An alternative theory of the history of Christianity
Augustine and the Eusebian fiction postulate
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Augustine Bishop of Hippo

. AUGUSTINE (354-430): Bishop of Hippo, in Africa; "Saint,
Doctor of the Church; a philosophical and theological genius of the
first order, dominating, like a pyramid, antiquity and the
succeeding ages. ... Compared with the great philosophers of past
centuries and modern times, he is the equal of them all; among
theologians he is undoubtedly the first, and such has been his
influence that none of the Fathers, Scholastics, or Reformers has
surpassed it." (CE. ii, 84.) This fulsome paean of praise sung by
the Church of its greatest Doctor, justifies a sketch of the fiery
African Bishop and a look into his monumental work, De Civitate Dei
-- "The City of God," written between the years 413-426 A.D. This
will well enough show the quality of mind of the man, a
monumentally superstitious and credulous Child of Faith; and throw
some light on the psychology of the Church which holds such a mind
as its greatest Doctor, towering like a pyramid over the puny
thinkers and philosophers of past centuries and of modern times. We
may let CE. draw the biographical sketch in its own words, simply
abbreviated at places to save space. Augustine's father, Patricius,
was a Pagan, his mother, Monica, a convert to Christianity; when
Augustine was born "she had him signed with the cross and enrolled
among the catechumens. Once, when very ill, he asked for baptism,
but, all danger being passed, he deferred receiving the sacrament,
thus yielding to a deplorable custom of the times." when sixteen
years old he was sent to Cartage for study to become a lawyer;
"Here he formed a sinful liaison with the person who bore him a son
(372) -- [Adeodatus, "the gift of God"] -- 'the son of his sin' --
an entanglement from which he only delivered himself, at Milan,
after fifteen years of its thralldom." During this time Augustine
became an ardent heretic: "In this same year Augustine fell into
the snares of the Manichaeans. ... Once won over to this sect,
Augustine devoted himself to it with all the ardor of his
character; he read all its books, adopted and defended all its
opinions. His furious proselytism drew into error [several others
named]. it was during this Manichaean period that Augustine's
literary faculties reached their full development." ...

     In 383 Augustine, at the age of twenty-nine, went to Italy,
and came to Milan, where he met and fell under the influence of
Bishop Ambrose -- [he who forged the Apostles' Creed]. "However,
before embracing the Faith, Augustine underwent a three years'
struggle. ... But it was only a dream; his passions still enslaved
him. Monica, who had joined her son at Milan, prevailed upon him
[to abandon his mistress]; and though he dismissed the mother of
Adeodatus, her place was soon filled by another. At first he
prayed, but without the sincere desire of being heard. -- [In his
"Confessions" (viii, 17) he addresses God: "Lord, make me pure and
chaste but not quite yet"! Finally he resolved to embrace
Christianity and to believe as the Church believed.] -- The grand
stroke of grace, at the age of thirty-three, smote him to the
ground in the garden at Milan, in 386. ... From 386 to 395
Augustine gradually became acquainted with the Christian doctrine,
and in his mind the fusion of Platonic philosophy with revealed
dogmas was taking place. ... So long, therefore, as his philosophy
agrees with his religious doctrines, St. Augustine is frankly neo-
Platonist; as soon as a contradiction arises, he never hesitates to
subordinate his philosophy to religion, reason to faith! (p. 86)
... He thought too easily to find Christianity in Plato, or
Platonism in the Gospel. Thus he had imagined that in Platonism he
had discovered the entire doctrine of the Word and the whole
prologue of St. John." Augustine was baptized on Easter of 387. He
did not think of entering the priesthood; but being in church one
day at prayer, the clamor of the crowd caused him to yield, despite
his tears, to the demand, and he was consecrated in 391, and
entered actively into the fray. A great controversy arose "over
these grave questions: Do the hierarchical powers depend upon the
moral worth of the priest? How can the holiness of the Church be
compatible with the unworthiness of its ministers? -- [The moral
situation must have been very acute to necessitate such a debate].
In the dogmatic debate he established the Catholic thesis that the
Church, so long as it is upon earth, can, without losing its
holiness, tolerate sinners within its pale for the sake of
converting them" [?] -- or their property.

