Syro-Palestinian Archaeology

[rich]

Eh - it's all a format to cleanse your mind so you can go back to fulfilling the first commandment in the bible - GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY AND FILL THE EARTH.

Face it - it's the only law that makes sense!!!!!!!

[Forum Monk]

Ishtar. I had to go back and read all your posts again (I emphasize again because I did read them first time) to get my head around what it is your asking me to defend or debate. I remember not so long ago it was the Pagan Christ or Jesus and astrological allegory but this time it is gnostic origins. I think I realize I need to separate the other stuff which we have debated before and now concentrate on the gnostic origin point of view.

Let me reorient myself to that (if I am wrong please let me know now) and I will try to address this directly with sources. Please be aware, my time will be precious as we are having guests arrive from Europe on Friday and I will be quite occupied for two weeks as my daughter then prepares to go to europe with them. I will still have time to post, nevertheless. Hopefully I can give you a fair debate.

[Ishtar]

Monk

Thanks. I really don't want to cut into your family time, though - and let's face, this argument is not going to go away any time soon!

So please let's pick this up again when you've got more time - families are much more important.

In the meantime, I'd like to clarify one point.

I'm not sure whether the Jesus story in astrotheitical allegory - at the time, it was a new idea that I wanted to think through with others here, and over the time that we were discussing it, I became more convinced but not 100 per cent.

With the Gnostics, I am sure, and this is something I've been studing at length for more than five years. I realised that if you zoom out and take a wider picture in the area, in neighbouring countries around that time, the Jesus story makes perfect sense but not as a historical event. And so yes, this is what I'd like to discuss with you here.

However, by finding for one does not necessarily rule out the other - we don't have to say "is it an astrothetical or a Gnostic allegory?" I've made this point many times before in other threads, so you may not have picked it up, but the old sages and priests were very good at encoding several layers of meaning simultaneously into one story - so they would put metaphors within metaphors, and they would also make it possible for one story to be used as both an astrological teaching story and one of an allegorical story of the path to God or mystic enlightenment.

Just one other thing - on my expertise, or otherwise, on Christianity. To say that I left Christianity at 10 may not seem like much. One would be forgiven for thinking that,at that age, I hadn't had the time to glean its finer points let alone appreciate them.

You may be right from a political point of view. But from a purely religious point of view, I knew the gospels inside out. I had a small New Testament on the cabinet besides my bed which I would read for up to an hour every night before I went to sleep. To me, the parables contained within Matthew, Mark and Luke and John were wonderful bedtime stories - my favourite was Luke - and I thought Jesus was the best hero ever - I used to love his dry, scathing remarks to the Pharisees - a bit like Min actually.

I also used to go to church three times on Sundays. I would go to the morning service, then Sunday School in afternoon, and then evensong. None of this was at the behest of my parents. They didn't go as they were atheists (and still are). It was entirely on my own initiative.

But I became disullusioned with it at such an early age because none of the Sunday School teachers could answer my questions. I also began to realise that no-one else seemed to want, or was trying to get, what I wanted - which was a real experience of God like the apostles had at the Pentecost: mystic enlightenment. The others seemed content with just believing what they were told to believe and being part of a club.

I did have another go at it not so long ago. My guru had told me to come back to my own country and practise the religion of my country. I didn't understand about the roots of Christianity then, so I thought he meant the Church - and it took a long while to figure out what he really meant.

So during that uncertain time, I used to go and stay with a closed order of Benedictine nuns on the Isle of Wight. I loved these ladies so much because they were totally into it. They would sing to God all day long, starting at four in the morning and ending at midnight. They also only spoke for half an hour a day, as they were constantly in contemplation on God. So I used to stay there and follow their routine, doing Bible study in between the masses and Matins, Vespers and Complines and so on. During this time I read many useful writings including the Confessions of Augustine and John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul. I also read a history of the Catholic Church that was gathering dust on the shelves, which was highly enlightening but not in a good way!

I left all that after a run-in with a Catholic priest who told me that I should just have faith in what he was telling me, whether it made sense to me or not.

