Good mornin’ FM
Well, what fun to read your musings over my cornflakes. Most entertaining. And as you say, we have a silent audience that is probably deriving much amusement over all of this too. I must say, I agree with them. I also find it hilarious to watch you floundering around in the subject of mythology (of which you know next to nothing) trying to prove something even your own Church fathers couldn’ t prove back in the earliest centuries CE, and no-one has ever been able to prove since.
Like me, this audience must also have been wondering why yesterday, you were refuting points about Horus that no-one had raised here. Why you were erecting your own straw men and then proceeding to set light to them. It was a great show with lots of pink smoke, bells and lights - a bit like a Catholic mass actually. It was quite an act! But perhaps what they don’t realise is that you copy and paste direct from the works of Christian apologists whose job is to debunk anything and everything that appears as an attack on Christianity. And perhaps knowing that you don’t have the ability or the expertise to apply any kind of critical thinking or intellectual rigour to their propaganda, you didn’t even bother to check whether their refutations answered any of my points. You just copied it straight over.
In addition, your concentration on Acharya S (or should I say, your Christian apologists’ concentration on Acharya S) as the main source of this little local difficulty for you is another straw man, and extremely short sighted. On matters do with mythology, Acharya S in not infallible and I have my own issues with her on the virginity of Krishna’s mother, which I am currently discussing with her.
What I am interested in is her theory of astrotheism, which is placed on top of the already established and known beliefs about the mythology of Jesus being an allegorical myth similar to others, that have existed for 2,000 years.
See, FM, anyone who knows anything about mythology knows that Acharya S is the just one of the most recent in a long line of commentators, stretching back to the 1st century AD, who noticed the similarities between the Jesus story and other mythology across Egypt and Greece.
As I said, even your own Church fathers, like Justin Martyr and Origen, couldn’t disprove it and were forced, in the end, to try to explain it by saying that the Devil had planted all these stories to test the faith of true believers. But as Marcion the 2nd century Christian theologian said:
“When Jesus descended into Hell, the sinners listened to his words and were all saved. But the saints, believing as usual that they were being put to the test, rejected his words and were all damned.”
I’ve already mentioned Justin Martyr around 150 AD, but I’ll quote him again here:
“When we say that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was produced without sexual union, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into Heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those who you esteem Sons of Jupiter.
"He was born of a virgin; accept this in common with what you believe of Perseus." [a version of Mthras].
After Justin’s death, his student Tatian abandoned his master’s teachings on a historical Jesus as he realised the similarities between the myths. He urged his pagan readers to:
“Compare your own stories with our narratives. Take a look at your own records and accept us merely on the grounds that we too tell stories.”
Origen, a Church father of the 2nd century, also admitted that the outer Christian religion hides an inner mystery teaching in common with other philosophical schools. This is from his paper Contra Celsus:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... en161.html
“But that there should be certain doctrines not made known to the multitude, which are (revealed) after the exoteric ones have been taught, is not a peculiarity of Christianity alone, but also of philosophic systems, in which certain truths are exoteric and others esoteric. Some of the hearers of Pythagoras were content with his ipse dixit; while others were taught in secret those doctrines which were not deemed fit to be communicated to profane and insufficiently prepared ears. Moreover, all the mysteries that are celebrated everywhere throughout Greece and barbarous countries, although held in secret, have no discredit thrown upon them, so that it is in vain that he endeavours to calumniate the secret doctrines of Christianity, seeing he does not correctly understand its nature.”
He goes on to address this same question, put by Celsus the Greek philosopher, about the lack of originality of the Christ story:
“It seems, then, to be not from a love of truth, but from a spirit of hatred, that Celsus makes these statements, his object being to asperse the origin of Christianity, which is connected with Judaism. Nay, he styles the Galactophagi of Homer, and the Druids of the Gauls, and the Getae, most learned and ancient tribes, on account of the resemblance between their traditions and those of the Jews.”
Other second century Christians actually co-opted this mythology to their cause. Athenagoras of Athens, Theophilus of Antioch and Minucius Felix of Africa promoted a philosophical Christianity based around the Greek mythical figures of the Logos and Sophia.
Despite persecution of this kind of Christianity (known as Gnosticism) in the fourth century, Christian teachers such as Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyasa, Gregory of Nazianzum, Evagrius of Pontus and Diodochus of Photice continued to teach the oral tradition of ‘private secret teachings’ to those initiated into the inner mysteries of Christianity.
Not long after that, some mystical writings attributed to Dionysius, a co-worker of Paul, were smuggled back into mainstream Christianity. Today, some say these works are the work of a sixth century monk who was a student of the Pagan Gnostic Proclus, the last master of the Platonic Academy which the Christian emperor Justinian forcibly closed down in 529. Others say he was, in fact, a first century writer and there is certainly evidence connecting Paul with Gnosticism. Nevertheless, Dionysius says:
“Don’t suppose the outward form of these contrived symbols exists for its own sake. It is protective clothing which prevents the common multitude from understanding the Ineffable and Invisible.....”
So FM, I could go on, quote after quote from early Christians to support what your apologists are attacking Acharya S over. But I think I’ve exhausted our readers enough who must be splitting their sides by now!
Of course, FM, you and your apologists may be able to do what Justin Martyr and Origen and countless others since have so miserably failed in, and prove that Jesus was a historical figure and the events of his life, as recorded in the Bible, have absolutely no connection to any other mythological stories of the time. And of course, we will all be vastly amused watching you try!
In the meantime, I would be extremely grateful if you would respond in the one area in which I know
do you have some expertise, and which is all I've really required of all along. You keep saying that the astrotheists astronomically based theories are 'bollox', but you don't make the case for why, despite me asking over and over.
I think if you don't make the case for that by the end of today, I will move on to the next part of this theory, as you've held up me up with your baseless posturings and refutations of non points long enough.
I’ll answer your second post later.
