in defence of astrotheology

[MrMacSon]

At Stonehenge in England and Carnac in France, in Egypt and Yucatan, across the whole face of the earth are found mysterious ruins of ancient monuments, monuments with astronomical significance. These relics of other times are as accessible as the American Midwest and as remote as the jungles of Guatemala. Some of them were built according to celestial alignments; others were actually precision astronomical observatories ... Careful observation of the celestial rhythms was compellingly important to early peoples, and their expertise, in some respects, was not equaled in Europe until three thousand years later."

Yes, and this is a fascinating topic. If you have ever been to Newgrange, where a burial chamber in a large building from 3200 BC is lit up by the sun at winter solstice (well, it's three days, but good enough) through a small window above the entrance, you will probably agree that it's awe-inspiring. Unfortunately, nobody knows who these people were and what they thought, as they didn't leave much more behind. It definitely doesn't help us with the Jesus story.

I agree that Egypt would be a good start to look for solar connections. However, no matter what you find, there's still the task of connecting whatever you find to the NT, at least in more than a "Moses came out of Egypt" fashion. A few sentences of solar imagery in hymns that are full of flowery images don't cut it.

Yes, Egypt is a good place to start: we know a lot of ancient Greek philosophy; we know a lot of ancient Jewish theology, and of course Roman Christianity, but there are indications ancient-Greek philosophy was preceded by Egyptian philosophy, and that there were lots of Egyptian theologies.

We just don't know much about ancient Egyptian philosophies, beyond what has been determined by archaeology, and it seems we have, figuratively speaking, only scratched the surface. I saw a documentary that someone has used satellite-enhanced topography to look for archaeological sites in Egypt and identified over 2,000 sites a few yrs ago, but current political upheaval precludes investigation of any of them.

You can just stop there. There's lots of quotes of astronomical data and concepts coming, but no evidence for anything of this actually having any impact on Christianity.

Astronomical and astrotheological concepts may not have had a dominant effect or a direct effect on Christianity: the concepts may not have changed (from previously-held concepts) during the formation of Christianity.

[MrMacSon]

My hypothesis is "New Testament writers used the Old Testament".
His hypothesis is "New Testament writers used astrotheology".

An overwhelming point of evidence for my hypothesis is that New Testament writers quote the Septuagint, sometimes verbatim. This is not a matter of interpretation, this is not a matter of "hidden codes", this is not a matter for subjectivity of any kind. There is no serious explanation other than that they were either recalling the Septuagint from memory or had a text in front of them, and therefore my hypothesis "New Testament writers used the Old Testament" is demonstrated by that data alone.

Equivalent evidence for the hypothesis "New Testament writers used astrotheology" would be, say, near-verbatim use of some known astronomy treatise. Or authorial citation of some known writer of astronomy ("according to Ptolemy" or "according to the Babylonian astronomers" or whatever instead of "according to the Scriptures"). Or unambiguous description with many points of contact to some known piece of architecture, some religious rite, some anything where scholars are sure that the thing in question has connections to astronomy (or astrology or whatnot) along with some textual evidence that the writer is aware of the astronomical usage.

This is not as unreasonable a bar as it may seem. For example, the author of Jude 14-15 quotes the Book of Enoch more or less directly, and that combined with a few more oblique references to Enoch scattered about is enough to make reasonable an interpretation of Jude that relies pretty heavily on its relationship to Enoch. In fact, many mainstream scholars do this and it is a fruitful interpretation of Jude with considerable explanatory power. Note well: this is a case that mainstream scholars are quite willing to acknowledge a non-canonical book as as influence on a canonical New Testament text. But the evidence for the thesis "New Testament writers used astrotheology" isn't even close to the level of evidence for the thesis "The author of Jude used Enoch".

It doesn't have to be either/or: Christianity is a syncretic religion.

[Stephan Huller]

How can you be this way? How can logic be so alien to your thinking? You haven't demonstrated what Christianity is. Don't you get that? Christianity is something today. You can go the oldest fucking church traditions - Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic whatever. They exist. They are real. You can touch them.

On the other end of the scale are the fucking retarded ideas thrown around by you and Robert Tulip. There is absolutely no actual evidence for 'it' - i.e. what you propose to be 'original Christianity' before the 'orthodox' changed 'it.'

Do you comprehend that? At the most fundamental level the only absolutely real Christianity that we know of is the ones which (a) we know date to a period before Nicaea and (b) that still exist and can be touched. Ok.

So at this point the question arises - were there other forums of Christianity? The answer is clearly yes, the Patristic sources tell us that there were. So, again, to speak clearly enough to get through the firewall that separates your and Robert Tulip and Pete Brown's brain from reality - 'real Christianity' (i.e. the only Christianity that we can absolutely certain is real and was real before Nicaea) makes reference to 'heresies' and spells them out in relatively coherent detail in the writings of the Church Fathers.

