The Essene Teacher of Righteousness was Apollonius of Tyana, who in the year 325 A.D., at the Council of Nicea, was replaced by a fictitious messiah called Jesus Christ: the greatest fraud in history. Here, Raymond Bernard, Ph.D. has discovered several sources that supposedly tell the true stories about Jesus and his family, as members of the Essene Jewish sect. The story of his life is commingled with tales of his alleged traveling to India and Japan. Jesus appears to be a person whose life and story were developed by the Essenes. His imaginary crucifixion was further developed by the so-called Holy Roman Empire, who used the Christian religion as a political tool to control the masses.

PHILOSTRATUS AND EUNAPIUS. (a) Of the distinguished Lemnian family of Philostrati, Flavius Philostratus, 'the Athenian', was a Greek sophist (professor), c. A.D. 170-205, who studied at Athens and later lived in Rome. He was author of the admirable Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Loeb Nos. 16 and 17) and Lives of the Sophists (which are really impressions of investigators alert but less fond of scientific method and discovery than of stylish presentation or things known), one part concerning some older, the other some later 'provessors'. Other extant works of this Philostratus are Letters and Gymnasticus, but the Heroicus or Heroica is apparently by another Philostratus, and the Eikones (Imagines, skilful descriptions of pictures, Loeb No. 256) were probably by two Philostrati, on being the son of Nervianus and born c. A.D. 190, the other his grandson who wrote c. AD. 300. (b) The Greek Sophist and historian Eunapius was born at Sardis in A.D. 347, but went to Athens to study and lived much of his life there teaching rhetoric and possibly medicine. He was initiated into the 'mysteries' and was hostile to Christians. Lost is his historical work (covering the years A.D. 270-404) but for excerpts and the use of it made by Zosimmus, but we have his Lives of Philosophers and Sophists mainly contemporary whth himself. Eunapius is our only source of our knowledge of Neo-Platonism in the latter part of the fourth century A.D.

Philip Schaff Prize, American Society of Church History S-USIH Book Award, Society for U.S. Intellectual History Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History, Organization of American Historians “A fascinating book...Gin Lum suggests that, in many times and places, the divide between Christian and ‘heathen’ was the central divide in American life.”—Kelefa Sanneh, New Yorker “Offers a dazzling range of examples to substantiate its thesis. Rare is the reader who could dip into it without becoming much better informed on a great many topics historical, literary, and religious. So many of Gin Lum’s examples are enlightening and informative in their own right.”—Philip Jenkins, Christian Century “Brilliant...Gin Lum’s writing style is nuanced, clear, detailed yet expansive, and accessible, which will make the book a fit for both graduate and undergraduate classrooms. Any scholar of American history should have a copy.” —Emily Suzanne Clark, S-USIH: Society for U.S. Intellectual History In this sweeping historical narrative, Kathryn Gin Lum shows how the idea of the heathen has been maintained from the colonial era to the present in religious and secular discourses—discourses, specifically, of race. Americans long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term “heathen” fell out of common use by the early 1900s, leading some to imagine that racial categories had replaced religious differences. But the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear. Americans still treat large swaths of the world as “other” due to their assumed need for conversion to American ways. Race continues to operate as a heathen inheritance in the United States, animating Americans’ sense of being a world apart from an undifferentiated mass of needy, suffering peoples. Heathen thus reveals a key source of American exceptionalism and a prism through which Americans have defined themselves as a progressive and humanitarian nation even as supposed heathens have drawn on the same to counter this national myth.

"The treatise of Eusebius, the son of Pamphilus, against the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, written by Philostratus, occasioned by the parallel drawn by Hierocles between him and Christ" (Greek and English, vol. II, p. 484-605).

This study of Philostratus , first published in 1986, presents the Greek biographer’s treatment of both sophists and holy men in the social and intellectual life of the early Roman Empire, which also displays his own distinctive literary personality as a superficial dilettante and an engrossing snob. Through him we gain a glimpse of the rhetorical schools and their rivalries, as well as a bizarre portrayal of the celebrated first-century holy man Apollonius of Tyana, long loathed by his later Christian press as a Pagan Christ. Rarely does a biographer’s reputation revolve round the charge that he forged his principal source. Graham Anderson’s account produces new evidence which supports Philostratus’ credibility, but it also extends the charges of ignorance and bias in his handling of fellow-sophists. Philostratus is intended for any reader interested in the social, cultural and literary history of the Roman Empire as well as the professional classicist.

The Book of Wisdom is a short Greek magical text that survives in eight manuscripts, the earliest of which date to the 15th century. Although spuriously attributed to the Neopythagorean philosopher Apollonius of Tyana and dated by many scholars to the 5th, 4th or even 3rd century, it was probably composed in Constantinople in the late 12th century CE. Its sources include the Testament of Adam (an Old Testament pseudepigraph) and traditions about the telesmata of Apollonius preserved by various Byzantine chroniclers; also possibly the Picatrix, the Book of Enoch and a lost work of the Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus on Chaldean theurgy.The Book of Wisdom lists the magical names of the four seasons and the twenty-four hours; also, the different names of the sun the moon, heaven, earth and the four quarters during each season. It is said that through the power of these names one could enchant and control natural phenomena, plants, animals and even human beings, causing love or discord. Unfortunately, the descriptions of the various apotelesmata (talismans) did not survive in the Greek text, with the exception of a short fragment. But, to an extent, they can be traced in its Latin and Arabic renditions. These talismans were usually metallic statuettes with the form of the creature one seeks to control.The text first appeared in Western Europe in the early 13th century, after the sacking of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, when parts of it were paraphrased in Latin as De Viginti Quattuor Horis, De Imaginibus Diei et Noctis and De Discretione Operis Differencia. These paraphrases later became the source of many other magical books, such as the Liber Lunae, the Book of Raziel, the Heptameron, the Steganographia of Trithemius and the Ars Paulina. The Book of Wisdom was also a source of the Arabic Great Book of Talismans.A fragment of the Book of Wisdom was published by the Christian Cabbalist Gilbert Gaulmin as early as 1615. It is interesting that this fragment later fell into the hands of Eliphas Levi, who used it ceremonially, in order to evoke the spirit of Apollonius. Levi included the Greek text as a supplement to the Rituel de la Haute Magie, together with an imaginative "translation".The present publication contains a detailed introduction, comparative translations of the two versions of the Book of Wisdom, a translation of the Great Book of Talismans from Paris BNF Ar. 2250 and appendices with parallel texts, including a translation of a Latin paraphrase. The manuscript page on the frontispiece is artwork created by the author.