Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

andrewcriddle wrote:This is the oracle of Serapis to Nicocreon.

It is probably not genuine.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hfE ... is&f=false

Andrew Criddle

Thanks for the reference. We're certainly glad to have you here, Andrew.

In Defence of Astrotheology
There are constantly so many interesting lines of discussion here, that I am sorry I lack the time and energy and expertise to respond to all as I would wish. So now that I do have some time I would like to go through this interesting comment from Neil Godfrey
viewtopic.php?p=29998&sid=052c644965320 ... 154#p29998

neilgodfrey wrote:

Bertie wrote:That "Mythicism Files" blog that recently emerged had a similar take:

Imagine the problem of the historical Jesus as a whodunnit scenario. Countless detectives (mythicist and historicist and agnostic) are there on the scene sleuthing around, diggin' up all the evidence they can, trying to figure out what's going on. There is a body on the ground. Some people are discussing a possible murder weapon. Some the possible motives. Some people are whispering and pointing fingers. Along comes Acharya S, who walks by and takes a look at the chalk outline on the ground and proclaims, 'Aha! It's elementary, my dear Watson ... what we have here is clearly a vertebrate creature of some kind ... a pretty large one ... possibly a simian or an anthropod,' as if this were at all relevant to the case at hand.

That's pretty much what I think, too. Here's another analogy, one from etymology. Open up a good English dictionary and look at the etymology of various words. Some of them will be quite close to their present-day usage and the etymology of such words may still be useful in getting at the current meaning of the word. But at the other extreme, some words will have completely diverged from their etymology, such that etymology of the word is of no value whatsoever in determining the current meaning of the word.

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. The reality, as Peter Kirby has said, and I paraphrase, is that literalists are driven by the conservative political agenda of trying to defend Christendom against secularism. Since Mr Kirby has removed his comment to the members-only ungooglable part of the forum, I copy it here.

Peter Kirby wrote:I've also observed a conservative trend in New Testament scholarship following the Second World War, accelerated after 1980 in the English-speaking, Anglo-American world. The gist of it is that the scholar-theologians feel that they need to combat rising secularism and are willing to sacrifice the ambiguities embraced by the older, more-daring research in favor of having a scholarly stick with which to defend Christendom. The rock bottom foundations of this stick are, of course, the historicity of Jesus along with the textual integrity of the New Testament, so the sabre-rattling is at its most intense when they fear that the very substance of this core might be put in the fire to be tested.

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

neilgodfrey wrote: 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.

neilgodfrey wrote: 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.

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.

neilgodfrey wrote: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.

neilgodfrey wrote: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.

neilgodfrey wrote: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.

neilgodfrey wrote: 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.

neilgodfrey wrote: 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.

neilgodfrey wrote: 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.

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.

neilgodfrey wrote: 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?

neilgodfrey wrote: 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, 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.

neilgodfrey wrote: 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.

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.

neilgodfrey wrote: 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.

andrewcriddle wrote:

MrMacSon wrote:

Clive wrote: There seems to be some confusion here about legitimately asking questions about the relationships of the stars and religions, astrology, and astronomy. They are separate areas!

allegedly 'from' a pre-Christian 'God' -

• A god I am, such as I show to thee,
  The starry heavens my head; my trunk the sea;
  Earth forms my feet; mine ears the air supplies;
  The sun's far-darting, brilliant rays mine eyes.

... Macrobius regarded the Alexandrian Isis as the same with the Ephesian Diana, for the ancient Isis of Egypt had only the usual complement of breasts. This philosopher had started with the axiom (i. 17), "Omnes deos referri ad Solem*," and begins by demonstrating from the various epithets of Apollo, that he was the same god with the one styled the Sun. He then proceeds to prove the same of Bacchus, Hermes, Aesculapius, and Hercules.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/gno/gar/gar23.htm

* “Omnes Deos referri ad Solem” = 'All Gods refer to the sun'

This is the oracle of Serapis to Nicocreon.

