No problem. If you honestly want to try and understand the reasoning then I'll try to honestly explain it for the sake of you or anyone else following along with similar questions.

tat tvam asi wrote:Azrael,
Now enter the mystics, gnostic and otherwise. We find an established myth about the solar cycle. The Goddess is the Great Virgin in this myth. Then proceeds certain mystical interpretations of mythology which uses the symbolism of the natural world - the solar cycle - in order to have a basis for an analogy to a spiritual teaching. Just as the sun is virgin born from the purity of the virgin dawn, so too ought men have rites and rituals by which they too are symbolically "born again" and what-have-you....

Vary good, except for this being "symbolical." It is those who follow the Christian, earthly, path and for this reason create rites etc to replace a reality they cannot see. A true Gnostic knows that rebirth, second birth is a real experience. It is what makes one a Gnostic, a born again nut, as opposed to a born again Christian who has no idea what womb he or she comes from. Gnosis; Greek, for a special kind of knowledge that comes directly from the Divine Spirit, Mother goddess. If one has not experienced it they cannot conceive of it. If they have experienced it they cannot deny it. It is not an exercise in intellectualizing. It is getting down in the muck and experiencing it, Spending the 40 days in the desert. Make no mistake you will pay a price for it and not in $$$$. Old Gnostic's love allegorical stories: My grand nephew just returned from Afghanistan where he lost a leg and foot from a road side bomb. You will not find him in his bed moaning and groaning, needing a shrink. He is rolling around in his chair giving support to those laying in their beds. He found his humanity. it cost him a foot and a leg. I am urging him to become a chaplain. He has truly been gifted by what ever you chose to call the Great Mother.

tat tvam asi wrote:No problem. If you honestly want to try and understand the reasoning then I'll try to honestly explain it for the sake of you or anyone else following along with similar questions.

Thanks. I will be more able to have a reasonable discussion on this when I get the book but that won't be before tomorrow....

First of all I: in my own language, Dutch, the word "Maagd" means virgin, but it is also used in the (old) word "dienstmaagd" which means "servant girl". So what the word implies is in fact "a maid" (which is the same word as "maagd") and just means: an unmarried woman.
So it is important that we understand what the word "virgin" for Mary, mother of Jesus, means. We know she wasn't "married", that is obvious from the story, but was she really a virgin? And how do we know that?
In the case of Isis it is very different. She was not a human, but a goddess. She impregnated herself, something Mary couldn't do.
What the book says is that the idea of Isis was transfered to Mary in an attempt to make Jesus a Son of God. I think that observation is correct because of the Isis cult in Rome. The problem with that idea is that Jesus was a semi-god, hardly a jewish concept, but very Greek indeed. And of course the Greek influence during the time Jesus is supposed to have walked the earth was immense. Also Egypt was a Greek province, from the time of Prolemy I, who was turned into the God Serapis, who was also called "the saviour", to Cleopatra. It all points to adaptation.
The problem with adaptation is that the true meaning of the original (the Isis story) might already have been forgotten, or misinterpreted by people outside Egypt. So Isis WAS a virgin, but Mary was an unmarried woman who gave birth to a baby. However, the baby was regarded as a semi-god - which means his father is a god - and in the male society this story came to be, a god would of course not have a baby from a woman who was NOT a virgin. It is still very important in Islam and we all know about virginity repair!!
The step from Isis to Mary is an easy step considering the very popular Isis cult and christians who were eager to win men AND women to their side.
But is it correct to transfer the (hidden?) meaning of the Isis-Horus story to the Mary-Jesus story?

drdalet wrote:First of all I: in my own language, Dutch, the word "Maagd" means virgin, but it is also used in the (old) word "dienstmaagd" which means "servant girl". So what the word implies is in fact "a maid" (which is the same word as "maagd") and just means: an unmarried woman.
So it is important that we understand what the word "virgin" for Mary, mother of Jesus, means. We know she wasn't "married", that is obvious from the story, but was she really a virgin? And how do we know that?
In the case of Isis it is very different. She was not a human, but a goddess. She impregnated herself, something Mary couldn't do.
What the book says is that the idea of Isis was transfered to Mary in an attempt to make Jesus a Son of God. I think that observation is correct because of the Isis cult in Rome. The problem with that idea is that Jesus was a semi-god, hardly a jewish concept, but very Greek indeed. And of course the Greek influence during the time Jesus is supposed to have walked the earth was immense. Also Egypt was a Greek province, from the time of Prolemy I, who was turned into the God Serapis, who was also called "the saviour", to Cleopatra. It all points to adaptation.
The problem with adaptation is that the true meaning of the original (the Isis story) might already have been forgotten, or misinterpreted by people outside Egypt. So Isis WAS a virgin, but Mary was an unmarried woman who gave birth to a baby. However, the baby was regarded as a semi-god - which means his father is a god - and in the male society this story came to be, a god would of course not have a baby from a woman who was NOT a virgin. It is still very important in Islam and we all know about virginity repair!!
The step from Isis to Mary is an easy step considering the very popular Isis cult and christians who were eager to win men AND women to their side.
But is it correct to transfer the (hidden?) meaning of the Isis-Horus story to the Mary-Jesus story?