Sorry if I've gone on a bit, but it will help to set the context of where I'm coming from on the subject, and also give you some idea of what I know, and what I don't know.

Look forward to talking to you again on this when you've more time!



PS KB - Canon has one 'n' - it is not a weapon of mass destruction that was used in the Crusades.

[kbs2244]

Excuse me!
Did you say Min was Christlike?

[Ishtar]

Only in that respect, KB.

Reading Jesus caustically seeing off the Pharisees and the hypocrites was a llittle like reading Min dealing with a fundie....except the language was less blue.... with Jesus I mean

[Minimalist]

except the language was less blue

Sometimes I get excited.

[Forum Monk]

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.

I am naming chapter and verse, quote after quote, attestation after attestation - and all you're doing is telling me what you believe WITH NOT ONE SHRED OF ANYTHING TO BACK IT UP.

even though I've laid out my stall very clearly and with a lot of evidence ...

Lets start here Ish. You claimed to have laid out your case chapter and verse. I obviously missed it unless you did it sometime ago. Give me some links to your case. Thanks.

sorry to make your repeat yourself.

[Ishtar]

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.

The story of Mary Magdelene anointing Jesus with oil when he came to visit her and Martha and Lazarus at their home. This is the anointing - otherwise why include a story about a prositute using her unbound hair to dry his feet? Unbound hair was a sign of promiscuity and abandonment in Jewish society at that time ...

You have to ask yourself the question, out of all the 33 years of Jesus's life, they would chose the specific incidents to highlight. Why include a story like the one above it was literal .... wouldn't that make their holy and pure living man look bad? Not if everyone knew it was an allegory based on the motif common to all mythological stories like this one - the union between the godman and the holy whore, and she does the anointing.

I then went on to show how this anointing crops up all the mythologies right back to the Indus valley.

I've given specific examples of Christian Gnostics. I've named names, dates and places, and also quoted some. Maybe you don't consider them Christians in keeping with the definition of Christian nowadays, but they certainly considered themselves to be so then.

I've shown how the Gnostics were in Rome in the second century where they were running philosophy schools when the Literalists were just a tiny cult there. That the Literalists gained the upper hand in the third century was largely for political reasons, and even then Eastern Christianity remained largely Gnostic. And Manicheism, founded in the second half of the third century in Persia, flourished for 1000 years from Spain in the West to China in the east. Mani taught that Judaism, Paganism and Christianity were all the same thing.

Again, you have to ask yourself, if Gnosticism wasn't the force I'm saying it was, why were the Church Fathers so worried about it? We see this from their letters.

I've cited the Nag Hammadi gospels as being those that didn't make it into the canon, that were found with copies of Plato's Republic and some works from the Egyptian Hermes. These shows the eclectism of these early Christians, who saw their story as part of a wider philosophy that stretched far outside the borders of the Israel.

These manuscripts are thought to have originally belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery, and buried after Bishop Athanasius condemned the uncritical use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367 AD. The earliest of these, the Gospel of Thomas, had been dated to 80 AD.

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

It's not a case of links, FM. You have to use your own initiative to look this stuff up. I don't believe something just because I read it on a web site. The above is the result of years of study and distilling information, and most of it from books - remember those?

Anyway, this a link to an introduction to Elaine Page, professor of relgion at Princeton's book on the Gnostics:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... agels.html

An Overview of the Nag Hammadi Texts

When analyzed according to subject matter, there are six separate major categories of writings collected in the Nag Hammadi codices:

Writings of creative and redemptive mythology, including Gnostic alternative versions of creation and salvation: The Apocryphon of John; The Hypostasis of the Archons; On the Origin of the World; The Apocalypse of Adam; The Paraphrase of Shem. (For an in-depth discussion of these, see the Archive commentary on Genesis and Gnosis.)

