Executive Summary

To begin with, this is not a work about religious beliefs, but books that look at how political and social events led to the creation of religious beliefs and rituals. This is a book about the mundane, not the sacred.

This set of writings, compiled into two books, argues three basic themes:

1) Christianity’s central notion, that God sacrificed his only begotten son to save the world, almost certainly has its sole source in the religion of the Canaanites; with its beloved god Ba’al. We argue that Ba’al, the god portrayed in the Old Testament as the great rival god of Yahweh, who’s worship was considered by the prophets as an abomination, is in fact the model for the Christ story; and Christianity is a “morphed” version of the Ba’al legend; not a “reformed” version of the Judaism; nor a new covenant with the Yahweh.

While not denying other influences on the development of Christianity (Egypt, Greek mystery religions, Persian dualism, etc) we argue that at its core the basis of the Christian religion is a revitalization of the concepts of the need for human sacrifice to placate a god, a concept of a deep ancient past, rooted in Ba’alism and one repressed for only a short while by both the Jews and the Classical world, but brought back in a morphed version by a “new church” with very ancient stories retold.

2) We also argue that the rituals of human sacrifice so associated with Ba’al continued for centuries after the Christian triumph in Western Europe. We see this continuation of Ba’alist rituals in such events as the Auto de Fe in Spain and witch burnings throughout Western Europe. When considered from a non-Christian point of view the similarities between the ancient rituals of Ba’al and the public burnings of heretics and witches are too close to be independent of each other; and

3) The justification of forced religious conformity, in fear of the wrath of God for failing to comply with “his” laws, first developed by the small Jewish colony founded after the Persian defeat of Babylonia, and then later greatly expanded under the Christian churches not only created for centuries a state of religious tyranny in Western Europe, and then later the Americas, but was the foundation for the justification for the 20th centuries state’s efforts at forced conformity and justification for the mega deaths created by these states.

4) The historical struggle to gain justification for “earthly power” through the use of some means of “divine authorization” has taken many forms in multiple cultures.  Within the pre-Jewish and early Christian framework the term that was used was a “covenant” with God.   According to who’s version of the Bible and how it is read, there were as few as four covenants between Yahweh and his followers, or as many as several dozen.  Critical to the Ba’al Theory is the right to the concept of the “ever lasting covenant” or the “covenant of peace.”  The Jews who returned from the Babylonian exile period and re-established Judea, claimed they held those covenants (or as some see it they were one in the same covenant.

After some 500 years, with the failure of what is called the Second Jewish Commonwealth, or the descendants of those returnees, and the destruction of the Second Temple, the newly forming sect of what would be called Christians claimed that they were the ones who were the true inheritors of those covenants.   They claimed that the “blood of Jesus” created the compact between God and his people. The Christians believed that it was this blood sacrifice that was required for the foundation of a new relationship with God.

In the Book of Hebrews we read that there was extensive criticism of the existing form of sacrifice, since it did not include the “right form” of blood sacrifice.  We also soon see that the Christians came to see that the failed sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham was the root of the illegitimacy of the “Jewish covenants” since it also did not include the proper blood sacrifice.

However, the Christians came to see that the “valued blood of Jesus” was the basis for the new covenant with their god.  Therefore the Christians showed their belief in the very ancient concepts of the Phoenicians/Canaanites who also very much valued the blood of the sacrifice of the first born child.

All four of these themes are linked together by exploring how Ba’alism, in its morphed form of Christianity, became the dominate religion in the Western world

I.

In the first book of the series, dealing with the influence of Ba’alism on the development of Christianity, we look at the origins of human sacrifice as part of the religious rituals of the ancient world; and how for some time it was considered a normal part of the religious process; including the sacrifice of the first born. We explore the great power, influence and colonization practices of the Phoenicians/Canaanites which led to the spread of this religious practice throughout Europe and North Africa.

We compare this spectacular success of the worshipers of Ba’al with the slow development, and near failure, of the Jewish religion. We also explore how this nearly eliminated religion revitalizes itself and become abhorrent of human sacrifice and come to believe that the practice had incited God’s wrath against them to the extent that He permitted the destruction of their nations and first temple.

We then look at the social and religious chaos that was created by the rush into the Eastern Mediterranean of Persian, Greek and Roman world views, and how they conflicted with the ancient beliefs of both the Phoenicians and “Jews” living in the area. We will see how the Jews fought against the changes in culture and religion and were nearly exterminated and how the followers of Ba’al, although defeated in arms, actually retold their story with Christ as Ba’al and eventually led to the creation of a triumphant “new” religion that was simply a morphed version of the very ancient story of the Phoenicians and Canaanites.

II.

In the second book of this series we look the consequences of the development of the new Christian church and how the Ba’alist rituals of human sacrifice were morphed into Christian rituals the led to the death of millions of persons. These people died, not in religious wars, (which account for millions of other deaths) but in well designed rituals in which persons were burned alive to appease the Christian god (such as the Auto de Fe’s of Spain, and the witch burnings throughout Western Europe.) and to ward off the wrath of God; much as the rituals of the Ba’alist religion required people burned alive in highly ritualized burnings to appease their gods. The Christians used this ritual of burning to enforce religious “purity.” We project modern states of Europe took this Christian demand for capital punishment for violation of religious purity as the justification for the mass exterminations of the 20th Century to preserve the integrity of the state (racial or social purity as opposed to religious purity). We can see a direct line from the Christian inquisitions to the slaughters in Nazi Germany and Stalin Russia.

III.

To demonstrate these claims, as well as to demonstrate why they are not within the mainstream of current historical and religious thought, we must discuss and synthesize our historical understanding of the founding of Christianity, and the process that led to it becoming the dominant religion within the later Roman world. Much of what historians understand of this several millennia period is not understood by the lay public who mainly bought into the common Christian myths. Even some historians who have specialized in one aspect of this period may not accurately understand its entirety. Demonstrating our claims will require us to focus on the following areas, where the historical record is clearly at odds with the Christian Bible and/or traditional Christian and Western understanding.

• The success and spread of the Ba’alist religion, primarily through the Phoenicians and Carthaginians.
• The relative failures of the early Judaism, more aptly called here the “Yahwehist” people, to maintain a state and to spread their religion beyond their small cult,
• The major social, religious and political conflicts created by the “clash of civilizations” that occurred with the rise of the Persia and later the Roman and Greek Classical world, and the occupation of the lands of the Ba’alist and Yahwehist by the peoples with these new concepts.
• The major social, religious and political conflicts that resulted in the “fall” of the Western Roman Empire, the preservation of the Eastern Roman Empire and how various groups and religions saw as the causes for these events.

IV.

