Reactor

Ipetrich...

Do these scriptures in some way show a greater likelihood of the apostles making things up (because of their ulterior motives), because if they do, I don't see it. It's quite accepted (as I understand it) for a historical figure to "make up an account... (part skipped)... by those who from the first were eyewitnesses...." as Luke did, or to testify as to what he'd seen and heard, as John did. You say that the biographies of JC must be viewed as hagiographies, in you opinion. However, I don't see the motives of either of these two men as sufficient evidence for such certainty.

Why do you? Is it simply because there are other examples or historical figures with like motives, whos biographies are now seen as fictional, or is there something else?

[ January 24, 2002: Message edited by: Reactor ]</p>

lpetrich

Here is someone who can walk on water, turn water into wine, drive demons into pigs, zap fig trees, conjure up bread and fish, and do other miracles, and he does not bother to jump off of that cross?

However, the papacy is not physically descended from him, which is what counts in that hero profile. And yes, JC's teachings may be viewed as laws; ask the Catholic hierarchy why it considers divorce a no-no some time.

Those would push his score down a bit, but it is interesting that those gospels, like the story of JC at the Temple, present him as being very precocious.

Does this mean that Jesus Christ is some kind of nobody instead of some hero figure?

However, others do. What does one call a biography that presents someone as a superior being, no matter what implausibilities it contains? A hagiography. Consider all the miracles in the Gospels. How are they fundamentally different from miracles that other religions claim?

RyanS2

The "Death on a Cross" motif was because the ancients had a big thing with the suffering of the Gods. (The Eucharist, the crown of thorns on Dionysus, etc.) The more a God suffered, the more it was considered beneficial for the followers of the religion.

Dr. Michael Magee puts it as:

"The doctrine of salvation by crucifixion had, like many of the ancient forms of religious faith, an astronomical origin. People in northern climates were saved by the sun's crucifixion when it crossed over the equinoctial line into the season of spring, and thereby gave out a saving heat and light to the world and stimulated the generative organs of animal and vegetable life. The sun that is crucified is the dark winter sun, lacking the warmth and brightness of the summer. It is resurrected as the bright warm fertilizing summer sun that continues on to ascend into heaven. The ancients would carve or paint sexual organs on the walls of their holy temples with fertilization in mind.

At a later part of the year the autumn equinox sees the bright summer sun transform into the dark winter sun. There are two suns, summer and winter, bright and dark, and these are seen daily when the sun crosses the heavens bright, then sinks to the west darkening and remains dark through the night until dawn. The sun god therefore exists as twins—a bright twin and a dark twin. The crucified one paradoxically is the dark twin which is why saviour gods often have a dark or black complexion.

That the dark sun is the undesirable one that is crucified shows that the myth is from northern climates. The legend is read as the salvific death of the evil winter sun to resurrect the summer sun. This seems to have been the Persian ceremony when it was the wicked Haman who was crucified. In the ancient near east, the summer sun is undesirable because it burns up the landscape, so the myth was read as the death of the desirable winter sun having nourished the land, leaving the people forlorn until he came again in the autumn. In Ezekiel, the women outside the temple gates bewailed the death of Tammuz, suggesting the latter interpretation. The Persians coming from the north and settled on the cooler Iranian plateau will have had the northern view originally, but changed it when they adapted to Babylonian conditions, and changed their calendar.

In the near east, the fertilizing winter sun having been crucified, and the summer sun risen into the heavens in resurrection, the blood of the grape, ripened by its the heat, was symbolically “the blood of the cross,” or “the blood of the Lamb.” Jesus is not the true vine for no reason."

Next, David Ulansey Biblical Archaeology Review, vol. 20,#5 pp. 40-53

"Because the ancients believed in the real existence of the great sphereof the stars, its various parts-- such as its axis and poles-- played acentral role in the cosmology of the time. In particular, one important attribute of the sphere of the stars was much better known in antiquity than it is today: namely, its equator, known as the "celestial equator." Just as the earth's equator is defined as a circle around the earth equal distant from the north and south poles, so the celestial equator was understoodas a circle around the sphere of the stars equidistant from the sphere'spoles.

The circle of the celestial equator was seen as having a particularly special importance because of the two points where it crosses the circle of the zodiac: for these two points are the equinoxes, that is, the places where the sun, in its movement along the zodiac, appears to be on the first day of spring and the first day of autumn. Thus the celestial equator was responsible for defining the seasons, and hence had a very concrete significancein addition to its abstract astronomical meaning.

As a result, the celestial equator was often described in ancient popular literature about the stars. Plato, for example, in his dialogue Timaeussaid that when the creator of the universe first formed the cosmos, heshaped its substance in the form of the letter X, representing the intersection of the two celestial circles of the zodiac and the celestial equator. Thiscross-shaped symbol was often depicted in ancient art to indicate the cosmicsphere. In fact, one of the most famous examples of this motif is a Mithraicstone carving showing the so-called "lion-headed god," whose image is often found in Mithraic temples, standing on a globe that is marked with the cross representing the two circles of the zodiac and the celestial equator."

How does that relate? The ancients called this cross representing the two circles of the Zodiac the "Zodiac Cross". What gave the idea of the crucification and the three day resurrection? The Sun, since the first day of summer, has each day been moving southward, and stops when it reaches its lowest point in the Northern Hemispheric sky (December 22nd - our winter solstice).

At this lowest point, the Sun stops its journey southward. For three days, December 22nd, 23rd , and 24th, the Sun rises on the exact same latitudinal (declination) degree.

