in defence of astrotheology

[neilgodfrey]

I already responded to Bertie's incorrect reading at viewtopic.php?p=29992#p29992
Adding to my comments there, the use of the made up word “anthropod” illustrates a derisory tone which is completely unjustified. And again, the breathtaking misrepresentation of the real nature of the debate on astral themes in religion falsely implies that literal historicists are homing in on detailed accurate findings. This baseless mockery of astral research in religion while puffing up the delusions of conventional scholarship strikes me as a lie worthy of a fundamentalist pulpit. . . .

Self-pitying sermonizing like this only reinforces the image you present elsewhere of being a rejected prophet-evangelist for your religious beliefs rather than the truly scientific scholar you want us to take you for.

Now back to Neil Godfrey’s comments on astral myth.

The myth of Ishtar does have real parallels with the Christ myth but that does not mean that Jesus was not really crucified or that the evangelists were consciously copying or adapting the Ishtar myth when they crafted their stories of Jesus. To establish any such link as that we would need detailed evidence that we simply don't have. Rather, the myth of Ishtar, alongside comparable myths in the ancient Middle Eastern and Mediterranean worlds is evidence of an idea that permeated those cultures.

The nub here is the need to consider unconscious as well as conscious influences. By itself, a parallel with Utnapishtim or Sargon does not mean that Noah or Moses were fictional. These parallels have to be put into a broad context of the most probable evolution of the stories to assess the most likely origin of the Bible Myths. Similarly, Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld has similarities to the myths of Jonah, Persephone, Eurydice and Christ, for example in the harrowing of hell on Easter Saturday. There is also the link between Ishtar/Innana’s descent and the forty day reversal of Venus each 1.6 years. This is a myth that bears comparison to the season of Lent and the Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness.

That's what I said. But I understand from the following you wish to reframe this point. . .

The number 12, I suspect, almost certainly originally took on significance because of astronomical observations long predating the biblical literature.

The human brain approached its current size as homo sapien evolved in Africa more than a hundred thousand years ago, and this brain size links to the existence of language and behavioural modernity. Writing only evolved in the last 5% or so of that time, so oral transmission has been the dominant method to convey culture and knowledge. The use of the sun and moon to mark time provides the constant stable basic units of the year, month, week and day. The fact that there are twelve lunar months every year (actually 12.3) makes the number twelve basic to measuring terrestrial time. As well, Jupiter takes twelve years to go around the sun, a fact that is clearly visible to any culture with a stable long term practice of observing the sky. [Neil's comment: Jupiter's orbit is irrelevant: you seem to throw this in simply because it is associated with the number 12 even though here it has no relevance at all to your argument.]

We really should assume that mythology and language go back into the Pleistocene, and therefore that the motif of the one major deity surrounded by twelve minor deities is a deep pervasive archetype based on universal observation of the sun and the moon.

Your last sentence that I have bolded is a non-sequitur. There is no reason whatever, given all we know about mythology and language, to assume that meanings necessarily (or even plausibly) last through millennia of cultural and anthropological changes. The only grounds for your assumption it appears to me is that you take Jungian ideas that have no scientific credibility at all any more as laws of human nature.

But we see evidence that over time that same number took on other special meanings unrelated to astronomical phenomena.

There is no evidence that other meanings of twelve are “unrelated” to astronomy. There may not be evidence of relation, but this does not imply evidence of unrelation. For example the twelve tribes of Israel is asserted by apologists to be unrelated to astronomy, although this assertion is directly contradicted by Philo and Josephus.

Philo and Josephus do not contradict any historical knowledge of the origins of the 12 tribes. They merely express the same opinion expressed by astrologers and mystics and others today that any group of 12 can be said to match the zodiac. They are no more proof that this was the real origin of the 12 tribes than is a Jeanne Dixon book repeating the same thing today.

Numbers in ancient philosophies took on mystical meanings in their own right.

There is no basis to assert that philosophies such as Pythagoreanism viewed number as unrelated to regular observation of the cosmos.

