Acharya S and the real Christ Conspiracy

[bcedaifu]

Happy Saint Valentine's day, Roger!

I do not see the word "Mihragen" in that article... In fact I don't see any of this in that article.

My fault. Mea Culpa.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/mehragan

http://www.iranchamber.com/culture/arti ... hregan.php

Aufstieg Und Niedergang Der Romischen Welt by Wolfgang Haase volume 2 (1992) Walter de Gruyter Inc. page 2069
http://books.google.com/books?id=wFceDN ... sm&f=false

...H. Lommel (1949), sees in the Western monuments evidence of an original Iranian (or IE) version in which Mithra indeed does kill the bull...
...
Bull sacrifice was central to the great feast of Mithra, the Mithragen/Mithrakana, celebrated by Zoroastrians to this day as the Mihragan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitra

As preserver of covenants, Mithra is also protector and keeper of all aspects of interpersonal relationships, such as friendship and love.

[Roger Pearse]

I have restored the context.

Ancient Persian religion: Zoroastrianism, one important feast day is Mihragen, a part of which involves sacrifice of a bull, tauroctony, performed by Mithra, according to H. Lommel (1949).
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/mithraism

I do not see the word "Mihragen" in that article... In fact I don't see any of this in that article.

My fault. Mea Culpa.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/mehragan
http://www.iranchamber.com/culture/arti ... hregan.php

Neither refers to any bull sacrifice, tho, which is curious in view of what follows:

Aufstieg Und Niedergang Der Romischen Welt by Wolfgang Haase volume 2 (1992) Walter de Gruyter Inc. page 2069
http://books.google.com/books?id=wFceDN ... sm&f=false

This is Roger Beck's important article "Mithraism since Franz Cumont" (which I still don't seem to have on disk for some reason). Beck is a serious Mithras scholar. The point being made here is that in Zoroastrianism it is Ahriman, not Mithra, who kills the bull. Lommel's theory (from 1949, when scholars thought that Mithra and Mithras were the same) is that the existence of the tauroctony in the cult of Mithras shows that a version of the Zoroastrian story did once exist in which Mithra killed the bull, rather than Ahriman.

Beck then states:

Bull sacrifice was central to the great feast of Mithra, the Mithragan/Mithrakana, celebrated by Zoroastrians to this day as the Mihragan (see Boyce 1975b), and there are interesting resonances of the tauroctony in its rituals (e.g. the offering of a portion to a dog).

Which is very interesting, and I have learned something. But can it be that central if the Encyclopedia Iranica article doesn't refer to it? We need more info. The reference is not very helpful; I wonder what work by Boyce is referred to? Any idea what it is? I might try and get hold of it this week if we can work it out.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

[andrewcriddle]

..........................
Beck then states:

Bull sacrifice was central to the great feast of Mithra, the Mithragan/Mithrakana, celebrated by Zoroastrians to this day as the Mihragan (see Boyce 1975b), and there are interesting resonances of the tauroctony in its rituals (e.g. the offering of a portion to a dog).

Which is very interesting, and I have learned something. But can it be that central if the Encyclopedia Iranica article doesn't refer to it? We need more info. The reference is not very helpful; I wonder what work by Boyce is referred to? Any idea what it is? I might try and get hold of it this week if we can work it out.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

I think the reference is to Mary Boyce A History of Zoroastrianism: The Early Period
See Zoroastrianism: Pagan Cult

The term Mithrakana seems more frequent than Mithragan/Mithragen

One problem is that we have limited information as to how the feast of Mithrakana was celebrated in ancient times. Modern practice may not be a safe guide.
See for example Traditions of the Magi by Albert De Jong.

Andrew Criddle

[Roger Pearse]

Interesting: thank you. I wish I knew more about all this Iranian stuff.

[Robert Tulip]

A main focus of Acharya's work is to explain religion in natural terms, removing all vestiges of supernatural belief and explaining myth in scientific evolutionary terms.

Thank you for taking the trouble to try to explain. I appreciate this. My rejoinder is that I don't see how any modern scholar approaches the question any differently. Claude Levi-Strauss also sought to explain myth in scientific evolutionary terms, for example. I don't know of any serious critical scholar who believes real spiritual phenomena explain religious beliefs in societies.

