Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clivedurdle · 04-19-2007, 01:21 AM

How does the alleged view of Cephas being a rule follower - demanding circumcision - fit with the vision in Acts of him being told by God to break rules?

And are we looking at more than one Jesus? Paul has a Christ in heaven - Yahweh Saviour Annointed One is a series of titles (plus the fish stuff), and some ideas about a bloke in Palestine?

And these completely separate strands got joined at some point?

mountainman · 04-19-2007, 02:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ted Hoffman

Because they were the only ones who are known historically to have been in a position to claim apostolic authority. We are seeing here diverging traditions similar to the "twin traditions" Crossan talks of in Birth of Christianity.

If you have other likely candidates who can be identified as the "super apostles", let us know please.

What about the goup lead by a character named "Apollos"
in all surviving codexes, except the codex Bessae, in which
the name given is "Apollonius" --- purported to have taught
with authority. Is this relevant to your question, Ted?

Ted Hoffman · 04-19-2007, 03:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

What about the goup lead by a character named "Apollos" in all surviving codexes, except the codex Bessae, in which
the name given is "Apollonius" --- purported to have taught with authority. Is this relevant to your question, Ted?

Yes, it is relevant to my question. Thanks.
Against Doherty, I dont think Paul is referring to Apollos of Alexandria. Alexandria is not Tyana now is it? What were Bernard's arguments for equating Apollos of Alexandria and Apollonius of Tyana besides the spelling?

mountainman · 04-19-2007, 03:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ted Hoffman

Yes, it is relevant to my question. Thanks.
Against Doherty, I dont think Paul is referring to Apollos of Alexandria. Alexandria is not Tyana now is it? What were Bernard's arguments for equating Apollos of Alexandria and Apollonius of Tyana besides the spelling?

The main arguments and research are outlined in the first
three chapters of his book Apollonius of Tyana the Nazarene.

These are all available online:

1 - The Historical Apollonius Versus the Mythical Jesus
2 - Similarities Between Apollonius and Jesus
3 - The Controversy Between Adherents of Apollonius and Jesus

From the first

Quote:

occurred the censorship of all books making reference to Apollonius, whose name was omitted or abbreviated. (Thus, in the original Pauline Epistles, which, we have reason to believe, originally had Apollonius as their central figure and were written by him, his name is abbreviated to "Apollos" and "Pol" (Paul.)

That Apollos (conceded by no less an authority than the Encyclopedia Britannica to be an abbreviation of Apollonius) was the real author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, falsely attributed to Paul, was the opinion of Martin Luther and other eminent scholars.

And if Apollonius wrote some of the so-called Pauline Epistles, there is a possibility that he may have written others, AND, IN FACT, ALL).

There may be more relevant material above.
It is a short online book, and worth the browse.

mountainman · 04-19-2007, 03:49 AM

Here is a bit more from Bernard, from chapter 3.
About the only thing that Bernard does not do
is to implicate Constantine and Eusebius....

Quote:

(**In the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica under the heading of Apollos, we read: APOLLOS (contracted from Apollonius) - an Alexandrian Jew who after Paul's visit to Corinth worked there in a similar way (Italics ours). He was with Paul at a later date in Ephesus. In Cor. 1. 10-12 we read of four parties in the Corinthian church, of which two attached themselves to Paul and Apollos respectively, using their names, though the 'division' could hardly be due to conflicting doctrines. From Acts xviii. 24-288 we learn that he spoke and taught with power and success., He may have captivated his hearers by teaching "wisdom" as P.W. Schmiedel suggests, in the allegorical style of Philo, and he was evidently a man of unusual magnetic force...Since Apollos was a Christian and 'taught exactly' he could hardly have been acquainted only with John's baptism or have required to be taught christianity more thoroughly by Aquila and Priscilla. Martin Luther regarded Apollos [=Apollonius] as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and many scholars since have shared his view.")
Concerning the identity of Apollonius and Paul ["Pol", an abbreviation of Apollonius), not only were they both in Tarsus at the same time as boys, but, as Newman points out, Apollonius was at Ephesus and Rome at EXACTLY the same time that Paul was (yet, strangely, Apollonius's biographer makes no mention of him, though Paul's biographer speaks of "Apollos" having been at Ephesus with him). Also it is significant that "Paul" is a fictitious name. There is more reason to identify the character of Apollonius with Paul than "Saul," who led a dissipated life, while Apollonius - even in youth, lived chastely.

