Freethought & Rationalism Archive

ApostateAbe · 04-27-2013, 10:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Tulip

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

You think that the image of the bust is just a reminder of Peter. My hypothesis is that Murdock simply trusted Barbara Walker, who claimed that the statue of Priapus really is a statue of Peter. But, I don't have Barbara Walker's book, so I don't know for sure.

Abe, your "hypothesis" here should not really be dignified with that term, since it is incorrect, and based on no evidence. You really shouldn’t dress up idle speculation as a hypothesis, which should have more basis than groundless suspicion or malevolent whimsy. And with your admission that you "don't know for sure", what you really meant was you don't have a clue and are just making it up to treat Murdock as a soft target. Ehrman got in trouble for his careless comments about making things up, so you should not do the same.

I do have a copy of The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara Walker. The entry on Saint Peter is six pages long, and is full of fascinating research. On the specific "hypothesis" that you raised, Walker did not claim "that the statue of Priapus really is a statue of Peter." Her text is as follows, and it illustrates that the question of what “really is” the case in such symbolic mythological examples is far from simple.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ”Barbara Walker”

There is a ring of ritual about the story that Peter denied Christ three times before the cock crew, as though some material of the ancient sacred drama were clumsily reinterpreted. The resurrected God couldn’t enter into his kingdom until dawn. The angel of annunciation appeared as a cock “to announce th coming of the sun” as Pausanias said. At cockcrow the Savior arose as Light of the World to disperse the demons of the night. But if he tried to enter into his kingdom earlier, disrupting the cycles of night and day, the Gatekeeper would deny him… This story made difficulties for Christian theologians, when the pagans inquired why Jesus should found his church on a disciple who denied him, rather than a more loyal one. The conventional answer was that it demonstrated Christ’s power of forgiveness. But during the later persecutions, denial of Christ came to be considered the one absolutely unforgiveable crime. The cock was another totemic “peter” sometimes viewed as the god’s alter ego. Vatican authorities preserved a bronze image of cock with an oversized penis on a man’s body, the pedestal inscribed ‘the Savior of the World’.* The cock was also a solar symbol. Sun worship was evident in Christian literature, especially the ‘Gnostic Gospel’ of John. Mithraic solar symbolism entered into many papal customs. St Peter’s Chair, the papal throne, was decorated like the throne of Mithra with zodiacal signs and the twelve labors of the sun god.

* source GR Scott Phallic Worship:
A History of Sex and Sex Rites in Relation to the Religions of All Races from Antiquity to the Present Day p262

You got me there. It looks as though Murdock's connection between Peter and the Priapus statue is more like the result of a game of telephone played by polemic authors, with no single author entirely to blame.

Stringbean · 04-28-2013, 05:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrMacSon

Exactly. Unless he has been truly unaware of the recent 'mythicist' movement.

Bart actually addresses your points in a recent blog-posting - http://ehrmanblog.org/explaining-myself/

Actually Bart does not explain himself.

Ehrman must know that the HJ argument is not merely that Jesus existed but that Jesus existed ONLY as a complete human being and was known and accepted only as a human being by his supposed followers, and writers of the Jesus cult in antiquity.

The NT does not state anywhere that Jesus was only a human being. The very stories of Jesus were regarded as credible because Jesus was considered a Son of a God or God himself.

In the earliest stories of Jesus of gMark the author stated that Jesus admitted he was the Son of God.

In the Pauline writings it is claimed Jesus was God's own Son who was raised from the dead.

The Jesus character in the NT was not ever described as only human but as a Son of a God.

In the HJ/MJ argument--Gods are Myths.

Ehrman must explain how is it that Jesus in the NT was a figure of history when he himself has discredited the NT as a credible historical source.

Quote:

Ehrman must explain how is it that Jesus in the NT was a figure of history when he himself has discredited the NT as a credible historical source.

This is something I have never figured out. Why spend so much time discrediting the historical reliability of the NT and then turn around and write a book on Did Jesus Exist? And for him to say he was not familiar with the MJ debate I find hard to swallow. I gotta get that book.

Robert Tulip · 04-28-2013, 06:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

It looks as though Murdock's connection between Peter and the Priapus statue is more like the result of a game of telephone played by polemic authors, with no single author entirely to blame.

