Historicity of Jesus - 2

[Husky]

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4. Sharan's comment on Encycopaedia Britannica

There is a well planned Christian agenda in Wendy Doniger’s Hindu bashing. Chicago is the largest and wealthiest Catholic diocese in the world and it has a large Indian Christian population including Syrian Christians. The University of Chicago is for all intents and purposes a Catholic university. Its Divinity School is world famous. It produces all the religious and cultural references for the Encyclopedia Britannica which has its headquarters in the city too.



The pro-Catholic EB is known for its offensive articles on Hindu society and deities. It also publishes incorrect historical references such as its entry for Thomas the Apostle, which it refuses to change, and for many years was banned in India because of its willfully wrongly drawn India-Kashmir maps.



Wendy Doniger is a contributor to the EB and many other “authoritative” references on Hindu religion and society.

Related to the above comment by Sharan.

The following contains extracts from the eminently readable and knowledgeable ex-catholic, ex-Fransiscan priest Joseph McCabe (aka the "encyclopaedic brain"). Again, except for the blue highlighting, which is my own, the emphases are as in original. You can read it in full at:



http://www.christianism.com/articles/19.html

Note: numerous references are made to the 9th, 11th, and 14th editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

9th edition: 1875—1889 ("scholar's edition")

11th edition: 1911 ("famous eleventh edition")

14th edition: 1929—(with revisions, etc.)1973

from: The Lies and Fallacies of the Encyclopedia Britannica, How Powerful and Shameless Clerical Forces Castrated a Famous Work of Reference, Joseph McCabe, Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius, Haldeman-Julius publications ("Big Blue Book", B—608, 46 pages, 21 cm [U.C.S.D. (Private collections) has "5,000" "Blue Books" (not catalogued)]), c1947. [received (reprint), and first seen, 3/18/97].



The Encyclopedia is, as its name implies, an ancient British institution inspired by the great French Encyclopedia of the 18th century [see Addendum A]. As the American reading public increased it served both countries, and by 1920 the special needs of American readers and the great development of science and technics made it necessary to prepare an entirely recast edition. It now had an American as well as a British staff and publishing house, and it was dedicated to King George and President Hoover. The last trace of the idealism of its earlier publishers disappeared. What bargains were secretly made to secure a large circulation we do not know but when the work was completed in 1928 [published 1929 (14th edition)] the Westminster Catholic Federation, which corresponds to the Catholic Welfare organization in America, made this boast in its annual report:

The revision to the Encyclopedia Britannica was undertaken with a view to eliminate matter which was objectionable from a Catholic point of view and to insert what was accurate [sic!] and unbiased [sic!]. The whole of the 28 volumes were examined, objectionable parts noted, and the reasons for their deletion or amendment given. There is every reason to hope that the new edition of the Britannica will be found very much more accurate [sic!] and impartial [sic!] than its predecessors."' [4].





"Castrating the Encyclopedia



It will be useful to give first the outcome of a somewhat cursory survey, page by page, of the first few volumes of the Encyclopedia. More important—in their bearing on the Church—articles in later volumes commonly have the initial X at the close, which seems to be the cloak of the CATHOLIC ADULTERATOR. This will enable any reader to compare for himself passages in the 11TH [1911] AND THE 14TH EDITIONS [1929— (with revisions, etc.)1973], but the conspirator shows his hand even in large numbers of short unsigned, especially biographical, notices. It is, of course, understood that the work had to be considerably abbreviated to accommodate new developments of science and life, in the 14th edition, but when you find that the curtailing consists in suppressing an unpleasant judgment or a fact about a Pope while unimportant statements of fact are untouched, and when you find the life of a saintly man or the flattering appreciation of his work little affected while the life or work of a heretic is sacrificed, you have a just suspicion." [5-6].



[...]



'The fine eight-page article on Gibbon [Edward Gibbon 1737 - 1794] by the learned Professor Bury [John Bagnell Bury 1861 - 1927] in the earlier edition could not expect to escape. Space must be saved; though one would hardly realize this when one finds 60 pages devoted to Geometry, which no one ever learns from an encyclopedia. The reviser condenses the six and a half pages of Gibbon's life and character to one page and then sublimely adds his X to Bury's initials as the joint authors of the article. You can guess how much of Gibbon's greatness is left.

