Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clivedurdle · 01-09-2009, 03:03 AM

Just been looking at the Jesus Puzzle site

Quote:

The Jesus Mysteries Thesis, as the authors title it, presents the Gospels as originally composed to be allegories, symbols of a deeper 'truth.' Allegory, and allegorical interpretation of older writings, was in that period a common and effective device for furthering religious faith and understanding.

According to Freke and Gandy, the Christian Gospels, when first devised, were offered as yet another rendition of ancient and ongoing insights into mystical knowledge about ourselves and the universe we live in. (In that universe, the authors seem to envision spiritual and divine dimensions, but they wisely leave it to others—or a future volume—to expound on the existence of God or the veracity of unseen realities.)

Here they focus on the historical investigation of a Christianity which began essentially as a "gnostic" expression. (Gnosticism is the possession of secret knowledge about the nature of human life and its relation to the world, the formation of that world and explanation of its evil, and how such knowledge can be used to achieve salvation.) As a philosophical/faith movement, it was an extension, or parallel manifestation, of the ancient world's paramount philosophical-religious expression: the mystery cults with their savior gods and especially their concepts of achieving knowledge of the Self. I'll quote from page 101/103:

"But what is self? The Pagan sages taught that every human being has a mortal lower self called the 'eidolon' and an immortal Higher Self called the 'Daemon'. The eidolon is the embodied self, the physical body and personality. The Daemon is the Spirit, the true Self which is each person's spiritual connection to God. The Mysteries were designed to help initiates realize that the eidolon is a false self and that their true identity is the immortal Daemon. . ."

"The quest for Self-knowledge leads the Pagan or Gnostic initiate on a remarkable journey of discovery. At first the initiate experiences themselves as the eidolon, the embodied personality, and sees the Daemon as a Guardian Angel or Heavenly Twin. The more mature initiate experiences the Daemon as their own Higher Self. To those blessed with the final vision of complete Self-knowledge or Gnosis, the Daemon is found to be more awesome still. It truly is the 'divine "I",' as Valentinus puts it.

"Although it appears as if each person has their own Daemon or Higher Self, the enlightened initiate discovers that actually there is one Daemon shared by all - a universal Self which inhabits every being. Each soul is a part of the one Soul of God. To know oneself therefore is to know God. These mystical teachings are found both in the Pagan Mysteries and Gnostic Christianity."

What Freke and Gandy have done (to an even greater degree than in my own research) is to locate the roots of Christianity in the mystery ethos of Hellenistic tradition. And they have done it through an insight which seems absurdly obvious. While we regularly lament that we know so little about the Greek mysteries (and thus about Christianity's precise relationship to them), much about the cultic rites and their mystical significance can be gleaned—even quite compellingly revealed—from the thought of mystically minded philosophies in the Platonic tradition and from Christian Gnosticism, both of which focused on that quest for self-knowledge and consequent salvation.

I say "obvious" because Platonism and Gnosticism, the latter rivaling or even surpassing 'orthodox' Christianity in strength and distribution in the early centuries, are cut from the same philosophical cloth, and it would be foolish to overlook the likelihood that this powerful co-expression of thinking about the nature of the world and humanity was not simply a more visible manifestation of the thinking that lay behind the practice of the Hellenistic mysteries. Thus at a stroke we can lay bare the whole dominant philosophical-religious cast of ancient world thinking and see how Christianity was yet another—if somewhat distinct—expression of that universal ground.

http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/BkrvTJM.htm

Pullman may be a closet mythicist....

Quote:

As for what experimental theology was, Lyra had no more idea than the urchins. She had formed the notion that it was concerned with magic, with the movements of the stars and planets, with tiny particles of matter, but that was guesswork, really. Probably the stars had daemons just as humans did, and experimental theology involved talking to them.

Chili · 01-09-2009, 08:31 AM

[QUOTE=Clivedurdle;5740765]Just been looking at the Jesus Puzzle site

Quote:

[SIZE=+1]The Jesus Mysteries Thesis, as the authors title it, presents the Gospels as originally composed to be allegories, symbols of a deeper 'truth.' Allegory, and allegorical interpretation of older writings, was in that period a common and effective device for furthering religious faith and understanding.

Christianity as an -ity or religion or even a conscious awareness of it [as being an end in itself as the answer to our search for meaning in life] has always been the anti-christ.

I forgot who said it at the moment but "to this end we cannot even have one eye-asquint" (Golding?). I just like that expression of it but it must be true if nobody can find it.

Here is a poem on this by Yeats:
http://http://quotations.about.com/c...econd_Comi.htm

. . . and please notise how he "slouches towards Bethlehem" as opposed to the triumphant entry into the New Jerusalem (not part of the poem). So that is a double whammer against Christianity as a means to the end and very much the antichrist indeed.

Here it is:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at laSt,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

mountainman · 01-10-2009, 12:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Just been looking at the Jesus Puzzle site

Quote:

What Freke and Gandy have done (to an even greater degree than in my own research) is to locate the roots of Christianity in the mystery ethos of Hellenistic tradition.

Thus at a stroke we can lay bare the whole dominant philosophical-religious cast of ancient world thinking and see how Christianity was yet another—if somewhat distinct—expression of that universal ground.

Dear Clivedurdle,

The chronology of the "roots of Christianity" is paramount to the exercise. The golden compass of ancient history is chronology and C14. The golden compass of New Testament Studies is Eusebius. But where is the common ground? Only in Eusebius are we compelled to think of the transcendental possibilities of christian gnostics living and breathing on the planet, creating and preserving texts amidst the neopythagoreans and neoplatonists and other stands of the Hellenistic traditions, while remaining impenetrable to the archaeological record.

Best wishes,

Pete

Chili · 01-10-2009, 04:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Just been looking at the Jesus Puzzle site

Dear Clivedurdle,

The chronology of the "roots of Christianity" is paramount to the exercise. The golden compass of ancient history is chronology and C14. The golden compass of New Testament Studies is Eusebius. But where is the common ground? Only in Eusebius are we compelled to think of the transcendental possibilities of christian gnostics living and breathing on the planet, creating and preserving texts amidst the neopythagoreans and neoplatonists and other stands of the Hellenistic traditions, while remaining impenetrable to the archaeological record.

Best wishes,

Pete

That's because God has no grandchildren Pete, let's face it, and not even a hundred million PhD's will put Humpty Dumpty together again. But I like it and would say 'keep on slugging away' and good luck to all.

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