Observations and commentaries on diverse Gnostic themes, such as the nature of reality, the nature of the soul, the relationship of the soul to the world: The Gospel of Truth; The Treatise on the Resurrection; The Tripartite Tractate; Eugnostos the Blessed; The Second Treatise of the Great Seth; The Teachings of Silvanus; The Testimony of Truth.

Liturgical and initiatory texts: The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth; The Prayer of Thanksgiving; A Valentinian Exposition; The Three Steles of Seth; The Prayer of the Apostle Paul. (The Gospel of Philip, listed under the sixth category below, has great relevance here also, for it is in effect a treatise on Gnostic sacramental theology).

Writings dealing primarily with the feminine deific and spiritual principle, particularly with the Divine Sophia: The Thunder, Perfect Mind; The Thought of Norea; The Sophia of Jesus Christ; The Exegesis on the Soul.

Writings pertaining to the lives and experiences of some of the apostles: The Apocalypse of Peter; The Letter of Peter to Philip; The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles; The (First) Apocalypse of James; The (Second) Apocalypse of James, The Apocalypse of Paul.

Scriptures which contain sayings of Jesus as well as descriptions of incidents in His life: The Dialogue of the Saviour; The Book of Thomas the Contender; The Apocryphon of James; The Gospel of Philip; The Gospel of Thomas.

And all these can be found here at the Nag Hammadi Library:

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

I hope this helps.

[Ishtar]

Monk

I've found some web references for the following statements I made in previous posts as follows:

Literalists co-opted in retrospect many Christian Gnostic writers such as second century writers Athenagoras of Athens, Theophilus of Antioch and Minucius Felix of Africa. These writers actually promoted a philosophical (love of Sophia) Christianity based around the mythical figures of the Logos and Sophia.

Not only were they not Literalists. They were not particularly interested in the figure of Jesus. Athenagorus goes minutely into the particulars of the Christian doctrine, yet never mentions Jesus at all. [ In his Plea for Christians: http://home.newadvent.org/fathers/0205.htm ]

Neither does Minucius Felix, even when someone asks him to name someone who has returned from the dead. He said:

"....when you attribute to us the worship of a criminal and his cross, you wander far from the truth." [Octavius, Chapter 9: http://www.intratext.com/X/LAT0267.htm ]

He condemns Christian Literalists who 'choose a man for their worship'.

The Epistle of Polycarp laments that 'the great majority of Christians embrace the idea of Jesus not existing in the flesh." (Epistle of Polycarp: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.toc.html]

[Forum Monk]

Gotcha. So you were quoting chapter and verse of a tome yet to be written because its all in your head.

No problem. I have begun looking into gnosticism starting of course with wiki and branching out. A few initial impressions; it is not particularly early, that is to say, it grew up more or less concurrently with christianity; and the basic principals of duality and the idea of the malevalent creator is not the least bit similar to christianity. But I've just scratched the surface so far.

[Ishtar]

Mornin' Monk

Gotcha. So you were quoting chapter and verse of a tome yet to be written because its all in your head.

Yes, but pulled together from quite a lot of good, solid research that's out there if you know where to look.

For instance, even Gibbon got into trouble with the established Church for not going along with their story about how the Gnostics were a tiny sect that rode on the coat tails of the immensely more popular Literalist Christianity, instead of it being the other way round, and they almost succeeded in gagging him.

In his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he makes it clear that the Gnostics dominated the Mediterranean during the first and second centuries:

“For the most part, they arose in the 2nd century, flourished during the third and were suppressed in the 4th and 5th by the prevalence of more fashionable controversies”.

I like his 'fashionable controversies"!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Histor ... man_Empire

Volume I was never published, it was introduced in quartos. The first two were well received and widely praised. The last quarto in Volume I, especially Chapters XV and XVI, were highly controversial, and Gibbon was attacked as a "paganist".

Gibbon attacked Christian martyrdom as a myth by deconstructing official Church history that had been perpetuated for centuries. Because the Roman Catholic Church had a virtual monopoly on its own history, its own Latin interpretations were considered sacrosanct, and as a result the Church's writings had rarely been questioned before. For Gibbon, however, the Church writings were secondary sources, and he shunned them in favour of primary sources contemporary to the period he was chronicling. This is why Gibbon is referred to as the "first modern historian". …..

