The NT was written in the 2nd century

[stahrwe]

Tat, thank you for this material. I haven't yet watched the videos, but look forward to it.

Editors of the Bible had plenty of motive to embellish or revise the story of Jesus, to the point of motive to invent the entire story.

Reconstructing the possible motives of the authors of the Gospels suggests they used the historical story of Jesus as bait to attract people to their esoteric teachings which had continuity with already ancient religious ideas, especially regarding the nature of the world and the cosmos. The therapeuts who wrote the Gospels succeeded beyond their dreams in convincing people the fictional account of Jesus was true, to the point that their original aim to control the new religious movement was swept aside by orthodoxy. It is a bit like the Magician's Apprentice, where the broom (orthodoxy) comes to life because the apprentice (the therapeuts) did not fully understand the wonders they were working. Now that orthodoxy is continuing to flood the house, so to speak, we are waiting for God to come back to fix the mistake. Orthodoxy was built on the ladder of the fictional fantasy of the historical Christ, and the church kicked away the ladder when they got to the top. We are now reconstructing the ladder.

The speculation of astrotheology is based on scientific evidence. Religious believers, by contrast, base their speculation on blind faith.

My understanding was that the first Christian material we have is the letters of Saint Paul, apparently written in the decade of the 50s, followed by various commentaries from church fathers, with the gospels only definitively appearing late in the second century. This time frame is the reverse of the common assumption of the faithful that the gospels came before the epistles in line with both the chronology and their order in the New Testament. It also challenges the scholarly consensus that the gospels were finalised within a generation or two after Christ.

Challenging this scholarly consensus adds to the serious doubt about the basic assumption of orthodoxy that the outline of the Gospels is historically true, by opening a more plausible psychological and political account.

My opinion, in agreement with Acharya S, is that astrotheology has a far larger and even a decisive role in structuring the evolution of faith than is ever acknowledged by orthodox apologists. The problem is to say why the authors of the Bible were so secretive about the stellar framework of their ideas and how we can explain the fragmentary evidence that survived the destruction of ancient knowledge by Christian fanatics. The evening and morning stars were the television of the ancient world. Putting ourselves in their minds involves looking at the stars and seeing how the mythic stories are reflected in the cosmos - 'thy will be done on earth as in heaven',

How I interpret the evidence is as follows.

Esoteric mystery religions of the Roman Empire and the Ancient Middle East had a high level of understanding of precession of the equinox as the main observable shift in the positions of the stars over time. The prominent place of the stars in Egyptian and Babylonian culture, the long period of observation, the presence of numerous coded references and the existence of stable markers such as the pyramids support this contention.

For example, Mithraism has as its central symbol the Tauroctony, a statue featuring the opposite zodiac signs of the bull and scorpion that celebrates the victory of man over bull. The Tauroctony appears to depict the transition from the Age of Taurus to the Age of Aries dating to about 2150 BC. Like other mysteries, the teachings of Mithras were transmitted orally, making them highly vulnerable to destruction and loss.

The shift of the equinox from Aries to Pisces at the time of Christ was a main cosmic factor defining the observed evolution of the universe. We can say the observation of precession matches to the “mythos of the logos” – the mythological framework of rational narrative explanation of reality. The precession presents a slow moving basis for stories about the constellations, just as earlier peoples had already identified all the visible constellations with stories from mythology.

The attached star chart shows the position of the equinox sun at the time of Christ. It illustrates how the easily observed movement of the equinox point across the first fish of Pisces provides a fertile framework for mythmaking about the alpha and omega point of the Great Year. You can see the first fish as the faint line of stars perpendicular to the zodiac line through the sun. We see here the movement of the equinox across the start and end point of the zodiac. Putting this observation into myth provides a clear motive and framework to invent the story of Jesus Christ as a cosmic messiah who would fulfil the prophecies of the Old Testament.

