Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

neilgodfrey wrote: I still have no idea what Atwill has to do with any of this.

Atwill is simply the most prominent advocate of the Caesar-Christ idea, which you say you find just as plausible as the astral allegory I argue for.

neilgodfrey wrote:
Your "precision and detail" is just as meaningful, just as valid, just as subjective, just as unverifiable as the precision and detail I have seen applied by Mormons, JW's, the rest.

That is a stupid comment, based on deliberately ignoring everything I say. There is a basic difference between natural science and supernatural religion. The work I am doing rests entirely within the paradigm of natural science, which has falsified supernatural religion. The precession is completely verifiable and absolutely true, as explained in mechanistic detail by Newton. Precession was known by ancient astronomers as the star clock of the earth. That provides the kernel upon which we can analyse the texts methodically to explore how this true seed bore fruit in their ideas.

neilgodfrey wrote: Why do you ignore my earlier argument that there is no incompatibility [of Caesaro-Christism] with New Testament "ethics"?

You are defending Caesaro-Christism. I simply agree with Earl Doherty, Richard Carrier, Acharya S, and overwhelming consensus, that your compatibilist claim here is wrong. But no similar level of refutation has been applied to an astral Gnostic reading of the Bible.

neilgodfrey wrote: (I'm not sure what you mean by "Biblical intent" -- the Bible is a collection of a lot of books.)

My view is that while there are conflicting ethical agendas within the Bible, what I describe as Biblical intent is the prophetic astral vision of the Gnostic authors such as Mark. This vision is in continuity with the Old Testament prophetic tradition of a hope for divine justice, but stands in conflict with the imperial use of religion by kings such as Josiah.

neilgodfrey wrote: Many scholarly works speak of the NT ethics and values as part and parcel of the society of the day.

And many also explore the massive conflict between Gospel ethics and the way of the world. The Bible proclaims a radical incompatibility between the narrow path of salvation arising from knowledge of God and the broad path of destruction produced by the values of the world. A nihilistic reduction of Biblical ethics to those of their broader society is just Caesarist error.

Robert Tulip wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote:Your "precision and detail" is just as meaningful, just as valid, just as subjective, just as unverifiable as the precision and detail I have seen applied by Mormons, JW's, the rest.

That is a stupid comment, based on deliberately ignoring everything I say. There is a basic difference between natural science and supernatural religion. The work I am doing rests entirely within the paradigm of natural science, which has falsified supernatural religion.

Aw gee, that's a bit strong, isn't it, Robert? I could just as easily say you are ignoring all of my arguments. You certainly stubbornly refuse to do as I suggest to ensure me you do understand my criticism and attempt to rephrase my view in your own words. Even JWs and Mormons all argue that the foundations of their faith can be found in empirical evidence -- just like you do. Are you interested in discussing this or will you just get cranky and kick me for saying it?

Robert Tulip wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote: Why do you ignore my earlier argument that there is no incompatibility [of Caesaro-Christism] with New Testament "ethics"?

You are defending Caesaro-Christism. I simply agree with Earl Doherty, Richard Carrier, Acharya S, and overwhelming consensus, that your compatibilist claim here is wrong. But no similar level of refutation has been applied to an astral Gnostic reading of the Bible.

Gee you're at it again, Robert, substituting your own interpretation of what I way for my own meaning. Please do stop doing that. Can you actually repeat what my point was? Can you show me a single line where Earl Doherty or Richard Carrier contradict or disagree with my point? I don't believe they do and if you think they do I can only ask you to re-read what I said. It was nothing controversial among the scholarly literature. It is found throughout the books and articles by New Testament scholars. The Bible reflects the values of the day. Stoicism, Pietas, and it is biblical scholarship that has alerted me to the transfer of the imperial model to ancient religions, including Christianity.

