Malachi151

The bigger point is really that it doesn't matter anyway. The claims she makes surrounding this "passage" are absurd. Tertullian can't "prove" anything.

Even if Tertullian said, "Yes, Jesus Christ is the Sun God and so has every other god in history been a sun god," it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans.

A 3rd century Roman's word or beliefs cannot dictate the reality of all global religious tradition or even Christian tradition.

Even if Tertullian did think that Jesus was a sun god, that would only reflect Tertullian's views anyway.

You don't prove that Jesus was a sun god by point to some 3rd or 4th century Roman and saying "See he said so!"

You do so by addressing the earliest sources, which is Paul, the early epistles, and the Gospels.

Citing traditions from hundreds of years later after the religion had indeed been incorporated into a culture that did in fact worship sun gods, doesn't do crap. We all know that the Romans, who were sun god worshipers, did blend Christianity with their existing religious traditions and views. Pointing out later influences tells us nothing about origins, and so it really doesn't matter if Tertullian did say Jesus was a sun god anyway.

rigorist

Bad writing?

Fortuna

Well, the specific idea of a "son of god" as being the product of a union of a god and a human (like Jesus) has no precedent in Judaism, ancient nor modern. However, we can find many such examples from Greco-Roman mythology (Heracles, Helen, Paris(by some accounts), Euphemus, the seduction of Europa, -- apparently Zeus liked human women).

The closest thing we find in Judaism is the taking of human wives by the bnai Elohim ("sons of god") in Bereshith. In that story though the "sons of god" were angels.(this story is retold and enhanced in 1 Enoch).

Does a celestial potent (Luke's the star of Bethlehem) have any Tanakh or Judaic precedent ?

In the NT, the places of the afterlife are referred to as "Hades","Tartarus"(1 occurence) and sometimes the word Gehenna is used. The words "Hades" and "Tartarus" are most certainly of greek origin.

In the Tanach the hebrew word "sheoul" is used. This word translates as "grave" or "pit". In fact the whole idea of an afterlife, judgement and reward after death is a late development in Judaism, that may itself be owed to greek influence. Joseph tells us that of the factions of Judaism in the first century, the more traditional and literalist sadducees do not believe in any sort of afterlife (due to their Torah literalism). The Tanach book of Koloheth specifically tells us that death is final.

Further, the heaven (or paradise) as used in the NT, that is, as a place for the righteous after death is foreign to Judaism. I find no precedent in Judaism for it. The only Tanakh references translated as "heaven" either refer to the skies (yikes - astrotheology!) and as the place where god seems to live (and it looks like "sky" or "skies" would be a better english translation).

And both of these (a hell and heaven as a places for the dead) do have precedents in greco-roman myth. We can not only find them in greek mythology (Cupid and Psyche) but can also find them in Plato (Republic - The myth of Er).

Interestingly, when Jerome translates this into latin, he will eliminate the distinction between Hades, Tartarus and Gehenna and transate them all as the latin "Infernum".

It is clear that these NT concepts are clearly greek and do not come from Judaism.

Further in the case of the NT, for the GREEK words for heaven and hell, you cannot reasonably say that there is no Greco-Roman influence. The very words themselves have prior meanings in GR mythology, and they will carry this baggage into the NT, especially for Greek and Roman readers. Do you think that understnading Hell as a place of fire and brimstone might be related to the use of the latin "infernum" or did it come from the use of Gehenna? The words Hades and Tartarus do not have that meaning, yet, look at how Dante will later interpret these ideas ?

But, let me emphsize, there is nothing like this idea of hell in Tanakh. Clearly, these ideas anyway did not come from earlier Judaism. But at the same time, later judaism, that is, second temple Judaism imported greek ideas.

Antipope Innocent II

Philo clearly understood Isaac's conception in much the same way as gLuke and GMatthew describe that of Jesus - he describes this in his De Cherubim. And the gospel stories are closer to other Jewish stories of women who should not be able to conceive doing so by the power of Yahweh - eg the mothers of Isaac, Samuel, Samson and John - than they are to Greek gods having actual sex with mortals. There's no sex and no implication of sex in the gospel stories, just a miraculous conception. That's a Jewish topos.

GakuseiDon

It's a summary of Tertullian's letter. The quote below from the Encyclopedia covers around 3 fairly long passages from Tertullian:

You say we worship an ass's head, he goes on, but you worship all kinds of animals; your gods are images made on a cross framework, so you worship crosses. You say we worship the sun; so do you.

Note that the Encyclopedia author doesn't say that Tertullian refutes any of the charges: if you wanted to, you could infer from this that Tertullian all but admits charges that Christians worship an ass's head. But actually, Tertullian is responding along the lines of a schoolboy's "Takes one to know one!" or "I know you are, but what am I?"

Tertullian is putting it back on the pagans. In effect, he is saying: "You say we worship animals (even though we don't). Well, so do you (even though I know you don't). You say we worship the sun (even though we don't). Well so do you (even though I know you don't)."

Reread that passage from Tertullian in "Ad nationes", and you can see that he is saying almost the opposite to what Acharya is inferring:

"Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we pray towards the east, or because we make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do you do less than this? Do not many among you, with an affectation of sometimes worshipping the heavenly bodies likewise, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise? It is you, at all events, who have even admitted the sun into the calendar of the week; and you have selected its day, in preference to the preceding day as the most suitable in the week for either an entire abstinence from the bath, or for its postponement until the evening, or for taking rest and for banqueting.

Tertullian is demonstrating to the pagans that they in effect worship the sun by the fact that they move their lips in the direction of the sunrise??? If pagans worshipped the sun, you'd think he wouldn't need to bother to point out something so mundane. Obviously he is showing that he can accuse the pagans of worshipping the sun by using the same bad reasoning that pagans use to accuse Christians, and also as obvious is that the pagans didn't, at least not in the way put by Tertullian.

