Isis Unveiled, Vol. 2, Chapter 3Overview of Early Gnosticism in Relation to Nazarene Groups (Divisions Among the Early Christians)
This chapter gives quite an intricate study of the origins of early
Christianity from the perspective of comparative religion. Relying on
some of the very learned and critical studies of the period, she
adroitly follows the intricacies of the mystical movements from a period
where there was really not a lot of historical records. What emerges is
an interesting alternative portrayal of Jesus and Gnosticism, and so
opens a theme that will be further pursued in most subsequent chapters.
What is interesting is that, despite that focus on esoteric tradition,
her views are quite realistic and modest, merely hinting at certain
possibilities, based on historical research. Her emphasis on the term 'Nazarene' is quite distinctive and original, as their is little historical testimony related to this term. The subsequent discoveries of the Qmran and Nag Hammadi mystical texts tend to corroborate her ideas.
1- Peter and the Myth of Apostolic Succession (p.123)
Christianity sprung from perennial tradition 123/ Peter and
the Dogma of Apostolic Succession 125 / Apocryphal Tradition about Peter
and the Church 125 / Peter Apostle of Circumcision 126 / Sepher Toldos
Jeshu 127
Clement describes Basilides, the Gnostic, as “a philosopher devoted
to the contemplation of divine things.” This very appropriate expression
may be applied to many of the founders of the more important sects
which later were all engulfed in one — that stupendous compound of
unintelligible dogmas enforced by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others,
which is now termed Christianity. If these must be called heresies, then early Christianity itself must be included in the number. Basilides
and Valentinus preceded Irenaeus and Tertullian; and the two latter
Fathers had less facts than the two former Gnostics to show that their heresy was
plausible. Neither divine right nor truth brought about the triumph of
their Christianity; fate alone was propitious. We can assert, with
entire plausibility, that there is not one of all these sects —
Kabalism, Judaism, and our present Christianity included — but sprung
from the two main branches of that one mother-trunk, the once universal
religion, which antedated the Vedaic ages — we speak of that prehistoric
Buddhism which merged later into Brahmanism. (123)
We must once more return to that greatest of all the Patristic
frauds; the one which has undeniably helped the Roman Catholic Church to
its unmerited supremacy, viz.: the barefaced assertion, in the teeth of
historical evidence, that Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome. It is but
too natural that the Latin clergy should cling to it, for, with the
exposure of the fraudulent nature of this pretext, the dogma of
apostolic succession must fall to the ground. (125)
2- Nazarenes in Relation to Ebionites and Essenes (127)
Nazarenes and Ebionites 127
We may the more readily credit this friendship between Peter and his late co-religionists as we find in Theodoret the following assertion: “The Nazarenes are Jews, honoring the ANOINTED (Jesus) as a just man and using the Evangel according to Peter.”** Peter was a Nazarene, according to the Talmud. He
belonged to the sect of the later Nazarenes, which dissented from the
followers of John the Baptist, and became a rival sect; and which — as
tradition goes — was instituted by Jesus himself.
History finds the first Christian sects to have been either Nazarenes
like John the Baptist; or Ebionites, among whom were many of the
relatives of Jesus; or Essenes (Iessaens) the Therapeutae, healers, of
which the Nazaria were a branch. All these sects, which only in the days
of Irenaeus began to be considered heretical, were more or less
kabalistic. They believed in the expulsion of demons by magical
incantations, and practiced this method; Jervis terms the Nabatheans and
other such sects “wandering Jewish exorcists,”*** the Arabic word Nabae, meaning to wander, and the Hebrew [[Heb char]] naba, to prophesy. The Talmud indiscriminately calls all the Christians Nozari.*
All the Gnostic sects equally believed in magic. Irenaeus, in
describing the followers of Basilides, says, “They use images,
invocations, incantations, and all other things pertaining unto magic.”
