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Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 7:13 am
by Robert Tulip
Frank, thanks for the Jesus Puzzle link. It is a good read and very informative. It certainly pares back the scope of who the historical Jesus may have been, especially with the absence of any historical reference from the epistles. The discussion of the source of the Gospels in the document known as Q could well contain the counter-cultural ethical teachings from Jesus which are at the heart of the gospels. Beyond this, it seems clear that the overall narrative was gradually compiled from various sources, in the classic case of proof by authority.

It reminds me of Anselm's argument for the existence of God that if we conceive of a perfect being, then its existence is the crowning perfection we can imagine, and therefore it must exist. Kant was called the 'all-destroyer' for his observation that existence is not a real predicate. By the same logic the existence of Jesus as depicted is proven more by the fact that people would like it to be so than by evidence.

Yet, I have to agree with Tom Harpur that these scientific observations can serve more to deepen faith than to undermine it. In terms of the discussion in this thread, there was something immensely special in cosmic terms about the time of Christ, as a time when the seasons and the stars were aligned, and in physical terms it is meaningful to speak of the incarnation of God in the world. In Chapter 14 of my essay on this topic from a few years ago I made the following comment,
The large scale movement of precession is a star clock which establishes a primary long term structure of time on earth, providing a principal real context for exploring the meaning of time. The next step here is to interpret precession as the basis for a specific hypothesis about how the structure of cosmic time provides a scientific underpinning for key elements of Christian faith. The hypothesis is that the precessional alignment between the signs and the stars which occurred at the time of the birth of Christ can justly be called the centre of time, and that through the person of Christ the energy of this alignment became a force for human salvation, providing a scientific basis for understanding the orthodox teachings that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Word made flesh, and suggesting a scientific meaning for the Christian idea of the age.

4. As a result of the precession of the equinox, the natural year on earth defining the sun signs aligns directly with the corresponding stars of the zodiac only once every 25,764 years, when the sun signs of astrology match the stars of the zodiac. This moment of alignment, marking the beginning and end of the great year when the equinoctial point stood between the first constellation of Aries and the last constellation of Pisces, last occurred at the time of the birth of Christ, and will not occur again for 24,000 years. In that central year the monthly period of each astrological sign occurred while the sun moved through its corresponding constellation. Over the 2000 years since Christ, the equinox has precessed by almost one full zodiacal sign through the sign of Pisces, so the astrological period of Aries now begins with the Sun between the constellations of Pisces and Aquarius. Every 2147 years (one twelfth of 25,764), precession causes the March equinox to move backwards through another of the twelve constellations of the zodiac. For about the last 2000 years it has moved through Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac, and for the 2147 years before the birth of Christ the equinox precessed through the constellation of Aries, the first sign.

5. Over the last two thousand years, the movement of the equinoctial point to a slightly earlier position each year within the constellation of Pisces has created an ever-widening misalignment between the sun signs of astrology and their constellations. Over the next 24,000 years, the equinoctial point will gradually move through the whole zodiac to once again reach the first point of Aries, a point viewed by astrology as the natural starting point of the stars. The present position of the equinoctial point can be seen from star maps as the point in Pisces where the ecliptic crosses the celestial equator. The diagram shows the millennial movement of the equinoctial point. In astronomical terms the precise timing of the age of Pisces is uncertain, but the assumption here is that the Piscean age is due to end in about the year 2147, when the sun will begin the natural year in Aquarius. The equinox will then precess through the sign of Aquarius over the next 2147 years, defining the age of Aquarius.
This is a Christian cosmology which like Tom Harpur's does not depend on the existence of a historical Jesus for its meaning.

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 8:27 am
by Thomas Hood
Penelope wrote:Tom there are quite a few of our very old churches and cathedrals with zodiacs.

If I remember correctly, when I visited Chartes in France, I think there was a zodiac in that, Europe's oldest cathedral. There is certainly a lovely labyrinth maze, depicted in tiles on the floor.

Chester Cathedral, here in these parts, has a zodiac too.
http://www.lessons4living.com/chartres_labyrinth.htm

I need to look into these things because they are relevant to The Name of the Rose. Many pictures of the Chartes zodiac on the Internet too.

