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As little as 300 years ago I would have been burned at the stake or tortured to death by some bigoted inquisition for asking such a question - is Jesus Christ an impostor? Today in the 21st century I could still be victimised and abused and in some fundamentalist States be ostracised. But the stark truth remains that we have very little evidence for the man that millions of Christian's around the globe worship. Surely, if, like Robin Hood and King Arthur, the character of Jesus was built upon that of a real man, then we would be able to find him in history? Well, we may very well have had him before our eyes the whole time!

Apollonius of Tyana was born in the 3rd or 4th Year BC in Tyana in Cappadocia, at 16 became a disciple of Pythagoras, renouncing flesh, wine and women. He wore no shoes and let his hair and beard grow long.

He soon became a reformer and stayed in the Temple of Aesculapius. As we were to discover in The Serpent Grail, this great Greek deity of healing was himself closely linked to what we would come to know as the serpent cult.

Apollonius was thought to have been one of the wisest of all men. This in itself gave us a clue, for Sophia or wisdom derived from the root Ophia or serpent and S'Ophia meant simply, shining serpent. You see, we discovered that Apollonius in all likelihood gained his immense wisdom whilst at the feet of the wise serpentine Naga sages of the Indian sub-continent.

We can see evidence of this from Philostratos [1], the biographer of Apollonius, who tells us of the journey to Kashmir to meet the Naga sage Larchus and of the "emerald valley set in a rim of pearls" and of the tales that Apollonius told his travelling companion, Damus, of dragons which lived in the hills. Both emerald and pearls have symbolic resonance with wisdom and knowledge and the dragons, which lived in the hills, were nothing more than the Naga, or serpent followers of the region.

Let's just take the time to look a little deeper into these Naga or Naaga:-

Naga is a Sanskrit term meaning literally Serpent (especially cobra), but interestingly it also holds the meanings - a tree; a mountain; the sun; the number seven; wisdom and initiate - all symbols and emblems we became familiar with in our search for those who worshipped of the serpent. The Naga were and indeed are said to reside in Patala, an underwater kingdom much like Atlantis, however this has a meaning similar to antipodes, the same name given by the ancients to the America's.

Naga is a similar term to the Mexican Nagals, the medicine (healers) and sorcerers who always kept a god in the shape of a serpent. In Burma they are Nats or serpent gods. Esoterically Naga is a term for wise men. There is a folk tradition that Nagas washed Gautama (Buddha) at his birth - the wise men visiting the deity on Earth. They are also said to have guarded him and the relics of his body after his death.

According to H. P. Blavatsky in Theosophical Glossary, the Naga were descended from Rishi Kasyapa who had twelve wives (therefore he is the sun), by whom he had numerous Nagas (serpents) and was the father of all animals. Rishi Kasyapa can therefore be none other than a progenitor of the Green Man, and this partly explains the reasons for the appearance of the snake in images of the Green Man and Horned God, such as upon the Gundestrup Cauldron.

The Naga of Kashmir instructed Apollonius of Tyana. This is the same Kashmir where the serpent tribes became famous for their healing skills. There is a theory that the Nagas descended from the Scythic race (who brought many of the Arthurian legends to the British Isles) and when the Brahmins invaded India they found a race of wise men, half gods, half demons (snakes). These men were said to be teachers of other nations and themselves instructed the Hindu's and Brahmans - no wonder that Apollonius visited them.

'Then come the Naaga, the Siren serpents, whose worship has been so important a factor in the folklore, superstition, and poetry of India from the earliest times down to-day. Cobras in their ordinary shape, they lived, like mermen and mermaids, more beneath the water, in a great luxury and wealth, more especially of germ, and sometimes, as we shall see, the name is used of the Dryads, the tree-spirits, equally wealthy and powerful. They could at will and often did, adopt the human form and though terrible if angered, were kindly and mild by nature. Not mentioned either in the Veda or in the pre-Buddhist Upanishads, the myth seems to be a strange jumble of beliefs, not altogether pleasant, about a strangely gifted race of actual men; combined with notions derived from previously existing theories of tree worship, and serpent worship, and river worship. But the history of the idea has still to be written. The Naagas are represented on the ancient bas-reliefs as men or women either with cobra's hoods rising behind their heads or with serpentine forms from their waist downwards.' Rhys Davies, Buddhist India, p.223.