Dunlap, on the authority of Lightfoot, shows that Jesus was called Nazaraios, in reference to his humble and mean external condition; “for Nazaraios means separation, alienation from other men.”** (127)
3- Jehovistic and Chaldean currents in Judaism (128)
Exoteric and Esoteric Religion in the Old Testament 128
The Jewish Scriptures indicate two distinct worships and religions
among the Israelites; that of Bacchus-worship under the mask of Jehovah,
and that of the Chaldean initiates to whom belonged some of the nazars, the
theurgists, and a few of the prophets. The headquarters of these were
always at Babylon and Chaldea, where two rival schools of Magians can be
distinctly shown. Those who would doubt the statement will have in such
a case to account for the discrepancy between history and Plato, who of
all men of his day was certainly one of the best informed. Speaking of
the Magians, he shows them as instructing the Persian kings of
Zoroaster, as the son or priest of Oromasdes; and yet Darius, in the
inscription at Bihistun, boasts of having restored the cultus of Ormazd
and put down the Magian rites! Evidently there were two distinct and
antagonistic Magian schools. The oldest and the most esoteric of the two
being that which, satisfied with its unassailable knowledge and secret
power, was content to apparently relinquish her exoteric popularity, and
concede her supremacy into the hands of the reforming Darius. The later
Gnostics showed the same prudent policy by accommodating themselves in
every country to the prevailing religious forms, still secretly adhering
to their own essential doctrines. (128)
John the Baptist and the Nazarenes 132 / Essenes 133 / Baptism 134 / Pharisees and Saducees 135 / The Ginza (Codex Nazareus 136)
The oldest Nazarenes, who were the descendants of the Scripture nazars, and
whose last prominent leader was John the Baptist, although never very
orthodox in the sight of the scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem were,
nevertheless, respected and left unmolested. Even Herod “feared the
multitude” because they regarded John as a prophet (Matthew xiv. 5). But
the followers of Jesus evidently adhered to a sect which became a still
more exasperating thorn in their side. It appeared as a heresy within
another heresy; for while the nazars of the olden times, the “Sons of
the Prophets,” were Chaldean kabalists, the adepts of the new dissenting
sect showed themselves reformers and innovators from the first.
The
great similitude traced by some critics between the rites and
observances of the earliest Christians and those of the Essenes may be
accounted for without the slightest difficulty. The Essenes, as we
remarked just now, were the converts of Buddhist missionaries who had
overrun Egypt, Greece, and even Judea at one time, since the reign of
Asoka the zealous propagandist; and while it is evidently to the Essenes
that belongs the honor of having had the Nazarene reformer, Jesus, as a
pupil, still the latter is found disagreeing with his early teachers on
several questions of formal observance. He cannot strictly be called an
Essene, for reasons which we will indicate further on, neither was he a nazar, or Nazaria of the older sect. What Jesus was, may be found in the Codex Nazaraeus, in the unjust accusations of the Bardesanian Gnostics. (133)
5- Jesus’ relation to Nazarenes (137)
Hindu Baptism Ceremonies 137 / Nazars, Essenes, Galileans 138
The motive of Jesus was evidently like that of Gautama-Buddha, to
benefit humanity at large by producing a religious reform which should
give it a religion of pure ethics; the true knowledge of God and nature
having remained until then solely in the hands of the esoteric sects,
and their adepts. As Jesus used oil and the Essenes never used
aught but pure water,* he cannot be called a strict Essene. On the other
hand, the Essenes were also “set apart”; they were healers (assaya) and dwelt in the desert as all ascetics did. (133)
6- Zoroastrian connection to Nazarenes (140)
Nazars and Paganism 141 / Nazars and Zoroastrianism 142
If we carefully trace the terms nazar, and nazaret,
throughout the best known works of ancient writers, we will meet them
in connection with “Pagan” as well as Jewish adepts. Thus, Alexander
Polyhistor says of Pythagoras that he was a disciple of the Assyrian Nazaret, whom
some suppose to be Ezekiel. Diogenes Laertius states most positively
that Pythagoras, after being initiated into all the Mysteries of the
Greeks and barbarians, “went into Egypt and afterward visited the
Chaldeans and Magi”; and Apuleius maintains that it was Zoroaster who
instructed Pythagoras.