Is there a zodiacal significance about the different blessings Jacob gave to his various sons. You know they each formed the twelve tribes and each were given a different blessing.
Jacob's blessings (Genesis 49) are more like prophecies. I haven't thought on these things since I was reading Swedenborgian literature 40 years ago and don't remember what conclusions I reached then. But the 12 tribes are traditionally associated with the 12 signs of the zodiac.
I was always charmed by the one which went: Thy shoes shall be of iron and brass and as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
This is from Moses's blessing in Deuteronomy 33. There is a question about the word "shoes." Modern translations favor 'lock' or 'bolt' for the Hebrew word, but "shoes' fits in context, and also accords with zodiacal correspondence, since Asher is the last of the tribes and Pisces (ruler of the feet) is the last sign of the zodiac.

The Bible is such an undecided book that there is nothing for atheist and theist to argue about, in my opinion.

Tom

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 11:03 am
by Frank 013
RT
Frank, thanks for the Jesus Puzzle link. It is a good read and very informative. It certainly pares back the scope of who the historical Jesus may have been, especially with the absence of any historical reference from the epistles.


I’m glad you liked it. But as the author explains; the earliest writings of Jesus describe him as a spirit not a man, he was an embodiment of mental wisdom a “logos”, not a flesh and blood person.

And if people so close to the time Jesus was said to have lived did not mention or even know about his earthly existence it seems unlikely that a real Jesus inspired any part of the biblical text.
RT
The discussion of the source of the Gospels in the document known as Q could well contain the counter-cultural ethical teachings from Jesus which are at the heart of the gospels.


Still clinging to that little thread of hope I see…

I thought the author made it clear that the vast majority of that material was hand me down sayings from older scriptures; and from many different locations, vastly spread out, its not at all likely that a historical Jesus was responsible for any of it.

And since most of the well known and cherished parts of the scripture can be shown to come from somewhere else (at least in meaning, if not word for word) what’s left is less than impressive. If you want to believe that some guy named Jesus was the author of that remaining material it can’t be disproven, but it certainly is not very noteworthy or special.
RT
Yet, I have to agree with Tom Harpur that these scientific observations can serve more to deepen faith than to undermine it.
Well if you mean that it stretches the belief farther from reality… requiring a greater leap of faith… than I totally agree.

Later

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 3:03 pm
by Robert Tulip
Frank 013 wrote:
RT: Frank, thanks for the Jesus Puzzle link. It is a good read and very informative. It certainly pares back the scope of who the historical Jesus may have been, especially with the absence of any historical reference from the epistles.
I’m glad you liked it. But as the author explains; the earliest writings of Jesus describe him as a spirit not a man, he was an embodiment of mental wisdom a “logos”, not a flesh and blood person. And if people so close to the time Jesus was said to have lived did not mention or even know about his earthly existence it seems unlikely that a real Jesus inspired any part of the biblical text.
This has me really intrigued. Earl Doherty presents a very coherent explanation for the emergence of Christianity, with the Mark narrative only gaining traction late in the second century as the Jesus story proved useful for the new faith. I thought though that his dismissal of Paul was overstated. I would be interested in his comment on lines like 1 Corinthians 2: 1-2: “I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Similarly, Colossians 1:15-20 does have a cosmic logos theme, but radicalises it with the idea of incarnation on the cross: “He is the image of the invisible God...God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

