The following review appeared in November 2010 on the blog 'Lycurgus 4.7'.
It is reproduced here with permission.
J.H Hatfield
Why call me God? The Gospel Seen with a Single Eye
Capabel Press, 2009
What so many have missed for so long
J.H Hatfield entered a Roman Catholic boarding school at the tender
age of nine where he was taught Latin for the daily religious services.
Latin was the "universal language of the church" up until 1962, and for
this a lot of study had to be done around canon texts in their language.
At 11 he was taught Greek and at 14 under the Order of Saint Benedict
he was taught military drills and how to shoot the rifle because this
was one way the Roman Catholic church would re-establish its lost
influence (1450 Henry VII?) that is by infiltrating the armed forces of
the state.
After that Hatfield studied classics and history but it was science that finally would win his heart. At Cambridge he studied Natural Sciences and Chemical Engineering which became very useful to him when he started his career in the British chemical industry that lasted 30 years. His skills were to look into problems and try to solve them. His approach was scientific, almost as a code-breaker. He became quite good at "solving problems left unsolved by others.. too tough to crack".
In 2001 the Roman Catholic Church was hit by the children sex abuse scandals in many countries around the world (USA, Australia, UK, and Ireland; then Italy, France, Spain). In England there were new recommendations by parliament aiming at preventing sex abuse by priests on children. These laws did not seem to Hatfield to address the prime cause of why so many priests were involved in abusing children sexually, but with his approach to crack unsolved problems, he was very keen to find out. Hatfield started to search for a reason why the church was saying godly things on one hand and then behaving the opposite way. He started an investigation into the ideological foundations of the Roman Catholic church to find out where this abhorrent behaviour towards children was coming from. To do this he had to go back to the original scripture written in Greek, the Septuagint, and see how and what it was misunderstood so badly by the Catholic church if any at all.
He found the gospels full with allegories and riddles but his analysis shows in his book that the ancient mysteries of the scriptures can be solved and the Gospel real meaning rediscovered. The conclusion was that the Catholic Church never understood them and built their religious empire on false principles.
On the Gospels he writes: "The Gospels are... esoteric tests, which means that they are directed for a selected few who possess beforehand, or can acquire, enough knowledge to understand them, in this case by the use of riddles and allegorical parallels". "The many who do not understand this secret meaning will follow a path - as Jesus says - that will lead to their destruction".
On the Catholic Church: "In this book we shall solve the mystery of scripture. It will then be clear that those persons responsible for established doctrine were amongst 'the many' who never understood".
The book starts with an introduction to the history of the bible and its translations. The Bible was not intended for everybody. It is not a historical document. It is fictional narrative, which means that its historical background exists to give body to the sequence of events as in tales, fable, parables, and novels. The Old Testament - Hebrew Books of scripture - is a Gnostic document rewritten in Greek in about 250 BCE by 70 unknown expert translators (the Septuagint is the name of this translation). Various other documents - New Testament - were added, all written in Greek around 50 CE by people who not only knew the Septuagint by heart but were followers of the same Gnostic religion. Then in 350 CE the scripture was translated into Latin and used as the main source of the catholic canon for the centuries to come. What happened in 350 CE was also the end of the original Gnostic scripture and the beginning of a test completely different. The translation in Latin could not maintain the hidden messages, the secret nuances and innuendos. These were hid by the Gnostic authors and with the translations were lost. Since then the catholic church has developed into a worldwide religious power, but the latin Bible written in 350 CE in Latin, on which all her Law is based, is a perverted and ill-translated book, not making any sense in many parts because its original gnostic message was lost.
The main body of his book is to solve as many riddles as possible and to see what the real message is. It is a comprehensive work that looks at how the real plot in scripture is, the message of the first seven days in Genesis, paradise, Eve, Lord God, Adam in the Book of Genesis of Heaven and Earth, how Satan is hidden in the Gospels and misunderstood for God, the relation between John and Jesus, Jesus as Cain and the 'Father' and Satan, and finally Paul as the false apostle.
The results are quite astonishing. Using the Greek text side by side to the English, Hatfield takes the reader through 12 chapters of break coding importance. His conclusion is that "the Catholic church fails to recognise these riddles for what they are, preferring to embrace the gospels as inspired commentaries upon a series of historical (if miraculous) events... failing entirely to grasp the deeper message conveyed by the selection of scriptures it has sought to make its own".
The conclusion is a damming verdict on the role, responsibilities and actions of the catholic church on many levels. The church has assumed the monopoly of the scripture but in fact has failed to grasp their meaning and by doing so has been leading millions of people in a "spiritual and logical trap" and is following "blindly the example of Cain, embracing the figure of Satan as 'Father' ". The Roman Catholic church is still unaware that:
- Jesus is the evil Cain
- The 'Father' to whom Jesus prays is Satan the serpent.
- The Eucharist, also called Holy Communion, Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, or The Lord's Supper, is "a re-enactment of the sacrifice" that Cain does when he confronts God with Abel.
- The claim that man is made in the image of God is the promise that only the serpent makes to Eve to deceive her.
- And the promise that believers will live forever is again the promise that only Satan does.
The implications are severe.
Because "the Christian church has mistaken evil for good... and Satan for God", it is inherently evil - see crusades, accumulation of power and riches, institutionalised child abuse - "hence the influence of the Christian churches should be curtailed in the public sphere". Here then are listed three guidelines for civil states to follow with regard to Christian organisations that makes a solid case:
The Christian church should have no financial privileges or any public money from any government. There should be no representation in the government from Christian organisations, and they should have no control or influence whatsoever in any civil institutions especially schools and hospitals.
Hatfield ends his book - which is a very well done analysis - with a few lines on a solution to the bigger social development of humanity:
"In the place of all these traditions, should we not do well in our age to focus upon developing human communities which provide for us to work together and to care for one another without placing reliance upon the notion of a god, or gods... and free from the corrupting expectation for a personal life beyond death?"
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