In all these cases, millions of people were fooled, deceived, or otherwise attached to false beliefs for centuries. It’s no surprise that millions could still be wrong.
 

Media, Government, Hollywood

All the Abrahamic religions worship the Jewish God; Muslims simply changed his name.

Governments everywhere want compliant populations. They want citizens who will respect authority without question, follow the laws, accept its power, and not be too inquisitive. They like people who simply have faith in government, and who more or less blindly trust them…

Colleges and universities are somewhat better, often having panels or speakers who challenge the Christian view. But the Antagonism Thesis is particularly difficult to discuss since it casts blame on Jews, and any negative talk about them risks ostracism or worse, even in our “liberal” and “free speech” universities.

What about our irreverent media and Hollywood filmmakers—those who are so willing to commit sacrilege against any social norm or moral standard? I suspect this has something to do with the extensive role played by Jewish Americans. It’s uncontroversial that Hollywood has been dominated by Jews for decades; a relatively recent article in the LA Times cites Jewish heads of nearly every major Hollywood studio.[2] And it’s not just the movie business. All the major media conglomerates have a heavy Jewish presence in top management. If they should decide that Jewish malevolence at the heart of the Christian story “looks bad,” then they obviously won’t bring it up at all—not in the news, not on TV, not in books…

“It is also difficult to imagine why Christian writers would invent such a thoroughly Jewish savior in a time and place where there was strong suspicion of Judaism.” Actually, not difficult at all: the “Christian” writers were Jews who were trying to build an anti-Roman church based on a Jewish God and a Jewish savior. They just had to make sure that the enemy was “the devil” and not “Rome.”
 

Whither Christianity?

I rest my case. By all accounts, and despite protests to the contrary, Christianity indeed seems to be a “cleverly devised myth” (2 Pet 1:16)—a lie, a hoax—foisted upon the innocent and gullible masses simply for the benefit of Israel and the Jews.

It’s in the Gospel of John that we read one of the bluntest statements of truth, wherein Jesus says, “You [Gentiles] worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews” (4:22). We know what we are doing, say the Jews. You Gentile Christians don’t even know what you’re worshipping—which in fact is us and our God. But that’s okay. Just leave everything to us; “salvation is of the Jews.”

But it’s Paul who’s really the star of this show. Paul comes across as a masterly and artful liar—one of the all-time greats in world history, a man who can lie with impunity about the soul, the afterlife, God, everything. This unprincipled scoundrel, who admits to being “all things to all men,” would do anything or say anything to win his “kingdom of God” here on Earth. His mournful cries of “I do not lie!” are revealed as nothing other than an inveterate liar caught in the act.

With his fabricated “Jesus” and his fabricated “afterlife,” Paul drained all value from this world, the real world. It turned believers into weak and subservient sheep, ones whose lives are oriented around the manufactured sayings of a marginal rabbi and of prayer to Jehovah, the invisible God of the Jews.

It took a few hundred years, but when enough people fell for the hoax, it helped to bring down the Roman Empire. And when people—lots of people—still believe it after two thousand years, it cannot but degrade society, weighing us down, blocking us from attaining that which we are capable of, that which was only hinted at in the greatness of Athens and Rome. And all for the salvation of the Jews.

___________

[1] Paul famously declared himself to be “Apostle to the Gentiles” (Rom 11:13, Gal 1:16).

[2] “How Jewish is Hollywood?”, by Joel Stein (Dec 19, 2008).

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Ancient Rome Antiochus IV Epiphanes Final solution Hadrian Horace Jerusalem Judaism Old Testament

The Jesus Hoax, 4

 
CHAPTER 4: ONE AGAINST ALL

If the Jews are chosen by God, then everyone else is, of necessity, not chosen. If Jews are first class humans in the eyes of God, everyone else is second-class at best. And indeed, Jews do view themselves as distinct, special, and superior to others. As Exodus states, “We are distinct from all other people that are upon the face of the earth” (33:16). Similarly, the Hebrew tribe is “a people dwelling alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations” (Numbers 23:9).

Moses adds that “you shall rule over many nations” (15:6)… you shall eat the wealth of the nations” (61:5-6).

Clearly, when other people began to encounter these ideas and the attitudes that derived from them, one would expect a backlash. And there was. Hence we find a consistent thread of opinions from non-Jewish observers, for centuries, who are repelled by such arrogance…

The earliest direct references come from Aristotle’s star pupil Theophrastus. He had a concern about one of their customs: “the Syrians, of whom the Jews (Ioudaioi) constitute a part, also now sacrifice live victims… They were the first to institute sacrifices both of other living beings and of themselves”. The Greeks, he added, would have “recoiled from the entire business.” The victims—animal and human —were not eaten, but burnt as “whole offerings” to their God, and were “quickly destroyed.” The philosopher was clearly repelled by this Jewish tradition.