     In the City of God, which "is considered his most important
work," Augustine "answers the Pagans, who attributed the fall of
Rome (410) to the abolition of Pagan worship. In it, considering
the problem of Divine Providence with regard to the Roman Empire,
in a burst of genius he creates the philosophy of history,
embracing as he does with a glance the destinies of the world
grouped around the Christian religion, the only one which goes back
to the beginning and leads humanity to its final term." (CE. ii,
84-89.) Let us now admire

                AUGUSTINE "PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY"

-- whereof, says His present Holiness in a special Encyclical on
the great Philosopher: "The teaching of St. Augustine constitutes
a precious statement of sublime truths.", (Herald-Tribune, Apr. 22,
1930.)

     The City of God, by which he intends the Christianized. World
-- City of Rome, is a ponderous tome, which cost Augustine some
thirteen years to write. Like the work of all the Fathers it is an
embellished rehash of the myths of the Old Testament, highly spiced
with "proofs" from the Pagan gods and their prophetic Sibyls, the
same style of exegesis being also used for the Gospels, all of
which he accepts as Gospel truth. He begins his philosophizing of
history by swallowing the "Sacred Science" of Genesis whole; he
entitles a chapter: "Of the Falseness of the History which allots
Many Thousand Years to the World's Past"; and thus sneeringly
dismisses those who knew better: "They are deceived, too, by those
highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of
many thousand years, though reckoning by the sacred writings, we
find that not yet 6,000 years have passed. ... There are some,
again, who are of opinion that this is not the only world, but that
there are numberless worlds." (Civ. Dei, Bk. xii, 10, 11; N&PNF.
ii, 232, 233.) Such persons are not to be argued with but to be
ridiculed: "For as it is not yet 6,000 years since the first man,
who is called Adam, are not those to be ridiculed rather than
refuted who try to persuade us of anything regarding a space of
time so different from, so contrary to, the ascertained truth?"
(Ib. xviii, 40; p. 384.) To prove that "there were giants in those
days," and that the ante-Diluvians were of greater size than men of
his times, he vouches: "I myself, along with others, saw on the
shore at Utica a man's molar tooth of such a size, that if it were
cut down into teeth such as we have, a hundred, I fancy, could have
been made out of it. ... Bones of almost incredible size have been
found by exposure of sepulchres." (xv, 9; p. 291.) And he shows
how, "according to the Septuagint, Methuselah survived the Flood by
fourteen years." (xv, 11; p. 292.) He accepts the earth as flat and
inhabited on the upper side only: "As to the fable that there are
Antipodes, that is to say, men who are on the opposite side of the
earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with
their feet opposite ours, is on no ground credible." (xvi, 9; p.
315.)

     Augustine is credited with a scientific leaning towards the
doctrine of Evolution and as recognizing the origin of species; but
some of his species are truly singular, and withal are but
variations from the original divine norm of Father Adam, who is
father of them all. In all soberness, tinged with a breath of
skepticism with respect to some, he thus philosophizes: "It is
reported that some monstrous races of men have one eye in the
middle of the forehead; some, the feet turned backward from the
heel; some, a double sex, the right breast like a man, the left
like a woman, and that they alternately beget and bring forth;
others are said to have no mouth. ... They tell of a race who have
two feet but only one leg, and are of marvelous swiftness, though
they do not bend the knee; they are called Skiopedes, because in
the hot weather they lie down on their backs and shade themselves
with their feet. Others are said to have no head on their
shoulders. ... What shall we say of the Cynocephali, whose doglike
head and barking proclaim them beasts rather than men? But we are
not bound to believe all we hear of these monstrosities. ... But
who could enumerate all the human births that have differed widely
from their ascertained parents? No one will deny that all these
have descended from that one man, ... that one first father of all.
... Accordingly, it ought not to seem absurd to us, that as in the
individual races there are monstrous births, so in the whole race
there are monstrous races; ... if they are human, they are
descended from Adam." (xvi, 8; p. 315.)

