Who wrote the bible? An entertaining and easy to understand outline of the history and controversy surrounding the early Church and the compilation of the bible.

The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ

Jesus and John the Baptizer

Essays on John the Baptist

More Jesus Mysteries

Pagan Parallels?

Euripides and Luke

Compares passages from the New Testament to Euripide's Bacchae, a pre-christian passion play.

Read the Bacchae

"And if we assert that the Word of God was born of God in a peculiar manner, different from ordinary generation, let this, as said above, be no extraordinary thing to you, who say that Mercury is the angelic word of God. But if any one objects that He was crucified, in this also He is on a par with those reputed sons of Jupiter of yours, who suffered as we have now enumerated. "
Justin Martyr, Church Father

The Dying God: Resurrected Saviors

The Greek Roots of Christianity

From Apollo to Jesus Christ

The Pagan Origins of Jesus Christ

Mithraism and Christianity

Infant God

Did you know? The eucharist of bread and wine was celebrated in a number of pagan mystery religions.

Pre-Christian Madonnas?

Did you know that the image of the Holy mother and her divine infant predates the Christian nativity? Click on the picture to read about some early pagan saviors, and view a gallery of Madonnas.

Play "Guess the Savior "

More Jesus Mysteries

Isopsephia

Gnostic Gospels
The Gnostic Gospels tell a different story of Christianity, and offer Salvation in life, not death- a message the Church killed to keep silent. This link leads to a collection of Gnostic texts in English.

The Gnostic Gospel
Selected quotes from Elaine Pagel's book "The Gnostic Gospels."

The Lost Gospels
Dozens of Christian Scriptures were Holy Writ, then heresy, then forgotten. Why are we looking at them again?

Were the Gnostic gospels suppressed?

The Gnostic Gospels

The Nag Hammadi Codices, Gnostic gospels discovered sixty years ago

Exploring the Legacy of the Gnostics
Gnostic Christianity and the Myth of Sophia
Gnostic and Historic Christianity
Paul, the Gnostic opponent of Peter

The Mandeans are the only Gnostic sect to have existed continuously from the first century. They are unusual in the fact that they recognize only one Savior- in the person of John the Baptist and his wife, Miriam!

The Apostle Paul encounters the Mandeans

The Mandean John Book

More about Mandeans

The Cathars were gentle, peaceful people who had a special affection for Mary Magdalen, believing her to be the mother of Christ's child. Little more is known as the Church utterly destroyed the Cathars, along with their scriptures (and the majority of their neighbors), in one of the worst slaughters in Western history.

The Cathars
The Church's War on the Cathars

See Also:

Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches)
The Guidebook to the Inquisition- or, how to put a woman in her place. This fifteenth century book is probably the world's most reknowned masterpiece of misogyny. Can an incubus have a baby? How does a witch make a pact with the Devil? A real insight into the medieval mind.

The Book of Enoch
Is there no help for the widow's son? Did fallen angels influence human history? This apocryphal Old Testament work describes the marriage of fallen angels with earthly women.

Dead Sea Scrolls Fact Sheet

"Abide with me in my soul. Leave me not, that I may be initiated and that the Holy Spirit may breathe within me." ~ Prayer to Mithras

"It has served us well , this myth of Christ " Pope Leo X

"Leonardo was of such a heretical frame of mind that he did not adhere to any kind of religion, believing that it is perhaps better to be a philosopher than a Christian." ~ Giogio Vasari, Leonardo's biographer

Make your work carry out your purpose and meaning. That is when you draw a figure consider well who it is and what you wish it to be doing. ~ Leonardo