Is the Jesus story an astrological allegory?

[kbs2244]

“So according to this theory,
the age of Taurus the bull would have been 4300 – 2150 BC. “

On other threads we have talked about all kinds of things, including comet hits, happening at the 2000 BC time frame.

Do comet impacts count as Astrological.?
Was it announcing the end of one world and the start of another?

[Digit]

I've not followed this too closely Ish but your post says to me that all these varied people must have recognised the same zodiac and divided time into the same little blocks. How? Why?

[Minimalist]

When!!!

[Ishtar]

When!!!

Well, I think some of them can be dated, as I said.

There's the Harappan pottery with bulls on (circa 3,000 BC)
The Sumerian stories are on cuneiform tablets that are dated to around the same time.

But I think we could also approach the problem from the other way round.

If we can prove that this religious symbology did reflect the age - and lots of experts think that it does - then how about dating, say, Osiris who is depicted as a bull to pre 2150 BC? I don't mean the actual depiction of him. I mean the story of him to that date.

Or is that completely out of order?

[Ishtar]

How? Why?

I don't know why. I think we'd have to understand astrology to know why - and I mean properly, not how it's practised nowadays with rubbish horoscopes etc.

I have a feeling we would know a heck of a lot more if they hadn't burnt down the Library at Alexandria.

Over the past 2,000 years, there's been systematic destruction of all this literature and even some times, those who propogated it. We only have shreds that we're trying to piece together.

[Ishtar]

“So according to this theory,
the age of Taurus the bull would have been 4300 – 2150 BC. “

On other threads we have talked about all kinds of things, including comet hits, happening at the 2000 BC time frame.

Do comet impacts count as Astrological.?
Was it announcing the end of one world and the start of another?

I don't think so, KB. I think that would be astronomical, which is not the same as astrological.

I may be wrong, but astrology seems to be focused mainly on fixed phenonema, or at least fixed in a regular orbit.

[Minimalist]

When I say "when" what I mean is, when was the zodiac categorized as such? Our evidence suggests that it was the Babylonians, sometime after 1,000 BC who came up with the concept but if that is true then it does not provide an answer as to why people in Greece, Crete and Egypt were worshipping bulls 1500 years earlier.

[Ishtar]

Well, we know from the Rig-veda that the Indians knew all about astrology, including the poe, then. As you may remember, in our AIT debate we dated the Rig-veda to around 3,000 BC.

It's thought that the Babylonians based their astrology on that of the Sumerians, so that gets us back to around the same time. But there has been some doubt about whether they knew about the precession of the equinoxes. If they didn't, they would know about the 12 signs, but not that the ages changes every 2150 years.

However, there is some new thinking on that:

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.


Astronomer Dr Krupp agrees:

"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 antiquity 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."

[Digit]

You don't need much in the way of instrumention to measure precession, just a lot of time, which is why I suggested earlier that some form of writing would have been useful, as precession takes a long time to show any obvious movement.

[Forum Monk]

But I think we’ve established that the poe was known about at least in some areas of the world close to Israel, if not to the Hebrews themselves in and around 2-3,000 BC.

To coin a phrase, "not so fast slippery" girl.

Two points:
1. Citing a few controversial authors does not establish proof. These people base their conclusions on ratios, angles, numbers and other types of numerical gymnastics which is often laughable.

2. You have not shown that the constellations of the zodiac we know today existed 2-3000 B.C. in fact they did not in Egypt, Mesopotamia, nor India and much less greece. How can there be an age of "something" if "something" was not recognized as a constellation?

Digit once again has hit the nail on the head. The recognition of precession takes a very long time with carefully documented records maintained over many generations. Not so simple. Also recognition does not constitute understanding. Hipparchus was the first to explain it (or so it seems) but I will grant you, he may not have been the first to recognize something going on. So while I do not rule the possibility that it was seen, and perhaps (a big perhaps) measured, there remains a lack of certainty. The mere fact that a culture aligned a temple to the stars in my opinion, means they did not understand that inside of 100 years that temple would no longer be aligned due to precession. This is one important reason why I believe they did not know it.

[Beagle]

How would a culture demonstrate a knowledge of poe? That is, if they didn't state it in writing.

[Digit]

The mere fact that a culture aligned a temple to the stars in my opinion, means they did not understand that inside of 100 years that temple would no longer be aligned due to precession

Which should mean that the pyramids of Giza should all have different alignments, or must have been built in a short time period, or the alignments are not for stellar puposes.

[Beagle]

The mere fact that a culture aligned a temple to the stars in my opinion, means they did not understand that inside of 100 years that temple would no longer be aligned due to precession

Which should mean that the pyramids of Giza should all have different alignments, or must have been built in a short time period, or the alignments are not for stellar puposes.

They are aligned to the Cardinal points Dig, not the stars.

[Digit]

They are aligned to the Cardinal points Dig, not the stars.

I was thinking of the holes that are supposed to be aligned on Orion Beag. Also of course I would have to ask what were their cardinal points, as far as I know the Egyptians lacked compasses so must have used stellar alignments for North etc.

[Minimalist]

If the Greeks, Cretans and Egyptians, etc. did notsee the constellation of Taurus as a bull then the whole theory goes out the window. It seems unlikely that such a symbol could have arisen in disparate cultures in the same general area without SOME common point of reference but what is lacking is actual written evidence.

"Logic" is one thing. We have all logically deduced that ancient man made it to America and Australia by boat...but we don't have any actual evidence of such boats.