However, Judaism had a formal revulsion for star worship which it saw as a form of idolatry. So it makes sense that this cosmic origin for the Christ story was held as a secret restricted to initiates. As Elaine Pagels explains in The Gnostic Paul, we see Paul continually tells his readers that he will expand on his letters with spoken explanation. It makes sense to suggest this spoken secret explanation included a Gnostic basis for Christian faith in the actually observed cosmology of the Great Year.

There are many examples in history where a belief has provided the basis for evolution of culture, but where the evolved result has forgotten its origins. Perhaps the most vivid is the way Calvinism provided a basis for the emergence of capitalism, in a way that is largely forgotten today, even though many Calvinist values such as thrift and prudence continue to inform successful capitalist investment.

It seems most likely to my reading that Pauline Christianity was grounded in a secret cosmology of the Great Year, encoded in about 40 references to the age throughout the New Testament, but this cosmology was forgotten when orthodoxy suppressed gnosis. The ladder was kicked away once people had climbed to the top, and the bishops then suppressed the evidence of Christian origins.

In summary, Christianity began as an imaginary story of what the messiah would have been like had he existed, based on the 'as above so below' idea that events on earth reflect the stars. As the Christian conflict with Rome continued, the story was historized and simplified to appeal to a wider audience, with the political motive of marshalling the ancient myths to attack the empire. Initially this simplified version was controlled by the Gnostics as an entry point, but the complex story proved hard to explain to a mass audience, and soon theologians emerged who said the simple story was all that existed. Once the empire co-opted Christianity, the suppression of 'heresy' expanded further so the big lie could proceed without opposition.

The conflict between orthodoxy and gnosis helps us to see Christianity against the big picture of the Great Year. Against the Gospel coded framework, the zeitgeist of the Age of Pisces is belief. The zeitgeist of the Age of Aquarius is knowledge. We can see the slow shift of the equinox through these historical ages in the star map attached. At the turning point between Great Years, as the equinox entered Pisces from Aries, all twelve themes from the twelve ages of the Great Year were unified in an imagined gnostic vision of salvation. As the equinox chugged into Pisces, we see that the Piscean theme of orthodox faith came to dominate. People simply could not see the bigger picture. Gnostics struggled to explain the story of the aeons, but they could not compete politically and culturally against the 'true believers' of institutional Christianity, who had a simplified literal message that resonated with the emotional needs of the time. Belief gradually came to dominate the world at the height of the Age of Pisces in the Dark Ages. We are now at another age cusp, with a new zeitgeist of knowledge emerging, but the old belief zeitgeist is still dominant. The Gnostics were Aquarian Christians, but the time was not right for them to succeed. This is why Christian eschatology, the theory of end times, explains in the Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24 that the gospel must be preached to the whole planet before the end will come. It is a prediction that the Age of Pisces will be a time of belief and the Age of Aquarius will be an age of knowledge.

I am collecting references to this theme of the Christ myth as based on precession of the equinox from one Great Year to the next. Acharya S has emphasised the narrative continuity between Christ and solar myths of dying and rising saviours. This precise story about Jesus, as a mythic rendering of the alpha and omega point of the Great Year at the shift from the Age of Aries to the Age of Pisces, is something that I have focused on for some time. This stellar correspondence gives the physical scientific reason why we can say that if Jesus did not exist it would have been necessary to invent him.

What we see here is that Christianity is a continuation of the ancient practice of linking myth and legend to imaginary stories about the constellations. There are detailed myths and legends about all the classical constellations, and many have a precessional content. Precession is the main long term change observable in the stars. Apart from the tiny shifts resulting from proper motion, precession is really the only difference between the night sky we see today and the sky as seen in the ancient world.