You really don't like to entertain any idea that threatens your religion, do you.

neilgodfrey wrote: [Regarding an alleged 'social contract' in the Bible,] Jeremiah 7:3, is entirely one-sided. God alone has all the power and lays out the terms. The other party has no rights and no say in the matter. They are dictated to by God: xenophobes, money-lenders, landlords, robbers are told to refrain from their oppressive activities, and baal and other worshipers are ordered to change their religion to proto-Judaism. The whole community is threatened with death and exile if the criminal element does not desist and if everybody does not convert to "the one true religion".

Why you interpret this as one-sided is unclear. God instructs Israel through Jeremiah to behave ethically by exercising respect and fellowship instead of allowing lawless conduct. God is suzerain for the contract, which outlines rights and duties of the people. It is absurd to say that people have no say, since free will permits sin. The point is that a sinful society is on a path to destruction. Concepts of sin have changed over the centuries, but this central notion of respect for human dignity is an abiding theme, arising in ancient covenant doctrine as much as in the secularised versions of the social contract in Locke and Rousseau.

neilgodfrey wrote: The obligation then falls to the rulers to introduce a zero-tolerance policy to all criminal activity and freedom of worship. Some might well say that what is envisaged is comparable to a Taliban or Wahibi state. This is especially so when we recall the punishments for crime and disobedience to God listed in other parts of the OT.

You say some silly things Neil. It is ridiculous to compare Jeremiah’s proto-Christian vision of a compassionate God, opposing xenophobia, murder and theft, to Saudi Arabia and the Taliban with their anti-scientific intolerance. The prophetic social contract seen in Jeremiah developed into the Christian idea of the Last Judgement at Matthew 25, where performance of works of mercy is the sole criterion of salvation.

neilgodfrey wrote: There is no contract entered into here. This is an outright unilateral set of demands by God who threatens to ethnically cleanse the land if his tribe does not obey him.

I don’t get why you don’t see the contract. When people live ethically they obtain political security. I imagine you are expressing some cynical sentiments about how the Old Testament has been used conventionally. My view is that this meaning of prophetic ethics in terms of political security illustrates a thread of messianic intent running through the Bible that is compatible with modern social contract theory.

neilgodfrey wrote: This God claims the moral high-ground because, like all great kings of the Near East in those days, he boasts how he protects the poor, delivers justice to all, punishes the cruel, etc. He is their Saviour, just like human kings claimed to be.

There is a rather jarring disjunction between Jeremiah 7:5 "don't oppress the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow, and don't shed innocent blood in this place” and the boasting of kings. The messianic theme of last as first presents a transformative vision against the claims of kings to dispense divine justice. It is all about how what you ignore will save you, a 'stone the builder refused' theme that motivates the frustration Jesus expresses in the loaves and fishes story in terms of how the disciples ignore the real meaning.

neilgodfrey wrote: The rulers of Israel have no choice. The people of the land under the rulers have no choice. If the rulers of the land do not do the right thing then the people are not given any permission to overthrow them or set up their own alternative rulers and government. There is non social contract at all.

A right to rebel may be a modern addition to the theory of social contract, but it is not necessarily essential. The messianic contract in the Bible presents a vision of what people have to do to be reconciled with God, and a level of caution about how to apply that vision in political terms. The deal is that people must live ethically to be saved. A social contract of mutual respect and fellowship is strongly implicit in this assertion of a divine deal. People have the choice to live unethically, breaking the contract, and producing social division and conflict and destruction.

neilgodfrey wrote: To see here the notion of "social contract" is to read modern concepts anachronistically into the text. The text needs to be studied in the context of its own time. In the time of the text kings did claim to be saviours who protected the poor and demanded absolute obedience and even "love" in return -- love meaning faithfulness and obedience and payment of tribute and willingness to fight and die for their ruler. Little changes by the time we later come to the Roman era and the writings of the early Christians.

