INRI, IN THE TIME OF CONSTANTINE (Bible Myths, Part II)

 Constantine the Great

Constantine the Great

It was customary in ancient times before a criminal was publically executed, that the nature of their crime be announced to all present. This was done either by public acclamation or by a sign which was hung around the neck of the accused and sometimes, posted on a wall or on a post near the site of execution. However, in the case of crucifixion, a sign was hung on the cross itself. Roman law was very specific about the mode of execution for those condemned of crimes against the empire. For instance, common criminals who had been condemned for murder, rape and other capital crimes were hung by the neck. Those guilty of insurrection were tied to a post and killed by a spear but those guilty of direct crimes against the Emperor were crucified. In those days of Roman occupation, insurrection was one thing but “sedition” was something else altogether. Insurrection was a crime against the state; sedition was a crime against the son of God, the Emperor of the Roman Empire.

When the personage of Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, he was not crucified with a thief and a murderer as it is written in scripture but with others who were also guilty of sedition and the sign that was nailed to the head of the cross did not say, “King of the Jews” but “INRI”, meaning “against God”!

Understanding this small error in historical account tells us a huge story that spans thousands of years and takes us from the Middle East 12,000 years ago into Ethiopia and later into the Sudan in Africa, then north into Egypt and back again to the Middle East in a 10,000 year period. The Jews or Juden that settled in the Middle East, some 2,000 years ago were in fact Egyptians! They spoke Egyptian! The evolution of the Jewish (Juden) language begins in Egypt.

The direct translation of INRI means “not God” but words over time have a way of losing their direct meaning and they evolve into new meanings. RI means God in ancient Egyptian. RA was the sun God of the Egyptians. If one were to be curious, they might look up the word RA (Ra… alternatively spelled Ré), Egyptian *ri:Ê•u, is the ancient Egyptian sun god).

So, the word INRI over thousands of years evolved into the word “sedition” which meant in those days, crimes against the Emperor of Rome, which translated into crimes against God. This was the crime that the man from Nazareth and the others crucified with him, were accused of and executed for.

Jesus of Nazareth began his ministry just prior to the time of the first Jewish Revolt against the Romans in the Middle East, around 67AD, which ended with the siege of Jerusalem in 70-71 AD (at Masada). Jesus of Nazareth was executed by the Romans a few years before this war erupted but in the time of Jesus of Nazareth, there was definitely the smell of coming war in the air.

In 325 AD, it made sense that Constantine would want to cover up the time period that Jesus of Nazareth would have been born. After all Jesus was an enemy of the Roman Empire guilty of sedition against the Emperor himself, against God himself. We must remember that the one responsible for putting the books of the bible together, Constantine, also claimed kinship with God as well as claiming to be the son of God!

The task of putting together the books of the bible was never meant as a means to detract from Constantine’s power. He did it to consolidate power! The book today that we call the Christian bible is not the same book that Constantine put together but another effort, a literary evolution by those in power to stay in power, to claim a direct responsibility from God to speak for God on the earth!

The original bible would have given homage to a common saint, revered by both the Juden and the Romans. It was not a declaration of guilt and subsequent act of contrition on the part of the Romans. The original text was an affirmation that the Messiah (messenger or savior) was a man given to possess the values of both the Romans and the Juden. The original text was designed to bring together two political factions within the Roman Empire into one “church” or nation.

During the time of Constantine, there were four basic factions; The Romans who were represented by a God man who was the Emperor of Rome, Constantine, and two factions of Christians both believing their Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus of Syria were the true representatives of God on the earth and the Jews who were still waiting for their Messiah to come.

The Jews never really needed a Messiah at the time because they had it pretty good, as they had prospered under Roman rule. It was the “Christians” that needed a Messiah and the Romans always had theirs in the form of the Emperor who claimed a blood relation with God. It just made sense that the three factions would combine into one… the Roman church.

The term Christian did not originate with the believers of Jesus. Christian is an ancient word which was used to define those who believed in the ancient text prophesies of a coming Messiah or anointed one; one which would be a uniting king, a representative of God on the earth. Christianity was the religion of the poor, practiced by the poor immigrants from Egypt that had settled around Jerusalem. However, the “pagan concept of Christianity”, was widely practiced all over the Roman Empire.

The term Christian is a word used by the Juden immigrants in the time of the Juden expulsion from Egypt. Their leaders had been members of the Egyptian royal house who claimed a blood relation with the God Jehovah or the king of the Gods! This exodus took place thousands of years before the bible has it dated and this group of exiled Egyptians, settled in the Sinai Peninsula after a bitter and bloody war with the Philistines. Although the hand of power changed from Philistine to Juden, the civil discord never stopped and over thousands of years refuges from the Sinai slowly made their way to Israel ( Is RI El… meaning “the one God”) or as it was to be called later Judah, land of the Juden or “chosen”. As the Juden integrated into society, the well to do became part of the establishment or “Sanhedrin” and the poor among them became the Christians who awaited a savior.

The Roman Emperor Constantine represented one member of this royal triad; Jesus of Nazareth represented a faction that had not proclaimed open rebellion against the Romans and Jeshua (another way of saying Jesus but spelled in this way to distinguish between the two) of Syria who did proclaim open rebellion against the Romans! Both Jeshua and Jesus had been executed by the Romans, one by crucifixion and the other by spear. They were both mystics who were heralded and though they died some twenty or thirty years apart, they both achieved great success as powerful spiritual leaders worthy of being called Messiah. A savior is always sought by the needy, downtrodden and persecuted, in times of great turmoil.