Concerning the identity of Apollonius, with Paul, Reville writes: "Apollonius is not only like Jesus Christ, but he combines in his own person many of the characteristics of the Apostles. Like Paul he travels up and down the world from east to west, and like him, too, he is the victim of Nero's jealousy. Like John, according to a tradition which prevailed even in his time, he is persecuted by Domitian." And there is reason to believe that he was also the author of the Apocalypse (St. John the Revelator).

The replacement of the vegetarian and pacifistic doctrine of Apollonius, who taught harmlessness to all living beings, animal as well as human (as was previously taught by gotama Buddha), by the non-vegetarian and non-pacifistic religion of Jesus and his bride, the Church Militant, has plunged the world into centuries of unceasing wars and bloodshed, which have continued to increase with the growth of Christianity. On this point, Tredwell writes; "Think not that I come to send peace on earth," said Jesus. "I come not to send peace but a sword....

Never did a man utter words so brimful of truth -- melancholy as it is. Never was a prediction whose disastrous fulfillment has unfortunately lasted without intermission from time time of its promulgation to the present. From the very establishment of the religion of Jesus, the sword has remained unsheathed in its service, and more victims have been sacrificed to its manes than to all other causes combined. Lest he should be misunuderstood concerning his mission Jesus reiterates that he came to send fire on earth, and strife to make divided households, fathers against sons, mothers against daughters, and that under the new regime, "a man's foes shall be those of his own household! Bolingbroke says, "The scene of Christianity has always been a scene of dissension, of hatred, of persecution and of blood." Erasmus said the church was born in blood; grew in blood; succeeded in blood, and will end in blood."

Tredwell pointed out that Christianity forced its way forward by mass executions and at the point of the sword. It was in this way that the "Church Militant" was born and was enabled to develop as a world power. Born in bloodshed (the brutal murder of Hypatia by Christian "monks" soon after the Council of Nicea, by order of Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, who was subsequently "sainted," and the ensuing massacres of the Manicheans), it grew by bloodshed (the deaths of tens of millions of true followers of Christ, who refused to accept the false hypocritical teachings of the church, over three million women having been put to death in Europe only a few centuries ago as witches), it shall die in bloodshed (the aftermath of the recent world carnage which is fruit of sixteen centuries of false Christian teachings of peace, carried on with an olive branch in one hand and a sword in the other).

All this resulted from the fraudulent replacement of the original religion of Apollonius by the "new" religion of the Church of Rome which took place at the Council of Nicea in the year 325 B.C.*

(*The word "new" here is significant. It clearly indicates that at the beginning of the fourth century, Christianity, as created by the Council of Nicea, was indeed a new religion, and was preceded by the religion established by Apollonius three centuries previously, which may be more properly called Essenism, a form of Neo-Pythagoreanism in character, the new doctrines which Apollonius brought from India and introduced among the Essenes, which gave rise to the new sect known as the NAZARENES or THERAPEUTS, whose doctrines were essentially Buddhist in nature.)

Since this date humanity has been led astray. It is the purpose of this book to correct this historic error and to bring humanity back to the truth, so that, purged by the recent suffering, mankind once more will return to the true scientific path of natural, healthful and humane living taught by the great Pythagorean philosopher, Apollonius of Tyana, nearly two thousand years ago.

Ben C Smith · 04-19-2007, 05:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ted Hoffman

If you have other likely candidates who can be identified as the "super apostles", let us know please.

The apostles were not a closed group. Else the instructions about recognizing false apostles in Revelation, the Didache, and other texts would have little meaning.

Ben.

Solo · 04-19-2007, 06:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Quote:

I am sure the prof is aware the passage clearly indicates that Cephas retired from gentile dining to avoid censure from James.

I am sure he is. As am I. And anybody else with the ability to read. That is not the point of contention.

...and since you and I know the point of contention and can't agree on what is fair inference, we'll just have to let it go. :huh:

Quote:

The rest of your post I found indecipherable (creatures of the wanderer??).

...and what else would you have me believe, Ben ? That Paul did not sharply dissent from the sentiment in the dominical saying captured by Luke 14:26 (Mt 10:37) ?

Jiri

Ben C Smith · 04-19-2007, 07:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben

The rest of your post I found indecipherable....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solo

...and what else would you have me believe, Ben ?

I said indecipherable, not unbelievable. If I could decipher it, maybe I too would believe it.

