Star Trek. No doubt.
Here Comes "The Sun"
by MoneurMallard 18 Replies latest jw friends
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MoneurMallard
My favorite lines come from Trek.
KIRK:"Scotty, do you think you could fabricate these walls to hold water?"
SCOTTY:"I suppose so Captain, ya plannin' to take a swim?"
BONES:"Off the deep end, Mr. Scott"
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thetrueone
Sol Invictus and Christianity
Mosaic of Christ as Sol or Apollo-Helios in Mausoleum M in the pre-fourth-century necropolis beneathSt. Peter's in the Vatican - interpreted by many as representing Christ The Philocalian calendar of 354 AD gives a festival of "Natalis Invicti" on 25 December. There is limited evidence that this festival was celebrated before the mid 4th century AD. [ 39 ] [ 40 ]
Whether the 'Sol Invictus' festival "has a strong claim on the responsibility for our December date" of Christmas (as per the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia [ 41 ] ) or not has been called into question by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, who challenged this theory by arguing that a December 25 date was determined simply by calculating nine months beyond March 25, regarded as the day of Jesus’ conception (the Feast of the Annunciation). [ 42 ]
In the 5th century, Pope Leo I (the Great) spoke of how the celebration of Christ's birth coincided with the sun's position increasing in the sky in several sermons on the Feast of the Nativity. Here is an excerpt from his 26th sermon:
But this Nativity which is to be adored in heaven and on earth is suggested to us by no day more than this when, with the early light still shedding its rays on nature, there is borne in upon our senses the brightness of this wondrous mystery.
According to the 1967 New Catholic Encyclopedia, a standard library reference, in an article on Constantine the Great:
- "Besides, the Sol Invictus had been adopted by the Christians in a Christian sense, as demonstrated in the Christ as Apollo-Helios in a mausoleum (c. 250) discovered beneath St. Peter's in the Vatican." Indeed "...from the beginning of the 3rd century "Sun of Justice" appears as a title of Christ". [ 43 ]
Some consider this to be in opposition to Sol Invictus [citation needed] . Some see an allusion to Malachi 4:2 .
The Syriac bishop Jacob Bar-Salibi wrote in the 12th century:
- "It was a custom of the Pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and revelries the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day." [ 44 ]
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MoneurMallard
I forgot also there is a Cathedral somewhere built on top of an ancient temple that belonged to the cult of the Mithras, where the words "You must eat my flesh and drink my blood" are inscribed on the cave walls beneath it... I believe it's in Turkey somewhere, and dates back several hundred years before the New Testament was ever a document.
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Leolaia
I forgot also there is a Cathedral somewhere built on top of an ancient temple that belonged to the cult of the Mithras, where the words "You must eat my flesh and drink my blood" are inscribed on the cave walls beneath it... I believe it's in Turkey somewhere, and dates back several hundred years before the New Testament was ever a document.
I'm really glad you mentioned this, as it is a really good example of how information on the internet about this is not reliable.
The temple you are thinking of is the Mithraeum underneath the church of Santa Prisca in Rome. It thus pertains to the Roman mystery cult and not the figure of Mithra in Persian Zoroastrianism. The Mithraeum was built in AD 220, so the inscription does not antedate the NT. What you give as the inscription doesn't make much sense in light of the Mithras cult because it wasn't Mithras who was sacrified and consumed (à la Jesus Christ); it was the bull slain by Mithras that held relevance to the Mithraic sacred meal (the Mithraeum was covered with frescoes depicting the taurectomy). The frescoes are in very poor condition and the inscription in question, not entirely legible, was read by the Dutch scholar M. J. Vermaseren as: Et nos servasti eternali sanguine fuso, offero ut fiant numina magna Mithre. This may be translated in English as: "And you saved us after having shed the eternal blood, I bring offerings so that the great power of Mithras may be shown". The reference here is to Mithras' mythological capture and slaying of the cosmic bull (a version of the cosmological conflict myth found throughout the ANE) whose blood brought fertility to the ground, a motif not found in the East and which represents syncretism with the taurobolium of the Phrygian cult of Attis and Cybele in Asia Minor (the original Mithra cult was diffused through Asia Minor via Pontus and Cappadocia on its way to the West). The reference is not to Mithras shedding his own blood, nor does it refer to the eating of flesh and drinking of blood.
