Toto

To rope someone in has implications of herding cattle, of using some subterfuge or inducement to get people to join your group.

I think it's clear that Acharya S is just trying to spread her ideas because she believes in them.

ApostateAbe

OK, yeah, I am glad we are clear on that. I don't really care about people's intentions. I would judge Acharya S to be generally dishonest, based on her writings, but even people with honest intentions can use the bait-and-switch technique, so I don't think that an honest intention would detract much from the quality of my own explanation.

GakuseiDon

It's probably worth putting in Doherty's and Price's view of astrotheology's place in mythicism here:

First, Doherty, in his review of Acharya S's "Christ Conspiracy":
http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/BkrvTCC.htm

Commemorative ceremonies of gods like Dionysos, Attis, Osiris, and even the Phoenician god Baal as recorded on a 4,000 year old tablet now in the British Museum, move in virtual lockstep with the Passion story of Jesus in the Gospels. Gospel characters and their features mirror astrological symbols and divine pantheons of contemporary cultures; the workings of the heavens (astro-theology) and especially solar myths have uncanny parallels in elements of the Christ story. And so on...

My own work has focused primarily on parallels with the savior gods of the mysteries, and the minute details of the Passion story which have been drawn from the Jewish scriptures (in the fashion of midrash). But another, equally rich backdrop exists in the many parallels with solar and astrological observation and mythology, illustrating the deep interdependence and even a form of unity within the various manifestations which the ancients saw in the universe around them. All these interdependent motifs they incorporated into their allegorical myths, into their written scripture which served to create the past they desired for themselves, in support of a present identity and set of religious truths they wanted to live by. Christianity, unfortunately, worked at divorcing itself from all this rich, unifying heritage...

Believers, scholars and critics alike are stuck in this Literalist, historicizing view of the Christ faith, and only when the genuine roots of the movement and its formative mythology are brought back into our consciousness can the modern world decide what to do with it and where we will go from here. If only half of these astrological and mythological symbols in the atmosphere of the time which closely conform to Gospel features were in the minds of the Gospel writers when they fashioned their tale, there can be no doubt that such writers were well aware that their work had nothing to do with history...

There are those who have expressed some uncertainty about the scholarship which originally presented some of the subject matter dealt with in this book, since much of it comes from the 19th and early 20th centuries... Acharya S may draw to a fair degree on that older scholarship, but while certain aspects of it are necessarily somewhat dated, one of the things which struck me in her quotations from it (and more and more of it is now being reprinted) is how perceptive and compelling much of it continues to be. We sorely need a new History of Religions School for the 21st century, to apply modern techniques to this important ancient material. Perhaps this book will help bring that about.

I'll note here that Doherty's book and theories don't rely on astro-theology or Acharya's work.

Dr Robert Price, in his review of Acharya S's "Suns of God":
http://www.truthbeknown.com/price-sog-review.html

The very learned Acharya S has spoken again. In a sequel to her wide-ranging The Christ Conspiracy, she has redoubled her efforts to show the solar - that is, the astro-theological - basis of all religions and mythologies, and to demonstrate that the great savior figures of the world's religions are late historicizations of the sacred sun myths. At the outset, let me make clear that I regard Acharya ("the Teacher," as she was dubbed by friends and students) as a colleague and fellow-laborer in the field of Christ-Myth scholarship. The issues over which she and I differ are secondary, though important and fascinating. In my review (which I fear has done at least as much harm as it may have done good) of her previous book, I focused on our differences, disliking to be held responsible for certain specific views set forth by one with whom I am nonetheless in fundamental agreement...

I had already found the solar mythology paradigm quite helpful in explaining the origin and character of much of the Old Testament narrative. Ignaz Goldziher, following Max Muller, made a powerful case for the solar/lunar/stellar identity of most Genesis (and several other biblical) characters in his masterpiece Mythology Among the Hebrews. Once one knows what to look for, Isaac, Esau, Enoch, Moses, Samson, and Elijah emerge as obvious candidates for solar myths. And Jesus certainly has many of the same marks...