Egyptian high priest Manetho (ca. 250 BC) tells of a group of “lepers and other polluted persons,” 80,000 in number, who were exiled from Egypt and found residence in Judea… When in power they treated the natives “impiously and savagely,” “setting towns and villages on fire, pillaging the temples and mutilating images of the gods without restraint,” and roasting the animals held sacred by the locals. This is a very different version than we read in the Jewish Bible…

The decline of the Seleucids coincided with Roman ascent. Rome was still technically a republic in the second century BC, but its power and influence were rapidly growing. Jews were attracted to the seat of power, and travelled to Rome in significant numbers. As before, they grew to be hated. By 139 BC, the Roman praetor Hispalus found it necessary to expel them from the city: “The same Hispalus banished the Jews from Rome, who were attempting to hand over their own rites to the Romans, and he cast down their private alters from public places”. In even this short passage, one senses a Roman Jewry who were disproportionately prominent, obtrusive, even ‘pushy.’

Perhaps in part because of this incident, and in light of the Maccabean revolt some 30 years earlier, the Seleucid king Antiochus VII Sidetes was advised in 134 BC to exterminate the Jews… Apollonius Molon wrote the first book to explicitly confront the Hebrew tribe, Against the Jews.

The rhetoric is clearly heating up. In 63 BC, as we know, Roman general Pompey took Palestine. In the year 59 BC Cicero gave a speech, now titled Pro Flacco. The Jewish religion is “at variance with the glory of our empire, the dignity of our name, the customs of our ancestors.” That the gods stand opposed to this tribe “is shown by the fact that it has been conquered, let out for taxes, made a slave.”

Ten years later Diodorus Siculus wrote his Historical Library. Among other things, it again recounts the Exodus: “The refugees had occupied the territory round about Jerusalem, and having organized the nation of Jews had made their hatred of mankind into a tradition” (34, 1).

Here, though, it is Antiochus Epiphanes, not his successor Sidetes, that was urged “to wipe out completely the race of Jews, since they alone of all nations avoided dealings with any other people and looked upon all men as their enemies”.

The great lyric poet Horace wrote his Satires in 35 BC, exploring Epicurean philosophy and the meaning of happiness. At one point, though, he makes a passing comment on the apparently notorious proselytizing ability of the Roman Jews—in particular their tenaciousness in winning over others. Horace is in the midst of attempting to persuade the reader of his point of view: “and if you do not wish to yield, then a great band of poets will come to my aid, and, just like the Jews, we will compel you to concede to our crowd” (I.4.143). Their power must have been legendary, or he would not have made such an allusion.

The last commentator of the pre-Christian era was Lysimachus. Writing circa 20 BC, he offers another variation on the Exodus story. The exiled ones, led by Moses, were instructed to “show goodwill to no man,” to offer “the worst advice” to others, and to overthrow any temples or sanctuaries they might come upon. Arriving in Judea, “they maltreated the population, and plundered and set fire to the local temples.” They then built a town called Hierosolyma (Jerusalem), and referred to themselves as Hierosolymites.

The charge of misanthropy, or hatred of mankind, is significant and merits further discussion, especially in light of the Christian story.

 

Romans of the Christian Era

Emperor Tiberius expelled them in the year 19 AD. The expulsion did not succeed. Eleven years later, as we recall from chapter two, Sejanus found reason to oppose them again.

Anti-Jewish actions continued. In 49, Claudius once again had to expel them. In a fascinating line from Suetonius circa the year 120, we find mention of one ‘Chrestus’ (Latin: Chresto) as the leader of the rabble; this would be perhaps the fourth non-Jewish references to Jesus. “Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, [Claudius] expelled them from Rome”. This is an important observation that, even at that late date, the Romans still identified Christianity with the Jews.

Despite all this, the beleaguered tribe still earned no sympathy. The great philosopher Seneca commented on them in his work On Superstition, circa 60. He was appalled not only by their ‘superstitious’ religious beliefs, but more pragmatically with their astonishing influence in Rome and around the known world, despite repeated pogroms and banishments. Seneca adds: “The customs of this accursed race (sceleratissima gens) have gained such influence that they are now received throughout all the world. The vanquished have given laws to their victors.”