This work is a complex and looks at millennia of history. Before we can truly tell the facts that lead to the conclusions, we also need to spend a great deal of time attempting to disavow much of what is accepted as valid history in the Christian dominated West. Therefore, there are a number of “introductory essays” attempting to help the reader gain a perspective of history that is not dominated by Christian thought who present a world view that justified the religion as the “good news” to the world. We need to make people aware of the limited and relative unimportance of the people known in the Bible as a series of names including Hebrews, Israelites, Judeans, and eventually as Jews as part of the world history of the time. We need to show the evidence that much of the history of this people (or these different peoples) has no foundation in history, while much of the history that can be supported by facts concerning both these people and the other nations of the time makes no room for a great kingdom of David or Solomon (or the Exodus, or the conquest of Canaan etc,)

And quite the opposite of the view of the Bible and therefore a history much repressed in Western thought is the great success and wealth of the followers of the Biblical “rival” of God and the Jews, the much condemned god Ba’al, and the people who worshiped him, the Phoenicians/Canaanites. Highly supported history shows these people to be among the most important in human history and they, and their culture is in fact the foundation of much of Western civilization.

And it was the religion of the Canaanites that was by far the most influential in the region called the Holy Land, and when there was great social collapse and political change, it was to this religion of Ba’al that many turned to for relief. And eventually we will see how it was the rituals of Ba’al that became the foundation for Christianity, not the newly created monotheism of the late developed Jews.

• We will see that the most likely, if in fact, the only likely source for what has been referred as the “New Testament in a nutshell,” the idea that God sacrificed his only begotten son to save the world, is Ba’alism.

In addition, we will show that perhaps the major difference between the Jews of the time, at the time of the foundation of Christianity, who had worked hard to purge themselves of the belief in the need for a human sacrifice to please God, and the new religion that became Christianity was not just the question of the divinity of Christ, but the concept of Christ’s death was a return to the older concepts of the Canaanites. The very foundation of the new Jewish religion was abhorrence of human sacrifice; they in fact blamed their defeats and exile and destruction of their first temple as God’s wrath against them for the practices of the human sacrifice ritual by both their kings and peoples of the time of the two kingdoms. To the Jews of the time Christianity seemed to be the revitalization of the only recently repressed Ba’alist rite or human sacrifice.

V.

As must be apparent with the opening statements; these works are not religious books, but books that look at “religious events” as part of the social and political development of society. They show how the political and social events of the times were often put in religious terms by the people living through the events and how the outcomes of these social and political events altered the religious views of the people of the time. The books are written from the concept that “not much is really sacred” and therefore as much as possible stays away from concepts of the divine and focuses on the mundane of political and social realities.

There are many problems in creating works such as these, including having to more or less create terms and ideas that are not always completely accurate or precise. For example the term I use to describe the religion of the Canaanite/Phoenicians/Carthaginian peoples, Ba’alism, is not completely a historically accurate term, nor one that truly represents the religion of the region, (since the chief god of these peoples’ pantheon was El) but it is a term that fits well into modern concepts of religion and I will use it to fit the understandings of the modern reader. For example, today the chief God of Christianity is God, or Yahweh, but the religion is called Christianity after it’s the central person/god/person-god of its foundation story.

It is even a bit more complex with Ba’al or Ba’alism, in the sense that the term Ba’al was and can be used as

• The name of a particular god (the storm god of the Canaanites) with a great epic poem associated with his adventures and struggle (as Jesus) with “death.”
• A title for any god or ruler or noble (the way Lord is used in English) So, therefore in local areas, the term “Ba’al Jesus” would have been common, as would Ba’al David or Solomon, with different meanings according to each persons title or claim to divinity. And El could have been called Ba’al El or simply “Ba’al” (or the lord God).
• Or a reference to the collective religion of the Canaanites, which consisted of many gods and goddesses, of whom Ba’al was one — such as Hindu is used to refer to the pantheon of India with all its gods and writings

Throughout the books, I will use the term Ba’al or my collective term of Ba’alism or Ba’alist mostly in third manner except where specifically point out as reference to the storm god or a title.

In addition, looking at writing a piece that covers such a broad stretch of time a problem arises in how to address the people who are the focus of the Old Testament. Their book itself refers to them with several terms based on the time and location in history; as noted -Hebrews, Israelites, Judeans, and eventually as Jews (only first used as a term in the Book of Esther, whose story takes place at least one hundred and fifty years after the destruction of the first temple). So, I link the terms when needed and also use the term Yahwehist to represent all the names at some various point in their history. And once again this use is not accurate, since according to the Book of Exodus, at the incident of the “burning bush” God tell Moses the true name of God, a word the Jews find so sacred itsshould never be spoken, and is translated into English as Yahweh and in this meeting God tell us that in fact Abraham and the patriarchs worshiped him as El (the name of the chief god of the Canaanites). So it is unclear if we can even refer the Hebrews in Abrahamic time up until the time of the Exodus as Yahwehist. It’s is simple difficult to be completely accurate and therefore, I use terms that are helpful to the reader, and the best I can to reflect “true history.”

Again, much of these works look at the major concept, that actually separated Christianity from the Jews, and from other “death and rising” savior gods religions of the ancient world, in Christianity there is a some what overly and some what coded statement of the need to seal a covenant with God through human sacrifice, and the death of Jesus was that sacrifice.

• Again, this book presents the argument that the Canaanite religion is the only likely source from the ancient world for this critical component of Christianity. And in fact, at the time of the foundation of Christianity this concept of a needed human sacrifice to God was considered by the Jews of the time as the most-wicked of all sins and the practice of which was the cause for the destruction of their first temple and their exile in Babylon.

VI.

In some detail we look at the Christian rejection of this argument that Christ was a human sacrifice and much of the Christian world denies that the death of Christ was a “human sacrifice.” However, the main objection to the use of that term is that Christ was not human and therefore the dying on the cross was not in anyway a human sacrificial process. This logic was presented in the early second century of the Christian era, by writers collectively referred to as “Christian apologist” and remains today as the primary line of most Christian churches concerning this claim. There is no denying that the act of Christ death was a “sacrifice” and a “sacrifice by God” or “to God” but the Christians deny the connection to other practices of human sacrifice only by denying Christ was human.

However, as we will see throughout the New Testament there are overt and subtle statements to support that the early Christians themselves saw the act of Christ death as indeed a old style human sacrifice and several modern fundamentalist approaches to Christian belief sees that only through the act of Christ sacrifice can the road to salvation be achieved. To put it simply in the words of modern day Christians, Christ, like the sacrificial lamb of some cultures and some societies and the human sacrifices of others, Christ died for our sins.

• Hebrews 10:10-12 “. . . we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ . . . But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God.”
• 1 Corinthians 5:7 “. . . For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” And
• John 3:16-18 – For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son (ton huion ton monogenee), that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God (tou monogenous tou huio tou theou).”

