Philo's guide to decoding the Hebrew Bible

[Ishtar]

But it doesn't matter for the purposes of this discussion whether what they believed is true or not. The fact is, they believed it and these beliefs led to a religion called Christianity.

[Ishtar]

I’ve broken down the Mystery initiates path that consists of two initiations (water and fire) to show in a table how the Exodus and the Jesus story match in that regard.



In 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, Paul says: “Our ancestors crossed over the Red Sea and so received baptism into the fellowship of Moses.”

Justin Martyr, in his First Apology, Chapter 60, entitled Plato’s Doctrine of the Cross, claims that Plato borrowed his (Gnostic) idea of the Son of God crucified in the Cosmos (Timaeus 34) from the above Moses story of the serpent on a cross.

In the OT, Joshua (Jesus ben Nun) takes over after the death of Moses, and carries on leading the Children of Israel to the Promised Land, and again we can see similar parallels.



Perhaps I should add for those still scratching the heads (Min ) that although the story of Exodus appears ostensibly to be an actual journey across a real geographic landscape, and the story of Jesus is about the journey of the life of the Christ, according to the mystery teachings, they are both actually about the initiates's journey across the inner landscape of consciousness, leading to soul growth, christ consciousness and spiritual enlightenment.

The mystery teachers taught that through this journey or path, the initiates achieved the promised eternal life because they learned to no longer identify with their body, but with their soul. So when their body dies, they didn't ...Thus the story of Jesus is the story of the inner journey of every Tom, Dick and Harry Gnostic initiate, and not just a special, unique, one-off Son of God.

[seeker]

I agree that the gnostic schools derived from Zoroastrianism

I would tend to the view that much of the OT is derived from Zoroastrianism/Sumerian and some Canaanite stories thrown in. Yahweh after all was originally a Canaanite god, and Daniel is a Canaanite story. These influences obviously fed through into the NT - but I have come to the view that the NT mysticism was primarily Greek/Egyptian or Mediterranean, for instance, the central motif of the dying and resurrecting godman doesn't exist in Zoroastrianism....does it? (Please correct me if I'm wrong, Seeker)

The dying/resurrected godman is not a central fixture of Zoroastrianism but I think it is common to all religion in one aspect. Dying/resurrected gods came in two flavors, sun and agricultural. Sun Gods were a fixture in every culture simply because of the reliance on cultivation and weather and were usually a dominant aspect of every pantheon.

Zorastrianism is trickier because of the obscurity of the identity of Ahura Mazda. I think the most likely explanation is that Ahura Mazda was Varuna, whom the rig-veda identified as the chief of gods or a of Varuna and Mithra. In either case Mithra stands in that religion as the law-giver and judge of souls, a station the Greeks associated with Apollo.

I think this is a case of the Greeks looking for a particular type of god to fit a religious idea, the dying/resurrected godman, and when they found something that seemed to fit they just added what was missing so Mithra came to be a sun god.

The mysticism though was, I think, still primarily that whole Persian-Median mess we discussed elsewhere (with a healthy dose of misunderstood or reinterpreted Indian influence). Most of the Gnostic notions of duality, demiurge etc come right out of the Avesta but there is little doubt that the theology was evolving and picking up influences as it went.

Gnostics weren't all that concerned with the name of the savior. Many of them were members of several different mysteries. Exclusivity was really more of a Christian invention. For Gnostics the various saviors weren't really all that different from each other, it was the spiritual journey that was important.

Couldn't agree more.

That's one of the biggest hindrances to people understanding the period, they tend to think in modern terms. We're back to the little boxes with a notion that Gnostic sects acted the way Christian sects do.

[Ishtar]

Actually, later on after writing that, I did come across a reference to a Persian dying and resurrecting godman and goddess set up: The Magna Mater and Mithras. What do you think?

Other dying and resurrecting godmen and goddesses in the region include:

Egypt - Isis and Osiris (later Min)
India - Sarama and Indra (later Parvati and Shiva)
Greece - Persephone and Dionysus
Syria - Aphrodite and Adonis
Asia Minor - Cybele and Attis
Mesopotamia - Ishtar and Marduk (yikes! )
Sumeria - Inanna and Tammuz
Canaan - Asherah and Baal
Judaea - Yahweh and Sophia (hehehehe!)

So when the Literalists downplayed the role of Mary Magdelene, you can see how Jesus would look different to all of these. But that was just part of their cunning plan.....

[seeker]

What I always thought most clever about the NT is its use of OT themes to create what seems to be a continuation of the Jewish theology into a completely different religion. It always seemed to me that the two primary books of thiology in the region for Gnostics had to be the Avesta and the Bible. The Avesta couldn't be used because of the Greek antipathy for all things Persian but the Bible seemed unrelated and contained a good deal of Gnostic doctrine.

Basically, from a Gnostic point of view the NT was just the missing piece of the bible, the completion of a fully Gnostic doctrine. Then the literalists moved in and obscured it.

