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NOT SO

DYERED

-IN-

THE-WOOL:

Meet the New Boss,
Same as the Old Boss

God incarnate spoke, saying:

“When an unclean spirit comes out of a man, it passes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ On its return, it finds the house vacant, swept clean, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and dwell there. And the final plight of that man is worse than the first. So will it be with this wicked generation” (Matt. 12:44,45).

Dear Team Dyer, “what we have” in the West wasn’t a creation of Byzantium… unless you’re referring to the project of Julian the Apostate, and bishops like Pegasius of Troas who repeatedly told emperor Julian that he adopted the “rags” of holy orders to save the temples of the gods.

Dear Mr. Dyer, since you say that we don’t even learn about Byzantium anymore, let us learn something from an early Byzantine emperor, indeed, the nephew of Constantine who gave his name to Constantinople.

Our text is The Works of the Emperor Julian, trans. Wilmer Wright, Ph.D., The Loeb Classical Library, vol. 3 (New York: G.P Putnam’s Sons, 1913), pg. 49 – 55. The year is late 362 or early 363 AD; Julian writes to a certain unnamed “priest” about a most illuminating fellow, whose inner light was darkness for while he claimed to be a Christian externally, he worshipped Helios secretly, and kept devotional fires burning before a shrine of Homer’s dead sainted Hector, and “bishop” Pegasius did so on the grounds that the pagans “worship a brave man who was their own citizen,

just as
we worship
the martyrs….”

Julian’s Letter to a Priest (c. 362 AD):

I should never have favoured Pegasius unhesitatingly if I had not had clear proofs that even in former days, when he had the title of Bishop of the Galilaeans, he was wise enough to revere and honour the gods. This I do not report to you on hearsay from men whose words are always adapted to their personal dislikes and friendships, for much current gossip of this sort about him has reached me, and the gods know that I once thought I ought to detest him above all other depraved persons. But when I was summoned! to his headquarters by Constantius of blessed memory | was travelling by this route, and after rising at early dawn I came from Troas to Hios about the middle of the morning. Pegasius came to meet me, as I wished to explore the city,— this was my excuse for visiting the temples,—and he was my guide and showed me all the sights. So now let me tell you what he did and said, and from it one may guess that he was not lacking in right sentiments towards the gods.

Hector has a hero’s shrine there and his bronze statue stands in a tiny little temple. Opposite this they have set up a figure of the great Achilles in the unroofed court. If you have seen the spot you will certainly recognise my description of it. You can learn from the guides the story that accounts for the fact that great Achilles was set up opposite to him and takes up the whole of the unroofed court.

Now I found that the altars were still alight, I might almost say still blazing, and that the statue of Hector had been anointed till it shone. So I looked at Pegasius and said: “ What does this mean? Do the people of Ilios offer sacrifices?’? This was to test him cautiously to find out his own views.

He replied:
“Is it not natural that they should worship a brave man who was their own citizen, just as we worship the martyrs?” Now the analogy was far from sound; but his point of view and intentions were those of a man of culture, if you consider the times in which we then lived. Observe what followed. “Let us go,” said he, “to the shrine of Athene of Ilios.”

Thereupon with the greatest eagerness he led me there and opened the temple, and as though he were producing evidence he showed me all the statues in perfect preservation, nor did he behave at all as those impious men do usually, I mean when they make the sign on their impious foreheads, nor did he hiss to himself as they do. For these two things are the quintessence of their theology, to hiss at demons and make the sign of the cross on their foreheads.

[Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie,
pp. 40, 221, discusses the practice in magic, and especially in the ritual of Mithras, of hissing and whistling.]

These are the two things that I promised to tell you. But a third occurs to me which I think I must not fail to mention. This same Pegasius went with me to the temple of Achilles as well and showed me the tomb in good repair; yet I had been informed that this also had been pulled to pieces by him. But he approached it with great reverence; ] saw this with my own eyes. And I have heard from those who are now his enemies that he also used to offer prayers to Helios and worship him in secret.

