If we reject the traditional religious doctrine of the meaning of life, that we exist to give glory to God, we are left with the problem of the subjectivity of values,

I don't see the subjectivity of values as a problem any more than our limited 5 senses is a problem. Meaning is the neural glue that holds together our worldviews. It's the association of concepts, hopefully representative of something objective, but not necessarily so. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that meaning could be objective. How could it be?

They have also writings of men of old, who were the founders of their sect and had left behind many memorials of the type of treatment employed in allegory, and taking these as a sort of archetype they imitate the method of this principle of interpretation...

What time period was this? Did the Therapeuts have the opportunity to alter biblical text?

Not alter in as much as read what is there in the OT allegorically because that's how they wrote and understood. And that's largely how much of the OT was written in first place giving them good reason to approach scripture that way. So it's more the case of some Jews migrating to Alexandria a few centuries before the common era and establishing a monastic community which Hellenized with the local Greek and Egyptian culture. I'm just posting tid bits from Philo about this sect that he thought so highly of.

In the next section The Proto-Christians, Eusebius comes into play in terms of how he regarded these Therapeuts which Philo wrote of in the early first century before Christianity is supposed to have been out, as early Christians. More and more pieces of the puzzle continue to come together as the book moves on...

CiE p.449

"One Catholic writer who insisted upon the connection between Philo's Therapeuts and the Christians was Eusebius during the fourth century. In The History of the Church(2.17), in speaking of "Philo's account of the Egyptian ascetics," Eusebius remarks:

Whether he invented this designation [Therapeutae] and applied it to them, fitting a suitable name to their mode of life, or whether they were actually called this from the very start, because the title Christian was not yet in general use, need not be discussed here.

As demonstrated previously, Philo did not invent the designation of "therapeutae," as it was connected to religious associations or collegia centuries prior to the common era.
Eusebius goes on to compare Philo's description of the Therapeuts with Christian monastic life, as found especially in the Acts of the Apostles. Although Eusebius asserts that the Therapeuts were the "orginal Christian community converted by St. Mark," the case could be be made that this rare moment of candor from an early Church father will prove deleterious to the implausible claim of Christianity's supernatural genesis, since Philo's account preceeded the creation of the faith.
...In edition, neither Clement of Alexandria nor Church father Origen, an Egyptian who taught at the Alexandrian school make any mention of this story connecting Mark to the Therapeuts or of his presence in their city at any point, which they surely would have done to increase their own credibility as spokesman for a "sanctioned" church. The reason Eusebius wanted Mark to be in Alexandria, of course, was to explain why there were "Christians" there at so early a time. The reality, however, may be that the Therapeuts morphed into Christians because it was they who essentially created much of Christianity, with no "historical Jesus" in fact founding the faith in Judea.
In his commentary, Eusebius springs another surprise on us with his assessment that the Therapeuts' "allegorical writings" represented the basis of the canonical gospels! After quoting Philo's discussion of the Therapeuts' "short works by early writers, the founders of their sect, who left many specimens of the allegorical method," Eusebius (2.17) remarks:

It seems like that Philo wrote this after listening to their exposition of the Holy Scriptures, and it is very probable that what he calls short works by their early writers were the gospels, the apostolic writings, and in all probability passages interpreting the old prophets, such as are contained in the Epistle to the Hebrews and several others of Paul's epistles

A more blatant identification of the Egypto-Jewish origins of Christianity we could not hope to find. Yet, scholars who hold onto the received Christian history have assiduously ignored or dismissed this "smoking gun."
...As can be seen, Eusebius declared the Therapeuts to be Christians, their writings to be the basis of the New Testament texts, and their customs to be the same as those of the Christians. The question remains, was the Church historian just grasping at straws in order to find an early path for the Alexandrian Christianity, or did he know more, unwittingly admitting, perhaps, that this Therapeutan network, by whatever name, was the real source of the Christian religion?
...Epiphanius thus was quite sure Philo was describing Christians - "Christians," in fact, who lived at Alexandria before Christianity was created in Judea! ...Could it be that Paul's own Syro-Gnostic Christ was syncretized with the Alexandrian-Philonic Logos at Corinth and then spread by Apollos throughout the Therapeutan collegia network? If the theory about Apollos is correct, then Therapeutae branches would be the same as the Christian churches in Paul's letters. Since we know that there existed mystery schools and religious brotherhoods in these very cities addressed in the Pauline epistles, it would not be surprising to find them both representative of the Therapeuts and engaged in the creation of Christianity...."

