In the National Library, among other books, I found a book entitled 'Factual Report from the Eternal World for All Peoples of the Earth', which I will call 'Factual Report' for short. It was written by a mediator called Griesmayer. The author claimed to be a man called John, who had been a constant companion of Christ. On behalf of all of Christ's disciples, he endeavoured to tell and restore the truth about Christ's life and teachings.
The factual account quickly impressed me for several reasons:
First, he formulated faith as ignorance and the knowledge of truth as a prerequisite for true charity. After my disappointing experiences with religious people, this was balm for my still open wounds.
Secondly, he explained the origin of the worlds in terms of evolution. He answered open questions logically and reasonably, not as fabulously and contradictorily as the Church.
Thirdly, he explained why Christ was hated and nailed to the cross. He said that Christ had called the God of the Jews evil and cruel, and the Jewish scriptures a tissue of lies. As a result, he had increasingly incurred the wrath of the Jewish leaders, who were looking for ways to eliminate him.
Fourthly, the report spoke of the Essenes, from whom Christ had actually come. A few years later, numerous scrolls were found at Qumran, on the Dead Sea near Jerusalem, which underlined the importance of the Essenes, who had previously been mentioned only in passing. In scholarly circles, people began to wonder whether Christ might not have been a non-Jew, descended from a Jewish Essene sect.
Fifthly, the factual report confirms that communication between this world and the next is possible. Neither the editor of the Factual Report, a certain Franz Woller from the seventh district of Vienna, nor the writer Griesmayer could have written the Factual Report, as neither had a scientific education.
After being thrown out of the Society for the Unification of World Christianity, I felt happy again. “What a joy“, I thought, “if the report were true, if it were really possible to receive messages from the past! I wanted to, I had to find out!”
The first thing I tried to do was to check whether the content of the report was really the spiritual work of one or more beings from the beyond. To do this, I first visited the editor, Franz Woller, and soon realised that the elderly gentleman, who was a policeman by profession, could not have been the author of the work. You didn't have to be a linguist to see the enormous stylistic and grammatical difference between Woller's long preface and the rest of the book. Such an report could perhaps have been written by a historian if he had also read and thought a lot about the history of development, physics, geography and other subjects.
Woller told me that a certain Raimund Kubasek had founded an association in the 1920s to research parapsychological phenomena, particularly the question of whether there was life after death. In the spirit of knowledge, he tried to obtain information through a mediator, which he did. Dr Josef Griesmayer, the mediators's son, wrote to me about this in a letter dated 5 October 1993:
"Brother Raimund (all members of the Association considered themselves brothers and sisters) found a mediator from his professional circle. False beings took advantage of the first good results and demanded faith again. Brother Raimund did not go along with this and reproached the manifesting beings for their lies. This led to a break with the mediator and a large part of the members of the association went with the mediator and founded a new association. Only a small number remained with Brother Raimund. He looked for a new mediator. My father had psychic abilities (he could feel the radiation of the earth and the human body with his bare hands without any aids), so he offered himself to Brother Raimund as a mediator. The training to become a speaking and writing mediator was arduous, and as a child I was able to witness the whole development as it took place in our small apartment. Through the search for truth and critical questioning, spiritual beings came who were able to answer the questions asked with scientific precision. Finally, the offer that a witness to the events of some 2000 years ago, namely John the Younger, would write an report of Christ, his life and his teachings".
At the time of my research, Kubasek had been dead for many years, so I can only judge his personality from the statements of those who knew him and from his writings. At the time of writing, I borrowed his works again from the Austrian National Library and gained the impression that Raimund Kubasek must have been a sincere seeker of truth and an open and honest man. He founded the 'Cosmological Club' in the third district of Vienna and endeavoured to “shed light on the darkness of the secret sciences”. In numerous experiments he tried to find out the truth about communication with the other side and life after death.
In 1922 Kubasek published his 'Ray of Light into the Darkness of the Secret Sciences'. Some time later there was a break between Kubasek and the other side, because Kubasek did not want to accept the teachings and demanded the knowledge of the truth. He then built up the mediator Griesmayer and received the medial messages. The mediator Griesmayer, whom I visited together with Mr Woller, confirmed Woller's statements. Griesmayer was already over eighty years old and had not been able to be used as a mediator for years. Griesmayer was a lovely man who told me many stories, such as how he once drove a tram through the streets of Vienna without realising it. That night he sat down, picked up a pencil and paper and began to write. In the morning, still feeling rested, he was amazed at what he had written. Kubasek took the messages and typed up a few copies.
