Monotheistic Dominance Theory and the Rise of Christianity

[jayraskin]

Hi All,

I am not sure why I can't find the Bill Cosby thread I started a few weeks ago. I did perhaps go too specifically into the details of the modern case and we brought up modern issues that strayed too far from Early Christian History.

At that time I was more interested in seeing the possible parallels in the development of the Cosby Demonization Myth with the development of the gospels' Jesus Apotheosis Myth.
I suggested that the minor accusation (1997)/minor accusation (2000) and wave of more serious accusations (5-6 in 2005-6) and wave of incredible and fantastic accusations (30 and counting in late 2014 and 2015) was a good model for how the stories in the gospels developed.

While I still hold this to be important to study, I would like to propose a more interesting parallel of political forces in the Cosby Case with the development of political forces in early Christianity. In the Cosby case, we have a general racist atmosphere in America where black criminality is blamed on innate genetic make-up of African-Americans instead of the economic and social conditions that lead to that criminality. This is the background of the case, but in the foreground is a push by certain feminists for legal dominance feminism, which would grant women special legal rights acknowledging woman as normally victims of men in society. To balance the advantages of men in a patriarchal society a certain group of feminist, starting in the 1970's (exemplified by Catherine McKinnon) started demanding special laws to protect women. This was in opposition to second wave feminism created by Simone de Beauvoir in the 1950's which was demanding social and sexual equality between men and women. In the Cosby case it is the legal dominance feminist movement that is using the generally racist attitude towards blacks to gain power. They are able to use the Cosby Demonization Myth effectively because of the strong subliminal background racism in American society. (a non-racist society would examine each accusation on its factual merits and see that they are without evidence and baseless).

I will stray here a bit and say that the legal dominance feminists using racism to gain power is not an unusual politcal tactic. One can even see it in Cosby's personal history. In 1965, Bill Cosby became the first Black man to play a staring role in a television drama series. He was in a series called "I Spy." It ran on NBC, but four NBC affiliate stations in the South refused to carry the show because Cosby, a black man, was a hero in it. In the very first episode, "So long, Patrick Henry," we have an answer to people not seeing Blacks as worthy of being shown as heroes. In the episode, a Black militant athlete defects to Communist Red China. Cosby, as an American spy is immediately shown to be the good calm black man working for the American government in contrast to the angry Black anti-American political man. The Black athlete believes he will find the freedom to live a life without racism in Communist Red China. The Black athlete soon finds that he is only a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communists. They will kill him if he does not obey them and say what he wants them to say. Cosby saves the black athlete from the clutches of the Chinese Communists. The message of the show is that blacks and whites misunderstand each other. They have a love of freedom in common. It is the Asian Communists who are trying to take away that freedom. Only by uniting can Whites and Blacks in America save freedom from the Asian Communists. It was racist anti-Asian propaganda. It also worked. "I Spy" became a hit and Bill Cosby became a superstar. Cosby should not be blamed for this, he was just being marketed in this way to Americans who had been raised on needing a racial enemy to prove their superiority.

When looking at the early History of Christianity, we look at it from the Jewish view and the Christian view. That is the problem. We need to see it in a more complex fashion. Just as today most men and women agree with Simone De Beauvoir's message of male-female equality and the legal dominance feminists represent a small minority (usually lawyers and rape center counselors), The vast majority of Jews in the First century and Second century simply wanted equality with Romans. They just wanted to control their own state as the Romans did, a rather small bit of territory compared to the Roman's empire. The Romans were generally simply racist towards the Jews, seeing them and their God as inferior to the Roman state. This attitude of racism spawned a Monotheistic Superiority Complex. There were Jews who not only thought that Jewish customs and the Jewish God was equal to the Romans, but they felt that they were superior to the Romans. The Romans were only in a superior position because Jews had not seen that he was superior. This was the Monotheistic Dominance Jews. The customs, rules and laws that Moses had received wasn't the essence of Judaism for them, It was that the Jewish God was the one true living God and all other Gods were evil demons compared to him. It is the Jewish Monotheistic Dominance Movement that uses the Jesus stories to gain their political ends of making the world worship only the one true Jewish Gods. They should be distinguished from the mass of Jews who simply wanted to worship their God and follow the Mosaic laws that they had been given. The Jewish Monotheistic Dominance Movement used the background and natural antisemitism of the Romans. Their Jewish Monotheistic Dominance ideas were sublimated in the gospel stories. By screaming hysterical that the Jews were God Killers, the Romans were duped into seeing the Jewish Monotheistic Dominance Movement as their allies and friends against the Jews.
We should see the Pauline letters as being part of the Jewish Monotheistic Dominance Movement and the gospel mythology as developing later within that movement.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

[outhouse]

we have a general racist atmosphere in America where black criminality is blamed on innate genetic make-up of African-Americans instead of the economic and social conditions that lead to that criminality.

