Freethought Nation

In some ways the myths of the biblical Jesus are very similar to the myths of Simon Magus. Could the Jesus myth have been partially based on the Simon myth?

Simon was from Samaria. Jesus was from Galilee. Both have a connection with John the Baptist. Jesus was supposedly baptized by John and Simon was supposedly second in command to John in his group. Simon became the leader of John's group after John was killed.

Jesus was supposedly the saviour son of the Jewish, old testament god. Simon claimed to be the saviour son of a superior, good god. Jesus was supposedly immortal. Simon claimed to be immortal. Jesus performed miracles/magic. Simon performed magic/miracles. Jesus was called the Christos and Lord. Simon was called the Chrestos and the standing one.

Jesus had a favourite female follower called Mary Magdalene. Simon had a favourite female follower called Helen. Jesus opposed the Sadducees and Pharisees. Simon opposed the Jewish religious establishment and cults. Jesus went to Jerusalem to convey his message to the Jews. Simon went to Rome to convey his message to the Romans. Jesus died in Jerusalem. Simon died in Rome.

James and Peter supposedly spread the message of Jesus. Menander and Saturninus supposedly spread the message of Simon. The myth of Jesus became the basis for Christianity. The myth of Simon was used as a basis for Gnosticism. Were the story similarities coincidence, or was the myth of one based on the story of the other?

Rik

Hi Tellurian,


I wanted to summerize a few points I make about Simon in my last book.

The Christian historians give us an account of these men as if they had heard their innermost thoughts . For instance, Epiphanius states that while Terebinthus’ pupil Manes (Mani) was in prison that he conceived the notion of sending his disciples to Judea to acquire Christian books so that he may use them for his propaganda. Several church fathers recount a similar story to the legend around Simon Magus flying in regards to the death of Scythianus and Terebinthus; they claim that Terebinthus, or, Buddas, after the ceremony of the "fig", died from jumping off the roof of a house and trying to fly. I am skeptical of this account because, besides differing from the Manichaen claim that Mani was not born a slave who wound up with Buddas’ books, rather he was said to be a cave painter similar to the Mandaean cult, and Buddhist monks who painted caves, the church fathers always “painted” these two as morons and it is hard to believe that the houses in Persia would have surpassed three levels making injury more probable than death

That the flight of Simon Magus and Buddas are related has been first shown by M. Scopello. The early church fathers go out of their way to avoid explaining the similarities between Simon Magus and Scythianus, the teacher of Buddas who taught Hermas, Thomas and Addas. But in their lies we have more reason to doubt a historical Jesus as the early church fathers place these two, who claimed to be saviors, before any historical mention of Jesus is made. Those who carried their doctrine, such as Valentinus and Basilides, also know nothing of an historical Jesus.

The mention of Simon Magus in Acts stands out as a sloppy covering for the Buddhist sources to Christianity. Besides Jesus allegedly selling Thomas as a slave for cash money, Jesus himself accepts fine perfume for his feet that could have been sold to feed the poor, and, mention is made of Jesus’ seemingly contradictory statements on paying taxes; let the careful reader of Simon in Acts consider that he was not trying to “buy” the power of God in as much as he was making an offering, presumably, the only objects on him that he was able to offer Jesus disciples were a sack of coins? Because what appears to be a later addition in Acts treats Apollonius of Tyre aslo as an enigma it seems obvious that he and Simon were first revered by the original writer/s of Acts. Mention has already been made of the Simon who predicted the infant Jesus would become a/the God man in the Infancy Gospel and how his words were similar to Virgil’s on his awaited golden-child and first said of Buddha by the sage Asita, who, is said to be very aged (again, more practically explaining why the great sage could not extend his life so far as to be alive during Buddha’s mission. Another Simon in Acts is Simon the Niger, which reminds me of the Samanaga of the Mahavamsa.


Porphyry says that the Samanaeans lived only for “divine knowledge”, just as the followers of Simon Magus and Buddas. Here we have first century Gnostikas as opposed to second and third century Gnosticism. The same writer says that the Samanaeans left their families for the order and they knew that Simon Magus and Buddas were the same sort (“Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” Mtth. 12:48). Cyril of Jerusalem and Clemens Alexandrinus agree that the Samanaeans were influential in Bactria and Persia.

