The Mystery of the First Pope
Okay, quick question, who was the first pope? Easy, right? Just about
everyone knows Peter was the first pope, heck, he's buried right there
under St Peter's Basilica. Isn't he? Well...maybe not.
First of all there's a very good chance Peter is not buried in the Vatican or even anywhere near there. So if he isn't in Rome, where is he? Interestingly enough there's an ossuary, a stone casket used around the time Peter died, in Jerusalem, right where it should be, that has his name, Simon bar Jona, etched in it. And guess what? It isn't empty, there are bones in it. It's been examined by experts and deemed to be genuine and that sort of thing makes the Skeptic very skeptical of claims by the Vatican that Peter is there, even for a saint it's tough to be in two places at the same time. So that caught the Skeptic's interest and got him poking around and he found some very interesting theories about the Roman Catholic Church. The Skeptic has always been sort of fascinated by the Catholic Church but this little investigation turned up stuff he'd never heard before and it explained a lot heretofore unanswered questions.
So if Peter wasn't the first pope why does the church claim he was and should anyone care after all these years? Well, maybe it doesn't mean so much anymore because the church is pretty much disintegrating before our eyes but if nothing else, it's interesting so of course we should care, if for no other reason than it amuses us. The Catholic Church claims all of its authority from the fact that Jesus supposedly made Peter the first leader of the church and gave him authority over heaven and earth but right off the bat there's a problem with the story, the only apostle to ever found a church in Rome was Paul, not Peter. There are mounds of evidence that this is the case, in the Bible and in the history books. Of course this is a major problem for the Catholic Church, there's nothing in the Bible that even vaguely gives Paul any special authority. No, they needed the first pope to be Simon Peter, no one else would do, all because of one phrase uttered by Jesus, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church." Nope, Paul wouldn't do, it had to be Peter, at least it did if they were going to claim to be the "only true church" and that authority was very important to the first Catholics and generations of Catholic leaders to follow. It was that falsely claimed authority they used as an excuse to torture and kill millions of people through the centuries in the name of God. It was all about bringing people to Christianity they claimed but when the Skeptic reads the scriptures he doesn't exactly see that method endorsed by Christ, in fact, Christ took a quite different approach. The Skeptic couldn't find a single verse in the Bible where Jesus says if people don't want to join the church they should be put to death, for that matter, Jesus didn't even endorse the old ruler across the back of the hand method employed by so many nuns over the years. Who knows where that came from?
So let's review, what do we know about the humble beginnings of the Catholic Church? According to the Catholic Church they were founded in Rome by Saint Peter after he was told by Jesus that he was the rock upon which God would build His church. Powerful stuff isn't it? Jesus, the very foundation of Christendom, tells Peter that he would be the very first leader of the Catholic Church. Peter must have been flattered to say the least, if you were to believe the Catholic Church version you would probably think he went directly to Rome and started work on his basilica. Well, that's sort of an exaggeration but you get the idea. Unfortunately, there are several problems with the church's story, such as, and this is a really big problem, other than in the official Catholic story, Peter was never in Rome, never went there, never died there, never preached there, never even took a nap there, none of the official Catholic story ever happened, it is exactly that, a story, a fairy tale. It was cooked up by the church as a way of claiming unwarranted authority.
Interestingly enough there was someone in Rome with the name of Simon and he did start a church, his name was Simon Magus and he was well known in Rome, very well known and apparently well liked. Some people called him a magician, some people thought he was a god but everyone who knew him thought he had great powers and a very interesting thing about the man was that he had actually an encounter with the Apostle Peter when he was in Samaria. For the geographically challenged Samaria is an area just north of Jerusalem and nowhere near Rome. Simon Magus had a church of sorts there before he went to Rome and when he heard about miracles that the apostles were performing he went out of his way to meet them. He even allowed himself to be baptized, it was said he wanted the powers they had and was willing to do just about anything to get those powers including calling himself a Christian. However, when he realized he wasn't going to be given the power to perform miracles he offered to purchase the power which apparently angered Peter who said he perceived the gall of bitterness in Simon Magus, Peter's way of saying he thought Simon Magus wasn't exactly apostle material. You can read all about this meeting in the book of Acts Chapter 8 if you'd like to have a look for yourself.
Well, we sort of lose track of of Simon Magus after this, at least in the Bible he isn't mentioned by name again, but we pick him up in the history books when he gets to Rome. If you're looking into the origins of the Catholic Church this is very interesting, a man, claiming to be a Christian but really more of a pagan, with a following, a church if you will, in Rome at the very time the Catholic Church claims it was founded. Simon Peter wasn't in Rome, the Bible actually tells us where he was for most of his life and it wasn't Rome, in fact it clearly states that he was never in Rome. But there are many sources that tell us Simon Magus was in Rome but the one the Skeptic likes best is Justin Martyr, an early convert to Christianity and a writer of history from around the year 150. He tells us point blank that Simon Magus had started a church in Rome, a church that combined the teachings of Christianity with the practices of paganism. That description really interested the Skeptic because he has always been fascinated by the Catholic Church, a church that claims to be a Christian church yet they have strange pagan twist to them.They have strange, elaborate rituals and they seem to have a very strange fixation on old bones and other relics that supposedly belong to early Christians. It sounds a lot like Voodoo or paganism to the Skeptic.
