My religion is very, very simple. If I am religious at all, it is simply a reliance on Jesus.
What fascinates me personally is the HISTORY of the ideas that led to Christianity.
My study of history tells me that Semites invent nothing. So I do not look to the Old Testament (OT) for hte real origins of Christianity. This at least gives me some special utility. Tens of thousands of theologians make a living digging into the Old Testament to try to somehow dig everything Christ said out of it.
There should be room for one amateur to get his nose out of the OT and look around for the truth elsewhere in history.
That is what I am talking to Richard about here.
Richard,
Zoroastrianism was an Aryan religion. Historians kept trying to push Zoroaster forward to about 600BC so he would not conflict with the real dating of the OT. Because of all the earlier references that have since been found, there is no doubt now that Zoroaster was at least 1200 BC.
I am not a theologian, but I’m a pretty good historian. Roman Christians competed with the Mazdaists, who were from Persia where Zoroastrianism is from. The Mazdaists used bread and wine and talkng about how THEIR savior was born of a virgin while sherpherds watched by night. Their services consisted of bread and wine. Actually it predated them considerably.
Naturally the Christians thought all this was stolen from them, and was therefore just blasphemy. I think there is more explanation of Christianity in Mazdaism than in the totally unrelated Old Testament.
I think Elizabeth is right. The fatal flaw of Mazdaism was that it excluded women.
The Protestant Old Testament excludes everything after about 600BC, the date you refer to.
You may look at all this as anti-Christian, or you may look at it as I do, something that puts Jesus outside the realm of OT Judaism, a whole newness. To an Old Testament Christian, it is pure heresy.
When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the light,” I do not think he meant, “The OT and me are the way, the truth and the light.”
The truth is not in the Old Testament, and Jesus was not just another Jewish prophet.
No, he did not tell the Jews that in so many words. But his hints were very broad indeed.
Richard, you said,
“True Christian morality was taught in the (Old Jewish) law.”
Among other things, true Christian morality does not torture babies.
Referring to the OT you mention THE captivity.
WHICH captivity?
The Babylonian captivity is the one everybody knows about, and fits in with the poor, poor little Jewish bit. But the Persian captivity was where Judaism went from a pagan religion to good versus evil and the concept of a savior, which it learned from Zoroastrianism.
The only non-Jew praised in the OT is Cyrus, the only non-Jew who, without further explanation in today’s version, “did the work of the Lord.”
In the NT, the Zoroastrian Magi accepted Christ before the Jews rejected him.
Trying to shoehorn Christ into the Old Testament is what theologians have spent eons doing, so that they worship The Holy Land in the name of savior whose kingdom is not of this earth.
These are my own observations, and, contrary to your comment about Deutoronomy, I have read the book. If that covenant were still relevant, Jesus would have stayed in the Temple.
Ther is a lot of code in Jesus’s words, as when he said render unto God what is God’s and unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. There is much there that the OT does not contain or predict.
Jesus was not speaking in a land of free speech.
Thus endeth all my theology.
#1 by Elizabeth on 11/07/2005 - 2:19 pm
Thanks for the praise, Bob.
I need to do a little nitpicking here:
Mazdaism was the state religion of the Persian
Empire. Mithraism was the offspring of Mazdaism
that spread across the Roman Empire and that
excluded women.
The classic work on Mithraism was written a hundred
years ago by Franz Cumont. I’ve been told that
Cumont’s work has been replaced by later works on
the subject. I haven’t seen many of these, but
the ones I have seen were written by academics and
are either discussions of archaeological finds or
treatises on inscriptions. Look for the Cumont
book.
#2 by Bob on 11/07/2005 - 2:27 pm
Elizabeth, I mixed those up before.
Outside of that, did you get anything out of the rest of what I said?
Concepts do matter.
#3 by Mark on 11/07/2005 - 2:39 pm
Hey Bob, speaking agnostically here, where does Jack and the Beanstalk come into all of this? I mean, if we’re going to discuss fairy tales why not chew on a story where the hero gets a pot of gold for his efforts instead of eternity plunkin’ on a harp?
#4 by Peter on 11/08/2005 - 5:36 pm
Beware the atheist who pretends to be an agnostic.
An atheist thinks that spirituality and anything else not materialist are fairy tales and impossible.
An agnostic respects others for their beliefs and believes it all might be possible.
Wrongly or rightly, atheists are often rejected, but agnostics are more often respected as close cousins to faith. Thus the deception.
#5 by Richard L. Hardison on 11/09/2005 - 10:00 pm
I’m not sure what prompted the essay, but it doesn’t really follow from what I said. Also, what I said was not a criticism of you.
You are correct that Judaism changed during the captivity, which includes both Babylonian and Persian periods, and it did change for the worst. That period began the slide to the two major parties in charge of the mess during Christ’s time on earth.
Yor statement “Trying to shoehorn Christ into the Old Testament is what theologians have spent eons doing, so that they worship The Holy Land in the name of savior whose kingdom is not of this earth” is actually two statements, both of limited factuality. SOME theologians have tried to some of the things of which you accuse them. Some have seen the connection between the OT and NT, and have seen how Christ actually fits in o the overall scheme of things, and yet see modern Israel for what it is – what you actually see it as.
Quite to the contrary, I see Christ as the culmination of OT Judaism, the Judaism that had been rejected by the religious leaders during Christ’s time. Because he was the culmination, the fulfillment, he ended much of Judaism and God made the part that was passe impossible by allowing Titus to destroy Jerusalem and the temple. Christ left the temple behind because it was no longer needed. The prophecy of what would happen to israel if it forgot God was not about Christ, but about the nation itself. Christ predicted the destruction of Jersualam, which was of a piece with Moses’ prediction in Deuteronomy. Both were fulfilled in detail, and are still in force.
I understand what you mean by Jehovism and I’m against much of what you are against in that regard. I am not prepared to abandon the OT, however, as the NT and OT were produced by the same inspiration from the same God. There is much in the NT that does not make sense in the absence of the OT.
As far as Zoroastrians providing any sort of positive influence to Judaism, I’ve seen the argument, and I don’t think it holds water.
The “Holy Land” is where Christ IS, not where he was. I’m certainly not a crusader of Roman catholic of the middle ages.
“True Christian morality was taught in the (Old Jewish) law.” Still true. “Among other things, true Christian morality does not torture babies.” Quite true. Ignorant people, however, have done things they believed right when it was of no effect. I’ll even bet you’ve done it yourself a time or two. As for the Hebrews circumcising kids, they do because God commanded it. Christians ended the practice until some one in the fairly recent past pushed it as a hygenic method. The evidence, as in many things, is mixed. I got sliced, my son got sliced (and I didn’t want that), but my grandson did not. I didn’t feel bad at all about the last.
No one I know claims that everything about Christ was predicted in the OT. We do claim there was no excuse for the religionists of the time missing the time of their visitation. The Prophcies were clear enough. Christ pointed these things out to them. You know what happens to people when they not only point out the truth, but also are proved correct.
Porch talk endeth.