Years passed, I pondered, studied, discussed and compared with other books. There were moments when I thought I had discovered the truth, then I found another weakness and the search continued. Days of despair followed, and many years later - I was already living in Amaliendorf - the day came when I threw the factual report into the oven. I had had enough; I wanted to free myself; I saw the report as refuted and thought it necessary to wipe the slate clean.
I was able to destroy the paper, but not the thoughts inside me. More years passed and I asked my brother Richard for the report I had once given him. Having matured, I believed I could see things more clearly again. Once again I was on the verge of accepting the report. Then a Dr. Paulus called me, who in the meantime had published the factual report in book form. I also met the mediator's son, Dr Griesmayer, and another doctor who was a friend of Paulus. Now the final liberation from the report came faster than I could have imagined. Paulus and his devoted friend were not willing to discuss it, and I once again saw certain practical effects of the teachings contained in the factual report. Once again, I urged the assembled group not to take anything, not even the factual report, for granted, but to do more research and keep an open mind:
“What is the sense and value of accepting and spreading this new book as a kind of new book religion?” I urged. “Some of the statements in the report are uncertain, and none of what is predicted for the future has actually happened yet!”
“You don't have to take the report so literally, dear Sauerschnig,” Paul explained without a trace of uncertainty. "It will take a long time for people to understand the spirit of the factual report!"
“But it is written in the factual report that the Spirit of Truth will rise again after 2000 years, that some people will recognise it and pass it on to mankind. Some nations will accept what has been recognised and then the others will follow. Peace and Truth will come into this world!”
"Dear Sauerschnig, I appreciate that you take the factual report so literally, but you see too narrowly. I have the spiritual greatness to see these things correctly. Everything will come, not in our time, perhaps in a few hundred years. Have you read my book about it?”
When someone spoke of spiritual greatness, I reacted very negatively. Woller also thought he was a great man. He talked about his spiritual vision reaching into eternity. He also thought he was a great spirit because he had supposedly had a spiritual experience with Christ. But from what I had seen of him, he was little more than average intelligence. The books and pamphlets he was so keen to write were so repulsive that I could only leaf through them.
The factual report did not mention the possibility that the factual report might not be accepted for several hundred years. Woller was already disappointed that despite his efforts and the many books he had sent, nothing had happened. Even Kubasek, according to Woller, died in discord with the beings of the other world.
Even then I knew how easily people can err and how time can change their ideas. I suspect that there are not only enough spiritual beings in the hereafter who first think they are Napoleon, but I have also heard of dozens who claim to be Jesus, Christ or Jesus Christ, without realising what banalities they usually utter.
I have to admit that I often have difficulty remembering events and conversations that took place 25 or more years ago, so that I can only reproduce quotations in a sense, and rarely literally. With each new year, memories fade, and I would rather not know what I would write in another 25 years, despite my efforts to always tell the truth.
“We need to talk about whether the factual report was written by beings who were unaware of their error, however unimaginable that may seem to us.” I tried to argue. “We don't know how the events of 2000 years ago were recorded. Did the beings in the afterlife write down and archive Christ's speeches? Why didn't Christ's disciples keep better records and bury them for posterity if they knew from Christ's speeches exactly how the evil one would cause trouble in the spirit? Or were they just reproducing what Christ might have said after 2000 years?”
No one was prepared to entertain such a sacrilegious thought. Seeing the futility of the situation, I said goodbye and left.
I retained the idea that all belief is a form of ignorance and that truth can only be found in the recognition of facts. The factual report and my subsequent studies made me realise that the Jewish God is a cruel being, hard, unjust, vicious, mean and merciless. I also maintained, because it is simply my nature, that the world can only be transformed through love, understanding, equality and justice. But it was not only in the report that I found such sublime thoughts.
For a long time I wondered what I could write about a person as significant as Jesus Christ. On the one hand, he influenced world history like no other and shaped the destinies of millions upon millions of people. On the other hand, we do not find a single line written by him. Could he not read and write, or could he write but did not write, or did he write but his writings were lost or destroyed?
Whichever way you look at it, it is not good that we find no writings by Christ, who was supposedly able to perform miracles. If he could bring the dead back to life, then it cannot have been so difficult for him to put his ideas and intentions down on paper and keep them safe for posterity. If the Essenes were able to preserve hundreds of scrolls into the twentieth century, then Christ and his disciples could have done at least as well. Or are there writings that are hidden from the public?