Would you not have accepted me as a witness even if I had been merely a private citizen? Of each man’s attitude towards the gods who could be more trustworthy witnesses than the gods themselves? Should I have appointed Pegasius a priest if I had any evidence of impiety towards the gods on his part? And if in those past days, whether because he was ambitious for power, or, as he has often asserted to me, he clad himself in those rags in order to save the temples of the gods, and only pretended to be irreligious so far as the name of the thing went—indeed it is clear that he never injured any temple anywhere except for what amounted to a few stones, and that was as a blind, that he might be able to save the rest—well then we are taking this into account and are we not ashamed to behave to him as Aphobius did, and as the Galilaeans all pray to see him treated?

If you care at all for my wishes you will honour not him only but any others who are converted, in order that they may the more readily heed me when I summon them to good works, and those others may have less cause to rejoice. But if we drive away those who come to us of their own free will, no one will be ready to heed when we summon.”

Question:
How did “bishop” Pegasius save the temples of the gods?

Answer:
Obviously the same way way his soul was feignedly saved, or just like you described how in the times of the so-called church fathers, “the idols were destroyed and they would CONVERT the basilicas into orthodox churches.”

You meant to say the idols were destroyed but the temples themselves were converted.

The question is whether the daemons that were formerly venerated in those temples were truly driven out or were they too “converted” and was the conversion sound, truly orthodox, or a deceitful act of sophistry accompanied by lying signs and wonders, buttressed by lewd fables sung by lying hypocrites with calloused consciences?

The old Greek pagans like Hesiod, Plato, Apuleius believed in celestial hierarchies.

They believed many of their “gods” were formerly men of differently ranked eras: eg, the Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, Age of Heroes, and the Iron Age.

Their fated rank in the afterlife’s celestial hierarchy was fixed by their merit before death. Plato believed that in his ideal republic, men of quality, saintly men, inventors, those who significantly contribute something to society would join member’s of Hesiod’s golden age after death and become guardian “daemons” of those dwelling on earth (The Republic, bk. 5, 468e–469a).

In Plato’s Symposium (202e-203a), he tells us that the daemons also acted as intermediaries between supplicant humans and the higher sovereign Gods (represented by the sun and moon).

So, the ancient pagans believed their saints underwent apotheosis after death, turned into lower level intermediary guardian gods or angels of sorts, but –while their living being was venerated through statues and icons– their bones and graves weren’t neglected. The pagans venerated the bones and graves of their dead saints.

Socrates said:

“Then we will further say that they [the dead] are never to be forgotten, and that we will institute public memorials and sacrifices to them, as to daemons if the Pythia approves, and if not, then as to fortunate and divine men” (Republic, bk. 5, 469a).

It appears that Socrates would have desired to established a religious calendar offering many sacrificial fast days (if fasting counts as sacrifice) and other such rites to venerate the dead saints; about 360 years after Christ, Christians became so indiscriminate in their frenzied veneration of dead saints that a synod was called in Laodicea to stop congregations forming around the veneration of allegedly evil heretics. In part, canon 9 said, “The members of the Church are not allowed to meet in the cemeteries, nor attend the so-called martyries of any of the heretics, for prayer or service….” About 800 years later, Zonaras commented saying:

“By the word ‘service’ in this canon is to be understood the healing of sickness. The canon wishes that the faithful should under no pretence betake themselves to the prayers of heretical pseudo-martyrs nor pay them honour in the hope of obtaining the healing of sickness or the cure of their various temptations.”

According to the synod, Christians were seeking miracles by means of honoring the bones of criminals and Julian the Apostate complained about this, saying:

“You have filled the whole world with tombs and sepulchres, and yet in your scriptures it is nowhere said that you must grovel among tombs and pay them honour” [Contra Galilaeos, 335b-c (trans. W.C. Wright, Loeb)].