Seneca is clearly indignant at their reach. Then came the historic Jewish revolt in Judea, during the years 66 to 70. The Romans were surely gratified; to their mind, the Jews received their just deserts.

In besieging Jerusalem, and consequently the mighty Jewish temple, Titus had the Jews trapped. There was thought of sparing the temple, but Titus opposed this option. For him, “the destruction of this temple was a prime necessity in order to wipe out more completely the religion of the Jews and the Christians.” These two religions, “although hostile to each other, nevertheless sprang from the same sources; the Christians had grown out of the Jews: if the root were destroyed, the stock would easily perish”. The passage closes by noting that 600,000 Jews were killed in the war.

The third and final Jewish uprising occurred just a few years later, in 132. The reasons for this were many, but two stand out: the construction of a Roman city on the ruins of Jerusalem, and Emperor Hadrian’s banning of circumcision: “At this time the Jews began war, because they were forbidden to practice genital mutilation (mutilare genitalia)”. Dio describes the conflict in detail. “Jews everywhere were showing signs of hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly overt acts”. They were able to bribe others to join in the uprising: “many outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter.” For those today who argue that Jews were perennially the cause of wars, this would provide some early evidence. Hadrian sent one of his best generals, Severus, to put down the insurgency. Through a slow war of attrition, “he was able to crush, exhaust, and exterminate them. Very few of them in fact survived.”

Finally we have Celsus, a Greek philosopher who composed a text, The True Word, sometime around 178. The piece is striking as an extended and scathing critique of the increasingly prominent Christian sect.

 

Conclusions

So what can we conclude from this brief overview of some 600 years of the ancient world? To say that the Jews were disliked is an understatement. The critiques come from all around the Mediterranean region, and from a wide variety of cultural perspectives. And they are uniformly negative. I note here that it’s not a case of ‘cherry-picking’ the worst comments and ignoring the good ones. The remarks are all negative; there simply are no positive opinions on the Jews or early Christians. A reasonable conclusion is that there is something about the Jewish culture that inspires disgust and hatred.

In any case, it’s clear that the Jews had few if any friends in the ancient world. Their religion instructed them to despise others (Gentiles), and others in turn despised them. But the originating source was the Jews themselves: their religion, their worldview, their values. They were willing to use and exploit non-Jews for their own ends. They were willing to kill, and to die.

This situation feeds directly into the circumstances of the Roman occupation and Paul’s reaction. The preceding analysis suggests that Paul was interested in nothing other than saving ‘Israel,’ the Jewish people. We have seen a few textual clues indicating that he was willing even to commit murder in order to further his ends. Surely he hated the Romans with a vengeance, and yet he also could see the futility of confronting them directly.

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Ancient Rome

European beauty

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Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Constantine Heinrich Himmler Hitler's Religion (book) Richard Weikart Sexual "liberation"

Some reflections

I would like to say something about the seventh chapter of Hitler’s Religion; not just what I quoted here, but the entire chapter. My reading of this book continues to confirm my premise: The most influential NS men, and those who inspired them, were just one step away from reaching the other side of the psychological Rubicon, but didn’t reach solid ground. (N.b.: I cannot link to the article ‘My stepping stones’ on the psychological Rubicon for the moment, as a technician is just about to see if it is possible to upload the WordPress-censored entries here. If this new incarnation of WDH doesn’t appear for a few moments, don’t be alarmed: we’re reconfiguring it.)

From this follows the need to create a new religious movement to take this last step, a movement I call the priesthood of the sacred words. And in doing so I must confess that I find myself somewhat closer to Himmler than to Hitler on this point.

On pages 189-90 of Hitler’s Religion Weikart informs us that, although Hitler criticised Gothic cathedrals and medieval mysticism for their somberness, he didn’t believe that NS was a religious cult for holding mystical ceremonies. In fact, his 1938 Nuremberg Rally speech was an open rebuke to Himmler, Rosenberg and other neo-pagans in the movement. Rosenberg himself in his major work recalled that Hitler had disapproved of Himmler’s plans to reintroduce the cult of Wotan and Thor. Hitler was even suspicious of Rosenberg’s studies of Germanic prehistory because he preferred the cultures of Greece and Rome.

Recall from The Fair Race that the original cultures of Greece and Rome were founded by Norsemen, and that only in their more decadent stages did they undergo interbreeding. I can well understand Hitler on this point and what he said about Wotan in one of his after-dinner talks. But Himmler’s idea was the right one: for a movement to be successful, it is necessary for believers to feel the mysterium tremendum, what Jung and others call the numinous.

