Posts by Neo

16

Michael Jackson does the Moonwalk in a KH!! (and some real FS stories...)

by Neo in

the bethelites who almost went out with michael jackson in service

the following is a true story.

when she came back with some money she asked michael if he had ever been told that he sure looked like michael jackson.

Neo

Time to bring this thread to the top. The most famous exJW is now dead.

Neo

55

The Value of Pi, The Mysteries of Pi and e and the Bible.

by Chalam in

pi and the bible has been the subject of debate before.

however, i had not seen this information which clear up the 1 kings 7:23 issue before so i am posting here.

also, the two constants, pi and e encoded in the first verse of the ot and nt respectively, see second article.. full details in the url at the start of each topic.. the value of pi.

Neo

Hey there, Narkissos! I'm sorry for the delay, time has been short.

Now I hear your argument! Thanks for being much clearer. You are of course correct in showing that, if it is claimed that the variation is unique or that "it must mean something," the honest and correct path for the apologist to take is to show how often the same phenomenon occurs elsewhere. I share the sentiment of your comments. Note that I'm taking a different approach from the one we find in the OP, as I conveyed in my first post. It is highly unlikely that scribes envolved in the composition of 1 Kings 7:23 (or even 2 Chronicles 4:2) had this "pi pattern" in mind when they penned the text, since it involves forms of interpretation that reached a developed state only long after the composition period. What I was showing was what kind of approach an interpreter of the text could take, in particular the one who follows the historical and traditional age-old Jewish fashion of interpretation. It could be anyone living, say, in the 17th, 19th or 21st century, for the matter.

The OP's quoted article seems to lead us to think that, since there is a qere/khetiv variation, it should be taken as a clue that will lead us to find the pi pattern. It also seems to suggest that this was encoded by either the original author(s) or, most likely, the scribes that copied the earliest manuscripts. Moreover, the article appears to be an apologetic effort to "explain" this apparent "wrong value" of pi in the Bible.

I do none of that. The implied value of pi in the text doesn't need to be defended. It is just an estimation that suffices for the context of a religious work. The text doesn't demand anything else for the reader to aprehend its content and meaning. It is fully satisfying as it stands.The occurrence of the qere/khetiv phenomenon in 1 Kings 7:23 doesn't mean that a "special exegesis" is in order.

I'm showing the path the Jewish intepreter takes if he is looking for "something more". The passage gives him much more than he could ever hope for! Those who are familiar with Jewish mystical exegesis know the Jews believe the biblical text has different "levels" of interpretation. The pious Jewish student of Scripture believes that, if he digs deeper into the text, he will be generously rewarded with gems of wisdom lying beneath the surface. So when he approaches 1 Kings 7:23 (or actually any other passage of their sacred writings), he knows that the description of the molten sea means what it says. But he believes that if God was the author of Scripture, he might as well have encoded additional layers of meaning in the passage.

Therefore his trained mind will look for understandings that go beyond the plainest meaning of the text. The question is: will he find anything in 1 Kings 7:23? The question is even more significant because, in a sense, that verse is not an ordinary one. Jewish interpretation places great emphasis on the symbolic significance of numbers and geometry. Number symbolism suffuses Jewish mystical thought. And 1 Kings 7:23 just happens to be a very rare passage in the Jewish Bible (the only one I can think of at the top of my head) that deals with geometric and engineering calculations, because of the implied value of pi. It naturally lends itself to being interpreted beyond its surface meaning. It is not just another "average verse". The bets are high. Will he find anything meaningful there?

It is only in this context that the spelling of qaveh appears as a clue-key. If he is searching the verse for a hint that will lead him to a deeper insight, the spelling of qaveh will no doubt quickly catch his trained eye (either by means of the qere/khetiv occurrence or the variation in the 2 Chronicles parallel passage). And that's where he would find the beauty of it: the spelling variation is a rather ordinary, non-unique phenomenon. To him it would follow precisely as his belief claims: God reveals himself in small things like in the letters of the sacred writings.

