H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Volume 3

A Serious Mistranslation

(Page 147) The Greek manuscripts, without exception, give these words as -

                                   Hλι Hλι λαμα .σαβαχθανι

They are Hebrew words, rendered into the Greek, and in Hebrew are as follows:

                                  .

The scripture of these words says, “that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” as their proper translation. Here then are the words beyond all dispute; and beyond all question, such is the interpretation given of them by Scripture. Now the words will not bear this interpretation, and it is a false rendering. The true meaning is just the opposite of the one given, and is -

                                   My God, My God, how thou dost glorify me!

But even more, for while lama is why, or how, as a verbal it connected the idea of to dazzle, or adverbially, it could run “how dazzlingly,” and so on. To the unwary reader this interpretation is enforced, and made to answer, as it were, to the fulfilment of a prophetic utterance, by a marginal reference to the first verse of the twenty-second Psalm, which reads:

                                   “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

The Hebrew of this verse for these words is -
                                  

as to which the reference is correct, and the interpretation sound and good, but with an utterly different word. The words are -

                                   Eli, Eli, lamah azabvtha-ni?

No wit of man, however scholarly, can save this passage from falseness of rendering on its face; and as so, it becomes a most terrible blow upon the proper first-face sacredness of the recital. [ App., vii., p.301.]

For ten years or more, sat the revisers (?) of the Bible, a most imposing and solemn array of the learned of the land, the greatest Hebrew and Greek scholars of England, purporting to correct the mistakes and blunders, the sins of omission and of commission of their less learned predecessors, the translators of the Bible. Are we going to be told that none of them saw the glaring difference between the Hebrew words in Psalm xxii., Azabbvtha-ni , and sabachthani in Matthew; that they were not aware of the deliberate falsification?
For “falsification” it was. And if we are asked the reason why the early Church Fathers resorted to it, the answer is plain: Because the Sacramental words belonged in their true rendering to Pagan temple rites. (Page 148) They were pronounced after the terrible trials of Initiation, and were still fresh in the memory of some of the “Fathers” when the Gospel of Matthew was edited into the Greek language. Because, finally, many of the Hierophants of the Mysteries, and many more of the Initiates were still living in those days, and the sentence rendered in its true words would class Jesus directly with the simple Initiates. The words “My God, my Sun, thou hast poured thy radiance upon me?” were the final words that concluded the thanksgiving prayer of the Initiate, “the Son and the glorified Elect of the Sun.” In Egypt we find to this day carvings and paintings that represent the rite. The candidate is between two divine sponsors; one “Osiris-Sun” with the head of a hawk, representing life, the other Mercury - the ibis-headed, psychopompic genius, who guides the Souls after death to their new abode, Hades - standing for the death of the physical body, figuratively. Both are shown pouring the “stream of life,” the water of purification, on the head of the Initiate, the two streams of which, interlacing, form a cross. The better to conceal the truth, this basso-relievo has also been explained as a “Pagan presentment of a Christian truth.” The Chevalier des Mousseaux calls this Mercury:

The assessor of Osiris-Sol, as St. Michael is the assessor, Ferouer, of the Word.

The monogram of Chrestos and the Labarum, the standard of Constantine - who, by the by, died a Pagan and was never baptised - is a symbol derived from the above rite and also denotes “life and death.” Long before the sign of the Cross was adopted as a Christian symbol, it was employed as a secret sign of recognition among Neophytes and Adepts. Says Eliphas Levi:

The sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong exclusively to them. It is kabalistic, and represents the oppositions and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by the occult verse of the Pater, to which we have called attention in another work, that there were originally two ways of making it, or, at least, two very different formulas to express its meaning; one reserved for priests and initiates; the other given to neophyte and the profane. [Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, ii, 88.]

 One can understand now why the Gospel of Matthew, the Evangel of the Ebionites, has been for ever excluded in its Hebrew form from the world’s curious grace.