You seem to have accepted a very inaccurate and cynical misreading of the Bible. No anachronism is needed to see a social contract in the prophetic messianic ideas of the Bible. These messianic ideas are a spur to the political world to assess how its theories of security and stability may be grounded in a deeper ethical vision. The Gospels place political stability squarely upon the foundation of social contract. Matthew 25:37-40 says “'Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you; or thirsty, and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger, and take you in; or naked, and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?' "The King will answer them, 'Most assuredly I tell you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” This text, the Last Judgment, places social inclusion at the core of political stability. Those who kings exclude as beneath their dignity are made central for the king of kings.

neilgodfrey wrote:I should add to the above the clarification that no responsibilities are imposed upon God at all. God promises to refrain from ethnic cleansing if his tribe obeys him. This is the same ethic as that of the Godfather -- he will protect those who submit to him and pay their dues and do as they are told. The remainder of the story even shows that God is not bound in any way to keep his promises or to behave consistently. It is always the obligation of his tribe to render total obedience and never speak ill of him even though his ways are not always understood or do not even seem just by their standards.

The cynicism of a comparison between God and a mafia boss is wrongheaded. In the New Testament and the prophetic tradition, God’s interest is the rights of the poor. Salvation comes through the centrality of the excluded, not through a capricious incomprehensible deity. We see that contractual focus on inclusion already in the Jeremiah passage under discussion here, and also in stories such as Dives and Lazarus, with the message that oppression of the poor leads to hell.

Schemers in church politics abuse Biblical teachings for their secular interests, including within the Bible itself. But Jesus Christ is presented as advocating a higher ethical vision, in which God is consistent and good, steadfast and true, opposed to hypocrisy and lies. Mindless conformity and stifling of dissent is not compatible with major themes in the Gospels, such as the statement by Christ to Pilate that he had come into the world to bear witness to the truth. And the idea that any Caesarist could have had Pilate reply ‘what is truth?’ is among the simplest contradictions for the idea that Jesus Christ was invented by Roman interests.

Robert Tulip wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote: [Regarding an alleged 'social contract' in the Bible,] Jeremiah 7:3, is entirely one-sided. God alone has all the power and lays out the terms. The other party has no rights and no say in the matter. They are dictated to by God: xenophobes, money-lenders, landlords, robbers are told to refrain from their oppressive activities, and baal and other worshipers are ordered to change their religion to proto-Judaism. The whole community is threatened with death and exile if the criminal element does not desist and if everybody does not convert to "the one true religion".

Why you interpret this as one-sided is unclear. God instructs Israel through Jeremiah to behave ethically by exercising respect and fellowship instead of allowing lawless conduct. God is suzerain for the contract, which outlines rights and duties of the people. It is absurd to say that people have no say, since free will permits sin. The point is that a sinful society is on a path to destruction. Concepts of sin have changed over the centuries, but this central notion of respect for human dignity is an abiding theme, arising in ancient covenant doctrine as much as in the secularised versions of the social contract in Locke and Rousseau.

neilgodfrey wrote: The obligation then falls to the rulers to introduce a zero-tolerance policy to all criminal activity and freedom of worship. Some might well say that what is envisaged is comparable to a Taliban or Wahibi state. This is especially so when we recall the punishments for crime and disobedience to God listed in other parts of the OT.

You say some silly things Neil. It is ridiculous to compare Jeremiah’s proto-Christian vision of a compassionate God, opposing xenophobia, murder and theft, to Saudi Arabia and the Taliban with their anti-scientific intolerance. The prophetic social contract seen in Jeremiah developed into the Christian idea of the Last Judgement at Matthew 25, where performance of works of mercy is the sole criterion of salvation.

neilgodfrey wrote: There is no contract entered into here. This is an outright unilateral set of demands by God who threatens to ethnically cleanse the land if his tribe does not obey him.

I don’t get why you don’t see the contract. When people live ethically they obtain political security. I imagine you are expressing some cynical sentiments about how the Old Testament has been used conventionally. My view is that this meaning of prophetic ethics in terms of political security illustrates a thread of messianic intent running through the Bible that is compatible with modern social contract theory.

neilgodfrey wrote: This God claims the moral high-ground because, like all great kings of the Near East in those days, he boasts how he protects the poor, delivers justice to all, punishes the cruel, etc. He is their Saviour, just like human kings claimed to be.