Ben.

andrewcriddle · 04-19-2007, 10:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

To my knowledge, yes. Cilician pirates being established in Italy is attested to elsewhere, so Plutarch's comment is not untoward, ie neither he nor a would-be interpolator has anything personal to gain by mentioning it.

I think we may be in some measure of agreement here. Plutarch is making a good faith plausible speculation about the origins of Mithraism based on his knowledge of the settlement in Italy by Pompey of Cilician pirates given to exotic forms of oriental worship.

What I doubt is whether he had any documentary evidence explicitly supporting his guess.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

However, Mithras was firmly established in neighboring Commagene in the 1st c. BCE, a realm incidentally which was given control of Cilicia.

Mithraism was also well enough known in Rome for the mid 1st c. poet Statius to allude to it. There was even a Mithraeum in Caesarea Maritima in the late 1st c., obviously brought there by Roman soldiers and into Germany at that time as well.

There are two currents in Roman Mithraism, an established "good family" adherence and a military one. This manifestation is best understood by a two pronged infiltration of Mithras, low contacts through the Cilicians and high contacts through exiled Commagenians.

spin

Statius wrote the Thebaid during the reign of Domitian ie in the late 1st century CE.

IMO it is a real problem with having Mithraism (or proto-Mithraism) brought to Italy by Pompey c 66 BCE, that we have no solid evidence of it before the reign of Domitian, around 150 years later.

Andrew Criddle

Clivedurdle · 04-19-2007, 12:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

I think we may be in some measure of agreement here. Plutarch is making a good faith plausible speculation about the origins of Mithraism based on his knowledge of the settlement in Italy by Pompey of Cilician pirates given to exotic forms of oriental worship.

What I doubt is whether he had any documentary evidence explicitly supporting his guess.

Statius wrote the Thebaid during the reign of Domitian ie in the late 1st century CE.

IMO it is a real problem with having Mithraism (or proto-Mithraism) brought to Italy by Pompey c 66 BCE, that we have no solid evidence of it before the reign of Domitian, around 150 years later.

Andrew Criddle

Quote:

Mithras was the central god of Mithraism, a syncretic Hellenistic mystery religion of male initiates that developed in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC and was practiced in the Roman Empire from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD. Parthian coins and documents bear a double date with a 64 year interval that represents Mithras' ascension to heaven, traditionally given as the equivalent of 208 BC, 64 years after his birth. The Romanized Greek Plutarch says that in 67 BC a large band of pirates in Cilicia — on the southeast coast of Anatolia — were practicing "secret rites" of Mithras. It has been suggested that much of the myth and symbolism of Mithraism was influential on the early Christian Church.[1]

The name Mithras is the Greek masculine form of Mithra, the Persian god who was the mediator between Ahura Mazda and the earth, the guarantor of human contracts, although in Mithraism much was added to the original elements of Mitra. However, some of the attributes of Roman Mithras may have been taken from other Eastern cults: for example, the Mithraist emphasis on astrology strongly suggests syncretism with star-oriented Mesopotamian or Anatolian religions. At least some of this synthesis of beliefs may have already been underway by the time the cult was adopted in the West. When Mithraism was introduced by Roman legions at Dura-Europos after 168 AD, the god assumed his familiar Hellenistic iconic formula (illustration above right) [1]. Compare the very similar Enkidu seal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithras

The Romans, Greeks and Persians had been trading goods, warfare and ideas from Cyrus et al. As we have evidence of silk from China in Rome, why also would not the concept of Mitra also have spread? Yes the pirates may have been one route but not the only one, Romans liked collecting gods!

And has anyone asked about Dura Europa, xianity and Mitra?

Syncretism?

Quote:

SYNCRETISM (Gr. av'yKprirco-Os, from aim and KEpavvvp. , mingle or blend, or, according to Plutarch, from o-uv and Kp774Ew, to combine against a common enemy after the manner of the cities of Crete), the act or system of blending, combining or reconciling inharmonious elements. The term is used technically in politics, as by Plutarch, of those who agree to forget dissensions and to unite in the face of common danger, as the Cretans were said to have done; in philosophy, of the efforts of Cardinal Bessarion and others in the 16th century to reconcile the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle; and in theology, of a plan to harmonize the hostile factions of the Church in the 17th century, advocated by Georg Calixtus, a Lutheran professor of theology at Helmstadt. Its most frequent use, however, is in connexion with the religious development of antiquity, when it denotes the tendency, especially prominent from the 2nd to the 4th centuries of the Christian era, to simplify and unify the various pagan religions. During this period, as a result of the intimate knowledge of the world's religions made possible by the gathering of every known cult of importance into the religious system of the Roman Empire, belief in the identity of many deities which resembled each other, and indeed in the essential identity of all, received a special impulse. Not only were various forms of the same deity, such as, for example, Jupiter Capitolinus and Jupiter Latiaris, recognized as being really the same under different aspects, but even the gods of different nations were seen to be manifestations of a single great being. Roman Jupiter, Greek Zeus, Persian Mithras and Phrygian Attis were one. The Great Mother, Isis, Ceres, Demeter, Ops, Rhea, Tellus, were the same great mother deity under different masks (see Great Mother Of The Gods). Venus and Cupid, Aphrodite and Adonis, the Great Mother and Attis, Astarte and Baal, Demeter and Dionysus, Isis and Serapis, were essentially the same pair. Syncretism even went so far as to blend the deities of paganism and Christianity. Christ was compared with Attis and Mithras, Isis with the Virgin Mary, &c. Isis, perhaps more than any other deity, came to be regarded as the great maternal goddess of the universe whose essence was worshipped under many different names. This fact, with the spirit of syncretism in general, is well illustrated by Apuleius. (Metamorph. xi. 2 and 5). Lucius invokes Isis: "Queen of Heaven, whether thou art the genial Ceres, the prime parent of fruits, who, joyous at the discovery of thy daughter, didst banish the savage nutriment of the ancient acorn, and, pointing out a better food, dost now till the Eleusinian soil; or whether thou art celestial Venus, who, in the first origin of things, didst 1 Apollinaris Sidonius uses the pure Latin term concellus. associate the different sexes, through the creation of mutual love, and having propagated an eternal offspring in the human race, art now worshipped in the sea-girt shrine of Paphos; or whether thou art the sister of Phoebus, who, by relieving the pangs of women in travail by soothing remedies, hast brought into the world multitudes so innumerable, and art now venerated in the far-famed shrines of Ephesus; or whether thou art Proserpine, terrific with midnight howlings. .. by whatever name, by whatever ceremonies, and under whatever form it is lawful to invoke thee; do thou graciously, &c." The goddess replies: "Behold me. .. I, who am Nature, the parent of all things, the mistress of all the elements, the primordial offspring of time, the supreme among divinities, the queen of departed spirits, the first of the celestials, and the uniform manifestation of the gods and goddesses; who govern by my nod the luminous heights of heaven, the salubrious breezes of the ocean, and the anguished silent realms of the shades below; whose one sole divinity the whole orb of the earth venerates under a manifold form, with different rites, and under a variety of appellations. Hence the Phrygians, that primeval race, call me Pessinuntica, the Mother of the Gods; the Aborigines of Attica, Cecropian Minerva; the Cyprians, in their sea-girt isle, Paphian Venus; the arrowbearing Cretans, Diana Dictynna; the three-tongued Sicilians, Stygian Proserpine; and the Eleusinians, the ancient goddess Ceres. Some call me Juno, others Bellona, others Hecate, others Rhamnusia. But those who are illumined by the earliest rays of that divinity, the Sun, when he rises, the Aethopians, the Arii, and the Egyptians, so skilled in ancient learning, worshipping me with ceremonies quite appropriate, call me by my true name, Queen Isis. Behold, then, &c." (Trans. Bohn's Lib.).

Naturally, the influence of Greek philosophy was very pronounced in the growth of syncretism. Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre affirmed that the gods of the different nations were only different aspects of the same deity, a supreme intelligence and providence which ruled the world. The Neoplatonists, however, were the first school to formulate the underlying philosophy of syncretism: "There is only one real God, the divine, and the subordinate deities are nothing else than abstractions personified, or celestial bodies with spirits; the traditional gods are only demons, that is, being intermediate between God and man. .. All, like every other created being, are emanations from the absolute God"

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Syncretism

Is not xianity a logical result of Roman syncretic tendencies?

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

04-19-2007, 01:21 AM	#131
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	How does the alleged view of Cephas being a rule follower - demanding circumcision - fit with the vision in Acts of him being told by God to break rules? And are we looking at more than one Jesus? Paul has a Christ in heaven - Yahweh Saviour Annointed One is a series of titles (plus the fish stuff), and some ideas about a bloke in Palestine? And these completely separate strands got joined at some point?

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.