One of the traditional practices in Rabbinical Judaism is counting the number of letters in a given text. If he follows the clue given by qaveh and, beginning with this word, counts the number of letters that form a self-contained sentence describing the circumference of the molten sea ("a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about"), he will find 22 letters. Twenty-two letters describing a circumference -- that wil pick his curiosity, suggesting that he is on the right track, because for him the mere mention of a set of "22 letters" evokes the Hebrew alphabet, which has exactly 22 letters. And a very ancient Jewish tradition states that God used the 22 letters to shape the cosmos, saying that he "placed them in a circle." (Sepher Yetzirah 2:4)

In this tradition, the letters are the agents that delimit the shape of the world that was a primeval chaos before creation, according to Genesis. (Compare Sepher Yetzirah 1:11) The waters of the deep are thus delimited by God's creative word, integrating with the declaration that "he set a circle upon the face of the deep" (Proverbs 8:27,29), which in turn is imaged by the molten sea in the temple (reputed by Jewish thought as a typological representation of the cosmos). This a-circle-and-22-letters motif thus results in a very tight, unexpected and impressive integration between Jewish mysticism and 1 Kings 7:23.

And so it goes as I explained in detail in my first post: the alternate spelling of qaveh omits the "revealing" letter hey and that reduces the letter count from 22 to 21. The 22/21 ratio thus adjusts the estimation of pi to a better value. Similarly, using a "deeper" practice of Jewish interpretation - gematria - gives us two values for the qv(h) word - 111 and 106. And the ratio 111/106 adjusts the estimation of pi to an even better value.

Three estimations of pi:
3
3 * (22/21) = 3.142857...
3 * (111/106) = 3.14150943396226...

It is very important to draw attention to the significance of this. One could say that "numbers can mean anything," to excuse himself to think a little about the significance of the pattern. A person can "search for patterns" in a given text and may even find something "meaningful" like a "pi pattern" if he looks hard enough. But that is definetely not what is going on in this passage. There are countless "approximations of pi," but the three approximations of pi above (3, 3.142857... and 3.14150943396226...) are EXACTLY the first three elements in the sequence of convergents of pi (which is by definition a sequence of better and better approximations)! This mathematical sequence (like the prime number sequence or the repdigit sequence, for instance) is a fixed set of data. The approximations just couldn't be any more significant.

And there's no force-fitting whatsoever: the student is limited to resorting to standard historical Jewish interpretational practices - textual variation, letter count and gematria -, doing so with much grace and simplicity. And more: it possesses internal harmony: the "deeper" the style of exegesis gets (plain text reading → letter count → gematria), the better the approximation is, all the while integrating grade-school geometry with Jewish theology and cosmogony. There is pattern and coherence in what was supposed to be a sea of chaos. That's a top-level phenomenon and it is impossible to remain indifferent to the pattern once you see it. It is mind-boggling.

What do you think?

55

The Value of Pi, The Mysteries of Pi and e and the Bible.

by Chalam in

pi and the bible has been the subject of debate before.

however, i had not seen this information which clear up the 1 kings 7:23 issue before so i am posting here.

also, the two constants, pi and e encoded in the first verse of the ot and nt respectively, see second article.. full details in the url at the start of each topic.. the value of pi.

Neo

Neo,
I'm surprised that in such an elaborate post you didn't address my simple objection.

Hi there Narkissos! I'm sorry that I didn't address your post. I don't want to avoid anything. I just concentrated on a larger post (Leolaia's). I'll address your objection in detail.

... namely that the same ketiv / qere' variation (qwh / qw)occurs in passages which have nothing to do with circles and circumferences (not surprisingly, since the term basically means "cord" or "measuring-line," as can be used for all kind of linear measures, straight, circular or other).

I also copy your previous post for convenience:

What about Jeremiah 31:39 and Zechariah 1:16, where the MT has exactly the same qere' / ketiv variant, qw / qwh?