Thank you a very well thought out truth.

Vary good, except for this being "symbolical."

What else is it? Are you literally born out of a womb twice? Or are you talking about an experience which you refer to, symbolically of course, as being born again, or born for a second time?

drdalet wrote:it is important that we understand what the word "virgin" for Mary, mother of Jesus, means. We know she wasn't "married", that is obvious from the story, but was she really a virgin? And how do we know that?
In the case of Isis it is very different. She was not a human, but a goddess. She impregnated herself, something Mary couldn't do.
What the book says is that the idea of Isis was transfered to Mary in an attempt to make Jesus a Son of God. I think that observation is correct because of the Isis cult in Rome. The problem with that idea is that Jesus was a semi-god, hardly a jewish concept, but very Greek indeed. And of course the Greek influence during the time Jesus is supposed to have walked the earth was immense. Also Egypt was a Greek province, from the time of Prolemy I, who was turned into the God Serapis, who was also called "the saviour", to Cleopatra. It all points to adaptation.
The problem with adaptation is that the true meaning of the original (the Isis story) might already have been forgotten, or misinterpreted by people outside Egypt. So Isis WAS a virgin, but Mary was an unmarried woman who gave birth to a baby. However, the baby was regarded as a semi-god - which means his father is a god - and in the male society this story came to be, a god would of course not have a baby from a woman who was NOT a virgin. It is still very important in Islam and we all know about virginity repair!!
The step from Isis to Mary is an easy step considering the very popular Isis cult and christians who were eager to win men AND women to their side.
But is it correct to transfer the (hidden?) meaning of the Isis-Horus story to the Mary-Jesus story?

Hello Drdalet, thank you for joining the conversation, and welcome to Booktalk. Your post assumes that Jesus and Mary were real people. There is no evidence whatsoever for this theory, except long tradition of church teaching. By contrast, the hypothesis that Mary and Jesus were invented in order to incarnate the Egyptian myth of Isis and Horus provides a far more elegant explanation for the origin of Christianity.

The Christian story makes no sense except in its Egyptian historical context, as another mutation of an old myth. But this mutation, seeking to give the myth the power to confront Rome through the device of incarnation, unleashed forces that its inventors could hardly have imagined, as the church took the doctrine of incarnation as a tool of monolithic secular power.

As pointed out in the title of this thread, Isis was known as Mery, which meant beloved. Christianity made her myth more powerful in one sense by incarnating it as Mary, except that this stratagem backfired once the stupidity of popular mythmaking took over, the Egyptian roots were forgotten and Mary was converted into a patriarchal idol. The natural backstory remains hidden in the daily revival of life as the sun (Jesus) is born at dawn (the virginal Isis)

The recognition that Jesus and Mary were not real is such a shock to true believers that they reject it out of hand as destructive to their idolatry. And yet, examining the source material provides a series of circumstantial indicators that Christianity is entirely fictional. For a start, the whole Jesus story is entirely absent from the contemporary historical record, with the only flimsy supposed references far too late, too obscure or too obviously fraudulent.

This is very bizarre for such a supposedly prominent series of events and should raise immediate suspicions of fraud. Even the supposition that the Jesus story was embroidered from actual history makes little sense, in view of the continuity with Egyptian precedent. The fanatical efforts of Christians to destroy 'unorthodox' material raises further big questions about their motives, suggesting they wanted to conceal evidence of their fraud.

So your questions that I have bolded above about the virginity of Mary are non-questions, because they presuppose that Mary was a real person, when in fact she was not. Murdock mentions Plutarch's critique of evemerism, in which he commented to the effect that dragging gods down to earth as literal individuals was an act of impiety and disrespect, an idolatrous failure to respect eternal mythic identity. The blessed virgin mary is nothing but an idol, a totemic fetish who serves purely secular purposes of church power, including the suppression of female identity.

Debating the virginity of Mary is exactly the same as debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, a foolish scholastic game that refuses to examine its assumptions critically. The only way the debate makes sense is to explore how the myth of Mary emerged by cultural evolution from earlier precedents such as Isis, and then to explore the cultural meaning of Isis, especially how the Egyptians regarded their gods as forces of nature.

tat tvam asi wrote:

Vary good, except for this being "symbolical."

What else is it? Are you literally born out of a womb twice? Or are you talking about an experience which you refer to, symbolically of course, as being born again, or born for a second time?

I am not allowed to give you details. I tried and it was wiped from my computer. So to generalise; One finds one's Self, soul, entering into the womb of the Great Mother like a sperm impregnating her. Some time later, years, one is crucified in Jesus, dies (in the flesh or not? (see St. Paul's letters for this.) descends into hell, ascends into heaven. Here they are given their mission in life and are reborn into this world. This is an experience more real than the reality of the physical universe. Quantum physics is just now opening the door of understanding of this wider universe and our place in it as co-creators with the divine. This clue you can have.

