Is the Jesus story an astrological allegory?

[Minimalist]

But I submit there is a variant of it. When lands were conquered there was a tendency to exterminate the ruling class but keep the peasants on the land. They were useful as farmers and no real threat to the new owners. Still....they did have a certain attachment to their old gods and I can see where new rulers would engage in a bit of syncretism just to keep the peace and make taking over the country somewhat easier.

[Forum Monk]

You must admit, Monk. That can be a powerful argument!

I admit. I don't know if all those tales of the Maccabees are true as an example, but a lot of Jews died resisting such orders from Antiochus Epiphanes. Nevertheless, I am willing to bet they were the faithful minority, and the most part of the people figured what could it hurt, as long as I can be safe with my family at the end of the day.

[Digit]

An example of that Monk was the Jews under Spanish Inquisition, they 'converted' en masse, and carried on being jews in secret.

[Rokcet Scientist]

You must admit, Monk. That can be a powerful argument!

I admit. I don't know if all those tales of the Maccabees are true as an example, but a lot of Jews died resisting such orders from Antiochus Epiphanes. Nevertheless, I am willing to bet they were the faithful minority, and the most part of the people figured what could it hurt, as long as I can be safe with my family at the end of the day.

I don't think so. They didn't have media, spin meisters, and mass communication technology to stir up their angst like we do today.

[Minimalist]

You must admit, Monk. That can be a powerful argument!

I admit. I don't know if all those tales of the Maccabees are true as an example, but a lot of Jews died resisting such orders from Antiochus Epiphanes. Nevertheless, I am willing to bet they were the faithful minority, and the most part of the people figured what could it hurt, as long as I can be safe with my family at the end of the day.

You know, I have a good friend...a flaming, rapture-loving Baptist...(we don't talk about religion much) but one time I asked her a question because of a debate I was having on another board. The question was:
"When did "Galilee" become Jewish enough to merit having Jesus be from there?" Obviously, Galilee was part of the Northern Kingdom which was allegedly depopulated by the Assyrians and replaced with non-Jewish populations.

To my great surprise, she did not know. Many months later I found the answer by accident. It was not until 102 BC when the Hasmoneans finally conquered the region and forcibly converted the inhabitant to Judaism.

That was only 40 years before Pompey the Great arrived with his legions.

[Forum Monk]

There's a certain irony to that Min.

Forced conversions; in the street they're one religion, in their homes another.

[Minimalist]

Think about "forced" circumcisions?

I, for one, would never forgive them!!

[Ishtar]

FM, thanks for all that on sidereal astrology. That makes sense - they knew about poe but didn't have a change in the age as their system wasn't based on the sun moving through the astrological houses.

So I now understand that for the Bible stories to be astrological allegories, we really do have to find evidence for knowledge of poe in Babylonian astrology or for the Greeks to be more advanced in their astrological knowledge earlier than currently thought.

But I was thinking about the Babylonian Great Year.

http://vridar.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/ ... hronology/

The notion of a Great Year was a well understood Hellenistic philosophical idea of a time between grand cosmic cycles or events. “Great years” have varied from the calculations of the precession of the equinoxes, to multiples of significant numbers, and vary from Persian and Indic culture through to the later Stoics. An ancient Babylonian “great year” appears to have been as much as 432,000 years.

Now this figure occurs a lot in the Vedas as it's the one they base their ages on too. The ages are called yugas and we are currently in Kali Yuga which will last for 432,000 years.

So it seems that there was a connection between both Babylonian and Vedic astrology and, as I said earlier, I would be surprised if the Vedics knew about the poe and the Babylonians didn't as they seemed to match ieach other in terms of knowledge in most other respects.

Also I don't know if you trust this source, but this article claims that the Babylonians 'inherited' their astrology from the Sumerians who knew about the poe:

http://www.pureinsight.org/pi/index.php?news=122

Surprisingly, newly translated Babylonian texts indicate that positions and motions of the stars and planets were calculated instead according to complex equations inherited from the Sumerian civilization. The Babylonians seem not to have understood the theoretical basis of these formulas, only how to use them.

The Sumerians had even more exact knowledge of the solar system and its place in the universe than their Babylonian heirs, whom they predate. Their calendar, devised as early as 3000 B.C., is the model for our calendar today, and they evidently understood a number of more arcane astronomical matters.

The Sumerians understood precession and knew the length of the Great Year-an extraordinary feat, given the lengthy observations involved and the instruments available to them.

It doesn't say what the 'newly translated texts' are, though. The article was written in 2000.

[Ishtar]

FM - also we have to consider whether the Egyptians knew about poe:

From the Catholic Encyclopaedia:

"The Egyptians and the Hindus were as zealous astrologers as the nations on the Euphrates and Tigris. The dependence of the Early Egyptian star (sun) worship (the basis of the worship of Osiris) upon early Chaldaic [Assyro-Babylonians] belongs to the still unsettled question of the origin of early Egyptian civilisation."

[Ishtar]

Hi FM

I know you're busy and most gainfully employed - unlike the rest of us layabouts!

But I hope you're dipping into this from time to time as I'm on the trail of whether or how the Hebrews knew about the precession of the equinoxes (poe), and I will be recounting my adventures as I go.

So here's today's little gem - and there may be more later:

In Hamlet's Mill, Santillana and Dechend say:

"There is good reason to assume that Hipparchus actually rediscovered this [poe], that it had been known for some thousand years previously, and that on it the Archaic Age based its long range computation of time."

Astronomer Dr Krupp concurs:

"The earliest known reference to the precession is that of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus (second century BC) who is credited with discovering it. Adjustments of the Egyptian temple alignments, pointed out by Sir Norman Lockyer, may well indicate a much earlier sensitivity to this phenomenon, however.

"Circumstantial evidence implies that the awareness of the shifting equinoxes may be of considerable antquity for we find, in Egypt at least, a succession of cults whose iconography and interest focus on duality, the bull and the ram for appropriate periods for Gemini, Taurus and Aries in the precessional cycle of the equinoxes."

I should add that in her book The Celts, Annie Ross shows that bull horns were prevalent in the Celts' inconography until they gave way to rams' horns.

[Minimalist]

And Robert Bauval points out that an equinoctal marker, like the Sphinx, would only have made sense as a lion's body during the Age of Leo.

Of course, that would have been between 10,500 and 8,000 BC and who knew about zodiacs back then?

[Ishtar]

Well, apparently the French!

Beagle will hate this!

Indian scholar SB Roy claims that the 'antelope-headed sorceror' of Les Trois Freres Caves in Lascaux in the French Pyrenees was 'a figure marking the onset of the season'.

This is because the stag's head in the Indian Rig-veda (shown on the Indus Seals) represents the star L-Orionis and the winter solstice at the new moon, as well as the summer solstice at the full moon.

The French stag figure dates to 10,600 BC.

[Ishtar]

I would like to extend a warm welcome to Archie who, I've just been told, has announced on another forum that he is following this thread.

Archie, I hope you're enjoying watching us take the idea that the stories of the Bible are historical and literal and tear it into tiny shreds, and then chuck it into the eternal and immortal trash can at the End of the Universe.

[Beagle]

This is because the stag's head in the Indian Rig-veda (shown on the Indus Seals) represents the star L-Orionis and the winter solstice at the new moon, as well as the summer solstice at the full moon.

Hi Ishtar, how do we know this?

[Digit]

As Precession is so slow I would suggest that writing or star maps would probably have to precede its discovery.