So the heresies can be acknowledged to be real in some sense because their reality is acknowledged by the only certainly 'real' tradition - the orthodox or Catholic Church.

Now what you guys do is say - 'hey these sources are biased' or 'they aren't really telling us the complete picture' - which is fine in itself because most people agree the Church Fathers are polemicists at bottom. But then you leap from that argument to say 'hey, we can arbitrarily pick and choose' from those 'biased and dishonest' statements and then arbitrarily 'attach' them to other bits and pieces from the pagan writers about astronomy and paganism and then make up a whole new understanding of what the heresies 'really were' without getting into specifics or having any specific proof for these assertions.

What kind of a person engages in research in this way? If you guys just said 'hey I got high and had this idea do the rest of your want to hear about what Christianity might have been like at the beginning' at least that is fair and honest. Or perhaps you could say 'the Holy Spirit spoke to me - here is what the truth of Christianity really is' - at the very least you aren't pretending to engage in actual research or developing arguments naturally from what the evidence actually tells us.

But what you do is either (a) testimony to your low intellect i.e. being unable to distinguish between actual scholarship and what you engage in or (b) witnesses you are thoroughly dishonest but misguided trying to make converts to your stupid religion at a forum filled with atheists. I refrain from saying which I believe describes the three of you.

[MrMacSon]

... There is absolutely no actual evidence for 'it' - ie. what you propose to be 'original Christianity' before the 'orthodox' changed 'it.'

err, No. I am not proposing an 'original Christianity'.

[neilgodfrey]

Astrotheology is more than a hypothesis advanced to explain early Christianity. It is a contemporary religious or spiritual belief system promoted by D.M. Murdock (and Robert Tulip). For several years now Murdock has been publishing astrotheology calendars for followers of this spiritual system in the same way other groups publish annual calendars to assist followers/believers to observe the correct times and seasons on schedule: http://stellarhousepublishing.com/2015calendar.html

Perhaps not so surprisingly, humanity has been marking these annual milestones for many thousands of years, as demonstrated by the 7,000-year-old ruins at Almendres, Portugal, featured in August. As part of this ancient tradition, for October we revisit Egypt, exploring the solar alignment of the Great Temple of Ramesses II at Abu, Simbel.

Astrotheology is a "cult" [Link is to Rodney Stark's definition; I do not use it with derogatory connotations here], a "religious" belief and practice of sorts, or a "spiritual" system of belief and practice.

Many religions appeal to objective realities to "prove" their Truth. Christianity appeals to the historicity of Jesus; some cults appeal to science or to some idiosyncratic selection of scientific ideas (e.g. Christian Science, Scientology, Creationists); probably all claim to be the ultimate Truth. Probably all of them are based on the same fallacy of "confirmation bias", of discovering that unfalsifiable ah-hah moment where "everything fits". Any test they might ever advance to prove their theory will be so vague and generalized that the same logic could be used to prove any theory at all.

One even observes the same sermonizing and moralizing traits in the arguments for astrotheology as one observes in the evangelistic arguments of fundamentalists or proselytizers for other "cults".

[MrMacSon]

Now what you guys do is say - 'hey these sources are biased' or 'they aren't really telling us the complete picture' - which is fine in itself because most people agree the Church Fathers are polemicists at bottom.

Kind of.

But then you leap from that argument to say 'hey, we can arbitrarily pick and choose' from those 'biased and dishonest' statements and then arbitrarily 'attach' them to other bits and pieces from the pagan writers about astronomy and paganism and then make up a whole new understanding of what the heresies 'really were' without getting into specifics or having any specific proof for these assertions.

No.

[MrMacSon]

Astrotheology is more than a hypothesis advanced to explain early Christianity. It is a contemporary religious or spiritual belief system promoted by D.M. Murdock (and Robert Tulip).

Astrotheology is a "cult" [Link is to Rodney Stark's definition; I do not use it with derogatory connotations here], a "religious" belief and practice of sorts, or a "spiritual" system of belief and practice.

One even observes the same sermonizing and moralizing traits in the arguments for astrotheology as one observes in the evangelistic arguments of fundamentalists or proselytizers for other "cults".

I see astrotheology as

• 1/ an old system of theology: a component of ancient theology
  
  2/ a current day study of such theologies.

I do not believe it explains much of early Christianity. I think it is only tied to Christianity through pre-existing theologies that were partly incorporated in early-Christianity.

[Stephan Huller]

But where's the methodology behind your claims? What's the evidence? How do you determine how likely any of these ideas you've come up with actually existed or manifested themselves in real space and time?

[Stephan Huller]

I am all for getting high and "being inspired" but there's a difference between that and real history

[MrMacSon]

I get the impression astrotheology was a significant feature a long long time ago (of which we have poor records, as is typical of ancient history). Aspects of it seem to have persisted in the late BC/BCE era.