Let me give a Biblical example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous ... h#153_fish discusses the miraculous catch of 153 fish in John 21, noting that the number 153 is associated with the geometric shape known as the Vesica Piscis or Mandorla, and that Archimedes, in his Measurement of a Circle referred to the ratio 153/265 as constituting the "measure of the fish".

What this means is that an Ichthys Christian fish symbol of length 265 units is mathematically 153 units wide. So the Fourth Gospel appears to refer to this ratio known in sacred geometry through the Vesica Piscis model of two circles with rim at each other's centre. With the use of this geometric symbol in the Mandorla, Christ is routinely depicted in celestial glory, surrounded by the four living creatures, the bull, lion, eagle and man. These symbols have well known astronomical links.

My point here is that Archimedes could be read as just talking about geometry, but the root three ratio he describes has been used in Christian symbolism within a cosmic framework. Understanding this framework helps us to enter the minds of the ancients to see how they used religion to explain the connection between earth and heaven, between time and eternity, between the mundane and the cosmic. Rejecting astronomical links for the cryptic story of the 153 fish will therefore lead to a failure to see its likely meaning.

You have not contradicted my point. My point therefore still stands.

By the time the gospels were written with their accounts of 12 disciples and references to 12 tribes of Israel Greek philosophy (Plato's Laws) had long suggested that 12 was the ideal number of tribes by which a new state should be organized. The evidence at hand points to the evangelists being influenced by, say, the general idea of the importance of the number 12 as a result of exposure to the OT.

This line of argument illustrates a basic difference in method between me and Neil. Neil’s default appears to be ‘if you can’t prove it, you should assume it is not true.’ While that is generally a sound precautionary principle to prevent fanciful speculation, it can break down when studying ex pede herculem problems such as solar symbols in the Bible.

If we have a large number of coherent concealed fragments, it is reasonable to look for the common source. I understand that is how Q was theorised. Similarly, if we have widespread use of the number twelve across diverse cultures, it is reasonable to examine a common reason for this.

As Jesus Christ commented, the sun shines equally on the good and the wicked. The two great lights described in the creation of the world in Genesis stand in a twelve to one temporal relation, a relation that formed the universal basis of lunisolar calendars. So a speculative model that excludes astronomy from later derivative use of the one and twelve cuts out the heart of the meaning: the sense that a divine reality is present on earth in a way that reflects its eternal template in the sky.

Further studies that might demonstrate, say, evangelists' knowledge of other Greek literature may lead to additional influences. None of this disputes the very probable fact that the original significance of the number 12 derived from astronomical observations but it does render that original meaning irrelevant for the specific purpose of explaining the immediate influences that led the authors to choose certain imagery in the gospels.

No, it does not render that meaning “irrelevant”. That is a fallacious inference. Our knowledge of the “immediate influences” on the gospel authors is extremely patchy, and affected by twenty centuries of stony sleep. Reconstructing their probable intentions has to bear in mind the severe anti-naturalism of Christendom, with its edicts making possession of heretical literature a capital crime.

The psychology of memes such as the one and twelve reaches into what Jung called the collective unconscious, the archetypal domain of universal shared symbols. The one to twelve relation between the sun and the moon does not only encompass all human evolution, but all the evolution of terrestrial DNA over the last four billion years. Cycles such as tides have a twelve-fold annual pattern driven by the sun and moon. Our explicit rational understanding of the dozen disciples only scratches the surface, just as we find it hard to say what makes a pop song into a hit.

The deliberate conscious meaning intended by Biblical authors bears psychological analysis regarding why certain symbols resonated for them in terms of unconscious influences. So Irenaeus’ ‘holy hand grenade’ type argument about why there are four gospels can be analysed against its cosmic framework, with the four evangelists symbolising the four corners of the heavens as depicted accurately in the Mandorla.

You have not contradicted my point. My point therefore still stands.

(But "collective unconscious"??? This is the twenty-first century, Robert. This is new-age hogwash. There is no more scientific basis for this than there is for paranormal powers to bend spoons.

Arguments for astrotheology appear to me to set aside all the immediate evidence (i.e. the literary and cultural influences immediately experienced by the evangelists) in order to assert that the original astronomical significance of, say, 12, was the primary influence on the gospels.