Examples of precession in mythology include:
1. The story of the Golden Apples of the Sun protected by Hera's Dragon appears to refer to the North Celestial Pole precessing from Vega through Draco.
2. Similar myths about the movement of the North Pole are directly encoded in the Biblical story at Rev 12-13 of the dragon (Draco) giving his seat to a bear/lion (Ursa/Leo).
3. The story of the slaying of the bull by Mithras indicates the shift from the Age of Taurus to the Age of Aries, with the constellation Taurus surrounded by three heroic constellations, Perseus, Orion and Aries.
4. The story of the loss of the prow ornament of Jason's ship the Argo appears to refer to the invisibility from Greece of Canopus, the main star of the constellation Argo, and the visibility of Canopus from Egypt where it was celebrated as the second brightest star after Sirius and a star of Osiris. Canopus reached its maximum northerly ascension in about 500 AD.
5. Biblical stories such as the loaves and fishes, the twelve jewels of the holy city, and the idea of the Christian age as a time of belief match to precession as an explanatory framework.

Against this background, the story of Jesus Christ can primarily be understood as an account of the epochal shift of Great Years, marking the moment of the Aries-Pisces shift as alpha and omega point. As 'King of the Aeons', (Rev 15:3), the Bible imagines Jesus Christ as a temporal model of God.

Denying this cosmic explanation, including the plausible thesis of the Gospels as Second Century documents, is disrespectful to the actual text. Fundamentalists say look to the Bible, but when we do, they avoid the conversation because they do not like what it says as it refutes their idolatry.

We have seen and heard all this before but just to maintain a fresh critique;

1) you say that Scorpius opposite Taurus symbolizes the victory of man over the bull. How? What does man have to do with a scorpion?

2) Somewhere in the confusion of Astrotheology I seem to remember being told that one can't really say when a given age begins or ends. Is that correct? If so how is that a positive?

3) Isn't Acharya S a self designation that D. M. Murdock took for herself?

[tat tvam asi]

Thanks Robert. Yes, that the bible makes use of stellar symbolism for the use of long time counts is abundantly clear. They were following the course of "Aeons".

This video series outlines a late dating for the entire NT, Pauline epistles included, so you may want to follow that part of it from the beginning. And I think you'll enjoy the way the series finishes because it opens up a new can worms in terms of trying to pin down a possible historical grain that could have started this off during the 2nd century. It's the best evemerist type theory I've ever seen to tell you the truth. I had to congradulate GodAlmighty for doing such a good job with it. But the historical person in question is not the Jesus of the gospels from the first century, that Jesus remains as a myth with many layers of solar motif and possible historical people making up the myth. Take all of the layers away and nothing remains. He agreed. This series was actually made before GodAlmighty understood mythicism in any great detail.

GodAlmighty also gives a theory for why the gospel writers back dated the gospel drama according to a time frame that can be reached by looking at the OT and Daniel. That part you need to pay close attention to:


And I recognized immediately that this also closely corresponds with the changing of the ages during the early first century as per calculations that you've given in the past. So there could have been double motivation involved.

So during the mid to late second century this savior mythology - possibly stemming from the followers of an early second century person - was eventually back dated to the early first century as the story passed along in order to make the person appear to meet scriptural criteria for the messiah. So from this early second century person (Yeshua Ben Pandera / Sedata), to the Pauline epistles which are focused dying and resurrecting, to Marcion's gospel, to the eventual emergence of the canonical gospels, shows a second century creation of the entire thing. And it's really interesting to consider.

[stahrwe]

Eureka, I think I have had an epiphany and I have to acknowledge that I was helped to see it by Tat Tvam Asi, Robert Tulip, Bertram Russel and Kurt Goedel.

I read Tat's response to Robert's post about Astrotheology and it occured to me what the problem is. There is so much crap in the theory that it appears to make sense but it is wrong. Take Russell's Principia Mathematica. He set out to prove all mathematics using logic. It took him until page 87 or something like that of volume 2 to prove that 1 plus 1 equals 2. Along comes Goedel and he shows that Russell is wrong, well, at least not free of contradictions. So, what went wrong and what has that got to do with Astrotheology? Simple is the word and Astrotheology is not. But what makes Astrotheology appear, note: APPEAR, to work is its complexity. Let's take a theory with five elements:

Premise
3 pieces of stuff
Supported conclusion reached by the stuff (data points) and consistent with premise.

