The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Constantine's Sword

Constantine's Sword
Posted by stooge number one (Guest) - Wednesday, November 14 2007, 21:37:53 (CET)
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So, there I was the other night, dining out yet again at a very fine establishment, thanks to the generous stipend I receive from my Arab/Turkish/Kurdish masters, thinking of ways to attack Christianity, when I recalled a book I read some years back titled, “Constantine’s Sword”, written, not by any Muslim, but by James Carrol, a Catholic priest who’d quit the franchise. Oh, and it’s a real book; published, not printed; by a real publisher, not a print-for-hire shop, receiving real praise from real people. Carrol details the life of the Emperor Constantine who established the Eastern Roman Empire at Byzantium, around 316 A.D. or so, which continued in existence for the next 1,300 years while the western empire would soon collapse...and who was the real Father of Christianity. Not the anemic, fretful, mealy-mouthed and ass-kicked version of the Church of the East and its rabid offspring, but the kick-ass Western version which “spread” the message by raping half the world.

Recalling Jumblat’s hysterical “What about dat sword of Khalid Hah?”… reminded me that the Christian author of this book described the “true cross” as in reality the sword Constantine used to hammer his own subjects into Christianity before attacking and “converting” everyone else he could lay his bloody hands on.

As the champagne flowed and the violinist played at my table, I mused about this real prophet who made Christianity the booming business it is today, contrasting him with Moses and Muhammad. The Hebrews only technically became Israelites when they came out of bondage from Egypt under Moses’ guidance…and although Moses sent Joshua to kill for him, he never lifted a sword himself to build up the business. In fact the Israelites didn’t believe in evangelizing.

Muhammad started with himself and then his wife and uncle, gradually attracting believers to a new faith(based largely on Judeo/Christian beliefs). Set upon by others his band of camel merchants and small traders was forced to defend themselves from a host of more powerful neighbors, in stark contrast to Constantine when he “saw the light”, who was already ruler of the greatest killing machine in history. Previous to that the only violence the early converts to Islam knew came from raiding caravans, an honorable way to exist as was out and out and massive thievery among the Christians, and everyone else, so we can’t hold that against Muslims since everyone else was doing it and doing it on a much grander scale and with no excuse of self-defense either. There were also tribal feuds but none of those glorious riots of mass murder the Romans were famous for. That sort of industrial scale bloodlust just wasn’t in Muhammad’s or Moses’ background.

Muhammad’s wars were defensive, against his own Arabs and his anger at the Jews came about because he believed they betrayed him…had people left him and his followers alone, I doubt he would have waged any wars. Besides which he expressly stated that it was against Islam to force people to convert or even to begin hostilities etc.

As the case may be, the point is that both Moses and Muhammad adhered to the rules of their own teachings in creating their movement, while Jesus never had in mind creating anything…just fulfilling the end-of-days eschatology of the Hebrews…if he was kind and decent, so was Moses and Muhammad…Constantine was another thing altogether.

As dessert was served (a fine platter of cherries jubilee accompanied by a snifter of Grande Marnier) I asked myself if Jesus really was the founder of Christianity…or was it Paul? Seeing as how Christianity in the East never got anywhere (as we can see when those famous missionaries went to China etc and were never able to win anybody over…and where there were no Arabs handy to blame), it seemed obvious that Constantine was the real prophet of Christianity, who received visions and messages from Jesus Christ on high and went on to “spread” the message in the name of the True Cross i.e., the sword in the title.

He first saw that cross when his armies faced a tough battle at the Mylvan Bridge and a vision appeared to Constantine at daybreak of Jesus Christ, up in the sky, saying something like, “In This Name Shall You Conquer”…more or less. Before battle Constantine had his soldiers paint (they had paint with them?) what would be Christ’s standard on their shields, at the center of which was a cross with whatever the initial’s of Jesus H. Christ are. Then his armies went out and killed a lot of fathers, brothers, sons, husbands and such…convincing Constantine that Jesus was, if not a god of love and peace for his and Rome’s purpose, certainly the greatest god of war.

Constantine didn’t become a Christian…he made a Roman of Jesus.

Needing to bolster his case and spiff up the franchise, he sent his mother, Helena, to Jerusalem where the pious broad discovered the True Cross, the True Crown of Thorns, the True Spear, plus enough True Nails to build an ocean liner AND the bones of all three Wise Men who’d inexplicably wandered the earth only to meet again at Golgotha to die and be buried within inches of each other, holding hands no doubt. Helena hauled this mass of pious forgeries back to her son who insisted the Romans fall to their knees and worship the bones and junk. The church made a saint of his lying Mom for her remarkable luck.

Constantine himself was a model Christian, if you stop to think about it. Not only did he go on killing people with his sword of Christ; the cross on his banner, but he killed one wife and two of his own sons, or two wives and one son…the point is that Jesus never set himself up to create a new religion, as Moses sort of did and as Muhammad did…he was a good, slightly unorthodox Jew, who said himself he was there to fulfill the Law of Moses, not change it. He railed against what he saw as abuses and backsliding in that eternal Law…much as Muhammad would later claim Christians had begun to get it wrong.

But Jesus, on his own, and even with Paul’s help, could have achieved little without Constantine and his Sword. Constantine, a Roman Emperor, is the real founder of Christianity…certainly of rip-roaring Christianity…which helps explain why this religion has been so damn bloody…even to the point where people still ecstatically “wash in the blood of Jesus”…and splash everybody else.



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