With respect, that is a superficial argument. Astrotheological arguments do indeed set aside conventional claims that there actually were twelve disciples and one Jesus Christ. But that is because there is no good evidence whatsoever for these claims, and abundant reason to see them as fictional as Eden, the Exodus or Camelot. Once we set aside a naïve historicism, the field should be seen as open for analysis of the causal factors in church history.

To sustain this argument they claim the sorts of evidence we have for other influences is lacking because it has been suppressed/destroyed by later powers who wanted to hide it. No-one can argue against such a conspiracy. It is unfalsifiable. If it is true then sadly we have no way of verifying it.

Of course we can verify the Christian censorship of cosmic Gnosticism. It is only ‘unfalsifiable’ because it is true. You can no more falsify the claim that the earth orbits the sun. The Edicts of Theodosius demanded an imperial conspiracy against heresy. This is simple historical fact.

I have highlighted the key point of misunderstanding here. You fail understand what the whole idea of falsifiability is all about. If any theory is not falsifiable it cannot be proved to be true in the first place.

Understand the difference between a hypothesis being falsifiable and being found to be false. Tests are set up to see if it could possibly be false. (We can always set up tests to prove something is true: that's called confirmation bias -- and is useless. We can "prove" any theory that way. What counts is whether it passes tests to prove it false.)

The theory or claim that the earth orbits the sun can indeed by falsified and it is only because it can be falsified that science came to believe it. Tests requiring observation and the meticulous recording of results were required before we could accept it: tests and observations at different latitudes, measuring planetary orbital variations from a fixed circle; observing other lunar orbits and planetary phases..... We can prove the earth does not orbit the sun by setting up tests to see if the planets and other observations are what we would predict if the sun and planets were orbiting the earth.

There are many other explanations for the parallels and motifs you have identified in the gospels but I get the impression you have largely never learned what they are. To test your hypothesis you would need to ask what each of the alternative views would lead us to expect to find in the evidence. And you would need to have some idea what evidence you would expect to find or not find if your idea is false.

I can prove the moon is made of green cheese if I ignore all the competing theories and accuse them of being motivated by hostile agendas and only look for the evidence that supports my view.

Clement of Alexandria said the Gnostics regarded the twelve disciples as symbols for the signs of the zodiac. At http://www.booktalk.org/christ-in-egypt ... 11145.html I noted that Clement and Irenaeus found it necessary to attack the ‘heresy’ that the twelve disciples are symbols of the twelve signs of the zodiac. As so often happened, this material in the Fathers caused a brain explosion among later pietists, who censored from view even the fact that the orthodox found it necessary to talk about such a topic. Clement’s statement that according to the Valentinian Gnostics, ‘the apostles replaced the signs of the zodiac, for as birth is governed by the stars, rebirth is governed by the apostles’ was therefore deleted from Dark Age editions of his works.

But if the evidence we do have is what we would expect on hypotheses that do not involve such conspiracies then we have valid grounds for going with those and setting aside the conspiracy theory.

But hypotheses that ignore how Christendom suppressed Gnostic thought are simply false. What is the point of even talking about such error?

I don't know any hypothesis that "ignores" this -- but I do know many hypotheses where this factor is not always relevant. If they are simply false you have to demonstrate that -- remember the falsifiability thing again. It's actually the fourth point in the hypothetico-deductive method that you consistently overlook or deny has any relevance to your views. You seem not to realize that you are claiming your astrotheology thesis is different from every other established and scholarly thesis because it does not need to be tested by point four -- the only one where the problem of confirmation bias does not apply.

Another point I think is significant here is that those who argue for astrotheology also appear to believe in the objective truth of astrotheology as a religion. If this is correct then we have yet another set of apologists: instead of people committing errors of confirmation bias in order to justify "scholarly" arguments for their conventional religious views we have people committing the same sorts of confirmation bias in order to justify "scholarly" arguments for their astrotheological religious beliefs.