It is probably not genuine.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hfE ... is&f=false

Andrew Criddle

Not genuine in that serapis didn't write it?

Not genuine in that it doesn't reflect astrotheology

• in the 2nd or 3rd C AD/CE?
• in the BC/BCE era?

I don't place much weight on any passages like that: it was just one that crossed my path.

but please elaborate.

We have at least two very high spec examples of technology, one of which has direct theological links - the fragments of the Coligny Calendar have been found at sites related to the worship of Mars. I have been looking at sources about the Coligny Calendar, and they are problematic, as they very often repeat Roman celtic tales about sex and beautiful bodies.

The other is of course the Antikythera Mechanism. I am unaware of any rituals alleged to be used when using it, but would propose it is unlikely to have been used without some form of observance.

http://www.livescience.com/1166-scienti ... chine.html

A new analysis of the Antikythera Mechanism, a clock-like machine consisting of more than 30 precise, hand-cut bronze gears, show it to be more advanced than previously thought—so much so that nothing comparable was built for another thousand years.

"This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind," said study leader Mike Edmunds of Cardiff University in the UK. "The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right…In terms of historical and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa."

I cannot see references to Celts, but why would it not be a celtic invention?

I am getting the impression that Roman biases are having huge effects about looking carefully at these areas. We have people producing incredibly sophisticated stuff and sharing their knowledge across Europe and to Africa and Asia.

I am probably actually not defending astrotheology but wish to ask if we are seriously downplaying what people were doing because of Roman - and Xian - biases.

The Antikythera Mechanism is a unique Greek geared device, constructed around the end of the second century bc. It is known1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 that it calculated and displayed celestial information, particularly cycles such as the phases of the moon and a luni-solar calendar. Calendars were important to ancient societies10 for timing agricultural activity and fixing religious festivals. Eclipses and planetary motions were often interpreted as omens, while the calm regularity of the astronomical cycles must have been philosophically attractive in an uncertain and violent world. Named after its place of discovery in 1901 in a Roman shipwreck, the Antikythera Mechanism is technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterwards. Its specific functions have remained controversial11, 12, 13, 14 because its gears and the inscriptions upon its faces are only fragmentary. Here we report surface imaging and high-resolution X-ray tomography of the surviving fragments, enabling us to reconstruct the gear function and double the number of deciphered inscriptions. The mechanism predicted lunar and solar eclipses on the basis of Babylonian arithmetic-progression cycles. The inscriptions support suggestions of mechanical display of planetary positions9, 14, 15, now lost. In the second century bc, Hipparchos developed a theory to explain the irregularities of the Moon’s motion across the sky caused by its elliptic orbit. We find a mechanical realization of this theory in the gearing of the mechanism, revealing an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 7.html#B10

I wonder if Roman propaganda assumptions about the celts are endemic in mainstream thinking. You foolish galatians, playing with your GPS!

MrMacSon wrote:

andrewcriddle wrote: This is the oracle of Serapis to Nicocreon.

It is probably not genuine.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hfE ... is&f=false

Andrew Criddle

Not genuine in that serapis didn't write it?

Not genuine in that it doesn't reflect astrotheology

• in the 2nd or 3rd C AD/CE?
• in the BC/BCE era?

I don't place much weight on any passages like that: it was just one that crossed my path.

but please elaborate.

This is supposedly an oracle to Nicocreon a ruler in Cyprus who died a little before 300 BCE. Our source is Macrobius writing after 400 CE.

The popularity of the cult of Serapis probably begins after the death of Nicocreon and the Oracle seems influenced by Orphic material from the late Hellenistic/Roman period.

The oracle is probably much later than its supposed date and may quite possibly be later than the New Testament writings.

Andrew Criddle

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.

Interestingly, we have - from a prayer book - a real example of how Archimedes thought and argued. Gods were not on the agenda! What is though is a fascinating form of argument using both words and diagrams. In a very different way to how we are used to do things, the diagrams were not just illustrative of the written argument, but actually an integral part of the whole argument.