If you exclude Christian theology from the category of modern scholarship we would have common ground. Christians make a distinction between faith and myth. Biblical studies as a discipline tends to assume the basic truth of the Gospel story regarding the existence of Jesus Christ as a historical individual. That is a very different method from what you call the ‘serious critical scholar’. But when it comes to Biblical studies, there is widespread acceptance of claims that are grounded more in faith than in evidence.

A big part of this method is analysis of how the ancients incorporated their observations of the sun, moon, planets and stars into their belief systems, Maybe the lights of heaven as Gods. Such analysis includes recognition that mythical beliefs contained a large measure of what we can call 'folk magic'. For example, if a Christian believes that Jesus Christ miraculously multiplied loaves and fishes, a scientist will naturally see this belief as an example of folk magic, because the literal claim is not physically possible. Similarly if an astrologer believes that Mercury retrograde causes electronic equipment to fail, absent any statistical evidence, we have an example of folk magic.

This is where I have a problem. It appears you are saying what I myself have discerned in Murdock's argument. She is beginning with a proposed answer and then looking for evidence to back it up. Ever since Popper it has been well understood that that is not the way to do science or approach any investigation scientifically. Such a method will nearly always produce what the investigator wants to see. That's not an attack on Murdock or you. I am trying to explain what the works on scientific method themselves explain.

The Hypothetico-deductive model provides the scientific method applied in astrotheology.
“The hypothetico-deductive model or method is a proposed description of scientific method. According to it, scientific inquiry proceeds by formulating a hypothesis in a form that could conceivably be falsified by a test on observable data.” Murdock’s hypothesis is that Jesus Christ as described in the New Testament is mythical, not historical, and that the myth evolved through the anthropification of a solar deity. This hypothesis could be falsified by providing evidence of the existence of Jesus Christ, or by providing other evidence disproving the Solar God theory.

“A test that could and does run contrary to predictions of the hypothesis is taken as a falsification of the hypothesis. A test that could but does not run contrary to the hypothesis corroborates the theory. It is then proposed to compare the explanatory value of competing hypotheses by testing how stringently they are corroborated by their predictions.” Testing the solar deity hypothesis for the evolution of the Christ Myth requires formulation of a coherent explanation for extant data. Abundant material corroborates origin of the Christ myth as solar, whereas all the material that casts doubt on this link between Jesus and the sun falls under strong suspicion of tampering in accordance with the stated intent of the orthodox church.

There are other fallacies in here as well. I don't think the evidence supports the idea that the miracle of the loaves and fishes was sourced from a belief in folk magic. There may have been community beliefs in folk magic that made such an account credible, but that's not explaining the origin of the story. Moreover, there is evidence that some Christians did not believe this story was literal at all but figurative. A parable.

You misread my statement. I did not say “the miracle of the loaves and fishes was sourced from a belief in folk magic.” I said “if a Christian believes that Jesus Christ miraculously multiplied loaves and fishes, a scientist will naturally see this belief as an example of folk magic.” My argument is that this miracle, the only one appearing in all four gospels, and twice in two of them, originated in the myth of Jesus Christ as a solar deity, and that the literal claim (the folk magic view) was a later corruption as the high Gnostic cosmic vision came under sustained assault by the ignorant forces of supernatural belief.

The argument you present is an either-or one, allowing only two possible answers, it seems. That comes across to me as a classic false dilemma. I'm not accusing you when I say that. I'm telling you how it comes across, so if I am mistaken you can explain.

The loaves and fishes miracle either happened or it did not. Obviously it did not happen, since it is not physically possible. There is no false dilemma here. Given that it is an imaginary event, the question arises of why it is so prominent in the Jesus story, and what it could possibly mean. My hypothesis is that it encodes the actual observation of precession of the equinox, with the loaves signifying Virgo and the fishes signifying Pisces, as the new cosmic equinoctial axis formed by the sun and moon at Easter from the time of Pilate.

The scientific question is what actually happened to give rise to the false belief. This is the sort of question answered by Acharya's focus on Christ as allegory for the sun. In the loaves and fishes example, we find allegory for the movement of the sun into the constellation of Pisces at the spring point at the time of Christ, a movement that Acharya correctly describes as seeing Christ as avatar of the Age of Pisces. I appreciate that ignorant idiots cannot understand the science here, but that common ignorance does not detract from the objective facts.

Again, it appears you are allowing only one possible answer to your scientific question. You seem to be saying it really happened as the believer thinks or it happened as a product of astro-beliefs and practices. Thanks for calling me and others "ignorant idiots". That really helps improve the tone of the discussion. It's the sort of language one expects from religious fundamentalists (according to research!) when they feel frustrated and they are not persuading others.

