by jwfacts 24 Replies latest watchtower bible
Leo,
I am reading The Templar Revelation - Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince. It attempts to show that Jesus grew up in Egypt and much of his life parallels Osiris and Isis, and that Jesus plays out the role of the God Osiris. In your summary you show connections to Antiochus. What do you think about the concept that he was considered an equivalent to Osiris, at least in some circles.
Hi DD,
I hope I didn't offend you with the phrase "dogmatic obsession," which was meant as . I couldn't help noticing, over the years, how you can attract a thread from the vicinity of Trinitarianism or predestinarianism into those topics...
As to wordplays, I count three occurrences of peirazô ktl. in Matthew:
- 4:1, to be tempted, peirasthènai.
- 4:3, the tempter, ho peirazôn.- 4:7, you shall not put to the test, ouk ekpeiraseis.
And three (different) in Luke:
- 4:2, being tempted, peirazomenos.
- 4:12, you shall not put to the test, ouk ekpeiraseis.- 4:13, having finished every temptation/test, suntelesas panta peirasmon.
The quotation about "tempting God" being part of the middle temptation in Matthew and the last one in Luke.
It is entirely possible that both texts, in different ways, suggest that "tempting the Son of God" amounts to "tempting God" -- although they don't state that explicitly, that was the point of my first reply to you.
But if this is the case what do they mean by that? Unlike John, Matthew and Luke never simply equate "the Son of God" with "God," in a static way as it were. But they both use the dynamic principle that what is done to one (as the sent representative, for instance) is done to the other (as the sender, for instance) (Matthew 8:40ff; 18:5; 25:31ff; Luke 9:48; 10:16 etc.). And this is not exclusive of Jesus and God, it applies to the disciple or to an anonymous child.
Now the Fourth Gospel admittedly goes further into static declarations of identity (the Word was God, being one, mutual indwelling, etc.). But (1) you cannot simply retroject the Johannine notions onto the other Gospels and (2) you must not forget that in the Fourth Gospel itself the same static declarations extend to the believers, so that they hardly suit the criterium of exclusivity implied (coming back to the thread topic) by the notion of blasphemy... which, by the way, is precisely the point of Jesus' reply in John: isn't something similar said in "your Law," about others?
jwfacts....I can think of better reading material....I think that is the book that influenced Dan Brown which is filled with pseudo-history nonsense about the (hoaxed) Priory of Sion, early Christianity, and the "historical Jesus" (this review is pretty much on the money: http://www.cnn.com/books/reviews/9902/19/templar/). From what I recall when I looked through it, among other things, there were some pretty bad leaps in logic....like making an argument from authority that there is no proof that the Dead Sea Scrolls came from the Essenes, which became the basis for the claim on the very next page that the Essene provenance of the scrolls has been decisively disproven as a myth. I recall the evidence they cited (other than being fabricated, like the Priory of Sion "documents") was at times erroneous or exaggerated to make the links closer than they really were. I remember they claimed that Osiris was killed by Seth on a Friday, which I thought was odd in light of the Egyptian calendar and the fact that the date of the death given by Plutarch (Moralia, Isis and Osiris, 356D) reckoned it by calendar date, i.e. Athyr 17. I recall that they claimed that the story of Jesus in the gospels was largely based on the story of Osiris, when in fact the parallels are far more tenuous than those with the OT (perhaps the major intertextual source of the gospel sayings and narratives, which the authors hardly acknowledged). At least they didn't repeat Archaya S's nonsense about "Anup the Baptizer" or some of the other fake parallels repeated on the internet between Jesus and Horus/Osiris/etc.
You might want to read Everett Ferguson's Backgrounds of Early Christianity for a pretty thorough survey of the possible influences of the primitive Christian church (including mystery cults). I think there was probably more of a role than the author allows, but he makes good points about the epistemological and methodological problems of those who make claims of strong influence (such as the copy-catter assertions). I think it is quite possible that there was syncretism in Egypt by the second or third centuries AD between the cults of Osiris-Horus and Jesus, especially within gnosticism which was highly syncretistic and which has references to Osiris in a few of its (later) tractates, and I think it is pretty clear that the Isis cult contributed to Egyptian Mariology, and the Horus cult on the reverence of St. George in Egypt. The influence on early Judaism (and Jewish-Christianity) was not formative but rather superficial, such as Seth/Typhon as a type for the Devil. I think a much better dying-rising parallel is that of Baal, which belongs to native Israelite tradition and which has many points of contact with Christian tradition.
Excellent thread. Thanks for asking the question Jwfacts.
Thanks for the info Leo. I reviewed Backgrounds of Early Christianity on Amazon and it looked very comprehensive so I ordered it.