So, let's assume for a minute that this story is the absolute truth, Peter was never in Rome and the first pope was in reality a man named Simon Magus, how did the Roman Catholic Church ever manage to pull off a con job like that and keep it a secret for two thousand years? Well, if you think about it, it probably wasn't that tough, especially when you put it in context of the times and what Rome was like in the first three hundred years after the death of Christ. Christianity was spreading throughout Europe and the Middle East and different forms of the new religion developed. In Rome Christians were being tortured and killed for sport, not too surprising that would happen where the state religion was a mishmash of different deities and beliefs. The idea of one God was frowned upon, after all, if there was one God that would essentially make all the gods worshiped by Romans irrelevant. So, to the Skeptic that explains why some of the Christians of Rome might have developed somewhat differently than say, the Christians of Jerusalem. Now, add to the mixture one Simon Magus, a man who claimed to be a Christian but had a lot of pagan tendencies, he was well known in Rome and we know he also had a church in Rome. Okay, Simon Magus is running his church in Rome where there are also other Christian churches. We know from the Bible that Paul and Luke were in Rome and we know they established a church there and we know that the Apostles were not exactly in love with Simon Magus, remember they'd met in Samaria and they weren't particularly impressed with Simon Magus.
But, in Rome things might have gone quite well for Simon's particular brand of Christianity, remember, he wasn't too particular about the one God business, he was quite happy to mix paganism with Christianity. That, it seems to the Skeptic, might make his version of Christianity a lot more popular than that of Luke and Paul. Also, we know Christians were being killed in Rome but what we don't exactly know is which Christians. The Skeptic wonders if being a member of the Magus Church might have been quite different in the eyes of the Roman authorities than Paul's church. It's not difficult to imagine at least two separate churches, both claiming to be Christian, operating in Rome at the time and, here's a key point, if you were a Roman who was inclined to be a Christian which church would you attend? Paul's church, where the members were frequently tossed in with wild animals for sport or would you join the Christian church that the authorities left alone? The Skeptic thinks that would be an easy choice for lots of people which would make for a fast growing church.
So it's a few hundred years later and the Magus Church has really grown. Paul's church? Maybe not so much, after all, joining that church could well get you tossed into a pit with a lion or worse. Then along came Constantine the Great, Emperor of Rome and a new convert to Christianity, in truth he converted to Roman Catholicism, he decreed that Christianity would be the official religion of the Roman Empire. But which Christianity would it be, the one taught by Paul and Peter or the one taught by Simon Magus? The Skeptic thinks that's an easy call.
Today's Catholic Church still practices a very ritualistic form of Christianity that makes the Skeptic think the story of Simon Magus isn't beyond the realm of possibility, when all the factors are considered it actually seems quite possible. They have a long and troubling history for a church, an all out war against the Cathars, the killing of native peoples around the world who refused to convert, the Inquisition, the sex scandals of today and countless other things that the Skeptic doesn't think of as something a church should countenance, let alone perpetrate. Then there are the scandals that involve how they treated their own members, the selling of indulgences, the blackmailing of people based on their confessions and jailing of people like Galileo, none of it sounds like a church of God to the Skeptic. It sounds like a church that was founded on a lie, founded by someone who was looking for power from the very beginning so yes, the Skeptic is, not surprisingly, skeptical of their claim that Peter was the first pope and skeptical of their claim to be the one true church. The Skeptic knows all of this will sound ridiculous to a lot of you, after all, the church is a worldwide organization that's been around for a couple thousand years, they have billions of dollars and a lot of men in silly looking outfits to deny everything and anything they don't like and the Skeptic is just a lone voice. Well the church can deny everything but that doesn't make it go away, their history is available to anyone with an internet connection, the Skeptic just asks that you keep an open mind and that you do some research.
This isn't meant to beat up on Catholics or their church, the Skeptic didn't invent the history of the church, the Roman Catholic Church did that, it is interesting as hell, think about it for a minute, we have an organization that demands its parishioners live a certain lifestyle yet the people who run the organization live a life that is nothing like the life they preach. You can get hours of enjoyment reading the history of this church, it is fascinating and disgusting, look into this church for yourselves, you won't regret it.
