A Potted History of Jesus Christ (or, What The Church Doesn't Want You To Know)

Issua ibn Iosep Hajeduhim ba Bet'lehim was an itinerant wanderer of Arabic descent from the regions surrounding the Dead Sea of the Roman Imperial District of Judea, in what is now known as Jordan. Brought up as a strict Essene Jew, as a child he learned the simple ascetic belief-system that governed the Essene way of life. His calm yet inquisitive nature, excellent memory, and aptitude with both the spoken and written forms of his native tongue, meant it was expected he would enter the priesthood, but he ultimately left his family & community as a young man of some fifteen or sixteen years of age to find his own way in the world instead.

Some years later, Issua ended up at a Buddhist monastery in the Jagannath region of western India, an area still rich in a blend of basic Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. Monastic texts described him as "a young Yida [Arab], dark of skin but light of spirit for the ways of Buddha are as air to him", who became an acolyte and then a mendicant teacher and healer for the region. After a few years, he decided to return to his homeland.

After rejoining the Essene communities of Jerusalem, he became dismayed to see how downtrodden the people had become under the rule of the Romans and the ruling theocrats, the Pharisee Jewish elite, and began to teach others the ways of living he had learned amongst the people of India, who still managed to lead a fulfilling, harmonious life despite the opression of the Brahmin rulers. Like any idea which seemed to offer escape from the opression of their elders, the young people took to Issua's ideas with enthusiasm, and despite his upbringing this notoriety prompted him to resume his mendicant ways, traveling across Judea teaching this new belief. Like Siddhartha Gautama did several hundred years before him, he roamed the country from vilage to town to city with several self-styled disciples and acolytes, using his fame as a healer to attract people, and his natural talent as a storyteller to spread his ideas wrapped up in parables.

With notoriety as both a highly skiller healer and spellbinding storyteller spreading before him, the sick, the infirm, the dissatisfied and the curious flocked to the larger towns along Issua's route to the northern border. it did not take long for news of the crowds Issua was getting to reach the ears of the Holy Roman Empire and the Pharisees; Issua's basic message was one of respect, harmony and self-trust, and as all he was doing was teaching people how to have a better life and was not actively advocating rebellion against the Romans or the Pharisees, they were content to just keep a watchful eye.

During a stop-over to heal and preach in the large town of Migdal, on the north-western shore of the Sea of Galilee, Issua healed a young woman named Miryam, and she became a daily visitor to Issua's camp to hear him speak. Sharp of mind herself, her frequent and insightful questions caught Issua's attention, and being both young adults, mutual attraction took its course and they fell in love. As they were both practicing Jews, they did it 'by the book', petitioned Miryam's family for permission to marry, and on return to Migdal several months later, were married in the large synagogue that served the region around Galilee. Miryam's insights and deep understanding of Issua's teachings ensured her place among the inner circle of Issua's growing ministry, and disciples would often turn to her for interpretations and understanding, as well as being the public female face of Issua's movement. Miryam eventually bore two children by Issua, a son and a daughter.

When any public movement grows large enough, you will get hot-heads, and Issua's ministry had its fair share of militant idealists. Issua and the inner circle tried to distance themselves from the hot-heads, but this was all the Romans & Pharisees needed to deal with what they were now seeing as a political threat to their hold on power. In Jerusalem, he was taken at spear-point by Roman legionaries, made to sit through a sham trial of heresy by the Pharisees using a paid stooge to testify against Issua, and then sentenced by the Pilate to be executed by crucifiction, ironically only a few miles north of where he had been born just over thirty years earlier.

Some three hundred years later, with the rapid rise to popularity of Issua's version of Judaism threatening to replace the religous pantheon of gods that formed the backbone of the failing Holy Roman Empire, Emperor Constantine set plans into motion to adopt this new religion as the official Roman religion. Realising that the Roman empire could no longer maintain its absolute rule as a power through military might, the only chance the Empire had of surviving was to become a theocratic power instead. To this end, the First Council of Nicaea was formed to gather, codify and edit a mixture of the available gospels with the brutal aspects of Rome's vengeful pantheon of gods so they were acceptable to the Roman people. As the Roman people (and their subjugated cultures) were used to the concepts of gods (or a god), the Council decided to make Issua a demigod, removed all reference to his marriage to Miryam and portrayed her as a repentant prostitute, and because Rome and the theocrats were male, deliberately excluded the three gospels written by women, and created the myth of the virgin birth.

To ensure that this new religion became the official and only verson and the books chosen by the Nicean council were the only accepted "canon", one Bishop Athanasius decreed that all non-canonical books and gospels to be found and destroyed, and decreed that anyone who did not accept the 'new' religion were to be killed. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church was born.

Much of the original teachings of Issua did survive the pogrom of destruction, with several sub-sects going to great lengths to hide un-edited copies away from the long arm of Constantine and his pet bishopric. Today, the purest form of the original teachings of Issua can be found in the Egyptian Coptic Church. The oldest surviving texts of the first gospels are part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Nag Hammadi Library, and translations show an almost perfect match with today's Coptic and surviving Gnostic gospels. Much to the Roman Catholic Church's chagrin, the rulers of Egypt at the time decided not to hand over these holy texts, but keep them temselves as a national historic treasure available to all scholars, instead of being locked away in the Vatican's library and out of reach of all but the highest-placed clergymen of the See.

Issua is, of course, better known as Jesus Christ, aka Jesus of Nazareth, and his wife Miryam is otherwise known as Mary Magdalene.