There is a rather jarring disjunction between Jeremiah 7:5 "don't oppress the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow, and don't shed innocent blood in this place” and the boasting of kings. The messianic theme of last as first presents a transformative vision against the claims of kings to dispense divine justice. It is all about how what you ignore will save you, a 'stone the builder refused' theme that motivates the frustration Jesus expresses in the loaves and fishes story in terms of how the disciples ignore the real meaning.

neilgodfrey wrote: The rulers of Israel have no choice. The people of the land under the rulers have no choice. If the rulers of the land do not do the right thing then the people are not given any permission to overthrow them or set up their own alternative rulers and government. There is non social contract at all.

A right to rebel may be a modern addition to the theory of social contract, but it is not necessarily essential. The messianic contract in the Bible presents a vision of what people have to do to be reconciled with God, and a level of caution about how to apply that vision in political terms. The deal is that people must live ethically to be saved. A social contract of mutual respect and fellowship is strongly implicit in this assertion of a divine deal. People have the choice to live unethically, breaking the contract, and producing social division and conflict and destruction.

neilgodfrey wrote: To see here the notion of "social contract" is to read modern concepts anachronistically into the text. The text needs to be studied in the context of its own time. In the time of the text kings did claim to be saviours who protected the poor and demanded absolute obedience and even "love" in return -- love meaning faithfulness and obedience and payment of tribute and willingness to fight and die for their ruler. Little changes by the time we later come to the Roman era and the writings of the early Christians.

You seem to have accepted a very inaccurate and cynical misreading of the Bible. No anachronism is needed to see a social contract in the prophetic messianic ideas of the Bible. These messianic ideas are a spur to the political world to assess how its theories of security and stability may be grounded in a deeper ethical vision. The Gospels place political stability squarely upon the foundation of social contract. Matthew 25:37-40 says “'Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you; or thirsty, and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger, and take you in; or naked, and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?' "The King will answer them, 'Most assuredly I tell you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” This text, the Last Judgment, places social inclusion at the core of political stability. Those who kings exclude as beneath their dignity are made central for the king of kings.

neilgodfrey wrote:I should add to the above the clarification that no responsibilities are imposed upon God at all. God promises to refrain from ethnic cleansing if his tribe obeys him. This is the same ethic as that of the Godfather -- he will protect those who submit to him and pay their dues and do as they are told. The remainder of the story even shows that God is not bound in any way to keep his promises or to behave consistently. It is always the obligation of his tribe to render total obedience and never speak ill of him even though his ways are not always understood or do not even seem just by their standards.

The cynicism of a comparison between God and a mafia boss is wrongheaded. In the New Testament and the prophetic tradition, God’s interest is the rights of the poor. Salvation comes through the centrality of the excluded, not through a capricious incomprehensible deity. We see that contractual focus on inclusion already in the Jeremiah passage under discussion here, and also in stories such as Dives and Lazarus, with the message that oppression of the poor leads to hell.

Schemers in church politics abuse Biblical teachings for their secular interests, including within the Bible itself. But Jesus Christ is presented as advocating a higher ethical vision, in which God is consistent and good, steadfast and true, opposed to hypocrisy and lies. Mindless conformity and stifling of dissent is not compatible with major themes in the Gospels, such as the statement by Christ to Pilate that he had come into the world to bear witness to the truth. And the idea that any Caesarist could have had Pilate reply ‘what is truth?’ is among the simplest contradictions for the idea that Jesus Christ was invented by Roman interests.

What rights does God give the other party? None. Being free to sin is the basis of making a contract in the first place. It's not a right that the so-called "contract" confers upon the people. You seem to have very fuzzy ideas of what a contract is.

Why don't you just pause a moment when you see an idea you've never encountered before and think about it? Instead of a knee-jerk "that's silly" -- especially after I have cited some of the scholars and their works that form the basis of what I am saying -- allow yourself a moment to consider you might still have room to learn some new things.

