Syro-Palestinian Archaeology

[kbs2244]

That is a good list of scriptures Min.
Where is it from?
The main problem I have with it is that it confuses the concept of two different “comings,” at different times and with two different purposes, of a single Messiah, with the concept of two different Messianic people.
This can get pretty deep pretty fast, but it has a lot to do with literal “minor” fulfillments of prophesy and later symbolic “major” fulfillments.
In short, the argument is that some prophesies were to be fulfilled more than once.
The rebuilding of Jerusalem is a good example.
It is pretty well accepted that it had a literal fulfillment after the fall of Babylon.
But some are expecting it to have a second physical fulfillment in the present day city.
And some are expecting a “Heavenly Jerusalem" with inhabitants of "Spiritual Israelites,” (not necessarily genetic Jews) as in Revelation, to be a yet to come symbolic fulfillment.

[Forum Monk]

Min's list is abridged (nice as it is). There are a large number of prophecies (all old testament) stretching from Genesis through the minor prophets which describe the messiah and his attributes. The majority of Jews did not recognize Jesus as their messiah because given their circumstances, they were looking for a conquerer to overthrow Roman oppression. It didn't happen and the reasons why some JEWS still recognized Jesus as messiah (as most did not) are much too complicated for the point I made.

There was no christian theology of messiah, Min. It was jewish and no need to remind you the first christians were jews. The text affirms the believing jews, if they made it all up as many believe, did not pull the concept of a resurrecting messiah out of their patutes. It was known before Jesus as I have said.

But the most important point overlooked by all is no one has verified the authencity of this artifact. The whole thing just may be another forgery amid a rash of recent forgeries.

[Minimalist]

Oh, shit. I'm sorry. It's from Wiki although now I don't recall where they got it from.

If I get a chance later I'll see if I can reconstruct my search to find out what their source was.

[Minimalist]

It was jewish and no need to remind you the first christians were jews.

Yeah, that's the story now. I keep looking for real history underlying it and never seem to find any.

Earl Doherty's position on this is that "Mark" was a midrash which was misunderstood by gentiles. The gentiles thought it was telling a real story. The "Jews" understood what midrash was but they were too busy fleeing from the Roman army to worry much about it.


This is the kind of historical analysis which indicates, to me, that there is a major distortion going on.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/corinth1.html

In the New Testament yarn Paul visited Corinth on his second missionary journey, stayed eighteen months and founded the Corinthian church. He supposedly returned to Greece – one assumes to the city of Corinth – for three months on his third mission. Two letters ostensibly written to the Christians of Corinth form part of the core of "authentic" Pauline epistles and shore up the historical claims of Christianity.

In Corinth, above all places on the apostle's various itineraries, defenders of the faith muster "historical markers" to corroborate the instructional tale of early evangelism and nascent discord in the Church of God.

Yet if we are not blinded by the conviction that the Corinthian episode is an obvious truth requiring no examination of the evidence, we can recognize the high probability that the apostle's residence in the city is entirely a matter of fable, and that the true authorship of the Corinthian epistles is rather more problematic than is generally supposed.

and,

Were there Jews in Corinth? Was there a synagogue?

Pausanius, a 2nd century visitor, describes a Corinthian market-place replete with statues of Artemis, Dionysus, Poseidon, Apollo, Aphrodite and Athena. He names the temples of Tyche, Hermes, and Zeus and a sanctuary of "All the Gods". Above the monumental gateway leading from the forum to the port of Lechaeum he describes the gilded chariots of the sun god Helios and his son Phaeton, and the nearby bronzes of Hercules and Hermes. By the theatre, he records the sanctuary of Zeus Capitolinus and nearby a temple dedicated to Asclepius. By the Acrocorinth he notes dual sanctuaries of the Egyptian gods Isis and Serapis, and still further shrines of the Fates, Demeter, and Hera Bunaea. On the summit of the Acrocorinth, he records the famed Temple of Aphrodite.

