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.