     It is not alone in the realm of the genus homo that oddities
exist, in the animal world there are some very notable
singularities, for which the Saint vouches with all confidence as
out of his personal knowledge and experience. Several times he
repeats the marvel of the peacock, "which is so favored by the
Almighty that its flesh will not decay," and "which triumphs over
that corruption from which even the flesh of Plato is not exempt."
He says: "It seems incredible, but a peacock was cooked and served
to me in Carthage; and I kept the flesh one year and it was as
fresh as ever, only a little drier." (xxi, 4, 5; pp. 455, 458.) The
now exploded doctrine of abiogenesis was strong with Augustine;
some animals are born without sexual antecedents: "Frogs are
produced from the earth, not propagated by male and female parents"
(xvi, 7; p. 314); "There are in Cappadocia mares which are
impregnated by the wind, and their foals live only three years."
(xxi, 5; p. 456.) There was much question as to the efficacy of
hell-fire in toasting lost souls through eternity. The master
philosopher of all time solves the knotty problem in two chapters,
under the titles: "2. Whether it is Possible for Bodies to last
Forever in Burning Fire," and, "4. Examples from Nature proving
that Bodies may remain Unconsumed and Alive in Fire." In the first
place, before the lamentable Fall of Adam, our own bodies were
imperishable; in Hell we will again get unconsumable bodies: "Even
this human flesh was constituted in one fashion before there was
Sin, -- was constituted, in fact, so that it could not die." (xxi,
8; p. 459.) But there are other proofs of this than theological
say-so, the skeptical may have the proofs with their own eyes in
present-day Nature: "There are animals which live in the midst of
flames. ... The salamander is well known, that it lives in fire.
Likewise, in springs of water so hot that no one can put his hand
in it with impunity, a species of worm is found, which not only
lives there, but cannot live elsewhere. ... These animals live in
that blaze of heat without pain, the element of fire being
congenial to their nature and causing it to thrive and not to
suffer," -- an argument which "does not suit our purpose" on the
point of painless existence in fire of these animals, in which
particular the wisdom of God has differentiated the souls of the
damned, that they may suffer exquisitely forever; in which argument
Augustine implies the doctrine, as feelingly expressed by another
holy Saint, the "Angelic Doctor" Aquinas: "In order that nothing
may be wanting to the felicity of the blessed spirits in heaven, a
perfect view is granted to them of the tortures of the damned"; all
these holy ones in gleeful praise to God look down at the damned
disbelievers "tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of
the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of
their torment ascendeth for ever and ever; and they have no rest
day nor night." (Rev. xiv., 10, 11.)

     In the realm of inorganic nature are many marvels, a long
catalogue of which our philosopher makes, and at several places
repeats; some of these are by hearsay and current report, for which
cautiously he does not vouch the truth; "but these I know to be
true: the case of that fountain in which burning torches are
extinguished, and extinguished torches are lit: and the apples of
Sodom, which are ripe to appearance, but are filled with dust"!
(xxi, 7; p. 458.) The diamond is the hardest known stone; so hard
indeed that it cannot be cut or worked "by anything, except goat's
blood." (p. 455.)