It seems to me there is a stronger theology of the cross in the Pauline literature than Doherty acknowledges, and this indicates a material belief in an actual Jesus who died. Despite these quibbles, Doherty makes a strong case. I was particularly taken by his observation that a main second century apologist, Minucius Felix “is one Christian who will have no truck with those, in other circles of his religion, who profess the worship of a Jesus who was crucified in Judea under the governorship of Pontius Pilate.” As Doherty points out, this state of affairs seems simply incompatible with the orthodox idea that Jesus was the founder of Christianity in the conventional view. Similarly, his observation that the name Jesus Christ simply means the anointed saviour of God indicates an ideal myth rather than an actual person. Yet this Neoplatonic ideal tendency is potentially just one end of the continuum of views ranging from focus on the actual man at ne end, through the orthodox view that the man was divine, to Minucius' view that Christ was solely divine.
RT
The discussion of the source of the Gospels in the document known as Q could well contain the counter-cultural ethical teachings from Jesus which are at the heart of the gospels.
Still clinging to that little thread of hope I see… I thought the author made it clear that the vast majority of that material was hand me down sayings from older scriptures; and from many different locations, vastly spread out, its not at all likely that a historical Jesus was responsible for any of it.
And since most of the well known and cherished parts of the scripture can be shown to come from somewhere else (at least in meaning, if not word for word) what’s left is less than impressive. If you want to believe that some guy named Jesus was the author of that remaining material it can’t be disproven, but it certainly is not very noteworthy or special.
Frank, I admit I have an emotional commitment to the Gospel story, rather like Anselm's fallacious reasoning that I quoted above that a perfect story becomes even more perfect for us if we believe it is true. However, I still feel that an actual Jesus figure could have originally collected these sayings. The paradoxical nature of the central teaching that the last will be first gives some credence to an invisibility of Jesus to the wider world through historians such as Philo.
RT: Yet, I have to agree with Tom Harpur that these scientific observations can serve more to deepen faith than to undermine it.
Well if you mean that it stretches the belief farther from reality… requiring a greater leap of faith… then I totally agree. Later
No, it is rather about transforming the faith into a real possibility rather than accepting mythical traditions based on authority. What remains special to me, and here I return again to the cosmic theme of this thread, is that the time of Christ was in astronomical terms a moment of celestial harmony and a turning point of time. The cosmic wheel of precession then reached a time in which the seasons aligned with the stars, with the first point of Aries defined by the start of spring occurring when the sun entered the constellation of Aries, etc. This cosmic harmony is actually what I understand primarily by the idea of the incarnation of the divine logos. It is a jarring and foreign form of thought, but unlike conventional Christianity is actually compatible with modern scientific knowledge so does not require a leap of faith.

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 12:57 am
by Interbane
RT: "No, it is rather about transforming the faith into a real possibility rather than accepting mythical traditions based on authority."

I've seen you write this a couple of times. It makes me wonder, are saying that your personal faith is greater due to your cosmic interpretations?

RT: "It is a jarring and foreign form of thought, but unlike conventional Christianity is actually compatible with modern scientific knowledge so does not require a leap of faith."

Your interpretation is not falsifiable nor testable, it's not science. The workings of the celestial bodies in the solar system are subject to science, but the correlation between that and the bible is not.

I propose that we are all players in a video game created by aliens and only exit the game when we die. We score points based on certain accomplishments in life. One of those accomplishments is to find patterned and symbolic correlation between our solar system and the christian bible. Unfortunately for you, that accomplishment was coded into the game and is meaningless beyond the points it awards us.

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 5:23 am
by Robert Tulip
Interbane wrote:RT: "No, it is rather about transforming the faith into a real possibility rather than accepting mythical traditions based on authority."I've seen you write this a couple of times. It makes me wonder, are saying that your personal faith is greater due to your cosmic interpretations?
Yes, my faith is based on this cosmic interpretation, and the study that I have done of it convinces me it is correct. My argument is that precession is the main structure of time for our planet. This is a falsifiable claim. Accepting the common western astrological symbolism, the turning point of time is the zero point of the Western calendar. Whether this is testable is much tougher. I started from this interpretation and began looking for correlations with it within the Bible. To my ongoing astonishment I have found that such correlations are present in amazing depth and number. Yet, as DH Lawrence argues, this paganism in the Bible has been systematically repressed and ignored. The idea of a shift from an age of belief (Pisces) to an age of knowledge (Aquarius) correlates to a shift from a faith based on authority to a faith based on evidence. In terms of the Gospel parable of the wheat and tares, authority is the weeds while evidence is the wheat.
RT: "It is a jarring and foreign form of thought, but unlike conventional Christianity is actually compatible with modern scientific knowledge so does not require a leap of faith."Your interpretation is not falsifiable nor testable, it's not science. The workings of the celestial bodies in the solar system are subject to science, but the correlation between that and the bible is not.
Incorrect. The correlations I describe are primarily based on evidence. For example, the loaves and fishes do correlate directly to the signs Virgo and Pisces which mark the new age that began with Christianity. The twelve jewels at the foundation of the imagined holy city do in fact symbolise the signs of zodiac in reverse. The Christian fish symbol, correlating with the sign of Pisces, was in fact used in the Roman world as an indicator of common membership in a new age. I agree that there is a scientific problem regarding why the Pisces-Aries precessional cusp is a turning point for the whole Great Year, but this is a scientific problem which is amenable to research and analysis, not a matter of blind faith. Since the dawn of life the equinox has precessed about 175,000 times, while the signs have cycled four billion times. Here we have the actual 'eternal return of the same' which Nietzche groped for.
I propose that we are all players in a video game created by aliens and only exit the game when we die. We score points based on certain accomplishments in life. One of those accomplishments is to find patterned and symbolic correlation between our solar system and the christian bible. Unfortunately for you, that accomplishment was coded into the game and is meaningless beyond the points it awards us.
Interbane, this is just the same as your earlier comment to the effect that the pattern of footprints in the sand are not evidence that a person walked there. When we see patterns we look for explanations. That is what science is.