I'll continue with this later.

D.M. Murdock wrote:Thank you for your thoughtful replies. Robert, you make some very good and, yes, profound points throughout. As concerns the philosophical implications of my work, as expressed in CIE, for one, I can state my own motivations in doing this difficult and controversial research, as well as my hopes for the future. Like the climate scientists you mention, I too have hit a bewildering brick wall of ignorance and indifference, despite the fact that the information I'm sharing is so very fascinating.

In my opinion, the implications of this knowledge constitute greater wisdom and less enmity for other cultures - an increasingly important development, as all over the world we begin to rub elbows in closer quarters. What the research eventually demonstrates is that there are continuities within religious ideation that date back to extremely early times and that reflect much about the human psyche in general. These continuities and similarities between religions and cults over the past several thousand years are of great interest to me and have been for many years.

The "continuities within religious ideation" are how the formation of ideas evolves within culture, adapting to new circumstances based on existing precedents. "Ideation" is itself a scientific term, rejecting the traditional claim that religious concepts are delivered from god by divine revelation, and recognizing instead that the hold that ideas gain within a specific culture is a function of how well they have been constructed to serve practical purposes. A key to traditional religious ideation is how a priesthood always justifies its cosmology as providing a unifying narrative for a society, in such a way as to gain respect from the populace for the ability of the seers to see visions that give meaning and common identity.

The contemporary global situation requires ideation that respects disparate sources, ranging from modern science to ancient mythology, in order to dissolve the artificial barriers of emnity that still keep cultures apart. This agenda of synthesis was part of the ancient appeal of Christianity, with Paul's doctrine in Galatians 3:28 that 'there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave or free, for all are one in Jesus Christ." Unfortunately, it seems this was read as saying there is only Jew and Greek, while other cultural sources, such as ancient Egypt, were suppressed. Bringing these hidden sources into the cultural mix, together with other suppressed mythemes from non-Western societies, is a task that the USA began with its motto 'out of many, one', but which is only very partially achieved to date.

In some instances, the similarities develop independently, based on observations of human psychology and natural phenomena. In other cases, there is clearly a continuum from earlier mythological and religious strata. Hence, religious origins are multifold, arising independently and derivatively from earlier concepts. I have little doubt that very basic concepts have been passed along with our shared genetic heritage, which appears to have been determined scientifically through DNA studies to have emanated out of Africa, some 50,000 to 140,000 years ago. Again, my ultimate interest is to uncover this "lost religion," so to speak, which eventually resolves itself largely into nature worship, the reason we find it globally.

'Nature worship' can seem an oxymoron for those whose spiritual vision has been formed by supernatural worship. For many believers, worship requires postulation of transcendental entities. On this supernatural model, worship of nature is understood as imagining animist entities in rocks and trees, on the model of how Christianity imagines God the Father as a real personal entity. Yet, looking at ancient Egyptian religion, while there is obviously much supernatural mythology, an alternative reading remains possible, seeing the stories of the gods as allegories for natural forces. If the original worship of nature, somewhat how baboons hold out their palms to the rising sun, is a simple instinctive reverence for nature in itself, and a recognition of primal connection to nature, then all the imaginative narrative that explains reverence by resort to fables of intentional entities hidden within nature is open to the suspicion of being delusory, a constructed explanation built incrementally on top of natural observation.

