The Strategy for Mythicists Going Forward

[DCHindley]

PGM IV. 3007-86 This is the conjuration: "I conjure you by the god of the Hebrews, / Jesus, ..." That was the only one I had remembered.

Yeah, Christian themes are sparse, and the lack of an index doesn't help. Christ 2x, Jesus 1x, Chrēstos 1x. Since the scan I used wasn't perfect (the spell checker built into the OCR software probably had a heart attack with all the vox magicae), there could be other cases of Jesus, Christ or even the possibly Marcionite(?) Chrēstos.

Wait, do I sense a series of long posts on Marcionite magicians approaching from Stephan Hüller soon ... ?

DCH

[Robert Tulip]

Robert Tulip has attempted to ram foreign traditions of 'astrotheology' into the Biblical texts.

What does ‘foreign’ mean in assessing the origins of Biblical images? The Jews were in captivity in Babylon and were influenced by Babylonian thought. Egyptian, Greek and Indian religion also had influence. Acts 7:22 says Moses was learned in all the teachings of the Egyptians. So it is not a matter of finding things elsewhere and introjecting them into the Bible, but rather reading the Bible with a view to finding lost astral meaning. We can readily show that in the case you have raised, the Pole Star.

the Mandaeans were recorded starting their year with a ceremony directed at the Great Bear and Polaris (the North Star) in the Little Bear …the priest, when entering the edifice, has the North Star, the great object of their adoration, immediately facing him. . . . Towards midnight the star- worshippers, men and women, come slowly down to the Mishkna by the river side. . . . By midnight there are some twenty rows of these white-robed figures, ranked in orderly array facing the Mishkna, and awaiting the coming of the priests. A couple of tarmidos, lamp in hand, guard the entry to the tabernacle, and keep their eyes fixed upon the pointers of the Great Bear. As soon as these attain the position indicating midnight/ a signal is given, and a procession of priests, including ' the spiritual head of the sect, the Ganzivro,' moves to the Mishkna.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... sion_N.gif is a map of the movement of the North Celestial Pole, the axis of the earth and the unmoving spot in the sky around which the stars appear to revolve. The Celestial Pole itself rotates slowly around the North Ecliptic Pole, the axis of the sun, located at the right foot of the dragon.

At Draco and Ursa in Ancient Astronomy I explore the astronomy around this observation, including as it is contained in ancient writings. I summarise some of this material at The Celestial Pole in the Apocalypse

[ghost]

Robert Tulip has attempted to ram foreign traditions of 'astrotheology' into the Biblical texts.

What does ‘foreign’ mean in assessing the origins of Biblical images? The Jews were in captivity in Babylon and were influenced by Babylonian thought.

It seems some stayed after the captivity and were influenced by Mandaean thought. Maybe Christianity is a synchretism of Mandaeism and Caesar religion?

http://www.carotta.de/subseite/texte/esumma.html

[andrewcriddle]

Andrew, what is the story with those?

FWIW I did a long-ago blog post on the issue
christianity-in-the-magical-papyri

Andrew Criddle

[Blood]

The Exorcism spell in the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris (PGM IV) lines 3007-86 is famous/notorious for its reference to Jesus the God of the Hebrews; this is usually regarded as a bit of peripheral syncretism but I was surprised to notice in the photographs of this spell in Deissmann’s Light from the Ancient East the repeated use of one of the nomina sacra namely θς, θν, and θυ for θεος etc., God

The nomina sacra are generally held by scholars to be of Christian origin indicating that the Christian influence here goes deper than just one phrase.

You didn't mention whether "Jesus" here was also a nomina sacra.

[DCHindley]

the Mandaeans were recorded starting their year with a ceremony directed at the Great Bear and Polaris (the North Star) in the Little Bear …the priest, when entering the edifice, has the North Star, the great object of their adoration, immediately facing him. . . . Towards midnight the star- worshippers, men and women, come slowly down to the Mishkna by the river side. . . . By midnight there are some twenty rows of these white-robed figures, ranked in orderly array facing the Mishkna, and awaiting the coming of the priests. A couple of tarmidos, lamp in hand, guard the entry to the tabernacle, and keep their eyes fixed upon the pointers of the Great Bear. As soon as these attain the position indicating midnight/ a signal is given, and a procession of priests, including ' the spiritual head of the sect, the Ganzivro,' moves to the Mishkna.

Stephan is apparently getting this from Robert Brown Jr, Researches into the Origin of the Primitive Constellations (vol 2, 1900, pages 176-182)

is a map of the movement of the North Celestial Pole, the axis of the earth and the unmoving spot in the sky around which the stars appear to revolve. The Celestial Pole itself rotates slowly around the North Ecliptic Pole, the axis of the sun, located at the right foot of the dragon.

I noted this image from the same website you drew your illustration from shows Draco hooking from the upper right over towards Polaris.

Another image does not show this "hook."


The star α Draconis was in fact the pole star circa 3500-2000 BCE (Brown, vol 2, page 77), but that was well before John wrote the Apocalypse. However, the chart you displayed (which has nothing to do with precession of the vernal point as implied by the page name it is at) shows that at the start of the Christian era the actual pole would be about halfway between α Ursae Min. (which is the modern Polaris) and α Draconis. According to Brown, volume 2, the pole star of that time would have been β Ursae Min (Kochab, the Star, Pleiad, when Taurus led the tropical year).

DCH (sleeeeep...)

At Draco and Ursa in Ancient Astronomy I explore the astronomy around this observation, including as it is contained in ancient writings. I summarise some of this material at The Celestial Pole in the Apocalypse

Its too late to look at this now, but I'll do so tomorrow after work.

DCH