mountainman

I am convinced it is not myth, but a monstrous literary fiction
perpetrated upon the empire in the 4th century under the initiative
of Constantine at the council of Nicaea. The world will groan to
find that no earlier historical evidence of christianity will be found
on the planet, other than a mass of literature dating to Eusebius,
written during the life of that imperially sponsored theological novelist.


Start with Apollonius of Tyana: seeing he was an historical figure
who's memory was calumnated by the christians via the Jesus fiction.
http://www.mountainman.com.au/apollonius_of_tyana.htm

The Life of Secundus the Philosopher:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essene...hilosopher.htm

There is evidence of a continuous high regard for the writings of, and
the interpretations of the sayings of Pythagoras, and of Plato. The issue
of Platonism and Pythagoreanism is often obscured by the christian fiction.

Eusebius writes nasty things about the pythagorean theory, which of course
is viewed as "false knowledge" not "true gnosis". Research the NEO versions
of these two strands of philosophy, and you find Apollonius of Tyana to
have been uprooted as the source of the NEO, or new arising of the old.

Check the writings of "the divine" Iamblichus, and others in his "tribe":
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essene..._aphorisms.htm

Other authors color-coded green (neo-pythagorean, neo-platonic) can
be found here:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_029.htm
Unfortunatley I have not yet assembled the detailed level of writings
attributable to each of the referenced authors above, but perhaps this
will be completed later.


There are the writing attributed (via Philo et al) to the Essenes:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essene...philosophy.htm

There are the Hermetic writings, sourced from Egyptian empire, from
the Roman empire and from the Islamic empire. Many western scholars
ignore all but the western Roman empire hermetic corpus, because that
is the myopia of current scholarship. Here is an article however, which
provides a full account of each of these three separate corpi:
Hermes Trismegistus and Apollonius of Tyana in the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh
http://www.mountainman.com.au/Hermes...even_Brown.htm

There are the writings of the eastern hemisphere around that time
such as the Kural, a book sworn upon in the court system of southern
India, written purportedly by a weaver:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/kural/

The global environment of the planet's literature should not be ignored.
Western-centric thinking and limiting oneself to the western hemisphere
is a sickening and myopic blindness of the spirit, which should be avoided
at all costs.



Pete Brown
http://www.mountainman.com.au/namaste_2006.htm
NAMASTE: “The spirit in me honours the spirit in you”

Iasion

Greetings Andrew,

Thanks for your comment,
yes,
my dating could be a bit early there.

Iasion

triffidfood

Just a general observation really, but it seems to me there's a 'trap' here which we (non-theists) sometimes fall into, which should pretty easily be avoided.

It's really tempting I think to look for killer examples of the similarities between Xianity and pre-existing beliefs ~ hence the stuff still circulating around implying (somewhat counter productively, since it's an extremely simplistic argument) that Xianity is basically just a "copy" of the cult of Mithras. I think that kind of misses the point though.

The point being, that the ideas Xianity drew on were part of the culture of the time (dying & rising deities, suffering or saviour gods, baptism & sacred meals, motifs like turning water into wine, the pronouncement stories, etc): in other words, it wasn't necessary for Xians to 'steal' whole myths, or even take ideas from a particular belief, because these ideas were all around, part of the cultural milieu (sp?) of the time.

Examples such as those referred to before therefore help paint a picture of this culture, from which the early 'Christians' took their ideas, blending them with the Judaism they were using (or, many of them were using) as their base.

Personally, I think the best 'killer' arguments about this come from the words of early Xians themselves ~ i.e. of people like Justin (Martyr), Tertullian, etc, who were unable to deny the similarities between Xianity and (so called) 'Pagan' beliefs, since these beliefs were still all around them at the time they were writing (Rome not having yet stepped in to adopt Xianity and suppress all alternatives).

So instead they resorted to the wonderfully creative ~ and completely absurd ~ idea of Satan anticipating Xianity & influencing pagan beliefs in advance, to mimic Xian ideas and rituals before they had actually happened (the idea known as 'Diabolical Mimicry'). Completely absurd not just rationally, but also possibly theologically, since (arguably) it contradicts the notion of Xianity being monotheistic ~ aren’t only gods supposed to have those sort of powers? :huh:

funinspace

Speaking of texts from this era, what is extant from the Gospel of the Nazirenes. I know Ireneaus spoke of the Ebionites, but I haven't seen much about them and this text.
Irenaeus stated (late 2nd century I understand) this about the Ebionites: “...represented Jesus as having not been born of a virgin, but as being the son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation, while he nevertheless was more righteous, prudent, and wise than other men. Moreover, after his baptism, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove from the Supreme Ruler, and that then he proclaimed the unknown Father, and performed miracles” (Irenaeus, Bk 1, Ch 26, doctrines of Cerinthus).

Malachi151

Do you have refernces to the works where they made these arguments?

Roger Pearse

Make sure you read what they *actually* say. Justin is routinely misquoted in this way by this standard piece of invective (where does it come from originally, I wonder). Although, when you get right down to it, quite why the fathers are not allowed to suppose that transcendant beings can foresee the future is never explained.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

triffidfood

Malachi151,

Do you mean references to the similarities between Xianity and pre-existing ('Pagan') beliefs, or more specifically the idea of 'Diabolical Mimicry'?

If the first, then there are numerous quotes which seem to relate to this (I can find and paste some examples of these if you wish) .. however, I'm guessing you're refering to the latter, in which case, see for instance the following from Justin Martyr's First Apology:

If I'm misinterpreting or misunderstanding I'm sure a ton of 'scholarly' bricks will fall on my head from the IIDB skies [looks nervously skyward .....] however the meaning seems quite clear to me .. the "devils"/ "evil spriits" anticipated Xianity in advance, and took steps to pre-empt it by interfering with "Heathen Mythology", in order to confuse people. They also continued to do this after 'Christ' was born, by directly influencing (amongst others, presumably) the likes of Simon Magus.

I could be misinterpreting that entirely of course, but that's my reading anyway.

I guess the fathers (so called) are ‘allowed’ to suppose what they like. However, the ability to alter the past (our past) in anticipation of future events ~ much like the supposed demonic ‘planting’ of dinosaur bones, I guess ~ has theological implications, doesn’t it?

It implies a Satan who has powers which belie Xianity’s supposed monotheism, for one .. we either (according to the mythology) live in a universe ultimately governed & directed by one god, or we don’t .. a transcendant, supernatural being who has the ability to pre-empt future events and alter history accordingly simply doesn’t fit into a ’monotheistic’ construction of life, in my opinion, since in what sense is Satan then not also a 'god'?

Also, the point I was making before, was that it’s telling (arguably) that the early church “fathers” felt the need to resort to this sort of apology in the first place … in other words, that they chose, rather than to deny any similarities between xianity and pre-existing culture/ beliefs, instead to effectively emphasise these similarities by expounding the theory of diabolical imitation.

By doing this, they weren’t simply failing to deny these similarities, they were actually drawing attention to them and (in effect) making them even more of an issue. Arguably, an extremely odd thing to do if there was no basis to the allegations (the alleged similarities) in the first place.

Roger Pearse

I can see that you have understood Justin in the sense of the original paragraph. But I'm not sure that Justin actually says this. Does he not actually say that they read the Old Testament prophecies and invented some pagan cults to sound like a fulfilment of them? And then sprinkled them around where the Messiah was prophecied to arrive? (This would relate to the general idea that we find in Eusebius that the Hebrews precede the Greek philosophers).

That pagan mythology and the idea of 'sons of Jupiter' precedes Christianity is of course true. (I have lost sight of why this is significant to this argument, I am afraid).

I did read your explanation of why the fathers believing that the devil could foresee events is impossible or ridiculous, but I wasn't able to follow the logic. Is the real objection that such an idea is merely not congruent to the values of current society? (Not understanding)

All the best,

Roger Pearse

GakuseiDon

That's correct, but that is slightly different to how it is usually portrayed, i.e. that Satan somehow used "Satan vision" to look into the future to anticipate Christ.

As you note above, the devils used the prophecies in the OT to influence pagan religions. But, as Justin writes, the devils got the prophecies wrong. That's why Justin has to plead with the pagans that "we propound nothing new or different" to the pagans: the pagans weren't able to recognise the similarities due to the devils' errors on the OT prophecies. So Justin claims that the story of Christ ascending to heaven is the same as the Greek myth of a man on a flying horse, if only the pagans would recognise it.

I look at Justin's comments in my review of "The God Who Wasn't There" movie here:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakus..._Part2.htm#2.4 (I plan to expand this section eventually)

Actually, it is an odd thing to do if pagans were saying "What you say about Christ we've been saying about the pagan gods all this time", as Robert Price says in TGWWT movie. In fact, it was the other way around, at least for Justin. Justin was trying to legitimize Christianity by saying that it wasn't so different to paganism. It was the pagans who didn't see this. But unfortunately for Justin, all he could find were generally vague similarities, and he had to resort to saying "well, the devils got them wrong".

Think of it this way: Justin Martyr was the Acharya S of his day, bringing up strained similarities to push his agenda. IOW, Justin Martyr is the "Pagan Myther" equivalent to Acharya's "Jesus Myther".

triffidfood

Yes indeed, although I'm not sure I read the second bit quite the same way.

The quote from First Apology relating to the sprinkling around of invented pagan cults/ ideas is:

(Emphasis added above)

So what's actually being said there, is that the demonic sayings of the poets (meaning, it seem, the various 'Pagan' myths resembling those of Xianity) were deliberately spread about in all those places where Xianity would later be believed in most strongly. As I said, how very clever of the otherwise (according to Justin) very stupid demons.

Actually, are there any Old Testament verses which actually say this? (I can't think of any, which of course doesn't mean they don't exist, just that I can't think of any.. :huh: )

It isn't really, I think I've just taken the topic somewhat off course (sorry Malachi)

In a sense that's possibly true. I guess I don't have the 'feel' for ancient cultures & beliefs that many people @ IIDB will have, so my instinctive reaction to some of Justin's ideas is maybe one of "Teh, really! ".

However that said, the powers attributed to Satan (in this case, via the demons/ evil spirits which Xian mythology posits as his ~ sorry, His ~ active agents) don't really seem consistent to me with Xians supposed monotheistic status. (Maybe I've just had too many arguments with Jehovah's Witnesses about this, since they of course take a dualist view of things, i.e. 'Jehovah' and 'Christ' as completely separate beings, before they even even get to thinking about 'Satan'.) However it's a somewhat trivial, semantic point really, I guess.