Were we to suggest that the Hebrew nazars, the railing
prophets of the “Lord,” had been initiated into the so-called Pagan
mysteries, and belonged (or at least a majority of them) to the same
Lodge or circle of adepts as those who were considered idolaters; that
their “circle of prophets” was but a collateral branch of a secret
association, which we may well term “international,” what a visitation
of Christian wrath would we not incur! And still, the case looks
strangely suspicious. (141)
7- Essenes and Mystery Religions in relation to Nazarenes (143)
Luke, who was a physician, is designated in the Syriac texts as Asaia, the
Essaian or Essene. Josephus and Philo Judaeus have sufficiently
described this sect to leave no doubt in our mind that the Nazarene
Reformer, after having received his education in their dwellings in the
desert, and been duly initiated in the Mysteries, preferred the free and
independent life of a wandering Nazaria, and so separated or inazarenized himself
from them, thus becoming a travelling Therapeute, a Nazaria, a healer.
Every Therapeute, before quitting his community, had to do the same.
Both Jesus and St. John the Baptist preached the end of the Age;** which
proves their knowledge of the secret computation of the priests and
kabalists, who with the chiefs of the Essene communities alone had the
secret of the duration of the cycles. The latter were kabalists and
theurgists; “they had their mystic books, and predicted future events,” says Munk.*** (144)
8- Jesus and the Ancient Portrayal of Magicians (147)
All this points undeniably to the fact, that except a handful of
self-styled Christians who subsequently won the day, all the civilized
portion of the Pagans who knew of Jesus honored him as a philosopher, an
adept whom they placed on the same level with Pythagoras and
Apollonius. Whence such a veneration on their part for a man, were he
simply, as represented by the Synoptics, a poor, unknown Jewish
carpenter from Nazareth? As an incarnated God there is no single record
of him on this earth capable of withstanding the critical examination of
science; as one of the greatest reformers, an inveterate enemy of every
theological dogmatism, a persecutor of bigotry, a teacher of one of the
most sublime codes of ethics, Jesus is one of the grandest and most
clearly-defined figures on the panorama of human history. His age may,
with every day, be receding farther and farther back into the gloomy and
hazy mists of the past; and his theology — based on human fancy and
supported by untenable dogmas may, nay, must with every day lose more of
its unmerited prestige; alone the grand figure of the philosopher and
moral reformer instead of growing paler will become with every century
more pronounced and more clearly defined. It will reign supreme and
universal only on that day when the whole of humanity recognizes but one
father — the UNKNOWN ONE above — and one brother — the whole of mankind
below. (150)
9- Docetic Aspect of Jesus and Reincarnation (151)
While the kabalists called this mysterious and rare occurrence of the
union of spirit with the mortal charge entrusted to its care, the
“descent of the Angel Gabriel” (the latter being a kind of generic name
for it), the Messenger of Life, and the angel Metatron; and while the Nazarenes termed the same Abel-Zivo,* the Delegatus sent by the Lord of Celsitude, it was universally known as the “Anointed Spirit.”
Thus it is the acceptation of this doctrine which caused the Gnostics
to maintain that Jesus was a man overshadowed by the Christos or
Messenger of Life, and that his despairing cry from the cross “Eloi,
Eloi, Lama Sabachthani,” was wrung from him at the instant when he felt
that this inspiring Presence had finally abandoned him, for — as some
affirmed — his faith had also abandoned him when on the cross. (154)
10 – Basilides, Buddhism, the Mystic Christ (155)
Thus, Christos, as a unity, is but an abstraction: a general idea
representing the collective aggregation of the numberless
spirit-entities, which are the direct emanations of the infinite,
invisible, incomprehensible FIRST CAUSE
— the individual spirits of men, erroneously called the souls. They are
the divine sons of God, of which some only overshadow mortal men — but
this the majority — some remain forever planetary spirits, and some —
the smaller and rare minority — unite themselves during life with some
men. Such God-like beings as Gautama-Buddha, Jesus, Tissoo, Christna,
and a few others had united themselves with their spirits permanently —
hence, they became gods on earth. Others, such as Moses, Pythagoras,
Apollonius, Plotinus, Confucius, Plato, Iamblichus, and some Christian
saints, having at intervals been so united, have taken rank in history