All you ever do is repeat your own sermons again and again. Why not actually demonstrate that you understand what it is you are arguing against and actually sum up in your own words what it is you believe to be my criticism of your views? I must have asked you to do that about fifty times by now.

I have spent a long time trying to understand your perspective and am grappling with it in some depth as I get time -- e.g. your so-called "textual analysis" of Mark 6 -- but you just shout back every time and say your religion is the one true one because it is based on scientific facts as surely as a religionist shouts his or her religion is true because it is based on verifiable and demonstrable historical facts. So what if the history or science is true? It's your next leap from that position that removes you from all scientific and scholarly endeavours.

Does Murdock herself support your views? To what extent does she differ?

neilgodfrey wrote:Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons all argue that the foundations of their faith can be found in empirical evidence -- just like you do.

That comparison of what I have presented to Mormon and JW thinking is breathtaking in its ignorance. Critiques of Mormonism, such as the great book by David FitzGerald, The Complete Heretic's Guide to Western Religion: The Mormons, show how Joseph Smith is exposed as a liar, a fraud and a charlatan. The absence of empirical evidence for Mormonism is just comical, producing the fascinating sociological question of why people believe things that are not true, and on such an immense and influential scale. It is extremely easy to show that claims in the Book of Mormon are historically false. That is falsifiability at work. But I am not making false claims. As I have said repeatedly, I am looking at how the writers of the New Testament grounded their ideas in what they could actually see.

For Neil Godfrey to compare me to Mormons, in a context where I argue that my view explains evidence better than traditional readings, is vacuous, simply showing a slapdash failure of comprehension and existence of psychological blockages on his part.

Neil tosses out a few vague parallels with Elisha, similar to this reading https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/li ... ishes.html as if that exhausts the meaning of the loaves and fishes parable, but then signally avoids any direct analysis of the astral reading I have presented.

Some good questions arise:
Did Orthodoxy evolve from Gnosticism or vice versa?
How does Gnostic and Christian thought connect to the Hermetic idea ‘as above so below’?
Why was Gnostic literature so deliberately and successfully targeted for obliteration?
Did the Christian church seek to conceal its real origins in mystery religion?
How do we account for the intense interest in astronomy within ancient religion?
Is the Messianic Secret that Jesus Christ was imagined as a Gnostic mediator?

The theory I have presented here provides clear and simple answers to such questions, in strong alignment with scholarly work such as The Jesus Mysteries by Freke and Gandy, various works by Elaine Pagels, Jesus Neither God Nor Man by Earl Doherty, and of course the writings of Acharya S. Neil Godfrey simply ignores all that, and instead suggests some vague errors of method. So I can see what Neil’s problem is, it is the old heresiologist method of “I can sniff them a mile off” as he explained at http://vridar.org/2012/10/09/falling-out/. Feeling embarrassed at how he wasted so much of his life in a stupid cult, Neil feels emboldened to imagine cults where none exist, methodologically putting out his own eyes such is his fear of seeing something real.

The flabbergasting nature of Neil's so-called method is illustrated in the following comment.

neilgodfrey wrote: Thompson ... has alerted us to many examples of passages in ancient Near Eastern culture that demonstrate the Biblical (New Testament) motifs are derived from this-worldly political and ethical concepts (not astrotheology): http://vridar.org/2010/05/22/jesus-a-sa ... d-babylon/

Now I have read that link, and unsurprisingly it abjectly fails to do the ‘this-worldly political and ethical’ work claimed of it by Neil. His first example: “Celebrating the accession of Ramses IV to the throne in 1166 bc, we find the inscription “Oh Happy Day! Heaven and earth are in joy.” Neil claims that Thompson “has alerted us” that such sources are “this worldly… not astrotheology”. The absurdity of Neil’s claim here descends into farce. Ramses IV was the son of Ramses III who built one of the greatest astrotheological monuments in the world, the Temple of Khonsu at Karnak. It is worth reading The Dawn of Astronomy by Norman Lockyer to get a solid scholarly appreciation of the astral religion of the Ramses family. Using Ramses IV to imply that Egyptian theology of the New Kingdom lacked astral context and is purely this-worldly may have seemed a neat rhetorical trick at the time Neil wrote his comment about Thompson, but does not really engage with anything.