It is said that Archelaos of Carrha debated with Mani, and that he knew of Buddha is proved by a fragmented work attributed to him which mentions the Buddhist belief in Buddha’s virgin birth. It has been theorized that the early church fathers associated Mani with Terebinthus only to explain his Buddhist sources which otherwise they are suspiciously silent on. Terebinthus was said to have had a sacred book in twenty-two chapters which may have been a primitive form of the Lotus sutra which was also probably in twenty-two chapters. It seems possible that the name Scythianus could reference the location of Sogdiana, a place that acted as a hub for religious interchange and was populated by the earliest Manicheans, in which case he would probably be one of the Scythians who, like the northern Buddhists, by his name of Scythianus identified himself as a Scythian. The Greek historians labeled tribes Scythian who themselves diverted from any sort of Scythian, or “Sakae” identity . Scythianus would have been under the influence of the Kushans which, according to the Manichaens, allowed Mani to preach.
The Kushans were an emerging tribe from the Indo-European Yue-Chi that came into contact with Buddhism in the second century B.C…




*M. Scopello, Simon Le Mage prototype de Mani selon les Acta Archelai

Daniel

There are stories from several different sources about Simon Magus flying. I have imagined that he may have been using some kind of parachute device or maybe a device that allowed him to glide to the ground after jumping off a tall building. Do you know of any stories that indicate how he was able to "fly"?

Rik

Tellurian,

Several early church fathers state that Buddas, and according to them the Manicheans, would “invoke the demon of the air” which they allege is related to their fig ceremony. It is interesting to note the attitude that early church fathers held against Manes, Magus, Terebinthus, Apollonius, etc.. right after a time when Christian were said to be cruely martyred, they seem to take great pleasure in the death of unfair death of Mani and treat Terebinthus as as also being justly persecuted.

In my book I show that this Buddas, or, Terebinthus was not the first to introduce this “turpentine” tree, or ter{tree}binth, to Palistine as a stand-in for the Buddhist Bodhi, or, pippal, or pipal, or, Ficus Religosa, I have covered how nearly every significant event in so called Jewish history takes place next to this tree or the Elm (Aram) or sycamore, or, Shakya-Maurya fig tree (which marks the Egyptian Tale of Sinuhe as being introduced by Buddhists), and how this was allegory for Buddhist influence on post exiled Jews. At first I traced this to Asoka who claims to have spread trees and medicines around the world, but, even before this, when Alexander whet to Darius’ tomb he was inaugurated by eating bits of the terebinth tree with sour milk (related to the ancient Buddhist who introduced yoghurt to Turkey and ‘misa’ fermented soy paste across East Asia) and figs. The Terebinth tree was used by the Buddhist missionaries just as they used the myrobolen fruit for medicine. The Buddhist missionaries introduced ‘binth’, or “reason” (bodhi) to those who would later be called “Gnostics”. In my book I give several instances where ‘binth’ and ‘bythos’ where used interchangeable by the pre-Christian Western Buddhist missionaries and how this relates to the ‘bottom of the sea’ which to the Buddhists symbolized, like the great void, the true mind.

Another founding tree which I show to be imported Buddhist legend, is that of Romulus and his founding fig tree (according to some) or the oriental plane tree and Palatine hill. The earliest Buddhist would establish many other such trees in distant lands. The Scandanavian Rowan tree was meant to replace the Asoka tree, the Gothic Upsala was another stand-in for the pipal, just as the poplar, etc.. I cover others also.

Ancient Buddhists would often tie prayer flags on tree branches and the same practice was found in ancient Palistine on the Butm, or Buddha tree.

"Again, on the borders of Afghanistan and India "the frontier hills are often bare enough of fields or habitations, but one cannot go far without coming across some syrat, or holy shrine, where the faithful worship and make their vows. It is It is very frequently situated on some mountain top or inaccessible cliff, reminding one of the 'high places' of the Istailites. Round the grave are some stunted trees of tamarisk or ber (Zizyphus jujuba). On the branches of these are hung innumerable bits of rag and pieces of coloured cloth" Folk-lore in the Old Testament, p. 68

There are also many other mythological trees which I allegorically trace back to Buddhist fables. The Acacia tree of Osirus was the Buddhist way of claiming his descent from Okkaka, the Greek Ogyges, or Ogugus. Although ‘ac’, or, ‘ak’, is fairly widely spread root for “point”, the Buddhists continually played with words in their mythologizing, and so there are multiple layers of allegory to peel back such as the play on a “Sak” tree which is seen in the legend of the Sakyas being founded in Kapilavastu, by the Indian sage Kapila, who the Buddhists claimed was the Buddha’s former incarnation, and in the book of Daniel and where Jesus curses the Suken fig tree, etc..