To these comments, I reply:

First, and less importantly, please note that in my post above I showed time and again that I understand that qaveh/qav means "(measuring) line". I repeatedly rendered the word as "line" (though a couple of times I called it "circumference" for convenience). So it is clear to me that the word qaveh/qav does not mean circumference.

Second (and also less importantly), your objection may arise from the insistence of the author of the original article quoted in the opening post on the association between qaveh and the word "circumference." Your objection most likely doesn't arise from this, but I'll comment it just in case.

The author states: "The common word for circumference is qav. Here, however, the spelling of the word for circumference, qaveh, adds a heh (h)."

By this he either meant one of two things:

The Hebrew word qav/qaveh means circumference.
The underlying Hebrew word rendered as "circumference" in his translation of 1 Kings differs from the usual spelling of that Hebrew word.

In the first case he obviously would be wrong. But chances are that he was fully aware that this is not the literal meaning of qaveh, since his article was very short and to-the-point and thus he was probably not much worried to explain this distinction to the reader. And even if he believed that qav/qaveh means "circumference," it wouldn't constitute a fundamental mistake in his thesis anyway.

That leads us to what I believe is the focus of your objection. Qaveh doesn't mean "circumference," so what about the other khetiv/qere occurrences of the same word? The answer is simple. There is no need for the other verses (Jeremiah 31:39 and Zechariah 1:16) to follow the exegesis of 1 Kings 7:23. In this examination, the word qav/qaveh has three distinct attributes that matter: spelling, denotation and connotation. In all three the denotation is the same (line, cord), the spelling is the same (qav/qaveh variation), but in 1 Kings the connotation differs from the other two. The "line" there is used as a tool to measure the circumference of a circular object, thus identifying in that specific context the object called "line" with the concept of circumference (since a measuring line assumes the shape of the object that is measured). The connotative value of "line" in 1 Kings is not carried over to the other verses just because the same word is used.

The interpretation related to pi in 1 Kings 7:23 that is unfolded by the spelling variation can only be applied to that limited context. Each case obviously should be examined on its own merit. Your question is incorrectly blending the contextual significance of qaveh in 1 Kings 7:23 with its ontological meaning.

Please let me know if that clears up this particular issue before we move on to the other points.

55

The Value of Pi, The Mysteries of Pi and e and the Bible.

by Chalam in

pi and the bible has been the subject of debate before.

however, i had not seen this information which clear up the 1 kings 7:23 issue before so i am posting here.

also, the two constants, pi and e encoded in the first verse of the ot and nt respectively, see second article.. full details in the url at the start of each topic.. the value of pi.

Neo

Now that's quite an irrational essay (and not irrational in the same mathematical sense that pi is irrational). First the author suggests that this understanding is something that the "Lord" revealed to him.

A claim that an understanding was a "revelation from the Lord" doesn't make this understanding necessarily irrational. An understanding should be taken by the validity of its content, not by what the author believes about it. I don't agree with the correlation you make between irrationality and claim of "divine revelation". Of course such a claim should be treated with skepticism but it doesn't follow that the essay is already judged as "irrational" because of it.

Of course we should be extra careful when people insist on having recieved special revelations from a superior "source," but on the other hand we should not be fall into temptation to poison the well when an argument that may turn to be valid is accompanied by such claims.

By the way, it could be said in favor of the author that he affirms: "In this case, the Lord ultimately brought to our attention some subtleties usually overlooked in the Hebrew Text." He doesn't seem to be making any special claim of being a special "reciever" of supernatural communications but seems to express himself in typical Evangelical style that attributes to "the Lord" all things good that they are favored with. It is a little like when an unbeliever says "thank God".

Then the ketiv/qere system of emendation is taken to be as a cypher for a hidden meaning without supplying any examples or evidence that this can be the case and not that it is an instance of what the system elsewhere always indicates, namely, the pronunciation of a word that is written differently than how it should be pronounced.

The khetiv/qere system is used for a specific purpose in Hebrew texts, but ancient Rabbinical traditions often assign "hidden meaning" to linguistic phenomena. Ketiv/qere can thus be taken as a "cypher" for this sytle of exegesis. So the scribe who recorded the variation in 1 Kings 7:23 may have not had the intention to encode this pi thing in the manuscript, but the style of interpretation that is assumed by the author is definitely not foreign to Jewish interpretive tradition.

