Satiricus
HAD Satiricus been a Christian, he would have sworn by the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the gospel truth. But there is a problem. Rather, there are two. One: Neither is Satiricus a Christian, and two: nor is the gospel the truth. He has it from Christian historians of Christianity that the gospels known today were later ?fabrications?, made up nearly a century after Jesus'sdeath, that they were plagiarised by the four saints who are supposed to be their authors, and that the real authors remain unknown to this day. In short, Satiricus was better off as a simple-minded Hindu who did not have to tax what passes for his brain with such a complex history of gospel untruth. Unfortunately, it now transpires that his relief at having escaped the complexities of Christianity was perilously premature. For recently he ran into a piece of religious research which says the Bible has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. As a result, says this researcher flatly, ?history has never had a definitive version of the book.?
Christ! What would Mel Gibson say when he knows Biblical history down to the last hours of the last day of Jesus? And what would the lexicographers of Oxford say, when one of their meanings of the word ?gospel? is the record of Jesus Christ'slife and teaching? Oh well, it seems even lexicographers need to live and learn. For Satiricus'snew source of information says Jesus'slife was recorded by ?thousands of followers?. Out of them ?more than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament?, and even out of them ?only a relative few were chosen for inclusion?Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John among them.? Now this is really getting enviouser and curiouser. What the biblical doubting Thomas may have thought of such a situation is not known, but doubting Satiricus does have a couple of questions here. First, if the present-day four gospels were among the ?few chosen for inclusion?, where are the other chosen ones? How many in all were they? And what happened to those not chosen? What did the original editor do with the rejects? And most importantly, who chose which gospels to include? This simpleton would have thought it would be one of the twelve original Christians, the disciples of Christ (had they lived that long). They would have been the best qualified. Or perhaps there were disciples? disciples, or disciples? disciples? disciples. Surely Satiricus would expect an ecclesiastical elite for such an onerous editorial undertaking.
But alas, here again Christian history'squirky sense of humour has flummoxed this simpleton. For he now finds that the selection of the four gospels, the four pillars of Christianity, was not done by a Christian at all; it was done by a pernicious pagan, a fell follower of?hold your breath!?Mithraism, the religion of the worship of Mitra, the Hindu Sun-god, imported all the way from ancient India. It was Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great who collated the Bible as it is known today. Jesus! The Christian Bible prepared by a pagan? Even Ripley of the believe-it-or-not fame would find it hard to believe. But then, apparently the gospel truth is stranger than fiction. For was not Emperor Constantine thought to be a Christian? ?Hardly?, says the researcher Satiricus has newly found. ?He was a lifelong pagan who was baptised on his death-bed, too weak to protest.? Ah! Looks like some ancient ancestor of Mother Teresa was by his bedside, wot?
Anyway, in Constantine'sdays, three centuries after Jesus Christ'scrucifixion, Sun worship was Rome'sofficial religion, and, again believe it or not, Constantine was its head priest. But by this time the growing hordes of the ?Prince of Peace? were waging such bloody wars that they threatened to break up the Roman empire. Constantine saw that something had to be done, so in 325 a.d. he decided to unify Rome under a single religion. The instrument he chose for this political purpose was Christianity. Well, now does this remind Satiricus of something very similar? It does. It reminds him of a whole book Anwar Shaikh wrote on how Mohammed chose Islam as an instrument of Arab imperialism. In exactly the same way Constantine chose Christianity as an instrument of Roman imperialism. But how could this prime pagan promote Christianity? He did so because he saw that Christianity was on the rise, and, as this researcher puts it with regrettable irreverence, ?he simply backed the winning horse?. But he went about it quite clearly. In order to make the new religion of Christianity acceptable to the Sun-worshippers, he mixed Christianity with a lot of the Sun-worshippers? rituals, symbols, and dates, and thus created a ?hybrid religion?. And where did these rituals and symbols actualy come from? There are crass communalists (and foreigners, at that) who say they were borrowed from Hinduism. French historian, Alain Danielou says the Christian ritual of holy water is a Hindu practice, and ?Amen? comes from the Hindu ?Om?, while French scholar Francois Gautier writes in his book, The Indian Origin of Things that incense, sacred bread, the rosary, the cross, the holy Trinity, are all borrowed from Hinduism.
Satiricus, of course, is suitably shocked at all this, for it actually and abominably means that Christianity required a generous mixture of Hinduism for its acceptability and spread. But the final and the most shocking shock was still to come. For Constantine held a big Christian gathering known as the ?Council of Nicaea? in which many aspects of Christianity were not only debated but actually voted upon, including the ?divinity? of Jesus. In a dazzling display of divine democracy, ?Jesus'sestablishment as ?the Son of God? was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea?.? So there! This Hindu ignoramus now knows the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the officially approved gospel truth.
Comments