Although I argue that walking on water was not as much as a common religious aspiration as many would believe it to have been, flying seems to have been a very common one. However, the flying mentioned about Simon Magus and terebinthus, or Buddas, appear to be directly related to the Buddhist saints who are literally said to fly around. Of course, Jesus, according to the History of Hanna, flies into Mary as a bird (Luke 3:22) and, according to many accounts, he is said to leave and come back via. the air.

I don't know how much the following dovetails with what Dan's got, because I can't take the time right now to wade through his posts, but my impression is that "Simon Magus" is the combination of two Syrian godnames, "Saman" and "Maga." In this regard, he would represent a syncretic god turned into a person in order to subordinate his followers to the new Christ cult. In that respect, these composite figures would have much in common, since they are both emulations of much older archetypes.

Samanean = follower of Saman. These may well be followers of "Buddha" as his myth had been Syrianized after Ashoka's Buddhist missionaries were sent to Antiochus. "Maga" is related, of course, to Magi, the Persian priests, and it likely also has its roots in India:

_________________
Why suffer from Egyptoparallelophobia, when you can read Christ in Egypt? Try it - you'll like it:

I know about the Buddhist influences in Greece, Egypt, and the Levant due to Ashoka's missionaries, but I wonder if there was also some Hindu influences.

In the Marcion gospel about a son of god coming down to save the Jews from the Old Testament demiurge, the main character comes down as a divine being and takes on human form and people around him see him as being human. This would be the same as what Hindu stories say divinities did when they came to humans and took on an avatar showing them to be just like mortal humans. This is also what stories about Simon Magus say he did when he claimed to others he was a son of the superior, unknown, "good" god.

Rik

There were several writers who referred to "Indian gymnosophists" who educated and heavily influenced Pythagoras, Plato, and other major philosophers. I think even the church father Clement of Alexandria mentioned this as well.
After Alexander conquered India there was definitely a lot of cultural exchange between Greece and India and this fact is well attested to by Hellenic writers. Unfortunately I cannot recall specific names or references at the moment, I know that some of these writers attest to syncretism between certain Greek gods and heroes with those of India. If I recall correctly, Hercules and Dionysus were a couple of examples, but I forget the names of the Indian gods they were conflated with.

Most of the early church fathers copy each other in saying that Simon, a name taken by several pre-Christian Eastern mystics, was very popular in Samaria and that he mainly started the second century Gnostics. The Samaritans claim descent from Joseph (Aesop, or Bo-seph, or Bodisat) and are believed to have broken away from other Jews after they made contact with Buddhism.

I don’t think what you wrote about the Avatars is an exclusively “Hindu” concept. It may not even be just a human hope as I imagine that if ants ever progressed to a human like intelligence that they also would have a similar character, who came from unknown lands, etc... I do believe Jesus legendary appearance owes much to the buddhavatara, or “The Buddha who comes down [ava] to save [tara]” of Gautama, or Godama, which, as distinguished from the former name Gautama, in Sanskrit means “attaining heaven and earth” and whose name was taken by the Cuthim (Gothic high priest was a Goti, the Greek word for Magician) , or Samaritans who were kicked out of Shechem, from where we have the Hebrew word for sage, ‘chacham’, an area were the “Sakyas” dwelt (word ‘sage’ is also from ‘Sakya’).

The identity of Shechem with Buddha is supported by the Jewish family names of Shacham, Shaham: Schachmundes & Schabtai, Schabtay, Shabtai, Shabtay which may be traced back to Shakyamuni and Sakya-Buddha.