as demi-gods and leaders of mankind. When unburdened of their
terrestrial tabernacles, their freed souls, henceforth united forever
with their spirits, rejoin the whole shining host, which is bound
together in one spiritual solidarity of thought and deed, and called
“the anointed.” Hence, the meaning of the Gnostics, who, by saying that
“Christos” suffered spiritually for humanity, implied that his Divine
Spirit suffered mostly. (159)
11- Marcion (159)
Was Marcion so far wrong? Was it blasphemy, or was it intuition,
divine inspiration in him to express that which every honest heart
yearning for truth, more or less feels and acknowledges? If in his
sincere desire to establish a purely spiritual religion, a universal
faith based on unadulterated truth, he found it necessary to make of
Christianity an entirely new and separate system from that of Judaism,
did not Marcion have the very words of Christ for his authority? “No man
putteth a piece of new cloth into an old garment . . . for the rent is
made worse. . . . Neither do men put new wine into old bottles, else the
bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish; but they put new wine into new bottles, and
both are preserved.” In what particular does the jealous, wrathful,
revengeful God of Israel resemble the unknown deity, the God of mercy
preached by Jesus; — his Father who is in Heaven, and the Father of all humanity? (163)
12- Hinduism, Buddhism, and Bacchus worship compared to Christianity (163)
“Good master, what shall I do that I may have eternal life?” asks a
man of Jesus. “Keep the commandments.” “Which?” “Thou shalt do no
murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt
not bear false witness,”** is the answer.
“What shall I do to obtain possession of Bhodi? (knowledge of eternal
truth)” asks a disciple of his Buddhist master. “What way is there to
become an Upasaka?” “Keep the commandments.” “What are they?” “Thou
shalt abstain all thy life from murder, theft, adultery, and lying,”
answers the master.***
Identical injunctions are they not? Divine injunctions, the living up
to which would purify and exalt humanity. But are they more divine when
uttered through one mouth than another? If it is god-like to return
good for evil, does the enunciation of the precept by a Nazarene give it
any greater force than its enunciation by an Indian, or Thibetan
philosopher? We see that the Golden Rule was not original with Jesus;
that its birth-place was India. Do what we may, we cannot deny
Sakya-Muni Buddha a less remote antiquity than several centuries before
the birth of Jesus. In seeking a model for his system of ethics why
should Jesus have gone to the foot of the Himalayas rather than to the
foot of Sinai, but that the doctrines of Manu and Gautarna harmonized
exactly with his own philosophy, while those of Jehovah were to him
abhorrent and terrifying? The Hindus taught to return good for evil, but the Jehovistic command was: “An eye for an eye” and “a tooth for a tooth.” (164)
Prominent authors and works used in this chapter:
Louis Jacolliot (1837-1890), Histoire des Vierges. Les Peuples et les continents disparus (History of the Virgins. Vanished People and Continents) (1874)
La Bible dans l’Inde, ou la Vie de Iezeus Christna (The Bible in India or The life of Iezeus Christna) (1869)
Lydia Maria Child (1802 – 1880), The Progress of Religious Ideas Through Successive Ages
John Denison Baldwin (1809 –1883), Pre-Historic Nations; or, Inquiries Concerning Some of the Great Peoples and Civilizations of Antiquity (1869)
Stanislas Aignan Julien (1797 –1873), Histoire de la Vie de Hiouen-Thsang [History of the Life of Xuanzang] (1856).
Buddhist Records of the Western World, by Hiuen Tsiang. 2 vols. (Vol 1, 2) Translated by Samuel Beal. London. 1884.
Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac (1778 –1867), Égypte Ancienne (1839)
Max Müller (1823 –1900), Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religions of India (1878) “Buddhist Pilgrims”
On the Vanity of Idols (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5)
Schott’s essay on Buddhism in Upper Asia and China (1846) Über den Buddhismus in Hochasien und in China. Berlin 1844; Probably quoted from The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo, translated by Henry Yule
The whole question of phenomena rests on the correct comprehension of old philosophies. Whither, then, should we turn, in our perplexity, but to the ancient sages, since, on the pretext of superstition, we are refused an explanation by the modern? Let us ask them what they know of genuine science and religion; not in the matter of mere details, but in all the broad conception of these twin truths — so strong in their unity, so weak when divided.