     The greatest of Christian Doctors, pyramid of philosophers,
has abiding faith in the reality of the Pagan gods, who, however,
as held by all the Fathers, are really demons or devils; they are
very potent as wonder-workers and magicians. Some of them, however,
are evidently not of a malicious nature: "The god of Socrates. if
he had a god, cannot have belonged to this class of demons." (xiii,
27; p. 165.) Time and again he vouches for and quotes the famous
Hermes Trismegistus, who he assures us was the grandson of the
"first Mercury." (viii, 23, 24; pp. 159, 161.) And for history he
says, that "At this time, indeed, when Moses was born, Atlas is
found to have lived, that great astronomer, the brother of
Prometheus, and maternal grandson of the elder Mercury, of whom
that Mercury Trismegistus was the grandson." (xviii, 39; p. 384.)
Also that "Picus, son of Saturn, was the first king of Argos."
(xviii, 15; p. 368.) He accepts as historic truth the fabulous
founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, their virgin-birth by the
god Mars, and their nursing by the she-wolf, but attributes the
last to the provident interference of the Hebrew God. Some of his
comments might be applicable to One later Virgin-born. "Rhea, a
vestal virgin, who conceived twin sons of Mars, as they will have
it, in that way honoring or excusing her adultery, adding as a
proof that a she-wolf nursed the infants when exposed. ... Yet,
what wonder is it, if, to rebuke the king who had cruelly ordered
them to be thrown into the water, God was pleased, after divinely
delivering them from the water, to succor, by means of a wild beast
giving milk, these infants by whom so great a City was to be
founded?" (xviii, 21; p. 372.)

     The great philosopher, at one with Cicero in this respect,
distinguishes between the ancient fables of the gods in an age of
ignorance and superstition, and those true histories of their later
deeds in a time, such as that of the Founding of the City, when
intelligence reigned among men. A singular reversion to the mental
state of the Homeric ages would seem to have come upon men with the
advent of the new Faith. Cicero had related the fables of Homer and
contrasted them with the true history of Romulus and his more
enlightened times, saying: "Homer had flourished long before
Romulus, and there was now so much learning in individuals, and so
generally diffused an enlightenment, that scarcely any room was
left for fable. For antiquity admitted fables, and sometimes very
clumsy ones; but this age of Romulus was sufficiently enlightened
to reject whatever had not the air of truth"! On this the great
Saint Augustine thus philosophizes, -- accounting, indeed, for the
age-long persistence of all superstitions, as due to inheritance
and early teaching: "But who believed that Romulus was a god except
Rome, which was then small and weak? Then afterwards it was
necessary that succeeding generations should preserve the
traditions of their ancestors; that, drinking in this superstition
with their mother's milk, their nation should grow great and
dominate the world"? (xxii, 6; p. 483.) In likewise it may be
queried: Who believed that Jesus was a virgin-born god except
superstitious Pagans who already believed such things of Romulus,
Apollo, AEsculapius, et id omne genus? and the succeeding
generations, "drawing in this superstition with their mother's
milk," have passed it on through the Dark Ages of Faith even unto
our own day. Even the great St. Jerome has said, that no one would
have believed the Virgin-birth of Jesus or that his mother was not
an adulteress, "until now, that the whole world has embraced the
faith" -- and would therefore believe anything -- except the truth!

     All who did not believe such things, when related by the ex-
Pagan Christians, were heretics instigated by the devil; for "the
devil, seeing the temples of the gods deserted, and the human race
running to the name of the living Mediator, has moved the heretics
under the Christian name to resist the Christian doctrine." (xviii,
51; p. 392.) Whether St. Augustine, in his earlier Pagan years,
practiced the arts of magic, as did many of the other ex-Pagan
Christian Fathers, he maintained a firm Christian faith in magic
and magicians, and explains how the gift is acquired. He gives an
account of a remarkable lamp which hung in a temple of Venus in a
great candelabra; although exposed to the open air, even the
strongest winds could not blow out the flame. But that is nothing
strange to the philosophic mind of the Saint: "For to this
[inextinguishable lamp] we add a host of marvels wrought by man, or
by magic, that is, by man under the influence of devils, or by the
devils directly, -- for such marvels we cannot deny without
impugning the truth of the sacred Scriptures we believe. ... Now,
devils are attracted to dwell in certain temples by means of the
creatures who present to them the things which suit their various
tastes. ... The devils cunningly seduce men and make of a few of
them their disciples, who then instruct others. ... Hence the
origin of magic and magicians." (xxi, 6; p. 457.) A most notable
example of magical power is that which transforms men into animals,
sometimes effected by the potent word, sometimes through material
means, as where sundry inn-keepers used to put a drug into food
which would work the transformation of their guests into wild or
domestic animals.