There is a novel that deals with this subject called On This Rock by Dave Leonard, we are serializing it here. There is also a website that gets into far more detail than we do here if you are interested in the subject. You can find it here.
First of all there's a very good chance Peter is not buried in the Vatican or even anywhere near there. So if he isn't in Rome, where is he? Interestingly enough there's an ossuary, a stone casket used around the time Peter died, in Jerusalem, right where it should be, that has his name, Simon bar Jona, etched in it. And guess what? It isn't empty, there are bones in it. It's been examined by experts and deemed to be genuine and that sort of thing makes the Skeptic very skeptical of claims by the Vatican that Peter is there, even for a saint it's tough to be in two places at the same time. So that caught the Skeptic's interest and got him poking around and he found some very interesting theories about the Roman Catholic Church. The Skeptic has always been sort of fascinated by the Catholic Church but this little investigation turned up stuff he'd never heard before and it explained a lot heretofore unanswered questions.
So if Peter wasn't the first pope why does the church claim he was and should anyone care after all these years? Well, maybe it doesn't mean so much anymore because the church is pretty much disintegrating before our eyes but if nothing else, it's interesting so of course we should care, if for no other reason than it amuses us. The Catholic Church claims all of its authority from the fact that Jesus supposedly made Peter the first leader of the church and gave him authority over heaven and earth but right off the bat there's a problem with the story, the only apostle to ever found a church in Rome was Paul, not Peter. There are mounds of evidence that this is the case, in the Bible and in the history books. Of course this is a major problem for the Catholic Church, there's nothing in the Bible that even vaguely gives Paul any special authority. No, they needed the first pope to be Simon Peter, no one else would do, all because of one phrase uttered by Jesus, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church." Nope, Paul wouldn't do, it had to be Peter, at least it did if they were going to claim to be the "only true church" and that authority was very important to the first Catholics and generations of Catholic leaders to follow. It was that falsely claimed authority they used as an excuse to torture and kill millions of people through the centuries in the name of God. It was all about bringing people to Christianity they claimed but when the Skeptic reads the scriptures he doesn't exactly see that method endorsed by Christ, in fact, Christ took a quite different approach. The Skeptic couldn't find a single verse in the Bible where Jesus says if people don't want to join the church they should be put to death, for that matter, Jesus didn't even endorse the old ruler across the back of the hand method employed by so many nuns over the years. Who knows where that came from?
So let's review, what do we know about the humble beginnings of the Catholic Church? According to the Catholic Church they were founded in Rome by Saint Peter after he was told by Jesus that he was the rock upon which God would build His church. Powerful stuff isn't it? Jesus, the very foundation of Christendom, tells Peter that he would be the very first leader of the Catholic Church. Peter must have been flattered to say the least, if you were to believe the Catholic Church version you would probably think he went directly to Rome and started work on his basilica. Well, that's sort of an exaggeration but you get the idea. Unfortunately, there are several problems with the church's story, such as, and this is a really big problem, other than in the official Catholic story, Peter was never in Rome, never went there, never died there, never preached there, never even took a nap there, none of the official Catholic story ever happened, it is exactly that, a story, a fairy tale. It was cooked up by the church as a way of claiming unwarranted authority.
Interestingly enough there was someone in Rome with the name of Simon and he did start a church, his name was Simon Magus and he was well known in Rome, very well known and apparently well liked. Some people called him a magician, some people thought he was a god but everyone who knew him thought he had great powers and a very interesting thing about the man was that he had actually an encounter with the Apostle Peter when he was in Samaria. For the geographically challenged Samaria is an area just north of Jerusalem and nowhere near Rome. Simon Magus had a church of sorts there before he went to Rome and when he heard about miracles that the apostles were performing he went out of his way to meet them. He even allowed himself to be baptized, it was said he wanted the powers they had and was willing to do just about anything to get those powers including calling himself a Christian. However, when he realized he wasn't going to be given the power to perform miracles he offered to purchase the power which apparently angered Peter who said he perceived the gall of bitterness in Simon Magus, Peter's way of saying he thought Simon Magus wasn't exactly apostle material. You can read all about this meeting in the book of Acts Chapter 8 if you'd like to have a look for yourself.
Well, we sort of lose track of of Simon Magus after this, at least in the Bible he isn't mentioned by name again, but we pick him up in the history books when he gets to Rome. If you're looking into the origins of the Catholic Church this is very interesting, a man, claiming to be a Christian but really more of a pagan, with a following, a church if you will, in Rome at the very time the Catholic Church claims it was founded. Simon Peter wasn't in Rome, the Bible actually tells us where he was for most of his life and it wasn't Rome, in fact it clearly states that he was never in Rome. But there are many sources that tell us Simon Magus was in Rome but the one the Skeptic likes best is Justin Martyr, an early convert to Christianity and a writer of history from around the year 150. He tells us point blank that Simon Magus had started a church in Rome, a church that combined the teachings of Christianity with the practices of paganism. That description really interested the Skeptic because he has always been fascinated by the Catholic Church, a church that claims to be a Christian church yet they have strange pagan twist to them.They have strange, elaborate rituals and they seem to have a very strange fixation on old bones and other relics that supposedly belong to early Christians. It sounds a lot like Voodoo or paganism to the Skeptic.