Compare that with what Acharya is inferring from her comment that "Tertullian... ironically admits the true origins of the Christ story and of all other such godmen by stating in refutation of his critics, "You say we worship the sun; so do you."

(ETA) This is my favorite quote from Tertullian's "Ad nationes". Acharya, feel free to use this!

"We [Christians] begin our religious service, or initiate our mysteries, with slaying an infant... there is no great difference between us, only you do not kill your infants in the way of a sacred rite, nor (as a service) to God. But then you make away with them in a more cruel manner,
because you expose them to the cold and hunger, and to wild beasts, or else you get rid of them by the slower death of drowning."

Malachi151

Yeah, but #1 the conception of Jesus isn't described at all until later works, namely Matthew and Luke. #2 Even in those works there is no conception in any Greco-Roman sense. God doesn't come down and physically mate with Mary, as is the case in Greek and Roman mythology. Indeed, there is no mating by God at all, it just says that she is with child.

Luke's account seems more to be an attempt to make sense of the name "Son of God", as if to explain why he had that designation.

So this seems like later rationalization, not something that was a part of the earliest concepts of and stories about Jesus.

I agree with this one. It is clear that the concept of afterlife in the NT was heavily influenced by Hellenistic culture, and I point this out in my own articles on the subject. These concepts, however, have little or nothing to do with "astrotheology" anyway, being much more based on Platonic philosophy. Also, these aren't direct imports into the NT, they make their way there via Hellenized Judaism.

Amaleq13

Exactly. It is simply incomprehensible to me how anyone could read the entire paraphrase and come away thinking that Tertullian is somehow admitting to only one of the charges. Either you think he "ironically admits" to them all or you realize he denied them all and the paraphrase is somewhat poorly worded.

Even if all you read was the paraphrase of the response to the sun-worshipping charge in isolation, it is difficult for me to imagine anyone being satisfied they knew enough to draw such a strong conclusion without reading what Tertullian actually wrote.

"Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we pray towards the east..."

Why did Christians pray towards the east?

Ben C Smith

While I think that the intent and meaning of what is ascribed to Christ in the NT is almost always Jewish, I also believe that the form and emphasis is at least sometimes inspired by the emperor cult.

Read the Prienne inscription, for example (emphasis mine):

It was seeming to the Greeks in Asia, in the opinion of the high priest Apollonius of Menophilus Azanitus: Since providence, which has ordered all things of our life and is very much interested in our life, has ordered things in sending Augustus, whom she filled with virtue for the benefit of men, sending him as a savior both for us and for those after us, him who would end war and order all things, and since Caesar by his appearance surpassed the hopes of all those who received the good tidings, not only those who were benefactors before him, but even the hope among those who will be left afterward, and the birthday of the god was for the world the beginning of the gospel tidings through him; and Asia resolved it in Smyrna.

Sent by providence (John 13.20; Galatians 4.4), sent as a savior (Luke 2.11; John 4.42; Philippians 3.20), appearing (2 Timothy 1.10), the beginning of the gospel (Mark 1.1).

It may be possible to trace a Jewish backdrop for each of these things as they are attributed to Jesus. But I do not think that the collocation of all these concepts as applied to Caesar and the collocation of all these concepts as applied to Jesus is a coincidence. I think the Christians were putting forward an alternate Caesar, as it were, as king and lord.

To this end they also ascribed a miraculous birth to Jesus in a more concrete way than Jewish stories of the barren woman. Please note that I myself have argued that the barren woman stories do form part of the background to the virgin birth; but I think there is more to it than that. The virgin birth story looks to me like a hybrid of sorts between the barren womb stories and the sort of birth attributed to Augustus; like the former, there is no physical sex between the deity and the woman (in keeping with Jewish sensibilities), but, like the latter, there is interaction of some kind that makes the child divine due to birth; compare the following:

Atia... had her litter set down in the temple and fell asleep.... On a sudden a serpent glided up to her and shortly went away. .... In the tenth month after that Augustus was born and was therefore regarded as the son of Apollo.

The holy spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the son of God.

(The former is Suetonius, Augustus 94.4; the latter is Luke 1.35b.)

I do not think the Jewish son of God concept had much to do with the kind of birth the child experienced (rather, it had to do with coronation, empowerment, commission, anointing). But the Greco-Roman concept certainly did.

Ben.

ApostateAbe

Dave31, I would like you to stick around and defend your position, even if you lose. If you lose on one point, then you can win on the next point if you choose it right and play it right. I know that you are an Acharya S loyalist because of the way you chide me for not reading her material, just like herself and all her other loyalists. Even if you are a loyalist, I suggest that you do not take tactical advice from Acharya S. Ad hominem arguments are irrelevant here.

youngalexander

I was most impressed with Julian - George Carlin
Hey, can I relate to that, every detail, especially the skin cancer.

As a physicist, can I relate to Astrotheology - you bet! I have a decided proclivity for Achayra's thesis. In fact it would fair astonish me, if there was not something in it. Indeed, there is a great deal in it as Roger Beck Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun has recently demonstrated.

So, 'Romans did not worship "the sun"'
Who sed that? Did Romans worship Mithras?
DEUS SOL INVICTUS MITHRAS

I read TCC and hoped that it was a precursor of better work. I was bitterly disappointed with S0G for which I had waited several years. It struck me as having so much potential, and then failing on scholastic grounds.

What has always astonished me is these religiosi claiming some special privelage for their delusions. Astrotheology informs the primitive mind - but fuck no, not ours!?