This example is as though Neil Godfrey recalled he had read something good by Thompson, and just vaguely pulled it out to give a veneer of reason to what is a primarily emotional argument against astrotheology.

Note: Here is a useful table comparing the six tellings of the loaves and fishes

Robert Tulip wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote: The obligation then falls to the rulers to introduce a zero-tolerance policy to all criminal activity and freedom of worship. Some might well say that what is envisaged is comparable to a Taliban or Wahibi state. This is especially so when we recall the punishments for crime and disobedience to God listed in other parts of the OT.

You say some silly things Neil. It is ridiculous to compare Jeremiah’s proto-Christian vision of a compassionate God, opposing xenophobia, murder and theft, to Saudi Arabia and the Taliban with their anti-scientific intolerance.

I love your openness to different perspectives, Robert. I also love your anachronistic inclusion of "anti-scientific intolerance" -- actually the Taliban are very big on the sciences, engineering and technology, as you ought to know.

But what else do I compare with a pure state based on God's law that stones adulterers and those who dabble with the occult and other religious preferences (I don't think you would have survived with your religious deviations, Robert) and those who pick up sticks on the sabbath and homosexuals and enforces slavery for debts and bodily mutilation of slaves and forces raped girls to marry their rapists, and requires the killing or enslavement of those of the wrong race? Not comparable to a Taliban or Wahibi society?

You seem to have a modern Protestant dream world vision of Jeremiah's peace that is in reality xenophobic and religiously intolerant society. Words like "peace" and "love" and "joy" nearly always have two meanings for the faithful as you surely know.

Robert Tulip wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote:Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons all argue that the foundations of their faith can be found in empirical evidence -- just like you do.

That comparison of what I have presented to Mormon and JW thinking is breathtaking in its ignorance. . . .
For Neil Godfrey to compare me to Mormons, in a context where I argue that my view explains evidence better than traditional readings, is vacuous, simply showing a slapdash failure of comprehension and existence of psychological blockages on his part.

Well I guess that makes it unnecessary for you to bother to attempt any dialogue with a reasoned response to what I actually said.

Robert Tulip wrote: Neil tosses out a few vague parallels with Elisha, similar to this reading https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/li ... ishes.html as if that exhausts the meaning of the loaves and fishes parable, but then signally avoids any direct analysis of the astral reading I have presented.

Oi, Robert, I'm reading this, too. Are you not talking to me? Or are you choosing to ignore my points and shout to the crowd what an idiot you think I am? I guess that also saves you having to actually deal with what I really wrote.

Robert Tulip wrote:Some good questions arise:
Did Orthodoxy evolve from Gnosticism or vice versa?
How does Gnostic and Christian thought connect to the Hermetic idea ‘as above so below’?
Why was Gnostic literature so deliberately and successfully targeted for obliteration?
Did the Christian church seek to conceal its real origins in mystery religion?
How do we account for the intense interest in astronomy within ancient religion?
Is the Messianic Secret that Jesus Christ was imagined as a Gnostic mediator?

Hang on, you have simply ignored my criticism. Was it too hard to answer? Would you rather we turn to these questions instead?

Robert Tulip wrote:The theory I have presented here provides clear and simple answers to such questions, in strong alignment with scholarly work such as The Jesus Mysteries by Freke and Gandy, various works by Elaine Pagels, Jesus Neither God Nor Man by Earl Doherty, and of course the writings of Acharya S.

Baloney. Where does your work align with Doherty's or even Pagels'? Quote the passages. Or maybe you have a very broad interpretation of the word "align".

Of course if anyone doesn't agree with the clarity and simplicity of your answers because they fail to align with valid logic and analysis then they are stubborn and if they agree they are converts, right?

