Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [46]
Another vocal critic of Christianity was the Pagan Emperor Julian, who, coming after the reign of the fanatical and murderous "good Christian" Constantine, returned rights to Pagan worshippers, for which he was murdered. Julian expressed his objections to the Christian religion thus:
If anyone should wish to know the truth with respect to you Christians, he will find your impiety to be made up partly of the Jewish audacity, and partly of the indifference and confusion of the Gentiles, and that you have put together not the best, but the worst characteristics of them both.
In fact, the Christians were not just mocked, they were considered criminals. As Pagels relates:
In an open letter addressed to "rulers of the Roman Empire," Tertullian acknowledges that pagan critics detest the movement: "You think that a Christian is a man of every crime, an enemy of the gods, of the emperor, of the law, of good morals, of all nature."4
The early Christians were thus accused of heinous behavior, including infanticide and orgies, imputations that Christians themselves later used against their enemies. In the face of such charges, Justin Martyr was forced to say, "Do you also ... believe that we eat human flesh and that after our banquets we extinguish the lights and indulge in unbridled sensuality?"42 And Tertullian was compelled to write, "We are accused of observing a holy rite in which we kill a little child and then eat it ... after the feast, we practise incest ... This is what is constantly laid to our charge. "43
Pagels also relates:
The Christian group bore all the marks of conspiracy. First, they identified themselves as followers of a man accused of magic and executed for that and treason; second, they were "atheists," who denounced as "demons" the gods who protected the fortunes of the Roman state ... Besides these acts that police could identify, rumor indicated that their secrecy concealed atrocities: their enemies said that they ritually ate human flesh and drank human blood ... 44
Another of the Pagan criticisms, as we have seen, was that the Christians were plagiarists (and degraders) of old ideologies and concepts, an accusation that the Christians were compelled to confirm as they attempted to gain respectability for their "new superstition." Thus, the Christians admitted the superlative nature and morality of those "Pagan" ideologies. In his Apology, Justin Martyr aligned himself with several ideologies that existed long prior to the Christian era:
In saying all these things were made in this beautiful order by God, what do we seem to say more than Plato? When we teach a general conflagration, what do we teach more than the Stoics? By opposing the worship of the works of men's hands, we concur with Menander, the comedian; and by declaring the Logos, the first begotten of God, our master Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin, without any human mixture, to be crucified and dead, and to have risen again, and ascended into heaven: we say no more in this, than what you say of those whom you style the sons of Jove.45
In fact, Plato was widely studied by the Christian fathers/forgers, as is obvious from their writings, particularly those pontificating about "the Word," an ancient concept refined by the Greek philosopher. Indeed, Justin Martyr was originally a Platonist. As to the purported difference between "Pagans" and "Christians," Doane states:
The most celebrated Fathers of the Christian church, the most frequently quoted, and those whose names stand the highest were nothing more or less than Pagans, being born and educated Pagans.46
These celebrated Pagan-Christian fathers included Pantaenus, Origen, Clemens Alexandrinus, Gregory and Tertullian.
The Jews
Naturally, orthodox Jews also denied the reality of Christ, although, like other cultures, they were eventually forced through violence to recite that the tale had at least some historicity. In his debate