And at the time of Christ, the Greeks and Romans mostly, but not completely, rejected the concept of direct human sacrifice. And the Greeks saw that human sacrifice was used at various times in their key work of culture, the Iliad, but mainly rejected its use in their “modern times.” The Romans had already changed the story of what appears to be a human sacrifice at the foundation of Rome (Romulus and Remus) to one of brother killing brother over the size of the walls of the city. The practice among the Romans however continued in the indirect form of the gladiator games.

The book looks at other cultural stories related to human sacrifice including some sort of death that at first appears to be a story of a human sacrifice and later changed as societies moved away for the concept as valid; Dido of Carthage and the near sacrifice of Isaac are two of the more famous stories that seem to echo the time when sacrifice was needed for the foundation of a city or a new “covenant with God.”

In fact, we read in history of at least two times where the Romans adopted the overt use of human sacrifice both in relationship to the Ba’alist practices. The first being when Hannibal “was at the gates” of Rome, and the Senate approved the sacrifice of children of the senatorial class to mimic the Carthaginian practice and then later when an emperor adopted Ba’al as the chief (universal) god of Rome and began sacrificing the children of senators to the god as part of its overall rituals. Through these and other sources we find that idea of human sacrifice was current in the area of the Christ story and also not directly condemned by the major cultures of the time, except by one; the Jews.

The concept of the need for human sacrifice seems to have been in use throughout the Ba’alist world in the centuries (if not millennia) leading up to the time of the Christ sacrifice, and from some sources it continued at least for another two hundred years or so after the death of Jesus. At least according to what sources remain, and admittedly bias sources, human sacrifice continued as a major important ritual with the Canaanites including the Phoenicians, and in their extensive colonies throughout the Mediterranean right up to the destruction of the areas by the Greeks in the East and the Romans in the West (Carthage et al). It appears to have maintained itself for centuries only to be briefly revived in Rome during the early third century AD.

One of the most important times that this sacrifice was required in this Ba’alist religion was when there was a new “covenant” with the God, for the founding of a city, or the founding of a new tribe; the human sacrifice was needed to solidify the contract. And in the book we argue that since Christ represented a new covenant with God to replace the failed one that had taken place with Abraham, according to the local religious traditions, a human sacrifice was needed to complete the process.

Another time for the use of human sacrifice was of great danger to the people and society a city under attack, a people in revolt. And we can see how the people of the time saw a great danger from the Roman control of the region and the failures of many revolts against the new power. It was truly a time of great danger to the people and according to the ancient practices of the region a human sacrifice was needed, to save the people.

VII.

However, according to history and the Bible, the Jews of the time of Christ were one of the people, if only peoples, in complete opposition to the rites of human sacrifice. According to the later books of the Bible (Chronicles, Jeremiah, Ezra etc) the chief crime of the Judeans that causes God’s wrath and the conquest of the people by the Assyrians and Babylonians was the extensive use of child sacrifice by the “wicked” kings of Judea and Israel. The Bible talks of the use of “passing children through the fire” by Judean kings and commoners alike right up until the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians; and how the prophets kept insisting that God did not want this, but for some reason (to be later explained) the kings and people continued the practice the condemned rite until complete defeat occurred.

Then, while in exile, in Babylon, the Judeans, on the way to becoming Jews, identified that it was this act of sacrifice of children as the cause for the downfall of their state and the destruction of their temple. And, while in exile, moved to change their history and legends and their religion, to expunge this practice completely from their “hearts and minds.” The people of the exile became the Jews, with a new version of the Bible and a new very controlled centralized concept of sacrifice, which was completely opposed to the old practices that the exiles saw as what led to their downfall.

It appears that while in exile the story of Abraham and Isaac was created or changed to show God’s disfavor with the idea of human sacrifice. We need to view this story in the context of the times prior to exile and during the exile. Prior to the exile this story, if the sacrifice was completed, would fit normally into the Canaanite practice of the time for the establishing a covenant with god by the sacrifice of the first born.

However, the sudden change in the course of events leading up to the sacrifice and the sacrificing of a lamb fit into the new Jewish aversion of the practice, where the practice is condemned. We should note that ancient traditions say that Isaac was sacrificed and spent three years in Paradise and then returned, or another was he was cut and killed but his spirit was immediately returned to his body, and among other stories he was truly sacrificed and that in return Abraham was given six new sons (and the listing of the news sons remains today in the Bible.) It is interesting to note that some Christians have seen that the failure of Abraham to complete the sacrifice was the reason the Abrahamic/Jewish covenant failed, and that Christ’s actual death was required for the new covenant to come into effect.

It is also important to note that there were other changes in the Bible to adjust older tradition, including the one most germane to this projection. In Exodus, within days of leaving Egypt Yahweh claims for himself the first of everything including the first born of all Hebrews ” all that comes first from the Matrix is mine.” However, in Deuteronomy, a work scholars all agree was written far later, either just before the exile or while in exile, the story of God’s claim is revises to tell how the people can buy off God or “redeem the first born” with a certain amount of metal or other gift. Again, the later Bible gives the people the “out” from the tradition of human sacrifice while not altering too much the original well known story itself. The ancient stories were well known and how they were altered was critical to leading to acceptance by the followers of the new interpretations or new endings.

VIII.

What we will show is that critical to social, political and religious development of the “West” is in fact a new concept that was created in the Exile. This concept which is explored in detail in Book One is one of collective responsibility for religious purity. It was something that first seems to appear in the West with the Jews of the return. These Jews, or at least the leadership of these Jews, so feared the return of the wrath of God that had led to the destruction of their nation and temple, that they claimed that God demanded the absolute compliance of all of his people to the religious laws of the land, not just the traditional ancient concept that it was the role of the king and priest to keep the gods happy.

With the return of the Exiles, the leaders required all to adhere or face capital punishment for the crimes. The interpretation of the cause of the exile was not that just the kings were sacrificing their children to God but common people were doing the same. And God wanted all to stop the practice. The leaders of the new Jewish religion took the effort one stop further and insisted that all the rules of the new laws, the 613 commandments of the Bible had to be obeyed completely or the whole people ran the risk of the wrath of God returning. The leaders created the first state similar to Taliban Afghanistan that the world had ever seen.

This was truly a novel idea in the Ancient world which was relatively speaking a very open society for religious beliefs. Almost all beliefs were if not accepted, respected to some degree by most rulers. And in fact we see great break downs in societies and great revolts against rulers when they tried to impose religion in some absolutist fashion, until, that is, the establishment of the Second Jewish Commonwealth. And we read in the writings of the leaders of the return resistance to their laws as well, especially dealing with marriage to foreign women.