Don't see anyone making that claim. Its all culture.

What we see is a social culture that promotes violence, far above and beyond other races. The number 1 killer of a black male, is another black male.

Blacks commit close to the same murders at roughly 13% ish of the population VS all of whites at 69%

They also collect more welfare, which indicates poverty has a large part in the problems.

[outhouse]

It is the Jewish Monotheistic Dominance Movement that uses the Jesus stories to gain their political ends of making the world worship only the one true Jewish Gods.




Jay Raskin

Do you have any sources for this? I don't see, and traditional cultural Jews "Israelites" avoided Jesus. He found popularity in Hellenistic gentile communities.

The customs, rules and laws that Moses had received wasn't the essence of Judaism for them, It was that the Jewish God was the one true living God and all other Gods were evil demons compared to him.

Nonsense.


Moses is fiction/mythology created for the needs of the Israelite cultures / Judaism.

We should see the Pauline letters as being part of the Jewish Monotheistic Dominance Movement and the gospel mythology as developing later within that movement.

Nonsense.

While the importance of monotheism in the roman Empire, should not be overlooked. Pauls Judaism has always been questioned, and his movement while not intentional, was the Hellenistic divorce from Judaism.

He was teaching of adding another god to the monotheistic god of Judaism, which took hundreds of years to iron out.


Pauls movement was about Jesus, not monotheism.

[MrMacSon]

Hi All,

I am not sure why I can't find the Bill Cosby thread I started a few weeks ago.

Jay Raskin

The Crucifixion of Bill Cosby and Early Christian Mythology went to The Lounge

[Peter Kirby]

Hi All,

I am not sure why I can't find the Bill Cosby thread I started a few weeks ago.

Jay Raskin

The Crucifixion of Bill Cosby and Early Christian Mythology went to The Lounge

I adjusted it so a link to the thread is now in the history of threads here.

[jayraskin]

Hi Peter,

Thanks, I appreciate that.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Hi All,

I am not sure why I can't find the Bill Cosby thread I started a few weeks ago.

Jay Raskin

The Crucifixion of Bill Cosby and Early Christian Mythology went to The Lounge

I adjusted it so a link to the thread is now in the history of threads here.

[Leucius Charinus]

Hi Philosopher Jay,

I have focussed upon a small extract of your OP because I think you have made an excellent observation.

When looking at the early History of Christianity, we look at it from the Jewish view and the Christian view. That is the problem. We need to see it in a more complex fashion.

I agree.

IMHO the pagan view (which was the dominant hegemon) needs to be added to the Jewish view and the Christian view. There are a number of treatments of pagan monotheism in contemporary academic studies. I used to think the pagan world was polytheistic, and to some extent that's true. But elements of the pagan world were also monotheistic, a fact not often acknowledged. The Emperor Julian for example is viewed by some experts as a pagan monotheist.

Christian Conversion Stats

Monotheistic cults large and small grow by conversions. So I'd be interested in seeing some sort of statistical model on conversions.

I am aware there have been a number of published demographic mode's to track the rise of Christianity from its origins.

• p.137
  
  "What is perhaps most remarkable in Roman paganism is that
  there was no basic objection to conversion: all that was
  required was acceptance of the consequences of one's own
  conversion. "
  
  ON PAGANS, JEWS, and CHRISTIANS
  --- Arnaldo Momigliano, 1987

LC

[Clive]

Isn't pagan a racist term? And what about the Barbarians?

[jayraskin]