However, again, there are some very detailed comparisons between religions that seem to have come through more or less direct descent, and I am again interested in tracing those as well. In the meantime, the outcome will hopefully be that increasing numbers of people will become aware of this shared past from remotest times and will become more appreciative of our global heritage vis-a-vis religion and mythology. If we can get beyond religious fanaticism and study the world's cultures dating back into remote antiquity, we can find common ground all over the world, and we need not disparage these past cultures upon which our own is built.

The incremental divisions that have accreted into religious traditions have fossilized into fanaticism. The great value of philosophical deconstruction of these traditions is that their psychological and cultural sources can still be respected while the surface meaning is seen as concealing something deep and vital, albeit often corrupted and degraded by secular motives.

The end result, I hope, is a more mature and less contentious humanity that does not slaughter its own at the drop of a hat - as it turns out, most if not all roads lead to the "Genetic Eve," so to speak, which means we humans are one big family. I do believe much religious ideation points in that direction as well. It was not necessarily my goal to synthesize the world's religions, but I began to notice commonality more than 25 years ago, while studying in Greece. At that time, it was linguistic studies that were leading me in that direction. As we are aware, linguistics and theology often go hand in hand, and the two disciplines provide much indication of how humanity has evolved over the past tens of thousands of years.

The unity of linguistics and theology points to universal synthesis. My favorite example here is how God the Father evolved linguistically from the ancient vedic sky god Dyaus Pita, by way of Zeus Patera in Greece, Jupiter in Rome, and Deus Pater in Christendom. All these western visions of a universal deity have the same linguistic form. Seeing their intrinsic unity is a way towards a more mature understanding of human spirituality.

Considering the global DNA heritage of humanity, there is a vast split in humanity between East and West dating to the eruption of an Indonesian volcano about 70,000 years ago that covered India in ash, separating the exiles from Africa into two groups. This split within the journey of mankind is summarized at http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/steph ... index.html

Moreover, I'm hopeful that, with the knowledge of the real meaning behind the myths - much of it astrotheological - we can redevelop our appreciation for our natural world, so that we can stop destroying it at a distressing pace. The meanings revealed by studying comparative religion and mythology are not only profound but often important and fascinating, as well as empowering beyond cultural boundaries. Instead of a divisive cult supposedly founded by one person or another of a particular ethnicity, with one or more gods of or favoring the same ethnicity over all others, we find a uniting body of knowledge that was crucial in our survival as a species in very difficulty circumstances: To wit, the knowledge of natural cycles, such as the movements and characteristics of the sun, moon, planets, stars, constellations, etc. In understanding this body of knowledge, which we can call "astrotheology," we can comprehend what the ancients - our ancestors - were trying to and frequently did convey, not as a babbling rabble of primitives but as wise and intelligent observers of their natural world.

The alienation of supernatural religion from actual observation of reality is at the source of the widespread modern indifference to the natural basis of life. This natural basis is understood by science in our origins in the evolution of life on earth and the longer path of evolution of matter in the cosmos. My view is that supernaturalism is the "false prophecy" discussed in the Bible as the primary risk of human destruction. Doctrines such as personal immortality, a spatial heaven, supernatural entities, miracles and apocalyptic rapture conflict directly with scientific observation, but are the object of fervent fundamentalist belief. In considering the ethical question of the conflict between good and evil, the discovery that supernatural religion is basically an unnatural mythical illusion suggests that ethical good has to be grounded in natural scientific truth, making transcendental fantasy a form of evil. Grounding theology in observation of the cosmos therefore provides a basis for profound philosophical and ethical transformation of human culture.

As a neat example of our shared heritage and its astrotheological roots, readers may wish to take a look at the Wiki article on "Solar deity." The following image, for instance, displays a nice anthropomorphization by Chinese artists of the sun god, Tai Yang Xing Jun by name, illustrating the development globally of representing such entities as distinct ethnic artifacts, yet based on the same general underlying observations of solar movements and characteristics. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ingJun.jpg

The commonality between Chinese and Western reverence for the sun is unsurprising when the natural source of religious ideation is considered from first principles. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said God makes the sun rise on the evil and the good (Matthew 5:45). The same sun provides light for all humanity. Those who honestly seek to understand what the sun actually is so they and their children may live by its light are good. Those who pretend the sun is something other than it is suffer from delusion, giving rise to all sorts of problems.