I understand you have an emotional hostility towards pantheism Neil,

Why this sort of ad hominem again all of a sudden? I have no "emotional hostility toward pantheism" at all. Why do you so regularly just suddenly drop comments like this? I have had some pretty cool friends who are pantheists and I've never had the slightest "emotional hostility" towards their beliefs, ever. You seem incapable of accepting that some people can actually argue at a scholarly or rational level for a particular purpose that has nothing to do with any personal embrace of what people believe. It's called an academic discussion.

but perhaps rather than argue against me you would prefer to argue against Albert Einstein, who said “My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly.” Astrotheology celebrates this form of pantheist reverence and awe and wonder for natural order, and rests upon Kantian philosophy, not religious apologetics.

Cool. I find myself pretty much in synch with Albert Einstein's statements along these lines. I also can't help but feel awe and wonder at so much of the universe around me. But I think you are mistaken if you think Einstein was in the slightest supporting your brand of pantheism here. But even if he was what is that supposed to prove? I am often bombarded with emails and spam from fundamentalists telling me I should believe in God or some religion because some or several notables in the world have also believed that religion. Do you really think we should embrace a religious belief for such a reason?

Trying to persuade us that your religion is the only true one because even brilliant people supposedly believe in it is just another form of evangelism.

In both cases where apologetics are involved we have the apologists sometimes resorting to accusations of "sinfulness" or "moral hypocrisy" and such like to explain the failure of others to be persuaded. Such charges of course demonstrate that the argument they are presenting is not entirely scholarly but fundamentally an attempt to proselytize or witness to "Truth" and, no doubt with very well-meaning intentions, offer people some form or variant of a healthier way of life, or "salvation" of some sort.

One of my favourite lines in the Bible is revelation 11:18 – the wrath of God is against those who destroy the earth. This to my reading illustrates the Gnostic ethical core of good ideas that can be excavated from the rubble of the alienated supernatural politics of Christianity.

So you even turn to the Bible to quote apocalyptic judgement from God against those who will not be persuaded by your views!

This is not how scholarly discussion works, Robert.

You could not be more blatant in alerting us all to your message as an evangelistic one commanding total repentance and belief. You are a hawker of religion pretending, like Intelligent Design advocates (and Scientologists and Christian Scientists) that your religion is really "science", not faith after all. But you cannot hide the wolf beneath your fleece.

I understand why some want to hold ethical discussion in disdain on grounds of academic detachment, but I see such disdain as morally irresponsible. Admittedly, the concept of salvation has been badly corrupted by the populist visions of going to heaven, but it is entirely reasonable to seek to rescue such central ethical concepts as part of a scientific reformation of Christianity. That is how I understand the systematic naturalism within astrotheology.

This accounts for the moral dimension (of moral praise and moral condemnation) that regularly surfaces whenever one engages with someone seeking to advance the views of astrotheology.

The moral dimension enters the debate where religious naturalism sees anti-naturalism as evil. I personally see this moral content as crucial, in that a reconstruction of a natural vision of religious ethics is essential to engage with the apocalyptic problems of the world.

People deserve moral blame when they defend imaginary myths that lack evidentiary basis and use these myths to construct cultural values. So when ignorant believers in God deride the possibility of astral meaning in the scriptures, and when people make foolish insulting comments in place of reasoned and courteous conversation, it is fair to open a debate about the morality of such methods.

As we began with a message of moral condemnation so this is how we conclude -- the sermon here endeth with a warning to us all to repent or face the judgement of Revelation.

Your persecution and self-pity complexes are showing; so is your evangelism.

If anyone was half-wondering earlier why I refused to debate you I hope my reasons are very clear now.

[Robert Tulip]

you don't have to be a math wizard to see that good Friday to easter Sunday is two days ("on the third day"), while Dec 21 to Dec 25 is four days (or on the fifth day, reckoned inclusively). Not exactly the same thing. Derp. But this is why we need actual sources. Because the discrepancy wouldn't matter, if people back then were walking around and saying such things. I guess we don't have any such sources at this time. That's too bad. Because I don't really care about a modern theosophical/astrotheological hunch about what people back then were wandering around and saying. It's worthless to me and really to anyone who is interested in the subject from the historical-critical perspective. Get a source. Please.