The Samaritin religion, claims the hill of Gerizm, the alleged location of Jotham’s parable about trees being called to serve as a king, a parable which parallels the Mahasamata being called upon to be elected and several Buddhist fables which tell of animals electing a king of animals and the Banyan and Pipal fig trees were claimed to have been the king of trees. This place is said to have been founded at the time of a great schism. Jesus downplays the importance of such disputes about the schism which divided the Samaritins and the other Jews who believed that God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on another hill (John 4:21). The Samaritins were mainly centered in Shechem, a place which the Gospel of John calls “Sycham”, Hebrew ‘shiqmar’, or the ‘Sycamine’ (Luke 17:6), or ‘Sakyamuni tree’; the Egyptian child/fig-tree alter ‘Sekhem’. Confirming this, and a split between the holy terebinth and the holy oak tree, is that the modern name of this place is Tell-Balata and “Balata” is said to be from the Greek word ‘platanus’, which was a word Greeks used for the terebinth tree possibly because it was so close a representation to the ‘Tree of Hippcrates’, another stand-in for the Pipal tree which is also said to be the tree ‘Platanus orientalis’, which is also known in Central Asia and India as the “chinar tree”; ‘chinar’ includes the ancient Iranian root for “China”. This tree may have been confused for the terebinth tree at an early age and it further parallels the pipal tree in that Zoroastrian Magi also believed that they could forecast events based on the movement of the leaves of this tree.


The Holy Buddha, or "Butm" tree of Palestine was also called the “Tree of Grace”, or ‘Shejr Al-Kheir’, the name of the place where the Samaritins claim that Joshua received the law from the Lord.

“Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritians; but go rather to the lost sheep of Isreal,… You shall not have gone through all the cities of Israel before the son of man comes”-Matthew 10:6

GodAlmighty



In the Life of Apollonius biography, book 6, there is mentioned a meeting Apollonius and 10 disciples had with Gymnosophists of Ethiopia. They discussed and compared the gymnosophists' ascetic viewpoints to the neopythagorean viewpoints of Apollonius. Apollonius mentioned that he found the Indians to be more advanced than the gymnosophists in their wisdom and philosophies.

The nomadic Indo-Europeans ranged from India to northern Europe so it is understandable that the Hindu god Indra of the Aryans in India was similar to Zeus in Greece and to Odin in the Germanic areas.

Rik

In my book Did Moses Exist? I've got a footnote concerning the Abraham-Brahma connection:


This quote can be found in my new ebook The Moses-Dionysus Connection, in case you're interested.

There is obviously much more to this story. There is the Indian Mitanni kingdom in the Levant around 1500 BCE, and I've got dozens of pages written on the Roman-Indian relationship during the first centuries surrounding the common era as well. Suffice it to say there was plenty of interaction.

_________________
Why suffer from Egyptoparallelophobia, when you can read Christ in Egypt? Try it - you'll like it:

Acharya

Your quote from Josephus seems to be referring to Jews who received teachings from the Buddhist missionaries sent to the Levant by Ashoka. Is that what he was referring to?

Your reference to an "Indian Mitanni kingdom" should probably be to an Aryan Mitanni empire. The Mitanni empire of the Hurrians is thought to have formed by some people from Urartu in eastern Anatolia, but mostly from Aryans out of northern Iran. The religious similarities to those in India would be due to the Hurrians of Mitanni being Aryans like the Aryans who migrated to northern India bringing their religious beliefs to that area, which would explain why the gods of Mitanni were the same as the Hindu gods in India.

Most people do not realize the huge amount of trade that existed between Rome and India. In the 3rd century BCE Ptolemy II had the Red Sea port city of Berenike built east of Aswan for trade with India, and the port was extremely busy until about the time the Muslims moved into Egypt, and the port was abandoned.

Rik

Dear Tat,
I think that many ancients realized that sometimes it was a lot easier to give the ignorant minded reasonable allegorical interpretations to their old superstitious beliefs than it was for them to ask them to turn thier backs on established tradition. The Buddhists were of this sort and if they would have read about the temptation in the Garden of Eden they would have certainly identified God with the snake, just as many Christian sects that were later labeled “Gnostic” did.