Robert Tulip wrote: Neil Godfrey simply ignores all that, and instead suggests some vague errors of method. So I can see what Neil’s problem is, it is the old heresiologist method of “I can sniff them a mile off” as he explained at http://vridar.org/2012/10/09/falling-out/. Feeling embarrassed at how he wasted so much of his life in a stupid cult, Neil feels emboldened to imagine cults where none exist, methodologically putting out his own eyes such is his fear of seeing something real.

Ooh, now we are getting into the really savage ad hom, aren't we. And the astonishing mind-reading, too. Robert, why don't you for once just attempt to answer the criticism? First of all, paraphrase my criticism to demonstrate you understand it then rebut it. You never never ever do that though I have asked you now a hundred and fifty times to do so.

Robert Tulip wrote: The flabbergasting nature of Neil's so-called method is illustrated in the following comment.

neilgodfrey wrote: Thompson ... has alerted us to many examples of passages in ancient Near Eastern culture that demonstrate the Biblical (New Testament) motifs are derived from this-worldly political and ethical concepts (not astrotheology): http://vridar.org/2010/05/22/jesus-a-sa ... d-babylon/

Now I have read that link, and unsurprisingly it abjectly fails to do the ‘this-worldly political and ethical’ work claimed of it by Neil. His first example: “Celebrating the accession of Ramses IV to the throne in 1166 bc, we find the inscription “Oh Happy Day! Heaven and earth are in joy.” Neil claims that Thompson “has alerted us” that such sources are “this worldly… not astrotheology”. The absurdity of Neil’s claim here descends into farce. Ramses IV was the son of Ramses III who built one of the greatest astrotheological monuments in the world, the Temple of Khonsu at Karnak. It is worth reading The Dawn of Astronomy by Norman Lockyer to get a solid scholarly appreciation of the astral religion of the Ramses family. Using Ramses IV to imply that Egyptian theology of the New Kingdom lacked astral context and is purely this-worldly may have seemed a neat rhetorical trick at the time Neil wrote his comment about Thompson, but does not really engage with anything.

This example is as though Neil Godfrey recalled he had read something good by Thompson, and just vaguely pulled it out to give a veneer of reason to what is a primarily emotional argument against astrotheology.

Oh come on Robert, that's not fair at all. You take just one quote from a post that has quite a few and all point to a scholarly work that you said (iirc) that you would even be prepared to read for yourself one day.

Instead of just saying how stupid everything I say is -- and directing your declamations to the crowd -- why not come and let us reason together? Like the way God likes it.

I have responded to what you call a "close textual analysis" of Mark 6 and I believe I demonstrated that it is neither a close analysis nor a textual analysis of Mark 6.

Is all this raving and insulting and shouting a lot of stuff to everyone else about me the best you can do by way of argument?

Robert, if you would just calm down and try to register a little of what I actually write here you would be more likely to realize that what I've been trying to point out to you is that your assumptions about the various books of the Bible are anachronistic. They are primarily informed of sentimental or romantic notions of heavenly peace and joy etc for the good and enlightenment for the pious, etc. Scholarship has moved on and realized that it won't do to interpret the NT or the OT through the assumptions of modern religious sentiments. They are products of their day and necessarily reflect the values and concepts of their day.

Religionists are always trying to tell us how relevant the Bible is today -- as they do in every age -- and that means they interpret according to the values and ideals of their own age. It is easy to lose sight of exactly what "love" meant in treaty obligations in the OT and even in the NT when it comes to master-slave relationships. You are missing all of this. You are under informed of the current literature on all of this.

And my points about method and logic are attempts to pin you down with something less nebulous than your series of posts on Mark 6. You have simply not done any textual analysis at all as I tried to show you. None at all.

I would prefer it if you could respond with courtesy and rationality and not address the others to tell them how stupid and psychologically wanting I am for everything I have said.

neilgodfrey wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:The phrase “looking up to heaven” is a strong indication of the astral meaning of the story.

