Dave31

Oh please, Jeffrey - how quickly and easily you totally omit the fact that the other thread about Acharya had to be locked for many reasons. One was it started out in the original post by R.G. Price calling her and her readers a cult. It went down hill from there. This thread at this point isn't much better and should be locked too.

The fact is, Acharya has been attacked here mostly by folks who have never even seen her books or never intend to or HATE the topic in the first place. R.G. Price had been smearing her for a long time without ever reading even her online articles. Now he thinks he's doing an un-biased "review"? Christ!

When attacked in such a way as the other locked thread - Acharya has the right to defend herself and slap back too.

I have to wonder if part of this is due to the fact that Acharya is a female - how much of this is SEXIST?

Jeffrey Gibson

Could you please point out the specific post(s) in that thread in which there was anything said about AS that was, in language, content, tone, and character, on the same order as the things that AS said about IIDB members in the post that I linked to, or contained the particular charges or assessments of character that she leveled against them there?

Jeffrey

JoeWallack

JW:
Ahh, progress. The Mark of a good scholar is her ability to change her own mind. Brunner is an interesting story by himself, a part of Nazi Germany who subsequently took up Semitic studies.

The Luxor Infancy Narrative, truth be told, is documented by a Christian organization (SBL) in Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt (or via: amazon.co.uk) by William J. Murnane. The Scenes are described in some detail and especially important, those pesky but key accompanying hieroglyphics are translated (as best they can) to give you some idea of what the hell exactly you are looking at and other background information not indicated graphically. This book is intended only as a resource on Egypt and no mention is made of any comparisons to Christianity. Presumably this is what has enabled Christian Bible scholars to ignore the book which is a pity, since as you have already righteously demonstrated, there are fabulous parallels between the Christian Infancy Narratives and Amenhotep III's.

Of special interest to you I think is that Amenhotep III plagiarized his Infancy Narrative from The Girl Pharoah (you know what they say, behind every God-man is a God-Woman). Not to mention Amenhotep III worshiped the Sun!
Now you find yourself in Germany where the definitive work on the subject, Die Geburt des Gottkoenigs was born. Coincidence? Maybe. Or an Act of Providence?

It shouldn't be surprising that Christian Bible scholarship on the subject is mainly One Way, just looking for parallels to Jewish Infancy Narratives, and largely avoiding Pagan parallels such as Luxor. Brunner mentions that the Luxor Infancy Narrative should be compared to other religions but for some reason seemed to be afraid of making any direct comparison to Christianity while in Nazi Germany. And now you are there in place of Brunner. Ironic isn't it?

If any of the Skeptics here want to see really bad scholarship on the subject check out Matthew 1-2 and the Virginal Conception where the author Roger David Aus, manages to convince himself that Jewish writings were the direct source for the Christian Infancy Narratives. I keep imagining Dan Akroyd appearing at the end of the book, formally dressed and in an old fashioned English chair with a cup of tea saying, "That was really bad scholarship."



B'Shalom, Joseph

Most men serve the State with their bodies and as such deserve no more respect than a stake of wood or a lump of clay. A few though serve the State with their conscience and therefore necessarily resist it for the most part.

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Amaleq13

Actually, we're trying to determine how many of the trees comprising your forest are actually cardboard cut-outs so that analogy doesn't really work.

Complaining about the way those who point out apparently bogus trees do so is not an adequate response. Blaming the person who originally created one of the fake trees rather than accepting responsibility for your choice to include it without checking whether it was real is not an adequate response.

Amaleq13

I would be grateful if no one would attempt to introduce or encourage this tangent to the discussion. Please focus on the subject (ie Acharya S's theory) and avoid tangents about who is more spiteful in their criticisms.

No, but you might want to get your sarcasm meter checked.

Toto

Note to Dave31: the other thread was closed at my discretion, because I thought it might help start a reasonable dialogue instead of name-calling. I think it has helped, but it is a slow process.

I still see a problem in that Acharya S expects normal standards of polite discourse, where people pretend to respect your ideas, as opposed to the less polite but more productive standards of debate, where you are expected to support your ideas.

Note to Jeffrey on Ted Hoffman's comment: I think some irony was intended there.

Welcome back, Ted. Best of luck with your nations's political situation.

Ben C Smith

Are sketches of these Luxor plates available online in their original sequence? I think I have found several relevant images (here, for instance), but am unsure which ones I am looking at, and the images are very small for viewing.

Also, is there any remedy for the persistent confusion between the immaculate conception with the virgin birth? Acharya S:

Carrier's declaration that the phrase "immaculate conception" refers only to the Christian Virgin Mary is a matter of debate, since what Massey, I and many others are claiming is that the concept occurs in the Egyptian religion as well and that the Virgin Mary is the goddess Isis-Meri, who was depicted as a virgin, despite the fact that she is represented in some traditions - but not all - as having been fecundated with Osiris's phallus.

That is not what Carrier was talking about at all. Carrier was pointing out that the immaculate conception is not the same thing as the virgin birth and does not simply mean a miraculous birth. The virgin birth is about the birth of Jesus to the virgin Mary (without the help of Joseph); the immaculate conception is about the birth of Mary to Joachim and Anna (her traditional parents, both of them, in the traditional way). It is a nitpick, yes, but as such it is easily remedied; simply remove every reference to the immaculate conception (unless one is indeed talking about the birth of Mary, not of Jesus!) and replace it with the virgin birth.

If the quotations of Massey and Jackson are accurate, they, too, confused the two. No need to change their quotations, of course, but a footnote would alleviate any confusion.

What this confusion does is to cause Acharya to tilt at windmills in her response to Carrier. For example, she writes:

Obviously, I am not the only one to use the term "immaculate conception" and to make these assertions regarding the Temple of Luxor. Nor am I the first one to suggest that the gospel account is based on the Egyptian scene. Indeed, Samuel Sharpe was one of the preeminent Egyptologists of his era, known as an expert in Egyptian hieroglyphics, for one.

If Samuel Sharpe used the term immaculate conception for the virgin birth, then he too was mistaken; however, in her quotation of Sharpe he does not use that term; he uses the term miraculous birth, and that is an appropriate term for either Horus or Jesus.

Again, this is a nitpick. But it is one that has led to entire paragraphs of confusion between the two articles.

Ben.

Solitary Man

This is my opinion, but I think Jeffrey was referring to Ted Hoffman's own theories which he holds on to...but I could be wrong.

Jeffrey Gibson

Where is there a description of an "adoration" on the part of anyone, let alone of the part of god like beings or persons of high station, in the Lukan story of Jesus' birth?

In addition to the curious and unsubstantiated claim about the secondary textual nature of Matt. 1-2, note (1) the peititio principii with respect to (a) what the Egyptian images represent and (b) that idea the Egyptian images, even if correctly interpreted, would have been known to Luke; (2) the transposition of what's in Matthew to what's in Luke (the "adoration' of Jesus appears in Matthew (Matt. 2:11), not in Luke) ; and (3) the fallacy of bifurcation (the only model for the scene in Luke is the (misread) Egyptian one) engaged in here in order to get the Lukan story to fit the alleged pattern that the images allegedly display and to "prove" that Gospel story is derived from the Egyptian one.

This is good scholarship??

Jeffrey

schilling.klaus

no, it does not matter, as the changed order is the fraudulent work
of the churchfathers who needed to force Jesus to look like the Messiah
of the Tanakh (in their narrow understanding of it)
by copycatting birth annunciations from the Old Testament
on top of an old pagan myth.

Klaus Schilling