So, let's assume for a minute that this story is the absolute truth, Peter was never in Rome and the first pope was in reality a man named Simon Magus, how did the Roman Catholic Church ever manage to pull off a con job like that and keep it a secret for two thousand years? Well, if you think about it, it probably wasn't that tough, especially when you put it in context of the times and what Rome was like in the first three hundred years after the death of Christ. Christianity was spreading throughout Europe and the Middle East and different forms of the new religion developed. In Rome Christians were being tortured and killed for sport, not too surprising that would happen where the state religion was a mishmash of different deities and beliefs. The idea of one God was frowned upon, after all, if there was one God that would essentially make all the gods worshiped by Romans irrelevant. So, to the Skeptic that explains why some of the Christians of Rome might have developed somewhat differently than say, the Christians of Jerusalem. Now, add to the mixture one Simon Magus, a man who claimed to be a Christian but had a lot of pagan tendencies, he was well known in Rome and we know he also had a church in Rome. Okay, Simon Magus is running his church in Rome where there are also other Christian churches. We know from the Bible that Paul and Luke were in Rome and we know they established a church there and we know that the Apostles were not exactly in love with Simon Magus, remember they'd met in Samaria and they weren't particularly impressed with Simon Magus.
But, in Rome things might have gone quite well for Simon's particular brand of Christianity, remember, he wasn't too particular about the one God business, he was quite happy to mix paganism with Christianity. That, it seems to the Skeptic, might make his version of Christianity a lot more popular than that of Luke and Paul. Also, we know Christians were being killed in Rome but what we don't exactly know is which Christians. The Skeptic wonders if being a member of the Magus Church might have been quite different in the eyes of the Roman authorities than Paul's church. It's not difficult to imagine at least two separate churches, both claiming to be Christian, operating in Rome at the time and, here's a key point, if you were a Roman who was inclined to be a Christian which church would you attend? Paul's church, where the members were frequently tossed in with wild animals for sport or would you join the Christian church that the authorities left alone? The Skeptic thinks that would be an easy choice for lots of people which would make for a fast growing church.
So it's a few hundred years later and the Magus Church has really grown. Paul's church? Maybe not so much, after all, joining that church could well get you tossed into a pit with a lion or worse. Then along came Constantine the Great, Emperor of Rome and a new convert to Christianity, in truth he converted to Roman Catholicism, he decreed that Christianity would be the official religion of the Roman Empire. But which Christianity would it be, the one taught by Paul and Peter or the one taught by Simon Magus? The Skeptic thinks that's an easy call.
Today's Catholic Church still practices a very ritualistic form of Christianity that makes the Skeptic think the story of Simon Magus isn't beyond the realm of possibility, when all the factors are considered it actually seems quite possible. They have a long and troubling history for a church, an all out war against the Cathars, the killing of native peoples around the world who refused to convert, the Inquisition, the sex scandals of today and countless other things that the Skeptic doesn't think of as something a church should countenance, let alone perpetrate. Then there are the scandals that involve how they treated their own members, the selling of indulgences, the blackmailing of people based on their confessions and jailing of people like Galileo, none of it sounds like a church of God to the Skeptic. It sounds like a church that was founded on a lie, founded by someone who was looking for power from the very beginning so yes, the Skeptic is, not surprisingly, skeptical of their claim that Peter was the first pope and skeptical of their claim to be the one true church. The Skeptic knows all of this will sound ridiculous to a lot of you, after all, the church is a worldwide organization that's been around for a couple thousand years, they have billions of dollars and a lot of men in silly looking outfits to deny everything and anything they don't like and the Skeptic is just a lone voice. Well the church can deny everything but that doesn't make it go away, their history is available to anyone with an internet connection, the Skeptic just asks that you keep an open mind and that you do some research.
This isn't meant to beat up on Catholics or their church, the Skeptic didn't invent the history of the church, the Roman Catholic Church did that, it is interesting as hell, think about it for a minute, we have an organization that demands its parishioners live a certain lifestyle yet the people who run the organization live a life that is nothing like the life they preach. You can get hours of enjoyment reading the history of this church, it is fascinating and disgusting, look into this church for yourselves, you won't regret it.
There is a novel that deals with this subject called On This Rock by Dave Leonard, we are serializing it here. There is also a website that gets into far more detail than we do here if you are interested in the subject. You can find it here.
Get a copy of On This Rock
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