Simply the fact that a qere is provided is apparently enough for the author to claim: "This appears to be a clue to treat the word as a mathematical formula".

The fact that a qere is provided may not be enough to establish a link with math formulas by itself, but there are traditions spanning millenia that do exactly that. That's how the minds of religious Jewish interpreters work. "What is the gematria of that word?" is one the first things that they think of when they find things like textual variations or strange and/or hard Scriptural sayings. So resorting to mathematical formulas is not a big hermeneutic jump, but a natural way of reading the text in these "conditions of pressure and temperature."

Then the author devises an arbitrary non-intuitive means of computing a value for the circumference that would agree with the value of pi (at least resolved to a handful of places).

It is not arbitrary in face of historical and traditional Jewish interpretation. It is the natural, intuitive, path to follow, in line with the spirit of countless works of Rabbinical exegesis (and, it seems to be unbeknownst even to the author that the link is so tight).

See, if a person trained in Jewish thought and tradition would come across this variation (qav and qaveh) when reading the text in question, he would probably think, among other things, in terms of the symbolic meaning of the letter that is added, in terms of gematria, in terms of typology, etc. If that person also had a little talent with math, the line of thought when reading the verse in question could follow like this:

"Well, this is a nice scriptural verse because it mentions that the molten sea in the temple had a circular shape. Jewish theology teaches that the temple is a blueprint of the cosmos, a microcosmos. And Scripture teaches that in Creation G'd "drew a circle on the surface of the deep." (Proverbs 8:27) It is all coherent.

But the verse also captures the interest because it implicitly mentions the Number Pi, the number of the circle! It is a rare appearance of a mathematical concept in a Scriptural context.

I know that in the real world pi is always used by approximation. In 1 Kings 7:23, it is 3, which is fairly good approximation to a religious text. I wonder if there's something more if I go deeper (as usual)...

When I compare the value in the verse to a better approximation of pi, I can measure the accuracy of the value of pi in the text. Thus:

3 / 3.141592654 = 0.954929658 → 95.4929658 % accuracy.

Now, I also see that there is a word in the verse - "(measuring) line" - that has two important features:

1. It is a word that encapsulates the meaning of the subject matter at hand (pi, circumference)

2. It is a word that has a textual variation (qav and qaveh).

This really sounds like a hint to something more. Well, first thing I should do is to check the numerical values of these words as I'm used to.

Qav = 106
Qaveh = 111

Hey, I begin to see something here. 106 is fairly close to 111. Is there any relationship between...?

106 / 111 = 0.954954954 → 95.4954954 % accuracy.

That's it!

3 / pi → 95.4929658 % accuracy.
106 / 111 → 95.4954954 % accuracy.

That's just too much. It is not everyday that you find such a precision in a pattern! 3 is to pi what one spelling of "line" is to the other (106 to 111)! How could that be? Maybe it just a big coincidence, but I know that "coincidence is not a kosher word". Well, this is either an amazing trick of a smart scribe or the hidden Hand of the Almighty leaving His Fingerprints into the text!"

So, this is just a summary of what could go on inside the mind of someone who is used to Rabbinical interpretation. It is not non-intuitive. It fits perfectly with their traditional approach to sacred texts of looking for patterns. It doesn't mean that we have to necessarily recieve it as divine. It means that this is not irrational. The accuracy is too high.

This is non-intuitive in part because if there was a problem with the rounded value of the circumference ("thirty cubits"), the obvious qere would have been for that number. Moreover, if one looks the verse up in the BHS, one would see that the qere is the shorter qav, not the longer qaveh. The qere is the revision, so why is the author revising the circumference upward from 30 cubits to something larger? It should be the opposite. He should be revising the value down from 30 to a shorter length, as the gematria of the qere should yield a shorter number than the ketiv. But that would ruin the amazing "discovery" that he seeks to find.

