Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [179]
The Myth of Primitive Christianity
In spite of this fervent belief, there remains no evidence for such a miraculous genesis, so scholars have been compelled to turn to the white-robed Essenes as the wellspring of Christianity. Within this theory, early Christianity was "pure" and "untainted" by corruption, which came only after it was institutionalized as the Catholic Church. Massey describes the "primitive Christianity" myth:
Another popular delusion most ignorantly cherished is, that there was a golden age of primitive Christianity, which followed the preaching of the Founder and the practice of his apostles; and that there was a falling away from this paradisiacal state of primordial perfection when the Catholic Church in Rome lapsed into idolatry, Paganised and perverted the original religion . . . Such is the pious opinion of those orthodox Protestants who are always clamouring to get back beyond the Roman Church to that ideal of primitive perfection supposed to be found in the simple teachings of Jesus, and the lives of his personal followers . . . But when we do penetrate far enough into the past to see somewhat clearly through and beyond the cloud of dust that was the cause of a great obscuration in the first two centuries of our era, we find that there was no such new beginning, that the I earliest days of the purest Christianity were pre-historic ...
There is little foundation for the assumption of a peaceful, ideal beginning, because from its inception "pure" Christianity was full of bickering and power struggles, as reflected in the Epistles and Acts. In fact, the Church started out in a contentious manner and continued in this way for centuries, as is evidenced by the endless forged texts and bloody battles over doctrine.
In reality, the so-called pure Christianity would have been abhorrent to the followers of a simple morality such as the Essenes. For example, in addition to the squabbling, threats and apparent murders of converts such as in Acts, where Peter is virtually depicted as having caused the deaths of a husband and wife over money, this "pure" Christianity included the exhortation of slaves to remain slaves, such as at 1 Timothy 6:1, where Paul says, "Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed." (Obviously God's name is more important than living, breathing and suffering human beings, whose wretched state in itself should be a stain on God's good name in the first place.) Again, at Colossians 3:22 Paul says, "Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters"; and, at Titus 2:9, he exhorts Titus to "bid slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect . . ." As noted, early Christians, in fact, were both slaves and slaveowners. As Pagels says, "Many Christians were themselves slave owners and took slavery for granted as unthinkingly as their pagan neighbors."2 In other words, no egalitarian Christianity existed, and Christians were discouraged from inciting slaves to demand their freedom. As for the Essenes, "There is not a single slave among them," says Philo.
Thus, the "freedom-loving" Paul exhorts the Christians to submit to authority, not to rebel, as presumably his purported master would do and supposedly did do, according to the gospel story. Paul even claims that those same authorities who allegedly destroyed Jesus should be both obeyed "in everything" and basically equated with God Himself:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what