These tree deities were Nagas anyway as Rhys Davies continues on page 223 'The tree-deities were called Naagas, and were able at will, like the Naagas, to assume the human form and in one story the spirit of a Nunyan tree who reduced the merchants to ashes is called a Naaga-raja, the tree itself is a dwelling place of Naaga. It seems that they also left behind myths of healing as a story in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Asiatic Society demonstrates. When there was an epidemic among the children, it seems the only answer was to bring them to a snake skin which was hung on a pole and allow them to touch it - reminding us of the idea of the Brazen Serpent of Moses, which was upon a pole and for the healing of the "children" of Israel. This may explain why it is that the tree-gods are not specially and separately mentioned in the Maha Samaya list of deities who are there said by the poet to have come to pay reverence to the Buddha.'

The history of the Nagas that we do have, textually beginning around the 7th century BC is an amazing history of ups and downs. It parallels the rise and fall of the serpent worshipped by the Semites, with the Brazen Serpent being raised in the wilderness and then broken up in the temple.

The hill where these wise men lived [2] was defended on all sides by immense piles of rocks. As soon as the travellers had dismounted a messenger from one of the Masters appeared, wearing of all things, a serpent Caduceus on his brow - an obvious allusion to the enlightenment process via the Indian Kundalini, or coiled serpent.

Platitudes were given and when in conversation Apollonius learned from one called Larchus, that these Nagas had delivered their wisdom to the Egyptians and even Ethiopia, which as Hivviah or Cush, named after the worship of serpents. In truth it seems that the wisdom of the serpent brothers spread far and wide.

Eventually Apollonius became a wise sage himself and his own notoriety grew. Aurelian vowed to erect Temples and statues to his honour "for was there ever any thing among men more holy, venerable, noble, and divine than Apollonius? He restored life to the dead; he did and spoke many things beyond human reach." (Vopiscus in Aurelian, cap. 24)

Truly, Temples and statues were erected to Apollonius in many places, including his own town of Tyana. Unlike Jesus, there is evidence to prove that Apollonius actually existed. As Moncure D. Conway said in his book Modern Thought:

"The world has been for a long time engaged in writing lives of Jesus."

The library of such writing has grown since then. But when we come to examine them, one startling fact confronts us: all these books relate to a personage concerning whom there does not exist a single scrap of contemporary information - not one! Nobody can say with any conviction that Jesus was a real person.

On the other hand Jesus may indeed be based upon Apollonius, which sheds an entirely new light on the matter. By accepted tradition, Apollonius was born in the reign of Augustus, the great literary age of the nation of which he was a subject and the same age as the literary Jesus. In the Augustan age historians flourished; poets, orators, critics and travellers abounded. Yet not one of them mentions the name of Jesus Christ, much less any incident of his life. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius admitted that it was to Apollonius that he owed his own philosophy, and erected Temples and statues in his honour. No statues or Temples were erected to Jesus.

Faust said, "Everyone knows that the Evangeliums were written neither by Jesus nor by his apostle, but long after their time by some unknown persons, who, judging well that they would hardly be believed when telling of things they had not seen themselves, headed their narratives with the names of the apostles or disciples contemporaneous with the latter."

On the other hand, the written record of the life of Apollonius is very sound and Philostratos who wrote the Life of Apollonius was the close friend of Damus who had related the whole thing in person.

Philostratos said, "Some consider him as one of the Magi, because he conversed with the Magi of Babylon and the Brahmans of India and the Gymnosophists of Egypt. But even his wisdom is reviled, as being acquired by the magic art, so erroneous are the opinions formed of him. Whereas Empedocles and Pythagoras and Democritus, though they conversed with the same Magi, and advanced many paradoxical sentiments, have not fallen under the like imputation. Even Plato, who travelled in Egypt, and blended with his doctrines many opinions collected there from the priests and prophets, incurred not such a suspicion, though above all men on account of his superior wisdom."

The very fact that Apollonius was in danger of usurping the "idea" of Christ with his own "factual" life caused much consternation amongst the early Christians. Justin Martyr, one of the Church Fathers of the 2nd century said, "How is it that the talismans by Apollonius have power over certain members of creation, for they prevent, as we have seen, the fury of the waves, the violence of the winds, and the attacks of wild beasts. And whilst Our Lord's miracles are preserved by tradition alone, those of Apollonius are most numerous, and actually manifested in present facts, so as to lead astray all beholders?"