I totally understand what you mean. But that's not the way the Jewish-styled interpreter would approach the text. For him, the measure of the circumference doesn't need to be "revised". It is not a "problem" at all. He accepts the implied value of pi in the text as valid and acceptable in a theological document such as the Book of Kings. He is just looking for something "more" that reinforces the wisdom of the text, as he is used to do. Therefore the high level of accuracy obtained in the comparison between the values of pi and the values of "line" speaks louder to him than the fact that the "3 / pi → qere/khetiv" correlation goes to opposite directions. He reads it in a "poetical" kind of way, just like he wouldn't reject the validity of chiastic paralellism in Hebrew poetry in contrast to standard paralellism just because in the former case the parallelism is introvert.

The essence lies on the the fact that there are two different spellings of "circumference". This variation could be better presented if the author pointed to the phenomenon of parallel passages in sacred texts instead of strictly focusing on the "qere/khetiv" in 1 Kings. 2 Chronicles 4:2 records the same content of 1 Kings 7:23. It comprises a repetition of the molten sea's description, but it reads qav instead of qaveh! Just a little hey that makes all the difference! To a Jewish exegete, this is like a neon sign telling him to dig deeper. Maybe the path he would take to detect the pi pattern would be first to compare qav/qaveh (106/111) and then to move on to the examination of the value of pi in face of this variation, reversing the direction of the hypothetical line of thought that I offered above.

Rabbi Mattityahu Munk was probably the first to document this pattern in his work The Halachik Way for the Solution of Special Geometry Problems. In it he also offers another insight: the description of the circumference that begins in the letter qoph in qaveh ("a line of thirty cubits compassed it round about") has 22 letters, whereas the value of the diameter has 7 letters ("ten cubits"). And 22/7 is a very common approximation of pi! (22/7 = 3.142857) There's also a college paper by Shlomo Belaga examining this qav/qaveh variation: On The Rabbinical Exegesis of an Enhanced Biblical Value of Pi.

Now, the big thing concerning these approximations of pi expressed through fractions is that they aren't just any kind of approximations. They couldn't be any better.

What do I mean? Well, any real number can be expressed in terms of a continued fraction.

$Continued fraction expansion$

Continued fractions are a useful tool to give a series of "best" estimates for an irrational number. (Check out an online "continued fraction" calculator.) Each term of the sequence is called a convergent.

The following is the infinite continued fraction expansion of the Number Pi:

$Continued fraction expansion of Pi$

The first "best approximation" of pi is 3. The second is 3 + (1/7). The third is 3 + (1 / (7+1/15)) and so on. It gets closer and closer to the actual value of pi.

Now, as we turn back to our case, we find that the value of pi implicitly provided in the surface text of 1 Kings is 3, which coincides with the first convergent of the continued fraction expansion of pi. That is not striking in itself, but the second convergent also coincides with an estimate of pi derived from the text of 1 Kings! The second convergent is 3 + (1/7), which is the same as 22/7, the estimation of pi that we found by counting the number of letters in the descriptions of the circumference and the diameter! (Curiously, the text of 2 Chronicles 4:2 gives us 21 letters instead of 22 because of the missing hey and so the fraction 21/7 yields the first convergent of the pi series.)

It gets even "worse". The third convergent also coincides with the remaining estimation of pi derived from the text! The third convergent is 3 + (1 / (7+1/15)), which is the same as 3 x 111/106. 111 and 106 are the numerical values of the word "circumference" found in the parallel verses describing the molten sea. That's simply staggering. Words fail to describe it. All three approximations of pi that can be extracted from the text are exactly the same numbers in the fraction expansion of pi (which is a perennial set of data)!

And there's a unifying guiding principle in this correlation: the deeper we move into our Jewish-fashioned exegesis of the text, the better is our approximation of pi! The estimation of 3 is derived from the mere surface reading of the passage. The estimation of 3.142857... is found by the less simple method of letter count in the description of the measurements in the Hebrew text. Finally, the best estimation of pi (3,141509...) is obtained from numerical values of the letters of the word "circumference". Gematria is reputed by Jews as a deeper form of exegesis.