Jerome found the authentic and original Evangel written in Hebrew, by Matthew the Publican, at the library collected at Caesarea by the martyr Pamphilius, “I received permission from the Nazaraeans, who at Beroea of Syria used this (gospel to translate it, “ he writes toward the end of the fourth century. [ (Hieronymus, Des Viris Illust., III) “It is remarkable that, while all Church Fathers say that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, the whole of them use the Greek text as the genuine apostolic writing, without mentioning what relation the Hebrew Matthew has to our Greek one! It had many peculiar additions which are wanting in our (Greek ) Evangel” (Olshausen, Nachweis der Echtheit der Sammtlichen Schriften des Neuen Test., p.32; Dunlap, Sod, the Son of Man, p. 44.) ]

 Secret Doctrine of Jesus

(Page 149) “In the Evangel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use,” said Jerome, “which recently I translated from Hebrew into Greek, and which is called by most persons the genuine gospel of Matthew,” etc. [Comment to Matthew (XII, 13) Book 11. Jerome adds that it was written in the Chaldaic language, but with Hebrew letters.]

That the apostles had received a “secret doctrine” from Jesus, who confessed it in an unguarded moment. Writing to the Bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, he complains that “a difficult work is enjoined, since this (translation) has been commanded me by your Felicities, which St Matthew himself, the Apostle and Evangelist, did not wish to be openly written. For if this had not been secret he (Matthew) would have added to the Evangel that what he gave forth was his ; but he made up this book sealed up in the Hebrew characters, which he put forth even in such way that the book, written in Hebrew letters and by the hand of himself, might be possessed by the men most religious ; who also, in the course of time, received it from those who preceded them. But this very book they never gave to any one to be transcribed, and its text they related some one way and another.” [ “St. Jerome.” v.445: Dunlap, Sod, the Son of Man, p. 46.] And he adds further on the same page: “And it happened that this book, having been published by a disciple of Manichaeus, named Seleucus, who also wrote falsely The Acts of the Apostles, exhibited matter not for edification, but for destruction; and that this (book) was approved in a synod which the ears of the Church properly refused to listen to.” [This accounts also for the rejection of the works of Justin Martyr, who used only this “Gospel according to the Hebrews,” as also did most probably Tatian, his disciple. At what a later period the divinity of Christ was fully established we can judge by the mere fact that even in the fourth century Eusebius did not denounce this book as spurious, but only classed it with such as the Apocalypse of John: and Credner ( Zur Gesch. des Kan, p. 129) shows Nicephorus inserting it, together with the Revelation, in his Stichometry, among the Antilegomena. The Ebionites, the genuine primitive Christians, rejecting the rest of the Apostolic writings, make use only of this Gospel (Adv Hev., i. 26) and the Ebionites, as Epiphanius declares, firmly believed, with the Nazarenes, that Jesus was but a man, “of the seed of a man.”]

Jerome admits, himself, that the book which he authenticates as being written “by the hand of Matthew,” was nevertheless a book which, notwithstanding that he translated it twice, was nearly unintelligible to him, for it was arcane. Nevertheless, Jerome coolly sets down every commentary upon it but his own as heretical. More than that, Jerome knew that this Gospel was the only original one, yet he becomes more zealous than ever in his persecution of the “Heretics.” Why? Because to accept it was equivalent to reading the death sentence of the established Church. The Gospel according to the Hebrews was well known to have been the (Page 150) only one accepted for four centuries by the Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites. And neither of the latter accepted the divinity of Christ. [ Isis Unveiled. II, 182-3.]

The Ebionites were the first, the earliest Christians, whose representative was the Gnostic author of the Clementine Homilies, and as the author of Supernatural Religion shows, 8 [Op. cit., II, 5] Ebionitic Gnosticism had once been the purest form of Christianity. They were the pupils and followers of the early Nazarenes - the kabalistic Gnostics. They believed in the Aeons, as the Cerinthians did, and that “the world was put together by Angels” (Dhyan Chohans), as Epiphanius complains (Contra Ebionitas) : “Ebion had the opinion of the Nazarenes, the form of Cerinthians.” “They decided that Christ was of the seed of a man,” he laments. [ See also Isis Unveiled, ii. 180, to end of chapter.] Thus again:

The badge of Dan-Scorpio is death-life, in the symbol .as crossbones and skull , . . or life-death . . . the standard of Constantine, the Roman Emperor. Abel has been shown to be Jesus, and Cain-Vulcain, or Mars, pierced him. Constantine was the Roman Emperor, whose warlike god was Mars, and a Roman soldier pierced Jesus on the cross . . . .