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 11:20 am
by Frank 013
RT
It seems to me there is a stronger theology of the cross in the Pauline literature than Doherty acknowledges, and this indicates a material belief in an actual Jesus who died.
A cross image says nothing to support a real person, remember that the upper planes in the old way of thinking had their parallels on earth… the cross image is still very likely entirely spiritual.

Doherty’s comments on the matter are here…
Christianity's savior god, Christ Jesus, had undergone death and been resurrected as a redeeming act (1 Corinthians 15:3-4), giving promising of resurrection and eternal life to the believer. This guarantee involved another feature of ancient world thinking, closely related to Platonism: the idea that things and events on earth had their parallels in heaven.

For the average pagan and Jew, the bulk of the workings of the universe went on in the vast unseen spiritual realm (the "genuine" part of the universe) which began at the lowest level of the "air" and extended ever upward through the various layers of heaven. Here a savior god like Mithras could slay a bull, Attis could be castrated, and Christ could be hung on a tree by "the god of that world,"

http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/preamble.htm
No actual Jesus dying was necessary to support the cross imagery, it could be simply a spiritual cross, which seems probable considering the rest of the works involved.
RT
However, I still feel that an actual Jesus figure could have originally collected these sayings.
If so who was Paul talking about in his epistles?

Remember that the current gospel writings were written and compiled much after Paul wrote his works, most of the quotations and events in the gospels were unknown to Paul and the other early Christian writers.

"Do not repay wrong with wrong, but retaliate with blessing,"

Became Jesus’ turn the other cheek for example.

For your current suggestion to be true Jesus would have to have been around after Paul wrote his works because the stories and quotes of wisdom did not exist in their current form in Paul’s time, some were still embedded in the old Jewish text others spread throughout the regions.

The idea that a Jesus character spoke some of the early sayings cannot be disproven, but it seems unlikely, especially considering the many years that they were accumulated over and the different cultures and regions involved. In addition and as I said before, the quotations that cannot be accounted for in other works are not very impressive or noteworthy, they do not make up the core beliefs of Christianity.

It seems more likely that there might have been a Jesus or many Jesuses that were absorbed into the myth after the initial spirit idea began to get misinterpreted, it is possible that those other Jesus stories were added after the fact and did not in fact inspire the religion, but were added to it.

Many people Named Jesus lived and died in the ancient world within very human parameters, most of those recorded died in rather less than glorious ways.

But who knows some of their stories could now be embedded into the current myth…

Later

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 3:56 pm
by Robert Tulip
Frank, this discussion of whether Jesus was a real person is an interesting and useful tangent to the purpose of this thread, which is basically to show that the Christian messianic idea is imbedded in the cosmos. Whether or not the Gospel myth of Christ originated with a single person, there is an actual scientific structure of time which can legitimately be identified with the Christian Logos - the connecting framework of reality – in the astronomical cycle of precession. My point here is that this underlying scientific basis gives the debate its purchase on reality. I like the Gospel myth and am emotionally predisposed to think of Jesus as a person. Whether or not this is so makes a difference to the institutional church but makes no difference to my theology, which is entirely new.

