Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [164]
The Mysteries
It may be reasonably asked why, if the mythos and ritual are found around the world and thus in cultures not subjected to the censorship of the Catholic Church and Christian hierarchy, they are unknown. As noted, the mythos and ritual form part of "the mysteries" of secret societies, brotherhoods, priesthoods and mystery schools. As such, they were not to be revealed but dangled over the heads of the uninitiated. Of these secret societies, Allegro says:
The whole point of a mystery cult was that few people knew its secret doctrines. So far as possible, the initiates did not commit their special knowledge to writing. Normally the secrets of the sect were transmitted orally, novices being required to learn direct from their mentors by heart, and placed under the most violent oaths never to disclose the details even under torture. When such special instruction was committed to writing, care would be taken that it should be read only by the members of the sect. This could be done by using a special code or cypher, as is the case with certain of the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, discovery of such obviously coded material on a person would render him suspect to the authorities. Another way of passing information was to conceal the message, incantations or special names within a document ostensibly concerning another subject.26
In reality, the Christian religion was a revelation of these mysteries, which had existed for millennia. Indeed, "Paul" himself attested that his preaching of Jesus Christ served to reveal "the mystery which was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations" (Rom. 16:25-26). In fact, it was because of the criminal revelation of this secret that the Christians were persecuted.
As the author of The Other Jesus says:
Much is made of the fact that Christians were supposed to have been severely persecuted just for "worshipping Jesus," (and for other no reason) by the Romans during the first centuries AD. Although the degree to which Christians were actually persecuted by pagans has been wildly exaggerated, the truth is, early Christians did indeed seem to have evoked considerably more than their share of scorn and antagonism from pagan authorities. This is somewhat baffling because, as has often been pointed out, the official policy of the Roman Empire, both in principle and in practice, was one of permitting near total religious freedom. This extended even to the point of allowing many practices that even modem western nations would never permit in the name of religious freedom. But once you recognize that claiming you were about to "reveal the secrets of the Son of God Jesus" to the uninitiated public was a death penalty offense forbidden under the laws prohibiting people from "profaning" or "betraying the mysteries," you begin to at least partially understand why the pagan legal officials might have tended to take for granted that it was their duty to suppress "Christian" preachers. To them, certain aspects of Christian preaching represented blatant criminal activities. In the mind of the pagans, such sanctions against Christians were reasonable punishments for very definite, obvious and specific violations of the law, not unwarranted "persecutions" of people who were innocently worshipping God in their own way.
Thus, the Christian religion and founder were based on the ubiquitous mythos and ritual that served as the mysteries, which were eventually compiled and written down. These astrotheological mysteries, however, were later carnalized and