In a pile of pyrites a few rhinestones caught my attention:
Yes they would. There’d be a lot fewer of them, but they’d still be called Christians. They were called Christians before Constantine had his alleged vision.
We aren’t using the Jewish calendar now, so we wouldn’t be using the Zoroastrian calendar under your counter-factual. We would most likely be using the Gregorian calendar under a different name.
Constantine having had a different alleged vision would not make the slightest difference to Paul’s alleged vision more than two centuries earlier. And don’t try to claim that Eusebius et al. would invent different histories, because we have manuscripts of Paul’s letters that are older than that.
If Biblical authors wanted to write about sun worship, they could have written about sun worship. There was no need to be coy. The Egyptians managed it with Ra
They did write about sun worship: και ανατελει υμιν τοις φοβουμεωοις το ονομα μου ηλιος δικαινσυης (sun of righteousness) και ιασις εν ταις πτερυξιν αυτου, και εξελεθσεσθε και σκιρτησετε ωε μοσχαρια εκ δεσμων ανειμενα.
The gospels are not histories or biographies, they’re scripts for plays, for theatre. The format of the gospels all follow the conventions of Greco-Roman tragedies, melodramas, and mystery dramas. Whole groups of people-Pharisees, crowds, disciples, Jews, chief priests all speak and act in unison. That doesn’t happen in real life. They are the chorus just like in a play by Euripides. In the gospels the sun is anthropomorphized. “My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.” - John Dominic Crossan, Who Is Jesus? Well now you know who the real Jesus is. The mind numbing and stupefying effects of literalist religion are so profound and widespread they even infect people who are not Christians.
I don’t think so. There would be no Christians for the same reason we don’t have any followers of Mithras or Attis today. Apparently, it’s human nature to dumb down allegorical literature to appease the moronic masses and then convert or eliminate the unbelievers, burn them and their libraries, schools and literature as the Christian mobs did pagans at the direction of their leaders.
There’s no mention of this world traveling, church planting, miracle performing, Mars Hill preaching, philosopher debating, often arrested friend of the Caesars by any historians at any time. The same goes for the other characters in the Catholic Church’s witness creation program. I can’t find Ignatius (God bearer), Clement, Polycarp (Many fruits) anywhere in the historical record. The stories of their lives (including Paul) all end with a symbolic journey to Rome, a glorious and theatrical martyrdom that the Church would make sure to echo down through the ages. These heroes of the faith exist only through fake “letters” and obviously fictional martyrologies - the work of 2nd century Catholic Orthodoxy. So how did you arrive at a date for Paul’s letters or even the existence of such a person? The stories about Paul in Acts are ridiculous and obvious fiction made to compare him with Jesus another fictional miracle man.
Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the Lord Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them. 2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. 3 Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty.
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit but the highest form of intelligence,” wrote that connoisseur of wit, Oscar Wilde. I knew you would not get it because of your literalist thinking, but the rest of the crowd here really should be ashamed. No wonder you can’t see an allegory when it’s soooo obvious.
That’s Malachi 4:2 [3:20] LXX. Here’s the English translation of this verse from the Septuagint:
But to you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise, and healing shall be in his wings: and ye shall go forth, and bound as young calves let loose from bonds.
Does this sound like sun worship? Certainly not in context, as this passage is all about how those who worship Yahweh will be rewarded and those who do evil will be destroyed in a day of judgment (Mal 3:16-4:3). Moreover, the author goes on to exhort his audience to keep Torah (4:4), which specifically forbids sun worship (Deut 4:19; 17:2-5).
Nor am I against “a little syncretism.” But the evidence for Christian debt to paganism pointed out by Boris falls into two groups: (1) little things like the blending of Christian with pagan holidays; (2) grand claims, e.g., that Christianity originated in solar religion, or that the Gospels are a coded journey through the zodiac. Regarding (1), Boris might sometimes be correct, but his information is wholly redundant, since scholars have agreed about such things for years. Regarding (2), “Boris has nothing” is a pretty good summary.
Allegory is actually one of the easiest literary forms to decipher, so if you have a demonstration that any of the Gospels is an allegory, you are welcome to provide it. And no, that doesn’t mean throwing out a bunch of random items from various passages and claiming they are an allegory of something. It means starting with the first verse of a Gospel, and elucidating every verse up to and including the last, and showing that the entire work is one sustained allegory. To do this properly would require a rather long book, filled with discussions of grammar, vocabulary, style, literary structure, etc. If you have published a gospel commentary of this kind, please tell us where it is. In fact, if anyone has published a gospel commentary of this kind, please tell us where it is.
See if you can grasp this: Hershel Shanks’s First Person as it appeared the November/December 2013 issue of BAR "I, of course, had been thinking of the mosaic pavement of the Hammath Tiberias synagogue on the Sea of Galilee. It wasn’t only that there was Helios, the Greek sun god, riding his four-horse chariot (quadriga) right there in the middle of the zodiac, but it was featured in the center of the floor right behind a mosaic of the Torah ark that was flanked by two large menorahs. Below the Helios mosaic was an inscription thanking the good Jews who founded or contributed money to the synagogue.
But that was just the beginning. Mosaics with Helios in his quadriga were featured in half a dozen synagogues in Late Antiquity (fourth–seventh centuries C.E.) sprinkled around upper Judea. And if you try to limit things geographically, I’ll call your attention to a text-only zodiac in the mosaic floor of the ancient synagogue at Ein Gedi on the shore of the Dead Sea."
Or, “Boris has read too many Dan Brown novels,” which is my current theory. “Boris doesn’t realize Dan Brown novels are fiction,” is running a close second.
Wrong again. The last fantasy novel I read is called Acts of the Apostles. Of course many people think that is an historical description of early Christianity. Fortunately that idea and the people who hold to it are currently being laughed off the planet. Ed.
Could it be that the shape of the cross came from . . . oh, I don’t know . . . the actual instrument that Romans used in executions? Maybe, just maybe? It’s not as if crucifixion was invented just for Jesus. When the rebellion led by Spartacus was put down they lined the Appian Way with 6,000 crosses. If you are willing to make this connection . . . words fail me.
6000 crosses? You’d think such a YUGE and tragic event would have been mentioned by at least one historian or commentator, Roman commander or politician who was alive at that time. But no. The earliest reference to any of this comes in the early and middle of the Second Century. As far as Spartacus, a name that is eponymous, we have no birth place, date and no accounts of his death. Someone, probably a small group of someones led a revolt, but I’m not buying any of the Spartacus legend especially not this mass crucifixion. There’s just no reliable or contemporary evidence for any of it.
Occasionally people were hung on trees and died from asphyxiation. Archaeologists have dug up quite a few bones and found the remains of only one crucified man to be recovered from antiquity. They found no evidence that nails had penetrated the victim’s arms and the nail in the foot was not long enough to have penetrated both feet, and a cross. What were originally thought to be fragments of two heel bones through which the nail passed were shown to be fragments of only one heel bone and a long bone. I don’t know how often crucifixions happened. However, I suspect they didn’t.
A lot of people think gladiators fought to death. Mortal wounds rarely happened and when they did, they were accidents. Gladiator fights were more like the WWE. They were entertainment. We got our morals, ethics, ideas about government and politics from the Greek and Roman civilizations. These people were not the savages Hollywood movies and television picture them to be. Unfortunately, people, especially Americans get their ideas and beliefs from the boob tube. I suspect you are one of these people.
