Jolly_Penguin

I recently viewed a video that made a claim I hadn't encountered before, that all of christian mythology is based on earlier religion which was in turm based on astrology.

Jesus being the Sun. The end times being the end of the age of pisces (and beinging of the age of aquarious) rather than the end of times.

They did a pretty decent job making their case. But it isn't something I'm familiar with at all.

Has anybody here heard of this? Is it commonly accepted or believed as the origin of religious myths?

Biff the unclean

Yes, I've heard it. There was a great deal of talk about this in the 60's.
Pisces by the way is that "Jesus fish" symbol. In astrology it didn't become two fish until the late middle ages.
It is interesting to note that John (as in 'the baptist') in English is the name of the god Ea (Oannes) "God of the house of water" (symbol is Capricorn a composite beast with the foreparts of a goat and the body of a fish) god of rebirth.

Clivedurdle

The Eucharist - wine into blood, bread into flesh, is clear philosophers stone alchemy thinking. Search for magical thinking here.

I think what xianity is is is actually a proto science where they thought they had discovered the secret of eternal life by carrying out the eucharist ritual. Jesus is a completely mythological character using platonic concepts of a high priest in heaven being the real version of the fumbling rituals on earth.

Wonderful stuff when you look at what the NT actually says!

Malachi151

Yes, actually there is a lot to this. The "Jesus Fish" is really just Pisces. The 12 apostles are the 12 signs of the zodiac, and in reality the Jews used to use a lot of astrology, in fact they invented a lot of it.

Some info on Jewish astrology:

http://cc.usu.edu/~fath6/worldview.html

Also, most of the early synagogues that we find have zodiacs in them.

There are about 10 major ancient synagogues with zodiacs in them. This does list them all, but its has a few:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=e...=Search+Images

Necroflange

I think most religions will overlap somewhere or other. When people come up with a new style of religion, it needs to fit into the historic and cultural framework already available, to some extent, for the idea to catch on. It's the same with art- take music for example: a new type of music will always share aspects of other contemporary music as it needs to fit into the cultural framework.
Astrology having been culturally present in terms of religion for such a long time preceding the Christian writers, it makes sense to me that it would be consciously or unconsciously referenced as it would be a part of their social discourse.

Magdlyn

The only bit of that link that really applies to the OP is this:

The "Jews" did not invent astrology. The exiled Judaean elite learnt it while in captivity in Babylon in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. The Hebrew scriptures were not written down until this time period. When the exiles did not have a temple to centralize their worship, they understood the need for scriptures to keep their group cohesive (which was only partly effective, as most captives did not return to Judah). What they wrote, in their extremely exaggerated and embellished legends of the "glorious" history of what was actually a small and rather impoverished group, was highly influenced by Babylonian astrology. There is little to no archeological evidence there were ever 12 distinct tribes of Israel/Judah, descended from brothers of one father, as depicted in the tales.

Of course, the gospel writers of the NT based their also false tales of "apostles" directly on the magic number of 12 from the Hebrew legends (as well as the numbers 40 and 7).

Magdlyn

**

Magdlyn

**

Magdlyn

double post

Malachi151

Right, I should have chosen my words more carefully. "Semitic people" invented a lot of astrology. The Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, and Hebrews are all Semitic people. Hebrew mythology is just a variant on the other Semitic mythologies.