No, it is not a misreading, as implied by the telephone analogy. It is more that Peter is analogy for rock, and rock is a deeply phallic symbol, reflected in the Hindu tradition of the lingam.

Walker cites GR Scott:

Quote:

http://www.atheistnexus.org/profiles...-the-fictional
The story of how the fictional Peter of the New Testament came to be invented
Posted by Dr. Terence Meaden on November 9, 2008
FRAUD: THE MYTH OF SAINT PETER—the man who never was.
ORIGINS OF RELIGIONS, PART 4
Barbara Walker, in her opus The woman’s encyclopedia of myths and secrets. (1993. Harper and Row) wrote about the fancy and fiction of St. Peter who we may call “the man who never was”.

“The myth of Saint Peter was the slender thread from which hung the whole weighty structure of the Roman papacy. One solitary passage in the Gospel of Matthew said Jesus made a pun by giving Simon son of Jonah the new name of Peter, “Rock” (Latin petra), saying he would found his church on this rock (Matthew 16: 18-19).

Unfortunately for Papal credibility, the so-called Petrine passage was a forgery. It was deliberately inserted into the scripture about the third century AD as a political ploy, to uphold the primacy of the Roman see against rival churches in the east. [Reinach, S. Orpheus. New York, Horace Liveright Inc. 1930, 240].

Various Christian bishoprics were engaged in a power struggle in which the chief weapons were bribery, forgery, and intrigue, with elaborate fictions and hoaxes written into sacred books, and ruthless competition between rival parties for the lucrative position of god’s elite. [H. Smith (1952). Man and his gods. Little, Brown and Co. Boston, USA.]

Most early churches put forth spurious claims to foundation by apostles, even though the apostles themselves were no more than the mandatory “zodiacal twelve” attached to the figure of the sacred king. Early popes were often mere names, drawn from titles of Roman gods, such as Eleutherios or Soter, falsely inserted into an artificial chronology to simulate succession from Peter.

The real roots of Peter’s legend lay in pagan Roman myths of the city-god called Petra, or Pater Liber, assimilated to the Mithraic pater partum (Father of Fathers), whose title was corrupted into papa, then “Pope”. This personage had been both a Rock and a Father—that is a phallic pillar—in the Vatican mundus since Etruscan times, when oracular priests called vatis gave their title to the site.

Other variations of the pagan deity’s name were Patriarch (Chief Father), Pompeius, and Patricius (Patrick). Like Indian Brahmans, Roman “patricians” claimed a patrilineal descent from the god. Since his name also meant a rock, he was what the Old Testament called “the Rock that begat thee” (Deuteronomy 32:18).

THE VATICAN PHALLUS: The god’s stone phallus remained planted in the Vatican mount through the later stages of the Roman empire and well into the Middle Ages—perhaps even into the 19th century, when a visitor said Vatican authorities “kept in secret a large stone emblem of the creative power, of a very peculiar shape” [G. R. Scott. Phallic Worship. Associated Booksellers. Westport, Connecticut].

Medieval names for such an object—perron, pyr, Pierre—show that it was both a “rock” and a “peter”. Such was the ancient Pater’s phallic sceptre or pillar topped with a pine cone, the thyrsus of Pater Liber. Church authorities often converted a carved perron into a Christian symbol simply by placing a cross on its tip.
…
…
It is now certain that there was no St. Peter in Rome to “found the papacy.”[Reinach 240]. Stories about Peter were invented after the Roman see was well established. During the first five centuries of the Christian era, no one thought the bishop of Rome had a right to govern other bishops; there was no such doctrine as the primacy of the Roman see. “Christ neither founded nor desired the Church.”

Acharya recently commented that

Quote:

We know that "Peter" was symbolized as a cock, and his name itself a slang term for "penis," as is the word cock. Reading another analysis, it occurs to me that he is likely the old phallic god represented by a lingam stone or rock, as his name indicates.

Quote: "The New Testament, besides establishing sun worship, is a priestly homily on the struggle between the new official religion and the old. We find Jesus a little afraid of the stone god, Peter or Cephas, and always praising and propitiating him...." (Sex Symbolism in Religion, 376)

This contention also reflects the popularity of the god Priapus in this region and era. It would appear that "Peter" is Priapus, demoted so that Jesus will be his master and usurp his cult. Peter's prominence in the gospel tale would indicate how important was the phallic/priapic cult at the time, which should not surprise us.