But the piercing of Abel was the consummation of his marriage with Cain, and this was proper under the form of Mars Generator; hence the double glyph, one of Mars-Generator [Osiris-Sun] and Mars-Destroyer [Mercury the God of Death in the Egyptian basso-relievo] in one; significant, again, of the primal idea of the living cosmos, or of birth and death, as necessary to the continuation of the stream of life. [ Source of Measure, p.299. This “stream of life” being emblematised in the Philloc basso-relievo just mentioned, by the water poured in the shape of a Cross on the initiated candidate by Osiris - Life and the Sun - and Mercury - Death. It was the finale of the rite of Initiation after the seven and the twelve tortures in the Crypts of Egypt were passed through successfully.]

To quote once more from Isis Unveiled:

A Latin cross of a perfect Christian shape was found hewn upon the granite slabs of the Adytum of the Serapeum; and the monks did not fail to claim that the cross had been hallowed by the Pagans in a “spirit of prophecy.” At least, Sozomen, with an air of triumph, records the fact. [ Another untrustworthy, untruthful and ignorant writer, an ecclesiastical historian of the fifth century. His alleged history of the strife between the Pagans, Neoplatonists, and the Christians of Alexandria and Constantinople, which extends from the year 324 to 439, dedicated by him to Theodosius, the younger, is full of deliberate falsifications.] But archaeology and symbolism, those tireless and implacable enemies of clerical false pretences, have found in the hieroglyphics of the legend running round the design at least a partial interpretation of its meaning.

 

According to King and other numismatists and archaeologists, the cross was placed there as the symbol of eternal life.

The Cross and Crucifix

(Page 151) Such a Tau, or Egyptian cross, was used in the Bacchic and Eleusinian Mysteries. Symbol of the dual generative power, it was laid upon the breast of the Initiate, after his “new birth” was accomplished, and the Mystae had returned from their baptism in the sea. It was a mystic sign that his spiritual birth had regenerated and united his astral soul with his divine spirit, and that he was ready to ascend in spirit to the blessed abodes of light and glory - the Eleusinia. The Tau was a magic talisman at the same time as a religious emblem. It was adopted by the Christians through the Gnostics and Kabalists, who used it largely, as their numerous gems testify. These in turn had the Tau (or handled cross) from the Egyptians, and the Latin Cross from the Buddhist missionaries, who brought it from India (where it can be found even now) two or three centuries B.C. The Assyrians, Egyptians, ancient Americans, Hindus and Romans had it in various, but very slight modifications of shape. Till very late in the middle ages, it was considered a potent spell against epilepsy and demoniacal possession, and the “signet of the living God” brought down in St. John’s vision by the angel ascending from the east to “seal the servants of our God in the foreheads,” was but the same mystic Tau - the Egyptian Cross. In the painted glass of St. Denis (France) this angel is represented as stamping this sign on the forehead of the elect; the legend reads, SIGNUM TAY. In King’s Gnostics, the author reminds us that “this mark is commonly borne by St. Anthony, an Egyptian recluse.” [ Gems of the Orthodox Christians. Vol. 1., p.135.] What the real meaning of the Tau was, is explained to us by the Christian St. John, the Egyptian Hermes, and the Hindu Brahmans. It is but too evident that, with the Apostle at least, it meant the “Ineffable Name,” as he calls this “signet of the living God” a few chapters further on [ Revelation, XIV, 1 ] “Father’s name written in their foreheads.” 

The Brahmâtmâ the chief of the Hindu Initiates, had on his headgear two keys, symbol of the revealed mystery of life and death, placed cross-like; and in some Buddhist pagodas of Tartary and Mongolia, the entrance of a chamber within the temple, generally containing the staircase which leads to the inner dagoba. [ A Dagoba is a small temple of globular form, in which are preserved the relics of Gautama.] and the porticos of some Prachidas [ Prachidas are buildings of all sizes and forms, like our mausoleums, and are sacred to votive offerings to the dead.] are ornamented with a cross formed of two fishes, as found on some of the zodiacs of the Buddhists. We should not wonder at all at learning that the sacred device in the tombs in the catacombs at Rome, the “Vesica Piscis,” was derived from the said Buddhist zodiacal sign. How general must have been that geometrical figure in the world-symbols, may be inferred from the fact that there is a Masonic tradition that Solomon’s temple was built on three foundations, forming the “triple Tau” or three crosses. 