First, her catalogue of parallels is so impressive as to press home the question: how can all these disparate cultures have come up, independently, with ceremonial crosses, sacrificed saviors, common myth-plots, etc.? Must these things not all be analogous responses by human brains, built the same way all over the earth, to the same stimulus? And what might that stimulus have been? It had to be something available to everybody, everywhere: Every eye shall see him. What else but the movements of the sun and the other lights through the heavens? We know astrology/astronomy to have been widespread across the ancient globe, and when we find such a correspondence among myths and ritual symbols, too, we naturally trace them to the same source. I don't believe I had ever faced the force of this argument before reading this book. Some might prefer to advance a Jungian explanation, but that is pretty much another way of saying the same thing: the deep structures of the mind will spit out the same creations faced with the same raw data. And in this case, that data would seem to have been astronomical...

Again, please keep in mind that I agree with Acharya on the basics: the mythical life of Jesus Christ was derived from many long-standing myths, many or most of them derived ultimately from ancient astronomy...

Price does write on where he disagrees with Acharya S, but I've concentrated on passages dealing with astro-theology as the basis of many of the world's myths.

ApostateAbe

That seems like a good point, GakuseiDon. If either Earl Doherty or Robert Price thought so highly of Acharya S's astrotheology or whatever, then it would seem sensible to incorporate such thinking into their own models. Acharya S's assertions seem enormously relevant to one's entire model of mythology and religion, especially Christianity, if one approves of those assertions. Dr Price gives Acharya S's model limited approval (he seems to approve of almost any unlikely fringe theory to suit an anti-historicist model, so that is no surprise). Then he proceeds to never give it another conscious thought in any of his own literature. Earl Doherty gives Acharya S's model a strong stamp of approval with no condition or limitation, and then he proceeds to never give it another conscious thought in any of his own literature.

aa5874

But does Robert Price use Earl Doherty's model?

Does Earl Doherty use Robert Price's model?

And does Acharya S use Earl Doherty's and Robert Prics's models?

No matter what model is used the results are the same.

Jesus of the NT was A MYTH.

Kapyong

Thanks Toto.

Yes, AcharyaS' astrotheology crackpottery is NOT what I consider mainstream JM.


Kap

mountainman

What is mainstream JM and what does that statement mean on average?
Is there a trade union for orthodox JM's? Of course not. Opinion is scattered.

There were highly paid and respected "astrologers/astronomers" in the ancient world.
These people were not paraded as "crackpots" by the world in those days, and their knowledge was often highly sought out.

astrotheology may be peripheral to BC&H discussions but it nonetheless must rate some place
in the discussions related to what people thought and believed in the ancient world of antiquity.

If you were to check the slow drift apart of the sidereal and the solar astrological frameworks,
which were once common and aligned in antiquity (by the process of adjustments to the year
to allow for the precession of the equinoxes) you will find that they started drifting apart
around the 4th century.

spamandham

This is an important point usually overlooked in the rush to figure out what type of Underoos Jesus wore.

When you remove the obvious myth, the obvious symbolism, the pre-existing stories attributed to Jesus, the impossible dialogs, the anachronisms, the rehashed stories from the OT, and the sayings that are deemed inauthentic, there is very little left to explain how Jesus would have even appealed to anyone. If there was a historical Jesus, he is lost in the noise.

GakuseiDon

I think there are two things there that too often get confused:
1. Is there enough evidence to suggest that there probably was a historical Jesus?
2. Does the evidence that we do have allow us to discuss who that historical Jesus was with any confidence?

I would answer "yes" to the first, and "no" to the second. The problem is that it seems that if we can't say for certain what Underoos Jesus wore, then it gets put under the first question rather than the second.

Even if the historical Jesus gets lost in the noise, so what? Even if we strip away all myth, symbolism, etc, and we are left with nothing, so what? It might provide problems for orthodox Christianity, but so what?

spamandham

If you can't say anything definitive about Jesus, then what is the basis for claiming there is enough evidence to suggest he probably existed? Doesn't that same evidence necessarily tell us something about him?