And that can only be inspired by a semi-religious movement. I understand Hitler because there were occult and parapsychological aspects in some high-ranking National Socialists that had to be rejected. But an ideal compromise would have been, as Manu Rodríguez rightly said in one of our books, to use the rebuilt Greco-Roman temples (starting e.g., by destroying the Vatican and putting in its place a huge temple to Zeus) to teach languages, history and literature of the peoples with Nordic blood (peoples that obviously include Greece and Rome in their origins).

The other reflection I wanted to communicate this day is due to the recent article ‘What is a Woman?’ by Spencer Quinn, who tells us: ‘It began in the 1960s, when we pretended that blacks were the intellectual equals of whites’.

That is not true. While Quinn is correct in saying that Matt Walsh (pic above), who produced the amazing documentary What is a Woman?, didn’t dare to name the influential Jews in gender ideology, the ideology of equality began in the writings of a much older Jew, St Paul. Constantine brought to Constantinople the inversion of Greco-Roman values we read in that famous verse in the Epistle to the Galatians, inducing, with all the power of the Roman Empire, a melting pot of races in the so-called second Rome. There began the Aryan decline big time. While the ancient Greeks and Romans with Nordic blood were racists, Christianity broke down the barriers—not something as recent as the 1960s.

Once I finish reviewing Weikart’s book on Hitler’s religion, we will continue translating Karlheinz Deschner’s history of Christianity.

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Albert Speer Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Catholic Church Constantine Emperor Julian Heinrich Himmler Hitler's Religion (book) Jesus Joseph Goebbels Michelangelo Old Testament Protestantism Richard Weikart Schutzstaffel (SS) St Paul

Hitler’s Religion: Chapter 4

(excerpts)

by Richard Weikart

Many Christian leaders in the 1930s and 1940s, both within and outside Germany, recognized Hitler was no friend to their religion. In 1936, Karl Spiecker, a German Catholic living in exile in France, detailed the Nazi fight against Christianity in his book Hitler gegen Christus (Hitler against Christ). The Swedish Lutheran bishop Nathan Soderblom, a leading figure in the early twentieth-century ecumenical movement, was not so ecumenical that he included Hitler in the ranks of Christianity. After meeting with Hitler sometime in the mid-1930s, he stated, “As far as Christianity is concerned, this man is chemically pure from it.”

Many Germans, however, had quite a different image of their Führer. Aside from those who saw him as a Messiah worthy of veneration and maybe even worship, many regarded him as a faithful Christian. Rumors circulated widely in Nazi Germany that Hitler carried a New Testament in his vest pocket, or that he read daily a Protestant devotional booklet. Though these rumors were false, at the time many Germans believed them…

Most historians today agree that Hitler was not a Christian in any meaningful sense. Neil Gregor, for instance, warns that Hitler’s “superficial deployment of elements of Christian discourse” should not mislead people to think that Hitler shared the views of “established religion.” Michael Burleigh argues that Nazism was anticlerical and despised Christianity. He recognizes that Hitler was not an atheist, but “Hitler’s God was not the Christian God, as conventionally understood.” In his withering but sober analysis of the complicity of the Christian churches in Nazi Germany, Robert Ericksen depicts Hitler as duplicitous when he presented himself publicly as a Christian…

However, when we turn to Hitler’s view of Jesus, we find a remarkable consistency from his earliest speeches to his latest Table Talks. He expressed admiration for Jesus publicly and privately, without once directly criticizing Him. But his vision of Jesus was radically different from the teachings of the Catholic Church he grew up in. For him, Jesus was not a Jew, but a fellow Aryan. He only rarely stated this explicitly, though he frequently implied it by portraying Jesus as an anti-Semite. However, in April 1921, he told a crowd in Rosenheim that he could not imagine Christ as anything other than blond-haired and blue-eyed, making clear that he considered Jesus an Aryan. In an interview with a journalist in November 1922, he actually claimed Jesus was Germanic…

While Hitler appreciated Jesus because he considered him a valiant anti-materialistic anti-Semite, I have never found any evidence that Hitler believed in the deity of Jesus. Richard Steigmann-Gall bases his mistaken claim that Hitler believed in Jesus as God on a mistranslation of Hitler’s April 22, 1922 speech (some of which we discussed earlier in this chapter). According to the Norman Baynes’ edition of The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, during that speech Hitler stated about Jesus, “It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to the fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as sufferer but as fighter.” The term that is translated “God’s truth!” is wahrhaftiger Gott, a common German interjection that is rendered in some German-English dictionaries as “good God!” or “good heavens!” In the original German edition, wahrhaftiger Gott is set off in commas, indicating that it is indeed an interjection… Steigmann-Gall uses this mistranslation to argue that Hitler believed in the deity of Jesus. Apparently, he did not understand the colloquial expression used…