I am not criticising you here, I am just pointing out there are many people who do not understand precession, one of the three motions of the earth. If someone said ‘the equinox does not precess’, I accept it is possibly less than constructive to call them an ignorant idiot. But then the situation is just the same as for people who have historically insisted the earth is flat, or that the sun orbits the earth. I am yet to see any superior hypothesis to explain the prominence and content of the loaves and fishes miracle.

I only ever faulted Murdock for her unscientific methodology as explained above -- the fallacy of starting with the answer and then looking for all the evidence to support it (a method that can be found to justify many different and contradictory hypotheses); and the false dilemmas.

Science routinely progresses with the hypothetico-deductive model used by Murdock. This is how Neptune and dark matter were discovered. It is not a fallacy, it is a primary method to add to human knowledge. If any evidence contradicts the hypothesis, it may be considered falsified. And if the hypothesis explains other things that otherwise are unexplained, it has predictive power and coherence. Murdock’s hypothesis that Jesus is the Sun is elegant and parsimonious, fully in accord with scientific method, providing a scientific framework to explain the evolution and structure of the Christ Myth.

[neilgodfrey]

Since you have sidestepped my specific criticisms by stepping back into generalities, let's follow those generalities through. Let's apply the hypothetico-deductive model to the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. I use the steps as set out on the Wikipedia article you link to:

1. Use your experience: Consider the problem and try to make sense of it. Gather data and look for previous explanations. If this is a new problem to you, then move to step 2.

What are the previous explanations for this miracle? Are they satisfactory? Cogent? Simple? Both you and Murdock would be more persuasive if you could demonstrate that you have undertaken this first step. But in none of your arguments have I seen any in depth grappling with existing explanations.

2. Form a conjecture (hypothesis): When nothing else is yet known, try to state an explanation, to someone else, or to your notebook.

Is nothing else yet known about the origin of this miracle? Why are they inadequate as explanations?

3. Deduce predictions from the hypothesis: if you assume 2 is true, what consequences follow?

I don't see this in your or Murdock's arguments. What would we expect to find in the data if your hypothesis is true? What predictive power does your hypothesis have? I would expect to find numbers and images in the miracle story directly pointing to astrological phenomena known or understood in that day. I mean, I would expect the numbers to be clearly making astrological sense of the images in the story. All numbers and images would be related in an explanatory way. That is, the images would be explained astrologically (or astronomically) by the numbers and vice versa. Is that not a fair prediction to expect of your hypothesis?

4. Test (or Experiment): Look for evidence (observations) that conflict with these predictions in order to disprove 2. It is a logical error to seek 3 directly as proof of 2. This formal fallacy is called affirming the consequent.

I never see this step followed by you or Murdock. I always see the logical error warned against here. That was the point of my comment to which you were responding. It appears by your own standard of the hypothetico-deductive model that your methods are not scientific and your conclusions are the result of the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

[andrewcriddle]

..........................
Beck then states:

Bull sacrifice was central to the great feast of Mithra, the Mithragan/Mithrakana, celebrated by Zoroastrians to this day as the Mihragan (see Boyce 1975b), and there are interesting resonances of the tauroctony in its rituals (e.g. the offering of a portion to a dog).

Which is very interesting, and I have learned something. But can it be that central if the Encyclopedia Iranica article doesn't refer to it? We need more info. The reference is not very helpful; I wonder what work by Boyce is referred to? Any idea what it is? I might try and get hold of it this week if we can work it out.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

I think the reference is to Mary Boyce A History of Zoroastrianism: The Early Period
See Zoroastrianism: Pagan Cult

The term Mithrakana seems more frequent than Mithragan/Mithragen

One problem is that we have limited information as to how the feast of Mithrakana was celebrated in ancient times. Modern practice may not be a safe guide.
See for example Traditions of the Magi by Albert De Jong.

Andrew Criddle

I think Beck's claim

Bull sacrifice was central to the great feast of Mithra, the Mithragan/Mithrakana, celebrated by Zoroastrians to this day as the Mihragan (see Boyce 1975b)

Is a misunderstanding of what Boyce actually claimed.

