Flann 5 wrote:Robert Tulip wrote:Even Jesus the Nazarene is almost certainly an ideal myth, an invented fictional character designed as avatar of the Age of Pisces, as argued especially by Frank Zindler and DM Murdock. This ideal makes complete sense of the pre-existent Logos, given that astronomers could see the movement of the spring point towards Pisces for hundreds and probably even thousands of years before Christ.
Here Robert claims that this thesis of D.M.Murdock's a.k.a. Acharya S.makes a lot of sense and is what he himself thinks is the true explanation in astrological terms of the gospels. However this is a hopelessly worthless thesis by Murdock and here Mike Licona demonstrates why.
http://www.risenjesus.com/a-refutation- ... conspiracy
I am going to go into some detail in response to this bad comment from Flann because I am astounded at his brazen impudence in circulating such ignorant falsity, and because rebutting this false fundamentalist claim is central to developing a rigorous analysis of the real relation between Christianity and Gnosticism.
Licona’s argument from his Risen Jesus Ministry webpage cited here by Flann suggests that the ancients had no knowledge of the boundaries between the constellations. This is wrong. In fact Licona’s claim is laughably stupid Christian propaganda, and it is simply amazing that anyone claiming to be sensible could fall for such a dumb argument. But these people know their intended audience has no interest in facts.
Here is Licona’s astoundingly offensive and false central comment quoting Noel Swerdlow, provided for our confusion by Flann: “the borders between … constellations are a completely modern convention of the International Astronomical Union for the purpose of mapping . . . what this woman is claiming is so wacky that it is hardly worth answering.”
This overtly bigoted remark from Risen Jesus Ministries illustrates the depth of error suffered by those who put supernatural faith before the evidence of science and sense. Licona is a fundamentalist Christ believer, relying on the Bible as history and entering respectful dialogue with people who maintain an anti-scientific method of Biblical studies. His greatest claim to scientific fame arose from getting sacked for questioning the zombie saints in Jerusalem story from Matthew 27:52-3. So we can hardly expect Licona to deliver a scientific analysis of ancient astronomy. His views on this matter are in fact worthless.
The constellations of the zodiac were formulated long before the time of Christ. Babylonian records indicate study of the zodiac for a thousand years before Christ, and of course the pyramids of Egypt, with their astral focus, are vastly older still. So this assertion that the ancients were too stupid to identify boundaries between the constellations is amazingly brazen in its ignorance and disrespect.
In analysing ancient astronomy, we have to understand the centrality of very old traditions in explaining time and space. Stone Age cultures routinely used the moon to mark months and weeks. The idea implicit in Flann’s argument that early humans did not notice the patterns formed by the stars behind the moon is false. In fact these patterns would have been known for far longer than we have written records, given that the human brain has not measurably evolved for a hundred thousand years. There is no reason to suggest paleolithic cultures would not have had involved stories about the stars. But the fall from grace into Christian corruption involved systematic amnesia about all this heritage of ancient wisdom, an amnesia well reflected in Licona's arrogant ignorance.
The twelve lunar months of the solar year have been stable for the four billion years of life on earth. Licona’s argument that humans only noticed a central feature of this temporal structure, the boundaries between constellations, when it was formulated by modern astronomers in their formal maps, is a zany piece of motivated reasoning, to put it extremely politely.
In fact, contrary to Licona, Swerdlow and Flann, the constellation of Pisces, the one at issue here, has an extremely clear and precise boundary formed by stars, a boundary that was perfectly visible to ancient seers, and is visible tonight around the planet since Pisces is now prominent in the evening sky. You can go and have a look for yourself with a star atlas.
Pisces is formed by two lines of stars, one of which is perpendicular to the path of the sun. Ancient maps show that one side of this line of stars was regarded as in Aries, and the other side was regarded as in Pisces. It is a simple and complete refutation of Flann’s cited claim that the ancients had no borders between star groups. For example Flamsteed’s star atlas, based on ancient sources, clearly shows the traditional depiction of Aries’ hoof reaching out to the point where the equinox entered Pisces at the time of Christ. Here is the picture, with the line of Pisces below the ram’s hoof.
http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/aries.htm A similar point of connection between Aries and Pisces is visible in ancient maps as well, such as the Dendera Zodiac.
The March equinox point, marked by the celestial equator, precessed across this line of stars into Pisces in 21 AD, during the rule of Pilate. This point moves very slowly, one degree of arc per human lifetime. Ancient methods were easily accurate enough to place this event to within a decade, ie during the purported life of Christ. The key point, and the reason it is anathematised by fundamentalists, is that this observation provides a scientific basis for the construction of the Christ story.
The shift of the spring equinox point from its previous location in Aries into the constellation of Pisces at the time of Christ has high explanatory value as a parsimonious and elegant scientific explanation of the emergence and evolution of the Christ Myth. This was the precise moment, in terms of the hermetic as above so below cosmology of the Gnostic seers, when the stars and the seasons were in tune, providing a simple natural explanation for the story that God became incarnate on earth at that time in the person of Jesus Christ.
This observed movement of the beginning of the natural year in spring from the first sign to the last sign provides a compelling symbolic explanation for why the Bible describes Jesus Christ as last and first, alpha and omega, beginning and end, God incarnate, word made flesh, pre-existent Logos, and why the Bible says this event was predicted for centuries beforehand.
The culture war regarding this stellar material is well reflected in Licona’s dismissive stupidity and ignorance regarding astronomy, and Flann’s unquestioning citation of this false material. Like Bart Erhman, Christian apologists think that their patronising rejection of the astrotheological scientific explanation of the Christ Myth is a simple matter. The Christian literalists fail to see that astrotheology is a new scientific paradigm that is emerging to render their own views obsolete, enabling a new Christian reformation to make faith compatible with reason and providing the basis for religion to become compatible with science.
The beauty of the astral reading of the Bible is in its ability to provide a coherent natural explanation of all the evidence from ancient times, without resort to invalid invocation of supernatural intervention. The scientific goal is to explain how all the stories arose in an entirely plausible and logical way, with a sensible natural meaning underlying the surface fantasy.
A key theme here is that this astral reading is able to maintain respect and reverence for the Christian story, in its imaginative explanation of human culture. An astral reading shows how the changing world of historical appearance can be interpreted against the unchanging orderly structure observed in the stars of the night sky.
Observation of the stars provides the point of connection between what Plato called the same and the different, eternity and time, the cosmos and history. This point of connection between stability and change is in fact located in the biggest observable movement of the structure of the universe available to ancient seers, the precession of the equinox.
This astronomical observation provides a direct physical explanation for Christian metaphysics, an explanation that was lost due to cultural politics of Christendom. The Christian texts themselves indicate that observation of the physical heavens will in time come to be understood as the true basis of their ideas.