Picking up on page 455, Murdock continues:

The solution to these various problems with identifying the Therapeuts and the first Christians in Egypt, as well as their texts as the basis of the canonical gospels and epistles, lies in a "radical" analysis of the data concerning Christian origins along strictly scientific lines, without fervent faith or blind belief in the gospel story preventing us from seeing the facts. What we discover when we look closely at the evidence is that the gospel story represents a largely fictional account begun towards the end of the first century, and reworked and reformatted until the end of the second century, at which point it was solidly written into history and backdated to the beginning of the first century. With these facts in mind, especially that there is no credible scientific evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ at any point, or for the existence of the four canonical gospels as we h ave them before the end of the second century, the pieces of the puzzle begin to fall neatly into place.
One of these pieces would be the allegorizing "short works" of the Therapeuts depicted by Philo around 20 to 30 AD/CE that possibly discussed the coming messiah or a spiritual savior not yet incarnate, Hellenized texts that were later Gnosticized and historicized in several different directions until they eventually ended up codified in the four canonical gospels at the end of the second century. Another, of course, would be the pre-existing Church structure complete with hierarchy and holidays that existed in Egypt and elsewhere, known by the name of "Therapeuts" and other designations.
Viewing this situation scientifically and logically, factoring in all the correspondences between the Egyptian and Christian religions, could we not reasonably conclude that, rather than having been instituted by a supernatural Jewish son of God, a significant part of Christianity constitutes the natural outcome of a Hellenizing and allegorizing Jewish sect living outside of Alexandria, home of the famed library possessing half a million texts from around the known world, including many discussing and mythology?

As I was learning more and more in life, and had gone through Campbell trying to account for the eastern religious themes from Buddhism found in Christianity, I was paying attention to the trade routes and how they ran through the holy land. It seemed reasonable to assume that the people there knew of and understood something of the people from the far east and west passing through the near east. The parallels are there in the mythos between the Buddha and Christ, it was just the question of how they came to be there. Would orthodox Jews in Israel bother with hybridizing their religion with Egyptian and far eastern mythology? It seemed possible.

But then as time went on and I continued thinking about this, I began to see deeper into the problem as I found new bits of information. It was all right there in Alexandria Egypt. The knowledge and data on world religion - east and west - and it's mysticism, the Greek OT from which to pull quotes from when trying to tie a messianic figure back to OT prophecies, accounting for the mistakes made by quote mining the Septuagint instead of the Hebrew bible, even Philo's commentary on the "Son of God" as an arch angel referred to as the "Word" which was not yet incarnate as of the early to mid part of the first century. I began to discover that there's an elaborate back ground behind the emergence of Christianity that few care to pay any mind to. But it's interesting to gather all of the available data and see what sort of evolution was taking place between the first and second centuries - as per the historical record that has managed to survive until present. That will all come up in the following sections as I continue along. The Hybrizing Emperor, Philo of Alexandria, the Hermetic writings, the Gnostics, Marcion, and the book of John. I'll continue to skim through the entire chapter as I have the time...

That was a great post Tat. Investigating the flow of constituent religious themes across the region. Is there a 5 page synopsis of CiE? Something more than just the overview, but easy to digest in about 30 minutes. If I had the time, I'd read more, but I'm simply overloaded at the moment.

Your post here gave me a "summary of progress" feeling, it was good.

I don't know about a five page synopsis. I can check with Murdock about that. But I'll try to continue pulling the main points from each section of the Chapter so that we have something here in the forum to reflect on.