(Calderini, A., Manomissione, p. 108 – 113), anti-slavery sentiments may have united the Serapis cult with the Therapeutae as they were both strongly opposed to slavery. The Essenes are often compared to the Therapeutae (Philo compares both to the Indian sophists), they were strongly opposed to slavery also.
Philo mentions the 49 day Therapeuatin Passover which is compared to the Buddhist celebrating the 49 days after Buddha’s enlightenment and there are said to be forty-nine days until a dying person reaches their destination. Philo mentions that they sling their right arm against their chest which is very similar to a Buddhists posture. Philo also mentions how the hymns of the Therapeutae would start by the head priest only to be overlapped by the lesser monks. This style was originally Buddhist and a quick sample of such a recitation can be found on the Lotus sutra chant found all over the net. One observer notes the parallels when they review the recent collaboration between the Gregorian and Japanese Buddhist monks when they notice the parallels of “alternating a soloist with a choir, which overlaps the boundaries of confession repertories. Another striking feature is the tonality based on the pentatonic scale".
Philo is unsure of the etymology of Therapeutae and considers the two relevant Greek roots which have the meaning of ‘healer’ and ‘servant’, what has also been neglected, is the consideration that, based on the similar doctrines held between the two, Terebinthus, or, Tere-butm, the “Buddha-tree”, is a rendering of Therapeutae . The correct form of “elder” in Alexandria was putae (related to the Indo-Euro root for lord, pat) but the Pistis Sophia has “pEutes” and the altered Pistis Sophia word “presbeutaes” maybe meant to reproduce the resurrected Buddha in the Lotus Sutra (Pra-bhuta Jewel). Like the Alexandrian Jews, the Buddhists also loved using homonyms, homophones, homographs, puns and recent scholarship has shown more use of ancient Buddhist word play, satire, and allegory within the Buddhist texts.

The early church fathers state that the earliest circulating Gospel (evangelion) was that of the Gospel of Scythianus (Socrates Scholastic says it resembled the Gospel [of Christ] in name only and that it was a teaching of the Pythagoreans and of Empodocles), who some say was the Gospel of his disciple Terebinthus who was said to go about calling himself Buddas and that Scythianus, who brought books from India, taught a doctrine based on two principles (good and evil).
Jesus says, “A good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit, neither can a bad tree produce good fruit”. In chapter 13 of the Gospel of Matthew Jesus references the Gnostic concept of two principles in his parable about a man whose
Augustine, who was formerly a follower of Mani, says "Ait enim Christus Deus est tantum, omnino homimis nihil habens. Hoc Manichaei dicunt. Photiani, homo tantum. Manichaei Deus tantum"
Cotelerius writes, "Solem negaret meridie lucere, qui Docetas, seu phantasmatas haereticas temporibus apostolorum inficiaretur erupisse"
These quotes reveal a type of Doceticism coinciding with the rise of early Christian sects. The Docetics most often held that the body was evil, and stressed the temporary nature of the body (found in the Gospel of Mary and in Buddhism). Many gospels labeleld “Gnostic” state that Jesus, or, “The Savior”, appears only as a phantom and this is said repeatedly of Buddha in Mahayana texts like the Avatamsaka sutra. In the Diamond sutra all is a phantom.
"But made himself the emptied form of a servant having taken on the likeness of men, and being found in the form (‘schy-mah’) of man" Philippians 2:7

When I used to enter an assembly,
I always became, before I seated myself,
in colour like unto the colour of my audience
and in voice like unto their voice.
I spoke unto them in their language
and then with religious discourse,
I instructed, quickened, and gladdened them – Gospel of Buddha, Teacher Unknown

The Gospel of Philip states;
“Jesus took them all by stealth, for he did not appear as he was, but in the manner in which they would be able to see him. He appeared to them all. He appeared to the great as great. He appeared to the small as small. He appeared to the angels as an angel, and to men as a man. Because of this, his word hid itself from everyone. Some indeed saw him, thinking that they were seeing themselves, but when he appeared to his disciples in glory on the mount, he was not small. He became great, but he made the disciples great, that they might be able to see him in his greatness.”

Daniel

I find your descriptions of the similarities between Buddhism and Gnosticism to be interesting. The difficulty I have with that are the two gods (the good, superior father and the OT demiurge) that are in Gnosticism while Buddhism has no gods.

Rik

The Buddhist also had gods, slowly the Bodhisattvas (which became the Greek Daemon) filled that role.

The Buddhist Sakra. Who plays the part of a powerful fool in the Buddhist text, in the so callerd "Gnostic" texts was called Saklas. Of course the Indian Sakra, perhaps the Kshatriya Indra, was not originally a fool, he was the all powerful until the Buddhists degraded him.


All of the earliest teachers, whose students would later be termed "Gnostic", beieved that the OT god was the all powerful god of this world and that he was cleverly cruel, the Buddhists say the same about Mara, the king of death.

Another important Buddhist god prajnaparamita who is said to be the wisdom mother of all great Bodhisattvas.

Luke 7:18 "Wisdom is justified by all her children". Here, either Jesus believes that "Wisdom", or, "Sophia", is either God, or a main goddess.