Your Magnificent Majesty, King of Heaven, Master of the World, and Distinguished Lord of Unbelievable Greatness and Inconceivable Preeminence,

It has come to my attention that the historical events on which Christianity was founded never happened. Unfortunately the wealth of data from anthropology and comparative religion on that disgusting little ball called earth, is shedding new light on biblical origins. J.M. Robertson, one of your most stalwart dissenters, has demonstrated that the Gospel Story of the Last Supper, the Agony, the Betrayal, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection was derived from a pagan mystery play that came to be accepted as a real happening. He has discovered the origin of the ritual drama and meaning of the name "Jesus(Joshua)." Who could have predicted these lowly creatures would remember the sacrificial victims in the ancient Palestinian rites were all given the name, "Jesus, Son of the Father."

Passion plays were a common feature in Greece, Egypt, and even in Rome. The gods, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Mithras, and Dionysus, to name but a few, were slain periodically in mimicry, only to rise again. It is well known, even among the mortals, that these make-believes evolved from the more primitive and savage reality of human sacrifice. This Robertson, clever enough as humans go, I'm afraid, has assembled an impressive body of evidence demonstrating that the evolution of religions throughout history and the world follow a similar pattern. As the world became a more civilized place, the sacrifice of the son of the ancient king was modified by the use of a surrogate; a volunteer, a criminal, or an animal. In the earliest phases, the collective eating of the victim, gave rise to symbolic communion in the partaking of bread(flesh) and wine(blood.) Parallel rites are found in the worship of Dionysus, Mithra, the gods of ancient Mexico and many others.

Another mark of religious evolution has been from a Primary God, the Enforcer, to a secondary God, the Teacher, or the Lawgiver. Teacher Gods have traditionally been said to introduce agriculture, writing, and building. These secondary Gods have sometimes also been sacrificed saviors. You, of course, my Lord have been both. Buddha, although not a God, was a Teacher who provided moral instruction and the way of salvation for his people. Gotama was as mythical as Mithra and the myths surrounding you, Jesus.

Robertson employed a wide brush and a broad canvas to advance his theories before contemporary scholars, thankfully the nonspecialist is unlikely to read much of him. Otherwise the jig would be up. This foolish man had a mind so loaded with arcane and obscure knowledge that the weight of it precludes consideration by any except those whose scholarship is as profound, and that, among mortals is exceedingly few.

Since Robertson's death, biblical scholars who are not clergy, have become unfashionable. Accordingly, the mythicist viewpoint has been subverted and covered up, but the Dead Sea Scrolls may well lend new life and more compelling arguments to the case. What this will mean to your faithful, only you know. As it is, too many mortals have come to understand the myths of Adonis, Attis, and Osiris are in no way substantially different from your own. Too many are aware that the following of Mithra in ancient Rome rivalled and paralleled your own. Huitzilopochti and Quetzacoatl from Mexico are known to be myth, unreal, and myths similar to your own. Robertson has taken all the myths of the savior gods and demonstrated they have common features due to common antecedents. It is not that they all sprang from one central source, but that have all evolved in a similar process from primitive rituals, including human sacrifice and cannibalism as a means to achieve salvation.

These practices are known to have been common in Mexico and Peru, and in the Graeco-Roman world. They were also prevalent in the Middle East including Palestine. The story of Abraham and Isaac just one of many pointers to the practice of human sacrifice by the early Hebrews. The general pattern has been times when human sacrifices were eaten as the God, or as the divine ancestor, to times when human sacrifices were prisoners of war, or criminals, to times when animals were used and finally to symbolic feasts of flesh and blood in the form of wafers and wine. Christianity is, as you know, not unique and early Christians were so shocked at the similarity between the communion of Mithraism to the Christian communion that they described it as a trick of the devil to deceive the faithful. The Mithraist attained salvation by baptism, either by the blood of a bull of that of a ram. In Christianity, the same concept is revealed when they speak of being "... bathed in the blood of the lamb" or another is " ...The Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." Not so veiled references to a past when animal sacrifice and animal blood was the path to salvation.

The Christian cross, symbol of the crucifixion, runs parallel to the Khond rite, even to the offering of a merciful drink. During human sacrifice the victim was often offered a mind numbing narcotic to stem the pain. There are more than sufficient grounds to surmise a pre-christian cult of Jesus(Joshua) that embraced human sacrifice and that modern Christianity reflects, symbolically, those rites. The very construction in dramatic parts of the Last Supper, the Passion, the Betrayal, the Trial, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection are obviously compressions provided for theatrical reasons. Jesus utters a prayer in the script that would be heard by no one, unless it were being performed before an audience.

The loftiest moral teaching have always accompanied the most savage and bloodthirsty of rituals. In Mexico the priesthood were celibate and taught the people to be peaceful, to bear injury quietly and with dignity, to be compassionate to the sick and charitable to the poor. Yet they held mass human sacrifices. In Christianity and Mithraism lofty principles are taught side by side with ritualistic eating of the divine flesh and consuming of the divine blood. Over time the practitioners of these ancient passion plays became convinced of the reality of their God; a god who was the personification that emerged from the doctrines reflecting human aspiration.

Which brings me to a final question. Why, in all the centuries I have been writing you, have you not once replied? With all the historicity coming to light and in view of your complete and stony silence toward me, I too am wondering if you are but myth. And if you are myth, then what am I? Perhaps some artificial construct in the mind of some demented writer, hoping against hope, to make difficult knowledge a more palatable dish. Still m'Lord, old habits die hard, and real or not, I remain loyal and your faithful servant.

Praise in the Highest,
Eternally, your Faithful Servant,
Archangel Ariel Ramadan Cardova