The returning Jews established a small and relatively isolated religious state based on an absolutist requirement for conformity. And for a short while under the protection of the Persians the state existed as a small island of absolutist Yahwehist culture. All that changed however with the coming of the Greeks, and then the Romans. Some Jews rejected Judaism and “went Greek” only to become targets of the Jews themselves in later revolts using the absolutist Jewish views and the fear of the return of the wrath of God as the basis for their risings against the new rulers of the land.

However, some four hundred years after the return of the Jews to Judea, along comes a new cult out of the peoples who never went into exile, (Galilee) and never went through this purging of the love of human sacrifice, and had only recently been forced converted to the new Jewish law of the 613 commandments. And this new cult claimed that God had sacrificed his only begotten son to save the world.

To the Jews of the time, this claim must have seemed like a direct return to the practices of the old Canaanite religion and pre exile Yahwehist culture which mainly followed the same practices. And the belief more then echoed the reason most saw as the cause for the destruction of the first temple (and some thirty or forty years after the cult develops, the second temple is destroyed, the wrath of God had returned.)

IX.

Few references of Christ as Ba’al or as the human sacrifice in the writings that have survived to this day; the Christians triumphed and would have destroyed all such discussions (well almost all such discussions) The question of the difference between Christians and Jews always seems to be played in the “Christian ballpark” with focused on the Christian question of why the Jews rejected the divinity of Jesus, not on the question of if the Jesus story was a “morphed” version of the old Ba’alist practice of sacrificing the first born in time of crisis or to seal a deal with God. For example, we never see the question of if the Christian focus on sacrifice of the first born son caused the destruction of the second temple (as the Old Testament states was the cause for the first temple destruction) because that would have linked Christ with the ancient religion of the Ba’alist.

To justify the claim that the core concept of Christianity is Ba’alist in nature we need to prove that the religion of the Canaanites

• was not a dead thing at the time of the Christ story, although represented as such in the time Old Testament and much of modern history; nor
• a minor localized religion of a people who fell to Israelite conquest. We need to show what is well known among the ancient peoples and that Ba’alism was in fact a vital and major religion throughout much of the whole “civilized history” of the Mediterranean basin; a religion that was dominate in that region for thousands of years and came close to being the religion of the “winning sides” in the “world wars” of the time (The Greek/Persian wars and the Roman/Carthage wars).

This in the Book One we do; we also show that

• Ba’alism in one of its many forms was still competing in the “market place” of religious ideas at the time of Christ.

We will show that Ba’alism was not only active, it was actually the first choice of the Roman emperors for of the universal religion that fit the new Roman concepts of government and religion . One Emperor; One God. In fact, Christianity was the fourth choice for this role.

X.

Therefore, to really understand the linkage between Christianity and Ba’alism the reader needs to be far better aware of the history of this Canaanite religion, as well as the real history of the Canaanites, so wrongfully represented in the Bible and by current history in the West, whose presentation is still mainly based on the Christian religious views (rather than true historic facts). In fact, the reader truly should be aware of the development of religious beliefs in Western society. Therefore, some of the early parts of Book One gives an overview of that development of religion from what we can call currently known historic facts. Obviously, these facts change with more and more discoveries, including the recent findings of what appear to be religious sites dating back some 12,000 years (near the current Turkish and Syrian boarders.) These finds will again force us to re-evaluate our concept of cultural and religious development in the West, but mostly have little direct bearing on this book.

Other finds have direct impact on the thesis of this book; in Syria and Lebanon discovery of old cities created a far greater understanding of the Canaanite world and how it was in fact one of the great cultures of the ancient world. Through these finds we are now aware that the Canaanites (through their Northern elements, the Phoenicians) created one of the first great trading empires of history. We also now know that many of the modern cities in the Mediterranean area are rebuilt Phoenician/Canaanite cities, and much of the religion of the Mediterranean cultures, including Greece and Rome religions, are retellings of Ba’alist myths.

So to claim that Christianity was built on the Ba’alist myth is somewhat justified alone by saying that much of the Classical religion of the West was previously built on Ba’alism. However, the link of Ba’al to Christianity appears to be far more then second hand influence. The influence of the religion was very powerful and continued to be so long after the decline and eventual total destruction of the Ba’alist home world and all of its empire.

XI.

The Romans recognized this contribution to the foundations of the West. In 3 AD Dyonysius of Susiana, was paying tribute to the Phoenicians by saying:

Upon the Tsurian sea the people live
Who style themselves Phoenicians… 
These were the first great founders of the world — 
Founders of cities and of mighty states
Who showed a path through seas before unknown.

But, we today, in the mainly Christian West know little of their greatness because they, the Canaanites/Phoenicians in their time, far overshadowed the greatness of the “chosen people,” the Hebrews, or Israelites or the Judeans or the Jews, as the name of the people transitioned over time. In the sacred book of the Christians and Jews, the Bible, the Canaanites, and Ba’alism are portrayed as the greatest enemy of God, Yahweh, and the religious practices as abominations. Therefore, even today in our schools we are told little of the greatness of the Canaanite peoples (not to be in conflict with Biblical stories) and we are continuing to teach much of unproven and over exaggerated importance of the history of the ancient “Jews.”

For example, the people who we refer to today as the Phoenicians actually referred to themselves as Canaanites and saw little or no difference between themselves and the peoples who occupied the prosperous cities to the South of them which over time became the lands of the Jews. The so called Phoenicians and so called Canaanites, made different peoples by the Bible and the Greeks were in fact by their own viewing the same peoples with the same culture and the same religion.

In fact, despite Biblical condemnation the Phoenicians/Canaanites, the people of Ba’al, prospered and over the course of some 850 years (from 1200 BC to 340 BC) mostly successfully resisted or at least fended off the great conquerors of the time, and created great cities far away (such as Carthage) and became rich with trade traveling as far away as what is called England. During this same time period, the peoples of Yahweh, by their own account suffered 400 years of slavery, a difficult and incomplete taking of the “promise land” and repeated defeats by Philistines and Egyptians, and eventually complete conquests and destruction of their kingdoms by the Assyrians and Babylonians. To the traditional mind set of the peoples of the time, the gods of the Canaanites/Phoenicians must have seemed far more powerful then the god of Israel/Judea.

And the claim in the Bible to the great “empire” of David and Solomon is both, according to their own account, ephemeral, lasting at most one hundred years, and according to modern scholarship and research not defendable as reality, since there have been virtually no archeological finds to support the claims of the Bible to David or Solomon and no reports of any contemporary peoples of a great Yahwehist empire in the timeslot allotted to this apparent mostly mythical empire. From the actual historical findings, it’s more likely that David, if he did exist at all, was more of a Robin Hood then a Charlemagne.