This was the problem that Constantine was faced with when all of the ancient writings had been collected for review and revision! These ancient writings contained within, the exploits of two men not just Jesus of Nazareth. All of these documents were combined and edited at the council of Nicaea in 325 AD and subsequent councils to follow. When we study the scripture, we see eyewitness accounts of Jesus and his ministry that are incredibly varied and inconsistent. However, when we consider that the New Testament was a combination of two Christian philosophies and the philosophy of Constantine, Sol Invictus, we begin to understand how these inconsistencies occurred. Sol Invictus has been determined by later historians to mean the worship of the sun and even this word has been misinterpreted via “semantics evolution”. The evolution of the Christian religion has created a division between Paganism and Christianity but in 325 AD, there was not that much difference between how these two factions worshiped. Some factions of both Pagan and Christian believed in animal sacrifice and others did not, some factions believed in the cleansing of the soul through the ritual of baptism with water and some believed that man’s relationship with God was reconciled through penance by giving to the poor or other acts of love. All philosophies regarding man’s relationship with God always came down to how does man reconcile themselves to God, how does one become worthy of eternal life! What we see today in the Christian bible does not vary that much from any philosophies, either contemporary or ancient with regard to man’s connection to God.

When all of the documents collected had been debated and finalized, there was still one problem left; the followers of Jeshua the Messiah had been dismissed and it was Jesus of Nazareth who had been selected to be Gods representative on the earth. As you can imagine what happened next was a matter of how those supporting this consolidation would sell the idea to their constituents. After all, it came down to… how the followers of these two philosophies would oppose Rome and with Rome as an ally, there was no longer a need for the philosophy of Jeshua, although many of the exploits of Jeshua were attributed to Jesus of Nazareth! The sellers of this “New Way” must have made peace, with the Romans, a higher priority than a bloody and vicious civil war!

When we think back and put ourselves in the place of Constantine in this time era, we must consider that this document was a project for peace. One must consider that any effort which brings peace is a great one! However, with this document, another war was waged. When Constantine consolidated these three factions within the Roman Empire, there was one segment of society which was excluded…the Jews! In order to understand this metamorphosis that took place, we need to understand who the Jews were in 325 AD. The word Jew is a word that originated in literary terms, translated in the 12th century as describing immigrants; however, to the Romans in the time of Constantine, the word used was not the word Jew. The term Jew, is a translation error! When the Romans used the word that would later be translated to Jew, it meant second class citizen or someone that was not a Roman citizen. What I refer to in this text as Juden, who were immigrants from Egypt into Israel and the word Jew are two different words but it is important with regard to biblical context that we understand the difference.

The Jews in the time of Constantine were immigrants to Rome from all over the Roman Empire and what they believed or how they worshiped had nothing to do with the term. The Jews were a wealthy minority and though they were non-citizens, they controlled much of the wealth of Rome. In fact, they controlled so much of the wealth that they began to threaten Rome and the representative of God and Roman Power… Constantine! With the publication of the documents of Nicaea, the civil rights of this minority were abolished, their wealth confiscated and the Jews were either killed in the resulting onslaught or they fled north in all directions to escape persecution.

When we talk about the evolution of Christianity we must also talk about the evolution of Judaism! It’s all the same; the Old Testament is also a collection of re-writes, plagiarisms, artistic sensationalism and in some cases, downright lies.

When we follow the path of logic back into history, we look for singularities that give us clues, main events that the ancient recorder of history would have hung onto as main topics to write their account around. With the New Testament, there is the consolidation in 325 AD and the subsequent re-writes which began occurring from that time, in all regions of the Roman Empire, beyond the evolution of the Empire into the Roman church… to the evolution and interpretations that occurred in later centuries and even into contemporary times where this evolution continues to happen.

The study of history is fascinating of course but its understanding is a mirror of the future! The evolution of civilization occurs in cycles which repeat themselves in an evolutionary manner or “evolutionary circuit”. Just like with electricity for example or any natural or manmade force, the evolution of civilization must follow the laws of physics, action and reaction. The law of logic is a constant; it doesn’t change with the times. The path of logic is as true today as it was in the beginning, it is after all truth that we seek, is it not?

When one is so inclined to follow the path of truth, one must pursue without preconceived beliefs. To do so would be like beginning a trip by going in the wrong direction. Our beliefs always take us in the wrong direction. When we believe in anything, there is no trip to make as we have already arrived at our destination.

When we look at the Old Testament, we start at the beginning and we pay attention to the main points, the parts of the story that would not be forgotten as time marches on. The first entries of the bible begin with man’s attempt to understand how the earth and the rest of the universe came to be. In my humble opinion, the creation of the universe is a complicated matter. The biblical account of God’s creation of the universe is very simplistic and one must ask themselves… couldn’t contemporary science do a better job with our knowledge of physics than the obviously primitive account that is given in scripture? However, even contemporary scientists cannot explain the complexities of this event. The bottom line is this; the primitive explanation although simplistic and completely unbelievable is no more illogical than contemporary explanations! When it is all said and done, we really have not come that far from those ancient, simplistic and primitive times. Something happened way back when and what happened was so amazing that the main idea that we see today, although distorted and misinterpreted, is still with us.

It would be wise for scientists to study the writings of the bible; it might just give them some clues that will lead us in to an advanced age of understanding, of invention and exploration. In order to follow the path of logic that leads to truth, we look for singularities. The mirror of our future is hidden in these ancient writings and it is logic that will tell us exactly what happened!

QUESTION FOR READER:

In order for mankind to evolve, we need to understand that history is a mirror of our future to be repeated unless we learn our lesson of wrong paths previously taken. “What is the lesson to be learned from the history presented in this article?”