Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [41]
Graves summarizes the Manicheans' perspective:
"One of the most primitive and learned sects," says a writer, .were the Manicheans, who denied that Jesus Christ ever existed in flesh and blood, but believed him to be a God in spirit only ..."24
These "heretics" were so common that the conspirators had to forge the two Epistles of John to combat and threaten them ".. . every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God." (1 Jn. 4:2-3) And again at 2 John 7: "For many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist." Of these Johannine passages, Higgins says:
This is language that could not have been used, if the reality of Christ Jesus's existence as a man could not have been denied, or, it would certainly seem, if the apostle himself had been able to give any evidence whatever of the claim.
Massey comments:
We see from the Epistle of John how mortally afraid of Gnostic Spiritualism were the founders of the historical fraud. "Many deceivers are gone forth into the world that confess not that Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh." These words of John state the Gnostic position. Their Christ had not so come, and could not be carnalized. These Gnostics were in the world long before they heard of such a doctrine; but when they did they denied and opposed it. This, says John, is anti-Christ.25
Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch
It was evidently the task of Antiochan bishop Ignatius (c. 5098/ 117) to convince those inclined to Docetism that "Christ really and truly lived," by way of writing letters to the churches of Asia Minor and Rome. Of Ignatius, Wheless says:
He was the subject of very extensive forgeries; fifteen Epistles bear the name of Ignatius, including one to the Virgin Mary, and her reply; two to the apostle John, others to the Philippians, Tarsians, Antiocheans, Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, Romans, Philadelphians, Smyrnaeans, and to Polycarp, besides a forged Martyriurn; the clerical forgers were very active with the name of Saint Ignatius.26
As Waite says, "It is now established that the only genuine writings of Ignatius extant, are the Cureton Epistles. These consist of about twelve octavo pages. They were written A.D. 115."27 By a few decades later, some 100 pages had been forged in his name. The Cureton epistles comprised the three Syriac texts: the Epistles to Polycarp, to the Romans and to the Ephesians. The other epistles, then, are late forgeries, and those that were "original," not necessarily from the hand of Ignatius but of the early second century, were interpolated after the beginning of Roman dominance at the end of that century. The older elements reflect Gnosticism, which, as noted, preceded orthodox, historicizing Christianity and which emanated out of Syria, in particular Antioch, where Ignatius was alleged to have been a bishop. For example, the gnosticizing Ignatius makes reference to the delusion-inducing "prince of this world," such as in Ephesians, in which he says, "So you must never let yourselves be anointed with the malodorous chrism of the prince of this world's doctrines . . ." The "malodorous chrism" of which Ignatius speaks is apparently the mystery of the lingam or phallus, practiced in a variety of mystery schools for centuries prior to the Christian era, including by Old Testament characters. By the term "malodorous," Ignatius is also evidently addressing the highly esoteric chrism or anointing that used semen.
The purpose of many of the epistles attributed to Ignatius was to deal with those "blasphemers" who denied his Lord "ever bore a real human body" (Smyrnaeans) and to program his followers into believing Jesus's "history." In his (forged) Epistle to the Magnesians, "Ignatius" exhorts his followers to resist such "heresies":
. . . but be ye fully persuaded