That cannot be categorized as any other thing than a "pattern", regardless of how it came to be.

As a last and least note, Jewish interpretation would also look for assigning meaning to the defining hey that makes all the difference. Hey has the value of 5, and the approximation of pi given by the qav/qaveh relation coincides with pi in fivesignificant digits (3,141509...) and even the digit sum of these numbers adds up to five (3+1+4+1+5 = 14 → 1+4 = 5). Moreover, the letter hey is considered by the Rabbis the Letter of Revelation (which in Hebrew is connected to the idea of roundness, rolling; galah), because the letter literally means "hey!", "behold!".

121

Religulous with Bill MaherI just saw it

by seven006 in

jw
friends

i dont post much at all any more but i had to mention this, i just got back from seeing religulous and cant remember the last time i laughed so hard.

it was great!!!!!!

close-minded religious people should save their money and not go see this movie but instead give your money to the next tv evangelist or street magician you see.

Neo

btt

121

Religulous with Bill MaherI just saw it

by seven006 in

jw
friends

i dont post much at all any more but i had to mention this, i just got back from seeing religulous and cant remember the last time i laughed so hard.

it was great!!!!!!

close-minded religious people should save their money and not go see this movie but instead give your money to the next tv evangelist or street magician you see.

Neo

Oh yes, there's a lot more than that -- things like Isis/Mary being seated on a throne, with a specific kind of averted gaze pose (no eye contact with head looking to the right), holding the child on her left thigh, sometimes with certain astral motifs, sometimes with pointing/nurturing gestures, etc. A good broad survey of the iconographic evidence can be found in the article "Isis and Mary in Early Icons" by Thomas F. Matthews and Norman Muller (pp. 3-12) in the book Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium (ed. by Maria Vassilaki, 2005). The similarity is strongest in the oldest examples and those closest to Egypt (such as in Sinai at the Monastery of St. Catherine). Iconographic parallels are also found in the function and setting of the images -- such as in door panels to shrines.

Thanks Leo! I read the article. There are several points of contact indeed. And that's one more example of the Christian religion building upon existing cults and adapting their motifs and artistry as a means of introducing Christian doctrine. An example that we are very familiar with is the adoption of December 25th as the birthday of Jesus.

Of course this kind of practice is found in Christianity from its earliest beginnings, the classic instance being Paul's discourse mentioning the altar to the "Unknown God" as a reference to the Christian Deity (Acts 17).

With respect to the throne motif, Matthews and Muller write: "The connection between Isis enthroned and Mary enthroned is also highly suggestive, for the throne is a proper attribute of Isis, whereas it is hardly what one would expect for Mary of Nazareth. Isis' name seems to have meant 'throne,' her hieroglyth was a throne, and she was protector of the pharaoh's throne. Mary acquired the throne to demonstrate that she was equal to, and indeed replaced, the ancient Mother of the God. This competittion of the Christian pantheon with the divinities they replaced is a process observed frequently in the formation of Christian iconography. Along with the throne, Mary aquired the halo, common on icons of the ancient gods, and a military guard. It should be noted that alongside the Karanis enthroned Isis was a representation of the Thracian military god Heron" (p. 9).

I beg to differ from the authors. It would be strange if a throne were not an attribute of Mary of Nazareth in the earliest traditions. The canonical Gospels go out of their way to show that Christ's Kingship is modeled after the Davidic Dinasty, and the OT shows that the "Queen Mother" (geburah) figure was prominent in the line of Davidic kings. Bath-Sheba herself is mentioned as having a throne (1Kings 2:19). Matthew mentions Bath-Sheba in his David-centered genealogy of Jesus (1:6) and Luke depicts Gabriel as referring to "the throne of David" before Mary the mother of the king (1:33, alluding to 2Samuel 7:13).