Why is there not a single line written by his many disciples? What did the apostles do? Did they just listen to their great master, or did they write to make sure they didn't forget anything? Confucius, Laozi and Buddha soon had disciples who sought to preserve their masters' thoughts for the future. And the all-powerful Christ, who could see into the past and the future, the supposed Son of God, was supposed to have been so stupid as not to preserve his teachings for the future?
It is hard to believe that Christ and/or his disciples and contemporaries did not write down much of what they said in letters, notes and works. Some of what was written was lost, and the rest was ruthlessly destroyed.
In the absence of authentic writings, and in view of the need for a critique of the writings and forgeries, I think it appropriate to juxtapose the ecclesiastical traditions with some statements from the factual report. Perhaps a miracle will happen and people will think and research about the life and work of Christ openly, objectively, without prejudice and without murder and manslaughter.
Using the factual report as an example, I hope to show how one can err in the spirit of knowledge and cause harm without evil intent. From the factual report you can see, if you wish, how the spirits of truth can err when they think they can attach truth to a person and capture it in a book.
The Factual Report claims that Christ was not born of Jewish parents. Mary, Joseph and Christ's disciples were Essenes. These claims are strangely supported by numerous scrolls found between 1947 and 1956 at Qumran on the Dead Sea, about 30 kilometres from Jerusalem. Legend has it that a young shepherd boy from a Bedouin tribe, looking for a goat, found an opening in a rock face and a cave below. Inside the cave were several clay pots containing scrolls. Later, more caves were discovered and a total of several hundred scrolls were found.
I bought the first complete German translation by Dr Johann Maier and read about the spirits of light and the reign of Belial (Satan), about the origin of man according to all kinds of spirits, about the god of knowledge and so on. I couldn't make sense of the translations, but at least I got confirmation that the statements in the factual report could not have been invented by Kubasek or Griesmayer - such ideas could not have been in their heads!
In 1995 or 1996 I came across a critical report by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh entitled 'The Jesus Secret' and subtitled 'The Qumran Scrolls and the Truth about Christianity'. It describes how a so-called 'international group' of scholars, set up by the highest echelons of the Church, defends its monopoly on the interpretation of the texts by any means necessary and silences all those scholars who do not adhere to an early 'agreement'. The authors try to explain why 75 per cent of the 800 or so manuscripts written in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic are withheld from the public. Despite this, many copies of the sealed scrolls have been smuggled out and carefully examined by the authors and academic experts. “These documents show that the beginnings of Christianity have been misinterpreted. There are also passages from the New Testament that are surprisingly different from the versions we know. And they show the early Christian community and Jesus of Nazareth in a new light.” This is a brief summary of the book's cover.
The factual report goes on to say that after a period of many millions of years of human existence, during which people knew the eternal as well as the true meaning and purpose of earthly existence, peoples came into this world who were less devoted to knowledge than to faith, and who worshipped different gods. However, these peoples could still distinguish between good and evil. Their religious cult consisted of serving the good gods through acts of charity, while fearing and protecting themselves from the evil gods through sacrifice. Their more childlike faith and relatively good character did not allow them to confuse evil with good, or lie with truth.
There was also a people, we are told, who believed in only one God. This supposed God told the leaders of this people, through communications in his spirit through intermediaries, that he was the sole creator of the world and of life on earth, and that they alone should worship, adore and serve him. The leaders and the people believed such messages, delivered in a prophetic spirit, and worshipped this spirit being as God, willingly accepting his offer to call the chosen people of God. The entity that claimed to be God then entered into a bloody covenant with the people through its mediators and, under terrible threats and curses, enacted laws that hypocritically concealed lies, wickedness and bloodlust, and that forced its chosen people to rob, murder or enslave other peoples, whom it itself chose. He demanded that his people constantly sacrifice to him animals that had been slaughtered in a torturous manner, and that he destroy any human being who dared to deny him as a god or to consider the effect and activity in his mind to be false and evil.
According to the facts, around the time of Christ's birth, there were scattered all over the world larger and smaller groups of people whose common pursuit was the cultivation of free knowledge, the knowledge of eternal life and of the Eternal, whom they recognised as the greatest and most spiritually perfect of all spiritual beings. These people were Essenes, considered themselves brothers and sisters, and addressed each other as 'brother' or 'sister'. They maintained contact with spiritual beings from the beyond and were aware that the time was near when the Eternal One himself would come as a human being and speak to men in his Spirit of Truth.