Hi Leucius Charinus,

I think of religion as a mythologized version of the actual world. You have hunter-gatherer tribes worshiping animal spirits because animals were powerful and could kill you or help you. In civilization, humans were dominant and humans determined your happiness or misery to a large extent, so we get anthropomophic gods as in Mesopotamia or human, but part animal gods in Egypt. With powerful pharoahs like Akhenaten, see the first movement towards monotheism in the worship of Ra or the rays of the Sun. Early Jewish Monotheism is probably based on the Persian Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid empire. the different Gods of Abraham and Issac and Joseph are united into one this time. He is King of Kings of Persia, King of Anshan, King of Media,King of Babylon,King of Sumer and Akkad,"King of the Four Corners of the World" He is also ruler of Judea, so Judean rewrite their mythology to try to acccount for their position in the world.
There is always a conflict between the priests, the fundamentalists who make their living off the myths of the people and the mass of people who must live in the real world and make their living there. The rule of Alexander the Great probably also enhanced the idea of Jewish monotheism, but only as in a reactionary way with fundamentalist Jews, priests still embracing their Achamenid vision of God. The Ptolemaic rulers after Alexander weren't all that interesting in imposing their Gods on their subject peoples. When the Romans defeated the Greeks, the reactionary Hasmonean, took advantage to establish their own control over the Jews. The revolt succeeded, but people still have to live in the real world, so the Maccabean priest-rulers gave way to more moderate rulers.
With the Roman takeover around 50 BCE, and the beginning of the Roman Empire with Augustus Caesar, you had a strange situation with the mass of Jews and King Herod the Great tending towards Polytheism, but the Priests fighting to maintain their power by clinging to the monotheistic mythology further developed under the Hasmoneans. In the First century, you had the Monotheistic Priest resorting to absolute terrorism (think sicarri) to maintain their control. The Jewish Monotheist Dominance Movement was started at this time by those who envisioned and fantasized that their ancient mythological God who had been crucified (staked) in Hades by the Roman Gods was about to be reborn and rule again in the Heavens. This insane dream led to the Jewish rebellions against Roman rule that ended with the Kochkbar War in 135 CE. Christianity started soon thereafter by rewriting the history of the Jewish Monotheistic Dominance movement and trying to blame the wars and their defeat on the moderate Jews who had opposed it.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Hi Philosopher Jay,

I have focussed upon a small extract of your OP because I think you have made an excellent observation.

When looking at the early History of Christianity, we look at it from the Jewish view and the Christian view. That is the problem. We need to see it in a more complex fashion.

I agree.

IMHO the pagan view (which was the dominant hegemon) needs to be added to the Jewish view and the Christian view. There are a number of treatments of pagan monotheism in contemporary academic studies. I used to think the pagan world was polytheistic, and to some extent that's true. But elements of the pagan world were also monotheistic, a fact not often acknowledged. The Emperor Julian for example is viewed by some experts as a pagan monotheist.

Christian Conversion Stats

Monotheistic cults large and small grow by conversions. So I'd be interested in seeing some sort of statistical model on conversions.

I am aware there have been a number of published demographic mode's to track the rise of Christianity from its origins.

• p.137
  
  "What is perhaps most remarkable in Roman paganism is that
  there was no basic objection to conversion: all that was
  required was acceptance of the consequences of one's own
  conversion. "
  
  ON PAGANS, JEWS, and CHRISTIANS
  --- Arnaldo Momigliano, 1987

LC

[jayraskin]

Hi All,

In thinking about a Monotheistic dominance movement using made up stories about Apostles, Jesuses and Christs, we should see the movement as the vehicle that spreads the stories. Where do the stories come from?
I think examining the Demon Cosby Myth again gives us a strong clue.
Here are two videos that are essential to understanding the process of Cosby Demonization:
The first is 3 minutes and 40 seconds. It is just a summary with excerpts of an interview that CNN had with Joan Tarshis - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Kz6hUQ_m2c
The second is an 11 minute video of Joan Tarshis describing her own mental history - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LA5Mymmqrk
Joan Tarshis was the first accuser of Cosby in 2014, telling her story starting around November 15, 2014. Cosby had been accused of drugging and assaulting five women in 2005/2006. Four of the women were widely discredited. Their charges were 20-30 years old (two had sold their stories to the National Enquirer for thousands of dollars. One was found to be mentally ill when she made the charge and another kept changing her story. The original accuser had filed a lawsuit for $150,000 when the police found no evidence to prosecute Cosby. That case dragged on for a year and a half and was settled out of court on unknown terms, before any testimony was taken. No new charges were made for eight years.
Then in October 2014, a black comedian in a comedy skit told how he had found the stories of the five accusers when he googled Cosby's name. He called Bill Cosby a "serial rapist". Then the Washington Post allowed one of the original discredited accusers to write an editorial making new charges against Cosby and famously asking "Why did it take so long for people to finally believe me?"
Three days later CNN ran the interview with the new accuser "Joan Tarshis." The self described "Publicist" Joan Tarshis was so good at publicizing her story, that 20 more women immediately claimed to be Cosby's victims in the following month. CNN and the mass media never told people the information in the second video.
The video of Joan Tarshis describing her mental history will probably be taken down in a few days. I suspect she has forgotten that she put it up in 2013. You might want to download it for your notes.

My guess is that the creators who created the Jesus Christ tales were probably very much like Tarshis and the other Cosby accusers.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin