gstafleu

Ah, echo, I was obviously reading what I expected and missed that subtlety. I can go along with echo. Let us compare the two stories.

The correspondences are as you have stated: God helps a woman conceive, this is announced by an angel and the boy will be a nazarite. But there are two important differences. First, there is no indication that God in any way impregnates the woman. This indication is present in the Jesus story, and allows Christian mythology to develop the concept that God sent his son to earth. Second, the woman (nameless, as opposed to Manoah, feminists of the world unite, perhaps we'll call her Manoette) is obviously not a virgin. In the Jesus story Maria's virginity allows the Church to later develop the doctrine of immaculate conception and all that goes with it, substituting the archetype of the Madonna for that of the Mother (and the implied Seductress) for their main goddess.

So we have a situation much like the passion: the form is there from the OT, the essence is not. The essence came, qua divine impregnation, from pagan tradition. Whence the essence came qua virginity is less clear, perhaps as I suggested from the Jewish god's transcendence. But no doubt the form found in Judges 13 helped the syncretism along.

So, a side-track question from an ignoramus: what's up with this nazarite? The usual interpretation in the NT is either from Nazareth, or from some cult/organization. It is unlikely Nazareth is meant--we are 7C BCE here, I think--so were there nazarites similar to 1C CE at that time?

Gerard Stafleu

Chili

Nazarite is a state of mind for which circumcision is symbolic except here we are circumsized by nature itself (it has nothing to do with a foreskin this time but with moral sensorship by nature via the gifts of the HS).

Steven Avery

Hi Gerald,

What do we have as the date for when the Augustus cult added a 'miraculous' conception ? Beyond the 2nd century Suetonius writing, referencing an earlier writing, do we have any other evidence of this aspect of the Augustus cult ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Solo

No, Ben I don't think you are crazy. I just think you (and not a few other scholars) are being pig-headed (I speak plainly) when you are trying to deny the link between the Christian virgin birth and pagan myth. The idea of God, (or a god) impregnating a woman did not originate in Judaism. An angel announcing to a barren woman she was going to conceive a holy man (or Isaiah predicting a golden age through a birth of a boy) is not a Holy Ghost impregnating a woman. That idea would be as offensive to a mainstream, Jewish traditionalist (in early rabbinical Judaism), as it later was to Mohammed and his followers. There is but one God to both, and that God does not procreate. OTOH, mythical nativities of the sort suggested by the virgin birth, were widely in circulation in the Middle East at the break of the ages. It cannot be denied.

Why should it be denied ? To my mind it is one thing to claim that Jesus originated as a synthetic myth and another thing to admit that syncretic mythical elements are very much in evidence in the forming of religion that centered around him. I don't understand the fear of admitting the latter. We are all human, aren't we ? Wasn't that the novel idea of Christianity ? So, what is so unpalatable about other cultures participating in the creation of religious symbols for all humans ? Tell me.

Jiri

Solo

FYI, Stobaeus' was a doxographer. The origin of the KK text is likely unknown; only a fragment was preserved.

Jiri

Chris Weimer

Jiri,

That same article you linked said that the corpus dated from the second to third centuries CE. Early Christian really equates to early Orthodox, not anywhere near the origins of the gospels.

Chris

judge

Provided of course, we leave out the observations of quantum mechanincs.

youngalexander

Shush, don't get Gibson onto QM.

Solo

Thank you, Chris. We are making progress.

Jiri

gstafleu

Good question, I don't know. Ben pointed to The Priene calendar inscription, circa 9 before Christ, but it doesn't mention any miraculous conception. Maybe Ben has more data on this?

Gerard Stafleu