And indeed much of the presentation in the first book is showing the now known real and very important history involved in the rise and fall of the Phoenician states and comparing it to the relatively unimportance of the actual known history of the rise and fall of the Yahwehist states.

XII.

This political history is critical because this work approaches the task of linking Ba’al and Christianity based on two major premises, and a third vital understanding.

The two premises are:

1) A study of history shows that religious beliefs mostly do not really end and are mostly consistent over long periods of history. Rather then ending, they mostly evolve or “morph” into other practices and rituals that are based on the general premise of the older religion. Much of what is found in today’s religions are variations of the most ancient of religious themes and practices. Often, the origins of a given idea or practice are hard to track or identify, but are readily identifiable to those willing to look with an open mind;

• Examples of this practice are numerous. We can see ancestor worship still widely practiced in some form or another throughout much of Asia, but also in the form of saint veneration in the West. Saints can also be seen as continuation of the worship of “demigods” or minor gods of polytheistic worship of the past. And one of the most interesting and much studied is the morphing of Aztec religion into the modified from of Catholic religion practiced in Mexico.

And in addition, the second premise is:

2) Political events drove the shaping of religion views over time. And that major political changes in a given region caused major religious changes to occur.

We see this in the changing of the religion of the ancient world with the coming of the rule of the Persians with their ideas of dualism and the conflict between the forces of good and evil (the first religion with a real devil) versus the old concept of gods with both good and evil sides to them. We also see this in the tremendous social and political turmoil created by the arrival of the Hellenistic/Classical world through first Alexander and then Rome; and how the clashes between the Greek concept of logic and science, and the more Ancient concepts of the importance of the Gods created great social upset, and eventually what appeared to be new religions.

In more modern times we see how Islam spread and Christianity first retreated and lost ground and then later revitalized based almost exclusively on the rise and fall of military powers that supported one religion or the other. One case in point is Albania who went in some 1,000 years from being “pagan” to “classicalist” to Christian and then back to pagan, and then to Christian again, and then to Muslim depending upon the religion of the next wave of conquerors.

Or Egypt who went from the from being the center of the Osiris religions for several thousand years to the center of Greek thinking (at least in Alexandria) to the one of the main Christian strong points and rival for the “See of Peter” to becoming mainly Muslim, again over the course of some 1000 years, and again based on the political events occurring. And perhaps we should point out Canaan/Israel/Judah which went from Ba’alist to Yahwahist to Classicalist to Christian to Muslim and back and forth between Christian and Muslim for some two hundred years or so (the Crusades) then back to Muslim to now half Yahwahist/Jewish and half Muslim, all based on political actions.

These two premises may appear slightly contradictory since one says that religions mainly are consistent over time and the other saying major changes in religion can be tracked through major political changes. They are not contradictory since the first does not reject the idea that new religious beliefs occurring, only that the occurrence of the new beliefs are often sparked by major political events and that when the new ones come about old ones continue in the new religious systems in other guises or forms.

The clearest example of this morphing is the linkage between the mother goddess, who at one time in documented history was considered the prime if not only deity. With the rise of the Sky Gods, (which is mostly linked to the invasion of the “Indo Europeans”) the mother goddess role was not eliminated but greatly reduced or morphed into different forms such as Mary in the Catholic Church. This linkage between Mary and the old mother goddess religions is greatly rejected by that church, however, the historic links (including the type of titles that is given to Mary and the types of prays offered to her) and “evidence trail” is clearly there.

The third point, that being the “understanding” that is needed to give a fair hearing to the projection of these books, is summed up in the saying that “the victors write the history”. Another way of saying this is simple that all history is biased; and is, in fact, “his story.” Therefore, since the story of the losers is seldom told and what is written is very biased

• Much of what we think we know about history is mostly false; and
• Some of what he think is history is completely false; and
• The rest of history that we know well it’s clearly biased.

For example, as already noted, the David and Solomon tales from the Bible fit very closely into the category of “completely false.” The statement that “Rome ruled the known world” is also mostly false, and outright biased since the Romans were well aware of Persia (and fought and mostly lost to them a great deal) India and China with whom they traded and had dreams of fighting. And of course they knew very well of the Germans and Huns whom they could not “civilize” nor conquer.

In addition, the Biblical history of the relationship between the Ba’alist and Yahwahist also seems to fit into the completely false category.

• In fact, almost all the historic facts of the Bible prior to the arrival of the Assyrians have been called into question by modern archeologist and historians, including the Exodus and the conquest under Joshua.

The latest theories supported by research show more that the people who evolved into the Jews were something like the founders of Rhode Island or Connecticut in that they were religious dissenters who left more civilized areas and attempted to settle relatively empty and thought to be somewhat useless lands.

XIII.

As we point out in book one, there was actually relatively little difference between the two religions (the follower of Yahweh and the followers of Ba’al) in practices and beliefs. We now know with the discovery and translation of extensive Canaanite texts that Yahweh was in fact a god of Ba’alism and perhaps, based on interpretation of the texts a brother of Ba’al, the great storm god of the Canaanites. In addition, much of the religious practices of what was to become the Jewish were practiced by the Ba’alist including almost all elements of what became the Passover feast (for the Canaanites it was a barley harvest festival complete with no leavening, dipping of herbs and ritual lamb slaughter, rather then a story of fleeing from Egypt.) Many of the psalms in the Bible are found almost word for word in the ancient text of the Canaanites.

It now appears that the Old Testament is a series of traditions created to give a break away Canaanite group or groups who saw Yahweh as the better god, and who settled in the remote highland of the area, a history that was different then their “brothers” who continued to worship Ba’al; a history that represented their God, Yahweh, gifting them the land over their rival god and a history that showed their rival god as the evil force and their god as the good force.

And as with almost all histories written about rivals and “the other,” the history in the Bible about the Canaanite peoples is almost not to be trusted. Which puts me as the author in a problematic situation since much of the references to the Ba’alist practices of child sacrifice comes from the Bible. How, as untrustworthy these references can be, and have been called into question by non-religious researchers, many of the Bible’s references to human sacrifice comes from that time period in the later kingdom periods and during the wars with the Assyrians and Babylonians, when the facts are more supported by outside sources. The references in the Bible are to Judean and Israelite kings conducting the practice in the fashion of the Canaanites and other local kingdoms; so this too could be propaganda against kings not liked by given prophets, but it adds to the possibility of the practices occurring. One key point is that the Bible also points out how at the time there was actually little difference between the religions rituals of Ba’al and Yahweh (including the belief the Yahweh had a consort.)