Obviously a historical-critical perspective should be our starting point. But what I responded to in this thread was the suggestion that because we have no pre-Nicaean explicit evidence for Christmas, therefore Christmas must be a late invention. My point was to say there is a range of implicit evidence for Christ having been linked to the solstice and the immediate time after it, and to the sun, sufficient to see it as likely that an early Christmas tradition within Christianity was conveyed orally. It is not proof but it is plausible.

http://www.timeanddate.com/sun/israel/j ... &year=2015 provides the length of days in December 2015 in Jerusalem. 21st and 22nd are the shortest days, less than one second different in length, with the 22nd fractionally shorter. 23rd is one second longer, 24th a further four seconds longer, and the 25th is then seven seconds longer. The exact minute of the solstice, when the polar axis pointed closest to the sun, was Tuesday, 22 December 2015 at 04:48 UTC. (and at the moment there is a ten hour difference between Israel and California)

But this scientific measurement of the solstice does not really help in defining exactly which day the ancients calculated and named as the solstice, although they did have armillary spheres that provided a good measurement. But it does show that suggesting a big gap between the solstice-death-rebirth meme and the three days motif in the Bible is dubious. It would be interesting to go to a solstice aligned temple such as Karnak to test on which of these dates the sun first visibly rises to the north of its position the day before. I have heard claims that it is the 25th.

http://biblehub.com/mark/8-31.htm Mark 8:31 says Christ taught that “he must be killed and after three days rise again.” This ‘after three days’ motif echoes the solar imagery from observation of the solstice, (and in Jonah), and contradicts the 40 hour period from the cross to the risen son at dawn on Sunday. But the time differences between the days at the solstice are small enough to suggest rival traditions of 'after three days' and 'on the third day'. People may find that question to be repugnantly theosophical, but I find it interesting in terms of the plausible psychology of belief in Christ and evolution of the myths.

[Peter Kirby]

But this scientific measurement of the solstice does not really help in defining exactly which day the ancients calculated and named as the solstice, although they did have armillary spheres that provided a good measurement.

No doubt. That's why I asked for a source, because we are more interested in how they thought than anything else.

Don't worry though. Someone quoted from Pliny the Elder.

Unlike some people, I'm not going to claim it was an interpolation by church fathers in some mass revisionist attempt...

...though someone might note with sarcasm that it escaped the omnipresent censor's sponge.

[Leucius Charinus]

But this scientific measurement of the solstice does not really help in defining exactly which day the ancients calculated and named as the solstice, although they did have armillary spheres that provided a good measurement.

No doubt. That's why I asked for a source, because we are more interested in how they thought than anything else.

Don't worry though. Someone quoted from Pliny the Elder.

I found at least some evidence. Pliny the Elder calculated the winter solstice, according to the Julian calendar, in his "Natural History", Book 18, as December 25 (see here). So this seems to be the correct winter solstice date at that time.

• Pliny ref:
  
  All these seasons, too, commence at the eighth degree of the signs of the Zodiac. The winter solstice begins at the eighth degree of Capricorn, the eighth [2] day before the calends of January, in general; the vernal equinox at the eighth degree of Aries; the summer solstice, at the eighth degree of Cancer; and the autumnal equinox at the eighth degree of Libra: and it is rarely that these days do not respectively give some indication of a change in the weather.
  
  [2] Twenty-fifth of December.

Thanks for the reference.




LC

[Robert Tulip]

But this scientific measurement of the solstice does not really help in defining exactly which day the ancients calculated and named as the solstice, although they did have armillary spheres that provided a good measurement.

No doubt. That's why I asked for a source, because we are more interested in how they thought than anything else.

Don't worry though. Someone quoted from Pliny the Elder.

I found at least some evidence. Pliny the Elder calculated the winter solstice, according to the Julian calendar, in his "Natural History", Book 18, as December 25 (see here). So this seems to be the correct winter solstice date at that time.