Robert Tulip wrote:

drdalet wrote:it is important that we understand what the word "virgin" for Mary, mother of Jesus, means. We know she wasn't "married", that is obvious from the story, but was she really a virgin? And how do we know that?
In the case of Isis it is very different. She was not a human, but a goddess. She impregnated herself, something Mary couldn't do.
What the book says is that the idea of Isis was transfered to Mary in an attempt to make Jesus a Son of God. I think that observation is correct because of the Isis cult in Rome. The problem with that idea is that Jesus was a semi-god, hardly a jewish concept, but very Greek indeed. And of course the Greek influence during the time Jesus is supposed to have walked the earth was immense. Also Egypt was a Greek province, from the time of Prolemy I, who was turned into the God Serapis, who was also called "the saviour", to Cleopatra. It all points to adaptation.
The problem with adaptation is that the true meaning of the original (the Isis story) might already have been forgotten, or misinterpreted by people outside Egypt. So Isis WAS a virgin, but Mary was an unmarried woman who gave birth to a baby. However, the baby was regarded as a semi-god - which means his father is a god - and in the male society this story came to be, a god would of course not have a baby from a woman who was NOT a virgin. It is still very important in Islam and we all know about virginity repair!!
The step from Isis to Mary is an easy step considering the very popular Isis cult and christians who were eager to win men AND women to their side.
But is it correct to transfer the (hidden?) meaning of the Isis-Horus story to the Mary-Jesus story?

Hello Drdalet, thank you for joining the conversation, and welcome to Booktalk. Your post assumes that Jesus and Mary were real people. There is no evidence whatsoever for this theory, except long tradition of church teaching. By contrast, the hypothesis that Mary and Jesus were invented in order to incarnate the Egyptian myth of Isis and Horus provides a far more elegant explanation for the origin of Christianity.

The Christian story makes no sense except in its Egyptian historical context, as another mutation of an old myth. But this mutation, seeking to give the myth the power to confront Rome through the device of incarnation, unleashed forces that its inventors could hardly have imagined, as the church took the doctrine of incarnation as a tool of monolithic secular power.

As pointed out in the title of this thread, Isis was known as Mery, which meant beloved. Christianity made her myth more powerful in one sense by incarnating it as Mary, except that this stratagem backfired once the stupidity of popular mythmaking took over, the Egyptian roots were forgotten and Mary was converted into a patriarchal idol. The natural backstory remains hidden in the daily revival of life as the sun (Jesus) is born at dawn (the virginal Isis)

The recognition that Jesus and Mary were not real is such a shock to true believers that they reject it out of hand as destructive to their idolatry. And yet, examining the source material provides a series of circumstantial indicators that Christianity is entirely fictional. For a start, the whole Jesus story is entirely absent from the contemporary historical record, with the only flimsy supposed references far too late, too obscure or too obviously fraudulent.

This is very bizarre for such a supposedly prominent series of events and should raise immediate suspicions of fraud. Even the supposition that the Jesus story was embroidered from actual history makes little sense, in view of the continuity with Egyptian precedent. The fanatical efforts of Christians to destroy 'unorthodox' material raises further big questions about their motives, suggesting they wanted to conceal evidence of their fraud.

So your questions that I have bolded above about the virginity of Mary are non-questions, because they presuppose that Mary was a real person, when in fact she was not. Murdock mentions Plutarch's critique of evemerism, in which he commented to the effect that dragging gods down to earth as literal individuals was an act of impiety and disrespect, an idolatrous failure to respect eternal mythic identity. The blessed virgin mary is nothing but an idol, a totemic fetish who serves purely secular purposes of church power, including the suppression of female identity.

Debating the virginity of Mary is exactly the same as debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, a foolish scholastic game that refuses to examine its assumptions critically. The only way the debate makes sense is to explore how the myth of Mary emerged by cultural evolution from earlier precedents such as Isis, and then to explore the cultural meaning of Isis, especially how the Egyptians regarded their gods as forces of nature.

Respectfully, I must disagree with you. You appear to be missing some important information. I would suggest you find a copy of Dr. Morton Smith's book, "Jesus the Magician." Smith gives information about Jesus' family background. The most probable candidate for his physical father. What happened to Mary after she was divorced. Ever wonder why Joseph disappears in the Bible after Jesus goes to the temple for his Bar Mitzvah? The answer to that is also in Smith's book. He also gave me the first clue into Jesus' sojourn into Egypt and his schooling in the Egyptian mysteries. This start is how I ended up here. Try to find a first edition. The second edition was published after Smith's death and some adjustments were made. Not enough to interfere with Smith's main points. The church was furious with him for revealing all he did and tried to discredit him. Just as they tried to stop the translation of "The Nag Hammadi Library" Gnostic scriptures. I trust this will help you in your future spiritual growth.

co-creators with the divine. This clue you can have.

Does my screen name ring a bell with you?