In addition, adding to the validity issue, the other key resource for the practices of the Ba’alist is Roman writers. They wrote during or after the horrendous and tragic Punic wars where Rome lost many battles and came close to destruction, and eventually Carthage itself was destroyed. Again, it is likely that the reports about Ba’alist rituals, especially one concerning human sacrifice coming out of these Roman writings are also biased, but many of these surviving Roman writings report similar things so we have some basis for acceptance.

And, in fact, the Bible and Roman writings which at the time of their writing were not likely connected, report somewhat similar practices of the Ba’alist rituals, especially in the area of human sacrifice. Therefore, the independent writings occurring hundreds of years apart make it likely that such events occurred. The archeological evidence also tends to support the idea of human sacrifice as being a normal part of the religious practices of the Ba’alist, but there is controversy as to the interpretation of the findings in Carthage and other areas of mass burials of burnt bones of children. While many see this as conclusive evidence of the practice of child sacrifice in Carthage, others question the conclusions.

XIV.

Therefore, to lay a foundation for the recognition that human sacrifice was a major part of the Ba’alist tradition, some of the first book covers a review of the evidence as to if the Canaanites/Phoenicians did in fact practice human sacrifice, and if so to what scale and for what purposes. The conclusions are basically they did in fact practice the rituals (as did the Israelite and Judean kingdoms that existed prior to the exile), and that it was used extensively at certain times, primarily in time of crisis. In addition, human sacrifice was used in a more limited fashion as part of major events including founding of new cities or in signing of peace agreements.

• Therefore the book provides evidence that gives a foundation for linkage of Christianity to Ba’alsim in that we can see that the religion was one of major importance, it used human sacrifice as a major component of ritual and it was active (if not rather beaten up) at the time of the development of Christianity.

In addition, based on the premise of political actions changing religious views, much of the first book needs to address how people in given areas responded to the political events helped bring about the major religious changes of the time. The premise of this book is that there are various responses to these religious and political changes by the affected peoples; understanding these responses is also critical to understanding the premise of this work. To attempt to explain the processes involved in the relationship between political and religious changes I classify the four options to major religious and political change as:

• Accepters;
• Resisters;
• Mergers; and
• Morphers.

The first two actions are somewhat self-evident in what newly conquered people did. Within the Jewish history, for example, when the Greeks came in through the conquest of Alexander the Great, many Jews rushed to take advantage of the new “Hellenistic culture” and began dressing and acting like the Greeks (the accepters), while over time as Greek rulers came to demand that all people “act Greek” an armed rebellion started through the leadership of the family soon known as the Maccabees (an example of the resisters) Later the Zealots were in the same resister role against the Romans; both groups used adherence to Jewish laws and traditions as means to rally the nationalistic forces to resist the new cultures and used religion and as a means to assure cohesion of those in revolt.

The mergers and morpher responses need a bit more explanation. Mergers hoped to find common ground between the old and the new. They did not reject the old (as accepters did) but tried to explain the old to the new and the new to the old as being common and mutually inclusive. The writings of Philo of Alexandria are often cited as the most famous of the attempts at cultural merging in the Jewish history (looking to find common ground with the Classical mind Ð his writings were later send by Christians as a tool to justify Christianity to both the Jews and the Classicalist.).

The morphers did not attempt to justify the old to the new, but attempt to salvage and protect the old by using the new terms and language of the new dominate group. The primary example of this in all of history is that of Christianity, using much of the new terms of the Greek philosophical world, and transforming it to retell the ancient concepts of Egyptian and Phoenician religions.

A more modern rendition of this morphing is what became know as “Social Darwinism” where the old racist concepts of a white supremacy evolved away from the language of religion and the Bible as the source of justification for such beliefs, to the use of the new language of science and the ideas of evolution to develop a self justifying case for white domination by the mere fact that whites were dominating.

Following how the people of Judea/Israel and Canaan/Phoenicia responded to the revolutionary wave of Persian and then Classical (Greek/Roman) invasion of the Ba’alist/Yahwehist world is again critical to understanding the effort of this work, and extensive space is provided to show the development of these four groups within these populations.

In addition, as Rome evolved from a small Republic to the great empire, it too was inundated with new ideas and concepts from the newly acquired lands. How Romans also fell into these four groups in response to this influx of ideas is also critical to understanding how Rome became Christian and therefore how Rome in fact became Ba’alist. So again, a great deal of time must be given to tracking the fall of the Roman world and the political crisis that came with the new religious ideas and how the crisis impacted the religions and the religions impacted the crisis.

XV.

It is clear that the group of beliefs that became Christianity was more then just the morphing of Ba’alism. The new religion incorporated much of the beliefs and practices of the ancient world into its new version of the “truth” and of the “good news.” And based on the first premise of this work, religions morph and do not die away, we actually see far more of other ancient religions in Christianity then just that of Ba’alism. This is not a new concept and one that has been discussed since the founding of the religion all the way through to modern times. I am by far not the first to point out or trace the similarities of Christianity to other religions. But for the process of this work, we need to review the origins of rituals to some degree.

For example, the story of the killing of the son of God was not really a new concept; in the ancient world; it was common for gods to die and be reborn more powerful then before, and often after their rebirth to become the judge of mankind. The Egyptian god Osiris is a classic example and much of Christianity is virtually a carbon copy of this god’s story.

• Already very old in Egypt, Osiris was identified with nearly every other Egyptian god and was on the way to absorbing them all. He had well over 200 divine names. He was called Lord of Lords, King of Kings, God of Gods. He was the Resurrection and the Life, the Good Shepherd, Eternity and Everlastingness, the god who “made men and women to be born again.” * From first to last, Osiris was to the Egyptians the god-man who suffered, and died, and rose again, and reigned eternally in heaven. They (the Egyptians) believed that they would inherit eternal life, just as he had done.”* See paganizingfaithofyeshua.netfirms.com/no1originalsaviourgods_orisis.htm.

However, the death of Osiris was not in a form of a sacrifice nor that of Mithras or any of the other death and rising gods; this type of god’s death and rising was mostly in association with the changing of the seasons and the crop cycles.

Where we do specifically find the need for human sacrifice and this link to Christianity is in the religion of the Canaanites. In Ba’alism, a sacrifice of the son of the leading figure of the area, often the king or the founder of the city or the founding of a new people, or even a new religion, was needed to gain the support of the gods or god of the area. And while, as stated, the idea of human sacrifice was well known and practiced in the ancient world, it seems that it was the Ba’alist who practiced it the most and saw in it the most value.