So it might be a mistake to think of oral and written as separate, both together illustrate, show something. We are multisensory - I would go back more than 100,000 years. The problem was and is to get an understanding of something. To do that we need to assess how it looks, feels, tastes, smells, moves....

We discuss, argue together, write down points, draw things, measure, argue in letters ...

We have clear evidence of these different traditions - the Druids for example did write things down - by building technology.

http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org

The subject of this website is a manuscript of extraordinary importance to the history of science, the Archimedes Palimpsest. This thirteenth century prayer book contains erased texts that were written several centuries earlier still. These erased texts include two treatises by Archimedes that can be found nowhere else, The Method and Stomachion.

Which means Church building structures, like the classic tripartite Italian Baptistry, main Church and Campagnola - Florence, Pisa... are actually part of the argument, both their discussion then of what and how people thought then that they believed, and of how we interpret that now.

The rituals - the eucharist - are also living fossils.

We have far more evidence than we realise. We miss it because we are not looking at the various transmission methods, like writing, as part of a whole.

Leucius Charinus wrote: http://www.christianbiblereference.org/ ... fJesus.htm
We celebrate Jesus' birth on Christmas, but no one really knows what day Jesus was born, or even exactly what year.
In 336 A.D., the Western Church, based in Rome, chose December 25 to celebrate as Christmas, meaning "Christ's Mass."

I don't think this statement is based on anything but guesswork tho. Christmas in Rome was being celebrated on 25 Dec around that time, because one of the documents collected in the Chronography of 354, itself dating to the 330's, gives it as the date. (I don't remember the exact date of that document - sorry).

Roger Pearse wrote:

Leucius Charinus wrote: http://www.christianbiblereference.org/ ... fJesus.htm
We celebrate Jesus' birth on Christmas, but no one really knows what day Jesus was born, or even exactly what year.
In 336 A.D., the Western Church, based in Rome, chose December 25 to celebrate as Christmas, meaning "Christ's Mass."

I don't think this statement is based on anything but guesswork tho. Christmas in Rome was being celebrated on 25 Dec around that time, because one of the documents collected in the Chronography of 354, itself dating to the 330's, gives it as the date. (I don't remember the exact date of that document - sorry).

Hi Roger,

There is some relevant information on the WIKI page for Sol_Invictus. The emperor Aurelian dedicated 25th December to the festival of Sol Invictus.

• Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") was the official sun god of the later Roman Empire and a patron of soldiers. In 274 the Roman emperor Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol,[1] a revival of the cult of Elagabalus[2] or completely new.[3] The god was favored by emperors after Aurelian and appeared on their coins until Constantine I.[4] The last inscription referring to Sol Invictus dates to AD 387,[5] and there were enough devotees in the 5th century that Augustine found it necessary to preach against them.[6]
  
  The idea, particularly popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, that the solstice date of 25 December for Christmas was selected because it was also the date of a Roman festival of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (Birthday of the Unconquered Sun) is challenged[7] by a different explanation considered academically to be "thoroughly viable".[8] Both theories have supporters, with some claiming that the festival of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti was later syncretized with Christmas,[9][need quotation to verify] and others saying that the Christian celebration may even predate the festival of the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti.[10][11][12]

We see here that there are arguments FOR and AGAINST the proposition that the 4th century Christian State appropriated this date for their own purposes. Alternatively you could restate the proposition that Aurelian appropriated this date from the pre-Nicene Christians. In either definition we need to look for evidence that the Christians worshipped the birth of Jesus on the 25th December prior to Aurelian.

Earlier discussions have essentially show there is nothing in the NT that pin points the birthdate of Jesus to either a year or a day of the month. While the may be some further information from the church fathers on this issue, I have not yet seen it or evaluated it.

What is the earliest evidence we have to indicate that the Christians celebrated the birth of Jesus on 25th December prior to the 4th century? If we don't have such evidence then it looks pretty clear that this practice was commissioned by the imperial Christian State, and not before then. The date of the 25th December was the winter solstice, and this date holds exceptionally well attested astrotheological significance.



LC