Last year, we began talking about a book called How the Great Pan Died. Some of us even located used copies of this out-of-print 1968 work. And now, we plunge into formal discussion about it! Come join us for an intriguing look at the possible origins of Christianity—as well as a look at possibly how everything went hideously wrong.
(If you couldn’t find the book in print, Scribd has a copy in PDF format that you can look at—or download if you have a subscription to their service.)
Who is Edmund Bordeaux?
Edmund Bordeaux Szekely—or simply Edmund S. Bordeaux, on my own printed copy of the book—sounds like part mystic, part historian, part linguist, part New Age health nut, and part out-and-out weirdo.
He claims that at some point in the 1920s, he got his hands on some Vatican documents about Essene Christians in the religion’s earliest days. Translating these materials revealed some shocking truths to him about the origins of Christianity—and how it’d gone so wrong somehow. Scholars have utterly rejected his so-called “translations,” calling them forgeries. (And they’re almost certainly correct.)
Mostly, he sought to uncover what he felt was the Original Christianity that so many Christians seek. To him, the Essenes—a Jewish sect competing with the more militaristic and dominance-oriented flavor that became Catholicism—better captured that flavor. Along with pacifism and personal cleanliness, he felt that Essene-style Christianity prescribed vegetarianism and other forms of clean and honorable living.
In 1940, he and his wife founded a health spa in Mexico. It still operates to this day. And wow, it is spendy.
The Vatican denies to this day as well that any of the books he translated even exist, much less that they allowed someone like him anywhere near secret archives of books. For what it’s worth, their denials sound quite plausible.
He published How the Great Pan Died in 1968. The copy I have is roughly 8.5″x11″ and fairly short.
What’s the gist of How the Great Pan Died?
Szekely thinks that the Jesus of the Gospels represents a sort of “germ of truth” of historical reality. And that’s fine, a lot of folks go that route. To him, though, the Gospels conceal some signal truths about who the original historical Jesus might have been.
Through a sometimes-circuitous route, he traces Jesus to a 1st-century family of rabble-rousers. This sect’s patriarch, Jesus’ father, ended up getting himself killed during an insurrection. This insurrection very likely got sparked by the Roman-empire-wide census mentioned in the Gospels.
By then, Jesus was already the scion of the family of insurrectionists. In his very deeply divided country, he preached a gospel of messianic deliverance from Roman rule. Naturally, the Jews who absolutely hated the Romans resonated with Jesus’ message. Other Jews liked how things were going under that rule, so they opposed him.
At the end, the Romans imprisoned Jesus along with another Jesus, this one called Jesus Bar-Abbas. Pontius Pilate released one prisoner but kept the other. In the Gospels, that released prisoner is the rabble-rouser, while the retained one is the sweet, meek, peaceful prisoner who’s done no wrong. In reality, the author thinks, Pilate released the sweet, meek, peaceful prisoner who’d done no wrong beyond sharing a name with the one he really sought: the rabble-rouser.
And that sweet, meek, peaceful prisoner was, the author asserts, an Essene Jew.
Oh, and the Book of Revelation may have been written by Jesus himself. (Yes, the book tells us, because Jesus was considerably older than most people surmise at the time of his execution.) The Book of Revelation may even have been the very first book of the New Testament, timeline-wise.
(Note from 2026 Cas: No, it most the fuck certainly is not.)
Then the author presents readers with a lengthy summary of what Essene Judaism involved. It does sound startlingly like the virtues most people associate with Christianity. It also sounds a lot less like the violence-condoning, threats-laden miserable sorry mess that is the New Testament.
An interesting view about the origins of Christianity
Mr. Captain got sick of me stopping him from playing his current game (Kingdom Come: Deliverance) to read him bits from this book. “Cas, I know this is important to you because you used to be religious,” he finally said. “But it all sounds ridiculous to me.”
He ain’t wrong.
It really is.
That’s why I liked it.
Its ridiculosity goes past the simple fact that none of the supernatural ideas contained in the religion are true. Regardless of its origins, it’s still a religion. It suffers from all of the faults of religions generally. Maybe the Essenes knew that. Certainly the author’s retreat in Mexico doesn’t seem overtly religious.
We could begin a critique with a round examination of his sources—such as they are. We could also marvel at some of the linguistic leaps of logic made here.
But for all the book’s faults, I can’t help but think that it might get some startling points right. That census thing always bugged me. I just didn’t realize quite why till now. And the weirdly warlike, violence-loving Jesus in the Gospels never meshed with those traditional, sweetsie-syrupy Christian virtues.
What do y’all think? Interesting? No? Full of bull patties? The floor is OPEN.
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Lord Snow Presides is our off-topic weekly chat series. I’ve started us off on a topic, but feel free to chime in with anything on your mind. Pet pictures especially welcome! The series was named for Lord Snow, my recently departed white cat. He knew a lot more than he ever let on.
2 Comments
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