And even more specifically, while much of the Osiris story is seen in the Christ story, an element seems to be missing and is actually found in the Ba’alist stories. According to very ancient Canaanite texts and traditions, the founder of Byblos, some 8.000 years ago, first called Cronus, then El, was defied, and was therefore a god, and then had an only child by a maiden, and in time of great crisis, this only begotten son was made a king and then sacrificed. Therefore the concept that “god sacrificed his only begotten son (king of the city) in time of crisis to save the world” or the concept that is referred as the New Testament in a nut shell” is one that was present in the region of the foundation of Christianity from some 6000 years (or perhaps only 2000 years) prior to that concept becoming included in the “Pauline” approach to Christianity. We find the story referred to as part of a written document stated to be created some 1200 years before the “time of Christ” and at the time reported to be a very ancient story.

• Euseb. Pr¾p. Evan. lib. I. c. 10.Ñlib. IV. For Cronus, whom the PhÏnicians call Il, and who after his death was deified and instated in the planet which bears his name, when king, had by a nymph of the country called Anobret an only son, who on that account is styled Ieoud, for so the PhÏnicians still call an only son: and when great dangers from war beset the land he adorned the altar, and invested this son with the emblems of royalty, and sacrificed him.

XVI.

While much scholarship (some reviewed in this book) has been conducted over the last centuries that shows the historic inaccuracies of the Bible, and the extensive misconceptions of the development of monotheism among the people that came to be called Jews; and in addition much scholarship has been conducted to show the massive similarities of the “Jesus” story with dozen of savior gods from the “Middle East” and other regions of the world; until now there has been little linkage between the religion of the Canaanites and the Jesus story.

In fact, until now there has been little inquiry into what appeared to be the more unique quality of Jesus as the Lamb of God, the needed Sacrifice to God and that lack of the concept of sacrifice of the other “death and rising gods of the region. Book One of this series spends a great deal of time looking at this possible connection, especially where this linkage is most obvious in the Christian writings to Ba’alist rituals and beliefs, the so called Book of Hebrews.

While this book of the Bible is often called one of the most confusing of all the books in the New Testament, (considering Revelations, that is saying quite a bit), if read in the context that it is being written to a people who were not early “Jewish Christians” as often claimed, but to a people who still were supporters of the now mostly repressed Ba’alist belief system, the book becomes far more clear in its meaning. If we read it as written to a people who were still closely connected to the religious traditions of the pre-Exile period, more Hebrews then Jews, who had traditions and beliefs closely connected to the need for human sacrifice to obtain God”s agreement on the new Covenant the work seems far less confusing.

If we read Hebrews as a promise in a newly morphed form of the new Christianity of the continuation of the old Ba’alist practices, millennia old, and now repressed by Greek, Roman and now Jewish required beliefs, the book of Hebrews becomes one of the best pieces of evidence that a great deal of Christian core beliefs are directly linked to the old beliefs of the Canaanite/Phoenician/Hebrews traditions. We basically read in Hebrews that there is a need for a human sacrifice to seal the deal with God; that is directly Ba’alist belief and for the time Ba’alist alone.

So a good portion of the first book is focused on looking at the Book of Hebrews and looking at it from the view point of its being a morphed version of a Ba’alist revival.

XVII.

And lastly in the first book we need to trace how Christianity came to triumph in the West, at least for a while (before losing more then half the lands they gained). We, therefore, need to trace the final few centuries of the Roman Empire and look at all the political and economic crisis that eventually led to the “withering away of the state” in the West. Again, with the premise being that religious chances come about with political change and decline, Rome fit the pattern well. As the politics of Rome changed and moved every more towards an absolute dictatorship of the Emperors, the Emperors sort to modify religion to reflex their absolutist rule on earth. The concept evolved long before the Christian church came to power of “one Emperor, One God” So as Rome stopped being governed by a group of squabbling senators, with a “heaven” filled with a group of squabbling gods, and became ruled by an unquestioned absolute monarch, the rulers of Rome moved to reform “heaven” to reflex the concept of “on earth as it is in heaven.”

But again, contrary to the Christian world view of history, the selection of Christianity by the later Roman Emperors was mostly driven by political issues and not divine revelation. In fact we point out that the Emperors actually tried three other major religions for providing a one true god for Rome, prior to settling on the Church of Christ. And again, as proof that the Ba’alist concept of religion was not only alive and functioning despite the defeats of Phoenicia and Carthage, the first choice of a Roman emperor for the “one true god” for Rome, was none other then Ba’al, in that name. The fact that the promoting emperor was short lived was perhaps why Ba’al in that name did not become the religion of the West.

Book One also looks at the other religions (Sol Invictus, Mithras) that were the choices of other emperors, and why these religions failed while Christianity eventually became the official religion of the Empire. In addition, we will explore how once in power, the new official church, based on the writings connected with the fall of the Judean state, and the wrath of god, required forced conformity and destroyed all knowledge that was contrary to their beliefs. It was this new Church that created a reign of terror and was far more responsible for the development of the “Dark Ages” then the influx of invading peoples.

XVIII.

As the author I fully have to acknowledge that much of the true evidence to justify the claims of this book are not available, since much of the evidence was destroyed by the Christians once they came to power. I am left with only the scraps and interpretations of what little we have from the Ancient world that survived the burning of books and so much more by the new Church. The extend of how much knowledge of the past was destroyed by the Christians (not just the library of Alexandria, but all the libraries of the Ancient world) and how they attempted to eliminate any writings or facts or legends or myths that in any way countered their new world view is only thinly understood in the current still predominately Christian West.

We still fail to understand how more than 1,000 years of repression where questioning Christian beliefs was a capital offense, continues to impact our current world and how current world politics play out. Despite the “Age of Reason” and the great advances of the modern world, much of what the Ancients knew and understood continues to be regarded as of little importance by most people today. And for those who are religious, inquiry into the basis for their beliefs is of little importance and for those who are not religious the inquiry into the past often seems fool hearty; to them it’s all myth.

However, I see it differently, in that much of the politics and religious absolutism that evolved out of the conflicts between the contending forces for political and religious supremacy in the time of the rise of Christianity and its morphing of the Ba’alist and other religions continued to play out through the history of the West.

We can see direct links between the demand for “orthodoxy” from the new Church and the requirements of One Emperor, One God, from the new absolutist rulers of Rome who eventually promoted Christianity to political power, and the mega deaths of the later centuries either in the Inquisition or later in the Thirty-Years War or in the great wars and revolutions of the 20th century. And in book Two of this series that is what we do — show how the events of the history of the post Roman Empire world right to the present are directly linked to the transition of absolutist religious beliefs, based in the manifestation of the Christian Churches. We also show how the rituals of Ba’alism morphed into rituals of repression; rather then Christ being the last human sacrifice needed, the Church took the ritual of human sacrifice and changed it into the primary tool for repression of dissent from Church conformity. The result was that over the last 1600 years or so, millions were burned to death in rituals that copy one thing and one thing only Ð a human sacrifice based in Ba’alism.