It would be difficult to do without being swamped in the pedantry of supporting points. Such points are necessary for the book, but not so much for an overview. The exercise would be great to organize your thoughts, as macro-level summaries often are. If written in chain of thought, or storyline style, it would be great. I try to capture a visual of ideas spreading along the leylines as described by Jared Diamond in GGS. The drift of religious themes.

for example in understanding that the Christ Myth has its origins in older heritage and in observation of the stars. Given that the original source of the Christian ideas appears to be astrotheological, a return to these sources offers far more prospect of changing people's opinions than the rather forlorn idea that we can abandon religion completely. It is better to be inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. What do you see as replacing the social function of religion?


Sun Jul 24, 2011 8:49 am
One is absolutly correct in saying that the religion is based on an older heritage. The whole problem is that as a Society of scholars that older heritage has never been explained. It is obvious that Jesus is based on Osiris. The question remains "What is Osiris based on." Why would any of you even discuss the religion if you cannot explain this one point? You have said that the source is astrotheological. Even some comments about that limiting what the Ancients knew? They are the ones that invented or found it, how can you limit what they knew when you can't explain what the myth is based on. Old Egyptian temples are built on older temples. All changed when another constellation passed overhead. Pisces was just the one over when Jesus was known! What about the past constellations were tied to Osiris? What about leo that was tied to the Sphinx, 10,000 years ago? There are many proofs that Egypt is that old or older. Yet we are set into thinking that egypt just couldn't be that old. Sir W. Budge talked about material misunderstood by the Ancient Egyptians that was "ancient" 4500 years ago! Their are alignments in Egypt and in other parts of the world pointing to a time, 10,000 B. C. The religion is that old! Yet you do not know what it was based on, Myth? Really, with all that is in Egypt, do you actually believe Osiris is based on myth, and that Jesus was just a tag along tied to the same myth?

Al

Yes...

Interbane wrote:

If we reject the traditional religious doctrine of the meaning of life, that we exist to give glory to God, we are left with the problem of the subjectivity of values,

I don't see the subjectivity of values as a problem any more than our limited 5 senses is a problem. Meaning is the neural glue that holds together our worldviews. It's the association of concepts, hopefully representative of something objective, but not necessarily so. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that meaning could be objective. How could it be?

Meaning is obviously objective when we are discussing facts. If all agree that a statement is obviously true, whether a statement of logic or of induction, then we take our intersubjective consensus as objectivity. Otherwise we would go crazy and start to doubt the reality of the universe.

The problem is far more complex with value statements, such as what sort of society we want and how people should live. Ideas such as the good, the beautiful and the just are notoriously subjective. However, we find that there is widespread intersubjective consensus on even these difficult ideas, encoded in traditions of law, morality and aesthetics. The challenge in philosophy is to articulate visions of value that will generate broad consensus and impetus for action. I think though, that it is always admissible that some one can challenge a consensus with something new and innovative.

The situation now is that the cult of liberal subjectivity has established a morass of relativism, in which values are only seen as conventional artifacts, making nihilism just as valid as human flourishing. The result is that people lose care and hope for the future. The challenge to conventional morality is not primarily coming from a higher and more innovative sense of value, but from an ever lower and more degraded outlook.

The conventional religious view of values as sources of ultimate power inherent in the structure of the universe is obviously subject to corruption. But simply mocking this corruption does little to establish a better ethical framework.

By showing how mythicism deconstructs Christianity, as discussed in this thread, the corruption of values within conventional opinion is exposed. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. However, I would hope this deconstruction is more along the line of Malachi's refiner's fire, a way of burning away dross to reveal a precious essence, than a counsel of despair.

If we wished, for example, to say that human flourishing is intrinsically good, we would open a nest of logical questions regarding the role of axioms in ethical thought. If the circularity of axiomatic thinking is accepted, as is required by the assertion that anything is objectively good, such as human flourishing, we then have a systematic platform to look at all other value statements in their objective relation to that axiom. For example, this would lead us to the view that destruction of nature is bad, because human flourishing cannot be sustained without nature. But the question of nature leads to the question of an even more fundamental axiom, that living entities have inherent rights.

The conundrum is that faith in circular logic is the only way to prevent the collapse into nihilism.