So, a shallow understanding of the gospel story and Christian history may not yield this peter-phallus analysis, but we can see how it came about - another piece of the puzzle. The emphasis on the "rock" in the Mithra tale, when there is in the Persian version a virgin goddess, is also indicative of a phallic/priapic cult usurped by Christianity.

aa5874 · 04-28-2013, 07:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Ehrman must explain how is it that Jesus in the NT was a figure of history when he himself has discredited the NT as a credible historical source.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stringbean

This is something I have never figured out. Why spend so much time discrediting the historical reliability of the NT and then turn around and write a book on Did Jesus Exist? And for him to say he was not familiar with the MJ debate I find hard to swallow. I gotta get that book.

I cannot swallow Ehrman's claim about how he found out about arguments for a Mythological Jesus.

The very fact that there has been a Quest for an historical Jesus for hundreds of years and the fact that the Quest for an historical Jesus was initiated precisely because the Jesus of the NT was considered a Jesus of Faith then it should have been known by Ehrman.

There would have been no need for a Quest for an historical Jesus if Jesus of the NT was not a figure of Faith.

In the earliest story of Jesus in the NT the author claimed the Jesus character was the Son of God who was a transfiguring water walker who was raised from the dead.

Ehrman seems not to realise that people of antiquity believed that Adam existed.

The Pauline writer BELIEVED Adam was a figure of history.

The Pauline writer claimed Jesus was the Last Adam.

The Pauline BELIEVED that Adam and Jesus were made by God.

Adam was a man but Jesus was made of the Spirit.

1 Corinthians 15:45 KJV

Quote:

And so it is written , The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

Adam was made from dirt--Jesus was made a Spirit.

The NT supports Mythology.

ApostateAbe · 04-28-2013, 09:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stringbean

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Actually Bart does not explain himself.

Ehrman must know that the HJ argument is not merely that Jesus existed but that Jesus existed ONLY as a complete human being and was known and accepted only as a human being by his supposed followers, and writers of the Jesus cult in antiquity.

The NT does not state anywhere that Jesus was only a human being. The very stories of Jesus were regarded as credible because Jesus was considered a Son of a God or God himself.

In the earliest stories of Jesus of gMark the author stated that Jesus admitted he was the Son of God.

In the Pauline writings it is claimed Jesus was God's own Son who was raised from the dead.

The Jesus character in the NT was not ever described as only human but as a Son of a God.

In the HJ/MJ argument--Gods are Myths.

Ehrman must explain how is it that Jesus in the NT was a figure of history when he himself has discredited the NT as a credible historical source.

Quote:

Ehrman must explain how is it that Jesus in the NT was a figure of history when he himself has discredited the NT as a credible historical source.

This is something I have never figured out. Why spend so much time discrediting the historical reliability of the NT and then turn around and write a book on Did Jesus Exist? And for him to say he was not familiar with the MJ debate I find hard to swallow. I gotta get that book.

I think that is a good question, and I think more of us need to be aware that making the case that Jesus never existed requires more than just discrediting the gospels. Discrediting the gospels is only an early step. The case is complete only when we find the most probable explanation for the evidence most relevant to the founding of Christianity, including the gospels. That means, yes, the gospels are evidence of something or other, most directly they are evidence for the set of beliefs among ancient Christians. Are those beliefs evidence for a religion founded by some human being roughly fitting the profile of Jesus? Or are they evidence for a religion that developed purely from myth? We choose the explanation that fits the evidence best. At no point do the gospels ever go from evidence to non-evidence, regardless of their reliability. One way or the other, they reflect what ancient Christians believed.

Bart Ehrman explains the gospels with a religion founded by Jesus as an "apocalyptic prophet," or, in my words, a "doomsday cult leader." Jesus led a small group of Jewish zealots who believed that a disastrous apocalypse would happen very shortly. I prefer this hypothesis because the evidence is directly and plainly on the face of many ancient Christian texts, and because it is plausible.

I don't accept that Jesus never existed, because the hypothesis is implausible. There has never been a religion, as far as anyone is aware, in which an actual human founder of a cult did not correspond to the myth's proposed human founder of the cult. That is because generally cults are founded by authoritarian human beings. When the cult outlives the founder, the cult maintains central respect for him or her in their myths. I see no good reason to make Christianity the special exception to this general pattern.

