Volume 2 Chapter 9

COMPENDIUM OF WORLD HISTORY

VOLUME 2

A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Ambassador College Graduate School of Education In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

by Herman L. Hoeh

1963 1966, 1969 Edition

CHAPTER IX

ITALY, HOME OF PAGAN RELIGION

Nearly everyone has heard of the ancient pagan Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. But almost no one knows that they were originally great rulers of Italy.

The whole modern Christian world has been influenced by Roman Catholicism. The story in pre-Roman times was the same. Instead of paganism spreading to Rome from Greece, it really spread from Italy to Greece.

It was the vogue of the last century to ridicule the myths of Rome and of Greece. The gods and goddesses were regarded as mere human inventions -- rigments of the superstitious madness of the ancients. To admit that they were originally flesh-and-blood human beings would have been tantamount to admitting the reality of the Bible. For several of the heroes-made-god of ancient Italy are characters of the Bible.

ITALY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

There is a very special reason that Italy became the home of religious apostasy in the West. The pagan mystery religions had a very special problem confronting them in Italy. They had to counter the teachings of Noah!

Yes, Noah appears as a ruler in the early history of Italy! Noah lived both sides of the Flood. He knew what life meant. Apart from him the whole human family would have been wiped from off the face of the earth. The world's religious leaders knew that if they were to succeed they must, in some way, counterfeit, in Italy, the teachings of Noah -- just as later they were to counterfeit the teachings of Christ. The parallel is exact.

To counterfeit Christ, they took Christ's name and labeled their superstition 'Christian.' They began to worship Christ. 'This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain worship they me, teaching for doctrines commands of men' (Mark 7:6-7).

To subdue the doctrines Noah preached, they made a pretense of following him -- claiming they were doing what he commanded them, claiming to do it by his authority. And when Noah died they began to worship him! They called him, in their mysteries, Janus -- the one who could look into both worlds because he experienced the worlds on either side of the Flood.

WHAT ITALIAN HISTORY REVEALS

The history of Italy was preserved down to Roman times. Not until the Middle Ages was it allowed to die a natural death. What could not be disproofd was left undiscussed. The scholarly world soon forgot the records in its possession. Those who did take note of them began labeling them as recent inventions -- just as they did the history of every other nation. Now let us open the pages of Italian history and see what really occurred in ancient Italy.

The history of Italy opens -- as might be expected -- with human government beginning at the Tower of Babel. Italian history begins immediately after the Flood -- with the land without inhabitants for 108 years. The first family to settle in Italy, according to ancient history, was Gomer. But why should this be so unusual, when one considers the contemporary history of Spain?

Gomer's children generally passed eastward out of Europe into Asia. Archaeology traces the movements of the earliest cultures of the children of Gomer from southern Europe into Asia. (See the previous chapter on the history of Spain under the family of Togarmah.)

Because Gomer was the earliest hero this side the Flood to populate limited areas of Europe, it became a Middle-Age superstition to label all the people of Europe the descendants of Gomer. Most Bible maps are so labeled today. But they are wrong. In the very first chapter, on the history of Germany, is proof that Shem's descendants now inhabit Western Europe. The fiction that Gomer was the ancestor of these people was deliberately, and knowingly, invented to cloak the identity of the House of Israel and of the Chaldeans and Assyrians. The

Germans do not want their identity known to the world. Nor do the Chaldeans. And the House of Israel wants to believe it is Gentile.

Now to continue the history of Italy as preserved to us from the same sources which give us German, Spanish and early British history.

THE HISTORY OF ETRURIA

The story of Etruria or Tuscany is essentially the history of those invading nations who dwelt in Italy, but were not descended from Kittim. The people of Etruria were a heterogeneous group of tribes.

THE HISTORY OF THE LATINS

Meanwhile the descendants of the children of Kittim were being ruled over by descendants of the family of Abraham. The famous woman Electra or Roma was daughter of Atlas Kittim. Josephus reveals Atlas to have been Epher, Abraham's grandson. His daughter is called the concubine of Jupiter (see Icelandic history earlier in this volume), From Electra, who later married Cambon, came a line of rulers who were later accounted gods or divine heroes. The list carries us down to the coming of Aeneas of Troy, recorded in Volume I. All these royal lines were related to the family of Abraham.

To conclude the surprising early history of Italy, here is a slightly different mode of reckoning the earliest rulers. Anderson's 'Royal Genealogies' records, from documents extant in the sixteenth century, the lengths of reigns from the time of Shem's settlement of colonies in Europe. That event may be dated from the 'Bavarian Chronicle' to 2214.