The book by Philostratos was therefore, and not surprisingly, kept back from translation and distribution. In fact, the books of the New Testament did not appear until at least one hundred years after the Life of Apollonius.

Even the birth of Apollonius bears some remarkable similarities to the fictional life of Christ. Whilst his mother was pregnant with Apollonius, Proteus, the Egyptian God, appeared to her and said, "Thou shalt bring forth me!" The mother of Apollonius was to bring forth God.

Incidentally, Proteus was known to take the form of a snake.

According to Phillimore, Apollonius actually founded a church and a community, made up of his disciples. It is highly likely that these were connected to a branch of the Essene, known as the Therapeuts and Nazarenes and who we also know were closely linked to the Indian Brahmins and the Nagas.

Indeed there was a group known as the Apolloniei - the adherents of Apollonius - who actually survived some centuries after his death. These constituted what became the Christian Church, after the Council of Nicaea - so Apollonius did indeed begin Christianity, based upon serpentine myths and traditions of the oldest order.

In fact Eunapius stated that Philostratos should have called his book "The Sojourning of a God Among Men." However once the decision had been made to plump for the newly created Christ, cobbled together from various deities, Apollonius was repressed. It is basically because of books like the one of Philostratos that the ancient libraries at places such as Alexandria were torched. Destroy the evidence of the opposition and there appears to be no opposition. But they missed one vital piece of evidence in their own book.

In 1st Corinthians 3:3-6 it says, "for while one saith, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal? Who, then, is Paul, and whom Apollos, but ministers, by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase."

I could so easily have overlooked this had it not been for a chance discovery of an ancient version of 1st Corinthians found in a French monastery by a Huguenot soldier entitled the Codex Bezae. The name Apollos is spelt Apollonius! In fact in the Encyclopaedia Britannica the name Apollo in this context can also mean Apollonius. Indeed this Apollos was said to have even visited Paul (the apostle who did not suffer from snakebites) and he was called an Alexandrian Jew. It is possible that Apollonius brought back a new gospel of Chrishna from the Kashmir interlude with the serpent sages and it was this, which gave birth to the Christ that was in reality based upon serpent worship. Now we know why Christ sloughed off his shroud in the tomb, just as the snake sloughs its skin and is resurrected. Now we know why the early Christians were known as Ophites, it simply means serpent worshippers. Now we know that the African practice of sacrificing snakes upon trees eventually found its coils embroiled in one of the largest religions to ever appear in the world and gave us the image of the son of God. Now we know why Vatican not only means hill, it means hill of snakes.

Notes

1 In De Vita Apollonii (The Life of Apollonius) Philostratos tells us of the superstitious practices carried out by those of Arabia and India with some remarkable tales about "eating the heart and liver of serpents, for the purpose of acquiring knowledge of the thoughts and languages of animals." Philostratos wrote extensively on Apollonius of Tyana, the great sage who is seen by many as being the true Christ.

2 Taxila was the capital of ancient Punjab (Hindus). In the Sanskrit language it was Takshacila or simply "Prince of the serpent tribe." Taxila was a famous place, having been mentioned in several languages and connected with the infamous Silk Road between the Far West (Babylonia) and the Far East (China). Here lies the oldest known Hindu shrine in the Pillared Hall, on the site of the western end, said to have had a ceremonial function. The king of Taxila was called Taxiles and in 329 BC he invited Alexander the Great to support him against aggressors. In 184 BC the Greeks invaded and placed Demetrius on the throne. The town was rebuilt and strangely it was called Sirkap (severed head). It was a multi-ethnic area now with Greeks, Bactrians, western Iranians and Hindus all living together. There was a great mix of Hinduism, serpent worship, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Greek religious beliefs all mixing together-a place very much like Alexandria.

Apollonius of Tyana went to Taxila as we find in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratos. "I have already described the way in which the city is walled, but they say that it was divided up into narrow streets in the same irregular manner as in Athens, and that the houses were built in such a way that if you look at them from outside they had only one storey, while if you went unto one of them, you at once found subterranean chambers extending as far below the level of the earth as did the chambers above." (Section 2.2). It was the King of Taxila (Phroates) who wrote a letter of recommendation for Apollonius to Iarchus in-order to have him learn the wisdom of the Nagas of Kashmir.