Thus there were several Essene communities in the land of Judea and Galilee who, informed by the intermediaries of the coming events, formed a close spiritual community and were in constant contact with each other. They were tolerated by the other peoples. Only the Jews are said to have been hostile to them. They tried to harm them and threatened their lives.
In Nazareth there lived a brother called Joseph Aramaeus, who was a carpenter by trade and the leader of the local Essene community. Around this time he fled with Mary to Egypt to escape persecution by the Jews, who had learned of the imminent birth of Christ. On the way, Christ was born and remained in Egypt until he was seven years old, later teaching among other peoples.
Christ is said to have spent the last period of his ministry in Jerusalem and the surrounding area. There he is said to have healed the sick, analysed the Jewish legal code and portrayed Yahweh as Satan (!). When the space in the city became too small for the large crowds, Pilate is said to have asked him to hold his sermons outside the city wall at Herod's Gate. According to John, he is said to have picked apart the Jewish legal code on the hill of Salem in front of thousands of people, including many Jewish leaders and rabbis. I offer some extracts from Christ's discourses to give an idea of how the Jewish leaders' deadly hatred of Christ might have arisen.
I quote:
The writing of this liar begins:
In the beginning God created heaven and earth, but the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. God made the light and saw that it was good. He called the light day and the darkness night. On the second day God divided the waters from the waters and made the firmament. He called the firmament the sky. On the third day God gathered together the waters that were under the heaven and called the dry land Earth; and he saw that it was good. And he said, 'Let the earth bring forth grass, which shall be green, and bring forth seed; and let fruit trees, which shall yield their fruit, and their seed be in them. And God saw that it was good. On the fourth day God made the lights in the sky to divide the day from the night; two great lights, the greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night; and the stars; and he saw that it was good. On the fifth day, God made the moving creatures with living souls out of the water and the birds above the earth, and then the great sea monsters. He blessed them and saw that they were good. On the sixth day God created the animals of the earth according to their kind, the tame cattle, the creeping things, the wild animals and man in the image of God to have dominion over everything. God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his face the breath of life; he put him in the Garden of Eden.
On the seventh day God rested from his work. He blessed and sanctified the day and perhaps washed his hands of the last work in the creation of man, which he had soiled with mud and clay.
Now consider how stupid this tale of lies about creation invented by Moses and his God is. This poor God first created the earth and the light of day and the living plants on it, and then he made the lights in the sky, including the shining sun and the moon. A child would laugh at these stupid lies and wonder what this God made the animals out of, and what the excrement of the earth must be like to turn into a living human body with a single breath.
According to this pack of lies, plants, worms and animals had two sexes. Only in the case of man had this god of lies forgotten to create gender. The poor man had to look for a helper among the animals, but he found none. So the forgetful Creator had no choice but to create a helper for man who would be like him, to replace the animal. He put the man into a deep sleep, took a rib from him, closed the wound with flesh and made a woman out of it. This time the God of Lies did not want to stain himself with filth and did not want to make the effort to breathe the breath of life into the face of the woman. That is why the servants of this creator of lies consider woman to be the subject of man and not his equal...
Consider the scriptures further and look at the garden of pleasure that the alleged God has planted. As well as gold and precious jewels, the garden had many trees that were beautiful to look at and whose fruit was delicious to eat. Among them were the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
So the God who creates from nothing took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to take care of it and to keep it. He commanded him, "You may freely eat of any tree of the garden, but you must not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.” Then the creator, curious to hear what the man called the beasts and his helper, listened to him. They were both naked and not ashamed, but the serpent was more cunning than all the animals in the world that this god had created out of nothing. It said to the woman, “Why did God tell you not to eat of any tree in the garden?” And the woman said unto the serpent, “We must not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither must we touch the tree, lest we die.” And the serpent said unto the woman, “Ye shall not surely die. For God shall know you when you eat of it, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and pleasant to the eye, and pleasant to the sight. She took some of its fruit, ate it and gave some to her husband, who also ate it. Then their eyes were opened, and when they saw that they were naked, they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.
Look at this stupid story of lies! What does he who calls himself God but is Satan want to achieve? He is presenting the naked human body with its sexual structure as something to be ashamed of and looking at each other as a crime!
I have explained to you the origin, reason, purpose and meaning of sex on earth. You scribes, priests and rabbis know this, yet you hypocritically wrap yourselves in the lies of your scriptures. Yet each of you has five to ten wives who are completely disenfranchised and whom you buy and sell like animals.