Looking up to heaven has no astral associations anywhere in Mark. They are all imported into the text by the interpreter. The heaven in the text is the place of God and original home of the holy spirit (Mark 1). The gospel itself leads readers to see heaven as the place of God and here the natural reading is to picture Jesus addressing God. The astral meaning is quite arbitrary and without any support in the text itself.

Again, that is just wrong. Looking to the text you cite, Mark 1, we find the mention of heaven at verse 10: “Jesus ... saw the heavens parting... A voice came out of the sky, "You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."”

Here heaven is explicitly connected by God to the sky, contrary to the assertion of no astral meaning. The vision by Christ of the heavens parting is presented as a physical sight, contrary to the imagined heaven as abode of God unconnected to what we can see. Allegorically, the whole discussion of the baptism by John in the River Jordan and the theme of wilderness matches directly to an astral reading, with heaven as the sky, the wilderness as the fallen world of human life sundered from grace, and the River Jordan as the constellation Eridanus, the river in the sky, etymologically linked to Jordan. Jesus and John stand as motifs for the sun at the winter and summer solstices respectively, as marked by their feast days after the dates when the sun begins to ascend and descend in its annual path.

The astral meaning of heaven is in my view the original Gnostic understanding, but is concealed throughout the Bible due to its clash with the Jewish theory that God is beyond the universe. Astral meaning is pantheistic, seeing the divine within nature, and is compatible with science, whereas supernatural theories are not. The widespread links between Gods and the visible sky in ancient mythology invites us to explore how this motif has been neglected.

Let me explain again the coherent theoretical basis of my reading here. Christology seeks to explain how Jesus Christ connects earth and heaven. Christian dogma interprets heaven as the supernatural abode of the afterlife, but the Platonic-Gnostic meaning of heaven was natural, revealed in the eternally unchanging stars of the sky. This enlightened understanding was corrupted and lost over the centuries of Christendom.

A valid method to find and restore the original meaning has to begin by assessing how the implausible literal stories may be read as allegory. Seeing the main intent of Biblical allegory as cosmic points to a coherent enlightened vision of reality at the basis of the Christ myth. This cosmic vision, aligned with the basic idea of Christology of seeing Christ as imagined mediator between the temporal world of appearance and the eternal truth of being, finds expression in the study of ancient astronomy. This imagination is not mine, but appears in the ancient ideas.

Plato is a primary source for the connection between astronomy and theology. He indicates in the Timaeus that the connection between what he calls the same and the different, being and becoming, is manifest in the Chi Rho X intersection formed by the eternal Milky Way and the changing path of the zodiac path of the sun and planets (or possibly the celestial equator). The paths of the galaxy and the zodiac, known as colures or heavenly circles, also intersect a third circle or colure formed by the celestial equator, and can still be seen in the same way on any clear dark night.

Ancient astronomy saw these colures as forming the seven heavens of the planets and the eighth heaven of the fixed stars, imagined as crystalline spheres. The shifting of the eighth heaven is seen in the precession of the equinoxes, the gradual movement of the equatorial point along the zodiac, and in the paths of the celestial poles. This movement, termed by Copernicus the third motion of the earth after the day and the year, was measured in ancient times, but is so difficult to understand that knowledge of it was largely lost within orthodox faith. But the Gnostic originators of Christianity saw precession as marking the aeons of time, and constructed the theory of Christ as mediator against this true celestial observation. Stories such as the loaves and fishes make complete sense against this scientific ethical framework.

A further astral meaning of heaven in Mark is in Chapter 13:24-25: "in those days, after that oppression, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken." As well as associating knowledge of the shift of ages with eclipses, following the astronomer Hipparchus, Mark here explicitly links the shaking of the heavenly powers with the falling of stars.

neilgodfrey wrote:That makes more sense and answers some of my questions. But the new question arises: how do we decide what elements of the plots qualify for transposition? Again, here we encounter the question of selectivity, of excerpts -- a subjective choice.

If I understand the question correctly, practically all, or almost all. Carotta shows it in his German PDF,…

http://www.carotta.de/subseite/texte/wj ... ar1999.pdf

…especially in the "Synopsis" section.