Jim Marrs - Rule by Secrecy - The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freema

Johannite heresy—the idea that John was the true messiah rather than Jesus. Although largely exterminated by the early church, this concept continued up to modern times within certain elements of Freemasonry as well as the Mandaeans of Iraq.

Following the crucifixion, the rivalries between the Jewish community and the early Christians—and even within Jesus' own followers—intensified.

There was a growing schism between the fundamentalist Jewish Christians belonging to the Essene sect and the Greek or Hellenized Christians in first century Jerusalem. Sounding much like the fundamentalists in America today, pious Jews attacked these foreigners for abandoning religious services for a Greek-style sports arena filled with wrestlers and discus throwers.

James and Mary Magdalene, as leaders of the Jerusalem church, were even at odds with Paul, who was bringing his Christian message to the gentiles to the north. There were immense squabbles over the most minute issues. In Galatians 5:12, Paul had become so exasperated with a continuing argument over circumcision that he expressed the hope that those initiating the controversy would emasculate themselves!

"The first Jewish Christians believed that obeying all of the stringent Jewish religious laws, including circumcision and eating only Kosher food, were necessary for salvation," noted Eddy. "Paul preached that salvation could be attained through faith and that the Jewish religious laws should not be allowed to impede people from becoming Christians. Paul's view eventually won out, as more and more gentiles converted to Christianity. By the third century they outnumbered the Jewish Christians by a large margin, defined Christianity according to Paul's theology, and began castigating the original Jewish Christians as heretics."

Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyon, by the middle of the second century condemned as heretics the followers of Jesus and James known as Nazarenes or the "poor." "They, like Jesus himself, as well as the Essenes and Zadokites [followers of King Solomon's chief priest Zadok] of two centuries before, expound upon the prophetic books of the Old Testament," Irenaeus complained. "They reject the Pauline epistles and they reject the apostle Paul, calling him an apostate [rejecter] of the Law." Gardner noted, "The Nazarenes . . . denounced Paul as a 'renegade' and a 'false apostle,' claiming that his 'idolatrous writings' should be 'rejected altogether.'"