Some internet websites attribute this quote to the Santa Prisca Mithraeum, or portray it as attributed to Mithras: "He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation". This is probably the quote you are thinking of. But this is misattributed. Roger Pearse tracked down the quote to its original source. It got on the internet after appearing in Freke & Gandy's Jesus Mysteries (p. 21, published in 2001), where it was presented as the text of a "Mithraic inscription". Freke & Gandy sourced the quote from another secondary source: Joscelyn Godwin's Mystery Religions in the Ancient World (p. 28, published in 1981). Godwin cites the passage in question as "a Persian Mithraic text". So Freke & Gandy's claim that the text came from an "inscription" is unfounded. Godwin in turn gives his source as the English translation of M. J. Vermaseren's Mithras de geheimzinnige god (pp. 103-104, published in 1959), yet another secondary source. Vermaseren gives his source as "a medieval text, published by Cumont, in which of Christ is set beside the sayings of Zarathushtra". Rather than an ancient inscription antedating Christianity, we now have a late medieval source that shows familiarity with Christianity (if not from a Christian writer). Nor does Vermaseren give any indication that this "sayings of Zarathushtra" is necessarily a Persian Mithraic text, as Godwin had it. Vermaseren in turn makes reference to Cumont (so we have Freke & Gandy quoting Godwin quoting Vermaseren quoting Cumont), but does not give a specific citation. It doesn't appear at all in Franz Cumont's Textes et Monuments, which would be an odd omission since this was the definitive compendium of Mithraic texts. Pearse and others working on the question finally tracked down the quote to Cumont's 1946 article "Un bas relief Mithriaque du louvre" published in Revue Archéologique, Vol. 25, pp. 193-195. Here we finally have a reference to the original source: "an Arab manuscript in Syriac characters (Karshuni) of the Library of Birmingham containing a homily or pastoral letter", catalogued as Mingana Ms. 142, which gives the quote as appearing in fol. 59a of the MS. The catalogue gives the date of the MS as AD 1690. The original source attributes the quote to Zardasht (i.e. Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism), not Mithra; it doesn't appear to have anything to do with Mithra per se. The source is very late, it's not Persian, and it's by a Christian author polemicizing against the beliefs of the Magi. Cumont was cautious in citing this text, noting that "our medieval source is so confused that it would be labor lost, I believe, to try to clarify this" (notre source médiévale est si trouble qu'on perdrait sa peine, je le crains, à vouloir en clarifier les eaux) and "It is not doubtful that certain Magi moved their traditions closer to the doctrines of the Church and claimed for themselves the priority (Il n'est pas doutex que certains Mages ont rapproché leurs traditions des doctrines de l'Église et réclamé pour eux-mêmes la priorité)" (p. 195). Thus this is a rather dubious source to use as evidence that the Christian eucharist was derived from the Mithraic sacred meal. And this is far removed from the claim bandied about on the internet that the passage is from an inscription in a pagan temple underneath a Christian church. Rather, what we see here is an elaborate game of telephone or Chinese whispers improving on the origin of the quote (making it more ancient and more relevant to the Roman Mithras cult) in each retelling. It illustrates the need to be skeptical of secondary references (and especially internet claims) and to always consult the original source of a text.
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MoneurMallard
Very true. My mystery cult study is a bit rusty indeed. About all I can say that is definite is that the "cross" of Christiainity is a symbol that originates with the god Tammuz, and yet, many Christians recognize this but yet still continue to use it even though it has nothing to do with Christ. The witneses of course take this to an extreme measure and make a whole mess out of the matter that looks worse than a double shift slinging hash in a shit house.