While Hitler’s positive attitude toward Jesus—at least the Jesus of his imagination—did not seem to change over his career, his position vis-a-vis Christianity is much more complex. Many scholars doubt that as an adult he was ever personally committed to any form of Christianity. They interpret his pro-Christian utterances as nothing more than the cynical ploy of a crafty politician. Almost all historians, including Steigmann-Gall, admit that Hitler was anti-Christian in the last several years of his life…

Even when he publicly announced his Christian faith in 1922 or at other times, Hitler never professed commitment to Catholicism. Further, despite his public stance upholding Christianity before 1924, he provided a clue in one of his earliest speeches that he was already antagonistic toward Christianity. In August 1920, Hitler viciously attacked the Jews in his speech, “Why Are We Anti-Semites?” One accusation he leveled was that the Jews had used Christianity to destroy the Roman Empire. He then claimed Christianity was spread primarily by Jews. Since Hitler was a radical anti-Semite, his characterization of Christianity as a Jewish plot was about as harsh an indictment as he could bring against Christianity. Hitler was also a great admirer of the ancient Greeks and Romans, whom he considered fellow Aryans. Blaming Christianity for ruining the Roman Empire thus expressed considerable anti-Christian animus. Hitler often discussed both themes—Christianity as Jewish, and Christianity as the cause of Rome’s downfall—later in life.

Hitler’s anti-Christian outlook remained largely submerged before 1924, because—as Hitler himself explained in Mein Kampf—he did not want to offend possible supporters…

But by the time Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1924-25, he was walking a tightrope. His political ally, General Ludendorff, was increasingly hostile to the Catholic Church, as were many on the radical Right in Weimar Germany. Hitler did not want to follow them into political oblivion—and indeed Ludendorff did end up politically isolated, perhaps in part because of his antireligious crusade. But Hitler was also sensitive to the anticlerical thrust within and outside his party. Thus, after warning his followers in the first volume of Mein Kampf against offending people’s religious tastes, he threw caution to the wind in the second volume by sharply criticizing Christianity. In one passage, he complained that both Christian churches in Germany were contributing to the decline of the German people, because they supported a system that allowed those with hereditary diseases to procreate. The problem, he thought, was that the churches focused on the spirit and neglected the physical basis of a healthy life. Hitler immediately followed up this critique by blasting the churches for carrying out mission work among black Africans, who are “healthy, though primitive and inferior, human beings,” whom the missionaries turn into “a rotten brood of bastards.” In this passage, Hitler harshly castigated Christianity for not supporting his eugenics and racial ideology.

Worse yet, he actually threatened to obliterate Christianity later in the second volume. After calling Christianity fanatically intolerant for destroying other religions, Hitler explained that Nazism would have to be just as intolerant to supplant Christianity:

A philosophy filled with infernal intolerance will only be broken by a new idea, driven forward by the same spirit, championed by the same mighty will, and at the same time pure and absolutely genuine in itself. The individual may establish with pain today that with the appearance of Christianity the first spiritual terror entered in to the far freer ancient world, but he will not be able to contest the fact that since then the world has been afflicted and dominated by this coercion, and that coercion is broken only by coercion, and terror only by terror. Only then can a new state of affairs be constructively created.

Hitler’s anti-Christian sentiment shines through clearly here, as he called Christianity a “spiritual terror” that has “afflicted” the world. Earlier in the passage, he also argued Christian intolerance was a manifestation of a Jewish mentality, once again connecting Christianity with the people he most hated. Even more ominously, he called his fellow Nazis to embrace an intolerant worldview so they could throw off the shackles of Christianity. He literally promised to visit terror on Christianity. Even though several times later in life, especially before 1934, Hitler would try to portray himself as a pious Christian, he had already blown his cover.

Hitler’s tirade against Christianity in Mein Kampf, including the threat to demolish it, diverged remarkably from his normal public persona… In January 1937, Goebbels was with Hitler during an internecine debate on religion and reported, “The Führer thinks Christianity is ripe for destruction. That may still take a long time, but it is coming.”