Reading Doherty, I get the impression there may have been a complete disjunct between Paul and the Apostolic community of Jesus. Paul was such a powerful and lucid writer that people assumed he was connected to the Jesus movement, but as Doherty points out, Paul's ideas seem to come from his own imagination rather than any tradition. So any discrepancy between the Epistles and the Gospels can be explained away by Paul's complete ignorance of and indifference to the historical story.

I would entertain Doherty's idea that Paul did not think Jesus was a real person except that in Romans 1:3 Paul says Jesus Christ "was descended from David according to the flesh." Similarly, in Galatians 4:4, Paul writes “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law.” The point of the term flesh throughout Paul's writings is that it is material. Doherty seems to be selectively reading Paul to fit his Procrustean agenda, ignoring the bits that don't fit his claim, effectively that Paul started the Docetist Heresy. Doherty is mentioned on the Docetism wiki, leading to another interesting wiki on the Jesus Myth Hypothesis which gives some good background on my own cosmological theory.

The first epistle of John expands Paul's theme of flesh, saying "many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist." Clearly here we have the emerging political orthodoxy set up as a test to unify the church, to weed out the implicit Pauline heresy of a metaphysical cross. There is something ominously Leninist in the tone of this test of the true faith. A range of 'Christians' (such as Felix discussed above) had ideas about the meaning of the New Age of the Logos, and these were steadily brought to heel in the political battle against the Old Age of pagan polytheism.

My impression is that the actual Jesus tradition may well have existed in secret isolation alongside the missionary evangelical community led by Paul. This is explicable by fear of persecution, that the holders of the Gospel message may have initially wished to protect it in secret. It is rather like the Holy Blood Holy Grail fable of Mary Magdalene secretly going to Marseilles pregnant with Christ's child who became the progenitor for the Merovingian kings - a lovely possible myth kept secret for fear of violence.

RT

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 4:22 pm
by Penelope
Robert: - It is rather like the Holy Blood Holy Grail fable of Mary Magdalene secretly going to Marseilles pregnant with Christ's child who became the progenitor for the Merovingian kings - a lovely possible myth kept secret for fear of violence.
Or the myth that the Queen of Sheba was a black lady from Ethiopia and took the Arc of the Covenant back to her home, whilst pregnant with Solomon's child.

But there is a mural - wall carving - on the wall of Chartres cathedral depicting this.....she is definitely a negress, I have been to look....twice.

But it is only a myth.....the possibility that it is true is backed up by the fact that there is a tribe of black Jewish people in Ethiopia who have been so isolated from other jews, that they do not have the more recent festivals and rituals and only adhere to the more ancient ones.

However, I haven't been to Ethiopia and spoken to those Jews....but here is a good example of how myths are perpetrated. I do love a mystery.

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 4:41 pm
by Interbane
RT: "Yes, my faith is based on this cosmic interpretation, and the study that I have done of it convinces me it is correct. My argument is that precession is the main structure of time for our planet. This is a falsifiable claim."

So you are speaking only of the workings of our solar system? I understand them and trust in much of what I read about them. As we model our time measurement after the rotation of the Earth and the Earth around the Sun, any claims that the structure of time for our planet is based on such are painfully obvious and has nothing to do with Christianity. I’m sure other people feel the same, even the people who wrote the bible, or ancient architects. The way I see it, it’s a one way street. Christianity has a lot to do with the celestial clockwork, but the celestial clockwork has nothing to do with Christianity. The theologians read the stars, but the stars don't read the theologians.

RT: "Incorrect. The correlations I describe are primarily based on evidence. For example, the loaves and fishes do correlate directly to the signs Virgo and Pisces which mark the new age that began with Christianity."

If all you are saying is that some of our ancestors were adept at astronomy and used their findings in the religion and architecture they created, my intuition tells me there isn’t a problem.

RT: "Interbane, this is just the same as your earlier comment to the effect that the pattern of footprints in the sand are not evidence that a person walked there. When we see patterns we look for explanations. That is what science is."

Sure, and if the hypothesis we devise to test our explanation isn’t falsifiable, then it’s not science. Also, my mention of the footprints in the sand most definitely was evidence that a person walked there, you completely missed my point.