“In the Codex of the Nazarenes it is Tobo who is “the liberator of the soul of Adam”, to bear it from Orcus (Hades) to the place of LIFE. Tobo is Tob-Adonijah, one of the twelve disciples (Levites) sent by Jehosaphat to preach to the cities of Judah the Book of the Law (2 Chronicles 17). In the kabalistic books these were “wise men”, Magi. They drew down the rays of the sun to enlighten the sheol (Hades) Orcus, and thus show the way out of the Tenebrae, the darkness of ignorance, to the soul of Adam, which represents collectively all the “souls of mankind.”
Adam (Athamas) is Tamuz or Adonis, and Adonis is the sun Helios. In the Book of the Dead (6, 231) Osiris is made to say: “I shine like the sun in the star-house at the feast of the sun.” Christ is called the “Sun of Righteousness”, Helios of Justice” (Euseb.,: Demons. Ev., verse 29), simply a revamping of the old heathen allegories; nevertheless, to have made it serve for such a use is no less blasphemous on the part of men who pretended to be describing a true episode of the earth-pilgrimage of their God!
“Herakles, who has gone out from the chambers of earth, leaving the nether house of Plouton!” At Thee, the Stygian lakes trembled; Thee, the janitor of Orcus feared. …Thee, not even Typhon frightened. …Hail true SON of JOVE, Glory added to the gods!”
More than four centuries before the birth of Jesus, Aristophanes had written his immortal parody on the Descent into Hell, by Herakles. The chorus of the “blessed ones”, the initiated, the Elysian Fields, the arrival of Bacchus (who is Iacchos – Iaho – and Sabaoth) with Herakles, their reception with lighted torches, emblems of new life and RESURRECTION from darkness, death unto light, eternal LIFE; nothing that is found in the Gospel of Nicodemus is wanting in this poem: “Wake, burning torches… for thou comest; shaking them in thy hand, Iacche, phosphoric star of the nightly rite!”
But the Christians accept these post-mortem adventures of their god, concocted from those of his Pagan predecessors, and derided by Aristophanes four centuries before our era, literally! The absurdities of Nicodemus were read in the churches, as well as those of the Shepherd of Hermas. Irenaeus quotes the latter under the name of Scripture, a divinely inspired “revelation”; Jerome and Eusebius both insist upon its being publicly read in the churches; and Athanasius observes that the Fathers “appointed it to be read in confirmation of faith and piety.”
But then comes the reverse of this bright medal, to show once more how stable and trustworthy were the opinions of the strongest pillars of an infallible Church. Jerome, who applauds the book in his catalogue of ecclesiastical writers, in his later comments, terms it “apocryphal and foolish”! Tertullian, who could not find praise enough for the Shepherd of Hermas when a Catholic, “began abusing it when a Montanist.””
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 