At this, the scribes, superiors and rabbis began to grumble and curse. One of them shouted at Christ: ”We have our god and act according to his law. But you blaspheme our god because you are poor!”
Christ replied:
Yes, this liar wants to be your God and you want to be his servants. You like to follow his law because it offers you earthly advantages at the expense of the poor and the seduced.
Let us take a closer look at your god and his laws. The first of his laws forbids man, on pain of death, to know good and evil, lest his lies and his wickedness be known.
How untrustworthy this God is is shown by the blatant lie that a snake - that is, an animal that by its very nature cannot speak at all - had to come and tell people that there is eternal life and that, as a cognitive being, it can recognise good and evil. So even his own snake lies to him and proves that there is no death, but there is truth.
According to this text, this God walked in the garden in the cool of the afternoon and called the human couple to account for transgressing his commandment. He dealt first with the man, then with the woman, and finally with the serpent, swearing and dictating punishments. He ordered the snake, which by nature has no feet and always crawls on the ground, to crawl on its belly from now on. He also ordered it to eat dust every day, which it has not done to this day. Then he put enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent, and the serpent shall pierce the heel of the woman. And she shall be tormented with the pains of childbirth, and she shall bring forth children in pain, and she shall be subject to the power of her husband, who shall rule over her. Because of the man, whom he now called Adam because he had been tempted by the woman, he cursed the earth and then said to him: "With much toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will bear thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the herbs of the earth until you return to the earth, for you are earth and will become earth again.”
Think how stupid this lie is and how full of malice and vengeance it is. But that's not all; this God's punishment continues... This God and Lord then expels Adam from the beautiful Garden of Eden and places cherubim with flaming swords in front of the Garden to guard the way to the Tree of Life.
See what ignorance these lies breed among men, and how you elders and rabbis take advantage of this ignorance! You hypocrites and blind guides who walk in the 'darkness of lies' and block the path of those who seek the 'light of truth' with cunning, hypocrisy, violence, punishment and revenge, are the greatest spiritual scum; you consciously act in lies and create evil for yourselves for time and eternity!
Let us continue in this book of lies and fairy tales!
The woman whom Adam called Eve is said to have given birth to two sons, Cain and Abel. As soon as these four people lived on earth, the killing and sacrificing began. God began to curse Cain for killing his brother. Cain then went to another land and there he recognised his wife, who bore him a son. Why he was able to find a wife in a strange land when there were only three people on earth is not explained in the Scriptures.
The lies of your god are getting thicker and thicker. So now follows a genealogy from Adam to Noah, how one begat the other - even at the age of eight hundred years and more - and how a Methusalah is said to have been nine hundred and sixty-nine years old.
Then this God suddenly regretted that he had made man on earth, and his heart was sad. He decided to destroy all living things, from man to worm. Only Noah found favour with him. According to his plan, Noah had to build an ark for himself and his family, which was to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high, and in which he had to put seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean animals, together with the necessary food. When Noah had completed the ark and entered with the animals, God shut him in. Then he opened the floodgates of the sky and opened the wells, so that everything on earth that had a breath was drowned, except Noah and his animals.
What do you scribes, elders and rabbis have to say about this horror story?
Tell me, how could Noah have accommodated in this relatively small ark one or seven pairs of each of the earth's animals, together with the food necessary for them, for one hundred and fifty days?
Think about the impossibility of accommodating all the world's animal species in such a way, and admit how silly the story of Noah is.
After the cruel story of Noah, there is another genealogy to make people believe that all humans descended from Noah and that Adam and his wife Eve were the first humans. Names and peoples were mentioned, such as the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites, who lived contentedly in this region twenty thousand years ago, when there were no Hebrews on earth.
I tell you, these peoples were Essenes and were very close to the truth about me and eternal life. It was only when your fathers, at the command of their god, attacked them, murdered them and plundered them. The Jebusite people lived here in this land. The foundations of your greatest temple in this city, where the liar and deceiver has his sanctuary, are the remains of the House of Truth of the ancient Jebusites.
At this the chief priests and rabbis began to shout, and some of them cried out to the people: “This one calls our sanctuary, which our fathers built for our god, unclean. This blasphemer should be stoned to death on the spot!”
Christ went on speaking and answered them:
Yes, my words of truth hurt you. But I must show the people the lies of your writings, so that they may know what evil spirit you follow. The words of your scriptures prove that once he begins to lie, he goes from one lie to another. Then he tries to cover up one lie with another.