Let's assume there is only 1 right conclusion.

Now, we assume that we have a system which allows us to differentiate between stuff which is relevant to our premise and conclusion and stuff which isn't and can be rejected as leading us in the wrong direction. On that basis, as our system becomes more complex we examine each stuff and throw out that which takes us away from our conclusion. We do this because the valid stuff is connected to each other and to the premise and conclusion. There is a solid road if you will. But suppose we throw in an infinite amount of stuff so that we can no longer easily differentiate between good stuff and garbage because we are moving in infinitesimal units. If our perception is off, we might think we are on a solid road when we really aren't. On that basis, we can't tell if we are moving to a valid conclusion or not consequently any conclusion may as well be valid. That is what is going on with Astrotheology. You need to go in the other direction and instead of complicating the system, call in the organizers to get rid of the garbage. Ever watch Hoarders, Buried Alive?


That's where Astrotheology is. It seems great because your minds are impressed with the complexity that you are creating but in reality you are getting further and further from the truth. That is what the early Church was faced with. There were lots of people running around claiming to be Christians, and writing stuff, and going off in wrong directions until finally, the Church collectively said we have to stop this. We need to collect the legitimate writings so everyone will know what to die for, yes, it was that serious.

[tat tvam asi]

Problem.

Astrotheology is the simplest explanation. The ancients followed the movement of the stars and the second function of a traditional mythology is the cosmological function. That the bible made use of the imagery of the sky above is an unchangeable fact. Everything lines up in order and points to this conclusion. In the time of Taurus the Bull is sacred. After it ends the Ram / Lamb gains focus. After that ends Fish symbolism becomes dominant. The Bible follows the precession of the 12 constellations of the Zodiac. It's people are numbered according to the 12 signs of the zodaic. The priest wears 12 jewels on his breast plate. It's creation account makes use of the number of the sun, moon, and five visible planets - the sacred number 7. It's savior's life follows the progression of the sun around the annual year started with the winter solstice and the saviors disciples are numbered as 12, just as the 12 constellation / companions of the sun. That's the cosmological function of mythology at work by the way. As above so below, simple.

Now just because Robert's ventured off into investigating all of the complexity regarding how many astrotheological references there are in the bible, and in the world in general, doesn't change the simplicity of the explanation for why these themes are found therein. It isn't very complex at all to look up, see two luminaries and five planets (wanderers) and decide that the number 7 should be sacred. Or to notice the ecliptic path of the sun and decide that the number 12 should be sacred because the sun travels through the 12 constellations. Or to note after generations of astronomer-priests observing the sky that every 72 years the constellations precess backwards one degree making for a longer year, the Great Year, and to consider that as sacred knowledge as well. And then to incorporate the mathmatics of the GY, considered sacred, into their mythologies and religions which passed down into the common era. This is simply the story of man's observation of his surroundings...

[Robert Tulip]

1) you say that Scorpius opposite Taurus symbolizes the victory of man over the bull. How? What does man have to do with a scorpion?
2) Somewhere in the confusion of Astrotheology I seem to remember being told that one can't really say when a given age begins or ends. Is that correct? If so how is that a positive?

Scorpius and Taurus are at opposite points in the sky. From the period 4300BC to 2150 BC the sun was in these constellations at the equinox. In 2150 BC the equinoxes moved out of Taurus and Scorpius and into Aries and Libra. At the time of Christ, as depicted in the diagram above, the sun at the March equinox was in between Aries and Pisces. This is part of a 26,000 year natural cycle known as the Great Year. I did not say that Scorpius opposite Taurus symbolised victory of man over bull, but that the movement of the equinox point out of Taurus and into Aries symbolises this victory. Taurus is surrounded by three constellations, Perseus, Orion and Aries, each of which can be regarded as symbolising a man who kills the bull. The Tauroctony, the central symbol of Mithraism, takes this Scorpion-Bull stellar axis and depicts the victory of the man, Mithras, over this previous dominant symbol.