• Pliny ref:
  
  All these seasons, too, commence at the eighth degree of the signs of the Zodiac. The winter solstice begins at the eighth degree of Capricorn, the eighth [2] day before the calends of January, in general; the vernal equinox at the eighth degree of Aries; the summer solstice, at the eighth degree of Cancer; and the autumnal equinox at the eighth degree of Libra: and it is rarely that these days do not respectively give some indication of a change in the weather.
  
  [2] Twenty-fifth of December.

Thanks for the reference.
LC

But that Pliny claim looks like pure garbage!

Calends signify the start of the new moon cycle and was always the first day of the month. Roman months had 30 or 31 days, with January and February originally left vague. The original December had 30 days. Eight days before January is 22 December, not 25 December, so this footnote has the sniff of a Christian interpolation to claim a reference to Christmas.

And the idea that equinoxes and solstices are at the eighth degree of the signs is completely bizarre against the precessional position of the constellations in Roman times. In 21 AD, the spring equinox point was at the line of the first fish of Pisces, which provides a compelling and iconic explanation for why Jesus Christ was placed in the reign of Pilate and Tiberius as the natural alpha and omega point of the great year cycle of precession of the equinoxes. That equinox position in the sky, which shifted by one degree per 71.6 years, bears no relation to the eighth degree of Aries, a position the equinox occupied around 1550 BC, somewhat before Pliny's day.

My point here is that ancient sources should be considered against what we know they could and would have known by visual astronomy. That is a valid interpretative method which delivers a coherent cosmology, far better than trusting some incorrect footnote to an equally dubious statement by Pliny.

[Clive]

Some comments here led me to look up about charles Wesley and William Blake ! https://18thcenturyculture.wordpress.co ... es-wesley/

Nevertheless, though both the liberal radicals and the state strived to suppress such visionary religious enthusiasm that threatened the status quo, subversive cultural voices still existed who challenged the supremacy of the autonomous subject and instead constructed freedom and identity in alternative, communitarian terms. Coming from radically different traditions and cultural perspectives, both Charles Wesley and William Blake used their religious, “enthusiastic” poetry to articulate a definition of human freedom and agency founded upon the Biblical construct of the “kingdom of God” which they variously develop as an intersubjective experience with the other that comes to define human actions and relations in the world and create true justice. Justice, in this sense, is not an impartial judgment in the interest of order and individual rights, but a radical embrace of the other.

[Clive]

Emmanuel - God with us. The sun and stars were used as symbols of a far more interesting problem- how to get the lion to sit down with the lamb, to enable a new heaven and earth without division "no more sea"

[Clive]

What did Paul write about groaning?

[Robert Tulip]

Self-pitying sermonizing

No, you misread my comment Neil. I do not engage in self-pity, I simply point out where mockery of my views is stupid and ignorant.

There is no reason whatever, given all we know about mythology and language, to assume that meanings necessarily (or even plausibly) last through millennia of cultural and anthropological changes. The only grounds for your assumption it appears to me is that you take Jungian ideas that have no scientific credibility at all any more as laws of human nature.

Of course the meaning of main constant factors in life such as the cycles of the sun would have lasted since the dawn of language and before. To say "there is no reason whatever this is plausible" is a considerable rhetorical over-reach on your part, asserting definite knowledge in a highly complex topic.

I do like Carl Jung’s theories of spiritual psychology including his concepts of archetypes in myth. If you don’t appreciate Jung I am sorry for you. Your claim around “scientific credibility” looks more a defence of behaviourist psychology than any appreciation of how psychology relates to philosophy and religion and myth in its analysis of spirituality. But then the concept of spirituality is often subject to a scientific fatwa.

Philo and Josephus do not contradict any historical knowledge of the origins of the 12 tribes. They merely express the same opinion expressed by astrologers and mystics and others today that any group of 12 can be said to match the zodiac. They are no more proof that this was the real origin of the 12 tribes than is a Jeanne Dixon book repeating the same thing today.

Okay, so when ancient sources contradict your prejudices just feel free to pillory them as well.