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kazar
I celebrate it. I love it!
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Leolaia
About all I can say that is definite is that the "cross" of Christiainity is a symbol that originates with the god Tammuz
And what is the evidence for that? This claim, frequently repeated by the Society and found also in W. E. Vine's book, originated in Alexander Hislop's The Two Babylons. There is not a shred of evidence that associates the Babylonian deity Dumuzi/Tammuz with any cross symbol.
Hislop's book would today be categorized as pseudohistory, no more reliable than Zecharia Sitchen's attempt to identify Babylonian and Sumerian gods as ancient alien astronauts. Both treat their sources in an equally slipshod manner, construct fanciful and totally erroneous etymologies, conflate unrelated deities, religious concepts, and symbols, and make other miscellaneous errors of fact. Hislop's Nimrod-Semiramis-Tammuz theory was based on a collage of historical and legendary figures and myths that originally had nothing to do with each other; it relies on late classical sources (not actual Akkadian or Sumerian texts) which were already confused about matters, and Hislop's creative interpretation of his sources confused things further.
Dumuzi was usually depicted with Inanna in sacred marriage, or as a shepherd (the antediluvian king of Badtibira); there is no association with a cross symbol in art nor literature. Hislop made his claim by referring to a woodcut drawing in Smith's Classical Dictionary (1859 ed., p. 208) of Dionysus, the Roman god of wine. This image has nothing to do with any Babylonian god. But Hislop equated Dionysus/Bacchus with Tammuz with his usual tortured circular reasoning: Nimrod was a son of Cush (the ancestor of the Ethiopians), and so Nimrod's son would be a son of Cush, Hislop noted that Bacchus was called the Ethiopian (as in some mythologies Bacchus was raised there), this made Bacchus a son of Ethiopia, or a son of Cush, and since Hislop already claimed that the figure of Tammuz derives from the memory of Nimrod's son (a claim without any evidence whatsoever), then this meant Bacchus could be equated with Tammuz, and then any attribute — imagined or real — of Bacchus could be freely accorded to Tammuz.....and presto! an artistic florish in one drawing of Dionysius (equated with Bacchus equated with an imaginary Nimrod's son equated with Tammuz) suddenly becomes an "emblem" of Tammuz. Hislop strengthened the link by speculating without evidence that the cross came from "the initial of the name Tammuz" (p. 289), which is nonsense because the Babylonians did not use the West Semitic alphabet and the original form of the name was Dumuzid anyway.
And with respect to Smith's woodcut illustration, the crossmarks that Hislop noticed on Dionysus' headband (mitra) appear to simply be artistic decoration. Hislop's belief that this was emblematic is belied by the fact that Dionysus and Bacchus were depicted quite variably in a range of different stylizations without any use of this decoration, whereas other features (such as the cantharus, the thyrus, grapes, and the fig tree) are common leitmotifs of depictions of Dionysus and Bacchus. The woodcut in Smith's dictionary has no source listed and it is unclear whether the woodcut artist took liberties with the original source, or whether represents any single original image (here is Smith's woodcut and here are some similar images of Dionysus: [1], [2], [ 3 ], etc.). And again, an image of Dionysus is NOT an image of Dumuzi/Tammuz.
On a more general theme, the cross is a very basic geometric shape consisting of intersecting lines. It was utilized as symbol independently by cultures all around the world because of this (and the fact that intersection can signify union and related concepts). Also the form of execution called crucifixion did not execute people on "symbols"; the gospel narratives clearly concern the execution instrument, as did Paul's more theological writings (such as the "scandal" of cross, reflecting common attitudes towards crucifixion), only later in the second century AD in searching for symbolic meaning did Christian writers draw more attention to the form of the cross and the potential for prefiguring and symbolism -- still this does not point necessarily to adoption of an already established symbol, though there certainly could have been (mutual) influence.