     The philosopher Saint vouches for such magical metamorphoses
as of his own knowledge and on unimpeachable authority. At much
length he relates: "A certain man named Praestantius used to tell
that it happened to his father in his own house, that he took that
poison in a piece of cheese, ... and that he had been made a
sumpter horse, and, along with other beasts of burden, had carried
provisions for the Rhoetian Legion. And all this was found to have
taken place just as he told. ... These things have not come to us
from persons we might deem unworthy of credit, but from informants
we could not suppose to be deceiving us. Therefore, what men say
and have committed to writing about the Arcadians being often
changed into wolves by the Arcadian gods, or demons rather, and
what is told in the song about Circe transforming the companions of
Ulysses, if they were really done, may, in my opinion, have been in
the way I have said -- [that is, by demons through the permission
of God]. ... As for Diomede's birds, that they bring water in their
beaks and sprinkle it on the temple of Diomede, and that they fawn
on men of Greek race and persecute aliens, is no wonderful thing to
be done by the inward influence of demons." (xviii, 18; p. 370.) To
the Saint and to all the Fathers, the air was full of devils: "All
diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to these demons; chiefly
do they torment fresh-baptized Christians, yea, even the guiltless
new-born infant." (De Divinatione Daemonorum, ch. iii), -- a whole
tome devoted to the prophetic works of the Devil, "after the
working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders," as
avouched in Holy Writ (II Thess. ii, 9); for: "The responses of the
gods are uttered by impure demons with a strong animus against the
Christians." (De Civ. Dei, xix, 23; p. 416.) And no wonder, for "by
the help of magicians, whom Scripture calls enchanters and
sorcerers, the devils could gain such power. ... The noble poet
Vergil describes a very powerful magician in these lines,"
(quoting; xxi, 6; p. 457).

     Again, like all the holy Fathers and Popes down at least to
Benedict XIV, elsewhere quoted, the great philosopher and Saint is
a devoted Sibyllist, and frequently quotes and approves the
utterances of these Pagan Seeresses, inspired by the devil through
the permission of the Christian God to reveal the holy mysteries of
the Christian Faith. Augustine devotes a chapter, entitled "Of the
Erythraean Sibyl, who is known to have sung many things about
Christ more plainly than the other Sibyls," to these signal Pagan
proofs of the Christ; and he dwells with peculiar zest on the
celebrated "Fish Anagram." On this theme he enlarges: "This Sibyl
certainly wrote some things concerning Christ which are quite
manifest [citing instances]. ... A certain passage which had the
initial letters of the lines so arranged that these words could be
read in them: 'Iesous Xristos Theou Uios Soter' -- [quoting the
verses at length]. ... If you join the initial letters in these
five Greek words, they will make the word Ixthus, that is, 'fish,'
in which word Christ is mystically understood, because he was able
to live, that is, to exist, without sin, in the abyss of this
mortality as in the depths of water." (xviii, 23; p. 372-3.)

     With full faith the great Doctor Augustine accepts the old
fable of the miraculous translation of the Septuagint, and to it
adds some new trimmings betraying his intimate knowledge of the
processes and purposes of God in bringing it about: "It is reported
that there was an agreement in their words so wonderful,
stupendous, and plainly divine, each one apart (for so it pleased
Ptolemy to test their fidelity), they differed from each other in
no word, or in the order of the words; but, as if the translators
had been one, so what all had translated was one, because in very
deed the one Spirit had been in them all. And they received so
wonderful a gift of God, in order that these Scriptures might be
commended not as human but divine, for the benefit of the nations.
who should at some time believe, as we now see them doing. ... If
anything is in the Hebrew copies and not in the version of the
Seventy, the Spirit of God did not choose to say it through them,
but only through the prophets. But whatever is in the Septuagint
and not in the Hebrew copies, the same Spirit chose rather to say
it through the latter, thus showing that both were prophets."
(xviii, 42, 43; pp. 385-387.) If this latter be true, that some
divine revelation is found in the Septuagint which is not in the
Hebrew, and vice versa how then can it be true, as the Saint has
just said, and as all the Fathers say, that there was perfect
agreement between the Hebrew original and the Greek translations?
If matters in the Hebrew text were omitted in the Greek, then the
inspired truth of God was not in those parts of the original, or
else what was inspired truth in the Hebrew became now false; and if
there was new matter now in the Greek, such portions were not
translation but were interpolations or plain forgeries of the
translators, yet inspired by God. The divine origin of the Hebrew
language, as invented by God for the use of Adam and Eve and their
posterity, is thus fabled by the great Doctor: "When the other
races were divided by their own peculiar languages [at Babel],
Heber's family preserved that language which is not unreasonably
believed to have been the common language of the race, and that on
this account it was henceforth called Hebrew." (p. 122.) As for the
origin of writing, our Saint agrees with St. Chrysostom, St.
Jerome, and other erudite Saints, that "God himself showed the
model and method of all writing when he delivered the Law written
with his own finger to Moses." (White, Warfare of Science against
Theology, ii, 181.)

     This greatest philosopher of all time attacks with profound
learning a problem which, he says, he had "previously mentioned,
but did not decide," and he proceeds with acutest wisdom to solve
the question: "Whether angels, inasmuch as they are spirits, could
have bodily intercourse with women?" With all the powers of his
mighty philosophico-clerical mind he reasons on the ethereal nature
of angels, and reaches the conclusion, fortified by many ancient
instances, that they can and do. There are, be points out, "many
proven instances, that Sylvans and Fauns, who are commonly called
'Incubi,' had often made wicked assaults upon women, and satisfied
their lusts upon them: and that certain devils, called Duses by the
Gauls, are constantly attempting and effecting this impurity."
(City of God, xv, 23; p. 303.) As the greatest Doctor and
Theologian of the Church, he discusses weightily what books of
Scripture are inspired and canonical, which are fables and
apocryphal: "Let us omit, then, the fables of those Scriptures
which are called apocryphal. ... We cannot deny that Enoch, the
seventh from Adam, left some divine writings, for this is asserted
by the Apostle Jude in his canonical Epistle"! (Ibid,, p. 305.)
Thus the great Doctor vindicates the potentiality of the Holy
Ghost, in the guise of the angel Gabriel, to maintain carnal
copulation with the "proliferous yet Ever Virgin" Mother of God;
and vouches for the divinity of the crude Jewish forgery of the
Book of Enoch, which is duly canonized as genuine and authentic
work of the mythical Patriarch, by the equally mythical "Apostle"
author of the forged Epistle of Jude. So great a Doctor of the
Church looks, by now, very much like an extraordinary "quack
doctor" peddler of bogus nostrums.

     Such are a few picked from numberless examples of the quasi-
divine wisdom and philosophy of this unparalleled, pyramidal Saint
and Doctor of the Church, who "never hesitated to subordinate his
reason to Faith." Most luminously and profoundly of all the Fathers
and Doctors, Augustine spoke the mind and language of the Church
and of its Pagan-born Christianity; more ably than them all he used
the same methods of propaganda of the Faith among the superstitious
ex-Pagan Christians; with greater authority and effect than all the
others, he exploited the same fables, the same falsehoods, the same
absurdities, exhibited to the n-th degree the same fathomless
fatuity of faith and subjugation of reason to credulity.

-- extracted from Joseph Wheless,
"FORGERY IN CHRISTIANITY", 1930

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