"collective unconscious"??? This is the twenty-first century, Robert. This is new-age hogwash. There is no more scientific basis for this than there is for paranormal powers to bend spoons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious explains that Collective unconscious describes how "the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience." If this term were as disreputable as Neil suggests, I would have thought Wikipedia would include some critique, hopefully with more rigor than the delightful language Neil deploys.

The sense that the dream of Christ resonates with deep common unconscious feelings in the human psyche, in terms of connecting our fallen world to an eternal cosmic ideal, can obviously be rejected in terms of how it could be proved using reductive empirical methods. But there is a danger in an excessive positivism here, an assertion that there is no meaning outside science. It is useful to consider such mystical language as having meaningful potential, especially as an imaginative way to try to get inside the minds of the Gnostics and assess the evidence of text and symbol.

You fail understand what the whole idea of falsifiability is all about.

Sorry, I do actually know how the concept of falsifiability is used in positivist reductionism. I simply find positivism to be a highly questionable philosophical method especially where data is weak and corrupted as is the case with religious history. So I was using falsify in its literal meaning of prove false, not its positivist meaning of casting the heathen into the outer darkness.

Questions such as whether the loaves and fishes miracle refer to the Easter axis of the position of the moon and sun in the stars of the loaves and fishes from the time of Christ are difficult to falsify in positivist terms, since we do not have enough data to be certain. But if this is a plausible and coherent hypothesis with predictive power regarding the use of cosmic imagery throughout Christianity, then its integration with all the evidence can readily be examined. That is what Neil Godfrey completely fails to see, and why I consider his ideological narrowness to be in error.

Neil has not come up with any test to refute this theory. By contrast, looking at the Caesar’s Messiah theory, the absence of the Gospels from the historical record for a century after Vespasian provides strong contradiction of Flavian authorship. My frustration here was that Neil says a theory is unfalsifiable, when in fact he means he has not been able to cite any contrary evidence, but instead resorts to airy dismissal rather than close analysis. The best Neil came up with was to observe that the loaves and fishes stories also drew on Old Testament midrash. That is hardly relevant to their intended purpose.

I have no "emotional hostility toward pantheism" at all.

Neil, I was referring to your comment at a Nuskeptix "Christ Myth Theory" video chat Saturday March 15th, 2014, where you said "One thing that disturbs me about Acharya's/Murdock thesis is that she seems to be always trying to hide what appears to be fairly apparent especially where now Robert Tulip has in a sense come out and admitted it that they actually do believe themselves in some sort of Pantheism, they believe this religion themselves."

Your descriptions of Carl Jung in this post read to me as emotional hostility towards pantheism, given that the concept of a collective unconscious is often seen as central to pantheist thought. Similarly, your insistence on importing positivist methodology into fields where it just doesn’t work reads quite emotionally. So I am pleased that you have now clarified that this comment was not intended as a general attack on pantheism, as it appeared at face value, but was specifically about my and Acharya's theories of how pantheism informed ancient religion.

[Ulan]

But that Pliny claim looks like pure garbage!

Calends signify the start of the new moon cycle and was always the first day of the month. Roman months had 30 or 31 days, with January and February originally left vague.The original December had 30 days. Eight days before January is 22 December, not 25 December, so this footnote has the sniff of a Christian interpolation to claim a reference to Christmas.

You should really learn to read. It's clearly stated that it's about the Julian calendar, which should even be obvious anyway from when Pliny lived. Which means December had 31 days. The way we define "eighth day" today, this would mean December 24 (which is by the way the date AcharyaS calculates from this in the book snippet Stephan Huller linked further above), but the calends seem to be included in the count.

Also, in the original Roman calendar, December had 29 days, not 30 as you claim, so two days were added, which I also already mentioned further above when it was about the shifted date of the Saturnalia.

The final reason why I think you have absolutely no idea of calendars, astronomy or the whole topic, which is remarkable for the self-appointed apostle of astrotheology on this site, is the simple fact that, with the original Roman calendar, you would in no way be able to make a general statement that the winter solstice is on the 8th day before the calends of January. No way at all. This was not possible with the original Roman calendar. That's a huge astronomy fail.