Yet Pausanius, in all this punctilious catalogue of piety, neither mentions nor so much as hints at either a "Christian meeting house" or a synagogue of the Jews. And this is in the mid-2nd century when the "Church of Corinth" should have been very much a going concern.

This suggests that the Christians of the time of Pausanius were so utterly marginal as to go unnoticed and that the Jews of Corinth were either thoroughly Hellenized and honoured the gods of Greece and Rome, or so totally impoverished as to be unable to support a synagogue. After all, Jews of a later period, for example, in 4th century Rome, built splendid synagogues.

The discovery of a crudely etched lintel from the 5th century, purportedly identifying the "synagogue of the Hebrews" but in secondary use, suggests orthodox Jews even at that late date were not a wealthy community. On the other hand, centuries earlier, it had been highly Hellenized Jews that had fled from Palestine after the Maccabean revolt, and these emigres had establishing enclaves in the coastal cities of Asia Minor and the Aegean (a point noted in 1 Maccabees 15.23). Attracted to the sophistication of Romano-Greek culture they had assimilated and became Greeks. But there could have been no such Jewish community in Corinth. Throughout the Hasmonean era – thanks to Leucius Mummius – the city had remained a ruin.

Continuing through the essay we do learn that General Vespasian sent 6,000 Jewish captives from teh Great Revolt to work on Nero's project of cutting a canal through the Corinthian Isthmus. On Nero's death the project was abandoned and presumably any remaining slaves were moved to other tasks. But this would have been at least 20 years after any visit by the supposed "Paul."

[Minimalist]

But some are expecting it to have a second physical fulfillment in the present day city.

Some people think it happened in 1948 and that 1988 was the big year because that would have been a "biblical generation" after the restoration of Israel....although I don't think a UN Partition was quite what they had in mind.

Then they amended it to 1967 when Jerusalem was re-unified but that 40 years expired in 2007, so back to the drawing board once again.

The fact is there are 10,000 different christian sects for a reason.

[Ishtar]

There was no christian theology of messiah, Min. It was jewish and no need to remind you the first christians were jews.

That's not correct, FM.

Messiah means 'anointed one' and Mary Magdelene anoints Jesus with oil whiile he is visiting at her house with Martha and Lazarus. This isn't just an meaningless diversion - it has great symbolic significance, as does every single act of Jesus - otherwise, why select just those events?

Anointing was a common Gnostic motif, both Pagan Gnostic and Christian Gnostic. In the Greek Eleusian Mystery initiations, the second initiation was called 'the anointing' because it began the process of the ultimate realisation of the Christ consciousness within the initiate, by the death of the ego.

The first initiation is associated with water and the second to fire/light - as in the light of the sun.

The non-canonical Gospel of Philip teaches:

"You can't see yourself in water or a mirror without a light. Nor again will you able to see yourself with light but no water or mirror. Therefore it is right to baptise with both water and light. But the light is the anointing."

And I hate to say it ... but I expect you know what I'm going to say next - the whole idea comes from India and the Vedas. The Sanskrit word 'puja' which means 'to worship' is derived from the Dravidian 'to anoint' - in this case, the lingam. The fire, as Agni, has the anointing quality. In Rig Veda 1.45.1, it says that the fire is ‘born of Manu and is a light that anoints’.

So once again, we are back at the second fire/light Mystery School initiation, known as the anointment, of the Greeks who passed it on to the Gnostic Christians who, imo, were the original Christians.

It's all the same allegorical teaching, but just told in different ways for different audiences in different places at different times.

[Minimalist]

Messiah means 'anointed one' and Mary Magdelene anoints Jesus with oil whiile he is visiting at her house with Martha and Lazarus.

True, but the kings "anointed" the high priests and the high priests anointed the kings in a sort of holier-than-thou circle jerk. The Jews would not have conceded that "Mary Magdalene" had the authority to anoint shit.

[Ishtar]

FM was saying that the Christians had no messiah theology ... that's the point I was responding to.