Did Jesus Exist? (or via: amazon.co.uk) is pretty good, but a better book by the same author is Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (or via: amazon.co.uk), which lays out the case for Jesus being best characterized as a doomsday cult leader. Even better is Ehrman's undergraduate textbook on the subject: The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (or via: amazon.co.uk). Ehrman is an excellent writer, whatever one's disagreements may be, and this book provides the minimal background knowledge required for the debates, best representing the secular academic positions on the New Testament, and it is readable at the same time.

ApostateAbe · 04-28-2013, 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Tulip

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

It looks as though Murdock's connection between Peter and the Priapus statue is more like the result of a game of telephone played by polemic authors, with no single author entirely to blame.

No, it is not a misreading, as implied by the telephone analogy. It is more that Peter is analogy for rock, and rock is a deeply phallic symbol, reflected in the Hindu tradition of the lingam.

Walker cites GR Scott:

http://www.atheistnexus.org/profiles...-the-fictional
The story of how the fictional Peter of the New Testament came to be invented
Posted by Dr. Terence Meaden on November 9, 2008
FRAUD: THE MYTH OF SAINT PETER—the man who never was.
ORIGINS OF RELIGIONS, PART 4
Barbara Walker, in her opus The woman’s encyclopedia of myths and secrets. (1993. Harper and Row) wrote about the fancy and fiction of St. Peter who we may call “the man who never was”.
“The myth of Saint Peter was the slender thread from which hung the whole weighty structure of the Roman papacy. One solitary passage in the Gospel of Matthew said Jesus made a pun by giving Simon son of Jonah the new name of Peter, “Rock” (Latin petra), saying he would found his church on this rock (Matthew 16: 18-19).
Unfortunately for Papal credibility, the so-called Petrine passage was a forgery. It was deliberately inserted into the scripture about the third century AD as a political ploy, to uphold the primacy of the Roman see against rival churches in the east. [Reinach, S. Orpheus. New York, Horace Liveright Inc. 1930, 240].
Various Christian bishoprics were engaged in a power struggle in which the chief weapons were bribery, forgery, and intrigue, with elaborate fictions and hoaxes written into sacred books, and ruthless competition between rival parties for the lucrative position of god’s elite. [H. Smith (1952). Man and his gods. Little, Brown and Co. Boston, USA.]
Most early churches put forth spurious claims to foundation by apostles, even though the apostles themselves were no more than the mandatory “zodiacal twelve” attached to the figure of the sacred king. Early popes were often mere names, drawn from titles of Roman gods, such as Eleutherios or Soter, falsely inserted into an artificial chronology to simulate succession from Peter.
The real roots of Peter’s legend lay in pagan Roman myths of the city-god called Petra, or Pater Liber, assimilated to the Mithraic pater partum (Father of Fathers), whose title was corrupted into papa, then “Pope”. This personage had been both a Rock and a Father—that is a phallic pillar—in the Vatican mundus since Etruscan times, when oracular priests called vatis gave their title to the site.
Other variations of the pagan deity’s name were Patriarch (Chief Father), Pompeius, and Patricius (Patrick). Like Indian Brahmans, Roman “patricians” claimed a patrilineal descent from the god. Since his name also meant a rock, he was what the Old Testament called “the Rock that begat thee” (Deuteronomy 32:18).
THE VATICAN PHALLUS: The god’s stone phallus remained planted in the Vatican mount through the later stages of the Roman empire and well into the Middle Ages—perhaps even into the 19th century, when a visitor said Vatican authorities “kept in secret a large stone emblem of the creative power, of a very peculiar shape” [G. R. Scott. Phallic Worship. Associated Booksellers. Westport, Connecticut].
Medieval names for such an object—perron, pyr, Pierre—show that it was both a “rock” and a “peter”. Such was the ancient Pater’s phallic sceptre or pillar topped with a pine cone, the thyrsus of Pater Liber. Church authorities often converted a carved perron into a Christian symbol simply by placing a cross on its tip.
…
…
It is now certain that there was no St. Peter in Rome to “found the papacy.”[Reinach 240]. Stories about Peter were invented after the Roman see was well established. During the first five centuries of the Christian era, no one thought the bishop of Rome had a right to govern other bishops; there was no such doctrine as the primacy of the Roman see. “Christ neither founded nor desired the Church.”