This is the only time in the year that the Sun actually stops its movement Northward or Southward in our sky. On the morning of December 25th the Sun moves one degree northward beginning its annual journey back to us in the Northern Hemisphere, ultimately bringing our spring. Anything steadily moving all year long that suddenly stops moving for three days was considered to have died. Therefore, God's Sun who was dead for three days, moves one-degree Northward on December 25th beginning its annual journey back to the Northern Hemisphere.

Anunnaki

Theres a picture of it<a href="http://www.sabbatarian.com/photos.html" target="_blank">HERE</a> (4th down on the left) as well as quite a few other things Christians such as Meta would rather we just forgot about.

Vorkosigan

Originally posted by Reactor:
Ipetrich...
Do these scriptures in some way show a greater likelihood of the apostles making things up (because of their ulterior motives), because if they do, I don't see it.

Yes, they do. First, the apostles didn't write the gospels, later writers did. John, to take one example, was edited several times. Consider that the authors of John moved several stories around, borrowed two fictitious miracles from Mark and inserted them in John 6, and borrowed the original ending of Mark and used it as John 21. It is clear that they did not regard their presentation as history, but propaganda. Consider that John presents obviously fruitcake scenes, such as a Jewish crowd demanding that a Roman government execute a Jewish criminal so he'd be a friend of Caesar. That's patently unbelievable. The gospels go to great lengths to reduce Roman culpability in Jesus' death and blame it on the Jews, creating all sorts of absurdities. This is highly suspicious; it smacks of historical revisionism.

Second, we know from long interaction with religiously-motivated writers that they are habitually and deliberately propagandistic. It goes against my understanding of human nature to think that missionaries in the first century were somehow different than missionaries in all other centuries.

It's quite accepted (as I understand it) for a historical figure to "make up an account... (part skipped)... by those who from the first were eyewitnesses...." as Luke did, or to testify as to what he'd seen and heard, as John did.

Let me correct this: as the authors of John claimed. Luke says that in his time there were many accounts of the Christian savior.

Note also how diverse modern readings are. Jesus was a peasant revolutionary. An eschatological teacher. A religious nationalist fanatic. A magician. Etc. Real history does not produce such diversity; people disagree about Caesar's motives, but nobody denies that he fought the battle of Alesia or was Consul.

You say that the biographies of JC must be viewed as hagiographies, in you opinion. However, I don't see the motives of either of these two men as sufficient evidence for such certainty.

Luke may have been a woman; see Randall Helm's Who Wrote the Gospels for a very convincing summary of the evidence.

Do you know of many dispassionate religious biographies from, say, the first 1500 years of Christianity?

Michael

[ January 24, 2002: Message edited by: turtonm ]</p>

BK

LOL! That's great stuff. This guy is creative. Too bad it has no relation to reality.

BK

Metacrock

Meta =&gt;The evidence I put through says earliest mention in Western lit is about 300 something BC and height of popularity by 300 AD. What's wrong with my evidence?

BK

"Allegations of an early Christian dependence on Mithraism have been rejected on many grounds. Mithraism had no concept of the death and resurrection of its God and no place for any concept of rebirth--at least during its early stages." R. Nash, [u]Christianity and the Hellenistic World.{/u] Mithraism flowered after Christianity, not before, so Christianity would not have copied Mithraism, it would have been the other way around.

You should get Nash's book on this subject. He quite nicely shows how Christianity is independent of the Mystery Religions and other religions which it is supposedly based upon.

It's nice to speculate that Jesus didn't exist, but it is all to clear as an historical matter that he did. There may be questions about what he said and did, but not that he existed or that he died on the Cross in Palestine in the early part of the First Century A.D.


BK

Metacrock

Meta =&gt;No that's a fallacious assumption. There's no reason to assume that he could not have had information in the Imperial archieves, he had access to them. Besides its that kind of "anything a christian says must always be discounted" that is so ridiculous. Real historians dont' think that way. No historian thinks in terms of plots and conspiracies, they don't see the early chruch as a conspiracy to convence people of a ficticious hero. There's no reaon to discount Christian testimony.


Meta =&gt;again, I think we should make the assumptions that professional historians make. They do not discount Joesphus on the mere possibilty of "contamination." That some core of info is found in the arabian fragment, thus it is a good possiblity it is the true core.

Meta =&gt;All that proves is that Jesus wasn't of interest to a Roman arostrocracy. That doesn't mean anything. He didn't address the senate, he wasn't important in Rome so there was no reason for a Roman to mention him. Jo was from taht region he had an insider's view of what was important.

Metacrock

Meta =&gt;that's not the argument! REad it again. I did not say that it doesn't predate, although the evidence does indicate that the Persion myth is not the same deal. But since we dont' know anyhting about the nature of pre-Christian mirthism we can't say that it was like Christianity at all. the argument is that it got the elements that Christ myther's point out form Christianity. I don't see any evidendce disputing Cumont. Cumont has been updated too, by his student in the 50's and by recent scholarship.


Meta =&gt;That's the same source I quoted, and he agrees with what I said that we dont' know anything about pre-Christian mithrism and that all we know is from aritfacts there are no texts.

"The earliest physical remains of the cult date from around the end of the first century A.D., and Mithraism reached its height of popularity in the third century. "

Meta =-&gt;pre-dating is not the issue, the issue is the alledged similarities, and you can't show any form before the end of the first century. In fact Stephen Neil says there are no physical evdiences of any similarities from before the end of the frist century. Ulancy backs that up too. I already quoted that.