aa5874

The passage in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews 20.7.2 does not actually say "Simon Magus" just "Simon", but this "Simon" may be "Simon Magus".

But, so far, I cannot find any information why Justin mentioned Marcion and NOT "Paul", the Acts of the Apostles or the Epistles to the seven Churches.

One reasonable explanation is that Justin did not know about or never heard of "Paul".

spamandham

You seem unwilling to even acknowledge the concept that Paul is a later name applied to an earlier character, as Detering has suggested. If that's true, then we wouldn't expect Justin to mention "Paul".

aa5874

Even if "Paul" was a name applied to an earlier character, I don't think that Simon Magus is that character.

Acts of the Apostles gave descriptions of some activities of Simon and "Saul/Paul".

Acts 8.3 Acts 8.9

spamandham

Acts is obviously a contrived apologetic work. You can't take anything in it at face value.

aa5874

Where else are you going to get information about "Saul/Paul" except for apologetic sources? Even the so-called "Pauline Epistles" are written by unknown characters who are all called "Paul".

The bulk of the information about Simon the magician comes Acts, and the early christian writers.

Can we take the information about Simon in Acts 8.9 at face value?

However, these sources characterized Simon as a magician or miracle worker, and believed to be a God, Jesus as a miracle worker, and believed to be a God, and "Saul/Paul" as a persecutor of believers who later became a believer.

Kelly

Personally, I don't trust Paul's supposed conversion any more than I trust his words. Paul/Saul was one of the Pharisees that had previously been persecuting the early Christians. Since Yeshua consistently argued against the Pharisees, had Paul's conversion been real, I suspect he would have completely turned away from preaching their doctrines, but instead, Paul apparently kept right on preaching the doctrines of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were from the order of Melchizedek and in several places in the Book of Hebrews, Paul demands that all Christian priests align themselves with the Order of the Melchizedek Pharisees. Neither Yeshua nor any of the original apostles said one single word demanding that Christians follow the Melchizedek traditions. One truly has to wonder where Paul was coming from.

In the ancient Book of Jasher, Melchizedek, the priest/king of Jerusalem is called by the name "Adonizedek."

11 And Adonizedek king of Jerusalem, the same was Shem, went out with his men to meet Abram and his people, with bread and wine, and they remained together in the valley of Melech.

12 And Adonizedek blessed Abram, and Abram gave him a tenth from all that he had brought from the spoil of his enemies, for Adonizedek was a priest before God." (Book of Jasher, 16:11-12)

Adonizedek (Adoniy-Tsedeq) means "my lord is Zedek." Compare this to Melchizedek (Malkiy-Tsedeq) which means "my king is Zedeq." Zedek was also the name of the chief god of the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem when Joshua came to destroy them for their wickedness against the God of the Hebrews. Both names may in fact be quite appropriate. If addressed as the high king of Jerusalem, the priest/king may have indeed been addressed as "Melchizedek". However, on the other hand if addressed in his capacity as a priest, he may have indeed been addressed by the name Adonizedek.

It was Sigmund Freud who first pointed out in his book "Moses and Monotheism," (Hogarth Press, 1940, p 42) that one of the most common terms used by the Israelites for God was "Adoni." However when Freud translated the word "Adoni" back into Egyptian the word was "Aten." Freud, in fact, proposed that the biblical figure of Moses had been linked to the court of Akhenaton, and there is considerable evidence coming to light that this indeed may have been the case. This implies that Adonizedek/Melchizedek was a high ranking priest among the priests of Heliopolis which was the Biblical city of On where the nation of Israel presumably resided during their 400 year sojourn in Egypt. (Interestingly, today Heliopolis is merely a suburb of Cairo and it is called by the distinctly curious name of "Maitreya".)

Personally, I suspect that the Pharisees were trained in the traditions of the Heliopolitan priesthood and that probably accounted for a great deal of the animosity Yeshua very apparently felt towards them. Paul apparently conceived of Jesus as an incarnation of the high priest Melchizedek. He also seems to compare Jesus to Apollo as is evident in the Book of 1 Corinthians 1:12-13. "Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I am of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul." Or, "I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase." (1 Co 3:6) Apollos or Apollo is merely the Greek name applied to a Horace King. (The Sirius Mystery, Robert K. G. Temple p- 110)

So it appears to me that the Pharisee Saul/Paul was simply intent upon hijacking early Christian concepts by presenting Jesus as just another avatar of Egypt's sun god cult; a concept that was apparently wholly embraced by the Church of Rome and their devotion to Sol Invictus, not to mention the fact that they seem to present Mary (Jesus' mother) as just another incarnation of Isis.

This is in direct contradiction to the Book of Revelations that declares 666 the number of the beast and the antichrist. An antichrist is essentially someone that usurps the power of Christ. The numeral 666 is well known in Gematria; the ancient numerical code used by the Jews, and the numeral is declared in the Hebrew Kabala to be the number representing the Sun. We may assume John's use of the numeral in the Book of Revelations is to clearly point out that Jesus was NOT to be considered just another one of the endless stream of sun gods known in antiquity.