And the Apostate asks:

“Why do you grovel among tombs? Do you wish to hear the reason? It is not I who will tell you, but the prophet Isaiah: “They lodge among tombs and in caves for the sake of dream visions” (Is. 65:4). You observe, then, how ancient among the Jews was this work of witchcraft, namely, sleeping among tombs for the sake of dream vision” [Contra Galilaeos, 339e-340a (trans. Wright)].

The irony was rich with Julian, the student of a neo-platonist wizard whose whole religious system revolved around the ritual veneration of dead heroes, accusing the Christians of practicing witchcraft by venerating their dead saints, but there was something to it. Let every word be established by the mouth of two or three witness. Julian’s complaints and the synod’s ban were happening at almost exactly the same time. Is it not strange to see an allegedly orthodox synod aligning with the critique of an Apostate? Julian died in 363 AD and, in about 364 AD, the Laodicean synod banned Christians from seeking miracles by worshipping the bones of dead “heretics.” The problem was so severe and so prevalent that the synod enforced the ban with the threat of damnation.

It seems plain to me that Christianity had fallen so far toward old paganism that Julian concluded there was no reason to hide behind the rags of a mere external Christianity anymore when so many were openly reverting to the grave soaking of old Jewish witchery.

However, the impulse toward the worship of dead saints isn’t restricted to 4th century Rome and Byzantium, but it is seen far further east in China and India, indeed all over the world.

History proves the teeth of Buddha are said to be revered as miraculous relics. Indeed, according to the nature of apostasy, ever falling ever downward as it were without hitting the bottom, Buddha fell away from the Hinduism that itself was an apostasy away from Brahmanism which deviated from Vedism and, even though Buddha denounced all complex Brahman-like priestly hierarchies, all venerated images, and all anxious exertions of prayer, nevertheless, the Buddha’s disciples became the most hierarchical and frenzied manic idol-makers in the world.

They became rosary-clad devisers of mechanized prayer who painted the magical-formula-like words on spinning wheels, whose hearts burned with the not-very-nirvana-like flame of passionate belief that every rotation of the mechanical prayer wheel generated some deposit in a treasury of merit.

Similarly, the Egyptians believed that the different relics of the bones of Osiris were buried in each different cult center of Egypt, and they venerated those bone relics for the sake of their miraculous powers.

What matters is whether the old neo-platonic practice of venerating dead saints through their icons died, or whether it lived on in a new religious costume. The external rags of description that are used to cover up the inner truth of the matter don’t matter much.

If it is true that the early Christians purged the demons (disguised as good guardian daemons) from the idols and temples then, according to the teaching of the King Messiah, the demons would eventually say to themselves:

“I will return
to the house
I came from”

(Matt. 12:44).

Dear team Dyer, you confess that the temples themselves which were built to be the houses of the daemons (demons) were not destroyed, but in many cases they were merely converted, renamed after dead Christian saints who are now said to live as intermediaries for supplicant humans. For example, in the late 500’s AD, the pagan temple of the Parthenon that was dedicated to be a house of worship for a Virgin goddess was converted into a church dedicated to the veneration of the Virgin Mary and all the saint; and, in 609 AD, the Ephesian temple of Artemis the mother Goddess was converted to honor Mary theotokos.

Since this is the case, why wouldn’t the old demons who disguised themselves to the pagans as dead saints —who were gladly venerated through statues and icons— why wouldn’t those old demons return to their old homes and disguise themselves as the dead Christian saints, saying:

“I will return
to the house
I came from”

(Matt. 12:44).

Would they mind the renovations of the temples into basilicas? Even more, would they mind returning to new statues under new names? Why would they? We know from Apuleius who wrote in the first century that the goddess Isis was regarded as:

 “…mother of all Nature
and mistress of the elements… 
whose sole divinity is worshipped in differing forms, with varying rites, under many names,
by all the world”
(The Golden Ass,
bk. 11, ch. 5).

