The Childhood of Jesus
The Gospel of James
Biographical Gospel of the Lord
- Chapter 76 -
The True Mythology Of The Gods
WITH THE GREATEST esteem the three priests approached Joseph and asked him how this Child had come to such a most amazing wisdom, and how old He already was.
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Joseph answered them, 'Dear friends, do not ask about that too soon, for a too premature answer could cost you your lives!
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But follow us and drop your many gods, believe that there is only one true God of heaven and of earth, and believe that this one true God is the same whom the people of Israel worship and honor at Jerusalem, and you will find out within yourselves and from this Child whence His wisdom is!'
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Here the priests asked, 'Sir, you speak strange words here!
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Are then our main gods, Zeus, Apollo, Mercury, Vulcan, Pluto, Mars and Neptune, Juno, Minerva, Venus and others nothing more than mere creations of human fancy?'
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And Joseph answered: 'Listen to me, friends! All of your gods came into being by the imagination of your forefathers at a time when they still knew the one God very well.
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These were rare poets and singers in the courts of the old kings of this land and personified the characteristics of the one true God in apt analogies.
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To them Jupiter represented the grace and love of the Father from eternity, while Apollo portrayed the wisdom of the Father, and Minerva the power of this wisdom.
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Mercury signified the presence everywhere of the one God by His almighty will.
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Venus portrayed the glory and beauty and eternally constant youth of the Deity.
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Vulcan and Pluto represented the one God's absolute power over the whole earth.
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Mars depicted the divine earnestness, judgment and death for the condemned.
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Neptune represented the spirit of the one God active in all waters and how He gives life to the earth through these waters.
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Thus the old Isis and also Osiris signified the divine, inviolably Holiness, which is divine love and wisdom from all eternity in Itself.
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And thus all the other gods portrayed nothing but the various attributes of the one God in analogous pictures!
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That was a highly praiseworthy illustration, for it entered no one's mind but that all of this signified only the one God in the diverse and infinite manner of His modus operandi.
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But in time selfishness, self-love and lust for power deluded and obscured the light in mankind.
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They lost the spirit and nothing remained for them than the outward form and they became pagans, which means the same as: they became coarse materialists, lost the one God and therefore gnawed on outer, empty and uncomprehended pictures like dogs which in their hunger gnaw on bones on which there is no more meat. - Do you understand me?'
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Here the three made big eyes at each other and replied, 'Truly, you are better versed in our religion than we are! But where did you learn all this?'
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And Joseph replied, 'Just be patient; the Child will reveal it to you. So follow us and do not fall back again.'