XIX.

This connection between the ancient practices of Ba’alism incorporated into Christianity, coupled with the great fear of the “wrath of God” found in the later Prophets and the creation of the Second Jewish Commonwealth, created a state of religion tyranny in the West lasting some 1500 years. We argue that this Western tradition of religious terror laid the foundation for the great state terrors of the 20th Century. In the second book of this series we explore the history of terror and death created by the tyranny or the Christian religion and the mega deaths of the last century (actually starting in the Age of Discovery till now.)

We especially can see these links for this use of terror far more clearly once we make the connection to the consequence of the Christians the merging of the Old and New Testaments. The early Church leaders took such a step to fight the criticism that they were a “new religion” (by including the Old Testament they claimed to be an extension of the Ancient Jewish worship). There was, in fact, a great deal of infighting over this step of inclusion and the first “New Testaments” was created as a rival, not a continuation of the Jewish Bible. The Christians who argued against inclusion saw the god of the Old Testament as an even demon and not a god of love, while the god of the New Testament, the god of Love, was a new god and not the same as the Jewish god; they lost the argument, and many their lives over this view.

With this adoption of the Old Testament came the acceptance of the right of the new Church to force conformity on to all people, just like the small and isolated Jewish state of the Second Commonwealth required forced conversion and adherence. With the Church becoming the Universal church through partnership with the Roman State (emperors) the right of the Church to force conformity to fall-stall the wrath of God was no longer a question of a small isolated state forcing conformity on a few thousand people.

We now see, once in power, the Church claiming the right to force conformity on millions; the resistance to the new religion resulted in unstable governments, extensive executions (over 300,000 in some fifty years) and the abandonment of the state; many “Romans” preferred to try and make deals with the Germans then live under the tyranny of the new Universal Church. There were revolts as late as 400 AD in Rome where they were trying to put a non-Christian Emperor on the throne in the West, with the promise of complete religious freedom to all people. The effort was crushed by the Eastern Catholic emperor.

We see the same sequence later when the Arabs appear with Islam, and much of the Eastern Empire accepted Arab rule with the promise of religious freedom. A few thousand Arab fighters were able to take all of “Middle East” and North Africa from the Eastern Empire with massive popular support, since the Christians in those lands were in dispute with the “Catholic Church” over some fine points of worship, and for decades had been in religious civil wars with the capital of the Empire. This time the Emperor could not crush his rivals and close to half of the Christian lands were lost — until this time.

• There is by far a stronger argument that Christianity, and its efforts at forced conformity, destroyed the Roman Empire rather then the Christian view that they saved it.

XX.

We see the church revival with the discovery of new lands; with the spread Christianity around the world, the Church saw its obligation to force conformity onto all people or face destruction from the wrath of God. The Church was not just concerned with the saving of souls of the newly “discovered peoples”, but the saving of all culture; forced conformity was needed among all peoples, based on the writings of the Old Testament, or else God would destroy all things again.

However, before the age of discovery, in the backwater of history that was Europe at the time of the ending of the Roman state, eventually over time, new states were redeveloped. These new leaders of these states (monarchs), much like the later Emperors of Rome wished no resistance to their rule. They too adopted Christianity with its concept of one god one ruler, and allowed the Church to institute forces to ensure conformity (as long as the Church supported the absolute rule of the monarch Ð on earth as it is in heaven.

Much of the second book looks at the road of the recovery of the Church in the West and from the Auto de Fe of Spain and the Spanish Empire to the gas chambers of Germany and Stalin death camps and the cultural revolution of China and the killing fields of Cambodia and how the modern states took on the right to force conformity for its own purposes..

We look at why the preferred form of execution in the West, especially in Spain and in areas once dominated by the Celts for these capital punishments for non-conformity was burning people alive. We ask the critical question of why -

• In 1500 BCE or so (up until about 150 BCE), every so often in what is now called Spain, there was a big public ceremony and celebration that ended with the burning of someone alive to placate the needs of a god, and then
• In 1500 CE (actually starting about 1200 CE to about 1870 CE) every so often in Spain, there was a big public ceremony and celebration that ended with the burning of someone alive to placate the needs of a god,

We need to also ask why throughout what was at one point Celtic Europe (and the Celts were allies and greatly influenced by Punic culture) over the course of at least 700 years, 100,000′s if not millions of people were burned alive as part of a public ritual designed to ward off evil and protect the community from non-conformity.

We argue that these acts of public burnings were more than a “social echo” of a very ancient culture, but a direct continuation, morphed by the Church, of the religious rituals that had dominated these areas for thousands of years; the rituals of Ba’alism.

We know that much of the model for the devil was created by the Church based on Ba’al and much of the model for hell is based on the rituals of burning people a live based on Ba’al but what we in the modern world do not know is that much of the concepts of social repression and the main tool used for social repression is also an adaptation Ð a morphing of the critical core ritual of Ba’alism, human sacrifice.

And not only was the retelling of the Christ story a retelling of the Ba’al story, and that the actual death of Christ is a retelling of the critical Ba’alist ritual of the need for the sacrifice of the first born in time of extensive danger, but the West morphed the actual ritual of human sacrifice into a continuation of human sacrifice in the same fashion as the Ba’alist rituals, through the Auto de Fe and witch burnings.

XXI.

And we can continue to see an echo of Ba’alism in the tragedies of the 20th century, not only in the transference of the right of conformity from the Church to the state but in far subtler forms.

For example, the very term holocaust, the term used for the mega death of Jews in World War II was a word chosen by Christians not Jews; the Jewish term for the event was Shoah which means “catastrophe.” The terms the Christians use, comes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew word referring to the highest from of sacrifice, one so sacred that none but god could participate in its consumption. The term is thought to refer to the human sacrifices offered to God in the older from of the Ancient Jewish religion, or the sacrificed the reflected the root of that religion in Ba’alism.

The Jewish groups initially strongly rejected the term since in Jewish writing, it implied that the Jews who were burned in the ovens (only after being killed by gas, or multiple other forms of executions) were somehow a sacrifice to god. We point out in the second book, that this concept is and was and continues to be appalling to Jewish thought, but completely in line with Christian and Ba’alist traditions; the sacrifice, the “holocaust” was needed by god.

The findings of both these books are that the modern religion of the Western world is perhaps better described as Christian Ba’alist tradition rather then a Judeo-Christian tradition. That the religion most hated by Yahweh actually is the religion, in its morphed from, that dominates the Western world today. Ba’al is Jesus, Jesus is Ba’al and the human sacrifice, the holocaust is accepted as needed by this God of the Christians.

I hope all who read this effort approach it with an open mind and is willing to look at what historic facts available and not just the sacred books of a given religion.