According to Gibbon, Romans were far more tolerant of Christians than Christians were of one another, especially once Christianity gained the upper hand. Christians inflicted far greater casualties on other Christians than were ever inflicted by the Roman Empire. Gibbon extrapolated that the number of Christians executed by other Christian factions far exceeded all the Christian martyrs who died during the three centuries of Christianity under Roman rule.

This was in stark contrast to orthodox Church history, which insisted that Christianity won the hearts and minds of people largely because of the inspirational example set by its martyrs. Gibbon demonstrated that the early Church's custom of bestowing the title of martyr on all confessors of faith grossly inflated the actual numbers.

Gibbon compares how insubstantial that number was, by comparing it to more modern terms....

No problem. I have begun looking into gnosticism starting of course with wiki and branching out. A few initial impressions; it is not particularly early, that is to say, it grew up more or less concurrently with christianity; and the basic principals of duality and the idea of the malevalent creator is not the least bit similar to christianity. But I've just scratched the surface so far.

I can't prove that the Gnostic Christians existed before the Literalist Christians any more than you can prove that Jesus was a real historical figure. Both of us are stuck, in terms of attestation, in the mid-2nd century and your main man is Justin Martyr.

But even JM nowhere mentions the four gospels. And he admits in his Dialogue with Trypho that he only set up his own school after being refused entry to the other Pythagorean and Platonic schools in Rome.

He said in his First Apology:

"on some points we teach the same things as the poets and philosophers whom you honour, and on other points are fuller and more divine than our teachings...."

In terms of attestated dates again. there is plenty of evidence for the Gnostics (such as Valentinus, Basildes, Appelles and Carpocretes) being in Egypt in the second century. But there is no sign of the Literalists until the end of the third century, in the form of Bishop Demetrius.

In Antioch, the Gnostics Saturniuis, Cerdo and Menander had established schools at the beginning of the second century.... but again, no sign of the Literalists.

Anyway, I'll let you absorb this lot before going on....

[Minimalist]

Back to Syro-Palestinian Archaeology....even if it is in Egypt.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? ... 2FShowFull

It is not well known that there were two Jewish temples in ancient Egypt. They do not form part of our traditional history, which concentrates on the going down into Egypt and the coming out of it, as based on the Torah accounts, for which there is little or no contemporary corroboration. But the two temples, though well attested by contemporary sources, have received little attention from our tradition.

[Ishtar]

Back to Syro-Palestinian Archaeology....even if it is in Egypt.

That's OK Min. Egypt is relevant to the Gnostic discussion.

That is why Jesus is in Egypt at the beginning of his story, after his birth.

Jewish Gnostics, and Christians after them, understood the story of Exodus to also be an initation allegory with the usual double initiation of first water (crossing of the Reed Sea) and then fire (the burning bush).

Paul wrote:

"Our ancestors passed through the Red Sea and so received baptism into the fellowship of Moses."

Between the two initiations, the Children of Israel wander in the wilderness for 40 years.

Between Jesus's two initiations of water (baptism in the river Jordan) and fire (the Cross of Light) Jesus spends 40 days in the wilderness.

Both Jesus and the CoI are on a journey to the Promised Land/Resurrection of the soul.

After Moses' death, the Jesus of Exodus is Joshua (which is also a variant of the name of Jesus). After Joshua and the CoI cross the river Jordan, he selects 12 men to represent the 12 tribes of Israel.

In the New Testament, after his baptism in the river Jordan, Jesus selects his 12 disciples.

But anyway, it sounds as if the Jewish temples are real enough!

An interestng article, Min.

[Minimalist]

Does kind of pour cold water on the idea that the "only" reason to build a temple was to "house" the Ark of the Covenant, doesn't it?


As for the rest of it....one fictional story derived from another.

[Ishtar]

As for the rest of it....one fictional story derived from another.

My point exactly.