01-22-2011, 12:01 AM
http://www.white-history.com/hwr17.htm
Quote:CHRISTIANITY THE YOUNGEST RELIGION
It is a sobering thought for many Christians today who presume their religion has been in existence since the start of the world, to realize that Christianity only in fact became widely known in southern Europe some 1,700 years ago, and was only accepted in northern Europe many hundreds of years after that, with the last northern European country to formally adopt Christianity being Iceland, around the year 1,000 AD.
Put another way - compared to the time frame of the existence of records of the White race - a little over 35,000 years - Christianity represents less than the last six percent this time.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE POPE
Each major town throughout the Roman world was assigned a Christian leader, called a bishop. Gradually the Bishop at Rome came to be recognized as the most important and assumed the title of "Pope" (from the Greek word meaning father).
By the seventh century AD, the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, had become the spiritual leader of all Christendom and was in possession of great political power - aided by the forged Donation of Constantine. The Pope even adopted the Roman Emperors' color - purple - which to this day remains the most used color in the Catholic church.
DISPUTES ALMOST IMMEDIATE
Although there was initially only one Christian church - the Catholic church - disputes over the interpretations attached to the new cult broke out almost immediately amongst its supporters. As Christianity spread after its legalization in 313 AD, it became more and more disorganized, with serious disputes erupting amongst the various missionaries as to the true version of the creation and purpose of the new God.
One of the biggest clashes was over the concept of what was called "Arianism," (named after Arius, a Christian leader in Alexandria) or the relative position of the three components of the Christian Trinity: God, Christ and the Holy Ghost. The belief that all three of these beings were one and the same thing was challenged by Arius who argued that the Christ figure could not be God as well.
So serious was this dispute taken that the Emperor Constantine called a special meeting of all the major leaders of the religion in 325 AD, to the now famous Council of Nicaea, to discuss the problem.
At the council of Nicaea it was decided that the Arian doctrine was ungodly, and declared a heresy, with its proponents being persecuted in the name of the new God - the first of many such repressive tactics to be used by the Christian church.
THE BIBLE CREATED
However, several other disputes over doctrine made the religious leaders at Nicaea realize that if some weighty final word on the outline of their belief was not forthcoming, the religion could splinter into factions. The problem was that there was no such manual or holy book in existence - the leaders then took it upon themselves to create such a book. For this purpose they turned to whatever texts they could find.
The books now contained in the Old Testament were largely oral before 300 BC, although some had been written down by Jewish rabbis. Through contact with Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt, King Ptolemy II of Philadelphus (285-246 BC) is credited with ordering the translation of the Jewish religious books into Greek.
The Christian version of the Old Testament was only established as a comprehensive work by the scribe Origen around 250 AD, and up until that time only loose translations of the Ptolemaic Greek work formed the basis of Christian teachings.
The origins of the New Testament are very vague. By the end of the first century AD, the writings of Saul/Paul (called the Pauline Epistles) consisting of letters to the various Christian communities in Asia Minor and Rome had been established as a collection of inspired works. The gospels which make up the first part of the New Testament only emerged after the writings of Saul/Paul had become well known, and long after his death.
This is evidenced by the fact that in Paul's writings there is no mention of any other new testament book or gospel, as well as the account of what Jesus did on the night he was "betrayed" (1: Cor. 11:23) which differs substantially from the Gospel version as recounted in the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John versions.
It is clear that if the four gospels were in existence at the time when Saul/Paul wrote his epistles (around the year 55 AD), he would have at least mentioned them, or very likely have even quoted from them. The earliest existent gospel consists of fragments of the Gospel of John, dating from about 100 AD, and which is in Greek.
By 200 AD, the Church had developed the New Testament in its present form, although still written in various languages, including Greek and Hebrew, apart from the Book of Revelations. Where this last chapter came from no-one knows for sure, but by the 4th Century it had been included in the New Testament anyway.
The compilation of the New Testament omitted several early Christian manuscripts which did not fit in with the other books. The most famous of these "left out" books is the Gospel of St. Thomas, probably because the events described therein are at quite some variance with the events described in the four more well known gospels.
The Council of Nicaea went a long way to formalizing the Bible as Christians know it today - all in an attempt to prevent the church from splitting again as it nearly did over the Arian controversy. In this attempt they were to fail, and some of the most grievous conflicts to come in Europe would be precisely over different interpretations of the Bible.
THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY - RESISTED BY BALTS, SLAVS AND GERMANS
When the Roman Empire in the West collapsed (see chapter 18) Christianity had been spread throughout its former dominions, with the exception of the Germans, the Balts, and a significant section of the Slavs.
The Germanic tribes, who participated in the sacking of Rome at the formal end of that empire, did not destroy the Roman Catholic Church alongside with the Roman state, partly as a result of them viewing the religion of Rome as being part of the great original cultural tradition of that Empire - which it was not.
The leader of the church in Rome, the Pope, therefore survived the Germanic invasions, and went on to become an important political player in his own right.
The Church itself lost no time in sending Christian missionaries to the pagan tribes, the most famous of them being Wufilas (311 - 383 AD) who worked amongst the Visigoths.
Another famous missionary was Patrick, who although born in Britain, went to Ireland and became the Christianizer of that island, later being made a saint by the church for his efforts.
Quote:COERCIVE CHRISTIANITY TAKES ROOT
With the use of violent and bloody coercion, Saxon and German paganism was quite literally killed off, and most of the survivors became Christians more out of fear than out of genuine conviction. Christianity finally spread to the Goths themselves, through a Christian slave named Wulfila, who translated the Bible into Gothic.
Before the end of the fourth century, Christianity had spread to the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Lombards and other German tribes within the direct sphere of influence of the Western Roman Empire.
By the year 550 AD, the only non-Christian tribes were to be found in Bavaria and those parts of Germany north from there - including virtually all of the Danes, Scandinavians, Balts and Slavs to the east.
WHITE PAGAN ORIGINS OF CHRISTMAS AND EASTER
Through sheer terror rather than logical persuasion, Christianity then became the dominant religion of the previously pagan Europe - yet because they never quite succeeded in rooting out some pagan customs, they quietly adopted them.
Easter, for example, comes from the old pagan goddess of fertility, Eoster (or Ostara), who used as her symbols the egg and the rabbit - potent signs of fertility. Most Christians today have no idea where their Easter rabbit comes from, or why they have Easter Eggs.
The ancient north European feast of Eoster marked the start of Spring in Europe - and as this celebration was too deeply ingrained in these Gothic tribes to remove, the Christianizing church elders simply took this feast and in arbitrary fashion made it into the date of Jesus Christ's crucifixion.
The same happened with the Winter solstice - originally a pagan celebration to mark the turning point of winter - the longest night of winter - with a fire and a pine tree. Solstice was then combined with the date of Jesus Christ's birth, again in an arbitrary fashion.
However, the church was for a long time uneasy with the pagan undertones of the celebration - such as the pine tree, which is native to Scandinavia, which is nowhere to be found in the Bible - and this led to the church officially banning the celebration of Christmas no less than three times - all of course unsuccessfully.