The Gnostic Jews would have recognised the motif of the sacred union between the holy harlot and the godman - again a favourite theme running through all the sacred literature for thousands of years, starting with Ishtar herself.

[Minimalist]

The only thing I can get out of xtian writings is a desire to pick and choose out of Jewish symbolism and then combine it with other, more general religious concepts from the times...which I guess is what you are saying.

[Ishtar]

The only thing I can get out of xtian writings is a desire to pick and choose out of Jewish symbolism and then combine it with other, more general religious concepts from the times...which I guess is what you are saying.

I think they were Jews and Samaritans who were influenced by the Greek and Hellenistic Jewish Gnostic teachers of Alexandria, primarily Philo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo

Philo (20 BCE - 50 CE), known also as Philo of Alexandria (gr. Φίλων ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς), Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, and Philo the Jew was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher born in Alexandria, Egypt.

Philo used allegory to fuse and harmonize Greek philosophy and Judaism. His method followed the practices of both Jewish exegesis and Stoic philosophy. His work was not widely accepted. "The sophists of literalness," as he calls them[1], "opened their eyes superciliously" when he explained to them the marvels of his exegesis. Philo's works were enthusiastically received by the early Christians, some of whom saw in him a cryptic Christian. His concept of the Logos as God's creative principle apparently influenced early Christology. To him Logos was God's "blueprint for the world", a governing plan.[dubious – discuss]

Arguments have been put forth that Philo is actually the founder of Christianity by virtue of his combination of Jewish theological ideas and those present in the Greek mystery religions, a combination of which would appear much like Christianity. Whatever the followers of Jesus were like before Philo's writings became well known, it's possible they seized upon his precepts and incorporated them into the essays that became the New Testament. Bruno Bauer was a key proponent of this argument.

[rich]

Hmmm - and all the while I figured it was the Romans that started it as a tale to show "Mess with us and we'll kill even your god and messiah."

No, seriously though, Christianity had to be started by someone - either the Jews, the Greeks, or the Romans. Take your pick.

[Forum Monk]

FM was saying that the Christians had no messiah theology ... that's the point I was responding to.

The Gnostic Jews would have recognised the motif of the sacred union between the holy harlot and the godman - again a favourite theme running through all the sacred literature for thousands of years, starting with Ishtar herself.

Gnostic jews.
How can the christians be looking forward to their messiah when they didn't even exist until after their messiah?

[Forum Monk]

Yeah, that's the story now. I keep looking for real history underlying it and never seem to find any.
...
This is the kind of historical analysis which indicates, to me, that there is a major distortion going on.

Occam would crap if you think the whole thing is made up and maintained by some unholy conspiracy. Its much too complex to be brushed off which such a dismissal.

The evidence is sometimes missing, most of the time written off as a "part of the conspiracy" and the rest of the time distorted into something its not - this resurrection stone case in point.

[Minimalist]

That's a fair point, Monk. Even just taking the story as given, the Xtians separate themselves from the Jews by saying..."Hey! The Messiah was already here and you missed it!"


Of course a cynic could look at that and note that it was a way to say "we're tired of getting our asses kicked by the Romans" which is also a more practical way to see things.

The first century was a very complex time and things are not helped by the fact that the Romans, too, abandoned their traditional gods (at least the upper classes) for Greek philosophy and the other Mystery Cults spread among the less literate branches of society.

The Romans had conquered the Med from Spain to Syria and in the process shown that they could defeat all sorts of local "gods." But they did not actively persecute those faiths. Instead they merely said, "worship what you want but pay homage to our gods and the emperor." When you compare that to the Middle Ages it was really a very advanced way to look at things.

[Ishtar]

How can the christians be looking forward to their messiah when they didn't even exist until after their messiah?

1. I didn't say they were looking forward to him. You said that the messiah - meaning the anointed one - wasn't part of Christian theology. I showed you how he was.

2. Imo Jesus never existed - so there's no question about before or after. The whole story was a Gnostic initiation story, based upon Greek initiation stories, based on Indian initiation stories. There is no BC or AD.