The March equinox was regarded in the ancient world as defining the zodiac age. Therefore, when the position of the sun at the March equinox moved from Aries to Pisces at the time of Christ, the ancients saw this astrologically as a transition from an age characterised by the qualities seen in the annual sign of Aries to an age characterised by the qualities seen in the annual sign of Pisces. The equinox point actually moved across the first fish of Pisces as depicted in the diagram above in 11 AD, moving so slowly (one degree of arc every 71.6 years) that this event marked the entire time subsequently seen as the time of Christ. This movement out of Aries (the first sign) into Pisces (the last sign) matches precisely to the Christian myth of Jesus Christ as the turning point of time, the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.

Precise definition of the age cusps is somewhat complex, although the long term pattern is readily apparent for those who are willing to do some simple scientific study. My current research into the physics of the Great Year is exploring this problem of defining the ages against the actual astronomical cycles of the earth. The Great Year of precession of the equinoxes is actually the primary driver of earth's long term climate cycles, as proven by the Milankovitch Theory of the orbital drivers of glaciation. By mapping the climate cycles onto the mythological interpretations, we can see a natural evidentiary basis for the speculative ideas, to ground religious imagery in material reality.

For the purpose of identifying the moment of the shift from the Age of Aries to the Age of Pisces depicted in the Bible, it is enough to say that the authors of the Gospels regarded the movement of the sun across the first fish of Pisces, easily seen in the above diagram, as the cusp of both the movement from the Age of Aries to the Age of Pisces and of the shift from one Great Year to the next Great Year. This stellar observation is the only real scientific explanation for how the zodiac signs are encoded into Biblical descriptions such as the foundation stones of the holy city of New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation. The cosmic ground of precession provides a scientific basis to understand the religious idea of how the cosmic Christ, the eternal spirit of truth and light, is incarnate in our present age of darkness.

As John 3:19 explains, the light came into the world but men preferred darkness. Therefore, the Christian church sought to explain the light of the cosmos by reference to the darkness of literal history. The church falsely claims the legacy of light, when in fact they were blighted by the darkness of the age and got it wrong big time. As Paul said of the Romans at Rom 1:25, the Christians exchanged the truth of God for a lie, with the false idolatry of the literal historical Christ replacing the true faith of the eternal reflection of the cosmos in the earth. The truth was sitting there encoded in their central texts, but the darkness of their minds prevented them from seeing it. We are now in a situation and time where we can look back on the Gospels with all the resources of science, enabling a new simple and elegant explanation that reconciles science and religion to bridge faith and reason. The entire New Testament has this cosmic back story that was partially and intuitively understood by the Gnostic authors, but was obliterated from history by the rise of Christianity as a false literal faith.

[stahrwe]

Problem.

Astrotheology is the simplest explanation. The ancients followed the movement of the stars and the second function of a traditional mythology is the cosmological function. That the bible made use of the imagery of the sky above is an unchangeable fact. Everything lines up in order and points to this conclusion. In the time of Taurus the Bull is sacred. After it ends the Ram / Lamb gains focus. After that ends Fish symbolism becomes dominant. The Bible follows the precession of the 12 constellations of the Zodiac. It's people are numbered according to the 12 signs of the zodaic. The priest wears 12 jewels on his breast plate. It's creation account makes use of the number of the sun, moon, and five visible planets - the sacred number 7. It's savior's life follows the progression of the sun around the annual year started with the winter solstice and the saviors disciples are numbered as 12, just as the 12 constellation / companions of the sun. That's the cosmological function of mythology at work by the way. As above so below, simple.