Hear what value your God places on your foreskin when he says:
You shall circumcise the flesh of the foreskin of every male among you, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you and your descendants after you, for an everlasting covenant. On the eighth day you shall be circumcised; every male among you who is born in the house, or who is bought, and is not of your tribe, shall be circumcised. This covenant upon your flesh shall be for an everlasting covenant. If a male is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, his soul shall be cut off, for he has broken my covenant.
Behold the spirit that devises and demands such things! Decide for yourselves whether there can be a greater spiritual abomination than this god. But you reverently carry out his bloody wishes and thus satisfy his base desires. By calling this spiritual abomination god, you yourselves admit that you want to be the same as this liar.
The covenants and bargains of this god continue. So he says to Abraham:
“You shall no longer call your wife Sarai, but Sarah. For I will bless you and give you a son by her.” Then Abraham fell on his face, laughed at this god and said: “How can a son be born to a man of a hundred years? Sarah is ninety years old and cannot bear children.” But this God continued to speak: “Yes, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. For I will establish my covenant with him after him for ever.” It is said that in return for the many promises, Abraham made all men undergo horrible mutilations, and that God's abominable lust was satisfied by the blood and pain.
It is also written that Abraham was visited by three men who were angels of god, and he gave them water to wash their feet. He entertained them with cakes of ashes and a roasted calf prepared with milk and butter. Then the three inquired where his wife Sarah was. Sarah was in the tent, and when she heard them talking about the birth of a son, she laughed and said: “Now that I have grown old, and my master has grown old, shall I still have lust?”
Listen to the witty conversation of the angels of this God with Abraham and Sarah. These alleged angels spoke only of pleasure, of giving birth, of washing feet, of cakes of ashes, of roasting veal with butter and milk.
Yes, as the villain thinks, so is he and so does he create! (End of quote).
According to the factual report, Moses really did live and through the media (prophets) wrote the scriptures about creation, Adam and Eve, Abraham, etc. with his god Yahweh. Unfortunately, it took me a relatively long time to learn that the history of Judaism did not unfold as the Old Testament and many believers would have us believe. Gerd Lüdemann, Professor of the History and Literature of Early Christianity at the University of Göttingen, states in his work 'Altes Testament und christliche Kirche':
"No book of Moses was written by Moses, no psalm of David by David, no proverb of Solomon by Solomon, no vision of Daniel by Daniel, very few words of the prophets by the prophets under whose names the books have been handed down. There was no exodus from Egypt, no revelation at Sinai and no giving of the Ten Commandments. Abraham, Isaac, Moses and Joshua are mere names; Jericho was never conquered. These sentences cannot be repeated often enough, because the opposite has been part of a sacred past for almost 2000 years, which has served church officials and politicians to maintain their power.”
A comparison with other sources on the Internet shows that other historians are also aware that the historical accounts contained in the Old Testament are fabulous and implausible. For example, the Internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia (chapter 'History of Israel') says of the so-called Exodus from Egypt:
“However, a mass exodus as described in the Bible seems hardly possible, especially if the Pharaoh knew about it and tried to prevent it militarily. The land of Canaan itself was at least partly occupied by Egyptians, and there were several Egyptian fortresses with entire garrisons along the route, so an escape from Egypt would have ended in Egypt again.
The route that the Israelites supposedly took to Canaan cannot be reconstructed exactly, despite the biblical description of the route. The exact locations of the Jam-suf (Red Sea) and Mount Sinai are also unclear. This is also cited by some scholars as evidence that there was probably no significant 'exodus from Egypt'.
According to the biblical account, it was Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt. He, whose existence is also doubted by historians, is still considered the most important prophet in Judaism.”
I have long been aware that fairy tales can be invented and turned into historical sources. The realisation that a person like Moses was also an invention did not shock me. But I realised that the statements about the life of the Israelites in Egypt, their exodus, the origin of the Ten Commandments, etc., which are put into the mouth of Christ in the factual report, can only be pure fantasy or invention. And that really shakes me over and over again, that people - whether in this world or in the next - can be so misled and deceived that they invent 'truths' full of conviction that could never have happened that way.
You can say, 'What do I care about the factual report', but you can't dismiss it so easily. Similar deceptions and aberrations can be found in many areas, you just don't notice them! I don't want to give examples because I don't want to offend anyone and because the spiritual aberrations and deceptions are not only related to religion, esotericism, etc., but to the general way of thinking by which people live and are governed in today's world.