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BIGGER THAN THE BOOK

"I have put my truth in our innermost mind, and I have written it in your heart. No longer does a man need to teach his brother about God. For all of you know Me, from the most ignorant to the most learned, from the poorest to the most powerful." - Jeremiah 31:33

Although the faith of many Christians relies heavily on the Bible, a collection of old writings they believe to be the Word of God, and the faith of those believers would suffer, without end, if the Bible suddenly ceased to exist, Christianity itself would survive without the Good Book.

Is God not bigger than any book?

The distinction, herein, between Christian and Christianity is not accidental. There are many forms of Christianity comprised of many different kinds of Christians. The broadest range of beliefs puts those who believe Jesus was God-in-the-flesh in juxtaposition with those who believe that Jesus was one of the world's most enlightened men, a man who might have been a bastard child who, because of persecution may have retreated to the remote spiritual sanctuaries of the secretive Nazarae or, perhaps, the equally private Essenes, where the righteousness of his birth would not have been an issue. Or, true to his times, he married relatively young and was with wife when he suddenly appeared in Galilee.

Contrary to popular dogma, the set of worldviews centered on Christ and Christhood that is called Christianity, was born and came to power without the Bible we know, today. The Christian way did not begin with the carpenter from Nazareth. Although they did not label themselves Christian, Jesus and many other Jewish people were "of christ" long before he took his christ-centered beliefs to the masses and long before hundreds of Christian writings coalesced into a collection of 27 New Testament books, none written by Jesus and none written during his tenure on this planet.

Gnostic Christianity, which focused on each individual's personal experience with the christ within (leading to "gnosis" or knowing God/christ), had been around before Jesus, the Apostles, and Paul appeared in Judea. Implicit in the Gnostic worldview was that, if Jesus existed at all, he did so as an enlightened being, one who had achieved the highest degree of gnosis or christhood.

The New Testament is a re-fabrication of old pagan beliefs that predate Christianity by millenniums. Many orthodox Christian mainstays, such as virgin birth, December 25, three kings, the crucifixion and

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