Now just because Robert's ventured off into investigating all of the complexity regarding how many astrotheological references there are in the bible, and in the world in general, doesn't change the simplicity of the explanation for why these themes are found therein. It isn't very complex at all to look up, see two luminaries and five planets (wanderers) and decide that the number 7 should be sacred. Or to notice the ecliptic path of the sun and decide that the number 12 should be sacred because the sun travels through the 12 constellations. Or to note after generations of astronomer-priests observing the sky that every 72 years the constellations precess backwards one degree making for a longer year, the Great Year, and to consider that as sacred knowledge as well. And then to incorporate the mathmatics of the GY, considered sacred, into their mythologies and religions which passed down into the common era. This is simply the story of man's observation of his surroundings...

It isn't obvious at all.

There are two luminaries but they are very different from each other and the planets are different still, so why not have 1 as the sacred number or 2, or five? There is nothing promoting the number 12, or 7. And why 12 constellations of the zodiac? WHy not 5, or 6, or 10. A Ten month year would be much easier to deal with. But then there is the pesky moon, that divides the year up into 12 right? Well, not really, Lunar calendars tend more often to deal with 13 months.

It is true that Christianity places emphasis on the role of Jesus as a lamb, not a ram, but the bull is pretty much non-existent in the church I attend. But then, the Bible editors probably took it out to take the focus off Mithras right? There's the problem. You cram so much garbage into the stew and what seems like a reasonable pathway only leads to blind alleys.

[stahrwe]

1) you say that Scorpius opposite Taurus symbolizes the victory of man over the bull. How? What does man have to do with a scorpion?
2) Somewhere in the confusion of Astrotheology I seem to remember being told that one can't really say when a given age begins or ends. Is that correct? If so how is that a positive?

Scorpius and Taurus are at opposite points in the sky. From the period 4300BC to 2150 BC the sun was in these constellations at the equinox. In 2150 BC the equinoxes moved out of Taurus and Scorpius and into Aries and Libra. At the time of Christ, as depicted in the diagram above, the sun at the March equinox was in between Aries and Pisces. This is part of a 26,000 year natural cycle known as the Great Year. I did not say that Scorpius opposite Taurus symbolised victory of man over bull, but that the movement of the equinox point out of Taurus and into Aries symbolises this victory. Taurus is surrounded by three constellations, Perseus, Orion and Aries, each of which can be regarded as symbolising a man who kills the bull. The Tauroctony, the central symbol of Mithraism, takes this Scorpion-Bull stellar axis and depicts the victory of the man, Mithras, over this previous dominant symbol.

The March equinox was regarded in the ancient world as defining the zodiac age. Therefore, when the position of the sun at the March equinox moved from Aries to Pisces at the time of Christ, the ancients saw this astrologically as a transition from an age characterised by the qualities seen in the annual sign of Aries to an age characterised by the qualities seen in the annual sign of Pisces. The equinox point actually moved across the first fish of Pisces as depicted in the diagram above in 11 AD, moving so slowly (one degree of arc every 71.6 years) that this event marked the entire time subsequently seen as the time of Christ. This movement out of Aries (the first sign) into Pisces (the last sign) matches precisely to the Christian myth of Jesus Christ as the turning point of time, the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.

Precise definition of the age cusps is somewhat complex, although the long term pattern is readily apparent for those who are willing to do some simple scientific study. My current research into the physics of the Great Year is exploring this problem of defining the ages against the actual astronomical cycles of the earth. The Great Year of precession of the equinoxes is actually the primary driver of earth's long term climate cycles, as proven by the Milankovitch Theory of the orbital drivers of glaciation. By mapping the climate cycles onto the mythological interpretations, we can see a natural evidentiary basis for the speculative ideas, to ground religious imagery in material reality.