Even the concept of the woman herself being a throne seems to be a common motif. Luke fashions the Visitation after the narrative of the Ark's procession in 2Samuel 6 and 1Chronicles 13. Mary is thus portrayed as an "Ark of the Covenant", a piece of furniture regarded by Jews as God's Throne on earth (2Samuel 6:2). And we know that Church Fathers mentioned Mary as being "God's Throne".

So the appropriation of these Isiac motifs is not unfounded.

Neo

121

Religulous with Bill MaherI just saw it

by seven006 in

jw
friends

i dont post much at all any more but i had to mention this, i just got back from seeing religulous and cant remember the last time i laughed so hard.

it was great!!!!!!

close-minded religious people should save their money and not go see this movie but instead give your money to the next tv evangelist or street magician you see.

Neo

Hi Neo....The evidence is iconographic (in terms of artistic motifs in depicting both Isis and Mary), archaeological (e.g. the Isis altar at Philippi that was reappropriated for Christian use), and literary (e.g. the dependence of the Mary story in the Arabic Infancy Gospel of the Savior on the kind of Isis myth found in Apuleius). The influence was largely regional; there is similarly strong evidence of mariological influence from the cults of Artemis and Cybele in Asia Minor (particularly in Phyrgia, the home of Montanism). Thus we find in some streams of Egyptian gnosticism a parallelism of Isis and Mary and Harpocrates and Jesus, and even in popular traditions we find a similar influence; for instance, some apocryphal stories claim that Mary fled with Jesus to Fayyum where Jesus was renamed Aour (i.e. Horus). For more discussion of the evidence, see Isis in the Ancient World by Reginald E. Witt and The Virgin Goddess: Studies in the Pagan and Christian Roots of Mariology by Stephen Benko. What we find with respect to the cults of Isis and Harpocrates is close to what would be expected for the kind of (local) syncretism resulting from the spread of Christianity and its displacement of older popular cults (just as can be found in the traditions pertaining to the saints which were similarly dependent on pagan deities, such as Saint George the dragon-slayer, which in Egypt drew significantly on the Horus cult).

Thank you Leo! I have seen various syncretic links between Mary's figure and that of pagan goddesses. But there's one point in particular that is hard for me to discern that just happens to be the very first one you mention: art. Which iconographic motifs do Isis' and Mary's depictions have in common? You know, a mother holding a baby child on her arms is not distinctive at all; this is common imagery. So it is hard to establish a link between Isis and Mary purely on the grounds of this common motif only. Do you know if there are distinguishing artistic elements that could link the two like, say, a crown on her head?

"A mother and her baby" just seems to be too little evidence to say that Christian iconography got inspiration from images of goddesses of the pagan world in its depiction of the Virgin and her Divine Son.

Neo

121

Religulous with Bill MaherI just saw it

by seven006 in

jw
friends

i dont post much at all any more but i had to mention this, i just got back from seeing religulous and cant remember the last time i laughed so hard.

it was great!!!!!!

close-minded religious people should save their money and not go see this movie but instead give your money to the next tv evangelist or street magician you see.

Neo

There are some genuine (broad) similarities between Jesus and the Osiris/Horus myths; the Typhonic conflict between Horus and Set for the kingship of Egypt, and Horus' trampling of Set's crocodiles, probably contributed to the stream of Christian tradition (found especially in the gospel of John, Revelation, and the Odes of Solomon) that portrayed Jesus' crucifixion as his triumph over Satan. The cult of Isis and Harpocrates definitely contributed to later mariology, and there are some dying-rising parallels are well. But the long lists of parallels that are often distributed online are largely modern inventions. I did quite a bit of research last year on this by tracking down the source materials claimed to support these claims; the notion that Horus was crucified comes from a Freemason publication from the 1920s (or so) that simply claimed this on the basis of a Maya sculpture (that has nothing to do with ancient Egypt). Other claims were originated without evidence by Theosophical and popular writers -- not actual scholars.

Hi Leolaia,

How do we know that the cult of Isis influenced later mariology? Can you help me out with that?