[Ishtar]

That's one of the biggest hindrances to people understanding the period, they tend to think in modern terms. We're back to the little boxes with a notion that Gnostic sects acted the way Christian sects do.

Yes, they tend to think that the Gnostics believed in real archons and demiurges and such like in the same way that they believe in a real Jesus that had actually once lived.

Generally speaking as a race, and through under-use, we have lost much of our ability to read and understand metaphor, which was the language of religion in those days. I blame the Literalists for that too!

[seeker]

Actually, later on after writing that, I did come across a reference to a Persian dying and resurrecting godman and goddess set up: The Magna Mater and Mithras. What do you think?

Other dying and resurrecting godmen and goddesses in the region include:

Egypt - Isis and Osiris (later Min)
India - Sarama and Indra (later Parvati and Shiva)
Greece - Persephone and Dionysus
Syria - Aphrodite and Adonis
Asia Minor - Cybele and Attis
Mesopotamia - Ishtar and Marduk (yikes! )
Sumeria - Inanna and Tammuz
Canaan - Asherah and Baal
Judaea - Yahweh and Sophia (hehehehe!)

So when the Literalists downplayed the role of Mary Magdelene, you can see how Jesus would look different to all of these. But that was just part of their cunning plan.....

Ever seen this before? I think the ancients drew the same parallels between various god stories and started grafting them onto gods. We get into a sort of chicken or egg scenario, did all these gods have the same attributes or did the scholars of the time recognize the basis of these gods and assign them these attributes?

[Ishtar]

Ever seen this before?

Yes, we did a thread on it, Is the Jesus Story an Astrological Allegory?
http://archaeologica.boardbot.com/viewtopic.php?t=1451

I think the ancients drew the same parallels between various god stories and started grafting them onto gods. We get into a sort of chicken or egg scenario, did all these gods have the same attributes or did the scholars of the time recognize the basis of these gods and assign them these attributes?

The reasons go back to shamanism, in my experience. The spirits or devas of the shaman were renamed gods by the Greeks. For instance, the Vedic storm spirit or deva was personified as Indra. Shamans find when working with spirits (that are in essence pure energy) that they take on forms of one kind or another in order for there to be an interface between them and the shaman, and so they are personified in the forms of various archetypes and sometimes aspects of nature.

[Minimalist]

The fact is, they believed it and these beliefs led to a religion called Christianity.

Did it?

Frankly, there seems to be a hell of a divide between early, or gnostic, christianity and what emerged from Nicaea. What was concocted by the power brokers seems to have been a control mechanism with parts taken from column "a", "b" and "c."

[Ishtar]

The fact is, they believed it and these beliefs led to a religion called Christianity.

Did it?

Frankly, there seems to be a hell of a divide between early, or gnostic, christianity and what emerged from Nicaea. What was concocted by the power brokers seems to have been a control mechanism with parts taken from column "a", "b" and "c."

Well, that is the point I've been trying to make for the past couple of weeks!

Except the Literalists left out column a!

[Minimalist]

One has to think that Constantine would have loved a guy who said:

"Render unto Caesar......" In fact, Constantine would have probably insisted on him saying it whether he said it or not.

[seeker]

I think the really interesting thing that is going on here is that all of these ideas were constantly evolving because they had never, up until this period, been codified. The act of writing down forced choices to be made about how to preserve mysteries, what to reveal, what was universal etc. It also forced political realities to become a consideration, Constantine wasn't about to accept a religion that advocated rebellion against his authority.

Theology was going from a set of loose concepts to rigid doctrines that could be enforced, essentially becoming an arm of the state

[Minimalist]

essentially becoming an arm of the state

Precisely. Xtianity is a wonderful religion for rulers. The "divine right" of kings could only have been invented by a king.

[seeker]

Its the ultimate evolution of religion. Cyrus used religion as a tool for conquest. Darius II used it to placate. The Maccabees used it to gain political favor. Constantine used it to gain political power. Finally the Church used it to control governments

[seeker]

The reasons go back to shamanism, in my experience.

I've been thinking about this (I readily admit to having no life).

I do think that shamanism underlies religion. Certainly the concept of communing with spirits, souls, God etc are shamanic (is that a word?) as is the concept of using ritual to influence the course of action the Gods would take. You could probably argue that the entire concept of a priesthood arises from the notion that certain people can intercede with spirits.

The question for me is whether theology evolved past shamanism or still relies on it. Is a priest still merely the mediator between the material and spirit worlds or does the priests communal role and the tradition of that role separate them from shamanism? I'm pretty sure that a Catholic priest would argue (as I believe Joseph Campbell did) that there is a distinction but when you peel off the theological crust of Christian lore it is just another set of mystical trappings.

Even if there is something I've overlooked there is a certain poetry in thinking that after millenia of theological and philosophical discourse we still placate ourselves by watching a magic man burn a goat over a sacred fire while waving a magic stick, grunting a magic grunt and praying that the god of the sky will masturbate on our crops.