On the other hand the notice of Pope "St." Gregory I [c. 540 - 604], the Pope who forbade the opening of schools and made the Papacy the richest landowner and slave-owner in Europe by persuading the rich that the end of the world was at hand and they had better pass on their property to the church, remains as fragrant as ever in the new edition [14th].' [15].



[...]



"I cannot go phrase by phrase through this Catholic rubbish. In spite of all its sophistry and suppressions it leaves the Inquisition the most scandalous quasi-judicial procedure that ever disgraced civilization, yet it is not the full truth. It is true that it does not tell the lie that American apologists now do—that the Roman Inquisition never executed men—and it does not even mention, much less challenge, the definite figure of 341,042 victims of the Spanish Inquisition which Llorente, secretary of the Inquisition, canon of the church, and Knight of the Caroline Order, compiled from its archives...." [19-20].



'The article "Libraries" is the next on which X employs his subtle art. I have explained, I think, that X is not one encyclopedic Catholic writer who does all this marvellous work. The explanation given of the X in the first volume of the 14th edition is that it is "the initial used for anonymous writers"; just as the lady whose sins are not to be disclosed in the court is called by the police Mlle X. In all earlier encyclopedias anonymous writers, who do the great body of the hackwork of the encyclopedia, did not need any monogram. But, of course, this was a special arrangement with the Catholic body. It assumes that Committees of Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic were appointed to scrutinize all articles bearing upon Catholic myths and to cut out and modify, no matter on what authority it rested, any statement that the Catholic clergy do not like. Whether any other sort of anonymous critics were allowed to do similar work and wear the mask I do not know. I have not noticed an X anywhere except where truth has been slain or mutilated by a Catholic sword.' [23].

[...]



Father Taunton [11th edition)] ["Jesuit Father Taunton...more liberal than a good Jesuit ought to be" (36)]—once more in agreement with our historians—says that Torquemada [1420 - 1498 (Dominican ("The Hounds of Hell"!))] burned 10,000 victims of the Inquisition in 18 years ["while"] the reviser inserts "but modern research reduces the list of those burned to 2,000." As no signature is subjoined while Taunton's initials are suppressed, the reader is given to understand that this correction of Llorente's [(see 378) Juan Antonio Llorente 1756 - 1823, Spanish priest and historian (see: Cambridge Bio. Dict., 1990, 905)] figures is given on the authority of the Britannica. As a matter of fact, what the writer means is that one or two Catholic priests like Father Gams have been juggling with the figures so as to bring down enormously Llorente's figure of the total victims of the Spanish Inquisition. Their work is ridiculous. Llorente was not only for years in high clerical dignity and esteem in Spain, but, as its secretary, he had the archives of the Inquisition and copied from them. But this is one of the new tricks of Catholic writers. Saying that "recent research" or "recent authorities" have corrected some statement about their church they give a few names of priests, knowing that the reader never heard of them and suppressing the "Rev." or "Father." A priest can become an expert on a section of history as well as any man but he will never tell the whole truth about it and he will strain or twist the facts at any time in the interest of his church.' [36].



(Note in the above the typical christian tactic of minisation of even early genocides: they can't deny it so they resort to the next best thing, minimising it, of which minimising the number of casualties is the first step. The catholic church tried the same for the catholic genocide of orthodox Serbs in WWII.)



[...]



"Keeton [("Professor G.W. Keeton") author of the article "Torture"] is a pious member of the Church of England, and he is no more willing than X to admit that Christianity kept the world at a low level of civilization. He makes the general remark that the nations of Europe borrowed the practice from ancient Rome—as if a man could excuse his crimes by pleading that he simply copied them from a civilization which he professed to regard as pagan and vicious—and he darkens the case against the Romans." [37].



[...]



'Give a priest an inch and he will take an ell [sic] of a lot. He does not learn casuistry for nothing. Under cover of the need of abbreviation he has deleted whole paragraphs, even columns of facts which were offensive to him because they flatly contradicted what he said or wrote, and then, possibly fearing that he had cut out too much, he inserted sentences or paragraphs which "put the Catholic point of view." He has taken phrases or paragraphs of the original writers of the articles and, while r[e]taining their initials, he has repeatedly turned them inside out or has said that "recent research" (the gymnastic of some other Catholic apologist) has corrected his statements.