In reading through Goebbels’ Diaries, Hitler’s monologues, and Rosenberg’s Diaries, it is rather amazing how often Hitler discussed religion with his entourage, especially during World War II. He was clearly obsessed with the topic. On December 13, 1941, for example, just two days after declaring war on the United States, he told his Gauleiter (district leaders) that he was going to annihilate the Jews, but he was postponing his campaign against the church until after the war, when he would deal with them. According to Rosenberg, both on that day and the following, Hitler’s monologues were primarily about the “problem of Christianity.” In a letter to a friend in July 1941, Hitler’s secretary Christa Schroeder claimed that in Hitler’s evening discussions at the headquarters, “the church plays a large role.” She added that she found Hitler’s religious comments very illuminating, as he exposed the deception and hypocrisy of Christianity. Hitler’s own monologues confirm Schroeder’s impression…

When Hitler told his Gauleiter in December 1941 that the regime would wait until after the war to solve the church problem, he was probably trying to restrain some of the hotheads in his party. But he also promised the day of reckoning would eventually come. He told them, “There is an insoluble contradiction between the Christian and a Germanic-heroic worldview. However, this contradiction cannot be resolved during the war, but after the war we must step up to solve this contradiction. I see a possible solution only in the further consolidation of the National Socialist worldview”…

At a cabinet meeting in 1937, Hitler commented, “I know that my un-Christian Germanic SS units with their general non-denominational belief in God can grasp their duty for their people (Volk) more clearly than those other soldiers who have been made stupid through the catechism.” Hitler’s contempt for Christianity could hardly have been more palpable.

Hitler’s press chief, Otto Dietrich, confirmed Frank’s impression. In private, according to Dietrich, Hitler was uniformly antagonistic to Christianity. Dietrich wrote in his memoirs:

…Primitive Christianity, he declared, was the “first Jewish-Communistic cell”…

Dietrich stated, “Hitler was convinced that Christianity was outmoded and dying. He thought he could speed its death by systematic education of German youth. Christianity would be replaced, he thought, by a new heroic, racial ideal of God.” This confirms the point Goebbels made in his diary—that Hitler hoped ultimately to replace Christianity with a Germanic worldview through indoctrination of children…

[Albert] Speer recalled a conversation in which Hitler was told that if Muslims had won the Battle of Tours, Germans would be Muslim. Hitler responded by lamenting Germany’s fate to have become Christian: “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?” As this conversation reveals, Hitler saw religion not as an expression of truth, but rather as a means or tool to achieve other ends—namely, the preservation and advancement of the German people or Nordic race. In April 1942, Hitler again compared Christianity unfavorably with Islam and Japanese religion. In the case of Japan, their religion had protected them from the “poison of Christianity,” he opined…

In fact, Hitler contemptuously called Christianity a poison and a bacillus and openly mocked its teachings… After scoffing at doctrines such as the Fall, the Virgin Birth, and redemption through the death of Jesus, Hitler stated, “Christianity is the most insane thing that a human brain in its delusion has ever brought forth, a mockery of everything divine.” He followed this up with a hard right jab to any believing Catholic, claiming that a “Negro with his fetish” is far superior to someone who believes in transubstantiation. Hitler… believed black Africans were subhumans intellectually closer to apes than to Europeans, so to him, this was a spectacular insult to Catholics… Then, according to Hitler, when others did not accept these strange teachings, the church tortured them into submission…

Another theme that surfaced frequently in Hitler’s monologues of 1941-42 was that the sneaky first-century rabbi Paul was responsible for repackaging the Jewish worldview in the guise of Christianity, thereby causing the downfall of the Roman Empire. In December 1941, Hitler stated that although Christ was an Aryan, “Paul used his teachings to mobilize the underworld and organize a proto-Bolshevism. With its emergence the beautiful clarity of the ancient world was lost.” In fact, since Christianity was tainted from the very start, Hitler sometimes referred to it as “Jew-Christianity”… He denigrated the “Jew-Christians” of the fourth century for destroying Roman temples and even called the destruction of the Alexandrian library a “Jewish-Christian deed.” Hitler thus construed the contest between Christianity and the ancient pagan world as part of the racial struggle between Jews and Aryans.

In November 1944, Hitler described in greater detail how Paul had corrupted the teachings of Jesus…

Hitler’s preference for the allegedly Aryan Greco-Roman world over the Christian epoch shines through clearly in Goebbels’s diary entry for April 8, 1941… “The Führer is a person entirely oriented toward antiquity. He hates Christianity, because it has deformed all noble humanity.” Goebbels even noted that Hitler preferred the “wise smiling Zeus to a pain-contorted crucified Christ,” and believed “the ancient people’s view of God is more noble and humane than the Christian view.” Rosenberg recorded the same conversation, adding that Hitler considered classical antiquity more free and cheerful than Christianity with its Inquisition and burning of witches and heretics. He loved the monumental architecture of the Romans, but hated Gothic architecture. The Age of Augustus was, for Hitler, “the highpoint of history.”