For the purpose of identifying the moment of the shift from the Age of Aries to the Age of Pisces depicted in the Bible, it is enough to say that the authors of the Gospels regarded the movement of the sun across the first fish of Pisces, easily seen in the above diagram, as the cusp of both the movement from the Age of Aries to the Age of Pisces and of the shift from one Great Year to the next Great Year. This stellar observation is the only real scientific explanation for how the zodiac signs are encoded into Biblical descriptions such as the foundation stones of the holy city of New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation. The cosmic ground of precession provides a scientific basis to understand the religious idea of how the cosmic Christ, the eternal spirit of truth and light, is incarnate in our present age of darkness.

As John 3:19 explains, the light came into the world but men preferred darkness. Therefore, the Christian church sought to explain the light of the cosmos by reference to the darkness of literal history. The church falsely claims the legacy of light, when in fact they were blighted by the darkness of the age and got it wrong big time. As Paul said of the Romans at Rom 1:25, the Christians exchanged the truth of God for a lie, with the false idolatry of the literal historical Christ replacing the true faith of the eternal reflection of the cosmos in the earth. The truth was sitting there encoded in their central texts, but the darkness of their minds prevented them from seeing it. We are now in a situation and time where we can look back on the Gospels with all the resources of science, enabling a new simple and elegant explanation that reconciles science and religion to bridge faith and reason. The entire New Testament has this cosmic back story that was partially and intuitively understood by the Gnostic authors, but was obliterated from history by the rise of Christianity as a false literal faith.

Pretty much what I remembered.

The idea of a relationship between early Christianity and Mithraism is based on a remark by the 2nd century Christian writer Justin Martyr, who accused the Mithraists of diabolically imitating the Christian communion rite.[112] Based upon this, Ernest Renan in 1882 set forth a vivid depiction of two rival religions: "if the growth of Christianity had been arrested by some mortal malady, the world would have been Mithraic,"[113] Edwin M. Yamauchi, states that Renan's work was "published nearly 150 years ago, [and] has no value as a source. He [Renan] knew very little about Mithraism..."[114]
111 Justin Martyr, First Apology, ch. 66: "For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, "This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body; "and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, "This is My blood; "and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn."
112 Renan, E., Marc-Aurele et la fin du monde antique. Paris, 1882, p. 579: "On peut dire que, si le christianisme eût été arrêté dans sa croissance par quelque maladie mortelle, le monde eût été mithriaste."
113 Edwin M. Yamauchi cited in Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007, p.175
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraic_mysteries

[tat tvam asi]

It isn't obvious at all.

There are two luminaries but they are very different from each other and the planets are different still, so why not have 1 as the sacred number or 2, or five? There is nothing promoting the number 12, or 7.

What does it matter how different the luminaries and planets are from another, the point is that ancient people looked up and took note of two luminaries and five planets that moved differently in the sky from the other stars. The planets were seen as wanderers. And the number of these celestial spheres comes out to 7 if you look up and count them. The number 7 became sacred in diverse cultures around the world because everyone saw the same 7 celestial sphere's standing out in the sky, obviously.

And why 12 constellations of the zodiac? WHy not 5, or 6, or 10. A Ten month year would be much easier to deal with. But then there is the pesky moon, that divides the year up into 12 right? Well, not really, Lunar calendars tend more often to deal with 13 months.

Because that's the way the ancients arranged the zodiac. I didn't arrange it, they did. And they also decided that the number that constellations of the zodiac were arranged into should be regarded as sacred, so sacred that the Israelite community was divided according to that number and the high priest wore 12 gemstones on his breastplate reflecting the same thing. Very sacred indeed...

It is true that Christianity places emphasis on the role of Jesus as a lamb, not a ram, but the bull is pretty much non-existent in the church I attend. But then, the Bible editors probably took it out to take the focus off Mithras right?

