Freethought Nation

Wow, this book is amazing. Thanks Acharya for drawing attention to it.

An interview with the author, Bill Darlison, is at http://www.thegospelandthezodiac.com/interview.html and is well worth reading. He cites Acharya, stating "There are a few works which cover similar territory. The books of Acharya S explore the idea that the Bible is informed by celestial cycles, as are other ancient scriptures."

He explains how the mysterious story of the man with the water jug inspired him to look for zodiac references in the gospel of Mark, and found that the whole text is a work of genius, as a coded description of the natural cosmic year from Aries through to Pisces. Kirkus Reviews says "An intriguing leap into faith, and not at all the loony speculation the title might suggest."

Darlison says Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, commented in his book Against Heresies that the Gnostic leader Valentinus held that the stages of Christ's ministry correspond with the signs of the zodiac, showing this astrological reading is ancient. Darlison says it is an interpretation that "has been ignored, or deliberately suppressed, for centuries."

The conventional Christian attitude insists that stellar references are "loony", denying by rank prejudice that the Gospels could explain a coherent natural message. This blindness was the attitude condemned by Christ in Mark 8 as hard hearted. These same people who condemn what they do not understand expect people to accept that Mark literally believed in a pile of impossible miracles. This disjunction has led to Christianity being regarded by rational people as contemptible. Darlison explains that Christians simply refuse to engage with astral analysis because it destroys their entire framework of belief.

This material is central to the astrotheological paradigm shift. The baleful anti-scientific prejudice around this topic is a main reason Acharya is condemned by the new inquisitors.

Glad you took a look in that book and enjoyed it, Robert. I didn't realize he cited my work. I note that he's an evemerist who needs to see a "historical nucleus" in various gods and godmen. He may cite me, but it doesn't sound like he's actually read my book, since I address evemerism throughout and show that there is no "historical" core to the onion, except for handfuls of sayings that human beings most assuredly said at some point. But collections of sayings by disparate individuals dating back hundreds to thousands of years does not a "historical nucleus" make!

In any event, I've found another related book of interest, especially since I'm deconstructing Ehrman's "Aramaic Jesus" hypothesis: To wit, Ehrman traces his "historical Jesus" largely to a handful of real and hypothesized Aramaic words and phrases in the New Testament.

Many of these phrases and words can be found in the Old Testament, and some of them are evidently spells from "Aramaic magic texts" that apparently existed either verbally or literally centuries earlier before they are found inscribed in the "Aramaic incantation bowls" of the sixth or seventh centuries AD/CE. Lindtner finds a Sanskritism in at least one of them, raca/raka, and I have always wondered about an Indian connection for the NT word "Maranatha."

Lindtner also points out that some inscriptions of the Indian Buddhist king Ashoka in which he proclaims to have sent out Buddhist medical missionaries to Antioch, Egypt and points in between appear in both Greek and Aramaic. Lindtner raises the issue of the Buddhists abundantly using magical spells .

The bottom line, then, is that these few Aramaic words and phrases do not provide evidence of a "Jesus of Nazareth" who supposedly walked the earth as a Jewish prophet and would-be messiah during the first third of the first century. I will be publishing this information in my rebuttal to Ehrman, as well as on my blog.

Noegel, Scott, Joel Walker, and Brannon Wheeler, eds. Prayer, Magic and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University, 2003.

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

This is one that is in my collection. He makes his case that the gospels follow the zodiac from the book of Matthew. Its not as much of an eye opener as the simpler case made from Mark, but lends credence to the hypothesis that Matthew is just zodiacal Mark embellished with more people, places and things ruled by a particular sign.

Therefore, a good working knowledge of astrology is necessary to see his case.

Still, a good one to have in ones collection!

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I am the Wind that blows over the Sea;
I am the Wave of the Deep;
I am the Bull of the Seven Battles;
I am the Eagle upon the rock;
I am a Tear of the Sun;

Here's another one that looks interesting. The author is evidently a professional historian:

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

Here's another important text that proves the contentions in my chapter "The Myth of Hebrew Monotheism."

I really appreciate all these scholarly texts by academic publishers validating the claims I've brought up in Christ Con.



Here's the link to this book on Google Books.

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

This sounds scrumptious! I'm interested in the Astral Background of El's Family in Ugaritic and Israelite Literature and Outsider Status and Frazer's Hypothesis About "Dying and Rising Gods". I have to see if I can get this book!

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I am the Wind that blows over the Sea;
I am the Wave of the Deep;
I am the Bull of the Seven Battles;
I am the Eagle upon the rock;
I am a Tear of the Sun;

This book is new, published December 2011. I stumbled upon it by accident. Anyone familiar with it?

From a single recent review:



http://www.amazon.com/The-Secrets-Stars ... 196&sr=1-1

_________________
I am the Wind that blows over the Sea;
I am the Wave of the Deep;
I am the Bull of the Seven Battles;
I am the Eagle upon the rock;
I am a Tear of the Sun;

_________________
I am the Wind that blows over the Sea;
I am the Wave of the Deep;
I am the Bull of the Seven Battles;
I am the Eagle upon the rock;
I am a Tear of the Sun;

Oh, those dangerous creative paths again...