The fundamental article is Boyce Mihragan which states

In Zoroastrian observance the bull sacrifice has an especial symbolism since according to ancient myth all animate life upon earth except for man himself sprang from one original creature the Uniquely Created Bull. But since this is so any beneficent animal may ritually represent the bull and no especial ritual significance appears to have attached to the bull sacrifice as such although this was often made in the past simply as a noble and costly offering...The standard offering now in Persia at Mihragan is that of a sheep or goat.

IE Mihragan involves a blood sacrifice to Mitra which represents the cosmic bull but not usually the sacrifice ot a literal bull.

Andrew Criddle

[Roger Pearse]

A very interesting article by Boyce indeed - thank you. I'm not sure how much distance there is between the two positions, but some, clearly.

[bcedaifu]

IE Mihragan involves a blood sacrifice to Mitra which represents the cosmic bull but not usually the sacrifice ot a literal bull.

Ok, Andrew, I am buying your explanation. I don't know how we can deduce whether or not, in ancient times, an actual, physical bull was wasted. It would seem illogical, but then, religion?

My question relates to Mark 14:24-25, which deals with this same subject of sacrifice, blood, and cosmic versus literal interpretation.
http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/manus ... omSlider=0

a. Jesus first drinks from the cup, (verse 23), then explains that the substance, just consumed, represents the blood of the covenant. ("new" covenant in Paul, and in later editions of Mark). Seems like they just drank blood, but then, in verse 25, we shift to the cosmic domain, with Jesus stating that he would no longer drink wine until he reached heaven, but, ?
b. why would he be drinking anything in heaven?
c. Which came first, the notion of the blood sacrifice, or the drinking of whatever, blood or wine. Does this tradition go back to Zoroastrianism, or something even earlier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization ?

I think it is fascinating to compare that verse of Mark in Codex Sinaiticus with this one, from Paul's letter 1Corinthians 11:25
ωϲαυτωϲ και το ποτηριον μετα το διπνηϲαι λεγω τουτο το ποτηρι ον η καινη δια θηκη εϲτιν εν τω εμω αιματι τουτο ποιειτε ο ϲακιϲ εαν πινη τε ειϲ την εμην αναμνηϲιν

Notice the two features which make this particular passage so interesting. Paul cleans up the ambiguity in Mark, by explicitly writing that the cup does contain blood, and Paul, but not Mark, claims that this pledge (covenant) is "new", something overlooked by Mark.

Revision, revision. So, did the ancient Zoroastrian texts, extant today, also get "cleaned up"? Perhaps our difficulty understanding whether or not the sacrifice of the bull was literal versus cosmic, is related to millenia of editorial revision?

[beowulf]

I have read Roger Pearse's page on Mithras that Stephan helpfully linked. Roger is obviously a conscientious and careful scholar. However, he is too conservative. There is great scope for a fascinating and informative discussion about the relation between Mithraism and Christianity in view of their abundant astral symbolism, including into the Masonic links that were raised in this thread. I present my own views on Mithraism in my review of David Ulansey's book.

In all this material, I consider that conservative academics are infected by a western bias, a failure and refusal to see the extent of links with the east. This is something well documented by Martin Bernal in Black Athena, and of course is a central theme in Murdock's work. In the case of Mithras as the invincible sun, the attempts to separate this from the eastern solar figure Mithra look to be contorted by some hidden agenda, probably Christian literalism.

I found Roger's summary of the lion-headed figure particularly valuable. As I mention in my review of Ulansey's Mithras book, I see this figure as symbolising precession of the equinox, as Carl Jung implied in his book Aion. The richness of the man-lion with eagle wings encoiled by a snake harks to the four living creatures of Ezekiel and Revelation, and the symbols of the four evangelists, as the four cardinal stars of the Age of Taurus. Here we see the secret snake on a pole described by Moses, derived from the snake in the tree in Paradise, and leading to Christ as the snake on the pole in John 3. A deeply coherent esoteric stellar mystery tradition is encoded in this material, based on accurate and ancient observation of the sky.

The central icon of Mithraism, known as the Tauroctony,

http://www.amazon.com/review/RL9ROCWAGPOUP


The central theme is the sacrificial meal and the rest is just after-dinner pleasantries. The central theme in Mithraism is Tauroctony and in the Christian cult is ‘lamboctony’ as advertised by the Crucifix.


The Mithras cult enjoyed tauroctony (the killing of the bull) and the Christian cult chose a lamb instead ( lamboctony). The Mithras cult drank the blood and ate the flesh of the sacrificial bull and the catholic cult, daring as they are, chose to drink the blood and eat the flesh of a human lamb