I guess they leave out the Moses and the Golden Calf incident in your church then Stahrwe - the incident where the ages had changed from Taurus the Bull to Aries the Ram / Lamb and the people were still trying to cling to worship of the symbolism of the former world age. They age of the Bull. After which Moses came down hard on the people in the storyline and put the attention on Ram /Lamb symbolism instead, and Jews to this day still blow the Ram's horn dating back to this religious myth about the changing of the ages from Taurus the Bull to Aries the Ram / Lamb. I suppose they don't read about Moses in your church...

And I guess they don't mention the transition from law to grace either at your church - Moses to Jesus. The next shift in world ages involved the Ram / Lamb of Aries changing over to Pisces the Fish. Jesus starts out as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and then after the resurrection he attends a fish dinner to usher in the new age of Pisces as per the storyline. In otherwords, after the sun had crossed over from the former age of Aries the Ram / Lamb, the sun entered into the house of Pisces the Fish at the spring equinox, after which Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. The writers were careful to include these stellar references to the passage of "time" every step of the way through the Old and New Testaments. They were following the passage of "Aeons".

And the unlearned obviously had no idea that there's an astrotheological "timeline" described throughout the surface storyline of these mythic tales and adventures. The learned, or informed, could always see it clear as day however. So by attacking the stellar symbolism of the bible you are essentially drawing attention to yourself as unlearned and uninformed with respect to the careful attention to the passage of "time" that the biblical writers have included. And being uninformed about the stellar symbolism, these things don't come as obvious to you at all. Only obvious to the informed. But thanks for outlining the fact that you don't understand the long "time" count references of your own religion Stahrwe. It makes your position against the existence of the astrotheology in your own religious stories that much clearer. You just don't know anything about it so you deny it exists...

There's the problem. You cram so much garbage into the stew and what seems like a reasonable pathway only leads to blind alleys.

Yes, it's interesting to hear feedack from those who don't understand the stellar symbolism contained in their own religious stories. When exposed to it I can see that the stellar symbolism prompts an immediate sense of fear, anger, and rejection because the individual is suddenly faced with the fact that their religion is covering things in the storyline they never realized that it covered. And facing the unknown generally prompts the response of fear in most cases. It means that many of these fantastic stories are actually allegorical writings about the observed movment of the heavens above, not necessarily about literal historical people and events to begin with. The story of Jesus' life ministry is one such instance:

[Robert Tulip]

I'm up to number 18 of 25 of GodAlmighty's explanation series of Christian origins. It is brilliant, learned, simple and compelling. The core question is why did none of the Apostolic Fathers mention the Gospels and Epistles or their contents until late in the second century. As with any forensic investigation, only the truth makes sense and is totally consistent. Where there is fraud, the lies are inconsistent. The truth is that the early writers did not mention the New Testament books because these books had not yet been written. Part of the fraud was the claim that these texts were written by God, when in fact they were just as much part of deceptive politics as any tract written today.

The fraud motive of the second century authors of the Gospels and Epistles was to wage politico-religious war. If they had a book that they could claim dated to the first century, about Jesus or Paul, they were very well placed in debate. Eliminating anachronisms was important to the pretense that the books were old. However they were only partly successful in covering their tracks, as they still left in numerous references to theological debates of the second century.

The false claim of the historical existence of Jesus and Paul was a big boost to any theologian who had the audacity and impudence to pull it off. Marcion was a consummate fraud, able to hoodwink the world for 2000 years. The emperor is wearing nothing.

Despite this problem of mass deception, the grain of truth that gives the stories their plausibility remains. This grain is the continuity with ancient wisdom from Egypt and Babylon. The New Testament was a way to give new life to the old myths, recasting them in literal historical guise. As I said before, the authors did not imagine that their Gnostic intent would be blasted away so easily and completely by an ignorant and oppressive dogmatism. However, we are now in a position to reconstruct the most plausible reality of Christian origins, and to regard the orthodox with the contempt they deserve. Escaping the brainwashing is difficult but possible.

[lady of shallot]

I am up to 4 or 5 but having trouble staying logged into this and even accessing it without going from this site. Any hints?