In its mystical sense, the Egyptian cross owes its origin, as an emblem, to the realisation by the earliest philosophy of an androgynous dualism of every manifestation in nature, which proceeds from the abstract ideal of a likewise androgynous deity, while the Christian emblem is simply due to chance. Had the Mosaic law (Page 152) prevailed, Jesus should have been lapidated. [ The Talmudistic records claim that, after having been hanged, he was lapidated and buried under the water at the junction of two streams. Mishna Sanhedrin, Vol. V1., p.4: Talmud, of Babylon, same article, 43a, 67a. ] The crucifix was an instrument of torture, and utterly common among Romans as it was unknown among Semitic nations. It was called the “Tree of Infamy.” It is but later that it was adopted as a Christian symbol; but during the first two decades the apostles looked upon it with horror.[ Coptic Legends of the Crucifixion. MSS. XI ]. It is certainly not the Christian Cross that John had in mind when speaking of the “signet of the living God,” but the mystic Tau - the Tetragrammaton, or mighty name, which, on the most ancient Kabalistic talismans, was represented by the four Hebrew letters composing the Holy Word.

 

The famous Lady Ellenborough, known among the Arabs of Damascus, and in the desert, after her last marriage, as Hanoum Medjouye, had a talisman in her possession, presented to her by a Druse from Mount Lebanon. It was recognised by a certain sign on its left corner as belonging to that class of gems which is known in Palestine as a “Messianic” amulet, of the second or third century B.C. It is a green stone of a pentagonal form; at the bottom is engraved a fish, higher, Solomon’s Seal; [ We are at a loss to understand why King, in his Gnostic Gems, represents Solomon’s Seal as a five-pointed star, whereas it is six-pointed, and is the signet of Vishnu in India.] and still higher, the four Chaldaic letters - Jod, He, Vau, He, IAHO, which form the name of the Deity. These are arranged in quite an unusual way, running from below upward, in reversed order, and forming the Egyptian Tau. Around these there is a legend which, as the gem is not our property, we are not at liberty to give. The Tau, in its mystical sense, as well as the Crux ansata, is the Tree of Life. 

It is well known that the earliest Christian emblems - before it was ever attempted to represent the bodily appearance of Jesus - were the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, and The Fish. The origin of the latter emblem, which has so puzzled the archaeologists, thus becomes comprehensible. The whole secret lies in the easily ascertained fact that, while in the Kabalah the King Messiah is called “Interpreter,” or Revealer of the Mystery, and shown to be the fifth emanation, in the Talmud - for reasons we will now explain - the Messiah is very often designated as “DAG,” or the Fish. This is an inheritance from the Chaldees, and relates - as the very name indicates - to the Babylonian Dagon, the man-fish, who was the instructor and interpreter of the people, to whom he appeared. Abarbanel explains the name, by stating that the sign of his (Messiah’s) coming is the conjuction of Saturn and Jupiter in the sign Pisces. [ King (Gnostics) gives the figure of a Christian symbol, very common during the middle ages of three fishes, interlaced into a triangle, and having the FIVE letters (a most sacred Pythagorean number) ΙΧΘΥΧ engraved on it. The number five relates to the same kabalistic computation.] Therefore, as the Christians were intent upon identifying their Christos with the Messiah of the Old Testament, they adopted it so readily as to forget that its true origin might be traced still further back than the Babylonian Dagon. How eagerly and closely the ideal of Jesus was united, by the early Christians, with every imaginable kabalistic and pagan tenet, may be inferred from the language of Clemens, of Alexandria, addressed to his co-religionists.

 

The Story of Jesus 

(Page 153) When they were debating upon the choice of the most appropriate symbol to remind them of Jesus, Clemens advised them in the following words. Let the engraving upon the gem of your ring be either a dove or a ship running before the wind (the Argha), or a fish.” Was the good father, when writing this sentence, labouring under the recollection of Joshua, son of Nun (called Jesus in the Greek and Slavonian versions); or had he forgotten the real interpretation of these pagan symbols? [ Op. cit.,II 253-256. ] 

And now, with the help of all these passages scattered hither and thither in Isis and other works of this kind, the reader will see and judge for himself which of the two explanations - the Christian or that of the Occultist - is the nearer to truth. If Jesus were not an Initiate, why should all these allegorical incidents of his life be given? Why should such extreme trouble be taken, so much time wasted trying to make the above: (a) answer and dovetail with purposely picked out sentences in the Old Testament, to show them as prophecies; and (b) to preserve in them the initiatory symbols, the emblems so pregnant with Occult meaning and all of these belonging to Pagan mystic Philosophy? The author of the Source of Measures gives out that mystical intent; but only once now and again, in its one-sided, numerical and kabalistic meaning, without paying any attention to, or having concern with, the primeval and more spiritual origin, and he deals with it only so far as it related to the Old Testament. He attributes the purposed change in the sentence “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani” to the principle already mentioned of the crossed bones and skull in the Labarum.