From Hitler’s perspective, Christianity had ruined a good thing. In July 1941 he stated, “The greatest blow to strike humanity is Christianity,” which is “a monstrosity of the Jews. Through Christianity the conscious lie has come into the world in questions of religion.” Six months later, he blamed Christianity for bringing about the collapse of Rome. He then contrasted two fourth-century Roman emperors: Constantine, also known as Constantine the Great, and Julian, nicknamed Julian the Apostate by subsequent Christian writers because he fought against Christianity and tried to return Rome to its pre-Christian pagan worship. Hitler thought the monikers should be reversed, since in his view Constantine was a traitor and Julian’s writings were “pure wisdom.” Hitler also expressed his appreciation for Julian the Apostate in October 1941 after reading Der Scheiterhaufen: Worte grosser Ketzer (Burned at the Stake: Words of Great Heretics) by SS officer Kurt Egger. This book contained anti-Christian sayings by prominent anticlerical writers, including Julian, Frederick the Great, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Goethe, Lagarde, and others. It was a shame, Hitler said, that after so many clear-sighted “heretics,” Germany was not further along in its religious development… A few days later, Hitler recommended that Eggers’s book should be distributed to millions because it showed the good judgment that the ancient world (meaning Julian) and the eighteenth century (i.e., Enlightenment thinkers) had about the church.

This notion that Christianity was a Jewish plot to destroy the Roman world was a theme Hitler touched on throughout his career, from his 1920 speech “Why Are We Anti-Semites?” to the end of his life. It made a brief appearance in his major speech to the Nuremberg Party Rally in 1929, and reappeared in a February 1933 speech to military leaders. In a small private meeting with his highest military leaders and his Foreign Minister in November 1937, Hitler told them that Rome fell because of “the disintegrating effect of Christianity.” From the way that Hitler bashed a generic “Christianity” as a Jewish-Bolshevik scheme, it seems clear that he was targeting all existing forms of Christianity…

During a monologue on December 14, 1941, Hitler divulged a decisive distaste for Protestantism. That day, Hitler learned Hanns Kerrl, a Protestant who was his minister for church affairs, had passed away. Hitler remarked, “With the best intentions Minister Kerrl wanted to produce a synthesis of National Socialism and Christianity. I do not believe that is possible.” Hitler explained that the form of Christianity with which he most sympathized was that which prevailed during the times of papal decay. Regardless of whether the pope was a criminal, if he produced beauty, he is “more sympathetic to me than a Protestant pastor, who returns to the primitive condition of Christianity,” Hitler declared. “Pure Christianity, the so-called primitive Christianity… leads to the destruction of humanity; it is unadulterated Bolshevism in a metaphysical framework.” In other words, Hitler preferred Leo X, the great Renaissance patron of the arts who excommunicated Luther, to the Wittenberg monk who called the church back to primitive, Pauline Christianity. According to Rosenberg’s account of this same conversation, Hitler specifically mentioned the corrupt Renaissance Pope Julius II, Leo X’s predecessor, as being “less dangerous than primitive Christianity”…


(Note of the Editor: Left, The monument of Julius II, with Michelangelo’s statues of Moses, with Rachel and Leah). Many anti-Semites in early twentieth-century Germany despised the Old Testament as the product of the Jewish spirit, and Hitler was no exception. He saw the Old Testament as the antithesis of everything he stood for. In his view, it taught materialism, greed, and deception. Further, it promoted racial purity for the Jews, since it taught them to avoid mingling with other races…

Moreover, Hitler lamented that the Bible had been translated into German, because this made Jewish doctrines readily available to the German people. It would have been better, he stated, if the Bible had remained only in Latin, rather than causing mental disorders and delusions…

Many SS members followed Himmler’s example and encouragement to withdraw from the churches, and Hitler lauded them for their anti-church attitude. Hitler once advised Mussolini to try to wean the Italian people away from the Catholic Church, lest he encounter problems in the future. When Mussolini asked how to do this, Hitler turned to his military adjutant and asked him how many men in Hitler’s entourage attended church. The adjutant replied, “None”…

In the end… he [Hitler] had utter contempt for the Jesus who told His followers to love their enemies and turn the other cheek. He also did not believe that Jesus’s death had any significance other than showing the perfidy of the Jews, nor did he believe in Jesus’s resurrection.