It's amusing watching the new paradigm shift unfold with increasing intensity.

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The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

Yes, that's what it is. A paradigm shift.

_________________
I am the Wind that blows over the Sea;
I am the Wave of the Deep;
I am the Bull of the Seven Battles;
I am the Eagle upon the rock;
I am a Tear of the Sun;

Asclepius and Jesus

Here is another great piece of scholarship that confirms major points in Christ Con: To wit, the Therapeut connection, as well as the Asclepius/Asklepios comparison to Jesus Christ.

Wells, Louise. The Greek Language of Healing from Homer to New Testament Times. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998.

Speaking of Asclepius/Asklepios, Wells (94) discusses similarities between the god and the Jewish messiah:


Following on the heels of these ancient critics and many more modern commentaries, I essentially related the same information about Asklepios and his connection to Jesus. As we can see, despite the claims from apologists and assorted other naysayers, there is great reason to submit that the "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is as mythical as the god Asklepios and is, indeed, significantly based upon the healing deity's myths.

Note the motif of raising the dead, which is denied by apologists to have existed in pre-Christian antiquity - a fallacious contention. Here the very word used to describe Asklepios's ability is basically anastasis, the same term utilized by the gospel writers to describe Jesus's resurrection - and used by Diodorus Siculus in the first century BCE to depict Horus's resurrection. Obviously, this concept of resurrection from the dead was well known before Christ's purported era and continued into it, having nothing to do with him, except that it was an attribute from Pagan mythology attached to the fiction composite of "Jesus Christ" in the New Testament.

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

And another fairly modern book (1954) from a major academic publisher (Brill) that confirms various "Christ Conspiracy" details, such as the winter-solstice/December 25th birthday of the sun in ancient Egypt. Here the author(s) is discussing the notorious passage in Epiphanius that was removed from the Migne edition (as shown in Christ in Egypt).

The discussion linked concerns the god Aion, a solar entity associated with Horus and others.

Essays on the History of Religions
by Raffaele Pettazzoni

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

According to the myths I have read it was the resurrections from the dead that got Asclepius killed. Asclepius was supposedly born from a mortal mother and the god Apollo, who himself was born from a mortal woman and the god Zeus. Supposedly, the god Poseidon complained to Zeus that Asclepius was stealing his dead by bringing them back to life. Zeus decided to stop Asclepius by killing him with a lightening bolt.

In comparison, the biblical Jesus was supposedly required by his father YHWH to be killed and become a human sacrifice for the supposed salvation of mankind. In both cases, the biblical Jesus and Asclepius, their deaths were determined by father/grandfather decisions.

Was Celsus One of the First Mythicists?

In Christ Con, I quoted scholars contending that the pagan philosopher Celsus, immortalized by Origen for his assault on the Christian absurdity, had questioned the very existence of Jesus. If so, this questioning would constitute one of the earliest recorded accounts of such doubt, a point of contention for apologists who claim no one in antiquity doubted Jesus's existence.

In this regard, here's a great quote from a book called Mysteriously Meant by Johns Hopkins professor Dr. Don Cameron Allen (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1970; p. 11). I've briefly tried to find the original quotes in Origen, by checking the attached Migne edition of Contra Celsum - unfortunately, the search feature does not seem to be working on this document, and it is difficult and time-consuming to slog through it.


This last sentence, of course, sounds much like my "Jesus Mythicist Creed": The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. (Being a Greek, Celsus apparently thought of the Jewish "wonder-workers" or messiahs as "barbarians.") Allen cites the first sentence as "Origen, Contra Celsum, PG XI, 1287-1503." He then cites the last sentence as "Ibid., cols. 951-54."

On p. 12 of the same book, Allen remarks:


For the first claim regarding Celsus here, Allen cites Contra Celsum, PG XI, cols. 1098-1106. For the last part of this quote, he cites cols. 1047, 1498.

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

Acharya

I am not certain what you are seeking, but the following quote is one comparing the Christian resurrection to other pagan resurrection stories:

You say he prophesied that he would himself rise from the dead, and he did rise. How many others produce wonders like this to convince simple hearers whom they exploit by deceit? Zalmoxis, the slave of Pythagoras, told the Scythians that he had come back from the dead. So Pythagoras told the Italians. Rhampsinitus pretended to have played dice with Demeter in Hell, and he showed a golden napkin which Demeter had given to him. Orpheus among the Odrysians, Protesilaus in Thessaly, Hercules at Tænarum, Theseus, all are said to have died and risen again. But did anyone really rise—really—in the body in which he had lived? Or shall we say that all these stories are fables, but that yours is true?

http://www.askwhy.co.uk/christianity/06 ... Celsum.php

An analysis of Celsus and a summary of his True Word is at:

http://www.1902encyclopedia.com/C/CEL/celsus.html

Probably not what you are seeking.

Rik