 

As an emblem of death, being placed over the door of life and signifying birth, or of the intercontainment of two opposite principles in one, just as, mystically, the Saviour was held to be man-woman. [ Op. cit., 301. All this connects Jesus with great Initiates and solar heroes: all this is purely Pagan, under a newly-evolved variation, the Christian scheme.]. 

The author's idea is to show the mystic blending by the Gospel writers of Jehovah, Cain, Abel, etc., with Jesus (in accordance with Jewish kabalistic numeration); the better he succeeds, the more clearly he shows that it was a forced blending, and that we have not a record of the real events of the life of Jesus, narrated by eyewitnesses or the Apostles. The narrative is all based on the signs of the Zodiac: 

Each a double sign or male-female [ in ancient astrological Magic] - viz.: it was Taurus-Eve, and Scorpio was Mars-Lupa, or Mars with the female wolf [ in relation to Romulus]. (Page 154) So, as these signs were opposites of each other, yet met in the centre, they were connected; and so in fact it was, and in a double sense, the conception of the year was in Taurus, as the conception of Eve by Mars, her opposite, in Scorpio. The birth would be at the winter solstice, or Christmas. On the contrary, by conception in Scorpio - viz., of Lupa by Taurus - birth would be in Leo. Scorpio was Chrestos in humiliation, while Leo was Christos in triumph. While Taurus-Eve fulfilled astronomical functions, Mars-Lupa fulfilled spiritual ones by type. [ Op. cit.,296.] 

The author bases all this on Egyptian correlations and meanings of Gods and Goddesses, but ignores the Aryan, which are far earlier. 

Mooth or Mouth, was the Egyptian cognomen of Venus, (Eve, mother of all living) [as Vach, mother of all living, a permutation of Aditi, as Eve was one of Sephira] or the moon. Plutarch (Isis, 374) hands it down that Isis was sometimes called Muth, which word means mother . . . (Issa, חשא woman). (Isis, p.372). Isis, he says is that part of Nature, which, as feminine, contains in herself, as (nutrix) nurse, all things to be born. . . “Certainly the moon, “ speaking astronomically, “chiefly exercises this function in Taurus, Venus being the house (in opposition to Mars, generator, in Scorpio), because the sign is luna, hypsoma. Since. . . Isis Metheur differs from Isis Muth and that in the vocable Muth the notion of bringing forth may be concealed and since fructification must take place, Sol being joined with Luna in Libra, it is not improbable that Muth first indeed signifies Venus in Libra; hence Luna in Libra. (Beiträge zur Kenntniss, pars 11, S. 9, under Muth.) [ Pp. 294. 295.] 

Then Fuerst, under Bohu, is quoted to show 

The double play upon the word Muth by help of which the real intent is produced in the occult way . . . sin, death, and woman are one in the glyph, and correlatively connected with intercourse and death. [ P.295.]

 All this is applied by the author only to the exoteric and Jewish euhemerised symbols, whereas they were meant, first of all, to conceal cosmogonical mysteries, and then, those of anthropological evolution with reference to the Seven Races, already evoluted and to come, and especially as regards the last branch races of the third Root-Race. However, the word void [primeval Chaos] is shown to be taken for Eve-Venus-Naamah, agreeably with Fuerst’s definition; for as he says:

 

In this primitive signification [ of void] was (bohu) taken in the Biblical cosmogony, and used in establishing the dogma [Jes(us) m’aven, Jes-us from nothing] respecting creation. (Which shows the writers of the New Testament considerably skilled in the Kabalah and Occult Sciences, and corroborates still more our assertion.) Hence Aquila translates ουδεν vulg. vacua (hence vacca, cow) [hence also the horns of Isis - Nature, Earth, and the Moon - taken from Vàch, the Hindu “Mother of all that lives,” identified with Viràj and called in Atharvaveda the daughter of Kàma, the first desires: “That daughter of thine, O kàma, is called the cow, she whom Sages name Vach-Viraj,” who was milked by Brihaspati, the Rishi, which is another mystery] Onkelos and Samarit