Paul may well have been "the wolf in sheep's clothing" that Jesus prophesied would come. (Mt 7:15, Acts 20:29) Paul was from the tribe of Benjamin and "the wolf" was a term applied to those Benjaminites that came out of Egypt; the Pharisee priests and their followers who may have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the Egyptian sun god cult. The Book of Isaiah seems to imply that the Tribe of Benjamin was a "split tribe" consisting of both wolves (Egyptian sun god cult) and "Lambs". (Isa 11:6, 65:25)

spamandham

What makes you think the rest of proto-Christianity was not already intermeshed with solar worship?

Kelly

I think if it had been, we'd be able to see indications of solar worship in the four main books written by the apostles who actually knew Jesus, and there is no evidence in them that I can find, nor is there any evidence of it in any of the letters written by the known original apostles. The only place that solar worship shows up in the New Testament is in the books written by Paul.

However, I certainly think there is very clear evidence that a portion of Israel was definitely into solar worship. For instance, it is my opinion that the belief that only a descendant from the royal house of tribe of Judah could be declared king as evidence of solar worship. After all the Ra Harakhty of Egypt represented Egyptian belief that all Pharaoh/kings represented Horace, and the symbol of the Ra Harakhty was certainly the Great Sphinx; the man headed lion god of Egypt. I don't think it's merely a "coincidence" that the Lion Tribe of Judah was thought to be the only tribe that could be king.

The concept that only a man from the Lion Tribe of Judah could be a Messiah King is clearly an Egyptian concept adhered to by both the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The OT God apparently had quite a different view. Not only was he displeased by Solomon (name meaning the "son of the Sun",) he said "I will rend the kingdom from thee and give it to thy servant." (1 Kings 11:11) Surely the priesthoods were aware of this, for the OT God clearly is saying he will choose who is to be king, and if he chooses to give the kingdom to the servants of the House of Judah, then so be it. The tribe of Judah was a very wealthy tribe in Solomon's day and the priesthood no doubt continued to kowtow to that tribe in spite of the fact that they had to have known that kingship was no longer within Judah's domain. "But I will take the kingdom out of his son's hand, and will give it unto thee, even ten tribes. And unto his son will I give one tribe, that David my servant may have a light alway before me in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen me to put my name there." (1 Kings 11:35-36)

Who were the "servants" to the House of Judah? It was clearly the Benjaminites, for although all people of the Nation of Israel were considered Hebrews, only the tribe of Benjamin and the Tribe of Judah were considered Jews. The other ten tribes were considered the gentile Hebrew nations dominated by the tribe of Ephraim, and were more or less apparently given to the worship of Baal (symbol: the golden calf. From my research, Baal was actually known in Egypt by the name "Seth" or "the evil Seth" that murdered Osirus. Guilty of that crime or not, Baal/Seth remained part of the Egyptian Ennead and was never removed from that post of Egyptian authority. In fact, after Baal lost to Horus, Ra actually adopted Baal/Seth as his son. "Let Seth, the son of Nut, be given to me, so that he may live with me and be a son to me. And he shall speak out in the sky, and men shall be afraid of him." {p 17, Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testament, Pritchard.})

Curiously, though Jerusalem had been awarded to the Tribe of Benjamin in the book of Joshua when lots were drawn for territory, when the tribes of Judah and Benjamen were freed from Babylonian captivity, the Tribe of Judah more or less took over Jerusalem while the Tribe of Benjamen was sent away to the area of Galilee. And Galilee, of course, was where Jesus, called "The light of the world" came from. Since Jesus was also called "the Lamb of God," rather than "the wolf of God" we must assume Jesus therefore did not necessarily represent another avatar of Solar Deity Complex kowtowing to the Egyptian sun god system.

Or that's my take on things…

spamandham

Ah, an apologist. I see. The gospels are not considered to be eyewitness accounts around here.

By the way, welcome to IIDB!

Kelly

Thanks for the welcome, Spamandham! Glad to be here and nice to know 'ya.

Nah, I'm not really an apologist. As a matter of fact I don't really subscribe to the dogma and doctrines of "official" Christianity, and were I living 500 years in the past, no doubt I'd have been guillotined or meet some equally distasteful death.

I do believe Jesus existed, but I've studied this stuff for years and years and have formed my own conclusions, which would, I dare say, substantially offend most churches. For instance, I don't personally believe that Jesus could have possibly been from the tribe of Judah, so that would get me immediately branded as an "infidel." :wave:

No priest, be he Sadducees or Pharisees, would have ever called for the death of a Messiah figure from the tribe of Judah. It was against the laws of the priesthood. Demanding the death of a man from the Tribe of Judah probably would have gotten any priest responsible lynched by the Israelites in general. So, like many infidels, I consider the supposed linage of Jesus in Books of Matthew and Luke (which do not match) a later addition deceptively put in place by the wily members of the priesthood. I also suspect each of the priesthoods hastily put their own man in place directly after the crucifixion; no doubt billing him as the "resurrected Christ" which accounts for why there are so many apparent discrepancies and contradictions in the New Testament. If I am right, the Sadducees would have put in their Judah "Horace king" and the Pharisees would have put in somebody thought to be the reincarnation of Melchizedek.

And then there was the guy who actually did get nailed to the cross…