outhouse

I have only contradicted myself in your eyes because you don't understand.

Influencing later dogma [which you admit you don't understand] has in no way acknowledged the legitimacy of what the Mary is a version of Isis people claim.



Who has contradicted himself?

Toto

At one point, I thought Robert Tulip made an unsourced reference to Acharya S. I don't see the point of trying to find it.

The idea that Isis' "virginity" is not virginity as we understand it is my conclusion from what reading I have done of Acharya S's works.

I do not claim to have read her extensively. I find her frustrating - she raises interesting ideas but I'm left feeling unsatisfied.

I was quoting the term "mystery" from the chapter of Acharya S's Christ in Egypt, which you helpfully provided. I believe she is referring to the concept of "mystery" in Christian theology, and/or the mystery religions.

Here is the pertinent paragraph:

In addition to the renewal of virginity, the virgin birth itself is also one of the "sacred mysteries" repeatedly discussed by Philo [1] comprising the "mystic union of the soul as female with God as male" [2] Oxford University professor of Theology Dr. Frederick C. Conyheare (1856-1924) comments that "Philo believed that it was possible for women under exceptional circumstances to conceive and bring forth dia tou theou [through the god] and without human husband." [3] Thus, Philo revealed the notion of a miraculous or virgin birth to have been a mystery which is likely one reason we do not find it blasted all over the place in ancient writings, although the concept was surely known to many people over the centuries and millennia.

[Yes I know that there are modern scholars who disagree with this interpretation of Philo.]

Again, I was quoting AS. I meant my tone to be somewhere between bemused and sarcastic. I guess it didn't come through.

Robert Tulip

Thanks Jeffrey for seeking the views of academic Egyptologists on the mythology of Isis. And sorry for my intemperate comments on the history of mythicism thread. I have promised the moderators I will not allow myself to be goaded again into such comments.

I drew your findings to Acharya's attention. She emailed me about it but I won't repeat her comments. Freethinkaluva responded here.

Reading carefully through Freethinkaluva's comments, I feel the academic Egyptologists you have cited have a psychological lacuna regarding the deep meaning of mythology, a topic that requires analysis of symbolic archetypes. It looks obvious that Egyptians regarded Isis as a virgin, not least due to her association with purity, and that the Blessed Virgin Mary has a mythic continuity with the Isis story.

So I am very confused as to why the academics look so biased. Maybe they are intimidated by the longstanding bigotry of the church into a group-think culture of fear of alternative views. We have to remember that Christians regard Isis as a demon, so it is not surprising if this Christian bigotry extends into academia.

A further thing here. Isis is given new life in the Bible as Mary in John's story of the resurrection of Lazarus, who is Osiris. Acharya analyses this continuity with Egypt at length in Christ in Egypt, citing the great Egyptologist Gerald Massey. I am well aware that Massey is viewed with contempt by fundamentalist bigots who have not read his work. But again, the problem here is a culture war, with conventional timid academicians on the one hand, and astrotheologians on the other, whose legacy goes back to the immolation of Bruno by the Pope in Rome in 1600 and the jailing of Taylor.

I don't have respect for conventional critiques of astrotheology. As Acharya commented in her Easter Message, our society today has forgotten how to look at the night sky.

Vorkosigan

Can you supply concrete texts in modern accepted translations that would support this view?

Thanks, Dr Gibson. This is the kind of thing that is very useful and important for the discussion.

What a tough high school experience Assmann must have had....

Vorkisgan

Robert Tulip

This is answered in Freethinkaluva's linked post in the paragraph above the one you quoted, where the Pyramid Text sources for Isis as Virgin are provided, as well as the citations from the 2003 Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament translating hwnt as virgin and citing ancient Egyptian inscriptions with Isis saying 'I am the great virgin', as well as the hieroglyphs showing Isis-Meri. This is all explained in DM Murdock's excellent book, Christ in Egypt.

You won't find academic egyptologists citing this material because they live in terror of being cast out of their narrow guild if they show any trace of sympathy to new research. The thought police are on the hunt (or is that hwnt?) for taboo astral material.

Freethinkaluva's excellent reference links through to material on Isis parallels in Catholicism and Orthodoxy which I see has been censored from wikipedia, unsurprisingly given the aggressive Christian hostility to discussion of the origins of their myths among Egyptian demons.

When there is such systematic suppression, dating back to the elimination of Gnosticism and Egyptian script, you have to consider the logic of arguments. Murdock, drawing from sources including Massey and AB Kuhn, explains how John's tale of Lazarus parallels Osiris, including the parallel reference to Mary and Martha in old Egyptian myth. Tom Harpur explains this laboriously in The Pagan Christ. But no true Egyptologist would be caught dead peeking at Harpur.

Vorkosigan, are you a true scotsman? No true Scotsman would dream of comparing Isis to Mary, or of reading Gerald Massey.

Chili

Not sure about Isis with all those theologians yanking away on what she is or is supposed to be, but Mary is necessarily virgin as the einai of all that is created and came to be. That so exludes phantams however fantastic they may appear to be in our imagination.

Mary must necessarily be perpetual in each and every organism as the essence of our DNA wherein She is the soul conceived of which there is no two the same, and hence no plural for the word einai in Greek.

Jeffrey Gibson

Which you yourself (and Free think what's his name Dave) cannot read, since you don't know Egyptian, and therefore cannot make any competent judgement regarding the accuracy of those translations..

May we have the full citation of the TDOT passage please.

<edit>

Jeffrey

Roger Pearse

I second that. Knowledge of ancient Egyptian is a specialised skill which few possess. It is great that you took the time to hunt this one down.

Toto

Freethinkaluva does not even engage with the issue. He casually asserts that h.wnt means "virgin" in spite of the informed comments Jeffrey has produced that indicate otherwise. Christ in Egypt does seem to realize that there is an issue with the translation, but dismisses it as "hair splitting."

Toto

The Freethought Forum link has screenshots of a googlebooks version of

Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Volume 2, pg.338-339:

I don't think that 2003 is the publication date.

I can't access that page on google books, but I can see it on the Amazon preview:

Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Vol. 2 (or via: amazon.co.uk) Publication Date: October 20, 1975

Under the definition of bethulah