Acharya recently commented that

Quote:

We know that "Peter" was symbolized as a cock, and his name itself a slang term for "penis," as is the word cock. Reading another analysis, it occurs to me that he is likely the old phallic god represented by a lingam stone or rock, as his name indicates.

Quote: "The New Testament, besides establishing sun worship, is a priestly homily on the struggle between the new official religion and the old. We find Jesus a little afraid of the stone god, Peter or Cephas, and always praising and propitiating him...." (Sex Symbolism in Religion, 376)

This contention also reflects the popularity of the god Priapus in this region and era. It would appear that "Peter" is Priapus, demoted so that Jesus will be his master and usurp his cult. Peter's prominence in the gospel tale would indicate how important was the phallic/priapic cult at the time, which should not surprise us.

So, a shallow understanding of the gospel story and Christian history may not yield this peter-phallus analysis, but we can see how it came about - another piece of the puzzle. The emphasis on the "rock" in the Mithra tale, when there is in the Persian version a virgin goddess, is also indicative of a phallic/priapic cult usurped by Christianity.

The rabbit hole is always deeper than we think with that kind of literature, and I should not have underestimated it. I think maybe Murdock should have just left out the drawing of the statue of Priapus. A point about Peter is best made with either a full explanation or a symbol of Peter, not a symbol of Priapus, and I think many readers were misled into thinking that Murdock thinks the statue actually represents Peter (Bart Ehrman was not alone).

aa5874 · 04-28-2013, 10:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stringbean

This is something I have never figured out. Why spend so much time discrediting the historical reliability of the NT and then turn around and write a book on Did Jesus Exist? And for him to say he was not familiar with the MJ debate I find hard to swallow. I gotta get that book.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

I think that is a good question, and I think more of us need to be aware that making the case that Jesus never existed requires more than just discrediting the gospels. Discrediting the gospels is only an early step. The case is complete only when we find the most probable explanation for the evidence most relevant to the founding of Christianity, including the gospels...

The most probable explation for the abundance of evidence is that the Jesus character was a product of Jewish, Greek and Roman mythology.

The authors of the Jesus admitted openly that their stories were from Hebrew Scripture.

1. Mark 13:30 KJV---Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass , till all these things be done

2. Matthew 1:22 KJV---Now all this was done , that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet,

3. Matthew 21:4 KJV---All this was done , that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying ,

4. Matthew 26:56 KJV---But all this was done , that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled .

In "Did Jesus Exist?" Ehrman showed that virtually all accounts of Jesus could not have happened.

Ehrman discredited stories of the Cyrenius census, the Triumphal entry, the prisonner exchange, and virtually all the miracles including the resurrection.

Effectively virtually all of the stories of Jesus were made up from birth to ascension.

The stories of Jesus were publicly known for hundreds of years to have come primarily from the Septuagint.

The first time Jesus rode a donkey it was based on prophecy. See the book of Zechariah.

The Gospel of Jesus was known to have come from the book of Daniel.

The birth of Jesus by a Virgin is found in Isaiah.

The claim that Jesus the Logos was the Creator is based on Genesis.

Jesus of Nazareth is completely unknown by any non-apologetic writer in the 1st century.

Mark 8

Quote:

27And Jesus went out , and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am ?

28And they answered ,
John the Baptist: but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets....

The stories of Jesus are the WORDS of the prophets.

Effectively, the Jesus character is part John the Baptist, part Daniel, part Zechariah, part Isaiah, part Micah, part Jonah, and other prophets.

Dave31 · 04-28-2013, 10:44 AM

Here's a response to the criticisms from Rook Hawkins on the book Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk).

Stringbean · 04-28-2013, 12:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave31

Here's a response to the criticisms from Rook Hawkins on the book Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk).

I would care to comment but the last time I did my post got put on review so I will just say that he needs to learn more about MP how about that. And just so I can be more up to snuff on this I just ordered the book for Kindle on Amazon.

Toto · 04-28-2013, 12:27 PM

The Tom Verenna review referred to incorrectly as "Rook Hawkins" is here.

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04-28-2013, 10:44 AM	#58
Dave31 Banned Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: USA Posts: 425	Here's a response to the criticisms from Rook Hawkins on the book Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk).

04-28-2013, 12:27 PM	#60
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	The Tom Verenna review referred to incorrectly as "Rook Hawkins" is here.

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