Categories
Ancient Rome Miscegenation Racial right Racial studies

WDH vs. AmRen

Martin P. Nilsson
(1874-1967)

On Thursday I wrote ‘The Broken Lyre—Or—: Marcus Aurelius for Dummies’ from the point of view of the 14-word priest. The next day American Renaissance posted ‘One of the Greatest Books of All Time’ where Gregory Hood and Chris Roberts discuss Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and his Stoic philosophy.

Judging from the comments section, for example—:

Stoicism is truly one of the greatest gifts of the White Race to the World. It’s [sic] fundamental wisdom and logic can be favorably adopted by adherents to any religion (including Atheists) and it is a great daily tool to navigate the reefs and shoals of modern life.

—the abysmal difference between the quasi-normies of AmRen and The West’s Darkest Hour is noticeable. I call the folk who comment on Jared Taylor’s forum quasi-normies for one simple reason. How can’t they see that a philosophy that doesn’t say a peep about the blood mixing that destroyed Rome—a philosophy no less than from the pen of a Roman emperor!—isn’t wise?

Of the links in our article on Marcus Aurelius, perhaps the most important was that of Swedish philologist and scholar of classical religions, Martin P. Nilsson’s ‘The Race Problem of the Roman Empire’.

Categories
Ancient Rome Aryan beauty Classical sculpture Maxfield Parrish Racial right

Semitic OS in the Observer

Last week I said:

What nationalists do is keep their parents’ Operating System (OS) and try to add racialist or reactionary programs to it. Such a naive strategy won’t work. We need a real Nietzschean transvaluation, the most radical operation of the mind I can think of: substituting an OS with another one (again, cf. what we say about ‘medicine’ in the above post).

The day before yesterday, The Occidental Observer (TOO) published an article that exemplifies my criticism. I was going to read it because of its enticing title, ‘Blond Hair, Blue Eyes: Some Thoughts on the Aryan Ideal’. But I got the idea to scroll it down first, to see if I could see an artistic image portraying Aryan beauty.

I found none. The article by Thomas Dalton, PhD is pure text: as is usual in that webzine and many others. So I decided not to read it, but rather to write a short note about an article I didn’t read…
 

______ 卐 ______

 
TOO contributors aren’t Jew-wise. If they were, they would realise that a western culture of the written word is a Semitic-inspired epiphenomenon, and this includes the early Pilgrims who migrated to the North American colonies carrying their Bibles, idealising the Old Testament, and wanting to found their city on a hill.

In contrast, the pre-Christian culture in Europe, as we have already said, was a culture of architectural and sculptural art that showed the beauty of the naked Aryan man in all his splendour. And what little remains of the paintings of ancient Rome show that they understood delicate feminine beauty as well. As we have also said, in his 1969 television series Kenneth Clark, whose forte was European art, said that with Christianity the human figure disappears for centuries; it only reappears, in the sense of majesty, until the Renaissance.

The Jews of Greek and Roman times were ugly. In recent centuries they have absorbed much European blood; but in the first century of our era they resembled this type, which in no way resembles the Renaissance idealisation of Jesus. It is understandable that the ancient Jews were ashamed of their physiques, and considered the flaunting of their naked bodies sinful. Their physical ugliness explains why their culture is a culture of the written word; why they score so high in verbal IQ but not in spatial intelligence.

If the TOO folk had already transvalued Semitic values to Aryan values, they would have nymphs in their webzines like the ones I have on my sidebar. But they do exactly the opposite. When Greg Johnson wrote a decade or so ago that there should be sculptures of naked teenagers, male and female, on every street corner, some scoffed at him. But that’s exactly what the Romans did when they destroyed Jerusalem and, after razing the Temple of Jerusalem to the ground, founded Aelia Capitolina.

In other words, when someone sticks to the culture of the word and mocks the culture of the arts that manifest the divinity of the Aryan body, he is obeying the Judeo-Christian, ethnosuicidal mandates that conquered the soul of Rome after Constantine.

Text, text, text. What a boring thing. What normie is persuaded by them alone? One picture of those nymphs on the rocks that Parrish painted should be enough to convert a noble Aryan to the religion of the 14 words!

When will the so-called white nationalists replace their Semitic-inspired culture of the word with the culture of the image? I don’t mean that they ought to stop writing, but that they should be inspired by a nation that was in the process of transvaluing its values, as can be seen in the YouTube clip of the Third Reich that appears at the top of the sidebar (real-life nymphs start to appear a few seconds before the 21st minute).