Neo

11

Solomons Salary: $666

by tula in

"now the weight of gold that came to solomon in one year was six hundred and threescore and six talents of gold.".

(2 chronicles 9:13 (same verse as 1 kings 10:14).

revelation 13:18: .

Neo

Nark,

the dominant circulation of Roman coins usually bearing the portrait and the name of the emperor was resented as idolatrous by the strictest religious nationalistic sections of Judaism, as testified by the denarius controversy in the Synoptic Gospels (where "Jesus"' argument rests on the question "whose money is it?"), and by the "changers" in the temple courtyard who exchanged the acceptable Tyrian money for the unacceptable Roman one...

Is there any other evidence outside the Synoptic tradition attesting the religious understanding of some Jews that the Roman coin was idolatrous?

Neo

19

Alpha & Omega / Aleph & Tav / First & Last

by AlphaOmega in

does anyone know anymore about this and whether it has been specifically mentioned in the jw literature ?.

as we all know, the first and last letters of the greek alphabet are alpha and omega.... .

the first and last letters of the hebrew alphabet are aleph and tav.

Neo

In the strictest grammatical sense, the presence of eth ('t, as pointed by Leolaia) in itself is no big deal, since it just indicates the direct object in the accusative. But, looking at the verse with a more "spiritual" interpretation, like the Rabbis would, it is a remarkable coincidence that first occurrence of eth occurs right there in Genesis 1.1 together with the first occurrence of Elohim.

Revelation calls Jesus "the Alpha and the Omega" in its introduction and the Gospel of John calls him the "Word" in its introduction. What is so interesting is that both are linguistic symbols. One is the word "WORD" itself, and the other is formed by the first and last letters of the alphabet, standing as a symbol of the whole alphabet, which is used to name everything that can be named. They are maximal symbols, and are applied to the same person.

Now John 1.1 says that the Word was with God in the beginning. This is an indirect reference by the author to Genesis 1.1, where we find that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". And now comes the coincidence: in Hebrew we read that the Word Eth was with God in the beginning. The Word written with the First and Last Hebrew letters sits right next to the first occurrence of God in the Torah. He, the Word, was with God there in the act of creation, as John 1:1-3 states.

It becomes even more interesting when we see that the first phrase in Genesis has seven words in Hebrew, therefore mimicking the creation that is detailed in the following verses in a pattern of seven days. The Aleph-Tav word is the fourth word, standing in the heart of Genesis 1:1. But this eth word is a derivative of the noun oth (the same aleph-tav with a different pronunciation), first used in Genesis 1:14, which means "sign, mark, miracle". Thus the fourth word self-reflectively suggests that it is a sign from God. In fact, the Aleph Tav / Alpha Omega is a symbol of the beginning and the ending, and it occurs in the beggining (Genesis 1:1) and the ending (Revelation 22:13) of the Bible.

There is an interesting correlation with another verse in the Old Testament:

"They shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son." - Zechariah 12:10

As in Genesis 1:1, there's an eth right there after "me" in Hebrew, and, like in Genesis, it doesn't mean much in a secular linguistic sense. But the Gospel of John quotes this verse and adapts it to show that Jesus was the one to be believed (John 20:28-31).

One of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: "Not one of his bones will be broken," and, as another scripture says, "They will look on the one they have pierced." - John 19:34-37

When we look back into the Zechariah verse, and having already spotted a link between Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1 based on eth, we can see that Zech 12:10 can be read with NT lenses as "they shall look upon me - the Aleph Tav - whom they have pierced".

And I just noted that John in this context suddenly emphasizes his catchword truth, which in Hebrew is written, as Leolaia points out, as emet, using the first, middle, and last letters of the alphabet, thus denoting "the whole truth". It is remarkable that the word is evoked in the context of the Zechariah Aleph-Tav quote.

Plus, emet can be broken down in two words: em and met. Em means mother and met means death in Hebrew. That is absolutely striking in the present context, since in John 19 Jesus sees his mother, who caused his birth, and then faces his death. A moment that encapsulates his whole life, from womb to tomb. From beginning to end.

Neo