While looking over Amazon in preparation for my previous post, I came across a lot of what I called “alternative history” books. Basically these are books which re-examine what we know about historical or religious stories, with one important detail changed. Generally they try to explain that the one piece on which they are hinged was either lost or buried through conspiracy.
Here’s a couple interesting-looking books in this genre, which suggest that the figure of Jesus was an intentional fictional invention on the part of the Romans. Caesar’s Messiah is a book which suggests:
The purpose of these texts [The Gospels] was to establish a peaceful Jewish sect to counterbalance the militaristic Jewish forces that had just been defeated by the Roman Emperor Titus in 70 A.D.
It’s actually a pretty interesting theory. Put together a hero who is all about love and peace, and who is a King, but with a Heavenly kingdom, rather than an earthly one. Sort of reminds of Nietzsche’s (I think) assertion that Christianity was a religion for slaves, which taught them to accept cruelty and persecution under the promise of “eternal reward.”
Another book called “Jesus Was Caesar” suggests just that: the mythological story of Jesus was actually patterned off of Caesar’s, but perhaps filtered through the eyes of another culture. Again, it’s an interesting idea, and maybe there’s something to it. Ultimately though, the more you delve into these areas of alternative interpretations of history, you start to realize that (1) everyone and their brother has a theory and (2) after a certain point, they all seem pretty much equally plausible.
And once you’ve studied enough of these things, you have to start asking yourself: What’s really going on here? Certainly all these competing theories can’t be factually true. Certainly some creative liberties are being taken here. I tend to see this from a more psycho-mythical perspective. Just like I think apocalypse beliefs act as a form of protest and vindication for certain cultural groups, this new trend in alternative history seems to serve a similar purpose - but in reverse. A group who is historically under-represented or repressed comes up with a story which “proves” that their position is not only valid today, but has a rich history entwined with the dominant view of history.
In many cases this may be true of course. Barbara Walker’s excellent Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets weaves together an extremely compelling tapestry showing alternative views of women in religion, myth and history. And then you have watered-down versions of the same thing with The Da Vinci Code, which espouses a repressed divine feminine in the form of Mary Magdalene. And then you have theories like Jesus being gay.
Stepping a bit farther out beyond that, you move into realms like Erich Von Daniken’s and Zecharia Sitchin’s assertions that earth was visited and perhaps “seeded” by ancient astronauts. And then there’s David Icke’s much maligned theory that certain of our political leaders are actually shape-shifting reptilian aliens.
I know, of course, that many ardent spiritual seekers would chafe at the comparison of Jesus’s relation with Mary Magdalene to David Icke’s reptilian conspiracy stuff. But just bear in mind that I’m looking for a moment at the social phenomena, and not worrying about the “truth” or either of them. Really, we don’t even need to restrict our search for more examples of this to contemporary times. We could just as easily reach for the nearest Bible.
Judaism seems very much to embrace this mythologizing of their history, in order to foment a sense of social cohesion and identity. People who have struggled together through great adversity to come to where they are now are more likely to stick together and value what they have. Whether or not all of it is factually true is quite another story. I’ve found interesting arguments about the Book of Genesis having been written in order to consolidate a monotheistic religion amongst a people who’d been exposed up to that time to polytheistic world views. In fact, the Old Testament is littered with evidence of this. But it obviously worked, because monotheism rose triumphant out of the splintered ashes of the pagan polytheistic world.
American history as well is no stranger to mythologizing and glorifying itself for purposes of social unity and identity. The Revolutionary War is often portrayed as a struggle against oppression, when in many regards it was actually fueled by a desire not to share colonial profits with the Brits back home. Or the Civil War is often portrayed (in the North) as a war to free the slaves. People conveniently forget that Lincoln only freed the slaves in the rebel states (over which he had no authority). And it’s been almost all but brushed aside that the South was trying to throw off the colonial shackles of the Northern economy. Don’t forget they called it “The War of Northern Agression.”
Another interesting correlation I see is happening on a more personal level in so-called “False Memories” or “Recovered Memory Syndrome.” Opponents of such practices say that hypnotists, therapists and others are helping people recover memories which may never have actually happened - and then treating them as reality. It’s a tricky territory in general, and the best way to approach it is probably on a case by case basis. But the parallel to “alternative history” books seems extremely strong and clear.
People invent and revise memories/history in order to support themselves in their current situation and help explain how we got there to begin with. This process is most frequently a mythologizing, which means that it tends to introduce some weird archetypal/unconscious contents into the mix. It could take the shape of something as “far out” as aliens, secret occult societies, or simply alternative lifestyles and sub-cultural value systems.
Once we become aware of this mythologizing tendency, we’re forced to ask: What’s real? What really happened? How can we know for sure? I’m not sure I have any definitive answer for that, but Norman O. Brown once wrote:
Everything is only a metaphor; there is only one poetry.
The problem ultimately is that once experiences have sailed into history, all we are left with is impressions, concepts, images and language - none of which can ever possibly be complete by themselves because of the limited viewpoints that we each have as people. Does that mean we ought to just go out and invent or throw things out according to whims? I certainly don’t think so, but the one thing you’ll realize when studying alternative history is that other people have had no such qualms. They’ve slashed and burned their way through what really happened in order to come up with “official versions” or what really happened that support their outlook. The best thing we can do is embrace our own biases and backgrounds, look out for our own projections, and take up our role proudly and conscientiously as “poets” according to Brown’s quote above. There’s no other way to navigate to the kind of Truth which transcends and encompasses “mere” facts.
- END -
ASSOCIATED CONTENT @TMBCHR (Auto-Generated)