This daemon goddess Isis already went by many names. If she was once expelled from her home, then why wouldn’t she return to enjoy the comfort of her old home, statue, and veneration, renovated under a new name?

Maybe we must leave our father’s house to follow the in the faithful footsteps of father Abraham; surely, there were Chaldean church fathers in his day, but Abraham’s voyage of faith was itself a protest against the patristic tradition of Chaldea, and so we too may need to protest long revered “traditions of the elders.”

Tatian’s Address to the Greeks (Chapter 10), said:

“[T]hey [the Greeks] say that the Egyptians were the first to use of the names of the twelve Gods, and that the Greeks borrowed them from them; they too were the first to set up images and Shrines for the Gods… They [the gods] are mortal, say they; for what reason is Hera now never pregnant? Has she grown old? or is there no one to give you information?” 

How did Tatian fail to see the reason that Hera was “now never pregnant”? If the gods “are mortal” then a devil’s advocate might ask why the goddess Mary came to be considered “never pregnant.”

Let us wisely consider:

There came a time when Yeshua left His mother’s house, and yet returned to His Father’s house. There comes a time when a prodigal comes to his senses and returns to his father’s house. When demons are purged they yearn to return to their haunts. Let us beware, and make sure that our worship is Lawful in the sight of God, in accordance with the Torah, not conformed to customs of the nations that surround us, lest we foolishly exalt abominations in the holy places of the Most High, and we discover that our house has been left to us desolate, leaving only a howling vacuum of soul-destroying delusions designed to deceive those who don’t love the knowledge of the Truth.

We must remember the God who brought us out of the house of bondage, the Creator of heaven and earth who descended from heaven to earth, died, rose, and ascended to heaven.

In Deuteronomy 13:1-3, He says He will allow a false prophet to give “a sign or a wonder” that “comes to pass,” but we are warned that if that miracle-worker urges us saying, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ the we must “not listen” to him. In such a case, “God is testing” us to know whether we love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul. 

God will allow miracles to occur in conjunction with “other gods” in order to test us.

What were the “other gods” of the nations?

Looking at the principle of euhemerism in general, the idol that Nebuchadnezzar made in his own image, the brief and plain summary of the matter given in the Apocrypha [: “a father, afflicted with untimely mourning, made an image of the child so quickly taken from him, and now honored as a god what once was dead and handed down to his household mysteries and sacrifices. Then, in the course of time, the impious practice gained strength and was observed as law, and graven things were worshiped by royal decrees” (Wisdom of Solomon, 14:15,16)], the researches of G.S. Faber’s The Origin of Pagan Idolatry (1816), and Sir William Ridgway’s  The Origin of Tragedy: With Special Reference to the Greek Tragedians (1910), considering all this: we know what it meant to serve “other gods.”

The “other gods” were dead sainted heroes, the daemons described Hesiod, Socrates, and Apuleius. According to the theology of the gentile nations, the “other gods” were venerable men who died and allegedly became intermediary spiritual agents that carried prayers, answers, and blessed miracle-working energies, back and forth between people on earth and the higher sovereign gods. The graves and bones of the “other gods” were venerated, along with statues and icons made in their images.

El Elyon forewarned us 1500 years before Christ that He would allow false prophets to perform true miracles to occur in order to test whether we would cling to the Torah or lose our grip and slide aside to follow lies, to follow “other gods,” another Jesus of another Gospel (2 Cor. 11:4) that grounds religious authority on the Traditions of man as if they are divine, rather than in Revelation from the Father that affirms and upholds every jot and tittle of the written Law until new Jerusalem descends on earth. This is for sure: the greater Tradition of Man exists at the very heart of the worship of “other gods,” for the “other gods” of the nations are nothing more than dead men deemed deified, even though the gentiles claim they are alive and active, serving in an intermediary role, absorbing veneration through dead statues theurgically enlivened, and answering prayers.

The Lord of the Sabbath has etched His warning into the solid foundation of eternal Truth:

Deuteronomy 13:4

You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. ⁵ But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.