And I say that for an encyclopedia to allow this and not candidly explain it to the public but even try to prevent the Catholics disclosing it is a piece of deception. The writers who did the work had not the decency—or were they forbidden?—to give their names, as other contributors do. It is therefore possible that the plea may be urged that various groups of folk were engaged in the work of correcting errors in the 11th edition and it was thought best to lump all these little men together as Mlle. X. We are, however, intrigued by the fact that all these alterations, suppressions, and additions that I have examined uniformly SERVE THE INTERESTS OF CATHOLIC PROPAGANDA AND ARE GENERALLY CHARACTERIZED BY THE FAMILIAR CHIEF FEATURE OF THAT PROPAGANDA—UNTRUTHFULNESS.' [44].



'When the Catholic objects that "historians" dispute a point he generally means that it is disputed by historians of his own church: the men who say that Peter was buried at Rome and Torquemada burned only 2,000 heretics, that the Dark Age was bright with culture and virtue and the Age of Chivalry and the Crusaders irradiated the entire world, that the church was just tainted a little by a wicked world at one time but it soon purified itself by a Counter-Reformation, that there was horrible butchery at the French, Russian and Spanish Revolutions, that the Christian church abolished slavery and gave the world schools, hospitals, democracy, art, and science, and a thousand other fantastic things. [color="#0000FF"]If encyclopedias propose to embody these SELF-INTERESTED ANTICS OF CATHOLIC PROPAGANDISTS the public ought to know it.' [45].



'In short, THE 14TH EDITION OF THE BRITANNICA HAS BEEN USED FOR THE PURPOSE OF CATHOLIC PROPAGANDA.



I do not in the least say that it is the only work of public reference that has been so used. The new Encyclopedia Americana betrays a lamentable degree of Catholic influence, and even the more scholarly Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics has curried favor with Catholics by entrusting a number of important articles ("Inquisition," etc.) to Catholic writers, with the usual disastrous results; while manuals of European, especially medieval, history by some American professors strain or suppress evidence scandalously to suit Catholic authorities. I HAVE HERE MERELY GIVEN THE DEFINITE EVIDENCE IN ONE FIELD THAT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH USES ITS ENORMOUS WEALTH AND VOTING POWER TO POISON THE WELLS OF TRUTH AND TO CONCEAL FROM THE PUBLIC THE FACTS OF HISTORY WHICH MAKE A MOCKERY OF THE FANTASTIC CLAIMS IT ADVANCES TODAY.' [45].[/color]



"Who wants in a modern encyclopedia the mass of stuff about saints and martyrs, which are to a great extent pure FICTION". [45].



"I have a small Rationalist Encyclopedia [see #8, 215] presently appearing in London which I wrote six or seven years ago. It will show how different the truth, gathered from the works of experts, is from the stuff one reads in encyclopedia-articles on matters affecting one's philosophy of life; though I fear it will be issued in two expensive volumes, instead of the cheap fortnightly parts (as originally intended) of my larger American publications, and my labor will be virtually wasted; for [color="#0000FF"]THE CLERGY WILL SEE THAT PUBLIC LIBRARIES DO NOT GET IT. It is a lamentable situation, for FROM THE RELIGIOUS FIELD THIS MODERN MANIPULATION OF TRUTH EXTENDS TO MANY OTHERS.[/color] I hope this short investigation will help to open the eyes of the American public to its new mental slavery."

[End of text] [46].



[...]

Hindus betray no comprehension of the christian determination behind suppression of truth and peddling of untruth (also seen in the communists in India - but then, the monotheistic tendency is ever the same).





All the above is why the latest encyclopaedia fad known as "Wikipedia" (the most ridiculous encyclopaedia of them all, because it's based on the principle that 'truth is established by those who lobby with greatest determination') is full of christist lying. Wikipedia has replaced Britannica etc etc down to the more recent Encarta (all of which were entirely doctored by christianism when it came to articles concerning their own religions and particularly also when it came to Hindu religion) - the replacement of existing encyclopaedias by Wikipedia is in terms of accessibility/visibility and hence in importance/relevance/prominence, as per the view of the church. So all of christianism is working to control Wackypedia. Modern christian cults often give up since they can't control the (to them) crucial evolution vs the laughable 'creationism' - the non-religious west guards science at atleast - and so modern christocults have even resorted to creating a parallel wiki encyclopedia to put their christian views into. In contrast, catholicism, foremost as ever, but also the other established christianism, want to control what the *general* public reads: about christianism and also (and this is where it specifically concerns Hindus) what Hindus and even others read about Hindu religion. Christianism wants to write Hindus' history for Hindus. Rather like the christobrits before them tried their best to.